615 32044010 30592 l 12:3.029 harvard college library tvejrite stas from the bright legacy one half the income from this legacy, which was received in 1880 onder the will of jonathan brown bright of waltham, massachusetts, is to be expended for books for the college library. the other half of the income is devoted to scbolarships in harvard university for the benefit of descendants of henry bright, jr., who died at watertown, massacbusetts, in 1686. in the absence of such descendants, other persons are eligible to the scbolarships. the will requires that this announcement oball be made in every book added to the library under its provisions. ralph waldo emerson complete works. centenary edition. 12 vols. with portraits, and copious notes by e emerson. 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. 5. english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. 10. lectures and biographical sketches. 11. miscellanies. 12. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with centenary edition, except that vol. 12 is without index. emerson's journals. edited by edward w. emerson and waldo emerson forbes. illustrated. 10 vols. poems. household edition. with portrait. essays. first and second series. in cambridge classics nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classics. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emerson. introductory essay. household edition. the same. holiday edition. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. emerson calendar book. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 1834-1872 edited by charles eliot norton. 2 vols. the same. library edition. 2 vols. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. for various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son memoirs, see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals // of ralph waldo emerson's 1820-1872 vol. vii 11 1846 ameson, journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1845-1848 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge karvard college sep 29 1925 llibrary cantacalea cebes lost chirolt feudd copyright, 1912, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1912 pere te c honda the co 2the c a friend contents journal xxxvi 1845 (from journals v, w, and y) anti-texas-annexation convention. wendell phillips. slavery question in lyceum. welcome february thaw. beauty. proclus. thought follows trade. talleyrand. porosity. great gentlemen. napoleon's fortune. democratic institutions. french calculation. whig depression. abolitionist. degrees of power. life's weather. penetration. massachusetts dishonoured by carolina. literature as consolation. the shakers. taming the holy ghost. dæmons. anti-slavery conventions. thoreau on fourierists. manners. what is the state? compromise. experience as teacher. poverty. men illumined. mysticism. god's parabolas. fourier. south carolina's outrage on samuel hoar. massachusetts. the indian. napoleon between thought and matter. talleyrand. hope in the age. the poet. criticism misleads. texas. new hampshire. the constitution. plato. pherecydes. writing with fire. busy bodies. scholar unintelligible to politicians. friendship is truth. uproar or genius ? can scholar explain life ? uses of great men. man must obey the spirit. art's direction, love's temperance. contents degeneracy. ideals are prophecy. napoleon's genius. taylor on bacon. timid scholars. necessary selfishness. degrees. the term “ nigger." slave-labour products. staff for a magazine. criticism. america. shaker folly. poem takes care of itself. monadnoc's inspiration. hero loyal to beauty. man’s counsellor. time. miracles. degrees. berkeley. rich poverty. barren days. english verse. mrs. ripley on holidays. small vs. large house. schiller on poems. life must flow; a game between god and man. write yourself. timid life. men rare. the farmers . . . . . 3-50 householder's questions. scholar's contrasts. vestiges of creation. science symbolic. personality. fame. the poet-crop. identity. whig party. plato's terrible dialectic ; the republic; his commentators. the hidebound college, philosopher in the school committee. insight in reform. our self-belief. genius finds the links. service of sceptic. the genius of the world. class of two. society a boarding-house. college anniversaries. charles newcomb. adaptiveness. the three words. magnetism. effect of farm work. poltroonery. poetry's aids. persons ; initial and celestial love. music if heard but once. seek the labourers. faith through skepticism : evolution. symbols in common life. bhagavat geeta. eras. worship. rufus choate. travel's help. one word in a book ; “ arrested development.” father taylor in concord. the “ timæus." our private theatres. taylor again. worldly teachers. men are lawful. men of character. thought given for act. our forerunners. open-mindedness. the two histories of man. power contents vii and acting reality. lectures. cities of refuge. gift of the years. diagonal in teaching. the sacred persons. invention god's gift. slavery. common people. practical and poetical. superiority in persons. cruikshank. court session at concord; webster and choate ; working of the law. the old dramatists. translation. plato on truth. identity. father taylor's eloquence. the solving word. magnetizers. byron. scott. plutarch. the neoplatonists. transmigration. plato and his interpreters ; cudworth. inertia. the convention ; stephen phillips and garrison. abaddon. genius is health ; the poet must be human. instinct. whiggism. thoreau on philosophies. humboldt's cosmos. gibbon. opportunity . 51-100 nature teaches the law. garrison on constitution. ques! tions. phædo. parallelism. adaptiveness. herbert's “ man” true. seashore. creation. eloquence. scholar's position. hold to your thought. the idea. cost of scholarship. “greek to him” lectures. knowledge in use. the scholar pictured. akhlaki-jalaly. vedanta. the internal check. buddha ; icy light. landor on canning ; untrained scholars. the two boys. skepticism. scholars' progress. symbols. the effective poem. winter apples. knowledge ; wisdom and virtue. “ native americans”; crossings. swedenborg ; fallacy of « the word” ; did not see “ the flowing” ; real wealth. timing. the poles of philosophy ; plato a poet. rachel. mastodons of literature. unavailable genius. jones very. goodness. man's zodiac. transmigration. east indian mythology ; sacrifice. france and england. viii contents sages, poets, women, and whigs. buddhism. fate in india and greece. swedenborg and sin ; poets are pagan ; too much dogma. vishnu purana. stand in your place ; questions answered. amalgam between absolutists and worldsmen. church doctrines from india. vishnu purana. “ hamatreya” and “ earth song.” indian ethics ; identity. wisdom. fashion. man's attributes ; advance from chaos ; culmination. robert owen's lecture criticized. the vegetation in man. livy ; a stage-coach thought. saint-skeptics. greeley, swedenborg and very. influences. man's inventory and the gleams. deliverances. miracles. man representative ; communism. shakspeare's fault. proper works. no coöperation. serve truth. travel. language making. reading . . . . . . 101–144 journal xxxvii 1846 (from journals y and o) god's temple built on ruins ; true reform. alcott's community. majorities. to mend the world. lyceum speakers. personality. contemporaries and moods. talents and ideas. the tail. the fontal german; hegel's philosopheme. eloquence hot or high ; impassivity. fiction in life. original action. relation. swedenborg's result. balance of genius. the looking glass. lights. thoreau's criticism. divine problem. inherited bonds. crossing stocks. spending is gain. thoreau. two brains. immortality. sacred contents reform. english bards. poems of art. the living god. imagination, its two powers. fourier. life a sleep. hymn-books. non-voters. tenacities. byron's failure ; uplifting poetry ; poets old and new, man, not men, instincts ; poets needed. companions. everett's inauguration ; webster's coming ; josiah quincy ; cambridge festivals ; holmes. amusement. hafiz. the mystic. dr. allyne. the universe from an idea. o'connell on disraeli. double the dose. the muse. mother and child. the great artists. ten years' confessions. the best here and cheap. coming death. the differential. follow your calling. costume. personal immortality. goethe's profusion. tropes unwelcome. the central man. thine and mine. the fosters mobbed. individual fate. whigs. the muse. alcott and his victims. alloy in men. a new man. poem of hafiz. the noblest chemistry. poetaster. rotation. torrey's funeral. hope in others' vision. don't pauperize. indians, teamsters, farmers, women. the wildfire of eloquence. strong americans. dickens's service. communist apostles. writing “at odd times.” hawthorne's method. truth. moral harmony, its notes everywhere; must be taught. writers' immunity. nature shows, but does not preach. surface. swedenborg. nature's support, not man's. torrey's burial. humiliation of massachusetts. samanthe crawford. short-sighted cheating. defences. tending. continuity. the universal currents. city of makebelieve. the scholar. carlyle's portrait. boston christianity's diagonal. pure genius. witch-laws. fame. contents zit the age of water. fatal indirections. birds at the study window. ideal community . . . . 145-200 cotton binds the union. eloquence; parker pillsbury's quality. ruggles in debate. osman. life is selection. successful americans. present superstitions. alcott. reform masks reform. mexican war. southerner. frémont's vanity. two points of view. poet must strike true tone ; those who wait. thoreau on society, days of stagnation. a friendship needed. society's curiosity-shop. yankeedom. the poem “ circles.” milton's evolution. nature's mixtures. making of new men. raw material for poems and lectures. bacchus. tests of writer and speaker. styles ; carlyle's medium ; the poet's duty and his measure. verses for “spiritual laws.” longevity. america wants male principle ; her poor policy. permissive destiny. war with mexico ; webster ; thoreau in jail. poor, well meaning state ; useless running amuck, till cause justifies ; alcott ; abolitionists. webster's method. teachers, real tests. exchange of pictures with carlyle. design of poem. bear with barbarians. meeting of class of 1821. sumner at phi beta kappa. the immortal, poets and saints. equality. spenser. destiny. channing as a poet. bangor sights and men. new england needs a history. dr. francis parkman. whitefield on his wife. burke and webster. alcott on emerson. reading ... 201-236 contents journal xxxviii 1847 (from journals o, ab, cd, gh) alfieri ; european characteristics. machiavelli. thoreau. oriental scriptures. power of cotton. samuel g. ward. legaré. pillsbury's tactics. superior friends. the oldest thing. scholar perpetual, sacred. affirmative. saadi's classes of men. bridging the wild atlantic. happy temper. temperance. the unmagnetic man. greek and gothic. measure of health. herbs and trees. alcott desires symposium. concord's magic places. daily help of morals. true thomas. eloquence. live magnets. apprentice sciences. the scholar's courage. a change required ; england? the national capital, impure politics, light-weight americans. what part to take ? scholars need a club. nature's police. pertinent reading ; the english liturgy. greek courage and humors. the cheap and high courages. vishnu purana. mesmerism ; society on our own terms; osman ; guy. nonsense. man follows nature ; his gains. free trade. proclus. burke's growth. light and shade. a quarterly journal. autobiography based on choice. music for sorrow. longevity. inducation. dr. james jackson. boston's societies. the minority. whip needed. transcendentalist and franklin. journal discussed. hafiz and edda on fate and freedom. reality. nantucket shore, people and stories. community wages. aunt mary. the wonderful boy safford. thought of the xii contents poem “ days.” poem of hafiz ; his spirit. “keep the body open.” oriental superlative. kurroglou, the minstrel-bandit. goethe on napoleon. to margaret fuller in rome. thought works unseen. beauty of national myths. bailey's festus ; shelley, carlyle, byron, johnson. the sword's rank. secret of humility. diffuse, unformed america. june blood. rejection. the moment in history. civilization a cake. the dollar. chastity a rocking stone. life's march weather. van mons's nurseries . . . . 237-290 kurroglou. criticism. east and west. goethe on megadhuta. land getting. judgment day. corinne. garden. insects. restless american. our happy climate. idols. arbors. feat of genius. doom of solitude. strange intellect. mystery of poetry. railroad. a musician. yankee speculators. my pear-tree. law of affinity. rich and poor. dumas ; journeymen writers. w. e. channing's book on rome. the rugged thoreau. goethe. luther's cure for morbid conscience. edda. conversation, good and poor. insufficient forces. cyrus stow redeems bog. lesson of tools and physics. friends fell timber for arbor. chronicle of the cid. joy of books. the pear trees. divine men. alcott's senses. gorgias; speculative and practical. compensation in faust and edda. beattie. aristocracy. july on the river. atmosphere. natural history symbolic. whip for top. théâtre des variétés. metamorphosis. ship skidbladnir. “massachusetts quarterly.” boston kings. value of a servant. discoverers creative. king's chapel ; originalities. superstitions of the age. rousseau ; confessions. contents xiii machine must be simple. wilkinson. education. life. . right reading. write as you can. aristocracy in hamlet. wealth is reverence for superiority. thoreau . on food and art. newcomb's visit. aristocracy's conditions. thoughts « impracticable”; hamlet. considerateness. individualism must remain. zohak and eblis; luxury. real and ideal. agent and reagent. france asks for books. boston statistics. intellect detaches; the large patriotism. laborer and idealist. hafiz. cultivate imagination; books recommended. mountains afar. dr. frothingham on the boy emerson. channing on nature. aunt mary's double prayer. effect of thoughts. horoscope, aristocracy. biography, autobiography. present and future. americans idealistic. the present. a man's angle. love gives personality. writing like skating. real aristocracy; serving society ; phantom men. voyage to england ; thoreau left as guardian. the scholar's mark. coals to a market. joseph emerson of malden ; his diary ; “ the shay." catholic and protestant religion . . . . . . . . 291--341 england ; landing ; the good alexander ireland. carlyle's welcome to london ; his wife and mother ; his conversation. mrs. bancroft ; breakfast with samuel rogers ; his house and his anecdotes. lectures in liverpool and manchester ; impressions of the english. street sights. derby; wollaton hall. wisdom not personal, but in the air; ellen's verses. rich and poor. nottingham, chesterfield, birmingham. the dissenter. wealth. new use of words. preston, leicester. influence of the times. worcester cathedral. xiv contents english coachmen. public schools; university system. english triumphs in science, art and letters ; her worthies. verses on queen maud, sir francis drake, the empress maud. milton on his age. intellectual acquaintances. carlyle's reputation ; ruskin. carlyle's rhetoric ; books advised by him. word from margaret fuller ; letter to her on italy. reading. 342-371 367 journal xxxix 1848 (from journals gh, lm, ed, “ london," and rs) england; climate and manners. york minster ; music. the bridlington saddler. armadillo-skinned man. true account of the island of england. the halifax mills. gibbet at liverpool. black country ; leeds and bradford. the times. “mechanics’ institutions.” huddersfield ; rawdon ; manchester. history in perspective is mythology. cameron, espinesse and carlyle. a right aristocracy. evolution. newcomb on thoreau. the sea-line. barnard and raby castles. duke of cleveland. newcastle ; mr. crawshay's trip-hammer. edinburgh ; wilson, jeffrey, de quincey. mrs. crowe's dinner ; david scott, dr. samuel brown and de quincey ; anecdotes of him. dr. brown's aim in chemistry. david scott paints emerson's portrait. glasgow. scottish speech. professor nichol in the observatory. edinburgh again ; wilson's lecture ; his quarrel and magcontents xv nanimity. chalmers. dinner with de quincey at lasswade. de quincey attends lecture ; his dread of his nemesis. dundee church. harriet martineau's trance ; visit to her and call on wordsworth. birth and manners in england, toughness and materialism. london. çarlyle's views ; chartists ; french revo4 . lution ; peel ; tennyson and de vere; cromwell. :/ englishman and american. nineteenth century. we joshua bates. immeasurable london ; characteristics ; parliament house ; the commons. news from paris. immortality. dreams. england, the country of the rich. france, socialism, rhetoric, louis philippe. 4.? lady harriet baring's dinner ; milnes ; buller. evangelical lady and her uncle ; macaulay's story. clergy. english women. the chartist meeting. the times's writers. nature. english tenacity ; american contrasted. tom appleton. franklin's trick. dinners at great houses ; the recluse's instinct. macaulay's strength. christianity old as creation ; thought. seeking priests. englishman practical, heavy ; merchants and scholars ; primogeniture. richard owen's lectures; jerboa rat, bats, hybernation. alcott's visit to england. wealth, power and misery. oxford; bodleian library. marquis of northampton's soirée. the rothschilds. agassiz’s lectures .... 375-424 the new religion ; wisdom in reform. symbols. the w. ☺ souls assessors. reserves. self means ignorance. the dread idea. the books survive. oracle dumb, on socialism. revolutions should be scholar's chance. power and probity. machinery. consciousness, private and universal. question of socialism. the word xvi contents list ljit wa pay. intellect. good hobbies. aim in a book. the british museum. st. paul's. women for australia ; miss coutts and the street-girls. the lycian marbles. owen and the sentry. universal mind ; startling inheritance, ludgate. trades of despair. carlyle's disciples. english finish; the poets ; platonism dead; birmingham lustre. visit to kew gardens. whewell. carlyle on clubs, society, and plato. dinner at john forster's with carlyle and dickens ; their talk on english unchastity. carlyle no idealist, insular, intolerant, the voice of london ; magnificent, yet poor aims; declamatory. hearing alboni. dinner at coventry patmore's with tennyson ; his courage, remark on carlyle ; on festus. visit to brookfield ; tennyson will not go to france ; his habits ; de vere's care of him ; his brothers, anecdotes. dr. shepherd's finding tennyson in holland. farie's models. hallam on swedenborg. france. paris lodgings, shops ; french poetry ; mme. de tocqueville on language. boulevards ; architecture. french traits. meeting with clough. sign of revolution. the day of the blouse. revolutionary clubs. louvre ; spanish paintings. the table d'hôte; clubs, des femmes and des clubs; gallic cock. artist in society. the rich mind. sleep's pranks. torchlight processions ; pictures. hugh doherty. odious joking, visions of home friends. large incomes. the counter-revolution blazes and is extinguished; barbès and blanqui ; causes of uprising. paris seems theatrical. michelet. rachel sings marseillaise. old and new revolution, french influence. london and paris ; use of water. the new contents xvii religion, its verdict; the laws. one's own facts. penalty of genius. writers neutral. mischievous dogmas. life cheap in paris. rising esteem for the french. rachel's person and acting. assemblée nationale; lamartine, restaurant. university. merits and attractions of paris. amiens. return to england . . . . . . . . . . . . 425-474 london ; courses of lectures at portman square and exeter hall; “the nineteenth century.” the first and the third class paradise. no pure idealists in england. art galleries. brain and difficulty. mr. stansfield shows the turner pictures. with owen to hunterian museum and turner's studio ; the mullet. the athenæum club ; richard monckton milnes, stories concerning, and his kind service ; the bunsens, palmerstons, disraeli, macaulay. de tocqueville. topics in london. paris and london to travellers. french have street courage. socialist orator. the english dinner ; limitations of young men. academy exhibition. books brought home. literary substructures. english acquaintance. visits to cambridge, salisbury, stonehenge, stoke poges, eton and windsor. homeward voyage. grace at oxford. six points of chartism. tedious days, the betting. tom appleton. reform-laws. preach not. rules of the gods. carlyle no voter. thoreau the wood-god, the oak tree. devoted women. alcott's barrier ; thoreau and alcott ; a teacher of the soul. george sand; novelists' task. planters of our fruit trees; changed conditions. writers’ unpopularity; the old ones leaped into their books. disraeli. george sand's sincerity. walk to conanxviii contents tum with channing ; old-time farmers ; return to savagery ; man's lot. detachment. dangerous chevelure. walk to estabrook farms; wild apples. the bhagavat geeta. novels. recipe for dramatic material. god grudges eternity ; herodotus. destiny. the model person. poet and politics. emerson's mathematics. population. success is adjustment. behmen, fox, luther, swedenborg. spoiled child of culture. the intellect; aristotle, proclus, laing. selections in writing. inspiration and talent. power of detachment. nature's economy. respect the toilers. temperament. accommodation. genius knows to transfer. on kicking up our heels; wait for sight; activity or listening ? strongest means are cheapest. aristippus and plato on wisdom. goethe on immortality. raphael's originality. doctrine of leasts. result of english visit. alcott's service incommunicable 475-524 the age ; service for cash — or grandeur? the salesman. three pamphlets. talk with low and high. parted friends. conceit of bathing. the merchant. memory. st. augustine on memory; and plato. beatitude of conversation. english and american elementary education. the walk to flint's pond ; priceless wood-lot ; need of brook ; channing on herrick. elusive germany. history teaches principles ; the people's facts needed. dilettante politics. love must right woman. undesired company. antony à wood on poor poet. books must have principle. alcott's schemes. brisbane on education. art miraculous. help of universities. the colours in white pond, talk with channing ; natural « barrows" ; poets old contents xix and new ; boston's neglect ; fitchburg railroad and cochituate water ; politics as a calling ; channing as a showman. phædrus. to know the way. working and indolent minds. the adorer of the laws. scholar posts his books. two bids to inspiration. webster secondary. plymouth usage. wit in trade. invention of the cat. hotel air. early english poetry. merlin's foresight. barbarian voters. the dulling of life's impressions. theory of transparency applied to reading. the laws and the will; reactions. the presidential election. the bad heart. the athenians. heliodorus founder of novels. get the best. convenience of culture ; william of wykeham, his greatness. good englishmen. hospitality of minds ; channing and thoreau on alcott. apples. the few good heads; memory's papyrus, midsummer ; soul's almanac. climate of speech ; fate. action and idea. teutonic granite. november drive to the wayside inn. dr. c. t. jackson on ordnance, and analyzed sound. agassiz on embryos. proportion of traders to thinkers ; reactions. thoreau and heaton. higginson calls for a new dial. punch on saturn. nature's sympathy. archimedes. fate's part. george sand. clough's bothie ; good man and poem. carlyle stands tests. the edda ; the people's language ; iceland. reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 525-565 illustrations ralph waldo emerson. (photogravure) . frontispiece from a daguerreotype taken for carlyle in may, 1846. thomas carlyle . . . . . . . . . . . 196 fromadaguerreotype taken for emerson in april, 1846. . . . . 272 samuel gray ward . . . . . . from an oil painting by william page. journal slavery napoleon webster in concord father taylor address at middlebury college east indian studies course on representative men journal xxxvi 1845 (from journals v, w, and y) [all page references to passages from the journals used by mr. emerson in his published works are to the centenary edition, 1903-05.] [mr. emerson gave no course in boston in the last month of 1844 and first of 1845. he was working on the theme which attracted him, namely, the men whom he had chosen as representative of a few great types. “napoleon, the man of the world,” seems to have been the lecture first finished, and this was in demand by the lyceum committees. during the winter and spring he spoke at fall river, dover (new hampshire), providence, new bedford, gloucester, and other towns. carlyle had bidden him write on an american hero, but he did not. the letters between these friends show the services each was gladly rendering the other in their respective countries, for emerson's second volume of essays was coming out in london, and carlyle's miscellanies in america. lo journal (age 41 pe dct le emerson had now three children, for a second son had been born to him. his farm was now increased in the home fields, and he had bought the walden pine grove. concord was now a railroad town, and steam made the lecturer's travelling easier by land and by water.] nicom m2 (from v) january 30, 1845. in boston, to hear the debates of the texan convention with the hope that i might catch some sparks of the typhonic rage. but i was unlucky in my visits to the house, and heard only smooth whig speeches on moderation, etc., to fill time. the poor mad people did not come.' [it must have been after attending another anti slavery meeting in february that mr. emerson wrote to his friend mr. s. g. ward, 1 this entry occurs in the journal for 1844 among those made in the middle of the summer, and is manifestly out of place there. mr. emerson often used a part of a blank page for a later entry. a joint resolution providing for the annexation of texas passed the united states house of representatives, january 25, 1845, and the senate on february 7. on march 1, these resolutions were approved by president tyler. on december 29, 1845, a joint resolution of congress declared texas admitted to the union. ey 18451 wendell phillips “have you ever heard wendell phillips ? i have not learned a better lesson in many weeks than last night in a couple of hours. the core of the comet did not seem to be much, but the whole air was full of splendors. one orator makes many, but i think this the best generator of eloquence that i have met for many a day, and of something better and grander than his own.”'] in january arose the question again in our village lyceum whether we should accept the offer of the ladies who proposed to contribute to the course a lecture on slavery by wendell phillips. i pressed the acceptance on the part of the curators of this proffer on two grounds; first, because the lyceum was poor, and should add to the length and variety of their entertainment by all innocent means, especially when a discourse from one of the best speakers in the commonwealth was volunteered ; second, because i thought, in the present state of this country, the particular subject of slavery had a commanding right to be heard in all places in new england, in season, and sometimes out of season; that, as in europe the partition of poland 1 letters to a friend, p. 60. ca 10. 0 journal (age 41 was an outrage so flagrant that all european men must be willing, once in every month or two, to be plagued with hearing over again the horrid story, so this iniquity of slavery in this country was a ghost that would not down at the bidding of boston merchants, or the best democratic drill-officers, but the people must consent to be plagued with it from time to time until something was done, and we had appeased the negro blood so. the proposition was later made to have a lyceum supplied by enthusiasts only. we want a lyceum just as much as a shoeshop. it must be boundless in its hospitality. aristo compared lectures to battles. february 26. a thaw for more than a week and three days of heavenly weather, bringing all mythology on their breezy dawns. down falls the water from the steeps; up shoots the northern light after sunset from the horizon. but nature seems a dissipated hussy. she seduces us from all work; listen to her rustling leaves, to the invitations which each blue peak and rolling river and fork of woodland road offers, — and we should never wield the shovel or the trowel. 1845] beauty. proclus 7 march 15. how gladly, after three months sliding on snow, our feet find the ground again!' venus or beauty, author of sport and jest, cheerer and rejoicer of men by the illuminations of beauty, was worshipped as the mother of all things. what right have you scholars and thinkers to pretend to plans of philanthropy, who freeze and dispirit me by that selfish, murderous, hang-dog face? proclus. i not only do not think he has his equal among contemporary writers, but i do not know men sufficiently athletic to read him. there is the same difference between the writings of these platonists and scotch metaphysics as between the sculptures of phidias and the statues of tam o' shanter and my uncle toby. they abound in personification. every abstract idea, every element, every agent in nature or in thought, is strongly presented as a god, in this i drug the cup, thou butler sweet, and send the nectar round. the feet that slid so long on sleet are glad to feel the ground. “may-day,” poems. are glad at slidstar rou journal (age 41 most poetic philosophy, so that the universe is filled with august and exciting images. it is imaginative and not anatomical. it is stimulating. “the soul is intellect in capacity, but life in energy." (proclus, in timæo, vol. ii, p. 448.) “the parts in us are more the property of wholes, and of things above us, than they are our property.” (vol. ii, p. 435.) “why fear to die? at death the world receives its own.” “for the universe uses them as irrational animals.” (vol. ii, p. 400.) the demiurgus, as orpheus says, was nurtured indeed by adrastia, but associates with necessity, and generates fate. in the ideal republic, of course, no man should ever do one thing but once. it is curious how incidental the best things are. a nation is dedicated to trade for some centuries; that occupies the vast majority of men every day for all that long duration. yet the last day it is not more elevated than the first day, and cannot command our respect. but as they grow rich, some men of leisure and study are formed, some men of taste appear; by the very indignation at the general meanness and 1845) thought. talleyrand 9 hurry, some souls are driven into a secluded and sublime way of thinking; these invent arts and sciences, these pray and sing and carve and build. incidentally, too, on all this vast grocery business floating all over the world books and letters go; a passenger is carried from one country who inoculates hundreds and thousands with the opinions and hopes cherished by a handful of men in the old. this new influence, quite incidental to trade, lets loose new thoughts on trade and politics and religion among the traders, which go to revise and revolutionize all their modes of living and conduct. in 1814, talleyrand said to alexander: “sire, only one of two things is possible. we must either have bonaparte or louis xviii. bonaparte, if you can support him; but you cannot, for you are not alone. we will not have another soldier in his stead. if we want a soldier, we will keep the one we have; he is the first in the world. after him, any other who may be proposed would not have ten men to support him. i say again, sire, either bonaparte or louis xviii. anything else is an intrigue.” (bourrienne, vol. iv.) louis xviii is a principle. 1ο (age 41 journal shall we say that the best physical fact is the porosity of all bodies ? an iron bar is not so much a barrier as it is a road and a conductor when we have skill. and when we have sat before a mountain of obstruction for a time, gleams and flashes of light begin to play, and by and by it grows transparent. there shall be no alps. we can turn them. we surrender the field to these vandal mobs of selfishness and brutality, and under their very breasts and animalism suddenly a conscience glows. the gentleman regards only beauty ; so that it is almost ungenerous to report of him anything else than his most outside action. but it is a pleasure to know the leaders of our time. horace walpole knows the first men and women of his time. every man should know the great among his contemporaries. i believe our political parties have nothing fantastic or accidental in their origin, but express very rudely some lasting relation. ... bonaparte delighted in testing his good for1 the rest of the paragraph is found in “politics” (essays, second series, pp. 208, 209). 01845) democracy. napoleon ii tune. reguideau, who had dissuaded madame beauharnais from “marrying a soldier with nothing but his cloak and his sword,” was sent for on the day of the coronation of the emperor, and asked, “well, have i nothing but my cloak and my sword ?” i neither think our democratic institutions dangerous to the citizen, nor, on the other hand, do i think them better than those which preceded them. they are not better but only fitter for us.' . .. napoleon was entitled to his crowns; he won his victories in his head before he won them on the field. he was not lucky only. but this ciphering is specially french ; fourier is another arithmetician. laplace, lagrange, berthollet, — walking metres and destitute of worth. these cannot say to men of talents, i am that which these express, as character always seems to say. yet man always feels that napoleon fights for him ; these are honest victories: this strong steam-engine does our work. i the rest of the passage is in “ politics” (essays, second series, p. 207). 12 (age 41 journal a despair has crept over the whig party in this country. they, the active, enterprising, intelligent, well-meaning, and wealthy part of the people, the real love and strength of the american people, find themselves paralyzed and defeated everywhere by the hordes of ignorant and deceivable natives and the armies of foreign voters who fill pennsylvania, new york, and new orleans, and by those unscrupulous editors and orators who have assumed to lead these masses. the creators of wealth, and conscientious rational and responsible persons, those whose names are given in as fit for jurors, for referees, for offices of trust, those whose opinion is public opinion, find themselves degraded into observers, and violently turned out of all share in the action and counsels of the nation. what is the difference between the abolitionist and the locofoco? this only, that the one knows the facts in this iniquity, and the other does not. one has informed himself of the slave laws of the southern states, and the other has not. how many degrees of power! that which we exert political, social, intellectual, moral is most superficial. we talk and work half asleep. between us and our last energy lie terrific social, 1845] life's weather 13 and then sublime solitary exertions. let our community rise en masse, the undrilled original militia; or let the private man put off the citizen, and make the hero; then is one a match for a nation. we do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action. we must always be little whilst we have these alternations. character is regular and homogeneous. our world, it is true, is like us: it has many weathers, here a shade and there a rainbow; here gravel and there a diamond; polar ice, then temperate zone, then torrid; now a genius, then a good many mediocre people. alas! our penetration increases as we grow older, and we are no longer deceived by great words when unrealized and unembodied. say rather, we detect littleness in expressions and thoughts that once we should have taken and cited as proofs of strength. the position of massachusetts seems to me to be better from samuel hoar's visit to south carolina, in this point, — that one illusion is 14 journal [age 41 dispelled.' massachusetts was dishonoured before ; but she was credulous in the protection of the constitution, and either did not believe, or affected not to believe, that she was dishonoured. now, all doubt on that subject is removed, and every carolina boy will not fail to tell every massachusetts boy, whenever they meet, how the fact stands. the boston merchants would willingly salve the matter over, but they cannot hereafter receive southern gentlemen at their tables without a consciousness of shame. i do not like very well to hear a man say he has been in carolina. i know too well what men she suffers in her towns. he is no freeman. in every government there are wild, lawless provinces where the constituted authorities are forced to content themselves with such obedience as they can get. turkey has its algiers and morocco, naples its calabria, rome its fondi, london its alsatia, and bristol county 1 what follows seems to have been written for delivery at an indignation meeting held in boston or concord, when the honorable samuel hoar, sent by the state of massachusetts as her accredited agent to south carolina to take measures for the protection of massachusetts colored citizens, who, as seamen, entered the port of charleston, from imprisonment and sale, had been forcibly expelled from that state. (see the sketch of samuel hoar in lectures and biographical sketches.) 1845) carolina. shakers 15 its slab bridge, where the life of a man is not worth insuring. south carolina must be set down in that infamous category, and we must go there in disguise and with pistols in our pockets, leaving our pocketbooks at home, making our wills before we go. literature is resorted to as consolation, not as decalogue; then is literature defamed and disguised. ence i talked yesterday with the shaker elders, joseph myrick and grove blanchard, and stated my chief objection to their community as a place of education, that there was too much interference. in heaven, a squadron of angels would be a squadron of gods, with profoundest mutual deference; so should men live. it is true that a community cannot be truly seen from the outside. if deep sympathy exists, what seems interference is not, being justified by the heart of the suffering party. and in lane's' representation of their society, they appear well. he thinks them open to the greatest improvei charles lane, mr. alcott's english friend, who, after the failure of the fruitlands community, remained for some time in this country. 16 journal [age 41 ment and enlargement on every side, even of science, learning, and elegance: only not suddenly. in that case, one can well enjoy their future, and leave them as an order of american monks and nuns, and willingly release from nuptial vows a class of virgins and children of light, who would dedicate themselves to austerity and religion, labor and love. lane thought that they looked on their speech, their dress, and even their worship as not sacred, nor even the best, but as open to revival, and though not rashly alterable, yet modifications were likely to be received. elder grove had said that their mode of worship was once spontaneous; now it was only preserved as a condition for exciting the spirit. i told him they seemed peasants, with a squalid contentment. serv the aim of writers is to tame the holy ghost, and produce it as a show to the city. but the sole terms on which the infinite will come to cities is the surrender of cities to its will. and yet nature seems sometimes to coquet with great poets, and in the willingness to be expressed, suffers them to be knowing men of the world, yet does not withdraw its inspirations. 1845] anti-slavery. thoreau 17 the dæmons lurk and are dumb: and, willing to be god, the worm flees through all the spire of form. let us, says prudence, attempt somewhat practicable. why should we call meetings to vote against the law of gravitation, or organize a society to resist a revolution round the sun ? in the anti-slavery conventions, and in most other meetings, i am forced to remember the clock, and regret how much time is passing, and if i spend any hour upon any history of facts, i think on this loss; but if you bring me a thought; if you bring me a law; if i contemplate an idea, i no longer count the hours. this is of the eternity which is the generator of time. henry thoreau said that the fourierists had a sense of duty which led them to devote themselves to their second best. good manners require a great deal of time, as does a wise treatment of children. orientals have time, the desart, and stars; the occidentals have not. 18 (age 41 journal the state is our neighbors ; our neighbors are the state. it is a folly to treat the state as if it were some individual, arbitrarily willing thus and so. it is the same company of poor devils we know so well, of william and edward and john and henry, doing as they are obliged to do, and trying hard to do conveniently what must and will be done. they do not impose a tax. god and the nature of things imposes the tax, requires that the land shall bear its burden, of road and of social order, and defence; and i confess i lose all respect for this tedious denouncing of the state by idlers who rot in indolence, selfishness, and envy in the chimney corner. common sense is the wick of the candle. x. friends to me are frozen wine ; i wait the sun shall on them shine. men do blunder into victories. the compromise which prevails every day is the accepting of other people's aims for our own, through these treacherous sympathies, and so this expedient civilization subsists and gets on, which pleases nobody and torments the sincere. yet it seems of little consequence at last whether we move on other people's tactics or on our own. 1845] teachers. men. mystics 19 experience is the only teacher, and we get his lesson indifferently in any school. i speak to a's state of mind; i write on a hint of b's learning; i enjoy myself in c's genius and tendency; e comes and says all this is wrong. be it so, but i have always been thus facile, and here i am with prodigious enjoyments and hopes. poverty. the worst thing i know of poverty is that if a man is dead, they call him poor fellow. fourier is a virile mind. his system is a military one. you no longer see phænixes;' men are not divine individuals ; but you learn to revere their social and representative character. they are not gods, but the spirit of god sparkles on and about them. after this generation one would say mysticism should go out of fashion for a long time. it makes now the stereotype turn and return of all poems and poetic prose, “in thyself,” etc. i for the introduction to this paragraph, see “ uses of great men” (representative men, p. 34). 20 journal [age 41 men are weathercocks and like nothing long. we are disgusted with history because it is precise, external, and indigent. but take up behmen, or swedenborg, or carlyle even, or any other who will write history mystically, and we wish straightway for french science and facts recorded agreeably to the common sense of mankind. on sy god's ways are parabolic projections that do not return into themselves. the good fourier does not go for virtue beyond his nose. the highest word i find in his vocabulary is the aromal, under which spiritual distinctions, such as he can recognize, should fall. we cannot spare the coarsest guard of virtue.' ... south carolina has placed itself in a foolish position and we are willing she should.” it is a jail, an alsatia. leave it to itself. it has ex1 see “worship” (conduct of life, p. 222). 2 referring to the expulsion of mr. hoar, mentioned earlier. 1845) samuel hoar outrage 21 cluded every gentleman, every man of honour, every man of humanity, every freeman from its territory. is that a country in which i wish to walk where i am assured beforehand that i shall not meet a great man? that all the men are cotton gins? where a great man cannot live, where the people are degraded, for they go with padlocked lips, and with seared conscience ? i am far from wishing that massachusetts should retaliate. if we could bring down the new england culture to the carolina level, if we were cart-whip gentlemen, it might be possible to retaliate very effectively, and to the apprehension of southerners ;shut up mr. calhoun and mr. rhett, when they come to boston, as hostages for the mulattoes and negroes they have kidnapped from the caboose and the cabin of our ships. but the new england culture is not so low. ours is not a brutal people, but intellectual and mild. our land is not a jail; “we keep open house”; we have taken out the bolt and taken off the latch and taken the doors off the hinges. does south carolina warn us out and turn us out, and then come hither to visit us ? she shall find no bar. we are not afraid of visitors. we do not ring curfews, nor give passes, nor keep armed pa22 journal [age 41 trols from berkshire to the sea; our roads are open from new hampshire to connecticut; the land is without a guard; we have no secrets, no fears. for her flying slave and for his degraded master here is rest and plenty and wisdom and virtue which he cannot find at home. we don't expect a sovereign state to treat us like a footpad. but south carolina does so treat us. the doctrine of south carolina proves too much. but new times have come, and new policy, subtler and nobler and more strong than any before. it is the inevitable effect of culture it cannot be otherwise to dissolve the animal ties of brute strength, to insulate, to make a country of men; not one strong officer, but a thousand strong men, ten thousand. in all south carolina there is but one opinion, but one man, — mr. calhoun. its citizens are but little calhouns. in massachusetts there are many opinions, many men. it is coming, i hope, to a pass when there shall not be the atlas and the post, the daily advertiser and the courier, but these voices shall lose their importance in a crowd of equal and happier men. and such shall their influence be. every one 23 '1845] the indian a new and finished man whom the rogue shall have no increased skill to meet by his dealing with his predecessor, but here is a new accuser, with new character and all the majesty of wisdom and virtue. ... 'tis always time to do right,' and perhaps at a time of disaster which certainly grows out of our social wrongdoing (a wrongdoing to which we have made ourselves parties) is the very hour when we should throw in a noble expiation. we in massachusetts see the indians only as a picturesque antiquity;— massachusetts, shawmut, samoset, squantum, nantasket, narraganset, assabet, musketaquid. but where are the men? “ alas for them! their day is o'er.” well, this feeling still honours the race. hiawatha, wyoming, — we thank them for names. indian relics, arrowheads. he is the oldest man. what real merits — knowledge as naturalist, skill to make bow, tent, sledge, canoe, to find his north, wise as a hound. ... 1 this paragraph is written on an enclosed sheet, and was probably written later, after the first heat of indignation on the outrage on our first citizen had cooled. the passage about the indians evidently was of later date. ace 24 journal [age 41 napoleon is immersed in things, in the land, fruits, forests, arts, money, and so forth, of the world; he does not say anything of him'self, but he says what they say, or rather, they always give some tincture to his speech. that is a very different sort of speech from any thinker's. there are men enough immersed in things, farmers, smiths, truckmen, etc., who have the strength of this sphere, but who cannot speak, who cannot organize and arrange. napoleon stands at the confluence of the two streams of thought and of matter, and derives thence his power. to louis xviii, on his return to france, talleyrand said, “sir, there is something in me which bodes no good to those governments which reject me.” « that lame rascal,” said chenier, “without any respect for episcopacy, resembles a sponge which imbibes every liquid into which it is dipped, with this difference, that when the sponge is pressed, it returns the liquid it has taken, whilst our limping friend makes it his own.” was it fit, after such sacrifices as france had made in the revolution, to adopt again the 1845] hope in the age 25 musty garments of the old civilization ? was it pathetic to see napoleon in st. helena turn his green coat? it was sadder to see europe turn its old coat. to c of course, i do not wish the formation of “mutual admiration societies,” but i do not think the sterility of periods is to be rashly inferred from the absence of eminent talent in a town. a divine soul, i can easily believe, would content itself with the society of illustrious minds which this very hour would afford it (for such exist, pure, true, faithful amongst the faithless, seeing amidst the blind), although no person exists among these with a talent sufficient to realize and establish his ideas. not to be bruised by the business is now a mark of merit; not to despond in cities; to look at the lower powers, viz., of demonstration, realization, edification, as at salt, and lime, and granite; materials and agents as indispensable as light and fire, though lower in the scale of energy. besides, remember sir humphry davy’s “best discovery was the discovery of michael faraday.” so many men whom i know are degraded only by their sympathies. their native aims or 26 (age 41 journal genius being high enough, but their relation all too tender to the gross people about them. a poet is so rare because he must be exquisitely fine and vital in his tissue, and at the same time immovably centred. a true melody, like ben jonson's good songs and all milton's, is of eternity already. verses of true poets are hickory nuts, so fresh and sound. criticism misleads; like bonaparte's quartermaster, if we listen to him, we shall never stir a step. the part you have to take, none but you must know. the critic can never tell you. the annexation of texas looks like one of those events which retard or retrograde the civilization of ages. but the world spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot easily drown him. he snaps his finger at laws. “as we grow old,” said alcott, “the beauty steals inward.” new hampshire is treacherous to the honour, honesty, and intelligence of new england : is and has been. i do not look at the massachu1845) politics. constitution 27 setts democrats in the same light. theirs is a sort of fancy politics. i have a better opinion than to believe they would vote as they do if the question depended on them. but as the proverb goes, “you may well walk if you hold the bridle of your horse in your hand,” so i interpret the caprice of and tactics of our compatriots in this commonwealth on the subject of texas. they know that the great and governing sentiment of the state is anti-slavery and anti-texas, and whilst it is so, they can safely indulge a little flirting with the great mother democracy at tammany hall or at washington which has made texas the passport to its grace. the constitutional argument is ever trivial, for the animus of the framers is not a fixed fact, but a proteus. the constitution was an arrangement, not an organic somewhat, and in south carolina means one thing, in massachusetts another. in such a case, avails but morals and might: “you hurt me, and i will blow your brains out, but i will put an end to this.” i do not see why the two states cannot immediately settle the dispute by a treaty. let them appoint commissioners to meet at philadelphia, and fix a rule of conduct to which both states will agree. 28 (age 41 journal position of massachusetts is better, (1) that it is explained; (2) that south carolina is selfpunished by the exclusion of every virtuous man from alsatia. (from w) χαλεποι δε θεοί φαίνεσθαι εναργείς. iliad, xx, 131. march. plato. a terrific motive power; he touches things and they spin: the solar system is fast becoming a fine transparency. yet to women his book is mahometan. in the republic, book 111, plato declares that his “guardians ” shall not handle gold or silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing at all times to give them without money that which they want. a coinage not corruptible, for with this organic gold we can buy bread and garments and tools, but cannot make an ill use of it, to buy comfits and brandy. pherecydes syrus wrote, “ jove is a circle, triangle and square, centre and line, and all things before all,” which indicates profoundness i for gods revealed are terrible to look upon. 1845] writing with fire 29 of perception. we say then of a jove-like soul, like plato's, that he at once shows the evanescence and the centrality of things. things are in a flood and fixed as adamant: the bhagavat geeta adduces the illustration of the sphered, mutable, yet centred air or ether. the english nation is full of manly, clever men, well-bred, who write these pungent offhand paragraphs in the literary and poetical journals.' . .. it is a coup de force. all this is convenient and civilized : but i had rather take very uncultured, inornate, irregular, very bad poetry with the chance of now and then an urgent, fiery line like threads of gold in a mass of ore. we have in america the comfort of the wretched, that out of this zone of clever mediocrity, england is as indigent as america in great writers. mu ise ah, we busy bodies ! cannot we be a little abstemious? we talk too much, and act too much, and think too much. cannot we cease doing, and gravitate only to our ends? cannot we let the morning be? 1 what follows is printed in english traits (p. 262). 30 journal (age 41 the only use which the country people can imagine of a scholar, the only compliment they can think of to pay him, is, to ask him to deliver a temperance lecture, or to be a member of the school committee. a few foolish and cunning managers ride the conscience of this great country with their texas, or tariff, or democracy, or other mumbo-jumbo, and all give in and are verily persuaded that that is great, — all else is trifling. and why? because there is really no great life, and one demonstration in all the broad land of that which is the heart and the soul of every rational american man; — the mountains walking, the light incarnated, reason and virtue clothed in flesh,he does not see. friends have nothing to give each other; nothing to withhold; nothing to ask for, or that can be refused : such liberty would infer imperfect affinity. all that behooves them is clearness, or, not to miscall relations, truth forevermore, and love after that. men of talent create a certain artificial position, a camp in the wilderness somewhere, about which they contrive to keep much noise, firing of guns, and running to and fro of boys and nd of man that it is thersuade the nori 1845] uproar or genius 31 idlers with what uproar they can. they have talents for contention, and they nourish a small difference into a loud quarrel, and persuade the surrounding population that it is the cause of the country and of man. but the world is wide; nobody will go there after to-morrow; the gun can defend nothing but itself; nor itself any longer than the man is by. but genius alings itself on real elemental things, which are powers, self-defensive, which first subsist, and therefore resist unweariably forevermore all that opposes. genius loves truth and clings to it, so that what it says and does is not a wilderness or a byroad, visited for curiosity or forgotten, but on the great highways of nature, which were before the appian was built, which all men and angels travel, and he holds fast these, a cement and comfort of the social being of men. the scholar does not fall into the existing forms and professions; they may fall into him; but is guided in his selection by religion and necessity. seashore, an imaginative man with a good hand. the imaginative-practical. imagination is suspected, the mechanical is despised; write the solid and the ethereal, for the divine. ... 32 (age 41 journal yet can he [the scholar] explain life? can he unfold the theory of this particular monday? can he uncover the living ligaments, concealed from all but poets, which attach the dull men and things we converse with, to the splendor of the first cause?' i have found a subject, “on the use of great men," which might serve a schleiermacher for monologues to his friends. but, in the first place, there should be a chapter on the distribution of the hand into fingers, or on the great value of these individuals as counterweights, checks on each other. what a satisfaction, a fortress, a citadel i find in a new individual who is undoubtedly of this class. how much now schelling avails, and how much, every day, plato! what storms of nonsense they silently avert. no, it is not the part of merit of a man to make his stove with his own hands, or cook and bake his own dinner : another can do it better 1 the rest of the passage may be found in “works and days” (society and solitude, pp. 179, 180). 2 the first lecture in the course representative men, and first chapter in that volume. 1845] follow the gleam 33 and cheaper; but it is his essential virtue to carry out into action his own dearest ends, to dare to do what he believes and loves. if he thinks a sonnet the flower and result of the world, let him sacrifice all to the sonnet; if he loves the society of one or of several friends more than life, let him arrange his living and make everything yield to the procuring him that chief good. now, we spend our money for that which is not bread, for paint and floorcloths, for newspapers, and male and female servants that yield us the very smallest fraction of direct advantage. the friction of this social machine is grown enormous, and absorbs almost all the power applied. we are bound hand and foot with our decorums and superstitions. england has achieved respectability at what a cost! america with a valet's eyes admires and copies in vain. art requires a living soul. the dunces believe that, as it must, at any one moment, work in one direction, an automaton will do as well, or nearly; and they beseech the artist to say in what direction. “in every direction,” he replies, “in any direction, or in no direction, but it must be alive.” 34 journal (age 41 love has that temperance which asks for nothing which is not already on the moment granted. “you have, o socrates,” said he, “like a statuary, made our governors all beautiful.” “and our governesses likewise, glauco,” said socrates. “for do not suppose that i have spoken what i have said any more concerning the men than concerning the women, — such of them as are of sufficient genius.” (republic, book vıı.) does the same skepticism exist at all times which prevails at present in regard to the powers of performance of the actual population? edmund hosmer thinks the women have degenerated in strength. he can find no matron for the else possible community. the men think the men are less, a puny race. and george minott' thinks the cows are smaller. conservatism has in the present society every advantage. all are on its side. of those who pretend to ideas, all are really and in practice on the side of the state. they know that, if they should persist in actualizing their theories, it i a valued neighbour of mr. emerson's in a little weatherbeaten house on the hill-side opposite. he was a small farmer and pot-hunter, mild and kindly, living with his sister, the village tailoress. 1845] dreamers. napoleon 35 would be all convulsion and plunging. their talk is the mere brag of liberalism. yet, yet, they like to feel their wings. the soul, with plato in pbadrus, likes to feel its wings; and they indulge themselves with this religious luxury, assured that, though the lion is as yet only half disengaged from the soil, the dream of to-day is prophetic of the experience of to-morrow. bonaparte represents the business men's party against the morgue. but the morgue is only the business men's party gone to seed. the lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches, that there is always room for it. he would not take “no” for an answer. he found impediments that would have stopped anybody else, but he saw what gibbering, quaking ghosts they were, and he put his hand through them : genius always sees room for one man more: he makes room for many. w an a bonaparte replied to bourrienne when he showed the difficulty of getting acknowledged by the old neighboring families of europe, “if it comes to that, i will dethrone them all, and then i shall be the oldest sovereign among them.” for really society is at any time only 36 (age 41 journal a troop of thinkers, and the best heads among them take the best seats. it is with the prizes of power and place as it is with estates. a feeble man can only see the farms that are fenced and tilled; the houses that are built. at the end of the town, he is at the end of the world. the strong man sees not only the actual but the possible houses and farms. his eye makes estates and villages, as fast as the sun breeds clouds. poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock. thomas taylor calls bacon's novum organon “the baseless fabric of a vision.” (general introduction to plato.) the puny race of scholars in this country have no counsel to give, and are not felt. every wretched partisan, every village brawler, every man with talents for contention, every clamorous place-hunter makes known what he calls his opinion, all over the country, that is, as loud as he can scream. really, no opinions are given; only the wishes of each side are expressed, of the spoils party, that is, and of the malcontents. but the voice of the intelligent and the honest, of the unconnected and inde1845] mind your own work 37 pendent, the voice of truth and equity, is suppressed. in england, it is not so. you can always find in their journals and newspapers a better and a best sense, as well as the low, coarse party cries. i have now arrived at a perfect selfishness on the most enforced consideration, for i am constrained by many lapses and failures to proportion any attempts to my means. now i receive daily just so much vital energy as suffices to put on my clothes, to take a few turns in my garden and in my study with a book or a pen in my hand. if i attempt anything beyond this, if i so much as stretch out my hand to help my neighbour in his field, the stingy genius leaves me faint and sprawling; i must pay for this vivacity by a prostration for two or three days following. these are costly experiments to try; i cannot afford two or three days when i count how many days it requires to finish one of my tasks; so i grow circumspect and disobliging beyond the example of all the misers. my kings and exemplars are st. hunks and st. elwes." degrees. do you think nobody would be the 1 john elwes was a notorious miser in england in the eighteenth century. 38 (age 41 journal poet if he could be the hero? and do you think the painter cares to be the subject which he paints ? i cannot even find that a woman wishes to be her lover, though she wishes to be united to him. there are steps and limitations in the universe, and not a huddle of identity only. what argument, what eloquence can avail against the power of that one word niggers? the man of the world annihilates the whole combined force of all the anti-slavery societies of the world by pronouncing it. i have charged the abolitionist sometimes with stopping short of the essential act of abstaining from all products of slave-labor. the apology for their use is not comfort and selfindulgence, but, i doubt not, the same feeling which i and others insist on, that we will not be headlong and abandoned to this one mania. a journal might find its resources in calvert," ward, margaret fuller, channing, thoreau, cabot, hunt, tappan, wendell holmes, whip1 probably george h. calvert of newport, a scholarly friend of mr. emerson's brother william, author of a book called the gentle man and many other volumes. 2 peter hunt, one of mr. emerson's pupils in the chelms1845] criticism. america 39 ple. dr. frothingham should contribute his treatise on the augustan astronomy. alcott should be made effective by being tapped by a good suction-pump. hawthorne, tuckerman the botanist, parker, hedge, lane, george curtis, ellen hooper, j. f. clarke. e in reading books, as in seeing men, one may well keep, if he can, his first thoughts; for they will soon be written over by the details of argument and sentiment in the book; and yet they are a juster judgment of the book than a digest of the particular merits can yield. as w. t. said of the first impression of a face, that, after your friend has come and gone many times and now is long absent, that first seen face comes back to the memory, and not the more intimate knowledge of recent days. is it not good that the muse should not govern; that men of thought and of virtue should be at leisure, and ridiculously vacant, and to seek, — rambling ingloriously in woods and by seashores;—that things should be left to themselves, as now in america all goes to a merry prosperous tune, – good and bad is done, govford school; later, a man of affairs in philadelphia. he wrote in the dial “ a voyage to jamaica.” 40 (age 41 journal ernment is not felt, and the governors have an idle time of it? the eager shaker charged adam with the capital sin of generation, and all his posterity with the same, compromising the existence of mother ann,' and of the accuser himself with sincere absurdity. and most of our criticism is of the same web. all the arguments are against literature, yet one verse of a poem will blow them and me away. ballads show the indifferency of subjects, times, styles, and manners. [in one of mr. emerson's verse-books is a half-erased pencilling of an improvisation on the spot — the dark ledges above the spruce forest of the poem “monadnoc” (see its second and third stanzas in the poems).] i among the original shakers in england, who were an offshoot of the society of friends, were the lee family, whose daughter ann, in 1770, thought that she received a divine revelation, which was accepted as such by the shakers. she, with several of the leading members, came to this country in 1777, and from watervliet, new york, their communities spread to other states. 1845] 41 monadnoc 3 may, 4 hours, 10 minutes a.m. i stand upon this uplifted land hugely massed to draw the clouds, like a banner unrolled to all the dwellers in the plains round about a hundred miles. in his own loom's garment dressed, by his own bounty blessed, thus constant giver yielding many a cheerful river appearing an aerial isle, a cheerful and majestic pile which morn and crimson eve shall paint for bard, for lover, and for saint; the country's core, inspirer, prophet evermore; and which god aloft had set so that men should not forget ; it should be their lives' ornament and mix itself with each event; their almanac and dial, painter's palette, sorcerer's phial mysteries of colour duly laid by the great painters, light and shade, and sweet varieties of time and chance, 42 (age 41 journal and the mystic seasons' dance; the soft succession of the hours thawed the snowdrift into flowers. by million changes skilled to tell what in the eternal standeth well. we have received the opinion, let us hope unjustly, that the men who surround us value a long life, and do not esteem life simply as a means of expressing the sentiment. but beauty belongs to the sentiment and is always departing from those who depart out of that. the hero rises out of all comparison with contemporaries and with ages of men, because he scorns old age and lands and money and power, and will brave all mankind just as readily as a single enemy at the call of that private and perfect right of beauty in which he lives. “ man is a torch borne in the wind.” is there only one courage and one warfare?' ... the shepherd boy very sensibly fought with a sling and a pebble. i decline henceforward (ah, would god it were so !) foreign methods and foreign courages. i will do that which i can do: 1 here follow sentences printed in " the scholar” (lectures and biograpbical sketches, p. 274). e co * 1845) the whisper 43 i will fight by my strength, not by my weakness. “not dead but living are ye to account those who are slain in the way of god.” (mahomet.) only the religious can expect the succor of religion. when we come into the world a wonderful whisper gives us a direction for the whole road (much as if one should hear from a skilful guide, at setting out on a journey, that to come at the point he sought he should keep always to the northeast). this whisper is wonderfully impressed on us, and is temperament, taste, bearing, talent. but having made and moulded the constitution, the counsellor contents himself, and is ever dumb. he that made the world lets that speak, and does not also employ a town crier. beauty forbids. but the man, having received this plastic counsel to which he alone is privy, never can hear it from any other person. on the contrary, all persons whom he meets have a different and contrary counsel to offer. society is unanimous against his project. and he never hears it as he knows it. it happens to most men that they listen to these opinions of men, and forsake their own, and attempt to work in other men's work, which is as if cripples should nan tou 44 journal (age 41 attempt to dance, and hare-lipped men should be orators. but he who listens to this counsel is called religious, for he alone worships, and he may rightly expect virtues and beauties and powers consonant with the whole frame of things; to which also he is consonant. it is like the card of the compass which arranges itself with the poles of the world. ers ran “may you likewise find the means better to employ time, which is only truly precious to more highly organized natures !” (goethe.) understand me, o charles, when i speak of miracles, i am never thinking of dead men. degrees. there are not one or two, but many things in the world, and unlike as mutton, and vowel sounds, and heathen gods, and the nine solids, and uncles, and many other things. bishop berkeley, in the minute philosopher, compared southern wits to “cucumbers, which are commonly all good in their kind, but at best are an insipid fruit; while the northern geniuses are like melons, of which not one in fifty is good.” 1845] the uncertain muse 45 the new “second church " in hanover street cost $65,000. give me bareness and poverty, so that i know them as the sure signs of the coming muse.' . .. the solitude of the body is the populousness of the soul. it is easy to hide for something, — to hide · now, that we may draw the more admiration anon. easy to sit in the shade, if we have a plato's republic teeming in the brain, which will presently be born for the joy and illumination of men; easy to withdraw and break somewhat morosely the bien-séances of society, visit not, and refuse visits, if we can make good to others and to ourselves a rare promise. but how if you have no security of such a result? — how if the fruit of your brain is abortive ? — if cramp and mildew, if dreams and the sons of dreams, if prose and crotchets and cold trifles, matter unreadable by other men and odious to your own eyes be the issue? how, if you must i in july, by invitation of the literary societies of the college at middlebury, vermont, mr. emerson gave an address there. this paragraph (which is partly printed in “the scholar,” an address given at the university of virginia in 1876), and that which follows it, were probably written for the middlebury occasion. journal (age 41 sit out the day in thoughtful attitude and experiment, and return to the necessities and conversation of the household without the support of any product, and they must believe and you may doubt that this waste cannot be justified. i call you to a confidence which surmounts this painful experience. you are to have a self-support which maintains you not only against all others, but against your own skepticism. pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you, if you are great. the saharas must be crossed as well as the nile. it is easy to live for others; everybody does. i call on you to live for yourselves, so shall you find in this penury and absence of thought a purer splendor than ever clothed the exhibitions of wit. you shall not know too much. there is a difference between a judge's and a deputy sheriff's knowledge of the world, and again between that of the last and a burglar's. when i read poetry in an english journal, as in the athenæum, i am relieved, if, on coming to the end of the article, i find it is not american. the poet and the citizen perfectly agree in 1845) the small house 47 conversation on the wise life. the poet counsels his own son as if he were a merchant.?... every poet knows the unspeakable hope and represents its audacity by throwing it out of all probability in his conversation. mrs. ripley “hated to hear of the opposition of clergymen and others to the fast day, for she thought our people had so few festivals and this was now well established”; and the penitential form of the proclamation gives it a certain zest which the other holidays want. ci [here follows the little poem,“ the mountain and the squirrel,” written as prose, but for the most part rhyming.] is not a small house best? put a woman into a small house, and after five years she comes out large and healthy, and her children are so. put her into a large house, and after the same time she shall be haggard, sickly, with a sharp voice, and a wrinkled, care-full countenance, and her children suffer with her. i here follows the long passage thus beginning, printed in « the scholar,” as delivered in virginia, but doubtless written for middlebury college in 1845. (see lectures and biograpbical sketches, pp. 264–266.) 48 [age 41 journal “only poetry inspires poetry,” said schiller; “therefore we ought to avoid affairs,” — or something like this he said. true, if he use “poetry” in a literal sense; but if he mean books of poems, no. for the test of the poet is that he be able to read the poetry of affairs. a whole volume of sermons might be made out of the chips of one sonnet. frivolous reasons have allowance with all men and with poets also, but no man says, i was reading plato and therefore could not come; i had new rhymes jingling in my brain, and would not wish losing them. to-day is carnival in heaven, the angels almost assume flesh.' ... one would think from the talk of men that riches and poverty were a great matter. ... a man shall not be a pond. as the water came in, so it shall go out. i think the charm i for the rest, see « works and days” (society and solitude, p. 170). 2 the rest of the paragraph is in “ illusions” (conduct of life, p. 323). 1845] life's game. writing 49 of rhetoric is still that, the hint or advertisement it gives us of our constitution; the pilgrim, the palmer, shell on shoulder, marching fraternity, we are bound on a long tramp. before god, why sit ye here? life is a game between god and man. the one disparts himself and feigns to divide into individuals. he puts part in a pomegranate, part in a king's crown, part in a person. instantly man sees the beautiful things and goes to procure them. as he takes down each one the lord smiles and says, it is yourself; and when he has them all, it will be yourself. we live and die for a beauty which we wronged ourselves in thinking alien. writing should be the settlement of dew on: the leaf, of stalactites on the wall of the grotto, the deposit of flesh from the blood, of woody fibre in the tree from the sap, our virtue runs in a narrow rill: we have i never a freshet. we ought to be subject to enthusiasms. one would like to see boston and massachusetts agitated like a wave with some generosity, mad for learning, for music, for phi50 journal (age 41 losophy, for association, for freedom, for art; but now it goes like a pedlar with its hand ever on its pocket, cautious, calculating. how hard to find a màn! it would take, as taylor said, the lamp of diogenes added to the splendor of the noonday sun. otis talked too much. webster has no morale. choate wants weight. alcott is unlimited, and unballasted. bound, bound, let there be bound! but let there be not too strict bound. . . . alcott is a pail of which the bottom is taken out, and the whig a pail from which you cannot get off the cover. these farmers, so keen in trade, so cool and solid in their manners, are no fools, and their considerate heads might wag to advantage with 'those in congress or the cabinet. but living as they now do, to so humble aims, it seems as if they must, on some day and year not far back, have compounded with more generous hopes and have renounced their homage and duty, and resolved to get what dirty compensation they could for their right of subscription to wild goodness and beauty, by an unmixed, undistracted attention to squalid economics. a great deal of god in the universe, but not 1845] farming. scholar. god 51 valuable to us until we can make it up into man." us 1 е с can 1 as what is the use of trying to get that out which is not in? you may ask me as often as you will, and in what ingenious forms, for an opinion concerning the mode of building the wall, or sinking the well, or laying out the acre, but always the ball will rebound. these are questions which you, and not i, will answer.? the scholar passes, like the russian bathers from hot water to ice-cold, so he from the height of honour to that of insult, as he falls into studious or into “practical” company. see the sentence from visbnoo sarma. vestiges of creation. what is so ungodly as these polite bows to god in english books ? he is always mentioned in the most respectful 1 the remainder of this passage will be found in “ the scholar” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 276). 2 mr. hosmer, or other neighbours who ploughed, manured, or built wall on the increasing acres, of course asked mr. emerson how he wished the work done, and thus made a call on his philosophy to salve the natural mortification at not knowing the answers. 52 (age 41 journal and deprecatory manner, “that august,” “ that almighty,” “that adorable providence,” etc., etc. but courage only will the spirit prompt or accept. everything in this vestiges of creation is good, except the theology, which is civil, timid, and dull. these things which the author so well collates ought to be known only to few, and those, masters and poets. cithara crinitus lopas personat aurata, docuit quae maximus atlas. hic canit errantem lunam, solisque labores unde hominis genus, et pecudes; unde imber et ignes, arcturum, pluviasque hyadas, geminosque triones, quid tantum oceano properent se tingere soles hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet. æneid, 1, 740. it is curious that all we want in this department is collation. as soon as the facts are stated we recognize them all as somewhere expressed in our experience or in history, fable, sculpture, or poetry. we have seen men with tails in the fauns and satyrs. we have seen centaurs, titans, lapithæ. all science is transcendental, or else passes away. botany is now acquiring a right theory. and how excellent is this macleay and swain1845] circles. fame. poets 53 son theory of animated circles ! symbolic also, as in kirby and spence. the cyclic or encyclopædiacal character that science acquires pleases also and satisfies. the avatars of brahma will presently be textbooks of natural history. well, and it seems there is room for a better species of the genus homo. the caucasian is an arrested undertype. persons. does any one suppose himself to be without bounds or limits? perhaps he will defy mesmerism.'... fame. among our social advantages what a signal convenience is fame! do we read all authors, to grope our way to the best? no; but the world selects for us the best, and we select from the best, our best. a crop of poets is as inevitable as a crop of violets or anemones, and the asperity, or the narrowness, or the conceit of any one is of no account in the cycle, being readily compensated, not in him, but in the choir. they are all less than the genus, and why not he? 1 the rest of the passage is in “ eloquence” (society and solitude, pp. 80, 81). 54 journal (age 41 identity. liars also are true. truth is the moral gravitation, and let a man begin where he will, and work in whatever false direction, he is sure to be found instantly afterwards arriving at a true result. the whig party is anxious to disembarrass itself of the abolitionists. does it know that no injustice can be done except by the help of justice ? — that its true policy is to take away from the locofoco party every right principle and adopt the same itself? then will the ruin be inevitable of the bad. but this boyish policy of becoming bad and rowdy gives strength to the other side. “we know all things as in a dream, and are again ignorant of them according to vigilant perception.” (plato, in sophista.) plato, the whetstone of wits, the yardstick, standard metre of wits. the hint of the dialectic is more valuable than the dialectic. one who has seen one proof, ever so slight, of the terrific powers of this organ will remember it all the days of his life. the most venerable proser will be surprised with silence. it is like the first hint that the earth 1845) plato 55 moves, or that iron is a conductor of fluids, or that granite is a gas. the solids, the centres, rest itself, fly and skip. rest is a relation, and not rest any longer. ah, these solid houses, real estates, have wings like so many nimble mosquitoes, and do exceedingly hop and avoid me. books are worth reading that settle a principle, as lectures are. all others are tickings of the clock and we have so much less to live. objections made to plato's republic are shallow. he keeps a cobbler a cobbler, but that is only illustration to show that each passion and action should keep its orbit. there is no cobbler to the civitas dei, which alone he would build. [notes for chapter on plato in representative men, and various quotations occur here in the journal.] it destroys how many originalities, pretended originals, to read plato.... yet how easy to say “my thunder”; “that's new church truth.” poor little fellows, all our propositions are related. ... 56 . journal [age 41 it is easy to read plato, difficult to read his v commentators. there was an ugly rumor went about from london to boston and in other places a twelvemonth since, that cousin was dished, and now i owe to him this magnificent republic; and how many scholars will thank him for a century to come for this translation! there is not the slightest probability that the college will foster an eminent talent in any youth. if he refuse prayers and recitations, they will torment and traduce and expel him, though he were newton or dante. of what use to put one whole thread into a rotten web? the neighbors tax the philosopher with not using his opportunity, if he refuse to serve in the school committee. but to what end should he serve? any reform that he might propose is beforehand either wholly inadequate or else sure of rejection, because he differs from them in the aim of his teaching; he wishing to make of the pupil a worshipper of truth and goodness, and they to make a lover of gain. the clergymen on the committee do not say this, but they also mean it, and aim at it, for ov 1845] insight in reform 57 the children generally, and for their own children also. is it different in regard to political employments ? but we have — have we not? — a real relation to markets and brokers, to currency and coin.'... you say that we talk of slavery and patriotism but will not do anything. why, but because we have not sufficient insight? in this new matter of association are men to blame that they will not leave their homesteads and try the hazardous experiment of a new colony in the woods of the west or in brook farm or skaneateles, perilling the means of living of their families ? they wish well to your enterprise, but it looks to them by no means wise and secure. they want sight, certainty, thorough knowledge. they are perfectly right in refusing their contribution and their personal aid to your project. better certainly that you should lack their aid than that they should do a foolish thing. then let us have insight before all things. with our saxon education and habit of i see the passage in “ the scholar” on the “unmentionable dollar” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 272). 58 (age 41 journal thought we all require to be first. each man must somehow think himself the first in his own career: if he find that he is not, he thinks himself cheated; he accuses nature and providence. we are born with lotus in our mouths, and are very deceivable as to our merits, easily believing we are the best. but in our present system that is the basis, that i am to be the first of my kind. meantime we have somewhere heard or dreamed of another order, to wit, purely social, where a social or loving perfection subsisted, blending the properties of all, and each found his beatitude in the atmosphere of his club. if an american should wake up some morning and discover that his existence was unnecessary, he would think himself excessively ill-used, and would declare himself instantly against the government of the universe. we construct all our theories and philosophies so as to show how with many members each member may be best. as creeps from leaf to leaf the worm, so creeps its life from form to form, and the poor emmet on the ground on the march of centuries is bound. truth, or the connexion of cause and effect, 1845) the good genius 59 alone interests us.'. .. talent makes counterfeit ties. genius finds the real ones. wonder is begotten by showing us legitimate series, but suppressing one or more of the terms. skepticism profits by suggesting the grander generalization which yet remains to us (as proved by this or that anomaly) after our present religion and philosophy shall be outlived. we say sometimes of a personage, that he spreads his ability over his whole discourse, and does not utter epigrams; so eminently does the good genius of the world, and cares little to distil sweetness or sense into moments or persons, but by here a little and there a little, with infinite tediousness of apparatus and detail, arrives surely at his ends. i will tell you how you can enrich me, if you can recommend to-day to me. is there a book that will not leave us where it found us? the republic, perhaps? yes, if there were one to read it with. what we want, then, is a class. a class of two. i here follow sentences printed in « montaigne" (reprosentative men, p. 170). 60 (age 42 journal society is a great boarding-house in which people of all characters and habits meet for their dinner and eat harmoniously together; but, the meal once over, they separate to the most unlike and opposite employments. mo i avoid the stygian anniversaries at cambridge, those hurrahs among the ghosts, those yellow, bald, toothless meetings in memory of red cheeks, black hair, and departed health. most forcible feeble made the oration that fits the occasion, that contains all the obituary eloquences. bluebirds celebrate theirs. animal spirits. on common ground, as at a feast, common people entirely meet or even blend. each newcomer is only the animal spirit of the other extended. instead of carrying the water in a hundred buckets we have a hose, and every hose fits every hydrant. saturday, june 7. i went with c. s. to see charles newcomb. we found him wrapt as ever in his great gothic cathedral of fancies ; pained now, it seems, by the doubt whether he should retire to more absolute inward priesthood, or accept the frequent 1845] a saint. adaptiveness 61 and to him dear solicitations of domestic and varied life. his idea of love, which he names so often, is, i think, only the wish to be cherished. he is too full of his prophecy, once to think of friendship. saints in a convent who all recognize each other, and still retire, that is his image. a purer service to the intellect was never offered than his, — warm, fragrant, religious, — and i feel when with him the pertinency of that platonistic word, “all-various." beautiful and dear, god and all his hosts shall keep him. adaptiveness. the philosophy we want is one of auxions and mobility; not a house but a ship in these billows we inhabit.' ... the universe and the individual perpetually act and react on each other. thus all philosophy begins from nox and chaos, the ground or abyss which schelling so celebrates. and in every man we require a bit of night, of chaos, of abgrund, as the spring of a watch turns best on a diamond. in every individual we require a pièce de resistance, a certain abyss of reliance and fortitude on which to fall back, when worst comes to worst. that continent, that backbone being secure, he i see “montaigne” (representative men, p. 160). 62 (age 42 journal may have what variety, what surface, what ornament, what flourish, he will. for plato, it would be pedantry to catalogue his philosophy; the secret of constructing pyramids and cathedrals is lost, and not less of platonic philosophies. you may know all the people on earth. do you know your own genius ? no. every thought, every deed, you drag before it that you may have a verdict and know something of itself; and it answers from its cloudy seat. what alone in the history of this world interests us? what but the mystic import of two or three words men use ? genius, love, right. he [the scholar] will have to answer certain questions which i must plainly tell you cannot be staved off.'... i invite you not to cheap joys."... un believe in magnetism, not in needles; in the unwearied and unweariable power of destiny, which, without an effort, brings together like to i the rest of this passage is printed in « the scholar," an address given at the university of virginia in 1876 (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 284). 2 idem (p. 287). 1845] effect of farm work 63 like, the arrow to its mark, the cause to its effect, the friend to the friend, and the soul to its fortune, for, though the bases are divided, the summits are united. silver to silver. lethe farm once more! the unanimous voice of thoughtful men is for the life of labor and the farm. all experience is against it, it being found, (1) that a small portion of the people suffice for the raising of bread for the whole ; (2) that men are born with the most positive peculiarities of power, as for music, for geometry, for chemistry, for care of animals, etc., etc.; (3) that hard labor on the farm untunes the mind, unfits for the intellectual exercises which are the delight of the best men. i suppose that all that is done in ploughing and sowing and reaping and storing is repeated in finer sort in the life of men who never touch the ploughhandles. the essence of those manipulations is subtle and reappears in counting-houses and council boards, in games of card and chess, in conversations, correspondences, and in poets' rhymes. the obvious objection to the indulgence of particular talent and refusing to be man of all work is the rapid tendency to farther subdivian 64 journal (age 42 sion and attenuation, until there shall be no manly man. the good of doing with one's own hands is the honoring of the symbol. my own cooking, my own cobbling, fence-building, digging of a well, building of a house, twisting of a rope, forging of a hoe and shovel, is poetic. poltroonery is in acknowledging an inferiority as incurable. ... the only suppression of truth we can forgive is in restraining the confession of inferiority when really felt because of some trivial advantage. let the penitent wait and not prematurely poltroonize. poetry aids itself both with music and with eloquence, neither of which is essential to it. say rather that music is proper to it, but that within the high organic music proper to it are inferior harmonies and melodies, which it avails itself of at pleasure. thus in channing's piece called “ death,” the line “i come, i come, think not i turn away” – is a turn of eloquence. and byron, when he writes, — 1845] byron. persons 65 “for who the fool that doth not know how bloom and beauty come and go, and how disease and pain and sorrow may chance to-day, may chance to-morrow unto the merriest of us all,” — enhances the pleasure of the poem by this bit of plaintive music. in like manner, “ out upon time! who will leave no more of the things to come than the things before. out upon time! who forever will leave but enough of the past for the future to grieve; relics of things that have passed away, fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay.” scholar goes for faith, but is a skeptic. persons are a luxury and a convenience, like shops. names are the only poems which loving maidens will hear. nearness is the aim of all love. an exchange of nobleness is it also. but if you would sublimate it, i think you must keep it hard and cold, and with a dantean leanness. we strangely stand — souls do — on the very edges of their own spheres, leaning tiptoe towards and into the adjoining sphere. the initial love must be allowed; then the celestial shall follow. the nuptial love releases each from 66 journal (age 42 that excess of influence which warped each from his own beauty, and gives each again to himself and herself, so that they acquire their own feature and proportion again, and a new beauty and dignity in each other's eyes. healed of the fever, let them beware of a second fever. it is not for lovers (on a high degree of love) to sue. great love has that temperance which asks for nothing which is not already in the moment granted. it is theirs only to be indulgent to the joyful necessity which, making them coexistent, has also made them contemporary. they are only to find each other and to be in each other. me with what astonishment and reverence would not men listen to music if it were rarely heard and a little at a time! but when they stand by an organ and hear its voluminous voices all day, the natural reverence is abated. one who wishes to refresh himself by contact with the bone and sinew of society must avoid what is called the respectable portion of his city or neighborhood with as much care as in europe a good traveller avoids american and english people. the laborers. 1845) heaven's way. symbols 67 shall i say that i am driven to express my faith by a series of skepticisms?'.. seri by atoms, by trifles, by sots, heaven operates. the needles are nothing, the magnetism is all. volvox globator has got on so far! he has rolled to some purpose truly.” “to make the great, little, and the little, great,” socrates said, “ was the orator's part.” well, that is what poetry and thinking do. i go out one day and see the masons and carpenters busy in building a house, and i discover with joy the parallelism between their work and my constitution, and come home glad to know that i too am a housebuilder. the next day i go abroad and meet hunters, and, as i return, accidentally discover the strict relation between my pursuit of truths and theirs of forest game. ... i here follows in substance, but with some difference of expression, the matter that is found in representative men (pp. 181, 182) as to the inability which the humane but honest thinker may find in himself to work in the partial reforms of his day. 2 “ man is the most composite of all creatures; the wheelinsect, volvox globator, is at the other extreme.” (see the last page of representative men.) 68 (age 42 journal ty “children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative and the practical doctrines, as two. they are but one, for both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained by the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the other. that man seeth who seeth that the speculative doctrines and the practical are one.” — bhagavat geeta. eminent experiences. eras. when the kepler laws were learned; when the 47th proposition [of euclid was issued] ; when the idealism was known; the doctrine of like to like; the doctrine of compensation; the doctrine of symbols and correspondence. worship is the height of rectitude. “the world is no place for the man who doth not worship, and where, o arjoon! is there another?” worship, because the sailor and the ship and the sea are of one stuff; worship, because, though the bases of things are divided, yet the summits are united ; because not by thy private, but by thy public and universal force canst thou share and so know the nature of things. worship, because that is the difference between genius and talent; between poetry and 1845] choate. hunter's words 69 prose; between imagination and fancy. the poet is like ... the vaulters in the circus round who step from horse to horse, but never touch the ground. superlatives. choate's thousand-for-one-style. choate is a locomotive that runs so readily back and forward that there is perpetual need to scotch the wheels. with so much sail the craft should mind her helm well. the grimace is a part of the superlative, and very bad part. a man fullgrown should not cry in a public place alone. the rich take up something more of the world into man's life: they include the country as well as the town, the ocean-side, niagara, the far west, and the old european homesteads of man, in their notion of available material; and therein do well. we owe to every book that interests us one or two words. thus, to vestiges of creation we owe “arrested development.”. i remember to . in his essay, “ poetry and imagination,” mr. emerson credits john hunter with “ the electric word “arrested and progressive development' indicating the way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highest organism which gave the 70 journal (age 42 have seen three or four important words claimed as the result of bentham, of which i think “international ” was one. to plato we owe a whole vocabulary and at this moment remember the importance of the words “obstetrical,” “mania," and “assimilation,” in their platonic sense. june 23. it was a pleasure, yesterday, to hear father taylor preach all day in our country church. men are always interested in a man, and the whole various extremes of our little village society were for once brought together. black and white, poet and grocer, contractor and lumberman, methodist and preachers, joined with the regular congregation in rare union. the speaker instantly shows the reason in the breadth of his truly social nature. he is mighty nature's child; another robert burns trusting heartily to her power, as he has never been deceived by it, and arriving unexpectedly every moment at new and m poetic key to natural science.” richard owen mentioned this expression to mr. emerson as found by him in hunter's manuscripts. mr. emerson alluded to it in connection with the article on hunter in the biographie générale. (see « biographical sketch of emerson” in nature, addresses, and leco fures, p. xxix.) 71 1845] edward taylor happiest deliverances. how joyfully and manly he speaks himself abroad. it is a perfect punch and judy affair, his preaching. the preaching quite accidental and ludicrously copied and caricatured from the old style, as he found it in some connecticut tubs. as well as he can he mimics and exaggerates the parade of method and logic, of text and argument, but after much threatening to exterminate all gainsayers by his syllogisms, he seldom remembers any of the divisions of his plan after the first, and the slips and gulfs of his logic would involve him in irreparable ridicule if it were not for the inexhaustible wit by which he dazzles and conciliates and carries away captive the dullest and the keenest hunter. he is perfectly sure in his generous humanity. he rolls the world into a ball and tosses it from hand to hand. he says touching things, plain things, grand things, cogent things, which all men must perforce hear. he says them with hand and head and body and voice; the accompaniment is total and ever varied. “i am half a hundred years old, and i have never seen an unfortunate day. there are none." ... “i have been in all the four quarters of the world, and i never saw any men i could not love.” “we have sweet conferences and prayer re no 72 (age 42 journal n e are meetings; we meet every day. there are not days enough in the year for us.” everything is accidental to him, — his place, his education, his church, his seamen, his whole system of religion, a mere confused rigmarole of refuse and leavings of former generations,— all has a grinning absurdity, except the sentiment of the man. he is incapable of thought, he cannot analyse or discriminate, he is a singing, dancing, drunkard of his wit— only he is sure of the sentiment. that is his mother's milk, that he feels in his bones, heaves in his lungs, throbs in his heart, walks in his feet, and gladly he yields himself to the sweet magnetism, and sheds it abroad on the people, rejoicing in his power. hence he is an cxample — i, at this moment, say the single example — we have of an inspiration ; for a wisdom not his own, not to be appropriated by him, which he cannot recall or ever apply, sails to him on the gale of the sympathetic communication with his auditory. there is his closet, there his college, there his confessional; he discloses secrets there, and receives information there, which his conversation with thousands of men (and he knows everybody in the world almost) and his voyages to egypt and journeys in germany and in syria 73 1845] edward taylor never taught him. indeed i think that all his talk with men and all his much visiting and planning for the practical in his “mariners house,” etc., is all very fantastic, all stuff; i think his guardians and overseers and treasurers will find it so. not the smallest dependence is to be put on his statement of facts. arithmetic is only one of the nimble troop of dancers he keeps. no; this free happy expression of himself and of the deeps of human nature, of the happier, sunny facts of life, of things connected and lying amassed and grouped in healthy nature, that is his power and his teacher he is so confident that his security breathes in all his manners and gestures, in his tones and the expressions of his face, and he lies all open to men, a man, and disarms criticism and malignity by perfect frankness. we open our arms, too, and with half-closed eyes enjoy this rare sunshine. a wondrous beauty swims all the time over the picture gallery and touches points with an ineffable lustre. obviously he is of the class of superior men, and every one associates him necessarily with webster, and, if fox and burke were alive, with fox and burke. what affluence! there never was such ac74 journal [age 42 de tivity of fancy. how wilful and despotic is his rhetoric—“no, not the blaze of diogenes's lamp added to the noonday sun would suffice to find it,” he said. everything dances and disappears, changes and becomes its contrary in his sculpturing hands. how he played with the word “lost” yesterday, “the parent who had lost his child.” “ lost !” lost became found in the twinkling of an eye. so will it always be. his whole work is a sort of day's sailing out upon the sea; not to any voyage, but to take an observation of the sun, and come back again. again and again and again, we have the whole wide horizon, how rare and great a pleasure ! that is the iliad, that is picture, that is art, that is music. his whole genius is in minstrelsy; he calls it religion, methodism, christianity, and other names, — it is minstrelsy, he is a minstrel; all the rest is costume. for himself, it is easy to see that, though apparently of a moderate temperament, he would like the old cocks of the bar-room a thousand times better than their temperate monitors. timæus. the weathers fit our moods.'. .. 1 the passage on the fit morning to read the timæus of plato follows. see works and days” (society and solie tude, pp. 169, 170). 1845] our private theatres 75 there is a little opium in it (plato's timæus); tête exaltée, the figures wear the buskin and the grandiose tragic mask: it is all from the tripod, though in admirable keeping. men go through the world each musing on a great fable, dramatically pictured and rehearsed before him. if you speak to the man, he turns his eyes from his own scene, and slower or faster endeavors to comprehend what you say. when you have done speaking, he returns to his private music. men generally attempt early in life to make their brothers first, afterwards their wives, acquainted with what is going forward in their private theatre, but they soon desist from the attempt, or finding that they also have some farce, or perhaps some ear and heart-rending tragedy forward on their secret boards, on which they are intent, all parties acquiesce at last in a private box with the whole play performed before himself solus. se even for those whom i really love i have not animal spirits. what an eloquence taylor suggests! ah, could he guide those grand sea-horses of his 76 journal [age 42 with which he caracoles on the waves of the sunny ocean. but no, he is drawn up and down the ocean currents by the strong sea-monsters, — only on that condition, that he shall not guide. how many orators sit mute there below! they come to get justice done to that ear and intuition which no chatham and no demosthenes has begun to satisfy. oliver houghton, kimball, john garrison, belknap, britton, weir, and the methodist preachers; w. e. channing, thoreau, horace mann, samuel hoar, the curtises, mrs. barlow, minot pratt, edmund hosmer, were of taylor's auditory. nobody but webster ever assembles the same extremes.' the scholar is very unfinished who has only literary weapons. he must be spiritual man. this list includes the humblest citizens of concord as well as those well known. george william curtis and his brother burrell were then working on the farm of captain nathan barrett (see correspondence of john s. dwight and g. w. curtis). mrs. barlow was the mother of the gallant general francis barlow, then a mischievous schoolboy in concord. minot pratt, originally a printer in boston and one of mr. emerson's congregation, after sinking most of his money in brook farm, became a farmer, in concord, and on holidays secured rare plants from other towns and domesticated them in concord woods. 1845] worldly teachers 77 he must be ready for bad weather, poverty, insult, weariness, reputation of failure, and many other vexations. he ought to have as many talents as he can. memory, practical talent, good manners, temper, lion-courage are all good things. but these are superficial, and if he has none of them he can still do, if he has the main mast, if he is anything.' ... i think the scholars who have given so many counsels are too worldly. scott will have it that they shall not be in false position with “good society,” they shall not be insulated. goethe thinks dealing habitually with men and affairs essential to the health. ... time will show whether the facility is not a snare, and do not drag him that has it back to the shops from which his genius would remove him. when somebody adduced the children as examples of the value of a careful education, aunt mary replied, “my good friend, they were born to be educated.” it stands just so with this superstition good whigs have concerning our debt i the long passage follows which is printed in the concluding pages of « the scholar” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 286, 287). 78 (age 42 journal to good laws. i always wish to answer “ good friend, we are a lawful people. the law is a mere effect, like their obedience to laws; men, these men, are lawful, and make laws and obey laws.” a cat falls on its feet; shall not a man? you think he has character; have you kicked him? talleyrand would not change countenance; edward taylor, henry thoreau, would put the assailant out of countenance. i am sorry we do not receive the higher gifts justly and greatly. the reception should be equal. but the thoughts which wander through our mind we do not absorb and make flesh of, but we report them as thoughts, we retail them as stimulating news to our lovers and to all athenians. at a dreadful loss we play this game; for the secret god will not impart himself to us for tea-table talk; he frowns out moths and puppets, passes by us and seeks out a solitary and religious heart. man. literature has been before us, wherever we go. when i come in the secretest recess of a swamp, to some obscure and rare and to me 1845] our forerunners 79 unknown plant, i know that its name and the number of its stamens, every bract and awn, is carefully described and registered in a book in my shelf. so it is with this young soul wandering lonely, wistful, reserved, unfriended, up and down in nature. these mysteries which he ponders, which astonish and entrance him, this riddle of liberty, this dream of immortality, this drawing to love, this trembling balance of motive, and the centrality whereof these are rays, have all been explored to the recesses of consciousness, to the verge of chaos and néant, by men with grander steadfastness and subtler organs of search than any now alive; so that when this tender philosopher comes from this reverie to literature, he is alarmed (like one whose secret has been betrayed) by the terrible fidelity with which men, long before his day, have described all and much more than all he has just seen as new continent in the west. august 19. we do not expect the tree to bear but one harvest in the year, but a man we expect to yield his fruit of wit and action every day. we are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ances80 journal (age 42 tor. we are of the party of war and of the peace party alternately; to both very sincerely. only we always may be said to be heartily only on the side of truth. see-saw. the world is enigmatical; everything said and everything known and done, and must not be taken literally, but genially. w. c.' is a middleman, dragoman, or graceful translator of ideas into the vernacular understanding. er there are always two histories of man in literature contending for our faith. one is the scientific or skeptical, and derives his origin from the gradual composition, subsidence, and refining, — from the negro, from the ape, progressive from the animalcule savages of the waterdrop, from volvox globator, up to the wise man of the nineteenth century. the other is the believer's, the poet's, the faithful history, always testified by the mystic and the devout, the history of the fall, of a descent from a superior and pure race, attested in actual history by the grand remains of elder i probably rev. william h. channing. 1845] man in power. reality 81 ages, of a science in the east unintelligible to the existing population; cyclopean architecture in all quarters of the world. in swedenborg, it is called the “most ancient church,” and the nobilities of thought are called “remains” from this. the height of this doctrine is that the entranced soul living in eternity will carry all the arts, all art, in power, but will not cumber itself with superfluous realizations. the faithful dogma assumes that the other is an optical show, but that the universe was long already complete through law; and that the tiger and the midge are only penal forms, the auburn and sing sing of nature; men, men, all and everywhere. e. the near-sighted people have much to say about action. but i can well say that the singing iopas seems to me as great as the sworded hector. it is by no means action which is the essential point, but some middle quality indifferent both to poet and to actor, and which we call reality. so that we have reality and necessity, it is equivalent in a word or in a blow. the election of the will is the crisis ; that is celebrated often by yea or nay: the following action is only the freight train. not action, not speculation imports, but a middle essence com82 'journal (age 42 mon to both. i believe in the sovereign virtue, or, shall i say, virulence, of probity, against all arithmetic. arithmetic is the science of purposes, probity that of essences. the most private will be the most public, if it be only real. i have no defence to set up for the existing philosophers or poets. the rogue or the statesman is not made to feel his insignificance among either divines or literary men; for, at a glance, he sees that it is rogue again under the cassock, or with the manuscripts, and they greet each other; but when he shall see the prophet, he shall be shamed. to the vigilant the history of the universe is only symptomatic; and life mnemonical. lectures are a few reasonable words to keep us in mind of truth amidst our nonsense. whiggism hates the relative; it dogmatizes, it pounds. to science there is no poison : the word is relative. see how many cities of refuge we have. skepticism, and again skepticism? well, let abyss open under abyss, they are all contained and bottomed at last, and i have only to endure. i am here to be worked upon. 1845] gains. the diagonal 83 · we expose our skepticism out of probity. well, we meet, then, on the ground of probity, and not of skepticism. i am shamed on reflecting on the little new skill the years bring me, at the power trifles have over me, at the importance of my dinner, and my dress, and my house, more than at the slenderness of my acquisitions. for we do acquire some patience, some temper, some power of referring the particular to the general. we acquire perspective so as to rank our experiences and know what is eminent. else the term an old one would have no meaning. ni what a luck in teaching! the tutor aims at fidelity, the pupil strives to learn, but there is never a coincidence, but always a diagonal line drawn partaking of the genius of the tutor and the genius of the pupil. this, when there is success, but that how conspicuous ! two precious madmen who cannot long conspire. honor among thieves, let there be truth among skeptics. are any or all of the institutions so valuable as to be lied for? learn to esteem all things symptomatic, no more. 84 journal (age 42 but, faith, has it not its victories also? behold these sacred persons, repulsive perhaps to you, yet undeniably born of the old simple blood, to whom rectitude is relative; see them here, white silver amid the bronze population, one, two, three, four, five, six, and i know not how many more, but conspicuous as fire in the night. each of them can do some deed of the impossible. do you say, our republic can never be? i say, but let citizens be born for it, and it can. nothing but god can give invention ; everything else, one would say, the study of plato would give; a discipline, it seems, in logic, in arithmetic, in taste and symmetry, in poetry, in longanimity, in language, in rhetoric, in science or ontology, and in morals or practical wisdom. august 25. i heard last night with some sensibility that the question of slavery has never been presented to the south with a kind and thoroughly scientific treatment, as a question of pure political economy in the largest sense. a practical question, you say, is, what are common people made for? you snub them, and 1845] society. advance 85 all your plans of life and all your poetry and philosophy only contemplate the superior class. this is a verbal question, never practical. common people, uncommon people, all sorts of people, dispose of themselves very fast, and never wait for the sentences of philosophers. the truth seems to be, there are no common people, no populace, but only juniors and seniors; the mob is made up of kings that shall be; the lords have all in their time taken place in the mob. the appearance in any assembly is of a rapid self-distribution into cliques and sets.' . ... do you think we should be practical? i grieve that we have not yet begun to be poetical. it is after long devotion to austere thought that the · soul finds itself only on the threshold, and that truth has steeps inaccessible to any new and profane foot; long novitiate, long purgation, maceration, vigils, enthusiasm, she requires. human life seems very short to the student. its practical importance in your sense vanishes like a cloud. they have all eaten lotus alike. over and above all the particular and enumerable list of talents and merits of any distini most of the long passage which follows is printed in substance in society and solitude (p. 14). 86 [ace 42 journal guished person is their superiority, not to be described, but which brought into notice all those talents and merits. one face of it is a certain eminent propriety, which is taste and reason and symmetry and makes all homogeneous. homer and milton and shakspeare all have this atmosphere or garment of fitness to clothe themselves withal, and we sometimes call it their “humanity.” in webster, our great lawyer, it is a propriety again. plato is no athenian. ... it transcends sectional lines, the great humane plato. but we read impatiently, still wishing the chapter or the dialogue at its close. [a trans-national book again is the bhagavat geeta.] the reader in plato is soon satisfied that to read is the least part. the whole world may read the republic and be no wiser than before. it is a chief structure of human wit, like karnac.'... b. a.” told me that when he saw cruikshank's drawings, he thought him a fancy caricaturist, but when he went to london he saw that he drew from nature, without any exaggeration. i the rest of the passage is printed on the last page of “ plato, or the philosopher" (representative men). 2 alcott ? 1845] court at concord 87 i was in the courthouse a little while to see the sad game. but, as often happens, the judge and jury, the government and the counsel for the prisoner, were on trial as much as he.' ... three or four stubborn necessary words are the pith and fate of the business; all the rest is expatiating and qualifying: three or four real choices, acts of will of somebody, the rest is circumstance, satellite, and flourish. there was webster, the great cannon loaded to the lips : he told cheney that if he should close by addressing the jury, he should blow the roof off. as it was, he did nothing but pound. choate put in the nail and drove it; webster came after and pounded. the natural grandeur of his face and manners always satisfies; easily great; there is no strut in his voice or behavior, as in the others. yet he is all wasted; he seems like a great actor who is not supported on the boards; and webster, like the actor, ought to i here follows the account of the trial in concord of the “wyman case,” in which webster, choate, and e. r. hoar were counsel for the defendant. the journal, omitting names, gives the account of the badgering of the judge by the district attorney in almost the same words as are printed in “ eloquence." not “salvage,” but “a trust” was what the judge was forced to define. (see society and solitude, pp86–88.) dne 88 (age 42 journal go to london. ah! if god had given to this demosthenes a heart to lead new england, what a life and death and glory for him. now he is a fine symbol and mantel ornamentcostly enough to those who must keep it; for the great head aches, and the great trunk must be curiously fed and comforted. the apparatus of the law is large and cumbrous and when one sees to how short an issue it leads it seems as if a judge would be as safe. all is for a vent to these two or three decisive phrases that come leaping out, no man knows when, at first or at last in the course of the trial. we go and sit out the tedious hearing for these moments. but at last when we come away, we are to eliminate' that result for ourselves : no reporter, except time, will do it for us. the old dramatists wrote the better for the great quantity of their writing and knew not when they wrote well. the play house was low enough to have entire interest for them; they were proprietors; it was low and popular and not literary. that the scholars scorned it, was its saving essence. shakspeare and his comrades i mr. emerson singularly always uses eliminate as equivalent to get, not to get rid of. 1845] live books. identity 89 evidently thought the mass of old plays or of stage plays corpus vile, in which any experiment might be freely tried. had the prestige which hedges about a modern tragedy or other worthless literary work existed, nothing could have been done. the coarse but warm blood of the living england circulated in the play as in street ballads.' . .. see how the translation of plutarch gets its wonderful excellence, as does the english bible, by being translation on translation.'. .. (from y) “the earth is upheld by the veracity of the good.” “and whatsoever soul shall have received anything of truth shall be safe from harm until another period.”—plato, pbadrus. identity. if a wise man should appear in our village, he would create in all the inhabitants a new consciousness of wealth by opening their eyes i what follows is printed in “shakspeare" (representative men, pp. 193, 194). 2 the rest of the long passage is printed in “shakspeare” (representative men, pp. 200, 201). 90 (age 42 journal to the sparkle of half-concealed treasures that lie in everybody's dooryard; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, as everybody would discern the checks and reciprocities of condition, and the rich would see their mistakes and poverty, whilst the poor would behold their own resources. father taylor, valuable as a psychologic curiosity, a man with no proprium or peculium, but all social. leave him alone and there is no man: there is no substance, but a relation. his power is a certain mania or low inspiration that repeats for us the tripod and possession of the ancients. i think every hearer feels that something like it were possible to himself, if he could consent: he has sold his mind for his soul (soul in the low, semi-animal sense, soul including animal spirits). art could not compass this fluency and felicity. his sovereign security results from a certain renunciation and abandonment. he runs for luck, and by readiness to say everything, good and bad, says the best things. then a new will and understanding organize themselves in this new sphere of no-will and no-understanding, and as fishermen use a certain discretion within their luck, to find a good fishing-ground, or the berry-women -u 1845] taylor. solving word. 91 to gather quantities of whortle berries, so he knows his topics, and his unwritten briefs, and where the profusion of words and images will likeliest recur. with all his volleys of epithets and imagery, he will ever and anon hit the white. he called god, in a profusion of other things, “a charming spirit”; he spoke of “men who sin with invention, sin with genius, sin with all the power they can draw.” but you feel this inspiration. it clothes him like an atmosphere, and he marches into untried depths with the security of a grenadier. he will weep and grieve and pray and chide, in a tempest of passionate speech, and never break the perfect propriety with a single false note; and when all is done, you still ask, or i do, “what's hecuba to him?” september. we sidle towards the problem. if we could speak the direct, solving word, it would solve us too; we should die, or be liberated as the gas in the great gas of the atmosphere. call it by whatever name, we all believe in personal magnetism, of which mesmerism is a lowest example. but the magnetizers are few. the best head in the company affects all the rest. 92 journal (age 42 we believe that if the angels should descend, we should associate with them easily, and never shame them by a breach of celestial propriety. how easy to give a poetic analysis of byron's apostrophe to nemesis in the fourth canto of the childe harold, — too good an example of a poetic end dissipated and annihilated through the seduction of the means. dinas emlinn of scott, like his helvellyn, shows how near to a poet he was. all the birmingham part he had, and what taste and sense! — yet rose into the creative region. as a practitioner or professional poet, he is unrivalled in modern times. in lectures on poetry almost all scott would have to be produced. what was said of the rainers, that they were street-singers, though good of their kind, and that it was a mistake to bring them into concert rooms; the like is true of scott. plutarch's symposiacs; an admirable passage concerning plato's expression that god geometrizes. — morals, vol. iii. i think the platonists may be read for sentences, though the reader fail to grasp the argusen1845] plato. transmigration 93 ment of the paragraph or the chapter. he may yet obtain gleams and glimpses of a more excellent illumination from their genius, outvaluing the most distinct information he owes to other books. the grandeur of the impression the stars and heavenly bodies make on us is surely more valuable than our exact perception of a tub or a table on the ground.' metempsychosis. for this indian doctrine of transmigration, it seems easy of reception where the mind is not preoccupied. not more wonderful than other methods which are in use, and so readily suggested, not only by the manners of insects, but by the manners of men. here is a gentleman who abused his privileges when in the flesh as a gentleman, and curtailed therefore his amount of vital force. we cannot kill him, for souls will not die. this punishment, self-imposed, is, that he take such a form as his diminished vital force can maintain. now it takes, to make a good dog, say, half a grain; to make a peacock, a quarter grain; to make a great general, a pennyweight; a philosopher, two; a poet, ten; i compare • nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 233). and « books” (society and solitude, p. 203). 94 journal (age 42 and a good and wise man, a thousand pounds. now our ill-behaved man, on emerging from his rotten body, and a candidate for a new birth, has not capital enough to maintain himself as man, and, with his diminished means, nothing is left for it but that he should take a turn through nature, this time as monkey. that costs very little, and by careful governance in the monkey form, he shall have saved something and be ready at his return to begin the world again more decently, say, as dog. there he saves again, and, at the end of that period, may drop his tail, and come out hottentot. good hottentot, he will rise, and one of these ages will be a massachusetts man. what other account is to be given of these superfluous triflers who whisk through nature, whom we are sure we have seen before, and who answer no purpose to the eye while they are above the horizon? they are passing through their grub state, or are expiating their ill economy of long ago. “travelling the path of life through thousands of births.” it requires for the reading and final disposition of plato all sorts of readers, frenchmen, 1845] readers of plato 95 germans, italians, english, and americans. if it were left to apprehensive, gentle, imaginative, plato-like persons, no justice would be done to his essence and totality, through the excess or violence of affection that would be spent on his excellence of reason and imagination. but frenchmen have no reverence; they seize the book like merchants; it is a piece of goods, and is treated without ceremony after the manner of commerce; and though its divine merits are lost by their profanation, the coarser, namely, the texture and coherence of the whole, and its larger plan, its french availableness, its fitness to french taste, by comprehending that— too much feelingis as fatal to just seeing as blindness is. people speak easily of cudworth, but i know no book so difficult to read as cudworth proper. for, as it is a magazine of quotations, of extraordinary ethical sentences, the shining summits of ancient philosophy, and as cudworth himself is a dull writer, the eye of the reader rests habitually on these wonderful revelations, and refuses to be withdrawn; so that, handling the book for years, the methods and the propositions of cudworth still remain a profound secret. cudworth is sometimes read without the platon1 the sentence is unfinished in the journal. 96 (age 42 journal ism; which would be like reading theobald's shakspeare, leaving out only what shakspeare wrote. i think the best reader of plato the least able to receive the totality at first, just as a botanist will get the totality of a field of flowers better than a poet.' platonists: a decline into ornament from the severity of strength — corinthian, byzantine. plato is grand; they are grandiose. it is easy to read plato, difficult to read his commentators. inertia. it is the bulwark of individualism. in the convention yesterday it was easy to see the drunkenness of eloquence. as i sat and listened, i seemed to be attending at a medical experiment.?... i have a bad time of it on these occasions, for i feel responsible for every one of the speakers, and shudder with cold at the thinness of the morning audience, and with fear lest all will fail at every bad speech.3 mere ability i mr. emerson praised cudworth to a college-mate. he came back delighted and quoting him. emerson did not recognize the passages. then it appeared that his own delight in the book had been only its sentences from plato. 2 here follow the next two paragraphs in “ eloquence" (society and solitude, p. 62). 3 this sentence and much that follows is printed in “ elo. quence” (pp. 67, 68), published in an impersonal form. 18457 garrison. abaddon 97 and mellowness is then inestimable. stephen c. phillips was a great comfort to me, for he is a good house warmer, with his obvious honesty and good meaning, and his hurra-anduniversal scream sort of eloquence, which inundates the assembly with a flood of animal spirits, and makes all safe and secure, so that any and every sort of good speaking becomes at once practicable. his animal eloquence is as good as a stove in a cold house. an orator is a thief of belief. garrison is a virile speaker; he lacks the feminine element which we find in men of genius. he has great body to his discourse, so that he can well afford occasional flourishes and eloquence. he is a man in his place. he brings his whole history with him, wherever he goes, and there is no falsehood or patchwork, but sincerity and unity. meno's definition of virtue is “ to feel a joy from what is fair, and o'er it to have power.” keep a thing by you seven years and it will come in use, though it were the devil, thought i, when abaddon' came lately into favor. goethe 1 the hebrew word (meaning the destroyer) translated in the new testament apollyon. 98 (age 42 journal had remarked that all men liked to hear him named. health is genius, the higher tone; potentially all wise enow, wine is what we want, wine of wine, excitement, opportunity, an initiative.' is the solar system good art and architecture? the same wise achievement is in my brain, can you only wile me from interference and marring. the poetic gift we want, but not the poetic profession; — poetic gift, as the breath and supremacy of man, but not rhymes and sonneteering, not bookmaking and bookselling, not cold spying and authorship; the poet who suffers the man to sit in him with the poet, as a charioteer with the hero in the iliad. byron, because his poetic talent was surpassing, could ruin his poem (see above, p. 92); a human wisdom should have assisted at the birth. genius consists in health, in plenipotence of that “top of condition” which allows of not only exercise but frolic of faculty. to coax and woo the strong instinct to bestir itself and work its miracle is the end of all wise endeavor.? i compare bacchus” in the poems. 2 thus to coax and woo the muse, mr. emerson, in the autumn, saved by purchase from impending destruction the beautiful woods on the lincoln shore of walden, opposite cm 1845] . instinct. thoreau 99 the instinct is resistless and knows the way; and is melodious, and at all points a god. the reason we set so high a value on any poetry, and the same on a line or phrase as on a poem, is, that it is a new work of nature, as a man or a woman is. we admire a new maiden infinitely, and a new verse is as divine. but a new verse comes once in five hundred years. this is the reason why hafiz and herrick and pindar speak so proudly of what seems to the thoughtless a mere jingle. whiggism, a feast of shells, idolatrous of the forms of legislature; like a cat loving the house, not the inhabitant. henry thoreau says “that philosophers are broken-down poets”; and “that universal assertions should never allow any remarks of the individual to stand in their neighborhood, for the broadest philosophy is narrower than the worst poetry." the grove of great pines on the hither side, the acquisition of which in 1844 gave him such pleasure. the rocky ledge with oaks, chestnuts, and hemlocks sweeping down to the shore of the pond, he called « my garden " and celebrates it in the poem of that name. 100 (age 42 journal but truly philosophers are poètes manqués, or neutral or imperfect poets. s m love attaches, thought detaches man from his family; head from his hands, head from his heart. cosmos. the wonderful humboldt, with his extended centre, expanded wings, marches like an army, gathering all things as he goes. how he reaches from science to science, from law to law, tucking away moons and asteroids and solar systems, in the clauses and parentheses of his encyclopædiacal paragraphs ! gibbon has a strength rare with such finish. he built a pyramid, and then enamelled it. pantheism. sin, and every man thou meetest shall stand up like a god, and judge thee. the god has delegated himself to a thousand deputies, and, at every street corner, god-like is yonder youth to those who go by, and where he halts, lo! the tenth man is a god to him. opportunity. this world was created as an audience for thee. they have so many faculties. they are so keen and thorough in their know1845] wealth. higher law 101 ledge, only to appreciate thy profoundness. they are so averse, and they hate thee, only to give thee a fair field and the greatest value to their suffrages, o coriolanus ! are wealth. a system there must be in every economy, or the best single experiments avail not.'... the moral of science should be a transference of that trust which is felt in nature's admired arrangements in light, heat, gravity, and so on, to the social and moral order. artificial legislation, perpetual, brazen-faced interference of every rowdy boy into the circles of law:he will help the law! can't he set his shoulder to the earth to assist it to spin on its axis, or to hasten it round the sun! if we had not confidence that the law provided for every exigency, that not an impulse of absolute freedom could exist, we should rush by suicide out of the door of this staggering temple. the superlative. you cannot say god, blood and bell too little. always suppose god. the jew named him not. i the rest of the paragraph is in "wealth” (conduct of life, pp. 118, 119). 102 journal (age 42 every time garrison repeats his phrase, “a covenant with death, and with hell they are at agreement,” i think of dr. bell's patients." a great man is he who answers questions which i have not skill to put. one man all his lifetime answers a question which none of his contemporaries put: he is therefore isolated. phædo. ah, if cebes and simmias had now said, yes, the reminiscence is well enow, but if my future is related to my present only as my present to my past, that is no immortality for cebes and simmias. it does for the universe. that suffers no detriment; but i have not sufficient property in it to interest me a moment in such a sky-high concern. i wish to be certified that these dear johns and henrys, anns and marys, shall keep the traits that are most their own and make them dear.” the universe is traversed with paths or 1 dr. luther v. bell was superintendent of the mclean asylum. 2 mr. emerson here speaks of the common yearning for personal identity, not his own. 1845) moods. adaptation 103 bridges or stepping-stones across all the gulfs of space.'... parallelism. we know in one mood that which we are ignorant of in another mood, like mesmerized patients who are clairvoyant at night and in the day know nothing of that which they told. adaptiveness, the peculiarity of human nature. the heavenly bodies are also universals, “but they enjoy not that fluctuating movement through various steps and in divergent directions, the circum-lation through all the limits of imperfection, that shifting with the revolution of all things, so as to master the whole mass of reality in all its ramifications, which forms the essential peculiarity of human nature.” akhlak-1--jalaly. 1 the paragraph may be found in natural history of intellect (p. 42). 2 a rare book; “the practical philosophy of the muhammadan people, exhibited in its professed connection with the european, so as to render either an introduction to the other; being a translation of the akhlak-1jalaly, the most esteemed work of middle asia, from the persian of fakir jāny muhammad asäad (with references and notes)," by w. f. thomson, esq., of the bengal civil service. london, 1839. 104 journal (age 42 herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they find their acquaintance there. herbert, “ man.” this is mystically true. the master can do his great deed, the desire of the world, — say to find his way between azote and oxygen, detect the scent of the new rock superposition, find the law of the curves, — because he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of that thing. as if one went into the mesmeric state to find the way of nature in some function, and then sharing it, came out into the normal state and repeated the trick. he knows the laws of azote because just now he was azote. man is only a piece of the universe made alive. man active can do what just now he suffered. the greatest man underlies the human nature, the longest wave quickly is lost in the sea.'... cad ea the seashore ; sea seen from shore, shore seen from sea, must explain the charm of plato. art expresses the one, or the same, by the different. ... i the long passage beginning thus is printed in “ plato” (representative men, pp. 77, 78). 2 see « plato" (representative men, p. 56). 1845] creation. the scholar 105 “let us declare the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose the universe. he was good, and he who is good has no kind of envy : exempt from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth.” – timæus. use p10 eloquence. the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.'... the hearer occupied with the excellence of the single thoughts and images is astonished to see the inspired man still impatient of the tardiness of words and parts, pressing forward to new parts . . . and in his prodigality ever announcing new and greater wealth to come. ew the scholar's is a position of present immunity. the vulgar think he would found a sect; he knows better. society has no bribe for him. do not give up your thought because you cannot answer an objection to it. consider only i see • eloquence” (society and solitude, pp. 92, 93). 106 journal (age 42 whether it remains in your life the same which it was. we are waiting until some tyrannous idea emerging out of heaven shall seize us and bereave us of this liberty with which we are falling abroad. every intellectual advantage bought at the expense of manhood. the lumpers are manlier than the grocers, more absolute. in the water party, the skipper of the boat was the only interesting person; the rest made puns. conversation. a convertible proverb, it is greek to him. those eastern story-tellers, whose oily tongues turn day into night and night into day, who lap their hearers in a sweet drunkenness of a fancy so that they forget the taste of meat: coleridge, too, who could dissipate the solar system to a thin transparency. are not lectures a kind of peter parley's story of uncle plato, and of a puppet show of eleusinian mysteries ? . knowledge. world full of tools or machines, every one a contrivance to exclude some one 1845) tools. scholar. koran 107 error or inconvenience and make a practical thinker. thus in making coffee many errors are likely to intervene and spoil the beverage. the biggin thinks for us, is a practical thinker and excludes this and that other impudence. it hinders the riling, it determines the quantity. what a stroke of genius is each carpenter's tool. it would be so easy to draw two pictures of the literary man, as of one possessed and led by muses, or as of one ridden by some dragon, or dire distemper. a mechanic is driven by his work all day, but it ends at night; it has an end. but the scholar's work has none.'... akhlak-1-jalaly. abu said abulkhain, the mystic, and abu ali leena, the philosopher, on leaving each other said; the one, “all that he sees, i know," and the other, “all that he knows, i see." “there are two that i cannot support, the fool in his devotions, and the intelligent in his impieties.” — koran. [here follow many pages of quotations, only a few of which are given.] 1 see « immortality” (letters and social aims, p. 341). 108 (age 42 journal vishnu purana. brahma descended from the highest heaven which decayeth not, and with the light of his own body illumined the dark abyss which now constitutes this world, and walking in the heavens, joyed in the possession of his glory. one brahma and then another from time to time descended and dwelt in the heavens, and from the self-inherent virtue of the said brahmas this world below became sweet as the honey of the honey-bee. one of the brahmas, beholding the earth, said to himself, what thing is this? — and with one of his fingers having touched the earth put it to the tip of his tongue and perceived the same to be deliciously sweet: from which time all the brahmas ate of the sweet earth for the space of sixty thousand years. in the mean time having coveted in their hearts the enjoyment of this world, they began to say one to another, this part is mine; that is thine; and so, fixing boundaries, divided the earth between them. on this account the earth lost its sweetness; then grew a mushroom; then a creeping plant ; then a tree; then a grain of rice; then rice grain ; then later, because of the sons of the brahmas having used substantial food, the light which once shone in their bodies was extinguished. 1845] ignorance. channing 109 individualism. “the notion that self consists in what is not self, and the opinion that property consists in what is not one's own, constitute the double seed of the tree of ignorance.”. ellery channing, said a., is made of earth and fire; he wants water and air. how fast all that magnetism would lick up water. he discharges himself in volleys. can you not hear him snap when you are near him? “i never find anything which i look for.” he cannot drive a nail. prometheus is to have a working plan of this fine machine, this crystal globe with glass wheels and hooks and teeth within, transparent, like that african apple whose seeds are seen. the caliph ali’ is a fine example of character. he “possessed a vein of poignant humor, which led soliman farsy to say of a jest he one day indulged in, this it is which has kept you back to the fourth (abu beker, omar, and othman having been successively elected before 1 the source of this quotation is not given. 2 ali ben abu taleb, the son-in-law of mahomet and fourth caliph, called for his courage « the lion of god.” of him the prophet said, “i am the city of knowledge, but ali is the gate.” 110 journal [age 42 wa him); for a reliance on his rights of sovereignty was the ruling feeling of that sacred person, and it is one which gives ascendence to the inner and individual nature in opposition to the suggestions of appearance and the observance of our relations with the many.” — akblak-1-jalaly, p. 158. vedanta. the internal check. “he who eternally restrains this and the other world, and all beings therein; who, standing in the earth, is other than the earth; whom the earth knows not, whose body the earth is, who interiorly restrains the earth, the same is thy soul, and the internal check immortal.” “the internal check is the supreme being.” colebrooke's essays, p. 341. buddha, or be who knows. intellect puts an interval: if we converse with low things, with crimes, with mischances, we are not compromised, the interval saves us. but if we converse with high things, with heroic actions, with heroic persons, with virtues, the interval becomes a gulf, and we cannot enter into the highest good. icy light. it is the chief deduction, almost the sole deduction from the merit of plato . . . that his writings have not the vital authority which e iii 1845] untrained scholars iii the screams of prophets ... the sermons of unlettered arabs and jews possess." landor says of canning (?) that “he was an understrapper made an overstrapper.” the expression is coarse enough, but is true of men of thought also. they are good pupils, and their life would be fair and blooming, if they could continue such; but in the absence of intellectual men, in the absence of many grades and ranks of power, from the lawful and thoroughly educated king to the youngest page, our scholar, on his first showing of intellectual power, is hurried from the pupil's desk to the master's chair; and by this rude and rapid change is cheated of those perfections which long training and faithful abiding in all the intermediate degrees alone can give. a false relation and false manners and incompleteness of beauty in every part are the result. the scholar finds himself not excellent in his own art, and deficient in the arts of men around him. he wants security, the unquestionable front of power, and feels himself interrogated and defied. he wants in this loneliness nerves of a lion, and has the nerves of a caterpillar. sympathy gives health, but he has not ✓ see plato” (representative men, p. 76). i 12 journal (age 42 sympathy of those he can see, and he has not quite eyes enough to see those whose sympathy he has. the bear comes out fatter from his hibernation than he went to it, and the great man should not have less resource in his hibernation. the boy learns chess and whist and takes lessons in dancing; the watchful father observes that another has learned algebra and geometry, in the meantime. but the first boy has got much more than those good-for-nothing games with the games.'... skepticism. there are many skepticisms. the universe is like an infinite series of planes, each of which is a false bottom, and when we think our feet are planted now at last on the adamant, the slide is drawn out from under us. value of the skeptic is the resistance to premature conclusions. if he prematurely conclude, his conclusion will be shattered, and he will become malignant. but he must limit himself with the anticipation of law in the mutations,-flow'ing law. i the rest of this passage is printed in “ culture" (corte duct of life, p. 143). 1845] the scholar's progress 113 the scholar blunders along on his own path for a time, assured by the surprise and joy of those to whom he first communicates his results; then new solitudes, new marches; but after a time, on looking up he finds the sympathy gone or changed, he fancies himself accused by all the bystanders; the faces of his friends are shaded by grief; and yet no tongue ever speaks of the cause. there is some indictment out against him, on which he is arraigned in many courts, and he cannot learn the charge. a prodigious power we have of begetting false expectations. these are the mistakes of others' subjectiveness. the true scholar will not heed them. jump into another bush, and scratch your eyes in again. he passes on to acquit himself of their charges by developments as surprising as was his first word; by indirections and wonderful alibis which dissipate the whole crimination. m no wonder a writer is rare. it requires one inspiration, or transmutation of nature into thought, to yield him the truth; another inspiration to write it. economy. nobody need stir hand or foot, the custom of the country will do it all.'. .. 1 see • wealth” (conduct of life, p. 121). 114 journal [age 42 croisements. symbols. the seashore and the taste of two metals in contact, and our enlarged powers in the presence ... of a friend.'... the poem must be tenax propositi, the fable or myth must hold, or it is worth no man's while to read it. if a pilot swings his vessel from the wharf with one intention, and, after letting go, changes his intention, and a vessel, deceived by his first demonstrations, is run afront of and injured, the pilot loses his branch. certainly we must hold the poet to as strict a law. winter apples. the worst day is good for something. all that is not love is knowledge, and all that is not good to-day is a store laid up for the wants of distant days. ver knowledge is the straight line ; wisdom is the power of the straight line, or the square ; virtue is the power of the square, or the solid. thus, my friend reads in the cultivator on the method of planting and hoeing potatoes, or he follows a farmer hoeing along the row of po1 the rest of this paragraph is printed in “ plato” (representative men, p. 55). 1845] virtue. americans 115 tato hills ; that is knowledge. at last, he takes the hoe in his hands and hoes the hills; the first with care and heed, and pulls up every root of piper grass : as the day grows hot and the row is long, he says to himself, “this is wisdom : but one hill is like another, i have mastered the art, it is mere trifling to waste my strength in doing many times the same thing: why should i hoe more?” and he desists. but the last lesson was still unlearned: the moral power lay in the continuance, in fortitude, in working against pleasure, to the excellent end and conquering all opposition. he has knowledge, he has wisdom, but he has missed virtue, which he only acquires who endures routine and sweat and postponement of fancy to the achievement of a worthy end. cs native americans. i hate the narrowness of the native american party. it is the dog in the manger. it is precisely opposite to all the dictates of love and magnanimity: and therefore, of course, opposite to true wisdom. ... man is the most composite of all creatures. ... well, as in the old burning of the temple at corinth, by the melting and intermixture of silver and gold and other metals a new comnew com116 (age 42 journal pound more precious than any, called the corinthian brass, was formed; so in this continent, asylum of all nations, — the energy of irish, germans, swedes, poles, and cossacks, and all the european tribes,of the africans, and of the polynesians, — will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new literature, which will be as vigorous as the new europe which came out of the smelting-pot of the dark ages, or that which earlier emerged from the pelasgic and etruscan barbarism. la nature aime les croisements. ca swedenborg's theology does well as long as it is repeated to and by those who are wont to accept something positive. . . . but when i hear it, i say, this is nothing to me. ... this is the excess of form. the fallacy seems to be in the equivocal use of the term the word. in the high and sacred sense of that term used by a strong oriental rhetoric for the energy of the supreme cause (in act), all that is predicated of it, is true: it is equivalent to reason. but this being granted, theologians shift the word from this grand sense to signify a written sentence of st. matthew or st. john, and instantly assume for this wretched written sentence all 1845] the flowing universe 117 that was granted to be true of the divine reason. swedenborg perceived the central life of each object and saw the change of appearance as it passed before different eyes. he does not seem to have seen with equal clearness the necessity of progression or onwardness in each creature. metamorphosis is the law of the universe. all forms are fluent, and as the bird alights on the bough and pauses for rest, then plunges into the air again on its way, so the thoughts of god pause but for a moment in any form,' but pass into a new form, as if by touching the earth again in burial, to acquire new energy. a wise man is not deceived by the pause: he knows that it is momentary : he already foresees the new departure, and departure after departure, in long series. dull people think they have traced the matter far enough if they have reached the history of one of these temporary forms, which they describe as fixed and final. ise csc a man should not be rich by having what is superfluous, but by having what is essential to 1 this sentence occurs in “ poetry” (letters and social aims, p. 15). 118 (age 42 journal ma eer ne him, like a manufacturer or engineer or astronomer who has a great capital invested in his costly apparatus. how to animate all his possessions: if he have any not animated by his quality and energy, let him sell them and convert them into things nearer to his nature. such a rich man excites no envy. he has no more than he needs or uses. timing. “unseasonable love is like hate.” – socrates, apud stobæus. “ all things are good and fair to those things wherewith they agree, but ill and deformed in respect of those things with which they agree not.” — socrates, apud xenophon, memorabilia. “what is strength? the motion of the soul with the body.” — socrates in stobæus. philosophy. unity or identity, and variety ; the poles of philosophy. it makes haste to develop these two. a too rapid unity or unification, and a too exclusive devotion to parts are the scylla and charybdis. a too rapid unity. yes, for a wise skepticism, a long secular patience that delays and still delays the premature summation is rewarded with truth per18451 the heights. rachel 119 haps in another sphere and cycle. this rashness or partiality is one vice; the other is confusion, or the misplacing the properties of the planes or spheres of nature. and the mind describes deity by simple purification of its own self. indian mythology creates nature from the parts of the human body; a gigantic crystal. every man who would do anything well must come to it from a higher ground, and a philosopher must be much more than a philosopher. plato is a poet. lor rachel. but rachel possesses a certain demoniacal power which is worthy of wonder. you feel in her veiled and nowise resonant voice, in her measured and earnest acting, and in her majestic delivery, that she is incessantly brooding on this inward raging fire. but this bursts up at decisive moments." [here follow extracts from the vishnu purana.] i mr. emerson first saw rachel in paris during the revojution of 1848 and heard her sing the marseillaise. this passage must have been written into the journal later. 120 journal (age 42 me s there were swedenborgs in those days, missouriums, mastodons of literature, not to be measured by a whole population of modern scholars. every genius is defended from approval by great quantities of unavailableness, good only for himself. what property! says the hungry mind, as it sees it afar, and swims toward it as a fish to its food. jones very is like the rain plentiful. he does not love individuals: he is annoyed by edge. he likes only community; and he likes the lowness also, if it be community. i like sharp slats. strength is wonderful. some men think their goodness made of themselves, others think the reverse. see the indian self. days. every age has its objects and symbol, and every man. why not, then, every epoch of our life its own? and a man should journey through his own zodiack of signs. the indian woman burns herself on her husband's funeral pile, because she believes in 1845) transmigration. fate 121 а transmigration; and being born again, if faithful, in a form not less than the last, retains enough memory to find her husband in his new form, though a dog, or a jackal, or a wolf, and, by affectionate speech, recalls to him also his memory and exhorts him to divest his present unworthy weeds. in the long rotation by fidelity they meet again in worthy forms. the flame of the funeral pile is cool to the widow. to this practical doctrine of migration we have nothing corresponding. ours is sentimental and literary. indian mythology a lace veil; clouds of legends, but the old forms seen through. we should infer a country of sages and devotees; but there seems no relation between the book and the actual population. one thing marks it all, the fate in the character. as soon as they confront each other, victory is declared without a struggle. it is by posts, not battles. sensible people, it is said, are selfish. sensuous are. in india, king, courtier, god, are represented as making the most romantic sacrifices — kingdom, goods, life itself— for know122 journal (age 42 ledge and spiritual power. in france, wit, science, personality, — counts for more than in england. in england, possession in every kind counts for more than person. lycurgus, pythagoras, plato, all poets, all women believe in the plasticity or education of man, but the whig world is very incredulous. october 27. in this finest of all indian summer days it seems sad that each of us can only spend it once. we sigh for the thousand heads and thousand bodies of the indian gods, that we might celebrate its immense beauty in many ways and places, and absorb all its good. trace these colossal conceptions of buddhism and of vedantism home, and they are always the necessary or structural action of the human mind. buddhism, read literally, the tenet of fate, worship of morals, or the tenet of freedom, are the unalterable originals in all the wide variety of geography, language, and intelligence of the human tribes. the buyer thinks he has a new article; but if he goes to the factory, there is the self-same old loom as before, the same mordants and colors, the same 1845] india and greece 123 blocks even ; but by a little splicing and varying the parts of all patterns, what passes for new is produced. fate. the indian system is full of fate, the greek not. the greek uses the word, indeed, but in his mind the fates are three respectable old women who spin and shear a symbolic thread, — so narrow, so limitary is the sphere allowed them, and it is with music. we are only at a more beautiful opera, or at private theatricals. but in india, it is the dread reality, it is the cropping-out in our planted gardens of the core of the world: it is the abysmal force, untameable and immense. they who wrestle with hari, see their doom in his eye before the fight begins. as for king swedenborg, i object to his cardinal position in morals that evils should be shunned as sins. i hate preaching. i shun evils as evils. does he not know charles lamb did — that every poetic mind is a pagan, and to this day prefers olympian jove, apollo and the muses and the fates, to all the barbarous indigestion of calvin and the middle ages ? great king is king swedenborg. i will not *124 journal (age 42 deny him his matchless length and breadth. such a world of mathematics, metallurgy, astronomy, anatomy, ecclesiastic history, theology, demonology, ouranology, love, fear, form, terror, law, all to come out of that quiet sleepy old gentleman with the gold-headed cane, lodging at mr. shearsmith's! as for “shunning evils as sins," i prefer the ethics of the vishnu : see beyond.'— too much form, o swedenborg ! too many steps, too much dogma, too much government. we are very clumsy writers of history. we tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, ... and 1 the passages referred to are:“he who meditates not wrong to others [said prahláda), but considers them as himself, is free from the effects of sin inasmuch as the cause does not exist; but he who inflicts pain upon others in act, thought, or speech sows the seed of future birth; and the fruit that awaits him after birth is pain. i wish no evil to any, and do and speak no offence, for i behold kasava in all beings as in my own soul.” — vishnu purana. « the whole world is but a manifestation of vishnu, who is identical with all things, and it is therefore to be regarded by the wise as not differing from, but as the same with themselves. let us therefore lay aside the angry passions of our race and so strive that we may obtain that perfect, pure and eternal happiness which shall be beyond the power of the elements or their deities, of fire, of the sun, of the moon, of wind, of indra, of the regent of the sea," etc., etc. — idem. 1845] stand in your place 125 when we have come to an end of this external history, the reader is no whit instructed, no ray of relation appears between all this lumber and the goddess-born.'... my dear friend — standing on his mountains of facts whose strata, chemistry, meteors, landscape, countries, towns, meridian, magnetism, and what not, he knows — asks me how all goes with me floating in obscure questions, musing on this and that metaphysical riddle? well, it is even so. i stay where i can, and am peaceful and satisfied enough as long as no sentinel challenges me. i use no election of the questions that occupy me. no doubt, i should feel a limitation if i were wont to task myself for men, or to compute in any manner of political economy my day's work, but well assured that this questioner who brings me so many problems. will bring the answers also in due time. very rich, very patient, cheerful giver that he is, he shall have it all his own way for me. amalgam. the absolutist is good and blessed, though he dies without the sight of that parai here follow the long paragraphs printed in “shakspeare" (representative men, pp. 206–208). 126 journal (age 42 cel dise he journeys after; and he can forgive the earthworms who remain immersed in matter and know not the felicities he seeks. but not so well can he dispose of the middle man who receives and assents to his theories and yet, by habit and talent formed to live in the existing order, builds and prospers among the worldly men, extending his affection and countenance all the time to the absolutists. ah, thou evil, two-faced half-and-half ! how can i forgive thee? evil, evil hast thou done. thou it is that confoundest all distinctions. if thou didst not receive the truth at all, thou couldst do the cause of virtue no harm. but now the men of selfishness say to the absolutist, behold this man, he has all thy truth, yet lo! he is with us and ours,— ah, thou damnable half-and-half! choose, i pray you, between god and the whig party, and do not longer strew sugar on this bottled spider. yes; but confucius. confucius, glory of the nations, confucius, sage of the absolute east, was a middle man. he is the washington of philosophy, the moderator, the mndèv ayav of modern history. also, this is not anybody's choice, but this double sympathy is born; this hated amalgam пса 1845) vishnu purana 127 comes into the world, and natural and supernatural power. the doctrine of the triform came from india, as did the poetic horror that the demons in hell had that tremendous power of vision that they saw through all intermediate regions and worlds, the great and happy gods moving in heaven; whilst the heavenly souls were also made to know their own felicity by discovering the infernal spaces. “what living creature slays, or is slain? what living creature preserves or is preserved? each is his own destroyer or preserver, as he follows evil or good.”? – vishnu purana. [the following extract from the vishnu purana was the origin of the “ hamatreya ” in the poems, its title being evidently another form of the word “maitreya” in this version.] “the words 'i and mine' constitute ignorance. “i have now given you a summary account of the sovereigns of the earth. — these, and other kings who with perishable frames have 1 compare the opening lines of " brahma,” in the poems. 128 journal [age 42 : possessed this ever-enduring world, and who, blinded with deceptive notions of individual occupation, have indulged the feeling that suggests this earth is mine, —it is my son's, – it belongs to my dynasty,' — have all passed away. so, many who reigned before them, many who succeeded them, and many who are yet to come, have ceased or will cease to be. earth laughs, as if smiling with autumnal flowers to behold her kings unable to effect the subjugation of themselves. i will repeat to you, maitreya, the stanzas that were chanted by earth, and which the muni asita communicated to janaka, whose banner was virtue:“how great is the folly of princes who are endowed with the faculty of reason, to cherish the confidence of ambition when they themselves are but foam upon the wave. before they have subdued themselves, they seek to reduce their ministers, their servants, their subjects, under their authority; they then endeavor to overcome their foes. “ thus,” say they, “will we conquer the ocean-circled earth”; and intent upon their project, behold not death, which is not far off. but what mighty matter is the subjugation of the sea-girt earth, to one who can subdue himself? emancipation from existence overco 1845] the earth-song 129 is the fruit of self-control. it is through infatuation that kings desire to possess me, whom their predecessors have been forced to leave, whom their fathers have not retained. beguiled by the selfish love of sway, fathers contend with their sons, and brothers with brothers, for my possession. foolishness has been the character of every king who has boasted, “all this earth is mine — everything is mine — it will be in my house forever”; – for he is dead. how is it possible that such vain desires should survive in the hearts of his descendants, who have seen their progenitor, absorbed by the thirst of dominion, compelled to relinquish me whom he called his own, and tread the path of dissolution? when i hear a king sending word to another by his ambassador, “ this earth is mine; resign your pretensions to it,” — i am at first moved to violent laughter; but it soon subsides to pity for the infatuated fool.'” “ these were the verses, maitreya, which earth recited and by listening to which ambition fades away like snow before the sun.” “ fooled thou must be, tho' wisest of the wise then be thou the fool of virtue, not of vice.” the indian teaching, through its cloud of leg130 journal (age 42 ends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. it teaches to speak the truth, love others as yourself, and to despise trifles. the east is grand, and makes europe appear the land of trifles. identity, identity ! friend and foe are of one stuff.'... cheerful and noble is the genius of this cosmogony. . wisdom consists in keeping the soul liquid, or, in resisting the tendency to too rapid petrifaction. there are people who are always in fashion ; and style and fashion and aristocracy bends and fits itself to them, denies itself to be possessed of them. one said, “if the hand had not been divided into fingers, man would be still a beast roaming in the desert.” the like if the tongue had not been fitted for sharp articulation. children cry and scream and stamp with fury, unable to express their desires. ... 1 the rest of this passage is printed in “ plato” (representative men, pp. 49, 50, 51). 2 for the rest of the passage, see “ plato” (representative men, pp. 45, 46). 1845] advance from chaos 131 “i judge by each man's truth, of his degree of understanding,” said chesterfield. it is ever thus, the progress is to accuracy, to skill, to truth, from blind force. ... the men of whom we are to speak are all uplifted to this elevation of civility. happy in this ! happy the period in which this truly human force reaches its perfect extent, and has not yet gone over into fineness, and an excessive thought for surfaces. there must be the abyss, nox and chaos, out of which all come, and they must never be far off. cut off the connection between any of our works and this dread origin, and the work is shallow and, unsatisfying. that is the strength and excellence of the people, that they lean on this, and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as we are apt to represent it, for it has this divine side. there is a moment in the history of every nation when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach with delight their greatest strength and have not yet become microscopic, so that the man at that instant extends across the entire scale, and, with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar and 132 journal [age 42 stellar creation. that is the moment of perfect health, the culmination of their star of empire.' ah, let the twilight linger! we love the morning spread abroad among the mountains, but too fast comes on the broad noon blaze, only exposing the poverty and barrenness of our globe, the listlessness and meanness of its inhabitants. montaigne or socrates would quote paul of tarsus and goody twoshoes with equal willingness. [in the autumn, mr. emerson seems to have been arranging with a boston publishing house for the printing of the poems of his friend william ellery channing. in the later months of the year and during the winter, as happened thereafter during the rest of his active life, he lectured before literary societies or lyceums in cities, towns, or villages, first in new england and new york, but soon farther west. he was invited to give an anti-slavery lecture in salem, and probably did so. during the summer he had prepared the course on representative men, and 1 the last paragraph, though printed in “ plato,” is kept as the connection with those above and below. 1845] robert owen 133 the “ napoleon ” attracted especial attention. he spoke before the boston lyceum in the same course with j. r. lowell, dr. s. g. howe, caleb cushing, and others; also in cambridge, salem, and lowell.] november 5. yesterday evening, saw robert owen at mr. alcott's.' his four elements are production, distribution, formation of character, and local and general governing. his three errors, on which society has always been based, and is now, are,(1) that we form ourselves; (2) that we form our opinions; (3) that we form our feelings. the three truths with which he wishes to replace these, are, (1) that we proceed from a creating power ; (2) that our opinions come from conviction; (3) that our feelings come from our instincts. the five evils which proceed from our three errors, and which make the misery of life, are, (1) religious perplexities ; (2) disappointment in i robert owen, the english social and industrial reformer and writer, who, after a marked temporary success with his community of factory operatives at new lanark in scotland, came to america in 1823 and established a community at new harmony, indiana. this failed, as did others later tried by him in scotland, england, and mexico. 134 journal (age 42 en w affections ; (3) pecuniary difficulties ; (4) intemperance ; (5) anxiety for offspring. he also requires a transitional state. fourier he saw in his old age. fourier learned of him all the truth he had, and the rest of his system was imagination, and the imagination of a banker. you are very external with your evils, mr. owen: let me give you some real mischiefs : v living for show; losing the whole in the particular; indigence of vital power. i am afraid these will appear in a phalanstery, or in a tub. we were agreed, that mr. owen was right in imputing despotism to circumstances, and that the priest and poet are right in attributing responsibility to men. owen was a better man than he knew, and his love of men made us forget his “three errors.” his charitable construction of men, classes, and their actions was invariable. he was always a better christian in his controversy with christians, and he interpreted with great generosity the acts of the holy alliance and prince metternich. “ah,” he said, “ you may depend on it, there are as tender hearts, and as much good will to serve men, in palaces as in cottages.” the owen and fourier plans bring no a priori convictions. they are come at merely by count1845) works grow. argument 135 ing and arithmetic. all the fine aperçus are for individualism. the spartan broth, the hermit's cell, the lonely farmer's life are poetic; the phalanstery, the “ self-supporting village.” (owen) are culinary and mean. there seems to be a certain vegetable principle pervading human nature also (or, perhaps better, a vital power which the vegetable life illustrates), which cannot be too much respected. it appears as if a good work did itself; as if whatever is good, in proportion as it is good, had a certain self-existence and self-creation or organism. the good book grows whether the writer is awake or asleep; its subject and order are not chosen, but preappointed him. i find it quoted from livy (?) “that the moment a man begins not to be convinced, he begins to convince.” i had another experience in the coach, if i can recall it, that the reason why a man becomes intellectual and shuns practice, is reverential and religious, because action is so melancholy. manliness seems to require something better than this desultoriness; and, as if out of self-respect, and courtesy to the world, we withdraw from noise. 136 journal (age 42 s nos skepticism has no such good argument as the irreligion of facts. we do not approach a man's house by his woodshed and offices, but through his park and portico. skepticism and gulfs of skepticism; strongest of all that of the saints. they come to the mount, and in the largest and most blissful communication to them, somewhat is left unsaid, which begets in them doubt and horrible doubt. “so then," say they, before they have yet risen from their knees, “even this, even this does not satisfy: we must still feel that this, our homage and beatitude, is partial and deferred. we must fly for relief and sanity to that other suspected and reviled part of nature, the kingdom of the understanding, the gymnastics of talent, the play of fancy." greeley surprises by playing all the parts. only possible in america. swedenborg. he reminds me again and again of our jones very, who had an illumination that i a portion of the above is found in “ montaigne" (representative men, p. 174), in connection with the thoughts quoted from mr. emerson's friend charles k. newcomb, who there appears as san carlo. 1845] we need influences 137 enabled him to excel every body in wit and to see farthest in every company and quite easily to bring the proudest to confusion; and yet he could never get out of his hebraistic phraseology and mythology, and, when all was over, still remained in the thin porridge or cold tea of unitarianism. we influences. we are candidates, we know we are, for influences more subtle and more high than those of talent and ambition. we want a leader, we want a friend whom we have not seen. in the company and fired by the example of a god, these faculties that dream and toss in their sleep would wake. where is the genius that shall marshal us the way that we were going? there is a vast residue, an open account ever. the great inspire us: how they beckon, how they animate, and show their legitimate power in nothing more than their power to misguide us. for the perverted great derange and deject us, and perplex ages with their fame; alexander, napoleon, mahomet. then the evil genius of france at and before the revolution, a learned fiend. it is the largest part of a man that is not inventoried. he has many enumerable parts: he is social, professional, political, sectarian, literary, 138 [age 42 journal and is this or that set and corporation. but after the most exhausting census has been made, there remains as much more which no tongue can tell. and this remainder is that which interests. this is that which the strong genius works upon; the region of destiny, of aspiration, of the unknown. ah, they have a secret persuasion that as little as they pass for in the world, they are immensely rich in expectancy and power. nobody has ever yet dispossessed this adhesive self to arrive at any glimpse or guess of the awful life that lurks under it. far the best part, i repeat, of every mind is not that which he knows, but that which hovers in gleams, suggestions, tantalizing, unpossessed, before him. his firm recorded knowledge soon loses all interest for him. but this dancing chorus of thoughts and hopes is the quarry of his future, is his possibility, and teaches him that his man's life is of a ridiculous brevity and meanness, but that it is his first age and trial only of his young wings, but that vast revolutions, migrations, and gyres on gyres in the celestial societies invite him. inward miracles. deliverances. that which so mightily annoyed and hampered us ceases 1845] deliverances. work 139 utterly and at unawares. we wist not how or whence the redemption came. what so rankled at heart, and kept the eyes open all night, and which, we said, will never down, lo! we have utterly forgot it; cannot by any effort of memory realize it again, and give it importance. the crises in our history come so. thus they steal in on us, a new life which enters, god knows how, through the solidest blocks of our old thoughts and mental habits, makes them transparent and pervious to its subtle essence; sweetens and enlightens all, and at last dissolves them in its new radiance. the miracles of the spirit are greater than those of the history. men also representative. swedenborg and behmen saw that things were representative. they did not sufficiently see that men were. but we cannot, as we say, be in two places at once. my doing my office entitles me to the benefit of your doing yours. this is the secret after which the communists are coarsely and externally striving. work in thy place with might and health, and thy secretion to the spiritual body is made. i in mine will do the like. thus imperceptibly and most happily, genially and triumphantly 140 journal (age 42 doing that we delight in, behold we are communists, brothers, members one of another. we are invited to an intellectual banquet, to a society of thought with them (the great men]. we see them as illustrations, incarnate and beautiful, of the laws, the laws walking and speaking, but the direct service they render us is that of health and is above the region of thought and will. shakspeare's fault that the world appears so empty. he has educated you with his painted world, and this real one seems a huckster's shop. every work needs a necessity, a nature, a material already existing, for motive to the poet and for credence to the people. otherwise the work were fantastic. a man does not get up some fine morning and say, i am full of life. lo, i will build a cathedral.'. .. dear heart, take it sadly home to thee, that there will and can be no coöperation.? ... i the substance of what follows, with slight variations and additions, may be found in “shakspeare” (representative men, p. 190). 2 the rest of the passage beginning thus is printed in society and solitude (p. 8). 1845] serve truth 141 the other part of life is self-reliance. love and it balance up and down, and the beam never rests. thou wouldst fain not look out of the window, nor waste time in expecting thy friend. thou wouldst be sought of him. well, that also is in thy soul, and this is its law. the soul of man must be the servant of another. in its good estate, it is the servant of the spirit of truth. when it is abandoned to that dominion, it is great and sovereign, and draweth friends and lovers. when it is not so, it serveth a friend or lover. the other and third thing is this, that it is ever well with him who finishes his work for its own sake, and the state and the world is happy that has the most of such finishers. the world will do justice to such. it cannot otherwise; but never on the day when the work is newly done and presented. but forever it is true that every man settles his own rate. travelling. our education in latin and greek really mortgages us to italy, and entitles us to go. not so, if we had a commanding idea which concatenates our readings and doings. but we have not; why should we say we have? if you are abandoned to your genius and 142 journal (age 42 employment, be it never so special and rare, as engraving or painting, men will do you justice and not reproach you that you do not plough. . the language is made, — who has not helped to make it? then comes milton, shakspeare, and find it all made to their hand, and use it as if there never had been language before. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1845 [as has been mentioned in a previous volume certain authors most frequently mentioned in the journals will be omitted from the lists ; viz., homer, plato, plutarch, cicero, virgil, horace, juvenal, montaigne, bacon, shakspeare, ben jonson, beaumont and fletcher, donne, herbert, sir thomas browne, jeremy taylor, pascal, newton, fénelon, young, pope, pitt, johnson, swedenborg, gibbon, de staël, wordsworth, landor, scott, coleridge, byron. in spite of the frequent mention of plotinus, proclus, and other neo-platonists, and of the oriental scriptures and poets, these names will appear in the lists, as shedding light on the 1845] reading 143 question when mr. emerson was reading them. goethe and carlyle will also be mentioned it often happens that the allusion to an author or book may be in a passage not included in the selections here printed.] bhagavat-geeta; pythagoras; pherecydes syrus; pindar; xenophon, memorabilia ; cicero, tusculan disputations ; livy, annals; ammianus; proclus, on the timæus of plato;, stobæus; mahomet; hafiz; akblak-1-jalaly (persian), translated by w. f. thomson ; spenser; kepler; herrick; saint evremond; bishop berkeley, alciphron, or the minute philosopher; floyer sydenham; lagrange ; jung stilling; bentham; berthollet; laplace; goethe; thomas taylor;talleyrand; hahnemann; schiller;lord edward fitzgerald; colebrooke, on the vedas or some writings of the hindus; chenier; kirby and spence; canning ; frere; humboldt; robert owen; charles lamb; schelling; fourier; sir humphry davy; lord brougham, the elective franchise ; cousin, translation of plato ; macleay and swainson (“theory of animated circles”), books on napoleon, caulincourt, 144 journal (age 42 bourrienne, duc de vicenza, antommarchi; karl postel (“sealsfield”), süden und norden (?); hood; macaulay; frederika bremer; robert chambers, vestiges of creation; countess hahn-hahn, countess faustina; alcott; horace greeley; jones very ; j. j. garth wilkinson, introduction to swedenborg's animal kingdom; webster ; choate ; everett; nathaniel l. frothingham; william ellery channing, poems; thoreau, poems; margaret fuller; hawthorne; holmes; theodore parker; frederic h. hedge; james freeman clarke; charles lane; george w. curtis; j. elliot cabot; e. p. whipple. journal philosophy, eloquence everett’s inauguration at harvard poetry hafiz humiliation of the north interchange of portraits with carlyle college class poems published journal xxxvii 1846 (from journals y and o) [no entries are to be found for january and february; probably there was no time for writing, as mr. emerson was giving in boston the course on representative men, begun in december, and giving the same in providence and lowell, with single lectures before many lyceums. meanwhile he was arranging for the publication of carlyle's new cromwell, and also his previous works, in this country, to better advantage. of this service carlyle wrote, april 18, “you have made the best of bargains for me, once again, with the freest contempt of trouble on your part, which i cannot sufficiently wonder at.”] (from y) march 24, 1846. why should people make such a matter of leaving this church and going into that? they betray so their want of faith, or spiritual perception. the holy principles discredit and ac148 journal (age 42 credit all churches alike. god builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions. it is not otherwise with social forms. a or b refuses the tax, or some tax, with solemnity, but eats and drinks and wears and perspires taxation all day. let them not hew down the state with axe and gunpowder, but supersede it by irresistible genius; huddle it aside as ridiculous and obsolete by their quantity of being. eloquence needs no constable. the fault of alcott's community is that it has only room for one. majorities, the argument of fools, the strength of the weak. one should recall what laertius records as socrates's opinion of the common people, “that it was as if a man should except against one piece of bad money, and accept a great sum of the same.” (from o) oft have i heard, and deemed the witness true, whom man delights in, god delights in too. pons de capdueil. nature may be cooked into all shapes, and 1846] let the muse reform 149 not recognized. mountains and oceans we think we understand;'... to know the virtue of the soil, we do not taste the loam, but we eat the berries and apples; and to mend the bad world, we do not impeach polk and webster, but we supersede them by the muse. demades surpassed all when he trusted to nature. theodore parker, w. h. channing, elizur wright, james f. clarke, george ripley, john s. dwight, charles sumner, parker pillsbury, 7. elliot cabot, h. g. o. blake, john brown, h. d. thoreau, a. b. alcott, r. w. e., edward bangs, t. t. stone, john weiss.? 1 the rest of the passage so beginning occurs in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 16). 2 this list is probably of persons who might be engaged to lecture in the concord lyceum that winter, those in italics being perhaps those who would be first invited. the names indicate how serious was the character of the lectures gladly listened to by learned and simple alike. improvement, not amusement, was the aim and expectation. as usual, the vil. lage contributed its quota of lecturers. john brown was perhaps the dry goods dealer, a member of one of the old families still represented in the town. 150 journal (age 42 the life which we seek is expansion; the actual life even of the genius or the saint is obstruction. what a contest between personality and universality! the man listens to stoic, epicurean, or christian, and acknowledges his mistakes. but he was right; and a little afterwards comes a new infusion of his own, and he is triumphantly right again in his own way against the prejudices of the universe. every person is right, or to make him right needs only more personality. intellect makes him strange among his housemates." w what a dancing jack o' lanthorn is this estimate of our contemporaries. sometimes i seem to move in a constellation. i think my birth has fallen in the thick of the milky way: and again i fancy that the american blightand english narrowness and german defectiveness and french surface have bereaved the time of all worth. ar. in your music, in your speech, in your writing, i am amused by your talents; but in the pres1 compare the last line of the poem • insight” (poems, p: 360). 1846] the tail. the germans 151 ence of one capable of serving, and expressing an idea, the finest talents become an impertinence. en in nature every creature has a tail. the brain has not yet availed to drop that respectable appendage. how odious is hunger. well enough in the animal, well in the citizen, but in the illstarred intellectualist a calamity: he can neither eat nor not eat. if he could eat an oak forest or half a mountain, i should like that; a good kurroglou supper for thirteen; but hunger for any dinner he is likely to get, degrades him. if we cannot have a good rider, at least let us have a good horse: now, 't is a haggard rider of a haggard horse. in germany there still seems some hidden dreamer from whom this strange, genial, poetic, comprehensive philosophy comes, and from which the english and french get mere rumors and fragments, which are yet the best philosophy we know. one while we thought that this fontal german was schelling; then fichte, novalis ; then oken; then it hovered about schleiermacher, and settled for a time on hegel. but on producing authenticated books from each of these masters, we find them clever men, but 152 (age 42 journal nothing like so great and deep a poet sage as we looked for. and now we are still to seek for the lurking behmen of modern germany. hegel's philosopheme, blazoned by cousin, that an idea always conquers, and, in all history, victory has ever fallen on the right side (a doctrine which carlyle has, as usual, found a fine idiom for, that right and might go together), was a specimen of this teutonism. something of it there is in schelling; more in his quoted maader; something in goethe, who is catholic and poetic. swedenborg had much; novalis had good sentences; kant, nothing of it. kepler was “ an unitarian of the united world," “ si non errasset, fecerat ille minus." eloquence wants anthracite cozi. coldness is the most fatal quality. phædrus-horses, one winged, one not; there must be both. burke had the high principles (in chatham never a generalization). burke dragged them down to facts which he never loses sight of: he had a mania, and yet also gives mosaic accounts. you must speak always from higher ground. webster does. but give us the rare merits of impassivity, of marble texture, against which the mob of souls w ma 1846) steadiness. friction 153 dashing is broken like crockery falling on stone: the endurance which can afford to fail in the popular sense, because it never fails in its own; it knows what it wants and advances to-day, and to-morrow, and every day, to that which belongs to it. we shall have to describe these arms in detail, though the highest eloquence must combine them all. kurroglou' had seventeen weapons, and in personal combat was wont to try them all in turn. one should have a great superseding personality. too much friction in life. the proverb teaches that there is a pound of grindstone to a pound of cheese, but i think there are always many pounds of grindstone to an ounce of cheese. how much arrangement and combination and drudgery to bring about a pleasant hour, to hear an eloquent argument, or a fine poetic reading, or a little superior conversation; what rattle and jingle; how many miles must be ridden, how many woods and meadows, alder-borders and stone walls must be tediously passed! 1 a romantic kurdish warrior-minstrel celebrated in chodzko's specimens of ancient persian poetry. kurroglou was also called roushan beg, whose leap over the chasm on his wonderful horse, kyrat, longfellow celebrates. 2 се 154 journal (age 42 nothing is so rare in any man as an act of his own; but then how beautiful it is ! what satisfactions in detecting now and then a long relation far over bounds of space and time in two parts of consciousness! well, but we drop one thing when we grasp another. the least acceleration in our intellectual processes, and an increased tenacity, would constitute a true paradise. swedenborg; — how strange that he should have persuaded men and drawn a church after him, this enchanter with his mob of dreams! it recalls defoe and drelincourt and mrs. veal, the circumstantiality of his pictures, the combination of variety and of moonshine, dreams in the costume of science. the effect of his religion will be denied by his disciples, but inevitable, that he leads them away from calvinism, and under the guise of allegiance to christianity, supplants both calvin and christ. when they awake, they have irrecoverably lost the others, and swedenborg is not to be found. we lie for the right. we affect a greater hope than we feel. we idealize character, we embellish the story. 1846] the glass. lights 155 genius consists neither in improvising nor in remembering, but in both ever trembles the beam of the balance in nature. two brains in every man. i see not how a man can walk in a straight line, who has ever seen a looking-glass. he acts, and instantly his act is reflected to him by the opinion of men. he cannot keep his eyes off of these dancing images; and that is the death of glory, the death of duty in him. safer, oh, far safer, is the reflection of his form that he finds in zoology, in botany, in chemistry. anthropomorphize them,— 't is all well and poetical. i cannot hope to make any thorough lights into the caverns of the human consciousness. that were worth the ambition of angels! no! but only to make special, provincial, local lights? yes; but we obey the impulse to affirm and affirm, and neither you nor i know the value of what we say. real henry thoreau objected to my“shakspeare,” that the eulogy impoverished the race. shakspeare ought to be praised, as the sun is, so that all shall be rejoiced. 156 (age 42 journal that which is divine is to make an entire traverse from deity to the dust, and it is indifferent whether it is in a book or in an institution. oh, yes, he may escape from shackles and dungeons, but how shall he get away from his temperament? how from his hereditary sins and infusions? — how from the yellow humors through which he must ever see the blue sky and the sun and stars? sixty centuries have squatted and stitched and hemmed to shape and finish for him that strait jacket which he must wear. must nature loves to cross her stocks. a pure blood, brahmin on brahmin, marrying in and in, soon becomes puny and wears out. some strong cain son, some black blood must renew and refresh the paler veins of seth. what a discovery i made one day, that the more i spent the more i grew, that it was as easy to occupy a large place and do much work as an obscure place to do little; and that in the winter in which i communicated all my results to classes, i was full of new thoughts. 1846] thoreau. two brains 157 queenie came it over henry last night when he taxed the new astronomy with the poverty of their new discoveries and showings — not strange enough. queenie wished to see with eyes some of those strange things which the telescope reveals, the satellites of saturn, etc. h. said that strange things might be seen with the naked eye. “yes,” said queenie, “but i wish to see some of those things that are not quite so strange.” the one good in life is concentration, the one evil is dissipation.'... the book i read of lately, taught, that there are two brains in every man, as two eyes, two ears, etc., and that culture consisted in compelling the two to the entertainment of one thought. ... immortality. 'tis a higher thing to confide that it is best we should live, then we shall live. ... i the rest of the passage occurs in “ power” (conduct of life, pp. 73, 74). 2 for the rest of this paragraph, see « worship" (conduct of life, p. 239), where much of the substance of it is given in the french quotation that follows, but the name of the author does not appear. 158 (age 42 journal “vous direz ce serait mieux que nous aurions une vie éternelle. bien. je dis, si ce serait mieux, cela viendra. alors, je dis c'est une chose plus grande de confier que si ce serait mieux, cela viendra, — beaucoup plus grande que serait la promesse formelle du createur que nous subsisterions pour tous les siècles.” we frigidly talk of reform, until the walls mock us with contempt. it is that of which a man should never speak, but if he have cherished it in his bosom, he should steal to it in the dark as an indian to his bride; or a monk should go privily to another monk, and say, lo, we two are of one opinion; and a new light has shined in our hearts. let us dare to obey it. ar bardic sentences how few! literature warps away from life, though at first it seems to bind it. if now i should count the english poets who have contributed aught to the bible of existing england and america sentences of guidance and consolation which are still glowing and effective-how few! milton, shakspeare, pope, burns, young, cowper, wordsworth —(what disparity in the names ! yet these are the authors) and herbert, jonson, donne. 1846] the living god 159 is the picture beautiful, and was the man so great, and must so many academies convene to settle the claims of the classic and the romantic schools ? so many journeys and measurements, — niebuhr, müller, and sir william gell to identify the plain of troy and tomb of achilles ?' ... he lurks, be hides, he who is success, reality, joy, power, that which constitutes heaven, which reconciles impossibilities, atones for shortcomings, expiates sins, or makes them virtues, buries in oblivion the crowded historical past, sinks religions, philosophies, nations, persons, to legends; reverses the scale of opinion, of fame; reduces sciences to opinion, and makes the thought of the moment the key to the universe and the egg of history to come. ... this is he that shall come, or if he come not, nothing comes; he that disappears on the instant that we go to celebrate him. if we go to burn those that blame our celebration, he appears in them. hoe and spade; sword and pen; cities, pictures, gardens, laws, bibles, are prized only 1 much of what follows is found in “works and days” (society and solitude, pp. 174, 175). 160 journal (age 42 because they were means he sometimes used: so with astronomy, arithmetic, caste, feudalism. we kiss with devotion these hems of his garment. they crumble to ashes on our lips. so ore sa prophecy is not more sacred than is knowledge of the present. quantum scimus, sumus. do not throw up your thought because you cannot answer objections. “apollo is a god who defends or destroys, according to the nature of the case.” müller, p. 193. imagination. there are two powers of the imagination, one, that of knowing the symbolic character of things and treating them as representative; and the other (elizabeth hoar thinks) is practically the tenaciousness of an image, cleaving unto it and letting it not go, and, by the treatment, demonstrating that this figment of thought is as palpable and objective to the poet as is the ground on which he stands, or the walls of houses about him. and this power appears in dante and shakspeare. i should say that the imagination exists by sharing the ethereal currents.' ... i the rest of the paragraph occurs in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 21).? 1846] fourier. life. hymns 161 society is trying fourierism in small pieces: as the union protective store; clubhouses for the married; boarding in hotels; book clubs. it needs now only that a hotel company should agree to build a palace for three hundred families subscribing beforehand to rent suites of apartments for three years. fourier's seventeen musical instruments taught him. his musical scale he applied with confidence to every part of nature. life is the sleep of the soul : as soon as a soul is tired, it looks out for a body as a bed; enters into a body in the season of dentition, and sleeps seventy years. nobody is entitled to travel but such as have done their work. whilst this world is in chaos, we shall not be allowed to leave it. hymns. there are a great many excellent hymns in use in our unitarian churches. the best collection in the english language is, no doubt, dr. greenwood's; excellent in what he retained, in what he discovered and brought into use again from cowper, wesley, and the moravians, etc., and in what he sunk, as i had hoped, 162 (age 42 journal forever. but already the scribaciousness of our ministers has produced a number of pretended new collections: the plymouth, the cheshire, etc. all that is good in these they take from greenwood. i will venture to say you cannot find one good piece in either of them that is not in his. but they have restored or added a great deal of trash. their collections will pass away and his judicious book will come into lasting use. the non-resistants go about and persuade good men not to vote, and so paralyze the virtue that is in the conservative party. and thus the patriotic vote in the country is swamped in the legion of paddies. but though the non-voting is right in the non-resistants, it is a patch and a pedantry in their converts, not in their system. not a just expression of their state of mind. one of these tenacities, it is no matter where it goes. it gets an education in a shanty, in an alehouse, over a cigar or in a fishing boat, as good as it could find in germany or in sais: for the world is unexpectedly rich, and everywhere tells the same things. the grasp is much, but not quite all. the juggle of commerce never loses 1846] poetry that feeds 163 its power to astonish and delight us, namely, the unlooked-for union that cannot but be of things. byron is no poet: what did he know of the world and its law and lawgiver? what moment had he of that mania which moulds history and man, and tough circumstances, like wax? he had declamation; he had music, juvenile and superficial music. even this is very rare, and we delight in it so much that byron has obtained great' fame by this fluency and music. it is delicious. all the “ hebrew melodies” are examples. “warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword,” — how neat, how clever, how roundly it rolls off the tongue— but what poetry is here? it is the sublime of schoolboy verse. how many volumes of such jingle must we go through before we can be filled, sustained, taught, renewed? the office of poetry i supposed was tyrtæan, consoling, indemnifying; and of the uranian, deifying or imparadising. homer did what he could, -and callimachus, pindar, and the greek tragedians; horace and persius; dante was faithful, and milton, shakspeare and herbert. but how shall i find my ume see 164 165 164 journal [age 42 heavenly bread in tennyson? or in milnes? in lowell? or in longfellow? yet wordsworth was mindful of the office. compare the music of collins, bubbling runnels joined the sound – and ben jonson's, drink to me only with thine eyes, and herrick, and chapman's homer, with the parlor and piano music of byron, and scott, and moore." · neat versification without poetry is cowper's alexander selkirk, i am out of humanity's reach; i must finish my journey alone; never hear the sweet music of speech, — i start at the sound of my own. clever execution; but these are properly college exercises, not manly labors. no wind-harp; i and yet at the centennial celebration of the birth of scott, in august, 1871, mr. emerson said: “we tread over our youthful grounds with joy. critics have found them to be only rhymed prose. but i believe that many of those who read them in youth, when, later, they come to dismiss their school-days' library, will make some fond exception for scott, as for byron." 1846] instincts. poets 165 ποντίων τε κυμάτων 'avýplopov yenao ja. æschylus, prometheus. o multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows ! “'tis not clear,” says de quincey, “whether æschylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the ear or the eye.” i like man, but not men. instincts, tendencies, – they do no wrong: they are beautiful, and may be confided in and obeyed. though they slay us, let us trust them. why should eggs and tadpoles talk? all is mere sketch, symptomatic, possible, or probable, for us, we dwellers in tents, we outlines in chalk, we jokes and buffooneries, why should we be talking? let us have the grace to be abstemious. the etiquette of society should guard and consecrate a poet; he should not be visited, nor be shown at dinner-tables: too costly to be seen except on high holidays. he should be relieved of visits and trivial correspondence. his time is the time of his nation. yes, we want a poet, the genuine poet of our time, no parrot, and no child. the poets that we praise, or try to, the brownings, barretts, bryants, tennysons,—are all abortive homers; they at least show tendency, the direction of 166 journal (age 42 nature to the star in lyra. boys still whistle, and every newspaper and girl’s album attest the ineradicable appetite for melody. oh, no, we have not done with music, nor must console ourselves with prose poets. we wish the undrawn line of tendency to be drawn for us. where is the euclid who can sum up these million errors, and compute the beautiful mean? we do not wish to make believe be instructed; we wish to be ravished, inspired, and taught. companions. men of thought who live in the same sphere are poor company for each other.' may 1. i was at cambridge yesterday to see everett inaugurated. his political brothers came as if to bring him to the convent door, and to grace with a sort of bitter courtesy his taking of the cowl. it is like the marriage of a girl; not until the wedding and the departure with her husband, does it appear that she has actually and finally changed homes and connections and social caste. webster i could so willingly have spared on this occasion. everett was entitled to the i the passage with a similar beginning is printed in representative men (p. 31). eve va 1846) everett and webster 167 entire field; and webster came, who is his evil genius, and has done him incalculable harm by everett's too much admiration of his iron nature; — warped him from his true bias all these twenty years, and sent him cloud hunting at washington and london, to the ruin of all solid scholarship, and fatal diversion from the pursuit of his right prizes. it is in vain that everett makes all these allusions to his public employments; he would fain deceive me and himself; he has never done anything therein, but has been, with whatever praises and titles and votes, a mere dangler and ornamental person. it is in vain for sugar to try to be salt. well, this webster must needs come into the house just at the moment when everett was rising to make his inaugural speech. of course, the whole genial current of feeling flowing towards him was arrested, and the old titanic earth-son was alone seen. the house shook with new and prolonged applause, and everett sat down, to give free course to the sentiment. he saved himself by immediately saying, “i wish it were in my power to use the authority vested in me and to say, 'expectatur oratio in lingua vernacula,' from my illustrious friend who has just taken his seat.” everett's grace and propriety were admirable 168 journal (age 42 through the day. nature finished this man. he seems beautifully built, perfectly sound and whole; and eye, voice, hand exactly obey his thought. his quotations are a little trite, but saved by the beautiful modulation and falls of the recitation. the satisfaction of men in this appointment is complete. boston is contented because he is so creditable, safe, and prudent, and the scholars because he is a scholar, and understands the business. old quincy, with all his worth and a sort of violent service he did the college, was a lubber and a grenadier among our clerks. quincy made an excellent speech, so stupid good, now running his head against a post, now making a capital point; he has mother wit, and great fund of honour and faithful serving, and the faults of his speech increased my respect for his character. the latin allusions flew all day; “ sol occubuit, nulla nox sequitur," : said webster. “uno avulso, non deficit aureus alter," 2 said winthrop. 1 the sun has set, yet no night follows. 2 when one has been torn away, another golden one is not lacking. 1846] everett's address 169 it is so old a fault that we have now acquiesced in it, that the complexion of these cambridge feasts is not literary, but somewhat bronzed by the colors of washington and boston. the aspect is political, the speakers are political, and cambridge plays a very pale and permitted part in its own halls. a man of letters — who was purely that — would not feel attracted, and would be as much out of place there as at the brokers' board. holmes's poem was a bright sparkle, but frothingham, prescott, longfellow, old dana, ward, parker, hedge, clarke, judd, the author of “margaret,” and whoever else is a lover of letters, were absent or silent; and everett himself, richly entitled on grounds of scholarship to the chair, used his scholarship only complimentarily. the close of everett's inaugural discourse was chilling and melancholy. with a coolness indicating absolute skepticism and despair, he deliberately gave himself over to the corpsecold unitarianism and immortality of brattle street and boston. everett's genius is persian. the poetry of his sermons in his youth, his delight in destiny, the elements, the colors and forms of 170 journal (age 42 things, and the mixture he made of physical and metaphysical, strongly recalls the genius of hafiz. people wish to be amused, and therefore like to have the good-natured man, the man of information, the “uncle isaac whose news is always true," or the poet, or the belle, come to their houses. but i do not wish to be amused, and the amusing persons are bores to me. but if a man speak in public one right and eloquent word, like gannett's once at some bible society, or henry ware's sometimes, or lovejoy's 'lately over torrey's dead body, or disclose the least vestige of character, then it is pathetic to me, and i have a feeling of gratitude that would wash the feet of this benefactor. ov oss hafiz. hafiz, whom i at first thought a cross of anacreon and horace, i find now to have 1 rev. joseph c. lovejoy, the brother of the brave elijah p. lovejoy, who was murdered by the mob at alton, illinois, in 1837, for his writings against slavery in his newspaper. charles t. torrey, a humane clergyman, born in massachusetts, resident in baltimore, was there tried and convicted of the crime of aiding the escape of a slave from bondage. he died there in prison of consumption. 1846] the mystic. prayer 171 the best blood of pindar also in his veins. also of burns. the mystic labels and tickets one thing, or two. the mystic, who beholds the flux, yet becomes pragmatist on some one particular of faith, and, what is the mischief, seeks to accredit this new jail because it was builded by him who has demolished so many jails. is not the mystic like a rogue who comes to an honest man and says, “by your accumulated character you could deal an immense stroke at counterfeiting”? rms memory. memory performs the impossible for man.'.. : prayer. dr. allyne,' of duxbury, prayed for rain, at church. in the afternoon the boys carried umbrellas. “why?” because you prayed for rain. “pooh! boys! we always pray for rain : it's customary.” 1 what follows is printed in “ memory” (natural history of intellect, p. 91). 2 of this kindly, humorous but eccentric clergyman many entertaining stories are told. mrs. emerson's brother, dr. charles t. jackson, with other boys, was placed in his family for instruction. 172 journal (age 42 the world, the universe may be reeled off from any idea, like a ball of yarn. thus, if you please, it is all mechanical. the mental phenomena all admit very well of being solved so. ... or it is all electrical; or chemical; or moral. suit yourself. o'connell, in 1835, denounced benjamin þ’israeli as a humbug of the first magnitude, and wound up by referring to the origin of d’israeli's family. he said, he“ had no doubt, if his genealogy were traced, it would be found that he was the true heir-at-law of the impenitent thief who atoned for his crimes on the cross.” double the dose. the pale faces, the pale faces! we are tired of asking for a great man, and now ask for a great deal of a man, somewhat satisfying; bonaparte, webster, —even captain rynders." for we must have a success. it is not we that i isaiah rynders, a new york man of german and irish descent, after a rough and varied life as boatman, gambler, etc., returned from the southwest and became a powerful democratic political manager of the worst classes. in 1849 and 1850 he instigated two riots, and was more than once brought before the courts for acts of violence, and only fear of him prevented other arrests. are 18461 the muse. artist 173 are in fault for not being convinced, but you that cannot convince us. you should mould us and wind us round your finger, so pliant and willing as we offer ourselves. we know you are in the right. weare already half convinced. you should take the ground from under us if you had a sliver of steel; not only neutralize our opposition that is a small thing — but convert us into fiery apostles and publishers of your wisdom. good powder, but not a heavy charge enough. the muse demands real sacrifices, i wrote. you cannot be poet and a paterfamilias and a militia captain. what pity that the mother and child cannot change states. the child is always awake, and the mother is always asleep. raphael found the material sufficiently ready and had all his heat for the main work. so shakspeare. michael angelo's designs teach us how near to creation we are; this man is of the creator that made and makes men; how much of the original craft yet remains in him, and he a man! art acquaints us with the wonderful translations of the same thought into the several lan174 journal [age 42 guages of drawing, of sculpture, of music, of poetry, of architecture; still further into scenery, into animals, that express it or harmonize with it; and lastly into human form and character. bring any club or company of intelligent men together again, after ten years, ... and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them all to recollection and frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up!' ... the best is accessible, is cheap. every man cannot get land or jewels, but every man can get what land and money and rank are valued for,namely, substantial manhood, thoughts selfrealizing and prophetic of the farthest future, thoughts of which poetry and music are the necessary expression. when summer opens, i see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of july and august, i am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn. so will it be with the coming of death. 1 the whole paragraph occurs in culture” (conduct of life, p. 136). 1846) individual. the poet 175 a good invention was the individual or differential. here are all the members of my body: how they use and rely on each other, trust each other beyond all the fables of friendship, and yet without love of each other! well, so live two young brothers or sisters, and have no good of their intimacy and use, because they know it not. love never forgets the differential. “i will get you to mow this piece of grass for me,” says the prudent mechanic, “ for i can earn more in the shop.” and the poet replies, in the same wisdom on a higher plane, to those who beg him to come in to the aid of the disturbed institutions: “i can best help them by going on with the creation of my own. i am a sad bungler at laws, being afflicted with a certain inconsecutiveness of thought, impertinent association, and extreme skepticism; but i recover my eyesight and spirits in solitude.” costume. we must accept without criticism or modification the costume of our times, and be glad we have one care less on our hands, — dress, money, language, railroads, taxation, and the civilization generally. the custom of the country will do so much for us. let it, and be thankful. 176 (age 42 journal all the matériel is vanquished to your hand; now for the triumphs of the spirituel.' immortality. is my future related to my present only as my present to my past ? — say they all. the universe suffers no detriment. but for cebes and simmias? — we wish to be certified that these dear johns and henrys, anns and marias, shall keep the traits that are most their own, and make them dear. ev anything that goethe said, another might attain to say; but the profusion of sayings, every one of which is good and striking, — no man. in these days we rather incline to sniff at men of talent, and at achievements, as if the artist cost too much; but when a man can do so many things, when achievement amounts to such a prodigious sum, it grows respectable. yet the “autobiography” looks to-day like a storm of gold-headed canes, and ellery perceived the snuff box.” i compare the passage in “ wealth” as to the helpfulness of custom in country life (conduct of life, p. 120). 2 channing has been elsewhere quoted as detecting the snuffy in wordsworth. 1846] the central man 177 men quarrel with your rhetoric. society chokes with a trope, like a child with the croup. they much prefer mr. prose, and mr. hoarseas-crows, to the dangerous conversation of gabriel and the archangel michael, perverting all rules, and bounding continually from earth to heaven. s we shall one day talk with the central man, and see again in the varying play of his features all the features which have characterized our darlings, and stamped themselves in fire on the heart: then, as the discourse rises out of the domestic and personal, and his countenance waxes grave and great, we shall fancy that we talk with socrates, and behold his countenance: then the discourse changes, and the man, and we see the face and hear the tones of shakspeare, — the body and the soul of shakspeare living and speaking with us, only that shakspeare seems below us. a change again, and the countenance of our companion is youthful and beardless, he talks of form and color and the riches of design ; it is the face of the painter raffaelle that confronts us with the visage of a girl, and the easy audacity of a creator. in a moment it was michael angelo ; then dante ; 178 journal [age 42 afterwards it was the saint jesus, and the immensities of moral truth and power, embosomed us. and so it appears that these great secular personalities were only expressions of his face chasing each other like the rack of clouds. then all will subside, and i find myself alone. i dreamed and did not know my dreams. thine and mine. be the condition what it may, you must support it, and by resources native or constitutional to you. mob. the boys kick and stamp for a noise when abby kelley and stephen foster' speak, not for any good reason, but because it is understood that people are to yell and throw eggs when the fosters speak. ’t is a regular holiday for the boys through the land when these people go by; and if they do not make the noise, who will ? you cannot allow too much for the levity of men. inconceivable is the levity of men: every body overrates their character. they have no meaning ; they have heels, they wish to feel them, and it is the charm of noise versus the charm of eloquence. i s. s. foster, of worcester, and his wife, formerly miss abby kelley, ardent and courageous abolitionist speakers. 1846] whigs. alcott's charge 179 individual. the same thing which happens to us would happen to the gods also; for if you come into the sweets of personality, you must accept its adamantine limitations. the whigs have only for their system the negative defence that they maintain it until something really good appears. first come, first served, said the world to the whig. “a new commandment,” archly said the muse: “thou shalt not preach, my dismal one.”. ... alcott and edward taylor resemble each other in the incredibility of their statement of facts. one is the fool of his idea, the other of his fancy. when alcott wrote from england that he was bringing home wright and lane, i wrote him a letter, which i required him to show them, saying, that they might safely trust his theories, but that they should put no trust whatever in his statement of facts. when they all arrived here, he and his victims,i asked them if 1 here occurs the first trial for the verse called "adakpu véuovtal aiwva, printed in the poems, at the end of the “quatrains” (p. 297). 180 journal (age 42 he showed them that letter; they answered that he did: so i was clear. vc we manage well enough with the elements, but when the elements become men, not so well; for they are no longer pure, but have such quantities of alloy as to make them of questionable use. you can extract sunbeams from cucumbers, but there is more cabbage than sunlight; and phosphate from cows, but the chemical phosphate is better. wsthe new man. neither herodotus nor hume has told the story as he knows it. none of the arts, no politics, no extant religion, no newspaper, no social circle or private friend quite represents him. alphonso of castile, it is too plain, was not consulted; might have given good advice.' i see nothing for it but that yet his opportunity and theatre should once for all be expanded to his broad wish ; let him make a little solar system of his own; let him play all the parts and sing all the songs. don't bore him with your old france and egypt, with homer and shakspeare any longer. 1 see the poem named for this critical monarch in the poems. 1846] the new man. hafiz 181 his duties are to omit and omit, to show you the back of his hands, to do nothing as you would have him. his prudence is a new prudence, his charity a new kind, his temperance original, his whole wealth of virtues are undescribed varieties. where's the genius, charm or stature in our crowded highway shown? show me thy face, dear nature; that i may forget my own! [the following is a translation from hafiz whose poems mr. emerson came at through the medium of von hammer-purgstall.] come let us strew roses and pour wine in the cup, break up the roof of heaven and throw it into new forms so soon the army of cares shed the blood of the true, so will i with the cupbearer shatter the building of woe. we will rosewater in winecups pour, and sugar in the censer full of musk smell throw. 182 journal (age 42 thy harping is lovely: o play sweet airs, that we may sing songs and shake our heads. bring, east wind, the dust of the body to that great lord, that we also may cast our eyes on his beauty. inthe noblest chemistry. sunshine from cucumbers. here was a man who has occupied himself in a nobler chemistry of extracting honor from scamps, temperance from sots, energy from beggars, justice from thieves, benevolence from misers. he knew there was sunshine under those moping, churlish brows, elegance of manners hidden in the peasant, heart-warming expansion, grand surprises of sentiment, in these unchallenged, uncultivated men, and he persevered against all repulses until he drew it forth. now, his orphans are educated, his boors are polished, his palaces built, his pictures, statues, conservatories, chapels adorn them; he stands there prince among his peers, prince among princes. the sunshine is out and all flowing abroad over the world. 1846) poetaster. rotation 183 poetaster. no man deserves a patron until first he has been his own. what do you bring us slipshod verses for? no occasional delicacy of expression or music of rhythm can atone for stupidities. here are lame verses, false rhymes, absurd images, which you indulge yourself in; which is as if a handsome person should come into a company with foul hands or face. read collins. collins would have cut his hand off before he would have left, from a weak selfesteem, a shabby line in his ode. rotation. the lesson of life lately is a pretty rapid rotation of friends.' ... at the funeral of torrey, it seems almost too late to say anything for freedom, — the battle is already won. you are a superserviceable echo.2 yet when you come out and see the apathy and incredulity, the wood and the stone of the people, their supple neck, their appetite for pineapple and ice cream!the passage on rotation which follows is essentially printed in “ uses of great men” (representative men, p. 19). 2 the conviction was forming in mr. emerson's mind that the slave power was rapidly working out its own doom. the death in prison of charles t. torrey, a martyr to his love of freedom, has been alluded to on page 170. 184 journal (age 42 singular credulity, which no experience will cure us of, that another man has seen or may see somewhat more than we have of the primary facts; as, for example, of the continuity of the individual; and eye for eye, object for object, their experience is invariably identical in a million individuals. in practical faculty there is great difference. no education can bring the grenadier to combine like bonaparte: but familiarity with a seer will accustom the dullest swain to contemplate the moral verities and the laws of life. it will not do to diminish personal responsibility: do not give money and teach the man to expect it. do not give him a bible, or a genius, to think for him. break no springs ; make no cripples and paupers. the indians and the old monks choose their dwelling-place for beauty of scenery. the indians have a right to exist in this world: they are (like monadnoc and the ocean) a part of it, and fit the other parts — as monadnoc and the sea, which they understand and live with so well as a rider his horse. the teamster, the farmer, are jocund and hearty, and stand on their legs: but the women are demure and subdued as 1846) fire of eloquence 185 shaker women, and, if you see them out of doors, look, as henry thoreau said, “as if they were going for the doctor.” has our christianity saddled and bridled us? there never was an eloquence: it is a fabulous power, as i have said, concerning which men are credulous, because there is in them all a tantalizing picture, which they would fain verify on some personal history of chatham or demosthenes. whoso assays to speak in a public assembly is conscious instantly of this lambent flame enlarging, elongating, contracting to a point, a zodiacal light, a jack-oʻlanthorn evanescent, refusing to be an instrument. ah! could he confine that lambent fire ! — once manage to catch and confine that wildfire, confine and direct it in a blow-pipe, he would melt or explode the planet. there is no despotism like this clutching with one strong hand the master nerve which carries all the pulsations from the brain to the heart of humanity. bust of demosthenes, a face of ropes; all cord and tendon. america. john randolph is somebody : and andrew jackson ; and john quincy adams, and daniel webster. 186 (age 42 journal criticism. the next generation will thank dickens for showing so many mischiefs which parliaments and christianities had not been strong enough to remove. punch, too, has done great service. · fourier, saint-simon, bentham, louis blanc, owen, leroux, and the chartist leader, all crazy men, and so they pound on one string till the whole world knows that. here are two or three things to be discriminated. first : the perception of our polarity impressed on all the universe, and on the particles.' ... tell children what you say about writing and laboring with the hands. i know better. can you distil rum by minding it at odd times? or anailyze soils? or carry on the suffolk bank? or the greenwich observatory? or sail a ship through the narrows by minding the helm when you happen to think of it? or serve a glass-house, or a steam-engine, or a telegraph, or a railroad express? or accomplish anything good or anything powerful in this manner? nothing whati most of what follows is printed in « instinct and inspiration” (natural history of intellect, p. 87). 18461 writing and labor 187 ever. and the greatest of all arts, the subtlest and most miraculous effect, you fancy is to be practised with a pen in one hand and a crowbar or a peat-knife in the other. all power is of geometrical increase. and to this painting the education is the costliest, and mankind cannot afford to throw away on ditching or wood-sawing the man on whom choicest influences have been concentrated, its baruch or scribe. just as much and just such exercise as this costly creature needs, he may have; and he may breathe himself with a spade, or a rapier, as he likes, not as you like: and i should rather say, bad as i think the rapier, that it were as much to his purpose as the other implement. both are bad, are only rare and medicinal resorts. the writer must live and die by his writing. good for that, and good for nothing else. a war, an earthquake, the revival of letters, the new dispensation by jesus, or by angels, heaven, hell, power, science, the néant, exist only to him as colors for his brush. that you think he can write at odd minutes only shows what your knowledge of writing is. american writing can be written w at odd minutes, — unitarian writing, charlatan writing, congress speeches, railroad novels.' i one or two sentences included above occur in “ art and artis narily keen ith 188 journal (age 42 hawthorne invites his readers too much into his study, opens the process before them. as if the confectioner should say to his customers, “now, let us make the cake.” truth, indeed; we talk as if we had it, or sometimes said it, or knew anything about it:'... morals. we have never heard that music; it is that which is sung to the fates by sirens or by their mystic whirling wheel. that is what all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve. literature, epics, tragedies, histories, are only apology, interlude, makeshift, in the absence of that. it is the basis of all the elements we know, and is, as readily reached from one as from another point. anacreon, hafiz, horace, herrick come out on it from drinking songs, as easily as newton from stars, and jeremy taylor from a funeral sermon. in the delphin juvenals and other poets, they print the moral sentences in roman capitals, and pope asterisked criticism," a fragmentary essay first published in the centenary edition of the works (natural history of intellect, p. 283). 1 the rest of the passage is in natural history of intellect (p. 78). 1846) moral philosophy 189 shakspeare, and, in early greece, they carved the sentences of the seven wise masters on stones by the roadside, and the christian inscribed the church walls with the commandments and lord's prayer. i believe i must transcribe below some sentences i find on a stray leaf that seems to belong to some old lecture, which refer to this point:if i dared, i would summon a class to lectures on moral philosophy: for i well know that all real aid and inspiration which we can owe each other is therein. it is really only so much moral philosophy as enters into any discourse or any action, — that is memorable, and gives value to the rest. all the rest is overture or interlude to fill the time, and make the company forget the absence of the great performer. but, on the instant when we rise so high as to see and affirm the ethical law in relation to our business, no apology is needed. we feel that we have come together for a worthy purpose, and would have done so, though we had travelled hundreds of miles. if i am unworthy, if i am forbidden to pass within the paling, and to tell any secret of generosity and immortality, it is vain that i speak at all; i am only one pretender more. i hover still with inextinguishable cou 190 journal (age 42 hope about that mountain even in my exclusion, happy to be in its neighborhood, for, “of divine things,” it is said, “ the confines are reverend.” the reason why i pound so tediously on that string of the exemption of the writer from all secular works is our conviction that his work needs a frolic health to execute.' ... nature never draws the moral, but leaves it for the spectator. neither does the sculptor, nor the painter, nor the poet. the moral equalizes all, ... it is the law, it takes no heed of the flaws of the material, but fashions its cups and vases after its now divine model, alike of porcelain, or of potter's earth, or of water, or of air, as you fetch it stock, or fetch it none. the best is to be had. under the whip of the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with kings; — the nothingness of all, the omnipotence of all, as they share the principle which fashions suns and earth, and the dreams of their dreamers, gossamer solid and gossamer in webs. 1 the rest of this long passage is in “poetry and imagination" (letters and social aims, pp. 40, 41). 1846] surface. nature's vote 191 wit has a great charter.' . . . but if the metaphysicians or learned german doctors mutter and analyze a little, the king cries with diotima, “ none of the gods philosophizes,” and sends the police to him. surface. the animals crawl on or fly over the rind of the planet, and the fishes and whales swim only at the surface of the water. you might skim the whole mammalia with a kitchen dipper. in the deep sea, and under the crust, all is still, nothing stirs. human life and thought is not less external. nobody is profoundly good or bad. were they profound, they would satisfy. swedenborg must have the credit of opening many new doors in what had been esteemed for ages dead wall, as belzoni discovered chambers in the pyramids. then nobody knows his sources of information. ... “saint peter a unitarian,” “isaac newton a unitarian,” that is neither here nor there, but if you will find the maple and elm, granite, slate, and slime, to be of your party and opinion, that were something. that moral nature abhors slavi see progress of culture” (letters and social aims, p. 218). 192 journal (age 42 ery, and new england sides with moral nature against south carolina and animal nature. the skeptics have got hold of park street church and will not let the body of the martyr torrey come into it, for fear the crowd will spoil their carpets. the skeptics have got into the abolition society, and make believe to be enraged. fire fights fire, the larger faith the less. how shall i educate my children?'... if i were a member of the massachusetts legislature, i should propose to exempt all colored citizens from taxation because of the inability of the government to protect them by passport out of its territory. it does not give the value for which they pay the tax. also i should recommend that the executive wear no sword, and the office of general be abolished and the whole militia disbanded; for if these persons do not know that they pretend to be and to do somewhat which they are not and do not, hoar of concord, walker of the 1 what follows is in “ instinct and inspiration ” (natural history of intellect, p. 75). 1846] new england's shame 193 branded hand, torrey the martyr, know that the sword of massachusetts is a sword of lath or a turkey feather. it gives me no pleasure to see the governor attended by military men in plumes; i am amazed that they do not feel the ridicule of their position. new england is subservient. the president proclaims war, and those senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to, as benton and calhoun. democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. the editors standing in the privilege of being last devoured. captain rynders, tempered by father ritchie and o'sullivan. oliver wellington describes to me samanthe crawford of oakham, who thought and felt in such strict sympathy with a friend in the spiritual world that her thought ultimated itself in a preternatural writing on her arm, and again into writing on a paper which seemed to float in at the open window, and alighted on her lap. cunning. shortsightedness of the mechanics is wonderful. to win from you an advantage of a few shillings or a few dollars, they will take 194 journal (age 42 the risk of the long discontent and heart-burning of the housemates, who will take in future any pains to avoid employing them again. certainly it costs too much — those two or three dollars. mirabeau said, “ madam, if there were no such thing as probity, it would be invented as a means of getting on in the world.” the reason of this cheating, however, is plain; it is their inability to make good calculations; they have found themselves short, they had miscalculated, and they now go to piece the hide of the lion by the skin of the fox. to every creature its own weapon, however skilfully concealed. i thought myself laid open, without walls, to the hoofs of all cattle, but found, many years ago, that the eyes of all comers respected some fence which i could not see. the very strawberry vines can hide their berry from fumble and keep it for cupid. cs tending. when we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can float.' ... one thing we have, though it is not of us, continuity. i live now a little this way, — then 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “sovereignty of ethics” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 196). 1846] currents. concord 195 a little that; —but nature, independently of our mathematics, secures a consecutiveness which later we acknowledge with pleased surprise. do you say, that the current goes down stream? no; these are ocean currents, and the currents of that ocean i speak of, go in all directions, up, down, sidewise, by exhalation, and by radiation. the exhalation which we call death is still in the current, and the current knows the way. continuity of nature, not of us. we have been baptized, vaccinated, schooled, churched, married. in the city of makebelieve is a great ostentation bolstered up on a great many small ostentations. i think we escape something by living in the villages. in concord here there is some milk of life, we are not so raving distracted with wind and dyspepsia. the mania takes a milder form. people go a-fishing, and know the taste of their meat. they cut their own whippletree in the woodlot, they know something practically of the sun and the east wind, of the underpinning and the roofing of the house, of the pan and the mixture of the soils. in the city of makebelieve all the marble edifices were veneered and all the columns were drums. un 196 journal (age 42 a scholar is a literary foundation. all his expense is for plato, fabricius, selden, bentley.' scholar. scholarship is our religion. we attempt practice, urged by nature,and are swamped at once in the profane miscellany; and by religious instinct we recover the shore as quick as we can, and in fault of power to execute our thought, we console us at least with delineating the picture. may 23. in carlyle's head (photograph), which came last night, how much appears! how unattainable this truth to any painter! here have i the inevitable traits, which the sun forgets not to copy, and which i thirst to see, but which no painter remembers to give me. here have i the exact sculpture, the form of the head, the rooting of the hair, thickness of the lip, the man that god made. and all the lawrences and d'orsays will now serve me well as illustration. i have the form and organism and can better spare the expression and color. what would i i the rest of the passage (with different authors named) occurs in “domestic life” (society and solitude, p. 110). 2 the daguerreotype here reproduced must be the picture. the english probably adopted the general term photograph thomas carlyle 1846] carlyle's head. boston 197 not give for a head of shakspeare by the same artist? of plato? of demosthenes? here i have the jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the head. and here the organism of the eye, full of england; the valid eye, in which i see the strong executive talent which has made his thought available to the nations, whilst others, as intellectual as he, are pale and powerless. the photograph comes dated 25 april, 1846, and he writes, “i am fifty years old.” boston or brattle street christianity is a compound of force, or the best diagonal line that can be drawn between jesus christ and abbott lawrence. how beautiful the manners of wild animals, the bird that trims herself by the stream, the habits of antelope and buffalo. well, the charm for a light-picture, instead of that giving the inventor's name, earlier than americans did. carlyle, in a letter written april 30, said, “if your photograph succeed as well as mine, i shall be almost tragically glad of it. this of me is far beyond all pictures ; really very like! i got lawrence the painter to go with me and he would not let the people off till they had actually made a likeness. o my friend!... do you bethink you of craigenputtock and the still evening there? i could burst into tears, if i had the habit : but it is of no use.” 198 journal (age 42 of genius is the same: we wish man on the higher plane to exhibit also the wildness or nature of that higher plane, but the biography of genius, so thirsted for, is not yet written. ss we educate and drill, we hot-press and polish, but the audacities of genius are one thing, and the skill of drill another. superstition. we do not now make laws, like our ancestors, forbidding under severe penalties all persons whatsoever from transporting themselves through the air by night. “fruitur fama”; no, never. the poet is least a poet when he sits crowned. the transcendental and divine has the dominion of the world on the sole condition of not having it. rus ruris. to the page on narcotics in “ the poet,” is to be added the confession, that the european history is the age of wine. the age of water, the simpler and sublimer condition, when the wine is gone inward, or the constitution has powers of original chemistry and can draw the wine of wine from water (as the earth from loam and water educes the orange, the cis 1846] indirection. sculptor 199 pomegranate, plum, peach, and pineapple), is yet to be, is now in its coming.' we shall not have a sincere literature, we shall not have anything sound and grand as nature itself, until the bread-eaters and waterdrinkers come. we are slain by indirections. give us the question of slavery, — yea or nay; texas, yea or nay; war, yea or nay; we should all vote right. but we accept the devil himself in an indirection. what taxes will we not pay in coffee, sugar, etc., but spare us a direct tax. to the fir tree by my study-window come the ground sparrow, oriole, cedarbird, common crossbill, yellowbird, goldfinch, catbird, particolored warbler, robin.' community. i remember often greenough's fine eulogy of phidias and his antique comrades who wrought together to make a frieze or a i compare « bacchus " in the poems. 2 opposite the spaces between the windows on three sides of the house were, at this time, young and vigorous balsamfirs which seemed very attractive to birds of all kinds. there were others in the front yard, but when they grew tall, and all the lower boughs died, they were cut down. 200 journal [age 42 statue, for so intractable is the material of the sculptor, that otherwise' his heat is expended before his work is sufficiently forward to keep him in heart for it. how many things should a community exist for; as pictures, maps, dictionaries, and apparatus, – as telescope and galvanic battery, etc. now i think of committees to read books, and on oath report of them. a scholar is crafty, and hides his reading; he is full of ends and reservations. i wish such report as a brother gives to a brother, or a husband to a wife. i will read behmen, if you will read swedenborg; and we will read it as generous gods, each for the other. the committees must be as naked and liberal as gods in their agency. here is fourier with unsettled claims. here is always plato; even livy, i want searched and reported on. i will take one, if another, who values his time as much as i, will take another book. there is, beyond this, a deeper, stricter community. we converse as spies. our very abstaining to repeat and credit the fine remark of our friend is thievish. each man of thought is surrounded by wiser men than he, if they cannot write as well. cannot he and they combine? i that is, without several working at once. 20i chalanx's sumont and god's love 1846] cotton. pillsbury 201 cannot they sink their jealousies in god's love, and call their poem beaumont and fletcher's or the theban phalanx's. the city will for nine days or nine years make differences and sinister comparisons. there is a newer and more excellent public that will bless the friends. yet is not community the dream of bedlam?... men are so discordant and of unequal pulse: and excellence is inflamed or exalted individualism. cotton thread holds the union together; unites john c. calhoun and abbott lawrence. patriotism for holidays and summer evenings, with music and rockets, but cotton thread is the union. eloquence. we go to the bar, the senate, the shop, the study, as peaceful professions, but you cannot escape the demand for courage, no, not in the shrine of peace itself.' . . . pillsbury, whom 1 the rest of the paragraph with similar beginning is printed in “ eloquence” (letters and social aims, p. 115). 2 the passage which follows, though printed in the works with the name suppressed, is given here in the original form, in honor of the memory of parker pillsbury, one of the early champions of freedom in the united states. (see society and solitude, pp. 95, 96.) 202 journal (age 42 i heard last night, is the very gift from new hampshire which we have long expected, a tough oak stick of a man not to be silenced or insulted or intimidated by a mob, because he is more mob than they; he mobs the mob. john knox is come at last, on whom neither money nor politeness nor hard words nor rotten eggs nor kicks and brickbats make the slightest impression. he is fit to meet the bar-room wits and bullies ; he is a wit and a bully himself and something more; he is a graduate of the plough and the cedar swamp and the snowbank, and has nothing new to learn of labor or poverty or the rough of farming. his hard head, too, had gone through in boyhood all the drill of calvinism, with text and mortification, so that he stands in the new england assembly a purer .bit of new england than any, and alings his sarcasms right and left, sparing no name or person or party or presence. the concord freeman of the last week he held in his hand (the editor was in the audience), and read the paragraph on the mexican war from it, and then gave his own version of that fact. what question could be more pertinent than his to the church, — “what is the church for, if, whenever there is any moral evil to be 1846] debate. selection 203 grappled with, as intemperance, or slavery, or war, there needs to be originated an entirely new instrumentality ?” mr. ruggles, of fall river, whom i once heard in a conversation at the lyceum, appeared to me a formidable debater. he had a strong personality which made nothing of his antagonists. they were baubles for his amusement. his light, scoffing, and, as it were, final dealing with them, seeming to weigh them and find them nothings, was exquisitely provoking. oh, yes, abolition, or abstinence from rum, or any other far-off and external virtue that will divert attention from the all-containing virtue which we vainly dodge and postpone, but which must be met and obeyed at last, if we wish to be substance and not accidents. who cannot be famous, said osman, since i am ? life is a selection, no more. the work of the gardener is simply to destroy this weed, or that shrub, or that tree, and leave this other to grow. ... the library is gradually made inestimable by taking out from the superabounding mass of 204 journal (age 42 books all but the best. ... things collect very fast of themselves, the difference between house and house is the wise omissions. a good success. alvah crocker, sewell f. belknap, patrick jackson, f. c. lowell, croton water commissioner, upjohn, wiley and putnam, w. h. eliot, horace greeley, w. l. garrison, j. j. astor, catlin. alcott a survivor of the institutions. superstition. pillsbury, commenting on beecher's precious distinction of organic sins, made, that is, by law, said that the american church ought to adopt a new formula, and say, i baptize thee in the name of the governor, and of the senate, and of the house of representatives. and really, instead of walter scott's superstitions, the virtual superstitions now are the deference to a supposed public opinion; to a parliamentariness, to which, for example, governor briggs has just now immolated the state of massachusetts. alcott said that whatever could be done with the eye he could do; meaning gardening, architecture, and, i suppose, picture and sculpture. 1846] audience. reform 205 i look for poetry above rhyme, poetry which the inspirer makes and applauds. the orator and the poet must be cunning dædaluses and yet made of milk like the mob. my friend said that the orator must have a dash of the devil in him to suit an audience: at least his rhetoric must be satanic. there is also something excellent in every audience, capacity of virtue;'... archangels listen in lowly forms, archangels in satinette and gambroon. so fleeting as it is, yet what is so excellent of present power as the riding this wild horse of the people! every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances. slavery and antislavery is the question of property and no property, rent and anti-rent; and anti-slavery dare not yet say that every man must do his own work, or, at least, receive no interest for money. yet that is at last the upshot. the scrupulous and law-abiding become whigs, the unscrupulous and energetic are 1 what follows is in “ eloquence” (society and solitude, p. 66). 206 journal [age 42 locofocos. the people are no worse since they invaded mexico than they were before, only they have given their will a deed. i the united states will conquer mexico, but · it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. mexico will poison us. the southerner is cool and insolent. “we drive you to the wall, and will again.” yes, gentlemen, but do you know why massachusetts and new york are so tame? — it is because we own you, and are very tender of our mortgages which cover all your property. the stout frémont, in his report of his expedition to oregon and california, is continually remarking on “the group,” on “the picture,” etc., “which we make.” our secondary feeling, our passion for seeming, must be highly inflamed, if the terrors of famine and thirst for the camp and for the cattle terrors from the arapahoes and utahs, anxieties from want of true information as to the country and the trail, and the excitement from hunting, and from the new and vast features of unknown country, could not repress this eternal vanity of how we must look! 1846) obligation. tone 207 i play with the miscellany of facts and take those superficial views which we call skepticism.'... there are so many ways of looking at the man. you call him ungrateful, because he does not flatter you, who say that you conferred favors on him. he thinks that which he took of you was no more yours than the air which he breathed in your house. he thinks that favors should be returned in kind and not in money; that is, that your strength should be returned by his strength, not by his weakness. you served, did you not, your genius, and the indications of nature and providence, as well as you could interpret them, in serving him? he will not be less generous in his reciprocations. he is grateful, but you must leave him to designate who is the benefactor. june 27. the poet should instal himself and shove all usurpers from their chairs by electrifying mankind with the right tone, long wished for, never heard. the true centre thus appearing, all false 1 the rest of the passage occurs in “ montaigne ” (representative men, p. 183). 208 (age 43 journal veipopular prese from the poterning the a sc centres are suddenly superseded, and grass grows in the capitol. now and then we hear rarely a true tone, a single strain of the right ode; but the poet does not know his place, he defers to these old conventions; and though sometimes the rogue knows well enough that every word of his is treason to all the kings and conventions of the world, yet he says, “it is only i”; “nobody minds what i say ”; and avails himself of the popular prejudice concerning his insignificance, as a screen from we had conversation to-day concerning the poet and his problem. he is there to see the type and truly interpret it. o mountain, what would your highness say,' thou grand expressor of the present tense, of permanence? yet is there also a taunt at the mutables from old sitfast. if the poet could only forget himself in his theme, — be the tongue of the mountain, his egotism would subside, and that firm line which he had drawn would remain like the names of discoverers of planets, written in the sky in letters which could never be obliterated. a man is caught up and takes a breath or 1 this expression mr. emerson used in the poem “ monadnoc,” begun the previous year. 1846] those who wait 209 two of the eternal, but instantly descends, and puts his eternity to commercial uses. but a pretty kettle of fish we have here, men of this vast ambition, who wish an ethics commensurate with nature, who sit expectant to be challenged to great performances, and are left without any distinct aim; there are openings only in the heavens before them, but no star which they approach ; they have an invincible persuasion that the right is to come to them in the social form, but they are aghast and desolate to know that they have no superiors in society. society treats their conscience as it does men of genius; the only compliment it knows how to pay a man of genius is to wait on him and to ask him to deliver a temperance address. so it proffers to these holy angels, wishing to save the world, some bead or button of communism, an anti-slavery cause, prison discipline, or magdalen refuge, or some other absorbent to suck his vitals into some one or other bitter partiality, and anyhow to deprive him of that essential condition which he prays for, — adequateness. henry thoreau seems to think that society suffers for want of war, or some good excite210 journal [age 43 ment. but how partial that is !— the masses suffer for want of work as barbarous as they are. what is the difference? now the tiger has got a joint of fresh meat to tear and eat: before, he had only bones to grind and gnaw. but this concerns only the tigers, and leaves the men where they were. the snails believe the geniuses are constitutionally skeptical. i lament that wit is a light mocker, that knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know, that genius is criticism. i lament to have life cheap; that a great understanding should play with the world as he tosses his walking-stick and catches it again. i wish the years and months to be long, the days centuries, loaded, fragrant: now we reckon them basely, as bank days, by some debt that we are to pay or that is to be paid us.' now, if there were an affection, a friendship that could be sovereign, that would at once bridge over these volcanic craters and gulf of inequality between the doer and the task ! 1 a sentence or two of this entry, though printed in “considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 247), are kept here for the connection. 1846] the odd men. yankee 211 society. society is a curiosity-shop full of odd excellences, a brahmin, a fakeer, a giraffe, an alligator, colonel bowie, alvah crocker, bronson alcott, henry thoreau; a world that cannot keep step, admirable melodies, but no chorus, for there is no accord. yankeedom. the yankee means to make moonlight work, if he can; and he himself, after he has spent all the business hours in wall street, takes his dinner at a french boarding-house, that his soup and cutlet may not be quite unprofitable, but he shall learn the language between the mouthfuls. i rode in the stagecoach with a pedlar: “mind the halfcent,” said my companion. “a man can about pay his shop-rent by minding the half-cent.” the only gift to men, the only event, is a new image, a new symbol. . . . think how many more eggs of that kind remain to be 1 this was a not uncommon economy in new england up to 1850. prices were named in shillings (six to the dollar there), nine pence (12} cents), “two and thrippence," “seven and six,” etc. 2 then follows several sentences found in “ poetry and imagination ” (letters and social aims, pp. 13, 14). 212 journal (age 43 hatched, when the under side of every stick and stone all round the lake is covered with them. [here follows in the journal the condensed thought for the poem which mr. emerson made for a motto to the essay “circles,” and below it the improving attempts to versify it. nature hates lines; rolls herself into balls, and generates new. man, who knows the most, is confined to surfaces, outside, and only learns the profile of the sphere, which is a circle. nature, hating lines and walls, self-willed, rolls her into balls, generating satellites; ill observed by peeping man. very wisest of his clan, anchored fast to the outsides, half learns the profile of the sphere, wise if he knew what that signified. ii nature, hating lines and walls, rolls her matter into balls. 1846] 213 “circles.” milton ah! her wise ephemerals, nailed to surface and outside, see the profile of the sphere; knew they what that signified, a new genesis were here. [below, the editors introduce the finished poem. (see essays, second series ; also poems.)] nature centres into balls, and her proud ephemerals, fast to surface and outside, scan the profile of the sphere: wist they the thing signified a new genesis were here. criticism is in its infancy. the anatomy of genius it has not unfolded. milton in the egg, it has not found. milton is a good apple on that tree of england. it would be impossible, by any chemistry we know, to compound that apple otherwise : it required all the tree; and out of a thousand of apples, good and bad, this specimen apple is at last procured. that is: we have a well-knit, hairy, industrious saxon race, londoners intent on their trade, steeped in their politics ; wars of the roses ; voyages and trade to the low countries, to spain, to lepanto, to virginia, and guiana — all bright with use and 214 journal (age 43 strong with success. out of this valid stock choose the validest boy, and in the flower of this strength open to him the whole dorian and attic beauty and the proceeding ripeness of the same in italy. give him the very best of this classic beverage. he shall travel to florence and rome in his early manhood: he shall see the country and the works of dante, angelo, and raffaelle. well, on the man to whose unpalled taste this delicious fountain is opened, add the fury and concentration of the hebraic genius, through the hereditary and already culminated puritanism, and you have milton, a creation impossible before or again; and all whose graces and whose majesties involve this wonderful combination ; — quite in the course of things once, but not iterated. the drill of the regiment, the violence of the pirate and smuggler, the cunning and thrift of the haberdasher's counter, the generosity of the norman earl, are all essential to the result. mil mixture. the whole art of nature is in these juxtapositions of diverse qualities to make a lucky combination, as green and gold, dry oak leaves and snow, enhance each other, and make a delicious mixture to the eye. 1846) raw material. test 215 everything that makes a new sort of man is good; for though he is only a chemic dose in this generation, in the next, or next but one, he becomes a poet, and then the new metal becomes inestimable. people do not value raw material. the laws of menu, — bhagavat, behmen, swedenborg, alcott, channing, and what not, i may have to myself: nobody to quarrel with me for these masses or particles. but when i have mixed these simples with a little boston water, it makes what they call poetry and eloquence, and will sell, it seems, in new york and london.. o bacchus, make them drunk, drive them mad, this multitude of vagabonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for poetry.'... test. opportunity. do they stand immovable there, -the sots, — and laugh at your so-called poetry? they may well laugh; it does not touch them yet. try a deeper strain. there is no make-believe about these fellows; they are good tests for your skill; therefore, a louder yet, and yet a louder strain. there is not one of them 1 the rest is given in “ poetry and imagination " (letters and social aims, p. 70). 216 journal (age 43 but will spin fast enough when the music reaches him; but he is very deaf, try a sharper string. angels in satinette and calico, angels in hunting-knives and rifles, — swearing angels, roarers with liquor ;-o poet, you have much to learn. va styles. there is the periclean and there is the slam-bang style. o carlyle, the merit of glass is not to be seen, , but to be seen through; but every crystal and lamina of the carlyle glass is visible. let the poet work in the aim to eliminate beauty;' that is verily his work; in that block of stone, in that rough verse, to free the noble conception, until it shall be as truly god's work as is the globe of the earth, or the cup of the lily. metre of the poet again is his science of love. does he know that lore? never was poet who was not tremulous with love-lore.3 1 though usually mr. emerson praised carlyle’s writing, he sometimes wearied at its intemperance and mannerism. 2 attention must again be called to mr. emerson's habitual misuse of the word eliminate. he means here discover hidden beauty, not get rid of it. 3 this passage is versified in the poems (see quatrains, “ casella"). 1846] living heaven. life 217 [mr. emerson, in preparing a second edition of the essays, graced them with mottoes. here follows the first attempt for the motto for “spiritual laws.” (see essays, first series, and poems.)] heaven is alive, self-built and quarrying itself up-builds eternal towers. self-commanded works in vial cirque. . by dint of being all its loss is transmutation. fears not the craft of undermining days, grows by decays, and by the famous might that lurks in re-creation and recoil teach flames to freeze and ice to boil, and through the arms of all the devils builds the firm seat of innocence. no lapse of memory betrays the angel into unbelief; but in the beginning sees the time to come, and on the road his home ; he cannot fear defeat. longevity. i have lamented the brevity of life, and yet it is easy to see that the stability 218 (age 43 journal of human beings depends on that consideration. who would stay in concord who had heard of valencia, but that there is not time to establish himself there, without too great a hazard of his happiness in the few years that remain? therefore we stick where we are. is not america more than ever wanting in the male principle? a good many village attorneys we have, saucy village talents, preferred to congress, and the cabinet, marcys, buchanans, walkers, etc., — but no great captains. webster is a man by himself of the great mould, but he also underlies the american blight, and wants the power of the initiative, the affirmative talent, and remains, like the literary class, only a commentator, his great proportions only exposing his defect. america seems to have immense resources, land, men, milk, butter, cheese, timber, and iron, but it is a village littleness; — village | squabble and rapacity characterize its policy. it is a great strength on a basis of weakness. perhaps the fairer picture of the permissive destiny we can see what it allows, what the, vegetable nature grows to, if unpruned; what fancies, what appetites are the crop of this plant, man. what destiny will.“ what's your wull?” , 1846] mexican war. thoreau 219 [the declaration of war with mexico was with mexico was promulgated may 13, 1846.] these — rabble — at washington are really better than the snivelling opposition. they have a sort of genius of a bold and manly cast, though satanic. they see, against the unanimous expression of the people, how much a little welldirected effrontery can achieve, how much crime the people will bear, and they proceed from step to step, and it seems they have calculated but too justly upon your excellency, o governor briggs. mr. webster told them how much the war cost, that was his protest, but voted the war, and sends his son to it. they calculated rightly on mr. webster. my friend mr. thoreau has gone to jail rather than pay his tax. on him they could not calculate. the abolitionists denounce the war and give much time to it, but they pay the tax.' 1 thoreau, with no outcry or parade, simply refused to pay his small tax that year, as a protest against iniquity of the government. the friendly sam staples, collector, also deputy sheriff and jailor, who had often helped him in his surveying, offered to advance the money, supposing that thoreau was short of it. thoreau explained that he did not mean to pay. staples said, “then i shall have to shut you up.” “one time is as good as another." • come along, then.” the amount of the tax was left at the jailor's door in the 220 journal (age 43 re it seems now settled that the world is no longer a subject for reform: it is too old for that, and is to have custard and calves' jelly. we are no longer to apply drastic or alterative pills, nor attempt remedies at all, but if we have any new game or some fireworks or ice cream, if jenny lind come hither, or fanny elssler return, it is all the case admits. boston is represented by mr. winthrop, whose ready adhesion to southern policy outspeeds even the swift sequaciousness of his constituents. snes on. the state is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly. a poor cow who does well by you, do not grudge it its hay. it cannot eat bread, as you can ; let it have without grudge a little grass for its four stomachs. it will not stint to yield you milk from its teat. you, who are a man walking cleanly on two feet, will not pick a quarrel with a poor cow. take this handful of clover and welcome. but evening. staples did not see the bringer, who gave it to his child, but said he always thought it was squire hoar's act or that of miss hoar. of course thoreau had not counted on this, nor could he protest, nor could staples keep him at the state's expense, so he went back to the shores of walden. no 18461 refusing the tax 221 if you go to hook me when i walk in the fields, then, poor cow, i will cut your throat. don't run amuck against the world. have a good case to try the question on. it is the part of a fanatic to fight out a revolution on the shape of a hat or surplice, on pædo-baptism, or altar-rails, or fish on friday. as long as the state means you well, do not refuse your pistareen. you have a tottering cause : ninety parts of the pistareen it will spend for what you think also good : ten parts for mischief.' you cannot fight heartily for a fraction. but wait until you have a good difference to join issue upon. thus socrates was told he should not teach. “please god, but i will.” and he could die well for that. and jesus had a cause. you will get one by and by. but now i have no sympathy. the abolitionists ought to resist and go to prison in multitudes on their known and described disagreements from the state. they know where the shoe pinches; have told it a i of course the tax was mainly town tax, but thoreau either had not considered that, or, more probably, in his disgust at the abject attitude of the community, felt as if the whole body politic was iniquitous. of alcott's refusal to pay, the good staples said, “i vum ! i believe it was nothing but principle !" 222 journal [age 43 thousand times; are hot-headed partialists. i should heartily applaud them; it is in their system. ... but not so for you generalizers. you are not citizens. you are not, as they, to fight for your title to be church members or citizens, patriots. reserve yourself for your own work. alcott thought he could find as good a ground for quarrel in the state tax as socrates did in the edict of the judges. then i say, be consistent, and never more put an apple or a kernel of corn into your mouth. would you feed the devil? say boldly, “there is a sword sharp enough to cut sheer between flesh and spirit, and i will use it, and not any longer belong to this doublefaced, equivocating, mixed, jesuitical universe.” the abolitionists should resist, because they are literalists; they know exactly what they object to, and there is a government possible which will content them. remove a few specified grievances, and this present commonwealth will suit them. they are the new puritans, and as easily satisfied. but you, nothing will content. no government short of a monarchy, consisting of one king and one subject, will appease you. your objection, then, to the state of massachusetts is deceptive. your true quarrel is with the state of man. 1846] alcott. webster 223 in the particular, it is worth considering that refusing payment of the state tax does not reach the evil so nearly as many other methods within your reach. the state tax does not pay the mexican war. your coat, your sugar, your latin and french and german book, your watch does. yet these you do not stick at buying. but really a scholar has too humble an opinion of the population, of their possibilities, of their future, to be entitled to go to war with them, as with equals. this prison is one step to suicide. he knows that nothing they can do will ever please him. why should he poorly pound on some one string of discord, when all is jangle? july 31. webster knows what is done in the shops, and remembers and uses it in the senate. he saw it in the shop with an eye supertabernal and supersenatorial, or it would not have steaded. he is a ship that finds the thing where it is cheap, and carries it where it is dear. every word of webster has passed through the fire of the intellect. the statement is already erect and disengaged. 224 journal (age 43 ome use om knowledge is of some use in the best company. but the grasp is the main thing.' ... august 22. teachers. the teacher should be the complement of the pupil; now, for the most part, they are earth's diameters wide of each other. a college professor should be elected by setting all the candidates loose on a miscellaneous gang of young men taken at large from the street. he who could get the ear of these youths after a certain number of hours, or of the greatest number of these youths, should be professor. let him see if he could interest these rowdy boys in the meaning of a list of words. [about this time margaret fuller, having left new england, to which she was destined never to return, obeying her yearning for italy, visited carlyle with a letter from mr. emerson commending her to him. (see carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 115, 116.) during the summer the desired picture of emerson also came to carlyle. emerson wrote at the end of may expressing delight in carlyle's picture and said, “i was instantly stirred to an emulation i the rest of the passage thus beginning is in natural history of intellect (p. 48). 1846) exchange of portraits 225 of your love and punctuality, and last monday, which was my forty-second birthday, i went to a new daguerreotypist who took much pains to make his picture right. i brought home three shadows, not agreeable to my own eyes. the machine has a bad effect on me.” carlyle did not like the picture with its heavy shadows. he wrote, “i could not at first, nor can i with perfect decisiveness, bring out any feature completely recalling to me the old emerson that lighted on us from the blue at craigenputtock long ago – eheu! here is a genial, smiling, energetic face, full of sunny strength, intelligence, integrity, good humor, but it lies imprisoned in baleful shade as of the valley of death ; seems smiling on me as if in mockery. “dost know me, friend? i am dead, thou seest, and forever hidden from thee; i belong already to the eternities and thou recognizest me not.” (carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, p. 110.)] a great design belongs to a poem, and is better than any skill in execution. ... we shall come to value only that excellence of finish which great design brings with it. we are liberal to the astors and vanderbilts and websters, and allow their barbarous and 226 journal [ace 43 semi-beast life to pass, though they give none to the olympian and divine, yet we ought as equitably to reverence pan in humblebee and cricket. one example of that would justify so much. we talked of the old baconian or platonistic canon. there is nothing in the globe of the world which is not in the crystal sphere. ... and our parisian savant has discovered mathematically a new planet yet invisible. menceme s wednesday, august (?). at commencement met with the members of the class of 1821. we counted nineteen present; josiah quincy presided : also present, angier, bulfinch, bunker, burton, dexter, gardner, hill, hilliard, cheney, blood, kent, lowell, reed, stetson, upham, withington, moody, emerson ; a very cordial three hours' space we spent together, and made up at last a little purse of $82.50 for — adjourned for five years. college class of 1821.' we have the less time to spend, for these many years since we met: i must not detain you. we were here before, mere lambs and rams, and we have come back solemn • 1 evidently prepared for the class meeting. 1846] speech to the class 227 abrahams; and on account of mrs. a. and the young a.'s we had some ado to get here now,— we that so ran and skipped. ... scots like to come of “kenned folk,” and there is an eminent use in having one's training in the public eye. but it is curious to see how identical we are. we can remember ourselves, about as good and bad as to-day, 25, 30, 40 years and more. in college, i had unpreparedness for all my tasks. i have the same unpreparedness at this moment. who is he that does not remember the roots of all the habits of his chum and his set in dr. popkin's recitation room or in commons hall ? we have had clients, pupils, patients, parishes. we have had hay to make, horses to buy, cargoes to manage, estates to settle, railroads to superintend, banks to direct, cities to preside over, states to govern, colleges to rule; but if we have done these things well, as i doubt not, it was because we could carry ourselves goodhumoredly as boys. with a fair degree of speed, i think there is still more bottom in the company; and what pleases me best in the history of the class is its good position and promise at this moment. its strength is not exhausted: our day has not been short; but we are not yet thinking of going to bed, and being tucked up e 228 journal (age 43 for the long night. ... i offer the sentiment; the proceeding education of the class. was at phi beta kappa, sumner's oration was marked with a certain magnificence which i do not well know where to parallel. he quoted story, as saying, “ every man is to be judged by the horizon of his mind.” “ taine,” he said, after allston, i think, “is the shadow of excellence, but that which follows him, not which he follows after." to the youth the hair of woman is a meteor. i think that he only is rightly immortal to whom all things are immortal; he who witnesses personally the creation of the world; he who enunciates profoundly the names of pan, of jove, of pallas, of bacchus, of proteus, of baal, of ahriman, of hari, of satan, of hell, of nemesis, of the furies, of odin, and of hertha ; knowing well the need he has of these, and a far richer vocabulary; knowing well how imperfect and insufficient to his needs language is: requiring music, requiring dancing, as languages; a dance, for example, that shall sensibly express our astronomy, our solar system, and seasons, in its course. 1846] saint. poet. spenser 229 our poets have not the poetic magnanimity, but a minimimity rather; and, when they would go abroad, instead of inspecting their inward poem, they count their dollar bills. the saints dare more, but i hate lamp-smoke; i wish them to know the beautiful equality and rotation of merits, destroying their saintly egotism or prigism; let them worship the appletrees, the thistles, and their beautiful lovers the humblebees, hummingbirds and yellow butterflies, as they pass, and, as i say, know the beautiful nemesis. all men are of a size,' . . . we are willing that christianity should have its glories, and greece its own, and india and england; but we are inly persuaded that heaven reserves an equal universe of good for each of us, ... poets do not need to consider how fruitful the topic is, for with their superfluity of eyes every topic is opulent. spenser seems to delight in his art for his own skill's sake. in the muiopotmos, see the security and ostentation with which he draws out and refines his description 1 all but one sentence of what follows is printed in representative men (p. 335). sentati 230 journal [age 43 of a butterfly's back and wings, of a spider's thread and spinning, of the butterfly's cruise among the flowers, “ bathing his tender feet in the dew which yet on them does lie,” – it is all like the working of an exquisite loom which strongly and unweariedly yields fine webs, for exhibition, and defiance of all spinners. destiny. everything will come home, and a man also. where is his home? there, thither, where he is incessantly called. he will surely come home, and, if long delayed, the more fiercely. sunday, september 20. a mood suffices ellery channing for a poem. “there, i have sketched more or less in that color and style. you have a sample of it. what more would you get, if i should work on forever?” he has no proposition to affirm or support. he scorns it. he has, first of all americans, a natural flow, and can say what he will. i say to him, “if i could write as well as you, i would write a great deal better.” “as for beauty, i need not look beyond an oar's length for my fill of it;” — i do not know whether he used the expression with design or no, but my eye rested on the charming play of 1846] colour. bangor 231 light on the water which he was striking with his paddle. i fancied, i had never seen such color, such transparency, such eddies; it was the hue of rhine wines, it was jasper and verd antique, topaz and chalcedony ; it was gold and green and chestnut and hazel in bewitching succession and relief without cloud or confusion. bangor, maine, october 6, 7, 8. three hundred townships good for timber and for nothing else. palmer mills that i saw building, — the whole property was reckoned worth $60,000 before the freshet, but would not have been relinquished for that sum. pines a thousand years old; every year they must go further for them: they recede, like beavers, or indians, before the white man. those bangor men buy townships merely for the logs that can be cut on them, and add township to township. some day a mine, a slate quarry, good marble or soapstone or lime, is found in them, or a new railroad is projected; the timber land becomes unexpectedly what is called “a settling township,” and the lumber merchant suddenly finds himself the lord of villages, towns, and cities, and his family established as great proprietors. 232 journal (age 43 my friend william emerson,' at bangor, told me that he thought“judge story might be a great man, oh yes, a man of a good deal of talent and learning and fame, but he did not think so highly of him as a judge, as many did ; that he had two failings as a judge: first, in p’int of judgment; and second, in p’int of integrity; — you take my idea?” new england. i think again of the true history of new england, and wish to see the just view taken with such grand sight as to omit all or almost all the chronologies and personalities which ordinarily constitute the tale. now, let us have only the aboriginal features, a god stepping from peak to peak nor planting his foot but on a mountain. calvinism and christianity, being now ended, shall be ended. their powerful contribution to the history shall be acknowledged. england should be dealt with as truly. english conventions and the english public shall not have so much politeness from us. neither shall the forms of our government and that wearisome constitutional argument mislead us, as it has whig parties and good-boy statesmen. but we will see what men here really 1 probably a distant relative. 1846) new england. parkman 233 wish and try to obtain, often against their professions; what new england gravitates toward. all the materialities should be freely received to refresh the picture; the ice, the lumber, leather, iron, and stone, and the cotton manufacture; and we should not spare to trace these facts to their grand home in the geology, and show the man the contemporary of pine, chestnut and oak, granite, ice, waterfalls, and therefore a worker in them; and how his commerce brought him hides from valparaiso and lead from missouri. the negative merit of the piece would be its resolute rejection of the faded or regnant superstitions, as of the christian mythology, of the agricultural, commercial, and social delusions which pass current in men's mouths, but have long lost all reality. dr. parkman told me yesterday ’t was thirtythree years since he was ordained ; and he could not credit that he was as old as his predecessor, dr. eliot, when he died. “ dr. eliot was an old man, and my infirmity,” said dr. parkman, “is my extreme youth.” whitefield's text after the death of his wife was “the creature was made subject to vanity.” 234 journal [age 43 november 23. burke a little too latin in debi sing, but what gradation ! such opulence as permits selection. webster, too, always has senatorial propriety. i wish to see accomplished translators of the world into language. i wish the leisures of the spirit. i please me with i know not what accounts of oriental tale-tellers who transport and ravish the hearer and make him forget the hours of the day and the taste of meat. but our careful americans blurt and spit forth news without grace or gradation, parenthetically between the mouthfuls of their hasty dining. [the volume of poems, that friends had been calling for for more than three years, came out at last at christmas. there follows in the journal a list of more than eighty persons to whom mr. emerson gave them.] ons non alcott, among many fine things he said of, my volume of poems, said, the sentiment was moral and the expression seemed the reverse. i suppose if verses of mine should be compared with those of one of my friends, the moral tendency would be found impressed on all mine 1846] reading 235 as an original polarity; that all my light is polarized. [mr. cabot, in his memoir, quotes from a letter written by mr. emerson to his brother william in new york, on december 29, in which he says: “i had lately an irregular application from different quarters in england proposing to me to come thither to lecture, and promising me engagements to that end in the great towns, if i would. and i understand the queenie (not victoria, but lidian) to say that i must go.” the proposal, however, did not take sufficiently definite shape to justify decision for a month or two.] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1846 zoroaster; pindar; anacreon ; alfred the great; pons de capdueil ; hafiz; copernicus; roger bacon ; spenser, muiopotmos; chapman ; kepler ; donne; selden; drelincourt, consolations de rame fidèle bentley; defoe ; cowper ; johann albert fabricius; abbé prévost d'exiles, histoire du chevalier des grieux et manon lescaut; 236 journal (age 43 whitefield; kant; burke, speeches ; bentham ; goethe; burns; saint-simon; fichte, die zeugung ; schleiermacher; robert owen; fourier; von hammer-purgstall, translations of hafiz; schelling; o'connell; “novalis” (von hardenberg); pellet, and basil hall (travels and voyages) on napoleon; karl otfried müller, introduction to greek mytbology; oken, natural history; chodzko, specimens of ancient persian poetry ; hegel ; carlyle; cousin ; webster; everett; alcott; bryant; dr. ezra stiles gannett; pierre leroux, de l'humanité; tennyson, poems; richard monckton milnes, poems; dickens; hood, poems; elizabeth barrett; robert browning; henry norman hudson, essays ; longfellow; lowell; o. macknight mitchel, planetary and stellar worlds. journal studies a new quarterly nantucket persian and norse reading garden and orchard yankee faculty concord walks england meeting carlyle again lectures to workingmen in the black country journal xxxviii 1847 (from journals o, ab, cd, gh) caput est artis decere.' θεόυ θέλοντος καν επί ριπός πλέους. [the year began with the usual lecturing before lyceums in cities and country towns, but with no course in boston.] (from 0) january 10, 1847. read alfieri's life : who died the year i was born, was a dear lover of plutarch and montaigne, a passionate lover of beauty and of study. his rare opportunities and the determination to use them make him a valuable representative. his temperament, however, isolated him, i let art, first of all, be seemly. 2 god willing, you could sail upon a twig ; a verse of pindar quoted by plutarch, or, rendered in verse, by the old translator, • were it the will of heaven, an osier bough were vessel safe enough the seas to plough." 240 journal (age 43 and he travels in a narrow track with high walls on either side. yet he is most fortunate in his friendships, and at last in his love. the noble is seeking the same good as the republican, namely, one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life with, and rebut the disparagement he reads in the sea and the sky. gori, caluso, and the countess of albany were sea and sky to him. one has many thoughts, in reading this book, of the uses of aristocracy and europe to the native scholar. the systems of blood and culture which we call france, spain, piedmont, etc., must not be set down as nothing. there is a strong, characterized, resultant man, result of race, climate, mountain, sea, occupation, and institutions, who is the frenchman, and appears well enough and acutely interesting to any one who has the opportunity of conversing with many of the best individuals of that nation; not recognized in any one man, but well enough exhibited in the most distinguished french circles. in like manner there is a spaniard, an englishman, a roman, and the rest. this is plainer when we remember how fast nature adopts art, and, whatever form of life calculation leads us into for one or two generations, nature presently nvel one e 1847) machiavelli. thoreau 241 adopts into the blood, and creates men organized for that accidental and artificial way of working. to be a noble is to have a ticket of admission to the flower of each of these races' ... grant the man divine, he wants also a divine fact; and no man, let him be never so thoughtful, ever went to the seashore, from an inland home, without a surprise, and a feeling that here was new invitation for somewhat that hitherto slept. som machiavelli. i have tried to read machiavelli's histories, but find it not easy. the florentine factions are as tiresome as the history of the philadelphia fire-companies. reau w henry thoreau wants to go to oregon, not to london. yes, surely; but what seeks he but the most energetic nature? and, seeking that, he will find oregon indifferently in all places; for it snows and blows and melts and adheres and repels all the world over. yes, the zoroastrian, the indian, the persian scriptures are majestic, and more to our daily i here follows a passage with a similar beginning printed in “wealth” (conduct of life, p. 94). 242 i journal (age 43 purpose than this year's almanac or this day's newspaper.' ... in looking at menu and saadi and bhagavat, life seems in the east a simpler affair,only a tent, and a little rice, and ass's milk; and not, as with us, what commerce has made it, a feast whose dishes come from the equator and both poles. february. it is now said that the mexican war is already paid for in the enhanced value of cotton and breadstuffs now to be sold by our people; and chiefly of cotton, a novelty, a single article on whose manufacture such immense mechanical powers have been concentrated that it takes the lead of all other articles of trade. now i suppose this is mere ignorance. not a single plant, perhaps, in the whole botany, that is not also adapted to general uses, and will not hereafter make the bread of millions, by its manufacture. ward’ has aristocratical position and turns it i the rest of this long passage is found in “ books " (society and solitude, pp. 219, 220). 2 samuel gray ward, mr. emerson's friend and correspondent. (see letters to a friend, edited by c. e. norton. houghton, mifflin & co.) 1847] pillsbury. morals 243 to excellent account; the only aristocrat who does. for the rest, this access to the best circles of information is of no use, and they are trifling and tedious company. but in reading legare's journal, who seems to have seen the best company, i find myself interested that he should play his part of the american gentleman well, but am contented that he should do that instead of me,do the etiquette instead of me, -as i am contented that others should sail the ships and work the spindles. february 15. i find this morning good things in legaré on demosthenes. ... he translates 'ttókplous, demosthenes' famous receipt, "acting,” not "action.” pillsbury said, that he found that people like to laugh, and he set himself to make them laugh at things which ought to be laughed down, such as the church and whiggism. morals. we are easily great with a loved and honoured associate ; then the sentiments appear as new and astonishing as the lightning out of the sky, and disappear as suddenly, without any sequel, leaving us among the marketmen. 244 journal (age 43 (from ab) what is the oldest thing? a dimple or whirlpool in water. that is genesis, exodus, and all. scholar perpetual. vice of men is setting up for themselves too early. i can't go into the quarrel or into the tavern, etc., because i am old; or into the abolition meeting at faneuil hall and attempt to speak; it won't do for me to fail ! but i look at wise men, and see that i am very young. i look over those stars yonder and into the myriads of the aspirant and ardent souls, and i see i am a stranger and a youth, and have yet my spurs to win. too ridiculous are these airs of age. ancora imparo,' i carry my satchel still. a scholar brooks no interruptions. he must post his books every day. for want of posting the books at greenwich, the star was lost — by adams? and england. apples of gold in silver salvers set. 1 i still learn. in his lecture “ michael angelo” (natyral history of intellect) mr. emerson tells that one of the artist's last drawings gave a hint of his own feeling, — a sketch of an old man with a long beard riding in a go-cart with an hour-glass before him, and the motto, ancora imparo. 2 the english claimant of the discovery of the planet neptune. 1847] music. saadi. ocean 245 we used to think that great thoughts insured musical expression, but these thirlwalls and grotes write greek history in dullest prose. wine is properly drunk as a salutation ; it is a liquid compliment. affirmative. set down nothing but what will help somebody. saadi’s five classes of men that may travel are, the rich merchant; the learned; the beautiful; the singer; and the mechanic,because these are everywhere sure of good reception. see this terrible atlantic stretching its stormy chaos from pole to pole, terrible by its storms, by its cold, by its icebergs, by its gulf stream, — the desert in which no caravan loiters, but all hurry as through the valley of the shadow of death. as impassable to the poor indian through all ages as the finer ocean that separates him from the moon; let him stand on the shore and idly entreat the birds or the wind to transport him across the roaring waste. yet see, a man arrives at the margin with one hundred and twenty dollars in his pocket, and the rude sea grows civil, and is bridged at once. 246 (age 43 journal the chief good of life seems — this morning to be born with a cheerful, happy temper, and well adjusted to the tone of the human race: for such a man feels himself in the harmony of things, and conscious of an infinite strength. he need not do anything. but if he is not well mixed and averaged, then he needs to achieve something, build a railroad, make a fortune, write an iliad, as a compensation to himself for his abnormal position. temperance. in the “ballad of lady jane” in jamieson's ballads, vol. ii, p. 78, i find this verse: “o she has served the lang tables wi' the white bread and the wine ; · but aye she drank the wan water, to keep her colour fine." demosthenes drank fair water. health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend. mesmerism. i thought again of the avarice with which my man looks at the insurance office and would so fain be admitted to hear the gossip that goes forward there. for an hour to be invisible there, and hear the best informed 1847] the unmagnetic man 247 men retail their information he would pay great prices, but every company dissolves at his approach. he so eagerand they so coy. a covey of birds do not rise more promptly from the ground when he comes near than merchants, brokers, lawyers, disperse before him. he went into the tavern, he looked into the window of the grocery shop, with the same covetous ears. they were so communicative; they laughed aloud; they whispered ; they proclaimed their sentiments;— he opened the door, — and the conversation received about that time a check, and one after another went home. boys and girls who had so much to say provoked scarcely , less curiosity, and were equally inaccessible to the unmagnetic man. great men are much when you consider that the race goes, with us, on their credit.' ... greek architecture is geometry. its temples are diagrams in marble, and not appeals to the imagination, like the gothic. powers of the square and cube. vers now we felt out of doors as we do in a parlor 1 the substance of the passage beginning thus is in uses of great men” (representative men, p. 4). 248 journal [age 43 with a high ceiling, that we are little ; but when our imaginations are addressed, and we are cultured, we shall not. the moral must be the measure of health.'... greenhouse. put dittany in your greenhouse, asphodel, lotus, nepenthe, moly, poppy, rue, selfheal, hæmony, euphrasy, acanthus. arboretum should contain sandal tree, banian, upas, magnolia. april 26. i set out by the hands of john hosmer and john garrison and anthony colombe in the warren lot twenty-four apple trees, and forty pear trees; and six apple trees in the east side of the heater-piece3 = seventy trees. alcott wishes to call together the club of notables again. but the old objection recurs : better let your tongue lie still till it forgets its 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in “worship” (conduct of life, p. 218). 2 a somewhat similar passage is found in “ country life,” which paper, however, was first published in the centenary edition (p. 174). v. 12. 3 the triangular lot between the cambridge turnpike and the “great road” to boston, so called from the shape of the iron stand on which flat-irons are set down. 1847] the enchanted path 249 office than undertake for god before he calls you. thence comes charlatanism, unitarianism. “if the other train do not arrive,” said mr. superintendent of the single track railroad, “do not move until your wheels rust off.” and many a life was saved by his tyrannical caution. ci concord has certain roads and waste places which were much valued for their beauty, but which were difficult to find. there was one which whoso entered could not forget, — but he had more than common luck if he ever found it again, let him search for it with his best diligence. run, boy, from the swamp beside the lake to the big hemlock where a chestnut has been chopped down at twelve feet high from the ground, then leave the high wood-road and take the ox-path to the right; — pass one righthand turn, and take the second, and run down a valley with long prairie hay covering it close; an old felled pine tree lies along the valley; follow it down till the birds do not retreat before you; then till the faint day-moon rides nearer; then till the valley is a ravine with the hills of nobscot seen at the bottom of it across the bay.' i in this route given to the boy, though fancifully treated, 250 journal (age 43 ov ci i value morals because it gives me something to do to-day. it enhances all my property. the foreign has lost its charm. the beauty of my youth has come back. i woke up one morning and found the ice in my pond promised to be a revenue. it was as if somebody had proposed to buy the air that blew over my field. well, it should have taught me that my richest revenues were in fasting and abstaining, in enduring and waiting, in bearing insult and rendering good service. can you go to boston in the cars to-morrow and come back at night safe and not degraded ? purpose, tendency, i have learned to value and nothing else. have you made the life of man clearer of any snag or sawyer? man sa i think the whole use in literature is the moral. morals differ from intellectuals in being instantly intelligible to all men. can be traced a walk to which mr. emerson once took his children from the southern bank of walden, beside the swamp by the railroad into which the pond drains under the glacial moraine, and thence down the little brook, named by mr. channing the sanguinetto, to its outlet into that enlargement of the river under the cliffs, called fairhaven bay. 1847) true thomas. orator 251 « farewell, thomas, i wend my way; i may no longer stand with thee.” “give me some token, my lady gay, that i may say i spake with thee." “ to harp and carp,* where so ever ye gone, thomas, take thou these with thee.” “ harping,” he said, “ ken i none, for tongue is chief of minstrelsy.” — " — if thou wilt spae, † or talés tell, thomas, thou shalt make never lye ; wheresoever thou go, to frith or fell, i pray thee speak never no ill of me.”, * talk † spell eloquence. and let it be well considered in eloquence that what we praise and allow is only relatively good, and that perhaps a person is there present who, if he would, could unsettle all that we have just now agreed on. we have fallen into a poor beggarly way of living, and our orators are of the same poverty.' ... i these verses from thomas the rhymer (thomas of ercildoune called “ true thomas "), given by scott in his minstrelsy of the scottish border, were favorites with mr. emerson. 2 what follows is printed in “ books” and in “ eloquence” (society and solitude, pp. 212-213 and 65). 252 journal (age 43 swedenborg calls crabs, dogs, bees, birds, etc., which find their way, living magnets. [here follow many quotations from swedenborg's principia and economics of the animal kingdom.] every science serves an apprenticeship to some elder art before it sets up for itself. chemistry served the apothecary and physician, then the cook, manufacturer, etc., until now it is itself a science. astronomy served navigation, surveying, and fortune-telling. . scholar. the scholar's courage may be measured by his power to give an opinion of aristotle, bacon, giordano bruno, swedenborg, fourier. if he has nothing to say to these systems, let him not pretend to skill in reading. but here am i with so much all ready to be revealed to me, as to others, if only i could be set aglow. i have wished for a professorship. much as i hate the church, i have wished the pulpit that i might have the stimulus of a stated task. n. p. rogers spoke more truly than he knew, perchance, when he recommended an abolition campaign to me. i doubt not, a course of 1847) scholar needs spur 253 mobs would do me much good. asnowflake will go through a pine board, if projected with force enough. i have almost come to depend on conversations for my prolific hours. i who converse with so few and those of no adventure, connexion, or wide information. a man must be connected.' . . . pericles, plato, cæsar, shakspeare, will not appoint us an interview in a hovel. my friends would yield more to a new companion. in this emergency, one advises europe, and especially england. if i followed my own advices, — if i were master of a liberty to do so, i should sooner go towards canada. i should withdraw myself for a time from all domestic and accustomed relations and command an absolute leisure with books — for a time. i think i have material enough to serve my countrymen with thought and music, if only it was not scraps. but men do not want handfuls of gold-dust, but ingots. the name of washington city in the newspapers is every day of blacker shade. all the news from that quarter being of a sadder type, more malignant. it seems to be settled that no 1 sentences which follow are in society and solitude (p. 10). 254 journal (age 43 our m act of honour or benevolence or justice is to be expected from the american government, but only this, that they will be as wicked as they dare. no man now can have any sort of success in politics without a streak of infamy crossing his name. things have another order in these men's eyes. heavy is hollow, and good is evil. a western man in congress the other day spoke of the opponents of the texan and mexican plunder as “every light character in the house,” and our good friend in state street speaks of the solid portion of the community,” meaning, of course, the sharpers. i feel, meantime, that those who succeed in life, in civilized society, are beasts of prey. it has always been so. the demostheneses, the phocions, the aristideses, the washingtons even, must bear that deduction, that they were not pure souls, or they would not have been fishers and gunners. they had large infusions of virtue, and hence their calamities and the mischievous dignity they have lent to the rogues that belong in those piratical employments. we live in lilliput. the americans are freewillers, fussy, self-asserting, buzzing all round creation. but the asiatics believe it is writ on the iron leaf, and will not turn on their heel to save 1847] lilliput politics 255 them from famine, plague, or sword. that is great, gives a great air to the people. we live in lilliput. men are unfit to live, from their obvious inequality to their own necessities,' ... the only path of escape is virtue. cause and effect are the gamesters who win, and it will beget a resignation to fate that even the americans will be exalted. the question recurs whether we should descend into the ring. my own very small experience instructs me that the people are to be taken in very small doses. vestry meetings and primary assemblies do not edify me. and i caution philosophers and scholars to use lenses and media. alcott said, the rest of the man will follow his head. his head is not his contemporary, but his ancestor and predecessor. let him be a cause. club. theology, medicine, law, politics, trade, have their meetings and assembly rooms; literature has none. see how magnificently the 1 much that follows is printed in “worship" (conduct of life, pp. 239, 240). 256 (age 43 journal merchants meet in state street. every bank and insurance office is a palace, and literature has not a poor café, not a corner even of mrs. haven's shop in which to celebrate its unions. by a little aliance with some of the rising parties of the time, as the socialists, and the abolitionists, and the artists, we might accumulate a sufficient patronage to establish a good room in boston. as ellery channing says, there is not a chair in all boston where i can sit down. ancients and moderns. the ancients brought the fire, the moderns collect coal. [here follow many sentences used in “the superlative”(lectures and biographical sketches)]. police. nature has taken good care of us. she knew what rowdies and tigers she was making, and she created a police, first, in the conscience; then, in the preaching propensity, which she gave indifferently to the worst and to the decent; and, lastly, in the terror of gossip with which she cowed the boldest heart. scholar, centrality. “your reading is irrelevant.” yes, for you, but not for me. it makes no difference what i read. if it is irrelevant, i 1847] footsteps. courage 257 read it deeper. i read it until it is pertinent to me and mine, to nature, and to the hour that now passes. a good scholar will find aristophanes and hafiz and rabelais full of american history. i believe in omnipresence and find footsteps in grammar rules, in oyster shops, in church liturgies, in mathematics, and in solitudes and in galaxies. i am shamed out of my declamations against churches by the wonderful beauty of the english liturgy, an anthology of the piety of ages and nations. courage. i have written in different places of the courage pertinent to scholars. the greeks seem to have had a fine audacity, as in aristophanes. i remember the saying of brumoy (?) that the greeks believed that the gods understood fun as well or better than men, and therefore the comic writers did not hesitate to joke the gods also pretty hardly. here is a man who loves fight. “stranger, will you liquor?” “no.” “then perhaps you will fight.” our kentuckian cannot see a man of good figure but he thinks he should like to break his back over an iron banister, or give 258 journal (age 43 him a fall that would finish him. but the other man cannot see the sun or stars without the wish to wrestle with them, and here is descartes, kepler, newton, swedenborg, laplace, schelling, who wish to wrestle with the problem of genesis and occupy themselves with constructing cosmogonies. nature is saturated with deity; the particle is saturated with the elixir of the universe. little men, just born, copernicise. they cannot radiate as suns, or revolve as planets, and so they do it in effigy, by building the orrery in their brain. “what living creature slays or is slain? what living creature preserves or is preserved? each is his own destroyer or preserver as he follows evil or good.” — vishnu purana.' mesmerism. wewant society on our own terms. each man has facts that i want, and, though i talk with him, i cannot get at them for want of the clue. he does not know what to do with his facts; i know. if i could draw them from him, it must be with his keys and reserves. here is all boston, — all railroads, all manufactures, and trade, in the head of this well-informed i compare « brahma” in the poems. 1847] the scholar's hunger 259 merchant at my side: what would not i give for a peep at his rows and rows of facts! here is agassiz with his theory of anatomy and nature; i am in his chamber and i do not know what question to put. here is charles t. jackson, whom i have known so long, who knows so much, and i have never been able to get anything truly valuable from him. here is all fourier in brisbane's head; all languages in kraitsir's; all swedenborg in reed's; all the revolution in old adams's head; all modern europe and america in john quincy adams's, and i cannot appropriate any fragment of all their experience. i would fain see their picturebooks as they exist. now if i could cast a spell on this man at my side and see his pictures without his intervention or organs, and, having learned that lesson, turn the spell on another, lift up the cover of another hive and see the cells and suck the honey, and then another, and so without limit, — they were not the poorer, and i were rich, indeed. so i think this mesmerism, whereof the fable adheres so pertinaciously to all minds, will one day realize itself. it is for this news, these facts, that i go to boston, and visit a and b and c. boston were ten times boston if i could learn what i go thither for, 260 journal (age 43 usc the ring of gyges prefigures this — society on our own terms. but osman' answered and said, i do not know whether i have the curiosity you describe. i do not want the particulars which the merchant values, or the lawyer, or the artist, but only the inevitable result which he communicates to me in his manner and conduct and in the tone and purpose of his discourse. then again said guy, if he could inspect these experiences, what would it signify? he can, if he wishes, as things are. he can devote himself to brokerage and stocks until he sympathizes practically with the merchant. then he will have that clue he wants. he can study humboldt until he can talk with humboldt. he can read bettine until he can predict her speech. if he could arrive at their pictures by the short cut you imagine, he must still be imprisoned in their minds by his dedication to their experience, and lose so much career of his own, or so much sympathy with still higher souls than theirs. man is a manufacturer. he makes sense out of nonsense, wealth out of rags. there must be chiffoniers. i as has been said before, “osman” stands for a sort of detached, ideal self. 1847] mishap. use all days 261 discontinuity is a vexation, discontinuity of thought or other material. nonsense is only sense deranged, chaos is paradise dislocated, poverty is wealth decomposed; spite, apathy, bad blood, frivolity, only dispersed matter and light. temperament is fortune, and we must say it so often.'... persistent man works after nature, whose productions are secular and cumulative. therein is the grandeur of british intellect. a man must do the work with that faculty he has now. but that faculty is the accumulation of past days. no rival can rival backwards. what you have learned and done is safe and fruitful. work and learn in evil days, in insulted days, in days of debt and depression and calamity. fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows. courage. can the scholar disentangle the i the rest of this passage and several which follow are found in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 43-45). 262 journal (age 43 thread of truth through all the confused appearances of the free trade facts ? every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons. when i read proclus, i am astonished at the vigor and breadth of his performance. here is no epileptic, modern muse with short breath and short flight, but atlantic strength, everywhere equal to itself, and dares great attempts because of the life with which it is filled. we seem to approach an analysis of burke's wonderful powers by observing the employment of his early years. to a man quite ignorant of mechanic arts, a penknife, a thimble, a pin, seems to be made with inexplicable ingenuity. but, on visiting the shop where it is made and seeing the successive parts of the work, in how simple a manner it is put together, the fabric loses part of its value, the composition is so easy. something like this disappointment is felt by those who trace that complex product, eloquence, to its elements. we listen with joy to burke explaining to the house of commons, on the rise of an unexpected debate, all the intricacy of the revenue laws, or the con1847] burke. crosses 263 stitution of a commission, or reviewing the details of legislation for years. in the midst of accurate details, he surprises us with some deep philosophic remark which, besides its own splendor, astonishes by contrast with the habits of so practical a man of business. but when we explore his youth and find him for years the author of the annual register, and that in the service of that work he spent his days in the gallery of the house of commons, and that in those same years he also wrote a philosophical treatise on taste and the sources of the sublime and beautiful, we cease to wonder at the minuteness of his official knowledge or at the loftiness of his speculation. where two shadows cross, the darkness thickens: where two lights cross, the light glows. milton, bacon, gray, are crosses of the greek and saxon geniuses. journal. 'tis proposed to establish a new quarterly journal. well, 't is always a favorable time, and now is. vice of journals, that they contain the secondbest, i think at this moment any journal would 264 journal (age 43 be incomplete that did not admit the zoroastrian element. [possible contributors.] ward, lowell, story, hill, james, talbot, newcomb, john p. robinson, benjamin peter hunt, charles t. jackson, peirce, mitchel, wilkinson, margaret fuller. articles on the state by charles sumner and on disunion by wendell phillips in the same number. an an autobiography should be a book of answers from one individual to the many questions of the time. shall he be a scholar? the infirmities and ridiculousness of the scholar being clearly seen. shall he fight? shall he seek to be rich? shall he go for the ascetic, or the conventional life?— he being aware of the double consciousness. shall he value mathematics? read dante?or not? aristophanes? plato? cosmogonies, and scholar's courage. what shall he say of poetry? what of astronomy? what of religion? then let us hear his conclusions respecting government and politics. does he pay taxes and record his title-deeds ? does goethe's autobiography answer these questions? so of love, of marriage, so of playing providence. it should 1847] autobiographies, music 265 be a true conversation's lexicon for earnest men. saadi’s gulistan is not far from this. it should confirm the reader in his best sentiment. it should go for imagination and taste. it should aspire and worship. every man prefers something, calling it art or music or something else, perhaps a misnomer. it should contemplate a just metaphysics, and should do justice to the coördinate powers of man, imagination, understanding, will, sensation, science. novels, poetry, mythology, must be well allowed for an imaginative being. you do us great wrong, henry thoreau, in railing at the novel reading. '... in this circle of topics will come education, and what we have to say of guns as liberalizers, and dancers, and chess. ... travelling is as fit for some men as it is pernicious for others. [here follows the first trial for the poem “the chartist's complaint.”] pythagoras cured distempers with music. if i here follows the passage on this subject found in « books” (society and solitude, p. 213). 266 (age 43 journal people are grieved, we go over the sorrow in words, and the more cunning the repetition of it in words, the better consoled they are ; or we lend them a book, cure with music still, administer literature, as “suspiria de profundis," or milton. longevity. how glad were orchards, if we could make the world-wheels turn a little faster; or, what were the same thing, if life were longer. orchards should not be squares or quincunxes, but fruit-woods. the fable of the wandering jew is agreeable to men.'... how delicious and how rare is literary society! it is certain that if, for education, inducation were possible, and one man could actually impart his talent, instead of its performances, a mountain of guineas would be readily paid for tuition fees. may 5. the best feat of genius is to make an audience of the mediocre and the dull.? ... 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ immortality" (letters and social aims, p. 339). 2 the rest is found in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 53). il 1847] boston. minority 267 dr. james jackson said, the whole art of medicine lay in removing and withdrawing the cause of irritation. boston respectable by its academy, its warren club of twenty-five members, and its natural history society. the academy offers to print gratuitously, with plates, any original matter falling within the scope that is sent to it. greatness. to the grand interests a superficial success is of no account.' ... why have the minority no influence? if lycurgus were in the cars, boutwell would not dare that morning to offer resolutions of homage to zachary taylor. is it not better not to mix or meddle at all, than to do so ineffectually? better mind your lamp and pen as man of letters, interfering not with politics, but knowing and naming them justly, than to inculpate yourself in the federal crime without power to redress the state, and to debilitate yourself by the miscellany and distraction for your proper task. our people have no proper expectations in regard to literary men: they expect a practical reformer. 1 what follows is in “ aristocracy” (lectures and bio. graphical sketches, p. 59). 268 journal (age 43 whip. my stories did not make them laugh, my facts did not quite fit the case, my arguments did not hit the white. isitso? then warm yourself, old fellow, with hot mince-pie and half a pint of port wine, and they will fit like a glove, and hit like a bullet. look at literary new england; one would think it was a national fast. transcendentalism says, the man is all. the world can be reeled off any stick indifferently. franklin says, the tools: riches, old age, land, health ; the tools. . . . a master and tools, – is the lesson i read in every shop and farm and library. there must be both. ... the wise man sees that we cannot spare any advantages, and that the tools are effigies and statues of men also; their wit, their genius perpetuated; and he that uses them becomes a great society of men as wise as himself. what a tool is money in a skilful hand. what a nuisance in a fool's. may 15[?] yesterday, theodore parker, william henry channing, charles sumner, alcott, thoreau, elliot cabot, dwight, stone, weiss, j. f. clarke, '1847] dyspathy. freedom 269 stetson, and mr. arrington of texas spent the day with me and discussed the project of thejournal. george p. bradford and i made fourteen. dyspathy. we are hard to please. it costs me many shrinkings and starts, the remembrance of the virtues of those whom i cannot respect. lumps of iniquity become missionaries of charity to the starving and houseless; the heady and sentimental become religiously interested in freedom and quietism, and how can we reject their eager offering? yet we cannot overcome our aversation. freedom. the proudest speech that free-will ever made is in hafiz's divan :“it stands written on the gate of heaven, woe to him who suffers himself to be betrayed by fate!” i have heard that they seem fools who allow themselves easily to be engaged and compromised in undertakings, but that at last it appears quite otherwise, and to the gods otherwise from the first. i affix a like sense to this text of hafiz; for he who loves is not betrayed, but makes an ass of fate. one more good fable i have concerning freedom in the edda, that the god freya has a sword 270 journal (age 43 so good that it will itself strow a field with carnage whenever the owner ordered it. but freya could slay bela with a blow of his fist, had he had a mind to it; yet the dwarves killed him. reality. the way to make our rhetoricand our rites and badges sublime is to make them real. our flag is not good because it does not represent the population of the united states, but the baltimore caucus. not union and sentiment, but selfishness and cunning. if we never put on the liberty-cap until we were freemen by love and self-denial, the liberty-capwould mean something. (from cd) [mr. emerson was invited to give a course of six lectures, probably“ representative men,” on the island of nantucket and accordingly did so, spending the first two weeks of may there. the recompense was ten dollars a lecture and all expenses paid. he found his stay there very interesting. on sunday he read from the pulpit his discourse on “worship.”] may 23. on the seashore at nantucket i saw the play of the atlantic with the coast. here was wealth ; every wave reached a quarter of a mile along 18471 ocean. nantucket 271 woli shore as it broke. there are no rich men, i said, to compare with these. every wave is a fortune. one thinks of etzlers and great projectors who will yet turn this immense waste strength to account and save the limbs of human slaves. ah, what freedom and grace and beauty with all this might! the wind blew back the foam from the top of each billow as it rolled in, like the hair of a woman in the wind. the freedom makes the observer feel as a slave. our expression is so slender, thin, and cramp; can we not learn here a generous eloquence ? this was the lesson our starving poverty wanted. this was the disciplinary pythagorean music which should be medicine. then the seeing so excellent a spectacle is a certificate that all imaginable good shall yet be realized. we should not have dared to believe that this existed. well, what does not the actual beholding of a hero or of a finished woman certify? nation of nantucket makes its own war and peace. place of winds, bleak, shelterless, and, when it blows, a large part of the island is suspended in the air and comes into your face and eyes as if it was glad to see you. the moon 272 (age 43 journal nc comes here as if it was at home, but there is no shade. a strong national feeling. very sensitive to everything that dishonours the island, because it hurts the value of stock till the company are poorer. fifty persons own five sevenths of all the property on the island. calashes. at the fire, they pilfered freely, as if, after a man was burnt out, his things belonged to the fire and everybody might have them. before the athenæum is a huge jawbone of a sperm whale, and at the corners of streets i noticed (chester street) the posts were of the same material. they say here that a northeaster never dies in debt to a southwester, but pays all back with interest. captain isaac hussey, who goes out soon in the planter, had his boat stove by a whale; he instantly swum to the whale and planted his lance in his side and killed him before he got into another boat. the same man, being dragged under water by the coil of his line, got his knife out of his pocket and cut the line 1 an old-fashioned light hood for women, made usually of silk, wadded. it was distended by hoops of light cane, so that it could be pulled forward over the face like a chaise-top, or pushed back. samuel gray ward 1847) whalers 273 and released himself. captain brayton was also dragged down, but the whale stopped after a short distance and he came up. i saw captain pollard. the captains remember the quarterdeck in their houses. fifty-five months are some voyages. nine thousand five hundred people, eighty ships. new bedford has three hundred ships. i saw captain isaac hussey in the steamboat and asked him about that penknife. he said, no, he felt in his pocket for his knife, but had none there, then he managed to let down his trousers and get the line off from his leg, and rose. at last he saw light overhead and instantly felt safe. when he broke water his men were a quarter of a mile off, looking out for him; they soon discovered him and picked him up. captain brooks told me that the last whale he killed was seventy-two feet long, fifty-two feet in girth, and he got two hundred barrels of oil from him. the young man sacrificed by lot in the boats of the ship essex was named coffin, nephew of captain pollard and a schoolmate of edward gardner. “grass widows” they call the wives of these people absent from home four or five years. 1 274 journal [age 43 walter folger has made a reflecting telescope and a clock which is now in his house and which measures hours, days, years, and centuries. in william mitchell's observatory i saw a nebula in cassiopeia, the double star at the pole, the double star zeta ursi. at nantucket every blade of grass describes a circle on the sand. community. at brook farm, one man ploughed all day, and one looked out of the window all day and drew his picture, and both received the same wages. aunt mary went out to ride horseback in her shroud. (from cd) henry truman safford (born at royalston, vermont, january 6, 1836) in 1846 was examined for three hours by rev. h. w. adams, of concord, new hampshire, and rev. c. n. smith, of randolph, vermont, and at last was bidden, “multiply in your head 365,365,365,365,365,i see “ mary moody emerson” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 428). 1847] young safford 275 365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365," — eighteen figures by eighteen. “he flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the top of his boots, bit his hand, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in agony, until in not more than one minute, he said, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225. the boy's father, rev. c. n. smith, and myself had each a pencil and slate to take down the answer, and he gave it us in periods of three figures each as fast as it was possible for us to write them. and what was still more wonderful he began to multiply at the left hand and to bring out the answer from left to right giving first 133, 491, etc. here, confounded above measure, i gave up the examination. the boy looked pale and said he was tired. he said it was the largest sum he ever swer did.” safford. “his infant mind drinks in knowledge as the sponge does water. chemistry, botany, philosophy, geography, and history are his sport.” — h. w. adams. [trumannus henricus safford graduated at harvard college, 1854. (note written in, years 276 journal (age 43 later, by mr. emerson, evidently taken from the triennial catalogue. what follows seems to be the statement of young safford's father.)] “he has found a new rule to calculate eclipses. he told me it would shorten the work nearly one third. when finding this rule, for two or three days he seemed to be in a sort of trance. one morning very early he came rushing downstairs, not stopping to dress him, poured on to his slate a stream of figures, and soon cried out in the wildness of his joy, 'oh! father, i have got it! i have got it! it comes, it comes !'” “in the spring of 1845, henry began to be much engaged with the idea of calculating an almanac, — every old almanac in the house was treasured up in his little chest, -and sun's declination, rising and setting, moon southings, risings and settings, seemed to occupy all his thoughts. "his almanac was put to press in the autumn of 1845, and was cast when henry was nine years and six months old, the most accurate of any of the common almanacs of new england.” mr. knowall, the american, has no concentration: he sees the artists of fame, the raffaelles 1847] judgment. the days 277 and cellinis with despair. he is up to nature and the first cause in his consciousness; but that wondrous power to collect and swing his whole vital energy into one act, and leave the product there for the despair of posterity, he cannot approach. eighteen or twenty centuries of european and asiatic men have been trained to check their actions by regard for a judgment day. now it begins to look to the knowing ones as if life were more correctly an affair for punch. ere i 1o may 24. the days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away." who gave thy cheek the mixed tint of tulip and rose is also in state to give patience and rest to me poor. who taught cruelty i it would seem that, on the eve of mr. emerson's fortyfourth birthday, he wrote this sentence, later embodied in his poem “ days.” in his latter years he said that, while he held it as perhaps his best, he could not recall the writing of it. 278 (age 43 journal to thy dark hair is also in state to give me right against myself. i gave up hope of ferhad once for all, on the day when i learned he had given his heart to schirin. surely i have no treasure, yet am i richly satisfied; god has given that to the shah, and this to the beggar. the bride of the world is truly outwardly richly dressed; who enjoys her must give his soul for a dowry. at the cedar's foot by the brook lift i freer my hands when now the blowing of the east gives tidings of may, etc., etc. hafiz. when i see my friend after a long time, my first question is, has anything become clear to oma you? loose the knot of the heart, says hafiz. at the opera i think i see the fine gates open which are at all times closed, and that to-morrow i shall find free and varied expression. but 1847] hafiz. expression 279 to-morrow i am mute as yesterday. expression is all we want : not knowledge, but vent: we know enough; but have not leaves and lungs enough for a healthy perspiration and growth. hafiz has: hafiz's good things, like those of all good poets, are the cheap blessings of water, air, and fire, the observations, analogies, and felicities which arise so profusely in writing a letter to a friend.' . . . but my fine souls are cautious and canny, and wish to unite corinth with connecticut. i see no easy help for it. our virtues, too, are in conspiracy against grandeur, and are narrowing. benvenuto cellini— he had concentration and the right rage. the true nobility has flood-gates, an equal inlet and outgo. thus the name of sappho inspires; the expressive person; not that casella or corinne or simonides has better thoughts than we, but that what we all have shall not be pent and smouldered and noxious in the possessor, but shall pass over into new forms. “keep the body open,” is the hygeian precept, and the reaction of free circulations on growth and life. ... large utterance! ... i most of what follows, as well as a sentence above given, may be found in “ persian poetry” (letters and social aims, p. 247). 280 journal (age 43 the jockey looks at the chest of the horse, the physician looks at the breast of the babe, to see if there is room enough for the free play of the lungs. arteries, perspiration. shakspeare sweats like a haymaker, all pores. has the creator put some valve between the hand and the brain of wisest men? oriental superlative. the life of the arabian a perpetual superlative. khoja yakub brings kurroglou the miniature of the handsome ayvaz.' he orders khoja to be instantly chained by neck and legs; “if the youth justify thy praises, i will gild thy head with a shower of gold; if not, i will tear the root of thy existence from the soil of life.” .... on the way he asks the shepherd for a slice of bread:shepherd. “i have, but no son of man will eat it.” kurroglou. “if it be but a trifle softer than stone, give it me.” 1 the book from which these extracts are taken (specimens of ancient persian poetry, translated by chodzko) is so rare that the editors include mr. emerson's copy in the journal of the greater part of the story of kyrat, the beautiful horse of kurroglou, which longfellow tells briefly in “ the leap of roushan beg." 1847] kurroglou and kyrat 281 shepherd. “it is made of barley and millet. i have baked it for my dogs. it will break thy teeth.” kurroglou broke and minced it all into a tub of milk until the spoon stood in it motionless in a vertical position; then, he twisted aside his long mustachios, he opened a mouth similar to the entrance of some cavern, and thrusting his hands under the tub he devoured its contents to the very bottom. the shepherd said, “he is the ghost of the wilderness, he is a famine.” ... [kurroglou finds and carries away the beautiful youth ayvaz upon his horse. his way home is beset by reyhan arab and his men. kurroglou rides up on to a mountain which is then surrounded by his enemies, and a wide chasm cuts off his escape.] there was a ravine at the foot of one of the sides of the mountain twelve yards broad. kurroglou sat before it three days and then encouraged his horse with a song, “on! on! my soul, kyrat, carry me to chamly bill. alas! my horse, let me not look upon thy shame. i will have thee wrapped in velvet trappings. i will shoe thy fore and thy hind legs with pure gold. o my kyrat, my chosen one of five hundred 282 journal (age 43 horses . . . thou shalt have a bath in a river of red wine.” reyhan arab, meantime, with his band, watched him from below with a telescope. “kurroglou, with ayvaz in the saddle, continued to walk kyrat until the foam appeared in his nostrils. at last he selected a spot where he had room enough for starting, and then, giving his horse the whip, pushed him forward. the brave kyrat stood on the very brink of the precipice; the whole of his four legs were gathered together like the leaves of a rosebud; he struggled a while, then gave a spring, and leaped to the other side of the ravine, nay, he cleared two yards farther than was necessary. as for kurroglou, even his cap did not move on his head, nor did he even look behind as if anything extraordinary had happened. he then rode quietly away with ayvaz. ... “without kyrat life and the world is but a sin to me. he has cleared a broad river. i have recognized his foot-marks. oh, i shall kiss every one of his hoofs; i shall kiss each of his burning eyes. this horse can run in one day from ardebil to koshem. what cares he for the sultan who is mounted on this horse?” 1847] margaret fuller 283 “napoleon, who lived wholly in the ideal, yet could not consciously comprehend it; he denies all the ideal throughout, denies to it all reality, whilst he eagerly strives to realize it. such an inner perpetual contradiction, however, can his clearer, incorruptibler understanding not endure, and it is of the highest importance when he, as if necessitated, expresses himself thereupon quite originally and agreeably.” – goethe, sprüche. [the following passage, found copied into the later journal ed, is from a letter written by mr. emerson to margaret fuller in rome. it is introduced here because of its date.] to margaret fuller at rome, june 4, 1847. old cities. rome is keeping its old promise to your eyes and mine; rome, which always keeps its promise, and which, like nature, has that elasticity of application to all measures of spirit. these millennial cities, in their immense accumulations of human works, find it easy to impress the imagination, by gradually dropping one piece after another of whim, blunder, and absurdity, nay, stubble and bladders, until nothing but necessity and geometry remains. 284 journal (age 44 yesterday, june 5, saw hedge sail in the washington irving; the mariners sung their cheeriest song in heaving the anchor and hoisting the sail. it was the opera by daylight. they say there is in america no thought, no delineated form, no heading. but who ever saw metaphysics passing into history? who ever stood so high and so near as to detect the transition, which yet no one doubts? what beauty in the mythology of arabia, the anka or simorg, the kaf mountain, the fountain chiser, the tree of paradise, tuba ; the mirror of jamschid, the seal of solomon, ... well, is it less in greece? . . . is it less in india, with its colossal and profuse growth, like a giant jungle in which elephants and tigers pass, the adventures of hari, the metamorphosis, the fate? or less in danish and scaldic, — thor, freya, loki, asgard, yggdrasil, and balder, where sea, fire, old age, and thought are the mead, the eater, the wrestler, and the runner; valhalla thatched with shields for shingles ? “festus ”' and shelley have both this merit 1 bailey's poem. 1847) scholar. debt. carlyle 285 of timeliness; that is the only account we can give of their imposing on such good heads. yet bailey is a brilliant young man who has got his head brimful of faust, and then pours away a gallon of ink. but no secondary inspiration, as on milton, on shakspeare, or on goethe, is permitted; only an inspiration direct from the almighty. scholar wishes that every book and chart and plate belonging to him should drawinterest every moment by circulation. why should men complain of stupid people, as if a man's debt to his inferiors was not at least equal to that to his superiors?'... in carlyle, as in byron, one is more struck with the rhetoric than with the matter. he has manly superiority rather than intellectuality, and so makes good hard hits all the time. there is more character than intellect in every sentence, herein strongly resembling samuel johnson. on how is it that the sword runs away with i the rest of the passage is on the last page of “greatness” (letters and social aims). 286 journal (age 44 all the fame from the spade and the wheel? ... courage forever, and this is the proof. my only secret was that all men were my masters; i never saw one who was not my superior, and i would so gladly have been his apprentice if his craft had been communicable. 100alas for america, as i must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, — one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! it all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. the air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion and sloth. eager, solicitous, hungry, rabid, busy-bodied america attempting many things, vain, ambitious to feel thy own existence, and convince others of thy talent, by attempting and hastily accomplishing much ; yes, catch thy breath and correct thyself, and failing here, prosper out there; speed and fever are never greatness; but reliance and serenity and waiting. america is formless, has no terrible and no beautiful condensation. genius, always anthro1 the rest of the passage appears in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 37). 1847] june sap. temptings 287 pomorphist, runs every idea into a fable, constructs, finishes, as the plastic italian cannot build a post or a pump-handle but it terminates in a human head. how attractive is land, orchard, hillside, garden, in this fine june! man feels the blood of thousands in his body, and his heart pumps the sap of all this forest of vegetation through his arteries. here is work for him and a most willing workman. he displaces the birch and chestnut, larch and alder, and will set oak and beech to cover the land with leafy colonnades. then it occurs what a fugitive summer-flower papilionaceous is he, whisking about amidst these longevities. gladly he could spread himself abroad among them; love the tall trees as if he were their father; borrow by his love the manners of his trees, and with nature's patience watch the giants from the youth to the age of golden fruit or gnarled timber, nor think it long. it seems often as if rejection, sturdy rejection were for us : choose well your part, stand fast by your task, and let all else go to ruin if it will. then instantly the malicious world changes itself into one wide snare or temptation, escape it 288 journal (age 44 who can. with brow bent, with firm intent, i go musing in the garden walk.'.... ma o . in history, the great moment is when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage,' . . . that moment of transition, the foam hangs but a moment on the wave; the sun himself does not pause on the meridian; literature becomes criticism, nervousness, and a gnawing when the first musical triumphant strain has waked the echoes. civilization is symbolized (how wittily) by a cake, in the hierological cipher of the egyptians. worship of the dollar. i may well ask when men wanted their bard and prophetas now? they have a quixote gallery of old romances and mythologies, norse, greek, persian, jewish, and indian, but nothing that will fit them, and they go without music or symbol to their day labor. channing proposed that there should be a magnified dollar, say as big as a barrel-head, made of silver or gold, in each village, and colonel shattuck or other priest appointed to take care i here follows the passage on the snare of weeding, printed in “ wealth” (conduct of life, p. 115). 2 much of what follows is printed in “ power" (conduct of life, pp. 70, 71). 18471 chastity. moods 289 of it and not let it be stolen; then we should be provided with a local deity, and could bring it baked beans, or other offerings and rites, as pleased us. rocking stones. it is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of women being the main girth or bandage of society ; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own. i think, however, that it is very difficult to debauch society. this chastity, which people think so lightly lost, is not so. 'tis like the eye, which people fancy is the most delicate organ, but the oculist tells you it is a very tough and robust organ, and will bear any injury; so the poise of virtue is admirably secured. unchastity with women is an acute disease, not a habit; . . . men are always being instructed more and more in the chastity of women. “in march, many weathers," said the proverb; and in life, many. if anything were but true two days.' . .. we are the angel gabriel i much of the substance of what follows is printed in • montaigne" (representative men, p. 176). 290 journal (age 44 and the archangel michael, ... our sword or spade or pencil or pen is to open the secret caverns of the universe. who but we? and where is the bondman of the parcæ ? well, next day, we whistle and are speculative, and have a profusion of common sense, ... resistance is good, and obedience is good, but who under heaven knows how to mix the two? our approval of one or another is all retrospective. then we look over into george minott's field and resolve to plough and hoe by old cause and effect henceforward. life is a puzzle and a whirl, and the cards beat the best players. dr. van mons, at louvain, in belgium, had in his nurseries in 1823 no less than two thousand seedlings of merit (beurré diel, etc.)“from among the eighty thousand seedlings raised by himself,” etc., ... some of roman pears were called proud, would not keep: and pliny says, “all pears are but a heavy meat unless they are well boiled or baked.” “tree must be in a state of variation.” “older the tree, nearer will seedlings raised from it approach a wild state, without, however, ever being able to return to that state.” 1847] critic. east and west 291 van mons counsels: “sow, resow, sow again, sow perpetually; in short, do nothing but sow." kurroglou. “ serdar, hear me, i am wont to sing some verses in the heat of battle. a song has just come into my mind. listen to it first and we shall fight afterwards.” criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, in structive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind. orientalism is fatalism, resignation : occidentalism is freedom and will. we occidentals are educated to wish to be first. orientalist. says goethe, “the english translator of the cloud messenger, megad1 mr. emerson breathed himself by going every morning after breakfast, during the growing season, into his orchard, where he paid much affectionate if unskilled attention to his pear trees. he liked to take his children with him. he had in his library downing's thick volume on fruit culture, and took especial interest in the account therein given of van mons's theories and practice, from which his optimism was reinforced. (see representative men, p. 9, natural history of intellect, pp. 76 and 173.) 292 journal (age 44 huta, is likewise worthy of all honour, since the first acquaintance with such a work always makes an epoch in our life.” in an evil hour i pulled down my fence and added warren's piece to mine; no land is bad, but land is worse.' ... everything hastens to its judgment day. the merriest poem, the sweetest music, rushes to its critic. from calvinism we shall not get away. see how sedulously we plant a pair of eyes in every window to overlook our own goings and comings. and i know my parcæ through all the old hats, pea-jackets, and blue farmer's frocks which they wear on every road i walk in. i cannot live as you do. it is only by a most exact husbandry of my resources that i am anybody. what a spendthrift you are, o beautiful corinne! what needless webs you weave, what busy arts you ply. it costs you no exertion to 1 the rest of this long passage occurs in “ wealth” ( conduct of life, pp. 115, 116). 1847) fruit trees. pests 293 paint the image of yourself that lies on any retina. yet how splendid that benefit! — and all your industry adds so little and puts in peril so much. . . . and every one can do his best thing easiest. garden. do you not understand values ? said sylvan. i economize every drop of sap in my trees as if it were wine. a few years ago these trees were whip-sticks. now every one of them is worth a hundred dollars. look at their form. not a branch nor a twig is to spare. they look as if they were arms and hands and fingers holding out to you the fruit of the hesperides. june 22. an orientalist, who was a hercules among the bugs and curculios, recommended to me a persian experiment of setting a lamp under the plum tree in a whitewashed tub with a little water in it by night. but the curculio showed no taste for so elegant a death. a few flies and harmless beetles perished, and one genuine yankee spider instantly wove his threads across the tub, thinking that there was likely to be a crowd and he might as well set up his booth and win something for himself. at night in the gar294 journal (age 44 den all bugdom and flydom is abroad. this year is like africa or new holland, all surprising forms and masks of creeping, flying, and loathsomeness. june 27. irresistibility of the american; no conscience; his motto, like nature's, is, “ our country, right or wrong." he builds shingle palaces and shingle cities; yes, but in any altered mood, perhaps this afternoon, he will build stone ones, with equal celerity; tall, restless kentucky strength; great race, but though an admirable fruit, you shall not find one good, sound, well-developed apple on the tree. nature herself was in a hurry with these hasters and never finished one. happy blending of advantages in this climate. we get in summer the splendour of the equator and a touch of syria, with enormous natural productiveness ; goes into the genius, as well as into the cucumbers. whilst the poor polar man only gets the last of it. nature in this climate ardent, rushing up after a shower into a mat of vegetation. mythology. we do not understand in old biblical history the idol business; but we have 1847] idols. genius. humility 295 a plenty of sub-gods ourselves. who is not an idolater? i remember being at a loss to know why those israelites should have such a passion for the idols. alcott says, why is an arbor ornamental, and intellect is not surely so regarded? i reply, because an arbor remains an arbor; but the man of intellect is will-of-the-wisp and fantastical, a bird, a bat. it should have reverence enow if it remained itself. the solitude. all intellectual men are believers in an aristocracy, that is, a hierarchy. but i think them honest; because it is the prerogative of genius to melt every many-ranked society into one company, merging distinction in their sincere curiosity and admiration.' dreadful to sit on the dais, happy to sit near the salt. happy who is never seen except rightly seen! happy whose dress no man ever could remember to describe. ah! who has society?— people to talk to? i compare in “ aristocracy” the passage really describing a village lecture by agassiz, though there only called “ a man of teeming brain.” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 53, 54.) 296 journal (age 44 people who stimulate? boston has 120,000 and i cannot now find one: and elsewhere in the world i dare not tell you how poor i am, how few they are. of the strange scepticism of the intellect. it will not speak to the intellectual on the platform of ethics, and that out of a true integrity. it has strange experience. it knows that it is a debtor to sin and degradation. certainly let it do homage in silence to the soul. but in speech i think it should bravely, as it certainly will with the intellectual, own the actual. that is sublime — to abandon one's self, against all experience, to the absolute and good. but god will keep his promise yet, trees and clouds are prophets sure, and new and finer forms of life day by day approach the pure. re the mysterious laws of poetry, the natural history of a poem are not known; no practical rules, no working-plan was ever given. it is miraculous at all points. the state given, a little more or a good deal more or less performance seems indifferent. there is much differ1847) railroad. a musician 297 ence in the stops, but the running time need be but little increased to add great results. as we say, one master could so easily be conceived as writing all the books of the world. they are all alike. railroads are to civilization what mathematics were to the mind. their immense promise made the whole world nervous with hope and fear, and they leave society as they found it. the man gets out of the railroad car at the end of five hundred miles in every respect the same as he got in. but a book or a friend opens a secret door at his side that may lead to parnassus. m my young friend believed his calling to be musical, yet without jewsharp, catgut or rosin. yes, but there must be demonstration. look over the fence yonder into captain abel's land.' there's a musician for you, who knows how to make men dance for him in all weathers, and 1 captain abel moore, a neighbor of mr. emerson's on the boston road, an admirable farmer, as was his son john who followed him. captain moore was sheriff and jailor,concord then being a shire town, — and, after the easy-going fashion of those days, employed the prisoners on his farm, an arrangement beneficial and not disagreeable to them. 298 journal [age 44 all sorts of men, — paddies, felons, farmers, carpenters, painters, yes, and trees and grapes and ice and stone, hot days, cold days. beat that, ménétrier de meudon,' if you can! knows how to make men saw, dig, mow, and lay stone wall, and how to make trees bear fruit god never gave them, and grapes from france and spain yield pounds of clusters at his door. he saves every drop of sap as if it were his own blood. his trees are full of brandy. you would think he watered them with wine. see his cows, see his swine, see his horses; and he, the musician that plays the jig which they all must dance, — biped and quadruped and centipede, — is the plainest, stupidest-looking harlequin in a coat of no colors. but his are the woods and the waters, the hills and meadows. with a stroke of his instrument he danced a thousand tons of gravel from yonder blowing sand-heap on to the bog meadow beneath us where now the english grass is waving over countless acres; with another he terraced the sand-hill, and covered it with peaches and grapes ; with another he sends his lowing cattle every spring up to peterboro' to the mountain pastures. i the fiddler in béranger's poem, who could even make the mourners in a funeral procession dance. 18471 yankee speculators 299 nesmith, of lowell, a little gnarled man, as abel adams says, projected the city of lawrence; persuaded samuel lawrence to work with him, and he interested abbott lawrence. the two received, i think, $30,000 each for their services. the ogdensburg speculators of boston sent up billy kendrick to bond the land at ogdensburg of the farmers. and he went talking and gossiping about, with his “trees to sell,” and actually bonded nine hundred acres. he had a judge hall of the place behind him to execute the papers. a man named bigelow at brighton first came there from vermont, barefoot, seventeen years old boy, to help a man drive his sheep down; and he thought he would stay there a little while,“ his father would n't find no fault”; then he drove a butcher's cart; now he was one of these ogdensburg speculators. an american in this ardent climate gets up early some morning and buys a river; and advertises for twelve or fifteen hundred irishmen; digs a new channel for it, brings it to his mills, and has a head of twenty-four feet of water; then, to give him an appetite for his breakfast, he raises a house; then carves out, within doors, a quarter 300 journal (age 44 township into streets and building lots, tavern, school, and methodist meeting-house-sends up an engineer into new hampshire, to see where his water comes from, and, after advising with him, sends a trusty man of business to buy of all the farmers such mill-privileges as will serve him among their waste hill and pasture lots, and comes home with great glee announcing that he is now owner of the great lake winnipiseogee, as reservoir for his lowell mills at midsummer. they are an ardent race, and are fully possessed with that hatred of labor, which is the principle of progress in the human race, as any other people. they must and will have the enjoyment without the sweat. so they buy slaves, where the women will permit it; where they will not, they make the wind, the tide, the waterfall, the steam, the cloud, the lightning, do the work, by every art and device their cunningest brain can achieve. e d nce the one event which never loses its romance is the alighting of superior persons at my gate. my pear. this noble tree had every property which should belong to a plant. it was hardy and almost immortal. it accepted every species of n e 1847] my pear. the irritant 301 nourishment, and could live almost on none. it was free from every species of blight. grubs, worms, flies, bugs, allattacked it. it yielded them all a share of its generous juices, but when they left their eggs on its broad leaves, it thickened its liber and suffered them to dry up, and shook off the vermin. it grows like the ash yggdrasil. en one thing is to be remarked concerning the law of affinity. every constitution has its natural enemies and poisons, which are to be avoided, as ivy and dogwood are by those whom those plants injure. there are those who, disputing, will make you dispute ; and, nervous and hysterical and animalized, will produce a like series of symptoms in you; though no other persons produce the like phenomena in you, and though you are conscious that they do not properly belong to you, but are a sort of extension of the diseases of the other party into you. i have heard that some men sympathize with their wives in pregnancy, as, for example, in the nausea with which women are affected, a ridiculous and incredible circumstance, but it, no doubt, grew out of this observation, which liebig has discovered, a law of bodies — “ the contagious influence of chemical action.” ...“ a substance, which would not of itself usea 302 journal (age 44 yield to a particular chemical attraction, will nevertheless do so if placed in contact with some other body which is in the act of yielding to the same force.” rich and poor. he is the rich man who on every day more than answers the demands of the day. there is a contest between the demands of the poor and the demands of the rich; the demands of the rich, — are they not legitimate also? thus, i have never seen a man truly rich, that is, with an adequate command of nature. but men are stimulated incessantly from the ideal to acquire the command over nature. it is the interest of the universe of men that there should be dukes of devonshire, cræsuses, karuns, and king solomons. yes, dumas has doubtless journeymen. in paris they can be procured, and why not he have journeymen, as well as thorwaldsen or upjohn? how much better, really better, would he not write for having the less vigorous, but yet original vein of another man put entirely under his command, with that man's honest experience and imagery? omma 2 1847] channing's book' 303 july 10. ellery channing has written a lively book on rome, which certifies that he has been there. he has the reputation of being a man of genius and this is some guarantee of it; he has approached sometimes the lightness and pungency of his talk, but not often. he has used his own eyes, and many things are brought to notice here that had not been reported, as the fountains, the gardens, lively charcoal sketches of the café the trattoria and the bacon-dealer's shop, the vettura and postilion, the agriculture in the campagna. it was a lucky thought to introduce montaigne in rome, and the tribute to raf· faelle over his tomb in the pantheon, and to michael angelo, are warm and discerning. a very catholic spirit. thoreau sometimes appears only as a gendarme, good to knock down a cockney with, but without that power to cheer and establish which makes the value of a friend. goethe in this third volume autobiography, which i read now in new translation, seems to know altogether too much about himself. 304 journal [ace 44 luther, according to mr. blecker, advises, in one of his letters, a young scholar, who cannot get rid of his doubts and spiritual fears, to get drunk. edda. “ the gods have erected a bridge from earth to heaven which is called bifrost or rainbow.” i also find it significant, what is said of thor's house (bilskirnir), that“ it has five hundred and forty floors.” poet. significant again that“ balder the good dreamed dreams great and perilous for his life: but he told the asa the dreams.” so the whole fable [of balder's slaying). conversation that would verily interest me would be those old conundrums which at symposia, the seven or seventy wise masters were wont to crack what is intellect? what is time? what are the runners and what the goals? but now there is no possibility of treating them well. conversation on intellect and scholars becomes pathology. what a society it needs! i think you could not find a club at once acute i compare the fragment in “ nature” (appendix to the poems, p. 341) beginning, “ day by day, for her darling,” etc. css 1847] poor conversation 305 and liberal enough in the world. bring the best wits together and they are so impatient of each other, so worldly, or so babyish, there is so much more than their wit, so many follies and gluttonies and partialities, so much age and sleep and care, that you have no academy. the questions that i incessantly ask myself, as, what is our mythology ? — which were a sort of test object for the power of our lenses — never come into my mind when i meet with clergymen ; and what academy has propounded this for a prize ? but of what use to bring the men together, when they will torment and tyrannize over each other, and play the merchant and the statesman? conversation in society is always on a platform so low as to exclude the saint and the poet after they have made a few trials. ah, we must have some gift of transcending time also, as we do space, and collecting our club from a wider brotherhood. crier, call pythagoras, plato, socrates, aristotle, proclus, plotinus, spinoza, confucius and menu, kepler, friar bacon. n . insufficient forces. we have experience, reading, relatedness enough, oh, yes, and every other weapon, if only we had constitution enough. 306 (age 44 journal “you but, as the doctor said in my boyhood, have no stamina.” cyrus stow wanted his bog-meadow brought into grass. he offered anthony colombe, sol wetherbee, and whoever else, seed and manure and team, and the whole crop; which they accepted, and went to work, and reduced the tough roots, the tussocks of grass, the uneven surface, and gave the whole field a good rotting and breaking and sunning, and now stow finds no longer any difficulty in getting good english grass from the smooth and friable land. what stow does with his field, what the creator does with the planet, the yankees are now doing with america. it will be friable, arable, habitable, to men and angels yet. in tools. mechanic powers. shall a man see wheels every day of his life on every cart, car, and loom, and not learn the value of manners as wheels or currency to himself? shall he, in his garden, cut down the spindling shoots of his pear tree, or pinch off the redundant buds of his grapevine, to give robustness to the stock, and not learn the value of rejection in his own spiritual economy? 1847] forces. the hemlocks 307 shall he see that all his gardening is a selection, and then a new, and then a newer selection, and not apply that lesson to his life? or shall he see in chemistry that law of superinducing and contagion (mentioned above) and not see that plato platonizes and napoleon napoleonizes men; that a merchant sets everybody on edge for stocks; spurzhein fills america with plaster skulls, and agassiz makes anatomists where he goes ? “ corpora non agunt nisi soluta." ; thursday, july 15. alcott, thoreau, and i went to the “island” in the walden woodlot, and cut down and brought home twenty hemlocks for posts of the arbor. and these have been growing when i was sleeping, fenced, bought, and owned by other men, and now, in this new want of mine for an ornament to my grounds, their care and the long contribution of the great agents, sun and earth, rain and frost, supply this rich botanic wonder of our isle. a rather aristocratic book is the history of the cid. rodrigo diaz de bivar (born a.d. 1026, i bodies only act when freed. 308 journal [age 44 southey's chronicle). “my cid, my fortunate, he who never was conquered, he of good fortune, my cid ruy diaz, he who in a happy hour first girt on his sword.” the horse bavieca, like kurroglou's horse, kyrat, is the sub-god in the poem, and then the swords colada and tizona, like arthur's excalibur. books. oh day of days, when we can read! the reader and the book. either without the other is naught. july 24. pear trees this morning in high prosperity. hardly a tough, dry, wormy dwarf in all the garden but is forced to show a bud or a shoot to-day. flemish beauty meanwhile and the golden beurré of bilboa, and the green princesses who keep their incognito so well near the plum trees, show a foot and a half of growth respectively. the divine man. alexander the great emitted from his skin a sweet odor, and henry more believed the same thing of himself, and who does not remember the south wind days when he was a boy, when his own hand had a strawberry scent? 1847] alcott's senses. plato 309 1. fuly 25. of alcott it is plain to see that he never loses sight of the order of things and thoughts before him. the thought he would record is something, but the place, the page, the book in which it is to be written are something also, not less than the proposition. so that usually in the attention to the marshalling, the thing marshalled dwindles and disappears. one thing more. i used to tell him that he had no senses. and it is true that they are with him merely vehicular, and do not constitute a pleasure and a temptation of themselves. we had a good proof of it this morning. he wanted to know “why the boys waded in the water after pond lilies?” why, because they will sell in town for a cent apiece and every man and child likes to carry one to church for a cologne bottle. “what!” said he, “have they a perfume? i did not know it.” see also the account of chaucer's canon. man 2 in gorgias. callicles. “tell me, socrates, whether we must say that you are now in earnest or in jest? for, if you are in earnest and these things which you say are true, is not our human life subverted, and are not all our ac310 journal (age 44 sin tions, as it seems, contrary to what they ought to be?” see also the diatribe against philosophers in gorgias. the distinction between speculative and practical seems to me much as if we should have champions appointed to tilt for the superiority respectively of each of the four elements except in so far as it covers the difference between seeming and reality. in this world of dreamers, it makes small difference whether the men devote themselves to nouns or to laying stone walls, but whether they do it honestly or for show. in the neighborhood of the new railroad the other day, in westminster, i found two poor english or irish men playing chequers on a little board where the spots were marked with ink, and the men were beans and coffee berries. they played on, game after game, one sure of beating the other, the other indignant at defeat, and i left them playing. why not? and what difference? all the world is playing backgammon, some with beans and coffee, and some with texas and mexico, with states and nations. eyes outrun the feet, and go where the feet and hands can never follow. so plato the practicalists. 1847] saga. lapse. flowers 311 compensation. in the essay should have been adduced the fable of faust as the contribution of christian mythology to the dogma; and balder's blessing by frigga from all harms but the mistletoe; and the eye left in pledge by the allfadir when he drank of mimir's spring. the wolf fenris is not chained except at the expense of the hand of tyr. beattie is an example of successful poetic expression. what can be finer than “see in the rear of the warm summer shower the visionary boy for shelter aly.” aristocracy. but the day is darkened when the golden river runs down into mud,'... there is no individual trait that will not, with a little self-indulgence, grow to a fanaticism, as the artistic or the stoical humor, and then beauty is deformity, and our delightful image of grace and friendship is a mournful chasm; ... henceforth a subject of tedious explanation. (from gh) concord river in july 25 and august 2 is decorated with the nymphæa, the cardinal i the rest of the passage beginning thus is in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 51). 312 journal (age 44 flower, and the button-bush, asclepias and eupatoriums; especially the willow adorns it with a sort of green smoke. at cambridge the succory. aristocracy. the astronomers are eager to know whether the moon has an atmosphere. cambridge telescope seems to think it has. i an only concerned that every man have one.'... en the highest value of natural history, and mainly of these new and secular results, like the inferences from geology, and the discovery of parallax, and the resolution of nebulæ, is its translation into an universal cipher applicable to man viewed as intellect also. all the languages should be studied abreast, says kraitsir. learn the laws of music, said fourier, and i can tell you any secret in any part of the universe, in anatomy, for instance, or in astronomy. kepler thought as much before. ah, that is what interests me; when i read in a true history what befals in that kingdom where a thousand years is one day, and see that it is true through all the sciences, in the laws of 1 the substance of what follows is in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 55, 56). 1847] whip. the mansions 313 thought as well as of chemistry. no marseillaise is sung in that high region. whip for our top. the young scholar buys an alarm-clock, he invents a clepsydron, he plants a dial in his garden, he reads greek by candlelight before breakfast. when this fury is first over, he tries travelling with book and pen, and relishes his greek poet in country bar-rooms, or in sea-beaches and lighthouses, or in a cabin in the woods. later, a public occasion, an expecting audience, or the pride of printing a book, flagellate the drowsy muse. in a theâtre des variétés. there are many mansions in my father's house: poetry is one, gardening is one, chemistry is one, geology is one, engineering is one. they are all intertranslateable language. metamorphosis. the interest of the gardener and the pomologist has the same foundation as that of the poet, — namely, in the metamorphosis: these also behold the miracle, the guided change, the change conspicuous, the guide invisible; a bare stick studs itself over with green v1 ve een 314 journal (age 44 buds, which become again leaves, flowers, and, at length, delicious fruit. though dwarfs built skidbladnir, as soon as its sails are unfurled a favorable gale arises and carries it of itself to whatever place it is destined. it will hold them all with all their war gear on, and when they have no mind to sail, they can fold it up like a cloth in their pocket. [the new journal (called the massachusetts quarterly review), considered at meetings in the spring, and especially urged by theodore parker and dr. s. g. howe, had been now decided on with the former as editor. mr. emerson refused to be an associate editor, but consented to write the initial address to the public. the following paragraph is, in substance, in that address, but is so much more local in expression that it is here given. (see miscellanies, pp. 383, 384.)] i read the fabulous magnificence of these karuns and jamschids and kai kans and feriduns of persia, all gold and talismans; then i walk by the newsboys with telegraph despatches; by the post office; and pedding's shop with english steamers' journals; and pass the maine ci 1847] boston kings. servant 315 depot; and take my own seat in the fitchburg cars, and see every man dropped at his estate, as we pass it; and see what tens of thousands of powerful and armed men, science-armed, societyarmed men, sit at large in this ample land of ours, obscure from their numbers and the extent of territory, and muse on the power which each of these can lay hold of at pleasure, — these men who wear no star nor gold-laced hat; you cannot tell if they be poor or rich,—and i think how far these chains of intercourse and travel go, what levers, what pumps, what searchings, are applied to nature for the benefit of the youngest of these exorbitant republicans, and i say, what a negrofine royalty is that of jamschid and solomon; what a real sovereignty of nature does the bostonian possess !— caoutchouc, steam, ether, telegraph, — what bells they can ring! ... value of a servant. the new englander is attentive to trifles, values himself on a sort of omniscience, knows when the cars start at every depot; feels every waterpipe and furnace-flue in his house; knows where the rafters are in the wall,— how can he be absorbed in his thought? how can he be contemplative? 316 (age 44 journal he must have a servant, he must call tom to ask prices and hours; what day of the month it is, and when the mail closes? who is goyernor of the state, and where is the police office? but tom does not come at a call. nothing is so rare in new england as tom. bad for the new englander. his skin is ocular. he is afflicted with the second thought. not for an instant can he be great and abandoned to a sentiment. let the countrymen beware of cities. a city is the paradise of trifles; and the current sets so strong that way that the city seems a hotel and a shop, a gigantic clothes-mart, toyshop; and if one, perchance, meet in the street a man of probity and wisdom, an accomplished and domestic soul, we are taken by surprise, and he drives the owls and bats, that had infested us, home to their holes again. aristocracy. what is it that makes the nobleman? loyalty to his thought.'... boston divides itself into factions on dr. jackson's discovery of ether; and london and paris contest the priority of having found nepthe rest of the passage is printed in « aristocracy" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 55). 1847] saliency. originality 317 tune in the skies. it is not that dr. jackson or mr. morton, that leverrier or mr. adams, will be in the least enlarged or ameliorated by conceding to them the coveted priority, — but there is evidently a feeling of an awful power in this creative saliency, this saliency of thought, this babit of saliency, of not pausing but going on, which is a sort of importation and domestication of the divine effort in a man." originality. i heard old john keyes º say, “that it was a story (that of importing the stone of the stone chapel) which he had told so often that he now firmly believed it himself”; so is it, no doubt, with many of my originalities. i have a good many commonplaces which often turn up in my writing and talking, which i have used so often that i have the right of the strong hand unto; but that they are indigenous in my brain, i do not know nor care. the superstitions of our age: the fear of catholicism; the fear of pauperism; 1 this last sentence occurs in natural history of intellect (p. 59). 2 a lawyer and leading citizen of concord, father of the late judge john shepard keyes. 318 (age 44 journal the fear of immigration; the fear of manufacturing interests; the fear of radicalism or democracy; and faith in the steam engine. nemesis takes care of all these things, balances fear with fear, eradicates nobles by upstarts, supplants one set of nobodies by new nobodies. i am always reminded, and now again by reading last night in rousseau's confessions, that it is not the events in one's life, but in the faculty of selecting and reporting them, that the interest lies. mrs. marshall, over the way, if she could write, would make as interesting a life as robinson crusoe. and this because poetry needs little history it is made of one part history and ninety-nine parts music; or — shall i say? — fact and affection. “this machine," said my friend, “must be far from perfect; see how complex it is.” the highest simplicity of structure is the last and requires the most composite. in england, landor, de quincey, carlyle, three men of original literary genius; but the 1847]. child. books. writing 319 scholar, the catholic, cosmic intellect, bacon's own son, the lord chief justice on the muse's bench is wilkinson. education should leave the child obscure in his youth; protected so, as the green apple in its crude state. life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. if a man read a book because it interests him, and read in all directions for the same reason, his reading is pure, and interests me; but if he read with ulterior objects, if he reads that he may write, we do not impute it to him for righteousness. in the first case he is like one who takes up only so much land as he uses; in the second, he buys land to speculate with. i have that faith in the necessity of all gifts that to implore writers to be a little more of this or that were like advising gunpowder to explode gently, or snow to temper its whiteness, or oak trees to be less profuse in leaves and acorns, or poplars to try the vinous habit and creep on walls. they do as they can, and 320 (age 44 journal . they must instruct you equally by their failure as by their talent, that is, they must teach you that the world is farmed out to many contractors, and each arranges all things on his petty task, sacrifices all for that. aristocracy may study hamlet; it is the literature and manual of that. aristocracy is the moral and independent class. polk and webster must have power, and must truckle for it. with patrician airs, they can never be gentlemen. we understand very well what they mean when they say “patriotism,” and unless we are very tired we do not laugh. ... the prerogatives of the teacher are determined, as one of my friends said, not by his profession, but by the health he restores to the body and mind of his patient and the faith he insures by actual cure. wealth. the difference between riches and poverty, as i so often say, is reverence for superiority ; it makes not much difference what kind that is, but health requires the upward eye. he is beautiful in face, in port, in manners, who is loyal to his thought, absorbed in objects which he thinks superior to himself. reau 18471 thoreau. newcomb 321 henry thoreau says that twelve pounds of indian meal, which one can easily carry on his back, will be food for a fortnight. of course, one need not be in want of a living wherever corn grows, and where it does not, rice is as good. henry, when you talked of art, blotted a paper with ink, then doubled it over, and safely defied the artist to surpass his effect. charles k. newcomb, the fathomless sceptic, was here august 8th. thought he defies, he thinks it noxious. it makes us old, harried, anxious. yes, but it is no more to be declined than hands and feet are. we must accept our functions, as well as our organs. thought is like the weather, or birth, or death: we must take it as it comes. then this is work which, like every work, reacts powerfully on the workman: out of this anxiety flows a celestial serenity. aristocracy. one word more for a real aristocracy, that, namely, in which each member contributes something real. every member commits himself, imparts without reserve the last results of intellect, because he is to receive an equivalent in virtue, in genius, in talent, from each other member. none shall join us but on 322 (age 44 journal that condition. no idler, no mocker, no counterfeiter, no critic, no frivolous person whatsoever, can remain in this company. i propose this law with confidence, because i believe every substantial man has somewhat to contribute. i talked with mr. w. of alcott. w. said, he is impracticable. i said, yes, as our thoughts are. he said, i do not think it will do to say that our thoughts are quite impracticable. i replied, nor do i think that any man is quite impracticable. nor do i feel at liberty to decline the thoughts or the men that go by, because they are not quite easy to deal with and conformable to the opinions of the boston post. hamlet was prophecy. “ nothing is more indicative of the deepest culture and refinement than a tender consideration of the ignorant,” said my friend a.— yes, and what is agreeable in it is the wealth of nature it indicates; enough has he and to spare. individualism has never been tried. all history, all poetry deal with it only, and because now it was in the minds of men to go alone, and ise 1847) communism. luxury 323 now, before it was tried, now, when a few began to think of the celestial enterprise, sounds this tin trumpet of a french phalanstery, and the newsboys throw up their caps and cry, egotism is exploded; now for communism ! but all that is valuable in the phalanstery comes of individualism. you may settle it in your hearts that when you get a great man, he will be hard to keep step with. spoons and skimmers may well enough lie together; but vases and statues must have each its own pedestal. : laws of the world. the fish in the cave is blind; such is the eternal relation between power and use. the fable of zohak, of whom eblis asked as the reward of his services that he might kiss the king's naked shoulder, and from the touch sprang two black serpents, who were fed daily with human victims ;it is easy to see how fast a figurative description of luxury becomes a legend. the peasant sees that a pound of meal is a day's food, and costs a penny, but that the courtier drinks a cup of wine, or eats a fowl, which costs fifty or one hundred prices of his day's provisions; nay, which costs the wages of 324 journal (age 44 a man for ten days. of course, ten men must toil all day, that this trifler may dine at ease. when this is much exaggerated, he says, the children of the courtier are corrupted from the mother's womb; if their father ate up ten men, they twenty,and with wrath and contempt beside. two snakes have sprung from his shoulder who feed on human brains. realism. idealism. “we have no land to put our words on, yet our words are true,” said my sacs and ioways: the philosopher may say the same. every agent is a reagent. what are governments but awkward scaffoldings by which the noble temple of individual genius is reared ? in greece one must see that the facility of intercourse (arising out of peculiar geography) combined with the absence of a massive priesthood, and the discussion of all political business in the open air, by all persons, gave that opportunity, that “easy state of transmission,” that “state of amelioration ” (which the seedling pear of van mons requires), so essential to the best genius. if the spark were struck out, it would be fanned to flame. 1847] boston statistics 325 august 24. mem. m. alexandre vattemare brings me compliments, etc., from m. ravaisson, maître des requètes, etc., au ministère de l'instruction publique, to which address i am to send copies of two books. ere boston. “the arrivals at the port of boston on saturday last (21 august) were 147 coastwise and 22 foreign, — total, 169; by far the largest number that ever came into this port in one day. in this number are not included a large number of vessels bringing wood, sand, etc., cape packets and small craft; but such as arrive from a considerable distance and are booked at the merchants exchange.” — boston daily advertiser of tuesday, august 24. [the following note added, september 14.] i read in to day's post that, according to the new valuation lists, boston has increased within one year by the amount of 1034 polls, by $7,644,900 real; and by $5,875,900 personal estate. . transition. oſ péovtes. intellect detaches in the most decided manner. 326 (age 44 journal we touch crimes, depths, mischance, and are yet safe. also with heights, virtues, heroes, we find an interval. intellect detaches the person. in any and every low company he is always salvable. he turns his gyges ring and disappears from them at will. 'tis a patent of nobility. ali. bonaparte. we go to europe to see aristocratic society with as few abatements as possible. we go to be americanized, to import what we can. this country has its proper glory, though now shrouded and unknown. we will let it shine. patriotism is balderdash. our side, our state, our town, is boyish enough. but it is true that every foot of soil has its proper quality, that the grape on either side of the same fence has its own flavor, and so every acre on the globe, every group of people, every point of climate, has its own moral meaning whereof it is the symbol. for such a patriotism let us stand. “what is a foreign country to those who have science?” the fever, though it groweth in my body, is my enemy: the febrifuge, though it groweth in the distant forest, is my friend. 1847] laborer and idealist 327 how simple is the problem which watts or hyde or coombs, these laborers, have to solve; merely to secure a subsistence, and every part of their action in this work, cutting peat, sawing wood, mowing hay, digging potatoes, is comely and solid. whilst they occupy themselves in this matter they are pyramidal, a cubic solidity: the farmer, the merchant, makes nature responsible for his performance. not so the idealist, as the poet, the saint, the philosopher; they must be to a certain extent farmers and merchants, and they propose to themselves an impossible aim. the farmer has the conquest of nature to the extent of a living; practicable: the poet the conquest of the universe ; impracticable. why can we not let the broker, the grocer, the farmer, be themselves, and not addle their brains with sciolism and religion? but the spiritualist needs a decided bias to the life of contemplation, else what prices he pays! poor withered ishmaelite, jew in his ghetto, disfranchised, odd one; what succors, what indemnities, what angels from the celestial side must come in to make him square. we wish to get the highest skill of finish, an 328 journal (age 44 engraver's educated finger, determination to an aim, — and then — to let in mania, ether, to take off the individual's interference and let him fly as with thunderbolt. hafiz characterized by a perfect intellectual emancipation, which also he provokes in the reader. nothing stops him. he makes the dare-god and dare-devil experiment. he is not to be scared by a name, or a religion. he fears nothing.' he sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man i wish to see and to be. the scholar's courage is as distinct as the soldier's and the statesman's, and a man who has it not cannot write for me. reading. the culture of the imagination, how imperiously demanded, how doggedly denied. there are books which move the sea and the land, and which are the realities of which you have heard in the fables of cornelius agrippa and michael scott. sweetness of reading: montaigne ; froissart; chaucer. ancient: the three banquets [plato, xenophon, plutarch]. 1 sentences to the same purpose differently expressed occur in “ persian poetry”(letters and social aims, p. 249). 1847] reading 329 oriental reading : [not filled out.] grand reading: plato; synesius ; dante; vita nuova; timæus (weather, river of sleep); cudworth ; stanley all-reading : account of madame de staël's rule; rabelais; diderot, marguerite aretin. english reading : clarendon; bacon; milton; johnson ; northcote. manuals: bacon's essays; ben jonson; ford; beaumont and fletcher. favorites : sully; walpole; evelyn; walton; burton; white's selborne ; aubrey; bartram's travels ; french gai science, fabliaux. tonic books: life of michael angelo; gibbon; goethe; coleridge. novels : manzoni. of translation : mitchell. importers : cousin ; de staël; southey. go to mountains and you may find you had better have stayed at home. you cannot find your mountain. yet from your lowland window there still is the carbuncle visible again.' moun1 not from his study window, but from the hill-top opposite his house, wachusett and watatic in massachusetts and monadnoc and the peterborough and temple mountains can be clearly seen. (see « monadnoc from afar,” in the poems, and thoreau's poem on these same mountains.) 330 (age 44 journal tains are haunted. but they would be dull spirits indeed who could not run away from a pair of climbing, sweltering cockneys. nathaniel l. frothingham twenty years ago found me in his parlor, and looking at the form of my head, said, “if you are good, it is no thanks to you.” september 5. channing wished we had a better word than nature to express this fine picture which the river gave us in our boat yesterday. kinde was the old word, which, however, only filled half the range of our fine latin word. but nothing expresses that power which seems to work for beauty alone, as channing said, whilst man works only for use. the mikania scandens, the steel blue berries of the cornel, the eupatoriums, enriched now and then by a well-placed cardinal, adorned the fine shubbery with what channing called judicious, modest colors, suited to the climate, nothing extravagant, etc. if an age that is to come would know the history of this it will seek certainly to know what idea we attached to the word. 1847] thought. horoscope 331 “give us peace in our boarders,” wrote aunt mary, and when shown the misspelling, said, “it would do as it was.” what is the effect of thoughts. certainly of single thoughts a limited and often an illusory effect : but of those elemental, organic thoughts which we involuntarily express in the very mould of our features, in the tendency of our characters, there is no measure known to us. what differences the men and actions of 1847 from those of 1747? horoscope. aristocracy. not the phrenologist but the philosopher may well say, let me see his brain and i will tell you if he shall be poet, king, founder of cities, etc.? ... people think it fortune that makes one rich and another poor. is it? yes; but the fortune was earlier in the balance or adjustment between devotion to the 1 miss emerson's eccentricities made her, in spite of her genius, a difficult boarder, though an actively interesting one. first and last during her ninety years of life she was domiciled for short periods in a great many households. see “mary moody emerson ” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 405, 432). 2 the rest of this long passage is in " aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 44-46). 332 journal [age 44 present good and a forecast of the good of tomorrow. g. lives for the moment, praises himself for it, and despises e., that he does not. g., of course, is poor, and e., since he is providing, is provided. the odd circumstance is, that g. thinks it a superiority in himself, this improvidence which ought to be rewarded with e.'s property. all biography autobiography. i notice that the biography of each noted individual is really at last communicated by himself. the lively traits of criticism on his works are all confessions made by him from time to time among his friends and remembered and printed. present and future. do not imagine that i should work for the future, if my services were accepted or acceptable in the present. immortality, as you call it, is my pis aller. remarkable trait in the american character is the union, not very infrequent, of yankee cleverness with spiritualism. thus, my wall street cotton-broker, thomas truesdale; and william green of boonton, new jersey, iron manufacturer; and rebecca black, living by slop1847] present. a man's angle 333 work from the tailors; and sampson reed, druggist; and hermann, toyseller; and edward stubler, druggist in alexandria, were all prospering people who knew how to trade and how to pray. william green's wagon always met thomas truesdale and rebecca black at the ferry when they went, moved by the spirit, to visit him, though he had no notice of their coming the present. the present moment is a boat in which i embark without fear; boat and pilot at once. the modern architecture is ship-building ; and the modern art is music; and the new power, steam. a man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. i am reckoned a better man than mr. o'shaughnessy, because i am found to see things at a larger angle than he; that is, not to be quite so much of a trifler or a fly, as he. well; here is alcott looks at everything in larger angles than any other, and, by good right, should be the greatest man. but here comes in another trait: it is found, though the lines of his 334 journal (age 44 angles are of so generous contents, the apex of the angle is not quite defined, which “ takes from the pith of nature the noblest attribute.” this he does not understand, and puts another construction on it, “that mankind are best served indirectly, the divine spark loving to insinuate itself through mediators to the minds of the multitude, he feels that he has the freest access to the minds of the people through the peoples' teachers,” etc., etc. aco a tool is that which is used purely for my benefit without any regard to its own. but all love is of that nature that it instantly respects the instrument also, and, though it be a ship or a wheel or bootjack, raises it instantly into personality and seeks to give it an interest of its own and to treat it as if it had. good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that lof walking, is added. (from jk) aristocracy. is the ideal society always to be only a dream, a song, a luxury of thought, and 1847] real aristocracy 335 never a step taken to realize the vision for living and indigent men, without misgiving within, and wildest ridicule abroad? between poetry and prose must the great gulf yawn ever, and they who try to bridge it over be lunatics or hypocrites ? and yet the too dark ground of history is starred over with solitary heroes who dared to believe better of their brothers and who prevailed by actually executing in some part the law (the high ideal) in their own life, and though a hissing and an offence to their contemporaries, yet they became a celestial figure to all succeeding souls as they journeyed through nature. how shine the names of abraham, diogenes, pythagoras, and the transcendent jesus in antiquity. in our best moments society seems not to claim equality, but requires to be treated like a child, to whom we administer camomile and magnesia, on our own judgment, without consultation. what we can do is little enough for the other. and we glance for sanction at the historical position of scholars in all ages, whom we commend in proportion to their self-reliance. but when our own light flickers in the socket, suddenly the pupil seems riper, and more forward, and even assumes the mien of a patron whom we must court. ii 336 journal (age 44 do you say that all the good retreat from men, and do not work strongly and lovingly with them? well, it is fit and necessary that they should treat men as ghosts and phantoms, here for our behoof, here to teach us dramatically, as long as they have not attained to a real existence in their own right, that is to say, until the uprise of the soul in them. then we shall, without tedious degrees, treat them as ourselves: they will be ourselves. now they are not ourselves: why should we say they are? aristocracy. heroic dreams taught us that the golden table never lacks members :'... really! [mr. emerson sailed from boston for liverpool in the packet ship washington irving, captain caldwell, on october 14. he had left his loyal and in every way capable friend, henry thoreau, in his home to man the wall during his absence. those persons who have been led to believe that thoreau was hard and undomestic are referred to his letters to mr. emerson in england telling of the home doings from week to week. for mrs. emerson i for the rest of the passage, see « aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 60-61). 1847] sailing for england 337 he felt a reverential and sympathetic regard, as of a younger brother, and the children found in him the most delightful of companions. (see the familiar letters of thoreau, edited by mr. f. b. sanborn.) through the friendly offices of mr. alexander ireland, with whom mr. emerson had the kindest relations on his first visit to england in 1833, (at this time editor of the manchester examiner), mr. emerson found himself engaged to lecture before many mechanics' institutes in lancashire and yorkshire, associated into a union and rapidly extending into the midland counties and northward into scotland.) at sea, october 14. the good ship darts through the water all night like a fish, quivering with speed, sliding through spaces, sliding from horizon to horizon.'.... it occurred, in the night watches, that the true aristocrat is at the head of his own order, and that disloyalty is to mistake other chivalries for his own. let him stop at the hotel of his i for an account of the voyage, see english traits (pp. 26-31). 338 [age 44 journal fashion: and, whatever he does or does not, let him know and befriend his friends. perhaps a scholar should carry with him a little trunk of specimens also, and be able to wile his lowest company from their meat and lowness by the new charms of romance and of reason. coals to a market. can you not fancy that, after all your elections, you are still carried in some degree by the genius and habit of your countrymen, of your profession? there is less of this which you have and know and are, where you are going than you left at home. ah! is it so? — then an idea leads you, and outcalculates your calculations. well; is there no insurance in that? can you not say, then, by the leave of god we will arrive? october 18. in reading last night this old diary of joseph emerson of malden,' ending in the year 1736, i rev. joseph emerson (born, 1700 ; a. b. harvard, 1717 ; married mary moody of agamenticus (york), maine, 1767; died, 1775), emerson's great-grandfather, and father of william emerson, minister of concord. much of the following extract from the diary of this pious and scholarly man is printed in the sketch of rev. ezra ripley (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 384, 385). . 1847] joseph of malden 339 one easily sees the useful egotism of our old puritan clergy. the minister experienced life for his / flock. he gave prominence to all his economy and history for the benefit of the parish. his cow and horse and pig did duty next sunday in the pulpit. all his haps are providences. if he keeps school, marries, begets children, if his house burns, if his children have the measles, if he is thrown from his horse, if he buys a negro, and dinah misbehaves, if he buys or sells his chaiseall his adventures are fumigated with prayer and praise — he improves next sunday the new ciriv cumstance,-and the willing flock are contented with this consecration of one man's adventures for the benefit of them all, inasmuch as that one is on the right level and therefore a fair representative. thus, in his diary the minister notes, january 27, 1735:“some talk about buying a shay. how much reason have i to watch and pray against inordinate affection for things of this world. " january 31. bought a shay for £27,108. the lord grant it may be a comfort and blessing to my family! “ february 5. remarked smilingly upon my being drawn in a shays. the lord jesus has the 340 journal [age 44 entire government of the church, and to his favour i am indebted for such a smile of providence, so very unexpected.” in the following march, he has “a safe and comfortable journey” to york. but, on april 24, we find,“ shay overturned with my wife and i in it, yet neither of us much hurt. blessed be our gracious preserver. part of the shay, as it lay upon one side, went over my wife, and yet she was scarcely anything hurt. how wonderful the preservation!” then again, may 5, “ went to the beach with three of the children. the beast being frightened, when we were all out of the shay, overturned and broke it. i desire (i hope i desire it) that the lord would teach me suitably to resent this providence, to make suitable remarks upon it, and to be suitably affected with it.' “have i done well to get me a shay? have i not been proud or too fond of this convenience? do i exercise the faith in the divine care and protection which i ought to do? should i not be more in my study, and less fond of diver1 this obsolete though correct use of “resent” in a good sense occurs also in the diaries of his son, rev. william emerson, in 1775. 1847] the shay. catholicism 341 sions? do i not withhold more than is meet from pious and charitable uses ? ” well, on 15 may, we have this, “shay brought home : mending cost 30 shillings. favoured in this respect beyond expectation.” “16 may. my wife and i rode together in the shay to rumney marsh. the beast frighted several times.” and at last we have this record :“june 4. disposed of my shay to the rev. mr. white." another circumstance appears from all the names in the diary: that the leading families in new england seem chiefly descended from some clergyman of that time, as, hancock, lowell, sewall, bulkeley, chauncy, forbes, walter, parsons, greenleaf, thacher, oxenbridge, barnard, colman, green, foxcroft, tappan. religion. the catholic religion respects masses of men and ages. if it elects, it is yet by millions, as when it divides the heathen and christian. the protestant, on the contrary, with its hateful “private judgment,” brings parishes, families, and at last individual doctrinaires and schismatics, and, verily, at last, private gentlemen into play and notice, which to the gentle 342 journal (age 44 musing poet is to the last degree disagreeable. this of course their respective arts and artists must build and paint. the catholic church is ethnical, and every way superior. it is in harmony with nature, which loves the race and ruins the individual. the protestant has his pew, which of course is only the first step to a church for every individual citizen — a church apiece. england (from gh, ed, lm, and london) toto divisos orbe brittannos. virgil, æneid, 1, 67. ich dien. quid vult valde vult. « l’angleterre est un vaisseau. notre île en a la forme; la proue tournée au nord, elle est comme à l'ancre au milieu des mers, surveillant le continent. sans cesse, elle tire de ses fancs d'autres vaisseaux faits à son image, et qui vont la représenter sur toutes les côtes du monde. mais c'est à bord du grand navire qu'est notre ouvrage à tous. le roi, les lords, les communes sont au pavillon, au gouvernail, et à la boussole ; nous autres, nous devons tous avoir la main aux cordages, monter aux mâts, tendre les voiles, et charger les canons. nous sommes tous de l'équipage, et nul 1847] england 343 n'est inutile dans la manœuvre de notre glorieux navire.' « mais, mon garçon,' cria le gros beckford, que diable peut faire le poète dans la manæuvre?' “il dit, · le poète cherche aux étoiles quelle route nous montre le doigt du seigneur.'” alfred de vigny. [during the visit to england and the voyages to and fro, mr. emerson, as far as travel, engagements and hospitalities allowed, recorded, as usual, in his journal the thoughts which the days brought. but among these he jotted down notes of travel and of the acquaintances and friends, old and new, that he met,mechanics, manufacturers, men of letters and science, noblemen ;also of the events of that period of unrest in england and revolution in france. unfortunately for the editors, these entries were scattered through four books with little regard to chronology, and sometimes repeated with more detail and different connection. we have selected and arranged the matter as best we could. it should be said that some extracts from these journals were incorporated by mr. cabot in his memoir, and that some were used in the notes to the centenary edition of the works. yet it seemed best to us to keep them here. ma 344 journal (age 44 of his friend, mr. ireland, who came from manchester to welcome him as he stepped on the dock at liverpool, on saturday, october 22, mr. emerson said, — “alexander ireland approves himself the king of all friends and helpful agents; the most active, unweariable and imperturbable. his sweetness and bonhommie in an editor of a polemic and rather influential newspaper is surpassing. i think there is a pool of honey about his heart which lubricates all the parts of his system, all his speech and expression with fine jets of mead. his good humor is absolutely comic.” mr. emerson rested in liverpool over sunday, heard james martineau preach, and took tea with him. mr. ireland put a welcome missive into his hands :-) i found at liverpool, after a couple of days, a letter which had been seeking me, from carlyle, addressed to “r. w. e. on the instant when he lands in england,” conveying the heartiest welcome and urgent invitation to house and hearth. and finding that i should not be wanted for a week in the lecture rooms, i came down to london, on monday, and at ten at night the door was opened to me by jane cartyle, and the man himself was behind her with 1847] carlyle 345 a lamp in the hall. they were very little changed from their old selves of fourteen years ago (in august) when i left them at craigenputtock. “well,” said carlyle, “here we are, shovelled together again !” the floodgates of his talk are quickly opened, and the river is a plentiful stream. we had a wide talk that night until nearly one o'clock, and at breakfast next morning again. at noon or later we walked forth to hyde park, and the palaces, about two miles from here, to the national gallery, and to the strand, carlyle melting all westminster and london into his talk and laughter, as he goes. here in his house, we breakfast about nine, and carlyle is very prone, his wife says, to sleep till ten or eleven, if he has no company. an immense talker, and, altogether, as extraordinary in that as in his writing; i think even more so. you will never discover his real vigor and range, or how much more he might do than he has ever done, without seeing him. my few hours' discourse with him, long ago, in scotland, gave me not enough knowledge of him; and i have now, . at last, been taken by surprise by him. he is not mainly a scholar, like the most of my acquaintances, but a very practical scotchman, such as you would find in any saddler's 346 (age 44 journal or iron-dealer's shop, and then only accidentally and by a surprising addition the admirable scholar and writer he is.... carlyle and his wife live on beautiful terms. their ways are very engaging, and in her bookcase all his books are inscribed to her, as they come from year to year, each with some significant lines. his brother, dr. john carlyle, has ended his travels as a physician to the families of the duke of buccleugh (?) and countess clare, has retired on some sort of pension, and lives near them, in lodgings, a bachelor, and is a good scholar on his own account. i see that i shall not readily find better or wiser men than my old friends at home, and, though no mortal in america could pretend to talk with carlyle, yet he is as unique here as the tower of london; and neither would he, in any manner, satisfy them or begin to answer the questions which they ask.? ... 1 the long paragraphs descriptive of carlyle which follow are found in the first two pages of the sketch “ carlyle" in lectures and biographical sketches, which was printed after mr. emerson's death. 2 the rest of the passage, thus beginning, is found in “ carlyle" (p. 490). 1847] carlyle's talk 347 i had a good talk with carlyle last night. he says over and over, for months, for years, the same thing, yet his guiding genius is his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth and justice; and he, too, says that there is pro» perly no religion in england. he is quite contemptuous about “ kunst,” also, in germans, or english, or americans. carlyle's realism is thorough. he is impatient of a literary trifler. . . . actors and actresses all mad monkeys. he saw rachel in an impossible attitude, and learned that she could stand so because her dress was loaded with lead, and he despises her ever since. the english parliament, with its babble, he denounces.' ... his sneers and scoffs are thrown in every direction. he breaks every sentence with a scoffing laugh, — “windbag,” “monkey,” “donkey,” “bladder,” and let him describe whom he will, it is always “poor fellow.” i said, “what a fine fellow are you to bespatter the whole world with this oil of vitriol!” “no man,” 1 what follows about parliament, the idle young noblemen, cobden, free trade, his admiration of the czar, and of chadwick, the hydraulic engineer, the universities, and architecture is printed in the short sketch of carlyle above mentioned. 348 journal (age 44 he replied, “speaks truth to me.” i said, “see what a crowd of friends listen to and admire you.” he said, “yes, they come to hear me, and they read what i write, but not one of them has the smallest intention of doing these things.” i said, on one occasion, “how can you undervalue such worthy people as i find you surrounded with, — milnes, and spedding, and venables, and darwin, and lucas, and so forth?” he replied, “may the beneficent gods defend me from ever sympathizing with the like of them!” i begin to understand that this arrogance and contempt of all people around him is brought to the genius by numerous experiences of disappointments in the promise of characters in a great population. london, october 26. mrs. bancroft presented me to samuel rogers, esq. mr. rogers invited us to breakfast with him on friday. just before ten o'clock, i attended mrs. bancroft, in company with her son,' and young butler, of new york, to i alexander bliss. 1847] samuel rogers 349 rogers's. i suppose no distinguished person has been in england during the last fifty years who has not been at this house; so that it has the prestige of a modern pantheon. mr. rogers received us with cold, quiet, indiscriminate politeness, and entertained us with a store of anecdote, which mrs. bancroft knew how to draw forth, about such people as we cared most to hear of. scott, wordsworth, byron, wellington, talleyrand, madame de staël, lafayette, fox, burke, and crowds of high men and women had talked and feasted in these rooms, which are decorated with every precious work. the mantelpiece was carved by flaxman. an antique marble head canova had brought with his own hands and set down in the place which it now occupies. sir francis chantrey, dining one day with our host, asked him if he remembered the workman who made a cabinet for him (which was now in the apartment). “i was that man,” continued the sculptor. here are vases from old rome; and some of the best pictures in england; casts of the elgin marbles are judiciously let into the walls (near which a flying staircase mounts) so as to be examinable at every angle. mr. rogers showed us milton's autograph, pope's original bust, autograph let350 journal (age 44 ters of washington, franklin, mozart, fox, burke, dr. johnson, etc. he read letters of byron to himself, and i saw original manuscript of pages of waverley, and so on, to any extent. this man's collection is the chief private show of london. rogers's sentences are quoted almost as much as sydney smith's, for their satirical point. it was he who said of croker's article on macaulay in the edinburgh, “that he had attempted murder, and committed suicide.” when miss cushman asked him whether he should not go to america, he replied, " it was always my intention to visit america before i died; but now that i have seen you, i have no longer any desire to do so.” rogers told us of talleyrand's visit to him with the duchess of orleans, blazing with beauty, and pamela (afterwards lady fitzgerald), who was more attractive by the sweet seriousness of sixteen. he repeated talleyrand's answer to madame de staël, who asked him, which he should save on a plank, in a shipwreck, madame récamier, or herself, “ mais, madame, vous pouvez nager.” when this princess of orleans was on her way to england, and the question rose, if you could only know one english word, one said, 1847] sydney smith. scott 351 “you could get along with yes!” but the princess said, “if i knew but one, it should be no; because no sometimes means yes, but yes never means no." to an englishman who said to the persian ambassador, “ they worship the sun in your country,” he replied, “so would you, if you ever saw him.” sydney smith said, “macaulay has improved; he has flashes of silence.” of the giraffe, he said, “he would take cold; and think of having two yards of sore throat !” “the two styles, the antediluvian and postdiluvian: men, nowadays, have not time to lounge seventy years over a pamphlet.” ? hogg wrote, “scott's novels,” on the back of waverley, etc. walter scott said, “ jamie, do you spell scots with twa ts?” mr. upcott, who lived in autograph cottage, had the writing found in felton's hat, and a page of the diary of princess charlotte, and the death warrant of mary, queen of scots. i these witticisms of sydney smith and the two next sentences were probably parts of rogers’s table talk. 352 journal (age 44 [after returning to liverpool from his four days' visit in london, mr. emerson found himself engaged to lecture nearly every evening in that city or in manchester for three weeks.] rp liverpool, october 30. everything in england bespeaks an immense population. the buildings are on a scale of size and wealth out of all proportion to ours, the colossal masonry of the docks and of all the public to be accommodated by them, and to pay for them. so the manners of the people,' . .. the englishman has thus a necessary talent of letting alone all that does not belong to him. they are physiognomically and constitutionally distinct from the americans. they incline more to be large-bodied men; they are stocky, and especially the women seem to have that defect to their beauty; no tall slender girls of flowing shape, but stunted and stocky. ... englishman. a manly ability, a general sufficiency, is the genius of the english. they have not, i think, the special and acute fitness to their employment that americans have, but a man is i omitted sentences are printed in the chapter “manners” (english traits, pp. 104, 105). ann 18471 the englishman 353 a man here, — a quite costly and respectable production, in his own, and in all other eyes. the englishman is cheerful, and his voice is. their nationality is intense. englishman is clean, methodical, veracious, proud, obstinate, comfort-loving, industrious, accumulative, nautical. englishman must have foothold. security is in his face and manners, because he has solidity in his foundations and method in his procedure. the english secure the essentials, according to their light, and it falls, at present, on bodily good health and wealth. the cyclops operative cannot subsist on food less solid than beef, and the masters cannot understand that there is any way to success but on capital and economy. the englishman is aboveboard and direct; he disdains, in fighting, to strike a foul blow, he disdains secret ballot. it is “out of his nature to assassinate even property.” “considering the abject respect which truth meets with in england, from persons of all politics.” — sir francis head. england. “lord clarendon has pluck like a cock, and will fight till he dies” -“but peel has that damned smile.” 354 (age 44 journal patience an eminent english virtue. “i bequeath my patience to mr. r. peel,” and peel, the sublime of mediocrity, has come to be the model man of england. all we ask of any man is that he should thoroughly like his own way of life. that gew-gaw of a tournament, when cour de lion appeared under an umbrella, cost £100,000. two styles of dress, the tortoise style,' and the supple or becoming. but the former, wherein the man speaks out of his building, suits english manners well. my little edie cost me many a penny." woman is cheap and vile in england.3 1 this was probably written after mr. emerson had seen the armor of the ancestors of the englishmen of to-day. in the journal for 1833 he speaks of the suits in the tower as reminding him of crustaceans. 2 that is, when he saw some little begging girl no bigger than she in the streets. 3 the sad sights of drunken and degraded women in the streets of the manufacturing towns moved him. (see letters to mrs. emerson in cabot's memoir, pp. 506, 507.) 1847] manchester. sights 355 it rains at every tide at manchester. only three or four per cent of this population are idle. everybody works in england, said mr. rawlins. in manchester they attribute the better character of this people for prudence and industry to the universal habit here of dining at one o'clock. if they are to go to business again in the afternoon, they say, we shall not eat so much. v i wish i had remarked who it was they said uttered the quite english sentence, “so help me god, i will never listen to evidence again.” england. among the local objects are horses and hounds clothed all over, and postilions in livery on every span of horses; and mourning coaches covered with nodding plumes; and gigs and carts with little horses of the canadian (?) breed; and dogs; and sedan-chairs; and men dressed in shawls; and they turn their horses to the left hand when they meet, and in manchester lately there is an order for foot passengers to turn to the right; and escutcheons on the walls for one year after death. all life moves here on machinery, 't is a various mill. ... 356 (age 44 journal most of the differences between american and english, referable to dense population here, and will certainly be lost as america fills up. what a misfortune to america that she has not original names on the land, but this whitewash of english names. here every name is history.' еу [during december mr. emerson read lectures in derby, sheffield (visiting newstead abbey), nottingham, birmingham, preston, leicester, chesterfield, and worcester. at first, he followed his instinct and his almost invariable custom in america of being independent of private hospitalities. soon, however, he wrote to his wife, “i find many kind friends and have given up my caprice of not going to private houses, and scarcely go to any other. at nottingham, i was the guest, on four nights, of four different friends. at derby, i spent two nights with mr. birch, mr. alcott's friend, and at towns which i have promised to visit i have accepted invitations from unknown hosts.”] december 10. i visited from derby with mr. w. birch and mr. thomas tunaley, kedleston hall, 1 examples given in english traits (p. 179). 1847] world is wise. ellen 357 seat of lord scarsdale. at derby, all saints church tower; and bells. at nottingham, the castle and mortimer's hole, december 11. i visited wollaton hall, seat of lord middleton. willoughby built in elizabeth's time. in the road between manchester and sheffield i passed through a tunnel of three and a quarter miles to dunsford station. one man drives the engine there all day through it. beautiful desolations are these houses. an this morning more than ever i believed the world is wise; the world, and not the individual. wordsworth knows very little about his “ode,” has as little to do with that as any reader. if you see the man, you would say, he is not the writer; and would warmly advise him to read that poem. in plutarch's placita philosophorum, i remember some one found the soul in the air circulating, respired and expired by all alike. yes, wisdom is in the air, and good health gets it all. ellen tucker's poetry was very sweet, and on the way to all high merits and yet as easy as breathing to her who wrote. 358 (age 44 journal rich and poor. the insurance of the first-class carriages in the railway is the parliamentary carriage which goes with them; and the telegraph lines which convey the messages of rothschild and lloyd would be surely cut if it were not known that tidings also of interest to the million were vibrating along the same wires. i met philip bailey,' and henry sutton, at joseph neuberg's, nottingham. december 23. dined at mr. swanwick's, chesterfield, with george stephenson. one quarter of a pound of coke will carry one ton one mile. december 24. met t. h. gill at mr. matthews', birmingham. mosely writes the articles in the times 1 the author of the poem festus. mr. neuberg was a scholarly german who gave carlyle much assistance in his literary work. 2 of this occasion mr. emerson wrote to his wife: “ dined in company with stephenson, the old engineer who built the first locomotive, and who is, in every way, the most remarkable man i have seen in england. i do not know but i shall accept some day his reiterated invitations • to go to his home and stay a few days and see chatsworth and other things.'" 1847] dissent. wealth. words 359 on the bishops. alsiger wrote the city articles. jones lloyd, the banker, writes on trade.' no dissenter rides in his coach for three generations; he infallibly falls into the establishment. wealth. “la nation animée de la faveur de paraître. paraître quoi ? riche, au dessus du rang qu'on occupe réellement.” — jules le comte. “to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a larger number of distinguished persons than they really are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry.” lord jeffrey. “in this country, where poverty is infamous.” sydney smith. in leicester, the conversion of the letter b remarkable; an act of parliament is a hact. use of words. “the bishops show such a nasty temper.” “he never uses those nasty phrases, ‘blood of christ,' “atoning covei see the chapter on “ the times” in english traits. 360 [age 44 journal nant,'” etc. “i had one or two nasty tumbles in riding." at preston i saw sedan-chairs carried about the streets, and at birmingham a kind of cab drawn by a man, and a milk-cart, or something like it, drawn by two dogs. at leicester (leir-castra) the river “ leir," now “soar”; a roman pavement; part of the “temple of janus”; a stockinger at work at his frames; and the remains of the old castle of john of gaunt. england — it is the times newspaper. the times newspaper suddenly changed its tone on free trade one morning, about a week before the secret was out that peel would adopt it, and begun its article “ the league is a great fact.” peel gave it the information ; for the support of the times was wanted, and that paper would appreciate the importance to its interests of the early intelligence, mortifying all the other prints which fancied themselves the ministerial organs. the one rule to give to the traveller in england is, do not sneak about diffidently, but make up your mind and carry your points. the only girth or belt that can enable one to nians s 1847] worcester. classes 361 face these patagonians of beef and beer is an absorbing work of your own. otherwise, with their * excessive life they hustle you out of their world. december 30. i went over worcester cathedral, part of which has stood nine hundred years (?). i saw the tomb of king john; of prince arthur, son of henry vii; and especially, and with most delight, some old tombs of crusaders with their mailed legs crossed in marble, and the countenances, handsome and refined as the english gentlemen of to-day, and with that uncorrupt youth in the face of manhood, which i often see here. from the tower i had the fine picture of the severn for many a mile, and the malvern hills. but the reason why any town in england does not grow is, that it is a cathedral town. if birmingham had been a cathedral town, they say it would have been no larger than worcester. english aristocracy. it is curious to see the overflowings of aristocratical manners and culture in the inferior classes, especially in the coachmen, who see and hear so much from their superiors. my omnibus driver from worcester, with 362 journal (age 44 his quotations from shakspeare and his praise of his horses, and his condescending humor and his account of the visit of his relations to him with a little boy, were deserving of dickens, or ellery channing. public schools. “in their playgrounds and in their rooms courage is universally admired; cowardice or meanness universally despised. manly feelings, noble sentiments, and generous conduct are fostered and encouraged; the spoiled child of rank, whose face had been most obsequiously smoothed downwards, by the rough hand of the school is rubbed upwards, until his admiration of himself, of his family, and of the extraordinary talents of his maiden aunt, are exchanged for a correcter estimate which continually makes him a better, a wiser, and a happier man. in short, the unwritten code of honour which, like a halo, shines around the playgrounds of our public school, ever has done and ever will do all that can be performed to make those who have the good fortune to exist under it, gentlemen.” — sir f. head. their university system, which makes greek and latin alive, galvanizes greek and latin and unnecessary mathematics into the creation of a 1847] successes. worthies 363 university aristocracy. so much of their literature and journalism is antiquarian and manufactured.' ... the greenwich observatory and ephemeris, the british museum; the lycian marbles, the excavations and monuments from nineveh; the crystal palace; the arctic voyages; herschel's catalogue of southern stars, are other national monuments of the genius of this singular people. gibbon's decline and fall; the translations of the greek drama. wood's athena oxonienses is a proper ornament for this england; it is a pasture oak, and hakluyt and purchas and fuller. william of wykeham. worthies. sir henry wotton is a good model englishman and equal to business or to study, able in both, yet had been as good in any other of twenty ways. ask him for a counsel, he can give one. he portrays a man as if he had seen many, and as good as homer had. earl of essex, duke of buckingham, were men, and equal to their high fortunes. they were no presidents of i the conclusion of this passage is printed in “ literature" (english traits, p. 251) in a condensed form. 364 journal (age 44 the united states. sir kenelm digby; nelson ; wellington ; samuel johnson. never country had so many good citizens. the worthies of england. never had country so many good fellows going about the world and each one bringing home something useful. sir h. wotton brought home melon seeds; raleigh, tobacco and potatoes. hargraves invented the spinning-jenny and died in nottingham workhouse. earl grey (of the reform bill). richard beauchamp, earl of warwick (1381– 1439), at a joust in france, fighting with sir collard fines, he so bore himself, the french thought he was tied to the saddle; and to confute their jealousies, he alighted and remounted. at the council of constance, his retinue amounted to eight hundred horse. “our success in france lived and died with him.” crossing into normandy, the ship was tossed with such a tempest that warwick caused himself and lady and infant son to be bound to the mainmast with his armor and coat of arms upon him, that he might be known and buried aright. yet he died in his bed. camden (266) quotes this tetrastich, made in commendation of queen maud (of henry i):1847) epitaphs 365 “ prospera non lætam fecere, nec aspera tristem; aspera risus ei, prospera terror erant. non decor effecit fragilem, non sceptra superbam, sola potens humilis, sola pudica decens.”: and of sir francis drake one (cowley?) wrote: – “ drake, pererrati novit quem terminus orbis, quemque semel mundi vidit uterque polus : si taceant homines, facient se sidera notum, sol nescit comitis immemor esse sui.” 2 of empress maud, daughter of henry i, wife of henry iv, emperor of germany, and mother of henry ii of england:“ magna ortu, majorque viro, sed maxima partu, hic jacet henrici filia, sponsa, parens.” (well-born, still better wedded, childed best, the bones of henry's daughter, wife, and mother rest.) 1 this may be freely rendered :good days did not make her joyous, nor evil days mournful ; she laughed at the rugged days, smooth ones she dreaded. beauty did not make her frail, nor the sceptre proud, alone humble in power, beautifully formed alone modest. 2 drake, whom the ends of earth through which he wandered knew, whom once either pole saw, if men are silent, the stars shall speak thy fame; the sun kaows not how to forget his comrade. 366 (age 44 journal “ butin a protestant nation, that should have thrown off these tattered rudiments long ago, after the many strivings of god's spirit, and our fourscore years' vexation of him in this our wilderness, since reformation began, — to urge these rotten principles, and twit us with the present age, which is to us an age of ages, wherein god is manifestly come down among us to do some remarkable good to our church or state, is, as if a man should tax the renovating and reingendering spirit of god with innovation, and that new creature for an upstart novelty.” – john milton, animadversion (jenks, vol. i, p. 200). “the house of chivalry decayed, those obelisks and columns broke down that shook the stars, and raised the british crown to be a constellation. once to the structure went more noble names than to the ephesian temple lost in flames, where every stone was laid by virtuous hands." these made up people i see everywhere, but as soon as i come upon an intellectual person, i fancy a resemblance to the americans. but truly intellectualists are of no country. 1847] carlyle 367 here is the english reputation of carlyle. is it founded on wit? no, but on his revolutionary character, or his setting himself against the mountainous nonsense of the life; and purer and higher had it been, if it had not weaved into it brag and conceit. ruskin, again, and a great school of protestants have perceived the natural beauty over the conventional, and that which is forever. carlyle again. like all men of wit and great rhetorical power, he is by no means to be held to the paradox he utters to-day. he states it well, and overstates it, because he is himself trying how far it will bear him. but the novelty and lustre of his language makes the hearers remember his opinion, and would hold him to it long after he has forgotten it. carlyle gave me a list of books which he advised me to buy, as follows:kennett's history of england; lowth's life of william of wykeham ; camden's britannia, translated by holland ; britton's beauties of england and wales ; hainault, abrège chronologique de l'histoire de france ; bede's chronicle; collins's peerage, 1745. 368 (age 44 journal margaret fuller writes concerning j. h. green's vital dynamics, “what a fuss these english make about presenting thoughts to an audience. what tedious prelude of apology for taking liberty to utter anything beyond the poorest truisms,” etc. to margaret fuller [in italy] december, 1847. yet i hear nothing lately of our friends f. and w. and e. and a. the goods of that country (america) are original and incommunicable to this (england); i see that well. it would give me no pleasure to bring valued persons thence, and show them to valued persons here, but lively pleasure to show to these last, those friends at home, in their own place. shall we not yet — you also — as we used to talk — build up a reasonable society in that naked, unatmospheric land, and effectually serve one another? i observe that many young men here look wishfully to america : i never dare say to them, go, though i might go in their position. i observe that the idea of owning woodlands, etc., is very attractive to the english imagination. 1847] reading 369 yet our young men find it all but impossible to live in the great continent. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1847 [as in previous volumes, a few of mr. emerson's favorite authors from his youth, as homer, plutarch, montaigne, ben jonson, swedenborg, wordsworth, and others are not given in the list of authors.] institutes of menu; bhagavat-geeta; vishnu purana; confucius; zoroaster; pythagoras; simonides ; aristophanes; xenophon; aristotle; plotinus; synesius; proclus; firdusi (abdul kasim mansur); ferradeddin; snorri sturlason, younger edda; fablieux of trouveurs; roger bacon; dante, vita nuova ; saadi; hafiz; chaucer; froissart; machiavelli; polidore virgil, historia anglica; luther; latimer; rabelais; descartes; kepler ; vasari, lives of the painters; giordano bruno; kepler ; sully, mémoires; burton ; grotius ; ford; izaak walton; descartes; a relation, or rather a true account, of the island of england by a venetian traveller ; 370 journal (age 44 aubrey; clarendon, history of england; spinoza; pascal; evelyn; kennett, a compleat history of england; spence, anecdotes; franklin; robert (?) lowth, life of william of wykeham ; hume; walpole; diderot ; gilbert white; rousseau ; burke; john adams ; bartram, travels ; laplace; goethe, autobiography, sprüche; gifford (in edinburgh review); schiller ; jamieson, collection of ballads ; john quincy adams; humboldt; von hammer-purgstall; o'connell, letter to stevenson on disraeli; hazlitt, conversations with james northcote; hallam ; brougham ; moore ; béranger, le ménétrier de meudon ; southey, chronicle of the cid; de quincey; manzoni ; shelley ; herschel; spence, entomology; sir francis head (in edinburgh review); lockhart; eugene scribe, le mariage d'argent; cousin; mrs. hemans, poems; mrs. jameson ; grote, and thirlwall, histories of greece; sydney smith; alfieri; hugh s. legaré ; w. h. f. talbot; chodzko, specimens of ancient persian poetry; macaulay ; dumas; james and harriet martineau; charles kraitsir; george sand; 371 1847] reading van mons apud downing, fruit and fruit trees of america; henry d. rogers, and charles t. jackson, geological reports; benjamin peirce; agassiz; j. j. garth wilkinson, on swedenborg ; philip bailey, festus; charles sumner; theodore parker ; wendell phillips ; w. w. story; henry james ; alcott ; thoreau ; william ellery channing journal northern england scotland edinboro' wits englishmen authors and savants carlyle, owen, tennyson clough, patmore, milnes paris in revolution london lectures and society return concord walks journal xxxix 1848 (from journals gh, lm, ed, “ london” and rs) january. i trace, then, the peculiarities of english manners to their working climate; their dense population; the presence of an aristocracy or model class for manners and speech; their diet, generous and orderly taken ; and their force of constitution. their manners betray real independence, and they are studiously inoffensive. they are castles compared with our men. ... an american feels like some invalid in their company. january 13. at york, i saw the skull of a roman centurion. i saw the tree planted by george fox; i saw the prison, the pews in which the prisoners are locked up; the scales with which they can weigh their own food. in the minster, i heard “god save the king,” of handel, played by dr. camidge on the grand organ. it was very great. i thought 376 (age 44 journal i had never heard anything so sublime. the music was made for the minster, and the minster for the music.'... the architects of york minster are not known; yet what brains were those! it is beautiful beyond belief. in bridlington, i was received one evening at the house of mr. potter, a saddler, with a very cordial hospitality, and the next day he accompanied me to flamborough head, to show me the cave, the “danes' dyke,” the castle, the lighthouse, etc. all the objects interested me, but my conductor more. he had waited on me in the morning at my hotel, with his apron tucked up under his coat, and very likely it was on still, under his surtout; but he told so well the story of his life, and that he saves two hundred pounds every year, and means by and by to devote himself principally to the care of the mechanics’ institute, and of the temperance society, of both of which he is the ardent friend. he is sent, however, by these institutions to i the rest of the passage is found in the chapter « religion,” in english traits. ean 1848] evolution's chances 377 wait on yarborough graeme, esq., on sir prichett, and other gentlemen of the county families, and is always kindly received by these gentlemen. en i saw a young man yesterday whose body is in greatest part covered over with a hard scale like that of the armadillo. he was naked, or nearly so, and i had the nearest view of him, though i declined touching him. there are a great many talents in a drop of blood, and a little suppression or retardation would unchain and let out what horns and fangs, what manes and hoofs, what fins and flippers, what feathers and coats of mail, which are now subdued and refined into smooth and shapely limbs, into soft white skin, into the simple, erect, royal form of man. it was at bridlington (pronounced burlington) that one of the company asked me if there were many rattlesnakes in the city of new york? and another whether the americans liked to call their country new england ? i remember the sensation at mr. mayor elgie's table, at worcester, when our host an378 (age 44 journal nounced that the port we were now to draw was from the duke of buckingham's cellar. [here follow several amusing quotations from a relation, or rather a true account, of the island of england, etc., about the year 1500 (translated from the italian, by charlotte augusta sneyd, printed for the camden society. lond. 1847), but two of which are here given.] “how many hours the sun might be above the horizon i cannot say, he is so rarely to be seen in winter, and never but at midday.” “they have an antipathy to foreigners, and imagine that they never come into their island but to make themselves masters of it, and to usurp their goods : neither have they any sincere and solid friendships among themselves — i have never noticed any one, either at court or among the lower orders, to be in love; — very jealous, – though anything may be compensated in the end by the power of money." january. in halifax (england) mr. crossley employs in his carpet mills fifteen hundred operatives. beautiful tapestry carpets at 7/6 per yard: saw the pattern sent to the queen. vista made ma ers 1848] halifax. leeds 379 by the looms resembled a church aisle. mr. acroyd's stuff-mills employ five or six thousand operatives. in one hall i saw eight hundred looms. in many they were making ponchos. here was a school spaciously built and well furnished for the children. in england, the manufacturers are not joint-stock companies, but individuals. the piece-hall in halifax was built in better times, and held twenty thousand children and teachers on a festival a few years ago, in its quadrangle. [liverpool?] remains of the old gibbet. by the local law, theft to the amount of 13 i pence was death by the gibbet, till the law was abrogated one hundred and sixty years since. as we were returning down “gibbet lane," a respectable old lady accosted mr. stansfeld to pray him to get the name altered, as she owns a house here, which she cannot rent, as tenants do not wish to live in gibbet lane. leeds. near leeds and bradford, i observed the sheep were black, ... begrimed by the smoke. ... the hopelessness of keeping clothes 380 (age 44 journal white leads to a rather dowdy style of dress, i was told, among the ladies; and yet they sometimes indemnify themselves; and leeds in the ball-room, i was assured, is a very different creature from leeds in briggate. mr. marshall's mill covers two acres of ground. the former owner, james marshall, presided in this immense hall at a dinner given to o'connell; and the chartists having threatened an attack, mr. marshall had a water-pipe under his chair which was supplied by a steam engine, and which he was ready to direct on the mob, if they had ventured to disturb him. i spent one night here with rev. mr. wicksteed; one night with mr. carbutt the mayor; of whom mrs. carbutt told me some excellent anecdotes; one night with george hyde, esq.; and one with joseph lupton, esq. everywhere anecdotes of the london times, ... its readers are disappointed if there is not a great public event in each day's paper. mr. mosely named as the writer of these papers on the bishops; mr. bailey, as a young cambridge man who wrote and offered a paper to the morning chronicle, and was refused; sent it to the times and received ten guineas, and request 1848) english mechanics 381 for more communications; and is a regular contributor. mr. jones lloyd writes often on financial matters. old walter? wrote on poorlaws. the grand feature which recommends the times is its independence. recomm sw iv n i hear it said that the sense which the manufacturers have of their duties to the operatives, and the exertions they have made in establishing schools and “ mechanics' institutions” for them, is recent, and is, in great part, owing to carlyle. at huddersfield, i was told that they have over-educated the men in the workingclass, so as to leave them dissatisfied with their sweethearts and wives ; and the good schwann and kehls there were now busy in educating the women up to them. mr. kehl thought that my lecture on napoleon was not true for the operatives who heard it at huddersfield, but was true only for the commercial classes, and for the americans, no doubt; that the aim of these operatives was to get twenty shillings a week, and to marry; then they join the “ mechanics’ institute,” hear leci originally the printer of the times. (see english traits, pp. 264, 266.) 382 (age 44 journal tures, visit the news-room, and desire no more. \ i thought it despair. at rawdon, i inquired, how much the men earned who were breaking stone in the road, and was told twenty pence; but they can only have work three days in the week, unless they are married; then they have it four days. ear are m the chartists, if you treat them civilly, and show any good will to their cause, suspect you, think you are going to do them. january. at manchester, william staley showed me over the whole warehouse of messrs. watts, in which one hundred and fifty persons are employed in selling all manner of “dry goods.” the arrangement was excellent. on the upper floor, i found ribbons, and was told their stock of this kind was never less in value than £20,000. use of words. “a good time” is an americanism. in england it is a phrase only applied to a woman after childbirth. also “fix" in the sense of arrange. 1848] our mythology 383 manchester, january. the battery. the staple figure in novels is the man of aplomb,' ... history is the group of the types or representative men of any age at only the distance of convenient vision. we can see the arrangement of masses, and distinguish the forms of the leaders. mythology is the same group at another remove, now at a pictorial distance ; the perspective of history. the forms and faces can no longer be read, but only the direction of the march, and the result; so that the names of the leaders are now mixed with the ends for which they strove. distance is essential. therefore we cannot say what is our mythology. we can only see that the industrial, mechanical, the parliamentary, commercial, constitute it, with socialism; and astor, watt, fulton, arkwright, peel, russell, rothschild, george stephenson, fourier, are our mythologic names. january 25. cameron and all the rest of this company are too deeply indebted to carlyle, and would 1 the rest of this paragraph is printed in “social aims" (letters and social aims, p. 80). 384 journal (age 44 be better, like wine, for a voyage to india or to nootka sound. espinesse, who is really a man of wit and capacity, writes unmitigated carlylese, and when i told carlyle that he ought to interfere and defend that young man from him, carlyle, he appeared piqued, and said, “he must write as he could, and be thankful.” : aristocracy, traits.” a soul so much more drawn to itself than to others that it comes through and out of any events or companies in a letter mr. emerson wrote : “ last night i heard a lecture from mr. cameron. . . . he talked without note or card or compass, for his hour, on readers and reading; very manly, very gaily ; not quite deeply enough, — it did not cost him enough, — yet what would i not do or suffer to buy that ability. • to each his own.'" 2 mr. emerson wrote to his wife from manchester on january 26, “i am writing in these very days a lecture which i will try at edinburgh, on aristocracy." it was given in london in the course at the portman square literary and scientific institute, in the following june, as the concluding lecture before a distinguished audience under the title natural aristocracy. later given with variations in america, its original form was lost and from the mass of sheets on this subject mr. cabot made the best selection and arrangement possible for the posthumous volume, lectures and biographical sketches. 1848) right aristocracy 385 10 reas е rесthe same; like metals and the nobler chemical compounds whose particles have that strong affinity for each other that no solvent can be found. these distinctions are in man, and as flagrant in democracies as in oligarchies. beauty no reasoning, no legislation could impart. it will not only remain a potent, but a differencing and aristocratic quality. ... nor will it at all be foreign to my purpose if it should appear that i am describing that which is the theoretic peerage, and not one recognized and actualized in any kingdom on earth. it would be ignoble, would it not? to draw our sketch from any body necessarily so impure as any that can contrive to exist amidst so much vice, injustice, and imbecility as we all confess in our times. i have no compliments to pay, and no tenderness to one or other renowned name, and really, therefore, no interest for their sake but is my own and all men’s; none but a regard for the behoof of the race that there should be model men, that we should all have true pictures of such, and, if possible, living standards. i write of a nobility always existing, but its members so scattered, so heedless of badges, so rarely convened, so little in sympaconver 386 (age 44 journal thy with any favorite measure that it is not acknowledged in any newspaper or in any peerage." for the particular of nature's adopting peculiarities, i think it a sublime hint or beckoning from the outward universe to man to hive and insert as many virtues and superiorities as he can into this web which is to be a fossil. ... thus it will be seen that, one after the other, all the material badges are dropped, like so much tattoo and heraldry, and those powers only worn which subjugate nature." cic charles newcomb remarked, as ellery channing had done, the french trait in henry thoreau and in his family. here is the precise voyageur of canada sublimed, or carried up to the seventh power. in the family the brother and one sister preserved the french character of face. february. sea-line. as we see the human body or one of its limbs undraped, so here nature shows us a limb of our planet in undress, and we see the i the substance of the last two sentences occurs in the opening pages of “ aristocracy." 2 compare english traits (pp. 197, 198). 1848] castles. the hammer 387 nakedness of the sea line. 't is a sublime curve, yet causes an uncomfortable feeling. to nature, as to man, we say, still be drest! still hide a poverty even so grand under the ornamented details of a broken landscape. february 8. duke of cleveland's land extends from the point where we first entered it, coming from darlington, toward barnard castle, twenty-three miles to high force, where the tees falls two hundred and twelve feet. after passing raby castle, we met the duke returning from hunting with his hounds, the horses and dogs very much blown and spent. the huntsman, as he passed us, told our coachman that they had had a desperate run of two hours, twenty-five minutes, without check. beside him, rode the whipper-in, and, a little behind, the duke and a gentleman, in red hunting-coats. newcastle, february 9. at newcastle, saw at mr. crawshay's' iron works the nasmith hammer, which will strike i in a letter to miss hoar mr. emerson said he was bidden as a guest by “ mr. crawshay, who refused the tests [i. e. religious tests) at cambridge after reading my essays! as he writes me. and so with small wisdom the world is moved, as of old.” 388 (age 44 journal with a weight of six tons, yet so manageable that nasmith will put his hand under it if one of his own men directs the stroke. crawshay put his new hat under it and received a slight damage. then an old hat was exploded [i. e., crushed to atoms by the triphammer]. read natural aristocracy at edinburgh, february 11. at edinburgh, february 12, saw wilson. lord jeffrey told me in his visit to boston he saw edward everett, then a boy, and everett accompanied him to the cambridge library, etc.' wilson said, “i know, but i will not tell de quincey's age, for it is my own. we were at oxford together, but not acquainted.” february 13. thomas de quincey. at edinburgh, i dined at mrs. crowe’s with de quincey, david scott, and dr. brown. de quincey is a small old man of seventy years, with a very handsome face, — a face marked by great refinement, a very i for interesting extracts from mr. emerson's letters telling about his friends and entertainment in the scottish capital, see cabot's memoir, vol. ii, p. 519, ff. 2 both were in their sixty-third year. 1848] de quincey 389 gentle old man, speaking with the utmost deliberation and softness, and so refined in speech and manners as to make quite indifferent his extremely plain and poor dress. for the old man, summoned by message on saturday by mrs. crowe to this dinner, had walked on this rainy, muddy sunday ten miles from his house at lasswade and was not yet dry, and though mrs. crowe's hospitality is comprehensive and minute, yet she had no pantaloons in her house. he was so simply drest, that ten miles could not spoil him. it seemed, too, that he had lately walked bome, at night, in the rain, from one of mrs. crowe's dinners. “but why did you not ride ? " said mrs. c.; “ you were in time for the coach.” because, he could not find money to ride; he had met two street girls; one of them took his eight shillings out of his waistcoat pocket, and the other his umbrella. he told this sad story with the utmost simplicity, as if he had been a child of seven, instead of seventy. here de quincey is serene and happy, among just these friends with whom i found him; for he has suffered in all ways and lived the life of a wretch, for many years; and samuel brown, mrs. c., and one or two more, have saved him from himself, and from the bailiff, and from a 390 journal (age 44 ever se fury of a mrs. macbold, his landlady, and from opinion; and he is now clean, clothed, and in his right mind. he might remind you of george p. b. or ellery c. he talked of many things easily, chiefly of social and literary matters, and did not venture into any voluminous music. de quincey has never seen landor, butgrieves over the loss of a finely bound copy of hellenics sent him by landor. he has also lost five manuscript books of wordsworth's unpublished poems. he loses everything. his simplicity is perfect. he takes dr. brown into the middle of the street, to tell him where his lodgings are. yet, on reckoning, it did not appear that all his debts exceeded a hundred pounds. he estimates paradise regained very highly, thinks the author always knows which is his best book. he said wordsworth appropriates whatever another says so entirely as to be angry if the originator claimed any part of it. festus was mentioned, and i said i did not esteem him'a true poet. david scott, in answer to my challenge for one good line, recited “ friendship hath passed me like a ship at sea.” de quincey said that tautology of “ship” and “ friendship” would ruin any verse. 1 philip james bailey. 1848) de quincey. dr. brown 391 de quincey said that blackwood pays him twelve guineas the sheet; pays to others, ten; to wilson, twenty; the quarterlies pay sixteen, that is, a guinea a page. blackwood's once reached a circulation of eight thousand copies. (when they first agreed, at my request, to invite de quincey to dine, i could fancy that some figure like the organ of york minster would appear.) in a tête-à-tête, i am told, he sometimes soars and indulges himself, but rarely in company. he invited me to dine with him on the following saturday, at lasswade, where, since the death of his wife (from whom he was separated for many years), he lives with his three daughters. was [during his stay in edinburgh mr. emerson was the guest of dr. samuel brown, brother of dr. john brown the author of rab and his friends and marjorie fleming. of his host he wrote to mrs. emerson: “what i chiefly regret is that i cannot begin on the long chronicle of our new paracelsus here, samuel brown, who is a head and heart of chiefest interest to me and others, and a person from whom everything is yet to be expected.” mr. cabot, in his memoir, notes that “ dr. brown was expectc 392 journal (age 44 ing to reduce several elements, perhaps all matters — to one substance, a line of speculation always interesting to emerson.” compare “ xenophanes” in the poems.] erson carlyle said of samuel brown “that he was that kind of a man, that if god almighty wished to hang a new constellation in the sky, he would give him an estimate for the same.” h. c. vowed to adhere to dr. brown when all means failed them to pursue an experiment and they had nothing to pawn. c. came triumphantly with the article wanted from the druggist. “how did you get it?” “i sold two old pair of breeches." [in his first days in edinburgh mr. emerson became acquainted with david scott the painter, who insisted on painting his portrait. this was a proposition anything but agreeable to mr. emerson, who always said he “was no subject for art,” but he was so much interested in the man that he consented. in a letter to his wife he says of scott, “the man is a noble stoic, sitting apart here among his rainbow allegories, very much respected by all superior persons.” after the death of mr. emerson and the painter, w 1848) scotland. glasgow 393 the picture was brought to this country for sale, and was bought and presented to the concord public library by three of his friends. though hard in drawing and color, and showing a much older man than the daguerreotype of mr. emerson taken the same year, some of his early friends found much to like in it. a rainbow appears in the dark background.] february 15. glasgow the rapidest growth in britain after liverpool. as soon as you cross the border at berwick and enter scotland, the face of things changes, the grass is less green, the country has an iron-gray look, it is cold and poor; the railways are ill-served; no well-trained porters: you must carry your own luggage ; the ticket-master weighs your sovereign (it is a rare piece) and finds it light: you can pay in copper now for what always cost silver in england. nobody rides in first-class carriages: and the manners become gross and swainish in some observed particulars. glasgow has 320,000 people. students in scarlet cloaks. americans here, and a consul. dr. hudson tells me some strange stories about the foundation at eton, and that the subscription made previous to entering declares that the 394 journal (age 44 signer is a beggar, yet is signed by noblemen. it confounds my understanding. glasgow adds 1000 a month to its population. at glasgow i spoke in a cavern called city hall to two or three thousand persons. the scotch speech has a most unnecessary superfluous energy of elocution and of rolling the r. great talkers, very fond of argument. scotch are plainer drest, plainer mannered than the english, not so clean, and many of them look drunk when they are sober. scotch are intelligent reading and writing people, but edinburgh is still but a provincial city; the tone of society is incurably provincial. william chambers, at edinburgh, speaking of american copyright, said, “as long as you do not grant copyright, we shall instruct you.” ferrier, son-in-law of wilson, helps on blackwood's, in which aytoun, smith, moir (a), and others write. theodore martyn is le bon gualtier. [after his first lecture in glasgow, mr. emerson returned to edinburgh, dined with the brothers robert and william chambers, heard a 1848) nichol. jeffrey. wilson 395 lecture by wilson and one by sir william hamilton, then returned to glasgow to lecture and spend the night of february 17 with professor nichol in the observatory. on the 18th he returned to edinburgh and visited lord jeffrey. (see cabot's memoir for the fuller account of his days in scotland, pp. 519-524.)] at edinburgh, i was introduced to professor wilson, and the next day went up to the university to hear him lecture. before the lecture, we called on him in his private room and sat ten or fifteen minutes with him. he was goodnatured and affable, but nothing important was said. i thought of our dear fat stetson, but it was s. without the wit. perfervidum ingenium scotorum, yes, but heavy as a speaking ox. he foamed at the mouth with physical exertion, and not a ray of wit or thought. it was in the course on moral philosophy. two gentlemen shot two dogs of wilson's that had belonged to his wife. they came and made their apology. but wilson carried it to the law. their friend came to wilson and hoped he would have the magnanimity to forgive them. “magnanimity, sir! was there ever any so enormous as mine? those two men stood where 396 (age 44 journal you now stand, and i did not pitch them out of the window." tholuck said to chalmers, that he was astonished that none of the theologians here had had the candour to read strauss. “sir," said chalmers, “i will read it on your recommendation; but is it a big book? for i am old.” t i find here a wonderful crop of mediocre and super-mediocre poets, they lie three, six, or ten 1 this anecdote served mr. emerson years later. the meeting of the massachusetts anti-slavery society held in the tremont temple, boston, january 24, 1861, was interrupted by a well-dressed mob of “union-at-any-price” citizens of boston and the suburban towns. hearing of the probable danger, mr. emerson felt bound to go, and sat upon the platform. the jeers and howls of the mob drowned his attempt at earnest speech, but he begged the disturbers to be a little quiet, for he had a very good story to tell them, of which their action reminded him. their curiosity quieting them a little, he told them, as illustrating the patience of this society, the above story, but the tumult arose again when wendell phillips spoke. within two years many of the young men of conservative families who took part in the mob were in the army, and even converting their fathers to anti-slavery views 2 friedrich august gottreu tholuck, professor of theology at halle, who had written an answer to strauss's life of jesus. rev. thomas chalmers, professor at the university of st. andrews and edinburgh. 1848] de quincey 397 deep, instead of single as in america. but, as atí. home, the merchants seem to me a greatly superior class to the clerisy, and they have a right to a great contempt of these. were ever february 19. dined with de quincey at lasswade. he lives with his three daughters margaret, florence, and thither i went, with mrs. crowe and dr. brown, in mrs. c.'s carriage. the second daughter, florence, had a pleasing style of beauty. his son, francis, was also present, who is a medical student in the university. de quincey told us how his acquaintance with wilson began ; for, though they were at oxford together, they had never met, but de quincey, travelling in wales, had arrived at an inn, where he learned that a gentleman lay sick and sore with his wounds. for wilson, in some of his mad pranks, had paid attention to a country girl at a theatre, and, after the play was over, her lover and his friends had way laid him and most ignominiously mauled him. and de quincey, learning who it was who was in the house, sent up his card and made his acquaintance. of turnbull (whom i had seen with dr. 398 journal (age 44 brown) it was told that he had said “he would go to hell for sir william hamilton.” mrs. crowe insisted that de quincey should go back to edinburgh with us in the coach and should go to my lecture, a proposition to which he somewhat reluctantly assented, as, i think, he said he had never attended a public lecture, or not for a good many years. but the victorious lady put him into the carriage. as we entered edinburgh, he grew very nervous, and dr. brown saw the reason, and assured him that his old enemy (mrs. macbold) had removed to another quarter of the city. “ah,” said de quincey,“ if one of the furies should arrive in edinburgh, it would make little difference at what hotel she put up.” dr. brown and mrs. crowe told me in detail the story of his rescue from the hands of this mrs. macbold, who was his evil genius, and had exercised a reign of terror over him for years, – a very powerful and artful, large-limbed, redhaired beldame, from whom flight to glasgow and concealment there was the only help, whilst his friends, with wilson, contrived the extrication of his valuable papers and literary manuscripts from her custody. the woman followed him to glasgow, met dr. nichol's daughter in 1848] dundee 399 the street (a child), and asked her pleasantly if she knew where mr. de quincey lived. the child said yes, and, at her request, conducted her to his retreat! he fled again. at edinburgh she sent a little girl to professor wilson (with a napkin of his own by way of token) “ with mr. de quincey's compliments,”asking him to send him back by the bearer the bundle of papers he had left with him, — and he sent them! february 21. in seeing old castles and cathedrals i sometimes say, as to-day at dundee church tower (which is eight hundred years old), this was built by another and a better race than any that now look on it. and, at other times, i say, if idealists will work as well as these men wrought, we shall see a new world apace. [in the last week of his stay in scotland mr. emerson visited dundee and perth, and probably lectured at both towns. he crossed the border southward on february 25 and lectured again at newcastle-upon-tyne. thence he went to make a promised visit to miss martineau at ambleside.] harriet martineau said, in her trance, that there 400 journal (age 44 was no ultimate atom, only forces; and this, she learned, was the stupendous discovery of faraday. p. t. visited harriet martineau at n. with richard cobden and on departing came back to say that cobden said, that 't was a sad business, this agitation, for his own little boy thought him, when he went home, a gentleman who visited his mother. [miss martineau took her guest to visit wordsworth, who lived near by. the conversation with the old man was not very satisfactory and is not here given, as mr. emerson printed the notes in his journal in the “ personal” chapter in english traits.] en the americans are sun-dried, the english are baked in the oven. the upper classes have only birth, say people here, and not thought. yes, but they have manners, and 't is wonderful how much talent runs into manners. nowhere and never so much as in england. and when they go into america and find that this gift has lost its power, the gold has become dry leaves, no wonder they are impatient to get away. every man in the carriage is a possible lord. 1848] vigour and morals 401 yet they look alike, and every man i meet in london i think i know.'... toughness. among the men made for work, dura ilia, seemingly not of flesh and blood, but of brass and iron, coke, mansfield, gibbon, johnson. strong body, vast memory. de quincey says he wishes “the morals of the middle classes of england, combined with the manners of the highest, — or — the morals of the gentry with the manners of the nobility.” “no morality which is built less on the mere amiableness of quick sensibilities, or more entirely on massy substructions of principle and conscience, than the morality of the british middle classes." traits. in england the understanding rules, and materialistic truth; the becoming, the fit, the discreet, the brave, the advantageous; but they could not produce such a book as the bhagavat geeta. dr. johnson is liked for his courage ; “a man who is afraid of anything is a scoundrel.” london “spatium est urbis et orbis idem.” “i believe the parallelogram between oxford 1 here follows much that is printed in “ manners," in english traits. 402 (age 44 journal street, piccadilly, regent street, and hyde park, encloses more intelligence and human ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world has ever collected in such a space before." sydney smith. [in london mr. emerson arrived march 1, and took lodgings. he dates his letters 142 strand. he saw much of carlyle, probably walking with him, for he would have been unwilling to trespass on his working hours. his friends, mr. and mrs. george bancroft, then living in london, with a wide acquaintance, did all they could to make his stay interesting. in mr. cabot's memoir several letters are printed telling of the people he met and how his days were spent.] carlyle thought the clubs remarkable signs of the times; that union was no longer sought, but only the association of men who would not offend one another. there was nothing to do, but they could eat better. he was very serious about the bad times. the chartists were then preparing to go in a procession of two hundred thousand to carry their petition, embodying the six points of chartism, to the house of commons, on the 1848] carlyle's opinions 403 0 ees toth april, 1848. he had seen this evil coming, but thought it would not come in his time. but now it is coming, and the only good he sees in it is the visible appearance of the gods. he thinks it “the only question for wise men instead of art and fine fancies, and poetry, and such things as tennyson plays with — to address themselves to the problem of society. this confusion is the inevitable end of such falsehood and nonsense as they have been embroiled with.” of course, this french revolution is the best thing he has ever seen and the teaching this great swindle, louis philippe, that there is a god's justice in the universe after all, is a great satisfaction.' he values peel as having shown more valor as a statesman than any other of these men. wellington he esteems real and honest; he will not have to do with any falsehood. chalmers he valued as a naif, honest, eloquent man, who, in these very days, believed in christianity, and though he himself, when he heard him, had 1 the sketch of carlyle in the lectures and biographical sketches was mostly taken from this london journal with some changes. some sentences which appear there were difficult to separate from their connection, and so are given here. vers . 404 journal (age 44 long discovered that it would not hold water, yet he liked to hear him. tennyson dined out every day for months ; then aubrey de vere, a charitable gentleman, thirty miles from limerick, on a beautiful estate, came up and carried him off. tennyson surrendered on terms: that he should not hear anything of irish distress ; that he should not be obliged to come down to breakfast; and that he should smoke in the house. so poor tennyson, who had been in the worst way, but had not force enough to choose where to go, and so sat still, was now disposed of. since the new french revolution, carlyle has taken in the times newspaper, the first time he has ever had a daily paper. if such a person as cromwellshould come now it would be of no use ; he could not get the ear of the house of commons. you might as well go into chelsea graveyard yonder, and say, shoulder arms! and expect the old dead churchwardens to arise. it is droll to hear this talker talking against talkers, and this writer writing against writing. jane carlyle said that the rich people whom she knew had occasion for all the shillings they 1848] traits. joshua bates 405 could find. the spending is, for a great part, in servants. thirty-five servants in lord ashburton's house. an englishman is aplomb. henry thoreau thought what we reckon a good englishman is in this country a stageproprietor. the people have wide range, but no ascending range in their speculation. an american, like a german, has many platforms of thought. but an englishman requires to be humoured or treated with tenderness as an invalid, if you wish him to climb. let who will fail, england will not. she could not now build the old castles and abbeys, but the nineteenth century loves club-houses, railways, and docks and mills, and builds them fast enough. mr. joshua bates,' the best informed man, one would say, hesitates to testify before the house of commons to the advantage of the i an american member of the great banking firm of baring brothers. 406 (age 44 journal proposed abolition of navigation laws, because he thinks the english shipowners and shipmasters cannot compete with those of america, here in their own ports. cs plural london. immeasurable london, evidently the capital of the world, where men have lived ever since there were men. yet it seems. deliberately built. an aggregation of capitals. there are several little nations here. a german quarter in whitechapel, a french quarter where they still carry on a silk business in spitalfields. in london only could such a place as kew gardens be overlooked. wealth of shops bursting into the streets; piles of plate breast-high on ludgate hill. in a london dock mr. bates said he had seen nineteen miles of pipes of wine piled up to the ceiling. many of the characterising features of london are new. such as gaslight, the omnibuses, the steam ferries, the penny-post, and the building up the west end. one goes from show to show, dines out, and lives in extremes. electric sparks six feet long; light is polarized; grisi sings; rothschild is your banker ; owen and faraday lecture; ma1848] houses of parliament 407 caulay talks; soyer cooks. is there not an economy in coming where thus all the dependence is on the first men of their kind ? englishman has hard eyes. he is great by the back of the head. do london, march. in the new parliament house, great poverty of ornament, the ball and crown repeated tediously all over the grand gate, near the abbey, and vivat regina written incessantly all over the casements of the windows in house of lords. houses of parliament a magnificent document of english power and of their intention to make it last. the irish harp and shamrock are carved with the rose and thistle over all the house. the houses cover eight acres, and are built of bolsover stone. fault, that there is no single view commanding great lines; only, when it is finished, the speaker of the house of commons will be able with a telescope to see the lord chancellor in the lords. but mankind can so rarely build a house covering eight acres that 't is pity to deprive them of the joy of seeing a mass and grand and lofty lines. in house of commons, when a man makes his first speech, there is a cry of “new member! 408 (age 44 journal new member!” and he is sure of attention. afterwards, he must get it if he can. in a body of six hundred and forty-eight members every man is sure to have some who understand his views on whatever topic. facts they will hear, and any measure proposed they will entertain, but no speculation, and no oratory. a sneer is the habitual expression of that body. therefore cobbett's maiden speech, “i have heard a great deal of nonsense, since i have been sitting here,” was quite in their vein, and secured their ear. stand at the door of the house of commons, and see the members go in and out, and you will say these men are all men of humanity, of good sense. march. they told me, that now, since february, paris was not paris, nor france france, everything was triste and grim. all the members of the provincial government had become aged since february, except only arago. immortality. of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious.' ... nobody should speak on this matter polemic1 the rest of the passage is printed in “worship" (conduct of life, p. 239). 1848] england and france 409 ally, but it is the gai science and only to be chanted by troubadours. nce & in dreams, the ordinary theory is that there is but one person; the mystical theory is that there are two or more. there's a great affinity between wit and oxygen; with the oxygen in these crowded parlours my wit always departs. e cr rs england is the country of the rich. the great poor man does not yet appear. whenever he comes, england will fall like france. it would seem that an organizing talent applied directly to the social problem, to bring, for example, labor to market, to bring want and supply face to face, would not be so rare. a man like hudson, like trevelyan, like cobden, should know something about it. france. the french revolution just now has surprised everybody (themselves included) who took any thought on the matter. no guizot, no thiers, no barrot, no times newspaper, no party that could remember and calculate, but was baulked and confounded. only the simple workmen, porters, shoeblacks, and women, and mei 410 journal (age 44 the few statesmen who, like lamartine, could afford through riches and energy of nature to let themselves go without resistance whither the explosion was hurling them, found themselves suddenly right and well. one would say, as sam ward said of the young collegians who drove a gig down his hill, “ if they had known how to drive, they would have broken their necks.” the french are, to a proverb, so formidable in explosions that every boy sees the folly of guizot and his master in bearding that lion. it had been plain to them a great while that just by dodging an explosion you might lead the monster quietly into a cage. this revolution has a feature new to history, that of socialism. the american revolution was political merely. it is not a good feature, the rhetoric of french politics. the manifestoes read like buonaparte's proclamations, instead. it strikes one, too, the identity of the nation through all these changes. i ask myself, what makes it? it is like the identity of an individual. the king and his party fell [in february, 1848] for want of a shot; they had not conscience to shoot, so entirely was the heart and spirit of monarchy eaten out. ul. 1848] france. dinner party 411 in germany, said n.,' the former revolution collapsed for want of an idea. now, all goes well, for they know what they want. the delegate who had carried congratulations to the french republic said, that “they had determined not to wait even till they knew whether it was a boy or a girl.” mr. van der w. said that louis philippe has not now £800 a year. louis philippe could not be received publicly, but he went privately to the queen, and made her and her company laugh very heartily by his account of his escapade, and the incidents of his disguise, voyage, and landing in england. march. at lady harriet baring's dinner, carlyle and milnes introduced me to charles buller, “reckoned,” they said aloud, “the cleverest man in england” — “until,” added milnes, -"until he meddled with affairs.” for buller was now poor laws commissioner, and had really postponed hitherto to make good the extraordinary expectation which his speeches in parliament had created. 1 probably neuberg, a german of culture, who rendered much good service to carlyle. 412 journal (age 44 eva religion. dr. arnott told a story of a very evangelical young lady who wanted the company to subscribe to send a missionary to india. “the people,” she said, “believed in devils, and worshipped devils.” “yes,” said her uncle, “i tell you, my dear, those are no jokes of devils, those in india. they actually eat or cause to be destroyed one per cent of the population. but, niece, they worship devils, too, in europe, and news were just brought that this is creeping into england, and instead of one per cent, they say their devil sends to eternal damnation nineteen out of every twenty.” the niece, who had expected a contribution to her missionary purse, shut her eyes and her mouth. macaulay' said that he had arrested on its progress to be printed a bill for civilizing and christianizing the natives of — in africa, appropriating a thousand pounds, first for an expense of £for adjusting pipes, etc., on 1 mr. emerson met macaulay, milman, lord morpeth, bunsen, and lyell at dinner at mr. bancroft's, and macaulay again and hallam at milman's. see letter to mrs. emerson in cabot's memoir, vol. ii, pp. 528, 530. he says: “macaulay is the king of diners-out. i do not know when i have seen such wonderful vivacity. he has immense memory, fun, fire, learning, politics, manners, and pride, and talks all the time a steady torrent." 1848) churchmen and science 413 the paddle-wheels of steamboats for squirting hot water on the natives. i have never heard, i believe, but one man in england speak of “our saviour.” at the dinner of the geological club, i sat between sir henry de la bèche and lord selkirk. when i remarked, what i understood the accepted view of the creation of races to be, that many individuals appeared simultaneously, and not one pair only, lord selkirk replied that there was no geological fact which is at variance with the mosaic history. “decent debility,” said sydney smith of the clergy. 'tis a long step from the cromlechs to york minster. two seasons every night in which the house of commons was ferocious, at the dinner hour by hunger and at two o'clock by sleep. this period. false fronted the englishwomen wear their grey hair.' in the 1 women in america, at this period, when their hair began to turn grey wore "frisettes” or “false fronts,” often of a singular warm chocolate-brown which heightened the unreality. almost all matrons, however young, wore caps. 414 journal (age 44 rain, they tuck up their gown about the waist and expose their skirt. england a little top-heavy still, though she keeps her feet much better since the corn laws were thrown overboard. march 9. i attended a chartist meeting in national hall, holborn. it was called to hear the report of the deputation who had returned after carrying congratulations to the french republic. the marseillaise was sung by a party of men and women on the platform, and chorused by the whole assembly: then the girondins. the leaders appeared to be grave men, intent on keeping a character for order and moral tone in their proceedings, but the great body of the meeting liked best the sentiment, “every man a ballot and every man a musket.” much was whispered of the soldiers, — that “they would catch it,” i. e., the contagion of chartism and rebellion. in the times, advertisement of literary assistance. t— rsold his name to a book. tdsells his book to a name of mr. cunningham, bookseller. (1848) newspaper writers 415 march 14. it is a proof of the abundance of literary talent here that no one knows, or, i think, asks the name of the writers of paragraphs and articles of great ability. it seems strange that literary power sufficient to get up twenty such reputations as quinet or michelet, and a hundred prescotts or sparkses, is here wasted in some short-lived paper in the christian remembrancer or the foreign quarterly, or even in a few leaders in the times newspaper. the papers surprise me, for i do not meet anywhere the fine-tempered talent that could write them, but only such literary men as i have known before. i read this morn the excellent critique on carlyle's cromwell in the christian remembrancer for april, 1846. nor nature. the oceanic working of nature which accumulates a momentary individual as she forms a momentary wave in a running sea. englishman talks of politics and institutions, but the real thing which he values is his home, and that which belongs to it, – that general culture and high polish which in his experience no man but the englishman possesses, and which 416 (age 44 journal he naturally believes have some essential connection with his throne and laws. that is what he does not believe resides in america, and therefore his contempt of america only half concealed. this english tenacity in strong contrast with our facility. the facile american sheds his puritanism when he leaves cape cod, runs into all english and french vices with great zest, and is neither unitarian, nor calvinist, nor catholic, nor stands for any known thought or thing; which is very distasteful to english honour. it is a bad sign that i have met with many americans who flattered themselves that they pass for english. levity, levity. i do not wish to be mistaken for an englishman, more than i wish monadnock or nahant or nantucket to be mistaken for wales or the isle of wight. appleton' spends so much wit, anecdote, good nature, on every conversation, that it is impossible with the ordinary economies of nature that he can have any stores, any winter, any ulterior views. he is like a broker who lends such sums that you would infer that he 1 thomas gold appleton, of boston, then travelling in europe. 1848) london society 417 was rich; but no, he turns all his capital every day. “our rivers have their sources in their dominions,” says the german (east prussian) placard reproachfully of russian dominion. “and other grain,” mr. austin said, were words introduced by franklin into a provision bill in pennsylvania to cover gunpowder. “i rise in the dignity of conscious virtue,” said roebuck in his first speech in the house of commons. dined at lord ashburton's, at lady harriet baring's, attended lady palmerston's soirée; saw fine people at lady morgan's and at lady molesworth's, lord lovelace's, and other houses. but a very little is enough for me, and i find that all the old deoxygenation" and asphyxia that have in town or in village existed for me in that word “a party,” exist unchanged in london palaces. of course the fault is wholly mine, but i shall at least know how/ to save a great deal of time and temper henceforward. you will wish to know what mr. bull really 418 [age 44 journal says to me and is to me. i confess i am, much of the time, in that unhappy state which evening parties throw me into,—the parlor erebus; — and that solitary infirmity of mine, mr. bull is the last person to forgive. english society, of course, requires vigour of health to shine in it. as we say, you must be a bruiser for congress. the novice fancies that the gladiators say something better than he; no, but they say it better. macaulay has the strength of ten men. “a unitarian will presently be shown as a dodo, an extinct race ” [was his remark]. that macaulay should be voted a bore in some high aristocratic companies is pathetic example of the impossibility of pleasing all. not only christianity is as old as the creation, not only every sentiment and precept of christianity can be parallelled in other religious writings, but a man of religious susceptibility and, at the same time conversant with men, — say a much travelled man, — can find the same height in numberless conversations. the religious find religion wherever they associate. when i find in people narrow religion, i find narrow reading. nothing is so expansive as thought. it cannot evo soc narrow 1848] a priest. the english 419 be confined or hid. 't is easily carried; it takes no room. i travelled, as i said, for a whip for my top. i had noticed that to every person are usually sent six or seven priests, in the course of their (impressible) life, and, to find one of these, he may well cross to asia, or the antarctic zone. it was to be expected that i might find the seventh of mine in england. cas ever every englishman is a house of commons. as that expects that every speech will propose a measure, so the man of letters here is never contemplative; a stanza of the song of nature he has no ear for. grievous amount of dross about men of wit, they are so heavy, so dull, so oppressive with their bad jokes, and monstrous conceit, and stupefying individualism. avoid the great man as one who is privileged to be an unprofitable companion. as a class the merchants are out of all comparison manlier and more sensible, and even the farmers are more real and agreeable. but this is babyish; i hate that a scholar should be an old goody. if excellence as scholars has cost too much and spoiled them for society, let 420 journal (age 44 religion, let their homage to truth and beauty, keep them in chambers or caves, that they may not by personal presence deface the fair festival which their reason and imagination have dressed. the most agreeable compliment that could be paid w. was to say that you had not observed him, in a house or in a street where you had met him.'... i see that the londoner is also, like me, a stranger in london. i have a good deal to tell him of it, and there is no man who at all masters or much affects this self-arranging mass. the englishman is proud; yes, but he is admirable. he knows all things, has all things, can do all : how can he not be proud ? colonel thompson's theory of primogeniture is, that it is to make one son strong enough to force the public to support all the rest. [last week in march.] richard owen. mr. richard owen was kind enough to give me a card to his course of lec1 the rest of the passage with a similar beginning is printed in society and solitude (p. 4). 1848] richard owen 421 tures before the royal college of surgeons, and i heard as many of the lectures as i could. he is an excellent lecturer. his vinous face is a powerful weapon. he has a surgical smile, and an air of virility, that penetrates his audience, a perfect self-command and temperance, master of his wide nomenclature, and stepping securely from stone to stone. but there was no need that he who thinks lightly of the accumulation of facts should run counter to his own genius, and attack the “transmutationists”; for it is they who obey the idea which makes him great. mr. owen told the story of dean buckland's objection to the gigantic rat which pulled down the trees of the elder world, namely, that he would get killed by their fall; and, when the fossil skull of one was examined, it was found to be double and of an immoderate thickness, and also with great fractures healed over. the jerboa rat and other animals of that kind are in enormous numbers, and prolific; have their function to destroy corrupt animal matter and are like the infusoria in that office. the bat analogous to the cetacea; one is a mammal adapted to swim and one a mammal adapted to fly — then again analogous to the 422 journal [age 44 mole and the shrew, one moving by displacing air and the other by displacing earth. sleep is the hybernation of the day. hybernation is the sleep of the year. light is not the exciting cause always, for some animals wake in the dark and sleep in the day. light was thought the exciting cause in reference to sleep, and heat in reference to hybernation. and yet there are animals who sleep during the hottest and driest part of the equatorial year. the hybernation is determined by the season of food. the bat living on insects would die when the insects died; but now, he sleeps through this long fast, without respiration. cs if i stay here long, i shall lose all my patriotism and think that england has absorbed all excellences. my friend alcott came here and brought away a couple of mystics and their shelf of books from ham common, and fancied that nothing was left in england;' and i see that kew gardens and so many great men and things are obscure. i look at the immense wealth and the solid 1 messrs. lane and wright, who joined in the fruitlands community, already mentioned in the journals of 1843 and 1844. the school at ham common had been named alcott house. 1848] poverty. oxford 423 power concentrated, and am quite faint: then i look in the street at the little girls running barefoot through the rain, with broom in hand, to beg a halfpenny of the passenger at the crossing, and at so many lascars, and pitifullest trades, and think of saadi, who, barefooted, saw the man who had no legs, and bemoaned himself no more. [on the invitation of arthur hugh clough, then a fellow of oriel college, and also of dr. daubeny, the botanical professor, mr. emerson went to oxford, “and spent something more than two days very happily,” meeting, among others, “palgrave and froude,” as told in cabot's memoir.] march 31. at oxford, in the bodleian library dr. bandinel showed me the manuscript plato of the date of a.d. 896, brought by dr. clarke from egypt.' ... [on april 1 mr. emerson went to a soirée at the marquis of northampton's, and in a letter tells of the company he met there, among others prince albert, sir charles fellows, dr. bucki here follows the narrative of what he saw in this library printed in english traits (pp. 203, 204). 424 journal (age 44 land, and crabbe robinson, who in his diary mentions his meeting with emerson. later, the same evening, he went to lord palmerston's, and there met disraeli, bunsen, macaulay, and baron rothschild.] mr. neuberg said that the rothschilds make great fortunes, but they really do a certain important service to society ; they are the cashiers of the world : and it is a public mischief when any calamity befalls them. people at nottingham are carried into crime, because rothschild does not accept bills at paris; it is quite obvious to him : he can trace it all the way. so when a bank discounts freely in any district, immediately an impulse is given to population, and new men are born. see the account rothschild gave of himself in fowell buxton's life, especially in regard to luck. agassiz made lectures on anatomy popular by the aid of an idea : homology, analogy, did that for him, which all the police of boston could not have done, in holding the crowd together at the odéon, when wyman lectured on the same subject. 1848) the new religion 425 the new religion. yes, there will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again.'.... it was necessary that this roaring babylon should fall flat, before the whisper that commands the world could be heard. it seems to every youth that he is alone, and left to fall abroad with too much liberty, when he is left with only god. he does not yet begin to see and to hear. the english church, being undermined by german criticism, had nothing left but tradition, and aung itself into the roman church, distrusting the laws of the universe. the next step is now the ruin of christendom. wisdom always lays the emphasis of reform in the right place, on tendency, on character, and not on some absurd particular, as on the knife and fork, which is sure to produce dislocation and ridiculous jangle. a monk must live in a monastery; an ascetic in thebais; he cannot get such puddings as he likes in nottingham or concord. 1 the passage thus beginning is printed in “ worship” (conduct of life, p. 241). 2 a part of the above passage is printed in the chapter “ religion” (english traits, p. 228). 426 (age 44 journal i had rather have a good symbol of my thought, or a good analogy, than the suffrage of kant or plato.'.... every soul is sent into nature accompanied by its assessors or witnesses. they are attached to it by similarities which keep them through all changes in the same stratum or plane, and within the same sphere; as the bodies of one solar system never quit their respective distances, but remain, as the foot of an animal follows its head. to his astonishment the man finds that he can never think alone, his thought is always apprehended by equal intellect; that he can never hide his action, but witnesses, and those his intimate acquaintance, look out of the dark of every cave, in an asiatic desart, in an arabian sahara.” everything connected with our personality fails.3 ... people interest as long as there is some re1 the rest of the passage is found in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 13). 2 the same idea and some of the same expressions occur in “worship” (conduct of life, p. 226). 3 the substance of this passage is printed in “ immortality” (letters and social aims, pp. 342, 343). 1848] the dread idea 427 serve about them. only that mind draws med which i cannot read. serve is n “ the belief that self consists in that which is not self, and that property consists in that which is not our own, is the double fruit of the tree of ignorance.” the objection, the loud denial, not less proves the reality and conquests of an idea than the friends and advocates it finds. thus communism now is eagerly attacked, and all its weak points acutely pointed out by british writers and talkers; which is all so much homage to the idea, whose first inadequate expressions interest them so deeply, and with which they feel their fate to be mingled. if the french should set out to prove that three was four, would british journalism bestir itself to contradict them? the geologic society and the stock exchange would have no time to spare it. one sees readily, in the embittered acuteness of the oxonian reviewer in snuffing heresy from far, how hapless an unbeliever he is, and why he inveighs so angrily against that which he vainly resists in his own bosom. i was struck, at least in one interview lately, with the mutual timidity of a couple of emi428 (age 44 journal nences (of very diverse sorts), each exaggerating the other, and then it appeared that victory was cheap, and lay there waiting for which one first recovered his reason. at oxford you may hold what opinion you please so that you hold your tongue. in going through the street you should be in a state of positive electricity, not negative. if i should believe the reviews, and i am always of their opinion, i have never written anything good. and yet, against all criticism, the books survive until this day. for the matter of socialism, there are no oracles. the oracle is dumb. when we would pronounce anything truly of man, we retreat instantly on the individual. we are authorized to say much on the destinies of one, nothing on those of many. it seems cruel that every man should be in false position and that, scholar and saint though he be, he should find himself in this most awkward relation to loaves of bread. and the promise of socialism is to redress this distorted balance. but i think it needs that we h 1848) socialism. chartists 429 must have the substance in purity which we will analyze, and not only cling to individuals but to angels. we must consider the condition of a youthful soul sent for its education into this university of nature, and perhaps it must have this drastic treatment of famine and plenty, insult and rapture, wisdom and tragedy, infernal and supernal society, in order to secure that breadth of culture so long-lived a destiny needs. oh, were there times that deserved any attention! but how can these convulsions effect any change of mood in any firm cæsarian scholar? archimedes buried himself in his geometry ... when marcellus was battering down the walls. april 6 (?). i fancied, when i heard that the times were anxious and political, that there is to be a chartist revolution on monday next,' and an irish revolution in the following week, that the right scholar would feel, now was the hour to test his genius. his kingdom is at once over and under 1 in a letter to his wife on april 10, mr. emerson wrote: “ a good deal of time is lost here in their politics, as i read the newspapers daily, and the revolution, fixed for the ioth instant, occupied all men's thought until the chartists' petition was actually carried to the commons." 430 (age 44 journal these perturbed regions. let him produce its charter now, and try whether it cannot win a hearing, and make felt its infinite superiority to-day, as, in the arts, they make winter oil on the coldest, and spermaceti candles on the hottest, day of the year. people here expect a revolution. there will be no revolution, none that deserves to be called so. there may be a scramble for money. but as all the people we see want the things we vad now have, and not better things, it is very certain that they will, under whatever change of forms, keep the old system. when i see changed men, i shall look for a changed world. whoever is skilful in heaping money now will be skilful in heaping money again. power. there must be a relation between power and probity. ... we seem already to have more power than we can be trusted with. and this preparation for a superior race is a higher omen of revolution than any other i have seen. except to better men, the augmented science is a mere chemic experiment of the quickest poison. what wrong road have we taken that all the improvements of machinery have helped everysee 1848) social questions 431 body but the operative? him they have incurably hurt. a curious example of the rudeness and inaccuracy of thought is the inability to distinguish between the private and the universal consciousness. i never make that blunder when i write, but the critics who read impute their confusion to me. in the question of socialism, which now proposes the confiscation of france, one has only this guidance ; — you shall not so arrange property as to remove the motive to industry. if you refuse rent and interest, you make all men idle and immoral. as to the poor, a vast proportion have made themselves so, and in any new arrangement will only prove a burden on the state. and there is a great multitude also whom the existing system bereaves forever of all culture and of all hope. the masses — ah, if you could read the biographies of those who compose them! the word pay is immoral. now we will work, because we can have it all to our snug selves; to-morrow we will not, 432 (age 44 journal because it goes to the community, and we all stand on a pauper's footing. the wonder of the science of intellect is that the substance with which we deal is of that transcendent and active nature, that it intoxicates all who approach it.' . . . everything is mover or moved, and we are admonished of omnipotence when we say, let us have intellect on our own terms. happy is he who gets early in life (or not too late) a good hobby. what happiness and fortune for charles fellows was in that ruin at xanthus.' ... owen by his fixed idea penetrates all courts, and sees all distinguished men. morgan's village is his key to pope, and prelate, author, and foreigner. dr. tuckerman with his ministry-atlarge. so perez blood with his telescope.3 sir 1 this and what follows is printed in “ powers and laws of thoughts” (natural history of intellect, pp. 10, 11). mr. emerson wrote, april 20, to his wife : “my newest writing is a kind of natural history of intellect ; very unpromising title, is it not ?". 2 see « education” (lectures and biographical sketcbes, pp. 145, 146). 3 a concord farmer, referred to in an earlier journal, who used his small inheritance of money from his father to buy a telescope and celestial globe. ire i 1848] british museum 433 joshua reynolds (fox said) had no pleasure in richmond; he used to say the human face was his landscape. guidance and determination to an aim, — yes, certainly, the book must have these, were the author ten times a poet; but it must not be mechanical, not a placing, but a polarity. ren april. the british museum holds the relics of ancient art, and the relics of ancient nature, in adjacent chambers. it is alike impossible to reanimate either. the arrangement of the antique remains is surprisingly imperfect and careless, without order, or skilful disposition, or names or numbers. a warehouse of old marbles. people go to the elgin chamber many times, and at last the beauty of the whole comes to them at once, like music. the figures sit like gods in heaven. coventry patmore's remark was, that to come out of the other room to this was from a roomful of snobs to a room full of gentlemen. there are 420,000 volumes in the library, as mr. panizzi assured me, and fifty or sixty thousand manuscripts. in the bodleian library probs anusc 434 journal (age 44 ably not more than 120,000 books. five libraries have the right to a copy of every book that is printed : this, the bodleian, the advocates' at edinburgh, the dublin university (?), and trinity college, cambridge (?). the king's library at paris is much larger than this — 1,500,000, said colman. here the line of shelves runs twelve miles. it is impossible to read from the glut of books. i looked at some engravings in the print-room with mr. patmore, who is connected with this library. ah! there is a nation completely appointed, and perhaps conveniently small. st. paul's is, as i remember it, a very handsome, noble architectural exploit, but singularly unaffecting. when i formerly came to it from the italian cathedrals, i said, “well, here is new york.” it seems the best of show-buildings, a fine british vaunt, but there is no moral interest attached to it. it is certain that more people speak english correctly in the united states than in britain. the government offers free passage to australia for twenty-five thousand women. in aus1848) street girls. lycia 1 435 tralia are six men to one woman. miss coutts has established a school to teach poor girls, taken out of the street, how to read and write and make a pudding and be a colonist's wife. they do very well so long as they are there, but when it comes to embarking for australia they prefer to go back to the london street, though in these times it would seem as if they must eat the pavement. such is the absurd love of home of the english race, said dickens. april 15. at the british museum with the bancrofts under the guidance of sir charles fellows. lycian art. the triumphal temple plagiarism of the parthenon. exact truth and fitness of every particular of greek work. there are ten statues because ten cities sent aid out of thirteen. every statue stands on an emblem, as crab, dove, snake, etc., which the coins now show to be the arms of the ten cities. the gods are at the eastern end. the friezes describe accurately the siege of the city. the reconstruction of the temple, like that of the dinornis, the most beautiful work of archaic science. history, geology, chemistry, and good sense. the temple itself imitates in stone the old carpentry of the country still visible in 436 (age 44 journal ornam the huts of the peasantry, and is an ark. the women wear the same ornaments, the boys have the same tuft of hair. illustration of homer and herodotus. england holds these things for mankind and holds them well. conservative, she is conservator. owen said he fell in with a sentinel in crossing the french frontier, who cried out, “who are you?” mr. arnott said he should have replied, “the creature of circumstances.” one power streams into all natures. mind is vegetable, and grows, thought out of thought, as joint out of joint in corn. mind is chemical, and shows all the affinities and repulsions of chemistry, and works by presence. ... mind knows the way because it has trod it before. knowledge is becoming of that thing. somewhere, sometime, some eternity, we have played this game before. go through the british museum and we are full of occult sympathies. i was azote. it is a little fearful to see with what genius some people take to hunting; what knowledge they still have of the creature they hunt; how lately they were his organic enemy; and the 1848) london. carlyle 437 physiognomies in the street have their type in woods. as in the british museum one feels his family ties, so in astronomy not less; little men copernicise. lud-gate still keeps the hoary memory of lud's town. lud, son of beli, is represented in the romantic chronicles as the elder brother of cassivellaunus who fought with julius cæsar. among the trades of despair is the searching the filth of the sewers for rings, shillings, teaspoons, etc., which have been washed out of the sinks. these sewers are so large that you can go underground great distances. mr. colman saw a man coming out of the ground with a bunch of candles. “pray, sir, where did you come from?” “oh, i've been seven miles,” the man replied. they say that chadwick’ rode all under london on a little brown pony. co vil i wonder the young people are so eager to see carlyle. it is like being hot to see the mathematical or the greek professor, before you 1 some sentences of the above are printed in “ powers and laws of thought” (natural history of intellect, p. 22). 2 the engineer of the london water system. 438 (age 44 journal have got your lesson. they fancy it needs only clean shirt and palaver. if the genius is true, it needs genius. the englishman is finished like a sea-shell. after the spires and volutes are all formed, or with the formation, the hard enamel varnishes every part.' pope, swift, jonson, gibbon, goldsmith, gray. it seems an indemnity to the briton for his precocious maturity. he has no generous daring in this age. the platonism died in the elizabethan. he is shut up in french limits. ... but birmingham comes in, and says, “never mind, i have some patent lustre that defies criticism.” moore made his whole fabric of the lustre: as we cover houses with a shell of inconsumable paint. april 19. at kew gardens, which enclose in all more than six hundred acres, sir william hooker showed us his new glass palm-house ... which cost £40,000. the whole garden an admirable work of english power and taste. good as oxford or the british museum. no expense spared, 1 these two sentences are printed in “ manners” (english traits, p. 11). 1848) kew gardens. clubs 439 all climates searched. the echino cactus visnasa, which is a thousand years old, cost many hundred pounds to transport it from the mountains in mexico to the sea. here was tea growing, green and black; here was clove, cinnamon, chocolate, lotus, caoutchouc, gutta-percha, kava, upas, baobab, orotava, the papaw, which makes tough meat tender, the graphtophyllum pictum or caricature-plant, on whose leaves were several good punch portraits visible to me (lately, there was one so good of lord brougham appeared, that all men admire); the ivory nut; the strelitzia regina, named for queen charlotte, one of the gayest flowers in nature; it looked like a bird, and all but sung; the papyrus; the banian; a whole greenhouse or “stove” full of wonderful orchises, which are the rage of england now. sydney smith said of whewell, that science was his forte and omniscience was his foible. . carlyle thought the clubs remarkable signs of the times. that union was no longer sought, but only the association of men who would not offend one another. there was nothing to do, but they could eat better. he said, there are about 70,000 of these 440 journal (age 44 people who make what is called “society.” of course, they do not need to make any acquaintance with new people like americans. plato [he found] very unsatisfactory reading, very tedious. the use of intellect not to know that it was there, but to do something with it. happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion ; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale — who writes always to the unknown friend. april 25. · carlyle. dined with john forster, esq., at lincoln's inn fields, and found carlyle and dickens, and young pringle. forster, who has an obstreperous cordiality, received carlyle with loud salutation,“ my prophet!” forster called carlyle's passion, “musket worship.” there were only gentlemen present and the conversation turned on the shameful lewdness of the london streets at night. “ i hear it,” he said, “i hear whoredom in the house of commons. disraeli betrays whoredom, and the whole house of commons universal incontinence, in every word they say." i said that when i came 441 1848] male chastity to liverpool, i inquired whether the prostitution was always as gross in that city as it then appeared, for to me it seemed to betoken a fatal rottenness in the state, and i saw not how any boy could grow up safe. but i had been told it was not worse nor better for years. carlyle and dickens replied that chastity in the male sex was as good as gone in our times; and in england was so 'rare that they could name all the exceptions. carlyle evidently believed that the same things were true in america. he had heard this and that of new york, etc. i assured them that it was not so with us; that, for the most part, young men of good standing and good education, with us, go virgins to their nuptial bed, as truly as their brides. dickens replied that incontinence is so much the rule in england that if his own son were particularly chaste, he should be alarmed on his account, as if he could not be in good health. “leigh hunt,” he said, “ thought it indifferent.” carlyle is no idealist in opinions, but a protectionist in political economy, aristocrat in politics, epicure in diet, goes for murder, money, punishment by death, slavery, and all the pretty abominations, tempering them with epigrams. his seal holds a griffin with the word, humili442 (age 44 journal st tate. he is a covenanter-philosophe and a sansculotte-aristocrat.' . yet it must be said of carlyle that he has the kleinstadslich traits of an islander and a scotchman, and believes more deeply in london than if he had been born under bow bells, and is pretty sure to reprimand with severity the rebellious instincts of the native of a vast continent which makes light of the british islands. he is an inspired cockney. (when i saw him, in 1848, he was reading wright's translation of some of plato's dialogues with displeasure. i was told by clough, in 1852, that he has since changed his mind, and professes vast respect for plato.) carlyle is malleus mediocritatis. he detects weakness on the instant in his companion, and touches it. ... i fancy, too, that he does not care to see anybody whom he cannot eat, and reproduce tomorrow, in his pamphlet or pillory. alcott was meat that he could not eat, and margaret fuller likewise, and he rejected them, at once. 1 a large part of what is written in the next pages of the journal is printed in the “ carlyle,” in lectures and biographical sketches. 2 this paragraph, mr. emerson wrote into the journal years later. e 1848) carlyle. alboni 443 he is the voice of london, a true londoner with no sweet country breath in him, and the instigation of these new pamphlets is the indignation of the night-walking in london streets. and 't is curious, the magnificence of his genius and the poverty of his aims. he draws his weapons from the skies, to fight for some wretched english property, or monopoly, or prejudice. he looks for such an one as himself. he would willingly give way to you and listen, if you would declaim to him as he declaims to you. but he will not find such a mate. and a short, plain-dealing and a communication of results, as when dalton and dana met, and without speaking, scratched down on scraps of paper chemical formulas, surprising each other with authentic proof of a chemist, – that he does not care for. may 3. i heard alboni sing last night in cenerentola, and the times today calls it the best of her triumphs. i found only the noble burst of voice beautiful, and the trills and gurgling and other feats not only not interesting, but, as in all other performers, painful; mere surgical, or rather, functional acts. 444 journal (age 44 rou [may 6 ?] i saw tennyson, first, at the house of coventry patmore, where we dined together.' his friend brookfield was also of the party. i was contented with him, at once. he is tall, scholastic-looking, no dandy, but a great deal of plain strength about him, and though cultivated, quite unaffected; quiet, sluggish sense and strength, refined, as all english are, and good-humoured. the print of his head in horne's book is too rounded and handsome. there is in him an air of general superiority, that is very satisfactory. he lives very much with his college set,spedding, brookfield, hallam, rice, and the rest,—and has the air of one who is accustomed to be petted and indulged by those he lives with, like george bradford. take away hawthorne's bashfulness, and let him talk easily and fast, and you would have a pretty good tennyson. \ he has just come home from ireland, where he had seen much vaporing of the irish youth against england, and described a scene in some tavern, i think, where a hot young man was flourishing a drawn sword, and swearing that he would drive it to the hilt into the flesh and blood of englishmen. tennyson was disgusted, i on may 5. 1848) meeting tennyson 445 and going up to the young man, took out his penknife, and offered it to him. “i am an englishman,” he said, “and there is my penknife, and, you know, you will not so much as stick that into me.” the youth was disconcerted and said he knew he was not an englishman. “yes, but i am.” hereupon the companions of the youth interfered, and apologized for him, he had been in drink and was excited, etc. tennyson talked of carlyle, and said, “if carlyle thinks the christian religion has lost all vitality, he is wholly mistaken.” tennyson and all carlyle's friends feel the caprice and incongruity of his opinions. he talked of london as a place to take the nonsense out of a man. it is his brother, tennyson turner, who wrote the verses which wordsworth praised. when festus was spoken of, i said that a poem must be made up of little poems, but that in festus were no single good lines; you could not quote one line. tennyson quoted — “ there came a hand between the sun and us, and its five fingers made five nights in air.” after dinner, brookfield insisted that we should go to his house, so we stopped an omnibus, and, not finding room inside for all three, 446 jage 44 journal tennyson rode on the box, and b. and i within. brookfield, knowing that i was going to france, told me that, if i wanted him, tennyson would go. “ that is the way we do with him,” he said. “we tell him he must go and he goes. but you will find him heavy to carry.” at brookfield's house we found young hallam, with mrs. brookfield, a very pleasing woman. i told tennyson that i heard from his friends very good accounts of him, and i and they were persuaded that it was important to his health, an instant visit to paris; and that i was to go on monday, if he was ready. he was very good-humoured, and affected to think that i should never come back alive from france, it was death to go. but he had been looking for two years for somebody to go to italy with, and was ready to set out at . once, if i would go there. i was tempted, of course, to pronounce for italy; but now i had agreed to give my course in london. he gave mea cordial invitation to his lodgings (in buckingham place), where i promised to visit him before i went away. on [the next day?] i found him at home in his lodgings, but with him was a church clergyman, whose name i did not know, and there was no conversation. he was sure, again, that 1848] tennyson 447 he was taking a final farewell of me, as i was going among the french bullets, but promised to be in the same lodgings, if i should escape alive after my three weeks in paris. so we parted. i spent a month in paris, and, when i returned, he had left london. carlyle describes him as staying in london through a course of eight o'clock dinners every night for months until he is thoroughly fevered. then, notice is given to one of his friends, as lately to aubrey de vere, who has a fine estate in ireland (thirty miles from limerick), to come and carry him off bodily. tennyson had capitulated, on three conditions : first, that he should not hear anything about irish distress ; second, that he should not come downstairs to breakfast; third, that he might smoke in the house. i think these were the three. so poor tennyson, who had been in the worst way, but had not force enough to choose where to go, and so sat still, was now disposed of. tennyson was in plain black suit and wears glasses. carlyle thinks him the best man in england to smoke a pipe with, and used to see him much; had a place in his little garden, on the wall, where tennyson's pipe was laid up. he has other brothers, i believe, besides tennyson 448 [age 44 journal tiis turner, the elder; and, i remember, carlyle told me with glee some story of one of them, who looked like alfred, and whom some friend, coming in, found lying on the sofa and addressed him, “ah, alfred, i am glad to see you,” and he said, “i am not alfred, i am septimus; i am the most morbid of all the tennysons.” i suppose he is self-indulgent and a little spoiled and selfish by the warm and universal favor he has found. lady duff gordon told me that the first day she saw him he lay his whole length on the carpet, and rolled himself to her feet and said, “will you please to put your feet on me for a stool.” coventry patmore described him as very capricious and as once spending the evening with a dozen friends, “not, to be sure, his equals, but as nearly his equals as any that could be collected." yet tennyson would not say a word, but sat with his pipe, silent, and at last said, “ i am going to cheltenham ; i have had a glut of men.” when he himself proposed, one day, to read tennyson a poem which he had just finished, that tennyson might tell him of anything which his taste would exclude, tennyson replied, “mr. patmore, you have no idea how many applications of this sort are made to me." dr. t. p. shepherd, of providence, who trava 15 an was n scru 1848] tennyson incognito 449 elled in the east with w. stirling, told me that he met tennyson at a hotel in amsterdam, and lived there a fortnight with him, not knowing his name, but riding out with him to see the environs, and meeting at the table d'hôte. he set his servant to ascertain from tennyson's servant his master's name; but the man was only a valet de place, and did not know; for tennyson scrupulously concealed his name, and got into trou. ble with the police about his passport. dr. shepherd thought he must be carlyle, from the strength and brilliancy of his conversation, until he spoke of carlyle. one day, however, he recited the “ moated grange," and inquired of dr. shepherd if they liked such verses in america. dr. shepherd replied, yes, he knew the verses; they were by tennyson, and, though he could not say they were widely known, yet they had a very cordial troop of admirers in the united states. “well,” replied the other, “ i am tennyson.” and thereafter their acquaintance was intimate, and he made dr. shepherd promise to visit him in england. but when dr. shepherd was in england, and inquired for him, he found, he said, that he was in a kind of retreat for the sane, which they keep there, and so saw him not. 450 journal (age 44 mr. sylvester told me that mr. farie could draw a model of any loom or machine after once seeing it, for rees's cyclopædia, and did so in the strutt's mills. mr. hallam asked me, at lord ashburton's, “whether swedenborg were all mad, or partly knave?” he knew nothing of thomas taylor, nor did milman, nor any englishman. france [in the first week in may, mr. emerson, neglecting the advice of solicitous friends, in his wish to see france especially in days of national crisis, and, incidentally, to gain a better knowledge of the language, crossed the channel.] may 6. from boulogne to paris fifty six leagues, seven and one-half mortal hours. in approaching paris, it seemed a nation of soldiers. the climate seemed altered, and 't is incredible that this syrian capital — all the people poured into the street — should be so near to london. in paris, my furnished lodgings, a very comfortable suite of rooms (15 rue des petits augustins) on the second floor, cost me ninety francs a 451 1848] paris month, or three francs a day. ... the expenses of living for a day, at my rate, are six francs fifteen sous, or seven francs. ’t is true that a breakfast consists of a certain number of mouthfuls. well, in france they count the number of mouthfuls—say thirty-two or sixty — and put a price on the mouthfuls, three centimes, five centimes a spoonful. i looked in all the shop windows for toys this afternoon and they are very many and gay, but the only one of all which i really wish to buy is very cheap; yet i cannot buy it, namely, their speech. i covet that which the vilest of the people possesses. french poetry is peu de chose and in their character and performance is always prose, prose ornée, but never poesy. madame de tocqueville, who is english, tells me that the french is so beautiful a language, so neat, concise, and lucid, that she can never bear to speak english. 'tis a peculiarity of the french that they assimilate all foreign words, and do not suffer them to be pronounced in the foreign manner. . . . every blouse in the street speaks like an academician; which is not possible in england. i do not distinguish between the language of a blouse, talking philosophy in a group, and that of a cousin. 452 journal (age 44 after the pair of noble fountains which play all day, the principal ornament of the place de la concorde is the obelisk brought from thebes. the boulevards have lost their fine trees, which were all cut down for barricades in february. at the end of a year we shall take account, and see if the revolution was worth the trees. in paris, the number of beggars does not compare with that in london, or in manchester even. the architecture of paris compares most favorably with that of london; is far more original, spirited, national. here is a royal palace. they have spent a great deal of money, and they have something to show for it. this tuileries, this louvre, this hôtel de ville, palais de justice, and old tower de la boucherie (st. jacques). efflorescence of france. i find the french all soldiers, all speakers. the aplomb which these need, every frenchman has; every gamin a certain trimness or trigness and a certain fancy cut like a dandy boat at a regatta. a certain ingenuity and verbal clearness of statement they require, and that satisfies them that they have a new and lucid 1848] the french. clough 453 and coherent statement, though it is artificial, and not an idea; verbally help, and not really. m. lambert is the servant of his literary theory. but where is the emancipation and joy that comes from new life of an idea ? i find the french intensely masculine. i find them expressive, not reticent. their heads are not so round as the english head, said doherty.' saw clough,' — talked of the inevitable civilization, and how much we owe it; as inevitable as we are the development of inevitable parts. we have got our bread and blood out of it until this hour, and must contrive to get our friction-pump or tap-root still applied to it, nor must we protest in parts, but in system. o · i suppose you could never prove to the mind of the most ingenious mollusk that such a creature as a whale was possible. hugh doherty, whom mr. emerson speaks of later as a unitarian minister, apparently at paris at this time. 2 mr. emerson took pleasure in clough s society and valued his poems, especially the bothie of tober-na-vuolicb. his presence in paris at the time of this visit was also helpful to mr. emerson. they dined together daily and often went about together. 454 journal (age 44 when men feel and say, “those men occupy my place,” the revolution is near. but i never feel that any men occupy my place;'... i have never met a person superior to his talent, — one who had money in his pocket and did not use it. may. the most important word the age has given to the vocabulary is blouse. it has not yet got into the dictionary, and even in america for a year or two it has been of doubtful sound, whether english “blouse," or french “blouse.” but, at last, the french revolution has decided forever its euphony. it is not that it was new for the workman to have ideas and speak in clubs, but new in its proportions to find not five hundred but two hundred thousand thinkers and orators in blouse. guizot thought they were but a handful. an orator in the french club declares that “ when the hour arrives for the second revolution, and it is not far off, the people (who had i for the rest of the passage, see “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 57). 2 and humbug (r. w. e.'s note). rous 1848] clubs. spanish art 455 been too generous at the first revolution in february) will show that it can avenge as well as pardon !” 'tis certain that they are dreadfully in earnest at these clubs. la vie à bon marché is the idea of paris. “l'inconstance immortelle des français.” george sand. “ le club des conspirateurs c'est l'aristocratie de la démocratie. “le club des conspirateurs déclare qu'il reconnaît les droits de l'émeute, et un conspirateur suprême. la conspiration est en permanence. “il sera créé au collège de france une chaire de conspiration. “on chargera le citoyen blanqui de rédiger dans le silence du cabinet un manuel de conspiration à l'usage des enfans.” in the spanish gallery in the louvre, it is easy to see that velasquez and spagnoletto were painters who understood their business. i fancy them both strong, swarthy men who would have made good soldiers or brigands at a pinch. and in running along the numberless cartoons of 456 journal (age 44 old masters, the eye is satisfied that the art of expression by drawing and color has been perfectly attained; that on that side, at least, humanity has obtained a complete transference of its thought into the symbol. these spaniards paint with a certain ferocity. zurbaran who paints monks, especially one monk with a skull in his hands, which seems the reflection of his own head, is a master so far. it is impossible in a french table d'hôte to guess the social rank or the employment of the various guests. the military manners universal in young frenchmen, their stately bow and salutation through their beards, are, like their beards, a screen, which a foreigner cannot penetrate. at the club des femmes, there was among the men some patronage, but no real courtesy. the lady who presided spoke and behaved with the utmost propriety, a woman with heart and sense, but the audience of men were perpetually on the lookout for some équivoque, into which, of course, each male speaker would be pretty sure to fall; and then the laugh was loud and general. 1848] clubs. seriousness 457 le club des clubs was one which consisted of the chiefs of all the clubs, and to which was accorded a tribune in the assembly. but they were so dictatorial and insolent that the chamber at last mustered courage enough to silence them, and, i believe, to turn them out. the gallic cock. an errand boy in france is commissionaire; a kitchen is laboratoire ; applied to is consacrée. a taper is not a conflagration. the negative superlative goes on increasing, and by and by, when all france is mad and every man takes the other by the throat, blanqui will hang himself for joy. an artist's ticket to society is not transferable, he has not an inch of margin to his own footing on this precipice to spare, so that, though he possessed the highest social privileges, he could not add to them, and (what is worse in his own eyes) could not impart them. or give me a rich mind, which does not bring a set of stories to the new companions whom he joins, and, when they are spent, has no more to say, but warm bounteous discourse. what trial is so severe to men as a sea voyage? a college 458 (age 44 journal examination is nothing to it. he who has not tired or restrained his shipmates in a month's voyage has won palms that cambridge or the academy or the congress cannot give. what games sleep plays with us! we wake indignant that we have been so played upon, and should have lent ourselves to such mountains of nonsense. all night i was scarifying with my wrath some conjuring miscreant, but unhappily i had an old age in my toothless gums, i was as old as priam, could not articulate, and the edge of all my taunts and sarcasms, it is to be feared, was quite lost. yet, spite of my dumb palsy, i defied and roared after him, and rattled in my throat, until wife waked me up. then i bit my lips. so one day we shall wake up from this longer confusion, and be not less mortified that we had lent ourselves to such rigmarole. rers torchlight processions have a seek-and-slay look, dripping burning oil-drops, and the bearers now and then smiting the torch on the ground, and then lifting it into the air as w. described them. i find in french pictures a coloring of human flesh, analogous to dead gold in jewelry. 1848) doherty. joking 459 mr. doherty thought this a revolution against humbugs; that the english were not so reasonable as they appear; and the french were more reasonable than they appear. all the clubs are armed, – that is, have depots of arms. paris, rue des petits augustins, no. 15; may 13. the one thing odious to me now is joking. what can the brave and strong genius of c.' himself avail? what can his praise, what can his blame avail me, when i know that if i fall or if i rise, there still awaits me the inevitable joke? the day's englishman must have his joke, as duly as his bread. god grant me the noble companions whom i have left at home who value merriment less, and virtues and powers more. if the english people have owed to their house of commons this damnable derision, i think they have paid an over-price for their liberties and empire. but when i balance the attractions of good and evil, when i consider what facilities, what talents a little vice would furnish, then rise before me not these laughers, but the dear and comely forms of honour and genius and piety in my distant home, and they touch me with chaste i carlyle or clough? 460 journal (age 44 palms moist and cold, and say to me, you are ours. “remember to be sober and to be disposed to believe, for these are the nerves of wisdom.” and mahomet's retribution of the jokers.' one of the principal discoveries, or, say confirmations, obtained in europe, was that bigger incomes do not help anybody. the scholar was glad to leave his manuscript and go to the window. [the above sentence, unexplained, in one of the journals of these weeks, may be well accounted for in a letter written by mr. emerson to his wife, may 17, from which it seems best to introduce here the following extract:-] “on monday (day before yesterday), as you will read in the papers, there was a revolution defeated, which came within an ace of succeeding. we were all assured for an hour or two that the new government was proclaimed and the old routed, and paris, in terror, seemed to acquiesce; but the national guards, who are all i “on the day of resurrection those who have indulged in ridicule will be called to the door of paradise and have it shut in their faces when they reach it.” arms 1848] plot overthrown 461 but the entire male population of paris, at last found somebody to rally and lead them, and they swept away the conspirators in a moment. blanqui and barbès, the two principal leaders, i knew well,' as i had attended blanqui's club on the evenings of saturday and sunday, and heard his instructions to his montagnards, and barbès' club i had visited last week and i am heartily glad of the shopkeepers' victory. “i saw the sudden and immense display of arms when the rappel was beaten on monday afternoon; the streets full of bayonets, and the furious driving of the horses dragging cannon towards the national assembly; the rapid succession of proclamations proceeding from the government and pasted on the walls at the corners of the streets, eagerly read by crowds of people; and, not waiting for this, the rapid passage of messengers with proclamations in their hands which they read to knots of people and then ran on to another knot, and so on down a street. the moon shone as the sun went down; the river rolled under the crowded bridges along the swarming quays; the tricolor waved on the great mass of the tuileries, which seemed too noble a palace to doubt of the owner; but be1 of course, only as having seen and heard them. 462 journal (age 44 fore night all was safe, and our new government, who had held the seats for a quarter of an hour, were safe in jail.”. fête du 21 mai. “ ballon tricolore; 500 jolies filles, les vivandières et les cantinières, et les petits enfants de chaque sexe, vêtus en soldat ou avec des rubans de fête, marchant dans le cortège”; drummajors, vast men with baton and huge caps of fur; sapeurs and pompiers ; children on stilts; merry-go-rounds — [the following two sentences were evidently written twenty years later, after clough's death:] citizen blanqui, a lame man with the face and air of a conspirator, and barbès (head of the club de la révolution) were the leaders of the 'émeute on the 15 of may, i think, which i saw. for details of may, 1848, in paris, see remains of a. h. clough, pp. 100-130. the question of history is, what each generation has done with its surplus produce? one bought crusades, one churches, one villas, one horses, and one railroads. ne e “le règne des épées a passé, le jour où celle de 1 more of this letter may be found in mr. cabor's memoir (pp. 571-573). 1848) socialist agitation 463 napoléon a été impuissante pour sa défense et pour la nôtre! “la force brutale des sabres, de la conquête, est brisée : brisez celle des fusils populaires. que les fusils, comme les épées, s'abaissent aujourdhui devant les idées. faites vous général des idées du siècle. . . . ce qui reste aujourdhui des canons de bonaparte, c'est la mitraille d'idées qu'ils contenaient aussi. ... ses codes étaient à la suite de ses armées, comme les cotons suivent les armées de l' angleterre.” — assemblée nationale, may 23. paris. in paris, 117 new newspapers have been set on foot since the revolution. this revolution distinguished from the old by the social problem agitated in every club. arithmeticians get up and cipher very shrewdly before the masses to show them what is each man's share. the good god, they say, is full of good sense, and the extreme inequality of property had got so far as to drive to revolution, and now it will not finish until god's justice is established, nor until the laborer gets his wages, nor until there is no idler left in the land. the idler is a diseased person and is to be treated by the state as a diseased person. in coming to the city, and seeing in it no 464 journal [age 44 men of information, you remain on the outside. but all this paris seems to me a continuation of the theatre, when i come out of the theatre, or of a limonade gazeuse, when i come out of the restaurant. this is the famous lotus which the mariners ate and forgot their homes. i pinch myself to remember mine. i went to hear michelet lecture on philosophy, but the sublime creed of the indian buddhists was not meant for a frenchman to analyze and crack his joke and make his grimace upon. but i came out hither to see my contemporaries, and i have seen leverrier to-day working out algebraic formulas on his blackboard to his class, quite heedless of politics and revolutions. i have seen rachel in phèdre and heard her chant the marseillaise. i have seen barbès rule in his club de la révolution, and blanqui in his club des droits de lhomme, and to-day they are both in the dungeon of vincennes. old revolution said, qu'est ce que le tiers état? rien. que doit il être ? tout. the new revolution reads, le producteur, for le tiers état. ce : the french have greatly more influence in 1848) water. the verdict 465 europe than the english. what influence the english have is by brute force of wealth ; that of the french, by affinity and talent. an eminent difference between paris and london is the economy of water. in paris, the stranger is struck with the beautiful fountains on the place de la concorde and gives paris the preference to london. but this water is not drinkable, and the houses in paris have no wells or pumps and buy all their water by the bucket from water-carriers who bring it from certain springs. in london every house has some kind of water-privilege ; as that in which i lived received its water from hertfordshire by an aqueduct which entered at the top of the house. so the new religion. you need only your own verdict. . . . or what if they tax you with gambling, or drinking, or riot, when you have all your virtue, health, and serenity, safe about you unspent? let them say it. for the good laws know whether it be so or not, and they cannot be made false witnesses. much of the time every man must have himself to his friend. nothing seems to me so excellent as a belief 466 (age 44 journal in the laws: it communicates dignity and an asylum in temples thenceforward to the character. the gods themselves could not help us. ah! if a man could explain his own facts, the little system of laws and companions and assessors or witnesses with which he walks surrounded, from which he cannot escape, the planet each of a choir of satellites. . . . had i not reason to say the secret of the present hour is as hard to tell as that of the future hour? steep and craggy, said porphyry, is the path of the gods. that unhappy man, called of genius, pays dear for his paltry distinction. his head runs up into a spire, and, instead of being a healthy, merry, round and ruddy man, he is some mad dominie. nature is regardless of the individual.... the writers are bold and democratic. the moment revolution comes, are they chartists and montagnards? no, but they talk and sit with the rich, and sympathize with them. 1 the remainder of the passage is in the first paragraph of “ culture” (conduct of life). 1848] useless dogmas 467 should they go with the chartist? alas, they cannot." mr. doherty said, the dogmes were malfaisants. it needed not to inquire whether men made them or god made them. in either case they had every right to take them away. in the natural world, they had tigers, snakes, wolves, and other dogmes malfaisants, which they did not hesitate to put away and kill; and so, in the moral world, they had the like, which, like these beasts, had answered their use for a time, but were now out of time, unfit, noxious. it is doubtful whether london, whether paris, can answer the questions which now rise in the minds. life is cheap in this ant-hill of paris. one can see that multitudes sell their future for one day. what prodigality to turn a little beautiful french edie’ into the procession to be consumed in the sun and crowd. 1 the long passage with a similar beginning is printed in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 63, 64). mr. emerson used it in his lecture on aristocracy given before his select london audience. at such a time this required moral courage. 2 some little girl figuring in the street parade of the revo468 journal (age 44 i have been exaggerating the english merits all winter, and disparaging the french. now i am correcting my judgment of both, and the french have risen very fast. but i see that both nations promise more than they perform. they do not culminate. 'tis easy to see that france is much nearer to socialism than england. in the gay and admirable illumination of the champs-elysées, one could see that it was but a few steps to the phalanstery. do not mind trifles — was the lesson so strenuously inculcated on my childhood. i did not learn it, and now i see england has not. i went to the pantheon and learned that the tomb of napoleon was at the invalides. rousseau and voltaire sleep under the pantheon. i have seen rachel in phèdre, in mithridate, and now last night in lucréce (of ponsard), in which play she took two parts, that of lucréce and that of tullia. the best part of her performance is the terror and energy she can throw into passages of defiance or denunciation. her manners and carriage are throughout pleasing by their highly intellectual cast. and her expreslutionists, of the age of mr. emerson's younger daughter edith. 1848] rachel. lamartine 469 sion of the character is not lost by your losing some word or look, but is continuous and is sure to be conveyed. she is extremely youthful and innocent in her appearance, and when she appeared after the curtain fell to acknowledge the acclamations of the house and the heaps of flowers that were flung to her, her smile had a perfect good nature and a kind of universal intelligence. ature at the chamber of the national assembly, by the kindness of mr. rush, who lent me his diplomatic ticket. lamartine made his speech on the question of poland. he was quite the best and indeed the only good speaker i heard in the house. he has a fine head, and a free and superior style of delivery, manly and cultivated. but he was quite at his ease, no sword or pikes over his head this time, and really little energy in his discourse. he read many.extracts from letters sent him from italy, and when he was tired, the members cried out, reposez vous! and the president gave an intermission for half an hour. the whole house of nine hundred members obviously listened with great respect and gladly to lamartine, for they want information, and it 470 (age 44 journal has been rather parsimoniously given by any whom they could trust. his speech is reckoned wise and moderate. to me it looks as if a wise frenchman should say to his country, leave poland and china and oregon to themselves. you have more than enough to do, at present, in constructing your own government and dealing with disorder, hunger, and faction in france. but lamartine praised the new republic because it had not a moment of egoism, but had adopted poland and italy. we now dine daily at a table d'hôte at no. 16 rue de notre dame des victoires, where five hundred french babitués usually dine at one franc sixty centimes. of course it is an excellent place for french grammar. nouns, verbs, adverbs, and interjections furnished gratuitously. i am told that there are twelve thousand students connected with the university, including all the faculties. 'tis a noble hospitality, and well calculated also, as it brings so great a population of foreigners to spend their money in france. paris has great merits as a city. its river is 1 mr. emerson and a. h. clough. mo 1848] the noble city 471 made the greatest pleasure to the eye by the quays and bridges; its fountains are noble and copious; its gardens or parks far more available to the pleasure of the people than those of london. what a convenience to the senses of men is the palais royal; the swarming boulevards, what an animating promenade; the furnished lodgings have a seductive independence; the living is cheap and good; then what a luxury is it to have a cheap wine for the national beverage as uniformly supplied as beer in england. the manners of the people, and probably their inferiority as individuals, make it as easy to live with them as with so many shopkeepers whose feelings and convenience are nowise to be consulted. meantime they are very civil and goodtempered, polite and joyous, and will talk in knots and multitudes in the streets all day for the entertainment of the passenger. then they open their treasures of art and science so freely to the mere passport of the traveller and to all the world on sunday. the university, the louvre, the hôtel de cluny, the institute, the gallery of the luxembourg, versailles. then the churches are always open: notre dame ; la sainte chapelle, built by st. louis and gorgeous within ; saint sulpice; the madeleine. 472 (age 45 journal then there is the pantheon ; and there is the jardin des plantes, worthy of admiration. everything odd and rare and rich can be bought in paris ; and by no means the least attractive of its shows is the immense book-stalls in the streets, maps, pictures, models, busts, sculptures, and libraries of old books spread abroad on tables or shelves at the side of the road. the manners of the people are full of entertainment, so spirited, chatty, and coquettish, as lively as monkeys. and now the whole nation is bearded and in military uniform. i have no doubt also that extremes of vice are found here, and that there is a liberty and means of animal indulgence hardly known by name, or even by rumor, in other towns. but any extremes are here also exceptional, and are visited here by the fatal nemesis who climbs all walls, dives into all cellars; but also the social decorum seems to have here the same rigors as in england, with a little variety in the application. a special advantage which paris has is in the freedom from aristocratic pride manifest in the tone of society. it is quite easy for any young man of liberal tastes to enter on a good footing the best houses. it is not easy in england. then the customs are cheap and inexpensive; a 1848) paris as a refuge 473 whilst it is a proverb, almost, that, to live in england at all, you must have a great fortune; which sounds to me as certain a prediction of revolution as musket-shots in the streets. so that on the whole i am thankful for paris, as i am for the discovery of ether and chloroform ; i like to know that, if i should need an amputation, there is this balm ; and if hard should come to hard, and i should be driven to seek some refuge of solitude and independency, why, here is paris. the cafés are not to be forgotten, filled with newspapers, blazing with light, sauntering places, oubliettes or remember-nothings. one in paris who would keep himself up with events must read every day about twelve newspapers of the two hundred that are printed there. then in the street the affiches on every spot of dead wall attract all eyes and make the text of all talk for the gazing group. the government reserve to their own the exclusive use of white paper. all others are in colours. after twenty-five days spent in paris, i took the railroad for boulogne, stopped at amiens half an hour and saw the cathedral, which has nothing equal to it in paris in the elaboration 474 journal (age 45 of the details of its moulding and sculpture on the exterior; saw the weeping angel also. at boulogne (where six thousand english reside for cheapness) i took the night steamboat for folkestone. the twenty seven miles of roughest sea between boulogne and folkestone made a piteous scene, of course, in the saloon of the boat, but as that wild strip of sea is from age to age the cheap standing army of england and worth a million of troops, no englishman should grudge his qualms. ouis [after this short sojourn in france, mr. emerson's lecturing engagements in london called him back to england. at the portman square literary and scientific institution he gave, between the 5th and 17th of june, six lectures, as follows: i, “powers and laws of thought”; ii, “relation of intellect to natural science”;iii,“ tendencies and duties of men of thought” (these were newly written or put together from his notes, for he had found, much to his annoyance, that his lectures given in the manufacturing towns had been so fully reported in london papers that he was unwilling to read them there); iv,“ politics 1848) the london lectures 475 and socialism”; v, “poetry and eloquence”; vi, “natural aristocracy” (this also was written in england and first delivered in edinburgh). the price that his friends had arranged for this course was high, and the audience, though including many persons of rank and of literary distinction, was not large, though it grew after the first lecture. of it mr. emerson wrote, “ it is truly a dignified company in which several notable men and women are patiently found.” (for some account of the company, see the letters in cabot's memoir, vol. ii, pp. 546-549.) during the delivery of this course a letter appeared in the london examiner urging a repetition of it at a price sufficiently low to allow of poor literary men hearing emerson. the writer, on behalf of “poets, critics, philosophers, historians, scholars, and the other divine paupers of that class,” urged this “ because emerson is a phenomenon whose like is not in the world, and to miss him is to lose an important part out of the nineteenth century.” mr. emerson could not refuse this plea of “all my public,” as he called them, so postponed his departure and read in exeter hall three lectures ; i, “napoleon”; ii, “ shakspeare”; iii, “ domestic life."7 476 (age 45 journal long ago, in boston, mr. george bancroft invited me to his house and introduced me to lord morpeth. in england, lord morpeth, now changed to lord carlisle, invited me to dine with him, and introduced me to his sister, the duchess of sutherland.' for a summary or verdict on the universities, full of good sense, see johnson's england as it is, vol. ii, p. 122. june 8 (?). i write “ mind and manners in the nineteenth century," ? and my rede is to make the student independent of the century, to show him that his class offer one immutable front in all times and countries, cannot hear the drums of paris, cannot read the london journals; they are the wandering jew or the eternal angel that survives all, and stands on the same i for mr. emerson's account of this distinguished and attractive lady and his visit to stafford house, “ the best house in the kingdom, the queen's not excepted,” see mr. cabot's memoir (pp. 548–551). 2 possibly the third of the three lectures on natural history of intellect in the course of six given in june in london, though that is elsewhere mentioned as “ tendencies and duties of men of thought.” 1848] democratic america 477 fraternal relation to all. the world is always childish, and with each gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more: but it is always becoming evident that the permanent good is for the soul only, and cannot be retained in any society or system. this is like naphtha which must be kept in a close vessel. sc s when i get into our first-class cars on the fitchburg road, and see sweltering men in their shirt sleeves (?)' take their seats with some well-dressed men and women, and see really the very little difference of level that is between them all, and then imagine the astonishment that would strike the polished inmates of english first-class carriages if such masters should enter and sit beside them, i see that it is not fit to tell englishmen that america is like england. no, this is the paradise of the third class; here everything is cheap; here everything is for the poor. england is the paradise of the first class; it is essentially aristo1 the question-mark is in the manuscript, mr. emerson not feeling quite sure whether he remembered shirt-sleeves in a first class car at home, for at that time there were also second-class cars with a reduced fare. 478 journal (age 45 cratic, and the humbler classes have made up their minds to this, and do contentedly enter into the system. in england every man you meet is some man's son; in america, he may be some man's father. miss hennell said at edward street to carlyle, “do you think, if we should stand on our heads, we should understand better?”, it is true that there are no men in england quite ideal, living in an ideal world, and working on politics and social life only from that. carlyle is mixed up with the politics of the day, earth-son antæus. milton mixes with politics, but from the ideal side. “is not this of mine a tolerable gallery?” said philip hone. “yes," said leslie,“ but who would think of valuing a tolerable egg?” works on art are like the museums themselves, each of which has a few gems and the rest is rubbish. i want a manual which has all the works of the first style engraved and described ; and then of the second style. all the gems are fossil wine. i at one of the philosophical lectures in the portman square course. 1848) brain work. turner 479 when nature adds a little brain, she adds a little difficulty, or provides work for the brain to do. were brains to be sinecures? a weevil, a mite, is born in the plum or the bark on which he is to feed; but she has not thought it necessary, when a man is born, to insert him in a mountain of bread and cheese. june 25. dined at mr. field's at hampstead with rowland hill,” mr. sharpe, and stanfield, the painter. june 26. [breakfasted) at mr. stanfield's, who showed me some of turner's pictures and his own. each of turner's cost one hundred guineas. i went with edwin field and mr. stanfield and his son to the house of mr. windus, tottenham, to see his collection of turner's pictures * and drawings of which altogether he may have a hundred. this gallery was that in which ruskin had studied. it is quite necessary to see all these pictures to appreciate the genius of turner through his extravagances. 1 mr. hill, originator of penny postage, and mr. sharpe, an egyptologist. 2 in another account of this visit mr. emerson adds here, “ which justify ruskin's praise." rner 480 journal [age 45 june 27. mr. owen invited hillard' and myself to inspect the hunterian (john hunter) museum, of which he is the curator. afterwards, he would carry us to turner, the artist, who is his friend. we met accordingly at his chambers and he showed us over the museum, communicating a great deal of valuable information, of which i deeply regret that i omitted to make immediate record. he gave a sad history of the misuse and voluntary destruction of hunter's manuscripts by sir everard home, who had built his own scientific reputation on the private use he had made of these manuscripts, and then destroyed them to hide his debt. he was displaced, and owen himself appointed to the care of the museum, and he does not like to sleep one night away from it. one of these days when the museum shall be confided to other and sufficient hands, he said, he shall feel at liberty to come to america, and read lectures to the lowell institute of boston, as mr. lowell has pressed him to do. he thought faraday would also come to boston. owen seemed to me an englishman 1 probably mr. george s. hillard, of boston, at one time editor of the courier, author of six months in italy, and other works. 1848) story of turner 481 who had made a prodigious stride in scientific liberalism for an englishman, and indemnified himself in the good opinion of his countrymen by fixing a certain fierce limitation to his progress, and abusing without mercy all such as ventured a little farther; these poor transmutationists, for example. he carried us to turner's studio, but turner, though he had written him a note to announce his visit, was gone. so he showed us the pictures. in his earlier pictures, he said, turner painted conventionally, painted what he knew was there, finished the coat and buttons; in the later, he paints only what the eye really sees and gives the genius of the city or landscape. he was engaged to paint a whaleship [query, “ the slave ship”? e. w. e.], and he came one day to see mr. owen and asked to see a mullet (?) (agassiz said, a clio), and begged him to explain to him, from the beginning, the natural history of the creature; which he did; and turner followed him with great accuracy. in process of time the picture was painted, and owen went there to see his mullet; “i could not find it,” he said, “in the picture, but i doubt not it is all there.” he told us that, one day, being present at the annual dinner of the annu 482 journal (age 45 royal academy, which takes place in the gallery itself, as the shades of evening darkened around, all the pictures became opake, — all but turner's, and these still glittered like gems, as if having light in themselves. i was much struck with the elevated manner in which mr. owen spoke of the few men of science he named; of agassiz and others, he said, “each had a manner, and a certain strength, and his own foible too,” and he thought he could well discern that in all they did, and i think he added, “i can see the same in myself, too." turner's face, i was told, resembles much the heads of punch. [elsewhere in the journal mr. emerson gives this anecdote:-] turner told stanfield he will not suffer any portrait to be taken of him, for nobody would ever believe that such an ugly fellow made such beautiful things." it was miss — of new haven, who on reading ruskin's book, said “nature was mrs. turner.” by the kind offices of mr. milnes, mr. mili the editors are informed that ruskin had in his house at brantwood a beautiful portrait of turner painted by himself, and inscribed by him, “ quarto lustro ætatis suæ," i. e. in the fourth lustrum of the artist's life. 1848] milnes 483 man, lord morpeth, and i know not what other gentlemen, i found myself elected into the “athenæum” club,“ during my temporary residence in england”; a privilege one must prize, not because only ten foreigners are eligible, at any one time, but because it gives all the rights of a member in the library and reading room, a home to sit in, and see the best company, and a coffee room, if you like it, where you eat at cost. milnes, milman, crabbe robinson, and many good men are always to be found there. milnes is the most good-nat ured man in england, made of sugar; he is everywhere, and knows everything; has the largest range of acquaintances, from the chartist to the lord chancellor; fat, easy, affable, and obliging; a little careless and sloven in his dress. his speeches in parliament are always unlucky, and a signal for emptying the house, a topic of great mirth to himself and all his friends, who frankly twit him with it. he is so entirely at home everywhere, and takes life so quietly, that sydney smith called him“ the cool of the evening,” and i remember i was told some anecdotes of exploits of well-bred effrontery. they address him now as citoyen milnes, since punch's, that is, thackeray's late list of som 484 journal (age 45 seme the ministry; but with pure feeling between jest and earnest they speak of him as really one who might play, one day, the part of lamartine in england. carlyle, at the first meeting of the london library, proposed to sacrifice milnes, as a sort of acceptable iphigenia. when he breakfasted somewhere with the archbishop of canterbury, his friend said, “now, milnes, i beg you not to slap him on the back, and call him canterbury, before breakfast is half over." his good humor is infinite ; he makes bad speeches of exquisite infelicity, and joins in the laugh against himself. he is very liberal of his money, and sincerely kind and useful to young people of merit. coventry patmore told me that milnes had procured him spontaneously the place he holds of sub-librarian in the british museum; and that he had known many good deeds of his. jane carlyle testified to his generosity — rare, she said, among people of fashion — with his money. for my part, i found him uniformly kind and useful to me both in london and in paris. he procured me cards to lady palmerston's soirée, introduced me there, and took pains to show me all the remarkable persons there, the 1848] soirées 485 crown prince of prussia; the prince of syracuse ; rothschild, a round, young, comfortablelooking man; mr. hope, reputed the richest commoner in england; the turkish ambassador; lord lincoln, head of the “ young england” party; and princely foreigners, whose names i have forgotten. milnes took pains to make me acquainted with chevalier bunsen and lady bunsen, whom i had already met at mr. bancroft's; with young mr. cowper, son of lady palmerston; with disraeli; and with macaulay, whom i here met for the second time. i had a few words with both lord and lady palmerston. he is frank (at least, in manner; — bancroft says, far from frank in business), affable, of a strong but cheerful and ringing speech. but i soon had enough of this fine spectacle and escaped. milnes sent me again another card from lady palmerston, but i did not go. milnes again befriended me at sir william molesworth's, where bancroft carried me, one night, and made me acquainted with dr. elliotson, and a very sensible young man, member of parliament, whose name i have lost. at paris, he carried me to de tocqueville, and at last, at my exeter hall lectures in london, he took 486 (age 45 journal the chair, and made a closing speech full of praises, perfectly well meant, if not felicitous. he is one of the most valuable companions in london, too, for the multitude of anecdotes he tells about good people, and at paris i found him equally acquainted with every body and a privileged man, with his pockets full of free cards, which admitted him everywhere. milnes said, in my presence, that he desired nothing so much as to make a good speech in parliament. the distinguished mrs. norton (to whom i was carried one day by carlyle) said that“milnes and disraeli were the two remarkable political failures which she had known.” viscount melbourne's letter in reply to lord brougham's sheets of objections, — “dear b. i am sorry you don't like my appointment of n. pray expedite the matter through all the forms as fast as possible. yours, m.” topics of conversation in england are irish affairs ; universal suffrage; pauperism ; public education; right and duty of government to interfere with increase of population; taxes. paris and london have this difference, that paris exists for the foreigner, serves him; — 1848] the french. socialism 487 whilst in london is the londoner, who is much in the foreigner's way. england has built london for its own use. france has built paris for the world. the french have this wonderful street courage. the least dislike, the smallest unpopularity, is intolerable to them. but they will take your fire with indifference. and is this a world to ride virtues in? there must, then, be revolutions to bring them out. in blanqui's club des droits de l'homme, an orator in blouse said, “why should the rich fear that we shall not protect their property? we shall guard it with the utmost care, in the belief that it will soon be our own.” people eat the same dinner at every house in england. 1, soup; 2, fish; 3, beef, mutton, or hare; 4, birds; 5, pudding and pastry and jellies; 6, cheese ; 7, grapes, nuts, and wine. during dinner, hock and champagne are offered you by the servant, and sherry stands at the corners of the table. healths are not much drunk in fashionable houses. after the cloth is removed, three bottles, namely, port, sherry, and claret, invariably circulate. what rivers of wine are 488 (age 45 journal drunk in all england daily ! one would say, every guest drinks six glasses. the english youth has a narrow road to travel. besides his horse and gun, all he knows is the door to the house of commons. ows landseer the only genius of the academy exhibition. leslie very sensible and pleasing. there are many english portraits, the true national type. the 'hôs of gibson, like the admirably finished pictures of scheffer, show want of all object with great powers of execution, so that we get noble vases empty. i bring home from england — 1, the heimskringla, or sea kings of norway, translated by laing ; 2, wood's athena oxonienses; 3, bede; 4, the meghaduta ; 5, lowth's life of william of wykeham; 6, wordsworth's scenery of the lakes; 7, jacobson's translation of æschylus; 8, john carlyle's translation of dante; 9, john mill's political economy. i thought how great men build substructures, and, like cologne cathedral, these are never finished. lord bacon begins, behmen begins, 1848) persons seen 489 goethe, fourier, they all begin; we, credulous, believe, of course, they can finish as they begun. if you press them, they fly to a new topic, and here again open a magnificent promise which serves the turn of interesting you, and silencing your reproaches. i stayed in london till i had become acquainted with all the styles of face in the street, and till i had found the suburbs and then straggling houses on each end of the city. then i took a cab, left my farewell cards, and came home. i saw alison, thackeray, cobden, tennyson, bailey, marston, macaulay, hallam, disraeli, milnes, wilson, jeffrey, wordsworth, carlyle, dickens, lockhart, procter, montgomery, collyer, kenyon, stephenson, buckland, sedgwick, lyell, edward forbes, richard owen, robert owen, cryikshank, jenny lind, grisi, william allingham, david scott, william b. scott, kinglake, de tocqueville, lamartine, leverrier, rachel, barbès, eastlake, spence, wilkinson, duke of wellington, brougham, joanna baillie, de quincey, sir c. fellows, sir henry de la bèche, john forster. [just before his final departure from london, mr. emerson visited cambridge, and the 490 journal (age 45 next day went with carlyle to salisbury, and thence by carriage to amesbury on july 7, whence they walked to stonehenge. next day they visited the sacred circle again with the local antiquary, then saw wilton house, and passed sunday with arthur helps at bishop's waltham. monday they spent at winchester. of this excursion mr. emerson gives a full account in english traits.] at stonehenge, it was impossible to forget turner's pictures. in the english landscape the combed fields have the softest look, and seemed touched with a pencil and not with a plough. july 12. with mr. kenyon and hillard, i joined the jays in a visit to stoke poges, where is gray's churchyard; then to eton, where we found six or seven hundred boys, the flower of english youth, some of them at cricket, on the green; others strolling in groups and pairs ; some rowing in the river; and recalled lamb's remark, “what a pity that these fine boys should be changed into frivolous members of parliament!” kenyon recalled verses of his own, of which i only remember, — 1848) eton and windsor 491 “o give us back our lusty youth!” and the whole place remembered gray. kenyon asked if ever a dirty request was couched in more beautiful verse than in the hints touching livings and preferments, addressed to the duke of grafton, in the cambridge installation ode. “ thy liberal heart, thy judging eye, the flower unheeded shall descry, and bid it round heaven's altars shed the fragrance of its blushing head; shall raise from earth the latent gem to glitter on the diadem.” after seeing the chapel, we went to windsor, where the tickets of the jays procured admittance for the whole party to the private apartments of her majesty. we traversed the long corridors which form the gallery of sculpture and paintings, then the chambers, dining-room, and reception rooms of this palace. the 'green expanse of trim counties which these windows command, beginning with a mile of garden in front, is excellent. then to the royal mews, where a hundred horses are kept; listened reverentially to all that the grooms told us of the favorite horses; looked at the carriages, etc. с 492 journal [age 45 if hard came to hard, the camel has a good deal of hump left to spend from. in st. george's chapel, mr. kenyon pointed out the true character of stained-glass windows, which is not in large figures or good drawings, but in gem-like splendor and condensation. in like manner he quoted lady morgan's notion on carpets, that they should be spread, not nailed; and there should not be great elaborate figures, but such a disposition of forms and colors that they should seem like jewels trodden in. from windsor we went to virginia water, the toy lake and toy fishing-house of george iv. (but the expense squandered on these grounds does not save them from the ridicule of a tawdry counterfeit, and the spectator grudges his time. here is a made waterfall; or a made ruin, the “persepolis of the woods,” constructed of stones brought from the ruins of carthage.) two red flags hanging from the little frigates afloat were quite too important in the raree-show. we suspected the two or three people in the boat were hired to sit there by the day; and the eye mistrusted the houses might be pasteboard and the rocks barley candy. [mr. emerson sailed from liverpool july 15.] 1848] homeward voyage 493 at sea, july 19 (?). the road from liverpool to new york is long, crooked, rough, rainy, and windy. even good company will hardly make it agreeable. four meals a day is the usual expedient, four and five (and the extreme remedy shows the exasperation of the case), and much wine and porter are the amusements of wise men in this sad place. never was a well-appointed dinner with all scientific belongings so philosophic a thing as at sea. even the restless american finds himself, at last, at leisure. the letter bag is captain hoxie's best passenger. it neither eats nor drinks, and yet pays in liverpool a passenger's fare. captain h. tells me that he usually carries between four and five thousand letters each way. at the new york post-office, they count his letters and pay him two cents for every one; at liverpool, twopence. he received in liverpool £39 the last time. i was accustomed to characterize alcott, in england, by saying that he was the one man i had met who could read plato without surprise questions : what is the latin grace at oxford ? 494 journal (age 45 benedictus, benedicat; benedicitur, benedicatur.' is carlyle a voter? was coleridge? the six points of chartism? 1, universal suffrage; 2, vote by ballot; 3, paid legislation ; 4, annual parliament; 5, equality of electoral districts ; 6, no property qualification. at sea, july 23. dragged day and night continually through the water by this steam engine, at the rate of near twelve knots, or fourteen statute miles, the hour; in the nearing america my inviting port, england loses its recent overweight, america resumes its commanding claims. one long disgustis the sea. no personal bribe would hire one who loves the present moment. who am i to be treated in this ignominious manner, tipped up, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge mephitis and stewing-oil? these lack-lustre days go whistling over us and are those intercalaries i have often asked for, and am cursed now with, the worthless granting of my prayer. 1 the editors are informed that a usual form of asking the blessing before a meal is, benedictus benedicat ; may the blessed (lord) bless (our food): and of grace afterwards, benedictus bene dicatur ; (for this) may the blessed (lord) be blessed. resun 1848) the new steamships 495 thomas g. appleton' makes now his fourteenth passage. “shakspeare will do,” he said. the english habit of betting makes them much more accurate than we are in their knowledge of particulars. — “which is the longest river, the mississippi or the missouri?” — they are about the same length. — “about! that won't do, i've a bet upon it.” captain lott says that 't is difficult to know in america the precise speed of a boat because the distances are not settled between the cities, and we overrate them. in england, the distance from boston to new york would be measured to half a foot. he says that the boat is yet to be built that will go through the water nineteen miles per hour. in the cabin conversations about england and america, tom appleton amused us all by tracing all english performance home to the dear puritans, and affirming that the pope also was once in south america, and there met a yankee, who gave him notions on politics and religion. m. lehmann, in paris, who made a crayon sketch of my head for madame d'agout, remarked that in american heads was an approach i thomas gold appleton, the genial boston wit. 496 [age 45 journal to the indian type; and in england, or perhaps from david scott at edinburgh, i heard a similar observation. gilpin's “ forest scenery” is a good example of the sincerity of english culture. (from lm) august. dr. kraitsir and all harro harrings, mazzinis, rufinis, major tochmans, and chopins, should be made to translate, spell, construe, , and render into all languages, the old lines,— “ how small, of all that human hearts endure, the part that laws or kings can cause or cure." preach not. “prends garde à l’emphase, qui n'est que le langage de la vanité satisfaite," says cardonnet, in george sand. dear doctor, is there any resurrection? what do you think?:... the gods deal very strictly with us, make out quarter bills, and exact specie payment, i this passage in substance is found in “ immortality" (letters and social aims, pp. 346, 347). no 0 1848] rules of the gods 497 allow no partnerships, no stock companies, no arrangements, but hold us personally liable to the last cent. ah, say i, i cannot do this and that, my cranberry field, my burned woodlot, the rubbish lumber about the summer house, my grass, my crop, my trees; — can i not have some partner; can't we organize our new society of poets and lovers, and have somebody with talent for business to look after these things, some deacons of trees and grass and cranberries, and leave me to letters and philosophy? but the nettled gods say, no, go to the devil with your arrangements. you, you, you personally, you alone, are to answer body and soul for your things. leases and covenants are to be punctually signed and sealed. arithmetic and the practical study of cause and effect in the laws of indian corn and rye meal is as useful as betting is in england to teach accuracy of statement, or duelling in france or ireland to make men speak the truth. a it is a sort of proverb with us that an englishman who comes into america must first be ruined before he can rise. 498 (age 45 journal it is a curious working of the english state that carlyle should in all his lifetime have never had an opportunity to cast a vote. henry thoreau is like the wood-god who solicits the wandering poet and draws him into antres vast and desarts idle, and bereaves him of his memory, and leaves him naked, plaiting vines and with twigs in his hand. ... i spoke of friendship, but my friends and i are fishes in our habit. as for taking thoreau's arm, i should as soon take the arm of an elm tree. i observe among the best women the same putting of life into their deed that we admire in the seton (was it?) who put her arm into the bolt-staples to defend queen mary,' or in the women in the old sieges who cut off their hair to make ropes and ladders for the men. ellery channing remarks in alcott the obstruction of his egoism. cultivated men always 1 the heroic deed remained in mr. emerson's mind, yet it was not done by mary seton to save her queen, but by katherine douglas on the night when james i of scotland was murdered. 1848] thoreau and alcott 499 must be had; everybody sends for them as for peaches. but what to do with this man, when you have first to kick away the man in order to get at what he knows. that each should in his house abide therefore was the world so wide ; that every man might live in his own house, and not in a hotel, o fourier ! henry thoreau, working with alcott on the summer house, said, he was nowhere, doing nothing.' alcott declares that a teacher is one who can assist the child in obeying his own mind, and who can remove all unfavorable circumstances. he believes that from a circle of twenty wellselected children he could draw in their conversation everything that is in plato, and as much better in form than it is in plato, as the passages i read him from the heimskringla are than bancroft. 1 a very amusing account by thoreau of his conversation with mr. alcott while working as his assistant on the summer-house is given in his letter to mr. emerson. (see familiar letters of thoreau, edited by mr. f. b. sanborn. ) 500 [age 45 journal he measures ages by teachers, and reckons history by pythagoras, plato, jesus, and pestalozzi. in his own school in boston, when he had made the schoolroom beautiful, he looked on the work as half-done. he said that every great man of antiquity had an eminent philosopher as his teacher. and this is true for pericles, alexander, alcibiades. the soul is older than the body. we are very careful of young pear trees and defend them from their enemies, from fire, blight, suckers, grass, slugs, pear worm, but we let our young men, in whose youth and flower all inferior kinds have their flowering and completion, grow up in heaps and by chance, take the rough and tumble, as we say (which is the skepticism of education), exposed to their borers, caterpillars, canker-worms, bugs, moping, sloth, seduction, wine, fear, hatred. w lucrezia floriani of george sand is a great step from the novels of one termination.' ... elizabeth hoar complains of this romance that tendency is not life. i say, there are always two things to be done by the novelist; first, 1 the omitted passage, thus beginning, is printed in “ books ” (society and solitude, p. 214). 1848) george sand. fruit 501 the aspirations of the mind are to be revered, that is, faith; and, secondly, the way things actually fall out, that is, fate. fate and faith, these two; and it seems as if justice were done, if the faith is vindicated in the sentiments of the heroes of the tale, and fate in the course and issue of the events. george sand is quite conversant with all the ideas which occupy us here in america. why did not the last generation of farmers plant the pears and plums and apples and grapes of whose growth time is the chief element and not leave it all to be done by us? ask in the market: a good pear will sell for a shilling. ... there are great and all but insuperable difficulties in raising these fine fruits in this climate; borer, mouse, curculio, and bug and caterpillar have settled a democratic majority against these whig fruits, and they have become a party of despair and only maintain a local existence in some few protected bostons and vermonts. that reply of the shilling is a quite impersonal, parliamentary reply ; it is a voice of things, of fates, of the general order of the world. it is as a practical answer, however, subject to i this question. was it not a reply for the last gen ! 502 journal (age 45 eration, and are there no new elements now which will make a new reply? a broad, slattern farming, it has been said, was the true policy of our new england men, and not the trim garden farming of the english. neither were there many buyers of fruit. now there are more people, the land is more easily manured and rich fruits can be raised, fed, protected, and ripened. now there are fences, also. to me one good pear tree bearing bartletts is a verdict. why should not my trees know the way towards the sky as well as yours? when i go into a good garden and nursery, i think if it were mine, i should never go out of it. i observe that all the bookish men have a tendency to believe that they are unpopular. parker gravely informs me by word and by letter that he is precisely the most unpopular of all men in new england. alcott believes the same thing of himself, and i, no doubt, if they had not anticipated me in claiming this distinction, should have claimed it for myself. the old writers, such as montaigne, milton, browne, when they had put down their thoughts, 1848) disraeli. character 503 jumped into their book bodily themselves, so that we have all that is left of them in our shelves; there is not a pinch of dust beside. the norsemen wrote with a crowbar, and we with gillott pens. september 10. disraeli, the chiffonier, wastes all his talentin the house of commons, for the want of character. he makes a smart cutting speech, really introduces new and important distinctions, as what he says in this new speech concerning “ the sentimental principle of nationality,” which the government have adopted; and what he says of “using forced occasions and invented opportunities," instead of availing of events. but he makes at last no impression, because the hearer asks, who are you? what is dear to you? what do you stand for? and the speech and the speaker are silent, and silence is confession. a man who has been a man has foreground and background. his speech, be it never so good, is subordinate and the least part of him, and as this man has no planet under him, but only his shoes, the hearer infers that the ground of the present argument may be no wider. george sand is a great genius, and yet owes 504 journal (age 45 to her birth in france her entire freedom from the cant and snuffle of our dead christianity. w we ne nore the railroads is the only sure topic for conversation in these days. that is the only one which interests farmers, merchants, boys, women, saints, philosophers, and fools. and now we have one more rival topic, california gold. the railroad is that work of art which agitates and drives mad the whole people; as music, sculpture, and picture have done on their great days respectively. september. james baker does not imagine that he is a rich man, yet he keeps from year to year that lordly park of his by fairhaven pond," lying idly open to all comers, without crop or rent, like some duke of sutherland or lord breadalbane, with its hedges of arcady, its sumptuous lawns and slopes, the apple on its trees, the i « fairhaven bay,” as it is usually called, is a widening of the south branch of the concord river, partly in lincoln, partly in concord. “ baker farm,” here alluded to, to which mr. channing wrote a pleasing poem, is now the property of charles francis adams. to the old holloway farm opposite, because long owned by the conant family, the name “conantum" was given, probably by mr. thoreau. 1848] baker farm. intellect 505 mirror at its foot, and the terraces of holloway farm on the opposite bank. as we walked thither, ellery proposed that we should have a water color exhibition in boston. i say, yes, but i should like better to have water-color tried in the art of writing. let our troubadours have one of these spanish slopes of the dry ponds or basins which run from walden to the river at fairhaven, in this september dress of color, under this glowering sky, — the walden sierras in september, given as a theme, and they required to daguerreotype that in good words. a mr. randall, m.c., who appeared before the committee of house of commons on the subject of the american mode of closing a debate, said, that “the one-bour rule worked well, made the debate short and graphic.” nothing worse can be said of a debate than that it is graphic. the only place in which i know graphic to be well used is ben jonson's “minerva's graphic tread.” god is a reality and his method is illusion. who is to save the present moment? the intellect is the head of the understanding, but is the feet of the moral power. 506 [ace 45 journal i know what i shall find if alcott brings me manuscripts. i shall have a salisbury plain full of bases of pyramids, to each of which i am to build an apex. [last days of september.] i go twice a week over concord with ellery, and, as we sit on the steep park at conantum, we still have the same regret as oft before. is all this beauty to perish? shall none remake this sun and wind, the sky-blue river, the riverblue sky; the yellow meadow spotted with sacks and sheets of cranberry-pickers; the red bushes; the iron-gray house with just the color of the granite rock; the paths of the thicket, in which the only engineers are the cattle grazing on yonder hill; the wide, straggling wild orchard in which nature has deposited every possible flavor in the apples of different trees? whole zones and climates she has concentrated into apples. we think of the old benefactors who have conquered these fields; of the old man moore, who is just dying in these days, who has absorbed such volumes of sunshine like a huge melon or pumpkin in the sun,who has owned in every part of concord a woodlot, until he could not find the boundaries of these, and never saw their interiors. but we say, where 1848) old-time farmers 507 is he who is to save the present moment, and cause that this beauty be not lost? shakspeare saw no better heaven or earth, but had the power and need to sing, and seized the dull ugly england, ugly to this, and made it amicable and enviable to all reading men, and now we are fooled into likening this to that; whilst, if one of us had the chanting constitution, that land would no more be heard of. the journal of one of our walks would be literature enough for a cockney, — or for us, if we should be shut up in our houses, — and we make no record of them. the cranberry meadow yonder is that where darius hubbard -picked one hundred bushels in one season, worth two hundred dollars, and no labor whatever is bestowed on the crop, not so much as to mow the grass or cut down the bushes. much more interesting is the woodlot, which yields its gentle rent of six per cent without any care or thought where the owner sleeps or travels, and fears no enemy but fire. but ellery declares that the railroad has proved too strong for all our farmers and has corrupted them like a war, or the incursion of another race; — has made them all amateurs, given the young men an air their fathers never had; they look as if they might 508 (age 45 journal be railroad agents any day. we shall never see cyrus hubbard, or ephraim wheeler, or grassand-oats, or oats-and-grass, or barrett or hosmer, in the next generation. these old saxons have the look of pine trees and apple trees, and might be the sons got between the two; conscientious laborers with a science born with them from out the sap vessels of these savage sires. this savagery is natural to man, and polished england cannot do without it. that makes the charm of grouse-hunting and deer-stalking to these lord breadalbanes walking out of their doors one hundred miles on their property, or dukes of sutherland getting off at last their town coat and donning their hunting-gear, exasperated by saloons and dress-boots. but let us have space enough, let us have wild grapes and rock-maple with tubs of sugar, let us have huge straggling orchards, let us have the ebba hubbard pear, hemlock, savin, spruce, walnut, and oak, cider mills with tons of pomace, peat, cows, horses, paddies, carts, and sleds. i had much discourse concerning the birth, death, and fate of men. ellery thought he should make a prayer to the chance that brought him into the world ; i, that when the child had 509 1848) detachment. escaped out of the womb, he cries, i thank the bridge that brought me safe over. i would not for ten worlds take the next man's chance. will they, one of these days, at fourierville, make boys and girls to order and pattern? i want, mr. christmas officer, a boy, between no. 17 and no. 134, half and half of both; or you might add a trace of 113. i want another girl like the one i took yesterday, only you can put in a leetle more of the devil. intellect detaches, yet the way men of talent make fools of themselves is, by too much detachment. a man knocks at my door and says, “i am, now for six years, devoted to the sun. i study the sun that i may thence deduce the laws of the universe.” i say i will not dispute against the sun, but beware of taking any one thing out of its connections, for that way folly lies. a little too much in the french novel about this superbe chevelure. the less said of that meteor the better. it is of quite unspeakable character, seat of illusion, and comes as near to witchcraft and humbugging as anything in nature. 510 journal [age 45 october 1. yesterday, the last day of september, ellery and i went to carlisle by the old road passing daniel clark's house into the region of the limekiln and the estabrook farm, and a country made up of vast orchards where the apple grows with a profusion that mocks the pains taken by careful cockneys who come into the country and plant young trees and watch them dwindle. here no hedges were wanted; the wide distance from any population is fence enough. here were varieties of apple not found in downing, the tartaric, and the cow apple, as ellery said. the ground was strewn with them in red and yellow heaps. they grew for their own pleasure; they almost lost price. barberries flourished at the roadside, and grapes along the walls. the apples were of a kind which i remember in boyhood, each containing a barrel of wine and half a barrel of cider, — the touch-me-ifyou-dare. books are like rainbows, to be thankfully received in their first impression, and not examined and surveyed by theodolite and chain, as if they were part of the railroad. perhaps it would be good in the tuition of an emperor 511 1848] bhagavat geeta that he should never read the same book twice. i owed — my friend and i owed — a magnificent day to the bhagavat geeta. — it was the first of books; it was as if an empire spake to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us. let us not now go back and apply a minute criticism to it, but cherish the venerable oracle. i still feel a little uneasiness about these novels. why should these sorceries have a monopoly of our delicious emotions? — the novel still, weakly uses the cheap resource of property married away instead of earned, and that is the chief conjuring-stick it has; for the instincts of man always attach to property, as he knows what accumulations of spiritual force go to the creation of that, and sobs and heart-beats and sudden self-sacrifice very easily result from the dealing with it. but the novel will find the way to our interiors, one day, and will not always be novel of costume merely. these stories are to stories of real life what the figures which represent the fashions of the month on the front page of the magazine are to portraits and inspired pictures. 512 (age 45 journal are you fond of drama? say the gods. said you so my fine fellow? verily? speak the truth a little, and truth on truth, to every man and woman; try that a few hours, and you shall have dramatic situations, assaults and batteries, and heroic alternatives to your heart's content. (from rs) to intellect, the guardian. “god's having tasted the sweet of eternity occasions him to demean himself enviously in it,” says the old translator of plutarch, quoting herodotus, thalia. “enlarge not thou thy destiny,” says the chaldaic oracle. and yet the exhilarations and expansions of spirit which come to us, and the entertainment in happy hours of dreams of a superior life are needed to balance the weight of earth. “more are made good by exercitation than by nature.” — democritus. oh, if a model person would remain a model person for a day! but, no, his virtues only serve to give a currency to his foolish acts and speeches. curi 's 1848) poet and politics 513 it is plain that some men may be spared from politics. the salvation of america and of the human race depends on the next election, if we believe the newspapers. but so it was last year, and so it was the year before, and our fathers believed the same thing forty years ago and these elections depend on the general bias and system of the people, — on their religion, interest, appetite, and culture, — and not on the particular information that is circulated in one or another set of handbills. the whole action of the scholar is mediate and to remote ends, and voting is not for him. his poem is good because it is not written to any person or moment, but to life generalized and perspectived. he does not live by the same calendar as the banker, but by the sidereal time of cause and consequence. all my knowledge of mathematics is the story of thales, who measured the pyramid by its shadow; and of pythagoras, .“when the famed lines pythagoras devised for which a hecatomb he sacrificed”; and of the decimal notation, the invention of zero, which seems to me one of the triumphs of human wit; and of the multiplication table 514 journal (age 45 which ranks with astronomy; and lastly, of the science of fractions as taught by warren colburn, for which i even him with stephenson and leverrier among our modern benefactors: and i add the beautiful command of the delphian oracle to the athenians that they should double his altar.' a child is better unborn than untaught! certainly be is. great cities, enormous populations, are disgusting, like the population of cheese, like hills of ants, or swarms of fleas, — the more the worse. but if they contain merlins and corneliuses, friar bacons, and crichtons, if road makers, mathematicians, astronomers, chemists; good kings like alfred; poets like chaucer; inventors, farmers, and sailors, who know the elements, and can make them work; memories, imaginations, combinings, perseverances, arts, music, architecture, nations of spartans, of athenians, of english, aristocratic men, and not maggots ;then 1 the story of doubling the cube at delos is in plutarch's demon of socrates; and in valerius maximus, vii, 13; and in webster's orations, p. 443; and in tennemann's life of plato, p. 339 (note by mr. emerson). 2 the substance of the first sentence is found in “ the uses of great men” (representative men, p. 4). can cmc 1848] success is adjustment 515 the more the merrier. open the gates, let the miracle of generation go on. a successful man is a good hit, a lucky adjustment to the men about him, and their aims, as goodrich, as weld, as brown, belknap, and all that company are. in another age and temper of the majority, each of these would be an odd one, an imbecile. well, what is a great man, but the like felicity of adjustment on a higher platform? and when society is advanced, the ruder strengths will be no more organizable than are now the first saurians whose bones lie in the coal-beds. the world is a glass dictionary. behmen and swedenborg and fox and luther do with the old, nearly effete christianity what good housewives do with their pies and bread when they are a little old, put them into the oven, and check the fermentation which is turning them sour and putrid. a book very much wanted is a beauties of swedenborg, or a judicious collection of sentences and symbols and pictures from his diffuse and wearisomely repetitious pages. wo 516 (age 45 journal ncame with his fine perceptions, his excellent instincts, his beautiful learning, his catholic mind, but i grudged him the time i gave him. he has become the spoiled child of culture; the roué of art and letters ; blasé with too much plato, dante, calderon, and goethe; tickled with music; pampered by his narrow society; amused by ballets; reading novels "like my bible”; and so jealous of partialism, so fearful of losing the level of life, that he has not written for three years, and now communicates nothing, but lies like a bit of bibulous paper. ... farewell, my once beautiful genius! i have learned a sordid respect for uses and values: i must have them. i must send him a peat-knife. are we to say, a man shall not go out to the shed to bring an armful of wood, lest this violence of action hurt the balance of his mind? cicero interprets aristotle's ¿vteré xela, a continued and perpetual motion. (tuscul. quæst. 1.) entelecheia, form; the form which the soul gives the body; perfection of the body; causative form. all knowledge is assimilation to the object of knowledge. « intellect is a god through a light which is more ancient than intellectual light and intel1848] inaction. inspiration 517 lect itself.” — proclus, theology of plato, vol. i, p. 115. “all conquests that history tells of will be found to resolve themselves into the superior mental powers of the conquerors.” – laing, vol. i, p. 14. the powers that make a capitalist are metaphysical. writing selects only the eminent experiences; poetry, the supereminent. inaction disgusts : activity is contagious. the inaction is treated with a bow like a rich man, but it is a farewell bow. he who bows makes his quittance so. that one he henceforth avoids, and will never pay him again the highest compliment of summoning him to help in manly work. ver i comme inspiration and talent. “je n'étais pas en peine de votre succès ; je savais que les hommes comme vous imposent tout ce qu'ils veulent, et, que, quand l'inspiration leur échappe, la science y supplée.” she proceeds, “mais pour les poètes, pour ces êtres incomplets et maladifs qui ne savent rien, qui étudient bien peu de choses, mais qui pres518 journal (age 45 sentent et divinent presque tout, il est difficile de les tromper, et de l'autel où le feu sacré n'est pas descendu, nulle chaleur n'émane." — lettres d'un voyageur. detachment. i value men as they can complete their creation. one man can hurl from him a sentence which is spheral, and at once and forever disengaged from the author. another can say excellent things, if the sayer and the circumstances are known and considered; but the sentences need a running commentary, and are not yet independent individuals that can go alone. thales called the soul κινήτικον, apt to move. if i wrote a novel, my hero should begin a soldier and rise out of that to such degrees of wisdom and virtue as we could paint; for that is the order of nature. (from rs) nature uniformly does one thing at a time: if she will have a perfect hand, she makes head and feet pay for it. so now, as she is making railroad and telegraph ages, she starves the spirituel, to stuff the matériel and industriel. 1848] respect the workers 519 xpws onlóel, the skin showeth, said the rotting pherecydes. everything comes to the face also. who are you that speak of these men? have you a title to sit in judgment on industrious, effective, producing men who have not indulged themselves by sitting in a corner and year by year surrounding themselves with new screens from dust, and light, and noise, and vulgarity, but have exposed themselves by labor in the open air to your inspection and criticism? how dare you mention their names to me? once these were your mates. now you are a gentleman. away with you! these are no gentlemen, but servants, earnest, muscular, toilsome, reliable servants, whom god and man must serve and honor. a bears wine better than b bears water. accommodation. did you give athens the best laws? solon. no, but the best it would receive. the transfer. i am struck with joy whenever genius makes the transfer from one part of nature to a remote part, and betrays the rhymes and echoes that pole makes with pole. 520 journal (age 45 on kicking up our beels. we have a ridiculous wisdom, like that which a man has of his corns, or of his gouty foot, and has become by experience cunning in setting it down so as not to hurt him, so we of our limitations. we have learned not to strut or talk of our wings, or affect angelic moods, but to keep the known ways, knowing that at the end of these fine struts is the lunatic asylum. the spirit of knowledge is serious, honest, and trustworthy. we say nothing against astronomy and vegetation, because we are roaring here in our bed with rheumatism. we doubt not there are bounding fawns, and lilies with graceful, springing stem ; so neither do we doubt or fail to love the eternal law of which we are such shabby practicers. a cripple was our father and an ethiop was our mother, and we worship the liberty which we shall not see with our eyes, nor help but with our prayer. our philosophy is to wait. we have retreated on patience, transferring our oft-shattered hope now to larger and eternal good. we meant well, but our uncle was crazy and must be restrained from waking the house. the roof leaked, we were out of wood, our sisters were unmarried 1848) wait for sight 521 and must be maintained; there were taxes to pay, and notes, and, alas, a tomb to build : we were obliged continually to postpone our best action, and that which was life to do could only be smuggled in to odd moments of the month and year. then we say, dear god, but the life of man is not by man, it is consentaneous and far-related, it came with the sun and nature, it is crescive and vegetative, and it is with it as with the sun and the grass. i obey the beautiful necessity. the powers that i want will be supplied as i am supplied, and the philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe. god never made such a bungler as i am at any practical work, therefore i keep clear of the garden and the phalanstery. henry thoreau sports the doctrines of activity : but i say, what do we? we want a sally into the regions of wisdom, and do we go out and lay stone wall or dig a well or turnips? no, we leave the children, sit down by a fire, compose our bodies to corpses, shut our hands, shut our eyes, that we may be entranced and see truly. sir david brewster gives exact directions for microscopic observation. thus; “lie 522 (age 45 journal down on your back and hold the single lens and object over your eye,” etc. do you think ecstasy is ever communicable ? the most powerful means are the cheapest, fire, water, fresh air, the stroke of the hand, a kind eye, a serene face, these are the drugs of æsculapius and galen and these leave the whole apothecary's shop to inferior and busier doctors. “peu de moyens, beaucoup d'effet." “wherein do philosophers excel other men?” —“though all laws were abolished, we should lead the same lives,” answered aristippus. “for we should dare to affirm the truth especially when speaking concerning the truth.” – phædrus, taylor, vol. iii. immortality. “le besoin de spécifier, la persistance tenace de tout ce qui est une fois arrivé à la réalité, force centripete, à laquelle aucune condition extérieure ne saurait rien changer : le genre erica en est la preuve.” — goethe, apud martins, p. 334. “is individuality the preached immortality?” that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. 1848] immortality. leasts '523 'tis an intellectual quality. he has it who gives life to all names, persons, things, so that greek mythology dies not for him, nor any art is lost. raffaelle had no need of more originality than to watch the clouds and the men. doctrine of leasts. the principle of all things, entrails made of smallest entrails; bone of smallest bone; blood of small sanguine drops reduced to one; gold of small grains; earth of small sands compacted; small drops to water ; sparks to fire contracted. lucretius apud stanley. every director is also a bank. every poem must be made up of lines that are poems. every hose in nature fits every hydrant; every atom screws to every atom; so only is crystallization, chemistry, vegetable, and animal, possible. lectures: 1, the superlative; 2, reading; 3, natural aristocracy; 4, natural history of · intellect, i; 5, natural history of intellect, ii; 524 journal (age 45 6, natural history of intellect, iii; 7, spirit of the age. england. not to see a knife made, but to see the country of success, i, who delighted in success, departed. i went out by invitation of some societies to read lectures in lancashire and yorkshire; yet i could not have contrived so ingenious a scheme for seeing towns and cities, men and things with thoroughness, as that i blundered into. alcott. alcott is a certain fluid in which men of a certain spirit can easily expand themselves and swim at large, they who elsewhere found themselves confined. he gives them nothing but themselves. of course, he seems to them the only wise and great man. but when they meet people of another sort, critics and practical, and are asked concerning alcott's wisdom, they have no books to open, no doctrines to impart, no sentences or sayings to repeat, and they find it quite impossible to communicate to these their good opinion. me he has served now these twelve years in that way; he was the reasonable creature to speak to that i wanted. sciv 1848) alcott's gold 525 there is in california a gold ore in great abundance in which the gold is in combination with such elements that no chemistry has yet been able to separate it without great loss. alcott is a man of unquestionable genius, yet no doctrine or sentence or word or action of his which is excellent can be detached and quoted. he is like channing, who possesses a painter's eye, an appreciation of form and especially of color, that is admirable, but who, when he bought pigments and brushes and painted a landscape on a barrel head could not draw a tree so that his wife could know it was a tree. so alcott the philosopher has not an opinion or an apothegm to produce. i shall write on his tomb, here lies plato's reader. read he can with joy and naïveté inimitable, and the more the style rises, the more natural and current it seems to him. and yet his appetite is so various that the last book always seems to him the best. here lies the amateur. the age. among the marks of the age of cities must be reckoned conspicuously the universal adoption of cash payment. once it was one of many methods. people bought, but they 526 journal (age 45 also borrowed, and received much on various claims of good will, on hospitality, in the name of god, in the interest of party, of letters, of charity. young men made essay of their talents for proof, for glory, for enthusiasm, on any reasonable call, nothing doubting that in one or another way their hazarded bread would return to them after many days. but now, in the universal expansion of the city by the railroads, the stock exchange infects our country fairs, and no service is thought reasonable which does not see a requital in money. yet where is the service which can by any dodge escape its remuneration? for grandeur, at least, let us once in a while serve god. let us sacrifice to the immortal gods. the killers of oxen and sheep did not, in old or later times, but they do who in their action respect a sentiment, and not cash payment. city. gardner brewer said to me, “to be a salesman you must have splendid talents.” american literature. we have not had since ten years a pamphlet which i have saved to bind! and here at last is bushnell's; and now, henry thoreau's ascent of katabdin. 1848] parted friends. bath 527 wisdom is like electricity.'... i think it is indispensable that we should converse both with our superiors and our inferiors in intellect. with the first, for new aim and correction; and, with the last, for self-possession and talent. c. said, “'tis so many years since we met, and you have passed over such stages !” — ah, my friend, i must think so often of captain franklin's company in the arctic regions travelling laboriously for six weeks to the north, and then discovering by observation that they were south of their starting-point. the ice had floated; and so with us. conceit. i notice that people who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little. carlyle washes, and he has come to believe that the only religion left us is ablution, and that chadwick, the man who is to bring water for the million, is the priest of these times. so at home i find the morning bathers are proud and haughty scorners, and i 1 the rest of the passage is printed in the last paragraph of “ clubs” (society and solitude). 528 [age 45 journal begin to believe that the composition of water must be one part hydrogen and three parts conceit. when nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor.' ... merchant. in the distribution of lots, the merchant seems to me often enviable, his social position is so good. he mixes with people on a ground so free from all hypocrisy. he has no part to play, but stands on the strength of things. he acquires facility, knowledge of things, knowledge of modes, knowledge of men, knows that which all men gladly hear. memory. “ it is best knocking in the nail over night, and clinching it the next morning.”— fuller. see saint augustine's analysis of memory. (pp. 172-187 of the boston edition). “how they entered into me, let them say if they can; i the rest of the passage is found in substance in uses of great men” (representative men, pp. 19, 20). 2 mr. emerson quoted this saying to his children when they had to learn poetry to recite at school, telling them to go over the piece several times while they were undressing. they were astonished to find how well they knew it next morning 1848] memory. conversation 529 for i have gone over all the avenues of my flesh, and cannot find by which they entered” (p. 175). “the memory is, as it were, the belly of the mind; and joy and sadness, like sweet and bitter food, which, when committed to the memory, are, as it were, passed into the belly, where they may be stowed, but cannot taste. ridiculous is it to imagine these to be alike; and yet they are not utterly unlike” (p. 177). we remember that we forget. one of the chief faculties which plato,' like other ancient philosophers, proposed to exercise and develop was memory, μνημονικήν αυτήν αν ζητώμεν δείν ειναι – see clouds passim, and v. 465, and republic, lib. vi. (sewell, p. 215). the beatitude of conversation. i am afraid books do stand in our way; for the best heads are writers, and when they meet and fall into profound conversation, they never quite lose all respects of their own economy and pour i plato says of the philosopher in the republic (book v11), “ there a soul which forgets cannot be ranked among genuine philosophic natures; we must insist that the philosopher should have a good memory.” (jowett.) 530 : journal (age 45 out the divinest wine, but each is a little wary, a little checked, by the thought of the rare helps this hour might afford him to some page which he has written. each is apt to become abstracted and lose the remark of the other through too much attention to his own. yet i have no book and no pleasure in life comparable to this. here i come down to the shore of the sea and dip my hands in its miraculous waves. here i am assured of the eternity, and can spare all omens, all prophecies, all religions, for i see and know that which they obscurely announce. i seem rich with earth and air and heaven; but the next morning i have lost my keys. to escape this economy of writers, women would be better friends; but they have the drawback of the perplexities of sex. berto untrue. forty per cent of the english people cannot write their names. one half of one per cent of the massachusetts people cannot, and these are probably britons born. american education tends, i am told, to arithmetic: at least, i hear it complained that all the public schools teach arithmetic chiefly.. 1848] walk with channing 531 october (last week). another walk this saturday afternoon with ellery through the woods to the shore of flint's pond.' the witch-hazel was in full bloom and from the highland we saw one of the best pictures of the new hampshire mountains. but ellery said that when you come among them they are low, and nothing but cow pastures. i say, let us value the woods; they are full of solicitation. my wood lot has no price. i could not think of selling it for the money i gave for it. it is full of unknown mysterious values. what forms, what colours, what powers, null, it is true, to our ignorance, but opening inestimably to human wit. the crows filled the landscape with a savage sound; the ground was covered with new fallen leaves which rustled so loud as we trampled through them that we could hear nothing else. one thing our concord wants, a berkshire brook which falls, and now beside the road, and i in lincoln; now called sandy pond. 2 in dreamy woods what forms abound that elsewhere never poet found. here voices ring, and pictures burn, and grace on grace where'er i turn. verse book. 532 journal [age 45 now under it, cheers the traveller for miles with its loud voice. channing asks whether the mullein is in england? i do not remember it. it is so conspicuous in our pastures with its architectural spire (especially where it grows with the poke-weed in the ruined shanties of the irish in my woods) that it must not be forgotten. channing celebrates herrick as the best of english poets, a true greek in england, a great deal better poet than milton, who, he says, is too much like dr. channing. i think that the landscape before us would give herrick all he needed; he who sung a cherry, julia's hair, netherby's pimple, his own hen partlet, and ben jonson; we have a wider variety here among the maples. but the prose and the poetry of that age was more solid and cordial than ours. i find myself always admiring single twigs and leaves of that tree, and, for a chance example, found in wood's athena oxonienses (vol. i, p. 225) a quotation from edmund campion's history of ireland, that was a proof of the wit of that age. germany. how impossible to find germany! our young men went to the rhine to find the genius which had charmed them, and it was not 1848] the people. politics 533 there. they hunted it in heidelberg, in göttingen, in halle, in berlin; no one knew where it was; from vienna to the frontier, it was not found, and they very slowly and mournfully learned, that in the speaking it had escaped, and as it had charmed them in boston, they must return and look for it there. 10a history. community. better that races should perish, if thereby a new principle be taught. all the world may well be bankrupt if they are driven so into a right socialism. it is necessary that you should know the people's facts. if you have no place for them, the people absolutely have no place for you. you may prove your theory by all syllogisms and all symbols, but heaven and earth, the constitution of things is on the people's side, and that is a reason not liable to a fallacy. in politics, all are dilettanti. no man makes a duty there, but he votes on a magnified whim. our politics are an affectation. 'tis plain that our people will vote for him who gives them rum. polk and cass stand nearer to the barrel than webster, clay, or taylor possibly can. 534 journal (age 45 love is necessary to the righting the estate of woman in this world. otherwise nature itself seems to be in conspiracy against her dignity and welfare; for the cultivated, highthoughted, beauty-loving, saintly woman finds herself unconsciously desired for her sex, and even enhancing the appetite of her savage pursuers by these fine ornaments she has piously laid on herself. she finds with indignation that she is herself a snare, and was made such. i do not wonder at her occasional protest, violent protest against nature, in fleeing to nunneries, and taking black veils. love rights all this deep wrong. i find out in an instant if my companion does not want me; i cannot comprehend how my visitor does not perceive that i do not want him. it is his business to find out that i, of course, must be civil. it is for him to offer to go. i certainly shall not long resist. i must pardon much to english exclusiveness when i see how life is lost by the swainishness of our fellows. css athena oxonienses. in the article “george peele,” wood writes, “this person was living in his middle age in the latter end of queen 1848] books. how to learn 535 elizabeth; but when or where he died, i cannot tell; for so it is, and always hath been, that most poets die poor, and consequently obscurely, and a hard matter it is to trace them to their graves." books are worth reading that sketch a principle, as lectures are. all others are tickings of a clock. and we have so much less time to live, the robbers ! alcott learned to write on the sand and on the snow, when paper and pens were dear. his journal must be stablished. he sits here and plots an invasion of cambridge library, which, er been reported. he proposes to thoreau to go down and spend a fortnight there, and lay it open to the day. es education. it was a right course which brisbane indicated when he told me of his visit to paris. “ i went,” he said, “to the first men in name and credit in science. i said, is there any man here who, for any price, will teach me the principles of music? i found the learnedest in the science and put myself diligently down to learn.” i believe in the admirableness of art. i expect it to be miraculous, and find it so. the 536 (age 45 journal combinations of the gothic building are not now attainable, and the phidian friezes with reason affect us as the forest does. m universities. the university clings to us. they give a certain mechanical integrity and make it impossible to make a mistake. these men are paid to read, who is benefited by their reading? i wonder the melioration is not more. the one is wise; but he has a great many foolish faces. the men remain ridiculous under the beautiful cap of the sky. why not platonised ? why do they not assimilate the arts and natural beauties on which they have fed? on october 29. yesterday, another walk with ellery well worth commemoration, if that were possible; but no pen could write what we saw : it needs the pencils of all the painters that ever existed to aid the description. we went to white pond; a pretty little indian basin, lovely now as walden once was; we could almost see the sachem in his canoe in a shadowy cove. but making the circuit of the lake on the shore, we came at last to see some marvellous reflections of the colored woods in the water, which held us fast to the ef1848] white pond 537 fect, almost to the going down of the sun. the water was very slightly rippled, which took the proper character from the pines, and the birches, and a few oaks, which composed the grove; and the submarine wood seemed all made of lombardy poplar, with such delicious green, stained by gleams of mahogany from the oaks, and streaks of white from the birches, every moment growing more excellent. it was the world seen through a prism, and set ellery on wonderful lucretian theories of “law” and “design.” ellery, as usual, found the place with excellent judgment “where your house should be set,” leaving the wood paths as they were, which no art could make over; and, after leaving the pond, and a certain dismal dell, whither a man might go to shoot owls, or to do selfmurder in, we struck across an orchard to a steep hill of the right new hampshire slope, newly cleared of woods, and came presently into rudest woodland landscapes, unknown, undescribed, and hitherto unwalked by us saturday afternoon professors. the sun was setting behind terraces of pines, disposed in groups unimaginable by downings, or loudons, or capability browns; but we kept our way and fell into the duganne trail, 538 journal [age 45 as as we had already seen the glimpse of his cabin in the edge of the barbarous district we had traversed. through a clump of apple trees, over a long ridge — (query, what does dr. jackson call such ridges?)— osars ; with fair outsight of the river, and across the nut meadow brook, we came out upon the banks of the river just below james brown's. ellery proposed that we should send the horticultural society our notes, “took an apple near the white pond fork of the duganne trail, — an apple of the beware-of-this variety, a true touch-me-if-you-dare, or seek-no-furtherof-this.” we had much talk of books and lands and arts and farmers. we saw the original tumulus or first barrow, which the fallen pine tree makes with its upturned roots, and which, after a few years, precisely resembles a man's grave. we talked of the great advantage which he has who can turn a verse, over all the human race. i read in wood's athena oxonienses a score of pages of learned nobodies, of whose once odoriferous reputations not a trace remains in the air, and then i came to the name of some carew, herrick, suckling, chapman, whose name is as fresh and modern as those of our friends in boston 1848) boston water-works 539 and london, and all because they could turn a verse. only write a dozen lines, and rest on your oars forever, you are dear and necessary to the human race and worth all the old trumpery plutarchs and platos and bacons of the world. i quoted suckling's line, “a bee had stung it newly” to praise it, and ellery said, “yes, everybody's poetry is good, but your own.” he declares that the modern books, tennyson, carlyle, landor, gave him no standard, no measure of thought and life, and he fancies that the only writing open for us is the essay. he arrived at three rules, 1, that no mercy is to be shown to poetry; 2, none to artists; 3, lost. i defended boston people from his charges of bottomless stupidity, by the wit they have shown in these two things i have read today, fitchburg road report, and hale's and quincy's speeches at the water celebration. what a use is their arithmetic turned to! for four millions of dollars (and in any street you can pick up forty men worth a hundred thousand each), they have in two years finished this splendid and durable toy, a strong aqueduct to last forever, running down snake brook bed, placed under navigable salt water, and arriving in boston, feeding every chamber and closet as well as the 540 journal (age 45 frog pond fountain. and then, by their judicious ciphering, the sale of city lands, new made (and rendered available by the water), in the next few years will pay all these four millions, and give the water free as it is pure to all. ellery said, he had once fancied that there were some amateur trades, as politics, but he found there were none; these too were fenced by whig barricades. even walking could not be done by amateurs, but by professors only. in walking with ellery you shall always see what was never before shown to the eye of man. and yet for how many ages of lonely days has that pretty wilderness of white pond received the sun and clouds into its transparency, and woven each day new webs of birch and pine, shooting into wilder angles and more fantastic crossing of these coarse threads, which, in the water, have such momentary elegance. socrates. “like those who make a hungry animal follow them by holding up to him a green bough or some fruit, so you, whilst you hold in your hand that roll of paper, could draw me without difficulty to the end of attica, and farther, if you would.” – phædrus, cousin, p. 11, vol. vi. u w 1848) the way. thought 541 every man is entitled to be measured or characterized by his best influence. every loafer knows the way to the rum shop, but every angel does not know the way to his nectar. why can we never learn our proper economy? every youth and maid should know the road to prophecy as surely as the cook-maid to the baker's shop. october 31. a good deal of thought and reading is no better than smoking, yet we give ourselves airs thereon, and not on our cigars. the difference between labor and indolence in the world of thought certainly points at a code and scale of reward as emphatic as the christian heaven and hell. yet with this difference, that inspiration is very coy.' ... it is a finer thing to hold a man by his ears than by his eyes, as the beauty does; by his belly, as the rich man does; by his fears, as the state does. the man whom we have not seen is the rapt lover in whom no regards of self degraded the 1 the rest of the passage is in “ instinct and inspiration” (natural history of intellect, p. 75). 542 journal (age 45 adorer of the laws. there is a pretension about our gasping dilettanti, and we tax them with imbecility ; but if i discovered in an obscure country boy, half-witted perhaps, that his sole pleasure was in finding certain spots of beautiful wilderness, that he had the truest taste in this selection, and it was all his passion and employ, a new narcissus, seeing the reflection of man in nature, and dying of its beauty, must i not respect him? i think the true solace of the philosopher is in the perfections of the law which ruins him. proud is he that he is a spartan, and that sparta can easily spare him. the scholar posts his books. the world is arithmetical. in this numbered system the scholar is a numberer, and so adds nature's soul to nature. the tree ygdrasil grows, but it grows geometrically. it is not plato but the world that writes, “let none enter but a geometer.” passion is logical as wine is geometrical. what is indispensable to inspiration? sleep. there are two things, both indispensable: sound sleep; and the provocation of a good book or a companion. ne a amou 1848] webster. penny wisdom 543 the rules of the game are paramount, and daunt the genius of the best players. webster does not lead, but always plays a reverential second part to some ancestors, or whig party, or constitution, or other primary, who is much his inferior, if he had but courage and a calling. plymouth. lidian says, that when she was a child, her mother never bought any crash, but that kitchen-towels and coarse cloths were made from old sails brought home from her father's vessels, and were called sail towels. wit in trade. there is no good story in the books to show how much better is wit, liberal wit, in trade, than penny wisdom; and yet, one would think, we should have many. the school textis thales, who, foreseeing the plenty of olives that would be that year, before the winter was gone, bought up all the oil casks at miletus and chios, which he did with little money, and when the time came that many were sought for in haste, he, getting what rates on them he pleased, by this means got together much money. it might be as the orchardist who cuts open the fruit-bud of the peach in winter and 544 journal (age 45 observes the black germ. . . . the famous coffee speculation is a good instance, and i should like better to know the true history of that, and the reasons of its failure, than to have many volumes of political economy. the wit that elects the site of a new city, finds the mills and a path and true terminus of a new railroad, perceives well where to buy wild land in the western country, judging well where the confluence of streams, the change of soil, climate, or race, will make thoroughfares and markets. how nature, to keep her balance true, invented a cat. what phantasmagoria in these animals! why is the snake so frightful, which is the line of beauty, and every resemblance to it pleases ? see what disgust and horror of a rat, loathsome in its food, loathsome in its form, and a tail which is villanous, formidable by its ferocity; yet interposed between this horror and the gentler kinds is the cat, a beautiful horror, or a form of many bad qualities, but tempered and thus strangely inserted as an offset, check, and temperament, to that ugly horror. see then the squirrel strangely adorned with his tail, which is his saving grace in human eyes. . 1848) more mind. voting 545 in the hotels the air is buttered and the whole air is a volatilized beefsteak. our poetry is an affectation, but read chaucer, and the old lays in which merlin and arthur are celebrated, and you will find it as simple as the speech of children. what awe would not the smallest exaltation of the intellectual processes awaken, as we see in safford or colburn's case, and the unproved pretensions of somnambulists. the boy merlin laughs three times, and, in each instance, because he foresees or second-sees what is future or distant. we are always on the edge of this, but cannot quite fetch it. x and y and so many honest bourgeois in our population vote on the expectation and assurance of a specific reward. it is as honest and natural in them to expect the place, as in an ox to expect his hay and stalks; and they are as legitimately angry and implacable, if they are baulked of it. this is the true wild, the hengist and horsa, unchristianized still, in so many ages. the same brutish naïveté appears in all their story, in their family quarrels on wills, etc. 546 (age 45 journal nature trains us on to see illusions and prodigies.' ... channing thinks it the woe of life that natural effects are continually crowded out, and artificial arrangements substituted. he remembers when an evening, any evening, grim and wintry like this, was enough for him, the houses were in the air; now it takes a very cold winter night to overcome the common and mean. and this, no doubt, as we agreed, is the poetstate. as long as the evening is sufficient, as long as the youth is in the capability of being imparadised by the sights and sounds of common day, he is poet; but as soon as he begins to use them well, knows how to parse and spell, turns artist, he ceases to be poet. i used to value newton's theory of transparency, that transparent bodies were homogeneous, and the ray entering, being attracted equally in every direction, was as if it were not attracted at all, and passed directly through; but opaque were heterogeneous, and the ray, being drawn this way and that way, was diverted and i the rest is printed in “memory” (natural history of intellect, p. 100). 1848] over-reading. politics 547 did not traverse. i think it is so with books. cram people with your books, furnish them with a constant river of books and journals, and you may be sure they will remember as little as if they read none. the laws (the statute book) are only the wishes of the majority of the people: there will be great deduction to be made for the performance. just so much private volition as there is makes the reliable force of the law. laws. i see no security in laws, but only in the nature of men; and in that reactive force which develops all kinds of energy at the same time ; energy of good with energy of evil; the ecstasies of devotion with the exasperations of debauchery. the sons of democrats will be whigs, and the fury of republicanism in the father is only the immense effort of nature to engender an intolerable tyrant in the next age. november 9. the whig party are what people would call first-rate in opposition, but not so good in government. perhaps they have not sufficient fortitude. the same thing happens often in england. 548 (age 45 journal here has passed an election, i think, the most dismal ever known in this country. three great parties voting for three candidates whom they disliked. next monday there will be more heart. van buren? taylor ? “sister lucy,” said the lady,“ how do you enjoy your mind lately? i have put up a great many petitions for you.” “why, i don't expect much enjoyment,” said the other, who was quilling skeins, “i have such a bad heart.” in plato's republic, book 111, see a sentence which might be an introduction to a friendly biography of alcottis“we must seek for those who are to supply us with the forms of art, men who by instinct can trace out the springs of grace and beauty, that, dwelling as in a sanctuary of health, the young may imbibe good from all around them, from every work and sight and sound whence aught may strike their sense, like airs that are wafting health from purest climes, and, step by step, from childhood, and changing them into the image of goodness, and into likeness and love and harmony with the beauty of truth.” 1848) novels. sources. 549 “ it was the peculiar genius of the athenian to anticipate. before the orator had finished his first clause they could tell the end.” — thucydides. novels. heliodorus, christian bishop, in his æthiopica, containing tbeagenes and chariclea, is the founder of novels. from this source comes the romance of the middle ages, and the modern novel. see sewell's plato, p. 154. dr. johnson said he always went into stately shops,' ... in the best circles is the best information, as i thought when i found what i wanted in wykeham's life. you can get phosphate from cow-dung; but better from bones. oxygen best from conferva rivularis. it is one convenience of culture that it has no enemies. the finished man of the world holds his hatred also at arm's length, so that he can, whenever is fit occasion, receive his foe with all the world at his house, and associate with him in public or in private affairs, unencumbered by old quarrel. but country people 1 much of what follows is omitted, as being printed in « books” (society and solitude, p. 196). 550 journal : (age 45 are like dogs and cows that quarrel, and remember their spite. william of wykeham quarrelled with the duke of lancaster. all wykeham's temporalities were sequestered, and he excluded from parliament. william managed to get all back, and the duke was for the time worsted. it does not hinder that the duke should be solemnly received at william's college at oxford on the visitation. this fast and loose belongs to the intellect, belongs to that power of detachment which the intellect introduces. the other lesson i learned in wykeham's life was certainly a confirmation of my respect for the solidity of english national genius. what men that isle yields! what gravity ; what liberality, and nobleness ; what tenacity of purpose ; what lofty religion! here is a man so allied to the material world, that he is sure to become rich and great under any government and times, and whose aims are so public and disinterested that he can easily be prudent and not too much mixed with bad politics, though by greatness of nature he must necessarily be mixed with great men and affairs. he is a man of the washington type, and it is by many such men as wykeham that england is great and 1848) englishmen. minds 551 free. ah! these fine solitudes around me in massachusetts could easily become dear and enviable to the human race if once they were the homes of grave, religious, forcible men. englishmen. i went to england to know who were the excellent men of that country. some of them i know personally, some only by name. wordsworth, landor, carlyle, tennyson, wilkinson, stephenson, hallam, faraday, owen, edward forbes, samuel brown, de quincey, david scott, p. j. bailey, j. s. mill, arthur h. clough, w. sewell, james moseley, henry turner taylor, edwin chadwick, duke of wellington, robert peel, richard cobden, robert browning, matthew arnold, john bright. all these i have seen except chadwick, browning, taylor, and sewell, and moseley. what difference in the hospitality of minds! some are actually hostile, and imprison me as in a hole. a blockhead makes a blockhead of me; whilst for my oriental friend here, i have always claimed for him, that nothing could be so expansive as his element is. my friends begin to value each other, now that alcott is to go; and ellery declares, “ that 552 journal [age 45 he never saw that man without being cheered,” and henry says, “he is the best natured man i ever met. the rats and mice make their nests in him.” ma rname apples. the apple is our national fruit, and i like to see that the soil yields it; i judge of the country so. the american sun paints himself in these glowing balls amid the green leaves. man would be more solitary, less friended, less supported, if the land yielded only the useful maize and potato, withheld this ornamental and social fruit. i have planted a pumpkin sweeting near my summer house, i believe out of agreeable recollection of that fruit in my childhood at newton. it grew in mr. greenough's pasture, and i thought it solid sunshine. “ ere boyhood with quick glance had ceased to spy the doubtful apple \mid the yellow leaves.” sum there are always a few heads, and out of these come the mythology and the machinery of the world. whence came all these books, laws, inventions, parties, kingdoms? out of the invisible world, through a few brains : and if we should pierce to the origin of knowledge, ne 1848) soul's almanac. fate 553 explore the meaning of memory, we might find it some strange mutilated roll of papyrus, on which only a strange, disjointed jumble of universal traditions, of heavenly scriptures, of angelic biographies, were long ago written, relics of a foreworld. ve midsummer. 'tis very certain that this almanack of the soul may be written as well as that of greenwich. we have had our heights of sun and depths of shade, and it would be easy in the soul's year to recall and fix its 21st of june. moses had his ten commandments; but we have ours. in the first age they wrote on stone, and what was fit to be written on stone; lycurgus, his laws; moses, his decalogue; but we write novels and newspapers. you would not have bulwer and disraeli publish their novel on stone ? there is a sort of climate in every man's speech running from hot noon, when words flow like steam and perfume, to cold night, when they are frozen. we must accept a great deal as fate. we accept it with protest, merely adjourning our experiment, and not squander our strength in 554 journal (age 45 upheaying mountains. mountain is conquerable also, to be sure, but whilst you cannot quarry it, let it be a mountain. action and idea are man and woman, both indispensable: why should they rail at and exclude each other? yes, we must call the anatomist and physiologist to counsel. the human body is undoubtedly the true symbol, true and highest and most instructive; human body and not sun or galaxy. tand medicaly the sunsel. the anatoteutonic. i still return, or did last night, to the eulogy of those natural priests who, in every condition of life, have yielded us some token of having read the laws of heaven,beginning as usual with my poor churl tarbox'at newton. these are the small behmens, or, the teutonic school ; and one farmer or labourer of that sort is worth whole towns full of plausible farmers, traders, and selectmen. it is the outcropping of the granite which is the core of the i the methodist working beside him in his uncle's hayfield who said men are always praying, and their prayers are answered. the young minister thought this over, and adding, therefore we must be careful what we pray for, made this the theme of his first sermon. 1848] the wayside inn 555 world. i seem to meet no more such. very and rebecca black' were the last; and yet perhaps hermann knows something. in england, how few! and yet there was sylvester, and fletcher, and sutton, and david scott. in every family a system settles itself. . . . in november 14. 't is the coldest november i have ever · known. this morning the mercury is at 26. yesterday afternoon cold, fine ride with ellery to sudbury inn,3 and mounted the side of nobscot. finest picture through wintry air of the russet massachusetts. the landscape is democratic, not gathered into one city or baronial castle, but equally scattered into these white steeples, round which a town clusters in every place where six roads meet, or where a river branches or falls, or where the pan of soil is a little deeper. the horizon line marched by hills tossing like waves in a storm : firm indigo line. ’t is a pretty revolution which is effected in next he ta olete hain che i a high-minded seamstress in new york. echter 2 the rest of this passage occurs in “wealth” (conduct of life, pp. 123, 124). 3 the wayside inn, which longfellow celebrated, then called howe's tavern. de este 556 journal (age 45 the landscape by simply turning your head upside down, or, looking through your legs : an infinite softness and loveliness is added to the picture. it changes the landscape at once from november to june, or, as ellery declared, makes campagna of it at once; so, he said, massachusetts is italy upside down. november 26. yesterday walked over lincoln hills with ellery, and saw golden willows, savins with two foliages, old chestnuts, apples as ever. i understand dr. charles t. jackson that a piece of ordnance may usually be fired one thousand times before it will burst, and only so many times ; that it is the rule in the united states service that one piece of each new kind of firearm should be burst; and that jenks's rifle was fired by a sergeant and man appointed to that service sixty-six thousand times, when last heard from, and was not yet burst. the doctor described the wonderful mirage of lake superior; and the aurora borealis and the analyzed sounds. the air in the woods at 100, the water at 38. the osars or horsebacks, i dr. jackson made in 1844-45 the first geological survey of the now rich mineral lands around lake superior. for 1848) agassiz. thoreau 557 so familiar in our woods, are made, he says, by the combing of waves ? ur v a robin, says agassiz (embryonic), is a gull; a gull is a duck; a duck is a fish; add now what i suppose is omitted, pro causa conciliandi gratiam, that a man is a robin, and the chain is perfect, a man is a fish. it is not for nothing, that very few heads are sent into the world busy with abstractions, and very many heads busy with making money. accept the order of the world, though it make you a shopkeeper. that is one thing; the second thing which comes often to mind, lately, is, the conviction that our security is in the reactive force which develops all kinds of energy out of the same time. december 10. henry thoreau is still falling on some bold volunteer like his dr. heaton who discredits the mr. emerson's use of what his brother-in-law told him of the phenomenon of analyzed sound, see the stanza in the poem “ may day,” beginning — so by remote superior lake. (poems, p. 179.) 558 (age 45 journal regulars; but henry like all the rest of sensible men, when he is sick, will go to jackson and warren. t. w. higginson at newburyport urged the establishment of such a journal as the dial for the comfort and encouragement of young men, who, but for that paper, had felt themselves lonely and unsupported in the world. punch notices that in the late hard times, saturn has lately appeared without his rings, and that the other planets openly accuse him of having pawned them. nature.' the earth takes the part of her children so quickly and adopts our thoughts, affections, and quarrels. the school boy finds every step of the ground on his way to school acquainted with his quarrel, and smartly expressing it. the ground knows so well his top and ball, the air itself is full of hoop-time, ball-time, swimming, sled, and skates. so ductile is the world. the rapt prophet finds it not less facile and intelligent. 'tis pentecost all; the rose speaks all languages, the sense of all affections,— parthians, jews, mesopotamians, greeks, french, english. i this passage, versified, is found in the poem “ may day." 1848] archimedes. fate 559 the girl finds her chamber enchanted, and all her walks, with the dear dreamcourage of archimedes. if he had courage of heart he would be a gone archimedes. it is by pounding on his problem, by being pure brain, that he suffers the soldier to kill him without a pang. fate in the mixture of the children, one having life in, the other life outside herself: the best antidote to fortune is the religious determination. fate, fate. well, settle this then; the nobility of the sentiments is in resisting that or in accepting it. here is a blessed piece of realism from george sand's joiner pierre :“ content d'avoir acquis les talents qu'il avait ambitionnés, il attendait que l'occasion de les faire apprecier vînt d'ellemême, et il savait bien qu'elle ne tarderait pas.” — le compagnon du tour de france. december 22. directly on the dreadful calamity of young george emerson's' death, comes to me one of 1 the only son of his valued and lifelong friend george barrell emerson. 560 (age 45 journal my highest prosperities. i received clough's poem’ at the bookstore, whilst pondering the dare or dare not of a visit to pemberton square. 'tis, i think, the most real benefit i have k had from my english visit, this genius of clough. how excellent, yet how slow to show itself! he gave no hint of all this to me, and i learned to esteem him for reticent sense, for solidity, and tenacity, after he had given proof of his apprehensiveness and of his thorough oxford culture, which was manifest enough. an oxonian is a kind of nobleman, of course. then he had that interest in life and realities, in the state of woman, and the questions so rife in paris through communism, and through the old loose and easy conventions of that city for travellers ; he talked so considerately of the grisette estate, that i found him the best pièce de resistance, and tough adherence, that one could desire. but i never surmised that this flowing, all-applicable expression belonged to him. where had he concealed it? and now tennyson must look to his laurels. and now i have a new friend, and the world has a new poet. i the bothie of tober-na-vuolicb. 1848) carlyle. the edda 561 tests. have you given any words to be the current coin of the country? carlyle has. what all men think, he thinks better. carlyle is thought a bad writer. is he? whereever you find good writing in dorian or rabelaisian, or norse sagas, or english bible, or cromwell himself, 't is odd, you find resemblance to his style. eve an the edda. where there is a common language between the authors and the mob, “the intellectuality of the educated class works down,” to use laing's word. he says, “no sentiment, phrase, popular idea, or expression from the works of lessing, goethe, schiller, richter, or any other german writer is ever heard among the lower classes in germany,” because of the wide difference between their plat deutsch and the written language. i should say, that, in english, only those sentences stand, which are good both for the scholar and the cabman, latin and saxon; half and half; perfectly latin and perfectly english. iceland was civilized and learned. thence came the scalds. what new england is to south, 562 (age 45 journal that was iceland to norway. the christian iceland fitted out no viking expeditions. but young icelanders sometimes joined the northmen's. so massachusetts and rhode island fit out no slave trade, yet the de wolfs go. rise of hanseatic league and wealth of west of europe extinguished these pests of vikings,“ and scald fell before clerk with his pen and ink," as viking before english trade, and as stage-coach before railroad. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1848 moses; meghaduta ; vishnu purana; lycurgus, solon, periander, thales, apud plutarch; zoroaster; æschylus; herodotus; democritus; aristotle; aristippus; lucretius; cicero; valerius maximus; jamblichus; heliodorus, ethiopica, theagenes and chariclea; sidonius apollinaris, apud camden ; saint augustine; mahomet; bede; sæmund, older edda ; snorri sturlason, younger edda; richard of devizes, chronicle; roger bacon; dante, inferno, translation of john carlyle; 563 1848] reading hafiz; chaucer; ellis, early english metrical romances; luther; rabelais ; cornelius agrippa (von nettesheim); edmund campion, history of ireland; william camden, britannia ; hakluyt, voyages; purchas, pilgrimmes ; clarendon, history; sir henry wotton; jacob behmen ; carew; herrick; suckling; sir kenelm digby; fuller, worthies; cowley; malpighi, de viscerum structura; anthony à wood, athena oxonienses; locke; spinoza; newton; dacier, doctrine de platon ; samuel laing, heimskringla; defoe; swift; pope; montesquieu; warburton ; lowth, life of william of wykeham ; gray, lines on eton college; kant; goldsmith; goethe; r. b. sheridan; thomas taylor; jamieson, collection of ballads; tenneman, history of philosophy; humboldt; sydney smith; metternich; robert owen; jeffrey; hallam ; thomas chalmers; dr. channing; sir david brewster; colonel (thomas p.?) thompson; john kenyon, verses written in a churchyard; william buckland; john wilson (christopher north); adam sedgwick; de quincey ; sir william hooker; tes 564 journal (age 45 guizot; lamartine ; von bunsen ; procter (barry cornwall); sir francis head; lockhart; mrs. jameson; pierre leroux; thomas carlyle; david moir; sir charles fellows ; alfred de vigny, cing mars (?); victor aimé huber, die englischen universitäten; alcott; bancroft ; horace bushnell; william and robert chambers; harriet and james martineau; william jacobson, translation of æschylus; richard owen; charles kraitsir; george sand, jeanne, compagnon du tour de france, lucrezia floriani; jules lecomte; disraeli; bulwer; de tocqueville, mazzini, ruffini; j. s. mill, political economy; william sewell, introduction to the dialogues of plato; alexander ireland; agassiz; (charles r.) darwin; alfred and septimus tennyson (turner); mrs. caroline elizabeth sarah norton; j. f. ferrier; richard monckton milnes; benjamin peirce; theodore parker; j. j. garth wilkinson, on swedenborg ; dickens; frederick lucas; william e. aytoun; edward forbes; theodore martyn, le bon gualtier ; philip bailey, festus; h. d. thoreau ; w. e chan565 1848] reading ning; arthur helps ; froude; a. h. clough, the bothie of tober-na-vuolich ; ruskin; westland marston; matthew arnold; coventry patmore ; william allingham. ta. end of volume vii the riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s.a 3 2044 010 307 692 ld be returneu. fore the last wow. is curreu .**2. the borrower must return this item on or before the last date stamped below. if another user places a recall for this item, the borrower will be notified of the need for an earlier return. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fines. harvard college widener library cambridge, ma 02138 617-495-2413 widener may 28 2018471 | kaeer #b2003 } book due please handle with care. thank you for helping to preserve library collections at harvard. 623 al 1323, 029 harvard college library verit tas from the bright legacy one half the income from this legacy, which was received in 1880 under the will of jonathan brown bright of waltham, massacbusetts, is to be expended for books for the college library. the orber balf of the income is devoted to scholarships in harvard university for the benefit of descendants of henry bright, jr., who died at watertown, massachusetts, in 1686. in the absence of such descendants, other persons are eligible to the scholarships. the will requires that this announce. ment shall be made in every book added to the library under its provisions. journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820–1872 vol. iii ا کر اسی سره ? tyto adi ezra ripley ser is of cor lodge sept 31 1842 journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1833-1835 € boston and new york houghton mifflin company che riverside press cambridge 1910 al)?:11,02:17:) nov ts 1010 bright fund ii,iv) copyright, 1910, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1910 contents voyage to europe return journal xxiv 1833 (from pocket note-book) the brig jasper; american seamen. berth meditations. the hospitable universe. wind and calm. passeno ch gers' nautical glory. goldoni. royal æolus. verses. varece the passenger-species. sailors; columbus. stars. azores. be yourself. memory. old europe. the mate. english vessels. always hope. captain and scholar. inward music. the straits. capable men. quarantine at malta. (self-testing. st. john's at valetta. the english chapel. missionary press. ball at the governor's. dr. davy. embarks for sicily. absurd crew. syracuse; its sights. mule-ride to catania; its churches and museums. the opera. ride to messina; kindly companions. taormina. sails to palermo; sights there. thoughts on the opera .. 3-61 naples. be not overawed by new surroundings. thank your safeguards. verses. the museum; “ the countenances of the first-born.” virgil's tomb. the worthless people. avernus. by stage to rome. verses. first wanderings. the vatican galleries. the transfiguration. churches. thorwaldsen. the pope blesses contents the palms. the sistine chapel. artists' studios. the miserere twice heard. st. peter's; moonlight walk with cranch and alexander. the jew baptized. easter mass in st. peter's. walk with american artists. the vatican splendors. churches, pictures, gardens. street singers and caffès. expedition to tivoli and villa d'este. capitoline; “the gladiator” and byron. taking the veil. the moses of michel angelo. letter to miss mary emerson; disappointment in art and splendor; longing for persons, for a teacher. the fault in one's self. the gift of rome . . . . . . . . . . . 61-103 journey northward by vettura ; companions. umbrian towns. tuscany. lake thrasimenus. florence; duomo; santa croce, homage to galileo and michel angelo. the uffizzi, the marble lady. byron's rooms. evening ramble. death of ellen's mother. jerome bonaparte. galleries. amici and his microscopes. opera, prima donna and ballet. unking one's self to see. the misericordia. dante's seat. landor at his villa. ascension. landor's pictures; talk with him. natural history museum. santa croce again. erminia the flower-girl. opera ivanhoe. italian superlatives. twilight and morning walks. i promessi sposi. san zenobio. santa croce yet again. hold your own opinion. obligations to society. leaving florence. statue of father apennine. bologna. ferrara; tasso, ariosto, byron, jews. valley of the po. petrarch's house and comb. padua. venice. mood of humiliation. venetian pictures, churches; canova. the palace and arsenal. disappointment. vicenza; contents vii verona; brescia, the people. milan, the cathedral and sights, good houses. thoughts on architecture as imitation . . . . . . . . 104-146 the diligence for paris; pleasant companions. domo d'ossola. the simplon; napoleon. a taste of switzerland, vevay, lausanne, gibbon's house, geneva. ferney and voltaire under protest. introduction to scholars and clergy. france. entrance to paris. henri quatre with tricolor. hotel montmorenci. paris seems too modern. a cousin. the sorbonne. the louvre, leonardo. street sights. out of place in paris. fourth of july dinner. external life; reflections; call to teach religion, not of tradition, but of the soul. st. charles borromeo. don't be morbid. visit to jardin des plantes, its riches; reflections; strange sympathies arise;"striving to be man.” jussieu. père la chaise; grave of the lover of montaigne. attractions and privileges of paris opera; théâtre français, madame mars. abbé chatel; eglise catholique française. frascati's. biot, arago, gay lussac, jouffroy. sails from boulogne . . . . 146-171 england. landing in london. reflections on italy. westminster. anecdote of wordsworth. matlock. kenilworth. english flowers. scotland. trip to the highlands; adventures in long, cold storm; lost baggage. glasgow. visit to carlyle at ecclefechan; his talk on persons and books; measure of his loyalty. mrs. carlyle tells of goethe. visit to wordsworth; he repeats his verses; speaks of dr. channing. lancaster to manchester; first experience on railway. meeting with jacob perkins. liverpool. thankful viji contents review of closing journey. limitations of great men; their value. preaching of martineau, yates and hinckes. reports about wordsworth and carlyle. delayed sailing. thoughts about carlyle. visit to new railway; mr. perkins on american and english locomotives, and on steamships. notes for nature. sailing from liverpool. the golden mean; resources in danger. likes his new book, nature. astronomy. want of religion in english great men. calvinism's strength, and weak unitarianism; both observe the little, neglecting the great; attempt to state it. ship life. the mails. europe comes to us in books. storm. captain fox's clipper voyage. sunday at sea. be yourself. verses on the travelling american. define morals, the great harmony, the angel from childhood up. immortality felt, not shown. virtue purges the eye. ties of great men. quietude. verses, god's message. wild weather; remembrance of voyage with achille murat. the steerage. letter in verse to edward. ben jonson. the banks. praise of ship .. 171-219 (from journal q). landing in new york. thanks on return. sunday with mother at newton. sermon by one of god's police. respect men. go alone to listen; the woods, true love for jesus; the advance in truth. teachers must study man, not text. coming illuminations of science; emblems. nature's appeal. stubler the quaker. lessons for the wise all around. quaker conversation. (from note-book). cheyne row. sifted character. cambridge jail. wise moments; suicide. the family of fero. contents (from journal a). room in boston. follow your calling. good hope. the grandfather's word. the moral wedge. the first philosophy. reason is the divine essence. « practical” men yet sleep, and often scholars. life spellbound. to find the sun. reading 219–240 journal xxv 1834 (from journal a) treasure everywhere for scholar. good judgment. the standard man. the will. chaste to the chaste. goethe's vanity. michel angelo; such men strengthen ideals. corinne. plymouth rock. webster's oratory. evil times also do good. owning property; position and will. preaching at new bedford. memories of ellen. miss rotch's religion of no choice ; her experience ; agreement with socrates, shakspear, fichte. stories of the whalers. live where you are understood. a new sabbath. not alone in solitude. real influence from stars. plymouth; ocean, people, flowers. quaker meetings. emerson's swedenborgianism. self-reliance; advice, pledges. friends' aid. saving instincts. truth demands your defence. ruth emerson. spring day at mount auburn. montaigne's rules of rhetoric. we postpone our greatness. abide your time. feeding with husks; then the strain of melody. clear relation to god. fatal machinery of society. beware of disciples. the soul without god. light always on your path. all works for god. birds, shells, flowers. the methodists. a day's gifts and demands. the glorious post of duty. books convert action to thought. contents nature's simple steps. boy and alphabet. limits. crises. shakspear's sonnets. units and laws. teaching of the wave; parties. the hidden idea. not yet the true classification. face the question. turn to nature. each and all. trust instinct. works find their level. languages. the berkshire dream. woman. preaching at waltham. counterworkings. antagonisms. the singing bird and the talker. tides of the soul. devils of solitude. the railway ride. visits the animals, but not to preach. the schoolmaster. dilettantism may teach. the unpoetic west; webster . . . . . . . . . . . . 240–308 x wilhelm meister ; goethe another poor monad. lafayette's death. high reason, low understanding. fine women ; elegance of kindness. goethe and morals; affects the god; self-culture. carlyle. our disguised protectors. lincoln bell. sabbath. languages. beast lingers in man. the scholar in company. tone in documents of revolution. the hero. the divine in all. society always, but best men alone. the ordination. renunciation; first thoughts. dying calvinism. misplaced worship. seniority. the god in man. the child. artificial life, yet greatness always there ; the turning wheel of life. marry natural history to life. shakspear and scott. freedom or ruts? the wisdom of ignorance; milton, wordsworth, scott, coleridge, homer, shakspear — mouthpieces of the mind of man. reason of need of worship, temples, churches; it may cease. pasteboard religion. the coming preachers. shun hypocrisy. write your thought, not the tune of the time. the $ b k poem. contents xi great men considerate and humble, failures make success. dreams. courage in daily act. speak your best thought. respect your taste and thought; singleminded action. rev. george blagden's preaching. italy; boswellism of travel; use your eyes at home. the forming philosopher. powers of intellect. a september afternoon. look straight forward. proteus. harmony of will. unconscious strength. the sermon on habit. edward's death; his deliverance. evil days cry for cure. the seeming real; ideal truth. true education coming. party tactics; thoughtless votes. even sins may help. the halo of an idea. old war-cries pass. fears transient. luther quoted. y broadway a symbol. men bipolar. humboldt. each age has new crisis. euler. whigs and tories; underlying merits; the elections. symbols. recoils in politics. mr. maxwell's speech. power dangerous . . . . . . . . . . . 309–360 greeting to concord as home; new resolves. respect god in man. the portrait of man. descent of thought. dr. ripley. history's lessons; small issues appear. spare preliminaries. retiring instinct. comfort in god. democracy's root. institutions clothe themselves. english elegies. money matters. the star-shower of 1834. universal beauty; each and all. immortality at hand. eclipse. teaching sincerity. talent and character. alexander everett and james savage. verses, “compensation.” puberty. sects. luther. woods. devout freedom. commerce makes love. the niedrig tone. heredity, its moral. avoid affection's superlatives. truth will wear. aunt : he porerne new resoja xii contents mary on prayer. human gifts. sympathy with others' gifts. choice, not pledges. the early philosophers. demosthenes. biographies for lectures. thought must supplement common sense. men must use their light. a new language. dr. ripley's utterances. thoughts in winter ride. schleiermacher. generous feelings. reason perfect. offensive lecture. writing an art. yearning idealism. the ways of arts common. spiritual religion self-evident; calvinism. chains. michel angelo, his sonnet vii. the finished man. true life makes every spot a centre. arts harmonious. waiting. serve friends by what you are. democracy's seamy side; monarchs and courts. mis-estimates among men. scholars are watchers. optical deceptions. the aunt. the lyceum. spiritual riches. equality of great men. man through the ages. writings endure. sacrificing truth. thread uniting mythologies. persons. jesus. light. man implies the state. shakspear, bacon, milton. poetry. christianity. benevolence. each man's idea. expression. sunset. our debt to + greece. beware tradition; living sermons. at the manse. the winter storm; resolves; spiritual laws. * “ mere morality.” unitarian, orthodox, quaker. virtue's elegance. reading . . . . . . 360-429 journal xxvi 1835 (from journal b) joy in concord. a swedenborgian sermon; father taylor's sermon. religious enthusiasts alike find god within. influence of jesus. dead gods and god contents xiii here. trust the spirit. prometheus. the æillade ; a tragedy. delicious memory. the manifold soul. each can help all. unspoken conversation's value. biography a spiritual help. ringing music from the past. disguised gods. thoughts. chaplain william emerson. courtesy. plymouth. john marshall. casting composition. lydia jackson. christianity and x slavery. french revolution. milton, burns, bryant. edward's “ farewell.” sea-skies. sense under poetry. winckelmann defines beauty. enchanting nature. tay. lor's van artevelde ; shakspear. sacrifice, bereavement, joyful trust. landor on argument. webster. boccaccio. illuminating reason, common conversation. men of business without far aims. sects feed on one another. discussion distrusted. delight. study and drifting. a calendar of nature. saturn. await your call. man an assembly. dreams. the room-mate. man upright. village music. idea of god changes, truth stable. principles hidden in base politics. quotation belps conviction. nature's language. men explained. idealize bravely. secret doctrines. a court house shows man. merits of abolition cause. carlyle. duty is plain. richter. magic mantle. goethe. genius is true seeing. hard times; which are they? preacher's opportunity. greatness not cheaply won. orientation. true men. advance necessary to soul. mind must have material; composition everywhere. sincere faith suspected. rich matter for coming essays. an episode in sicily. speak to young america. miracle of letter. the farmer and locomotive. curiosity in botany. herrick. poems · · · · · · · 430-483 xiv contents the candid observer. superlatives. real and apparent good speaking. torpor and lapses of the mind. idealism. doctrine of compensation. be, not seem. allston. truth, or appearance. heaven the world of reason. cudworth. the great laws of the first philosophy. books are blessings. self-education. questions for homer. language of thought. the good of publishing. poetry precedes prose. witty speech. public speaking. george fox. those silent revolutions in england. the english gentleman. universal language. discomfort shakes idealism. humility. good society, four views. god a seed. historical discourse at concord; introduction. hours of reason immortal. norris's ideal world; st. augustine. locke. alcott. languishing arts. doom of solitude. starved at divinity șchool. man needs a shrine. quotation. elastic wit of man. clean mind necessary. oegger's true messiah. books and memory. veterans' stories of concord fight. english writers individual. excellence in writing holds good. english view of our democracy. alcott's record of a school. force of parables. our multiple lives. child civilizes the father. quotations from oegger. humility is a time-saver. history, the maker and chronicler. principles open eyes. everett and slavery. god cannot be described. jesus not w final. books of the future. ideas or facts ? reading. y duties done. samuel j. may. virtue sure of its due. happy eyes and tongue. abolition grows strong. two sincere men. john barbour's bruce. history of human wit. system-grinders; advancing teachers . 484-524 jacob behme; his aurora. sphinx. fancy and imagicontents ху nation. god hides in light. sober age; samuel hoar. journal keeping. symbols help; instances. à kempis, aristotle, plato. language of nature. jests; senx tences. letter to miss peabody on swedenborg; disproportioned minds ; premature theories. jesus beautiful but incomplete. the strong old poets. thought families. wordsworth; “ode to duty.” dreams and animals. thinkers are reporters. thaddeus blood's memories of april, 1775. wordsworth's limitations. true and faint love. books, perusal or chance readings. your own surroundings. rainyday treats. the mind's far focus. dunbar of saltoun. visual power of man of science. robert wyer, on women. praise of montaigne. scott's line. reason's eye. purchase of the coolidge house in concord; description of place. immortality will be proved from intellect; coleridge. visit to harriet martineau; contemporary english writers. harvard college. patriotka ism a duty? father taylor at battle-ground. marriage to lydia jackson. plutarch’s “. apophthegms,” “tamlane.” wise poetry. “ king laurin.” bead-eyes. each must arrange his own knowledge. visit of samuel j. may and george thompson. culture. charles on christianity and the english church. thompson. minister must be simple in manners; decorum now in demand; prune the sermon bravely; trust your genius in writing, and yourself observe the great laws. what is a book to different men ? history's jewels are anecdotes; facts rank themselves; idealizing. janus reputations. english blank verse. english childish in middle ages. be the channel of law. literature of xvi contents a country. the strong country preacher. tantaluslife. charles on carlyle. god's private door. persuasion. science kills legend. luther's pious spite. hearing and speaking. alcott's visit. spiritual words; x security in wordsworth. what oaths mean. conjunction of stars; inspiration. wordsworth’s platitudes. persecution. our wild ancestry. trifles eat the hours. mobs. scholar's assurance of eternity. halo of the past. rev. hersey goodwin's sermon. witness of the eye. the preacher must be universal. ideas as walls. edward; epigrammatic answers. webster. oriental man. republican courtesy. sharon turner's systematizing. burke. plutarch. spiritual man sees identity. antigone. ellen. the ancient poets held sacred. walk and talk with charles. high church. alcott, hedge, bradford. carlyle. letter to henry ware on abolition of war. reading . . . 524-575 illustrations 'ezra ripley, d.d. (photogravure) . . . frontispiece from a silhouette, 1841; in the possession of mrs. james b. thayer. . . . . . . . . 346 edward bliss emerson . from a silhouette, 1827. the old manse . . . . . . . . . . 360 built by rev. william emerson in 1769; later the bome of rev. ezra ripley. concord battleground. ....508 after the drawing by f. h. lane in 1837. the emerson home . . . . . . . . . . 540 after the drawing by w. r. miller in 1852. journal voyage to europe. cities and men. return journal xxiv 1833 (from pocket note-books and q) at sea. january 2, 1833. sailed from boston for malta, december 25, 1832, in brig jasper, captain ellis, 236 tons, laden with logwood, mahogany, tobacco, sugar, coffee, beeswax, cheese, etc. a long storm from the second morn of our departure consigned all the five passengers to the irremedial chagrins of the stateroom, to wit, nausea, darkness, unrest, uncleanness, harpy appetite and harpy feeding, the ugly “sound of water in mine ears,” anticipations of going to the bottom, and the treasures of the memory. i remembered up nearly the whole of lycidas, clause by clause, here a verse and there a word, as isis in the fable the broken body of osiris. out occasionally crawled we from our several holes, but hope and fair weather would not; so there was nothing for it but to wriggle again into the crooks of the transom. then it seemed strange that the first man who came to sea did not journal [age 29 turn round and go straight back again. strange that because one of my neighbours had some trumpery logs and notions which would sell for a few cents more here than there, he should thrust forth this company of his poor countrymen to the tender mercies of the northwest wind. we study the sailor, the man of his hands, man of all work; all eye, all finger, muscle, skill and endurance: a tailor, a carpenter, cooper, stevedore and clerk, and astronomer besides. he is a great saver, and a great quiddle, by the necessity of his situation. the captain believes in the superiority of the american to every other countryman. “you will see,” he says, “when you get out here how they manage in europe; they do everything by main strength and ignorance. four truckmen and four stevedores at long wharf will load my brig quicker than a hundred men at any port in the mediterranean.” it seems the sicilians have tried once or twice to bring their fruit to america in their own bottoms, and made the passage, he says, in one hundred and twenty days. p. m. a crop of meditations in the berth. thought again of the sailor, and how superficial the differences. how shallow to make much of mere 18331 thoughts at sea coat and hat distinctions. you can't get away from the radical, uniform, interior experiences which peep out of the new faces, identical with those of the old. new tongues repeat the old proverbs, primeval truths. the thought occurred, full of consolation, that if he would deal towards himself with severest truth, man must acknowledge the deity. so far from being a conventional idea, built on reason of state, it is in strict soliloquy, in absolute solitude when the soul makes itself a hermit in the creation, that this thought naturally arises. this unavoidable acknowledgment of god, this valid prayer, puts the soul in equilibrium. in this state the question whether your boat shall float in safety or go to the bottom is no more important than the flight of a snow-flake. january 3. i rose at sunrise, and under the lee of the spencer-sheet had a solitary, thoughtful hour. all right thought is devout. the clouds were touched and in their silent faces might be read unutterable love. ere they shone with light that shines on europe, afric, and the nile, and i opened my spirit's journal [age 29 ci ear to their most ancient hymn. what, they said to me, goest thou so far to seek — painted canvas, carved marble, renowned towns ? but fresh from us, new evermore, is the creative efflux from whence these works spring. you now feel in gazing at our fleecy arch of light the motions that express themselves in arts. you get no nearer to the principle in europe. it animates man. it is the america of america. it spans the ocean like a hand-breadth. it smiles at time and space. yet welcome, young man ! the universe is hospitable. the great god, who is love, hath made you aware of the forms and breeding of his wide house. we greet you well to the place of history, as you please to style it, to the mighty lilliput or ant-hill of your genealogy, if, instructed as you have been, you must still be the dupe of shows, and count it much, the three or four bubbles of foam that preceded your own on the sea of time. this strug-winged sea-gull and striped sheer-water +l; ..;pave watched as they skimmed the war... . » vault, they are works of art bei“ ? " p rivhusiasm, masi terpieces of eterr..! 27 ) ' eternal because now active, and yarations so far to seek what ye would not sekat.'is in ore not within you. yet welcome and his song in 1833) wind and calm 7 my ear the silver-grey mists, and the winds and the sea said amen. thursday, january 3. n. lat. 37° 53. dr. johnson rightly defends conversation upon the weather. with more reason we at sea beat that topic thin. we are pensioners of the wind. the weathercock is the wisest man. all our prosperity, enterprise, temper, come and go with the fickle air. if the wind should forget to blow, we must eat our masts. sea-farmers must make hay when the sun shines. the gale collects plenty of work for the calm. now are we all awaiting a smoother sea to stand at our toilette. a head wind makes grinning esaus of us. happy that there is a time for all things under the moon, so that no man need give a dinner-party in a brig's cabin, nor shave himself by the gulf lightning. cs saturday evening, january 5. i like the latitude of 37° better than my bitter native 42°. we have sauntered all this calm day at one or two knots the hour, and nobody on board well pleased but i, and why should i be pleased ? i have nothing to record. i have read little. i have done nothing. what then? need we be such barren scoundrels that the whole journal [age 29 beauty of heaven, the main, and man, cannot entertain us unless we too must needs hold a candle and daub god's world with a smutch of our own insignificance. not i, for one. i will be pleased, though i do not deserve it. i will act in all up to my conceit of last week, when i exulted in the power and art with which we rode tilting over this january ocean, albeit, to speak truth, our individual valours lay very sick the while, lodged each in the waistcoat pocket of the brave brig's transom. so that each passenger's particular share in the glory was much the same as the sutler's or grocer's who turns his penny in the army of leonidas or washington. the southing latitude does notyet make early mornings. the steward's lanthorn and trumpery matutinal preparations are to me for the rosy ray, the silver cloud, or chaunt of earliest bird. but days will come. poor book, this scelta di goldoni. he is puffed in the preface, and also by sismondi, as the restorer or reformer of the italian stage, etc., etc. not a just sentiment, or a well-contrived scene in the book. his highest merit that of a good phrase book. perrin might as well knit his conversations into a dialogue and call it a drama. 1833] sea-life. writing 9 sunday, january 6. lat. 37° 23; long. 39° 59 w. last evening, fair wind and full moon suddenly lost in squall and rain. there are no attractions in the “sailor's life.” its best things are only alleviations. “a prison with the chance of being drowned.” it is even so, and yet they do not run blind into unmeasured danger, as seems to the landsman; these chances are all counted and weighed, and experience has begotten this confidence in the proportioned strength of spars and rigging to the ordinary forces of wind and water, which, by being habitual, constitutes the essence of a sailor's fearlessness. suppose a student confined to a ship, i see not why he might not trim his lamp to as good purpose as in college attic. why should he be less efficient in his 'vocation than the poor steward who ingloriously deals ever in pork and beans, let the quadrant or the chart or the monsoon say what they will. the caboose is his rome. it occurred forcibly this morning, whether suggested by goldoni, or bigelow, or some falsetto of my own, that the thing set down in words is not affirmed. it must affirm itself, or no forms of grammar and no verisimilitude can give it evi10 journal [age 29 dence. this is a maxim which holds to the core of the world. storm, storm; ah we! the sea to us is but a lasting storm. we have had no fine weather to lastan hour. yet i must thank the sea and rough weather for a truckman's health and stomach, how connected with celestial gifts ! the wind is the sole performer in these parts of nature, and the royal æolus understands his work well, and to give him his due, shifts the scene and varies the accompaniment as featly and as often as the audience can desire. certainly he rings his few chimes with wondrous skill of permutation. sometimes we, his pets, are cross, and say 't is naught but salt and squalls, and sometimes we are ourselves and admit that it is divine architecture. what is it to sail upon the calm blue sea, to ride as a cloud over the purple floor with golden mists for company? and day and night are drest ever in their jocund vest, and the water is warm to the hands, and far below you see motes of light by day, and streams of fire by night. 1833] the passenger ii what is it to sail upon the stormy sea, to drive with naked spars before the roaring gale, hemmed round with ragged clouds, foaming and hissing and thumping waves ? the reeking cabin is cold and wet, the masts are strained, and the sail is torn, the gale blows fiercer as the night sets in scarce can the seaman aloft master his struggling reef. even the stout captain in his coat of storms sighs as he glances astern at the white, white combs, and the passenger sits unsocial and puts his book aside and leans upon his hand. yet is the difference less between this grey sea and that golden one than 'twixt the moods of the man that sails upon it to-day and yesterday. what is a passenger? he is a much-enduring man who bends under the load of his leisure. he fawns upon the captain, reveres the mate, but his eye follows the steward; scans accurately, as symptomatic, all the motions of that respectable officer. the species is contemplative, given to imitation, viciously inquisitive, immensely capable of sleep, large eaters, swift digesters, their thoughts ever running on men and things ashore, 12 journal [age 29 and their eye usually squinting over the bulwark to estimate the speed of the bubbles. 0 cvo january 7. w. long. 36° 11; n. lat. 37° 4. sailors are the best dressed of mankind. convenience is studied from head to heel, and they have a change for every emergency. it seems to me they get more work out of the sailor than out of any other craftsman. his obedience is prompt as a soldier's, and willing as a child's, and reconciles me to some dim remembrances of authority i wondered at. thin skins do not believe in thick. jack never looks an inch beyond his orders. “brace the yards," quoth the master; “ay, ay, sir,” answers jack, and never looks over the side at the squall or the sea that cometh, as if it were no more to him than to the capstan. but though i do not find much attraction in the seaman, yet i can discern that the naval hero is a hero. it takes all the thousand thousand european voyages that have been made to establish our faith in the practicability of this our hodiurnal voyage. but to be columbus, to steer west steadily day after day, week after week, for the first time, and wholly alone in his opinion, shows a mind as solitary and self-subsistent as any that 1833) the stars. azores 13 ever lived. i am learning the use of the quadrant. another voyage would make an astronomer of me. how delicately come out these stars at sea! the constellations show smaller, and a ship, though with the disadvantage of motion, is a fine observatory. but i am ashamed of myself for a dull scholar. every day i display a more astounding ignorance. the whole world is a millstone to me. the experiment of the philosopher is but a separation to bring within his optics the comprehension of a fact which is done masterly and in harmony in god's laboratory of the world. wednesday, january 9. w. long. 28° 58. still we sail well, and feed full, and hope tomorrow to make st. mary's, the southernmost of the azores. when the abbey grew rich the fat monk cut up all his quills for toothpicks. so do we. thursday eve at 9 o'clock passed st. mary's, a dim, black hummock of land. our dead reckoning agreed with its longitude in the bearings to a mile. january 13. we have but fourteen degrees of longitude to make to reach the rock of gibraltar, but the fickle wind may make those fourteen longer mea14 (age 29 journal sure than all we have meted. a gale, day before yesterday; yesterday a heavy sea, and a cold headwind to-day. yet still we hope and drift along. in the ocean the vessel gains a large commission on every mile sailed, even with a wind dead ahead. in a narrow sea much less. a sea voyage at the best is yet such a bundle of perils and inconveniences that no person as much a lover of the present moment as i am would be swift to pay that price for any commodity which anything else would buy. yet if our horses are somewhat wild, and the road uneven and lonely and without inns, yet experience shows us that the coward eye magnifies the dangers. ss sunday. w. long. 17° 2. * let us insist on having our say. we but half express ourselves, but ever draw diagonals between our own thought and the supposed thought of our companion, and so fail to satisfy either. now god made the model and meant we should live out our idea. it may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so that it be faithfully expressed, but god will not have his work made manifest by cowards. and so it takes a divine man to exhibit anything divine, socrates, alfred, columbus, wordsworth, or any other 1833) memory 15 brave preferrer of the still voice within to the roar of the populace— a thing very easy to speak and very hard to do for twenty-four hours. the rest are men potentially, not actually, now only pupas or tadpoles, say rather quarries of souls, heroes that shall be, seeds of gods. sunday, january 13. in the wonderful store of the memory carry we power and peace. it is the monument of how high antiquity. the sides of the pyramids cannot contain the story of half so much time, nor be inscribed with anything like the magic of its method. its method is myriad-fold. its order comprehends a thousand lines, right, left, oblique, curved, and waving. every point lives, and is centre or extreme in turn. as the lightning shineth out of one part of heaven even unto the other part, so one thought in this firmament flashes its light over all the sphere. a man looks upon himself as a mere circumstance and not as the solid, adamant, mundane ground-plan of a universal man. he thinks his internals are evanescent opal shades, and won't bear criticism and description. let him turn the telescope on them. let him compare them with durable things. he will find they outshine the 16 [age 29 journal sun, and will grind to powder the iron and the stone of outward permanence. ous january 14. w. long. 14° 14. well, blithe traveller, whatcheer? what have the sea and the stars and the moaning winds and the discontented thoughts sung in your attentive ears? peeps up old europe yet out of his eastern main hospitably, ho? nay, the slumberous old giant cannot bestir himself in these his chair days to loom up for the pastime of his upstart grandchildren, as now they come, shoal after shoal, to salute their old progenitor, the old adam of all. sleep on, old sire, there is muscle and nerve and enterprise enow in us, your poor spawn, who have sucked the air and ripened in the sunshine of the cold west, to steer our ships to your very ports and thrust our inquisitive, american eyes into your towns and towers and keeping-rooms. here we come, and mean to be welcome. so be good now, clever old gentleman. i comfort the mate by assuring him that the sea life is excellent preparation for life ashore. no man well knows how many fingers he has got, nor what are the faculties of a knife and a needle, or the capabilities of a pine board, until he has seen the expedients and the ambidexter1833] sea-learning 17 ous invincibility of jack tar. then he may buy an orchard, or retreat to his paternal acres, with a stock of thrifty science that will make him independent of all the village carpenters, masons, and wheelwrights, and add withal an enchanting beauty to the waving of his yellow corn and sweetness to his shagbarks in his chimney corner. no squally twelve o'clock ! call the watch! shall break his dreams. tuesday, january 15. w. long. 13° 27. calm, clear, warm, idle day; holiday to the senses, rest to the sailor, vexation to the captain, dubiously borne by the passenger. yesterday, or day before, saw three sail, one englishman. to-day, one french brig, and saluted them both by exchanging the sight of our colours. john bull, they say, is very sulky at sea, or assuredly sometimes very rude. but how comes my speculative pencil down to so near a level with the horizon of life, which commonly proses above? i learn in the sunshine to get an altitude and the latitude, but am a dull scholar as ever in real figures. seldom, i suppose, was a more inapt learner of arithmetic, astronomy, geography, 18 (age 29 journal political economy, than i am, as i daily find to my cost. it were to brag much if i should there end the catalogue of my defects. my memory of history-put me to the pinch of a precise question-is as bad; my comprehension of a question in technical metaphysics very slow, and in all arts practick, in driving a bargain, or hiding emotion, or carrying myself in company as ja man for an hour, i have no skill. what under the sun canst thou do then, pale face? truly not much, but i can hope. “in a good hope,” said bias, “the wise differ from the unwise.” i am content to belong to the great all, and look on and see what better men can do, and by my admiration realize a property in their worth. i did not put me here; yet god forbid i should therefore decline the responsibility into which i am born. space and time and venerable nature and beautiful stars and all the various fellow beings, i greet ye well, and will not despond, but even out of my acre god shall yet rear himself some tardy fruit. if not, still is it not sublime unprofitably to pray and praise? am wednesday, january 16. i rose betimes and saw every fold of the banner of the morning unrolled from starlight to 1833) captain and scholar 19 full day. we are as poor as we are rich. we brag of our memory, but in the lonely nightwatch it will not always befriend us, but leaves the scholar's brain as barren as the steward's. but that i sat in the confessional last night, i should parade my rags again. the good cap-? tain rejoices much in my ignorance. he confounded me the other day about the book in the bible where god was not mentioned, and last, night upon st. paul's shipwreck. yet i comforted myself at midnight with lycidas. what marble beauty in that classic pastoral. i should like well to see an analysis of the pleasure it gives. that were criticism for the gods. the inconvenience of living in a cabin is that people become all eye. 'tis a great part of well-being to ignorize a good deal of your fellow man's history and not count his warts nor expect the hour when he shall wash his teeth. january 17. lat. 36° 29 n.; long. 9° 48 w. another day as beautiful as ever shines on the monotonous sea, but a wind so soft will not fill our sails, and we lie like a log, so near our haven too. 'atpuynty oálaooa; the sea is a blank, and all the minstrelsy of nature rings but a few changes 20 [age 29 journal on the instrument. the more it should send us to the inner music; but that is a capricious shell which sometimes vibrates wildly with multitudinous impulses, and sometimes is mute as wood. the inner shell is like its marine archetype, which murmurs only where there is already noise. friday, january 18. lat. 36° 36 n.; long. 8° 20 w. well, thou navigating muse of mine; 't is now the hour of chinese inspiration, the post-tea-cuptime, the epical creative moment to all thinking heads of the modern world; and what print have the ethereal footsteps of night and morn left upon your tablets ? another day, profusion of the divine munificence, yet taken and spent by us as by the oysters. the boar feeds under the tree, and never looks up to see who shakes down the mast, and i glide in leisure and safety and health and fulness over this liquid sahara, and the invisible leader, so venerable, is seldom worshipped and much a stranger in the bosom of his child. we feel sometimes as if the sweet and awful melodies we have once heard would never return; as if we were deaf?7 and fear we shall not again aspire to the glory of a moral life, of a will as punctual as the little needle in the bin1833] straits of gibraltar 21 nacle over my head. the sea tosses on the horns of its waves the framework of habits so slight and epicurean as mine, and i make the voyage one long holiday, which, like all holidays, is dull. saturday, january 19. mem. no trust to be put in a seaman's eye. he can see land wherever he wishes to see it, and always has a cloud, and “ the stuff” ready to cover up a mistake. no word suits the sea but i bope. every sign fails. straits of gibraltar, january 20. last evening they saw land from the masthead, and this morn broke over the bold and picturesque mountains of africa behind cape spartel and tangiers. on the left was cape trafalgar and spain. the passengers greeted each other and mused, each in his own way, on this animating vision. but now, as tarifa light opened upon us, we have encountered an adverse current, a thing unknown in the books, or to the sailors in these waters, where they say the current always sets from the ocean into the mediterranean. meantime all the other craft, great and small, are flying by us and we seem anchored in the middle of the stream. what is this to me beyond 22 [age 29 journal my fellow-feeling for the master? shall not i be content to look at the near coast of andalusia and morocco ? i have seen this morn the smokes of moorish fishers or mountaineers on one side and of spanish on the other. we could not quite open tangier bay enow to see that mauretanian town, but the watch towers and the cultivated enclosures and the farm-houses of the spaniard are very discernible. not many weeks ago i should scarce have been convinced that i should so soon look on these objects, yet what is their poetry, or what is it not? is not a hut in america a point that concentrates as much life and sentiment as a hut in europe or on the ragged side of mount atlas ? ah! it is all in the anointed eye. yet will not i refine overmuch on the love of the remote and the renowned, nor affirm them both to be only a mixture of colors upon the retina of the eye, nor say of a man, he is mammiferous, and of beauty, it is but gelatine and oxygen. january 21. a squall with copious rain helped us out of our straits, and last evening i saw the lights of the barracks at gibraltar on one side and at ceuta on the other. the summit of the hill at gibraltar is 1500 feet high. 1833] barbary and spain 23 this day we sail bravely five, six, and seven knots. sunrise was charming; the pillars of hercules astern, the barbary coast on the lee quarter, and the mountains of granada covered with snow, having white villages half-way up their sides on the left hand. a grand show they make. the sierra nevada is the name of the range, and the easternmost summit which we saw is the highest in spain and, except the alps, in europe; to wit, 11,690. we glided by malaga, the country of the finest grape, but were too far seaward to spy the town. twenty-one sail were in sight at sunrise. these cold alpine hilltops remind us of new england, though far higher than any of our snowbanks. noble sierra nevada ! all the afternoon we have watched the sublime peak of cumbre de mulahacen, and, fast as we go, we scarce change our bearings from it. january 22. off the snowy mountains blew not so cold breath yesterday as this day from the northeast. “fire,” well said the ancient, “is the sauce of life.” if you diminish the temperature, it infuses ague into my inner as well as outer self. yet since the first ten days of the voyage i have ict a. 24 [age 29 journal scarce worn my great-coat except at evening, or to sit still in the shade. january 25. lat. 37° 31 n.; long. 1° 20 e. head-winds are sore vexations, and the more passengers, the sorer. yesterday the captain killed a porpoise and i witnessed the cutting up of my mammiferous fellow creature. when men and women sit mum by the hour and week, shall i doubt the doctrine that every natural character is interesting? by no means; there is always sweet music in the pipe, but it needs a skilful player to draw it out, else month by month we may be packed in the same closet, and shall be all only so much ash and ebony. if the sea teaches any lesson, it thunders this through the throat of all its winds, “that there is no knowledge that is not valuable.” how i envied my fellow passenger who yesterday had knowledge and nerve enough to prescribe for the sailor's sore throat, and this morning to bleed him. in this little balloon of ours, so far from the human family and their sages and colleges and manufactories, every accomplishment, every natural or acquired talent, every piece of information is some time in request. and a short 18331 the able captain 25 voyage will show the difference between the man and the apprentice as surely as it will show the superior value of beef and bread to lemons and sugar-plums. honour evermore aboard ship to the man of action, — to the brain in the hand. * here is our stout master, worth a thousand philosophers, -a man who can strike a porpoise, and make oil out of his blubber, and steak out of his meat, who can thump a mutineer into obedience in two minutes; who can bleed his sick sailor, and mend the box of his pump; who can ride out the roughest storm on the american coast, and, more than all, with the sun and a three-cornered bit of wood, and a chart, can find his way from boston across three thousand miles of stormy water into a little gut of inland sea, nine miles wide, with as much precision as if led by a clue. malta february 2. made st. elmo's light at 1 o'clock this morning; lay to in a gale till daylight, and then sailed into st. paul's bay. the pilot-boat was quickly followed by a procession of boats who, after a short, loud wrangling with the unflinching captain, came into his terms and took the rope and brought us in. so here we are in malta, in the 26 journal [age 29 renowned harbor of marsa muscette, the quarantine roads for a fortnight, imprisoned for poor dear europe's health, lest it should suffer prejudice from the unclean sands and mountains of america. the truth is, it is all pro forma on the part of the english government, this quarantine being enforced in accordance with the rules of naples and trieste, merely that vessels quarantined here may be admitted to full pratique in those ports. we were presently visited by the harbormaster, then by the boats of the grocer and shipchandler presenting their cards at the end of a pole to us leprous men, then the clamorous spenditori to offer their services, then by the merchant, signor paul eynaud. this afternoon i visited the parlatorio, where those in quarantine converse with those out, across barriers. it looked to me like the wildest masquerade. there jabbered turks, moors, sicilians, germans, greeks, english, maltese, with friars and guards and maimed and beggars. and such grotesque faces ! it resembled more some brave antique picture than a congregation of flesh and blood. the human family can seldom see their own differences of color and form so sharply contrasted as in this house. i noticed, 1833] quarantine 27 however, that all the curiosity manifested was on our part. our cousins of asia and europe did not pay us the compliment of a second glance. in quarantine, our acquaintance has been confined chiefly to the maltese boatmen, a great multitude of poor, swarthy, good-natured people, who speak their own tongue, not much differing from the arabic, and most of them know very few words of italian and less of english. (from q) harbor of malta, marsa muscette, february 3. here in the precincts of st. john, the isle of old fame under the high battlements, once of the knights and now of england, i spend my sunday, which shines with but little sabbath light. “tout commence,” as père bossuet says. it is hardly truer of me at this point of time, when i am setting foot on the old world and learning two languages, than it is of every day of mine, so rude and unready am i sent into this world. glad, very glad, to find the company of a person quite the reverse of myself in all these particulars in which i fail most, who has all his knowledge, and it is much and various, at his sudden command. i 28 (age 29 journal seem, on all trivial emergencies, to be oppressed with an universal ignorance. if i rightly consider that for this point of time which we call a life, tout commence, i shall rejoice in the omen of a boundless future and not be chagrined. oh heavens! no. it is, however, a substantial satisfaction to benefit your companions with your knowledge, a pleasure denied me.“ time,” said friend carlyle, “ brings roses ”; a capital mot, putting a little rouge on the old skeleton's cheek. february 10. perhaps it is a pernicious mistake, yet, rightly seen, i believe it is sound philosophy, that wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn. montaigne said, himself was all he knew, myself is much more than i know, and yet i know nothing else. the chemist experiments upon his new salt' by trying its affinity to all the various substances he can command, arbitrarily selected, and thereby discloses the most wonderful properties in his subject. and i bring myself to sea, to malta, to italy, to find new affinities between me and my fellow men, to observe narrowly the affections, weaknesses, surprises, hopes, doubts, which new sides of the panorama shall call forth in me. mean, sneakingly 1833) malta 29 mean, would be this philosophy, a reptile unworthy of the name, if self be used in the low sense, but as self means devil, so it means god. i speak of the universal man to whose colossal dimensions each particular bubble can by its birthright expand.is it the hard condition upon which the love of highest truth is given, such extreme incapacity foraction and common conversation as to provoke the contempt of the bystander, even of kindred and debtors. or is it that we will put off upon our nature the bad consequence of our faults ? hang out your temperance, my friend, as your amulet, your benevolence as your shield, your industry as your advocate, and perhaps you will not have so much reason as you think to complain of your reception among men. i am a full believer in the doctrine that we always make our own welcome. malta, february. i am now pleased abundantly with st. john's church in valetta. welcome these new joys. let my american eye be a child's again to these glorious picture-books. the chaunting friars, the 1 this passage should be borne in mind in reading the essay self-reliance, of which the oversoul is the explanation and correction. 30 journal [age 29 carved ceilings, the madonnas and saints, they are living oracles, quotidiana et perpetua. silver gates. louis de beaujolais. you have one inner rule. you leave that and measure your actions by a laxer rule of others. in vain. they won't judge you by theirs, but will hold you to your own. spite of themselves, they will find out and use that secret inner rule of yours, cobwebbed up in thickest darkness of nature as you thought. everything intercepts us from ourselves. lrt mo la valetta, february 16. yesterday we took pratique, and found lodgings once more on dry ground with great joy all day with my fellow travellers i perambulated this little town of stone. it is from end to end a box of curiosities, and though it is very green and juvenile to express wonder, i could not hinder my eyes from rolling continually in their sockets, nor my tongue from uttering my pleasure and surprise. it is an advantage to enter europe at the little end, so we shall admire by just degrees from the maltese architecture up to st. peter's. i went to st. john's church, and a noble house it is to worship god in, full of 1833) malta. saint john's 31 marble and mosaic and pictures and gilding; the walls are eloquent with texts and the floor covered with epitaphs. the verger led me down into a dim vault full of solemn sculpture and showed me the tomb of l’isle adam, the grand master of the knights of st. john, to whom charles v gave the island of malta when he and his knights had been driven by the turks from rhodes. next to him rests the body of la valette, who so bravely defended the island against the sultan. but i shall have more to say about this fine temple when i have paid another visit. everywhere as i went, the wretched beggars would steal up beside me, with, “grazia, signore, sono miserabile. uno grano per carità.” “look hard at a maltese,” said my friend, mr. h.,' “and he instinctively holds out his hand.” i went to the churches of st. popilius and st. thomas. the first is no other than “ publius, the chief man of the island,” in acts xxviii, and much honour hath he in malta, at least on the walls of his church. in all these churches there were many worshippers continually coming in, saying their prayers, and going their way. i yielded me joyi a mr. s. p. holbrook. 32 (age 29 journal fully to the religious impression of holy texts and fine paintings and this soothfast faith, though of women and children. how beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this. i hope they will carve and paint and inscribe the walls of our churches in new england before this century, which will probably see many grand granite piles erected there, is closed. to be sure there is plenty of superstition. everywhere indulgence is offered, and on one convent on our way home i read this inscription over the gate, “indulgentia plenaria, quotidiana, perpetua, pro vivis et defunctis.” this is almost too frank, may it please your holiness. february 17. visited st. john's again and attended mass. the bishop, a venerable old man, was present, but did not officiate. this noble temple was built by the grand master la cassiera, and chiefly adorned with painting by preti, who lies buried here. (vide abela.) mrs. davy told me it was built about 1560. the lordly heads of the grand masters still command the eye in marble or on canvas around the walls, and their 1833] english chapel 33 notched cross surmounts or underlies every ornament. the music of the organ and chaunting friars very impressive, especially when we left the kneeling congregation in the nave, and heard it at a distance, as we examined the pictures in a side oratory. i went into several churches, which were all well attended. how could anybody who had been in a catholic church devise such a deformity as a pew? went at 11 o'clock to mr. temple's plain chapel on the third storey of his dwelling-house, and heard with greedy ears the english bible read, and watts's psalms sung, and a good sermon. a small congregation of english ; one armenian, who is translating the bible into his tongue. mr. temple and mr. halleck conduct the missionary press here and print in modern greek, in italian, in armenian, and turkish. the malteseis arabicwith a mixture of italian. they have translated adams's arithmetic and peter parley's geography (iiét pov'oulantov) and the best tracts into greek. the names look odd enough. ‘h súvapis rñs å delas, and ‘h ovyárnp tôu yalaktonólov, are droll masks for scott's force of truth and the dairyman's daughter. i brought away scougal's life of god in the soul of man, in italian. 34 [age 29 journal the missionary press for the mediterranean is established here for the sake of the protection of this government. there is only protection, no countenance. it was a stipulation of the maltese in their capitulation to the english in — that the scriptures should not be printed in the maltese (?). [sic] february 20. i went to the terrace on the top of mr. temple's house. all the roofs are flat, and afford this valuable accommodation. i saw many persons walking on the tops. last friday, mr. temple said he saw mt. etna very distinctly from hence, and it is very frequently seen. it is one hundred and fifty miles distant. he is sure the atmosphere is much more transparent than with us; that venus and jupiter give more light. mr. temple rents his lofty house for one hundred and forty dollars, containing his chapel and press. it rented once for 1000 scudi=$400. noble houses everywhere, thanks to the beautiful material for building which constitutes the soil of the island. the maltese stone is very soft and easily wrought, and when well selected, the house will last a thousand years. the architecture is in fine taste, the apartments twenty or thirty feet high,— floors, walls, stairs, all of this 1833) ball at the palace 35 cold, clean, sightly stone; the balconies supported with sculptured work, and the openings adorned with vases. instead of paper, the walls and ceilings are covered with ordinary frescoes, wherein æsop and the old testament furnish the subjects. visited the armoury in the palace, and saw the arms of the old knights, of every form and size, much the same show, i suppose, as is in the tower of london. the hall might be two hundred feet long. the library of the knights contains 40,000 volumes, and a venerable ptolemaic bookstall it is. i sat down and read in abela's old folios, melita illustrata. through the politeness of mr. eynaud, the american consul, i received a card of invitation from sir frederick ponsonby, the governor, to attend a fancy dress ball at the palace. a very gay and novel scene, but hardly equal to the place and expectation. as the consul did not appear very early, my friends and i presented each other to sir frederick, who conversed a few moments very pleasantly. we thought he resembled george iv. a few beautiful faces in the dancing crowd; and a beautiful face is worth going far to see. that which is finest in beauty is moral. the most piquant attraction of a long-descended 36 [age 29 journal maiden is the imputation of an immaculate innocence, a sort of wild virtue (if i may so term it), wild and fragrant as the violets. and the imagination is surprised and gratified with the strong contrast, meeting the divinity amidst flowers and trifles. the days pass over me and i am still the same; the aroma of my life is gone like the flower with which it came.' called upon mrs. davy, a very agreeable woman. dr. davy (brother to sir humphry) is given to chemical pursuits. much younger than i expected, and of simple manners. i was sorry i could not accept of their invitation to dine, as they were well named, well educated, well mannered, and well acquainted with malta. visited the workshop of sigismundo dimeck, a sculptor in maltese stone: beautiful work. if i had a great house in america, i would send to the signor for a pair of vases which i saw, four feet high, two feet diameter, richly carved with ornaments à la raffaelle ; price, eight dol1 these lines are found in journal « (1831), but in a book in which mr. emerson copied his verses he gives the date as 1833, so it is here introduced. rna1833) voyage to syracuse 37 lars apiece. another pair of the same size and as good to my eye, though with less costly ornament, price, five dollars. venetian oil is put in them to make them hold water. a bocale one foot high and beautiful, seventy-five cents. vaso etrusco, one dollar. convicts in chains sweep the streets in malta. the maltese milkman drives his goats through the street, and milks you a pint at your door. asses and mules passim. february 21. at 8 o'clock p. m. we embarked for syracuse in a sicilian brigantine, il santissimo ecce homo, and a most ridiculous scene our ship's company offered, they to us and we to them. the little brig was manned with fourteen men, who were all on a perfect level with each other. the steersman sat down at the helm, and when they brought him his supper, the captain affectionately took his post whilst he ate. the boy was employed in sitting down by the steersman and watching the hour-glass so that he might turn it when it ran out. but the whole interest of master and men was concentrated on us, his five passengers. we had hired for thirty dollars the whole cabin, so they put all their heads into the scuttle and companion-way to behold all "sy 38 (age 29 journal that we did, the which seemed to amuse them mightily. when anything was to be done to sails or spars, they did it who had a mind to it, and the captain got such obedience as he could. in the morning the mate brought up his gazetteer to find boston, the account of which he read aloud, and all the crew gathered round him whilst he read. they laughed heartily at the captain and passed jokes upon him, and when the little boy did something amiss everybody gave him a knock. a cask of blood-red wine was on tap, from which everybody drank when it pleased him, in a quart measure. their food was a boiled fish called purpo (which looks like an eel and tastes like lobster), with bread and green onions eaten raw. their little vessel sailed fast, and in sixteen hours we saw the ancient city of syracuse. abundance of fuss and vexation did the sanità and the dogana give us before we were suffered to land our baggage, but our captain and mate helped us all they could, and our money opened all the gates at last. sicily syracuse, february 23. shall i count it, like the berber at rome, the greatest wonder of all to find myself here? i 39 1833] syracuse have this day drank the waters of the fountain arethusa and washed my hands in it. i ate the very fragrant hyblæan honey with my breakfast. i have been into the old temple of minerva, praised for its beauty by cicero, and now preserved and concealed by having its pillars half buried in the walls of the cathedral. a modern façade conceals the front, but the severe beauty of a parthenon peeps from the sides in projecting flutes and triglyphs. it was seven in the morning, and i found the priests saying mass in the oratories of the church. the american consul called upon our party in the forenoon, and we rode with him into the country. we stopped at a crumbled arch, reputed as the spot where cicero found the globe and cylinder, the tomb of archimedes. did i hold my breath for awe? then went we to the catacombs, old enough, nothing else, mere excavations in the living rock for cemeteries, but the air was soft and the trees in bloom, and the fields covered with beautiful wild flowers to me unknown, and amidst ruins of ruins nature still was fair. close by, we found the aqueduct, which once supplied the magnificent city of hiero, now turning a small grist-mill. then we went to dionysius' ear; a huge excavation into the v40 journal (age 29 hard rock which i am not going to describe. poor people were making twine in it, and my ear was caught on approaching it by the loud noise made by their petty wheels in the vault. a little beyond the entrance the floor was covered with a pool of water. we found a twinemaker who very readily took us, one after another, on his shoulders into the recess 250 feet, and planted us on dry land at the bottom of the cave. we shouted and shouted and the cave bellowed and bellowed; the twine-maker tore a bit of paper in the middle of the cave, and very loud it sounded; then they fired a pistol at the entrance and we had our fill of thunder. i inquired for the tyrant's chamber in the wall, the focus of sound where he was wont to hear the whispers of his prisoners, but in this unvisited country it is inaccessible. high up the rock, seventy or eighty feet, they pointed to a little inlet to which once there was a stair, but not now. if we had time and spirit would we not go up thither in baskets, as sundry english have done? i affirm not. a little way off, along the same quarry of rock, we found another great excavation in which they were making saltpetre. it was the place from which the great pillars of un 41 arrow 18331 gifts to minerva the temple of minerva, it is said, were taken. then we visited the theatre, or rather the rows of stone benches which are all of it that remains. from this spot we looked down upon the city and its noble harbour, and a beautiful, sad sight it was. the town stands now wholly within the little peninsula, the ancient ortygia, (not a third of the size of the peninsula of boston, i judge) and the three great suburbs, or parts, neapoli, tycha and acradina, have almost no house or church where they stood. and syracuse is very old and shabby, with narrow streets and few people and many, many beggars. once 800,000 people dwelt together in this town. its walls were, according to historical measurements, twentytwo english miles in circuit. of its two ports, the northern was called the marmoricus, because surrounded with marble edifices. the southern is five miles round, and is the best harbour in the mediterranean sea. in the old time every sicilian carried honey and wheat and flowers out of the port, and threw them into the sea as soon as he lost sight of the statue of minerva aloft on her temple. once dion, once timoleon, once archimedes dwelt here, and cicero dutifully visited their graves. i lodge in the strada amalfitana. ca as soo 42 journal [age 29 in a caffè in our street, they have had the good taste to paint the walls in very tolerable frescoes, with archimedes drawing the famous galley by means of a windlass, and a sign over our locanda contains this sentence of cicero's 4th oration in verrem, “ urbem syracusas elegerat.” was it grand or mournful that i should hear mass in this temple of minerva this morn? though in different forms, is it not venerable that the same walls should be devoted to divine worship for more than 2500 years ? is it not good witness to the ineradicableness of the religious principle? with the strange practice that in these regions everywhere confounds pagan and christian antiquity, and half preserves both, they call this cathedral the church of “ our lady of the pillar." abundance of examples here of great things turned to vile uses. the fountain arethusa, to be sure, gives name to the street, via aretusa, in which it is found; but an obscure dark nook it is, and we walked up and down and looked in this and that courtyard in vain for some time. then we asked a soldier on guard where it was. he only knew that “ questa è la batteria,” nothing more. at last an old woman as 1833] arethusa's fountain 43 guided us to the spot, and i grieve, i abhor to tell, the fountain was bubbling up its world-renowned waters within four black walls, serving as one great washing-tub to fifty or sixty women, who were polluting it with the filthy clothes of the city. it is remarkable now, as of old, for its quantity of water springing up out of the earth at once, as large as a river. its waters are sweet and pure and of the colour of lake george. all day from the balcony, mount etna is in sight, covered with snow. from the parlour window i look down on the broad marshes where the carthaginian army, that came to rescue syracuse from the romans, perished. they say in this country you have but to scratch the soil and you shall find medals, cameos, statues, temples. february 24. visited the latomie of the gardens of the capuchins, a strange place. it is a large and beautiful garden, full of oranges and lemons and pomegranates, in a deep pit, say 1 20 feet below the surrounding grounds. all this is a vast excavation in the solid rock, and we first came upon it from above and peeped down the precipice 44 journal (age 29 into this fragrant cellar far below us. “opus est ingens magnificum regum ac tyrannorum. totum ex saxo in mirandam altitudinem depresso,” etc. cicero. "all this excavation is manifestly the work of art, — cyclopean all. after circumambulating the brink above, we went to the convent and got admission to the garden below. a handsome and courteous monk conducted us, and showed us one huge arch wherein he said the athenian prisoners recited the verses of euripides for their ransom; wild and grand effect. all syracuse must have been built out of this enormous quarry, traces of works on a vast scale in oldest time. went into the convent, and the fathers set before us bread, olives, and wine. our conductor then showed us the dormitories (over each of which was a latin inscription from the bible or the fathers), the chapel, etc., of the house. there is no better spot in the neighborhood of syracuse than the one they have chosen. the air, the view, the long gallery of the chambers, the peace of the place, quite took me, and i told the padre that i would stay there always if he would give me a chamber. he said, “i should have his,” which he opened, a little neat room with a few books, theologia thomæ ex charmes, 1833) sunken gardens 45 and some others. my friend's whip-cords hung by the bedside. there are only twenty-two or twenty-three persons in this fine old house. we saw but four or five. i am half resolved to spend a week or fortnight there. they will give me board, i. am informed, on easy terms. how good and pleasant to stop and recollect myself in this wornout nook of the human race, to turn over its history and my own. but, ah me! hence we went to the campo santo where several americans have been buried; and thence to other latomie, the gardens of the marquis di casal. similar to those we had left, but the rich soil is now filled with flowers in wildest profusion of scent and colour. the bergamot lemon, the orange, the citron, we plucked and ate; and lavender and rosemary and roses and hyacinths and jasmine and thyme, which were running wild all over the grounds, we filled our hands and hats with. here we found the marchesino, or son of the marchese, who was very polite to us, and mr. baker, the english consul, and his family, whom we greeted warmly for the love of the fatherland and language. well pleased, we came back 46 [age 29 journal to the locanda, where we received the american consul, signor nicosia, and his friend signor giuseppe ricciardi to dine. february 25. • still, melancholy old metropolis ! under the moon, last eve, how wan and grey it looked. took a boat this morning and crossed the porto maggiore and sailed up the mouth of the river anapus; full of canes and bulrushes and snails, and a very little, narrow, mean puddle to be famed in song. we did not go up so far as the fountain cyane, but disembarked about three miles lower, where the stream was an oar's length wide. it was a pretty fable of pluto's metamorphosis of cyane, and if we had more time should have stamped on the very ground where “gloomy dis ” stamped, and the rather that our “plan” afterwards showed us this was the spot of the athenian encampment. no wonder proserpine gathered flowers; they grow everywhere of prettiest forms and liveliest colours now in february, and i stopped ever and anon to pick them. on the banks of the anapus grows the papyrus, the immortal plant. it is a sightly clean, green triangular stem, 20 feet high, surmounted by a bunch of threads which the 1833) temple of jove 47 people call parroca (periwig). we cut down a good many, and then crossed the fields to the columns of the temple of olympian jove. here stand the broken shafts, the sole remains of the temple which gelo enriched with the spoils of the carthaginians 2500 years ago. the site is a commanding one, facing the centre of the mouth of the great harbor. seven of these fluted columns were standing in the last century, but earthquakes are added to time here in the work of destruction. we crossed the bridge of the anapus and went home by way of the catacombs. we sat down on the benches of the theatre, which was entire in the days of nero. we asked a goatherd who smoked his pipe on the same bench what they were for?“ per il mulino, mulino ; ” we could not easily get him by our questions beyond the mill; at last he said, “antichità.” on the lowest circuit of benches we read the inscriptions βασιλισσας φιλιστιδος and bασιλισσας nephiaoe. there are medals with the first inscription, supposed to denote the daughter of philistas, wife of the elder dionysius. in the afternoon, i went to the museum and saw the venus kallipyge, dug up here in 1810, a headless beauty. 48 (age 29 journal february 27. at dinner, a frate dei padri capuccini was announced, who brought olives and lemons in his hand, and would accompany us to the latomie of the church of st. john. thither we went, and descended into subterranean caverns cut regularly in the living rock. two fathers and two boys attended with torches. on each side of the main passages were catacombs, some larger, some less. occasionally the ceiling was vaulted up to admit light and air. i asked how far these long passages extended; the friar said, he knew not how far, but the air was bad, and no one went further than we. cicero visited them before us. then went to the church, very old, small and poor, but by stone stairs descended into one far older, which they say is st. john's church, and coeval with the planting of christianity in sicily. the bold carving of the granite all around made me think it of greek age and afterward converted to this use. signor ricciardi, a friend of the consul nicolini's, was very civil to us and spoke good english. at parting he gave each of us a handful of sugar plums. 1833) ride to catania 49 catania, march 1. fine strange ride and walk yesterday coming by mules from syracuse hither, 42 miles, thirteen hours. our party (three gentlemen, two ladies) were accommodated with seven beasts,two for the lettiga containing the ladies, two for the baggage, one for each saddle. the morning road led us by catacombs without number. what are they butevidences of an immense ancient population that every rock should be cut into sepulchres. the road, a mere mule-path through very stony soil, was yet not so rough but that i preferred walking to riding, and for an hour or two kept up easily with the caravan. fine air, clear sun. mount ætna right before us, green fields, laborers ploughing in them, many flowers, all the houses of stone. passed the trophy of marcellus, a pile of broken masonry, and yet it answers its purpose as well as marcellus could have hoped. did he think that mr. emerson would be reminded of his existence and victory this fine spring day 2047 years to come? saw the town of melilli. dined from our own knapsack at the strangest tavern; hills of olive trees all around, an oil-mill or press adjoining, and a dozen big morgiana jars thereby; what seemed the remains of some most ancient church 50 journal [ace 29 or temple, with the stumps of pillars still standing, in the rear, and the hostelry itself a most filthy house, the common dwelling of men, women, beasts and vermin. “siamo pronti, signore,” then said the muleteer, which he of our party to whom it was said, misapprehending to be a call for brandy, we waited yet a little. the afternoon ride was pleasanter much,flowers abounding, the road smooth, and ætna glorious to behold with his cap of smoke, and the mountainettes like warts all over his huge sides. then wound the road down by the seaside, and for many miles we traversed a beach like that of lynn paved with pretty shells. we crossed the simæthus in a ferry, and going a little inland, we tramped through miles of prickly pears gigantic, but, though catania had been in sight much of the time since twelve o'clock, nothing could be ruder than this mule-path from syracuse to a city of 70,000 souls. had i opened my eyes from sleep, here, almost under the shadows of the town, i might have thought myself near timbuctoo. yet has nature done all it could for this drowsy nation. i suppose the bay of naples cannot be so beautiful as the spacious bay, round the shore of which we straggled and stumbled with tinkling mules, and sighing and ca 51 id & oi ses 1833) catania shouting drivers. tzar, tzar, gia, bm, and many an odd, nondescript, despairing sound they utter to that deliberate animal. as the day went down the mules began to tire, and one slipt into the mud, and was with difficulty got out. another fell down with the lettiga. thesun set, the moon rose, and still we did not reach the town, so near at noon, till eight o'clock. town of lava of earthquakes; the mountain is at once a monument and a warning. houses are built, streets paved with lava; it is polished in the altars of the churches. huge black rocks of it line the shore, and the white surf breaks over them. a great town full of fine old buildings; long regular streets thronged with people, a striking contrast to the sad solitude of syracuse. cathedral church of st. agatha. what exhilaration does the mere height of these prodigious churches produce! we feel so little and so elated upon the floor. all the interior and exterior of this edifice is costly, and the cost of ages. the ancient roman amphitheatre was robbed for the columns and bas-reliefs of its porch and much of its walls. its niches and altars shine with many colored marbles, and round the whole ample square whereon the church stands runs a large marble fence. 52 [age 29 journal but what is even this church to that of the benedictines? indeed, my holy fathers, your vows of poverty and humility have cost you little. signor ricciardi of syracuse gave me a letter to padre anselmo adorno, the cellerájo of this monastery, and this morn i waited upon his reverence in his cell, and the kings of france and england, i think, do not live in a better house. the padre with great courtesy showed us the church and its paintings, and its organ, here reputed the finest in europe. it imitates sack but, harp, psaltery and all kinds of music. the monk donatus who built it, begged that he might be buried under it, and there he lies. to my ignorance, however, the organ neither appeared very large nor very richly toned. but the church shall be st. peter's to me till i behold a fairer shrine. have the men of america never entered these european churches, that they build such mean edifices at home? contini was the architect, but father anselm only knew that it was more than a hundred years old. but oh the marbles ! and oh, the pictures, and oh the noble proportions of the pile! a less interesting exhibition was the treasury of the convent, some silver richly wrought, seats and stools embroidered and gilt, and a wardrobe, — drawers 1833) convent. opera 53 full of copes and things of cloth-of-gold and silver. then the long lofty cloisters, galleries of chambers, then gardens, too artificially laid out. about 50 monks are laid up in clover and magnificence here. they give bread twice in a week, one roll to every comer. i saw hundreds of women and children in the yard, each receiving her loaf and passing on into a court, that none should come twice to the basket. visited the museum of the prince of biscari, one of the best collections of the remains of ancient art. bronzes, marbles, mosaics, coins, utensils dug up all over sicily, of greek and roman manufacture, are disposed with taste and science. a head of scipio took my fancy, and some more heads. the prince of biscari is a venerable name here. he was the roscoe, the petrarch of the town. everywhere his beneficent hand is shown in restoring the old and saving the new. i have been under the cathedral into the ancient baths; and into the subterranean ruins of the ancient theatre ; and now i will leave this primeval city, said to have been built by the siculi 80 years before the destruction of troy! and engage with the vetturo for a visit to messina. i have been to the opera, and thought three 54 (age 29 journal taris, the price of a ticket, rather too much for the whistle. it is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but i am my own comedy and tragedy. did ye ever hear of a magnet who thought he had lost his virtue because he had fallen into a heap of shavings ? our manners are sometimes so mean, our blunders and improprieties so many and mulish, that it becomes a comfort to think that people are too much occupied with themselves to remember even their neighbor's defects very long. so s so messina, march. from catania my ride to this city was charming. the distance is but 60 miles, but that is two days' journey here. mount etna was the grand spectacle of the first day, and a fine sight it is. this monarch of mountains, they say, supports a population of 115,000 souls, and is 180 miles in circuit. and its ample sides are belted with villages and towers up almost to the snow. as the wind blew fresh, i smelt the snowbanks. village of giarre; old country ; catholic all over, scarce a house or a fence but hath a shrine or cross or inscription. “basta a chi non ba. basta a chi morra.” another,“ viva la divina providenza,” and a thousand more. it is a poor philosophy ow 1833] friendly sicilians 55 that dislikes these sermons in stones. but what green fields, and trees in bloom, and thick villages the turns of the road showed; and my sicilian companions would break out, “ o che bella veduta!” these companions were four, the priest of the church of st. iago in messina, named itellario, his two nephews lorenzo and gaetano, and francesco nicolozi, a tailor. i name them all because they were very kind to me; they speedily found i was a stranger and took great pleasure in hearing my bad italian and in giving me the names of things and places. they brought their vivers with them, and at giardini, where we spent the night, they made me dine with them and paid all reckonings in the morning. it was amusing enough, first, to see how a sicilian dines. then their intercourse with me was all a comedy (their pronunciation and dialect are very different from tuscan). when i could not understand, they would raise their voices, and then all say something, and then the worthy priest after a consultation among them inquired if i could understand latin, and i declaring that i could, he essayed to communicate in that tongue, but his sicilian accent made his latin equally unintelligible to me. all the house; hold collected gradually around us. at last i hit 56 journal [age 29 upon the sense of what they would say, and much acclamation and mutual congratulation there was. coachey came in too, and he told them i was a sacerdote, a prete in my own country, a fact he had picked upin catania. this was wonders more. then at every sentence which i forged and uttered was profound silence, followed by acclamations, “ che bravo signore !” so modulated as only italians can. the little dark locanda was on the beach of cape [taormina or schiso?] and the roar of the sea lulled me to sleep. next morning i awoke right early and found myself in the most picturesque of places. high overhead was taormina, so high and steep that it seemed inaccessible, and if men could get there, not safe to live on the edge of a rock. presently we set forth, and every step of the road showed new beauty and strangeness. the ruins of the amphitheatre at taormina, in very good preservation, i saw, and much i doubt if the world contains more picturesque country in the same extent than in the thirty miles betwixt giardini and messina. palermo, march 7. yesterday at noon i left messina in the steamboat and passed betwixt scylla and charybdis, 57 1833) palermo which have long lost their terrors, probably fabulous at first. then saw i stromboli, and the lipari islands, and smoke ascending from the crater of the first, and as night grew darker, a faint light of fire. three very pleasant englishmen recently from naples and about to travel in greece were on board. all the english i have yet seen, i have found courteous, contrary to report. palermo is a fine sight from the sea. bold, mountainouscoast like all the north and east of sicily. 160,000 inhabitants. arrived on shore at 9 o'clock and passed the usual gauntlet of petty extortions. my lessons cost me much. visited the consul. i have visited the cathedral, built in 1158. a rich and stately church with some fine basreliefs. saw the tombs of four sovereigns. the first was roger, the first king of sicily, 1154; emperor henry vi, 1197; constantia, 1198 ; frederic ii, 1250. at the viceroy's palace, i saw nothing but a small chapel which they vaunted much. i went to the capuchin convent. that pleased me better. i like these capuchins, who are the most esteemed of the catholic clergy. their profession is beggary, but they distribute large alms to the poor. you approach their houses 58 [age 29 journal ce through a regiment of beggars. the fathers were at dinner, so i took a turn in their sober garden. then came a monk, and led me down into their cemetery. a strange spectacle enough, — long aisles, the walls of which on either side are filled with niches, and in every niche the standing skeleton of a dead capuchin; the skull and the hands appearing, the rest of the anatomy wrapped in cerements. hundreds and hundreds of these grinning mortalities were ranged along the walls, here an abbot, there a general of the convent ; every one had his label with his name, when in the body, hanging at his breast. one was near 300 years old. on some the beard remained, on some the hair. i asked the monk how many there were? he said, since 300 years half a million; and he himself would stand there with his brothers in his turn. my cicerone conducted ine next to the spedale dei pazzi. i did not know where i was going, or should not have visited it. i could not help them and have seen enough of their sad malady without coming to sicily. then to the pleasant gardens of the prince di butera. at the tavola rotonda of the giacheri perhaps eight persons dined. i believe no one but i spoke english. so i sat mute. the same gentlemen was 1833) mr. gardner. society 59 spoke alternately french, spanish and italian. a traveller should speak all the four, and his pocket should be a well-spring of taris and bajocchi. noble flora or public garden; parterres and fountains and statues; and the marina fine, far better than the good one of messina. mr. gardner tells me there are 400 churches and convents in palermo. i have visited several beautiful ones. art was born in europe and will not cross the ocean, i fear. in the university, a good collection of casts and pictures; one rubens, one vandyke, one domenichino; and many things from pompeii, and sicilian excavations. mr. gardner, the american consul, lives in a fine house. mrs. gardner has a rich collection of shells and fossils. she tells me, all her society is english ; none native. if you ask a sicilian to your house, he will bring twenty more. they will always accept your invitations, but never ask you in return to visit them, but at their box at the opera. their pride is in an equipage to ride on the marina. even shoemakers and hairdressers will go hungry to keep a carriage. no learned or intelligent men, or next to none. abate ferrara is. the daughters are sent to a 60 [age 29 journal convent for their education, and learn to make preserves and needlework. the english here, and now some sicilians, send their sons to switzerland to excellent schools. the steamboat must stay another day, and i must use philosophy. so i have been to the monte reale on foot and i suppose the world has not many more beautiful landscapes than the plain and the port of palermo as seen therefrom. olive and orange and lemon groves wide around. after visiting st. simon's church and the benedictine convent, i followed my vivacious little guide raimondo to his house and he set before me wine and olives and oranges and bread. at the tavola rotonda with eight persons we had five languages. at the opera in the evening i had a thought or two that must wait a more convenient page. i do not know whether i can recommend my domestique de place, michele beleo, to the patronage of my friends, but i promised to remember his name. and now for naples. at sea in the steamboat re ferdinando. march il. i tried last night in my berth to recall what had occurred at the opera. toinua; what is 1833) opera 61 really good is ever a new creation. i could not help pitying the performers in their fillets and shields and togas, and saw their strained and unsuccessful exertions and thought on their long toilette and personal mortification at making such a figure. there they are, the same poor johns and antonios they were this morning, for all their gilt and pasteboard. but the moment the prima donna utters one tone, or makes a gesture of natural passion, it puts life into the dead scene. i pity them no more. it is not a ghost of departed things, not an old greece and rome, but a greece and rome of this moment. it is living merit which takes ground with all other merit of whatever kind, — with beauty, nobility, genius and power. o trust to nature, whosoever thou art, even though a strutting tragedy-prince. trust your simple self and you shall stand before genuine princes. the play was tedious, and so are the criticisms. two pleasant young englishmen, who had. just ascended etna, on board the boat. one named barclay, the other hussey, fond of geology. kind, domestic manners are more elegant than too civil ones. “this is the most capital place of all,” was better than twenty sirs and scrupulosities. 62 (age 29 journal naples vedi napoli e poi muori naples, march 12. and what if it is naples, it is only the same world of cake and ale, of men and truth and folly. i won't be imposed upon by a name. it is so easy, almost so inevitable, to be overawed by names, that on entering this bay it is hard to keep one's judgment upright, and be pleased only after your own way. baiæ and misenum and vesuvius, procida and posilipo and villa reale sound so big that we are ready to surrender at discretion and not stickle for our private opinion against what seems the human race. who cares? here's for the plain old adam, the simple, genuine self against the whole world. need is, that you assert yourself, or you will find yourself overborne by the most paltry things. a young man is dazzled by the stately arrangements of the hotel, and jostled out of his course of thought and study of men by such trumpery considerations. the immense regard paid to clean shoes and a smooth hat impedes him, and the staring of a few dozens of idlers in the street hinders him from looking about him with his own eyes; and the attention which 1833) naples. safeguards 63 he came so far to give to foreign wonders is concentrated instead on these contemptible particulars. therefore it behoves the traveller to insist first of all upon his simple human rights of seeing and of judging here in italy, as he would in his own farm or sitting-room at home. naples, march 13. howbeit, naples is a fine city, though it rains very fast to-day, a beautiful city beyond dispute, but merely from its wonderful situation and its chiaja, and not from the magnificence of streets or public buildings. i have not yet found st. martin's, but have straggled into several churches nowise remarkable. when i was at home and felt vaunty, i pestered the good folks with insisting on discarding every motive but the highest. i said you need never act for example's sake; never give pledges, etc. but i think now that we need all the advantages we can get, that our virtue wants all the crutches; that we must avail ourselves of our strength, and weakness, and want of appetite, and press of affairs, and of calculation, and of fear, as well as of the just and sublime considerations of the love of god and of self-respect. not that any others will bear comparison with these, but be64 (age 29 journal cause the temptations are so manifold and so subtle and assail archangels as well as coarser clay, that it will not do to spare any strength. the remembrance of the affectionate, anxious expectation with which others are intent upon your contest with temptation is a wonderful provocative of virtue. so is it when in a vast city of corrupt men you ask, who are the elegant and great men, to reflect that in all and by all you may be making yourself the elegant, the great, the good man, day by day. at naples we are what we are made; each following day is the creator of our human mould not less than was the first ; the all-wise god gilds a few points in every several life; and as each flower upon the fresh hillside, and every coloured petal of each aower, is sketched and dyed each with a new design, its spot of purple and its streak of brown, so each man's life shall have its proper light, and a few joys, a few peculiar charms, for him round in the melancholy hours and reconcile him to the common days. not many men see beauty in the fogs of close, low pinewoods in a river town; 1833] saint martin's 65 yet unto me not morn's magnificence, nor the red rainbow of a summer eve, nor rome, nor joyful paris, nor the halls of rich men blazing hospitable light, nor wit, nor eloquence, — no, nor even the song of any woman that is now alive, hath such a soul, such divine influence, such resurrection of the happy past, as is to me when i behold the morn ope in such low, moist roadside, and beneath peep the blue violets out of the black loam; pathetic, silent poets that sing to me thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife! march 14. i climbed up this morning to st. martin's sumptuous church and saw the fine bold paintings of spagnoletto, excepting the dead christ, for that chapel was shut, and the keeper gone to the city. but what pomp of marble and sculpture and painting! a nativity by guido. i staid long alone. there is a famed view of the city from the adjoining monastery and what a noise came up from its 400,000! i in the journal, a few lines were defective, and they are here printed as mr. emerson later copied them into his verse book, and as given in the appendix to the later editions of the poems. 66 journal [age 29 march 15. a nation of little men, i fear. no original art remains. i have been to the academia and seen the works of raffaelle, titian, guido, correggio. a good many artists were making indifferent copies of the best. i hear nothing of living painters, but perhaps there are. a rich collection of marble and bronze and frescoes, etc., from herculaneum, pompeii, and the baths of caracalla. many fine statues, cicero, aristides, seneca ; and dianas, apollos, etc., without end. nothing is more striking than the contrast of the purity, the severity expressed in these fine old heads, with the frivolity and sensuality of the mob that exhibits and the mob that gazes at them. these are the countenances of the firstborn, the face of man in the morning of the world, and they surprise you with a moral admonition as they speak of nothing around you, but remind you of the fragrant thoughts and the purest resolutions of your youth. march 16. last night, stayed at home at my black lodging in the croce di malta and read goethe. this morn sallied out alone, and traversed, i believe for the seventh time, that superb mile of the villa e 1833) degenerate italy 67 reale; then to the tomb of virgil. but here the effect of every antiquity is spoiled by the contrast of ridiculous or pitiful circumstances. the boy who guided me was assailed by men, women and children with all manner of opprobrium. a gang of boys and girls followed me, crying, “signore, c'è un mariolo!”. yea, the venerable silence of the poet's sepulchre must be disturbed with the altercation of these lilliputians. the tomb is well enough for so great a name, but its rich ashes are long ago scattered. it has an aperture which looks down into the entrance of the grotto of posilipo. then descending, i passed through this cyclopean excavation to the bright and beautiful country of vineyards and olive groves beyond with the fine ridges of camaldoli. presently i met a company of muleteers who set up a shout“ladre” and “mariolo” when they saw my cicerone; so i hasted to get rid of my suspicious companion, and engaged another to conduct me to the grotto del cane. through lanes of plenty he led me to the beautiful lake of agnano and the grotto where they expose a dog to the sulphurous vapor, and the animal in a short time loses all signs of life, but is restored by being brought out. they offered the 1 “he's a cheat!” 68 journal (age 29 poor dog for the experiment if i would pay six carlines; i told them i would not; so the dog was saved his fainting. a pleasant place is this little lake. thence i followed my guide for two or three miles to the solfatura of pozzuoli and saw these volcanic springs of ever-boiling sulphur. the soil was hot under my feet and the mountain smoked above at different openings. we always look at volcanoes with great respect. thence to pozzuoli and the well-preserved remains of the coliseum or amphitheatre. here, underground, i could have a lively recollection of that great nation for whose amusement these fabrics were reared, but above ground in pozzuoli, it is impossible to connect the little dirty suburb full of beggars, and beggar-boatmen, and beggar-coacheys with the most ancient city which the cumæans founded, the old dicæarchia, and, long after, the puteoli of cicero, his “ little rome,” as he affectionately called this garden of palaces. alas! no! here by the temple of serapis, one stout fellow tried to pick my pocket of my torn handkerchief, and here, too, my guide worried me with demanding three or four times as much as his due, and a swarm of boys settled on me with “antiquities” to sell, old coins and fragmæa 69 1833] disillusioned ments of brass and copper, and beggars, as usual a regiment. ah, sirs of naples ! you pay a high price for your delicious country and famed neighborhood in this swarming, faithless, robber population that surrounds and fills your city to-day. i was very glad to see no more antiquities, but to get home as fast as i could. i dined with mr. rogers, and found some pleasant gentlemen at his hospitable house. one must be thoroughly reinforced with the spirit of antiquity to preserve his enthusiasm through all the annoyances that await the visitor of these ruins. long ago when i dreamed at home of these things, i thought i should come suddenly in the midst of an open country upon broken columns and fallen friezes, and their solitude would be solemn and eloquent. instead of this, they are carefully fenced round like orchards, and the moment the unhappy traveller approaches one of them this vermin of ciceroni and padroni fasten upon him ; a class of people whose looks and manners are more like those of macguffog and the duke of alsatia than the vain and flippant character i had imagined as the exhibitor con amore. what with these truculent fellows, and the boys, and the 70 [age 29 journal beggars and the coachmen, all sentiment is killed in the bud, and most men clap both hands on their pockets and run. march 17. this morning under the kind guidance of mr. durante i have visited six or seven churches, the finest in the city. they are truly splendid and compare with the best i have seen. the cathedral is a suite of churches, and there the blood of st. januarius is annually liquefied. its wealth must be immense. they showed me thirty busts of saints, large as life, composed of solid silver, and lamps, and angels, and candelabra, many more. huge gates of brass richly carved admitted us to this chapel. it was thronged with worshippers ; so was the nave of the cathedral. then the private chapel of the family of the severini, in the strada st. severino, contains the famous veiled statues, which are wonders in their way. then santa clara, santo geronimo, st. laurentio, gesù nuovo, st. gaetano; all which i trust i shall find again, for they were superb structures and of their ornaments was there no end. such churches can only be finished in ages. they were all well attended this sabbath morn. who can imagine the effect of a true and worthy 1833) street sights 71 form of worship in these godly piles ! it would ravish us. i do not mean the common protestant service, but what it should be if all were actual worshippers. it would have something of this catholic ceremony too, and yet not show a priest trotting hither and thither, and buzzing now on this side then on that. these mighty dwelling-houses rise to five and six tall stories, and every floor is occupied by a different family. opposite my window at the crocelle, on the fourth storey, a family lived with poultry cackling around them all day, 40 feet from the ground; and to-day i observe a turkey in the chamber across the street, stepping about the second storey. a goat comes up stairs every day to be milked. but the woes of this great city are many and conspicuous. goethe says, he shall never again be wholly unhappy, for he has seen naples; if he had said happy, there would have been equal reason. you cannot go five yards in any direction without seeing saddest objects and hearing the most piteous wailings. instead of the gayest of cities, you seem to walk in the wards of a hospital. even charity herself is glad to take a walk in the villa reale, and extricate herself from beggars for half an hour. whilst you eat your dinner at a tratoio caso ca 72 . journal [age 29 cover rises toria, a beggar stands at the window, watching every mouthful. march 19. it rains almost every day in showers, to the great discomfiture of all the inhabitants of the town where people live out of doors. the streets are full of tables and stands of all sorts of small tradesmen. when the shower comes, the merchant takes out his pocket-handkerchiefs and covers up his table-full of goods. then rises the cry of “ la carozza! la carozza!” from the thousands of hackney coachmen that infest every street and square. it takes one "grand tour” to learn how to travel. march 20. and to-day to the lake avernus, to the lucrine lake, to baiæ, the arco felice or gate of cuma; and at baiæ to the temple of venus, the temple of mercury and many, many nameless ruins. a day of ruins. the soil of baiæ is crumbled marble and brick. dig anywhere, and they come to chambers and arches and ruins. what a subterranean taste these roman builders had. on each side i saw structures peeping out of the ground that must have been originally built into the side of the hill. here and there anean 1833) the bay. avernus 73 could be traced for some distance in the hillside the remains of a floor composed of small pieces of white marble. i broke some out. it is a most impressive spot. before you is this ever beautiful bay, and capri (always more like a picture · than a real island), and vesuvius with his smoke; and about you are the great remains of this pleasure-ground of the roman senators, their magnificent nahant, not only broken by time but by earthquakes, and covered even with new soil by the volcanic action which has raised monte nuovo, a large hill within a fourth of a mile from this spot. then, to what base uses turned! the temple of venus, which is almost all standing, and even some delicate bas-reliefs remain upon the ceiling, is now a cooper's shop, and asses bray in it. they turn the chambers of the roman ladies into little stables for the goats, and all baiæ and pozzuoli swarm with the gang of ciceroni and beggars. i saw the lake of avernus, a beautiful little sheet of water, but what gave it its evil classic name, it is not easy to see. nor did the acherontian marsh at all suggest the images of the sheeted dead and the judges of hell. as to the lucrine lake, it is not above three times the size of frog pond, nor quite three times as pretty. 74 . journal (age 29 march 21. well, i have been to herculaneum and pompeii. herculaneum is nothing but a specimen of the mode of destruction, a monument of the terrors of the volcano. ... march 23. judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams. if you yield to temptation there, i am afraid you will, awake. if you are a coward then, i jalouse of your courage by day. sunday. attended service in the english chapel. rev. mr. b. read the prayers very well, and the liturgy sounded well and kindly in my ear. but nothing could be more insipid, inane than the sermon. it was a counterpart of the “noodle's oration," or the “song by a person of quality.” i thought how always we are beginning to live, and how perfectly practicable at all times is the sublime part of life, the high hours, for which all the rest are given. march 25. i left naples in angresani's coach with my townsmen messrs. grant and warren, and two english people. we dined at molo di gaeta; 1833] rome 75 and i think i have seen nothing since i stood on the monte reale at palermo, which was richer than the view from this pleasant locanda. strange costumes upon the road at fondi. but we rode all night and passed in safety the pontine marshes, molested neither by malaria nor by robbers. as we drew nigh to the imperial city, the stately ruins of the aqueducts began to appear, then the tomb of cecilia metella, and we entered the city by the gate of st. john. rome rome, march 27. it is even so; my poor feet are sore with walking all this day amongst the ruins of rome. alone in rome! why rome is lonely too ; besides you need not be alone, the soul shall have society of its own rank, be great, be true, and all the scipios, the catos, the wise patriots of rome, shall flock to you and tarry by your side and comfort you with their high company. virtue alone is sweet society; it keeps the key to all heroic hearts, and opens you a welcome in them all. you must be like them, if you desire them, scorn trifles, and embrace a better aim than wine, or sleep or praise ; 76 [age 29 journal hunt knowledge as the lover woos a maid, and ever in the strife of your own thoughts obey the nobler impulse. that is rome. that shall command a senate to your side; for there is no might in the universe that can contend with love. it reigns forever. wait then, sad friend, wait in majestic peace the hour of heaven. generously trust thy fortune's web to the beneficent hand that until now has put his world in fee for thee. he watches for thee still. his love broods over thee; and as god lives in heaven, however long thou walkest solitary, the hour of heaven shall come, the man appear.' march 28. we came hither tuesday, a little after noon, but that day i saw nothing but a passing view of the coliseum as we entered the city, and afterwards the yellow tiber. yesterday morn at nine i set forth with a young englishman, mr. kingston, and crossed the tiber and visited st. peter's. another time i will say what i think about this temple. from st. peter's to the chambers of raffaele and saw the pictures of 1 as in the case of the lines written at naples, the better form of these verses, as copied in the verse book, is here given. they are printed in the appendix to the poems. 1833) vatican. capitol 77 the great master. it was a poor way of using so great a genius to set him to paint the walls of rooms that have no beauty and, as far as i see, no purpose. then we threaded our way through narrow streets to the temple of vesta, and the house of rienzi, “last of romans," then to the forum and the coliseum. here we spent some hours in identifying ruins and fixing in mind the great points of the old topography. march 29. i went to the capitoline hill, then to its museum and saw the dying gladiator, the antinous, the venus, – to the gallery, then to the tarpeian rock, then to the vast and splendid museum of the vatican, a wilderness of marble. after traversing many a shining chamber and gallery i came to the apollo and soon after to the laocoon. 'tis false to say that the casts give no idea of the originals. i found i knew these fine statues already by heart and had admired the casts long since much more than i ever can the originals. here too was the torso hercules, as familiar to the eyes as some old revolutionary cripple. on we went from chamber to chamber, through galleries of statues and vases and sarcophagi and 78 (age 29 journal bas-reliefs and busts and candelabra — through all forms of beauty and richest materials— till the eye was dazzled and glutted with this triumph of the arts. go and see it, whoever you are. it is the wealth of the civilized world. it is a contribution from all ages and nations of what is most rich and rare. he who has not seen it does not know what beautiful stones there are in the planet, and much less what exquisite art has accomplished on their hard sides for greek and roman luxury. in one apartment there were three statues of canova, the perseus, and two fighting gladiators. then lions and horses and fauns and cupids and cars; then the sitting philosophers, and such scipios and cæsars ! it is vain to refuse to admire; you must in spite of yourself. it is magnificent. even all this unrivalled show could not satisfy us. we knew there was more. much will have more. we knew that the first picture in the world was in the same house, and we left all this pomp to go and see the transfiguration by raphael. a calm, benignant beauty shines over all this picture and goes directly to the heart. it seems almost to call you by name. how the father of the poor mad boy looks at the apostles! and the sister! and the sweet and sublime 1833) the transfiguration 79 face of jesus above is beyond praise, and ranks the artist with the noble poets and heroes of his species, the first born of the earth. i had thought in my young days that this picture and one or two more were to surprise me with a blaze of beauty, that i was to be delighted by i know not what bright combination of colours and forms, but this familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance i did not expect. march 30. i have seen st. john lateran's and the pantheon, and the baptistery of constantine, and the sad remnants of the palaces of the cæsars, and many many ruins more. glad i was amidst all these old stumps of the past ages to see lewis stackpole, as fresh and beautiful as a young palm tree in the desert. rome is very pleasant to me, as naples was not, if only from one circumstance, that here i have pleasant companions to eat my bread with, and there i had none. this morning went with young warren and grant' to thorwaldsen's studio and saw his fine i probably james sullivan warren, a friend of dr. holmes, and in europe all the time; he is mentioned more than once in morse's life and letters of holmes. grant may have been patrick grant, who graduated the year before dr. holmes at harvard; he is pleasantly mentioned by emerson a few pages later. 80 journal (age 29 statue of byron. 'tis good as a history. i saw three or four rooms of stone things, but nothing else to look at. then to the barberini palace and saw the beatrice cenci of guido and the fornarina of raffaelle. thence to the borghese palace and saw raffaelle's portrait of cæsar borgia and many fine things, but nothing that pleased me more than a madonna by andrea del sarto. whoso loves a beautiful face, look at this. then to the colonna palace, a proud old mansion of this ancient family, the finest suite of apartments i have ever seen, and hung around with master pictures, and many of them portraits of the heroes and the beauties of their own line. two fine portraits of luther and calvin by titian, and the martyrdom of st. sebastian by guido. but i liked the whole show,— the hall itself, better than any part of it. william pratt very kindly acted the part of cicerone and introduced me to his relatives. then i found under the capitoline hill the famous mamertine prison, the scene of the death of cethegus and lentulus, and of the captivity of st. peter and st. paul, and the reputed dungeon of the “ roman daughter." this p. m. i went to the palace of cardinal erone 1833] palm sunday 81 wield, where bishop england delivered a discourse, in explanation of the ceremonies of the catholic church to-morrow (palm sunday), to the english and american residents. i was led in the evening, so easy is it to be led, to a violin concert. i was glad, however, to learn the power of a fiddle. it wailed like a bugle, and reminded me of much better things and much happier hours. sunday, march 31. i have been to the sistine chapel to see the pope bless the palms, and hear his choir chaunt the passion. the cardinals came in, one after another, each wearing a purple robe, an ermine cape, and a small red cap to cover the tonsure. a priest attended each one, to adjust the robes of their eminences. as each cardinal entered the chapel, the rest rose. one or two were fine persons. then came the pope in scarlet robes and bishop's mitre. after he was seated, the cardinals went in turn to the throne and kneeled and kissed his hand. after this ceremony the attendants divested the cardinals of their robes and put on them a gorgeous cope of cloth-of-gold. when this was arranged, a sort of ornamental baton made of the dried palm leaf was brought to his holiness and blessed, and each of the cardinals 82 [age 29 journal re went again to the throne and received one of these from the hands of the pope. they were supplied from a large pile at the side of the papal chair. after the cardinals, came other dignitaries, bishops, deans, canons,— i know them not, but there was much etiquette, some kissing the hand only, and some the foot also of the pope. some received olive branches. lastly several officers performed the same ceremony. when this long procession of respect was over, and all the robed multitude had received their festal palms and olives, his holiness was attended to a chair of state, and, being seated, was lifted up by his bearers, and, preceded by the long official array and by his chaunting choir, he rode out of the chapel. it was hard to recognize in this ceremony the gentle son of man who sat upon an ass amidst the rejoicings of his fickle countrymen. whether from age or from custom, i know not, but the pope's eyes were shut or nearly shut as he rode. after a few minutes he reëntered the chapel in like state, and soon after retired and left the sacred college of cardinals to hear the passion chaunted by themselves. the chapel is that whose walls michel angelo adorned with his last judgment. but to-day i have not seen the picture well. 1833) pomp at saint peter's 83 all this pomp is conventional. it is imposing to those who know the customs of courts, and of what wealth and of what rank these particular forms are the symbols. but to the eye of an indian i am afraid it would be ridiculous. there is no true majesty in all this millinery and imbecility. why not devise ceremonies that shall be in as good and manly taste as their churches and pictures and music? i counted twenty-one cardinals present. music at st. peter's in the afternoon, and better still at chiesa nuova in the evening. those mutilated wretches sing so well it is painful to hear them. monday. to-day at the grotto of egeria, whence came the laws of rome; then to the tomb of cecilia metella, “the wealthiest roman's wife.” a mighty tomb; the wall is thirty feet thick. then to the tomb of scipio, then to the spada palace, and saw the statue of pompey, at whose base great cæsar fell, then to the palace farnesina, to see raffaelle's frescoes. here raffaelle painted whilst michel angelo locked himself up in the sistine chapel. then to the vatican. and at night to an american soirée. 84 [age 29 84 journal 01 tuesday, april 2. what is more pathetic than the studio of a young artist? not rags and disease in the street move you to sadness like the lonely chamber littered round with sketches and canvas and colour-bags. there is something so gay in the art itself that these rough and poor commencements contrast more painfully with it. here another enthusiast feeds himself with hope, and rejoices in dreams, and smarts with mortifications. the melancholy artist told me that, if the end of painting was to please the eye, he would throw away his pallet. and yet how many of them not only fail to reach the soul with their conceptions, but fail to please the eye. these beggarly italians! if you accept any hospitality at an italian house a servant calls upon you the next day and receives a fee, and in this manner, the expense of your entertainment is defrayed. in like manner, if you are presented to the pope, it costs you five dollars. plain good manners and sensible peoplehow refreshing they are! a bashful man is cramped among the fine people who have polished manners but dull brains; but he is relieved and recreated by a better influence 1833] the miserere 1 85 and regains his natural shape and air and powers. to-day i have seen the fine church of santa maria maggiore, the third best in rome. then the doria palace. there was nicholas machiavel by titian and landscapes of claude lorraine. wednesday, april 3. the famous miserere was sung this afternoon in the sistine chapel. the saying at rome is, that it cannot be imitated, not only by any other choir, but in any other chapel in the world. the emperor of austria sent mozart to rome on purpose to have it sung at vienna with like effect, but it failed. surely it is sweet music, and sounds more like the eolian harp than anything else. the pathetic lessons of the day relate the treachery of judas and apply select passages from the prophets and psalms to the circumstances of jesus. then whilst the choir chaunt the words “traditor autem dedit eis signum, dicens, quem osculatus fuero, ipse est, tenete eum," all the candles in the chapel are extinguished but one. during the repetition of this verse, the last candle is taken down and hidden under the altar. then out of the silence and the darkness rises this most plaintive and 86 journal (age 29 melodious strain (the whole congregation kneeling), “miserere mei, deus,” etc. the sight and the sound are very touching. everything here is in good taste. the choir are concealed by the high fence which rises above their heads. we were in michel angelo's chapel which is full of noblest scriptural forms and faces. thursday. these forms strike me more than i expected, and yet how do they fall short of what they should be. to-day i saw the pope wash the feet of thirteen pilgrims, one from each nation of christendom. one was from kentucky. after the ceremony, he served them at dinner; this i did not see. but gregory xvi is a learned and able man; he was a monk and is reputed of pure life. why should he not leave one moment this formal service of fifty generations and speak out of his own heart— the father of the church to his children, — though it were but a single sentence or a single word? one earnest word or act to this sympathetic audience would overcome them. it would take all hearts by storm. to-night i heard the miserere sung in st. peter's and with less effect than yesterday. but 1833) moonlight in rome 87 what a temple! when night was settling down upon it and a long religious procession moved through a part of the church, i got an idea of its immensity such as i had not before. you walk about on its ample, marble pavement as you would on a common, so free are you of your neighbors ; and throngs of people are lost upon it. and what beautiful lights and shades on its mighty gilded arches and vaults and far windows and brave columns, and its rich-clad priests that look as if they were the pictures come down from the walls and walking. thence we came out (i was walking with two painters, cranch and alexander) under the moon and saw the planet shine upon the finest fountain in the world, and upon all the stone saints on the piazza and the great church itself. this was a spectacle which only rome can boast, — how faery beautiful! an arabian night's tale. good friday. the mystery of the tre ore is said and shewn in all the churches, in some with scenic representations. i have seen nothing affecting, though it is sometimes, i am told, very much so. many religious processions in the streets, muffled in black with staves surmounted with death's-heads. 88 (age 29 journal this night i saw with cranch the great coliseum by moonlight. it is full of dread. saturday. i did not go to the baptism of the jew to-day. usually it is a weary farce. 'tis said they buy the jews, at 150 scudes the head, to be sprinkled. this man was respectable. this p. m. i heard the greek mass. the chaunts are in armenian. sunday. this morning the pope said mass in st. peter's. rich dresses, great throngs, lines of troops, but not much to be said for the service. it is easter, and the curtains are withdrawn from the pictures and statues to my great joy, and the pope wears his triple crown instead of a mitre. at twelve o'clock the benediction was given. a canopy was hung over the great window that is above the principal door of st. peter's, and there sat the pope. the troops were all under arms and in uniform in the piazza below, and all rome and much of england and germany and france and america was gathered there also. the great bell of the church tolled, drums beat, and trumpets sounded over the vast congregation. 1833] easter 89 presently, at a signal, there was silence, and a book was brought to the pope, out of which he read a moment and then rose and spread out his hands and blessed the people. all knelt as one man. he repeated his action (for no words could be heard), stretching his arms gracefully to the north and south and east and west, pronouncing a benediction on the whole world. it was a sublime spectacle. then sounded drums and trumpets, then rose the people, and everyone went his way. this evening i have seen the illumination of the church. when it was dark, i took the wellknown way and on reaching the bridge of st. angelo found the church already hung with lights from turret to foundation. but this was only partial. at the moment when the bell in the tower tolled 8 o'clock, out flashed innumerable torches in the air and the whole edifice blazed with fires which cast the first lamps into shade and lit up every face in the multitude of the piazza as with daylight. but it is very melancholy to see an illumination in this declining church and impoverished country. i love st. peter's church. it grieves me to think that after a few days i shall see it no more. it has a peculiar smell from the quantity of 90 [age 29 journal incense burned in it. the music that is heard in it is always good and the eye is always charmed. it is an ornament of the earth. it is not grand, it is so rich and pleasing; it should rather be called the sublime of the beautiful. tuesday. to-day i went with cranch and wall to the palazzo chigi, a good gallery; there is the laura of paul veronese; to the farnese, a fine palace where are annibal caracci's frescoes, but saw no pictures beside. then we crossed the tiber in a boat to the corsini palace, whose noble gardens ascend the side of mons janiculum ; pleasant walk and far prospect of the apennines and of mount soracte. then to the sciarra palace, whose gallery is one of the best in rome. quick eye had cranch to detect a titian everywhere. he admires him as an original painter. here was guido's magdalen; leonardo da vinci's modesty and vanity ; titian's mistress ; raffaelle's portrait of himself; and fine pictures by garofalo. all the americans are gone, and i who lately knew them not, now feel quite alone, my countrymen and countrywomen have been so civil and social. miss bridgen is a most intelligent and excellent lady, and young grant has made me much a debtor by his courtesy. i ii. 1833) glory of the vatican 91 april 10. walked alone in the spacious grounds and fine groves of the villa borghese, whilst the birds sang to me. i thought it would be good to spend an hour there by myself every day. ποίημα πράšews. [april] 11. how have all nations and ages contributed to the magnificence of the vatican! if we could only know the history of each marble there, when and by whom, and for whom it was carved ; of what luxurious villa it formed an ornament, it would open to us the story of the whole world. each has figured in splendid scenes and served the pleasure of the lords of mankind. then again, most gladly would i know the place of all these works in the history of art; how this vase and that statue were designed, what the sculptor and what his patron thought of them, and the marks of the eras of progress and decline. but now they amaze me and beget a vague curiosity which they cannot satisfy, nor can any living man. i went up to the top of st. peter's and climbed into the copper ball. it is necessary to go up into the dome in order to estimate the prodigious dimensions of the edifice. it takes one's breath away, to look down into the church from the 92 : journal [age 29 giro within the cupola, and at first the temptation is terrible to throw yourself down, though the walk is wide and the railing is high. with some pauses and some conversation i succeeded in getting round the dizzy promenade; but, like many things in rome, it is a quite unimaginable spot. the view from the exterior of the cupola, of the campagna di roma is delicious, from the apennines on one side to the sea on the other, and tiber flowing through his marble wilderness below. april 13. rome fashions my dreams. all night i wander amidst statues and fountains, and last night was introduced to lord byron!' it is a graceful termination to so much glory that rome, now in her fallen state, should be the metropolis of the arts. art is here a greater interest than anywhere else. the caffès are filled with english, french and german artists, both sculptors and painters. the number of mosaicistas and printshops is surprising. rinaldi has just finished a mosaic picture of pæstum, which is valued at a thousand louis d'or. i am indebted to my new-found countryman? i meaning, first rightly appreciated childe harold. 2 john cranch, the portrait-painter. 93 1833] andrea sacchi for some most pleasant hours, a grateful relief to sights of ruins. i do not yet fall in with that class of english i had hoped to see, those best educated gentlemen, namely, who are not bred with a view to any profession, nor even to politics, but only to maintain the old honours of their houses. in such a class one would hope to find chivalry and learning and sense ; but i am not so fortunate as to meet them, but of dandies an abundance. a gentleman, i suppose, is as rare as a genius. those who usurp the name are often masses of selfishness and littleness. one al sunday, april 14. attended divine service at the english chapel. to preach well you must speak the truth. it is vain to say what has been said every sunday for a hundred years, if it is not true. april 15. few pictures please me more than the vision of st. romoaldo by andrea sacchi in the vatican. what a majestic form is the last carmelite in the train who ascends the steps ! one is greater for knowing that such forms can be. what a cant of the head has this same figure ! look at him. 94 journal [age 29 i shall, i think, remember few sculptures better when i get back into my chimney corner than the beautiful head of the justice who sits with prudence on the monument of paulus iii, on the left of the tribuna in st. peter's. it was designed by michel angelo, executed by william de la porta ; but where in the universe is the archetype from which the artist drew this sweetness and grace? there is a heaven. i have been to see the library of the vatican. i think they told me the hall was a quarter of a mile long. afterwards, the elgin marble-casts. what heads and forms ! in rome all is ruinous. in the garden before my window the flowerpots stand upon blocks made of the capitals of old columns, turned upside down. everywhere you may see in the walls and the foundations of houses fragments of carved and fluted stone now cemented in with rough stones, but once the ornament of the luculli or scauri, or even of vesta or jove. april 17. i have been to the church of st. onofrio to see the tomb of tasso. then, in the convent, the courteous fathers showed us his bust in wax. he died in the convent, and this head was taken 1833) tasso. jove's temple 95 at the time from the corpse. a noble head it is, full of independence and genius. it resembles strongly the prints i have seen of his head, but is better, i should think, than any. i shall always like him the better for having seen this face. i have never yet learned to feel any strong interest in a poet so imitative, but since god marked him, i will attend to him. in the convent was also a beautiful madonna by leonardo da vinci. i neglected on the 15th to record my visit to the church aracæli, once the temple of jupiter capitolinus; a dim-lighted, spacious and lofty temple worthy of its name and fame and location. here, if i rightly remember, gibbon says, he conceived the design of writing his history. its scala might be called the giants' staircase, and on some of the steps were half-effaced inscriptions. what a memorandum is each step to the historical eye that can see the priest of jove, ages back, climbing the same hill, burning incense on the same spot. what pleasant fountains all over rome, in every villa, garden, and piazza. an eye for beauty is nature's gift to this people; they delight in bright colours and in all ornaments. as we sat in the caffè we agreed that it was 96 (age 29 journal decorated and furnished with a beauty and good taste which could not be rivalled in america. no man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby, so helpless and so ridiculous. [in italy, the little airs of the street-singers took mr. emerson's fancy. he used to recall this verse of the inebriate's pathetic explanation and appeal to his wife :“ son caduto quì per terra, sol del vin la causa fu,la sua virtù e la mia rovina. cara bettina, ajutami tu!”] in rome at the best trattoria you may get a good dinner for 15 bajocchi. thus to-day and yesterday i have dined at the lepri on this fashion : “macaroni a la napolitana,” 3 ; “mongana con spinnagio,” 5; “ crema in piátta,” 5; and two rolls of bread to eat with it, 2;=15 cents for a good dinner in the best house. add one or two for waiter. my breakfast at the most 1833) tivoli 97 expensive caffè in rome costs 16 cents. coffee in the evening 5, and my chamber at the gran bretagna 50 cents. la pianta uomo nasce più robusta in italia che in qualunque altra terra, e quegli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono, ne sono una prova.' hotel di gran bretagna, piazza di spagna. rome, april 20. yesterday i went with cranch and smith and wall' to tivoli. i cannot describe the beauty of the cascade, nor the terror of the grotto, nor the charm of the iris that arched the torrent. the temple of vesta is one of the most beautiful of ruins and in a chosen place. the whole circuit of about four miles which we made with the cicerone showed everywhere a glorious landscape. all was bright with a warm sun. the ground was sprinkled with gay flowers, and among 1 “the plant, man, in italy springs up stronger than in any other land whatsoever, and the atrocious crimes there done are a proof.” — alfieri. 2 mr. wall, a young artist of new bedford, mass., in whom mr. emerson found a pleasant acquaintance and travelling companion. his copy of the three fates in the pitti palace, then attributed to michael angelo, always hung over the fireplace in mr. emerson's study. 98 journal (age 29 others that pink thing with a spicy smell we used to call “rabbit's ears.” · then there was the great aloe with its formidable, fleshy spine growing about, and (which is a rare sight) one of these plants was in bloom. we found the remains of the villa of catullus, then the reputed site of the house of horace, and hard by, the arched ruins of the villa of quintus varus. here too, they say, mæcenas lived; and no wonder that poet and patron should have come to this fair specular mount, escaping from the dust of the capital. the campagna lies far and wide below, like a sea. then we went to the villa d'este, whose beauty in my eyes outshone the beauty of the cascade. such trees, such walls, such fountains, such grottoes, such adornments, the long, long house, — all its empty halls painted in fresco; the piazza with its vast prospect, the silver river, the sun that shone, and the air that blew,— i would fain keep them in my memory the fairest image of italy. the villa belongs to the duke of modena, who never saw it, and it is occupied only by a custode. i have paid a last visit to the capitoline museum and gallery. one visit is not enough, no, nor two, to learn the lesson. the dying 1 cyclamen (?). 1833] byron. michelangelo 99 gladiator is a most expressive statue, but it will always be indebted to the muse of byron for fixing upon it forever his pathetic thought. indeed italy is byron's debtor, and i think no one knows how fine a poet he is who has not seen the subjects of his verse, and so learned to appreciate the justness of his thought and at the same time their great superiority to other men's. i know well the great defects of childe harold. in the gallery i coveted nothing so much as michel angelo's portrait by himself. rome, april 21. i went this morn to the church of trinità de' monte to see some nuns take the veil. can any ceremony be more pathetic than to see youth, beauty, rank, thus self-devoted to mistaken duty. i went this afternoon to see. michel angelo's statue of moses, at the church of san pietro in vinculo, and it is grand. it seems he sought to embody the law in a man. directly under the statue, at the side where the whole face is seen, the expression is terrible. i could wish away those emblematic horns. “ alzati, parla!” said the enthusiastic sculptor. 100 [age 29 journal from a letter to miss emerson rome, april 22. “here is matter for all feeling,” said byron, and yet how evanescent and superficial is most of that emotion which art and magnificence can awaken. it yields in me to the interest the most ordinary companion inspires. i never get used to men. they always awaken expectations in me which they always disappoint, and i am a poor asteroid in the great system, subject to disturbances in my orbit, not only from all the planets, but from all their moons. the wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments. yet i cannot persuade myself that all the beautiful souls are fled out of the planet, or that always i shall be excluded from good company and yoked with green, dull, pitiful persons. after being cabined up by sea and by land, since i left home, with various little people, all better to be sure and much wiser than me, but still such persons as did not help me, — how refreshing was it to fall in with two or three sensible persons with whom i could eat my bread and take my walk and feel myself a free man once more of god's universe. still these last were not instructors, and i want in1833] a teacher ioi structors. god's greatest gift is a teacher, and when will he send me one full of truth and of boundless benevolence and of heroic sentiments? i can describe the man. i know the idea well, but where is its real blood-warm counterpart? i know whilst i write thus that the creature is never to dawn upon me like a sunburst. i know too well how slowly we edge along sideways to everything good and brilliant in life, and how casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances. and yet i saw ellen at once in all her beauty, and she never disappointed me, but in her death. and why may not the master whom the soul anticipates, so appear? our stern experience replies with the tongue of all its days: son of man! it saith, allgiving and receiving is reciprocal; you entertain angels unawares, but they cannot impart more or higher things than you are in a state to receive, but every step of your progress affects the intercourse you hold with all others ; elevates its tone, deepens its meaning, sanctifies its spirit, and when time and suffering and self-denial shall have transfigured and glorified this spotted self, you shall find your fellows also transformed, and their faces shall shine with the light of wisdom and the beauty of holiness. you who cling with both hands to, 102 journal (age 29 the literal word and to venerable traditions will, no doubt, find in my complaints a confession and a self-accusation. you will perhaps say i do not receive whom heaven gives. but you must not say any such thing. for i am, you see, speaking truly as to my maker. jesus, who has done so much to raise and sweeten human life, and who prized sincerity more than sacrifice, cannot be to me what he was to john. my mother, my brothers, my companions, must be much more to me in all respects of friendship than he can be. “ how small, of all that human hearts endure, the part that laws or kings can cause or cure: still to ourselves in every place consigned, our own felicity we make or find.” in rome it is not the diameter nor the circumference of the columns, it is not the dimensions nor the materials of the temples, which constitute their chief charm. it is the name of cicero; it is the remembrance of a wise and good man; it is the remembrance of scipio and cato and regulus; the influence of human character, the heroes who struggled, the patriots who fell, the wise men who thought, the men who contended worthily in their lifetime in the same trials 1833) actions intelligible 103 which god in this city and this year is placing before each of us. why are you dazzled with the name of cæsar? a part as important, a soul as great, a name as dear to god as his or any other's is your own. it will take you long to learn another tongue so as to make yourself fully understood by those who speak it, but your actions are easy of translation. they understand what you do. temperance is good english and good french and good italian. your courage, your kindness, your honesty, are as plain to a turk as his own alphabet. y in boston they have an eye for improvement, a thing which does not exist in asia nor in africa., and so i left, on the twenty-third of april, the city built on seven hills, the palatine, the capitoline, cælian, aventine, quirinal, viminal, and esquiline. april 26. passignano. here sit i this cold eve by the fire in the locanda of this little town on the margin of the lake of thrasimene, and remember hannibal and rome. pleases me well the clear pleasant air which savors more of new england than of italy. to-day we came from 104 journal (age 29 w spoleto to perugia on the top of how high a hill with mighty walls and towers far within the gates of the town. old cathedral, and all around architectural ornaments of the middle ages. but were i a proprietor in perugia, i would sell all and go and live upon the plain. how preposterous too it is to live in trevi, where the streets must make with the horizon an angle of 45 degrees. yet here in umbria every height shows a wide prospect of well-cultivated country. april 27. passed a peaceful night close by the dreadful field of hannibal and flaminius. this morning we crossed the sanguinetto and left the pontifical state. we passed by cortona, the venerable etruscan town, then by arezzo, the birthplace of petrarch, and stopped at night at levane. unnext morn (april 28) through the beautiful val d'arno we came to figline, to incisa, and in the afternoon to fair florence. [april 29.] and how do you like florence? why, well. it is pleasant to see how affectionately all the artists who have resided here a little while speak 1833] florence duomo 105 of getting home to florence. and i found at once that we live here with much more comfort than in rome or naples. good streets, industrious population, spacious, well-furnished lodgings, elegant and cheap caffes. the cathedral and the campanile, the splendid galleries and no beggars, make this city the favorite of strangers. how like an archangels tent is this great cathedral of many-coloured marble set down in the midst of the city, and by its side its wondrous campanile! i took a hasty glance at the gates of the baptistery which angelo said ought to be the gates of paradise, “digne chiudere il paradiso,”and then at his own david, and hasted to the tribune and to the pitti palace. i saw the statue that enchants the world. and truly the venus deserves to be visited from far. it is not adequately represented by the plaster casts, as the apollo and the laocoön are. i must go again and see this statue. then i went round this cabinet and gallery and galleries till i was well-nigh“ dazzled and drunk with beauty." i think no man has an idea of the powers of painting until he has come hither. why should painters study at rome? here, here. i have been this day to santa croce, which is to florence what westminster abbey is to 106 [age 29 journal england. i passed with consideration the tomb of nicholas machiavelli, but stopped long before that of galileus galileo, for i love and honor that man, except in the recantation, with my whole heart. but when i came to michael angelo buonaroti my flesh crept as i read the inscription. i had strange emotions. i suppose because italy is so full of his fame. i have lately continually heard of his name and works and opinions; i see his face in every shop window, and now i stood over his dust. then i came to the empty tomb of dante, who lies buried at ravenna. then to that of alfieri. piazza santa maria novella, no. 4599. may 1, of my journey from rome to this city i cannot give a good account. i came in a vettura with messrs. wall, walsh, and mayer, mr. o'flanagan, an irish priest, and signor dracopoli, a greek returning to new smyrna after an absence of ten years for his education in rome. the journey occupied five days and a half. the first night was spent at cività castellana. the second day we arrived a little after noon at terni, and visited the great cascade of velino. nature 1833] spoleto. foligno 107 never disappoints us. her grand and beautiful things always satisfy the eye, and this does. still i think the grotto under the cascade at tivoli better deserves the name of “the hill of waters,” has more of the terrible in it than anything i saw here. “won't you go to america with me, little fellow?” -“non signore.” –“in america all the little boys are taught to read and write.” — “in terni, anzi,” he replied. great abundance of the spicy, red flowers which they call capuccini. terni was the birthplace of tacitus. the next morning we came to spoleto, where hannibal received a repulse after his victory at thrasimene, and we were shown the porta di fuga, named from that event. here too was a prodigious aqueduct 300 feet high. from spoleto to foligno, where we passed the night. all the streets of this town have been shaken by earthquakes; the houses lean, and are kept from falling by timbers which cross the street from house to house. between foligno and vene we saw the“ temple of small and delicate proportion” dedicated to clitumnus. strange dreams at foligno. next morn from foligno to assisi through fertile fields, and up the mountain to perugia. 108 journal [age 29 perugia has outgrown its walls, which are far within the town. it commands a wide prospect of cultivated territory. the difference of cultivation is very great between the fat umbria and the lean sabina. on we came to the little hamlet of passignano on the margin of the lake of thrasimene. may 2. i revisited the tribune this morning to see the venus and the fornarina and the rest of that attractive company. i reserve my admiration as much as i can; i make a continual effort not to be pleased except by that which ought to please me, and i walked coolly round and round the marble lady ; but when i planted myself at the iron gate which leads into the chamber of dutch paintings, and looked at the statue, i saw and felt that mankind have had good reason for their preference of this excellent work, and i gladly gave one testimony more to the surpassing genius of the artist. to-day i had a singular pleasure. mr. ritchie's kindness procured me the privilege of seeing the apartments occupied by lord byron when he was in florence. they are part of the palace of the duke of san clementi, who is mr. r.'s neighbor. the rooms were very very richly reaso ice 109 were 1833) florence furnished and hung with tapestry. there were five in a range, and the last opening into a large dining-hall. below was a large hall which byron fitted up as a theatre. the palace is in the via san sebastiano. how bare and poor are these florentine churches after the sumptuous temples of naples and rome! ah! ah ! for st. peter's, which i can never more behold. close by my door is the church of santa maria novella which michel angelo called his bride, my eye has not yet learned why; it still looks naked and unfinished to me. the church of st. john's in malta, he might well have distinguished by such a name. evening. beautiful days, beautiful nights. it is to-day one of the hundred festas of this holiday people; so was yesterday, so is to-morrow. the charming cascina and the banks of the arno are thronged, but moonshine or sunshine are indispensable to a festa ; as they say in france, “there will be no revolution to-day, for it rains.” (from q) florence, tuesday, may 7. “ah! l'aurora della vita • e l'aurora del dolor.” 0 110 journal [age 29 may 8. to-day i heard, by charles's letter, of the death of ellen's mother. fast, fast the bonds dissolve that i was so glad to wear. she has been a most kind and exemplary mother, and how painfully disappointed! happy now. and oh, what events and thoughts in which i should have deepest sympathy does this thin partition of flesh entirely hide! does the heart in that world forget the heart that did beat with it in this? do jealousies, do fears, does the observation of faults, intervene? dearest friends, i would be loved by all of you : dearest friend ! we shall meet again. (from note-book) florence, may 9. i rode out this evening with mr. miles in the beautiful cascina. its walks and groves extend from the prato gate of the city out for miles along the right bank of the arno. it is full of sweet singing birds, the robin and the nightingale, and of quails, partridges and rabbits kept for game by the grand duke. i saw jerome buonaparte on horseback. he resembles the pictures of his brother napoleon, though utterly devoid of his energy of expression. his brother louis also lives in florence. 1833] pictures. amici 11 the emperor of austria is responsible for the good behaviour of the family. i went last night to a theatre and heard a whole opera very respectably performed, with all scenic pomp and music and numbers, and paid one paul, 10 cents, for my seat. a seat in the pit costs 2 crazies. i have visited the palace and gallery of the principe corsini, where are carlo dolcis and salvator rosas in plenty ; the original sketch by michel angelo of his last judgment; a fine portrait by rembrandt of himself, and some other good pictures in many fine rooms. the prince himself is gone to naples as proxy for the grand duke, to marry the sister of the king all night the street echoes with the songs of this musical people. they have fine voices and repeat the airs of the operas. but the boys ! may 1o. visited professor amici and saw his optical instruments. he is reputed the maker of the best microscopes in europe. he has also made a telescope for herschel in london. he has a microscope whose magnifying power is 6000 diameters, or 36,000,000 superficies. to instruments of this enormous power he applies the ii2 journal [age 29 camera lucida and then draws the outline of the object with pencil. his experiments upon polarized light are beautiful. the price of his best instruments is 800 francs. he has just made one for dr. jarvis for $45. speak out, my boy, speak plain, non capisco. “ ed io anche non intendo lei,” said the beggar. may 11. last night i went to the pergola, and to my eyes, unused to theatres, it was a glorious show. the prima donna, signora delsere, is a noble greek beauty, full of dignity, and energy of action, and when she sung the despair of agnes, she was all voice. she had moreover so striking a resemblance to a valued friend in america that i longed to know who and what signora delsere was, much more than the issue of the play. but nobody knew. the whole scenery and the dresses of the performers were in admirable taste, everything good but the strutting of the actors. is it penal for an actor to walk? before the play was done, my eyes were so dazzled with the splendor of light and colors that i was obliged to rest them and look at my shoes for half an hour, that i might keep them for the last act. 1833] . ballet. opera 113 for my seat in the pit, where the ladies sit also, i paid three pauls, 30 cents. i ought not to forget the ballet between the acts. goethe laughs at those who force every work of art into the narrow circle of their own prejudices and cannot admire a picture as a picture, and a tune as a tune. so i was willing to look at this as a ballet, and to see that it was admirable, but i could not help feeling the while that it were better for mankind if there were no such dancers. i have since learned god's decision on the same, in the fact that all the ballerine are nearly idiotic. (from q) may 11. how little is expressed or can be! in the least action what an infinity is understood! i heard la straniera performed last night. moreover cannot a lesson of wisdom and glory be got even from the hapless prima donna of an italian opera? at least one is informed of the extent of female powers and warned not to be too easily satisfied with the accomplishments of vulgar pretty women. i have heard that the old king george was so impatient of his state that he delighted to dress himself plainly and escape in a morning from 114 journal (age 29 windsor to the market, or the lanes, and mix in a crowd. well, i have seen a man, the lord of quite another sortofprincipality, forced to pay the same price for all his knowledge and to unking himself and take knocks from such “parmaceti' gentlemen in order to have a peep at men. (from note-book) may 12. i dined to-day with mr. askew at his villa, seven miles out of florence, and all the road was through a garden. we rode on our return through a shower of fies, all the way. i gladly hear much good of the order of misericordia. i see these philanthropists now with quite new feeling, when they carry by the dead with their hasty chaunt. this order is composed of men of all professions and ages and ranks, who, for a penance, or for love, enter into it for a longer or shorter period. they devote themselves to all works of mercy, especially to the care of the sick. they watch and tend them, but never speak, and their faces are never seen, being always covered with a silken hood. they are not known to each other. cardinals and princes sometimes take the dress of this order for a time. the last grand duke was once a member. miss anna bridgen 1833] dante. giotto. landor 115 tells me that she saw in rome a coachman driving a splendid coach with chasseurs attendant, who attempted to pass directly through a funeral procession, when one of the misericordes ran forward and laid a powerful arm upon the rein of the horse and lifted his veil to the coachman, who instantly drew up his horses and waited with the utmost respect for the train to pass. they have taken down the old marble bench on which dante used to sit and look at the beautiful campanella [sic], and set it into the pavement with the inscription, “ sasso di dante." well he mightsit and admire thatcharming tower, which is a sort of poem in architecture. one might dream of such a thing, but it seems strange that it should have been executed in lasting stone. giotto built it, that old gothic painter. e. may 15. to-day i dined with mr. landor at his villa at san domenica di fiesole. he lives in a beautiful spot in a fine house full of pictures and with a family most engaging : he has a wife and four children. he said good and pleasant things, and preferred washington to all modern great men. he is very decided, as i might have expected, in all his opinions, and very much a connoisseur, 116 (age 29 journal in paintings. he was not very well to-day, and i go to breakfast with him next friday. mr. hare was present, the author of guesses at truth, and mr. worsley.'... may 16. this day is the festival of the ascension, which is a great annual holiday of the florentines, and pours them all out under the trees and along the lawns of the beautiful cascina. there they keep a sort of rural saturnalia. the grand dukecame up towards evening and took a turn round the square in his coach and bowed gracefully to the bowing multitude. his little children were with him in the coach. in the evening, the grounds were light as day with countless lamps hung in the trees, and in the centre of all an obelisk of flambeaux. then played the band, and all the people danced. i believe this rude ball was continued all night. i left them in full activity about ten o'clock. • the rest of the account of this visit to landor, and most of that of may 17, are here omitted because printed in the first chapter of english traits. in the notes to the centenary edition of that volume some of landor's spicy but good-tempered comments on mr. emerson's account of his views are given, which mr. landor published in “ an open letter” to him soon after the publication of english traits. 1833) visit to landor 117 may 18. visited mr. landor again yesterday. he lives in the villa ghirardesca. mr. landor has a fine cabinet of pictures, and as greenough remarked, he, in common with all collectors, imagines that his are the only masterpieces. — “ne sutor,” etc. and i remembered the story of voltaire and congreve. mr. hare told me that mr. landor has not more than twelve books in his library.' x (from q) i told landor i thought it an argument of weak understanding in lord chesterfield, his slippery morality. it is inexcusable in any man who pretends to greatness to confound moral distinctions. true genius, whatever faults of action it may have, never does. shakspeare never , does, though a loose liver. but such fry as beaumont and fletcher, and massinger, do continually. and chesterfield did. well for him if he had often thought and spoken as when he said, “i judge by every man's truth of his degree of understanding." i think it was of socrates that landor dared i i. c., at a time. he gave away his books (see english traits). 118 (age 29 journal to say, -so far can a humorsome man indulge a whim,-“he was a vulgar sophist and he [landor] could not forgive vulgarity in anybody; if he saw it in a wise man, he regretted it the · more.” wax (from note-book) noon. i went to the museum of natural history, and to the representation in wax of the plague of florence, and saw how man is made, and how he is destroyed. this museum contains an accurate copy in wax from nature of every organ and process in the human frame, and is beautiful and terrible. for in life nature never intends that these things should be uncovered. i have looked into santa croce this afternoon, and if i spoke ill of it before, i will unsay it all. it is a grand building, and its windows of stained glass charm me. it is lined and floored with tombs, and there are two or three richly finished chapels. in one is a fine painting of the last supper by vasari. while we were walking up and down the church, the organ was played, and i have never heard a more pleasing one. i saw the bust of michel angelo and his eight wrinkles. when i walk up the piazza of santa croce i 1833] the flower-girl 119 feel as if it were not a florentine, no, nor an european church, but a church built by and for the human race. i feel equally at home within its walls as the grand duke, so hospitably sound to me the names of its mighty dead. buonaroti and galileo lived for us all; as don ferranto says of aristotle, “non è nè antico nè moderno; è il filosofo senza più.” i met the fair erminia to-day. these meetings always cost me a crazie, and it is fit that she should not be slighted in the journal. erminia is a flower-girl who comes to the caffè every morning, and if you will not buy her flowers she gives them to you and with such a superb air. she has a fine expression of face and never lets her customers pass her in the street without a greeting. every coach too in florence that ventures to stop near the piazza di trinità is a tributary of erminia's. i defy them to escape from her nosegays. she has a rich pearl necklace, worth i know not how much, which she wears on festas. mr. wall wishes to paint her portrait, but she says she is not handsome enough, “e brutto il mio ritratto.” went again to the opera to see a piece called ivanboe. what a miserable abuse, to put a woman of dignity and talent into man's clothes 120 journal [age 29 to play the part of wilfrid. the signora delsere who delighted me so much the other night was strutting about ineffectually with sword and helmet. they had spoiled a fine woman to make a bad knight. i came home disgusted. the italians use the superlative too much. mr. landor calls them the nation of issimi. a man, to tell me that this was the same thing i had before, said, “è l'istessissima cosa”; and at the trattoria, when i asked if the cream was good, the waiter answered, “stupendo.” they use three negatives; it is good italian to say, “non dite nulla a nessuno.' may 19. hot weather steadily for three weeks past, and florence is a degree of latitude farther north than boston. six or seven blazing hours every day, when, as the florentines say, “there's nobody but dogs and englishmen in the streets.” then the pleasant evening walk from 6 to 7 or 8 o'clock upon the cascina, or the banks of the little sylvan mugnone, or in the boboli gardens. and wherever i go, i am surrounded by beautiful objects: the fine old towers of the city; the elegant curve of the ponte trinità; the rich purple line of the apennines, broken by the bolder summit of the marble mountains of car1833) morning walk 121 rara. and all, all is italian; not a house, not a shed, not a field, that the eye can for a moment imagine to be american. miss anna bridgen said very wittily, that so inveterate were her dutch instincts, that she sees almost no work of art in italy, but she wants to give it a good scrubbing; the duomo, the campanella, [sic] and the statues. "may 21. rose early this morning and went to the bello sguardo out of the roman gate. it was a fine picture, this tuscan morning, and all the towers of florence rose richly out of the smoky light on the broad green plain. i passed the michelozzi villa, where guicciardini wrote his history. returning, i saw the famous fresco painting on the wall within the city, directly opposite the roman gate, the work of giovanni da san giovanni; executed, they say, to show the skill of tuscan art. a story is told that, some roman painter having been sent for to execute a public work in florence, the florentine artists painted this wall that he might see it on his entrance into the city. when he came and saw this painting, he inquired whose work it was; and being informed it was done by florentines, he returned 122 journal (age 30 immediately to rome, saying that they had no occasion for foreign artists. (from q) i like the sayers of no better than the sayers of yes. on bravely through the sunshine or the showers time hath his work to do and we have ours. “il tempo il suo mestiere, ed io il mio.” (from note-book) i have finished the promessi sposi, and i rejoice that a man exists in italy who can write such a book. i hear from day to day such hideous anecdotes of the depravity of manners, that it is an unexpected delight to meet this elevated and eloquent moralist. renzo, and lucia, fra cristoforo, and federigo borromeo, all are excellent, and, which is the highest praise, all excite the reader to virtue. may 25. it is the festa of san zenobio, once bishop of florence, and at the churches the priests bless the roses and other flowers which the people bring them, and they are then esteemed good for the cure of headache and are laid by for that purpose. last night in the duomo i saw a priest 1833) santa croce 123 carrying a silver bust of san zenobio, which he put upon the head of each person in turn who came up to the barrier. this ceremony also protects him from the headache for a year. but, asked i of my landlady, do you believe that the bust or the roses do really cure the headache of any person? “secondo alla fede di ciascuno," she replied. it is my festa also.' (from ) is not santa croce a grand church? nobody knows how grand who only sees it once. its tombs! its tombs! and then the mighty windows of stained glass which a man sees at noon and thinks he knows what they are worth, and comes back after sunset and finds to his delight (i did) a wholly novel and far more beautiful effect. they should be seen just about the hour of candle-light. we came out to europe to learn what man can,what is the uttermost which social man has yet done. and perhaps the most satisfactory and most valuable impressions are those which come to each individual casually and in moments when he is not on the hunt for wonders. to make any sincere good use, i mean 1 his birthday. 124 (age 30 journal what i say, of what he sees, he needs to put a double and treble guard upon the independency of his judgment. the veriest luther might well suspect his opinion upon the venus or the apollo. (from note-book) i wrote to g. a. s.' yesterday, what i have found true, that it is necessary for the traveller, in order to see what is worth seeing, and especially who is worth seeing in each city, to go into society a little. now no man can have society upon his own terms. if he seek it, he must serve it too. he immediately and inevitably contracts debts to it which he must pay, at a great expense, often, of inclination, and of time, and of duty. “comanda niente, signore?” niente. “ felice. notte, signore.” felice notte. such is the dialogue which passes every evening betwixt giga and me when the worthy woman lights my lamp, and leaves me to goethe and sismondi, to pleasant study hours and to sound sleep. i have been to the academia delle belle arti, and there saw an unfinished work of michel angelo's. his opinion was asked concerning a i george a. sampson of boston, a near friend who died not long after. 1833) agriculture. tax block of marble, whether it were large enough to make a statue of? “yes,” he said, “a colossus.” and the inquirers doubting, he went to work, and cutting a little here and a little there, rudely sketched a figure of gigantic dimensions and left it so, a sort of sculptor's puzzle. tuesday morn, may 28. sad i leave florence, the pleasant city. i have not even seen it all, and between negligence and mishap have failed to see the library. the system of mezzaria or metayer is universal in the agriculture of tuscany. the introduction of the potato into general use, and the culture of saracenic grain has done much to alleviate the distress of the peasantry. labor is dogcheap. the hat manufacturer is almost peculiar. mr. miles tells me that it takes one woman one week to make a hat, and he usually orders a thousand hats in a week. the taxation seems very irregular and sometimes enormous; every ox that enters the gates of florence pays eleven francesconi at the gate. may 28. left florence. stopped at the pratolino, five miles out of the city, to see the colossal statue of father apennine by john of bologna. a seems 126 journal (age 30 it is grand if only from its size. they call it 60 feet high, meaning probably that in a standing posture it would be so high. i got up into his neck and head and looked out of his ear. fine mountain scenery to the frontier of the roman state. at last on reaching a new height we saw the adriatic sea. we slept at lacca, the first village on the roman territory, 36 miles from florence. may 29. at 4 a. m. we set forward, and passing through a picturesque country, arrived at bologna (25 miles) at 10 o'clock. here we visited the celebrated statue of neptune by john of bologna (good enough, but why so famous ?), the gallery of the academy and of the palazzo lambacari, both rich in guidos, caraccis, guercinos; the museum and library founded by marsilius, 100,000 volumes; the cathedral, the church of san domenico where is guido's fresco, paradise, and where lie the bones of guido, of the two caraccis, and also of st. dominick. here too are two leaning towers, one deviating nine feet from the perpendicular, and a good story is told of their building. all the streets are lined with porticoes so that the inhabitants walk always under cover, which, in the 1833) bologna. ferrara 127 rain, and under this dangerous sun, is a great public convenience. from the gate of the city a portico three miles in length, formed of 650 arcades, leads to the church of the madonna della guardia. in the piazza were planted some pieces of artillery which have stood there since the soi-disant revolution, two years ago. there are here 75,000 souls. may 30. from bologna to ferrara, 32 miles ; nearly all the way the road was paved, and lined with trees. arrived at ferrara at 4 p. m. visited tasso's prison, a real dungeon. there i saw byron's name cut with his penknife in the wall. the guide said his father accompanied him, and that byron stayed an hour and a half in the prison and there wrote. we visited the cathedral, fine old gothic exterior built in 1100; then the library, where is ariosto's tomb, his inkstand, medals and chair. i sat in his chair. they were shown by an old man who entered into the spirit of his profession as the showman. thence to the campo santo, passing through the jews' quarter, of whom there are 2800, who are shut up every night, as in rome, like dogs. at the campo santo two monuments by canova. what a desolate town! the streets appeared like state name 128 journal [age 30 street on sunday, and the grass grew. there are 24,000 inhabitants. under the dukes there were 70,000. it is the native place of garofalo, guercino, canova. a prolegate of the pope administers the government. ernm . may 31. from ferrara to rovigo across the po in a ferry. the stream was wide and strong, about as wide as the connecticutat hartford. the road all day was lined with poplars on each side. fine, bold taste displayed in all their architecture. every church is a new and pleasing plan. every chimney is built on an ornamental design. at night we reached monselice, after crossing the adige. saw our honest countryman the indian corn growing well. monselice is the most picturesque town i have seen in italy. it has an old ruin of a castle upon the hill, and thence commands a beautiful and extraordinary view. it lies in the wide plain, a dead level, whereon ferrara, bologna, rovigo, este, padua stand, and even venice we could dimly see on the horizon, rising with her tiara of proud towers. what a walk and what a ride, delightful picture! to venice 38 miles. june 1. this morn we stopped half a mile this side 1833) petrarch's tomb. padua 129 of the village of battaglia on the road to padua, sent the vettura on to the market-place, and walked over to arqua to see the tomb of petrarch, and the house where he spent his latter days. both are striking and venerable objects. the house is vacant and clean; its windows look out upon mountains. his portrait and his interviews with laura are painted in fresco on the walls. they show his chair and the chamber where he died. good, good place. it does honor to his head and heart. there grow the pomegranate and fig and olive. at noon at padua. three rich churches; as usual in italy, unlike all others, the duomo, and san antonio and san justin. visited the grand hall, the ancient sala di giustizia, 300 feet long, 100 wide, 100 high, without other support than the walls. stewartson,'wall and i then went for our breakfast to the most beautiful caffe in europe. nothing can exceed the taste and splendor of this room. visited the university, 1600 students, 62 professors. heard the professor caldania lecture upon anatomy with a subject; the form of the lecture room was an ini probably young dr. stewartson of philadelphia, mentioned with high regard in dr. holmes's letters from paris in the year 1833. see morse's life of holmes. 130 journal (age 30 verted cone. saw the museum. the quadrangle of the university is a venerable place, covered with armorial bearings. venice from padua to venice, 20 miles : crossed the brenta and passed a profusion of fine villas, all the grounds full of statues, not quite as thick as they could stand. far the most splendid of all was the villa imperiale, built by palladio. arrived at mestre, the place of embarcation for venice, 5 miles off. here we took a boat and sailed for the famous city. it looked for some time like nothing but new york. we entered the grand canal and passed under the rialto, and presently stepped out of the boat into the front entry of the gran bretagna. the front entry of the gran bretagna opens also upon a little bridge which connects by a narrow alley with the piazza of st. mark, so out we went under the full moon to see the same. it was all glorious to behold. in moonlight this arabesque square is all enchantment, so rich and strange and visionary. (from q) venice, june 2. the ancient metropolis of the merchants. in coming into it, it seemed a great oddity but not 1833) venice. humiliation 131 at all attractive. under the full moon, later in the evening, st. mark's piazza showed like a world's wonder, but still i pity the people, who are not beavers, and yet are compelled to live here. but what matter where and how, as long as all of us are estranged from truth and love, from him who is truth and love. sometimes i would hide myself in the dens of the hills, in the thickets of an obscure country town. i am so vexed and chagrined with myself, — with my weakness, with my guilt. then i have no skill to live with men, that is, with such men as the world is made of; and such as i delight in i seldom find. it seems to me, no boy makes so many blunders or says such awkward, contrary, disagreeable speeches as i do. in the attempt to oblige a person i wound and disgust him. i pity the hapless folks that have to do with me. but would it not be cowardly to flee out of society and live in the woods? i comfort myself with a reference to the great and eternal revolution which, under god, bears the good of us all, — thine and mine, and that of each by the instrumentality of the other, on the wings of these dull hours and months and years. i collect nothing that can be touched or tasted 132 journal (age 30 or smelled, neither cameo, painting nor medallion; nothing in my trunk but old clothes; but i value much the growing picture which the ages have painted and which i reverently survey. it is wonderful how much we see in five months, in how short a time we learn what it has taken so many ages to teach. (from note-book) again i have been to st. mark's and seen his horses and his winged lion, the bridge of sighs, the doge's palace, the piazza, the canals. we took a gondola, three of us (that is, one too many for the perfect enjoyment of that cunning vehicle) and proceeded to the churches and the academy. there is titian's picture of the assumption of the madonna, so glorified by the painters. the young men whom i converse with prefer it to raphael. there also is another of titian's, the presentation of the virgin, yet a child, to the high priest; a very large picture, and i thought i might call it the handsomest picture i have seen, but certainly not the best. it lacks the expression of raffaelle. it will not do to compare anything, in my opinion, with his transfiguration. a great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject vers 1833] pictures, churches 133 great, and what tenderness and holiness beams from the face of the christ in that work, what emotion. i have never yet seen the face copied in all the soi-disant copies of that picture. in the academy is a cast of the hercules of canova. the original is in the torlonia palace at rome. it is a tremendous action. here too are casts of his best works. the chair in which he has seated mme. buonaparte is the same beautiful form i admired in the caffe at padua. grand pictures here of paul veronese, tintoretto and titian. these churches of venice surpass all the churches in florence in splendor. the chiesa dei carmeliti has eight chapels, built at the expense of eight families, and they are superb. the chiesa dei gesuiti is a most costly imitation in marble of tapestry hangings throughout the interior. hiram and solomon could not beat it. in the chiesa della salute is a monument to canova, built from canova's design of a tomb for titian. canova's design, however, if that little model i saw in the academy be it, is more impressive than this gorgeous marble execution of the same in the salute. these churches are all rich with monuments, on many of which is figured the horned bonnet worn by the doges of si vorn 134 journal (age 30 venice. from these we came to the ducal palace up the giant staircase. at the side of the door we were shown the “ lion's mouth,” a hole in the wall into which anciently were thrown the anonymous accusations of any citizen for the eye of the council of state. thence we were conducted to the library, then to the hall, a grand chamber whose whole walls and ceiling are adorned by the best pictures of great size by paul veronese and his son, and tintoretto, and palma vecchio, and palma giovane, and bonifacio. all the paintings are historical. this hall and the adjoining chambers contain in this splendid way a chronicle of the republic. the portraits of one hundred and sixteen doges hang round on high, among which is the black board where should be the head of marino faliero. on the ceiling, most of the pieces are allegorical (which is as bad in painting as it is in poetry), and at one extremity of the hall a paradise by tintoretto, a picture of amazing size. from this hall to the audience chamber where the doge and his council received foreign ambassadors, then to the council chamber of the three hundred, with its rostrum and other realities. after seeing these noble apartments we were conducted to the prisons below 18331 austrians. french 135 sa e and all the hideous economy and arrangement of them explained. i saw the little blackened chamber from whose walls lord byron had those sad inscriptions copied, and passed the dreaded door opening on the bridge of sighs down to the third noisome story of the subterranean dungeon. it is a sickening place, and 't is enough to make one dance and sing that this horrid tyranny is broken in pieces. to be sure the austrians are here, but their rule is merciful to that whose story is written here in stone and iron and mire. the policy of the venetian government kepteven the existence of their state prison a secret, and on the approach of the french in 1796, they hastily built up the secret passages. the french acted with good sense in opening these damnable holes to the day and exposing them to the public, in order to make their own invasion popular. after leaving the ducal palace we climbed the stairs of the campanile to the lookout, an essential part of the traveller's duty at venice, for, as in the city you are always in a gutter, it needs to get up into this tower to have any sight of its shape and extent. the day was not very clear, but the view was noble. the campanile itself is [a] beautiful tower, 136 journal [age 30 but it cannot compare with giotto's wonder at florence, the poem in stone. i should attempt to describe st. mark's piazza, the glory of venice, and without which the city would not be worth visiting, but that the common prints of it are so good. there stand the painted masts whereon the republic hung her banners. as it is the only piece of ground in the city where a thousand men could find elbow-room, its daily importance can easily be conceived. we took a long sail across the harbor to the immense arsenal, a place of all manner of naval works, three miles in circuit. the bucentaur is gone, but there they show a model of it, and upon it all the places of state, and the garrulous showman tells all the story of the annual marriage of the adriatic. here too is an armory where they show without a blush the golden keys of venice that were made in 1797 to be presented to napoleon. worse things are various inventions for torture and a nameless thing for an incredible, indecent cruelty ascribed to francesco da carrara. i am speedily satisfied with venice. it is a great oddity, a city for beavers, but, to my thought, a most disagreeable residence. you feel always in prison, and solitary. two persons may 1833) not won to venice 137 live months in adjoining streets and never meet, for you go about in gondolas, and all the gondolas are precisely alike, and the persons within commonly concealed; then there are no newsrooms; except st. mark's piazza, no place of public resort. it is as if you were always at sea. and though, for a short time, it is very luxurious to lie on the eider-down cushions of your gondola and read or talk or smoke, drawing to, now the cloth-lined shutter, now the venetian blind, now the glass window, as you please, yet there is always a slight smell of bilgewater about the thing, and houses in the water remind one of a freshet and of desolation, anything but comfort. i soon had enough of it. ... i ought not to forget that i went to the manfrini palace and saw its famous gallery of paintings, and giorgione's picture. and so we left the ocean-rome. tuesday, june 4. with our trusty vetturino who brought us from florence, we left mestre this morn for padua, and then for vicenza, where we pass the night. this is the city of palladio and embellished with his architecture. the campo marzio is a beautiful public walk. went thence to the 138 journal (age 30 duomo and the basilica. many fine palaces in this town. june 5. to verona 30 miles. the chief object of interest is the amphitheatre built in trajan's time, a smaller coliseum, but in excellent preservation and still used as a theatre. a play was getting up in the arena when we came away. then to what is called juliet's tomb, a very apocryphal sepulchre; then to the duomo to see an assumption of the madonna, by titian ; to san giorgio to see pictures of paul veronese. this is his own town, and of maffei also. saw the roman bridge built by vitruvius over the adige. there are 12,000 soldiers now in this town. a large part of them are employed in rebuilding the ancient walls. the population from 50,000 to 60,000. this place suffered much in the french invasion in 174 and i saw many walls honeycombed with musket-shot. we do not make many miles in a day, but our journey has many alleviations, and we are very companionable travellers, and some of our tuscan conversations with the vetturino ludicrous enough. “vetturino!” shouted my friend stewartson from within the coach; “ vetturino! perchè non arrangiate questo window?” then 18331 verona to brescia ona we find a hospitable caffè every evening where we find an ice, and the oriental narcotic, and wall and stewartson their cigar. june 6. to-day from verona to brescia, 40 miles. from verona in the morning to lago di guarda, and crossed the smooth sliding mincio and spent our three hours of nooning at defenzano. 'tis corpus christi day, and for a week past wherever we have been we have seen preparations for celebrating this festa with what pomp each city could. a splendid procession is everywhere made under awnings, and in many places i believe over carpets laid along the streets. even in this little village every house has hung out its quilts and damask and brocade, and the walls are lined. at the altar in the church, officiate little girls dressed out in white and gold with wings for angels. we passed to-day many beautiful villas, and, what was new and pleasant, we saw no beggars. the women in this country universally wear in their hair silver pins with heads as large as eggs; they remind one of an electrical machine. all the way they were stripping the mulberry trees of leaves for the food of the silkworms which are in every house. i went into a house and 2 10 von 140 (age 30 journal begged to see the animals; the padrona led me upstairs and showed me the creatures in every age and state. she had given up the whole of the primo piano, or what we call the second storey, to them. then to brescia. all the italian towns are different and all picturesque. the well-paved brescia, the church of the madonna dei miracoli, how daintily it is carved without to the very nerves of the strawberry and vine leaf! italy is the country of beauty, but i think specially in the northern part. everything is ornamented. a peasant wears a scarlet cloak. if he has no other ornament, he ties on a red garter or knee-band. they wear flowers in the hat or the buttonhole. a very shabby boy will have the eye of a peacock's feather in his hat. in general the great-coats and jackets of the common people are embroidered, and the other day i saw a cripple leaning on a crutch very finely carved. every fountain, every pump, every post is sculptured, and not the commonest tavern room but its ceiling is painted. red is a favorite color, and on a rainy morning at messina the streets blazed with red umbrellas. in brescia they have lately made some excavations of their antiquities, and laid open the mon zza was a es in 1833) brescia. lombardy 141 floor and shafts of the pillars of a roman temple of hercules. they have found a fine bronze victory there. at a fountain in the piazza was a statue of canova's. i thought a clever mason might make as good a one. in brescia 4000 soldiers. porticoes in all these towns in north of italy. the roads seem the best and costliest i have ever seen, but there are no bad roads in italy. buonaparte, with whatever intent, was a great benefactor to this whole peninsula from naples northward. i notice that the new buildings erected or erecting are in as bold and as beautiful a style as old ones. every church, every villa is original; and what gates they can make to a villa or a palace ! june 7. to-day crossed the mela. in all this lombard region they write on a signpost the name of each town thus:comune di ospedaletto capo luogo del secondo distretto provincia di brescia, and a similar threefold inscription in every village. we begin to see goitres on both men and 142 journal (age 30 women. the vettura stopped at noon at calcio. wall and i have walked on towards triviglio, and now, whilst he sketches, i sit upon an arch that crosses a brook and listen to a bird's song; ’t is surely the nightingale. june 8. this morn at 10 o'clock entered milan by a broad and splendid street. saw the top of the cathedral from far upon the road, and got a nearer view of its glories before arriving at the hotel. june 9. this cathedral is the only church in italy that can pretend to compare with st. peter's. it is a most impressive and glorious place, without and within. and its exterior altogether as remarkable and deserving minute attention as its interior. it was begun by andrea commodia in 1386 and is not yet finished, though always being built. when completed, it will have 7000 statues, great and small, upon the outside ; there are now 5000. it is all built, to the minutest part, of white marble, and, as the showman asserted, would have cost a mountain of gold, but that the founder had left to it a quarry of marble. forty-two artists are perpetually employed upon it. the walk upon the top of the church is 1833) milan cathedral -143 delightful from the novelty and richness of the scene. neighbored by this army of marble saints and martyrs, with scores of exquisitely sculptured pinnacles rising and flowering all around you, the noble city of milan beneath, and all the alps in the horizon,it is one of the grandest views on earth. then, inside the church, the grand gothic perspective of the aisles, the colour of the light which all enters through stained glass, the richness and magnitude of all the objects, — truly it is good to be there. an immense surface in this cathedral is glass window. thus behind the great altar are three huge windows only separated by sashes, each of which is wide by twelve panes (each pane one foot) and high by twelve panes (each pane two feet), and over all a great arch in which the glass is of irregular shape. these huge windows contain the whole history of mankind from adam and eve down, each pane being a separate picture. underneath the church is the sumptuous tomb of st. charles borromeo, whose history is the glory of milan and has furnished manzoni with a hero in i promessi sposi. the kindness of the conte del verme has shown me and my friends all the curiosities of 144 journal [age 30 milan. in his coach we have made the circuit of the city and, as travellers say, “killed it thoroughly.” we visited not less than eight churches beside the cathedral, some of them very rich. at one they showed me tapestry between two and three centuries old, which was as delicately pictured as if done by a camel’s-hair pencil. we went to the ospitale grande, which is the most considerable institution of the sort in europe. a magnificent charity. there are 2500 beds and almost all are full. its aid is gratuitous. everybody is received who applies, and we walked through corridor after corridor of beds whereon lay the sick of all manner of diseases. great and good and sad, this hospital is a little city in itself. a very different spectacle was the palazzo di brera which has a rich gallery of paintings, a great public library, and an astronomical observatory, which were all shown us. then we visited the triumphal arch, l'arco del sempione, designed and begun by napoleon as the termination of the road of the simplon from paris to milan. its finishing [is] by the austrian government, of course with some variation in the bas-reliefs. then to the ambrosian library and museum, where i saw petrarch's etc. 1833] austrian rule 145 copy of virgil, all written by himself; and to the ospitale dei frati, — fate bene fratelli, and to the castle, and to the arena, and to a collegio and to a registry office, etc., etc. my friend the count speaks with no good will of the austrian government, so jealous, so rapacious, which holds italy down by the pointed cannon. there are 96,000 or 97,000 austrian troops in lombardy. when he solicited a passport to go to the united states of america, it was 16 months before it was granted him. i visited the church of san domenico to see the famous fresco painting of the last supper by leonardo da vinci. it is sadly spoiled by time and damp. the face of christ is still very remarkable. milan is a well-built town with broad streets and a little railroad of stone for the wheels to run upon in the middle of the street. it looks too modern to be so conspicuous in european history as it has been, for lombardy was the theatre of every war. there is an advantage which these old cities have over our new ones that forcibly strikes an american, namely, that the poorest inhabitants live in good houses. in process of time a city is filled with palaces, the rich ever deserting old 146 journal [age 30 ones for new, until beggars come to live in what were costly and well-accommodated dwellings. thus all the trattorias, even of little pretension, have their carved work and fresco painting, as this of the marino where i dine with my companions. co (from q) milan, june 10. architecture — shall i speak what i think? seems to me ever an imitation. accustomed to look at our american churches as imitative, i cannot get it out of my head that these which i now see are only more splendid and successful imitations also. i am perplexed with my inveterate littleness; i must and will see the things in detail and analyse all, every noble sentiment to the contrary notwithstanding. it seems to me nothing is truly great, nothing impresses us, nothing overawes, nothing crowds upon us, and kills calculation. we always call in the effect of imagination, coax the imagination to hide this and enlarge that, and even st. peter's, nor this frost-work cathedral at milan, with its 5000 marble people all over its towers, can charm down the little imp. it is in the soul that architecture exists, and seer 18331 journey to simplon 147 santa croce and this duomo are poor far-behind imitations. i would rather know the metaphysics of architecture, as of shells and flowers, than anything else in the matter. but one act of benevolence is better than a cathedral, so do your duty, yours. architecture, said the lady'is frozen music. and iarno says in wilhelm that he who does the best in each one thing he does, does all, for he sees the connexion between all good things. (from note-book) tuesday, june 11. left milan in the diligence, with wall and stewartson and the misses bridgen. before sunset we arrived on the beautiful banks of the lago maggiore, and crossed the adda, which is there an arm of the lake, at sesto calendo, and stopped at arona to dine. though we passed directly below the famous colossal statue of san carlo borromeo, after leaving arona, it was so dark that i could not see it, which i regretted much. we rode all night and reached domo d'ossola next morn to breakfast [in] the town at the foot of the alps. the maître d'hôtel here spoke english, and we were much cheated, two facts which are said to be concomitant. the i madame de staël. 148 (age 30 journal whole of the day, 12 june, was spent in crossing the mountain by the celebrated road of the simplon, cut and built by buonaparte. let it be a glory to his name, him the great hand of our age. truly it is a stupendous work, passing through every variation of ragged mountain scenery, now through the earth or solid rock in the form of a tunnel, now in successive easy inclined planes called galleries climbing the sides of a precipice, now crossing some rift in the mountain on a firm bridge, and so working its way up from the hot plain of lombardy to cold waterfalls and huge snowbanks, and up and upward to the bleak hamlet of sempione which almost crowns the top. here we see our own breath, and are very glad to get into the house and avoid the cold air. over a wild mountain cascade and within a gallery cut through the rock buonaparte has had the honesty to write, “ italo aere. nap. imp. mdcccv.” céard was his principal engineer. and these, i thought, are the mountains of freedom. this queer ridge of matter is of such proved moral efficiency. let their spartan hymn ascend. i saw a good many of the swiss peasantry on the hillsides : how different from the italians on one side, or the french on a 1833) the pass 149 the other, but exactly resembling the faces and dresses of their countrymen who emigrate to the united states. it is marvellous to see their houses on such narrow lodgments, half way up a mural precipice, as was said of cortona,“like a picture hanging on a wall.” what can they do with their children? we dined at sempione and soon began the descent of the mountain; the wheel of the diligence is chained and shod with a heavy log of green wood; yet the descent at some points looks perilous enough. the mountain views are very fine. no extensive prospect is commanded in the ascent or from the top, but we see many noble summits of the chain as we come down toward briga. we arrived safely at briga at the foot of the mountain after sunset. we have left the italian speech behind us, and though in switzerland, all is french. after supper we set forward again, and unluckily, having taken my place outside by day, i was compelled to ride the whole cold night sub jove frigido, and was very thankful to one of my fair friends within, who loaned me a shawl for the occasion. at dawn we reached sion, and in the forenoon martigny. we had taken our places for martigny, intending to visit 150 journal (agb 30 mont blanc from thence. but the sky was overcast and it rained a little, and we were afraid of a storm, so we relinquished our purpose, or at least postponed it for consideration at geneva. june 13 on we came, passing the fine cascade of pissevache, and stopped an hour at st. maurice. thence in more convenient vehicles through a country of grandest scenery passing through clarens and along the banks of lake leman, by the castle of chillon, then through vevay, and we reached lausanne before nightfall. the repose and refreshment of a good hotel were very welcome to us after riding two nights; but the next morning (14th) was fine, and mr. wall and i walked out to the public promenade, a high and ornamented grove which overlooks the lake and commands the view of a great amphitheatre of mountains. we are getting toward france. in the café where we breakfasted we found a printed circular inviting those whom it concerned to a rifle-match, to the intent, as the paper stated, “ of increasing their skill in that valuable accomplishment, and of drawing more closely the bonds of that regard with which we are,” etc. 1833) gibbon. voltaire 151 after breakfast i inquired my way to gibbon's house and was easily admitted to the garden. the summer-house is removed, but the floor of it is still there, where the history was written and finished. i stood upon it and looked forth upon the noble landscape of which he speaks so proudly. i plucked a leaf of the lime tree he planted, and of the acacia, successors of those under which he walked. i have seen however many landscapes as pleasant and more striking. at 10 o'clock we took the steamboat for geneva and sailed up lake leman. the passage was very long, seven hours, for the wind was ahead, and the engine not very powerful. we touched at coppet. the lake is most beautiful near geneva. it was not clear enough to see mont blanc, or else it was not visible. mount varens and monte rosa were seen. geneva, june 16. here am i in the stern old town, the resort of such various minds, of calvin, of rousseau, of gibbon, of voltaire, of de staël, of byron, on the blue rhone by the placid lake leman. mont blanc towers above the alps on the east sublimely with his three summits; jura on the west is marking the line of france; and 152 (age 30 journal the lake lies in beauty before me. everybody is polite. 1 yesterday, to oblige my companions, and protesting all the way upon the unworthiness of his memory, i went to ferney to the château, the salon, the bedchamber, the gardens of voltaire, the king of the scorners. his rooms were modest and pleasing, and hung with portraits of his friends. franklin and washington were there. the view of the lake and mountains commanded by the lawn behind the château is superior to that of gibbon's garden at lausanne. the old porter showed us some pictures belonging to his old master, and told a story that did full justice to his bad name. yet it would be a sin against faith and philosophy to exclude voltaire from toleration. he did his work as the bustard' and tarantula do theirs. we had a fine ride home, so royally towers up mont blanc with his white, triple top. on the way we passed the stone which marks the boundary of france, which made dr. stewartson crow like chanticleer, and the grass he thought greener. visited the music-box manufactory, and the watchmaker's. the music man offered to 1 thus in the journal, but probably buzzard was what was really intended. — ed. an 1833) geneva ministers 153 make a box with two airs of beethoven for 50 francs, to be received by me in paris. prices of the best watches that they can make are 500 francs. of the second class, without a compensation, but esteemed as good for all ordinary purposes, 300 francs. s. bought one for 275, the difference of value being in the weight of the case. they speak of smuggling with perfect simplicity, and offer to send you the watch to paris (via smuggler, that is) for a few francs. through the misses bridgen's acquaintance in mr. wolf's family, i was carried away to hear m. gissot, a very worthy calvinist who has been ejected from the national church. his exercise was a catechism and exhortation of a large class of children; then i was introduced to mr. cordis and others of their brethren ; very worthy men they seemed. i spent the day at the house of mr. wolf. the daughter told me that “if i was, as i said, a seeker, she thought i ought to make it a point of duty to stop longer at geneva,” and so offered in very pretty broken english “to intrude me to the minister who begun the exercise.” she had learned english because her house was destined to receive boarders, etc., etc. i owed them all much kindness, but if i had known anything i should have 154 journal [age 30 made acquaintance with m. chenevière first. after all this kindness it would have been great violence to have gone away to him. the established church of geneva is now unitarian, and the three calvinistic clergymen of the city are ejected. france left geneva in the diligence for paris monday morning at 4 o'clock, and presently crossed the line of france and began the ascent of mount jura. as we rose toward the top, what noble pictures appeared on the swiss side! the alps, the alps and mont blanc in all his breadth, towering up so cold and white and dim towards heaven, all uninhabitable and almost inaccessible. yet more than saussure have reached the top. france, france. it is not only a change of name: the cities, the language, the faces, the manners have undergone a wonderful change in three or four days. the running fight we have kept up so long with the fierté of postillions and padroni in italy is over, and all men are complaisant. the face of the country is remarkable; not quite a plain, but a vast undulating champaign without a hill, and all planted like the connecticutt intervales. no fences, the fields 1833) arrival in paris 155 full of working women. we rode in the coupé of a diligence by night and by day, for three days and a half, and arrived in paris at noon thursday. dav. oon paris i arrived in paris at noon on thursday, 20 june. my companions, who have been in the belle ville before, and wished it to strike me as it ought, are scarce content with my qualified admiration. certainly the eye is satisfied on entering the city with the unquestionable tokens of a vast, rich, old capital. we crossed the seine by the pont neuf, and i was glad to see my old acquaintance henry iv very respectably mounted in bronze on his own bridge ; but the saucy faction of the day has thrust a tricolor into his bronze hand, as into a doll's, and in spite of decency the stout old monarch is thus obliged to take his part in the whirligig politics of his city. fie! louis philippe. we were presently lodged in the hotel montmorenci on the boulevard mont martre. i have wandered round the city, but i am not well pleased. i have seen so much in five months that the magnificence of paris will not take my eye to-day. the gardens of the louvre looked pinched and the wind blew dust in my eyes, and before i got into the 156 journal [age 30 champs élysées i turned about and fatly refused to go farther. i was sorry to find that in leaving italy i had left forever that air of antiquity and history which her towns possess, and in coming hither had come to a loud, modern new york of a place. i am very glad to find here my cousin ralph emerson, who received me most cordially and has aided me much in making my temporary establishment. it were very ungrateful in a stranger to be discontented with paris, for it is the most hospitable of cities. the foreigner has only to present his passport at any public institution and the doors are thrown wide to him. i have been to the sorbonne, where the first scientific men in france lecture at stated hours every day, and the doors are open to all. i have heard jouffroy, thenard [and gay lussac]. then the collège royale de france is a similar institution on the same liberal foundation. so with the collège du droit, and the amphitheatre of the garden of plants. i have been to the louvre, where are certainly some first-rate pictures. leonardo da vinci has more pictures here than in any other gallery, and i like them well, despite of the identity of the features which peep out of men and women. 1833) street scenes 157 i have seen the same face in his pictures i think six or seven times. murillo i see almost for the first time with great pleasure. july. it is a pleasant thing to walk along the boulevards and see how men live in paris. one man has live snakes crawling about him, and sells soap and essences. another sells books which lie upon the ground. another under my window all day offers a gold chain. half a dozen walk up and down with some dozen walking sticks under the arm. a little further, one sells canetassels at 5 sous. here sits boots brandishing his brush at every dirty shoe. then you pass several tubs of gold fish. then a man sitting at his table cleaning gold and silver spoons with emery and haranguing the passengers on its virtues. then a person who cuts profiles with scissors —"shall be happy to take yours, sir." then a table of card-puppets which are made to crawl. then a hand-organ. then a wooden figure called [?] which can put an apple in its mouth whenever a child buys a plum. then a flower merchant. then a bird-shop with twenty parrots, four swans, hawks and nightingales. then the show of the boy with four legs, etc., etc., without end. all these are the mere boutiques on the 158 journal (age 30 sidewalk, moved about from place to place as the sun or rain or the crowd may lead them. (from q) paris. it shall be writ in my memoirs (as aunt mary would say), as it was writ of st. pachomius,“ pes ejus ad saltandum non est commotus omni vita sua.” the worse for me in the gay city. pray what brought you here, grave sir ? the moving boulevard seems to say. “aimer, pleurer, mourir, c'est la vie de la femme"; title of a novel just published. paris, july 4. the two gifts of the old world to the new, columbus and lafayette. (from note-book) dined to-day at lointier's with general lafayette and nearly one hundred americans. i sought an opportunity of paying my respects to the hero, and inquiring after his health. his speech was as happy as usual. a certain lieutenant levi did what he could to mar the day.' 1 dr. oliver wendell holmes in a letter to his family describes the incident here referred to. (see morse's life and letters of oliver wendell holmes, vol. i, p. 105.) 1833] use of life 159 (from q) july 9. how does everybody live on the outside of the world! all young persons thirst for a real existence for an object, for something great and good which they shall do with all their heart. meantime they all pack gloves, or keep books, or travel, or draw indentures, or cajole old women. july 11. does any man render written account to himself of himself? i think not. those who have anything worth repeating, ah! the sad confession! those who are innocent have been employed in tape and pins. when will good work be found for great spirits? when shall we be able without a blush and without harm to utter to the world our inmost thought? thus, shall i write memoirs ? a man who was no courtier, but loved men, went to rome, —and there lived with boys. he came to france, and in paris lives alone, and in paris seldom speaks. if he do not see carlyle in edinburgh, he may go to america without saying anything in earnest, except to cranch and to landor. the errors of traditional christianity as it now exists, the popular faith of many millions, 160 journal (age 30 need to be removed to let men see the divine beauty of moral truth. i feel myself pledged, if health and opportunity be granted me, to demonstrate that all necessary truth is its own evidence; that no doctrine of god need appeal to a book; that christianity is wrongly received by all such as take it for a system of doctrines, its stress being upon moral truth; it is a rule of life, not a rule of faith. and how men can toil and scratch so hard for things so dry, lifeless, unsightly, as these famous dogmas, when the divine beauty of the truths to which they are related lies behind them; how they can make such a fuss about the case, and never open it to see the jewel, is strange, pitiful. paris, july 12. is it not true that in every season of excited thought, when a man has a strong conception of god, it is wholly new to him; he perceives that he has never penetrated so far before into the holy of holies? and yet every time st. charles borromeo, what a man was he! what a priest! you cannot answer at the hour the argument of little men, which insists on the unavoidableness of sensual pleasure to such constitutions 1833) jardin des plantes 161 as ours; but st. charles borromeo is answer enough, any great and noble man is answer enough, any one who will not be little, who will bestir himself, who will use his faculties and do his duty. be cheerful. what an insane habit is this of groping always into the past months, and scraping together every little pitiful instance of awkwardness and misfortune, and keeping my nervous system ever on the rack. it is the disease of a man who is at the same time too idle, and respectful to the opinion of others. il tient son affaire. (from note-book) july 13. i carried my ticket from mr. warden to the cabinet of natural history in the garden of plants. how much finer things are in composi✓ tion than alone. 'tis wise in man to make cabinets. when i was come into the ornithological chambers i wished i had come only there. the fancy-coloured vests of these elegant beings make me as pensive as the hues and forms of a cabinet of shells, formerly. it is a beautiful collection and makes the visitor as calm and genial as a bridegroom. the limits of the possible are 162 journal (age 30 enlarged, and the real is stranger than the imaginary. some of the birds have a fabulous beauty. one parrot of a fellow called psittacus erythropterụs from new holland deserves as special mention as a picture of raphael in a gallery. he is the beau of all birds. then the humming birds, little and gay. least of all is the trochilus niger. i have seen beetles larger. the trochilus pella hath such a neck of gold and silver and fire! trochilus delalandi from brazil is a glorious little tot, la mouche magnifique. among the birds of paradise i remarked the manucode or paradisea regia from new guinea, the paradisea apoda, and paradisea rubra. forget not the veuve à epaulettes, or emberiza longicauda, black with fine shoulder-knots; nor the ampelis cotinga ; nor the phasianus argus, a peacock-looking pheasant; nor the trogon pavoninus, called also couroncou pavonin. i saw black swans and white peacocks; the ibis, the sacred and the rosy ; the flamingo, with a neck like a snake; the toucan rightly called rhinoceros; and a vulture whom to meet in the wilderness would make your flesh quiver, so like an executioner he looked. in the other rooms i saw amber containing perfect musquitoes, grand blocks of quartz, naless v 1833] “striving to be man” 163 tive gold in all its forms of crystallization, threads, plates, crystals, dust; and silver, black as from fire. ah! said i, this is philanthropy, wisdom, taste, to form a cabinet of natural history. many students were there with grammar and note-book, and a class of boys with their tutor from some school. here we are impressed with the inexhaustible riches of nature. the universe is a more amazing puzzle than ever, as you glance along this bewildering series of animated forms, — the hazy butterflies, the carved shells, the birds, beasts, fishes, insects, snakes, and the upheaving principle of life everywhere incipient, in the very rock aping organized forms. not a form so grotesque, so savage, nor so beautiful but is an expression of some property inherent in man the observer, an occult relation between the very scorpions and man. i feel the centipede in me, cayman, carp, eagle, and fox. i am moved by strange sympathies; i say continually “ i will be a naturalist.” there's a good collection of skulls in the comparative anatomy chambers. the best skull seemed to be english. the skeleton of the balena looks like the frame of a schooner turned upside down. n . 164 journal [age 30 the garden itself is admirably arranged. · they have attempted to classify all the plants in the ground, to put together, that is, as nearly as may be, the conspicuous plants of each class on jussieu's system. walk down the alleys of this flower-garden, and you come to the enclosures of the animals where almost all that adam named or noah preserved are represented. here are several lions, two great elephants walking out in the open day, a camelopard seventeen feet high, the bison, the rhinoceros, and so forth, — all manner of four-footed things in air and sunshine, in the shades of a pleasant garden, where all people, french and english, may come and see without money. by the way, there is a caricature in the print-shops respecting the arrival of the giraffe in paris, exclaiming to the mob, “messieurs, il n'y a qu'un bête de plus.” it is very pleasant to walk in this garden. as i went out, i noticed a placard posted on the gate giving notice that m. jussieu would next sunday give a public herborisation, that is, make a botanical excursion into the country, and inviting all and sundry to accompany him. 1833] père le chaise 165 july 15. i have just returned from père le chaise. it well deserves a visit and does honour to the french. but they are a vain nation. the tombstones have a beseeching, importunate vanity and remind you of advertisements. but many are affecting. one which was of dark slate stone had only this inscription, “mon père.” i prefer the “ ci gît” to the “ ici repose” as the beginning of the inscriptions, but, take the cemetery through, i thought the classics rather carried the day. one epitaph was so singular to be read by me, that i wrote it off; ici repose auguste charles collignon, mort plein de confiance dans la bonté de dieu, à l'âge de 68 ans et 4 mois, le 15 avril, 1830. il aima et chercba à faire du bien, et mena une vie douce et beureuse en suivant autant qu'il put la morale et les leçons des essais de montaigne et des fables de la fontaine. i notice that, universally, the french write, as, in the above, “here lies augustus,” etc., and we write,“ here lies the body of,” etc. —amore important distinction than roi de france and roi des français. i live at pension with professor heari at the corner of rue neuve vivienne directly over the entrance of the passage aux panorames. if i had 166 [age 30 journal companions in the city, it would be something better to live in the café and restaurant. these public rooms are splendidly prepared for travellers and full of company and of newspapers. this passage aux panorames was the first arcade built in paris and was built by an american, mr. thayer. there are now probably fifty of these passages in the city. and few things give more the character of magnificence to the city than the suite of these passages about the palais royal. notre dame is a fine church outside, but the interior quite naked and beggarly. in general, the churches are very mean inside. young men are very fond of paris, partly, no doubt, because of the perfect freedom, freedom from observation as well as interference, in which each one walks after the sight of his own eyes; and partly because the extent and variety of objects offers an unceasing entertainment. so long as a man has francs in his pocket he needs consult neither time, nor place, nor other men's convenience; wherever in the vast city he is, he is within a stone's throw of a patissier, a café, a restaurant, a public garden, a theatre, and may enter when he will. if he wish to go to the thuileries perhaps two miles off, let eve 1833] evenings 167 him stop a few minutes at the window of a printshop or a book-stall, of which there are hundreds and thousands, and an omnibus is sure to pass in the direction in which he would go, and for six sous he rides two or three miles. then the streets swarm with cabinets de lecture where you find all the journals and all the new books. i spend many hours at galignani's and lately at the english reading room in the rue neuve augustine, where they advertise that they receive 400 journals in all languages, and have moreover a very large library. lastly, the evening need never hang heavy on the stranger's hands, such ample provision is made here for what the newspapers call “nos besoins recreatifs.” more than twenty theatres are blazing with light and echoing with fine music every night, from the académie royale de la musique, which is the french opera, down to the children's drama; not to mention concerts, gardens and shows innumerable. the theatre is the passion of the french, and the taste and splendour of their dramatic exhibitions can hardly be exceeded. the journal, in speaking of the opera last night, declares that “mme. d. was received by the dilettanti of paris with not less joy than the lost soul by the angels in heaven.” i saw 168 [age 30 journal is a the opera gustave performed the other night, and have seen nothing anywhere that could compare with the brilliancy of their scenic decoration. the moonlight scene resembled nothing but nature's; and as for the masked ball, i think there never was a real fancy-ball that equalled the effect of this. at the théâtre français, where talma played and madame mars plays, i heard delavigne's new piece, enfans d'edouard, excellently performed; for although madame mars speaks french beautifully and has the manners of a princess, yet she scarcely excels the acting of the less famous performers who support her. each was perfect in his part. paris is an expensive place. rents are very high. all frenchmen, in all quarters of their dispersion, never lose the hope of coming hither to spend their earnings, and all the men of pleasure in all the nations come hither, which fact explains the existence of so many dazzling shops full of most costly articles of luxury. indeed, it is very hard for a stranger to walk with eyes forward ten yards in any part of the city. i have been to the faubourg st. martin to hear the abbé chatel, the founder of the eglise catholique française. it is a singular institution 1833] abbé chatel 169 which he calls his church, with newly invented dresses for the priests and martial music performed by a large orchestra, relieved by interludes of a piano with vocal music. his discourse was far better than i could expect from these preliminaries. sometimes he is eloquent. he is a unitarian, but more radical than anybody in america who takes that name. i was interested in his enterprise, for there is always something pathetic in a new church struggling for sympathy and support. he takes upon himself the whole pecuniary responsibilities of the undertaking, and for his chapel in the rue st. honoré pays an annual rent of 40,000 francs. he gave notice of a grand funeral fête which is to be solemnized on the anniversary of the three days at that chapel. in the print-shops they have a figure of the abbé chatel on the same picture with père enfant, le templier. i went this evening into frascati's, long the most noted of the gambling houses or hells of paris, and which a gentleman had promised to show me. this establishment is in a very handsome house on the rue richelieu. several servantsin livery were waitingin the hall, who took our hats on entering, and we passed at once into the niversa 170 journal (age 30 wi suite of rooms in all of which play was going on. the most perfect decorum and civility prevailed, the table was covered with little piles of napoleons which seemed to change masters very rapidly, but scarce a word was spoken. servants carry about lemonade, etc., but no heating liquor. the house, i was told, is always one party in the game. several women were present, but many of the company seemed to be mere spectators like ourselves. after walking round the tables, we returned to the hall, gave the servant a franc for our hats, and departed. frascati has grown very rich. go to the champs élysées after sunset and see the manifold show. an orchestra, a roundabout, a tumbler, sugar-plum-gambling-tables, harpers, dancers, and an army of loungers. · i went to the mazarin library, and mr. warden kindly introduced me to the séance of the class of science in the institute, and pointed out to me the conspicuous men. i saw biot, arago, gay lussac, jouffroy, and others. several memoirs were read, and some debate ensued thereon. visited st. cloud. july 18. left paris in the diligence for boulogne. rode all night through st. denis, moisselles, beau1833) england 171 vais, breakfasted at abbeville, passed through montreuil, samur, and reached boulogne about sunset. at abbeville we picked up signore alessandro, an italian emigrant. at boulogne, on saturday morn, 19th, took the steamboat for london. after a rough passage of 20 hours we arrived at london and landed at the tower stairs. england july 20. weknow london so well in books and pictures and maps and traditions that i saw nothing surprising in this passage up the thames. a noble navigable stream, lined on each side by a highly cultivated country, full of all manner of good buildings. then greenwich and deptford, hospital, docks, arsenals, fleets of shipping, and then the mighty metropolis itself, old, vast, and still. scarce anybody was in the streets. it was about 7 o'clock sunday morning, and we met few persons until we reached st. paul's. a porter carried our baggage, and we walked through cheapside, newgate street, high holborn, and found lodgings (according to the direction of my friend in paris) at mrs. fowler's, no. 63 russell square. it was an extreme pleasure to hear english 172 journal [age 30 spoken in the streets; to understand all the words of children at play, and to find that we must not any longer express aloud our opinion of every person we met, as in france and italy we had been wont to do. went into st. paul's, where service was saying. poor church. london, july 24. here in the great capital it needs to say something of the creature immortal that swarms on this spot. coming to boulogne, i thought of the singular position of the american traveller in italy. it is like that of a being of another planet who invisibly visits the earth. he is a protected witness. he sees what is that boasted liberty of manners, free of all puritan starch, and sees what it is worth, how surely it pays its tax. he comes a freeman among slaves. he learns that old saws are true, which is a great thing. he is not now to be answered any longer in his earnest assertions of moral truth, by the condescending explanation that these are his prejudices of country and education. he has seen how they hold true through all the most violent contrasts of condition and character. ma 173 1833) london july 28. attended divine service at westminster abbey. the bishop of gloucester preached. it is better than any church i have seen except st. peter's. happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on. [there are no further notes on london except the following list:] westminster abbey; st. stephen's; haymarket; mr. irving's chapel ; gallery of practical science; london university; zoological gardens; regent street ; athenæum; st. james ; mr. fox's chapel; wilberforce's funeral; regent's park; immense city, very dull city. july 31. at dr. bowring's, milton's house; inscription on the wall, “ sacred to milton, the prince of poets.” [here follows the account of the visit to wordsworth at ambleside, which is printed in full in english traits, with but slight alterations.] 174 journal [age 30 almost nobody in highgate knew his [coleridge's] name. i asked several persons in vain; at last a porter wished to know if i meant an elderly gentleman with white hair? yes, the same. “why, he lives with mr. gillman.” ah yes, that is he. so he showed me the way. mr. bowring says that wilson and hogg went to see wordsworth, and the morning was fine, and then there was a rainbow, and altogether it was genial. so hogg said to wordsworth, this is a fit spot for poets to meet in. wordsworth drew himself up with ineffable disdain saying, “poets indeed!” [leaving london, august 9, mr. emerson visited oxford, then birmingham, but made no records in the journal.] matlock, tuesday evening, 9 o'clock. august 13. beautiful valley! esteemed the most romantic dell in england. here sit i close by the derwent, and under the eaves of the caverns of the peak of derbyshire. but it will not do, to visit even these fine things alone. i think i must not stay to visit even haddon hall and chatsworth. 1833] kenilworth. flowers 175' pleasant it was to me to spend yesterday with mr. dewey in such a visit. how reared himself old kenilworth into the english morning sky. the ruin is as lordly as was the perfect state. i thought, if i had a boy to educate, i would carry him by moonlight into the inner floor of the lancaster building. it would doom him a poet. the smell of the fresh ground, the cellar smell in a hall so princely as lancaster's, was tragical. “ the hall of cyndyllan is gloomy this night, wanting fire, wanting candle. i will weep awhile and then be silent.” the visit to warwick castle is a proper appendix to the visit to kenilworth, for warwick is what kenilworth was. it overhangs the avon. in the interim betwixt these two visits we went to st. mary's church and saw “ our lady's chapel.” in this day's ride i marked that the botany of england and america is alike. the clematis, the mints, the goldenrods, the gerardias, the wild geranium, the wild parsley, and twenty more better known to my eye than to my ear, i saw and recognized them all. i passed through tamworth and saw the tower and the town, and 176 journal [age 30 thought up the old jingle of my school days:“ largesse, largesse, lord marmion! they hailed him lord of fontenaye of lutterworth and scrivelbaye, of tamworth tower and town.” we passed through ashby-de-la-zouche, and i saw the ruin of the old castle. we crossed the trent, we came to derby. iwe see throughout wri europe the counterparts of the americans i passed sir robert peel's place, then sir richard arkwright's. [mr. emerson then passed northward, visiting haddon hall, through bakewell, sheffield, spending a day in york, thence by newcastle and berwick to edinburgh. there are no notes of this part of the journey, nor of his visit to edinburgh, where he spent four days. the narrative then begins again on some loose sheets, apparently a copy of a letter.] glasgow, august 23. may i send you an account of my romancing from edinburgh to the highlands? i was told it was so easy, at an expense of two days, to see 1833) stirling. trosachs 177 that famous country of ben lomond, loch katrine and the rest. so up the forth sailed i, in the steamboat for stirling, cold, rainy wind in our teeth, all the way. we passed alloa and falkirk, yes, close by bannockburn, i quietly reading my book in the cabin. at stirling, i saw the ruin of the abbey of cambus kenneth and the view from stirling castle. at night, in a car, being too late for the coach, i rode through the rain ten miles to doune and callander. of the scenery i saw little more than my horse's head. at callandar i slept hard from 10 till 5, and was then waked to hasten to the trosachs inn. this passage was made in an uncovered car again, and the rain wet me through my own coat and my landlord's over that, and though we passed loch vennachar, and then loch achray, yet the scenery of a shower-bath must be always much the same, and perpendicular rather than horizontal. once when the flood intermitted, i peeped out from under the umbrella, and it was a pretty place. we dried and breakfasted at the trosachs inn. i walked with a party a mile and a half to the head of loch katrine. it had cleared up, though the wind blew stoutly, and i had the satisfaction of the trosachs. the ornament of scottish scenery is the 178 journal , (age 30 heather, which colours the country to the hue of a rose. in two boats with four oars each we pushed into the lake, and got as far as ellen's island, the isle of the lady of the lake. ben venue and ben an rise on either side. the lake was rough, the wind was strong, and our party were spattered, and the rowers made such little way that it seemed impracticable to attempt to go through the lake, which is nine miles long. they put into the first cove the shore afforded; part of the company returned to the trosachs, and a part who were bent on reaching that night glasgow, had nothing for it but to walk to the end of the lake, which, following the windings of the shore, is fourteen miles. there was no better road than a sheep-track through every variety of soil, now sand, now morass, now fern and brake, now stones. but the day was fine and on we fared, one of the boatmen acting as guide. we embarked in the boat at 9 o'clock. five out of fifteen reached the little hut at the end of the lake at 12 12. here we dried our shoes and drank (i drank) whiskey, and eat oat-cake. it was five miles to inversnaid, where we must take the steamboat on loch lomond. there was no conveyance but our legs, which served us again ; a country as bare almost as a paved 1833) loch lomond. glasgow 179 street; mountains, mountains, but i don't remember that i saw a sheep. at inversnaid, a hut full of highlandmen and women talking gaelic, no chimney, and the peat smoke escaped as it could. behind the house was a roaring cataract. the steamboat came (and through much fear and tribulation on the rough waves) we were transported in a little boat and embarked therein. and so on we fared through this lake about 15 miles to balloch. the wind blew my cap off, which had travelled with me from malta where it was made, and it fell into loch lomond. my hat was with the baggage all at glasgow, and the loss not to be repaired, so i shivered, and sweltered when need was, in the rain and wind with a handkerchief on my head. we landed at balloch, and took coach 5 miles farther to dumbarton. at dumbarton we were carried to the steamboat on the clyde, and went up to glasgow, where we arrived about ten o'clock at night. my own appearance was no doubt resolute, arriving at an inn (where my baggage had not) in an old surtout, without a hat and without a rag of baggage. they put me in a little room aloft. i was in no condition to dictate, and crept to bed. this morn came the trunk, and armed with razors and so180 journal [age 30 clean shirt i recovered my courage. i visited the cathedral of 1123, spared by knox, and now a presbyterian church. in the vaulted cellar of the same is laid the scene of part of rob roy. then to the salt market, and to the hunterian museum, and to the walks behind the college. a little girl named jeanie was my guide to the tower of the church. broad scotch she spake, but she said her name was not deans. [a large part of mr. emerson's account of his visit to carlyle was printed by him in englisb traits and is therefore omitted here.] carlisle in cumberland, august 26. i am just arrived in merry carlisle from dumfries. a white day in my years. i found the youth i sought in scotland, and good and wise and pleasant he seems to me. thomas carlyle lives in the parish of dunscore, 16 miles from dumfries, amid wild and desolate heathery hills, and without a single companion in this region out of his own house. there he has his wife, a most accomplished and agreeable woman. truth and peace and faith dwell with them and beautify them. i never saw more amiableness than is in his countenance. se 1833] carlyle's talk 181 he speaks broad scotch with evident relish; “ in london yonder,” “i liked well,” “aboot it,” “ay, ay,” etc., etc. nothing can be better than his stories, the philosophic phrase: “the duchess of queensberry was appointed to possess this estate,” -“by god almighty,” added the lady ; wordsworth; the earl of lonsdale ; the town of whitehaven; the liverpool duellist; coleridge ; allan cunningham; hazlitt; walter scott, sheriff of selkirk. ... “mud magazine,” “ sand magazine.”: coronation of king william. ... t. c. was born in annandale. his reading multifarious, tristram shandy, robinson crusoe, robertson's america. rousseau's confessions discovered to him that he was not such an ass as he had imagined. ten years ago he learned german. london; heart of the world, wonderful only for the mass of human beings. ... splendid bridge from the new world to the old, built by gibbon. ... t. c. had made up his mind to pay his taxes to william and adelaide guelph with great cheerfulness as long as william is able to compel the payment, and he shall cease to do so the moment he ceases to compel them. landor's i carlyle's names for fraser's magazine, and blackwood's. 182 (age 30 journal principle is mere rebellion, and he fears that is the american principle also. himself worships the man that will manifest any truth to him. mrs. carlyle told of the disappointment when they had determined to go to weimar, and the letter arrived from the bookseller to say the book did not sell, and they could not go. the first thing goethe sent was the chain she wore round her neck, and how she capered when it came! but since that time he had sent many things. mrs. c. said, when i mentioned the burns piece, that it always had happened to him upon those papers to hear of each two or three years after. t. c. prefers london to any other place to live in. john s. mill the best mind he knows, more purity, more force, has worked himself clear of benthamism. the best thing t. c. thought in stuart's book was the story of the bootblack that a man can have meat for his е і labor. ambleside, august 28. this morning i went to rydal mount and called upon mr. wordsworth. [here follows the story of this visit, which is printed in english traits almost exactly as in the note-book. 1833] visit to wordsworth 183 wordsworth surprised his visitor by offering to repeat some of his verses as they walked in the garden. this amused mr. emerson at first, but on reflection he thought it kind, and fitting for a poet to do.] the poet is always young, and this old man took the same attitudes that he probably had at seventeen, whilst he recollected the sonnet he would recite. his egotism was not at all displeasing, obtrusive, as i had heard. to be sure it met no rock. i spoke as i felt, with great respect of his genius. he spoke very kindly of dr. channing, who, he said, “sat a long time in this very chair,” laying his hand upon an armchair. he mentioned burns's sons. on my return to the inn, he walked near a mile with me, talking, and ever and anon stopping short to impress the word or the verse, and finally parted from me with great kindness and returned across the fields. his hair is white, but there is nothing very striking about his appearance. august 29. from kendall this morning to lancaster; thence to manchester, and there was deposited er on e w 184 (age 30 journal with my luggage in the coach on the railway to liverpool. we parted at 11 minutes after six, and came to the 21st milestone at 11 minutes after seven. strange it was to meet the return cars; to see a load of timber, six or seven masts, dart by you like a trout. everybody shrinks back when the engine hisses by him like a squib. the fire that was dropped on the road under us all along by our engine looked, as we rushed over it, as a coal swung by the hand in circles, not distinct, but a continuous glare. strange proof how men become accustomed to oddest things ! the laborers did not lift their umbrellas to look as we flew by them on their return at the side of the track. it took about one and one-half hours to make the journey, 32 miles. it has been performed in less than the hour. liverpool, august 30. i talked commonplaces to-day with a man at this hotel, who told me he had lived in boston, until i found out it was jacob perkins. he says it is not true that he has failed for want of material strong enough to hold his force. he says he has succeeded in everything he has undertaken, but in making money. 1833) review of journey 185 (from q) liverpool, september 1. i thank the great god who has led me through this european scene, this last schoolroom in which he has pleased to instruct me, from malta's isle, through sicily, through italy, through switzerland, through france, through england, through scotland, in safety and pleasure, and has now brought me to the shore and the ship that steers westward. he has shown me the men i wished to see, landor, coleridge, carlyle, wordsworth; he has thereby comforted and confirmed me in my convictions. many things i owe to the sight of these men. i shall judge more justly, less timidly, of wise men forevermore. to be sure not one of these is a mind of the very first class, but what the intercourse with each of these suggests is true of intercourse with better men, that they never fill the ear fill the mind — no, it is an idealized portrait which always we draw of them. upon an in telligent man, wholly a stranger to their names, they would make in conversation no deep impression, none of a world-filling fame, — they would be remembered as sensible, well-read, earnest men, not more. especially are they all mo w neve 186 (age 30 journal deficient, all these four,– in different degrees, but all deficient,-in insight into religious truth. they have no idea of that species of moral truth which i call the first philosophy. (peter hunt' is as wise a talker as either of these men. don't laugh.) the comfort of meeting men of genius such as these is that they talk sincerely, they feel themselves to be so rich that they are above the meanness of pretending to knowledge which they have not, and they frankly tell you what puzzles them. but carlyle — carlyle is so amiable that i love him. but i am very glad my travelling is done. a man not old feels himself too old to be a vagabond, the people at their work, the people whose avocations i interrupt by my letters of introduction, accuse me by their looks for leaving my business to hinder theirs.” i benjamin peter hunt has been already alluded to. he had been one of mr. emerson's scholars in the village of chelmsford, and later, when mr. hunt lived in philadelphia, they sometimes wrote to one another. 2 mr. emerson seldom presented a letter of introduction. it was his practice to go to the town where the person he would see lived and write a note to him from the ind. the recipient could judge from the note whether the writer was one whom he cared to see. cc1833) limits of the great 187 these men make you feel that fame is a conventional thing, and that man is a sadly “limitary” spirit. you speak to them as to children, or persons of inferior capacity whom it is necessary to humour; adapting our tone and remarks to their known prejudices and not to our knowledge of the truth. i believe in my heart it is better to admire too rashly, as i do, than to be admired too rashly, as the great men of this day are. they miss by their premature canonization a great deal of necessary knowledge, and one of these days must begin the world again (as to their surprise they will find needful) poor. i speak now in general, and not of these individuals. god save a great man from a little circle of flatterers. i know it is sweet, very sweet, ratsbane. to-day i heard mr. hinckes, mr. martineau, and mr. yates, preach : yates who wrote against wardlaw. he preached the best sermon i have heard in england,-a great deal the best. here at my hotel, the star and garter, paradise street, i have found jacob perkins the inventor of so many improvements in steamengines. he has been illuminating me upon the science of heat. ermon 188 journal (age 30 could not wordsworth have kept to himself his intimations that his new edition was at the bookseller's and contained some improvements? john milton was a poet, not a bookmaker, although the muse made shakspear, milton made his muse. true elevation which nothing can bring down is that of moral sentiment. all carlyle's intellect did not hinder an unpleasant emotion at hearing about his occupation. but johnson's school or peter hunt's are above contempt, and an act of heroism, “a roman recovery,” would have enshrined c. a saint for me. i love his love of truth. the spot is the preference of such a scrub as mirabeau to socrates. liverpool, september 2. no sailing to-day, so you may know what i have seen and heard in the four days i have been here. really nothing external, so i must spin my thread from my own bowels. it must be said this is the least agreeable city to the traveller in all england, the old, the rich, the strong nation, full of arts and men and memories; nor can i feel any regret in the presence of the best of its sons that i was not born here. 189 (1833) america i am thankful that i am an american as i am thankful that i am a man. it is its best merit to my eye that it is the most resembling country to america which the world contains. the famous burden of english taxation is bearable. men live and multiply under it, though i have heard a father in the higher rank of life speak with regret of the increase of his family. that is all i can say ; i am at a dead stand. i can neither write nor read more. if the vessel do sail, they say we shall be drowned on the lee shore; if she do not sail, i perish waiting. what's the odds? i have plainly said my last word; it is the prodigality of ink, the wanton destruction of paper to add another syllable, and withal a singular exhibition of what fatuity a man is capable who reckons himself sometimes an educated and thinking man. yet must i write still. why? these lines are the expectants of the dinner; and it is cold and i cannot go out. why should i? i have bid good-bye to all the people. shall i make them repeal their tears and benedictions ? there are no books in the house, i have digested the newspaper. i have no companion. even · mr. perkins, when at home, has finished his communications, and we have got to theology at last. if it won't rain after the soles and cutlets, i will 190 journal [age 30 brave one family whom i have parted from. ah me! mr. thomas carlyle, i would give a gold pound for your wise company this gloomy eve. ah, we would speed the hour. ah, i would rise above myself what self-complacent glances casts the soul about in the moment of fine conversation, esteeming itself the author of all the fine things it utters, and the master of the riches the memory produces, and how scornfully looks it back upon the plain person it was yesterday without a thought. it occurs forcibly, yea, somewhat pathetically, that he who visits a man of genius out of admiration for his parts should treat him tenderly. 'tis odds but he will be disappointed. that is not the man of genius's fault. he was honest and human, but the fault of his own ignorance of the units of human excellence. let him feel that his visit was unwelcome, and that he is indebted to the tolerance and good nature of his idol, and so spare him the abuse of his own reacting feelings, the back-stroke. su ic september 3. no sailing still, but sitting still. i went to the railroad and saw rocket and goliath and pluto and firefly and the rest of that vulcanian genera1833] jacob perkins 191 tion. mr. perkins says they should not go faster than fifteen miles the hour. it racks the engines to go faster. there are thirty locomotives upon the road. these only have the circulators. there is no such thing as latent heat. the thermometer indicates all the heat that is present. only when the particles of the water expand in vapor the particles of the heat expand also. high pressure steam-engines are safer than low. he says that he confidently expects the time when the ocean will be navigated by merchantmen by steam as the most economical means, but there is a great deal to be done first; that now very little advantage is taken of the expansion of steam, its most important property. mr. perkins recited with glee his victory over one of the directors of the manchester road. mr. perkins showed that his engine had beat the sun (stephenson's) all last week, doing more work with less coke. director said that was because sun had been out of order. mr. p.reminded him of the quantity of coke which the director had alleged was needful always, to the ton and the hour, for said engine ; to which director assented. well, said mr. p., i have here certificates of your servants to show that the sun performed the same work all last week with a fraction less coke. the now 192 journal (age 30 director acknowledged it could not be much out of order. (from separate notes) [the notes which follow were very likely made while waiting in liverpool, mr. emerson perhaps then having in view the writing the lecture which he found opportunity to deliver in november as the introductory discourse before the boston society of natural history. it should be borne in mind that he had turned his back on tradition and turned to nature as his teacher, and he had already begun his book, nature.] natural history i don't think that we are yet master of all the reasons why we should cultivate it. natural magic good for society, a diffused taste in natural science ; good in a higher degree to the cultivators, – 1. in the knowledge it communicates; pump, natural steam engine, ship, boundaries. 2. in the explanation it gives of moral truth; shells [are] symbols. 3. in the effect upon the character. it makes y in the intellect exact. it makes the manners simple; makes all boys. it generates enthusiasm. . 4. salutary to the body. antæus. higher 193 1833) natural p natural history questions. beauty. how old is the pebble? “is it true? ” natural history of water ; of coal. it makes every natural event a scientific experiment, — as a snowstorm. compare an orrery with the solar system to see how beautiful is nature. her ropes never entangle, nor crack, nor wear, nor weigh. they are invisible. so the magnet. simplicity of the means. bees fanning themselves. good for the body. good for the knowledge it communicates. good in its effect upon the mind and character. 1. explains moral truth. elementary forms of bodies revealed by polarization of light. elective affinities. polarity of matter. light. electricity. galvanism. magnetism. wednesday, september 4. at 2 o'clock left liverpool in the new york of n. y., 14 cabin passengers, 16 steerage. ship 516 tons. journal (age 30 thursday (september] 5. calm fine day. this morn i saw the last lump of england receding without the least regret. i saw too for the first time a piece of ireland. it was the wicklow mountains. as i came down to the waterside in liverpool, i noticed the announcement of the wind at holyhead," at holyhead, : n. e. wind blowing fresh.” this communication was telegraphed from holyhead 60 miles from liverpool. noble docks. heard mr. yates preach on sunday the best sermon i heard in england. “ be clothed with humility.” after service i stood waiting for him to come out, when he spoke to me at my side. “oh,” said i surprised, “how do you do, mr. wardlaw,i mean mr. yates." is it not strange that every book begins with “ no science deserves more attention than,” whether astronomy, geology, civil history, geometry, algebra, commerce, or what not. even wise herschel, after a saving flourish, begins with a “no science.” we were towed out of liverpool harbor by steamboat. admirable contrivance for ports in deep bays like this, or philadelphia, or baltimore, for they might lie weeks waiting to get out with the wind fair for the voyage all the time. 1833] the narrow line 195 at one moment the boat and the ship had nearly struck. every ship, every man, has all butstruck, been within an inch of destruction a thousand times. it is such a narrow line that divides an awkward act from the finish of gracefulness. every man eats well alone. let a stranger come in, and he misses his mouth, and spills his butterboat, and fails of finding the joint in carving, and that by so little. i wrote above something concerning the golden mean wherein grace and safety lies. in peaceful pursuits, in cities, we do not consider how great is the distance between danger and death. a man in his parlor thinks that to meet a lion in the desart, or to stumble over an alligator in wading through a watered savannah, is certain destruction. they who are familiar with these rencontres think no such thing, and in that discrimination their safety lies. see the story of the indian girl who put out the cayman's eyes; and, in the accurate dampier, the account of the irishman whose knee was seized by an alligator, he quietly waited till the animal loosened his teeth to take a new and surer hold, and when it did so, snatched away his knee, interposing the butt end of his gun in its stead, which the animal seized so firmly that it was jerked out 196 journal (age 30 of the man's hand and carried off. see also the marvellous expedient of righting the ship when lying in the trough of the sea by going up the fore-shrouds and spreading out their coats. (early english navigation cabinet library.) when the french fleet under count d'estrées was wrecked, those of the ordinary seamen who got ashore died of fatigue and famine, while those who had been buccaneers were wrecked here, being used to such accidents, lived merrily; for they kept a gang by themselves and watched when the ships broke up to get the goods that came out of them, and though much was staved against the rocks, yet abundance of wine and brandy floated over the reef where they waited to take it up. . . . in the selecting unknown wild fruits they were guided by birds, freely eating whatever kind had been pecked. со friday, 6. fair ; fine wind; still in the channel, off the coast of ireland, but not in sight of land. this morning 37 sail in sight. 1 i like my book about nature, and wish i knew i where and how i ought to live. god will show me. i am glad to be on my way home, yet not so glad as others, and my way to the bottom i 1833) smalls. astronomy 197 could find perchance with less regret, for i think it would not hurt me, – that is, the ducking or drowning saturday, 7. gentle airs. wind still, and, what is perhaps good, no events. at 12 o'clock, south of cape clear. sunday, 8. the solitary keeper of the lighthouse of the smalls in the english channel, which stands on three pillars of cast iron, the waves washing through them : there were two, one sickened and died, the other kept his body, lest they should say he murdered him, until somebody came to the spot; and the body was quite rotten. bread must be well mixed to keep sweet; man well tempered to keep his spirit clear. “a rum place,” says an englishman. it is pleasant to know that our ship is renowned for fast sailing. captain hoxie tells me that in three successive days he sailed in this ship 275, 273 and 276 miles=824. astronomy, i thank herschel, promises everything. it refers me to a higher state than i now occupy. i please myself rather with contemplating the penumbra of the thing than the 198 journal [age 30 thing itself. but no moralities now, the good, the holy day. (from q) at sea. sunday, september 8. i wrote above my conviction that the great men of england are singularly ignorant of reli·gion. they should read norton's preface to his new book,' who has stated that fact well. carlyle almost grudges the poor peasant his calvinism. must i not admit in the same moment that i have practical difficulties myself. i see or believe in the wholesomeness of calvinism for thousands and thousands. i would encourage, or rather i would not discourage, their scrupulous religious observances. i dare not speak lightly of usages which i omit. and so with this hollow obeisance to things i do not myself value. i go on not pestering others with what i do believe, and so i am open to the name of a very loose speculator, a faint, heartless supporter of a frigid and empty theism, a man of no rigor of manners, of no vigor of benevolence. ah me! what hope of reform, what hope of communicating religious light to benighted europe, if they who have what they call the light are so selfish and timid and cold, and their faith so unpractical and, 1 prof. andrews norton's attack on trinitarian doctrines. vere 1833) narrow religion 199 in their judgment, so unsuitable for the middling classes. i know not, i have no call to expound, but this is my charge plain and clear, to act faithfully upon my own faith, to live by it myself, and see what a hearty obedience to it will do. (carlyle deprecated the state of a man living in rebellion, as he termed it, with no worship, no reverence for anybody. himself, he said, would worship anyone who showed him more truth. and unitarians, he thought, were a tame, limitary people, who were satisfied with their sciolistic system, and never made great attainments, incapable of depth of sentiment.) back again to myself. i believe that the error of religionists lies in this, that they do not know the extent or the harmony or the depth of their moral nature; that they are clinging to little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law, and very imperfect versions too, while the infinite laws, the laws of the law, the great circling truths whose only adequate symbol is the material laws, the astronomy, etc., are all unobserved, and sneered at when spoken of, as frigid and insufficient. i call calvinism such an imperfect version of the moral law. unitarianism is another, and every form of christian and of pagan faith in the hands of incapable teachers is such a ver200 journal (age 30 sion. on the contrary, in the hands of a true teacher, the falsehoods, the pitifulnesses, the sectarianisms of each are dropped, and the sublimity and the depth of the original is penetrated and exhibited to men. i say also that all that recommends each of these established systems of opinion to men is so much of this moral truth as is in them, and by the instructive selection of the preacher is made to shine forth when the system is assailed. and because of this one bottom it is that the eminent men of each church, socrates, à kempis, fénelon, butler, penn, swedenborg, channing, think and say the same thing. ! but the men of europe will say, expound; let us hear what it is that is to convince the faithful and at the same time the philosopher? let us hear this new thing. it is very old. it is the old revelation, that perfect beauty is perfect goodness, it is the development of the wonderful congruities of the moral law of human nature. let me enumerate a few of the remarkable properties of that nature. a man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. he is made a law unto himself. all real good or evil that can befal him must be from himself. he only can do himself any good or any harm. nothing can be 1833) ship life. mails 201 given to him or taken from him but always there is a compensation. there is a correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the world; more properly, everything that is known to man. instead of studying things without the principles of them, all may be penetrated unto within him. every act puts the agent in a new condition. the purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. he is not to live to the future as described to him, but to live to the real future by living to the real present. the highest revelation is that god is in every man. (from separate notes) monday, september 9. the road from liverpool to new york, as they who have travelled it well know, is very long, crooked, rough, and eminently disagreeable. good company even, heaven's best gift, will scarce make it tolerable. four meals a day is the usual expedient (and the wretchedness of the expedient will show the extremity of the case) and much wine and porter, -these are the amusements of wise men in this sad place. the purest wit may have a scurvy stomach. the letter-bag is our captain's best passenger. he neither eats nor drinks, and yet pays, at 202 journal [age 30 least in liverpool, a passenger's fare. captain hoxie tells me that he usually carries between 4000 and 5000 letters each way. at the new york post office they count his letters and pay him two cents for every one. at liverpool two pence. the last time he received in liverpool £39 for them. fraser's magazine states that lord clarendon wrote a sketch of the life of charles cotton, father of charles cotton, doubtless the translator of montaigne. i have never seen it. (from q) liverpool, september 10. i have heard the proverb that there is no evil but can speak. especially in these days when every sentiment and every class of opinions and interests has its organ and voice, is there no evil but speaks. also consider that every week europe sends this voice of all its opinions and interests by its periodical press or occasional works into america; it follows that one can better know what transpires there by reading here (with more accuracy and in a shorter time) than by the slow and partial method of personal observation in travelling. it seems to argue great simplicity then for a 203 1833) rough water traveller to undertake to inform us upon europe because he has seen it. so it would. you have learned more by contenting yourself with this abbreviated tabulated method. i will then say what i have to say, merely in confirmation of your results, and by no means pretending to state new views or theories. the whole creation groaneth until now, waiting for that which shall be revealed. loud winds last night, but the ship swam like a waterfowl betwixt the mountains of sea. the wise man in the storm prays god, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. it is the storm within which endangers him, not the storm without. but it is a queer place to make one's bed in, the hollows of this immense atlantic; mazeppa-like we are tied to the side of these wild horses of the northwest. but this rough breath of heaven will blow me home at last, as once it blew me to gibraltar. the powerful trumpet of the blast finds a response to all its stops in the bottom of the heart of the men in the cabin. (from separate notes) friday, september 13. the sea to us is but a lasting storm. how it blows, how it rocks! my sides are sore with 204 journal [age 30 rolling in my berth. the coverlet is not wide enough that a man should wrap himself in it. it is only strange that with such a sea and wind and rain, such wild, distressful, noisy nights, no harm should befal us. we have torn a sail and lost a hencoop and its inmates, but the bulwarks are firm, and i often hear of the sea breaking the bulwarks of ships. captain fox, who went in 14 days from liverpool to boston, slept in the cable tier to keep the mate from taking in sail. running in for boston harbor it was very misty and the passengers besought him to lay to, in vain. presently the man before cried, “a sail!” “pooh!” said captain fox, “'t is the lighthouse ; starboard helm!” it was the light, and he ran round it and came to anchor within the bay. · what a machine is a ship, changing so fast from the state of a butterfly, all wing, to the shape of a log, all spar. poor ireland! they told a story of an irish boy at school asking a holiday to go to the market town. “what to go for?” “to see uncle hanged.” monday, 16. gale and calm, pitch and rock, merrily swim we, the sun shines bright. the mate says they 205 e ar 1833) sunday at sea took up, about where we are now, a year ago, the crew of the leonidas, a portland vessel loaded with salt, which sprang a leak. the captain would not leave the ship, after putting quadrant and compass and his own things in a boat, and saw the boat leave the ship. one of this line of packets struck an island of ice, and the whole company with 35 passengers escaped in the boat. dull stormy day yesterday. i kept sunday with milton, and a presbyterian magazine. milton says, if ever any was ravished with moral beauty, he is the man. it occurred with sad force how much we are bound to be true to ourselves (the old string) because we are always judged by others. as ourselves, and not as those whose example we would plead. a. reads in a book the praise of a wise man who could unbend and make merry, and so he tosses off his glass whilst round him are malicious eyes watching his guzzling and fat eating. the truth is, you can't find any example that will suit you, nor could, if the whole family of adam should pass in procession before you, for you are a new work of god. runs .. “time and the hour wear through the roughest day.” m, i , *** 206 (age 30 journal [improvisations] (from a verse book) america, my country, can the mind embrace in its affections realms so vast (unpeopled, yet the land of men to be) as the great oceans that wash thee enclose? 'tis an ambitious charity that makes its arms meet round and yet, the sages say, the preference of our own cabin to a stranger's wealth, the insidious love and hate that curls the lip of the frank yankee in the tenements of ducal and of royal rank abroad, his supercilious ignorance of heraldry and ceremony, and his tenacious recollection amid the coloured treasuries of art that circle the louvre or the pitti house,– tuscany's unrivalled boast, — of the brave steamboats of new york, the boston common, and the hadley farms washed by connecticut; yea, if the ruddy. englishman speak true, of the vast roman church, and underneath the frescoed sky of its majestic dome, the american will count the cost and build the shrine with dollars in his head; and all he asks, arrived in italy, 1833] define morals 207 has the star-bearing squadron left leghorn ? land without history, land lying all in the plain daylight of the temperate zone, thy plain acts without exaggeration done in day; thy interests contested by their manifest good sense, in their own clothes without the ornament of bannered army harnessed in uniform. land where — and it is in europe counted a reproach — where man asks questions for which man was made. a land without nobility, or wigs, or debt, no castles, no cathedrals, and no kings; land of the forest. ... in this world, if a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has the headache ? m (from q) at sea. september 17. yesterday i was asked what i mean by morals. i reply that i cannot define, and care not to define. it is man's business to observe, and the definition of moral nature must be the slow result of years, of lives, of states, perhaps of being. yet in the morning watch on my berth i thought that morals is the science of the laws of human action as respects right 208 journal [age 30 and wrong. then i shall be asked, and what is right? right is a conformity to the laws of nature as far as they are known to the human mind. these for the occasion, but i propound definitions with more than the reserve of the feeling above-named, — with more, because my own conceptions are so dim and vague. but nevertheless nothing darkens, nothing shakes, nothing diminishes my constant conviction of the eternal concord of these laws which are perfect music, and of which every high sentiment and every great action is only a new statement, and therefore and insomuch speaks aloud to the whole race of man. i conceive of them by no types, but the apparent hollow sphere of the whole firmament wherein this ball of the earth swims. not easy are they to be enumerated, but he has some idea of them who considers such propositions as st. bernard's, — nobody can harm me but myself, — or who developes the doctrine in his own experience that nothing can be given or taken without an equivalent. milton describes himself in his letter to dioi dati as enamoured of moral perfection. he did not love it more than i. that which i cannot yet declare has been my angel from childhood until now. it has separated me from men. it 1833) the soul of religion 209 has watered my pillow, it has driven sleep from my bed. it has tortured me for my guilt. it has inspired me with hope. it cannot be defeated by my defeats. it cannot be questioned, though all the martyrs apostatize. it is always the glory that shall be revealed; it is the “open secret" of the universe; and it is only the feebleness and dust of the observer that makes it future, the whole is now potentially in the bottom of his heart. it is the soul of religion. keeping my eye on this, i understand all heroism, the history of loyalty and of martyrdom and of bigotry, the heat of the methodist, the nonconformity of the dissenter, the patience of the quaker. but what shall the hour say for distinctions such as these, this hour of southwest gales and rain-dripping cabin? as the law of light is, fits of easy transmission and reflexion, such is also the soul's law. she is only superior at intervals to pain, to fear, to temptation, only in raptures unites herself to god; and wordsworth truly said, “'t is the most difficult of tasks to keep heights which the soul is competent to gain.” su what is this they say about wanting mathematical certainty for moral truths. i have always 210 journal [age 30 affirmed they had it. yet they ask me whether i know the soul immortal. no. but do i not know the now to be eternal? is it not a sufficient reply to the red and angry worldling, colouring as he affirms his unbelief, to say, think on living, i have to do no more than you with that question of another life? i believe in this life. i believe it continues. as long as i am here i plainly read my duties as writ with pencil of fire; they speak not of death. they are woven of immortal thread. men seem to be constitutionally believers and unbelievers. there is no bridge that can cross from a mind in one state to a mind in the other. all my opinions, affections, whimsies, are tinged with belief,—incline to that side. all that is generous, elegant, rich, wise, looks that way. but i cannot give reasons to a person of a different persuasion that are at all adequate to the force of my conviction. yet when i fail to find the reason, my faith is not less. unpalatable must be always the argument based upon the text, “if ye do my father's will, ye shall know of the doctrines,” and almost incapable of being used in conversation. it is felt as a gross personality. yet it is a good topic for the preacher, and a better topic for the closet. 1833] ties of great men 211 i believe that virtue purges the eye, that the abstinent, meek, benevolent, industrious man is in a better state for the fine influences of the great universe to act upon him than the cold, idle, eating disputant. the rocky, dry, fallow ground says, “i can produce nothing, nothing will grow; yet i see the sun and feel the rain as much as you.” “aye,” replies the cornfield,“ but they have plucked away my stones and turned up my surface and let in the watercourses, and now the sun and the air, the heat and the snow all serve me.” is it not singular and not at all unpleasing, the fact that almost all great men have been so yoked together by the accidents of their lives, and few or none stand alone, but all in a genial constellation ? john evelyn gave a pension to jeremy taylor. jeremy taylor and john milton both did homage to the same lady, countess of carbery, one in his dedication, the other in his comus. milton and galileo, clarke, butler, and hume, cervantes and shakespear. sir henry wotton was a hoop of gold to what a company! dante died at ravenna, 1321; fifty-one years after, boccaccio was made professor at florence to lecture upon the divine comedy, and in 1351 boccaccio was sent by the floren212 journal [age 30 tines to padua to entreat petrarch to return and end his days in his native city. these are god's mnemonics. newton was born the year galileo died. cuvier, scott and mackintosh were born and died in the same years. it were a good topic for a sermon, to preach upon serenity of mind, manners, countenance; according to the sentiment of some pretty verses on “consider the lilies of the field how they grow,” verses contained in the pious minstrel and which also have the fine line, « christ's blessing at your heart is warm”; and, according to the sentiment of herbert's verses upon rest, “study to be quiet." i will not hesitate to speak the word committed to me. it is not of men; it is not of myself, no vain discourse empty oration, tinkling, soulless talk. my heart lies open to the universe, i read only what there is writ. i speak the sincere word that 's whispered in my ear. i am an organ in the mouth of god, my prophecy the music of his lips. tho' harsh in evil ears, 't is harmony to patient, wise and faithful hearts whose love coöperates with his 1833) our ship 213 : concord of heaven and earth. author divine of what i am and what i say, vouchsafe to cleanse me, that my folly may not hide thy truth, nor my infirmity disguise the omnipotence that animates my clay. thou, lord, dost clothe thy attributes with alesh, and named it man, a morning spectacle unto the universe exhibiting, a manifold and mystic lesson. (from separate notes) sunday, september 22. gales and headwinds producing all the variety of discomfort and ennui in the cabin. we try in vain to keep bright faces and pleasant occupation below, heedless of the roar of the tempest above. we are too nearly interested in every rope that snaps and every spar that cracks overhead, to hear the ruin with philosophy. we may keep our eyes on the cicero or addison in our hands, but that noise touches our life. i would i were in the bushes at canterbury,' for my part. yesterday was too fine a day to lose at sea. calm shining after the wild storm of two preceding days. this time i have not drawn the golden lot of company, and yet far better than the last voyage. but that little one to charleston 1 the home in roxbury during school-keeping days. w 214 journal (age 30 from st. augustine with murat was worth all the rest. yet thanks to the good god, who leads and protects me, for the measure of comfort and intellectual occupation that is possible in the valleys of the sea by means of this wonderful chef dæuvre of human art, the-ship. sad for the steerage passengers; old women and children sitting up all night or lying in wet berths. the poor cow refuses to get up and be milked, and four dogs on board shiver and totter about all day, and bark when we ship a sea. september 25. it was a good jest which a passenger quoted from a sea-song in which two sailors in a storm at sea express their pity for the poor landsmen:“ my eyes ! what tiles and chimney pots about their heads are aying, whilst you and i upon the deck are comfortably lying." it is like the being thankful for the board blanket.' what a gale that was on the night of the 19th! the second mate says that if an i a story of which mr. emerson was fond, of a widow so poor that she eked out the thin blanket by laying an old door over herself and her little children.. one of these piped up, “ mamma, what do those poor little children do who have n't got a door to cover them?” 1833) voyaging 215 18-pounder had been fired on deck it could not have been heard aloft, and the only way he got the captain's orders was by putting his ear to his mouth. dear brother' would you know, sitting under a gold september sun, how we plough the atlantic wave under the stars and under the clouds, with swimming deck and singing shrouds, climbing the steep slope of the cabin floor, or peeping timid into the rain out of the round-house door? shall i not tell you, to kill the time, how we spend the day? dull the bard, and sad the lay. uneasy rolls the ship, uneven runs the rhyme. dimly the morning breaks upon the skylight of my berth, where i had dreamed myself at peace, my feet upon my maker's earth. but the muse doth refuse to recollect these trumpery cares, the waking bell, that tragic knell that calls us back to recognition of our deplorable condition. i this letter in verse was probably sent to edward at porto rico. 216 journal (age 30 out we come, unshaven faces, and with what look forlorn pass the greetings of the morn each to the other in the well-known places. we climb the gangway, walk the deck, survey the wide horizon round there's not a sail, there's not a wreck, there's not a wreck, there's not a sail, nor land, nor waterspout, nor whale : the only living thing, sometimes a gull with snowy wing. a shoal of porpoises come wheeling across the bows thro' the grey waves, or mother carey's chickens, stealing on wings that never rest their forlorn food. poor little wanderers, outcasts of nature, where have you been in the drowning storm? here is no bush to hide you from whirlwinds, here is no perch to rest your little footies, going alway by night and by day, under starlight, under clouds, with swimming deck and singing shrouds. i have read what shakespeare wrote of bloated falstaff, royal lear. there is a dulness proper to great wit, and jonson hath his ample share of it. it needs much skill to write so dull a piece, draw learned faults from italy and greece 1833) ben jonson 217 beautiful songs ben jonson can write, and his vocabulary is so rich, and when he pleases, so smooth, that he seems to be prosing with a design to relieve and display better the bright parts of the piece. then he shows himself master of the higher, the moral taste, and enriches himself occasionally with those unquestionable gems which none but the sons of god possess. strange that among his actors, and not the first, is will shakspeare. he never was dull to relieve his brilliant parts. he is all light, sometimes terrestrial, sometimes celestial, but all light. “take away that empty marine," said the duke of york. “what do you mean, sir?” said an officer of marines. “i mean that fellow who has done his duty and is ready to do it again,” replied the duke. “o, c'est grande! magnifique! dat is, vat you call pretty well,” said monsieur, arrived in london. thursday, september 26. long. 49, lat. 44. on the banks ; found bottom at 49 fathoms, and fished in vain with 70 fathoms of line. saw a fishing schooner. they fish from june to 218 (age 30 journal ca october. it may take two months to get full and they bring home 20,000 or 25,000 fish. the colour of the water has changed, the birds fly about and we have fogs. yesterday a little petrel caught in the end of a rope and was drowned ; web-footed, a pretty bird with a white belt upon the tail. september 29. storm, storm, storm, but only this can show the virtues of the ship, which behaves well and carries these tender bodies tucked up in boxes along its side without injuring a hair through these wild, cold, savage waters. strange that anybody who has hands to work should be willing to spend two months on that bank exposed to such storms as yesterday's. “that fellow has got a bleak place," said the captain. much indebted to mr. h.'s conversation. story of the duc de bourdeaux, infant son of the duc de berri, being carried to louis xviii. “le roi pue.” “ l'enfant. a raison; ôtez l'enfant." qui pius est, summe pbilosopbatur. i notice that we always judge of the length of the passage by the weather of the present moment. co 1833) prayer 219 friday, october 4. long. 67, je crois. our month expires to-day, and therefore 't is time to look for land. the poor malay saith to the wind in his petulance, “ blow, me do tell you blow,” but not of that mind are we, but contrariwise, very glad of this fine weather. captain's merry account of his capture by pirates in south america in 1822 when they cut up his sails for trousers and ripped off the copper sheathing of the vessel for french horns and appointed him fifer. he played in that capacity the dead march of two priests, whom the worthy lieutenant general shot for smuggling. “ chap from wiggin, manchester man, and a gentleman from liverpool,” said coachey. sea of all colours. to-day indigo, yesterday grass green, and day before grey. october 8. my god, who dost animate and uphold us always on the sea and on land, in the fields, in cities, and in lonely places, in our homes, and among strangers, i thank thee that thou hast enlightened and comforted and protected me to this hour. continue to me thy guard and blessing. may i resist the evil that is without by the good that is within. may i rejoice ever220 journal (age 30 more in the consciousness that it is by thee i live. may i rejoice in the divine power, and be humble. oh that i might show forth thy gift to me by purity, by love, by unshrinking industry and unsinking hope, and by unconquerable courage. may i be more thine, and so more truly myself every day i live. [mr. emerson landed in new york, october 9, and went by stage to boston, thence to newton upper falls where his mother was living for the time, probably on the farm of mr. ladd, who had married the sister of mr. emerson's father.] (from q) newtowne, october 20. a sabbath in the country, but not so odoriferous as i have imagined. mr. b., a plain serious calvinist, not winning, but not repelling: one of the useful police which god makes out of the ignorance and superstition of the youth of the world. i dare not and wish not to speak disrespectfully of these good, abstemious, laborious men, yet i could not help asking myself how long is the society to be taught in this dramatic or allegorical style? when is religious truth to be distinctly uttered, what it is, not what it 1833) conventional sermons 221 resembles ? thus every sunday ever since they were born this congregation have heard tell of salvation, and of going to the door of heaven and knocking, and being answered from within, “depart, i never knew you,” and of being sent away to eternal ruin. what hinders that, instead of this parable, the naked fact be stated to them? namely that as long [as] they offend against their conscience they will seek to be happy, but they shall not be able, they shall not come to any true knowledge of god, they shall be avoided by good and wise men, they shall become worse and worse. god defend me from ever looking at a man as an animal. god defend me from the vice of my constitution, an excessive desire of sympathy. let me be content with the consciousness of innocency and the desire of worth, without stretching myself upon the rack whenever any man, woman, or child passes by until he, she or it is possessed of my intention. the nine solids. an impulse as irresistible as is the acorn to germinate is in the soul of the prophet to speak. mr. blanchard said that labor had kept him well eleven years at the desk. 222 journal [age 30 october 21. i am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books. he will come to hear god speak as audibly through his own lips as ever he did by the mouth of moses or isaiah or milton. “for nature never did betray the heart that loved her." such revelations as were made to george fox or emanuel swedenborg are only made in the woods or in the closet. they were no common madmen. they wanted but little, or, if you please, they exceeded but little, of being true prophets. e. b. e.' quotes from st. pierre the saying that “when the chain is put upon a slave, the other end is rivetted around the neck of the master,” and sanctions warmly the observation. when a man goes into the woods he feels like a boy without loss of wisdom. to be sure a dandy may go there, and nature will never speak to a dandy. it seems to me that the perspective of time, as it sets everything in the right point of view, does his brother. 1833] real love for jesus 223 the same by christianity. we learn to look at it now as a part of the history of the world, to see how it rests in the broad basis of man's moral nature, and is not itself that basis. i cannot but think that jesus christ will be better loved by being less adored. he has had an unnatural, an artificial place for ages in human opinions — a place too high for love. there is a recoil of the affections from all authority and force. to the barbarous state of society it was thought to add to the dignity of christ to make him king, to make him god. now that the scriptures are read with purged eyes, it is seen that he is only to be loved for so much goodness and wisdom as was in him, which are the only things for which a sound human mind can love any person. as the world waxes wiser, he will be more truly venerated for the splendor of the contrast of his character to the opinions and practices of his age, he will attract the unfeigned love of all to whom moral nature is dear because he planted himself in the face of the world upon that sole ground, showing that noble confidence in the reality and superiority of spiritual truths, that simplicity and at the same time enthusiasm in declaring them which is itself one of the highest merits and gives confidence to all thinkers that come after. 224 [age 30 journal but will not this come to be thought the chief value of his teaching, that is, of christianity, to wit, that it was a great stand made for man's spiritual nature against the sensualism, the forms, and the crimes of the age in which he appeared and those that preceded it? like every wise and efficient man, he spoke to the [men of] his times in all their singular peculiarities. his instruction is almost as local, as personal, as would be the teaching in one of our sunday schools. he speaks as he thinks, but he is thinking for them. yet such is the extraordinary truth of his mind that his sentences have a fulness of meaning, a fitness to human nature, and an universality of application, that has commended them to the whole world. they must be looked upon as one affirmation, proclamation glorious of moral truth, but not as the last affirmation. there shall be a thousand more. very inconsistent would it be with a soul so possessed of this love as his to set bounds to that illimitable ocean. none knew better than he that every soul occupies a new position, and that if the stars cannot be counted, nor the sands of the sea, neither can those moral truths be numbered and ended of which the material creation is only the shadow. 1833) right not dogma 225 newton, october 24. the teacher of the coming age must occupy himself in the study and explanation of the moral constitution of man more than in the elucidation of difficult texts. he must work in the conviction that the scriptures can only be interpreted by the same spirit that uttered them. and that as long as the heart and the mind are illumined by a spiritual life, there is no dead letter, but a perpetual scripture. i expect everything good and auspicious from the studies and the actings of good men in the course this thought shall guide them. it will be inspiration to prophet and to heroes. it will bring the heavens near and show a calm sky always overhead. [october]' 31. sir j. mackintosh has well said that every picture, statue, poem is an experiment on the human mind. and if such slight and transient things often produce in us deepest results, if a paragraph of a newspaper or an eloquent word touch us so to the quick, as now they often do, what may we not expect from a familiar and full comprehension of the amazing discoveries that the naturalists of this day have made, from 1 “31 november" in journal, by mistake. n 226 journal [age 30 the wonderful application of polarized light to the discovery of periodical colours in refrangible substances, and so to the uncovering of nature's primary forms in the secret architecture of bodies, or the great, long-expected discovery of the identity of electricity and magnetism lately completed by dr. faraday's obtaining the spark from the magnet, and the opening almost a door to the secret mechanism of life and sensation in the relation of the pile of volta to the electrical fish. november 2. 1 bacon said man is the minister and interpreter of nature : he is so in more respects than one. he is not only to explain the sense of each passage, but the scope and argument of the whole book. he is to explain the attractiveness of all. (there is more beauty in the morning cloud than the prism can render account of. there is something in it that resembles the aspects of mortal life, its epochs and its fate. there is not ' a passage in the human soul, perhaps not a shade of thought, but has its emblem in nature. and this does not become fainter, this undersong, this concurrent text, with more intimate knowledge of nature's laws, but the analogy is 1833) nature's appeal 227 felt to be deeper and more universal for every law that is revealed. it almost seems as if an unknown intelligence in us expressed its recognition of each new disclosure. let a man under the influence of strong passion go into the fields, and see how readily every thought clothes itself with a material garment. (is it not illustration to us of the manner in which every spirit clothes itself with body?) now i say, is it not time that something was done to explain this attractiveness which the face of nature has for us, -renewed this ad day of november of the 6oooth year of the world, as it has been every day of the 6000 years, to the reality of which every age has testified? nature is a language, and every new fact that we learn is a new word; but rightly seen, taken all together, it is not merely a language, but the language put together into a most significant and universal book. i wish to learn the language, not that i may learn a new set of nouns and verbs, but that i may read the great book which is written in that tongue. the glutton wrote for his epitaph:“what i have eat is mine ; in words my will i've had, and of my lust have ta'en my fill.” 228 journal (age 30 crates, the philosopher, altered it for himself: “ what i have learned is mine, i've had my thought, and me the muses noble truths have taught.” to an instructed eye the universe is transparent. the light of higher laws than its own shines through it. : new bedford, november 19. stubler said the difference between brother witherlee's preaching and his was this: brother w. said, “ if you do not become good you shall be whipt," and himself said, “if you will become good, you shall not be whipt.”. wrote to charles yesterday of the amount of meaning in life: dum tacet, clamat. he would feel it, if he should suppose shakspear should go with him to mr. peabody's or aunt cook's. if a susceptible man should lay bare his heart, it would show theories of life, thoughts of unutterable tenderness, and visions of beauty that were suggested from the most seemingly inadequate and mean occasions, from hearing an unwashed boy spell or cipher in his class, or i stubler, the quaker, has been already mentioned in the journals, a serious-minded man whom mr. emerson met in travelling. 1833) quaker anecdotes 229 seeing the blush upon the cheek of a schoolgirl, or watching the transmission of the candlelight through his closed fingers, or listening long to the sound made by tinkling a glass tumbler or touching the key of a piano. is it not true that no persons meet, of what inequality soever, but a quick apprehension can straightway bridge over the distance between them and see how they may stand in most strict and ami-' able relations? [quaker conversations]' “ thomas, i know what thee is thinking of.” “ if you do, micah, you don't feel flattered.” “mary, it has been revealed to me that i should marry thee.” “ abner, when it is revealed to me i will tell thee.” “william, i am sent to tell thee thou hast a divided heart.” (from note-book) i much regret that in all my sauntering in london streets, where i suppose i felt much like an english boy on his first visit from the i mr. emerson in the autumn accepted an invitation to preach in dr. dewey's church in new bedford. he made pleasant acquaintances among the more liberal quakers there, from whom he heard these anecdotes. 230 journal [age 30 country, the names were so familiar and the things so new, yet tallying so well with their pictures, i did not chance upon great cheyne row, chelsea, for i should gladly know all, even to the peach-coloured doublet. the bounds of friendship, where are they? the good soul meekly defies all the angels to strip it of its state and reputation, and can even make the pure bean permeate the meanness of man's state and behold it as a god, put gentle charitable hands under the faults, as separate as is every loathed symptom of a diseased friend from the friend. it transmutes blood to ichor and transubstantiates flesh. ... will god grant me your society, fear not that i am to eat up your time. you shall make your own laws and, idler as i am, i have mine. i feel assured that though i am searching in a mine not quickly exhausted, — say boldly, inexhaustible, for though talent is finite, character is not, and who has that great spiritual force from god, which we denominate character, is endless study, surprise, solace and support, i do not know seven in the world. “it is not permitted to a man to corrupt himself for the sake of mankind.” rousseau. 1833) cambridge jail, elm 231 “who is discreet is seldom betrayed.” bulwer. “character is the only rank. principle is a passion for truth.” hazlitt. the old jail in cambridge was immediately back of mrs. kneeland's house. the inmates of the prison were very bad neighbors and used to take delight in pestering mrs. kneeland with foul names and profane language. professor hedge took great pains to get the nuisance removed, and at last the old jail was pulled down. someone congratulated mrs. k. upon the happy deliverance, but found her quite sad at the loss of her stimulus. “she kind o' missed 'em,” she said. wise moments are years, and light the countenance ever. they are the good moments. they do not belong to genius, but to man. they refuse to be recorded. the suicide is beside himself, yet is his act no more unreasonable than the thief's or the fop's. old tree in the common, circumference twenty-four feet at base; 17 at 6 feet from ground. 232 journal (age 30 i will not refer, defer, confer, prefer, differ. i renounce the whole family of fero.' i embrace absolute life. i nor you can feel the chain that draws us together. perhaps continents, tongues, ages intervene, a prejudice may be an age, and yet all be nothing against that strong sympathy. (from “a”) tuesday, december 10 took possession of my chamber at mr. pelletier's.” boston, december 11. the call of our callingis the loudest call. there are so many worthless lives, apparently, that to advance a good cause by telling one anecdote or doing one great act, seems a worthy reason for living. when a poor man thanked richard reyi in a lecture called “ art and criticism,” given by mr. emerson in a course in boston in 1859, a portion of which is printed for the first time in the centenary edition of narural history of intellect, he bids young writers • beware of the whole family of fero" (including of course its participle latus) perhaps because “ choose," “ give way,” “gather," “ bring together,” and “remove,” are less pedantic than “ prefer,” « defer,” « infer," • collate,” and “ translate.” 2 probably in boston. 1833] a good hope 233 nolds for his goodness, he said, “do you thank the clouds for rain ?” the elder scipio said, he had given his enemies as much cause to speak well of him as his friends. fontenelle said, “i am a frenchman, i am sixty years old, and i never have treated the smallest virtue with the smallest ridicule.” december 14. i please myself with contemplating the felicity of my present situation. may it last. it seems to me singularly free, and it invites me to every virtue and to great improvement. “in being silent, and hoping, consisteth our strength,” – so luther quotes isaiah. for every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath. wordsworth. alexander gave away the conquered provinces,—“and what have you left for yourself?” “ hope,” replied the hero. “how do the wise differ from the unwise?” was the question put to bias. he replied, “in a good hope.” it is the true heroism and the true wisdom, hope. the wise are always cheerful. the reason is (and it is a blessed reason), that the eye sees that the 234 journal (age 30 ultimate issues of all things are good. there is always a presumption in favor of a cheerful view. [here follow some notes on hints taken by engineers and architects from nature, printed in “art,” society and solitude.] (from small note-book) my children, said my grandfather, you will never see anything worse than yourselves. why can we find a spiritual meaning in every natural fact? the young bee, up to the time he leaves the hive, has never seen light. yet he launches at once into the air, flies far from home, wanders to many flowers, yet comes back with unerring certainty to the hive. who pilots him? (from "a") december 19. the moral of your piece should be cuneiform and not polygonal. judge of the success of the piece by the exclusive prominence it gives to the subject in the minds of all the audience. i william emerson, minister of concord, or his father, reverend joseph of malden, or possibly john haskins of boston. 1833] the first philosophy 235 [the following, probably written in 1833, are from a smaller note-book.] the first philosophy, that of mind, is the science of what is in distinction from what appears. it is one mark of its laws that their enunciation awakens the feeling of the moral sublime, and great men are they who believe in them. they resemble great circles in astronomy, each of which, in what direction soever it be drawn, contains the whole sphere. so each of these seems to imply all truth. these laws are ideas of the reason, and so are obeyed easier than expressed. they astonish the understanding, and seem to it gleams of a world in which we do not live. our compound nature differences us from god, but our reason is not to be distinguished from the divine essence. we have yet devised no words to designate the attributes of god which can adequately stand for the universality and perfection of our own intuitions. to call the reason“ours” or “human” seems an impertinence, so absolute and unconfined it is. the best we can say of god, we mean of the mind as it is known to us. thus when you say, 236 (age 30 journal “ the gods approve the depth, but not the tumult of the soul (a fervent, not ungovernable love),” the sublime in the sentiment is, that to the soul itself depth, not tumult, is desirable. when you say (socrates said it), “ jupiter prefers integrity to charity,” your finest meaning is the “soul prefers,” etc. when jesus saith, “ who giveth one of these little ones a cup of cold water shall not lose his reward,” is not the best meaning the love at which the giver has arrived? and so on throughout the new testament there is not a volition attributed to god considered as an external cause but gains in truth and dignity by being referred to the soul. reason, seeing in objects their remote effects, affirms the effect as the permanent character. the understanding, listening to reason, on the one side, which says itis, and to the senses on the other side, which say it is not, takes middle ground and declares it will be. heaven is the projection of the ideas of reason on the plane of the understanding. jesus christ was a minister of the pure reason. the beatitudes of the sermon on the mount are all utterances of the mind contemning the phenomenal world. “blessed are the righteous poor, 1833] the first philosophy 237 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. blessed are ye when men revile you;” etc. the understanding can make nothing of it. 'tis all nonsense. " the reason affirms its absolute verity. various terms are employed to indicate the counteraction of the reason and the understanding, with more or less precision, according to the cultivation of the speaker. a clear perception of it is the key to all theology, and a theory of human life. st. paul marks the distinction by the terms natural man and spiritual man. when novalis says, “ it is the instinct of the understanding to counteract the reason,” he only translates into a scientific formula the sentence of st. paul “the carnal mind is enmity against god.” the mind is very wise, could it be roused into action. but the life of most men is aptly signified by the poet's personification, “death in life.” we walk about in a sleep. a few moments in the year, or in our lifetime, we truly live; we are at the top of our being; we are pervaded, yea, dissolved by the mind; but we fall back again presently. those who are styled practical men are not awake, for they do not exercise the reason; yet their sleep is restless. the most active lives have so much routine as to pre238 journal (age 30 clude progress almost equally with the most inactive. we bow low to the noted merchants whose influence is felt, not only in their native cities, but in most parts of the globe; but our respect does them and ourselves great injustice, for their trade is without system, their affairs unfold themselves after no law of the mind, but are bubble built on bubble without end; a work of arithmetic, not of commerce, much less of humanity. they add voyage to voyage, and buy stocks, – that they may buy stocks, -and no ulterior purpose is thought of. when you see their dexterity in particulars, you cannot overestimate the resources of good sense; and when you find how empty they are of all remote aims, you cannot underestimate their philosophy. the man of letters puts the same cheat upon us, bestirring himself immensely to keep the secret of his littleness. he spins his most seeming surface directly before the eye, to conceal the universe of his ignorance. to what end his languages, his correspondence, his academic discourses, his printed volumes? newton said that if this porous world were made solid, it would lie in a nutshell. allour writings are variations of one air. books for the most part are such expedients as his who 1833] life spell-bound 239 makes an errand for the sake of exercise. and for the sincere great men the wisest passages they have writ, the infinite conclusions to which they owe their fame, are only confessions. throughout their works, the good ear hears the undersong of confession and amazement, the apothegm of socrates, the recantation of man. such is the inaction of men. we have an obscure consciousness of our attributes. we stand on the edge of all that is great, yet are restrained in inactivity and unconscious of our powers, like neuters of the hive, every one of which is capable of transformation into the queen bee. we are always on the brink, etc. much preparation, little fruit. but suddenly in any place, in the street, in the chamber, will the heavens open and the regions of wisdom be uncovered, as if to show how thin the veil, how null the circumstances. as quickly, a lethean stream washes through us and bereaves us of ourselves. what a benefit if a rule could be given whereby the mind, dreaming amid the gross fogs of matter, could at any moment cast itself and find the sun! but the common life is an endless succession of phantasms; and long after we have 240 journal [age 30 deemed ourselves recovered and sound, light breaks in upon us and we find we have yet had no sane hour. another morn rises on mid-noon. legenda article, “croker's boswell's johnson,” in edinburgh review. essays on pursuit of truth. hazlitt's essays on principles of human action. hobbes' treatise on human nature, hume's dissertation on the passions ; and enquiry. shaftesbury's enquiry. sir charles bell's animal mechanics. sir samuel romilly's article on “codification.” hartley tucker's chapter on “pleasure," and paley's on “happiness.” cousin's [translation of] tennemann. turner's elements of chemistry. affinity. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal of 1833 homer; cicero; petrarch; montaigne; sir henry wotton; george herbert, verses upon rest; 1833] reading 241 milton, lycidas, letter to diodati; jeremy taylor; dampier, voyage round the world, apud early english navigators; addison ; bossuet ; voltaire ; johnson, apud boswell; abela, melita illustrata; goldoni, scelta di ; rousseau ; gibbon; alfieri; goethe, travels in italy, wilbelm meister; herschel; sismondi, la littérature du midi de l'europe; byron, childe harold ; scott, marmion, rob roy, heart of midlothian; wordsworth; hazlitt; mackintosh ; manzoni, i promessi sposi ; andrews norton; a statement of reasons for not believing the doctrines of trinitarians concerning the nature of god and the person of christ. carlyle, sartor resartus and various articles in english and scotch reviews. bulwer. journal newton lectures in boston preaching at new bedford and plymouth the old manse, concord journal xxv 1834 (from journal a) not of men, neither by man. “may i consult the auguries of time, and through the human heart explore my way, and look and listen.” “ ch' apporta mane, e lascia sera.” , [so far as the headquarters of the emerson family could be determined by the presence of madam emerson, it might have been considered at the farm of their kinswoman mrs. ladd, near newton upper falls. charles may have been there too, but more probably at the manse in concord, as then, or soon after, he was studying law in the office of that fine old roman, samuel hoar. waldo came and went, for dur1 it was mr. emerson's custom after this time to write one or more mottoes at the beginning of each journal. 246 journal [age 30 ing most of the winter he was filling the pulpit of his kinsman, the rev. orville dewey, in new bedford, occasionally preaching in plymouth, where he made the acquaintance of miss lydia' jackson, a lady slightly older than himself, whose spiritual mind, refined character and distinguished bearing caused her to be regarded almost as a lady-abbess among her generation and the younger people there. the next year she became his wife. in new bedford mr. emerson made many friends among the liberal quakers. in january he delivered a lecture at the athenæum in boston before the mechanics' institute. the subject was “water,” very freely treated, after his wont. later in the winter he gave two lectures on italy, in boston, and, in may, one called “naturalist” at the annual meeting of the boston natural history society.] this book is my savings bank. i grow richer because i have somewhere to deposit my earnings; and fractions are worth more to me because corresponding fractions are waiting here that shall be made integers by their addition. 1 after her marriage, at mr. emerson's request, she changed her name to lidian. 1834) treasure everywhere 247 a january 2, 1834. the year, the year, but i have no thought for time. it occurs that a selection of natural laws might be easily made from botany, hydraulics, natural philosophy, etc., which should at once express also an ethical sense. thus, 'water confined in pipes will always rise as high as its source.' 'a hair line of water is a balance for the ocean if its fount be as high.' 'durable trees make roots first, charles reads. ‘a cripple in the right road beats a racer in the wrong road.' 'fractures well cured make us more strong.' 'action and reaction are equal.' concentrated nourishment is unhealthy; there must be mixture of excrement. january 3. to goethe there was no trifle. glauber picked up what everybody else threw away. cuvier made much of humblest facts. the lower tone you take, the more flexible your voice is. the whole landscape is beautiful, though the particulars are not. “you never are tired whilst you can see far.' there is no weakness, no exposure, for which we cannot find consolation in the thought,well, 't is a part of my constitution, part of my 248 [age 30 journal relation and office to my fellow creature. i like to see the immense resources of the creature. january 5. “ newton," says fourier,“ knew not yet the perfections of the universe.” “what la place called great was really great." i read in herbert a beautiful verse, a high example of what the rhetorician calls the moral sublime:“ ah, my dear god! though i am clean forgot, let me not love thee, if i love thee not." january 12. i was well pleased with dr. bradford's view of judgment the other day.' particular men are designated as persons of good judgment. it is merely that they are persons of experience in such affairs as interest most men. their opinion on any question where they have not experience is worthless. men of good sense act in certain conjunctures in a most imbecile manner. it is because it is their first trial. others act with decision and success. it is because they have made many trials before, and of course got through their failures. then some men reserve their opinion, and so never speak foolishly. others publish 1 dr. gamaliel bradford of boston, brother to mrs. ripley and mr. george p. bradford. cau c 1834) the standard man 249 every opinion they hold, and so, though the first thoughts of all were equally ineffectual and foolish, yet the abstemious have the credit of forming sound opinions the first time, and the prompt speakers, if of active and advancing minds, are always uttering absurdities. january 19. what is it that interests us in biography? is there not always a silent comparison between the intellectual and moral endowments portrayed, and those of which we are conscious ? the reason why the luther, the newton, the bonaparte, concerning whom we read, was made the subject of panegyric, is, that in the writer's opinion, in some one respect this particular man represented the idea of man. and as far as we accord with his judgment, we take the picture for a standard man, and so let every line accuse or approve our own ways of thinking and living by comparison. at least i thought thus in reading jeffrey's fine sketch of playfair the other evening. january 21. is not the use of society to educate the will, which never would acquire force in solitude? we mean will, when we say that a person has a good deal of character. women generally have 250 journal [age 30 weak wills, sharply expressed perhaps, but capricious, unstable. when the will is strong, we inevitably respect it in man or woman. i have thought that the perfection of female character seldom existed in poverty, at least where poverty was reckoned low. is not this because the rich are accustomed to be obeyed promptly, and so the will acquires strength and yet is calm and graceful? i think that involuntary respect which the rich inspire in very independent and virtuous minds, arises from the same circumstance, the irresistible empire of a strong will. there is not nor ever can be any competition between a [will] of words and a real will. webster, adams, clay, calhoun, chatham, and every statesman who was ever formidable are wilful men. but everett and stanley and the ciceros are not; want this backbone. meantime a great many men in society speak strong, but have no oak, are all willow. and only a virtuous will is omnipotent. ; (january 31. i add that in a former age the x men of might were men of will, now the men of wealth.) january 22. luther and napoleon are better treatises on the will than edwards’s. will does not know if it be cold or hot or dangerous, he only goes 1834] chaste to the chaste 251 on to his mark, and leaves to mathematicians to calculate whether a body can come to its place without passing through all the intermediates, “men have more heart than mind.” different faces things wear to different persons. whole process of human generation how bifronted! to one it is bawdry, to another pure. in the mother's heart every sensation, from the nuptial embrace, through the uncertain symptoms of the quickening, to the birth of her child, is watched with an interest more chaste and wistful than the contemplations of the nun in her cloister; yet the low-minded visitor of a woman in such circumstances has the ignorant impertinence to look down and feel a sort of shame. akin to the pathetic sublime of the two lines of herbert on the last leaf, are the lines in the last canto of il paradiso, thus translated:“o virgin mother, daughter of thy son! created beings all in loveliness surpassing, as in height above them all.” january 23. i cannot read of the jubilee of goethe, and of such a velvet life, without a sense of incongruity. genius is out of place when it reposes fifty years on chairs of state, and inhales a continual incense 252 journal [age 30 of adulation. its proper ornaments and relief are poverty and reproach and danger, and if the grand-duke had cut goethe's head off, it would have been much better for his fame than his retiring to his rooms, after dismissing the obsequious crowds, to arrange tastefully and contemplate their gifts and honorary inscriptions.' new bedford, january 29. michel angelo's life, in the library of useful knowledge; and his poverty, by signor radici in the retrospective review, volume xiii. these elevate my respect for the artist. his life, they say, too, was a poem. beautiful is his platonic passion, before that word had been perverted by affectation and hypocrisy. ... berni said of him, ei dice cose, e voi dite parole. hesought to penetrate by just degrees to the centre of that eternal radiance, in which is hidden “pamor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.” 1 compare emerson's letter to carlyle of november 20, 1834, in their correspondence, i, 27. 2 here follow passages used in the lecture on michael angelo given, a year later, before the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge in boston, in a course on biography. the lectures were, « tests of great men," « michel angelo," « luther,” « george fox,” • milton,” “edmund burke," 1834) michel angelo 253 are not his struggles and mortifications a more beautiful wreath than the milliners made for goethe? in reference to this appetite for death, shall i say it is sometimes permissible? that the object of life is answered when the uses of time are discovered; when the soul has so far discovered its relation to external truth, that time can never more be a burden, and nothing but the evils inseparable from human condition prevent it from being a heaven? february 1. in viewing the greatness of men of the first ages, homer and alfred equal to goethe and washington, does it not seem that a little additional force of will in the individual is equivalent to ages-ful of the improvements we call civilization ? but these anakim do yet yield to the sad observer of his race real and great consolation (i am thinking now of michel angelo and his platonism), for they seem to him, himself without his faults and in favorable circumstances; he recognizes their lofty aspirations as the thoughts of his own childhood; he looks at these heroes as nothing peculiar and monstrous, but as only more truly men, and he perceives that a heaven of truth and virtue is still possible. im254 journal (age 30 some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so.' such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. every man leaves that contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. february 2. how often our nature is conscious of and labours with its own limits! in the very act of pretension it is oppressed with secret humiliation. february 3. i have read corinne with as much emotion as a book can excite in me.a true representation of the tragedy of woman, which yet (thanks to the mysterious compensation which nature has provided) they rarely feel. the tragedy of genius also. the story labours with the fault of an extravagant, i may say ridiculous, filial passion in oswald, which no man of such intelligence can carry so far, and then with the second impossibility of his rapid marriage. no matter; though i olympian bards who sung divine ideas below, which always find us young, and always keep us so. poems: “ode to beauty." 2 corinne, ou l' italie, by mme. de staël. 1834) plymouth. webster 255 the circumstances are untrue, the position and the feelings of corinne are possible, and, as plato would say, more true than history. new bedford, february 7. i have been to plymouth and stood on the rock, and felt that it was grown more important by the growth of this nation in the minutes that i stood there. but barnabas hedge ought not — no man ought— to own the rock of plymouth. mr. bond said he had learned that men can never learn by experience. in the last depression of trade he had resolved never to be caught again; and now, amid his perplexities, resolves again. at sea we always judge by the present weather the probable length of the voyage. february 10. the newspapers say they might as well publish a thunderstorm as a report of webster's speech in answer to wright.' his tones were 1 mr. emerson had been chosen poet for the annual meeting of the phi beta kappa society at cambridge. the two best passages in the poem, otherwise not remarkable, were those on lafayette, who had just died, and on webster. the latter is given in the appendix to the poems (riverside and centenary editions). 256 [age 30 journal like those of a commander in a battle. times of eloquence are times of terror. i wrote to charles last night that the obstinate retention of simple and high sentiments in obscurest duties is hardening the character to that temper that will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold. yet perhaps the courage of heroes in revolutions is extemporary, and what seems superhuman fortitude is the effect of an ecstasy of sorrow. evil times have the effect of making men think. i suppose in the last few weeks men have thrown more searching glances at the structure and interdependence of society than in years of prosperous times. they begin to trace the path of an ear of corn from its stalk to their table. e g. a. s.' confirms the views of the education of the will (see january 21) by saying, that in his experience a very great change is produced in men by the possession of property, a great addition of force,which would remain to them if their property were taken away. it is not the possession of luxuries, but the exercise of power, which belongs to wealth that has wrought this effect. the possession of office has the same i george a. sampson. 1834) position and will 257 effect. what a pepper-corn man is if he had been poor. by this education of things and persons he is now a person of decision and influence. how imbecile is often a young person of superior intellectual powers for want of acquaintance with his powers; bashful, timid, he shrinks, retreats before every confident person, and is disconcerted by arguments and pretensions he would be ashamed to put forward himself. let him work, as many merchants do, with the forces of millions of property for months and years upon the wills of hundreds of persons, and you shall see him transformed into an adroit, fluent, masterful gentleman, fit to take and keep his place in any society of men. this is the account to be given of the fine manners of the young southerners brought up amidst slaves, and of the concession that young northerners make to them, yes, and old northerners to old southerners. . . . this part of education is conducted in the nursery and the playground, in fights, in frolics, in business, in politics. my manners and history would have been very different, if my parents had been rich, when i was a boy at school. herein is good ground for our expectation of the high bearing of the english nobleman. 258 (age 30 journal b[enjamin] r[odman] called his friend, the naval architect, a perfect ship. mr. hillman. new bedford, february 12. the days and months and years flit by, each with his own black riband, his own sad reminiscence. yet i looked at the almanack affectionately as a book of promise. these three last years of my life are not a chasm — i could almost wish they were—so brilliantly sometimes the vision of ellen's beauty and love and life come out of the darkness. pleasantly mingled with my sad thoughts the sublime religion of miss rotch yesterday. she was much disciplined, she said, in the years of quaker dissension, and driven inward, driven home, to find an anchor, until she learned to have no choice, to acquiesce without understanding the reason when she found an obstruction to any particular course of acting. she objected to having this spiritual direction called an impression, or an intimation, or an oracle. it was none of them. it was so simple it could hardly be spoken of. it was long, long, before she could attain to anything satisfactory. she was in a state of great dreariness, but she had a friend, a woman, now deceased, who used to advise her to dwell patiently with this dreariness 1834) miss mary rotch 259 and absence, in the confidence that it was necessary to the sweeping away of all her dependence upon traditions, and that she would finally attain to something better. and when she attained a better state of mind, its beginnings were very, very small. and now it is not anything to speak of. she designed to go to england with mr. and mrs. farrar, and the plan was very pleasant, and she was making her preparations, and the time was fixed, when she conceived a reluctance to go for which she could not see any reason, but which continued; and she therefore suspended her purpose, and suffered them to depart without her. she said she had seen reason to think it was best for her to have staid at home. but in obeying it, she never felt it of any importance that she should know now or at any time what the reasons were. but she should feel that it was presumption to press through this reluctance and choose for herself. i said it was not so much any particular power as a healthful state of the mind; to which she assented cordially. i said, it must produce a sublime tranquillity in view of the future — this assurance of higher direction; and she assented.' 1 in the essay “greatness" (letters and social aims, p. 309, cent. ed.) mr. emerson gives this doctrine of the quakers. ons were 260 journal [age 30 can you believe, waldo emerson, that you may relieve yourself of this perpetual perplexity of choosing, and by putting your ear close to the soul, learn always the true way? i cannot but remark how perfectly this agrees with the daimon of socrates, even in that story which i once thought anomalous, of the direction as to the choice of two roads; and with the grand unalterableness of fichte's morality. hold up this lamp and look back at the best passages of your life. once there was choice in the mode, but obedience in the thing. in general there has been pretty quiet obedience in the main, but much recusancy in the particular. “hamlet. but thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart, but it is no matter. “horatio. if your mind dislike anything, obey it.” no “the barber learns his art on the orphan's face." ; arabian proverb. i this proverb was a favorite one of mr. emerson's. he used to say, “when a village lyceum committee asks me to give a lecture, and i tell them i will read one i am just writing, they are pleased. poor men, they little know how 1834] whaling stories 261 the walls of houses are transparent to the architect. providence; men apply themselves to events, and according to their affinities, that is sweet or bitter. [the] good man is obedient to the laws of the world, and so successful. the angel rather. conversation with william w. swain. boston, february 19. a seaman in the coach told the story of an old sperm-whale, which he called a white whale, which was known for many years by the whale; men as old tom, and who rushed upon the boats which attacked him, and crushed the boats to small chips in his jaws, the men generally escaping by jumping overboard and being picked up. a vessel was fitted out at new bedford, he said, to take him. and he was finally taken somewhere off payta head by the winslow or the essex. he gave a fine account of a storm, which i heard imperfectly, only “the whole ocean was all feather white.” a whale sometimes runs off three rolls of cord, three hundred fathom in length each one. different that lecture will be when it is given in new york, or is printed. i try it on' on them; •the barber learns bis trade on the orphan's chin."" 262 journal (age 30 february 20. self-contradiction is the only wrong; for, by the laws of spirit, in the right is every individual character that acts in strict consistence with itself. coleridge's wallenstein. february 21. the true reasons for actions are not given. george p. bradford says that he is so well understood at plymouth that he can act naturally without being reckoned absurd. that is a valid reason for going there. but how many would not understand it, and how many, understanding it, would hoot at it. they think a cheaper board is a good reason for going to one house, or the prospect of making acquaintance that give parties, or the like; but such a reason as this, which affects happiness and character, seems unworthy attention. as george says, it is agreed in society to consider realities as fictions, and fictions realities. february 22. it were well to live purely, to make your word worth something. deny yourself cake and ale to make your testimony irresistible. be a pure reason to your contemporaries for god and ne 1834) new sabbaths 263 truth. what is good in itself can be bad to nobody. as i went to church i thought how seldom the present hour is seized upon as a new moment. to a soul alive to god every moment is a new world. a new audience, a new sabbath, affords an opportunity of communicating thought and moral excitement that shall surpass all previous experience, that shall constitute an epoch, a revolution, in the minds on whom you act and in your own. the awakened soul, the man of genius, makes every day such a day, by looking forward only ; but the professional mob look back only to custom and their past selves. february 25. “the day is immeasurably long to him who knows how to value and to use it,” said goethe. ss march 2. it is very seldom that a man is truly alone. he needs to retire as much from his solitude as he does from society, into very loneliness. while i am reading and writing in my chamber i am not alone, though there is nobody there. there is one means of procuring solitude which to me, and i apprehend to all men, is effectual, and that is to go to the window and look at the 264 journal (age 30 stars. if they do not startle you and call you off from vulgar matters i know not what will. i sometimes think that the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man in the heavenly bodies a perpetual admonition of god and superior destiny. seen in the streets of cities, how great they are!' when i spoke of this to g. a. s. he said, that he had sought in his chamber a place for prayer and could not find one till he cast his eye upon the stars. new bedford, march 15. i have been again to plymouth, and the families and the faces are almost as tranquil as their pines. the blue ocean reminded me of goethe's fine observation that “nature has told everything once"; one illustration of it . . . was to me this noble line of sea by which nature is pleased to reveal to the asking eye the dimensions of the globe by showing the true outline of the world. fine objects in plymouth from men and women down to vegetables. i saw and relished all even to the epigæa and the byssus or puli one or two sentences in this paragraph occur in the opening passage of nature. 1834) quaker meetings 265 vis simplicissimus, ground-pine, sabbatia, and empetrum.' “nature tells everything once.” yes, our microscopes are not necessary; they are a mechanical advantage for chamber-philosophers; she has magnified everything somewhere. each process, each function, each organ, is disproportionately developed in some one individual. go study it there, instead of wearing your eyes out in your 6-million magnifier. i count no man much because he cows or silences me. any fool can do that. but if his conversation enriches or rejoices me, i must reckon him wise. fo new bedford, march 21. i have been much interested lately in the ms. record of the debates in the quaker monthly meetings here in 1823, when elizabeth rodman and mary rotch were proposed to be removed from the place of elders for uniting in the prayers of mary newhall. i must quote a sentence or two from two of these speakers. “februbyssus (+) epigæa repens (mayflower), sabbatia chloroides, corema conradii (gray). 2 these two sentences occur in “ country life,” in natural history of intellect, centenary edition, p. 160. 266 journal (age 30 ary, 1823: m. n. rose in the meeting and began with, “as the stream does not rise higher than the fountain,' etc.; spoke of the mosaic dispensation in which the performance of certain rituals constituted the required religion; the more spiritual dispensation of our saviour; of the advent of christ; and the yet more inward and spiritual dispensation of the present day. these dispensations she compared to the progressive stages of the human heart in the work of religion, from loving our neighbor as ourselves to loving our enemies, and lastly arriving at that state of humility when self would be totally abandoned and we could only say, lord be merciful to me a sinner.” new bedford. my swedenborgian friend dr. stebbins tells me that he esteems himself“ measureably excused for not preaching whilst i remain here, as i am giving as much new jerusalem doctrine as the people will bear.” fine thought in the old verse by barbour describing bruce's soldiers crowding around him as with new unsated curiosity after a battle: — 267 1834) true self-reliance “sic wordis spak they of their king; and for his hie undertaking ferleyit and gernit him for to see, that with him ay was wont to be.” march 22. the subject that needs most to be presented, developed, is the principle of self-reliance, what it is, what is not it, what it requires, how it teaches us to regard our friends. it is true that there is a faith wholly a man's own, the solitary inmate of his own breast, which the faiths of all mankind cannot shake, and which they cannot confirm. but at the same time, how useful, how indispensable, has been the ministry of our friends to us, our teachers — the living and the dead! i ask advice. it is not that i wish my companion to dictate to me the course i should take. before god, no. it were to unman, to un-god myself. it is that i wish him to give me information about the facts, not a law as to the duty. it is that he may stimulate me by his thoughts to unfold my own, so that i may become master of the facts still. my own bosom will supply, as surely as god liveth, the direction of my course. this truth constitutes the objection to pledges. 268 journal (age 30 they are advocated on the principle that men are not to be trusted. they are to be trusted. they can never attain to any good, until they are trusted with the whole direction of themselves, and therefore it is pernicious, it is postponing their virtue and happiness, whenever you substitute a false principle for the true, in a mind capable of acting from a right motive. march 23. it occurs that the distinction should be drawn in treating of friendship between the aid of commodity which our friends yield us, as in hospitality, gifts, sacrifices, etc., and which, as in the old story about the poor man's will in montaigne, are evidently esteemed by the natural mind (to use such a cant word) the highest manifestations of love; and, secondly, the spiritual aid, -far more precious and leaving the other at infinite distances, — which our friends afford us, of confession, of appeal, of social stimulus, mirroring ourselves. march 26. as the flower precedes the fruit, and the bud the flower, so, long before the knowledge, comes the opinion, long before the opinion comes the instinct, that a particular act is unfriendly, 1834] ruth emerson 269 unsuitable, wrong. we are wonderfully protected. ... march 28. wherever the truth is injured, defend it. you are there on that spot within hearing of that word, within sight of that action, as a witness, to the end that you should speak for it. “my heritage how long and wide, – time is my heritage, my field is time.” boston, april 10. is it possible that, in the solitude i seek, i shall have the resolution, the force, to work as i ought to work, as i project in highest, most far-sighted hours? well, and what do you project? nothing less than to look at every object in its relation to myself. edward wrote on the back of alexander's portrait of mother, taken in 1825 at the age of 57,feminæ, uxoris, viduæ, matris optima, laudatæ, benedictæ, vita pulchra, similitudo tam similis pretiosa. ipsa mulier ad cælum ibit: umbra picta inter amicos, deo volente, numquam inter inimicos, quia tales non sunt, vivis descriptionem sine errore mortalis quondam, tunc angeli, dabit. 270 journal (age 30 c. c. e. proposes an improved reading of the second sentence:— ipsa mulier in cælum ibit : umbra picta inter amicos, deo volente, non umquam, cum tales nulli sint, inter inimicos, errore pure mortalis quondam, tunc anima beata, imaginem servabit. placuit omnibus cui satis uni placuisse; epitaph on olivia buckminster emerson. april 11. went yesterday to cambridge and spent most of the day at mount auburn; got my luncheon at fresh pond, and went back again to the woods. after much wandering and seeing many things, four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that i could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding; then a whole bed of hepatica triloba, cousins of the anemone, all blue and beautiful, but constrained by niggard nature to wear their last year's faded jacket of leaves ; then a black-capped titmouse, who came upon a tree, and when i would know his name, sang chick-a-dee-dee ; then a far-off tree full of clamorous birds, i know not what, but you might hear them half a mile. i forsook the tombs, and found a sunny hollow where the east wind would ver 1 1834) spring. mount auburn 271 not blow, and lay down against the side of a tree to most happy beholdings. at least i opened my eyes and let what would pass through them into the soul. i saw no more my relation, how near and petty, to cambridge or boston; i heeded no more what minute or hour our massachusetts clocks might indicate -i saw only the noble earth on which i was born, with the great star which warms and enlightens it. i saw the clouds that hang their significant drapery over us. it was day — that was all heaven said. the pines glittered with their innumerable green needles in the light, and seemed to challenge me to read their riddle. the drab oak-leaves of the last year turned their little somersets and lay still again. and the wind bustled high overhead in the forest top. this gay and grand architecture, from the vault to the moss and lichen on which i lay, who shall explain to me the laws of its proportions and adornments ? see the perpetual generation of good sense: nothing wholly false, fantastic, can take possession of men who, to live and move, must plough the ground, sail the sea, have orchards, hear the robin sing, and see the swallow fly. to-day i found in roxbury the saxifraga vernalis. 272 journal [age 30 april 12. glad to read in my old gossip montaigne some robust rules of rhetoric: i will have a chapter thereon in my book. i would thomas carlyle should read them. “in good prose,” said schlegel (?), “every word should be underscored.” its place in the sentence should make its emphasis. write solid sentences, and you can even spare punctuation. the passages in montaigne are in volume iii, pages 144-146.' we are always on the brink of an ocean of thought into which we do not yet swim. we are poor lords, have immense powers which we are hindered from using. i am kept out of my heritage. ... ca ... are we not ever postponing great actions and ineffable wisdom. we are ever coming up with a group of angels still in sight before us," which we refer to when we say “the truth” and the wise man, and the corrections these shall make in human society. all the mistakes i make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view. i read so resolute a self-thinker as carlyle, and am convinced of the riches of wisdom that i probably cotton's translation. 2 the thought of his poem, “ the forerunners.” 1834) keep yourself. wait 273 ever belong to the man who utters his own thought with a divine confidence that it must be true if he heard it there. we live, animals in the basement story, and when shakspeare or milton, or even my fantastical scotchman who fools his humor to the top of his bent, call us up into the high region, we feel and say, “ this is my region, they only show me my own property. i am in my element. i thank them for it.” presently we go about our business into the basement again, cumbered with serving; and assured of our right to the halls above, we never go thither. i had observed long since that, to give the thought a just and full expression, i must not prematurely utter it. better not talk of the matter you are writing out. it was as if you had let the spring snap too soon. i was glad to find goethe say to the same point, that “ he who seeks a hidden treasure must not speak.” sabbath, april 13. there are some duties about courtesy: and were it not lawful for the discontented spirit sometimes to cry out, husks, husks! ye feed the people with words, even in their solemn 274 journal (age 30 assembly? they distress me by their prayers, and all the discourse was an impertinence. there sat, too, the gifted man, and if he unlawfully withheld his word, this wearisome prose was his just punishment. elsewhere, certainly not there, but from m, m. e., from carlyle, or from this delicious day, or whatever celestial fingers touched the divine harp,i woke to a strain of highest melody. i saw that it was not for me to complain of obscurity, of being misunderstood; it was not for me, even in the filthy rags of my unrighteousness, to despond of what i might do and learn. can you not do better than clear your action to the highest of these puppets or these potentates around you, by clearing it to your creator, by being justified to yourself? absolve yourself to the universe, and, as god liveth, you shall ray out light and heat, – absolute good. were it not noble gratitude, since we are the fruit of time and owe all to the immeasurable pastits nations and ages guide our pen— to live for the world; to inspect the present and, in the present, report of the future for the benefit of the existing race; and having once seen that virtue was beautiful, count that portion enough, without higgling for our particular commodity to 1834) fatal machinery boot? down with that fop of a brutus!' peace to the angel of innocency for evermore!. seeming disproportionate it occurs how much friction is in the machinery of society. the material is so much that the spiritual is overlaid and lost. a man meditates in solitude upon a truth which seems to him so weighty that he proposes to impart it to his fellow men. immediately a society must be collected, and books consulted, and much paper blotted in preparation of his discourse. alien considerations come in, personal considerations and finally when he delivers his discourse, 'tis quite possible it does not contain the original message, so that it was no superfluous rule he gave who said, “when you write, do not omit the thing you meant to say.” the material integuments have quite overlaid and killed the spiritual child. not otherwise it falls out in education. a young man is to be educated, and schools are built, and masters brought together, and gymnasium erected, and scientific toys and i "it is told of brutus that, when he fell on his sword after the battle of philippi, he quoted a line of euripides, o virtue! i have followed thee through life and i find thee at last but a shade.'” “heroism," essays, first series. 276 (age 30 journal monitorial systems and a college endowed with many professorships, and the apparatus is so enormous and unmanageable that the e-ducation or calling out of his faculties is never accomplished; he graduates a dunce. see how the french mathematics at cambridge have quite destroyed the slender chance a boy had before of learning trigonometry. is it otherwise in our philosophic enterprises ? they wish to heal the sick, or emancipate the african, or convert the hindoo, and immediately agents are appointed, and an office established, and annual reports printed, — and the least streamlet of the vast contributions of the public trickles down to the healing of the original evil. the charity becomes a job. well now, is it otherwise with life itself? we are always getting ready to live, but never living. we have many years of technical education; then many years of earning a livelihood, and we get sick, and take journeys for our health, and compass land and sea for improvement by travelling, but the work of self-improvement, — always under our nose, — nearer than the nearest, is seldom seldom engaged in. a few, few hours in the longest life. set out to study a particular truth. read upon it; walk to think upon it; talk of it; write about 1834] gleams. prayers 277 it;the thing itself will not much manifest itself, at least not much in accommodation to your studying arrangements. the gleams you do get out, they will flash as likely at dinner, or in the roar of faneuil hall, as in your painfullest abstraction. very little life in a lifetime. m. m. e. writes, that, “ the world is full of children, and what in our hearts we take no merit in — blush that it is no more generous — we expose to the weak as justification.” april 20. a good inaugural sermon from mr. stearns at old south this morning; and from mr. frothingham this p. m., a good unfolding of the parting of elijah and elisha. elijah said, “ask what thou wilt.” who could have stood this test? to whom would it not have been a snare? but elisha said, “ let a double portion of thy spirit be on me.” the preacher should have added, i think, that the blessing descended in the asking, the prayer answered itself, as all real prayers do. · awake, arm of the lord ! awake, thou godlike that sleepest! dear god that sleepest in man, i have served my apprenticeship of bows and blushes, of fears and references, of excessive admiration. 278 [age 30 journal the whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible. and they are. they want awakening. get the soul out of bed, out of her deep habitual sleep, out into god's universe, to a perception of its beauty, and hearing of its call, and your vulgar man, your prosy, selfish sensualist awakes, a god, and is conscious of force to shake the world. it seemed to me to-night as if it were no bad topic for the preacher to urge the talent of hearing good sermons upon their congregations. i can hear a good sermon where surd shall hear none, and absurd shall hear worse than none. spend the sunday morning well, and the hours shall shine with immortal light, shall epitomize history, shall sing heavenly psalms. your way to church shall be short as the way to the playground is to a child, and something holy and wise shall sit upon all the countenances there and shall inspire the preacher's words with a wisdom not their own. spend the sunday morning ill, and you will hardly hear a good sermon anywhere. could it be made apparent, what is really true, that the whole future is in the bottom of the heart, that, in proportion as your life is spent 1834) gratitude 279 within, in that measure are you invulnerable ? in proportion as you penetrate facts for the law, and events for the cause, in that measure is your knowledge real, your condition gradually conformed to a stable idea, and the future foreseen. i have laid my egg, but 't is either old or empty. it was nobly said by goethe that he endeavored to show his gratitude to all his great contemporaries, humboldt, cuvier, byron, scott, or whosoever, by meeting them half way in their various efforts by the activity and performances of his own mind. it is like the worthy man whom i once took up in my chaise as i rode, and who, on parting, told me he should thank me by rendering the same service to some future traveller. april 22. the most original sermon is adopted by each hearer's self-love as his old orthodox, or unitarian, or quaker, preaching. april 23. in desert lands the bird alights on the barrel of the hunter's gun, and many other facts are there; but that which i would say is that every teacher acquires a cumulative inertia ; the more forcible, the more eloquent, have been his inno280 journal (age 30 vating doctrines, the more eagerly his school have crowded around him, so much the more difficult is it for him to forfeit their love, to compromise his influence by advancing farther in the same track. therefore the wise man must be wary of attaching followers. he must feel and teach that the best wisdom cannot be communicated; must be acquired by every soul for itself. and the prudent world cannot wish that the gifted channing should advance one step, lest it be left without confidence in its conductor. newton, april 26. the muses love the woods, and i have come hither to court the awful powers in this sober solitude. whatsoever is highest, wisest, best, favor me! i will listen and then speak.' to be i here follows a passage used in “the preacher” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 221, centenary edition), beginning there : « unlovely, nay, frightful, is the solitude of the soul which is without god in the world.” the sentence in that essay about “this chill, houseless, fatherless, aimless cain, the man who hears only the sound of his own footsteps in god's resplendent creation,” is given in the journal version (omitted here) thus: “ this chill, houseless, fatherless baboon, with the image, but not the soul of man.” mr. cabot, in the preface to letters and social aims, explains the diversity of date often found in the posthumously printed s 11 1834) soul without god 281 without god in the world — who devised that pregnant expression?... there is no longer distinction between the value of thoughts. to be sweet as sugar is sweet, strong as iron is strong, wise as a miser, happy as a drunkard, is the whole compass of his speculation. and he is left in how terrible a solitude. the hopes that cheered him, the glorious affections that made a sky over all he knew, the unseen powers that watched with tenderness his education, that knit his yet imperfect endeavors to the great cause of goodness and to the universe that labors for it, the fellowship of all great men working earnestly in the world, the smiles and auspices of departed heroes, yea, and the right and power to rejoice in anything that is won or done — all, all depart from him, he is alone in a barren and mean solitude. he bitterly feels that he must yield the palm of real dignity to the meanest worm or fly, for they are not tormented with a consciousness of total worthlessness as he is.' ... papers by his account of his arranging these for publication with mr. emerson's sanction, in his later days. 1 here follows, also in « the preacher," the passage beginning, — “how gloomy is the day,” and ending, “ is gone forever.” 282 journal (age 30 do you not see that wherever the wise, the good man goes, light springs up in his path — he carries meaning to every dead symbol; the creator is in his heart, and illustrates and affects his world, through the hands of his servant. but the evil man, that is, the atheist, goes up and down, and all is dark and pernicious. rain, rain. the good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off. god is promoted by the worst. don't despise even the kneelands' and andrew jacksons. in the great cycle they find their place, and like the insect that fertilizes the soil with worm casts, or i abner kneeland, editor of the boston investigator, who had just been sent to jail in boston, convicted of blasphemy in articles written and published by him expressing disbelief in god, in christ, in miracles and in immortality (pickering's reports, vol. xx). four years later, the young james russell lowell, in his class poem, thus commented on mr. emerson's divinity school address :“ woe for religion, too, when men, who claim to place a reverend before their name, ascend the lord's own holy place to preach in strains that kneeland had been proud to reach, and which, if measured by judge thacher's scale, had doomed their author to the county jail," etc. (see scudder's biography of lowell.) 1834] birds. shells. flowers 283 the scavenger bustard' that removes carrion, they perform a beneficence they know not of, and cannot hinder if they would. i saw a hawk to-day wheeling up to heaven in a spiral flight, and every circle becoming less to the eye till he vanished into the atmosphere. what could be more in unison with all pure and brilliant images. yet is the creature an unclean greedy eater, and all his geography from that grand observatory was a watching of barn-yards, or an inspection of moles and field-mice. so with the pelican, crane, and the tribes of sea-fowl disgusting gluttons all. yet observe how finely in nature all these disagreeable individuals integrate themselves into a cleanly and pleasing whole. april 27. here is a mytilus margaritiferus as large as a moon and of the same color, and a tellina radiata which reminds the beholder of the rising sun. i think they should call one of those shells, moon, and the other, morn. to-day i found also the andromeda calyculata, houstonia, potentilla sarmentosa." this empetrum and smilax and i buzzard was meant. 2 chamædaphne calyculata, houstonia cerulea, potentilla pumila (gray). 284 journal [age 30 kalmia’ and privet, i have wondered oft to what end they grew. how ridiculous! ask wrens and crows and bluebirds. as soon as you have done wondering and have left the plant, the bird and the insect return to it as to their daily table. and so it renews its race for a thousand, thousand summers. natural history gives body to our knowledge. no man can spare a fact he knows. the knowledge of nature is most permanent; clouds and grass are older antiquities than pyramids or athens; then they are most perfect. goethe's plant, a genuine creation. then they bear strange but well-established affinities to us. nobody can look on a cistus or a brentus without sighing at his ignorance. it is an unknown america. linnæus is already read as the plato who described atlantis. a classification is nothing but a cabinet. the whole remains to be done thereafter. a religion of forms is not for me. i honor the methodists who find, like st. john, all christianity in one word, love. to the parishes in my neighborhood milton would seem a freethinker when he says, “they (the jews] thought i corema conradii, smilax rotundifolia, kalmia angustifolia (gray). 1834 a day's demands 285 it too much license to follow the charming pipe of him who founded and proclaimed liberty and relief to all distresses.” april 28. vaccinium tenellum, pyrus ovalis,' anemone nemorosa, fragaria virginiana : the day is as good for these as for oaks and corn. the air vibrates with equal facility to the thunder and to the squeak of a mouse; invites man with provoking indifference to total indolence and to immortal actions. you may even shun the occasions of excitement by withdrawing from a profession and from society, and then the vast eternity of capacity, of freedom, opens before you, but without a single impulse. a day is a rich abyss of means, yet mute and void. it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common yokes and motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. high be his heart, faithful his will, vast his contemplations, that he may truly be a world, society, law to himself; that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others. it is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation, that a reasoning man, conscious of his powers and duties, annihilates all distinction of circumi amelanchier oblongifolia (gray). 286 journal [age 30 stances. what is rome? what is royalty ? what is wealth? his place is the true place, and superior therefore in dignity to all other places. linnæus at copenhagen, oberlin on the high alps, white at selborne, roger bacon at oxford, rammohun roy in india, and heber at bombay, washington in the jerseys — these are the romes, the empires, the wealth of these men. the place which i have not sought, but in which my duty places me, is a sort of royal palace. if i am faithful in it, i move in it with a pleasing awe at the immensity of the chain of which i hold the last link in my hand and am led by it. i perceive my commission to be coeval with the antiquity of the eldest causes. literature is the conversion of action into thought for the delight of the intellect. it is the turning into thought what was done without thought. it aims at ideal truth. but it is only approximation. the word can never cover the thing. you don't expect to describe a sunrise. art actualizes thought. literature idealizes action. mission of the intellect. 1834) nature's steps 287 the vulgar man seems to himself unmoored the moment he has changed his scene and associates. he misses his chair and his hat-peg. the wise man carries his spring and his regulator within, and is at home in untrodden wilds. april 29. fontenelle said, if men should see the principles of nature laid bare, they would cry,“what! is this all?” how simple they are. how is the wonder perpetually lessened by showing the disproportionate effect upon the eye of simple combination! the shell is a marvel until we see that it was not one effort, but each knot and spine has been in turn the lip of the structure. shakspeare how inconceivable, until we have heard what italian novels and plutarch's lives and old english dramas he had, also what contemporary fund of poetic diction. a webster's speech is a marvel until we have learned that a part of it he has carried in his head for years, and a part of it was collected for him by young lawyers, and that mr. appleton furnished the facts, and a letter from mr. swain turned the paragraph. st. peter's did not leap full grown out of the head of the architect; the part that was builded instructed the eye of the next genera288 journal (age 30 tion how to build the rest. mirabeau has his dumont. the tree did not come from the acorn, but is an annual deposit of vegetation in a form determined by the existing disposition of the parts. every leaf contains the eyes which are sufficient to originate a forest. the magnet is a marvel when we simply see it spontaneously wheel to the north, and cling to iron like one alive. the wonder diminishes when it is shown to be only one instance of a general law that affects all bodies and all phenomena, light, heat, electricity, animal life. a ship, a locomotive, a cotton factory is a wonder until we see how these romes were not built in a day, but part.suggested part, and complexity became simplicity. the poem, the oration, the book are superhuman, but the wonder is out when you see the manuscript. homer how wonderful, until the german erudition discovered a cyclus of homeric poems. it is all one; a trick of cards, a juggler's sleight, an astronomical result, an algebraic formula, amazing when we see only the result, cheap when we are shown the means. this it is to conceive of acts and works, to throw myself into the object so that its history shall naturally evolve itself before me. well, so does the universe, time, history evolve itself, so re 1834) limits. crises 289 simply, so unmiraculously from the all-perceiving mind. g. p. b. tells a ridiculous story about the boy learning his alphabet. “that letter is a,” says the teacher. “a,” drawls the boy. “that is b,” says the teacher. “b,” drawls the boy, and so on. “ that letter is w," says the teacher. “the devil! is that w?” enquires the pupil. now i say that this story hath an alarming sound. it is the essence of radicalism. it is jack cade himself. or is it not exquisite ridicule upon our learned linnæan classifications? “what shell is this?” “it is a strombus.” “ the devil! is that a strombus ? ” would be the appropriate reply. the fly strikes against the window-pane until at last he learns that, though invisible, there is an obstacle there. the soul of man by a thousand offences learns at last that there is an invisible law which april 30. there are more purposes in education than to keep the man at work. self-questioning is one; a very important end. the disturbance, the self-discord which young men feel is a most important crisis, indispensable to a free, improv290 journal (age 30 able race creature. give me the eye to see a navy in an acorn. if i could write like the wonderful bard whose sonnets i read this afternoon, i would leave all, and sing songs to the human race. poetry with him is no verbal affair; the thought is poetical, and nature is put under contribution to give analogies and semblances that she has never yielded before. whether the same or an equal tone of natural verse is now possible? whether we are not two ages too late? but how remarkable every way are shakspear's sonnets. those addressed to a beautiful young man seem to show some singular friendship amounting almost to a passion which probably excited his youthful imagination. they are invaluable for the hints they contain respecting his unknown self. he knew his powers; he loved spenser ; he deplored his own way of living, etc., etc. what said c. c. e. the other day touching a common impression left by jesus of nazareth and this poet? the war of the telescope and the microscope; the mass and the particular. science ever subdivides. it separates one star into two, a nebula into a constellation, a class into genera, a genus 1834) units. laws. waves 291 into species; and ever the most interesting facts arise from ascertaining habits of an individual. we should find the individual traits of a robin or a bee probably far more interesting than their generic habits when once we arrive to know them, as much as the traits of one dog affect us more than, though interesting, the canine character. newton and webster charm us more than accounts of the character of the saxon race. it occurred also in the forest, that there is no need to fear that the immense accumulation of scientific facts should ever encumber us, since as fast as they multiply they resolve themselves into a formula which carries the world in a phial. every commonplace we utter is a formula in which is packed up an uncounted list of particular observations. and every man's mind at this moment is a formula condensing the result of all his conclusions. may 1. in this still newton we have seven sabbaths in a week. the day is as calm as eternity quite a chaldean time. the philosophy of the wave. the wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. the same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. its unity is dy 292 journal (age 30 ononly phenomenal. so it is with men. there is a revolution in this country now, is there? well i am glad of it. but it don't convert nor punish the jackson men, nor reward the others. the jackson men have made their fortunes; grow old; die. it is the new comers who form this undulation. the party we wish to convince, condemn, loses its identity. elect webster president, — and find the jackson party if you can. all gone, dead, scattered, webstermen, southerners, masons, any and everything. judicial or even moral sentence seems no longer capable of being inflicted. france, we say, suffered and learned; but the red revolutionists did not. france to-day is a new-born race that had no more to do with that regicide france than the sandwich islanders. may 3. the idea according to which the universe is made is wholly wanting to us; is it not? yet it may or will be found to be constructed on as harmonious and perfect a thought, self-explaining, as a problem in geometry. the classification of all natural science is arbitrary, i believe; no method philosophical in any one. and yet in all the permutations and combinations supposable, might not a cabinet of shells or a flora be mo x1834) the hidden idea 293 thrown into one which should flash on us the very thought? we take them out of compo, sition, and so lose their greatest beauty. the moon is an unsatisfactory sight if the eye be exclusively directed to it, and a shell retains but a small part of its beauty when examined separately.' all our classifications are introductory and very convenient, but must be looked on as temporary, and the eye always watching for the glimmering of that pure, plastic idea. if swammerdam forgets that he is a man, and when you make any speculative suggestion as to the habits or origin or relation of insects, rebukes you, with civil submission that you may think what you please, he is only concerned for the facts, -he loses all that for which his science is of any worth. he is a mere insect-hunter, and no whit more respectable than the nuthatch or titmouse who are peeping and darting about after the same prey. this was what goethe sought in his metamorphosis of plants. the pythagorean doctrine of transmigration is an idea; the swedenborgian of affections clothed, is one also. let the i compare in nature (centenary edition, p. 19) the paragraph in the division “ beauty,” beginning, “ but this beauty of nature." 294 journal (age 30 mind of the student be in a natural, healthful and progressive state, let him, in the midst of his most minute dissection, not lose sight of the place and relations of the subject; shun giving it a disproportionate importance, but speedily adjust himself and study to see the thing (though with added acquaintance of its intimate structure) under the sun and in the landscape as he did before. let it be a point as before. integrate the particulars. we have no theory of animated nature. when we have, it will be itself the true classification. perhaps a study of the cattle on the mountain-side as they graze is more suggestive of truth than the inspection of their parts in the dissection-room. the way they classify is by counting stamens, or filaments, or teeth and hoofs and shells. a true argument, what we call the unfolding an idea, as is continually done in plato's dialogues, in carlyle's characteristics, or in a thousand acknowledged applications of familiar ethical truths, — these are natural classifications containing their own reason in themselves, and making known facts continually. they are themselves the formula, the largest generalization of the facts, and if thousands on thousands more should be discovered, this idea hath predicted already their place and fate. when e 1834) face the question 295 shall such a classification be obtained in botany? this is evidently what goethe aimed to do, in seeking the arch-plant, which, being known, would give, not only all actual, but all possible vegetable forms. thus to study would be to hold the bottle under water instead of filling it drop by drop. monday, may 3. the parliamentary people say, we must not blink the question. there is an intellectual duty as imperative and as burdensome as that moral one. i come, e. g., to the present subject of classification. at the centre it is a black spotno line, ņo handle, no character; i am tempted to stray to the accessible lanes on the left hand and right, which lead round it — all outside of it. intellectual courage, intellectual duty says we must not blink the question, we must march up to it and sit down before it and watch there, incessantly getting as close as we can to the black wall, and watch and watch, until slowly lines and handles and characters shall appear on its surface and we shall learn to open the gate and enter the fortress, unroof it and lay bare its ground-plan to the day. mr. coleridge has written well on this matter of theory in his friend. a lecture may be 296 journal (age 30 given upon insects or plants, that, when it is closed, irresistibly suggests the question,“well, what of that?” an enumeration of facts without method. a true method has no more need of firstly, secondly, etc., than a perfect sentence has of punctuation. it tells its own story, makes its own feet, creates its own form. it is its own apology. the best argument of the lawyer is a skilful telling of the story. the true classification will not present itself to us in a catalogue of a hundred classes, but as an idea of which the flying wasp and the grazing ox are developments. natural history is to be studied, not with any pretension that its theory is attained, that its classification is permanent, but merely as full of tendency. may 6. well, my friend, are you not yet convinced that you should study plants and animals?' to be sure the reasons are not very mighty : but words. i it should be remembered that mr. emerson, having left his pulpit, was earnestly searching for the highest truth as revealed in nature by the informing spirit. two days after this entry he gave a lecture called " the naturalist,” before the boston natural history society at their annual meeting. a synopsis of this lecture is given in cabot's memoir, in the appendix, vol. ii, p. 712. 1834) turning to nature 297 to it again. say then that i will study natural history to provide me a resource when business, friends, and my country fail me, that i may never lose my temper, nor be without soothing, uplifting occupation. it will yet cheer me in solitude, or, i think, in madness, that the mellow voice of the robin is not a stranger to me, that the flowers are reflections to me of earlier, happier and yet thoughtful hours. or again, say that i am ever haunted by the conviction that i have an interest in all that goes on around me, that i would overhear the powers what they say. no knowledge can be spared, or any advantage we can give ourselves, and this is the knowledge of the laws by which i live; but finally say frankly, that all the reasons seem to me to fall far short of my faith upon the subject. therefore, boldly press the cause as its own evidence; say that you love nature, and would know her mysteries, and that you believe in your power by patient contemplation and docile experiment to learn them. may 8. the men of this world say ever of the thinker, “how knoweth this man these things, having never learned?” ho! every one that thirsteth! come ye to the waters, and he that hath ma 298 journal (age 30 no money, come buy wine and milk without money. the recluse hermit ofttimes more doth see, etc. a few wise instincts, etc. wordsworth. may 16. i remember when i was a boy going upon the beach and being charmed with the colors and forms of the shells. i picked up many and put them in my pocket. when i got home i could find nothing that i gathered — nothing but some dry, ugly mussel and snail shells. thence \ i learned that composition was more important than the beauty of individual forms to effect. on the shore they lay wet and social by the sea and under the sky.' · the sun illuminates the eye of the man, but 'the eye and the heart of the child. his heart is in the right place. many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it. may 21. i will thank god of myself and for that i have. i will not manufacture remorse of the pattern of others, nor feign their joys. i am i the origin of the poem “each and all.” 1834) trust instinct 299 born tranquil, not a stern economist of time, but never a keen sufferer. i will not affect to suffer. be my life then a long gratitude. i will trust my instincts. for always a reason halts after an instinct, and when i have deviated from the instinct, comes somebody with a profound theory teaching that i ought to have followed it: some goethe, swedenborg, or carlyle. i stick at scolding the boy, yet conformably to rule, i scold him. by and by, the reprimand is a proven error. “our first and third thought coincide.” i was the true philosopher in college, and mr. farrar and mr. hedge and dr. ware the false, yet what seemed then to me less probable ? # “there are three things,” said my worthy friend w. w. to me, “ that make the gentleman, — the hat, the collar, and the boots.” ah, that professor teufelsdrock' had heard the word ! may 29. dr. darwin's work has lost all its consequence in the literary world.” why? not from currie, 1 mr. emerson never mastered the spelling of teufelsdröckh. 2 evidently one of the works of the elder darwin (dr. erasmus). he wrote “the botanic garden," a poem, and later zoönomia, or laws of organic life ;” later still, “ phytologia, or philosophy of agriculture and gardening.” 300 journal [age 31 nor from brown. no. a dim, venerable public decides upon every work. when it offers itself, a sort of perplexity, an uneasy waiting for judgment appears in the living literary judges; but the work presently takes its true place, by no effort, friendly or hostile, but by the real importance of its principles to the constant mind of man. and this in a way that no individual can much affect by blame or praise. it is the specific gravity of the atom. an aspiring young man readily distinguishes in the first circles those who are there by sufferance, and those who constitute them first circles, and attaches himself to the fountains of honor, not to the conduits. the true aspirant goes one step further and discerns in himself the fountain of these fountainlets, and so becomes the giver of all fine and high influences. in him is the source of all the romance, the lustre, the dignity, that fascinates him in some saloons with an inexpressible charm; for, truth, honor, learning, perseverance, are the jove and apollo who bewitched him. may 30. languages as discipline, much reading as an additional atmosphere or two, to gird the loins and make the muscles more tense. it seems time lost for a grown man to be turning the leaves of a 1834) languages. woman 301 dictionary, like a boy, to learn german, but i believe he will gain tension and creative power by so doing. good books have always a prolific atmosphere about them and brood upon the spirit. [newton was still the temporary abidingplace. on may 31 emerson wrote to his brother edward in porto rico: “here sit mother and i among the pine-trees, still almost as we shall lie by and by under them ;” and telling edward of the accession of property that had come to him from his late wife's estate, urged him to come home and join him, saying: “if you will come, we will retreat into berkshire and make a little world of other stuff.”] june 2. the life of women is unfortunately so much for exhibition that every the minutest trait pleases which is wholly natural, even to a girl's crying because it thundered, et ce que disent les femmes l'une de l'autre. what more sensible than what they say of mr. — , that he sells his splendid chinese house and goes to live at watertown because he cannot make a bow and pleasantly entertain the 302 (age 31 journal crowd of company that visit him. c. c. e. says he should build a large room. preached at waltham yesterday. expect every day when some trenchant iarno' will come across me and read me such a lesson. is the preacher one to make a fool of himself for the entertainment of other people? would he say, when there is any difference of level felt in the footboard of the pulpit and the floor of the parlor, you have not said that which you should say? the best sermon would be a quiet, conversational analysis of these felt difficulties, discords; to show the chain under the leather; to show the true, within the supposed advantage of christian institutions. there are several worthy people making themselves less because they would act the police officer, and keep the factory people at church. i say, “be genuine.” they answer,“ if we should, our society, which has no real virtue, would go to pot.” and so the yoke, it is confessed, is only borne out of fear. suppose they should let the societies go down, and form new and genuine ones. let such as felt the advantage of a sermon and social worship meet voluntarily and compel nobody. 1 a character in goethe's wilhelm meister. ou dis 1834) counterworkings 303 june 3. the lower tone you take, the more flexible your voice is. june 5. what perpetual working and counterworking in us, so that many good actions spring from bad motives, and many bad actions from good motives. verily. then how slovenly and despite ourselves we are continually jostled into knowledge of truth. d. p. commends peace to the boys, the boys debate the matter and give such cogent reasons to the contrary, that d. p. in anger and fear to be put down, wades out beyond his depth in the other direction, and gets unawares a knowledge of the infinite reason of love. highest praise and happiness is it to go forward one step of our own seeing and find ourselves in a position whose advantages we foresaw. fatal tendency to hang on to the letter and let the spirit go. we will debate the precept about “turning the cheek to the smiter,” the “coat and cloke,” the “not taking thought what ye shall speak,” etc., and question whether it is now prac ticable, and is now obligatory. yet every one of us has had his hours of illumination by the same spirit, when he fully understood those commands and saw that he did not need them. he 304 journal [age 31 had the commander, giving fresh precepts fit for the moment and the act. yet it is well that christ's are recorded. they show how high the waters flowed when the spirit brooded upon them, and are a measure of our deficiency. the wonder that is felt at these precepts is a measure of our unreason. antagonisms there are persons both of superior character and intellect whose superiority quite disappears when they are put together. they neutralize, anticipate, puzzle, and belittle each other. june 8. the solitary bird that sung in the pine tree reminded me of one talker who has nothing to say alone, but when friends come, and the conversation grows loud, is forthwith set into intense activity, mechanically echoing and strengthening everything that is said, without any regard to the subject or to truth. the soul has its diurnal, annual and secular periodic motions like the needle. you may doubt for a day, but you will believe before the week's end; you may abandon your friendships and your designs, as you think, on good advice, for 1834) a railway ride 305 these months, but by and by it will come back as with thunder from all heaven, that god crowns him who persists in his purposes — no fairweather friend, that the very armory of heroes and sages is in obscurity, conflict, high heart which sustained itself alone. you are there in that place to testify. there was a man in sais who was very good to all people, but he could not be trusted alone. when he was left alone, all the devils associated themselves to him, and he robbed, murdered, committed adultery, blasphemed, lied, cringed. june 10. one has dim foresight of hitherto uncomputed mechanical advantages who rides on the railroad, and moreover a practical confirmation of the ideal philosopher that matter is phenomenal, whilst men and trees and barns whiz by you as fast as the leaves of a dictionary. as our teakettle hissed along through a field of mayflowers, we could judge of the sensations of a swallow who skims by trees and bushes with about the same speed. the very permanence of matter seems compromised, and oaks, fields, hills, hitherto esteemed symbols of stability, do absolutely en 306 (age 31 journal dance by you. the countryman called it “hell in harness.” : what habits of observation has my friend, what keen senses. it would seem as if nothing, though under your nose, was permitted to be visible to you until he had seen it. thereafter, all the world may see it, and it never leaves your eyes. washington wanted a fit public. aristides, phocion, regulus, hampden had worthy observers. but there is yet a dearth of american genius. i went to the menagerie tuesday and saw 14 pelicans, a sacred ibis, a gazelle,zebras, a capibara, ich neumon, hyena, etc. it seems to me like“visiting the spirits in prison." yet not to“ preach.” there was the mystery. no word could pass from me to them. animals have been called by some german “the dreams of nature." i think we go to our own dreams for a conception of their consciousness. in a dream i have the same instinci it would seem that mr. emerson had taken a ride on the portion of the new railroad between boston and worcester which was opened in april, 1834, when the locomotive engine had been for the first time introduced in new england. 1834] animals. teaching 307 tive obedience, the same torpidity of the highest power, the same unsurprised assent to the monstrous, as these metamorphosed men exhibit. the pelicans remind one of nick bottom. one has a kind of compassionate fear lest they should have a glimpse of their forlorn condition. what a horrible calamity would be to them one moment's endowment of reason! yet sometimes the negro excites the same feeling, and sometimes the sharp-witted, prosperous white man. you think, if he could overlook his own condition, he could not be kept from suicide. but to the contemplations of the reason is there never penitence. the scholar seeks the ingenuous boy to apprize him of the treasures within his reach, to show him poetry, religion, philosophy, and congratulate him on being born into the universe. the boy's parents immediately call to thank him for his interest in their son, and ask him to procure him a schoolmaster's situation. june 18. everything teaches, even dilettantism. the dilettante does not, to be sure, learn anything of botany by playing with his microscope, and 308 journal [age 31 with the terminology of plants, but he learns what dilettantism is; he distinguishes between what he knows and what he affects to know, and through some pain and self-accusation he is attaining to things themselves. webster's speeches seem to be the utmost that the unpoetic west has accomplished or can. r we all lean on england; scarce a verse, a page, i a newspaper, but is writ in imitation of english forms; our very manners and conversation are traditional, and sometimes the life seems dying out of all literature, and this enormous paper currency of words is accepted instead. i suppose the evil may be cured by this rank rabble party, the jacksonism of the country, heedless of english and of all literature a stone cut out of the ground without hands; — they may root out the hollow dilettantism of our cultivation in the coarsest way, and the newi born may begin again to frame their own world with greater advantage. meantime webster is no imitator, but a true genius for his work, if that is not the highest. but every true man stands on the top of the world. he has a majestic understanding, which is in its right place, the servant of the reason, and employed ever to 1834) goethe 309 bridge over the gulf between the revelations of his reason, his vision, and the facts within, in the microscopic optics of the calculators that surround him. long may he live. it is singular that every natural object, how wearisome soever in daily observation, is always agreeable in description, and doubly so in illustration. june 20. what a charm does wilhelm meister spread over society, which we were just getting to think odious. and yet, as i read the book to-day and thought of goethe as the tag und jahres hefte describes him, he seemed to me, all-sided, gifted, indefatigable student as he is, — to be only another poor monad, after the fashion of his little race bestirring himself immensely to hide his nothingness, spinning his surface directly before the eye to conceal the universe of his ignorance. the finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread, or else expedients to keep the writer from the mad-house and amuse him and his fellow men with the illusion that he knew; but the greatest passages they have writ, the infinite conclusions to which they owe their fame, are only confessions. through310 [age 31 journal out goethe prevails the undersong of confession and amazement; the apothegm of socrates; the recantation of man. the first questions are always to be asked, and we fend them off by much speaking and many books, so that scarcely can i blame the man who affects to philosophize as some sensualists do, and says his fun is profound calculation. and yet it is best in the poorest view to keep the powers healthy and supple by appropriate action. “all things,” complained the philosopher, “hasten back to unity.” as the bells in america toll because lafayette has died in france. the bells in all the earth, in church, monastery, castle, and pagoda might well toll for the departure of so pure, faithful, heroic, secular a spirit out of the earth to which it has been salt and spikenard. go in, great heart! to the invisible, to the kingdom of love and faith. he has “ lingered among the last of those bright clouds which on the steady breeze of honour sail in long procession, calm and beautiful.” it occurred that the gestures of the reason are graceful and majestic, those of the understanding quick and mean. the uplifted eye of mem1834] reason. woman 311 ory, the solemn pace, perfect repose, and simple attitudes of meditation inspire respect, but the moment the senses call us back, and the understanding directs us, we run, start, look askance, or turn and look behind us, we skulk, fumble, exceed in manner and voice, and suffer. live by reason, and you will not make the foul mouths, nor utter the foul breath nor drag disgracefully sleepy days that convince alexander that he is mortal. when minerva, they say, saw her distorted face in a brook, she threw away her hautboy. june 26. if friendship were perfect, there would be no false prayers. but what could wilhelm have done at the crabs house? the rare women that charm us are those happily constituted persons who take possession of society wherever they go, and give it its form, its tone. if they sit, as we sit, to wait for what shall be said, we shall have no olympus. to their genius elegance is essential. it is enough that we men stammer and mince words and play the clown and pedant alternately. they must speak as clearly and simply as a song. i say all this is a happiness, not a merit, and few there 312 (age 31 journal be that find it. society cannot give it, nor the want of society withhold it. aunt mary and s. a. r.' never wait for the condescending influences of society, but seek it out, scrutinize it, amuse themselves with the little, sympathize with and venerate the great. and ellen, in a life of solitude, was incapable of an inelegance. yesterday the attentions of the poor girl with flowers made me think how elegant is kindness. kindness is never vulgar. genius and strong will may be only phenomena in the chain of causes, and most men and women may grow up to be what they are, as the cows and horses grow in the pastures, but kindness from a perfect stranger — a sudden will to benefit me and everybody — is a salient spring, it is a hint of the presence of the living god. the condition of young women, even the most favored, excites sometimes a profound pity. ... but kindness, native courtesy, redeems them at once out of your pity; they are happy and the objects of your joy and your respect. “ happy, happier far than thou, with the laurel on thy brow, she who makes the humblest hearth lovely but to one on earth.”. 1 mrs. ripley. 2 [mrs. hemans.] 1834) goethe and morals 313 next door to us lives a young man who is learning to drum. he studies hard at his science every night. i should like to reward his music with a wreath of smilax peduncularis.' goethe and carlyle, and perhaps novalis, have an undisguised dislike or contempt for common virtue standing on common principles. meantime they are dear lovers, steadfast maintainers of the pure ideal morality. but they worship it as the highest beauty; their love is artistic. praise socrates to them, or fénelon, much more any inferior contemporary good man, and they freeze at once into silence. it is to them sheer prose. the tag und jahres hefte is a book unparalleled in america, an account of all events, persons, studies, taken from one point of view. the problem to be solved is, how shall this soul called goethe be educated? and whatever he does or whatever befalls him is viewed solely in relation to its effect upon the development of his mind. even in the arms of his mistress at rome he says he studied sculpture and poetry. to husband our admiration is an intellectual temperance indispensable to health. but goethe 1. probably the older name for s. rotundifolia, the common catbriar. 314 journal (age 31 was a person who hated words that did not stand for things, and had a sympathy with everything that existed, and therefore never writes without saying something. he will be artist, and look at god and man, and the future, and the infinite, as a self-possessed spectator, who believed that what he saw he could delineate. herder wisely questioned whether a man had a right thus to affect the god, instead of working with all his heart in his place. selfcultivation is yet the moral of all that goethe has writ, and in indolence, intolerance and perversion i think we can spare an olive and a laurel for him. no man has drawn his materials of fiction from so wide a circuit. very properly he introduces into the machinery of his romance whatever feeling or impulse the most rapt enthusiast has trusted in. coincidences, dreams, omens, spiritual impressions, and a habitual religious faith all these are the materials which, as a wise artist, he avails himself of. nevertheless there is a difference between thought and thought, and it is as real a defect in a man not to perceive the right of his moral sentiments to his allegiance, as it is not to be conscious of moral sentiments. yet goethe, with all his fine things about entsagen, 1834] goethe's lapse 315 can write and print too like rochester and béranger. as to carlyle, he is an exemplification of novalis's maxim concerning theunion of poetry and philosophy. he has married them, and both are the gainers. who has done so before as truly and as well? sartor resartus is a philosophical poem. [added here, november 30.] goethe is praised as uvplovovs, or all-sided. and, if i understand it, this is the apology that is made for his epicurean life compared with his religious perceptions. to praise a man for such quality is like praising an observatory for being very low and massive, and a very good fort. it is not more the office of man to receive all impressions, than it is to distinguish sharply between them. he that has once pronounced intelligently the word “self renouncement,” “ invisible leader," “ powers of sorrow," and the like, is forever bound to the service of the superhuman. ca ns e a ma n 10 weare wonderfully protected. we have scarce a misfortune, a hindrance, an infirmity, an enemy, but it is somehow productive of singular advantage to us. after groaning through years 316 [age 31 journal of poverty and hard labor, the mind perceives that really it has come the shortest road to a valuable position, that, though the rough climate was not good for leaves and flowers, it was good for timber. it has been saved from what associations. it has been introduced to what thoughts and feelings. “he knows you not, ye mighty powers! who knows not sorrow.” god brings us by ways we know not and like not into paradise. july 12. “ lincoln bell aings o'er the fen his far renowned alarum.” i read this and straight regret that i did not visit lincoln cathedral and hear the far renowned alarum; such superstitious preference do we give to other men's senses. undoubtedly something in my own sphere or spherule takes the place to me of that particular gratification. i have some “lincoln bell,” heard with joy in my ordinary movements. yet i long to hear this other, simply out of deference to my fellows in england who have exalted it by their love. better believe in the perfection of thine own lot. retreat upon your own spontaneous emotions. mark the occasions of them, and cheerfully believe that what son 1834) trust your thought 317 has excited true and deep pleasure in one man is fitted to excite the same emotions in all men. so will i find my lincolnshire in the next pasture, and the“ bell” in the first thrush that sings. napoleon sat back on his horse in the midst of the march to catch the fine tone of a bell. with myself i shall always dwell, but lincoln and niagara and cairo are less accessible. and yet, and yet, can aught approach the effect of the sabbath morn in quietest retreats? and yet is its sacredness derivative and alien. some thoughts are superficial, others have their root in your being. always discriminate, when you would write, between them, and never choose the first for a topic. diogenes moved his tub in winter into the sun, and in summer into the shade, and compared himself to the persian king who spent the one season at susa and the other at ecbatana. “as many languages as a man knows,” said charles v, “so many times is he a man.” our eagerness to possess this gift of foreign speech rather hinders than helps us to it. i stand in a company where circulates how much wit and information, yet not one thought can pass from them to me, — i do not understand their speech. 1 this anecdote was later used in the poem “ each and dn au." 318 journal (age 31 so0 my countryman enters who understands it, and the communication between them and him is perfect. stung with desire, i devote myself to the task of learning the language, but this perpetual poetic vision before me, which is quite foreign from their experience, and which i shall lose as soon as i master the speech, affords me so much entertainment as to embarrass every particular effort at dialogue, and dispirits me and unfits me for that simple effort to know the thing said to me, and to convey my thought in return, which is the best instructor. ralph emerson said to me in paris, that the americans think there is some magic in speaking and writing french. he who has mastered the tongue sees nothing behind him but simple addition of particulars, and this new knowledge blends harmoniously with all his experience; and, moreover, it has lost all its anticipated value. when the wrong handle is grasped of comparative anatomy, the tresses of beauty remind us of a mane. how much is an assembly of men restrained! it seems often like a collection of angels, and a collection of demons in disguise. come dal fuoco il caldo, esser diviso non può'l bel dall eterno. michel angelo. 1834) scholar in company 319 bangor,' july 15. the thoughtful man laments perhaps the unpliancy of his organization, which draws down the corners of his mouth to ludicrous longitude, whilst all the company chat and titter around him. what matters it? he actually sympathizes with each of the company more truly than the liveliest chatterbox; for they are all going back from this smiling time to discipline, to silence, labor and anxiety, and then they recall the melancholy man with a fraternal remembrance. in our plans of life an apparent confusion. we seem not to know what we want. why, it is plain we can do best something which in the present form of society will be misconstrued and taken for another thing. i wish to be a true and free man, and therefore would not be a woman, or a king, or a clergyman, each of which classes, i mr. emerson had been invited to preach in bangor for one or more sundays. possibly there was a vacancy in the pulpit, for he wrote to dr. hedge: “i am almost persuaded to sit down on the banks of this pleasant stream, and, if i could persuade a small number of persons to join my colony, we would have a settlement thirty miles up the river, at once.” evidently he had still the hope of establishing a home with his brothers. 320 journal (age 31 in the present order of things, is a slave. mr. canning judged right in preferring the title of mister, in the company of alexander and napoleon, to my lord. the simple, untitled, unofficed citizen possessing manners, power, cultivation, is more formidable and more pleasing than any dignitary whose condition and etiquette only makes him more vulnerable and more helpless. noble strain of the revolutionary papers. see williamson, [history of maine,] volume ii, pp. 408-411. and when the port of boston had been closed (in june, 1774), sixteen days they tolled the bells in the town of falmouth all day, and addressed an affectionate letter to the inhabitants of boston. “we look upon you,” they say, “as sufferers for the common cause of american liberty. we highly appreciate your courage to endure privation and distress, sensibly aware that the season puts to severest trial the virtues of magnanimity, patience, and fortitude, which your example will honorably exemplify. we beg leave to tender you all the encouragements which the considerations of friendship and respect can inspire, and all the assurances of succor which full hearts and feeble abilities can render.” 1cou 1834] a hero. god in all 321 july 18. the abomination of desolation is not a burned town, nor a country wasted by war, but the discovery that the man who has moved you is an enthusiast upon calculation. “ indeed all that class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity.” may be so. that gives them their worth. it is that we ourselves, the observers, have been imposed upon and led to condemn the actor before, and the far-sighted heroism of the sufferer has felt the condemnation, and yet persisted in his own judgment and kept up his courage — it is that conviction that adds eagerness to our commendation now. what is there of the divine in a load of bricks? what is there of the divine in a barber's shop? ... much. all. george a. sampson died wednesday evening, 23 july, 1834. newton, august 9. carlyle says society is extinct. be it so. society existed in a clan ; existed in alaric and attila's time, in the crusades, in the puritan conventicles. very well. i had rather be soli322 journal [age 31 ilical. tary as now, than social as then. society exists now where there is love and faithful fellowworking, only the persons composing it are fewer — societies of two or three, instead of nations. societies, parties, are only incipient stages, tadpole states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly not. the true and finished man is ever alone. men cannot satisfy him ; he needs god, and his intercourse with his brother is 'ever condescending, and in a degree hypocritical. “he charged them that they should tell no man.” “hold thy tongue for one day; tomorrow thy purpose will be clearer.” why, yea, and it would be good if the minister put off his black clothes and so affirmed the reality of spiritual distinctions. when i was at the ordination at bangor the other day, the men in the pulpit seemed woodsawyers dressed up, as they stood up and spoke in succession. it would not out of my head. by and by a true priest spoke. ... renounce. work hard. in the great heats why should you leave your labor for a little sweat, since the haymaker does not? he cannot; therefore, if you are noble, you will not. renounce. when i was in the pasture and stopped to eat, the familiar cried, eat not. tut, 1834) first thoughts 323 replied i, does nemesis care for a whortleberry? i looked at the world, and it replied, yea. but the clock struck two and the table was covered with fishes and fowls and confections. they are very good and my appetite is keen; and i could not see any good in refusing the pleasure of a hearty meal that was as great as the pleasure. look back, cried the familiar, at years of good meat in boston. do you miss anything that you forebore to eat? nothing, replied i. first thoughts are from god; but not the numerically first; allow what space you may for the mind to grasp the facts, then the thoughts that are first in place are divine and the second earthly. sunday, august 10. at mr. grafton's church this p.m. and heard the eloquent old man preach his jewish sermon dry-eyed. indeed i felt as a much worse spirit might feel among worshippers — as if the last link was severed that bound him to their traditions and he ought to go out hence. strange that such fatuity as calvinism is now, should be able to stand yet — mere shell as it is — in the face of day. at every close of a paragraph it almost seemed as if this devout old man 324 journal [age 31 looked intelligence and questioned the whole thing. what a revival, if st. paul should come and replace these threadbare rags with the inexhaustible resources of sound ethics. yet they are so befooled as to call this sucked eggshell high-toned orthodoxy, and to talk of anything true as mere morality. is it not time to present this matter of christianity exactly as it is, to take away all false reverence from jesus, and not mistake the stream for the source ? “it is no more according to plato than according to me.” god is in every man. god is in jesus, but let us not magnify any of the vehicles, as we magnify the infinite law itself. we have defrauded him of his claim of love on all noble hearts by our superstitious mouth-honor. we love socrates, but give jesus the unitarian association. see two sincere men conversing together. they deport themselves as if self-existent. are they not for the time two gods ? for every true man is as if he should say, i speak for the universe; i am here to maintain the truth against all comers; i am in this place to testify. august 11. is not man in our day described by the very attributes which once he gave his god? is not 1834) children. real men 325 the sea his minister ; the clouds his chariot; the flame his wheels; and the winds his wings? august 13 blessed is the child; the unconscious is ever the act of god himself. nobody can reflect upon his unconscious period, or any particular word or act in it, with regretor contempt. bard or hero cannot look down upon the word or gesture of a child; it is as great as they. little albert sampson asks when his father will come home, and insists that his father can't die. сат august 14. we look up sometimes with surprise to see that the tree, the hill, the schoolhouse are still there, and have not vanished in our mood of pyrrhonism. if there were many philosophers, the world would go to pieces presently, all sand, no lime. quam parva sapientia. all society and government seems to be making believe, when we see such hollow boys with a grave countenance taking their places as legislators, presidents, and so forth. it could not be but that at intervals throughout society there are real men intermixed, whose natural basis is broad enough to sustain these paper men in common times, as the 326 (age 31 journal carpenter puts one iron bar in his banister to five or six wooden ones. yet when at other times i consider the capacities of man and see how nearalike they all are, and that (they] always seem to be on the verge of all that is great, and yet invisibly retained in inactivity and unacquaintance with our powers, it seems as if men were like the neuters of the hive, every one of which is capable of transformation into the queen-bee, which is done with some one as soon as the sovereign is removed. the fourth chapter of my meditation is the observation that the soul, or the day, is a turning wheel which brings every one of its manifold faces for a brief season to the top. now, this dunghill quality of animal courage, indomitable pluck, seems to be the supreme virtue; anon, patience; then, elegance; then, learning; then, wit; then, eloquence; then, wealth ; then, piety ; then beauty ; each seems in turn the one desirable quality ; and thus every dog has his day. it occurred that the fine verse of “honorable age,” etc., in wisdom of solomon is quite greek in its genius, not jewish. august 15. natural history by itself has no value; it is like a single sex; but marry it to human history, 1834) shakespeare 327 and it is poetry. whole floras, all linnæus', and buffon's volumes contain not one line of poetry, but the meanest natural fact, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the interpretation or even associated to [with] a fact in human nature is beauty, is poetry, is truth at once.' saturday eve, august 16. king lear and antony and cleopatra still fill me with wonder. every scene is as spirited as if writ by a fresh hand of the first class, and there is never straining; sentiments of the highest elevation are as simply expressed as the stage directions. they praise scott for taking kings and nobles off their stilts and giving them simple dignity, but scott's grandees are all turgid compared with shakspear's. there is more true elevation of character in prince hal's sentence about the pleached doublet than in any king in the romances. another mastership of shakspear is the immortality of the style, the speeches of passion are writ, for the most part, in a style as fresh now as it was when the play was published. the remarkable sentences of 1 this passage is used in nature, vol. i, p. 28 (centenary edition), but in not quite so pleasing a form. 328 (age 31 journal lear, hamlet, othello, macbeth, might as naturally have been composed in 1834 as in 1600. “ i tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; i never gave you kingdom, called you children, you owe me no subscription,” etc. august 17. freedom. a very small part of a man's voluntary acts are such as agree perfectly with his conviction, and it is only at rare intervals that he is apprized of this incongruity — “so difficult is it to read our own consciousness without mistakes.” whose act is this church-going, whose this praying? the man might as well be gone, so he leave a maelzel' machine in his place. evening. on the wisdom of ignorance. milton was too learned, though i hate to say it. it wrecked his originality. he was more indebted to the hebrew than even to the greek. wordsworth is a more original poet than he. that seems the poet's garland. he speaks by that right, that he has somewhat yet unsaid to say. scott and coleridge and such like are not poets, only professors 1 johann nepomuc mälzel, an austrian, inventor of an orchestral panharmonicon, visited boston in 1826. 1834] message, not man 329 of the art. homer's is the only epic. he is original, yet he separates before the german telescopes into two, ten or twenty stars. shakspeare, by singular similarity of fortune, undeniably an original and unapproached bard, — first of men, is yet enfolded in the same darkness as an individual writer. his best works are of doubted authenticity, and what was his, and what his novelist's, and what the players', seems yet disputed: a sharp illustration of that relentless disregard of the individual in regard for the race which runs through history. it is not an individual, but the general mind of man that speaks from time to time, quite careless and quite forgetful of what mouth or mouths it makes use of. go to the bard or orator that has spoken and ask him if what he said were his own? no; he got it he knows not where, but it is none of his. for example, edward emerson, whence had you those thunderous sentences in your master's oration?' there is nothing in wordsworth so vicious in sentiment as milton's account of god's chariots, etc., standing harnessed for great days. we republicans cannot relish watts' or milton's royal imagery. i suggesting that edward was influenced by webster, in whose office he was studying at the time of his college address. ane 330 journal [age 31 is it not true that contemplation belongs to us, and therefore outward worship, because our reason is at discord with our understanding? and that, whenever we live rightly, thought will express itself in ordinary action so fully as to make a special action, that is, a religious form, impertinent? is not solomon's temple built because solomon is not a temple, but a brothel and a change-house? is not the meeting-house dedicated because men are not? is not the church opened and filled on sunday because the commandments are not kept by the worshippers on monday? but when he who worships there, speaks the truth, follows the truth, is the truth's; when he awakes by actual communion to the faith that god is in him, will he need any temple, any prayer? the very fact of worship declares that god is not at one with himself, that there are two gods. now does this sound like high treason and go to lay flat all religion? it does threaten our forms; but does not that very 1 . form” already sound hollow? it threathol forms, but it does not touch injuriously l'ipo 1. would there be danger if there were risi mpion? if the doctrine that god is in man se prithfully taught and received, if i lived to .;... l'he truth and enact it, if i pursued every 1834) the coming preacher 331 generous sentiment as one enamoured, if the majesty of goodness were reverenced, would not such a principle serve me by way of police at least as well as a connecticut sunday? but the people, the people. you hold up your pasteboard religion for the people who are unfit for a true. so you say. but presently there will arise a race of preachers who will take such hold of the omnipotence of truth that they will blow the old falsehood to shreds with the breath of their mouth. there is no material show so splendid, no poem so musical as the great law of compensation in our moral nature. when an ardent mind once gets a glimpse of that perfect beauty, and sees how it envelopes him and determines all his being, will he easily slide back to a periodic shouting about “ blood atoning”? i apprehend that the religious history of society is to show a pretty rapid abandonment of forms of worship and the renovation and exaltation of preaching into real anxious instruction. august 18. the mussulman is right, by virtue of the law of compensation, in supposing the scraps of paper he saves will be a carpet under his feet over the bridge of purgatory. he has 332 (age 31 journal ince seca s learned the lesson of reverence to the name of allah. august 19. never assume. be genuine. so wrote i for my own guidance months and years ago; but how vainly ! show me in the world the sincere man. even the wit, the sentiment that seasons the dinner, is a sort of hypocrisy to hide the coarseness of appetite. the child is sincere, and the man when he is alone, if he be not a writer; but on the entrance of the second person, hypocrisy begins.' what mischief is in this art of writing. an unlettered man considers a fact, to learn what it means; the lettered man does not sooner see it than it occurs to him how it can be told. and this fact of looking at it as an artist blinds him to the better half of the fact. unhappily he is conscious of the misfortune, which rather makes it worse. as cultivated flowers turn their stamens to petals, so does he turn the practick part to idle show. he has a morbid growth of eyes; he sees with his feet. what an unlucky creature is dr. channing. let him into a room; would not all the company feel that, simple as he looked, 1 this sentence occurs in “ friendship," essays, second series. 1834) writing. gentilesse 333 the cat was not more vigilant, that he had the delirium tremens and its insomnolency, that he heard what dropped from any as if he read it in print? we sit down with intent to write truly, and end with making a book that contains no thought of ours, but merely the tune of the time. here am i writing a 0 b k poem, free to say what i choose, and it looks to me now as ifit would scarce express thought of mine, but be a sort of fata morgana reflecting the images of byron, shakspear, and the newspapers. we do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best. august 22. the greatest men have been most thoughtful for the humblest. socrates, of whom see the fine story told in plutarch on tranquillity; alfred, franklin, jesus christ and all the pauls and fénelons he has made. it requires no ordinary elevation to go by the social distinctions and feel that interest in humanity itself which is implied in attentions to the obscure. wordsworth is a philanthropist; fox; wilberforce; howard; montaigne. washington introduced the ass into america. and, so keep me heaven, i will love the race in general if i cannot in any particular. 334 journal (age 31 august 30. . were it not a heroic adventurein meto insiston being a popular speaker, and run full tilt against the fortune who with such beautiful consistency shows evermore her back? charles's näif censure last night provoked me to show him a fact, apparently wholly new to him, that my entire success, such as it is, is composed wholly of particular failures, — every public work of mine of the least importance, having been (probably without exception) noted at the time as a failure. the only success (agreeably to common ideas) has been in the country, and there founded on the false notion that here was a boston preacher. i will take mrs. barbauld's line for my motto « and the more falls i get, move faster on.”: i never was on a coach which went fast enough for me. it is extremely.disagreeable, nay, a little fiendish to laugh amid dreams. in bed i would keep my countenance, if you please. i of a brook. 1834) courage in act -335 a poem is made up of thoughts, each of which filled the whole sky of the poet in its turn. newton, september 13. there are some things which we should do, if we considered only our own capacity and safety, which we stick at doing when we think of the estimates and prejudices of other people. for the freest man society still holds some bribe. he wants of it a living, or a friend, or a wife, or a fit employment, or a reputation correspondent to his self-esteem. is it not possible to draw in his importunate beggar hands and ask nothing but what he can himself satisfy ? in some respects certainly. in this matter of reputation — is it not possible to settle it in one's mind immoveably that merit of the first class cannot, in the nature of things, be readily appreciated; that immortal deeds, over which centuries are to pass as days, are not brought to light and wholly comprehended and decided upon in a few hours? the wise man is to settle it immoveably in his mind, that he only is fit to decide on his best action; he only is fit to praise it; his verdict is praise enough, and as to society, “their hiss is thine applause.” it is an ordinary enhancement of our admiration of 336 (age 31 journal noble thinking and acting that it was done in wilful defiance of present censure out of a clear foresight of the eternal praise of the just. ... next, as to thoughts of the first class. do not cease to utter them and make them as pure of all dross as if thou wert to speak to sages and demigods, and be no whit ashamed if not one, yea, not one in the assembly should give sign of intelligence. make it not worthy of the beggar to receive, but of the emperor to give. is it not pleasant to you, unexpected wisdom? depth of sentiment in middle life? iarnos and abbés that in the thick of the crowd are true kings, and gentlemen without the harness and the envy of the throne? is it not conceivable that a man or a woman in coarse clothes may have unspeakable comfort in being the only human being privy to a virtuous action which he or she is in the act of consummating? ... perhaps you cannot carry too far the doctrine of self-respect. the story that strikes me; the joke that makes me laugh often; the face that bewitches me; the flower, the picture, the building, that, left to myself, i prefer, these i ought to remember, love, and praise. for there is nothing casual or capricious in the impres1834] self-respect 337 : sion they make (provided always that i act naturally,) but they make this strong impression because i am fit for them and they are fit for me. but if i forsake my peculiar tastes, overawed by the popular voice or deferring to mr. everett's or mr. wordsworth's or baron swedenborg's tastes, i am straightway dwarfed 'of my natural dimensions for want of fit nourishment and fit exercise. it is as if you should fill the stomach of a horse with the food of a fish. lean without fear on your own tastes. is there danger in the doctrine as if it permitted self-indulgence? fool! every man hath his own conscience as well as his own genius, and if he is faithful to himself he will yield that law implicit obedience. all these doctrines contained in the proposition, thou art sufficient unto thyself (ne te quæsiveris extra) are perfectly harmless, on the supposition that they are heard as well as spoken in faith. there is no danger in them to him who is really in earnest to know the truth, but like everything else, may be a mere hypocrite's cloak to such as seek offence, or to such as talk for talk's sake. una sunday, september 14. what is the doctrine of infallible guidance if one will abdicate choice, but striving to act uncon338 journal (age 31 sciously, to resume the simplicity of childhood? it is to act on the last impression derived from a knowledge of all the facts, and not wilfully to secure a particular advantage. the single-minded actor insists on the tranquillity of his own mind.' ne te quæsiveris extra. i would insist so far on my own tastes as to read those books i fancy and postpone reading those which offer me no attraction. if dr. linberg would have me study swedenborg because i have respect for his doctrines, i shall hold it sufficient answer that the aura of those books is not agreeable to my intellectual state. it is not for nothing that one word makes such impression, and the other none; it is not without preëstablished harmony, this sculpture in the memory. the eye was placed where that ray should fall, to the end that it might testify of that particular ray. i will not so far do violence to myself as to read them against my inclination, believing that those books which at any time i crave are the books fittest at that time for me. this is carlyle's justification for giving such humorous prominence to such incidents as george fox's leather suit of clothes. if i obey my pas1 this seems an attempt to reconcile the quaker doctrine of acquiescence with self-reliance. this was later done in “the oversoul.” 1834) george w. blagden 339 sion, instead of my reason, that is another affair. the appeal is always open from philip drunk to philip sober. september 15. heard mr. blagden' preach yesterday with much interest. what an orator would some extraordinary discipline of events make of him ! could some socrates win him to the love of the true and the beautiful; or extreme sorrows arouse the mighty interior reactions; or revolutionary violence call into life the best ambition; could any event acquaint him with himself, hę would, with his rare oratorical talents, absolutely command us. his manner is the best i know of, and seems to me unexceptionable. as to his preaching, that was good, too, in the main. the skeleton of his sermon, or, as charles called it, the frame of his kite, was fallacious, illogical after the most ordinary fashion of the wisners and beechers, but his strong genius led him continually to penetrate this husk, and, leaning simply on himself, speak the truth out of this unnecessary mask. the conflict of the tradition and of his own genius is visible throughout. he gets his hands and eyes up in describing jehovah i dr. george washington blagden, pastor of the old south church, rs 340 journal (age 31 exalted as in calvinistic state, and then saves the whole by ending with — “in the heart's affections.” i listen without impatience, because, though the whole is literally false, it is really true; only he speaks parables which i translate as he goes; thus, he says, “ the carnal mind hates god continually”; and i say, “ it is the instinct of the understanding to contradict the reason.” one phrase translates the other. reaso se the charm of italy is the charm of its names. i have seen as fine days from my own window. then what boswellism it is to travel! illusx trate, eternize your own woodhouse. it is much cheaper, and quite possible to any resolute thinker. what matters it, i said to myself on my journey, as the persons in the coach disputed as to the name of the town, whether this bunch of barberry bushes and birches visible from the coachwindow be called bridgewater or taunton ? so, what matter whether this hill and yon green field be called garofalo, terni, or ipswich and cape cod? let the soul be fully awake, and its thought is so much that the place becomes nothing. remember the sunday morning in naples when i said, “this moment is the truest 1834] word and life. wealth 341 vision, the best spectacle i have seen amid all the wonders, and this moment, this vision i might have had in my own closet in boston.” hence learn that it is an unworthy superstition for seers to go to italy or france and come home and describe houses and things ; let them see men and magnify the passages of common life. let them be so man-wise that they can see through the coat, the rank, the language, and sympathize promptly with that other self that under these thin disguises wholly corresponds to their own. ... you do not know any socrates. very likely. the philosopher whom you have admired in discourse makes a different impression in private life. very likely. most men do ; their aims are not distinct enough. as his aim becomes more distinct, it will insensibly pervade and characterize his private action, his manners, his tabletalk. the whole matter of riches and poverty is reversed by the act of reflexion, whenever it begins. the intellect at once takes possession of another's wealth, and habits, and performances, as if it were its own. who is rich in the room 342 [age 31 journal where socrates sits but he? whilst webster speaks to the senate, who is formidable but he ? the intellect, fairly excited, overleaps all bounds with equal ease, and is as easily master of millions as master of one. with each divine impulse it rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite and comes out into eternity, inspires and expires its air. it converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with phocion and epictetus than with the persons in the house. afternoon. no art can exceed the mellow beauty of one square rood of ground in the woods this afternoon. the noise of the locust, the bee, and the pine ; the light, the insect forms, butterflies, cankerworms hanging, balloon spiders swinging, devils-needles cruising, chirping grasshoppers ; the tints and forms of the leaves and trees, not a flower but its form seems a type, not a capsule but is an elegant seedbox,then the myriad asters, polygalas, and golden-rods, and through the bush the far pines, and overhead the eternal sky. all the pleasing forms of art are imitations of these, and yet before the beauty of a right action all this beauty is cold and unaffecting. 1834] arc and orbit 343 noble scene in i promessi sposi, the humiliation of fra cristoforo. that is what we aim to teach in all our christian rhetoric about the transforming power of godliness. young men, struck with particular observations, begin to make collections of related truths and please themselves, as burton did, with thinking the wheel, an arc of whose curve they discern, will, by their careful addition of arc to arc as they descry them, by and by come full circle, and be contained in the field of their vision. by and by they learn that the addition of particular facts brings them no nearer to the completion of an infinite orbit. shall i say that the use of natural science seems merely ancillary to moral? i would learn the law of the diffraction of a ray because, when i understand it, it will illustrate, perhaps suggest a new truth in ethics. september 16. how despicable are the starts, sidelong glances, and lookings back of suspicious men. go forward and look straight ahead, though you die for it. abernethy says in his hunter book, that the eye-sockets are so formed in the 344 (age 31 journal gods and heroes of greek sculpture that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint and take furtive glances on this side and that. you have looked behind you at the passenger and caught his eye looking behind also. what dastards you both are for that moment! the unconscious forever, which turns the whole head or nothing ! september 17. how truly has poetry represented the difficulty of reflexion in the story of proteus or silenus, and in that of odin's prophetess! any evasion, any digression, anything but sitting down before the gates with immoveable determination that they mustopen. one of the forms the proteus takes is that of civil self-depreciation. “you quite mistake, sir; i am not that you took me for, a poor, evanescent topic really not worth your consideration; it was my resemblance to a relation that deceived you. had you not better seek that?” the poet writes for readers he little thinks of. persons whom he could not bear, and who could not bear him, yet find passages in his works which are to them as their own thoughts. so aunt mary quotes the verses. 1834) unconscious strength 345 “ that which sir william pepperell willed, came to pass.” there is in some men, as it were, a preëxistent harmony stablished between them and the course of events, so that they will at the precise moment that which god does. they are pitched to the tune of the time. or, shall i say, they are like the fly in the coach? september 22. one is daunted by every one of a multitude of rules which we read in books of criticism, but when we speak or write unconsciously we are carried through them all safely without offending or perceiving one. october 6. in september, the roads and woods were full of crickets, and as fast as one falls by the way, the rest eat him up. the high prize of eloquence may be mine, the joy of uttering what no other can utter, and what all must receive. i thought how much, not how little accomplishment in manners, speech, practick, address, an open eye discovers in each passenger. if an i williamson. 346 journal [age 31 equal vitality is dealt out to each man, how strange, if diverging by all that force from your line, your neighbor had not attained a degree of mastery in one sort admirable to you. insist on yourself' .... adhere to your own and produce it with the meek courage that intimates, this possession is my all; is my inheritance from almighty god and must have value. october 14. every involuntary repulsion that arises in your mind, give heed unto. it is the surface of a central truth. in boston, at second church, george sampson told me after i preached my sermon on habit, that mr. washburn said to him, that he wished he was in the habit of hearing such sermons as that; which speech i found to be good praise and good blame.” new york, october 18. received the tidings of the death of my dear brother edward on the first day of this month i here follows a short passage printed in “self-reliance.” 2 this passage is written in here in mr. emerson's handwriting of many years later. edward bliss emerson ea 1834] edward. death 347 at st. john, porto rico. so falls one pile more of hope for this life. i see i am bereaved of a part of myself. « whatever fortunes wait my future life the beautiful is vanished and returns not.” : october 27. “let them rave ! thou art quiet in thy grave." : even so, how oft saith the spirit, that happier is the lot of the dead than of the living that are yet alive. who that sees the spirit of the beast uppermost in the politics and the movements of the time, but only congratulates washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, and forever safe, that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjui from schiller's wallenstein, coleridge's translation. for an account of edward bliss emerson, see cabot's and holmes's memoirs of emerson, also senator hoar's autobiography, and emerson's “ in memoriam e. b. e.” in the poems (centenary and riverside editions) before which he placed his brother's “ last farewell ” on leaving home, for porto rico. see also the “ dirge.” 2 quoted from memory incorrectly from tennyson's “ dirge.” 348 (age 31 journal gated in him.' and edward's fervid heart is also forever still, no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world. and they who survive and love men have reason to apprehend that, short as their own time may be, they may yet outlive the honor, the religion, yea, the liberty of the country. yet, yet is “ hope the paramount duty which heaven lays for its own honor, on man's suffering heart.” otherwise one would be oppressed with melancholy and pray to die whenever he heard of the orgies of the julien hall or of the outrages of a mob. the best sign which i can discover in the dark times is the increasing earnestness of the cry which swells from every quarter that a systematic moral education is needed. channing, coleridge, wordsworth, owen, de gerando, spurzheim, bentham. even saul is among the prophets. the gentleman will by and by be found to mean the man of conscience. carlyle; also pestalozzi. “where every man may take liberties there is little liberty for any man.” this sentence appears in the last paragraph of “heroism” (essays, first series). 1834) the seeming real 349 all around us in vulgar daylight are hid (yes, hid in daylight) sublimest laws. de staël saw them. ours have not yet been seen. do not multiply your facts, but seek the meaning of those you have. this eternal superiority belongs to the contemplative man over his more forcible and more honored neighbor, styled the practical man, that the former moves in a real world, the latter in a phenomenal; that though the seasons of the former's activity may be rare and with intermissions of deepest gloom, yet when he works it is life, properly so called, whilst the latter's endless activity and boundless pretension reminds him too often of the laborer at the poor-house who worked all winter shovelling a ton of coal from the yard to the cellar, and then from the cellar to the yard. euler's truth against all experience.' it is losing time to inquire anxiously respecting the opinions of another speculator. the way his opinions have attained any value is by his forbearing to inquire and merely obserying. man is great, not in his goals, but in his transition from state to state. great in act, but instantly dwarfed by self-indulgence. for full quotation, see p. 356. 350 (age 31 journal not universal education, but the penny magazine has failed. brougham may have failed, but pestalozzi has not. leibnitz said, “i have faith that man may be reformed when i see how much education may be reformed.” why not a moral education as well as a discovery of america ? the education of the mind consists of a continual substitution of facts for words, as in petrefaction a particle of stone replaces a particle of wood. but observe that what are called facts are commonly words, as regards the fact-man. it is rather humiliating to attend a public meeting such as this new york caucus last evening, and see what words are best received, and what a low, animal hope and fear patriotism is. there is, however, great unity in the audience. what pleases the audience very much, pleases every individual in it. what tires me, tires all. greatest care is taken instinctively on both sides to represent their own cause as the winning one. the word, “why then do we despond?” was manifestly a mistake in mr. hone's speech. this party-lie aims to secure the votes of that numerous class (whose vote, weighed, w 1834) thoughtless votes 351 would kick the beam) of indifferent, effeminate, stupid persons, who in the absence of all internal strength, obey whatever seems the voice of their street, their ward, their town, or whatever domineering strength will be at the trouble of civilly dictating to them. but their votes count like real votes. transcribe from quarterly review the sentences on the progressive influence of the man of genius. if you kill them, i will write a hymn to their memory that shall sing itself, might luther say. october 29. michel angelo buonarotti : john milton : martin luther: george fox: lafayette : falkland, hampden. are not these names seeds ? “men akin unto the universe.” the sentiment which, like milton's, comes down to new generations is that which was no i mr. emerson was preparing the course of lectures on biography which he gave before the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, in boston, in the following winter. they were : « tests of great men,” “ michel angelo," « luther," " milton,” • burke.” for short abstracts, see cabot's memoir, vol. ii, appendix f, p. 712. 352 journal (age 31 sham or half-sentiment to milton himself, but the utterance of his inmost self, “plainest taught and easiest learnt what makes a nation happy and keeps it so.” thanks for my sins, my defects; as the stag should have thanked for his feet. as no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has first contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or the talents of men until he has suffered from the one and seen the triumphs of the other over his own want of the same. i should not be a bard of common life, wants, individualities, in the pulpit, were i not the foolish parlor and table companion that i am. we always idealize. hard to find in paul, luther, adams, lafayette, anything so fine as to bear out our praises. for said not aristotle, “action is less near to vital truth than description”? we tinge them with the glories of that idea in whose light they are seen. we should hold to the usage until we are clear it is wrong. 1834) old war-cries die 353 how different is one man in two hours ! whilst he sits alone in his studies and opens not his mouth, he is god manifest, in flesh. put him in a parlor with unfit company, and he shall talk like a fool. october 31. it is not to be doubted that the subjectivity (to use the germanic phrase) of man clothes itself with a different objectivity in every age. satan, who plays so prominent a part in the theology of the last age, is a hollow word now, but the evil principles which that word designated are no whit abated in virulence. i am bound by all my tastes to a reverence for luther, yet can i by no means find any but a subjective, that is, essential correspondence in me to his mind. i cannot reanimate and appropriate his difficulties and speculations. socrates, bacon. how then jesus and the apostles ? sometimes it seems nations, ages, were the body of shades of thought. wrote mother, of edward, what is true of all, that no words but his name can describe the peculiarities of any remarkable person. but what shall be the action of society? how superficial are our fears and hopes! we meet with a single individual, or read a single news354 journal [age 31 paper expressing malignant sentiments, and we despond for the republic. by one declaimer of an opposite character our confidence is renewed that all will go well. in these times a ragged coat looks sinister and revolutionary. “who injures one threatens all.” luther says, “pull not by force any one person from the mass. reflect on my conduct in the affair of the indulgences. i had the whole body of the papists to oppose. i preached, i wrote, i pressed on men's consciences with the greatest earnestness the positive declarations of the word of god, but i used not a particle of force or constraint. what has been the consequence? this same word of god has, while i was asleep in my bed, given such a blow to papal despotism as not one of the german princes, not even the emperor himself, could have done. it is not i, it is the divine word that has done all.” sublimely is it said in natural history of fanaticism, of angry persons, “ night does not part the combatants.' at least let the good side of these truths be applied to the true word which the poet has uttered whilst he is asleep in his bed, and when he is asleep in the grave it never halts or faints, but prospers in the work whereto it is sent. 1834] men bipolar 355 i believe in the existence of the material world as the expression of the spiritual or real, and so look with a quite comic and condescending interest upon the show of broadway with the air of an old gentleman when he says, “sir, i knew y your father.” is it not forever the aim and endeavor of the real to embody itself in the phenomenal ? broadway is trade and vanity made flesh. therein should the philosophers walk as the impersonations of states, as if massachusetts, carolina, ohio, should go out to take an airing. november 1. the union of extreme sensitiveness and defiance of opinion is not very uncommon. every man is bipolar; never a circle; somewhere therefore in each one of never so many million you shall find the contrariety, inconsistency of his nature. and as language translates language, verb, verb, and noun, noun, so, could their surfaces be adjusted to each other, might we find one age corresponding to another age in every minute peculiarity, and every one man to every other man. this makes the interest of biography. i have heard men say they were afraid to read the accounts of suicides in the newspapers last year so remarkable for that crime. p356 journal (age 31 humboldt's scientific imagination will make the mnemonics of science. i read yesterday his designation of the sudden and violent disturbances of the magnetic equilibrium as “magnetic storms.” so before of “volcanic paps.” the speculations of one age do not fit another. the great man of one age is a showing how the great man of this time would have acted in that. now and then comes a crisis when the contemporaries of one opinion become contemporaries of another, and then the great man becomes the man of two ages, as was burke. fault of our mortality, we cannot act in a past age; we compensate ourselves by choosing out of that generation its most human individual and say, “lo, how man acted!” some men stand on the solid globe; others have no basis: but some one stands by and puts a shovel under their feet at any moment. euler, having demonstrated certain properties of arches, adds, “ all experience is in contradiction to this; but this is no reason for doubting its truth.” november 5. the elections. whilst it is notorious that the jackson party is the bad party in the cities and 1834] good in bad party 357 in general in the country, except in secluded districts where a single newspaper has deceived a well disposed community, — still, on all the banners, equally of tory and whig, good professions are inscribed. the jackson flags say, “down with corruption!” “we ask for nothing but our right.” “the constitution, the laws," “the laboring classes,”“ free trade,” etc., etc. so that they have not yet come to the depravity that says, “ evil be thou my good.” should the whig party fail, which god avert ! the patriot will still have some confidence in the redeeming force of the latent, i. e., deceived virtue that is contained within the tory party; and yet more in the remedial, regenerative nature of man, which ever reproduces a healthful moral sense even out of stupidity and corruption. thus the children of the convicts at botany bay are found to have sound moral sentiments. mr. h. says the tories deserve to succeed, for they turn every stone with an irishman under, and pick him up. surprising tendency of man in action to believe in his continuance. if these stormy partisans doubted their immortality in these hours, as in others, it would calm their zeal. “the moral and intelligent instrumentality from the which the sovereign grace refuses to 358 journal [age 31 sever itself, is nothing else than the vital force which animates each single believer.” fanaticism, p. 8. noisy election ; flags, boy processions, placards, badges, medals, bannered coaches, everything to get the hurrah on our side. that is the main end. great anxiety, pale faces are become florid. they count that 1600 minutes are all the time allowed in all three days. indisposition to business, and great promptness to spend. me s verses. the philosophy of the erect position. god made man upright. the sublime of the ship is that in the pathless sea it carries its own direction in the chart and compass. see herrick's verses. 'tis as hard to blow a flageolet — it takes so little breath — as to blow a flute, which costs so much; so in writing poetry, to speak simply enough in the abundance of thoughts and images is not easier than to be profound enough in their superficiality. there is a way of making the biography of luther as practical and pertinent to-day as the last paragraph from liverpool upon the price of cotton. 1834] recoils in politics 359 the children of this world are wiser than the children of light. the good cause is always on the defensive, the evil, assailant. because the unscrupulous can not only avail themselves of innocent means to their ends, but all evil ones likewise. the whigs can put in their own votes. but the tories can do this and put them in again in another ward, or bring a gang of forsworn gallows-birds to boot, to elect the officers that are to hunt, try, imprison and execute them. let the worst come to the worst, and the whig cause be crushed for a season, and the constitution be grossly violated, then you should see the weak whig become irresistible. they would then acquire the gloom and the might of fanaticism, and redeem america as they once redeemed england, and once aforetime planted and emancipated america. “how many big events to shake the earth lie packed in silence waiting for their birth." heard mr. maxwell at the masonic hall, a thoroughly public soul, the mere voice of the occasion and the hour. there are these persons into whom the general feeling enters, and through whom it passes and finds never a hitch or hindrance; they express what is boil360 journal [age 31 ing in the bosóms of the whole multitude around them. plain is it, too, that there are people who justly make the impression of ability upon us, and yet can neither speak nor write nór act well. there is a callus or paralysis somewhere, a slight excess or defect that neutralizes a fine genius. it is a great step from the thought to the expression of the thought in action... if the wishes of the lowest class that suffer in these long streets should execute themselves, who can doubt that the city would topple in ruins. do not trust man, great god! with more power until he has learned to use his little power better. does not our power increase exactly in the measure we learn how to use it? as [emerson now desired to live close to nature, and what other spot had the same charm for him as had the low, wooded hills, the old indian cornfields and the great meadows along the concord river — musketaquid — where he and his brothers had taken delight during vacations in boyhood? doctor ripley, his step-grandfather, lived in the manse, built by his predecessor, the young william emerson, the patriot min*6 iii ta மாமியார் the old manse 1834) the ancestral home 361 ister of the days of the revolution. he welcomed madam emerson with her sons, waldo and charles, as boarders, until plans for a more permanent home could be made.] concord, november 15. hail to the quiet fields of my fathers! not wholly unattended by supernatural friendship and favor, let me come hither. bless my purposes as they are simple and virtuous. coleridge's fine letter (in london literary gazette, september 13, 1834) comes in aid of the very thoughts i was revolving. and be it so. henceforth i design not to utter any speech, poem or book that is not entirely and peculiarly my work. i will say at public lectures, and the like, those things which i have meditated for their own sake, and not for the first time with a view to that occasion. if, otherwise, you select a new subject, and labor to make a good appearance on the appointed day, it is so much lost time to you, and lost time to your hearer. it is a parenthesis in your genuine life. you are your own dupe, and for the sake of conciliating your audience you have failed to edify them, and, winning their ear, you have really lost their love and gratitude. rowi 362 (age 31 journal v respect a man ! assuredly, but in general only as the potential god, and therefore richly deserving of your pity and your tears. now he is only a scrap, an ort, an end, and in his actual being no more worthy of your veneration than the poor lunatic. but the simplest person who, in his integrity, worships god, becomes god: at least no optics of human mind can detect the line where man, the effect, ceases, and god, the cause, begins. unhappy divorce of religion and philosophy. i suppose the materials may now exist for a portraiture of man which should be at once history and prophecy. does it not seem as if a perfect parallelism existed between every great and fully developed man and every other? take a man of strong nature upon whom events have powerfully acted — luther or socrates or sam johnson — and i suppose you shall find no trait in him-no fear, no love, no talent, no dream in one that did not translate a similar love, fear, talent, dream, in the other. luther's pope and turk and devil, and grace, and justification, and catherine de bore, shall reappear under far other names in george fox, in john milton, in 1834] descent of thought 363 george washington, in goethe, or, long before, in zeno and socrates. their circles, to use the language of geometry, would coincide. here and there, to be sure, are anomalous, unpaired creatures, who are but partially developed, wizzled apples, — as if you should seek to match monsters, one of whom has a leg, another an arm, another two heads. if one should seek to trace the genealogy of thoughts he would find goethe's “open secret” fathered in aristotle's answer to alexander, " that these books were published, and not published.” and mme. de staël's “ architecture is frozen music,” borrowed from goethe's “ architecture is dumb music,” borrowed from vitruvius, who said, “the architect must not only understand drawing, but also music.” and wordsworth's man “that pleased his childish thought,” got from schiller’s “reverence the dreams of his youth,” got from bacon's primæ cogitationes et consilia juventutis plus divinitatis babent. 1 ... if those great doctors truly said that th’ ark to man's proportion was made. donne. (r. w. e.'s note.) 364 journal (age 31 november 19. the aged grandsire' came out of his chamber last evening into our parlor for the first time since his sickness, in cloak and velvet cap, and attended prayers. in things within his experience he has the most robust, erect common sense, is as youthful, vigorous in his understanding, as a man of thirty; in things without his circle often puerile. he behaved and spoke last evening as jefferson or franklin might. his prayer, as usual, with the happiest pertinence. “we have been variously disciplined; bereaved, but not destitute; sick, but thou hast healed, in degree, our diseases; and when there was but a step between us and death, thou hast said, live." he ever reminds one, both in his wisdom and in the faults of his intellect, of an indian sagamore, a sage within the limits of his own observation, a child beyond; his discourse and manners so far fittest, noblest, simplest, the grace and dignity of a child. what could be better than his speech to me after grandmother's death. “well, the bond that united us is broken, but i hope you i doctor ripley. although most of this entry is to be found in mr. emerson's sketch «ezra ripley” (lectures and biographical sketches), it seems appropriate to retain it in its place in the journal. 1834) doctor ripley 365 and your brothers will not cease to come to this house. you will not like to be excluded, and i shall not like to be neglected.” and his conversation with the m — family after the death of their father, i admired. the son was supposed to be intemperate in his habits. the family and friends were all collected for the funeral when we went in. “madam, i condole with you; sir, i condole with you; and with you all. i remember, sir, when i came to this town your grandfather was living on this farm, and a most respectable citizen. his father lived here before him. your father has stood in their place, and lived a useful and respected life. now, sir, the name and respectability of your family rests on you. sir, if you fail ichabod the glory is departed, and i hope you will not.” css history teaches what man can do, and not less what man can suffer and what he can believe. the slowness with which the stirps generosa, seu historica in europe opened their eyes to the monstrous lie of popery, might startle us as to the possible depth of our own degradation through the sleep of reason, and prompt a hope of what height we may yet attain. 366 (age 31 journal is it not an instructive fact in literary history, that of luther's writing from wittemberg to spalatin for the elector's collection of gems, to assist him in translating the twenty-first chapter of revelation? they were sent and, after careful examination, returned. (vide seckendorf, p. 204.) and here is another eulogy, a true eulogy of that great man. king christiern of denmark, passing through saxony, sent for luther. he afterwards declared, “never have i heard the gospel so well explained as by luther. so long as i continue to live i shall hold his discourse in remembrance, and shall submit with greater patience to whatever i am destined to endure.” longinus could not improve the sentence, and the last clause should be writ in the diary of every preacher. the marseillaise hymn, and the ballads of the reformation, and watts' hymnbook, and the ranz des vaches. the best cause has been seldom defended on its merits. men are possessed by the idea of liberty or right in the matter, but the fewest are able to state in propositions that which makes 1834) small issues appear 367 the strength and soul of their party. the idea is deep and pervades the whole mass of men and institutions involved, but that which makes the surface is the names of certain men and other accidentseven the divine milton recurs with bitterness to tippet and surplice, etc. these are what, in words, the antagonist party oppose and revile, and therefore on these (as in european war, on the milanese) the battle is fought. luther has never stated his thought so well as mackintosh has done for him; and dwelleth far more on the bald pates and gray cloaks of his opponents. luther was a great man and, as coleridge says, acted poems, and his words, if they will, they may characterize as half-battles. but the sublime of them, critically considered, is the material sublime, not the moral. “if the heavens should pour down duke georges for nine days,” etc. “if i don't burn them, 't is because i can't find fire.” “i'll go, if all the devils are in the way,” etc. it is like mahomet's description of the angel whom he saw in heaven: “it was nine days' journey from one of his eyes to the other.” mere sublimity of magnitude and number; but landor says well, “where the heart is not moved, the gods stride and thunder in vain. the pathetic 368 [age 31 journal is the true sublime.” i speak of course of the homely monk's sayings as sentences. the purposes and character which they manifest is quite another consideration. there is something akin to sublimity. but there is no such force in all his sayings as in “ forgive his virtues too." let a man have no presence, no manners. it takes some men so long to get through their preliminaries that everybody avoids them for fear of the trouble. but be a mere word, a mere action; and when parade-days come, then do these long courtesies when there is time and expectation; but spare working-days and working-people. o what is heaven but the fellowship of minds that each can stand against the world by its own meek but incorruptible will.* cy november 21. ah, how shone the moon and her little sparklers last eve! there was the light in the self1 forgive his crimes; forgive his virtues too, those smaller faults, half converts to the right. young. 2 when some friend asked mr. emerson to write something in an album, he often wrote these lines. 1834) comfort in god 369 same vessels which contained it a million years ago. i perceived in myself this day with a certain i degree of terror the prompting to retire. what! is this lone parsonage in this thin village so populous as to crowd you and overtask your benevolence? they who urge you to retire hence would be too many for you in the centre of the desert or on the top of a pillar.' se mage so how dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of god peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments ! when we have lost our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may god fire the heart with his presence. november 23. the root and seed of democracy is the doctrine, judge for yourself. reverence thyself. it is the inevitable effect of that doctrine, where it has any effect (which is rare), to insulate the pari merely social life was always difficult for mr. emerson. '. for this reason he never wished to visit for more than a day. at the manse, of course, parishioners came to pay their respects to the pastor and his guests. “ urge you to retire” means only make you want to run away. 370 journal [age 31 tisan, to make each man a state. at the same time it replaces the dead with a living check in a true, delicate reverence for superior, congenial minds. “how is the king greater than i, if he is not more just?” how does every institution, every man, every thought embody, clothe itself externally with dress, houses, newspapers, societies. as i sat in the orthodox church this day, i thought how brick and laths and lime flew obedient to the master idea that reigns in the minds of many persons, be that idea what it may, jackson, antimasonry, diffusion of knowledge, farm school, or calvinism. why then should the swedenborgian doctrine be obnoxious, that in the spiritual world the affections clothe themselves with appropriate garments, dwellings, and other circumstances? ... what concerns me more than orthodoxy, anti masonry, temperance, workingmen's party, and the other ideas of the time? is the question of temperance pledges a question whether we will, in a pestilence, go into quarantine? wonderful charm in the english elegiac verse 1834) elegiac verse. money 371 for the expression of amatory sorrow, and the shades of feeling of a mystic; but it is only in newspapers and by second-rate or third-rate poets that i have seen it used. a fine verse of this sort i chanced upon, addressed to music, in which, after saying that music links us to higher realities than we see around us, the unknown poet saith therefore a current of sadness deep through the streams of thy triumph is heard to sweep. november 26. goethe says of lavater, that, “it was fearful to live near a man to whom every boundary within which nature has seen fit to circumscribe us was clear.” se us was “the world in which i exist is another world indeed, but not to come.” coleridge. o what a wailing tragedy is this world, considered in reference to money-matters. rather melancholy, after asking the opinion of all living, to find no more receivers of your doctrine than your own three or four, and sit down to wait until it shall please god to create some more men before your school can expect increase. 372 journal [age 31 show a head of cuvier, goethe, or milton to vulgar people, and they see nothing but resemblances to deacon gulliver or mr. gibbons. a year ago on november 13, little ezra ripley started up in bed and told his father all the stars were falling down. his father bid him sharply go to sleep, but the boy was the better philosopher.' what can be conceived so beautiful as actual nature? i never see the dawn break or the sun set, as last evening, when from every grey or slate-coloured cloud over the whole dome depended a wreath of roses, or look down the river with its tree-planted banks (from the bridge north of the house) absolutely affecting an elegancy, without a lively curiosity as to its reality, and a self-recollection that i am not in a dream. well, is this all superficial, and is the earth itself unsightly? look at a narcissus, or crocus, or lily, or petal, or stamen, or plumule, at any process of life, and answer. what can be conceived so i this was the night of the most remarkable meteoric shower on record. ezra ripley, the child here mentioned, was the grandson of dr. ripley. he grew up to a noble manhood, left the profession of law to serve as lieutenant in a massachusetts regiment in the civil war, and died in service. 1834] each and all 373 beautiful as an assemblage of bright and opake balls floating in space, covered each with pretty races, and each individual a counterpart and contemplator of the whole. everything, to be appreciated, must be seen from the point where its rays converge to a focus. this gorgeous landscape, these poetical clouds, what would they be if i should put my eye to the ground? a few pebbles; or into the cloud? a fog. so of human history, and of my own life. we cannot get far enough away from ourselves to integrate our scraps of thought and action, and so judge of our tendency or ascend to our idea. we are in the battle, and cannot judge of its picturesque effect, nor how the day is going, nor at present of its consequences. the shepherd or the beggar in his red cloak little knows what a charm he gives to the wide landscape that charms you on the mountain-top and whereof he makes the most agreeable feature, and i no more the part my individuality plays in the all.' to an idle inquiry whether you are immortal, god maketh no answer. no argument of conviction can be found; but do your duty, and you 1 the first note of the opening lines in “ each and all ” (poems); evidently a european memory. 374 [age 31 journal are already immortal; the taste, the fear of death has already vanished. we would study greek and astronomy if life were longer. study them, and life is already infinitely long. december. yesterday saw i at waltham the eclipse of the sun, 10.45 digits. the fact that a prediction is fulfilled is the best part of it; the preternatural half-night which falls upon the hills, and the violet shade which touches all the clouds. the fine fringes of the cloud made the best smoked glass through which to see the sun, while the shadow encroached upon his face. when the young philosopher forgets men's opinions, nothing seems so worthy employment, or rather life, as religious teaching. if i could persuade men to listen to their interior convictions, if i could express, embody their interior convictions, that were indeed life. it were to cease being a figure, and to act the action of a man. but for that work he must be free and true. he must not seek to weld what he believes, to what he does not wish publicly to deny. nothing can compensate for want of belief; no accomplishments, no talents. a believing man, in a cause worthy of a man, gives the mind a sense 1834) talent and character 375 of stability and repose more than mountains. i could not help calling the attention of my venerable neighbor to the different impression made by a [lexander] everett and james savage :' one, very accomplished, but inspires no confidence; for he is not much of a man; the other, tolerably well equipped, but is himself an upright, single-hearted man, pursuing his path by his own lights and incapable of fear or favor. columbus did not affect to believe in a new continent and make dinner speeches about it (other than his egg speech), and george fox and emanuel swedenborg never advise people to go to church for the sake of example. it would give scope for many truths in experimental religion to preach from the text, « there shall be new heavens and a new earth.” i alexander everett, older brother of edward everett, a man of wide culture who received honorary degrees from many colleges and learned societies, became president of jefferson college, louisiana, and later was sent to spain as minister plenipotentiary. died 1847. james savage, a useful, fearless, public-spirited citizen of boston, founder of the provident institution for savings; a scholar who did valuable work on the history of the early settlers of new england. he was made ll. d. harvard, and overseer, fellow of the american academy, and president of the massachusetts historical society. 376 journal [age 31 , sometimes we perceive that god is wholly unknown in the world, that the church and the sermon and the priest and the alms are a profanation. “we were early cast upon thy care,” is a heathen expression. compensation why should i keep holiday when other men have none ? why but because, when these are gay, i sit and mourn alone ? and why, when mirth unseals all tongues, must i be ever dumb ? ah, late i spoke to breathless throngs, and now their hour is come.' concord, december 2. the age of puberty is a crisis in the life of the man worth studying. it is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious; from the sleep of the passions to their rage; from careless receiving to cunning providing; from beauty to use; from omnivorous curiosity to anxious stewi these verses, which, slightly altered, mr. emerson published in the poems years later, are written in pencil under the above entries in ink, and evidently belong to this period. 1834] puberty. sects 377 ardship; from faith to doubt; from maternal reason to hard, short-sighted understanding; from unity to disunion; the progressive influences of poetry, eloquence, love, regeneration, character, truth, sorrow, and of search for an aim, and the contest for property. i look upon every sect as a claude lorraine glass through which i see the same sun and the same world and in the same relative places as through my own eyes, but one makes them small, another large; one, green; another, blue; another, pink. i suppose that an orthodox preacher's cry, “the natural man is an enemy of god,” only translates the philosopher's that “ the instinct of the understanding is to contradict the reason”; so luther's law and gospel (also st. paul's); swedenborg's love of self and love of the lord; william penn's world and spirit; the court of honor's gentleman and knave. the dualism is ever present, though variously denominated. i have not so near access to luther's mind through his works as through my own mind when i meditate upon his historical position. when they jeered at the devil, luther says, 378 [age 31 journal he went away " quia est superbus spiritus et non potest ferre contemptum sui.” my own picture was ugly enough to me. i read that when his own picture was shown to erasmus, he said, “look i like this picture? so am i the greatest knave that liveth,” which luther relates with sharpness. francis comes to doctor ripley at breakfast to know if he shall drive the cow into the battlefield. blessed are the woods. in summer they shade the traveller from the sun; in winter, from the tooth of the wind; when there is snow, it falls level ; when it rains, it does not blow in his face. there is no dust, and a pleasing fear reigns in their shade. blessed are the woods ! i think the most devout persons be the freest of their tongues in speaking of the deity, as i the old manse, which had come to dr. ripley through his wife, widow of rev. william emerson, was close by the battle-ground ; and as the original north bridge had been taken down some forty years before this time, and the new monument had not been erected, the field where the british stood and fired was the doctor's pasture. are 1834] devout freedom 379 luther, fuller, herbert, milton, whose words are an offence to the pursed mouths which make formal prayers; and beyond the word, they are free-thinkers also. “melancthon discoursed with luther touching the prophets who continually do boast in this sort and with these words, • thus saith the lord,' etc., whether god spake in person with them or no? then luther said, they were very holy, spiritual people, which seriously did contemplate on holy and divine causes : therefore god spake with them in their consciences, which the prophets held for sure revelations.” — table-talk, p. 362, folio edition. so saint james he frankly called “epistola straminea.” bring men near one another, and love will follow. once the men of distant countries were painted as of monstrous bodies without necks, with tails, etc. but commerce contradicted the report. then they were described as having monstrous minds, thieves, sottish, promiscuously mixed, destitute of moral sentiments. but commerce has exposed that slander too, and shown that as face answereth to face in water, so the heart of man to man. 380 journal (age 31 a man is a very vulnerable creature. his manners and dignity are conventional. leave him alone and he is a sorry sight. [here follows the passage on apologies; see “heroism," essays, first series, page 260, centenary edition.] how sad, how disgusting, to see this niedrig air on the face, a man whose words take hold on the upper world, whilst one eye is eternally down cellar, so that the best conversation has ever a slight savor of sausages and soap-barrels. basest when the snout of this influence touches the education of young women, and withers the blessed affection and hope of human nature by teaching that marriage is nothing but housekeeping, and that woman's life has no other aim. even g. was capable of saying “the worst marriage is better than none,” and s. made a similar stab at the sanity of his daughter. concord, december 3. the poor irishman, a wheelbarrow is his country.' 1 the building of the railroads in new england at this time brought the first important immigration of irishmen with their families. du1834] moral of heredity 381 when i remember the twofold cord, then fourfold, and, go a little back, a thousand and a millionfold cord of which my being and every man's being consists; that i am an aggregate of infinitesimal parts, and that every minutest streamlet that has flowed to me is represented in that man which i am, so that, if every one should claim his part in me, i should be instantaneously diffused through the creation and individually decease, then i say, if i am but an alms of all, and live but by the charity of innumerable others, there is no peculiar propriety in wrapping my cloak about me and hiding the ray that my taper may emit. what is a man but a congress of nations. just suppose for one moment to appear before him the whole host of his ancestors. all have vanished; he — the insulated result of all that character, activity, sympathy, antagonism, working for ages in all corners of the earth — alone remains. such is his origin; well, was his nurture less compound? who and what has not contributed something to make him that he is ? art, science, institutions, black men, white men, the vices and the virtues of all people, the gallows, the church, the shop, poets, nature, joy, and fear, all help, all teach him. every fairy brings a gift. 382 journal {age 31 deliver us from that intensity of character which makes all its 'crows swans. so soon as i hear that my friend is engaged, i perceive at once that a very ordinary person is henceforward adopted into that rose-colored atmosphere which exhales from his self-love, and every trait, every trifle, every nothing about the new person is canonized by identifying the same with the positive virtue to which it is related, just as children refer the moon to the same region of heaven with the stars. talent becomes genius; inoffensiveness, benevolence; wilfulness, character; and even stupidity, simplicity. poor, dear human nature; leave magnifying and caricaturing her; it frets and confuses us. more winning, more sociable and society-making is she as she stands, faults and virtues unpainted, confessed; then the fault even becomes piquant, and is seen to prop and underpin some excellent virtue, let us deal so with ourselves and call a spade a spade. december 6. do you imagine that because i do not say luther's creed, all his works are an offence to me? far otherwise. i can animate them all that they shall live to me. i can worship in that temple as well as in any other. i have only to 1834] prayer. human gifts 383 translate a few of the leading phrases into their equivalent verities, to adjust his almanack to my meridian, and all the conclusions, all the predictions shall be strictly true. such is the everlasting advantage of truth. let a man work after a pattern he really sees, and every man shall be able to find a correspondence between these works and his own and to turn them to some account in rome, london, or japan, from the first to the hundredth century. on reading yesterday afternoon, to aunt mary, coleridge's defence of prayer against the author of natural history of enthusiasm, she replied, “ yes, for our reason was so distinct from the universal reason that we could pray to it, and so united with it, that we could have assurance we were heard.” december 8. the world looks poor and mean so long as i think only of its great men; most of them of spotted reputation. but when i remember how many obscure persons i myself have seen possessing gifts that excited wonder, speculation and delight in me ; when i remember that the very greatness of homer, of shakspeare, of webster and channing, is the truth with which 384 journal (age 31 they reflect the mind of all mankind; when i consider that each fine genius that appears is already predicted in our constitution, inasmuch as he only makes apparent shades of thought in us of which we hitherto knew not (or actualizes an idea); and when i consider the absolute boundlessness of our capacity — no one of us but has the whole untried world of geometry, fluxions, natural philosophy, ethics, wide open before him. when i recollect the charms of certain women, what poems are many private lives, each of which can fill our eye, if we so will, (as the swan, the eagle, the cedar-bird, the canary, each seems the type of bird-kind whilst we gaze at it alone,) and then remember how many millions i know not; then i feel the riches of my inheritance in being set down in this world, gifted with organs of communication with this accomplished company. pray heaven that you may have a sympathy with all sorts of excellence, even with those antipodal to your own. if any eye rest on this page, let him know that he who blotted it could not go into conversation with any person of good understanding without being presently gravelled. the slightest question of his most familiar 1834] choice, not pledges 385 proposition disconcerted him, eyes, face and understanding, beyond recovery. yet did he, not the less, respect and rejoice in this daily gift of vivacious common sense, which was so formidable to him. may it last as long as the world. the application of goethe's definition of genius; “that power which by working and doing gives laws and rules,” to common life, to the art of living, is obvious. deacon warren, mr. turner, mr. crafts, and every new, simple heart give us a new image of possible virtues and powers. if you ask me whether i will be so good as to abstain from all use of ardent spirits for the sake of diminishing by my pint per annum the demand, and so stopping the distiller's pernicious pump, i answer, yes, with all my heart. but will i signify the same fact by putting my name to your paper? no. be assured, i shall always be found on your side in discouraging this use and traffic. but i shall not deprive my example of all its value by abdicating my freedom on that point. it shall be always my example, the spectacle to all whom it may concern of my spontaneous action at the time. 386 [age 31 journal why,o diffusers of useful knowledge, do you not offer to deliver a course of lectures on aristotle and plato, or on plato alone, or on him and bacon and coleridge? why not strengthen the hearts of the waiting lovers of the primal philosophy by an account of that fragmentary highest teaching which comes from the half fabulous personages heraclitus, hermes trismegistus, and giordano bruno, and vyasa, and plotinus, and swedenborg. curious, now that first i collect their names, they should look all so mythological i rejoice in time. i do not cross the common without a wild poetic delight, notwithstanding the prose of my demeanour. thank god i live in the country. well said bell, that no hour, no state of the atmosphere but corresponded to some state of the mind; brightest day, grimmest night. december 9. the dear old plutarch assures me that the lamp of demosthenes never went out; that king philip called his orations soldiers, and in a moment of enthusiasm, on hearing the report of one of his speeches, exclaimed, “had i been there, i too should have declared war against 1834) demosthenes .387 myself.” flying before antipater, he wrote his own epitaph at calauria ; "elep ionv páunu yróun, anuoobéves, foxes, ούποτ' άν ελλήνων ήρξεν "αρης μακεδών. when epicles twitted him upon his exact preparation, he said, “i should be ashamed to speak what comes uppermost to so great an assembly.” one day his voice failing him, he was hissed, and he cried unto the people, “ye are to judge of players indeed by the clearness and tuneableness of their voice, but of orators by the gravity and excellency of their sentences.” despising other orators, when phocion arose, demosthenes was wont to say, “ pruning-knife of my orations, arise !” last night, abed, i recollected four names for four lectures : luther, michel angelo, milton, george fox; then comes question of epaminondas, esteemed by the ancients greatest of the greeks; demosthenes for the sake of his oratory and the related topics; alfred for his human · character; sam. johnson for his genuineness ; phocion, more, and socrates, for their three renowned deaths; hampden for his saxon soul; 388 journal. (age 31 muley moloch;' reynolds. but it seemed to me that a fit question to handle in a public lecture is the one involved in the claims and apologies made by people and orators in this new england raft of ours every day. it is said that the people can look after their own interests; that “common sense, though no science, is fairly worth the seven”; that a plain, practical man is better to the state than a scholar, etc. he were a benefactor to his countrymen who would expose and pillory this state sophism. we hold indeed that those reasons for a public action which are presented to us should be of that simple, humane character as to be fully comprehensible by every citizen of good capacity, as well the uneducated as the educated. that is a good test and condition of such reasons. they should not be addressed to the imagination, or to our literary associations, but to the ear of plain men. therefore are they such as plain men, farmers, mechanics, teamsters, seamen or soldiers might offer, if they would gravely, patiently, humbly reflect upon the matter. there i abd el malek, sultan of morocco in the sixteenth century. his heroic death in battle is mentioned in the spectator, no. 349. he is there called muly moluc. muley means my lord. see, also, dryden's don sebastian. 1834] light for all men 389 is nothing in their want of book-learning to hinder. this doctrine affirms that there is imparted to every man the divine light of reason, sufficient not only to plant corn and grind wheat by, but also to illuminate all his life, his social, political, religious actions. sufficient according to its faithful use. sufficient, if faithfully used. the propositions are true to the end of the world, with this inseparable condition; every man's reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used. but does it mean that because a farmer, acting on deep conviction, shall give a reason as good as bacon could have given, that therefore the ordinary arguments of farmers are to be preferred to those of statesmen? that whatever crude remarks a circle of people talking in a barroom throw out, are entitled to equal weight with the sifted and chosen conclusions of experienced public men? and because god has made you capable of reason, therefore must i hear and accept all your selfish railing, your proven falsehoods, your unconsidered guesses as truth? no; i appeal from you to your reason, which, with me, condemns you.... it amounts to this; “every man's reason can show him what is right. therefore every man says what is right, whether he use his reason or no.” i hate 390 journal [age 31 this fallacy the more that it is, beside being dire nonsense, a profanation of the dearest truths. democracy, freedom, has its root in the sacred truth that every man hath in him the divine reason, or that, though few men since the creation of the world live according to the dictates of reason, yet all men are created capable of so doing. that is the equality and the only equality of all men. to this truth we look when we say, reverence thyself; be true to thyself. because every man has within him somewhat really divine, therefore is slavery the unpardonable outrage it is. there is great delight in learning a new language. when the day comes in the scholar's progress unawares, when he reads pages without recurrence to the dictionary, he shuts up his book with that sort of fearful delight with which the bridegroom sits down in his own house with the bride saying, “i shall now live with you always." december 11. when the sick man came out of doors, the stars seemed to shine through his eyes into his heart, and the blessed air that he inhaled seemed to lighten his frame from head to feet. 1834) ezra ripley 391 a little above i referred to one of my characters.' it might be added that if he made his forms a strait-jacket to others, he wore the same himself all his years, and so reanimated for his beholders the order of la trappe. . . . one who showed ever, in his fireside discourse, traits of that pertinency and judgment, softening ever and anon into elegancy, which make the distinction of the scholar, and which, under better discipline, might have ripened into a salmasius or hedericus. sage and savage strove harder in him than in any of my acquaintance, each getting the mastery by turns, and pretty sudden turns. “save us,” he said in his prayer, “ from the extremity of cold, and violent sudden changes.” — “ the society will meet after the lyceum, as it is difficult to bring the people together in the evening,--and no moon,” etc. “mr. n. f. is dead, and i expect to hear the death of mr. b. it is cruel to separate old people from their wives in this cold weather.” thus is one reminded of the children's prayer, who in confessing their sins, say, “yes, i did take the jump-rope from mary.” pleasantly 1 rev. dr. ezra ripley of concord. a portion of what follows is included in mr. emerson's memoir of dr. ripley, in lectures and biographical sketches. 392 [age 31 journal said he at supper, that his “last cup was not potent in any way, neither in sugar, nor cream, nor souchong; it was so equally and universally defective, that he thought it easier to make another than to mend that.” the counsellor's fine simplicity and sweetness of character saved his speech, the other evening, from being distressful to the hearers. charles is reminded by him of edward. there are some points of resemblance. this for one, that neither was ever put out of countenance. concord, december 14. yesterday, i sealed and despatched my letter to carlyle. to-day, riding to east sudbury, i pleased myself with the beauties and terrors of the snow; the oak leaf hurrying over the banks is fit ornament. nature in the woods is very companionable. there, my reason and my understanding are sufficient company for each other. i have my glees as well as my glooms alone. confirm my faith (and when i write the word, faith looks indignant), pledge me the word of the highest that i shall have my dead and my absent again, and i could be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years. i know no aisle so stately as the roads through 1834] schleiermacher 393 the pine woods in maine. cold is the snow-drift, topping itself with sand. how intense are our affinities : acids and alkalis. the moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed: all its tragedies and ennụis vanish, all duties even; nothing remains to fill eternity with but two or three persons.' but then a person is a cause. what is luther but protestantism? or columbus but columbia ? and were i assured of meeting ellen tomorrow, would it be less than a world, a personal world ? death has no bitterness in the light of that thought. ps in boston, hedge? read me good things out of schleiermacher concerning the twofold divisions of study; 1. physics, or that which is ; 2. ethics, or that which should be. also his definition of sciences and art; the one, all things brought into the mind; the other, the mind going into things. then the ascetic, or the discipline of life produced by the opinions. every man's system should appear in his ascetic. scarce one man's does. this last sentence occurs in “ friendship,” essays, first series. 2 dr. frederic henry hedge, clergyman and student of german metaphysics. 394 [age 31 journal december 17. if it has so pleased god, it is very easy for you to surpass your fellows in genius; but surpass them in generosity of sentiment; see not their meanness, whilst your eyes are fixed on everlasting virtues; being royal, being divine, in your sentiment: “this shall be another morn risen on mid-noon.” this shall be your own, o no; god forbid ! not your own, but a vast accession of the divinity into your trembling clay. god has made nothing without a crack, except reason. what can be better than this? “ quanto era proprio per far tutta la pompa del suo profundo sapere.” note in vasari's life of michel angelo. poets and painters ever walk abreast. december 18. i am writing my lecture of michel angelo, clothed with a coat which was made for me in florence: i would i were clothed with the spirit of beauty which breathed life into italian art. quello ch' apporta mane e lascia sera. — dante. 1834) writing as an art – 395 solon said, “such as the speech, such is the life of the man.” loathsome lecture last evening on precocity, and the dissection of the brain, and the distortion of the body, and genius, etc. a grim compost of blood and mud. blessed, thought i, were those who, lost in their pursuits, never knew that they had a body or a mind. december 19. he who makes a good sentence or a good verse exercises a power very strictly analogous to his who makes a fine statue, a beautiful cornice, a staircase like that in oxford, or a noble head in painting. one writes on air, if he speaks; but** no, he writes on mind more durable than marble, and is like him who begets a son, that is, originates a begetter of nations. the maker of a sentence, like the other artist, launches out into the infinite and builds a road into chaos and old night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. december 20. i like well the doctrine“ that every great man, napoleon himself, is an idealist, a poet with different degrees of utterance.” as the love of 396 journal rnal [age 31 flowers contains the science of botany, so the innate love of novelty, enterprise like that which delighted me when a boy in atkinson street with climbing by help of a small ladder and touching for the first time the shingles of the shed; yes, and makes every boy a poet when a fine morning in spring seducingly shows him the uplands in the neighboring towns on his way to school, — this same desire of the untried, leads the young farmer in maine to load his little wagon and rattle down the long hills on his way to illinois. a strictest correspondence ties all the arts. and it is as lawful and as becoming for the poet to seize upon felicitous expressions and lay them up for use as for michel angelo to store his sketch-book with hands, arms, triglyphs, and capitals to enrich his future compositions. the | wary artist in both kinds will tear down the scaffolding when the work is finished, and himself supply no clue to the curiosity that would know how he did the wonder. the chickadees are very busy and happy in cæsar's woods' between the spots of snow. i i on the bluffs over the great meadows, near the manse. 1834] spiritual religion 397) met them yesterday. whatis the green leaf under the snow resembling a potentilla ? spiritual religion is one that cannot be harmed by the vices of its defenders. unitarianism and all the rest are judged by the standing or falling of their professors. i refuse that test to this. it is true. i see this to be true, though i see it condemns my life, and no man liveth by it. they [spiritual laws] are truth itself; they are the measure of truth; and can no more be affected by my falling away, or all men's denial, than the law of gravity is changed by my acting as if it were not. yet is it dangerous. it is very far from a system of negatives; it lowly, earnestly sees and declares how its laws advance their reign for evermore into the infinitude on all sides of us. jesus was a setter up more than a puller down. socrates was also. both were spiritualists. george fox, william penn were urgent doers, hard livers. but they were of wrath. i see the world and its maker from another side. it seems to me beauty. he seems to me love. spiritual religion has no other evidence than its own intrinsic probability. it is probable because the mind is so constituted as that they [its laws] appear likely so to be. it simply demore 398 [age 31 journal scribes the laws of moral nature as the naturalist does physical [laws] and shows the surprising beauties and terrors of human life. it never scolds and never sneers. it is opposed to calvinism in this respect, that all spiritual truths are self-evident, but the doctrines of calvin are not, and are not pretended to be by their understanding defenders ;– mystery. this is the only live religion ; all others are dead or formal. this cannot be but in the new conviction of the mind. others may. this produces instant and infinite abuses. it is a two-edged sword, because it condemns forms, but supplies a better law only to the living. it leaves the dead to bury their dead. the popular religion is an excellent constable; the true religion is god himself to the believer and maketh him a perfect lover of the whole world; but it is only a cloak of licentiousness to the rest. it would dismiss all bad preachers and do great harm to society by taking off restraints. my reason is well enough convinced of its immortality. it knows itself immortal. but it cannot persuade its down-looking brother, the understanding, of the same. that fears for the cord that ties them, lest it break. hence miss 1834] chains. michel angelo 399 rotch affirms undoubtedly, “i shall live forever," and, on the other hand, does not much believe in her retaining personality. uc december 21. who says we are not chained? he lies. see how greedily you accept the verse of homer or shakspear; the outline of michel angelo; the strain of handel; the word of webster ; how thoroughly you understand and make them your own; and are well assured, too, that they are only units from an infinite store of the same kinds; well, now put out your own hands and take one more unit thence. i say you are chained. michel angelo was the homer of painting. titian the moore, or better, the spenser. the difference is the same betwixt this stern designer and the beautiful colorists that followed him, as between the severe aristotle and the ornate cicero. blessed is the day when the youth discovers that within and above are synonyms. actio agentis nihil aliud est quam extrabere rem de potentia ad actum. aristotle. 400 [age 31 journal we can all put out our hands towards the desired truth, but few can bring their hands to meet around it. he alone is an artist whose hands can perfectly execute what his mind has perfectly conceived;—. solo a quello arriva la man che obbedisce all intelletto. michel angelo.' the domestic man loves no music so well as his kitchen clock and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn in the fireplace. the best means of mending a bad voice is to utter judicious remarks with it; the second best is to favor it by silence. translation of michel angelo's sonnet vii “ i know not if it is the light of its first maker impressed on the imagination, which the soul 1 mr. emerson later rendered the sonnet of michel angelo of which these words are a part into verse, beginning thus :never did sculptor's dream unfold a form which marble doth not hold in its white block; yet it therein shall find only the hand secure and bold which still obeys the mind. see poems, “translations." me 1834] the finished man 401 perceives, or if from the memory, or from the mind, any other beauty shines through into the heart; or if in the soul yet beams and glows the bright ray of its primitive state, leaving of itself i know not what burning, which is perhaps that which leads me to complain. that which i feel, and that which i see, and that which guides me, is not with me, nor know i well where to find it in me; and it seems to me that another shows it to me. this, lady, happened to me when i first saw you, that a bitter-sweet, a yes and no, moved me; (certainly it must be your eyes).” december 22. it is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. it is very easy in solitude to be self-centred. but the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. i knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hand nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred. i too can see the spark of titan in that coarse clay; ne barse 402 journal (age 31 queis arte benigna et meliore luto finxit præcordia titan." wherever is life, wherever is god, there the universe evolves itself as from a centre to its boundless irradiation. whosoever therefore apprehends the infinite, — and every man can, — brings all worth and significance into that spot of space where he stands, though it be a ditch, a potato-field, a work-bench; or, more properly, into that state of thought in which he is, whether it be the making a statue or designing a church like michel angelo, or holding silent meetings like george fox, and job scott, or fighting battles like leonidas, washington, lafayette; exploring the law of laws like plotinus; or loving like socrates, petrarch and angelo; or prescribing the ethics of the scholar like schiller. therefore is it in the option of every generous spirit to denominate that place in which he now is, his rome, his world; his sunshine shall be susa; his shade, ecbatana; and let him rest assured, if he invite them, not one deity will stay away from his feast. and therefore also . these lines from juvenal might be thus rendered: whose hearts the god of day fashioned with loving hand and from a nobler clay. commune 1834] harmony. waiting 403 is it that every good sentence seems to imply all truth. truly exists that quoddam vinculum commune between all the arts and knowledges of men. vitruvius said that to understand architecture needed, not only to draw well, but also to understand music; and michel angelo said of architecture that he who did not understand something of the anatomy of the human body could know nothing of that subject. the philosophy of waiting needs sometimes to be unfolded. thus he who is qualified to act upon the public, if he does not act on many, may yet act intensely on a few; if he does not act much upon any, but, from insulated condition and unfit companions, seem quite withdrawn into himself, still, if he know and feel his obligations, he may be (unknown and unconsciously) hiving knowledge and concentrating powers to act well hereafter, and a very remote hereafter. god is a rich proprietor, who, though he may find use for sprouts and saplings of a year's growth, finds his account also in leaving untouched the timber of a hundred years, which hardens and seasons in the cold and in the sun. 404 journal [age 31 but a more lowly use (and yet with right feelings all parts of duty are alike lowly) is pleasing; that of serving an indirect good to your friends by being much to them, a reserve by which their sallies of virtue are fortified and they cordially cheered by the thoroughness of a mutual understanding. how has edward served us most in these last years? by his figures and invoices ? or through the healthful influence of his perfect moral health ? how serves the aunt mary? how but by bearing most intelligible testimony which is felt where it is not comprehended. in friendship too, observe my song, there is both equal, broad, and long; but this thou must not think to find with eyes of body but of mind. empedocles. love, idle of himself, takes up his rest and harbors only in a slothful breast. if i were more in love with life and as afraid of dying as you seem to insinuate, i would go to a jackson caucus or to the julien hall, and i doubt not the unmixed malignity, the withering selfishness, the impudent vulgarity, that mark those meetings would speedily cure me of my ap1834] monarchs and courts 405 petite for longevity. in the hush of these woods i find no jackson placards affixed to the trees. i we republicans do libel the monarchist. the monarchist of europe for so many ages has really been pervaded by an idea. he intellectually and affectionately views the king as the state. and the monarch is pervaded by a correspondent idea, and the worst of them has yet demeaned himself more or less faithfully as a state. a crown then is by no means “a stripe of velvet with jewels,” nor is louis xvi mr. louis capet, as we chuse to affirm. certainly there is something that mightily tickles a human ear in being named a nation, as elizabeth of england, mary of scotland, anne of austria. all pomps and ceremonies of courts do only flourish and idealize the simple facts in which that state began, as the orders of architecture do in every ornament refer to some essential part of the building. “the pope performeth all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as in consistory among his cardinals, which were originally but the parish priests of rome,” so to the wise eye, an etiquette is a history. mr. coleridge has thrown many new truths into circulation; mr. southey never one. 406 [age 31 journal yet falsehoods, superstitions, are the props, the scaffolding, on which how much of society stands. look at the relation betwixt the uneducated and educated classes. “one's afraid and the other dares n't,” as the boys say. each supposes much in the other which is not in him, and so the peace and place is kept. accurately, i suppose the graduate underestimates the grocer, whilst the grocer far overestimates the graduate, and so the strong hand is kept in submission to what should be the wise head. the reason why mr. graduate's secret is kept, and never any accident discovers his bankruptcy and produces a permanent revolution, is, that there is a real object in nature to which the grocer's reverence instinctively turns, viz., the intellectual man, and though the scholar is not that object, he is its representative, and is, with more or less symptoms of distrust, honored for that he ought to be.... it is a manifest interest which comes home to my bosom and every man's bosom, that there should be on every tower watchers set to observe and report of every new ray of light, in what quarter soever of heaven it should appear, and their report should be eagerly and reverently received. there is no offence done, certainly, to is na 1834) the scholar's office 407 the community in distinctly stating the claims of this office. it is not a coveted office: it is open to all men. all see their interest in it, yet very few feel any inclination to adopt it as their vocation. the blessed god has given to each his calling in his ruling love, ... has adapted the brain and the body of men to the work that is to be done in the world. greenough has an invincible penchant to carve marble, and john haskins to fry caoutchouc. a small number of men meantime have a contemplative turn, and voluntarily seek solitude and converse with themselves, a work which to most persons has a jail-smell. this needs a peculiar constitution, a dormancy of some qualities, and a harmonious action in all, that is rare. it has its own immunities, and also its own painful taxes, like the rest of human works. but where it is possessed, let it work free and honoured, in god's name. ... every discovery he makes, every conclusion he announces, is tidings to each of us from our own home. his office is to cheer our labor as with a song by highest hopes. of the german nation:itis the only nation that addresses the deity with the appellation dear. lieber gott! 408 (age 31 journal the sun is the sole inconsumable fire and god is the sole inexhaustible giver. december 23 a good chapter might be writ of optical deceptions. a sort of disappointment is felt by an ingenious man on hearing opinions and truths congenial to his own announced with effect in conversation. they are so near to his own thought or expression that he thinks he ought to have spoken first. that is an optical deception of the mind. if they had not been uttered by this other, he would not have uttered them. it is merely under the influence of this magnet that he becomes intensely magnetic. take it away, and this effect will subside in him. perhaps i shall never write of shakspear's sonnets, yet let any critic execute that work, and i should go to law with him for assault and battery. bottom, in shakspear, is a philosopher of this kidney. he fathers each new part the moment it is named. it fills his whole horizon. he would be that alone. he mistakes his omnivolence for omnipotence. the only remedy is to present still a new thought to withdraw him from the last. it results from the fact that every thought is 1834] the aunt. lyceum 409 one side of nature, and really has the whole world under it. this exclusive prominence of one thought is that which bacon indicated by idols of the cave. “time and patience change a mulberry leaf into satin." a good aunt is more to the young poet than a patron. molière had more happiness the year round from his old woman than from louis. do, dear, when you come to write lyceum lectures, remember that you are not to say, what must be said in a lyceum? but, what discoveries or stimulating thoughts have i to impart to a thousand persons? not what they will expect to hear, but what is fit for me to say. “no matter where you begin. read anything five hours a day and you will soon be knowing, said johnson. out of these fragmentary, lob-sided mortals shall the heaven unite phidias, demosthenes, shakspear, newton, napoleon, bacon and saint john in one person. 410 journal [age 31 december 24. him i call rich, that soul i call endowed, whether in man or woman, who by poverty or affliction or love has been driven home so far as to make acquaintance with the spiritual dominion of every human mind. henceforward he is introduced into sublime society, henceforward he can wave the hand of adieu to all the things he coveted most. henceforward he is above compassion. he may, it is true, seldom look at his treasure; he may, like one who has brought home his bride, go apart and compose himself and only take furtive glances at his good with a fearful joy, from the very assurance of confirmed bliss, but him i leave in his heaven, and all others i call miserably poor. he a singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and the last ages. the astronomy, the arts, and the history of sixty centuries give lafayette, canning, webster no advantage over saladin, scipio, or agesilaus. the reason is, the arts, the sciences are in man, and the spartan possessed and used the very talent in his war that watt used for economical ends, and the pride and self-sufficiency of the ancient was founded on this very consciousness of inreaso lences 1834) man through the ages 411 finitely versatile resources. the beggars of sparta and of rome hurled defiance with as proud a tone as if lysander's fleet of tubs had been an armada, or the rude walls of sparta had been the bastions of gibraltar. the resources of the mechanic arts are merely costume.' if fabricius had been shown, instead of pyrrhus's elephants, napoleon's park of artillery, he would have displayed no more emotion; he would have found a counter-balance in himself: all the finites cannot outweigh one infinite. all the erudition of an university of doctors is not a match for the mother-wit of one æsop. raphael's three manners of painting may be matched in the biography of every genius. nature keeps much on her table, but more in her closet. a few words writ by a trembling hand of old isaiah or homer become an immoveable palisado to guard their sense against change or loss through all the storms and revolutions of time. 1 the opening sentence and also the last one of this paragraph occur in “self-reliance." s 412 journal · [age 31 “where there is d e f there must be a b c,” saith sancho's aunt. [here follows the passage in “friendship” (the latter half), beginning, “let me be alone till the end of the world," and the ten lines ending “than be his echo.”] i lament with a contrition too deep for groaning every sacrifice of truth to fat good-nature, and not less those where custom has insensibly produced a great alteration in a well-founded opinion. i am thankful that i was permitted to write — in his bereavement, that i lacked sympathy with the character of his wife. if i praise her virtues, he will now believe me. an obscure and slender thread of truth runs through all mythologies, and this might lead often to highest regions of philosophy. isis and osiris. eros and anteros. a singular correspondence is also to be remarked in the fables themselves. “old knurre murre is dead,”: seems only a 1 the peasant, in the tale, going home in the night, hears . a voice say : “ hie home, goodman platt, tell thou the gib-cat, that steals buttermilk out of the buttermilk vat, that old knurre murre is dead." 1834] persons. jesus. light 413 travestie of “ the great god pan is dead," in pythian oracles. a few persons, three or four, perhaps, are to burns what nations and races and long chronicles of annals are to gibbon, and often it may be suspected that shakspeare tacks the name of rome or france upon traits to which he had more truly given the name of nicholas bacon or john sylvester. ever how beautiful are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth salvation! forever graceful in every unperverted eye are the acts of jesus of nazareth, the man who believed in moral nature and therefore spake; who came not in his own name. there is no object in nature which intense light will not make beautiful, and none which loses beauty by being nearer seen. it is a thin partition that divides the housebreaker and the hero; him that, in the conventicle, bawls glory! and the philosopher who muses in amazement. only an inventor that knows how to borrow. 414 journal [age 31 knowledge transfers the censorship from the statehouse to the reason of every citizen and compels every man to mount guard over himself, and puts shame and remorse for sergeants and maces. december 27. we say every truth supposes or implies every other truth. not less true is it that every great man does in all his nature point at and imply the existence and well-being of all the institutions and orders of a state. he is full of reverence. he is by inclination (though far remote in position) the defender of the grammar school, the almshouse, the christian sabbath, the priest, the judge, the legislator, and the executive arm. throughout his being is he loyal. such was luther, milton, burke; each might be called an aristocrat, though by position the champion of the people. bacon never mentions shakspear nor spenser, though often very inferior latin and greek poets. milton's praise of shakspear is most unequal to the subject, and jonson's much more. milton, in his turn, was not seen by his contemporaries, and was valued most as a scholar. 1834] poetry. christianity 415 tasso, dante, michel angelo make no figure in milton's estimate. everything may be painted, everything sung, but, to be poetized, its feet must be just lifted from the ground. snow and moonlight make all landscapes alike. i i believe the christian religion to be profoundly true; true to an extent that they who are styled its most orthodox defenders have never, or but in rarest glimpses, once or twice in a lifetime, reached. i, who seek to be a realist, to deny and put off everything that i do not heartily accept, do yet catch myself continually in a practical unbelief of its deepest teachings. it taught, it teaches the eternal opposition of the world to the truth, and introduced the absolute authority of the spiritual law. milton apprehended its nature when he said, “for who is there almost that measures wisdom by simplicity, strength by suffering, dignity by lowliness?” that do i in my sane moments, and feel the 416 journal (age 31 ineffable peace, yea and the influx of god, that attend humility and love, and before the cock crows, i deny him thrice. “ there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” a friend once told me that he never spent anything on himself without deserving the praise of disinterested benevolence. saturday night. there is in every man a determination of character to a peculiar end, counteracted often by unfavorable fortune, but more apparent, the more he is left at liberty. this is called his genius, or his nature, or his turn of mind. the object of education should be to remove all obstructions, and let this natural force have free play and exhibit its peculiar product. it seems to be true that no man in this is deluded. this determination of his character is to something in his nature; something real. this object is called his idea. it is that which rules his most advised actions, those especially that are most his, and is most distinctly discerned by him in those days or moments when he derives the sincerest satisfaction from his life. it can only be cere cu1834) each man's idea 417 indicated by any action, not defined by anything less than the aggregate of all his genuine actions; perhaps then only approximated. hence the slowness of the ancients to judge of the life before death. “expect the end.” it is most accurately denoted by the man's name, as when we say the scipionism of scipio;'or,“there spoke the soul of cæsar.” the ancients seem to have, expressed this spiritual superintendence by representing every human being as consigned to the charge of a genius or dæmon by whose counsels he was guided in what he did best, but whose counsels he might reject. “heathen philosophers taught that whosoever would but use his ear to listen might hear the voice of his guiding genius' ever before him, calling, and, as it were, pointing to that way which is his part to follow.” milton, volume i. december 28. whenever i open my eyes, i read that everything has expression, a mouth, a chin, a lock of hair, the lappet of a coat, a cream-pot, a tree, a stone, the crimp or plait of a cap. so much i 1 yet, later, mr. emerson used to smile at the povertystricken newspaper reporters, who often wrote of his last evening's discourse: “ the lecture was — well — emersonian.” 418 (age 31 journal concede to the physiognomist and craniologist. at the same time i see well enough how different is the expression of a pink ribbon upon one and upon another head. but ah! the pink ribbons of clouds that i saw last eve in the sunset, modulated with tints of unspeakable softness, and the air meantime had so much vivacity and sweetness that it was a pain to come indoors. charles saw the same flecks of cloud and likened them to gold fishes. had they no expression? is there no meaning in the live repose which that amphitheatre of a valley behind ball's hill reflects to my eye, and which homer or shakspeare could not re-form for me in words? the leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue east for their background, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, with all their forms and hues contribute something to the mute music." rather let me be" a pagan suckled in a creed outworn ” than cowardly deny or conceal one particle of my debt to greek art, or poetry, or i the last half of this paragraph, though printed in nature, is refreshing among the philosophic speculations, and in form more local than in the book. 1834) our debt to greece 419 virtue. certainly i would my debt were more, but it is my fault, not theirs, if 'tis little. but how pitiful if a mind enriched and infused with the spirit of their severe yet human beauty, modulating the words they spake, the acts they did, the forms they sculptured, every gesture, every fold of the robe; especially animating the biography of their men with a wild wisdom and an elegance as wild and handsome as sunshine; the brave anecdotes of agesilaus, phocion, and epaminondas; the death of socrates, that holy martyr, a death like that of christ; the purple light of plato which shines yet into all ages, and is a test of the sublimest intellects — to receive the influences, however partial, of all this, and to speak of it as if it were nothing, or, like a fool, underpraise it in a sermon, because the worshippers are ignorant, and incapable of understanding that there may be degrees and varieties of merit, and that the merit of paul shall not be less because that of aristotle is genuine and great, i call that mean-spirited, if it were channing or luther that did it. be it remembered of milton, who drank deeply of these fountains, that, in an age and assembly of fierce fanatics, he drew as freely from these resources and with just acknowledgeresources 420 journal [age 31 ment, as from those known and honored by his party :« his soul was like a star and dwelt apart.” ar if i were called upon to charge a young minister, i would say beware of tradition : tradition which embarrasses life and falsifies all teaching. the sermons that i hear are all dead of that ail. the preacher is betrayed by his ear. he begins to inveigh against some real evil, and falls unconsciously into formulas of speech which have been said and sung in the church some ages, and have lost all life. they never had any but when freshly and with special conviction applied. but you must never lose sight of the purpose of helping a particular person in every word you say. thus, my preacher summed the deaths of the past year, and then reminded the bereaved that these were admonitions of god to them, etc., etc. now all these words fell to the ground. they are hamlet's“ many as-es of great charge”; mere wind. he ought to have considered whether it were true, as his ear had always heard, to be sure without contradiction, that deaths were admonitions. by enumerating in his mind the persons that would be included in this address, he would quickly perceive that there was great 1834) traditional sermons 421 disparity in the cases. many had mourned, but were not now mourners; that some of the deaths were to the survivors desirable; some quite indifferent; that some of the survivors were persons of that habitual elevation of religious view as to have just views of death and so were above this prose. others were of such manifold business or preoccupation of mind as that any death must occupy but a subordinate place in their thoughts, and if anywhere the words might be spoken with strict propriety, they were yet so general as not likely to strike that ear. i am prolix on this instance, yet the fault is obvious to a discerning ear in almost every sentence of the prayers and the sermons that are ordinarily heard in the church. not so with edward taylor,' that living methodist, the poet of the church. not so with the swedenborgians, if their pulpit resembles their book. december 29. a critic pronounced that wordsworth was a good man, but no poet. “ah!” said one present, “ you know not how much poetry there is in goodness!” i “father” taylor, the ex-seaman and powerful preacher of the sailors' bethel at the north end of boston. 422 [age 31 journal charles says he has four stomachs, like a camel, and what law he reads in the morning he puts into the first stomach till evening; then it slides into the second. every truth is a full circle. “he made himself of no reputation.” the words have a divine sound. : to the music of the surly storm that thickens the darkness of the night abroad, and rocks the walls and fans my cheek through the chinks and cracks,' i would sing my strain, though hoarse and small. yet, please god, it shall be lowly, affectionate and true. it were worth trial whether the distinction between a spiritual and traditional religion could not be made apparent to an ordinary congregation. there are parts of faith so 1 mr. emerson occupied the northwest second-story cham' ber of the manse. there he worked upon nature, which he had alluded to in his journal at sea (september 5) as a book already begun, but it was not published until september, 1836. hawthorne, when he temporarily occupied the house some ten years later, wrote the mosses from an old manse there. in the south gable of the third story is a little room, known as the saints' chamber, which from early days gave hospitality to ministers and scholars. inc! 1834) the manse. spirit 423 great, so self-evident, that when the mind rests in them the pretensions of the most illuminated, most pretending sect pass for nothing. when i rest in perfect humility, when i burn with pure love, what can calvin or swedenborg say to me? but to show men the nullity of church-going compared with a real exaltation of their being, i think might even promote parish objects and draw them to church. to show the reality, and infinite depth of spiritual laws, that all the maxims of christ are true to the core of the world; that there is not, can't be, any cheating of nature, might be apprehended. every spiritual law, i suppose, would be a contradiction to common sense. thus i should begin with my old saws, that nothing can be given; everything is sold ; love compels love; hatred, hatred; action and reaction always are equal; no evil in society but has its check which coexists; the moral, the physical, the social world is a plenum, and any flood in one place produces equal ebb in another; nothing is free but the will of man, and that only to procure his own virtue: on every other side but that one he beats the air with his pompous action; that punishment not follows but accompanies crime. 424 journal (age 31 they have said in churches in this age, “mere morality.” o god, they know thee not who speak contemptuously of all that is grand. it is the distinction of christianity, that it is moral. all that is personal in it is nought. when anyone comes who speaks with better insight into moral nature, he will be the new gospel ; miracle or not, inspired or uninspired, he will be the christ; persons are nothing. if i could tell you what you know not; could, by my knowledge of the divine being, put that within your grasp which now you dimly apprehend, and make you feel the moral sublime, you would never think of denying my inspiration. the whole power of christianity resides in this fact, that it is more agreeable to the constitution of man than any other teaching. but from the constitution of man may be got better teaching still. morality requires purity, but purity is not it; i compare, in « worship” (conduct of life): “ men talk of mere morality' – which is much as if one should say, poor god with nobody to help him.'” also in “ the sovereignty of ethics" (lectures and biographical sketches): “mere morality' means — not put into a personal master of morals.” 2 mr. emerson, in the journal, here makes a written reference to the entry, on the 9th august previous, about the « jewish sermon” that he heard that sunday. 1834) “mere morality” 425 < requires justice, but justice is not that; requires beneficence, but is something better. indeed there is a kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue it enjoins. for to the soul in her pure action all the virtues are natural, and not painfully acquired. excite the soul, and it becomes suddenly virtuous. touch the deep heart, and all these listless, stingy, beef-eating bystanders will see the dignity of a sentiment; will say, this is good, and all i have i will give for that. excite the soul, and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear; the world itself loses its solidity, nothing remains but the soul and the divine presence in which it lives. youth and age are indifferent in this presence. “overturn, overturn, and overturn,” said our aged priest, "until he whose right it is to reign, shall come into his kingdom.” the great willow tree over my roof is the trumpet and accompaniment of the storm and gives due importance to every caprice of the gale, and the trees in the avenue announce the same facts with equal din to the front tenants. hoarse rse 426 [age 31 journal concert: they roar like the rigging of a ship in a tempest. the unitarian preacher who sees that his orthodox hearer may with reason complain that the preaching is not serious, faithful, authoritative enough, is by that admission judged. it is not an excuse that he can with clearness see the speculative error of his neighbor. but when a man speaks from deeper convictions than any party faith, when he declares the simple truth, he finds his relation to the calvinist or methodist or infidel at once changed in the most agreeable manner. he is of their faith, says each. it is really a spiritual power which stopped the mouths of the regular priests in the presence of the fervent first quaker and his friends. if the dead-alive never learned before that they do not speak with authority from the highest, they learn it then, when a commissioned man comes, who speaks because he cannot hold back the message that is in his heart. certainly i read a similar story respecting luther; that the preacher's heart, stout enough before, misgave him when he perceived luther was in the audience. the height of virtue is only to act in a firm 1834] virtue's elegance 427 belief that moral laws hold. jesus and saint paul and socrates and phocion believed, in spite of their senses, that moral law existed and reigned, and so believing, could not have acted otherwise. the sinner lets go his perception of these laws, and then acts agreeably to the lower law of the senses. the logic of the sinner and of the saint is perfect. there is no flaw in either epicureanism or stoicism. does not aristotle distinguish between temperance for ends and temperance for love of temperance ? each of these virtues becomes dowdy in a sermon. they must be practiced for their elegance; the virtuous man must be a poet and not a drudge of his virtues, to have them perfect. if he could by implication perform all the virtues, that is, not aim to be temperate, nor aim to be honest, nor aim to be liberal, but in his lofty piety be all three without knowing it, then is he the good moralist. the ecclesiastical dogma of “faith, not works” is based on this truth. jesus believed in moral nature, and he did not come in his own name. (when a preacher does not say he comes in his own name, he generally looks it, or speaks it plainer than by words.) ov in n 428 (age 31 journal authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1834 [in this list, and hereafter, those standard authors, mr. emerson's favorites, that appear nearly every year, will be omitted in the list of his reading or references, namely: homer, plato, plutarch, virgil, cicero, horace, juvenal, montaigne, bacon, shakespeare, ben jonson, beaumont and fletcher, donne, herrick, herbert, milton, sir thomas browne, jeremy taylor, pascal, george fox, locke, newton, fénelon, young, pope, johnson, swedenborg, pitt, hume, burke, gibbon, stewart, jeffrey, mackintosh, de gérando, de staël, wordsworth, scott, landor, coleridge, byron, napoleon.] empedocles ; vyasa ; plotinus'; hermes trismegistus ; sheking (chinese) ; arabian proverbs ; dante, paradiso ; petrarch ; machiavelli ; john barbour, bruce; michel angelo's poems, apud signor radici in retrospective review ; vasari's life of, apud library of useful knowledge ; luther, apud coleridge, table talk; earl of rochester ; swammerdam; gilbert white, natural history of selborne ; linnæus, metamorphosis of plants; oberlin ; erasmus darwin ; friedrich augustus wolf; goethe, tag und jahres hefte, entsagen ; schiller, wallenstein, apud coleridge ; novalis (friedrich von hardenberg) ; reginald heber ; brougham, practical observations on the education of the people ; spurzheim, view of the elementary process of education ; robert dale owen, outline of the system of education at new lanark; dr. jacob bigelow, plants of the vicinity of boston; humboldt ; mrs. barbauld, the brook; tennyson, dirge ; béranger, chansons ; carlyle, characteristics; edinburgh and retrospective reviews. journal the new home in concord marriage to lidian jackson charles emerson course of lectures in boston alcott preaching in east lexington journal xxvi 1835 (from journal b) “to think is to act " concord, january 6, 1835. no doubt we owe most valuable knowledge to our conversation, even with the frivolous; yet when i return, as just now, from more than usual opportunities of hearing and seeing, it seems to me that one good day here is worth more than three gadding days in town. sunday i went for the first time to the swedenborg chapel. the sermon was in its style severely simple, and in method and manner had much the style of a problem in geometry, wholly uncoloured and unimpassioned. yet was it, as i told sampson reed, one that, with the exception of a single passage, might have been preached without exciting surprise in any church. at the opposite pole, say rather in another zone from this hard truist, was taylor,' in the afternoon, wishi rev. edward taylor. 18351 father taylor 431 ing his sons a happy new year, praying god for his servants of the brine, to favor commerce, to bless the bleached sail, the white foam, and through commerce to christianize the universe. “may every deck,” he said, “ be stamped by the hallowed feet of godly captains, and the first watch and the second watch be watchful for the divine light.” he thanked god he had not been in heaven for the last twenty-five years, — then indeed had he been a dwarf in grace, but now he had his redeemed souls around him. and so he went on, — this poet of the sailor and of ann street, — fusing all the rude hearts of his auditory with the heat of his own love, and making the abstractions of philosophers accessible and effectual to them also. he is a fine study to the metaphysician or the life philosopher. he is profuse of himself; he never remembers the looking-glass. they are foolish who fear that notice will spoil him. they never made him, and such as they cannot unmake him; he is a real man of strong nature, and noblest, richest lines on his countenance. he is a work of the same hand that made demosthenes and shakspear and burns, and is guided by instincts diviner than rules. his whole discourse is a string of audacious felicities harmonized by a spirit of 432 journal (age 31 joyful love. everybody is cheered and exalted by him. he is a living man and explains at once what whitefield and fox and father moody were to their audiences, by the total infusion of his own soul into his assembly, and consequent absolute dominion over them. how puny, how cowardly, other preachers look by the side of this preaching! he shows us what a man can do. as i sat last sunday in my country pew, i thought this sunday i would see two living chapels, the swedenborg and the seamen's, and i was not deceived. january 7. bitter cold days, yet i read of that inward fervor which ran as fire from heart to heart through england in george fox's time. how precisely parallel are the biographies of religious enthusiasts — swedenborg, guyon, fox, luther, and perhaps boehmen. each owes all to the discovery that god must be sought within, not without. that is the discovery of jesus. each perceives the worthlessness of all instruction, and the infinity of wisdom that issues from meditation. each perceives the nullity of all conditions but one, innocence; the absolute submission which attends it. all becomes simple, plain in word and act. swedenborg and the quakers cov 1835] influence of jesus 433 have much to say of a new name that shall be given in heaven. the most original writer feels in every sentence the influence of the great writers who have established the conventions of composition ; and the religious revolution effected by jesus christ insensibly or avowedly models each of these succeeding reforms. the boldest vision of the prophet communing with god only, is confined and coloured and expressed according to the resistless example of the jewish. luther's jocularity and learning give him the most reputation for sanity. the quaker casts himself down a passive instrument of the supreme reason, and will not risque silencing it by venturing the coöperation of his understanding. he therefore enacts his first thought, however violent or ludicrous, nor stays to consider whether the purport of his vision may not be expressed in more seemly and accustomed forms. january 8. there is an elevation of thought from which things venerable become less, because we are in the presence of their source. when we catch one clear glimpse of the moral harmonies which accomplish themselves throughout the everlast434 journal [age 31 ing now and throughout the omnipresent here, how impertinent seem the controversies of theologians. god is before us, and they are wrangling about dead gods. what matters it whether theinspiration was plenary or secondary; whether this or that was intended by the prophet; whether jesus worked a miracle or no; if we have access inwardly to the almighty and all-wise one inspirer of all prophecy, container of all truth and sole cause of causes? all the godhead that was in either of those ages, in either of those men, was the perception of these resplendent laws which, at this very moment, draw me, at the same time that they outrun and overwhelm my faculties. the teacher that i look for and await shall enunciate with more precision and universality, with piercing poetic insight those beautiful yet severe compensations that give to moral nature an aspect of mathematical science. he will not occupy himself in laboriously reanimating a historical religion, but in bringing men to god by showing them that he is, not was, and speaks, not spoke. january 9. the only true economy of time is to rely without interval on your own judgment. keep the eye and ear open to all impressions, but 1835) trust the spirit 435 deepen no impression by effort, but take the opinion of the genius within, what ought to be retained by you, and what rejected by you. keep, that is, the upright position. resign yourself to your thoughts, and then every object will make that mark, that modification of your character which it ought. this were better advice to a traveller than sir henry wotton's, “il viso sciolto, i pensieri stretti.": all your time will be lived; the journey, the dinner, the waiting, will not need to be subtracted. “the spirit of prophecy is the witness of jesus.” madame guyon's incapability to speak before the captious is swedenborg's inability to utter what is not believed, a “ though they folded their lips to indignation.” prayer is—is it not? the forcible subjugation for the time of the understanding to the reason. i wrote in my last blotting book that we need a theory of interpretation or mythology. how true a picture is prometheus.... i open countenance and secret thoughts. 2 said of the angels. 3 the substance of what follows in the ms. is omitted, as printed in “ history,” essays i, p. 31, centenary edition. 436 . . journal (age 31 there are some occult facts in human nature that are natural magic. the chief of these is, the glance (æillade). the mysterious communication that is established across a house between two entire strangers, by this means, moves all the springs of wonder. it happened once that a youth and a maid beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time. the youth gazed with great delight upon the beautiful face until he caught the maiden's eye. she presently became aware of his attention, and something like correspondence immediately takes place. the maid depressed her eyes that the man might gaze upon her face. then the man looked away, that the maiden might gratify her curiosity. presently their eyes met in a full, searching, front, not to be mistaken glance. it is wonderful how much it made them acquainted. the man thought that they had come nearer together than they could by any other intercourse in months. but he felt that by thatglance he had been strangely baulked. the beautiful face was strangely transformed. he felt the stirring of owls and bats and horned hoofs, within him. the face, which was really beautiful, seemed to him to have been usurped by a low devil, and an innocent maiden, for so she still seemed to him, to be possessed. and 1835) a glance. illusions. 437 that glance was the confession of the devil to his inquiry. very sorry for the poor maiden was the man, and when the assembly separated, and she passed him as a stranger in the crowd, her form and feet had the strangest resemblance to those of some brute animal. it is remarkable too that the spirit that appears at the windows of the house does at once, in a manner, invest itself in a new form of its own to the mind of the beholder.' se january 12. truth is beautiful. without doubt; and so are lies. i have no fairer page in my life's album than the delicious memory of some passages at concord on the merrimack when affection contrived to give a witchcraft surpassing even the deep attraction of its own truth to a parcel of accidental and insignificant circumstances. those coach wheels that rolled into the mist and darkness of the july morning. the little piazza, a piece of silk, the almshouse, the d girl, and such other things, which were not the charm, have more reality to this groping memory than the charm itself which illuminated them. 1 two or three sentences of the above paragraph were printed, years later, in the essay “ behaviour" in conduct of life. 438. journal [age 31 « passing sweet are the remains of tender memory.” be assured there is as deep a wisdom in embroidered coats and blue and pink ribbons, as in truth and righteousness.' is it not the stupendous riches of man's nature that gives an additional delight to every new truth? when i read a problem, i would be a geometer; poetry, a poet; history, a historian; sermons, a preacher; when i see paintings, i would paint; sculpture, carve; and so with all things, the manifold soul in me vindicates its acquaintance with all these things. similar delight we have in the admirable artist's, soldier's, or sailor's life. we individuate ourselves with him, and judge of his work. what is this but our first ride round our estate to take possession, promising ourselves withal, after a few visits more, to have an insight and give a personal direction to all the affairs that go on within our domain, which is the all? january 13... “our very sign-boards show there has been a titian in the world.” do you think that aris1 in “ love,” essays ii, pp. 174, 175, these memories are expressed in a less personal form. 1835] each can help all 439 totle benefits him only who reads the ethics and the rhetoric? or bacon, or shakspear, or the schools, those only who converse in them? far otherwise; these men acted directly upon the common speech of men and made distinctions which, as they were seen to be just by all who understood them, were rigidly observed as rules in their conversation and writing; and so were diffused gradually as improvements in the vernacular language. thus the language thinks for us, as coleridge said. also simeon the stylite is not quite useless to me, nor danton, nor robespierre, nor rabelais, nor aretin. and the merest speculatists — plotinus and dante — act most intensely on me. fine sketch of the life of descartes in cousin. the student at his first course of philosophical lectures looks wistfully at every knob and ball and glass rod or cylinder, as menacing him with the occult energies which they are about to disclose to their compeller. i think i will read for a lyceum lecture the three deaths of phocion, socrates and sir thomas more. perhaps the martyrdom of sir john cobham in southey’s book of the church might serve as a fourth. 440 [age 31 journal my friend mr. — will be a good minister “when it shall please the lord to make his people out of board." it is a great happiness when two good minds meet, both cultivated and with such difference of learning as to excite each the other's curiosity, and such similarity as to understand each other's allusions in the touch-and-go of conversation. they make each other strong and confident. ... the unspoken part of this conversation is the most valuable. how many secrets that have puzzled us for years are then told, and with most unexpected issues. you may find, for example, that the reason of your friend's superiority in power arises, strangely enough, not from a defect, but a superfluity in your constitution. far, very far from envy is this free communication. a mutual respect rejoices them both. coöperation, and not exclusiveness is the fruit. the great value of biography consists in the perfect sympathy that exists between like minds. space and time are an absolute nullity to this principle. anaction of luther's that i heartily approve do i adopt also. we are imprisoned in life 1835] spiritual helpers 441 in the company of persons painfully unlike us, or so little congenial to our highest tendencies, and so congenial to our lowest, that their influence is noxious, and only now and then comes by us some commissioned spirit that speaks as with the word of a prophet to the languishing, nigh dead faith in the bottom of the heart, and passes by, and we forget what manner of men we are. it may be that there are very few persons at any one time in the world who can address with any effect the higher wants of men. this defect is compensated by the recorded teaching and acting of this class of men. socrates, st. paul, antoninus, luther, milton have lived for us as much as for their contemporaries, if by books or by tradition their life and words come to my ear. we recognise with delight a strict likeness between their noblest impulses and our own. we are tried in their trial. by our cordial approval we conquer in their victory. we participate in their act by our thorough understanding of it. and thus we become acquainted with a fact which we could not have learned from our fellows, that the faintest sentiments which we have shunned to indulge from the fear of singularity are older than the oldest institutions,—are eternal in man; that 442 journal [age 31 we can find ourselves, our private thoughts, our preferences, and aversions, and our moral judgements perhaps more truly matched in an ancient lombard, or saxon, or greek, than in our own family. roar it is a beautiful fact in human nature that the roar of separating oceans, no, nor the roar of rising and falling empires, cannot hinder the ear from hearing the music of the most distant voices ; that the trumpet of homer's poetry yet shrills in the closet of the retired scholar across three thousand years; that the reproof of socrates stings as like the bite of a serpent, as it did alcibiades. these affinities atone to us for the narrowness of our society, and the prison of our single lot, by making the human race our society, and the vast variety of human fortune the arena of actions on which we, by passing judgement, take part. history, taken together, is as severely moral in its teaching as the straitest religious sect. and thus we are fortified in our moral sentiments by a most intimate presence of sages and heroes. pythagoras is said (falsely, i suppose) to have declared that he remembered himself to have existed before, under the name of euphorbus, arena 1835] disguised gods 443 at the siege of troy. which of us who is much addicted to reading but recognizes his own saying or thinking in his favorite authors ? january 14. apollo kept the flocks of admetus, said the priests; another significant fable. every man is an angel in disguise, a god playing the fool. it seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as an asylum, and here they will break out into rare music and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven, and then the mad fit returns and they mope and wallow like dogs. when the gods come among men they are not known. jesus was not. socrates and shakspear were not." my thoughts tame me. proud may the bard be among his fellow men, but when he sits waiting his inspiration he is a child, humble, reverent, watching for the thoughts as they flow to him from their unknown source. the moment of inspiration,i am its reverent slave. i watch and watch and hail its aurora from afar.” i the first sentence in this paragraph and the concluding ones are printed in “ history," essays i. 2 cf. “the poet,” poems, centenary edition, p. 313. 444 journal (age 31 january 15. saw the morn rise from the hilltop, but could not wait for the sun. those long slender bars of cloud swim like fishes in the sea of crimson light. nor am i ashamed to be a lover of that silent sea.' my grandfather william emerson left his parish and joined the northern army, in the strong hope of having great influence on the men. he was bitterly disappointed in finding that the best men at home became the worst in the camp, vied with each other in profanity, drunkenness and every vice, and degenerated as fast as the days succeeded each other, and instead of much influence, he found he had none.' this so affected him that when he became sick with the prevalent distemper, he insisted on taking a dismission, not a furlough, and, as he died on his return, his family lost, it is said, a major's pension. i here follows the passage in nature, “ beauty,” • how does nature deify us,” etc. 2 mr. emerson did not take into account that his uniformly brave and hopeful grandfather had, when he wrote the letter on which this paragraph is based, the poison of mortal disease already working in his blood; hence his depression. 1835] courtesy. plymouth 445 we are all glad of warm days, they are so economical, and in the country in winter the back is always cold." january 16. the whole of heraldry is in courtesy. a man of fine manners can pronounce your name in his conversation with all the charm that ever “my lord” or “your highness ” or “your grace” could have had to your ear. ve er january 23. home again from plymouth, with most agreeable recollections. some thoughts lost. the cs and bs can finish their sermon, the man of genius cannot, because they write words and pages which are finite things and can be numbered and ended at pleasure; he writes after nature, which is endless. his work, therefore, when it is best concluded, he sees to be only begun. may i say without presumption that, like michel angelo, i only block my statues. mr. hoar, in the coach, said of judge marshall “ that if his intellects failed, he could lose as much as would furnish brains to half a dozen 1 the modern reader must remember that open fires were the sole dependence for warmth. 446 [age 31 journal common men, before common men would find it out.” it is one of the laws of composition that, let the preparation have been how elaborate, how extended soever, the moment of casting is yet not less critical, not the less all-important moment on which the whole success depends. ichabod morton at plymouth said that he did not, in dealing with his brother, look very sharply to his own interest or mind the loss of a few dollars. he wished to treat all men in the same way. january 30. i spent at plymouth with lydia jackson. february 2. let christianity speak ever for the poor and the low. though the voice of society should demand a defence of slavery, from all its organs, that service can never be expected from me. my opinion is of no worth, but i have not a syllable of all the language i have learned, to utter for the planter. if by opposing slavery i go to undermine institutions, i confess i do not wish to live in a nation where slavery exists. the 1835) slavery 447 life of this world has but a limited worth in my eyes, and really is not worth such a price as the toleration of slavery. therefore — therefore — though i may be so far restrained by unwillingness to cut the planter's throat as that i should refrain from denouncing him, yet i pray god that not even in my dream or in madness may i ever incur the disgrace of articulating one word of apology for the slave-trader or slaveholder. yesterday, had i been born and bred a quaker, i should have risen and protested against the preacher's words. i would have said that in the light of christianity is no such thing as slavery. the only bondage it recognizes is that of sin. clytemnestra, in sophocles, thinks herself too violently reproved by her daughter. electra answers, — «'t is you that say it, not i; you do the deeds, and your ungodly deeds find me the words.” the childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day. paradise regained. “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” 448 journal (age 31 february 11. it needs to say something, they tell me, of the french revolution. why, yes, i believe that it has been advantageous on the whole. i very readily seek and find reasons for any such proposition, because whilst i believe that evil is to be hated and resisted and punished, at least forcibly hindered, yet offences must needs come, and out of them comes good as naturally and inevitably as the beautiful flower and the nourishing fruit out of the dark ground. i believe that the tendency of all thought is to optimism. now for the french revolution. i believe, in the first place, that it would be an advantage, though we were not able to point out a single benefit that had flowed thence, and were able to show many calamities. i should still incline to think that we were too near to judge, like a soldier in the ranks who is quite unable, amid the din and smoke, to judge how goes the day, or guess at the plan of the engagement. if i could see no direct good which it had occasioned, i should still say, see what great lessons it has taught the governor and the subject. it has taught men how surely the relaxing of the moral bands of society is followed by cruelty. it taught men that there was a limit 1835] milton, burns, bryant 449 beyond which the terrors of a standing army and of loyal association could not avail; that there was a limit beyond which the patience, the fears of a down-trodden people could not go. february 14. grand is that word of milton in his letter to diodati excusing his friend for not writing to him, “ for though you have not written, your probity writes to me in your stead.” well said the wise aunt to-day, “elizabeth grows on one; she is capable of humility; her manners to the obscure are without fault.”. february 16. if milton, if burns, if bryant, is in the world, we have more tolerance, and more love for the changing sky, the mist, the rain, the bleak, overcast day, the indescribable sunrise and the immortal stars. if we believed no poet survived on the planet, nature would be tedious. february 25. on visits. if i had anything to say to you, you would find me in your house pretty quick. i miss elizabeth hoar, always regarded as a sister by mr. emerson because of her engagement to his brother charles. 450 journal [age 31 asse i looked upon trades, politics, and domestic life as games to keep men amused and hinder them from asking cui bono? until their eyes and minds are grown. then came edward's tragic verses,' and i thought we give full leave to the poor man and to the parting man to feel bitterness; but not less bitter (though we give them no allowance) are the sad farewells of the realist amidst home, friends, and wealth. march 17. many days give me marine recollections, as to-day. it is because when the wind is loud and the air clear, the great masses of cloud move so fast as to suggest immediately their vicinity to the sea. the wind blowing from the west, they must reach the coast, and shade the sea in an hour. instantly, therefore, comes up before the eye the cold blue sea gathered up into waves all rippled and scored over with wind-lines, and a few sail scudding on their several tracks, though scarce seen to move over the broad black circle. but nature is a picture frame which fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. taylor in the preface to this healthful poem, van artevelde, says that sense must be the 1 the last farewell,” which mr. emerson printed with his own poems. 1835] sense under poetry 451 basis of all consummate poetry. it is well and truly said. we have almost a theory of shakspear, the wonder of shakspear is almost diminished, when we say, strong sense is the staple of his verse, because what is to be accounted for, is the extent of the man; that he could create not one or two, but so manifold classes and individuals, and each perfect. but we are quite familiar with the expertness and power of men of sense in every new condition, and this experience supplies us with a just analogy. march 18. “beauty with the ancients was the tongue on the balance of expression,” said winckelmann. what meant he? answer: beauty no other thing is than a beam flashed out between the middle and extreme. herrick. hunc solem et stellas, et decedentia certis tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla imbuti spectant. horace. march 19. as i walked in the woods i felt what i often feel, that nothing can befal me in life, no ca452 journal (age 31 lamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which nature will not offer a sweet consolation. standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into the infinite space, i become happy in my universal relations. the name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. i am the heir of uncontained beauty and power. and if then i walk with a companion, he should speak from his reason to my reason; that is, both from god. to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle too insignificant for remembrance.' o, keep this humor, (which in your life-time may not come to you twice,) as the apple of your eye. set a lamp before it in your memory which shall never be extinguished. i think taylor's poem’ is the best light we have ever had upon the genius of shakspear., ! we have made a miracle of shakspear, a haze of light instead of a guiding torch, by accepting unquestioned all the tavern stories about his want of education and total unconsciousness. the internal evidence all the time is irresistible 1 part of this paragraph occurs in nature, chapter i. 2 philip van artevelde. as a m 1835] shakspear. sacrifice 453 that he was no such person. he was a man, like this taylor, of strong sense and of great cultivation; an excellent latin scholar, and of extensive and select reading, so as to have formed his · theories of many historical characters with as much clearness as gibbon or niebuhr or goethe. he wrote for intelligent persons, and wrote with intention. he had taylor's strong good sense, and added to it his own wonderful facility of execution which aerates and sublimes all language the moment he uses it, or, more truly, animates every word. n v i ought to have said in my wood-thoughts just now, that there the mind integrates itself again. the attention, which had been distracted into parts, is reunited, reinsphered. the whole of nature addresses itself to the whole man. we are reassured. it is more than a medicine. it is health. in talking, weeks ago, with m. m. e. i was ready to say that a severest truth would forbid me to say that ever i had made a sacrifice. that which we are in healthy times seems so great that nothing can be taken from us that seems much. i loved ellen, and love her with an affec454 journal (age 31 tion that would ask nothing but its indulgence to make me blessed. yet when she was taken from me, the air was still sweet, the sun was not taken down from my firmament, and however sore was that particular loss, i still felt that it was particular, that the universe remained to us both, that the universe abode in its light and in its power to replenish the heart with hope. distress never, trifles never abate my trust. only this lethean stream that washed through us, that gives sometimes a film or haze of unreality, a suggestion that, as c. said of concord society, “we are on the way back to annihilation,” — only this threatens my trust. but not that would certify me that i had ever suffered. praise ! praise and wonder! and oft we feel so wistful and babe-like that we cannot help thinking that a correspondent sentiment of paternal pleasantry must exist over us in the bosom of god. march 19. “ spare the poor emmet, rich in hoarded grain; he lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.” at waltham they have 11,000 spindles ; at lowell, 200,000. 1835] argument. act truth 455 “the road that luxury levels for the coach, industry may travel with his cart.” e. b. e. through nature's ample range in thought to stroll, and start at man, the single mourner there. young. heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow. young. landor writes that “no man ever argued so fairly as he might have done.” and in a reflecting, highly cultivated society it seems as if no man could ever be in a passion, or act with a negligent, self-forgetting greatness. can webster in the american senate, for any conceivable public outrage, scream with real passion? the reporters say he did the other day. they did not think so when they wrote it, and nobody believes it was anything else than a fine, wise, oratorical scream. was never utter the truism, but live it among men and by your fireside. this rebellious understanding is the incorrigible liar; convict him of perfidy, and he answers you with a new fib. no man speaks the truth or lives a true life two minutes together. nswers 456 journal (age 31 march 23. there is no greater lie than a voluptuous book like boccaccio. forit represents the pleasures of appetite, which only at rare intervals, a few times in a life-time, are intense, and to whose acme continence is essential, as frequent, habitual, and belonging to the incontinent. ... settle it in your own mind that you must choose between your own suffrage and other people's. i used to think, all men use to think, that you can have both; but you cannot. secure your own, and you shall be assured of others, twenty years hence, but you must part with them so long. before this reason with bright eternal eyes, even merits that seem pure and saint-like compared with practices and reputations of the mob, are seen to be vulgar and vile. there are merits calculated on shorter and longer periods; better than those of the hour are the benthamite and the calvinist, who keep the law all their life for pay; but these dwindle before the incalculable eternity which the lover of virtue embraces in the present moment. the virtue of the intellect consists in preferring work to trade. brougham, canning, everett, convert their genius into a shop, and turn 1835] common conversation 457 every faculty upside down that they may sell well. allston, wordsworth, carlyle, are smit with the divine desire of creation, and scorn the auctioneers. now what you do for the shop is so much taken from science. r.' cannot eat sponge cake without a ramrod. there is almost no earnest conversation, so much of display enters into it. put two people of good condition together, the talk on one or both parts will probably be merely defensive; that is, they are not thinking how they may learn something, but how they may come off well. change your parties, and perhaps you excite the ambition of each speaker to say something brilliant, to leave a good opinion of himself. ordinarily men do not exchange thoughts and converse in method, that is, advancing. one goes east, the other west. the preacher goes among his people, the professor among his scholars, and finds an universal admiration of his sermons or lessons; but the first word they speak on the general subject shows him that these discourses never penetrated farther than the ears. 1 dr. ripley, who always refused it without this adjunct. 458 (age 31 journal they have a sort of instinctive respect for his train of thought and the profession which belongs to it, but they live in another train of thought that in particulars flatly contradicts his. and when he thinks a perfect understanding is obtained, he finds the whole battle remains to be fought. did you ever take part in a conversation which advanced? commonly it is merely pastime. they circulate round point-no-point. each remains fast in his own aura and not once do they communicate. re dr. h., mr.b., mr. s., mr. i., the most powerful men in our community, have no theory of business that can stand scrutiny, but only bubble built on bubble without end. they skate so fast over a film of ice that it does not break under them. it seems, when you see their dexterity in particulars, as if you could not overestimate the resources of good sense, and when you find how utterly void they are of all remote aims, as if you could not underestimate their philosophy. cannot a man contemplate his true good so steadily as to be willing to renounce all thirst for display, and make all his doings tentative, imperfect, because aiming ever at truth and perfection lying out of himself; instead of tricking out 1835) sects. oracles 459 what trifles he has picked up and disposing them to advantage in little popular poems or conversations or books? i think he had better live in the country, and see little society, and make himself of no reputation. sects fatten on each other's faults. how many people get a living in new england by calling the unitarians prayerless, or by showing the calvinists to be bigots. hallett feeds on the masons, and mcgavin on the catholics. the poor man that only sees faults in himself will die in his sins. charles thinks the unitarians pursue a low, conservative policy. the high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will always instruct and command mankind. ivin ose it is because i am such a bigot to my own whims, that i distrust the ability of a man who insists much on the advantage to be derived from literary conversazione. alone is wisdom. alone is happiness. society nowadays makes us low spirited, hopeless. alone is heaven. march 26. the wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. nature says, he is my creature, and spite of all his impertinent griefs 460 journal [age 31 he shall be glad with me. almost i fear to think how glad i am. i went by him in the night. who can tell the moment when the pine outgrew the whortleberry that shaded its first sprout. it went by in the night. march 27. he who writes should seek not to say what may be said, but what has not been said that is yet true. i will read and write. why not? all the snow is shovelled away, all the corn planted, and the children and the creatures on the planet taken care of without my help. but if i do not read, nobody will. yet am i not without my own fears. captain franklin after six weeks' travelling to the north pole on the ice, found himself two hundred miles south of the spot he set out from: the ice had floated. and i sometimes start to think i am looking out the same vocables in the dictionary, spelling out the same sentences, solving the same problems. — my ice may float also. march 28. if life were long enough, among my thousand and one works should be a book of nature whereof howitt's seasons should be not so n1835] a book of nature 461 much the model as the parody. it should contain the natural history of the woods around my shifting camp for every month in the year. it should tie their astronomy, botany, physiology, meteorology, picturesque, and poetry together. no bird, no bug, no bud, should be forgotten on his day and hour. to-day the chickadees, the robins, bluebirds and song-sparrows sang to me. i dissected the buds of the birch and the oak; in every one of the last is a star. the crow sat above as idle as i below. the river flowed brimful, and i philosophised upon this composite, collective beauty which refuses to be analysed. nothing is beautiful alone. nothing but is beautiful in the whole. learn the history of a craneberry. mark the day when the pine cones and acorns fall. a wonderful sight is the inverted landscape. look at the prospect from a high hill through your legs, and it gives the world a most pictorial appearance. saturn, they say, devoured his children, thereby presignifying the man who thought, and instantly turned round to see how his thoughts were made: the hen that eats the egg. 462 journal [age 31 march 29. certainly a man would be glad to do his country service, but he cannot cram his service down its throat. it is time enough if he come when he is called. it is enough for him if he has eyes to see, that he is infinite spectator, without hurrying, uncalled, to be infinite doer. let him brood on his immortality, — « for every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath." he cannot look to work directly on men, but obliquely. few men bring more than one or two points into contact with society at once ; they must be content to influence it thereby. hereafter they may find more purchase. we live and grow by use. if you sit down to write, with weak eyes, and awaken your imagination to the topic, you will find your eyes strong. march 31. the tree is a congeries of living vegetables ; so it often seems as if man was a congeries of living spirits, according to goethe's monadism. one of them looks to see what another does. many dissimilar things are done with like earnestness. 1835] dreams. the room-mate 463 the robin hóps about in the field as if he was waiting for somebody — hop, hop, hop — and then stops again. ce the dreams of an idealist have a poetic integrity and truth. their extravagance from nature is yet within a higher nature, and terrible hints are thrown to him out of a quite unknown intelligence. i have been startled two or three times by the justice as well as the significance of the intimations of this phantasmagoria. once or twice the conscious fetters of the spirit have been unlocked and a freer utterance seemed attained. april 10. i fretted the other night at the hotel at the stranger who broke into my chamber after midnight, claiming to share it. but after his lamp had smoked the chamber full and i had turned round to the wall in despair, the man blew out his lamp, knelt down at his bedside, and made in low whisper a long earnest prayer. then was the relation entirely changed between us. i fretted no more, but respected and liked him. coleridge said it was no decisive mark of poetic genius that a man should write well con464 journal (age 31 cerning himself. is it not because the true genius, the shakspeare and goethe, sees the tree and sky and man as they are, enters into them; whilst the inferior writer dwells evermore with himself, “ twinkling restlessly”? a man is seldom in the upright position two moments together, but when he is, let him record his observations and they shall be fit for “ the spiritual inquirer.” le baron russell has visited me and shown me the stars. hither came g.,'as usual appearing as if bestridden by a restless and invisible rider. ii april 11. glad to hear music in the village last evening under the fine yellow moon; it sounds like cultivation, domestication. in america, where all are on wheels, one is glad to meet with a sign of adorning our own town. it is a consecration, a beautifying of our place. a bugle, clarionet and flute are to us a momentary homer and milton. music is sensuous poetry. 1 dr. le baron russell of plymouth, later of boston, a friend of mr. emerson's through life. g. is mr. george p. bradford. 1835] idea of god changes 465 april 12. the gods make those men very bad who talk much about them, says landor's cyrus. it must be owned that the idea of god in the human mind is a very changing luminary. sometimes seen; never quite unremembered; often quite hidden, to the degree that the spirit asks, is there any? but the moral sentiments are immutable. was there ever a moment in your life when you doubted the existence of the divine person? yes. was there ever a moment in your life when you doubted the duty of speaking the truth? no. then is one mutable, the other immutable. [here follows the passage on the dark hours of life, found in the opening paragraph of“ the tragic,” first printed in the dial (see natural history of intellect).] a man feels that his time is too precious, the objects within reach of his spirit too beautiful, than that his attention should stoop to such disfigurements, as antimasonry, or convent riots, or general jackson and the globe. yet welcome would be to him the principle out of which these proceed, for all the laws of his being are beautiful. this translation the wise is ever making. 466 journal (age 31 • “already my opinion has gained infinitely in force when another has adopted it.” this is the reason why a writer appears ever to so much more advantage in the pages of another man's book than in his own. coleridge, wordsworth, schelling are conclusive, when channing or carlyle or everett quotes them, but if you take up their own books, then instantly they become, not lawgivers, but modest, peccable candidates for your approbation. language of nature no man ever grew so learned as to exhaust the significance of any part of nature. nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. the flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. april 14. “ ne te," etc. every man is a wonder until you learn his studies, his associates, his early acts and the floating opinions of his times, and then he developes himself as naturally fro point as a river is made from rills. burke's tions are but the combination of the an i ne te quæsiveris extra. m 1835] idealize bravely 467 register, which he edited, with the “inquiry.on the sublime and beautiful,” which he wrote at the same time. swedenborg is unriddled by learning the theology and philosophy of continental europe in his youth. each great doctrine is then received by the mind as a tally of an idea in its own reason, and not as news. rev.dr. f. consoled my father on his deathbed by telling him he had not outlived his teeth, etc., and bid my mother expect now to be neglected by society. april 16. this “snow in summer,” which falls so fast to-day, is like a wound from a friend. dr. ripley calls it “robin-snow.” why must always the philosopher mince his words and fatigue us with explanation ? he speaks from the reason, and being, of course, contradicted word for word by the understanding, he stops like a cog-wheel at every notch to explain. let him say, i idealize, and let that be once for all; or, i sensualize, and then the rationalist may stop his ears. empedocles said bravely, “i am god; i am immortal; i contemn human affairs ”; and all men hated him. 468 [age 31 journal yet every one of the same men had had his religious hour when he said the same thing. fable avoids the difficulty, is at once exoteric and esoteric, and is clapped by both sides. plato and jesus used it. and history is such a fable. plato had a secret doctrine, — had he? what secret can he conceal from the eyes of montaigne, of bacon, of kant? let the imaginative man deny himself and stick by facts. as a man must not bring his children into company naked, and must not bring more children into the world than he can clothe, so the idealist must retain his thoughts until they embody themselves in fit outward illustrations. a court house is a good place to learn the limits of man. the best counsel are not orators, but very slovenly speakers; to use mr. warren's fine apology for baylies, “they spread their ability over the whole argument, and have not strong points.” the interminable sentences of mr. h., clause growing out of clause “like the prickly pear,” as charles said, reminded me 1835) abolition eloquence 469 of nothing so much as certain vestry prælections. but in the court house the worth of a man is gauged.' sore an advantage shines on the abolition side, that these philanthropists really feel no clog, no check from authority — no discord, no sore place in their own body which they must keep out of sight or tenderly touch. people just out of the village, or the shop, reason and plead like practised orators, such scope the subject gives them, and such stimulus to their affections. the reason is glad to find a question which is not, like religion or politics, bound around with so many traditions and usages that every man is forced to argue unfairly, but one on which he may exhaust his whole love of truth, — his heart and his mind. this is one of those causes which will make a man. never is a good cause in facts long at loss for an ideal equipment." i concord was a shire-town until 1858, when the courts were transferred to lowell, and the sessions of the supreme court once a year, and of the court of common pleas three times a year, drew a large attendance from the neighborhood to hear the leaders of the bar. 2 mr. emerson used to say (or quote), “ eloquence is dogcheap at an antislavery chapel.” 470 journal (age 31 it was alarming to see the lines of sloth in so many faces in the court house; the flame of life burns very dim. the most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive. “je défie un cœur comme le vôtre d'oser mal penser du mien,” writes rousseau to diderot. april 19. it is a happy talent to know how to play. some men must always work if they would be respectable; for the moment they trifle, they are silly. others show most talent when they trifle. be it said of w. that his excess of reverence made it impossible for him to realize ever that he was a man; he never assumed equality with strangers, but still esteemed them older than himself, though they were of his own age or younger. he went through life postponing his maturity and died in his error.' april 22. i have made no record of everett's fine eulogy at lexington on the 20th, but he is all art, and i find in him nowadays, maugre all his gifts i this passage seems to be a veiled allusion to himself. 1835) everett and webster 471 and great merits, more to blame than praise. he is not content to be edward everett, but would be daniel webster. this is his mortal distemper. why should such a genius waste itself? have we any to spare? ... daniel webster, nature's own child, sat there all day and drew all eyes. poor everett ! for this was it that you left your own work, your exceeding great and peculiar vocation, the desire of all eyes, the gratitude of all ingenuous scholars to stray away hither and mimic this man, that here and everywhere in your best and (for work) unsurpassed exertions, you might still be mere secondary and satellite to him, and for him hold a candle? webster spoke at the table few and simple words, but from the old immoveable basis of simplicity and common natural emotion to which he instinctively and consciously adheres. “we only row; we're steered by fate.” the involuntary education is all. see how we are mastered. with the desire of dogmatising, here we sit chatting. with desire of poetic reputation, we still prose. we would be teachers, but in spite of us we are kept out of the pulpit, and thrust into the pew. who doth it? no 472 journal [age 31 man: only lethe, only time; only negatives ; indisposition ; delay; nothing. on the same auspicious morning i received a letter from carlyle the wise, the brave, and his intimations of a visit to america, which purpose may god prosper and consummate ! better a great deal have friends full grown before they are made acquainted, like moody and webster; they have the pleasant surprise of the bare result; a man meets a man. what fact is more valuable than the difference of our power alone and with others.' april 23. the order of things consents to virtue. such scenes as luxurious poets and novelists often paint, where temptation has a quite overcoming force, never or very rarely occur in real life. it is very hard to know what to do if you have great desires for benefitting mankind; but a very plain thing is your duty. it may be suspected then that the depth of wisdom and the height of glory is there. self-union, never risk that. neither lie, nor steal, nor betray, 1 here follows the passage on the happy flow of a letter to a friend. see first page of " friendship,” essay i. scenes a us1835) richter. magic mantle 473 for you violate consciousness. nothing is selfevident but the commandments of consciousness. “the limbs of my buried ones,” etc. i dislike the bad taste of almost everything i have read of jean paul; this scrap forinstance: shakspear never said these hard artificial things. we think we are approaching a star. i fear it is a nebula. at least individual aims are very nebulous. may 1. cloudy and cold: is not may morning sure to be? may 9. spin out your web to the end of your yarn. ten rivers stream from your finger ends. a frost this morn. if what you have read in newspapers you had read in good books, how much would you know? may 11. a foolish german fairy tale, the short mantle, which i read in english long years ago, made my cheeks glow again and almost the gracious drops fall at the triumph of the chaste 474 journal [age 31 and gentle genelas.' very docile we are to such pretty tales, but to verify them in our own chaste life and simple spiritual excellence very slow indeed. it is a fine flattery to tell your friend he is a singular mind, an incalculable person. i am disqualified by hearing this strife concerning goethe from judging truly of his genius. he is that which the intelligent hermit supposes him to be, and can neither be talked up nor talked down. we are all wise for other people, none for himself. that wise fessenden told me never to have two related ideas without putting them on paper. genius seems to consist merely in trueness of sight, in using such words as show that the man was an eye-witness, and not a repeater of what was told. thus, the girl who said “the 1 this story is found in many forms. in the fabliau du mantel mal taillé, the hero's name is venelas. see also “ the boy and the mantle” in percy's reliques and child's collection of ballads. 1835] hard times. preacher 475 earth was a-gee;" lord bacon when he speaks of exploding gunpowder as “a fiery wind blowing with that expansive force,” etc.— these are poets. car hard times. in this contradictory world of truth the hard times come when the good times are in the world of commerce; namely, sleep, full eating, plenty of money, care of it, and leisure; these are the hard times. nothing is doing, and we lose every day. the young preacher is discouraged by learning the motives that brought his great congregation to church. scarcely ten came to hear his sermon. but singing, or a new pelisse, or cousin william, or the sunday school, or a proprietors' meeting after church, or the merest anility in hanover street, were the beadles that brought and the bolts that hold his silent assembly in the church. never mind how they came, my friend, never mind who or what brought them, any more than you do who or what set you down in boston in 1835. here they are, real men and women, fools, i grant, but potentially divine, every one of them convertible. every ear is yours to gain. every heart will be glad and proud and thankful for a master. a 1 476 [age 31 journal there where you are, serve them and they must serve you. they care nothing for you, but be to them a plato; be to them a christ, and they shall all be platos, and all be christs. may 13. do believe so far in your doctrine of compensation as to trust that greatness cannot be cheaply procured. self-denial and persisting selfrespect can alone secure their proper fruits. act naturally, act from within, not once or twice, but from month to month, without misgiving, without deviation, from year to year, and you shall reap the costly advantages of moral accomplishments. make haste to reconcile you to yourself, and the whole world shall leap and run to be of your opinion. imprison that stammering tongue within its white fence until you have a necessary sentiment or a useful fact to utter, and that said, be dumb again. then your words will weigh something, two tons, like st. john's. what a benefit if a rule could be given whereby the mind could at any moment east itself, and find the sun. but long after we have thought we were recovered and sane, light breaks in upon us and we find we have yet had no sane moment. another morn rises on mid-noon. 1835) true men. advance 477 who is capable of a manly friendship? very few. charles thinks he can count five persons of character; and that shakspear and the other writers of the first class infused their character into their works and hence their rank. we feel an interest in a robust healthful mind, an alfred, chaucer, dante, which goethe never inspires. the truest state of mind, rested in, becomes false. thought is the manna which cannot be stored. it will be sour if kept, and to-morrow must be gathered anew. perpetually must we east ourselves, or we get into irrecoverable error, starting from the plainest truth and keeping as we think the straightest road of logic. it is by magnifying god, that men become pantheists ; it is by piously personifying him, that they become idolaters. as the world signified with the greek, beauty, so skepticism, alas! signifies sight. not in his goals but in his transition man is great. dcc see the second aphorism of the novum organum, that neither the hand nor the mind of man can accomplish much without tools, etc., etc. : “nec intellectus sibi permissus, multum valet.” this is the defence of written or premeditated preach478 journal [age 31 ing, of the written book, of the composed poem. no human wit unaided is equal to the production at one time of such a result as the hamlet or lear, but by a multitude of trials and a thousand rejections and the using and perusing of what was already written, one of those tragedies is at last completed — a poem made that shall thrill the world by the mere juxtaposition and interaction of lines and sentences that singly would have been of little worth and short date. rightly is this art named composition, and the composition has manifold the effect of the component parts. the orator is nowise equal to the evoking on a new subject of this brilliant chain of sentiments, facts, illustrations, whereby he now fires himself and you. every link in this living chain he found separate; one, ten years ago; one, last week; some of them he found in his father's house, or at school when a boy; some of them by his losses; some of them by his sickness; some by his sins. the webster with whom you talk admires the oration almost as much as you do, and knows himself to be nowise equal, unarmed, that is, without this tool of synthesis, to the splendid effect which he is yet well pleased you should impute to him. 479 1835) composition no hands could make a watch. the hands brought dry sticks together, and struck the flint with iron, or rubbed sticks for fire, and melted the ore, and with stones made crowbar and hammer; these again helped to make chisel and file, rasp and saw, piston and boiler, and so the watch and the steam-engine are made, which the hands could never have produced, and these again are new tools to make still more recondite and prolific instruments. so do the collated thoughts beget more, and the artificially combined individuals have in addition to their own a quite new collective power. the main is made up of many islands, the state of many men, the poem of many thoughts, each of which, in its turn, filled the whole sky of the poet, was day and being to him. may 14. there is hardly a surer way to incur the censure of infidelity and irreligion than sincere faith and an entire devotion. for to the common eye, pews, vestries, family prayer, sanctimonious looks and words constitute religion, which the devout man would find hindrances. and so we go, trying always to weld the finite and infinite, the absolute and the seeming, together. on the contrary, the manner in which religion is most 480 (age 31 journal e positively affirmed by men of the world is bare-faced skepticism. when i write a book on spiritual things i think i will advertise the reader that i am a very wicked man, and that consistency is nowise to be expected of me. when will you mend montaigne? when will you take the hint of nature? where are your essays? can you not express your one conviction that moral laws hold? have you not thoughts and illustrations that are your own; the parable of geometry and matter; the reason why the atmosphere is transparent; the power of composition in nature and in man's thought; the uses and uselessness of travelling; the law of compensation; the transcendent excellence of truth in character, in rhetoric, in things; the sublimity of self-reliance; and the rewards of perseverance in the best opinion? have you not a testimony to give for shakspear, for milton? one sentence of real praise of jesus, is worth a century of legendary christianity. can you not write as though you wrote to yourself, and drop the token, assured that a wise hand will pick it up? i recorded worse things in my italian journal than one i omitted ; that a lady in palermo 1835] strange courtesy 481 invited me to come and ride out with her in her barouche, which i did, though the day was rainy and so the coach was covered. she did not invite me to dine, so i made my obeisance, when on our return i had waited upon her into the house; then i walked home through a drenching rain in a city where i was an entire stranger, but not until i had paid her coachman my half dollar who way laid me on the stairs. to as fat an understanding as mine i cannot but think it might have occurred, that, to send the guest home or to pay one's servants, would really be a finer compliment. but it is a good specimen of the misery of finery. address your rede to the young american, and know that you hook to you all like minds far or near, whether you shall know them or not. and remember brutus. im “pberecydes syrus primus dixit animos hominum esse sempiternos.” cicero, tusc. quest. lib. 1, c. 16. the chapter on optical delusions in our lifetime is very large. how many times have we resolved not to be again deceived by one and the same! 482 [age 31 journal 1 commerce, which vulgarises great things, will x never quite degrade for the poet the miracle of the letter which floats round the globe in a pine ship and comes safe to the eye for which it was writ.' se rs 0 good story squire adams told here of countryman travelling between day and sunrise, and seeing the locomotive and its train of cars on the railroad. he saw the smoke and the wheels, his horse was frightened, ran, turned over the wagon, and broke it; and he crawled to a house for help. they asked him what had happened. he could not well tell what, but that it looked like hell in harness. trifles move us more than laws. why am i more curious to know the reason why the star form is so oft repeated in botany, why the number five is such a favorite with nature, than to understand the circulation of the sap and the formation of buds?? those two wonders of electro-magnetism and the polarisation of light have also a peculiar interest. i see “ prudence” in essays i, p. 236, centenary ed. 2 why nature loves the number five and why the star-form she repeats. poems, “woodnotes i." 1835] herrick 483 may 16. robert herrick delights in praising ben jonson, and has many panegyrical pieces to others, and in one copy of verses praising many, beaumont and fletcher and others, yet never drops the name of shakspear. 'tis like the want of the statues of cassius and brutus in the funeral of junia,“ eo ipso præfulgebant, quod non visebantur.” herrick's merit is the simplicity and manliness of his utterance, and only rarely the, weight of his sentences. he has, and is conscious of having, a noble idiomatic use of his english, a perfect plain-style from which he can at any time soar to a fine lyric delicacy, or descend to the coarsest sarcasms without losing his firm footing. but this power of speech was accompanied by an assurance of fame. a similar merit is that of the american hillhouse, though no approach to herrick's wealth. sarcasmer of sple. as so c landor thinks that a knowledge of poetry is reserved for some purer state of sensation and existence. the observation of a mere observer is more unsuspicious than that of a theorist. i ought to have no shame in publishing the records of one who aimed only at the upright position, more 484 journal (age 32 anxious that the thing should be truly seen than careful what thing it was. as we exercise little election in our landscape, but see for the most part what god sets before us, i cannot but think mere enumeration of the objects would be found to be more than a catalogue, — would be a symmetrical picture, not designed by us, but by our maker, as when we first perceive the meaning of a sentence which we have carried in the memory for years. may 24. coincidences, dreams, animal magnetism, omens, sacred lots, have great interest for some minds.' ... may 29. in your rhetoric, notice that only once or twice in history can the words “ dire” and “tremendous” fit. he weakens who means to confirm his speech by vehemence, feminine vehemence. пе “a tremendous faculty, that of thinking on one's legs” is a newspaper description of eloi here follows the long paragraph, beginning thus, in “demonology," originally printed in the dial. see lectures and biographical sketches. 1835] phenomenal speaking 485 quence; and this is a tolerable use of the word noticed above. as at the sunday school meeting, g. p. b. remarked that his measure of a good speech was the desire it imparted to himself to speak, and open the suggestions of the man on the floor. mr. lspoke, and the eminent propriety of his manner answered to the audience the same purpose as if he had said something. all people agreed it was a good speech. yet is not nature cheated, for these men accomplish nothing. their effect is as merely phenomenal as their work. add to g. p. b.'s remark just now, our frequent experience of receiving intellectual activity from an acting mind. i read, two days since, verses of eliot, the poet, which filled me with desire to write, with faith in the art. now he will render a service to his countrymen who in these days will patiently collect the experiences of this kind and so write rules for the discipline of the intellect. could you show me how in every torpid hour i could wake to full belief and earnest labor, o give me the recipe. better yet : could you point me to the divine page of cudworth, plato, bacon, herbert, 486 journal [age 32 carlyle, michel angelo, or of paul, or of god in nature, where i could find a timely restoration of my reason under the insanity of passion, do that, and the joy of a saviour shall be yours. happy the wit or dunce; but hard is it to be half a bard. may 30. the ideal philosophy is much more akin to virtue than to vice. when the mountains begin to look unreal, the soul is in a high state, yet in an action of justice or charity things look solid again. i am convinced that we are very much indebted to each other for stimulus, and for such confirmation to our own thoughts that we venture to try them in practice, a step we should have long postponed but for that seconding. ore june 1. in this age of seeming, nothing can be more important than the opening and promulgation of the gospel of compensations to save the land. the men who put manner for matter at our public meetings should learn that they have lost their time. the man who mistakes his profes1835] being, not seeming 487 sion, the scholar who takes his subject from dictation and not from his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained. and when the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say “what a good speech!” it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce. societies as well as individuals are bubbles. but nature cannot be cheated. that only profits which is profitable. life alone can impart life, and though we burst, we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. the irresistible conclusion of your chapter on compensation should be, therefore, the devil is an ass. levi woodbury occupies the position once filled by alexander hamilton; jackson that of washington ; isaac hill is a member of the senate as much as daniel webster. but does any one living imagine that this equal nominal standing makes the standing of these men identical? it is perfectly well known both to washington and to jackson the gulf that is between them; and likewise to hamilton and to woodbury; and likewise to webster and to hill. mr. allston would build a very plain house and have plain furniture, because he would hold 488 [age 32 journal out no bribe to any to visit him who had not similar tastes to his own — a good ascetic. measure sir henry wotton said of sidney that “his wit was the measure of congruity.” june 4. it seems as if every sentence should be prefixed with the word true, or apparent, to indicate the writer's intention of speaking after that which is, or that which seems. thus, truly, our power increases exactly in the measure that we know how to use it, but apparently, andrew jackson is more powerful than john marshall. in heaven, utterance is place enough. heaven is the name we give to the true state, the world of reason, not of the understanding; of the real, not the apparent. it exists always, whether it is ever to be separated from the hell or not. it is, as coleridge said, another world, but not to come. the world i describe is that, where only the laws of mind are known; the only economy of time is saying and doing nothing untrue to self.' knowledge is hard to get and unsatisfying when gained. knowledge is a pleasing provoca1 the passage about being the devil's child, in “ selfreliance” (essays i) follows this. 1835) the first philosophy 489 tion to the mind beforehand, and not cumbersome afterwards. am i true to myself? then nations and ages do guide my pen, then i perceive my commission to be coeval with the oldest causes. an june 1o. aristotle platonizes. cudworth is like a cow in june which breathes of nothing but clover and scent-grass. he has fed so entirely on ancient bards and sages that all his diction is redolent of their books. he is a stream of corinthian brass in which gold and silver and iron are molten together out of ancient temples. i endeavor to announce the laws of the first philosophy. it is the mark of these that their enunciation awakens the feeling of the moral sublime, and great men are they who believe in them. every one of these propositions resembles a great circle in astronomy. no matter in what direction it be drawn, it contains the whole sphere. so each of these seems to imply all truth. compare a page of bacon with swift, chesterfield, lacon,' and see the difference of great and 1 a book of maxims, by charles caleb colton, 1820. 490 [age 32 journal less circles. these are gleams of a world in which we do not live: they astonish the understanding. са june 16. books. blessed art and blessed instruments of pen, ink and paper that hold fast the representatives of the related thoughts. here logic holds, and between the major and minor of a syllogism cannot the mind whisk away because a thrush flies out of a bush, or a smart golden senecio catches the eye, or an elegant lupine lifts its blue spires in the path. june 20. the advantage in education is always with those children who slip up into life without being objects of notice. happy then those who are members of large families. literature. i asked in the woods, what i would know of homer, if the edipus were ready to reply. we would know whether in the mind of his age were any radical differences from ours? whether they had an equivalent for our organized morale? whether we have lost by civilization any force, by christianity any virtue? machinery encumbers. homer is to us nothing personal, merely the representative of 491 s 1835) language his time. i believe that to be his sincerest use and worth. the most abstract questions are really operating actively on men, though they know it not, and the real interest that effervesces in this love of literary gossip is a wise curiosity in the human soul to know if our fellow is our counterpart. i suppose we would most anxiously know what is his moral sentiment, and not so curiously inquire, whether he managed better than we, with our fellow-beings — the sea, and the land, the plants, the animals, fire, and light. when we read a book in a foreign language, we suppose that an english version of it would be a transfusion of it into our own consciousness. but take coleridge or bacon, or many an english book besides, and you immediately feel that the english is a language also, and that a book writ in that tongue is yet very far from you, — [from] being transfused into your own consciousness. there is every degree of remoteness from the line of things in the line of words. by and by comes a word true and closely embracing the thing. that is not latin, nor english, nor any language but thought. the aim of the author is not to tell truth that he cannot do, but to suggest it. he has only approximated it himself 492 [age 32 journal cis many and hence his cumbrous, embarrassed speech: he uses many words, hoping that one, if not another, will bring you as near to the fact as he is. for language itself is young and unformed. in heaven it will be, as sampson reed said, “one with things.” now, there are many things that refuse to be recorded,perhaps the larger half. the unsaid part is the best of every discourse. the good of publishing one's thoughts is that of hooking to you like-minded men, and of giving to men whom you value, such as wordsworth or landor, one hour of stimulated thought. yet, how few! who in concord cares for the first philosophy in a book? the woman whose child is to be suckled? the man at nine-acrecorner who is to cart sixty loads of gravel on his meadow? the stageman? the gunsmith? oh, no! who then? june 21. poetry preceded prose, as the form of sustained thought, as reason, whose vehicle poetry is, precedes the understanding. when you assume the rhythm of verse and the analogy of nature, it is making proclamation, “i am now freed from the trammels of the apparent; i speak from the mind.” 1835) witty speech 493 june 22. it is unpleasing to meet with those anomalous wits who say brilliant things and yet have no proportioned strength of mind; chalmers, edward irving, brougham, randolph, or, more frequently, talkers who impose upon us by the vivacity or weight of single remarks, and when you better know the speaker, .. “ you wonder how the devil they got there.” the more genius, usually, the more conformity there is to the general model. but these seem hybrids. i wrote l.' that this speechmaking seems to turn the man out of doors, to turn his timber into flowers, and make him like unto apicius who sold his house, but kept the balcony to see and be seen in. is allore u aunt saith, “ the finest wits have their sediment.” some persons in rhode island saying to george fox, that, if they had money enough, they would hire him to be their minister, he 1 miss jackson, to whom he was now engaged. 494 journal [age 32 said, “then it was time for him to be gone, for if their eye was to him, or to any of them, then would they never come to their own teacher." june 24. “three silent revolutions in england; first, when the professions fell from the church. 2. when literature fell from the professions. 3. when the press fell from literature.” coleridge. m . in i remembered to charles to-night the eng. lish gentleman whom i saw in the cold hostelrie at simplon at the top of the mountain, and whose manners so satisfied my eye. he met there unexpectedly an acquaintance, and conversed with him with great ease and affectionateness, and as if totally unconscious of the presence of any other company, yet with highbred air. the self-existency of the gentleman is his best mark. he is to be a man first, with original perceptions of the true and the beautiful, and thence should grow his grace and dignity. then he is god's gentleman and a new argument to the stoic. “when i am purified by the light of heaven my soul will become the mirror of the world, in 1835] universal language 495 which i shall discern all abstruse secrets." warton quotes this, he says, from an ancient turkish poet. — history of english poetry. books are not writ in the style of conversation. one might say they are not addressed to the same beings as gossip and cheat in the street. neither are speeches, orations, sermons, academic discourse, on the same key of thought, or addressed to the same beings. the man that just now chatted at your side of trifles, rises in the assembly to speak, and speaks to them collectively in a tone and with a series of thoughts he would never think of assuming to any one of them alone. because man's universal nature is his inmost nature. idealism is not so much prejudiced by danger as by inconvenience. in our speculative habits we sometimes expect that the too solid earth will melt. then we cross the ocean sweltering, seasick, reeling, week after week, with tar, harnesstub, and bilge, and, as an ingenious friend says, it is carrying the joke too far. june 26. if you would know what nobody knows, read what every body reads, just one year afterwards, 496 (age 32 journal and you shall be a fund of new and unheard-of speculations. the mystery of humility is treated of by jesus, by dante, by chaucer in his griselda, by milton and by sampson reed; or listen to the discourse of a wise man to a crowd in a perfect conviction that nobody hears it but you. june 27. i wrote hedge that good society seemed an optical illusion that ought to be classed with bacon's idols of the cave. carlyle affirms it has ceased to exist. c. c. e. affirms that it has just begun— greek and roman knew it not. to me it seems that it is so steadily and universally thwarted by death, sickness, removal, unfitness, ceremony, or what not, that a design to hinder it must be suspected. every person is indulged with an opportunity or two of equal and hearty communication enough to show him his potential heaven. but between cultivated minds the first interview is the best, and it is surprising in how few hours the results of years are exhausted. besides, though it seem ungrateful to friends whom the heart knoweth by name, yet the value of the conversation is not measured according 1835] historical discourse 497 to the wisdom of the company, but by quite other and indefinable causes, the fortunate moods. 1 think we owe the most recreation and most memorable thoughts to very unpromising gossips. (i copied the above from memory.) june 29. george fox's chosen expression for the god manifest in the mind is the seed. he means that seed of which the beauty of the world is the flower, and goodness is the fruit. i replied this morning to the committee that i would do what i could to prepare a historical discourse for the town anniversary.' yet why notice it? centuries pass unnoticed. the saxon king was told that man's life was like the swallow that flew in at one window, fluttered around, and flew out at another. so is this population of the spot of god's earth called concord. for a moment they fish in this river, plow furrows in the banks, build houses on the fields, mow the grass. but hold on to hill or tree never so fast, they must disappear in a trice.? 1 the occasion was the celebration of the two hundredth birthday of concord, september 12, 1835. 2 compare “hamatreya” in poems. the paragraph in 498 [age 32 journal the contemplation of nature is all that is fine. who can tell me how many thousand years, every day, the clouds have shaded these fields with their purple awning. the little river by whose banks most of us were born, every winter for ages has spread its crust of ice over the great meadows which in ages it has formed. the countless families that follow or precede man, keep no jubilee, mark no era; the fly and the moth in burnished armor, these little emigrants travel fast, they have no baggage-wagon, all night they creep; the ant has no provision for sleep. the trees that surround us grew up in the days of peter bulkeley. this first celebration from that everlasting past. the oaks that were then acorns wave their branches in this morning's wind. the little flower that at this season stars the woods and roadsides with its profuse blooms won the eye of the stern pilgrim with its humble beauty. the maple grew red in the early frost over those houseless men burrowing in the sand. the journal which immediately follows occurs in the opening passage of the “ historical address," but it is given here for its beauty, and because the discourse, though printed as a pamphlet for the use of the citizens that year, was not included in the works until after mr. emerson's death. it is found in the miscellanies, riverside and centenary editions. 1835] concord's birthday 499 the mighty pine, yet untouched, towered into the frosty air. and yet another kind of permanence has also been permitted. here are still the names of the first fifty years. here is blood, willard, flint, wood, barrett, heywood, hunt, wheeler, jones, buttrick. and if the name of bulkeley is wanting, the honor you have done me this day shows your kindness for his blood.' ss july 1. a windmill, so soon as it is far enough in the landscape to look like a toy, is picturesque; nearer it is disagreeable. the robin, like the geranium family, wears sober colors. charles says that painting the vans red is adding insult to injury." “ there is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure,” says shakspear in measure for measure. in the memory of the disembodied soul the i rev. joseph emerson, minister of milton and afterwards of mendon, married elizabeth, granddaughter of peter bulkeley. 2 there was a windmill on the hill behind the court house on the road to the manse. 500 journal [age 32 days or hours of pure reason will shine with a steady light as the life of life, and all the other days and weeks will appear but as hyphens which served to join these. july 2. the distinction of science objective and subjective i find in norris's ideal world. admirable passages quoted from st. augustine's de libero arbitrio, lib. ii : “and yet as rich as thy furniture is, o city of god, thy gates stand always open, free to all comers. for thy immoveable wealth needs no guard, the exchequer of light and truth is secure against all thievish attempts, and the treasures of wisdom, though common to all, can yet be rifled or carried away by none." norris's first volume was an unexpected delight this afternoon. he fights the battles and affirms the facts i had proposed to myself to do. but he falls, i so think, into the common error of the first philosophers, that of attempting to fight for reason with the weapons of the understanding. all this polemics and syllogism and definition is so much waste paper, and montaigne is almost the only man who has never lost sight of this fact. idot 1835] locke. alcott. art 501 1. fuly 4. talked last eve. with george bradford of locke, who, i maintained, had given me little. i am much more indebted to persons of far less name. i believe his service was to popularize metaphysics, allure men of the world to its study, if that indeed be a service. george gave a good account of his friend alcott, who is a consistent spiritualist, and so expects the influence of christianity into trade, government and arts.' the arts languish now because all their scope is exhibition; when they originated, it was to serve the gods. ... the catholic religion has turned them to continual account in its service. now they are mere flourishes. is it strange they perish? poetry, to be sterling, must be more v than a show; must have, or be, an earnest meaning. chaucer, wordsworth; per contra moore and byron. i study the art of solitude: i yield me as gracefully as i can to my destiny. why cannot one get the good of his doom, and since it is from eternity a settled thing that he and society shall be nothing to each other, why need he blush 1 the first mention of this valued friend. 502 (age 32 journal so, and make wry faces and labor to keep up a poor beginner's place, a freshman's seat in the fine world? one of the good effects of hearing the man of genius is that he shows the world of thought to be infinite again, which you had supposed exhausted. july 15. why do i still go to pasture where i never find grass; to these actors without a purpose, unless a poor mechanical one, these talkers without method, and reasoners without an idea? at the divinity school this morning i heard what was called the best performance, but it was founded on nothing and led to nothing, and i wondered at the patience of the people. this afternoon the king of the house of seem spoke, and made as if he was in earnest with pathetic tones and gesture, and the most approved expressions, and all about nothing; and he was answered by others with equal apparent earnestness, and still it was all nothing. the building seemed to grudge its rent, if the assembly did not their time. stetson,' who jokes, seems the only wise man. it is a pity three hundred men i rev. caleb stetson, a classmate of emerson's. seem as 1835) real life and speech 503 should meet to make believe or play debate. they are all so solemn and vehement, that i listen with all my ears, and for my life can't find any idea at the foundation of their zeal. i forgive desultoriness, trifling, vice even, in a young man, so long as i believe that he has a closet of secret thoughts to which he retires as to his home, and which have a sort of parents' interest in him wherever he is. at sight of them he bows. but if he is not in earnest about anything, if all his interest is good breeding and imitation, i had as lief not be as be him. great pudder make my philanthropic friends about the children. i should be glad to be convinced they have taught one child one thing. gand b, no doubt, teach them just as much as the minister did before, not a jot more; for the children don't understand anything they say. quotation coleridge loses by de quincey, but more by his own concealing, uncandid acknowledgment of debt to schelling. why could not he have said generously, like goethe, i owe all? as soon as one gets so far above pride, as to say all truth that might come from him, and that now does 504 journal [age 32 come from him, as truth and not as his truth, as soon as he acknowledges that all is suggestion, then he may be indebted without shame, to all. i see that the young men like to speak at public meetings just as they would take exhilarating gas, 'tis so pretty an intoxication. oh, for the days of the locrian halters again." the wit of man is more elastic than the air our bodies breathe. a whole nation will subsist for centuries on one thought, and then every individual man will be oppressed by the rush of his conceptions, and always a plenum with one grain or sixty atmospheres. let not the voluptuary dare to judge of literary, far less of philosophical questions. let him wait until the blindness that belongs to pollution has passed from his eyes. we all have an instinct that a good man, good and wise, shall be able to say intuitively, i. e., from god, what is true and great and beautiful. 1 a story of plutarch's. the locrians had halters around the necks of the speakers so that they could shut off their discourse. oegger's messiah 505 never numbers, but the simple and wise shall judge. not the wartons and drakes, but some divine savage, like webster, wordsworth, and reed, whom neither the town or the college ever made, shall say that we shall all believe. how we thirst for a natural thinker! i find good things in this manuscript of oegger,' and i am taken with the design of his work. but it seems as if everybody was insane on one side, and the bible makes them as crazy as bentham or spurzheim or politics. the ethical doctrines of these theosophists are true and exalting, but straightway they run upon their divine transformation, the death of god, etc., and become horn-mad. to that point they speak reason, then they begin to babble, and so this man cries out, wo to them that do not believe, etc., etc. this obstinate orientalism that god is a petty asiatic king and will be very angry i guillaume caspar lencroy oegger, professor of philosophy, and vicar of notre dame in paris. the work referred to is the true messiah, or the old and new testaments examined according to the principles of the language of nature. a translation of a part of it was published later in boston, by miss elizabeth p. peabody. it may have been her manuscript that mr. emerson had. 506 (age 32 journal if you do not prostrate yourself, they cannot get rid of. but now and then outbreaks the sublimity of truth. .. “we shall pass to the future existence as we enter into an agreeable dream: all nature will accompany us there." cason much that is best is hid by being next to us. who in christendom knows the beauty and grandeur of the lord's prayer? july 24. the first age of the world, by reason of the number of their days, their memories served instead of books.” (hooker.) there is no book like a memory, and none that hath such a perfect index and that of every kind, alphabetical, systematic, and arranged by names of persons and all manner of associations. “i say three persons,” ingenuously confessed st. augustine (on the trinity: v. 9), “not that i may say something, but that i may not say nothing.” (apud oegger.) most persons exist to us merely or chiefly in relations of time and space. those whom we 1835] concord fight 507 love, whom we venerate, or whom we serve, exist to us independently of their relations. 0 thou who drawest good out of the fury of devils, save me. yesterday i visited jonas buttrick' and abel davis; the former aged seventy, the latter seventy-nine years. both were present at concord fight. davis was one of the militia under command of — jonas buttrick remembers major hosmer and captain davis going back and forward often, and said of captain davis that “his face was red as a piece of broadcloth — red as a beet. he looked very much worried.” i asked, “worried with fear?” “no.” both agree that captain davis had the right of the companies, but know not why. jonas buttrick thinks 1 son of major john buttrick, who led the attack on the british at the north bridge. jonas was then eleven years old, and so, of course, was only an eager spectator of the action, which took place partly on his father's farm. 2 joseph hosmer, whose spirited question to his superiors, “ are you going to let them burn the town?” seems to have influenced the attack, was at that time lieutenant acting as adjutant. mr. emerson's informants call him by his later title of major. captain isaac davis of acton, who with his company led the column by buttrick's side, fell dead at the first volley. 508 (age 32 journal that he did not come up from acton until after the consultation of the officers and the conclusion to fight, and that he took the right because that was the side on which he most conveniently joined the troops. abel davis thinks that major [buttrick] having given up his company to captain davis had the right in virtue of his rank.' dr. palfrey remarked at cambridge, when we talked of the manners of wordsworth and coleridge, that there seemed to be no such thing as a conventional manner among the eminent men of england, for these people lived in the best society, yet each indulged the strongest individual peculiarities. for literature, one is ever struck with the fact that the good once is good always. the average strength is so fixed that among thirty jumpers the longest jump will be likely to be the longest of three hundred, and a very long jump will remain a very long jump a century afterward. richard hooker wrote good prose in 1580. here it is good prose in 1835. there have not 1 a probable reason was assigned by other survivors, namely, that the acton company alone had bayonets. concord battleground in 1837 1835] american democracy 509 been forty persons of his nation from that time to this who could write better. the quarterly review toils to prove that there is no selfish aristocracy in america, but that every man shakes hands heartily with every other man, and the chancellor says, “my brother, the grocer.” and to fix this fact will be to stamp us with desired infamy. i earnestly wish it could be proved. i wish it could be shown that no distinctions created by a contemptible pride existed here, and none but the natural ones of talent and virtue. but i fear we do not deserve the praise of this reviewer's ill opinion. the only ambition which truth allows is to be the servant of all. the last shall be first. i read with great delight the record of a school." it aims all the time to show the symbolical character of all things to the children, and it is alleged, and i doubt not, truly, that the children take the thought with delight. it is remarkable that all poets, orators and philosophers 1 this remarkable book is the journal of mr. amos bronson alcott's private school in boston, kept by miss elizabeth p. peabody, his assistant, later well known for her philanthropic life. 510 [ace 32 journal have been those who could most sharply see and most happily present emblems, parables, figures. good writing and brilliant conversation are perpetual allegories. “my fortunes are in the moult,” says philip van artevelde. webster is such a poet in every speech. “you cannot keep out of politics more than you can keep out of frost,” he said to clifford. “no matter for the baggage, so long as the troop is safe,” he said when he lost his trunk. “waves lash the shore,” etc.; indians' whole speech. “back of the hand,” was crockett's expression. all the memorable words of the world are these figurative expressions. light and heat have passed into all speech for knowledge and love. the river is nothing but as it typifies the flux of time. many of these signs seem very arbitrary and historical. i should gladly know what gave such universal acceptance to cupid's arrow for the passion of love; and more meanly, the horn for the shame of cuckoldom. em ephraim stow, says the newspaper, was born on the last day of the year, which gave occasion to a parish wit to remark that “he came near not being born at all.” 1835] multiple lives su 1. fuly 27. “one of those crystal days which are neither hot nor cold.” mrs. r. cited a well-known character to show that trick and pretension impose on nobody, but that my friend is reverenced for his liberality. everybody leads two or three lives, has two or three consciousnesses which he nimbly alternates. here am i daily lending my voice, and that with heat often, to opinions and practices opposite to my own. here is m. m. e. always fighting in conversation against the very principles which have governed and govern her. very good remark saw i in the very good record of a school, concerning unity reproduced by the mind out of severed parts. yes, all men have thoughts, images, facts, by thousands and thousands, but only one of many can crystallize these into a symmetrical one by means of the nucleus of an idea. humphrey heywood showed me his fine toy-cart which his father made for him. i see nothing of the farmer but his plain dealing and hard work; yet there are finer parts which, but 512 journal [age 32 for this child, would remain latent; his love and the taste which makes a fanciful child's wagon for its manifestation. a good example of that prosopopæia i wrote of, is thompson's '“ come to nurse our bantling in the cradle of liberty. yet i do not know whether that is right. methinks he has grown so great that if we should rock him in faneuil hall his feet would dangle out the door.” ... one of the best examples of this sort is burke's “shearing the wolf.” [here follow many pages of extracts from oegger's true messiah, or the old and new testaments examined according to the principles of the language of nature; a few of these are given.] “people suppose that when god produced our visible world the choice that he made of forms and colors for animals, plants and minerals was entirely arbitrary on his part. this is false. man may sometimes act from whim; god never can. the visible creation then cannot, must not (if we may use such expressions), be i george thompson, the english abolitionist, who faced insult and violence in his crusade, at this time, against slavery in the united states. en en 1835] oegger's messiah 513 anything but the exterior circumference of the in-1 visible and metaphysical world, and material objects are necessarily kinds of scoriæ of the substantial thoughts of the creator.'... for god to create is only to show. the universe in its minutest details existed for god as really before the creation, as after it; because it existed in him substantially, as when the statue exists in the block of marble from which the sculptor extracts it. “by the creation, we only have been enabled to perceive a portion of the infinite riches eternally buried in the divine essence. the perfect especially must have always thus existed in god. the imperfect alone can have received a kind of creation by means of man, a free agent, though under the influence of a providence which never loses sight of him. “neither the form nor the color of any object in nature can have been chosen without a reason. everything that we see, touch, smell, — everything from the sun to a grain of sand, . . . has flowed forth by a supreme reason from that world where all is spirit and life. no fibre in the animal, no blade of grass in the vegetable, no form of crystallization in inanimate matter, is without i this sentence is quoted in nature, p. 35, centenary edition. car 514 (age 32 journal its clear and well-determined correspondence in the moral and metaphysical world. and if this is true of colors and forms, it must, by a still stronger reason, be true of instincts of animals, and the far more astonishing faculties of man. consequently, the most imperceptible thoughts and affections which we imagine we have conceived by our own power; the compositions which we consider our own in philosophy and literature; the inventions which we believe we have made in the arts and sciences; the monuments that we think we are erecting; the customs that we fancy we establish in the things which men consider great, as in the most insignificant transactions of civil and animal life, — all this existed before us; all this is simply given to us, and given with a supreme reason, according to our different wants. an infinitely little degree of consent to receive, which forms our moral liberty, is the only thing that we have for our own. ... and indeed, but for all these emblems of life which creation offers, there would be no appreciable moral idea or moral sentiment, no possible means — we fear not to say it—for god to communicate a thought, and affection to his creature, any more than for one feeling creature to communicate it to another. ... 1835) oegger 515 “had there been no father, could you know anything of tenderness? had there never been a generous man, could you know what is generosity? love; maladies; defilements; the persecutions show what is atrocity, etc., etc. the necessity of indicating moral distinctions alone explains monstrosities and disgusting images unworthy of the creator, which nature offers to the eye of degraded man. the abyss of our being cannot be revealed but by the appreciable phenomena of life. ..." “ man and the serpent form the right angle: other animals fill the whole quadrant, and any other kind of beings is geometrically impossible.” “ jehovah addresses himself to all his intelligent creation, and each being finds in his words what is appropriate to himself. the pure spirits who act on the human race must necessarily be always in advance of it in knowledge of the oracles of the most high, the perfect accomplishment of which oracles they concur to produce, spite of the united efforts of all degraded spirits,” etc. severy man must live upon a principle and move according to its will, as in the vehicu516 [age 32 journal lar state every soul rides upon its ray. i have seen the adoption of a principle transform a proser into an orator. every transgression that it makes of routine makes man's being something worth. x humility is a great time-saver. the whole business must wait whenever each individual of the company has some personal recollection, some apology or explanation to make. all sit impatiently deferring till his impertinent vanity is adjusted and then go on. i, who know the supreme folly of the thing, can collect instances, not only from last night's conversation, but from my own sayings two nights ago at dr. willard's. july 30. it is affecting to see the old man's, thaddeus blood's, memory taxed for facts occurring sixty years ago at concord fight. “it is hard to bring them up,” he says; "the truth never will be known.” the doctor [ripley), like a keen hunter, unrelenting follows him up and down, barricading him with questions; yet cares little for the facts the man can tell, but much for the confirmation of the printed history. “ leave me, leave me to repose." 1835) principle. everett 517 every principle is an eye to see with. facts in thousands of the most interesting character are slipping by me every day unobserved, for i see not their bearing, i see not their connexion. i see not what they prove. by and by i shall mourn in ashes their irreparable loss. mou no distinction in principle can be broader than that taken by the abolitionist against everett. everett said that in case of a servile war, though a man of peace, he would buckle on his knapsack to defend the planter. the philanthropist who was here this morning' says that he is a man of peace, but, if forced to fight on either side, he should fight for the slave against his tyrant. i know nothing of the source of my being, but i will not soil my nest. i know much of it after a high, negative way, but nothing after the understanding. god himself contradicts through me and all his creatures the miserable babble of kneeland and his crew; but if they set me to affirm in propositions his character and provii perhaps george thompson. 2 abner kneeland who, a short time before, had been sent to jail for publications held by the court to be blasphemy. 518 [age 32 journal dence, as i would describe a mountain or an indian, i am dumb. oft i have doubted of his person, never that truth is divine. you affirm that the moral development contains all the intellectual, and that jesus was the perfect man. i bow in reverence unfeigned before that benign man. i know more, hope more, am more, because he has lived. but, if you tell me that in your opinion he has fulfilled all the conditions of man's existence, carried out to the utmost, at least by implication, all man's powers, i suspend my assent. i do not see in him cheerfulness: i do not see in him the love of natural science: i see in him no kindness for art; i see in him nothing of socrates, of laplace, of shakspear. the perfect man should remind us of all great men. do you ask me if i would rather resemble jesus than any other man? if i should say yes, i should suspect myself of superstition. ages hence, books that cannot now be written may be possible. for instance, a cumulative moral and intellectual science. if i would know something of the elements and process of the moral sublime, where shall i now seek the analysis? if i would know the elementary distinc1835) books of the future 519 tion of spiritual and intellectual, where shall i inquire? a sentence showing a tendency is all that a century contributes to psychology. where shall i find the result of phrenology? of animal magnetism? of extacy? by and by, books of condensed wisdom may be writ by the concentrated lights of thousands [of]centuries which shall cast bacon and aristotle into gloom. as the american encyclopædia said of astronomy, “how many centuries of observation were necessary to make the motion of the earth suspected!” july 31. every day's doubt is whether to seek for ideas, or to collect facts; for all successful study is the marriage of thoughts and things. a continual reaction of the thought classifying the facts, and of facts suggesting the thought. when shall i be tired of reading? when the moon is tired of waxing and waning, when the sea is tired of ebbing and flowing, when the grass is weary of growing, when the planets are tired of going. the act of duty that might have been omitted, but that was inserted in a past day, pleases, in 520 journal (age 32 remembering the contingency, with a better satisfaction than that with which we see the mail stage roll off in its cloud of dust, if, breathless with haste, we have arrived just in time to get our letter in. i wrote yesterday that these orators of a principle owed everything to it, and our good friend samuel j. may may instruct us in many things. he goes everywhere and sees the leaders of society everywhere, his cause being his ticket of admission, and talks on his topic with no intelligent person who does not furnish some new light, some unturned side, some happy expression, or strike off some false view or expression, of the philanthropist. in this way his views are enlarged and cleated and he is always attaining to the best expressions. as when he said the question between the colonization and the abolition men was “whether you should remove them (the negroes] from the prejudice, or the prejudice from them.” it is, my god, an antidote to every fear, the conviction twice recently forced on me, that men reverence virtue never by the appearance, but accurately according to its weight. nothing 1835] happy eye and tongue 521 but an ounce will balance an ounce. thus alone is the will strong; thus he whose right it is to reign shall reign. spit at consequences; launch boldly forth into the pure element, and that which you think will down you, shall buoy you up. [here follows the last part of the passage on the stars in the first page of nature.] n men believe that some of their fellows are more happily constituted than themselves after the pattern of themselves. they have in fortunate hours had the eye opened, whereby the world was newly seen, as if then first seen, and which seemed to say that all prior life, however loud and pretending, was but death or sleep. they believe that some men add to this eye a tongue to tell their vision, and a certain degree of control over these faculties; that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; and they wish such men to take the chronicle of their parish, or their age, and in the auspicious hour let the facts pass through their mind and see if they will not take the form of picture and song. when i cast my look inward and look upon god as mine, i may well defy the future, and 522 journal [age 32 looking upon all the rough weather ahead as exercises to try the faith of the combatants, i may merrily predict a victory. the reason has her victories. $15,000 were subscribed in a very short time in new york by these abolitionists, $2,000 at one meeting in boston, and $5,000 at another, and forthwith paid. so put that against the burning convent and the julien hall. my two facts referred to on the last page were the bountiful e. r. [ezra ripley?] and the christian sam may, who both pass for that they are in things to praise and things to blame. for christ made no cathedrals ne with him was no cardinals. chaucer. once in a while we meet with poetry which is also music,—“high and passionate thoughts to their own music chaunted.” the following lines of john barbour (1365) remind me of the music i heard lately :this was in the moneth of may when birdis singis in ilk spray, melland their notes with seemly soun, for softness of the sweet seasoun, 1835) history of wit 523 and levis of the branchis spred, and bloomis bright beside them bred, and fields are strovit with flowris well sawer and of ser colouris. me it pleases well to skip the minuter designation of the plants, and to slight also the chronicles of kings, so that i can learn somewhat of the history of wit in this world of men; to know what have been the entertainments of the human spirit from age to age, what are the best things that it hath said, and who and what they were who said them. yet the beauty that drew us to one or another pursuit, as botany, medicine, history of poetry, and the like, is presently lost sight of in the details of the study itself, and none the less poetical than the herbalist, the doctor, the critic. a system-grinder hates the truth. to make a step into the world of thought is given to but few men; to make a second step beyond his first, only one in a country can do; but to carry the thought out to three steps marks a great teacher. aladdin's palace, with its one unfinished window which all the gems in the royal treasury cannot finish in the style of the meanest of the profusion of jewelled windows that 524 journal (age 32 were built by the genie in a night, is but too true a picture of the efforts of talent to add a scene to shakspear's play or a verse to shakspear's songs. august 1. a sparrow or a deer knows much more of nature's secrets than a man, but is less able to utter them. and those men who know the most can say the least. jacob behme is the best helper to a theory of isaiah and jeremiah. you are sure he was in earnest, and, could you get into his point of view, the world would be what he describes. he is all imagination. — “aurora, i. e. the dayspring or dawning of the day in the orient, or morning redness in the rising of the sun; i.e., the root or mother of philosophy, astrology and theology from the true ground,” etc., etc., by j. behme. written in gerlitz in germany, a. d. 1612, ætatis suæ 37. london, 1656. “o world, where is thy humility, where is thy angelical love? at that very instant when the mouth says ‘god save thee,' then, if the heart were seen, it might be said, 'beware, look to thyself, for it bids the devil take thee.'” behme. “o thou excellent, angelical kingdom, how comely dressed and adorned wert thou once! how 1835) sphinx. imagination 525 hath the devil turned thee into a murderous den. dost thou suppose thou standest now in the flower of thy beauty and glory? no! thou standest in the midst of hell; if thine eyes were opened, thou wouldst see it. or dost thou think that the spirit is drunken and doth not see thee?" behme. there sits the sphinx from age to age, in the road, charles says, and every wise man that comes by has a crack with her.' but this oegger's plan and scope argue great boldness and manhood, to depart thus widely from all routine and seek to put his hands, like atlas, under nature, and heave her from her rest. why the world exists, and that it exists for a language or medium whereby god may speak to man, this is his query, this his answer. saturday eve. the distinction of fancy and imagination seems to me a distinction in kind. the fancy aggregates; the imagination animates. the fancy takes the world as it stands and selects pleasing groups by apparent relations. the imagination is vision, regards the world as symbolical, and i see nature, p. 34. 526 journal [age 32 pierces the emblem for the real sense. sees all external objects as types. a fine example is the [account] of the execution of lord russell. (anecdotes (spence?], p. 11.) xt god hides the stars in a deluge of light. that is his chosen curtain. so he hides the great truths in the simplicity of the common consciousness. i am struck with the contrast, which i have repeatedly noted before, between the positiveness with which we can speak of certain laws — an evidence equal to that of consciousness — and the depth of obscurity in which the person of god is hid. from month to month, from year to year, i come never nearer to definite speaking of him. he hideth himself. i cannot speak of him without faltering. i unsay as fast as i say my words. he is, for i am. say rather, he is. but in the depth inaccessible of his being he refuses to be defined or personified. neare after thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning, excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death. it was strange after supposing for years that my respected friend was the heart of the county and blended thoroughly with the people, to find him wholly isolated, more even 1835) samuel hoar. symbols 527 than i, walking among them with these “monumental” manners unable to get within gunshot of any neighbor except professionally. yet the fulness of his respect for every man and his selfrespect at the same time have their reward, and after sitting all these years on his plain wooden bench with eternal patience, honor comes and sits down by him.' august 3. charles wonders that i don't become sick at the stomach over my poor journal. yet is obdurate habit callous even to contempt. i must scribble on, if it were only to say in confirmation of oegger's doctrine that i believe i never take a step in thought when engaged in conversation without some material symbol of my proposition figuring itself incipiently at the same time. my sentence often ends in babble from a vain effort to represent that picture in words. how much has a figure, an illustration, availed every sect. as when the reabsorption of the soul into god was figured by a phial of water broken in the sea. this morn, i would have said that a man sees in the gross of the acts of his life the domination of his instincts or genius over all other causes. his wilfulness may determine the 1 evidently hon. samuel hoar. a 528 journal (age 32 a mas character of moments, but his will determines that of years. while i thus talked, i saw some crude symbols of the thought with the mind's eye, — as it were, a mass of grass or weeds in a stream, of which the spears or blades shot out from the mass in every direction, but were immediately curved round to float all in one direction. when presently the conversation changed to the subject of thomas à kempis's popularity, and how aristotle and plato come safely down, as if god brought them in his hand (though at no time are there more than five or six men who read them), and of the natural academy by which the exact value of every book is determined, maugre all hindrance or furtherance; then saw i, as i spoke, the old pail in the summer street kitchen with potatoes swimming in it, some at the top, some in the midst, and some lying at the bottom; and i spoiled my fine thought by saying that books take their place according to their specific gravity “as surely as potatoes in a tub. ..." it occurred with regard to à kempis that it is pleasant to have a book come down to us of which the author has, like homer, lost his individual distinctness, is almost a fabulous perss 1835) language. jests 529 sonage, so that the book seems to come rather out of the spirit of humanity and to have the sanction of human nature than to totter on the two legs of any poor ego. for language of nature, ichabod morton uses no other; peter hunt, crockett, and the vermont drover. so, in the 17th century, it appeared in every book, “and to put finger in the eye and to renew their repentance, they think this is weakness.” thos. shepard, 1645, new england's lamentation. i suspect that wit, humor, and jests admit a more accurate classification by the light of the distinction of the reason and the understanding. nothing is so cheap as jests of the sort that fill byron's “heaven and earth.” they might be manufactured by the thousand. all the dinner wit that assails swedenborg and his church is cut off the same piece. “heshall be as a god to me,” said plato, “who can rightly define and divide.” who can make a good sentence can make a good book. ex ungue leonem. if you find a good thing in the writing of a mediocre man, be sure he stole it. 530 (age 32 journal edw. bagshaw wrote (1662) “an answer to all that roger l'estrange intends to write.” we have little control of our thoughts. we are pensioners upon ideas.' ... aro oner i wrote to miss peabody [on swedenborg] that i should certainly not have denied, awake, that the spiritual contains the intellectual nature, or that the moral is prior, in god's order, to the intellectual; which i believe. the two attributes of wisdom and goodness always face and always approach each other. each when perfect becomes the other. yet to the moral nature belongs sovereignty, and so we have an instinctive faith that to it all things shall be added, that the moral nature being righted, the circulations of the universe take effect through the man as a member in its place, and so he learns the sciences after a natural or divine way. a good deed conspires with all nature, as the hand sang with the voice in the angels' concert; but there is a kind of falsehood in the enunciation of a chemical or astronomical law by an unprincipled savant. but whilst all considerate persons incline, i suppose, to this general i here follows a passage on “ prisoners of ideas.” (see “ intellect," essays i, pp. 328, 329, cent. ed.) 1835) swedenborg 531 confession, there still stand the uncontested facts that in our experience is almost no proportioned cultivation. the blacksmith has a strong arm, the dancer a strong foot; great proficiency in the mathematics may coexist with extreme moral insensibility, and the splendors of holiness with a contempt for learning ; such lobsided, oneeyed half-men are we now, and such a yawning difference between our esse and our posse. i am content to find these differences, i am content to wait long before many refractory facts. a great tendency i like better than a small revelation, and i hate to be imprisoned in premature theories. i have no appetite such as sir thomas browne avows for difficultest mysteries, that my faith may have exercise; but i had rather not understand in god's world than understand through and through in bentham's and spurzheim's. i like what you say of your aversion at being confined to swedenborg's associations, and i confirm myself with similar declarations whenever my critical acumen, with which you make yourself so merry, is at fault in the great life. you have studied much the character of jesus, and i read with pleasure every considered expression of praise of him. but perfect, in the sense of 532 [age 32 journal es mo complete man, he seems not to me to be, but a very exclusive and partial development of the moral element, such as the great compensation that balances the universe provides to repair accumulated depravity. the weight of his ethical sentences deserves more than all the consideration they have, and his life is one original pure beam of truth, but a perfect man should exhibit all the traits of humanity and should expressly recognize intellectual nature. socrates i call a complete, universal man, fulfilling all the conditions of man's existence. sublime as he is, i compare him not as an ethical teacher to christ, but his life is more humane. ah, homer! ah, chaucer ! ah, shakspear! but we live in the age of propriety. their elegance is intrinsic, ours super-added ; their cleanness is sunshine, ours painting and gilding.' classification. a thought comes single, like a foreign traveller, but if you can find out its name, you shall find it related to a powerful and numerous family. i mr. emerson during this month gave an address before the american institute of education « on the best mode of inspiring a correct taste in english literature.” (see cabot's memoir, vol, ii, appendix f.) 1835] the first thought 533 august 5. our summer, charles says, is a galloping consumption, and the hectic rises as the year approaches its end. wordsworth’s “ ode to duty” singeth, — there are who ask not if thine eye be on them; who in love and truth, where no misgiving is, rely upon the genial sense of youth; glad hearts ! without reproach or blot, who do thy work and know it not. happy they and their counterparts in the intellectual kingdom, who sit down to write and lend themselves to the first thought and are carried whithersoever it takes them, and solve the problem proposed in a way they could not have predicted, and are not now conscious of their own action. merely they held the pen. the problem, whilst they pondered it, confounded them. the birds fly from us, and we do not understand their music. the squirrel, the musquash, the insect have no significance to our blind eyes; such is now the discord betwixt man and nature. yet it is strange that all our life is accompanied by dreams on one side, and by the animals on 534 (age 32 journal the other, as monuments of our ignorance, or hints to set us on the right road of inquiry. the life of a contemplator is that of a reporter. he has three or four books before him and now writes in this, now in that other, what is incontinuously said by one or the other of his classes of thought. it is a good trait of the manners of the times that thaddeus blood told me this morning that he (then twenty years old) and mr. ball (fifty) were set out to guard lieutenant potter, the british officer taken at lexington, 19 april,'75; and, whilst staying at reuben brown's, potter invited them both to dine with him. he, lieutenant potter, asked a blessing, and after dinner asked mr. ball to dismiss the table, “which he did very well for an old farmer.” lieutenant potter then poured out a glass of wine to each and they left the table. presently came by a company from groton, and lieutenant potter was alarmed for his own safety. they bolted the doors, etc., etc. bateman, he thinks, could not have made the deposition in dr. r’s history. a ball passed through his cap and he cried, “a miss is as 1835) wordsworth 535 good as a mile.” immediately another ball struck his ear and passed out at the side of his mouth, knocking out two teeth. he lived about three weeks, and his wounds stunk intolerably. it was probably carr's or starr's deposition.' the powers of the poetical genius seem quite local, and to give no felicity in any other work transcending the strait limits of that vein. wordsworth writes the verses of a great, original bard, but he writes ill, weakly, concerning his poetry, talks ill of it, and even writes other poetry that is very poor. true love watched every word and gesture of her shepherd and believed in her heart that things he did and thought not of were beautiful. faint love talked of her affection, but cared i the depositions of many participants in the action of the 19th of april were taken by order of the provincial congress shortly afterwards, and published also by their order in a pamphlet entitled narrative of the excursion and ravages of the king's troops under the command of general gage, on the nineteenth of april, 1775, together with the depositions taken by congress to support the truth of it. dr. ripley, however, irritated by a pamphlet published in lexington in 1825, wrote, in 1827, a history of the fight at concord, etc., containing the depositions. 536 [age 32 journal only for those words and deeds of the swain that respected herself. what else, though it were more wise and good, she noted never. if you read much at a time, you have a better sight of the plan and connexion of the book, but you have less lively attention. if you read little, fine things catch your eye and you read accurately, but all proportion and ulterior purpose are at an end. charles doubts whether all truth is not occasional; not designed to be stored for contemplation, but alive only in action. make much of your own place. the stars and celestial awning that overhang our simple concord walks and discourses are as brave as those that were visible to coleridge as he talked, or dryden, or ben jonson and shakspear, or chaucer and petrarch and boccaccio when they met. for the history of psalm singing in our churches, see warton, history of english poetry, volume iii, p. 447. hurra when next it rains (in the private sky) for miss fanny kemble's journal, and lyell's geology! 1835] mind's far focus 537 the human mind seems a lens formed to concentrate the rays of the divine laws to a v focus, which shall be the personality of god. but that focus falls so far into the infinite that the form or person of god is not within the ken of the mind. yet must that ever be the effort of a good mind, because the avowal of our sincere doubts leaves us in a less favorable mood for action, and the statement of our best thoughts, or those of our convictions that make most for theism, induces new courage and force. august 6. i think i may undertake, one of these days, to write a chapter on literary ethics, or the duty and discipline of a scholar. the camel and his four stomachs shall be one of his emblems. in dunbar of saltoun's golden targe (warton, history of english poetry, volume iii, p. 102) one of the dramatis persona is new-acquaintance, who“ embraces him a while, but soon takes her leave and is never seen afterwards.” i suppose a reason why one man apprehends physical science better than another is that his 538 (age 32 journal er fancy is stronger, so that he can comply with the prescribed conditions of the problem long enough for the full apprehension of the law; as in learning the precession of the equinoxes he can keep the picture of the sun where he ought in his mind, and figure to himself the nutation of the axis of the earth, etc., etc. but i, alas, write my diagrams in water. in 1542 robert wyer printed the scole howse, in which the writer is thus merciless to women. his name is unknown. i fear it was a private revenge. trewely some men there be that live alway in great horroure, and say it goeth by destinye to hang or wed, both hath one hour; and whether it be, i am well sure hanging is better of the twayne, sooner done and shorter payne. warton, history of english poetry, volume iii, p. 426. augus' " yesterday i delighted myself with mic | montaigne. with all my heart i embra : grand old sloven. he pricks and sting its sense of virtue in me — the wild gentile ::-*. 1835] montaigne. scott 539 i mean, for he has no grace. but his panegyric of cato, and of socrates in his essay of cruelty (volume ii) do wind up again for us the spent springs and make virtue possible without the discipline of christianity, or rather do shame her of her eye-service and put her upon her honor. i read the essays in defence of seneca and plutarch; on books; on drunkenness; and on cruelty. and at some fortunate line which i cannot now recal, the spirit of some plutarch hero or sage touched mine with such thrill as the war-trump makes in talbot's ear and blood. i know no truer poetry in modern verse than scott's line, “ and sun himself in ellen's eyes.” every fact studied by the understanding is not only solitary but desart. but if the iron lids of reason's eye can be once raised, the fact is classified immediately and seen to be related to our nursery reading and our profoundest science. august 13. add to what was said august 6 concerning literary ethics, that no doubt another age will have such sermons duly preached, and immortality will be proved from the implication of the 540 journal (age 32 intellect. for who can read an analysis of the faculties by any acute psychologist like coleridge, without becoming aware that this is proper study for him and that he must live ages to learn anything of so secular a science ? august 14. we would call up him who left half told the story of cambuscan bold, but the great contemporary just now laid in the dust no man remembers; no man asks for him who broke off in the first sentences the analysis of the imagination, on the warning of a friend that the public would not read the chapter. no man asks, where is the chapter?' august 15. i bought my house and two acres six rods of land of john t. coolidge for 3,500 dollars. mr.j.t. coolidge of boston had the house built for his son, about 1825. it faced on the cambridge turnpike just where it leaves the “great road” where the stages passed to and from boston. the main house was of an l shape, but mr. emerson soon had the square completed by a parlor behind his study, with a chamber i coleridge died in july, 1834. sa the emerson home ri 1835) the new home 541 above. the prolongation towards the flowergarden and brook beyond was part of the original house and contained kitchen, servants' chambers, and wood-shed. although on low land in a river-town, these disadvantages were met by the sandy soil and the mile-long southward slope of the opposite tableland, which gave the region a different climate in cold weather from the rest of concord plain, shutting off the north, and storing sun-heat by day to neutralize the night damp. the excellent cellar was always dry and light. both mr. and mrs. emerson had had threatenings in their lungs before they came there, but both lived well beyond threescore and ten. the trees did not overshadow the house, and the southeast yard and orchard, and garden on the south, were sunny and sheltered. the fire in 1872 only burned off the roof of the main house and part of the top of the walls, though smoke and water did great damage below. the general appearance of the house when mr. emerson brought his wife thither was about as shown in the illustration (made about 1852), except that some trees were smaller and others not yet planted. the study faced north and west, and its windows only show in perspective towards the right in the picture. c e. 542 journal (age 32 in a letter telling his brothers of the purchase, mr. emerson said of the house, “it is in a mean place and cannot be fine until trees and flowers give it a character of its own. but we shall crowd so many books and papers and, if possible, wise friends into it, that it shall have as much wit as it can carry.”] august 25. visited miss harriet martineau at cambridge to-day;' a pleasant, unpretending lady whom it would be agreeable to talk with when [not?) tired and at ease; but she is too weary of society to shine, if ever she does. she betrayed by her facile admiration of books and friends her speedy limits. the ear-trumpet acts as chain as well as medium, making siameses of the two interlocutors. henry reeve, henry taylor of manchester, john s. mill, and w. j. fox, she regarded as the ablest young men in england. what pleased me most of her communications was that w. j. fox, though of no nerve, timid as a woman, yet had the greatest moral courage. 1 miss martineau visited mr. and mrs. emerson later, and in her retrospect of american travel gives a pleasant account of the visit. mr. cabot quotes in his memoir (vol. i, p. 296) her sketch of mr. emerson. 18351 taylor. marriage 543 as charles said at my commentary, “go and be hanged, but blush if spoken to on the tumbril.” august 31. use of harvard college to clear the head of much nonsense that gathers in the inferior colleges. it shall be a rule in my rhetoric, before you urge a duty, be sure it is one. try patriotism, for example. edward taylor came to see us. dr. ripley showed him the battle-field. “why put it on this bank?” he asked. “you must write on the monument, 'here is the place where the yankees made the british show the back seam of their stockings.'” he said he had been fishing at groton and the fishes were as snappish as the people; that he looked to see if the scales were not turned the wrong side, etc. september 14. i was married to lydia jackson.' i the marriage took place at the winslow house, a fine old colonial mansion framed in england, which still stands, though much altered, on north street in plymouth. mrs. emerson's father and mother had died some years before, 544 journal (age 32 october 2. the woods are all in a glow. charles thinks never was great man quite destitute of imagination. “the fading virtues of later times were a cause of grief to his father, archidamus, who again had listened to the same regrets from his own venerable sire,” said agis. plutarch, “apophthegms,” lacon, 17. where is the ballad of tamlane, from which the fine editor of warton borrows these lines? “our shape and size we can convert to either large or small; an old nutshell's the same to us as is the lofty hall.” these lines, by the way, i would put into the mouth of the orators, as parallel to isocrates' account of eloquence. october 5. i like that poetry which, without aiming to be allegorical, is so. which, sticking close to its subject, and that perhaps trivial, can yet be applied to the life of man and the government of god and be found to hold. and this house was her home. mr. emerson and his bride drove in a chaise to concord the next day. 1835] each man's reading 545 “ little was king laurin, but from many a precious gem his wondrous strength and power and his bold courage came. tall at times his stature grew with spells of gramarye, then to the noblest princes fellow might he be.” i take this to be a picture of a child of nature who draws his wisdom from the whole world, and is great only when he has great argument. (quoted by edward warton from little garden of roses.) i see this moral in every novel, fable, mythology i read. i see it in all plutarch and homer, in æsop, in the arabian nights, in ravenswood ; in perceforest and amadis. ... “never much good comes of black bead eyes.” [aunt mary.] every man, if he lived long enough, would make all his books for himself. he would write his own universal history, natural history, book of religion, of economy, of taste. for in every man the facts under these topics are only so far efficient as they are arranged after the law of bis being. but life forbids it, and therefore he uses bossuet, buffon, westminster 546 [age 32 journal catechism as better than nothing, at least as memoranda and badges to certify that he belongs to the universe, and not to his own house only, and contents himself with arranging some one department of life after his own way. our will never gave the images in our minds the rank they now take there. anecdotes i read under the bench in the latin school assume a grandeur in the natural perspective of memory which roman history and charles v, etc., have not. october 10. this morning mr. may and mr. george thompson breakfasted with me. i bade them defend their cause as a thing too sacred to be polluted with any personal feelings. they should adhere religiously to the fact and the principle, and exclude every adverb that went to colour their mathematical statement. as josiah quincy said on the eve of revolution, “the time for declamation is now over; here is something too serious for aught but simplest words and acts.” so should they say. i said also, what seems true, that if any man's opinion in the country was valuable to them, that opinion would be distinctly known. if daniel webster's or dr. channing's opinion is not frankly told, it is so 1835] culture. charles 547 much deduction from the moral value of that opinion, and i should say, moreover, that their opinion is known by the very concealment. one opinion seeks darkness. we know what opinion that is.' an the oak is magnificent from the acorn up. ~ the whortleberry no pruning or training can magnify. who can believe in the perfectibility of this race of man, or in the potency of education? yet compare the english nation with the esquimaux tribe and who can underestimate the advantages of culture? charles thinks there is no christianity, and has not been for some ages, and esteems christianity the most wonderful thing in the history of the world. but for that, he can arrange his theory well enough of the history of man. it is, according to him, the first exalting of the bestial nature, the first allaying of clay with the divine fire, which succeeds in a few cases, but in far the greater part the spirit is overlaid and expired. a few, however, under the benevolent aspect of heaven, so coöperate with god as to work off the slough of the beast, and give evidence of arriving 1 eleven days later, william lloyd garrison was mobbed and imprisoned in boston for his utterances against slavery. 548 (age 32 journal within the precincts of heaven. but the introduction of christianity seems to be departure from general laws, and interposition. jesus seems not to be man. strange, thinks he, moreover, that so sensible a nation as the english should be content so long to maintain that old withered idolatry of their church ; with the history too of its whole manufacture, piece by piece, all written out, thompson the abolitionist is inconvertible: what you say, or what might be said, would make no impress on him. he belongs, i fear, to that great class of the vanity-stricken. an inordinate thirst for notice cannot be gratified until it has found in its gropings what is called a cause that men will bow to; tying himself fast to that, the small man is then at liberty to con sider all objections made to him as proofs of folly and the devil in the objector, and, under that screen, if he gets a rotten egg or two, yet his name sounds through the world and he is praised and praised.' the minister should be to us a simple, absolute man; any trick of his face that reminds us 1 thompson was stoned in some towns. 1835) ministers 549 of his family is so much deduction, unless it should chance that those related lineaments are associated in our mind with genius and virtue. but the minister in these days, how little he says! who is the most decorous man? and no longer, who speaks the most truth? look at the orations of demosthenes and burke, and how many irrelevant things, sentences, words, letters, are there? not one. go into one of our cool churches, and begin to count the words that might be spared, and in most places the entire sermon will go. one sentence kept another in countenance, but not one by its own weight could have justified the saying of it. 't is the age of parenthesis. you might put all we say in brackets and it would not be missed. even — has come to speak in stereotyped phrase and scarcely originates one expression to a speech. i hope the time will come when phrases will be gazetted as no longer current and it will be unpardonable to say, “the times that tried men's souls,” or anything about “a cause,” and so forth. now literature is nothing but a sum in the arithmetical rule, permutation and combination. a man to thrive in literature must trust himself. the voice of society sometimes, and the 550 journal (age 32 writings of great geniuses always, are so noble and prolific, that it seems justifiable to follow and imitate. but it is better to be an independent shoemaker than to be an actor and play a king.' ... see the noble self-reliance of ben jonson. shun manufacture, or the introducing an artificial arrangement in your thoughts — it will surely crack and come to nothing, — but let alone tinkering, and wait for the natural arrangement of your treasures; that shall be chemical affinity, and is a new and permanent substance added to the world, to be recognized as genuine by every knowing person at sight. ... a meek self-reliance i believe to be the law and constitution of good writing. a man is to treat the world like children who must hear and obey the spirit in which he speaks, but which is not his. if he thinks he is to sing to the tune of the times, is to be the decorous sayer of smooth things to lull the ear of society, and to speak of religion as the great traditional thing to be either mutely avoided or kept at a distance by civil bows, he may make a very good 1 here follows the passage on rejected thoughts, “selfreliance,” essays i, p. 45, centenary edition. · 1835) the writer 551 workman for the booksellers, but he must lay aside all hope to wield or so much as to touch the bright thunderbolts of truth which it is given to the true scholar to launch, and whose light flashes through ages without diminution. he must believe that the world proceeds in order from principles. he must not guess, but observe, without intermission, without end; and these puissant elements he shall not pry into who comes in fun, or in haste, or for show. the solemn powers of faith, of love, of fear, of custom, of conscience, are no toys to be shoved aside, but the forces which make and change society. they must be seen and known. you might as well trifle with time. they keep on their eternal way, grinding all resistance to dust. if you will, you may read nothing but songbooks and fairy tales, all the year round, but if you would know the literature of any cultivated nation, you must meet the majestic ideas. of god, of justice, of freedom, of necessity, of war, and of intellectual beauty, as the subject and spirit of volumes and eras. een what's a book? everything or nothing. the eye that sees it is all. what is the heaven's majestical roof fretted with golden fire to one 552 (age 32 journal man, but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors? well, a book is to a paddy a fair page smutted over with black marks; to a boy, a goodly collection of words he can read; to a half-wise man, it is a lesson which he wholly accepts or wholly rejects; but a sage shall see in it secrets yet unrevealed; shall weigh, as he reads, the author's mind; shall see the predominance of ideas which the writer could not extricate himself from, and oversee. the belfast town and county almanack may be read by a sage; and, wasteful as it would be in me to read anti-masonic or jackson papers, yet whoso pierces through them to the deep idea they embody, may well read them. october 13. do you see what we preserve of history? a few anecdotes of a moral quality of some momentary act or word, — the word of canute on the seashore, the speech of the druid to edwin, the anecdote of alfred's learning to read for judith's gift, the box on the ear by the herdman's wife, the tub of diogenes, the gold of cresus, and solon, and cyrus, the emerald of polycrates; these things, reckoned insignificant at the age of their occurrence, have floated, occurrer 1835) jewels of history 553 whilst laws and expeditions and books and kingdoms have sunk and are forgotten. so potent is this simple element of humanity or moral common sense. my will never gave the images in my mind the rank they now take there. the four college years and the three years' course of divinity have not yielded me so many grand facts as some idle books under the bench at the latin school.' we form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. man idealizes every portrait. so are the sentiments of every age unconsciously corrected and pure models upheld in the worst times. the canonizing of a good bishop or monk was a useful preaching to several ages. they who did it would naturally sink the faults and swell the virtues of their friend, and so give to virtuous youth an objective good. on party. — the aliases of the father of william the conqueror, who was called robert the magnificent, or robert the devil, are a good specimen of every man's janus reputation. genius can never supply the want of knowledge, though even its errors may be valuable. i this sentence occurs in “spiritual laws,” essays i. 554 journal [age 32 madame de staël tells me, in this fine book of the influence of literature, that the english do not admit much imagination into their prose, because, such is the facility of the structure of their blank verse, that every one reserves for poetry all such thoughts. what shall the english, of whom only four or five have ever succeeded in blank verse, say to this ? shakspear, milton, young, thomson, cowper, wordsworth. october 15. it does seem, in reading the history or the writings of the english in the xi, xii, xiii, xiv centuries, that their eyes were holden that they could not see. they submit to received views of religion and politics that a child would deride nowadays, and exhibit, at the same time, strong common sense in other things. what stuff there is even in bacon! what a baby-house he builds of diet and domestic rules, — and montaigne even. the right of civil liberty, how slowly it opens on the mind! surely they say well who say that god screens men from premature ideas. a great bump of nonsense in bacon and in brown.' i probably sir thomas browne is meant. sc 1835] the oversoul 555 [mr. emerson was preparing the course of ten lectures on “ english literature,” which he gave in november and december at the masonic temple in boston, before the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge. see cabot's memoir, vol. ii, appendix f.] when we enter upon the domain of law, we do indeed come out into light. to him who, by god's grace, has seen that by being a mere tunnel or pipe through which the divine will flows, he becomes great, and becomes a man, the future wears an eternal smile, and the alight of time is no longer dreadful. i assure myself always of needed help, and go to the grave undaunted because i go not to the grave. i am willing also to be as passive to the great forces i acknowledge as is the thermometer or the clock, and quite part with all will as superfluous. do not expect to find the books of a country written, as an encyclopædia by a society of savants, on system, to supply certain wants and fill up a circle of subjects. in french literature perhaps is something of this order of a garden, where plat corresponds to plat and shrub with shrub. but in the world of living genius all at first 556 (age 32 journal seems disorder, and incapable of methodical arrangement. yet is there a higher harmony whereby 't is set, as in nature the sea balances the land, the mountain the valley and woods and meadows; and as the eye possesses the faculty of rounding and integrating the most disagreeable parts into a pleasing whole. i listened yesterday, as always, to dr. ripley's prayer in the mourning house with tenfold the hope, a tenfold chance, of some touch of nature that should melt us, that i should have felt in the rising of one of the boston preachers of proprieties — the fair house of seem. these old semi-savages do, from the solitude in which they live and their remoteness from artificial society and their inevitable daily comparing man with beast, village with wilderness, — their inevitable acquaintance with the outward nature of man, and with his strict dependence on sun and rain and wind and frost, — wood, worm, cow and bird, get an education to the homeric simplicity which all the libraries of the reviews, and the commentators in boston do not countervail. what a tantalus cup this life is! the beauty that shimmers on these yellow afternoons, who 1835] our possibilities 557 ever could clutch it? go forth to find it, and it is gone; 't is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence. charles says to read carlyle in the north american review is like seeing your brother in jail; and that alexander everett is the sheriff that put him in. . far off, no doubt, is the perfectibility ; so far off as to be ridiculous to all but a few. yet wrote i once that, god keeping a private door to each soul, nothing transcends the bounds of reasonable expectation from a man. now what imperfect tadpoles we are ! an arm or a leg, an eye or an antenna, is unfolded, — all the rest is yet in the chrysalis. who does not feel in him budding the powers of a persuasion that by and by will be irresistible? already how unequally unfolded in two men! here is a man who can only say yes and no in very slight variety of forms. but to render a reason or to dissuade you by anything less coarse than interest, he cannot and attempts not. but themistocles goes by and persuades you that he whom you saw up was down, and he whom you saw down was up. 558 journal [age 32 the ancients probably saw the moral significance of nature in the objects, without afterthought or effort to separate the object and the expression. they felt no wrong in esteeming the mountain a purple picture whereon oreads might appear as rightly as moss, and which was the image of stability, and whatever other meaning it yielded to the wandering eye, because they were prepared to look on it as children, and believed the gods built it and were not far off, and so every tree and flower and chip of stone had a religious lustre, and might mean anything. but when science had gained and given the impression of the permanence, even eternity, of nature, and of every substance, and when on the new views which this habit imparted to the learned, wit, wine, derision arose, the mountain became a pile of stones acted on by bare blind laws of chemistry, and the poetic sense of things was driven to the vulgar, and an effort was made to recal the sense by the educated, and so it was faintly uttered by the poet and heard with a smile. the objective religion of the middle and after age is well exemplified in the spite which heightened luther's piety. “we cannot vex 1835) alcott's visit 559 the devil more,” said luther, “than when we teach, preach, sing and speak of jesus and his humanity. therefore i like it well when, with loud voices and fine, long and deliberately, we sing in the church, et homo factus est : et verbum caro factum est. the devil cannot endure to hear these words, he flieth away,” etc. — table talk. october 20. the hearing man is good. unhappy is the speaking man. the alternations of speaking and hearing make our education. october 21. last saturday night came hither mr. alcott, and spent the sabbath with me. a wise man, simple, superior to display, and drops the best things as quietly as the least. every man, he said, is a revelation, and ought to write his record, but few with the pen. his book is his school, in which he writes all his thoughts. the spiritual world should meet men everywhere; and so the government should teach. our life flows out into our amusements. need of a drama here; how well to lash the american follies. every man is a system, an institution. autobiography the best book. he thinks 560 (age 32 journal jesus a pure deist, and says all children are deists. charles remarks upon the nimbleness and buoyancy which the conversation of a spiritualist awakens; the world begins to dislimn. it is the comfort i have in taking up those new poems of wordsworth, that i am sure here to find thoughts in harmony with the great frame of nature, the placid aspect of the universe. i may find dulness and flatness, but i shall not find meanness and error. nes whence these oaths that make so many words in english books? the sun, the moon, st. paul, jesus, and god, are called upon as witness that the speaker speaks truth. i suppose they refer to that conviction suggested by every object that something is, and signify, if anything is, then i did so and so. yet now they are all obsolete. except for the court forms, i doubt if ever they would be used. they import something separate from the will of man. “by day and night,” “by jupiter,” etc., “ by st. nicholas,” etc., i. e., my will, which interferes to color and change all things, interferes not here. this is. 1835) rich hours. death 561 october 22. what can be truer than the popular poetic doctrine of a conjunction of stars? how many things must combine to make a good word or event? most truly said mme. de staël, that 't is tradition more than invention that helps the poet to a good fable. e what can be truer than the doctrine of inspiration? of fortunate hours? things sail dim and great through my head. veins of rich ore are in me, could i only get outlet and pipe to draw them out. how unattainable seem to me these wild pleasantries of shakespeare, yet not less so seem to me passages in old letters of my own. what platitudes i find in wordsworth! « 1, poet, bestow my verse on this and this and this.” scarce has he dropped the smallest piece of an .. egg, when he fills the barnyard with his cackle. 14 in the hours of clear vision how slight a thing it is to die. it is so slight that one ought not turn a corner or accept the least disgrace (so much as skulking) to avoid it. the mob may 562 journal [age 32 prove as kind and easy a deliverer as a pin or a worm. the mob seems a thing insignificant. it has no character. it is the emblem of unreason; mere muscular and nervous motion, no thought, no spark of spiritual life in it. it is a bad joke to call it a fruit of the love of liberty. it is permitted, like earthquakes and freshets and locusts, and is to be met like a blind mechanical force. what of these atrocious ancestors of englishmen, the briton, saxon, northman, berserkir? is it not needful to make a strong nation that there should be strong wild will? if a man degenerates in goodness he must be grafted again from the wild stock. we all know how life is made up; ... [trifles] eat up the hours. how then is any acquisition, how is any great deed or wise and beautiful work possible? let it enhance the praise of milton, shakspear and laplace. these oppress and spitefully tyrannize over me because i am an idealist. the mob ought to be treated only with contempt. phocion, even jesus, cannot otherwise regard it in so far as it is mob. it is mere beast 1835] future and past 563 of them that compose it; their soul is absent from it. it is to consider it too much, to respect it too much, to speak of its terror in any other way than mere animal and mechanical agents. it has no will; oh no. sunday, october 25. every intellectual acquisition is mainly prospective, and hence the scholar's assurance of eternity quite aloof from his moral convictions. behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms as clouds do far off. even the corpse that has lain in our chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house.' in this my new house no dead body was ever laid. it lacks so much sympathy with nature. mr. goodwinº preached a good sermon this afternoon and said, “the almighty never implanted in a human breast the right of doing wrong.” as he taught, it seemed pleasant, the tie of principle that holds as brothers all men, so that when a stranger comes to me from the other side the globe, otaheitan or chinese, to 1 this sentence occurs in the opening passage of “spirit.ual laws,” essays i. 2 rev. hersey b. goodwin, dr. ripley's young colleague. 564 journal (age 32 buy or sell with me, he shall have that measure from me as shall fill his mind with pleasant conviction that he has dealt with a fellow man in the deepest and dearest sense. a talk in the morning concerning eyes and their spiritual and incorruptible testimony. when a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, god aids him by giving him an eye as clear as his own heavens. . . . when you think of a friend's character you think of his eye rather than of form or mouth. weston's story of the boy that was cross-eyed whenever he lied, but the axes of the eyes parallel when he spoke truth. “ in no man's path malignant stood.” excellent hymn of cowper concerning “truths which o'er the world rise but never set.” the preacher, thought i in church, must assume that man is the revelation, and that, if he will reflect, he shall find his heart overflowing with a divine light, and the bible shall be a mirror giving back to him the refulgence of his own mind. let the preacher speak himself in the same faith that we all, his hearers, are urns of the godhead, and will surely know if any word 1835] preacher. edward 565 of our own language is uttered to us, and will accept it, but that all of us which is divine must remain forever impassible to anything else. he, the preacher, let him then acquiesce in being nothing that he may move mountains: let him be the mere tongue of us all; no individual, but a universal man, let him leave his nation, his party, his sect, his town-connexion, even his vanity and self-love at home, and come hither to say what were equally fit at paris, at canton, and at thebes. there is no wall like an idea. i used to remark edward's greek petulance disclosed in answers like that of pyrrhus when invited to hear one mimic the nightingale: “but i have heard the nightingale itself.” m. m. e. has made many such speeches. a good one of this sort the putting down reverend folly by childish reason is hannibal's answer to antiochus saying, that “the entrails of the sacrifice forbade the battle”; “you are for doing what the flesh of a beast, not what the reason of a wise man, adviseth.” socrates also. webster is in a galvanized state when he makes the hayne speech, and ’t is as easy to say gigantic 566 journal (age 32 things, to introduce from god on the world “truths which rise but never set," as at another hour to talk nonsense. he is caught up in the spirit and made to utter things not his own. october 28. the oriental man: abraham and heth, job, etc. man stands on the point betwixt the inward spirit and the outward matter. he sees that the one explains, translates, the other: that the world is the mirror of the soul. he is the priest and interpreter of nature thereby. 'tis a good thing for man that i am obliged to pick my words of low trades with so much care. in england you may say, a sweep, a blacksmith, a scavenger, as synonym for a savage in civil life. but in this country i must look about me. i perhaps speak to persons who occasionally or regularly work at these works and yet do take, as they ought, their place as men in places of manly culture and entertainment. wacic the caliph, who died a. d. 845, ended his life with these words: “o thou, whose kingdom never passes away, pity one whose dignity 1 cowper's hymn. 1835] living images 567 is so transient!” turner, anglo-saxons, vol. i, p. 286. [here follow quotations from turner, about alfred, and from asser.] october 30. it will not do for sharon turner, or any man not of ideas, to make a system. thus, mr. turner has got into his head the notion that the mosaic history is a good natural history of the world, reconcilable with geology, etc. very well. you see at once the length and breadth of what you may expect, and lose all appetite to read. but coleridge sets out to idealize the actual, to make an epopæa out of english institutions, and it is replete with life. november 6. burke's imagery is, much of it, got from books, and so is a secondary formation. webster's is! all primary. let a man make the woods and fields his books; then at the hour of passion his thoughts will invest themselves spontaneously with natural imagery. plutarchiana this morn. verses and words served as hampers and baskets to convey the oracle's answers from place to place. ... then was it that history alighted from versifying, as 568 journal (age 32 it were from riding in chariots, and on foot distinguished truth from fable. he speaks of the lovers of omens, etc., as preferring rainbows and haloes to the sun and moon. charles says the nap is worn off the world. on ſduring november mr. emerson accepted an invitation to preach in the church at lexington east village, and continued to do so, not hampered in his manner of conducting the service, for nearly three years.] “to know that the sky is everywhere blue, you need not travel around the world.” november 7. advantage of the spiritual man in the fact of the identity of human nature. draw your robe ever so chastely round you, the surgeon sees every muscle, every hair, every bone, every gland; he reads you by your counterpart. so i read the history of all men in myself. give me one single man, and uncover for me his pleasures and pains, let me minutely and in the timbers and ground-plan study his architecture, sures 1835] antigone 569 and you may travel all round the world and visit the chinese, the malay, the esquimaux and the arab, — i travel faster than you. in my chimney-corner i see more, and anticipate all your wonders. or do you ransack all the histories and learn what has been done and thought, back in time, in the xvii century, in the middle age, at the time of the consuls, or in the twilight of history, and i, intent upon the principles of this one man, will know what you shall say, and will say that also which shall be made good ages hence in some far-stretching revolution. november 14. melancholy cleaves to the saxon mind as closely as to the tones of an æolian harp. when yesterday i read antigone, at some words a very different image of female loveliness rose out of the clouds of the past and the actual. that poem is just what winckelmann described the greek beauty to be,—“the tongue on the balance of expression.” it is remarkable for nothing so much as the extreme temperance, the abstemiousness which never offends by the superfluous word or degree too much of emotion. how slender the materials, how few the 570 journal [age 32 incidents! how just the symmetry! charles thinks it as great a work of genius as any. every word writ in steel. but that other image which it awakened for me brought with it the perception how entirely each rational creature is dowried with all the gifts of god. the universe— nothing less — is totally given to each new being.' ... but i thought thus yesterday in regard to the charming beauty which a few years ago shed on me its tender and immortal light. she needed not a historical name, nor earthly rank or wealth. she was complete in her own perfections. she took up all things into her and in her single self sufficed the soul. the way in which plutarch and the ancients usually quote the poets is quite remarkable, as it indicates a deep and universal reverence for poetry, indicates a faith in inspiration. they quote pindar, much as a pious christian does david or paul. where is that reverence now? fine walk this afternoon in the woods with charles; beautiful gothic arches, yes, and cathei here follows the passage on the hero's being entitled to a setting of natural beauty to his action, etc. (nature, “ beauty,” pp. 20, 21, centenary edition.) 1835] walk with charles 571 dral windows, as of stained glass, formed by the interlaced branches against the grey and gold of the western sky. we came to a little pond in the bosom of the hills, with echoing shores. charles thought much of the domesticity and comfort there is in living with one set of men, to wit, your contemporaries; and thought it would be misery to shift them, and hence the sadness of growing old. now, every newspaper has tidings of “kenned folk.” i projected the discomfort of our playing over again to-night the tragedy of babes in the wood. charles rejoiced in the serenity of saturday night. it was calm as the universe. i told him what a fool he was not to write the record of his thoughts. he said it were an impiety. yet he meant to when he was old. i told him, when alcibiades turned author, we workies should be out of countenance. yet i maintained that the lycidas was a copy from the poet's mind printed out in the book, notwithstanding all the mechanical difficulties, as clear and wild as it had shone at first in the sky of his own thought. we came out again into the open world and saw the sunset, as of a divine artist, and i asked if it were only brute light and aqueous vapor and there was no intent in that celestial smile? anus 572 journal [age 32 other topic of the talk was, that lyceums-so that people will let you say what you thinkare as good a pulpit as any other. but c. thinks that it is only by an effort like a berserkir a man can work himself up to any interest in any exertion. all active life seems an amabilis insania. and when he has done anything of importance he repents of it, repents of virtue as soon as he is alone. nor can he see any reason why the world should not burn up to-night. the play has been over some time.' peace and war. “the wounds inflicted by iron are to be healed by iron, and not by words,” said the elder cancellieri, and ordered the hand of lore to be cut off. müller, vol. iii. magnanimity of literary men. argyropulus and theodore of gaza. müller, vol. iji. [many quotations from müller follow.] in elizabeth's time the high church was looked upon by intelligent men as “a horse which was still kept always saddled in readiness for the pope.” see müller. this attitude of mind was probably due to the fact that he was already in consumption, though it was not recognized. 1835] friends. carlyle 573 compensation. charles v always dissembled and never was believed. december 7. last week mr. alcott spent two days here. the wise man who talks with you seems of no particular size, but, like the sun and moon, quite vague and indeterminate. his characterizing of people was very good. hedge united strangely the old and the new; he had imagination, but his intellect seemed ever to contend with an arid temperament. george bradford was an impersonation of sincerity, simplicity, and humility without servility. carlyle's talent, i think, lies more in his beautiful criticism, in seizing the idea of the man or the time, than in original speculation, he seems to me most limited in this chapter or speculation in which they regard him as most original and profound — i mean in his religion and immortality from the removal of time and space. he seems merely to work with a foreign thought, not to live in it himself. in shakspear i actually shade my eyes as i read for the splendor of the thoughts. 574 (age 32 journal december 12. i wrote h. ware, jr., that his “4th topic, the circumstances which show a tendency toward war's abolition, seemed to me the nearest to mine; for i strongly feel the inhumanity or unmanlike character of war, and should gladly study the outward signs and exponents of that progress which has brought us to this feeling.” the arts and sciences are the only cosmopolites. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1835 asser and alfred the great, apud sharon turner's history of the anglo-saxons. richard hooker; dunbar of saltoun, golden targe, apud thomas warton's history of english poetry; robert wyer, scole howse, apud warton, also the little garden of roses and tamlane in the same collection ; scottish ballads; jacob behmen (or boehme), the aurora or morning redness, ... i.e., the root or mother of philosophy, astrology and theology from the true ground, etc. (translation, london, 1656). dryden; robert hooke; thomas shepherd, 1835] reading 575 new england's lamentation ; edward bagshaw; joseph spence, anecdotes, &c.; cowper, olney hymns; diderot; voltaire ; jeremy bentham; laplace; chatterton; sharon turner, history of the anglo-saxons ; spurzheim; johannes von müller, universal history; lyell, geology; abner kneeland; frances anne kemble (butler), journal of residence in america. amos bronson alcott, record of a school. end of volume iii @he riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s. a 3 2044 005 056 015 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. wilin sri mandenes twene box due 2 & 2004 mar 07.1991 cancelled feu wi b aue 29 1998 boi due jul cabece que ed ) widener widener feb 1 0 2003 may 2 8.2004 book de cancelled feb 13 -1983,00 cancelled | 1253028390 241 ssays s c c s = h s | _ _ h a rva r d c o l l e g e l i b r a r y works of ralph waldo emerson, “such is the beauty of his speech, such the majesty of his ideas, such the power of the moral sentiment in men, and such the impression which his whole character makes on them, that they lend him, everywhere, their ears, and thousands bless his manly thoughts.”—massachusetts quarterly review. essays. first series. i vol. 16mo. $2.oo. essays. second series. 1 vol. 16mo. $2.oo. miscellanies. embracing nature, addresses, and lectures. 1 vol. 16mo. $2.o.o. representative men. seven lectures.. i vol. 16mo. $2.o.o. english traits. i vol. 16mo. $2.o.o. the conduct of life. 1 vol. 16mo. $2.oo. prose works comprising the six preceding volumes. 2 vols. 12mo. cloth, $5.oo; half calf, $9.oo; morocco, $ 12.oo. society and solitude. vol. 16mo. $2.00. letters and social aims. 1 vol. 16mo. $ 2 oo. poems. 1 vol. 16mo. with portrait. $2.oo. may-day, and other pieces. 1 vol. 16mo. $2.o.o. parnassus : a volume of choice poems, selected from the whole range of english literature, edited by ralph waldo emerson. with a prefatory essay. crown 8vo. nearly 600 pages. $4.oo. james r. osgood & co., publishers, boston. e s s a. y. s. by r a lph wa l do e m e r son. second series, new and revised edit ion. —-(>;-ºº-º-ºb o s t o n : james r. osgood and company., late ticknor & fields, and fields, osgood, & co. 1876. : lº * †, , , harvahb cº, ºf lºſſy ci, t , f : . . . bibliqi la tº jha. caiia cas copyright, 1876. by ralph wali)0 emerson. university press : welch, bigelow, & co., cambridge. contents. page the poet. • 9 experience . 41 character • • . 75 manners . 99 gifts . . • . 129 nature • • 137 politics . • . 161 nominalist and realist . • 181 new england reformers . • . 201 e s s a.y. s. t h e poet. -ºa moody child and wildly wise pursued the game with joyful eyes, which chose, like meteors, their way, and rived the dark with private ray: they overleapt the horizon’s edge, searched with apollo's privilege; through man, and woman, and sea, and star, saw the dance of nature forward far ; through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. 1 * ſ olympian bards who sung divine ideas below, which always find us young, and always keep us so. t h e poet. -those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement or for show. it is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. there is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. we were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. so in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual mean12 t h e poet. ing of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. but the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall i say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact: orpheus, empedocles, heraclitus, plato, plutarch, dante, swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. for we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torchbearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, when we know least about it. and this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the poet, or the man of beauty, to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time. the breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. he stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the commonwealth. the young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. they receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. nature enhances her beauty to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. he is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but with this t h e poet. 13 consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. for all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. in love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. the man is only half himself, the other half is his expression. notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare. i know not how it is that we need an interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. there is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun, and stars, earth and water. these stand and wait to render him a peculiar service. but there is some obstruction, or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the due effect. too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. every touch should thrill. every man should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him. yet, in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. the poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart. for the universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear, under different names, in every system 14 t h e poet. of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, jove, pluto, neptune; or, theologically, the father, the spirit, and the son; but which we will call here, the knower, the doer, and the sayer. these stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. these three are equal. each is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him, and his own patent. the poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. he is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. for the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and god has not made some beautiful things, but beauty is the creator of the universe. therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. but homer's words are as costly and admirable to homer, as agamemnon’s victories are to agamemnon. the poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect. t h e poet. 15 for poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. the men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. for nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. the sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. he is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. he is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and casual. for we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. i took part in a conversation, the other day, concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a musicbox of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill and command of language we could not sufficiently praise. but when the question arose, whether he was not only a lyrist, but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. he does not stand out of our low limitations, like a chimborazo under the line, running up from a torrid base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of 16 the poet. every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and terraces. we hear, through all the varied music, the ground-tone of conventional life. our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music. the argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is primary. for it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, -a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. the thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. the poet has a new thought: he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. for the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet. i remember, when i was young, how much i was moved one morning by tidings that genius had appeared in a youth who sat near me at table. he had left his work, and gone rambling none knew whither, and had written hundreds of lines, but could not tell whether that which was in him was therein told: he could tell nothing but that all was changed, man, beast, heaven, earth, and sea. how gladly we listened how credulous ! society seemed to be compromised. we sat in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars. boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had the night before, or was much farther than that. rome, – t h e poet. 17 what was rome? plutarch and shakspeare were in the yellow leaf, and homer no more should be heard of. it is much to know that poetry has been written this very day, under this very roof, by your side. what! that wonderful spirit has not expired! these stony moments are still sparkling and animated' i had fancied that the oracles were all silent, and nature had spent her fires, and behold ! all night, from every pore, these fine auroras have been streaming. every one has some interest in the advent of the poet, and no one knows how much it may concern him. we know that the secret of the world is profound, but who or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. a mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new person, may put the key into our hands. of course, the value of genius to us is in the veracity of its report. talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds. mankind, in good earnest, have arrived so far in understanding themselves and their work, that the foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. it is the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time. all that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology. man, never so often deceived, still watches for the arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to a truth, until he has made it his own. with what joy i begin to read a poem, which i confide in as an inspiration 1 and now my chains are to be broken ; i shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in which i live, – opaque, though they seem transparent, —and from the heaven of truth i shall see b 18 the poet. and comprehend my relations. that will reconcile me to life, and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what i am doing. life will no more be a noise; now i shall see men and women, and know the signs by which they may be discerned from fools and satans. this day shall be better than my birthday: then i became an animal: now i am invited into the science of the real. such is the hope, but the fruition is postponed. oftener it falls that this winged man, who will carry me into the heaven, whirls me into mists, then leaps and frisks about with me as it were from cloud to cloud, still affirming that he is bound heavenward; and i, being myself a novice, am slow in perceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, and is merely bent that i should admire his skill to rise, like a foul or a flying-fish, a little way from the ground or the water; but the all-piercing, all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven, that man shall never inhabit. i tumble down again soon into my old nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who can lead me thither where i would be. but, leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with new hope, observe how nature, by worthier impulses, has insured the poet’s fidelity to his office of announcement and affirming, namely, by the beauty of things, which becomes a new and higher beauty, when expressed. nature offers all her creatures to him as a picture-language. being used as a type, a second wonderful value appears in the object, far better than its old value, as the carpenter's stretched cord, if you hold your ear close enough, is musical in the breeze. “things more excellent than every t h e poet. 19 image,” says jamblichus, “are expressed through images.” things admit of being used as symbols, because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every part. every line we can draw in the sand has expression; and there is nobody without its spirit or genius. all form is an effect of character; all condition, of the quality of the life; all harmony, of health; (and, for this reason, a perception of beauty should be sympathetic, or proper only to the good.) the beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary. the soul makes the body, as the wise spenser teaches : — “so every spirit, as it is more pure, and hath in it the more of heavenly light, so it the fairer body doth procure to habit in, and it more fairly dight, with cheerful grace and amiable sight. for, of the soul, the body form doth take, for soul is form, and doth the body make.” here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in a critical speculation, but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently. we stand before the secret of the world, there where being passes into appearance, and unity into variety. the universe is the externization of the soul. wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. the earth and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that being we have. “the mighty heaven,” said proclus, “exhibits, in its transfigurations, 20 t h e poet. clear images of the splendor of intellectual perceptions; being moved in conjunction with the unapparent periods of intellectual natures.” therefore, science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. since everything in mature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active. no wonder, then, if these waters be so deep, that we hover over them with a religious regard. the beauty of the fable proves the importance of the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if you please, cvery man is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments of nature; for all men have the thoughts whereof the universe is the celebration. i find that the fascination resides in the symbol. who loves nature ? who does not? is it only poets, and men of leisure and cultivation, who live with her? no; but also hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, though they express their affection in their choice of life, and not in their choice of words. the writer wonders what the coachman or the hunter values in riding, in horses, and dogs. it is not superficial qualities. when you talk with him, he holds these at as slight a rate as you. his worship is sympathetic; he has no definitions, but he is commanded in nature, by the living power which he feels to be there present. no imitation, or playing of these things, would content him; he loves the earnest of the north-wind, of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. a beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. it is nature the t h e poet. 21 symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed by life, which he worships, with coarse but sincere rites. the inwardness and mystery of this attachment drive men of every class to the use of emblems. the schools of poets and philosophers are not more intoxicated with their symbols, than the populace with theirs. in our political parties, compute the power of badges and emblems. see the huge wooden ball rolled by successive ardent crowds from baltimore to bunker hill! in the political processions, lowell goes in a loom, and lynn in a shoe, and salem in a ship. witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. see the power of national emblems. some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure, which came into credit god knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind, on a fort, at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest or the most conventional exterior. the people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics' beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of the divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world is a temple, whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and commandments of the deity, in this, that there is no fact in nature which does not carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinctions which we make in events, and in affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear when nature is used as a symbol. thought makes everything fit for use. the vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. what would be base, 22 t h e poet. or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connection of thought. the piety of the hebrew prophets purges their grossness. the circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. small and mean things serve as well as great symbols. the meaner the type by which a law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories of men: just as we choose the smallest box, or case, in which any needful utensil can be carried. bare lists of words are found suggestive, to an imaginative and excited mind; as it is related of lord chatham, that he was accustomed to read in bailey’s dictionary, when he was preparing to speak in parliament. the poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought. why covet a knowledge of new facts day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. we are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. we can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity. it does not need that a poem should be long. every word was once a poem. every new relation is a new word. also, we use defects and deformities to a sacred purpose, so expressing our sense that the evils of the world are such only to the evil eye. in the old mythology, mythologists observe, defects are ascribed to divine natures, as lameness to vulcan, blindness to cupid, and the like, to signify exuberances. for, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of god, that makes things ugly, the poet, who reattaches things to nature and the whole, – reattaching even artithe poet. 23 ficial things, and violations of nature, to mature, by a deeper insight, — disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts. readers of poetry see the factory village and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these ; for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading; but the poet sees them fall within the great order not less than the beehive, or the spider's geometrical web. nature adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves like her own. besides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing how many mechanical inventions you exhibit. though you add millions, and never so surprising, the fact of mechanics has not gained a grain's weight. the spiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; as no mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. a shrewd country boy goes to the city for the first time, and the complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. it is not that he does not see all the fine houses, and know that he never saw such before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet finds place for the railway. the chief value of the new fact, is to enhance the great and constant fact of life, which can dwarf any and every circumstance, and to which the belt of wampum, and the commerce of america, are alike. the world being thus put under the mind for verb and moun, the poet is he who can articulate it. for, though life is great, and fascinates, and absorbs, and though all men are intelligent of the symbols through which it is named, -yet they cannot originally use them. we are symbols, and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and 24 t h e poet. tools, words and things, birth and death, all are emblems; but we sympathize with the symbols, and, being infatuated with the economical uses of things, we do not know that they are thoughts. the poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes, and a tongue, into every dumb and inanimate object. he perceives the thought’s independence of the symbol, the stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacity of the symbol. as the eyes of lynceus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession. for, through that better perception, he stands one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform ; that within the form of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher form ; and, following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature. all the facts of the animal economy – sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth — are symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of man, to suffer there a change, and reappear a new and higher fact. he uses forms according to the life, and not according to the form. this is true science. the poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. he knows why the plain or meadow of space was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the great deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought. the poet. 25 by virtue of this science the poet is the namer, or language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary. the poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. for, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. the etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. language is fossil poetry. as the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. but the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other. this expression, or naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. what we call nature, is a certain self-regulated motion, or change; and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave another to baptize her, but baptizes herself; and this through the metamorphosis again. i remember that a certain poet described it to me thus : — genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind. nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she wol. ii. 2 26 the poet. shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day. the new agaric of this hour has a chance which the old one had not. this atom of seed is thrown into a new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent two rods off. she makes a man; and having brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of losing this wonder at a blow, but she detaches from him a new self, that the kind may be safe from accidents to which the individual is exposed. so when the soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away from it its poems or songs, – a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary kingdom of time; a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the virtue of the soul out of which they came), which carry them fast and far, and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men. these wings are the beauty of the poet's soul. the songs, thus flying immortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far greater numbers, and threaten to devour them ; but these last are not winged. at the end of a very short leap they fall plump down, and rot, having received from the souls out of which they came no beautiful wings. but the melodies of the poet ascend, and leap, and pierce into the deeps of infinite time. so far the bard taught me, using his freer speech. but nature has a higher end, in the production of new individuals, than security, namely, ascension, or, the past h e poet. 27 sage of the soul into higher forms. i knew, in my younger days, the sculptor who made the statue of the youth which stands in the public garden. he was, as i remember, unable to tell directly what made him happy, or unhappy, but by wonderful indirections he could tell. he rose one day, according to his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the eternity out of which it came, and, for many days after, he strove to express this tranquillity, and, lo! his chisel had fashioned out of marble the form of a beautiful youth, phosphorus, whose aspect is such, that, it is said, all persons who look on it become silent. the poet also resigns himself to his mood, and that thought which agitated him is expressed, but alter idem, in a manner totally new. the expression is organic, or, the new type which things themselves take when liberated. as, in the sun, objects paint their images on the retina of the eye, so they, sharing the aspiration of the whole universe, tend to paint a far more delicate copy of their essence in his mind. like the metamorphosis of things into higher organic forms, is their change into melodies. over everything stands its demon, or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody. the sea, the mountain-ridge, niagara, and every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-cantations, which sail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with an ear sufficiently fine, he overhears them, and endeavors to write down the notes, without diluting or depraving them. and herein is the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's faith, that the poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature, with 28 t h e poet. which they ought to be made to tally. a rhyme in one of our sonnets should not be less pleasing than the iterated nodes of a seashell, or the resembling difference of a group of flowers. the pairing of the birds is an idyl, not tedious as our idyls are ; a tempest is a rough ode, without falsehood or rant: a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is an epic song, subordinating how many admirably executed parts. why should not the symmetry and truth that modulate these glide into our spirits, and we participate the invention of nature? this insight, which expresses itself by what is called imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others. the path of things is silent. will they suffer a speaker to go with them : a spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcendency of their own nature, — him they will suffer. the condition of true naming, on the poet’s part, is his resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that. it is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and t h e poet. 29 his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. the poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only, when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, “with the flower of the mind ’’; not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. as the traveller who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. for if in any manmer we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible. this is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal-wood and tobacco, or whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration. all men avail themselves of such means as they can, to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers; and to this end they prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, politics, or love, or science, or animal intoxication, which are several coarser or finer quasi-mechanical substitutes for the true nectar, which is the ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact. these are auxiliaries to the centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out into free space, and they help him to escape the custody of that body in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of individual relations in which he is en30 the poet. closed. hence a great number of such as were professionally expressors of beauty, as painters, poets, musicians, and actors, have been more than others wont to lead a life of pleasure and indulgence: all but the few who received the true nectar; and, as it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an emancipation not into the heavens, but into the freedom of baser places, they were punished for that advantage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration. but never can any advantage be taken of nature by a trick. the spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. the sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. that is not an inspiration which we owe to narcotics, but some counterfeit excitement and fury. milton says that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. for poetry is not ‘devil's wine,’ but god's wine. it is with this as it is with toys. we fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums, and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and sufficing objects of nature, the sun, and moon, the animals, the water, and stones, which should be their toys. so the poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low, that the common influences should delight him. his cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water. that spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine stump, and the poet. 31 half-imbedded stone, on which the dull march sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple taste. if thou fill thy brain with boston and new york, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and french coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pine-woods. if the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive in other men. the metamorphosis excites in the beholder an emotion of joy. the use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. we seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. we are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. this is the effect on us of tropes, ſables, oracles, and all poetic forms. poets are thus liberating gods. men have really got a new sense, and found within their world another world, or nest of worlds; for, the metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does not stop. i will not now consider how much this makes the charm of algebra and the mathematics, which also have their tropes, but it is felt in every definition; as, when aristotle defines space to be an immovable vessel, in which things are contained; or, when plato defines a line to be a flowing point; or, figure to be a bound of solid; and many the like. what a joyful sense of freedom we have, when vitruvius announces the old opinion of artists, that no architect can build any house well, who does not know something of anatomy. when socrates, in charmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations, and that these incantations are beau32 t h e poet. tiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls; when plato calls the world an animal; and timaeus affirms that the plants also are animals; or affirms a man to be a heavenly tree, growing with its root, which is his head, upward; and, as george chapman, following him, writes, – “so in our tree of man, whose nervie root springs in his top '; when orpheus speaks of hoariness as “that white flower which marks extreme old age"; when proclus calls the universe the statue of the intellect; when chaucer, in his praise of ‘gentilesse,' compares good blood in mean condition to fire, which, though carried to the darkest house betwixt this and the mount of caucasus, will yet hold its natural office, and burn as bright as if twenty thousand men did it behold; when john saw, in the apocalypse, the ruin of the world through evil, and the stars fall from heaven, as the fig-tree casteth her untimely fruit; when aesop reports the whole catalogue of common daily relations through the masquerade of birds and beasts; we take the cheerful hint of the immortality of our essence, and its versatile habit and escapes, as when the gypsies say of themselves, “it is in vain to hang them, they cannot die.” the poets are thus liberating gods. the ancient british bards had for the title of their order, “those who are free throughout the world.” they are free and they make free. an imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive at the precise sense of the t h e poet. 33 author. i think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary. if a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought, to that degree that he forgets the authors and the public, and heeds only this one dream, which holds him like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you may have all the arguments and histories and criticism. all the value which attaches to pythagoras, paracelsus, cornelius, agrippa, cardan, kepler, swedenborg, schelling, oken, or any other who introduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as angels, devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmerism, and so on, is the certificate we have of departure from routine, and that here is a new witness. that also is the best success in conversation, the magic of liberty, which puts the world, like a ball, in our hands. how cheap even the liberty then seems; how mean to study, when an emotion communicates to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature: how great the perspective nations, times, systems, enter and disappear, like threads in tapestry of large figure and many colors; dream delivers us to dream, and, while the drunkenness lasts, we will sell our bed, our philosophy, our religion, in our opulence. there is good reason why we should prize this liberation. the fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. on the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying. the inaccessibleness of every thought but that we are in, is wonderful. what if you come near to it, — you are as remote, when you are nearest, as when 2 * c 34 t h e poet. you are farthest. every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode, or in an action, or in looks and behavior, has yielded us a new thought. he unlocks our chains, and admits us to a new scci16. this emancipation is dear to all men, and the power to impart it, as it must come from greater depth and scope of thought, is a measure of intellect. therefore all books of the imagination endure, all which ascend to that truth, that the writer sees nature beneath him, and uses it as his exponent. every verse or sentence, possessing this virtue, will take care of its own immortality. the religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men. but the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. the poet did not stop at the color, or the form, but read their meaning, neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought. here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. for all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. the morning redness happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of jacob behmen, and comes to stand to him for truth and faith; and he believes should stand for the same realities to every reader. but the first reader pret h e poet. 35 fers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweller polishing a gem. either of these, or of a myriad more, are equally good to the person to whom they are significant. only they must be held lightly, and be very willingly translated into the equivalent terms which others use. and the mystic must be steadily told, all that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric, -universal signs instead of these village symbols, — and we shall both be gainers. the history of hierarchies seems to show, that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and, at last, nothing but an excess of the organ of language. swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently for the translator of nature into thought. i do not know the man in history to whom things stood so uniformly for words. before him the metamorphosis continually plays. everything on which his eye rests obeys the impulses of moral nature. the figs become grapes whilst he eats them. when some of his angels affirmed a truth, the laurel twig which they held blossomed in their hands. the noise which, at a distance, appeared like gnashing and thumping, on coming nearer was found to be the voice of disputants. the men, in one of his visions, seen in heavenly light, appeared like dragons, and seemed in darkness: but, to each other, they appeared as men, and when the light from heaven shone into their cabin, they complained of the darkness, and were compelled to shut the window that they might see. 36 t h e poet. there was this perception in him, which makes the poet or seer an object of awe and terror, namely, that the same man, or society of men, may wear one aspect to themselves and their companions, and a different aspect to higher intelligences. certain priests, whom he describes as conversing very learnedly together, appeared to the children, who were at some distance, like dead horses; and many the like misappearances. and instantly the mind inquires whether these fishes under the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, those dogs in the yard, are immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me, and perchance to themselves appear upright men; and whether i appear as a man to all eyes. the bramins and pythagoras propounded the same question, and if any poet has witnessed the transformation, he doubtless found it in harmony with various experiences. we have all seen changes as considerable in wheat and caterpillars. he is the poet, and shall draw us with love and terror, who sees, through the flowing vest, the firm nature, and can declare it. i look in vain for the poet whom i describe. we do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chant our own times and social circumstance. if we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await. dante's praise is, that he dared to write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into universality. we have yet had no genius in america, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and the poet. 37 saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in homer; then in the middle age; then in calvinism. banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of troy, and the temple of delphos, and are as swiftly passing away. our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our negroes, and indians, our boats, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, oregon and texas, are yet unsung. yet america is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres. if i have not found that excellent combination of gifts in my countrymen which i seek, neither could i aid myself to fix the idea of the poet by reading now and then in chalmers's collection of five centuries of english poets. these are wits, more than poets, though there have been poets among them. but when we adhere to the ideal of the poet, we have our difficulties even with milton and homer. milton is too literary, and homer too literal and historical. but i am not wise enough for a national criticism, and must use the old largeness a little longer, to discharge my errand from the muse to the poet concerning his art. art is the path of the creator to his work. the paths, or methods, are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see them, not the artist himself for years, or for a life. time, unless he come into the conditions. the painter, 38 the poet. the sculptor, the composer, the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire, namely, to express themselves symmetrically and abundantly, not dwarfishly and fragmentarily. they found or put themselves in certain conditions, as, the painter and sculptor before some impressive human figures; the orator, into the assembly of the people; and the others, in such scenes as each has found exciting to his intellect; and each presently feels the new desire. he hears a voice, he sees a beckoning. then he is apprised, with wonder, what herds of demons hem him in. he can no more rest; he says, with the old painter, “by god, it is in me, and must come forth of me.” he pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him. the poet pours out verses in every solitude. most of the things he says are conventional, no doubt; but by and by he says something which is original and beautiful. that charms him. he would say nothing else but such things. in our way of talking, we say, ‘that is yours, this is mine’; but the poet knows well that it is not his; that it is as strange and beautiful to him as to you; he would ſain hear the like eloquence at length. once having tasted this immortal ichor, he cannot have enough of it, and, as an admirable creative power exists in these intellections, it is of the last importance that these things get spoken. what a little of all we know is said ' what drops of all the sea of our science are baled up! and by what accident it is that these are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature hence the necessity of speech and song; hence these throbs and heart-beatings in the orator, at the door of the assembly, to the end, namely, that thought may be cjaculated as logos, or word. the poet. 39 doubt not, o poet, but persist. say, ‘it is in me, and shall out.” stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in turn arise and walk before him as exponent of his meaning. comes he to that power, his genius is no longer exhaustible. all the creatures, by pairs and by tribes, pour into his mind as into a noah's ark, to come forth again to people a new world. this is like the stock of air, for our respiration, or for the combustion of our fireplace, not a measure of gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. and therefore the rich poets, as homer, chaucer, shakspeare, and raphael, have obviously no limits to their works, except the limits of their lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through the street, ready to render an image of every created thing. o poet a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. the conditions are hard, but equal. thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. for the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. god wills also that thou abdicate a duplex and manifold life, and that thou be content that 40 t h e poet. others speak for thee. others shall be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions also. thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and caust not be afforded to the capitol or the exchange. the world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool, and a churl, for a long season. this is the screen and sheath in which pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. and thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. and this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. thou true land-lord 1 sea-lord ' air-lord wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldst walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. exper i e n c e . -ºthe lords of life, the lords of life, – i saw them pass, in their own guise, like and unlike, portly and grim, use and surprise, surface and dream, succession swift, and spectral wrong, temperament without a tongue, and the inventor of the game omnipresent without name; — some to see, some to be guessed, they marched from east to west: little man, least of all, among the legs of his guardians tall, walked about with puzzled look; — him by the hand dear nature took; dearest nature, strong and kind, whispered, ‘darling, never mind! to-morrow they will wear another face, the founder thou ! these are thy race l’ exper ib n ce. -where do we find ourselves? in a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. we wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. but the genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. all things swim and glitter. our life is not so much threatened as our perception. ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again. did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation ? we have enough to live and bring the year about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. ah, that our genius were a little more of a genius ! we are like millers on the lower levels of a stream, when the 44 experience. factories above them have exhausted the water. we too fancy that the upper people must have raised their dams. if any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know ! we do not know to-day whether we are busy or idle. in times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. all our days are so uncomfortable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. we never got it on any dated calendar day. some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that hermes won with dice of the moon, that osiris might be born. it is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. our life looks trivial and we shun to record it. men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference. ‘yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,’ says the querulous farmer, “only holds the world together.' i quote another man’s saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me. 't is the trick of nature thus to degrade to-day; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped magically in. every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands, and deluges of lethe, and the men ask, ‘what’s exper, ie n c e . 45 the news?’ as if the old were so bad. how many individuals can we count in society? how many actions * how many opinions? so much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man's genius eontracts itself to a very few hours. the history of literature — take the net result of tiraboschi, warton, or schlegel — is a sum of very few ideas, and of very few original tales, – all the rest being variation of these. so, in this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. it is almost all custom and gross sense. there are even few opinions, and these seem organic in the speakers, and do not disturb the universal necessity. what opium is instilled into all disaster! it shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces: we fall soft on a thought: ante dea is gentle, “over men's heads walking aloft, with tender feet treading so soft.” people grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. there are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. but it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. the only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. that, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. was it boscovich who found out 46 experience. that bodies never come in contact 2 well, souls never touch their objects. an innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. grief too will make us idealists. in the death of my son, now more than two years ago, i seem to have lost a beautiful estate, – no more. i cannot get it nearer to me. if to-morrow i should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, – neither better nor worse. so is it with this calamity: it does not touch me; something which i fancied was a part of me, which could not be toru away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me and leaves no scar. it was caducous. i grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. the indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. the dearest events are summer rain, and we the para coats that shed every drop. nothing is left us now but death. we look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us. i take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates. we may have the sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy. direct strokes she never gave us experience. 47 power to make; all our blows glance, all our hits are accidents. our relations to each other are oblique and casual. dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be manycolored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. from the mountain you see the mountain. we animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. it depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. there are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. the more or less depends on structure or temperament. temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? who cares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at some time shown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he laugh and giggle 2 or if he apologize 2 or is infected with egotism * or thinks of his dollar * or cannot pass by food? or has gotten a child in his boyhood? of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave, and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life? of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does not care enough for results, to stimulate him to experiment, and hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so 48 experience. that life stagnates from too much reception, without due outlet p of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them * what cheer can the religious sentiment yield, when that is suspected to be secretly dependent on the seasons of the year, and the state of the blood i knew a witty physician who found the creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man became a calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a unitarian. very mortifying is the reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of genius. we see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd. temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions, and shuts usin a prison of glass which we cannot see. there is an optical illusion about every person we meet. in truth, they are all creatures of given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass: but we look at them, they seem alive, and we presume there is impulse in them. in the moment it seems impulse; in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box must play. men resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that temper prevails over everything of time, place, and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. some modifications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the individual texture holds its experie n c e . 49 dominion, if not to bias the moral judgments, yet to fix the measure of activity and of enjoyment. i thus express the law as it is read from the platform of ordinary life, but must not leave it without noticing the capital exception. for temperament is a power which no man willingly hears any one praise but himself. on the platform of physics, we cannot resist the contracting influences of so-called science. temperament puts all divinity to rout. i know the mental proclivity of physicians. i hear the chuckle of the phrenologists. theoretic kidnappers and slave-drivers, they esteem each man the victim of another, who winds him round his finger by knowing the law of his being, and by such cheap sign-boards as the color of his beard, or the slope of his occiput, reads the inventory of his fortunes and character. the grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness. the physicians say, they are not materialists: but they are: – spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: o, so thin — but the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own ecidence. what motions do they attach to love p what to religion ? one would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them. i saw a gracious gentleman who adapts his conversation to the form of the head of the man he talks with ! i had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in the fact that i never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me. i carry the keys of my castle in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and in what disguise soever he shall appear. i wol. ii. 3 d 50 experience. know he is in the neighborhood hidden among vagabonds. shall i preclude my future, by taking a high seat, and kindly adapting my conversation to the shape of heads when i come to that, the doctors shall buy me for a cent. — “but, sir, medical history; the report to the institute; the proven facts' —i distrust the facts and the inferences. temperament is the veto or limitation-power in the constitution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as a bar to original equity. when virtue is in presence, all subordinate powers sleep. on its own level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. i see not, if one be once caught in this trap of so-called sciences, any escape for the man from the links of the chain of physical necessity. given such an embryo, such a history must follow. on this platform, one lives in a sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. but it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed, through which the creator passes. the intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover of absolute good, intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of these high powers, we awake from ineffectual struggles with this nightmare. we hurl it into its own hell, and cannot again contract ourselves to so base a state. the secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand. this onward trick of nature is too strong for us: pero si muove. when, experience. 51 z at night, i look at the moon and stars, i seem stationary, and they to hurry. our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. we need change of objects. dedication to one thought is quickly odious. we house with the insane, and must humor them; then conversation dies out. once i took such delight in montaigne, that i thought i should not need any other book; before that, in shakspeare; then in plutarch; then in plotinus; at one time in bacon; afterwards in goethe ; even in bettine; but now i turn the pages of either of them languidly, whilst i still cherish their genius. so with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner. how strongly i have felt of pictures, that when you have seen one well, you must take your leave of it; you shall never see it again. i have had good lessons from pictures, which i have since seen without emotion or remark. a deduction must be made from the opinion, which even the wise express on a new book or occurrence. their opinion gives me tidings of their mood, and some vague guess at the new fact, but is nowise to be trusted as the lasting relation between that intellect and that thing. the child asks, ‘mamma, why don’t i like the story as well as when you told it me yesterday?’ alas, child, it is even so with the oldest cherubim of knowledge. but will it answer thy question to say, because thou wert born to a whole, and this story is a particular * the reason of the pain this discovery causes us (and we make it late in respect to 52 experience. works of arts and intellect), is the plaint of tragedy which murmurs from it in regard to persons, to friendship and love. that immobility and absence of elasticity which we find in the arts, we find with more pain in the artist. there is no power of expansion in men. our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. they stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take the single step that would bring them there. a man is like a bit of labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. there is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practised. we do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues. i cannot recall any form of man who is not superfluous sometimes. but is not this pitiful? life is not worth the taking, to do tricks in. of course, it needs the whole society, to give the symmetry we seek. the party-colored wheel must revolve very fast to appear white. something is learned too by conversing with so much folly and defect. in fine, whoever loses, we are always of the gaining party. divinity is behind our failures and follies also. the plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. so it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of experience. 53 every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it. like a bird which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the power which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another moment from that one. but what help from these fineries or pedantries? what help from thought p life is not dialectics. we, i think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. if a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. at education farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. it would not rake or pitch a ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry. a political orator wittily compared our party promises to western roads, which opened stately enough, with planted trees on either side, to tempt the traveller, but soon became narrower and narrower and ended in a squirreltrack, and ran up a tree. so does culture with us; it ends in headache. unspeakably sad and barren does life look to those, who a few months ago were dazzled with the splendor of the promise of the times. “there is now no longer any right course of action, nor any self-devotion left among the iranis.” objections and criticism we have had our fill of. there are objections to every 54 experience. course of life and action, and the practical wisdom infers an indifferency, from the omnipresence of objection. the whole frame of things preaches indifferency. do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question. nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense when they say, “children, eat your victuals, and say no more of it.” to fill the hour, – that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. we live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them. under the oldest, mouldiest conventions, a man of native force prospers just as well as in the newest world, and that by skill of handling and treatment. he can take hold anywhere. life itself is a mixture of power and form, and will not bear the least excess of either. to finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. it is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. since our office is with moments, let us husband them. five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium. let us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day. let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are. men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and tremulous for successful labor. it is a tempest of fancies, and the only ballast exper. ien ce. 55 i know is a respect to the present hour. without any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, i settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. if these are mean and malignant, their contentment, which is the last victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo to the heart than the voice of poets and the casual sympathy of admirable persons. i think that, however a thoughtful man may suffer from the defects and absurdities of his company, he cannot without affectation deny to any set of men and women a sensibility to extraordinary merit. the coarse and frivolous have an instinct of superiority, if they have not a sympathy, and honor it in their blind capricious way with sincere homage. the fine young people despise life, but in me, and in such as with me are free from dyspepsia, and to whom a day is a sound and solid good, it is a great excess of politeness to look scornful and to cry for company. i am grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, and i should relish every hour and what it brought me, the potluck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room. i am thankful for small mercies. i compared notes with one of my friends . who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and i found that i begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods. i 56 exp e r ien ce. accept the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies. i find my account in sots and bores also. they give a reality to the circumjacent picture, which such a vanishing meteorous appearance can ill spare. in the morning i awake, and find the old world, wife, babes, and mother, concord and boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. if we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. the great gifts are not got by analysis. everything good is on the highway. the middle region of our being is the temperate zone. we may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry, a narrow belt. moreover, in popular experience, everything good is on the highway. a collector peeps into all the picture-shops of europe, for a landscape of poussin, a crayon sketch of salvator; but the transfiguration, the last judgment, the communion of st. jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are on the walls of the vatican, the uffizii, or the louvre, where every footman may see them; to say nothing of nature's pictures in every street, of sunsets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human body never absent. a collector recently bought at public auction, in london, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of shakspeare: but for nothing a school-boy can read hamlet, and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein. i think i will never read any but the commonest books, – the bible, homer, dante, shakspeare, and milton. then experie n c e. 57 we are impatient of so public a life and planet, and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets. the imagination delights in the wood-craft of indians, trappers, and bee-hunters. we fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man, and the wild beast and bird. but the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered, and four-footed man. fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe, and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside: it has no inside. the mid-world is best. nature, as we know her, is no saint. the lights of the church, the ascetics, gentoos and corn-eaters, she does not distinguish by any favor. she comes eating and drinking and sinning. her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, do not come out of the sunday school, nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. if we will be strong with her strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. we must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come. so many things are unsettled which it is of the first importance to settle, – and, pending their settlement, we will do as we do. whilst the debate goes forward on the equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a century or two, new and old england may keep shop. law of copyright and 3 * 58 .experie n c e. international copyright is to be discussed, and, in the interim, we will sell our books for the most we can. expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line. right to hold land, right of property, is disputed, and the conventions convene, and before the vote is taken, dig away in your garden, and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to all serene and beautiful purposes. life itself is a bubble and a scepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. grant it, and as much more as they will, -but thou, god's darling ! heed thy private dream: thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and scepticism : there are enough of them : stay there in thy closet, and toil, until the rest are agreed what to do about it. thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better. human life is made up of the two elements, power and form, and the proportion must be invariably kept, if we would have it sweet and sound. each of these elements in excess makes a mischief as hurtful as its defect. everything runs to excess: every good quality is noxious, if unmixed, and, to carry the danger to the edge of ruin, nature causes each man’s peculiarity to superabound. here, among the farms, we adduce the scholars as examples of this treachery. they are nature's victims e x per ien ce. 59 of expression. you who see the artist, the orator, the poet, too near, and find their life no more excellent than that of mechanics or farmers, and themselves victims of partiality, very hollow and haggard, and pronounce them failures, – not heroes, but quacks, – conclude, very reasonably, that these arts are not for man, but are disease. yet nature will not bear you out. irresistible nature made men such, and makes legions more of such, every day. you love the boy reading in a book, gazing at a drawing, or a cast: yet what are these millions who read and behold, but incipient writers and sculptors? add a little more of that quality which now reads and sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. and if one remembers how innocently he began to be an artist, he perceives that nature joined with his enemy. a man is a golden impossibility. the line he must walk is a hair's breadth. the wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool. how easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep forever these beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once for all, to the perfect calculation of the kingdom of known cause and effect. in the street, and in the newspapers, life appears so plain a business, that manly resolution, and adherence to the multiplication-table through all weathers, will insure success. but ah! presently comes a day — or is it only a half-hour, with its angel-whispering — which discomfits the conclusions of nations and of years' to-morrow, again, everything looks real and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated, commonsense is as rare as genius, – is the basis of genius, and experience is hands and feet to every enterprise; — and 60 experience. yet, he who should do his business on this understanding would be quickly bankrupt. power keeps quite another road than the turnpikes of choice and will, namely, the subterranean and invisible tunnels and channels of life. it is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and doctors, and considerate people; there are no dupes like these. life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. god delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. we would look about us, but with grand politeness he draws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. “you will not remember,’ he seems to say, ‘and you will not expect.’ all good conversation, manners, and action come from a spontaneity which forgets usages, and makes the moment great. nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive. man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such ; and the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory and alternate; and the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. we thrive by casualties. our chief experiences have been casual. the most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke : men of genius, but not yet accredited : one gets the cheer of their light without paying too great a tax. theirs is the beauty of the bird, or the morning light, and not of art. in the thought of genius there is always a surprise; and the moral sentiment is well called “the newness,” for it is never other; as new to the oldest intelligence as to the young child,“the kingdom that cometh without observation.” in like manner, for pracexper i e n c e. 61 tical success, there must not be too much design. a man will not be observed in doing that which he can do best. there is a certain magic about his properest action, which stupefies your powers of observation, so that though it is done before you, you wist not of it. the art of life has a pudency, and will not be exposed. every man is an impossibility, until he is born ; every thing impossible, until we see a success. the ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest scepticism, that nothing is of us or our works, that all is of god. nature will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. all writing comes by the grace of god, and all doing and having. i would gladly be moral, and keep due metes and bounds, which i dearly love, and allow the most to the will of man, but i have set my heart on honesty in this chapter, and i can see nothing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital force supplied from the eternal. the results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. the years teach much which the days never know. the persons who compose our company converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked-for result. the individual is always mistaken. he designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. it turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself. the ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the elements of human life to calculation, exalted chance 62 experien ce. into a divinity, but that is to stay too long at the spark, — which glitters truly at one point, — but the universe is warm with the latency of the same fire. the miracle of life which will not be expounded, but will remain a miracle, introduces a new element. in the growth of the embryo, sir everard home, i think, noticed that the evolution was not from one central point, but coactive from three or more points. life has no memory. that which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency. so is it with us, now sceptical, or without unity, because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile value, and now religious, whilst in the reception of spiritual law. bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of the parts; they will one day be members, and obey one will. on that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our attention and hope. life is hereby melted into an expectation or a religion. underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars is a musical perfection, the ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam. do but observe the mode of our illumination. when i converse with a profound mind, or if at any time being alone i have good thoughts, i do not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when, being thirsty, i drink water, or go to the fire, being cold: no! but i am at first apprised of my vicinity to a new and excellent region of life. by persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the experience. 63 clouds that covered it parted at intervals, and showed the approaching traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and dance. but every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. i do not make it; i arrive there, and behold what was there already. i make | o no ! i clap my hands in infinite joy and amazement, before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright mecca of the desert. and what a future it opens ! i feel a new heart beating with the love of the new beauty. i am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable america i have found in the west. “since neither now nor yesterday began these thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can a man be found who their first entrance knew.” if i have described life as a flux of moods, i must now add, that there is that in us which changes not, and which ranks all sensations and states of mind. the consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the first cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. the sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not, what you have done or forborne, but, at whose command you have done or forborne it. fortune, minerva, muse, holy ghost, — these are quaint names, too narrow to cover this unbounded sub64 experie n c e . stance. the baffled intellect must still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named, -ineffable cause, which every fine genius has essayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as thales by water, anaximenes by air, anaxagoras by (novs) thought, zoroaster by fire, jesus and the moderns by love: and the metaphor of each has become a national religion. the chinese mencius has not been the least successful in his generalization. “i fully understand language,” he said, “and nourish well my vast-flowing vigor.”—“i beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor?” said his companion. “the explanation,” replied mencius, “is difficult. this vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree unbending. nourish it correctly, and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. this vigor accords with and assists justice and reason, and leaves no hunger.” in our more correct writing, we give to this generalization the name of being, and thereby confess that we have arrived as far as we can go. suffice it for the joy of the universe, that we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. our life seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vastflowing vigor. most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty; information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we are very great. so, in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in an action. it is for us to believe in the rule, not in the exception. the noble are thus known from the ignoble. so in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, experie n c e . 65 or the like, but the universal impulse to beliere, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in the history of the globe. shall we describe this cause as that which works directly the spirit is not helpless or needful of mediate organs. it has plentiful powers and direct effects. i am explained without explaining, i am felt without acting, and where i am not. therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. they refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. they believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles. why should i fret myself because a circumstance has occurred which hinders my presence where i was expected? if i am not at the meeting, my presence where i am should be as useful to the commonwealth of friendship and wisdom, as would be my presence in that place. i exert the same quality of power in all places. thus journeys the mighty ideal before us; it never was known to fall into the rear. no man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. onward and onward in liberated moments, we know that a new picture of life and duty is already possible; the elements already exist in many minds around you, of a doctrine of life which shall transcend any written record we have. the new statement will comprise the scepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. for, scepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the e 66 experie n c e. new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as it must include the oldest beliefs. it is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. that discovery is called the fall of man. ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. we have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. perhaps these subject lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. once we lived in what we saw ; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. nature, art, persons, letters, religions, objects, successively tumble in, and god is but one of its ideas. nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. the street is full of humiliations to the proud. as the fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them wait on his guests at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shopmen or bar-keepers in hotels, and threaten or insult whatever is threatenable and insultable in us. 't is the same with our idolatries. people forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint. jesus, “the providential man,” is a good man on whom many people are agreed that these optical laws exper if. n. c. e. . 67 shall take effect. by love on one part, and by forbearance to press objection on the other part, it is for a time settled, that we will look at him in the centre of the horizon, and ascribe to him the properties that will attach to any man so seen. but the longest love or aversion has a speedy term. the great and crescive self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants all relative existence, and ruins the kingdom of mortal friendship and love. marriage (in what is called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object. the subject is the receiver of godhead, and at every comparison must feel his being enhanced by that cryptic might. though not in energy, yet by presence, this magazine of substance cannot be otherwise than felt: nor can any force of intellect attribute to the object the proper deity which sleeps or wakes forever in every subject. never can love make consciousness and ascription equal in force. there will be the same gulf between every me and thee, as between the original and the picture. the universe is the bride of the soul. all private sympathy is partial. two human beings are like globes which can touch only in a point, and, whilst they remain in contact, all other points of each of the spheres are inert; their turn must also come, and the longer a particular union lasts, the more energy of appetency the parts not in union acquire. life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. any invasion of its unity would be chaos. the soul is not twin-born, but the only begotten, and though revealing itself as child in time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and universal power, admitting no co-life. 68 experien c e . every day, every act, betrays the ill-concealed deity. we believe in ourselves, as we do not believe in others. we permit all things to ourselves, and that which we call sin in others is experiment for us. it is an instance of our faith in ourselves, that men never speak of crime as lightly as they think: or, every man thinks a latitude safe for himself, which is nowise to be indulged to another. the act looks very differently on the inside, and on the outside; in its quality, and in its consequences. murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations. especially the crimes that spring from love, seem right and fair from the actor's point of view, but, when acted, are found destructive of society. no man at last believes that he can be lost, nor that the crime in him is as black as in the felon. because the intellect qualifies in our own case the moral judgments. for there is no crime to the intellect. that is antinomian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as fact. “it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder,” said napoleon, speaking the language of the intellect. to it, the world is a problem in mathematics or the science of quantity, and it leaves out praise and blame, and all weak emotions. all stealing is comparative. if you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal? saints are sad, because they behold sin (even when they speculate) from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the intellect; a confusion of thought. sin seen from experie n c e. 69 the thought is a diminution or less : seen from the conscience or will, it is pravity or bad. the intellect names its shade, absence of light, and no essence. the conscience must feel it as essence, essential evil. this it is not: it has an objective existence, but no subjective. thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. the subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. as i am, so i see; use what language we will, we can never see anything but what we are; hermes, cadmus, columbus, newton, bonaparte, are the mind's ministers. instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the newcomer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush-pasture. the partial action of each strong mind in one direction is a telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. but every other part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same extravagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericity. do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? if you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate, – and meantime it is only puss and her tail. how long before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance? — a subject and an object, — it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude adds nothing. what imports it whether it is kepler and the 70 ex p e r ib n c f. sphere; columbus and america; a reader and his book; or puss with her tail? it is true that all the muses and love and religion hate these developments, and will find a way to punish the chemist, who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. and we cannot say too little of our constitutional necessity of seeing things under private aspects, or saturated with our humors. and yet is the god the native of these bleak rocks. that need makes in morals the capital virtue of self-trust. we must hold hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and by more vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of action, possess our axis more firmly. the life of truth is cold, and so far mournful; but it is not the slave of tears, contritions, and perturbations. it does not attempt another's work, nor adopt another's facts. it is a main lesson of wisdom to know your own from another's. i have learned that i cannot dispose of other people's facts; but i possess such a key to my own, as persuades me against all their denials, that they also have a key to theirs. a sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him. they wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices. charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. a wise and hardy physician will say, come out of that, as the first condition of advice. in this our talking america, we are ruined by our good-nature and listening on all sides. this compliance takes away the power of being greatly useful. a man experie n c e. 71 should not be able to look other than directly and forthright. a preoccupied attention is the only answer to the importunate frivolity of other people; an attention, and to an aim which makes their wants frivolous. this is a divine answer, and leaves no appeal, and no hard thoughts. in flaxman's drawing of the eumenides of aeschylus, orestes supplicates apollo, whilst the furies sleep on the threshold. the face of the god expresses a shade of regret and compassion, but calm with the conviction of the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. he is born into other politics, into the eternal and beautiful. the man at his feet asks for his interest in turmoils of the earth, into which his nature cannot enter. and the eumenides there lying express pictorially this disparity. the god is surcharged with his divine destiny. illusion, temperament, succession, surface, surprise, reality, subjectiveness, – these are threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life. i dare not assume to give their order, but i name them as i find them in my way. i know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. i am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. i can very confidently announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief and form, but i am too-young yet by some ages to compile a code. i gossip for my hour concerning the eternal politics. i have seen many fair pictures not in vain. a wonderful time i have lived in. i am not the novice i was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. let who will ask, where is the fruit? i find a private fruit sufficient. this is a fruit, — that i should not ask for a rash effect from 72 experienc e. meditations, counsels, and the hiving of truths. i should feel it pitiful to demand a result on this town and county, an overt effect on the instant month and year. the effect is deep and secular as the cause. it works on periods in which mortal lifetime is lost. all i know is reception; i am and i have: but i do not get, and when i have fancied i had gotten anything, i found i had not. i worship with wonder the great fortune. my reception has been so large, that i am not annoyed by receiving this or that superabundantly. i say to the genius, if he will pardon the proverb, in for a mill, in for a million. when i receive a new gift, i do not macerate my body to make the account square, for, if i should die, i could not make the account square. the benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. the merit itself, so called, i reckon part of the receiving. also, that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to me an apostasy. in good earnest, i am willing to spare this most unnecessary deal of doing. life wears to me a visionary face. hardest, roughest action is visionary also. it is but a choice between soft and turbulent dreams. people disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. i am very content with knowing, if only i could know. that is an august entertainment, and would suffice me a great while. to know a little, would be worth the expense of this world. i hear always the law of adrastia, “that every soul which had acquired any truth should be safe from harm until another period.” i know that the world i converse with in the city and experie n c e. 73 in the farms is not the world i think. i observe that difference, and shall observe it. one day, i shall know the value and law of this discrepance. but i have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. many eager persons successively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves ridiculous. they acquire democratic manmers, they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. worse, i observe, that in the history of mankind, there is never a solitary example of success, – taking their own tests of success. i say this polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, why not realize your world? but far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism, since there never was a right endeavor, but it succeeded. patience and patience, we shall win at the last. we must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. it takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life. we dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power. wol. ii. 4 c h a r a c t e r. -ºthe sun set; but set not his hope : stars rose; his faith was earlier up ; fixed on the enormous galaxy, deeper and older seemed his eye : and matched his sufferance sublime the taciturnity of time. he spoke, and words more soft than rain brought the age of gold again : his action won such reverence sweet, as hid all measure of the feat. work of his hand he nor commends nor grieves: pleads for itself the fact; as unrepenting nature leaves her every act. c h a r a cte r. -i have read that those who listened to lord chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said. it has been complained of our brilliant english historian of the french revolution, that when he has told all his facts about mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate of his genius. the gracchi, agis, cleomenes, and others of plutarch's heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. sir philip sidney, the earl of essex, sir walter raleigh, are men of great figure, and of few deeds. we cannot find the smallest part of the personal weight of washington in the narrative of his exploits. the authority of the name of schiller is too great for his books. this inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunder-clap; but somewhat resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. the largest part of their power was latent. this is that which we call character, — a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. it is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart; 78 ch a racter . which is company for him, so that such men are often solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not need society, but can entertain themselves very well alone. the purest literary talent appears at one time great, at another time small, but character is of a stellar and undiminishable greatness. what others effect by talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes by some magnetism. “half his strength he put not forth.” his victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing of bayonets. he conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. “o iole ! how did you know that hercules was a god?” “because,” answered iole, “i was content the moment my eyes fell on him. when i beheld theseus, i desired that i might see him offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the chariot-race; but hercules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood or walked, or sat, or whatever thing he did.” man, ordinarily a pendant to events, only half attached, and that awkwardly, to the world he lives in, in these examples appears to share the life of things, and to be an expression of the same laws which control the tides and the sun, numbers and quantities. but to use a more modest illustration, and nearer home, i observe that in our political elections, where this element, if it appears at all, can only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently understand its incomparable rate. the people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted. they cannot come at their ends by sending to congress a learned, acute, and fluent speaker, if he be not one who, before he was appointed cha r a cte r. 79 by the people to represent them, was appointed by almighty god to stand for a fact, — invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself, so that the most confident and the most violent persons learn that here is resistance on which both impudence and terror are wasted, namely, faith in a fact. the men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion. the constituency at home hearkens to their words, watches the color of their cheek, and therein, as in a glass, dresses its own. our public assemblies are pretty good tests of manly force. our frank countrymen of the west and south have a taste for character, and like to know whether the new-englander is a substantial man, or whether the hand can pass through him. the same motive force appears in trade. there are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate, is not to be told. it lies in the man : that is all anybody can tell you about it. see him, and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if you see napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune. in the new objects we recognize the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, and not dealing with it at second-hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent, as her factor and minister of commerce. his natural probity combines 80 c h a r a cte r. with his insight into the fabric of society, to put him above tricks, and he communicates to all his own faith, that contracts are of no private interpretation. the habit of his mind is a reference to standards of natural equity and public advantage; and he inspires respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords. this immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the southern ocean his wharves, and the atlantic sea his familiar port, centres in his brain only; and nobody in the universe can make his place good. in his parlor, i see very well that he has been at hard work this morning, with that knitted brow, and that settled humor, which all his desire to be courteous cannot shake off. i see plainly how many firm acts have been done; how many valiant noes have this day been spoken, when others would have uttered ruinous yeas. i see, with the pride of art, and skill of masterly arithmetic and power of remote combination, the consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of the original laws of the world. he too believes that none can supply him, and that a man must be born to trade, or he cannot learn it. this virtue draws the mind more, when it appears in action to ends not so mixed. it works with most energy in the smallest companies and in private relations. in all cases, it is an extraordinary and incomputable agent. the excess of physical strength is paralyzed by it. higher natures overpower lower ones by affecting them with a certain sleep. the faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance. perhaps that is the universal law. characte r. sl when the high cannot bring up the low to itself, it benumbs it, as man charms down the resistance of the lower animals. men exert on each other a similar occult power. how often has the influence of a true master realized all the tales of magic! a river of command seemed to run down from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a torrent of strong sad light, like an ohio or danube, which pervaded them with his thoughts, and colored all events with the hue of his mind. “what means did you employ p” was the question asked of the wife of concini, in regard to her treatment of mary of medici; and the answer was, “only that influence which every strong mind has over a weak one.” cannot caesar in irons shuffle off the irons, and transfer them to the person of hippo or thraso the turnkey p is an iron handcuff so immutable a bond p suppose a slaver on the coast of guinea should take on board a gang of negroes, which should contain persons of the stamp of toussaint l'ouverture: or, let us fancy under these swarthy masks he has a gang of washingtons in chains. when they arrive at cuba, will the relative order of the ship's company be the same 2 is there nothing but rope and iron? is there no love, no reverence? is there never a glimpse of right in a poor slave-captain's mind; and cannot these be supposed available to break, or elude, or in any manner overmatch, the tension of an inch or two of iron ring 2 this is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature co-operates with it. the reason why we feel one man’s presence, and do not feel another's, is as simple as gravity. truth is the summit of being; justice is the 4 * f 82 cha r a ct e r . application of it to affairs. all individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. the will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. this natural force is no more to be withstood, than any other natural force. we can drive a stone upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed. character is this moral order seen through the medium of an individual nature. an individual is an encloser. time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer. now, the universe is a close or pound. all things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. with what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return into his own good at last. he animates all he can, and he sees only what he animates. he encloses the world, as the patriot does his country, as a material basis for his character, and a theatre for action. a healthy soul stands united with the just and the true, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun journeys towards that person. he is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. thus, men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong. character. 83 the natural measure of this power is the resistance of circumstances. impure men consider life as it is reflected in opinions, events, and persons. they cannot see the action, until it is done. yet its moral element pre-existed in the actor, and its quality as right or wrong, it was easy to predict. i’verything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive and negative pole. there is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a north and a south. spirit is the positive, the event is the negative. will is the north, action the south pole. character may be ranked as having its natural place in the north. it shares the magnetic currents of the system. the feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative pole. they look at the profit or hurt of the action. they never behold a principle until it is lodged in a person. they do not wish to be lovely, but to be loved. men of character like to hear of their faults: the other class do not like to hear of faults; they worship events; secure to them a fact, a connection, a certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask no more. the hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him. a given order of events has no power to secure to him the satisfaction which the imagination attaches to it; the soul of goodness escapes from any set of circumstances, whilst prosperity belongs to a certain mind, and will introduce that power and victory which is its natural fruit, into any order of events. no change of circumstances can repair a defect of character. we boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of the idolatry. what have i gained, that i no longer immolate a bull to jove, or to 84. c h a r a cte r. neptune, or a mouse to hecate; that i do not tremble before the eumenides, or the catholic purgatory, or the calvinistic judgment-day, if i quake at opinion, the public opinion, as we call it; or at the threat of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or of murder if i quake, what matters it what i quake at our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors. the covetousness or the malignity which saddens me, when i ascribe it to society, is my own. i am always environed by myself. on the other part, rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy, but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual. it is disgraceful to fly to events for confirmation of our truth and worth. the capitalist does not run every hour to the broker, to coin his advantages into current money of the realm ; he is satisfied to read in the quotations of the market, that his stocks have risen. the same transport which the occurrence of the best events in the best order would occasion me, i must learn to taste purer in the perception that my position is every hour meliorated, and does already command those events i desire. that exultation is only to be checked by the foresight of an order of things so excellent, as to throw all our prosperities into the deepest shade. the face which character wears to me is self-sufficingmess. i revere the person who is riches; so that i cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, benefactor, cha t. a ctet. 85 and beatified man. character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. a man should give us a sense of mass. society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes. but if i go to see an ingenious man, i shall think myself poorly entertained if he give me nimble pieces of benevolence and etiquette; rather he shall stand stoutly in his place, and let me apprehend, if it were only his resistance; know that i have encountered a new and positive quality; great refreshment for both of us. it is much, that he does not accept the conventional opinions and practices. that non-conformity will remain a goad and remembrancer, and every inquirer will have to dispose of him, in the first place. there is nothing real or useful that is not a seat of war. our houses ring with laughter, and personal and critical gossip, but it helps little. but the uncivil, unavailable man, who is a problem and a threat to society, whom it cannot let pass in silence, but must either worship or hate, – and to whom all parties feel related, both the leaders of opinion, and the obscure and eccentric, -he helps; he puts america and europe in the wrong, and destroys the scepticism which says, “man is a doll, let us eat and drink, 'tis the best we can do,” by illuminating the untried and unknown. acquiescence in the establishment, and appeal to the public, indicate infirm faith, heads which are not clear, and which must see a house built, before they can comprehend the plan of it. the wise, man not only leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves out the few. fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the commander because he is commanded, the 86 c h a r a c t e r. assured, the primary, they are good; for these announce the instant presence of supreme power. our action should rest mathematically on our substance. in nature, there are no false valuations. a pound of water in the ocean-tempest has no more gravity than in a midsummer pond. all things work exactly according to their quality, and according to their quantity; attempt nothing they cannot do, except man only. he has pretension: he wishes and attempts things beyond his force. i read in a book of english memoirs, “mr. fox (afterwards lord holland) said, he must have the treasury; he had served up to it, and would have it.” xenophon and his ten thousand were quite equal to what they attempted, and did it: so equal, that it was not suspected to be a grand and inimitable exploit. yet there stands that fact unrepeated, a high-water mark in military history. many have attempted it since, and not been equal to it. it is only on reality, that any power of action can be based. no institution will be better than the institutor. i knew an amiable and accomplished person who undertook a practical reform, yet i was never able to find in him the enterprise of love he took in-hand. he adopted it by ear and by the understanding from the books he had been reading. all his action was tentative, a piece of the city carried out into the fields, and was the city still, and no new fact, and could not inspire enthusiasm. had there been something latent in the man, a terrible undemonstrated genius agitating and embarrassing his demeanor, we had watched for its advent. it is not enough that the intellect should see the evils, and their remedy. we shall still postpone our existence, nor c h a r a cte r. 87 take the ground to which we are entitled, whilst it is only a thought, and not a spirit that incites us. we have not yet served up to it. these are properties of life, and another trait is the notice of incessant growth. men should be intelligent and earnest. they must also make us feel, that they have a controlling happy future, opening before them, whose morning twilights already kindle in the passing hour. the hero is misconceived and misreported: he cannot therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders: he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his domain, and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you, if you have loitered about the old things, and have not kept your relation to him, by adding to your wealth. new actions are the only apologies and explanations of old ones, which the noble can bear to offer or to receive. if your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings. we have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence that is only measured by its works. love is inexhaustible, and if its estate is wasted, its granary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and the man, though he sleep, seems to purify the air, and his house to adorn the landscape and strengthen the laws. people always recognize this difference. we know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscription to soup-societies. it is only low merits that can be enumerated. fear, when your friends say to you what you have done well, 88 character. and say it through; but when they stand with uncertain timid looks of respect and half-dislike, and must suspend their judgment for years to come, you may begin to hope. those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present. therefore it was droll in the good riemer, who has written memoirs of goethe, to make out a list of his donations and good deeds, as, so many hundred thalers given to stilling, to hegel, to tischbein: a lucrative place found for professor voss, a post under the grand duke for herder, a pension for meyer, two professors recommended to foreign universities, etc., etc. the longest list of specifications of benefit would look very short. a man is a poor creature, if he is to be measured so. for, all these, of course, are exceptions; and the rule and hodiernal life of a good man is benefaction. the true charity of goethe is to be inferred from the account he gave dr. eckermann, of the way in which he had spent his fortune. “each bon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold. half a million of my own money, the fortune i inherited, my salary, and the large income derived from my writings for fifty years back, have been expended to instruct me in what i now know. i have besides seen,” etc. i own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate traits of this simple and rapid power, and we are painting the lightning with charcoal; but in these long nights and vacations, i like to console myself so. nothing but itself can copy it. a word warm from the heart enriches me. i surrender at discretion. how deathcold is literary genius before this fire of life . these are the touches that reanimate my heavy soul, and give characte r. 89 it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. i find, where i thought myself poor, there was i most rich. thence comes a new intellectual exultation, to be again rebuked by some new exhibition of character. strange alternation of attraction and repulsion | character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before new flashes of moral worth. character is nature in the highest form. it is of no use to ape it, or to contend with it. somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation. this masterpiece is best where no hands but nature's have been laid on it. care is taken that the greatly destimed shall slip up into life in the shade, with no thousand-eyed athens to watch and blazon every new thought, every blushing emotion of young genius. two persons lately — very young children of the most high god— have given me occasion for thought. when i explored the source of their sanctity, and charm for the imagination, it seemed as if each answered, “from my nonconformity: i never listened to your people's law, or to what they call their gospel, and wasted my time. i was content with the simple rural poverty of my own; hence this sweetness: my work never reminds you of that; — is pure of that.” and nature advertises me in such persons, that, in democratic america, she will not be democratized. how cloistered and constitutionally sequestered from the market and from scandal! it was only this morning, that i sent away some wild flowers of these wood-gods. they are a relief from literature, — 90 characte r. these fresh draughts from the sources of thought and sentiment; as we read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first lines of written prose and verse of a nation. how captivating is their devotion to their favorite books, whether æschylus, dante, shakspeare, or scott, as feeling that they have a stake in that book: who touches that, touches them; and especially the total solitude of the critic, the patmos of thought from which he writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever read this writing. could they dream on still, as angels, and not wake to comparisons, and to be flattered yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile. i remember the indignation of an eloquent methodist at the kind admonitions of a doctor of divinity, “my friend, a man can neither be praised nor insulted.” but forgive the counsels; they are very natural. i remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to america, was, have you been victimized in being brought hither?— or, prior to that, answer me this, “are you victimizable p’ as i have said, nature keeps these sovereignties in her own hands, and however pertly our sermons and disciplines would divide some share of credit, and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she goes her own gait, and puts the wisest in the wrong. she makes very light of gospels and prophets, as one who has a great many more character,. 91 to produce, and no excess of time to spare on any one. there is a class of men, individuals of which appear at long intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and virtue, that they have been unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem to be an accumulation of that power we consider. divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from napoleon, they are victory organized. they are usually received with ill-will, because they are new, and because they set a bound to the exaggeration that has been made of the personality of the last divine person. nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. when we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. none will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his own high unprecedented way. character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. it needs perspective, as a great building. it may not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we should not require rash explanation, either on the popular ethics, or on our own, of its action. i look on sculpture as history. i do not think the apollo and the jove impossible in flesh and blood. every trait which the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy. we have seen many counterfeits, but we are born believers in great men. how easily we read in old books, when men were few, of the smallest action of the patriarchs. we require that a man should be so large and columnar in the land92 c ii a r a c t e r. scape, that it should deserve to be recorded, that he arose, and girded up his loins, and departed to such a place. the most credible pictures are those of majestic men who prevailed at their entrance, and convinced the senses; as happened to the eastern magian who was sent to test the merits of zertusht or zoroaster. when the yunani sage arrived at balkh, the persians tell us, gushtasp appointed a day on which the mobeds of every country should assemble, and a golden chair was placed for the yunani sage. then the beloved of yezdam, the prophet zertusht, advanced into the midst of the assembly. the yunani sage, on seeing that chief, said, “this form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but truth can proceed from them.” plato said, it was impossible not to believe in the children of the gods, “though they should speak without probable or necessary arguments.” i should think myself very unhappy in my associates, if i could not credit the best things in history. “john bradshaw,” says milton, “appears like a consul, from whom the ſusces are not to depart with the year; so that not on the tribunal only, but throughout his life, you would regard him as sitting in judgment upon kings.” i find it more creditable, since it is anterior information, that one man should know hearen, as the chinese say, than that so many men should know the world. “the virtuous prince confronts the gods, without any misgiving. he waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not doubt. he who confronts the gods without any misgiving, knows heaven; he who waits a hundred ages until a sage comes, without doubting, knows men. hence the virtuous prince moves, and for ages shows c h a r a ct e r . 93 empire the way.” but there is no need to seek remote examples. he is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. the coldest precision cannot go abroad without encountering inexplicable influences. one man fastens an eye on him, and the graves of the memory render up their dead; the secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to betray must be yielded; another, and he cannot speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their cartilages; the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and eloquence to him ; and there are persons he cannot choose but remember, who gave a transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled another life in his bosom. what is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they spring from this deep root * the sufficient reply to the sceptic, who doubts the power and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful intercourse with persons, which makes the faith and practice of all reasonable men. i know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. it is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. for, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. those relations 94 cha r a c t e r . to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid enjoyment. if it were possible to live in right relations with men! — if we could abstain from asking anything of them, from asking their praise, or help, or pity, and content us with compelling them through the virtue of the eldest laws ' could we not deal with a few persons, – with one person, — after the unwritten statutes, and make an experiment of their efficacy could we not pay our friend the compliment of truth, of silence, of forbearing? need we be so eager to seek him # if we are related, we shall meet. it was a tradition of the ancient world. that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a greek verse which runs, “the gods are to each other not unknown.” friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise; when each the other shall avoid, shall each by each be most enjoyed. their relation is not made, but allowed. the gods must seat themselves without seneschal in our olympus, and as they can install themselves by seniority divine. society is spoiled, if pains are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet. and if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of the best. all the greatness of each is kept back, and every foible in painful activity, as if the olympians should meet to exchange snuff-boxes. character . 95 life goes headlong. we chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. but if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession, is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. the moment is all, in all noble relations. a divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart. our beatitude waits for the fulfilment of these two in one. the ages are opening this moral force. all force is the shadow or symbol of that. poetry is joyful and strong, as it draws its inspiration thence. men write their names on the world, as they are filled with this. history has been mean; our nations have been mobs; we have never seen a man: that divine form we do not yet know, but only the dream and prophecy of such: we do not know the majestic manners which belong to him, which appease and exalt the beholder. we shall one day see that the most private is the most public energy, that quality atones for quantity, and grandeur of character acts in the dark, and succors them who never saw it. what greatness has yet appeared, is beginnings and encouragements to us in this direction. the history of those gods and saints which the world has written, and then worshipped, are documents of character. the ages have exulted in the manners of a youth who owed nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendor around the facts of his death, which has transfigured every particular into an universal symbol 96 character, . for the eyes of mankind. this great defeat is hitherto our highest fact. but the mind requires a victory to the senses, a force of character which will convert judge, jury, soldier, and king; which will rule animal and mineral virtues, and blend with the courses of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents. if we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, at least, let us do them homage. in society, high advantages are set down to the possessor, as disadvantages. it requires the more wariness in our private estimates. i do not forgive in my friends the failure to know a fine character, and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. when, at last, that which we have always longed for, is arrived, and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to be critical, and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. this is confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. is there any religion but this, to know, that, wherever in the wide desert of being, the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms for me * if none sees it, i see it; i am aware, if i alone, of the greatness of the fact. whilst it blooms, i will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my folly and jokes. nature is indulged by the presence of this guest. there are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable : but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which ch a r a cte r. 97 has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses, – only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it. vol. ii. 5 g. m a n n e r s. -e“how near to good is what is fair which we no sooner see, but with the lines and outward air our senses taken be. “again yourselves compose, and now put all the aptness on of figure, that proportion or color can disclose ; that if those silent arts were lost, design and picture, they might boast from you a newer ground, instructed by the heightening sense of dignity and reverence in their true motions found.” ben jonso n. m a n n e r. s. -half the world, it is said, knows not how the other half live. our exploring expedition saw the feejeeislanders getting their dinner off human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and children. the husbandry of the modern inhabitants of gournou (west of old thebes) is philosophical to a fault. to set up their housekeeping, nothing is requisite but two or three earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat which is the bed. the house, namely, a tomb, is ready without rent or taxes. no rain can pass through the roof and there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. if the house do not please them, they walk out and enter another, as there are several hundreds at their command. “it is somewhat singular,” adds belzoni, to whom we owe this account, “to talk of happiness among people who live in sepulchres, among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they know nothing of.” in the deserts of borgoo, the rocktibboos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of bats, and to the whistling of birds. again, the bornoos have no proper names; individuals are called after their height, thickness, or other acci. 102 m a n n e r.s. dental quality, and have nicknames merely. but the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into countries, where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals and man-stealers; countries where man serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk, and wool; honors himself with architecture; writes laws, and contrives to execute his will through the hands of many nations; and, especially, establishes a select society, running through all the countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or fratermity of the best, which, without written law or exact usage of any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted island, and adopts and makes its own whatever personal beauty or extraordinary native endowment anywhere appears. what fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the creation of the gentleman? chivalry is that, and loyalty is that, and, in english literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from sir philip sidney to sir walter scott, paint this figure. the word gentleman, which, like the word christian, must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding centuries, by the importance attached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with the name, but the steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed to the valuable properties which it designates. an element which unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat so precise, that it is at once felt if an indim a n n e r s. 103 vidual lack the masonic sign, cannot be any casual product, but must be an average result of the character and faculties universally found in men. it seems a certain permanent average; as the atmosphere is a permament composition, whilst so many gases are combined only to be decompounded. comme il faut, is the frenchman's description of good society, as we must be. it is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this hour, and, though far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be. it is made of the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a compound result, into which every great force enters as an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power. there is something equivocal in all the words in use to express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the cause. the word gentleman has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. but we must keep alive in the vernacular the distinction between fashion, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the gentleman imports. the usual words, however, must be respected: they will be found to contain the root of the matter. the point of distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, is, that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. it is beauty which is the aim this time, and not 104. m a n n e r. s. worth. the result is now in question, although our words intimate well enough the popular feeling, that the appearance supposes a substance. the gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature or benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness. the popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that they should possess and dispense the goods of the world. in times of violence, every eminent person must fall in with many opportunities to approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a flourish of trumpets. but personal force never goes out of fashion. that is still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd of good society, the men of valor and reality are known, and rise to their natural place. the competition is transferred from war to politics and trade, but the personal force appears readily enough in these new arenas. power first, or no leading class. in politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks. god knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in strictness, and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point at original energy. it describes a man standing in his own right, and working after untaught methods. in a good lord, there must first be a good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparable advantage of man n e r. s. 105 animal spirits. the ruling class must have more, but they must have these, giving in every company the sense of power, which makes things easy to be done which daunt the wise. the society of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which intimidate the pale scholar. the courage which girls exhibit is like a battle of lundy’s lane, or a sea-fight. the intellect relies on memory to make some supplies to face these extemporaneous squadrons. but memory is a base mendicant with basket and badge, in the presence of these sudden masters. the rulers of society must be up to the work of the world, and equal to their versatile office: men of the right caesarian pattern, who have great range of affinity. i am far from believing the timid maxim of lord falkland (“that for ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go through the cunningest forms”), and am of opinion that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken through; and only that plenteous nature is rightful master, which is the complement of whatever person it converses with. my gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. he is good company for pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and i could as easily exclude myself, as him. the famous gentlemen of asia and europe have been of this strong type: saladin, sapor, the cid, julius caesar, scipio, alexander, pericles, and the lordliest personages. they sat very carelessly in their chairs, 5 * 106 man n e r.s. and were too excellent themselves, to value any condition at a high rate. a plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment, to the completion of this man of the world; and it is a material deputy which walks through the dance which the first has led. money is not essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste, and makes itself felt by men of all classes. if the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared. diogenes, socrates, and epaminondas are gentlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the condition of poverty, when that of wealth was equally open to them. i use these old names, but the men i speak of are my contemporaries. fortune will not supply to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every collection of men furnishes some example of the class; and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular. the manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by men of taste. the association of these masters with each other, and with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. the good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. by swift consent, everything man n e r.s. 107 superfluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. fine manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. they are a subtler science of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword, – points and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the players. manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. they aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. these forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain. there exists a strict relation between the class of power and the exclusive and polished circles. the last are always filled or filling from the first. the strong men usually give some allowance even to the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the faubourg st. germain: doubtless with the feeling, that fashion is a homage to men of his stamp. fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. it is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. it does not often caress the 108 man n e r. s. great, but the children of the great; it is a hall of the past. it usually sets its face against the great of this hour. great men are not commonly in its halls: they are absent in the field : they are working, not triumphing. fashion is made up of their children; of those who, through the value and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, in their physical organization, a certain health and excellence, which secures to them, if not the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. the class of power, the working heroes, the cortez, the nelson, the napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they ; that fashion is funded talent; is mexico, marengo, and trafalgar beaten out thin ; that the brilliant names of fashion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. they are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. the city is recruited from the country. in the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in europe was imbecile. the city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. it is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day. aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. these mutual selections are indestructible. if they provoke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority, by the strong hand, and kill them, at once a new class man n e r s. 109 finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk: and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. you may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of the realm. i am the more struck with this tenacity, when i see its work. it respects the administration of such unimportant matters, that we should not look for any durability in its rule. we sometimes meet men under some strong moral influence, as, a patriotic, a literary, a religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and mature. we think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashion, for example; yet come from year to year, and see how permanent that is, in this boston or new york life of man, where, too, it has not the least countenance from the law of the land. not in egypt or in india a firmer or more impassable line. here are associations whose ties go over, and under, and through it, a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a college class, a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a religious convention;– the persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its members will mot in the year meet again. each returns to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. the objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of this union and selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. each man's rank in that perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in 110 man n e r. s. his structure, or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society. its doors unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. a natural gentleman finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician out, who has lost his intrinsic rank. fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. the chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in london and paris, by the purity of their tournure. to say what good of fashion we can, – it rests on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; — to exclude and mystify pretenders, and send them into everlasting ‘coventry,” is its delight. we contemn, in turn, every other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. there is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt, and give it the freedom of its saloons. a sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. but so will jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and cotillons. for there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. the maiden at her first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a ritual according to which every act and compliment must be performed, or the failing party must be cast out of this man n e r.s. 111 presence. later, they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. all that fashion demands is composure, and self-content. a circle of men perfectly well-bred would be a company of sensible persons, in which every man's native manners and character appeared. if the fashionist have not this quality, he is nothing. we are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion. but any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world forfeits all privilege of nobility. he is an underling; i have nothing to do with him; i will speak with his master. a man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him, not bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. he should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. “if you could see vich ian vohr with his tail on 1—” but vich ian wohr must always carry his belongings in some fashion, if not added as honor, then severed as disgrace. there will always be in society certain persons who are mercuries of its approbation, and whose glance will at any time determine for the curious their standing in the world. 112 m a n n e r.s. these are the chamberlains of the lesser gods. accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege. they are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formidable, without their own merits. but do not measure the importance of this class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and shame. they pass also at their just rate; for how can they otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's office for the siſting of character? as the first thing man requires of man is reality, so, that appears in all the forms of society. we pointedly, and by name, introduce the parties to each other. know you before all heaven and earth, that this is andrew, and this is gregory; they look each other in the eye; they grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. it is a great satisfaction. a gentleman never dodges; his eyes look straight forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that he has been met. for what is it that we seek, in so many visits and hospitalities p is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations p or, do we not insatiably ask, was a man in the house? i may easily go into a great household where there is much substance, excellent provision for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there any amphitryon, who shall subordinate these appendages. i may go into a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man i have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. it was therefore a very natural point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentleman who received a visit, though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should wait his man n e r.s. 113 arrival at the door of his house. no house, though it were the tuileries, or the escurial, is good for anything without a master. and yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality. everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow p it were unmerciful, i know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of eminent convenience, whether the guest is too great, or too little. we call together many friends who keep each other in play, or, by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. or if, perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as adam at the voice of the lord god in the garden. cardinal caprara, the pope's legate at paris, defended himself from the glances of napoleon, by an immense pair of green spectacles. napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally them off; and yet, napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough, with eight hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple barriers of reserve; and, as all the world knows from madame de staël, was wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all expression. but emperors and rich men are by no means the most skilful masters of good manners. no rent-roll nor armylist can dignify skulking and dissimulation; and the first ii 114 m a n n e r s. point to courtesy must always be truth, as really all the forms of good-breeding point that way. i have just been reading, in mr. hazlitt’s translation, montaigne’s account of his journey into italy, and am struck with nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time. his arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of france, is an event of some consequence. wherever he goes, he pays a visit to whatever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and to civilization. when he leaves any house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentleii, cll. the compliment of this graceful self-respect, and that of all the points of good-breeding i most require and insist upon, is deference. i like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. i prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of fellowship. let the incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man teach us independence. let us not be too much acquainted. i would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self. poise. we should meet each morning as from foreign countries, and spending the day together, should depart at night, as into foreign countries. in all things i would have the island of a man inviolate. let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all around olympus. no degree of affection need invade this religion. this is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. lovers man n e r. s. 115 should guard their strangeness. if they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. it is easy to push this deference to a chinese etiquette; but coolmess and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. a gentleman makes no moise: a lady is serene. proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience. not less i dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbor's needs. must we have a good understanding with one another's palates? as foolish people who have lived long together know when each wants salt or sugar. i pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate as if i knew already. every natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. let us leave hurry to slaves. the compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should recall, however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny. the flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts go to its conformation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. to the leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart must furnish a proportion. defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. it is not quite sufficient to good-breeding, a union of kindness and independence. we imperatively require a perception of, and a homage to, beauty in our companions. other virtues are in request in the field and work-yard, but a certain degree 116 man n e r s. of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. i could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. the same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all parts of life. the average spirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting under certain limitations and to certain ends. it entertains every natural gift. social in its nature, it respects everything which tends to unite men. it delights in measure. the love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. the person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, is quickly left alone. if you wish to be loved, love measure. you must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the want of measure. this perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of the social instrument. society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together. that makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship. for, fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. it hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. and besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome man n e r.s. 117 in fine society as the costliest condition to its rule and its credit. the dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must be tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. accuracy is essential to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick perceptions. one may be too punctual and too precise. he must leave the ommiscience of business at the door, when he comes into the palace of beauty. society loves creole natures, and sleepy, languishing manners, so that they cover sense, grace, and good-will: the air of drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps, because such a person seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not see the annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the sensitive. therefore, beside personal force and so much perception as constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class another element already intimated, which it significantly terms good-nature, expressing all degrees of generosity, from the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity and love. insight we must have, or we shall run against one another, and miss the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. the secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. a man who is not happy in the company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. all his information is a little impertinent. a man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to say. the favorites 118 man n e r s. of society, and what it calls whole souls, are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. england, which is rich in gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good model of that genius which the world loves, in mr. fox, who added to his great abilities the most social disposition, and real love of men. parliamentary history has few better passages than the debate, in which burke and fox separated in the house of commons; when fox urged on his old friend the claims of old friendship with such tenderness, that the house was moved to tears. another anecdote is so close to my matter, that i must hazard the story. a tradesman who had long dunned him for a note of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting gold, and demanded payment. “no,” said fox, “i owe this money to sheridan: it is a debt of honor: if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing to show.” “then,” said the creditor, “i change my debt into a debt of honor,” and tore the note in pieces. fox thanked the man for his conſidence, and paid him, saying, “his debt was of older standing, and sheridan must wait.” lover of liberty, friend of the hindoo, friend of the african slave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and napoleon said of him on the occasion of his visit to paris, in 1805, “mr. fox will always hold the first place in an assembly at the tuileries.” we may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as its foundam a n n ers. 119 tion. the painted phantasm fashion rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. but i will neither be driven from some allowance to fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy. we must obtain that, if we can ; but by all means we must affirm this. life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ball-room code. yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in the imagination of the best heads on the planet, there is something necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the dupes of anything preposterous; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which details of high life are read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated manners. i know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged “first circles,” and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit to the individuals actually found there. monarchs and heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. fashion has many classes and many rules of probation and admission; and not the best alone. there is not only the right of conquest, which genius pretends, – the individual, demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the best;-but less claims will pass for the time; for fashion loves lions, and points, like circe, to her horned company. this gentleman is this afternoon arrived from denmark; and that is my lord ride, who came yesterday from bagdat; here is captain friese, from cape turnagain; and captain symmes, from the interior of the earth; and mon120 man n e r.s. sieur jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon; mr. hobnail, the reformer; and reverend jul bat, who has converted the whole torrid zone in his sunday school; and signor torre del greco, who extinguished vesuvius by pouring into it the bay of naples; spahi, the persian ambassador; and tul wil shan, the exiled nabob of nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon. — but these are monsters of one day, and to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens; for, in these rooms, every chair is waited for. the artist, the scholar, and in general, the clerisy, wins its way up into these places, and gets represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. another mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending a year and a day in st. michael's square, being steeped in cologne-water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and properly grounded in all the biography, and politics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs. yet these fineries may have grace and wit. let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. let the creed and commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. the forms of politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees. what if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of selfishness p what if the false gentleman almost bows the true out of the world p what if the false gentleman contrives so to address his companion, as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and also to make them feel excluded ? real service will not lose its nobleness. all generosity is not merely french and sentimental; nor is it to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last distinguish god’s man n e r s. 121 gentleman from fashion’s. the epitaph of sir jenkin grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age. “here lies sir jenkin grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid for ; what his servants robbed, he restored; if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body.” even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. there is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway .slaves; some friend of poland; some philhellene; some fanatic who plants shade trees for the second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some just man happy in an illfame; some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. and these are the centres of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses. these are the creators of fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of behavior. the beautiful and the generous are, in the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church : scipio, and the cid, and sir philip sidney, and washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who worshipped beauty by word and by deed. the persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, when he appears. the theory of society supwol. ii. 6 122 m a n n e r s. poses the existence and sovereignty of these. it divines afar off their coming. it says with the elder gods, – “as heaven and earth are fairer far than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs; and as we show beyond that heaven and earth, in form and shape compact and beautiful; so, on our heels a fresh perfection treads; a power, more strong in beauty, born of us, and fated to excel us, as we pass in glory that old darkness: for, 't is the eternal law, that first in beauty shall be first in might.” therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of love and chivalry. and this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic dispositions are native, with the love of beauty, the delight in society, and the power to embellish the passing day. if the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review, in such manner as that we could, at leisure and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars we should detect of. fence. because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. there must be romance of character, or the most fastidious exclusion of impertinences will not avail. it man n e r.s. 123 must be genius which takes that direction: it must be not courteous, but courtesy. high behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. scott is praised for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and conversation of the superior classes. certainly, kings and queens, nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the absurdity that had been put in their mouths, before the days of waverley; but neither does scott’s dialogue bear criticism. his lords brave each other in smart epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. in shakspeare alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in england, and in christendom. once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their nature, but whose character emanates freely in their word and gesture. a beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. a man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. i have seen an individual, whose manners, though wholly within the conventions of elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; who 124 man n e r.s. exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and free as robin iiood; yet with the port of an emperor, —if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions. the open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, are the places where man executes his will; let him yield or divide the sceptre at the door of the house. woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall. our american institutions have been friendly to her, and at this moment, i esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in women. a certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of woman's rights. certainly, let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms, as the most zealous reformer can ask, but i conſide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that i believe only herself can show us how she shall be served. the wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of minerva, juno, or polymnia; and, by the firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest calculators that another road exists, than that which their feet know. but besides those who make good in our imagination the place of muses and of delphic sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that m a n n ers. 125 the wine runs over and fill the house with perfume; who inspire us with courtesy; who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who anoint our eyes, and we see? we say things we never thought to have said; for once, our walls of habitual reserve vanished, and left us at large; we were children playing with children in a wide field of flowers. steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets, and will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are. what hafiz or firdousi was it who said of his persian lilla, she was an elemental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when i saw her day after day radiating, every instant, redundant joy and grace on all around her. she was a solvent powerful to reconcile all heterogencous persons into one society: like air or water, an element of such a great range of affinities, that it combines readily with a thousand substances. where she is present, all others will be more than they are wont. she was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she did became her. she had too much sympathy and desire to please, than that you could say, her manners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. she did not study the persian grammar, nor the books of the seven poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her. for, though the bias of her nature was not to thought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments ; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble. 126 man n e r s. i know that this byzantine pile of chivalry or fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary facts for science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spectators. the constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in its golden book, and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and privileges. they have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance: its proudest gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. for the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. to remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. for, the advantages which fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue. but we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. the worth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste for the emblem. everything that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause and fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely, the heart of love. this is the royal blood, this the fire, which, in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kind, and conquer and expand all that approaches it. this gives new meanings to every fact. this impovman n e r s. 127 erishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but its own. what is rich p are you rich enough to help anybody ? to succor the unfashionable and the eccentric ; rich enough to make the canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul’s paper which commends him “to the charitable,” the swarthy italian with his few broken words of english, the lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general bleakmess and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and hope? what is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? what is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart and yours one holiday from the national caution ? without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. the king of schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor osman who dwelt at his gate. osman had a humanity so broad and deep, that although his speech was so bold and free with the koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him, —that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the centre of the country, that it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his side. and the madness which he harbored, he did not share. is not this to be rich this only to be rightly rich but i shall hear without pain, that i play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which i do not well understand. 128 man n e r s. it is easy to see, that what is called by distinction society and fashion, has good laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. ‘ i overheard jove, one day,” said silenus, “talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. minerva said, she hoped not ; they were only ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near; if you called them bad, they would appear so; if you called them good, they would appear so; and there was no one person or action among them, which would not puzzle her owl, much more all olympus, to know whether it was fundamentally bad or good.’ g ift. s. -ºgifts of one who loved me, – 't was high time they came ; when he ceased to love me, time they stopped for shame. gifts. -it is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. i do not think this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at christmas and new year, and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. but the impediment lies in the choosing. if, at any time, it comes into my head that a present is due from me to somebody, i am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone. flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. these gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a workhouse. nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond : everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. men use to tell us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough 132 gifts. to be courted. something like that pleasure the flowers give us: what am i to whom these sweet hints are addressed? fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. if a man should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a basket of fine summer fruit, i should think there was some proportion between the labor and the reward. for common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could procure him a paint-box. and as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. necessity does everything well. in our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. if it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. i can think of many parts i should prefer playing to that of the furies. next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we might convey to some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him in thought. but our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. the only gift is a portion of thyself. thou must bleed for me. therefore the poet brings his gifts. 133 poem; the shepherd his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem ; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. this is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to the primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man’s wealth is an index of his merit. but it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. this is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-mail. the law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful sailing, or rude boats. it is not the office of a man to receive gifts. how dare you give them p we wish to be self-sustained. we do not quite forgive a giver. the hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. we can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. we sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living by it. “brother, if jove to thee a present make, be sure that from his hands thou nothing take.” we ask the whole. nothing less will content us. we arraign society, if it do not give us — besides earth and fire and water — opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of veneration. he is a good man who can receive a gift well. we 134' gifts. are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. some violence, i think, is done, some degradation borne, when i rejoice or grieve at a gift. i am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then i should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that i love his commodity, and not him. the gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. when the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. all his are mine, all mine his. i say to him, how can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny p hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. this giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all timons, not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, i rather sympathize with the beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord timon. for, the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. it is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you. it is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. a golden text for these gentlemen is that which i so admire in the buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, “do not flatter your benefactors.” the reason of these discords i conceive to be, that gifts. 135 there is no commensurability between a man and any gift. you cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. after you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. the service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. compared with that good-will i bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. we can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one ; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received. but rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people. i fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to prescribe. let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. there are persons, from whom we always expect fairy-tokens; let us not cease to expect them. this is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules. for the rest, i like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. the best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in fate. i find that i am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am i thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. no services are of any. 136 gifts. value, but only likeness. when i have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick, no more. they eat your service like apples, and leave you out. but love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time. n at u r e. -qthe rounded world is fair to see, nine times folded in mystery: though baffled seers cannot impart the secret of its laboring heart, throb thine with nature's throbbing breast, and all is clear from east to west. spirit that lurks each form within beckons to spirit of its kin; self-kindled every atom glows, and hints the future which it owes. n a t u r. e. -there are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perſection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her off. spring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of florida and cuba; when everything that has life gives signs of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. these halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure october weather, which we distinguish by the name of the indian summer. the day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. to have lived through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. the solitary places do not seem quite lonely. at the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. the knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes into these precincts. here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, 140 n atu r. e. and judges like a god all men that come to her. we have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. how willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us. the tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. the anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. the stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. the incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. here no history, or church, or state is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. how easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature. these enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. these are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. we come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. we never can part with it; the mind loves its old home ; as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. it is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity! ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and nature. 141 shames us out of our nonsense. cities give not the human senses room enough. we go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath. there are all degrees of natural influence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and the soul. there is the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to which the chilled traveller rushes for safety, and there is the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. we nestle in nature, and draw our living as parasites from her roots and grains, and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell the remotest future. the blue zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. i think, if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with gabriel and uriel, the upper sky would be all that would remain of our furniture. it seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have given heed to some natural object. the fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving rye-field; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical steaming odorous south-wind, which converts all trees to wind-harps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames; or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sitting-room, these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. my house stands in low land, 142 nature. with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. but i go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, i leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation. we penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element: our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. a holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. these sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. i am taught the poormess of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. i am overinstructed for my return. henceforth i shall be hard to please. i cannot go back to toys. i am grown expensive and sophisticated. i can no longer live without elegance: but a countryman shall be my master of revels. he who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. this is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to back their faulty personality with these strong accessories. i do not wonder n atu r. e. 143 that the landed interest should be invincible in the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. these bribe and invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. we heard what the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, his wine, and his company, but the provocation and point of the invitation came out of these beguiling stars. in their soft glances, i see what men strove to realize in some versailles, or paphos, or ctesiphon. indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for the background, which save all our works of art, which were otherwise bawbles. when the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they should consider the effect of men reputed to be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. ah! if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches | a boy hears a military band play on the field at night, and he has kings and queens, and famous chivalry palpably before him. he hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the notch mountains, for example, which converts the mountains into an aeolian harp, and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the dorian mythology, apollo, diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. can a musical note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! to the poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society; he is loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich for the sake of his imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if they were not rich ! that they have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, to 144 nature. watering-places, and to distant cities, are the groundwork from which he has delineated estates of romance, compared with which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. the muse herself betrays her son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born beauty, by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests that skirt the road, a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in mature, a prince of the power of the air. the moral sensibility which makes edens and tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the material landscape is never far off. we can find these enchantments without visiting the como lake, or the madeira islands. we exaggerate the praises of local scenery. in every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the alleghanies. the stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the campagna, or on the marble deserts of egypt. the uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and evening will transfigure maples and alders. the difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders. there is nothing so wonderful in any particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. nature cannot be surprised in undress. beauty breaks in everywhere. but it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura naturata, or mature passive. one can hardly speak directly of it withnature. 145 out excess. it is as easy to broach in mixed companies what is called “the subject of religion.” a susceptible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind, without the apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a wood-lot, or to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling-piece or a fishing-rod. i suppose this shame must have a good reason. a dilettanteism in nature is barren and unworthy. the fop of fields is no better than his brother of broadway. men are naturally hunters and inquisitive of wood-craft, and i suppose that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and indians should furnish facts for, would take place in the most sumptuous drawingrooms of all the “wreaths” and “flora's chaplets” of the bookshops; yet ordinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism. frivolity is a most unfit tribute to pan, who ought to be represented in the mythology as the most continent of gods. i would not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet i cannot renounce the right of returning often to this old topic. the multitude of false churches accredits the true religion. literature, poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unſathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity. nature is loved by what is best in us. it is loved as the city of god, although, or rather because, there is no citizen. the sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. and the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as wol. ii. 7 j 146 n at u r e. itself. if there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. if the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. it is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. the critics who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done, must consider that our hunting of the picturesque is inseparable from our protest against false society. man is fallen; nature is erect and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. by fault of our dulness and selfishness we are looking up to nature; but when we are convalescent, nature will look up to us. we see the foaming brook with compunction : if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. the stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry. but taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the efficient nature, natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes (as the ancients represented nature by proteus, a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. it publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through n atu r. e. 147 transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap. a little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. all changes pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. geology has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange our mosaic and ptolemaic schemes for her large style. we knew nothing rightly, for want of perspective. now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed, then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote flora, fauna, ceres, and pomona to come in. how far of yet is the trilobite how far the quadruped how inconceivably remote is man! all duly arrive, and then race after race of men. it is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to plato, and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. yet all must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides. motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: motion and rest. the whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. the whirling bubble on the surface of a brook admits us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky. every shell on the beach is a key to it. a little water made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of the simpler shells; the addition of matter from year to year, arrives at last at the most complex forms; 148 n atu r. e. and yet so poor is nature with all her craft, that, from the beginning to the end of the universe, she has but one stuff, but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties. nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. she keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. she arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and equips another animal to destroy it. space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence. the direction is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials, and begins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage: otherwise, all goes to ruin. if we look at her work, we seem to catch a glance of a system in transition. plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. the animal is the novice and probationer of a more advanced order. the men, though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissipated; the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt ; yet no doubt, when they come to consciousness, they too will curse and swear. flowers so strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel, that their beautiful generations concern not us: we have had our day; now let the children have theirs. the flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness. natu r. e. 149 things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and prop. erties of any other may be predicted. if we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city. that identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great intervals on our customary scale. we talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial life were not also natural. the smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly related, there amid essences and billetsdoux, to himmaleh mountain-chains, and the axis of the globe. if we consider how much we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. nature, who made the mason, made the house. we may easily hear too much of rural influences. the cool disengaged air of natural objects, makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be men instead of woodchucks, and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk. this guiding identity runs through all the surprises and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes every law. man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment 150 . n atu. r. e. of somebody, before it was actually verified. a man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature: moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. commonsense knows its own, and recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical experiment. the common-sense of franklin, dalton, davy, and black is the same common-sense which made the arrangements which now it discovers. if the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runs also into organization. the astronomers said, ‘give us matter, and a little motion, and we will construct the universe. it is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass, and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces. once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all this mighty order grew.’ — ‘a very unreasonable postulate,’ said the metaphysicians, ‘and a plain begging of the question. could you not prevail to know the genesis of projection, as well as the continuation of it p” nature, meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls rolled. it was no great affair, a mere push, but the astronomers were right in making much of it, for there is no end to the consequences of the act. that famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball, through all the races of creatures, and through the history and performances of every individual. exaggeration is in the course of things. nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper qualnature. 151 ity. given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much. without electricity the air would rot, and without this violence of direction, which men and women have, without a spice of bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. we aim above the mark, to hit the mark. every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. and when now and then comes along some sad, sharpeyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play, but blabs the secret; — how then p is the bird flown o no, the wary nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold them fast to their several aim ; makes them a little wrong-headed in that direction in which they are rightest, and on goes the game again with . new whirl, for a generation or two more. the child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. but nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. she has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions, – an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. this glitter, this 152 n atu r.e. opaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to his eye, to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. we are made alive and kept alive by the same arts. let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. the vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity, that, at least, one may replace the parent. all things betray the same calculated profusion. the excess of fear with which the animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, protects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, from some one real danger at last. the lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race. but the craft with which the world is made, runs also into the mind and character of men. no man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to heart. great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters. not less remarkable is the overfaith of each man in the importance of what he has to do or say. the poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he utters n at u r e. 153 than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. the strong, self-complacent luther declares with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that “god himself cannot do without wise men.” jacob behmen and george fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial tracts, and james naylor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the christ. each prophet comes presently to identify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. however this may discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words. a similar experience is not infrequent in private life. each young and ardent person writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. the pages thus written are, to him, burning and fragrant: he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the morning star; he wets them with his tears: they are sacred ; too good for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest friend. this is the man-child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. the umbilical cord has not yet been cut. after some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. will they not burn his eyes? the friend coldly turns them over, and passes from the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes the other party with astonishment and vexation. he cannot suspect the writing itself. days and nights of ſervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of light, have engraved their shadowy characters on that 7 * 154 n atu r. e. tear-stained book. he suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. is there then no friend ? he cannot yet credit that one may have impressive experience, and yet may not know how to put his private fact into literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we, that though we should hold our peace, the truth would not the less be spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our zeal. a man can only speak, so long as he does not feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. it is partial, but he does not see it to be so, whilst he utters it. as soon as he is released from the instinctive and particular, and sees its partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. for, no man can write anything, who does not think that what he writes is for the time the history of the world; or do anything well, who does not esteem his work to be of importance. my work may be of none, but i must not think it of none, or i shall not do it with impunity. in like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking, something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with us. all promise outruns the performance. we live in a system of approximations. every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. we are encamped in nature, not domesticated. hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to drink; but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. it is the same with all our arts and performances. our music, our poetry, our language itself, are not satisfactions, but suggestions. the hunger for wealth, which nature. 155 reduces the planet to a garden, fools the eager pursuer. what is the end sought plainly to secure the ends of good sense and beauty, from the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind. but what an operose method what a train of means to secure a little conversation 1 this palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen, these stables, horses, and equipage, this bankstock, and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house and cottage by the water-side, all for a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual could it not be had as well by beggars on the highway ? no, all these things came from successive efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the wheels of life, and give opportunity. conversation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth was good as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door, brought friends together in a warm and quiet room, and kept the children and the dinner-table in a different apartment. thought, virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was known that men of thought and virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or could lose good time whilst the room was getting warm in winter days. unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. that is the ridicule of rich men, and boston, london, vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with 156 n at u r. e. pains and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is for nothing. they are like one who has interrupted the conversation of a company to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say. the appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aimless nations. were the ends of nature so great and cogent, as to exact this immense sacrifice of men p quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face of external nature. there is in woods and waters a certain enticement and flattery, together with a failure to yield a present satisfaction. this disappointment is felt in every landscape. i have seen the softness and beauty of the summer clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. it is an odd jealousy; but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. the pine-tree, the river, the bank of ſlowers before him, does not seem to be nature. nature is still elsewhere. this or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph that has passed by, and is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then in the adjacent woods. the present object shall give you this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone by. what splendid distance, what recesses of ineſtable pomp and loveliness in the sunset ! but who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon p off they fall from the round world for º n at u r e. 157 ever and ever. it is the same among the men and women, as among the silent trees; always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. is it, that beauty can never be grasped in persons and in landscape is equally inaccessible? the accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. she was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star; she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he., what shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that first projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking of so many well-meaning creatures p must we mot suppose somewhere in the universe a slight treachery and derision ? are we not engaged to a serious resentment of this use that is made of us? are we tickled trout, and fools of nature ? one look at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. to the intelligent, nature converts herself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. her secret is untold. many and many an oedipus arrives; he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel’s wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of the curve. but it also appears, that our actions are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than we designed. we are escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us. we cannot bandy words with nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. if we 158 n atu r. e. measure our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. but if, instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, pre-existing within us in their highest form. the uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition of nature, namely, motion. but the drag is never taken from the wheel. wherever the impulse exceeds, the rest or identity insinuates its compensation. all over the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self-heal. after every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the innate universal laws. these, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. our servitude to particulars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations. we anticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, or a balloon; the new engine brings with it the old checks. they say that by electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown from the seed, whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner; it it is a symbol of our modern aims and endeavors, – of our condensation and acceleration of objects: but nothing is gained: mature cannot be cheated: man’s life is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they natur. e. 159 slow. in these checks and impossibilities, however, we find our advantage, not less than in the impulses. let the victory fall where it will, we are on that side. and the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being, from the centre to the poles of nature, and have some stake in every possibility, lends that sublime lustre to death, which philosophy and religion have too outwardly and literally striven to express in the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. the reality is more excellent than the report. here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. the divine circulations never rest nor linger. nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. the world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized. man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. that power which does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and distils its essence into every drop of rain. every moment instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. it has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence, until after a long time. º ! pol it i c s. -ºgold and iron are good to buy iron and gold; all earth's fleece and food for their like are sold. hinted merlin wise, proved napoleon great, — nor kind nor coinage buys aught above its rate. fear, craft, and avarice cannot rear a state. out of dust to build what is more than dust, — walls amphion piled phoebus stablish must. when the muses nine with the virtues meet, find to their design an atlantic seat, by green orchard boughs fended from the heat, where the statesman ploughs furrow for the wheat; when the church is social worth, when the state-house is the hearth, then the perfect state is come, the republican at home. politics. -in dealing with the state, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born: that they are not superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act of a single man: every law and usage was a man’s expedient to meet a particular case: that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better. society is an illusion to the young citizen. it lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. but the old statesman knows that society is fluid ; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like pisistratus, or cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like plato, or paul, does forever. but politics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity. republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it 164 po l it ics. were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. but the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the state must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. the law is only a memorandum. we are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat : so much life as it has in the character of living men, is its force. the statute stands there to say, yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to-day our statute is a currency, which we stamp with our own portrait: it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time will return to the mint. nature is not democratic, nor limitedmonarchical, but despotic, and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her authority, by the pertest of her sons; and as fast as the public mind is opened to more intelligence, the code is seen to be brute and stammering. it speaks not articulately, and must be made to. meantime the education of the general mind never stops. the reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. what the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishlment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures. the history of the state politics. 165 sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of culture and of aspiration. the theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of men, and which they have expressed the best they could in their laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objects for whose protection government exists. of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being identical in nature. this interest, of course, with its whole power demands a democracy. whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. one man owns his clothes, and another owns a county. this accident, depending, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every degree, and secondarily, on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights, of course, are unequal. personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, lest the midianites shall drive them off, and pays a tax to that end. jacob has no flocks or herds, and no fear of the midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. it seemed fit that laban and jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer, who is to defend their persons, but that laban, and not jacob, should elect the officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. and, if question arise whether additional officers or watch-towers should be provided, must not laban and isaac, and those who 166 politics. must sell part of their herds to buy protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than jacob, who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own 2 in the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable community, than that property should make the law for property, and persons the law for persons. but property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not create it. gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner's, as labor made it the first owner's: in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an ownership, which will be valid in each man's view according to the estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity. it was not, however, found easy to embody the readily admitted principle, that property should make law for property, and persons for persons: since persons and property mixed themselves in every transaction. at last it seemed settled, that the rightful distinction was, that the proprietors should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on the spartan principle of “calling that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just.” that principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared in former times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too much weight had not been allowed in the laws to property, and such a structure given to our usages, as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor; but mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticulate, , politics. 167 that the whole constitution of property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only interest for the consideration of the state is persons; that property will always follow persons; that the highest end of gov. ernment is the culture of men: and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement, and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land. if it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is less when we take note of our natural defences. we are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect. society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. the old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. these believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. with such an ignorant and deceivable majority, states would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with. property will be protected. corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest it. under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. they exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. cover up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound; it will always attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one pound 168 , politics. weight; — and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, — if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; if not wholesomely, then poisonously; with right, or by might. the boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. a nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the greeks, the saracens, the swiss, the americans, and the french have done. in like manner, to every particle of property belongs its own attraction. a cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. its value is in the necessities of the animal man. it is so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land. the law may do what it will with the owner of property, its just power will still attach to the cent. the law may in a mad freak say, that all shall have power except the owners of property; they shall have no vote. nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write every statute that respects property. the nonproprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. what the owners wish to do, the whole power of property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of it. of course, i speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. when the rich are outvoted, as frequently politics. 169 happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. every man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that property to dispose of. the same necessity which secures the rights of person and property against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, determines the form and methods of governing, which are proper to each nation, and to its habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. in this country, we are very vain of our political institutions, which are singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men, from the character and condition of the people, which they still express with sufficient fidelity, and we ostentatiously prefer them to any other in history. they are not better, but only fitter for us. we may be wise in asserting the advantage in modern times of the democratic form, but to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the monarchical, that and not this was expedient. democracy is better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better with it. born democrats, we are nowise qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right. but our institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical defects which have discredited other forms. every actual state is corrupt. good men must not obey the laws too well. what satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the state is a trick? vol. ii. 8 170 politics. the same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the parties into which each state divides itself, of opponents and defenders of the administration of the government. parties are also founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders. they have nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. we might as wisely reprove the eastwind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves. our quarrel with them begins, when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and, obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging to their system. a party is perpetually corrupted by personality. whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. they reap the rewards of the docility and zeal of the masses which they direct. ordimarily, our parties are parties of circumstance, and not of principle; as, the planting interest in conflict with the commercial; the party of capitalists, and that of operatives; parties which are identical in their moral character, and which can easily change ground with each other, in the support of many of their measures. parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of abolition of capital punishment, degenerate into personalities, or would inspire enthusiasm. the vice of our leading parties in this country (which may be politics. 171 cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion) is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth. of the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost share the nation between them, i should say, that, one has the best cause, and the other contains the best men. the philosopher, the poet, or the religious man will, of , course, wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and power. but he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-called popular party propose to him as representatives of these liberalities. they have not at heart the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. the spirit of our american radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. on the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. it windicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the indian, or the immigrant. from neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or 172 politics. humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation. i do not for these defects despair of our republic. we are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. in the strife of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished, as the children of the convicts at botany bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among ourselves are learning from europeans to look with some terror at our turbulent freedom. it is said that in our license of construing the constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our calvinism. fisher ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, “ that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water.” no forms can have any dangerous importance, whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. it makes no difference how many tons' weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. augment the mass a thousand-fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is equal to action. the fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops the other. wild liberty depolitics. 173 velops iron conscience. want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. “lynch-law’ prevails only where there is greater hardihood and selfsubsistency in the leaders. a mob cannot be a permanency; everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all. we must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience. governments have their origin in the moral identity of men. reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other. there is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so many, or so resolute for their own. every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls truth and holiness. in these decisions all the citizens find a perfect agreement, and only in these ; not in what is good to eat, good to wear, good use of time, or what amount of land, or of public aid, each is entitled to claim. this truth and justice men presently endeavor to make application of, to the measuring of land, the apportionment of service, the protection of life and property. their first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. yet absolute right is the first governor; or, every government is an impure theocracy. the idea, after which each community is aiming to make and mend its law, is the will of the wise man. the wise man it cannot find in mature, and it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his government by contrivance; as, by causing the 174 politics. entire people to give their voices on every measure; or, by a double choice to get the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of the best citizens; or, to secure the advantages of efficiency and internal peace, by conſiding the government to one, who may himself select his agents. all forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man. every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. my right and my wrong is their right and their wrong. whilst i do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and i shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. but whenever i find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, i overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. i may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. this undertaking for another is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. it is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. i can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what i must do, i may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly po litics. 175 the absurdity of their command. therefore, all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. for, any laws but those which men make for themselves are laughable. if i put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. we are both there, both act. but if, without carrying him into the thought, i look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. this is the history of governments, – one man does something which is to bind another. a man who cannot be acquainted with me taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as i, but as he, happens to fancy. behold the consequence. of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. what a satire is this on government! everywhere they think they get their money’s worth, except for these. hence, the less government we have the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. the antidote to this abuse of formal government is, the influence of private character, the growth of the individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. that which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. to educate the wise man, the state exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the state expires. the appearance of charac176 politic s. ter makes the state unnecessary. the wise man is the state. he needs no army, fort, or navy, he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him ; no vantage-ground, no favorable circumstance. he needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute-book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. he has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. his relation to men is angelic ; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers. we think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. in our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. as a political power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. malthus and ricardo quite omit it; the annual register is silent; in the conversations' lexicon, it is not set down; the president’s message, the queen's speech, have not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. the gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of force and simulation, the presence of worth. i think the very strife of trade and ambition are confession of this divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide its nakedness. i find the like unwilling politics. 177 homage in all quarters. it is because we know how much is due from us, that we are impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. we are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it. but each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. that we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reaching the mark of a good and equal life. but it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of our companions. it may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. we do penance as we go. our talent is a sort of expiation, and we are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a certain humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of our permanent energy. most persons of ability meet in society with a kind of tacit appeal. each seems to say, ‘i am not all here.’ senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. this conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. they must do what they can. like one class of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail: climb they must, or crawl. if a man found himself so rich-natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best persons, and make life serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and 8 * l 178 politics. the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous, as those of a politician * surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere. the tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more encrgy than we believe, whilst we depend on artiſicial restraints. the movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. it was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. it separates the individual from all party, and unites him, at the same time, to the race. it promises a recognition of higher rights than those of personal freedom or the security of property. a man has a right to be employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered. the power of love, as the basis of a state, has never been tried. we must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at an end. are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? on the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. for, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force, where , politics. 179 men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered. we live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. there is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil mations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. what is strange, too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the state on the principle of right and love. all those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad state. i do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. if the individual who exhibits them dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent, and women of superior sentiments, cannot hide their contempt. not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men, 180 politics. — if indeed i can speak in the plural number, — more exactly, i will say, i have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might share and obey each with the other the grandest and truest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers. nominalist and realist. -oin countless upward-striving waves the moon-drawn tide-wave strives: in thousand far-transplanted grafts the parent fruit survives; so, in the new-born millions the perfect adam lives. not less are summer mornings dear to every child they wake, and each with novel life his sphere fills for his proper sake. nominalist and realist. --i cannot often enough say that a man is only a relative and representative nature. each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. if i seek it in him, i shall not find it. could any man conduct into me the pure stream of that which he pretends to be long afterwards, i find that quality elsewhere which he promised me. the genius of the platonists is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can i detach from all their books. the man momentarily stands for the thought, but will not bear examination; and a society of men will cursorily represent well enough a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty of manners, but separate them, and there is no gentleman and no lady in the group. the least hint sets us on the pursuit of a character, which no man realizes. we have such exorbitant eyes, that on seeing the smallest arc, we complete the curve, and when the curtain is lifted from the diagram which it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that no more was drawn, than just that fragment of an arc which we first beheld. we are greatly too liberal in our construction of each other's faculty and promise. exactly 184 n o m in a list and realist. what the parties have already done, they shall do again; but that which we inferred from their nature and inception, they will not do. that is in nature, but not in them. that happens in the world, which we often witness in a public debate. each of the speakers expresses himself imperfectly: no one of them hears much that another says, such is the preoccupation of mind of each; and the audience, who have only to hear and not to speak, judge very wisely and superiorly how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of the debaters to his own affair. great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. when i meet a pure intellectual force, or a generosity of affection, i believe, here then is man; and am presently mortified by the discovery, that this individual is no more available to his own or to the general ends, than his companions; because the power which drew my respect is not supported by the total symphony of his talents. all persons exist to society by some shining trait of beauty or utility, which they have. we borrow the proportions of the man from that one fine feature, and finish the portrait symmetrically; which is false; for the rest of his body is small or deformed. i observe a person who makes a good public appearance, and conclude thence the perfection of his private character, on which this is based; but he has no private character. he is a graceful cloak or lay-figure for holidays. all our poets, heroes, and saints fail utterly in some one or in many parts to satisfy our idea, fail to draw our spontaneous interest, and so leave us without any hope of realization but in our own future. our exaggeration of all fine characters arises from the nomin a list and realist. 185 fact that we identify each in turn with the soul. but there are no such men as we fable; no jesus, nor pericles, nor caesar, nor angelo, nor washington, such as we have made. we consecrate a great deal of nonsense, because it was allowed by great men. there is none without his foible. must i believe that if an angel should come to chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious atrocity ? it is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society, who has fine traits. he is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. the men of fine parts protect themselves by solitude, or by courtesy, or by satire, or by an acid worldly manner, each concealing, as he best can, his incapacity for useful association, but they want either love or self-reliance. our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach us a little reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden surrender to the brilliant qualities of persons. young people admire talents or particular excellences; as we grow older, we value total powers and effects, as, the impression, the quality, the spirit of men and things. the genius is all. the man, – it is his system : we do not try a solitary word or act, but his habit. the acts which you praise, i praise not, since they are departures from his faith, and are mere compliances. the magnetism which arranges tribes and races in one polarity is alone to be respected; the men are steel-filings. yet we unjustly select a particle, and say, ‘o steel-filing number one ! what heart-drawings i feel to thee! what pro186 nominalist and realist. digious virtues are these of thine! how constitutional to thee, and incommunicable!” whilst we speak, the loadstone is withdrawn; down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the wretched shaving. let us go for universals; for the magnetism, not for the needles. human life and its persons are poor empirical pretensions. a personal influence is an ignis futuus. if they say, it is great, it is great; if they say, it is small, it is small; you see it, and you see it not, by turns; it borrows all its size from the momentary estimation of the speakers: the will-of-the-wisp vanishes if you go too near, vanishes if you go too far, and only blazes at one angle. who can tell if washington be a great man, or no? who can tell if franklin be? yes, or any but the twelve, or six, or three great gods of fame? and they, too, loom and fade before the eternal. we are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. we adjust our instrument for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easily as we pick out a single figure in the terrestrial landscape. we are practically skilful in detecting elements for which we have no place in our theory, and no name. thus we are very sensible of an atmospheric influence in men and in bodies of men, not accounted for in an arithmetical addition of all their measurable properties. there is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society. england, strong, punctual, practical, well-spoken england, i should not find, if i should go to the island to seek it. in the parliament, in the play-house, at dinnernom in a list and realist. 187 tables, i might see a great number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conventional, proud men, – many old women, —and not anywhere the englishman who made the good speeches, combined the accurate engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. it is even worse in america, where, from the intellectual quickness of the race, the genius of the country is more splendid in its promise, and more slight in its performance. webster cannot do the work of webster. we conceive distinctly enough the french, the spanish, the german genius, and it is not the less real, that perhaps we should not meet in either of those nations, a single individual who corresponded with the type. we infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument, to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed a stone. and, universally, a good example of this social force is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. in any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety to the sentiments, which the language of the people expresses. proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual. in the famous dispute with the nominalists, the realists had a good deal of reason. general ideas are essences. they are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our life, and divest it of poetry. the day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. his measures are the hours; 188 n o minal ist and realist. morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature, play through his mind. money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. property keeps the accounts of the world, and is always moral. the property will be found where the labor, the wisdom, and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and (the whole lifetime considered, with the compensations) in the individual also. how wise the world appears, when the laws and usages of nations are largely detailed, and the completeness of the municipal system is considered nothing is left out. if you go into the markets, and the custom-houses, the insurers' and notaries' offices, the offices of sealers of weights and measures, of inspection of provisions, – it will appear as if one man had made it all. wherever you go, a wit like your own has been before you, and has realized its thought. the eleusinian mysteries, the egyptian architecture, the indian astronomy, the greek sculpture, show that there always were seeing and knowing men in the planet. the world is full of masonic ties, of guilds, of secret and public legions of honor; that of scholars, for example; and that of gentlemen fraternizing with the upper class of every country and every culture. i am very much struck in literature by the appearance that one person wrote all the books; as if the editor of a journal planted his body of reporters in different parts of the field of action, and relieved some by others from time to time; but there is such equality and identity both of judgment and point of view in the narrative, n om in a list and realist. 189 that it is plainly the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman. i looked into pope's odyssey yesterday: it is as correct and elegant after our canon of to-day, as if it were newly written. the modernness of all good books seems to give me an existence as wide as man. what is well done, i feel as if i did ; what is ill done, i reck not of shakspeare's passages of passion (for example, in lear and hamlet) are in the very dialect of the present year. i am faithful again to the whole over the members in my use of books. i find the most pleasure in reading a book in a manner least flattering to the author. i read proclus, and sometimes plato, as i might read a dictionary, for a mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination. i read for the lustres, as if one should use a fine picture in a chromatic experiment, for its rich colors. 't is not proclus, but a piece of nature and fate that i explore. it is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself. a higher pleasure of the same kind i found lately at a concert, where i went to hear handel's messiah. as the master overpowered the littleness and incapableness of the performers, and made them conductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe what efforts nature was making through so many hoarse, wooden, and imperfect persons, to produce beautiful voices, fluid and soul-guided men and women. the genius of nature was paramount at the oratorio. this preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of that deification of art, which is found in all superior minds. art, in the artist, is proportion, or a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details. and the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity 190 nomin a list and realist. which it denotes. proportion is almost impossible to human beings. there is no one who does not exaggerate. in conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much. in modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the artist works here and there, and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought. beautiful details we must have, or no artist; but they must be means and never other. the eye must not lose sight for a moment of the purpose. lively boys write to their ear and eye, and the cool reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in it. when they grow older, they respect the argument. we obey the same intellectual integrity, when we study in exceptions the law of the world. anomalous facts, as the never quite obsolete rumors of magic and demonology, and the new allegations of phrenologists and neurologists, are of ideal use. they are good indications. homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time. so with mesmerism, swedenborgism, fourierism, and the millennial church; they are poor pretensions enough, but good criticism on the science, philosophy, and preaching of the day. for these abnormal insights of the adepts ought to be normal, and things of course. all things show us, that on every side we are very near to the best. it seems not worth while to execute with too much pains some one intellectual, or aesthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dream will scatter, and we shall burst into universal power. the reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. whilst n o m in a list and r. ea list. 191 we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes. thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre, and flout the surfaces. i wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes i must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. they melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals. though the uninspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the divine man does not respect them; he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives over the surface of the water. but this is flat rebellion. nature will not be buddhist; she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh particulars. it is all idle talking: as much as a man is a whole, so is he also a part; and it were partial not to see it. what you say in your pompous distribution only distributes you into your class and section. you have not got rid of parts by denying them, but are the more partial. you are one thing, but nature is one thing and the other thing, in the same moment. she will not remain orbed in a thought, but rushes into persons; and when each person, inflamed to a fury of personality, would conquer all things to his poor crotchet, she raises up against him another person, and by many persons incarnates again a sort of whole. she will have all. nick bottom cannot play all the parts, work it how 192 nom in a i, ist and realist. he may : there will be somebody else, and the world will be round. everything must have its flower or effort at the beautiful, coarser or finer according to its stuff. they relieve and recommend each other, and the sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities. she punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an induction which is rare and casual. we like to come to a height of land and see the landscape, just as we value a general remark in conversation. but it is not the intention of nature that we should live by general views. we fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment. if we were not thus infatuated, if we saw the real from hour to hour, we should not be here to write and to read, but should have been burned or frozen long ago. she would never get anything done, if she suffered admirable crichtons, and universal geniuses. she loves better a wheelwright who dreams all night of wheels, and a groom who is part of his horse; for she is full of work, and these are her hands. as the frugal farmer takes care that his cattle shall eat down the rowen, and swine shall eat the waste of his house, and poultry shall pick the crumbs, so our economical mother despatches a new genius and habit of mind into every district and condition of existence, plants an eye wherever a new ray of light can fall, and gathering up into some man every property in the universe, establishes thousand-fold occult mutual attractions among her offspring, that all this wash and waste of power may be imparted and exchanged. nominal ist and realist. 193 great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this incarnation and distribution of the godhead, and hence nature has her maligners, as if she were circe; and alphonso of castile fancied he could have given useful advice. but she does not go unprovided; she has hellebore at the bottom of the cup. solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of despots. the recluse thinks of men as having his manner, or as not having his manner; and as having degrees of it, more and less. but when he comes into a public assembly, he sees that men have very different manners from his own, and in their way admirable. in his childhood and youth, he has had many checks and censures, and thinks modestly enough of his own endowment. when afterwards he comes to unfold it in propitious circumstance, it seems the only talent: he is delighted with his success, and accounts himself already the fellow of the great. but he goes into a mob, into a banking-house, into a mechanic's shop, into a mill, into a laboratory, into a ship, into a camp, and in each new place he is no better than an idiot; other talents take place, and rule the hour. the rotation which whirls every leaf and pebble to the meridian, reaches to every gift of man, and we all take turns at the top. for nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her heart on breaking up all styles and tricks, and it is so much easier to do what one has done before, than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual tendency to a set mode. in every conversation, even the highest, there is a certain trick, which may be soon learned by an acute person, and then that particular style continued indefinitely. each man, too, is a tyrant in tendency, because he would wol. ii. 9 m 194 nom in a list and realist. impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. jesus would absorb the race; but tom paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power. hence the immense benefit of party in politics, as it reveals faults of charac. ter in a chief, which the intellectual force of the persons, with ordinary opportunity, and not hurled into aphelion by hatred, could not have seen. since we are all so stupid, what benefit that there should be two stupidities it is like that brute advantage so essential to astronomy, of having the diameter of the earth's orbit for a base of its triangles. democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation of all men into a few men. if john was perfect, why are you and i alive? as long as any man exists, there is some need of him; let him fight for his own. a new poet has appeared; a new character approached us; why should we refuse to eat bread, until we have found his regiment and section in our old army files p why not a new man? here is a new enterprise of brook farm, of skeneateles, of northampton: why so impatient to baptize them essenes, or portroyalists, or shakers, or by any known and effete name? let it be a new way of living. why have only two or three ways of life, and not thousands? every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. we came this time for condiments, not for corn. we want the great genius only for joy; for one star more in our constellation, for one tree more in our grove. but he thinks we wish to belong to him, as he wishes to occupy us. he greatly mistakes us. i think i have done well, if i have no minalist and realist. 195 acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him is to find my own, though it were only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use. “into paint will i grind thee, my bride l’” to embroil the confusion, and make it impossible to arrive at any general statement, when we have insisted on the imperfection of individuals, our affections and our experience urge that every individual is entitled to honor, and a very generous treatment is sure to be repaid. a recluse sees only two or three persons, and allows them all their room; they spread themselves at large. the statesman looks at many, and compares the few habitually with others, and these look less. yet are they not entitled to this generosity of reception? and is not munificence the means of insight? for though gamesters say, that the cards beat all the players, though they were never so skilful, yet in the contest we are now considering, the players are also the game, and share the power of the cards. if you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your own caricature of him. for there is somewhat spheral and infinite in every man, especially in every genius, which, if you can come very near him, sports with all your limitations. for, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst i fancied i was criticising him, i was censuring or rather terminating my own soul. after taxing goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbelieving, worldly, i took up this book of “helena,” and found him an indian of the wilderness, a piece of pure nature like an apple or 196 n o'm in a list and realist. an oak, large as morning or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose. but care is taken that the whole tune shall be played. if we were not kept among surfaces, everything would be large and universal: now the excluded attributes burst in on us with the more brightness, that they have been excluded. “your turn now, my turn next,” is the rule of the game. the universality being hindered in its primary form, comes in the secondary form of all sides: the points come in succession to the meridian, and by the speed of rotation, a new whole is formed. nature keeps herself whole, and her representation complete in the experience of each mind. she suffers no seat to be vacant in her college. it is the secret of the world that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return again. whatever does not concern us, is concealed from us. as soon as a person is no longer related to our present well-being, he is concealed, or dies, as we say. really, all things and persons are related to us, but according to our nature, they act on us not at once, but in succession, and we are made aware of their presence one at a time. all persons, all things which we have known, are here present, and many more than we see; the world is full. as the ancient said, the world is a plenum or solid; and if we saw all things that really surround us, we should be imprisoned and unable to move. for, though nothing is impassable to the soul, but all things are pervious to it, and like highways, yet this is only whilst the soul does not see them. as soon as the soul sees any object, it stops before that object. therefore, the divine providence, n o m in a list and real ist. 197 which keeps the universe open in every direction to the soul, conceals all the furniture and all the persons that do not concern a particular soul, from the senses of that individual. through solidest eternal things, the man finds his road, as if they did not subsist, and does not once suspect their being. as soon as he needs a new object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to pass through it, but takes another way. when he has exhausted for the time the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing, that object is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in his immediate neighborhood, he does not suspect its presence. nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise. jesus is not dead: he is very well alive: nor john, nor paul, nor mahomet, nor aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go. if we cannot make voluntary and conscious steps in the admirable science of universals, let us see the parts wisely, and infer the genius of nature from the best particulars with a becoming charity. what is best in each kind is an index of what should be the average of that thing. love shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend a hidden wealth, and i infer an equal depth of good in every other direction. it is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one ; so i would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best. 198 n o m in a list and realist. the end and the means, the gamester and the game, life is made up of the intermixture and reaction of these two amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies and tends to abolish the other. we must reconcile the contradictions as we can, but their discord and their concord introduce wild absurdities into our thinking and speech. no sentence will hold the whole truth, and the only way in which we can be just, is by giving ourselves the lie; speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech; —all things are in contact; every atom has a sphere of repulsion; — things are, and are not, at the same time; — and the like. all the universe over, there is but one thing, this old two-face, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any proposition may be affirmed or denied. very fitly, therefore, i assert, that every man is a partialist, that nature secures him as an instrument by self-conceit, preventing the tendencies to religion and science; and now further assert, that, each man’s genius being nearly and affectionately explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his nature is found to be immense; and now i add, that every man is a universalist also, and, as our earth, whilst it spins on its own axis, spins all the time around the sun through the celestial spaces, so the least of its rational children, the most dedicated to his private affair, works out, though as it were under a disguise, the universal problem. we fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history. the rabid democrat, as soon as he is senator and rich man, has ripened beyond possibility of sincere radicalism, and n o m in a list and realist. 199 unless he can resist the sun, he must be conservative the remainder of his days. lord eldon said in his old age, “that, if he were to begin life again, he would be damned but he would begin as agitator.” we hide this universality, if we can, but it appears at all points. we are as ungrateful as children. there is nothing we cherish and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it. we keep a running fire of sarcasm at ignorance and the life of the senses; then goes by, perchance, a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and happy, and making the commonest offices beautiful, by the energy and heart with which she does them, and seeing this, we admire and love her and them, and say, ‘lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dissipated, or too early ripened by books, philosophy, religion, society, or care!’ insinuating a treachery and contempt for all we had so long loved and wrought in ourselves and others. if we could have any security against moods ! if the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and join the crusade could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony' but the truth sits veiled there on the bench, and never interposes an adamantine syllable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of god were carried forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succor of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the same speaker, as morbid; “i thought i was right, but i was not,” — and the same immeasurable credulity demanded for new audacities. if we were not of all opinions! if 200 nominalist and real1st. we did not in any moment shift the platform on which we stand, and look and speak from another! if there could be any regulation, any ‘one-hour-rule,” that a man should never leave his point of view, without sound of trumpet. i am always insincere, as always knowing there are other moods. how sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same words! my companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said which words can say, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption. is it that every man believes every other to be an incurable partialist, and himself a universalist? i talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers: i endeavored to show my good men that i liked everything by turns, and nothing long; that i loved the centre, but doated on the superficies; that i loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats; that i revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground, and died hard; that i was glad of men of every gift and mobility, but would not live in their arms. could they but once understand that i loved to know that they existed, and heartily wished them godspeed, yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and could well consent to their living in oregon, for any claim i felt on them, it would be a great satisfaction. n e w e n g l a n d r e for mer. s. a lecture read before the society in amory hall, on sunday, march 3, 1844. -ºin the suburb, in the town, on the railway, in the square, came a beam of goodness down doubling daylight everywhere: peace now each for malice takes, beauty for his sinful weeds; for the angel hope aye makes him an angel whom she leads. new en gl and reformers. -whoever has had opportunity of acquaintance with society in new england, during the last twenty-five years, with those middle and with those leading sections that may constitute any just representation of the character and aim of the community, will have been struck with the great activity of thought and experimenting. his attention must be commanded by the signs that the church, or religious party, is falling from the church nominal, and is appearing in temperance and non-resistance societies, in movements of abolitionists and of socialists, and in very significant assemblies, called sabbath and bible conventions, – composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in question the authority of the sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the church. in these movements, nothing was more remarkable than the discontent they begot in the movers. the spirit of protest and of detachment drove the members of these conventions to bear testimony against the church, and immediately afterward, to declare their discontent with these conventions, their independence of their colleagues, and their impatience of the methods whereby they were working. they defied each other, like a congress of kings, each of whom had a 204. new e n g l and re for mers. realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable. what a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! one apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another, that no man should buy or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another, that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damnation. these made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. it was in vain urged by the housewife, that god made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. no; they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. stop, dear nature, these incessant advances of thine : let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels' others attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food. the ox must be taken from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. even the insect world was to be defended, that had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay. with these appeared the adepts of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of the christian miracles | others assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. others attacked the instinew e n g l and refor. m. e. r. s. 205 tution of marriage, as the fountain of social evils. others devoted themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship; and the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans seemed to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform. with this dim of opinion and debate, there was a keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic life than any we had known, there was sincere protesting against existing evils, and there were changes of employment dictated by conscience. no doubt, there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of backsliding might occur. but in each of these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of the private man. thus it was directly in the spirit and genius of the age, what happened in one instance, when a church censured and threatened to excommunicate one of its members, on account of the somewhat hostile part to the church, which his conscience led him to take in the antislavery business; the threatened individual immediately excommunicated the church in a public and formal process. this has been several times repeated: it was excellent when it was done the first time, but, of course, loses all value when it is copied. every project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good, when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. it is right and beautiful in any man to say, ‘i will take this coat, or this book, or this measure of corn of yours,” —in whom we see the act to be original, and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him; for then that 206 new e n g lan d r e for mers. taking will have a giving as free and divine : but we are very easily disposed to resist the same generosity of speech, when we miss originality and truth to character in it. there was in all the practical activities of new england, for the last quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from the social organizations. there is observable throughout, the contest between mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steady tendency of the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief and reliance on spiritual facts. in politics, for example, it is easy to see the progress of dissent. the country is full of rebellion; the country is full of kings. hands off! let there be no control and no interference in the administration of the affairs of this kingdom of me. hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party of free trade, and the willingness to try that experiment, in the face of what appear incontestable facts. i confess, the motto of the globe newspaper is so attractive to me, that i can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its columns, “the world is governed too much.” so the country is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the government, solitary mullifiers, who throw themselves on their reserved rights; nay, who have reserved all their rights; who reply to the assessor, and to the clerk of court, that they do not know the state ; and embarrass the courts of law, by non-juring, and the commander-in-chief of the militia, by non-resistance. the same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in civil, festive, neighborly, and domestic society. a n e w e n g l and re for mer s. 207 restless, prying, conscientious criticism broke out in unexpected quarters. who gave me the money with which i bought my coat? why should professional labor and that of the counting-house be paid so disproportionately to the labor of the porter and woodsawyer? this whole business of trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as i am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person whom i pay with money, whereas if i had not that commodity, i should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other. am i not too protected a person? is there not a wide disparity between the lot of me and the lot of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister? am i not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of those gymnastics which manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute; i find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society; i do not like the close air of saloons. i begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. i pay a destructive tax in my conformity. the same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for the reform of education. the popular education has been taxed with a want of truth and nature. it was complained that an education to things was not given. we are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a 208 . new england reformers. memory of words, and do not know a thing. we cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. we do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. it is well if we can swim and skate. we are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider. the roman rule was to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. the old english rule was, “all summer in the field, and all winter in the study.’ and it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow-men. the lessons of science should be experimental also. the sight of the planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry. one of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisition it fixed on our scholastic devotion to the dead languages. the ancient languages, with great beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain likeminded men, – greek men, and roman men, in all countries, to their study; but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage, they had exacted the study of all men. once (say two centuries ago), latin and greek had a strict relation to all the science and culture there was in europe, and the mathematics had a momentary importance at some era of activity in physical science. these things become stereotyped as education, as the manner of men is. but the good spirit never new england re for mers. 209 cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in latin, greek, and mathematics, it had quite left these shells high and dry on the beach, and was now creating and feeding other matters at other ends of the world. but in a hundred high schools and colleges, this warfare against common-sense still goes on. four, or six, or ten years, the pupil is parsing greek and latin, and as soon as he leaves the university, as it is ludicrously styled, he shuts those books for the last time. some thousands of young men are graduated at our colleges in this country every year, and the persons who, at forty years, still read greek, can all be counted on your hand. i never met with ten. four or five persons i have seen who read plato. but is not this absurd, that the whole liberal talent of this country should be directed in its best years on studies which lead to nothing? what was the consequence? some intelligent persons said or thought: ‘is that greek and latin some spell to conjure with, and not words of reason 2 if the physician, the lawyer, the divine, never use it to come at their ends, i need never learn it to come at mine. conjuring is gone out of fashion, and i will omit this conjugating, and go straight to affairs.” so they jumped the greek and latin, and read law, medicine, or sermons, without it. to the astonishment of all, the self-made men took even ground at once with the oldest of the regular graduates, and in a few months the most conservative circles of boston and new york had quite forgotten who of their gownsmen was college-bred, and who was not. one tendency appears alike in the philosophical specun 210 new e n g l and re for mer. s. t lation, and in the rudest democratical movements, through all the petulance and all the puerility, the wish, namely, to cast aside the superfluous, and arrive at short methods, urged, as i suppose, by an intuition that the human spirit is equal to all emergencies alone, and that man is more often injured than helped by the means he uses. i conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and the indication of growing trust in the private, self-supplied powers of the individual, to be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy; and that it is feeling its own profound truth, and is reaching forward at this very hour to the happiest conclusions. i readily concede that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest; much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm and to construct. many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish, – and that makes the offensiveness of the class. they are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. they lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit. it is of little moment that one or two, or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses. the criticism and attack on institutions which we have witnessed has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him : he has become tediously good in some particular, but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result. new eng land reformers. 211 it is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration. do not be so vain of your one objection. do you think there is only one * alas! my good friend, there is no part of society or of life better than any other part. all our things are right and wrong together. the wave of evil washes all our institutions alike. do you complain of our marriage our marriage is no worse than our education, our dict, our trade, our social customs. do you complain of the laws of property it is a pedantry to give such importance to them. can we not play the game of life with these counters as well as with those ; in the institution of property, as well as out of it. let into it the new and renewing principle of love, and property will be universality. no one gives the impression of superiority to the institution, which he must give who will reform it. it makes no difference what you say; you must make me feel that you are aloof from it; by your natural and supernatural advantages, do easily see to the end of it, — do see how man can do without it. now all men are on one side. no man deserves to be heard against property. only love, only an idea, is against property, as we hold it. i cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all my time in attacks. if i should go out of church whenever i hear a false sentiment, i could never stay there five minutes. but why come out? the street is as false as the church, and when i get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, i have not got away 212 new en g l a n d re for mer.s. ss from the lie. when we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, what right have you, sir, to your one virtue? is virtue piecemeal? this is a jewel amidst the rags of a beggar. in another way the right will be vindicated. in the midst of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false churches, alike in one place and in another, — wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, there it will do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth, it shall abrogate that old condition, law, or school in which it stands, before the law of its own mind. if partiality was one fault of the movement party, the other defect was their reliance on association. doubts such as those i have intimated drove many good persons to agitate the questions of social reform. but the revolt against the spirit of commerce, the spirit of aristocracy, and the inveterate abuses of cities, did not appear possible to individuals; and to do battle against numbers, they armed themselves with numbers, and against concert, they relied on new concert. following, or advancing beyond the ideas of st. simon, of fourier, and of owen, three communities have already been formed in massachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the country at large. they aim to give every member a share in the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a liberal culture with an education to labor. the scheme offers, by the economies of associated labor and expense, to make every member rich, on the same amount of property, that, in separate families, would leave every member n e w e n g l and re for mer. s. 213 poor. these new associations are composed of men and women of superior talents and sentiments; yet it may easily be questioned, whether such a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the good; whether those who have energy will not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the world, to the humble certainties of the association; whether such a retreat does not promise to become an asylum to those who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the strong ttwtctctc members will not necessarily be fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot enter it, without some compromise. friendship and association are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of the human race, banded for some catholic object: yes, excellent; but remember that no society can ever be so large as one man. he in his friendship, in his natural and momentary associations, doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one. but the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such, concert appears the sole specific of strength. i have failed, and you have failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community, might be. many of us have differed in opinion, and we could find no man who could make the truth plain, but possibly a college or an ecclesiastical council might. i have not been able either to persuade my brother or to prevail on myself, to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy, but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually 214 n e w e n g lan d r e for mer. s. + s ) §s restrain us. the candidate my party votes for is not to be trusted with a dollar, but he will be honest in the senate, for we can bring public opinion to bear on him. thus concert was the specific in all cases. but concert is neither better nor worse, neither more nor less potent, than individual force. all the men in the world cannot make a statue walk and speak, cannot make a drop of s blood, or a blade of grass, any more than one man can. ^ | *but let there be one man, let there be truth in two men, ~ in ten men, then is concert for the first time possible, because the force which moves the world is a new quality, and can never be furnished by adding whatever quantities of a different kind. what is the use of the concert of the false and the disunited * there can be no concert in two, where there is no concert in one. when the individual is not indiridual, but is dual; when his thoughts look one way, and his actions another; when his faith is traversed by his habits; when his will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his sense; when with one hand he rows, and with the other backs water, what concert can be 2 i do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire. the world is awaking to the idea of union, and these experiments show what it is thinking of. it is and will be magic. men will live and communicate, and plough, and reap, and govern, as by added ethereal power, when once they are united; as in a celebrated experiment, by expiration and respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man from the ground by the little ſinger only, and without sense of weight. but this union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is to be reached ~. --tn e w e n g l and re for mer. s. 215 by a reverse of the methods they use. the union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated. it is the union of friends who live in different streets, or towns. each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. but leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke. government will be adamantine without any governor. the union must be ideal in actual individualism. i pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in man, which the heart is preaching to us in these days, and which engages the more regard, from the consideration, that the speculations of one generation are the history of the next following. in alluding just now to our system of education, i spoke of the deadness of its details. but it is open to graver criticism than the palsy of its members: it is a system of despair. the disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith. men do not believe in a power of education. twe do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. we renounce all high aims. we believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. a man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me, “that he liked to have § () 3.g 216 n e w e n g land re for mer.s. concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.” i am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, “if you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.” i notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: ‘this country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.” we do not believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. having settled ourselves into this | infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. we adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with inoffensºj sive and comely manners. so have we cunningly hid | the tragedy of limitation and inner death we cannot } avert. is it strange that society should be devoured by ~. a secret melancholy, which breaks through all its smiles, \ and all its gayety and games? but even one step further our infidelity has gone. it appears that some doubt is felt by good and wise men, whether really the happiness and probity of men are ſincreased by the culture of the mind in those disciplines ſ: which we give the name of education. unhappily, too, the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who have tried these methods. in their experience, the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. he was * a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance s ;s.; new eng land re for mers. 217 and growth. it was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous. a canine appetite for knowledge was generated, which must still be fed, but was never satisfied, and this knowledge not being directed on action, never took the character of substantial, humane truth, blessing those whom it entered. it gave the scholar certain powers of expression, the power of speech, the power of poetry, of literary art, but it did not bring him to peace, or to beneficence. when the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief. what remedy ? liſe must be lived on a higher plane. we must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, tie widic aspect of things changes.tt resist the *::::::::::hºº men. i do not believe that the differences of opinion and character in men are organic. i do not recognize, beside the class of the good and the wise, a permanent class of sceptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malignants, or of materialists. i do not believe in two classes. you remember the story of the poor woman who importuned king philip of macedon to grant her justice, which philip refused: the woman exclaimed, “i appeal”: the king, astonished, asked to whom she appealed: the woman replied, “from philip drunk to philip sober.” the text will suit me very well. i believe not in two classes of men, but in man in two moods, in philip % drunk and philip sober. i think, according to the goodvol. ii. 10 218 new e n g l and re for mers. hearted word of plato, “unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth.” iron conservative, miser, or thief, no man is, but by a supposed necessity, which he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight. the soul lets no man go without some visitations and holydays of a diviner presence. it would be easy to show, by a narrow scanning of any man's biography, that we are not so wedded to our paltry performances of every kind, but that every man has at intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in comparing them with his belief of what he should do, that he puts himself on the side of his enemies, listening gladly to what they say of him, and accusing himself of the same things. what is it men love in genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done p genius counts all its miracles poor and short. its own idea it never executed. the iliad, the hamlet, the doric column, the roman arch, the gothic minster, the german anthem, when they are ended, the master casts behind him. how sinks the song in the waves of melody which the universe pours over his soul! before that gracious infinite, out of which he drew these few strokes, how mean they look, though the praises of the world attend them. from the triumphs of his art, he turns with desire to this greater defeat. let those admire who will. with silent joy he sees himself to be capable of a beauty that eclipses all which his hands have done, all which human hands have ever done. well, we are all the children of genius, the children of virtue, – and feel their inspirations in our happier hours. is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? n e w e n g lan d r e for mer. s. 219 men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. they are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged; in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals. in the circle of the rankest tories that could be collected in england, old or new, let a powerful and stimulating intellect, a man of great heart and mind, act on them, and very quickly these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly influence, these hopeless will begin to hope, these haters will begin to love, these immovable statues will begin to spin and revolve. i cannot help recalling the fine anecdote which warton relates of bishop berkeley, when he was preparing to leave england, with his plan of planting the gospel among the american savages. “lord bathurst told me that the members of the scriblerus club, being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally berkeley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at bermudas. berkeley, having listened to the many lively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of eloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose up all together with earnestness, exclaiming, ‘let us set out with him immediately.” men in all ways are better than they seem. they like ſattery for the moment, but lº.º.º. for their own. it is a foolish cowardice which keeps us from trusting them, and speaking to them rude truth. they resent your honesty for an instant, they will thank you for it always. what is 220 n e w e n g l and re for mer. s. it we heartily wish of each other? is it to be pleased and flattered no, but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and phantoms. we are weary of gliding ghostlike through the world, which is itself so slight and unreal. we crave a sense of reality, though it come in strokes of pain. i explain so, by this manlike love of truth, – those excesses and errors into which souls of great vigor, but not equal insight, often fall. they feel the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world. they know the speed with which they come straight through the thin masquerade, and conceive a disgust at the indigence of nature: rousseau, mirabeau, charles fox, napoleon, byron, — and i could easily add names nearer home, of raging riders, who drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of living to forget its illusion: they would know the worst, and tread the floors of hell. the heroes of ancient and modern fame, cimon, themistocles, alcibiades, alexander, cæsar, have treated life and fortune as a game to be well and skilfully played, but the stake not to be so valued but that any time it could be held as a trifle light as air, and thrown up. caesar, just before the battle of pharsalia, discourses with the egyptian priest, concerning the fountains of the nile, and offers to quit the army, the empire, and cleopatra, if he will show him those mysterious sources. the same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations, in the preference, namely, which each man gives to the society of superiors over that of his equals. all that a man has, will he give for right relations with his mates. new eng land reformers. 221 all that he has, will he give for an erect demeanor in every company and on each occasion. he aims at such things as his neighbors prize, and gives his days and nights, his talents and his heart, to strike a good stroke, to acquit himself in all men's sight as a man. the consideration of an eminent citizen, of a noted merchant, of a man of mark in his profession; naval and military honor, a general’s commission, a marshal's baton, a ducal coronet, the laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, the acknowledgment of eminent merit, have this lustre for each candidate, that they enable him to walk erect and unashamed, in the presence of some persons, before whom he felt himself inferior. having raised himself to this rank, having established his equality with class after class, of those with whom he would live well, he still finds certain others, before whom he cannot possess himself, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer, which extorts homage of him. is his ambition pure ? then, will his laurels and his possessions seem worthless: instead of avoiding these men who make his fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him, and seek their society only, woo and embrace this his humiliation and mortification, until he shall know why his eye sinks, his voice is husky, and his brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence. he is sure that the soul which gives the lie to all things will tell mone. his constitution will not mislead him. if it cannot carry itself as it ought, high and unmatchable in the presence of any man, if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life do here withdraw and accompany him no longer, it is time to undervalue what 222 n e w e n g l and re for mers. had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers he has valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, and with caesar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and cleopatra, and say, “all these will i relinquish, if you will show me the fountains of the nile.” dear to us are those who love us; the swift moments we spend with them are a compensation for a great deal of misery; they enlarge our life; — but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life: they build a heaven before us, whereof we out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances. as every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior society, wishes to be convicted of his error, and to come to himself, so he wishes that the same healing should not stop in his thought, but should penetrate his will or active power. the selfish man suffers more from his selfishness, than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit. what he most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform, that he may see beyond his present fear the transalpine good, so that his fear, his coldness, his custon, may be broken up like fragments of ice, melted and carried away in the great stream of goodwill. do you ask my aid i also wish to be a benefactor. i wish more to be a benefactor and servant, than you wish to be served by me, and surely the greatest good fortune that could befall me is precisely to be so moved by you that i should say, ‘take me and all mine, and use me and mine freely to your ends !’ for, i could not say it, otherwise than because a great enlargement had come to my heart and mind, which made new eng land refor mers. 223 me superior to my fortunes. here we are paralyzed with fear; we hold on to our little properties, house and land, office and money, for the bread which they have in our experience yielded us, although we confess, that our being does not flow through them. we desire to be made great, we desire to be touched with that fire which shall command this ice to stream, and make our existence a benefit. if therefore we start objections to your project, o friend of the slave, or friend of the poor, or of the race, understand well, that it is because we wish to drive you to drive us into your measures. we wish to hear ourselves confuted. we are haunted with a belief that you have a secret, which it would highliest advantage us to learn, and we would force you to impart it to us, though it should bring us to prison, or to worse extremity. nothing shall warp me from the belief, that every man is a lover of truth. there is no pure lie, no pure maligmity in nature. the entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. there is no scepticism, no atheism, but that. could it be received into common belief, suicide would umpeople the planet. it has had a name to live in some dogmatic theology, but each man's innocence and his real liking of his neighbor have kept it a dead letter. i remember standing at the polls one day, when the anger of the political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the independent electors, and a good man at my side looking on the people, remarked, “i am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to vote right.” i suppose, considerate observers looking 224 n e w e n g l and re for mer.s. at the masses of men, in their blameless, and in their equivocal actions, will assent, that in spite of selfishness and frivolity, the general purpose in the great number of persons is fidelity. the reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you : he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. you have not given him the authentic sign. if it were worth while to run into details this general doctrine of the latent but ever-soliciting spirit, it would be easy to adduce illustration in particulars of a man’s equality to the church, of his equality to the state, and of his equality to every other man. it is yet in all men's memory, that, a few years ago, the liberal churches complained, that the calvinistic church denied to them the name of christian. i think the complaint was confession: a religious church would not complain. a religious man like behmen, fox, or swedenborg is not irritated by wanting the sanction of the church, but the church feels the accusation of his presence and belief. it only needs that a just man should walk in our streets, to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a contrivance is our legislation. the man whose part is taken, and who does not wait for society in anything, has a power which society cannot choose but feel. the familiar experiment, called the hydrostatic paradox, in which a capillary column of water balances the ocean, is a symbol of the relation of one man to the whole family of men. the wise dandamis, on hearing the lives of socrates, pythagoras, and diogenes read, “judged them to be n ew eng land reformer s. 225 great men every way, excepting, that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws, which to second and authorize, true virtue must abate very much of its original vigor.” and as a man is equal to the church, and equal to the state, so he is equal to every other map. the disparities of power in men are superficial; and all frank and searching conversation, in which a man lays himself open to his brother, apprises each of their radical unity. when two persons sit and converse in a thoroughly good understanding, the remark is sure to be made, see how we have disputed about words! let a clear, apprehensive mind, such as every man knows among his friends, converse with the most commanding poetic genius, i think, it would appear that there was no inequality such as men fancy between them; that a perfect understanding, a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished differences, and the poet would confess, that his creative imagination gave him no deep advantage, but only the superficial one, that he could express himself, and the other could not; that his advantage was a knack, which might impose on indolent men, but could not impose on lovers of truth; for they know the tax of talent, or, what a price of greatness the power of expression too often pays. i believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. each is incomparably supertof to his companion in some ſaciy. his want of skifftother directions has added to his fitness for his own work. each seems to have some compensation yielded to him by his infirmity, and every hinderance operates as a concentration of his force. 10 * o 226 n e w e n g lan d re formers. these and the like experiences intimate, that man stands in strict connection with a higher fact never yet manifested. there is power over and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications. we seek to say thus and so, and over our head some spirit sits, which contradicts what we say. we would persuade our fellow to this or that; another self within our eyes dissuades him. that which we keep back, this reveals. in vain we compose our faces and our words; it holds uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and he answers civilly to us, but believes the spirit. we exclaim, ‘there 's a traitor in the house !” but at last it appears that he is the true man, and i am the traitor. this open channel to the highest life is the first and last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet so tenacious, that although i have never expressed the truth, and although i have never heard the expression of it from any other, i know that the whole truth is here for me. what if i cannot answer your questions? i am not pained that i cannot frame a reply to the question, what is the operation we call providence? there lies the unspoken thing, present, omnipresent. every time we converse, we seek to translate it into speech, but whether we hit, or whether we miss, we have the fact. every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever. if the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make themselves good in time, the man who shall be born, whose advent men and events prepare and foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connection with a higher life, n ew eng land re form ers. 227 with the man within : shall destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his native but forgotten methods, shall not take counseſ of ſlesh and blood, but shall rely on the law alive and beautiful, which works over our heads and under our feet. pitiless, it avails itself of our success, when we obey it, and of our ruin, when we contravene it. men are all secret believers in it, else, the word “justice” would have no meaning: they believe that the best is the true; that right is done at last; or chaos would come. it rewards actions after their nature, and not after the design of the agent. ‘work,” it saith to man, ‘in every hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought : no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. the reward of a thing well done is to have done it.’ -as soon as a man is wonted to look beyond surfaces, and to see how this high will prevails without an ex\ ception or an interval, he settles himself into serenity. iie can already rely on the laws of gravity, that every stone will fall where it is due ; the good globe is faithful, and carries us securely through the celestial spaces, anxious or resigned : we need not interfere to help it on, and he will learn, one day, the mild lesson they teach, that our own orbit is all our task, and we need not assist the administration of the universe. do not be so impatient to set the town right concerning the unfounded pretensions and the false reputation of certain men of 228 new en g l and re for mers. standing. they are laboring harder to set the town right concerning themselves, and will certainly succeed. suppress for a few days your criticism on the insufficiency of this or that teacher or experimenter, and he will have demonstrated his insufficiency to all men's eyes. in like manner, let a man fall into the divine circuits, and he is enlarged. obedience to his genius is the only liberating influence. we wish to escape from subjection, and a sense of inferiority, and we make self-denying ordimances, we drink water, we eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to jail; it is all in vain; only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise before a man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison. that which befits us, imbosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. the life of man is the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction. all around us, what powers are wrapped up under the coarse mattings of custom, and all wonder prevented. it is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them, that it is just as wonderful, that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise : the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual. shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the power by which it lives? may it not quit other leadings, and listen to the soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past? ~~ ~~~~ ----i -;-the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last datestamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. harvard college widener library cambridge, ma 02138 (617) 495-2413 | | | | | | | | | | 265 nedl, transfer | hn e e 7 (º. d 6-1222 the gift of richardson morris — january 1, 1847. a list of b00ks recently published by james m un roe & company., 134 cºaspington, ©pposite séchool street, boston. por:try, &c. is ralph waldo emerson. poems. in one volume, 16mo. pp. 251. price 11. charles t. brooks. hom(age of the arts, with miscellaneous pieces from rüch ert, fre1l1grath, and other german poets. in one volume, 16mo. pp. 158. price 62 cents. ill. epes sargent. songs of the sea, with poems and dramatic pieces. in one volume, 16mo. pp. i w. william ellery channing. poems, second series. in one volume, 16mo. pp. 168. price 62 cents. y william thompson bacon. poems. one volume, 16mo. pp. john pierpont. airs of palestine, with other por ms. in one volume, 16mo. steel plate. pp. 350. price $1.00. wine john s. dwight. select minor poems. translated from the german of goethe and schiller, with notes. one volume, 12mo. pp. 460. price $1.00. 2 a list of books recently published will. alexander. h. everett. poems. one volume, 12mo, pp. 104. price 75 cents. 1x. charlest. brooks. songs and ballads. translated from uhland, körner, bürger, and other german lyric poets. with notes. 12mo. pp. 410. price $1.00. x. charles t. brooks. william tell, a drama, in five acts, from the german of schille r. one volume, 12mo. pp. 120. price 62 cents. xi. schiller's wallenstein. wallenstein's camp, translated from the german of schiller by george mour. with a memoir of albert wallenstein, by g. w. haven. 16mo. pp. 142. price 50 cents. xii. henry taylor philip wan artevelde, a dramatic romance. in one volume, 16mo. pp. 252. price $1.00. xiii. stephen g. bulfinch. lays of the gospel. one volume, 16mo. pp. 203. price 75 cents. xlv. goethe's egmont. egmont, a tragedy, in five acts, translated from the german. 16mo. pp. 152. price 38 cents. xv. the bondmaid. translated from the swedish by mas. purn am. one volume, 16mo. pp. 112. price 50 cents. xvi. lydia. h. sigourney. pleasant memories of pleas ant lands. two steel plates. 16mo. pp. 382. price $1.25. xv.11. lydia. h. sigourney. scenes in my native land. two steel plates. 16mo, pp. 32). price $1.25. by james munroe & company. 3 translations. º i. essays on art. translated from the german of goethe, by samuel gray ward. one volume, 16mo. pp. 264. price 75 conts. n is walt and vult, or the twins. translated from the german of je an paul richter, by mrs. t. lee. two volumes, 16mo, pp. 320. price $1.00 each. 111. flower, fruit, and thorn pieces ; 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her ear is heavy, she broods on the world. “who'll tell me my secret, the ages have kept 1– i awaited the seer, while they slumbered and slept; — “the fate of the man-child; the meaning of man; known fruit of the unknown ; daedalian plan; 7 the sphinx. out of sleeping a waking, out of waking a sleep; life death overtaking; deep underneath deep “erect as a sunbeam, upspringeth the palm; the elephant browses, undaunted and calm ; in beautiful motion the thrush plies his wings; kind leaves of his covert, your silence he sings. “the waves, unashamed, in difference sweet, play glad with the breezes, old playfellows meet; the journeying atoms, primordial wholes, firmly draw, firmly drive, by their animate poles. the sphinx. 9 “sea, earth, air, sound, silence, plant, quadruped, bird, by one music enchanted, one deity stirred, – each the other adorning, accompany still ; night veileth the morning, the vapor the hill. “the babe by its mother lies bathed in joy; glide its hours uncounted, – the sun is its toy; shines the peace of all being, without cloud, in its eyes; and the sum of the world in soft miniature lies. “but man crouches and blushes, absconds and conceals; he creepeth and peepeth, he palters and steals; 10 the sphinx. infirm, melancholy, jealous glancing around, an oaf, an accomplice, he poisons the ground. “outspoke the great mother, beholding his fear; — at the sound of her accents cold shuddered the sphere : — ‘who has drugged my boy's cup 7 who has mixed my boy's bread? who, with sadness and madness, has turned the man-child's head 2''' i heard a poet answer, aloud and cheerfully, “say on, sweet sphinx thy dirges are pleasant songs to me. deep love lieth under these pictures of time; they fade in the light of their meaning sublime. the sphinx. 11 “the fiend that man harries is love of the best; yawns the pit of the dragon, lit by rays from the blest. the lethe of nature can't trance him again, whose soul sees the perfect, which his eyes seek in vain. “profounder, profounder, man's spirit must dive; to his aye-rolling orbit no goal will arrive; the heavens that now draw him with sweetness untold, once found, for new heavens he spurneth the old. “pride ruined the angels, their shame them restores; and the joy that is sweetest lurks in stings of remorse. 12 the sphinx. have i a lover w who is noble and free ? — i would he were nobler than to love me. “eterne alternation now follows, now flies; and under pain, pleasure, — under pleasure, pain lies. love works at the centre, heart-heaving alway; forth speed the strong pulses to the borders of day. “dull sphinx, jove keep thy five wits' thy sight is growing blear; rue, myrrh, and cummin for the sphinx– her muddy eyes to clear !” — the old sphinx bit her thick lip, — said, “who taught thee me to name 7 i am thy spirit, yoke-fellow, of thine eye i am eyebeam. the sphinx. 13 “thou art the unanswered question ; couldst see thy proper eye, alway it asketh, asketh ; and each answer is a lie. so take thy quest through nature, it through thousand natures ply; ask on, thou clothed eternity; time is the false reply.” uprose the merry sphinx, and crouched no more in stone; she melted into purple cloud, she silvered in the moon ; she spired into a yellow flame; she flowered in blossoms red; she flowed into a foaming wave; she stood monadnoc's head. thorough a thousand voices • spoke the universal dame: “who telleth one of my meanings, ls master of all i am.” 14 e a c h and a ll. little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, of thee from the hill-top looking down; the heifer that lows in the upland farm, far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; the sexton, tolling his bell at noon, deems not that great napoleon stops his horse, and lists with delight, whilst his files sweep round yon alpine height; not knowest thou what argument thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. all are needed by each one; nothing is fair or good alone. i thought the sparrow's note from heaven, singing at dawn on the alder bough; i brought him home, in his nest, at even; he sings the song, but it pleases not now, each and all. 15 for i did not bring home the river and sky; — he sang to my ear, – they sang to my eye. the delicate shells lay on the shore; the bubbles of the latest wave fresh pearls to their enamel gave; and the bellowing of the savage sea greeted their safe escape to me. i wiped away the weeds and foam, i fetched my sea-born treasures home; but the poor, unsightly, noisome things had left their beauty on the shore, with the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar. the lover watched his graceful maid, as 'mid the virgin train she strayed, nor knew her beauty's best attire was woven still by the snow-white choir. at last she came to his hermitage, like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; — the gay enchantment was undone, a gentle wife, but fairy none. then i said, ‘i covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; each and all. i leave it behind with the games of youth.”— as i spoke, beneath my feet the ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, running over the club-moss burrs; i inhaled the violet's breath; around me stood the oaks and firs; pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground, over me soared the eternal sky, full of light and of deity; again i saw, again i heard, the rolling river, the morning bird;— beauty through my senses stole; i yielded myself to the perfect whole. 17 t h e p r o b l e m. * i like a church; i like a cowl ; i love a prophet of the soul; and on my heart monastic aisles fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; yet not for all his faith can see would i that cowled churchman be. why should the vest on him allure, which i could not on me endure ? not from a vain or shallow thought his awful jove young phidias brought; never from lips of cunning fell the thrilling delphic oracle; out from the heart of nature rolled the burdens of the bible old; 2 18 the problem. the litanies of nations came, like the volcano's tongue of flame, up from the burning core below, the canticles of love and woe ; the hand that rounded peter's dome, and groined the aisles of christian rome, wrought in a sad sincerity; himself from god he could not free; he builded better than he knew ; — the conscious stone to beauty grew. know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest of leaves, and feathers from her breast ! or how the fish outbuilt her shell, painting with morn each annual cell? or how the sacred pine-tree adds to her old leaves new myriads? such and so grew these holy piles, whilst love and terror laid the tiles. earth proudly wears the parthenon, as the best gem upon her zone; the problem. 19 and morning opes with haste her lids, to gaze upon the pyramids; o'er england's abbeys bends the sky, as on its friends, with kindred eye; for, out of thought's interior sphere, these wonders rose to upper air; and nature gladly gave them place, adopted them into her race, and granted them an equal date with andes and with ararat. these temples grew as grows the grass; art might obey, but not surpass. the passive master lent his hand to the vast soul that o'er him planned; and the same power that reared the shrine, bestrode the tribes that knelt within. ever the fiery pentecost girds with one flame the countless host, trances the heart through chanting choirs, and through the priest the mind inspires. 20 the problem. the word unto the prophet spoken was writ on tables yet unbroken ; the word by seers or sibyls told, in groves of oak, or fanes of gold, still floats upon the morning wind, still whispers to the willing mind. one accent of the holy ghost the heedless world hath never lost. i know what say the fathers wise, – the book itself before me lies, old chrysostom, best augustine, and he who blent both in his line, the younger golden lips or mines, taylor, the shakspeare of divines. his words are music in my ear, i see his cowled portrait dear; and yet, for all his faith could see, i would not the good bishop be. 21 to r. h. e. a. thee, dear friend, a brother soothes, not with flatteries, but truths, which tarnish not, but purify to light which dims the morning's eye. i have come from the spring-woods, from the fragrant solitudes;– listen what the poplar-tree and murmuring waters counselled me. if with love thy heart has burned; if thy love is unreturned; hide thy grief within thy breast, though it tear thee unexpressed; for when love has once departed from the eyes of the false-hearted, to rhea. and one by one has torn off quite the bandages of purple light; though thou wert the loveliest form the soul had ever dressed, thou shalt seem, in each reply, a vixen to his altered eye; thy softest pleadings seem too bold, thy praying lute will seem to scold; though thou kept the straightest road, yet thou errest far and broad. but thou shalt do as do the gods in their cloudless periods; for of this lore be thou sure, — though thou forget, the gods, secure, forget never their command, but make the statute of this land. as they lead, so follow all, ever have done, ever shall. warning to the blind and deaf, 'tis written on the iron leaf, to rhea. 23 who drinks of cupid’s nectar cup loveth downward, and not up ; therefore, who loves, of gods or men, shall not by the same be loved again; his sweetheart's idolatry falls, in turn, a new degree. when a god is once beguiled by beauty of a mortal child, and by her radiant youth delighted, he is not fooled, but warily knoweth his love shall never be requited. and thus the wise immortal doeth. — 'tis his study and delight to bless that creature day and night; from all evils to defend her; in her lap to pour all splendor; to ransack earth for riches rare, and fetch her stars to deck her hair : he mixes music with her thoughts, and saddens her with heavenly doubts: all grace, all good his great heart knows, profuse in love, the king bestows: 24 to rhea. saying, “hearken' earth, sea, airl this monument of my despair build i to the all-good, all-fair. not for a private good, but i, from my beatitude, albeit scorned as none was scorned, adorn her as was none adorned. i make this maiden an ensample to nature, through her kingdoms ample, whereby to model newer races, statelier forms, and fairer faces; to carry man to new degrees of power, and of comeliness. these presents be the hostages which i pawn for my release. see to thyself, o universe thou art better, and not worse.” – and the god, having given all, is freed forever from his thrall. t h e wis it. askest, ‘how long thou shalt stay,’ devastator of the day ? know, each substance, and relation, thorough nature's operation, hath its unit, bound, and metre; and every new compound is some product and repeater, — product of the early found. but the unit of the visit, the encounter of the wise, – say, what other metre is it than the meeting of the eyes? nature poureth into nature through the channels of that feature. riding on the ray of sight, more fleet than waves or whirlwinds go, 26 the visit. or for service, or delight, hearts to hearts their meaning show, sum their long experience, and import intelligence. single look has drained the breast; single moment years confessed. the duration of a glance is the term of convenance, and, though thy rede be church or state, frugal multiples of that. speeding saturn cannot halt; linger, — thou shalt rue the fault; if love his moment overstay, hatred's swift repulsions play. 27 u r. i e l. it fell in the ancient periods, which the brooding soul surveys, or ever the wild time coined itself into calendar months and days. this was the lapse of uriel, which in paradise befell. once, among the pleiads walking, said overheard the young gods talking; and the treason, too long pent, to his ears was evident. the young deities discussed laws of form, and metre just, orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, what subsisteth, and what seems. 28 uriel. one, with low tones that decide, and doubt and reverend use defied, with a look that solved the sphere, and stirred the devils everywhere, gave his sentiment divine against the being of a line. ‘line in nature is not found ; unit and universe are round; in vain produced, all rays return; evil will bless, and ice will burn.' as uriel spoke with piercing eye, a shudder ran around the sky; the stern old war-gods shook their heads; the seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds; seemed to the holy festival the rash word boded ill to all; the balance-beam of fate was bent; the bounds of good and ill were rent; strong hades could not keep his own, but all slid to confusion. a sad self-knowledge, withering, fell on the beauty of uriel; uriel. 29 in heaven once eminent, the god withdrew, that hour, into his cloud; whether doomed to long gyration in the sea of generation, or by knowledge grown too bright to hit the nerve of feebler sight. straightway, a forgetting wind stole over the celestial kind, and their lips the secret kept, if in ashes the fire-seed slept. but now and then, truth-speaking things shamed the angels' veiling wings; and, shrilling from the solar course, or from fruit of chemic force, procession of a soul in matter, or the speeding change of water, or out of the good of evil born, came uriel's voice of cherub scorn, and a blush tinged the upper sky, and the gods shook, they knew not why. 30 t h e w or l d – s o u l. thanks to the morning light, thanks to the foaming sea, to the uplands of new hampshire, to the green-haired forest free; thanks to each man of courage, to the maids of holy mind; to the boy with his games undaunted, who never looks behind. cities of proud hotels, houses of rich and great, vice nestles in your chambers, beneath your roofs of slate. the world-soul. 31 it cannot conquer folly, time-and-space-conquering steam and the light-outspeeding telegraph bears nothing on its beam. the politics are base; the letters do not cheer; and 'tis far in the deeps of history, the voice that speaketh clear. trade and the streets ensnare us, our bodies are weak and worn; we plot and corrupt each other, and we despoil the unborn. yet there in the parlor sits some figure of noble guise, – our angel, in a stranger's form, or woman's pleading eyes; or only a flashing sunbeam in at the window-pane; or music pours on mortals its beautiful disdain. the world-soul. the inevitable morning finds them who in cellars be ; and be sure the all-loving nature will smile in a factory. yon ridge of purple landscape, yon sky between the walls, hold all the hidden wonders, in scanty intervals. alas ! the sprite that haunts us deceives our rash desire; it whispers of the glorious gods, and leaves us in the mire. we cannot learn the cipher that's writ upon our cell; stars help us by a mystery which we could never spell. if but one hero knew it, the world would blush in flame; the sage, till he hit the secret, would hang his head for shame. the world-soul. but our brothers have not read it, not one has found the key; and henceforth we are comforted, we are but such as they. still, still the secret presses, the nearing clouds draw down; the crimson morning flames into the fopperies of the town. within, without the idle earth, stars weave eternal rings; the sun himself shines heartily, and shares the joy he brings. and what if trade sow cities like shells along the shore, and thatch with towns the prairie broad, with railways ironed o'er 7 — they are but sailing foam-bells along thought's causing stream, and take their shape and sun-color from him that sends the dream. 3 the world-socil. for destiny does not like to yield to men the helm ; and shoots his thought, by hidden nerves, throughout the solid realm. the patient daemon sits, with roses and a shroud; he has his way, and deals his gifts, – but ours is not allowed. he is no churl nor trifler, and his viceroy is none, – love-without-weakness, – of genius sire and son. and his will is not thwarted; the seeds of land and sea are the atoms of his body bright, and his behest obey. he serveth the servant, the brave he loves amain; he kills the cripple and the sick, and straight begins again. the world-soul. for gods delight in gods, and thrust the weak aside; to him who scorns their charities, their arms fly open wide. when the old world is sterile, and the ages are effete, he will from wrecks and sediment the fairer world complete. he forbids to despair; his cheeks mantle with mirth ; and the unimagined good of men is yeaning at the birth. spring still makes spring in the mind, when sixty years are told; love wakes anew this throbbing heart, and we are never old. over the winter glaciers, i see the summer glow, and, through the wild-piled snowdrift, the warm rosebuds below. 36 a lp h o n s o of cas til e. i, alphonso, live and learn, seeing nature go astern. things deteriorate in kind; lemons run to leaves and rind; meagre crop of figs and limes; shorter days and harder times. flowering april cools and dies in the insufficient skies. imps, at high midsummer, blot half the sun's disk with a spot: 'twill not now avail to tan orange cheek or skin of man. roses bleach, the goats are dry, lisbon quakes, the people cry. yon pale, scrawny fisher fools, gaunt as bitterns in the pools, alphonso of castile. 37 are no brothers of my blood; — they discredit adamhood. eyes of gods ! ye must have seen, o'er your ramparts as ye lean, the general debility; of genius the sterility; mighty projects countermanded; rash ambition, brokenhanded; puny man and scentless rose tormenting pan to double the dose. rebuild or ruin: either fill of vital force the wasted rill, or tumble all again in heap to weltering chaos and to sleep. say, seigniors, are the old niles dry, which fed the veins of earth and sky, that mortals miss the loyal heats, which drove them erst to social feats; now, to a savage selfness grown, think nature barely serves for one; alphonso of castile. with science poorly mask their hurt, and vex the gods with question pert, immensely curious whether you still are rulers, or mildew masters, i am in pain with you; masters, i'll be plain with you; in my palace of castile, i, a king, for kings can feel. there my thoughts the matter roll, and solve and oft resolve the whole. and, for i’m styled alphonse the wise, ye shall not fail for sound advice. before ye want a drop of rain, hear the sentiment of spain. you have tried famine: no more try it; ply us now with a full diet; teach your pupils now with plenty; for one sun supply us twenty. i have thought it thoroughly over, — state of hermit, state of lover; alphonso of castile. 39 we must have society, we cannot spare variety. hear you, then, celestial fellows fits not to be overzealous; steads not to work on the clean jump, nor wine nor brains perpetual pump. men and gods are too extense; could you slacken and condense 7 your rank overgrowths reduce till your kinds abound with juice earth, crowded, cries, ‘too many men l' my counsel is, kill nine in ten, and bestow the shares of all on the remnant decimal. add their nine lives to this cat; stuff their nine brains in his hat; make his frame and forces square with the labors he must dare; thatch his flesh, and even his years with the marble which he rears. there, growing slowly old at ease, no faster than his planted trees, 40 alphonso of castile. he may, by warrant of his age, in schemes of broader scope engage. so shall ye have a man of the sphere, fit to grace the solar year. 41 m it h r id a t e s. i cannot spare water or wine, tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; from the earth-poles to the line, all between that works or grows, every thing is kin of mine. give me agates for my meat; give me cantharids to eat; from air and ocean bring me foods, from all zones and altitudes; — from all natures, sharp and slimy, salt and basalt, wild and tame: tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, bird, and reptile, be my game. 42 mithridates. ivy for my fillet band; blinding dog-wood in my hand; hemlock for my sherbet cull me, and the prussic juice to lull me; swing me in the upas boughs, vampyre-fanned, when i carouse. too long shut in strait and few, thinly dieted on dew, i will use the world, and sift it, to a thousand humors shift it, as you spin a cherry. o doleful ghosts, and goblins merry o all you virtues, methods, mights, means, appliances, delights, reputed wrongs and braggart rights, smug routine, and things allowed, minorities, things under cloud 1 hither take me, use me, fill me, wein and artery, though ye kill me ! god i will not be an owl, but sun me in the capitol. 43 to j. w. set not thy foot on graves: hear what wine and rosés say the mountain chase, the summer waves, the crowded town, thy feet may well delay. set not thy foot on graves; nor seek to unwind the shroud which charitable time and nature have allowed to wrap the errors of a sage sublime. set not thy foot on graves: care not to strip the dead of his sad ornament, his myrrh, and wine, and rings, 44 to j. w. his sheet of lead, and trophies buried : go, get them where he earned them when alive ; . as resolutely dig or dive. life is too short to waste in critic peep or cynic bark, quarrel or reprimand : 'twill soon be dark ; up, heed thine own aim, and god speed the mark fa t e. that you are fair or wise is vain, or strofig, or rich, or generous; you must have also the untaught strain that sheds beauty on the rose. there is a melody born of melody, which melts the world into a sea: toil could never compass it; art its height could never hit; it came never out of wit ; but a music music-born well may jove and juno scorn. thy beauty, if it lack the fire which drives me mad with sweet desire, what boots it ! what the soldier's mail, unless he conquer and prevail? 46 fate. what all the goods thy pride which lift, if thou pine for another's gift alas! that one is born in blight, victim of perpetual slight: when thou lookest on his face, thy heart saith, ‘brother, go thy ways! none shall ask thee what thou doest, or care a rush for what thou knowest, or listen when thou repliest, or remember where thou liest, or how thy supper is sodden;’ and another is born to make the sun forgotten. surely he carries a talisman under his tongue; broad are his shoulders and strong; and his eye is scornful, threatening, and young. i hold it of little matter whether your jewel be of pure water, a rose diamond or a white, but whether it dazzle me with light. fate. 47 i care not how you are dressed, in the coarsest or in the best; nor whether your name is base or brave; nor for the fashion of your behavior; but whether you charm me, bid my bread feed and my fire warm me, and dress up nature in your favor one thing is forever good; that one thing is success, – dear to the eumenides, and to all the heavenly brood. who bides at home, nor looks abroad, carries the eagles, and masters the sword. g u y. mortal mixed of middle clay, attempered to the night and day, interchangeable with things, needs no amulets nor rings. guy possessed the talisman that all things from him began; and as, of old, polycrates chained the sunshine and the breeze, so did guy betimes discover fortune was his guard and lover; in strange junctures, felt, with awe, his own symmetry with law; so that no mixture could withstand the virtue of his lucky hand. he gold or jewel could not lose, nor not receive his ample dues. guy. 49 in the street, if he turned round, his eye the eye ’twas seeking found. it seemed his genius discreet worked on the maker's own receipt, and made each tide and element stewards of stipend and of rent; so that the common waters fell as costly wine into his well. he had so sped his wise affairs that he caught nature in his snares: early or late, the falling rain arrived in time to swell his grain; stream could not so perversely wind but corn of guy's was there to grind; the siroc found it on its way, to speed his sails, to dry his hay; and the world's sun seemed to rise, to drudge all day for guy the wise. in his rich nurseries, timely skill strong crab with nobler blood did fill; the zephyr in his garden rolled from plum-trees vegetable gold; 4 50 guy. and all the hours of the year with their own harvest honored were. there was no frost but welcome came, nor freshet, nor midsummer flame. belonged to wind and world the toil and venture, and to guy the oil. 51 t act. what boots it, thy virtue, what profit thy parts, while one thing thou lackest, — the art of all arts : the only credentials, passport to success; opens castle and parlor, — address, man, address. the maiden in danger was saved by the swain; his stout arm restored her to broadway again. 52 tact. the maid would reward him, gay company come; they laugh, she laughs with them; he is moonstruck and dumb. this clinches the bargain; sails out of the bay; gets the vote in the senate, spite of webster and clay; has for genius no mercy, for speeches no heed; it lurks in the eyebeam, it leaps to its deed. church, market, and tavern, bed and board, it will sway. it has no to-morrow ; it ends with to-day. 53 h a m a t r. e. y.a. minott, lee, willard, hosmer, meriam, flint possessed the land which rendered to their toil hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood. each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, saying, ‘’tis mine, my children's, and my name's : how sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees | how graceful climb those shadows on my hill ! i fancy these pure waters and the flags know me, as does my dog : we sympathize; and, i affirm, my actions smack of the soil.’ where are these men 7 asleep beneath their grounds; and strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet clear of the grave. 54 hamatreya. they added ridge to valley, brook to pond, and sighed for all that bounded their domain. ‘this suits me for a pasture; that's my park; we must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge, and misty lowland, where to go for peat. the land is well, lies fairly to the south. 'tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back, to find the sitfast acres where you left them.' ah! the hot owner sees not death, who adds him to his land, a lump of mould the more. hear what the earth says: — e a r t h – s o n g . ‘mine and yours; mine, not yours. earth endures; stars abide — shine down in the old sea; old are the shores; but where are old men 7 hamatreya. i who have seen much, such have i never seen. “the lawyer's deed ran sure, in tail, to them, and to their heirs who shall succeed, without fail, forevermore. ‘here is the land, shaggy with wood, with its old valley, mound, and flood. but the heritors 7 fled like the flood's foam, the lawyer, and the laws, and the kingdom, clean swept herefrom. 56 hamatreya. “they called me theirs, who so controlled me; yet every one wished to stay, and is gone. how am i theirs, if they cannot hold me, but i hold them 7” when i heard the earth-song, i was no longer brave; my avarice cooled like lust in the chill of the grave. 57 g o o d – by e. good-bye, proud world! i'm going home : thou art not my friend, and i’m not thine. long through thy weary crowds i roam; a river-ark on the ocean brine, long i’ve been tossed like the driven foam; but now, proud world ! i’m going home. good-bye to flattery's fawning face; to grandeur with his wise grimace; to upstart wealth's averted eye; to supple office, low and high; to crowded halls, to court and street; to frozen hearts and hasting feet; to those who go, and those who come; good-bye, proud world ! i'm going home. good-bye. i am going to my own hearth-stone, bosomed in yon green hills alone, – a secret nook in a pleasant land, whose groves the frolic fairies planned; where arches green, the livelong day, echo the blackbird's roundelay, and vulgar feet have never trod a spot that is sacred to thought and god. o, when i am safe in my sylvan home, i tread on the pride of greece and rome; and when i am stretched beneath the pines, where the evening star so holy shines, i laugh at the lore and the pride of man, at the sophist schools, and the learned clan; for what are they all, in their high conceit, when man in the bush with god may meet 7 59 t h e r h od or a : on being asked, whence is the flow er 2 in may, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, i found the fresh rhodora in the woods, spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, to please the desert and the sluggish brook. the purple petals, fallen in the pool, made the black water with their beauty gay : here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, and court the flower that cheapens his array. rhodora! if the sages ask thee why this charm is wasted on the earth and sky, tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being: why thou wert there, o rival of the rose! i never thought to ask, i never knew; but, in my simple ignorance, suppose the self-same power that brought me there brought you. 60 t h e h u m b l e – b e e. burly, dozing, humble-bee, where thou art is clime for me. let them sail for porto rique, far-off heats through seas to seek; i will follow thee alone, thou animated torrid-zone ! zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, let me chase thy waving lines; keep me nearer, me thy hearer, singing over shrubs and vines. insect lover of the sun, joy of thy dominion 1 sailor of the atmosphere; swimmer through the waves of air; the humble-bee. 61 voyager of light and noon; epicurean of june; wait, i prithee, till i come within earshot of thy hum,all without is martyrdom. when the south wind, in may days, with a net of shining haze silvers the horizon wall, and, with softness touching all, tints the human countenance with a color of romance, and, infusing subtle heats, turns the sod to violets, thou, in sunny solitudes, rover of the underwoods, the green silence dost displace with thy mellow, breezy bass. hot midsummer's petted crone, sweet to me thy drowsy tone 62 the humible-bee. tells of countless sunny hours, long days, and solid banks of flowers; of gulfs of sweetness without bound in indian wildernesses found; of syrian peace, immortal leisure, firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. aught unsavory or unclean hath my insect never seen; but violets and bilberry bells, maple-sap, and daffodels, grass with green flag half-mast high, succory to match the sky, columbine with horn of honey, scented fern, and agrimony, clover, catchfly, adder's tongue, and brier roses, dwelt among ; all beside was unknown waste, all was picture as he passed. wiser far than human seer, yellow-breeched philosopher the humble-bee. seeing only what is fair, sipping only what is sweet, thou dost mock at fate and care, leave the chaff, and take the wheat. when the fierce north-western blast cools sea and land so far and fast, thou already slumberest deep; woe and want thou canst outsleep; want and woe, which torture us, thy sleep makes ridiculous. 64 b e r. r. y in g. ‘may be true what i had heard, – earth's a howling wilderness, truculent with fraud and force,’ said i, strolling through the pastures, and along the river-side. caught among the blackberry vines, feeding on the ethiops sweet, pleasant fancies overtook me. i said, ‘what influence me preferred, elect, to dreams thus beautiful ?” the vines replied, “and didst thou deem no wisdom to our berries went?” 65 t h e s n o w – s t o r. m. announced by all the trumpets of the sky, arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, seems nowhere to alight: the whited air hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, and veils the farm-house at the garden's end. the sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit around the radiant fireplace, enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm. come see the north wind's masonry. out of an unseen quarry evermore furnished with tile, the fierce artificer curves his white bastions with projected roof round every windward stake, or tree, or door. speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 5 º 66 the snow-storm. so fanciful, so savage, nought cares he for number or proportion. mockingly, on coop or kennel he hangs parian wreaths; a swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate, a tapering turret overtops the work. and when his hours are numbered, and the world is all his own, retiring, as he were not, leaves, when the sun appears, astonished art to mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, the frolic architecture of the snow. 67 w ood not e s. 1. for this present, hard is the fortune of the bard, born out of time; all his accomplishment, from nature's utmost treasure spent, booteth not him. when the pine tosses its cones to the song of its waterfall tones, he speeds to the woodland walks, to birds and trees he talks : caesar of his leafy rome, there the poet is at home. he goes to the river-side, – not hook nor line hath he: woodnotes. he stands in the meadows wide, – nor gun nor scythe to see; with none has he to do, and none seek him, nor men below, nor spirits dim. sure some god his eye enchants: what he knows nobody wants. in the wood he travels glad, without better fortune had, melancholy without bad. planter of celestial plants, 2 what he knows nobody wants; ~\ what he knows he hides, not vaunts. knowledge this man prizes best seems fantastic to the rest: pondering shadows, colors, clouds, grass-buds, and caterpillar-shrouds, boughs on which the wild bees settle, tints that spot the violets' petal, why nature loves the number five, and why the star-form she repeats: woodnotes. 69 lover of all things alive, wonderer at all he meets, wonderer chiefly at himself, who can tell him what he is 7 or how meet in human elf coming and past eternities 7 2. and such i knew, a forest seer, a minstrel of the natural year, foreteller of the vernal ides, wise harbinger of spheres and tides, a lover true, who knew by heart each joy the mountain dales impart; it seemed that nature could not raise a plant in any secret place, in quaking bog, on snowy hill, beneath the grass that shades the rill, under the snow, between the rocks, in damp fields known to bird and fox but he would come in the very hour it opened in its virgin bower, 70 woodnotes. as if a sunbeam showed the place, and tell its long-descended race. it seemed as if the breezes brought him; it seemed as if the sparrows taught him; as if by secret sight he knew where, in far fields, the orchis grew. many haps fall in the field seldom seen by wishful eyes, but all her shows did nature yield, to please and win this pilgrim wise. he saw the partridge drum in the woods; he heard the woodcock's evening hymn; he found the tawny thrush's broods; and the shy hawk did wait for him; what others did at distance hear, and guessed within the thicket's gloom, was showed to this philosopher, and at his bidding seemed to come. 3. in unploughed maine he sought the lumberers' gang, where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; woodnotes. 71 he trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon the all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, and up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. he saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, the slight linnaea hang its twin-born heads, and blessed the monument of the man of flowers, which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. he heard, when in the grove, at intervals, with sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, — one crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, declares the close of its green century. low lies the plant to whose creation went sweet influence from every element; whose living towers the years conspired to build, whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. through these green tents, by eldest nature dressed, he roamed, content alike with man and beast. where darkness found him he lay glad at night; there the red morning touched him with its light. three moons his great heart him a hermit made, so long he roved at will the boundless shade. 72 woodnotes. the timid it concerns to ask their way, and fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, to make no step until the event is known, and ills to come as evils past bemoan. not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps to spy what danger on his pathway creeps; go where he will, the wise man is at home, his hearth the earth, – his hall the azure dome; where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, by god's own light illumined and foreshowed. 4. 'twas one of the charmed days, when the genius of god doth flow, the wind may alter twenty ways, a tempest cannot blow; it may blow north, it still is warm; or south, it still is clear; or east, it smells like a clover-farm; or west, no thunder fear. the musing peasant lowly great beside the forest water sate ; woodnotes. 73 the rope-like pine roots crosswise grown composed the network of his throne; the wide lake, edged with sand and grass, was burnished to a floor of glass, painted with shadows green and proud of the tree and of the cloud. he was the heart of all the scene; on him the sun looked more serene ; to hill and cloud his face was known, – it seemed the likeness of their own; they knew by secret sympathy the public child of earth and sky. ‘you ask,’ he said, ‘what guide me through trackless thickets led, through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide 1 i found the water's bed. the watercourses were my guide; i travelled grateful by their side, or through their channel dry; they led me through the thicket damp, through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, 74 woodnotes. through beds of granite cut my road, and their resistless friendship showed; the falling waters led me, the foodful waters fed me, and brought me to the lowest land, unerring to the ocean sand. the moss upon the forest bark was polestar when the night was dark; the purple berries in the wood supplied me necessary food; for nature ever faithful is to such as trust her faithfulness. when the forest shall mislead me, when the night and morning lie, when sea and land refuse to feed me, 'twill be time enough to die; then will yet my mother yield a pillow in her greenest field, nor the june flowers scorn to cover the clay of their departed lover. 75 wood not e s. ii. as sunbeams stream through liberal space, and nothing jostle or displace, so waved the pine-tree through my thought, and fanned the dreams it never brought. ‘whether is better the gift or the donor 7 come to me,’ quoth the pine-tree, ‘i am the giver of honor. my garden is the cloven rock, and my manure the snow; and drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, in summer's scorching glow. ancient or curious, who knoweth aught of us? 76 woodnotes. old as jove, old as love, who of me tells the pedigree? only the mountains old, only the waters cold, only moon and star my coevals are. ere the first fowl sung my relenting boughs among; ere adam wived, ere adam lived, ere the duck dived, ere the bees hived, ere the lion roared, ere the eagle soared, light and heat, land and sea, spake unto the oldest tree. glad in the sweet and secret aid which matter unto matter paid, the water flowed, the breezes fanned, the tree confined the roving sand, woodnotes. 77 the sunbeam gave me to the sight, the tree adorned the formless light, and once again o'er the grave of men we shall talk to each other again of the old age behind, of the time out of mind, which shall come again. ‘whether is better the gift or the donor come to me,’ quoth the pine-tree, ‘i am the giver of honor. he is great who can live by me. the rough and bearded forester is better than the lord; god fills the scrip and canister, sin piles the loaded board. the lord is the peasant that was, the peasant the lord that shall be; the lord is hay, the peasant grass, one dry, and one the living tree. 78 woodnotes. genius with my boughs shall flourish, want and cold our roots shall nourish. who liveth by the ragged pine foundeth a heroic line; who liveth in the palace hall waneth fast and spendeth all. he goes to my savage haunts, with his chariot and his care; my twilight realm he disenchants, and finds his prison there. ‘what prizes the town and the tower? only what the pine-tree yields; sinew that subdued the fields; the wild-eyed boy, who in the woods chants his hymn to hills and floods, whom the city's poisoning spleen made not pale, or fat, or lean; whom the rain and the wind purgeth, whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth, in whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth, in whose feet the lion rusheth, woodnotes. 79 iron arms, and iron mould, that know not fear, fatigue, or cold. i give my rafters to his boat, my billets to his boiler's throat; and i will swim the ancient sea, to float my child to victory, and grant to dwellers with the pine dominion o'er the palm and vine. westward i ope the forest gates, the train along the railroad skates; it leaves the land behind like ages past, the foreland flows to it in river fast; missouri i have made a mart, i teach iowa saxon art. who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, unnerves his strength, invites his end. cut a bough from my parent stem, and dip it in thy porcelain vase; a little while each russet gem will swell and rise with wonted grace; but when it seeks enlarged supplies, the orphan of the forest dies. woodnotes. whoso walketh in solitude, and inhabiteth the wood, choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, before the money-loving herd, into that forester shall pass, from these companions, power and grace. ) clean shall he be, without, within, from the old adhering sin. love shall he, but not adulate the all-fair, the all-embracing fate; all ill dissolving in the light of his triumphant piercing sight. not vain, sour, nor frivolous; not mad, athirst, nor garrulous; grave, chaste, contented, though retired, and of all other men desired. on him the light of star and moon shall fall with purer radiance down; all constellations of the sky shed their virtue through his eye. him nature giveth for defence his formidable innocence; woodnotes. 81 the mounting sap, the shells, the sea, all spheres, all stones, his helpers be ; he shall never be old ; nor his fate shall be foretold ; he shall see the speeding year, without wailing, without fear; he shall be happy in his love, like to like shall joyful prove; he shall be happy whilst he woos, muse-born, a daughter of the muse. but if with gold she bind her hair, and deck her breast with diamond, take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear, though thou lie alone on the ground. the robe of silk in which she shines, it was woven of many sins; and the shreds which she sheds in the wearing of the same, shall be grief on grief, and shame on shame. woodnotes. “heed the old oracles, ponder my spells; song wakes in my pinnacles when the wind swells. soundeth the prophetic wind, the shadows, shake on the rock behind, and the countless leaves of the pine are strings tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. hearken hearken if thou wouldst know the mystic song chanted when the sphere was young. aloft, abroad, the papan swells; o wise man' hear'st thou half it tells 7 o wise man hear'st thou the least part 'tis the chronicle of art. to the open ear it sings the early genesis of things, of tendency through endless ages, of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, of rounded worlds, of space and time, of the old flood's subsiding slime, woodnotes. 83 of chemic matter, force, and form, of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm : the rushing metamorphosis, dissolving all that fixture is, melts things that be to things that seem, and solid nature to a dream. o, listen to the undersong — the ever old, the ever young; and, far within those cadent pauses, the chorus of the ancient causes 1 delights the dreadful destiny to fling his voice into the tree, and shock thy weak ear with a note breathed from the everlasting throat. in music he repeats the pang whence the fair flock of nature sprang. o mortall thy ears are stones; these echoes are laden with tones which only the pure can hear; thou canst not catch what they recite of fate and will, of want and right, woodnotes. of man to come, of human life, of death, and fortune, growth, and strife.’ once again the pine-tree sung : — ‘speak not thy speech my boughs annong; put off thy years, wash in the breeze; my hours are peaceful centuries. talk no more with feeble tongue; no more the fool of space and time, come weave with mine a nobler rhyme. only thy americans can read thy line, can meet thy glance, but the runes that i rehearse understands the universe; the least breath my boughs which tossed brings again the pentecost, to every soul it soundeth clear in a voice of solemn cheer, — “am i not thine? are not these thine?” and they reply, “forever mine !” my branches speak italian, english, german, basque, castilian, woodnotes. mountain speech to highlanders, ocean tongues to islanders, to fin, and lap, and swart malay, to each his bosom secret say. come learn with me the fatal song which knits the world in music strong, whereto every bosom dances, kindled with courageous fancies. come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, of things with things, of times with times, primal chimes of sun and shade, of sound and echo, man and maid, the land reflected in the flood, body with shadow still pursued. for nature beats in perfect tune, and rounds with rhyme her every rune, whether she work in land or sea, or hide underground her alchemy. thou canst not wave thy staff in air, or dip thy paddle in the lake, but it carves the bow of beauty there, and the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. 86 woodnotes. the wood is wiser far than thou; the wood and wave each other know. not unrelated, unaffied, but to each thought and thing allied, is perfect nature's every part, rooted in the mighty heart. but thou, poor child ! unbound, unrhymed, whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed ! whence, o thou orphan and defrauded ? is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ? who thee divorced, deceived, and left thee of thy faith who hath bereft, and torn the ensigns from thy brow, and sunk the immortal eye so low ! thy cheek too white, thy form too slender, thy gait too slow, thy habits tender for royal man; — they thee confess an exile from the wilderness, – the hills where health with health agrees, and the wise soul expels disease. hark! in thy ear i will tell the sign by which thy hurt thou may’st divine. woodnotes. 87 when thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, or see the wide shore from thy skiff, to thee the horizon shall express only emptiness and emptiness; there is no man of nature's worth in the circle of the earth; and to thine eye the vast skies fall, dire and satirical, on clucking hens, and prating fools, on thieves, on drudges, and on dolls. and thou shalt say to the most high, “godhead all this astronomy, and fate, and practice, and invention, strong art, and beautiful pretension, this radiant pomp of sun and star, throes that were, and worlds that are, behold ! were in vain and in vain; — it cannot be, – i will look again; surely now will the curtain rise, and earth's fit tenant me surprise; — but the curtain doth not rise, woodnotes. and nature has miscarried wholly into failure, into folly.” ‘alas! thine is the bankruptcy, blessed nature so to see. come, lay thee in my soothing shade, and heal the hurts which sin has made. i will teach the bright parable older than time, things undeclarable, visions sublime. i see thee in the crowd alone; i will be thy companion. let thy friends be as the dead in doom, and build to them a final tomb ; let the starred shade that nightly falls still celebrate their funerals, and the bell of beetle and of bee knell their melodious memory. behind thee leave thy merchandise, thy churches, and thy charities; woodnotes. 89 and leave thy peacock wit behind; enough for thee the primal mind that flows in streams, that breathes in wind. leave all thy pedant lore apart; god hid the whole world in thy heart. love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, and gives them all who all renounce. the rain comes when the wind calls; the river knows the way to the sea; without a pilot it runs and falls, blessing all lands with its charity; the sea tosses and foams to find its way up to the cloud and wind; the shadow sits close to the flying ball; the date fails not on the palm-tree tall; and thou, go burn thy wormy pages, – shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. oft didst thou thread the woods in vain to find what bird had piped the strain; – seek not, and the little eremite flies gayly forth and sings in sight. 90 woodnotes. * hearken once more i will tell thee the mundane lore. older am i than thy numbers wot; change i may, but i pass not. hitherto all things fast abide, and anchored in the tempest ride. trenchant time behoves to hurry all to yean and all to bury: all the forms are fugitive, but the substances survive. ever fresh the broad creation, a divine improvisation, from the heart of god proceeds, a single will, a million deeds. once slept the world an egg of stone, and pulse, and sound, and light was none; and god said, “throb!” and there was motion, and the vast mass became vast ocean. onward and on, the eternal pan, who layeth the world's incessant plan, halteth never in one shape, but forever doth escape, woodnotes. 91 like wave or flame, into new forms of gem, and air, of plants, and worms. i, that to-day am a pine, yesterday was a bundle of grass. he is free and libertine, pouring of his power the wine to every age, to every race; unto every race and age he emptieth the beverage; unto each, and unto all, maker and original. the world is the ring of his spells, and the play of his miracles. as he giveth to all to drink, thus or thus they are and think. he giveth little or giveth much, to make them several or such. with one drop sheds form and feature; with the second a special nature; the third adds heat's indulgent spark; the fourth gives light which eats the dark ; woodnotes. in the fifth drop himself he flings, and conscious law is king of kings. pleaseth him, the eternal child, to play his sweet will, glad and wild; as the bee through the garden ranges, from world to world the godhead changes; as the sheep go feeding in the waste, from form to form he maketh haste; this vault which glows immense with light is the inn where he lodges for a night. what recks such traveller if the bowers which bloom and fade like meadow flowers a bunch of fragrant lilies be, or the stars of eternity? alike to him the better, the worse, — the glowing angel, the outcast corse. thou metest him by centuries, and lo! he passes like the breeze; thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, he hides in pure transparency; thou askest in fountains and in fires, he is the essence that inquires. woodnotes. 93 he is the axis of the star; he is the sparkle of the spar; he is the heart of every creature; he is the meaning of each feature; and his mind is the sky, than all it holds more deep, more high.' 94 m o n a d no c. thousand minstrels woke within me, ‘our music's in the hills;” — gayest pictures rose to win me, leopard-colored rills. “up!—if thou knew'st who calls to twilight parks of beech and pine, high over the river intervals, above the ploughman's highest line, over the owner's farthest walls! up! where the airy citadel o'erlooks the surging landscape's swell ! let not unto the stones the day her lily and rose, her sea and land display. read the celestial sign lo! the south answers to the north; bookworm, break this sloth urbane; monadnoc. 95 a greater spirit bids thee forth than the gray dreams which thee detain. mark how the climbing oreads beckon thee to their arcades 1 youth, for a moment free as they, teach thy feet to feel the ground, ere yet arrives the wintry day when time thy feet has bound. accept the bounty of thy birth, taste the lordship of the earth.” i heard, and i obeyed, assured that he who made the claim, well known, but loving not a name, was not to be gainsaid. ere yet the summoning voice was still, i turned to cheshire's haughty hill. from the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed, like ample banner flung abroad to all the dwellers in the plains monadnoc. round about, a hundred miles, with invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles. in his own loom's garment dressed, by his own bounty blessed, fast abides this constant giver, pouring many a cheerful river; to far eyes, an aerial isle unploughed, which finer spirits pile, which morn and crimson evening paint for bard, for lover, and for saint; the country's core, inspirer, prophet evermore; pillar which god aloft had set 'so that men might it not forget; it should be their life's ornament, and mix itself with each event; their calendar and dial, barometer and chemic phial, garden of berries, perch of birds, pasture of pool-haunting herds, monadnoc. 97 graced by each change of sum untold, earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold. the titan heeds his own affairs, wide rents and high alliance shares; mysteries of color daily laid by the great sun in light and shade; and sweet varieties of chance and the mystic seasons' dance; and thief-like step of liberal hours thawing snow-drift into flowers. o, wondrous craft of plant and stone by eldest science done and shown 1. ‘happy,” i said, ‘whose home is here ! fair fortunes to the mountaineer boon nature to his poorest shed has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.’ intent, i searched the region round, and in low hut my monarch found he was no eagle, and no earl; — alas! my foundling was a churl, 7 98 mon adnoc. with heart of cat and eyes of bug, dull victim of his pipe and mug. wo is me for my hope's downfall ! lord l is yon squalid peasant all that this proud nursery could breed for god's vicegerency and stead? time out of mind, this forge of ores; quarry of spars in mountain pores; old cradle, hunting-ground, and bier of wolf and otter, bear and deer; well-built abode of many a race; tower of observance searching space; factory of river and of rain; link in the alps' globe-girding chain; by million changes skilled to tell what in the eternal standeth well, and what obedient nature can; — is this colossal talisman kindly to creature, blood, and kind, and speechless to the master's mind 7 i thought to find the patriots in whom the stock of freedom roots: monadnoc. 99 to myself i of recount the tale of many a famous mount, — wales, scotland, uri, hungary's dells; roys, and scanderbegs, and tells. here nature shall condense her powers, her music, and her meteors, and lifting man to the blue deep where stars their perfect courses keep, like wise preceptor, lure his eye to sound the science of the sky, and carry learning to its height of untried power and sane delight: the indian cheer, the frosty skies, rear purer wits, inventive eyes, – eyes that frame cities where none be, and hands that stablish what these see; and by the moral of his place hint summits of heroic grace; man in these crags a fastness find to fight pollution of the mind; in the wide thaw and ooze of wrong, adhere like this foundation strong, 100 monadnoc. the insanity of towns to stem with simpleness for stratagem. but if the brave old mould is broke, and end in churls the mountain folk, in tavern cheer and tavern joke, sink, o mountain, in the swamp! hide in thy skies, o sovereign lamp ! perish like leaves, the highland breed no sire survive, no son succeed soft let not the offended muse toil's hard hap with scorn accuse. many hamlets sought i then, many farms of mountain men; x found i not a minstrel seed, but men of bone, and good at need. rallying round a parish steeple nestle warm the highland people, coarse and boisterous, yet mild, strong as giant, slow as child, smoking in a squalid room – where yet the westland breezes come. monadnoc. 101 close hid in those rough guises lurk western magians, – here they work. sweat and season are their arts, their talismans are ploughs and carts; . and well the youngest can command honey from the frozen land; with sweet hay the wild swamp adorn, change the running sand to corn; for wolves and foxes, lowing herds, and for cold mosses, cream and curds; weave wood to canisters and mats; drain sweet maple juice in vats. no bird is safe that cuts the air from their rifle or their snare; no fish, in river or in lake, but their long hands it thence will take; and the country's iron face, like wax, their fashioning skill betrays, to fill the hollows, sink the hills, bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills, and fit the bleak and howling place * for gardens of a finer race. 102 monadnoc. * , the world-soul knows his own affair, forelooking, when he would prepare for the next ages, men of mould well embodied, well ensouled, he cools the present’s fiery glow, sets the life-pulse strong but slow: bitter winds and fasts austere his quarantines and grottos, where he slowly cures decrepit flesh, and brings it infantile and fresh. these exercises are the toys and games with which he breathes his boys: they bide their time, and well can prove, if need were, their line from jove; of the same stuff, and so allayed, as that whereof the sun is made, and of that fibre, quick and strong, whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song. now in sordid weeds they sleep, their secret now in dulness keep ; monadnoc. 103 yet, will you learn our ancient speech, these the masters who can teach. fourscore or a hundred words all their vocal muse affords; these they turn in other fashion than the writer or the parson. i can spare the college bell, and the learned lecture, well; spare the clergy and libraries, institutes and dictionaries, for that hardy english root thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. rude poets of the tavern hearth, squandering your unquoted mirth, which keeps the ground, and never soars, while jake retorts, and reuben roars; tough and screaming, as birch-bark, goes like bullet to its mark; while the solid curse and jeer never balk the waiting ear. to student ears keen relished jokes on truck, and stock, and farming folks,— 104 monadnoc. nought the mountain yields thereof, but savage health and sinews tough. on the summit as i stood, o'er the wide floor of plain and flood seemed to me, the towering hill was not altogether still, but a quiet sense conveyed; if i err not, thus it said : — ‘many feet in summer seek, betimes, my far-appearing peak; in the dreaded winter time, none save dappling shadows climb, under clouds, my lonely head, old as the sun, old almost as the shade. and comest thou to see strange forests and new snow, and tread uplifted land 7 and leavest thou thy lowland race, here amid clouds to stand? and wouldst be mv companion, monadnoc. 105. where i gaze, and shall gaze, when forests fall, and man is gone, over tribes and over times, at the burning lyre, nearing me, with its stars of northern fire, in many a thousand years? “ah! welcome, if thou bring my secret in thy brain ; to mountain-top may muse's wing with good allowance strain. gentle pilgrim, if thou know the gamut old of pan, and how the hills began, the frank blessings of the hill fall on thee, as fall they will. 'tis the law of bush and stone, each can only take his own. 106 monadnoc. & le him heed who can and will; enchantment fixed me here to stand the hurts of time, until in mightier chant i disappear. “if thou trowest how the chemic eddies play, pole to pole, and what they say; and that these gray crags not on crags are hung, but beads are of a rosary on prayer and music strung; and, credulous, through the granite seeming, seest the smile of reason beaming:can thy style-discerning eye the hidden-working builder spy, who builds, yet makes no chips, no.din, with hammer soft as snowflake's flight; — knowest thou this? o pilgrim, wandering not amiss! already my rocks lie light, and soon my cone will spin. monadnoc. 107 ‘for the world was built in order, and the atoms march in tune; rhyme the pipe, and time the warder, cannot forget the sun, the moon. orb and atom forth they prance, when they hear from far the rune; none so backward in the troop, when the music and the dance reach his place and circumstance, but knows the sun-creating sound, and, though a pyramid, will bound. ‘monadnoc is a mountain strong, tall and good my kind among; but well i know, no mountain can measure with a perfect man. for it is on temples writ, adamant is soft to wit: and when the greater comes again with my secret in his brain, i shall pass, as glides my shadow daily over hill and meadow. 108 monadnoc. “through all time, i hear the approaching feet along the flinty pathway beat of him that cometh, and shall come; of him who shall as lightly bear my daily load of woods and streams, as now the round sky-cleaving boat which never strains its rocky beams; whose timbers, as they silent float, alps and caucasus uprear, and the long alleghanies here, and all town-sprinkled lands that be, sailing through stars with all their history. “every morn i lift my head, gaze o'er new england underspread, south from saint lawrence to the sound, from katskill east to the sea-bound. anchored fast for many an age, i await the bard and sage, who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, shall string monadnoc like a bead. monadnoc. 109 comes that cheerful troubadour, this mound shall throb his face before, as when, with inward fires and pain, it rose a bubble from the plain. when he cometh, i shall shed, from this wellspring in my head, fountain drop of spicier worth than all vintage of the earth. there's fruit upon my barren soil costlier far than wine or oil. there's a berry blue and gold,— autumn-ripe, its juices hold sparta's stoutness, bethlehem’s heart, asia's rancor, athens' art, slowsure britain's secular might, and the german's inward sight. i will give my son to eat best of pan's immortal meat, bread to eat, and juice to drink; so the thoughts that he shall think shall not be forms of stars, but stars, nor pictures pale, but jove and mars. 110 monadnoc. he comes, but not of that race bred who daily climb my specular head. oft as morning wreathes my scarf, fled the last plumule of the dark, pants up hither the spruce clerk from south cove and city wharf. i take him up my rugged sides, half-repentant, scant of breath, – bead-eyes my granite chaos show, and my midsummer snow; open the daunting map beneath, – all his county, sea and land, dwarfed to measure of his hand; his day's ride is a furlong space, his city tops a glimmering haze. i plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding: “see there the grim gray rounding of the bullet of the earth whereon ye sail, tumbling steep in the uncontinented deep.” he looks on that, and he turns pale. monadnoc. 111 'tis even so; this treacherous kite, farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere, thoughtless of its anxious freight, plunges eyeless on forever; and he, poor parasite, cooped in a ship he cannot steer, — who is the captain he knows not, port or pilot trows not, — risk or ruin he must share. i scowl on him with my cloud, with my north wind chill his blood ; i lame him, clattering down the rocks; and to live he is in fear. then, at last, i let him down once more into his dapper town, to chatter, frightened, to his clan, and forget me if he can.” as in the old poetic fame the gods are blind and lame, and the simular despite betrays the more abounding might, 112 monadnoc. so call not waste that barren cone above the floral zone, where forests starve : it is pure use; — what sheaves like those which here we glean and bind of a celestial ceres and the muse? ages are thy days, thou grand expresser of the present tense, and type of permanence 1 firm ensign of the fatal being, amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, that will not bide the seeing ! hither we bring our insect miseries to the rocks; and the whole flight, with pestering wing, vanish, and end their murmuring, — vanish beside these dedicated blocks, which who can tell what mason laid! spoils of a front none need restore, monadnoc. 113 replacing frieze and architrave;— yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave; still is the haughty pile erect of the old building intellect. complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, o barren mound, thy plenties fill ! we fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. to myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. thou seest, o watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good for which we all our lifetime grope, in shifting form the formless mind, and though the substance us elude, we in thee the shadow find. 8 114 monadnoc. thou, in our astronomy an opaker star, seen haply from afar, above the horizon's hoop, a moment, by the railway troop, as o'er some bolder height they speed, – by circumspect ambition, by errant gain, by feasters and the frivolous, – recallest us, and makest sane. mute orator well skilled to plead, and send conviction without phrase, thou dost supply the shortness of our days, and promise, on thy founder's truth, long morrow to this mortal youth. 115 f a b l e. the mountain and the squirrel had a quarrel; and the former called the latter ‘little prig.’ bun replied, ‘you are doubtless very big ; but all sorts of things and weather must be taken in together, to make up a year and a sphere. and i think it no disgrace to occupy my place. if i'm not so large as you, you are not so small as i, and not half so spry. i'll not deny you make 116 fable. a very pretty squirrel track; talents differ; all is well and wisely put; if i cannot carry forests on my back, neither can you crack a nut.' 117 ode, inscribed to w. h. channing. though loath to grieve the evil time's sole patriot, i cannot leave my honied thought * for the priest's cant, or statesman's rant. if i refuse my study for their politique, which at the best is trick, the angry muse puts confusion in my brain. but who is he that prates of the culture of mankind, i 18 ode. of better arts and life? go, blindworm, go, behold the famous states harrying mexico with rifle and with knife or who, with accent bolder, dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer i found by thee, o rushing contoocook 1 and in thy valleys, agiochook the jackals of the negro-holder. the god who made new hampshire taunted the lofty land with little men; – small bat and wren house in the oak: — if earth-fire cleave the upheaved land, and bury the folk, the southern crocodile would grieve. ode. 119 virtue palters; right is hence; , freedom praised, but hid; funeral eloquence rattles the coffin-lid. what boots thy zeal, o glowing friend, that would indignant rend the northland from the south wherefore ? to what good end ? boston bay and bunker hill would serve things still; — things are of the snake. the horseman serves the horse, the neatherd serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the chattel, c. web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in the saddle, and ride mankind. 120 ode. there are two laws discrete, not reconciled, law for man, and law for thing; the last builds town and fleet, but it runs wild, and doth the man unking. 'tis fit the forest fall, the steep be graded, the mountain tunnelled, the sand shaded, the orchard planted, the glebe tilled, the prairie granted, the steamer built. let man serve law for man; live for friendship, live for love, for truth's and harmony's behoof; the state may follow how it can, as olympus follows jove. ode. 121 . yet do not i invite the wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods, nor bid the unwilling senator ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. every one to his chosen work; — foolish hands may mix and mar; wise and sure the issues are. round they roll till dark is light, sex to sex, and even to odd;— the over-god who marries right to might, who peoples, unpeoples, – he who exterminates races by stronger races, black by white faces, – knows to bring honey out of the lion; grafts gentlest scion on pirate and turk. the cossack eats poland, like stolen fruit; 122 ode. her last noble is ruined, her last poet mute: straight, into double band the victors divide; half for freedom strike and stand; — the astonished muse finds thousands at her side. 123 a s t r ae a. himself it was who wrote his rank, and quartered his own coat. there is no king nor sovereign state that can fix a hero's rate ; each to all is venerable, cap-a-pie invulnerable, until he write, where all eyes rest, slave or master on his breast. i saw men go up and down, in the country and the town, with this prayer upon their neck, “judgment and a judge we seek.’ not to monarchs they repair, nor to learned jurist's chair; but they hurry to their peers, to their kinsfolk and their dears; 124 astraea. louder than with speech they pray, ‘what am i? companion, say.” and the friend not hesitates to assign just place and mates; answers not in word or letter, yet is understood the better; is to his friend a looking-glass, reflects his figure that doth pass. every wayfarer he meets what himself declared repeats, what himself confessed records, sentences him in his words; the form is his own corporal form, and his thought the penal worm. yet shine forever virgin minds, loved by stars and purest winds, which, o'er passion throned sedate, have not hazarded their state; disconcert the searching spy, rendering to a curious eye astraea. 125 the durance of a granite ledge to those who gaze from the sea's edge. it is there for benefit; it is there for purging light; there for purifying storms; and its depths reflect all forms; it cannot parley with the mean,— pure by impure is not seen. for there's no sequestered grot, lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot, but justice, journeying in the sphere, daily stoops to harbor there. 126 etienne de la b o fc e. i serve you not, if you i follow, shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow; and bend my fancy to your leading, all too nimble for my treading. when the pilgrimage is done, and we've the landscape overrun, i am bitter, vacant, thwarted, and your heart is unsupported. wainly valiant, you have missed the manhood that should yours resist, — its complement; but if i could, in severe or cordial mood, lead you rightly to my altar, where the wisest muses falter, and worship that world-warming spark which dazzles me in midnight dark, etienne de la boéce. 127 equalizing small and large, while the soul it doth surcharge, that the poor is wealthy grown, and the hermit never alone, — the traveller and the road seem one with the errand to be done, – that were a man's and lover's part, that were freedom's whitest chart. 128 s u u m c uiq u e. the rain has spoiled the farmer's day; shall sorrow put my books away? thereby are two days lost : nature shall mind her own affairs; i will attend my proper cares, in rain, or sun, or frost. 129 c o m p e n s a ti on. why should i keep holiday when other men have none 7 why but because, when these are gay, i sit and mourn alone? and why, when mirth unseals all tongues, should mine alone be dumb 2 ah! late i spoke to silent throngs, and now their hour is come. 130 f or b e a r a n c f. . hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk 7 at rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust 7 and loved so well a high behavior, in man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, nobility more nobly to repay? o, be my friend, and teach me to be thine ! 131 t h e pa. r. k. the prosperous and beautiful to me seem not to wear the yoke of conscience masterful, which galls me everywhere. i cannot shake off the god; on my neck he makes his seat; i look at my face in the glass, – my eyes his eyeballs meet. enchanters enchantresses your gold makes you seem wise; the morning mist within your grounds more proudly rolls, more softly lies. 132 the park. yet spake yon purple mountain, yet said yon ancient wood, that night or day, that love or crime, leads all souls to the good. * 133 fo r. e. r. un n e r s . long i followed happy guides, i could never reach their sides ; their step is forth, and, ere the day, breaks up their leaguer, and away. "keen my sense, my heart was young, right good-will my sinews strung, but no speed of mine avails to hunt upon their shining trails. on and away, their hasting feet make the morning proud and sweet; flowers they strew, -i catch the scent; or tone of silver instrument leaves on the wind melodious trace; yet i could never see their face. on eastern hills i see their smokes, mixed with mist by distant lochs. 134 forerunners. i met many travellers who the road had surely kept; they saw not my fine revellers, – these had crossed them while they slept. some had heard their fair report, in the country or the court. fleetest couriers alive never yet could once arrive, as they went or they returned, at the house where these sojourned. sometimes their strong speed they slacken, though they are not overtaken; in sleep their jubilant troop is near, – i tuneful voices overhear; it may be in wood or waste, – at unawares 'tis come and past. their near camp my spirit knows by signs gracious as rainbows. i thenceforward, and long after, listen for their harp-like laughter, and carry in my heart, for days, peace that hallows rudest ways. 135 s u r s u m c or d a. seek not the spirit, if it hide inexorable to thy zeal: baby, do not whine and chide: art thou not also real? why shouldst thou stoop to poor excuse? turn on the accuser roundly; say, ‘here am i, here will i remain forever to myself soothfast; go thou, sweet heaven, or at thy pleasure stay !' already heaven with thee its lot has cast, for only it can absolutely deal. 136 o de to b e aut y. who gave thee, o beauty, the keys of this breast, — too credulous lover of blest and unblest ? say, when in lapsed ages thee knew i of old 7 or what was the service for which i was sold 7 when first my eyes saw thee, i found me thy thrall, by magical drawings, sweet tyrant of all ! i drank at thy fountain false waters of thirst ; thou intimate stranger, thou latest and first ode to beauty. 137 thy dangerous glances make women of men; new-born, we are melting into nature again. lavish, lavish promiser, nigh persuading gods to err guest of million painted forms, which in turn thy glory warms the frailest leaf, the mossy bark, the acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, the swinging spider's silver line, the ruby of the drop of wine, the shining pebble of the pond, thou inscribest with a bond, in thy momentary play, would bankrupt nature to repay. ah, what avails it to hide or to shun whom the infinite one hath granted his throne 7 133 olde to beautr. the heaven high over is the deep's lover; the sun and sea, informed by thee, before me run, and draw me on, yet fly me still, as fate refuses to me the heart fate for me chooses. is it that my opulent soul was mingled from the generous whole; sea-valleys and the deep of skies furnished several supplies; and the sands whereof i’m made draw me to them, self-betrayed 2 i turn the proud portfolios which hold the grand designs of salvator, of guercino, and piranesi's lines. i hear the lofty paans of the masters of the shell, who heard the starry music ode to beauty. 189 and recount the numbers well; olympian bards who sung divine ideas below, which always find us young, and always keep us so. oft, in streets or humblest places, i detect far-wandered graces, which, from eden wide astray, in lowly homes have lost their way. thee gliding through the sea of form, like the lightning through the storm, somewhat not to be possessed, somewhat not to be caressed, no feet so fleet could ever find, no perfect form could ever bind. thou eternal fugitive, hovering over all that live, quick and skilful to inspire sweet, extravagant desire, starry space and lily-bell filling with thy roseate smell, 140 ode to beauty. wilt not give the lips to taste of the nectar which thou hast. all that's good and great with thee works in close conspiracy; thou hast bribed the dark and lonely to report thy features only, and the cold and purple morning itself with thoughts of thee adorning; the leafy dell, the city mart, equal trophies of thine art; e’en the flowing azure air thou hast touched for my despair; and, if i languish into dreams, again i meet the ardent beams. queen of things i dare not die in being's deeps past ear and eye; lest there i find the same deceiver, and be the sport of fate forever. dread power, but dear! if god thou be, unmake me quite, or give thyself to me ! 141 giw e a l l t o low e. give all to love; obey thy heart; friends, kindred, days, estate, good-fame, plans, credit, and the muse, – nothing refuse. 'tis a brave master; let it have scope: follow it utterly, hope beyond hope : high and more high it dives into noon, with wing unspent, untold intent; 142 give all to lowe. but it is a god, knows its own path, and the outlets of the sky. it was not for the mean ; it requireth courage stout, souls above doubt, valor unbending; such 'twill reward, – they shall return more than they were, and ever ascending. leave all for love; yet, hear me, yet, one word more thy heart behoved, one pulse more of firm endeavor, – keep thee to-day, to-morrow, forever, free as an arab of thy beloved. give all to love. 143 cling with life to the maid; but when the surprise, first vague shadow of surmise flits across her bosom young of a joy apart from thee, free be she, fancy-free; nor thou detain her vesture's hem, nor the palest rose she flung from her summer diadem. though thou loved her as thyself, as a self of purer clay, though her parting dims the day, stealing grace from all alive; heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive. 144 to ellen, at the south. the green grass is bowing, the morning wind is in it; 'tis a tune worth thy knowing, though it change every minute. 'tis a tune of the spring; every year plays it over to the robin on the wing, and to the pausing lover. o'er ten thousand, thousand acres, goes light the nimble zephyr; the flowers — tiny sect of shakers — worship him ever. to ellen. 145 hark to the winning sound ! they summon thee, dearest, — saying, ‘we have dressed for thee the ground, nor yet thou appearest. “o hasten ; ’tis our time, ere yet the red summer scorch our delicate prime, loved of bee, – the tawny hummer. ‘o pride of thy race | sad, in sooth, it were to ours, if our brief tribe miss thy face, we poor new england flowers. ‘fairest, choose the fairest members of our lithe society; june's glories and september's show our love and piety. “thou shalt command us all, april's cowslip, summer's clover, 10 146 to ellen. to the gentian in the fall, blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover. “o come, then, quickly come! we are budding, we are blowing; and the wind that we perfume sings a tune that's worth the knowing.’ 147 to e. w. a. o fair and stately maid, whose eyes were kindled in the upper skies at the same torch that lighted mine; for so i must interpret still thy sweet dominion o'er my will, a sympathy divine. ah! let me blameless gaze upon features that seem at heart my own; nor fear those watchful sentinels, who charm the more their glance forbids, chaste-glowing, underneath their lids, with fire that draws while it repels. 148 t h e a m u l e t. your picture smiles as first it smiled; the ring you gave is still the same; your letter tells, o changing child ! no tidings since it came. give me an amulet that keeps intelligence with you, red when you love, and rosier red, and when you love not, pale and blue. alas ! that neither bonds nor vows can certify possession; torments me still the fear that love died in its last expression. 149 th in e e yes still s h in e d . thine eyes still shined for me, though far i lonely roved the land or sea: as i behold yon evening star, which yet beholds not me. this morn i climbed the misty hill, and roamed the pastures through; how danced thy form before my path amidst the deep-eyed dew when the redbird spread his sable wing, and showed his side of flame; when the rosebud ripened to the rose, in both i read thy name. 150 e r o s. the sense of the world is short, — » long and various the report, — to love and be beloved; men and gods have not outlearned it ; and, how oft soe'er they’ve turned it, 'tis not to be improved. 151 h e r m i o n e . on a mound an arab lay, and sung his sweet regrets, and told his amulets: the summer bird his sorrow heard, and, when he heaved a sigh profound, the sympathetic swallow swept the ground. “if it be, as they said, she was not fair, beauty 's not beautiful to me, but sceptred genius, aye inorbed, culminating in her sphere. this hermione absorbed the lustre of the land and ocean, hills and islands, cloud and tree, in her form and motion. hermione. ‘i ask no bawble miniature, nor ringlets dead shorn from her comely head, now that morning not disdains mountains and the misty plains her colossal portraiture; they her heralds be, steeped in her quality, and singers of her fame who is their muse and dame. “higher, dear swallows! mind not what i say. ah! heedless how the weak are strong, say, was it just, in thee to frame, in me to trust, thou to the syrian couldst belong i am of a lineage that each for each doth fast engage; in old bassora's schools, i seemed hermit vowed to books and gloom,hermione. 153 ill-bested for gay bridegroom. i was by thy touch redeemed; when thy meteor glances came, we talked at large of worldly fate, and drew truly every trait. once i dwelt apart, now i live with all; as shepherd's lamp on far hill-side seems, by the traveller espied, a door into the mountain heart, so didst thou quarry and unlock highways for me through the rock. now, deceived, thou wanderest in strange lands unblest; and my kindred come to soothe me. southwind is my next of blood; he is come through fragrant wood, drugged with spice from climates warm, and in every twinkling glade, 154 hermione. and twilight nook, unveils thy form. out of the forest way forth paced it yesterday; and when i sat by the watercourse, watching the daylight fade, it throbbed up from the brook. ‘river, and rose, and crag, and bird, frost, and sun, and eldest night, to me their aid preferred, to me their comfort plight; — “courage we are thine allies, and with this hint be wise, – the chains of kind the distant bind; deed thou doest she must do, above her will, be true; and, in her strict resort to winds and waterfalls, and autumn's sunlit festivals, to music, and to music's thought, hermione. inextricably bound, she shall find thee, and be found. follow not her flying feet; come to us herself to meet.” " 156 initial, dae monic, and c e l e s tial low e. the initial love. venus, when her son was lost, cried him up and down the coast, in hamlets, palaces, and parks, and told the truant by his marks, – golden curls, and quiver, and bow. this befell long ago. time and tide are strangely changed, men and manners much deranged: none will now find cupid latent by this foolish antique patent. he came late along the waste, shod like a traveller for haste; the initial love. 157 with malice dared me to proclaim him, that the maids and boys might name him. boy no more, he wears all coats, frocks, and blouses, capes, capotes; he bears no bow, or quiver, or wand, nor chaplet on his head or hand. leave his weeds and heed his eyes, – all the rest he can disguise. in the pit of his eye's a spark would bring back day if it were dark; and, if i tell you all my thought, though i comprehend it not, in those unfathomable orbs every function he absorbs. he doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot, and write, and reason, and compute, and ride, and run, and have, and hold, and whine, and flatter, and regret, and kiss, and couple, and beget, by those roving eyeballs bold. 158 the initial love. undaunted are their courages, right cossacks in their forages; fleeter they than any creature, — they are his steeds, and not his feature; inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting, restless, predatory, hasting; and they pounce on other eyes as lions on their prey; and round their circles is writ, plainer than the day, underneath, within, above, – love — love —love — love. he lives in his eyes; there doth digest, and work, and spin, and buy, and sell, and lose, and win; he rolls them with delighted motion, joy-tides swell their mimic ocean. yet holds he them with tortest rein, that they may seize and entertain the glance that to their glance opposes, like fiery honey sucked from roses. the initial love. 159 he palmistry can understand, imbibing virtue by his hand as if it were a living root; the pulse of hands will make him mute; with all his force he gathers balms into those wise, thrilling palms. cupid is a casuist, a mystic, and a cabalist, — can your lurking thought surprise, and interpret your device. he is versed in occult science, in magic, and in clairvoyance; oft he keeps his fine ear strained, and reason on her tiptoe pained for ačry intelligence, and for strange coincidence. but it touches his quick heart when fate by omens takes his part, and chance-dropped hints from nature's sphere deeply soothe his anxious ear. 160 the initial love. heralds high before him run; he has ushers many a one ; he spreads his welcome where he goes, and touches all things with his rose. all things wait for and divine him, how shall i dare to malign him, or accuse the god of sport? i must end my true report, painting him from head to foot, in as far as i took note, trusting well the matchless power of this young-eyed emperor will clear his fame from every cloud, with the bards and with the crowd. he is wilful, mutable, shy, untamed, inscrutable, swifter-fashioned than the fairies, substance mixed of pure contraries; his vice some elder virtue's token, and his good is evil-spoken. the initial love. 161 failing sometimes of his own, he is headstrong and alone; he affects the wood and wild, like a flower-hunting child; buries himself in summer waves, in trees, with beasts, in mines, and caves; loves nature like a horned cow, bird, or deer, or caribou. shun him, nymphs, on the fleet horses! he has a total world of wit; o how wise are his discourses but he is the arch-hypocrite, and, through all science and all art, seeks alone his counterpart. he is a pundit of the east, he is an augur and a priest, and his soul will melt in prayer, but word and wisdom is a snare ; corrupted by the present toy he follows joy, and only joy. 11 162 the initial love. there is no mask but he will wear; he invented oaths to swear; he paints, he carves, he chants, he prays, and holds all stars in his embrace, godlike, — but 'tis for his fine pelf, the social quintessence of self. well said i he is hypocrite, and folly the end of his subtle wit he takes a sovran privilege not allowed to any liege; for he does go behind all law, and right into himself does draw ; for he is sovereignly allied, heaven's oldest blood flows in his side, – and interchangeably at one with every king on every throne, that no god dare say him nay, or see the fault, or seen betray : he has the muses by the heart, and the parce all are of his part. the initial lowe. 163 his many signs cannot be told; he has not one mode, but manifold, many fashions and addresses, piques, reproaches, hurts, caresses, arguments, lore, poetry, action, service, badinage; he will preach like a friar, and jump like harlequin; he will read like a crier, and fight like a paladin. boundless is his memory; plans immense his term prolong; he is not of counted age, meaning always to be young. and his wish is intimacy, intimater intimacy, and a stricter privacy; the impossible shall yet be done, and, being two, shall still be one. as the wave breaks to foam on shelves, then runs into a wave again, 164 the daemonic and so lovers melt their sundered selves, yet melted would be twain. ii. the daemonic and the celestial love. man was made of social earth, child and brother from his birth, tethered by a liquid cord of blood through veins of kindred poured. next his heart the fireside band of mother, father, sister, stand: these, like strong amulets preferred, throbs of a wild religion stirred; — virtue, to love, to hate them, vice; till dangerous beauty came, at last, till beauty came to snap all ties; the maid, abolishing the past, the celestial, love. 165 with lotus wine obliterates dear memory's stone-incarved traits, and, by herself, supplants alone friends year by year more inly known. when her calm eyes opened bright, all were foreign in their light. it was ever the self-same tale, the first experience will not fail; only two in the garden walked, and with snake and seraph talked. but god said, ‘i will have a purer gift; there is smoke in the flame; new flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, and love without a name. fond children, ye desire to please each other well; another round, a higher, ye shall climb on the heavenly stair, and selfish preference forbear; 166 the daemonic and and in right deserving, and without a swerving each from your proper state, weave roses for your mate. “deep, deep are loving eyes, flowed with naphtha fiery sweet; and the point is paradise, where their glances meet: their reach shall yet be more profound, and a vision without bound ; the axis of those eyes sun-clear be the axis of the sphere : so shall the lights ye pour amain go, without check or intervals, through from the empyrean walls unto the same again.' close, close to men, like undulating layer of air, right above their heads, the potent plain of daemons spreads. the celestial lowe. 167 stands to each human soul its own, for watch, and ward, and furtherance, in the snares of nature's dance; and the lustre and the grace which fascinate each youthful heart, beaming from [its counterpart, translucent through the mortal covers, is the demon's form and face. to and fro the genius hies, – a gleam which plays and hovers over the maiden's head, and dips sometimes as low as to her eyes. unknown, albeit lying near, to men, the path to the daemon sphere; and they that swiftly come and go leave no track on the heavenly snow. sometimes the airy synod bends, and the mighty choir descends, and the brains of men thenceforth, in crowded and in still resorts, teem with unwonted thoughts: 168 the daemonic and as, when a shower of meteors cross the orbit of the earth, and, lit by fringent air, blaze near and far, mortals deem the planets bright have slipped their sacred bars, and the lone seaman all the night sails, astonished, amid stars. beauty of a richer vein, graces of a subtler strain, unto men these moonmen lend, and our shrinking sky extend. so is man's narrow path by strength and terror skirted; also, (from the song the wrath of the genii be averted the muse the truth uncolored speaking,) the daemons are self-seeking: their fierce and limitary will draws men to their likeness still. the celestial love. 169 the erring painter made love blind, – highest love who shines on all; him, radiant, sharpest-sighted god, none can bewilder; whose eyes pierce the universe, path-finder, road-builder, mediator, royal giver; rightly seeing, rightly seen, of joyful and transparent mien. 'tis a sparkle passing from each to each, from thee to me, to and fro perpetually; sharing all, daring all, levelling, displacing each obstruction, it unites equals remote, and seeming opposites. and ever and forever love delights to build a road: unheeded danger near him strides, love laughs, and on a lion rides. 170 the daemonic and but cupid wears another face, born into daemons less divine: his roses bleach apace, his nectar smacks of wine. the daemon ever builds a wall, himself encloses and includes, solitude in solitudes: in like sort his love doth fall. he is an oligarch; he prizes wonder, fame, and mark; he loveth crowns; he scorneth drones; he doth elect the beautiful and fortunate, and the sons of intellect, and the souls of ample fate, who the future's gates unbar, – minions of the morning star. in his prowess he exults, and the multitude insults. his impatient looks devour oft the humble and the poor; the celestial love: 171 and, seeing his eye glare, they drop their few pale flowers, gathered with hope to please, along the mountain towers, – lose courage, and despair. he will never be gainsaid, – pitiless, will not be stayed; his hot tyranny burns up every other tie. therefore comes an hour from jove which his ruthless will defies, and the dogs of fate unties. shiver the palaces of glass; shrivel the rainbow-colored walls, where in bright art each god and sibyl dwelt, secure as in the zodiac's belt; and the galleries and halls, wherein every siren sung, like a meteor pass. for this fortune wanted root in the core of god's abysm, was a weed of self and schism; 172 the daemonic and and ever the daemonic love . is the ancestor of wars, and the parent of remorse. iii. higher far, upward into the pure realm, over sun and star, over the flickering daemon film, thou must mount for love; into vision where all form in one only form dissolves; in a region where the wheel on which all beings ride visibly revolves; where the starred, eternal worm girds the world with bound and term ; where unlike things are like; where good and ill, and joy and moan, melt into one. the celestial, lowe. 173 there past, present, future shoot triple blossoms from one root; substances at base divided in their summits are united ; there the holy essence rolls, one through separated souls; and the sunny aeon sleeps folding nature in its deeps: and every fair and every good, known in part, or known impure, * to men below, in their archetypes endure. the race of gods, or those we erring own, are shadows flitting up and down in the still abodes. the circles of that sea are laws which publish and which hide the cause. pray for a beam out of that sphere, thee to guide and to redeem. 174 the celestial lowe. o, what a load of care and toil, by lying use bestowed, from his shoulders falls who sees the true astronomy, the period of peace. counsel which the ages kept shall the well-born soul accept. as the overhanging trees fill the lake with images, – as garment draws the garment's hem, men their fortunes bring with them. by right or wrong, lands and goods go to the strong. property will brutely draw still to the proprietor; silver to silver creep and wind, and kind to kind. nor less the eternal poles of tendency distribute souls. the celestial love. 175 there need no vows to bind whom not each other seek, but find. they give and take no pledge or oath, – nature is the bond of both : no prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, – their noble meanings are their pawns. plain and cold is their address, power have they for tenderness; and, so thoroughly is known each other's counsel by his own, they can parley without meeting; need is none of forms of greeting; they can well communicate in their innermost estate; when each the other shall avoid, shall each by each be most enjoyed. not with scarfs or perfumed gloves do these celebrate their loves; not by jewels, feasts, and savors, not by ribbons or by favors, 176 the celestial lowe. but by the sun-spark on the sea, and the cloud-shadow on the lea, the soothing lapse of morn to mirk, and the cheerful round of work. their cords of love so public are, they intertwine the farthest star: the throbbing sea, the quaking earth, yield sympathy and signs of mirth; is none so high, so mean is none, but feels and seals this union; even the fell furies are appeased, the good applaud, the lost are eased. love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, bound for the just, but not beyond; not glad, as the low-loving herd, of self in other still preferred, but they have heartily designed the benefit of broad mankind. and they serve men austerely, after their own genius, clearly, the celestial love. 177 without a false humility; for this is love's nobility, not to scatter bread and gold, goods and raiment bought and sold; but to hold fast his simple sense, and speak the speech of innocence, and with hand, and body, and blood, to make his bosom-counsel good. for he that feeds men serveth few ; he serves all who dares be true. 12 178 t h e a pol o g y . think me not unkind and rude that i walk alone in grove and glen; i go to the god of the wood to fetch his word to men. tax not my sloth that i fold my arms beside the brook; each cloud that floated in the sky writes a letter in my book. chide me not, laborious band, for the idle flowers i brought; every aster in my hand goes home loaded with a thought. the apology. 179 there was never mystery but 'tis figured in the flowers; was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers. one harvest from thy field homeward brought the oxen strong; a second crop thine acres yield, which i gather in a song. 180 m e r lin. thy trivial harp will never please or fill my craving ear; its chords should ring as blows the breeze; free, peremptory, clear. no jingling serenader's art, nor tinkle of piano strings, can make the wild blood start in its mystic springs. the kingly bard must smite the chords rudely and hard, as with hammer or with mace; that they may render back artful thunder, which conveys secrets of the solar track, merlin. 181 sparks of the supersolar blaze. merlin's blows are strokes of fate, chiming with the forest tone, when boughs buffet boughs in the wood; chiming with the gasp and moan of the ice-imprisoned flood; with the pulse of manly hearts; with the voice of orators; ..with the din of city arts; with the cannonade of wars; with the marches of the brave; and prayers of might from martyrs' cave. great is the art, great be the manners, of the bard. he shall not his brain encumber with the coil of rhythm and number; but, leaving rule and pale forethought, he shall aye climb for his rhyme. “pass in, pass in,’ the angels say, 182 merlin. in to the upper doors, nor count compartments of the floors, but mount to paradise by the stairway of surprise. blameless master of the games, king of sport that never shames, he shall daily joy dispense hid in song's sweet influence. things more cheerly live and go, what time the subtle mind sings aloud the tune whereto their pulses beat, and march their feet, and their members are combined. by sybarites beguiled, he shall no task decline; merlin's mighty line extremes of nature reconciled, bereaved a tyrant of his will, and made the lion mild. merlin. 183 songs can the tempest still, scattered on the stormy air, mould the year to fair increase, and bring in poetic peace. he shall not seek to weave, in weak, unhappy times, efficacious rhymes; wait his returning strength. bird, that from the nadir's floor to the zenith's top can soar, the soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length. nor profane affect to hit or compass that, by meddling wit, which only the propitious mind publishes when 'tis inclined. there are open hours when the god’s will sallies free, and the dull idiot might see the flowing fortunes of a thousand years; — 184 merlin. sudden, at unawares, self-moved, fly-to the doors nor sword of angels could reveal what they conceal. 185 m e r lin. ii. the rhyme of the poet modulates the king's affairs; balance-loving nature made all things in pairs. to every foot its antipode; each color with its counter glowed; to every tone beat answering tones, higher or graver; flavor gladly blends with flavor; leaf answers leaf upon the bough; and match the paired cotyledons. hands to hands, and feet to feet, coeval grooms and brides; eldest rite, two married sides in every mortal meet. 186 merlin. light's far furnace shines, smelting balls and bars, forging double stars, glittering twins and trines. the animals are sick with love, lovesick with rhyme; each with all propitious time into chorus wove. like the dancers' ordered band, thoughts come also hand in hand; in equal couples mated, or else alternated; adding by their mutual gage, one to other, health and age. solitary fancies go short-lived wandering to and fro, most like to bachelors, or an ungiven maid, not ancestors, with no posterity to make the lie afraid, or keep truth undecayed. merlin. 187 perfect-paired as eagle's wings, justice is the rhyme of things; trade and counting use the self-same tuneful muse; and nemesis, who with even matches odd, who athwart space redresses the partial wrong, fills the just period, and finishes the song. subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, murmur in the house of life, sung by the sisters as they spin; , in perfect time and measure they build and unbuild our echoing clay, as the two twilights of the day fold us music-drunken in. iss b a c c h u s. bring me wine, but wine which never grew in the belly of the grape, or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through under the andes to the cape, suffered no savor of the earth to scape. let its grapes the morn salute from a nocturnal root, which feels the acrid juice, of styx and erebus; and turns the woe of night, by its own craft, to a more rich delight. we buy ashes for bread; we buy diluted wine; give me of the true, – bacchus. 189 whose ample leaves and tendrils curled among the silver hills of heaven, draw everlasting dew; wine of wine, blood of the world, form of forms, and mould of statures, that i intoxicated, and by the draught assimilated, may float at pleasure through all natures; the bird-language rightly spell, and that which roses say so well. wine that is shed like the torrents of the sun up the horizon walls, or like the atlantic streams, which run when the south sea calls. water and bread, food which needs no transmuting, rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting 190 bacchus. wine which is already man, food which teach and reason can. wine which music is, – music and wine are one, – that i, drinking this, shall hear far chaos talk with me; kings unborn shall walk with me; and the poor grass shall plot and plan what it will do when it is man. quickened so, will i unlock every crypt of every rock. i thank the joyful juice for all i know; — winds of remembering of the ancient being blow, and seeming-solid walls of use open and flow. pour, bacchus ! the remembering wine; retrieve the loss of me and mine ! bacchus. 191 wine for vine be antidote, and the grape requite the lotel haste to cure the old despair, – reason in nature's lotus drenched, the memory of ages quenched; give them again to shine; let wine repair what this undid; and where the infection slid, a dazzling memory revive; refresh the faded tints, recut the aged prints, and write my old adventures with the pen which on the first day drew, upon the tablets blue, the dancing pleiads and eternal men. 192 loss and gain. virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill ; she is rapt, and doth refuse to wait a painter's will. star-adoring, occupied, virtue cannot bend her just to please a poet's pride, to parade her splendor. the bard must be with good intent no more his, but hers; must throw away his pen and paint, kneel with worshippers. loss and gain. 193 then, perchance, a sunny ray from the heaven of fire, his lost tools may overpay, and better his desire. 13 194 m e r o ps. what care i, so they stand the same, – things of the heavenly mind, how long the power to give them name tarries yet behind 7 thus far to-day your favors reach, o fair, appeasing presences ! ye taught my lips a single speech, and a thousand silences. space grants beyond his fated road no inch to the god of day; and copious language still bestowed one word, no more, to say. 195 t h e h o u s e. there is no architect can build as the muse can ; she is skilful to select materials for her plan; slow and warily to choose rafters of immortal pine, or cedar incorruptible, worthy her design. she threads dark alpine forests, or valleys by the sea, in many lands, with painful steps, ere she can find a tree. 196 the house. she ransacks mines and ledges, and quarries every rock, to hew the famous adamant for each eternal block. she lays her beams in music, in music every one, to the cadence of the whirling world which dances round the sun; that so they shall not be displaced by lapses or by wars, but, for the love of happy souls, outlive the newest stars. 197 saa di. trees in groves, kine in droves, in ocean sport the scaly herds, wedge-like cleave the air the birds, to northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks, browse the mountain sheep in flocks, men consort in camp and town, but the poet dwells alone. god, who gave to him the lyre, of all mortals the desire, for all breathing men's behoof, straitly charged him, “sit aloof;’ annexed a warning, poets say, to the bright premium, ever, when twain together play, shall the harp be dumb. 198 saadi. many may come, but one shall sing; two touch the string, the harp is dumb. though there come a million, wise saadi dwells alone. yet saadi loved the race of men, – no churl, immured in cave or den; in bower and hall he wants them all, nor can dispense with persia for his audience; they must give ear, grow red with joy and white with fear; but he has no companion; come ten, or come a million, good saadi dwells alone. be thou ware where saadi dwells; wisdom of the gods is he, – entertain it reverently. saadi. 199 gladly round that golden lamp sylvan deities encamp, and simple maids and noble youth are welcome to the man of truth. most welcome they who need him most, they feed the spring which they exhaust; for greater need draws better deed : but, critic, spare thy vanity, nor show thy pompous parts, to vex with odious midely the cheerer of men's hearts. sad-eyed fakirs swiftly say endless dirges to decay, never in the blaze of light lose the shudder of midnight; pale at overflowing noon hear wolves barking at the moon; in the bower of dalliance sweet hear the far avenger's feet; 200 saadi. and shake before those awful powers, who in their pride forgive not ours. thus the sad-eyed fakirs preach: ‘bard, when thee would allah teach, and lift thee to his holy mount, he sends thee from his bitter fount wormwood, – saying, “go thy ways, drink not the malaga of praise, but do the deed thy fellows hate, and compromise thy peaceful state; smite the white breasts which thee fed; stuff sharp thorns beneath the head of them thou shouldst have comforted; for out of woe and out of crime draws the heart a lore sublime.”” and yet it seemeth not to me that the high gods love tragedy; for saadi sat in the sun, and thanks was his contrition; for haircloth and for bloody whips, had active hands and smiling lips; saadi. 201 and yet his runes he rightly read, and to his folk his message sped. sunshine in his heart transferred lighted each transparent word, and well could honoring persia learn what saadi wished to say; for saadi's nightly stars did burn brighter than dschami's day. whispered the muse in saadi's cot: “o gentle saadi, listen not, tempted by thy praise of wit, or by thirst and appetite for the talents not thine own, to sons of contradiction. never, son of eastern morning, follow falsehood, follow scorning. denounce who will, who will deny, and pile the hills to scale the sky; let theist, atheist, pantheist, define and wrangle how they list, 202 saadi. fierce conserver, fierce destroyer, — but thou, joy-giver and enjoyer, unknowing war, unknowing crime, gentle saadi, mind thy rhyme; heed not what the brawlers say, heed thou only saadi's lay. ‘let the great world bustle on with war and trade, with camp and town: a thousand men shall dig and eat; at forge and furnace thousands sweat; and thousands sail the purple sea, and give or take the stroke of war, or crowd the market and bazaar; oft shall war end, and peace return, and cities rise where cities burn, ere one man my hill shall climb, who can turn the golden rhyme. let them manage how they may, heed thou only saadi's lay. seek the living among the dead, – man in man is imprisoned; saadi. 203 barefooted dervish is not poor, if fate unlock his bosom's door, so that what his eye hath seen his tongue can paint as bright, as keen; and what his tender heart hath felt with equal fire thy heart shall melt. for, whom the muses smile upon, and touch with soft persuasion, his words like a storm-wind can bring terror and beauty on their wing; in his every syllable lurketh nature veritable; and though he speak in midnight dark, in heaven no star, on earth no spark, yet before the listener's eye swims the world in ecstasy, the forest waves, the morning breaks, the pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be, and life pulsates in rock or tree. saadi, so far thy words shall reach : suns rise and set in saadi's speech' 204 saadi and thus to saadi said the muse: ‘eat thou the bread which men refuse; flee from the goods which from thee flee; seek nothing, — fortune seeketh thee. nor mount, nor dive; all good things keep the midway of the eternal deep. wish not to fill the isles with eyes to fetch thee birds of paradise: on thine orchard's edge belong all the brags of plume and song; wise ali's sunbright sayings pass for proverbs in the market-place; through mountains bored by regal art, toil whistles as he drives his cart. nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind, a poet or a friend to find: behold, he watches at the door behold his shadow on the floor open innumerable doors the heaven where unveiled allah pours the flood of truth, the flood of good, the seraph's and the cherub's food : saadi. 205 those doors are men: the pariah hind admits thee to the perfect mind. seek not beyond thy cottage wall redeemers that can yield thee all: while thou sittest at thy door on the desert's yellow floor, listening to the gray-haired crones, foolish gossips, ancient drones, saadi, see they rise in stature to the height of mighty nature, and the secret stands revealed fraudulent time in vain concealed, that blessed gods in servile masks plied for thee thy household tasks.” 206 h o l id ay s. from fall to spring the russet acorn, fruit beloved of maid and boy, lent itself beneath the forest, to be the children's toy. pluck it now ! in vain, – thou canst not; its root has pierced yon shady mound; toy no longer—it has duties; it is anchored in the ground. year by year the rose-lipped maiden, playfellow of young and old, was frolic sunshine, dear to all men, more dear to one than mines of gold. holidays. 207 whither went the lovely hoyden disappeared in blessed wife; servant to a wooden cradle, living in a baby's life. still thou playest; —short vacation fate grants each to stand aside; now must thou be man and artist, — 'tis the turning of the tide. 208 paint in g and s c u l ptu r. e. the sinful painter drapes his goddess warm, because she still is naked, being dressed: the godlike sculptor will not so deform beauty, which limbs and flesh enough invest. 209 f. r o m t h e p e r sian of h a f i z. the poems of hafiz are held by the persians to be allegoric and mystical. his german editor, von hammer, remarks on the following poem, that, “though in appearance anacreontic, it may be regarded as one of the best of those compositions which earned for hafiz the honorable title of “tongue of the secret.” " butler, fetch the ruby wine which with sudden greatness fills us; pour for me, who in my spirit fail in courage and performance. bring this philosophic stone, karun's treasure, noah's age; haste, that by thy means i open all the doors of luck and life. bring to me the liquid fire zoroaster sought in dust: 14 210 from the persian of hafiz. to hafiz, revelling, 'tis allowed to pray to matter and to fire. bring the wine of jamschid's glass, which glowed, ere time was, in the néant; bring it me, that through its force i, as jamschid, see through worlds. wisely said the kaisar jamschid, “the world's not worth a barleycorn :' let flute and lyre lordly speak; lees of wine outvalue crowns. bring me, boy, the veiled beauty, who in ill-famed houses sits: bring her forth; my honest name freely barter i for wine. bring me, boy, the fire-water ; — drinks the lion, the woods burn; give it me, that i storm heaven, and tear the net from the archwolf. wine wherewith the houris teach souls the ways of paradise ! on the living coals i’ll set it, and therewith my brain perfume. from the persian of hafiz. 211 bring me wine, through whose effulgence jam and chosroes yielded light; wine, that to the flute i sing where is jam, and where is kauss. . bring the blessing of old times, – bless the old, departed shahs bring me wine which spendeth lordship, wine whose pureness searcheth hearts; bring it me, the shah of hearts give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares, see the countenance of luck. whilst i dwell in spirit-gardens, wherefore stand i shackled here? lo, this mirror shows me all ! drunk, i speak of purity, beggar, i of lordship speak; when hafiz in his revel sings, shouteth sohra in her sphere. fear the changes of a day: bring wine which increases life. 212 from the persian of hafiz. since the world is all untrue, let the trumpets thee, remind how the crown of kobad vanished. be not certain of the world,— 'twill not spare to shed thy blood. desperate of the world's affair came i running to the wine-house. bring me wine which maketh glad, that i may my steed bestride, through the course career with rustem,gallop to my heart's content; that i reason quite expunge, and plant banners on the worlds. let us make our glasses kiss; let us quench the sorrow-cinders. to-day let us drink together; now and then will never agree. whoso has arranged a banquet is with glad mind satisfied, 'scaping from the snares of dews. woe for youth ! 'tis gone in the wind: happy he who spent it well ! from the persian of hafiz. 213 bring wine, that i overspring both worlds at a single leap. stole, at dawn, from glowing spheres call of houris to my sense: — “o lovely bird, delicious soul, spread thy pinions, break thy cage; sit on the roof of seven domes, where the spirits take their rest.” in the time of bisurdschimihr, menutscheher's beauty shined. on the beaker of nushirvan, wrote they once in elder times, * hear the counsel; learn from us sample of the course of things: the earth — it is a place of sorrow, scanty joys are here below; who has nothing has no sorrow.’ where is jam, and where his cup ! solomon and his mirror, where? which of the wise masters knows what time kauss and jam existed 7 214 from the persian of hafiz. when those heroes left this world, left they nothing but their names. bind thy heart not to the earth; when thou goest, come not back; fools squander on the world their hearts, – league with it is feud with heaven: never gives it what thou wishest. a cup of wine imparts the sight of the five heaven-domes with nine steps: whoso can himself renounce without support shall walk thereon; — who discreet is is not wise. give me, boy, the kaisar cup, which rejoices heart. and soul. under wine and under cup signify we purest love. youth like lightning disappears; life goes by us as the wind. leave the dwelling with six doors, and the serpent with nine heads; from the persian of hafiz. 21.5 life and silver spend thou freely if thou honorest the soul. haste into the other life; all is vain save god alone. give me, boy, this toy of daemons: when the cup of jam was lost, him availed the world no more. fetch the wineglass made of ice; wake the torpid heart with wine. every clod of loam beneath us is a skull of alexander; oceans are the blood of princes; desert sands the dust of beauties. more than one darius was there who the whole world overcame ; but, since these gave up the ghost, thinkest thou they never were? boy, go from me to the shah; say to him, ‘shah, crowned as jam, win thou first the poor man's heart, then the glass; so know the world. 216 from the persian of hafiz. empty sorrows from the earth canst thou drive away with wine. now in thy throne's recent beauty, in the flowing tide of power, moon of fortune, mighty king, whose tiara sheddeth lustre, peace secure to fish and fowl, heart and eye-sparkle to saints; — shoreless is the sea of praise; i content me with a prayer: — from nisami's lyric page, fairest ornament of speech, here a verse will i recite, verse more beautiful than pearls: “more kingdoms wait thy diadem than are known to thee by name; thee may sovran destiny * lead to victory day by day!” 217 g h a s e l l e : from the persian of hafiz. of paradise, o hermit wise, let us renounce the thought; of old therein our names of sin allah recorded not. who dear to god on earthly sod no corn-grain plants, the same is glad that life is had, though corn he wants. o just fakir, with brow austere, forbid me not the vine; on the first day, poor hafiz' clay was kneaded up with wine. 218 ghaselle. thy mind the mosque and cool kiosk, spare fast and orisons; mine me allows the drinking-house, and sweet chase of the nuns. he is no dervise, heaven slights his service, who shall refuse there in the banquet to pawn his blanket for schiraz' juice. who his friend's skirt or hem of his shirt shall spare to pledge, to him eden's bliss and angel's kiss shall want their edge. up! hafiz, grace from high god's face beams on thee pure; shy thou not hell, and trust thou well, heaven is secure. 219 x e n o ph an e s. by fate, not option, frugal nature gave one scent to hyson and to wall-flower, one sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls, one aspect to the desert and the lake. it was her stern necessity : all things are of one pattern made ; bird, beat, and flower, song, picture, form, space, thought, and character, deceive us, seeming to be many things, and are but one. beheld far off, they differ as god and devil; bring them to the mind, they dull its edge with their monotony. to know one element, explore another, and in the second reappears the first. the specious panorama of a year but multiplies the image of a day, 220 xenophanes. | a belt of mirrors round a taper's flame; and universal nature, through her vast and crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, repeats one note. 221 t h e d a y " s r a tion. | when i was born, from all the seas of strength fate filled a chalice, saying, ‘this be thy portion, child; this chalice, less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw from my great arteries, – nor less, nor more.’ all substances the cunning chemist time melts down into that liquor of my life, – friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust. and whether i am angry or content, indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, all he distils into sidereal wine and brims my little cup; heedless, alas ! of all he sheds how little it will hold, how much runs over on the desert sands. if a new muse draw me with splendid ray, and i uplift myself into its heaven, 222 the day's ration the needs of the first sight absorb my blood, and all the following hours of the day drag a ridiculous age. to-day, when friends approach, and every hour brings book, or starbright scroll of genius, the little cup will hold not a bead more, and all the costly liquor runs to waste; nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop so to be husbanded for poorer days. why need i volumes, if one word suffice? why need i galleries, when a pupil's draught after the master's sketch fills and o'erfills my apprehension ? why seek italy, who cannot circumnavigate the sea of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn the nearest matters for a thousand days? 223 b l i g h t. give me truths; for i am weary of the surfaces, and die of inanition. if i knew only the herbs and simples of the wood, rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and agrimony, blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras, milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes, and sundew, and rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods draw untold juices from the common earth, untold, unknown, and i could surely spell their fragrance, and their chemistry apply by sweet affinities to human flesh, driving the foe and stablishing the friend, o, that were much, and i could be a part of the round day, related to the sun and planted world, and full executor 224 blight. of their imperfect functions. but these young scholars, who invade our hills, bold as the engineer who fells the wood, and travelling often in the cut he makes, love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, and all their botany is latin names. the old men studied magic in the flowers, and human fortunes in astronomy, and an omnipotence in chemistry, preferring things to names, for these were men, were unitarians of the united world, and, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell, they caught the footsteps of the same. our eyes are armed, but we are strangers to the stars, and strangers to the mystic beast and bird, and strangers to the plant and to the mine. the injured elements say, ‘not in us; ” and night and day, ocean and continent, fire, plant, and mineral say, ‘not in us,’ and haughtily return us stare for stare. for we invade them impiously for gain; we devastate them unreligiously, blight. 225 and coldly ask their pottage, not their love. therefore they shove us from them, yield to us only what to our griping toil is due ; but the sweet affluence of love and song, the rich results of the divine consents of man and earth, of world beloved and lover, the nectar and ambrosia, are withheld; and in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves and pirates of the universe, shut out daily to a more thin and outward rind, turn pale and starve. therefore, to our sick eyes, the stunted trees look sick, the summer short, clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay, and nothing thrives to reach its natural term; and life, shorn of its venerable length, even at its greatest space is a defeat, and dies in anger that it was a dupe; and, in its highest noon and wantonness, is early frugal, like a beggar's child; with most unhandsome calculation taught,' / even in the hot pursuit of the best aims 15 226 * blight. and prizes of ambition, checks its hand, like alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped, chilled with a miserly comparison of the toy's purchase with the length of life. 227 mu s k e t a q. uid. because i was content with these poor fields, low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, and found a home in haunts which others scorned, the partial wood-gods overpaid my love, and granted me the freedom of their state, and in their secret senate have prevailed with the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, made moon and planets parties to their bond, and through my rock-like, solitary wont shot million rays of thought and tenderness. for me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring visits the valley; —break away the clouds, – i bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air, and loiter willing by yon loitering stream. sparrows far off, and nearer, april's bird, blue-coated,—flying before from tree to tree, 228 musketaquid. courageous, sing a delicate overture to lead the tardy concert of the year. onward and nearer rides the sun of may; and wide around, the marriage of the plants is sweetly solemnized. then flows amain the surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag, hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade, are touched with genius. yonder ragged cliff has thousand faces in a thousand hours. beneath low hills, in the broad interval through which at will our indian rivulet winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, whºse pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, here in pine houses built of new fallen trees, supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road, or, it may be, a picture; to these men, the landscape is an armory of powers, which, one by one, they know to draw and use. they harness beast, bird, insect, to their work; they prove the virtues of each bed of rock, musketaquid. 229 and, like the chemist mid his loaded jars, draw from each stratum its adapted use to drug their crops or weapon their arts withal. they turn the frost upon their chemic heap, they set the wind to winnow pulse and grain, they thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime, and, on cheap summit-levels of the snow, slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods o'er meadows bottomless. so, year by year, they fight the elements with elements, (that one would say, meadow and forest walked, transmuted in these men to rule their like,) and by the order in the field disclose the order regnant in the yeoman's brain. what these strong masters wrote at large in miles, i followed in small copy in my acre; for there's no rood has not a star above it; the cordial quality of pear or plum ascends as gladly in a single tree as in broad orchards resonant with bees; 230 musketaquid. and every atom poises for itself, and for the whole. the gentle deities showed me the lore of colors, and of sounds, the innumerable tenements of beauty, the miracle of generative force, far-reaching concords of astronomy felt in the plants, and in the punctual birds; better, the linked purpose of the whole, and, chiefest prize, found i true liberty in the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. the polite found me impolite; the great would mortify me, but in vain; for still i am a willow of the wilderness, loving the wind that bent me. all my hurts my garden spade can heal. a woodland walk, a quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, a wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine, salve my worst wounds. for thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: “dost love our manners ? canst thou silent lie? canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass musketaquid. 231 into the winter night's extinguished mood? canst thou shine now, then darkle, and being latent feel thyself no less? as, when the all-worsnipped moon attracts the eye, the river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure, yet envies none, none are unenviable.’ 232 d i r. g. e. knows he who tills this lonely field, to reap its scanty corn, what mystic fruit his acres yield at midnight and at morn? in the long sunny afternoon, the plain was full of ghosts; i wandered up, i wandered down, beset by pensive hosts. the winding concord gleamed below, pouring as wide a flood as when my brothers, long ago, came with me to the wood. dirge. 233 but they are gone, – the holy ones who trod with me this lovely vale; the strong, star-bright companions are silent, low, and pale. my good, my noble, in their prime, who made this world the feast it was, who learned with me the lore of time, . who loved this dwelling-place they took this valley for their toy, they played with it in every mood; a cell for prayer, a hall for joy, they treated nature as they would. they colored the horizon round; stars flamed and faded as they bade; all echoes hearkened for their sound, – they made the woodlands glad or mad. i touch this flower of silken leaf, which once our childhood knew; 234 dirge. its soft leaves wound me with a grief whose balsam never grew. hearken to yon pine-warbler singing aloft in the treel hearest thou, o traveller, what he singeth to me? not unless god made sharp thine ear with sorrow such as mine, out of that delicate lay could'st thou its heavy tale divine. ‘go, lonely man,’ it saith; “they loved thee from their birth; their hands were pure, and pure their faith, – there are no such hearts on earth. ‘ye drew one mother's milk, one chamber held ye all; a very tender history did in your childhood fall. dirge. 23.5 ‘ye cannot unlock your heart, the key is gone with them; the silent organ loudest chants the master's requiem.” 236 t h r en o d y . the south-wind brings life, sunshine, and desire, and on every mount and meadow breathes aromatic fire; but over the dead he has no power, the lost, the lost, he cannot restore; and, looking over the hills, i mourn the darling who shall not return. / i see my empty house, i see my trees repair their boughs; and he, the wondrous child, whose silver warble wild outvalued every pulsing sound within the air's cerulean round, – threnody. 237 the hyacinthine boy, for whom morn well might break and april bloom, the gracious boy, who did adorn the world whereinto he was born, and by his countenance repay the favor of the loving day, has disappeared from the day's eye; far and wide she cannot find him; my hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. returned this day, the south wind searches, and finds young pines and budding birches; but finds not the budding man; nature, who lost him, cannot remake him; fate let him fall, fate can't retake him; nature, fate, men, him seek in vain. and whither now, my truant wise and sweet, o, whither tend thy feet? i had the right, few days ago, thy steps to watch, thy place to know; how have i forfeited the right? hast thou forgot me in a new delight? 238 threnody. i hearken for thy household cheer, o eloquent child! whose voice, an equal messenger, conveyed thy meaning mild. what though the pains and joys whereof it spoke were toys fitting his age and ken, yet fairest dames and bearded men, who heard the sweet request, so gentle, wise, and grave, bended with joy to his behest, and let the world's affairs go by, awhile to share his cordial game, or mend his wicker wagon-frame, still plotting how their hungry ear that winsome voice again might hear; for his lips could well pronounce words that were persuasions. gentlest guardians marked serene his early hope, his liberal mien ; threnody. 239 took counsel from his guiding eyes to make this wisdom earthly wise. ah, vainly do these eyes recall the school-march, each day's festival, when every morn my bosom glowed to watch the convoy 'on the road; the babe in willow wagon closed, with rolling eyes and face composed; with children forward and behind, like cupids studiously inclined; and he the chieftain paced beside, the centre of the troop allied, with sunny face of sweet repose, to guard the babe from fancied foes. the little captain innocent took the eye with him as he went; each village senior paused to scan and speak the lovely caravan. from the window i look out to mark thy beautiful parade, stately marching in cap and coat to some tune by fairies played; — 240 threnody. a music heard by thee alone to works as noble led thee on. now love and pride, alas ! in vain, up and down their glances strain. the painted sled stands where it stood; the kennel by the corded wood; the gathered sticks to stanch the wall of the snow-tower, when snow should fall; the ominous hole he dug in the sand, and childhood's castles built or planned; his daily haunts i well discern, – the poultry-yard, the shed, the barn, – and every inch of garden ground paced by the blessed feet around, from the roadside to the brook whereinto he loved to look. step the meek birds where erst they ranged; the wintry garden lies unchanged; the brook into the stream runs on; but the deep-eyed boy is gone. threnody. 241 on that shaded day, dark with more clouds than tempests are, when thou didst yield thy innocent breath in birdlike heavings unto death, night came, and nature had not thee; i said, “we are mates in misery.' the morrow dawned with needless glow; each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow; each tramper started; but the feet of the most beautiful and sweet of human youth had left the hill and garden, they were bound and still. there's not a sparrow or a wren, there's not a blade of autumn grain, which the four seasons do not tend, and tides of life and increase lend ; and every chick of every bird, and weed and rock-moss is preferred. o ostrich-like forgetfulness! o loss of larger in the less! was there no star that could be sent, no watcher in the firmament, 16 the exody. no angel from the countless host that loiters round the crystal coast, could stoop to heal that only child, nature's sweet marvel undefiled, and keep the blossom of the earth, which all her harvests were not worth 2 not mine, — i never called thee mine, but nature's heir, – if i repine, and seeing rashly torn and moved not what i made, but what i loved, grow early old with grief that thou must to the wastes of nature go, 'tis because a general hope was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. for flattering planets seemed to say this child should ills of ages stay, by wondrous tongue, and guided pen, bring the flown muses back to men. perchance not he but nature ailed, the world and not the infant failed. it was not ripe yet to sustain a genius of so fine a strain, threnody. 243 who gazed upon the sun and moon as if he came unto his own, and, pregnant with his grander thought, brought the old order into doubt. , his beauty once their beauty tried; they could not feed him, and he died, and wandered backward as in scorn, to wait an aeon to be born. ill day which made this beauty waste, plight broken, this high face defaced some went and came about the dead ; and some in books of solace read; some to their friends the tidings say; some went to write, some went to pray; one tarried here, there hurried one ; but their heart abode with none. covetous death bereaved us all, to aggrandize one funeral. the eager fate which carried thee took the largest part of me: for this losing is true dying; this is lordly man's down-lying, threnody. this his slow but sure reclining, star by star his world resigning. o child of paradise, boy who made dear his father's home, in whose deep eyes men read the welfare of the times to come, i am too much bereñ. the world dishonored thou hast left. o truth’s and nature's costly lie o trusted broken prophecy! / o richest fortune sourly crossed born for the future, to the future lost! the deep heart answered, ‘weepest thou ? worthier cause for passion wild if i had not taken the child. and deemest thou as those who pore, with aged eyes, short way before, — think'st beauty vanished from the coast of matter, and thy darling lost? threnody. 245 taught he not thee — the man of eld, whose eyes within his eyes beheld heaven's numerous hierarchy span the mystic gulf from god to man? to be alone wilt thou begin when worlds of lovers hem thee in 7 to-morrow, when the masks shall fall that dizen nature's carnival, the pure shall see by their own will, which overflowing love shall fill, 'tis not within the force of fate the fate-conjoined to separate. but thou, my votary, weepest thou? i gave thee sight—where is it now? i taught thy heart beyond the reach of ritual, bible, or of speech; wrote in thy mind's transparent table, as far as the incommunicable; taught thee each private sign to raise, lit by the supersolar blaze. past utterance, and past belief, and past the blasphemy of grief, 246 threnody. the mysteries of nature's heart; and though no muse can these impart, throb thine with nature's throbbing breast, and all is clear from east to west. ‘i came to thee as to a friend ; dearest, to thee i did not send tutors, but a joyful eye, innocence that matched the sky, lovely locks, a form of wonder, laughter rich as woodland thunder, that thou might'st entertain apart the richest flowering of all art: and, as the great all-loving day through smallest chambers takes its way, that thou might'st break thy daily bread with prophet, savior, and head; that thou might'st cherish for thine own the riches of sweet mary's son, boy-rabbi, israel's paragon. and thoughtest thou such guest would in thy hall take up his rest? threnody. 247 would rushing life forget her laws, fate's glowing revolution pause ! high omens ask diviner guess; not to be conned to tediousness. and know my higher gifts unbind the zone that girds the incarnate mind. when the scanty shores are full with thought's perilous, whirling pool; when frail nature can no more, then the spirit strikes the hour: my servant death, with solving rite, pours finite into infinite. ‘wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, whose streams through nature circling go? nail the wild star to its track on the half-climbed zodiac 2 light is light which radiates, blood is blood which circulates, life is life which generates, and many-seeming life is one, – wilt thou transfix and make it none 7 the enoly. its onward force too starkly pent in figure, bone, and lineament 1 wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate, talker' the unreplying fate? nor see the genius of the whole ascendant in the private soul, beckon it when to go and come, self-announced its hour of doom 2 fair the soul's recess and shrine, magic-built to last a season; masterpiece of love benign ; fairer that expansive reason whose omen 'tis, and sign. wilt thou not ope thy heart to know what rainbows teach, and sunsets show'? verdict which accumulates from lengthening scroll of human fates, voice of earth to earth returned, prayers of saints that inly burned, – saying, what is excellent, as god lives, is permanent; threnody. 249 hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; heart's love will meet thee again. revere the maker; fetch thine eye up to his style, and manners of the sky. not of adamant and gold built he heaven stark and cold ; no, but a nest of bending reeds, flowering grass, and scented weeds; or like a traveller's fleeing tent, or bow above the tempest bent; built of tears and sacred flames, and virtue reaching to its aims; built of furtherance and pursuing, not of spent deeds, but of doing. silent rushes the swift lord through ruined systems still restored, broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, plants with worlds the wilderness; waters with tears of ancient sorrow apples of eden ripe to-morrow. house and tenant go to ground, lost in god, in godhead found.’ 250 hy min: sung at the completion of the concord monument, april 19, 1836. by the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to april's breeze unfurled, here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world. the foe long since in silence slept ; alike the conqueror silent sleeps; and time the ruined bridge has swept down the dark stream which seaward creeps. on this green bank, by this soft stream, we set to-day a votive stone; that memory may their deed redeem, when, like our sires, our sons are gone. hymn. 251 spirit, that made those heroes dare to die, or leave their children free, bid time and nature gently spare the shaft we raise to them and thee. * º 3. feb | 0 1997 k the borrower will be charged anoverduefee if this bookis not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. fº: i tºok ºut: y^y | º | | | 591 589 th 1323.034 harvard college library e from the bright legacy one half the income from this legacy, wbich was received in 1880 under the will of jonathan brown bright of waltham, massachusetts, is to be expended for books for the college library. the other half of the income is devoted to scholarships in harvard university for the benefit of descendants of henry bright, jr., wbo died at watertown, massachusetts, in 1686. in the absence of such descendants, other persons are eligible to the scholarships. the will requires that this announcement shall be made in every book added to the library ander its provisions. ralph waldo emerson. complete works. centenary edition. 12 vols., crown 8vo. with portraits, and copious notes by edward waldo emerson. price per volume, $1.75 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. 5. english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. 10. lectures and biographical sketches. 11. miscellanies. 12. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works. riverside edition. with 2 portraits. 12 vols., each, 12mo. gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 12 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25: the set, $1500. poems. household edition. with portrait. 12mo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. essays! first and second series. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1,00. nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emer. son. introductory essay. household edition. 12mo, $1.50. holiday edition. 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. 18mo, $1.00. emerson calendar book. 32mo, parchment-paper, 25 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. 2 ols, crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton, 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. the correspondence between emerson and grimm. edited by f. w. holls. with portraits. 16mo, $1.00, net. postpaid, $1.05. for various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son memoirs see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals, of ralph waldo emerson 1820–1872 vol. ii madam emerson journals of. ralph waldo emerson with annotations 645 edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1824-1832 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1909 al 1323,012.9 (2) dec i 1909 librari, oright und copyright, 1909, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1909 contents teacher and divinity student journal xv 1824 letter to aunt mary: byron's death. books of the centuries, a man. each and all. tiberius. questionings: truth elusive, honest doubts; good seen everywhere, books and men. writing for americans, a proposed spectator. civilization. society or solitude. fragment for sermon, god within. imagination. providence. faith a telescope. aunt mary's reproving letter: “ holy ghost ” ; degenerate cambridge: channing * and ware; diluted calvinism; christ against “ german madness”' ; an appeal. a portion of the nephew's answer: the god of nature against the god of calvin. verses, forefathers' day. books.. ... 3 journal xvi 1825 reflections on closing his school; cultivate sympathy, verses on leaving the old life for the new. prosperity and arms. editorial confidences: ancestry; brothers; conventional life; selfishness. everett's plymouth oration; mediæval despair and modern hope; fortune or providence ? strength of weakness. practical poetry. • keeping.” solitude; dissuasions from the ministry; contents a free mind. henry clay. leaves roxbury for cambridge divinity school; reflections. poetical quotations. the ministry of the day; the sages of old. solitude or society again; action. poem, riches ( the caterpillar). letter to aunt mary: anthropomorphism; the divinity of common sense always recognized; nature's influence. modern progress. the educated mind. books. ill health; leaves cambridge... 36 journal xvii 1826 teaching again in roxbury and cambridge. joy in writing again. faces the uncertain future. content with nineteenth century. compensation; people who sell themselves; sin is ignorance. another letter to aunt mary: hume, his influence; each must have his own religion; value of christianity, even though transient. greatness. the sabbath. slave trade. verses, fate. rulers. fitness. the wind a poet. another letter to aunt mary: german criticism of christian evidences; loss of the tradition would be tragic; not to be passively abandoned. reason in religion. reflections and hopes. byron. age of chivalry; charles's remark. the world our teacher; history, its help for ideals. another letter: education after death. public prayer. growth of one's knowledge. forethought and afterthought. friendship. style. hints of history. seedthought. verses, living-prayer, immortality. letter to aunt mary: value of eyes; everett's phi beta kappa oration; genius, the spirit of the age? shakspeare; the # mundane soul; man clings to identity; the hereafter contents vii unworthily pictured; hard to conceive without matter; surely welcome. another letter: poetry; poet needs material form, life as well as imagination; shakspeare and wordsworth contrasted; criticism of latter; what is poetry ? happiness defined. letter to aunt mary: the moments of our lives. funeral rites of adams and jefferson. letter to edward: the soul's affinities. quiddle. reflections, bowing to necessity. sampson reed's book. increasing ill health and depression; hope of edward's return from europe; take courage, and die like a gentleman. christianity and morals; rea* son of evil. religious dogmas pass; what then? poisons. letter to aunt mary: hume again, and gibbon. shakspeare; burke; everett; emerson's own cold temperament. another letter: sampson reed's growth of the mind, swedenborgians; day of sentiment. approbated to preach. combats of conscience. belief in the resurrection. study of history. butler on translations. verses: life or death; song. emerson sails southward for his health. versatility. the voyage. charleston; tides of thought. moral sense native; discoveries and science in morals. advancing religion. hypocrisy; sin carries its reward. theologic war. manners; southern courtesy. reading . . . . 70 the young minister journal xviii 1827 the new year; reflections, principle. note-books. love of eloquence. the fortunate generation. freemasonry viji contents of the dull. the flag. iron. verses, st. augustine, and notes on that city. determination of right. prince napoléon. achille murat. dark hours; rights of conscience; doubts; sovereignty of ethics. tallahassee, visit to the murats. letters to charles and william. minorcans and indians. gibbet-irons. peculiarities of the present age. ingratitude. necessity. virtue and genius. the coming duties. the way of the great. living in the future. st. augustine’s priest; indians again. letters to edward and charles, on moments, and the value of letters. letter to aunt mary: meanness and grandeur; patriotism; prayer. church at st. x augustine. the bible educates. the slave-auction and the bible meeting. methodist preaching. pantheism and atheism. verses in exile. letter to aunt mary: improving health; the house of pain, its benefit. resignation not easy. verses, farewell to st. augustine. letter to william. friendship with achille murat. at charleston; good gifts of travel. account of murat and his letter to emerson. miss emerson's letter to mrs. ripley: evolution and religion; unbelieſ; biblical criticism. joy in thought; philosophic scriptures. charleston. verses on spontaneous utterance. “listen.” autobiographic verses. alexandria; returning courage. compensation. letter to edward: dr. channing and inferior clergy. letter to aunt mary: alexandria; bride of lammermoor; aspirations for art, letters and science an argument for immortality. president john quincy adams. the lions of philadelphia and new york. emerson's preachings on way home. some gain in health. verse: at the old manse; the storm; contents ix and added verse to the poem fame. letter to aunt mary: dissolving of creeds after death; immortality; x fear of death. constancy. the magnet. a good x hope. another letter: let the preacher give from his own store. use the minutes. evidences. solitude. president adams. genius and domesticity. alpine flowers. the universal mind, sonnet in sickness. ellen tucker. places and days. song. letter to aunt mary: religious feeling keeps alive through the ages among the enthusiastic and the grave; reason in relix gion; and imagination; god within. reading. . . 144 x journal xix 1828 preaching and practice. use of time. public opinion. all knowledge valuable. visit to the prison. selections from wordsworth. notes on poetry: criticism of wordsworth; shakspeare; ben jonson; montgomery and wordsworth. milton. burnap on dr. watts, and dr. doddridge. deity. mr. otis and judge spencer. office of religion: action as well as contemplation, yet action is not all; god the pilot. inspiration. friends. silence. “ writing down.” saunterings -autobiographical. education; good signs in children. edward bliss emerson's sketch for a sermon. conscience connects god to man. stored knowledge. duelling. self-reliance. power of mind. sit-o'? uation. man is his own star. reading. justice. beauty's immunity. the splendour of english poetry. forgiveness. engagement to ellen tucker. . . 227 contents minister of the second church of boston journal xx 1829 lines to ellen. letter to aunt mary: the good days come to the family; trust against misgiving. the call to the second church of boston; reflections. the fashionist in novels. verses on the independent life. more lines to ellen. marriage. the new jerusalem church. books. the social principle. reading nature; idolatries or god. prayer. serenity. human metamorphosis. every man free. second letter to aunt mary: human progress; the cheering miracle of life; the idea of god. perseverance, habit, force. third letter to aunt mary: the ailing knee; coleridge; a conventional or living christmas sermon ? coleridge again. uses of biography. reading. . . . . . . . . . 257 journal xxi 1830 aunt mary on intellectual debt to others. story from plutarch. spirit of the age. your thought god's gift. solon and lycurgus. metaphysics; critics. aristotle; epitomized thought. saying of fénelon. human desires. natural goodness. ministers' conduct, self-denial, do not worry about example. chemistry, providence, marriage of facts, ideas of god. religion sublimed. miracles. creeds grow from the structure of the creature; petty providences. donne's counsel as to our contents responsibilities. original poems. preaching. prayer. webster's reply to hayne. the deacon. “one having authority.” the year. solitude; wisdom and virtue bound together; character. humility and pride. selfreliance; we shape ourselves and have compensations. who is religious ? asking reasons. attitude of wonx der. buckminster; all subjects good; pertinence. happiness or serenity ? happiness unearned. town and field. men weighed against nature. dugald stewart. judge howe. resolves. self-reliance. simple truth, enterprising virtue. poem, the nightingale. census of slaves. temperamental virtue; free trade; merit of “ talking shop.” fear of death; ancestral christian death beds. thought, not experiment, finds god. enthusiasts; swedenborgians, quakers, metho-x dists. be yourself. perseverance; temperance, wise severance of the flesh from the spirit. patriotism. the law, why reverenced. means and ends. brave economy. plotinus. as to history of jesus, trust your soul; god in the soul. ourselves in others. the low self. x the truth is everyone's concern. the internal evidence important; miracles. christianity weighed by truth. bacon. newton. holy days. the great facts. sir thomas browne. reading. degérando on ancient philosophies. bacon's prima philosophia. ancient cosmogonies. theogonies. idealism, peter hunt. the ionian school; thales, anaximander, anaxagoras, diogenes of apollonia, archelaus. the italian school ; pythagoras, archytas, eudoxus. the eleatic school; xenophanes, parmenides, zeno, heraclitus, hippocrates. hymn, there is in all the sons of men. extracts хіі contents from samuel daniel, donne, and herbert, st. paul, novalis, goethe, lessing, landor, and lee’s life of cuvier . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 journal xxii 1831 neighbour's claim is through god. greatness, nobility. ethics bind christian and theist. essential doctrines. death of ellen tucker emerson. plotinus on god; ne* cessary truths. god in all. the true holy ghost. wisdom and goodness one; hence religion must not 7 fear science. genius is reception ; examples, jesus, socrates, milton, and others. live as if forever, but man of god must be human. verses on country life. sad meditation. conscience. calm. fast-day sermon, honour to the forefathers. the bride of lammermoor; heroic characters. novels; love of the ideal doctrine of trust; gratitude. heaven guards man's freedom. man's inertia. plotinus. quotation from schiller's wallenstein, coleridge's translation. admiration a fine trait. be true to yourself. the sunday school meeting; true attitude of a teacher. the blind and the illuminated mind; worth in the worthless. lines on + death. verses to ellen. visit to vermont. be god's child, not a sectarian. the unteachable wisdom. thomas à kempis, fénelon, and scougal. freedom of the wise. verses, the days pass over me. extracts from giordano bruno, stewart, wordsworth. compensation. nourish high sentiments. high aims assure of immortality. god makes us answer our prayers. contents xiii obedience conquers. shame of ignorance. verses, on death; tvôb. leavtóv. president monroe. morals and intellect. point of view, law. the blessed nineteenth century. the right word; test of good writing; poems; shakspeare; wordsworth ; the old english writers. he invents who proves ; the discerning eye. the solitude of the soul among friends. god in us. education. love and death. phi beta kappa. longing for friendship. thoughts that set one aglow; friends capable of such ; ellen. thin disguises. right use of riches. the real power ; napote leon, cromwell, andrew jackson. misrepresenting god. trust reason ; the oversoul; god's door. right and wrong way to make christ loved. quocations from bacon. threads tie the universe. campbell. justified books. reputation. adams's eulogy on monroe. temperance. silence; speech; poverty. education. coming death. who knoweth? origin of sunday schools. everyman's gauge. miracles. compensation. elevated and clear writing. pestalozzi on effect of surroundings. the moral law infinite. verses, the mines of truth. non-resistance; judge each by his law. creeds or commandments ; calvinism ; heaven here. quotations; schelling, landor, cicero, shakespeare's sonnets. formal and polemic worship ; calvinism and unitarianism; the soul's worship. derry academy; limitations; trust your instincts. abide your time. your future here. exchanges of pulpit. robert burns, wordsworth, praise and criticism. madam emerson's remark. mayhew school-committee. prayer should be entrance into god's mind. origin xiv contents of poem compensation. elevation in sorrow; ellen's words. subjects for sermons; the unseen good in man ; real wisdom and ignorance ; love of nature ; coincidence of first and third thoughts ; uneven character ; first and second thoughts. charles emerson's departure. conferring favours. parochial memoranda. god's orderly universe. preach and practice. visits to sick and dying; fear of death. sentences and quotations. extempore speaking. letter to aunt mary: montaigne; wild vigour versus talking from memory. the closing year. faith. robert haskins's proverb. reading . . . . . . . . . . · 353 journal xxiii 1832 the unsaid part of the discourse. death. george bradford. the proposed book. acquaintances. mental crystallization. mendelssohn's phædo. reading. dreams. ministerial bonds. native vigour in speech. true philosophy. dangerous power. brave independence ; cowardly courtesies. dreams and beasts. travel overestimated. the house-hero. utilitarianism. reality of duty. talk with sampson reed and thomas worcester on spirits. channing on war. to each his gift. letter to elizabeth tucker advising reading, — monitors: thomas à kempis, scougal, taylor, fénelon, browne, young, ware ; history: müller, robertson, hume, scott's napoleon, belknap's new hampshire, morton's new england, milman ; natural history: brougham, herschel, nuttall, etc.; novels: scott, edgeworth, etc.; contents xv xv poetry: milton, bryant, cowper, thomson, wordsworth. poverty and riches. a wise man's matter. best opinions prevail at last ; newton ; leonardo da vinci. each finds his own in books. nothing is new. galileo. unanswered questions. sin. temperance. the unsatisfied. mackintosh; creeds as scaffoldings, moore on campbell. suum cuique. abernethy on fies. sermon subjects, animals, idleness. the force within. nature teaches physician. persian scriptures. pestalozzi. stand to your thought; humility, human relations. x expression. sermons. porto rico. a thought under another name. symbols. be master. hobby-riding. wonder. woman. blessed poverty. spanish proverbs. truth coming. shakspeare's creations. know to like. new lights. envy unreasonable. constancy. concealment, the present. the point of view. jortin. missionaries. the miracle of the universe. science ethical ; design ; astronomy, effect on religion. crisis in emerson’s life ; to the mountains for help ; meditations; the stirring of thought; inspiration of nature. sunday at the inn. the question of the lord's supper. george fox. god the soul. truth immortal. repairs, bodily and spiritual. real antiquity. design for a modern plutarch. ideal men. speak your own word. cholera times ; value of death and of life. begenuine. subject for a sermon, watch for fine sentiment everywhere. inner meaning of texts ; objective theology a discipline ; the soul reserves her word. hypocrisy. resignation of pastorate. christianity educates and frees. differing x gifts. “ think of living,” the present duty, the unknown future. your powers your horoscope. seekx xvi contents * truth, do generously, have faith, the great have had it. let god speak through us. first reading of carlyle. sovereignty of ethics ; truth precedes christianity. the terrible freedom. “teach by degrees.” use god's x riches. resolves. verses, self-reliance. quotations x from landor. problems of a minister. the light within, let it direct your way ; it leads to common goal. imitators. thought and speech. nothing within. truth many-sided. the noble heart ; carlyle. mary moody emerson. resignation of pastorate accepted. schiller. pope's couplet. public concern, or private ? wasted life. little thoughts. war. aphorisms. sartor resartus. margaret tucker's death. a winter's day. wordsworth. compulsory mathematics. winter's day again. letter to george a. sampson on influence of solitude. notice of miss tucker. reading . . . . . . 444 illustrations madam emerson (ruth haskins), widow of rev. william emerson and mother of ralph waldo emerson. (photogravure) . . . . . frontispiece from a miniature, painted about 1840; artist unknown. prince napoléon achille murat ..... 188 from a print after a painting in the public library of tallahassee, florida. 'ellen tucker. (photogravure) ...... 256 from a miniature, painted in 1829; artist unknown. *the second church of boston (old north), in hanover street, where emerson was pastor . . 424 journal teacher and divinity student journal xv (the last half of 1824, from “ xv,” « xvi,” and “xviii,” 2d) [for the next few years, mr. emerson kept several journals or note-books, the distinction between which is not strictly followed, with entries of dates covering several years. therefore it seems better to avoid confusion by grouping the selections by years, rather than by separate note-books. it will be specified from what manuscript book the selections for each year were taken. it must be understood, then, that, in this part of the work, the heading for each year given by the editors, journal — does not signify a separate manuscript, but a combination; and yet, unfortunately, three of the journals that are here drawn upon have the roman numerals xv, xvi, and xviii, 2d, given by mr. emerson.] journal (age 21 trim enost r. w. e. to miss emerson (from “ xviii") july 26, 1824. ... i suppose it jarred no chord in the vale ? when byron died, a man of dreadful history, who left no brighter genius behind him than is gone, and no such blasphemer of heaven or pander to sensuality. but the light of sublimer existence was on his cheek, even in his sarcastic beastliness and coarse sneers, nor seemed less than archangel ruined, and the excess of at glory obscured. it is one of the hardest errors was to get rid of, — the admiration of intellectual i tein excellence though depraved, and one cause is, there seems to be no reason why a spirit should be finely touched for such poor issues. one is glad of eternity, when we find so much to learn. but it is melancholy to have your well dry up, your fountain stopped from whence you were wont to look for an unfailing supply. men marvel at scott's never-ending traditions, but they set no bounds to their expectation from byron's creative genius. wit, argument, history, i « the vale” (waterford, maine) was the name of the haskins farm, in which miss emerson had some rights, and which was long her place of residence. korban 1824] books rhapsody, the extremes of good and ill, -everything was to be expected from his extraordinary invention. he might have added one more wonder to his life — its own redemption. and now he is dead, and is seeing the secrets his paramount genius dared to brave. it is terrible in example to presume as he has done, it is a risque not many are willing to run, but it is less mean and no worse thus to face the things unseen, and shake hands with lucifer, than to commit the deed, and love the lust, and shake at the contumely of being over-good, and refuse to speak out all the time out of fear of being struck dead. [books of the centuries] (from “ xvi”) october, 1824. “by books,” says the gentle shepherd, “i crack with kings.” 'tis a godlike invention which thus annihilates to all purposes of mental improvement both space and time, and suffers the solitary scholar by these silent interpreters to converse with minds who illuminated the beginnings of the world. my memory goes back to a past immortality, and i almost realize the perfection of a spiritual intercourse which gains lates than a ca this is a difreue books 6 h journal [age 21 all the good, and lacks all the inconvenience and disgust of close society of imperfect beings. we are then likest to the image of god, for in this grateful rapidity of thought a thousand years become one day. providence has equitably distributed the highest order of minds along successive periods of time, and not clustered them all into one fortunate age. hereby their potent influence enlightens the dark and cheers the gloom of barbarism. but an evil consequence ensues, that they are deprived of that splendid enjoyment which their equal society would afford them. but, as they everywhere rise above the sinking mass in which they stand, the eye of the distant historian associates them together, as in a distant prospect the vast intervening lowlands vanish and the mountains tower above them, seeming to come together in solemn and sublime society. man [a man] i am partial to one sort of portrait. ...i like the image my fancy presents me of a wise man, well bred to a vast variety of sound learning, carrying through sun and rain, through his rambles and business, and animal refections and filthy occupations, through visits of cere1824) each and all mony, and all the attitudes into which the versatile scene of life may throw him,his soul, that rich world of thought; that subtle and elegant arrangement of conceptions, ripe for communication so soon as another spirit is presented. i like an unity of purpose in a man like the oft repeated warning of cato, “it is also my opinion that carthage should be destroyed.” scipio also. mr. wilberforce never speaks in british parliament but for slaves. mr. everett is the expounder of a certain practical philosophy which always breaks forth incidentally, or in the plan of all his productions. in voltaire, they who have vainly sought for any unity of character or object have been reduced to fix it in the absolute disregard of all character, object and truth. anacreon tried to sing of heroes, but his lyre responded only love; byron's lyre returned but one sublime note, and it was hatred. he dreamed by day and by night but one dream, himself. he i hated all others and also himself. [each and all] in god's system, the virtue pervades the whole world, and none so poor as not to partake: if not opulent, he may impart of his journal [age 21 wisdom; if foolish, of his strength, and so thoroughly social is our constitution that scarce an infant or idiot exists who cannot somehow or other contribute to the well-being of the universe. all are inevitably amenable to the author of their power for the right use of it, and chiefly, or in the highest degree, those who have most liberally received. are you then chief among ten thousand in the rarest endowments of genius, of wealth, of power, of accomplishments? you are but the wider channels through which the streams of his goodness flow. it was a noble saying of a stoic that wise men are the perpetual priests of the gods. c tiberius forbade they should consult the sy billine books about the inundation “ perinde divina bumanaque obtegens . . . ut callidum ejus ingenium, ita anxium judicium.” the spanish philips have been tiberii. austria today is tiberian. 'tis so true and common and so bad a combination of real human elements that tacitus might have wrought it up, as xenophon did the character of cyrus, exempli causa. candidus insuetum miratur limen olympi, sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera daphnis. apud leibnitz, de bayle. 1824) truth? 9 [questionings] (continued from “xv”). october 8, 1824. it is a striking feature in our condition that we so hardly arrive at truth. ... the final cause of this is, no doubt, found in the doctrine that we were not sent into this world for the discovery of truth, but for the education of our minds, and our faculties are best exercised by doubts, not by facts. the immediate consequence of this arrangement, like all other parts of human nature, has its admixture of evil. it is productive of that scepticism which throughout the world combats the advancement of truth. what you say is probable, says the pyrrhonian, but the interval is always infinite between the highest probability and certainty. i will not renounce my old opinion for what may be an error. prove it true, and i will be converted. in opposition to this scepticism, in science, reason fights with truth; in religion (with) conscience. when a pure creed is proposed and 1 the young literary man pleased himself by putting a large part of the journal from which the next pages are taken into the form of a publication like the spectator or rambler, though without serious thought of its ever appearing in print : it was purely for pleasure and practice. reaso : 10 osas o cruds & prar journal [age 21 accepted by the multitude, in whom the force of truth and conscience ordinarily overbalances the ambition of doubting, the infidelity of the wise, who alone are privy to the full force of objections, is commonly kept a secret among themselves. that the number of avowed infidels is small must not be esteemed decisive on the success of christianity. on the contrary, there are few men who cannot number in the small circle of their acquaintance one or more sceptics. there are few christians indeed who have not nourished, if they don't now nourish, a latent scepticism as to some portions of their system. ... when one considers that such is the constitution of the human mind that physical truth, even when established by experiments of invariable success, is forced to encounter innumeraable obstacles from vulgar prejudice, as in the instance of vaccination, of czar peter's canals, of harvey's blood-circulation, and the like, and since great force is added to the apprehension that a metaphysical theological creed will not prosper but against infinite odds, a doubt may very naturally arise whether god would leave his dispensation of such immeasurable moment to his creatures, to struggle against this mighty bias lumeraii 1824] christianity 11 with so small chances of success. the more this objection is weighed, the more its force will be felt. we are so much the creatures of education that we find it hard to put ourselves in the place of those who lived under the imperfect religions of paganism. christianity is so much adapted to the course of human feelings that it requires more discrimination than we are perhaps masters of to separate its fruits from the native promptings of humanity. there are moments in the life of every reflecting man wherein he seems to see farthest into the intellectual world, when his convictions of the existence of god i and his own relations to him rise upon his mind! with far greater force than they are accustomed to exert. but it is by no means certain that the mind of the old idolaters ached for any inspiration, or accused philosophy and nature with any emphasis for their scanty revelations. providence supports, but does not spoil its children. we are called sons, not darlings, of the deity. there is ever good in store for those who love it; knowledge for those who seek it; and if we do evil, we suffer the consequences of evil. throughout the administration of the world there is the same aspect of stern kindness; of good against your will; good against 12 journal [age 21 your good; ten thousand channels of active beneficence, but all flowing with the same regard to general, not particular, profit. ... and to such an extent is this great statute policy of god carried, that many, nay, most of the great blessings of humanity require cycles of a thousand years to bring them to their height. ... the arts which do exalt and lengthen life by carrying on the old landmarks of thought to new stations, make a vast difference in the existence of the ist and the 60th century. yet all these truths, of such vast consequence to our improvement, lay hid. the compass, press, steam engine; astronomy, mathematics, politics, have scarce begun to exist till within a thousand years. yet the principles of which they are results are surely in our nature. “nature,” said burke, “is never more truly herself than in her grandest forms. the apollo belvidere is as much in nature as any figure from the pencil of rembrandt, or any clown in the rustic revels of teniers.” it is our nature to eat bread, yet the making of this substance is a very artificial process. “man has no natural food," but was expected to convert inedible to edible substances. thus, too, god has done with the religious education of men; he has sowed truth in e sca was ban tese books and men 1824) books and men 13 the world, but has let them arrive at it by the slow instrumentality of human research. such is the wise remark of origen. ... [books and men] the great library of books that is in the world, instead of making all mankind wiser and better, is addressed for the most part to a very small minority of men, to the learned alone. in so great a mass of works, doubtless every appetite must be suited, and so we find a portion which seems specially intended for coxcombs and deficient persons. to this department belong the greatest part of novels and romances, and all that part of the english drama which is called living plays. . . . but the third class of men, the great body of society who make up nations and conduct the business of the world, these are least consulted in the composition of books. the immense importance of this order of men makes them indeed the subject of authors; they form the groundwork of their reasonings, and from them illustrations are quoted. but the books written on them are not written to them. authors write to authors. and as this order (to use a local term), this middling interest of mankind, are immersed in daily 14 journal (age 21 writing for americans labours for daily bread, they seldom have the will or power to take up the pen in their turn. the consequence often is that they utter the same complaint as the lion in the fable, that “if they were painters,” etc. [writing for americans] now this oversight of the greatest human interests might be excused by those political imperfections which were its cause as long as they lasted. it cannot now be excused. that portion of the community which all over europe is called the third estate, has righted itself, by god's aid, in america, and has absorbed into itself the old distinctions of nobility and office. we have plucked down fortune and set up | nature in his room. consider who are the patrons of my muse. not a frivolous dowager queen, not an imbecile baby, born, forsooth, in a royal bed, is now to be flattered in florid prose or lying rhyme, — then i had been silent, — but to address a great nation risen from the dust and sitting in absolute judgment on the merits of men, ready to hear if any one offers good counsel, may rouse the ambition and exercise the understanding of a man. it is fit that something besides newspapers should be put som ecur1824] a new “spectator” 15 into the hands of the people. it were well if ! short practical treatises on a hundred topics, all of primary importance, could make them prize what all the world covets. in the capital of new england are many individuals who both serve and adorn their country. i have waited to hear them speak, but they are silent; the hours are passing that should complete our education, the moment of instilling wholesome principles may not return. i shall therefore attempt in a series of papers to discuss, in a popular manner, some of those practical questions of daily recurrence, moral, political and literary, which best deserve the attention of my countrymen. it is now a hundred years since the spectator was found duly laid on every plate in the coffee houses and palaces of london. it was a book daily read by near fifty thousand people of every condition, and being a book of faultless persuasive morality and a sharp censor of fashionable vices, it operated with great force on the side of virtue. the common accounts say that 14,000, sometimes 20,000 spectators were sold in a day. supposing that four persons read each copy (and though some were no doubt read by less, others were read by many more), we shall have each of those moral lessons read by more cv ere 16 journal [age 21 than 50,000 persons. since, the number has been indefinitely multiplied. sometimes, as seasons and circumstances change, i shall smile; sometimes i shall laugh, and that heartily; but my readers may expect that my garrulous humour may get the upper hand of my moral turn, and vent itself in anecdotes of myself and my friends, living and dead, in this and every age. and that which i reckon my chief recommendation is the confidence my reader may entertain of finding me his friend. i shall appear every evening at his tea-table, always speaking to him in the frankness of love, and communicating to him my choicest observations on men and manners. he who reflects what numbers are made miserable by the unhappiness of missing those offices of kindness 't is a friend's duty to perform, and who considers that the best and most consolatory use of friendship is the unreserved communication of thoughts, will not lightly esteem this overture i have made in the sincere desire of soothing discontent and sweetening solitude. i have ever been noted for my fondness for children, and children are always fond of me. nature has so vigilantly provided for the care of children in the affections of parents that, at a 1824] a new “spectator” 17 certain season of life, these irrepressible feelings break forth in bachelors also and secure a thousand endearments for the child that comes in their way. 't is like, my brother used to tell me, the strong instinct of sea-shells which accompany the hoarse murmur of their native ocean, though far removed from its social abodes and though withered and dried up in cabinets. ... and if ever, in administering to the wants of one class of my readers, i should offend another, i must ask their charity beforehand for my case, answering, as i must, such different demands; ; and it becomes me, like the old lady who worshipped the picture of st. michael, while i hold up one candle to the saint, to hold another to the dragon. i shall also allow myself such a latitude as to relate to my younger readers occasionally certain old stories which i heard in germany touching the trollfolk and the elf gentry that yet lurk in some corners of that ancient empire, for 1 spit at the scepticism of the moderns. 18 [age 21 journal civilization, moral. ... if we fulfil the expectations of mankind, we flatter ourselves we have fulfilled the demand of duty. especially are we liable to this selfdeception when the tone of feeling in society runs with any strong current towards the natural obligations of conscience. and now when virtue has éclat, and fashion itself has taken the cross, there is indeed danger lest we mistake our conformity to this prevalent correct taste for the fruits of severe and ineradicable principles. those sacred rules of life, companions of its sorrow and its well-being, companions and elements of its eternity, the objects of its present probation, the ties by which 't is to be bound to the universe of good beings, are not thus easily put on and off, with the succession of insignificant opinions and the customs of high life. they are slowly formed by many sacrifices of self, by many victories over the rebellion of fashion, and their genuineness is ever to be suspected when of hasty growth. ... it is perilous for religion to be a fashion, as it is apt to lead men to errors both in the nature and in the degree of their virtue. . . 1824) thought and action 19 cou society or solitude? i propose to write presently on the use of our powers and passions, on abstinence and action, on hermits and men of affairs.' i propose to remember that 't is one thing to stifle and another to direct a propensity. i propose to look philosophically at the conduct of life; to remember [that] to the course of the meanest all the high rules of the theorist can be applied; and [to write] of the acceptance that sedulous action will find on high beside shiftless contemplation, and infer a law whether either life be embraced, or a golden mean preserved. admit the exception of possibility of sublime virtue in absolute inaction, when inaction is martyrdom, but scrupulously exclude the claim of conceited or deceived indolence. a fine train of final causes in the rewards attached to action. (eichhorn — relatively and absolutely.) 1 l'étendue des connoissances dans les temps modernes ne fait qu'affoiblir le caractère quand il n'est pas fortifié par l'habitude des affaires et l'exercice de la volonté. tout voir et tout comprendre est une grande raison d'incertitude ; et l'energie de l'action ne se développe que dans ces contrées libres et puissantes où les sentiments patriotiques sont dans l'âme, comme le sang dans les veines, et ne se glacent qu'avec la vie. — mme. de staël’s germany. (r. w. e.) 20 [age 21 journal final causes į ignorance is not a malady contracted on the | earth, nor an incidental defect foreign to the purpose of our existence, but is an original want with which we were created, and which it is a chief business of life to supply. as hunger stimulates us to procure the food appointed for our sustenance, ignorance is but an appetite which god made us to gratify. ... [method in study] december 1, 1824. i may digress, where all is digression, to utter a wish not altogether fruitless, that there might be an order introduced into the mass of reading that occupies or impends over me. it was a reasonable advice that a scholar gave me to build in the studies of a day ; to begin with solid labour at hebrew and greek; theological criticism, moral philosophy and laborious writing should succeed; then history; then elegant letters — that species of books which is at once the most elevated amusement and the most productive suggester of thought, of which the instant specimens are the bulk of johnson's 1824] plan of study 21 works, as lives of poets, rambler, etc., pope's moral essays, and conspicuously montaigne's essays. thus much for the day. but what arrangement in priority of subjects? when shall i read greek, when roman, when austrian, when ecclesiastical, when american history? whilst we deliberate, time escapes. a poor plan is better than none, as a poor law. i propose, therefore, every morning before breakfast to read a chapter in greek testament with its commentary. afterwards, if time serve, le clerc; or my reading and writing for dissertations; then mitford (all history is ecclesiastical, and all reasonings go back to greece), and the day end with milton, shakspere, cicero or everett, burke, mackintosh, playfair, stewart, scott, pope, dryden. ... time december 10. i confess i am a little cynical on some topics, and when a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, i am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. i have generally found the gravest and most useful citizens are not the easiest provoked to swell the noise, though they may be punctual at the 22 journal [age 21 polls. and i have sometimes thought the election an individual makes between right and wrong more important than his choice between rival statesmen, and that the loss of a novel train of thought was ill paid by a considerable pecuniary gain. it is pleasant to know what is doing in the world, and why should a world go on if it does no good? the man whom your vote supports is to govern some millions — and it would be laughable not to know the issue of the naval battle. in ten years this great competition will be very stale, and a few words will inform you the result which cost you so many columns of the newsprints, so many anxious conjectures. your soul will last longer than the ship; and will value its just and philosophical associations long after the memory has spurned all obtrusive and burdensome contents. ... 89 (fragment for use in a sermon] a celebrated english preacher, whose praise is in your churches, closed his discourse with a bold appeal which the fervour of his eloquence permitted, to the passions and imaginations of his hearers. he pointed their minds' eyes to the recording angel who waited on the wing 1824] god present 23 in the midst of the assembly to write down some name of all that multitude in his book of life. “and shall he wait in vain?” he said, “and will you let him take his departure for heaven without making him the witness of a single soul converted from his sins?” my friends, we know that his sentiment was but a flight of oratory, natural enough to a fervid spirit, and which the urgency of the occasion might excuse. my friends, no recording angel that we know of hovers over our assembly, but a greater than an angel is here. there is one in the midst of us, though your eyes see him not, who is not a fictitious or an imaginary being, but who is too great and too glorious for our eyes to bear. there is one here, imparting to us the life and sense we at this moment exercise, whose tremendous power set yonder sun in the firmament, and upholds him and us. you cannot discern him by the gross orbs of sight, but can you not feel the weight of his presence sinking on your heart; does no conscious feeling stir in your bosoms under the eye of your author and god, who is here? what doth he here? and how shall we acknowledge the almighty mind? ... journal [age 21 imagination i propose to write an essay on the evils of imagination, which, after such a panegyrick on this beautiful faculty as it easily shall admit, may treat of those egregious errors that, growing out of some favourite fancy, have shot up into whole systems of philosophy or bodies of divinity, and have obstructed truth for thousands of years. the essay should exemplify its statement by some of the most signal instances of this capacity in which the imagination has held the reason of man.' thus the picturesque dogma of a ruined world has had a most pernicious fascination over nations of believers. it was an error locked with their life. they gave up the ghost for the love of this lye. and it clings, to this day, in the high places of knowi “man,” says brown, "loves what is simple much, but he loves what is mysterious more. “i am persuaded,' said fontenelle, that, if the majority of mankind could be made to see the order of the universe such as it is, as they would not remark in it any virtues attached to certain numbers, nor any properties inherent in certain planets, nor fatalities in certain times and revolutions of these, they would not be able to restrain themselves on the sight of this admirable regularity and beauty from crying out with astonishment, “ what ! is this all ? """ — brown's philosophy (r. w. e.). cl 1824] evils of imagination 25 ledge and refinement. hence the avidity with which tales of wonder are caught and propagated. hence gibbon's remark that men of imagination are dogmatic. see, on this subject, one of stewart's introductory chapters in the philosophy. see mr. hume's remarks on the agreeableness of the feelings engaged. chapter on miracles, and some of the fables anciently recounted touching memnon's marble harp, renowned of old, and the oracles of dodona and delphos, and the histories of enchanters, ghosts and stars. le saurin called earth the “ scaffold of divine vengeance”;' also, e. g., “nature abhors a vacuum.”... on this head, consult the introductory lectures of brown's philosophy. quietists, essenes, quakers, swedenborgians. vide prideaux. for proselytism and missions see vattel, p. 219. christ came not unforeseen by the ancient prophets, whose eyes had caught a glimpse of blessed light across the cloud of futurity. a thousand years brooded over the prophecy ere the event was matured. 1 origen, conforming himself to the extravagancies of his time, shews the necessity of 4 gospels, from 4 winds, 4 pillars of a house, and ransacks nature and nonsense for resemblances of the cross. (r. w. e.) ss 26 (age 21 journal providence another remark which belongs to the econ, omy of providence is the cheapness (if the expression may be used) with which its operations are performed. a man conversant in books of history must often have deplored the immense expense of wit, of time, that are incurred by us to promote any designs of considerable extent. if a legislator would relieve the necessities of a thousand paupers he has the task of life, and of all his abilities, and of many more lives and minds than his own. much of his labour is mere experiment, and much therefore of his labour is lost. private and public subscriptions which searched the charity and taxed the means of a whole nation may leave the evil as bad or worse than it was found. ... does providence botch up its broken or disordered machinery with the same awkwardness, miscalculation and prodigal expense? look a little at its vast and serene policy, and see how it answers the same end which we have seen human wisdom toiling to gain. as if to delight itself with the exhibition of its contrivance, it brings all men into life paupers. not destitute of wealth alone, but in the destitution of all faculties of action and capacities 1824] the aunt's reproof 27 of thought and enjoyment, without virtue, affection, knowledge or passion. this deplorable poverty it is the proposed problem to relieve, and it may furnish amusement to many hours of idleness in him that once thought life wearisome, to detect the beauty and simplicity of the means whereby it is done. (read rousseau's émile, — rousseau the unrivalled observer of infantile development, — and buffon, the ingenious and benevolent describer of the growth and habits of animals.) sseau faith is a telescope. [here follows part of a letter which miss emerson, stirred by some daring heterodoxy in his (lost) letter, wrote to her nephew, now on the eve of entering the cambridge divinity school.] (from “ xviii,” zd) waterford, maine, december 6, 1824. he talks of the holy ghost. god of mercy what a subject ! holy ghost given to every man in eden; it was lost in the great contest going on in the vast universe ; it was lost, stifled; it was regiven, embodied in the assumed humanity journal [age 21 of the son of god, and since — the reward of prayer, agony, self-immolation! dost not like the faith and the means ? take thy own — or rather the dictates of fashion. let those who love the voice of uncorrupt nature seek for supernal aid — for an alliance with the most powerful of spirits — the holy ghost. such was the ambition of paul — of holy martyrs — it burnt up every earthly element, and would not stoop to ask an angel's record nor an angel's wreath. would to god thou wert more ambitious — respected thyself more and the world less. thou i wouldst not to cambridge. true they use the name “christo,” but that venerable institution, it is thought, has become but a feeble, ornamented arch in the great temple which the christian world maintains to the honour of his name. it is but a garnished sepulchre where may be found some relics of the body of jesus — some grosser parts which he took not at his ascent, and which [the college] will be forgotten and buried forever beneath the flowrets of genius and learning, if the master spirits of such as appleton, chalmers and stewart and the consecrated channing do not rescue it by a crusade of faith and lofty devotion. the nature and limits of human virtue, its dangers, its origin — “questions an1824] miss emerson's letter 29 swered at cambridge — easily” god forgive thy child his levity!-subjects veiled with something of thine own awful incomprehensibility, soothed only by the faith which reason loves, but can never describe, which rests in solemn delight on him who not once calculated it for any earthly emolument. this was written with the pen taken for the old almanacks at the moment of reading yours of antediluvian date. then you do not go to stewart [at andover). you might like him, though he makes mouths at the heartless ... kindnesses which tickle, not benefit, the weak world. he thinks a man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. why did you not study under the wing of channing which was never pruned at cambridge? if he advised cambridge; ... alas that you are there! there is a tide in' the affairs of men who connect the soul to the future, which, taken at the moment, bears on to fortune; omitted, the rest may be shallows. do we repine that so much is dependent on mortal life? the reason we can't determine, yet that this dread responsibility is not extended, is not lengthened to the unknown world, is matter of constant gratitude to those who find terrors in the divine law and government, and in his natu30 journal (age 21 ral attributes. were this protection to be extended, as the liberal believe, to those who have heard of the gospel — of what reason was that astonishing apparatus given? did not christianity — even as much as the good ware allows (which seems to leave more difficulties, though not so frightful as calvin and the improvements of woods) — imply much war with human nature, why do its professed disciples run into atheism so often, rather than deism? diluted as it is, it demands too much lofty and serious virtue, and, as humanitarianism opens the door to conclusions most forbidden, they make them. price, so eminent, yet so flouted, says christianity cannot be credible on lardner's scheme; rather does it seem more so if necessarily connected with the trinitarian. blessed be god for the history, whether the penmen were inspired or not, of primitive religion in the old and new testaments. a descended being, the companion of god before time, living and suffering as he did giving not an intimation that he provided for any earthly comfort to his disciples, leaving if but a few of the precepts and engagements which he did, contains enow to demand constant martyrdom of speculation or interest gives and does enable its devoted children to look at 1824) miss emerson's letter 31 death and hell with sovereignty, to call god, though so tremendously holy, to witness that while he sustains their fulfilment of his conditions, while they love him thus, he himself can do nothing against them. this deep and high theology will prevail, and german madness may be cured. the public ear, weary of the artifices of eloquence, will ask for the wants of the soul to be satisfied. may you be among others who will prove a pharos to your country and times. but i wander, because it is a penance, from the design of writing. it is to say that the years of levity and pride &c. &c. [which render me unworthy to speak of the heights of religion] i cannot but think were, in some measure, owing to the atmosphere of theology; to my own speculation, to what is worse and certain, the sore of human nature—could years of penitence restore me the last twenty years! it was pretty, it seemed best, to tell children how good they were' – the time of illusion and childhood is past, and you will find mysteries in man which baffle genius. ... may the god of your fathers bless you beyond your progeni she blames herself for having fostered the (uncalvinistic) good opinion of themselves of the emerson boys in their childhood, which has unfitted them for belief in original sin. an 32 [age 21 journal itors to the utmost bounds of your undying existence. [the following is probably an extract from the nephew's answer to the foregoing.] s answ december 17, 1824. i am blind, i fear, to the truth of a theology which i can't but respect for the eloquence it begets, and for the heroic life of its modern, and the heroic death of its ancient defenders. i acknowledge it tempts the imagination with a high epic (and better than epic) magnificence; but it sounds like mysticism in the ear of understanding. the finite and fitting kingdoms of this world may forget in the course of ages their maxims of government, and annul today the edict of a thousand years. and none would be surprised if the rome of the popes should vary in policy from the rome of the consuls. but that the administration of eternity is fickle; that the god of revelation hath seen cause to repent and botch up the ordinances of the god of nature — i hold it not irreverent, but impious in us to assume. yet paley's deity and calvin's deity are plainly two beings, both sublime existences, but one a friend and the other a foe to ma crn 1824) against calvin that capacity of order and right, to that understanding which is made in us arbiter of things seen, the prophet of things unseen. when i see wise and good of all [ages] consenting to a single creed that taught the infinite perfections and paternal character of god, and the accountableness of man, i cannot help acknowledging the first and invariable fruit of those means of information that are put in all hands. i cannot help revolting from the double deity, gross gothic offspring of some genevan school. i suppose you'll think me so dazzled by a flambeau that i can't see the sun when i say that the liberality of the age, though it stray into licentiousness and deism, &c. &c. [the rest is missing.] ["forefathers' day"] (“from xvi”) december 22. whose is the bark that comes over the deep and lags on the waters while winds are asleep? the salt foam scarce whitens the wake of its keel, scarce a motion of air can its loose sail reveal; no gay streamers aloft on its main-top are hung, no ensign declares whence its mariners sprung. unconvoyed the dull vessel sails and forlorn, her masts have been racked and her canvas is torn. 34 journal (age 21 whose is this bark, and what doth she here by this winter-bound coast in the night of the year? war is not the errand this traveller brings, for her sides are not armed with the thunders of kings; nor for commerce she visits yon barbarous shore, which the ship of the stranger ne'er greeted before. heave gently, dark ocean, thou bear'st on thy breast the hope of mankind to its home in the west. if the tempest should bury that ship in the deep, the fortunes of nations beside it should sleep, for she brings through the vast solitudes of the sea the pride of old england, the . .. authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1824 bible; . homer; anacreon; euripides; horace; tacitus, annales ; juvenal; origen; boethius; calvin; montaigne, essays; hobbes, leviatban; shakspeare; bacon, essays, henry vii; milton, comus, paradise lost, il penseroso, prose works; pascal; cudworth ; locke; newton, maclaurin's life of; leibnitz, letters; le clerc; prideaux; wollaston, religion of nature; massillon; 1824] reading 35 lardner (rev. nathaniel ?); addison; saurin; young; butler, analogy; pope, essays, and poems; montesquieu, esprit des loix; hume, history, essays ; vattell, law of nations (?); goldsmith, retaliation, and deserted village ; burke, economic reform; paley, natural tbeology; gibbon ; playfair; pitt, and fox, speeches; franklin, epbemeris, etc.; dugald stewart, pbilosophical essays, introduction to the encyclopædia; de staël, french revolution; mackintosh; thomas brown, pbilosopby of the human mind; byron, childe harold; scott; hogg ; wordsworth, excursion; canning, tbe pilot that weathered the storm; mother goose. cutti icons journal xvi reflections 1825 (from "xv,” “xvi,” and “xviii,” zd) · [reflections] (from “ xv”) roxbury, january 4, 1825. i have closed my school. i have begun a new year. i have begun my studies, and this day a moment of indolence engendered in me phantasms and feelings that struggled to find vent in rhyme. i thought of the passage of my years, of their even and eventless tenor, and of the crisis which is but a little way before, when a month will determine the dark or bright dye they must assume forever. i turn now to my lamp and my tomes. i have nothing to do with society. my unpleasing boyhood is past, my youth wanes into the age of man, and what are the unsuppressed glee, the cheering games, the golden hair and shining eyes of youth unto me? i withdraw myself from their spell. a solemn voice commands me to retire. and if in those scenes my blood and brow have been cold, if my tongue has 37 1825] reflections stammered where fashion and gaiety were voluble, and i have had no grace amid the influences of beauty and the festivities of grandeur, i shall not hastily conclude my soul ignobly born and its horoscope fully cast. i will not yet believe that because it has lain so tranquil, great argument could not make it stir. i will not believe because i cannot unite dignity, as many can, to folly, that i am not born to fill the eye of great expectation, to speak when the people listen, nor to cast my mite into the great treasury of morals and intellect. i will not quite despair, nor quench my flambeau in the dust of “easy live and quiet die.” those men to whom the muse has vouchsafed her inspirations, fail, when they fail, by their own fault. they have an instrument in their hands that discourses music by which the multitude cannot choose but be moved. yet the player has sometimes so many freaks, or such indolence, as to waste his life. if you have found any defect in your sympathies that puts a bar between you and others, go and study to find those views and feelings in which you come nearest to other men. go and school your pride and thaw your icy benevolence, and nurse somewhere in your soul a spark of pure and heroic 38 journal [age 21 enthusiasm. ambition and curiosity — they will prompt you to prove by experiments the affections and faculties you possess. you will bind yourself in friendship; you will obey the strong necessity of nature and knit yourself to woman in love,' and the exercise of those affections will open your apprehension to a more common feeling and closer kindred with men. you will explore your connexion with the world of spirits, and happy will you be if the flame of ardent piety toward the infinite spirit shall be taught to glow in your breast. ... (from "xvi”) o what have i to do with merriment and jollities, – youth, golden hair and sparkling eyes, and deafening games that children prize? i am not made to tune a lute, nor amble in a soft saloon; nor mine the grace of kind salute to mien of pride and heart of stone. my pulse is slow, my blood is cold, my stammering tongue is rudely turned. i “no thought infirm altered his cheek.” (r. w. e.) 1825) taking the vows 39 man to his work, the merry to their wine, friend to his friend, folly to festivals, all hopes and humors to their several ends, sages to schools, young passion to its love, ambition to its task, and me to mine. i am not charged with dallying messages that thus i mingle in this glittering crowd, seeing with strange eyes their buffooneries. i am not tangled in the cobweb net that wanton beauty weaves for youth so knit to some fair maid he follows with his eye. a sterner errand to the silken troop has quenched the uneasy blush that warmed my cheek; i am commissioned in my day of joy to leave my woods and streams, and the sweet sloth of prayer and song that were my dear delight; to leave the rudeness of my woodland life, sweet twilight walks and midnight solitude and kind acquaintance with the morning stars, and the glad heyday of my household hours, — the innocent mirth which sweetens daily bread, railing in love at those who rail again, by mind's industry sharpening the love of life. books, muses, study, fireside, friends, and love, i loved ye with true love, so fare ye well. i was a boy; boyhood slid gaily by, and the impatient years that trod on it taught me new lessons in the lore of life. 40 [age 21 journal i've learned the sum of that sad history all woman-born do know, that hoped for days, days that come dancing on fraught with delights dash our blown hopes as they limp heavily by. but i — the bantling of a country muse abandon all those toys with speed, to obey the king whose meek ambassador i go. (from “xv”) [must prosperity rest on arms?] s pray in your multifarious reading, look out for an instance to disprove bacon's and the common opinion that the armed nation is a prosperous one. can ye not find in the extent of time one people, one hour, when a conquered, unambitious community surpassed the victor in comfort, in intelligence, in real enjoyment? it concerns the weal of mankind that the position be denied. ... [editorial confidences] when, some ... pages back, my communicative mood was on me, and i was fain to take captive in print, not, as before, one or two compassionate eyes whom accident brought to my page, but the whole world of hearts, i attempted to 1825] the emersons 41 bespeak some kindness for my fortunes by promising to make the reader acquainted with my friends, my habits and my worldly lot, i frankly told him that i spurned the vanity of external greatness, and had no sympathy with the effeminate soul that was cheated by the unmeaning names of grace and majesty. for me, i had as lief be the simple cobbler of agawam as the lineal bourbon of the house of capet; and a thousand times rather receive my immortal life from sophroniscus, the stone-cutter, and his plain spouse, the midwife, so that i should be to future times the godlike mind, the liberator of the understanding who sprung from them, than be any porphyrogenet of them all. i shall have future occasion to give a reason of my dissent from the universal prejudice to which no man can succumb and be wise. i return to my purpose of describing my connexions. it is my own humor to despise pedigree. i was educated to prize it. the kind aunt whose cares instructed my youth (and whom may god reward), told me oft the virtues of her and mine ancestors. they have been clergymen for many generations, and the piety of all and the eloquence of many is yet praised in the churches. but the dead sleep in their moonless night; my. v journal [age 21 business is with the living. the genius that keeps me, to correct the inequalities of my understanding, did not make me brother to clods of the same shape and texture as myself, but to my. contraries. thus, one of my house is a person of squared and methodical conduct." another, on whose virtues i shall chiefly insist, is an accomplished gentleman of a restless, worldly ambition who will not let me dream out i william, the eldest, on whom from his early teens a large share of the burden of family affairs had fallen. while studying in germany, doubts begotten by his philosophic instruction arose ; so, at the bidding of conscience, though otherwise advised by goethe, whose counsel the youth sought in a special pilgrimage to weimar, he abandoned the hereditary profession and came home to study law. he practised honourably and successfully in new york for many years, in spite of constant illhealth, the result of his early asceticism on the family's behalf, and of unremitting work. he was a gentleman of great probity and courtesy, and an accomplished scholar. 2 edward bliss, two years younger than waldo, handsome, eloquent, and a brilliant scholar. he was destined for the law, and studied in daniel webster's office and was tutor to his sons ; but his early promise was blighted by disease, and after years of broken health, he died in porto rico in 1834. emerson in his “ dirge" (see poems) mourns his “ brother of the brief but blazing star.” for accounts of edward see cabot's and holmes's memoirs of emerson. 43 1825] reflections my fine-spun reveries, but ever and anon jogs me and laughs aloud at my metaphysical sloth. in the acquaintance i propose to form with my readers i shall insist on my brothers' opinions as often as my own, and without knowing or caring whence spring the differences in character between equals in education, or whence fall the seed of virtues and abilities into the child which were not seen in the sire, i shall yet try to clothe him to the reader's eye in those attractions and dignities wherein he appears to my own. the day is gone by with me —such are the connexions into which providence has thrown me the day has gone by, when the useless and the frivolous should command my respect. i know very well that the great brotherhood of folly in the world, the idlers, the maniacs and the fools in society, exercise an influence over the daily course of events as vast and intimate as that of men of study and soul. since it is not truth, but bread, that men seek, and when bread is procured, the exercise of their faculties delights them not so much as love and pride, it follows that very different agents enter into the offices of life from those of which wise men would compose their ideal commonwealths. a fair skin, a bank-note, a fashionable dress, a tapestried parcoui 44 journal [age 21 lor, a granite house, cause more steps and acts each day and keep more eyelids open by night than all the theories of the french academy, or all the lofty images of paradise lost. if one of those silly angels that writers sometimes feign, to help them out of their difficulties, should be stationed at the corner of court street to inquire of every passenger the business he was upon, no doubt he would marvel much for what ends this world was made. for not one in a thousand could inform him of any mental or moral concern he had in hand. every one, whatever bait attract him, whatever associates accompany him, picks out his own course, forgets in his own engrossing occupations the infinite multitude that bustles round him. it slips his memory that there are six hundred times ten hundred thousand persons on the planet: set aside the score of people with whom he has habits of familiar connexion, and the one or two hundred more with whom he has occasional intercourse, and the rest are of as little consequence to his life and his death as if they were the tenants of another globe. no information transmitted from one man to another can be more interesting than the accurate description of this little world in which he lies; and i shall deserve the thanks 1825] an age of hope 45 of every knowing reader, if i shall shew him the colour, orbit, and composition of my particular star. [everett's plymouth oration, etc.] jack cade was not more inclined to proscribe grammar from his domains, than i method from mine. i had a freak three days ago to describe tom, dick and harry, but my freak is clean gone by. i have been at an ordination, hearing maxims on eloquence till i burned to speak. i have been reading everett's rich strains at plymouth,– gazing at the sun till my eyes are blurred. this consenting declamation from every quarter on the auspicious promise of the times; this anxious and affectionate watching of the elder brothers over the painful birth of new nations in south america, asia, africa, (this “ transfusion of youthful blood into aged veins” in greece), is an authentic testimony to the reality of the good, or at least to a degree of it. it is infinitely better than that ill-omened cry of warning and fear that in the middle age bemoaned an enormous present degeneracy and the destruction of the world drawing nigh. men congregated together in processions, fasts, penances, miserecordias, impressed by the sympathies of fear. the ew 46 [age 21 journal tremblers saw nothing in nature but symptoms of decay; nothing in the heavens but the torches that should light the conflagration. ... it is better to go to the house of feasting than to such a house of mourning as that. sympathy with the wassailers is twice as easy and clever. but for my part, i am sorry that they could not have remembered the only thing worth remembering in those pall-holders, namely, their devotion. in their tribulation they kneeled to god, and acknowledged him as the sender of the adversity which overpowered them. but when, as the hebrew bard would say, god repented of the evil which he thought to do, men, in their prosperity, forget the salutary lessons of an uniform and ancient experience, forget how the heart has always grown giddy and proud and blasphemous with what ought to make it thankful, and now, forsooth, in congratulating each other on their prosperity, they pronounce themselves fortunate; the advancement of knowledge, the acknowledgement of popular rights, fortunate ; and the settlement at plymouth (the most conspicuous interposition of god's providence in these latter days) forlunate. i mourn at the i “that any thing happens by chance,” said bishop butler, “every thinking man knows is absurd.” (r. w. e.) 1825] practical poetry 47 scepticism of prosperity, the scepticism of knowledge, the darkness of light. i love to trace the unambiguous workings of a greater hand than ours. poetry had better drink at immortal fountains. eloquence is best inspired by an infinite cause. it is always an agreeable picture to the human imagination, the allusions to the strength of seeming weakness. no eye was ever offended at the tiny violet peeping out in fresh bloom on cold autumnal days, when the leaves are fallen and the oak is bare. none are disgusted at the fable of the bending willow which outlived the storm that tore down the monarchs of the forest. yet such a power of meek sublimity is detected all along the course of human events, (among men, not of men), impelling and immortalizing the salutary principles of nature. practical poetry january 23, 1825. poetry, wise women have said, hath a noble inutility, and is loved, as the flowers of the field, because not the necessaries, but the luxuries of life; yet i observe it has sometimes deigned to mix in the most important influences that act on society. the revolutionary spirit in this cold and prudential country, it is said, was kept alive 48 journal [age 21 eas a 14 and energized in 1776 by the seasonable aid of patriotic songs and satirical ballads pointing at well-known names and acts. of tyrtæus and his conquering elegies who has not heard? and greek history has another more extraordinary instance to the purpose. when lycurgus meditated the introduction into sparta of his unprecedented political model, he prevailed on thales, whom he met as he travelled in asia minor, to pass to laconia and compose poems there of such a character as to prepare the minds of his countrymen for the novel schemes of the reformer.!. “keeping” he that searches analogies in arts and life will discern something akin to whạt in painting is called keeping, in many corners where 't is unlooked for. for though mine ear is untaught by nature or art in the mysteries of music, yet i have found my guess that such performance was good or bad, on more than one occasion borne 1 the most remarkable instance of the power of mere literature is dean swift, a modern tyrtæus, who turned the tide of political opinions in the british nation, ruined marlborough, and denounced wood's half-pence by pamphlets. nothing fell from his pen in vain, says johnson. idolized by the irish, and proud of his influence. see lives of the poets. (r. w. e.) in prente s 1825] solitude 49 out by competent hearers when my only means of forming a judgment was the observation that there were abrupt transitions from loud to soft sounds without the just degrees which might be termed the keeping of music. a skilful critic will readily see the justice of the application of this figure to any composition, also whether in verse or prose. (though i admit the propriety of certain exceptions in all the applications of the rule; as when in haydn's creation, an explosion of sound announces the change from darkness to light; or in dryden's ode on cecilia's day, violent transition of subject and manner is permitted.) solitude roxbury, january 29, 1825. [“ but when it pleased god, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his son in me, that i might preach him among the heathen ; immediately i conferred not with flesh and blood : neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me: but i went into arabia, and returned again unto damascus.”] galatians, chap. i. 15, 16, 17. ... you will be told that it is wholly a fanciful scheme, such as boys all have in their turn and all sound minds outgrow — thus to talk of divorcing yourself from society and making 50 journal [age 21 yourself a haughty alien from flesh and blood and its vulgar concerns, in the conceit of giving your life to books, prayers, and barren meditations, and when you have been taunted as a friar, grave sophists will accost you and tell you, under the sanction of great names, that man is born by the side of his father, and therefore should remain a social being; that it is deducible from the laws of political economy that we should be social, and many of the human faculties have no use in solitude, which is the strong voice of nature pronouncing you fool. they will tell you that newton and bacon and shakspeare were nursed and bred in crowds. nay, veteran reformers may go a step or two beyond, and tell you in a learned whisper that religion has been mere reason of state ever since numa's time, and always will be: that, though men of sense and spirit are seen in public worship, 't is merely as they countenance the constables; and that by no accident did any eye in earth or heaven ever detect them in private. so 't were better you did not set your judgment against the whole world's, and so ruin a promising youth by falling into disesteem and opprobrium. against this consenting witness, or more, against this lofty derision, what stoic can stand? you judge it best to a w dr 1825] solitude of soul si leave the ground you took, and rather than be persuaded twice, o son of the ill-advised adam, pluck the fruit that others have plucked, and rush into the great, foolish procession that goes through the world drawing all men into its train, and none know whence they come or where they go. “o for a warning voice which he that saw the apocalypse heard cry in heaven aloud, woe to the inhabitants of earth.” and you too will enter, you who should have been prophet and rescuer to a thousand of your brothers. you will submit that hopeful character to these depraved influences and be ground down to the same base level. meantime though you have let it go, there is a good, solid and eternal, in casting off the dishonest fetters of opinion and nursing your solitary faculties into a self-existence so that your thoughts and actions shall be in a degree your own. i commend no absurd sacrifices. i praise no wolfish misanthropy that retreats to thickets from cheerful towns, and scrapes the ground for roots and acorns, either out of a grovelling soul, or a hunger for glory that has mistaken grimace for philosophy. it is not the solitude of place, but the solitude of ! soul which is so inestimable to us. .... 52 journal (age 21 ... the parnassian nag i rode, i perceive has thrown me, and i have been bestriding a hobby. it was my design, and must be the topic of a true discussion of this nature, to commend study, meditation, the preference of moral and intellectual things to appetites for outward things; and as far as solitude can be a generalization of these things it may be admitted as the cardinal topic. but in this light ’t were foolish to admit newton, bacon and shakspeare as counter instances, or at all as exceptions. for all that made them great, is my very argument, the very stuff i praise, and all that subtracted from their respective worth is the very object of my invective sarcasm, admonition, rebuke, irony, satire, derision, assault, -0 ye words! i have no breath to utter 'em. the philanthropist will perchance throw in the teeth of the anchorite the verse of milton:« the mind is it's own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven what matter where, if i be still the same?” i only propose to let that mind be unswaddled, unchained, and there is no danger of any excess in the practice of this doctrine. “so forcible within our hearts we feel the bond of nature draw us to our own." 53 1825] henry clay nature vindicates her rights, and society is more delicious to the occasional absentee. besides, though i recommend the wilderness, i only enforce the doctrine of stated or frequent and habitual closetings. men may be read, as well as books, too much. ... henry clay february 6. and if henry clay is dead, another great spirit has gone, like byron's, over the unvoyageable gulf, another contemner of moral distinctions, to the award of the divinity who set those distinctions, and not the less created the genius which defied them. man feels a property in the eloquence, as in the poetry, of his fellows, or rather owes allegiance to those who exercise lordship over his noblest and dearest capacities, and so the public loss is mourned as when a sovereign dies. but it is a paradox that is again and again forced on our wonder, how those who act a part so important in its influences on the world should be permitted to give their genius to the worst passions, to cast the children's bread before the dogs. that ancient doctrine that a human soul is but a larger or less emanation from the infinite soul is so agreeable to our imjournal [age 21 agination that something like this has always been a cherished part of popular belief. ... man is but the poor organ through which the breath of him is blown; a pipe on which stops are sounded of strange music. a torch not lighted for itself. yet these, such is the mystery of free will, turn on the hand that feeds them, dishonour the energy that inspires them, blaspheme the spirit that in them blasphemes. byron, who partook richest of divinity, foully ridicules the virtues practised to obey him. clay scorns the laws which bind all god's creatures. scorn s . february 8. he is not dead. the story of the duel was false. alas! for mine ejaculations. reflections roxbury, 1825. it is the evening of february eighth, which was never renowned that i know. but, be that as it may, 't is the last evening i spend in canterbury. i go to my college chamber to-morrow a little changed for better or worse since i left it in 1821. i have learned a few more names and dates, additional facility of expression, the gauge of my own ignorance, its sounding-places 1825) personal 55 and bottomless depths. i have inverted my inquiries two or three times on myself, and have learned what a sinner and a saint i am. my cardinal vice of intellectual dissipation — sinful strolling from book to book, from care to idleness — is my cardinal vice still; is a malady that belongs to the chapter of incurables. i have written two or three hundred pages that will be of use to me. i have earned two or three thousand dollars which have paid my debts and obligated my neighbors, so that i thank heaven i can say none of my house is the worse for me. in short, i have grown older and have seen something of the vanity and something of the value of existence, have seen what shallow things men are, and how independent of external circumstances may be the states of mind called good and ill." i emerson was very glad to close his school and turn scholar again. he had considered joining william in germany, but was deterred by the unknown language and the expense. the family circumstances were easier, however, for edward had graduated in 1824 and was earning. charles, who had just entered college, alone remained to be educated. so waldo decided to enter the divinity school in cambridge, as he wrote to william that “the learned and reverend have consented to admit me to the middle class." he took a room on the lower floor of divinity hall (no. 14), which soon proved very unwholesome. 56 journal [age 21 [here follows in the journal an account of mr. emerson's call, in company with his brother edward, on john adams, the venerable expresident. it is omitted here, because mr. emerson printed it in full at the end of his essay “old age” in society and solitude.] cambridge, february, 1825. i have a mind to try if my muse hath not lost a whit of her nimbleness; if the damps of this new region, its prescribed and formal study, have n't chilled a little her prurient and prolific heat. i would boldly take down a topic and enter the lists, were there not reason to remember and fear the old orthodoxy concerning fortune (and i think i have heard it whispered of fairies too and of wit even), that, when the humoursome, jealous coquette is presumed on, she withdraweth straight her smiles, and leaves the audacious votary to curse his self-conceit in the dark. ... i insert here that there seems to be a fine moral in the passage of the ancient historian who says the lacedemonians were in the habit of rising up very early to pray, that so they might be beforehand of their enemies and preoccupy the ear of the gods. u1825] quotations 57 « but to sit idle on the household hearth a burdenous drone ; to visitants a gaze or pitied object.” samson agonistes. “ short is the date of all immoderate fame. it looks as heav'n our ruin had designed and durst not trust thy fortune and thy mind.” absalom and achitophel. « dim as the borrowed beam of moon and stars to lonely, weary, wandering travellers is reason to the soul; and as on high those rolling fires discover but the sky, not light us here ; so reason's glimmering ray was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, but guide us upward to a better day; and as,” etc. religio laici. bible “ this only doctrine does our lusts oppose unfed by nature's soil, in which it grows." religio laici. « scripture was scarce and, as the market went, poor laymen took salvation on content, as needy men take money, good or bad; god's word they had not, but the priest's they had.” religio laici. 58 (age 21 journal as much as you men of the world acknowledge good and noble is all derived from religion, from the principles of nature to which i appeal, as your honour, etc. [the ministry of the day] what have we to say worth the attention of men, when we put on, in these latter days, the profession of the sacred teacher? we remember with pride and gratitude the venerable men who, in all past time, have instructed humanity, from those oriental sages who gave the first direction to the understanding, down to the accomplished orators whose accents yet ring in the ear of this generation. and have they left anything unsaid ? is this a science of discoveries? what contribution in your hand, what hope have you in heart? theology, which in pagan lands was only one part of ethics, the revolution of events has enriched with noble parts. theology, since revelation, has become the great science of man, the only object here known worth the sole engagement of the intellect. ethics is a secondary — a branch of this first philosophy. a correspondent change affects its professors. to be the curious speculators on the contradictory phenomena of thought, to be the humble ad59 assum s 1825] the ministry visers to courses of conduct least dark, where all was doubtful, this was the ambition, this the merit of the heathen sages. the ordinations of the divinity respecting this world have put that office on different foundations. those men who assume the charge of directing the devotions and duties of society are now the immediate representatives of the deity, the organs through which he speaks to his creatures; the vicars, as the ambitious have said with a profane secular import, of god. ah! what? has nature broke her marble silence? has the spell of weary centuries dissolved and the deity disclosed himself to men? has the most high opened his sublime abodes and come down on his sorrowing children with healing in his wings ? speak! how came he? what is he? what said he ? and what is to come? here we sat in the world waiting; admiring what could be the design of the appointments we seemed to be fulfilling, enduring as we could the pangs we met, desiring joy, but embracing evil with heavy hearts, sickening and alway dying, to the eve of our short day which went down in darkness, and especially moved with a sad curiosity and foreboding as to what should befall us after death. we saw in the world that some mind had wrought, or now per60 journal [ace 21 chance consummated its active will with inexpressible might, and we waited when at last he should break out into audible declaration of himself to our ears. but in vain we waited, who died before the sight. say what he hath said. this is the language the eager stoic should utter to us when restored to consciousness. solitude or society (continued) there can be no doubt that, in the disposition of human affairs which providence has made, there are great natural advantages proper to the social state. but it is equally conformable to divine dispensations that these should be blended and balanced by disadvantages. it is the part of wisdom, therefore, to choose that safe middle path which shall avail itself of the good and escape as much of the evil as is possible. ... no man can examine the connexions and dependencies of men in society without being struck with the harmony and value of the whole design. that infinity of relationships which spring from parentage, from marriage, is a singular advantage of the present order of things. if the world should be conceived to be peopled in any other mode, the innumerable connexions that tie socican 1825] the social duty 61 ety together being taken away, would take off a mighty check from the bad passions. it is pleasant to see in society two strangers introduced. true to the social principles of nature, they begin to feel round on the ordinary topics of conversation, until they find where they can nearest meet and sympathize. and you can hardly make two countrymen acquainted who will not frequently find some name with which both are connected by nature, affection or acquaintance; so far do the roots of families extend. it is an ignoble and ungrateful part, in a man who rightly considers the goods of existence, to submit to be only born to this heritage, to be a passive recipient of life, or to lay a light and sloven hand on the generous bequests of nature and providence. it manifests a noble spirit, in harmony with the liberal giver, to come eagerly into the enjoyment to which we are invited, instead of skulking to a mouthful in the dark. we would not be the parasites of god's bounty, hungry for the good, but too mean and selfish to be capable of gratitude. we would rather be forgiven for a noble daring, for an ambition to see all, to know all, to use all. we would fain try the virtue of these powers, we would grapple with what is great, we would follow what flies, 62 [age 21 journal take hold on truth and imprison pleasure. we would go boldly on our adventurous quest and risk something to acquire a light on the nature, extent and end of our condition. in short, we would feel that it is action which exalts our nature above the slothful clod. there is reason in action. the good that is borne to us is not sharpened by our sluggishness. there is no indication in the fearful whirl of the rolling universe that we should squat down unprofitable quietists in its lap. besides the strong presumption there is, that by pushing these energies to their utmost we may even deserve something, may earn merit, instead of being a charge on the universe. [riches '] hae ye seen the caterpillar foully warking in his nest ? 't is the puir man getting siller; without cleanness, without rest. i mr. emerson copied these verses into his “verse book," in a slightly modified form, which would show that, in spite of their scottish dress, they were his own, and, as such, they are included in the centenary edition of the poems (page 374). 63 1825] letter to his aunt hae ye seen the butterfly in braw claithing drest ? 't is the puir man gotten rich with rings and painted vest. the puir man crawls in web of rags and sair beset with woes, but when he fees on riches' wings he laugheth at his foes. r. w. e. to miss emerson (from “ xviii," zd) marcb, 1825. anthropomorphism is, or has been, a bugbear of a word, and yet it wraps up in its long syllables a sound and noble doctrine. so simple is the deduction of reason, or so inevitable the inborn propensity to believe in god, that the sadducee is solitary in his cheerless creed. in the excess, as it seems to me, of the same faith, we find human faces in the clouds, hear human voices in the roaring of the storms, and shake at spectres that surround us in the dark. the frivolous mythologies that are heard of in history pass and repass in the eyes of men, but take a firm root nowhere. religion, like metaphysics or physics, hath its string of old wives' 64 journal [age 21 more tales, told to its dishonour in every country; one tissue in assyria, another at memphis, another in gaul, another by the baltic, but probably there was no single spot and no one moment when legitimate notions of the first cause did not find place along with this contemporary | nonsense. for the sober divinity of common sense is no aristocrat. he dwells in high and humble places, he is no recent revelation, but is of greek and babylonian, nay, of antediluvian antiquity. and the grounds of proof are not more new. the eye, proverbially called the cure for atheism; the hand, a machine of as exquisite and undeniable design; the mind, that busy deducer of causes from effects, itself the strongest and most evasive of all phenomena ; the great globe itself and all mighty connexion that bind together its vast innumerable species — all these things subsisted in their entire force, bare all their testimony to the mind of adam, as to mine. ... the life of a man is the epitome of the life of a body of men. “a single house will show whatever is done or suffered in the world,”[said] juvenal. the effects of circumstances on the individual are wonderfully analogous to the same effects on a state. and those final causes, whose 65 1825] letter harmony strikes the eye with more grandeur on the vaster theatre, are as conspicuous and as conclusive evidence to the wisdom which arranged them in the individual as in the nation. yet the foolish folk of the ancient time are represented, with the solitary exception of here and there an aristotle or two, as bowing down to an ox, to an onion, to a block, and devoutly believing in the divinity of the poor baggages. now i put the question, whether in the course of your life (which, pardon me, i do not mean is long) you have not known at least half a dozen persons who, without being aristotles, have yet had dogged sense enow to have disbelieved, to have scouted all that mythological flummery as soon as they came to years of discretion? and if so be that you have known six or seven, and each other explorer of mankind six or seven more, why, we shall very soon be able to acquit our pagan forefathers of being such absolute bears as the learned, in their lampoons, will have them to be. there is no doubt something very imposing in an ancient establishment that has intertwined its roots with government, property, art and poetry; but there is something also revolting in the gross superstition to correct the seduction; and moreover there are scenes or se 66 [age 21 journal som and hours of redemption nature hath provided for her children (or some of her children), when she sends down upon them the night in its beauty, and takes off the veil of garish day from the glowing, adorning firmament. these sights stir the strong principles afresh in the soul; and i do not think it is in the understanding of man, when he stands in that temple, to ascribe the whole matter to a cat or crocodile, or yet to a sorry society, like the olympian banditti. in fine, i do not so disparage reason, god's elder revelation, as to think ’t would leave men entirely in the lurch in their greatest concernment; nor swallow such fables as to admit the firmness with which i see society amid all her institutions stood, without ascribing to men's conscience the same wholesome and sublime authority it exerts now. en sco [later comments] but our author should remember that there are some things so absolutely impossible as not to be found by the most curious and microscopic eye, “for what never was will not easily be found, not even by the most curious.” public prosperity was content in old times in old nations with very gradual advances. she made 1825] the educated mind 67 many pauses and some retrocessions, but latterly she has mended her pace and has called in art to her aid ; she travels the land in railroads and steam coaches ; she sweeps the sea with a pressure of a thousand pounds, and all sails spread; and sends her parachute through the air like a cloud. there are some men whose minds misgive them, when they see the prodigious rate at which they are borne in the public vessel. they cannot help but be giddy and out of breath at the accelerated velocity of their motion. a sabbath day's journey would be a safer jog. [the educated mind] choose a sensible man to a responsible place rather than a man versed in the particular art which is to be taught, inasmuch as a method of acquiring truth is better than the truth it has already ascertained. let your discipline liberalize the mind of a boy rather than teach him sciences, that he may have means, more than results. the indian will give his bow for the knife with which it was made. journal [age 21 books to read philippe de commines; machiavel; cardinal de retz; montaigne's essays; plato's dialogues; isocrates' panegyric; constitution of the united states; adam smith, works. [the last two entries, following the letter to miss emerson, are written in a large, straggling hand, the writer evidently not looking on his page. there are no more journal entries in 1825. emerson's family letters of this time showed that his health failed rapidly after he moved to divinity hall. his eyes gave out completely, and he had a “stricture of the chest," and a very lame hip. he was obliged to give up his studies and go to visit his uncle ladd, who lived in newton. he staid there until summer, helping as he could on the farm, and his health improved. madam emerson had taken a house on north avenue (near jarvis field) to be near her sons, for edward was teaching and studying law in daniel webster's office, and charles in college. 1825] schoolmaster again 69 waldo took some private pupils during the summer, and taught a school in chelmsford in the autumn. some recollections of their schoolmaster by pupils at chelmsford are given in emerson in concord, p. 32.] trnal xvii (from «xv,” « xvi,” «xviii,” 2d, and cabot's q and r) [somewhat improved in health, emerson came to roxbury at the beginning of the year to take, for a time, a school which edward's health had obliged him to give up. he taught there during the winter, and in april rejoined his mother in cambridge, in the “ mellen house” on north avenue, which afforded a schoolroom. there he gathered his last school, which he taught until the end of the summer. among his scholars were richard henry dana and john holmes. (see morse's life of richard henry dana, page 5, and holmes's life of emerson, page 50.)] (from "xv") january 8, 1826. i come with mended eyes to my ancient friend and consoler. has the interval of silence made the writer wiser? does his mind teem with well weighed judgments? the moral and intellectual universe has not halted because the eye of the observer was closed. compensation has been 1826] cheer reviving 71 woven to want, loss to gain, good to evil, and good to good, with the same industry, and the same concealment of an intelligent cause. and in my joy to write and read again i will not pester my imagination with what is done unseen, with the burden that is put in the contrary scale, with the sowing of the death-seed in the place of the nettle that was rooted up. i am a more cheerful philosopher, and am rather anxious to thank oromasdes than to fear ahriman. since i wrote before, i know something more of the grounds of hope and fear of what is to come. but if my knowledge is greater, so is my specy! courage. i know that i know next to nothing, but i know too that the amount of probabilities is vast, both in mind and in morals. it is not certain that god exists, but that he does not is a most bewildering and improbable chimæra. i rejoice that i live when the world is so old. there is the same difference between living with adam and living with me as in going into a new house unfinished, damp and empty, and going into a long occupied house where the time and taste of its inhabitants has accumulated a thousand useful contrivances, has furnished the chambers, stocked the cellars, and filled the library. in the new house every comer must do all for 72 (age 22 journal himself. in the old mansion there are butlers, cooks, grooms and valets. in the new house all must work, and work with the hands. in the old one there are poets who sing, actors who play and ladies who dress and smile. o ye lovers of the past, judge between my houses. i would not be elsewhere than i am. compensation all things are double one against another, said solomon. the whole of what we know is a system of compensations. every defect in one manner is made up in another. every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid. the history of retributions is a strange and awful story; it will confirm the faith that wavers, and, more than any other moral feature, is perhaps susceptible of examination and analysis, and, more than any other, fit to establish the doctrine of divine providence. ... i have seen all men in the common circumstances of society may see — the thrift, coldblooded and hard-hearted thrift, that has wrought out for itself its own reward, men and women that set out to be rich, that sold their body, its strength, its grace, its health, its sleep; yea, 73 18267. compensation and sold their soul, its peace, its affections, its time, its education, its religion, its eternity, for gold. they have paid the price and by the laws of providence they shall receive their purchase. but by the laws of providence they shall receive nothing more. they have not bought any immunity from bodily pain, any grace from the elements, any courtesy from the diseases; they made no mention with their dealers of gentle affections, and asked no more of the intellectual principle than how to cast their drivelling balances of loss and gain. health, knowledge, friendship, god, — these were no parties to their contract, no guarantees against disaster. these were defrauded of the just debt which each human being owes them, to scrape together the means by which wealth was to be bought. but these are creditors that will not let them pass unchallenged. they have asked no protection against the evils of life, and god has left them naked to them. ... ignorance shall curse them with a leaden cloud on their understandings, their hours shall drag by in stupid darkness, unvisited by thought, the daughter of god, denounced, forgot, unrecognized by the great brotherhood of intelligent minds who are penetrating into the obscure on we re 74 journal [age 22 every side and adding new provinces to the kingdom of knowledge. ... but all who sell themselves do not sell for wealth. there are many dupes of many passions. nor are the compensations that god ordains confined to a single class of moral agents. to come nearer to my design, i will venture to assert that whilst all moral reasonings of necessity refer to a whole existence, to a vaster system of things than is here disclosed, there are, nevertheless, strong presumptions here exhibited that perfect compensations do hold, that very much is done in this world to adjust the uneven balance of condition and character. there are certain great and obvious illustrations of this doctrine which lie on the outside of life and have therefore been always noted : that prodigality makes haste to want; that riot introduces disease; that fearful crimes are hunted by fearful remorse; that the love of money is punished by the care of money; that honest indigence is cheerful; that in fertile climates the air breathes pestilence, and in healthy zones there is an iron soil; that whilst the mind is in ignorant infancy, the body is supple and strong; when the mind is informed and powerful the body decays,— these and all this most important 1826] compensation 75 class of facts lie at the foundation of our faith in god's being and providence. ... i say that sin is ignorance, that the thief steals from himself; that he who practices fraud is himself the dupe of the fraud he practices, that whoso borrows runs in his own debt; and whoso gives to another benefits himself to the same amount. our nature has a twofold aspect, towards self and towards society; and the good or evil, the riches or poverty of a man, is to be measured, of course, by its relation to these two. and in the view of individual, unconnected character, as a moral being having duties to fulfil and a character to earn in the sight of god, am i impoverished that i have given my goods to feed the poor, that i have hazarded half my estate in the hands of my friend in yielding to calls of moral sentiment which made a part of my highest nature? am i the richer in my own just estimation that i have unjustly taken or withheld from my fellow man his good name, his rights, or his property? am i the richer that i have tied up my own purse and borrowed for my needs of the treasure of my friends? shall i count myself richer that i have received an hundred favours and rendered none? myself 76 journal [ace 22 the man within the breast — am the sole judge of this question and there is no appeal from the decisive negative. the daily mistake of thousands and tens of thousands who jump to make any pitiful advantage of their neighbour must not be quoted against this tribunal. ... it is not the true estimate of a man's actual value that is made from the balance of figures that stands in his favour on his ledger. this is to be corrected from the book of life within him. ... if it is the reward of honest industry and skill, to which, said the ancient philosopher, the gods have sold all things, his estimate is correct, his doings are respected in heaven and in earth. each man knows ... what is his just standing, whether he is indebted or whether he has rendered others rich and happy. we have, we trust, made it apparent, that in the aspect of self, our doctrine that nothing in the intercourse of men can be given, is sound. the doctrine is no less true, no less important in its respect to our social nature. if a man steals, is it not known ? if he borrows, is it not known? if he receives gifts, is it not known? if i accept important benefits from another, in secret or in public, there arises of course from the deed a secret acknowledgment of benefit 1826] letter to his aunt 77 on his part and of debt on mine, or, in other words, of superiority and of inferiority. (from cabot's q) letter to miss emerson january, 1826. the name of hume, i fancy, has hardly gathered all its fame. his essays are now found all over europe and will take place doubtless in all pyrrhonian bosoms of all other freethinkers of england or france. german theology will prop itself on him, and suggest to its lovers a sort of apology and consolation in his mild and plausible epicureanism. he is one of those great limitary angels to whom power is given for a season over the minds and history of men, not so much to mislead as to cast another weight into the · contrary scale in that vast and complex adjustment of good and evil to which our understandings are accommodated and through which they are to escape by the fine clue of moral perception. for me, i hold fast to my old faith, that to each soul is a solitary law, a several universe. the colours to our eyes may be different, your red may be my green. my innocence, to one of more opportunity, shall be guilt. to one age, in like manner, christianity is a stern '78 [age 22 journal eca dogmatical and ritual religion, but it answers their prayers and does also fulfil its divine purposes. to the next generation it is a gentle and intellectual faith, for its disciples are men of minds and manners, and it likewise doth god's will to them. new england is now the most reading community in the world, and, of course, has the love of knowledge, and lust of change. in the supposed case of the external evidences being shaken down of christianity, will there be any hope beyond the experiment of the morals of seneca and antonine on an improved age ? shall we not be safer for butler's “analogy”? suppose we could lose our hold on the foundations of christianity, would there be nothing satisfying in esteeming it also a great permitted engine of most exact and benign adaptation to the wants of many past ages, and so, yielding to an offensive aphorism, that what is absolutely false may be relatively true? judgment must be measured to a man of bagdad on a compound regard to the law of conscience and the law of mahomet. if the secrets of external nature were disclosed, there were no science to dis minds. if every candle were a sun, we should be blind. if every doubt were solved, we should be listless clods. presently the door will be unmeasu our 79 greatnes 1826] verses bolted at which we daily knock, and some of us shudder. [greatness] it is doleful consolation to those who aspire in vain, to see how imperfect is greatness ;buonaparte finding his greatest felicity in bed, in a bed; byron attributing his poetic inspiration to gin; charles xii dozing and boasting away an insignificant manhood in the provinces of turkey. richard iii is respectable when he says, “slave, i have set my life upon a cast, and i will stand the hazard of the die!” whoso, alas! is young, and being young is wise and deaf to saws of gray advice, hath listened when the muses sung and heard with joy when on the wind the shell of clio rung.' i the last two lines, in different form, occur among later poetical fragments, apropos of the greater charms history had for the youth than metaphysics :slighted minerva's learned tongue, but leaped for joy when on the wind the shell of clio rung. 80 (age 22 journal the sabbath ... the sabbath is a respite from the importunacy of passion, from the dangerous empire of human anxieties; a pious armistice in the warfare of the world, a point of elevation like the pisgah of the man of god, an observatory whence we measure backward the wilderness we have traversed, and forward the interval that is yet to be trodden by us ere the solemn shadows descend upon our path, beyond which the magnificence of other worlds is towering into the distance. slave trade to stop the slave traffic the nations should league themselves in indissoluble bands, should link the thunderbolts of national power to demolish this debtor to all justice human and divine. verses" ah fate! cannot a man be wise without a beard? from east to west, from beersheba to dan, pray was it never heard i these verses, amended in several lines by the author, but never published by him, appear, with an additional stanza, in the appendix to the poems, in the riverside and centenary editions. 81 1826) the real rulers that wisdom might in youth be gotten, or wit be ripe before 't was rotten? he pays too high a price for knowledge and for fame who sells his sinews to be wise, his teeth and bones to buy a name, and crawls half-dead, a paralytic, to earn the praise of bard and critick. is it not better done to dine and sleep through forty years, be loved by few, be feared by none, laugh life away, have wine for tears, and take the mortal leap undaunted, content that all we asked was granted ? but fate will not permit the seed of gods to die, nor suffer sense to win from wit its guerdon in the sky, nor let us hide, whate'er our pleasure, the world's light underneath a measure. [rulers] ... who are the real sovereigns of britain and france? notsurely the simplegentlemen that are kept in the palaces and produced on state occasions with gaudy frocks and baubles on their 82 [age 22 journal heads, or in their hands, and saluted with the smooth old title of king. surely these are not they who act most powerfully on the fortunes and the minds of the british and the french. but scott and mackintosh and jeffrey and laplace, these are the true de facto sovereigns, who rule in those countries. they never affect the airs, nor assume the trappings of vulgar majesty, but they receive the secret and open homage of all classes, they command feelings, determinations and actions. pulchrum est laudari a laudato viro. newton said of cotes, “if he had lived, we should have known something." fitness i am pleased with every token, however slight, in nature, in institutions, in arts, of progressive adaptation to wants. the men of switzerland cover their houses with shingles of the larch tree, which in a little time give out their pitch to the sun and fill up every joint so that the roof is impervious to rain. [the wind] the wind, who is the great poet of the world, sings softer measures on summer eves in groves 1826] letter to his aunt 83 and gardens, and hoarser and sublimer music in mountains and on the desolate sea.' r. w. e. to miss emerson madam, you have received the boding letter i writ from cambridge concerning german faith. i am anxious to have sight enow to study theology in this regard. the objections the german scholars have proposed attack the foundations of external evidence, and so give up the internal to historical speculators and pleasant doubters. the eager appetite for novelty that rages among us undieted, uncloyed by religious establishments and venerable abuses, will not stand on ceremony with any name or form or fact, by whatsoever men or prejudices hallowed, when its genuineness is denied. there will be to good men henceforward a horrid anticipation when the majestic vision that has, for ages, kept a commanding check upon the dangerous passions of men— has rivetted the social bonds and brought forward so many noble spirits and prodigious benefits to the 1 for mr. emerson's delight in the song of the wind see, in the poems, the “wood notes ii,” where it sings through the pine ; also “the harp" and “ maiden song of the æolian harp." 84 journal [age 22 help of struggling humanity —shall roll away, and let in the ghastly reality of things. regard it as a possible event, and it is the prospect of a dark and disastrous tragedy. these great eleusinian mysteries which have hoarded comfort from age to age for human sufferings, the august founder, the twelve self-denying heroes of a pious renown, distancing in moral sublimity all those primeval benefactors whom ancient gratitude deified; the apostles, whose desiring eyes saw little lustre on earth, and no consolation but in extending the victories, the moral victories of the cross; the martyrs, who had found after so many sensual ages, in a faith for things unseen, in a moral intellection, more than a compensation for the lust of the world, and the pride of life; and after all these, and better even than all these, the boundless aggregate of hearts and deeds which the genius of christianity touched and inspired; the violence of fiery dispositions to which it has whispered peace; the antidote it has administered to remorse and despair; the samaritan oil it has poured into wounded hearts; the costly sacrifices and unpurchaseable devotion to the cause of god and man it has now for eighteen centuries inspired — all these must now pass away and become ridiculous. they have come s . e 1826] german sceptics 85 been the sum of what was most precious on earth. they must now pass into the rhetoric of scoffer and atheist as the significant testimonies of human folly, and every drunkard in his cups, and every voluptuary in his brothel will roll out. his tongue at the resurrection from the dead; at the acts, the martyrdoms, the unassailable virtues and the legendary greatness of christianity. god forbid. it were base treason in his servants tamely to surrender his cause. the gates of hell will not prevail against it. but it were vile and supine to sit and be astonished without exploring the strength of the enemy. if heaven gives me sight, i will dedicate it to this cause. patriots turn pale when some paper privilege, some national punctilio, is withheld or disputed to their country, and christians should not sit still when the honour of their order (no transient institution of one age or one realm, but the chivalry of the universe) is trampled in the dust. for the love of truth and good send ! me your sentiments on this subject. ... reason [reason] to the times preceding christianity, mind and its works was a luxury; to the times subse86 journal [age 22 quent, it has been a solemn instrument of truth and goodness. lil wella se tomary march 27, 1826. my years are passing away. infirmities are already stealing on me that may be the deadly enemies that are to dissolve me to dirt, and little is yet done to establish my consideration among my contemporaries, and less to get a memory when i am gone. i confess the foolish ambition to be valued, with qualification. i do not want to be known by them that know me not, but where my name is mentioned i would have it respected. my recollections of early life are not very pleasant. i find or imagine in it a meanness, a character of unfounded pride cleaving to certain passages, which might come to many ears that death has not yet shut. i would have the echoes of a good name come to the same ears to remove such imputation. ... byron lord byron calls circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator; and what thing is there in the world he has not marred or misplaced by his unwise agency? 1826] chivalry history 87 age of chivalry [after speaking of its glamour, and its dark side.] i can faintly hear some tremendous tones in the clang of the conqueror's curfew as it is borne to my ear over the distance of centuries, and i am glad to be relieved by any images, however imperfect, of valour and virtue of the same times, so that i own i love the flourish of the silver trumpet of chivalry, for it speaks to me of prevented oppression and vindicated innocence in a forlorn and benighted time. but all i wish to say is an opinion i am proud to owe to my youngest brother, and not to bacon. it runs somewhat in this wise:let the fictions of chivalry alone. fictions, whether of the theorist or poet, have their value as ornaments; but when they intrude into the place of facts, they do infinite injury, inasmuch as it is only by the perception and comparison of truth that we can perceive and enjoy the harmonies of the system of human destinies which the deity is accomplishing from age to age. name асс [the world our teacher: history] i have heard of monks who had grown so silly and deficient under their rule that they 88 [age 22 journal shut their eyes, the lean, cowled coxcombs — shut their eyes, when their mothers and sisters came to see them. we too shall be monks of a more renowned canon of folly, of dulness, if we can without shame take station at our grated window, which commands a prospect of the universe and the great unmarshalled crowd of all its agents, and shut our eyes upon the eminent and the amiable, on what might please and what might warn us. why else this complex machinery, these dependent agencies of mind and matter, conspiring to bring about the useful effect, — to teach us something of other men, -running backward to the beginnings of our race? why the active curiosity which in us corresponds to these contrivances out of us for intelligence? why, but that it behoved us to know what had been done, that we might acknowledge and exercise the moral affinities which time and space do not affect, that we might sympathize with the eldest and feel that we set an example to the latest man. this is the only unity, the only accord into which the diversities of human condition can be blended. in the error and the rectitude, in the agreeable and distressing events, in the education and degeneracy of so many nations of minds, there runs 1826] help from history 89 through all the same human principle in which our hearts are constrained to find a consanguinity, and so to make the registers of history a rule of life. in this way moses and solomon, alcibiades and bonaparte have existed for me; the fortunes of assyria, of athens and of rome have not become a dead letter — have not fulfilled their effect in the universe, till they have taught me and you, and all men to whose ears these names may come, all the lessons of manners, of political and religious causes, and of a high paramount providence which the great scripture of a nation's history contains. this is the immortality of moral truth, which is not a vague name, a trumpet flourish, but a thing of incessant activity from age to age ; and the errors and successes of cicero become impelling motives to thousands of men though now, for nineteen centuries, his tongue has been dumb. it is an important observation that though our perception of moral truth is instinctive, and we do not owe to education our approbation of truth or our abhorrence of ingratitude, yet we are not born to any image of perfect virtue. we recognize with faithful readiness the virtue and the vice of action presented to us, but we need a learned experience to enumerate all the particcen90 journal (age 22 ulars that make the whole of virtue. and many a mind after studying men and books for twenty or thirty years has found in the story of an ancient hero a quality or colour of moral worth which he adds to this image, this growing godhead within him. .... i am answerable for whatever wisdom i can glean from the wisdom of rome; for whatever counsel i can extract from the death of so many heroes and the decline of so many nations. this should shame pedantry. to my correspondent in waterford' april 10, 1826. 'tis a curious measure to see what a fragment, what a span of time, our intellectual history would subtract from life. the oil and wine of existence, the moral and intellectual nature, are grudgingly dealt out by the atom, at long intervals of dull sensual pain and comfort. and what reason to suppose it will be otherwise when we get rid of the clay, now that our ancient traditions are tottering to ruin around us? to what good purpose this cumbrous apparatus of good and evil? sages of all sects answer, 'tis a discipline. these are the gymnastics in which the 1 miss emerson. 1826] letter to his aunt 91 youth of the universe are reared. aye, but 't is plain that the bigger part of mankind die in a state of little comparative preparation for high event, for moral sacrifice, for intercourse with angels and “ardours," and that all come very far short of their own conception of suitableness to die. of course, the light of nature countenances the notion of a proper purgatory, of an island between evil and good where the poor tempestdriven sufferers must perform sad quarantine to purge out the sores of human nature that might infect or offend the society of heaven. i do not apprehend the grounds, if they exist, of believing we shall launch at once into any free and pure element of thought, in which it will be indefinitely quickened in its processes and exalted in its tone. for this must come from within, not from without. what external help can be afforded, i have no doubt will be afforded, and this chiefly in two ways, an increased facility of locomotion, and of social intercourse, and this at once removes the chief impediments that in' this world obstruct our education. when therefore we escape from life, we shall not perchance escape from disappointment, from indolence and the punishment of indolence ennui — from the frequent sense of incapacity and of immense in92 [age 22 journal feriority. hope has a thousand times cheated us here, and we may find reasons, now too subtle for our apprehension, to be dissatisfied, even with the immense advancement promised us in that uncertain and silent infinity. the whole of truth (it has been nobly said) will not probably be found injurious to the whole of virtue. they will be found to be seal and print. it is the necessary consequence of this doctrine, that a great progress of knowledge —and nothing on earth has a title to the name— will be a great progress in goodness. but happiness, we know, belongs only to the last. it follows, that periods of study, long courses of initiation in the colleges of heaven, may waste away before the soul of a man in heaven may begin to be happy. is it then a false association that, among men, from the rise of this great doctrine of the reformation, has coupled the ideas of heaven and happiness? if riches cannot confer this excellence in earth, neither can knowledge (except remotely, as explained) confer it in heaven. public prayer cambridge, april 12, 1826. most men, who have given their attention to the prayers publicly offered in a christian con1826] public prayer 93 gregation, have felt in the institution an unsuitableness to their feelings. they have found themselves ready, in their own exculpation, to accuse a certain stubbornness of sympathy in their natural disposition, or else their past lives of such discontinuance of the offices of piety as has issued in a total incapacity of joining their fellowmen in this venerable service. disuse has made their contemplations of their creator cold and ungrateful to their understandings. the man who prays is in quite another mood from the man who hears, and tones and language which we have once become accustomed to regard with suspicion, or at best with admiration, it will be long ere we learn to listen to them with sympathy. the truth is, public prayer is rather the offspring of our notions of what ought to be, than of what is. it has grown out of the sentiment of a few, rather than the reason of many. indeed we have said all, — and i am sorry to say it, — in characterizing it as an appeal to our veneration, instead of our sympathy. that it is right to ask god's blessing on us is certainly reasonable. that it is right to enumerate our wants, our sins, even our sentiments, in addresses to this unseen idea, seems just and natural. and it may probably be averred with m ty en o ts 94 journal [age 22 safety that there has been no man who never prayed. that persons whom like circumstances and like feelings assimilate, that a family, that a picked society of friends, should unite in this service, does not, i conceive, violate any precept of just reason. it certainly is a question of more difficult solution whether a promiscuous assemblage, such as is contained in houses of public worship, and collected by such motives, can unite with propriety to advantage in any petition such as is usually offered by one man. w progress of an individual in knowledge april. every cultivated man observes, in his past years, intervals of mentality—and is accustomed to consider the present state of his mind as the result rather of many periods of singular intenseness of thought and feeling than of a perpetual and equable expansion. corn grows by jumps. the ordinary growth of mind, especially till the old age of man, depends on aliment procured from without. but this aliment for which we search the bosoms of other men, or their books, or the face of external nature, will be got in larger or less amounts according to circumstances quite as often without as within our controul. | 1826] keys of knowledge 95 whoever explores his recollection of those periods, will find that by some casualty or some study he had arrived at one of those general ideas which not only epitomize whole trains of thought, but cast a flood of new light upon things inscrutable before; after waiting mostly in the vestibule, had picked up unawares the master key, whose wards and springs open every door, and the surprised adventurer goes on astonished from cell to cell, from chamber to chamber, gratified, but overawed at the unexplored extent and opulence of his own possessions." may 20. any degree of profoundest consideration is due to the least action before it is performed, and afterwards the least. “we are purified by terror and pity.” [aristotle?] friendship cambridge, may 28. friendship is something very delicious to my understanding. yet the friends that occupy my i compare the third paragraph in “ education,” works, vol. x ; also in poems, appendix, centenary edition, p. 357, lines beginning, “ with the key of the secret he marches faster," etc. 96 (age 23 journal so thoughts are not men, but certain phantoms clothed in the form and face and apparel of men by whom they were suggested and to whom they bear a resemblance. the gods gave life to prometheus's ivory statue, and the revolution of events may one day give me the men for the prototypes. you love your friend for your sake, not for his own, might say hobbists and wolves, for you would not have that good fortune befall him that should raise him above your reach and your society. i please myself that i can dimly see how it would gratify me to promote that very good fortune of my friend.' in god's name what is in this topic? it encourages, exhilarates, inspires me. i feel that the affections of the soul are sublimer than the faculties of the intellect. i feel immortal. and the evidence of immortality comes better from consciousness than from reason. style a man's style is his intellectual voice, only in part under his controul. it has its own proper 1 have i a lover who is noble and free? i would he were nobler than to love me. poems, “ the sphinx.” 18261 seed-thoughts 97 tone and manner, which, when he is not thinking of it, it will always assume. he can mimic the voices of others, he can modulate it with the occasion and the passion, but it has its own individual nature. (hints of history] ballads, bon mots, anecdotes, give us better insight into the depths of past centuries than grave and voluminous chronicles. “a straw,” says selden, “thrown up into the air will show how the wind sits, which cannot be learned by casting up a stone.” (from "xviii," zd) june, 1826. i pursue my speculations with confidence and, though i can discern no remoter conclusion, i doubt not the train i commence extends farther than i see, as the first artificer of glass did not know he was instructing men in astronomy, and restoring sight to those from whom nature had taken it. there is no thought which is not seed as well as fruit. it spawns like fish. when success exalts thy lot god for thy virtue lays a plot ; 98 [age 23 journal and all thy life is for thy own, then for mankind's instruction shewn; and, tho' thy knees were never bent, to heaven thy hourly prayers are sent, and whether formed for good or ill, are registered and answered still." proverbs, chapter 2, 18. the jewish philosopher did not know that the soul survived the body, yet there seemed to him a peculiar sympathy and conjunction between vice and death, and the idea was natural, and suggests the evidence we have from nature of the immortality of the soul. the intellections of the mind are scarcely discriminated from the sensations which occasion them. they end in themselves and do not imply the notions of merit and reward. but moral actions seem not a mere 1 the last four lines had this origin : the summer before, when emerson had gone to his uncle ladd's in newton to restore his health, he was talking with his companion, a methodist labourer, named tarbox, as they worked in the hay-field. tarbox said, that men were always praying, and that their prayers were answered. on these two heads the young divine wrote his first sermon, adding the comment, then men must be careful what they pray for. this was the sermon preached in waltham, october 15, 1826. next day, in the stage-coach, a farmer said to him, “ young man, you'll never preach a better sermon than that.” 1826] letter to his aunt 99 bundle of facts, but of relations, relations to something unseen, and because thus related to something to which the body was not, possess for themselves a principle of life in which the body had no share. since virtue was imperishable, every act contrary to it would seem to tend to the destruction of the agent. vice is the soul's suicide. r. w. e. to miss emerson cambridge, june 15, 1826. i rejoice in the prospect of better sight and better health. seasons and calendars have little to do with him who distinctly sees eternity writ upon his dial, but on earth his impatience is irrepressible, who finds his years increasing, whilst his means of acquisition are withdrawn. loss of eyes is not exactly one of socrates's superfluities. how many things do i not want. for when i came back to books, i felt like columbus on the new shore. the value of this art (of reading), when remembered as man's addition to his wealth, is the best argument of perfectibility, and is a sound one. alas for adam! not milton's nor moses', but the first adventurer that was accomplished only with his 100 journal [age 23 own perfections; the noble savage whom poets extol, the wretch whom philosophers pity. alas for his joyless hours, though in powers and dispositions perfectly moulded, and in understanding profound as a god, the better his understanding of good, the keener his perception of surrounding evil. we should be glad if the next periods of our existence were only so much an improvement on this as the man of the both century is a being of greater powers and resources than the man of the first. yet campbell does not lament the loss of the sun, because all the arts “ and triumphs that beneath thee sprang healed not a passion or a pang entailed on human hearts.” en aan all which i am fain to call sublime lying. for it is the noble and exhilarating discovery of modern grand juries, and the more noble that it is more trite, that educated men are never brought to the bar for felonious crimes, and that the all but immedicable crimes of drunkenness and indolence have found their antidote in the love of reading. i have not forgiven everett one speculative doctrine of the 0 b k oration, the more dis1826) the mundane soul 101 agreeable, that i have found some reason to think it true, to wit, that geniuses are the organs, mouthpieces of their age; do not speak their own words, nor think their own thoughts. it has occurred to me that, though we think shakspeare so singularly grand as to be a hermit in the fields of thought where he travels, yet we bind up in his volumes four or five plays of which the authorship is disputed betwixt him and certain unknown contemporaries. other productions modern criticism has quoted from his time, bearing very respectable comparison with his own. so that the time, not the man, gave birth to this empyrean conceit. 'tis not in man to thank the philosopher that merges his selfish in the social nature. ’t was a foolish vanity in the stoic to talk in this wise. it suggested or else grew out of that primeval dogma of the mundane soul. no man loves it; the meanest loses more than he gains by parting with his identity to make an integral atom of the whole. nor perhaps need we dread anything. if any one feeling is positive, it is per, sonal accountability. i know that i exist, but the age and the universe are alike abstractions of my own mind, and have no pretensions to the same definitive certainty. one can some102 journal [age 23 times feel pretty clearly where these fancies originate, when we observe the grouping together of men into generations and countries, and the dismally gregarious manner in which they walk and talk and think. if men were like phænixes, and only at long secular intervals the world travailed with this noble progeny, we should feel more secure of ourselves both now and hereafter. but this fulsome generation, this redundant prodigality of being, whereby they are cast out, clean and unclean, heroes and underlings, by millions, — begets a doubt whether the riches of eternity can be as prodigally spent, and whether such immense resources as each one feels his own capacities crave can be furnished from the storehouses of god to every one of the individuals of these inconceivable numbers of systems of life. it is indeed pleasing to the mind, as she sits serene in her own firmament, to find from her nature that these doubts have no force, that the physical limit to physical increase is a humble law of material nature which does not taint her majesty. speedily she expects a divorce from her gross mate, who, because he hungers and thirsts, makes her forsake her celestial musings to find out where he may go to be fat and where to be warm. but when this 1826] the spirit's society 103 dissolution shall have taken place, no incongruity is seen in the project of an immeasurable multiplication of sentient individuals. there is no bankruptcy in the commerce of thought to be occasioned from an overdoing of its craft. mind has no relation that we know to space. all the analogies of matter are, in this regard, inapplicable to the intensity of the enjoyment (though hard to analyze, or at any moment to say “it is now”) which we, in this world, extract from friendship, and to which we continually see the “miscreator circumstance". to be an insuperable bar, estranging us from characters to which we feel an affinity, and separating us from those to whom we are already allied. this great element, the social principle, instructs us in the mystery of future happiness by suggesting the noble and endless entertainment that a free access to innumerable minds out of clay, and skiey influences is of itself able to furnish. but all men feel their incompetency to uncover the secret employments of the emancipated spirit, and the silly conceit of singers and children about the psalm-singing of the other world is not more inadequate perhaps than the conception of a passive receiver or channel through byron's expression. 104 [age 23 journal which flows forever the stream of immortal thought. we can determine something in this, as in all general speculations, by consulting the whole of our nature, and we find ourselves emasculated by a description that leaves out our active faculties. yet the appropriate objects of our action we shall not easily ascertain. all our action here is material, and that to such an extent as to have induced a metaphysical doubt whether action is predicable of mind. almost all suffering, exercising the soul's fortitude, is of the body. indeed, i would submit whether a philosopher subjecting his griefs to rigid analysis will not find them all to be ultimately related to body, unless it be the apprehension of the disesteem of others, and of annihilation. now action and sufferance go hand in hand. “ none can aspire to act greatly but those who are of force greatly to suffer,” said burke. and it would seem all our action and passion are of the body. i do not say the mind does not act when, for example, it prefers honesty to guilty wealth, but it is clear the things about which it is concerned are of body, not of mind, -as whether the hand, foot or tongue shall move in a certain way. nor can we conceive of virtuous action in the soul ending in the soul. yet we c c was 1826] as to matter 105 should be very loth to add to modern vagaries the dogma that matter was essential to virtue. we know better. we know that all speculation of this sort pushed to any extreme is inconclusive and idle, for the nature of matter, as of mind, is buried in inscrutable night; and that we are fools to fear matter when we do not know that there is any such thing. what, then, do we know? i know that i exist, and that a part of me, as essential as memory or reason, is a desire that another being exist. if i am not an anomaly, but was made, and what is within was made, with reference to what is without, then there is another being who made me. and having such intuitions, such golden rudiments whereof to frame my history, i can look unappalled at the future, and welcome the coming on of my untried being. r. w. e. to miss emerson (?) cambridge, june 30, 1826. in all the vagaries i have troubled you with, not much has been said of poetry, though a subject near to us both. i should be glad to see your thoughts on its general nature and value. does the continuation of your own speculations shew its fairy web to be superficial, or wrought 106 [ace 23 journal into the grain of man? is it left behind as we advance, or is it more perfect in the archangel than in the child? and for the professors of the art, can they not err by excess of relish for the same? it would seem that the genuine bard must be one in whom the extremes of human genius meet; that his judgment must be as exact and level with life as his imagination is discursive and incalculable. it would seem as if abundant erudition, foreign travel, and gymnastic exercises must be annexed to his awful imagination and fervent piety to finish milton. that the boisterous childhood, careless of criticism and poetry, the association of vulgar and unclean companions, were necessary to balance the towering spirit of shakspeare, and that mr. wordsworth has failed of pleasing by being too much a poet. a man may propose a course of exercises designed to strengthen his arm with such indiscreet zeal as to paralyze it. a boy enamoured of the beauty of a butterfly chases and clutches it with such eagerness that he finds his hand full of dirt and blood. i can't read this poet's mystic and unmeaning verses without feeling that if he had cultivated poetry less, and learning and society more, he would have gained more favour 1826] wordsworth 107 at the hands of the muses, who must be courted, not taken by violence. ’t is sufficient proof of a man's aberration to know that he is writing verses on a theory; that he has agreed with two or three antics more to bring the public over to a new taste in poetry. it would seem there was some kindred between this new philosophy of poetry and the undisciplined enterprizes of intellect in the middle age. the geniuses of that era, all on fire with that curiosity which is, in every age, inextinguishable, to break the marble silence of nature and open some intercourse between man and that divinity with which it seems instinct, struggled to grasp the principles of things, to extort from the spheres in the firmament some intimations of the present or some commentary on the past. they were impatient of their straitened dominion over nature, and were eager to explore the secrets of her own laboratory, that they might refine clay and iron into gold, might lengthen life and deduce formulas for the solution of all · those mysteries that besiege the human adventurer. not otherwise this modern poet, by natural humour an ardent lover of all the enchantments of wood and river and seduced by an overweening confidence in the force of his own 108 journal [age 23 genius, has discarded that modesty under whose influence all his great precursors have resorted to external nature sparingly for illustration and ornament, and have forborne to tamper with the secret and metaphysical nature of what they borrowed. he has been foolishly inquisitive about the essence and body of what pleased him, of what all sensible men feel to be, in its nature, levanescent. he can't be satisfied with feeling the general beauty of a moonlight evening, or of a rose. he would pick them to pieces and pounce on the pleasurable element he is sure is in them, like the little boy who cut open his drum to see what made the noise. the worthy i gentleman gloats over a bulrush, moralizes on the irregularity of one of its fibres, and suspects a connexion between an excrescence of the plant and its own immortality. is it not much more conformable to that golden middle line in which all that is good and wise of life lies, to let what heaven made small and casual remain the objects of a notice small and casual, and husband our admiration for images of grandeur in matter or in mind? but i should not worry myself with abusing mr. wordsworth, not even for his serene egotism, whereby he seems at every turn thunderstruck to see to what a prodigious height 1826] wordsworth 109 human genius has headed up in him, but that he has occasionally written lines which i think truly noble. he would be unworthy your notice but that now and then comes from him a flash of divine light and makes you uneasy that he should be such an earthen vessel. he has 1 nobly embodied a sentiment, which, i know not why, has always seemed congenial to humanity, that the soul has come to us from a preëxistence in god; that we have a property in the past which we do not ourselves recognize, and a title to the future for which we should be a little thankful.' wait a little, says this venerable faith, and this feverish being for which you are so anxious will be whelmed in a vaster being to which it is only subsidiary; but let the glory and virtue of other worlds be as they may, in parting with our identity we part with happiness. every age, as it augments the number of the successful experiments of genius, whilst it should seem to furnish that large induction from whence 'we can ascertain the true extent and nature of i it may be interesting to refer in this connection to what mr. emerson said later of wordsworth ; of his personality and his poetry in english traits, chapters i, xiv, and xvii, and also in the papers from the dial, “ modern literature” and “ europe and european books,” in volume xii of the works. 110 journal (age 23 poetry, has rather appeared to carry its title into new empires, and annex an import yet more vague and universal to the word. what is poetry? it is philosophy, it is humour, it is a chime of two or three syllables, it is a relation of thought to things, or of language to thought. it converses with all science and all imagination, with all accidents and objects, from the grandest that are accessible to the senses, and grander than those, to the coarsest parts of life. and i would go to the farthest verge of the green earth to learn what it was or was not. if the spirit of him who paced the academe and had this virtue in his soul, though he feigned to disparage it in his philosophy, or the laurelled lovers of the british muse, harp in hand, sit on your misty mount, or soothe their majesties by the margin of your lakes, conjure them, i beseech you, to announce this secret that the wit of humanity has been so long in vain toiling to unriddle. it shall be reverently received, and cautiously dispensed, and shall add a rich item to the scanty stock of truth of which your friend is the humble master. 1826] happiness iii 111 (from cabot's q) cambridge, july 28, 1826. there is but one meaning can be put upon the term happiness consistent with what our experience has shewn. it consists in reliefs, not in enjoyments; and unhappiness is an uneasiness, a useful uneasiness in the body or mind prompting to the attainment of some good agreeable to its nature. that is to say, all unhappiness tends to happiness. (from “ xviii,” 2d) letter to miss emerson 1 august, 1826. tis a droll life, and the only humour proper to it seems quiet astonishment. others laugh, weep, sell or proselyte. i admire. there are, i take it, in each man's history insignificant passages which he feels to him not to be insignificant; little coincidences in little things, which touch all the springs of wonder and startle the sleeper conscience in the deepest cell of his repose, the mind with all her faculties rushing out in alarm, suspicious of a presence which it i probably suggested by st. augustine's exclamation, “wrangle who will, i will wonder.” 112 journal [age 23 ov severs it in greatly behooves her to respect — touched not more with awe than with curiosity, if perhaps some secret revelation is not about to be vouchsafed ; or doubtful if some moral epoch is not just now fulfilled in its history, and the tocsin just now struck that severs and tolls out an irreparable past. these are not the stale reasons by which we can enforce the burdensome doctrine of deity on the world, but make often, i apprehend, the body of evidence on which private conviction is built. in solitude and in silence memory visits her inmost chambers to produce these treasured tokens of connexion and immortality. much of what is subtle and mysterious in our intervals of mentality is more flattering and more favoured than the ordinary acquisitions in the general progress of the soul, and — but what congratulation ought to be heard in the earth from theist and patriot when god, in these eminent instances of these our latter days, departs from the ancient inviolable sternness of an unrespecting providence to harmonize the order of nature with the moral exigencies of humanity. arise from the dust, put on thy beautiful clothing, oh thou that wast despised for depravity, want and presumption! human nature will go 1826] webster 113 daft in our time, like the grecian father who embraced two olympian victors in one day. (from cabot's e) cambridge, august 3, 1826. yesterday i attended the funeral solemnities in faneuil hall in honour of john adams and thomas jefferson. the oration of mr. webster was worthy of his fame, and what is much more, was worthy of the august occasion. never, i think, were the awful charms of person, manners and voice outdone. for though in the beginning unpromising, and in other parts imperfect, in what was truly grand he fully realized the boldest conception of eloquence. (from "xviii,” 2d) to his brother, edward bliss emerson' august 12. eyes so rich will atone for many petty uneasinesses; for hands that are poor, and a little while) for hopes deferred and affections fasting for their food. in the long run, in the great existence, they will vindicate their paramount importance and hold at a cheap rate the disappointi then travelling in europe for his health, 114 journal . (age 23 ment or even blight of a particular affection. for the wealth of the eye passes into the mind, elevating its tone, nourishing its strength, enlarging its proportions; and this godlike inhabitant is always a favourite, and can create for itself new attachments whensoever and where it chooses. blood is a dear tie, and old love is not easily forgotten, but this sort of feeling is but a rag of wretched humanity, low itself and dwelling in low places and striving to link its necessities to lofty sentiment. but the soul sternly assures us that there are affinities dearer and truer, that these are perishing, but those eternal. (from cabot's r) quiddle excessive love of order denominated quiddle. apparent why it should be the mark of a weak mind, because proximity of time and place being the simplest of associations, a violation of it in a mind where higher relations do not enter must produce painful confusion. two sorts of people: (1) who find themselves in life, and content themselves with looking at the great show they 1826] personal 115 find around them, and (2) who like the game and enter into it with spirit. september 10, 1826. the days blow me onward into the desarts of eternity; i live a few strong moments, in the course, perhaps, of each day ; i observe a little the ways of man, and in them accumulated, the ways of god. i act a little. i shape my fortunes, as it seems to me, not at all. for in all my life i obey a strong necessity, and all that sacrifice of time and inclination which certain of my fond friends regard as virtue, i see and confess to be only a passive deference to the course of events. for, in reference to those passages of my life which please their moral sense, i could not have done otherwise without doing violence to my own or my neighbour's feelings. there was, in those instances, in the very likely supposition that i had disliked to play the martyr, no nook, no pretence such as commonly falls to other people, under cover of which i might plausibly decline the assured alternative of inconvenience and loss. it is melancholy to suffer on account of others without any appeal to our own self-devotion as the cause. it is low and ridiculous to be the football of vulgar cir116 journal (age 23 cumstances and never by force of character to have surmounted them. and yet, inasmuch as the course of events in the world appears to consent to virtue, these regretted evils may be ennobled by being a portion of the sublime necessity which links all agents and events together under an omnipotent jurisdiction. be the theories as they may, it suits my humour to sit and speculate, a civil philosopher, mild and composed in the presence of little and of majestic minds; without contempt of reptiles, and, as the stoics say, without being afraid of gods. “ growth of the mind”: our american press does not often issue such productions as sampson reed's observations on the growth of the mind, a book of such a character as i am conscious betrays some pretension even to praise. it has to my mind the aspect of a revelation, such is the wealth and such is the 1 a young man, an apothecary in boston, had just written a book with this title, which emerson valued highly, and which first interested him in swedenborg and his teachings. in a letter written to rev. james freeman clarke in 1834, mr. emerson said, “ have you read sampson reed's growth of the mind? i rejoice to be contemporary with that man, and cannot wholly despair of the society in which he lives. there must be some oxygen yet.” 1826] edward b. emerson 117 novelty of the truth unfolded in it. it is remarkable for the unity into which it has resolved the various powers, feelings and vocations of men, suggesting to the mind that harmony, which it has always a propensity to seek, of action and design in the order of providence in the world. september 23. health, action, happiness. how they ebb from me! poor sisyphus saw his stone stop once, at least, when orpheus chaunted. i must roll mine up and up and up how high a hill! but hark, i can hear on the eastern wind almost the harp of my coming orpheus. he sets his sail and flees over the grim flood.' breathe soft the winds, and shine warmly on him, the autumnal sun. it may be, a contrary destiny will be too strong on me for the help of his hand. but speed his bark, for his heart is noble and his hand is strong, and the good of others is given into his hand. it would give me very great pleasure to be well. it is mournful, the expectation of ceasing to be an object of hope, that we may become objects of compassion, and then go gloomily to nothing, in the eye of this world, before we have i edward was on his return voyage from europe. 118 journal [age 23 had one opportunity of turning to the sun what we know is our best side. but there have existed on earth noble thoughts, and souls that gave them free entertainment, which sentiments were designed as counterpoises to these very sorrows, and consolation to worse distresses. what is stoicism? what is christianity? they are for nothing (that is to say, the human mind at its best estate and the divine mind in its communication with the human, are for nothing), if they cannot set the soul on an equilibrium, when it leans to the earth under the pressure of calamity. i bless god, there is virtue in them. the warlike soul that has put on this armour has come off conqueror. little vexations that eat into the hearts of meaner men were to them that were of the household of this faith dust and smoke; . . . they met with undaunted eye and even temper. they felt the slow wasting of disease which seems to consume the powers of resistance whilst it augments the force of the attack. the fires, that hope had kindled up in the firmament within, were seen to wane in their light, and, star by star, were slowly extinguished; but there was that in them of robust virtue, that derived a blameless triumph from contrasting the health of the soul with the de1826] superior souls 119 cay of its house; the eternity of the universe with the transition of its parts; the grandeur of the ends, themselves were pursuing, with the puny weakness of the instruments; the immortal life, the great, the immeasurable, the overwhelming progression of the mind, with the little passing cloud of tears, decline and death with which it was afflicted on earth. these things they thought on and were comforted. these were the good angels that gathered before them on the holy mount of their hope, and beckoned them to walk boldly forward in the vallies of life, proof to temptation, and not afraid of trial, overlooking the crosses and accidents of the way, for their bright and burning eye was fixed steadfastly on the future. thus much must serve me for a consolatory soliloquy now; or for a sermon by and by, if i prosper better than i at this present apprehend. these that have been said, are the stated, the official consolations. there is another key on which vulgar understandings are sometimes to better purpose addressed. up, up! faint heart never won fair lady. no, there's a necessity in fate why still the brave, bold man is fortunate! 120 journal [ace 23 die? what should you die for? maladies ? what maladies? dost not know that nature has her course as well as disease? that nature has not only helps and facilities for all beneficial operations, but fangs and weapons for her enemies also? die? pale face, lily liver! go about your business, and when it comes to the point, then die like a gentleman. christianity ... in its purified and primitive state, makes one with the moral code. they cast mutual light and honour on each other. the doctrine of immortality, the grand revelation of christianity, illuminates and ennobles the existence of man. this solves the question concerning the existence of evil. for if man is immortal, this world is his place of discipline and the value of pain is then disclosed. ... the most absurd and frivolous superstitions have been defended as the most precious doctrines which jesus christ came into the world to teach. these insane tenets have been sanctioned by councils and sealed by the blood of martyrs. an age went by; a revolution in men's minds took place, and these famous dogmas are pleasantly quoted to amuse an idle hour and speedily are forgotten. and now, it may be, an1826) doubts 121 other set of opinions is taught in councils, and illustrated in pulpits; but what security is there that these are more genuine than those that went before, or that another age may not treat them with the same irreverence? and in this shifting spectacle, is not a doubt thrown upon the gospel itself, which is thus represented to different ages in such contradictory lights? poison, poison, poison; the poison of vanity, the poison of fear, the poison of testimony. “ poison expels poison, and vices are expelled by pride.” “the ænigma of ourselves swallows up, like the sphinx, thousands of systems which pretend to the glory of having guessed its meaning." de staël. (from “ xviii,” 2d) r. w. e. to miss emerson september 28, 1826. hume, all grimace apart, you honour as a genuine scholar, as an exact and powerful philosopher, without a single word of dulness, and with this single qualification of praise, that because of the novelty of the ground he had taken, he was seduced from the grand view of human 122 journal [age 23 nature which he ought to have taken, into a consideration, too partial and minute, of the defective nature of our reasoning; and this, entering into all his habits of thinking, chilled and belittled (compared with a true, with a religious wisdom) all his philosophy. in the history of metaphysics and ethics, however, the advantage is of course great. the experiment might not have been tried under better auspices, and every experiment must once be made. of his friend gibbon, i think there can be but one idea among people of good feeling and sense. he was a sort of alcibiades whom all the instructions of socrates might adorn, but could not purify. then shakspeare and burke. the old poet is crushed under his laurels, and you would hardly withdraw a leaf, but for the indecency of the old stage. it was queer; a sort of representation of humanity, that the truest of all bards should be permitted thus to mix the highest and vilest. heroism, virtue, devotion thrown into these brothel associations. but the words of brutus in julius cæsar will search out a sympathy in the purest heart that ever turned a severe eye on the spotted web of human intellect. but why maul the old idol ? we think alike of him. then we can have no quarrel about burke, 1826] everett 123 an improved cicero; improved precisely in the proportion of the advanced age. . . . as to what is met from our american press, i can't but think the glowing epithets that come down from the mountains are a full echo of the applause of the valleys. i think of our orators. for one's reputation's sake 't is always well to stick in a word to qualify admiration, and you should have heard us tax, in everett, the want of an abounding, delicate philosophy not at all compensated by the dazzle of the imagery. moreover, there is in many minds a certain dulness to perceive god; not so quick a habit of detecting and confederating final causes, whence he is inferred. but for diligence, rectitude, fancy and sense we reckon edward everett chief among ten thousand. next, it seems i am cold, and when shall i kindle? i was born cold. my bodily habit is cold. i shiver in and out; don't heat to the good purposes called enthusiasm a quarter so quick and kindly as my neighbours. yet, so depraved is self-conceit, that i sometimes imagined this very seed of wrath to be one of my gifts, though not graces. “poor mortals do themselves beguile." i 24 [age 23 journal to the same october. but what, in the name of all the fairies, is the reason you don't like sampson reed? what swart star has looked sparely on him? can anything be more greatly, more wisely writ? has any modern hand touched the harp of great nature so rarely? has any looked so shrewdly into the subtile and concealed connexion of man and nature, of earth and heaven? has any, in short, produced such curiosity to see the farther progress, the remoter results, of the caste of intellect to which he belongs? i speak for myself, and not for another. i believe he must have admirers, but i have not seen any. the sabbath after it came out, dr. channing delivered a discourse obviously founded upon it. and, as to his sect, you know they exult in the independent testimony of poor wordsworth, to the same truths which they get from swedenborg. lo! what confirmations to what i said about sentiment ruling the roast in these our matchless times. what holiday the easy satirist might hold in pleasant observance of the fickle world, but for the iron fate that levels the destiny of each with the destiny of all, and afflicts 1826] approbated to preach 125 the observer with the same evil and folly which he analyzes. [on october 10, the young divinity student, having, though irregularly, studied what seemed to the authorities enough to make such action on their part safe, had been “approbated to preach” by the middlesex association of ministers. he had, even a month or two before this, preached his first sermon in his uncle ripley's pulpit in waltham; and after his approbation preached in his father's, the first church, in boston.] (from cabot’s r) “le triomphe de la raison c'est de bien vivre avec ceux qui n'en ont pas.” voltaire." house of have and house of want ren see the 68th number of the quarterly review for some prodigiously fine remarks at the close of the geological article. rombold's opinion, who died on the rye · house plot, quoted by jefferson :men sadi in the fragmentary verses in the appendix to emerson's poems, this saying is versified thus : of all wit's uses the main one is to live well with who have none. 126 journal (age 23 dled and bridled for others booted and spurred, etc. burnet. disproportion all vice is built on the apparent disproportion there is between the temptation to do wrong and the motive to do right. the contest that exists between these opposite influences is like no other strife in nature. it is no combat between beings of the same blood, of equal might, of the like nature, between sword and sword, or wit and wit.2 immortality " that fate and metaphysical aid do deem that i shall be great or small, is o so that the great hope of spirits militant be sure. for who can doubt but that, in the ages of intercourse that impend with spirits of every degree of grandeur, be it of thought or of virtue, he can fail to find his own level, or fear to be robbed of his just fame? but shake down this blessed doctrine of the resurrection, towards which the wise and good, the countless generai quoted in essay on aristocracy, works, vol. x, p. 45 and note. the name is usually spelled rumbold. 2 mrs. julia ward howe relates mr. emerson's instruction to her, when a young girl, that the angel must always be stronger than the evil spirit. 1826] god in history 127 tions of men as they scanned in their little day the impending future, have darted their desiring eyes — to which every conclusion of the intellectual power and every effort of the moral power have pointed, from the first glimmering of human history, and you have done more for ruin than if you had shaken down the stars from their courses. and after this downfall, all things here below, or there above, are so insignificant to us, who are to be connected with them but a moment, that fame which we nickname immortality is but the shadow of a shade. history 't is not always easy to separate what principles are robust and stable, what in humanity is immoveably moored, from what is tossed upon the waves of time. few things need more philosophy than the study of history. for it is not easy or safe to look long on these turning wheels, lest we grow giddy. the best good that is reaped, is the glorious congregation of final causes, that is marshalled as this muse descends from age to age ; the indisputable tribute they bring of obedience and honour to deity. the examination of a single idea with the eye of exact philosophy leads to atheism and to universal 10u 128 [age 22 journal doubt; is susceptible of all the criticism with which mr. hume assailed the sources of knowledge. but many ideas confederated compel men to believe. i need observe that 't is no result of accumulated inquiry that has brought into doubt the faithfulness of the senses ; for, in plato's phædon, socrates mentions that the poets sing that “we neither see nor hear truly”; but what was moonshine then is philosophy now. i have heard shakspeare's “blow winds and crack your cheeks,” and the rest, accused of false taste and bombast. i do not find this fault. and though i might not allow it in another, even in his mad king, yet i am not offended by this passage in lear. for as the romans were so idolatrous of cato's virtue that when he had drunk wine they would rather believe that intemperance was virtue than that cato was guilty of a vice, so i am afraid to circumscribe within rhetorical rules, the circuits of such a towering and majestic mind, and a taste the most exquisite that god ever informed among men.' “we seem to recognize a truth the first time we hear it.” fontenelle. i the three last paragraphs are dated 1825. ambrid 1826] jesus christ 129 cambridge, november, 1826. i would write something worthily on the most affecting of topics, upon the personal character and influence and upon the death of jesus christ, a being whose nature has divided the opinions of men more than did ever any question; who was so great as to leave foundation for the idea that he was a portion of the deity, and, in the opinions least reverent, that he was first of men; a being who would be called renowned, did not fame and what men call glory sink before his majesty into things offensive and ridiculous; a human being whose influence on the fortunes of human society — taking out of account all supernatural influence — has been far the most powerful foreign influence that ever acted thereon; a being whose character was so pure and whose death was so sublime as, if no consequences had followed, would for himself have attracted the greatest admiration. [here follow several quotations from mme. de staël's germany.] i find in burke almost the same thought i had entertained as an original remark three years ago: that nothing but the moral quality 130 journal [age 23 of actions can penetrate through vast intervals of time. “the translator,” says butler, “is a small factor that imports books of the growth of one language into another; but it seldom turns to account, for the commodity is perishable, and, the finer it is, the worse it endures transportation, as the most delicate of indian fruits are by no art to be brought over.” (from "xvi”) the spirits of the wise sit on the clouds and mock the ambition of man, for his breath is vapour, his beauty the colour of a cloud, and his body and soul are parted by a sun, a storm, or the feeble fork of a poor worm : and who shall tell his household whither the soul of the dead man is gone? is it gone to live in torture, enduring a dread resurrection into pain, and perceive mortal plagues in an immortal body, sighing to the heavy centuries, that bring no light, no hope in their immeasurable train ? is it gone to farther regions of unequal lot, to a land where the colours of love and disgust are blended anew in the texture of the web, 1826] life or death 131 and the web is stained with black and bloody clouds ? is it gone to harmonies of joy, to the ardour of virtue and the wealth of truth? is it gone to blank oblivion, the mockery of hope and virtuc, and the death of god? alas! alas! alas! wo is me! for the sad survivor ! tho' fortune threw good, not evil, in his way, showering the roses of pleasure and the laurel of fame, whilst his brother breasted the driving snows — alas for the sad survivor! he walks the long streets of his native city, but the peopled street is like the desolate sea. men study his face and its lofty lines, and love the graceful tones of pride and power rolled with rich thunder of eloquent words. in the bosom of his own land they love him and they honour him, and they think his heart leaps at the voice of their praise. but their thoughts are dark and their eyes are dim, and they cannot see that a.noble nature must pine, or be matched with noble things. it is ill with the living, it is well with the dead. it is better with the dead who live than it is with the living who die daily. oh life, thou art a house wherein fears inhabit; 132 [age 23 journal and when man, poor pilgrim, enters the doors, they flock unto him with icy hands, they lead him in their shivering company, and if he come to a shining room, they tell him it leads to a dungeon tower. song this cup of life is not so shallow that we have drained the best, that all the wine at once we swallow, and lees make all the rest. maids of as soft a bloom shall marry as hymen yet hath blessed, and finer forms are in the quarry than phidias e'er released. [the damps of autumn brought increase to emerson's symptoms. the invitations to preach which came to him were gratifying, but after · each occasion his chest felt the strain. his condition was low; consumption distinctly threatened him. at this crisis his good (half-) uncle, reverend samuel ripley, came to the rescue and insisted on his going south for the winter and there remaining until his health improved; and he advanced the necessary funds and gave letters of credit. there can be little doubt that 1826] southward voyage 133 emerson's life was saved by mr. ripley's kindly forethought and generosity. waldo stayed at home until he could see his loved brother edward, just returned from france, and then took ship for charleston, south carolina, on the 25th of november.] (from “ xvi,” cabot's s) for versatility of genius, see livy, de cato the elder; shakspeare, de henry v,—“hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,” etc., etc.; aubrey, de bacon; byron, de cæsar; plutarch, de themistocles; milton, de education; and stewart, fred. iii's bottle in cellar; jack of all trades, good at none — what's worth doing, worth doing well. . “no profit comes where is no pleasure taken: in brief, sir, study what you most affect.” nature notches the edge of the petal, and hurls the globes in orbits. (from cabot's r) at sea; sunday, december 3, 1826. 't is a nine days' wonder to me, this voyage of mine. here i have been rolling through the weary leagues of salt water, musing much on 134 journal (age 23 myself and on man, with some new but incoherent thinking. i revolved a thought i had somewhere found, that dangers were companions of illustrious minds; and applying it to society, which may, like individuals, by its education and fortune emerge from obscurity and grow illustrious, i perceived that in its progress it would overtake dangers not known to its infancy. it would embrace dangers and ennoble itself by its company. the men of this age work and play between steam-engines of tremendous force, amid the roaring wheels of manufactories, brave the incalculable forces of the storm, here in the seat of its sovereignty, and fulfil in these perilous crises all the minute offices of life, as calm and unawed as they would compose themselves to sleep in the shade of a forest. such facts assert a sovereignty in the mind that is very dear to the philanthropist. after a day or two, i found i could live as comfortably in this tent, tossed on the ocean, as if it were pitched on the mountains ashore. but it is the irresistible sentiment of the first day, whilst your philosophy is sea-sick, to fancy man is violating the order of nature in coming out here where he assuredly has no business; and that, in virtue of this trespass on his part, the isic 1826] inertia 135 wind has a right to his canvass and the shark to his body. whilst his philosophy is distempered, so is his imagination. the whole music of the sea is desolate and monitory. the wave and the cloud and the wind suggest power more than beauty to the ear and eye. but the recovery is rapid, and the terrible soon subsides into the sublime. (from “ xviii,” 2d) charleston, south carolina, december 13. i have for a fortnight past writ nothing. my bosom's lord sits somewhat drowsily on his throne. it is because i think not at all that i write not at all. there is to me something alarming in these periods of mentality. one day i am a doctor, and the next i am a dunce, that is, so far as relates to my own resources. an educated man who thinks for himself can, of course, at any time, by contact with a powerful mind, whether by conversation or by a book, be easily wrought upon, and go into action. but put away these foreign impulses, and the mind will be treacherous to its alleged immortality, inasmuch as suspended action, independent of the waking and sleep of the body, assaults the 136 journal (age 23 notion of spiritual life. the true account of the scarecrow is this. at sea a fortnight elapses in which i always remember myself to have been, in times past, a channel through which flowed bright and lofty thought. but i find in me no disposition, no power to recreate for myself the same brilliant entertainment. i come to land, and the weary days succeed each other as on the desolate sea, but this coveted power does not return, and every attempt to force the soul is heavily baffled. now suppose it should never return; the causes are concealed, the sun and the moon are hidden which affect the ebbs and flowings of the intellectual tides.' they are determined by something out of me and higher than me. if the virtue that is gone out of me be withheld, i have parted with what in life was best, and eternity will lose its dread attracļ tions. eternity is only desirable when regarded : as the career of an inquisitive mind. it would be a disappointment, a prolonged sorrow to him who mourned the loss of the sense which only could unlock its treasures. yet during the days of this eclipse the notice of the loss of light 1 unsure the ebb and flow of thought; the moon comes back — the spirit not. see poems (appendix), « the poet." 1826] moral sense inborn 137 sometimes rises into apprehension lest it might not return. this is our boasted human dignity and majesty and so forth. we are such bubbles that when we mount, we see not how; and when we grow great, we cannot commend ourselves. (from cabot's r) charleston, south carolina, december 16. it is an old remark, that there are no discoveries in morals. it is the leading object of our existence, to form moral character, and the laws of morals are therefore written on the heart in luminous and ineffaceable characters. ... but there are problems of moral science, questions of no easy solution, and it would be the grossest error to suppose that from the scanty lights of nature the young and ignorant were equally competent to decide them with the experienced moralist. it cannot be. all men are equal on this point precisely in the sense in which we say in general all men are born free and equal. they all have the same kind of moral science in different degrees, and in each sufficient for his wants. the little child refuses to tell a lie with the same confidence in the rectitude of his refusal that the archangel feels when he persists in his allegiance mt 138 journal [age 23 to the most high, and defies the tempter. but the child can give no reason for his perception, nor see one step beyond of its harmony with nature. but there are discoveries in morals: 1, in the case of every individual who loves to search the sources of action, the manner in which god has connected and fortified us by the graduated forces of the passions,— tut, tell me he makes no discoveries, from the time he first blushed, to the hour when he analyzed shame; and 2, there are discoveries made in morals from age to age. ... the silent progress of human refinement does from time to time disclose more and more insight of the moral frame of man. understand now, morals do not change, but the science of morals does advance; men discover truth and relations of which they were before ignorant; therefore, there are discoveries in morals. it is under this persuasion that we think it a matter of importance to adapt the exercises of public worship to the changing exigences of society. if ethics were an immovable science, the primeval altar of the jews might serve as the model of our holy place. ... 1826] advancing religion 139 we see that we are standing on a higher stage; that we are instructed by a better philosophy, whose greater principles explain to us the design, whilst they comprehend, themselves, the petty provisions of the less. — we leave the ritual, the offering, and the altar of moses; we cast off the superstitions that were the swaddling clothes of christianity, the altercations of novices, the ambition that created a hierarchy, the images and the confessional; and would accommodate the instructions of the church to the wants of worshippers. we already descry the broader light blazing before us when we shall have emerged from the porches of the temple and stand in the temple itself. ... then the champion of the cross will be able to turn from this ungrateful task, in which ages have so unprofitably elapsed, of stripping off the manifold coats under which prejudice and falsehood had concealed the truth and come at last to the dear and lofty employment of pointing out the secret but affecting passages in the history of the soul. ... it has been ever a favourite topic of the pulpit to warn men against the great vice of every day, — assuming the shew of godliness when their hearts are strangers to its power, — no man in the world but pretends to a more perfect vir140 journal [age 23 wer tue than he possesses, -and to denounce against this most prevalent sin the future vengeance of heaven. i am inclined to consider this a very imperfect statement, as so falling very far short of the power and conviction it ought to carry. instead of denouncing a future contingent vengeance, i see that vengeance to be contemporary with the crime. instead of a cold delineation of the discord between hypocrisy and just moral feeling, i see the attempt at disguise, in every instance, to fall shamefully short of its own ends. i see that its plot is wise and its hands cunning, but in all its purposes, betwixt the work and the reward, comes in upon the evil doers a dark and strong hand which turns them back with shame upon the way they came. the true statement which i would introduce . . . is that the assumption of a shew of virtue does not and cannot impose on men, and that a successful hypocrisy does not exist, and quiet natures suffer most in the apprehension of pain. [strife of theologians] it has been remarked that notwithstanding the prodigious impression which theological controversies respecting the nature of jesus christ have made on human history, and the passions they 1826] climate and manners 141 daily excite in men's minds, the real difference between the sentiments of the disputants when rigidly analyzed is very subtle, and is inconsiderable. for the trinitarian, whilst he names the name of god, is very careful to separate the idea of god from his account of the life of jesus christ, but considers him only in his human nature; considers him as a man. hence it happens well that, to whatever party names education or inclination has attached us, we sympathize all on the same affecting views of the life and passion of our lord. manners manners seem to be more closely under the influence of climate. they belong more to the body than the soul, and so come under the influence of the sun; they are accommodations of the motions of the body to moods of the mind. in lapland, men are savage: in norway, they are plain-spoken and use no ceremony, in england, some; in france, much; in spain, more. in like manner, no man has travelled in the united states from the north to the south without observing the change and amelioration of manners. in this city, it is most observable, the use of the conventions of address among the lowest classes, which are coarsely neglected by the labouring 142 journal [age 23 classes at the north. two negroes recognize each other in the street, though both in rags, and both, it may be, balancing a burden on their heads, with the same graduated advances of salutation that well-bred men who are strangers to each other would use in boston. they do not part before they have shaken hands and bid good-bye with an inclination of the head. there is a grace and perfection too about these courtesies which could not be imitated by a northern labourer where he designed to be extremely civil. indeed i have never seen an awkward carolinian. e authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1825 and 1826 bible; homer; socrates ; plato; demosthenes; epicurus; plutarch; seneca; juvenal; marcus antoninus; origen; machiavelli; luther; montaigne; bacon; shakspeare; ben jonson, alcbymist; milton; pascal, pensées; dryden, song for st. cecilia's day, absolom and achitophel; newton; burnet; prideaux; fontenelle; leclerc; 143 1826] reading le saurin ; pope ; butler, analogy; voltaire ; johnson, lives of the poets ; hume, essays ; vattel; rousseau, émile; buffon, natural history; warton, essay on pope; burke, speeches; gibbon, roman empire ; eichhorn; paley, natural theology; mitford, history of greece; herder; playfair; dugald stewart; jeffrey; mackintosh ; thomas brown, lectures on the philosophy of the human mind; napoleon; de staël, germany; scott; wordsworth, excursion, intimations of immortality, dion; byron, marino faliero ; campbell, the last man; dr. channing; edward everett, phi beta kappa oration ; webster, funeral oration on adams and jefferson; sampson reed, growth of the mind. journal xviii 1827 [from “ xviii," zd, cabot's q and r, and a pocket note-book] yamam (from cabot's r) charleston, s. c. january 4, 1827. a new year has opened its bitter cold eye upon me, here where i sought warm weather. a new year has opened on me and found my best hopes set aside, my projects all suspended. a new year has found me perchance no more fit to live and no more fit to die than the last. but the eye of the mind has at least grown richer in its hoard of observations. it has detected some more of the darkling lines that connect past events to the present, and the present to the future; that run unheeded, uncommented, in a thousand mazes wherever society subsists, and are the moral cords of men by which the deity is manifested to the vigilant, or, more truly, to the illuminated observer. it does not always 70s 1827] principle 145 this gifted observation — it does not always presuppose a regulated soul. a man may be a shrewd judge of the finest shades of character, whose own conscience is contaminated with habitual guilt. but such a man is not blind to the discrepancy betwixt his morals and his mind. he perceives the discord, and cannot perceive it without alarm. for he has an instinctive dread of the tendencies to harmony in the universe which he has often observed, and which betoken some future violence to root out this disorder. if the string cannot be made to accord, it must be broken. it is a just thought which was lately presented to me and which fell in entirely with my own notions of compensation, not yet fully unfolded, that it is beyond the compass of the most subtle policy, when once the consideration of principle has been set aside, to regulate affairs so as always to succeed; or, (as in the instance on which the remark was grounded) so as to keep for a man the popularity for which his duty was abandoned. for the order of providence in the world fights against such a man; and somewhere on his way, maugre all his forecast and all his fetches, he will be unexpectedly circumvented and thrown out. 146 (age 23 journal note-books if an ingenious man lived long enough, he might learn to talk by system, in a manner out of all comparison better than men now use. suppose him to keep a book of commonplaces, and, as his knowledge grew, to put down on the page of each the theories that occurred. it is clear that in process of time it would embrace all the ordinary subjects of human discourse. he would n't talk so well as those who have the natural talent. nature has fetches which art cannot reach; bewitching felicities, affecting pauses, that the mere practice of a moderate genius would n't attain. but something would doubtless be accomplished that would put to shame the cheap, extemporaneous draggle-tail dialogue that takes place in our evening companies, even among men of letters and ambition, from candlelight till the bell strikes nine and breaks up the company.' i mr. emerson's own practice, from youth to age, of keeping journals in which he, on the moment, faithfully recorded his thought or observation or sentence, and made his corollary, then or later, thereon, was the basis of all his writings, — the poems, the lectures, the books, — and gave a strange interest even to his occasional speech on public events. ou 1827] the single gift 147 men lose their temper in defending their * taste. a man becomes sensible, now and then, of the existence of a kind of country gentlemen in the regions of genius, a sort of taciturn critics who have in them a solitary talent, it may be a love of eloquence, an image enshrined in their souls of eloquence so beautiful and so glorious that the successful orator, if he could open the doors of the mind and behold, would find his satisfaction changed to admiration and move all the springs of wonder, turn his summit of success into a starting-post. such a man seems to belong elsewhere. he is a column in the desert. e. g. r. m. g.' it is the rare fortune of those who are born in these times and this country to be born for the blessing of the world. there's a free masonry among the dull by which they recognize and are sociable with the dull, as surely as a correspondent tact in men of genius. a cor n men i perhaps robert marion gourdin, an attractive southerner, brother to john g. k. gourdin, emerson's chum. he studied medicine after leaving college. 148 [age 23 journal the flag it is surprising what frivolous things excite our strongest emotions. an old rag of blue and red bunting — the national flag waving in the air of these outposts of society — makes all my patriotism glow again.' iron it was formerly said that he“ who has the most iron will be master of all this gold.” in our times, war has surrendered his supremacy to trade. but the experience of nations has shewn that the manufacture of iron is an unerring index of the degree of civilization. the consequence is that the position of solon is still emphatically true, though in a sense very wide of that which was in his mind, that he who has most iron will have all the gold. i probably the fag on the old fort at st. augustine, florida. the cold at charleston had driven him farther south. he had written to his brother william, “ i am not sick, but luke-sick. i have but a single complaint, a certain stricture on the right side of my chest which always makes itself felt when the air is cold or damp, and exertion of the lungs is followed by an aching. the worst part of it is the deferring of hopes; and who can help being heart-sick?” 1827] the exile 149 in your charity, the merit is always commen-1 surate with the sacrifice. st. augustine for fifteen winter days i sailed upon the deep, and turned my back upon the northern lights, and burning bear," and the cold orbs that hang by them in heaven, till, star by star, they sank into the sea. full swelled the sail before the driving wind, till the stout pilot turned his prow to land, where peered, 'mid orange-groves and citron blooms, the little city of saint augustine. slow slid the vessel to the fragrant shore, loitering along matanzas' sunny waves, and under anastasia's verdant isle. i saw saint mark's grim bastions, piles of stone planting their deep foundations in the sea, and speaking to the eye a thousand things of spain, a thousand heavy histories. under these bleached walls of old renown our ship was moored. an hour of busy noise, and i was made a quiet citizen pacing my chamber in a spanish street. an exile's bread is salt, his heart is sad, — 1 another form of the third line was, on the twin bears, fast tethered to the pole. 150 journal [age 23 happy, he saith, the eye that never saw the smoke ascending from a stranger's fire ! yet much is here that can beguile the months of banishment to the pale travellers whom disease hath sent hither for genial air from northern homes. oh, many a tragic story may be read, dim vestiges of a romantic past, within the small peninsula of sand. here is the old land of america and in this sea-girt nook, the infant steps, first foot-prints of that genius giant-grown that daunts the nations with his power to-day. inquisitive of such, i walk alone along the narrow streets unpaved and old, among few dwellers, and the jealous doors and windows barred upon the public way. i explored the castle and the ruined monastery, . unpeopled town, ruins of streets of stone, pillars upon the margin of the sea, with worn inscriptions oft explored in vain. then with a keener scrutiny, i marked the motley population. hither come the forest families, timid and tame; not now, as once with stained tomahawk the restless red man left his council fire, or when, with mexique art, he painted haughtily on canvas woven in his boundless woods 1827] st. augustine 151 his simple symbols for his foes to read. not such an one is yon poor vagabond, who in unclean and sloven apathy brings venison from the forest, — silly trade. alas! red men are few, red men are feeble, they are few and feeble and must pass away. and here, the dark minorcan, sad and separate, wrapt in his cloak, strolls with unsocial eye ; by day, basks idle in the sun, then seeks his food all night upon the waters, stilly plying his hook and line in all the moonlit bays. here steals the sick man with uncertain gait, looks with a feeble spirit at things around as if he sighing said, “what is 't to me? i dwell afar; — far from this cheerless fen my wife, my children strain their eyes to me, and oh! in vain. wo, wo is me! i feel in spite of hope, these wishful eyes no more shall see new england's wood-crowned hills again.” heard the roaring on the beach long before we saw land, and the sea was full of green twigs and feathers. (from pocket note-book) st. augustine, january 16, 1827. the colonies observe the customs of the parent country, however ill they may be adapted to теү 152 (age 23 journal the new territory. the dutch cut canals in batavia, because they cut canals in holland, but the fierce sun of the e. indies stagnated the water and slew the dutch. in like manner the spaniards and the yankees dig cellars here because there are cellars in madrid and boston; but the water fills the cellars and makes them useless and the house unhealthy. yet still they dig cellars. why? because there are cellars in madrid and boston. over the gate of the fort is an inscription which, being in spanish, and in an abbreviated character, i was unable to read. after many inquiries in town, i could not find an individual who had ever read it, or knew anything about it. mr. gay, the public interpreter, took the card on which i had written what letters were not defaced of the inscription, and succeeded in decyphering the following record :regnando en españa el señor don fernando gobernador y capitan general de esta plaza de san agostino de la florida y su provincia el mariscal de campo don alonzo fernandes d'heredia se concluio este castillo el año de 1756 dirigiendo las obras el capitan ynceniero don pedro de brozas y garay. which runs in english thus: 1827] st. augustine 153 “don ferdinand vi being king of spain, and the field marshal don alonzo fernandez d'heredia being governor and captain general of this place of st. augustine of florida, and of its province, this fort was finished in the year 1756. the works were directed by the captain engineer don pedro de brozas y garay.” it is commonly said here that the fort is more than a century old. it seems there was an old one of much earlier date standing on the same site, which was the foundation of the present erection. there are two graveyards in st. augustine, one of the catholics, another of the protestants. of the latter, the whole fence is gone, having been purloined by these idle people for firewood. of the former, the fence has been blown down by some gale, but not a stick or board has been removed, — and they rot undisturbed ; such is the superstition of the thieves. i saw two spaniards entering this enclosure, and observed that they took off their hats in reverence to what is holy ground. in the protestant yard, among other specimens of the sepulchral muse, the following epitaph is written over the body of mr. happoldt, “ a native of germany”:154 [age 23 journal rest in this tomb, raised at thy children's cost; here sadly summoned what they had and lost for kind and true, a treasure each alone, a father, brother, and a friend in one; o happy soul, if thou canst see from high thy large and orphan family. [st. augustine is the] oldest town of europeans in north america; 1564; full of ruins,chimneyless houses, lazy people ; horsekeeping intolerably dear, and bad milk from swamp grass, because all the hay comes from the north. 40(?) miles from here is nevertheless the richest crop of grass growing untouched. why? because there is no scythe in st. augustine, and if there were, no man who knows how to use one. [determination of right] (from cabot's r) it occurs to me in reading the history of the revolution of 1688, that where, as in that case, the providence of god and the progress of mankind imperiously demand the final success of a cause, the particular events on which it might be beforehand supposed the general result would hang are disastrous, and yet without affecting that general result. a determined bias is given to the mass, which is preserved amid all the lesser 1827] achille murat 155 revolutions which it fulfils, by the foreign attractions to which it is subjected in its average orbit. james gains the victories, but william gains the crown. it is the same with the american revolution. [in the expression of doubts in the latter part of the following entry, and perhaps in some allusions later, there seem to appear reflections of the writer's conversation with a new and notable friend. at st. augustine he met napoleon achille murat, eldest son of joachim murat, napoleon's brilliant cavalry leader, to whom he gave his sister carolineas wife, and made him king of naples. but for the overthrow of his uncle the emperor, and the tragic death of his father, prince achille murat might have succeeded to that troublesome kingdom. happily he sought his fortunes in the new world and became an enthusiastic american. he had married a virginian lady,' a grand-niece of washington, and was a planter near tallahassee. emerson by chance met murat, who was two years the elder, and the young men were drawn to one another. murat, brave, frank and friendly, i a mrs. gray, a widow of sixteen, née catherine willis. her father, colonel byrd willis, lived near fredericksburg. 156 [age 23 journal had a very active mind, but was skeptical as to religious dogmas. emancipated from the church of rome, he was disgusted with the low forms of the methodist and baptist worship that he found in the new community. emerson, of course, was much disturbed at the frank agnosticism of this admirable youth, and gave him his first ideas of the liberal and humane views of the channing unitarians. the result of their discussions appears in a letter from murat, which will be given a little later, also in the references to boston and the unitarians in murat's intelligent and enthusiastic letters on “ america and the americans” to a friend in belgium, which were published in translation in a little book so entitled, after murat's death in 1847.] [dark hours] st. augustine. a child in a vessel thinks the shores remove when the ship leaves the shore. when the affections depart from god, god appears to depart from the soul. his image fades fast from his sanctuary and when he ceases to be seen he is thought to cease to be. there is a tremendous sympathy to which ece s as mo 1827] rights of conscience 157 we were born by which we do easily enter into the feelings of evil agents, of deep offenders in the hour of their temptation and their fall. we catch with intelligent ear the parley between the tempter and the tempted; we measure with sad alacrity the joys of guilt. this is a part of our condition, a part of our free agency, and necessary to us as moral probationers. let us, then, since it lies in our power, observe these gradations by which he that stands in his purity suffers himself to decline to his fall. what hinders me from doing my will? i am perplexing myself with scruples that never entered the minds of thousands of persons, fellowbeings of mine who have lived and acted in similar circumstances. why should i embarrass my existence? voluntarily give up this enjoyment of life, which is equivalent to so much life itself, because of certain ideas, certain imaginations which occur to nobody else, or, if they occur, are defied? who calls on me to be the solitary servant, or the victim rather, of what is called conscience, when all my neighbours are absolved from its authority. conscience, virtue— to be sure these are words of wonderful efficiency, but there have been men who have denied their foundation in the nature of man. yet these are the al158 journal [age 23 pha and omega of the argument, these two words are all the obstacles that stand between meand my advantage. they seem to me of some account, i am accustomed to revere them. i honour men that honour them. yet there are many prejudices which i well remember to have influenced my conduct when a child, which i now despise and ridicule. these too may be but superstition, and a few years hence i shall wonder that i could ever be so pusillanimous as to regard them. besides, what am i in the general system of being but an iota, an unregarded speck? why then suppose that my puny arm is chained to one or another action by all this apparatus of invisible agency, that all my solitudes are swarming with commissioned witnesses, that every word i utter is overheard, that every thought i entertain is. i observed, that every insignificant passage of my life is brought into judgment? alas ! i fear me there is something fabulous in this prodigious array of solemn images with which divines and philosophers would bear me down and persuade me that the health of this wide universe of moral beings of an extent that affrights the imagination—and the omnipotence of god over all — are nearly concerned in this pitiful contingency (of mine) whether i shall act, or whether i shall 'e s 90 1827] doubts 159 forbear. why, this is the very folly of the dotard, who thinks when a passing hurricane darkens a few leagues around his hovel, that the consummation of the world is come, whilst half the globe beside is basking in sunshine. i am wiser than this. i better rate my just value in the world. i can fulfil my purposes without being affrighted by these disproportioned bugbears. and what is the amount of all that is called religion in the world? who is he that has seen god of whom so much is known, or where is one that has risen from the dead? satisfy me beyond the possibility of doubt of the certainty of all that is told me concerning the other world, and i will fulfil the conditions on which my salvation is suspended. the believer tells me he has an evidence, historical and internal, which make the presumption so strong that it is almost a certainty, that it rests on the highest of probabilities. yes; but change that imperfect to perfect evidence, and i too will be a christian. but now it must be admitted i am not certain that any of these things are true. the nature of god may be different from what is represented. i never beheld him. i do not know that he exists. this good which invites me now is visible and specific. i will at least embrace it this time by 160 journal [age 23 way of experiment, and if it is wrong, certainly god can in some manner signify his will in future. moreover i will guard against any evil consequences resulting to others by the vigilance with which i conceal it. ... january 30, 1827. but now comes the analysis of this shallow philosophy. he that was sinless before declines from his integrity. he says, i have sinned ; but i live; i am in health; i shall not sin again; and how am i the worse? and no man shall know it. vain, blind man! alas ! the laws which he spurned, the laws of the moral universe have taken hold on him and assert their insulted supremacy. he thought himself too insignificant to provoke the animadversion of the most high and that he might sin unnoticed in the inimensity of god's government. but god has not so poorly framed the economy of his administration. he devised no fallible police, no contingent com! pensations. he secured the execution of his everlasting laws by committing to every moral being the supervision of its own character, by making every moral being the unrelenting, inexorable punisher of its own delinquency. in the hour when he sinned, that hour his own fate · 1827] the murats 161 avenged on him the majesty of the laws he had broken. (from pocket note-book) tallahassee tallahassee, a grotesque place, selected three years since as a suitable spot for the capital of the territory, and since that day rapidly settled by public officers, land speculators and desperadoes. much club law and little other. what are called the ladies of the place are, in number, eight. “gov. duval is the button on which all things are hung.” prince murat has married a mrs. gray and has sat down in the new settlement. tallahassee is 200 miles west of st. augustine, and in the journey thither you sleep three nights under the pine trees. the land in its neighbourhood is rich. here is the township of lafayette. i saw here a marble copy of canova's bust of queen caroline of naples, murat's wife. it did not strike me as at all wonderful, though canova's busts of the buonapartes are said to be his finest works.' i it would appear from this passage, although there is no other mention of it, that emerson accepted an invitation of murat to ride with him to the new settlements in west florida. i was told in tallahassee that murat's plantation was at some distance to the eastward from that small capital with its beautiful surroundings. 162 journal [age 23 [in a letter written to his brother charles, january 27, mr. emerson said: “whoso is in st. augustine resembles what may be also seen at st. augustine — the barnacles on a ledge of rocks which the tide has deserted : move they cannot; very uncomfortable they surely are; but they can hear from afar the roaring of the waters and imagine the joy of the barnacles that are bathed thereby. the entertainments of the place are two, billiards and the sea-beach, but those whose cloth abhors the billiards — why, theirs is the seabeach. a small, gray-coated gnat is wagoner to the queen of fairies, and we who walk on the beach are seers of prodigious events and prophets of noble natures.” to william he wrote, a day or two later: “the air and sky of this ancient, fortified, dilapidated sand-bank of a town are really delicious. i am very decidedly relieved from my stricture, which seems to hold its tenure from boreas. it is a queer place. there are eleven or twelve hundred people, and these are invalids, public officers, and spaniards, or rather minorcans. what is done here? nothing. ... i stroll on the sea-beach and drive a green orange over the sand with a stick. sometimes i sail in a boat, sometimes i sit in a chair. i read and write a te a n he sea-beach here! nórh? rather i 1827] seminoles 163 little, moulding sermons for an hour which may never arrive. for, though there may be preaching in the world to come, yet ... it will be hardly after the written fashion of this pragmatic world.” (see letters, of greater length, in cabot's memoir, vol. i.)] (from pocket note-book) the minorcans are very much afraid of the indians. all the old houses have very strong walls and doors, with apertures through which a musket can be discharged. they are delighted to find that under the american flag the indians are afraid of the whites. some of them, however, do not like to venture far out of the town at this day. “but what are you afraid of? don't you know general jackson conquered all the indians?” “yes, but general jackens no here now.” “but his son is, for, you know the indians call colonel gadden his son.” “ay, ay, but then the indians, for all that.” i saw by the city gates two iron frames, in the shape of a mummy, with iron rings on the head. they were cases in which the spanish governor had hung criminals upon a gibbet. there is a little iron loop on one side, by the breast, in 164 journal [age 23 which a loaf of bread and a vessel of water were contained. thus provided, the wretch was hung up by suspending the ring over his head to a tree and left to starve to death. they were lately dug up full of bones. (from cabot's r) peculiarities of the present age 1. instead of systematic pursuit of science, men cultivate the knowledge of anecdotes. 2. it is said to be the age of the first person singular. 3. the reform of the reformation. 4. transcendentalism. metaphysics and ethics look inwards — and france produces mad. de staël; england, wordsworth; america, sampson reed; as well as germany, swedenborg. ... 5. the immense extent of the english language and influence. the english tongue is spreading over all north america except mexico,over demerary, &c., jamaica, &c., indostan, new holland and the australian islands. 6. the paper currency. joint stock companies. 7. the disposition among men of associating themselves to promote any purpose. (millions of societies.) 1827] genius and virtue 165 “i have seen,” said a preacher, in northampton, “a drunkard who acknowledged his fault, a profane man who confessed profanity, a loose man who owned his licentiousness, &c., but i never saw an ungrateful man who owned his ingratitude. an ungrateful man! a monster in the universe.” the argument for necessity can never be got the better of. it is like a goose which, — fight it down as much as you will, — always cackles of victory. it always turned on you as you retired. so of berkeley's idealism. there is hope of one who has a vein of genius that he will be a friend to virtue. for there is between virtue and genius a natural, an eternal affinity, and where one is found, the other may be looked for, as in south america a gold mine is said to indicate the vicinity of diamonds. the bodies of intemperate men are the tombs lit --*** of immortal minds. st. augustine, february 2, 1827. with a little thinking, passive almost amidst our sensations, and rounding our lives with a 166 journal [age 23 remote little sleep, we count off our days with a prodigal hand. the months depart, and soon i shall measure back my way to my own people. but i feel how scanty is the addition i have made to my knowledge or my virtue. day by day i associate with men to whom my society yields no noticeable amount of advantage or pleasure. i have heard of heights of virtue and lives of philanthropy. i am cold and solitary, and lead a life comfortable to myself and useless to others. yet i believe myself to be a moral agent of an indestructible nature, and designed to stand in sublime relations to god and to my fellow men; to contribute in my proper enjoyments to the general welfare. what then, young pilot, who by chart and compass pointest out to others the shoals they must shun and the haven they must seek—art not thyself a castaway? will you say you have no call to more austere virtue than you daily exhibit? have you computed the moral influences of this quiescence, this waking torpor of the soul and found them adequate to what may in equity be demanded of you? young pilot! you dare not say aye. 1827] way of the great . 167 16 february, 1827. my weight is 141 lbs. it is not these speculations which are most abstruse that either deserve or receive the best reward from fame. the only dispensers of fame are the middle class of mankind, and they will not value the far-sought abstraction, no matter how inaccessible or sublime, more than the fowl on the dunghill regards the pearl. it came from distant climes, it was got with toil, it was hoarded with care, yet having no suitableness to the wants of the finder, is less valued than a kernel of corn. but those writings which indicate valuable genius treat of common things. those minds which god has formed for any powerful influence over men, have never effeminately shrunk from intercourse with unnurtured minds. they scorned to be tender and squeamish. human destiny is not nice. they have taken hold with manly hand on its vulgar wants; on poverty and riches; on pain of body and pain of mind, on the inconveniences of goodness, and the compensating hope. “most poor matters point to rich ends.” besides the advantage of being understood, it is a groundless fear that the author loses a jot of true dignity by this humility in the choice of topics; for the high and low points of human 168 journal [age 23 life are so nearly allied that no man of powerful sense ever found himself on any subject far removed from the sources of what is deeper in human thought. it is a near neighbourhood, that of greatness of destiny and lowness of lot; that of mind and matter; that of man and god. it is like our natural existence. though we be pigmies of a few feet, it is not a dungeon wall which confines us to the earth. there is nothing between us and the infinite universe. so our life, which had its beginning a few summers ago from a sorry succession of some dull material causes, walks with god on the other side through time and chance, through the fall of suns and systems, through unbounded ages, unhurt and immortal. 'tis the rich treasure in earthen vessels. such being the character of our life, such must also be the character of its descriptions. ic vo if a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. his well being is always ahead. such a creature is probably immortal. (from pocket note-book) the worthy father of the catholic church here, 1827] priest – indians 169 by whose conversation i was not a little scandalized, has lately been arrested for debt and imprisoned in st. mark's. this exemplary divine on the evening of his arrest said to mr. crosby, “ if you can change ten dollars for me, i will pay you the four which i owe you.” crosby gave him six, which the father put in his waistcoat pocket, and, being presently questioned, stoutly denied that he had anything from him. but crosby was the biggest and compelled him to restore the money. i went yesterday to the cathedral, full of great coarse toys, and heard this priest say mass, for his creditors have been indulgent and released him for the present. wa i met some indians in the street selling venison. i asked the man where he lived? “yonder.” “where?” “in the big swamp.” he sold his haunch for 5 bits. the purchaser offered him one bit, and a bill worth half a dollar and counted on his fingers this, one, and this, four. “you lie,” said the indian — which i found was his only word for no: i gave him a half bit for“ piccaniny.” indian notions about the creation, and three pairs, and three boxes. col. humphreys [is] indian agent. 170 [age 23 journal (from “ xviii” 2d). to his brother edward february, 1827. much of what we learn, and to the highest purposes, of life is caught in moments, and rather by a sublime instinct than by modes which can be explained in detail. i acquire, when musing on my office and my hopes, notions which might savour of enthusiasm to an unprepared ear. if any unlucky charles light on these sentences and call them obscure, tell him with pindar, “ it sounds to the intelligent.” to his brother charles 23 february, 1827. how is it with the ambitious youth? he of the sometime melancholy temperament, he that was called ardent, eloquent, irresistible scholar; he who loved greatness, and defied fair women; he who adored virtue on the great scale, but was squeamish at viewing it on a small one; he who had enthusiasm from nature, but it was almost all evaporated in the kneading; he whose taste would be correct, were it more manly, and whose form would be good, were it more stout — thyself? i am prone to mercy, and would draw 1827] letter to charles 171 your character to the life, so that your own eye should acknowledge the fidelity of the portraiture. the memory is sharp, when home is distant and the dim congregation which my fancy nightly and daily visits always appear in costume, each in his virtues and vices. ... you are in the heyday of youth, when time is measured not by numbering days, but by the intervals of mentality, the flux and reflux of the soul. one day has a solemn complexion, the next is cheerful, the south wind makes a third poetic, and another is “sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought,” – but all are redolent of knowledge and joy. the river of life with you is yet in its mountain sources, bounding and spouting on its way, and has not settled down into the monotony of the deep and silent stream. vouchsafe, then, to give your poor brother some of these sweet waters. write, write. i have heard men say (heaven help their poor wits), they would rather have ten words viva voce from a man than volumes of letters to get at his opinion. i had rather converse with them by the interpreter. politeness ruins conversation. you get nothing but the scum and surface of opinions, when men are afraid of being unintelligible in their metaphysical distinctions, or that the subiii 172 [age 23 journal tlety and gravity of what they want to say will draw too largely on the extemporaneous attention of their company. men's spoken notions are thus nothing but outlines, and for the most part, uninviting outlines of a subject, and so general as to have no traits appropriate and peculiar to the individual. but when a man writes, he uncovers his soul, he divests himself of his manners and all physical imperfections, and it is the pure intellect that speaks. there can be no deception here. you get the measure of his soul. instead of the old verse, “speak that i may know thee,” i write, ‘speak that i may suspect thee; write that i may know thee.” take your pen therefore and give me the secret history of the sanctuary you call yourself; what new lights illuminate, what fragrant affections perfume it; what litanies are sung; what works are daily done in its industrious recesses, and to what god is it consecrated? and if you have any inclination to retort, and play the la bruyère on me, i defy you. it will give me extreme pleasure to see you miss the mark, and more if you hit it. 1827] dust and grandeur 173 to miss emerson february, 1827. pascal wrote to expose the contradictions existing in human nature, to show that it was vile and sublime, and to furnish an account of the extremes. young also stated and discussed the paradox. but a competent account has not, in my judgment, been given. every man of reflexion has felt a contiguity between what was minute and what was magnificent, which was never stated in words. there is not a thing so poor and refuse in the world but that has some aspects and connexions which are grand. the chaff on the wind, the atom swimming in the sewer, fill a place in the system of matter as essential as the sun in heaven. and how, then, can man be low? if, on one side, his feet are in the dust, on the other there is nothing between his head and the infinite heavens. yea, yea, though i may fail to make it apparent in language, i feel that close by meanness is grandeur. in a beggar's weeds, in a servile office, the imagination starts out with a noble recoil, and in that moment whispers “yeare gods.” never so lowly but we remember that we are tenants of infinite spaces and survivors of the sun m . | 174 journal [age 23 and the stars.' “power,” said pythagoras, “is never far from necessity,” a stern saying which is both analogy and exemplification to my homily. what set me forth on this odd declamation was the curious moral quality we call patriotism, which seems to flourish best, like flowers, in lowest grounds. wise men perceive that the advantage of the whole is best consulted in consulting the real advantage of the particular, and do not therefore dissipate their affection or their force. but the dusty artisan who needs some consolation for the insignificant figure his sordid habits and feelings make in comparison with the great, and in comparison with his own conscience and conceptions, is fain to remember how large and honourable is the confederacy of which he is a member and, that, however low his lot, his resources are yet reckoned an integral part of that awful front which the nation presents to the world. hence the unaffected, boisterous enthusiasm with which any spirited allusion to the idea i the above passage recalls mr. emerson's verses beginning “ let me go where'er i will ” poems (appendix), and also the often quoted lines in the voluntaries :so nigh is grandeur to our dust, so near is god to man, etc. w nc1827] office of christ 175 of country is always received by a mixed assembly. but it is not only plebeian clay that is thus touched. the sciolists also. .. you say the sermon on prayer wanted unction and authority, and allusion to a venerable name. let me suggest that the son of god, if he listens from on high to the feeble efforts of his mortal ministers, may more approve the piety which finds the original foundation of his father's law complete and competent, than that which adds awkward abutments to the work of omniscience from the second dispensation. the true account, i take to be this. men were so ignorant and besotted they could not see the perfection of morals. jesus christ was sent to remove the blindness from their minds. they are now able to see the majestic proportions and the sufficiency of the first law. and it needs no corroboration. (from pocket note-book) st. augustine, february 25. i attended mass in the catholic church. the mass is in latin and the sermon in english, and the audience, who are spaniards, understand neither. the services have been recently interrupted by the imprisonment of the (clergy176 [age 23 journal man) worthy father for debt in the castle of st. marks. the people call the place botany bay, and say that whenever presidents and bishops or presbyteries have danglers on their hands fit for no offices they send them to florida. when the woods are burned 'tis said they set the rivers in florida on fire. (from "xviii,"2d) bible ness the bible is an engine of education of the first power. it does more than all other books. it is an index everywhere of light. all over the world where that book is found and honoured there is light; where it is not found there is darkness. the sabbath doth more for education than all books and schools and institutions beside, united. it is one seventh of the week. it is one seventh of the year. it is one seventh of life. the child that hath lived in the light of no other opportunity, at seven years has had one year of education. the man at threescore years and ten has had ten years of religious education. 1827] the slave auction 177 it is a sound doctrine that faith is virtue. if god sent revelations daily, none could plead the merit of faith. (from pocket note-book) st. augustine, february 27. a fortnight since i attended a meeting of the bible society. the treasurer of this institution is marshal of the district, and by a somewhat unfortunate arrangement had appointed a special meeting of the society, and a slave-auction, at the same time and place, one being in the government house, and the other in the adjoining yard. one ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with “going, gentlemen, going!” and almost without changing our position we might aid in sending the scriptures into africa, or bid for “four children without the mother” who had been kidnapped therefrom. it was singular enough that, at the annual meeting of this society one week after, the business should have been interrupted by an unexpected quarrel of two gentlemen present, both, i believe, members of the society, who with language not very appropriate to the occasion collared each other, and were, not without difficulty, separated by the interference of some members. there is some178 [age 23 journal thing wonderfully piquant in the manners of the place, theological or civil. a mr. jerry, a methodist minister, preached here two sundays ago, who confined himself in the afternoon to some pretty intelligible strictures upon the character of a president of the bible society who swears. the gentleman alluded to was present. and it really exceeded all power of face to be grave during the divine's very plain analysis of the motives which probably actuated the individual in seeking the office which he holds. it fairly beat the “ quousque, catilina.” march 1. i found here a gentleman from north carolina who gave me some account of the monstrous absurdities of the methodists at their camp meetings in that state. he related an instance of several of these fanatics jumping about on all fours, imitating the barking of dogs and surrounding a tree in which they pretended they had "treed jesus.” (from cabot's r) st. augustine, east florida, march 11, 1827. to believe too much is dangerous, because it is the near neighbour of unbelief. pantheism leads to atheism. 1827] st. augustine 179 i am an exile from my home; heavily and all alone i walk the long seashore, and find no joy. the trees, the bushes talk to me, and the small ay that whispers in my ear. ah me! i do not love the look of foreign men ; and woe is me that i forsook my little home, my lamp, my book, to find across the foaming seas this cheerless fen. i care not that it should be said by lords and grooms that nature in my land is dead and snows are scattered on her head, whilst here the fig and citron shed their fragrant blooms. scat and dulcimer mosquitoes in the woods hum their sly secrets in unwilling ears which, like all gossip, leave a smart behind. march 25th, weighed 152 lbs. to miss emerson (from “ xviii,” 2d) st. augustine, march, 1827. i fancy myself better lately, through the blessing of god and the use of this fine air. and if 180 journal [age 23 ca it please him that i shall wholly recover, i agree to the sentiment of your letter that i shall be a 1, wiser and better man. he has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the house of pain. pleasure and peace are but indifferent teachers of what it is life to know. and though the mind touched with poetry must have a god, and the heart will reveal one, if history does not, yet the smooth man of taste and ease will be satisfied with a very indistinct and shadowy personification mixing on every side with the unintelligent forms of nature — some spirit too vague, if not too kind, to rebuke and punish his sin and pride. but the decay of his hopes; the manifested inefficacy of efforts into which he has pushed the pith and resources of all his nature; suffering and the grievous dependence on other men which suffering brings with it, — these things startle the luxurious dreamer, and alarm him with necessities never experienced before. these suggest the possibility of relations more intimate and more awful than friendship and love. they bring to light a system of feelings whose existence was not suspected before ; they place him in a connexion with god that furnishes a solution of the mystery of his being. yet is the lesson of resignation hard to learn, 181 1827] st. augustine and i believe is seldom taught the young. ... it is easier for the venerable saint, whose warfare is accomplished and whose brows are crowned, to sing his hymn whilst the faggots are lighted, than it is for a youth whose yet unmeasured powers and yet immature virtues have already suggested an unbounded confidence in himself; one for whom the soothsayer hope « has turned the iron leaves of fate's dark book to read high dooms ” — these and such as these are, my dear aunt, the thoughts of every young man whose projects of life are menaced by disease. i have made the case extreme, you see, and instead of painting myself, have given you one better and brighter. but if you complain of long words and trite thoughts, i confess i am fair game. case į (from cabot's u) [farewell to st. augustine] there liest thou, little city of the deep, and always hearest the unceasing sound by day and night, in summer and in frost, the roar of waters on thy coral shore. but, softening southward in thy gentle clime, even the rude sea relents to clemency, 182 journal [age 23 ? feels the kind ray of that benignant sun and pours warm billows up the beach of shells. farewell; and fair befall thee, gentle town! the prayer of those who thank thee for their life, the benison of those thy fragrant airs, and simple hospitality hath blest, be to thee ever as the rich perfume of a good name, and pleasant memory! extract from a letter to william charleston, april 23, 1827. my dear brother, — i arrived here yesterday, after a direful passage of nine days from st. augustine. the ordinary one is one or two days. we were becalmed, tempest-tossed, and at last well nigh starved, but the beloved brother bore it not only with equanimity, but pleasure, for my kind genius had sent me for my ship-mate achille murat, the eldest son of the old king joachim. he is now a planter at tallahassee and at this time on his way to visit his uncle [joseph bonaparte] at bordentown. he is a philosopher, a scholar, a man of the world; very skeptical but very candid, and an ardent lover of truth. i blessed my stars for my fine companion and we talked incessantly. much more of him when i shall see you. mo 1827] achille murat 183 (from cabot's r) charleston, april 6, 1827. a new event is added to the quiet history of my life. i have connected myself by friendship to a man who with as ardent a love of truth as that which animates me, with a mind surpassing mine in the variety of its research, and sharpened and strengthened to an energy for action to which i have no pretension, by advantages of birth and practical connexion with mankind beyond almost all men in the world, — is, yet, that which i had ever supposed only a creature of the imagination -a consistent atheist, — and a disbeliever in the existence, and, of course, in the immortality of the soul. my faith in these points is strong and i trust, as i live, indestructible. meantime i love and honour this intrepid doubter. his soul is noble, and his virtue, as the virtue of a sadducee must always be, is sublime. (from "xviii," 2d) to miss emerson charleston, april 10, 1827. ... i fancy myself wiser for my excursion. to be sure, one need not stir from the chimvc 184 [ace 23 journal ato1 ney corner for that. . . . but i rake the bright atoms faster together by quitting the fireside and sallying out after them, than by waiting for them in the slow and uncertain communication of books. besides, to sluggish natures and manners impolite, travelling is the best lesson. when the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it is problematical, and is dependent on the success of his manners. if he can assume the part of a gentleman, he is acknowledged as such. there is much entertainment also in the business of ascertaining the degree and character of a hundred casual acquaintances, and observing how far your preconceived notions tally with your experience of any companion as he gradually discloses himself. for me, who, like all men of a religious temper, love to consider myself as a favoured child of the divinity, who is unrolling the universe before me for my particular instruction; and, with an exact reference to my exigences and state of preparation, is bringing into my neighbourhood now one, and now another man, agent or combination of agents, until, by just degrees i am strengthened in each immortal fibre for the scenes of magnificent action which ence 1827] achille murat 185 another world shall disclose for me, it is very pleasant to retire with these views into my shell, and salute the comers as they pass in procession with a very majestic indifference — much as i would behold so many ingenious puppets which another hand is guiding. nevertheless, i shall not deny that there are some who take such a strong hold of my attention that i am fain to quit my stoic fur, and fairly go out of my circle and shake hands and converse with them. now i know, my kind aunt with all her electrical imagination, will think i am talking of women. alack-a-day! it surely is not so. wo is me! with all the chivalry that is in my soul, backed by all the muse, i pass in cold selfishness from maine to florida and tremble lest i be destined for a monk. no, i was speaking of men, and another time i will give you an account of one whom it was my good fortune to meet in east florida, a man of splendid birth and proud advantages, but a humble disciple in the school of truth. · [as the foregoing is the last place but one in the journal in which murat is mentioned, and the friends never met again, it seems best to say a last word about him here in connection 186 [age 23 journal with the letter he wrote to his northern friend in the autumn, here introduced. although the young murat is not mentioned by name in mr. emerson's works, their pleasant companionship is thus recalled in the essay “ society and solitude” in the volume of that name. “if we recall the rare hours when we encountered the best persons, we there found ourselves, and then first society seemed to exist. that was society, though in the transom of a brig, or on the florida keys.” achille murat went abroad a few years later, and his military instincts led him to take a commission in a belgian cavalry regiment, but the “ holy alliance” did not approve of a brilliant nephew of the dreaded emperor (who was said, too, to have borne a strong resemblance to his uncle) receiving a military training from a friendly power bordering on france, and for this reason the regiment is said to have been disbanded. murat then lived for a time in england, he and his wife befriending louis napoleon, then an impoverished exile, who, when emperor, showed his gratitude to his “ cousin kate” when she was a widow after the civil war. the murats returned to their plantation in west florida, where they spent the rest of their lives. 1827] murat's letter 187 achille murat, returning from the old world, with all its attractions, enjoyed keenly plantation life with his brave wife in the frontier territory. he served in the seminole war. an entertaining account of the murats appeared in munsey's magazine a few years ago, entitled “an american princess.” they were childless. prince murat died in 1847. his remains and those of his wife lie in the graveyard of tallahassee. as to his agnosticism, the widow of governor long of florida told me that her husband was murat's second in a duel. as he took his pistol he said quietly, “you know i expect nothing hereafter,” and stood up to give and receive fire, which happily was without fatal results to either combatant.] letter from achille murat to r. w. emerson point breeze, september 3, 1827. my dear sir, — i have received nearly one month ago, your very polite letter, which i i point breeze, near bordentown, new jersey, was the home of joseph bonaparte who, forced by his brother, the emperor, to be successively king of naples and king of spain, was thankful to spend his later days in quiet in america. in the letter the spelling of the original is preserved. 188 journal (ace 23 would have answered sooner but for my ill health. i have not left my bed since the middle of july, and since three weeks i have been afflicted with a paralisis in my hands and arms which prevents me using my pen. this, as you may well think has entirely put a stop to my plans, study and literary pursuits. i had here lost sight of the discussions which we intended to have together, but i intended as well as yourself to be able to continue it without interruption, before engageing in it. i must tell you, ! however, candidly, that the state of my mind has been altered since our meeting. your system has acquired as much in proberbility as mine has lost in certainty, both seem to me now nearly equally proberable. i have accordingly one only test left — that of expediency. on this subject i still lean on my side, in a refined state of society, although in barbarous time of obscurity and ignorance your theory may be more useful. a necessary prelimanary,! however, is to assertain how far we can have an absolute notion of truth. this is paramount to all subsequent indigations. as soon as i shall ? be home (about the beginning of november) and i shall be able to do anything, i shall employ myself in writing a monography of truth, prince napoleon achille murat 1827] murat's letter 189 for which i have been collecting materials, and of which, i believe i have spoken to you. as i shall not move from my house for a long time, i shall be fully at leasure to engage myself, at the same time, in any kind of polemical warfare which may lead to the mutual improvement of our minds. the time i was here before being sick, was not entirely lost. i prepared for the american quarterly review, an article on florida, but the constant misfortune which has followed me since several years did not leave me in this my first literary experiment in english. it was highly approved and spoken of by the editor of the review, who wanted only to make a few alterations in the style, which i, of course, readily granted. for that purpose he gave it to some underscribe, who, as little provided of commonsense and feeling of propriety as of knowledge of the matter, did take the unwarrantable liberty not only to add a review of the two works of bertram, which i purposedly had discarded, but went further, and without making any alteration in my style in those parts which he conserved, changed compleately sence and meaning of others, so as to make me say exactly the contrary of what i conscientiously think. as the war 190 journal [age 23 article now stands, it is evident to any other mind but of the able revisor, that it pulls in diferent directions and wants unity of objects. you will easyly see that the sentence which terminates the article on the indians, is not from my hand, and is jaring with all the rest of the article. where i had provided a regular portico for the entrance of the edifice, he has added a superstructure of historical scraps and stupid reflections which spoils the whole. if you hear anybody cite me as the author of this article, please to contradict it. i do not know i ever felt so mad about anything before. i have been in philadelphia to hear mr. furnace preach and heard him with great pleasure. your church is increasing very rapidly in geo. why should it not extend to tallahassee, and you come there to substitute, reason, learning and morality, to nonsense, ignorance, fanaticism ; even those who do not think as you do, would be glad of it for decency's sake, then we are far from that age of reason, where truth alone, resplendant, unbleamished, unmixed with errors, will be the proper food for man. i thank you very much for the interest you take in my welfare, and i assure you that feeling is perfectly reciprocal. we have met by chance, but i hope co 18271 miss emerson's letter 191 that the friendship you have inspired me, and you tell me i can claim from you, will be not the least lasting for it. mrs. murat appreciates your kind remembrances and has not forgotten to threaten me with your name whenever a harsh expression finds its way up my throat. your friend and servant, achille murat. (from "xviii," 2d) from miss emerson to mrs. ripley' yes, from my epicurean leisure, if it so please you, i scarcely peep out, but let the mutation go on which is one day to be lost in the fine elements. “ struggle for existence” — what a i mr. emerson's good uncle, rev. samuel ripley, had married miss sarah alden bradford of duxbury, a descendant of governor bradford of the old colony and of john alden. she was a woman of great beauty of character and person, combining remarkable intellectual and domestic gifts, an accomplished scholar and the strength of her husband's school for boys at waltham. with open mind, she eagerly read the new works on science and philosophy, whether in french, german or english. these naturally shook her faith in the dogmas of the day and she frankly told the change in her views in her letters to her valued friend, miss emerson. these, of course, drew out sharp criticism. she showed this letter to mr. emerson and allowed him to copy the passage. 192 [age 23 journal sc phrase for one like you about the bubble life! how much better the ease of mr. horse and mrs. cow and miss sparrow. — and these might = fill the earth with much more comfort to themselves if mr. man and woman were not in company — and would prove to other spectators that there was a designing and good creator, – one surely as good as the deity of old and late skeptics, who refer not only all the powers of our mind, but god also, to the fortuitous concourse of atoms; that such a being must necessarily have resulted from these, operating from eternity. well, such a being (which leaves us, it is said, all as before for natural and revealed religion) is better than none. were atheism the order of the universe, would it be better to take part in active life? would not death be indeed terrible then? to have loved and been loved would indeed be death to die! how much better to be a quiet dreamer ; to lose by little the breath; to contract the sails of life; to despise honour and patriotism and friendship,for indeed they would be but phantoms to embitter the grave. but then, where could be this thing — this wondrous substance which loves and hates and prophesies and reasons a priori, or was able to? but i know this is begging the 1827) miss emerson's letter 193 question, and i had lain all to sleep, and it seemed so natural for my neighbours; but without any logic in me up started such a mind as s. a. r. and overset the theory. anything, the whole of calvinism, is nothing so absurd as that her spirit, her anything that acts, should slumber, and by the work of ages again chance in the form of a lily or a lobster. “ can't believe.” commit a crime — form an intrigue, such as queens and great outlaws do; blot the fair fabric of your fame, quench the torch which has been light for others, and you will have faith enough. conscience will do an office which reason seems slow in doing. early education would then react like a penal angel. and is it thus? is human nature in its best estate so ungracious a thing that fear will influence where love is useless? oh no, the budding of the trees, the gentle breezes will dispel the demon. alas! their buds wither and the morning soon clouds. but man has an invincible appetite for sorrow and apprehension of some kind which increases with his years, and it is only the old book which can quiet and sublime them. well, you'll say, what a canting old maid this has become. she has forgotten how many bright thoughts i gave her callous brain on the subject so clcs 10n. 194 (age 23 journal of faith. oh, these after-births — the bible-believer don't like them, don't respect them, since the glory of socrates and such like have given place to a higher prophet your would-be faith is stumbled at a gibbet. a gibbet. he [i. e., the criminal] never had any education. has gone where he who hung on a cross will procure means to instruct him. besides what's his crime? some sudden theft or rash murder — naught of ambition which don't wash out; look not at him, but at some long-faced hypocrite, some cruel slave-holder, some lying office-seeker, or some carnivorous man that feeds on human character and grows fat on the entrails of human defects. how little can we recapitulate without vomiting at mortal condition, and resigning that the knot should be cut, if it cannot be untied by the revelation. adieu. you speak of those who dream about future influence and knowledge. it is natural that the active should : they can hardly imagine an existence where they are not efficient, and why should not this part of the constitution go forward? the mystics, i believe, think a higher order of virtue attainable, and i admire the mystics without knowing them. 1827) mind 195 (from caboe's r) "gup meredenen charleston, s. c., april 17, 1827. bogdana | let the glory of the world go where it will, the mind has its own glory. what it doth, endures. no man can serve many masters. and often the choice is not given you between greatness in the world and greatness of soul, which you will choose, but both advantages are not compatible. the night is fine; the stars shed down their severe influences upon me, and i feel a joy in my solitude that the merriment of vulgar society can never communicate. there is a pleasure in the thought that the particular tone of my mind at this moment may be new in the universe ; that the emotions of this hour may be peculiar and unexampled in the whole eternity of moral being. i lead a new life. i occupy new ground in the world of spirits, untenanted before. i commence a career of thought and action which is expanding before me into a distant and dazzling infinity. strange thoughts start up like angels in my way and beckon me onward. i doubt not i tread on the highway that leads to the divinity. and why shall i not be content with these thoughts and this being which give a majesty to my nature, and forego the ambition to 196 [age 23 journal shine in the frivolous assemblies of men, where the genuine objects of my ambition are not revered or known? yet my friend is at home in both these jarring empires, and whilst he taxes my powers in his philosophic speculations, can excel the coxcombs, and that, con amore, in the fluency of nonsense. nevertheless i cannot but remember that god is in the heavens, god is here, and the eye of my friend is dull and blind and cannot perceive him. but what matter if this being be acknowledged or denied, if the faith cannot impose any more effective restraint on vice and passion, than morals unsupported by this foundation ? charleston in charleston, i like well the decoration of the churches with monuments. it no doubt has a powerful tendency to attach. the negroes in charleston have a new theory of the seasons, viz., that the number of people from the north bring the cold with them. when thy soul is filled with a just image, fear not thou lest halting rhymes or unharmonious verse cripple the fair conception. leave the heart alone to find its language. in all tongues 1827] listening 197 it hath a sovereign instinct that doth teach .. an eloquence which rules can never give. je in the high hour when destiny ordains that thou bear testimony to its dooms, that hour a guiding spirit shall impart the fervid utterance art could never find. e cofana the retur? “listen” a poet represented as listening in pious silence, “to hear the mighty stream of tendency.” there is much wisdom, let me say there is much duty in his employment." (from cabot's r and u) charleston, s. c., 1827. he must have droll fancies sometimes cross his quiet thoughts, who in my vagrant verse shall look to find a holiday from study or from toil, and consolation to his mortal care. such idler will not be a man of name, i compare in poems, “ wood notes ii”:hearken! hearken! if thou wouldst know the mystic song, chanted when the sphere was young. to the open ear it sings sweet the genesis of things of tendency through endless ages, of star-dust and star-pilgrimages, etc. 198 journal (age 23 but must be, and therein resembles me, a little liable to ridicule, because he cares a particle too much for the opinion of the fickle world; and notes how merit does not swim to place in th'tides of this world, and feels the scandal oft of low salute to men of meaner mould; and yet has felt, albeit with scorn the while, a kind of justice in the seneschal, the uncivil fate, that made his fortunes vile. i am frank, my friend, your eye has found a gypsy muse that reads your lineaments to tell the faithful fortunes of your life. go to, i'll feed my humour to the full, and still expand the pleasant commentary. who loves my verse is one whose roving eye detects more beauty than his tongue will own in art and nature. nay his traitor tongue, sometimes consenting to the coxcomb's jest, derides the beauty, which delights his soul. he is a man, who, though he told it not, mourned in the hour of manhood, while he saw the rich imagination that had tinged each earthly thing with hues from paradise, forsake forever his instructed eye; bewailed its loss, and felt how dearly bought was wisdom, at the price of happiness. 1827] forest solitude 199 ah me! sometimes in [heady wantonness'] and sometimes when the dainty south-wind blew its soft luxurious airs, and called the clouds, mustering their hosts from all the sunny bays, – then, when the piping wind and sounding sea and tossing boughs combined their cadences, the sweet and solemn melody they made enticed him oft in heady wantonness to scoff at knowledge, mock the forms of life, cast off his years, and be a boy again. then has he left his books, and vulgar cares, and sallied forth across the freshened fields, with all the heart of high-born cavalier in quest of forest glades hid from the sun, and dim enchantments that therein abide. i had rather follow him than talk to him ; fast, fast he leaves the villages behind, as one who loathed them, yet he loathes them not, and snuffs, the scents which on the dallying gale the woods send out as gentle harbingers , bro't from their inmost glens to lure the step of the pleased pilgrim to their alleys green. i know the pleasures of this humour well, and, please you, reader, i'll remember them: first, the glad sense of solitude, the sure, i these words were struck out in the manuscript, because he preferred to use them in the eighth line below, but neglected to fill their places. 200 journal (age 23 the absolute deliverance from the yoke of social forms, that are as tedious oft to a fretful and romantic man as a mosquito's song at summer eve. in the wood he is alone, and for the hollow chat of men that do not love, and will not think, he has the unpretending company of birds and squirrels and the fine race of flowers. [these verses were carried on at home in u, and dated august 16.] he forms his friendships with the flowers whose habits or whose hue may please him best; goes by the red and yellow populace that with their vulgar beauty spot the plain, to find the honoured orchis, seldom seen, the low pyrola with a lilac's smell, or the small cinque-foil, the wild strawberry's friend. he speculates with love on nature's forms, admires a calyx much as winkelmann the architecture of a doric pile; not more he doted on the line of frieze or triglyph or on architrave, than doth this dreamer on the slender shaft, with arms and stipules graced, that lifts in air the lily or the loose-strife, tapestried with leaves; and close below, the faithful capsule to transmit its race, 1827] compensation 201 like from its like, to another year of flowers, once more to be the food of tuneful bird low stooping on swift wing, or busy bee, or the small nameless eaters that can find a country in a leaf. (from cabot’s r) alexandria, may 5, 1827. my days run onward like the weaver's beam. they have no honour among men, they have no grandeur in the view of the invisible world. it is as if a net of meanness were drawn around aspiring men, through which their eyes are kept on mighty objects, but the subtile fence is forever interposed. « they also serve who only stand and wait.” . aye, but they must wait in a certain temper and in a certain equipment. they must wait, as the knight on the van of the embattled line, standing in the stirrups, his spear in rest, his steed foaming, ready for the career with the speed of a whirlwind. am i the accomplished cavalier? compensations in the view of compensations nothingis given. there is always a price. purity is the price at which impurity may be sold. if i sell my cruelty 202 journal [age 23 i shall become merciful of necessity. no man ever had pride but he suffered from it; or parted with it for meekness, without feeling the advantage of the blessed change. the angels — see psalm 91.– the virtues are the angels. to his brother edward may 8. glad of dr. channing, as some amends for the dullness, i fear i can't say degeneracy, of the pulpit in the whole country. if men abhorred nonsense as much as injury, a new race of iconoclasts would outrun the fury of the knoxes in demolishing our pews and spires. i suppose whenever the average intellect of the clergy declines in the balance with the average intellect of the people, it must happen that the churches will be shut up and a new order of things begin. the hazard of such a revolution who can tell ? and yet i have hardly been to church this winter without feeling that the beam of the balance trembled already. i am consoled by the reflection that there is much in man that operates to postpone the convulsion, or to guide the ship in the event of a storm. 1827] imaginings 203 to miss emerson alexandria, d. c., may 15. i am writing here in pleasant durance till the sun will let me go home. . . . i am not sure i am a jot better or worse than when i left home ... only in this, that i preached sunday morning in washington without any pain or inconvenience. ... i have not lost my courage or the possession of my thoughts. ... it seems to me lately that we have many capacities which we lack time and occasion to improve. if i read the bride of lammermoor, a thousand imperfect suggestions arise in my mind, to which could igive heed, i should be a novelist. when i chance to light on a verse of genuine poetry, it may be in a corner of a newspaper, a forcible sympathy awakens alegion of little goblins in the recesses of the soul, and if i had leisure to attend to the fine tiny rabble, i should straightway become a poet. i mr. emerson's strange fondness, retained from the time of first reading this novel, appeared at the scott centennial occasion in 1871. he said, “ the bride of lammermoor, which ! almost goes back to æschylus for a counterpart as a painting of fate, leaving on every reader the impression of the highest and purest tragedy." see miscellanies, centenary ed., ; p. 465; also essays, first series, p. 35. 204 journal (age 23 in my day dreams, i so often hunger and thirst to be a painter, beside all the spasmodic attachments i indulge to each of the sciences and each province of letters. they all in turn play the coquette with my imagination, and it may be i shall die at the last a forlorn bachelor jilted of them all. but all which makes these reveries noticeable is the indirect testimony they seem to bear to the most desirable attributes of human nature. if it have so many conatus, they are not in vain, but point to a duration ample enough for the entire satisfaction of them all. they suggest a just idea of the world to come, which has always been made repulsive to men's eyes from the inadequate representations of systems of religion which looked at it only in one aspect, and that (i am forced to use a word in a limited sense it ought not to bear) a religious one. but i am satisfied the future world ought not so much to be regarded as the place of final moral reward, but as the after state of man, since it is probable that i the heads drawn in pen and ink on the margins and blank spaces of the earlier journals show much native skill and observation of feature and expression. he had no instruction, except the example of his friend and schoolmate, william h. furness. 1827] john quincy adams 205 a moment of that infinity holds no more relation of reward to the past than doth a moment of the present life, for every moment of this life involves a relation of reward. and in this regard it is assuredly more consistent with our most elevated and therefore truest notions of god, that the education of man should there be carried on by furnishing space and excitement to the development of every faculty that can add accomplishment to the noble being. and though our poor tools of art, the colours, the pallet, the chisel, rhyme, and the pipes and strings of sound, must yield to finer and more efficient means, yet it would be to neglect those tokens of intended intellectual progress disclosed in our nature, to doubt that scope would be afforded to the compassing of the great ideal results of which these tools are now the poor, inadequate instruments. the president alexandria, may 19, 1827. mr. adams went out a swimming the other day into the potomac, and went near to a boat which was coming down the river. some rude blackguards were in it, who, not knowing the character of the swimmer, amused themselves with laughing at his bald head as it poppled up 206 journal [age 24 and down in the water, and, as they drew nearer, threatened to crack open his round pate if he came nigh them. the president of the united states was, i believe, compelled to waive the point of honour and seek a more retired bathingplace. new york, june 2. i am sometimes fond, when i am uncomfortable, because to retreat on our own affections is the best way to put a rampart between us and fortune. (from pocket note-book) lions seen in philadelphia 1. deaf and dumb asylum. 2. academy of arts. 3. philosophical society. 4. sully's painting rooms. 5. west's picture. 6. waterworks of schuylkill. 7. mrs. royall. 8. hall of the declaration of independence. 9. market. lions of new york 1. broadway and battery. 2. city hall. 3. van buren and emmett. 18271 journey northward 207 [mr. emerson worked his way slowly homeward, cautiously heeding any remonstrances from his chest at too rapid changing of latitude. he had opportunities to preach, and did so, in st. augustine, charleston, washington, philadelphia, and new york. he reached the ancestral home in the third week in june, and joined his mother at the manse, his grandfather's house, where they were for the time the guests of dr. ripley. invitations to supply the pulpit of his father's church in boston came to him. the improvement due to the southern journey shows in the return of courage and energy which appears in his writings. yet he still had uncomfortable warnings that he was, as he said, “all clay, no iron.” in a letter written to his brother william in the end of june, he wonders whether, after all, he must give up the ministry, for, he said, “my lungs in their spiteful lobes sing sexton and sorrow whenever i only ask them to shout a sermon for me.” he took a better room in divinity hall for the rest of the year. he was asked to preach in northampton for several weeks in the early autumn.] 208 [age 24 journal [from cabot's u] at the old manse concord, june, 1827. awed i behold once more ! my old familiar haunts; here the blue river, the same blue wonder that my infant eye admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came, whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed the fragrant aag-roots in my father's fields, and where thereafter in the world he went. look, here he is unaltered, save that now he hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales with his redundant waves. here is the rock, where yet, a simple child, i caught with bended pin my earliest fish, much triumphing, — and those the fields over whose flowers i chased the butterfly, a blooming hunter of a fairy fine. and hark! where overhead the ancient crows hold their sour conversation in the sky. these are the same, but i am not the same, but wiser than 1 was, and wise enough not to regret the changes, though they cost me many a sigh. oh; call not nature dumb; these trees and stones are audible to me, these idle aowers, that tremble in the wind, i understand their faery syllables, 1827) the storm 209 and all their sad significance. this wind, that rustles down the well-known forest road, it hath a sound more eloquent than speech. the stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind, all of them utter sounds of (ad)monishment and grave parental love. they are not of our race, they seem to say, and yet have knowledge of our moral race, and somewhat of majestic sympathy, something of pity for the puny clay, that holds and boasts the immeasurable mind. i feel as i were welcome to these trees after long months of weary wandering, acknowledged by their hospitable boughs. they know me as their son, for side by side, they were coeval with my ancestors, adorned with them my country's primitive times, and soon may give my dust their funeral shade. (from cabot's r) the storm fast, fast across the savage sea my little bark is blown; down in the ocean mournfully the stars sank one by one. jesu maria ! pray for me, my hope is well nigh gone. 210 journal [age 24 and now the heavens, which gleamed before, were sealed with windy clouds, and i beheld the stars no more, no more in shining crowds, but loud above, the tempest tore the canvas and the shrouds. [the following lines, written at this time, were appended as a last verse to the little poem “ fame,” written in 1824, given earlier in these extracts, and printed in the poems (centenary ed., appendix, p. 384).] go then, sad youth! and shine; go sacrifice to fame. put love, joy, health upon the shrine and life to fan the flame. thyself, poor dupe ! for praises barter and die to fame an honoured martyr.' (from “ xviii,” 2d) to miss emerson june, 1827. although i strive to keep my soul in a polite equilibrium, etc., i belong to the good sect of in copying them later still, he changed the last two lines to “being for seeming bravely barter, and die to fame a happy martyr." 1827] letter to his aunt 211 the seekers, and conceive that the dissolution of the body will have a wonderful effect on the opinion of all creed-mongers. how the flimsy sophistries that have covered nations, unclean cobwebs that have reached their long dangling threads over whole ages, issuing from the dark bowels of athanasius and calvin, will shrink to nothing at that sunburst of truth; and nobody will be more glad than athanasius and calvin. a glorious moment; and yet a young man does not wish it arrived. i do not think it will be dreadful to me, and yet wish to interpose thirty or forty years of strong life between me and it. in my frigidest moments, when i put behind me the subtler evidences, and set christianity in the light of a piece of human history, much as confucius or solomon might regard it, i believe myself immortal. the beam of the balance trembles, to be sure, but settles always on the right side. for otherwise all things look so silly. the sun is silly, and the connexion of beings and worlds such mad nonsense. i say this, i say that in pure reason i believe my immortality, because i have read and heard often that the doctrine hangs wholly on christianity. this, to be sure, brings safety, but i think that i get bare life without. i have 212 journal (age 24 no pleasure in the curiosity that hence arises to be falsified at that undeceiving hour. i covet no surprises then. i am content, if i can, to know what shall befall me. there's one consideration, however, one check without which i am persuaded the soul would leap in its dark womb, the body, at the approach of the future. i mean the fear of death itself, the instinctive melancholy which long trained philosophy does not strip off. if it be really true, and we plodders are to be so grand and infinite — mere beams of glory — spirits, one would think the soul would be so enamoured of the strong suggestion that it would run before to meet its fate. but it is sedate instead, or, as you would say, wallows in the mire of life. i hope you won't scold a letter which adds nothing, even by guess, to the mass of truth, but to me 't is pleasant in idleness to hover on the verge of worlds we cannot enter, and explore the bearings of the piled mists i cannot penetrate. r. w. e. (from cabot's r) concord, june 29, 1827. the man who bates no jot of courage when y oppressed by fate, who, missing of his design, lays hold with ready hand on the unexpected 1827) magnet hope 213 event, and turns it to his own account, and in the cruelest suffering has that generosity of perception that he is sensible of a secret joy in the addition this event makes to his knowledge, that man is truly independent, -“he takes his revenge on fortune ” — is independent of time and chance; fortune may rule his circumstances, but he overrules fortune. the stars cannot thwart with evil influences the progress of such a soul to grandeur. — see taylor's holy living, p. 128, philadelphia edition. i have seen a skilful experimenter lay a magnet among filings of steel, and the force of that subtle fluid, entering into each fragment, arranged them all in mathematical lines, and each metallic atom became in its turn a magnet communicating all the force it received of the loadstone. [a good hope] august 16. there is a pleasure that has no alloy, in a hope so confident and steadfast, that it pushes forward, through good report and evil, to the accomplishment of its end, that it acts as what is spiritual should act, with a scorn of material 214 journal [age 24 obstacles, with a divine contempt for all that men think will hinder and bring it to nought; and lo! instead [of] a heavy defeat, it springs elastic, and, as 't were, refreshed from apparent discomfiture, neither contracting its sail nor bating one tittle of its joyful pride. when bystanders say, look, there is a lion in the way, it answers, but i am a man and mightier than lions. when they say, men counterwork, it replies, aye, but i go in the strength of god. it is what is unseen in all actions that gives them their character. it is what is unseen that gives splendour in the view of wise men. to miss emerson august 24, 1827. when i attended church, and the man in the pulpit was all clay and not of tuneable metal, i thought that if men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting. every man is a new creation: can do something best, has some intellectual modes or forms, or a character the general result of all 1827] evidences-solitude 215 such, as no other agent in the universe has; if he would exhibit that, it must needs be engaging, a curious study to every inquisitive mind. but whatever properties a man of limited intellect feels to be peculiar he studiously hides; he is ashamed or afraid of himself, and all his communications to men are unskilful plagiarisms from the common stock of thought and knowledge, and he is of course flat and tiresome. 'tis an old and vulgar maxim, take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves; but like many old and vulgar things 't is better than gold of ophir, wisely used. the emperor napoleon is as much a proof of heaven and eternity as the life of st. paul. he proves how impossible it is to satisfy the human soul. but he neglected, and the world neglects, to draw the right inference from their failures. for å sermon on solitude there is a story of a man who on his deathbed called to him his profligate son and left him large possessions, only exacting of him the promise to spend an hour every day alone. the son kept his word and became a wise and good man. 216 journal [age 24 of mr. adams it was memorably said by president kirkland, “for fifty years he rose before the sun.” was mem [ “whenever agesilaus made an excursion, he lodged in the temples most renowned for sanctity; and whereas upon many occasions we do not choose that men should see what we are about, he was desirous to have the gods themselves inspectors and witnesses of his conduct.” plutarch. genius and domesticity aunt mary used her thimble twice as a seal to once for her needle, and i have heard my mother remark that her own was too much worn ever to make the indented impression on wax that aunt mary's did. • the alpine flower that grew in fearless beauty amid storm and cold under the awful shadow of the avalanche will wither and die in the sunny gardens of the plains. 1827] the universal mind 217 the universal mind northampton, october, 1827. ... there prevailed anciently the opinion that the human mind was a portion of the divinity, separated for a time from the infinite mind, and when life was closed, reabsorbed into the soul of the world; or, as it was represented by a lively image, death was but the breaking of a vial of water in the ocean. but this portion of the divine mind in childhood and youth they thought was yet pure as it came from god and yet untainted by the impurities of this world. there was much of truth in the beautiful theory. w sonnet written in sickness i bear in youth the sad infirmities that use to undo the limb and eye of age. it has pleased heaven to break the dream of bliss that lit my onward path with bright presage, and my unserviceable limbs forego the sweet delights i found in fields and farms, on windy hills, whose tops with morning glow, and lakes, lone mirrors of aurora's charms. yet i think on them in the sleepless night still breaks that morn, though dim, in memory's eye, 218 (age 24 journal and the clear soul doth the foul train defy of pale disease that would her peace affright. please god, i'll wrap me in my innocence and bid each awful muse drive the damned harpies hence. cambridge, no. 14 divinity hall, december 7, 1827.' [in december he went on a visit (probably an invitation to preach) to concord, new hampshire; hence the notification, in the following entry, to the possible future reader of his journal, for there he met ellen louisa tucker, and fell in love. she was the daughter of mr. beza tucker, a boston merchant who had lately died, and her mother had married mr. w. a. kent of concord, n. h.] (i ought to apprize the reader that i am a bachelor and to the best of my belief have never been in love.) i in this journal, the eighth line was written, and lakes that mirrored all aurora's charms ; for which it seemed better to substitute the form given by mr. emerson in a later copy (in cabot's u). in the last line of that copy, however, he substituted “ dark” for “ damned,” probably because he deemed the latter unbecoming in one of his profession, yet, as stronger, it is here retained. e v pre 1827] places and days 219 robinson crusoe when he was in any perplexity was wont to retire to a part of his cave which he called his thinking corner. devout men have found a stated spot so favourable to a habit of religious feeling that they have worn the solid rock of the oratory with their knees. i have found my ideas very refractory to the usual bye-laws of association. in the graveyard my muscles were twitched by some ludicrous recollections, and i am apt to be solemn at a ball. but, whilst places are alike to me, i make great distinction between states of mind. my days are made up of the irregular succession of a very few different tones of feeling. these are my feasts and fasts. each has his harbinger, some subtle sign by which i know when to prepare for its coming. among these some are favourites, and some are to me as the eumenides. but one of them is the sweet asylum where my greatest happiness is laid in, which i keep in sight whenever disasters befal me, and in which it is like the life of angels to live. song the cup of life is not so shallow that we have drained the best, that all the wine at once we swallow, and lees make all the rest. 220 (age 24 sv. test journal . maids of as soft a bloom shall mari, as hymen yet hath blessed and fairer forms are in the quarry than phidias released." v find it in our own souls to miss emerson november 20, 1827. it is difficult to speak with confidence of religious feeling. i the mind recurs at once to history for authority. it finds the great multitude of the best men who have lived and left a name to be what the enthusiast calls “ cold and prudent christians" — bacons, lockes, butlers, johnsons, buckminsters. but the enthusiast admits or insists on the fact that the world is against him, and appeals confidently to the received language of religion in every age, which has always expected the suffrage only of a minority. at the same time he proudly cites a concurrent line of elect souls, coming down from the beginning, who saw the light that was not vouchsafed to the world, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. the apostles, the early martyrs, the ebionites, the tenants of thebais, the bene1 these verses appear to have been written earlier in the year, it is impossible to tell just when, but this seems an appropriate place for their introduction. 1827] religious feeling 221 dictines, the waldenses, the puritans, the moravians, down to pascal, wesley, and cowper, beside what has been done and suffered from kindred motives by unnumbered devotees in “the mysterious east,” out of the pale of christianity, and many indications of the same spirit before its advent, as the gymnosophists of india, and essenes of the jews: all these bear witness to a principle in human nature ineradicable in the shifting influences and forms of society, firm in the flux of ages, that suggests and sanctions the crucifixion of the flesh before the mighty image of god within the soul. moreover, in our wariest, most philosophic hours the heart compels us to respect even what we deem the extravagant issues of devotion. the proper emotion is wonder: the proper duty perhaps a diligent study of the phenomenon and of ourselves; but i think no good man will laugh i at wesley, and no wise man be secure of his own superiority. 'tis always grateful to find men, the solidity of whose understanding is beyond dispute, giving themselves heartily to devotion. the piety of newton is inestimable: and there is something awful in the gravity and apprehensive contrition of johnson's closet. it gives a start to the secure spirit, like his who ou 222 (aģe 24 222 journal “... heard the bell of the convent toll for a departing sinner's soul.” nevertheless we are not to be bound by suggestions of sentiment, which our reason not only does not sanction, but also condemns. ’t were to throw our pilot into the sea in compliment to the winds. and when the mystics tell me, as the mystics will not hesitate to do, that there is sinin every good work until i have the assurance clear as the sun in heaven of a new connexion of god with my soul, of a new birth, or what not, i shall give them no regard; i shall be content, while the laws of my nature remain the same, with “the beggarly elements of justice and charity"_self-condemned, i own, at the lax discharge of my known duties, but not curious to add to my genuine grief horrors for imaginary and remediless delinquencies. does this reasoning seem to you unsafe? is it not to be applied to all that we judge false doctrine, coming under whatever authority of names and age? were it not a crime of which account would be demanded, and involving possibly hereafter many more than myself, if i should surrender to the casual and morbid exercise of the sentiment of a midnight hour the steady light of all my days, my most m irr 1827] thought in religion 223 vigorous and approved thoughts, barter the sun for the waning moon? 'tis all idle talking. in the extreme it is plain enough. but the difficulty i contemplated consists in finding the proper mean; in discerning how much (for certainly something) is laudable, and how much extravagant in their theory of duty; in learning how much we lack of the love of god, and in adjusting life betwixt reason and feeling; e. g., it may be plausibly denied that 't is worth while to get rich, or to make acquisitions in science. but shall a wise man refrain? december 17, 1827. ... but now and then the lawless imagination flies out and asserts her habit. i revisit the verge of my intellectual domain. how the restless soul runs round the outmost orbit and builds her bold conclusion as a tower of observation from whence her eyes wander incessantly in the unfathomable abyss. i dimly scrutinize the vast constitution of being into which this present shall be absorbed, in which we shall look back, peradventure, to christianity as to a rosary on which, in the morn of existence, we learned to count our prayers, and think it idle to pause in the train of mighty meditation, to remember in our an224 journal (age 24 cient pupilage the rudiments of those stupendous moral energies we shall wield at that hour. but no; no thought, no perception of truth, how limited soever, can become insignificant. god communicates with the thoughts of men; and to whatever magnificence of nature and acquisition we may attain, the whole past will always be the instrument of future works. over souto ... connexion between god and the soul,what is religion but this connexion? is not this the thought that always invests human nature, though in rags and filth, with sublimity, — that wheresoever a man goeth, there goes an animal containing in his soul an image of the being by whom the universe subsists? the mind is his image and mirror. is it not that, with whatever depravations blotted and disguised, god makes the main idea therein to which all others arrange themselves as threads of steel to a magnet, or as all the magnets of the world to the polar axis ? is not the mind in health just in proportion as that idea is clear? if that is obscured, is there not death in the mind? (i use mind in its largest sense, for i see that the intellect may be vigorous, as in laplace, and refuse to honor its maker.) but i am confounded by the anomaly. these 1827] god within us 225 views seem to me to hold. i cannot understand the feelings of the atheist. i cannot believe atheism and genius to consist. and yet what motive for the pretence? does n't the heart say hallelujah amid its prayers for bacon, newton and locke, for socrates and cicero? if there were no lobsidedness, no disease in the soul, the idea of deity would be its exact and constant measure of its progression. when that was great, the mind was great. its own glory would keep even pace with the glory it gave. is not this unutterably beautiful and grand, this life within life, this literal emanuel, god within us? when this shall have been taught worthily to men, the wailing spirits of the prophets may bend from their spheres, for the principle of evil shall come to his end, and god shall be all in all. authors or books mentioned or referred to in journals of 1827 bible; pindar; socrates; cicero; seneca ; epictetus; plutarch, lives; athanasius; philippe de comines; mémoires; calvin. bacon; shakspeare; 226 (age 24 journal jeremy taylor, holy living and dying ; james harrington, apud hume; pascal; locke; newton; la bruyère ; cowper; young; berkeley ; butler ; madame de staël ; scott, quentin durward, bride of lammermoor, rokeby ; buckminster, channing, sermons ; sampson reed, growth of the mind. journal xix (from “sermons and journals," 1828–29, and cabot's q and r) some letters, written by emerson to his brothers and aunt during the winter and spring of this year, which are quoted by mr. cabot in his memoirs, show the good sense with which at this critical period he yielded to necessity instead of fighting fate, like his brother edward. thus the elder brother saved and the valiant younger brother lost his life. in one of these letters, waldo says: “i am living cautiously, yea, treading on eggs, to strengthen my constitution. it is a long battle this of mine between life and death. ... so i never write when i can walk, and especially when i can laugh.” this accounts for the scanty journal-writing in this year, and he refused many flattering invitations to preach. thus his proper health gradually reasserted itself.] (from cabot's r) january, 1828. montaigne says he is sorry brutus's treatise on virtue is lost, because he would hear one, 228 journal [ace 24 who so well understood the practice, discuss the theory of virtue. 'tis well said. it is always dangerous when an appeal is made from the sermon to the preacher, when the bold reason of the hearer quotes his life against his doctrine. demades told the athenians that he had observed that they never treated of peace except in black clothes; so, says plutarch, men never reduce their diet except amidst cataplasms, clysters and medicines ; so also men do not turn for enjoyment to another world till their hopes in this have failed them. “age gives good advice when it is no longer able to give a bad example.” we think ill of a man who has an ill gait, or a defective utterance, or bad countenance, and shun his acquaintance, but a man who wastes * his time does not excite aversion. it has been observed that particular sects have their own physiognomy. but we keep the same face and air from year to year; — it shows that we have wasted our time. it is said public opinion will not bear it. really? public opinion, i am sorry to say, will 1828] public opinion 229 bear a great deal of nonsense. there is scarce any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science, or manners, which it will not bear. it will bear the amazing conference of new leba-, non. it will bear andrew jackson for president. it will bear the convicted ignorance of captain symmes. it will bear the obscenities of the boston theatre. lord bacon never spoke truer word than when he said, there's more of the fool in the world than the wise. rance ave i have once or twice been apprehensive that i was reading in vain, that the cultivation of my mind did not turn to any good account in my intercourse with men. i am now satisfied of the contrary. i have every inch of my merits. more is conceded to me than i have a just title to. i am oftener compelled to deplore my ignorance than to be pleased with my knowledge. i have no knowledge that i do not want. january, 1828. in concord, n. h., i visited the prison and went into the cells. at this season they shut up the convicts in these little granite chambers at about 4 o'clock p. m. and let them out about 7 o'clock a. m. — 15 dreadful hours. 230 [age 24 journal extracts from wordsworth' (from cabot's q) “ but in calm peace the appointed victim slept as he had fallen, in magnanimity of spirit too capacious to require that destiny her course should change.” dion. “ tens of thousands rent from off the tree of hopeful life, by battle's whirlwind blown into the deserts of eternity.” iii, 218. “ not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from god who is our home.” intimations of immortality. “... from cambrian wood and moss druids descend, auxiliars of the cross, bards nursed on blue plinlimmon's still abode.” ecclesiastical sonnet, x. “ there is a radiant but a short lived aame that burns for poetry in the dawning east." 1 because of the confused manner in which the journals were kept during this unsettled period, it is hard to tell whether these extracts and the essay on poetry which follows were written in 1825 or the end of 1826. 1828] : selections 231 “ know — that he who feels contempt for any living thing hath faculties which he hath never used; that thought with him is in its infancy.” lines left upon a seat in a yew tree. « intent to trace the ideal path of right more fair than heaven's broad causeway paved with stars which dion learned to measure with delight.” dion. “ a soul by force of sorrows high uplifted to the purest sky of undisturbed humanity.” “ how touching when, at midnight, sweep snow-muffled winds and all is dark.” sonnet 1, on the river duddon. “ from her unworthy seat, the cloudy stall of time, breaks forth triumphant memory.” “ but shapes that come not at an earthly call will not depart when mortal voices bid.” 232 (age 24 journal (from cabot's q) 1828? notes on poetry.' a fault that strikes the readers of mr. wordsworth is the direct pragmatical analysis of objects, in their nature poetic, but which all other poets touch incidentally. he mauls the moon and the waters and the bulrushes, as his main business. milton and shakspeare touch them gently, as illustration or ornament. beds of flowers send up a most grateful scent to the passenger who hastens by them, but let him pitch his tent among them and he will find himself grown insensible to their fragrance. and it must have occurred frequently to our reader that brilliant moonlight will not bear acquaintance. nothing is more glorious than the full moon to those who ride or walk under its beams. but whoso goes out of doors expressly to see it returns disappointed. mr. wordsworth is a poet with the same error that wasted the genius i it may be of interest to compare with these early judgments what mr. emerson said of wordsworth in 1840 and in 1843; see in natural history of intellect, « papers from the dial,” « modern literature,” and “ europe and european books” ; also in english traits, chapters i and xvii. 1828) poetry – wordsworth 233 of the alchemists and astrologers of the middle age. these attempted to extort by direct means the principle of life, the secret substance of matter from material things; and those to extract intelligence from remoter nature, instead of observing that science is ever approximating to truth by dint of application to present wants, and not by search after general and recondite truth. mr. wordsworth is trying to distil the essence of poetry from poetic things, instead of being satisfied to adorn common scenes with such lights from these sources of poetry as nature will always furnish to her true lovers. we feel the same sort of regret that is occasioned when aristotle forsakes the laws of the intellect and the principles of ethics for researches into the nature of mind. “ the man who shows his heart is hooted for his nudities, and scorned.” young. there's a great difference between good poetry and everlasting poetry. shakspeare alludes to himself nowhere in his drama. the sonnets. homer keeps out of sight except in two places. a grand trait. it is like providence. vide herder. mem. pope's account 234 journal [ace 24 of his own resemblance to providence in my blotting book.— a different age. in antiquity, nature towered above all man had done: it sunk the personal importance of man. the bard taught as the minister preaches, and felt an impertinence in introducing self. now man has grown bigger, a commercial, political, canalling, writing animal. philosophy inverts itself, and poetry grows egotistical. | shakspeare immortalizes his characters. they live to every age and, as we say of christianity, have a prospective adaptation. ben jonson's are all dead. read alchymist and the rest. they are all in brocade. we feel that they are a past generation, our great grandfathers and mothers. and so their motives and manners are in brocade, not vital to us; as the euphuism of one. but universal man appreciates shakspeare, — boys, rabble, every man of strong sense though uncultivated as — . exceptions rare. gibbon, — but he had no acumen for poetry ; that ear was deaf; witness his poetical opinions in notes. so dr. priestley, i guess, had no ear; he calls mrs. barbauld one of the best poets england can boast of (see his life, p. 69). milton does not get this general suffrage. i find to-day one of shakspeare's quibbles. 1828) poetry – montgomery 235 miranda tells ferdinand who carries wood to the pile, “when this burns, ’t will weep for having wearied you." february, 1828. a very unaccountable poem, that pelican island. a mixture of greatness with defects that don't appear to be slovenliness, like the slovenly greatness of dryden, so much as want of delicate poetic perception; but all along, at intervals, glitter lines that might decorate paradise lost. and there's a general grandeur of conception. but in the minor poems he is decidedly an ordinary genius again. it is the singular merit of the pelican island that 'tis original both in the design, which perhaps makes all its greatness, and in the execution. it is a poem worth ten excursions, being generally a complete contrast to wordsworth's verses. these abounding in fact, and wordsworth wanting. these seizing coarse and tangible features for description or allusion, and wordsworth the metaphysical and evanescent. this teaching body, and wordsworth soul. this using a very large encyclopediacal diction, and wordsworth affecting that which may be proper to the passions in common life. it seems 236 journal (age 24 to me that who could write this could write ten times as well. milton would write it off in unpremeditated manuscript and lay it up as a block to be hewn and carved and polished. but milton would as soon have hanged himself as published it as it stands. had it been found and printed by montgomery's executors, instead of montgomery, it would not surprise. the puzzle is that there's quite a large portion of the poem is mere extemporaneous blank verse, only fit for the fount of a newspaper. (from cabot's r) divinity hall, february 14, 1828. burnap was very witty to-night.' he said there was one man who had the queerest reputation dr. watts — such a mixture of heathenism and scholastic learning and calvinism and love and despair and mully-grubs — he was the funniest old cock in the theological walk; that that old betty should be one of the three legs that support the trinity, and that the church should go chanting his hymns for centuries, mistaking the effusions of belly-ache for rev. george washington burnap, at that time a divinity student. he received the degrees of a.b.,1824; a.m.,1827; s.t.d., 1849; from harvard university. 18281 dr. watts -deity 237 the inspirations of david — was the greatest phenomenon. then, that he should write a treatise on logic, and then one on the improvement of the mind! then, that his sun should set clear after being foggy all day! and dr. doddridge! who owed all his fame to his getting up at five o'clock every morning and writing for two hours what everybody knew and said before. 2w religion aims to make a man at peace with himself. a man who is angry is not at peace with himself, or who is proud, or who steals. and, as we cannot determine the place of the ship on the heaving sea except by reference to the immoveable sun, so we find it impossible to determine the state of the soul without something outside, some fixed idea, as that of god. i would ask, what is god? with that awe which becomes a man in this inquiry. it is no idle curiosity. it is what we were made for. the answer we offer to the question is always an unerring index of the purity of our religious views. a savage will make one reply, a sage another, an angel another; and, as their views of god are, their views of man and of duty will be. ... ws. 238 (age 24 journal anecdote of mr. otis and judge spencer divinity hall, march 10, 1828. ... if you are in habits of intimacy with men, you have sometimes known two of your friends come to you at different times, and each, giving the character of the other, lament that he had not judgment. the fact probably was that both were right, for both wanted it. judge spencer of new york (who was left out in the new modelling of the courts in that state) told judge lyman that mr. otis came to see him on his way from washington, and “i said to him, well, my old friend, we are both disappointed i have fallen and you have failed to rise'and i was very much mortified to have said this, for i found it touched mr. otis to the quick.” shortly after mr. otis came to northampton and dined with judge lyman and spoke of this visit to spencer and the conversation, and remarked, “that it really made him ashamed to see how much judge spencer was offended by so trifling a thing as this political disappointment.” and how was the truth? i inquired of judge lyman; “o,” said he,“ both felt it very much.” 1828] true religion 239 . ffice of religio [office of religion] ... men entertain very gross prejudices touching the very nature of religion. i speak ... of good plausible people that go to church for decency's sake, but do not obey the commandments, nor observe the ordinances. they think it is a train of solemn pageants that we wish them to entertain in the mind, to lengthen the visage, to make long prayers, to read long sermons,and not to fulfil their duties to the universe. they are living. all the true aim of religion is to set them right, enlighten them. they are on a wrong scent; they are undoing themselves; they are living like animals. we would have them live like men. they are acting for thirty or forty years. we would have them act as century-plants. they are scheming and talking, as if they belonged, like a toad or a ground-worm, to the acre on which they were born: they never leave the shop, they are village statesmen, cob-house architects; we have found out that, though in the disguise of these rags, they are come of an imperial family ; that they are heirs of heaven and earth; tidings have come full of astonishment and transport that their life, that seemed running fast to the last sands, is to be prolonged by a decree of omnipotence; 240 journal (age 24 10w that it is not to be wasted any more in low places, but they are to be removed to the company of majestic minds and an infinite spectacle; that they are now to owe duties to the sovereign of the universe and to all the vast circle of intelligent beings. observe:— a prejudice exists that we would call them to a life of contemplation, and the nature of man demands a life of action. they would have reason. but it is not so. we call them to a life of action. we understand their ignorance. we find unutterably dear and beautiful what they esteemed, and what we once esteemed, sad and tragic. joy is grave. [religio non solum] ad delectationem, sed ad animi magnitudinem, et ad mores conferat. [bacon] de augmentatione scientiae, lib. 11; cap. 13. (from “ sermons and journals.”) [do not over-rate action] we are very apt to over-rate the importance of our actions. men of a very religious turn of mind are apt to think (at least their language gives this impression) that the designs of god in the world are very much affected [by], if not 1828] god the pilot 241 dependent upon what shall be done or determined by themselves, or their society, or their country. we lose ourselves in the details of the-> prejudice, till we are blind to the absurdity that we are making the everlasting progress of the universe hang upon the bye-laws of a missionary society or a sunday school. the true way to consider things is this: truth says, give yourself no manner of anxiety about events, about the consequences of actions. they are really of no importance to us. they have another director, controller, guide. the whole object of the universe to us is the formation of character. if you think you came into being for the purpose of taking an important part in the administration of events, to guard a province of the moral creation from ruin, and that its salvation hangs on the success of your single arm, you have wholly mistaken your business. creep into your grave, the universe hath no need of you. how foolish! for what hast thou which thou didst not receive? and cannot he who gave you this power commit it to another, or use it himself? mage it is proposed as a question, whether the busiredness of the preacher is not simply to hunt out core and to exhibit the analogies between moral and pre yo i 242 journal [age 25 material nature in such manner as to have a bearing upon practice. [inspiration] concord, may, 1828. ... i find a kindling excitement in the thought that the feeling which prompts a child to an act of generosity is the same which guides an archangel to his awful duties; that in the humblest transaction in which we can engage we can introduce these stupendous laws which make the sovereignty of the creation, the character of god. it seems to me, in obeying them, in squaring my conduct by them, i part with the weakness of humanity. i exchange the rags of my nature for a portion of the majesty of my maker. i am backed by the universe of beings. i lean on omnipotence. friends the character of our friends is a sacred property which is very important to us. ... in moments when our own faith wavers, when we are disturbed with melancholy doubts, the unfailing refuge of the mind is in that little honoured number of good men and women among our friends, whose probity is our anchor, that, like a squad1828] silence 243 ron of angels, gather on the mount before us and send out from their seraph faces courage and light into our hearts. there is something respectable in being master of the tongue. . . . consider the force of character; the impressiveness of the silence of a good man. i have known a pause in speech do more than a harangue. consider also the beneficent consequences of collecting and reporting the good of all men. [writing down] divinity hall, july 1o, 1828. i am always made uneasy when the conversation turns in my presence upon popular ignorance and the duty of adapting our public harangues and writings to the mind of the people. 'tis all pedantry and ignorance. the people know as much and reason as well as we do. none so quick as they to discern brilliant genius or solid parts. and i observe that all those who use this cant most, are such as do not rise above mediocrity of understanding. 244 (age 25 journal [saunterings] i am not so enamoured of liberty as to love to be idle. but the only evil i find in idleness is unhappiness. i love to be my own master, when my spirits are prompt, when my brain is yegete and apt for thought. if i were richer, i should lead a better life than i do; that is, better divided and more able. i should ride on horseback a good deal; i should bowl, and create an appetite for my studies by intermixing some heat and · labour in affairs. the chief advantage i should propose myself in wealth would be the independence of manner and conversation it would bestow and which i eagerly covet and seldom quite attain, and in some companies never. it is a peculiarity (i find by observation upon others) of humour in me, my strong propensity for strolling. i deliberately shut up my books in a cloudy july noon, put on my old clothes and old hat and slink away to the whortleberry bushes and slip with the greatest satisfaction into a little cowpath where i am sure i can defy observation. this point gained, i solace myself for hours with picking blueberries and other trash of the woods, far from fame, behind the birch-trees. i seldom enjoy hours w 1828) edward b. emerson 245 as i do these. i remember them in winter; i expect them in spring. i do not know a 7. creature that i think has the same humour, or would think it respectable. yet the friend, the anteros, whom i seek through the world, ***** now in cities, now in wilderness, now at sea, ". will know the delight of sauntering with the melancholy jaques. when i consider the constitutional calamity of my family, which, in its falling upon edward, has buried at once so many towering hopes — with whatever reason, i have little apprehension of my own liability to the same evil. i have so much mixture of silliness in my intellectual frame that i think providence has tempered me against this. my brother lived and acted and spoke with preternatural energy. my own manner is sluggish; my speech sometimes flippant, sometimes embarrassed and ragged; my actions (if i may say so) are of a passive kind. edward had always great power of face. i have none. i laugh; i blush; i look ill-tempered; against my will and against my interest. but all this imperfection, as it appears to me, is a caput mortuum, is a ballast – as things go, is a defence. my practice conforms more to the epicurean, than to the stoic rule, 246 (age 25 journal “i will be flesh and blood; for there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods and made a pish at chance and sufferance." maanwo is me, my brother, for you! please god to rescue and restore him ! education i like to have a man's knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves. i like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy. sir henry wotton says of the institutions of education, that they are more important than the laws, because, if young trees were at first well fastened at the root, they would little want any props and fence afterwards. he says also, by an analogy perhaps not so natural, that if such an unpliant and stubborn mineral as iron is will acquire by continuance a secret appetite, an habitual inclination to the site it held before, 1 edward's reason temporarily gave way because his conscience and his ambition spurred him to labours too great for his high-strung organization to stand. see in emerson's poems, “in memoriam, e. b. e.,” and the “ dirge"; also in cabot's memoir, vol. 1, pp. 140, 141. n cc 1828] edward's sermon 247 how much more may we hope through [the] same means, education being nothing but a constant plight and inurement,to induce, by custom, good habits into a reasonable creature? — see survey of education. he has two or three signs among children; tantum ingenii quantum irae, seneca; another, tantum ingenii quantum memoriae, quintilian; a third, tantum ingenii quantum imitationis, aristotle. i do not love to be punctual because i love x to be punctual. sketch for a sermon, by e. b. e. you are a son, and certain conduct you perceive to belong to you in this relation. you are a brother, and such and such duties, etc. you are a merchant. you belong to this city, and (it is] this or that in the deportment which makes up your virtue or your vice in your character as citizen. one step farther; you belong to this country as a confederacy of states, and hence come other new obligations. farther still, you belong to mankind, and, as a man, owe something. but is this all ? — you belong to one still more extensive family, brotherhood, community -the universe. 248 [age 25 journal july 30, 1828. a child is connected to the womb of its mother by a cord from the navel. so, it seems to me, is man connected to god by his conscience. god has given him a free agency, has permitted him to work his will in the world — doing wrong or right, but has kept open this door by which he may come in at all times and visit his sins with distress, or his virtues with pleasant thoughts. it is like the hydrostatic paradox, as naturalists call it; the ocean against a hair line of water; god against a human soul. est deus in nobis, etc., and, when outraged, this deus becomes diabolus, a spectre that no exorcism will bind. divinity hall, august 18, 1828. keep a thing by you seven years, and you shall find use for it. you will never waste knowledge. i like the sentence of locke; “ that young men in their warm blood are often forward to think that they have in vain learned to fence, if they never show their skill in a duel." one of the great defects of the world is this, that it is not enough that an objection has been fully answered. in my simplicity i should have thought richardson's engaging novel of sir 1828] power of mind 249 charles grandison a settlement of the subject of duelling: that all the common prejudices on that ' question were manifestly shown to be paltry. but no, it must be hammered into the head of society, as latin nouns into the head of a blockhead at school. october 31, 1828) february 11, 1828.") s. [self reliance] it is better to depend on yourself and set at nought the judgment of society. . . . is it not better to get out of the vapours that settle in this low air, its deceptive echoes, its false valuations, and sketch the map of the country from mountain ground? is it not better to scorn and avoid the heaving fluctuations of its public opinion, refuse to be the victim of its changing estimation, and be all the universe to yourself? divinity hall, september 11. we are very powerful beings. every mind may be brought to such a state as to have very little regard to inconvenience or physical obstructions. let it [...] be felt by us that we exist i here follow two passages written in cipher. 250 [age 25 journal wholly in the mind; that all happiness is there, and all unhappiness; that the present condition and appearance is nothing. ... situation ’t is a striking proof of the power of situation to drop a penknife or a glove upon the ground and see how they look there. [compensation/ it is an important fact that a man carries about with him favour or disgrace. we impute our reception in society to the will of others and forget that we ourselves alone determine what * that reception shall be, that a man may always, before he enters the door of a house, forestal his welcome by consulting his own mind. it will render him a true and faithful reply. ... do you not see that every misfortune is misconduct, that every honour is desert, that every affront is an insolence of your own? don't you see you are the universe to yourself? you carry your fortunes in your own hand. change of place won't mend the matter, you will weave the same web at pernambuco as at boston, if you have only learned how to make one texture. ... one e . 1828] mind— booksjustice 251 he that explores the principles of architecture and detects the beauty of the proportion of a column, what doth he but ascertain one of the laws of his own mind? the kingdom of god is within you. conduce ikejeli if you stammer in your talk or are cloudy, .. why then it is because your purpose is not pure. if the plan you explain is high-minded, generous on your part, why, then the reason you stammer is because you tell it to get credit for your magnanimity. (reading] · i read things in montaigne, caius, that you cannot; much as he said himself. i will give you scougal and you shall not find anything in it valuable to you. “it sounds to the intelligent.”ı the lapidary will let you choose a stone from a handful of chrystals, knowing that your eye is not skilful enough to detect the unpolished diamond. i believe the law of justice is very hard to keep. as to charity, you can't help being charitable. it is easier to give than it is to withhold on twenty occasions. but justice lasts all the time, and never mitigates her claim, and, after all, is a pitiful performance, for it never deserves praise. you can only sing, weare unprofitable servants. car i pindar. ervants. 252 journal [age 25 beauty in a tavern everybody puts on airs except the landlord: he is the poor devil, and the commonest sot of a teamster thinks he has the advantage of him. [beauty] it is hard to yoke love and wisdom. it is hard to criticize the behaviour of beauty. in her magic (presence, reason becomes ashamed of himself and wears the aspect of pedantry or calculation. sentiment triumphs, ... quotes triumphantly the ancient theory (a sweet falsehood) that beauty is the flower of virtue. experience looks grave, and though when the radiant eye peeps out upon him, he stands half convinced, yet still he musters his saws, his conspiring traditions and rules of the wise, his observations on the living, his analogies, and, what he chiefly relies on, the impressions formerly made on the same heart by other and loftier qualities which reason and stoicism justified. a pretty plea, no doubt, but if the dæmon of the man should throw him into circumstances favourable to the sentiment, reason would stand on a perilous, unsteady footing. the terms of intercourse in society are singularly unpropitious to the virtuous curiosity of young men with regard to the inner qualities of a beautiful woman. they may only see the outside lutir 1828] beautyenglish poets 253 of the house they want to buy. the chance is very greatly against her possessing those virtues and general principles which they most value. for they know of what delicacy and rarity is the nature of those fruits, and with what difficult and long separated steps they themselves reached them. yet a mighty testimony is afforded to the moral harmony of human nature, in the fact that the deportment of a beautiful woman in the presence of her admirer never offends point blank against the great laws whose violation would surely shock him. [the splendour of english poetry] is it not true, what we so reluctantly hear, that men are but the mouthpiece of a great progressive destiny, in as much as regards literature ? i had rather asked, is not the age gone by of the great splendour of english poetry, and will it not be impossible for any age soon to vie with the pervading etherial poesy of herbert, shakspeare, marvell, herrick, milton, ben jonson; at least to represent anything like their peculiar form of ravishing verse? it is the head of human poetry. homer and virgil and dante and tasso and byron and wordsworth have powerful genius whose amplest claims i cheerfully ac-, 254 journal (age 25 knowledge. but 't is a pale ineffectual fire when theirs shines. they would lie on my shelf in undisturbed honour for years, if these saxon lays stole on my ear. i have for them an affectionate admiration i have for nothing else. they set me on speculations. they move my wonder at myself. they suggest the great endowment of the spiritual man. they open glimpses of the heaven that is in the intellect. when i am caught by a magic word and drop the book to explore the infinite charm — to run along the line of that ray — i feel the longevity of the mind; i admit the evidence of the immortality of the soul. well, as i said, i am afraid the season of this rare fruit is irrecoverably past; that the earth has made such a nutation of its nodes, that the heat will never reach again that hesperian garden in which alone these apricots and pomegranates grew. [forgiveness] divinity hall, december 20, 1828. “forgive our sins.” were it not desirable that we should have a guardian angel that should go on our errands between heaven and earth, that should tell us how god receives our actions ; when he smiles and when he frowns; what petiorgiveness 1828] ellen tucker 255 tions he hears with favour, and what he rejects ? well, we have such a report rendered back to us. consider this prayer, forgive our sins. i believe every man may answer to himself when he utters this ejaculation, the precise degree of consideration it has received from the almighty mind. that consideration depends wholly upon the sentiment which accompanied the prayer. if when i say forgive my sins, i am in a frame of mind that sorrowfully repents of all my perversity, if i am struck with a deep and contrite sense of the enormity of sin ; if i feel the evil of guilt and the virtue to sin no more, then god hears me. concord, new hampshire, december 21, 1828. i have now been four days engaged to ellen louisa tucker. will my father in heaven regard us with kindness, and as he hath, as we trust, made us for each other, will he be pleased to strengthen and purify and prosper and eternize our affection ! [on edward's happy recovery of his mental balance, though his general health was permanently broken, waldo took him, for a change, with him to concord, new hampshire, where 256 journal [age 25 he had engagements to preach for three sundays in december. in a letter to his brother william, announcing his engagement, he said : “it is now just a year since i became acquainted with ellen ...; but i thought i had got over my blushes and my wishes when now i determined to go into that dangerous neighbourhood on edward's account. but the presumptuous man was overthrown by the eye and ear, and surrendered at discretion. he is now as happy as it is safe in life to be. she is seventeen years old, and very beautiful, by universal consent.” a little before this time, mr. emerson had been asked by the committee of the second church in boston to become associate pastor, on account of the delicate health and need of travel of the rev. henry ware, jr., the pastor, and was considering whether he ought to accept the call.] “ү”, “7, journal xx 1829 (from “ xviii,” 2d, “sermons and journal,” cabot's s, u and y) .(from cabot's s) to ellen all that thy virgin soul can ask be thine, beautiful ellen, — let this prayer be mine. the first devotion that my soul has paid to mortal grace it pays to thee, fair maid. i am enamoured of thy loveliness, lovesick with thy sweet beauty, which shall bless with its glad light my path of life around, which now is joyless where thou art not found. now am i stricken with the sympathy that binds the whole world in electric tie; i hail love's birth within my hermit breast, and welcome the bright ordinance to be blest. i was a hermit whom the lone muse cheers, i sped apart my solitary years, i found no joy in woman's meaning eye when fashion's merry mob were dancing by; yet had i read the law all laws above, great nature hath ordained the heart to love; 258 [age 25 journal yet had i heard that in this mortal state to every mind exists its natural mate; that god at first did marry soul to soul, though lands divide and seas between them roll. then eagerly i searched each circle round, i panted for my mate, but no mate found. i saw bright eyes, fair forms, complexions fine, but not a single soul that spoke to mine. at last the star broke through the hiding cloud, at last i found thee in the silken crowd; i found thee, ellen, born to love and shine, and i who found am blessed to call thee mine. to miss emerson (from «xviii,” 2d) january 6, 1829. my dear aunt, — you know — none can know better on what straitened lines we have all walked up to manhood. in poverty and many troubles the seeds of our prosperity were sown. ... counnow all these troubles appeared a fair counterbalance to the flatteries of fortune. i lean always to that ancient superstition (if it is such, though drawn from a wise survey of human affairs) which taught men to beware of unmixed 1829) days of prosperity 259 prosperity, for nemesis keeps watch to overthrow the high. well, now look at the altered aspect. william has begun to live by the law. edward has recovered his reason and his health. bulkeley was never more comfortable in his life." charles is prospering in all ways. waldo is comparatively well and comparatively successful — far more so than his friends, out of his family, anticipated. now i add to all this felicity a particular felicity which makes my own glass very much larger and fuller. and i straightway say, can this hold? will god make me a brilliant exception to the common order of his dealings which equalizes destinies? there's an apprehension of reverse always arising from success. but is it my fault that i am happy, and cannot i trust the goodness that has uplifted to uphold mę? in all these considerations i believe the sentiment of the old hymn is just: “ in every joy that crowns my days, in every pain i bear, my heart shall find delight in praise, or seek relief in prayer.” i robert bulkeley emerson, a brother between edward and charles in age, though amiable and well behaved, remained childish all his life, supported by his brothers, usually at the house of some worthy farmer. 260 journal [age 25 the way to be safe is to be thankful. i cannot find in the world without, or within, any antidote, any bulwark, against this fear like this,the frank acknowledgment of unbounded dependence. let into the heart that is filled with prosperity the idea of god, and it smooths the giddy precipices of human pride to a substantial level, it harmonizes the condition of the individual with the economy of the universe. i should be glad, dear aunt, that you, who are my oldest friend, would give me some of your meditations upon these new leaves of my fortune. you have always promised me success, and now, when it seems to be coming, i chuse to direct to you this letter which i enter as a sort of protest against my ahriman, that, if i am called, after the way of my race, to pay a fatal tax for my good, i may appeal to the sentiment of collected anticipation with which i saw the tide turn and the winds blow softly from the favouring west. as bacon said, “you may know it was my fate, and not my folly, that brought me to it.”... 1829) the call 261 [after receiving the call to the second church] (from “ sermons and journals ") cambridge, sunday morning, january 17, 1829. my history has had its important days within a brief period. whilst i enjoy the luxury of an unmeasured affection for an object so deserving of it all, and who requites it all,— i am called by an ancient and respectable church to become its pastor. i recognize in these events, accompanied as they are by so many additional occasions of joy in the condition of my family, – i recognize with acute sensibility, the hand of my heavenly father. this happiness awakens in me a certain awe: i know my imperfections: i know my ill-deserts; and the beauty of god makes me feel my own sinfulness the more. i throw myself with humble gratitude upon his goodness, i feel my total dependence. o god direct and guard and bless me, and those and especially ber, in whom i am blessed. she has the purity and confiding religion of an angel. are the words common? the words are true. will god forgive me my sins, and aid me to deserve this gift of his mercy? 262 journal [age 25 what is the office of a christian minister? 'tis his to show the beauty of the moral laws of the universe; to explain the theory of a perfect life; to watch the divinity in his world ; to detect his footstep; to discern him in the history of the race of his children, by catching the tune from a patient listening to miscellaneous sounds; by threading out the unapparent plan in events crowding on events. the soldier in the army does not know the plan of the fight. ... the world, to the skeptical eye, is without form and void. the gospel gives a firm clue to the plan of it. it shows god. find god, and order, and glory, and hope, and happiness begin. it is the office of the priest. ... [mr. emerson was still considering the acceptance of the call to the second church when another serious element was added to the problems. signs of consumption appeared in miss tucker, sufficient to cause grave uneasiness. dr. james jackson, the leading physician in boston, however, held out hope of her improvement, and so, after a frank talk with the committee, mr. emerson decided to accept the associate pastorship. ellen seemed to improve much as spring approached. in 263 sc 1829) novels naturally there are few entries in the journal for some time to come. the new life brought other uses for the hours which for years had been devoted to writing.) july 3. my weight is 144 lbs. novels [boston] chardon st., july 21. the passion for novels is natural. every child asks his grandpapa to tell him a story. cinderella and red ridinghood are the novels of the twoshoeses, and walter scott is the grandpa of the grown up children. there appeared in the world, as civilization advanced, a marked character which was its creature — a fashionist. he never laughs, he never weeps, is never surprised, never moved. he is completely selfish. by his self-command he aspires to an influence over society which owes nothing to rank, wealth, office, talents or learning — the command of fashion. he derides and is cool, and so reigns. this person has been shown to the public under several names : vivian grey, lord etherington, mr. brummel, lord dalgarno, pelham. but 't is all one rascal with all his aliases. now the question arises whether these ucs 264 journal (age 26 novels of fashionable life, whether these representations of this scoundrel, have a good or bad effect. it is an impertinent question. as long as the original exists, the copies will be multi| plied. if the moral is bad, as it is, get rid of the character and the pictures will no more be made. therefore let every man cultivate benevolence in himself. [fragment] i am not, i thank the gods, born a slave to priests or kings; both were bad, but what's the odds to be the thrall of thoughts, or things ? there's blood alike on crown and mitre pronounce, who can, which cap is whiter. my humour, poor and proud, disdains the monarch's crown and friar's frock; my blood shall warm my proper veins nor stain the altar or the block. [to confirm miss tucker's apparently improving health, a driving journey was made in august ; mr. emerson and she in one chaise, her mother (mrs. kent), and her sister, miss margaret tucker, in a carriage. they followed the route chosen by the patient, day by day, resting as they pleased, from concord, new hampce 1829] driving journey 265 shire, through canterbury and meredith to centre harbor; thence northward to tamworth under chocorua, and on to crawford's at the notch. from there they went to conway, and, via squam lake, to plymouth; thence through rumney and wentworth to hanover, and, descending the connecticut valley to springfield, eastward through worcester to boston. these verses to ellen, and those which follow them, were written in september, at pepperell, where, no doubt, mr. emerson was occupying the pulpit for a sunday.] (from cabot's u) í dear ellen, many a golden year may ripe, then dim, thy beauty's bloom, but never shall the hour appear in sunny joy, in sorrow's gloom, when aught shall hinder me from telling my ardent love, all loves excelling. the spot is not in the rounded earth, in cities vast, in islands lone, where i will not proclaim thy worth, and glory that thou art mine own; will you, nill you, i'll say i love thee, be the moon of june or of march above thee. 266 journal (age 26 and when this porcelain clay of thine is laid beneath the cold earth's aowers, and close beside reposes mine, prey to the sun and air and showers, i'll find thy soul in the upper sphere, and say i love thee in paradise here. i call her beautiful; — she says go to; your words are idle; my lips began to speak her praise, my lips she tried to bridle. but, ellen, i must tell you this, your prohibition wasted is, unless among your things you find a little jail to hold the mind; if you should dazzle out mine eyes, as dimmer suns sometimes have done, my sleepless ears, those judges wise, would say, 't is the voice of the peerless one. and if your witchery decree that my five senses closed should be, the little image in my soul is ellen out of ellen's controul, and whilst i live in the universe i will say 't is my beauty, for better, for worse. [on the last day of september, 1829, ralph waldo emerson was married to ellen louisa tucker, at the house of colonel w. a. kent, 1829) the swedenborgians 267 her step-father; the bridegroom being then twenty-six years of age, and the bride eighteen. they immediately began housekeeping in chardon place, in boston, madame emerson living with them.] (from “ blotting book 1829.” cabot's y) quantum scimus sumus. quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur. persius. new jerusalem church chardon st., october 9, 1829. i am glad to see that interpretations of scripture like those of the new jerusalem church can be accepted in our community. the most spiritual and sublime sense is put upon various historical passages of the new testament. the interpretation of the passages is doubtless wholly false. the apostle john in patmos and our saviour in his talking, meant no such things as the commentator says he meant. but the sentiment which the commentator puts into their mouths is nevertheless true and eternal. the wider that sentiment can be spread and the more effect it can have on men's lives, the better. and if the fool-part of man must have the lie, if truth is a 268 journal [age 26 pill that can't go down till 't is sugared with superstition, why then i will forgive the last in the belief that the truth will enter into the soul natively and so assimilantly that it will become part of the soul and so remain, when the falsehood grows dry and lifeless and peels off. book memoranda vide john smith, contemporary of jeremy taylor; huber on bees and ants; kirby and spence, introduction to entomology; works of derham, niewentiet and lyonet; coleridge's aids to reflection, p. 147; bayle, article “simonides”; pomponatius, treatise de fato, aids to reflection, p. 148; · h. more's antidote to atheism ; dr. donne's sermons. october 13. there are people who exist to ask each other conundrums, and there are others who avail themselves of each other's knowledge to find out the plan of the solar system ; to such different uses do we put this social principle. 1829] reading nature 269 october 15. the way for us to be wise is to foresee the great tendencies and currents of the universe in the leanings and motions of the little straws which our eyes can see. we live among eggs, embryos and seminal principles, and the wisest is the most prophetic eye. thus perhaps we might find out god's being from the strong instinct of the human soul to worship, from the magnifying idolatrous propensity we have. a great man we call a very great man: our friend, we call the best man; and that not to others, for vanity's sake, but we try to convince ourselves that there is something that reaches a little beyond our apprehension in the knowledge, genius, delicacy, or magnanimity of the protégée reputation we take up cudgels for. “it is in honour of theism,” says aunt mary, “that the effect of strong and exclusive attachment to natural science, that becomes disinterested and free of interest and fame, has a noble moral effect, as in case of some german philosophers. alas that the religious affections should be developed in idolatry even of knowledge!" it would seem as if the soul had been made to go out of itself to apply itself in all its length and breadth to something else, that is, to god. therefore we so we 270 journal [age 26 approve when it goes out of itself and does thus devote itself to friendship or to science; we approve, for we compare this action with selfishness; but when the idea of god is suggested, then we feel these are but half; that the act is true, but the object is untrue. prayer october 20. the government of god is not on a plan,that would be destiny ; it is extempore. the history of the universe is a game of which the object to be gained is the greatest good of the whole, and is attained by a long series of independent moves. the omniscient eye makes each new move from a survey of all the present state of the game. hence the efficiency of prayer. god determines from all the facts, and my earnest desires make one of the facts. [serenity] how ridiculous that the follies of the world should vex you. thus they become part and parcel of you, an excess of the social principle, — too eager and sick a sympathy. presidents should not take sides in a battle of mosquitoes. say with plato,“do not i think things os1829) metamorphoses 271 unsound because i am unsound?” as the blind man complained the streets were dark. human metamorphosis october 31. . i am made unhappy by talking with mr. , with all his reputed fine feelings and his profession and his genius. for he scoffs; slightly and elegantly, but still 'tis the poison of scoffing, and hardly can a man believe his immortality and deride any hallowed thing. “he that contemns, &c., has faculties which he has never used.” we must beware of the nature of the spiritual world. it has this [so] terrible power of self-change, self-accommodation to whatsoever we do, that ovid’s metamorphoses take place continually. the nymph who wept became a fountain; the nymph who pined became an echo. they who do good become angels; they who do deformities become deformed. we are not immoveably moored, as we are apt to think, to any bottom. and if we do wrong, and don't succeed, we think we can come back to where we were. that where is gone. i cannot live over my childhood. no more can i do right when i have vitiated all the springs of feeling and action. i have no που στω.i have then no eye to see 272 journal [age 26 the right, no fingers to feel it. i have only vicious members loving and doing wrong. that part of us which we don't use dries up and perishes. november 7. every man by god's arrangements whilst he ministers and receives influence from all others is absolutely, imperially free. when i look at the rainbow i find myself the centre of its arch. but so are you; and so is the man that sees it, a mile from both of us. so also the globe is round, and every man therefore stands on the top. king george and the chimney-sweep no less. note esoya hestone note to miss emerson (from “ xviii,” 2d) : november 15 (1829?] they say that the progress of the human mind is not by individuals, but by society at large; that the newtons and bacons are mountain summits that catch the sunlight a little earlier, which is presently visible to all; so we gazers are spying to see if the giants of the generation are not now bathing in a purer element than we below. it is surely with no affectation and no good will that i suspend my judgment of things so vast, but a 1829) letter to his aunt 273 state of mind wholly involuntary. all that i see is full of intelligence and all that i know is my approximation to the idea of god. when i see a green lane open, i suppose that however beautiful in itself, with what bluebell and rosemaries soever it may be adorned, it leads somewhere, and in my simple manhood i am still guided by these old truepenny reasons, all hume and germany to the contrary notwithstanding. then is not one amazed, if amazement it be, which is rather calm delight to find, as he goes on, how perfectly the moral laws hold, how they pervade with their delicate and subtle divinity all human life how truly too the material creation seems to be their shadow and type, by its faithful analogies (the mind does not manufacture, but finds them). then every man's life is to him the idea of a providence. and moments are marked in his memory of intercourse with god. well now, if he have sense, he must see that where all is so wondrous, a miracle is no more, and a revelation of immortality no more strange than his perception of its probability. i think thus and so, receive the dispensation gladly, but with my own interpretations, not thinking it becoming or possible to give up the certainty of natural reason for the highest un274 journal [age 26 0 certainties, when at the same time 'tis so easy to account for the imperfect transmission of the revelation. but when you ask, what is god — i must answer with simonides: the finite cannot comprize the infinite; we have faculties to perceive his laws, but himself how obscurely. he can be nothing less than our highest conception, and our conceptions continually soar higherboth the man's and the age's. so that the best man of our time is a nobler moral exhibition than the god of a much ruder time. we need not fear what time may teach us, for that which is true must be that which is most desirable; — because that which is true must be fittest for our nature, since all that exists is mutually conformed. at least we may gather so much prophecy from our inward informations. че perseverance (from cabot's y) december 7. habit is the succour god sends in aid of perseverance, that is, he decrees that what you have done laboriously you shall do easily. the great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. . . . some very unseasonable circumstances occurred and the good purpose was е cum1829) help of habit 275 postponed. who is there here who does not remember his defeats; who that does not own himself the cause? the world is full of slippery, imbecile, undetermined persons, who carry a! cowardice in their bosoms that invites attack., here and there is a hercules who persists in his purposes. ... he cannot fail. if all the universe oppose he cannot fail. for the stake is nothing; the skill of his game is all. the soul he has made unconquerable, and so, at death, it bursts into eternity, like a god to win worlds. one of the reasons why perseverance hath such potency is because it gains by littles, and life is made up of littles, and happiness. everything has its price. little goods are x lightly gained, but the rich sweets of things are idea of in the ribs of the mountain, and months and compensa years must dig for them. for example, a jest or ea glass of wine a man can procure without much pains to relieve his trouble for a moment; but a babit of patience, which is the perfect medicine, he cannot procure in a moment or a week or a month. it will cost thought and strife and mortification and prayer. in some of the foreign manufacturing towns steam power is generated and vended in amounts 276 [age 26 journal to suit very different purposes. i conceive every man to be such a shop. his conversation and works in the world do generate a certain amount of power, which he applies here to certain objects, but these objects are arbitrary and they are temporary, will soon be removed, and he will be called on to apply the same habits, i. e., steam power, to new uses, and very different ones in heaven. are 00 give your good project a fair trial, a year, two years. it is of small matter if it should prove on the whole inexpedient. it has done you good, if it has not mankind; and so has given the state a better citizen for its next occasions. to miss emerson boston, december 10, 1829. my dear aunt, — i hear nothing from you, though i sent an almost immediate answer to your catechism. you asked about the knee. i said nothing, for it was no better. now 't is well, or all but well. i have walked far and wide to-day. a quack doctor, the pupil of sweet, has cured me, and that in two or three hours. his name is hewitt. he still attends me every evening, and will come presently, so my pen must scamper. 1829) letters — coleridge 277 i am reading coleridge's friend with great interest. you don't speak of it with respect. he has a tone a little lower than greatness — but what a living soul, what a universal knowledge! i like to encounter these citizens of the universe, that believe the mind was made to be spectator of all, inquisitor of all, and whose philosophy compares with others much as astronomy with the other sciences, taking post at the centre and, as from a specular mount, sending sovereign glances to the circumference of things. there is an affectation of emphasis and typography, a nobleman don't care how he looks; but there are a good many of these rousseaus in the world whose two eyes are one a microscope and t'other a telescope. but there are few or no books of pure literature so self-imprinting, that is so often remembered as coleridge's. sunday night, 13. i have got your letter and perhaps will try to answer it. but what a fight all our lives long between prudence and sentiment; though you contradicted once when i tried to make a sentence, that life was embarrassed by prudentials. the case in point is this:my soul is chained down even in its thoughts, where it should be 278 journal [age 26 freest, lordliest. the christmas comes, a hallowed anniversary to me as to others, yet am i not ready to explore and explain the way of the star-led wizards — am looking at the same truth which they sought, on quite another side and in novel relations. i could think and speak to some purpose, i say, if you would take what i have got, but if i must do what seems so proper and reasonable, — conform to the occasion, — i can only say what is trite, and will, 't is likely, be ineffectual. this is a very disadvantageous example of that warfare that is in all professional life between the heroical and the proper. people wag their heads and say, i can't understand coleridge. yet it is only one more instance of what is always interesting, the restless human soul bursting the narrow boundaries of antique speculation and mad to know the secrets of that unknown world, on whose brink it is sure it is standing — yea, can now and then overhear passing words of the talk of the inhabitants. i say a man so learned and a man so bold, has a right to be heard, and i will take off my hat the while and not make an impertinent noise. at least i become acquainted with one new mind i never saw before,— an acquisition in my knowledge of man not unimportant, when it is remembered + s icot 1829] coleridge – books 279 that so gregarious are even intellectual men that aristotle thinks for thousands, and bacon for his ten thousands, and so, in enumerating the apparently manifold philosophies and forms of thought, we should not be able to count more than seven or eight minds. ’t is the privilege of his independence and of his labour to be counted for one school. his theological speculations are, at least, god viewed from one position ; and no wise man would neglect that one element in concentrating the rays of human thought to a true and comprehensive conclusion. then i love him that he is no utilitarian, nor necessarian, nor scoffer, nor hoc genus omne, tucked away in the corner of a sentence of plato. uses of biography and history december 12. pericles is made noble and luther indomitable to show canis and aspen their capabilities. instead of generating complaint, it should beget all hope. authors or books mentioned or quoted in journals of 1828 and 1829 homer; anaximander, apud de gérando; simonides; democritus; socrates; plato; 280 journal [age 26 virgil; persius; juvenal; plutarch, lives and morals ; saint augustine, confessions; dante ; montaigne, essays; tasso; neare: ben jonson; bacon, de augmentatione scientiae ; sir henry wotton, survey of education ; herrick ; herbert; milton; marvell; saint-évremond, sense of an honest and experienced courtier ; locke; newton; scougal, life of god in the soul ; young ; pope, essay on man; samuel richardson, sir charles grandison; spence, anecdotes, observations and characters; butler; cotton mather, essays to do good; hume, essays ; priestley ; gibbon ; paley; james montgomery, the pelican island; sir james mackintosh; degerando, derivation de la science du droit ; wolf, prolegomena ad homerum ; de staël, germany; wordsworth, excursion, sonnets, dion, intimations of immortality, etc; byron; coleridge, friend, literary biographies, aids to reflection ; rev. henry ware, sermon; rev. nathaniel l. frothingham, sermon; disraeli, vivian grey; bulwer, pelbam. journal xxi 1830 from y, v, and blotting book iv [interaction of minds] (from y) january, 1830. “the grandest visions external could not become intellectual, but by the chemistry of those acquired from the minds of others, – how far original inspiration influenced is uncertain, as how far a constant agency in harmony with the laws of mind and matter influence at all times the seeker of moral excellence.” aunt mary. ica i read in plutarch's political precepts, that when leo byzantinus went to athens to appease the dissensions in that city, when he arose to speak, he perceived that they laughed on account of the littleness of his stature. “what would you do,” he exclaimed, “ if you saw my wife who scarce reaches to my knees?” and scarce 1 282 journal [age 26 they laughing the more he said, “yet as little as we are, when we fall out, the city of byzantium is not big enough to hold us.” it is strange that the greatest men of the time only say what is just trembling on the lips of all thinking men. january 4, 1830. knowledge, even, god's own attribute and delight and mean, i fear it is but the cock's pearl when it is in a spirit which is not united to the great spirit. quantum sumus scimus. it will not do for us to dogmatize. nothing is more untrue to nature. the meanest scholar in christian practice may often instruct the greatest doctor both in faith and practice. i have no shame in saying, i lean to this opinion, but am not sure. i do not affect or pretend to instruct. o no, it is god working in you that instructs both you and me. i only tell how i have striven and climbed, and what i have seen, that you may compare it with your own observations of the same object. it is important to have some formal observer, whether a keen-sighted one or not, in order to furnish some goû ot@, some other point to measure thought by. 1830] your own thought 283 that man will always speak with authority who speaks his own convictions, not the knowledge of his ear or eye, i. e., superstitions got in conversation, or errors or truths remembered from his reading, but that which, true or false, he hath perceived with his inward eye, which therefore is true to him, true even as he tells it, and absolutely true in some element, though distorted and discolored by some disease in the soul. omnia exeunt in mysterium. en boston, january 7, 1830. “quelle profonde philosophie,” says de gérando,' “ ne supposent pas les législations de lycurgue et de solon !” a specimen, it seems to me, had i found it elsewhere, of that superficial admiration which is so common. neither lycurgus nor solon need have been profound thinkers to have made their respective codes, but only practical, severe and persevering men. wonderful capabilities both moral and intellectual, the formation of a code does indeed suppose, but in the general mind of man, and not in the individual. lycurgus and solon were alike in the dark i histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie, par m. de gérando. i, ai 284 journal [age 26 with their contemporaries as to the extent, or the order, or the history of those capabilities which yet their codes recognized, and the common people they ruled recognized, and degerando recognizes, and i recognize, — inevitably one and all. anaximander revives in de staël. anaximander said, “the infinite is the principle (principe) of all things.” anaxagoras, in degerando, is the model of the true philosopher. neve suse it is the praise of most critics that they have never failed because they have attempted nothing. it is generous in a youthful hero who bears an unspotted shield to adventure his fame in that difficult field of metaphysics, where, from the intrinsic inaccessibilities of the positions, the strongest and the weakest assailants are brought nearly to a level, and where much may be gained by the losses of the individual. he will console himself, when he comes out smeared and baffled, with the saying of wotton that “critics are brushers of noblemen's clothes." “the eternal hath fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter,” shall be my answer to the pyrrhonist. 1830] epitomized thought 285 the system of aristotle, the labour of a thousand years, which had become the religion of the intellect of europe, comes to be called an experiment ; some happy genius epitomizes it in a word, and that becomes its history, the algebraic x by which it is to be designated, now that its value has been evolved and that it cannot be spared more room in the opulence of human knowledge, — repositories where it is huddled away. january 18. “i am more a frenchman,” said the archbishop of cambray, “than a fénelon, and more a man than a frenchman.” this is quoted in spence's anecdotes to chevalier ramsay, who was secretary to fénelon. the greatness of human desires is surely one element of the greatness of man. the love of the marvellous, all the fantastic theories of mystics, the deification of the faculties, &c, &c, are in that view good. man's natural goodness is to do good to others. remarkable what natural aids there are to this object. love of praise strongest in strongest minds. if the tree did not bear its drupe, it 286 . journal [age 26 cs would perish; if the animal did not give out its young, it would perish; if the soul do not bear its good deed, it will wither and die, it is made stronger, like the animal muscles, by use. if you cut off the tree's leaves and it cannot give out its juices to the atmosphere, it dies. if you feed the horse and not work him, he dies. a great deal of good we can't help doing. example is inevitable. a miser and a sensualist do good by their hateful example. that's a shabby good. january 22. the question was debated before the association this evening, whether we were not required to abstain from amusements, innocent to us, if we think them not innocent to others. the subject announced was self-denial, and the instance perpetually quoted was the theatre. i think that self-denial is only one form of expression for perfection of the moral character. it means the denial of self-indulgences. it means the subordination of all the lower parts of man's nature to the higher, so that the individual doth nothing contrary to reason. well, such a person cannot do wrong. he is that pure man to whom all things are pure. if such a person finds it any ma rent 1830] self-denial example 287 time his duty to go to the theatre, he will go there unchecked by fear of what harm his example may do. it is not very likely he will ever want to go there, for any good now, or in past time, apparent on the stage; but if he do, he must go. nor will he do any harm. his example will never be quoted bona fide by any who goes with evil intentions. his going there cannot be mistaken. a self-denier creates a moral atmosphere about him, which sanctifies and separates his actions. one part of his example interprets another part of his example. he may safely trust his virtue to bear itself out in the world. our saviour sat with sinners, yet none ever thought of quoting him as sanctioning sin. what, then, may we be so free? and is nothing due to the judgments of others ? no, not anything to the judgments of others, except as a commentary, an expositor frequently useful in bringing out the true sense of our own. not anything to the judgments of others, but much, very much more, to our own than we are accustomed to give them. the true pinch of the question is that there is almost no such thing as this self-denial. it is not that men are careless of their influence on other men, but that they are careless of their own action. 288 journal [age 26 chemistry began by saying it would change the baser metals into gold. by not doing that it has done much greater things. solon said, he that has better iron shall have all this gold. in modern times the best iron-manufacturing nations are the most civilized and run away with all the gold. objection to the subject of providence that 'tis too vast for human optics; pick up here and there a pebble contrivance, and say see! a god! as newton thought. every one of these instances valuable. five or six facts, independently of almost no value, made the discovery of america in columbus's mind, and it took as many centuries to accumulate them. one man sees a fact and secures it, which is to him altogether frivolous, but inestimable to the race, when seen in connexion with another fact not known for one hundred years after. facts seek their inventions, happy marriage of fact to fact. set coit sir isaac newton, a little before he died, said: “ i don't know what i may seem to the world, but as to myself i seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself 'now and then finding a smoother pebble or a 1830] religion sublimed 289 prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” february 3. “the greater god is, the greater we are. homer was not grand in making his gods so mean.” aunt mary. february 10. is there not the sublime always in religion? i go down to the vestry and i find a few plain men and women there, come together not to eat or drink, or get money, or mirth, but drawn by a great thought. come thither to conceive and form a connexion with an infinite person. i thought it was sublime, and not mean as others suppose. “the miraculous,” says sampson reed, 1“ is the measure of our departure from god.” and brown says to the selfsame purpose, that the miraculous is no violation of the laws of nature, but a new agent interposes, dignus vindice nodus. i mr. emerson's swedenborgian friend. 290 [age 26 journal [creeds grow from the structure of the creature] february 11. every man makes his own religion, his own god, his own charity; takes none of these from the bible or his neighbour entire. all feel that there is something demanded by the mind stronger and wiser than itself; that it is a thing essentially imperfect, that in its very structure demands more, as one half a pair of scissors, one sex, or a babe, and so every human creature makes its jove, its josh, its fairy, or amulet. having got this thought well shaped and accommodated to their other knowledge they are easy, they are stronger than before, they will do wonders. if this idea is disturbed they are made uncomfortable, sometimes furious, sometimes depraved, sometimes dejected. well then, it would seem that this idea is pointed at in all the structure of the animal, man. as nothing, it is discovered, is made without a meaning,— no hands, no intestines, no antennæ, no hair, without a distinct purpose disclosed as we study it, well then, is this leaning without a purpose, this inevitable, essential, natural prayer of all intelligent nature, without purpose? is it not a finger 1830] petty providences 291 pointing straight upwards at the great spirit? then it is found that this superstition is cleansed into religion as the mind is informed. the belief in god being thus gotten, providence is the application of that belief to the government of the world. just as great, or as little, as is the idea of god, just such is their opinion of providence. the pagan believes in a little, jealous, snarling patronage that reaches him and his family and hates every body else. it knows a little more and does a little better than a man. one god thwarts another, as man contends with man. the superstition of the fairies is the idea of a petty providence. as his knowledge enlarges, that is, as his mind applies itself to a larger piece of the universe, he sees the unbroken prevalence of laws; the grass grows in bengal by the same order as in massachusetts, the man of one district fears death like the man of the other, and knows what it is to love and to have and to want. ... dr. donne saith, “ encourage the catechizer as well as the curious preacher. look so far towards your way to heaven, as to the firmament, and consider there that the star by which we sail and make great voyages is none of the stars 292 journal [age 26 of greatest magnitude, but yet it is none of the least neither, but a middle star. those preachers which must save your souls are not ignorant, unlearned, extemporal men, but they are not over curious men neither. your children are you, and your servants are you; and you do not provide for your salvation if you provide not for them who are so much yours as that they are you. no man is saved as a good man, if he be not saved as a good father, and as a good master, if god have given him a family.” five sermons, p. 66. mm february 24. we are, by dint of self-command on one hand and omniscience on the other, as if a dead wall were built on one side of our plot of ground, and on the other it was not fenced by so much as a stake or a pin from the boundless expanse. a cunning dissimulator may shut out man's eye from so much as a glance at his thoughts, but god and all angels behold him on the spiritual side. february 26. whether, saith ellen, the spirits in heaven look onward to their immortality as we on earth, or are absorbed in the present moment ? 1830] ellen 293 [because, in spite of all hope and tender care, the health of his young wife was failing, mr. emerson took her southward in early march, accompanied by her sister. mr. ware meanwhile had gone abroad and all the duties of pastor and preacher devolved upon mr. emerson. it is probable that he had to leave mrs. emerson with her sister and return to his post for a time. the poem “to ellen at the south” was written a year earlier, april, 1829, and probably also “ thine eyes still shined.” two of her poems, “ the violet” and one entitled “lines written by ellen louisa tucker,” were printed by mr. emerson in the dial ten years or more after her death. they are included in the centenary edition of the poems. the following lines were probably written in 1830.] cs 1 were and, ellen, when the greybeard years have brought us to life's evening hour, and all the crowded past appears a tiny scene of sun and shower, then, if i read the page aright where hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot, thyself shalt own the page was bright, well that we loved, wo had we not; 294 (age 26 journal when mirth is dumb and flattery's fled, and mute thy music's dearest tone, when all but love itself is dead, and all but deathless reason gone. preaching february 28. hudibras says, “ rhymes the rudder are of verses, with which, like ships, they steer their courses." it is not very much otherwise in preaching. topics are the masters of the preacher. he cannot often write in the way he deems best and most level with life. he is obliged to humour his mind in the choice and the development of his subject. when the sermon is done he is aware that much of it is from the purpose, ... and altogether it is unworthy of his conception of a good sermon. but to-morrow is sunday. he must take this, or write worse, or have nothing. he hopes beside that parts of this discourse will reach all, and all of it touch or instruct individuals. prayer what is prayer? it is the expression of human wishes addressed to god. what is god? the most elevated conception of character that can be 1830] converse with god 295 formed in the mind. it is the individual's own soul carried out to perfection. for no other deity can he conceive. he is infinite as i am finite; he is sinless as i am sinful; he is all wise as i am all ignorant. he is strong as i am weak. well, now prayer is the effort of the soul to apply itself in all its length and breadth to this sovereign idea, is the attempt to bring home to the thoughts so grand a mind and converse with it, as we converse with men. ... burke said, “if i borrow the aid of an equal understanding, i double my own; if of a higher, i raise my own to the stature of that i contemplate.” well now, what must be the effect, judging from this plain analogy, of conversing with one who is wholly pure and benevolent, and whom we know we cannot deceive? it seems to me plain that we must grow godlike. oy w we can webster march 3. read with admiration and delight mr. webster's noble speech in answer to hayne. what consciousness of political rectitude, and what confidence in his intellectual treasures must he have to enable him to take this master's tone! mr. channing said he had great “self-subsistence.” 296 journal [age 26 the beauty and dignity of the spectacle he exhibits should teach men the beauty and dignity of principles. this is one that is not blown about by every wind of opinion, but has mind great enough to see the majesty of moral nature and to apply himself in all his length and breadth to it and magnanimously trust thereto. wednesday night. the power that we originate outlives us, takes imposing and stable forms, and cæsar becomes a dynasty; and luther and calvin each a church; and mahomet represents himself in a third of the human race. april 24. noah ripley, the good deacon, is himself an affecting argument for the immortality of the soul. may 12. it was said of jesus that “he taught as one having authority,” a distinction most palpable. there are a few men in every age, i suppose, who teach thus. stubler the quaker, whom i saw on board the boat in delaware bay, was one. if sampson reed were a talker, he were another. there is nevertheless a foolish belief among teachers that the multitude are not wise enough 1830] one having authority 297 to discern between good manner and good matter, and that voice and rhetorick will stand, instead of truth. they can tell well enough whether they have been convinced or no. the multitude suppose often that great talents are necessary to produce the elaborate harangues which they hear without emotion of consequence, and so they say, what a fine speaker, what a good discourse; but they will not leave any agreeable employment to go again, and never will do a single thing in consequence of having heard the discourse. but let them hear one of these godtaught teachers and they surrender to him. they leave their work to come again; they go home and think and talk and act as he said. men know truth as quick as they see it. it is remarkable how this mastery shows itself in the tone that is taken, as much as in the facts that are presented. a tone of authority cannot be taken without truths of authority. it is impossible to mimick it. there is no favouritism in the public. buckminster had it; greenwood has it in some measure. fm has not a particle. it proceeds directly from the perception of principles. dr. johnson was one. 298 journal epheme z [ace 27 ver 1 a m brookline, june 7. conversion from a moral to a religious character is like day after twilight. the orb of the earth is lighted brighter and brighter as it turns, until at last there is a particular moment when the eye sees the sun, and so when the soul perceives god. every man contemplates an angel in his future self. brookline, june 2, 1830. ... what value would belong to every man, if everyone literally told his own impressions from all he saw, and by the use of his conscience kept himself in the state of an observer. ... ver. . e were tw 0 [dual consciousness] dr. channing spoke to me of a frenchman who had written that there were two souls in the human body, one which never suspended its action, and had the care of what we call the involuntary motions, and was, in short, a gentleman who knew a good deal of natural magic, antipathies, instincts, divination and the like; and the other, the vulgar, waking, practical soul. well, this theory, like all others, is founded on one glimpse of truth by a cross light. and such 1830] dipsychus — the year 299 an intelligence is there in all men, that knows when men speak in simplicity, and when they speak conventionally. but observe, simplicity of character is not enough, of itself. all country people have it in great measures. it needs also a tender conscience, which shall lead men to improve themselves, to keep the ear and soul open to receive truth, and then this straightforwardness shall make them act and utter the truth. ... the year the year is long enough for all that is to be done in it. the flowers blow; the fruit ripens; la and every species of animals is satisfied and at-', tains its perfection, but man does not; man has seen more than he has had time to do. what it means to be one with god? solitude go sit alone,for the nations are a handful compared with that amount of being for whom the soul consults when she reasons of virtue, — and see what you can hope to be that is highest and best. see how goodness is the way to wisdom, and wisdom is the way to goodness. see how the soul, in the infinite vista of the future, foresees 300 journal [age 27 the hour when it shall desire nothing wrong, and therefore nothing false; when, desiring everything right, and everything right being done, it shall find that insensibly it beats pulse for pulse with the heart of nature, that all its volitions are followed by instant effects, that it is united to god. is there any hiding of the character of an appletree or of a geranium, or of an ore, or of a horse, 'or of a man? a man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite. ... humility brookline, july 15.1 humility is properly the exaltation of the spirit. ... we are to be so humble as to be of the greatest possible service to all men. we are to be always accessible to truth as the proud are 1 after mr. and mrs. emerson's return home in the early summer they lived in brookline for better air (probably boarding). madame emerson and mr. emerson's brother charles were with them. 1830] independence 301 not. yet every sin are we to scorn with an imperial superiority. then to keep an independence of all men, dazzling men and bad ones, how hard ! it needs this great equilibrium, the relation to god, which sets all right. for if we depend on him for all things, [we) are his children. ... self reliance brookline, july 20, 1830. ... milton, bacon, bunyan, scougal, herbert, montesquieu : these are names of good men, but what dissimilar images do they suggest to the soul. now this is not the thought of men, that to each belongs a separate nature which must be, by him cultivated as an inalienable estate. as they say the vines failed because in america they wanted to grow madeira wine, instead of bringing out the native wines, probably equally good, of this region, so men fail as far as they leave their native moral instincts in the admiration of other characters. let them on the contrary have greater confidence in the plan, yet to them unknown, which the moral architect has traced for them. ... the elm is a bad oak, but a beautiful elm; and the beauty of the walnut or the sycamore 302 journal [age 27 is not felt by comparing them with different species, but with other individuals of their own. the question arises doubtless, have we not ! the power to make ourselves what we will by steadfast exertions ? we do not snuff a scent that is laid already. we do not grow up like a plant according to a conformation of a seed. on the contrary, it is the privilege of our nature over that of flowers and brutes that we are our own law. brookline, july 24. don't say that qualities are so radical in us that the fickle man can never persevere, let him try as he will, nor the selfish man ever distribute; for on the contrary, any quality of a man may be taken advantage of to lead him to any other that is desirable. i hate steady labour from morn till night, and therefore am not a learned man, but i have an omnivorous curiosity and facility of new undertaking. in voluntary exertions to gratify it, may i not become learned and acquire the habits of steady toil? [who is religious?) it seems to me there are degrees in religion, and much is religion that is not called by that 1830] who is religious? 303 name in minds that do oppose themselves to what they call religion. a man of honour and generosity, who would rather die than speak falsely, has an aversion to religion, treats it with a degree of contempt. now i think this man is religious, in the lowest degree. what he does well, he does from his religious nature; « pious beyond the intention of his thought, devout beyond the meaning of his will.” he is in the right way, and far more near, therefore, to god, than the sensual religionist, as a cripple in the right way will beat a racer in the wrong. he is in the right way, and if he contribute all these generous sentiments in a high degree, he will continually make advancements unconsciously in religious excellence. he thinks, perchance, that religion is calvinism, and so he hates it. by and by, in consequence of his efforts at self-knowledge, his mind will revolve so far that the increasing twilight will give place to the sun, and god will appear as he is to his soul. i believe it is not a fact that is very early known to children, that the sun is the cause of the day. i am sure i was not myself acquainted with it, and while living and growing and playing in his beams, and learning, o ce 304 journal [age 27 as all children do, the laws of light, i did not imagine to what i was indebted; and when first i was told, it seemed to me a thing absurd. is not this an emblem of the irreligious hero? brookline, august 3, 1830. my weight is 157 lbs. august 18. the sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and musquitoes and silly people. august 28. | alii disputent, ego mirabor, said augustine. it shall be my speech to the calvinist and the unitarian. buckminster september 1, 1830. ... buckminster went into the pulpit on days of deepest affliction in his parish for the loss of excellent persons, with an alacrity and cheerfulness in his countenance that would have been revolting levity in another man, and read psalms and scriptures of praise. yet no one was offended, but all felt that the intensity of his emotion was such, and the principle on which it was 1830] all subjects good 305 founded was such, as to overmaster their private thoughts, and the mourner was carried away by the infection of his sublime joy, from the consideration of his petty griefs. so does a man ask himself if his subject be unseasonable or extravagant? let him feel that none is so unseasonable but the force of his thinking upon it will make its excuse. such is the intimate connexion existing between all truth, that no topic can be so unusual but a genuine teacher can show such a practical value in it as shall command your total attention, and make a mountain before your eyes out of a grain of sand. september 3. there are two kinds of pertinence. one to the circumstances, and one to the thing itself. what has been wholly pertinent to one case, (in the second and superior sense) will, i apprehend, always be found to have a degree of pertinence to every case. if the orator, as is common, attends only to the circumstantial pertinence, if he say, this man had yellow hair, large lips, 1 this is one of the earliest passages in the journal that appears in his published writings. it is found in an improved form, but without giving the name of the preacher, in “ eloquence,” vol. vii, p. 83, of collected works, centenary ed. 306 (age 27 journal long life, or he spent on this occasion a dollar and a quarter, or he lived in such a street and died on such a day, the discourse will not only be of necessity wholly impertinent to any other occasion, but, in my judgment, will be really impertinent to the occasion for which it was made. this is a mere carcass of circumstances destitute of all life and of all use to me. but if he describe with minutest fidelity the moral portrait of the man, line for line, if he describe states of mind, the effect of temptation, and the modes of escape, the more minute his copying from the finest shades of thought in his original, the more deep and universal and permanent will the interest of the picture become. and let him change the names, and read it in chinese in a bazar at pekin, and he will find it is pertinent still to the human mind. so much for the doctrine so much prosed over of pertinent preaching. september 6. mon amie à concord. (happiness or serenity?] if a man be asked if he is happy, on his conscience, he will not affirm it; he will feel a scrui probably mrs. emerson had gone to visit her mother and sister at concord, new hampshire. she was now very delicate. 1830] serenity 307 ple, i apprehend, precisely like that he would feel if he were about to say that he was sinless. and is there not any condition of the human heart when it is esteemed to have reached this climax? there is one remarkable exception; the state of religious progress, when a mind that has doubted of its spiritual safety emerges from the gloom into a state of peace, and says, i am happy. this is not strict language. if such a person be strictly dealt with, it will be found [he has] wants and imperfections yet. it is a joy and serenity but not happiness, though i think a nearer approach to it than any other circumstances that can be named..... sa m ess what happiness does a man feel uneasiness about? that which comes to him almost without his exertions, or anyhow which he feels he has not earned. and as all supereminent prosperity has a degree of this want of desert, it is always dashed with this feeling. [town and field] ... if a man loves the city, so will his writings love the city, and if a man loves sweet fern and roams much in the pastures, his writings will smell of it. i ..., can''.wien. 308 (ace 27 journal the argument which has not power to reach my own practice, i may well fear has not power to reach yours. september 8. maxima debetur pueris reverentia. ? september 9. balancing there are some kingdoms of europe whose whole population for ages does not possess an equal interest in history with some single minds. the history of john locke or of isaac newton is a far more important part of the stock of knowledge than the whole history of poland or hungary. well, what of this? you accuse yourself perhaps. before god, poland is a greater affair than locke. mr. stewart's works are like dr. clarke's description of the entrance of moscow, all splendour and promise till you enter the gate, and then you look before and behind — but only cottages and shops. judge howe advised his pupils to make study their business, and business their amusement. 1830] resolves 309 september 1o. it is my purpose to methodize my days. i ! wish to study the scriptures in a part of every day, that i may be able to explain them to others and that their light may flow into my life. i wish not to be strait-laced in my own rules, but to wear them easily and to make wisdom master of them. it is a resolving world, but god grant me persistency enough, so soon as i leave brookline, and come to my books, to do as i intend. self reliance css brookline, september 27. i would have a man trust himself, believe that he has all the endowments necessary to balance each other in a perfect character, if only he will allow them all fair play. i have sometimes wished i had not some acuteness or minuteness of observation that seemed inconsistent with dignity of character; but thus to wish seems to me now to be false to one's-self, to give up a tower in my castle to the enemy which was given me as a bulwark of defence. it is a wondrous structure, this soul in me, infinitely beyond my art 310 journal (ace 27 to puzzle out its principle. i admire a flower and see that each lily and aster is perfect in its kind, though different in its proportions and arrangement of petals from every other aster in the field, and shall i not believe as much of every mind? — that it has its own beauty and character, and was never meant to resemble any other one? every man has his own voice, manner, eloquence, and, just as much, his own sort of love and grief and imagination and action. let him scorn to imitate any being, let him scorn to be a secondary man, let him fully trust his own share of god's goodness, that, correctly used, it will lead him on to perfection which has no type yet in the universe, save only in the divine mind. s it seems to be true that the more exclusively idiosyncratic a man is, the more general and infinite he is, which, though it may not be a very intelligible expression, means, i hope, something intelligible. in listening more intently to our own reason, we are not becoming in the ordinary sense more selfish, but are departing more from what is small, and falling back on truth itself, and god. for it is when a man does not listen to himself, but to others, that he is de1830] trust thyself 311 praved and misled. the great men of the world, the teachers of the race, moralists, socrates, bacon, newton, butler, and the like, were those who did not take their opinions on trust, but explored themselves, and that is the way ethics and religion were got out. september 29. a man is invincible, be his cause great or small, an abstract principle, or a petty fact, whenever he expresses the simple truth. this makes the cogency of the talk of common people in common affairs. ... it ought to be considered that the meanest human soul contains a model of action greater than is realized by the greatest man. nobody can read the life of newton or franklin or washington without detecting imperfections in those astonishing instances of the conduct of life. [virtue must be active] boston, october 18. there is very little enterprize in virtue. when men take to themselves the reproofs and exhortations of scripture, they say, the rule is above my whole life. the mind performs a penitential act of perceiving its deficiency, but there it stops. 312 journal [age 27 co wor uns it declares war against the enemy, but it does not levy a troop nor make an excursion into his country. it languishes in inaction, and, at the end of a year, or of seven years, it is found no better, and therefore far worse than at the beginning — far worse, because the demand runs on increasing and the performance does not. it were better to keep the blood warm with virtue by some brilliant act. it is as easy and natural to move, as to rest. do a deed of charity; persevere to the end of a harassing work. better to give every sentiment the body of an outward action; as johnson said, deal soberly by keeping early hours, righteously by giving alms, and godly by going early to church : domestic virtues: spartan, early rising, &c:temperance, fasting. newton's mode of succeeding in his study was by always thinking unto it. a general attention to a man's personal habits, the habit of being sometimes alone, the habit of reading, the habit of abstraction, in order to find out what his own opinion is, the habit of controlling his conversation, the habit of praying, of referring himself always to god. order has a good name in the world for getting the most sweetness out of time. vn 1830) the nightingale 313 the nightingale's song the nightingale on her lonely thorn in great gardens loud complaineth, and all the woods where the sounds are borne are the sphere in which she reigneth by the empery of sound, wide through the dew above and around the birds lie mute to his breathing aute, and lordly man must linger and thank the wondrous singer. yet is it inarticulate sound nor mortal wit can give it sense, and only heard a mile around thro’ dusky lawns and hawthorn fence. · but thou, my bird of paradise -' from blotting book y 1830 [the following note is written on the cover.] population of u. s. a. 12,821,181 souls. slaves 2,000,000. chardon street, october 29, 1830. it has been noticed that all a man's views are of a piece. he is a friend of liberal religion ; he 1 this unfinished poem appears to have been original. 314 journal [age 27 will probably be found a friend of free trade, and of free press, and of free discussion of truth. on the contrary, is he a bigot? he will contract his views of education and of politics. this will happen where interest does not incline him to either side. but the manufacturer may wish a higher protecting duty in the present circumstances, though, on general questions, he adheres to the liberal party of the world. the improvement that a man makes in one part of his knowledge affects every other part, as the light that shines on one object illuminates all parts of the room. all a man's conversation must be tinged by his occupations. his trade commonly furnishes his mind, and therefore his talk, with the analogies that furnish him with the most conviction; and the more natural wisdom that will give him, through increased skill or invention, or extension of its processes, the more will the spiritual wisdom also be augmented that he draws therefrom. can it be then that there should not be a retribution to our actions, if thus our nature is single, and feels throughout the condition of every part? 1830] fear of death 315 november 3, 1830. is it possible for religious principle to overcome the fear of death? it is commonly overcome, as bacon observes, by every passion and humour in turn, love, honour, revenge, fun, &c. the instances are familiar of men habitually encountering the greatest risks, sailor and soldier marching up to a battery for sixpence a day. and multitudes of the lower classes of mankind die continually with almost no exhibition of fear. in all these instances i apprehend it is not a conquest of the fear, but a setting it aside. it is want of thought. it is a dogged attention to the facts next them, and not a consideration of the event of death. on the contrary, spiritual men exhibit not unfrequently strong apprehension, great gloom, as dr. johnson, at the thought of dissolution. the more delicate the structure of the mind, the stronger this emotion, i suppose ; and this for two reasons, first, because such persons have more to lose in losing life, and secondly, because they are not yet spiritual enough to overcome fear. i suppose that he who ... lives in the daily exercise of the purest and most expanded affections, especially has attained religious principles 316 [age 27 journal and loves to meditate on god and heaven, i suppose that life is worth to him infinitely more than it is to a sensual wretch; life to him is a world of sweet and holy thought, and the idea of losing it is tremendous. i think therefore that christianity has done much to increase the fear of death in the world by the general advance it has brought about in the cultivation of the moral powers, whilst it has yet failed to effect any large portion of society to that degree as to overcome this terror. secondly, i firmly believe that a fuller effect of christian principles upon our hearts will be the disappearance of the fear of death. men doubt their immortality because they doubt the real independent being of their moral nature. they fancy the thoughts of god, of goodness, of love, of ethics generally, may be visions of the mind, creations of the mind, and it and they may perish together. i suppose that the reality, the independence of this part of our nature, can only appear to us by its use, that, in proportion as it is brought into exercise, its eternity will be felt. i have always noticed that when i had been occupied with diligence in any ethical speculation, with the law of compensations, for example, with the ance exe 1830] dying christians 317 great conclusions that come from the analysis of the affections or any kindred question, — if from the midst of such thoughts i glance at the question of immortality, i have at that time a clearer conviction of it. i have heard moreover a great many anecdotes of people in the last and the former generation, quiet simple people of malden and concord who had no books but bible and psalter, and a less rational therefore, but far more fervid piety than is common now, who died without fear and with exaltation even in the love of christ. i suppose though they had neglected their minds, they had cultivated their moral power till it stood out to their minds a living soul, unaffected by any change of the body. this is true too of the apostles, who never speak of death as dreadful, to whom to die was gain. ... no man addicted to chemistry ever discovered a salt, or an acid, which he thought divine, never discovered a law which he thought god. no man devoted to literary criticism ever imagined that any of the thoughts that formed his study was god. but the man who cultivated the moral powers, ascended to a thought, and said this is god. the faith is the evidence. 318 (age 27 journal a great deal may be learned from studying the history of enthusiasts. they are they who have attained in different ways to this cultivation of their moral powers, and so to the perception of god. the reason why they are enthusiasts is that they have cultivated these powers alone; if they had, with them, trained all their intellectual powers, they would have been wise, devout men, newtons, fénelons, channings. the enthusiast, enraptured with the splendour of his discovery, imagines that whosoever would make the same must think as he has thought. in his wanderings he has come out upon the shore of the ocean and, astonished, he believes you must walk through the same woods, climb the same mountains and be led by the same guide. meantime the wise christian sees and rejoices in the evidence brought by so many and independent witnesses that the ocean has been discovered. the swedenborgian thinks himself wholly different and infinitely more favoured than the quaker or the methodist. yet is nothing more like than the mode in which they severally describe this common experience. their likeness is greater than their difference. x 1830) be yourself 319 november 5, 1830. when a man has got to a certain point in his career of truth he becomes conscious forevermore that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that what he can get out of his plot of ground by the sweat of his brow is his meat, and though the wide universe is full of good, not a particle can he add to himself but through his toil bestowed on this spot. it looks to him indeed a little spot, a poor barren possession, filled with thorns, and a lurking place for adders and apes and wolves. but cultivation will work wonders. it will enlarge to his eye as it is explored. that little nook will swell to a world of light and power and love. november 10, 1830. i thought to-day, in reading wayland's excellent sermon on sunday schools, that no better illustration could be to my doctrine of perseverance preached some time ago than this, that whenever a man first perceives the supposed necessity of the use of ardent spirits throughout the community to vanish in his own mind — when first he sees in his thought the custom of drinking separate itself from the idea of society, and feels for the first time satisfied that it is a 320 journal (age 27 ou icething wholly accidental and not necessary, then the empire of intemperance receives a fatal blow. as an illustration of persistency it should be the condition of the thought, that it comes in the prosecution of the project of reform; then, when he has got to that point, he is safe and victorious. and is not this the history of all advancement? we look at good and ill which grows together as indissolubly connected: if an improvement takes place in our own mind, we get a glimpse of an almost imperceptible line that separates the nature of the thing from the evil admixture. by a more diligent inspection that division will farther appear, till it peels off like dead bark. this is the sense of coleridge's urged distinction between the similar and the same. this is the merit of every reformer. one man talks of the abolition of slavery with perfect coolness, whilst all around him sneer or roar at his ludicrous benevolence. they with their sinful eyes cannot see society without slaves. he sees distinctly the difference, and knows that the crime is unnecessary. and this is the progress of every soul. what it joined before, it now severs, and sin and error are perpetually falling away from the eternal soul. 1830] wise severing 321 all our knowledge comes in this way. it is when a man perceives the essential distinctness of his mind and his body that he is a metaphysician. it is when the sword of the spirit doth divide his flesh and his spirit, that he perceives the immortality of his soul. there is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth ; it is the beginning of wisdom. there is a time when a man separates god from his works by a process of his own mind, and sees clearly that matter is one thing and the order and forms of matter another. to the matter of patriotism, remember the saying of anaxagoras when blamed for neglecting his country, “wrong me not; my greatest care is my country,” pointing to heaven. the law is a sort of god or divine man to men, being the sense of equity or conscience applied, as close as men can, to the action of men. yet is it plainly impossible, without prophecy, to fit it to all exigencies. it is for its spirit, for this human heart that is in it, that it has our reverence. 322 (age 27 journal s means and ends. goodness consists in seeking goodness for its own sake. heaven is not something else than virtue. truth must be sought, not for farther ends, but must be the ultimate end. prayer too finds the end in the means. the world is driving ever at ulterior ends; the wise man is content to study the present event, and to disclose a world of valuable conclusions in the facts which the vulgar are shoving aside as the mere obstacles, scaffolding, steps, over which they must arrive at bread and wine. i suppose most young men had rather run in debt or tell a lie than be known by the most elegant young man of their acquaintance to have made their dinner on onions from economy. yet this last had been the act of epaminondas, of scipio, of regulus, of socrates, of alfred, of sidney, of washington, of every great gentleman, persian, greek or saxon, that ever lived; and the first would have been the action of commodus, of chiffinch, of rochester, of bonaparte, of byron, of brummel. virtue is the only gentility. as soon as a young man is found to be incapable of virtue he should be bound out, as montaigne says, prentice to make mince pies in some good town, though he were son of a duke. 1830] god in the soul 323 plotinus said as follows: “ the animal life is aeriform and must be supplied with air. the eye is soliform and must be supplied with the sun. the soul is truth-like and must be fed with truth.” november 29. smother no dictate of your soul, but indulge 1 it. there are passages in the history of jesus which to some minds seem defects in his character. probably a more full apprehension of his history will show you these passages in a more agreeable light. meantime count them defects, and do not stifle your moral faculty, and force it to call what it thinks evil, good. (for there is no being in the universe whose integrity is so precious to you as that of your soul. november 30, 1830. one mind may hold europe in counterpoise. locke and poland. december 10, 1830. | god is the substratum of all souls. is not that the solution of the riddle of sympathy? it is worms and flesh in us that fear or sympathize with worms and flesh, and god only within that worships god of the universe. 324 journal (age 27 | is it not remarked by us that always we endeavour to find ourselves in other men? all our honest conversation aims at this point, to find the conviction in him that has appeared in me. eloquence is the universal speech. bad stammering, vulgar talk, is the issue of self in the individual. as fast as his nature rises, and truth appears, and good is sought, so fast he loses mal-loquence in eloquence. for 't is noticed that all eloquence is uniform, one. everything bad is individual, idiosyncratic. everything good is universal nature. wrong is particular. right is universal. an end, ist hand clarte re on e le st ot it has often occurred to me that a man was a reflection of my own self. i understand his smile and his scowl. so far we go along together and have one nature. the moment i do not understand him, the moment he departs from me, i am pained, for i feel that either he is wrong or i am. as long as that difference subsists, so long will our uneasiness on that point. it is an unshaken conviction of both, that both cannot be right. an injury aimed at his body is individual, or at any of his opinions of institutions. but an assault upon his truth strikes me and every man ass man 1830) internal evidence 325 as hard as it does him. a false sentiment has no country. it makes no difference whether it was uttered in france or germany, in cambridge or in newgate. every soul to whom it comes, feels the wound, and resists the enemy as if it were personal to itself alone. ... december 11. internal evidence outweighs all other to the inner mand if the whole history of the new testament had perished, and its teachings remained, the spirituality of paul, the grave, considerate, unerring advice of james would take the same rank with me that now they do. i should say, as now i say, this certainly is the greatest height to which the religious principle of human nature has ever been carried, and it has the total suffrage of my soul to its truth, whether the miracle . was wrought, as is pretended, or not. if it had not, i should yield to hume or any one that this, like all other miracle accounts, was probably false. as it is true, the miracle falls in with and confirms it. ... december 21, 1830. when a truth is presented, it always brings its own authority, doth it not? if anyone, denying jesus, should bring me more truth, i cannot 326 [age 27 journal help receiving it also. i do not wish to make disagreeable or impossible suppositions, but say it for the extreme case. the value of christianity must be shown, must it not, by showing the amount of truth it has brought? i am raised by the reception of a great principle to its height. and he who communicates, and applies, and embodies, a great principle for me, is my redeemer from the evil to which the want of it would have led me. bacon showed the inanity of science not founded on observation. so he is the restorer of science. he has not saved my life; he has not saved my estate ; but he has saved me from one error, and to that degree is he honourable in my mind. newton showed the law of gravity, and has directed all men to what will be true and will be false touching bodies, and so has saved a thousand errors. december 22, 1830. forefathers' day; 3 days more, christmas. a man will make a better celebration of a holy day by clearing one principle than all the spruce and games and solemnities of catholic or episcopal europe united. the pain that a commandment gives us should be more welcome than all the pleasures of sin, for 'tis a pledge and a measure of the good we . 1830] the great facts 327 are capable of, of the excellency of the nature. but men forget this and take it wrong. december 23. the simplest facts are the most awful. is it not the noblest fact with which we are acquainted that we are capable of being addressed on moral grounds? this fact is so close to the first fact of our being, that, like the circulation of the blood, or the gravity of bodies, it passes long unnoticed from the circumstance of its omnipresence. december 29, 1830. hydriotaphia of sir thomas browne smells in every word of the sepulchre. “that great antiquity, america, lay buried for thousands of years, and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us.”. “a gem of the old rock, adamas de rupe veteri praestantissimus.” “we, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that is past a moment,” p. 95. “to be studied by antiquaries who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations 328 (age 27 journal unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages," – p. 96. “there is no antidote against the opium of time.” authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1830 thales, anaximander, pythagoras, xenophanes, anaximenes, heraclitus, anaxagoras, democritus, empedocles, zeno, apud de gérando, histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie; tertullian, apud life of william penn by clarkson; plotinus; shakspeare ; bacon; donne ; george herbert ; samuel daniel ; sir thomas browne, hydriotapbia; milton; bunyan; locke; newton; scougal, life of god in the soul of man; fénelon; swift ; montesquieu ; spence, anecdotes, observations, etc.; dr. johnson ; hume, essays; huber, nouvelles observations sur les abeilles; goethe, wilhelm meister (carlyle's translation); clarkson, life of william penn; 1830] reading 329 alison, on the nature and principles of taste; paley ; dugald stewart; de gérando, systèmes de philosophie, etc.; sermons of greenwood, buckminster, wayland; landor, imaginary conversations ; edinburgh review, on godwin; sampson reed, growth of the mind ; dr. jacob bigelow, botany; webster, reply to hayne. blotting-book iv [this manuscript is hard to deal with. begun in the autumn of 1830, and continued next year, it contains some jottings of later date. these, as far as recognized, are omitted here. the book also is a “double-ender.” there is little original matter, except the hymn, but it seems to the editors well to give some notes and quotations, apparently made in 1830 and 1831, when mr. emerson was introduced by the work of de gérando to the philosophers of the various schools of ancient hellas, and also, through him and anquetil-duperron, learned something of the teachings of confucius and zoroaster. thus he entered on the path that, years later, led to the springs of religion and philosophy in the remote past of the orient. re 330 journal [age 27 at the same period he was forming acquaintance through articles by carlyle and others in frazer's magazine, the foreign review, and other sources, with the german writers, and copied passages from translations of goethe's wilbelm meister, elective affinities and his memoirs by falk; also extracts from lessing, schiller, fichte, and novalis. always curious about advancing science, he read with interest lee's life of cuvier and sir charles bell on the hand. lastly, walter savage landor's imaginary conversations gave him great pleasure and he copied long extracts from them.] october 27, 1830. i begin the histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie par m. de gérando. this leads me in the outset back to bacon. (de augmentis scientiae.) bacon thought that philosophy in the highest sense of the word (prima philosophia) was deficient, by which he meant the great principles that are true in all sciences, in morals and in mechanics. he said (vol. 1, p. 96), “i see sometimes the profounder sort of wits, in handling some particular argument, will now and then draw a bucket of water out of this well for their pre1830) bacon 331 sent use; but the springhead thereof seemeth to me not to have been visited.” by this i understand that generalization which gives the elevation to all the writings of burke, of de staël, and now of sampson reed. his definition of this philosophy is “that it be a receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common and of a higher stage” (vol. 1, p. 95). (metaphysics, in the advancement of learning, is removed from this philosophy and confined within narrower limits, namely, first, to the discovery of the “ form,” that is, the essential nature of physical things, as the nature of whiteness, of heat, of weight; and secondly, the discovery of “final causes," as why we have eyebrows, why the skins of animals are covered with hair, fur, etc.) m.de gérando has understood lord bacon's project of a literary history as intended to develop this highest philosophy rather by furnishing the premises than drawing the conclusion. bacon (lib. 111, cap. 4), in speaking of natural history, proposes to have the fundamental 332 journal (age 27 points of the several sects and philosophies collected, so that men may see the several opinions touching the foundations of nature, not for any exact truth that can be expected in those theories, but because it will be useful to run over so many differing philosophies as so many different glosses or opinions of nature (quarum una fortasse uno loco, alia alio, est emendatior), “whereof it may be every one in some one point hath seen clearer than his fellows.” but he expressly warns that it should " be done distinctly and severally, the philosophies of every one throughout by themselves, and not by titles packed and fagotted up together as hath been done by plutarch.” “for it is the harmony of a philosophy in itself which giveth it light and credence; whereas if it be singled and broken, it will seem more foreign and dissonant." it is this idea which de gérando(eng. vol. vii, p. 113) applies to the other of the prima philosophia, and proposes himself to pursue. considering“ philosophy as the centre in which all the rays of light unite which direct the human mind in its different pursuits,” he says further, “in like manner, the ideas which compose each philosophical doctrine in particular form a body and a whole by the connexion which they have in 1830) de gerando 333 the mind of him who has conceived them. every doctrine has then in itself its fundamental conditions which determine both the development of its details and the distinctive character of its face, so to speak, and the influence which it exerts around it.” “if then,” continues the baron, “there are in philosophy a small number of questions which, lying at the foundation of all the rest, should exercise over them a natural influence, and which should furnish the last data necessary to their solution; if the opinions which philosophers have formed respecting this small number of primary questions ought to determine by a secret or manifest consequence the whole after-course of their opinions by fixing the direction of their ideas, if these fundamental questions, i say, could be known (reconnues), enumerated, strictly defined, we should have found a simple and sure means of marking in a general manner the primary conditions, the essential characteristics of each doctrine, we might find the terms which compose one of the most important laws of the intellectual world.” the first distinction that is made is that of material and work: changes, not creation. first come the cosmogonies. indians, chinese, es 334 journal (age 27 chaldeans, egyptians, phænicians, persians, have a striking sameness in them, but all these are an intellectual offspring ; no utility, mere curiosity. next come theogonies, fruit of these, or rather, their expression. for to all the great powers and changes they give a genius, or god, and presently recite the history of world by a genealogy of gods. then, system of emanations. idealism a primeval theory. the mahabarat, one of the sacred books of india, puts in the mouth of jschak palak these express words; “ the senses are nothing but the souls instrument of action; no knowledge can come to the soul by their channel (v. l'oupnek-hat, par anquetil-duperron, vol. i, p. 467). the rule “ do as you would be done by” is found in the “invariable medium” of the chinese, but thrown into the 3d paragraph of the 3d chap. so the invariable milieu begins with these promising definitions. “the order established by heaven is called nature. what is conformed to nature is called law, the establishment of law (in the mind?) is called instruction.” (this “ invariable milieu” m. abel remusat has translated into french in tome ii. des notices des manuscrits, 1818.) “what is pure thought? 1830] idealism 335 that which has for object the beginning of things.” la isechné, ch. viii, dans le žendavesta, par anquetil-duperron, vol. 1, 2d part, p. 141. crea peter hunt's' uncle, sitting by his fire in chelmsford, asked his nephew how he knew the tongs and shovel which he handled were actually there. the gnostics removed the sufferings of christ from him, the æon, to the body. and there is some confused idealism in the conversation of a soldier with geo. fox (sewell's history of the quakers, vol. 1, p. 85). “christ did not suffer outwardly,” said fox. [the soldier asked him] “whether there were not jews, chief priests and pilate outwardly? ” idealism seems a preparation for a strictly i benjamin peter hunt was a boy who attended the country school in chelmsford taught by emerson in 1825, of whom the latter said, “ he was a philosopher whose conversation made all the social comfort i had." in 1860, hunt, living in philadelphia, wrote to his old schoolmaster, “it is now thirty-five years since you began your teachings to me, and, with the exception of those of the great, rough, honest, impartial world, i think they have been the best which i ever received from any man whom i have personally known.” 336 journal (age 27 moral life, and so skepticism seems necessary for a universal holiness. first class; the ionian school. thales begins the catalogue of acknowledged philosophers. he taught that “water was the beginning of all things.” “in the liquid or fluid state,” saith de gérando, “all chemical changes take place, and it is in that same state that substances unite to, and identify themselves with organized bodies —” thales was the first physician opposed to metaphysicians; the newton who called attention from speculation to experience. next great principle of thales ; the essence of the soul is motion, kuvýtikóv ti, å elklvýtlkov, aitokivýtlkov, i. e., thinks de gérando, that he “ taught the essence of the soul consisted in free activity.” thus we can make mouse mean mountain everywhere. de gérando thinks that he did not make first principle (äpxn) mean both element and cause, but only element, for he was physic, not metaphysic, studying laws of nature and not theology, and excluding divinity by supplying second causes for all particular phenomena. he incurred the reproach common to most physical philosophers, of atheism. yet doth it appear that, over all this matter, he can 1830) greek philosophers 337 set a universal cause, and diogenes laertius and plutarch give these three maxims to him; god is the oldest, for be was not made. the world is the most perfect, for it is the work of god. no action, no thought even is bid from god. anaximander made this maxim, nothing can come of nothing, and de gérando says that this was the pivot on which long greek philosophy turned. ... the next wondrous eruption of anaximander was the infinite is the beginning of all things ; an infinite altogether immutable and immense. and surely such transcendentalism shows how close is the first and that last step of philosophy. anaximenes. hermotimus of clazomene. anaxagoras. plutarch remarks “that the contemporaries of anaxagoras gave him the surname of volls (mind) because he first had disengaged it from all mixture, presented it in all its simplicity, and its purity, and placed it at the summits of all being." i think this a very remarkable passage of the history of philosophy, as it casts light upon the disengagement also of the idea of god; for the greatest problem of the history of opinions is whether this idea is reasoned out or revealed. s reason re 338 [age 27 journal anaxagoras taught at athens, but is reckoned in the ionian school because, like them, he cultivated the physical sciences. but the great merit of anaxagoras is thus told. whilst the system of emanations, the systems of pantheism, the opinions of the first ionians themselves, had associated the elementary matter of all things to the first cause of all production, and thus conceive the divinity as the universal soul, the soul of the world, the world itself as an animated whole identical in some sort with its author, anaxagoras first detached, separated with precision and neatness these two notions until then confounded. the universe is in his eyes an effect wholly distinct from its cause. ; this cause has nothing common with the rest : of beings. it hath its peculiar nature, one, eternal, acts on the world as workman on materials. so the idea of the first cause, which until then was essentially defined by the attribute of power, was determined by anaxagoras to receive chiefly the attribute of intelligence. de gérando's authorities are aristotle, de anima, 1, 3. (metaphys, 1, 3.) plutarch, pericles, and cicero, de natura deorum. until him, a plurality of gods. he first announced that the phenomena of the universe are amo est 1830) greek philosophers 339 strictly connected, that they form one whole, that one order reigns, that its unity supposes one mind which ordains it. vide aristotle, de anima, 1, 1. metaph. 1, 3. by banishing god from each detail, magic, genii, etc., anaxagoras was able to make this demonstration of god over all. superstition opposes truth. anaxagoras said, one single soul ran through all being, ordering matter, but intimately present to man. he said moreover that the senses were little to be trusted. anaxagoras was a nobleman, but forsook his estate for philosophy, was friend of phidias and pericles, and said that his country, (pointing upward) was very dear to him. diogenes of apollonia in crete, another ionian philosopher, rather went backward from anaxagoras, confounding cause with matter. this materialism of theirs seemed to be incapacity of conceiving cause or principle, except as inherent in real substance; it was a substance of great subtilty expanded. archelaus of miletus also retrograded. in morals, he taught hobbism: “ that men are born of the earth, have built cities, formed arts, made laws; the difference between just and 1 unjust is not founded in nature, but in positive laws.” 340 journal (age 27 second class; the italian school. pythagoras taught that numbers were the principles of things; the monad one, eternal, simple, perfect; the dyad imperfect, matter, chaos. “beings are bound together by a chain of relations parallel or like to those which unite numbers. all these relations converge to one centre. world forms one whole. symmetry presides over the systems of their dependence and their connexion.” the pythagoreans first gave the name koouos to the world — beauty. their notions of god were more material than the ionians --soul of the world again — placed him at the centre. mystics and spiritualizers were they; hierarchies of genii; much importance to dreams and predictions, and pythagoras himself pretended to be an augur. but they bought this tribute paid to vulgar superstitions by fine notions of providence. philolaus says, “we are slaves, property of the gods; they govern us, watch us, supply our wants.” they first gave virtue this definition, virtue is a harmony. moderation, thought pythagoras, the essential character of virtue; the empire over self to be i “a subtle chain of countless rings the next unto the farthest brings,” etc. see poems, “ mayday.” 1830) greek philosophers 341 the means of obtaining it; inward peace as the fruit. he gave chiefly practical precepts, dietetic, etc., but iamblichus attributed this to him, “the love of truth and the zeal of good are the most precious present which god has been able to grant to man.” pythagorean opinions. “the soul is an emanation of the divinity, a part of the soul of the world, a ray from the source of light. it comes from without into the human body, as into a momentary abode, it goes out of it anew; it wanders in ethereal regions, it returns to visit it; it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.” (“man has some affinity not only with gods, but with animals; one mind runs through the universe.") “the soul breathes the representations of the images of things as a sort of air.” “reason contemplates all nature, it has a certain affinity with it. as light is perceived by the eye, sound by the ear, because of affinity between object and organ; so the universality of nature by reason, because of a consanguinity betwixt them.” archytas of tarentum has left this great maxim that “virtue ought to be sought for itself,” also that “ god is the source and means and end of ii, 342 [age 27 journal all that is conformed to justice and reason.” and a profound view of the double operation of the understanding. “what can decompound all particulars contained in a general principle, can arrive at truth and wisdom ; can, in these notions, in a sort of mirror, behold god and the series of dependent beings." eudoxus said “ pleasure is the supreme good,” but was a good man. third school; eleatic. the eleatics asked why things are? and sought the answer in the soul only, and wished to find the essence of things. other philosophers demanded, “what is the generation of things?” xenophanes demanded, “ is there really any generation ?” ex nihilo nil fit, said thales, and xenophanes said therefore, “one thing can never come from another thing." like must produce like. then all is eternal. “thought," said xenophanes, “is the only real substance.” he gave to the universe only a phenomenal value. “god is one ; there cannot be but one god. he is always like himself. he cannot be conceived under the human form; he is perfect. we can't apply to him either motion or limit. but he is not immoveable nor infinite,” i. e., 1830] greek philosophers 343 motion and limit as they belong to matter have no relation to god's attributes. said zenny, then, not wisely distributed things into four elements, etc., and entitled himself to the name of a neptunian geologist. “ xenophanes (said], " none perceives by the senses things as they are. we must not then begin from these opinions, got we know not how, but from what is stable, from what reason discovers." in the last part of his life he said, “ he could not be so happy as to know anything certainly. whichever side he looked all ran to unity – there was but one substance." and sextus empiricus has preserved these words from his poem on nature which are as skeptical as one could desire. “no man knows anything certain touching the gods, nor upon what i say upon the universal whole. none can. for if one should chance upon the truth be could not know that he had obtained it; but opinion spreads her veil over all things.” but it was of the external world, and never of metaphysical truths, that he was skeptical, saith de gérando. it was idealism which he maintained. parmenides, poem on nature. “ thought and the object of thought are but 344 (age 27 journal one.” these philosophers had confounded the abstract notion of being with its objective reality and thought they could conclude from one to the other. this great mistake has misled a number of metaphysicians down to descartes himself, says de gérando. he was the idealist of antiquity. there began from this eleatic school the first philosophical dispute, this concerning the senses and the existence of matter. zeno was charged with the defence of the eleatics against the dogmatists, who relied of course on common sense and conscience. heraclitus said this good thing: that“a great variety of knowledge did not make wisdom, but it consisted in discovering the law which governs all things.” “all nature is governed by constant laws. the phenomena themselves, which appear discordant, concur in the harmony of the whole. it is an accord which results from discords. meantime all change. attraction, repulsion.” “the same cannot be conceived except by the same.” “conception cannot be except by a similitude between the object and the subject"; therefore reject the testimony of the senses, and hear reason. 1830) greek philosophers 345 still, he said that the senses were open canals through which we inhale the divine reason. hence also from this admission to the divine he founded the authority of common sense. “the judgments in which all men agree are a certain testimony of truth. that common light which enlightens all at once is only the divine reason spread through all thinking beings by an immediate effusion.” “ the understanding represents the march of the universe, such, as it has been preserved by memory; we arrive then, at truth, when we borrow from memory the faithful tablet of which the deposit is trusted to it. wisdom is then accessible to all men.” virtue consists in governing the passions; wisdom in fidelity to what is true. the end of man is his own satisfaction. the body is to be used as an instrument only. human laws receive their force from this divine law which rules all at its touch, which triumphs over all. hippocrates, the physician, [was] his disciple, an exact experimental philosopher. hippocrates is called the result, the pride of the eleatic school, pythagoras of the italian, thales of the ionian. · always utility gives the medal, even though philosophers are the school-committee. tull. 346 [age 27 journal hymn [hymn]" there is in all the sons of men a love that in the spirit dwells, that panteth after things unseen, and tidings of the future tells. and god hath built his altar here to keep this fire of faith alive and set his priests in holy fear to speak the truth — for truth to strive. and hither come the pensive train, of rich and poor, of young and old, of ardent youths untouched by pain, of thoughtful maids and manhood bold. they seek a friend to speak the word already trembling on their tongue, i this hymn was probably the first trial for that beginning "we love the venerable house our fathers built to god," which was sung at the ordination of the rev. chandler robbins, mr. emerson's successor in the second church. both hymns are printed in the centenary edition of the poems. in this hymn, in the 5th stanza the original wording “ humble sorrow's door” is given, as better than that found in a later verse-book, — “meek contrition's door," the form in the volume referred to. e. w. e. 1830] hymn — extracts 347 to touch with prophet's hand the chord which god in human hearts hath strung. to speak the plain reproof of sin that sounded in the soul before, and bid them let the angels in that knock at humble sorrow's door. sole source of light and hope assured, o touch thy servant's lips with power, so shall he speak to us the word thyself dost give forevermore. “man is a microcosm.” aristotle. “ knowing the heart of man is set to be the centre of this world, about the which these revolutions of disturbances still roll; where all the aspects of misery predominate ; whose strong effects are such as he must bear, being helpless to redress : and that unless above himself he can erect himself, how poor a thing is man!” samuel daniel. “ the recluse hermit oft-times more doth know of the world's inmost wheels than worldlings can; 348 journal (age 27 as man is of the world, the heart of man is an epitome of god's great book of creatures, and men need no further look.” donne. he is in little all the sphere. oh mighty love! man is one world, and hath another to attend him. herbert. “ all things are yours.” st. paul. “ there is a secret attraction towards all points, from within us, diverging from an infinitely deep centre.” novalis. “what good were it for me to manufacture perfect iron, while my own breast is full of dross? what would it stead me to put properties of land in order, while i am at variance with myself?” goethe, letter to werner. “if i wished to find some real inspiration, some profound sentiment, some just and striking reflexions for my poetical compositions, i saw that i must draw them from my own bosom.” goethe's memoirs. 1830] extracts 349 “i, for my share, cannot understand how men have made themselves believe that god speaks to us through books and histories. the man to whom the universe does not reveal directly what relation it has to him, whose heart does not tell him what he owes himself and others, — that man will scarcely learn it out of books, which generally do little more than give our errors names.” wilhelm meister. “every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand different things,the learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish, infancy and age have come in turn, generally without having the least suspicion of it, to bring me the offering of their thoughts, their faculties, their experience; often they have sowed the harvest i have reaped; my work is that of an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature; it bears the name of goethe.” “ the smallest production of nature has the circle of its completeness within itself, and i have only need of eyes to see with, in order to discover the relative proportions. i am perfectly 350 journal [age 27 sure that within this circle, however narrow, an entirely genuine existence is enclosed. a work of art, on the other hand, has its completeness out of itself ; the best lies in the idea of the artist which he seldom or never reaches ; all the rest lies in certain conventional rules which are indeed derived from the nature of art and of mechanical processes, but still are not so easy to decipher as the laws of living nature. in works of art, there is much that is traditional; the works of nature are ever a freshly uttered word of god.” goethe. 20 “the great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. it is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the . laws and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. it is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. it is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of deceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from what he is. it is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him.” “... my thoughts are my company. ...” landor. 1830] extracts 351 “character is a perfectly educated will." novalis. “ the gift of bearing to be contradicted, is, generally speaking, possessed only by the dead. ..." lessing. [a very long extract from goethe's wilhelm meister, the wanderjabre, on the three true religions is given. then follows (from lee's life of cuvier) this statement of his fourfold division of the animal kingdom.] “ there exist in nature four principal forms or general plans according to which all animals seem to have been modelled, and the ulterior divisions of which, whatever name the naturalist may apply to them, are comparatively but slight modifications founded on the development or addition of certain parts which do not change the essence of the plan.” 1. man, and animals like him ; 2. molluscous animals; 3. insects and worms; 4. radiated animals. 352 journal [age 27 “cuvier rejects the idea of a scale of beings as not founded in nature, but urges the “necessity of considering each being, each group of beings, by itself, and not to make abstraction of any of its affinities or any of the links which attach it either to the beings nearest to it or the most distant from it.' the true method is to view each being in the midst of all others : it shows all the radiations by which it is more or less closely linked with that immense net-work which constitutes organized nature.” lee's life of cuvier. journal xxii from ` 1831 january 10, 1831. ... i am not to help my neighbour because he is importunate, nor because he wants; (that does not express his claim on me) but because he is god's creature, as i am: and i have received all, and only hold all i have as occasion of exercising affections. his claim on me is through god, but this claim is nearest of any, for the bible teaches us that god is in us, and in all, and there is therefore something in him which is another and the same as myself. i find myself in my neighbour, and the object of a charity is not to relieve want as an end, but by means of relieving that want, to justify myself to himself, or to fill both of us with god's approbation. he only is a perfect man through whom god's spirit blows unobstructed, who seeks with all his powers god's ends, seeks usefulness with every muscle, seeks truth in every thought. me a 354 journal [age 27 herein may be seen all the evil of the great controversy about faith and works. works done as unto the lord, and not unto men, contain faith; and he would be beside himself who should lift a finger against such. easo great men are great unto men, and not unto the lord, and that is the reason why they are so much suspected. the greatest man is he that is not man at all, but merges his human will in the divine and is merely an image of god. there is a greatness, however, that has been sometimes seen among the gladiators on our political arena, here and in england. i mean that elevation of reason that sees clearly great principles, and trusts magnanimously to them in the face of present odium, because it has some insight into their wholesome nature, and is sure they will work good in the end, and so justify themselves to the times and to posterity. this we call noble, and do not grudge our applause. it takes advantage of that moral advancement which the world has made, and is a tribute to that. this has been done by the pitts and burkes and websters, and is second only to the praise of godliness. they do not ur 1831) ethics and doctrines 355 act as unto men as they are, but to men as they ought to be, and as some are. if there were no good men, they would not thus act, and they will not now act thus, steadily, invariably. if they acted to the lord, they would thus act always, and they would find this course of action full of sweetness, and not full of chagrin, as burke confesses it is. january 24, 1831. i believe it is true that the devout theist and the devout christian will agree fully as to their duty. the preceptive part of christianity enjoins no rules of action which are not binding on the theist. it enjoins love of relations, friends, country, mankind, and the strictest virtues, according to the ancient idea of virtue ; but with this first and last injunction, that they should be done as unto god. if this is so, then to be an enemy to christianity is to be an enemy to one's own self. let nobody suppose that what are by some sects called the peculiar, essential doctrines of christianity — regeneration, justification by faith — make an exception to this remark, or are not enjoined by the conscience. these doctrines, like everything in dispute, have been strained a great way, yea, out of all shape, but en 356 [age 27 journal they are originally solemn verities, and in that shape, if presented by an ancient philosopher, would have to a sound mind absolute authority. ellen tucker emerson died, 8th february, tuesday morning, 9 o'clock. ... chardon st., february 13, 1831. five days are wasted since ellen went to heaven to see, to know, to worship, to love, to intercede. ... reunite us, o thou father of our spirits. there is that which passes away and never returns. this miserable apathy, i know, may wear off. i almost fear when it will. old duties will present themselves with no more repulsive face. i shall go again among my friends with a tranquil countenance. again i shall be amused, i shall stoop again to little hopes and little fears and forget the graveyard. but will the dead be restored to me? will the eye that was closed on tuesday ever beam again in the fulness of love on me? shall i ever again be able to connect the face of outward nature, the mists of the morn, the star of eve, the flowers, and all poetry, with the heart and life of an enchanting friend? no. there is one birth, and one baptism, and one 1831] ellen's death 357 first love, and the affections cannot keep their youth any more than men. her end was blessed and a fit termination to such a career. she prayed that god would speedily release her from her body, and that she might not make this prayer to be rid of her pains,“ but because thy favour is better than life.” “take me, o god, to thyself,” was frequently on her lips. never anyone spake with greater simplicity or cheerfulness of dying. she said, “i pray for sincerity, and that i may not talk, but may realize what i say.” she did not think she had a wish to get well. ... heu! quantominus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse! february 23, 1831. the questions that come to me this evening are few and simple. it is worth recording that plotinus said, “ of the unity of god, nothing can be predicated, neither being, nor essence, nor life, for it is above all these.” grand it is to recognize the truth of this and of every one of that first class of truths which are necessary. thus, “design proves a designer,” “ like must know like,” or “the -same can only be known by the same,” out of 358 [age 27 journal which come the propositions in ethics, “si vis amari, ama,” and “god without can only be known by god within,” and “the scriptures can be explained only by that spirit which dictated them,” and a thousand sayings more which have a quasi truth instantly to the ear, the real truth of which is this elementary fact in all,“ like must know like.” it would be well for every mind to collect with care every truth of this kind he may meet, and make a catalogue of “necessary truths.” they are scanned and approved by the reason far above the understanding. they are the last facts by which we approximate metaphysically to god. march 13. paul says that his preaching was made effectual to the gentiles by the same spirit as peter's preaching to the circumcision. he saith rightly. there is one light through a thousand stars. there is one spirit through myriad mouths. it will not do to divide or bound what is in itself infinite. every word of truth that is spoken by man's lips is from god. every thought that is true is from god. every right act is from god. all these are as much done by his spirit as the miracle of the pentecost, they are of the same sort as that influence. the apostle who prophe1831] god the holy ghost 359 sied or who wrought a miracle, felt that his word or his act was as true to the occasion as he did when he lifted bread to his mouth that he might eat. the prophet understood his prediction; the apostle willed the cure of the cripple. if you ask how he wrought the miracle, i ask how you lift your arm. by god. i suppose that miraculous power is only more power. i suppose it is strictly of the same kind, for i suppose there is but one kind. there is but one source of power, that is god. rarm the reason why i insist on this uniformity and universality of spiritual influence is because any other view that can be taken of the holy ghost is idolatrous. if it be received into the mind as a person and separated from god and god's common operation, that moment the idea of god receives a wound in you. all that is added to the new power is taken from him. a man tells me that the spirit has been poured out in a great reformation. does he mean anything more or anything different from saying that god, in the infinite variety of his accustomed ways, has made some men better? if he does mean differently, he means wrong. does he speak so fervently of the spirit as to imply more? i say 360 [age 27 journal he is doing injury to his own mind, and breaking up the thought of god into fragments; literally he is changing the glory of the incorruptible god into idols, made like unto good yet corruptible men. but, it will be said, the comforter, the advocate whom the saviour speaks of, — did he mean nothing? truly he meant what he said, the comforter whom the father will send you, that is the spirit of truth. ... i know well ... many will not fail to say; — to what purpose is this attempt to explain away so safe and holy a doctrine as that of the holy spirit? why unsettle or disturb a faith which presents to many minds a helpful medium by which they approach the idea of god? and this question i will meet. it is because i think the popular views of this principle are pernicious, because it does put a medium, because it removes the idea of god from the mind. it leaves some events, some things, some thoughts, out of the power of him who causes every event, every flower, every thought. the tremendous idea, as i may well call it, of god, is screened from the soul. men are made to feel as if they ate their dinner and committed their common sins some1831] the universal spirit 361 where in the purlieus of the creation, behind a screen, for the spirit of god works in a church, or in judea, and not in the vulgar affairs of every day. the spirit of god teaches us, on the contrary, that not a star rolls in space, that not a pulse beats in a single heart, not a bird drops from the bough, not an atom moves throughout the wide universe, but is bound in the chains of his omnipotent thought, — nota lawless particle and least of all can we believe — reason will not let us — that the presiding creator commands all matter and never descends into the secret chambers of the soul. there he is most present. the soul rules over matter. matter may pass away like a mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of god, as a mist is absorbed into the heat of the sun; but the soul is the kingdom of god: the abode of love, of truth, of virtue. the bringing all minds into union with him is the work which god worketh from age to age. concord, march 4. our goodness is so low that it scarce seems to approximate to truth, and our knowledge so scanty that it does not approximate to virtue. but in god they are one. he is perfectly wise because he is perfectly good; and perfectly good 362 journal [age 27 because he is perfectly wise. ... we say of a bad man that he will not believe because he cannot understand the great action of a moral hero. did we ever see an exhibition of intellectual power by a good man that was not aided, enforced, and that in the intellectual truth too, by his goodness ? milton, burke, and webster get most of their wisdom from the heart. ... v the religion that is afraid of science dishonours god and commits suicide. it acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of god's empire, but is not the immutable universal law. every influx of atheism, of scepticism, is thus made useful, as a mercury pill, assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth, and itself is presently purged into the draught. ... keep the soul always turned to god. nothing so vast but feel that he contains it. if your idea of him is dim or perplexed, pray and think and act more. it is the education of the soul. it is the sure way of individual increase. sincerity is always holy and always strong. come good or ill, the pure in heart are in the right way. and presently and often, you shall be rewarded with clearer perception, the sense of more 1831] genius is reception 363 intimate communion. dear friendship or solitary piety is often conscious that god's approbation rests upon it. ... voltaire forsook good, aiming at truth, and grew up half, or less than half, a man, — a colourless plant grown in the dark. and many a religionist hurts the cause of religion by the opposite error. it is all reception. more genius does not increase the individuality, but the community of each mind. in the wisdom or fancy (which is oft wisdom) of bacon and shakspeare we do not admire an arbitrary, alien creation, but we have surprize at finding ourselves, at recognizing our own truth in that wild unacquainted field. who knows that he has got all the truth he might have? who dares to think he has got all the good he might have? we dip our finger-tips in the sea that would make us invulnerable if we would plunge and swim. out upon the cold, hard-eyed zealot whose whole religion and whole sect and all his missions and all his prodigality of means go to stifle the flame of holy love which young and heroic minds are nourishing, go to traduce the spirit of man. 364 journal [age 27 all wisdom, all genius, is reception. the more perfect the character and the more rich the gifts, the more would the individual seem sunk, and the more unmixed would the truth he possessed appear. he would exist merely to impart and to hang on the first cause, a socrates, a jesus. the moment you describe milton's verse you use words implying, not creation, but increased perception, second-sight knowledge of what is, beyond the ken of others. yet these are prophecy. ... various psychological facts to be remembered: socrates's abstraction ; anaxagoras ; hermotimus burned in a trance ; plotinus; marivaux' description of inequality of mental states; newton's saying, that attention to what was true is all; shakspeare and bacon as attentive to what is true as kirby or swammerdam. whole zeal of opposers of one uniform ; spiritual influence proceeds [not?] from inattention to the strictly divine character of ordinary phenomena. all is miracle, and the mind revolts at representations of two kinds of miracle. opus quod deus operatur a primordio usque ad finem. 1831] live forever 365 will god work only in geology and not come into secret chambers of spirit? seek to dwell with god, o man.' ... let all the common duties derive dignity from the dedication to the most high. ... live forever shall be writ on every thought. a day will not suffice; but form habits of grand life, form yourself, your affections, your friendin these years it was more and more impressed on emerson that nature spoke by parables — the facts that met the eye of the dullest even at every turn — to man's spirit, and thus that religion was revealed to him each hour and not merely in past centuries. he began to read books on science with keen interest. here are some notes written on a loose bit of paper, shut into this journal: — “ it was a resurrection in miniature,” said cuvier. sir james hall and gregory watt set out to see how the world was made, — basalt and sand stone. as to burning out coal, we will warm the world with grindstones by and by. a bubble of water, a grain of gunpowder. a shell may teach more than a range of mountains. heat keeps the earth from assuming the shape of a small crystal. expansion of water by freezing. man comes in and turns the fishes out. fishes and their senses fit for their element. atomic theory. water the mirror, the solvent, the engincer, the presser, the scavenger. 366 journal [age 27 ships, your charities, your talk, your commercial dealings, on principles so vast it will infuse a mighty soul into them all. god will be felt. cannot a mind thus formed, or reformed, better understand a science or an honest art than another ? can it not acquire such self-subsistence as to give, not take, character from its neighbourhood? the imputation to which priests have always been subjected is that their private and their public discourses differ, that whilst they say one thing formally, they sympathize fully with other men in private, and reason and apprehend or regret the same trivial inconveniences as they. ... now this is the fault of the priest in part, in part the fault of man, and in part the mistake of the censurer. who expects that the worshipper of god should be wholly grave, overlooks a great part of nature. a grave man is no more a perfect character than a jester. there are many truths manifested by the ridiculous. and in intelligent society, abundance of humour and wit will appear. no one can take sufficiently generous views of providence, none can go out into the fields and see the rejoicing beauties of morning and of spring, or enter an evening party, without feeling that god never meant that his can 1831] country life 367 children should shun each other or should wear a sad countenance. written at chardon st., boston spring of 1831 dear brother, would you know the life, please god, that i would lead ? on the first wheels that quit this weary town v over yon western bridges i would ride, and with a cheerful benison forsake each street and spire and roof, incontinent. then would i seek where god would guide my steps amid the mountain shires, hants, franklin, berks, where down the rock ravine a river roars even from a brook, and where old woods, not tamed and cleared, cumber the ground with their centennial wrecks. find me a slope where i can feel the sun, and mark the rising of the early stars. there will i bring my books,my household gods, the reliquaries of my dead saint, and dwell in the sweet odour of her memory. then in the uncouth solitude unlock my stock of art, plant dials in the grass, hang in the air a bright thermometer, and aim a telescope at the inviolate sun. 368 (age 27 journal april 1, 1831. the spring is wearing into summer, and life is wearing into death; our friends are forsaking us, our hopes are declining; our riches are wasting; our mortifications are increasing, and is the question settled in our minds, what objects we pursue with undivided aim? have we fixed ourselves by principles? have we planted our stakes? april 3. trust to that prompting within you. no man ever got above it. men have transgressed and hated and blasphemed it, but no man ever sinned but he felt it towering above him and threatening him with ruin. the troubled water reflects no image. when it is calm it shows within it the whole face of heaven. our vices even, prove the being of god, as shadows point in (sic) the direction of the sun. it is a luxury to be understood. e c 1831] fast-day sermon 369 boston, april 4. the days go by, griefs, and simpers, and sloth and disappointments. the dead do not return, and sometimes we are negligent of their image. not of yours, ellen. i know too well who is gone from me. and here come on the formal duties which are to be formally discharged, and in our sluggish minds no sentiment rises to quicken them, they seem — and when the fast comes, what shall i say? it is forgot and despised. it is remainder of an ancient race, and like old furniture to be dispensed with, it is huddled aside by the upstart generation as if it were a disgrace to their refinement and enlarged views of things. perhaps there yet remain in the present race so much kindness, so many kindred to the former, as will not like to see their venerable usages trampled upon. something may be said for those old people, that generous race who delivered two countries, england and america, from tyranny, and founded the institutions by which our fathers and ourselves were reared. it is well to remember the departed. even savages keep their fathers' bones. ... the noble love the dead. the jews were taught in their prosperity to remember the day of small things, to remember 370 journal [age 27 the outcast joseph, and say, “my father was a syrian and went down a bondman to egypt.” they were taught to remember in their prosperity the stranger, and say, “i was a stranger when the lord brought me into this land.” and happy would be the people of this land, if they never grow unmindful of their stock and stem (for we remember that which is like ourselves); if the pride of ancestry from men that loved god and freedom more than worldly good does not fade out of their minds. we may grow so besotted as to think that a disgrace, which is our chiefest ornament, like the stag in the fable. a fop thinks the simple dress and manners of his country-father mean. let us not be such coxcombs as to dishonour the gray hairs of the puritans. i think of them as men whom god honoured with great usefulness. that solid sense, that expansion of the inner man, that greater reverence for history, for law, which they had, may compensate for thrift and mechanical improvements and fine houses which they had not. seriousness may be forgiven to the redeemers of suffering liberty, to the defenders of religion, to the pious men who kept their integrity in an unholy age. danger is when men will not keep 1831] bride of lammermoor 371 quiet, and grow restless from turning the eye out, instead of inward. when those men had asserted their rights they were appeased and still. we think stillness stagnation, and in a man want of thought. it is want of thought that makes this everlasting inquietude. great men; great thoughts have they bequeathed to the world. i will honour their institution, if only because it was theirs. whatever relic precious has come down, i won't spit upon. i will respect this fast as a connecting link by which the posterity are bound to the fathers; as a trump through which the voice of the fathers speaks. as a the bride of lammermoor." april 9. pleasure taken in ravenswood's grand feudal character great. and why? because the contemplation of somebody that we could depend upon, and should without risk admire and love if we should converse with him, is pleasing. the soul i in his speech at the scott centennial celebration in boston, mr. emerson said of this novel, “ the bride of lammermoor almost goes back to æschylus for a counterpart as a painting of fate, — leaving on every reader the impression of the highest and purest tragedy.” (see miscellanies.) the last half of this passage in the journal is used in “ history,” essays ii. 372 (age 27 journal believes in its own immortality and whilst this character floats before it, is already anticipating intercourse with such in other states of being. is it not too, that by the law of sympathy the soul sees in every great character only a mirror in which its own pinched features are expanded to true dimensions, “the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” and does it not find a lesson herein, the suggestion that a mind raised above circumstances may fight this heroic battle day by day; that sir william ashton is only another name for a vulgar temptation; that ravenswood castle is only another name for proud poverty and the “foreign mission of state,” only a bunyan disguise for honest industry; that we may all shoot a wild bull that would toss the good and beautiful, by fighting down the unjust and sensual ; that lucy is another word for fidelity, which is always beautiful and always liable to great suffering in the world, but which is true to itself, and trusts god for success in the abysses of his designs. april 11, 1831. the love of novels is the preference of sentiment to the senses. who are they that love an ideal world and dwell in it? the young, the pure, who believe that love is stronger than lust; who e 1831) novels 373 delight in the belief that virtue may prevail over the power of circumstances. . . . if the principles of jesus could take possession of all breasts, life would not be vile. society would be pure but not puritanical. 'tis because we are such half-faced friends of god that we have this awkwardness of religion, holiness without beauty. in its source it is the all-fair. a community of christians would be a field of splendid occasions, exciting recollections, purposes ; grand characters and epical situations that would leave the loftiest fiction, of prose or verse, far beneath it. ... what you seek in these novels is the friendships you would form with tempers so true and majestic on which an infinite trust might be reposed. they would act for you across the earth and could not be bribed or scared or cooled. now in every mind is the material of all this romance and that is the way in which every mind is heir of heaven. have you not ever felt the pleasure, the tossing, the turmoil of a lofty sentiment? when your pillow would not give rest to your head because of the delight of what you had done or determined. how was life ennobled, and death in that hour lost much of his dread. is there not living in the world the person for 374 journal (age 27 whose advantage you would eagerly have made costliest sacrifices ? that sentiment, that occasion, was the beginning of all good to you, if only persevered in ; and if you have left that way, you have wandered; and how have you fared ? therefore is life stale and cheap. it is wonderful that men do not learn this lesson from love, so familiar in its lower stages, but seldom carried to any heights. “ all other pleasures are not worth its pains.” now a greater heroism than has delighted you in wallace, or richard, or ravenswood, is offered to you. in the common sun and air, in the paved street, in all the details trite of vulgar life you may tread with the step of a king. you may not fight down rivals, but you may live like a wise man among silly people. among gluttons and sycophants you may carry the hand of franklin and the heart of paul. and the good call out great sentiments, as well as give them out. that which is like you in other minds will start from sleep in your presence. april 23. what so fit for man as trust? he did not make himself; he has no finger in the opera1831) trust 375 tions of the universe. ... let him be calm: let him assume the port of a resolved mind that waits an enemy, but does not fear him. this is the first step. then let him open his eye and heart to the good he has received, and put his finger, if he can, on his title-deed. are you so happy? have you so much? the height of your fear shows the price of your stake. well now, by what right is it yours? it is all received. and, if any cause to complain, it is that it would be inconsistent with the goodness that has been shown you not to show you more. not with your merits, observe, but with that grace. well then, i don't see but you may trust it still. . again, man is greater by leaning on the greatest. nature is commanded by obeying her. god lends his strength to the good. thus it is wisest, first, because you cannot help yourself, any whimpering would be ridiculous; and secondly, 't is wisest, because there's every reason for affectionate trust, for a voluntary act of approval of god's order. what so sublime and so indicative of a perception of the matchless wisdom that directs as implicit trust? “one man may lead a horse to water, but ten canna gar him drink.” it is so in the order ce 11 376 (age 27 journal of providence with man. heaven guards his freedom so carefully that nothing compels him to enter into the spirit of the festival to which he is invited. he may pout in the corner, if he will, and suck his thumbs. but the loss is his own. the company is large and can easily spare him; but he would do more wisely to conform himself to circumstances intended kindly, and carry forward the brilliant game. april 25. from our feeble hands we drop the tools. nobody thinks of the duty and the nobleness of instituting a perfect life. nobody acts three days on a system. a man rises from a good book or from a good example and the eternal chord in him vibrates to heaven's melody a moment, and then the superincumbent flesh stops its tone. if in some distant world the vision of these weeks we are now so idly spending shall come full on the memory, is it not probable they will be attended with poignant regret? shan't we think what capabilities, — and what nothings of act! perhaps we cannot even form steady views of duty; then we are very low indeed and this defect should alarm us. but there is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is capacity of vice to make your blood creep. ow so 1831] schiller 377 plotinus pudore quodam affici videbatur quod anima ejus in corpore esset. ess “in their distress they call a spirit up, and when he comes straight their flesh creeps and quivers, and they dread him more than the ills for which they called him up." the uncommon, the sublime, must seem and be like things of every day. but in the field, aye, there, the present being makes itself felt. the personal must command, the actual eye examine. if to be the chieftain asks all that is great in nature, let it be likewise his privilege to move and act in all the correspondencies of greatness. the oracle within him, that which lives, he must invoke and question— not dead books, not ordinances, not mould-rotted papers.” schiller’s wallenstein, coleridge's translation. “ in your own bosom are your destiny's stars : confidence in yourself, prompt resolution, this is your venus ! and the sole malignant, the only one that harmeth you is doubt.” ibid. “ at the approach of extreme peril, when a hollow image is found a hollow image, and no more, — then falls the power into the mighty hands 378 (age 27 journal of nature, of the spirit giant-born who listens only to himself.” ibid. « of its own beauty is the mind diseased and fevers into false creation." admiration is a sure mark of a noble mind. uncommon boys follow uncommon men. vulgar minds are too much wrapped up in themselves to mark, much less to estimate, another's merits, though they shine as the sun. but you admire and you despair; you have no fellowship with what you admire, and it seems to you that real life is a waste where all your fellows act on low motives, and pour out all the vessels of ridicule on the innocents who would hope to act on any better, as unpractical and romantic. love even, and high sentiments are regarded as boarding-school wares. well now, what is the lesson god teaches you hereby as with an angel's trumpet? that you should sternly conform your life to the dictates of lofty sentiment, that you should be what you admire. but you say, nobody can; nobody will estimate me. very likely, but that is exactly the scope and occasion of great sentiments, to prompt right against the voice, it may be, of 1831] sunday school 379 the whole world. every popinjay blows with the wind. the thunder cloud sails against it. ... men take counsel in moments of peril of the deceptive face of things and not from themselves. always listen to yourself, never be tempted to a word of vanity or of pride; persist in the old vulgar road of benevolence : make his good with whom you deal a real omnipresent motive, whilst and whenever you deal with him. persist, only persist in seeking the truth. persist in saying you do not know what you do not know, and you do not care for what you do not care. ... may 18, 1831. went to-night to the sunday school meeting, but was myself a dumb dog that could not bark. question was whether the instruction at sunday school should be exclusively religious. i should have said that in god's goodness this instruction blessed twice, him that gives and him that takes. teacher must consider it an institution whence he is to derive most essential benefit,and, in order to give and gain the most, he is to aim at the great end with his whole might. if he fill himself with an earnest love of god, all the rest shall be added unto him. the question will answer itself in his practice. it is well known that 380 journal [age 27 on it is the property of the human mind, when strongly aroused by any sentiment, by any passion, by the love of any science or art, to give its whole knowledge and powers the new force of an arrangement after that principle. and then it acts with as much more efficiency than before, as an organized army acts than a great mob. whatever passion, whatever love, arrives at a certain heat in a mind, melts away all resistance, fuses all its knowledge, turns everything like fire to its own nature. the poet casts his eyes on no object, how mean soever, not on a tub or shoe, but it grows poetical in his eye. the whole world is a poem to him. the mathematician does not see the dome of a church, or the corner of a house or of a table, but it is a diagram to prove a truth in geometry. the mourner reads his loss in every utensil in his house, in every garment, in the face of every friend. well now, let the sunday school teacher dwell fervently alone on the great idea whose servants and worshippers we all are, let him be in heart and soul a worshipper of god, and he will find no need to prescribe rules to direct his instructions into one or another course. he will see the religious face of everything. he will draw precisely that tone and accord of thought he 1831] illumination 381 wants from things you would call common and unclean. he will do better than the fable told of the lydian king whose touch turned everything to gold. he will show everything to be good and from god. but i see the meanness of this illustration : let me offer a better. he will be like the hand of christ which touched the rolling eyeball, and it saw, which touched the paralytic and he was made whole; yea, and was laid upon dead bones and they started up again into human life, and praised god. he will be a freeman whom the truth has made free, and will put the whole compass of all his reading and all his experience under contribution to convey proofs of god's being and providence into the mind of his pupil. nobody doubts, i suppose, that this can be done. every chip and sea weed contributes its part to the gravity of the system, and every object in the universe, every truth bears testimony to god. may 20. blind men in rome complained that the streets were dark. to the dull mind all nature is leaden. to the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light. you read a poor essayist and you feel humiliated at the 382 journal (age 28 poverty of human wit; a few oft repeated saws seem to be all it has attained. you read burton, or montaigne, or sir thomas browne — you read bacon, and you are in wonder at the profusion of wise observations which they seem to have barrelled up from the vast commonplaces of mankind. the more a man knows, he is the more prepared scholar. the magazine shows more inexhaustible, and the particulars of greater price every moment. every weed, every atom, discloses its relations. mens agitat molem. “ to virtue every day is bright, and every hour propitious to diligence "; and that is the virtue of increased intelligence that it imparts worth to what was counted worthless. the progress of manufactures finds a yellow dye in a crumbling rubbish stone ; plants a thistle for its teazel ; plucks a whortleberry bush for unwinding silk; saves the coke after the coal is burned, and saves the ashes after the coke is consumed; and so works up into its processes the refuse and dung of the world with the frugality of nature herself. | mens agitat molem. the whole is instinct with life. 1831] the passing – ellen 383 written at williamstown, vermont june 1, 1831 why fear to die and let thy body lie under the flowers of june, thy body food for the ground worm's brood, and thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon? amid great nature's halls, girt in by mountain walls and washed with waterfalls, it would please me to die, . where every wind that swept my tomb goes loaded with a free perfume dealt out with a god's charity. i should like to lie in sweets, a hill's leaves for winding-sheets, and the searching sun to see that i am laid with decency, and the commissioned wind to sing his mighty psalms from fall to spring, and annual tunes commemorate of nature's child the common fate. 384 journal [age 28 ellen dust unto dust! and shall no more be said, ellen, for thee, and shall a common fate blend thy last hour with the last hours of all ? of thee, my wife, my undefiled, my dear? the muse thy living beauty could inspire shall spare one verse to strew thy urn or be forever silent. ellen is dead, she who outshone all beauty, yet knew not that she was beautiful, she who was fair after another mould than flesh and blood. her beauty was of god. the maker's hand yet rested on its work, and cast an atmosphere of sanctity around her steps that pleased old age and youth ; yea, that not won the eye, but did persuade the soul by realizing human hopes, teaching that faith and love were not a dream, teaching that purity had yet a shrine, and that the innocent and affectionate thoughts that harbour in the bosom of a child might live embodied in a riper form, and dwell with wisdom never bought by sin. blessed, sweet singer, were the ears that heard; to her the eye that saw bare witness ... june 15. after a fortnight's wandering to the green mountains and lake champlain, yet finding 1831] be god's child 385 you, dear ellen, nowhere and yet everywhere, i come again to my own place, and would willingly transfer some of the pictures that the eyes saw, in living language to my page ; yea, translate the fair and magnificent symbols into their own sentiments. but this were to antedate knowledge. it grows into us, say rather, we grow wise, and i not take wisdom; and only in god's own order, and by my concurrent effort, can i get the abstract sense of which mountains, sunshine, thunders, night, birds and flowers are the sublime alphabet. june 20. i suppose it is not wise, not being natural, to belong to any religious party: in the bible you are not directed to be a unitarian, or a calvinist or an episcopalian. now if a man is wise, he will not only not profess himself to be a unitarian, but he will say to himself, i am not a member of that or of any party. i am god's child, a disciple of christ, or, in the eye of god, a fellow disciple with christ. now let a man get into a stage-coach with this distinct understanding of himself, divorcing himself in his heart from every party, and let him meet with religious men of every different sect, and he will find scarce any proposition uttered by them to which he does and tಂದ suade a dress chouza 7' 8 heart it is faca 386 [age 28 journal an not assent, and none to the sentiment of which he does not assent, though he may insist on varying the language. as fast as any man becomes great, that is, thinks, he becomes a new party. socrates, aristotle, calvin, luther, abelard, what are these but names of parties? which is to say, as fast as we use our own eyes, we quit these parties or unthinking corporations, and join ourselves to god in an unpartaken relation. v. a sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. since to govern my passions with absolute sway is the work i have to do, i cannot but think that the sect for the suppression of intemperance, or a sect for the suppression of loose behaviour to women, would be a more reasonable and useful society than the orthodox sect, which is a society for the suppression of unitarianism, or the unitarian, which is a society for the diffusion of usei ful knowledge. religion is the relation of the soul to god, and therefore the progress of sectarianism marks the decline of religion. for, looking at god instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother. a man may die by a fever as well as by consumption, and religiour is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference. 1831) thomas à kempis 387 the best part of wisdom can never be communicated, as“ books never can teach the use of books.” and as bacon said, “the best part of beauty could not be represented in a picture.” to a philosophical infidel the writings of thomas à kempis, of fénelon, of scougal, should be shown. for the fact that such a new science as this they treat, has been drawn out of the new testament, — the creation of such a theory as the mind of thomas à kempis [evolved] in its very nature claiming authority over all other principles — is a mighty evidence for the divine authority of scripture. wherever goes a man, there goes a great soul. i never more fully possess myself than in slovenly or disagreeable circumstances. when i stamp through the mud in dirty boots, i hug myself with the feeling of my immortality.' i then reflect complacently on whatever delicacy is in my taste, of amplitude in my memory. in a university i draw in my horns. on nothing 1 the image was borrowed from mme. de staël, quoted by mr. emerson in the beginning of the chapter « literature" in english traits: “i tramp in the mire with wooden shoes whenever they would force me into the clouds." 388 journal (age 28 does a wise man plume himself so much as on independence of circumstances; that in a kitchen, or dirty street, or sweltering stage-coach, he can separate himself from impure contact and embosom himself in the sublime society of his recollections, of his hopes and of his affections. ambassador carries his country with him. so does the mind. the days pass over me and i am still the same; the aroma of my life is gone like the flower with which it came. from blotting book iii june, 1831 si cum natura sapio et sub numine, id vere plusquam satis est. giordano bruno. “our first and third thoughts coincide.” stewart. “we know the arduous strife, the eternal laws to which the triumph of all good is given, high sacrifice and labour without pause even to the death, else wherefore should the eye of man converse with immortality?” wordsworth. as rs 1831 compensation 389 chardon st. [boston], june 29, 1831. is not the law of compensation perfect? it holds as far as we can see. different gifts to different individuals, but with a mortgage of responsibility on every one. “the gods sell all | things.” well, old man, hast got no farther? why, this was taught thee months and years ago. it was writ on the autumn leaves at roxbury in keep-school days; it sounded in the blind man's ear at cambridge.' and all the joy and all the sorrow since have added nothing to thy wooden book. i can't help it. heraclitus grown old complained that all resolved itself into identity. that thought was first his philosophy, and then his melancholy, — the life he lived and the death he died. and i have nothing charactered in my brain that outlives this word compensation. old stubler, the quaker in the baltimore steamboat, said to me, that, if a man sacrificed his impurity, purity should be the price with which it would be paid ; if a man gave up his hatred, he should be rewarded with love — 't is the same old melody and it sounds through the vast of being. is it a great i referring to the failure of his eyes (perhaps iritis) with that of his general health, in his damp room in divinity hall in 1825. 390 (age 28 journal exertion to you to contain your roving eye, is it very easy to please it, and very hard to forbid it? well, exactly proportionate is the merit of the self-denial and the power it confers. is it a great estate that is within your grasp? will a little servility, a few derelictions, not gross themselves, and such as few can know, suffice to give you an easy subsistence for many years, and do you say it were foolhardy to toss your head with unseasonable virtue that perhaps you will not sustain, and lose the prize ? but will you gain nothing by the loss? consider it well; there's no cheating in nature, not a light halfpenny; not a risk of a doit which is not insured to the total amount on the credit of the king of nature. by that sacrifice of body to soul, of the apparent to the real, have you not given body and fact to a sentiment, which, if it is not recognized on 'change, is sterling with god and his creation? have you not been filled, spiritualized, exalted by a delicate, rare magnanimity which constitutes you a nobleman in the kingdom of heaven? have you not given firmness to your brow, an unquestionable majesty to your eye when you meet other eyes, a serenity to your solitude, — yea, just so much of assured presence of god to your soul? 'tis a 1831] high sentiments 391 noble but a true word of bacon, — “if once the mind has chosen noble ends, then not virtues but divinities encompass it si animus semel generosos fines optaverit, statim non modo virtutes circumstant, sed et numina.”; and so it is, these sentiments are the true native angels of the kingdom, having their lineage written on their faces. the adoption in act of a great sentiment gives you assurance on the faith of him that liveth that you have made exactly that progress which you seem to have made ; but my riches add nothing to me. they make no evidence, but only bewilder my inquiries for truth. in the most barren, echoing solitude, in small, disagreeable circumstances, these thoughts give a ground of assurance most solid. in a hovel, low born and fed on husks, you may think thoughts and act after a manner that you are sure is qualifying you every day for the most exalted enjoyments of friendship, though the word may be gibberish or a laughing-stock in that place. i probably the correct version is that which occurs a few pages later in this journal: animum qui generosos fines semel optaverit, non virtutes solum, sed numina circumstant. the man who seeks a noble end not angels, but divinities, attend. see poems, centenary ed., appendix. 392 journal (age 28 the friends exist, and the sympathy is forming, though perhaps years or ages may intervene before the good effects you seek on god's faith shall be fully accomplished, before this union takes place. what matters it to the mind, as far as concerns the evidence, how one or another fact looks, what may be the aspect of things toward materialism, what may be the impression got from geology, or the conatus, or equivocal generation, or any other humbug? does not every consciousness contain its own evidence? that consciousness which “cannot ferment its mass of clay,” that apprehends death, will die. that which looks death in the face, the master, not the slave, carries therein its own hope and assurance. now my affections prophesy to me out of heaven, where my angel is, and when i listen to them i do not fear death. i see plainly that the ends to which i live are independent of time and place; and neither the hope nor the fear of conscience profess themselves satisfied with the scanty inches of mortal life. june 30. one thought more has occurred to me (if there is no logic by which these thoughts cohere, 1831) obedience conquers 393 the mind itself uttering necessary truth must be their vinculum), and that is, that god makes us the answerers of our own prayers and so fulfils the cycle and perfection of things, and, as in others, so in the prayer, to be immortal : ... itiv ise vnen u nav e imperat parendo obedience is the eye which reads the laws of the universe. rejoice when you have not bent your desires to your convenience, but have rested in no good below the level of your desires. use locks to ascend streams, but never to descend. go buoyed up as high as sentiments of heaven will, and do not huckster with sense and custom, but treat with princes only, a sovereign with a sovereign. july 5. it is remarkable that we cannot be willing to say, i do not know. i am ashamed of my ignorance of history, of science, of languages, daily. “all error,” dr. johnson said, “is mean.” and by this powerful shame doth god wonderfully indicate to us his intention that we should study and learn without end. 394 journal [age 28 july 6, 1831. 1 all the great and good and all the fair, as if in a disdainful mood forsake the world, and to the grave repair. is there a sage needed to curb the unruly times, – he hastes to quit the stage and blushing leaves his country to its crimes. is there an angel, drest in weeds of mortal beauty, whom lavish heaven with all sweet perfections doth invest,it hastes to take what it hath given. and as the delicate snow that latest fell, the thieving wind first takes, so thou, dear wife, must go as frail, as spotless as those new-fall’n aakes. let me not fear to die, but let me live so well as to win this mark of death from on high, that i with god, and thee, dear heart, may dwell. i write the things that are not what appears ; 395 1831] know thyself of things as they are in the eye of god not in the eye of man. γνώθι σεαυτόν if thou canst bear strong meat of simple truth, if thou durst my words compare with what thou thinkest in the soul's free youth, then take this fact unto thy soul, — god dwells in thee. it is no metaphor nor parable, it is unknown to thousands, and to thee; yet there is god. he is in thy world, but thy world knows him not. he is the mighty heart from which life's varied pulses part. clouded and shrouded there doth sit the infinite embosomed in a man; and thou art stranger to thy guest, and know'st not what thou dost invest. the clouds that veil his life within are thy thick woven webs of sin, which his glory struggling through darkens to thine evil hue. 396 journal (age 28 then bear thyself, o man! up to the scale and compass of thy guest; soul of thy soul. be great as doth beseem the ambassador who bears the royal presence where he goes. give up to thy soul — let it have its way — it is, i tell thee, god himself, the selfsame one that rules the whole, tho' he speaks thro' thee with a stifed voice, and looks through thee, shorn of his beams. but if thou listen to his voice, if thou obey the royal thought, it will grow clearer to thine ear, more glorious to thine eye. the clouds will burst that veil him now and thou shalt see the lord. therefore be great, not proud, — too great to be proud. let not thine eyes rove, peep not in corners ; let thine eyes look straight before thee, as befits the simplicity of power. and in thy closet carry state; filled with light, walk therein; and, as a king 397 1831) the oversoul would do no treason to his own empire, so do not thou to thine. this is the reason why thou dost recognize things now first revealed, because in thee resides the spirit that lives in all ; and thou canst learn the laws of nature because its author is latent in thy breast. therefore, o happy youth, happy if thou dost know and love this truth, i thou art unto thyself a law, and since the soul of things is in thee, thou needest nothing out of thee. the law, the gospel, and the providence, heaven, hell, the judgment, and the stores immeasureable of truth and good, all these thou must find within thy single mind, or never find. intion thou art the law; the gospel has no revelation of peace or hope until there is response from the deep chambers of thy mind thereto, the rest is straw. it can reveal no truth unknown before. the providence 398 journal (age 28 thou art thyself that doth dispense wealth to thy work, want to thy sloth, glory to goodness, to neglect, the moth. thou sow'st the wind, the whirlwind reapest, thou payest the wages of thy own work, through all ages. the almighty energy within crowneth virtue, curseth sin. virtue sees by its own light; stumbleth sin in self-made night. who approves thee doing right? god in thee. who condemns thee doing wrong? god in thee. who punishes thine evil deed ? god in thee. what is thine evil need? thy worse mind, with error blind and more prone to evil that is, the greater hiding of the god within, and next, the consequence more faintly, as more distant, wrought upon our outward fortunes. there is nothing else but god. where'er i look 1831). morals and mind 399 all things hasten back to him light is but his shadow dim. * shall i ask wealth or power of god, who gave an image of himself to be my soul ? as well might swilling ocean ask a wave, or the starred firmament a dying coal, for that which is in me lives in the whole. july 6, 1831. president monroe died on the fourth of july, a respectable man, i believe. relation of morals to intellect shaftesbury's maxim, that wisdom comes more from the heart than the head. “do the will, know the doctrines.” impera parendo. obedience is the eye which reads the laws of the universe. for the moral sense is the proper keeper of the doors of knowledge; whom he will he lets in, and whom he will he shuts out. a polemic, a partizan, for want of a candid heart becomes miserably ignorant of the whole question. the point of view is of more importance than the sharpness of sight. fénelon anticipated adam smith. ... the eye, too near, turns the fairest proportions of architecture or of sculps o 400 (age 28 journal ture into deformity. now goodness is the right place of the mind. make known the law and you can dispense with collecting the particular instances. kepler's second (?) law was seen at once to contain, and so make useless and ridiculous, all the tables that were made or could be made of falling bodies. iu 7 bem? bei nqsonidaneogot [advantage of the nineteenth century] i pay twenty or thirty dollars to the government of my country a year. if i had lived before it was discovered that we could do without a court, i should have paid twice as much, and been otherwise troubled. if i had lived earlier, before some moral discoveries were made, i could not have sustained the independent fashion of living i do for less than the support of a garrison of guards. for, plain gentleman as i am, and living no better than a thousand persons in this city, i do believe i live better than any person, not a gentleman or knight, in eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth centuries. if i had lived earlier, i must have been my own guard, and that duty would have taken up all my time, and left me none for speculation, i.e., i should have been a savage. see then what | discoveries moral progress has made. ... qilisini 7h 7.7 1*?, secupant different autendamilar the deliuty thonora 1831] good writing 401 the right word july 8. no man can write well who thinks there is any choice of words for him. the laws of composition are as strict as those of sculpture and architecture. there is always one line that ought to be drawn, or one proportion that should be kept, and every other line or proportion is wrong, and so far wrong as it deviates from this. so in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. there is no beauty in words except in their collocation. the effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head. to the same purpose i find at this date in guesses at truth, — “in good prose, (says schlegel) every word should be underlined”: “no italics in plato.” in good writing, every word means something. in good writing, words become one with things. i take up a poem; if i find that there is not a single line there nor word but expresses something that is true for me as well as for him ... it is adamant. its reputation will be slow, but sure from every caprice of taste. no critic can hurt it, he will only hurt himself by tilting against it. this is the nor 402 [age 28 journal confidence we feel concerning shakspeare. we know, charles says, “that his record is true.” and this is the ordeal which the new aspirant wordsworth must undergo. he has writ lines that are like outward nature, so fresh, so simple, so durable ; but whether all or half his texture is as firm i doubt, though last evening (27 oct.) i read with high delight his sonnets to liberty.' july 1o. old english writers are the standards, not because they are old, but simply because they wrote well. they deviated every day from other people, but never from truth, and so we follow them. if we write as well, we may deviate from them and our deviations shall be classical. “he invents who proves ” every man says a hundred things every day that are capable of much more meaning than he attaches to them. the declaration of independence, as webster intimates, deserves its fame, though every sentence had been somewhere said before. that gave it flesh and flower. not that man is the abolisher of slavery or intemperance who calls them evils, but he whose dis1 this last clause evidently was written in later. 1831] the soul's solitude 403 cerning eye separates between the existence of society, and these evils, and sees that these may peel off and the institutions remain whole. [solitude of the soul] july 14. one of the arguments with which nature furnishes us for the immortality of the soul is, it always seemed to me, the awful solitude in which here a soul lives. few men communicate their highest thoughts to any person. to many they cannot, for they are unfit receivers. perhaps they cannot to any. yet are these thoughts as much made for communication as a sex. ellen wondered why dearest friends, even husband and wife, did so little impart their religious thoughts. and how rarely do such friends meet. here i sit alone from month to month filled with a deep desire to exchange thoughts with a friend who does not appear. yet shall i find, or refind, that friend. sampson goes about, yet never speaks what his soul is full of. barnes also; mrs. lee; motte ; s. a. r.' they cani george sampson, his young parishioner, a valued friend, died soon after this time; barnes and mrs. lee were probably friends in his parish. the rev. mellish irving motte was a classmate. s. a. r. was sarah alden, the wife of his uncle ripley, a remarkable woman, and a dear friend through life. 404 [age 28 journal not discharge this subtle electricity for defect of medium or of receiver. but was this glorious fabric made for nothing? · will not its day and means and object come? will not heaven's matches be made or restored? july 15. nothing more true than the saying, “spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.” god in us worships god. 1 the things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education. fable that love and death exchanged arrows by mistake. phi beta kappa day july 21, 1831. the feast is pleasant, but its joys have no after life, and seem to be a subtraction from our mortal work-day of so much. why not follow out the great idolatry, no, the great penchant, of the human mind for friendship? is it not beautiful, this yearning after its mate — its mate, i mean, by spiritual affinities, and not by sex. i never hear 1831) ideal friendship 11p 405 of a person of noble feelings but i have the emotion of the moral sublime, such as is caused by reading young's line, forgive his crimes — forgive his virtues too, those minor faults, half converts to the right,” or shakspeare's “the more angel she," which coleridge quotes, -or bacon's sentence, animum qui generosos fines semel optaverit, non virtutes solum sed et numina circumstant. els oiwvòs ă plotos, etc.? i put together these with pleasure as two or three specimens of that peculiar and beautiful class of thoughts which set you aglow. non verba sed tonitrua audio. well, just such a feeling i have in hearing of c. g. l's or j. a's,3 or anybody else's noble sentiments. now if surely i knew there was a mind somewhere thinking and willing, that is a repository of these sentiments, a hive of chosen knowledge, a knower and lover of the golden laws of the intellect and the heart; and that in future i am to 1 othello, after smothering desdemona, says to her waitingwoman, “ you heard her say herself it was not i,” to which emilia answers, “0, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil !” 2 hector's speech, “ one omen is ever good, — to defend one's country.” 3 charles greeley loring, and john adams. 406 journal [age 28 meet this mind in connexions of most cheerful and close fellowship, should not i be glad? yes, indeed: the rainbow, the evening star, day, night, storm, sorrow, death, they would seem preparations, they would seem subjects for this delicious conversation. when i think of you, sweet friend, wife, angel ellen, on whom the spirit of knowledge and the spirit of hope were poured in equal fulness, when i think of you, i am sure we have not said everlasting farewells. the impulses of a heart of faultless sentiments would be as much an object of exact calculation as the effects of caloric or azote. how very thin are the disguises of action ! these men that came to-day to ob k, came with their purposes writ as legibly on every proposition as if they had said, “i wish an audience when i hold forth”; another, “i hate everett”; another, “i am an anti-mason"; another, “i love young men”; another, “ truth.”... a rich man may lawfully have handsome house and furniture. he is doing better with his money for the world than if he gave it to the beggar. but he must adorn his house with the principle of love running through every detail. 1831] possessions — power 407 m “ 'tis use alone which sanctifies expense and splendour borrows all its rays from sense.” all possessions that end in self are odious. the man who shuts himself up in solitary splendour hath much of the devil in him. ... books are to be read, and every library should be a circulating library. pictures are to be seen, and are as if they were not, when unseen, and palaces have no other use. ... [the real power] ... most kings and presidents by title are merely clerks of some real power which stands erect at their side and subjugates them. cromwell and buonaparte are men in my mind far more respectable than james i. of england or george iv. for if they used hypocrisy to rise by, they rose more by the energy of their own will, and though thoroughly selfish they scorned a servile selfishness, — they took off the slave's cloak when they had got up and tossed it down in the face of all the mob below. they kicked the ladder down, crush whom it might. whilst these other gentlemen (and wo is me, my country, many great gentlemen in thy chairs) sit with it on. if i want a favour of the president of the united states i need not cultivate his personal 408 [age 28 journal kindness, i will ask it of his president, the bad party in the country, and if they say yea, i shall be sure of mr. jackson's bow and smile and sign manual. whilst i admire cromwell and buonaparte, however, for the simplicity and energy of their evil, i lose my reverence the moment i consider their ends. i see they were both wholly ( mistaken, blind as beetles, ... power is a trust. so also is genius or every degree of wisdom. dined with president adams yesterday at dr. parkman's. [god misrepresented] mr. — said to a woman doubting, —“do you not fear god? does not the feeling that your whole future destinies for happiness or misery are in his hands terrify you?” she said, “no, she wished it did.” the question was false theology. it does not recognize an immutable god. it was for the woman to become happy or miserable, not for god to make her so. 1831] god 409 [god's door] july 29, 1831. suicidal is this distrust of reason; this fear to think; this doctrine that 't is pious to believe on other's words, impious to trust entirely to yourself. to think is to receive. is a man afraid that the faculties which god made can outsee god, can find more than he made, or different, can bring any report hostile to himself? to reflect is to receive truth immediately from god without any medium. that is living faith. to take on trust certain facts is a dead faith, inoperative. a trust in yourself is the height, not of pride, but of piety, an unwillingness to learn of any but god himself. it will come only to one who feels that he is nothing. it is by yourself without ambassador that god speaks to you. you are as one who has a private door that leads him to the king's chamber. you have learned nothing rightly that you have not learned so. god does not use personal authority. it is the direct effect of all spiritual truth to abrogate, nullify, personal authority, — to make us love the virtue and the person exactly by the measure of his virtues, but not to honour the inher410 journal [age 28 ent evils for the sake of any person. he is no respecter of persons. and that is the wrong whereby theology has injured jesus christ, insisting upon a love to him as a duty. nobody will ever be loved by compulsion. love is the reward of loveliness. tell not me to love my saviour. no, do him not that injustice. but fill me with his goodness and i shall love him, of course. make me as pure, as meek, as useful, and i shall love him as certainly as a stone falls. duise “ the progress of custom (consuetudo) is arithmetical, of nature, geometrical.” bacon. "we think after nature; we speak after rules; we act after custom.” bacon. “manifest merits procure reputation, occult ones, fortune.” bacon. august 15. the world becomes transparent to wisdom. everything reveals its reason within itself. the threads of innumerable relations are seen running from part to part and joining remotest points of time and space. i read verses to-day of thomas campbell about the poles, which are alive. most of the “pleasures of hope” has no life: dead verses. 1831] justified books 411 august 16. every composition in prose or verse should contain in itself the reason of its appearance. thousands of volumes have been written and mould in libraries of which this reason is yet to seek, does not appear. then comes adam smith, bacon, burke, milton; then comes any good sentence, and its apology is its own worth. it makes its pertinence. [man's reputation] there is an engine at waltham to watch the watchmen of the factory. every hour they must put a ring on to the wheel, or if they fall asleep and do not, the machine will show their neglect and which hour they slept. such a machine is every man's reputation. [the younger adams] august 26. yesterday i heard john quincy adams deliver an eulogy upon president monroe. but he held his notes so close to his mouth that he could be ill heard. there was nothing heroic in the subject, and not much in the feelings of the orator, so it proved rather a spectacle than a speech. 412 [age 28 journal september 7. i think it better to drink water than cider or ale. i think two cups of tea better than three. tentandum est. [silence. speech. poverty] loquendi magistros habemus homines, tacendi deos, apud jeremy taylor. and plutarch said excellently, qui generose et regio more instituuntur, primum tacere, deinde loqui discunt. (“to be taught first to be silent, then to speak well and handsomely, is education fit for a prince.") nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se quam quod ridiculos homines facit. ? education september 13, 1831. the things which are taught children are not an education, but the means of education. the grammar and geography and writing do not train up the child in the way it should go, but may be used in the service of the devil. education is the drawing out the soul. 1831]death-sunday schools 413 [equanimity] september 14. mr. walker' said in conversation that the information that death must probably take place soon, commonly gave steadiness to the mind and enabled it to do what was fit with more ability. the mind, he said, never plays false. it is always equal to all it is called to meet. [who knoweth?] the first questions still remain to be asked after all the progress of science. what an abyss is my ignorance. sunday schools september 14, 1831. robert raikes and mrs. catherine cappe the founders of sunday schools fifty years ago; mrs. c. a little the first. raikes saw the word try, as it were, written before him. now 2,000,000 children attend them, in four continents. everyman's gauge i suppose a skilful judge of character would get some measure of the whole from the smallest actions and from trifling conversation. all would i rev. james walker, later, president of harvard college. 414 journal [age 28 be arcs, however small, of the same circle, and from them the whole circumference might be drawn. the swing of his arm, however free and violent, is determined mathematically by the length of the bones. every motion bears some proportion to the fixed size and form of his whole frame, and so the measure of his mind determines as accurately every word he utters. miracles it is impossible that omnipotence should make a ball pass from one point to another point without passing through a space equal to the straight line betwixt them. this necessity the mind perceives. does not the same necessity make leibnitz's law of continuity manifest? if we knew more of matter, would not this absurdity strike us as lying against miracles? i think it would in the common understanding of them. let then a miracle be the effect of far greater knowledge of the laws of nature and so a superior command of nature. imperat parendo. compensation is it not one of the most thrilling truths of moral science that i write below? the savage of the sandwich islands believes that whenever he 1831) herbert – versifying 415 overcomes and slays an enemy, the strength and prowess of that enemy passes into him. the soul instructed by god, knows, that whenever it overcomes a temptation, it becomes stronger by the strength of that temptation. but for heaven's sake do not (to use the vulgar expression)“treat” your resolution. haec est mors mea. it is my opinion that, because of the law “that every truth you receive prepares the mind for the reception of unknown truth,” 2 ... rhetoric september 15. i often make the criticism on my friend herbert's diction, that his thought has that heat as actually to fuse the words, so that language is wholly flexible in his hands and his rhyme never stops the progress of the sense. and, in general, according to the elevation of the soul will the power over language always be, and lively. thoughts will break out into spritely verse. no measure so difficult but will be tractable, so sens 1 this image occurs in “compensation,” in essays i. 2 here follows in the journal the passage on the inability of a teacher to hide his own view, printed in “ spiritual laws," essays 1, centenary ed., p. 146. 416 [age 28 journal that you only get up the temperature of the thought. to this point i quote gladly my old gossip montaigne ; “for my part i hold, and socrates is positive in it, that whoever has in his mind a spritely and clear imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind or another, and, though he were dumb, by sighs.” • verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur. horace. and again seneca, cum res animum occupavere, verba ambiunt. and cicero, ipsa res verba rapiunt. oh how that name inspired my style! the words come skelpin rank and file amaist before i ken !” burns. i am glad to have these learned thebans confirm my very thought. september 21. pestalozzi, a venerable name, after witnessing the events of the french revolution, concluded in 1797, “ that the amelioration of outward circumstances will be the effect, but never can be the means of mental and moral improvement,” a paralogism to the old words, “ seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousyou.” knize w... you here is the 1831] law – the royal mine 417 ness, and all these things shall be added unto [the law infinite] chardon st., september 30, 1831. pleasant it is to the soul, painful it is to the conscience, to recognize wherever you go the fixed eternity of moral laws. you cannot be too kind, you cannot be too just. there is no excess of observance: be kind in the stage, be kind in the pew, keep your word, be kind in a quarrel. bear yourself so on all occasions, saith one, that the opposer may beware of thee. jesus says, so bear yourself as if your trade and business was to serve that man. don't lose this principle a moment. and your character will be its commentary and exposition. .... a dull uncertain brain, but gifted yet to know that god has seraphim who go singing an immortal strain, immortal here below. i know the mighty bards, i listen when they sing; and more i know the secret store which these explore when they with torch of genius pierce 418 journal [age 28 the tenfold clouds that cover the riches of the universe from god's adoring lover. and if to me it is not given to bring one ingot thence of that unfading gold of heaven his merchants may dispense, yet well i know the royal mine, and know the sparkle of its ore, celestial truths from lies that shine'explored they teach us to explore. [non-resistance] october 3. i wish the christian principle, the ultra principle of non-resistance and returning good for ill, might be tried fairly. william penn made one trial. the world was not ripe, and yet it did well. an angel stands a poor chance among wild beasts; a better chance among men : but among angels best of all. and so i admit of this system that it is, like the free trade, fit for one nation only on condition that all adopt it. still a man may try it in his own person, 1 a later version printed in the appendix to the poems gives this line better :know heaven's truth from lies that shine. ves 1831] non-resistance 419 and even his sufferings by reason of it shall be its triumphs. “the more falls it gets, moves faster on.” love is the adamantean shield that makes blows ridiculous. if edward everett were a sanguine philanthropist, not a shade would attach to his name from the insults of platt; but he is thought a selfish man, so by his own law must he be judged ; the mussulman by the koran ; the jew by the pentateuch. one thing more; it is said that it strips the good man bare a:d leaves him to the whip and license of pirates and butchers. but i suppose the exaltation of the general mind by the influence of the principle will be a counteraction of the increased license. not any influence acts upon the highest man but a proportion of the same gets down to the lowest man. signboards speak of titian; a regular ladder of communicating minds from webster down to joe cash, san creeds people would teach me what they think concerning modes of justification, and how their supposed offices of christ are compatible with the father's dignity, etc. will they teach me how to resist my temptations? will they teach me how to be a good man? i have nothing to do 420 journal [age 28 with their creeds. it is more than i can do now to keep the commandments. yet they want more than these. i can't keep these. can they? do they? i think they have no idea how much is contained in them. yea, calvinism lays the salve to this very sore, and says, because you can't keep them, here is blood to expiate; only give your assent; and it produces no higher level of obedience in the multitudthan in the professors of another faith. “all that is simple is enough for all that's good.” don't meddle with others, nor with high beliefs, but strictly keep your own soul. try to keep the ten commandments a day. you will find they mean enough literally. well, then take them with the new testament exposition and keep them from the heart. boston, october 21, 1831. people . . . talk with a sneer of those who comfort themselves for the evils of life by an imaginary heaven; and they rightly ridicule them who thus do. but christians do it not. their 'heaven is prophesied in their virtuous purpose, and begins in their first deliberate virtuous action, and is established in their virtuous habit. it is not a false or imaginary heaven; . . . every man, as far as his virtue goes, says it is good; he 1831] heaven begins here 421 cleaves to it amidst his wickedness, blasphemy, scoffing and stupidity. he gets credit for it, he loves it, he does not abhor himself because of it, — of this grain of antidote to his evils. take it out and he would hang himself. ... is it not good to have right opinions; to understand one's self; to know what is and what is not? men think that instead they are to take religious truth on trust. impossible; not on the word of god himself. truth is never crammed down your throat, but is to be understood. have you not guarantee enough in your own constitution for the discretion of god? ... well, this is a part of heaven: to know as we are known, to see what is now hid, to have every secret thing work out its full effect. “he that made the heart, shall not he understand?" light from within boston, october 24, 1831. “admiration ennobles and blesses those who ! feel it. the lover is made happier by his love than his mistress can be. like the song of the bird, it cheers his own heart. why are we commanded to give glory to god unless that we ourselves may be made godly.” guesses at truth (vol. 11, p. 115). е m422 journal [age 28 "glory is a light that shines from us on oth| ers and not from others on us.” landor. see quincy's definition. “some minds think about things; others think the things themselves.” schelling. augur cum esset cato, dicere ausus est, optimis auspiciis ea geri, quae pro reipublicae salute gererentur; quae contra rempublicam ferrentur, contra auspicia ferri. cicero, de senectute, 4, 4. els oiwvòs á plotos, etc. and it is like webster's skill in law, who knows what it is (i. e., what it should be), and story can tell the authorities. shakspeare [one) thing strikes me in the sonnets, which in their way seem as wonderful as the plays, and perhaps are even more valuable to the analysis of the genius of shakspeare, and that is the assimilating power of passion that turns all things to its own nature. see sonnet, — “o never say that i was false of heart,” etc. and sonnet “since i left you mine eye is in my mind,” or “from you have i been absent in the spring," or “what is your substance, whereof are you made?” 1831] shakspeare's sonnets 423 and then see the immortality of the human spirit in them, for who but an eternal creature could so think and express himself as in, “ if my dear love were but the child of state,” or “no time," etc. and listen to the stern morality that seems to inform them all and to be present in the eye of the poet, even when contradicted in the expression: but present in spirit and letter in “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” etc., or “poor soul !” etc. la wast thekla's song' “ the clouds are flying, the woods are sighing, the maiden is walking the grassy shore, and as the wave breaks, with might, with might, she singeth aloud in the darksome night but a tear is in her troubled eye. “ for the world feels cold, and the heart gets old, and reflects the bright aspect of nature no more, then take back thy child, holy virgin, to thee, i have plucked the one blossom that hangs on earth's tree, i have lived, i have loved, and die.” 1 translation from schiller's wallenstein, edinburgh review, oct., 1830. see same number for geological article. 424 (age 28 journal the soul's worship october 27. • what we love that shall we seek. ... the heart is the sole world, the universe, and if its wants are satisfied, there is no defect perceived. but how little love is at the bottom of these great religious shows; congregations and temples and sermons, how much sham! love built them, to be sure. yea, they were the heart's work; but the fervent generation that built them passed away, things went downward, and the forms remain, but the soul is well nigh gone. calvinism stands, fear i, by pride and ignorance; and unitarianism, as a sect, stands by the opposition of calvinism. it is cold and cheerless, the mere creature of the understanding, until controversy makes it warm with fire got from below. but is there no difference in the objects which the heart loves ? is there no truth? yes. and is there no power in truth to commend itself? yes. it alone can satisfy the heart. are we asking you to love god as if there was any arbitrary burden from duty imposed, as if we said, apart from your usual loves come and cultivate this. it is sour, but it must be done, for such is the hard law.no; the second church of boston “ old north" in hanover street, where emerson was pastor we 1831] the soul's worship 425 god forbid; we call you to that which all things call you unto with softest persuasion, to that which your whole reason enjoins with absolute sovereignty. we call you to that which all the future shall teach far more forcibly and simply than we now. these things are true and real and grand and lovely and good. is it not all in us, how strangely! look at this congregation of men;— the words might be spoken,—though now there be none here to speak them, — but the words might be said that would make them stagger and reel like a drunken man. who doubts it? were you ever instructed by a wise and eloquent man? remember then, were not the words that made your blood run cold, that brought the blood to your cheeks, that made you tremble or delighted you,did they not sound to you as old as yourself? was it not truth that you knew before, or do you ever expect to be moved from the pulpit or from man by anything but plain truth? never. it is god in you that responds to god without, or affirms his own words trembling on the lips of another. 426 journal [age 28 november, 1831. have been at the examination of derry academy, and had some sad, some pleasant thoughts." is it not true that every man has before him in his mind room in one direction to which there is no bound, but in every other direction he runs against a wall in a short time? one course of thought, affection, action is for him that is his use, as the new men say. let me embark in political economy, in repartee, in fiction, in verse, in practical counsels (as here in the derry case) and i am soon run aground; but let my bark head its own way toward the law of laws, toward the compensation or action and reaction of the moral universe, and i sweep serenely over god's depths in an infinite sea. in an unknown wood the traveller gives the reins to his horse, seeks his safety in the instincts of the animal. trust something to your instincts far more trustworthy. as there is always a subject for life, so there is always a subject for each hour, if only a man has wit enough 1 the occasion of mr. emerson's attending the examination seems to have been that a young kinswoman of his wife, elizabeth tucker, lived there, and was one of the scholars. next year he wrote her a letter of advice as to her reading. wn wait 1831] composure 427 to find what that is. i sit friday night and note the first thought that rises. presently another, presently five or six, — of all these i take the mean, as the subject for saturday's sermon. [wait] november 4. god is not in a hurry. don't be impatient of riding in a stage coach and talking less religiously than the orthodox passenger, and wish yourself shown to them doing something, because you would act as a religious being, though it is not in you to talk after their manner. god will provide opportunities. calmly wait. now is an opportunity. you can't be true to their principles, but you can to yours now in sitting with them. your understanding of religion is that it is doing right from a right motive. stick to that mighty sense. don't affect the use of an adverb or an epithet more than belongs to the feeling you have. november 5, friday. as religious philosophy advances, men will cease to say “the future state” and will say instead “the whole being.” the aim of the wise man will always be to set his tune on such a key as can hold, to bring his life level with the laws of rs 428 [age 28 journal the mind, not of the body, because those endure. third sunday of december i exchange with mr. barlow. second sunday of march mr. francis. robert burns “ but fare you weel, auld nickie-ben! o wad ye tak' a thought and men'! ye aiblins might — i dinna ken — still hae a stake. i'm wae to think upon yon den, ev'n for your sake!” if it be comical, yet it belongs to the moral sublime. “ thy tuneful aame still careful fan, preserve the dignity of man with soul erect; and trust the universal plan will all protect." he tells the mouse that he is his “ fellow-mortal.” the whole mouse piece is capital and this sublime:“ still thou art blest compared with me, the present only toucheth thee, but och! i backward cast my ee on prospects drear, an' forward, tho' i canna see, i guess and fear." 1831] wordsworth 429 + november 18. as respite from the claffair, read wordsworth: river duddon; ode to duty; rob roy, excellent, much happier diction than ordinary. the poet's epitaph, fine account of the poet. « you must love him ere to you he will seem worthy of your love." ... but miserable is the last verse, and the intended thought poorly half-conveyed. but sublime is the severe, eternal strain called dion. what they say of laodamia were better said of this, i. e., about being read to heroes and demigods. are not things eternal exactly in the proportion in which they enter inward into nature; eternal according to their inness ? “ for deathless powers to verse belong, and they like demigods are strong on whom the muses smile.” wordsworth. so also such a line as this [in dion] : intent to trace the ideal path of right more fair than heaven's broad pathway paved with stars which dion learned to measure with delight. so excellent also is the piece called the happy warrior. come up, william wordsworth, al430 journal [age 28 rr in most i can say coleridge's compliment, quem quoties lego, non verba mihi videor audire, sed tonitrua. his noble distinction is that he seeks the truth and shuns with brave self-denial every image and word that is from the purpose, means to stick close to his own thought and give it in naked simplicity and so make it god's affair, not his own whether it shall succeed. but he fails of executing this purpose fifty times for the sorry purpose of making a rhyme in which he has no skill, or from imbecility of mind losing sight of his thought, or from self-surrender to custom in poetic diction (e. g., the inconsistency with his own principles in the two lines about the cestus and thunderer's eye, &c. vol. 111, p. 27). he calls his brother “a silent poet.” and almost every moral line in his book might be framed like a picture, or graven on a temple porch, and would gain instead of losing by being pondered. november 19., i apologized for his baby pieces to my mother by saying he was agesilaus, who rode on a cane with his children. she said that agesilaus did not ride out of doors. ow 1831] school committee 431 november 21. spoke with messrs. baxter, foster and moore at the gate of mayhew school. they all came into my study. mr. foster agreed to meet the committee at the school house at twelve o'clock, but did not appear. while the committee waited there, mr. allen came in to inform mr. of the threats, etc. so it was agreed that i should request of the mayor a peace officer, which i did. november 22. marriage of g. l. emerson. prayer november 23, 1831. in connexion with the great doctrines of compensation or reaction, we get the best insight into the theory of prayer. it teaches that prayer does not at all consist in words, but wholly is a state of mind. consider it also in connexion with the doctrine that god is in the soul of man, and we shall make another step towards truth. for it is not to be expected that god should gratify any man in an unreasonable request, only because he asks it violently, but precisely in proportion as a man comes into 432 [age 28 journal conformity with god, he asks right things, or things which god wills, and which therefore are done. and when he is wholly godly, or the unfolding god within him has subdued all to himself, then he asks what god wills and nothing else, and all his prayers are granted. in this sense the promises of christ to his disciples may be understood. were they not rather admonitions that they should bind, or they should loose, as god would? and i easily believe that elijah or peter or john, uplifted in a rapture of devotion, thought with the mind of god for the moment and so the miracle was wrought. foede in hunc mundum intravi, anxie vixi, perturbatus egredior. causa causarum miserere mei! (aristotle's reputed death speech.) it is a curious compensation to be noticed of such as i, that those who talk when everybody else is silent are forced to be silent when everybody else talks.' november 25. read muller, vol. 1, with great pleasure. i compare second verse of “ compensation,” poems. 1831] compensation 433 [elevation in sorrow] may i not value my griefs, and store them up? i am imprisoned in the forms and uses of every day, and cannot surrender myself to the sweet bitterness of lamenting my beauty, my glory, the life of my life. the glory of acting from the feeblest right' motive and seeing the compensations of the moral universe justify you to coldest reason in the simultaneous elevation of the character. ascend a mile where you will, and the barometer indicates the same levity of air. rise to the same height of motive in what unfavourable circumstances soever, and you belong to the family of lofty spirits, are adopted into them, ennobled by their title, enrolled in their rank and chapter on god's book, and forever to be / treated as one of them by them, and by all, even though god, for this present, separates you from them, though you never saw one of them, though your lot be low and hard and contemned and insulted by those whose unhappy eyes cannot see you through the disguise of low condition. this is the oil of joy for mourning. r saw un434 journal [age 28 december 2, 1831. the day is sad, the night is careful, the heart is weighed down with leads. what shall he do who would belong to the universe, “and live with living nature a pure rejoicing thing?” o friend that said these words, are you conscious of this thought and this writer? i would not ask any other consolation than to be assured by one sign that the heart never plays false to itself when, in its scope, it requires by a necessity the permanence of the soul, [subjects] december 3. the boys in the streets say to each other, “ dick, toss the ball to me, you know me," which seems to argue a confidence of each child in its own worthiness of love. if it was known to the bottom it must be loved. it is not less, i suppose, true of men, if they were known out and out, through and through, they would be more loved than now; many dark steps would be explained. is this a kinder philosophy than that of the antideception sermon? i write the things that are, not what appears. write upon the several classes of ignorant men, and upon the wise man. wisdom is in1831] matter for sermons 435 sight. ignorance is outward sight. the enterprising, shrewd, learned, scoffing ignorant, « whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, '. he is a slave.” so love of nature. the soul and the body of things are harmonized; therefore, the deeper one knoweth the soul, the more intense is the love of outward nature in him. december 10. write upon the coincidence of first and third thoughts, and apply it to affairs; and to religion and skepticism. i should like to know if any one ever went up on a mountain so high as that he overlooked right and wrong and saw them confounded, saw their streams mix, that justice did not mean anything to his mind. unevenness of character. every man is onehalf of a man, either benevolent and weak, or firm and unbenevolent; either a speaker and no doer, or a doer and no speaker, either contemplative or practical, and excellence in any one kind seems to speak defect in the others. this wisely ordered for the social state ; and the individual expectation and effort seems to promise completeness of character in the whole future. 436 journal [age 28 * our very defects are thus shadows of our virtues. opposition of first thoughts and common opinion. god has the first word. the devil has the second, but god has the last word. we distrust the first thought because we can't give the reason for it. abide by it, there is a reason, and by and by, long hence, perhaps it will appear. how we came out of silence into this sounding world is the wonder of wonders. all other marvels are less. charles has gone away to porto rico.' god preserve and restore him. to visit edward, who, though his mental balance was restored, was really a broken man. in hope of recovery he had taken some clerical position in a business house at san juan. i see him with superior smile, hunted by sorrow's grisly train, in lands remote, in toil and pain, with angel patience labour on with the high port he bore ere-while when, foremost of the youthful band, the prizes in all lists he won, nor bate one jot of heart or hope ; and least of all the loyal tie which holds to home 'neath every sky. “in memoriam e. b. e,” poems. 1831] order — self-command 437 when you confer a favour, be very careful how you do it. it must be done with the remembrance of your own squirming when you have received one. and feel that the whole difficulty lies in receiving, not in giving." memoranda. committee of evangelical treasury concerning pews of american unitarian association. mr. thayer, and kahler; also soliciting subscriptions committee. pemberton fund for miss; ... tuesday, house of industry. nothing done at random. no accidents in nature. you go out of a city and come to social disorder and wilderness, never get out of god's city. order, order everywhere, morals paramount, equality of number of the sexes, proportion of vegetable and animal life. december 14, 1831. it will not do to indulge myself. philosopher or christian, whatever faith you teach, live by it. ✓ who opposes me, who shuts up my mouth, who hinders the flow of my exhortation ? myself, deum 1 such was mr. emerson's desire to stand on his own feet that it was a little hard for him to receive a favour or gift, all through life. 438 [age 28 journal only myself. cannot i conform myself to my principles ? set the principles as low, as loose as you please, set the tune not one note higher than the true pitch, but after settling what they shall be, stick to them. parochial visits parochial visits december 19. when i talk with the sick they sometimes think i treat death with unbecoming indifference and do not make the case my own, or, if i do, err in my judgment. i do not fear death. i believe those who fear it have borrowed the terrors through which they see it from vulgar opinion, and not from their own minds. my own mind ! is the direct revelation which i have from god and far least liable to mistake in telling his will of any revelation. following my own thoughts, especially as sometimes they have moved me in the country (as in the gulf road in vermont), i should lie down in the lap of earth as trustingly as ever on my bed. but the terror to many persons is in the vague notions of what shall follow death. the judgment, an uncertain judgment to be passed upon them, whether they shall be saved? it ought to be considered by them that į there is no uncertainty about it. already they 1831] time – age — action 439 may know exactly what is their spiritual condition. ... he will not suffer his holy one to see corruption. ... what are your sources of v satisfaction? if they are meats and drinks, dress, gossip, revenge, hope of wealth, they must perish with the body. if they are contemplation, kind affections, admiration of what is admirable, self-command, self-improvement, then they survive death and will make you as happy then as now. december 20. “time was his estate.” (italian philosopher, johnson, vol. v.) “daily self-surpast." alexander 33 years. 30 years, age of having done most. scipio, hannibal. revivals wrought in a moment, great discoveries, great thoughts, great deeds. it only takes a moment to die, or to kill. what can't then be done in a year? life long enough for any good purpose: a year long enough. “ action comes less near to vital truth than description.” plato, republic, book v. 440 journal [age 28 “poetry is something more philosophical and excellent than history." aristotle, poetica, ch. 10. when you throw a stone, the way to hit the mark is to look at the mark and not consider how you swing your arm. when you speak extempore, you must carry your thought to the person opposite and never think of the manner. to miss emerson december 25. what from the woods, the hills, and the enveloping heaven? what from the interior creation, --if what is within be not the creator? how many changes men ring on these two words in and out. it is all our philosophy. take them away, and what were wordsworth or swedenborg? the rough and tumble old fellows, bacons, miltons, and burkes, don't wire-draw. that's why i like montaigne. no effeminate parlour workman is he, on an idea got at an evening lecture or a young men's debate, but roundly tells what he saw, or what he thought of when he was riding horse-back or entertaining a troop at his chateau. a gross, semisavage indecency debases his book, and ought doubtless to turn it out of or a 1831] montaigne 441 doors; but the robustness of his sentiments, the generosity of his judgments, the downright truth without fear or favour, i do embrace with both arms. it is wild and savoury as sweet fern. henry viii. loved to see a man, and it is exhilarating, once in a while, to come across a genuine saxon stump, a wild, virtuous man who knows books, but gives them their right place in his mind, lower than his reason. books are apt to turn reason out of doors. you find men talking everywhere from their memories, instead of from their understanding. if i stole this thought from montaigne, as is very likely, i don't care. i should have said the same myself. 1 boston, december 28, 1831. the year hastens to its close. what is it to me? what i am, that is all that affects me. that i am 28, or 8, or 58 years old is as nothing. should i mourn that the spring flowers are gone, that the summer fruit has ripened, that the harvest is reaped, that the snow has fallen ? should i mourn because so much addition has been made to the capital of human comfort? in my study my faith is perfect. it breaks, , scatters, becomes compounded, in converse with 442 journal [age 28 men. hume doubted in his study, and believed in the world. voma 10 mr. robert haskins quoted a significant proverb, that a woman could throw out with a spoon faster than a man could throw in with a shovel. “always be sticking a tree, jock, -it will be growing when ye are sleeping," was the thrifty scotchman's dying advice. always be setting a good action to grow, is the advice of a divine thrift. it is bearing you fruit all the time, knitting you to men's hearts, and to men's good and to god, and beyond this it is benefitting others by remembrance, by emulation, by love. the progress of moral nature is geometrical. celestial economy! authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1831 homer, iliad; anaxagoras; socrates; plato, republic ; aristotle, poetica; cicero, de senectute; horace; plutarch; plotinus ; porphyry; thomas à kempis ; luther; montaigne; calvin; shakspeare, sonnets; bacon; burton; sir thomas browne; milton; jeremy 1831] reading 443 taylor; herbert; lovelace; swammerdam; newton; scougal; fénelon ; young; swedenborg; chir abraham tucker (edward search); samuel johnson; adam smith; burke; schlegel, guesses at trutb; schiller; wordsworth, dion, rob roy, laodamia, happy warrior; mrs. barbauld, the likes brook; dugald stewart; burns, to the deil; kirby; de staël; schelling; scott; byron ; campbell, pleasures of hope; coleridge ; landor, imaginary conversations; müller (karl otfried, or wilhelm?); webster; everett. journal xxiii 1832 from n (blotting book iii) v and q the good ear (from n) boston, january 4, 1832. more is understood than is expressed in the most diffuse discourse. it is the unsaid part of every lecture that does the most good. if my poor tuesday evening lectures (horresco referens) were to any auditor the total of his exposition of christianity, what a beggarly faith were it. “death,” said you? we die daily. “death,” the soul never dies. theory of agreeable and disagreeable people, alluded to by george bradford,' that reflecting i george partridge bradford of duxbury was, like his sister sarah alden, wife of rev. samuel ripley of waltham, through life a close friend of mr. emerson. mr. bradford was affectionate, refined, a born scholar and a lover of aowers. he prepared himself for the ministry, but was so modest and sensitive that he found himself unfitted for its public offices. he 1832] plan for a book 445 and self-improving minds are not agreeable company, but that indolent and deceitful, rather. january 6. shall i not write a book on topics such as follow? — chapter 1. that the mind is its own place; chapter 2. that exact justice is done; chapter 3. that good motives are at the bottom of (many) bad actions; e. g. business before friends; chapter 4. that the soul is immortal; chapter 5. on prayers ; chapter 6. that the best is the true; chapter 7. that the mind discerns all things; chapter 8. that the mind seeks itself in all things. chapter 9. that truth is its own warrant. [charles?] sprague, [rev. mellish i.] motte, [edward] wigglesworth, [charles h., later admiral?] davis, [george p.] bradford, [?] willis, [rev. george] ripley, [?] henry, was a loyal member of the brook farm community, and after its breaking up, became a teacher of classes of young ladies, an occupation for which his culture and enthusiasm admirably fitted him; also a devoted gardener. 446 [age 28 journal crystallization [cornelius conway] felton, [rev. frederic h.] hedge.i [crystallization] january 7. there is a process in the mind very analogous to crystallization in the mineral kingdom. i think of a particular fact of singular beauty and interest. in thinking of it i am led to many more thoughts which show themselves, first partially, and afterwards more fully. but in the multitude of them i see no order. when i would present them to others they have no beginning. there is no method. leave them now, and return to them again. domesticate them in your mind, do not force them into arrangement too hastily, and presently you shall find they will take their own order. and the order they assume is divine. it is god's architecture. [excellence is truth) january 9. i cannot help quoting from mendelssohn's phædo the following rule, “all that which, being admitted as true, would procure the human very likely a list of the serious-minded and scholarly young men who might meet for conversation or form a literary club. race a a cle 1832] law benéficial 447 race a real advantage or a feeble consolation, acquires by that alone a high degree of probability.” “when the skeptics,” says his socrates, “ object against the belief in god and virtue that it is a simple political invention imagined for the good of society, i reply, ‘o, imagine a doctrine as indispensable to man, and i will pledge myself upon its truth.'” this is a true account of our instinctive faith. why do i believe in a perfect system of compensations, that exact justice is done? certainly not upon a narrow experience of a score, or a hundred instances. for i boldly affirm and believe the universality of the law. but simply that it is better in the view of the mind than any other way, therefore must be the true way. . whatever is better must be the truer way. “ little matters it to the simple lover of truth to whom he owes such or such a reasoning." mendelssohn. article “beauty” in ree's encyclopædia written by flaxman, also “sculpture.” mem. read treatise on “ commerce" of lib. useful knowledge, and mr. lee's “exposition of evidence.” 448 [age 28 journal dreams hideous dreams last night, and queried to-day whether they were any more than exaggerations of the sins of the day.' ... iinisterial bond “regard (not) dreams, since they are but the images of our hopes and fears.” cato, apud fielding's proverbs. [ministerial bonds] january 10. it is the best part of the man, i sometimes think, that revolts most against his being a minister. his good revolts from official goodness. if he never spoke or acted but with the full consent of his understanding, if the whole man acted always, how powerful would be every act and every word. well then, or ill then, how much power he sacrifices by conforming himself to say and do in other folks' time instead of in his own! the difficulty is that we do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all, and this 1 here follows a long paragraph printed in “spiritual laws,” essays i. 1832] vigorous english 449 accommodation is, i say, a loss of so much integrity and, of course, of so much power. but how shall the droning world get on if all its beaux esprits recalcitrate upon its approved forms and accepted institutions, and quit them all in order to be single minded? the double refiners would produce at the other end the double damned. native vigour in speech january 11. people sometimes wonder that persons wholly uneducated to write, yet eminent in some other ability, should be able to use language with so much purity and force. but it is not wonderful. the manner of using language is surely the most decisive test of intellectual power, and he who has intellectual force of any kind will be sure to show it there. for that is the first and simplest vehicle of mind, is of all things next to the mind, and the vigorous saxon that uses it well is of the same block as the vigorous saxon that formed it, and works after the same manner. same manner. 450 [age 28 journal [true philosophy] january 12. diogenes was a true philosopher when he compared his shade and his sunshine to the alternate residence of the persian king at susa and ecbatana. men live, as it were, upon concentric circles, a king upon a little larger arc, a peasant upon a little less, but the most perfect proportion subsisting between the enjoyments and pains of one and of the other. set your habits right, as paley said. trifles will be occasions of pleasure to a wise man, and of instruction. but nature must be exhausted to furnish one hour's stimulus to john dart. the good mind is set to happiness, the evil to pain. ower [power] january 20. don't trust children with edge tools. don't trust man, great god, with more power than he has, until he has learned to use that little better. what a hell should we make of the world if we could do what we would! put a button on the foil till the young fencers have learned not to put each other's eyes out. 1832] be your best self 451 is it not true that our power does increase exactly in the measure that we learn how to use it? “o reason, reason, art not thou he whom i seek ?” fénelon apud cousin. january 21. write on personal independence. there are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live. a man considers the fashion of his better neighbour's coat and hat, and then condemns his own. the only way to improve the fashion of his own coat and hat is to forget his neighbour and work out his own results; to eat less dinner; to rise earlier; to work harder, do more benefits, and more strictly adhere in his acts to the decisions of his own judgment. so to do will make his own coat and hat very respectable in the eyes of all men. ... “ say not then, · this with that lace will do well'; but • this with my discretion will be brave.'” herbert. what is the fault of hotspur's avowal? it seems just. 452 journal [age 28 “i'll give thrice so much land to any well deserving friend; but in the way of bargain, mark ye me, i'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair." ; 0 1 be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory. it requires circumspection. else he will be surprised by his good nature into acquiescence in false sentiments uttered by others. be a cato, and it will be easier to keep out of sin and shame than in the ease and social habit of mæcenas. no man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies. every one makes allowance for so much bowing and smiling and compliment as he supposes was insincere, and rates the character so much the worse for that heavy subtraction. the true man of business never brags. he talks simply of extensive commercial operations that embrace years and nations in their conpletion. a country attorney has much more to say about washington and the free trade and tariff conventions than the person whose influence is felt in conventions. i henry iv., part i, ii, 1. 1832] nature's keys— travel 453 dreams and beasts in 1 [they] are two keys by which we are to find out the secrets of our own nature. all mystics use them. they are like comparative anatomy. they are test objects; or we may say, that must be a good theory of the universe, that theory will bring a commanding claim to confidence which explains these phenomena.' travel “ here is he who gave away his lands to see those of other men.” my friend admires the knowledge and tact of his fellow boarders who have seen the world and know so much more of men then he. they got it however, not by peering about all over the world, but by minding their business. in the steadfast attention to all the details of their profession, they met this information. let the clergyman attend as steadfastly to his profession, and he will get as much fact, as much commanding knowledge. let him trust god's order, which supplies every eye which i see “ demonology” in lectures and biographical sketches, p. 6, centenary ed. 2 probably mr. bradford, who enjoyed and valued travel, all through life, as much as mr. emerson did litele. 454 [age 28 journal tood. keeps its place with its fair share of opportunity, as well as every mouth with its food. my friend expects with travelling to learn human nature, as if to become acquainted with man it were necessary to know all the individuals upon earth. were it not wiser to let god judge for us in this matter? he has provided every man with twenty or thirty companions, and two or three hundred acquaintances, by way of specimen of the varieties of human character, and as a large book wherein he may read his own nature in extenso. consider also that everybody's occasions provide him with much variety of intercourse. he is obliged to see the statehouse, the college, the almshouse and jail, court, camp, ship, stable, mine, and mountain sometime in his life, to travel many hundred miles by land and water. keep your eyes open, and god will provide you oppor: ? tunity. besides, if you go out to see the moon, it will not please you; but it will brighten and cheer your walk of business. all goes to show that, if you do your duty, wisdom will flow in. ... a subject write a sermon upon a house-hero, upon the hero to his valet de chambre; the ugly face that 1832] low philosophy — duty 455 obstinate association of true words and good acts has made beautiful. “real virtue is most loved where it is most nearly seen, and no respect which it commands from strangers can equal the never ceasing admiration it excites in the daily intercourse of domestic life.” plutarch, pericles. the stinking philosophy of the utilitarian ! le lance! nihil magnificum, nihil generosum, sapit, as cicero ? said of that of epicurus. repose of mind we must have, we must not feel pyrrhonistically, however we may speculate. what can comfort us if we think right and wrong are idiosyncrasies? “ duty subsists. immutably survive for our support the measures and the forms which an abstract intelligence supplies whose kingdom is where time and space are not." january 27. talked with reed and worcester last evening about the mutual influence of spirits. men1 rev. thomas worcester was minister of the swedenborgian church in boston for fifty years. he was a little 456 [age 28 journal delssohn's principle, that the desirable is the true, is the best thing which can be alleged in favour of the position. god, we agreed, was the communication between us and other spirits, departed or present. good wishes of us affect them. what is this more than the stoical precept that “the wise man who lifts his finger in rome affects all the wise men on the earth.” indeed, their position is just equivalent, for they suppose that spirit affects spirit, both unconscious. worcester said, god not so much sees as dissolves us. dr. channing on war (from ¥) boston, january 26, 1832. heard dr. channing last evening at the peace society. very good views. freedom unfits for war, unchains industry, and so makes property; then men are unwilling to put it at stake; improves men and gives them individuality, do not follow leaders, etc. only two men ever controlled public opinion in this country, washington and jefferson. efforts of the country in the last war paralysed by the minority, etc. older than emerson. he and sampson reed, author of growth of the mind, which mr. emerson so valued, married sisters. 1832] to each his gift 457 january 30, 1832. every man hath his use, no doubt, and everyone makes ever the effort according to the energy of his character to suit his external condition to his inward constitution. if his external condition does not admit of such accommodation, he breaks the form of his life, and enters a new one which does. if it will admit of such accommodation, he gradually bends it to his mind. thus finney can preach, and so his prayers are short; parkman can pray, and so his prayers are long; lowell can visit, and so his church service is less. but what shall poor i do, who can neither visit nor pray nor preach to my mind? can you not be virtuous? can you not be temperate ? can you not be charitable? can you not be chaste? can you not be industrious ? can you not keep your word, and possibly when you have learned these things you may find the others. [the following letter, though not in the journal, seemed to the editors worth while to insert here. it was written by mr. emerson to a young cousin of his wife, miss elizabeth tucker (later, mrs. mcgregor), of derry, n. h.] 458 (age 28 journal boston, february 1, 1832. my dear cousin, if it were not true that it is never too late to do right, i should be quite ashamed to send my list of books at such a long distance behind my promise. when i spent so pleasant a day at your house, i thought it would be very easy and i knew it would be very pleasant for me to make out a scheme of study for your vacation as soon as i got home. but what to select out of so great a company of leather-jackets and so deserving — and then a crowd of things to be done and withal a quaker habit of never doing things till their necessary time, in the hope of doing them better, has postponed my letter from day to day and week to week. but so you must never do, my dear cousin. but for fear you should quite forget your wise adviser, and should be a grown lady and so i should lose the honour of having had any part in your education, i hasten to send you my poor thoughts upon what is good to be read. i make no pretensions to give you a complete course, but only select a few good books of my acquaintance — such as i think you will like, and such as will serve you. one more preliminary word; never mind any silly people that try to sneer you out of the love 1832] letter on reading 459 of reading. people are fast outgrowing the old prejudice that a lady ought not to be acquainted with books. it is the display that disgusts; the knowledge that you get from them never disgusts any body, but is all useful, and has comforted how many hours that would otherwise, have been long, dull, and lonely. first then, you must keep one or two books for the soul always by you for monitors and angels, lest this world of trifles should run away with you. such a book is thomas à kempis's imitation of christ, written by a german monk near four hundred years ago, and needs only a little allowance for a roman catholic's opinions, to make it express the religious sentiment of every good mind. then there is a little book i value very much, scougal's life of god in the soul of man. taylor's holy dying is a good book. its author was called the “shakspear of divines.' selections from fénelon, by mrs. follen. ware, on the formation of the christian character. sir thomas browne's religion of a physician; this is a beautiful work lately republished in this town. young's night thoughts. a friend whom i 460 journal (age 28 value very much told ellen always to keep young upon her table. but i suppose you will think here are sunday books enough. now for history. the "american society for the diffusion of useful knowledge' are publishing müller's universal history in four duodecimo volumes. it is very much the best of all the general histories, and is very easily read. they have only printed the first volume. the sketch of rome and of greece in it are (sic) excellent. then the most important modern history to be read perhaps is robertson's charles v., which is an account of europe in the most interesting period. i would skip the first volume, which is a general view of europe, and read the two last. then you might takeup hume, say at the reign of elizabeth, which would continue pretty well the line of events. the best history of europe during the french revolution is scott's life of napoleon. for the american history, as you happen to live at derry, n. h., i would read dr. belknap's history of the state. it is not only a very good book itself, but will give you a pretty good idea of all the states, — their story is so much alike. morton's new england's memorial is a little book and a pleasing account of the forefathers. -1832) letter on reading 461 milman's history of the jews in the family library is a very good book. but what is far more soothing, and never painful like the history of man, is natural history in its various parts. the first volume of the american library of useful knowledge (and you must make the social library of derry subscribe for that book) contains mr. brougham's discourse upon the advantages and prospects of science, which is excellent, and mr. herschel's, which is better. the same mr. herschel, son of the famous astronomer, is about to publish a discourse on astronomy, which is expected with great interest. then there is a beautiful book on american birds, the ornithology by mr. nuttall, that every one who lives in the country ought to read. i suppose you have read school conversations on chemistry. the conversations on vegetable physiology are just as good. with this class of books is the account of polar expeditions, a volume of the family library. i suppose to such a formidable list i must add a novel or two, or you would think me very unkind. so i really hope you will read de vere by the author of tremaine, and as much of walter scott and miss edgeworth as you please. 462 (age 28 journal for poetry read milton. if the paradise lost tires you, it is so stately, try the minor poems. comus, if the mythology does not make it sound strange, is a beautiful poem and makes one holy to read it. read bryant's poems; i know you will love them, and cowper and thomson, and perhaps (a very large perhaps) wordsworth. if you do not like poetry, which i suppose you do, the best way to learn is to write some. now i do not suppose that you will read all these books in a short time, or perhaps at any time, and some of them very probably you have read. i only wanted to fulfil your command and speak a good word for some valued acquaintance of mine. the best of all ways to make one's reading valuable is to write about it, and so i hope my cousin elizabeth has a blank-book where she keeps some record of her thoughts. and if you think my letter very long, why you must bear in mind that once i was a schoolmaster, and i am so proud of my new scholar as to keep her long at my lecture. make my respectful remembrances to your mother and father, and my compliments to your sister. your affectionate cousin, r. w. emerson, 1832] riches of wise man 463 poverty and riches february 6. every man has some facts in his mind which invalidate the common sayings, and incline him to think that the poor are as happy as the rich. the man, not the condition, imports. there ' are many rich who would be happy if they were poor; many poor who would be unhappy if they were rich. a poem would give me more pleasure than a hundred dollars, and mind does so far vindicate itself that i think the man does not live so base who would exchange the least intellectual power for the wealth of the world. i believe a hundred dollars a year would support me in the enjoyment of what i love best. why toil i then for twenty times as much? might i cut and run? might i dignifiedly walk away, and keep the man nor turn cat? ... take nothing for granted. that strikes you in hearing the discourse of a wise man, that he has brought to the crucible and the analysis all that other people receive without question, as chemists are directed to select what manufacturers throw away. 464 [age 28 journal the words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. ecclesiasticus ix, 17. consider the permanence of the best opinion; the certainty with which a good book acquires fame, though a bad book succeeds better at first. consider the natural academy which the best heads of the time constitute, and which, 'tis pleasant to see, act almost as harmoniously and efficiently, as if they were organized and acted by vote. men appreciate instinctively the measure of a superior intellect; as if a part of the man acknowledged the messiahship of wisdom, whilst a part denied it, —an awkward consciousness that here is merit, here is power, though latent and wholly inapplicable to my wants and state of mind. i should say it is the newton within the peasant that recognizes newton'as the ornament of the human race. i met some good sentences, in brewster's life of newton, from leonardo da vinci. i of course take the spiritual sense of the passage. “in the study of the sciences which depend on mathematics, those who do not consult nature, but authors, are not the children of nature, they are only her grand1832] book and reader 465 children. nature alone is the master of true genius.” adhere to nature, never to accepted opinion. the sermon which i write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day. ... february 18, 1832. what can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. cousin is a thousand books to a thousand persons. take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what i find. if i would have a monopoly of the delight or che wisdom i get, i am as secure now the book is english as if it were imprisoned in syriac. judge of the use different persons can make of this book by the use you are able to make of it at different times; sometimes very imperfectly apprehending the author and very little interested ; again delighting in a sentence or an argument; another time, ascending to the comprehension of the whole reasoning, but implicitly. following him as a disciple ; at another, not only understanding his reasoning, but understanding his mind; able not only to discern, but to prei the substance of the last sentences occurs in “spiritual laws,” essays i. re 466 (age 28 journal dict his path and its relation to other paths, to discern his truth and his error.' ... nothing is new february 19. was not all truth always in the world ? even the lord's prayer, grotius represents as a compilation of jewish petitions, and the german commentators trace almost all the precepts of christ to hebrew proverbs. and i learn to-day that the copernican system, it is gathered from the writings of aristotle, — was maintained by some philosophers before his (aristotle's) time. (library useful knowledge, life of galileo.) and the new light, brand new, of the swedenborgians even, is old as thought. i match every saying of theirs with some greek or latin proverb, e.g., “the wise man lifting his finger,” etc. galileo february 20, 1832. one is tempted to write a lecture on the right use of the senses, from having attention called to the fact that galileo lost his sight in 1636. “the noblest eye is darkened,” said castelli, “which here follows in this journal the passage, “ introduce a base person among gentlemen,” etc. in “spiritual laws.” seen mor 1832] old questions — sin 467 nature ever made, an eye so privileged, and gifted with such rare qualities, that it may with truth be said to have seen more than all of those who are gone, and to have opened the eyes of all who are to come.” see also the expressions of galileo himself, quoted p. 75, life of galileo, in library useful knowledge. galileo died in 1642, æt. 78. so the eye of milton. it is idle in us to wonder at the bigotry and violence of the persecution of galileo. every man may read the history of it in himself when he is contradicted and silenced in argument by a person whom he had always reckoned his inferior. [unanswered questions] i wrote one day, after being puzzled by a mechanical alderman, that the first questions remain to be asked. ’t is even so; and many a profound genius, i suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet every day posed by trivial questions at his own suppertable. [sın] it is not permitted to do wrong in the dark. set out to sin, and the whole cause will bave a unanswered estions 468 (age 28 journal hearing, however brief and mad you be. the best arguments are yet stated by the opposition. the angels are faithful to their post as the devils. from [from e] chardon street, boston. march 10, 1832. temperance is an estate. i am richer, the stoic might say, by my self-command than i am by my income. and literally, for his acquaintance spends at the confectioner's what pays the bookseller's bill of the stoic and makes him rich indeed. then the sum with holden from the liquor-dealer enables the stoic to be magnificent in expenses of charity and of taste. to say nothing of the doctor's and apothecary's accounts. a good way to look at the matter is to see how it figures in the ledger. bacon says, best spent in the most permanent ways, such as buying plate. this year i have spent say $20 in wine and liquors which are drunk up, and the drinkers are the worse. it would have bought a beautiful print that would have pleased for a century; or have paid a debt. ... but every indulgence weakened the moral facdi 1832) dissatisfaction 469 ulty, hurt at least for the time the intellect, lowered the man in the estimation of the spectators though sharers, injured them, and diminished the means of beneficence. tu cura tibi march 14, 1832. anything not base is desirable to bring about so good an end as this of personal purity. be master of yourself, and for the love of god keep every inch you gain. no man who has once by hatred of excess mastered his appetites would be bought back to his bondage by any possessions. 28 march, my food per diem weighed 14 14 oz. 20 " " " " " " 13. " 2 april, « « « « « 12 12" dissatisfaction [dissatisfaction] what ails you, gentlemen ? said jupiter. what ails you, my wo-begone friend ? speak, what are you? “bilious.” and you? “a slave.” and you? “hypp'd.” and you?“poor.” and you? “lame.” and you? “a jew.” march 29. i visited ellen's tomb and opened the coffin. 470 journal. [age 28 march 30. i am your debtor, sir james mackintosh, for your ethics, and yet, masterly book asit is, highly as i esteem the first account of the conscience that has ever been given, yet is it at last · only an outline, nor can suffice to my full satisfaction. ... omnis aristippum docuit color et status et res. horace. “ be not almighty, let me say, against, but for me.” herbert. co sexan ingenious and pleasing account of human nature is hartley's successive passions as expounded by mackintosh. each becomes the parent of a new and higher passion, and itself dies. if the scheme of necessity must be admitted, then let that doctrine also be the antidote, the gradual glorification of man. ... very costly scaffoldings are pulled down when the more costly building is finished. and god has his scaffoldings. the jewish lawanswered its temporary purpose and was then set aside. christianity is completing its purpose as an aid to educate i man. and evil is a scaffolding on which universal good is reared. god shall be all in all.... 1832] to each his own 471 moore to crabbe of campbell “ true bard ! and simple, as the race of heaven-born poets ever are, when, stooping from their starry place, they're children, near, though gods afar.” (suum cuique] the world is an academy to the scholar, a butt to the satirist, a church to the devotee, “the scaffold of the divine vengeance” to the calvinist, good society to the fashionist, a market to the merchant, a conquest to alexander. “no one can guess what kind of vision belongs to the fly. there are probably 25,000 hexagonal lenses or menisci on its surface, or the same number of distinct visual organs, as some comparative anatomists would lead us to believe." abernethy, lectures. deus anima brutorum april 2. write a sermon upon animals. they are to man in life what fables about them are in ethics. draw the moral then of the bee, ant, fox, hedgehog, ermine, swine, roe, woodpecker, pigeon, worm, moth, mite, a frozen snake. 472, [age 28 journal [memoranda for] sermon on idleness “in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread." galileo's eye. he that does nothing is poorer than he that has nothing. “the devil tempts others, an idle man tempts the devil.” “an idle brain is the devil's shop.” “he hath no leisure who useth it not.” the busy man is entirely ignorant of what was doing this morning all over the city. working in your calling is half praying. what keeps the world from being a horrid poneropolis ? what divides and conquers? necessity of all; labor ; “ poverty is a good which | all hate.” give us no leisure until we are fit for it. [the force within] ... blundering rhetorician seeking in the tones or gestures of chatham or adams, or in the circumstances of the parties present or concerned, the electricity that lay only in the breast of chatham and adams ; — pectus est disertum et vis mentis.' i probably a fragment from quintus fabius pictor, the “ father of latin history," who lived in the time of the third punic war, and is quoted with respect by cicero and livy. 1832] persian sculptures 473 [nature's teaching] april 6, 1832. it was the comparing the mechanism of the hand and the foot that led galen, who, they say, was a skeptic in his youth, to the public declaration of his opinion that intelligence must have operated in ordaining the laws by which living beings are constructed. “in explaining these things,” he says, “i esteem myself as composing a solemn hymn to the great architect of our bodily frame, in which i think there is more true piety than in sacrificing hecatombs of oxen or burning the most costly perfumes, for i first endeavour from his works to know him myself, and afterwards by the same means to show him to others, to inform them how great is his wisdom, his goodness, his power.” galen, apud abernethy, lectures. hunter like pestalozzi; each lived to an idea which was their guide and genius; but abernethy is hardly a niederer. so jussieu wrote nothing, yet had an idea. [persian scriptures] april 17. a strange poem is zoroastrism. it is a system as separate and harmonious and sublime as swed. vot 474 journal [age 28 enborgianism — congruent. one would be glad to behold the truth which they all shadow forth. (for it cannot but be truth that they typify and symbolize, as the play of every faculty reveals an use, a cause and a law to the intelligent. one sees in this, and in them all, the element of poetry according to jeffrey's true theory, the effect produced by making every thing outward only a sign of something inward: plato's forms or ideas which seem almost tantamount to the ferouers of zoroaster. “of all the ferouers of beings that should exist in the world, the most precious in the eyes of ormuzd were that of law, that of iran and that of zoroaster,” académie des inscriptions, vol. 37, p. 623. but what i would have quoted just now to illustrate the poetry theory is this :“fire, the sun of ormuzd, was also created. he represented, though imperfectly, the original fire which animates all beings, forms the relations which exist between them and which in the beginning was a principle of union between ormuzd and time-sans-bornes ” (which is the first name in their theodicæa). by the way, i cannot help putting in here an exquisite specimen of the vraisemblance in fiction. among the evil persons and things produced by ! 1832] zoroaster 475 ahriman, it is said, — abriman produisit même une espèce de feu ténébreux, dont vient celui de la fièvre, p. 628. dowe not feel in reading these elemental theories that these grotesque fictions are the gallipots of socrates, that these primeval allegories are globes and diagrams on which the laws of living nature are explained? do we not seem nearer to divine truth in these fictions than in less pretending prose ? here is one of the sentences. goschoroon rejoicing before ormuzd at the prospect of the creation of zoroaster, says, “i said to heaven in the beginning when there was no night, that there must be purity of thought, of word and of action," – p. 643. i am quoting from the histoire de l'académie des inscriptions, vol. 37. prometheus archaic : “ jupiter an upstart.” the foolish took no oil in their vessels with their lamps. pestalozzi said, “ that no man was either willing or able to help any other man." chardon st., april 29, 1832. you may chuse for yourself, or let others chuse for you, in things indifferent. you may give the 476 [age 28 journal law, or take it. let a man set down his foot and say, “this or that thing i can't and won't do,” and stand it out, it shall be counted to him not only for innocency, but for righteousness; whilst a poor craven stands by, omitting the same thing and apologizing for it, and receives the hearty contempt and round abuse of all observers. x you had better begin small, sail in an eggshell, make a straw your mast, a cobweb all your cloth. begin and proceed on a settled and not-to-beshaken conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well. he had better stick by what he knows sartain, that humility and love are always to be practised; but there is no such pressing reason for his asserting his opinions, but he had better be humble and kind and useful to-day and to-morrow and as long as he lasts. count from yourself in order the persons that have near relation to you up to ten or fifteen, and see if you can consider your whole relation to each without squirming. that will be something. then, have you paid all your debts? then, have you paid to the world as much kindness as you received from early benefactors? it were a sort of baseness to die in . 1832] expression — sermons 477 the world's debt. then, can you not, merely for the very elegancy, the eruditus luxus of the thing, do an unmixed kindness or two? expression may 3. sir j. mackintosh said well, that every picture, statue and poem was an experiment upon the human mind. i hunt in charles's dish of shells each new form of beauty and new tint, and seem, as fontenelle said, “to recognize the thing the first time i see it.” every knot of every cockle has expression, that is, is the material symbol of some cast off thought. sermons to analyse a foolish sermon may require much wisdom. strange that so learned and gifted a man as my friend should please himself with drawing for an hour such gingerbread distinctions. may 7. charles says that porto rico is a place where one is never pestered with cold feet and never needs a pocket-handkerchief, and never is unwilling to get out of bed in the morning. 478 [age 28 journal [a thought under another name] " mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. to be at perfect agreement with a man of most opposite conclusions you have only to translate your language into his. the same thought which you call god in his nomenclature is called christ. in the language of william penn, moral sentiment is called christ. may . there is no country so extensive as a thought. “he who contemplates hath a day without ? night.” [symbols] ; i suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind; a flora of the whole globe would be so likewise; or a history of beasts; or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. everything is significant. symbols (be master] ... reduce the body to the soul. make the body the instrument through which that thought is uttered. it is counted disgraceful in the ambassador not to represent in the dignity of his carriage the power of his country. if your manners are false to your theory, cut them off, ma 1832] mastery – women 479 as cranmer burnt the offending hand. don't shrink from your work. it will never be an example further than it should be: for no other man has the same freak. do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action. you serve an ungrateful master, — serve him the more. be wholly his. embrace any service, do what you will, and the master of your master, the law of laws, will secure your compensation. ... he that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard. is it not better to intimate our astonishment ! as we pass through the world, if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yest of the abyss? i will just lift my hands and say, kóguos! [woman] may 12. burns's remark about fine women too true in my experience. is not affluence, or at least easy circumstances, essential to the finish of the female character? not to its depth and resources, perhaps, but to the beauty of mind and manners. is it not because woman is not 480 (age 28 journal yet treated properly, but some taint of indian barbarity marks yet our civilization? she was made, not to serve, but to be served, and only wealth admits among us of that condition. or is it that an eye to interest is a fatal blot to the female character, and the poor scarce can help it? write a sermon upon blessed poverty. who have done all the good in the world? poor men. “poverty is a good hated by all men!” e ofs-soul spanish proverbs god comes to see us without a bell. suindship a wall between both, best preserves friendship. whither goest thou, grief? where i am used to go. x make the night night, and the day day. working in your calling is half praying. when you are all agreed upon the time, quoth the curate, i will make it rain. he counts very unskilfully who leaves god out of his reckoning.' i brahma, in emerson's poem, says: “ they reckon ill who leave me out.” 1832) truth — thought 481 a good man is ever at home wherever hel chance to be. [truth coming] “truth never is; always is a-being.” does not that word signify that state in which a man ever finds himself conscious of knowing nothing, but being just now ready to begin to know ? he feels like one just born. he is ready to ask the first questions. strange how abysmal is our ignorance. every man who writes a book or pursues a science seems to conceal ambitiously his universal ignorance under this fluency in a particular. the higher the subjects are, which occupy your thoughts, the more they tax yourself; and the same thoughts have least to do with your individuality, but have equal interest for all men. things moreover are permanent in proportion to their inwardness in your nature. shakspeare may 16, 1832. shakspeare's creations indicate no sort of anxiety to be understood. there is the cleopatra, i “go where he will, the wise man is at home.” poems, “woodnotes." 482 [age 28 journal an irregular, unfinished, glorious, sinful character, sink or swim, there she is, and not one in the thousand of his readers apprehends the noble dimensions of the heroine. then ariel, hamlet, and all; all done in sport with the free, daring pencil of a master of the world. he leaves his children with god. it is a good sign in human nature, the unmixed delight with which we contemplate the genius of shakspeare, and if it were, ten times more, should be glad. freindshes ssay on [know, to like] may 17. king james liked old friends best; as he said, his old shoes were easiest to his feet. we are benefitted by coming to an understanding, as it is called, with our fellow men, and with any fellow man. it empties all the ill blood; it ventilates, purifies the whole constitution. and we always feel easiest in the company of a person to whom the whole nature has been so made known. no matter what, but how well known. [new lights] the moment you present a man with a new idea, he immediately throws its light back upon 11 so 1832) envy 483 the mass of his thoughts, to see what new relation it will discover. and thus all our knowledge is a perpetually living capital, whose use cannot be exhausted, as it revives with every new fact. there is proof for noblest truths in what we already know, but we have not yet drawn the distinction which shall methodize our experience in a particular combination. envy may 18. shall i not write upon envy? upon the wisdom of christ which ranks envy with robbery, which is only envy in act? upon the folly of envy, which seeks an impossible thing, viz., to draw another man's good to itself?— in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. — upon the nobleness which converts all the happiness of the world into my happiness, and makes mr. davis's house agreeable to me? pestalozzi's melancholy paradox, that no man is able or willing to help any other man, should set men right. who receive hospitality ? the hospitable; who receive money? the rich. who receive wisdom? the wise. to whom do opportunities fall? to the opportune. unto him that hath shall be given. v 484 journal [age 28 malthus coops up indomitable millions ; spiritual world not so. we rejoice unmixedly in shakspeare's genius. ardour with which we desire a friend, a teacher of prima pbilosopbia. admiration warms and exalts. the lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection. “no revenge is more heroic than that which torments envy by doing good.” would you be revenged ? live well. who hath envy? i do not envy any one, in the sense of wishing their goods mine. but i am capable, i may easily see, of malevolence to those who have injured me, or before whom i have played the fool. charles saith, the jackson party hath envy, and doubtless the low idle hate the high rich. it is a very low passion, if we have to look so hard to find it. it is as rare as robbery, its bad son. am nstancy [constancy] may 19. how has the soldier acquired his formidable courage? by a rare occasional action, effort? no; by eating his daily bread in danger of his life, by having seen a thousand times what resolution and combination can accomplish. 18327 present and past 485 well, is any other virtue to be gained in any other way? how is a firm, cheerful conversation to be got? not by one effort, but by spending days and years well, and so having a divine support for such a frail nature to lean upon. a divine support of all the virtue of his life. the bubble of the present is every moment hardening into the flint of the past. what makes the majesty of brougham, and webster and mackintosh? no brass resembles gold. the consciousness of an innocent life, and the cumulative glory of so many witnesses behind.' . .. concealment if you would not be known to do anything, -never do it.?... the present the vanishing, volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow 1 the journal here gives essentially the passage in “ self reliance” (p. 59, century ed.), with “ the heroes of the senate and field " instead of the names here given; and, a few lines later, instead of “the thunder of chatham's voice,” the original has “ music of channing's voice.” 2 here follows a passage differing but slightly from that in “spiritual laws” beginning with the same words. 486 [age 28 journal away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine record of the past,—the fragility of the man into the eternity of god. the present is always becoming the past. we walk on molten lava on which the claw of a fly or the fall of a hair makes its impression, which being received, the mass hardens to flint and retains every impression forevermore. the point of view there is a great parallax in human nature ascertained by observing it from different states of mind. .... rtin jortin said in his tracts that they who uphold the orthodox doctrine of the trinity must be prepared to assert“ that jesus christ is his own father and his own son. the consequence will be so, whether they like it, or whether they like it not.” he also said in a letter to gilbert wakefield,“ there are propositions contained in our liturgy and articles which no man of common sense among us believes." ; 1 john jortin, d. d. (1698-1770), author of discourses concerning the truth of the christian religion and life of erasmus. 1832] the one miracle 487 [missionary work] “you send out to the sandwich islands one missionary and twenty-five refutations in the crew of the vessel,” said mr. sturgis. [the miracle of the universe] indeed is truth stranger than fiction. for what has imagination created to compare with the science of astronomy? what is there in paradise lost to elevate and astonish like herschel or somerville? the contrast between the magnitude and duration of the things observed and the animalcule observer! it seems a mere eye sailing about space in an egg-shell, and for him to undertake to weigh the formidable masses, to measure the secular periods, and settle the theory of things so vast and long, and out of the little cock-boat of a planet to aim an impertinent telescope at every nebula and pry into the plan and state of every white spec that shines in the inconceivable depths ! not a white spot but is a lump of suns, the roe, the milt of light and life. who can be a calvinist, or who an atheist? god has opened this knowledge to us to correct our theology and educate the mind. 488 [age 28 journal “how many centuries of observations were necessary to render the earth suspected !” am. encyclopædia. “ a good naturalist cannot be a bad man.” bewick. bonus orator, bonus vir. so galen, so abernethy, so davy. has not some astronomer said young's sentiment of astronomy? i hope the time will come when there will be a telescope in every street." design every form is a history of the thing. the comparative anatomist can tell at sight whether a skeleton belonged to a carnivorous or herbivorous animal, a climber, a jumper, a runner, a . digger, a builder. the conchologist can tell at sight whether the shell covered an animal that fed on animals or on vegetables, whether it were i “stars haunt us with their mystery," wrote mr. emerson in “ the world soul," and the spectacle of the heavens at night always stirred him; see the opening passage of “ nature.” the great astronomers interested him; see the passage in “ the method of nature" about the stars and star-gazers : also the early verses, “ the poet," in the appendix to poems. 489 1832] astronomy a river or a sea shell, whether it dwelt in still, or in turbid waters. everything is a monster till we know what it is for, a ship, a telescope, a surgical instrument, are puzzles and painful to the eye until we have been shown successively the use of every part, and then the thing tells its story at sight and is beautiful. a lobster is monstrous, but when we have been shown the reason of the case and the colour and the tentacula and the proportion of the claws, and seen that he has not a scale nor a bristle nor any quality but fits to some habit and condition of the creature, he then seems as perfect and suitable to his sea-house as a glove to a hand. a man in the rocks under the sea would be a monster, but a lobster is a most handy and happy fellow there. astronomy may 26. astronomy hath excellent uses. the first questions it suggests, how pregnant! do you believe that there is boundless space? just dwell on that gigantic thought. does not idealism seem more probable than a space upon whose area what is, the family of being, is a mere dot, and the thought of men or angels can never fathom more than its verge? all is lost in the bosom of its great night. me 490 [age 29 journal next see how it corrects the vaunty speculations of men. it was an old sarcasm, if the triangles had a god, they would paint him with three sides. and men take man, of course, for the type of the highest beings, and suppose whatever is intelligent and great must be like him in nature. astronomy gives the lie to all this, and shows that whatever beings inhabit saturn, jupiter, herschel, venus, even in this little neighbourhood of social worlds that so nearly resemble ours, must be of entirely different structure from man. the human race could not breathe in the moon, nor exist in the cold of saturn, nor move in the gravity of jupiter. well then, it irresistibly modifies all theology. “ not to earth's contracted span thy goodness let me bound, nor think thee, lord, alone of man when thousand worlds are round.” 1 calvinism suited ptolemaism. the irresistible effect of copernican astronomy has been to í make the great scheme for the salvation of man absolutely incredible. hence great geniuses who studied the mechanism of the heavens became unbelievers in the popular faith. newton became a unitarian, laplace, in a catholic country, be1832] a crisis in life 491 came an infidel, substituting necessity for god; but a self-intelligent necessity is god. thus astronomy proves theism, but disproves dogmatic theology. the sermon on the mount must be true throughout all the space which the eye sees and the brain imagines, but st. paul's epistles, the jewish christianity would be unintelligible. it operates steadily to establish the moral laws, to disconcert and evaporate temporary systems. at the touch of time errors scatter, in the eye of eternity, truth prevails. [the crisis] june 2, 1832. cold, cold. thermometer says temperate. yet a week of moral excitement." is it years and nations that guide my pen? i have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. the profession is antiquated. in an i this must have been the week in which mr. emerson made known to his people his repugnance to the communion rite, and proposed its modification, at least to one of commemoration simply, omitting the use of the elements. the matter was referred to a committee for consideration. meanwhile the young minister, following the example of jesus in all periods of trial and distress, withdrew to the mountains for spiritual renewal. 1 492 journal [age 29 huqur serke, think, to be humble. not sog is too you to be added bu sa nu lif of those faculties up altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers. were not a socratic paganism better than an effete, superannuated christianity ? does not every shade of thought have its own tone, so that wooden voices denote wooden minds? whatever there is of authority in religion is that which the mind does not animate. 2 conway, n. h., july 6. here, among the mountains, the pinions of thought should be strong, and one should see the errors of men from a calmer height of love and wisdom. what is the message that is given me to communicate next sunday ?: religion in the mind is not credulity, and in the practice is not form. it is a life. it is the order and soundness of a man. it is not something else to be got, to be added, but is a new life of those faculties you have. it is to do right. it is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble. erhan allen crawford's, white mountains, july 14, 1832. there is nothing to be said. why take the pencil? i believe something will occur. a slight i probably in the village church. 1832] meditations 493 momentum would send the planet to roll forever, and the laws of thought are not unlike. a thought, i said, is a country wide enough for an active mind. it unrolls, it unfolds, it shows unlimited sense within itself. a few pains, a few pleasures, how easily we are amused, how easily scared. a too benevolent man is at the mercy of every fop he meets, and every householder. his willingness to please withdraws him from himself. sure he ought to please, but not please at the expense of his own view by accommodation. “imitation is a leaning on something foreign; } incompleteness of individual development; defect of free utterance.” edinburgh review, no. cx. “ah me," said the mourner to me,“ how natural he looked when they had put on his dickey!” “ it was this that caught him," said the wife to me, touching her pearl earring. meditations the golden days of youth are gone, the hours of sun and hope ; and round thee — how hard to command the soul, or to solicit the soul. many of our actions, many of 494 journal (age 29 mo mine, are done to solicit the soul. put away your flesh, put on your faculties. i would think, i would feel. i would be the vehicle of that divine principle that lurks within, and of which life has afforded only glimpses enough to assure me of its being. we know little of its laws, but we have observed that a north wind, clear, cold, with its scattered fleet of drifting clouds, braced the body, and seemed to reflect a similar abyss of spiritual heaven between clouds in our minds; or a brisk conversation moved this mighty deep, or a word in a book was made an omen of by the mind and surcharged with meaning, or an oration, or a south wind, or a college, or a cloudy lonely walk, — “striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.” and having this experience, we strive to avail ourselves of it, and propitiate the divine inmate to speak to us again out of clouds and darkness. truly, whilst it speaketh not, man is a pitiful being. he whistles, eats, sleeps, gets his gun, makes his bargain, lounges, sins, and when all is done is yet wretched. let the soul speak, and all this drivelling and these toys are thrown aside and man listens like a child. the good of going into the mountains is that life is reconsidered; it is far from the slavss. 1832) the mountains 495 ery of your own modes of living, and you have opportunity of viewing the town at such a distance as may afford you a just view, nor can you have any such mistaken apprehension as might be expected from the place you occupy and the round of customs you run at home. he who believes in inspiration will come here to seek it. he who believes in the wood-loving muses must woo them here, and he who believes in the reality of his soul will therein find inspiration, and muses, and god, and will come out here to undress himself of pedantry and judge righteous judgment, and worship the first cause. the reason why we like simplicity of character, the reason why grown men listen with untiring interest to a lively child is the same, viz., it is something more than man, above man, and we hearken with a curiosity that has something of awe. we should so listen to every man, if his soul spake, but it does not; his fears speak, his senses speak, and he himself seldom. white mountains july 15, 1832. a few low mountains, a great many clouds always covering the great peaks, a circle of woods 496 journal [age 29 to the horizon, a peacock on the fence or in the yard, and two travellers no better contented than myself in the plain parlour of this house make up the whole picture of this unsabbatized sunday. but the hours pass on, creep or fly, and bear me and my fellows to the decision of questions of duty ; to the crises of our fate; and to the solution of this mortal problem. welcome and farewell to them; fair come, fair go. god is, and we in him. the hour of decision. it seems not worth while for them who charge others with exalting forms above the moon to fear forms themselves with extravagant dislike. i am so placed that my ali· quid ingenii may be brought into useful action. let me not bury my talent in the earth in my indignation at this windmill. but though the thing may be useless and even pernicious, do not destroy what is good and useful in a high degree rather than comply with what is hurtful in a small degree. the communicant celebrates on a foundation either of authority or of tradition an ordinance which has been the occasion to thousands, i hope to thousands of thousands, of contrition, of gratitude, of prayer, of faith, of love and of holy living. far be it from any of my friends, god forbid it be in my heart, to interrupt 1832] the communion rite 497 any occasion thus blessed of god's influences upon the human mind. i will not, because we may not all think alike of the means, fight so strenuously against the means, as to miss of the end which we all value alike. i think jesus did not mean to institute a perpetual celebration, but that a commemoration of him would be useful. others think that jesus did establish this one. we are agreed that one is useful, and we are agreed i hope in the way in which it must be made useful, viz., by each one's making it an original commemoration. i know very well that it is a bad sign in a man to be too conscientious, and stick at gnats. the most desperate scoundrels have been the overrefiners. without accommodation society is impracticable. but this ordinance is esteemed the most sacred of religious institutions, and i cannot go habitually to an institution which they esteem holiest with indifference and dislike. george fox george fox, born 1624, son of a weaver, was put out to a shoemaker, and for him tended sheep. in [1643-44] he began his wanderings, dressed always in leather clothing for strength's sake, and suffering much from hunger, thirst, 498 journal [age 29 -want of lodging, imprisonment and abuse. he taught that the scriptures could not be understood but by the same spirit that gave them forth. rails had been built about the communion table in churches about — and the house in which the episcopalians worshipped of course was only called “the church.” these things moved george's indignation very much. he called them steeple-houses, and on almost all occasions preferred to preach out of doors. when the church was manifestly the only convenient place, he went in. he told the priests that he was no man-made priest. “the visible,” he said, “ covereth the invisible sight in you.” "it pleased the lord to show him that the natures of those things which were hurtful without were also within in the minds of wicked men, and that the natures of dogs, swine, vipers, etc., and those of cain, ishmael, esau, pharaoh, etc., were in the hearts of many people. but since this did grieve him, he cried to the lord saying, -why should i be thus, seeing i was never addicted to commit those evils? and inwardly it was answered him, that it was needful he should have a sense of all conditions.”—“ about that time it happened that 1832] george fox 499 walking in the town of mansfield by the steeple-house side it was inwardly told him, “that which people trample upon must be thy food.' and at the saying of this it was opened to him that it was the life of christ people did trample on, and that they fed one another with words, without minding that thereby the blood of the son of god was trampled under foot.” (sewell, vol. 1.) thoroughly consistent he was; how much more than other reformers. a consistent reformer. the natural growth, by reaction, of a formal church. “words, words, ye feed one another with words," — he said. he would have the substance of religion seen and obeyed. all his prophetic rhapsodies are directed at some moral offence. they put him in prison. he saw the evils of the jail “and laid before the judges what a hurtful thing it was that prisoners should lie long in jail, because they learned wickedness one of another in talking of their bad deeds; and that therefore speedy justice ought to be done.” he also wrote to them about the evil of putting to death for stealing. (fox's life.) in jail, there was a conjurer who threatened to raise the devil and break the house down. cen 500 [age 29 journal but george went to him and said, “come, let us see what thou canst do, and do thy worst: the devil is raised high enough in thee already; but the power of god chains him down.” at the undaunted speech, the fellow slunk away. they gave him liberty to walk a mile from jail, hoping he would escape. socrates-like, he would not. they offered him bounty if he would serve against charles. he said his weapons were not carnal. a band of volunteers chose him their captain. still he refused. col. — threatened to kill the quakers. “here's my hair,” said g. fox, “here's my cheek, and here's my shoulder.” the colonel and his companions stood amazed, and said, “if this be your principle, as you say, we never saw the like in our lives.” to which fox said, “what i am in words, i am the same in life.” practical good sense he had, when, at the request of someone, he lay down on a bed to refute the rumour that he never slept in a bed. a reformer putting ever a thing for a form. “my allegiance,” he said, “ doth not consist in swearing, but in truth and faithfulness.” sa swedenborg.“ considered the visible world and the relation of its parts as the dial plate of 1832] god the soul 501 the invisible one." quoted in new jerusalem magazine for july, 1832." und i am god i have complained that the acknowledgment of god's presence halts far behind the fact. samith what is it intended to be but the tribute to one for godi without whose movings no tribute can be paid, for no tributary can be? one without whom no man or beast or nature subsists; one who is the life of things, and from whose creative will our life and the life of all creatures flows every moment, wave after wave, like the successive beams that every moment issue from the sun. such is god, or he is nothing. what is god but the name of the soul at the centre by which all things are what they are, and so our existence is proof of his? we cannot think of ourselves and how our being is intertwined with his without awe and amazement. [truth immortal] august 11.2 the truth is not injured nor touched though thousands of them that love it fall by the way. 1 the new jerusalem magazine was the swedenborgian organ. 2 mr. emerson was acutely ill in that week. ed. 502 [age 29 journal oman alon serene, adorable, eternal it lives, though goethe, mackintosh, cuvier, bentham, hegel die in their places, which no living men can fill. repairs 201 nam for hom pent the errors that the moon and earth make in the heavens in a long period of time, an equal period repairs; the seventh pleiad was lost and is found; the sweet fern dies, but revives ; as much rain as the mountain sheds in forming torrents is replenished by visiting clouds. but these are faroff signs of compensation. before tea i counted not myself worth a brass farthing, and now i am filled with thoughts and pleasures and am as strong and infinite as an angel. so when, one of these days, i see this body going to ruin like an old cottage, i will remember that after the ruin the resurrection is sure. ... the principle of repairs is in us, the remedial principle. everybody perceives greatest contrasts in his own spirit and powers. to-day he is not worth a brown cent, to-morrow he is better than a million. he kicks at riches and could be honoured and happy with nothing but arrowroot and balm tea. this we call being in good or bad spirits. it is only in the bad fit, that we doubt and deny and doill, and we know well at that time that 1832] a modern plutarch 503 sorrow will come for the bad action; and sorrow is repairs, and belief in the powers and perpetuity of man will return, and we shall be magnified by trust in god. when, therefore, i doubt and sin, i will look up at the moon, and, remembering that its errors are all periodical ; i will anticipate the return of my own spirits and faith. patrick henry's speech full of religion. real an uity [real antiquity] our upstart antiquities hide themselves like little children between the knees of such a fatherly place as london. the bishop of london sits in his cathedral by a regular succession of twelve hundred years. read palgrave's account of saxon religion, vol. 1, p. 55. god = good. man = wickedness. they believed in future state. a british plutarch [a british plutarch] august 12. the british plutarch and the modern plutarch is yet to be written. they that have writ the lives of great men have not written them from love and from seeing the beauty that was to be de504 journal [age 29 sired in them. but what would operate such gracious motions upon the spirit as the death of lord cobham and of sir thomas more, and a censure of bacon, and a picture of george fox and hampden, and the chivalrous integrity of walter scott, and a true portrait of sir harry vane, and falkland, and andrew marvell? i would draw characters, not write lives. i would evoke the spirit of each, and their relics might rot. luther, milton, newton, shakspeare, alfred, a light of the world, — adams. i would walk among the dry bones, and wherever on the face of the earth i found a living man, i would say, here is life, and life is communicable. jesus christ truly said, my flesh is meat indeed. i am the bread, for of his life or character have the nations of the earth been nourished. socrates i should like well, if i dared to take him. i should repeat montaigne though. i would n't. “ eyes that the beam celestial view which evermore makes all things new." these i claim as sole qualification, ewe-lamb. i would make milton shine. i would mourn for bacon. i would fly in the face of every cockered prejudice, feudal or vulgar, and speak as christ of their good and evil. 1832] speak your own word 505 (ideal men] when we look at the world of past men, we say, what a host of heroes; but when we come to particularize, it is like counting the stars which we thought innumerable, but which prove few and rare. bacon, shakspeare, cæsar, scipio, cicero, burke, chatham, franklin, none of them will bear examination, or furnish the type of a man. ov what we say, however trifling, must have its roots in ourselves, or it will not move others. no speech should be separate from our being like a plume or a nosegay, but like a leaf or a flower or a bud, though the topmost and remotest, yet joined by a continuous line of life to the trunk and the seed. cholera times august 17. it would be good to publish girard's heroism in yellow fever at philadelphia, and dr. rush's account of his own practice, to stimulate the cowed benevolence of this dismal time. • we are to act doubtless in our care of our own health as if there were no other world. we are to be punctilious in our care. no caution 506 (age 29 journal is unseemly. this is the design of providence. but we are to recognize, in every instant of this creeping solicitude, that happy is the lot of those to whom the unspeakable secrets of the other state are disclosed. when our own hour comes, when every medicine and means has been exhausted, we are then to say to the angel, hail! all hail! and pass to whatever god has yet to reveal to the conscious spirit. why should we dread to die, when all the good and the beautiful and the wise have died, and earth holds nothing so good as that which it has lost. but oh! let not life be valued, when that which makes the value of life is lost. it is only a clean conscience, the knowledge that we are beloved by our friends, and deserve to be beloved, that can persuade an honourable mind to pray that its being may be prolonged an hour; but to outlive your own respect, to live when your acquaintance shall shrug their shoulders, and count it a disgrace to you the breath that is yet in your nostrils, i shall be glad to be told what is the pleasure, what is the profit that is worth buying at such a price. august 18. to be genuine. goethe, they say, was wholly so. the difficulty increases with the gifts of the a 1832] be genuine 507 individual. a plough-boy can be, but a minister, an orator, an ingenious thinker how hardly! george fox was. “what i am in words,” he said, “i am the same in life.” swedenborg was. “my writings will be found,” he said, “another self.” george washington was ; "the irreproachable washington.” whoever is genuine, his ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. the height of the pinnacle determines the breadth of the base. a subject for a sermon august 19. reverence man, and not plato and cæsar. wherever there is sense, reflexion, courage, admit it to the same honour, – embrace it, quote it from a truckman as quick as from webster. if you cannot get the habit of seeing qualities except in the great, if anything new should spring up, it will be lost to you. “socrates," says montaigne, “makes his soul move a natural and common motion. ‘a country peasant said this; a woman said that.' ... he has done human nature a great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself. we are all of us richer than we think we are, but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up the great habit of seeinwebster. 508 [age 29 journal more to make use of what is another's than our own.” “he was content to stand by, and let reason argue for him.” potentissimus est qui se babet in potestate. seneca. the sublime of morals seems ever to be of this kind, frail man intimating this defiance of the universe and gathering himself into his shell. every grand sentiment of religion, far as it flies, comes back to self. as when you say, “the gods approve the depth, but not the tumult, of the soul,” the sublime of it is, that “ to the soul itself depth, not tumult, is desireable.” when you say, "jupiter prefers integrity to charity,” your finest meaning is, “ the soul prefers,” etc. when jesus saith, “he that giveth one of these little ones a cup of cold water shall not lose his reward,” is not the best meaning, “the love at which the giver has arrived”? “every plant which my heavenly father hath not planted shall be rooted up,” “everything is transitory but what hath its life from the interior of the soul,” and so on through the new testament there is not a just or grand thought but is made more round and infinite by applying it to the soul considered as sent 1832] the oversoul 509 the universe, living from god within. consider the sense of such propositions as “the pure in heart shall see god.” is not then all objective theology a discipline, an aid, to the immature intellect until it is equal to the truth, and can poise itself. yet god forbid that i should one moment lose sight of his real eternal being, of my own dependence, my nothingness whilst yet i dare hail the present) deity at my heart. the understanding speaks much; the passions much; the soul seldom. the only friend that can persuade the soul to speak is a good and great cause. out it comes now and then like the lightning from its cloud, and with an effect as prodigious. september 5. hypocrisy is the attendant of false-religion. when people imagine that others can be their priests, they may well fear hypocrisy. whenever they understand that no religion can do them any more good than they actually taste, they have done fearing hypocrisy. [on september 9th, mr. emerson met his congregation again. in his sermon, he simply and freely stated his opinion, that jesus did 510 [age 29 journal not intend to establish a perpetual observance when he ate the passover with his disciples; and further, that it was not expedient to celebrate it as was then done in his church. for this opinion he gave his reasons, drawn from the scriptures. he then stated what seemed to him real objections to the customary observance. finally, since the changes he had proposed had not recommended themselves to the worshippers at the second church, he resigned his pastoral charge, “because,” he said, “it is my desire, in the office of a christian minister, to do nothing which i cannot do with my whole heart." his people did not wish to part with him. meetings were held in hopes of arranging some way of keeping him, but at last his resignation was reluctantly accepted, and he and his people parted in peace. (see sermon on “ the lord's supper”in miscellanies; also cabot's and holmes's memoirs of emerson.)] september 14. ; the true doctrine respecting forms is this, is ': it not? — that christianity aims to form in a man a critical conscience, and that being formed, he is constituted a judge, the only and absolute judge, of every particular form that the estab1832] life, not death 511 lished religion presents to him. the discretion he exercises is like the discretion of the bench, which hath nothing arbitrary. joethe. every man feels the strain of duty in a different place ; l[owell] in domiciliaries, i in paræneticks. “think of living.” goethe. don't tell me to get ready to die. i know not what shall be. the only preparation i can make is by fulfilling my present duties. this is the everlasting life. to think of mortality makes us queasy, the flesh creeps at sympathy with its kind. what is the remedy? to ennoble it by animating it with love and uses. give the soul its ends to pursue, and death becomes indifferent. it saith, what have i to do with death? the vice of calvinism has been to represent the other world wholly different from this. so that a preparation to live in this was all lost for that. i would very temperately speak of future delights, employments, . . . solely from the prophecy of the powers that are immortal. not by description to captivate, for the impenetrable 512 journal [age 29 veil, not to be lifted, has been shut down for that reason, to confine us to the present where all duty and excellence for us lies, — “in seipso totus teres atque rotundus. truth and virtue teach the same thing. it is in being good to wife and children and servants that the kingdom of heaven begins. it is in setx tling punctually with your tailor, and not hold(ing out false hopes to young men. it is not over-praising your goods, or underrating your debtor's goods. it is in forming your own judgment upon questions of duty. it is in preferring a just act to a kind one, and a kind act to a graceful one. it is in thus trying your powers, and bringing out each one in order, until the whole moral man lives and acts and governs the animal man. it is no argument against the future state, the ignorance of man, no more than the lifelessness of the egg is a proof that it shall not be a bird, or the want of intelligence in the human embryo a proof that it shall not be a reasoning speaking man. but this ignorance is argument as significant as a visible finger out of the sky, that we should not fabricate a heaven in our heads, and then square life to that fiction. 1832] truth 513 ts these powers, and these powers alone, contain the revelation of what you can do and can become. it is writ in no book. it can never be foretold or imagined. their's is your secret. they are your heaven, or they are your hell. and their hell shall be whatever part of heaven you miss of: i. e., it is the perversion of a good power that makes your misfortunes. ss [seek truth] september 17. i would gladly preach to the demigods of this age (and why not to the simple people ?) concerning the reality of truth, and the greatness of believing in it and seeking after it. it does not shock us when ordinary persons discover no craving for truth, and are content to exist for years exclusively occupied with the secondary objects of house and lands and food and company, and never cast up their eyes to inquire whence it comes and what it is for, wholly occupied with the play, and never ask after the design. but we cannot forgive it in the sand – s that they who have souls to comprehend the magnificent secret should utterly neglect it and seek only huzzas and champagne. my quarrel with the vulgar great men is that they do not generously give 514 journal [age 29 themselves to the measures which they meddle with; they do not espouse the things they would do, live in the life of the cause they would forward and faint in its failure, but they are casting sheep's eyes ever upon their own by-ends; their pert individuality is ever and anon peeping out to see what way the wind blows, and where this boat will land them, whether it is likely they will dine nicely and sleep warm. that for the first thing, that choosing action rather than contemplation, they only half act, they only give their hands or tongues, and not themselves to their works. my second charge against them is, that they lack faith in man's moral nature. they can have no enthusiasm, for the deep and infinite part of man, out of which only sublime thought and emotions can proceed, is hid from them. socrates believed in man's moral nature and knew and declared the fact that virtue was the supreme beauty. he was capable therefore of enthusiasm. jesus christ existed for it. he is its voice to the world. phocion felt it, recognized it, but was a man of action, true in act to this conviction. luther, more, fox, milton, burke, every great man, every one with whose character the idea of stability presents itself, had this faith. 1832] carlyle s16 the true men are ever following an invisible leader, and have left the responsibleness of their acts with god. but the artificial men have i assumed their own bonds and can fall back on nothing greater than their finite fortunes; ... empirics with expedients for a few years, reputation instead of character, and fortune instead of wisdom. the true men stand by and let reason argue for them. i talk with sampson and see it is not him, but a greater than him,“ my father is greater than i.” truth speaks by him. (can my friend wish a greater eulogy ?) whatever i say that is good on the sundays, i speak with fervour and authority, — surely not feeling that it rests on my word, or has only the warrant of my faulty character, but that i got it from a deeper and common source, and it is as much addressed to me as to those i speak to. [carlyle] october 1. i am cheered and instructed by this paper on corn law rhymes in the edinburgh by my germanick new-light writer, whoever he be. he gives us confidence in our principles. he assures the truth-lover everywhere of sympathy. blessed art that makes books, and so 516 journal [age 29 nce joins me to that stranger by this perfect. railroad. [sovereignty of ethics] has the doctrine ever been fairly preached of man's moral nature? the whole world holds on to formal christianity, and nobody teaches the essential truth, the heart of christianity, for fear of shocking, etc. every teacher, when once he finds himself insisting with all his might upon a great truth, turns up the ends of it at last with a cautious showing how it is agreeable to the life and teaching of jesus, as if that was · any recommendation, as if the blessedness of jesus' life and teaching were not because they were agreeable to the truth. well, this cripples his teaching. it bereaves the truth he inculcates of more than half its force, by representing it as something secondary that can't stand alone. the truth of truth consists in this, that it is self-evident, self-subsistent. it is light. you don't get a candle to see the sun rise. instead of making christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for christianity. it is a very operose way of making people good. you must be humble because christ says, “be humble.” “but why must i obey christ?” “because god sent him.” but 1832] terrible freedom 517 how do i know god sent him? because your own heart teaches the same thing he taught. why then shall i not go to my own heart at first? the terrible freedom october 2. it well deserves attention what is said in new jerusalem magazine concerning external restraint. it is awful to look into the mind of man and see how free we are, to what frightful excesses our vices may run under the whited wall of a respectable reputation. outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom ! october 9. “i teach by degrees,” says landor's epicurus. it is not the will but the necessity of the. wise. none are wise enow to teach otherwise. all this pedantry about the peoples not bearing the whole truth, — what else does it mean than that the teacher has not yet arrived at the safe, that is, the true statement of the particular doctrine which he would oppose to the ruling error. he knows in general there is an i compare the early poem beginning, “how much, protecting god, to thee i owe.” poems, appendix. 518 [age 29 journal ei error; he has not yet found its boundary lines. ... . all our art is how to use what the good god provides us. there is water enough; we are only so to shape aqueducts as to bring it to our door. there is air enough; we must only so build as that it shall ventilate our house. so with man's education. there is truth enough; only open the mind's door, and straighten the passages. there are men enough; only so place yourself to them in true position (en rapport), i. e., by amity, as to suck the sweetness of society. there is power and happiness enough. i will not live out of me. i will not see with others' eyes; my good is good, my evil ill. i would be free; i cannot be while i take things as others please to rate them. i dare attempt to lay out my own road. that which myself delights in shall be good, that which i do not want, indifferent; that which i hate is bad. that's flat. henceforth, please god, forever i forego the yoke of men's opinions. i will be light-hearted as a bird and live with god. i find him in the bottom of my heart, 519 1832] god within i hear continually his voice therein, and books, and priests, and worlds, i less esteem. who says the heart 's a blind guide? it is not. my heart did never counsel me to sin. i wonder where it got its wisdom, for in the darkest maze, amid the sweetest baits or amid horrid dangers, never once did that gentle angel fail of his oracle. the little needle always knows the north, the little bird remembereth his note, and this wise seer never errs. i never taught it what it teaches me, i only follow when i act aright.' whence then did this omniscient spirit come? from god it came. it is the deity. october 13. “if thou lovest true glory, thou must trust her truth.” “she followeth him who doth not turn and gaze after her.” landor. “since all transcendent, all true and genuine greatness must be of a man's own raising and only on the foundations that the hand of god has laid, do not let any touch it; keep them off civilly, but keep them off.” landor. i printed in poems, among poems of youth: appendix, centenary ed. 520 journal [age 29 october 13. exhortations and examples are better than psalms and sermon. we have thoughts, but we don't know what to do with them; materials, but we can't manage or dispose. we cannot get high enough above them to see their order in reason. we cannot get warm enough to have them exert their natural affinities and throw themselves into crystal. we see a new sect devoted to certain ideas, and we go to individuals of it to have them explained. vain expectation! they are possessed with the ideas, but do not possess them. [the light within] chardon st., october 14, 1832. the great difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing, when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment. they know not how divine is a man. i know you say, such a man thinks too much of himself. alas! he is wholly ignorant. he yet wanders in the outer darkness, in the skirts and shadows of himself, and has not seen his inner light. i probably referring to the swedenborgians. 1832] your own way 521 would it not be the text of a useful discourse to young men, that every man must learn in a different way? how much is lost by imitation ! our best friends may be our worst enemies. a man should learn to detect and foster that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within far more than the lustre of [the] whole firmament without. yet he dismisses without notice his peculiar thought because it is peculiar. the time will come when he will postpone all acquired knowledge to this spontaneous wisdom, and will watch for this illumination more than those who watch for the morning. for this is the principle by which the other is to be arranged. this thinking would go to show the significance of self-education; that in reality there is no other; for, all other is nought without this. a man must teach himself because that which each can do best, none but his maker can teach him. no man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. where is the master that could have taught shakspeare? where is the master that could have instructed franklin, or washington, or bacon, or newton? every great man is an unique. the scipionism of scipio is just that part he could not 522 journal (age 29 nan com mon borrow. ... every man comes at the common results with most conviction in his own way. but he only uses a different vocabulary from yours; it comes to the same thing. an imitation may be pretty, comical, popular, but it never can be great. buonaparte mimicked themistocles. if anybody will tell me who it is the great man imitates in the original · crisis when he performs a great act, — who muley molok imitated, or falkland, or scipio, or aristides, or phocion, or fox, or more, or alfred, or lafayette, i will tell him who else can teach him than himself. a man has got to learn that he must embrace the truth, or shall never know it; that to be thankful for a little is the way to get more. he is to work himself clear of how much nonsense and mischief. he is to learn, like the persian, to speak the truth. [thought and speech] do you say that a mechanic must attend to language and composition? you are looking the wrong way and seeking the source in the river. strong thinking makes strong language; correct thinking, correct speech. 1832] truth many-sided 523 [nothing within] s. gave a sad definition of his friend in saying he resembled a nest of indian boxes, one after the other, each a new puzzle, and when you come to the last there is nothing in it. so with each man, a splendid barricade of circumstances, the renown of his name, the glitter of his coach, then his great professional character, then comes another fine shell of manners and speech, — but go behind all these and the man, the self, is a, poor, shrunken, distorted, imperceptible thing. october 17. the surveyor goeth about taking positions to serve as the points of his angles, and thereby afterwards he finds the place of the mountain. the philosopher in like manner selects points whence he can look on his subject from different sides, and by means of many approximate results he at last obtains an accurate expression of the truth. · that statement only is fit to be made public which you have got at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. for himself, a man only wants to know how the thing is; it is for other 524 [age 29 journal people that he wants to know what may be said about it. october 19. landor said, “the true philosophy is the only true prophet.” may i not add, the whole future is in the bottom of the heart. jung stilling said of goethe, “the man's heart, which few know, is as true and noble as his genius, which all know.” if carlyle knew what an interest i have in his persistent goodness, would it not be worth one effort more, one prayer, one meditation? but will he resist the deluge of bad example in england? one · manifestation of goodness in a noble soul brings him in debt to all the beholders that he shall not betray their love and trust which he has awakened. — (mem.) fraser's magazine, vol. ii, march, 1831, carlyle's notice of schiller. mr. n. k. g. oliver died on board u. s. ship potowniac, commodore downes. he was commodore's secretary. the crew subscribed $2080 for the relief of his destitute family. the sum raised in boston for the relief of the cape de verde islanders suffering from famine was about $6800. 1832] resigns pastorate 525 [mary moody emerson] my aunt had an eye that went through and through you like a needle. “she was endowed,” she said, “ with the fatal gift of penetration.” she disgusted every body because she knew them too well. to live in a field of pumpkins, yet eat no pie! october 28, 1832. the vote on the question proposed to the proprietors of the second church this evening stood thus, ayes 25; nays 34; blanks 2. on the acceptance of the pastor's letter, ayes 30; nays 20; blanks 4. “he who would write heroic poems should 1 x make his whole life an heroic poem." milton. schiller i propose to myself to read schiller, of whom i hear much. what shall i read ? his robbers ? oh no, for that was the crude fruit of his immature mind. he thought little of it himself. 1 this is the only direct mention in this journal of mr. emerson's parting from his church. 526 [age 29 journal what then: hisæsthetics ? oh no, that is only his struggle with kantean metaphysics. his poetry? oh no, for he was a poet only by study. his histories? — and so with all his productions; they were the fermentations by which his mind was working itself clear, they were the experiments by which he got his skill, and the fruit, the bright pure gold of all was — schiller himself. carlyle says it was complained of schiller's robbers that the moral was bad, or it had none, and he saith, “but schiller's vindication rests on higher grounds than these. his work has on the whole furnished nourishment to the more exalted powers of our nature; the sentiments and images which he has shaped and uttered, tend, in spite of their alloy, to elevate the soul to a nobler pitch ; and this is a sufficient defence," etc. the writer of a work, which interests and excites the spiritual feelings of men, has as little need to justify himself by showing how it exemplifies some wise saw, or modern instance, as the doer of a generous action has to demonstrate its merit by deducing it from the system of shaftesbury, or smith or paley, or whichever happens to be the favourite system of the age and place. the instructiveness of the one and 1832] the soul's integrity 527 the virtue of the other exist independently of all systems or saws and in spite of all.” life of schiller. in we this is tantamount (is it not?) to aristotle's maxim, “we are purified by pity and terror.” and thus is shakspeare moral, not of set purpose, but by “elevating the soul to a nobler pitch.” so too are all great exciters of man moral; in war and plague and shipwreck greatest virtues appear. why, but that the inmost soul which lies tranquil every day is moved and speaks ? but the inmost soul is god. the spark passes where the chain is interrupted. november 6. pope is said to have preferred this couplet among his writings :“ lo where mæotis sleeps, and hardly aows the freezing tanais ’mid a waste of snows." [public concern or private?] a part of our anxiety for the welfare of the state, that the elections should go well, proceeds peradventure from our consciousness of personal defect. if the soul globe itself up into a perfect in528 [age 29 journal tegrity — have the absolute command of its desires — it is less dependent on other men, and less solicitous concerning what they do, albeit with no loss of philanthropy. at least, that is my thought from reading milton's beautiful vindication of himself from the charge of incontinence and intemperance. see vol. i, p. 239, etc. yet seemeth it to me that we shall all feel dirty if jackson is reëlected. [wasted life] november 11. what is the grief we feel when a man dies? is it not an uneasiness that nothing can be said? he has done nothing; he has been merely passive to the common influences that act on all men. and now that the great endowments proper to every man have passed away from this flesh, we feel that the nothingness of life and character is sad dispraise, and the affectionate expressions of friendship are apologetic. certainly the feeling would be very different if the departed man had been an earnest self-cultivator, scattering streams of useful influence on every side of him. then every tear that flowed would be a tribute of eulogy. friends would not need to say anything, his acts would speak for him. they would keep 1832] little thoughts 529 a proud silence; a rich consolation would shine in all eyes. but now, let our tears flow for the vanity of man, for the poor issues of a god's charity. november 13. we think so little that we are always novices in speculation. we think so little that every new thought presented to us, even every old thought in a new dress of words, takes us by surprise and we are thus at the mercy of goethe, kant, cousin, mackintosh, and even of burton. if, from their natural centre, our thoughts had taken a natural arrangement by frequent and free exercise, we should detect the falsehood at sight in whatever was proposed to us on all the primary questions. as it is, we can hardly stand our ground against the ready advocate of a proven lie. man-01-war: a excellence is always brand new. a kingdom has the rig of a man-of-war; a republic the rig of a merchantman. men in our day consent to war because the antagonists are strangers. i know my neighbour, but the frenchman, the maylay, the buenos ayrean are no more to me than dramatis persond. 530 journal [age 29 the chief mourner does not always attend the funeral. a fine day is not a weather-breeder, but a fine day. the whole future is in the bottom of the heart. «. what shall i teach you the foremost thing?'. could'st teach me off my own shadow to spring ?” goethe, apud carlyle. [sartor resartus] unconsciously we are furnishing comic examples, to all spectators, of cobwebbed ethical rules. i go to the atheneum and read that “man is not a clothes-horse," and come out and meet in park st. my young friend who, i understand, cuts his own clothes, and who little imagines that he points a paragraph for thomas carlyle. goethe says, “others will never spare you." so true is it that i am not reminded of my own unfaithfulness when i animadvert upon it in c. miss margaret tucker saturday, 11 a. m., november 24, 1832, died my sister, margaret tucker. farewell to 18321 margaret tucker 531 thee for a little time, my kind and sympathizing sister. go rejoice with ellen, so lately lost, in god's free and glorious universe. tell her, if she needs to be told, how dearly she is remembered, how dearly valued. rejoice together that you are free of your painful corporeal imprisonment. i may well mourn your loss, for in many sour days i had realized the delicacy and sweetness of a sister's feeling. i had rejoiced too, as always, in the gifts of a true lady, in whom was never anything little or mean seen or suspected, who was all gentleness, purity and sense with a rare elevation of sentiments. god comfort the bitter lonely hours which the sorrowing mother must spend here. farewell, dear girl. i have a very narrow acquaintance, and of it you have been a large part. we anchor upon a few, and you have had the character and dignity that promised everything to the esteem and affection of years. think kindly of me, — i know you will, — but perchance the disembodied can do much more, can elevate the sinking spirit and purify and urge it to generous purposes. teach me to make trifles, trifles, and work with consistency and in earnest to my true ends. the only sister i ever had, pass on, pure soul! to the opening heaven. 532 (age 29 journal co arer a winter's day november 27. instead of lectures on architecture, i will make a lecture on god's architecture, one of his beautiful works, a day. i will draw a sketch of a winter's day. i will trace, as i can, a rude outline of the foundation and far-assembled influences, the contribution of the universe whereon this magical structure rises like an exhalation, the wonder and charm of the immeasurable deep. the bed of a day is eternity, the ground plan is space. the account of its growth is astronomy. its nearer phenomena are chemistry, optics, agriculture, hydrostatics, animated nature. it ends again in astronomy, when it has carried forward by its few rounded hours the immense beneficence. this magic lanthorn with fresh pictures, this microcosm, this bridal of the earth and sky, this god's wonder, we cannot take to pieces like a machine, but we may study its miracles apart, one at a time, and learn how to find the whole world, and every one of its pebbles, a tongue. the snow is a self-weaving blanket with which ena mei 1832] winter 533 the parts of the globe exposed to the cold, cover themselves in pile proportioned to their exposure, what time the animated creation in the same parts whiten and thicken their fleeces. the snow crystal, (nix columnaris) hexagon,densum vellus tacitarum aquarum. provision for keeping the waters fluid : immense force of crystallizing water, riving of granite blocks. powers of the arctic winter. beneficent effects upon the animal, vegetable, mineral creation — most unknown; defence of trees, vegetable heat, e. g., last winter. crunching of the snow under the wood-sled. domestic effects: pump frozen; thawed by salt. x water pitcher cracked; leave it empty. clock too fast ; lengthen the pendulum. gloves not thick enough; exchange them for mittens. frost on the windows, wood splits better, and stone worse. cat's back and flannel vest sparkle. flowers, bees, ants, flies, none; but instead, the social apple, the breakfast honey, the good proverb; and the flies, plain-suited, we are willing to spare, and their cousins the musquitoes that make men draw up the foot. ice trade, fur trade, and country trade by means of universal railroad; and conservative powers of frost. fuel-wood brought out of the 534 journal [age 29 wood-lots; game easier procured; lime-kiln burned. games: skating, sledding, snow-building, esquimaux hunting with snow-shoes. winter evening. reading, astronomical observations, electricity. india-rubber shoes ; winter less interesting here than in the north or in the south, but beautiful. (memoranda for “the winter's day.") audubon; polar regions; polehampton; daniell; black. the cholera cost the city of new york 110,000 dollars, and a vast additional expense to individuals. the holy days are said to cost spain £7,000,000 sterling a year. wordsworth december 1. i never read wordsworth without chagrin; a man of such great powers and ambition, so near to the dii majores, to fail so meanly in every attempt! a genius that hath epilepsy, a deranged archangel. the ode to duty, conceived and expressed in a certain high, severe ce ess evere 535 1832) mathematics style, does yet miss of greatness and of all effect by such falsities or falses as, “ and the most ancient heavens thro' thee are fresh and strong," which is throwing dust in your eyes, because they have no more to do with duty than a dung-cart has. so that fine promising passage about “the mountain winds being free to blow upon thee,” etc., flats out into “me and my benedictions.” if he had cut in his dictionary for words, he could hardly have got worse. [compulsory mathematics] among things to be reformed at college is this miserable practice of leading ingenuous youth blindfold through trigonometry and the other mathematics. the first scholar tells me that he can understand a page at a time’; and young appleton' himself suggests the great good of having a preliminary treatise, often referred to in the main body, apprizing the reader what it all drives at. now he has no idea. there are two sorts of cui bono, however. if the 1 either thomas gold appleton (class of 1831), the well-known wit of boston later, or william channing appleton (class of 1832). 536 [age 29 journal boy sees the truth and beauty of the problem, he may well remain ignorant and indifferent for a time as to its practical applications. but if he discern neither necessary truth nor utility, he has got stone for bread. “teach me,” said the young syracusan to archimedes, “the divine art by which you have saved your country.” “divine, do you call it?” said a. “it is indeed divine, but so it was before it saved the city. he that woos the goddess, must forget the woman.” none spares another, yet it pleases me that none to any is indifferent. no heart in all this world is separate, but all are cisterns of one central sea : all are mouthpieces of the eternal word. [postscript to “a winter's day"] the good earth, the planet on which we are embarked and making our annual voyage in the unharboured deep, carries in her bosom every good thing her children need on the way, for refreshment, fuel, science, or action. she has coal in the hold, and all meats in the larder, and overhung with showiest awning. the progress of art is to equalize all places. 1832) letter to sampson 537 reindeer, caoutchouc, glass windows, anthracite coal, nott stoves, coffee, and books will give greenland the air and ease of london. ice, fruits, baths, refrigerators, linen, will fan the hot forehead of cuba to the 56th degree. dangers. the snow-storm. capt. parry's frozen men. degree of cold tolerable to man,58. temperature of the celestial spaces. γλώσσης προ των άλλων κράτει θεοίς επόμενος. pythagoras. november 29. i wrote to george a. sampson: are they not two worlds, your solitude and your society? one, heaven, the other, earth; one, real, the other apparent. and that society is best and unobjectionable which does not violate your solitude, but permits you to communicate the very same train of thought. and then will our true heaven be entered when we have learned to be the same manner of person to others that we are alone; say the same things to them, we think alone, and to pass out of solitude into society without any change or effort. when an awkward man is alone, he is graceful, all his 538 [age 29 journal motions are natural. when a vain man is alone, his thoughts are wise. it is the presence of other people which embarrasses them by over exciting them, and they do and say ungracious things. the reason is, himself is a pepper-corn: his relations to other people are the whole world in his imagination. the only remedy must be from the growth of his true self, and its mastering predominance over him, so that the men and things which looked so great shall shrink to their true dimensions, as already the house in which we lived and the hills on which we ran in childhood appear smaller than they were. [miss margaret tucker]' it is not certainly to gratify any impatience of domestic sorrow by a parade of departed merits that this notice of a worthy woman is offered, but it is offered merely because many wet eyes will look in the obituary and ask if there is no word to be spoken over a dear and honoured benefactress, a most gentle and virtuous lady. in the death of miss margaret tucker one 1 this notice of mr. emerson's loved sister-in-law was probably printed in a boston newspaper. it was written from malta, february 2, but it seems best to introduce it here. 18321 margaret tucker 539 who was fit to be an ornament of society has passed away almost unknown to it. a beloved member of a gifted family, to whom uncommon accomplishments and most attractive manners were the ornament and riches of a most delicate frame, she has spent her few years in retirement. but in that family, and in the much larger circle of her acquaintance, she was revered and loved in an uncommon degree, and as she deserved. for she possessed the charm and respect that always attaches to a strong sense, when united with elevated sentiments. never was anything little or mean either seen or suspected in her. she was the considerate, but most liberal friend of all who needed assistance, and many know how ingeniously sometimes her open hand sought the luxury of beneficence. her extreme delicacy and sweetness never suffered her to wound the feelings of another, and, though almost all her life the victim of slow but disheartening disease, it is not easy to remember that she ever complained. few have preserved such dignity and gentleness through so long a term of sickness, or gone out of the world to join the friends she had never forgotten, more affectionately remembered by those whom she has left in it. n 540 (age 29 journal [in mr. cabot's memoir (vol. 1, pp. 171– 175) are given four interesting letters written at this crisis of mr. emerson's life; one by him to his brother william telling him of the schemes he was then revolving for the new life before him, among them one for a new magazine in which his brothers should join, “give me my household gods against the world, william, edward and charles.” (william had been giving literary lectures in new york.) two letters follow from charles to his aunt mary, telling of the illness of waldo (he was called so in the family), and his decision to go to europe, and of his (charles's) “growing disappointment as i go sunday after sunday and hear ordinary preachers, and remember what a torch of kindling eloquence has been snuffed out in such an insignificant fashion.” then follows a letter from waldo telling william of his resolve to go to europe instead of visiting edward in porto rico.] 1832) reading 541 authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1832 zoroaster, zend avesta, apud histoire de l'académie des inscriptions; pythagoras; aristotle; quintus fabius pictor, apud cicero (?); cicero; horace ; st. paul; plutarch, archimedes, pericles ; seneca; leonardo da vinci, apud brewster's life of newton; montaigne, essays; shakspeare ; grotius ; milton, comus, prose works; george herbert; george fox, apud sewell's history of the quakers, also life of ; bishop patrick, parable of a pilgrim ; fénelon, fontenelle; saurin; swedenborg; john jortin; fielding, proverbs; lucas, on happiness, on holiness; joseph black; bentham; patrick henry; moses mendelssohn, phædo; herschel, william and john; jung stilling, autobiography; goethe, apud carlyle; schiller; john flaxman, beauty, sculpture, apud rees' encyclopedia ; laplace; schlegel, guesses at truth; mal542 (age 29 journal thus; burns, poems; mackintosh, ethical philosophy; abernethy, lectures; jeffrey; hegel; pestalozzi, apud biber; wordsworth; landor, imaginary conversations ; moore, poems; daniell, meteorological essays; mary somerville, mechanism of the heavens ; parry, voyages; audubon; cousin ; channing, sermon on war; carlyle, cornlaw rbymes, sartor resartus, life of schiller ; edinburgh review; new jerusalem magazine. end of volume ii 7 2с che riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s. a 3 2044 009 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on of before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the | borrower from overdue fees. jul 3 1986 1857375 widenerva may 143 cancelled 325 nedl transfer hn 3k85 x adriette va droogt. english traits. english traits. by r. w. emerson. boston: houghton, osgood and company. the riverside press, cambridge. 1878. kd 23950 harvard university library entered according to act of congress, in the year 1847, by james munroe and company, in the clerk's office of the district court of the district of massachusetts. university press : welch, bigelow, & co., cambridge. contents. chapter 1. first visit to england, .......... chapter ii. voyage to england, ...81 chapter iii .. . . . . . land, . .. .. . 40 chapter iv. . . . . . . . . . . . . . race, . . . . 60 chapter v. ability, ....79 chapter vi. • • manners • • 106 (5) contents. chapter vii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . trtth, . . . 119 chapter viii. . . . . . . character. . . . . . 130 chapter ix. . . . . . . . . . . . cockayne. . . . . 146 chapter x. . . . . . . . wealth, . . . . . . . 166 chapter xi. aristocracy, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 chapter xii. universities, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 chapter xiii. . . . . . . . . . . . religion, . . . . . 216 chapter xiv. . . . . . . . . . literature, . . . . . . 232 chapter xv. thb “times," ............... 260 contents. chapter xvi. stonehenge, ............... 272 chapter xvii. . . personal . . 290 chapter xviii. result, . . 296 chapter xix. bphron at manchbater, . . . . . . 307 english traits. chapter i. first visit to england. i have been twice in england. in 1833, on my return from a short tour in sicily, italy, and france, i crossed from boulogne, and landed in london at the tower stairs. it was a dark sunday morning; there were few people in the streets; and i remember the pleasure of that first walk on english ground, with my companion, an american artist, from the tower up through cheapside and the strand, to a house in russell square, whither we had been recommended to good chambers. for the first time for many months we were forced to check the saucy habit of travellers' criticism, as we could no longer speak aloud in the streets without being understood. the shop-signs spoke our lau. guage ; our country names were on the door-plates; . (9) :9 englise traits. and the public and private buildings wore a moro native and wonted front. like most young men at that time, i was much indebted to the men of edinburgh, and of the edinburgh review, to jeffrey, mackintosh, hallam, and to scott, playfair, and de quincey; and my narrow and desultory reading had inspired the wish to see the faces of three or four writers, coleridge, wordsworth, landor, de quincey, and the latest and strongest contributor to the critical journals, carlyle; and i suppose if i had sifted the reasons that led me to europe, when i was ill und was advised to travel, it was mainly the attracvion of these persons. if goethe had been still living, i might have wandered into germany also. besides those i have named, (for scott was dead,) chere was not in britain the man living whom ( cared to behold, unless it were the duke of wellington, whom i afterwards saw at westminster abbey, at the funeral of wilberforce. the young scholar fancies it happiness enough to live with people who can give an inside to the world ; without reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, and cannot apply themselves to yours. the conditions of literary success are almust destructive of the best social power, as they do not leave that frolic liberty which only can first visit to england. encounter a companion on the best terms. it is probable you left some obscure comrade at a tavern, or in the farms, with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when you crossed sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. i have, however, found writers superior to their books, and i cling to my first belief, that a strong head will dispose fast enough of these impediments, and give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense of having been met, and a larger horizon. on looking over the diary of my journey in 1833, i find nothing to publish in my memoranda of visits to places. but i have copied the few notes i made of visits to persons, as they respect parties quite too good and too transparent to the whole world to make it needful to affect any prudery of suppression about a few hints of those bright personalities. at florence, chief among artists i found horatio greenough, the american sculptor. his face was so handsome, and his person so well formed, that he might be pardoned, if, as was alleged, the face of his medora, and the figure of a colossal achilles in clay, were idealizations of his own. greenough was a superior, man, ardent and eloquent, and all his opinions had elevation and magnanimity. he believed that the greeks had english traits. wrought in schools or fraternities, – the genius of the master imparting his design to his friends, and inflaming them with it, and when his strength was spent, a new hand, with equal heat, continued the work; and so by relays, until it was finished in every part with equal fire. this was necessary in so refractory a material as stone ; and he thought art would never prosper until we left our shy jealous ways, and worked in society as they. all his thoughts breathed the same generosity. he was an accurate and a deep man. he was a votary of the greeks, and impatient of gothic art. his paper on architecture, published in 1843, announced in advance the leading thoughts of mr. ruskin on the morality in architecture, notwithstanding the antagonism in their views of the history of art. i have a private letter from him, — later, but respecting the same period, in which he roughly sketches his own theory. “here is my theory of structure: a scientific arrangement of spaces and forms to functions and to site ; an emphasis of features proportioned to their gradated importance in function; color and ornament to be decided and arranged and varied by strictly organic laws, having a distinct reason for each decision; the entire and immediate banishment of all make-shift and make believe.” first visit to england. 13 greenough brought me, through a common friend, an invitation from mr. landor, who lived at san domenica di fiesole. on the 15th may i dined with mr. landor. i found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his villa gherardesca, a fine house commanding a beautiful landscape. i had inferred from his books, or magnified from some anecdotes, an impression of achillean wrath, — an untamable petulance. i do not know whether the imputation were just or not, but certainly on this may day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and he was the most patient and gentle of hosts. he praised the beautiful cyclamen which grows all about florence ; he admired washington ; talked of wordsworth, byron, massinger, beaumont and fletcher. to be sure, he is decided in his opinions, likes to surprise, and is well content to impress, if possible, his english whim upon the immutable past. no great man ever had a great son, if philip and alexander be not an exception ; and philip he calls the greater man. in art, he loves the greeks, and in sculpture, them only. he prefers the venus to every thing else, and, after that, the head of alexander, in the gallery here. he prefers john of bologna to michael angelo ; in painting, raffaelle , and shares the english traits. growing taste for perugino and the early masters, the greek histories he thought the only good; and after them, voltaire's. i could not make him praise mackintosh, nor my more recent friends montaigne very cordially, and charron also, which seemed undiscriminating. he thought degerando indebted to “ lucas on happiness" and “ lucas on holiness”! he pestered me with southey ; but who is southey? he invited me to breakfast on friday. on friday i did not fail to go, and this time with greenough. he entertained us at once with reciting half a dozen hexameter lines of julius cæsar's ! — from donatus, he said. he glorified lord chesterfield more than was necessary, and undervalued burke, and undervalued socrates ; designated as three of the greatest of men, washington, phocion, and timoleon; much as our pomologists, in their lists, select the three or the six best pears " for a small orchard ;” and did not even omit to remark the similar termination of their names. “a great man,” he said, “should make great sacrifices, and kill his hundred oxen, without knowing whether they would be consumed by gods and heroes, or whether the flies would eat them.” i had visited professor amici, who had shown me his microscopes, toscopes magnifying it was said) two thousand di. first visit to england. 15 a meters; and i spoke of the uses to which they were applied. landor despised entomology, yet, in the same breath, said, “ the sublime was in a grain of dust.” i suppose i teased him about recent writers, but he professed never to have heard of herschel, not even by name. one room was full of pictures, which he likes to show, especially one piece, standing before which, he said “ he would give fifty guineas to the man that would swear it was a domenichino." i was more curious to see his library, but mr. h, one of the guests, told me that mr. landor gives away his books, and has never more than a dozen at a time in his house. mr. landor carries to its height the love of freak which the english delight to indulge, as if to signalize their commanding freedom. he has a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, and inexhaustible, meant for a soldier, by what chance converted to letters, in which there is not a style nor a tint not known to him, yet with an english appetite for action and heroes. the thing done avails, and not what is said about it. an original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures. landor is strangely undervalued in england; usually ignored ; and sometimes savage. ly attacked in the reviews. the criticism may 16 english traits. be right, or wrong, and is quickly forgotten ; but year after year the scholar must still go back to landor for a multitude of elegant sentences — for wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unforgetable. from london, on the 5th august, i went to highgate, and wrote a note to mr. coleridge, requesting leave to pay my respects to him. it was near noon. mr. coleridge sent a verbal message, that he was in bed, but if i would call after one o'clock, he would see me. i returned at one, and he appeared, a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes and fine clear complexion, leaning on his cane. he took snuff freely, which presently soiled his cravat and neat black suit. he asked whether i knew allston, and spoke warmly of his merits and doings when he knew him in rome ; what a master of the titianesque he was, &c., &c. he spoke of dr. channing. it was an unspeakable misfortune that he should have turned out a unitarian after all. on this, he burst into a declamation on the folly and ignorance of unitarianism, its high unreasonableness; and taking up bish sp waterland's book, which lay on the table, he read with vehemence two or three pages written by himself in the fly-leaves, passages, too, which, i believe, are first visit to england. printed in the “ aids to reflection.” when ho stopped to take breath, i interposed, that, “ whilst i highly valued all his explanations, i was bound to tell him that i was born and bred a unitarian.' “ yes,” he said, “i supposed so ; " and continued as before. it was a wonder, that after so many . ages of unquestioning acquiescence in the doctrine of st. paul,the doctrine of the trinity, which was also, according to philo judæus, the doctrine of the jews before christ, this handful • of priestleians should take on themselves to deny it, &c., &c. he was very sorry that dr. channing, – a man to whom he looked up, — no, to say that he looked up to him would be to speak • falsely; but a man whom he looked at with so much interest, — should embrace such views. when he saw dr. channing, he had hinted to him that he was afraid he loved christianity for what was lovely and excellent, — he loved the good in it, and not the true; and i tell you, sir, that i have known 'ten persons who loved the good, for one person who loved the true ; but it is a far greater virtue to love the true for itself alone, than to love the 'good for itself alone. he (coleridge) knew all about unitarianism perfectly well, because he had once been a unitarian, and knew what quackery it was. he had been called “the rising star of 18 english traits. • unitarianism.” he went on defining, or rather refining: the trinitarian doctrine was realism ; the idea of god was not essential, but super• essential ;' talked of trinism and tetrakisin, and much more, of which i only caught this, that the will was that by which a person is a person; • because, if one should push me in the street, .and so i should force the man next me into the • kennel, i should at once exclaim, “i did not do it, sir," meaning it was not my will.' and this also, that if you should insist on your faith here in england, and i on mine, mine would be the hotter side of the fagot.' i took advantage of a pause to say, that he had many readers of all religious opinions in america, and i proceeded to inquire if the “ extract” from the independent's pamphlet, in the third volume of the friend, were a veritable quotation. he replied, that it was really taken from a pamphlet in his possession, entitled “a protest of one of the independents,” or something to that effect. i told him how excellent i thought it, and how much i wished to see the entire work. “yes,” he said, o the man was a chaos of truths, but lacked the knowledge that god was a god of order. yet the passage would no doubt strike you more in the quotation than in the original, for i have filtered it.” first visit 10 england. 19 when i rose to go, he said, “i do not know whether you care about poetry, but i will repeat some verses i lately made on my baptismal anniversary,” and he recited with strong emphasis, standing, ten or twelve lines, beginning, “born unto god in christ " he inquired where i had been travelling; and on learning that i had been in malta and sicily, he compared one island with the other, repeating • what he had said to the bishop of london when he returned from that country, that sicily was an excellent school of political economy; for, in any town there, it only needed to ask what the govern'ment enacted, and reverse that to know what ought to be done ; it was the most felicitously opposite · legislation to any thing good and wise. there were only three things which the government had • brought into that garden of delights, namely, itch, pox, and famine. whereas, in malta, the force of • law and mind was seen, in making that barren rock of semi-saracen inhabitants the seat of population • and plenty.' going out, he showed me in the next apartment a picture of allston's, and told me that • montague, a picture-dealer, once came to see him, 'and, glancing towards this, said, “well, you have 'got a picture ! ” thinking it the work of an old 20 english traits. master ; afterwards, montague, still talking with his back to the canvas, put up his hand and touched it, and exclaimed, “ by heaven ! this picture is not ten years old : ” — so delicate and skilful was that man's touch i was in his company for about an hour, but find it impossible to recall the largest part of his discourse, which was often like so many printed paragraphs in his book, – perhaps the same, 80 readily did he fall into certain commonplaces. as i might have foreseen, the visit was rather a spectacle than a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my curiosity. he was old and preoccupied, and could not bend to a new companion and think with him. from edinburgh i went to the highlands. on my return, i came from glasgow to dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter which i had brought from rome, inquired for craigenputtock. it was a farm in nithsdale, in the parish of dunscore, sixteen miles distant. no public coach passed near it, so i took a private carriage from the inn. i found the house amid desolate heathery kills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. carlyle was a man from his youth, an au. first visit to england. thor who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best in london. he was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish ; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor, which floated every thing he looked upon. his talk playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance with his lars and lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. few were the objects and lonely the man, “not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the minister of dunscore ; " so that books inevitably made his topics. he had 'names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. “blackwood's” was the “sand magazine ; ” “fraser's " nearer approach to possibility of life was the “mud magazine;" a piece of road near by that marked some failed enterprise was the “grave of the last sixpence.” when too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to admire the talent shown by his pig. he had spent much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his . . 22 english traits. pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. for all that, he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked nero's death, “qualis artifex pereo ! ” better than most history. he worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. at one time he had inquired and read a good deal about america. landor's principle was mere rebellion, and that he feared was the american principle. the best thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat for his labor. he had read in stewart's book, that when he inquired in a new york hotel for the boots, he had been shown across the street and had found mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey. we talked of books. plato he does not read, and he disparaged socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making mirabeau a hero. gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. his own reading had been multifarious. tristram shandy was one of his first books after robinson crusoe, and robertson's america an early favorite. rousseau's confessions had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned german, by the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what he wanted. first visit to england, he took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment ; recounted the incredibie sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the book. sellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. he still returned to english pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should perform. «government should direct poor men what to do. • poor irish folk come wandering over these moors. • my dame makes it a rule to give to every son of • adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. but here are thousands of acres • which might give them all meat, and nobody to • bid these poor irish go to the moor and till it. • they burned the stacks, and so found a way to .force the rich people to attend to them.' we went out to walk over long hills, and looked at criffel, then without his cap, and down into wordsworth’s country. there we sat down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. it was not carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to brúise itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. but he was honest and true, and cognizant nf the english traits. subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event affects all the future. •christ died on the tree: that built dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. time has only a • relative existence.' he was already turning his eyes towards london with a scholar's appreciation. london is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. he liked the huge machine. each keeps its own round. the baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all the londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. but it turned out good men. he named certain individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom london bad well served. on the 28th august, i went to rydal mount, to pay my respects to mr. wordsworth. his daughters called in their father, a plain, elderly, white-haired man, not prepossessing, and disfigured by green goggles. he sat down, and talked with great simplicity. he had just returned from a journey. his health was good, but he had broken a tooth by a fall, when walking with two lawyers, and had said, that he was glad it did not happen first visit to england. 25 forty years ago; whereupon they had praised his philosophy. he had much to say of america, the more that it gave occasion for his favorite topic, — that society is being enlightened by a superficial tuition, out of all proportion to its being restrained by moral culture. schools do no good. tuition is not education. he thinks more of the education of circumstances than of tuition. 'tis not question whether there are offences of which the law takes cognizance, but whether there are offences of which the law does not take cognizance. sin is what he fears, and how society is to escape without gravest mischiefs from this source — ? he has even said, what seemed a paradox, that they needed a civil war in america, to teach the necessity of knitting the social ties stronger. there may be,” he said, “in america some vulgarity in manner, but that's not important. that comes of the pioneer state of things. but i fear they are too much given to the making of money; and secondly, to politics ; that they make political distinction the end, and not the means. and i fear they ·lack a class of men of leisure, -in short, of gen“tlemen, — to give a tone of honor to the commuinity. i am told that things are boasted of in the second class of society there, which, in england, english traits. 6god knows, are done in england every day, -, .but would never be spoken of. in america i wish to know not how many churches or schools, but what newspapers ? my friend, colonel hamilton, • at the foot of the hill, who was a year in america, • assures me that the newspapers are atrocious, and • accuse members of congress of stealing spoons ! lle was against taking off the tax on newspapers in england, which the reformers represent as a tax upon knowledge, for this reason, that they would be inundated with base prints. he said, he talked on political aspects, for he wished to impress on me and all good americans to cultivate the moral, the conservative, &c., &c., and never to call into action the physical strength of the people, as had just now been done in england in the reform bill,a thing prophesied by delolme. he alluded once or twice to his conversation with dr. channing, who had recently visited him, (laying his hand on a particular chair in which the doctor had sat.) the conversation turned on books. lucretius he esteems a far higher poet than virgil : not in his system, which is nothing, but in his power of illustration. faith is necessary to explain any thing, and to reconcile the foreknowledge of god with human evil. of cousin, (whose lectures we first visit to england. 27 · had all been reading in boston,) he knew only the game. i inquired if he had read carlyle's critical arti cles and translations. he said, he thought him sometimes insane. he proceeded to abuse goethe's wilhelm meister heartily. it was full of all manner of fornication. it was like the crossing of flies in the air. he had never gone farther than the first part ; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across the room. i deprecated this wrath, and said what i could for the better parts of the book; and he courteously promised to look at it again. carlyle, he said, wrote most obscurely. he was clever and deep, but he defied the sympathies of every body. even mr. coleridge wrote more clearly, though he had always wished coleridge would write more to be understood. he led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in which thousands of his lines were composed. his eyes are much inflamed. this is no loss, except for reading, because he never writes prose, and of poetry he carries even hundreds of lines in his head before writing them. he had just returned from a visit to staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on fingal's cave, and was composing a fourth, when he was called in to see me. he said, “ if you are inter. 28 english traits. ested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear these lines.” i gladly assented ; and he recollected himself for a few moments, and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the three entire sonnets with great animation. i fancied the second and third more beautiful than his poems are wont to be. the third is addressed to the flowers, which, he said, especially the oxeye daisy, are very abundant on the top of the rock. the second alludes to the name of the cave, which is “ cave of music ; ” the first to the circumstance of its being visited by the promiscuous company of the steamboat. this recitation was so unlooked for and surprising, — he, the old wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a schoolboy declaiming, that i at first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that i had come thus far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, i saw that he was right and i was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear. i told him how much the few printed extracts had quickened the desire to possess his unpublished poems. he replied, he never was in haste to publish ; partly, because he corrected a good deal, and every alteration is ungraciously received after printing ; but what he had written would be printed, whether he first visit to england. 23 lived or died. i said, “ tintern abbey" appeared to be the favorite poem with the public, but more contemplative readers preferred the first books of the “ excursion,” and the sonnets. he said, yes, they are better.” he preferred such of his poems as touched the affections, to any others ; for whatever is didactic, — what theories of society, and so on, — might perish quickly; but whatever combined a truth with an affection was xenua es ael, good to-day and good forever. he cited the sonnet « on the feelings of a high-minded spaniard," which he preferred to any other, (i so understood him,) and the “ two voices ; ” and quoted, with evident pleasure, the verses addressed « to the skylark.” in this connection, he said of the newtonian theory, that it might yet be superseded and forgotten ; and dalton's atomic theory. when i prepared to depart, he said he wished to show me what a common person in england could do, and he led me into the enclosure of his clerk, a young man, to whom he had given this slip of ground, which was laid out, or its natural capabilities shown, with much taste. he then said he would show me a better way towards the inn; and he walked a good part of a mile, talking, and ever and anon stopping short to impress the word 3 * 80 english traits. or the verse, and finally parted from me with great kindness, and returned across the fields. wordsworth honored himself by his simple adherence to truth, and was very willing not to shine; but he surprised by the hard limits of his thought. to judge from a single conversation, he made the impression of a narrow and very english mind; of one who paid for his rare elevation by general tameness and conformity. off his own beat, his opinions were of no value. it is not very rare to find persons loving sympathy and ease, who expiate their departure from the common, in one direction, by their conformity in every other. chapter ii. voyage to england. thb occasion of my second visit to england was an invitation from some mechanics’ institutes in lancashire and yorkshire, which separately are organized much in the same way as our new england lyceums, but, in 1847, had been linked into a “ union,” which embraced twenty or thirty tɔwns and cities, and presently extended into the middle counties, and northward into scotland. i was invited, on liberal terms, to read a series of lectures in them all. the request was urged with every kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest parties in manchester, who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word. the remuneration was equivalent to the fees at that time paid in thiş country for the like services. at all events, it was sufficient to cover any travelling expenses, and the proposal offered an excellent opportunity of seeing the interior of england and (31) 82 english traits. scotland, by means of a home, and a committee of intelligent friends, awaiting me in every town. i did not go very willingly. i am not a good traveller, nor have i found that long journeys yield a fair share of reasonable hours. but the invitation was repeated and pressed at a moment of more leisure, and when i was a little spent by some unusual studies. i wanted a change and a tonic, and england was proposed to me. besides, there were, at least, the dread attraction and salutary influences of the sea. so i took my berth in the packet-ship washington irving, and sailed from boston on tuesday, 5th october, 1847. on friday at noon, we had only made one hundred and thirty-four miles. a nimble indian would have swum as far ; but the captain affirmed that the ship would show us in time all her paces, and we crept along through the floating drift of boards, logs, and chips, which the rivers of maine and new brunswick pour into the sea after a freshet. at last, on sunday night, after doing one day's work in four, the storm came, the winds blew, and we flew before a north-wester, which strained every rope and sail. the good ship darts through the water all day, all night, like a fish, quivering with speed, gliding through liquid leagues, sliding from horizon to horizon. she has passed cape sable voyage to england. she has reached the banks; the land-birds are left; gulls, haglets, ducks, petrels, swim, dive, and hover around ; no fishermen; she has passed the banks, left five sail behind her, far on the edge of the west at sundown, which were far east of us at morn, — though they say at sea a stern chase is a long race, -and still we fly for our lives. the shortest sea-line from boston to liverpool is 2850 miles. this a steamer keeps, and saves 150 miles. a sailing ship can never go in a shorter line than 3000, and usually it is much longer. our good master keeps his kites up to the last moment, studding-sails alow and aloft, and, by incessant straight steering, never loses a rod of way. watchfulness is the law of the ship, watch on watch, for advantage and for life. since the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept but in his day-clothes whilst on board. “ there are many advantages,” says saadi, “in sea-voyaging, but security is not one of them.” yet in hurrying over these abysses, whatever dangers we are running into, we are certainly running out of the risks of hundreds of miles every day, which have their own chances of squall, collision, sea-stroke, piracy, cold, and thunder. hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater ; but the speed is safety, or, twelve days of danger, instead of twenty-four. english traits. our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed perhaps, with all her freight, 1500 tons. the mainmast, from the deck to the top-button, measured 115 feet; the length of the deck, from stem to stern, 155. it is impossible not to person ify a ship; every body does, in every thing they say: she behaves well; she minds her rudder; she swims like a duck; she runs her nose into the water; she looks into a port. then that wonderful esprit du corps, by which we adopt into our self-love every thing we touch, makes us all champions of her sailing qualities. the conscious ship hears all the praise. in one week she has made 1467 miles, and now, at night, seems to hear the steamer behind her, which left boston to-day at two, has mended her speed, and is flying before the gray south wind eleven and a half knots the hour. the sea-fire shines in her wake, and far around wherever a wave breaks. i read the hour, 9h. 45', on my watch by this light. near the equator, you can read small print by it; and the mate describes the phosphoric insects, when taken up in a pail, as shaped like a carolina potato. i find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for tomatoes and olives. the confinement, cold, motion, noise, and odor are not to be dispensed with the floor of your room is sloped at an angle of voyage to england. twenty or thirty degrees, and i waked every morning with the belief that some one was tipping up my berth nobody likes to be treated ignominiously, upset, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis, and stewing oil. we get used to these annoyances at last, but the dread of the sea remains longer. the sea is masculine, the type of active strength. look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery? in our graveyards we scoop a pit, but this aggressive water opens mile-wide pits and chasms, and makes a mouthful of a fleet.. to the geologist, the sea is the only firmament ; the land is in perpetual flux and change, now blown up like a tumor, now sunk in a chasm, and the registered observations of a few hundred years find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and falling. the sea keeps its old level ; and 'tis no wonder that the history of our race is so recent, if the roar of the ocean is silencing our traditions. a rising of the sea, such as has been observed, say an inch in a century, from east to west on the land, will bury all the towns, monuments, bones, and knowledge of mankind, steadily and insensibly. if it is capa 36 english traits. ble of these great and secular mischiefs, it is quite as ready at private and local damage ; and of this no landsman seems so fearful as the seaman. such discomfort and such danger as the narratives of the captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the costly fee we pay for entrance to europe ; but the wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor. and here, on the second day of our voyage, stepped out a little boy in his shirt-sleeves, who had hid himself, whilst the ship was in port, in the bread-closet, having no money, and wishing to go to england. the sailors have dressed him in guernsey frock, with a knife in his belt, and he is climbing nimbly about after them, “likes the work first-rate, and, if the captain will take him, means now to come back again in the ship.” the mate avers that this is the history of all sailors ; nine out of ten are runaway boys ; and adds, that all of them are sick of the sea, but stay in it out of pride. jack has a life of risks, incessant abuse, and the worst pay. it is a little better with the inate, and not very much better with the captain. a hundred dollars a month is reckoned high pay. if sailors were contented, if they had not resolved again and again not to go to sea any more, i should respect them. of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the voyage to england. 37 bea are not of any account to those whose minds are preoccupied. the water-laws, arctic frost, the mountain, the mine, only shatter cockneyism ; every noble activity makes room for itself. a great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is. and the sea is not slow in disclosing inestimable secrets to a good naturalist. 'tis a good rule in every journey to provide some piece of liberal study to rescue the hours which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal from the best economist. classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. i remember that some of the happiest and most valdable hours i have owed to books, passed, many years ago, on shipboard. the worst impediment i have found at sea is the want of light in the cabin. we found on board the usual cabin library ; basil hall, dumas, dickens, bulwer, balzac, and sand were our sea-gods. among the passengers, there was some variety of talent and profession; we exchanged our experiences, and all learned something. the busiest talk with leisure and convenience at sea, and sometimes a memorable fact turns up, which you have long had a vacant niche for, and seize with the joy of a collector. but, under the best conditions, a voyage is one of the 38 english traits. severest tests to try a man. a college examina. tion is nothing to it. sea-days are long, — these lack-lustre, joyless days which whistled over us ; but they were few,only fifteen, as the captain counted, sixteen according to me. reckoned from the time when we left soundings, our speed was such that the captain drew the line of his course in red ink on his chart, for the encouragement or envy of future navigators. it has been said that the king of england would consult his dignity by giving audience to foreign ambassadors in the cabin of a man-of-war. and i think the white path of an atlantic ship the right avenue to the palace front of this seafaring people, who for hundreds of years claimed the strict sovereignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the striking sail from the ships of all other peoples. when their privilege was disputed by the dutch and other junior marines, on the plea that you could never anchor on the same wave, or hold property in what was always flowing, the english did not stick to claim the channel, or bottom of all the main. “as if,” said they, “we contended for the drops of the sea, and not for its situation, or the bed of those waters. the sea is bounded by his majesly's empire.” as we neared the land its genius was felt. this voyage to england. was inevitably the british side. in every man's thought arises now a new system, english sentiments, english loves and fears, english history and social modes. yesterday, every passenger had measured the speed of the ship by watching the bubbles over the ship’s bulwarks. to-day, instead of bubbles, we measure by kinsale, cork, water-. ford, and ardmore. there lay the green shore of ireland, like some coast of plenty. we could see towns, towers, churches, harvests ; . but the curse of eight hundred years we could not discern. chapter iii. land. alfieri thought italy and england the only countries worth living in ; the former, because there nature vindicates her rights, and triumphs over the evils inflicted by the governments ; the latter, because art conquers nature, and transforms a rude, ungenial land into a paradise of comfort and plenty. england is a garden. under an ash-colored sky, the fields have been combed and rolled till they appear to have been finished with a pencil instead of a plough. the solidity of the structures that compose the towns speaks the industry of ages. nothing is left as it was made. rivers, hills, valleys, the sea itself feel the hand of a master. the long habitation of a powerful and ingenious race has turned every rood of land to its best use, has found all the capabilities, the arable soil, the quarriable rock, the highways, the byways, the fords, the navigable waters; and the new arts of intercourse meet you every where ; so that england is (40) land. a huge phalanstery, where all that man wants is provided within the precinct. cushioned and comforted in every manner, the traveller rides as on a cannon-ball, high and low, over rivers and towns, through mountains, in tunnels of three or four miles, at near twice the speed of our trains ; and reads quietly the times newspaper, which, by its immense correspondence and reporting, seems to have machinized the rest of the world for his occasion. the problem of the traveller landing at liverpool is, why england is england ? what are the elements of that power which the english hold over other nations ?. if there be one test of national genius universally accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful country in the universe for the last millennium, that country is england. a wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the best of actual nations ; and an american has more reasons than another to draw him to britain. in all that is done or begun by the americans towards right thinking or practice, we are met by a civilization already settled and overpowering. the culture of the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are english thoughts and aims. a nation considerable for a thousand years since egbert, it has, in the 42 english traits. last centuries, obtained the ascendant, and stamped the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind with its impress. those who resist it do not feel it or obey it less. the russian in his snows is aiming to be english. the turk and chinese also are making awkward efforts to be english. the practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion take, is the natural genius of the british mind. the influence of france is a constituent of modern civility, but not enough opposed to the english for the most wholesome effect. the american is only the continuation of the english genius into new conditions, more or less propitious. see what books fill our libraries. every book we read, every biography, play, romance, in whatever form, is still english history and manners. so that a sensible englishman once said to me, “as long as you do not grant us copyright, we shall have the teaching of you." but we have the same difficulty in making a social or moral estimate of england, as the sheriff finds in drawing a jury to try some cause which bas agitated the whole community, and on which every body finds himself an interested party. officers, jurors, judges have all taken sides. eng. land has inoculated all nations with her civilization, land. intelligence, and tastes ; and, to resist the tyranny and prepossession of the british element, a serious man must aid himself, by comparing with it the civilizations of the farthest east and west, the old greek, the oriental, and, much more, the ideal standard, if only by means of the very impatience which english forms are sure to awaken in independent minds. besides, if we will visit london, the present time is the best time, as some signs portend that it has reached its highest point. it is observed that the english interest us a little less within a few years ; and hence the impression that the british power has culminated, is in solstice, or already declining. as soon as you enter england, which, with wales, is no larger than the state of georgia,* this little land stretches by an illusion to the dimensions of an empire. the innumerable details, the crowded succession of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated estates, the number and power of the trades and guilds, the military strength and splendor, the multitudes of rich and of remarkable people, the servants and equipages, — all these catching the eye, and never allowir.g it to pause, • add south carolina, and you have more than an equivalent for the area of scotland. english traits. hide all boundaries, by the impression of magnif cence and endless wealth. i reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this and that object indispensably to be seen, — yes, to see england well needs a hundred years ; for, what they told me was the merit of sir john soane’s aluseum, in london, – that it was well packed and well saved,is the merit of england ; — it is stuffed full, in all corners and crevices, with towns, towers, churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and charity-houses. in the history of art, it is a long way from a cromlech to york minster; yet all the intermediate steps may still be traced in this allpreserving island. the territory has a singular perfection. the climate is warmer by many degrees than it is entitled to by latitude. neither hot nor cold, there is no hour in the whole year when one cannot work. here is no winter, but such days as we have in massachusetts in november, a temperature which makes no exhausting demand on human strength, but allows the attainment of the largest stature. charles the second said, “it invited men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than another country.” then england has all the materials of a working country except wood. the constant rain, — a rain with every tide, in some land. parts of the island, — keeps its multitude of rivers full, and brings agricultural production up to the highest point. it has plenty of water, of stone, of potter's clay, of coal, of salt, and of iron. the land naturally abounds with game, immense heaths and downs are paved with quails, grouse, and woodcock, and the shores are animated by water birds. the rivers and the surrounding sea spawn with fish ; there are salmon for the rich, and sprats and herrings for the poor. in the northern lochs, the herring are in innumerable shoals; at one season, the country people say, the lakes contain one part water and two parts fish. the only drawback on this industrial conveniency, is the darkness of its sky. the night and day are too nearly of a color. it strains the eyes to read and to write. add the coal smoke. in the manufacturing towns, the fine soot or blacks darken the day, give white sheep the color of black sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate the air, poison many plants, and corrode the monuments and buildings. the london fog aggravates the distempers of the sky, and sometimes justifies the epigram on the climate by an english wit, “in a fine day, looking up a chimney ; in a foul day, looking down one." a gentleman in liverpool told me that he found english traits. he could do without a fire in his parlor about one day in the year. it is however pretended, that the enormous consumption of coal in the island is also felt in modifying the general climate. factitious climate, factitious position. england resembles a ship in its shape, and, if it were one, its best admiral could not have worked it, or anchored it in a more judicious or effective position. sir john herschel said, “ london was the centre of the terrene globe.” the shopkeeping nation, to use a shop word, has a good stand. the old venetians pleased themselves with the flattery, that venice was in 45°, midway between the poles and the line ; as if that were an imperial centrality. long of old, the greeks fancied delphi the navel of the earth, in their favorite mode of fabling the earth to be an animal. the jews believed jerusalem to be the centre. i have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city of philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of athens, rome, and london. it was drawn by a patriotic philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of chestnut street. but, when carried to charleston, to new orleans, and to boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals. land. but england is anchored at the side of europe, and right in the heart of the modern world. the sea, which, according to virgil's famous line, divided the poor britons utterly from the world, proved to be the ring of marriage with all nations. it is not down in the books, it is written only in the geologic strata, — that fortunate day when a wave of the german ocean burst the old isthmus which joined kent and cornwall to france, and gave to this fragment of europe its impregnable sea wall, cutting off an island of eight hundred miles in length, with an irregular breadth reaching to three hundred miles ; a territory large enough for independence enriched with every seed of national power, so near, that it can see the harvests of the continent; and so far, that who would cross the strait must be an expert mariner, ready for tempests. as america, europe, and asia lie, these britons have precisely the best commercial position in the whole planet, and are sure of a market for all the goods they can manufacture. and to make these advantages avail, the river thames must dig its spacious outlet to the sea from the heart of the kingdom, giving road and landing to innumerable ships, and all the conveniency to trade, that a people so skilful and sufficient in economizing water-front by docks, warehouses, and lighters 48 english traits. required. when james the first declared his purpose of punishing london by removing his court, the lord mayor replied, “that, in removing his royal presence from his lieges, they hoped he would leave them the thames.” in the variety of surface, britain is a miniature of europe, having plain, forest, marsh, river, seashore; mines in cornwall ; caves in matlock and derbyshire ; delicious landscape in dovedale, delicious sea-view at tor bay, highlands in scotland, snowdon in wales; and, in westmoreland and cumberland, a pocket switzerland, in which the lakes and mountains are on a sufficient scale to fill the eye and touch the imagination. it is a nation conveniently small. fontenelle thought, that nature had sometimes a little affectation; and there is such an artificial completeness in this nation of artificers, as if there were a design from the beginning to elaborate a bigger birmingham. nature held counsel with herself, and said, my romans are gone. to build my new empire, i will choose a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength. i will not grudge a competition of the roughest males. let buffalo gore buffalo, and the pasture to the strongest! for i have work that requires the best will and sinew. sharp and temperate northern breezes shall blow, to keep that will alive land and alert. the sea shall disjoin the people from others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. it shall give them markets on every side. long time i will keep them on their feet, by poverty, border-wars, seafaring, sea-risks, and the stimulus of gain. an island, but not so large, the people not so many as to glut the great markets and depress one another, but proportioned to the size of europe and the continents.' with its fruits, and wares, and money, must its civil influence radiate. it is a singular coincidence to this geographic centrality, the spiritual centrality, which emanuel swedenborg ascribes to the people. “for the english nation, the best of them are in the centre of all christians, because they have interior intellectual light. this appears conspicuously in the spiritual world. this light they derive from the liberty of speaking and writing, and thereby of thinking.” chapter iv. race. an ingenious anatomist has written a book to prove that races are imperishable, but nations are pliant political constructions, easily changed or destroyed. but this writer did not found his assumed races on any necessary law, disclosing their ideal or metaphysical necessity; nor did he, on the other hand, count with precision the existing races, and settle the true bounds; a point of nicety, and the popular test of the theory. the individuals at the extremes of divergence in one race of men are as unlike as the wolf to the lapdog. yet each variety shades down imperceptibly into the next, and you cannot draw the line where a race begins or ends. hence every writer makes a different count. blumenbach reckons five races; humboldt three; and mr. pickering, who lately, in our exploring expedition, thinks he saw all the kinds of men that can be on the planet, makes eleven. • the races, a fragment. by robert knox. london: 1880. (50) race. the british empire is reckoned to contain 222, 000,000 soưls, – perhaps a fifth of the population of the globe; and to comprise a territory of 5,000,000 square miles. so far have british people predominated. perhaps forty of these millions are of british stock. add the united states of america, which reckon, exclusive of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, on a territory of 3,000,000 square miles, and in which the foreign element, however considerable, is rapidly assimilated, and you have a population of english descent and language, of 60,000,000, and governing a population of 245,000,000 souls. the british census proper reckons twenty-seven and a half millions in the home countries. what makes this census important is the quality of the units that compose it. they are free forcible men, in a country where life is safe, and has reached the greatest value. they give the bias to the current age; and that, not by chance or by mass, but by their character, and by the number of individuals among them of personal ability. it has been denied that the english have genius. be it as it may, men of vast intellect have been born on their soil, and they have made or applied the principal irventions. they have sound bodies, and supreme endurance in war and in labor. the spawning force of the race has sufficed to the colonization english traits. of great parts of the world ; yet it remains to be seen whether they can make good the exodus of millions from great britain, amounting, in 1852, to more than a thousand a day. they have assim. ilating force, since they are imitated by their foreign subjects ; and they are still aggressive and propagandist, enlarging the dominion of their arts and liberty. their laws are hospitable, and slavery does not exist under them. what oppression exists is incidental and temporary; their success is not sudden or fortunate, but they have maintained constancy and self-equality for many ages. is this power due to their race, or to some other cause ? men hear gladly of the power of blood or race. every body likes to know that his advantages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, as mines and quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor to fortune, but to superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him. . we anticipate in the doctrine of race something like that law of physiology, that, whatever bone, muscle, or essential organ is found in one healthy individual, the same part or organ may be found in or near the same place in its congener ; and we look to find in the son every mental and moral property that existed in the ancestor. in race, it is not the broad shoulders, or litheness, or statura race. 53 that give advantage, but a symmetry that reaches as far as to the wit. then the miracle and renown begin. then first we care to examine the pedigree, and copy heedfully the training, what food they ate, what nursing, school, and exercises they had, which resulted in this mother-wit, delicacy of thought, and robust wisdom. how came such men as king alfred, and roger bacon, william of wykeham, walter raleigh, philip sidney, isaac newton, william shakspeare, george chapman, francis bacon, george herbert, henry vane, to exist here? what made these delicate natures ? was it the air? was it the sea ? was it the parentage ? for it is certain that these men are samples of their contemporaries. the hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter any thing which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. it is race, is it not? that puts the hundred millions of india under the dominion of a remote island in the north of europe. race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all celts are catholics, and all saxons are protestants; that celts love unity of power, and saxons the representative principle. race is a controlling influence in the jew, who, for two millenniums, under every 5 * english traits, climate, has preserved the same character and employments. race in the negro is of appalling importance. the french in canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. i chanced to read tacitus “on the manners of the germans,” not long since, in missouri, and the heart of illinois, and i found abundant points of resemblance between the germans of the hercynian forest, and our hoosiers, suckers, and badgers of the american woods. but whilst race works immortally to keep its own, it is resisted by other forces. civilization is a re-agent, and eats away the old traits. the arabs of to-day are the arabs of pharaoh ; but the briton of to-day is a very different person from cassibelaunus or ossian. each religious sect has its physiognomy. the methodists have acquired a face; the quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. an englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners. trades and professions carve their own lines on face and form. certain circumstances of english life are not less effective; as, personal liberty; plenty of food; good ale and mutton ; open market, or good wages for every kind of labor ; high bribes to talent and skill; the island life, or the million opportunities and outlets for expanding and misplaced talent; readiness of combination race 55 among themselves for politics or for business strikes; and sense of superiority founded on habit of victory in labor and in war; and the appetite for superiority grows by feeding it is easy to add to the counteracting forces to race. credence is a main element. 'tis said, that the views of nature held by any people determine all their institutions. whatever influences add to mental or moral faculty, take men out of nationality, as out of other conditions, and make the national life a culpable compromise. these limitations of the formidable doctrine of race suggest others which threaten to undermine it, as not sufficiently based. the fixity or inconvertibleness of races as we see them, is a weak argument for the eternity of these frail boundaries since all our historical period is a point to the duration in which nature has wrought. any the least and solitariest fact in our natural history, such as the melioration of fruits and of animal stocks, has the worth of a power in the opportunity of geologic periods. moreover, though we flatter the self-love of men and nations by the legend of pure races, all our experience is of the gradation and resolution of races, and strange resemblances meet us every where. it need not puzzle us that malay and paprian, celt and roman, saxon and tar. 56 english traits. tar should mix, when we see the rudiments of tiger and baboon in our human form, and know that the barriers of races are not so firm, but that some spray sprinkles us from the antediluvian seas. the low organizations are simplest ; a mere mouth, a jelly, or a straight worm. as the scale mounts, the organizations become complex. we are piqued with pure descent, but nature loves inoculation. a child blends in his face the faces of both parents, and some feature from every ancestor whose face hangs on the wall. the best nations are those most widely related ; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer of nations. the english composite character betrays a mixed origin. every thing english is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements. the language is mixed; the names of men are of different nations, three languages, three or four nations ; — the currents of thought are counter: contemplation and practical skill; active intellect and dead conservatism; world-wide enterprise, and devoted use and wont; aggressive freedom and hospitable law, with bitter class-legislation ; a people scattered by their wars and affairs over the face of the whole earth, and homesick to a man; a country of extremes, dukes and chartists, bishops of durham and race. naked heathen colliers ; — nothing can be praised in it without damning exceptions, and nothing denounced without salvos of cordial praise. neither do this people appear to be of one stem ; but collectively a better race than any from which they are derived. nor is it easy to trace it home to its original seats. who can call by right names what races are in britain? who can trace them historically? who can discriminate them anatomically, or metaphysically? in the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on the historical question of race, and, come of wnatever 'disputable ancestry, — the indisputable englishman before me, himself very well marked, and nowhere else to be found, i fancied i could leave quite aside the choice of a tribe as his lineal progenitors. defoe said in his wrath, “the englishman was the mud of all races.” i incline to the belief, that, as water, lime, and sand make mortar, so certain temperaments marry well, and, by well-managed contrarieties, develop as drastic a character as the english. on the whole, it is not so much a history of one or of certain tribes of saxons, jutes, or frisians, coming from one place, and genetically identical, as it is an anthology of temperaments out of them all. certain temperaments suit the sky and soil of england, say eight english traits. or ten or twenty varieties, as, out of a hundred pear-trees, eight or ten suit the soil of an orchard, and thrive, whilst all the unadapted temperaments die out. the english derive their pedigree from such a range of nationalities, that there needs sea-room and land-room to unfold the varieties of talent and character. perhaps the ocean serves as a galvanic battery to distribute acids at one pole, and alkalies at the other. so england tends to accumulate her liberals in america, and her conservatives at london. the scandinavians in her race still hear in every age the murmurs of their mother, the ocean ; the briton in the blood hugs the homestead still. again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of race, what we think of when we talk of english traits really narrows itself to a small district. it excludes ireland, and scotland, and wales, and reduces itself at last to london, that is, to those who come and go thither. the portraits that hang on the walls in the academy exhibition at london, the figures in punch's drawings of the public men, or of the club-houses, the prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive english, and not american, no, nor scotch, nor irish: but ’tis a very restricted nationality. as you go north into the manufacturing and agricultural districts, and to race. 59 the population that never travels, as you go into yorkshire, as you enter scotland, the world's englishman is no longer found. in scotland, there is a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien and manners ; a provincial eagerness and acuteness appear; the poverty of the country makes itself remarked, and a coarseness of manners; and, among the in. tellectual, is the insanity of dialectics. in ireland, are the same climate and soil as in england, but less food, no right relation to the land, political dependence, small tenantry, and an inferior or mis placed race. these queries concerning ancestry and blood may be well allowed, for there is no prosperity that seems more to depend on the kind of man than british prosperity. only a hardy and wise people could have made this small territory great. we say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that if the boats are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man that wins. put the best sailing master into either boat, and he will win. yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of unbroken traditions, though vague, and losing themselves in fable. the traditions have got footing, and refuse to be disturbed. the kitchen-clock is more convenient than sidereal time. we must use the popular category, as we do by the linnæan ko english traita. classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe. i found plenty of well-marked english types, the ruddy complexion fair and plump, robust men, with faces cut like a die, and a strong island speech and accent; a norman type, with the complacency that belongs to that constitution. others, who might be americans, for any thing that appeared in their complexion or form : and their speech was much less marked, and their thought much less bound. we will call them saxons. then the man has implanted his dark complexion in the trinity or quaternity of bloods.. 1. the sources from which tradition derives their stock are mainly three. and, first, they are of the oldest blood of the world, — the celtic. some peoples are deciduous or transitory. where are the greeks? where the etrurians ? where the romans? but the celts or sidonides are an old family, of whose beginning there is no memory, and their end is likely to be still more remote in the future ; for they have endurance and produce race. 61 tiveness. they planted britain, and gave to the seas and mountains names which are poems, and imitate the pure voices of nature. they are favorably remembered in the oldest records of europe. they had no violent feudal tenure, but the husbandmin owned the land. they had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed. they have a hidden and precarious genius. they made the best popular literature of the middle ages in the songs of merlin, and the tender and delicious mythology of arthur. 2. the english come mainly from the germans, whom the romans found hard to conquer in two hundred and ten years, — say, impossible to conquer, — when one remembers the long sequel ; a · people about whom, in the old empire, the rumor ran, there was never any that meddled with them that repented it not. 3. charlemagne, halting one day in a town of narbonnese gaul, looked out of a window, and saw a fleet of northmen cruising in the mediterranean. they even entered the port of the town where he was, causing no small alarm and sudden manning and arming of his galleys. as they put out to sea again, the emperor gazed long after them, his eyes bathed in tears. “i am tormented with sorrow,” he said, " when i foresee the evils they will 62 english traits. bring on my posterity.” there was reason for these xerxes' tears. the men who have built a ship and invented the rig, — cordage, sail, compass, and pump, — the working in and out of port, have acquired much more than a ship. now arm them, and every shore is at their mercy. for, if they have not numerical superiority where they anchor, they have only to sail a mile or two to find it. bonaparte's art of war, namely of concentrating force on the point of attack, must always be theirs who have the choice of the battle-ground. of course they come into the fight from a higher ground of power than the land-nations; and can engage them on shore with a victorious advantage in the retreat. as soon as the shores are sufficient ly peopled to make piracy a losing business, the, same skill and courage are ready for the service of trade. the heimskringla,* or sagas of the kings of norway, collected by snorro sturleson, is the iliad and odyssey of english history. its portraits, like homer's, are strongly individualized. the sagas describe a monarchical republic like sparta. the government disappears before the importance of citizens. in norway, no persian masses fight • heimskringla. translated by samuel laing, esq. london 1844. race. 63 and perish to aggrandize a king, but the actors are bonders or landholders, every one of whom is named and personally and patronymically described, as the king's friend and companion. a sparse population gives this high worth to every man. individuals are often noticed as very handsome persons, which trait only brings the story nearer to the english race. then the solid material interest predominates, so dear to english understanding, wherein the association is logical, between merit and land. the heroes of the sagas are not the knights of south europe. no vaporing of france and spain has corrupted them. they are substantial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to defend their properties. they have weapons which they use in a determined manner, by no means for chivalry, but for their acres. they are people considerably advanced in rural arts, living amphibiously on a rough coast, and drawing half their food from the sea, and half from the land. they have herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon, butter, and cheese. they fish in the fiord, and hunt the deer. a king among these farmers has a varying power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of a sheriff. a king was maintained much as, in some of our country districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quartered, a week here, a week there, and english traits. a fortnight on the next farm, on all the farmers in rotation. this the king calls going into guest-quarters ; and it was the only way in which, in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers, could be kept alive, when he leaves his own farm to collect his dues through the kingdom. these norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. but they have a singular turn for homicide ; their chief end of man is to murder, or to be murdered ; oars, scythes, harpoons, crowbars, peatknives, and hayforks, are tools valued by them all the more for their charming aptitude for assassinations. a pair of kings, after dinner, will divert themselves by thrusting each his sword through the other's body, as did yngve and alf. another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, and, finding no weapon near, will take the bits out of their horses' mouths, and crush each other's heads with them, as did alric and eric. the sight of a tent-cord or a cloak-string puts them on hanging somebody, a wife, or a husband, or, best of all, a king. if a farmer has so much as a hayfork, he sticks it into a king dag. king ingiald finds it vastly amusing to burn up half a dozen kings in a hall, after getting them drunk. never was poor gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to be race. rid of it, as the northman. if he cannot pick any other quarrel, he will get himself comfortably gored by a bull's horns, like egil, or slain by a land-slide, like the agricultural king onund. odin died in his bed, in sweden; but it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of old age. king hake of sweden cuts and slashes in battle, as long as he can stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread ; being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down contented on deck. the wind blew off the land, the ship flew burning in clear flame, out between the islets into the ocean, and there was the right end of king hake. the early sagas are sanguinary and piratical ; the later are of a noble strain. history rarely yields us better passages than the conversation between king sigurd the crusader, and king eystein, his brother, on their respective merits, — one, the soldier, and the other, a lover of the arts of peace. but the reader of the norman history must steel himself by holding fast the remote compensations which result from animal vigor. as the old fossil world shows that the first steps of reducing the chaos were confided to saurians and other huge and horrible animals, su the foundations of 6 * 66 english traits. the new civility were to be laid by the most savage men. the normans came out of france into england worse men than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years before. they had lost their own language, and learned the romance or barbarous latin of the gauls; and had acquired, with the language, all the vices it had names for. the conquest has obtained in the chronicles, the name of the “memory of sorrow.” twenty thousand thieves landed at hastings. these founders of the house of lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. they were all alike, they took every thing they could carry, they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until every thing english was brought to the verge of ruin. such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled. i england yielded to the danes and northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and was the receptacle into which all the mettle of that strenuous population was poured. the continued draught of race. the best men in norway, sweden, and denmark, to these piratical expeditions, exhausted those countries, like a tree which bears much fruit when young, and these have been second-rate powers ever since. the power of the race migrated, and left norway void. king olaf said, “ when king harold, my father, went westward to england, the chosen men in norway followed him: but norway was so emptied then, that such men have not since been to find in the country, nor especially such a leader as king harold was for wisdom and bravery.” it was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in 1801, the british government sent nelson to bombard the danish forts in the sound; and, in 1807, lord cathcart, at copenhagen, took the entire danish fleet, as it lay in the basins, and all the equipments from the arsenal, and carried them to england. konghelle, the town where the kings of norway, sweden, and denmark were wont to meet, is now rented to a private english gentleman for a hunting ground. it took many generations to trim, and comb, and perfume the first boat-load of norse pirates into royal highnesses and most noble knights of the garter: but every sparkle of ornament dates back to the norse boat. there will be time enough to english traits. mellow this strength into civility and religion. it is a medical fact, that the children of the blind see • the children of felons have a healthy conscience. many a mean, dastardly boy is, at the age of puberty, transformed into a serious and generous youth. the mildness of the following ages has not quite effaced these traits of odin ; as the rudiment of a structure matured in the tiger is said to be still found unabsorbed in the caucasian man. the nation has a tough, acrid, animal nature, which centuries of churching and civilizing have not been able to sweeten. alfieri said, “the crimes of italy were the proof of the superiority of the stock;" and one may say of england, that this watch moves on a splinter of adamant. the english uncultured are a brutal nation. the crimes recorded in their calendars leave nothing to be desired in the way of cold malignity. dear to the english heart is a fair stand-up fight. the brutality of the manners in the lower class appears in the boxing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, love of executions, and in the readiness for a set-to in the streets, delightful to the english of all classes. the costermongers of london streets hold cowardice in loathing:— " we must work our fists well; we are all handy with our fists.” the public schools are charged with being bear-gardens race. of brutal strength, and are liked by the people for that cause. the fagging is a trait of the same quality. medwin, in the life of shelley, relates, that, at a military school, they rolled up a young man in a snowball, and left him so in his room, while the other cadets went to church; — and crippled him for life. they have retained impressment, deckflogging, army-flogging, and school-flogging. such is the ferocity of the army discipline, that a soldier sentenced to flogging, sometimes prays that his sentence may be commuted to death. flogging banished from the armies of western europe, remains here by the sanction of the duke of wellington. the right of the husband to sell the wife has been retained down to our times. the jews have been the favorite victims of royal and popular persecution. henry iii. mortgaged all the jews in the kingdom to his brother, the earl of cornwall, as security for money which he borrowed. the torture of criminals, and the rack for extorting evidence, were slowly disused. of the criminal statutes, sir samuel romilly said, “i have examined the codes of all nations, and ours is the worst, and worthy of the anthropophagi.” in the last session, the house of commons was listening to details of flogging and torture practised in the jails. english traits. as soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a hardy people into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and factors of the globe. from childhood, they dabbled in water, they swum like fishes, their playthings were boats. in the case of the ship-money, the judges delivered it for law, that “ england being an island, the very midland shires therein are all to be accounted maritime:” and fuller adds, “the genius even of landlocked counties driving the natives with a maritime dexterity.” as early as the conquest, it is remarked in explanation of the wealth of eng. land, that its merchants trade to all countries. the english, at the present day, have great vigor of body and endurance. other countrymen look slight and undersized beside them, and invalids. they are bigger men than the americans. i suppose a hundred english taken at random out of the street, would weigh a fourth more, than so many americans. yet, i am told, the skeleton is not larger. they are round, ruddy, and handsome; at least, the whole bust is well formed ; and there is a tendency to stout and powerful frames. i remarked the stoutness, on my first landing at liverpool; porter, drayman, coachman, guard,—what substantial, respectable, grandfatherly figures, with costume and manners to race. suit. the american has arrived at the old mansion-house, and finds himself among uncles, aunts, and grandsires. the pictures on the chimney-tiles of his nursery were pictures of these people. here they are in the identical costumes and air, which so took him. it is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky, and the women have that disadvantage, few tall, slender figures of flowing shape, but stunted and thickset persons. the french say, that the englishwomen have two left hands. but, in all ages, they are a handsome race. the bronze monuments of crusaders lying cross-legged, in the temple church at london, and those in worcester and in salisbury cathedrals, which are seven hundred years old, are of the same type as the best youthful heads of men now in england ; — please by beauty of the same character, an expression blending goodnature, valor, and refinement, and, mainly, by that uncorrupt youth in the face of manhood, which is daily seen in the streets of london. both branches of the scandinavian race are distinguished for beauty. the anecdote of the hand. some captives which saint gregory found at rome, a. d. 600, is matched by the testimony of the norman chroniclers, five centuries later, who wondered at the bearity and long flowing hair of the 72 english traits. young english captives. meantime, the heims kringla has frequent occasion to speak of the personal beauty of its heroes. when it is considered what humanity, what resources of mental and moral power, the traits of the blonde race betoken, its accession to empire marks a new and finer epoch, wherein the old mineral force shall be subjugated at last by humanity, and shall plough in its furrow henceforward. it is not a final race, once a crab always crab, but a race with a future. on the english face are combined decision and nerve, with the fair complexion, blue eyes, and open and florid aspect. hence the love of truth, hence the sensibility, the fine perception, and poetic construction. the fair saxon man, with open front, and honest meaning, domestic, affectionate, is not the wood out of which cannibal, or inquisitor, or assassin is made, but he is moulded for law, lawful trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of children, for colleges, churches, charities, and colonies. they are rather manly than warlike. when the war is over, the mask falls from the affectionate and domestic tastes, which make them women in kindness. this union of qualities is fabled in their national legend of beauty and the beast, or, long before, in the greek legend of hermaphrodite. the two sexes are co-present in the engrace. 12 lish mind. i apply to britannia, queen of seas and colonies, the words in which her latest novelist portrays his heroine: “she is as mild as she is game, and as game as she is mild.” the english delight in the antagonism which combines in one person the extremes of courage and tenderness nelson, dying at trafalgar, sends his love to lord collingwood, and, like an innocent schoolboy that goes to bed, says, “ kiss me, hardy," and turns to sleep. lord collingwood, his comrade, was of a lature the most affectionate and domestic. ad. miral rodney's figure approached to delicacy and effeminacy, and he declared himself very sensible to fear, which he surmounted only by considerations of honor and public duty. clarendon says, the duke of buckingham was so modest and gentle, that some courtiers attempted to put affronts on him, until they found that this modesty and effeminacy was only a mask for the most terrible determination. and sir edward parry said, the other day, of sir john franklin, that, “ if he found wellington sound open, he explored it; for he was a man who never turned his back on a danger, yet of that tenderness, that he would not brush away a mosquito.” even for their highwaymen the same virtue is claimed, and robin hood comes described to us as mitissimus prædonum, the ged. english traits. tlest thief. but they know where their wardogs lie. cromwell, blake, marlborough, chatham, nelson, and wellington, are not to be trifled with, and the brutal strength which lies at the bottom of society, the animal ferocity of the quays and cockpits, the bullies of the costarmongers of shoreditch, seven dials, and spitalfields, they know how to wake up. they have a vigorous health, and last well into middle and old age. the old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. a clear skin, a peachbloom complexion, and good teeth, are found all over the island. they use a plentiful and nutritious diet. the operative cannot subsist on watercresses. beef, mutton, wheatbread, and maltliquors, are universal among the first-class laborers. good feeding is a chief point of national pride among the vulgar, and, in their caricatures, they represent the frenchman as a poor, starved body. it is curious that tacitus found the english beer already in use among the germans : “they make from barley or wheat a drink corrupted into some resemblance to wine.” lord chief justice fortescue in henry vi.'s time, says, “the inhabitants of england drink no water, unless at certain times, on a religious score, and by way ·f penance.” the extremes of poverty and ascetic penance, it race. would seem, never reach cold water in england. wood, the antiquary, in describing the poverty and maceration of father lacey, an english jesuit, does not deny him beer. he says, “his bed was under a thatching, and the way to it up a ladder ; his fare was coarse; his drink, of a penny a gawn, or gallon.” they have more constitutional energy than any other people. they think, with henri quatre, that manly exercises are the foundation of that elevation of mind which gives one nature ascendant over another; or, with the arabs, that the days spent in the chase are not counted in the length of life. they box, run, shoot, ride, row, and sail from pole to pole. they eat, and drink, and live jolly in the open air, putting a bar of solid sleep between day and day. they walk and ride as fast as they can, their head bent forward, as if urged on some pressing affair. the french say, that englishmen in the street always walk straight before them like mad dogs. men and women walk with infatuation. as soon as he can handle a gun, hunting is the fine art of every englishman of condition. they are the most voracious people of prey that ever existed. every season turns out the aristocracy into the country, to shoot and fish. the more vigorous run out of the island to eu. 76 english traits. rope, to america, to asia, to africa, and aus. tralia, to hunt with fury by gun, by trap, by harpon, by lasso, with dog, with horse, with elephant, or with dromedary, all the game that is in nature. these men have written the game-books of all countries, as hawker, scrope, murray, herbert, maxwell, cumming, and a host of travellers. the people at home are addicted to boxing, running, leaping, and rowing matches. i suppose, the dogs and horses must be thanked for the fact, that the men have muscles almost as tough and supple as their own. if in every efficient man, there is first a fine animal, in the english race it is of the best breed, a wealthy, juicy, broad-chested creature, steeped in ale and good cheer, and a little overloaded by his flesh. men of animal nature rely, like animals, on their instincts. the englishman associates well with dogs and horses. his attachment to the horse arises from the courage and address required to manage it. the horse finds out who is afraid of it, and does not disguise its opinion. their young boiling clerks and lusty collegians like the company of horses better than the company of professors. i suppose, the horses are better company for them. the horse has more uses than buffon noted. if you go into the streets, every race. driver in bus or dray is a bully, and, if i wanted a good troop of soldiers, i should recruit among the stables. add a certain degree of refinement to the vivacity of these riders, and you obtain the precise quality which makes the men and women of polite society formidable. they come honestly by their horsemanship, with hengst and horsa for their saxon founders. the other branch of their race had been tartar nomads. the horse was all their wealth. the children were fed on mares' milk. the pastures of tartary were still remembered by the tenacious practice of the norsemen to eat horseflesh at religious feasts. in the danish invasions, the marauders seized upon horses where they landed, and were at once converted into a body of expert cavalry. at one time, this skill seems to have declined. two centuries ago, the english horse never performed any eminent service beyond the seas ; and the reason assigned, was, that the genius of the english hath always more inclined them to footservice, as pure and proper manhood, without any mixture; whilst, in a victory on horseback, the credit ought to be divided betwixt the man and his horse. but in two hundred years, a change bas taken place. now, they boast that they un. derstand horses better than any other people 78 englisii traits. in the world, and that their horses are become their second selves. “ william the conqueror being,” says camden, “ better affected to beasts than to men, imposed heavy fines and punishments on those that should meddle with his game.” the saxon chronicle says, “ he loved the tall deer as if he were their father.” and rich englishmen have followed his example, according to their ability, ever since, in encroaching on the tillage and commons with their game-preserves. it is a proverb in england, that it is safer to shoot a man, than a hare. the severity of the game-laws certainly indicates an extravagant sympathy of the nation with horses and hunters. the gentlemen are always on horseback, and have brought horses to an ideal perfection, the english racer is a factitious breed. a score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently be seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly as steep as the roof of a house. every inn-room is lined with pictures of races ; telegraphs communicate, every hour, tidings of the heats from newmarket and ascot: and the house of com. mons adjourns over the • derby day.' chapter t ability. the saxon and the northman are both scandi navians. history does not allow us to fix the limits of the application of these names with any accuracy ; but from the residence of a portion of these people in france, and from some effect of that powerful soil on their blood and manners, the norman has come popularly to represent in england the aristocratic, — and the saxon the democratic principle. and though, i doubt not, the nobles are of both tribes, and the workers of both, yet we are forced to use the names a little mythically, one to represent the worker, and the other the enjoyer. the island was a prize for the best race. each of the dominant races tried its fortune in turn. the phænician, the celt, and the goth, had already got in. the roman came, but in the very day when his fortune culminated. he looked in the eyes of a new people that was to supplant his own. (79) 80 english traits. he disembarked his legions, erected his camps and towers, — presently he heard bad news from italy, and worse and worse, every year; at last, he made a handsome compliment of roads and walls, and departed. but the saxon seriously settled in the land, builded, tilled, fished, and traded, with german truth and adhesiveness. the dane came, and divided with him. last of all, the norman, or french-dane, arrived, and formally conquered, harried and ruled the kingdom. a century later, it came out, that the saxon had the most bottom and longevity, had managed to make the victor speak the language and accept the law and usage of the victim ; forced the baron to dictate saxon terms to norman kings; and, step by step, got all the essential securities of civil liberty invented and confirmed. the genius of the race and the genius of the place conspired to this effect. the island is lucrative to free labor, but not worth possession on other terms. the race was so intellectual, that a feudal or military tenure could not last longer than the war. the power of the saxon-danes, so thoroughly beaten in the war, that the name of english and villein were synonymous, yet so vivacious as to extort charters from the kings, stooon the strong personality of these people. sense and economy must rule in a world which is made ability. 81 of sense and economy, and the banker, with his seven per cent, drives the earl out of his castle. a nobility of soldiers cannot keep down a com. monalty of shrewd scientific persons. what signifies a pedigree of a hundred links, against a cotton-spinner with steam in his mill; or, against a company of broad-shouldered liverpool merchants, for whom stephenson and brunel are contriving locomotives and a tubular bridge ? these saxons are the hands of mankind. they have the taste for toil, a distaste for pleasure or repose, and the telescopic appreciation of distant gain. they are the wealth-makers, – and by dint of mental faculty, which has its own conditions. the saxon works after liking, or, only for himself; and to set him at work, and to begin to draw his monstrous values out of barren britain, all dishonor, fret, and barrier must be removed, and then his energies begin to play. the scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by trolls, a kind of goblin men, with vast power of work and skilful production, — divine stevedores, carpenters, reapers, smiths, and masons, swift to reward every kindness done them, with gifts of gold and silver. in all english history this dream comes to pass. certain trolls or work ing brains, under the names of alfred, bede, cax english traits. tun, bracton, camden, drake, selden, dugdale, newton, gibbon, brindley, watt, wedgwood, dwell in the troll-mounts of britain, and turn the sweat of their face to power and renown. if the race is good, so is the place. nobody landed on this spellbound island with impunity. the enchantments of barren shingle and rough weather, transformed every adventurer into a laborer. each vagabond that arrived bent his neck to the yoke of gain, or found the air too tense for him. the strong survived, the weaker went to the ground. even the pleasure-hunters and sots of england are of a tougher texture. a hard temperament had been formed by saxon and saxon. dane, and such of these french or normans as could reach it, were naturalized in every sense. all the admirable expedients or means hit upon in england, must be looked at as growths or irresistible offshoots of the expanding mind of the race. a man of that brain thinks and acts thus; and his neighbor, being afflicted with the same kind of brain, though he is rich, and called a baron, or a duke, thinks the same thing, and is ready to allow the justice of the thought and act in his recainer or tenant, though sorely against his baronial or ducal will. the island was renowned in antiquity for its ability. 83 breed of mastiffs, so fierce, that, when their teeth were set, you must cut their heads off to part them. the man was like his dog. the people have that nervous bilious temperament, which is known by medical men to resist every means employed ta make its possessor subservient to the will of others. the english game is main force to main force, the . planting of foot to foot, fair play and open field, a rough tug without trick or dodging, till one or both come to pieces. king ethelwald spoke the language of his race, when he planted himself at wimborne, and said, he would do one of two things, or there live, or there lie.' they hate craft and subtlety. they neither poison, nor waylay, nor assassinate ; and, when they have pounded each other to a poultice, they will shake hands and be friends for the remainder of their lives. you shall trace these gothic touches at school, at country fairs, at the hustings, and in parliament. no artifice, no breach of truth and plain dealing, not so much as secret ballot, is suffered in the island. in parliament, the tactics of the opposition is to resist every step of the government, by a pitiless attack: and in a bargain, no prospect of advantage is so dear to the merchant, as the thought of being tricked is mortifying. sir kenelm digby, a courtier of charles and 84 english traits. james, who won the sea-fight of scanderoon, was a model englishman in his day. “his person was handsome and gigantic, he had so graceful elocution and noble address, that, had he been dropt out of the clouds in any part of the world, he would have made himself respected: he was skilled in six tongues, and master of arts and arms."* sir kenelm wrote a book, “of bodies and of souls," in which ne propounds, that “syllogisms do breed or rather are all the variety of man's life. they are the steps by which we walk in all our businesses. man, as he is man, doth nothing else but weave such chains. whatsoever he doth, swarving from this work, he doth as deficient from the nature of man: and, if he do aught beyond this, by breaking out into divers sorts of exterior actions, he findeth, nevertheless, in this linked sequel of simple discourses, the art, the cause, the rule, the bounds, and the model of it.” + there spoke the genius of the english people. there is a necessity on them to be logical. they would hardly greet the good that did not logically fall, — as if it excluded their own merit, or shook their understandings. they are jealous of minds that have much facility of association, from an instinctive fear that the seeing many relations to their * antony wood. + man's scule, p. 29. ability. 85 thought might impair this serial continuity and lucrative concentration. they are impatient of genius, or of minds addicted to contemplation, and cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought, however lawful, whose steps they cannot count by their wonted rule. neither do they reckon better å syllogism that ends in syllogism. for they have a supreme eye to facts, and theirs is a logic that brings salt to soup, hammer to nail, oar to boat, the logic of cooks, carpenters, and chemists, following the sequence of nature, and one on which words make no impression. their mind is not dazzled by its own means, but locked and bolted to results. they love men, who, like samuel johuson, a doctor in the schools, would jump out of his syllogism the instant his major proposition was in danger, to save that, at all hazards. their practical vision is spacious, and they can hold many threads without entangling them. all the steps they orderly take; but with the high logic of never confounding the minor and major proposition ; keeping their eye on their aim, in all the complicity and delay incident to the several series of means they employ. there is room in their minds for this and that, — a science of degrees. in the courts, the independence of the judges and the loyalty of the suitors are equally excellent. to 36 english traits. parliament, they have hit on that capital inven. tion of freedom, a constitutional opposition. and when courts and parliament are both deaf, the plaintiff is not silenced. calm, patient, his weapon of defence from year to year is the obstinate reproduction of the grievance, with calculations and estimates. but, meantime, he is drawing numbers and money to his opinion, resolved that if all remedy fails, right of revolution is at the bottom of his charter-box. they are bound to see their measure carried, and stick to it through ages of defeat. into this english logic, however, an infusion of justice enters, not so apparent in other races, a belief in the existence of two sides, and the resolution to see fair play. there is on every question, an appeal from the assertion of the parties, to the proof of what is asserted. they are impious in their scepticism of a theory, but kiss the dust before a fact. is it a machine, is it a charter, is it a boxer in the ring, is it a candidate on the hustings, — the universe of englishmen will suspend their judgment, until the trial can be had. they are not to be led by a phrase, they want a working plan, a working machine, a working constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide by the issue, and reject all preconceived theories. in ability. politics they put blunt questions, which must be answered ; who is to pay the taxes? what will you do for trade ? what for corn? what for the spinner ? this singular fairness and its results strike the french with surprise. philip de commines says, “now, in my opinion, among all the sovereignties i know in the world, that in which the public good is best attended to, and the least violence exercised on the people, is that of england.” life is safe, and personal rights; and what is freedom, without security ? whilst, in france, fraternity,' • equality,' and indivisible unity,' are names for assassination. montesquieu said, “ england is the freest country in the world. if a man in england had as many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm would happen to him.” their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their realistic logic or coupling of means to ends, have given them the leadership of the modern world montesquieu said, “no people have true common sense but those who are born in england.” this common sense is a perception of all the conditions of our earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, and of laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned only by practice, in which allowance for friction is made. they are impious in their scepticism of theory, and in high departments they are cramped 88 english traits. and sterile. but the unconditional surrender to facts, and the choice of means to reach their ends, are as admirable as with ants and bees. the bias of the nation is a passion for utility. they love the lever, the screw, and pulley, the flanders draught-horse, the waterfall, wind-mills, tide-mills; the sea and the wind to bear their freight ships. more than the diamond koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize that dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. now, their toys are steam and galvanism. they are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit at the coarse; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but the best iron-masters, colliers, wool-combers, and tanners, in europe. they apply themselves to agriculture, to draining, to resisting encroachments of sea, wind, travelling sands, cold and wet subsoil ; to fishery, to manufacture of indispensable staples, — salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pottery, and brick, to bees and silkworms;— and by their steady combinations they succeed. a manufacturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes which was wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. you dine with a gentleman on venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry, mushrooms, and pine-apples, all ability. the growth of his estate. they are neat husbands for ordering all their tools pertaining to house and field. all are well kept. there is no want and no waste. they study use and fitness in their building, in the order of their dwellings, and in their dress. the frenchman invented the ruffle, the englishman added the shirt. the englishman wears a sensible coat buttoned to the chin, of rough but solid and lasting texture. if he is a lord, he dresses a little worse than a commoner. they have diffused the taste for plain substantial hats, shoes, and coats through europe. they think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it. they secure the essentials in their diet, in their arts, and manufactures. every article of cutlery shows, in its shape, thought and long experience of workmen. they put the expense in the right place, as, in their sea-steamers, in the solidity of the machinery and the strength of the boat. the admirable equipment of their arctic ships carries london to the pole. they build roads, aqueducts, warm and ventilate houses. and they have impressed their directness and practical habit on modern civilization. in trade, the englishman believes that nobody breaks who ought not to break ; and, that, if he 8 * 90 english traits. do not make trade every thing, it will make hiin nothing; and acts on this belief. the spirit of system, attention to details, and the subordinatior of details, or, the not driving things too finely, (which is charged on the germans,) constitute that despatch of business, which makes the mercantile power of england. in war, the englishman looks to his means. he is of the opinion of civilis, his german ancestor, whom tacitus reports as holding “that the gods are on the side of the strongest ;” — a sentence which bonaparte unconsciously translated, when he said, “that he had noticed, that providence always favored the heaviest battalion.” their military science propounds that if the weight of the advancing column is greater than that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. therefore wellington, when he came to the army in spain, had every man weighed, first with accoutrements, and then without; believing that the force of an army depended on the weight and power of the individual soldiers, in spite of cannon. lord palmerston told the house of commons, that more care is taken of the health and comfort of english troops than of any other troops in the world ; and that, hence the english can put more men into the rank, on the day of action, on the field of battle, ability. 91 than any other army. before the bombardnient of the danish forts in the baltic, nelson spent day after day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting service of sounding the channel. clerk of eldin's celebrated maneuvre of breaking the line of seabattle, and nelson's feat of doubling, or stationing his ships one on the outer bow, and another on the outer quarter of each of the enemy's were only translations into naval tactics of bonaparte's rule of concentration. lord collingwood was accustomed to tell his men, that, if they could fire three well-directed broadsides in five minutes, no vessel could resist them; and, from constant practice, they came to do it in three minutes and a half. but conscious that no race of better men exists, they rely most on the simplest means; and do not like ponderous and difficult tactics, but delight to bring the affair hand to hand, where the victory lies with the strength, courage, and endurance of the individual combatants. they adopt every improvement in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they fundamentally believe that the best stratagem in naval war, is to lay your ship close alongside of the enemy's ship, and bring all your guns to bear on him, until you or he go to the bottom. this is the old fashion, which never goes out of fashirin, neither in nor out of england. 92 english traits. it is not usually a point of honor, nor a reli. gious sentiment, and never any whim that they will shed their blood for ; but usually property, and right measured by property, that breeds revolution. they have no indian taste for a tomahawkdance, no french taste for a badge or a proclamation. the englishman is peaceably minding his business, and earning his day's wages. but if you offer to lay hand on his day's wages, on his cow, or his right in common, or his shop, he will fight to the judgment. magna-charta, jury-trial, habeas-corpus, star-chamber, ship-money, popery, plymouth-colony, american revolution, are all questions involving a yeoman's right to his dinner, and, except as touching that, would not have lashed the british nation to rage and revolt. whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order, and of calculation, it must be owned they are capable of larger views; but the indulgence is expensive to them, costs great crises, or accumulations of mental power. in common, the horse works best with blinders. nothing is more in the line of english thought, than our unvarnished connecticut question, “ pray, sir, how do you get your living when you are at home?” the questions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, are money questions. heavy fellows, steeped in beer and ability. fleshpots, they are hard of hearing and dim of sight. their drowsy minds need to be flagellated by wai and trade and politics and persecution. they cannot well read a principle, except by the light of fagots and of burning towns. tacitus says of the germans, “ powerful only in sudden efforts, they are impatient of toil and labor.” this highly-destined race, if it had not somewhere added the chamber of patience to its brain, would not have built london. i know not from which of the tribes and temperaments that went to the composition of the people this tenacity was supplied, but they clinch every nail they drive. they have no running for luck, and no immoderate speed. they spend largely on their fabric, and await the slow return. their leather lies tanning seven years in the vat. at rogers's mills, in sheffield, where i was shown the process of making a razor and a penknife, i was told there is no luck in making good steel ; that they make no mistakes, every. blade in the hundred and in the thousand is good. and that is characteristic of all their work, no more is attempted than is done. when thor and his companions arrive at utgard, he is told that “nobody is permitted to remain here, unless he understand some art, and excel in it all other men.” the same question is still put 94 english traits. to the posterity of thor. a nation of laborers, every man is trained to some one art or detail, and aims at perfection in that; not content unless he has something in which he thinks he surpasses all other men. he would rather not do any thing at all, than not do it well. i suppose no people have such thoroughness ; from the highest to the lowest, every man meaning to be master of his art. « to show capacity," a frenchman described as the end of a speech in debate : “no,” said an englishman, “but to set your shoulder at the wheel,– to advance the business.” sir samuel romilly refused to speak in popular assemblies, confining himself to the house of commons, where a measure can be carried by a speech. the business of the house of commons is conducted by a few persons, but these are hard-worked. sir robert peel “knew the blue books by heart.” his colleagues and rivals carry hansard in their heads. the high civil and legal offices are not beds of ease, but posts which exact frightful amounts of mental labor. many of the great leaders, like pitt, canning, castlereagh, romilly, are soon worked to death. they are excellent judges in england of a good worker, and when they find one, like clarendon, sir philip warwick, sir william coventry, ashley, burke, thurlow, mansfield, pitt, eldon, ability. 95 peel, or russell, there is nothing too good or too high for him. they have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public aim. private persons exbibit, in scientific and antiquarian researches, the same pertinacity as the nation showed in the coalitions in which it yoked europe against the empire of bonaparte, one after the other defeated, and still renewed, until the sixth hurled him from his seat. sir john herschel, in completion of the work of his father, who had made the catalogue of the stars of the northern hemisphere, expatriated himself for years at the cape of good hope, finished his inventory of the southern heaven, came home, and redacted it in eight years more ; – a work whose value does not begin until thirty years have elapsed, and thenceforward a record to all ages of the highest import. the admiralty sent out the arctic expeditions year after year, in search of sir john franklin, until; at last, they have threaded their way through polar pack and behring's straits, and solved the geographical problem. lord elgin, at athens, saw the imminent ruin of the greek remains, set up his scaffoldings, in spite of epigrams, and, after five years' labor to collect them, got his marbles on shipboard. the ship struck a rock, and went to the bottom. he had them all 96 english traits, fished up, by divers, at a vast expense, and brought to london ; not knowing that haydon, fuseli, and canova, and all good heads in all the world, were to be his applauders. in the same spirit, were the excavation and research by sir charles fellowes, for the xanthian monument; and of layard, for his nineveh sculptures. the nation sits in the immense city they have builded, a london extended into every man's mind, though he live in van dieman's land or capetown. faithful performance of what is undertaken to be performed, they honor in themselves, and exact in others, as certificate of equality with themselves. the modern world is theirs. they have made and make it day by day. the commercial relations of the world are so intimately drawn to london, that every dollar on earth contributes to the strength of the english government. and if all the wealth in the planet should perish by war or deluge, they know themselves competent to replace it. they have approved their saxon blood, by their sea-going qualities; their descent from odin's smiths, by their hereditary skill in working in iron ; their british birth, by husbandry and immense wheat harvests; and justified their occupancy of the centre of habitable land, by their bupreme ability and cosmopolitan spirit. they ability. 97 have tilled, builded, forged, spun, and woven. they have made the island a thoroughfare; and london a shop, a law-court, a record-office, and scientific bureau, inviting to strangers; a sanctuary to refugees of every political and religious opinion; and such a city, that almost every active man, in any nation, finds himself, at one time or other, forced to visit it. in every path of practical activity, they have gone even with the best. there is no secret of war, in which they have not shown mastery. the steam-chamber of watt, the locomotive of stephenson, the cotton-mule of roberts, perform the labor of the world. there is no department of literature, of science, or of useful art, in which they have not produced a first-rate book. it is england, whose opinion is waited for on the merit of a new invention, an improved science. and in the complications of the trade and politics of their vast empire, they have been equal to every exigency, with counsel and with conduct. is it their luck, or is it in the chambers of their brain, it is their commercial advantage, that whatever light appears in better method or happy invention, breaks out in their race. they are a family to which a destiny attaches, and the banshee has sworn that a male heir shall never be wanting 98 english traits. they have a wealth of men to fill important posts, and the vigilance of party criticism insures the selection of a competent person. a proof of the energy of the british people, is the highly artificial construction of the whole fabric. the climate and geography, i said, were factitious, as if the hands of man had arranged the conditions. the same character pervades the whole kingdom. bacon said, “rome was a state not subject to paradoxes;” but england subsists by antagonisms and contradictions. the foundations of its greatness are the rolling waves; and, from first to last, it is a museum of anomalies. this foggy and rainy country furnishes the world with astronomical observations. its short rivers do not afford waterpower, but the land shakes under the thunder of the mills. there is no gold mine of any importance, but there is more gold in england than in all other countries. it is too far north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all countries are in its docks. the french comte de lauraguais said, “no fruit ripens in england but a baked apple”; but oranges and pine-apples are as cheap in london as in the mediterranean. the mark-lane express, or the custom house returns wear out to the letter the faunt of pope, factitious. "let india boast her palms, nor envy we the weeping amber, nor the spicy tree, while, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne, and realms commanded which those trees adorn.” i'he native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of artificial breeds. the agriculturist bakewell, created sheep and cows and horses to order, and breeds in which every thing was omitted but what is economical. the cow is sacrificed to her bag, the ox to his surloin. stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the cattle, and converts the stable to a chemical factory. the rivers, lakes and ponds, too much fished, or obstructed by factories, are artificially filled with the eggs of salmon, turbot and herring. chat moss and the fens of lincolnshire and cambridgeshire are unhealthy and too barren to pay rent. by cylindrical tiles, and guttapercha tubes, five millions of acres of bad land have been drained and put on equality with the best, for rape-culture and grass. the climate too, which was already believed to have become milder and drier by the enormous consumption of coal, is so far reached by this new action, that fogs and storms are said to disappear. in due course, all england will be drained, and rise a second time out of the waters. the latest step was to call in the aid of steam to agriculture. steam is almost an englishman. i do 100 english traits. not know but they will send him to parliament, next, to make laws. he weaves, forges, saws, pounds, fans, and now he must pump, grind, dig, and plough for the farmer. the markets created by the manufacturing population have erected agriculture into a great thriving and spending industry. the value of the houses in britain is equal to the value of the soil. artificial aids of all kinds are cheaper than the natural resources. no man can afford to walk, when the parliamentary-train carries him for a penny a mile. gas-burners are cheaper than daylight in numberless floors in the cities. all the houses in london buy their water. the english trade does not exist for the exportation of native products, but on its manufactures, or the making well every thing which is ill made elsewhere. they make ponchos for the mexican, bandannas for the hindoo, ginseng for the chinese, beads for the indian, laces for the flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings. the board of trade caused the best models of greece and italy to be placed within the reach of every manufacturing population. they caused to be translated from foreign languages and illustrated by elaborate drawings, the most approved works of munich, berlin, and paris. they have ransacked italy to find new forms, to add a grace to the factitis js. 101 products of their looms, their potteries, and their foundries. * the nearer we look, the more artificial is their social system. their law is a network of fictions. their property, a scrip or certificate of right to interest on money that no man ever saw. their social classes are made by statute. their ratios of power and representation are historical and legal. the last reform-bill took away political power from a mound, a ruin, and a stone-wall, whilst birmingham and manchester, whose mills paid for the wars of europe, had no representative. purity in the elective parliament is secured by the purchase of seats.f foreign power is kept by armed colonies ; power at home, by a standing army of police. the pauper lives better than the free laborer; the thief better than the pauper ; and the transported felon better than the one under imprisonment. the crimes are factitious, as smuggling, poaching, non-conformity, heresy and treason. better, they say in england, kill a man than a hare. the sovereignty of the seas is maintained by the impressment of seamen. “the * see memorial of h. greenough, p. 66, new york, 1853. + sir s. romilly, purest of english patriots, decided that the only independent mode of entering parliament was to buy a seat, and he bought horsham. 9 * 102 english traits. impressment of seamen,” said lord eldon, “is the life of our navy.” solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, '“ if you will not lend me the money, how can i pay you?” for the administration of justice, sir samuel romilly's expedient for clearing the arrears of business in chancery, was, the chan. cellor's staying away entirely from his court. their system of education is factitious. the universities galvanize dead languages into a semblance of life. their church is artificial. the manners and customs of society are artificial; made up men with made up manners ;— and thus the whole is birminghamized, and we have a nation whose existence is a work of art; a cold, barren, almost arctic isle, being made the most fruitful, luxurious and imperial land in the whole earth. man in england submits to be a product of political economy. on a bleak moor, a mill is built, a banking-house is opened, and men come in, as water in a sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. man is made as a birmingham button. the rapid doubling of the population dates from watt's steamengine. a landlord, who owns a province, says “ the tenantry are unprofitable; let me have sheep.” he unroofs the houses, and ships the population to america. the nation is accustomed s01 idarity. -103 to the instantaneous creation of wealth. it is the maxim of their economists, “that the greater part in value of the wealth now existing in england, has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months.” meantime, three or four days' rain will reduce hundreds to starving in london. one secret of their power is their mutual good understanding. not only good minds are born among them, but all the people have good minds. every nation has yielded some good wit, if, as has chanced to many tribes, only one. but the intellectual organization of the english admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas among them all. an electric touch by any of their national ideas, melts them into one family, and brings the hoards of power which their individuality is always hiving, into use and play for all. is it the smallness of the country, or is it the pride and affection of race, they have solidarity, or responsibleness, and trust in each other. their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more lasting than the cloth. they embrace their cause with more tenacity than their life. though not military, yet every common subject by the poll is fit to make a soldier of. these private reserved 104 english traits. mute family-men can adopt a public end with all their heat, and this strength of affection makes the romance of their heroes. the difference of rank does not divide the national heart. the danish poet ohlenschlager complains, that who writes in danish, writes to two hundred readers. in germany, there is one speech for the learned, and another for the masses, to that extent, that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from the works of any great german writer is ever heard among the lower classes. but in england, the language of the noble is the language of the poor. in parliament, in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers rise to thought and passion, the language becomes idiomatic; the people in the street best understand the best words. and their language seems drawn from the bible, the common law, and the works of shakspeare, bacon, milton, pope, young, cowper, burns, and scott. the island has produced two or three of the greatest men that ever existed, but they were not solitary in their own time. men quickly embodied what newton found out, in greenwich observatories, and practical navigation. the boys know all that hutton knew of strata, or dalton of atoms, or harvey of blood-vessels; and these studies, once dangerous, are in fashion. so what is invented or known in agriculture, or in solidarity. 105 trade, ou in war, or in art, or in literature, and antiquities. a great ability, not amassed on a few giants, but poured into the general mind, so that each of them could at a pinch stand in the shoes of the other; and they are more bound in character, than differenced in ability or in rank. the laborer is a possible lord. the lord is a possible basket-maker. every man carries the english system in his brain, knows what is confided to him, and does therein the best he can. the chancellor carries england on his mace, the midshipman at the point of his dirk, the smith on his hammer, the cook in the bowl of his spoon; the postilion cracks his whip for england, and the sailor times his oars to “god save the king!” the very felons have their pride in each other's english stanchness. in politics and in war, they hold together as by hooks of steel. the charm in nelson's history, is, the unselfish greatness ; the assurance of being supported to the uttermost by those whom he supports to the uttermost. whilst they are some ages ahead of the rest of the world in the art of liv ing; whilst in some directions they do not represent the modern spirit, but constitute it, -this vanguard of civility and power they coldly hold, marching in phalanx, lockstep, foot after foot, file after file of heroes, ten thousand deep. chapter vi. manners. 1 find the englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. they have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom. on the day of my arrival at liverpool, a gentleman, in describing to me the lord lieutenant of ireland, happened to say, “ lord clarendon has pluck like a cock, and will fight till he dies ;” and, what i heard first i heard last, and the one thing the english value, is pluck. the cabmen have it; the merchants have it; the bishops have it ; the women have it ; the journals have it; the times newspaper, they say, is the pluckiest thing in england, and sydney smith had made it a proverb, that little lord john russell, the minister, would take the command of the channel fleet to-morrow. they require you to dare to be of your own opinion, and they hate the practical cowards who cannot in affairs answer directly yes or no. they (106) manners. 107 dare to displease, nay, they will let you break all the commandments, if you do it natively, and with spirit. you must be somebody ; then you may do this or that, as you will. machinery has been applied to all work, and carried to such perfection, that little is left for the men but to mind the engines and feed the furnaces. but the machines require punctual service, and, as they never tire, they prove too much for their tenders. mines, forges, mills, breweries, railroads, steampump, steamplough, drill of regiments, drill of police, rule of court, and shop-rule, have operated to give a mechanical regularity to all the habit and action of men. a terrible machine has possessed itself of the ground, the air, the men and women, and hardly even thought is free. the mechanical might and organization requires in the people constitution and answering spirits : and he who goes among them must have some weight of metal. at last, you take your hint from the fury of life you find, and say, one thing is plain, this is no country for fainthearted people: don't creep about diffidently; make up your mind; take your own course, and you shall find respect and furtherance. it requires, men say, a good constitution to travel in spain i say as much of england, for other 108 english traits. cause, simply on account of the vigor and brawn of the people. nothing but the most serious business, could give one any counterweight to these baresarks, though they were only to order eggs and muffins for their breakfast. the englishman speaks with all his body. his elocution is stomachic, — as the american's is labial. the englishman is very petulant and precise about his accommodation at inns, and on the roads ; a quiddle about his toast and his chop, and every species of convenience, and loud and pungent in his expressions of impatience at any neglect. his vivacity betrays itself, at all points, in his manners, in his respiration, and the inarticulate noises he makes in clearing the throat ; — all significant of burly strength. he has stamina ; he can take the initiative in emergencies. he has that aplomb, which results from a good adjustment of the moral and physical nature, and the obedience of all the powers to the will; as if the axes of his eyes were united to his backbone, and only moved with the trunk. this vigor appears in the incuriosity, and stony neglect, each of every other. each man walks, eats, drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, and, in every manner, acts, and suffers without reference to the by. standers, in his own fashion, only careful not to inter manners. 109 fere with them, or annoy them; not that he is trained to neglect the eyes of his neighbors, — he is really occupied with his own affair, and does not think of them. every man in this polished country consults only his convenience, as much as a solitary pioneer in wisconsin. i know not where any personal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives himself any concern with it. an englishman walks in a pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella like a walking-stick; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a saddle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made. and as he has been doing this for several generations, it is now in the blood. in short, every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable. in a company of strangers, you would think him deaf" ; his eyes never wander from his table and newspaper. he is never betrayed into any curiosity or unbecoming emotion. they have all been trained in one severe school of manners, and never put off the harness. he does not give his hand. he does not let you meet his eye. it is almost an affront to look a man in the face, without being introduced. in mixed or in select companies they do not introduce persons ; so that a presentation is a circumstance as valid as a contract. introductions are sucraments. he withholds his name. at 10 110 english traits. the hotel, he is hardly willing to whisper it to the clerk at the book-office. if he give you his private address on a card, it is like an avowal of friendship; and his bearing, on being introduced, is cold, even though he is seeking your acquaintance, and is studying how he shall serve you. it was an odd proof of this impressive energy, that, in my lectures, i hesitated to read and threw out for its impertinence many a disparaging phrase, which i had been accustomed to spin, about poor, thin, unable mortals ; — so much had the fine physique and the personal vigor of this robust race worked on my imagination. i happened to arrive in england, at the moment of a commercial crisis. but it was evident, that, let who will fail, england will not. these people have sat here a thousand years, and here will continue to sit. they will not break up, or arrive at any desperate revolution, like their neighbors ; for they have as much energy, as much continence of character as they ever had. the power and possession which surround them are their own creation, and they exert the same commanding industry at this moment. they are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal, loving routine, and conventional ways; loving truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable on manners. 11; points of form. all the world praises the cornfort and private appointments of an english inn, and of english households. you are sure of neatness and of personal decorum. a frenchman may possibly be clean; an englishman is conscientiously clean. a certain order and complete propriety is found in his dress and in his belongings. born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him in doors whenever he is at rest, and being of an affectionate and loyal temper, he dearly loves his house. if he is rich, he buys a demesne, and builds a hall; if he is in middle condition, he spares no expense on his house. without, it is all planted: within, it is wainscoted, carved, curtained, hung with pictures, and filled with good furniture. 'tis a passion which survives all others, to deck and improve it. hither he brings all that is rare and costly, and with the national tendency to sit fast in the same spot for many generations, it comes to be, in the course of time, a museum of heirlooms, gifts, and trophies of the adventures and exploits of the family. he is very fond of silver plate, and, though he have no gallery of portraits of his ancestors, he has of their punch-bowls and porringers. incredible amounts of plate are found in good houses, and the poorest have some spoon or saucepan, gift of a godmother, saved out of better times. 112 english traits. an english family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two siamese. england produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. and, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them. nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes. the song of 1596 says, “ the wife of every englishman is counted blest.” the sentiment of imogen in cymbeline is copied from english nature; and not less the portia of brutus, the kate percy, and the desdemona. the romance does not exceed the height of noble passion in mrs. lucy hutchinson, or in lady russell, or even as one discerns through the plain prose of pepys's diary, the sacred habit of an english wife. sir samuel romilly could not bear the death of his wife. every class has its noble and tender examples. domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to branch wide and high. the motive and end of their trade and empire is to guard the independence and privacy of their homes. nothing manners. 113 80 much marks their manners as the concentra. tion on their household ties. this domesticity is carried into court and camp. wellington governed india and spain and his own troops, and fought battles like a good family-man, paid his debts, and, though general of an army in spain, could not stir abroad for fear of public creditors. this taste for house and parish merits has of course its doting and foolish side. mr. cobbett attributes the huge popularity of perceval, prime minister in 1810, to the fact that he was wont to go to church, every sunday, with a large quarto gilt prayer-book under one arm, his wife hanging on the other, and followed by a long brood of children. they keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps, their wig and mace, sceptre and crown. the middle ages still lurk in the streets of london. the knights of the bath take oath to defend injured ladies; the gold-stick-in-waiting survives. they repeated the ceremonies of the eleventh century in the coronation of the present queen. a hereditary tenure is natural to them. offices, farms, trades, and traditions descend so. their leases run for a hundred and a thousand years. terms of service and partnership are life long, or are inherited. “holdship has been with 10 * 114 english traits. me,” said lord eldon, “ eight-and-twenty years, knows all my business and books.” antiquity of usage is sanction enough. wordsworth says of the small freeholders of westmoreland, “ many of these humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land which they tilled had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of the same name and blood.” the ship-carpenter in the public yards, my lord's gardener and porter, have been there for more than a hundred years, grandfather, father, and son. the english power resides also in their dislike of change. they have difficulty in bringing their reason to act, and on all occasions use their memory first. as soon as they have rid themselves of some grievance, and settled the better practice, they make haste to fix it as a finality, and never wish to hear of alteration more. every englishman is an embryonic chancellor : his instinct is to search for a precedent. the favorite phrase of their law, is, “ a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not back to the contrary.” the barons say, “ nolumus mutari ;” and the cockneys stifle the curiosity of the foreigner on the reason of any practice, with “ lord, sir, it was always so.” they hate innovation. bacon told them, time was the right reformer; chatham, manners. (1) that ": confidence was a plant of slow growth ; ” canning, to “ advance with the times ; ” and wel lington, that “ habit was ten times nature.” all their statesmen learn the irresistibility of the tide of custom, and have invented many fine phrases to cover this slowness of perception, and prehensility of tail. a seashell should be the crest of england, not only because it represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish of the men. the englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex. after the spire and the spines are formed, or, with the formation, a juice exudes, and a hard enamel varnishes every part. the keeping of the proprieties is as indispensable as clean linen. no merit quite countervails the want of this, whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. “ 'tis in bad taste,” is the most formidable word an englishman can pronounce. but this japan costs them dear. there is a prose in certain englishmen, which exceeds in wooden deadness all rivalry with other countrymen. there is a knell in the conceit and externality of their voice, which seems to say, leave all hope behind. in this gibraltar of propriety, mediocrity gets intrenched, and consolidato ed, and founded in adamant. an englishman of fashion is like one of those souvenirs, bound in 116 english traits. gold vellum, enriched with delicate engravings on thick hot-pressed paper, fit for the hands of ladies and princes, but with nothing in it worth reading or remembering. a severe decorum rules the court and the cottage. when thalberg, the pianist, was one evening performing before the queen, at windsor, in a private party, the queen accompanied him with her voice. the circumstance took air, and all england shuddered from sea to sea. the indecorum was never repeated. cold, repressive manners prevail. no enthusiasm is permitted except at the opera. they avoid every thing marked. they require a tone of voice that excites no attention in the room. sir philip sydney is one of the patron saints of england, of whom wotton said, “ his wit was the measure of congruity.” pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. they keep to the other extreme of low tone in dress and manners. they avoid pretension and go right to the heart of the thing. they hate nonsense, sentimentalism, and highflown expression ; they use a studied plainness. even brummel their fop was marked by the severest simplicity in dress. they value themselves on the absence of every thing theatrical in the public business, and on conciseness and going to the point, in private affairs. manners. 117 in an aristocratical country, like england, not the trial by jury, but the dinner is the capital institution. it is the mode of doing honor to a stranger, to invite him to eat, and has been for many hundred years. “and they think,” says the venetian traveller of 1500, " no greater honor can be conferred or received, than to invite others to eat with them, or to be invited themselves, and they would sooner give five or six ducats to provide an entertainment for a person, than a groat to assist him in any distress."* it is reserved to the end of the day, the family-hour being generally six, in london, and, if any company is expected, one or two hours later. every one dresses for dinner, in his own house, or in another man's. the guests are expected to arrive within half an hour of the time. fixed by card of invitation, and nothing but death or mutilation is permitted to detain them. the english dinner is precisely the model on which our own are constructed in the atlantic cities. the company sit one or two hours, before the ladies leave the table. the gentlemen remain over their wine an hour longer, and rejuin the ladies in the drawing-room, and take coffee, the dress-dinner generates a talent of table-talk * « relation of england.' printed by the camden society 118 english traits. which reaches great perfection : the stories are 80 good, that one is sure they must have been often told before, to have got such happy turns. hither come all manner of clever projects, bits of popular science, of practical invention, of miscellaneous humor; political, literary, and personal news; railroads, horses, diamonds, agriculture, horticulture, pisciculture, and wine. english stories, bon-mots, and the recorded table-talk of their wits, are as good as the best of the french. in america, we are apt scholars, but have not yet attained the same perfection : for the range of nations from which london draws, and the steep contrasts of condition create the picturesque in society, as broken country makes picturesque landscape, whilst our prevailing equality makes a prairie tameness : and secondly, because the usage of a dress-dinner every day at dark, has a tendency to hive and produce to advantage every thing good. much attrition has worn every sentence into a bullet. also one meets now and then with polished men, who know every thing, have tried every thing, can do every thing, and are quite superior to letters and science. what could they not, if only they would ? chapter vii. truth. the teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts with the latin races. the german name has a proverbial significance of sincerity and honest meaning. the arts bear testimony to it. the faces of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with earnest belief. add to this hereditary rectitude, the punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and you have the english truth and credit. the government strictly performs its engagements. the subjects do not understand trifling on its part. when any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it was resented by the people as an intolerable grievance. and, in modern times, any slipperiness in the government in political faith, or any repudiation or crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the whole nation to a committee of inquiry and reform. private men keep their promises, never so trivial and, in modernitical faith, or any d bring th (119) sno english traits. down goes the flying word on the tablets, and is indelible as domesday book. their practical power rests on their national sin. cerity. veracity derives from instinct, and marks superiority in organization. nature has endowed some animals with cunning, as a compensation for strength withheld ; but it has provoked the malice of all others, as if avengers of public wrong. in the nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, her races are loyal to truth, as truth is the foundation of the social state. beasts that make no truce with man, do not break faith with each other. 'tis said, that the wolf, who makes a cache of his prey, and brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on digging, it is not found, is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces. english veracity seems to result on a sounder animal structure, as if they could afford it. they are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, and they require plaindealing of others. we will not have to do with a man in a mask. let us know the truth. draw a straight line, hit whom and where it will. alfred, whom the affection of the nation makes the type of their race, is called by a writer at the norman conquest, the truth-speaker; alueredus veridicus. geoffrey of monmouth says of king aurelius, uncle of arthur, that “ above all things he hated a lie.” truta. 121 the northman guttorm said to king olaf, “it is royal work to fulfil royal words.” the mottoes of their families are monitory proverbs, as, fare fac, — say, do,of the fairfaxes ; say and seal, of the house of fiennes; vero nil verius, of the de veres. to be king of their word, is their pride. when they unmask cant, they say, “the english · of this is,” &c.; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. the phrase of the lowest of the people is “honor-bright,” and their vulgar praise, “his word is as good as bis bond.” they hate shuffling and equivocation, and the cause is damaged in the public opinion, on which any paltering can be fixed. even lord chesterfield, with his french breeding, when he came to define a gentleman, declared that truth made his distinction: and nothing ever spoken by him would find so hearty a suffrage from his nation. the duke of wellington, who had the best right to say so, advises the french general kellermann, that he may rely on the parole of an english officer. the english, of all classes, value themselves on this trait, as distinguishing them from the french, who, in the popular belief, are more polite than true. an englishman understates, avoids the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, that in the french language, one cannot speak without lying. 122 english traits. they love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do not easily learn to make a show, and take the world as it goes. they are not fond of ornaments, and if they wear them, they must be gems. they read gladly in old fuller, that a lady, in the reign of elizabeth,“ would have as patiently digested a lie, as the wearing of false stones or pendants of counterfeit pearl.” they have the earth-hunger, or preference for property in land, which is said to mark the teutonic nations. they build of stone: public and private buildings are massive and durable: in comparing their ships' houses, and public offices with the american, it is commonly said, that they spend a pound, where we spend a dollar. plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout their house and belongings, mark the english truth. they confide in each other, english believes in english. the french feel the superiority of this probity. the englishman is not springing a trap for his admiration, but is honestly minding his business. the frenchman is vain. madame de stael says, that the english irritated napoleon, mainly, because they have found out how to unite success with honesty. she was not aware how wide an application her foreign readers would give to the remark. wellington discovered the ruin truth. 123 of bonaparte's affairs, by his own probity. he augured ill of the empire, as soon as he saw that it was mendacious, and lived by war. if war do not bring in its sequel new trade, better agricul. ture and manufactures, but only games, fireworks, and spectacles, no prosperity could support it; much less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and out of pocket, like france. so he drudged for years on his military works at lisbon, and from this base at last extended his gigantic lines to waterloo, believing in his countrymen and their syllogisms above all the rhodomontade of europe. at a st. george's festival, in montreal, where i happened to be a guest, since my return home, i observed that the chairman complimented his compatriots, by saying, “they confided that wherever they met an englishman, they found a man who would speak the truth.” and one cannot think this festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d of april, wherever two or three english are found, they meet to encourage each other in the nationality of veracity. in the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion's mouth, no men surpass them. on the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to offer the king a purse of gold, latimer gave flenry viii. a copy of the vulgate, with a mark 124 english traits. adulte ang page bonor at the passage, “whoremongers and adulterers god will judge;" and they so honor stoutness in each other, that the king passed it over. they are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily change their opinions to suit the hour. they are like ships with too much head on to come quickly about, nor will prosperity or even adversity be allowed to shake their habitual view of conduct. whilst i was in london, m. guizot arrived there on his escape from paris, in february, 1848. many private friends called on him. his name was immediately proposed as an honorary member of the athenæum. m. guizot was blackhalled certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. but the englishman is not fickle. he had really made up his mind, now for years as he read his newspaper, to hate and despise m. guizot; and the altered position of the man as an illustrious exile, and a guest in the country, makes no difference to him, as it would instantly to an american. they require the same adherence, thorough conviction and reality in public men. it is the want of character which makes the low reputation of the irish members. “see them,” they said, “one hundred and twenty-seven all voting like sheep, never proposing any thing, and all but four voting the income tax," — which was an ill-judged conces. truth. 125 sion of the government, relieving irish property from the burdens charged on english. they have a horror of adventurers in or out of parliament. the ruling passion of englishmen, in these days, is, a terror of humbug. in the same proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and adherence to your own. they like a man committed to his objects. they hate the french, as frivolous ; they hate the irish, as aimless; they hate the germans, as professors. in february, 1848, they said, look, the french king and his party fell for want of a shot; they had not conscience to shoot, so entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy eaten out. they attack their own politicians every day, on the same grounds, as adventurers. they love stoutness in standing for your right, in declining money or promotion that costs any concession. the barrister refuses the silk gown of queen's counsel, if his junior have it one day earlier. lord collingwood would not accept his medal for victory on 14th february, 1797, if he did not receive one for victory on 1st june, 1794 ; and the long withholder medal was accorded. when cas·lereagh dissuaded lord wellington from going to the king's levee, until the unpopular cintra business had been explained, he replied, “ you furnish 11 * 126 english tra ts. me a reason for going. i will go to this, or i will never go to a king's levee.” the radical mob at oxford cried after the tory lord eldon, “there's old eldon; cheer him; he never ratted.” they have given the parliamentary nickname of trimmers to the timeservers, whom english character does not love.* they are very liable in their politics to extraordinary delusions, thus, to believe what stands recorded in the gravest books, that the movement of 10 april, 1848, was urged or assisted by foreigners : which, to be sure, is paralleled by the democratic whimsy in this country, which i have noticed to be shared by men sane on other points, that the english are at the bottom of the agitation of slavery, in american politics : and then again to the french popular legends on the subject of perfidious albion. but suspicion will make fools of nations as of citizens. • it is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in england to the emperor louis napoleon. i am sure that no englishman whom i had the happiness to know, consented, when the aristocracy and the commons of london cringed like a neapolitan rabble, before a suc. cessful thief. buthow to resist one step, though odious, in a linked series of state necessities ? governments must always learn too late, that the use of dishonest agents is as ruinous for nations as for single men. truth. 127 a slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready than other countrymen, and has given occasion to the observation, that english wit comes afterwards, which the french denote as espri. d'escalier. this dulness makes their attachment to home, and their adherence in all foreign countries to home habits. the englishman who visits mount etna, will carry his teakettle to the top. the old italian author of the “ relation of england” (in 1500), says, “i have it on the best information, that, when the war is actually raging most furiously, they will seek for good eating, and all their other comforts, without thinking what harm might befall them.” then their eyes seem to be set at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm the one small fact they know, with the best faith in the world that nothing else exists. and, as their own belief in guineas is perfect, they readily, on all occasions, apply the pecuniary argument as final. thus when the rochester rappings began to be heard of in england, a man deposited £100 in a sealed box in the dublin bank, and then advertised in the newspapers to all somnambulists, mesmerizers, and others, that whoever could tell him the number of his note, should have the money. he let it lie there six months, the newspapers now and then, at his instance, stimulating the attention 128 english traits. of the adepts; but none could ever tell him ; and he said, “ now let me never be bothered more with this proven lie.” it is told of a good sir john, that he heard a case stated by counsel, and made up his mind; then the counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak, he found himself 80 unsettled and perplexed, that he exclaimed, “ so help me god! i will never listen to evidence again." any number of delightful examples of this english stolidity are the anecdotes of europe. i knew a very worthy man, a magistrate, i believe he was, in the town of derby, — who went to the opera, to see malibran. in one scene, the heroine was to rush across a ruined bridge. mr. b. arose, and mildly yet firmly called the attention of the audience and the performers to the fact, that, in his judgment, the bridge was unsafe ! this english stolidity contrasts with french wit and tact. the french, it is commonly said, have greatly more influence in europe than the english. what influence the english have is by brute force of wealth and power ; that of the french by affinity and talent. the italian is subtle, the spaniard treacherous : tortures, it was said, could never . wrest from an egyptian the confession of a secret. none of these traits belong to the englishman. his choler and conceit force every thing truth. 129 out. defoe, who knew his countrymen well, says " of them, • in close intrigue, their faculty's but weak, for generally whate'er they know, they speak, and often their own counsels undermine by mere infirmity without design; from whence, the learned say, it doth proceed, that english treasons never can succeed ; for they're so open-hearted, you may know their own most secret thoughts, and others' too. chapter viii. character the english race are reputed morose. i do not know that they have sadder brows than their neighbors of northern climates. they are sad by comparison with the singing and dancing nations : not sadder, but slow and staid, as finding their joys at home. they, too, believe that where there is no enjoyment of life, there can be no vigor and art in speech or thought : that your merry heart goes all the way, your sad one tires in a mile. this trait of gloom has been fixed on them by french travellers, who, from froissart, voltaire, le sage, mirabeau, down to the lively journalists of the feuilletons, have spent their wit on the solerunity of their neighbors. the french say, gay conversation is unknown in their island. the englishman finds no relief from reflection, except in reflection. when he wishes for amusement, he goes to work. his hilarity is like an attack of fever. religion, the theatre, and the reading the (130) character. 131 books of his country, all feed and increase his natural melancholy. the police does not interfere with public diversions. it thinks itself bound in duty to respect the pleasures and rare gayety of this inconsolable nation; and their well-known courage is entirely attributable to their disgust of life. • i suppose, their gravity of demeanor and their few words have obtained this reputation. as compared with the americans, i think them cheerful and contented. young people, in this country, are much more prone to melancholy. the english have a mild aspect, and a ringing cheerful voice. they are large-natured, and not so easily amused as the southerners, and are among them as grown people among children, requiring war, or trade, or engineering, or science, instead of frivolous games. they are proud and private, and, even if disposed to recreation, will avoid an open garden. they sported sadly ; ils s'amusaient tristement, selon la coutume de leur pays, said froissart ; and, i suppose, never nation built their party-walls so thick, or their garden-fences so high. meat and wine produce no effect on them : they are just as cold, quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the begin. ning of dinner. the reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed for six or seven hundred years ; and a kind of 132 english traits. pride in bad public speaking is noted in the house of commors, as if they were willing to show that they did not live by their tongues, or thought they spoke well enough if they had the tone of gentlemen. in mixed company, they shut their mouths a yorkshire mill-owner told me, he had ridden more than once all the way from london to leeds, in the first-class carriage, with the same persons, and no word exchanged. the club-houses were established to cultivate social habits, and it is rare that more than two eat together, and oftenest one eats alone. was it then a stroke of humor in the serious swedenborg, or was it only his pitiless logic, that made him shut up the english souls in a heaven by themselves ? they are contradictorily described as sour, splenetic, and stubborn, — and as mild, sweet, and sensible. the truth is, they have great range and variety of character. commerce sends abroad multitudes of different classes. the choleric welshman, the fervid scot, the bilious resident in the east or west indies, are wide of the perfect behavior of the educated and dignified man of family. so is the burly farmer ; so is the country 'squire, with his narrow and violent life. in every inn, is the commercial-room, in which trav, ellers,' or hagmen who carry patterns, and solicit character. 133 orders, for the manufacturers, are wont to be entertained. it easily happens that this class should characterize england to the foreigner, who meets them on the road, and at every public house, whilst the gentry avoid the taverns, or seclude themselves whilst in them. but these classes are the right english stock, and may fairly show the national qualities, before yet art and education have dealt with them. they are good lovers, good haters, slow but obstinate admirers, and, in all things, very much steeped in their temperament, like men hardly awaked from deep sleep, which they enjoy. their habits and instincts cleave to nature. they are of the earth, earthy; and of the sea, as the sea-kinds, attached to it for what it yields them, and not from any sentiment. they are full of coarse strength, rude exercise, butcher's meat, and sound sleep; and suspect any poetic insinuation or any hint for the conduct of life which reflects on this animal existence, as if somebody were fumbling at the umbilical cord and might stop their supplies. they doubt a man's sound judgment, if he does not eat with appetite, and shake their heads if he is particularly chaste. take them as they come, you shall find in the common people a surly indifference, sumetimes gruffness and ill temper; and, in minds of more 12 134 english traits. power, magazines of inexhaustible war, challenging “ the ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring to frown upon the enraged northumberland.” they are headstrong believers and defenders of their opinion, and not less resolute in maintaining their whim and perversity. hezekiah woodward wrote a book against the lord's prayer. and one can believe that burton the anatomist of melancholy, having predicted from the stars the hour of his death, slipped the knot himself round his own neck, not to falsify his horoscope. their looks bespeak an invincible stoutness : they have extreme difficulty to run away, and will die game. wellington said of the young coxcombs of the life-guards delicately brought up, “but the puppies fight well ; " and nelson said of his sailors, “ they really mind shot no more than peas.” of absolute stoutness no nation has more or better examples. they are good at storming redoubts, at boarding frigates, at dying in the last ditch, or any desperate service which has daylight and honor in it ; but not, i think, at enduring the rack, or any passive obedience, like jumping off a castle-rock at the word of a czar. being both vascular and highly organized, so as to be very character. 138 sensible of pain ; and intellectual, so as to see reason and glory in a matter. of that constitutional force, which yields the supplies of the day, they have the more than enough, the excess which creates courage on fortitude, genius in poetry, invention in mechanics, enterprise in trade, magnificence in wealth, splendor in ceremonies, petulance and projects in youth. the young men have a rude health which runs into peccant humors. they drink brandy like water, cannot expend their quantities of waste strength on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, and run into absurd frolics with the gravity of the eumenides. they stoutly carry into every nook and corner of the earth their turbulent sense ; leaving no lie uncontradicted; no pretension un examined. they chew hasheesh ; cut themselves with poisoned creases ; swing their hammock in the boughs of the bohon upas; taste every poison ; buy every secret; at naples, they put st. januarius's blood in an alembic; they saw a hole into the head of the “ winking virgin,” to know why she winks ; measure with an english footrule every cell of the inquisition, every turkish caaba, every holy of holies ; translate and send to bentley the arcanum bribed and bullied away from shuddering bramins; and measure their own strength by the 136 englisa traits. rror they cause. these travellers are of every class, the best and the worst; and it may easily happen that those of rudest behavior are taken notice of and remembered. the saxon melancholy in the vulgar rich and poor appears as gushes of ill-humor, which every check exasperates into sarcasm and vituperation. there are multitudes of rude young english who have the self-sufficiency and bluntness of their nation, and who, with their disdain of the rest of mankind, and with this indigestion and choler, have made the english traveller a proverb for uncomfortable and offensive manners. it was no bad description of the briton generically, what was said two hundred years ago, of one particular oxford scholar : “ he was a very bold man, uttered any thing that came into his mind, not only among his companions, but in public coffee-houses, and would often speak his mind of particular persons then accidentally present, without examining the company he was in ; for which he was often reprimanded, and several times threatened to be kicked and beaten.” the common englishman is prone to forget a cardinal article in the bill of social rights, that every man has a right to his own ears. no man can claim to usurp more than a few cubic feet of the audibilities of a public room, or to put upon character. 157 the company with the loud statement of his crotchets or personalities. but it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes of nations are written, and however derived, whether a happier tribe or mixture of tribes, the air, or what circumstance, that mixed for them the golden mean of temperament, — here exists the best stock in the world, broad-fronted, broadbottomed, best for depth, range, and equability, men of aplomb and reserves, great range and many moods, strong instincts, yet apt for culture ; warclass as well as clerks ; earls and tradesmen ; wise minority, as well as foolish majority ; abysmal temperament, hiding wells of wrath, and glooms on which no sunshine settles ; alternated with a common sense and humanity which hold them fast to every piece of cheerful duty; making this temperament a sea to which all storms are superficial ; a race to which their fortunes flow, as if they alone had the elastic organization at once fine and robust enough for dominion; as if the burly inexpressive, now mute and contumacious, now fierce and sharp-tongued dragon, which once made the island light with his fiery breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to bis conqueror. they hide virtues under vices, or the semblance of them. it is the misshapen hairy scandinavian troll again, pha 12 * 138 english traits. lifts the cart out of the mire, or “threshes the corn that ten day-laborers could not end," but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledice tions. he is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. he says no, and serves you, and your thanks disgust him. here was lately a cross-grained miser, odd and ugly, resembling in cowatenance the portrait of punch, with the laugh left out ; rich by his own industry; sulking in a lonely house ; who never gave a dinner to any man, and disdained all courtesies; yet as true a worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever existed, and profusely pouring over the cold mind of his countrymen creations of grace and truth, removing the reproach of sterility from english art, 3 catching from their savage climate every fine hint, s and importing into their galleries every tint and trait of sunnier cities and skies ; making an era in painting; and, when he saw that the splendor of one of his pictures in the exhibition dimmed his rival's that hung next it, secretly took a brush and blackened his own. they do not wear their heart in their sleeve for daws to peck at. they have that phlegm or staidness, which it is a compliment to disturb. “great men,' said aristotle, “ are always of a nature character. 139 originally melancholy.” 'tis the habit of a mind which attaches to abstractions with a passion which gives vast results. they dare to displease, they do not speak to expectation. they like the sayers of no, better than the sayers of yes. each of them has an opinion which he feels it becomes him to express all the more that it differs from yours. they are meditating opposition. this gravity is inseparable from minds of great resources. there is an english hero superior to the french, the german, the italian, or the greek. when he is brought to the strife with fate, he sacrifices a richer material possession, and on more purely metaphysical grounds. he is there with his own consent, face to face with fortune, which he defies. on deliberate choice, and from grounds of character, he has elected his part to live and die for, and dies with grandeur. this race has added new elements to humanity, and has a deeper root in the world. they have great range of scale, from ferocity to exquisite refinement. with larger scale, they have great retrieving power. after running each tendency to an extreme, they try another tack with equal heat. more intellectual than other races, when they live with other races, they do not take their language, but bestow their own. they subsidize other nations, and are not subsidized. they pros140 english traits. elyte, and are not proselyted. they assimilato other races to themselves, and are not assimilated. the english did not calculate the conquest of the indies. it fell to their character. so they administer in different parts of the world, the codes of every empire and race ; in canada, old french law ; in the mauritius, the code napoleon ; in the west indies, the edicts of the spanish cortes ; in the east indies, the laws of menu ; in the isle of man, of the scandinavian thing; at the cape of good hope, of the old netherlands; and in the ionian islands, the pandects of justinian. they are very conscious of their advantageous position in history. england is the lawgiver, the patron, the instructor, the ally. compare the tone of the french and of the english press: the first querulous, captious, sensitive about english opinion; the english press is never timorous about french opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous. they are testy and headstrong through an excess of will and bias ; churlish as men sometimes please to be who do not forget a debt, who ask no favors, and who will do what they like with their own. with education and intercourse, these asperities wear off, and leave the good will pure. if anatomy is reformed according to national tendencies, i suppose, the spleen will hereafter be found character 141 in the englishman, not found in the american, and differencing the one from the other. i anticipate another anatomical discovery, that this organ will be found to be cortical and caducous, that they are superficially morose, but at last tender-hearted, herein differing from rome and the latin nations. nothing savage, nothing mean resides in the english heart. they are subject to panics of credulity and of rage, but the temper of the nation, however disturbed, settles itself soon and easily, as, in this temperate zone, the sky after whatever storms clears again, and serenity is its normal condition. a saving stupidity masks and protects their perception as the curtain of the eagle's eye. our swifter americans, when they first deal with english, pronounce them stupid ; but, later, do them justice as people who wear well, or hide their strength. to understand the power of perform ance that is in their finest wits, in the patient newton, or in the versatile transcendent poets, or in the dugdales, gibbons, hallams, eldons, and peels, one should see how english day-laborers hold out. high and low, they are of an unctvous texture. there is an adipocere in their constitu. tion, as if they had oil also for their mental wheels, and could perform vast amounts of work without damaging themselves. 142 english traits even the scale of expense on which people live, and to which scholars and professional men conform, proves the tension of their muscle, when vast numbers are found who can each lift this enormous load. i might even add, their daily feasts argue a savage vigor of body. no nation was ever so rich in able men; “gentlemen," as charles i. said of strafford, “ whose abilities might make a prince rather afraid than ashamed in the greatest affairs of state ; ” men of such temper, that, like baron vere, “ had one seen him returning from a victory, he would by his silence have suspected that he had lost the day ; and, had he beheld him in a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror by the cheerfulness of his spirit.” * the following passage from the heimskringla might almost stand as a portrait of the modern englishman :“ haldor was very stout and strong, and remarkably handsome in appearances. king harold gave him this testimony, that he, among all his men, cared least about doubtful circumstances, whether they betokened danger or pleasure ; for, whatever turned up, he was never in higher nor in lower spirits, never slept less nor more on account of them, nor ate nor drank but • fuller. worthies of england. character. 143 according to his custom. haldor was not a man of many words, but short in conversation, told his opinion bluntly, and was obstinate and hard : and this could not please the king, who had many clever people about him, zealous in his service. haldor remained a short time with the king, and then came to iceland, where he took up his abode in hiardaholt, and dwelt in that farm to a very advanced age.” * the national temper, in the civil history, is not flashy or whiffling. the slow, deep english mass smoulders with fire, which at last sets all its bor ders in flame. the wrath of london is not french wrath, but has a long memory, and, in its hottest heat, a register and rule. half their strength they put not forth. they are capable of a sublime resolution, and if hereafter the war of races, often predicted, and making itself a war of opinions also (a question of despotism and liberty coming from eastern europe), should menace the english civilization, these seakings may take once again to their floating castles, and find a new home and a second millennium of power in their colonies. the stability of england is the security of the modern world. if the english race were as mu. • heimskringln, laing's translatinn, vol. iii. p. 37. 144 english traits. table as the french, what reliance? but the eng. lish stand for liberty. the conservative, moneyloving, lord-loving english are yet liberty-loving ; and so freedom is safe : for they have more pere sonal force than any other people. the nation always resist the immoral action of their government. they think humanely on the affairs of france, of turkey, of poland, of hungary, of schleswig holstein, though overborne by the statecraft of the rulers at last. does the early history of each tribe show the permanent bias, which, though not less potent, is masked, as the tribe spreads its activity into colonies, commerce, codes, arts, letters? the early history shows it, as the musician plays the air which he proceeds to conceal in a tempest of variations. in alfred, in the northmen, one may read the genius of the english society, namely, that private life is the place of honor. glory, a career, and ambition, words familiar to the longitude of paris, are seldom heard in english speech. nelson wrote from their hearts his homely telegraph, “ england expects every man to do his duty.” for actual service, for the dignity of a profession, or to appease diseased or inflamed talent, the army and navy may be entered (the worst boys doing well in the navy); and the civil service, in character. 145 departments where serious official work is done , and they hold in esteem the barrister engaged in the severer studies of the law. but the calm, sound, and most british briton shrinks from public life, as charlatanism, and respects an economy founded on agriculture, coal-mines, manufactures, or trade, which secures an independence through the creation of real values. they wish neither to command or obey, but to be kings in their own houses. they are intellectual and deeply enjoy literature ; they like well to have the world served up to them in books, maps, models, and every mode of exact information, and, though not creators in art, they value its refinement. they are ready for leisure, can direct and fill their own day, nor need so much as others the constraint of a necessity. but the history of the nation discloses, at every turn, this original predilection for private independence, and, however this inclination may have been disturbed by the bribes with which their vast colonial power has warped men out of orbit, the inclination endures, and forms and reforms the laws, letters, manners, and occupations. they choose that welfare which is compatible with the commonwealth, knowing that such alone is stable ; as wise merchants prefer in. vestments in the three per cents. 13 chapter ix. cockayne. the english are a nation of humorists. indi. vidual right is pushed to the uttermost bound compatible with public order. property is so perfect, that it seems the craft of that race, and not to exist elsewhere. the king cannot step on an acre which the peasant refuses to sell. a testator endows a dog or a rookery, and europe cannot interfere with his absurdity. every individual has his particular way of living, which he pushes to folly, and the decided sympathy of his compatriots is engaged to back up mr. crump's whim by statutes, and chancellors, and horse-guards. there is no freak so ridiculous but some englishman has attempted to immortalize by money and law. british citizenship is as omnipotent as roman was. mr. cockayne is very sensible of this. the pursy man means by freedom the right to do as he pleases, and does wrong in order to feel his freedom, and makes a conscience of persisting in it. (146) cockayne. 147 he is intensely patriotic, for his country is so small. his confidence in the power and perform ance of his nation makes him provokingly incu rious about other nations. he dislikes foreigners. swedenborg, who lived much in england, notes “ the similitude of minds among the english, in consequence of which they contract familiarity with friends who are of that nation, and seldom with others : and they regard foreigners, as one looking through a telescope from the top of a palace regards those who dwell or wander about out of the city.” a much older traveller, the venetian who wrote the “ relation of england,” * in 1500, says : -" the english are great lovers of themselves, and of every thing belonging to them. they think that there are no other men than themselves, and no other world but england; and, whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that he looks like an englishman, and it is a great pity he should not be an englishman ; and whenever they partake of any delicacy with a foreigner, they ask him whether such a thing is made in his country.” when he adds epithets of praise, his climax is “ so english ;” and when he wishes to pay you the highest compliment, he says, i should not * frinted by the camden society. 148 english traits. know you from an englishman. france is, by its nat. ural contrast, a kind of blackboard on which english character draws its own traits in chalk. this arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the french. i suppose that all men of english blood in america, europe, or asia, have a secret feeling of joy that they are not french natives. mr. coleridge is said to have given public thanks to god, at the close of a lecture, that he had defended him from being able to utter a single sentence in the french language. i have found that englishmen have such a good opinion of england, that the ordinary phrases, in all good society, of postponing or disparaging one's own things in talking with a stranger; are seriously mistaken by them for an insuppressible homage to the merits of their nation ; and the new yorker or pennsylvanian who modestly laments the disadvantage of a new country, log-huts, and savages, is surprised by the instant and unfeigned commiseration of the whole company, who plainly account all the world out of england a heap of rubbish. the same insular limitation pinches his foreign politics he sticks to his traditions and usages, and, so help him god! he will force his island bylaws down the throat of great countries, like india, china, canada, australia, and not only so, but cockayne. 145 le inda british natalà im pose wapping on the congress of vienna, and trample down all nationalities with his taxed boots. lord chatham goes for liberty, and no taxation without representation ; — for that is british law; but not a hobnail shall they dare make in america, but buy their nails in england, — for that also is british law; and the fact that british commerce was to be re-created by the independence of america, took them all by surprise. in short, i am afraid that english nature is so rank and aggressive as to be a little incompatible with every other. the world is not wide enough for two. but, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, the island offers a daily worship to the old norse god brage, celebrated among our scandinavian forefathers, for his eloquence and majestic air. the english have a steady courage, that fits them for great attempts and endurance : they have also a petty courage, through which every man delights in showing himself for what he is, and in doing what he can; so that, in all companies, each of them has too good an opinion of himself to imitate any body. he hides no defect of his form, features, dress, connection, or birthplace, friz he thinks every circumstance belonging to rico 13 * 150 english traits. comes recommended to you. if one of them have a bald, or a red, or a green head, or bow legs, or a scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a squeaking or a raven voice, he has persuaded himself that there is something modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on him. but nature makes nothing in vain, and this little superfluity of self-regard in the english brain, is one of the secrets of their power and history, for, it sets every man on being and doing what he really is and can. it takes away a dodging, skulking, secondary air, and encourages a frank and manly bearing, so that each man makes the most of himself, and loses no opportunity for want of pushing. a man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world, precisely that importance which they have to himself. if he makes light of them, so will other men. we all find in these a convenient meter of character, since a little man would be ruined by the vexation. i remember a shrewd politician, in one of our western cities, told me, “ that he had known several successful statesmen made by their foible.” and another, an ex-governor of illinois, said to me, “ if a man knew any thing, he would sit ir a corner and be modest ; but he is such an ignorant cockayne. 151 peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.” ! there is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it. their culture generally enables the travelled english to avoid any ridiculous extremes of this self-pleasing, and to give it an agreeable air. then the natural disposition is fostered by the respect which they find entertained in the world for english ability. it was said of louis xiv., that his gait and air were becoming enough in so great a monarch, yet would have been ridiculous in another man ; so the prestige of the english name warrants à certain confident bearing, which a frenchman or belgian could not carry. at all events, they feel themselves at liberty to assume the most extraordinary tone on the subject of english merits. an english lady on the rhine hearing a german speaking of her party as foreigners, exclaimed, “ no, we are not foreigners ; we are english; it is you that are foreigners.” they tell you daily, in london, the story of the frenchman and englishman who quarrelled. both were unwilling to fight, but their companions put them up to it: at last, it was agreed, that they should fight alone, in 152 english traits. the dark, and with pistols : the candles were pó out, and the englishman, to make sure not to uit any body, fired up the chimney, and brought down the frenchman. they have no curiosity about foreigners, and answer any information you may volunteer with “oh, oh!” until the informant makes up his mind, that they shall die in their ignorance, for any help he will offer. there are really no limits to this conceit, though brighter men among them make painful efforts to be candid. the habit of brag runs through all classes, from the times newspaper through politicians and poets, through wordsworth, carlyle, mill, and sydney smith, down to the boys of eton. in the gravest treatise on political economy, in a philosophical essay, in books of science, one is surprised by the most innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality. in a tract on corn, a most amiable and accomplished gentleman writes thus :— “ though britain, according to bishop berkeley's idea, were surrounded by a wall of brass ten thousand cubits in height, still she would as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as she now does, both in this secondary quality, and in the more important ones of freedom, virtue, and science.” • william spence. cockayne. 153 the engiish dislike the american structure of bociety, whilst yet trade, mills, public education, and chartism are doing what they can to create in england the same social condition. america is the paradise of the economists; is the favorable exception invariably quoted to the rules of ruin ; but when he speaks directly of the americans, the islander forgets his philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes. but this childish patriotism costs something, like all narrowness. the english sway of their colonies has no root of kindness. they govern by their arts and ability ; they are more just than kind ; and, whenever an abatement of their power is felt, they have not conciliated the affection on which to rely. coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, province, or town, are useful in the absence of real ones ; but we must not insist on these accidental lines. individual traits are always triumphing over national ones. there is no fence in metaphysics discriminating greek, or english, or spanish science. æsop, and montaigne, cervantes, and saadi are men of the world ; and to wave our own flag at the dinner table or in the university, is to carry the boisterous dulness of a fire-club into a polite circle. nature and destiny 154 english traits. are aways on the watch for our follies. nature trips as up when we strut; and there are curious examples in history on this very point of national pride. george of cappadocia, born at epiphania in cilicia, was a low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. a rogue and informer, he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. he saved his money, embraced arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a faction to the episcopal throne of alexandria. when julian came, a. d. 361, george was dragged to prison ; the prison was burst open by the mob, and george was lynched, as he deserved. and this precious knave became, in good time, saint george of england, patron of chivalry, emblem of victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world. strange, that the solid truth-speaking briton should derive from an impostor. strange, that the new world should have no better luck, that broad america must wear the name of a thief. amerigo vespucci, the pickledealer at seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant columbus, and cockayne. 153 baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name. thus nobody can throw stones. we are equally badly off in our founders; and the false pickledealer is an offset to the false bacon-seller. chapter x. wealth. there is no country in which so absolute a hor. age is paid to wealth. in america, there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if, after all, it needed apology. but the englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. a coarse logic rules throughout all english souls ; — if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes, and coach, and horses? how can a man be a gentleman without a pipe of wine ? haydon says, o there is a fierce resolution to make every man live according to the means he possesses.” there is a mixture of religion in it. they are under the jewish law, and read with sonorous emphasis that their days shall be long in the land, they shall have sons and daughters, flocks and herds, vine and oil. in exact proportion, is the reproach of poverty. they do not wish to be represented except by opulent men. an englishman who has (156) wealth. 157 lost his fortune, is said to have died of a broken heart. the last term of insult is, “a beggar." nelson said, “the want of fortune is a crime which i can never get over.” sydney smith said, “ poverty is infamous in england.” and one of their recent writers speaks, in reference to a private and scholastic life, of “the grave moral deterioration which follows an empty exchequer.” you shall find this sentiment, if not so frankly put, yet deeply implied, in the novels and romances of the present century, and not only in these, but in biography, and in the votes of public assemblies, in the tone of the preaching, and in the table-talk. i was lately turning over wood's athena oxonienses, and looking naturally for another standard in a chronicle of the scholars of oxford for two hundred years. but i found the two disgraces in that, as in most english books, are, first, disloyalty to church and state, and, second, to be born poor, or to come to poverty. a natural fruit of england is the brutal political economy. malthus finds no cover laid at nature's table for the laborer's son. in 1809, the majority in parliament expressed itself by the language of mr. fuller in the house of commons, “if you do not like the country, damn you, you can leave it.” when sir s. romilly proposed his bill forbidding 14 158 english trai rs. parish officers to bind children apprentices at a greater distance than forty miles from their home, peel opposed, and mr. wortley said, “though, in the higher ranks, to cultivate family affections was a good thing, 'twas not so among the lower orders. better take them away from those who might deprave them. and it was highly injurious to trade to stop binding to manufacturers, as it must raise the price of labor, and of manufactured goods.” the respect for truth of facts in england, is equalled only by the respect for wealth. it is at once the pride of art of the saxon, as he is a wealth-maker, and his passion for independence. the englishman believes that every man must take care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he do not mend his condition. to pay their debts is their national point of honor. from the exchequer and the east india house to the huckster's shop, every thing prospers, because it is solvent. the british armies are solvent, and pay for what they take. the british empire is solvent; for, in spite of the huge national debt, the valuation mounts. during the war from 1789 to 1815, whilst they complained that they were taxed within an inch of their lives, and, by dint of enormous taxes, were subsidizing all the continent against france, the english were growing rich every year faster than any people wealth. 159 ever grew before. it is their maxim, that the weigh: of taxes must be calculated not by what is taken, but by what is left. solvency is in the ideas and mechanism of an englishman. the crystal palace is not considered honest until it pays; no matter how much convenience, beauty, or eclat, it must be self-supporting. they are contented with slower steamers, as long as they know that swifter boats lose money. they pro.. ceed logically by the double method of labor and thrift. every household exhibits an exact economy, and nothing of that uncalculated headlong expenditure which families use in america. if they cannot pay, they do not buy; for they have no presumption of better fortunes next year, as our people have; and they say without shame, i cannot afford it. gentlemen do not hesitate to ride in the second-class cars, or in the second cabin. an economist, or a man who can proportion his means and his ambition, or bring the year round with expenditure which expresses his character, without embarrassing one day of his future, is already a master of life, and a freeman. lord burleigh writes to his son, “that one ought never to devote more than two thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses of life, since the extraordinary will be certain to absorb the other third.” 160 english traits. the ambition to create value evokes every kird of ability, government becomes a manufacturing corporation, and every house a mill. the headlong bias to utility will let no talent lie in a napkin, – if possible, will teach spiders to weave silk stockings. an englishman, while he eats and drinks no more, or not much more than another man, labors three times as many hours in the course of a year, as any other european ; or, his life as a workman is three lives. he works fast. every thing in england is at a quick pace. they have reinforced their own productivity, by the creation of that marvellous machinery which differences this age from any other age. 'tis a curious chapter in modern history, the growth of the machine-shop. six hundred years ago, roger bacon explained the precession of the equinoxes, the consequent necessity of the reform of the calendar; measured the length of the year, invented gunpowder; and announced, (as if looking from his lofty cell, over five centuries, into ours,) “ that machines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than a whole galley of rowers could do; nor would they need any thing but a pilot to steer them. carriages also might be constructed to move with an incredible speed, without the aid of any animal. finally, it would not be wealta. 161 impossible to make machines, which, by means of a suit of wings, should fly in the air in the manner of birds.” but the secret slept with bacon. the six hundred years have not yet fulfilled his words. two centuries ago, the sawing of timber was done by hand; the carriage wheels ran on wooden axles ; the land was tilled by wooden ploughs. and it was to little purpose, that they had pit-coal, or that looms were improved, unless watt and stephenson had taught them to work force-pumps and powerlooms, by steam. the great strides were all taken within the last hundred years. the life of sir robert peel, who died, the other day, the model englishman, very properly has, for a frontispiece, a drawing of the spinning-jenny, which wove the web of his fortunes. hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse. arkwright improved the invention; ard the machine dispensed with the work of ninety-nine men: that is, one spinner could do as much work as one hundred had done before. the loom was improved further. but the men would sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the masters, and, about 1829-30, much fear was felt, lest the trade would be drawn away by these interruptions, and the emigration of the spinners, to belgium and the united states. iron and steel are very obedient 14 * 162 english traits. whether it were not possible to make a spinner that would not rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl, nor strike for wages, nor emigrate? at the solicitation of the masters, after a mob and riot at staley bridge, mr. roberts of manchester undertook to create this peaceful fellow, instead of the quarrelsome fellow god had made. after a few trials, he succeeded, and, in 1830, procured a patent for his self-acting mule; a creation, the delight of mill-owners, and “ destined,” they said, “ to restore order among the industrious classes”; a machine requiring only a child's hand to piece the broken yarns. as arkwright had destroyed domestic spinning, so roberts destroyed the factory spinner. the power of machinery in great britain, in mills, has been computed to be equal to 600,000,000 men, one man being able by the aid of steam to do the work which required two hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago. the production has been commensurate. · england already had this laborious race, rich soil, water, wood, coal, iron, and favorable climate. eight hundred years ago, commerce had made it rich, and it was recorded, “ england is the richest of all the northern nations." the norman historians recite, that “in 1067, william carried with him into normandy, from england, more gold and silver than had ever wealth. 163 before been seen in gaul.” but when, to this labor and trade, and these native resources was addea this goblin of steam, with his myriad arms, never tired, working night and day everlastingly, the amassing of property has run out of all figures. it makes the motor of the last ninety years. the steampipe has added to her population and wealth the equivalent of four or five englands. forty thousand ships are entered in lloyd's lists. the yield of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000 quarters in the time of the stuarts, to 13,000,000 in 1854. a thousand million of pounds sterling are said to compose the floating money of commerce. in 1848, lord john russell stated that the people of this country had laid out £300,000,000 of capital in railways, in the last four years. but a better measure than these sounding figures, is the estimate, that there is wealth enough in england to support the entire population in idlencss for one year. the wise, versatile, all-giving machinery makes chisels, roads, locomotives, telegraphs. whitworth divides a bar to a millionth of an inch. steam twines huge cannon into wreaths, as easily as it braids straw, and vies with the volcanic forces which twisted the strata. it can clothe shingle mountains with ship-oaks, make spord-blades tha 164 english traits. will cut gun-barrels in two. in egypt, it can plaat forests, and bring rain after three thousand years. already it is ruddering the balloon, and the next war will be fought in the air. but another machine more potent in england than steam, is the bank. it votes an issue of bills, population is stimulated, and cities rise; it refuses loans, and emigration empties the country; trade sinks; revolutions break out; kings are dethroned. by these new agents our social system is moulded. by dint of steam and of money, war and commerce are changed. nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will. steam has enabled men to choose what law they will live under. money makes place for them. the telegraph is a limp-band that will hold the fenris-wolf of war. for now, that a telegraph line runs through france and europe, from london, every message it transmits makes stronger by one thread, the band which war will have to cut. the introduction of these elements gives new resources to existing proprietors. a sporting duke inay fancy that the state depends on the house of lords, but the engineer sees, that every stroke of the steam-piston gives value to the duke's land, fills it with tenants ; doubles, quadruples, cen. wealth. 163 tuples the duke's capital, and creates new measures and new necessities for the culture of his children. of course, it draws the nobility into the competition as stockholders in the mine, the canal, the railway, in the application of steam to agriculture, and sometimes into trade. but it also introduces large classes into the same competition; the old energy of the norse race arms itself with these magnificent powers; new men prove an overmatch for the land-owner, and the mill buys out the castle. scandinavian thor, who once forged his bolts in icy hecla, and built galleys by lonely fiords ; in england, has advanced with the times, has shorn his beard, enters parliament, sits down at a desk in the india house, and lends miollnir to birmingham for a steam-hammer. . the creation of wealth in england in the last ninety years, is a main fact in modern history. the wealth of london determines prices all over the globe. all things precious, or useful, or amusing, or intoxicating, are sucked into this commerce and floated to london. some english private fortunes reach, and some exceed a million of dollars a year. a hundred thousand palaces adorn the island. all that can feed the senses and passions, all that can succor the talent, or arm the hands of the intelligent middle class, who never 166 english traits. spare in what they buy for their own consumption all that can aid science, gratify taste, or soothe comfort, is in open market. whatever is excellent and beautiful in civil, rural, or ecclesiastic architecture; in fountain, garden, or grounds; the english noble crosses sea and land to see and to copy at home. the taste and science of thirty peaceful generations; the gardens which evelyn planted; the temples and pleasure-houses which inigo jones and christopher wren built; the wood that gibbons carved; the taste of foreign and domestic artists, shenstone, pope, brown, loudon, paxton, are in the vast auction, and the hereditary principle heaps on the owner of to-day the benefit of ages of owners. the present possessors are to the full as absolute as any of their fathers, in choosing and procuring what they like. this comfort and splendor, the breadth of lake and mountain, tillage, pasture, and park, sumptuous castle and modern villa, — all consist with perfect order. they have no revolutions; no horse-guards dictating to the crown; no parisian poissardes and barricades; no mob: but drowsy habitude, daily dress-dinners, wine, and ale, and beer, and gin, and sleep. with this power of creation, and this passion for independence, property has reached an ideal per. wealta. 167 fectiun. it is felt and treated as the national life.blood. the laws are framed to give property the securest possible basis, and the provisions to lock and transmit it have exercised the cun. ningest heads in a profession which never admits a fool. the rights of property nothing but felony and treason can override. the house is a castle which the king cannot enter: the bank is a strong box to which the king has ro key. whatever surly sweetness possession can give, is tasted in england to the dregs. vested rights are awful things, and absolute possession gives the smallest freeholder identity of interest with the duke. high stone fences, and padlocked garden-gates an. nounce the absolute will of the owner to be alone. every whim of exaggerated egotism is put into stone and iron, into silver and gold, with costly deliberation and detail. an englishman hears that the queen dowager wishes to establish some claim to put her park paling a rod forward into his grounds, so as to get a coachway, and save her a mile to the avenue. instantly he transforms his paling into stone-masonry, solid as the walls of cuma, and all europe cannot prevail on him to sell or compound for an inch of the land. they delight in a freak as the proof of their sovereign freedom. sir edward 168 english traits. boynton, at spic park, at cadenham, on a preci. pice of incomparable prospect, built a house like a long barn, which had not a window on the prospect side. strawberry hill of horace walpole, fonthill abbey of mr. beckford, were freaks; and newstead abbey became one in the hands of lord byron. but the proudest result of this creation has been the great and refined forces it has put at the disposal of the private citizen. in the social world, an englishman to-day has the best lot. he is a king in a plain coat. he goes with the most powerful protection, keeps the best company, is armed by the best education, is seconded by wealth ; and his english name and accidents are like a flourish of trumpets announcing him. this, with his quiet style of manners, gives him the power of a sovereign, without the inconveniences which belong to that rank. i much prefer the condition of an english gentleman of the better class, to that of any potentate in europe, — whether for travel, or for opportunity of society, or for access to means of science or study, or for mere comfort and easy healthy relation to people at home. such as we have seen is the wealth of england, a mighty mass, and made good in whatever details we care to explore. the cause and spring of it is wealth. 169 the wealth of temperament in the people. the wonder of britain is this plenteous nature. her worthies are ever surrounded by as good men as themselves; each is a captain a hundred strong, and that wealth of mer is represented again in the favaly of each individual, – that he has waste sliength, power to spare. the english are so rich, and seelu to nave established a tap-root in the bowels of the planet, because they are constitutionally fertile and creative. but a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him. man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world. but it is found that the machine unmans the user. what he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power. there should be temperance in making cloth, as well as in eating. a man should not be a silk-worm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars. the robust rural saxon degenerates in the mills to the leicester stockinger, to the imbecile manchester spinner, — far on the way to be spiders and needles. the incessant repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man, robs him of his strength, wit, and versatility, to 15 170 english traits. make a pin-polisher, a buckle-maker, or any other specialty; and presently, in a change of industry, whole towns are sacrificed like ant-hills, when the fashion of shoe-strings supersedes buckles, when cotton takes the place of linen, or railways of turnpikes, or when commons are inclosed by landlords. t'hen society is admonished of the mischief of the division of labor, and that the best political economy is care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the ap plication of their talent to new labor. then again come in new calamities. england is aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost every fabric in her mills and shops ; finding that milk will not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper bite the tongue, nor glue stick. in true england all is false and forged. this too is the reaction of machinery, but of the larger machinery of commerce. 'tis not, i suppose, want of probity, so much as the tyranny of trade, which necessitates a perpetnal competition of underselling, and that again a perpetual deterioration of the fabric. the machinery has proved, like the balloon, unmanageable, and flies away with the ae; naut. steam, from the first, hissed and screamed to warn wealth. 171 nim ; it was dreadful with its e...) sion, and crushed the engineer. the machinist has wrought and watched, engineers and for men without nuinber have been sacrificed in learning 'io tame and guide the monster. but harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon money, with his paper wings. chancellors and boards of trade, pitt, peel, and robinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing. they congratulated each other on ruinous expedients it is rare to find a merchant who knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of paper money. in the culmination of natior.al prosperity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, depots, towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and his acre of land ; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was touching the point of ruin. the poor-rate was sucking in the solvent classes, and forcing an exodus of farmers and mechanics, what befals from the violence of financial crises, befals daily in the violence of artificial legislation. 172 english traits. such a wealth has england earned, ever new, bounteous, and augmenting. but the question recurs, does she take the step beyond, namely, to the wise use, in view of the supreme wealth of nations? we estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital. and, in view of these injuries, some compensation has been attempted in england. a part of the money earned returns to the brain to buy schools, libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists, and artists with; and a part to repair the wrongs of this intemperate weaving, by hospitals, savings-banks, mechanics’ institutes, public grounds, and other charities and amenities. but the antidotes are frightfully inadequate, and the evil requires a deeper cure, which time and a simpler social organization must supply. at present, she does not rule her wealth. she is simply a good england, but no divinity, or wise and instructed soul. she too is in the stream of fate, one victim more in a common catastrophe. but being in the fault, she has the misfortune of greatness to be held as the chief offender. england must be held responsible for the despotism of expense. her prosperity, the splendor which sc wealth. 173 much man hood and talent and perseverance has thrown upon vulgar aims, is the very argument of materialism. her success strengthens the hands of base wealth. who can propose to youth poverty and wisdom, when mean gain has arrived at the conquest of letters and arts; when english success has grown out of the very renunciation of principles, and the dedication to outsides ? a civility of trifles, of money and expense, an erudition of sensation takes place, and the putting as many impediments as we can, between the man and his objects. hardly the bravest among them have the manliness to resist it successfully. hence, it has come, that not the aims of a manly life, but the means of meeting a certain ponderous expense, is that which is to be considered by a youth in england, emerging from his minority. a large family is reckoned a misfortune. and it is a consolation in the death of the young, that a source of expense is closed 15. chapter xi. aristocracy. the feudal character of the english state, now that it is getting obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the democratic tendencies. the inequality of power and property shocks republican nerves. palaces, halls, villas, walled parks, all over engjand, rival the splendor of royal seats. many of the halls, like haddon, or kedleston, are beautiful desolations. the proprietor never saw them, or never lived in them. primogeniture built these sumptuous piles, and, i suppose, it is the sentiment of every traveller, as it was mine, 'twas well to come ere these were gone. primogeniture is a cardinal rule of english property and institutions. laws, customs, manners, the very persons and faces, affirm it. the frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of the people is loyal. the estates, names, and manners of the nobles flatter the fancy of the people, and conciliate the necessary support (174) aristocracy. 175 in spite of broken faith, stolen charters, and the devastation of society by the profligacy of the court, we take sides as we read for the loyal england and king charles's “ return to his right” with his cavaliers, — knowing what a heartless trifler he is, and what a crew of god-forsaken robbers they are. the people of england knew as much. but the fair idea of a settled government connecting itself with heraldic names, with the written and oral history of europe, and, at last, with the hebrew religion, and the oldest traditions of the world, was too pleasing a vision to be shattered by a few offensive realities, and the politics of shoemakers and costermongers. the hopes of the commoners take the same direction with the interest of the patricians. every man who becomes rich buys land, and does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which he hopes to rise. the anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. time and law have made the joining and mould. ing perfect in every part. the cathedrals, the universities, the national music, the popular romances, conspire to uphold the heraldry, which the current politics of the day are sapping. the taste of the people is conservative. they are proud of the castles, and of the language and sym. bol of chivalry. even the word lord is the luck. · 176 englibé traits. iest style that is used in any language to designate a patrician. the superior education and manners of the nobles recommend them to the country. the norwegian pirate got what he could, and held it for his eldest son. the norman noble, who was the norwegian pirate baptized, did likewise. there was this advantage of western over oriental nobility, that this was recruited from below. english history is aristocracy with the doors open. who has courage and faculty, let him come in. of course, the terms of admission to this club are hard and high. the selfishness of the nobles comes in aid of the interest of the nation to require signal merit. piracy and war gave place to trade, politics, and letters ; the war-lord to the lawlord ; the law-lord to the merchant and the millowner ; but the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed. the foundations of these families lie deep in norwegian exploits by sea, and saxon sturdiness on land. all nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority. the things these english have done were not done without peril of life, nor without wisdom and conduct; and the first hands, it may be presumed, were often challenged to show their right to their honors, or yield them to better men. “he that will be a head, aristocracy. 177 let him be a bridge,” said the welsh chief benegriilran, when he carried all his men over the river on his back. “he shall have the book," said the mother of alfred, “who can read it ;” and alfred won it by that title : and i make no doubt that feudal tenure was no sinecure, but baron, knight, and tenant, often had their memories refreshed, in regard to the service by which *hey held their lands. the de veres, bohuns, mowbrays, and plantagenets were not addicted to contemplation. the middle age adorned itself with proofs of manhood and devotion. of richard beauchamp, earl of warwick, the emperor told henry v. that no christian king had such another knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, and caused him to be named, “ father of curtesie.” “our success in france,” says the historian, “lived and died with him.” * the war-lord earned his honors, and no donation of land was large, as long as it brought the duty of protecting it, hour by hour, against a terrible enemy. in france and in england, the nobles were, down to a late day, born and bred to war : and the duel, which in peace still held them to the risks of war, diminished the envy that, in trading • fuller's worthies. ii. p. 472. 178 english traits. and studious nations, would else have pried into their title. they were looked on as men who played high for a great stake. great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be kept great. a creative economy is the fuel of magnificence. in the same line of warwick, the successor next but one to beauchamp, was the stout earl of henry vi. and edward iv. few esteemed themselves in the mode, whose heads were not adorned with the black ragged staff, his badge. at his house in london, six oxen were daily eaten at a breakfast ; and every tavern was full of his meat; and who had any acquaintance in his family, should have as much boiled and roast as he could carry on a long dagger. the new age brings new qualities into request, the virtues of pirates gave way to those of planters, merchants, senators, and scholars. comity, social talent, and fiue manners, no doubt, have had their part also. i have met somewhere with a historiette, which, whether more or less true in its particulars, carries a general truth. “ how came the duke of bedford by his great landed estates ? his ancestor having travelled on the continent, a lively, pleasant man, became the companion of a foreign prince wrecked on the dorsetshire coast, where mr. russell lived. the prince recommend. aristocracy. 179 ed him to henry viii., who, liking his company, gave him a large share of the plundered church lands.” the pretence is that the noble is of unbroken descent from the norman, and has never worked for eight hundred years. but the fact is otherwise. where is bohun? where is de vere? the lawyer, the farmer, the silkmercer lies perdu under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing ; especially skilful lawyers, nobody's sons, who did some piece of work at a nice moment for government, and were rewarded with ermine. the national tastes of the english do not lead them to the life of the courtier, but to secure the comfort and independence of their homes. the aristocracy are marked by their predilection for country-life. they are called the county-families. they have often no residence in london, and only go thither a short time, during the season, to see the opera ; but they concentrate the love and labor of many generations on the building, planting and decoration of their homesteads. some of them are too old and too proud to wear titles, or, as sheridan said of coke, “ disdain to hide their head in a coronet ;” and some curious examples are cited to show the stability of english families. their proverb is, that, fifty miles from london, a 180 english traits. family will last a hundred years ; at a hundred miles, two hundred years ; and so on; but i doubt that steam, the enemy of time, as well as of space, will disturb these ancient rules. sir henry wotton says of the first duke of buckingham, “ he was born at brookeby in leicestershire, where his ancestors had chiefly continued about the space of four hundred years, rather without obscurity, than with any great lustre.” * wraxall says, that, in 1781, lord surrey, afterwards duke of norfolk, told him, that when the year 1783 should arrive, he meant to give a grand festival to all the descendants of the body of jockey of norfolk, to mark the day when the dukedom should have remained three hundred years in their house, since its creation by richard iii. pepys tells us, in writing of an earl oxford, in 1666, that the honor had now remained in that name and blood six hundred years. this long descent of families and this cleaving through ages to the same spot of ground captivates the imagination. it has too a connection with the names of the towns and districts of the country. the names are excellent, — an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over the land. older than all epics and histories, which zlothe a nation * reliquiæ wottonianą p. 208. aristocracy. 181 this undershirt sits close to the body. what his.' tory too, and what stores of primitive and savage observation it infolds ! cambridge is the bridge of the cam ; sheffield the field of tlic river sheaf; leicester the castra or camp of the lear or leir (now soar) ; rochdale, of the roch ; exeter or excester, the castra of the ex; exmouth, dartmouth, sidmouth, teignmouth, the mouths of the ex, dart, sid, and teign rivers. waltham is strong town ; radcliffe is red cliff; and so on: a sincerity and use in naming very striking to an american, whose country is whitewashed all over by unmeaning names, the cast-off clothes of the country from which its emigrants came ; or, named at a pinch from a psalm-tune. but the english are those « barbarians ” of jamblichus, who “ are stable in their manners, and firmly con tinue to employ the same words, which also are dear to the gods.” 'tis an old sneer, that the irish peerage drew their names from playbooks. the english lords do not call their lands after their own names, but call themselves after their lands ; as if the man represented the country that bred him ; and they rightly wear the token of the glebe that gave them birth; suggesting that the tie is not cut, but that there in london, the crags of argyle, the kail 16 182 english traits. of cornwall, the downs of devon, the iron of wales, the clays of stafford are neither forgetting nor forgotten, but know the man who was born by them, and who, like the long line of his fathers, has carried that crag, that shore, da le, fen, or woodland, in his blood and manners. it has, too, the advantage of suggesting responsibleness. a susceptible man could not wear a name which represented in a strict sense a city or a county of england, without hearing in it a challenge to duty and honor. the predilection of the patricians for residence in the country, combined with the degree of liberty possessed by the peasant, makes the safety of the english hall. mirabeau wrote prophetically from england, in 1784, “ if revolution break out in france, i tremble for the aristocracy: their chateaux will be reduced to ashes, and their blood spilt in torrents. the english tenant would defend his lord to the last extremity.” the english go to their estates for grandeur. the french live at court, and exile themselves to their estates for economy. as they do not mean to live with their tenants, they do not conciliate them, but wring from them the last sous. evelyn writes from blois, in 1644, “ the wolves are here in such numbers, that they often come and take children aristocracy. 183 out of the streets : yet will not the duke, who is sovereign here, permit them to be destroyed.” in evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient families, the traveller is shown the palaces in piccadilly, burlington house, devonshire house, lansdowne house in berkshire square, and, lower down in the city, a few noble houses which still withstand in all their amplitude the encroachment of streets. the duke of bedford includes or included a mile square in the heart of london, where the british museum, once montague house, now stands, and the land occupied by woburn square, bedford square, russell square. the marquis of westminster built within a few years the series of squares called belgravia. stafford house is the noblest palace in london. northumberland house holds its place by charing cross. chesterfield house remains in audley street, sion house and holland house are in the suburbs. but most of the historical houses are masked or lost in the modern uses to which trade or charity has converted them. a multitude of town palaces contain inestimable galleries of art. in the country, the size of private estates is more impressive. from barnard castle i rode on the highway twenty-three miles from high force, a fall of the tees, towards darlington, past 184 english traits. raby castle, through the estate of the duke of cleveland. the marquis of breadalbane rides out of his house a hundred miles in a straight line to the sea, on his own property. the duke of sutherland owns the county of sutherland, stretching across scotland from sea to sea. the duke of devonshire, besides his other estates, owns 96,000 acres in the county of derby. the duke of richmond has 40,000 acres at good. wood, and 300,000 at gordon castle. the duke of norfolk's park in sussex is fifteen miles in circuit. an agriculturist bought lately the island of lewes, in hebrides, containing 500,000 acres. the possessions of the earl of lonsdale gave him eight seats in parliament. this is the heptarchy again : and before the reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four persons sent three hundred and seven members to parliament. the borough-mongers governed england. these large domains are growing larger. the great estates are absorbing the small freeholds. in 1786, the soil of england was owned by 250,000 corporations and proprietors; and, in 1822, by 32,000. these broad estates find rorm in this narrow island. all over england, scattered at short intervals among ship-yards, mills, mines, and forges, are the paradises of the nobles, where aristocracy. 185 the livelong repose and refinement are heightened hy the contrast with the roar of industry and necessity, out of which you have stepped aside. i was surprised to observe the very small attendance usually in the house of lords. out of 573 peers, on ordinary days, only twenty or thirty. where are they? i asked. “at home on their estates, devoured by ennui, or in the alps, or up the rhine, in the harz mountains, or in egypt, or in india, on the ghauts.” but, with such interests at stake, how can these men afford to neglect them ? “0," replied my friend, 6 why should they work for themselves, when every man in england works for them, and will suffer before they come to harm ?” the hardest radical instantly uncovers, and changes his tone to a lord. it was remarked, on the 10th april, 1848, (the day of the chartist demonstration,) that the upper classes were, for the first time, actively interesting themselves in their own defence, and men of rank were sworn special constables, with the rest. 5. besides, why need they' sit out the debate ? has not the duke of wellington, at this moment, their proxies, — the proxies of fifty peers in his pocket to vote for them, if there be an emergency ?" 16 * 186 english trait.. it is however true, that the existence of the house of peers as a branch of the government entitles them to fill half the cabinet ; and their weight of property and station give them a virtual nomination of the other half; whilst they have their share in the subordinate offices, as a school of training. this monopoly of political power has given them their intellectual and social eminence in europe a few law lords and a few political lords take the brunt of public business. in the army, the nobility fill a large part of the high commissions, and give to these a tone of expense and splendor, and also of exclusiveness. they have borne their full share of duty and danger in this service; and there are few noble families which have not paid in some of their members, the debt of life or limb, in the sacrifices of the russian war. for the rest, the nobility have the lead in matters of state, and of expense ; in questions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and domestic hospitalities. in general, all that is required of them is to sit securely, to preside at public meetings, to countenance charities, and to give the example of that decorum so dear to the british heart. if one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, what service this class have rendered ? — uses ap. aristocracy. 187 pear, or they would have perished long ago. some of these are easily enumerated, others more subtle make a part of unconscious history. their institution is one step in the progress of society. for a race yields a nobility in some form, however we name the lords, as surely as it yields women. the english nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to wealth and power, who have run through every country, and kept in every country the best company, have seen every secret of art and nature, and, when men of any ability or ambition, have been consulted in the conduct of every important action. you cannot wield great agencies without lending yourself to them, and, when it happens that the spirit of the earl meets his rank and duties, we have the best examples of behavior. power of any kind readily appears in the manners; and beneficent power, le talent de bien faire, gives a majesty which cannot be concealed or resisted. these people seem to gain as much as they lose by their position. they survey society, as from the top of st. paul's, and, if they never hear plain truth from men, they see the best of every thing, in every kind, and they see things so grouped and amassed as to infer easily the sum and genius, 188 english traits. instead of tedious particularities. their good be. havior deserves all its fame, and they have that simplicity, and that air of repose, which are the finest ornament of greatness. the upper classes have only birth, say the people here, and not thoughts. yes, but they have manners, and, 'tis wonderful, how much talent runs into manners: — nowhere and never so much as in england. they have the sense of superiority, the absence of all the ambitious effort which disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone of thought and feeling, and the power to command, among their other luxuries, the presence of the most accomplished men in their festive meetings. loyalty is in the english a sub-religion. they wear the laws as ornaments, and walk by their faith in their painted may-fair, as if among the forms of gods. the economist of 1855 who asks, of what use are the lords ? may learn of franklin to ask, of what use is a baby? they have been a social church proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring the lover and the loved. politeness is the ritual of society, as prayers are of the church, a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to the age in which it grew. 'tis a romance adorning english life with a larger horizon ; a midway heaven, fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales aristocracy. 139 and poetry. this, just as far as the breeding of the robleman really made him brave, handsome, accomplished, and great-hearted. on general grounds, whatever tends to form manners, or to finish men, has a great value. every one who has tasted the delight of friendship, will respect every social guard which our manners can establish, tending to secure from the intrusion of frivolous and distasteful people. the jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality they have found in life. when a man once knows that he has done justice to himself, let him dismiss all terrors of aristocracy as superstitions, so far as he is concerned. he who keeps the door of a mine, whether of cobalt, or mercury, or nickel, or plumbago, securely knows that the world cannot do without him. every body who is real is open and ready for that which is also real. besides, these are they who make england that strong box and museum it is ; who gather and protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning cities and revolutionary countries, and brought hither out of all the world. i look with respect at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or, like warwick castle, nine hundred years old. i pardoned high park-fences, when i saw, that, besides does 190 english traits. and pheasants, these have preserved arundel marbles, townley galleries, howard and spenserian libraries, warwick and portland vases, saxon manuscripts, monastic architectures, millennial trees, and breeds of cattle elsewhere extinct. in these manors, after the frenzy of war and destruction subsides a little, the antiquary finds the frailest roman jar, or crumbling egyptian mummy-case, without so much as a new layer of dust, keeping the series of history unbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who is sure to arrive. these lords are the treasurers and librarians of mankind, engaged by their pride and wealth to this function. yet there were other works for british dukes to do. george loudon, quintinye, evelyn, had taught them to make gardens. arthur young, bakewell, and mechi, have made them agricultural. scotland was a camp until the day of culloden. the dukes of athol, sutherland, buccleugh, and the marquis of breadalbane have introduced the rape-culture, the sheep-farm, wheat, drainage, the plantation of forests, the artificial replenishment of lakes and ponds with fish, the renting of game-pieserves. against the cry of the old tenantry, and the sympathetic cry of the english press, they have rooted out and planted anew, and now six millions of people live, and live better on the same land that fed three millions. aristocracy. 191 the english barons, in every period, have been brave and great, after the estimate and opinion of their times. the grand old halls scattered up and down in england, are dumb vouchers to the state and broad hospitality of their ancient lords. shakspeare's portraits of good duke humphrey, of warwick, of northumberland, of talbot, were drawn in strict consonance with the traditions. a sketch of the earl of shrewsbury, from the pen of queen elizabeth's archbishop parker ;* lord herbert of cherbury's autobiography ; the letters and essays of sir philip sidney; the anecdotes preserved by the antiquaries fuller and collins ; some glimpses at the interiors of noble houses, which we owe to pepys and evelyn; the details which ben jonson's masques (performed at kenilworth, althorpe, belvoir, and other noble houses,) record or suggest ; down to aubrey's passages of the life of hobbes in the house of the earl of devon, are favorable pictures of a romantic style of manners. penshurst still shines for us, and its christmas revels, “where logs not burn, but men.” at wilton house, the “ arcadia” was written, amidst conversations with fulke greville, lord brooke, a man of no vulgar mind, as his own poems declare him. i must hold ludlow castle an honest • dibdin's literary reminiscences, vol. 1, xii. 192 english traits. house, for which milton's “ comus” was written, and the company nobly bred which peformed it with knowledge and sympathy. in the roll of nobles, are found poets, philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid virtues and of lofty sentiments, often they have been the friends and patrons of genius and learning, and especially of the fine arts; and at this moment, almost every great house has its sumptuous picture-gallery. · of course, there is another side to this gorgeous show. every victory was the defeat of a party only less worthy. castles are proud things, but 'tis safest to be outside of them. war is a foul game, and yet war is not the worst part of aristocratic history. in later times, when the baron, educated only for war, with his brains paralyzed by his stomach, found himself idle at home, he grew fat and wanton, and a sorry brute. grammont, pepys, and evelyn, show the kennels to which the king and court went in quest of pleasure. prostitutes taken from the theatres, were made duchesses, their bastards dukes and earls. “the young men sat uppermost, the old serious lords were out of favor.” the discourse that the king's companions had with him was “ poor and frothy." no man who valued his head might do what these pot-companions familiarly did with the king. in logical aristocracy. 193 sequence of these dignified revels, pepys can tell the beggarly shifts to which the king was reduced, who could not find paper at his council table, and “no handkerchers ” in his wardrobe, “and but three bands to his neck," and the linen-draper and the stationer were out of pocket, and refusing to trust him, and the baker will not bring bread any longer. meantime, the english channel was swept, and london threatened by the dutch fleet, manned too by english sailors, who, having been cheated of their pay for years by the king, enlisted with the enemy. the selwyn correspondence in the reign of george iii., discloses a rottenness in the aristocracy, which threatened to decompose the state. the sycophancy and sale of votes and honor, for place and title ; lewdness, gaming, smuggling, bribery, and cheating ; the sneer at the childish indiscretion of quarrelling with ten thousand a year ; the want of ideas ; the splendor of the titles, and the apathy of the nation, are instructive, and make the reader pause and explore the firm bounds which confined these vices to a handful of rich men. in the reign of the fourth george, things do not seem to have mended, and the rotten debauchee let down from a window by an inclined plane into his coach to take the air, was a scandal to europe which the 17 194 english traits. ill fame of his queen and of his family did nothing to retrieve. under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the court is thought to have put a check on the gross vices of the aristocracy; yet gaming, racing, drinking, and mistresses, bring them down, and the democrat can still gather scandals, if he will. dismal anecdotes abound, verifying the gossip of the last generation of dukes served by bailiffs, with all their plate in pawn; of great lords living by the showing of their houses ; and of an old man wheeled in his chair from room to room, whilst his chambers are exhibited to the visitor for money; of ruined dukes and earls living in exile for debt. the historic names of the buckinghams, beauforts, marlboroughs, and hertfords, have gained no new lustre, and now and then darker scandals break out, ominous as the new chapters added under the orleans dynasty to the “ causes célèbres ” in france. even peers, who are men of worth and public spirit, are overtaken and embarrassed by their vast expense. the respectable duke of devonshire, willing to be the mecænas and lucullus of his island, is reported to have said, that he cannot live at chatsworth but one month in the year. their many houses eat them up. they cannot sell them, because they are entailed. they will not let aristocracy. 198 them, for pride's sake, but keep them empty, aired, and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of four or five thousand pounds a year. the spending is for a great part in servants, in many houses exceeding a hundred. most of them are only chargeable with idleness, which, because it squanders such vast power of benefit, has the mischief of crime. “they might be little providences on earth,” said my friend, “and they are, for the most part, jockeys and fops." campbell says, “acquaintance with the nobility, i could never keep up. it requires a life of idleness, dressing, and attendance on their parties." i suppose, too, that a feeling of self-respect is driving cultivated men out of this society, as if the noble were slow to receive the lessons of the times, and had not learned to disguise his pride of place. a man of wit, who is also one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion, confessed to his friend, that he could not enter their houses without being made to feel that they were great lords, and he a low plebeian. with the tribe of artistes, including the musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no terms, but excludes them. when julia grisi and mario sang at the houses of the duke of wellington and other grandees, a cord was stretched between the singer and the company. 196 english traits. when every noble was a soldier, they were care. fully bred to great personal prowess. the education of a soldier is a simpler affair than that of an earl in the nineteenth century. and this was very seriously pursued ; they were expert in every species of equitation, to the most dangerous practices, and this down to the accession of william of orange. but graver men appear to have trained their sons for civil affairs. elizabeth extended her thought to the future; and sir philip sidney in his letter to his brother, and milton and evelyn, gave plain and hearty counsel. already too, the english noble and squire were preparing for the career of the country-gentleman, and his peaceable expense. they went from city to city, learning receipts to make perfumes, sweet powders, pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, coins, and divers curiosities, preparing for a private life thereafter, in which they should take pleasure in these recreations. all advantages given to absolve the young patrician from intellectual labor are of course mistaken “ in the university, noblemen are exempted from the public exercises for the degree, &c., by which they attain a degree called honorary. at the same time, the fees they have to pay for matriculation, and on all other occasions, are much higher." * • huber. history of english l'niversities. aristocracy. 19? fuller records “the observation of foreigners that englishmen, by making their children gentlemen, before they are men, cause they are so seldom wise men.” this cockering justifies dr. johnson's bitter apology for primogeniture, “that it makes but one fool in a family.” the revolution in society has reached this class. the great powers of industrial art have no exclu sion of name or blood. the tools of our time, namely, steam, ships, printing, money, and popular education, belong to those who can handle them : and their effect has been, that advantages once confined to men of family, are now open to the whole middle class. the road that grandeur levels for his coach, toil can travel in his cart. this is more manifest every day, but i think it is true throughout english history. english history, wisely read, is the vindication of the brain of that people. here, at last, were climate and condition friendly to the working faculty. who now will work and dare, shall rule. this is the charter, or the chartism, which fogs, and seas, and rains proclaimed, that intellect and personal force should make the law; that industry and administrative talent should administer; that work should wear the crown. i know that not this, but something else is pretended. the fiction with which 17 * 198 english traits. the noble and the bystander equally please them. selves is, that the former is of unbroken descent from the norman, and so has never worked for eight hundred years. all the families are new, but the name is old, and they have made a covenant with their memories not to disturb it. but the analysis of the peerage and gentry shows the rapid decay and extinction of old families, the continual recruiting of these from new blood. the doors, though ostentatiously guarded, are really open, and hence the power of the bribe. all the barriers to rank only whet the thirst, and enhance the prize. “now,” said nelson, when clearing for battle, “a peerage, or westminster abbey !” “i have no illusion left,” said sydney smith, “ but the archbishop of canterbury.” “the lawyers,” said burke, “are only birds of passage in this house of commons," and then added, with a new figure, “they have their best bower anchor in the house of lords.” another stride that has been taken, appears in the perishing of heraldry. whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the middle class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of lordship are getting musty and cumbersome. i wonder that sensible men have not been already impatient of them. they belong, with wigs, powder, and aristocracy. 199 scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may be advantageously consigned, with paint and tattoo, to the dignitaries of australia and polynesia. a multitude of english, educated at the universities, bred into their society with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day confronting the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, as often, in the race of honor and influence. that cultivated cláss is large and ever enlarging. it is computed that, with titles and without, there are seventy thousand of these people coming and going in london, who make up what is called high society. they cannot shut their eyes to the fact without the inconveniences that belong to rank, and the rich englishman goes over the world at the present day, drawing more than all the advantages which the strongest of his kings could command. chapter xil. universities. of british universities, cambridge has the most illustrious names on its list. at the present day, too, it has the advantage of oxford, counting in its alumni a greater number of distinguished scholars. i regret that i had but a single day wherein to see king's college chapel, the beautiful lawns and gardens of the colleges, and a few of its gownsmen. but i availed myself of some repeated invitations to oxford, where i had introductions to dr. daubeny, professor of botany, and to the regius professor of divinity, as well as to a valued friend, a fellow of oriel, and went thither on the last day of march, 1848. i was the guest of my friend in oriel, was housed close upon that college, and i lived on college hospitalities. my new friends showed me their cloisters, the bodleian library, the randolph gallery, merton hall, and the rest. i saw several faithful, highminded young men, some of them in the mood of (200) universities. 201 makir.g sacrifices for peace of mind, a topic, of course, on which i had no counsel to offer. their affectionate and gregarious ways reminded me at once of the habits of our cambridge men, though i imputed to these english an advantage in their secure and polished manners. the halls are rich with oaken wainscoting and ceiling. the pictures of the founders hang from the walls; the tables glitter with plate. a youth came forward to the upper table, and pronounced the ancient form of grace before meals, which, i suppose, has been in use here for ages, benedictus benedicat ; benedicitur, benedicatur. it is a curious proof of the english use and wont, or of their good nature, that these young men are locked up every night at nine o'clock, and the porter at each hall is required to give the name of any belated student who is admitted after that hour. still more descriptive is the fact, that out of twelve hundred young men, comprising the most spirited of the aristocracy, a duel has never occurred. oxford is old, even in england, and conservative. its foundations date from alfred, and even from arthur, if, as is alleged, the pheryllt of the druids had a seminary here. in the reign of edward i., it is pretended, here were thirty thousand 102 english traits. students; and nineteen most noble foundations were then established. chaucer found it as firm as if it had always stood ; and it is, in british story, rich with great names, the school of the island, and the link of england to the learned of europe. hither came erasmus, with delight, in 1497. albericus gentilis, in 1580, was relieved and maintained by the university. albert alaskie, a noble polonian, prince of sirad, who visited england to admire the wisdom of queen elizabeth, was entertained with stage-plays in the refectory of christchurch, in 1583. isaac casaubon, coming from henri quatre of france, by invitation of james i., was admitted to christ's college, in july, 1613. i saw the ashmolean museum, whither elias ashmole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. here indeed was the olympia of all antony wood's and aubrey's games and heroes, and every inch of ground has its lustre. for wood's athena o.tonienses, or calendar of the writers of oxford for two hundred years, is a lively record of english manners and merits, and as much a national monument as purchas's pilgrims or hansard's register. on every side, oxford is redolent of age and authority. its gates shut of themselves against modern innovation. it is still governed by the statutes of archbishop laud. the books in mer universities. 203 ton library are still chained to the wall. here, on august 27, 1660, john milton's pro populo anglicano defensio, and iconoclastes were committeil to the flames. i saw the school-court or quadrangle, where, in 1683, the convocation caused the leviathan of thomas hobbes to be publicly burnt. i do not know whether this learned body have yet heard of the declaration of american independence, or whether the ptolemaic astronomy does not still hold its ground against the novelties of copernicus. as many sons, almost so many benefactors. it is usual for a nobleman, or indeed for almost every wealthy student, on quitting college, to leave behind him some article of plate; and gifts of all values, from a hall, or a fellowship, or a library, down to a picture or a spoon, are continually accruing, in the course of a century. my friend doctor j., gave me the following anecdote. in sir thomas lawrence's collection at london, were the cartoons of raphael and michel angelo. this inestimable prize was offered to oxford university for seven thousand pounds. the offer was accepted, and the committee charged with the affair had collected three thousand pounds, when among other friends, they called on lord eldon. instead of a hundred pounds, he surprised them by putting 204 english traits. down his name for three thousand pounds. they told him, they should now very easily raise the remainder. “no," he said, “your men have probably already contributed all they can spare ; i can as well give the rest”: and he withdrew his cheque for three thousand, and wrote four thousand pounds. i saw the whole collection in april, 1848. in the bodleian library, dr. bandinel showed me the manuscript plato, of the date of a. d. 896, brought by dr. clarke from egypt; a manuscript virgil, of the same century; the first bible printed at mentz, (i believe in 1450); and a duplicate of the same, which had been deficient in about twenty leaves at the end. but, one day, being in venice, he bought a room full of books and manuscripts, every scrap and fragment, for four thousand louis d'ors, and had the doors locked and sealed by the consul. on proceeding, afterwards, to examine his purchase, he found the twenty deficient pages of his mentz bible, in perfect order; brought them to oxford, with the rest of his purchase, and placed them in the volume ; but has too much awe for the providence that appears in bibliography also, to suffer the reunited parts to be re-bound. the oldest building here is two hundred years younger than the frail manu. script brought by dr. clarke from egypt. ne univf.rsities. 203 candle or fire is ever lighted in the bodleian. its catalogue is the standard catalogue on the desk of every library in oxford. in each several college, they underscore in red ink on this catalogue the titles of books contained in the library of that college, — the theory being that the bodleian has all books. this rich library spent during the last year (1847) for the purchase of books £1668. the logical english train a scholar as they train an engineer. oxford is a greek factory, as wilton mills weave carpet, and sheffield grinds steel. they know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse ; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit out of both. the reading men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do no work, but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday. seven years' residence is the theoretic period for a master's degree. in point of fact, it has long been three years' residence, and four years more of standing. this “three years ” is about twenty-one months in all.* “ the whole expense,” says professor sewel, " of ordinary college tuition at oxford, is about * huber, ii. p. 304. 18 206 englisa traits. sixteen guineas a year.” but this plausible state. ment may deceive a reader unacquainted with the fact, that the principal teaching relied on is private tuition. and the expenses of private tuition are reckoned at from £50 to £70 a year, or, $1000 for the whole course of three years and a half. at cambridge $750 a year is economical, and $1500 not extravagant.* the number of students and of residents, the dignity of the authorities, the value of the foundations, the history and the architecture, the known sympathy of entire britain in what is done there, justify a dedication to study in the undergraduate, such as cannot easily be in america, where his college is half suspected by the freshman to be insignificant in the scale beside trade and politics. oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates in the realm ; and where fame and secular promotion are to be had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous respect of all cultivated nations. this aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses ; fills place, as they fall vacant, from the body of students the number of fellowships at oxford • bristed. five years at an english university, universities. 207 is 540, averaging £200 a year, with lodging and diet at the college. if a young american, loving learning, and hindered by poverty, were offered a home, a table, the walks, and the library, n one of these academical palaces, and a thousand dollars a year as long as he chose to remain a bachelor, he would dance for joy. yet these young men thus happily placed, and paid to read, are impatient of their few checks, and many of them preparing to resign their fellowships. they shuddered at the prospect of dying a fellow, and they pointed out to me a paralytic old man, who was assisted into the hall. as the number of undergraduates at oxford is only about 1200 or 1300, and many of these are never competitors, the chance of a fellowship is very great. the income of the nineteen colleges is conjectured at £150,000 a year. the effect of this drill is the radical knowledge of greek and latin, and of mathematics, and the solidity and taste of english criticism. whatever luck there may be in this or that award, an eton captain can write latin longs and shorts, can turn the court-guide into hexameters, and it is certain that a senior classic can quote correctly from the corpus poetarum, and is critically learned in all the humanities. greek erudition exists on the isis and cam, whether the maud man or the 208 english traits. brazen nose man be properly ranked or not; the atmosphere is loaded with greek learning ; the whole river has reached a certain height, and kills all that growth of weeds, which this castalian water kills. the english nature takes culture kindly. so milton thought. it refines the norseman. access to the greek mind lifts his standard of taste. he has enough to think of, and, unless of an impulsive nature, is indisposed from writing or speaking, by the fulness of his mind, and the new severity of his taste. the great silent crowd of thorough-bred grecians always known to be around him, the english writer cannot ignore they prune his orations, and point his pen. hence, the style and tone of english journalism. the men have learned accuracy and comprehension, logic, and pace, or speed of working. they have bottom, endurance, wind. when born with good constitutions, they make those eupeptic studyingmills, the cast-iron men, the dura ilia, whose powers of performance compare with ours, as the steam-hammer with the music-box;— cokes, mansfields, seldens, and bentleys, and when it happens that a superior brain puts a rider on this admirable horse, we obtain those masters of the world who combine the highest energy in affairs, with a supreme culture. universities. 204 it is contended by those who have been bred at eton, harrow, rugby, and westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and manly ; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged: that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make them gentlemen. again, at the universities, it is urged, that all goes to form what england values as the flower of its national life, — a well-educated gentleman. the german huber, in describing to his countrymen the attributes of an english gentleman, frankly admits, that, “ in germany, we have nothing of the kind. a gentleman must possess a political character, an independent and public position, or, at least, the right of assuming it. he must have average opulence, either of his own, or in his family. he should also have bodily activity and strength, unattainable by our sedentary life in public offices. the race of english gentlemen presents an appearance of manly vigor and form, nut elsewhere to be found among an equal number of persons. no other nation produces the 18 * 210 english traits. stock. and, in england, it has deteriorated. the university is a decided presumption in any man's favor. and so eminent are the members that a glance at the calendars will show that in all the world one cannot be in better company than on the books of one of the larger oxford or cam. bridge colleges.” * these seminaries are finishing schools for the upper classes, and not for the poor. the useful is exploded. the definition of a public school is “ a school which excludes all that could fit a man for standing behind a counter." + no doubt, the foundations have been perverted. oxford, which equals in wealth several of the smaller european states, shuts up the lectureships which were made “ public for all men thereunto to have concourse ; ” mis-spends the revenues bestowed for such youths “ as should be most meet for towardness, poverty, and painfulness ; ” there is gross favoritism; many chairs and many fellowships are made beds of ease ; and 'tis likely that the university will know how to resist and make inoperative the terrors of parliamentary huber : history of the english universities. newman's trans lation. + seo bristed. five years in an english university. new york 1852. universities. 211 inquiry; no doubt, their learning is grown obsolete; but oxford also has its merits, and i found here also proof of the national fidelity and thoroughness. such knowledge as they prize they possess and impart. whether in course or by indirection, whether by a cramming tutor or by examiners with prizes and foundation scholarsbips, education according to the english notion of it is arrived at. i looked over the examination papers of the year 1848, for the various scholarships and fellowships, the lusby, the hertford, the dean-ireland, and the university, (copies of which were kindly given me by a greek professor,) containing the tasks which many competitors had victoriously performed, and i believed they would prove too severe tests for the candidates for a bachelor's degree in yale or harvard. and, in general, here was proof of a more searching study in the appointed directions, and the knowledge pretended to be conveyed was conveyed. cxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty very able pun, and three or four hundred welleducated rsa. the diet as i rough exercise secure a certain amount of cold norse power. a fop will fight, and, in exigen! circumstances, will play the manly parti. in pro ng these youths, i believed i saw 212 english traits. already an advantage in vigor and color and gen eral habit, over their contemporaries in the ameri can colleges. no doubt much of the power anu brilliancy of the reading-men is merely constitu tional or hygienic. with a hardier habit and resolute gymnastics, with five miles more walking, or five ounces less eating, or with a saddle and gallop of twenty miles a day, with skating and rowing-matches, the american would arrive at as robust exegesis, and cheery and hilarious tone. i should readily concede these advantages, which it would be easy to acquire, if i did not find also that they read better than we, and write better. english wealth falling on their school and university training, makes a systematic reading of the best authors, and to the end of a knowledge how the things whereof they treat really stand: whilst pamphleteer or journalist reading for an argument for a party, or reading to write, or, at all events, for some by-end imposed on them, must read meanly and fragmentarily. charles i. said, that he understood english law as well as a gentleman ought to understand it. . then they have access to books ; the rich libraries collected at every one of many thousands of houses, give an advantage not to be attained by a youth in tnis country, when one thinks how much universities. 213 more and better may be learned by a scholar, who, immediately on hearing of a book, can consult it, than by one who is on the quest, for years, and reads inferior books, because he cannot find the best. again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. the habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection. universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints. yet we all send our sons to college, and, though he be a genius, he must take his chance. the university must be retrospective. the gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity. oxford is a library, and the professors must be librarians. and i should as soon think of quarrelling with the janitor for not magnifying his office by hostile sallies into the street, like the governor of kertch or kinburn, as of quarrelling with the professors for not admiring the youag neologists who pluck the beards of euclid and aristotle, or for not attempting themselves to fill their vacant shelves as original writers. it is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if we will wait for it, will have its own turn. genius 214 english traits. exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the house of commons. it is rare, precarious, eccentric, and darkling. england is the land of mixture and surprise, and when you have settled it that the universities are moribund, out comes a poetic influence from the heart of oxford, to mould the opinions of cities, to build their houses as simply as birds their nests, to give veracity to art, and charm mankind, as an appeal to moral order always must. but besides this restorative genius, the best poetry of england of this age, in the old forms, comes from two graduates of cambridge. chapter xiii. religion. no people, at the present day, can be explained by their national religion. they do not feel responsible for it; it lies far outside of them. their loyalty to truth, and their labor and expenditure rest on real foundations, and not on a national church. and english life, it is evident, does not grow out of the athanasian creed, or the articles, or the eucharist. it is with religion as with marriage. a youth marries in haste ; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes ? •i should have much to say,' he might reply, if the question were open, but i have a wife and children, and all question is closed for me.' in the barbarous days of a nation, some cultus is formed or imported; altars are built, tithes are paid, priests ordained. the education and expenditure of the country take that direction, and when wealth, (215) 216 english traits. refinement, great men, and ties to the world, supervene, its prudent men say, why fight against fate, or lift these absurdities which are now mountainous? better find some niche or crevice in this mountain of stone which religious ages have quarried and carved, wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt any thing ridiculously and dangerously above your strength, like removing it. in seeing old castles and cathedrals, i sometimes say, as to-day, in front of dundee church tower, which is eight hundred years old, this was built by another and a better race than any that now look on it.' and, plainly, there has been great power of sentiment at work in this island, of which these buildings are the proofs: as volcanic basalts show the work of fire which has been extinguished for ages. england felt the full heat of the christianity which fermented europe, and drew, like the chemistry of fire, a firm line between barbarism and culture. the power of the religious sentiment put an end to human sacrifices, checked appetite, inspired the crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, inspired self-respect, set bounds to serfdom and slavery, founded liberty, created the religious architecture, -york, newstead, westminster, fountains abbey, ripon, beverley, and dundee,-works to which the key is lost, with the sentiment which religion. 217 created them ; inspired the english bible, the liturgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of richard of devizes. the priest translated the vulgate, and translated the sanctities of old hagiology into english virtues on english ground. it was a certain affirmative or aggressive state of the caucasian races. man awoke refreshed by the sleep of ages. the violence of the northern savages exasperated christianity into power. it lived by the love of the people. bishop wilfrid manumitted two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he found attached to the soil. the clergy obtained respite from labor for the boor on the sabbath, and on church festivals. “ the lord who compelled his boor to labor between sunset on saturday and sunset on sunday, forfeited him altogether.” the priest came out of the people, and sympathized with his class. the church was the mediator, check, and democratic principle, in europe. latimer, wicliffe, arundel, cobham, antony parsons, sir harry vane, george fox, penn, bunyan are the democrats, as well as the saints of their times. the catholic church, thrown on this toiling, serious people, has made in fourteen centuries a massive system, close fitted to the manners and genius of the country, at once domestical and stately. in the long time, it has blended with 19 218 english traits. every thing in heaven above and the earth beneath. it moves through a zodiac of feasts and fasts, names every day of the year, every town and market and headland and monument, and has coupled itself with the almanac, that no court can be held, no field ploughed, no horse shod, without some leave from the church. all maxims of prudence or shop or farm are fixed and dated by the church. hence, its strength in the agricultural districts. the distribution of land into parishes enforces a church sanction to every civil privilege ; and the gradation of the clergy, — prelates for the rich, and curates for the poor, — with the fact that a classical education has been secured to the clergyman, makes them “the link which unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual advancement of the age.” * the english church has many certificates to show, of humble effective service in humanizing the people, in cheering and refining men, feeding, healing, and educating. it has the seal of martyrs and confessors ; the noblest books; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked by the same secular merits, nothing cheap or purchasable. from this slow-grown church important reac. wordsworth. religion. 213 tions proceed; much for culture, much for giving a direction to the nation's affection and will today. the carved and pictured chapel, — its entire surface animated with image and emblem, — made the parish-church a sort of book and bible to the people's eye. then, when the saxon instinct had secured a service in the vernacular tongue, it was the tutor and university of the people. in york minster, on the day of the enthronization of the new archbishop, i heard the service of evening prayer read and chanted in the choir. it was strange to hear the pretty pastoral of the betrothal of rebecca and isaac, in the morning of the world, read with circumstantiality in york minster, on the 13th january, 1848, to the decorous english audience, just fresh from the times newspaper and their wine; and listening with all the devotion of national pride. that was binding old and new to some purpose. the reverence for the scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved. here in england every day a chapter of genesis, and a leader in the times. another part of the same service on this occabion was not insignificant. handel's coronation anthem, god save the king, was played by dr 220 english traits. camidge on the organ, with sublime effect. the minster and the music were made for each other. it was a hint of the part the church plays as a political engine. from his infancy, every englishman is accustomed to hear daily prayers for the queen, for the royal family and the parliament, by name; and this lifelong consecration of these personages cannot be without influence on his opinions. the universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical system, and their first design is to form the clergy. thus the clergy for a thousand years have been the scholars of the nation. the national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order and tradition of its church; the liturgy, ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the good company, the connection with the throne, and with history, which adorn it. and whilst it endears itself thus to men of more taste than activity, the stability of the english nation is passionately enlisted to its support, from its inextricable connection with the cause of public order, with politics and with the funds. good churches are not built by bad men ; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm some. keligion. 221 where in the society. these minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists. no church has had more learned, industrious or devoted men ; plenty of “ clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, would turn their backs on no man." * their architecture still glows with faith in immortality. heats and genial periods arrive in history, or, shall we say, plenitudes of divine presence, by which high tides are caused in the human spirit, and great virtues and talents appear, as in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of genius and piety. but the age of the wicliffes, cobhams, arundels, beckets ; of the latimers, mores, cranmers; of the taylors, leightons, herberts; of the sherlocks, and butlers, is gone. silent revolutions in opinion have made it impossible that men like these should return, or find a place in their once sacred stalls. the spirit that dwelt in this church has glided away to animate other activities; and they who come to the old shrines find apes and players rustling the old garments. the religion of england is part of good-breeding. when you see on the continent the well. * fuller. 19 * 222 english traits. dressed englishman come into his ambassador's chapel, and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, one cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman. so far is he from attaching any meaning to the words, that he believes himself to have done almost the generous thing, and that it is very condescending in him to pray to god. a great duke said, on the occasion of a victory, in the house of lords, that he thought the almighty god had not been well used by them, and that it would become their magnanimity, after so great successes, to take order that a proper acknowledge ment be made. it is the church of the gentry; but it is not the church of the poor. the operatives do not own it, and gentlemen lately testified in the house of commons that in their lives they never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church. the torpidity on the side of religion of the vigor ous english understanding, shows how much wit and folly can agree in one brain. their religion is a quotation; their church is a doll; and any examination is interdicted with screams of terror. in good company, you expect them to laugh at the fanaticism of the vulgar; but they do not: they are the vulgar. religion. 228 the english, in common perhaps with christen. dom in the nineteenth century, do not respect power, but only performance; value ideas only for an economic result. wellington esteems a saint only as far as he can be an army chaplain :-“mr. briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good sense, got the better of methodism, which had appeared among the soldiers, and once among the officers.” they value a philosopher as they value an apothecary who brings bark or a drench; and inspiration is only some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical aid. i suspect that there is in an englishman's brain a valve that can be closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off steam. the most sensible and wellinformed men possess the power of thinking just so far as the bishop in religious matters, and as the chancellor of the exchequer in politics. they talk with courage and logic, and show you magnificent results, but the same men who have brought free trade or geology to their present standing, look grave and lofty, and shut down their valve, as soon as the conversation approaches the english church. after that, you talk with a box-turtle. the action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit of the place, is directed more on producing an english gentleman, than a saint or a psychologist. it ripens a bishop, and 224 english traits. extrudes a philosopher. i do not know that there is more cabalism in the anglican, than in other churches, but the anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. they say, here, that, if you talk with a clergyman, you are sure to find him well-bred, informed, and candid. he entertains your thought or your project with sympathy and praise. but if a second clergyman come in, the sympathy is at an end : two together are inaccessible to your thought, and, whenever it comes to action, the clergyman invariably sides with his church. the anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms, by the manly grace of its clergy. the gospel it preaches, is, · by taste are ye saved. it keeps the old structures in repair, spends a world of money in music and building; and in buying pugin, and architectural literature. it has a general good name for amenity and mildness. it is not in ordinary a persecuting church ; it is not inquisitorial, not even inquisitive, is perfectly well-bred, and can shut its eyes on all proper occasions. if you let it alone, it will let you alone. but its instinct is hostile to all change in politics, literature, or social arts. the church has not been the founder of the london university, of the mechanics’ institutes, of the free school, or religion. 223 whatever aims at diffusion of knowledge. the platonists of oxford are as bitter against this heresy, as thomas taylor. the doctrine of the old testament is the religion of england. the first leaf of the new testament it does not open. it believes in a providence which does not treat with levity a pound sterling. they are neither transcendentalists nor christians. they put up no socratic prayer, much less any saintly prayer for the queen’s mind; ask neither for light nor right, but say bluntly, “ grant her in health and wealth long to live.” and one traces this jewish prayer in all english private history, from the prayers of king richard, in richard of devizes' chronicle, to those in the diaries of sir samuel romilly, and of haydon the painter “ abroad with my wife," writes pepys piously, “ the first time that ever i rode in my own coach ; which do make my heart rejoice and praise god, and pray him to bless it to me, and continue it.” the bill for the naturalization of the jews (in 1753) was resisted by petitions from all parts of the kingdom, and by petition from the city of london, reprobating this bill, as “tending extremely to the dishonor of the christian religion, and extremely injurious to the interests and commerce of the kingdom in general, and of the city of london in particular.” 226 english traits.. but they have not been able to congeal humanity by act of parliament. “ the heavens journey still and sojourn not,” and arts, wars, discoveries, and opinion, go onward at their own pace. the new age has new desires, new enemies, new trades, new charities, and reads the scriptures with new eyes. the chatter of french politics, the steam-whistle, the hum of the mill, and the noise of embarking emigrants, had quite put most of the old legends out of mind ; so that when you came to read the liturgy to a modern congregation, it was almost absurd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of old costumes. no chemist has prospered in the attempt to crystallize a religion. it is endogenous, like the skin, and other vital organs. a new statement every day. the prophet and apostle knew this, and the nonconformist confutes the conformists, by qurting the texts they must allow. it is the condition of a religion, to require religion for its expositor. prophet and apostle can only be rightly understood by prophet and apostle. the statesman knows that the religious element will not fail, any more than the supply of fibrine and chyle ; but it is in its nature constructive, and will organize surh a church as it wants. the wise legislator will spend on temples, schools, libraries, colleges religion. 227 but will shun the enriching of priests. if, in any manner, he can leave the election and paying of the priest to the people, he will do well. like the quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of priests, and create opportunity and expectation in the society, to run to meet natural endowment, in this kind. but, when wealth accrues to a chaplaincy, a bishopric, or rectorship, it requires moneyed men for its stewards, who will give it another direction than to the mystics of their day. of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed. the class certain to be excluded from all preferment are the religious, – and driven to other churches ; — which is nature's vis medicatrix. the curates are ill paid, and the prelates are overpaid. this abuse draws into the church the children of the nobility, and other unfit persons, who have a taste for expense. thus a bishop is unly a surpliced merchant. through his lawn, i can see the bright buttons of the shopman's coat glitter. a wealth like that of durham makes almost a premium on felony. brougham, in a speech in the house of commons on the irish elective franchise, said, “ hiw will the reverend bishops of the other house be able to express their due ab228 english traits. horrence of the crimr of perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of god, that when they are called upon to accept a living, perhaps of £4000 a year, at that very instant, they are moved by the holy ghost to accept the office and administration thereof, and for no other reason whatever?” the modes of initiation are more damaging than custom-house oaths. the bishop is elected by the dean and prebends of the cathedral. the queen sends these gentlemen a congé d'élire, or leave to elect ; but also sends them the name of the person whom they are to elect. they go into the cathedral, chant and pray, and beseech the holy ghost to assist them in their choice ; and, after these invocations, invariably find that the dictates of the holy ghost agree with the recommendations of the queen. but you must pay for conformity. all goes well as long as you run with conformists. but you, who are honest man in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits. besides, this succumbing has grave penalties. if you take in a lie, you must take in all that belongs to it. england accepts this ornamented national church, to false godt his point also here a man w/ religion. 229 and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the voice a sterturous clang, and clouds the understanding of the receivers. the english church, undermined by german criticism, had nothing left but tradition, and was led logically back to romanism. but that was an element which only hot heads could breathe : in view of the educated class, generally, it was not a fact to front the sun ; and the alienation of such men from the church became complete. nature, to be sure, had her remedy. religious persons are driven out of the established church into sects, which instantly rise to credit, and hold the establishment in check. nature has sharper remedies, also. the english, abhorring change in all things, abhorring it most in matters of religion, cling to the last rag of form, and are dreadfully given to cant. the english, (and i wish it were confined to them, but ’tis a taint in the anglosaxon blood in both hemispheres,) the english and the americans cant beyond all other nations. the french relinquish all that industry to them. what is so odious as the polite bows to god, in our books and newspapers ? the popular press is flagitious in the exact measure of its sanctimony, and the religion of the day is a theatrical sinai, where the thunders are supplied by the property. 20 230 english traits. man. the fanaticism and hypocrisy create satire. punch finds an inexhaustible material. dickens writes novels on exeter-hall humanity. thack. eray exposes the heartless high life. nature revenges herself more summarily by the heathenism of the lower classes. lord shaftesbury calls the poor thieves together, and reads sermons to them, and they call it gas.' george borrow summons the gypsies to hear his discourse on the hebrews in egypt, and reads to them the apostles' creed in rommany. “when i had concluded,” he says, “i looked around me. the features of the assembly were twisted, and the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful squint: not an individual present but squinted ; the genteel pepa, the goodhumored chicharona, the cosdami, all squinted : the gypsy jockey squinted worst of all.” the church at this moment is much to be pitied. she has nothing left but possession. if a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman, and reads fatal interrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine with him. false position introduces cant, perjury, simony, and ever a lower class of mind and character into the clergy: and, when the hierarchy is afraid of science and education, afraid of piety, afraid of tradition, and afraid of theology, there is nothing left but to quit a church which is no longer one. religion. 23) but the religion of england, is it the established church? no; is it the sects? no; they are only perpetuations of some private man's dissent, and are to the established church as cabs are to a coach, cheaper and more convenient, but really the same thing. where dwells the religion ? tell me first where dwells electricity, or motior, or thought or gesture. they do not dwell or stay at all. electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like london monument, or the tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the english do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular ; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret, which perplexes them, and puts them out. yet, if religion be the doing of all good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, souffrir de tout le monde et ne faire souffrir personne, that divine secret has existed in england from the days of alfred to those of romilly, of clarkson, and of florence nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame. chapter xiv. literature a strong common sense, which it is not easy to unseat or disturb, marks the english mind for a thousand years : a rude strength newly applied to thought, as of sailors and soldiers who had lately learned to read. they have no fancy, and never are surprised into a covert or witty word, such as pleased the athenians and italians, and was convertible into a fable not long after ; but they delight in strong earthy expression, not mistakable, coarsely true to the human body, and, though spoken among princes, equally fit and welcome to the mob. this homeliness, veracity, and plain style, appear in the earliest extant works, and in the latest. it imports into songs and ballads the smell of the earth, the breath of cattle, and, like a dutch painter, seeks a household charm, though by pails and pans. they ask their constitutional utility in verse. the kail and herrings are never out of sight. the poet nimbly recovers hiniself from every (232) literature. 233 sally of the imagination. the english 'muse loves the farmyard, the lane, and market. she says, with de stael, “ i tramp in the mire with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me into the clouds." for, the englishman has accurate perceptions ; takes hold of things by the right end, and there is no slipperiness in his grasp. he loves the axe, the spade, the oar, the gun, the steampipe : he lias built the engine he uses. he is materialist, economical, mercantile. he must be treated with sincerity and reality, with muffins, and not the promise of muffins ; and prefers his hot chop, with perfect security and convenience in the eating of it, cu the chances of the amplest and frenchiest bill of fare, engraved on embossed paper. when he is intellectual, and a poet or a philosopher, he carries the same hard truth and the same keen machinery into the mental sphere. his mind must stand on a fact. he will not be baffled, or catch at clouds, but the mind must have a symbol palpable and resisting. what he relishes in dante, is the vice-like tenacity with which he holds a mental image before che eyes, as if it were a scutcheon painted on a skield. byron “liked something craggy to break his mira upon” a tast.e for plain strong speech, what is called a bibiical style, marks the english. it is in dired, and 20 * 234 english traits. the saxon chronicle, and in the sagas of the northmen. latimer was homely. hobbes was perfect in the “noble vulgar speech.” donne, bunyan, milton, taylor, evelyn, pepys, hooker, cotton, and the translators, wrote it. how realistit: or materialistic in treatment of his subject, is swift. he describes his fictitious persons, as if for the police. defoe has no insecurity or choice. hudibras has the same hard mentality, — keeping the truth at once to the senses, and to the intellect. it is not less seen in poetry. chaucer's hard painting of his canterbury pilgrims satisfies the senses. shakspeare, spenser, and milton, in their loftiest ascents, have this national grip and exactitude of mind. this mental materialism makes the value of english transcendental genius ; in these writers, and in herbert, henry more, donne, and sir thomas browne. the saxon materialism and narrowness, exalted into the sphere of intellect, makes the very genius of shakspeare and milton. when it reaches the pure element, it treads the clouds as securely as the adamant. even in its elevations, materialistic, its poetry is common sense inspired ; or iron raised to white heat. the marriage of the two qualities is in their speech. it is a tacit rule of the language to make the frame or skeleton, of saxon words, and, when literature. 235 elevation or ornament is sought, to interweave roman ; but sparingly; nor is a sentence made of roman words alone, without loss of strength. the children and laborers use the saxon unmixed. the latin unmixed is abandoned to the colleges and parliament. mixture is a secret of the eng. lish island; and, in their dialect, the male principle is the saxon ; the female, the latin ; and they are combined in every discourse. a good writer, if he has indulged in a roman roundness, makes haste to chasten and nerve his period by english monosyllables. when the gothic nations came into europe, they found it lighted with the sun and moon of hebrew and of greek genius. the tablets of their brain, long kept in the dark, were finely sensible to the double glory. to the images from this twin source (of christianity and art), the mind became fruitful as by the incubation of the holy ghost. the english mind flowered in every faculty. the common-sense was surprised and inspired. for two centuries, england was philosophic, religious, poetic. the mental furniture seemed of larger scale ; the memory capacious like the storehouse of the rains; the ardor and endurance of study; the boldness and facility of their mental construction ; their fancy, and imagination, and 236 english traits. easy spanning of vast distances of thought ; the enterprise or accosting of new subjects ; and, generally, the easy exertion of power, astonish, like the legendary feats of guy of warwick. the union of saxon precision and oriental soaring, of which shakspeare is the perfect example, is shared in less degree by the writers of two centuries. i find not only the great masters out of all rivalry and reach, but the whole writing of the time charged with a masculine force and freedom. there is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigor, and closeness to the matter in hand, even in the second and third class of writers ; and, i think, in the common style of the people, as one finds it in the citation of wills, letters, and public documents, in proverbs, and forms of speech. the more hearty and sturdy expression may indicate that the savageness of the norseman was not all gone. their dynamic brains hurled off their words, as the revolving stone hurls off scraps of grit. i could cite from the seventeenth century sentences and phrases of edge not to be matched in the nineteenth. their poets by simple torce of mind equalized themselves with the accumulated science of ours. the country gentlemen had a posset or drink they called october ; and the poets, as if by this hint, knew how to distil the whole season into their literature. 237 autumnal verses: and, as nature, to pique the more, sometimes works up deformities into beauty, in some rare aspasia, or cleopatra ; and, as the greek art wrought many a vase or column, in which too long, or too lithe, or nodes, or pits and flaws, are made a beauty of; so these were so quick and vital, that they could charm and enrich by mean and vulgar objects. a man must think that age well taught and thoughtful, by which masques and poems, like those of ben jonson, full of heroic sentiment in a manly style, were received with favor. the unique fact in literary history, the unsurprised reception of shakspeare ; — the reception proved by his making his fortune ; and the apathy proved by the absence of all contemporary panegyric, — seems to demonstrate an elevation in the mind of the people. judge of the splendor of a nation, by the insignificance of great individuals in it. the manner in which they learned greek and latin, before our modern facilities were yet ready, without dictionaries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures of a professor, followed by their own searchings, required a more robust memory, and coöperation of all the faculties ; and their scholars, camden, usher, selden, mede, gataker, hooker, taylor, burton, bentley, brian walton, acquired the solidity and method of engineers. 238 english traits. the influence of plato tinges the british genius their minds loved analogy; were cognisant of: resemblances, and climbers on the staircase of unity 'tis a very old strife between those who elect to see identity, and those who elect to see discrepances; and it renews itself in britain. the poets, of course, are of one part; the men of the world, of the other. but britain had many disciples of plato; more, hooker, bacon, sidney, lord brooke, herbert, browie, donne, spenser, chapman, milton, crashaw, norris, cudworth, berkeley, jeremy taylor. lord bacon has the english duality. his centuries of observations, on useful science, and his experiments, i suppose, were worth nothing. one hint of franklin, or watt, or dalton, or davy, or any one who had a talent for experiment, was worth all his lifetime of exquisite trifles. but he drinks of a diviner stream, and marks the influx of idealism into england. where that goes, is poetry, health, and progress. the rules of its genesis or its diffusion are not known. that knowledge, if we had it, would supersede all that we call science of the mind. it seems an affair of race, or of meta-chemistry ;the vital point being, how far the sense of unity, or instinct of seeking resemblances, predominated. for, wherever the literature. 239 mind takes a step, it is, to put itself at one with a larger class, discerned beyond the lesser class with which it has been conversant. hence, all poetry, and all affirmative action comes. bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the analogists, of the idealists, or (as we popularly say, naming from the best example) platonists. whoever discredits analogy, and requires heaps of facts, before any theories can be attempted, has no poetic power, and nothing original or beautiful will be produced by him. locke is as surely the influx of decomposition and of prose, as bacon and the platonists, of growth. the platonic is the poetic tendency; the so-called scientific is the negative and poisonous. 'tis quite certain, that spenser, burns, byron, and wordsworth will be platonists ; and that the dull men will be lockists. then politics and commerce will absorb from the educated class men of talents without genius, precisely because such have no resistance. bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, required in his map of the mind, first of all, universality, or prima philosophia, the receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of philosophy, but are more common, and of a higher stage. he held this element essential: it 240 english traits. is never out of mind : he never spares rebukes for such as neglect it; believing that no perfect discovery can be made in a flat or level, but you must ascend to a higher science. “if any man thinket'ı philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied, and this i take to be a great cause that has hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage.” he explained himself by giving various quaint examples of the summary or common laws, of which each science has its own illustration. he complains, that “he finds this part of learning very deficient, the profounder sort of wits drawing a bucket now and then for their own use, but the spring-head unvisited. this was the dry light which did scorch and offend most men's watery natures.” plato had signified the same sense, when he said, “ all the great arts require a subtle and speculative research into the law of nature, since loftiness of thought and perfect mastery over every subject seem to be derived from some such source as this. this pericles had, in addition to a great natural genius. for, meeting with anaxagoras, who was a person of this kind, he attached himself to him, and nourished himself with sublime speculations on literature. 241 the absoluto intelligence; and imported thence into the oratorical art, whatever could be useful to it.” a few generalizations always circulate in the world, whose authors we do not rightly know, which astonish, and appear to be avenues to vast kingdoms of thought, and these are in the world constans, like the copernican and newtonian theories in physics. in england, these may be traced usually to shakspeare, bacon, milton, or hooker, even to van helmont and behmen, and do all have a kind of filial retrospect to plato and the greeks. of this kind is lord bacon's sentence, that “nature is commanded by obeying her ;” his doctrine of poetry, which “ accommodates the shows of things to the desires of the mind,” or the zoroastrian definition of poetry, mystical, yet exact, “ apparent pictures of unapparent natures ;” spenser's creed, that “soul is form, and doth the body make;" the theory of berkeley, that we have no certain assurance of the existence of matter; doctor samuel clarke's argument for theism from the nature of space and time ; harrington's political rule, that power must rest on land, a rule which requires to be liberally interpreted ; the theory of swedenborg, so cosmically applied by him, that the man nakes his heaven and hell ; hegel's study of 21 242 english traits. civil history, as the conflict of ideas and the victory of the deeper thought; the identity-philosophy of schelling, couched in the statement that “ all difference is quantitative.” so the very announcement of the theory of gravitation, of kepler's three harmonic laws, and even of dalton's doctrine of definite proportions, finds a sudden response in the mind, which remains a superior evidence to empirical demonstrations. i cite these generalizations, some of which are more recent, merely to indicate a class. not these particulars, but the mental plane or the atmosphere from which they emanate, was the home and element of the writers and readers in what we loosely call the elizabethan age, (say, in literary history, the period from 1575 to 1625,) yet a period almost short enough to justify ben jonson's remark on lord bacon; “about his time, and within his view, were born all the wits that could honor a nation, or help study.” such richness of genius had not existed more than once before. these heights could not be maintained. as we find stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils, and have received traditions of their ancient fertility to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed races became effete. so it fared with english genius. literature. 243 these heights were followed by a meanness, and a descent of the mind into lower levels ; the loss of wings; no high speculation. locke, to whom the meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and his “ understanding " the measure, in all nations, of the english intellect. his coun. trymen forsook the lofty sides of parnassus, on which they had once walked with echoing steps, and disused the studies once so beloved ; the powers of thought fell into neglect. the later english want the faculty of plato and aristotle, of grouping men in natural classes by an insight of general laws, so deep, that the rule is deduced with equal precision from few subjects or from one, as from multitudes of lives. shakspeare is supreme in that, as in all the great mental energies. the germans generalize : the english cannot interpret the german mind. german science comprehends the english. the absence of the faculty in england is shown by the timidity which accumulates mountains of facts, as a bad general wants myriads of men and miles of redoubts, to compensate the inspirations of courage and conduct. the english shrink from a generalization. “i'hey do not look abroad into universality, or they draw only a bucket-full at the fountain of the first phi. losor hy for their occasion, and do not go to the 244 english traits. spring-head.” bacon, who said this, is almost unique among his countrymen in that faculty, at least among the prose-writers. milton, who was the stair or high table-land to let down the english genius from the summits of shakspeare, used this privilege sometimes in poetry, more rarely in prose. for a long interval afterwards, it is not found. burke was addicted to generalizing, but his was a shorter line ; as his thoughts have less depth, they have less compass. hume's abstractions are not deep or wise. he owes his fame to one keen observation, that no copula had been detected between any cause and effect, either in physics or in thought ; that the term cause and effect was loosely or gratuitously applied to what we know only as consecutive, not at all as causal. doctor johnson's written abstractions have little value: the tone of feeling in them makes their chief worth. mr. hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has written the history of european literature for three centuries, – a performance of great ambition, inasmuch as a judgment was to be attempted on every book. but his eye does not reach to the ideal standards: the verdicts are all dated from london : all new thought must be cast into the old moulds. the expansive element which creates literature is literature. 245 steadily denied. plato is resisted, and his school. hallam is uniformly polite, but with deficient sympathy ; writes with resolute generosity, but is unconscious of the deep worth which lies in the mystics, and which often outvalues as a seed of power and a source of revolution all the correct writers and shining reputations of their day. he passes in silence, or dismisses with a kind of contempt, the profounder masters: a lover of ideas is not only uncongenial, but unintelligible. hallam inspires respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by his manifest love of good books, and he lifts himself to own better than almost any the greatness of shakspeare, and better than johnson he appreciates milton. but in hallam, or in the firmer intellectual nerve of mackintosh, one still finds the same type of english genius. it is wise and rich, but it lives on its capital. it is retrospective. how can it discern and hail the new forms that are looming up on the horizon, — new and gigantic thoughts which cannot dress themselves out of any old wardrobe of the past ? the essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day have the like municipal limits. dickens, with preternatural apprehension of the language of manbers, and the varieties of street life, with pathos and laughter, with patriotic and still en larging 21 # 246 english traits. generosity, writes london tracts. he is a painter of english details, like hogarth ; local and temporary in his tints and style, and local in his aims. bulwer, an industrious writer, with occasional abil. ity, is distinguished for his reverence of intellect as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly ainbition of the student. his romances tend to fan these low flames. their novelists despair of the heart. thackeray finds that god has made no allowance for the poor thing in his universe ; more's the pity, he thinks ;but 'tis not for us to be wiser : we must renounce ideals, and accept london. the brilliant macaulay, who expresses the tone of the english governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches, that good means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity; that the glory of modern philosophy is its direction on “ fruit ;” to yield economical inventions; and that its merit is to avoid ideas, and avoid morals he thinks it the distinctive merit of the baconian philosophy, in its triumph over the old platonic, its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-fair and all-good, and pinning it down to the making a better sick chair and a better wine-whey for an invalid ; this not ironically, but in good faith ; — that, “ solid advantage,” as he calls it, meaning literature. 247 always sensual benefit, is the only good. the eminent benefit of astronomy is the better navigation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring home their lemons and wine to the london grocer. it was a curious result, in which the civility and religion of england for a thousand years, ends, in denying morals, and reducing the intellect to a sauce-pan. the critic hides his skepticism under the english cant of practical. to convince the reason, to touch the conscience, is romantic pretension. the fine arts fall to the ground. beauty, except as luxurious commodity, does not exist. it is very certain, i may say in passing, that if lord bacon had been only the sensualist his critic pretends, he would never have acquired the fame which now entities him to this patronage. it is because he had imagination, the leisures of the spirit, and basked in an element of contemplation out of all modern english atmospheric gauges, that he is impressive to the imaginations of men, and has become a potentate not to be ignored. sir david brewster sees the high place of bacon, without finding newton indebted to him, and .hinks it a mistake. bacon occupies it by specinc gravity or levity, not by any feat he did, or by any tutoring more or less of newton &c., but an effect of the 248 english traits. same cause which showed itself more pronounced afterwards in hooke, boyle, and halley. coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for ideas, with eyes looking before and after to the highest bards and sages, and who wrote and spoke the only high criticism in his time,is one of those who save england from the reproach of no longer possessing the capacity to appreciate what rarest wit the island has yielded. yet the mis. fortune of his life, his vast attempts but most inadequate performings, failing to accomplish any one masterpiece, seems to mark the closing of an era. even in him, the traditional englishman was too strong for the philosopher, and he fell into accommodations : and, as burke had striven to idealize the english state, so coleridge narrowed his mind' in the attempt to reconcile the gothic rule and dogma of the anglican church, with eternal ideas. but for coleridge, and a lurking taciturn minority, uttering itself in occasional criticism, oftener in private discourse, one would say, that in germany and in america, is the best mind in england rightly respected. it is the surest sign of national decay, when the bramins can no longer read or understand the braminical philosophy. in the decomposition and asphyxia that followed literature. 2,19 all this materialism, carlyle was driven by his disgust at the pettiness and the cant, into the preaching of fate. in comparison with all this rottenness, any check, any cleansing, though by fire, seemed desirable and beautiful. he saw little difference in the gladiators, or the “causes” for which they combated; the one comfort was, that they were all going speedily into the abyss together: and his imagination, finding no nutriment in any creation, avenged itself by celebrating the majestic beauty of the laws of decay. the necessities of mental structure force all minds into a few categories, and where impatience of the tricks of men makes nemesis amiable, and builds altars to the negative deity, the inevitable recoil is to heroism or the gallantry of the private heart, which decks its immolation with glory, in the unequal combat of will against fate. wilkinson, the editor of swedenborg, the annotator of fourier, and the champion of hahnemann, has brought to metaphysics and to physiology a native vigor, with a catholic perception of relations, equal to the highest attempts, and a rhetoric like the armory of the invincible knights of old. there is in the action of his mind a long atlantic roll not known except in deepest waters, and only lacking what ought to accompany such powers, a 250 english traits. manifest centrality. if his mind does not rest in immovable biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, and the return is not yet : but a master should inspire a confidence that he will adhere to his convictions, aud give his present studies always the same high place. it would be easy to add exceptions to the limitary tone of english thought, and much more easy to adduce examples of excellence in particular veins: and if, going out of the region of dogmil, we pass into that of general culture, there is no end to the graces and amenities, wit, sensibility and erudition, of the learned class. but the artificial succor which marks all english performance, appears in letters also: much of their æsthetic production is antiquarian and manufactured, and literary reputations have been achieved by forcible men, whose relation to literature was purely accidental, but who were driven by tastes and modes they found in vogue into their several careers. so, at this moment, every ambitious young man studies geology: so members of parliament are made, and churchmen. the bias of englishmen to practical skill has reacted on the national mind. they are incapable of an inutility, and respect the five mechanic powers even in their song. the voice of their modern literature. 251 0 muse has a slight hint of the steam-whistle, and the poem is created as an ornament and finish of their monarchy, and by no means as the bird of a new morning which forgets the past world in the full enjoyment of that which is forming. they are with difficulty ideal; they are the most conditioned men, as if, having the best conditions, they could not bring themselves to forfeit them. every one of them is a thousand years old, and lives by his memory: and when you say this, they accept it as praise. nothing comes to the book-shops but politics, travels, statistics, tabulation, and engineering, and even what is called philosophy and letters is mechanical in its structure, as if inspiration had ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, existed any more. the tone of colleges, and of scholars and of litrary society has this mortal air. i seem to walk in a marble floor, where nothing will grow. they exert every variety of talent on a lower ground, and may be said to live and act in a sub-mind. they have lost all commanding views in literature, philoscphy, and science. a good englishman shuts himself out of three fourths of his mind, and confines himself to one fourth. he has learn. ing, good sense, power of labor, and logic: but a 252 english traits. faith in the laws of the mind like that of archi. medes; a belief like that of euler and kepler, that experience must follow and not lead the laws of the mind; a devotion to the theory of politics, like that of hooker, and milton, and harrington, the modern english mind repudiates. i fear the same fault lies in their science, since they have known how to make it repulsive, and bereave nature of its charm; — though perhaps the complaint flies wider, and the vice attaches to many more than to british physicists. the eye of the naturalist must have a scope like nature itself, a susceptibility to all impressions, alive to the heart as well as to the logic of creation. but english science puts humanity to the door. it wants the connection which is the test of genius. the science is false by not being poetic. it isolates the reptile or mollusk it assumes to explain ; whilst reptile or mollusk only exists in system, in relation. the poet only sees it as an inevitable step in the path of the creator. but, in england, one hermit finds this fact, and another finds that, and lives and dies ignorant of its value. there are great exceptions, of john hunter, a man of ideas; perhaps of robert brown, the botanist; and of richard owen, who has imported into britain the ges man homologies, and enriched science with literature. 253 contributions of his own, adding sometimes the divination of the old masters to the unbroken power of labor in the english mind. but for the most part, the natural science in england is out of its loyal alliance with morals, and is as void of imagination and free play of thought, as conveyancing. it stands in strong contrast with the genius of the germans, those semi-greeks, who love analogy, and, by means of their height of view, preserve their enthusiasm, and think for europe. no hope, no sublime augury cheers the student, no secure striding from experiment onward to a foreseen law, but only a casual dipping here and there, like diggers in california “ prospecting for a placer” that will pay. a horizon of brass of the diameter of his umbrella shuts down around his senses. squalid contentment with conventions, satire at the names of philosophy and religion, parochial and shop-till politics, and idolatry of usage, betray the ebb of life and spirit. as they trample on nationalities to reproduce london and londoners in europe and asia, so they fear the hostility of ideas, of poetry, of religion, -ghosts which they cannot lay; — and, having attempted to domesticate and dress the blessed soul itself in english broadcloth and gaiters, they are tormented with fear that herein lurks a force that will sweep their 22 254 english traits. system away. the artists say, “ nature puts them out;” the scholars have become un-ideal. they parry earnest speech with banter and levity; they laugh you down, or they change the subject. “ the fact is,” say they over their wine, “all that about liberty, and so forth, is gone by; it won't do any longer.” the practical and comfortable oppress them with inexorable claims, and the smallest fraction of power remains for heroism and poetry. no poet dares murmur of beauty out of the precinct of his rhymes. no priest dares hint at a providence which does not respect english utility. the island is a roaring volcano of fate, of material values, of tariffs, and laws of repression, glutted markets and low prices. in the absence of the highest aims, of the pure love of knowledge, and the surrender to nature, there is the suppression of the imagination, the pri. apism of the senses and the understanding; we have the factitious instead of the natural; tasteless expense, arts of comfort, and the rewarding as an illustrious inventor whosoever will contrive one impediment more to interpose between the man and his objects. thus poetry is degraded, and made ornamental. pope and his school wrote poetry fit to put round frosted cake. what did walter scott write with literature. 255 out stint ? a rhymed traveller's guide to scotland. and the libraries of verses they print have this birr. ingham character. how many volumes of well-bred metre we must gingle through, before we can be filled, taught, renewed! we want the miraculous; the beauty which we can manufacture at no mill, — can give no account of; the beauty of which chaucer and chapman had the secret. the poetry of course is low and prosaic; only now and then, as in wordsworth, conscientious ; or in byron, passional; or in tennyson, factitious. but if i should count the poets who have contributed to tie bible of existing england sentences of guidance and consolation which are still glowing and effective, how few! shall i find my heavenly bread in the reigning poets? where is great design in modern english poetry? the english have lost sight of the fact that poetry exists to speak the spiritual law, and that no wealth of description or of fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the limits of prose, until this condition is reached. therefore the grave old poets, like the greek artists, heeded their designs, and less considered the finish. it was their office to lead to the divine sources, out of which all this, and much more, readily springs, and, if this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to sume purpose, and we can well afford some staidness, or hardness, or want of popular tune in the verses 256 english traits. the exceptional fact of the period is the genius of wordsworth. he had no master but nature and solitude. “he wrote a poem,” says landor, “ without the aid of war.” his verse is the voice of sanity in a worldly and ambitious age. one begrets that his temperament was not more liquid and musical. he has written longer than he was inspired. but for the rest, he has no competitor. tennyson is endowed precisely in points where wordsworth wanted. there is no finer ear, nor more command of the keys of language. color, like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil, in waves so rich that we do not miss the central form. through all his refinements, too, he has reached the public, a certificate of good sense and general power, since he who aspires to be the english poet must be as large as london, not in the same kind as london, but in his own kind. but he wants a subject, and climbs no mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people. he contents himself with describing the englishman as he is, and proposes no better. there are ali degrees in poetry, and we must be thankful for every beautiful talent. but it is only a first success, when the ear is gained. the best office of the best poets has been to show how low and un inspired was their general style, and that only once or twice they have struck the high chord. literature. 257 that expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic element, they have not. it was no oxonian, but hafiz, who said, “let us be crowned with roses, let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms." a stanza of the song of nature the oxonian has no ear for, and he does not value the salient and curative influence of intellectual action, studious of truth, without a by-end. by the law of contraries, i look for an irresisti.. ble taste for orientalism in britain. for a selfconceited modish life, made up of trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, there is no remedy like the oriental largeness. that astonishes and disconcerts english decorum. for once there is thunder it never heard, light it never saw, and power which trifles with time and space. i am not surprised, then, to find an englishman like warren hastings, who had been struck with the grand style of thinking in the indian writings, deprecating the prejudices of his countrymen, while offering them a translation of the bhagvat. “ might i, an unlettered man, venture to prescribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, i should exclude, in estimating the merit of such a produce tion, all rules drawn from the ancient or modern literature of europe, all references to such sentia 22 * 258 english traits. mencs or manners as are become the standards of propriety for opinion and action in our own modes, and, equally, all appeals to our revealed tenets of religion and moral duty."* he goes on to bespeak indulgence to “ ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste, and passages elevated to a tract of sublimity into which our habits of judgment will find it difficult to pursue them.” meantime, i know that a retrieving power lies in the english race, which seems to make any recoil possible; in other words, there is at all times a minority of profound minds existing in the nation, capable of appreciating every soaring of intellect and every hint of tendency. while the constructive talent seems dwarfed and superficial, the criticism is often in the noblest tone, and suggests the presence of the invisible gods. i can well believe what i have often heard, that there are two nations in england ; but it is not the poor and the rich; nor is it the normans and saxons; nor the celt and the goth. these are each always becoming the other; for robert owen does not exaggerate the power of circumstance. but the two complexions, or two styles of mind, — the perceptive class, and the practical finality class, -• preface to wilkins's translation of the bhagvat geeta. literature. 259 are ever in counterpoise, interacting mutually, one, in hopeless minorities; the other, in huge masses; one studious, contemplative, experimenting; the other, the ungrateful pupil, scornful of the source, whilst availing itself of the knowledge for gain ; these two nations, of genius and of animal force, though the first consist of only a dozen souls, and the second of twenty millions, forever by their discord and their accord yield the power of the english state. chapter xv. the “times.” the power of the newspaper is familiar in america, and in accordance with our political system. in england, it stands in antagonism with the feudal institutions, and it is all the more beneficent succor against the secretive tendencies of a monarchy. the celebrated lord somers “ knew of no good law proposed and passed in his time, to which the public papers had not directed his attention.”. there is no corner and no night. a relentless inquisition drags every secret to the day, turns the glare of this solar microscope on every malfaisance, so as to make the public a more terrible spy than any foreigner; and no weakness can be taken advantage of by an enemy, since the whole people are already forewarned. thus england rids herself of those incrustations which have been the ruin of old states. of course, this inspection is feared. no antique privilege, no comfortable monopoly, but sees surely that its days (260) the "times.” 261 are counted ; the people are familiarized with the reason of reform, and, one by one, take away every argument of the obstructives. “so your grace likes the comfort of reading the newspapers,” said lord mansfield to the duke of northumberland; “ mark my words ; you and i shall not live to see it, but this young gentlenian (lord eldon) may, or it may be a little later ; but a little sooner or later, these newspapers will most assuredly write the dukes of northumberland out of their titles and possessions, and the country out of its king." the tendency in england towards social and political institutions like those of america, is inevitable, and the ability of its journals is the driving force. england is full of manly, clever, well-bred men who possess the talent of writing off-hand pungent paragraphs, expressing with clearness and courage their opinion on any person or performance. valuable or not, it is a skill that is rarely found, out of the english journals. the english do this, as they write poetry, as they ride and box, by being educated to it. hundreds of clever praeds, and freres, and froudes, and hoods, and hooks, and maginns, and mills, and macaulays, make poems, or short essays for a journal, as they make speeches in parliament and on the hustings, or, as they shoot and 262 english traits. ride. it is a quite accidental and arbitrary direc. tion of their general ability. rude health and spirits, an oxford education, and the habits of society are implied, but not a ray of genius. it comes of the crowded state of the professions, the violent interest which all men take in politics, the facility of experimenting in the journals, and high pay. the most conspicuous result of this talent is the “ times” newspaper. no power in england is more felt, more feared, or more obeyed. what you read in the morning in that journal, you shall hear in the evening in all society. it has ears every where, and its information is earliest, completest, and surest. it has risen, year by year, and victory by victory, to its present authority. i asked one of its old contributors, whether it had once been abler than it is now ? « never,” he said ; “ these are its palmiest days.” it has shown those qualities which are dear to englishmen, unflinching adherence to its objects, prodigal intellectual ability, and a towering assurance, backed by the perfect organization in its printing-house, and its world-wide net-work of correspondence and rec ports. it has its own history and famous trophies. in 1820, it adopted the cause of queen caroline, and carried it against the king. it adopted a noor. the "times.” 263 law system, and almost alone lifted it through. when lord brougham was in power, it decided against him, and pulled him down. it declared war against ireland, and conquered it. it adopted the league against the corn laws, and, when cobden had begun to despair, it announced his triumph. it denounced and discredited the french republic of 1848, and checked every sympathy with it in england, until it had enrolled 200,000 special constables to watch the chartists, and make them ridiculous on the 10th april. it first desiounced and then adopted the new french empire, and urged the french alliance and its results. it has entered into each municipal, literary, and social question, almost with a controlling voice. it has done bold and seasonable service ic exposing frauds which threatened the commercial community. meantime, it attacks its rivals by perfecting its printing machinery, and will drive them out of circulation : for the only limit to the circulation of the “ times” is the impossibility of printing copies fast enough ; since a daily paper can only be new and seasonable for a few hours. it will kill all but that paper which is diametrically in opposition; since many papers, first and last, have lived by their attacks on the leading journal. the late mr. walter was printer of the “ times," 264 english traits. and had gradually arranged the whole materiel of it in perfect system. it is told, that when he demanded a small share in the proprietary, and was refused, he said, “ as you please, gentlemen ; and you may take away the times' from this office when you will; i shall publish the new times,' next monday morning.” the proprietors who had already complained that his charges for printing were excessive, found that they were in his power, and gave him whatever he wished. i went one day with a good friend to the “ times" office, which was entered through a pretty gardenyard, in printing-house square. we walked with some circumspection, as if we were entering a powder-mill; but the door was opened by a mild old woman, and, by dint of some transmission of cards, we were at last conducted into the parlor of mr. morris, a very gentle person, with no hostile appearances. the statistics are now quite out of date, but i remember he told us that the daily printing was then 35,000 copies ; that on the 1st march, 1848, the greatest number ever printed, 54,000 were issued; that, since february, the daily circulation had increased by 8000 copies. the old press they were then using printed five or six thousand sheets per hour; the new machine, for which they were then building an engine, the “times." 265 would print twelve thousand per hour. our entertainer confided us to a courteous assistant to show us the establishment, in which, i think, they employed a hundred and twenty men. i remember, i saw the reporters' room, in which they redact their hasty stenographs, but the editor's room, and who is in it, i did not see, though i shared the curiosity of mankind respecting it. the staff of the “ times” has always been made up of able men. old walter, sterling, bacon, barnes, alsiger, horace twiss, jones loyd, john oxenford, mr. mosely, mr. bailey, have contributed to its renown in their special departments. but it has never wanted the first pens for occasional assistance. its private information is inexplicable, and recalls the stories of fouché's police, whose omniscience made it believed that the empress josephine must be in his pay. it has mercantile and political correspondents in every foreign city ; and its expresses outrun the despatches of the government. one hears anecdotes of the rise of its servants, as of the functionaries of the india house i was told of the dexterity of one of its reporters, who, finding himself, on one occasion, where the magistrates had strictly forbidden reporters, put his hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in one hand, and tablet in the other, did his work 23 266 english traits. the influence of this journal is a recognized power in europe, and, of course, none is more conscious of it than its conductors. the tone of its articles has often been the occasion of comment from the official organs of the continental courts, and sometimes the ground of diplomatic complaint. what would the “ times” say ? is a terror in paris, in berlin, in vienna, in copenhagen, and in ne. paul. its consummate discretion and success exhibit the english skill of combination. the daily paper is the work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, of young men recently from the university, and perhaps reading law in chambers in london. hence the academic elegance, and classic allusion, which adorn its columns. hence, too, the heat and gallantry of its onset. but the steadiness of the aimn suggests the belief that this fire is directed and fed by older engineers; as if persons of exact information, and with settled views of policy, supplied the writers with the basis of fact, and the object to be attained, and availed themselves of their younger energy and eloquence to plead the cause. both the council and the executive departments gain by this division. of two men of equal ability, the one who does not write, but keeps his eye on the course of public affairs, will have the higher judicial wisdom. but the parts are kept in concert; the “ times.” 267 all the articles appear to proceed from a single will. the “ times” never disapproves of what itself has said, or cripples itself by apology for the absence of the editor, or the indiscretion of him who held the pen. it speaks out bluff and bold, and sticks to what it says. it draws from any number of learned and skilful contributors; but a more learned and skilful person supervises, corrects, and coördinates. of this closet, the secret does not transpire. no writer is suffered to claim the authorship of any paper; every thing good, from whatever quarter, comes out editorially; and thus, by making the paper every thing, and those who write it nothing, the character and the awe of the journal gain. the english like it for its complete information. a statement of fact in the “ times” is as reliable as a citation from hansard. then, they like its independence; they do not know, when they take it up, what their paper is going to say: but, above all, for the nationality and confidence of its tone. it thinks for them all; it is their understanding and day's ideal daguerreotyped. when i see them reading its columns, they seem to me becoming. every moment more british. it has the national courage, not rash and petulant, but considerate and determined no dignity or wealth is a shield from its assault. it attacks a duke as readily as a police 268 english traits. man, and with the most provoking airs of condescension. it makes rude work with the board of admiralty. the bench of bishops is still less safe. one bishop fares badly for his rapacity, and another for his bigotry, and a third for his courtliness. it addresses occasionally a hint to majesty itself, and sometimes a hint which is taken. there is an air of freedom even in their advertising columns, which speaks well for england to a foreigner. on the days when i arrived in london in 1847, i read among the daily announcements, one offering a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would put a nobleman, described by name and title, late a member of parliament, into any county jail in england, he having been convicted of obtaining money under false pretences. was never such arrogancy as the tone of this paper. every slip of an oxonian or cantabrigian who writes his first leader, assumes that we subdued the earth before we sat down to write this particular “ times.” one would think, the world was on its knees to the “ times" office, for its daily breakfast. but this arrogance is calculated. who would care for it, if it “ surmised,” or “ dared to confess,” or “ ventured to predict,” &c no; it is 30, and so it shall be. the morality and patriotism of the “ times the “ times." 269 claims only to be representative, and by no means ideal. it gives the argument, not of the majority; lut of the commanding class. its editors know better than to defend russia, or austria, or eng. lish vested rights, on abstract grounds. but they give a voice to the class who, at the moment, take the lead; and they have an instinct for finding where the power now lies, which is eternally shift ing its banks. sympathizing with, and speaking for the class that rules the hour, yet, being apprised of every ground-swell, every chartist resolution, every church squabble, every strike in the mills, they detect the first tremblings of change. they watch the hard and bitter struggles of the authors of each liberal movement, year by year, — watching them only to taunt and obstruct them,until, at last, when they see that these have established their fact, that power is on the point of passing to them, — they strike in, with the voice of a mon arch, astonish those whom they succor, as much as those whom they desert, and make victory sure. of course, the aspirants see that the “ times” is one of the goods of fortune, not to be won but by winning their cause. “ punch" is equally an expression of english good sense, as the “ london times.” it is the comic version of the same sense. many of its caricaturas 23 * 270 english traits. are equal to the best pamphlets, and will convey o the eye in an instant the popular view which was taken of each turn of public affairs. its sketches are usually made by masterly hands, and sometimes with genius ; the delight of every class, because uniformly guided by that taste which is tyrannical in england. it is a new trait of the nineteenth century, that the wit and humor of england, as in punch, so in the humorists, jer. rold, dickens, thackeray, hood, have taken the direction of humanity and freedom. the “times,” like every important institution, shows the way to a better. it is a living index of the colossal british power. its existence honors the people who dare to print all they know, dare to know all the facts, and do not wish to be flattered by hiding the extent of the public disaster. there is always safety in valor. i wish i could add, that this journal aspired to deserve the power it wields, by guidance of the public sentiment to the right. it is usually pretended, in parliament and elsewhere, that the english press has a high tone,which it has not. it has an imperial tone, as of a powerful and independent nation. but as with other empires, its tone is prone to be official, and even officinal. the “ times” shares all the limitations of the governing classes, and wishes the “times." 27 never to be in a minority. if only it dared to cleave to the right, to show the right to be the only expedient, and feed its batteries from the central heart of humanity, it might not have so many men of rank among its contributors, but genius would be its cordial and invincible ally ; it might now and then bear the brunt of formidable combinations, but no journal is ruined by wise courage. it would be the natural leader of british reform ; its proud function, that of being the voice of europe, the defender of the exile and patriot against despots, would be more effectually discharged; it would have the authority which is claimed for that dream of good men not yet come to pass, an international congress; and the least of its victories would be to give to england a new millennium of beneficent power. chapter xvi. stonehenge. it had been agreed between my friend mr c. and me, that before i left england, we should make an excursion together to stonehenge, which neither of us had seen; and the project pleased my fancy with the double attraction of the monument and the companion. it seemed a bringing together of extreme points, to visit the oldest religious monument in britain, in company with her latest thinker, and one whose influence may be traced in every contemporary book. i was glad to sum up a little my experiences, and to exchange a few reasonable words on the aspects of england, with a man on whose genius i set a very high value, and who had as much penetration, and as severe a theory of duty, as any person in it. on friday, 7th july, we took the south western railway through hampshire to salisbury, where we found a carriage to convey us to amesbury. the fine weather and my friend's local knowledge (272) stonehenge. 273 ot hampshire, in which he is wont to spend a part of every summer, made the way short. there was much to say, too, of the travelling americans, and their usual objects in london. i thought it natural, that they should give some time to works of art collected here, which they cannot find at home, and a little to scientific clubs and museums, which, at this moment, make london very attractive. but my philosopher was not contented. art and • high art' is a favorite target for his wit. “ yes, kunst is a great delusion, and goethe and schiller wasted a great deal of good time on it:” — and he thinks he discovers that old goethe found this out, and, in his later writings, changed his tone. as soon as men begin to talk of art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes of it. he wishes to go through the british museum in silence, and thinks a sincere man will see something, and say nothing. in these days, he thought, it would become an architect to consult only the grim necessity, and say, 'i can build you a coffin for such dead persons as you are, and for such dead purposes as you have, but you shall have no ornament.' for the science, he had, if possible, even less tolerance, and compared the savans of somerset house to the boy who asked confucius “how many stars in the sky ?” confucius replied, “ ho 274 english traits. minded things near him:" then said the boy “ how many hairs are there in your eyebrows ?” confucius said, “ he didn't know and didn't care." still speaking of the americans, c. complained that they dislike the coldness and exclusiveness of the english, and run away to france, and go with their countrymen, and are amused, instead of manfully staying in london, and confronting englishmen, and acquiring their culture, who really have much to teach them. i told c. that i was easily dazzled, and was accustomed to concede readily all that an englishman would ask; i saw everywhere in the country proofs of sense and spirit, and success of every sort: i like the people: they are as good as they are handsome; they have everything, and can do everything: but meantime, i surely know, that, as soon as i return to massachusetts, i shall lapse at once into the feeling, which the geography of america inevitably inspires, that we play the game with immense advantage; that there and not here is the seat and centre of the british race; and that no skill or activity can long compete with the prodigious natural advantages of that country, i he hands of the same race; and that england, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her chil. stonehenge. 275 dren. but this was a proposition which no englishman of whatever condition can easily entertain. we left the train at salisbury, and took a carriage to amesbury, passing by old sarum, a bare, treeless hill, once containing the town which sent two members to parliament, now, not a hut;and, arriving at amesbury, stopped at the george inn. after dinner, we walked to salisbury plain. on the broad downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible, nothing but stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide expanse, stonehenge and the barrows, — which rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few hayricks. on the top of a mountain, the old temple would not be more impressive. far and wide a few shepherds with their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. it looked as if the wide margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded by the veneration of the british race to the old egg out of which all their ecclesiastical structures and history had proceeded. stonehenge is a circular colonnade with a diameter of a hundred feet, and enclosing a second and a third colonnade within. we walked round the stones, and clambered over them, to wont ourselves with their strange aspect and groupings, and found a nook sheltered from the wind among them, where c. lighted his 176 english traits. cigar. it was pleasant to see, that, just this sim. plest of all simple structures, two upright stones and a lintel laid across, — had long outstood all later churches, and all history, and were like what is most permanent on the face of the planet : these, and the barrows, mere mounds, (of which there are a hundred and sixty within a circle of three miles about stonehenge,) like the same mound on the plain of troy, which still makes good to the passing mariner on hellespont, the vaunt of homer and the fame of achilles. within the enclosure, grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, goldenrod, thistle, and the carpeting grass. over us, larks were soaring and singing, -as my friend said, “the larks which were hatched last year, and the wind which was hatched many thousand years ago.” we counted and measured by paces the biggest stones, and soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the inscrutable temple. there are ninety-four stones, and there were once probably one hundred and sixty. the temple is circular, and uncovered, and the situation fixed astronomically, — the grand entrances here, and at abury, being placed exactly northeast, “ as all the gates of the old cavern temples are.” how came the stones here? for these sarsens or druidical stonehenge. 277 sandstones, are not found in this neighborhood. the sacrificial stone, as it is called, is the only one in all chese blocks, that can resist the action of fire, and as i read in the books, must have been brought one hundred and fifty miles. on almost every stone we found the marks of the mineralogist's hammer and chisel. the nineteen smaller stones of the inner circle are of granite. i, who had just come from professor sedgwick's cambridge museum of megatheria and mastodons, was ready to maintain that some cleverer elephants or mylodonta had borne off and laid these rocks one on another. only the good beasts must have known how to cut a well-wrought tenon and mortise, and to smooth the surface of some of the stones. the chief mystery is, that any mys. tery should have been allowed to settle on so remarkable a monument, in a country on which all the muses have kept their eyes now for eighteen hundred years. we are not yet too late to learn much more than is known of this structure. some diligent fellowes or layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the whole history, by that exhaustive british sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its choice of objects, which leaves its own stonehenge or choir gaur to the rabbits, whilst it opens pyramids, and uncovers nineveh. stonehenge, in 24 278 english traits. virtue of the simplicity of its plan, and its good preservation, is as if new and recent; and, a thousand years hence, men will thank this age for the accurate history it will yet eliminate. we walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh look at the uncanny stones. the old sphinx put our petty differences of nationality out of sight. to these conscious stones we two pilgrims were alike known and near. we could equally well revere their old british meaning. my philosopher was subdued and gentle. in this quiet house of destiny, he happened to say, “i plant cypresses wherever i go, and if i am in search of pain, i cannot go wrong.” the spot, the gray blocks, and their rude order, which refuses to be disposed of, suggested to him the flight of ages, and the succession of religions. the old times of england impress c. much: he reads little, he says, in these last years, but “ acta sanctorum,” the fifty-three volumes of which are in the london library. he finds all english history therein. he can see, as he reads, the old saint of iona sitting there, and writing, a man to men. the acta sanctorum show plainly that the men of those times believed in god, and in the immortality of the soul, as their abbeys and cathedrals testify : now, even the puritanism is all gone. london is pagan. he fancied stonehenge. 279 that greater men had lived in england, than any of her writers; and, in fact, about the time when those writers appeared, the last of these were already gone. . we left the mound in the twilight, with the design to return the next morning, and coming back two miles to our inn, we were met by little showers, and late as it was, men and women were out attempting to protect their spread wind-rows. the grass grows rank and dark in the showery england. at the inn, there was only milk for one cup of tea. when we called for more, the girl brought us three drops. my friend was annoyed who stood for the credit of an english inn, and still more, the next morning, by the dog-cart, sole procurable vehicle, in which we were to be sent to wilton. i engaged the local antiquary, mr. brown, to go with us to stonehenge, on our way, and show us what he knew of the “ astronomical ” and “ sacrificial ” stones. i stood on the last, and he pointed to the upright, or rather, inclined stone, called the “ astronomical,” and bade me notice that its top ranged with the sky-line. “ yes.” very well. now, at the summer solstice, the sun rises exactly over the top of that stone, and, at the dru. idical temple at abury, there is also an stronomi sal stone, in the same relative positions. 280 english traits. in the silence of tradition, this one relation to science becomes an important clue ; but we were content to leave the problem, with the rocks. was this the “giants’ dance” which merlin brought from killaraus, in ireland, to be uther pendragon's monument to the british nobles whom hengist slaughtered here, as geoffrey of monmouth relates ? or was it a roman work, as inigo jones explained to king james; or identical in design and style with the east indian temples of the sun ; as davies in the celtic researches maintains ? of all the writers, stukeley is the best. the heroic antiquary, charmed with the geometric perfections of his ruin, connects it with the oldest monuments and religion of the world, and with the courage of his tribe, does not stick to say," the deity who made the world by the scheme of stonehenge.” he finds that the cursus * on salisbury plain stretches across the downs, like a line of latitude upon the globe, and the meridian line of stone* connected with stonehenge are an avenue and a cursus. the avenue is a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 yards in a straight line from the grand entrance, then dividing into two branches, which lead, severally, to a row of barrows; and to the cursus, — an artificially formed flat tract of ground. this is half a mile northeast from stonehenge, bounded by banks and di:ches, 3036 yards long, by 110 broad. stonehenge. 281 henge passes exactly through the middle of this cursus. but here is the high point of the theory: the druids had the magnet; laid their courses by it; their cardinal points in stonehenge, ambresbury, and elsewhere, which vary a little from true east and west, followed the variations of the compass. the druids were phænicians. the name of the magnet is lapis heracleus, and hercules was the god of the phænicians. hercules, in the legend, drew his bow at the sun, and the sun-god gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean. what was this, but a compass-box? this cup or little boat, in which the magnet was made to float on water, and so show the north, was probably its first form, before it was suspended on a pin. but science was an arcanum, and, as britain was a phænician secret, so they kept their compass a secret, and it was lost with the tyrian commerce. the golden fleece, again, of jason, was the compass, – a bit of loadstone, easily supposed to be the only one in the world, and therefore naturally awakening the cupidity and ambition of the young heroes of a maritime nation to join in an expedition to obtain possession of this wise stone. hence the fable that the ship argo was loquacious and oracular. there is also some curious coincidence in the names. apollodorus makes magnes the son 24 * 282 english traits. of æolus, who married nais. on hints like these, stukeley builds again the grand colonnade into historic harmony, and computing backward by the known variations of the compass, bravely assigns the year 406 before christ, for the date of the temple. for the difficulty of handling and carrying stones of this size, the like is done in all cities, every day, with no other aid than horse power. i chanced to see a year ago men at work on the substructure of a house in bowdoin square, in boston, swinging a block of granite of the size of the largest of the stonehenge columns with an ordinary derrick. the men were common masons, with paddies to help, nor did they think they were doing anything remarkable. i suppose, there were as good men a thousand years ago. and we wonder how stonehenge was built and forgotten. after spending half an hour on the spot, we set forth in our dog-cart over the downs for wilton, c. not suppressing some threats and evil omens on the proprietors, for keeping these broad plains a wretched sheep-walk, when so many thousands of english men were hungry and wanted labor. but i heard afterwards that it is not an economy to cultivate this land, which only yields one crop on being broken up and is then spoiled. we came to wilton and to wilton hall, – tho stonehenge. 283 renowned seat of the earls of pembroke, a house known to shakspeare and massinger, the frequent home of sir philip sidney where he wrote the arcadia ; where he conversed with lord brooke, a man of deep thought, and a poet, who caused to be engraved on his tombstone, “ here lies fulke greville lord brooke, the friend of sir philip sidney.” it is now the property of the earl of pembroke, and the residence of his brother, sid.. ney herbert, esq., and is esteemed a noble specimen of the english manor-hall. my friend had a letter from mr. herbert to his housekeeper, and the house was shown. the state drawing-room is a double cube, 30 feet high, by 30 feet wide, by 60 feet long: the adjoining room is a single cube, of 30 feet every way. although these apartments and the long library were full of good family portraits, vandykes and other; and though there were some good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full of antique and modern statuary, to which c., catalogue in hand, did all too much justice, yet the eye was still drawn to the windows, to a magnificent lawn, on which grew the finest cedars in england. i had not seen more charming grounds. we went out, and walked over the estate. we crossed a bridge built by inigo jones over a stream, of which the gardener did not know 284 english traits. the name. (qu. alph ?) watched the deer ; climbed to the lonely sculptured summer house, on a hill backed by a wood; came down into the italian garden, and into a french pavilion, garnished with french busts; and so again, to the house, where we found a table laid for us with bread, meats, peaches, grapes, and wine. on leaving wilton house, we took the coach for salisbury. the cathedral, which was finished 600 years ago, has even a spruce and modern air, and its spire is the highest in england. i know not why, but i had been more struck with one of no fame at coventry, which rises 300 feet from the ground, with the lightness of a mullein-plant, and not at all implicated with the church. salisbury is now esteemed the culmination of the gothic art in england, as the buttresses are fully unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides of the pile. the interior of the cathedral is obstructed by the organ in the middle, acting like a screen. i know not why in real architecture the hunger of the eye for length of line is so rarely gratified. the rule of art is that a colonnade is more beautiful the longer it is, and that ad infinitum. and the nava of a church is seldom so long that it need be die vided by a screen. we loitered in the church, outside the choir stonehenge. 282 whilst service was said. whilst we listened to the organ, my friend remarked, the music is good, and yet not quite religious, but somewhat as if a monk were panting to some fine queen of heaven. c. was unwilling, and we did not ask to have the choir shown us, but returned to our inn, after seeing another old church of the place. we passed in the train clarendon park, but could see little but the edge of a wood, though c. had wished to pay closer attention to the birthplace of the decrees of clarendon. at bishopstoke we stopped, and found mr. h., who received us in his carriage, and took us to his house at bishops waltham. on sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy day. my friends asked, whether there were any americans ? — any with an american idea, — any theory of the right future of that country? thus challenged, i bethought myself neither of caucuses nor congress, neither of presidents nor of cabinetministers, nor of such as would make of america another europe. i thought only of the simplest and purest minds; i said, certainly yes ; — but those who hold it are fanatics of a dream which i should hardly care to relate to your english ears, to which it might be only ridiculous, — and yet it is the only true.' so i opened the dogma of nogoverrment and non-resistance, and anticipated the 286 english traits. objections and the fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. i said, it is true that i have never seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to stand for this truth, and yet it is plain to me, that no less valor than this can command my respect. i can easily see the bankruptcy of the vulgar musket-worship, though great men be musketworshippers ; — and 'tis certain, as god liveth, the gun that does not need another gun, the law of love and justice alone, can effect a clean revolution i fancied that one or two of my anecdotes made some impression on c., and i insisted, that the manifest absurdity of the view to english feasibility could make no difference to a gentleman; that as to our secure tenure of our mutton-chop and spinage in london or in boston, the soul might quote talleyrand, “ monsieur, je n'en vois pas la nécessiié.”* as i hid thus taken in the conversation the saint's part, when dinner was announced, c. refused to go out before me, " he was altogether too wicked.” i planted my back against the wall, and our host wittily rescued us from the dilemma, by saying, he was the wickedest, and would walk out first, then c. followed, and i went last. on the way to winchester, whither our host . • " mais, monseigneur, il faut que j'existe." stonehenge. 287 accompanied us in the afternoon, my friends asked many questions respecting american landscape, forests, houses, my house, for example. . it is not easy to answer these queries well. there i thought, in america, lies nature sleeping, overgrowing, almost conscious, too much by half for man in the picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, like the rank vegetation of swamps and forests seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves ; and on it man seems not able to make much impression. there, in that great sloven continent, in high alleghany pastures, in the sea-wide, skyskirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides the great mother, long since driven away from the trim hedge-rows and over-cultivated garden of england. and, in england, i am quite too sensible of this. every one is on his good behavior, and must be dressed for dinner at six. so i put off my friends with very inadequate details, as best i could. just before entering winchester, we stopped at the church of saint cross, and, after lookirg through the quaint antiquity, we demanded a piece of bread and a draught of beer, which the founder, henry de blois, in 1136, commanded should be given to every one who should ask it at the gate. we had both, from the old couple who take care 288 english traits. of the church. some twenty people, every day, they said, make the same demand. this hospitality of seven hundred years' standing did not hinder c. from pronouncing a malediction on the priest who receives £2000 a year, that were meant for the poor, and spends a pittance on this small beer and crumbs. in the cathedral, i was gratified, at least by the ample dimensions. the length of line exceeds that of any other english church; being 556 feet by 250 in breadth of transept. i think i prefer this church to all i have seen, except westminster and york. here was canute buried, and here alfred the great was crowned and buried, and here the saxon kings: and, later, in his own church, william of wykeham. it is very old : part of the crypt into which we went down and saw the saxon and norman arches of the old church on which the present stands, was built fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. sharon turner says, “ alfred was buried at winchester, in the abbey he had founded there, but his remains were removed by henry i. to the new abbey in the meadows at hyde, on the northern quarter of the city, and laid under the high altar. the build. ing was destroyed at the reformation, and what is left of alfred's body now lies covered by mod. stonehenge. 289 ern buildings, or buried in the ruins of the old." * william of wykeham's shrine tomb was unlocked for us, and c. took hold of the recumbent statue's marble hands, and patted them affectionately, for he rightly values the brave' man who built windsor, and this cathedral, and the school here, and new college at oxford. but it was growing late in the afternoon. slowly we left the old house, and parting with our host, we took the train for london. • history of the anglo-saxons, i. 690. • chapter xvii. personal in these comments on an old journey now revised after seven busy years have much changed men and things in england, i have abstained from reference to persons, except in the last chapter, and in one or two cases where the fame of the parties seemed to have given the public a property in all that concerned them. i must further allow myself a few notices, if only as an acknowledgment of debts that cannot be paid. my journeys were cheered by so much kindness from new friends, that my impression of the island is bright with agreeable memories both of public societies and of households : and, what is nowhere better found than in england, a cultivated person fitly surrounded by a happy home, “with honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,” is of all institutions the best. at the landing in liverpool, i found my manchester correspondent awaiting me, a gen tleman whose kind reception was followed by a (290) personal. 291 train of friendly and effective attentions which never rested whilst i remained in the country. a man of sense and of letters, the editor of a powerful local journal, he added to solid virtues an infinite sweetness and bonhommie. there seemed a pool of honey about his heart which lubricated all his speech and action with fine jets of mead. an equal good fortune attended many later accidents of my journey, until the sincerity of english kindness ceased to surprise. my visit fell in the fortunate days when mr. bancroft was the american minister in london, and at his house, or through his good offices, i had easy access to excellent persons and to privileged places. at the house of mr. carlyle, i met persons eminent in society and in letters. the privileges of the athenæum and of the reform clubs were hospi. tably opened to me, and i found much advantage in the circles of the “geologic,” the “ antiquarian,” and the “ royal societies.” every day in london gave me new opportunities of meeting men and women who give splendor to society. i saw rogers, hallam, macaulay, milnes, milman, barry cornwall, dickens, thackeray, tennyson, leigh hunt, d’israeli, helps, wilkinson, bailey kenyon, and forster: the younger poets, clough, arnold, and patmore ; and, among the men of 292 english traits. science, robert brown, owen, sedgwick, faraday, buckland, lyell, de la beche, hooker, carpenter, babbage, and edward forbes. it was my privilege also to converse with miss baillie, with lady morgan, with mrs. jameson, and mrs. somerville. a finer hospitality made many private houses not less known and dear. it is not in distinguished circles that wisdom and elevated characters are usually found, or, if found, not confined thereto; and my recollections of the best hours go back to private conversations in different parts of the kingdom, with persons little known. nor am i insensible to the courtesy which frankly opened to me some noble mansions, if i do not adorn my page with their names. among the privileges of london, i recall with pleasure two or three signal days, one at kew, where sir william hooker showed me all the riches of the vast botanic garden; one at the museum, where sir charles fellowes explained in detail the history of his ionic trophy-monument; and still another, on which mr. owen accompanied my countryman mr. h. and myself through the hunterian museum. the like frank hospitality, bent on real service, i found among the great and the humble, wherever i went; in birmingham, in oxford, in leicester, in nottingham, in sheffield, in manchester, in personal. 293 liverpool. at edinburgh, through the kindness of dr. samuel brown, i made the acquaintance of de quincey, of lord jeffrey, of wilson, of mrs. crowe, of the messrs. chambers, and of a man of high character and genius, the short lived painter, david scott. at ambleside in march, 1848, i was for a couple of days the guest of miss martineau, then newly returned from her egyptian tour. on sunday afternoon, i accompanied her to rydal mount. and as i have recorded a visit to wordsworth, many years before, i must not forget this second interview. we found mr. wordsworth asleep on the sofa. he was at first silent and indisposed, as an old man suddenly waked, before he had ended his nap; but soon became full of talk on the french news. he was nationally bitter on the french : bitter on scotchmen, too. no scotchman, he said, can write english. he detailed the two models, on one or the other of which all the sentences of the historian robertson are framed. nor could jeffrey, nor the edinburgh reviewers write english, nor can * * *, who is a pest to the english tongue. incidentally he added, gibbon cannot write eng. lish. the edinburgh review wrote what would tell and what would sell. it had however changed the tone of its literary criticism from the time when 25 * 294 english traits. a certain letter was written to the editor by coleridge mrs. w. had the editor's answer in her possession. tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though with some affectation. he had thought an elder brother of tennyson at first the better poet, but must now reckon alfred the true one. ... in speaking of i know not what style, he said, “ to be sure, it was the manner, but then you know the matter always comes out of the manner.” ... he thought rio janeiro the best place in the world for a great capital city. ... we talked of english national character. i told him, it was not creditable that no one in all the country knew anything of thomas taylor, the platonist, whilst in every american library his translations are found. i said, if plato's republic were published in england as a new book to-day, do you think it would find any readers ? he confessed, it would not: “and yet," he added after a pause, with that complacency which never deserts a true-born englishman, " and yet we have embodied it all.” his opinions of french, english, irish, and scotch, seemed rashly formulized from little anecdotes of what had befallen himself and members of his family, in a diligence or stage-coach. his face sometimes lighted up, but his conversation was not marked by special force or elevation. yet personal. 295 perhaps it is a high compliment to the cultivation of the english generally, when we find such a man not distinguished. he had a healthy look, with a weather-beaten face, his face corrugated, especially the large nose. miss martineau, who lived near him, praised him to me. not for his poetry, but for thrift and economy; for having afforded to his countryneighbors an example of a modest household, where comfort and culture were secured without any display. she said, that, in his early housekeeping at the cottage where he first lived, he was accustomed to offer his friends bread and plainest fare: if they wanted any thing more, they must pay him for their board. it was the rule of the house. i replied, that it evinced english pluck more than any anecdote i knew. a gentleman in the neighborhood told the story of walter scott's staying once for a week with wordsworth, and slipping out every day under pretence of a walk, to the swan inn, for a cold cut and porter ; and one day passing with wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by the landlord's asking him if he had come for his porter. of course, this trait would have another look in london, and there you will hear from different literary men, that wordsworth had no personal friend, that he was not amiable, 296 english traits. that he was parsimonious, &c. landor, always generous, says, that he never praised any body a gentleman in london showed me a watch that once belonged to milton, whose initials are engraved on its face. he said, he once showed this to wordsworth, who took it in one hand, then drew out his own watch, and held it up with the other, before the company, but no one making the expected remark, he put back his own in silence. i do not attach much importance to the disparagement of wordsworth among london scholars. who reads him well will know, that in following the strong bent of his genius, he was careless of the many, careless also of the few, self-assured that he should " create the taste by which he is to be enjoyed.” he lived long enough to witness the revolution he had wrought, and “ to see what he foresaw.” there are torpid places in his mind, there is something hard and sterile in his poetry, want of grace and variety, want of due catholicity and cosmopolitan scope: he had conformities to english politics and traditions ; he had egotistic puerilities in the choice and treatment of his subjects; but let us say of him, that, alone in his time he treated the human mind well, and with an absolute trust. his adherence to his poetic creed personal. 297 rested on real inspirations. the ode on immortality is the high-water-mark which the intellect has reached in this age. new means were employed, and new realms added to the empire of the muse, by his courage. chapter xviii. result. england is the best of actual nations. it is no ideal framework, it is an old pile built in different ages, with repairs, additions, and makeshifts ; but you see the poor best you have got. london is the epitome of our times, and the rome of to-day. broad-fronted broad-bottomed teutons, they stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the points of compass; they constitute the modern world, they have earned their vantage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse possession. they are well marked and differing from other leading races. england is tender-hearted. rome was not. england is not so public in its bias; private life is its place of honor. truth in private life, untruth in public, marks these home-loving men. their political conduct is not decided by general views, but by internal intrigues and personal and family interest. they cannot readily see beyond england. the history of rome and greece, when written by (298) result. 299 their scholars, degenerates into english party pamphlets. they cannot see beyond england, nor in england can they transcend the interests of the governing classes. “english principles” mean a primary regard to the interests of property. england, scotland, and ireland combine to check the colonies. england and scotland combine to check irish manufactures and trade. england rallies at home to check scotland. in england, the strong classes check the weaker. in the home population of near thirty millions, there are but one million voters. the church punishes dissent, punishes education. down to a late day, marriages performed by dissenters were illegal. a bitter class-legislation gives power to those who are rich enough to buy a law. the game-laws are a proverb of oppression. pauperism incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes hideous. in bad seasons, the porridge was diluted. multitudes lived miserably by shell-fish and seaware. in cities, the children are trained to beg, until they shall be old enough to rob. men and women were convicted of poisoning scores of children for burial-fees. in irish districts, men deteriorated in size and shape, the nose sunk, the gums were exposed, with diminished brain and brutal form. during the australian emigration, 300 english traits. multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as being too emaciated for useful colonists. during the russian war, few of those that offered as recruits were found up to the medical standard, though it had been reduced. the foreign policy of england, though ambitious and lavish of money, has not often been generous or just. it has a principal regard to the interest of trade, checked however by the aristocratic bias of the ambassador, which usually puts him in sympathy with the continental courts. it sanctioned the partition of poland, it betrayed genoa, sicily, parga, greece, turkey, rome, and hungary. some public regards they have. they have abolished slavery in the west indies, and put an end to human sacrifices in the east. at home they have a certain statute hospitality. england keeps open doors, as a trading country must, to all nations. it is one of their fixed ideas, and wrathfully supported by their laws in unbroken sequence for a thousand years. in magna charta it was ordained, that all “ merchants shall have safe and secure conduct to go out and come into england, and to stay there, and to pass as well by land as by water, to buy and sell by the ancient allowed customs, without any evil toll, except in time of result. . 301 war, or when they shall be of any nation at war with us.” it is a statute and obliged hospitality, and peremptorily maintained. but this shop-rule had one magnificent effect. it extends its cold unalterable courtesy to political exiles of every opinion, and is a fact which might give additional light to that portion of the planet seen from the farthest star. but this perfunctory hospitality puts no sweetness into their unaccommodating manners, no check on that puissant nationality which makes their existence incompatible with all that is not english. what we must say about a nation is a superficial dealing with symptoms. we cannot go deep enough into the biography of the spirit who never throws himself entire into one hero, but delegates his energy in parts or spasms to vicious and defective individuals. but the wealth of the source is seen in the plenitude of english nature. what variety of power and talent; what facility and plenteousness of knighthood, lordship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty; what a proud chivalry is indicated in “ collins's peerage,” through eight hundred years ! what dignity resting on what reality and stoutness ! what courage in war, what sinew in labor, what cunning workmen, what inventors and engineers, what seamen and pilots, what clerks and scholars ! 26 302 english traits. no one man and no few men can represent them. it is a people of myriad personalities. their many. headedness is owing to the advantageous position of the middle class, who are always the source of letters and science. hence the vast plenty of their æsthetic production. as they are many-headed, so they are many-nationed : their colonization annexes archipelagoes and continents, and their speech seems destined to be the universal language of men. i have noted the reserve of power in the english temperament. in the island, they never let out all the length of all the reins, there is no berserkir rage, no abandonment or ecstasy of will or intellect, like that of the arabs in the time of mahomet, or like that which intoxicated france in 1789. but who would see the uncoiling of that tremendous spring, the explosion of their well-husbanded forces, must follow the swarms which pouring now for two hundred years from the british islands, have sailed, and rode, and traded, and planted, through all climates, mainly following the belt of empire, the temperate zones, carrying the saxon seed, with its instinct for liberty and law, for arts and for thought, — acquiring under some skies a more electric erergy than the native air allows, — to the conquest of the globe. their colonial policy, obeying the necessities of result. 303 a vast empire, has become liberal. canada and australia have been contented with substantial independence. they are expiating the wrongs of india, by benefits ; first, in works for the irrigation of the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs ; and secondly, in the instruction of the people, to qualify them for self-government, when the british power shall be finally called home. their mind is in a state of arrested devel. opment, a divine cripple like vulcan; a blind savant like huber and sanderson. they do not occupy themselves on matters of general and lasting import, but on a corporeal civilization, on goods that perish in the using. but they read with good intent, and what they learn they incarnate. the english mind turns every abstraction it can receive into a portable utensil, or a working institution. such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, that they hold all they gain. hence we say, that only the english race can be trusted with freedom, — freedom which is double-edged and dangerous to any but the wise and robust. the english designate the kingdoms emulous of free institutions, as the sentimental nations. their culture is not an outside varnish, but is thorough and secular in families and the race. they are oppressive with their temperament, and all the more that they are refined. i have sometimes 304 english traits. een them walk with my countrymen when i was forced to allow them every advantage, and their companions seemed bags of bones. there is cramp limitation in their habit of thought, sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct to hold hard to the ground with his claws, lest he should be thrown on his back. there is a drag of inertia which resists reform in every shape; — lawreform, army-reform, extension of suffrage, jewish franchise, catholic emancipation, — the abolition of slavery, of impressment, penal code, and entails. they praise this drag, under the formula, that it is the excellence of the british constitution, that no law can anticipate the public opinion. these poor tortoises must hold hard, for they feel no wings sprouting at their shoulders. yet somewhat divine warms at their heart, and waits a happier hour. it hides in their sturdy will. “will,” said the old philosophy, “is the measure of power," and personality is the token of this race. quid vult valde vult. what they do they do with a will. you cannot account for their success by their christianity, commerce, charter, common law, parliament, or letters, but by the contumacious sharptongued energy of english naturel, with a poise impossible to disturb, which makes all these its instruments. they are slow and reticent, and are like a dull good horro result. 303 which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down every racer in the field. they are right in their feeling, though wrong in their speculation. the feudal system survives in the steep inequality of property and privilege, in the limited franchise, in the social barriers which confine patronage and promotion to a caste, and still more in the submissive ideas pervading these people. the fagging of the schools is repeated in the social classes. an englishman shows no mercy to those below him in the social scale, as he looks for none from those above him: any forbearance from his superiors surprises him, and they suffer in his good opinion. but the feudal system can be seen with less pain on large historical grounds. it was pleaded in mitigation of the rotten borough, that it worked well, that substantial justice was done. fox, burke, pitt, erskine, wilberforce, sheridan, romilly, or whatever national man, were by this means sent to parliament, when their return by large constituencies would have been doubtful. so now we say, that the right measures of england are the men it bred; that it has yielded more able men in five hundred years than any other nation; and, though we must not play providence, and balance the chances of producing ten great men against the 26 * 306 english traits. comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet retrospectively we may strike the balance, and prefer one alfred, one shakspeare, one milton, one sidney, one raleigh, one wellington, to a million foolish democrats. the american system is more democratic, more humane; yet the american people do not yield better or more able men, or more inventions or books or benefits, than the english. congress is not wiser or better than parliament. france has abolished its suffocating old régime, but is not recently marked by any more wisdom or virtue. the power of performance has not been exceeded, — the creation of value. the english have given importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. every man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is, and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. “ magna charta,” said rushworth, “is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.” by this general activity, and by this sacredness of individuals, they have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. it is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island famous for immortal laws, for the announcements of original right which make the stone tables of liberty. chapter xix. speech at manchester. a few days after my arrival at manchester, in no vember, 1847, the manchester athenæum gave its annual banquet in the free-trade hall. with other guests, i was invited to be present, and to address the company. in looking over recently a newspaper-report of my remarks, i incline to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which i entered england, and which agrees well enough with the more deliberate results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages. sir archibald alison, the historian, presided, and opened the meeting with a speech. he was followed by mr. cobden, lord brackley, and others, among whom was mr. cruikshank, one of the contributors to " punch.” mr. dickens's letter of apology for his absence was read. mr. jerrold, who had been announced, did not appear. on being introluced to the meeting i said, (307) 308 english traits. mr. chairman and gentlemen : it is pleasant to me to meet this great and brilliant company, and doubly pleasant to see the faces of so many distinguished persons on this platform. but i have known all these persons already. when i was at home, they were as near to me as they are to you. the arguments of the league and its leader are known to all the friends of free trade. the gayeties and genius, the political, the social, the parietal wit of " punch ”go duly every fortnight to every boy and girl in boston and new york. sir, when i came to sea, i found the “ history of europe " * on the ship's cabin table, the property of the captain ;a sort of programme or play-bill to tell the seafaring new englander what he shall find on his landing here. and as for dombey, sir, there is no land where paper exists to print on, where it is not found; no man who can read, that does not read it, and, if he cannot, he finds some charitable pair of eyes that can, and hears it. but these things are not for me to say ; these compliments, though true, would better come from one who felt and understood these merits more. i am not here to exchange civilities with you, but rather to speak of that which i am sure interests • by sir a. alison. speech at manchester. 309 these gentiemen more than their own praises ; of that which is good in holidays and working-days the same in one century and in another century that which lures a solitary american in the woods with the wish to see england, is the moral pecularity of the saxon race, its commanding sense of right and wrong, the love and devotion to that, — this is the imperial trait, which arms them with the sceptre of the globe. it is this which lies at the foundation of that aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries, so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed ; and in trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity of work, which is a national characteristic. this conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man to man, running through all classes, — the electing of worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of kindness and warm and staunch support, from year to year, from youth to age, which is alike lovely and honorable to those who render and those who receive it ; — which stands in strong contrast with the superficial attachments of other races, their excessive courtesy und shortived connection. 310 english traits. you will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it be, i have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys; and i think it just, in this time of gloom and commercial disaster, of affliction and beggary in these districts, that, on these very accounts i speak of, you should not fail to keep your literary anniversary. i seem to hear you say, that, for all that is come and gone yet, we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak leaf the braveries of our annual feast. for i must tell you, i was given to understand in my childhood, that the british island from which my forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and roses and music and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold foggy mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and endurance; that their best parts were slowly revealed ; their virtues did not come out until they quarrelled: they did not strike twelve the first time ; good lovers, good haters, and you could know little about them till you had seen them long, and little good of them till you had seen them in action ; that in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity they were grand. is it not true, sir, that the wise speech at manuiiester. 311 ancients did not praise the ship parting with flying colors from the port, but only that brave sailer which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, stript of her banners, but having ridden out the storm ? and so, gentlemen, i feel in regard to this aged england, with the possessions, honors and trophies, and also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs which cannot be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and competing populations, — i see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. i see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. seeing this, i say, all hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires in the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. 312 english traits. so be it ! so let it be! if it be not so, if the cour. age of england goes with the chances of a commercial crisis, i will go back to the capes of massachusetts, and my own indian stream, and say to my countrymen, the old race are all gone, and the elasticity and hope of mankind must hencefortb remain on the alleghany ranges, or nowhere the borrower must return this item on or before the last date stamped below. if another user places a recall for this item, the borrower will be notified of the need for an earlier return. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fines. harvard college widener library cambridge, ma 02138m 617-495-2413 021381a semeru man beg 2001 book due ssp bun 2047 2001 cangreso please handle with care. thank you for helping to preserve library collections at harvard. 451 32044010 308 328 کے درد harvard college library ralph waldo emerson. complete works. centenary edition. 12 vols., crown 8vo. with portraits, and copious notes by edward waldo emerson, price per volume, $1.75. 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. 5. english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. ro. lectures and biographical sketches. 11. miscellapies. 12. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works riverside edition. with a portraits. 12 vols., each, 12mo. gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 12 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15.00. poems. household edition. with portrait. 1amo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00 essays. first and second series. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. io cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emer. son. introductory essay. hansehold edition. tamo, $1.50. holiday edition. 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illus. trations. 18mo, $1.00. emerson calendar book. 32mo, parchment-paper, 25 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. 3 ols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. the correspondence between emerson and grimm. edited by f. w. holls. with portraits. z6mo, $1.00, net. postpaid, $1.05. por various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son momoirs see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and now york journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820–1872 vol. i rw. camerton journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1820–1824 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1909 al1323. 029 harvard college library copyright, 1909, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1909 introduction was in the year 1902 messrs. houghton, mifflin and company asked me whether mr. emerson's journals could not be published, to follow the annotated edition of the works which they were to bring out in honour of the approaching centenary. this question was referred to mr. cabot, whom mr. emerson, trusting to his good judgment and taste, had made his literary executor. mr. cabot, after a little consideration, said “yes.” many persons, he agreed, would gladly see emerson's first record of his thoughts, come nearer to the man than in the essays carefully purged of personality, and also trace the growth of his powers of expression in prose or rhyme, and the expansion of his mind during the fifty years or more that the journals cover. mr. cabot said that he was too old to undertake further literary work, and expressed his wish that i should be the editor: “only take time enough,” he said ; “ do not allow yourself to be hurried.” a few months later, mr. cabot died. i was deprived of his important and valued counsel. vi introduction the journals were postponed until the centenary edition with its additions and notes was published; then the consideration of them began. mr. emerson's grandson, mr. waldo emerson forbes, expressed his willingness to share the labour of editing the journals. this aid has been of great importance. at first the plan included only the journals from the time of mr. emerson’s new departure in life and writing after his return from his first visit to europe in the autumn of 1833 ; but, on carefully reading the journals for the fourteen years preceding that time, — for the boy faithfully kept them from the age of seventeen onwards, it seemed well to the editors to introduce large extracts from these. before deciding to do so, however, they showed specimens of the boyish entries to several persons in whose taste and literary judgment they confided, and were confirmed in the plan by their less partial opinions. for we believe that those who care about emerson, his thought and ideals, may wish to look beyond the matured and sifted work that he left in his books, and see the youth in his apprenticeship, the priest in his noviciate and in his full office caring for his people; his studies, questionings and hopes; sons introduction his final sacrifice; meantime, the warmth and tenderness that came into this monastic life with his love for ellen tucker and his marriage, soon followed by her death and the sad wreck of the new home; then, after the parting with his church, the pilgrimage over-sea to restore his health and see certain men whose written words had helped him. the extracts from the early journals are not chosen for their merit alone: they show the soil out of which emerson grew, the atmosphere around, his habits and mental food, his doubts, his steady, earnest purpose, and the things he outgrew. his frankness with himself is seen, and how he granted the floor to the adversary for a fair hearing. also the ups and downs of the boy's health appear in the schoolkeeping days, and why, beyond all reasonable hope, considering the neglect of the body, he lived to a healthy middle life and old age by his rambling tendencies, by quietness, and bending to the blast which shattered the health of his more unyielding brothers. in these years the young emerson was reading eagerly and widely, and learned to find what the author or the college text-book had for him, and leave the rest. the growth of his literary viii introduction taste, his style, independence of thought, and originality in writing verse can be traced. but from first to last appears the value to him of his strange aunt, miss mary moody emerson, in her constant interest and stimulating influence : poor, remote, only self-educated, hungry for knowledge, extraordinarily well-read, exalted in her religious thought, critical but proud of her nephews, especially ralph, and a tireless correspondent. the boy prized her letters, and they put him on his mettle. his most careful youthful writing is in his answers ; he holds his own in them. large extracts from her letters and his answers occur, especially in the earlier journals. he admired her rhetoric, now poetical, now fiery, now sarcastic, — always her own. it was mr. emerson's habit often in later years to copy into his journal passages from his letters to others in which he had conveyed his thought with care. it was as natural to this boy to write as to another to play ball, or go fishing, or experiment with the tools of a neighbour carpenter, or feel out tunes on a musical instrument. when recitations were over, and study did not press, or he was not walking in mount auburn woods introduction ix or the wild country around fresh pond, he betook himself to his journal. it was his confidential friend : his ambitions, his disappointments, his religious meditations, his mortifications, his romantic imaginings, his sillinesses, his trial-flights in verse, his joy in byron and scott, or everett's orations, the ideas gathered from serious books, — all went in, everything but what might be expected in a boy's diary; for of incidents, of classmates, of students' doings, there is hardly an entry. throughout, and increasingly in later years, these are journals, not of incidents and persons, but of thoughts. with the biography of mr. emerson in mind or in hand, the outward conditions, or relations with people or public events which suggested a train of thought, may perhaps be found. a talk, or ramble with a friend, or the reading of a book, may be mentioned, but soon the thought takes its own direction. more often the thoughts were on the great, the abiding questions. the journals of exile in florida and of the i on this account it seemed well to introduce the annals of the pythologian club, of which emerson was secretary, giving a flavour of the students' life at that time and his part in it. introduction visit to europe in 1833 are exceptional, as being real records of daily life, of voyages in a packet ship, of sight-seeing, of travel in malta, sicily, the italian cities, through the brenner pass, to paris, the sights as well as thoughts there; then of the visits in england, and the voyage home. much of the account of the visits to landor, coleridge, wordsworth, and carlyle is omitted in these volumes, as it is printed in english traits. the notes of the second trip abroad are less full. mr. emerson printed many of them in that book, and others have been given in the notes to that volume in the centenary edition. during his third journeying abroad, in 1871–72, when, sent by his friends, mr. emerson visited england, france, italy and egypt, he took no notes, as his health and spirits were far below their usual standard. after 1833, the journals are of greater interest, for mr. emerson was entering on a new life and founding his new home, whither he brought his wife, lidian jackson, and where their children were born. one finds the mention of the planting of trees, the gradually added fields, orchard, and — best for him— woodland by walden. turning his back on tradition, he sought the living god in nature introduction and the soul. the book nature sped well and was soon published. day by day, the journal was the storehouse of the thoughts given him in the wood. wandering voices in the air and murmurs in the wold speak what i cannot declare, yet cannot all withhold. these journals are reflections, sometimes dim, sometimes clear, of the inner life as stirred by the outer. the study of nature led to increasing interest in natural history, but always as a key to unlock chambers of thought. the first lectures after his european trip were on this subject. mr. emerson often preached by invitation in various towns for several years, with good acceptance. but when, in 1837 and 1838, he spoke for free thought in letters and religion before chosen audiences gathered at the university, reaction followed and he stood condemned by many of the elder professors, clergy, and leading citizens, as visionary, dangerous, or insane. the journals show that, however bravely mr. emerson stood against the tide which then looked so strong, it seemed at the time as if he might be outlawed as speaker and writer, and xii introduction have to turn to the soil for a living. the event quickly did away with such a fear. societies at country colleges, apparently unaware of his heresies, asked him, year by year, to speak to them ; his boston lectures won him increasing audiences, and new friends, and the spread of the lyceums from east to west gave him a hearing wide as could be desired. the bases of these lectures, which, thus tested and sifted, became the essays, came from these day-book entries of thoughts, sights, experiences, and the fine passages of his reading. now new friends appear one by one: the young thoreau, loyal and skilful helper in all practical matters, yet keeping his fine independence, the platonic alcott, jones very the mystic, father taylor, dr. hedge, and always the beautiful and sisterly presence of miss elizabeth hoar, who should have been the wife of charles emerson. the new home had been saddened by the death of the two brilliant younger brothers, edward fading away in porto rico, and charles, not two years later, in concord. a few years later samuel gray ward is often alluded to, to whom the “ letters to a friend” were written ; then margaret fuller came, and charles newcomb from providence, a youth introduction xiii for whom emerson cared much, and later, ellery channing and hawthorne became his neighbours. the earlier friends, of course, appear : the venerable doctor ripley and his beneficent son rev. samuel, of waltham, his gifted wife, sarah bradford, and her brother george, whom mr. cabot speaks of as the only “crony” that mr emerson ever had. at this period waldo, the little son so soon to be taken away, comes into the journal, a delight to his father. the transcendental epoch meantime comes on, with its star-led souls, but also many reformers of small and strange pattern, uncomfortable creatures who had hitched their wagons to the smallest asteroids. these were hospitably heard and fed,– mr. emerson's humanity, as appears in the journals, helped out by his sense of humour. always the friend across the sea, carlyle, remains a planet in his heaven, though sometimes with smoky and lurid light. goethe's wide range of thought was stimulating, especially in the domain of art, but the new england conscience could not accept the man. a little earlier than the days of the dial, the neo-platonists stirred mr. emerson by their xiv introduction mysticism and strange imagery, and from them he followed upward the stream of thought that had influenced these to their remote sources in the scriptures of the ancient east. he found delight by the way in the gardens of persia, with saadi and hafiz. in the verse-books many trial-renderings of their poems (from the german) are found. traces of all these influences appear in his notes. in 1848, mr. emerson, setting his face towards home after his stay in england, wrote “boundless freedom in america," but was forced to add “in the north,” for from that time on for thirteen years the cloud of slavery grew darker, and the attitude of northern politicians and merchants was sadly subservient, while the “comfortable classes " seemed indifferent, even the clergy and the scholars. certain of the journals show how heavily the load of the country's shame lay on emerson, and in them are found his notes of opinions given by great men of law, which he had sought out, on the basal rights of man and the supremacy of the moral law. in these days, although he well knew that the law of compensation was sleeplessly working, out of sight already the rifts made by conscience were running through introduction xv the parties, — its slow action tried even his brave philosophy. he saw too far to devote his life to abate this special evil, but his aid was never wanting at a time of danger, as a strong ally to those brave men who did. loyal to the ideal republic, disregarding coldness or hostility, there was no tremor in his voice as it rang out clearly for the eternal rights. in those years he had the relief each winter, given by his lecturing journeys afar, of seeing the new country of youth and courage, and speaking a word for freedom as he passed. the war came, and he rejoiced in the clearing of the heavens once more, though grieving at the wreck left by the cruel storm. in the journal of january, 1862, when mr. emerson gave before the smithsonian institute in washington his lecture “civilization at a pinch, in which he earnestly urged emancipation, he wrote out, in detail unusual for him, the story of his meeting president lincoln, seward, chase, sumner, and others of the leading actors in the great drama. peace returned, and the country seemed one to be proud of as never before. mr. emerson's relief and his high hopes appear in the journals, and reappear in the poems and later xvi introduction essays. then began a calmer, pleasanter chapter in his life. years ago he had “ planted himself on his thought,” and now “the world had come round to him.” he was now widely known on both sides of the ocean through his words and work, and welcomed as a helper. but the increasing call for lectures from a newer west beyond the mississippi allowed no abatement of work, and the journeying, though less exposing, was greater. his material was still accumulating, but the arrangement of the choice pieces into a harmonious mosaic was growing more difficult than ever for him. one day he met the god of bounds, who said, no more ! no farther shoot thy broad, ambitious branches and thy root. fancy departs: no more invent; contract thy firmament to compass of a tent. · · · · · · · · a little while still plan and smile, and — fault of novel germs — mature the unfallen fruit. “ timely wise,” he accepted the terms; but, until he told of this meeting, no one had found introduction xvii out that he was growing old. his powers failed so gradually that not until the shock and exposure, culminating in serious illness, at the time of the burning of his house, did anyone realize that his strength was failing. but the journals show it, for although in the middle period of his life the entries in these were not so many as when his time was freer, after the war they are much fewer. the fact that society and solitude, and may day, the second book of poems, were in preparation partly accounts for this. mr. emerson had great happiness in that period in giving rein to his poetic instinct, now refined, and in “crooning rhymes” as he walked in the woods, — lines for“ may day,”“waldeinsamkeit,” “my garden," and other fragments. the verse-book filled as the journal shrank. with the illness of 1872 the journals practically came to an end, nor after that time did mr. emerson do any original work except endeavouring to mend or arrange passages in unpublished lectures for the promised volume letters and social aims ; but he felt his inability for this task, and consented to the calling in by his family of mr. cabot's willing and admirable aid. xviii introduction a few things remain to be said :1. in these volumes are selections; not the whole, but the greater part of the contents of the journals. 2. during his most productive years mr. emerson used in his books a great part of the thoughts set down in the journals, often with little or no change in form. such paragraphs are for the most part left out, but sometimes, if important, are referred to. in some instances it seems well to give the original form, which may show the conditions. 3. most of the personal references, unless too private, are given. mr. emerson's notes are free from offence in this particular. 4. the passages in which “osman" appears are not to be taken as exact autobiography, though they come near being so. “osman” represents, not emerson himself, but an ideal man whose problems and experiences are like his own. 5. in some cases where mr. emerson quotes passages from memory erroneously, the true version has been given. 6. the reading of the youth, as shown by the quotations, seems to have been so wide, and his love of certain authors so great and introduction xix constant, that it seemed well to give lists of the books referred to or authors mentioned in each year up to 1833. of course many of these quotations were at second hand, yet led the eager scholar to seek out the original work. plutarch, shakspeare, milton, montaigne, jonson, newton, burke, scott, byron, wordsworth, are quoted so often that we have in the lists, year by year, set down their recurring names to show his love for them. after 1833 only the notable books of the newer reading will be mentioned. it is interesting to see on the pages of the early journals how the boy's hand instinctively strayed from writing to drawing heads. a few of these are given in the illustrations which seem to show that emerson had some gift in that direction, had he chosen to follow it. the cordial thanks of the editors are due to those friends who have helped them in their task by their valuable counsel. edward w. emerson. september, 1909. contents college 3 journal i 1820 socrates, "phrases poetical.” song for conventicle club. rebellion of 1820 . . . . . . . . . . journal ii 1820 dedication. “edward search.” imagination. the moving universe. pulpit eloquence. webster. occupations. romantic dreams. return of spring. everett's lecture. greek. invocation of spirits. sortes virgiliana. ben jonson. barrow. cloud-shows. bacon : the novum organum. the possible friend. speculations in the future. consideration of the journal. books. record of the [pythologian] society. .. journal iii 1820 drama. the exact sciences. poems : to the possible friend; care and caress . . . . . . . . journal iv 1820–21 the gift of fancy. professor ticknor's lecture. verses, fancy. journal-writing versus mathematics. everett. 10 52 xxii contents exhibition day ; oratory of barnwell and upham. the possible friend again ; verses. milton. scott's abbot. recipes to occupy the time. everett; value of simplicity in eloquence. imitation of chateaubriand. escape from his school-room. everett's sermon. aunt mary's religion. price on morals. use of sickness. recovery ; prayer. the possible mind again. everett. books. the universe, a quotation-book. . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 teacher journal v 1822 contrast. aunt mary on genius. religion ; its history, of poetry. drama. a venture in romance. verses, idealism. the circle of the virtues . . . . . 95 journal vi 1822 dedication. providence. novels. college revisited. a romance; verses. social feelings. romance waning. a vision. greatness. ballad, the knight and the hag. social feelings again. death. drama again, fiction, prophecy. · ·, · · · · · · · · · iii journal vii 1822 dedication ; the giant of chimborazo. vain world. populace. martyrdoma habit. reflections: from contents xxiii senior to school-teacher; mortification. otis in faneuil hall. poem, marathon. the coming walking-journey. the country ; the wood-gods. drama again. god. differing rank of nations ; greece. licoő, song of the tonga islanders . . . . . . . . . 132 journal viii 1822 dedication ; the spirit of america. the moral law. god. poem, the river. drama again. reason. drama again. the organ of siphar trees. the land of not. clarke, butler, paley, sherlock, newton. conclusion ; webster . . . . . . . . 160 journal ix 1822 dedication. vision of slavery. moral law again. justice. god's benevolence. professor andrews norton. verses, solitary fancies. the friend denied. benevolence again. greatness. america. books . . . . 176 journal x 1822–23 dedication. good hope. alfred the great. everett's lecture. death. time. moral sense. enthusiasm. prayer. history ; its dark side ; meagreness in prosperous times. domestic manners and morals. solitude. imagination versus thought. animals. body and soul. men of god . . . . . . . . . . . 205 xxiy contents journal xi 1823 dedication. time. poem, the bell. free thinking. self-examination. poem, a sbout to the shepberds. america a field for work. compensation. moral obligation. dramatic fragment(blank verse). morals pervading the universe. trade. reading in job. temptation. epilogue . . . . . . . . ; 232 journal xii 1823 a walk to the connecticut ; framingham, worcester, leicester, brookfield, western, ware, belchertown, amherst, mount holyoke, hadley, hatfield, whate. ly, deerfield, greenfield, montagu, wendell, new salem, hubbardston, princeton, sterling, waltham. the tides of thought. god and his works. william withington. andover seminary. edwards, on the will. letter to withington on studies and reading. dr. channing's sermon. verses. hume's essay. edinburgh review. love. fear of criticism. verses, sbakspeare. religion, milton's prose. books. . 267 journal xiii 1823–24 sameness. self-esteem. romance. crossing stocks. east indian mythology. beauty. verses, thought. the puritan movement. a school. aristocracy. genius versus knowledge. friendship. society. beginnings. contents xxv action and thought. burke, fox, pitt, franklin. no original work now. verses. the egyptians. the farmer. philosophic imagination, buckminster. luxury. letter to aunt mary : reason and science in religion ; newton, metric system. earl carnarvon's speech. chauncy and whitefield. letter from aunt mary: reproof; poetry a tempter ; cæsar and cicero; inborn images ; the drama ; the apocalypse. priestcraft . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 journal xiv 1824 pascal. praise. inventions. asia, bossuet. auld lang syne. nowadays, education. moral beauty, bancroft. sentiment. poem, goodbye, proud world. metaphors. country life. the puritans, melioration. poem, the blackbird; country life again. young america. letter to aunt mary. self-examination: natural defects; dupe of hope. poems: goodbye, proud world continued ; to-day. letter from aunt mary: study of nature, solitude and the poets, independent thought; everett ; the age ; god's bow in the clouds. letter to aunt mary : defence of the present age ; spirit of liberty as against mediæval religion ; franklin versus homer. self-examination again ; choice of profession. creeds do not satisfy, nor metaphysics, nor ethics; position of man. verses, asia. letter to plato. the greeks. young america. manners. books. conclusion . . . . . . . 338 illustrations ralph waldo emerson. (photogravure). · frontispiece from a miniature painting, in 1844, by mrs. richard hildreth. emerson's college room (hollis 15) in his junior year . . . . . . . . . . . . . from a water-colour probably painted by him. memory sketch of martin gay, by emerson, in his journal for 1821. . . . . . . . . 70 sketches by emerson, in the leaves of his college journals . . . . . . . . . . 138 south view of harvard college yard from craigie road, 1823 . . . . . . . . . . . 264 after an engraving in harvard college library, from the painting by fisber. . journal college 6. in the morning, solitude,' said pythagoras. by all means give the youth solitude, that nature may speak to his imagination, as it does never in company; and for the like reason give him a chamber alone;and that was the best thing i found in college." emerson's journal, 1859. “i don't think he ever engaged in boys' plays; not because of any physical inability, but simply because, from his earliest years, he dwelt in a higher sphere. my one deep impression is, that, from his earliest childhood, our friend lived and moved and had his being in an atmosphere of letters, quite apart by himself. i can as little remember when he was not literary in his pursuits as when i first made his acquaintance.” from a letter about emerson by his earliest friend, dr. william h. furness. journal i “ no. xvii” 1820 un [this “blotting-book” rather than journal, simply marked “no. xvii,” showing that it had predecessors, though these are gone, was begun almost with the year 1820. emerson was then a junior, living in hollis hall, no. 15. a rude but faithful little picture in water-colours of that room, apparently done by him, is found in “the wide world,” no. 1. its bare floor, uncurtained window, cheap paper, and spartan furniture, fairly represent the brave simplicity of those days. the pictures are probably such engravings of eminent divines as could be spared from home,–george whitefield, dr. samuel cooper, rev. charles chauncy, or other lights of that ministry for which the boy was already destined. his chum was john gaillard keith gourdin (pronounced godyne): yet strangely no mention of him occurs in the jottings of that year. dr. holmes, in his memoir of emerson, says: “the two gourdins, robert and john gaillard keith, were dashing young fellows, as 4 journal (age 16 i recollect them, belonging to charleston, south carolina. the southerners' were the reigning college elegans of that time, the merveilleux, the mirliflores, of their day. their swallow-tail coats tapered to an arrow-point angle, and the prints of their little delicate calf-skin boots in the snow were objects of great admiration to the village boys of the period. i cannot help wondering what brought emerson and the showy, fascinating john gourdin together as room-mates.” emerson was writing a dissertation on the character of socrates, for which he received a bowdoin prize. this, with a later prize-dissertation,“on the present state of ethical culture,” were recently printed, with a sketch of emerson's life, by dr. edward everett hale, in a small volume published in boston by the unitarian association. for the latter essay emerson only received the second prize; his classmate, josiah quincy, won the first. the book is full of miscellaneous scraps of prose and verse written by the boy, and also quoted from a variety of sources, given below. many lines from shakspeare, byron, scott, dryden, and moore, classified by the initial letter, are stored away there for use in a game, now becoming obsolete, called “capping verses.” the following passages from us sc is lead him astray after will. the wish over wilderness y few bright him washimahestly hobgobling-wreak your vengeance as you will he gives you free love on this sole condition, = ef you can. .منjum august24, 18 20. emerson's college room (hollis 15) in his junior year 1820] socrates a study for the paper on socrates, together with some“ phrases poetical” which the young author stored to adorn his sentences or enlarge his vocabulary, and a song for a club festival, are all that seem worth while to print.] january, 1820. (age, 16.) the ostentatious ritual of india which worshipped god by outraging nature, though softened as it proceeded west, was still too harsh a discipline for athenian manners to undergo.— socrates had little to do with these and perhaps his information on the subject was very limited. he was not distinguished for knowledge or general information, but for acquaintance with the mind and its false and fond propensities, its springs of action, its assailable parts; in short, his art laid open its deepest recesses, and he handled it and moulded it at will. indeed we do not have reason to suppose that he was intimately versed in his own national literature, herodotus, homer, thucydides, pindar, etc.—his profession in early life had perhaps imparted a little of poetic inspiration, but his leading feature seems to have been sagacity — little refinement, little erudition. his genius resembled æsop. the greatness of the philosopher shines forth journal [age 16 in its fullest lustre when we examine the originality, the bold and unequalled sublimity of his conceptions. his powerful mind had surmounted the errours of education and had retained useful acquisitions, whilst it discarded what was absurd or unprofitable. he studied nature with a chastised enthusiasm, and the constant activity of his mind endowed him with an energy of thought little short of inspiration. when he speaks of the immortality of the soul, or when he enters on considerations of the attributes or nature of the deity, he leaves the little quibblings of the sophists, and his own inferiour strains of irony, and his soul warms and expands with his subject; we forget that he is manhe seems seated like jupiter creator moulding magnificent forms and clothing them with beauty and grandeur. ... what is god? said the disciples, and plato replied, it is hard to learn and impossible to divulge. ... in athens, learning was not loved for its own sake, but for sinister ends. it was prized as a saleable commodity. the sophists bargained their literature, such as it was, for a prize which, always exorbitant, was regulated by the ability 1820) phrases. song 7 of the disciple. and this must always happen more or less in the infancy of letters. in a moneymaking community literature will soon thrive. it must always follow, not precede, successful trade. the first wants to be supplied are the native ones of animal subsistence and comfort, and when these are more than provided for, and luxury and ease begin to look about them for new gratification, the mind then urges its claim to cultivation. ... for use — phrases poetical rescuing and crowning virtue. “ coldest complexion of age.” ill-conditioned. cameleon. zeal. booked in alphabet. cushioned. compunction. beleaguered. halidom. galloping. whortleberry. spikenard. staunch. council-chamber. star-crossed. till its dye was doubled on the crimson cross. countless multitudes. abutments. panoply. sycophant smile. kidnapping. beheaded. demigods. signal (adjective). cleopatra. ambidexter. register (verb). defalcation. sjoner song you may say what you please of the current rebellion, tonight the conventicle drink to a real one;' i the conventicle was a somewhat convivial club, established in their junior year by some of emerson's friends, samuel alden being bishop, and john b. hill, parson. the “ current rebellion,” being some outbreak of sophomores, journal age 16 the annals of ages have blazoned its fame and pæans are chanted to hallow its name. derry down, etc. alas for the windows the sophs have demolished ! alas for the laws that they are not abolished ! and that dawes could abide the warm battle's brunt, and the government vote it was gay, lee and blunt. derry down. but this shock of the universe who could control ? aghast in despair was each sophomore's soul, save one, who alone in his might could stand forth to grapple with elements – mr. danforth.” derry down. nents could be looked down on smilingly by juniors who had, the year before, been more or less involved in a “real one " celebrated in that epic, the rebelliad, which has been from time to time reprinted; also described in josiah quincy's figures of the past. i of the above-mentioned victims, martin gay and john clarke lee, sophomores, were suspended ; and though they finished their college course, did not receive their academic degrees until 1841 and 1842 respectively. nathanael b. blunt, also a sophomore, was dismissed from college. samuel danforth remained with the class into the senior year, but did not receive a degree. rufus dawes, a freshman, seems to have ended his college career in the sophomore year. 1820) song let the earth and the nations to havoc go soon, and the world tumble upward to mix with the moon; old harvard shall smile at the rare conflagration, the coventicle standing her pledge of salvation. derry down. journal ii the wide world, no. 1 1820 [the journals from february, 1820, to july, 1824, bear the name “the wide world,” and extracts from all of these are given here, excepting no. 6, which is missing.) february, 1820. mixing with the thousand pursuits and passions and objects of the world as personified by imagination, is profitable and entertaining. these pages are intended at their commencement to contain a record of new thoughts (when they occur); for a receptacle of all the old ideas that partial but peculiar peepings at antiquity can furnish or furbish; for tablet to save the wear and tear of weak memory, and, in short, for all the various purposes and utility, real or imaginary, which are usually comprehended under that comprehensive title common place book. oye witches, assist me! enliven or horrify some midnight lucubration or dream (whichever may be found most convenient) to supply this 1820) dedication ii reservoir when other resources fail. pardon me, fairy land! rich region of fancy and gnomery, elvery, sylphery, and queen mab! pardon me for presenting my first petition to your enemies, but there is probably one in the chamber who maliciously influenced me to what is irrevocable; pardon and favour me! — and finally, spirits of earth, air, fire, water, wherever ye glow, whatsoever you patronize, whoever you inspire, hallow, hallow this devoted paper — dedicated and signed january 25, 1820, junio. after such a dedication, what so proper to begin with as reflections on or from edward search?: it is a fine idea which he either intends i the nom de plume always used by abraham tucker (1705-1774), an english scholar, country gentleman and magistrate. his writings were highly praised by dugald stewart, sir james mackintosh, hazlitt and others. leigh hunt called him “ the most agreeable of metaphysicians,” and paley said, “i have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects he has taken in hand than in any other, not to say than all others put together.” his principal works are : 1. a country gentleman's advice to his son; 2. free will, foreknowledge and fate ; 3. man in quest of himself, or a defence of the individuality of the human mind or self ; 4. the light of nature pursued. 12 journal (age 16 to convey, or else the form of expression unintentionally did (pray let us believe the latter for the credit of originality) that those parts of the world which man cannot or does not inhabit are the abodes of other orders of sentient being, invisible or unperceived by him. to amplify: perhaps the inferiour centre of the earth, the bottomless depths and the upper paths of ocean, the lands circumjacent to the poles, the high rock and clefts of the rock, are peopled by higher beings than ourselves;animals cast in more refined mould; not subject to the inconveniences, woes, etc., of our species — to whom, as to us, this world appears made only for them, and among whom our very honest and honourable species are classed only as the highest order of brutes — perhaps called of the bee kind. when imagination has formed this class of beings and given them the name of supromines, it will be perfectly convenient to rise again to an order higher than these last, holding our self-complacent friends, the supromines, in as utter contempt as they us, or as we the beasts, and then she may rise to another and another, till, for aught i know, she may make this world one of the mansions of heaven, and in parts of it, though in and around, yet thoroughly 1820] the moving universe 13 m e . unknown to us, the seraphim and cherubim may live and enjoy. i have now already fallen into an errour, which may be a very common one, to hunt an idea down, when obtained, in such a remorseless manner as to render dull and flat an idea originally plump, round and shining. perhaps our system and all the planets, stars, we can discover, nay, the whole interminable universe, is moving on, as has been supposed, in one grand circle round the centre of light, and since the world began it has never completed a single revolution. it is an improvement on the grandeur of this supposition to suppose there is a source of light before us and the whole vast machinery has been forever and is now sweeping forward in a direct line through the interminable fields — extensions of space. it is a singular fact that we cannot present to the imagination a longer space than just so much of the world as is bounded by the visible horizon; so that, even in this stretching of thought to comprehend the broad path lengthening itself and widening to receive the rolling universe, stern necessity bounds us to a little extent of a few miles only. but what matters it? we can talk and write and think it out. ... chateau14 journal (age 16 briand's “the universe is the imagination of the deity made manifest” is worthy him. “mount on thy own path to fame, nor swerve for man or more than man ” says caswallon (in “samor”), and it will be a fine motto by striking out the last four words. independence; pulpit eloquence let us suppose a pulpit orator to whom the path of his profession is yet untried, but whose talents are good and feelings strong, and his independence, as a man, in opinion and action is established; let him ascend the pulpit for the first time, not to please or displease the multitude, but to expound to them the words of the book and to waft their minds and devotions to heaven. let him come to them in solemnity and strength, and when he speaks he will claim attention with an interesting figure and an interested face. to expand their views of the sublime doctrines of the religion, he may embrace the universe and bring down the stars from their courses to do homage to their creator. i samor, lord of the bright city, an heroic poem, by the rev. henry hunt milman, m. a., new york (reprint), c. wiley & co., 1818. 1820] pulpit eloquence 15 here is a fountain which cannot fail them. wise christian orators have often and profitably magnified the inconceivable power of the creator as manifested in his works, and thus elevated and sobered the mind of the people and gradually drawn them off from the world they have left by the animating ideas of majesty, beauty, wonder, which these considerations bestow. then when life and its frivolities is fastly flowing away from before them, and the spirit is absorbed in the play of its mightiest energies, and their eyes are on him and their hearts are in heaven, then let him discharge his fearful duty, then let him unfold the stupendous designs of celestial wisdom, and whilst admiration is speechless, let him minister to their unearthly wants, and let the ambassador of the most high prove himself worthy of his tremendous vocation. let him gain the tremendous eloquence which stirs men's souls, which turns the world upside down, but which loses all its filth and retains all its grandeur when consecrated to god. when a congregation are assembled together to hear such an apostle, you may look round and you will see the faces of men bent forward in the earnestness of expectation, and in this desirable frame of mind the preacher may lead them is sd 16 [age 16 journal whithersoever he will; they have yielded up their prejudices to the eloquence of the lips which the archangel hath purified and hallowed with fire, and this first sacrifice is the sin-offering which cleanseth them. webster february 7th. mr. k., a lawyer of boston, gave a fine character of a distinguished individual in private conversation, which in part i shall set down. “webster is a rather large man, about five feet, seven, or nine, in height, and thirty-nine or forty years old — he has a long head, very large black eyes, bushy eyebrows, a commanding expression, and his hair is coal-black, and coarse as a crow's nest. his voice is sepulchral — there is not the least variety or the least harmony of toneit commands, it fills, it echoes, but is harsh and discordant. — he possesses an admirable readiness, a fine memory and a faculty of perfect abstraction, an unparallelled impudence and a tremendous power of concentration he brings all that he has ever heard, read or seen to bear on the case in question. he growls along the bar to see who will run, and if nobody runs he will fight. he knows his strength, has a perfect con1820) webster 17 re fidence in his own powers, and is distinguished by a spirit of fixed determination; he marks his path out, and will cut off fifty heads rather than turn out of it; but is generous and free from malice, and will never move a step to make a severe remark. his genius is such that, if he descends to be pathetic, he becomes ridiculous. he has no wit and never laughs, though he is very shrewd and sarcastic, and sometimes sets the whole court in a roar by the singularity or pointedness of a remark. his imagination is what the light of a furnace is to its heat, a necessary attendant-nothing sparkling or agreeable, but dreadful and gloomy.”— this is the finest character i have ever heard pourtrayed, and very truly drawn, with little or no exaggeration. with respect to the cause of a town's condition of bad society he said well, “there is stuff to make good society, but they are discordant atoms,” and regarding the contrasting and comparing the worthy and great dead, -"you may not tell a man 'your neighbor's house is higher than yours,' but you may measure gravestones and see which is the tallest." cambridge, march 11th, 1820. thus long i have been in cambridge this term (three or four weeks) and have not before 18 journal (age 16 this moment paid my devoirs to the gnomes to whom i dedicated this quaint and heterogeneous manuscript. is it because matter has been wanting? — noi have written much elsewhere in prose, poetry, and miscellany let me put the most favourable construction on the case and say that i have been better employed. beside considerable attention, however unsuccessful, to college studies, i have finished bisset's life of burke, as well as burke's “regicide peace,” together with considerable variety of desultory reading, generally speaking, highly entertaining and instructive. the pythologian poem' does not proceed very rapidly, though i have experienced some poetic moments. could i seat myself in the alcove of one of those public libraries which human pride and literary rivalship have made costly, splendid and magnificent, it would indeed be an enviable situation. i would plungen into the classic lore of chivalrous story and of the fairy-land bards, and unclosing the ponderous volumes of the firmest believers in magic and in the potency of consecrated crosier or elfin ring, i would let my soul sail away delighted into their wildest phantasies. pendragon is rising i a poem written for another club, which will be later mentioned. 1820) imaginings 19 before my fancy, and has given me permission to wander in his walks of fairy-land and to present myself at the bower of gloriana. i stand in the fair assembly of the chosen, the brave and the beautiful; honour and virtue, courage and delicacy are mingling in magnificent joy. unstained knighthood is sheathing the successful blade in the presence of unstained chastity. and the festal jubilee of fairy-land is announced by the tinkling of its silver bells. the halls are full of gorgeous splendour and the groves are joyous with light and beauty. the birds partake and magnify the happiness of the green-wood shades and the music of the harp comes swelling on the gay breezes. or other views more real, scarcely less beautiful, should attract, enchain me. all the stores of grecian and roman literature may be unlocked and fully displayed —or, with the indian enchanters, send my soul up to wander among the stars till “ the twilight of the gods.” april 2d. spring has returned and has begun to unfold her beautiful array, to throw herself on wildflower couches, to walk abroad on the hills and summon her songsters to do her sweet homage. the muses have issued from the library and e is 20 journal (age 16 costly winter dwelling of their votaries, and are gone up to build their bowers on parnassus, and to melt their ice-bound fountains. castalia is flowing rapturously and lifting her foam on high. the hunter and the shepherd are abroad on the rock and the vallies echo to the merry, merry horn. the poet, of course, is wandering, while nature's thousand melodies are warbling to him. this soft bewitching luxury of vernal gales and accompanying beauty overwhelms. it produces a lassitude which is full of mental enjoyment and which we would not exchange for more vigorous pleasure. although so long as the spell endures, little or nothing is accomplished, nevertheless, i believe it operates to divest the mind of old and worn-out contemplations and bestows new freshness upon life, and leaves behind it imaginations of enchantment for the mind to mould into splendid forms and gorgeous fancies which shall long continue to fascinate, after the physical phenomena which woke them have ceased to create delight. april 4th. judging from opportunity enjoyed, i ought to have this evening a flow of thought, rich, abundant and deep; after having heard mr. 1820) everett’s lecture 21 everett deliver his introductory lecture, in length one and one half hour, having read much and profitably in the quarterly review, and lastly having heard dr. warren's introductory lecture to anatomy, — all in the compass of a day! — and the mind possessing a temperament well adapted to receive with calm attention what was offered., shall endeavor to record promiscuously received ideas:— though the literature of greece gives us sufficient information with regard to later periods of their commonwealth, as we go back, before the light of tradition comes in, the veil drops. “all tends to the mysterious i edward everett was appointed in 1815, first to fill the chair of greek literature just founded anonymously by samuel eliot. he went to europe to fit himself for it. many years later, mr. emerson wrote, “ germany had created criticism in vain for us until 1820, when edward everett returned from his five years in europe and brought to cambridge his rich results, which no one was so fitted by natural grace and the splendor of his rhetoric to introduce and recommend.” (see long passage in his praise in “ historic notes of life and letters in new england” in lectures and biographical sketches, vol. x, emerson's works.) dr. john collins warren, second in a line of eminent surgeons which still holds high place in boston, and founder of the warren museum, after six years' service as adjunct professor, had succeeded his father as hersey professor of anatomy and surgery 22 journal [age 16 east.” . . . from the time of the first dispersion of the human family to the time of grecian rise, everything in the history of man is obscure, and we think ourselves sufficiently fortunate “if we can write in broad lines the fate of a dynasty,” though we know nothing of the individuals who composed it. the cause is the inefficiency and uncertainty of tradition in those early and ignorant times when the whole history of a tribe was lodged in the head of its patriarch, and in his death their history was lost. but even after the invention of letters, much, very much, has never reached us. this we need not regret. what was worth knowing was transmitted to posterity, the rest buried in deserved forgetfulness. everything was handed down which ought to be handed down. the phenicians gave the greeks their alphabet, yet not a line of all which they wrote has come down, while their pupils have built themselves an imperishable monument of fame. is i here make a resolution to make myself acquainted with the greek language and antiquities and history with long and serious attention and study; (always with the assistance of circumstances.) to which end i hereby dedicate 1820) virgilian lot 23 and devote to the down-putting of sentences quoted or original, which regard greece, historical, poetical and critical, page 47 of this timehonored register. by the way, i devote page 45 to the notation of inquirenda and of books to be sought. signed, junio. april 30th. ... ethereal beings to whom i dedicated the pages of my "wide world,” do not, i entreat you, neglect it; when i sleep waken me; when i weary animate! wander after moonbeams, fairies! but bring them home here. indeed, you cannot imagine how it would gratify me to wake up from an accursed enfield lesson and find a page written in characters of light by a moonbeam of queen mab! i will give you a subject -a thousand if you wish; for instance “pendragon,” your own pendragon; record his life and his glories. “prince arthur” if it is not too trite; or “the universe," or a broom-stick; either or all of these, or fifty thousand more. tune 7tb. a very singular chance led me to derive very sensible answers to the two questions i pro24 (age 17 journal for the first i opened to the posed to virgil. lineo crudelis alexi, nihil mea carmina curas.? for the other i opened to a line, dryden's translation of which is — « go, let the gods and temples claim thy care." have been of late reading patches of barrow and ben jonson; and what the object — not curiosity? no — nor expectation of edification intellectual or moral — but merely because they are authors where vigorous phrases and quaint, peculiar words and expressions may be sought and found, the better“ to rattle out the battle of my thoughts.” i shall now set myself to give a good sentence of barrow's (the whole beauty of which he has impaired by a blundering collocation) in purer and more fashionable english; — obvious manifestations may be sometimes seen 1 this passage refers to his consulting the virgilianæ sortes, that is, opening virgil at random and taking the first line the eye lighted on for an oracle. on the first occasion, he was a competitor for a college prize for verse. when the prizes were announced, he had won the second. it is probable that the other question he propounded was with regard to his vocation in life. 2 virgil, eclogue ii. 1820] style of barrow 25 of the ruling government of god. sometimes in the career of triumphant guilt when things have come to such a pass that iniquity and outrage do exceedingly prevail, so that the life of the offender becomes intolerably grievous, a change comes upon the state of things, however stable and enduring in appearance, a revolution in a manner sudden and strange, and flowing from causes mean and unworthy, which overturneth the towering fabric of fortune and reduces its gigantic dimensions; and no strugglings of might, no fetches of policy, no circumspection or industry of man availing to uphold it: there is outstretched an invisible hand checking all such force and crossing all such devices-a stone cut out of the mountain without hands and breaking to pieces the iron and the brass and the clay and [the] silver and the gold. — in looking over the sentence however, though the grand outline of the whole was originally the rev. isaac barrow's, yet we very self-complacently confess that great alterations have rendered it editorially mr. ralph emerson's, and i intend to make use of it hereafter, after another new modelling, for it is still very susceptible of improvement. journal [age 17 june 19th. when those magnificent masses of vapour which load our horizon are breaking away, disclosing fields of blue atmosphere, there is an exhilaration awakened in the system of a susceptible man which so invigorates the energies of mind, and displays to himself such manifold power and joy superiour to other existences, that he will triumph and exult that he is a man. ... we feel at these times that eternal analogy which subsists between the external changes of nature, and scenes of good and ill that chequer human life. joy cometh, but is speedily supplanted by grief, and we look at the approach of transient verities like the mists of the morning, fearful and many, but the fairies are in them and white ladies beckoning. august 8th. i have been reading the novum organum. lord bacon is indeed a wonderful writer; he condenses an unrivaled degree of matter in one paragraph. he never suffers himself “to swerve from the direct forthright,” or to babble or speak unguardedly on his proper topic, and withal writes with more melody and rich cadence than any writer (i had almost said, of england) on a 1820) bacon 27 similar subject. although i have quoted in my “universe” of composition (by which presumptuous term i beg leave to remind myself that nothing was meant but to express wideness and variety of range), yet i will add here a fine little sentence from the thirtieth section of the second volume of the novum organum. speaking of bodies composed of two different species of things, he says: “but these instances may be reckoned of the singular or heteroclite kind, as being rare and extraordinary in the universe; yet for their dignity they ought to be separately placed and treated. for they excellently indicate the composition and structure of things; and suggest the cause of the number of the ordinary species of the universe ; and lead the understanding from that which is, to that which may be.” there is nothing in this sentence which should cause it to be quoted more than another. it does not stand out from the rest; but it struck me accidentally as a very different sentence from those similarly constructed in ordinary writers. for instance, in the last three clauses (beginning “for they excellently”) it is common to see an author construct a fine sentence in this way, with idle repetitions of the same idea, embellished a little for the sake of sam 28 journal (age 17 shrouding the deception. in this, they all convey ideas determinate, but widely different and all beautiful and intelligent. — but, says sterne, “the cant of criticism is the most provoking.' there is a strange face in the freshman class whom i should like to know very much. he has a great deal of character in his features and should be a fast friend or bitter enemy. his name is — i shall endeavour to become acquainted with him and wish, if possible, that i might be able to recall at a future period the singular sensations which his presence produced at this." i the name is given, and later scratched out. the person referred to was martin gay of hingham, who, born in the same year with emerson, came to college two years later. the entries in prose and verse concerning this boy, which follow in emerson's journals for the junior and senior years, show how strong the fascination was, for there is a remarkable absence of mention of other students. it would seem that this was an imaginary friendship. there is no evidence that the elder student ever brought himself to risk disenchantment by active advances, and the younger boy could not understand why he was watched and even followed afar by this strange upper-class man. it would have been not unnatural that he should have resented it, being of an entirely different temperament, and called “cool gay” by his classmates. his active interests are said to have been scientific experiments and the 1820) art 29 ans when we see an exquisite specimen of painting-whence does the pleasure we experience arise? from the resemblance, it is immediately answered, to the works of nature. it is granted that this is in part the cause, but it can't explain the whole pleasure we enjoy; for we see more perfect resemblances (as a stone apple or fruit) without this pleasure. no, it arises from the power which we immediately recollect to be necessary to the creation of the painting. college military company. gay studied medicine and took his doctor's degree in 1826. he practised a short time in new bedford, then for the rest of his life in boston. he was modest and faithful, with a high sense of honour. his practice grew slowly but steadily, and he was much beloved. his interests were scientific, chemistry especially. he was a member of the american academy of arts and sciences and curator of the department of mineralogy in the boston natural history society. as an analytical chemist he acquired a high reputation, and it is said that his testimony in the courts in cases of death by poisoning “ marked an era in the history of medical jurisprudence in this country." yet although dr. gay lived within twenty miles of emerson, and was a valued friend of his wife's brother, dr. charles t. jackson, whose claim to the discovery of anæsthesia by ether in surgical operations he loyally defended, it does not appear that emerson ever really knew him; yet he always was interested to hear of him, and was grieved at his untimely death in 1850. 30 journal (age 17 august 21st. in the h [arvard] c[ollege] athenæum i enjoyed a very pleasant hour reading the life of marlborough in the" quarterly review.” i was a little troubled there by vexatious trains of thought; but once found myself stopping entirely from my reading and occupied in throwing guesses into futurity while i was asking myself if, when, ten or a dozen years hence, i am gone far on the bitter, perplexing roads of life, when i shall then recollect these moments, now thought so miserable, shall i not fervently wish the possibility of their return, and to find myself again thrown awkwardly on the tilted chair in the athenæum study with my book in my hand; the snuffers and lamps and shelves around; and motte' coughing over his newspaper near me, and ready myself to saunter out into gaiety and commons when that variouslymeaning bell shall lift up his tongue. “sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.” august 23, 1820. to-morrow finishes the junior year. as it is i emerson's classmate, mellish irving motte, from charleston, s. c. he was minister of the south congregational church in boston from 1828 to 1842. 1820] review 31 time to close our accounts, we will conclude likewise this book which has been formed from the meditations and fancies which have sprinkled the miscellany-corner of my mind for two terms past. it was begun in the winter vacation. i think it has been an improving employment decidedly. it has not encroached upon other occupations and has afforded seasonable aid at various times to enlarge or enliven scanty themes, etc. nor has it monopolized the energies of composition for literary exercises. whilst i have written in it, i have begun and completed my pythologian poem of 260 lines,' — and my dissertation on the character of socrates. it has prevented the ennui of many an idle moment and has perhaps enriched my stock of language for future exertions. much of it has been written with a view to their preservation, as hints for a peculiar pursuit at the distance of years. little or none of it was elaborate—its office was to be a hasty, sketchy composition, containing at times elements of graver order. i emerson was secretary of a small literary (and, when fines permitted, mildly convivial,) club of this name, and on this 'occasion had written in “heroics” a didactic poem on improvement. the record-book of the club was found among his papers, and will be given to the college library. some extracts from this book will be given later in this volume. 32 journal (age 17 so fare ye well, gay powers and princedoms! to you the sheets were inscribed. light thanks for your tutelary smiles. grim witches from valhalla, and courteous dames from faery-land, whose protection was implored and whose dreams were invoked to furnish forth the scroll, adieu to you all;—you have the laughing poet's benison and malison, his wish and his forgetfulness. abandoning your allegiance, he throws you to the winds, recklessly defying your malice and fun. pinch the red nose; lead him astray after will-o'-the-wisp over wilderness and fen; fright him with ghastly hobgoblins — wreak your vengeance as you will — he gives you free leave on this sole condition, if you can. junio. ce ve august 24, 1820. books to be sought wordsworth's recluse; quarterly review, september, 1819; liber viii, of buchanan's scotland — wallace; spenser's view of the state of ireland; camden's annals of queen elizabeth; kennet's life and characters of greek poets; hody, de illustribus graecis; middleton's cicero; burton's melancholy; barrow's sermons; hobbes' leviathan; joinville's life 1819) pythologian society 33 of st. louis; froissart's history of england; chaucer's works; bayle's dictionaire; corinne ; massinger's plays; fletcher's do; bentley's phalaris; peter's letters; letters from eastern states; waverley; cogan on the passions ; sir charles grandison. inquirenda extent, history of the troubadours. pendragon. — sir walter raleigh's conceipt of the “faery queen.” — valhalla. — archipelago. paestum.— taillefer at the battle of hastings. illumination (graphic). — griselda of boccace. — walter raleigh's account of theories of paradise. — water-spouts.' extracts from the record of the (pythologian ?) society, of which emerson was for a time secretary. 1819–1821 [although in the secretary's book no name is given to the society, and in the record of the 1 a book-club was organized by emerson and some of his college friends. they subscribed for some of the english reviews and for the north american, then new. they also bought new poems and fiction, especially scott's novels; and often read them aloud at their meetings. of course, most of the serious reading mentioned in the journals, while in cam. bridge, was done in the college library. cac co tes 34 journal (age 16 meeting of june 13, 1819, the committee appointed to consider the subject reported that “it is best that the society should have no name,” and that report was accepted, it there appears that emerson was appointed to prepare a poem for the celebration of the first anniversary of the society, and read one, as the accompanying extracts show. in the journal covering this period, however, he twice mentions the writing of his “pythologian poem.”] several members of the sophomore class met at gourdin's room,' april 24th, 1819, for the purpose of forming a society, for exercise in composition and discussion : present, blood, emerson, frye, gourdin 2d, hill 2d," james, reed, and wood. the question, whether it be expedient to form a society for this purpose, was proposed and debated. voted unanimously, to form a society, for these purposes ; hill 2d, · wood and emerson, were chosen to prepare regulations and laws, to be presented at the next meeting. they adjourned to meet at frye’s room on the second of may, at half-past 7, p. m. ma 1 also emerson's room. 2 there were two gourdins and two hills, brothers, in the class. 1819) pythologian society 35 laws and regulations of the — the great design of public education is to qualify men for usefulness in active life, and the principal arts by which we can be useful are those of writing and speaking. we are told by those from whose decision there is no appeal that by constant, unwearied practice only can facility and excellence in these arts be attained. we believe that societies, when well regulated, and supported with spirit, are of great use towards acquiring these important qualifications. we therefore agree to form ourselves into a society for writing and extemporaneous speaking, to be called we engage to endeavour to promote the interests of the society and the mutual improvement of each other by freely receiving and imparting instructions, and we pledge our honour to be governed by the following laws and regulations:'article 1. the society shall consist of no more than twelve members, and no person shall be 1 the more important of these, submitted by the committee at the meeting of may 2, and adopted and signed by the members, are here given. 36 journal (age 16 admitted without the consent of every member. article 4. six members shall read compositions at every regular meeting, upon subjects given out by the society, as they are called upon by the moderator, and six shall discuss subjects proposed at the preceding meeting, each upon the subject assigned him by the society. article 5. two members shall be chosen from · those who read compositions to decide the question, and, in case of disagreement, the moderator shall decide it. article 6. four members shall be chosen by the society to read essays before the society upon subjects of their own choice, two at the meeting nearest the middle of each term to perform at the meeting nearest the middle of the next term, and two at the end of each term to perform at the last meeting of the succeeding term. any member neglecting or refusing to read a composition or discuss, shall be fined twelve and one-half cents; for neglecting to read an essay, fifty cents. disorderly or disrespectful conduct shall subject the offender to a fine of six and one-quarter cents; non-attendance shall be fined twelve and one-half cents. any member coming 1819) pythologian society 37 after the meeting shall be fined six and onequarter cents." *john angier ? *geo. b. james oliver blood *benj. t. reed warren burton *charles w. upham ralph w. emerson natal. wood enoch frye edward kent john g. k. gourdin saml. h. lyon joseph b. hill john m. cheney jn. b. hill i spanish silver coins représenting these amounts were in general circulation up to the year 1850; the six and one-quarter cents was however called “ fourpence-hapenny,” and the twelve and one-half cents “ ninepence” in new england, and in the western and southern states a “ bit,” surviving still in “ two bits” for twenty-five cents. 2 those whose names are marked with an asterisk were “honourably dismissed” at their own request. a few words may be said of some of these members. warren burton, of wilton, n. h., became a clergyman, first a unitarian, afterwards an enthusiastic swedenborgian. he preached in various massachusetts and new hampshire towns, and was minister-at-large among the poor in boston. but he chiefly devoted himself to writing and lecturing upon domestic education and home-culture. john gourdin returned to his home in the south and died early. john boynton and joseph bancroft hill, twin brothers, came from mason, n. h. the former became a lawyer; the 38 (age 16 journal october 25th, 1819. the next meeting being that of the essays, a committee of three were chosen to provide for the evening: blood, gourdin and lyon. it was found necessary by the society to have a particular sum of money agreed on to be expended essay evenings." accordingly, it was voted that two dollars should be the sum ; that what the fines did latter also studied law, but was successively a printer, teacher and presbyterian preaching elder, mainly in tennessee. during the civil war he was a field agent of the u. s. christian commission and died in that service at chattanooga. charles w. upham studied divinity and was a minister in salem. later, he was mayor of that city and was sent to congress. his book on the salem witchcraft is well known. edward kent, a handsome, forcible, and dignified man, was born in concord, n. h. he studied law and moved to bangor, maine, of which city he was mayor. he was twice governor of maine, later, consul at rio janeiro, and finally a justice of the supreme court of maine. john m. cheney lived in concord, like emerson, and was for most of his life cashier of the bank there. i on essay evenings (if the essays were forthcoming, and not without) there was some simple refreshment. mr. emerson used to say that he remembered the malaga from warland's (the grocer) as more delicious than any wine he had tasted since. 1820] pythologian society 39 not cancel should be paid by an assessment upon the members. voted to adjourn till monday evening, 6 o'clock, to br. gourdin's room, november 7th. nathaniel wood, sec'y. thaniel monday ev'g., march 6tb, (1820). • met at br. wood's room according to adjournment. proceeded to confer on the admission of a new member, vice upham. cheney was nominated and elected, and br. wood appointed to inform him and invite him to join. proceeded to the reading of themes. brs. lyon and gourdin being absent, chose by lot as voluntary discussers blood, vice gourdin, and wood, vice lyon. the first discussion between kent and frye was decided in favour of kent by blood and reed, judges. after discussion, chose brs. kent and hill ist to appoint subjects for discussion; brs. wood and burton for themes. the committee for discussions report:· ist: which is most conducive to individual happiness, a state of celibacy or matrimony? burton and reed. 2d: whether daddy tracy can be justified in spending his days in cambridge? — wood and blood. 40 [age 16 journal 3d: which is the strongest passion, love or ambition ?—emerson. committee for themes report, “envy wishes, and then believes.” both reports accepted. br. reed requested that the fine which he had paid for non-performance of essay might be refunded, as he had been sick for three weeks previous to the evening on which it was due, and was then sick and out of town. much warm debate ensuing, he withdrew the request and it was voted, that the members of the society as individuals in the situation of br. reed would consider an essay as due from them. adjourned till monday evening, a fortnight hence, to meet at 7 o'clock at br. emerson's room. attest, r. w. emerson. monday evg., march 20th [1820). met according to adjournment, br. kent in the chair. proceeded to reading themes, then to discussion. on account of the absence of brs. hill ist, gourdin and lyon, it was voted that brs. frye and hill 2d be judges of all the discussions. question arising with regard to the expediency of choosing by lot one who should voluntarily discuss with br. emerson, it was 1820] pythologian society 41 voted, that in the present or a similar instance the single discussor should speak alone. the judges decided the first discussion in favour of br. reed (for celibacy!). on examination of the second, the judges reported indecision, and the moderator decided for br. wood. after discussion, proceeded to hear br. wood's report as committee, who reported that mr. cheney will join the society with pleasure, but cannot appear till the next meeting. proceeded to committees. brs. blood and burton, committee for discussions, report:ist: whether the accession of the canadas to the territory of the u. s. a. would be for the best interest of this country. – frye and hill ist. 2d: whether commons be honourable to the progress of college literature. — kent and hill 2d. 3d: whether cicero or demosthenes be the greatest orator. — gourdin and lyon. committee of themes report “futurity.” voted, that the anniversary of this society, the 24th of april next, be celebrated by oration and poem. chose br. kent orator, and br. emerson poet. as the next meeting is essay night, chose br. burton and emerson committee of arrangements. 42 journal (age 16 adjourned to monday evg., 7 o'clock, to meet at br. burton's room. attest, r. w. emerson, sec’y. monday evg., april 3d (1820). met according to adjournment. br. lyon in the chair. proceeded to hear br. hill ist's essay voted, that the thanks of the society be presented to br. hill for his elegant and ingenious performance. br. gourdin not being present, proceeded to the convivial business of the evening. afterwards br. gourdin appearing, on account of the lateness of the time, and other considerations, it was voted, that br. g.'s essay should be read at the next ordinary meeting of the society. appointed brs. hill 2d and wood to be the essayists at the meeting in the middle of next term. adjourned till april 24th, the anniversary of the society, to meet at br. emerson's room, to hear the oration and poem. attest, r. w. emerson, sec’y. april 26th, 1820. met by mistake two days later than the anniversary. voted, that br. gourdin be requested 1820] pythologian society 43 to read his essay this evening to the society. proceeded to initiate br. cheney, then to hear the essay. voted, that the thanks of the society be presented to br. gourdin, for his correct and elegant essay. br. blood presented br. kent's excuse for non-attendance, and it was voted, that br. emerson be a committee to request br. kent to deliver his oration to the society at the earliest convenient opportunity. proceeded to hear the poem. a treat was then given to the society by the liberality of brs. reed and lyon. voted that the thanks of the society be given to brs. reed and lyon for their unexampled munificence. adjourned to a fortnight from next monday evening. sec. r. w. emerson. november 18, 1820. after several unsuccessful efforts, on the part of the secretary, to call the society together, a few of the members (affording an instance of disinterestedness and self denial, which reflects the highest honour on themselves) met this evening at br. hill's room. after spending some time in lively conversation, a sufficient number were found present to form a quorum; 44 journal (age 17 and, accordingly, the meeting was opened, when, agreeably to the object of the meeting, the essays were called for. but br. gourdin, from whom one has been some time due, not appearing, his of course was omitted; as was br. blood's for the same reason. the essayists, whose performances became due this evening, were brs. cheney and emerson. br. cheney was, therefore, called upon, and delivered a very elegant and patriotic essay; for which the sincere thanks of the society were bestowed upon him; a mark of honour incomparably more valuable than medals, which time will tarnish and destroy, or statues, which violence will deface, and barbarism overthrow. here the secretary would gladly close the record of this evening, and let the critics of posterity suppose that what he has written above is merely a fragment of what he recorded ; and exercise their learning and ingenuity in supplying the deficiency, but truth and fidelity forbid. for (o tempora ! o mores !) no sooner had br. cheney delivered his essay, and received the thanks of the society, as above recorded, than some of the members present began to express uneasiness at being any longer detained; and that, although br. emerson was prepared to read the 1821) pythologian society 45 essay due from him. strange infatuation! but such was their desire to depart that it was found impossible to keep them together any longer. the meeting was therefore adjourned.attest, e. frye, secretary. february 26th, 1821. wonderful to relate! within an hour of the time appointed, a larger number of the members than have attended any meeting since i have had the honour to be sec'y, met at no. 4 h'y'to hear the essays due last time, and the anniversary oration due from time not quite immemorial, but so long that it should have been delivered almost a year ago. —the meeting was then opened (with br. kent in the chair) and the oration called for. but br. kent, not having had sufficient time, we may suppose, to prepare himself since he was chosen orator, desired that it might be postponed till the next anniversary (april 24th); which was agreed to by the society. we shall then verify the old proverb, by killing two birds with one stone. having settled this business, br. burton was called on for his essay, which has been due almost as long as the oration. but not being prepared, it was voted, after hearing 1 holworthy hall. 46 journal [age 17 his excuse, “ that it be delivered on the evening of the monday nearest the fifteenth of april.” — br. gourdin being absent, his essay of course was not read. br. blood, whose essay was due at the same time with br. gourdin's, was next called on. — but it appearing that, by some fatal mistake, he had left it in sterling, or elsewhere, a vote was passed to hear it with br. burton's. thus we despatch business. no essay now remained to be heard except br. emerson's; which was not read last term on account of circumstances mentioned page 46 of this volume. he was, therefore, called on to read now. and, oh! how the secretary's heart beat with joy, when he actually saw him arise from his seat, and, taking a roll of paper from his pocket, seat himself by the table! rejoice with me, my brethren, for we shall yet hear an essay this evening. he accordingly read a very “elegant and appropriate essay,” for which he received the unanimous and (let me add) the most sincere thanks of the society. all business relative to performances being thus finished, br. hill 2d was chosen committee of one to wait on br. gourdin, and inform him that, unless he, in future, attend the meetings of the society more regularly than in times 1821] pythologian society 47 past, he shall be expelled. br. blood was likewise chosen committee of one to wait on br. lyon for the same purpose. ... reand now, as my term of service has expired, i must leave it with him hill, the new secretary] to transmit to posterity the very interesting proceedings of this society, while i with true firmness of mind (oh! the sweets of power !), will descend to a private station. so farewell to all my greatness; frye’s occupation's gone! attest, enoch frye, sec'y. wednesday, march 21, 1821. met at br. blood's, and let us look up, for the day of restoration draweth nigh. with rapture do i record the proceedings of this joyful evening. imprimis: br. wood filled the chair with superior dignity, in which gravity and imposing majesty were predominant. the house was then called to order, and we were favoured with a most ingenious, amusing, and humorous performance by br. blood, entitled, “journal travels, etc” in the country. the effect which this produced upon us was — i cannot tell how powerful—and therefore shall not attempt to describe 1 us was pr48 [age 17 journal it,-it baffled description. therefore we will drop that subject and turn to a milder atmosphere, and calmer sky. br. emerson next advanced, with a neat, concise and pitby comparison of country and city life, much to the edification of the brotherhood. br. wood then obliged us with an original and, no doubt, very accurate description of “country life,” in which he drew aside the curtain, that is, opened the door and introduced us, at once, into the interior of a yeoman's dwelling. we were very much pleased with the mistake which the master of the house, “good easy soul” made, by taking his guest at first for an ass, or some other outlandish beast. but on awaking from his nap, he saw his error, and gave him such a cordial reception, that we were charmed with “ country life.” themes being despatched, proceeded to discussion. the first, hill 2d solus, gourdin absent, decided in his favour of course. then the important dowling question was discussed by kent and frye.' in the progress of which the former displayed an interest, an eloquence, warmth of feeling, and sensibility in defence of patrick i at a meeting in the preceding august, the question had been assigned to these members, “whether dowling be advantageous to the welfare of college ?" 1821] pythologian society 49 dowling, a catholic irishman, which did equal honour to his head and his heart. he even rose to the sublime in defence of this great and much injured man, interlarded with specimens of the most beautiful pathos. his feelings indeed were so much affected, that they choked his utterance, but his expressive countenance did more for his cause than all the letters in the alphabet. brother frye on the contrary produced many “knockdown” arguments, which had a manifest tendency to disprove all his opponent had advanced. he assailed him with invectives and contradictions in abundance. displayed much sophistry, satire, humour, in his attack upon the maculate dowling. he would even gladly have buried him in a hole of his own digging, into which a fit of intoxication had plunged him. this being a case of peculiar importance, instead of committing the decision, as usual, to two members only, the secretary formally took the opinion of all present; and notwithstanding the obstinate virulence, and the position of mr. attorney frye, the patrick was cleared by a majority of one. so may intemperance triumph!' committees : kent and hill 2d, for dis1 this last sentence seems to have been written in later. 50 journal [age 17 cussions, reported the following which were accepted. i: whether it be beneficial to the students to spend much time in the acquisition of the polite accomplishment. — burton and emerson. 2: a conference. on the comparative interest excited by the lectures of ware, willard and everett. — blood, cheney and wood. blood and cheney, for themes, reported: “the miseries of human life.” accepted. voted to adjourn to the 5 april next, to meet at burton's, at 7 o'clock p. m. april 5, 1821. met at burton's. ... kent and hill 2d, judges of the discussion by burton and emerson, decided in the negative, in favour of burton. attest, jos. b. hill, sec. may ist, 1821. met at brother blood's to hear br. kent's anniversary oration. liberal provision had been made for social conviviality, to which two bottles of wine, handed over by brother emerson, not a little contributed, and for which by a public 1821] pythologian society 51 vote the society bestowed their warmest thanks to brother emerson. br. cheney filled the chair, and after a cheerful glass the orator held forth on[here the records of the society come to an abrupt end, excepting certain accounts in the end of the books, and the following official declaration :-) i,r.w.emerson, committee of arrangements, have received of r. w. emerson, secretary, the sum of two dollars for each essay-meeting in the past term collected from fine and assessment, and likewise the donations made to the society on the anniversary meeting, &c., and have faithfully expended the same for the best interests of the society, as far as my limited apprehension would assist me. there remains in the treasury the sum of one cent, being the donation of br. oliver blood to the society — which i shall pay on the demand of the new secretary. signed, r. w. emerson. rnal iii “no. xviii” 1820 between, or contemporary with “wide worlds,” nos. 1 and 2, is a manuscript book, marked as above, a few specimens from which are here given. besides these, it contains notes on college lectures, and extracts copied from the books he was reading; also some very juvenile criticism of wordsworth, especially the “excursion,” and notes for his prize dissertation “ on the present state of ethical philosophy,” which, as has been said, rev. dr. edward everett hale printed, with that on socrates, accompanying his sketch of emerson. the note-book also has fragments on the re ligion of the middle ages, religious tendencies of different states of society, on poetry, et cætera. of romance also there are a few pages, “the magician,” and an unnamed one about a witch-wife; also various scraps of verse, including part of a ballad on king richard. but much space is given in this and some of the following “wide worlds" to a discussion 1820) drama 53 of the drama, especially in america. he attacks it in a daring and violent manner, praising the greek tragedies, but his youthful sense of morality is outraged by the grossness of passages. in the elizabethan dramatists, and his taste disgusted by the degeneracy of the later drama. it must be borne in mind, however, first, that it is doubtful whether the youth had ever been inside of a play-house; second, that the writings in question were probably prepared for a debate in the pythologian society, in which he had his part assigned; hence, do not exactly represent emerson's views at the time, especially as, somewhat later, he adopts a much less stringent tone, and believes that the theatre in america might be reformed, and become an elevating influence, from which, however, shakespeare with all his charms, must be excluded, unless severely expurgated.] “no. xviii” boston, september 22d, 1820. where dost thou careless lie buried in ease and sloth ? knowledge that sleeps doth die; and this security, 54 [age 17 journal it is the common moth which eats on wits and arts, and quite destroys them both. are all the aonian springs dryed up? lies thespia waste ? does clarius' harp want strings ? that not a nymph now sings, or droop they as disgraced to see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced ? ben jonson to himself. drama campbell, the poet, said to professor everett that the only chance which america has for a truly national literature is to be found in the drama;' we are bound to reverence such high authority, and at least to examine the correctness of the position. few speculations have such a charm in their nature as this, whose object is, how to conduct a dialogue between a man and his fellow just far enough removed from common life to avoid 1 this statement is twice made in this journal. i have substituted for the one found in this place the later one, as better expressed, and mentioning that the opinion was given to professor everett. innan 1820] drama 55 disgust while it must claim the attention and elevate the tone of feeling. in the nation which has always been regarded as the model in all the arts, the fountain of all polished letters, and the pattern of all time, the drama was invented, and there alone succeeded perfectly. all inquiries therefore upon this subject begin from greece. the history and influence of tragedy, its modes and machines of operation, must be explained from these sources. tragedy, by exciting the emotions of fear and of pity, tends to correct the same affections in the soul. this has been all along esteemed the philosophy of tragedy, with what correctness we shall not pretend to determine; but these ends were answered in greece, and more than this, a respect for the gods was effectually inculcated. the thraldom of superstition was made useful to shackle those whom the light and law of natural religion could not guide, and he whom the beauty of moral rectitude could not win, was afraid to face the temple of the furies, and averted his head as he passed by it. but by whom was this powerful influence created over a people whose refined taste kept a watchful eye on the artist, so that it should not be seduced unawares, and never yielded save to 56 journal [ace 17 the irresistible might of genius? in what schools did they purchase the subtle art which became in their hands an instrument of such power? this question is the most important which can be asked, for it developes the causes of their preeminence. it was not the robed disciple at ease in the academy who gained the prize of tragedy, but æschylus was a son of the republic who had fought valiantly at marathon and plataea, and came bleeding from the battle, to assemble in a simple natural plot the personages of old traditions, and attribute to them the feelings he had just felt, and place them in circumstances in which himself had been placed. miraculous effects have been recorded of their representation; but by whom and how were they performed? in answer to this we all know how the primitive stage differed from the modern; that all was on a magnificent scale, that the actors were transformed to giants, and the strength of their voices increased by a metallic mouthpiece. but that which formed their chief distinction were their independent habits of feeling, of sentiment, of invention. this is illustrated by an anecdote of their theatre. polus, the first actor on the stage, was preparing to perform the part of electra. in this piece electra embraces the 1820] drama 57 urn supposed to hold the remains of orestes. the greek actor ordered that the urn containing the ashes of his own son should be brought from the tomb and conveyed to the theatre; and when, on the stage, this urn was offered to him and the father bent over it, he rent the air with no mimic grief or insincere howlings, but the whole audience was melted with the moving picture of his grief and lamentation. when the light had failed from the greek theatre which those masters had poured upon it, it would have violated the common order of events had an equal illumination been rekindled. the frivolous comic muse, hitherto of slight esteem, grew into favour and trode fast on the steps of sceptred tragedy. the witty and offensive aristophanes parodied the eloquent declamation of euripides, mimicked the awful port of princes and gods, and converted the general satire of the old comedians into a vicious personal ribaldry. finally the civil authority interfered to stop its flagrant abuses. was the tragedy was not inherited by rome, which scrupulously incorporated all the arts of athens. it was too delicate a treasure to be 58 [age 17 journal lightly transmitted by instruction or won with the spoils. in france, during the dark ages, the castle of feudal chieftains witnessed a second rude drama, the name and character of which is all that remains. the “mysteries” served to shew that it was a natural expression of the human feelings. in england, the progress was somewhat similar, but the first productions which were marked for fame are works of prodigious power and their origin is sudden and unaccountable. from an obscurity which none had illuminated since chaucer's era, there suddenly issued a series of elegant and original performances equal in power to the masterpieces of greece, and adorned by a strain of such delicate feeling, and the wisdom of solid and rare philosophy, in verse wherein was breathed the very melody of nature to arrest the soul withal. over all this fair miracle a hideous corruption was spread which made every page offensive. it is wonderful how intimately health and poison, beauty and destruction, can combine, and nowhere shall we find such a fatal illustration. the inhabitants of england have sat down rejoicing in the light which shakspeare's genius 1820] the sciences 59 hath shed around them, unconscious or careless of the defilement which attends us. ... shall we be told that shakspeare painted nature as he found it, that we only see here what we see elsewhere in the scenes of life daily? no, he paints nature, not in innocence and its primitive condition, but not until it has become depraved itself, and its exhibition will deprave others. nor is the general moral which is to be deduced from the whole pure. ... shakspeare assumed the commanding attitude of bold unrivalled genius; men saw that the inspiration was genuine, and few were so scrupulous as to ask if all were here. ... the statue is colossal but its diabolical features poison our admiration for the genius which conceived and the skilful hand which carved it. [the exact sciences] of all the sciences the science of the mind is necessarily the most worthy and elevating. but it cannot precede the others. natural philosophy and mathematics must be sought in order to gain first, the comforts of civilized life, and then the data whence our moral reasonings proceed. it is an old saying that all are a circle, and necessarily depend on one another; that great improvements 60 journal [age 17 e 1 ve in astronomy involve a knowledge of mathematics, and so of the others. we exist to moral purposes and are proud to call ourselves intellectual beings! hence, one would say, leave matter to the beasts that are only matter, and indulge your peculiar and distinguishing faculties. but then our reason and all our mental powers are called into as active exercise in demonstrating the properties of matter as the properties of mind, and the beasts are alike incapable of both. so your plea confutes itself. with regard then to the study of natural philosophy, i do not think any one study so contributes to expand the mind as our first correct notions of this science;—when we first know that the sky is not a shell, but a vacant space, that the world is not still and a plain, but a little globe, performing, as one of a system, immense revolutions. ... 1820] 61 poem dedication quem fugis ? aut quis te nostris complexibus arcet ? haec memorans, cinerem et sopitos suscitat ignes. virgilian lot. (this song to one whose unimproved talents and unattained friendship have interested the writer in his character and fate.) by the unacknowledged tie which binds us to each other, by the pride of feeling high which friendship's name can smother; by the cold encountering eyes whose language deeply thrilling rebelled against the prompt surmise which told the heart was willing; by all which you have felt and feel, my eager glance returning, i offer to this silent zeal on youthful altars burning. all the classic hours which fill the little urn of honour; minerva guide and pay the pen your hand conferred upon her. journal : [age 17 translation of montaigne to monsieur charron may fortune bless thee and friends caress thee remote from care, but loved by me; the gifts of pleasure in boundless treasure not withheld, but poured on thee. garlanded with roses at eve thy friend reposes, yet looks for joys that boundless be. r. w. e. when jove's grey daughter, beldame care, on crimson couches first was laid, her thousand wrinkled children there scowled on poor man— to all betrayed. there was a little fairy then of crooked form, whose name was s, who bade the miscreants join to form a smiling cherub, hight caress. “ doth not the queen of the woods gather the secrets of futurity when she reads the decaying oak leaves, and can she not tell the young man how to guide his steps in life?”; i question of a youth to a weird woman in a fragment of a fairy story of r. w.e.'s. journal iv the wide world, no. 2 [emerson was now a senior, seventeen years old, and with his loved brother, edward bliss emerson, who had just entered the freshman class, occupied room no. 9 hollis.] succe sa october, 1820. i have determined to grant a new charter to my pen, having finished my commonplace book, which i commenced in january, and with as much success as i was ambitious of — whose whole aim was the small utility of being the exchequer to the accumulating store of organized verbs, nouns and substantives, to wit, sentences. it has been a source of entertainment, and accomplished its end, and on this account has induced me to repeat or rather continue the experiment. wherefore, on! to forget for a season the world and its concerns, and to separate the soul for sublime contemplation till it has lost the sense of circumstances, and is decking itself in plumage drawn out from the gay wardrobe of fancy, is a recre64 journal [age 17 ation and a rapture of which few men can avail themselves. but this privilege, in common with other great gifts of nature, is attainable if not inborn. it is denied altogether to three classes at least of mankind, viz.: the queer, the downright, and the ungainly. this is by no means a careless or fanciful classification, although rather a restricted sense belongs to these epithets. by “the queer” i understand those animals of oddity whose disgusting eccentricity flows from a conceited character and the lack of common sense. i characterize “the downright" only as people who do jobs. and “the ungainly” points exclusively at some quaint lantern countenances who have at one time and another shocked my nerves and nauseated my taste by their hideous aspects. with cautious explanation we advance from these degraded stages of intellect, this doleful frontispiece of creation, to prouder orders of mind. ordinary men claim the intermittent exercise of this power of beautiful abstraction; but to the souls only of the mightiest is it given to command the disappearance of land and sea, and mankind and things, and they vanish. then comes the enchanter illuminating the glorious vision with hues from heaven, granting thoughts of other worlds gilded with lustre of ravishment and delight, till 1820] george ticknor 65 · the hours, teeming with loveliness and joy, roll by uncounted. exulting in the exercise of this prerogative, the poet, truly called so, has entreated the reluctant permission. “ and forever shalt thou dwell in the spirit of this spell.” october 6th, 1820 i have listened this evening to an eloquent lecture of the elegant professor of french and spanish literature' on the subject of the extent of the language, a subject which bears on the face of it dullness and dread — every soul present warmly acknowledged the force of delineation when the great deluge of the french language, sweeping down all the feeble barriers of ephemeral dialects, carried captive the languages and literature of all europe, while in the commotions of politics the german thrones were dashed to pieces against each other on this great and wide sea. when bounding fancy leaves the clods of earth to riot in the regions of her birth, i george ticknor, smith professor of the french and german languages and literature. to this chair the corporation and overseers added a professorship of belles letters. longfellow and lowell were in turn mr. ticknor's successors. 66 [age 17 journal where, robed in light, the genii of the stars launch in refulgent space their diamond cars, or in pavilions of celestial pride, serene above all influence beside, vent the bold joy which swells the glorious soul rich with the rapture of secure controul, onward, around, their golden visions stray till only glory can their range delay. well, i began with prose and have mustered up ten lines of poetry, which will answer rarely to lighten the labour of the next theme. it is half past 10, and time to put away the wide world and its concerns, and consign my indolent limbs to comfortable repose. ergo cease, my pen, “ to witch the world with noble penmanship!” october 12tb. i should write a theme this morning, but cruel destiny forbids the thought of rainbow colours to rise. i want to write poetry to add to “when bounding,” etc. october 15tb. different mortals improve resources of happiness which are entirely different. this i find more apparent in the familiar instances obvious 1820] everett. exhibition 67 ere at college recitations. my more fortunate neighbours exultin the display of mathematical study,' while i, after feeling the humiliating sense of dependence and inferiority, which, like the goading, soul-sickening sense of extreme poverty, palsies effort, esteem myself abundantly compensated, if with my pen, i can marshal whole catalogues of nouns and verbs, to express to the life the imbecility i felt. ... mr. everett says:— “the shout of admiration is lost ere it reaches the arches of heaven, but there is an all-seeing eye which looks deep down into the recesses of the obscurest heart. it is a small matter to abstain from vice to which there is no temptation, or to perform a virtue which is standing by you with crowns for your head; but it is the obscure, struggling and unsuccessful virtue which meets with reward.” exhibition night. this tumultuous day is done. the character of its thought-weather is 1 just before entering college, the young emerson wrote to his elder brother william: “to tell the truth, i do not think it necessary to understand mathematicks and greek thoroughly to be a good and useful, or even a great man. aunt mary would certainly tell you so, and i think you yourself believe it, if you did not think it a dangerous doctrine to tell a freshman. but do not be afraid, for i mean to study them through, but with equal interest to other studies.” 68 journal [age 17 always extremely singular. fuller than any other day of great thoughts and poets' dreams, of hope and joy and pride, and then closed with merriment and wine, evincing or eliciting gay, fraternal feeling enough, but brutalized and defiled with excess of physical enjoyment; leaving the mind distracted and unfit for pursuits of soberness. barnwell's oration contained sublime images. — one was of great power — a terrible description of the fire-tempest which overshadowed sodom and gomorrha—another description of the waterspout of the pacific was noble. a great struggle of ambition is going on between barnwell and upham.' thundering and lightning are faint and tame descriptions of the course of astonishing eloquence. you double the force of painting if you describe it as it is. robert woodward barnwell, of south carolina, later a united states senator, and president of south carolina college, was a classmate loved and admired. after the civil war, which had greatly reduced his fortunes, his class sent him messages of affection, accompanied, i think, with substantial aid (of course unasked), and in this movement emerson was active. they died in the same year. charles wentworth upham of salem, author of a work on salem witchcraft, and a brother-in-law of dr. o. w. holmes, was much valued by emerson. they were in the divinity school together. he was mayor of salem and a member of congress. 1820] eloquence 69 the flashing eye, that fills up the chasms of language, the living brow, throwing meaning and intellect into every furrow and every frown; the stamping foot, the labouring limbs, the desperate gesture, these must all be seen in their strong exercise, before the vivid conception of their effect can be adequately felt. and then a man must separate and discipline and intoxicate his mind before he can enjoy the glory of the orator, when mighty thoughts come crowding on the soul; he must learn to harrow up unwelcome recollections and concentrate woe and horror and disgust till his own heart sickens; he must stretch forth his arm and array the bright ideas which have settled around him till they gather to forceful and appalling sublimity. october 24th. i begin to believe in the indian doctrine of eyefascination. the cold blue eye of — has so intimately connected him with my thoughts and visions that a dozen times a day, and as often by night, i find myself wholly wrapt up in conjectures of his character and inclinations. we have had already two or three long profound stares at each other. be it wise or weak or superstitious, i must know him. cara 70 [age 17 journal perhaps thy lot in life is higher than the fates assign to me, while they fulfil thy large desire, and bid my hopes as visions flee. but grant me still in joy or sorrow, in grief or hope, to claim thy heart, and i will then defy the morrow whilst i fulfil a loyal part." october 25. i find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid and hollow. this is somewhat appalling and, if i do not discipline myself with diligent care, i shall suffer severely from remorse and the sense of inferiority hereafter. all around me are industrious and will be great, i am indolent and shall be insignificant. avert it, heaven! avert it, virtue! i need excitement. november 1. my opinion of — was strangely lowered by hearing that he was “ proverbially idle.” this was redeemed by learning that he was a “superior man.” this week, a little eventful in college, has brought a share of its accidents to him. 1 these verses have a paper over them arranged so that it can be turned up ; and on the paper is an india ink profile and bust, presumably a memory-sketch of gay. perhaps the lot in life is higher than the fates afside to me while they fulfee the large desire and bid my hopes as visions the but grant me shee in jou or forrow in grief or hope to clame the heart and i will then defy the morrow whilst i fulfil a loyal part. memory sketch of martin gay. by emerson in his journal for 1821 1820] engraving 71 november 2. what a grand man was milton! so marked by nature for the great epic poet that was to bear up the name of these latter times. in “reason of church government urged against prelaty,” written while young, his spirit is already communing with itself and stretching out in its colossal proportions and yearning for the destiny he was appointed to fulfil. november 10. “the abbot”must be to its author “a source of unmixed delight and unchastened pride.” iii november 1o. a recipe!!! young waldo, when in your thick-coming whims, you feel an itching to engrave, take a piece of glass and cover it with a thin film of wax or isinglass and trace the proposed figure with a steel point. place this over a vessel containing a mixture of powdered fluor-spar, and sulphuric acid gently heated. the acid gas coming into contact with the uncovered parts of the glass combines with and removes the silex, as well probably as the alkali with which it is united, and lines more or less deep are thus formed ore 72 journal [age 17 according to gorham's chemistry (article, silicon), page 265, volume one. observe this. mr. everett notices that a temperate climate has always been found necessary to a high national character. also, mr. waldo, if you would like to find the sublimest attainable sayings on the destruction of nations, vide 4th book of the sybilline collections. november 18tb. i shall subjoin some recipes for the terrible void which ruins ever and anon the mind's peace, and is otherwise called unhappiness. 1. take scott's novels and read carefully the mottoes of the chapters; or, if you prefer reading a novel itself, take the “bride of lammermoor.”ı 2. sometimes (seldom) the finest parts of cowper's “task” will answer the purpose. i refer to the home-scenes. 3. for the same reason that i would take scott's mottoes, i would also take an old tragedy such as ben jonson's, otway's, congreve's; in 1 although mr. emerson seldom read a novel after his youth, and cared little for them, especially disliking “ dismal stories,” he retained through life his early affection for this novel, forlorn from the beginning, and most tragic in the end. 1820) eloquence 73 short, any thing of that kind which leads as far as possible from the usual trains of thought. 4. make recipes to add to this list. december 4th, 1820. here at cambridge in my cheerless schoolroom.' sunday evening i heard mr. everett preach at the old south a charity sermon one of his most (perhaps the most) eloquent efforts. december 5th. it appears to me that it is a secret of the art of eloquence to know that a powerful aid would be derived from the use of forms of language which were generally known to men in their infancy, and which now, under another and unknown garb, but forcibly reminding them of early impressions, are likely to be mistaken for opinions whose beginning they cannot recollect and therefore suppose them innate. at least, if by such operation they cannot convince the i it was then the custom, which continued for nearly forty years afterward, to allow the poorer students to help themselves through college by teaching, often far from cambridge, during their college course, presenting themselves at due time for examinations. 74 journal [age 17 mind, they may serve to win attention by this awakening but ambiguous charm. by these forms of language i mean a paraphrase of some sentence in a primer or other child's book common to the country. the spell would be more perfect, perhaps, if, instead of such a paraphrase, the words of a sentence should be modulated to the cadence of the aforesaid infant literature. i dare not subjoin an example." nan e a . lu the human soul, the world, the universe are labouring on to their magnificent consummation. we are not fashioned thus marvellously for naught. the straining conceptions of man, the monuments of his reason and the whole furniture of his faculties is [sic] adapted to mightier views of things than the mightiest he has yet beheld. roll on, then, thou stupendous universe, in sublime, incomprehensible solitude, in an unbeheld but sure path. the finger of god is pointing out your way. and when ages shall have elapsed and time is no more, while the stars shall fall from heaven and the sun become darkness and the moon blood, human intellect, puri1 here a water-colour of the “ three wise men of goshen” [gotham) at sea in their bowl — all with the " muttonchop" whiskers of the day. 1820] school. futurity 75. fied and sublimed, shall mount to perfection of unmeasured and ineffable enjoyment of knowledge and glory. man shall come to the presence of jehovah. (in the manner of chateaubriand.) unmeasured in. man shall.com chateaubriand.) december 15th. i claim and clasp a moment's respite from this irksome school to saunter in the fields of my own wayward thought. the afternoon was gloomy and preparing to snow, — dull, ugly weather. but when i came out from the hot, steaming, stoved, stinking, dirty, a-b spellingschool-room, i almost soared and mounted the atmosphere at breathing the free magnificent air, the noble breath of life. it was a delightful exhilaration; but it soon passed off. it is impossible that the distribution of rewards hereafter should not be in gradation. how inconsistent with justice would it be that all the boundless varieties of desert and condition should be levelled to a single lot — all, from the agonized martyr, who was sawn asunder for the faith, to the deathbed of a modern christian, where a soul which was never tempted, and a sinless innocence which was never tried, has sighed out a harmless life on beds of down and accompanied and piloted to heaven by the 76 journal [age 17 prayerful sympathy of the saints on earth. (in the manner of everett.) the other day read edinburgh review of drummond's “ academic questions.” the review and the reviewed are both beautiful specimens of an elegant metaphysical style. attended mr. ticknor's lecture on vol. taire. 1821 january 9th, 1821. have heard to-day another consecrated display of genius — of the insinuating and overwhelming effect of eloquent manners and style, when made sacred and impregnable by the subject which they are to enforce — mr. everett's sermon before the howard benevolent society. he told a very affecting anecdote. “i have known a woman in this town go out to work with her own hands to pay for the wooden coffin which was to enclose the dust of her only child. i prayed with her when there was none to stand by her but he who was to bear that dust to the tomb.” there was a vast congregation, but while he spoke as silent as death. unluckily, in the pauses, however, they shook the house with 1821] aunt mary 77 their hideous convulsions; for when he raised his handkerchief to his face after a pause in the sermon, it seemed almost a concerted signal for the old south to cough. let those now cough who never coughed before, and those who always cough, cough now the more. february 7th. the religion of my aunt' is the purest and most sublime of any i can conceive. it appears to be based on broad and deep and remote principles of expediency and adequateness to an end principles which few can comprehend and fewer feel. it labours to reconcile the apparent insignificancy of the field to the surpassing grandeur of the operator, and founds the benignity and mercy of the scheme on adventurous but probable comparisons of the condition of other orders of being. although it is an intellectual offspring of beauty and splendour, if that were all, it breathes a practical spirit of rigid and austere devotion. it is independent of forms and ceremonies, and its ethereal nature gives a glow 1 miss mary moody emerson, his inspiring correspondent and severe, though loving and secretly proud, critic. his sketch of her is printed in vol. x (lectures and biographical sketches of his works. 78 [age 17 journal of soul to her whole life. she is the weirdwoman of her religion, and conceives herself always bound to walk in narrow but exalted paths, which lead onward to interminable regions of rapturous and sublime glory. march 141b. i am reading price, on morals, and intend to read it with care and commentary. i shall set down here what remarks occur to me upon the matter or manner of his argument. on the 56th page, dr. price says that right and wrong are not determined by any reasoning or deduction, but by the ultimate perception of the human mind. it is to be desired that this were capable of satisfactory proof, but, as it is in direct opposition to the sceptical philosophy, it cannot stand unsupported by strong and sufficient evidence. i will however read more and see if it is proved or no.— he saith that the understanding is this ultimate determiner. cambridge, march 25. sabbath. i am sick — if i should die what would become of me? we forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary 1821] prayer 79 sickness is to remind us of these concerns. i must improve my time better. i must prepare myself for the great profession i have purposed to undertake. i am to give my soul to god and withdraw from sin and the world the idle or vicious time and thoughts i have sacrificed to them; and let me consider this as a resolution by which i pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances, and to which i must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation, to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience. cambridge, april 1. • it is sabbath again, and i am for the most part recovered. is it a wise dispensation that we can never know what influence our own prayers have in restoring the health we have prayed god to restore? it has been thought by some that in these immediate effects they have no influence; in general, that their good is prospective and that the world is governed by providence through the instrumentality of general laws, which are only broken on the great occasions of the world or other portions of the creator's works. but what have i wandered from? i think that it infinitely removes heavenly dispensations from earthly ones. this manner of giving gifts with80 [age 17 journal out expressing the reason for which they are bestowed, and leaving it to the heart to make the application, and to discover the giver, is worthy of a supreme, ineffable intelligence. well, i am sorry. ... the anecdote which i accidentally heard of — shews him more like his neighbours than i should wish him to be. i shall have to throw him up after all, as a cheat of fancy. before i ever saw him, i wished my friend to be different from any individual i had seen. i invested him with a solemn cast of mind, full of poetic feeling, and an idolater of friendship, and possessing a vein of rich sober thought. for a year i have entertained towards him the same feelings and should be sorry to lose him altogether before we have ever exchanged above a dozen words. may 2. i am more puzzled than ever with — 's conduct. he came out to meet me yesterday, and i, observing him, just before we met, turned another corner and most strangely avoided him. this morning i went out to meet him in a different direction, and stopped to speak with a lounger, in order to be directly in — 's way; but turned into the first gate and went 1821] everett's sermon 81 towards stoughton. all this [took place (?)] without any apparent design and as [soberly (?)] as if both were intent on some tremendous affair.' may 1otb. huzza for my magician!he engages me finely." i am as interested in the tale and as anxious to know the end as any other reader could be. by the by, this tale of mine might be told with powerful effect by a man of good voice and natural eloquence. june 10. mr. everett, in his artillery election sermon, to preface his own prophecy that the century now begun (i. e. third century since the plymouth landing) will be the most important in determining the future fates of america, told this story :in 1417, when huss was bound to the stake at prague, he declared amid his tori all the above paragraph was purposely obscured with heavy ink-marks. the bracketed words, however, are the only doubtful ones. 2 this was a romance on which the young emerson was for the moment working. in the page or so of it which remains in one of his blotting-books, king richard cæur de leon, worn out and sick, is confessing to a friar how the presumptuous sins of his youth have been punished by haunting remorse. 82 journal [age 18 tures that after a hundred years a retribution should be made on papacy. the inhabitants of prague wrote his words “post centum annos" upon their standard and in their records, and in 1517 the reformation by luther began. books lent kett's elements, both vols., to angier. telemaque, to stackpole 1. lacroix, to gutterson. locke, 2. vol., to hill. iii and iv cantoes of childe harold, — both lost. guy mannering, to lane. rhyming dictionary, to williams, a. b. blair's rhetoric (abridgement), to hooper. lay of the last minstrel, lothrop. lady of the lake, to idem. adams's antiquities. books inquirenda mather's magnalia. dunlop's history of fiction. mattaire. swift. froissart. davy's chemistry. teignmouth's life of jones. simmon's life of milton. 3 vol. of brit. plutarch. 1821] books chaucer. montaigne's essays. germany (stael). drummond's academical questions. price, on morals. humboldt's work on america. smith's virginia. robertson's s. america. history of philip ii. life of shakspeare. subjects for themes destruction of a city ; poetry. (forensic) whether civil government be founded on a compact expressed or implied. the domestic relations as restraints on an adventurous spirit. influence of weather on intellectual temperament. character of any fancy portrait, as for instance, i the hand points to a respectable sketch of a man of a somewhat classic type, his head filleted, and below him a seamonster with the feet, just bitten from the man, in his mouth. in place of these the man has miraculously grown a trifid fishtail on which he stands gracefully, and, looking down on the monster with philosophic scorn, is saying (on a scroll), “my feet are gone. i am a fish. yes, i am a fish." 84 [age 16-18 journal authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1820 and 1821 bible, apocrypha. pythagoras; anaxagoras; aristotle; xenophon's and plato's accounts of socrates; homer; æschylus; sophocles; euripides; aristophanes; archelaus; theocritus (apud kennet's greek poets). cicero; lucretius ; virgil; horace ; epictetus; arrian; marcus antoninus; epicurus; zendavesta, (apud gibbon); arthurian romances; de joinville, chronicle of st. louis; plays and masques of shakespeare, ben jonson (the alchymist), beaumont and fletcher, massinger, otway; bacon, novum organum; milton, paradise lost, comus, samson agonistes; rev. isaac barrow; montaigne, essays; montesquieu, lettres persanes; chateaubriand; cowper, task; dryden, absalom and achitophel ; corneille; racine; hobbes; swift; sterne; addison; pope; pwce 1820–21] reading 85 descartes; cudworth; locke; woolaston; shaftsbury; mosheim; hume, essays; priestly; paley; dugald stewart; dr. reid; dr. price, on morals; mellen, on divine vengeance; forsyth, principles of moral science ; bishop hall. johnson, lives of the poets; gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire; burke, regicide peace; bissel, life of burke ; edward search's [abraham tucker] writings. sismondi, history of the italian republics; scott, guy mannering, old mortality, monastery, and minstrelsy of the scottish border ; lockhart, spanish ballads; moore, lalla rookb; campbell, poems; wordsworth, excursion ; southey, curse of kebama; byron, manfred, corsair, and childe harold; charles lamb, essays ; maclaurin, life of sir isaac newton; dean milman, samor, the lord of the bright city, and fall of jerusalem ; . hillhouse, percy's masque ; bryant, waterfowl, and murdered traveller; edward everett's lectures; edinburgh and quarterly reviews. 86 [age 16–18 journal the universe [during the years 1820 and 1821 emerson kept a quotation book, named as above, made up of passages from his miscellaneous reading in the college library or whatever other treasurehouses of letters were open to him. these passages are neatly copied in a small hand on folio sheets, numbered, which were afterwards folded once and placed in a cover. the range is somewhat remarkable and a list is given below.] spenser's view of the state of ireland, apud warton. diversions of queen elizabeth's maids of honor; harrison, apud hollinsbed's chronicle. verses of homer, sung by him and a chorus of boys before the houses of the rich men in samos; original greek and a metrical rendering, apud basil kennet's lives and characters of the greek poets, 1697. pope gregory vii's excommunication of the emperor henry iv, apud berington's abelard and heloisa. queen elizabeth's infatuation for the earl of leicester, apud camden's annales elizabetbae. extract from a scene in byron's manfred. chaucer's account of his sufferings in prison. 1820–21] reading 87 css extract from letter of cicero to plancus, middleton's cicero. extract from poem by cornwall, describing a pauper's burial. close of the conference between the jewess rebecca and brian de bois gilbert, in scott's ivanboe. death and funeral of spenser, camden. erasmus's (latin) epigram to sir t. more, when he did not return the borrowed horse of the latter. alleged epitaph written by virgil for himself. the pedantry of the times of queen elizabeth, warton. on the art of rhetorick, richard wilson, apud burnett. on bessarion, by marcus ficinus, apud hody, de graecis illustribus. suppressed passage from soliloquy of bertram in play by maturin, apud edinburgh review. passage from shipwreck in byron's don juan. extract from sermon of rev. isaac barrow, on comparative ineffectiveness of human laws. concerning shakespeare, ben jonson's discoveries. concerning bacon, 88 journal [age 16-18 collins's ode, “how sleep the brave.” extract from hebrew melodies, byron. meg merrilies' denunciation of the laird of ellangowan. her prophecy of good to his son. guy mannering. on shaking off cupid's yoke, and on emulation; shakespeare's troilus and cressida. song of runic bard [quoted later in “poetry and imagination” in letters and social aims, p. 59), godwin. sforza's speech on his misfortunes. duke of milan; massinger. meditation on conscience; bishop hall. concluding passage of c. w. upham's oration, exhibition, aug. 1820. the shadowing out of paradise lost; a long extract from milton's reason of church government urged against prelaty, beginning “although a poet, soaring in the high region of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him” etc. speech of sir bohort over the dead body of lancelot. ellis's specimens of early english romances. the mourning bride ; congreve. the power of chance in human inventions ; bacon's novum organum (part 2 section ii). 1820–21] reading sert epitaph on pizarro; southey. long extract from idealist; drummond's academical questions. reasonings a priori ; moral outline, dugald stewart. the angels the guides of the heavenly bodies; sermon of jeremy taylor. dialogue between a tyrant and a stoic; arrian, priestley's translation. favourite passage, beginning “the unearthly voices ceased” in scott's lay of the last minstrel, canto i. dreams, from the castle of indolence, thomson. extracts from scenes between viola and the duke, in twelfth night, shakespeare. spenser's lamentation; mother hubberd's tale. the nightingale; thomson's seasons. extract from the magnalia christi of cotton mather, as to the number of settlers in massachusetts bay. lord bacon's expostulation with queen elizabeth, in a letter to the earl of devonshire. song from gipsies metamorphosed, ben jonson. “ ode to melancholy”; the passionate madman, beaumont and fletcher. 90 journal [age 16–18 extract from lord herries' complaint, c. k. sharpe, apud drake's essays. the origin of fable; éloge de fontaine. the mariner's dream. song of the clown, twelfth night. the lombards' loss of opportunity to establish federated republics; hallam's middle ages. decline of ecclesiastical power of rome; hallam's middle ages. the defensive power and successes of federated republics. sismondi, histoire des républiques italiens du moyen age. the bad omens attending the commencement of hostilities when charles i set up his standard at nottingham; clarendon's history. the character of cromwell; clarendon's history. to the berb rosemary; h. kirke white. preface to one of elizabeth's costly masques; ben jonson. to a waterfowl, william cullen bryant. close of the decline and fall of the roman empire; from gibbon's memoirs of his own life and writings. a student's thought compared to a river which 1820–21] reading 91 one one undertakes to dam; tucker's (“ edward search”) light of nature. deliberation and investigation compared to the hunting of a hound; tucker. journal teacher journal v the wide world, no. 3 [emerson seems to have kept no journal for the last half of 1821. he had graduated in the summer of 1821, number thirty in a class of fifty-nine. his actual scholarship in the required branches must have been much lower, for it must be remembered that any misconduct might remove a greater or less number of marks for recitations. hence a boy of quiet disposition might stand in the end much higher than a brilliant but disorderly one. but emerson, none the less, had, night and day, been educating himself in his own way. he came just within the number of those to whom “parts” at commencement were assigned, and in those days they were always delivered. his was the character of john knox, in a colloquy on knox, penn, and wesley, in which function he is said to have been rather negligent. he was class poet, a doubtful honour, as at least six had been asked before him, and refused. his brother william, who graduated in 1818, was doing his best to maintain the family, and it 96 [age 18 journal became waldo's duty to help, for the case was urgent. william, aged twenty-two, had recently opened a finishing school for young ladies, in boston, at his mother's house, and now offered his brother, aged eighteen, the place of assistant. it was a trying place for a bashful boy, unused to girls, but he accepted. (see cabot’s memoirs, pages 69–72 and 86.)] en boston, january 12, 1822. after a considerable interval i am still willing to think that these commonplace books are very useful and harmless things,-at least sufficiently so, to warrant another trial. contrast the principle of contrast which we find engraven within —... how came it there, whence did we derive it? either the deity has written it as one of his laws upon the human mind, or we have derived it from an observation of the invariable course of human affairs. ... in this principle is lodged the safety of human institutions and human life. for suppose ambition excite against the peace of the world one of those incarnate fiends which have, at different periods, arisen to destroy the peace and good order 1822] aunt mary 97 of one community after another, and of nation after nation. gradually the lust of excess engendered by sudden prosperity debauches every virtue and steals away the moral sense. the insolence of power tramples upon the laws of god and the rights of man. . . . here, when the day of triumph burns with consuming splendour here, the mind itself pauses to anticipate change near at hand. the victor must cease. else would the very stones cry out. day and night contend against him; the elements which he wielded rebel and crush him; the clouds nurse their thunders to blast him; he is lifted up on rebellious spears between heaven and earth unworthy and abhorred of both, to perish. tnamurya' “when that spell which can only be felt is thrown over the soul by the magic of genius, 1 shift the letters of this word about, and they spell “ aunt mary.” her nephew thus marks the frequent passages from her letters to him which he copies into his journals. years later he wrote a sketch of the life of this remarkable woman, his sibyl. she was his father's younger sister, and daughter of william emerson, the young minister of concord in the days of the revolution. in her infant ears had rung the noise of the firing at concord fight, close by the manse. her letters to her nephew ralph, whom she idolized, continued through years 98 [age 18 journal now lettest thou thy servant depart where all is boundless genius — or let us tarry forever in this grave, if thus illuminated,' is the adoring language of the heart. is it not a well known principle of human nature that moments of enthusiasm can produce sacrifices which demand no proportionate virtue to those which never pretend to fame?” ... religion the invisible connection between heaven and earth, the solitary principle which unites intellectual beings to an account and makes of men moral beings —religion is distinct and peculiar, alike in its origin and in its end, from all other relations. it is essential to the universe. you seek in vain to contemplate the order of things apart from its existence. you can no more banish this than you can separate from yourself the notions of space and duration. through all the perverse mazes and shadows of infidelity the from remote new england towns where she boarded, were one of the strongest influences of the earlier part of his life, quickening and enlarging his thoughts and also provoking him to defend its independence. his deep debt to her he always acknowledged. see “mary moody emerson,” in his lectures and biographical sketches." 1822] religion 99 light still makes itself visible, until the reluctant mind shudders to acknowledge the eternal encompassing presence of deity. if you can abstract it from the universe, the soul is bewildered by a system of things of which no account can be given; instances of tremendous power— and no hand found to form them; a thousand creations in a thousand spheres all pointing upward to a single point — and no object there to see and receive — it is all a vast anomaly. restore religion and you give to those energies a sublime object. ... the history of religion involves circumstances of remarkable interest, and it is almost all that we are able to trace in the passage of the remote ages of the world. it is a beautiful picture, and just as it should be, that in the character of noah, of abraham, and the early denizens of the world, we trace no feature which does not belong peculiarly to their religion;it was their life. it was natural that when the mountains were just swelling upward under the hand of the creator, when his bow was just built and painted in the sky, when the stone-tables were yet unbroken by moses which now lie mouldering in fragments upon sinai — that men should walk with god. as we come downward 100 journal [age 18 and leave the immediate precincts of the tabernacle, although we become sensible of the progressive departure from the truth, yet each superstition retains the inherent beauty of the first form, disguised and defaced, in some degree, by ill-adjusted and needless apparel. indeed, the only records by which the early ages of any nation are remembered is their religion. we know nothing of the first empires which grasped the sceptre of the earth in egypt, assyria, or persia, but their modes of worship. and this fact forcibly suggests the idea thạt the only true and legitimate vehicle of immortality, the only bond of connection which can traverse the long duration which separates the ends of the world and unites the first people to the knowledge and sympathy of the last people, is religion. we have said that the first nations were remembered by their religion ; and in tracing down their history a little farther until the time of written languages, we find that the first efforts which the human genius made to commit its ideas to permanent signs were exercised upon the great topic which stood uppermost in an unperverted mind. poetry attempted to fashion a probable picture of the creation, to explore the character of providence, to impress upon mankind the 1822] religion ioi enlightened views of a moral government in the world which had been disclosed to her own eye. but the date of writing marks the second age in the history of religion, and we have parted from the more attractive memory of the first. the naked savage who ascends the mountain,because the dusky summit inclines him to believe that the great spirit inhabits there, — and erects a stone as his simple and sincere tribute to the majesty of that being, is an object infinitely more agreeable to our imagination and feelings than the loftier and more excellent offering of lettered science. and although reason teaches us that the deliberate devotion of a philosophic mind is more worth than the vague fears of a superstitious one, yet we are apt to inquire if the pride of learning has not been known to harden the mind even to the plain proofs of divine providence. ге у the difference between the primitive forms of religion and the second dispensation (and likewise the first) consisted in this, that the first were the voluntary offerings of the imagination and the understanding to a sublime but unseen spirit, and the last were the implicit submissions of 102 journal [age 18 duty, of custom, of fear. for this reason we sympathize more with the savage. it is somewhat remarkable that, in the simple institutions of the barbarous nations, god was worshipped through sublime and awful images, and nothing mean and disgusting was attributed to his character. it were needless to repeat that cæsar found the german nations without idols, deeming it unworthy to build a house for him that made the universe ;— or to transcribe the indian creed of the great spirit, so scrupulously pure that it rejected what it could not reconcile of an evil world to a benevolent cause, and created an opposite active evil principle on which to and the storm, pain and death which beset human life. such also was the persian faith, which thought the fire no unfit emblem of divinity; and if the druid sacrificed men on the altar, an oak forest was the temple, and it was not offered to an ox or an ass, but to an adequate notion of the supreme being. in all these the ways of providence were traced in the hurricane, the sea, the cloud, or the earthquake, and therefore the mind must needs be elevated that would converse with them. but as civilized life advanced, and civil and social institutions were erected, and life became more intellectual, 1822] religion 103 w devotion was degraded by a profane and vulgar idolatry ; ... the gods and demigods went fast below the standard of human respectability, until the worship of superior beings, the holiest feeling of which the human soul is capable, and that perhaps for which it was made, seems to have almost passed out of repute and name among honest patriots, and olympus needed to be cleaned of its impurities, and the thrones of heaven to be subverted for the peace of society. this fact, that the seeds of corruption are buried in the causes of improvement strikes us everywhere in the political, moral, and national history of the world. it seems to indicate the intentions of providence to limit human perfectibility and to bind together good and evil, like life and death, by indissoluble connection. ... the idea of power seems to have been everywhere at the bottom of the theology; the human mind has a propensity to refer all its higher feelings, all its veneration for virtue and greatness, to something wherein this attribute is supposed to reside. cause and effect is another name for the direction of this sentiment. ... what are honour, mercy, pride, humility, revenge—but sensations which have reference to in-dwelling power? honour is the worthiness se 104 journal [age 18 wwhich it gives ; mercy, the temperate forbearance of its exercise; pride, the self-respect which attends its possession ; humility, the acknowledgement of its existence; revenge, a barbarous use to which it is put. it is shared among all beings, but in all has a limit and a beginning, on which the mind's eye eagerly fastens, with an immediate attempt to trace the sources whence the subtle principle was derived. it is a great flood which encircles the universe and is poured out in unnumbered channels to feed the fountains of life and the wants of creation, but everywhere runs back again and is swallowed up in its eternal source. that source is god. will the disputes upon the nature of god, upon trinitarianism and unitarianism, never yield to a purer pursuit and to practical inquiry? it is possible, for all we know to the contrary, that god may exist in a threefold unity; but if it were so, since it is inconceivable to us, he would never have revealed to us such an existence which we cannot describe or comprehend. infinite wisdom established the foundations of knowledge in the mind, so that twice two could never make anything else than four. as soon as this can be otherwise, our faith is loosened and science abolished. three may be one, and one three. ne 1822] 105 poetry of poetry it is the language of the passions which do not ordinarily find their full expression in the sober strains of prose. we should rest our argument on this : that there seems to be a tendency in the passions to clothe fanciful views of objects in beautiful language. it seems to consist in the pleasure of finding out a connection between a material image and a moral sentiment. few men are safe when they begin to describe poetry; they talk at random, or hardly prevent the ends of the lines from rhyming, and are like the mimic of a madman who went mad himself. poetry never offers a distinct set of sensations. science penetrates the sky, philosophy explains its adaptation to our wants, and poetry grasps at its striking phenomena and combines them with the moral sentiment which they naturally suggest. its images are nothing but the striking occurrences selected from nature and art and clothed in an artful combination of sounds. . . . but poetical expression constitutes to half the world the beauty of poetry and in this it seems to resemble algebra, for both make language an instrument and depend solely upon it without having any abstracted use. 106 [age 18 journal there are few things which the well-wishers of american literature have more at heart than our national poetry. for every thing else, for science, and morals and art they are willing to wait the gradual development, but they are in haste to pluck the bright blossoms from the fair tree which grows fast by the hill of parnassus. for when a nation has found time for the luxury and refinement of poetry it takes off the reproach of a sluggish genius and of ignorant indifference. poetical expression serves to embellish dull thoughts, but we love better to follow the poet, when the muse is so ethereal and the thought so sublime that language sinks beneath it. drama saturday evening, january 19tb. when a species of composition has been written with success in a brilliant period, and in another and remote land has been likewise known, and after having been discontinued and forgotten is revived in another age and another country — we have every right to say that such an art is agreeable to the dictates of nature. this is the history of the drama, and it has every reason1822] drama 107 able indication that it will every where flourish under favourable circumstances. it is easy also to distinguish between those parts of it which are unnatural and the forced production of a state of society, and those which are the genuine offspring of the human spirit. in the mysteries, the french drama of the middle ages, --such personages were introduced upon the stage as “such,” “each one,” and “both,” and performed their parts as gravely and as much to the satisfaction of a perverted public taste as did ever the most accomplished iphigenia, electra, cæsar. such a folly as this is evidently the appropriate spawn of the age of the schools and the pleasantry of confirmed pedantry. it does not follow that, if anything be out of the common course of human experience, it is not natural to the drama and may not talk with ordinary agents. the representation of the dead consorts perfectly with the feelings of the most refined taste, and in every age has formed a part of dramatic entertainment. for the belief in unseen agents is so universal, and indeed is a consequence of a belief in god, that no mind ever revolts at the idea. a constituent part of the drama from its very invention was the ornament of scenery. 108 journal [age 18 this suggests itself unavoidably as an important element of the plan which acts altogether by deceiving the audience into the conviction that the actors really are the persons whom they represent. the illusion could be best promoted by removing all extraneous circumstances and affording the imagination the help of all the senses. independently of this, it is a high gratification to be suddenly removed from all the common objects of daily occurrence, and admitted to a spectacle of shining cities, of imposing mountain scenery, of thrones, and of magnificent apparel. may. i rejoice in shakspeare's empire as far as it is reckless of that learning which some dotards make a merit of; but, as sustained on the sensual, regret and abhor his dominion. it is for a still brighter era to erase his deformities, and possibly set a mightier magician over the witcheries of fancy. but to me— to his old admirers, nothing could supply his place. ... [a venture in romance] i was the pampered child of the east. i was born where the soft western gale breathed upon me the fragrance of cinnamon groves, and through 1822] idealism 109 the seventy windows of my hall the eye fell on the arabian harvest. an hundred elephants, apparelled in cloth of gold, carried my train to war, and the smile of the great king beamed upon omar. but now—the broad indian moon looks through the broken arches of my tower, and the wing of desolation fans me with poisonous airs; the spider's threads are the tapestry which adorns my walls, and the rain of the night is heard in my halls for the music of the daughters of cashmere. wail, wail for me, ye who put on honour as gay drapery! idealism deep in the soul a strong delusion dwells, a curious round of fairly fashioned dreams; yet, quietly the pleasant vision swells its gay proportions far around, the streams of the wide universe their wealth supply, their everlasting sources furnish forth the fabled splendours, whose immortal dye colours the scene with hues which mock the summer sky. and oh how sweetly in youth's seraph soul, that vision, like the light of heaven, doth rest. its name is life; its hours their circle roll like angels in the robes of morning drest; iio journal [age 18 and every phantom of the train is blest who shakes his plumes upon the odorous air, or lights a star upon his azure crest; and while the lovely beam reposes there, joy in the guileless heart his welcome will prepare. the circle of the sciences is no more firmly bound together than the circle of the virtues ; but, in the first, a man cannot hope to be thoroughly acquainted with all, for they are in some degree incompatible; whereas, in the last, his character will be defective if it do not combine the whole, and form that harmony which results from all. journal vi the wide world, no. 4 dedication boston, february 22, 1822. i have invoked successively the muse, the fairies, the witches, and wisdom to preside over my creations; i have summoned imagination from within, and nature from without; i have called on time, and assembled about the slight work the hours of his train — but the powers were unpropitious; fate was averse. some other spell must be chaunted, some other melody sung. i will devote it to the dead. the mind shall anticipate a few fleeting hours, and borrow its tone from what all that have been are, and all that are will shortly be. all that adorns this world are the gifts which they left in their passage through it. to these monuments which they bequeathed, and to their shades which watch in the universe, i apply for excitement, and i dedicate my shortlived flowers. i the duties to the dead implied in this dedication, however, seem to have slipped the mind of the young writer, after he turned the page, until he nearly reached the end of the book. journal [age 18 continuation of some remarks upon providence saturday eve., february 23. no elaborate argument can remove the fact which strikes the senses, and which is the first and chief difficulty in the way of the belief of an omnipotent good principle, namely, the existence of evil in the world, and next, the great share it has in the texture of human life, and its successful opposition to virtue and happiness. if we suppose the character of the author to be unmixed goodness, the work must be likewise pure, and an ultimate failure of success subtracts wisdom and omnipotence (if indeed the one be not involved in the other) from the qualities of the forming being, thatis, demonstrates him not to be god. human wisdom sees the imperfection of the part, and labours to make out the perfection of the whole from the analogies of the universe which fall under its eye, from its judgments upon the language which testimony attributes to this creator, and from the intuitive and acquired conclusions which it forms upon nature. 1 this argument, though, after the above paragraph, leading nowhere and ending conventionally when the young writer tired of it, is introduced because of the criticism so often made 1822] providence 113 but another great testimony to which the mind will naturally turn to confirm or efface its convictions of a superintending hand, is history; to see if time will fulfil any larger part of that justice which should take place than falls under the life of one man. and this is an evidence which grows with every year of time, which could not be open to the primitive races of mankind, and which, if its weight be found favourable, will develope to the last ages the connecting bonds which unite the fate of many generations, the plan, of ample outline and intricate parts, on emerson, that he would not look on the dark side of the world, on evil, on sin. his attempts to deal with such problems he later considered as among the diseases of childhood. in “spiritual laws” (essays, ist series) he said: “the intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if a man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his. no man need be perplexed in his speculations. let him do and say what strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, predestination and the like. these never presented a practical difficulty to any man, — never darkened across any man's road who did not go out of his way to seek them. these are che soul's mumps and measles and whooping-cough, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. a simple mind will not know these enemies." 114 journal [age 18 which will reveal the obscure relations between one and another remote scene, whereby a succession of misfortune and suffering is counterbalanced by an equal sum of happiness, and the unnatural success of vice and its undue preponderance over ages and nations of the world, is set right again by the triumphs of virtue over other ages and nations. moralists have regarded the adjustment of this great and perplexing variety in human condition as the exhibition to the universe of a great picture, in which, for the harmony of the whole, much is encompassed with deep shade; and the painted figures may not complain to the artist because they have been arranged and coloured in such or such a manner. but is this a fair view? are free agents nothing more than painted emblems? are— (but i have left my proper course of thought and must return to it again)i was about to say that it is history alone which can determine whether the means answer the end, and whether the design be fully accomplished in those schemes whose fulfilments involves many ages; e. g. to discover the typical and direct relations between the jewish and christian dispensations; and to watch the fulfilment of prophecy. but whether these schemes be answered or not, the question still recurs -1822) existence of evil 115 why did a good providence permit at all the existence of evil, or why does any one individual suffer from the vice of others, or the sickness and unhappiness which he did not bring on himself, but which is incident to his nature? the reply which each individual finds himself able to make to this question will go far to doubt or to justify his idea of providence. it may be well by way of solving this question to propose and answer two more — what is evil? and, what is its origin? what is evil ? there is an answer from every corner of this globe — from every mountain and valley and sea. the enslaved, the sick, the disappointed, the poor, the unfortunate, the dying, the surviving, cry out, it is here. every man points to his dwelling or strikes his breast to say, it is here. an enumeration of some of the most prominent evils in society will illustrate the variety and malignity of this disease. what is its origin? the sin which adam brought into the world and entailed upon his children. no ensuais contigo one of the finest chapters in the old testament is the song of deborah and barak, judges v. q. v. !! 116 (age 18 journal [novels] the novelist must fasten the skirts of his tale to scenes or traditions so well known as to make it impossible to disbelieve, and so obscure as not to obtrude repugnant facts upon the finished deception he weaves. was e [college revisited] i have not much cause, i sometimes think, to wish my alma mater well, personally; i was not often highly flattered by success, and was every day mortified by my own ill fate or ill conduct. still, when i went today to the ground where i had had the brightest thoughts of my little life and filled up the little measure of my knowledge, and had felt sentimental for a time, and poetical for a time, and had seen many fine faces, and traversed many fine walks, and enjoyed much pleasant, learned, or friendly society, — i felt a crowd of pleasant thoughts, as i went posting about from place to place, and room to chapel. february 28, 1822. few of my pages have been filled so little to my own satisfaction as these — and why ? -because the air has been so fine, and my visits so 1822) romance 117 pleasant, and myself so full of pleasant social feelings, for a day or two past, that the mind has not possessed sufficiently the cold, frigid tone which is indispensable to become so oracular as it hath been of late. etsi mearum cogitationum laus (et bonor? ) non tam magna quam antea fuit, tamen gaudium voluptatemque majorem accipit, quoniam sentire principia amoris me credebam. vidi amicum etsi veterem, ignotum ; alteram vidi notam et noscendam; ambo, forsitan, si placet deo, partem vitae, partem mei facient. pænitet mei res magnas narrare cum verbis qualibus tyro uti solet. · · · · · · · · at mid day in the crowd of care, the unbidden thought will come, and force the obedient blush prepare reluctant welcome home ; and in the corners of the heart, and in the passions' cell, it bids my thoughts to battle start, which fain would peaceful dwell. peace, pleasure, pride, and joy, and grief, awake the chaos wild, — but worse and cursed the relief which sense and strife beguiled. (to-wit, indifference.) so much poetry for peculiar sources of pride, old and inveterate, and perhaps hereafter un. 118 [age 18 journal intelligible. still one's feelings are well worth speculation and i am desirous of remembering a date. (as that of the last page) ... a beautiful thought struck mesuddenly, without any connection which i could trace with my previous trains of thought and feeling. it had no analogy to any notion i ever remembered to have formed; it surpassed all others in the energy and purity in which it clothed itself; it put by all others by the novelty it bore, and the grasp it laid upon every fibre; for the time, it absorbed all other thoughts ; — all the faculties — each in his cell, bowed down and worshipped before this new star. — ye who roam among the living and the dead, over flowers or among the cherubims, in real or ideal universes, do not whisper my thought ! social feelings ... solitude has but few sacrifices to make, and may be innocent, but can hardly be greatly virtuous like abraham, like job, like the roman regulus or the apostle paul. great actions, from their nature, are not done in the closet ; they are performed in the face of the sun, and in behalf of the world. ... 1822) vision 119 sabbath, marcb 3. animi ardor, de quo supra dixi, non extinctus est, sed mibi videtur non esse tam potens, tam clarus, tam magnus quam antea. timeo ne caderet. spero ut viveret. marcb 4. vision a breathless solitude in a cottage in the woods beneath the magnificent splendour of this moonlight and with this autumnal coolness might drive one mad with excitement. precipitous and shadowy mountains, thick forests and far winding rivers should sleep under the light, and add their charm to the fascination. the silence broken only by the far cry of the night bird; or disturbed by the distant shout of the peasant, or, at intervals, by those melancholy moanings of the wind which speak so expressively to the ear,— who would not admire? let the hours roll by uncounted, let the universe sleep on in this grand repose, but be the spell unbroken by aught of this world, by vulgar and disquieting cares; by a regret or a thought which might remind us of aught but nature. here is her paradise, here is her throne. the stars in their courses roll silently; the oaks rock in their forests to the voice of the sighing breeze; the wall flowers on the top of the cliff nod ro er 120 journal [age 18 over its giddy edge, and the worshipping enthusiast stands at the door of his tent mute and happy, while the leaves rustle down from the topmost boughs and cover his feet. a cry in the wilderness! the shriek and sudden sound of desolation! howl for him that comes riding on darkness through the midnight; that puts his hand forth to darken the moon, and quenches all the stars. lo! where the awful pageantry rolleth now to the corners of the heaven; the fiery form shrouds his terrible brow behind the fragment of a stormy cloud, and the eyes of creation gaze after the rushing chariot. lo! he stands up in the universe and with his hands he parts the firmament asunder from side to side. and as he trode upon the dragons, i saw the name which burned underneath. wake, oh wake, ye who keep watch in the universe ! time, space, eternity, ye energies that live,for his name is destruction! — who keep the sceptre of its eternal order, for he hath reached unto your treasuries, and he feeleth after your sceptre to break it in pieces. another cry went up, like the crash of broken spheres, the voice of dying worlds. it is night. — an exceeding noisy vision ! 1 the florid oratory then in vogue, especially of the young southerners, had, for a time, a great attraction ex1822] 121 greatness reserv greatness never mistake yourself to be great, or designed for greatness, because you have been "visited by an indistinct and shadowy hope that something is reserved for you beyond the common lot. it is easier to aspire than to do the deeds. the very idleness which leaves you leisure to dream of honour is the insurmountable obstacle between you and it. those who are fitly furnished for the weary passage from mediocrity to greatness seldom find time or appetite to indulge that hungry and boisterous importunity for excitement which weaker intellects are prone to display. that which helps them on to eminence is in itself sufficient to engross the attention of all their powers, and to occupy the aching void. greatness never comes upon a man by surprise, and without his exertions or consent; no, it is another sort of genii who traverse your path suddenly ; it is poverty which travels like an armed man; it is contempt which meets you in the corners and for the new england boy. in later years mr. emerson used to recite to his children, imitating the manner, some fragments of their college oratory which still remained in his memory. i22 journal (age 18 highways with a hiss, and anger which treads you down as with the lightning. greatness is a property for which no man gets credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged. nor do i think this to be so absolutely rare and unattainable as it is commonly esteemed. this very bope, and panting after it, which was alluded to, is, in some sort, an earnest of the possibility of success. god doubtless designed to form minds of different mould, and to create distinctions in intellect; still the extraordinary effects of education attest a capacity of improvement to an indefinite de-gree. a newton was often at a loss when the conversation turned upon his own discoveries į shakspeare was indifferent or opposed to the publication of his works, and idly left his books, careless himself, for others, for britain, or the world to boast of. it is impossible to make arithmetical computation of mind. still this indifference to trifles, and the sensibility to them, trace a very broad line of distinction between the first and second orders. ... i am not sure but that the highest order of greatness, that which abandons earthly consanguinity, and allies itself to immortal minds, is je 1822) ballad 123 that which exists in obscurity and is least known among mankind. for superiour intellects are only drawn out into society by the action of those inducements which society holds up to them. if, therefore, there are any who are above the solicitation of wealth, honour, and influence, and who can laugh even at the love of fame, that last infirmity of noble minds, there will be nothing left worth offering them, to attract them from their solitudes; they must pass on through their discipline and education of life, unsympathized with, unknown, or perhaps, ignorantly despised. thus the archangels pass among us unseen, for, if known, they could not be appreciated, and having faculties and energies which our organs can never measure, it is better that we never meet. march 7. ballad the knight rode up to the castle-gate, but a grisly hag was there, she chattered in spite, with muttered threat, and twisted her thin gray hair. her half-bald pate was a sorry sight, but her eyes went wide askew; two long dog-teeth, like dim twilight, shone over her lips so blue. i 24 journal (age 18 « fair ladye of love !” the knight exclaimed, and bent his body low, “ thou flower of beauty, widely famed, roses feed thee, i trow. « the boy cupide attendeth thee, the graces thy sisters be ; oh give me a lock of thy golden hair and make a faithful knight of me." the maiden clenched her shrivelled fist, and her eyes grew red with rage:“ you may mock, sir simple, as loud as you list, but you shall be my (chosen) page. “i'll give you a lock of the hair that's left, three hairs i'll give to thee; beëlzebub knows, when i'm bereft, i will the stronger be.” she plucked three hairs from her pye-bald head, and shrieked like a fishhorn loud, straight of those hairs three snakes were made, * that leaped on the champion good; and one twined round his armed neck, and one twined round each hand, and the tails of the three in a black braid met in the grisly haggis hand. 1822] social feelings 125 and the hag she turned to a dragon green, with these she flew away, — and never again those two were seen, until the judgement day. this book, in ordinary, is peculiarly devoted to original ideas, but i cannot resist the pleasure of setting down, in black and white, verses which i have repeated so often. it is a charm in one of ben jonson's masques. “ the faery beam upon you, the stars to glister on you, a moon of light, in the noon of night, till the fire-drake hath oer-gone you. the wheel of fortune guide you, the boy with the bow beside you run aye in the way, till the bird of day, and the luckier lot betide you." social feelings ... it is in itself a most noble and magnificent subject, and one to which all others seem tributary, ... how the combined energies of many millions of co-existent agents may be brought to act, with their proper infinite influence, continually in the direction of their sure 126 journal [age 18 interests, for time and eternity; and how the improvement which is gained may be kept, and the separate and conflicting energies may be reconciled, and, that mind shall reap all the fruits of the toiling of the body. ... death [death] marcb 8. . . . life is the spark which kindles up a soul and opens its capacities to receive the great lessons which it is appointed to learn of the universe—of good-of evil —of accountability of eternity; of beauty, of happiness. the inestimable moment in which the history of past ages is opened, its own relations to the universe explained, its dependence and independence shewn; the time to reach itself the affections, and to gratify them, to ally itself in kindly bonds with other beings of like destiny; the time to educate a citizen of unknown spheres ; the time to serve the lord. and is it good to die? to exchange this precious consciousness capable of such sublime purposes for an unknown state (of which all that is seen is appalling); perhaps for a gloomy sleep? is it good to be forced away against our will and through extreme suffering, from the vital body, 1822] death. drama 127 and give up that organ of our enjoyment and sufferings to the worms, while what shall befall the soul we cannot tell? we shudder when the question is made, and terror, terror breaks down the vain refinements of philosophy, and the fences of affectation. reason bids us ask, who is the being that forces away the mind into this unknown state? nature and revelation have taught us something of this being. we are reduced to put our views of death entirely upon his character and will, and death will become more or less terrible according to our notions of the lord of death. thus have i fulfilled enough of my design in this book to authorize my dedication on the first page. this shall not prevent me from resuming the topics upon the slightest indications of my noömeter. drama march 9. in connexion with the remarks on the drama wide world, no. 3] it should be further said, that this art is the most attractive, naturally, of all. the others speak to man from a distance, through cold and remote associations. the liter128 journal [age 18 ature of a generation generally addresses but a scanty portion of society; of their contemporaries, history and poetry are confined to a few 'readers; philosophy and science to still fewer; but the buskined muse comes out impatient from these abstractions, to repeat in a popular and intelligible form the productions of the closet, to copy the manners of high and low life, to act upon the heart; and succeeds, by thus avoiding the haughty port of the parnassian queens, to draw the multitude by the cords of love. folly wins where wisdom fails; and the policy of adding to our attractions even at the cost of some wit, is seldom repented. this is the excellence of the drama which pretends to nothing more than to be a true picture of life. fiction the origin of fiction is buried in the darkness of the remotest ages. if it were a question of any importance, perhaps its secret springs are not yet beyond the reach of the inquirer. to paint what is not should naturally seem less agreeable to the mind than to describe what is. “nothing” (said the author of the essay on the human understanding) "is so beautiful to the eye, as truth to the mind.” but if we look again, id 1822] fiction. prophecy 129 i apprehend we shall find that the source of fable, is human misery; that to relieve one hour of life, by exciting the sympathies to a tale even of imaginary joy, was accounted a praiseworthy accomplishment; and honour and gold were due to him, whose rare talent took away, for the moment, the memory of care and grief. fancy, which is ever a kind of contradiction to life and truth, set off in a path remote as possible from all human scenes and circumstances ; and hence the first legends dealt altogether in monstrous scenes, and peopled the old mythology, and the nursery lore, with magicians, griffins, and metamorphoses which offend the ear of taste, and could only win away the credulity of a savage race, and the simplicity of a child. reason, however, soon taught the bard that the deception was infinitely improved by being reduced within the compass of probability; and the second fictions introduced imaginary persons into the manners and dwellings of real life. prophecy march 10. no talent is more prized, in society, than that sagacity which, from passing events draws just and profound conclusions regarding their future ter130 journal (age 18 affairs, to feturn. this events, and mination. the names of burke, fox and pitt deservedly rank high in the world's esteem from the success of their political predictions. for it argues a singular elevation of mind to generalize so calmly in the conflicting interests and partialities of fortune, to see something inevitable in the almost fortuitous concurrence of affairs, to cast a die into the whirl of events, and rest in confidence of its return. this, however, is but a faint approach to the majesty of that remarkable foresight which was exhibited in the early ages of the world, and termed prophecy. for the one is of inferior origin, and depends altogether upon a shrewd comparison of present with past events, and a critical attention to the bias and results of a form of government, of a national character, of a popular excitement. the other grasps at indications which are invisible to other eyes, and possesses a new faculty of communication with the universe. it does not follow the general progress of things to a general result, but singles out, with admirable distinctness, the one man or event, for which its lips were opened ; and, entirely destitute of any manifest clue to its knowledge, describes, with a precision not to be mistaken, the character, circumstances and use of things which are buried in a futurity of many ages. it sensibly ic 1822) prophecy 131 elevates our notions of the human mind, to discover in it this latent capacity of reaching through the accidents of time, to ascertain a destiny beyond the possibility of cross accidents to change. it is a capacity which every soul looks to enjoy hereafter, and its development here is a signal distinction from the hand of providence, and an earnest to the soul of an unclouded vision to come. ... [wide world, no. 5, is missing from the journals.] journal vii the wide world, no. 6 “ maximus parlus temporis," quoth giggling vanity. “burn the trash,” saith fear. there the northern light reposes with ruddy aames in circles bright like a wreath of ruby roses on the dusky brow of night. dedication boston, april 14, 1822. in aforetime, while to the inhabitants of europe the existence of america was yet a secret in the heart of time, there dwelled a giant upon the south mountain chimborazo, who extended a beneficent dominion over hills and clouds and continents, and sustained a communication with his mother nature. he lived two hundred years in that rich land, causing peace and justice, and he battled with the mammoths and slew them. upon the sumrnit of the mountain, amid the snows of all the winters, was the mouth of a cave which was lined with golden ore. this cavity, termed “ the golden lips," on 1822] dedication 133 pv admitted downwards into the centre of the mountain, which was a vast and spacious temple, and all its walls and ceilings glowing with pure gold. man had never polluted it with his tools of art. nature fashioned the mighty tenement for the bower of her son. at midday, the vertical sun was perpendicular to the cavity, and poured its full effulgence upon the mirror floor; its reflected beams blazed on all sides, from the fretted roof, with a lustre which eclipsed the elder glory of the temple of solomon. in the centre of this gorgeous palace, bareheaded and alone, the giant califo performed the incommunicable rite, and studied the lines of destiny. when the sun arrived at the meridian, a line of light traced this inscription upon the wall:-“a thousand years, a thousand years, and the hand shall come, and shall tear the veil for all.” two thousand years have passed, and the mighty progress of improvement and civilization have been forming the force which shall reveal nature to man. to roll about the outskirts of this mystery and ascertain and describe its pleasing wonders — be this the journey of my wideworld. the hand shall come; -i traced its outline in the mists of the morning. 134 (age 18 journal vain world tuesday evening, april 16. it is strange that a world should be so dear which speculatively and seriously we acknowledge to be so unsatisfying and so dark. not all its most glorious array when nature is apparelled in her best, and when art toils to gratify, — not the bright sun itself, and the blazing firmament wherein he stands as chief —can prevent a man, at certain moments, from saying to his soul —" it is vanity.” no wild guesses, no elaborate reasoning can surmount this testimony to the familiar truth, that the human spirit hath a higher origin than matter, a higher home than the earth ; that it is too capacious to be always cheated with trifles, and too longlived to amalgamate with mortality. ... it was found by philosophy that luminous matter wastes itself ever; it is true without a metaphor of this shining world which goes on decaying, and still attracting by its false lustre. [populace] it is a matter of great doubt to me whether or not the populace of all ages is essentially the same in character. i am not a competent judge 1822) populace 135 to decide if inconsistent institutions will affect and alter the prominent features of the moral character. there can be no question that from both the poles to the equator, under every sun, man will be found selfish and comparatively indifferent to the general welfare, whenever it is put in competition with private interest. but in china, as in venice, will faction and cabal always watch to check the continuance of every administration, good or bad? will vulgar blood always rebel and rail, and against honourable, virtuous and opulent members of the same society? will the good always be in peril from the misdeeds and menaces of the bad ? in the answer to these interrogations, truth leads reluctantly towards the affirmative. this is certain— that war is waged in the universe, without truce or end, between virtue and vice; they are light and darkness, they cannot harmonize. upon earth they are forcibly consorted, and the perpetual struggle which they make, separates by a distinct line man from man throughout the world. answ 136 [age 18 journal martyrdom saturday evening. april. i rejoice in the full and unquestionable testimony which certifies the sufferings of martyrs, as the most undeniable merit of the human race; it proves the existence of a consistency and force of character which might else to common minds appear chimerical. ... in those moments when a desperate view of the wrong side of society will sometimes totally unsettle our convictions, and reason almost leans to doubt and atheism, because the world is frail or mad, this saving recollection comes up like an angel of light to assure us that men have suffered the fierceness of the torture, have endured, and died for the faith. : .. to keep inviolate the divine law, they have broken over the law of nature and the native fears of man and have dared to immolate this mysterious existence and to try the gulfs of futurity. .... habit habit is a thing of compound character which forges chains for human nature at the same time that it announces its consistency and independence. it is a thorough and perfect servitude, but 1822) reflections 137 one swe man voluntarily imposed it upon himself. it is a noble foresight which at once determines upon actions that will be perpetually proper, and makes one resolution answer for a thousand, and once made, binds with divine force. when we consider it as an instrument — put into the hands of vice and virtue, which both may wield to certain, to vast advantage, we shall have an adequate idea of its importance in the constitution of human life. in childhood it is given into the power of all to make choice between virtue and vice, to whom he will commit the service of this magic wand. nan each movement of the archangel is perhaps free and independent of every former one. tuesday evening. may 7. amid my diseases and aches and qualms i will write to see if my brains are gone. for a day or two past we have had a wind precisely annual; which i discovered by this, that i have a return of the identical thoughts and temperament which i had a year ago. but this sun shines upon, and these ill winds blow over a changed person in condition, in hope. i was then delighted with my recent honours, traversing my chamber (hollis 138 journal [age 18 9) flushed and proud of a poet's fancies, and the day when they were to be exhibited; pleased with ambitious prospects, and careless because ignorant of the future. but now i am a hopeless schoolmaster, just entering upon years of trade to which no distinct limit is placed; toiling through this miserable employment even without the poor satisfaction of discharging it well, for the good suspect me, and the geese dislike me. then again look at this: there was pride in being a collegian, and a poet, and somewhat romantic in my queer acquaintance with — and poverty presented nothing mortifying in the meeting of two young men whom their common relation and character as scholars equalized; but when one becomes a droning schoolmaster, and the other is advancing his footing in good company and fashionable friends, the cast of countenance on meeting is somewhat altered. hope, it is true, still hangs out, though at further distance, her gay banners; but i have found her a cheat once, twice, many times, and shall i trust the deceiver again? and what am i the better for two, four, six years delay? nine months are gone, and except some rags of wideworlds, half a dozen general notions, etc., i am precisely the same world's humble servant that left the university in august. good people alergi ihan l zo 1 denen a herald to fu yique . c sketches by emerson in the leaves of his college journals 1822] mortification 139 will tell me that it is a judgment and lesson for my character, to make me fitter for the office whereto i aspire; but if i come out a dispirited, mature, broken-hearted miscreant,how will man or myself be bettered? now i have not thought, all this time, that i was complaining at fate, although i suppose it amounts to the same; these are the suggestions only of a disappointed spirit brooding over the fall of castles in the air. my fate is enviable contrasted with that of others; i have only to blame myself who had no right to build them. waldo e. “and there is a great difference whether the tortoise gathers herself within her shell hurt or unhurt.” i shall bless cadmus, or chad, or hermes, for inventing letters and written language-you, my dear little wideworld, deducing your pedigree from that pretty event. may 13. in twelve days i shall be nineteen years old; which i count a miserable thing. has any other educated person lived so many years and lost so many days? i do not say acquired so little, for by an ease of thought and certain looseness of 140 journal [age 18 mind i have perhaps been the subject of as many ideas as many of mine age. but mine approaching maturity is attended with a goading sense of emptiness and wasted capacity; with the conviction that vanity has been content to admire the little circle of natural accomplishments, and has travelled again and again the narrow round, instead of adding sedulously the gems of knowledge to their number. too tired and too indolent to travel up the mountain path which leads to good learning, to wisdom and to fame, i must be satisfied with beholding with an envious eye the labourious journey and final success of my fellows, remaining stationary myself, until my inferiors and juniors have reached and outgone me. and how long is this to last? how long shall i hold the little acclivity which four or six years...... ago i flattered myself was enviable, but which has become contemptible now? it is a child's place, and if i hold it longer, i may quite as well resume the bauble and rattle, grow old with a baby's red jockey on my grey head and a picturebook in my hand, instead of plato and newton. well, and i am he who nourished brilliant visions of future grandeur which may well appear presumptuous and foolish now. my infant im.. agination was idolatrous of glory, and thought 1822] mortification 141 itself no mean pretender to the honours of those who stood highest in the community, and dared even to contend for fame with those who are hallowed by time and the approbation of ages. it was a little merit to conceive such animating hopes, and afforded some poor prospect of the possibility of their fulfilment. this hope was fed and fanned by the occasional lofty communications which were vouchsafed to me with the muses' heaven, and which have at intervals made me the organ of remarkable sentiments and feelings which were far above my ordinary train. and with this lingering earnest of better hope (i refer to this fine exhilaration which now and then quickens my clay) shall i resign every aspiration to belong to that family of giant minds which live on earth many ages and rule the world when their bones are slumbering, no matter whether under a pyramid or a primrose? no, i will yet a little while entertain the angel. look next from the history of my intellect to the history of my heart. a blank, my lord. i have not the kind affections of a pigeon. ungenerous and selfish, cautious and cold, i yet wish to beromantic; have not sufficient feeling to speak a natural, hearty welcome to a friend or stranger, and yet send abroad wishes and fancies of a friend142 journal [age 18 ship with a man i never knew. there is not in the whole wide universe of god (my relations to himself i do not understand) one being to whom i am attached with warm and entire deyotion, not a being to whom i have joined fate. for weal or wo, not one whose interests i have nearly and dearly at heart;—and this i say at the most susceptible age of man. perhaps at the distance of a score of years, if i then inhabit this world, or still more, if i do not, these will appear frightful confessions; they may or may not, it is a true picture of a barren and desolate soul." (be it remembered that it was last evening that i heard that prodigious display of eloquence in faneuil hall, by mr otis, which astonished and delighted me above any thing of the kind i ever witnessed.) i love my wide worlds. my body weighs 144 pounds. in a fortnight i intend, deo volente, to make a journey on foot. i these utterances are not to be taken too seriously. the boy's ascetic life and close confinement at his necessary and his selfimposed work have wrought their natural result. these are the first symptoms of the general vital depression which, in the next five years, nearly cost him his life. for his mother and brothers he always had a strong affection and loyalty. 1822] marathon 143 amonth hence i will answer the question whether the pleasure was only in the hope. marathon go hide the shields of war, the clarion and the spear, the plume of pride and scimetar, vain trophies of a bier. they have digged a thousand graves in marathon today ; their dirge is sounded by the waves which wash the slain away. the hearth is forsaken, the furies are fed, wake, maidens of athens ! your wail for the dead. the persian's golden car, and image of the sun in aashing light rolled fast and far o’er echoing marathon. he mourns his quenched beam, his slain and broken host, he curses glory's dream which lured him to be lost. his rose-wreath is dyed with a bloody stain and the genius of asia shrieks shame! to the slain. io! minerva! hail ! what argive harp is dumb ? the triumph loads the gale, the laurelled victors come! 144 journal : [age 18 there 's a light in victory's eye which none but god can give; and a name can never die — apollo bids it live. the daughters of music have learned your name, and athens, and earth, shall reěcho your fame. may 24, 1822. and now it is friday at even, and i am come to take leave of my pleasant wideworld, for a little time, and commence my journey tomorrow. i look to many pleasures in my fortnight's absence, but neither is my temperament so volatile and gay, nor my zeal so strong as to make my expectations set aside the possibility of disappointment. i am so young an adventurer, that i am alive to regret and sentiment upon so little an occasion as this parting; though one would judge from my late whispered execrations of the school that a short suspension of its mortifications would be exceedingly delightful. i may also observe here that i had never suspected myself of so much feeling as rose within me at taking leave of mrs. e. at the water side and seeing so delicate a lady getting into a boat from those steep wharf-stairs among sailors and labourers; and leaving her native shore for louisiana with1822] shakspeare. nature 145 out a single friend or relation attending her to the shore, and seeing her depart.— for myself i was introduced to her upon the wharf. her husband behaved very well. god speed them! mem. certain lines in anthony and cleopatra about a "hoop of affection so staunch," etc.; find it.? how noble a masterpiece is the tragedy of hamlet: it can only be spoken of and described by superlatives. there is a deep and subtle wit, with an infinite variety, and every line is golden. sunday evening, june 9.3 if a man could go into the country but once, as to some raree-shew, or if it were indulged by god but to a single individual to behold the i r. w. e.'s (later) note. she is dead and her husband also, a thousand miles away from their kindred. 2 “if i did know a hoop to hold us staunch, from edge to edge o'the world i'd seek it.” anthony and cleopatra. 3 some account of this walking journey of ralph and william is given by the former in a letter to his aunt mary emerson, printed by mr. cabot in the memoir (vol. i, pages 78–79). they walked to northborough, found a pretty farmhouse, where they were received as boarders for a week. this was near little chauncey pond, which they crossed in a boat and betook themselves to great woods beyond. they enjoyed 146 journal [age 19 majesty of nature, i think the credit and magnificence of art would fall suddenly to the ground. for take away the cheapness and ease of acquisition which lessen our estimation of its value, and who could suddenly find himself alone in the green fields where the whole firmament meets the eye at once, and the pomp of woods and clouds and hills is poured upon the mind — without an unearthly animation? upon a mountain solitude a man instantly feels a sensible exaltation and a better claim to his rights in the universe. he who wanders in the woods perceives how natural it was to pagan imagination to find gods in every deep grove and by each fountain head. nature seems to him not to be silent but to be eager and striving to break out into music. each tree, flower and stone, he invests with life and character; and it is impossible that the wind which breathes so expressive a sound amid the leaves — should mean nothing. ... the embowered cottage and solitary farmhouse display to you the same mingled picture of frankness and meanness, pride and poverty of feeling, fraud and charity, which are encomthemselves highly, did little reading or writing, but found rest and “ an exhilarating paradise air” which was much better for them. 1822] drama 147 passed with brick walls in the city. every pleasant feature is balanced by somewhat painful. to the stranger, the simplicity of manners is delightful and carries the memory back to the arcadian reign of saturn; and the primitive custom of saluting every passenger is an agreeable acknowledgement of common sympathies, and a common nature. but from the want of an upper class in society, from the admirable republican equality which levels one with all, results a rudeness and sometimes a savageness of manners which is apt to disgust a polished and courtly man. mon drama june 1o. there are two natures in man, — flesh and spirit, — whose tendencies are wide as the universe asunder, and from whose miraculous combination it arises that he is urged alway by the 1 mr. emerson kept up this kindly custom in his walks on country-roads through his life. 2 this is the latter part of an attack on the drama for its depraving quality (everywhere a moral poison disguised and sweetened by art) ending with a conventional picturing of the soul at the judgment day confounded by the record of misspent time. then, as in the earlier passages on the same subject, emerson abruptly turns to praise the theory of the drama and its possibilities for good, if reformed. 148 journal [age 19 visible eloquent image of truth, toward immortal perfection, and allured aside from the painful pursuit by gross but fascinating pleasure. the worst form under which temptation entices our weakness, is when it plots to make the soul a pander to the sense, by winning the mind to the pleasures of lofty sentiment and sublime fiction, and insinuating amid this parade of moral beauty its pernicious incentives to crime, and invitations to folly. it is a fatal twilight, in which darkness is sown with light, until the perverted judgment learns to think that the whole spectacle is more harmonious, and better accommodated to his feeble human sense. but be assured, the light shall grow less and less, and shade shall be added to shade. ... the platonist ... did not widely err who proclaimed the existence of two warring principles, the incorruptible mind, and the mass of malignant matter. this was a creed which was often damned as heresy by the infallible church; happy if they had never devised a worse. in their attempts to escape from this inherent corruption, and correct the imperfection of nature, they went wrong with delirious zeal; but eternal truth founded the basis of their belief. ... the theory of the drama is, in itself, so beauti1822] drama 149 ful, and so well designed to work good, that we feel forcibly what a pity it is, that its concentrating interest, its unequalled power of conveying instruction and the delight inspired by its ordinary decorations should be so miserably perverted to the service of sin. it might aid virtue, and lend its skilful powers to the adornment of truth; its first form was a hymn to the gods, and a monitory voice to human frailty, and human passion. now, it seduces to pleasure and leads on to death, and the shadows of eternity settle over its termination. i think it is pretty well known that more is gained to a man's business by one half hour's conversation with his friend, than by very many letters; for, face to face, each can distinctly state his own views; and each chief objection is started and answered; and, moreover, a more definite notion of one's sentiments and intentions, with regard to the matter, are gathered from his look and tones, than it is possible to gain from paper. it is therefore a hint borrowed from nature, when a lesson of morals is conveyed to an audience in the engaging form of a dialogue, instead of the silence of a book, or the cold soliloquy of an orator. when this didactic dialogue is improved by the addition of 150 journal [age 19 n pathetic or romantic circumstances, and, in the place of indifferent speakers, we are presented with the characters of great and good men, of heroes and demigods, thus adding to the sentiments expressed the vast weight of virtuous life and character — the wit of the invention is doubled. lastly, a general moral is drawn from an event where all the parts of the piece are made to tend and terminate ; this is what is called the distribution of poetical justice, and is nothing but an inevitable inference of some great moral truth, which the mind readily makes, upon the turn of affairs. for greater delight, we add music, painting and poetry, well aware that the splendour of embellishment will fix the eye, after the mind grows weary. these are the advantages comprehended in the dramatic art. truths otherwise impertinent, are told with admirable effect in this little epitome of life; and every philosophic christian must be loth to lose to religion, an instrument of such tried powers. godi ... simonides said well, “give me twice the time, for the more i think, the more it enlarges"; and it is only mathematical truth; for i extracts from a long passage on this theme. 1822] god 151 when the subject is infinite, it must be, that, in proportion as discipline enlarges the capacity of the powers to comprehend a portion of the line, so much the more of the line will be continually discerned, extending above and beyond the straining orbs of imagination. it is, nevertheless, apparent in the munificent endowment of the human intellect, that provision has been made to enable it to proceed to some distinct knowledge of this being whom in darkness we adore. witness some of those admirable demonstrations of the existence and attributes which various minds in various ages have fallen upon, and which we record as the best monuments of human wit. and i regard this rather as a glimpse and earnest of the light which shall break upon the soul when its cumbering flesh bond is broken, of the glory that shall be revealed — than as any solitary or fortuitous discovery which may stand unconnected with the past or the future. for is it not natural to believe that out of earth, and men of clay — the deity is the great engrossing theme which absorbs the wonder as well as the devotion of the disembodied spirits that people his creation ? and is it not to be presumed that the soul will be furnished with some under152 journal [age 19 standing of his strength when she enters on the scene where his divinity is displayed? the lisping infant, on earth, stammers the name of god; and shall the archangel, whose gigantic intelligence displays the education of heaven, stand silent beneath the very cloud? mankind have naturally conceived the joy of that spiritual estate to consist in the satisfaction and delight of certain high intellectual exercises, of which our best and loftiest contemplations afford some faint symbol. and this notion is natural and consistent with their condition; for they have left the obstruction of a material universe, and dwell now in the majesty of thought, in a grand inconceivable dependence of mind upon the great source of intelligence, and are therefore in a situation to pursue those inquiries which mocked the researches of finite beings, but which invite the study of those to whom the sources of wisdom, and the riches of the unseen state are laid open. in this state and with these opportunities, a little meditation will make it plain, that there can be, in heaven or earth, no thought which can so concentrate and absorb the living spirit as the idea of god. . . . . . . . . what will divert our attention, and attach our 1822] god 153 affections in the long, long day wherein the facluiste ulties shall enjoy an eternal exercise? perhaps in the communion of departed wisdom and virtue; in the society of socrates, plato, and st. paul. be it so; it is a rational and authorized hope. we respect and admire the life and character of these eminent individuals; they appeared to possess an intimate familiarity with the profoundest principles of philosophy, and at the same time a power to express them with the most perfect simplicity in their conversation and in their books. p irms it is natural to look to these great masters of mankind as qualified in another state to give us our introduction to its mysteries and joys. but consider a moment, if a celestial spirit could be so besotted as to prefer the little flights of a spirit which is its peer, to the inconceivable intellect which kindles all and overwhelms all. let it compare for a moment the history of the two beings. one lived upon earth its span, and was then swallowed into the multitude of men, leaving no trace of its existence, except, perhaps, a little book, or its name, or its monument. but if your mind be strung to an elevated tone, try to comprehend the history of the other;—a stream without a source, an age without an infancy, the mind resorts in vain to its highest 154 journal [age 19 junior antiquity to seek the commencement of the ancient of days. it can only pursue a few days of his history in the immensity of his works. in a few days he built the world and the firmament, and in the darkness of the universe he lit the sun; he created man and beast; he arranged the seasons and provided for the preservation of the order established; he arched the rainbow and gathered the clouds, the granaries of his hail, of the lightning and thunder. that immeasurable existence upon such an insignificant portion of which the eye of all mankind rests with wonder—we conceive to have been spent in similar employment throughout his infinite kingdom; and that being is well worthy of prostrate adoration to whom we ascribe an eternity, every moment of which hath been signalized by a scheme of preserving providence, by a plan of redemption, by the informing of angelic intellect, or by the creation of a world. one chief reason why the human soul is so prone to neglect or avoid this idea, is because it is so unsatisfactory, being almost entirely above the attainment of our weak powers; but, in the upper state, when this weakness is removed, and our faculties are taught to soar up to the very throne -i need not ask if the mind could be so blind as to admire the 1822] god 155 evoktion spark, in the presence of that fire whence it came. sunday morn. on such employments we anticipate the happiness of heaven to depend. that any approximation to such spiritual elevation can be made on earth, will be believed by some and denied by others. the reasons why we are no more strongly attracted, are plainly seen, and are lodged within ourselves. [for the mind does not yet exist but in an infant state, and waits for a development in another world. but there have been men at various intervals, in the world, who by some remarkable fortune, or remarkable effort, have rendered themselves less liable to the suggestions of sense, and have, in a manner, departed from the pursuits and habits of men to hold strict conversation with the attributes of deity, and, in the emphatic language of the hebrew historian, to walk with god. and there are certain facilities for this enlarged communion which sometimes occur, to give direction and aid to the feebleness of nature. the astronomer who, by reason of the littleness of the earth, would be able to learn next to nothing of the distance and magnitudes of the heavenly bodies, can yet take advantage of its revolutions around the sun, and thus move his instruments 156 journal [acean 1816 about in the universe, across the vast orbit oi planet; so the lapse of ages may sometimes e ble the devout philosopher to trace the design providence, otherwise above his comprehensit v by reducing to a miniature view, a magnificer. course of events. . . . . . . . in the the being which we adore must of necessity' be adorable. where gat we the idea — so different from our other ideas — of somewhat so transcendant and sublime? ... the only answer which we are compelled to receive is that the intelligence who formed our minds adjusted them in such manner as to admit suitable notions of himself from the exhibition of his works, or from the consciousness of our own existence. what must be that existence to which every star, every leaf, every drop in the creation testifies, by their strange and unaccountable formation! towards that object the eyes of all generations have successively turned, by an universal instinctive impulse ; and we are actuated by a portion of the same inspiration when we pronounce the great name of god. and when the mute creation with irresistable force points our inquiries to him, it becomes a truly admirable spectacle to behold this wise sympathy throughout nature, 1822] god 157 of imperfect beings consenting to adore perfection. si ulla fuit genitalis origo terrarum et coeli, semperque aeterna fuere, cur supra bellum thebanum, et funera trojae, non alias alii quoque res cecinere poetae ? lucretius. i know nothing more fit to conclude the remarks which have been made in the last pages than certain fine pagan strains. ) ... “of dew-bespangled leaves and blossoms bright hence ! vanish from my sight, delusive pictures! unsubstantial shews ! my soul absorbed, one only being knows, of all perceptions, one abundant source, hence every object, every moment aows, suns hence derive their force, hence planets learn their course; but suns and fading worlds i view no more, god only i perceive, god only i adore !” [narayena; sir william jones's translation.] differing rank of nations july 6. what imparted that impulse to greece which may be said to have created literature, which has been communicated through rome to the world? 158 [age 19 journal it is a curious spectacle to a contemplative man to observe a little population of twelve or twenty thousand men for a couple of generations setting their minds at work more diligently than men were accustomed, and effecting something altogether new and strange; to see them lie quietly down again in darkness, while all the nations of the world rise up to do them a vain reverence; and all the wisest among them exhausting their powers to make a faint imitation of some one excellence of greece in her age of glory; to see this admiration continued and augmented as the world grows older, and with all the advantages of an experience of 6000 years to find those departed artists never paralleled. it certainly is the most manly literature in the world, being composed of histories, orations, poems, and dramatic pieces, in which no sign of accommodation is discovered to the whims of fashion or patronage. simplicity is a remarkable characteristic of the productions of all the ancient masters. upon their most admirable statue they were content to engrave, “apollodorus the ephesian made it”; and we respect the republican brevity which, in the place of a studied eulogium upon a drama which had been represented with unbounded applause, simply wrote, “ placuit” (it pleased). 1822] 159 licoö licoö “let us plait the garland and weave the chi, while the wild waves dash on our iron strand; tomorrow, these waves may wash our graves, and the moon look down on a ruined land." ; the islanders who sung this melancholy song, presaging the evil fates which waited for them have passed away. no girdled chieftain sits upon their grim rocks to watch the dance of his tribe beneath the yellow lustre of the moon; the moan of the waves is the only voice in their silent-land; the moan of the waves is the only requiem of the brave who are buried on the seashore or in the main. but their memory has not failed from among men; the mournful notes which foreboded their fall have given it immortality. for there is a charm in poetry, which binds the world, and finds its effect in the east and in the west. me “let me not, like a worm, go by the way.” chaucer. 1 this poem, in which mr. emerson took delight in his youth, and often referred to, is printed in his parnassus under the title “ song of the tonga islanders”; author unknown. journal viii the wide world, no. 7 ζήτω γαρ την αλήθειαν, υφ' ής ουδείς πώποτε έβλάβη. marcus antoninus. dedication boston, july 11, 1822. i dedicate my book to the spirit of america. i dedicate it to that living soul, which doth exist somewhere beyond the fancy, to whom the divinity hath assigned the care of this bright corner of the universe. i bring my little offering, in this month, which covers the continent with matchless beauty, to the shrine, which distant generations shall load with sacrifice, and distant ages shall admire afar off. with a spark of prophetic devotion, i hasten to hail the genius, who yet counts the tardy years of childhood, but who is increasing unawares in the twilight, and swelling into strength, until the hour when he shall break the cloud, to shew his colossal youth, and cover the firmament with the shadow of his wings. 21822) america 161 evening. it is a slow patriotism which forgets to love till all the world have set the example. if the nations of europe can find anything to idolize in their ruinous and enslaved institutions, we are content, though we are astonished at their satisfaction. but let them not ignorantly mock at the pride of an american, as if it were misplaced or unfounded, when that freeman is giving an imperfect expression to his sense of his condition. he rejoices in the birthright of a country where the freedom of opinion and action is so perfect that every man enjoys exactly that consideration to which he is entitled, and each mind, as in the bosom of a family, institutes and settles a comparison of its powers with those of its fellow, and quietly takes that stand which nature intended for it. he points to his native land as the only one where freedom has not degenerated to licentiousness; in whose well-ordered districts education and intelligence dwell with good morals; whose rich estates peacefully descend from sire to son, without the shadow of an interference from private violence, or public tyranny ; whose offices of trust and seats of science are filled by minds of republican strength and elegant accomplish162 (age 19 journal ments." xenophon and thucydides would have thought it a theme better worthy of their powers, than persia or greece; and her revolution would furnish plutarch with a list of heroes. if the constitution of the united states outlives a century, it will be matter of deep congratulation to the human race; for the utopian dreams which visionaries have pursued and sages exploded, will find their beautiful theories rivalled and outdone by the reality, which it has pleased god to bestow upon united america. saturday evening, july 13. (continued from wide world, no. 6) i have proposed to attempt the consideration of those different aspects, under which we are accustomed to view the divinity. i shall endeavour first to give some account of his relation to us as the founder of the moral law. it is not necessary to describe that law, otherwise than by saying that it is the sovereign necessity which commands every mind to abide by one mode of conduct and to reject another, 1 such an one died yesterday. professor frisbie will hardly be supplied by any man in the community. [levi frisbie, alford professor of natural religion, moral philosophy and civil polity.] (r. w. e.) 1822) moral law 163 is! areams, it by joining to the one a perfect satisfaction, while it pursues the other with indefinite apprehensions. its divine origin is fully shown by its superiority to all the other principles of our nature. it seems to be more essential to our constitution than any other feeling whatever. it dwells so deeply in the human nature that we feel it to be implied in consciousness. other faculties fail, memory sleeps; judgment is impaired or ruined; imagination droops, — but the moral 10: sense abides there still. in our very dreams, it wakes and judges amid the chaos of the rest. the depths of its foundations in the heart, and the subtilty of its nature in eluding investigations into its causes and character, distinguish it eminently above other principles. if you compare it, for example, with the phenomena of taste, which also appear to be universal, we shall readily discern a considerable distinction withdrawing from the one its transient resemblance. the judgment which determines a circle to be more beautiful than a square, or a rose to be fairer than a clod, is not founded upon aught existing in the mind independent of the senses, butis manifestly derived from the humble sources of the material world. it is nothing but a power 164 journal (age 19 to decide upon the pleasures of sense. if this be not the limit of the province of taste, if it ever rise to the judgment of questions which seem to involve moral beauty, it is only where it begins to blend with the moral sense and becomes ennobled by its connection. but that sovereign sense whereof we speak leaves the material world and its subordinate knowledge to subordinate faculties, and marshals before its divine tribunal the motives of action, the secrets of character and the interests of the universe. it has no taint of mortality in the purity and unity of its intelligence; it is perfectly spiritual. it sometimes seems to sanction that platonic dream, that the soul of the individual was but an emanation from the abyss of deity, and about to return whence it flowed. so it seems to predict, on supreme authority, that fate which is to be declared, when time shall cease. it seems to be the only human thought which is admitted to partake of the counsels of the eternal world, and to give note already to man, of the event and the sentence to which he is doomed.... god we have one remarkable evidence to the character, from eternity, of that being, in the di1822) the river 165 vine determination to make man in the image of god. in all the insignificance and imperfection of our nature, in the guilt to which we are liable, and the calamity which guilt has accumulated, man triumphs to remember that he bears about him a spark which all beings venerate [and] acknowledge to be the emblem of god, which may be violated, but which cannot be extinguished. and we remark with delight the confirmations of this belief in the opening features of human character. and the little joy of the child who plants a seed and sees himself instrumental in the creation of a flower, forcibly reminds us of that beneficence which built the heavens and the earth, and saw that it was good. the river among the bulrushes i lay which deck the river's murmuring tide; upon those banks no men abide, but swans come sailing in their pride and graceful float into the quiet bay. fast sailed the golden fishes by, and some leaped out to see the sky, nor saw the bird that stooped from high until he broke the wave's white crest and bore the alapping fish aloft unto his nest. 166 journal [age 19 an april cloud blew o'er the stream and cast its big drops down, they oped the lily's covering brown and shed its steaming perfume round, and golden insects few unto that aower supreme. . . . . . . . . drama july. ... the grand object of the drama is to claim the affections by awakening ... sympathy. it represents an accumulation of human wo with gorgeous pomp to move the pity and indignation of a susceptible audience. its triumph is complete, when the passions of the multitude, which naturally move in unison, at last aid each other to some general utterance, and consent to the weakness of feelings, which in an individual would be ridiculous. from the theatre, then, drive out the buyers and sellers of corruption who have made it a den of vice, and make it an oracle of those opinions and sentiments which multiply and strengthen the bonds of society. the more we reflect upon the subject, the more thoroughly we shall be convinced how practicable it is to produce a theatre of an actively useful character. it is a mistake to suppose that only vicious gratification can raise sufficient ex1822) reason 167 citement to draw men together around a stage. on the contrary, what an inextinguishable thirst for eloquence, however rude, exists in every breast! ... it is natural that we pant to feel those thrilling sensations of a most agreeable character which passionate and powerful declamation never fails to move. they are akin to the emotions produced by the sublime, in sense or thought. and for these, the fictitious distresses of exalted personages, amid the passage of wonderful events, such as a pure play will freely admit, seem to afford every desirable facility. ... besides we have direct testimony of the certainty of success, in the instance of the greek tragedy, which, without impurity, was universally popular at athens ... sense reason sunday, september 7. [as for] that hoary-headed error which considers reason as opposed to scripture, and which frequently and loudly condemns reason as an adversary and a seducer, as unbelieving and profane. . . . instead of placing idiots in his universe, capable only of sensual gratification, able only to obey instincts, and requiring every mo168 journal (age 19 ment a new direction from heaven to prevent them from grovelling in the dirt, or being destroyed by the beasts, god has peopled it with images of himself, and kindled within them the light of his own understanding — a portion of that ray which illuminates, as it formed, the creation. he has communicated to them an intelligence by which they are enabled to see their way in a universe where other beings are blind; to behold bim, and their relation to him ; to read and understand all those communications which in past or future time he is pleased to make; it is an intelligence by which they find themselves distinguished from his other creations. there are about and amidst them a thousand different properties; there are hills and waters, trees and flowers, the living forms of nature and the stars of the firmament; — but they are still and brutish — there is no eye and voice within them to detect and declare the stupendous glory which surrounds them; they lack that living spirit which opens the eyes of man, and without which the universe is as if it were not, and the glory of deity is darkness. it is an intelligence which soars above these charms of the material world, and can contemn them in the comparison with the objects which it is capable of enjoying. in fine, it is an 1822] . drama 169 intelligence which reveals to man another condition of existence, and a nearer approach to the supreme being. this intelligence is reason. yet some there are who tell you, as if it involved no inconsistency, and certainly no sin, to avoid profaning the revelations of god by submitting them to the tribunal of man's reason, who seek to walk implicitly by a law which they do not and will not understand, because they refuse to apply to its explanation that light with which their maker has furnished them. it is not only a wilful perversion and abuse of a priceless gift, but it is a most ungrateful neglect of divine mercy, and a neglect which incurs a tremendous responsibility. ... drama (continued) october. selity in proposing schemes of reformation in so important a matter as the drama, one should be cautious to avoid running into systems too visionary for popular understanding. the scholar in his closet must beware lest his poetical imaginations of the beauty of tragedy lead him into fields beyond the track of common opinion, and to render his speculations of no use. nevertheless, it appears to me that the bold and beauti170 journal [age 19 ful personification in milton's penseroso is not an unapt description of the true drama:sometime let gorgeous tragedy with sceptred pall come sweeping by, presenting thebes and pelops' line. and the tale of troy divine. for we wish that tragedy should take advantage of that weakness, or perhaps virtue, in our nature which bears such an idolatrous love for the emblems of royalty, and that its moral lessons should be couched in the grand and pathetic fables which antiquity affords. owing to the identity of human character in all ages, there is as much instruction in the tale of troy as in the annals of the french revolution. .... there is an embellishment which i would recommend, though out of place here. i mean the introduction of prophecies. the author of guy mannering and the bride of lammermoor knew the value of the charm and has made fine use of the fascination. it is the most beautiful use of supernatural machinery in fiction. organ october, thursday evening. when i was a lad, said the bearded islander, we had commonly a kind of vast musical ap1822] the fatal organ 171 paratus in the pacific islands which must appear as fabulous to you as it proved fatal to us. on the banks of the rivers there were abundance of siphar trees, which consist of vast trunks perforated by a multitude of natural tubes without having any external verdure. when the roots of these were connected with the waters of the river, the water was instantly sucked up by some of the tubes and discharged again by others, and, when properly echoed, the operation (was] attended by the most beautiful musical sounds in the world. my countrymen built their churches to the great zoa upon the margin of the water and enclosed a suitable number of these trees, hoping to entertain the ears of the god with this sweet harmony. finding however by experience that the more water the pipes drew the more rich and various were the sounds of the organ, they constructed a very large temple with high walls of clay and stone to make the echoes very complete, and enclosed a hundred siphars. when the edifice was complete, six thousand people assembled to hear the long expected song. after they had waited a long time and the waters of the river were beginning to rise, the instrument suddenly began to emit the finest notes imaginable. through some of the broader pipes the nor 172 journal (age 19 water rushed with the voice of thunder, and through others with the sweetness of one of your lutes. in a short time the effect of the music was such that it seemed to have made all the hearers mad. they laughed and wept alternately, and began to dance, and such was their delight, that they did not perceive the disaster which had befallen their organ. owing to the unusual swell of the river and to some unaccountable irregularity in the ducts, the pipes began to discharge their contents within the chapel. in a short time the evil became but too apparent, for the water rose in spouts from the top of the larger ducts and fell upon the multitude within. meantime the music swelled louder and louder, and every note was more ravishing than the last. the inconvenience of the falling water which drenched them, was entirely forgotten, until finally the whole host of pipes discharged, every one, a volume of water upon the charmed congregation. the faster poured the water, the sweeter grew the music, and the floor being covered with the torrent, the people began to float upon it with intolerable extacies. finally the whole multitude swam about in this deluge, holding up their heads with open months and ears as if to swallow the melody, whereby they swallowed 1822] the land of not 173 much water. many hundreds were immediately drowned and the enormous pipes, as they emptied the river, swelled their harmony to such perfection that the ear could no longer bear it, and they who escaped the drowning died of the exquisite music. thenceforward there was no more use of the siphar trees in the pacific islands. that periods which i hail safely say the land of not ... it is now nineteen years since i left the land of not, and i may safely say that, in the countries in which i have passed my time since that period, it has been invariably true that there is more crime, misery and vexation in every one of them, in the course of a single year, than transpires in the peaceful land of not in the lapse of many centuries. except for the existence of one single institution which has been established from time immemorial, there is no question that a vast tide of emigration would rapidly flow into that country. this institution is a rigorous alien act which ordains that no man who leaves the limits of the country shall eyer be permitted to set foot within it again. but, to my knowledge, many who have left it have often afterwards looked back to its pleasant abodes, and desired in vain to return.... 174 journal [age 19 ou saturday evening, november. my adventurous and superficial pen has not hesitated to advance thus far upon these old but sublime foundations of our faith; and thus, without adding a straw to the weight of evidence or making the smallest discovery, it has still served to elevate somewhat my own notions by bringing me within prospect of the labours of the sages. after the primitive apostles, i apprehend that christianity is indebted to those who have established the grounds upon which it rests; to clarke, butler, and paley ; to sherlock, and to the incomparable newton. and when it shall please my wayward imagination to suffer me to go drink of these chrystal fountains; or when my better judgment shall have at last triumphed over the dæmon imagination, and shall itself conduct me thither, i shall be proud and glad of the privilege. for the present, i must be content to make myself wiser as i may, by the same loose speculations upon divine themes. .. conclusion i have come to the close of the sheets which i dedicated to the genius of america, and notice that i have devoted nothing in my book to any peculiar topics which concern my country. 1822] webster 175 but is not every effort that her sons make to advance the intellectual interests of the world, and every new thought which is struck out from the mines of religion and morality, a forward step in the path of her greatness ? peace be with her progressive greatness, -and prosperity crown her giant minds. a victory is achieved today for one,' whose name perchance is written highest in the volume of futurity. 1 webster was chosen representative to congress by a majority of 1078 votes this morning. (r. w. e.) boston, november 4, 1822. journal ix the wide world, no. 8 dedication boston, november 6, 1822. to glory which is departed, to majesty which hath ceased, to intellect which is quenched—i bring no homage, — no, not a grain of gold. for why seek to contradict the voice of nature and of god, which saith over them, “it is finished,” by wasting our imaginations upon the deaf ear of the dead? turn rather to the mighty multitude, the thunder of whose footsteps shakes now the earth ; whose faces are flushed by the blood of life; whose eye is enlightened by a living soul. is there none in this countless assembly who hath a claim on the reverence of the sons of minerva? i have chosen one from the throng. upon his brow have the muses hung no garland. his name hath never been named in the halls of fashion, or the palaces of state; but i saw prophecy drop the knee before him, and i hastened to pay the tribute of a page. 1822) 177 vision of slavery vision of slavery' in my dreams i departed to distant climes and to different periods, and my fancy presented before me many extraordinary societies, and many old and curious institutions. i sat on the margin of the river of golden sands when the thirsty leopard came thither to drink. it was just dawn and the shades were chased rapidly from the eastern firmament by the golden magnificence of day. as i contemplated the brilliant spectacle of an african morning i thought on 1 the slave-trade was abolished by law in the united states in 1808, but was unlawfully continued until the civil war. massachusetts had no slaves in 1770, but they were legally held in new york, rhode island and connecticut at the time this journal was written. the question had just come to the front in the fruitless opposition to the admission of missouri as a slave-state. the abolition movement was not begun by william lloyd garrison until 1831. emerson's effort always to consider the object temperately and fairly appears twenty-two years later in his speech on the anniversary of emancipation in the british west indies ; and later, even during the great conflict, in his proposal to compen*sate the southerners for their loss. of his presentation of the apologies for slavery in this journal it should be said that he had had an agreeable and well-bred southerner for his chum, and so heard their point of view. 178 [age 19 journal those sages of this storied land who instructed the infancy of the world. meanwhile the sun arose and cast a full light over a vast and remarkable landscape. about the river, the country was green and its bed reflected the sunbeams from pebbles and gold. far around was an ample plain with a soil of yellow sand, glittering everywhere with dew and interspersed with portions of forest, which extended into the plain from the mountains which surrounded this wide amphitheatre. the distant roar of lions ceased to be heard, and i saw the leopard bathing his spotted limbs and swimming towards the woods which skirted the water. but his course was stopped; an arrow from the wood pierced his head, and he floated lifeless ashore. i looked then to see whence the slayer should have come, and beheld not far off a little village of huts built of canes. presently i saw a band of families come out from their habitations; and these naked men, women and children sung a hymn to the sun, and came merrily down to the river with nets in their hands to fish. and a crimson bird with a yellow crest flew over their heads as they went, and lighted on a rock in the midst of the river and sung pleasantly to the savages while he brushed his feathers in the stream. the boys plunged into the river and swam '1822] vision of slavery 179 towards the rock. but upon a sudden i saw many men dressed in foreign garb run out from the wood where the leopard had been killed; and these surrounded the fishers, and bound them with cords, and hastily carried them to their boats, which lay concealed behind the trees. so they sailed down the stream, talking aloud and laughing as they went; but they that were bound gnashed their teeth and uttered so piteous a howl that i thought it were a mercy if the river had swallowed them. in my dream, i launched my skiff to follow the boats and redeem the captives. they went in ships to other lands and i could never reach them, albeit i came near enough to hear the piercing cry of the chained victims, which was louder than the noise of the ocean. in the nations to which they were brought they were sold for a price, and compelled to labour all the day long, and scourged with whips until they fell dead in the fields, and found rest in the grave. canst thou ponder the vision, and shew why providence suffers the land of its richest productions to be thus defiled ? do human bodies lodge immortal souls,—and is this tortured life of bondage and tears a fit education for the 180 journal [age 19 ven icico descnismis bright ages of heaven and the commerce of angels? is man the image of his maker, and shall this fettered and broken frame, this marred and brutalized soul become perfect as he is perfect? this slave hath eat the bread of captivity and drank the waters of bitterness, and cursed the light of the sun as it dawned on his ? bed of straw, and worked hard and suffered long, while never an idea of god hath kindled in his mind from the hour of his birth to the hour of his death ; and yet thou sayest that a merciful lord made man in his benevolence to live and enjoy, to take pleasure in his works and worship him forever. confess that there are secrets in that providence which no human eye can penetrate, which darken the prospect of faith, and teach us the weakness of our philosophy. november 8. at least we may look farther than to the simple fact and perhaps aid our faith by freer speculation. i believe that nobody now regards the maxim “that all men are born equal,” as any thing more than a convenient hypothesis or an extravagant declamation. for the reverse is true, that all men are born unequal in personal powers, and in those essential circum1822] slavery 181 حد، هر is : stances, of time, parentage, country, fortune. the least knowledge of the natural history of man adds another important particular to these; namely, what class of men he belongs to— european, moor, tartar, african? because !!! nature has plainly assigned different degrees of!!! intellect to these different races, and the barriers between are insurmountable. this inequality is an indication of the design of providence that some should lead, and some should serve. for when an effect invariably takes place from causes which heaven established, we surely say with safety, that providence designed that result. throughout society there is therefore not only the direct and acknowledged relation of king and subject, master and servant, but a secret dependence quite as universal, of one man upon another, which sways habits, opinions, conduct. this prevails to an infinite extent and, however humbling the analogy, it is nevertheless true, that the same pleasure and confidence which the dog and horse feel when they rely upon the superior intelligence of man, is felt by the lower parts of our own species with reference to the higher. now, with these concessions, the question onc 182 journal (age 19 comes to this: whether this known and admitted assumption of power by one part of mankind over the other, can ever be pushed to the extent of total possession, and that without the will of the slave? it can hardly be said that the whole difference of the will divides the natural servitude of which we have spoken from the forced servitude of “slavery.” for it is not voluntary, on my part, that i am born a subject;contrariwise, if my opinion had been consulted, it is ten to one i should have been the great mogul. the circumstances in which every man finds himself he owes to fortune and not to himself. and those men who happen to be born in the lowest caste in india, suffer much more perhaps than the kidnapped african, with no other difference in their lot than this, that god made the one wretched, and man, the other. except that there is a dignity in suffering from the ordinances of supreme power — which is not at all common to the other class — one lot is as little enviable as the other. when all this is admitted, the question may still remain entirely independent and untouched apart from the consideration of slavery as agreeable or contradictory to the analogies of naturewhether any individual has a right to deprive any 1822] slavery 183 other individual of freedom without his consent; or whether he may continue to withhold the freedom which another hath taken away? upon the first question, whether one man may forcibly take away the freedom of another,the weakness and incapacity of africans would seem to have no bearing; though it may affect the second. still it may be advanced that the beasts of the field are all evidently subjected to the dominion of man, and, with the single restriction of the laws of humanity, are left entirely at his will. and why are they, and how do we acquire this declaration of heaven? manifestly from a view of the perfect adaptation of these animals to the necessities of man, and of the advantage which many of them find in leaving the forest for the barnyard. if they had reason, their strength would be so far superior to ours, that, besides our inability to use them, it would be inconsistent with nature. so that these three circumstances are the foundation of our dominion; viz. their want of reason; their adaptation to our wants; and their own advantage (when domesticated). but these three circumstances may very well apply to the condition of the blacks, and it may be hard to tell exactly where the difference lies. is it in reason? if we speak in general of the two classes, man and 184 journal [age 19 ower beast, we say that they are separated by the distinction of reason, and the want of it; and the line of this distinction is very broad. but if we abandon this generalization, and compare the classes of one with the classes of the other, we shall find our boundary line growing narrower and narrower, and individuals of one species approaching individuals of the other, until the limits become finally lost in the mingling of the classes. ... november 14. if we pursue a revolting subject to its greatest lengths, we should find that in all those three circumstances which are the foundations of our dominion over the beasts, very much may be said to apply them to the african species; even in the last, viz., the advantage which they derive from our care ; for the slaveholders violently assert that their slaves are happier than the freedmen of their class; and the slaves refuse oftentimes the offer of their freedom. nor is this owing merely to the barbarity which has placed them out of the power of attaining a competence by themselves. for it is true that many a slave under the warm roof of a humane master, with easy labours and regular subsistence, enjoys more happiness than his naked brethren, parched ve مرد ہو کر احلام 1822) slavery 185 with thirst on a burning sand, or endangered in the crying wilderness of their native land. this is all that is offered in behalf of slavery; we shall next attempt to knock down the hydra. to establish, by whatever specious argumentation, the perfect expediency of the worst institution on earth is prima facie an assault upon reason and common sense. no ingenious sophistry can ever reconcile the unperverted mind to the pardon of slavery; nothing but tremendous familiarity, and the bias of private interest. under the influence of better arguments than can be offered in support of slavery we should sustain our tranquillity by the confidence that no surrender of our opinion is ever demanded, and that we are only required to discover the lurking fallacy which the disputant acknowledges to exist. it is an old dispute, which is not now and never will be totally at rest, whether the human mind be or be not a free agent. and the asserter of either side must be scandalized by the bare naming of the theory that man may impose servitude on his brother. for if he is himself free, and it offends the attributes of god to have him otherwise, it is manifestly a bold stroke of impiety to wrest the same liberty from his fellow. and if he is not free, then this inhuman barbarsurro 186 journal [age 19 ity ascends to derive its origin from the author of all necessity. a creature who is bound by his hopes of salvation to imitate the benevolence of better beings, and to do all the kindness in his power, fastens manacles on his fellow with an ill grace. a creature who holds a little lease of life upon the arbitrary tenure of god's good pleasure improves his moment strangely by abusing god's best works, his own peers. moral law saturday evening, november 16. the child who refuses to pollute its little lips with a lie, and the archangel who refuses with indignation to rebel in the armies of heaven against the most high, act alike in obedience to a law which pervades all intelligent beings. this law is the moral sense; a rule coëxtensive and coëval with mind. it derives its existence from the eternal character of the deity, of which we spoke above; and seems of itself to imply, and therefore to prove his existence. ... whence comes this strong universal feeling that approves the or abhors actions? manifestly not from matter, which is altogether unmoved by it, and the con1822] moral law 187 nection of which with it is a thing absurd — but from a mind, of which it is the essence. that mind is god... this sentiment which we bear within us, is so subtle and unearthly in its nature, so entirely distinct from all sense and matter, and hence so difficult to be examined, and withal so decisive and invariable in its dictates — that it clearly partakes of another world than this, and looks forward to it in the end. it is further to be observed of it, that its dictates are never blind, are never capricious, but, however they may seem to differ, are always discovered on a close and profound examination to point to a faultless and unattainable perfection. they seem to refer to a sublime course of life and action which nowhere exists, or to which we are not privy; and to be an index of the creator's character lent to mankind in vindication or illustration of the command,“ be ye perfect as he is perfect.” this sentiment differs from the affections of the heart and from the faculties of the mind. the affections are undiscriminating and capricious. the moral sense is not. the powers of the intellect are sometimes wakeful and sometimes dull, alive with interest to one subject and dead to the charm of another. there are no ebbs 188 (age 19 journal and flows, no change, no contradiction in this. its lively approbation never loses its pleasure ; its aversion never loses its sting. its oracular answers might be sounded through the world, for they are always the same. motives and characters are amenable to it; and the golden rules which are the foundation of its judgments we feel and acknowledge, but do not understand. i .. justice “even handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.” the bold misdoer who transgresses the law of justice grapples with he knows not what. he has offended against an essential attribute of the divinity, which will plead against him inexorably until it be avenged. his rash hand has disordered a part of the moral machinery of the universe and he is in peril of being crushed by the mischief he has caused. ... how shall man reconcile his freedom with that eternal necessary chain of cause and consequence which binds him and nature down to an irreversible decree? how shall he reconcile his freedom with that prophetic omniscience which beheld his end long before the infant en1822] justice 189 tered on the world ? perhaps he is a slave – and men have worn his limbs with irons, and his soul with suffering; the name of virtue and the smile of kindness never have stooped to alleviate his hard and bitter bondage ; but ere his little day of apathy and distress was done, he cursed god and died; — hath he descended into hell ? or how dost thou reconcile the creation and destiny of this being with that infinite and benevolent justice that would not abuse its omnipotence, and would not create a mind to be miserable? tell not that man of those feelings and thoughts which give a joy to your existence and warm your heart to the world; for it will be but to mock his wretchedness. tell him not of the dignity of human nature, of its benevolence and philanthropy, — he will clank his chains at the word. he scoffs bitterly at your pictures of the golden gates of heaven, for they are closed on him. the man is bold who undertakes to answer beyond a doubt these perplexing questions. but theology would be a vain science, unworthy of our attention, if it left them all in their full force, without notice or solution. if an ignorant man were carried from his closet ou . 190 journal [age 19 to the prisons and penitentiaries of a vast kingdom and shewn a multitude of men confined and scourged and forced to labour, and informed that this was the act of the government, if he knew nothing more of that state and perhaps foolishly conceived that its limits extended no further than the walls wherein he stood, it would be a very plain conclusion that this government was a savage and outrageous tyranny; while perhaps at that very moment the government was the most perfect and beneficent in the world. our rash conclusions from the dark side of human affairs are analogous to these, and like these are to be corrected by broader views of the system which we misunderstand. the questions we have named, are incidental to the subject, but of such importance, that we shall digress from the main topic to attempt to answer them. the endeavour is always laudable to clear up the darkness which settles around portions of the system. god in heaven is answerable for his works, to those principles which he hath set within us to judge of them. to the discussion of some of them, our nature is incompetent." i the young man confesses this inability to satisfactorily account for all misery when he considers it under the two dis1822] 191 benevolence one of the best satires upon women is the popular opinion of the third century, that they who took wives were of all others the most subject to the influence of evil demons. . . . men's minds visit heaven as they visit earth, and hence the turkish heaven is a harem; the scandinavian, a hunting field; the arabian, a place of wheaten cakes and murmuring fountains. we've supple understandings and so it comes that a new religion ever suits itself to the state in which 'tis born, whether despotism or democracy, as montesquieu has remarked. four daughters make the family of time, but rosy summer is the darling child. benevolence saturday evening, november 23. the hours of social intercourse, of gratified hope, of the festive board, have just now yielded to quieter pleasures of the closet and the pen. this tender flesh is warmly clad, the blood leaps in the vessels of life, health and hope write their results on the passing moment, and these cussions of benevolence a few pages farther on. in the latter of these his favourite doctrine of compensation appears. 192 journal (age 19 things make the pleasure of a mortal, bodily, mental being. there are in the world at this moment one hundred million men whose history today may match with mine, not counting the numberless ones whose day was happier. there are also in existence here a countless crowd of inferior animals who have had their lesser cup filled full with pleasure. the sunny lakes reflect the noonday beams from the glittering tribes which cover its bottom, rapid as thought in their buoyant motions, leaping with the elasticity and gladness of life. the boundless ocean supports in its noisy waves its own great population, the beautiful dolphin, the enormous whale, and huge sea-monsters of a thousand families and a thousand uncouth gambols dash through its mighty domain in the fulness of sensual enjoyment. the air is fanned by innumerable wings, the green woods are vocal with the song of the insect and the bird; the beasts of the field fill all the lands untenanted by man, and beneath the sod the mole and the worm take their pleasure. all this vast mass of animated matter is moving and basking under the broad orb of the sun,is drinking in the sweetness of the air, is feeding on the fruits of nature, — is pleased with life, and loth to lose it. all this pleasure flows 1822) god's benevolence 193 from a source. that source is the benevolence of god. this is the first superficial glance at the economy of the world and necessarily leaves out a thousand circumstances. let us take a closer view, and begin with the human mind. i find within me a motley array of feelings that have no connection with my clayey frame, and i call _them my mind. every day of my life, this mind draws a thousand curious conclusions from the different things which it beholds. with a wanton variety which tires of sameness, it throws all its thoughts into innumerable lights, and changes the fantastic scene by varying its own operations upon it; by combining and separating, by comparing and judging, by remembering and inventing all things. every one of these little changes within, produces a pleasure, the pleasure of power or of sight. but besides the mere fact that the mind acts, there is a most rich variety in thought, and i grossly undervalue the gift i possess, if i limit its capacity to the puny round of every day's sensations. it is a ticket of admission to another world of ineffable grandeur— to unknown orders of things which are as real as they are stupendous. as soon as it has advanced a little in life it opens its eye to thoughts which tax its 194 journal (age 19 whole power, and delight it by their greatness and novelty. these suggest kindred conceptions, which give birth to others, and thus draw the mind on in a path which it perceives is interminable, and is of interminable joy. to this high favoured intellect is added an intuition that it can never end, and that with its choice it can go forward to take the boon of immortal happiness. these are causes and states of pleasure which no reason can deny. but this is the true history of all the individuals of the mighty nations that breathe today. these point also to a source — which is the benevolence of god. but a groan of the dying, a cry of torture from the diseased, the sob of the mourner, answer to this thanksgiving of human nature and produce a discord in our anthem of praise. if god is good, why are any of his creatures unhappy? ... those who consider the foundations of human happiness find that it is a contrasted and comparative thing. ... high and multiplied sources of pleasure are often in our possession, without being enjoyed, for they never were lacking; god disturbs or removes them for a time; and he is dull, who sees no wisdom in this mode of giving them value and sharpening the blunted edge of appetite. thus health and peace are 1822] professor norton 195 minsipid goods, until you have been able to compare them with the torments of pain and the visitation of war. and after this comparison has once been made, man runs riot in holding them. next, it should be remembered that we wisely assume the righteousness of the creator in placing man in a probationary state. we do not seek with vain ambition to question the abstruse and unsearchable ground of this ordination, because it is plain matter of fact that we are incompetent to the discussion. this being assumed, there is no longer any doubt of the divine benevolence arising from the existence of evil. evil is the rough and stony foundation of human virtue; weaning man away from the seductive dangers of vicious, transient, destructive pleasures to a hold and security of paradise where they are perpetual and perfect. of professor n., shakespeare long ago wrote the good and bad character : oh it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.' i evidently andrews norton, professor of sacred literature. mr. cabot, in his memoirs of emerson (p. 334), speaks 196 (age 19 journal [solitary fancies] rich in the playful joys of solitude the peaceful muse begins her jubilee when night's black car, sprinkled with golden stars, has chased the sun's magnificence away. pleased with the closet's motley furniture, and broken shadows, where the elves and gnomes fight with the rats for noise or victory, the muse roves boldly on her vagrant wing, disdains the recent times and days of dwarfs, and this cold land apollo never knew ; abandons with proud plumes the passing hour, and follows fancy through a thousand worlds. it is a curious spectacle, to see the panorama of unnumbered hues that her wild journey marshals round her eye. but icy reason scowls upon the shew,— and its gay battlements and beaming towers and shining forms all vanish at his frown. yet i, who never bowed obedient neck to reason's iron yoke, will still rebel and vex the tyrant in his ancient halls. i'll ponder pleasantly the changing scenes and tell their wonders loudly on the lyre. of him as “ a man of acute intellect and commanding personality and, i suppose, the foremost theologian of the liberal christians.” sixteen years later, emerson, after the delivery of his divinity school address, felt the weight of this giant's attack. 1822) the friend denied 197 vas v november 29, 1822. the ardour of my college friendship foris nearly extinct, and it is with difficulty that i can now recall those sensations of vivid pleasure which his presence was wont to waken spontaneously for a period of more than two years. to be so agreeably excited by the features of an individual personally unknown to me, and for so long a time, was surely a curious incident in the history of so cold a being, and well worth a second thought. at the very beginning of our singular acquaintance, i noticed the circumstance in my wide world, with an expression of curiosity with regard to the effect which time would have upon those feelings. to this day, our glanceat meeting is not that of indifferent persons, and were he not so thoroughly buried in his martial cares, i might still entertain the hope of departed hours. probably the abatement of my solitary enthusiasm is owing to the discouraging reports which i have gathered of his pursuits and character, so entirely inconsistent with the indications of his face. but it were much better that our connexion should stop, and pass off, as it now will, than to have had it formed, and then broken by the late discovery of insurmountable barriers to friendship. from the first, i preferred to preserve the terms 198 [age 19 journal which kept alive so much sentiment rather than a more familiar intercourse which i feared would end in indifference. benevolence (continued) saturday evening, november 30. heraclitus was a fool, who wept always for the miseries of human life. or was he blind and deaf to beauty and melody? in his day, was the sky black, and were snakes instead of flowers coiled in his path? was his mind reversed in its organization;—had he despair for hope, and remorse for memory? could his disordered eye discern a savage power sitting in this splendid universe, thwarting the good chances of fortune and promoting the bad, sowing seeds of sorrow for glory, turning grace and tranquillity to desolation, and heaven to hell? then let him weep on. true philosophy hath a clearer sight, and remarks amid the vast disproportions of human condition a great equalization of happiness; an intimate intermingling of pleasure with every gradation, down to the very lowest of all. pleasant and joyous are the connexions of our sympathy and affection 'tis proved by the very tear which marks their dissolution; and even that pang of separation and loss is relieved by its own indulgence. .... in1822] god's benevolence 199 happiness lies at our own door. misery is further away. until i know by bitter personal experience that the world is the accursed seat of es all misfortunes, and as long as i find it a garden of delights—i am bound to adore the benefi, cent author of my life. . . . no representations of foreign misery can liquidate your debt to heaven. you must join the choral hymn to which the universe resounds in the ear of faith, and i think, of philosophy. ... the mind can perceive a harmonious whole, combined and overruled by a sublime necessity, which embraces in its mighty circle the freedom of the individuals, and without subtracting from any, directs all to their appropriate ends. it perceives a purpose to pain, and sees how the instruction and perfection of myriads is brought about by the spectacle of guilt and its punishment. that great and primeval necessity may make impossible an universe without evil, and perhaps founds happiness everywhere, as here, upon the contrast of suffering. this question lies at the sources of things, and we are only indulged with an intimation that may make out the just goodness of the deity. (this connection may be deeper and more intimate than we are apt to imagine, and the cir200 journal (age 19 cumstances observed just now, seem to indicate that it is. that connection, which subsists bere in character, will subsist in condition hereafter. and some plan will be developed, in which the good of evil will be made plain on the general scale, that cannot be explained upon the particular.) ... greatness every man who enumerates the catalogue of his acquaintance is privately conscious, however reluctant to confess the inferiority, of a certain number of minds which do outrun and command his own, in whose company, despite the laws of good breeding and the fences of affectation, his own spirit bows like the brothers' sheaves to joseph's sheaf. he remembers the soothsayer's faithful account of antony's guardian genius which among other men was high and unmatchable, but quailed before cæsar's. he remembers also other some of his companions, over whom his own spirit exercises the same mastery. and let no man complain of the inequality of such an ordination, or call fortune partial in the distribution of her blessings. 1822) 201 america america december 21. there is everything in america's favour, to one who puts faith in those proverbial prophecies of the westward progress of the car of empire. though there may be no more barbarians left to overrun europe and extinguish forever the memory of its greatness, yet its rotten states, like spain, may come to their decline by the festering and inveteracy of the faults of government. aloof from the contagion during the long progress of their decline, america hath ample interval to lay deep and solid foundations for the greatness of the new world. and along the shores of the south continent, to which the dregs of corruption of european society had been unfortunately transplanted, the fierceness of the present conflict for independence will, no doubt, act as a powerful remedy to the disease, by stirring up the slumbering spirits of those indolent zones to a consciousness of their power and destiny. here, then, new romes are growing, and the genius of man is brooding over the wide boundaries of infant empires, where yet are to be drunk the intoxicating draughts of honour and renown; here are to be played over again les w202 journal (age 19 the bloody games of human ambition, bigotry and revenge, and the stupendous drama of the passions to be repeated. other cleopatras shall seduce, alexanders fight, and cæsars die. the pillars of social strength, which we occupy ourselves in founding thus firmly to endure to future ages as the monuments of the wisdom of this, are to be shaken on their foundations with convulsions proportioned to their adamantine strength. the time is come, the hour is struck; already the actors in this immense and tremendous scene have begun to assemble. the doors of life in our mountain-land are opened, and the vast swarm of population is crowding in, bearing in their hands the burden of sorrow and sin, of glory, and science, which are to be mingled in their future fates. in the events and interests of these empires, the old tales of history and the fortunes of departed nations shall be thoroughly forgotten and the name of rome or britain fall seldom on the ear. in that event, when the glory of plato of greece, of cicero of rome, and of shakspeare of england shall have died, who are they that are to write their names where all time shall read them, and their words be the oracle of millions? let those who would pluck the lot of a ics 1822) reading 203 immortality from fate's urn, look well to the future prospects of america. friday evg. dec. 21, 1822. authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1822 homer; simonides; heraclitus; sophocles, electra; thucydides; demosthenes; bible; zoroaster; cicero; lucretius; horace; plutarch ; tacitus, germania ; seneca; marcus aurelius; mediæval mystery plays; chaucer; shakspeare; ben jonson ; bacon; milton, paradise lost; boileau ; locke, on the human understanding ; william sherlock, sermon on faith; newton; burnet, memorial; fontenelle; pope; richardson, novels; montesquieu ; butler, analogy; voltaire ; david hartley, observations on man; dr. johnson, vanity of human wishes; samuel clarke; priestly; gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire; paley; logan, yarrow; speeches of pitt, burke, fox; dugald stewart, philosophy of the mind; 204 journal [age 19 claudius buchanan, christian researches in india; abernethy; buckminster, sermons; arabian nights; scott, the pirate, minstrelsy; byron, corsair, childe harold ; fearing, travels in the united states; sismondi, italian republics; leigh hunt, song. journal x the wide world, no. 9 od hope “pass not unblest the genius of the place." saturday evening, december 21, 1822. to the genius of the future, i dedicate my page. « incipe. vivendi qui recte prorogat horam, . rusticus expectat dum defuat amnis ; at ille labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.” [good hope] ... if the misanthrope take refuge in analogy it will fail him. for though we bewail the imperfection of sublunary things, yet all things in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdom have a perfection, which, though not attained in the hundred instances,is attained in the thousand; is attained much oftener than not. man in many trials has failed ; . . . but now a preparation is made for another experiment which begins with infinite advantages. i need not name the daily blessings which are diffused over the present generation and distinguish them above antiquity. i notice only that they possess christianity and a 206 journal (age 19 civilization more deeply ingrafted in the mind (by reason of the extraordinary aids it derives from inventions and discoveries) than ever it has before been. it is the nature of these advantages to multiply themselves. providence ordains that every improvement extend an influence of infinite extent over the face of society. for centuries back, the progress of human affairs has appeared to indicate some better era ; and finally when all events were prepared, god has opened a new theatre for this ultimate trial. this country is daily rising to a higher comparative importance and attracting the eyes of all the rest of the world to the development of its embryo greatness, alfred the great christmas, december 25. if (as saith voltaire) all that is related of alfred the great be true, i know not the man that ever lived, more worthy of the gratitude of posterity. i hope the reservation means nothing. there is not one incredible assertion made either of his abilities, his character, or his actions. besides it was not an age, nor were saxon monks the men, to invent and adorn another cyropaedia. sharon turner, an ambitious flashing writer, and elsewhere a loon, hath done well by alfred. his 1823] everett 207 praise rests not upon monkish eulogy or vague tradition, but upon facts. ... december 26, 1822. i have heard this evening and shall elsewhere record prof. everett's lecture upon eleusinian mysteries, dodona, and st. sophia's temple. ... though the lecture contained nothing original, and no very remarkable views, yet it was an account of antiquities bearing everywhere that “ fine roman hand,” and presented in the inimitable style of our cicero. “ bigotry and philosophy are the opposite poles of the judgment, and the scepticism of hume and gibbon is as different as the superstition of the catholics from the freedom of the protestant.” (professor e.) saturday evening, january 11. “my bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne"; i cannot distinctly discern the cause; tomorrow he will sit heavily there; and after a few days more, he shall cease to be. the connexions which he nursed with earthly society shall be broken off, and the memory of his individual influence shall be obliterated from human hearts. it may chance that he will resume his thought elsewhere ; that while the place from whence he passed forgets 208 journal [age 19 him, he shall nourish the fires of a pure ambition in some freer sanctuary than this world holds. it is possible that the infinity of another world may so crowd his conception, as to divest him of that cumbrous sense of self that weighs him down,until he lose his individual existence in his efforts for the universe. time ... the years of infancy fled, and those toys dwindled away to make room for the splendid hopes and enthusiastic resolutions of youth. the sky was not so bright, and alas ! not so changeable as its promises. it revelled in the sight of beauty, and the sound of music, in the motion of the limbs, in the intercourse of friends, and in all the joys of a pleasant and gorgeous world. but the crimson flush went from its cheek and the joyous light from its eye; its bones hardened into manhood, and its years departed beyond the flood. reason watched them as they departed, and was bitterly mortified to find how insignificant they became in the view. those changes and events which had engaged the mind by their gigantic greatness sunk now to pigmy dimensions, and so dim were their images upon the memory that it 1823] moral sense 209 was hard to believe they were not altogether a dream. after a few more turnings of the globe in its orbit, manhood, age and life itself will have passed, and as i advance, that which i have left behind will continually grow less and less. as i reach and pass successively the several epochs of existence, the things of former pursuit will degenerate in my esteem. all, all, will be unremembered as if they had never been. the mind writes daily, in its recollections of the past, but one epitaph upon time “vanity of vanities, all is vanity !” god forbid that this be the faithful history of the universe. ... moral sense ... there is one distinction amid these fading phenomena —one decided distinction which is real and eternal and which will survive nature i mean the distinction of right and wrong. your opinions upon all other topics, and your feelings with regard to this world, in childhood, youth, and age, perpetually change. your perceptions of right and wrong never change. you can dismiss the world from your mind, and almost abolish in your imagination the dominion 210 journal [age 19 ou of sense; but you can never bury in your breast the sense of offended justice. ... the mind may lose its acquaintance with other minds, and may abandon, without a sigh, this glorious universe, as a tent of the night to dwell in; but it cannot part with its moral principle, by which it becomes akin to the extraordinary intelligences that are to accompany its everlasting journey to the throne of god. if there be anything real under heaven, or in heaven, the perception of right and wrong relates to that reality. dogmatists and philosophers may easily convince me that my mind is but the abode of many passing shadows by the belief of whose existence about me i am mocked. i shall not very sturdily combat this ancient scepticism because, to my mind and to every mind, it has often seemed problematical whether or not it was cheated by an unsubstantial edifice of thought. but it is in the constitution of the mind to rely with firmer confidence upon the moral principle, and i reject at once the idea of a delusion in this. this is woven vitally into the thinking substance itself, so that it cannot be diminished or destroyed without dissipating forever that spirit which it inhabited. upon the foundation of my moral sense i ground my faith in the immortality of 1823] enthusiasm 211 ce the soul, in the existence and activity of good beings, and in the promise of rewards accommodated hereafter to the vicious or virtuous dispositions which were cultivated here. the great citizenship of the universe, which all souls partake, has this for its common bond and charter, which none may violate, without taking upon themselves the peril of losing its infinite privileges. upon the bounded field of this earth, nations upon nations of men have expired in succession, and borne to other and unseen countries the minds that dwelled here for a space; and all the individuals of this host have consented together in one respect alone, namely, the acknowledgement of this inward tribunal of thought and action. they obeyed or disobeyed its law, they suffered or rejoiced, as they might; but not one ever escaped from this high, unyielding, universal thraldom which the author of mind has created upon the mind. enthusiasm january 19, 1823. the ideas of deity and religious worship readily find admission to the mind, and are readily abused. the clown on a dunghill can exalt his capacity to these truths and is delighted and flat212 journal [age 19 tered by this consciousness of a new and transcendent power. god is infinitely above the whole creation, and he that aspires to worship him, feels that his mounting spirit leaves the rest of the universe beneath his feet. enthusiasm is therefore apt to generate in uncultivated minds a rash and ignorant contempt for the slow modes of education and the cautious arts of reasoning by which enlightened men arrive at wisdom — because they have themselves acquired this surpassing conception without the irksome toil of the intermediate steps. the boor becomes philosopher at once, and boldly issues the dogmas of a religious creed from the exuberance of a coarse imagination. the tumults of a troubled mind are mistaken for the inspiration of an apostle, and the strength of excited feelings is substituted for the dispassionate and tardy induction, the comparison of scripture and reason, which sanctions the devotions of moderate and liberal men. this has been everywhere found to be the history of religious error ; not merely in the fanaticism of sects, but in the mistakes and superstitions of individuals. every man's heaven is different; and is coloured by the character and tone of feeling most natural to his mind. and, in like manner, his conceptions of the divine bene 1823] prayer 213 ing will vary with the narrowness or justness of his modes of thinking. a mind which is remarkable for the truth and grandeur of its views in physical or metaphysical science will seldom be found the dupe of an unrelenting bigotry in its religious faith. ... intellectual habits are not the sudden productions of an accident, but are formed slowly, and confirmed from day to day by the influence of events, until they acquire an immutable strength that may outlast the period of this life. we think of god, therefore, as we think of man. our views of human nature are liable to mistake; so are our views of the divine. prayer ... the origin of prayer is no doubt to be traced in our comparison of finite beings with the infinite being. to obtain bread, we prayed our neighbour to impart from his store. but to obtain more than bread,—to obtain our health or the life of a friend, to change the course of events, is beyond our neighbour's power. man remembered in his hour of need that there was a power above him, and uttered an ejaculation of his distress and his hopes, dictated by precisely the same emotions which moved him to address his earthly friend. thus far the analogy 214 journal [age 19 is unexceptionable, but if pursued farther it fails. a judge has decreed the death of a criminal; the father and friends of the unfortunate man come before the tribunal to pray for his life, and plead with such importunity and eloquence that the judge consents to set aside the sentence. the character of the culprit is not amended, but the free course of justice is stopped, and society wronged, by the earnestness of the supplication. (in the ancient persian religion, it is forbidden to petition for blessings to themselves individually; the prayer must extend to the whole persian nation.) in like manner, men came to their maker to ask the favour of a partial event, a particular blessing that will prove prejudicial to the whole; and reasoning erroneously from human experience, they concluded that there was a certain force in prayer that would extend some controul even over the mind of deity. pity and irresolution in the human judge triumphed over his knowledge and his virtue, and the worshipper flattered himself with the hope that even god might be induced to hesitate by the offering of hecatombs and clamorous petition. the idolatry of every nation has had a tendency towards this belief, that the arm of omnipotence could be men ca co 101 1823] prayer 215 in ins chained down by sacrifice and entreaty, which the hindoo mythology has pursued to extravagant lengths. prayer and penance by their intrinsic virtue will raise the worshipper above the power of gods and men, until it hurls the highest from his throne to make room for the devout usurper. such a creed shocks the mind; but a secret bias to this belief is by no means uncommon in christian countries. we are prone to think that the prayers of righteous men avail with god to check or change the course of events, which implies either that those events were ill-ordered before, or that they will take a wrong direction now; but both these hypotheses are inconsistent with our trust in the superintendence of providence over human affairs. ... the opposition of a general to a particular providence is often implied in prayer. antiquity viewed the gods as the particular, fate as the general providence, and reconciles them by making fate absolute in the administration of the universe. our perplexity springs from the union of both in the hands of one god. ... when god has ordained a change of events and the aspect of the world, suggesting the benefits of such a change to the mind, in216 journal [age 19 duces man to pray for it, in this case, the event coincides with the prayer, and is interpreted as an especial interposition. with this solitary exception, men's prayers and the succession of events have no direct connexion at all with each other. ... human curiosity is forever engaged in seeking out ways and means of making a connection between the mind and the world of matter without, or the world of mind that has subsisted here, or an uniting bridge which shall join to future ages our own memory and deeds. this laudable curiosity should not neglect the formation of a bond which proposes to unite it, not to men, to matter, or to beasts, but to the unseen spirit of the universe. our native delight in the intercourse of other beings urges us to cultivate with assiduity the friendship of great minds. but there is a mind to whom all their greatness is vanity and nothing; who did himself create and communicate all the intellect that exists; and there is a mode of intercourse provided by which we can approach this excellent majesty. that mind is god; and that mode is prayer. “and if by prayer incessant i could hope to change the will 1823] history 217 of him who all things can, i would not cease to weary him with my assiduous cries. but prayer against his absolute decree no more avails than breath against the wind blown stilling back on him that breathes it forth.” paradise lost, book xi. history in reading history it is hard to keep the eye steadily fixed upon any distinct moral view of the species, to which we may readily refer all the facts recorded of individuals. when we lạy aside the book, and think of man, our habitual theories regard him as a being in a state of probation, and we elevate the whole human race to an exalted equality of condition and destiny. resume the page, and you are convinced at once, that whatever opinions you are yourself pleased to entertain concerning them,-it never entered the minds of the majority of mankind in past ages that any such equality prevailed, or that they sustained any very sublime rank in the scale of creation. they have themselves shewn a melancholy apathy (that is madness in the eye of a philanthropist) to every supposed nobleness of moral or intellectual design ; they that is the majority — have uniformly preferred 218 journal [age 23 the body to the mind, have permitted the free and excessive enjoyment of their sensual appetites, and chained down in torpid dreams the noble appetites of the soul. instead of eating to live, men have lived to eat, to drink, and to be merry; and when ordinary means failed to bring • about these grand purposes, then the extraordinary means of lies, murder and robbery have been resorted to. no doubt good men are also found in the dramatic variety of the tale, to recall the mind to the theory from which it has wandered; but a good man in the world is aptly represented by a stag in the chase, as the one mark and victim at whose cost the enjoyment of all the rest is procured. ... it seems to be a mockery to send us to this howling wilderness to pluck roses and fruits. the rose is blooming there and the wild flowers hanging luxuriantly, but they cast their perfume in the tiger's den. fanciful men, heated by the new wine of their imaginations, have attempted to woo the indignant reason into a better love of this darkened world; epicurean pencils have painted it as perfectly accommodated to our powers of enjoyment, as fraught with every luxury, grace and good which we desire to gain, as the palace of beauty and love, the vast mart of thought, friendship, soro 1823] history 219 ciety and distinction, the home of virtue and the end of hope. so it is pictured, and so we believe in childhood; but our first mature glance at the actual state of society falls upon so much real deformity and such low moral and intellectual turpitude that the fair fabric of the imagination is speedily undermined. we find it difficult or impossible to reconcile the phenomena which we observe with any plausible hypotheses that heaven or earth have told us of their design; but humanity always resembles itself, and we readily recognize the imposture that attempts to describe better beings than men. for this more brilliant and seductive faith concerning man and the earth is deduced from false and partial representations of human nature, and makes only momentary converts when it is aided by the gay exhilaration which nature within and without awakens in youth, or by the few hours or moments that happen in a man's life, when the heart is swelled and imagination is feasted at seasons of revel, magnificence and public joy. whereas the times when the contrary conviction is forced upon the soul, outnumber these moments a thousand fold. .... 220 [age 2 journal history (continued) the history of america since the revolution is meagre because it has been all that time under better government, better circumstances of religious, moral, political, commercial prosperity than any nation ever was before. history will continually grow less interesting as the world grows better. professor playfair of edinburgh, the greatest, or one of the greatest men of his time, died without a biography, for there was no incident in the life of a great and good man worth recording. nelson and bonaparte, men of abilities without principles, found four or five biographies apiece. the true epochs of history should be those successive triumphs which, age after age, the communities of men have achieved, such as the reformation, the revival of letters, the progressive abolition of the slave-trade. sive abolitin, the revival of taleved, such as the whoever considers what kind of a spirit it is which prompts men to write, will remark the improbability that a knowledge of the domestic manners of an ancient people should be transmitted to a remote age, by any but the most fortuitous event. literature grew out of the 1823] domestic manners 221 221 necessity of written monuments, and in its first expansion into an elegant art, while yet its mechanical advantages were rude and poor, it was devoted only to those great features on the face of the world which first forced themselves on the mind of the writer, — to the history of laws, of colonies, of wars, and of religion. for his illustrations, the writer appealed to nature, and upon the early discovery of the delight given by these appeals, was formed a new department of the art which was called poetry. h domestic manners ... if we had a series of faithful portraits of private life in egypt, assyria, greece and rome, we might relinquish without a sigh their national annals. the great passions which move a whole nation, and the common sense of mankind, are alike everywhere, and these determine the foreign relations and the political counsels of men. but private life hath more delicate varieties, which differ in unlike circumstances; ... ... our vague and pompous outlines of history serve but to define in geographical and chronological limits, the faint vestiges we possess of former nations. but of what mighty mo222 journal [age 19 n ment is it that we know the precise scene of a virtue or a vice? give us the bare narrative of the moral beings engaged, the moral feelings concerned, and the result—and you have answered allour purpose, all the ultimate design which leads the mind to explore the past. (that is of a speculative mind apart from all purposes of government and policy-for the purposes of another world, rather than for this.) for the history of nations is but the history of private virtues and vices collected in a more splendid field, a wider sky. to little purpose you would shew the curious philosopher a mighty forest, extending at a distance its thousand majestic trees; a single branch, a stem, a leaf, in his hand is of more value to him for all the purposes of science. even the eternal geometer, in the fancy of leibnitz, deduces the past and present condition of the universe from the examination of the single atom. solitude the gods and wild beasts are both, to a proverb, fond of solitude; thought makes the difference between the solitude of the god and that of the lion. 1823] 223 imagination [imagination versus thought] in the entry of the saloon there has been considerable bustle; but an individual now stood there to throw off his blue cloak, whose figure arrested at once the whole attention of two or three guests who chanced to be looking towards the door. a whisper instantly circulated to inform the party of the presence of a most distinguished and welcome guest. every one rose at his entrance, and the stranger advanced with an air of dignified majesty towards the centre of the hall. franklin saluted him with evident respect and introduced him to the company as the first american president. there was no brilliant sparkle in his eye which attracted notice, nor rapid change of expression in his countenance; his countenance was composed and a graceful dignity marked every motion, so that he was rather the jupiter than the apollo of the group. this however was manifest, that from the time of his entrance, during all that long conference, the first place in that society was invariably, and of right, as it seemed, conceded to him. a most melodious voice which rolled richly on the ear and was that of cicero, addressed the last mentioned person. “i esteem myself happy to stand in the company of one to 224 journal [age 19 whom heaven seems to have united me by a certain similarity of fortune and the common glory of saving a state. but the fates have given you an advantage, o most illustrious man, above my lot, in granting you an honourable decline and death amid the regrets of your country, while i fell by the vengeance of the flagitious antony." gibbon put up his lip at this speech; and franklin, who sat with his hands upon his knees between washington and gibbon, &c. &c." “tush!” he said, “thoughts and imaginations! i tell thee, man, that i, who have got my bread and fame by informing the world, can write, in twenty lines, all the thoughts that ever i had, while the imaginations would fill a thousand fair pages.” animals [animals] march 6, 1823. my brother edward asks me, whether i have a right to make use of animals ? i answer “yes,” and shall attempt to give my reasons. a poor native of lapland found himself in midwinter destitute of food, of clothing and 1 the author evidently postponed to another day telling what franklin's remark or gesture was, in his cagerness to give gibbon the floor. 1823] body and soul 225 light, and without even a bow to defend himself from the beasts. in this perplexity he met with a reindeer, which he killed and conveyed to his hut. he now found himself supplied with oil to light his lamp, with a warm covering for his body and with wholesome and strengthening food, and with bowstrings withal, whereby he could again procure a similar supply. does any mind question the innocence of this starving wretch in thus giving life and comfort to a desolate family in that polar corner of the world? ...now there is a whole nation of men precisely in this condition, all reduced to the alternative of killing the beasts, or perishing themselves. let the tender-hearted advocate of the brute creation go there, and choose whether he would make the beasts bis food, or be himself theirs. ... [body and soul] march 1o. the mixture of the body and soul is the great wonder in the world, and our familiarity with this puts us at ease with all that is unaccountable in our condition. providence, no doubt, scrupulously observes the proportions of this mixture, and requires for the soundness 226 journal [age 19 of both, a fixed equilibrium. the gross appetites of the body are sometimes indulged until the mind by long disuse loses the command of her noble faculties, and one after another, star after star, they are gradually extinguished. those passages and conduits of thought, of divine construction, through which god intended that the streams of intellect should flow in various directions, — because they have never been used, have fallen to ruin, and are choked up; mind, from being the free born citizen of the universe and the inheritor of glory, has become the caterer and the pander of sense. even the body, from being the upright lord of the lower creation and the temperate owner of a thousand pleasures, has abused his liberties, until he is the slave of those pleasures, and the imitator and peer of the beasts. this is one mode of destroying the balance that nature fixed in our compound frame. ... ascetic mortification and an unintermitting, livelong martyrdom of all the sensual appetites, although far more innocent than the contrary extreme, is nevertheless unwise, because it fails of its intended effect. hermits, who believed that by this merciless crucifixion of the lusts of the body they should succeed in giving to the 1823] body and soul 227 corr succ ve winds the rags and tatters of a corrupt nature, and elevate and purge the soul in exact proportion to the sufferings of the flesh, have been disappointed in their hopes; at least, if they have succeeded in deceiving themselves, they have grievously disappointed the world.' . .. but these golden dreams of a rapid amelioration of the world to issue from the prayers and penances that stormed heaven from these solitudes, vanished away. the solitary man was as other men are. his sufferings had soured his temper, or inflamed his pride; the current of thought had been checked and frozen. his powers and dispositions were diverted from useful ends and were barren and selfish. instead of the blessed plant which they thought had sprung for the healing of the nations, was a dry and withered branch; it was sundered from its root; producing neither blossoms, nor leaves, nor fruits, 't was fit only for the fire. march 12. ... but there was an elder scripture, a prior command; love thy neighbor; amid your righteous war against your passions, forget not that you are a man; that you are one individual of a i here follows a long passage on the hermits of the thebaid and their temporary repute for their sacrifices. eoul 228 journal [age 19 great and immortal company, who, with you, are labouring on to attainment of objects which demand all and more than all their faculties to appreciate and reach; that thousands of these are fainting or falling by the way, and will task your utmost benevolence to lend them needful aid. and when a man has duly considered, ... i think he will be led to undervalue the precious qualities of that man's virtue who, like the priest and the levite of the parable, goes on the other side and extricates himself as he can from the importunity of want or the cries of the dying. ... the earth which supports him upon her bosom, the common mother of us all, has a right to ask at his hands some return for her bounties, and what immunity. it is entitles him to nurse his own unprofitable existence, without putting his shoulder to the wheel or bearing his part of the burden of life; without giving help to the weary or pouring one drop of balm into the wounded heart. i am persuaded that god enforces the law ... to make the perfection of man's nature consist in a fixed equilibrium of the body and the mind. those masters of the moral world, who have preserved an undisputed lordship over 1823] body and soul 229 е good minds for ages after they themselves have died, have not gained that rare fortune by any extraordinary manners of life, or any unseemly defiance of the elements, or of death. temperate, unassuming men, they have conformed to the fashions of the times in which they fell, without effort or contempt. god, in their minds, removed the ancient landmarks of thought, or else gave them strength to overleap the boundary, so that they took in a mightier vision of the state of man than their fellows had done. in all this they did not see differently from them, but saw beyond the common limit. accordingly it was no part of their pride to be at discord with men upon common matters of every day's observation. upon trifles of time and sense they all thought alike. deeper thoughts and remote consequences, far beyond the ken of vulgar judgments, and yet intimately connected with the progress and destinies of society, were the points they fixed their eyes upon; and upon the distinctness with which they were able to detect these, they chiefly valued themselves. it is a delightful relief in the afflicting history of the world, it is a crystal fountain gushing in the wilderness to remember the men who exercised this peaceful and sublime dominion over human hearts not 230 journal [age 19 cemented by the blood nor shaken by the curses of enemies. bound like other men to the complicated machine of society, and their fortunes perhaps inseparably linked to the greatness of another house — these minds quietly founded a kingdom of their own, which should long outlast the ruins of that transient dynasty in which it grew.... men of god they were, children of a clearer day, walking upon earth, keeping in their hands the urns of immortality out of which there streamed a light which reached to far distant generations that they might follow in their track. the pagan also blest them, “pauci quos aequus amavit juppiter, aut ardens virtus ad sidera tollit.” march 13. and what a motley patchwork of feelings may be found in the crew of their admirers behind them. how many brows are knit, how many hearts yearn, of those who resolve to follow, or are content to worship them! upon what meat did these cæsars feed, that they have grown so great? did god or man, time, or place, or chance, sow the immortal seed? and how many seats at the table of the gods are yet vacant? and the storehouses of genius and goodness from 1823] men of god 231 which each child of the universe may pluck out his share-are they yet exhausted or locked up? and shall those hearts which have throbbed to the secret urgency of the spirit, (perchance it was the same spirit that urges all existence) shall they faint in the outset? onward, onward, the sun is already high over your head! or fearest thou because the day is waxed late that time shall lack? i tell thee, the race is for eternity. the windows of heaven are opened, and they whose faces are as the day, seraphim and cherubim, beckon to the children of man and bid him “be bold!” “ incipe. vivendi qui recte prorogat horam, rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis ; at ille labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.” journal xi the wide world, no. 10 “optimus ille fuit vindex laedentia pectus vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel.” 1 [during the period which this wide world covers, perhaps in may, mrs. emerson and her sons moved to canterbury, a part of roxbury, where they hired a house in the picturesque region near the dedham turnpike, now a portion of franklin park. waldo's health as reflected in portions of this journal, especially the poem “the bell,” seems not to have been good. there is a pleasant letter about the joy he felt in dwelling in the country, written to one of his classmates, in mr. cabot's memoirs, vol. i, p. 96.] dedication boston, march 18, 1823. when god had made the beasts, and prepared to set over them an intelligent lord, he considered what external faculty he should add to his frame, to be the seat of his superiority. then he gave him an articulate voice. he gave him i from ovid's remedia amoris (corrected). 1823] eloquence 233 an organ exquisitely endowed, which was independent of his grosser parts, —but the minister of his mind and the interpreter of its thoughts. it was designed moreover as a sceptre of irresistible command, by whose force the great and wise should still the tumult of the vulgar million, and direct their blind energies to a right operation. the will of heaven was done, and the morning and evening gales wafted to the highest the harmonious accents of man. but the generations of men lived and died, while yet their expanding powers were constrained by the iron necessities of infant civilization, and they had never, with, perchance, a few solitary exceptions, ascertained the richness of this divine gift. suddenly, in a corner of europe, the ripe seeds of greatness burst into life, and covered the hills and valleys of greece with the golden harvest. the new capacities and desires which burned in the human breast, demanded a correspondent perfection in speech, — to body them forth. then a voice was heard in the assemblies of men, which sounded like the language of the gods; it rolled like music on the ear, and filled the mind with indefinable longings; it was peremptory as the word of kings; or mournful as a widow wailing; or enkindling as the martial 234 journal [age 19 clarion. that voice men called eloquence, and he that had it unlocked their hearts, or turned their actions whithersoever he would. like seawaves to the shore, like mountain sheep to their shepherd, so men crowded around this commander of their hearts to drink in his accents, and to mould their passions to his will. the contagion of new desires and improvements went abroad, — and tribe after tribe of barbarians uplifted the banner of refinement. this spirit-stirring art was propagated also, and although its light sunk often in the socket, it was never put out. time rolled, and successive ages rapidly developed the mixed and mighty drama of human society, and among the instruments employed therein, this splendid art was often and actively used. and who that has witnessed its strength, and opened every chamber of his soul to the matchless enchanter, does not venerate it as the noblest agent that god works with in human hearts ? my muse, it is the idol of thy homage, and deserves the dedication of thine outpourings. time after two moons i shall have fulfilled twenty years. amid the fleeting generations of the human race and in the abyss of years i lift my solitary 1823] 235 time voice unheeded and unknown, and complain unto inexorable time:— “stop, destroyer, overwhelmer, stop one brief moment this uncontrollable career. ravisher of the creation, suffer me a little space, that i may pluck some spoils, as i pass onward, to be the fruits and monuments of the scenes through which i have travelled.” fool ! you implore the deaf torrent to relax the speed of its cataract, « at ille labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.” how many thousands before, have cast up to time the same look of fear and sorrow when they have contemplated the terrible flight of time. but this infinite extinguisher or changer of being continues his supreme agency without exception or interval. among the undistinguished myriads thus hurried on and off the stage of mortal life, a few, parted by long periods asunder, have made themselves a longer memory in this world, (and perchance in worlds beyond,) by pouring out all their strength in the service of their fellow men. they rightly judged that if a benevolent god keeps watch in heaven over his family in earth, the sight would be grateful to him of patient study and intense toil accomplished by magnanimous minds in behalf of human nature and for mous 236 journal [age 19 the avowed design of its improvement. men grope, they said, in a night of doubts and falsehoods, for the light of truth is quenched, or burns dimly in the midst; come, let us restore the flame, and feed it with fuel, until it shall grow up again in a beacon-light blazing broadly and gloriously to illuminate the world. then oursons and our sons' sons shall walk in the brilliant light and shall pray god to bless us long after we have gone down to the chambers of death. that glorious company of martyrs who took up the cross of virtuous denial and gave their days and nights to study, meditation and prayer, were indeed “blessed” of heaven and earth. god, in the watches of the starry night, fed their imaginations with secret influences of divinity, and swelled their conceptions with showers of healing water from the fountains of paradise. they could not contain their joy of these sweet and silent promptings,this interview as they deemed it, between god and man, and they mounted to a constant elevation of thought which left far below them the cankering and ignoble pursuits of life. they have left inscribed in their writings frequent and bold appeals to the grandeur of the spirit which lodged in their breasts, confident that what was writ would justify the truth of their claims. the 1823] time 237 sublimest bard of all — he who sung “ man's disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree which brought death into the world and all our woe” — felt himself continually summoned and inspired by a spirit within him, and which afterward, he says, grew daily upon meto do god's work in the world by sending forth strains which after-times would not willingly let die. not a work to be finished in the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; nor yet by invocation of dame memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who giveth knowledge; hereby he hoped to release in some great measure the hearts of posterity from that harlotry of voluptuousness, whereinto he perceived with grief his own age had fallen. a kindred genius born for the exaltation of mankind, who preceded the poet, and who fell (alas for humanity!) into a share and ruin for his integrity, did yet contribute a mighty impulse to the cause of wisdom and truth. and he also was no wise unconscious of the magnitude of the effort and the power which supported him. 238 [age 19 journal the bell? i love thy music, mellow bell, i love thine iron chime, to life or death, to heaven or hell, which calls the sons of time. thy voice upon the deep the homebound sea-boy hails, it charms his cares to sleep, it cheers him as he sails. to merry hall or house of god thy summons called our sires, and good men thought thy awful voice disarmed the thunder's fires. and soon thy music, sad death-bell, shall sing its dirge once more, and mix my requiem with the gale which sweeps my native shore. free thinking it is often alleged, with a great mass of instances to support the assertion, that the spirit of philosophy and a liberal mind is at discord these youthful verses, slightly changed for the better by mr. emerson a few years later, were printed in the appendix to the centenary edition of the poems. 1823] free thinking 239 with the principles of religion, so far, at least, as to imply that hoary error that religion is a prejudice which statesmen cherish in the vulgar as a wholesome terror. those whom genius or education have rescued from the common ignorance have openly discarded the humble creeds of men and vaunted their liberty : they have mounted, it is pretended, to some loftier prospect of man's dependence or independence upon god, and have discovered that human beings foolishly trouble themselves by their shallow and slavish fear of some great power in the universe who notices and remembers their actions. for these clearer-sighted intellects have darted their glance into the secrets of the other world, and have satisfied themselves, either that there is no divinity at all, beyond the vain names and fantastic superstitions of men, or else, if there be a sphered and potent dweller in the abyss, he is incurious and indifferent to the petty changes of the world. in this confidence, therefore, these bold speculators cast off the fetters of opinion and those apprehensions which so cleave to our poor nature, and are willing to survey at ease the gorgeous spectacle of the universe, the fabric of society, and the closet of the mind; and to make themselves 240 journal. [age 19 nes proud of this birthright of thoughts — this rare chance -which fell upon them, they know not how; and even to vaunt of their incomprehensible immortality, if perchance they shall outlast the changes of death. this perilous recklessness, i find with regret in many of the intellectual guides of these latter times. . . . hume, gibbon, robertson, franklin, certain scotch geniuses of the present day, and the profligate byron have expressed more or less explicitly their dissent from the popular faith. composing in themselves a brilliant constellation of minds variously and richly endowed, they have taken out its welcome influence from the cause of good will to men, and set it in the opposite scale. like the star seen in the apocalypse, they have cast a malign light upon the earth, turning the sweet waters to bitter. that there may be a transient pleasure in such free thinking i will not deny, nor that pride of opinion has its gratifications. i will not dispute that to a man inclined so to consider it, the majesty of nature is a puppet-show of rarest entertainment, abounding with devices which will repay the toil of his curiosity. i will not deny that this disciple of democritus may find the human soul and human society rich sources of 1823] free thinking 241 merriment; but i shall say that laughter in the mouth of a maniac is, in my judgment, as becoming. standing, as man stands, with the thunders of evil fate suspended over him, bound on every side by the cords of temptation, and uncertainty sweeping like a dark cloud before his path, is it for him, if his understanding is strong enough to appreciate this condition, to acknowledge his melancholy lot by unseasonable mirth? a sober firmness on his brow, and purity in his heart, is the best armour he can wear. i believe nothing is more ungrounded than the assertion, that scepticism is, in any manner, the natural fruit of a superior understanding. the legitimate fruits of a master spirit are a dearer love to virtue, and an ardent and thrilling desire to burst the bonds of the flesh and begin a perfecter existence. in those moments which every wise man counts the best of his life — who hath not been smitten, with a burning curiosity, to rend asunder the veil of mortality, and gaze, with pious violence, upon the unutterable glories beyond? the names which i mentioned as apostate weigh nothing against the greater names of bacon, milton, newton, and the like, whose hearts cleaved to the divine revelations as the pledge of their resurrection to eternity. nor can 242 journal [age 19 i conceive of any man of sense reading the chapter of milton ... [reason of church government urged against prelaty, book 2, c. 1] without his heart warming to the touch of noble sentiments; and his faith in god and in the eternity of virtue and of truth being steadfastly confirmed. nothing of human composition is so akin to inspiration. sunday evening, march 23, 1823. ... one youth among the multitudes of mankind, one grain of sand on the seashore, unknown in the midst of my contemporaries, i am hastening to put on the manly robe. from childhood the names of the great have ever resounded in my ear, and it is impossible that i should be indifferent to the rank which i must take in the innumerable assembly of men, or that i should shut my eyes upon the huge interval which separates me from the minds which i am wont to venerate. every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition, which he mistakes for the promptings of a secret genius. . . . it is not time, nor fate, nor the world, that is half so much his foe as the demon indolence within him. a man's cer 1823] self-examination 243 enemies are those of his own household. but if a man shall diligently consider what it is which most forcibly impedes the natural greatness of his mind, he will assuredly find that slothful, sensual indulgence is the real unbroken barrier, and that when he has overleaped this, god has set no bounds to his progress. the maxim is true to an indefinite extent, “faber quisque fortunae suae.” we boast of our free agency. what is this but to say, god has put into our hands the elements of our character, the iron and the brass, the silver and the gold, to choose and to collcgc.. fashion them as we will. but we are afraid of the leto toil, we bury them in a napkin, instead of moulding them into rich and enduring vessels. this view is by far the most animating to exertion. it speaks life and courage to the soul. mistrust no more your ability, the rivalry of others, or the final event. make speed to plan, to execute, to fulfil; forfeit not one moment more in the dalliance of sloth ; for the work is vast, the time is short, and opportunity is a headlong thing which tarries for no man's necessities. habits of labour are paths to heaven. it commands no outward austerities. do not put ashes on your head, nor sackcloth on your loins, nor a belt of iron for your girdle. but mortify the mind, 244 journal [age 19 put on humility and temperance, for ashes, and bind about the soul as with iron. the soul is a fertile soil, which will grow rank and to waste, if left to itself. if you wish, therefore, to see it bud out abundantly and bring an harvest richer an hundred and a thousand fold, bind it, bind it with the restraint of cultivation. march 26. it is overgrown with tares and poisons. suffer no longer this noisesome barrenness. harrow it up with thoughts. fill it with the joys and wholesome apprehensions of a reasonable being, instead of the indifference of a brute. march 28. these are the clamours with which conscience pursues and upbraids me— happy if they were undeserved — happiest could they accomplish their end! but the inscrutable future comes down in darkness and finds us in the thrall of the same old enemies, with all our hopes and full-blown intentions thick on our heads. for your life, then, for your life! crawl on a few steps farther in the next twelvemonth! 1823] 245 pastoral a shout to the shepherds freshly, gaily, the rivulet flows beside its emerald bank, each silver bubble in beauty goes adown the stream and briefly glows till it reach the broad aags and the alders dank. shepherds, who love the lay of untaught bards in oaken shades, bright-eyed apollos of the forest glades, hither, hither, turn your way. come to the grassy border of the brook, here, where the ragged hawthorn dips his prickly buds of perfume in the wave, and thence again a costly fragrance sips, drinking with each balmy aoweret's lips pure from the naiad's welling urn, while overhead the embowering elms bow their broad branches and keep out the day. hither, hither, turn your way. [america a field for work] april 8, 1823 powerful and concentrated motive . . . is necessary to a man, who would be great; and young men whose hearts burn with the desire of distinction may complain perhaps that the paths in which a man may be usefully illustrious are 246 journal [age 19 already taken up, and that they have fallen in too late an age to be benefactors of mankind. truly i wish it were so. ... alas! the wildest dreams of poetry have uttered no such thing. there is a huge and disproportionate abundance of evil on earth. indeed the good that is here is but a little island of light amidst the unbounded ocean. what mind therefore (that is stirred by ardent feelings) looks over the great desart of human life without fervently resolving to embark in the cause of god and man, and without finding puissant motives calling out the strength of every root and fibre of his soul? but he finds the field too spacious and the motive not enough concentrated. ... let the young american withdraw his eyes from all but his own country, and try if he can find employment there. . . . separated from the contamination which infects all other civilized lands, this country has always boasted a great comparative purity. at the same time, from obvious causes, it has leaped at once from infancy to manhood; has covered, and is covering, millions of square miles with a hardy and enterprizing population. the free institutions' which prevail here, and here alone, have attracted to this country the eyes of the world. in 1823] america the field 247 this age the despots of europe are engaged in the common cause of tightening the bonds of monarchy about the thriving liberties and laws of men ; and the unprivileged orders, the bulk of human society, gasping for breath beneath their chains, and darting impatient glances towards the free constitution of other countries. to america, therefore, monarchs look with apprehension, and the people with hope. but the vast rapidity with which the desarts and forests of the interior of this country are peopled have led patriots to fear lest the nation grow too fast for its virtue and its peace. in the raw multitudes who lead the front of emigration, men of respectability in mind and morals are rarely found — it is well known. the pioneers are commonly the off-scouring of civilized society, who have been led to embark in these enterprizes by the consciousness of ruined fortunes or ruined character, or perchance a desire for that greater license which belongs to a new and unsettled community. these men and their descendants compose the western frontier population of the united states and are rapidly expanding themselves. at this day, the axe is laid to the root of the forest; the indian is driven from his hut, and the bison from the plains;248 [age 19 journal en in the bosom of mountains where white men never trod, already the voice of nations begins to be heard — haply heard in ominous and evil accents. good men desire, and the great cause of human nature demands that this abundant and overflowing richness wherewith god has blessed this country be not misapplied and made a curse of; that this new storehouse of nations shall never pour out upon the world an accursed tribe of barbarous robbers. now the danger is very great that the machine of government acting upon this territory at so great distance will wax feeble, or meet with resistance, and that the oracles of moral law and intellectual wisdom, in the midst of an ignorant and licentious people, will speak faintly and indistinctly. human foresight can set no bounds to the ill consequences of such a calamity, if it is not reasonably averted. and, on the contrary, if the senates that shall meet hereafter in those wilds shall be made to speak a voice of wisdom and virtue, the reformation of the world would be to be expected from america. how to effect the check proposed is an object of momentous importance. and in view of an object of such magnitude, i know not who he is, that can complain that motive is lacking in this latter age, whereby men should become great. ... 1823] 249 compensation incompensation the balancing and adjustment of human pleasures, privileges and graces, so that no man's share shall outrun all competition, nor be diminished to an extreme poverty, is so obvious in the world, as to be a daily topic of conversation. and the system of compensations takes place as much in the difference of good, as in the apportioning of evil and good. thus knowledge is a good; but it must be acquired in different ways, and there is no single way which combines the advantages of all the others. the advantages which one man enjoys by access to unusual sources of improvement do, by some necessity, deprive him of admittance to other sources equally rare and rich. is he opulent, and commands the privileges of libraries and schools? he wants that vigour and eagerness to use them which necessity gives. is he a traveller and borne by the winds to every foreign clime, and does he transact affairs amidst the famous ruins of each continent? — then his taste has been uncultivated and he views them all with indifference. has he wit and industry sufficient to grasp all knowledge? – poverty shuts up with iron bars every avenue to him. men are alike only in 250 journal (age 20 infancy; afterwards every man takes a path which leads out from the common centre, and every step separates him further from all the rest. ... moral obligation . . . . . . . . to what purpose is this gorgeous firmament displayed, in such rich and inimitable colours, with such glorious variety? what is this curtain of darkness which is hung abroad, unaltered in its regularity, unrivalled in its grandeur? i stand in a paradise. and the pleasant winds of heaven fan me as they move, and scatter health and odours through all their outgoings. custom has made familiar to me the marvels of the world; nevertheless its mighty magnificence will sometimes break upon the sense in overpowering sensations, and fill the mind with unspeakable conceptions of the cause and design, and with awful shame for its own ingratitude. but men are much more apt to let their thoughts rest in the works, to behold nature without anxiety to see nature's god; it is custom, the tyranness of fools, that suffers them to gaze vacantly upon this fair and noble miracle, this sublime and exquisite world, without exacting an unbounded homage to the author of it all. but perchance 1823] moral obligation 251 custom is right, and i owe no homage ; stand forth now and shew, if thou canst, some grounds for this superlative claim upon my affections and life. for, if you say well, then i am checked in that liberty which i have exercised and in the full view of my whole hopes) i shall be free to do right, but i shall no longer be free to do wrong. for he that is bid to go one way, and a sword is pointed to his breast, is not free to go another. explain to me, then, my obligations, for else i cannot consent to resign that free and entire license to go right or to go wrong with which i hitherto believed i walked in the world's ways. (infra, quote 6, 7, 8 verses, xxxv job.)" first, then, you are not your own, but belong to another by the right of creation. this claim is the most simple, perfect and absolute of all claims. nothing is akin to it in the universe ; we cannot reason about it from analogy; but when we think of it, it is the most reasonable and satisfactory of all claims. god animated a clod with i “if thou sinnest, what doest thou against him ? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him ? "if thou be righteous, what givest thou him, or what receiveth he of thine hand? « thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art ; and thy righteousness may profit the son of man.” 252 journal [age 20 life in a corner of his dominions; by his own power he first orders it to be,— to hold a passive existence as a clod, out of nothing; then, he breathes into it life—and thus from an imparting of omnific virtue, a thing is, which was not; having come from himself, it is a part of himself; it takes the tone of existence from him alone; can aught be said to be so absolutely, inevitably, unchangeably god's?'... if we conceive the divine being inflicting pain upon these creatures, we cannot satisfy ourselves that even persecution authorises their rebellion against his will. for, he has as close and near an interest in what he makes from himself as that which he makes has for itself; and for him to pain such a creature is to pain himself. . . . we cannot reason here from analogy, for men are not creators. . . . if a father abuses his child, forgets the ties of nature, and encroaches upon his human rights or seeks his life-the son is not left without resourcehe can renounce those mutual claims which his sire has refused to rei “ a man ... is there to speak for truth; but who is he? some clod the truth has snatched from the ground and with fire has fashioned to a momentary man. without the truth he is a clod again.” – “the sovereignty of ethics,” lectures and biographical sketcbes, p. 194. 1823] moral obligation 2531 spect, and divesting himself of all other support can sustain himself on the simple grounds of natural rights. ... but the case is radically different with the creature of god, and with a son of man. for the former has no ultimate and primal rights to throw himself back upon, when he is induced to renounce his submission to god; for god is his maker and made those very rights which he possesses. there is no other being in the abysses of existence who might erect a hostile standard against the throne of the deity that afflicts him, about which the disaffected might rally and hope. there is no other separate, ultimate resource, for god is within him, god about him, he is a part of god himself. nothing therefore can destroy, nothing abridge, the claim of obedience which a creator advances upon his creatures. hence, the first ground of moral obligation is this; that the being who ordained it is the source, the support and the principle of our existence, and it were a kind of denying our nature to reject that which is agreeable to him. ... there is no waste, no period to the moral universe. an antiquity that is without beginning, and a futurity that is without end, is its history. a principle of life and truth in itself 254 journal [age 20 which it is impossible to conceive of as liable to death or suspension, or as less than infinite in the extent of its rule, binding god and man in its irreversible decree,is coexistent with deity. ... [dramatic fragment] cawba. when will the plague depart? will all my sons snuff death from the wild wind, and go away to the dim land of spirits o'er the hills ? seer. the bisons fed in safety in the valley until thy sire set up his wigwam here; now they are gone to see the setting sun. thy people dwelt in safety in this land, but they must flee to see the setting sun. come let them now dig down the tree of peace, cut reeds from rivers for their poisoned shafts, pluck up keen aintstones for their tomahawks, and battle with the thunder gods of heaven. hear the bald eagle scream amid the clouds; his voice betokens blood, his eye glares bright o’er the great waters to the misty isles. out of the clouds big warriors shall come in swift canoes that ay on shining wings; — 1823] dramatic fragment 255 i see them leap like giants on thy shore with thunder in their hands, and thy great spirit is frighted at their gods, and leaves his skies. i tell thee, chieftain, that the coward gods fear the white tribe that ride across the deep. and hide their shamed heads. ah, red men are few; they are few and feeble, and the eagle tribes must crumble fast away and fall in pieces. mas. you sing the deathsong of my tribe. ah me! now by my father's soul, old cawba, say why are the tall warriors weak? and why does god suffer the wolves to lap his children's blood? does the great spirit betray, or does he fear? seer. eagle! he loves his children; feeds them when they famish, saves them in the winter's storm, and sends the pleasant summer full of joy fattening the forest families — for them. then see thou blame him not, for he is good. mas. sometimes he darts his thunder at my sons; can he not kill my enemies ? seer. there are gods besides thy god, as other tribes have chiefs 256 [age 20 journal mas. besides thy own. eagle, thy god is weak, waxing and waning like yon horned moon; the white man's god, eternal as the sun. out on your god ! i'll be my people's god. since the great spirit is afraid to fight, they shall not lack an arm strong as his arm. and when the white canoes come o'er the sea, oh may their god with me wrestle for life! then i will fall upon them like the night, and sing my war-song in their ears, and kill, and stain the water-side with crimson foam. and if my warriors fall, and if the foe prevail — then i will die, as the eagle chief should die — in fight, last of a noble tribe, and white men's dying groans shall lull my last sleep. [morals, continued] june 1, 1823. great force is given to morals if you consider the object and integrity they contribute to human life. they are strong; if they were weak, and but a faint hint, or indeed no suggestion at all, of this law were imparted to the mind, life, instead of being a noble and harmonious order, would immediately become a wild and terrible dream. 1823] morals 257 men would ask one of another the cause and meaning of the unexplained enigma. to what purpose stand we here? shall a tremendous event shut up this troubled scene? these tempestuous passions of ours — come, let us gratify them, though we slay each other and ourselves also, to avoid some darker calamity that uncertain existence may be storing for us. a chaos more frightful than that of nature the chaos of thought would make life an insupportable curse. the intelligent universe would be deprived of the salutary restraint that supports and prolongs its awful beauty. rend away the darkness, and restore to man the knowledge of this principle, and you have lit the sun over the world and solved the riddle of life. now man lives for a purpose. hitherto was no object upon which to concentrate his various powers. now happiness is his being's end and aim. one course leads to it, and the prize is secure. the distant and dark intimation of such an end, which, in case of total previous privation, we should have hailed with rapture and have pursued with unconquerable diligence, is made to us a rich and majestic revelation; and can the zeal with which we conform to its edicts ever become intemperate? never in the eye of god; never in the eye of 258 [age 20 journal so seraphim and cherubim; but often ill-timed and intemperate, it would seem, in the eye of men. so unerring, perhaps, and so judicious is human sagacity that it is ever loth to enter zealously into this subject; afraid, it would seem, of jeopardizing some whit the stately dignity of human nature by falling into a momentary enthusiasm in this inquiry. out of this world, all the active intelligences that move in the heavens are absorbed in these views, are incessantly pursuing on the fiery wing of contemplation the wonders of god's providence into the abyss of his works. mind, which is the end and aim of all the divine operations, feeds with unsated appetite upon moral and material nature, that is, upon the order of things which he has appointed. it is perpetually growing wiser and mightier by digesting this immortal food; and, even in our feeble conceptions of the heavenly hosts, we seek to fill up the painful chasm that divides god from his humble creatures upon earth by a magnificent series of godlike intellects. worlds like ours were the cradle of their infancy. their minds, like ours, learned the rudiments of thought from the material creation. there ripened and godlike understandings revere the law and study the foundation principles of morals. but man, in m 1823] trade 259 his nook of earth, knits his brow at the name of his maker, and gravely apprehends that the discussion of his laws may lead to fanaticism. it seems to me ardour and enthusiasm are the appropriate feelings which belong to things of eternity and make the habits of angels; but man waxes cold and slow at the word; and fears to commit himself upon these topics in the presence of his fellow worms. june 1, 1823 but this waywardness, in the end, grows to presumption, and there is a time when slighted opportunity ceases to return. « praise is the salt that seasons right for man and whets the appetite for moral good.” “ dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.” trade men so universally draw their characters after the pattern of their times that great regard is due to any who, spurning the character and humour of an ignoble age, act upon principles not apprehended by the vulgar. upon this ground we claim veneration for the forefathers of new england, who were an association of men that for once in the history of the world forgot to found 260 [age 20 journal their plans exclusively upon the interests of trade, and preferred to trade the finer interests of religion and literature. trade was always in the world, and indeed, to judge hastily, we might well deem trade to have been the purpose for which the world was created. it is the cause, the support and the object of all government. without it, men would roam the wilderness alone, and never meet in the kind conventions of social life. who is he that causes this busy stir, this mighty and laborious accommodation of the world to men's wants ? who is he that plants care like a canker at men's hearts, and furrows their brows with thrifty calculations ? that makes money for his instrument, and therewith sets men's passions in ferment and their faculties in action, unites them together in the clamorous streets, or arrays them against each other in war? it is trade, trade which is the mover of the nations, and the pillar whereon the fortunes of life hang. all else is subordinate. tear down, if you will, the temples of religion, the museums of art, the laboratories of science, the libraries of learning-and the regret excited among mankind would be cold, alas ! and faint; — a few would be found, a few enthusiasts in secret places to mourn over their ruins ; — but destroy the temples of trade, your 1823] trade 261 wea stores, your wharves and your floating castles on the deep; restore to the earth the silver and the gold which was dug out thence to serve bis purposes; — and you shall hear an outcry from the ends of the earth. society would stand still, and men return howling to forests and caves which would now be the grave, as [they were] once the cradle, of the human race. this partial and inordinate success by which this institution of men wears the crown over all others is necessary; for the prosperity of trade is built upon desires and necessities which nourish no distinction among men; which all, — the high and humble, the weak and strong, can feel, and which must first be answered, before the imprisonment of the mind can be broken and the noble and delicate thoughts can issue out, from which art and literature spring. the most enthusiastic philosopher requires to be fed and clothed before he begins his analysis of nature, and scandal has called poetry, taste, imagination the overflowing phantasms of a highfed animal. true, archimedes forgot for a moment, in the sicilian capital, the rigid laws of decorum when he found the theory of the tides, and fiery poets have lived who defied the vile necessities of the flesh and wrote obstinately on, until they starved; but these are instances rare and 262 journal [age 20 we extraordinary and are only quoted in evidence as miracles by which the reality of these lower revelations was to be attested. and, in despite of them all, the scholar is quickly taught the unwelcome conviction, that his studies are the later luxuries, which the world can easily forego; whilst it cannot spare its meat and its drink and the interests of traffic, which he holds in contempt. the justice and propriety of this early preference to trade we are not so blind as to doubt; we only lament the poverty of our nature which makes us heirs to such inconveniences. but we complain that here we find new instances of the imperfection of our mind, which — by that universal misapprehension of the means for the end -after the wants are gratified, which trade proposed to gratify, continues to pursue with unslaked appetite these concerns which have ceased to be necessary, to the exclusion of those nobler pursuits which bring honour and greatness upon our race. this mistake is a sore evil under the sun, and under some broad form or other offends us every day. the merchant said in his heart, i will amass treasure and then buy me these pleasures of refinement and science; when i am free from the fear of want, i will call the muses from sue n1823] trade 263 helicon and sacrifice at their altars. and he unfurled his canvas on the sea, and sent men on his errands of gain to all corners of the earth. and his purpose seemed good in the eye of the genii of the air and the mermaids of the deep. his white sails were swelled with favourable winds, and the mermaids sung pleasantly to his mariners to cheer them on their way. ores of gold and silver, mines of diamond and shores of pearl, spice groves of the east and plantations of the west were ransacked to heap the amount of his wealth ; but when his will was done and the progress of years added new accumulations to his wealth, —in the abundance of his schemes he forgot his youthful promises for the application of his wealth, he forgot to invoke the muses and call the arts and philosophy to adorn his dwelling. alas! he was fast yoked into the thraldom of care, — painfully gathering riches for another to enjoy, and niggardly denying himself the best fruits of his toil. this history of the individual is the history of the nation. thousands wished well to the scanty, godlike band who kindled and bore the torch of improvement through the darkness of the world and were well nigh persuaded to abandon their own sordid pursuits and ally themselves to their cause. nations 264 journal [ace 20 ripened into civilization and crowded with an enlarging population the narrow confines god gave them to possess, but it was trade who sent out the superfluous numbers in colonies to people distant territories. phænicia, greece and rome, vaunting the liberality of their policy, had no loftier motive than the extension of their taxes and their trade. a reading selected from 29 and 30 chapters of job, admits of great eloquence. note the pauses after “ now” which occur thrice. temptation there is an important view, striking the very foundation of moral accountability, which i shall attempt to present. i cannot blame, for i do not feel, a contradiction to divine justice in the alarming result of god's experiment on earth. men have thought, that if a fair and equal election of good and ill and their respective rewards be offered to man, it cannot be that so huge a majority of wrong-doers should burden the earth. sin, they say, is too strong—it hath too many pleasures and too many apologies — for our integrity. god should not have made it so difficult fisher pinx south view of harvard college yard from craigie road, 1823 1823] epilogue 265 -if purity be necessary to my salvation — to be pure. i answer, if temptation were tenfold stronger than it is, i see not, with what face this poor palliation of guilt could be advanced. for all the most clamorous invitations that vice ever offered, the moment they are brought into close comparison with the recompense offered to virtue, do so shrink into mute and secret insignificance that they lose every shadow of effect, nothing that ever occurred to man's fiery imagination bearing any proportion as a picture of delight to the promises granted to obedience. ... epilogue june 11. when memory rakes up her treasures, her ingots of thought, i fear she will seldom recur to the muse's tenth son; and yet she should have been able to gather and condense something from the wealth of fancy which nature supplies in the beautiful summer. i have played the enthusiast with my book in the greenwood, the huntsman with my gun; have sat upon rocks and mused o'er flood and fell; have indulged the richest indolence of a poet, and am therefore a creditor ture for some brilliant and unusual inspiraso 266 journal (age 20 tion. but the goddess is slow of payment-or has forgotten an old bantling. if she was partial once, she is morose now; for familiarity (if awful nature will permit me to use so bold a word) breeds disgust; and vinegar is the son of wine; peradventure i may yet be admitted to the contemplation of her inner magnificence, and her favour may find me, no shrine, indeed, but some snug niche, in the temple of time. “tut,” says fortune, -"and if you fail, it shall never be from lack of vanity.” labour is the son of resolution, and the father of greatness, of health and wealth. the family is a very thriving one, though it is infested not uncommonly by an execrable vermin called care. journal xii the wide world, no. ii june, 1823. [this journal has no dedication. the earlier part is here omitted. its pages reflect a state of depression in the young writer, doubtless due to poor health and to the mortification that he felt in not being a better teacher. this was largely due to his shyness. yet he was soon called on to show greater courage, for his brother william, having established a good name for his school, was now for the first time at liberty to do something for himself. he went to göttingen to study for the ministry, leaving waldo in full charge of the school.] 268 [age 20 journal journal of a walk to the connecticut august, 1823." “ have lights when other men are blind as pigs are said to see the wind.” framingham, august 22, 1823. friday noon, warren's hotel. after a delightful walk of twenty miles, i reached this inn before noon, and in the near recollection of my promenade through roxbury, newton, needham, natick, do recommend the same, particularly as far as the lower falls in newton, to my friends who are fond of fine scenery. to this stage of mine errantry no adventure has befallen me; no, not the meeting with a mouse. i both thought and talked a little with myself on the way, and gathered up and watered such sprigs of poetry as i feared had wilted in my memory. i thought how history has a twofold effect, viz., intellectual pleasure and moral pain. and in the midst of a beautiful country i thought how monotonous and uniform is nature; but i found now as ever that, maugre all the flights of the sacred muse, the profane i this, though written in a pocket note-book, is inserted in its proper place in this journal. 1823] turnpikes 269 solicitudes of the flesh elevated the tavern to a high rank among my pleasures. worcester ; evening, 8 o'clock. i reached worcester one half hour ago, having walked forty miles without difficulty. every time i traverse a turnpike, i find it harder to conceive how they are supported; i met but three or four travellers between roxbury and worcester. the scenery all the way was fine, and the turnpike, a road of inflexible principle, swerving neither to the right hand nor the left, stretched on before me, always in sight. a traveller who has nothing particular to think about is apt to make a very lively personification of his road and to make the better companion of it. the kraken, thought i, or the sea-worm, is three english miles long; but this land worm of mine is some forty, and those of the hugest. saturday: rice's hotel, brookfield. after passing through leicester, spencer and north brookfield, i am comfortably seated in south brookfield, sixty miles from home. in leicester, i met with stephen elliot in the barroom of the inn, on his way, it appeared, to 270 journal (age 20 stafford springs. he guessed with me a few minutes concerning the design and use of a huge white building opposite the house, and could not decide whether it were court house or whether it were church. but the stageman called, and he went on his way. the building i found to be an academy containing ordinarily eighty students, — boys and girls. “not so many girls now," added the bar-keeper, “because there is no female instructor; and they like a woman to teach them the higher things.” “ye stars!” thought 1,“if the metropolis get this notion, the mogul and i must lack bread.” at spencer, i sympathized with a coachman who complained, that, “ride as far or as fast as he would, the milestones were all alike and told the same number!” mr. stevens of north brookfield is an innholder after my heart. corpulent and comfortable, honest to a cent, with high opinions of the clergy. and yet he told me there was a mournful rise of schisms since he was a boy,unitarians and universalists, which, he said, he believed were all one, and he never heard their names till lately. i asked him the cause of all this frightful heterodoxy? the old serpent, he said, was at work deceiving man. he could not but think people bebaved about as well now as their fathers did; 1823] brookfield 271 but then mr. bisby (the universalist) minister of brookfield is a cunning fox, and by and bye he and his hosts will show what and how bad they really are. my good landlord's philanthropic conclusion was, that there was a monitor within, and, if we minded that, no matter how we speculated. sunday evening, august 24. i rested this sabbath day on the banks of the quebog. mr. stone, a worthy calvinist, who had been already recommended to my respect, by the hearty praises of my last-named landlord, preached all day, and reminded me forcibly of one of my idols, dr. nichols of portland.: my lord bacon, my trusty counsellor all the week, has six or seven choice essays for holy time. the aforesaid lord knew passing well what i rev. ichabod nichols, pastor of the first church (unitarian) of portland, from 1809 to 1859. the following is quoted from a historical sermon by rev. john c. perkins, pastor of the same church : “ this man dominated the best thought of this city. ... he was a man of great seriousness and a fine dignity. . . . he was modest and retiring. he stood for everything that was substantial and permanent in human life. he was a scholar with delicate perceptions of truth. he was a writer who said what his own age needed. dr. channing once said, after listening to an address of his, • i could not have done that ; he is my superior.'” x or sev 272 journal [age 20 was in man, woman and child, what was in books, and what in palaces. this possessor of transcendent intellect was a mean slave to courts and a conniver at bribery. and now, perchance, if mental distinctions give place to moral ones at the end of life, now this intellectual giant, who has been the instructor of the world and must continue to be a teacher of mankind till the end of time,has been forced to relinquish his preeminence, and in another world to crawl in the dust at the feet of those to whom his mounting spirit was once a sacred guide. one instant succeeding dissolution will perhaps satisfy us that there is no inconsistency in this. till then, i should be loth to ascribe anything less than celestial state to the prince of philosophers. belchertown, clapp's hotel: monday afternoon. after noticing the name of mr. rice upon the hat store, upon the blacksmith's shop, and upon the inn of south brookfield, i made inquiries of my landlord, and learned that this omni-trader was he himself, who, moreover, owned two lines of stages! this morning phoebus and i set out together upon our respective journies; and i believe we shall finish them to1823] amherst 273 gether, since this village is ten miles from amherst. the morning walk was delightful; and the sun amused himself and me by making rainbows on the thick mist which darkened the country. after passing through west brookfield, i breakfasted among some right worshipful waggoners at the pleasant town of western,'and then passed through a part of palmer (i believe) and ware to this place. i count that road pleasant and that air good, which forces me to smile from mere animal pleasure, albeit i may be a smiling man; so i am free to commend the road from cutler's tavern in western, as far as babcock's in ware, to any youthful traveller, who walks upon a cloudless august morning. let me not forget to record here the benevolent landlady of ware who offered me her liquors and crackers upon the precarious credit of my return, rather than exchange my bills. monday evening: bartlett's, amherst. i sit here ninety miles from home, and three from the institution, and have the pleasure and eke the honour, to waft, on the winged steeds of a wish, my best regards to the lords and ladye who sit at home; to the majesty of tartary, 1 the town has since been named warren. 274 journal [ags 20 chiefest of men, calling the young satraps to order from the elbow chair and secretly meditating golden schemes in an iron age; then to the young lion of the tribe (to change the metaphor) now resting and musing on his honourable oars; next to my loud-voiced and spare-built friend, loving duty better, oh, abundantly better, than pudding; last to the medalled youth, the anxious driver and director of the whole establishment; peace to his bones. my worthy landlord wishes blessings to the amherst institution, which, saith he, howbeit it may have had a muddy foundation, yet the lord hath blessed. thursday, august. tuesday morning i engaged mr. bartlett to bring me to mrs. shepard's, and i think the worthy man returned with some complacent i he alludes to his brothers : william (the “ majesty of tartary"), the serious and dignified eldest brother, who, having given up his school for young ladies to waldo, was probably tutoring boston youth in the months that remained before his going to study at göttingen for the ministry. edward is the “ lion of the tribe,” brilliant, eager, ambitious and just entering on his senior year. the good but deficient robert bulkeley is the “ loud-voiced and spare-built” one, and charles, the youngest, always a brilliant scholar, is the “ medalled youth” at the latin (?) school. 1823] amherst 275 recollections of the instructions and remarks he had dropped on the way for the stranger's edification. our wagon ride was somewhat uneasy from below, but its ups and downs were amply compensated by the richness and grandeur visible above and around. hampshire county rides in wagons. in this pleasant land i found a house full of friends, –a noble house, very good friends. in the afternoon i went to the college. the infant college is an infant hercules. never was so much striving, outstretching, and advancing in a literary cause as is exhibited here. the students all feel a personal responsibility in the support and defence of their young alma mater against all antagonists, and as long as this battle abroad shall continue, the government, unlike all other governments, will not be compelled to fight with its students within. the opposition of other towns and counties produces, moreover, a correspondent friendship and kindness from the people in amherst, and there is a daily exhibition of affectionate feeling between the inhabitants and the scholars, which is the more pleasant as it is so uncommon. they attended the declamation and commencement with the interest which parents usually ice276 (age 20 journal have any pro shew at the exhibitions of schools where their own children are engaged. i believe the affair was first moved, about three years ago, by the trustees of the academy. when the cornerstone of the south college was laid, the institution did not own a dollar. a cartload of stones was brought by a farmer in pelham, to begin the foundation; and now they have two large brick edifices, a president's house, and considerable funds. dr. moore has left them six or seven thousand dollars. a poor one-legged man died last week in pelham, who was not known to have any property, and left them four thousand dollars to be appropriated to the building of a chapel, over whose door is to be inscribed his name, adams johnson. william phillips gave a thousand, and william eustis a hundred dollars, and great expectations are entertained from some rich men, friends to the seminary, who will die without children. they have wisely systematized this spirit of opposition, which they have found so lucrative, and the students are all divided into thriving opposition societies, which gather libraries, laboratories, mineral cabinets, etc., with an indefatigable spirit, which nothing but rivalry could inspire. upon this impulse, they write, speak, appropriate in be inscr 1823] the new college 277 and study in a sort of fury, which, i think, promises a harvest of attainments. the commencement was plainly that of a young college, but had strength and eloquence mixed with the apparent “vestigia ruris," and the scholar who gained the prize for declamation, the evening before, would have a first prize at any cambridge competition. the college is supposed to be worth net 85,000 dollars. after spending three days very pleasantly at mrs. shepard's, among orators, botanists, mineralogists, and above all, ministers, i set off on friday morning with thomas greenough and another little cousin in a chaise to visit mount holyoke. how high the hill may be i know not; for different accounts makeit eight, twelve, and sixteen hundred feet from the river. the prospect repays the ascent, and although the day was hot and hazy, so as to preclude a distant prospect, yet all the broad meadows in the immediate vicinity of the mountain through which the connecticutt winds make a beautiful picture, seldom rivalled. after adding our names in the books to the long list of strangers whom curiosity has attracted to this hill, we descended in safety without encountering rattlesnake or 278 journal [age 20 viper that have given so bad fame to the place. we were informed that about forty people ascend the mountain every fair day during the summer. after passing through hadley meadows, i took leave of my companions at northampton bridge and crossed for the first time the far-famed yankee river. from the hotel in northampton i visited mr. theodore strong, where i have been spending a couple of days of great pleasure. his five beautiful daughters and son make one of the finest families i ever saw. in the afternoon, i went on horseback (oh, hercules !) with allen strong to round hill, the beautiful site of the gymnasium, and to shepherd's factory, about four miles from the centre of the town. saturday morning, we went in a chaise in pursuit of a lead mine said to lie about five miles off, which we found after great and indefatigable search. we tied our horse and descended, by direction, into a somewhat steep glen, at the bottom of which we found the covered entrance of a little canal about five feet wide. into this artificial cavern we fired a gun to call out the miner from within. the report was long and loudly echoed and after a weary interval we discerned a boat with lamps lighted in its side issuing from this dreary abode. we 1823] northampton 279 welcomed the miner to the light of the sun, and leaving our hats without, and binding our heads, we lay down in the boat and were immediately introduced to a cave varying in height from four to six and eight feet, hollowed in a pretty soft sandstone through which the water continually drops. when we lost the light of the entrance and saw only this gloomy passage by the light of lamps, it required no effort of the imagination to believe we were leaving the world, and our smutty ferryman was a true charon. after sailing a few hundred feet, the vault grew higher and wider overhead, and there was a considerable trickling of water on our left; this was the ventilator of the mine and reaches up to the surface of the earth. we continued to advance in this manner for goo feet, and then got out of the boat and walked on planks a little way to the end of this excavation. here we expected to find the lead vein, and the operations of the subterranean man, but were sadly disappointed. he had been digging through this stone for 12 years, and has not yet discovered any lead at all. indications of lead at the surface led some boston gentlemen to set this man at work, in the expectation that after cutting his dark canal for 1000 feet, he would reach the vein, and the 280 journal (age 20 canal would then draw off the water which prevented them from digging from above. as yet, he has found no lead, but, as he gravely observed, “has reached some excellent granite." in this part of the work he has forty dollars for every foot he advances and it occupies him ten days to earn this. he has advanced 975 feet, and spends his days, winter and summer, alone in this damp and silent tomb. he says the place is excellent for meditation; and that he sees no goblins. many visitors come to his dark residence, and pay him a shilling apiece for the sight. a young man, he said, came the day before us, who after going in a little way was taken with terrors and said he felt faint, and returned. said miner is a brawny person, and discreet withal; has a wife and lives near the hole. all his excavations are performed by successive blasting. in the afternoon i set out on my way to greenfield, intending to pass the sabbath with george ripley. mr. strong insisted on carrying me to hatfield, and thence i passed, chiefly on foot, through whately and deerfield over sands and pine barrens, and across green river to greenfield, and did not arrive there till after ten o'clock and found both taverns shut up. i should ot 1823] greenfield 281 have staid in deerfield if mr. s. had not ridiculed the idea of getting to greenfield that night. in the morning i called at mr. ripley's, and was sorely disappointed to learn that his son was at cambridge. the family were exceedingly hospitable, and i listened with as great pleasure to a sermon from rev. mr. perkins of amherst in the morning, and in the afternoon rode over to the other parish with mr. r. to hear rev. lincoln ripley. after service mr. l. r. returned with us, and in the evening we heard another sermon from mr. perkins which pleased me abundantly better than his matins. he is a loud-voiced, scripture-read divine, and his compositions have the element of a potent eloquence, but he lacks taste. by the light of the evening star i walked with my reverend uncle, a man who well sustained the character of an aged missionary. it is a new thing to him, he said, to correspond with his wife, and he attends the mail regularly every monday morning to send or receive a letter. 1 rev. lincoln ripley was mr. emerson's step-greatuncle, as being brother of dr. ezra ripley, minister of concord, who had married the widow of rev. william emerson of concord, the builder of the “ old manse,” and chaplain in the army at ticonderoga. rev. lincoln ripley was minister of waterford, maine. 282 [age 20 journal so after a dreamless night, and a most hospitable entertainment, i parted from greenfield and through an unusually fine country, crossed the connecticutt (shrunk to a rivulet in this place somewhere in montagu). my solitary way grew somewhat more dreary, as i drew nearer wendell, and the only relief to hot sandy roads and a barren, monotonous region was one fine forest with many straight, clean pine trees upwards of a hundred feet high, “fit for the mast of some great admiral.”: all that day was a thoughtless, heavy pilgrimage, and fortune deemed that such a crowded week of pleasure demanded a reaction of pain. at night i was quartered in the meanest caravansera which has contained my person since the tour began. traveller! weary and jaded, who regardest the repose of thine earthly tenement; traveller, hungry and athirst, whose heart warms to the hope of animal gratification; traveller of seven or seventy years, beware, beware, i beseech you, of haven's inn in new salem. already he is laying a snare for your kindness or credulity in fencing in a mineral spring for your infirmities. beware. 1«the tallest pine hewn on norwegian hills to be the mast of some great ammiral” milton, paradise lost, book 1. 18231 282 the home-stretch from mr. haven's garret bed i sallied forth tuesday morning towards hubbardston, but my cramped limbs made little speed. after dining in hubbardston i walked seven miles farther to princeton, designing to ascend wachusett with my tall cousin thomas greenough, if i should find him there, and then set out for home in the next day's stage. but when morning came, and the stage was brought, and the mountain was a mile and a half away, learned again an old lesson, that, the beldam disappointment sits at hope's door. i jumped into the stage and rode away, wachusett untrod. at sterling, i learned that oliver blood studies physic in worcester. at boston i saw nat wood' on his way to amherst, n. h., to study law, his pedagogical career being terminated o fortunate nimium! close-cooped in a stage-coach with a score of happy, dusty rustics, the pilgrim continued his ride to waltham, and alighting there, spent an agreeable evening at rev. mr. ripley's.2 home he came from thence the next morning, right i blood and wood were his classmates. 2 rev. samuel ripley, minister of waltham, was stepuncle of the emerson boys, and always a kind friend and benefactor, especially to waldo. 284 journal (age 20 glad to sit down once more in a quiet well-fed family at canterbury. canterbury, september, 1823. i have often found cause to complain that my thoughts have an ebb and flow. whether any laws fix them, and what the laws are, i cannot ascertain. i have quoted a thousand times the memory of milton and tried to bind my thinking season to one part of the year, or to one sort of weather; to the sweet influence of the pleiades, or to the summer reign of lyra. the worst is, that the ebb is certain, long and frequent, while the flow comes transiently and seldom.' once when vanity was full fed, it sufficed to keep me at work and to produce some creditable scraps; but alas! it has long been dying of i so in “the poet”; poems (appendix), p. 319:is there warrant that the waves of thought, in their mysterious caves, will heap in me their highest tide, in me, therewith beatified ? unsure the ebb and flow of thought, the moon comes back, — the spirit not. lectures and biographical also in « the preacher," sketches, p. 219. 1823) tides of thought 285 a galloping starvation, and the muse, i fear me, will die too. the dreams of my childhood are all fading away and giving place to some very sober and very disgusting views of a quiet mediocrity of talents and condition — nor does it appear to me that any application of which i am capable, any efforts, any sacrifices, could at this moment restore any reasonableness to the familiar expectations of my earlier youth. but who is he that repines? let him read the song about the linter-goose. melons and plums and peaches, eating and drinking, and the bugle, all the day long. these are the glorious occupations which engross a proud and thinking being, running his race of preparation for the eternal world. man is a foolish slave who is busy in forging his own fetters. sometimes he lifts up his eyes for a moment, admires freedom, and then hammers the rivets of his chain. who does not believe life to be an illusion when he sees the daily, yearly, livelong, inconsistency that men indulge, in thinking so well and doing so ill? ... s god ... god's works are fruits of his character; copies (as ancient philosophy expressed it) of 286 journal [age 20 w his mind and wishes. one could not venerate him if he were only good. who could bow down before a god who had infinite instincts of beneyolence, and no thought; in whom the eye of knowledge was shut; who was kind and good because he knew no better; who was infinitely gentle as brutes are gentle? the poor egyptian plebeian layman might do so, who worshipped a divine ox, for his gracious tameness ; but an enlightened man, with the spirit of a man, would bid them bring the stake and fire and make him martyr, ere he surrendered his mind and body to such a prostration. man reveres the providence of god as the benign and natural result of his omniscience; and expects in the imperfect image of god an imperfect copy of the same eternal order.' ... october 5. milord w.2 from andover let me into his mystery about edwards on the will, and told me, i mr. cabot, in his memoir (p. 103), gives two letters on god and providence, written at this period by emerson to his aunt mary, who, as he used to say, “ wished everyone to be a calvinist but herself.” 2 william withington, a classmate, who became an episcopalian minister. in the century magazine for july, 1883, are printed several interesting letters written to him by emerson 1823) letters from andover 287 withal, that the object of the piece was to prove that president e. has not advanced human knowledge one step, for his definition includes the very proposition which the book is designed to establish. w. saith, moreover, that perchance the president has done something, albeit his definitions be imprudent and entangled. and, perchance, the fault of apparently proving an identical proposition lies in the nature of the subject which, though so intricate before as to have ever been debateable ground, is made so plain by the able and skilful statements of edwards, that we are made to see the truth, and wonder that it ever was disputed. waldo e. will please consult upon this topic, on one side edwards, priestley, and belsham ; on the other, clarke, and stewart (?). dr. reid is to be read by me, quo citius, eo melius ; and edinburgh review of la place's calculation of chances ; also are to be stated anew the two propositions unanswerable concerning necessity. one of them has occurred in wideworld no. 8.' a year earlier than this entry. by the kind permission of the century company, extracts from these are introduced after this paragraph. i under « benevolence.” 288 journal [age 19 [in april, 1822, emerson wrote to withington at andover] “to congratulate you upon your singular exemption from the general misery of your compeers, who have rushed into the tutors' desks of every minerva's temple in the country; then, to claim the honour of corresponding with one scholar in the land, -and to enjoin it upon you as a primal duty to write a letter from your seat of science to a desponding schoolmaster. “i am delighted to hear there is such a profound studying of german and hebrew, parkhurst and jahn, and such other names as the memory aches to think of, on foot at andover. ... what are you studying beside bibles? do you let suns and moons, eclipses and comets pass without calculation or account? is there not time for trigonometry no, not for a logarithm? or, if all these are forgotten, i hope you have not sacrificed johnson and burke, shakespeare and scott altogether. books are not so numerous at andover but that you will want the cambridge library.” ... (july, 1822.) [emerson praises the fortunes of nigel, which he is reading, as being] “i fear, ex1822] letter to classmate 289 cis cluded from your reading catalogue because it is so unfortunate as to bear the name of a novel. butif masterly, unrivalled genius add any weight to the invitation for a scholar to step out of his greek and hebrew circle of sad enchantment that he may pluck such flowers of taste and fancy as never bloomed before, to deck his strength withal, — why then he may read scott, and particularly the latter novels. . . . perhaps it is wasting your time to trouble you with my lucubrations about novels and poetical idolatry, but, at the moment, i have it more at heart than aught else, and if, when you read this, you be stooping to some musty folio which suffered under the types of a century ago, you will oblige me by transferring your solemn thoughts thereupon on paper to me, yea, if it be a dictionary, if it be anything earthly but mathematics.”... ? d.gen (november, 1822.) 9 [emerson speaks of plato, and goes on ] “i have read one very useful book of late, stewart's second dissertation. it saves you a world of reading by laying open the history of moral and intellectual philosophy since the revival of letters. . . . it is a beautiful and instructive abridgment of the thousand volumes 290 [age 20 journal of locke, leibnitz, voltaire, bayle, kant and the rest. ... the next books on my table are hume, and gibbon's miscellanies. i shall be on the high road to ruin presently with such companions, but i cannot help admiring the genius and novelty of the one, and the greatness and profound learning of the other, maugre the scepticism and abominable sneers of both. if you read gibbon and hume, you have to think, and gibbon wakes you up from slumber to wish yourself a scholar and resolve to be one." ... dr. channing sunday, october, 1823. i heard dr. channing deliver a discourse upon revelation as standing in comparison with nature. i have heard no sermon approaching in excellence to this, since the dudleian lecture. the language was a transparent medium, conveying with the utmost distinctness the pictures in his mind to the mind of the hearers. he considered god's word to be the only expounder of his works, and that nature had always been found insufficient to teach men the great doctrines which revelation in-_ culcated. astronomy had in one or two ways i also by dr. channing. 1823] channing 291 an ilverse an unhappy tendency. an universe of matter in which deity would display his power and greatness must be of infinite extent and complicate relations, and, of course, too vast to be measured by the eye and understanding of man. hence errors. astronomy reveals to us [an] infinite number of worlds like our own, accommodated for the residence of such beings as we of gross matter. but to kindle our piety and urge our faith, we do not want such a world as this, but a purer, a world of morals and of spirits. la place has written in the mountain album of switzerland his avowal of atheism. newton had a better master than suns and stars. he heard of heaven ere he philosophized, and after travelling through mazes of the universe he returned to bow his laurelled head at the feet of jesus of nazareth. dr. channing regarded revelation as much a part of the order of things as any other event. it would have been wise to have made an abstract of the discourse immediately. o keep the current of thy spirits even; if it be ruffled by too full a flood, 't is turbid; or, if drained, goes dry. the mind, in either case obeys the animal pulse, and weeps the loss of unreturning time. 292 journal [age 20 mr. hume's essay upon necessary connection proves that events are conjoined, and not connected ; that we have no knowledge but from experience. we have no experience of a creator and there [fore] know of none. the constant appeal is to our feelings from the glozed lies of the deceived [deceiver?], but one would feel safer and prouder to see the victorious answer to these calumnies upon our nature set down in impregnable propositions. pride carves rich emblems on its seals, and slights the throng that dogs its heels. fair vanity hath bells on cap and shoes, and eyes his moving shadow as he goes. we put up with time and chance because it. costs too great an effort to subdue them to our wills, and minds that feel an embryo greatness stirring within them let it die for want of nourishment. plans that only want maturity, ideas that only need explanation to lead the thinker on to a far nobler being than now he dreams of, good resolutions whose dawning was like the birth of gods in their benevolent promise, sudden throbs of charity and impulses to goodness that spake most auspicious omens, are 1823] reading. love 293 suffered to languish and blight in hopeless barrenness. ... december 13, 1823. edinburgh review has a fine eulogy of newton and dr. black, etc., in the first article of the 3d volume. no. xxxvi contains a review of mrs. grant on highlanders, and, in it, good thoughts upon the progress of manners. “a gentleman's character is a compound of obligingness and self-esteem.” the same volume reviews alison, and gives an excellent condensed view of his theory. the charm of all these discussions is only a fine luxury, producing scarce any good, unless that of substituting a pure pleasure for impure. occasionally this reading helps one's conversation ; but seldom. the reason and whole mind is not forwarded by it, as by history. the good in life that seems to be most real, is not found in reading, but in those successive triumphs a man achieves over habits of moral or intellectual indolence, or over an ungenerous spirit and mean propensities. love december. love is a holy passion, and is the instrument of our connexion with deity; and when we 294 journal [age 20 drop the body, this, perhaps, will constitute the motive and impulse to all the acquisitions of an immortal education. as we are instinctively ashamed of selfishness, we venerate love, the noble and generous nature of which seeks another's good. . . . embryo powers of which we were not hitherto conscious are nursed into the manhood of mind. a powerful motive is to the character what a skilful hypothesis is to the progress of science; it affords facility and room for the arrangement of the growing principles of our nature. what lay in chaos and barren before, is now adjusted in a beautiful and useful order, which exposes to the light numberless. connexions and relations and fine issues of . thought, not easily perceived until such a sys.tem is laid. a motive thus powerful and of such benignant fruits is love. ... it bears many forms, but is love. it is the attachment to truth, to a sentiment, to our country, to a fellow being or to god, that has won and worn the crown of martyrdom, and that has stirred up in men's minds all the good which the earth has seen. indeed pure love is too pure a principle for human bosoms; and, were it not mixed with the animal desires of our nature, would not meet. that unqualified and universal honour it now. 1823] fear 295 sensufinds among men. ... what does the sensualist know of love? of such love as exists between god and man, and man and god; of such love as the pure mind conceives for moral grandeur, for the contemplation of which it was made? fear love has an empire in the world, but fear has an empire also. and i wish, on the comparison, this palsied, leprous principle be not found to have the larger sway. the conventions, as they are called, of civilized life, the artificial order and conversation of society, are. propped on this miserable reed. now and then, there are minds of such indomitable independence as to overleap the wretched restraints of fashion, and who let the universe hear the true tones of their voice ; unpractised to “ the tune of the time," unembarrassed by fear; who venture to speak out, and to treat their fellow creature as their peer, and the deity as god. such men embrace, in their apprehension, a larger portion of existence than their weaker brethren in the shackles of prudence. by casting a glance on the future they discriminate between trifles and magnificent things, and learn to weigh the world in a true scale, and to 296 (age 20 journal undervalue what is called greatness below. i would not be understood to cast imputation on good-breeding in the human throng; it is certainly a convenient, perhaps a necessary thing; and its absence could not be borne. but in the higher connexions of which i speak, it is to be treated merely as a convenient thing, and when it pretends to higher claims it is to be treated with contempt. shall the fear which an expanding mind entertains of the eye or tongue of each insignificant man and woman in its way interfere with its progress towards the ripe excellence of its being? there are times in the history of every thinking mind, when it is the recipient of uncommon and awful thought, when somewhat larger draughts of the spiritual universe are let in upon the soul; and it breathes eloquent ejaculations to god, and would cease to be the plaything of petty events, and would become a portion of that world in which it has sojourned. but that mind returns into the company of unsympathising minds, and the humble routine of their small talk is little akin to the revelations opening upon his soul; and must what is called good manners freeze the tongue that should drop heaven's wisdom to dumbness; and must the 1823] religion 297 eye struck with the glory of paradise be levelled to the earth ? shakspeare when merry england had her virgin queen, and glory's temple in the isle was seen, on avon's bank a child of earth was born in meads where fairies wind the midnight horn. the tiny dancers leaped in frolic wild and o’er the cradle blessed the sleeping child. religion there is danger of a poetical religion from the tendencies of the age. there is a celebrated passage in the prose works of the great christian bard which is precious to the admirers of milton. i refer to the 2d book of reason of church government, etc. there is probably no young man who could read that eloquent chapter without feeling his heart warm to the love of virtue and greatness, and without making fervent resolutions that his age should be made better, because he had lived. yet these resolutions, unless diligently nourished by prayer and expanded into action by intense study, will be presently lost in the host of worldly cares; but they leave one 298 (age 20 journal fruit that may be poisonous: they leave a selfcomplacency arising from having thought so nobly for a moment, which leads the self-deceiver to believe himself better than other men. authors or books quoted or referred to in journals of 1823 bible; democritus; socrates; plato; horace; norse saga on eric's voyage to greenland; roger bacon; luther; galileo; shakspeare; bacon; milton; waller; cowley; newton, principia ; leibnitz; pope; neal, history of the puritans; edwards, on the will; johnson; franklin; reid; hume, essays; boscovich; william robertson; playfair; laplace, apud edinburgh review; mrs. anne grant, on the highlanders, apud edinburgh review; alison, the nature and principles of taste; stewart, philosophical essays, etc.; byron, childe harold; sharon turner, history of the saxons ; dr. channing; edward everett, lecture on greek literature; hindu mythology and mathematics, edinburgh review. journal xiii the wide world, no. 12 12. δός που στο sameness canterbury, december 14, 1823. the world changes its masters, but keeps its own identity, and entails upon each new family of the human race, that come to garnish it with names and memorials of themselves, — certain indelible features and unchanging properties. proud of their birth to a new and brilliant life, each presumptuous generation boasts its dominion over nature; forgetful that these very springing powers within, which nurse this arrogance, are part of the fruits of that nature, whose secret but omnipotent influence makes them all that they are. the world which they inhabit they call their servant, but it proves the real master. moulded of its clay, breathing its atmosphere, fed of its elements, they must wear its livery, the livery of corruption and change, and obey the laws which all its atoms obey. 300 journal (age 20 ... the lively fancy of some men has induced them to entertain fanciful anticipations of the progress of mankind, and of radical revolutions in their manners, passions, and pursuits, already forming in the womb of ages. but the quiet wisdom of history, as she winds along her way through sixty centuries, speaks of no wonders, and of little glory. noah awoke from his wine as the sensualist awakes to-day, but without the patriarch's excuse. nimrod, long of yore, hunted man and beast from the same furious impulses that drove alexander and cæsar and buonaparte over europe. no vices, that we ever heard of, have grown old and died. (they are a vampire brood and live upon those whom they destroy.) they outlast the pyramids, and laugh at destruction. the same topics which the eldest moralist urged are repeated by our preachers now, and received with the same repugnance by the first and last offender. suffering and sickness are the same thing now as of old. no one passion has become extinct. joy has not altered its nature, nor learned to last. man has died as a leaf. families and nations have mouldered; but all the traits of their nature have been faithfully transmitted without an irregularity. there is a much vaunted progress in the 1823] self-esteem 301 world, from the rudeness of savage habits to the prosperous refinement of civilized nations. but the change is very short from the barbarian to the polished gentleman; at least, what is cast aside is very insignificant compared with what remains of the dull, unmoveable nature. the world, i said, holds more dominion than it yields — both the natural and moral system. ... self-esteem i see no reason why i should bow my head to man, or cringe in my demeanour. when the soul is disembodied, he that has nothing else but a towering independence has one claim to respect; whilst genius and learning may provoke our contempt for their supple knees. when i consider my poverty and ignorance, and the positive superiority of talents, virtues and manners, which i must acknowledge in many men, i am prone to merge my dignity in a most uncomfortable sense of unworthiness. but when i reflect that i am an immortal being, born to a destiny immeasurably high, deriving my moral and intellectual attributes directly from almighty god, and that my existence and condition as his child must be forever independent of the controul or will of my fellow children,i am ele302 [age 20 journal vated in my own eyes to a higher ground in life and a better self-esteem. but, alas, few men hold with a strong grasp the sceptre of self-government and can summon into exercise, at will, whatever set of feelings suits their judgment best. one is apt, when in society, to be tormented with this odious abasement, to wonder reluctantly with a foolish face of praise, and to consent, with bitter inward reproaches, to things and thoughts he cannot combat; and, in solitude only, to be uplifted by this manly but useless independence. a vigorous resolution is not enough to conquer this abominable habit. a humble christian would not wallow in his humility. his reverence for the creator precludes an extravagant deference to the creature. an ic re. romance romance grows out of ignorance, and so is the curse of its own age, and the ornament of those that follow. romance is never present, always remote; not a direct, but reflected ray. it is things cruel and abominable in act that become romantic in memory. unprincipled bandits are red cross knights, and templars and 1823] romance 303 martyrs even, in the song of this century. in individual history, disagreeable occurrences are remembered long after with complacency. a romantic age, properly speaking, cannot exist. eating and drinking, cold and poverty, speedily reduce men to vulgar animals. heaven and earth hold nothing fanciful. as mind advances, all becomes practical. knowledge is a law-giver,-as fancy is an abolisher of laws, -and introduces order and limit, even into the character of deity. nevertheless romance is mother of knowledge — this ungrateful son that eats up his parent. it is only by searching for wonders that they found truth. omne ignotum pro magnifico; if the unknown was not magnified, nobody would explore. europe would lack the regenerating impulse, and america lie waste, had it not been for el dorado. the history of all science is alike, – men guess, and to verify their guesses they go and see, and are disappointed, but bring back truth. that fables should abound, seems not to indicate any especial activity of mind, for, though greece had many, stupid indostan has more. it may be that theirs are the traditionary ingenuity of that supposed ancient parent people i in greece, such a person was a hero in the second gencration, a giant in the third, and a god in the fourth. (r.w.e.) eems 304 journal (age 20 of asia, that bailey wrote of. she that is not gay or gaudy, pitiful or capricious, 'that liveth and conquereth forevermore, that is 'the strength and the wisdom, the power and majesty of all ages'' is truth. . [crossing] a nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock. [east indian mythology] the indian pantheon is of prodigious size; 330 million gods have in it each their heaven, or rather each their parlour, in this immense “ goddery.” “in quantity and absurdity their superstition has nothing to match it, that is or ever was in the world.” (see two articles on hindu mathematics and mythology in vol. 29 of the edinburgh review.) beauty the theory of mr. alison, assigning the beauty of the object to the mind of the beholder, is natural and plausible. this want of uniformity is useful. it prevents us all from falling in love with the same face, and as the 1 esdras iv, 38, 40.. 1823] beauty 305 associations are accidental, enables them to hope and to succeed, to whose form and feature partial nature has been niggard of her ornaments. a homely verse of blessed truth in human history saith :« there lives no goose so gray, but soon or late, she finds some honest gander for her mate." byron's fine verses are conformable to this theory: — « of its own beauty is the mind diseased, and fevers into false creation,” etc. december 31, 1823. i bear no badge, no tinsel star glistens upon my breast, nor jewelled crown nor pictured car robs me of rest. i am not poor, but i am proud of one inalienable right, above the envy of the crowd thought's holy light. better it is than gems or gold, and oh, it cannot die, but thought will glow when the sun grows cold and mix with deity. 306 (age 20 journal 1824 a merry new year to the wide world! impulse of the puritan movement the theory of the strong impulse is true, i believe, nor does it matter at all what sort of being or event impart it. religion was always one of the strongest. few bodies or parties have served the world so well as the puritans. from their irreverent zeal came most of the improvements of the british constitution. it was they who settled north america. bradford and winthrop and standish, [the] mathers and jonathan edwards, otis, hawley, hancock, adams, franklin, and whatever else of vigorous sense, or practical genius this country shews, are the issue of puritan stock. the community of language with england has doubtless deprived us of that original, characteristic literary growth that has ever accompanied, i apprehend, the first bursting of a nation from the bud. our era of exploits and civilization is ripe enow, and, had it not been dissipated by the unfortunate rage for periodical productions, our literature should have been born and grown ere now to a greek or roman stature. franklin is such a era 1824) the puritans 307 fruit as might be expected from such a tree. edwards, perhaps more so. the puritans had done their duty to literature when they bequeathed it the paradise lost and comus; to science, by to legislation, by! ; to all the great interests of humanity, by planting the new world with their thrifty stock. if there be such a thing as the propagation of moral and intellectual character for many generations, the prosperity of america might have been safely foretold. the energy of an abused people, whose eyes the light of books and progress of knowledge had just opened, has a better title to immortality than that vulgar physical energy which some nations are supposed to inherit from gothic or scandinavian sires. family pride engrafted on a pedigree of a thousand nobles yields to the pride of intellectual power, the pride of indomitable purpose. a few stern leaders of that stern sect nourished in their bosoms settled designs of reform, and gave to the design such shape and impulse, that when they slept in the earth, the hope failed not. it was the nursling of an iron race. their prayers, thoughts and deeds were brothers to the sentiment. it grew and throve mightily in england. 1 these blanks occur in the original. 308 journal [age 20 its tremendous activity outwent, doubtless, the expectations of its early friends and the apprehensions of its enemies. the old courses into which national feeling runs were broken up. wise men were aghast at the fury of the convulsion, and abandoned in so wild a tempest the helm which no human hand could providently hold. bear witness england and france in their regicide revolutions. nameless and birthless scoundrels climbed up in the dark, and sat in the seat of the stuarts and bourbons. cromwell and napoleon plucked them down when the light returned, and locked their own yoke round the necks of mankind. a school men are not aware, and pedagogues least of all, how much truth is in that tritest of commonplaces, ‘that one may study human nature to advantage in a school. when a man has been reading or hearing the history of politic men, of insinuating contrivance which neutralized hostility; of arts that brought the sturdiest prejudices to parley ; of men whose eye and tongue got them that ascendency over other men's 1824) a school 309 minds which the sword cannot give— from pericles, through augustus cæsar and unnumbered italians, down to charles ii, and to aaron burr even, he is often stung with the desire of being himself a cunning workman in that art of arts — human nature. but when he looks around on his acquaintances in search of materials, the force of habit is so strong that he cannot strip himself i in connection with these almost machiavellian aspirations of the young schoolmaster, now labouring alone with the administrative difficulties of « lifting the truncheon against the fair-haired daughters of this raw city,” a few words may be quoted said by him, nearly fifty years later, to some of them : “ my brother was early old . . . at eighteen he offered himself as a grave and experienced professor, who had seen much of life, and was ready to give the overflowing of his wisdom and ripe maturity to the youth of his native city. his mind was method ; his constitution was order ; and, though quiet and amiable, the tap of his pencil, you will remember, could easily enforce a silence which the spasmodic activity of other teachers cannot often command. i confess to an utter want of this same virtue. i was nineteen (on joining william, two years later); had grown up without sisters, and, in my solitary and secluded way of living, had no acquaintance with girls. i still recall my terrors at entering the school : my timidities at french, the infirmities of my cheek, and my occasional admiration of some of my pupils, – absit invidia verbo, — and the occasional vexation when the will of the pupils was a little too strong for the will of the teacher.” cabot's memoir, p. 70. 310 [age 20 journal urof the old feelings that always arise at the sight of those well-known persons, nor come to consider them as mere subjects to work upon. he cannot, if he try, keep on, nay, can seldom put on, the iron mask he would assume. nature will speak out, in spite of his grimace, in the old vulgar frankness of a man to his fellow. all his projected artificial greatness, his systematic courtesy, which, under the guise of kindness, pride devises to keep men at bay, his promised self controul, his wisdom that should drop only aphorisms, all falls quite down. ambition will drop asleep, and the naked mediocrity of the man is seen as it was wont, and he says and does ordinary things in a very ordinary way, and his influence, which was to be so enormous, is quite insignificant. before these disappointments occurred, the experiment wore a very practicable air, and afterwards he always attributes the failure, not to any absurdity or impossibility in the scheme itself, but to the unconquerable opposition he had to encounter, in the strength of the habits he long before formed. this in many instances gives rise to the expression of a wish to go among strangers. the aspirant very naturally believes that he shall get rid of the associations by escaping from their objects. it may be he cheats set as w 1824] aristocracy 311 himself. he does not know that the feelings he blushes for are his feelings towards the species and not towards individuals. but if there be any hope for the experiment, and i sometimes think there is a great deal, it is in the theatre of a school. the artificial character and deportment assumed, the unstooping dignity which in all ages mark out the pedagogue to the reverence or ridicule of mankind, is eminently propitious to this attempt. aristocracy aristocracy is a good sign. aristocracy has been the hue and cry in every community where there has been anything good, any society worth associating with, since men met in cities. it must be everywhere. ’t were the greatest calamity to have it abolished. it went nearest to its death in the french revolution, of all time. and if, tonight, an earthquake should sink every patrician house in the city, to-morrow there would be as distinct an aristocracy as now. the only change would be that the second sort would have become first, but they would be as unmingling, as i compare « lecture on the times,” nature, addresses, etc., p. 261; “ manners,” essays, 2d series, p. 129; “ aristocracy,” letters and biographical sketches, p. 31. 312 [age 20 journal much separated from the lower class, as ever the rich men of to-day were from them. no man would consent to live in society if he was obliged to admit every body to his house that chose to come. robinson crusoe's island would be better than a city if men were obliged to mix together indiscriminately, heads and points, with all the world. envy is the tax which all distinction must pay. genius versus knowledge january 25, 1824. profound knowledge is good, but profound genius is better, because, though one obtains with greater ease all the thoughts of all wise men, which the other obtains slowly by adding, himself, conclusion to conclusion, yet in the end, when both have arrived at the same amount of knowledge, the latter is much the richest. ... they have not only a certain sum of intelligence to get, but a great expedition to perform. no petty, circumscribed offices to discharge, whose narrow details daily return; no functions wherein mechanical adroitness avails more than acquaintance with principles, but immortal life in an unbounded universe. they are both to be shortly introduced into the immense 1824] genius 313 storehouse of eternal truth. their faculties are to be tasked to solve the secret enigmas of science by whose successive development the history of nature is to be explained. the universe, to the eyes of ignorance, is but a shining chaos. and when the veil of flesh is rent, and the eyes of the spirit open, human perception will shrink from the splendour of the spiritual world. but there will be no comparison between the fitness of one and the other of the pilgrims who are to go on that heavenly road, from knowledge to knowledge. he who has sharpened his faculties by long and painful thought enters, in a mighty sphere, but upon an accustomed task. education has armed him in the panoply of thought. he moves gracefully, like one at home in that etherial country. but his companion, whose habits have not been similar, though he recognizes some bright forms in the scenery, is a stranger to the customs and the tongue of that glorious land, and must walk among its wonders in stupid amazement long ere their order is seen, and must forever loiter at a distance from the other. considered with relation to our whole existence, that habits of thought are better than knowledgewas the original position of my rhetoric. · · · · · · · · co e m 314 [age 20 journal friendship sympathy is the wine of life. a man has comfort in a friend when he is absent and when he is nigh. “the panic of physical strength reinforceth the onset,” and so is the society of two men dearer to them for the interval of interruption. friends fill that interval with pleasant thoughts which borrow their charm from the magic of this gentle sentiment. they treasure up the occurrences and thoughts, the times and chances that were mixed in their cup of life, to regale each other with the feast of memory. words may be free, thought may be free, and the heart laid bare to your friend, but, nevertheless, the freedom, even of friendship, hath a limit, and beware how he passes it. ... society men pay a price for admission to the civilization of society. some pay twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty hundred dollars a year to be permitted to take certain high and higher seats therein. my mother and i might subsist on two hundred [dollars], but we are willing to buy with twelve or thirteen times as much a more convenient and reputable place in the world. every man who 1824] beginnings 315 s so z values this bargain which he drives so zealously must give the whole weight of his support to the public, civil, religious, literary institutions which make it worth his toil. keep the moral fountains pure. open schools. guard the sabbath, if you be a member or lover of civil society, as you would not tremble at the report of its earthquake convulsions, and be shocked at the noise of its fall. beginnings it is excellent advice both in writing and in action to avoid a too great elevation at first. let one's beginnings be temperate and unpretending, and the more elevated parts will rise from these with a just and full effect. we were not made to breathe oxygen, or to talk poetry, or to be always wise. we are sorry habitants of an imperfect world, and it will not do for such beings to take admiration by storm. one who would take his friend captive by eloquent discourse must forego the vulgar vanity of a great outset, which cannot last, but dwindles down to flatness and disgust. he must lull the suspicion of art asleep by the unambitious use of familiar commonplaces. he must be willing to say, “how do you do?” and “what's the news ?” he must 316 journal [age 20 not disdain to be interested in the weather or the time of day. and when the talk has gradually got into those channels where he wished to lead it, knowledge that is in place and fervour that is well-timed will have their reward. action and thought forms are not unimportant in society. it is supremely necessary that you regulate men's conduct, whether you can affect their principles or no. for the thoughts of the mass of men are ever in a crude, ungrown, unready state, but their actions regular and ready. they must act; but there is no compulsion to think. therefore, when the understanding is sluggish and indicates no course of conduct, they are forced to obey example, and surrender the whole ordering of life to the judgments of other men. thus a whole community go to church; acquiesce in the existence of a certain law, or in the government of a certain ruler, while, if their hearts were all read, it might appear that these institutions had but a few strong favourers, and that, for the rest, each man leaned on his neighbour; nay, a critical inquiry should make it plain that the majority of opinions rebelled in secret against the custom complied with, but that doubts were too shadowy 1824] dearth of thought 317 and unformed to venture to challenge an old established mode. men, in fact, so openly borrow their common modes of thinking, i.e. those outside modes on which their actions depend (for, when they act in a certain way, they commonly go armed with some obvious reason, whether they believe it or no) that it is surprising how small an amount of originality of mind is required to circulate all the thought in a community. the common conversation that has place in a city for a year does not embrace more intelligence than one vigorous thinker might originate; and one who carefully considers the flow and progress of opinion from man to man and rank to rank through society, will soon discover that three or four masters present the people with all that moderate stock of conclusions upon politics, religion, commerce, and sentiment which goes current. the kingdom of thought is a proud aristocracy. burke, fox, pitt england had three great names in her parliament (1790] — burke, fox, and pitt. the two latter interest us by the engaging shew of youthful might. they seem to be beardless boys, abandoning their college with youthful 318 journal [age 20 impatience to mix with men; they come among the gray-haired statesmen, who are aghast at the storm which gathers around, and fearlessly grasp and hurl the thunderbolts of power with graceful majesty. fox took his seat in parliament at nineteen years of age. pitt was prime minister of england at twenty-four. burke, who lacked the aristocratical interest to back him, which fox, who descended from henry iv of navarre, and pitt, who was son of chatham, could muster — was somewhat later. the two former were friends ; true-hearted and noble friends, so matched as the world hath seldom seen, and so parted as we would hardly have had it otherwise. they were two large and philosophical understandings, both lit with the fire of eloquence. fox, with tears in his eyes, lamented in parliament that an uninterrupted friendship of twenty-three years should be invaded by the intemperance of a debate, and that his friend should have applied such violent and angry epithets to his name. burke said he did not recollect any epithets. the reply of fox was in the spirit of a gentleman. “my honourable friend has forgotten the epithets, they are out of his mind, and they are out of mine forever.” 1824] burke, pitt, and fox 319 burke's principle was dearer to him even than his friend, and he broke with a stoic's heart his ancient attachment. burke said afterwards of fox,"he was a man made to be loved.” and goldsmith said of burke, is « who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, and to party gave up what was meant for mankind.” it is not easy, for a common mind, perhaps it is not possible, to appreciate this magnanimous sacrifice (of his friendship). no man perhaps was ever fitter to enjoy fully this best and purest of pleasures. f[ox] and b[urke] agreed upon the american [question], and their foresight triumphed over their adversaries, who laughed at the “vagrant congress, one hancock, one adams, and their crew," who spurned them, when they “might have been led,” as franklin told them, “by a thread,” until they broke chains and scattered armaments like flaxen strings. in the dark tempest of the french revolution, pitt was “the pilot that weathered the storm.” fox, in westminster abbey, lies eighteen inches from pitt, and close by chatham. pitt, fox, burke:—since one was in office, one in favour, and one in neither, perhaps it is just to say, pitt was a practical statesman, fox, a 320 journal [age 20 theoretical statesman, and burke, a philosophic statesman. franklin franklin was political economist, a natural philosopher, a moral philosopher, and a statesman; invests and dismisses subtle theories (e. g. of the earth) with extraordinary ease. unconscious of any mental effort in detailing the profoundest solutions of phenomena, and therefore makes no parade. he writes to a friend when [aged] 80, “i feel as if i was intruding among posterity when i ought to be abed and asleep. i look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. we shall rise refreshed in the morning.” “many,” said he, “ forgive injuries, but none ever forgave contempt.” (see edinburgh review.) that age abounded in greatness, — carnot, moreau, bonaparte, etc.; johnson, gibbon, etc.; washington, etc. institutions are a sort of homes. a man may wander long with profit, if he come home at last, but a perpetual vagrant is not honoured. men may alter and improve their laws, so they fix them at last. 1823] miscellaneous 321 “humanity does not consist in a squeamish ear.” fox. men in this age do not produce new works, but admire old ones; are content to leave the fresh pastures awhile and to chew the cud of thought in the shade. “a great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.” franklin. [a fëw extracts from entries, made by emerson in 1823 in his blotting book xviii (2d), are appended here. these entries are largely his notes on his reading, or quotations from the authors. the verse which follows is, however, original.] when fortune decks old learning's naked shrine and bids his cobwebbed libraries be fine, young merit smooths his aspect to a smile, and fated genius deigns to live awhile. the prophet, speaking of the egyptians, says—“their strength is to sit still.” this is a profound remark in its application to certain states and the characters of individuals. it may be added in confirmation of the prophet's asser322 [age 20 journal tion, that it was proverbially impossible (in the iii century) to extort a secret from an egyptian by torture.' the farmer ca “we may talk what we please of lilies and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or or d'argent; but if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.” cowley. agriculture is the venerable mother of all the arts, and compared with the pastoral or the hunting life is certainly friendly to the mind; it is next to commerce in this respect, but must necessarily precede commerce in the growth of society. virtue and good sense and a contemplative turn are universally characteristic of an agricultural people. in the city, “those who think must govern those who toil”; in the country, the labourers both toil and govern. i this proverb was a favourite of mr. emerson's through life, variously applied. when it was proposed to him to make a visit, perhaps, or to venture some unusual experiment on the farm, or unwonted household expenditure, he would smile and say, “ the strength of the egyptians is to sit still.” 1823] 323 fortunate images len philosophic imagination buckminster was remarkable for a “philosophic imagination.”: it is the most popular and useful quality which a modern scholar can possess to become a favourite in society. it imparts a spirit of liberal philosophy which can impress itself by the applying of beautiful images. its advantage is owing to the circumstance that moral reflections are vague and fugitive, whereas the most vulgar mind can readily retain a striking image from the material world. many men might say “that the labours of the mind must be occasionally relaxed,” and it was easily forgotten, but when one said “non semper arcum tendit apollo,” it served to imprint the truth, and is ever remembered. that “great minds are unlike each other and do not appear twice in the world,” — men might hear and forget, until it was established by the adage that “nature has broken the mould in which she made them.” it is better for popularity than scientific sagacity, for it is more easily appreciated. one is at a 1 probably the younger buckminster (joseph stevens), the pastor of the brattle street church, contemporary and friend of mr. emerson's father, and associated with him in the anthology, the first important literary magazine of new england. 324 [age 20 journal loss to say if bacon had it or no; he is not precisely the mind at which the term points, because he had more of the philosopher than the poet, which is the reverse of everett, buckminster, bancroft — and is superior to them. luxury saw you ever luxury? he is not attired in gold, but in green, and his diadem is not of gems, but of wild flowers. letter to his aunt, mary moody emerson canterbury, november 11, 1823. as to metaphysical difficulties that stagger us,— does not the divinity make himself amenable, at least in those works and laws that come under our eye, to the (cultivated) reason which he has lit up in his creatures? if his material operations be irregular, as in the promulgation of gospel, we say, it is to aid some mighty moral design. but if his moral operations be irregular (or appear so to our profoundest study); if justice be mixed with injustice ; if unequal conditions be yoked under the same decree; what shall his creatures do? can they affix an unshaken and accurate sense to moral distinctions, when from the insecure and unsatismo 1823] reason in religion 325 metere factory tenure by which we hold all our ideas, our firmest faith in intellectual and moral truths sometimes passes away like the morning cloud before the queries of the sceptic? it was one of my youngest thoughts that god would not confound the weak-eyed understandings of his children whilst they read on earth the alphabet of morals. do people feel firmer or fainter in their faith as they grow older and think more? ... does not the philosophy of moments ever tamper with the faith of years? does not the solid universe, memory, the economy of matter, the economy of mind, sometimes so fade into a false mist that it is possible it may indeed be no more substantial? there seem to be two ways of shaking off this nightmare, viz., a larger acquaintance with matter, or with mind. ... ... an acquaintance with mind, indefatigable pursuit and accumulation of all demonstrable truths ; science, deep and high and broad as newton's, may ally consciousness to so many certain truths ; may extend our vantage ground of existence so widely and tie it with so many fast knots to such a various multitude of thoughts as to confirm our hold. a man with one proposition can hardly go far in its illustration or defence, and his knowledge increases in a far 326 journal (age 20 faster proportion than the number of single propositions he amasses, because he continually discerns new connexions and inferences growing out of and between them. and newton's bright eye, which glanced in every direction into the vast universe, and saw each fact corroborated by correspondencies springing up on every side, was perhaps wholly absorbed in the extent, the consistency and beauty of the show, too much absorbed to have leisure or inclination to doubt. not to be despised was that grave, modest, profound old man, that ape whom angels shew ;2 he is a compensation to the race for many generations of darkness, and countries of barbarism. we can set newton over against juggernaut. — nevertheless, admiration is the foible of ignorant and sanguine minds : admiration paid by a few gazers to ono sage's intellectual supremacy will hardly be counted in the eye of the philanthropists any 1 v. stewart. (r. w. e.) 2 the expression « ape whom angels shew" is probably a quotation from his aunt's letter, original, or borrowed by her. her rhetoric was daring. in a later letter from her, speaking of angels, she writes, “they may shew a newton as an ape of their knowledge, but these sublime feelings are of their very nature.” 1823] metric system 327 atonement for the squalid and desperate ignorance of untold millions who breathe the breath of misery in asia, africa, yea, in the great globe. why is this? s ere metric system weights and measures are made interesting by the philosophical radicalism with which the french revolutionary authorities took up the subject, and by mr. adams's report. after inspecting a decimal system, the mere recitation of one of the vulgar tables (of long measure for example) is ridiculous. . . . the ancient systems which were arbitrary like ours, cannot be now accurately ascertained. but if such an order were once established as this, it would be easy to perpetuate it through any political convulsions, and to recover it if lost. but so inveterate is men's prejudice for a pound, and so shocking is the innovation of a barbarous kilometre, that this philanthropic plan is premature. a salem merchant who traded with the natives of one of the east india islands for spices is said to have made some thousands in this manner. the natives had no pound weight to measure their spices with. “oh,” said the american, “my foot weighs just a pound,” and lea 328 [age 20 journal put it on the scale. as may be supposed, he got 5 lb. weight or more at the price of each pound. earl carnarvon's speech (before the house of peers, dec. 23, 1678) is a curious piece of english history:'“my lords, i don't know latin, but i do know english, and i know something of english history; and i know also what has become of those who have charged themselves with impeachments. i will begin no farther back than the latter part of queen elizabeth's time. sir walter raleigh, your lordships all know, ran down the earl of essex; and you all know what became of sir walter raleigh. chancellor 1 the version given in the journal is from memory and full of errors and omissions. so i give it in the form he gave it (in his book of extracts, t), altered by him to make it effective as a declamation, for which purpose he taught it to me. his note on the speech is as follows : “it was proposed to impeach the earl of danby. while the house of peers were deliberating on this subject, the earl of carnarvon entered, having just come from a drunken revel, where he had sworn over his claret, that, although he had never spoken before in the house, he would go there directly and make a speech upon whatever subject should happen to be before the house." (e. w. e.) 1823] carnarvon’s speech 329 bacon, you all know, ran down sir walter raleigh; and your lordships all know what became of the chancellor. the duke of buckingham ran down lord bacon; and you all know what became of the duke of buckingham. sir thomas wentworth, afterwards earl of strafford, ran down the duke of buckingham; and you all know what became of him. sir harry vane ran down the earl of strafford; and your lordships all know what became of sir harry vane. sir edward hyde ran down sir harry vane; and your lordships all know what became of sir edward hyde. the earl of danby ran down sir edward hyde ; and what will become of the earl of danby your lordships only can tell. but let the man dare to present himself who will run down the earl of danby,—and we shall soon see what will become of that man.” i mr. emerson refers for the speech to cobbett's parliamentary history of england, vol. iv, page (or rather, column) 1073, where, in the record of this impeachment, it is referred to as “the earl of carnarvon's remarkable speech thereon.” cobbett states that the earl had, at the revel, been “excited to display his abilities by the duke of buckingham, who meant no favour to the treasurer, but only ridicule." so, at the end, “ this being pronounced with a remarkable humour and tone, the duke of buckingham, both surprised ulic 330 (age 20 journal chauncy and whitefield “where are you going, mr. whitefield?” said dr. chauncy. “i'm going to boston, sir.” “i'm very sorry for it,” said dr. c. “so is the devil,” replied the eloquent preacher." extracts from a letter from his aunt mary ... “is the muse become faint and mean? ah well she may, and better, far better, leave you wholly than weave a garland for one whose destiny leads to sensation rather than to sentiment; whose intervals of mentality seem rather spent in collecting facts than energising itself -in unfolding, imperating, its budding powers and disappointed, cried out, • the man is inspired ! and claret has done the business. the majority, however, was against the commitment.” i rev. charles chauncy, pastor of the first church, was a divine respected and beloved in boston in the latter half of the eighteenth century. it seems that the popular excitement wrought by george whitefield, the eloquent english revivalist, with his reactionary influence towards calvinism, troubled the good doctor, and moreover the emotional and sensational quality of his preaching disturbed his boston sensibilities. mr. emerson, in his essay on “old age" (society and solitude), gives the testimony of president john adams as to whitefield's eloquence. 1823] miss emerson's letter 331 after the sure yet far distant glories of what plato, plotinus, and such godlike worthies, who, in the language of st. austin, showed that none could be a true philosopher that was not abstracted in spirit from all the effects of the body, etc., etc., more than i dare to impose. yet it is verily valuable to find the principles of the human constitution the same, when developed by philosophy in all ages and nations—to find that, after all its dissections, at bottom is an insatiable thirst for what they denominate 'a state of mind being unable to stay, after its highest flights, till it arrive at a being of unbounded greatness and worth !' o, would the muse forever leave you till you had prepared for her a celestial abode. poetry, that soul of all that pleases —the philosophy of the world of sense—yet the iris— the bearer of the resemblances of uncreated beauty ! yet with these gifts you flag—your muse is mean because the breath of fashion has not puffed her. you are not inspired in heart, with a gift for immortality, because you are the nurseling of surrounding circumstances. you become yourself a part of the events which make up the ordinary life-even that part of the economy of living which relates, in the order of things, necessarily to private and social affections, rather than to pub332 journal (age 20 lic and disinterested. still, there is an approaching period i dread worse than this sweet stagnation, when the muse shall be dragged into éclat. ... then will be the time when the guardian angel will tremble. in case of failing, of becoming deceived and vain, there will yet remain a hope that your fall may call down some uncommon effort of mercy, and you may rise from the love of deceitful good to that of real. had you been placed in circumstances of hard fare for the belly -labour and solitude-it does seem you would have been training for those most insidious enemies which will beset your public life on every hand. how little you will be armed with the saying of a french divine of highest order, 'that it is safest for a popular character to know but part of what is said.' you provoke me to prose by eulogising cæsar and cicero. true, the speech you quote (i believe-‘you bear cæsar and his fortune') is sublime, and instanced by christians, but for him, for that tyrant (whose only charm, the love of letters, was not accompanied by enthusiasm) it was mere rant, or he was thinking of the egg from which venus sprung (which was preserved by fishes and hatched by doves) to whom he was a most debauched devotee. as to cicero, 1823] an aunt's criticism 333 one wants to admire him, but different accounts forbid—tho' none are favourable enow ever to place him one moment beyond the imperious controul of passing events. dejected in adversity, and without any respite from age or experience — pursuing, begging, other people to let him be praised. is not this enough to neutralize those effects for the public, as we know not their motive to be beyond emulation? his eloquence, it is true, is glorious, but himself remains an object of pity, and the only apology for becoming the meanest of scavengers is that in company with genius is the love of fame, and he knew of no object hereafter to feed it. such are the men you are more excited by than by your heroic ancestor!' 'pomp of circumstance.' merciful creator! this child, so young, so well born and bred, yet so wedded to sounds and places where human passions triumphed! when he knows that spots, the most famous even by thine own appearances, are swept out of record! ... i rev. william emerson, the young minister of concord. this eager and eloquent “son of liberty,” at the outbreak of the revolution, served as chaplain in the provincial camp at cambridge, and later was regularly appointed chaplain of a massachusetts regiment at ticonderoga, where he contracted the fever of which he died. 334 journal [age 20 whoever wants power must pay for it. how unnatural one man asks another to give him up his rights; this is the nakedness of the traffic, and if there be ever so much fraud and violence, after ages produce slaves enow to celebrate their conquerors. as to words or languages being so important — i'll have nothing of it. the images, the sweet immortal images are within us — born there, our native right, and sometimes one kind of sounding word or syllable awakens the instrument of our souls, and sometimes another. but we are not slaves to sense any more than to political usurpers, but by fashion and imbecility. aye, if i understand you, so you think. sorry you meditate a reform in drama, which will oblige you to go thro' such bogs and fens and sloughs of passion and crime. true, one ought to sacrifice himself to the public, but how long and poisonous the execution compared to that of other martyrs ! still, if by plucking up those principles of human nature which have made dramas agreeable to the populace, and which have been sometimes considered as drains to human vices, or preventatives to worse places, —if you pull down old establishments which have found place in almost every age and nation of cultivated or semi-barbarous life, why may 1823] an aunt's criticism 335 denny ve you not undertake it? to men in general, it would seem gigantic. and to me, who am, if possible, more ignorant on the history and character of drama than any other subjects [it] seems a less useful exercise, as respects the reformer, than any scientific or literary pursuit. mathematics and languages remain with one for use and ornament, and all the universe of facts which are connecting will some time or other prove something; and if they don't, they are apologies for higher. the picture of a bud is better than the idle jokes and saturnine gossip of ordinary society. there is one idea of dramatic representation interesting, that of eichhorn respecting the apocalypse of st. john. the learned german, you know, believes all passed in patmos in scenic order. and why may not this be a key to many revelations? in the infancy of the world, men were taught by signs. it would seem that the higher and last-made instructions from heaven applied to reason as well as sentiment, and i am glad to escape from all sorts of earthly dramas.” priestcraft men are so essentially alike, that, if you do not radically alter their institutions, you will find 336 [age 20 journal the same habits recurring monotonously from century to century. friars and monks of the roman priesthood very closely resemble the country clergy of new england, notwithstanding the very considerable progress of public opinion through a score of generations. the town clergy, no doubt, are a vast many degrees higher, but they may perhaps fitly represent the eminent abbots whom public admiration elevated to the episcopal and archiepiscopal thrones of rome, constantinople, paris, and london. if one be curious enough to notice the topics and turn of conversation, and the ability wherewith 't is managed by clergymen in mixed or chosen company, i think he will not be struck with any distinct marks of excellence, or see that thoughts are broached to-day which might not be suggested in the tea-table talk of a thousand years ago. whitefield was as good and as bad as peter the hermit; mr. channing, and mr. norton, and mr. buckminster make good the place of athanasius, st. cyril, and bernard (the name, i think, of the hermit of abelard's time), and mr. everett will serve for many a polite and dignified archbishop who staid at home and kept his choice rhetoric for the ear of kings. ... 1823] “ priestcraft” 337 no doubt beneficent and devout hearts have in humble spheres regenerated generations and the world. but i complain of the great multitude of the laxer sort. ... but all the world complains. “let each,” said franklin, “take care to mend one." i add, 't is worth while to notice how the black coats wind their way into the foremost ranks of the proudest company. what can the reason be why a priest of whatever god, under whatever form, should in every clime and age be open to such liberal abuse, and to ineradicable suspicion? is the reason to be found in ecclesiastical history? questionless this has been very bad. the pious professors have been outrageous rogues in a thousand temples from memphis to boston. or is its origin deeper fixed in the nature of the profession? ... journal xiv the wide world, no. 13 « bonus vir tempore tantum a deo differt.” seneca. « nor fetch my precepts from the cynic's tub." canterbury, february 17, 1824. “ la nature,” says pascal, “confond les pyrrhoniens, et la raison confond les dogmatistes." and sir j. mackintosh calls the sentence the sublimest of human composition. it is fortunate and happy, but a sublimity not difficult to gain, as it did not occur to pascal when he first revolved the subject, but is the last generalization at which he arrives. and it is easier to build up one subject into a cone with a broad base of examples narrowing up into a formula expressing a general truth, than to detach subtle facts from subjects partially known. ... praise “please to praise me” is the ill disguised request of almost all literary men. all men are cheered by applause and vexed by censure: 1824) 339 praise ...“nihil est quod credere de se non possit.” juvenal. but literary men alone cannot do without it. the reason is obvious. other men toil for gold and get gold for their toil, but scholars cannot get gold, and appetite in them craves another food. they are no more insatiable for their proper reward than are the pursuers of mammon for theirs. but why are the askers of praise ridiculous, and not the askers of silver? (minor negatur.) icis in education it seems to be safer to praise than to censure abundantly. for myself, i have ever been elated to an active mind by flattery and depressed by dispraise. perhaps a muse that soared on a stronger wing would scorn to be so slightly disheartened. i like the lines — “ praise is the salt that seasons right in man and whets the appetite of moral good.” young. it is noticeable how much a man is judged of by the praise he gives. it is best not to be too inflammable, not to be lavish of your praise on light occasions, for it will be remembered long 340 journal [age 20 after your fervent admiration has cooled into disgust. milton was very frugal of his praise. a man is not more known by the company he keeps. dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas — is a decisive index of perverted character. [inventions] pliny's uncle had a slave read while he eat. in the progress of watt and perkins's' philosophy, the day may come when the scholar shall be provided with a reading steam-engine; when he shall say “ presto," and it shall discourse eloquent history, and “stop, sesame," and it shall hush to let him think. he shall put in a pin, and hear poetry; and two pins and hear a song. that age will discover laputa. asia. origin february 20. “tout commence,” says father bossuet, of the first ages. all has the air of beginning. they form societies, devise arts, polish manners, and make laws. this return to the cradle is useful. now, when all things are tried and trite, when jacob perkins, the ingenious american (1766-1849) who invented the nail-making machine, improvements in engraving, the steam-gun (self-feeding), and other machines. 1824) asia 341 shem, ham, and japhet have strayed from their paternal tent as far as the limits of the globe will let them, and on the mind of each is writ in indelible lines his character, now the spirit of humanity finds it curious and good to leave the armchair of its old age and go back to the scenes of auld lang syne, to the old mansion house of asia, the playground of its childhood, the land of distant but cherished remembrance. that spot must needs be dear where the faculties first opened, where youth first triumphed in the elasticity of strength and spirits, and where the ways of civilization and thought (then deemed infinite) were first explored. it brings the mind palpable relief, to withdraw it from the noisy and overgrown world to these peaceful primeval solitudes. for this reason, perhaps, there is a species of grandeur in premier epoque of bossuet, though it relates a thread bare tale. it may be, this emotion will be only occasionally felt, for though the grandeur is real, it is ever present, as the firmament is forever magnificent, but is only felt to be so when our own spirits are fresh (and buoyant). asia, africa, europe, old, leprous and wicked, have run round the goal of centuries till we are tired and they 1 "we” means, beings better than we. (r. w. e.) 342 journal [age 20 are ready to drop. but now a strong man has entered the race and is outstripping them all. strong man! youth and glory are with thee. as thou wouldst prosper, forget not the hope of mankind. trample not upon thy competitors, though unworthy. europe is thy father, bear him on thy atlantean shoulders. asia, thy grandsire, — regenerate him. africa, their ancient, abused bondsman,-give him his freedom. ... auld lang syne in the beginning, which i spake of a few lines above, there was some good. would it not have been well to have lived in nineveh, or to have been the mighty hunter, or to have floated on the deluge, or have been dead before? hope, at least, would have been a contemporary. now she has long been dead or doating — as good as dead. moreover, men's thoughts were their own then. noah was not dinned to death with aristotle and bacon and greece and rome. the patriarchs were never puzzled with libraries of names and dates, with first ages and dark ages; and revivals, and upper empires and lower empires; with the balance of power and the balance of trade; with fighting chronologies and dagger-drawing creeds. life is wasted in the 1824) the latter days 343 necessary preparation of finding which is the true way, and we die just as we enter it. an antediluvian had the advantage — an advantage that has been growing scarce as the world has grown older of forming his own opinion and indulging his own hope, without danger of contradiction from time that never had elapsed, or observation that never had been made. nowadays. education unknown troubles perplex the lot of the scholar whose inexpressible unhappiness it is to be born at this day. he is born in a time of war. a thousand religions are in arms. systems of education are contesting. literature, politics, morals, and physics are each engaged in loud civil broil. a chaos of doubts besets him from his outset. shall he read, or shall he think? ask the wise. the wise have not determined. shall he nourish his faculties in solitude or in active life? no man can answer. he turns to books—the vast amount of recorded wisdom, but it is useless from its amount. hecannot read all;' no, not in methuselah's multiplied days; — but how to choose — boc opus est. must he 1 one had need read as pliny elder, to accomplish anything. (r. w. e.) 344 journal (age 20 en read history and neglect morals; or learn what ought to be, in ignorance of what has been? or must he slight both in the pursuit of (physical) science; or all, for practical knowledge and a profession? must he, in a last alternative, abandon all the rest, to be profoundly skilled in a single branch of art, or, understanding none, smatter superficially in all? a question of equal moment to each new citizen of the world is this: shall i subdue my mind by discipline, or obey its native inclinations? govern my imagination with rules, or cherish its originality. shall i cultivate reason or fancy, educate one power with concentrated diligence or reduce all to the same level? ... these and similar questions are a real and recurring calamity. i do not know that it were extravagant to say that half of the time of most scholars is dissipated in fruitless and vexatious attempts to solve one or another of (such questions] in succession. it is an evil oftener felt than stated. it is an evil that demands a remedy. it requires that what master minds have done for some of the sciences, should be done for education. teach us no more arts, but how those which are already should be learned. 1824) 345 moral beauty moral beauty february 20. material beauty perishes or palls. intellectual beauty limits admiration to seasons and ages; hath its ebbs and flows of delight. . . . but moral beauty is lovely, imperishable, perfect. it is dear to the child and to the patriarch, to heaven, angel, man. ... none that can understand milton's comus can read it without warming to the holy emotions it panegyrizes. i would freely give all i ever hoped to be, even when my air-blown hopes were brilliant and glorious, not as now — to have given down that sweet strain to posterity to do good in a golden way. ... the service that such books as this, and the prelaty and bunyan, &c., render, is not appreciable, but it is immense. these books go up and down the world on the errand of charity. ... they pluck away the thorn from virtue's martyr crown and plant the rose and amaranth instead. of this i am glad. i am glad to find at least one unfading, essential, beneficent principle in human nature — the approval of right; and that it is so strong and ineffaceable. . . . popular preachers ... have won the understanding by getting on the 346 journal (age 20 right side of the heart. i am ignorant if, in saying this, i analyze bancroft's eloquence. his sermon on temperance was of powerful effect, but it seemed to reach the practice through an appeal to this moral poetry. thus, one fine sentiment in it, that was calculated to produce much fasting, was the representation of the body as the corruptible and perishable channel, through which flowed for a season the streams of immortal thought.' re sentiment canterbury, february 22, 1824. the war between sentiment and reason is the perpetual wonder that fasts the “ nine days” of ** human life. when we calmly think and precisely reason, our life (ever enigmatical enow) has most of sense and design ; there is an arrangement perceived in education, and a growth in mind. but when we feel strongly, when we love woman or man, when we hope, or fear, or hate, or i perhaps this was the origin of the early poem, beginning, o what are heroes, prophets, men, but pipes, through which the breath of god doth blow a momentary music ? later, mr. emerson chose the classical form, and substituted “ pan,” for “god.” see poem “pan,” poems, appendix. 1824] sentiment 347 oquenas core to aspire with vehemence, the strength of a sentiment is so engrossing and exclusive that it throws all memory and habit for the moment into a remote background; the delusion waxes so strong that it alone remains real, and all else shows as strong delusion. an educated man, when he is star-gazing or vividly considering for a moment his relations as an eternal being to the world, frequently undervalues, as nugatory, the time and diligence bestowed by him on science and art; forgetting that to this very cultivation he owes that elevation of thought which disgusts him with this world's unsatisfactoriness. ... a melancholy dream it is, this succession of rolling weeks, each, like the last, in peevish dissatisfaction and in diminished hope. “ by pain of heart now checked and now impelled, the intellectual power through words and things went sounding on a dim and perilous way.” 118 sete но." ܐ 88ܐ canterbur ginen [canterbury, february, 1824.] goodbye, proud world, i'm going home : thou’rt not my friend and i'm not thine. long i've been tossed like the salt sea foam, all day mid weary crowds i roam,and o my home, o holy home! 348 (age 20 journal goodbye to flattery's fawning face, to grandeur with his wise grimace, to upstart wealth's averted eye, to supple office, low and high, to frozen hearts and hasting feet, to noisy toil, to court and street, to those who go, and those who come; goodbye, proud world ! i'm going home. i'm going to my own hearthstone, bosomed in yon green hills alone; sweet summer birds are warbling there." metaphysicians are mortified to find how entirely the whole materials of understanding are. derived from sense. no man is understood, who speculates on mind or character, until he borrows the emphatic imagery of sense. a mourner will try in vain to explain the extent of his bereavement better than to say, a chasm is opened in society. i fear the progress of metaphysical philosophy may be found to consist in nothing 1 the rest of these verses, the “goodbye,” occurs, two months later in date, in this journal. mr. emerson sent an improved version, in 1839, to gratify his friend james freeman clarke, who published them in the western messenger. what mr. emerson said of them may be found in the letter which he sent with them, in dr. holmes's memoir of him. (ralph waldo emerson, american men of letters series, p. 129.) 1824) the imagery of sense 349 else than the progressive introduction of oppo-, site metaphors. thus the platonists congratu-' .' lated themselves for ages upon their knowing that mind was a dark chamber whereon ideas y'van like shadows were painted. men derided this as infantile when they afterwards learned that the mind was a sheet of white paper whereon any and all characters might be written. almost everything in language that is bound up in your memory is of this significant sort. sleep, the cessation of toil, the loss of volition, etc., what is that? but “sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care” a betet preness is felt. life is nothing, but the lamp of life that blazes, flutters, and goes out, the bill of life which is climbed and tottered down, the race of life which is run with a thousand competitors and for a prize proposed, — these are distinctly understood. “we love tellers of good tidings” is faint, but “how beautiful upon the mountains are their feet” is excellent. “the world is the scaffold of divine justice,” said saurin. 32 i nothing oltes i suckers jes free vestiging ? -: ܩܐ 103 [country] how do you do, sir? very well, sir. you have a keen air among your rocks and hills. yes, 350 journal [age 20 a sir. i never saw a country which more delighted me. a man might travel many hundred miles and not find so fine woodlands as abound in this neighbourhood. but the good people who live in them do not esteem them. it is people born in town who are intoxicated with being in the country. it certainly is a good deal like being drunk, the feelings of a cit in the hills. in cambridge there is some wild land called sweet auburn, upwards of a mile from the colleges, and yet the students will go in bands over a flat sandy road, and in summer evenings the woods are full of them. they are so happy they do not know what to do. they will scatter far and wide, too, among some insignificant whortleberry bushes, pricked with thorns and stung by musquetoes for hours, for the sake of picking a pint of berries; occasionally chewing a bug of indescribable bad relish. you count it nothing more to go among green bushes than on the roads, but those who have been educated in dusty streets enjoy as much sauntering here as you would in the orange groves and cinnamon gardens of the east indies. they say there is a tune which is forbidden to be played in the european armies because it makes the swiss desert, since it reminds them 1824) country joys 351 ü ndes sie ed se comen so forcibly of their hills and home. i have heard many swiss tunes played in college. balancing between getting and not getting a hard lesson, a breath of fragrant air from the fields coming in at the window would serve as a swiss tune and make me desert to the glens from which it came. nor is that vagabond inclination wholly gone yet. and many a sultry afternoon, last summer, i left my latin and my english to go with my gun and see the rabbits and squirrels and robins in the woods. goodbye, sir. stop a moment. i have heard a clergyman of maine say that in his parish are the penobscot indians, and that when any one of them in summer has been absent for some weeks a-hunting, he comes back among them a different person and altogether unlike any of the rest, with an eagle's eye, a wild look, and commanding carriage and gesture; but after a few weeks it wears off again into the indolent dronelike apathy which all exhibit. good day, sir. over at he meno er dos and ai prilie i would 7s of the puritans; melioration of the type such a change as hume remarks to have taken place in men's minds, about the reign of james i, may be found also, perhaps, in a complete observation of the early and later books of this counbidden saus ds the 352 journal [age 20 ace we 37 mpya try. the race who fought the revolution out were obviously not of the same temper and manners as the first comers to the wilderness. they had dropped so much of the puritanism of their sires, that they would hardly have been acknowledged by them as sound members of their rigorous society. this nation is now honourably distinguished above all others for greater moral hi purity. but the constant intercourse with europe constantly lessens the distinction; and liberality of religious and political sentiment gains ground rapidly. the great men of our first age were bradford, standish, cotton, winthrop, phipps, and underwood; of our second, the mathers, john eliot, witherspoon, and president edwards; and of the third, otis, adams, washington, franklin. smith of virginia would not have been admitted to the plymouth doors, unless, perchance, on account of the slaughter of the three saracens. liberality of religion and of politics do not always go hand in hand. for the same puritans who framed the english constitution persecuted the quakers and hanged the witches. the adventurous spirit which distinguished the settlers was begotten by the fanaticism of the reformation, a spirit which confides in its own strength for the accomplishment of its 1824] the blackbird 353 pie not ackout 103174 ends, and disdains to calculate the chance of failure. it is strange, gratifying, to see how faithfully the feelings of one generation may be propagated to another amid the adverse action of all outward circumstances, poverty, riches, revolution. from the close of elizabeth's reign, the intolerance and bigotry of the puritans continued and multiplied until the outbreak in england in 1640 (?), and, in the branch of the stock in america, in the ecclesiastical tyranny. after that effervescence, men corrected the faults of inexperience, and the following generation here were more marked by good sense. gibbon said 'twas as rare as genius. the blackbird the blackbird's song is in my ear, a summer sound i leap to hear; day breaks through yonder dusky cloud o’er well-known cliffs, those giants proud; and i am glad the day is come to greet me in my ancient home. 2 rejoice with me, melodious bird, whose merry note my childhood heard ; for i've come back again to see the wildwoods of mine infancy; for, o my home, i thought no more — hot 354 journal (age 20 i love the voice of the bird, and the tree where he builds his nest, and the grove where man's mirth and man's grief are unheard. ye are my home, ye ancient rocks, who lift ’mid cedar shades, your rugged crest; the flowers, like beauty's golden locks, adorn your brow and droop upon your breast. mountain and cliff and lake, i am your child ; ye were the cradle of mine infancy, the playground of my youth.' he who frequents these scenes, where nature discloses her magnificence to silence and solitude, will have his mind occupied often by trains of thought of a peculiarly solemn tone, which never interrupted the profligacy of libertines, the money-getting of the miser, or the glory-getting of the ambitious. in the depths of the forest, where the noon comes like twilight, on the cliff, in the cavern, and by the lonely lake, where the the imagery of rock and cedar shows that this outburst of joy in spring was inspired by the rougher parts of roxbury, where emerson for the time dwelt, and whither, as a boy, he had made excursions. as for mountains, blue hill was the nearest approach to one, but the young poet felt free to include all wild nature in his description. wordsworth's influence seems to appear in the last lines. 1824] temple of nature 355 sounds of man's mirth and of man's sorrow were never heard, where the squirrel inhabits and the voice of the bird echoes, —is a shrine which few visit in vain, an oracle which returns no ambiguous response. the pilgrim who retires hither wonders how his heart could ever cleave so mightily to the world whose deafening tumult he has left behind. what are temples and towered cities to him? he has come to a sweeter and more desirable creation. when his eye reaches upward by the sides of the piled rocks to the grassy summit, he feels that the magnificence of man is quelled and subdued here. the very leaf under his foot, the little flowers that embroider his path, outdo the art, and outshine the glory of man. ... things here assume their natural proportions, before distorted by prejudice. what, in this solitude, are the libraries of learn-. ing? the scholar and the peasant are alike in the view which nature takes of them. the barriers of artificial distinction are broken down. society's iron sceptre of ceremony is dishonoured here, — here in the footsteps of the invisible, in the bright ruins of the original creation, over which the morning stars sang together, and where, even now, they shed their sweetest light. whatsoever beings watch over these inner chamve ciers 356 [age 20 journal bers of nature, they have not abandoned their charge. nature never tires of ber house, and each year its glorious tapestry is newly hung. ... [young america's judgments] youth is not the fault nations soonest mend, and it may be very long before the world's experience can be any wise pronounced mature. what are we who sit in judgment upon our fathers, as if upon a remote and foreign race? their stripling progeny; inhabiting their hearths, covered with the dust of their prejudices, dressed in their robes and using their wealth. when hundreds of ages shall have rolled away and the scholar's eye shall combine the entire history of a thousand nations in one view, it will be less immodest and more easy to pronounce on the merits of their respective literatures. it will correct our vain pretensions to read often franklin's scrap called “ephemeris.” from a letter to miss emerson march 21, 1824. no fashion is so frantic as to depreciate thought. no change of times or minds has ever occurred to throw too much intellect on the market. the world is very poor amidst the 1824] letters 357 rich library of all knowledge its vaunting children have bequeathed it. now, in its ripe and learned old age, come i, its docile child, to be pleased and instructed by its abundant wisdom; but when i open its accepted gospels of thought and learning, its sages and bards, i find they were all fain to spin a spider thread of intellect, to borrow much of each other, to arrive at few results, and to hide or supply meagreness by profuse ornament. i am therefore curious to know what living wit (not perverted by the vulgar rage of writing a book) has suggested or concluded upon the dark sayings and sphinx riddles of philosophy and life; i do beseech your charity not to withhold your pen. i have one more calculation with which i please myself, that if my gross body outlive you, you will bequeath me the legacy of all your recorded thought. i know not to what purpose you should think and write so many years (pardon the coarseness of the phrase) if you design to burn or bury your books, like prospero. 'tis counted good in the greek and the roman to have planted so many fair flowers of fancy on the open road of poetry, for the use and pleasure of all subsequent travellers. he who makes one addition to the stock of thought in circulaco 358 (age 20 journal tion among men is a benefactor to an unknown amount, and has not lost his day. if you are too proud to expose the mind's wealth to the vulgar voice of fame (as de staël has done), you do philanthropy a wrong, and friendship a wrong, to withhold it from men and from a friend. and what will you want of it where you go? says faith: if you are to lie for a season in cold obstruction, it will rot by your side. if you wake in glorified existence, you will cease to value these rudiments of the soul. but cast your bread on the waters and you will find it after many days; you may find it in other worlds bearing fruit, and multiplying, as is the nature of thought. why is the fruit of knowledge sorrow? i have, it may be, a pleasant poetical cast of thought — because i am ignorant. i had a pleasanter and more romantic existence (for such is childhood) whilst i thought the rainbow a symbol and an arch in heaven, and not necessary results of light and eyes, whilst i believed that the country had some essential sacredness, some nobler difference from the town than that one was builded, ť other not. a flower and a butterfly lose every charm when poring science discloses lobes and stomachs, acids and alkalies in their delicate beauty. i dislike to augment my 1824) to miss emerson 359 slender store of chemistry and astronomy, and i think i could have helped the monks to betabour galileo for saying the everlasting earth moved. now these few lines are an epitome of the history of knowledge. every step science has made — was it not the successive destruction of agreeable delusions which jointly made up no mean portion of human happiness? in metaphysics, “the gymnastics of the soul,” what has reason done since plato's day but rend and tear his gorgeous fabric. and how are we the wiser? instead of the unmeasurable theatre which we deemed was here opened to the range of the understanding, we are now reduced to a little circle of definitions and logic round which we may humbly run. and how has faith fared? why, the reformer's axe has hewed down idol after idol, and corruption and imperfection, until faith is bare and very cold. and they have not done stripping yet, but must reach the bone. the old fable said truth was by gods or men made naked. i wish the gods would help her to a garment or make her fairer. from eden to america the apples of the tree of knowledge are but bitter fruit in the end. 360 (age 20 journal myself sunday, april 18, 1824. “ nil fuit unquam sic dispar sibi." horace. i am beginning my professional studies. in a month i shall be legally a man. and i deliberately dedicate my time, my talents, and my hopes to the church. man is an animal that looks before and after ; and i should be loth to reflect at a remote period that i took so solemn a step in my existence without some careful examination of my past and present life. since i cannot alter, i would not repent the resolution i have made, and this page must be witness to the latest year of my life whether i have good grounds to warrant my determination. i cannot dissemble that my abilities are below my ambition. and i find that i judged by a false criterion when i measured my powers by my ability to understand and to criticize the intellectual character of another. for men graduate their respect, not by the secret wealth, but by the outward use; not by the power to understand, but by the power to act. i have, or had, a strong imagination, and consequently a keen relish for the beauties of poetry. the exercise which the 1824] self-examination 361 so practice of composition gives to this faculty is the cause of my immoderate fondness for writing, which has swelled these pages to a voluminous extent. my reasoning faculty is proportionably weak, nor can i ever hope to write a butler's analogy or an essay of hume. nor is it strange that with this confession i should choose theology, which is from everlasting to everlasting “debateable ground.” for, the highest species of reasoning upon divine subjects is rather the fruit of a sort of moral imagination, than of the “reasoning machines,” such as locke and clarke and david hume. dr. channing's dudleian lecture is the model of what i mean, and the faculty which produced this is akin to the higher flights of the fancy. i may add that the preaching most in vogue at the present day depends chiefly on imagination for its success, and asks those accomplishments which i believe are most within my grasp. i have set down little which can gratify my vanity, and i must further say that every comparison of myself with my mates that six or seven, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, years have made, has convinced me that there exists a signal defect of character which neutralizes in great part the just influence my talents ought to have. whether that defect be in the 362 (age 20 journal address, in the fault of good forms, which, queen isabella said, were like perpetual letterscommendatory — or deeper seated in an absence of common sympatbies, or even in a levity of the understanding, i cannot tell. but its bitter fruits are a sore uneasiness in the company of most men and women, a frigid fear of offending and jealousy of disrespect, an inability to lead and an unwillingness to follow the current conversation, which contrive to make me second with all those among whom chiefly i wish to be first. hence my bearing in the world is the direct opposite of that good-humoured independence and self-esteem which should mark the gentleman. be it here remembered that there is a decent pride which is conspicuous in the perfect model of a christian man. i am unfortunate also, as was rienzi, in a propensity to laugh, or rather, snicker. i am ill at ease, therefore, among men. i criticize with hardness; i lavishly applaud; i weakly argue; and i wonder with a “foolish face of praise.” now the profession of law demands a good deal of personal address, an impregnable confidence in one's own powers, upon all occasions expected and unexpected, and a logical mode of thinking and speaking, which i do not possess, се ious 1824] self-examination 363 -18, etullo in an de jerzτα: fender co leads conto ado hty the and may not reasonably hope to obtain. medicine also makes large demands on the practitioner for a seducing mannerism. and i have no taste for the pestle and mortar, for bell on the bones, or hunter, or celsus. butin divinity i hope to thrive. i inherit from my sire a formality of manner and speech, but i derive from him, or his patriotic parent, a passionate love for the strains of eloquence. i burn after the “ aliquid immensum infinitumque" which cicero desired. what we ardently love we learn to imitate. my understanding venerates and my heart loves that cause which is dear to god and man—the laws of morals, the revelations which sanction, and the blood of martyrs and triumphant suffering of the saints which seal them. in my better hours, i am the believer (if not the dupe) of brilliant promises, and can respect myself as the possessor of those powers which command the reason and passions of the multitude. the office of a clergy man is twofold: public preaching and private influence. entire success in the first is the lot of few, but this i am encouraged to expect. if, however, the individual himself lack that moral worth which is to secure the last, his studies upon the first are idly spent. the most prodigious genius, a seraph's autori 364 journal (age 20 eloquence, will shamefully defeat its own end, if it has not first won the heart of the defender to the cause he defends. but the coolest reason cannot censure my choice when i oblige myself professionally to a life which all wise men freely and advisedly adopt. i put no great restraint on myself, and can therefore claim little merit in a manner of life which chimes with inclination and habit. but i would learn to love virtue for her own sake. i would have my pen so guided as was milton's when a deep and enthusiastic love of goodness and of god dictated the comus to the bard, or that prose rhapsody in the third book of prelaty. i would sacrifice inclination to the interest of mind and soul. i would remember that “spare fast oft with gods doth diet,” that justinian devoted but one out of twentyfour hours to sleep, and this week (for instance) i will remember to curtail my dinner and supper sensibly and rise from table each day with an appetite, till tuesday evening next, and so see if it be a fact that i can understand more clearly. i have mentioned a defect of character; perhaps it is not one, but many. every wise man 1824] 365 natural defects aims at an entire conquest of himself. we applaud, as possessed of extraordinary good sense, one who never makes the slightest mistake in speech or action; one in whom not only every important step of life, but every passage of conversation, every duty of the day, even every movement of every muscle— hands, feet, and tongue, are measured and dictated by deliberate reason. i am not assuredly that excellent creature. a score of words and deeds issue from me daily, of which i am not the master. they are begotten of weakness and born of shame. i cannot assume the elevation i ought,— but lose the influence i should exert among those of meaner or younger understanding, for want of sufficient bottom in my nature, for want of that confidence of manner which springs from an erect mind which is without fear and without reproach. in my frequent humiliation, even before women and children, i am compelled to remember the poor boy who cried, “ i told you, father, they would find me out.” even those feelings which are counted noble and generous take in me the taint of frailty. for my strong propensity to friendship, instead of working out its manly ends, degenerates to a fondness for particular casts of feature, perchance not unlike the doting are 366 (age 20 journal ss "55 of old king james. stateliness and silence hang very like mokannah's suspicious silver veil, only concealing what is best not shewn. what is called a warm heart, i have not. the stern accuser conscience cries that the catalogue of confessions is not yet full. i am a lover of indolence, and of the belly. and the good have a right to ask the neophyte who wears this garment of scarlet sin, why he comes where all are apparelled in white? dares he hope that some patches of pure and generous feeling, some bright fragments of lofty thought, it may be of divine poesy, shall charm the eye away from all the particoloured shades of his character? and when he is clothed in the vestments of the priest, and has inscribed on his forehead “ holiness to the lord,” and wears on his breast the breastplate of the tribes, then can the ethiopian change his skin, and the unclean be pure? or how shall i strenuously enforce on men the duties and habits to which i am a stranger? physician, heal thyself; i need not go far for an answer to so natural a question. i am young in my everlasting existence. i already discern the deep dye of elementary errors, which threaten to colour its infinity of duration. and i judge that if i devote my nights and days in form, to the service of 1824] dupe of hope 367 god and the war against sin, i shall soon be prepared to do the same in substance. i cannot accurately estimate my chances of success, in my profession, and in life. were it just to judge the future from the past, they would be very low. in my case, i think it is not. i have never expected success in my present employment. my scholars are carefully instructed, my money is faithfully earned, but the instructor is little wiser, and the duties were never congenial with my disposition. thus far the dupe of hope, i have trudged on with my bundle at my back, and my eye fixed on the distant hill where my burden would fall. it may be i shall write dupe a long time to come, and the end of life shall intervene betwixt me and the release. my trust is that my profession shall be my regeneration of mind, manners, inward and outward estate; or rather my starting-point, for i have hoped to put on eloquence as a robe, and by goodness and zeal and the awfulness of virtue to press and prevail over the false judgments, the rebel passions and corrupt habits of men. we blame the past, we magnify and gild the future, and are not wiser for the multitude of days. spin on, ye of the adamantine spindle, spin on, my fragile thread. 368 (age 20 journal [continuation of “goodbye, proud world”] i'm going to my own hearthstone, bosomed in yon green hills alone, a secret shrine in a pleasant land, whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; their twilight shade, each summer day echoes the blackbird's roundelay, and vulgar crowds have never trod a spot that is sacred to mind and god. o, when i am safe in my sylvan home, i tread on the pride of greece and rome ; and when i am stretched beneath the pines, where the evening star so holy shines, i laugh at the lore and the pride of man, at the sophist schools and the learned clan; for what are they all, in their high conceit, when man in the bush with god may meet. today i rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide the resurrection of departed pride ; safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep, let kings and conquerors, saints and soldiers sleep. late in the world — too late perchance for fame just late enough to reap abundant blame — i choose a novel theme, a bold abuse of critic charters, an unlaurelled muse. 1824] mary moody emerson 369 old mouldy men and books and names and lands disgust my reason and defile my hands; i had as lief respect an ancient shoe as love old things for age, and hate the new. i spurn the past, my mind disdains its nod, nor kneels in homage to so mean a god. i laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze, the bald antiquity of china praise. youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend) the fault that boys and nations soonest mend. the following extracts from letters written by miss mary emerson to her nephew, and his to her in reply, should properly be introduced here. they are taken from his journal or extractbook no. xviii, 2d. mr. emerson in his account of his revered aunt (lectures and biographical sketches), says: “she had the misfortune of spinning with a greater velocity than any of the other tops” in ordinary motion, in conversation, in thought. so in her writing, her thought leaves her expression far behind. she often leaves out letters from words, words from sentences, and does not tarry to finish her thought. hence her letters and journals are often hard to make out.] 370 (age 20 journal miss emerson to r. w. e. [waterford, maine,] april 13, 1824. “imagination will always revolt at the loss of the butterfly's beauty, and the rude waste of the rich dew of the welkin from its own azure cups, — but be patient. there are many who are forced to creep thro’ the entrails of reptiles and roots to find an infinite designer. never dislike their little lobes and [sic], and all their capacities to enjoy the raptures of sense, for they afford so much comfort to those who seek for analogies, and who are otherwise [rather:] related to the amiable instincts of animals than to the lofty relations of reason and principle in the higher orders. the longer you live, the more you will have to endure the elementary existence of society, and your premature wisdom will distaste quiescence, when the old become gay and the young grave at the portraiture of a fly and the galen dissection of a flower. then you find no necessary sacredness in the country. nor did milton, but his mind and his spirit were their own place and came when he called them in the solitude of darkness. solitude, which to people not talented to deviate from the beaten track is the safe ground of mediocrity, without offending, asol 1824) miss emerson's letter 371 is to learning and genius the only sure labyrinth, tho' sometimes gloomy, to form the eagle wing that will bear one farther than suns and stars. byron and wordsworth have there best, and only intensely, burnished their pens. would to providence your unfoldings might be therethat it were not a wild and fruitless wish that you could be disunited from travelling with the souls of other men, of living and breathing, reading and writing with one vital time-sated idea — their opinions! so close was this conjunction that a certain pilgrim lived for some months in an eclipse so monotonous as scarcely to discern the disk of her own particular star. could a mind return to its first fortunate seclusion, where it opened with its own peculiar colours and spread them out on its own rhymy pallette [sic], with its added stock, and spread them beneath the cross, what a mercy to the age! that religion so poetical, so philosophical, so adapted to unfold the understanding, when studied 'where sublime sentiments and actions spring from the desire which genius always possesses of breaking those bounds which circumscribe the imagination. the heroism of morals, the enthusiasm of eloquence, the love of an eternal fame are supernatural enjoyments allotted only to minds which are me 372 journal (age 20 at once exalted and melancholy, and wearied and disgusted with everything transitory and bounded. this disposition of mind is the source of every generous passion and philosophical discovery.' would this description of character, which i have copied from a glorious author, suit even our boasted everett? is he not completely enveloped in foreign matters and an artificial character? i am glad that his notice has fallen on edward, who will be for flinging his light on a civil profession (rather] than on another destiny. ... those ‘gospels of thought and wisdom' which you find so gossamer, –... two or three old books contain everything grand for me. yet you call this age the ripest. where are its martyrs? where was an age since christianity, when the public mind had less hold of the strongest of all truths? the mass will ever be in swaddlings, and there ever have been great minds, so i cannot see clearly the comparison between infancy and age. the arts not equalled; and even milton casting an eye toward ovid and virgil, which seems less bearable than towards homer. ... i would remind your grace — tho' but an abbess of a humble vale— that the triple bow was never seen before the deluge; nor is it 1824] miss emerson's letter 373 were no or no a legend. there were no rains in those regions, or none heavy enow to give the binding of that flowery verge, before the alteration the flood caused. st. pierre favours this. rich as is the triple bow of promise (and it has been seen bending on the grave of long buried friendship) it would lose its best beauty, even if the commentators' restoring it as a covenant bow were just. i am glad to spew out a scrap of learning to your science-ship in revenge for your speaking of my moral scrawls and sybilline scraps. in truth i have nothing of the old eld but as many sands which i fear. the better part of the flattering letter i receive as a token of kindness. it was ingeniously done to write so well on my old almanacks. and i never reject handsome compliment, for the only thing would occur to you, what possible interest would any one have in flattering me. yet in solitude it is not necessary, as in society, where even the oars of life can hardly be kept in motion without. but if you tax me with any payment in the course of this letter, why, take it as debt or due to merit, for it is always passable in the best society.” ... occ 374 [age 20 journal r. w. e. to miss emerson april 30, 1824. ... is not life merely a sort of perpetual motion? one identical restlessness in all the individuals, but applied by the artist to many works, – as steam will turn a spit, or propel a man of war? different trades thrive at different periods, and capital is converted occasionally from one to the other. ten centuries ago, the human machines in europe were all busy as wheels can be in killing man, destroying libraries, extirpating art, justice, and mercy. today, with the same reckless activity, good is done, books are written and read, useful and elegant institutions reared, manners are polished and morals revered. colleges take the place of schools, a sage of an hero. german, saxon, hun, dane, in dusty gowns and darkened cloisters, by an odd revolution of fortune are at this moment exploring with critical acumen the rude antiquity, the manners, origin, and the war-path of their ancestors, and evincing, it may be, as much intrepidity and unconquerable pride in pedant argument as did their forefathers when they clashed their bucklers in the tented field. no change of manners leaves heaven without a 1824] to miss emerson 375 witness, and luitprand and st. gregory and st., etc., are represented today by dr. channing, dr. chalmers, etc. but for cannibal saracens, have come up critical scholars ; for paynim giants locking their dungeons, have come up howards, opening the dungeon doors. the use of the safety-lamp, of the compass and of the press supersede the talismans and charlatanry of superstition. for attila has come wilberforce, and for alaric, franklin. the religious spirit was the excess of that day, and europe was depopulated in seven unsuccessful crusades. spirit of liberty is the fashion of this age, and we have had our unsuccessful crusades. naples, spain and greece are the coveted holy lands of modern chivalry. i am glad to remark how much more reason is the friend of our hopes than of theirs. is man the result of men, or a mushroom exotic in every land? was dr. franklin (one of the most sensible men that ever lived) as likely to be born elsewhere as at boston and in 17–? don't you admire (i am not sure you do) the serene and powerful understanding which was so eminently practical and useful, which grasped the policy of the globe, and the form of a fly, with like felicity and ease; which seemed to be a 376 journal (age 20 transmigration of the genius of socrates — yet more useful, more moral, and more pure, and a living contradiction of the buffoonery that mocked a philosophy in the clouds? franklin was no “seraphic doctor,” no verbal gladiator clad in complete mail of syllogisms, but a sage who used his pen with a dignity and effect which was new, and had been supposed to belong only to the sword. he was a man of that singular force of mind (with which in the course of providence so few men are gifted) which seems designed to effect by individual influence what is ordinarily done by the slow and secret work of institutions and national growth. one enjoys a higher conception of human worth in measuring the vast influence exercised on men's minds by franklin's character than even by reading books of remote ages. homer has indeed triumphed over time, but a poem is, at best, a work of art, and is seen ever with the same cold eyes that survey a marble statue or italian painting. whoever found, of all the generations of the readers of homer — where is the madcap? — that his conduct in life was ruled or biassed one moment after merry boyhood by the blind bard's genius? i own i have read somewhere (perchance in foster's essays) such an 1824] choice of profession 377 opinion avowed, but it smacked of extravagance then, and smacks now. but many millions have already lived and millions are now alive who have felt through their whole lives the powerful good effect both of franklin's actions and his writings. his subtle observation, his seasonable wit, his profound reason and his mild and majestic virtues made him idolized in france, feared in england, and obeyed in america. providence seemed to send him in our hour of need, qualified extraordinarily for an extraordinary service. nor is it easy to limit the fame of the influence of those who thus mightily act on society. his good offices reach through a thousand years to posterity unborn, who will bless the builders of this doric temple of liberty. moses and aaron, priests and levites, led out the people into the appointed land, but, long after, god anointed a wise king, the wisest of men, to settle the foundations of civil prosperity and erect an altar to himself. ... myself (continued) may 2d, 1824. it puzzles and mortifies the bounding spirit to be brought so soon to a goal. a choice of three professions, in either of which but a small 378 [age 20 journal portion of time is professedly devoted to the analysis of those high relations which unite us to god, and those inexplicably curious cords that fasten us to matter. men's creeds can never, at least in youth, set the heart entirely at ease. they strike the eye ever and anon as fine-spun textures through which rebellious doubt is impatient, sometimes desperate, to plunge. there is a dreaminess about my mode of life (which may be a depravity) which loosens the tenacity of what should be most tenacious — this my grasp on heaven and earth. i am the servant more than the master of my fates. they seem to lead me into many a slough where i do no better than despond. and as to the life i lead, and the works and the days, i should blush to recite the unprofitable account. but prophets and philosophers assure me that i am immortal,.. and sometimes my own imagination goes into a fever with its hopes and conceptions. tell me, my soul, if this be true, if these indolent days and frivolous nights, these insignificant accomplishments, this handful of thought, this pittance of virtues, are to form my trust and claim on an existence as imperishable as my maker's. there is no such thing accorded to the universal prayer of man as satisfactory knowledge. metaphysics com1824) 379 metaphysics teach me admirably well what i knew before; setting out in order particular after particular, bone after bone, the anatomy of the mind. my knowledge is thus arranged, not augmented. morals, too, — the proud science which departs at once from the lower creation about which most of man's philosophy is conversant, and professes to deal with his sublimest connexions and separate destiny,-morals are chiefly occupied in discriminating between what is general and what is partial, or in tying rules together by.. a thread which is called a system or a principle. but neither metaphysics nor ethics are more than outside sciences. they give me no insight into the nature and design of my being, and the profoundest scholar in them both is as far from any clue to the being and the work behind the scenes, as the scythian or the mohawk. for morals and metaphysics, cudworth and locke may both be true, and every system of religion yet offered to man wholly false. to glowing hope, moreover, 't is alarming to see the full and regular series of animals from mites and worms up to man; yet he who has the same organization and a little more mind pretends to an insulated and extraordinary destiny to which his fellows of the stall and field are in no part ad380 journal [age 21 mitted, nay are disdainfully excluded.' . . . but for myself, wo is me! these poor and barren thoughts are the best in my brain“the glow that in my spirit dwelt is auttering faint and low." i am ambitious not to live in a corner, or, which is tenfold perdition, to be contemptible in a corner. meantime my prospect is no better; my soul is dark or is dead. i will hope “ she is not dead, but sleepeth.” asia sleep on, ye drowsy tribes whose old repose the roaring oceans of the east enclose; old asia, nurse of man, and bower of gods, the dragon tyranny with crown and ball chants to thy dreams his ancient lullaby. letter to plato the voice of antiquity has proclaimed, most venerable shade, that if the father of the gods should converse with men he would speak in the language of plato. in cloisters and colleges, lovers of philosophy are found to this day who repeat this praise. but the revolution of ages has 1 this is, perhaps, the first hint of his coming interest in evolution. 1824] letter to plato 381 introduced other tongues into the world and the dialect of attica is well-nigh forgotten. rome succeeded to the honours of greece ; italy, france and england to the power and refinement of rome, and the children of the proud republicans who disgraced xerxes, defied asia, and instructed all europe, are now cooped up in a corner of their patrimony, making a desperate stand for their lives against a barbarous nation whose bondmen they have been. in these circumstances, the pillars of the porch have been broken and the groves of the academy felled to the ground. philosophy discourses in another language, and, though the messages of deity are brought to men, they come in terms, as well as on topics, to which you, illustrious athenian(?), were a stranger. in this old age of the world, i shall therefore speak to the spirit of plato in a new language, but in one whereinto has long been transfused all the wealth of ancient thought, enriched, and perchance outweighed, by productions of modern genius. i may add that i live in a land which you alone prophesied to your contemporaries, where is founded a political system more wise and successful than utopia or the atlantis. you have now dwelled in the land of souls 382 journal (age 21 upwards of twenty centuries, and in the meantime mightier changes than those to which i have already alluded have appeared on earth. i have no design to interrupt your serene repose with the weary annals of political convulsion.. these were always alike, and the fortunes of ages may be told from an infancy as brief as man's life. the desperate state of the greek republic concerns me not; it has long ceased to touch yourself. i write of higher revolutions and vaster communities. i write of the moral and religious condition of man. as the world has grown older, the theory of life has grown better, while a correspondent improvement in practice has not been observed. eighteen hundred years ago a revelation came down from heaven which distinctly declared the leading principles of ethics, and that in so clear and popular a form that the very terms in which they were conveyed served the most illiterate as well as the great and wise for a manual, a rule of life. the book which contains this divine message has done more than any other to sap the authority — i might say, to sweep away the influence — of socrates and his disciple. men still commend your wisdom, for indeed, plato, thou reasonest well, but christ and his apostles 1824) letter to plato 383 ucinfinitely better, not through thy fault, but through their inspiration. thus a religious revolution has taken place in the midst of civilized nations, more radical and extensive than any other which ever came, be it religious, scientific or political. men are now furnished with creeds, animated by all the motives a gospel offers, and they look back with pity on the proud attainments of the pagan plato and his emulous successors, and around upon the living pagan nations of the east and west. this dispensation of the supreme being is expounded and enforced to all classes of men by a regular priesthood. . that priesthood finds riddles in their vocation hard to solve, wonders not easy to digest. they examine with curious inquiry public annals and private anecdotes of your age to ascertain the just level to which human virtue had then arisen; to find how general were integrity, temperance, and charity; to find how much the gods were reverenced; and then to compare accurately the result with the known condition of modern europe and america. for it is not believed possible by those living under the influence of such new and puissant principles as our gospel hath erected, that any high standard could have obtained of thought or action under the patronwn 384 journal (age 21 age of your gaudy and indecent idolatry. but now and then a scholar whose midnight lamp is regularly lit to unfold your spirit, appeals from the long mythology which the poets forged, to your own lofty speculations on the nature of the gods and the obligations to virtue—which christianity hath rather outstripped than contradicted; when a scholar appeals from that to these for the true belief of good men, your contemporaries, he is told that the mass of men regarded your pages as fine-spun theories, unsanctioned, unpractical, untrue; that you, plato, did not know if there were many gods or but one; that you inculcated the observance of the vulgar superstitions of the day. if the law of the universe admitted of exception, and it were allowed me to depart to your refulgent shores and commune with plato, this is the information i should seek at your hands. how could those parts of the social machine whose consistency and just action depends entirely upon the morality and religion sown and grown in the community, how could these be kept in safe and efficient arrangement under a system which, besides being frivolous, was the butt of vulgar ridicule? is it necessary that men should have before them the strong excitement of religion and its 1824) letter to plato 385 was acc thrilling motives? one who was accustomed to constant pressure of their yoke would pronounce it indispensable. it was so specially made for man and blends so intimately with his nature and habits that it is difficult for the believer to conceive of unbelief. nay, the influence seems to spread a great deal wider and to affect all those who belong to a religious country, though the predominance of these feelings be no part of their character. but 'tis very possible that this may be illusory and it seems to me if we study the particular actions making up the aggregate which we call character, and abandon generalities, we shall find that there is a great self-deception practised daily in society where gospels are promulged, and that the proneness of men to judge of themselves by their best moments, combining with that unqualified approbation which every moral being must needs yield to a system so pure, leads men to suspect that the deeds they do from a broad view of their interest, they do from religious motives and a powerful bias to virtue. it is a favourite point, plato, with our divines, to argue from the misery and vice anciently prevalent in the world, a certain necessity of the revelation. of this revelation i am the ardent m 386 [age 21 journal ne friend. of the being who sent it i am the child, and i trust i am disposed from reason and affection with the whole force of my understanding, the warmth of my heart, and the constant attention of all my life, to practise the duties there enjoined and to help its diffusion throughout the globe. but i confess it has not for me the same exclusive and extraordinary claims it has for many. i hold reason to be a prior revelation, and that they do not contradict each other. i conceive that the creator addresses his messages to the minds of his children, and will not mock them by acting upon their moral character by means of motives which are wild and unintelligible to them. the assent which fear and superstition shall extort from them to words or rites or reasons which they do not understand, since it makes a ruin of the mind, can please none but a cruel and malicious divinity. the belief of such a god and such sublime depravity is absurd. his house is divided against itself. his house, his universe, cannot stand. the errand which the true god sends, which men have hoped to receive, which philosophers waited for in your porches and schools, – must be worthy of him, or it will be rejected as a mountebank's tales and wonders. what we do not apprehend, 1824) letter to plato 387 tilet the de the alms 13 for rea cada this is we first admire, and then ridicule. therefore i scout all these parts of the book which are reckoned mysteries. but one of the greatest of these is of external, rather than internal, character, by which the revelation is made but a portion of a certain great scheme planned from eternity in heaven to be slowly developed on earth. it is made essential to the economy of providence and necessary to the welfare of man. i need not inform you in all its depraved details of the theology under whose chains calvin of geneva bound europe down; but this opinion, that the revelation had i become necessary to the salvation of men through some conjunction of events in heaven, is one of its vagaries. this is one which, from whatever cause, has lingered in men's minds after the rest of that family of errors disappeared. and sober and sensible theologians speak of the ages preceding the event as a long preparation for it, and of the whole history of man as only relative to it. the cases are so few in which we can see connexion and order in events, by reason of the narrow field of our vision, that we are glad in our vanity if we can solder with our imaginations into a system, things in fact unconnected, can turn the ravishment of devotion or poetry nde 388 journal (age 21 into prophecies, by searching up and down in the great garner of history for an event that will chime with a prediction. the greeks ... the grecian genius did not start into life with the victories of salamis and platæa, but was born and disciplined before homer sang. america when this country is censured for its foolhardy ambition to take a stand in its green years among old and proud nations, it is no reproach and no disqualification to be told, but you have no literature. it is admitted we have none. but we have what is better. we have a government and a national spirit that is better than poems or histories, and these have a premature ripeness that is incompatible with the rapid production of the latter. we should take shame to ourselves as sluggish and boeotian if it were righteously said that we had done nothing for ourselves, neither in learning, nor arts, nor government, nor political economy. but we see and feel that in the space of two generations this nation has taken such a start as already to outstrip the bold freedom of modern speculation 1824) manners 389 which ordinarily (universally, but for this case) is considerably in advance of practice. no man calls mr. hume an old-fashioned and shortsighted politician, yet many pages of his history have lost their credit already by the practical confutation of their principles. 'tis no disgrace to tell newton he is no poet, nor america even. $227 pizza tror de done treme pos manners' pericles, cæsar, chesterfield, henry iv of france. it certainly is worth one's while, who considers what sway elegant manners bear in society, and how wealth, genius and moral worth, all extrinsic and intrinsic good in men, do, in society, feel their empire,it becomes a clear command of reason to cultivate them. there are some men, wittily called nature's gentlemen, who need no discipline, but grow straight up into shape and grace and can match the proudest in dignified demeanour and the gentlest in courtesy. of these the line in the old song is a thousand times quoted, “my face's my fortune, sir, she said.” ... i speak here of no transient success in i compare the motto to essay on behaviour" (conduct of life), also printed in poems. 2 10. ere regio ل هو م tors arbeit 390 . journal [age 21 tying a neckcloth aright, and making a fashionable bow, and speaking in the precise nick of time, and the just length, but of manners of a sensible man when they become the chief channel in which a man's sense runs; of those which are the plain index of fine sense and fine feelings, which impress all and offend none. the specimens of this sort are to be searched for in the summits of society,— for these manners are invariably successful, or among the young, not yet advanced. they had better be observed in youth, for there is nothing in art or nature so charming as the brilliant manners of one of these candidates for eminence before adulation has got to be an old song with him, while hope and love dazzle him. their address is marked by an alacrity of manner arising from elasticity of spirits and of limbs that no eye can watch unmoved. the spectacle these afford is a perfect tonic in its physical effect, like light, or like wine. it imparts an impulse of cheerfulness not easily withstood to all within their influence; it effaces for a moment the omnipresent consciousness of sin, sickness, sorrow. it is an attractive subject. ...“many men,” said montaigne, “ i have known of supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners.” ..., 1824), manners 391 ... manners is a fourth fine art, and, like painting, poetry and sculpture, is founded on fiction. it is a mask worn by men of sense to deceive the vulgar, ape the conduct of every superior intelligence. thus i know models who affect to drop carelessly the most subtle wit or profound thought. every virtue is spoken of with respect, even those to which their private life bears little love. every event is treated with its exact measure of interest, — sickness and death, a balloon and a butterfly, being discussed with the same cool philosophy. in the practice of these wise masters i know different theories of manners prevail, and are as many as the systems of philosophy — for this is a species of second philosophy, and may be termed the philosophy of life. thus the sect of the stoics will have their mannerists who would command in good company by inflexible reception of good and ill. democritus has many, even heraclitus a few. socrates has some disciples, who use plain speech and practical as j. l., but the predominant sect are those who hold fast with the epicureans, independent and goodhumoured. 392 (age 21 journal books ... apart from the vastness of transitory volumes which occasional politics or a thousand ephemeral magnalia elicit, . . . there is another sort of book which appears now and then in the world, once in two or three centuries perhaps, and which soon or late gets a foothold in popular esteem. i allude to those books which collect and embody the wisdom of their times, and so mark the stages of human improvement. such are the proverbs of solomon, the essays of montaigne, and eminently the essays of bacon. such also (though in my judgment in far less degree) is the proper merit of mr. pope's judicious poems, the moral essays and essay on man, which, without originality, seize upon all the popular speculations floating among sensible men and give them in a compact graceful form to the following age. i should like to add another volume to this valuable work. i am not so foolhardy as to write sequel to bacon on my title-page; and there are some reasons that induce me to suppose that the undertaking of this enterprise does not imply any censurable arrogance. ... it may be made clear that there may be the wisdom of an age, independent of and 1824) conclusion 393 above the wisdom of any individual whose life is numbered in its years. and the diligence rather than the genius of one mind may compile the prudential maxims, domestic and public maxims current in the world and which may be made to surpass the single stores of any writer, as the richest private funds are quickly exceeded by a public purse. conclusion why has my motley diary no jokes? because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone. 1. there is no royal road to learning. ii. let not your virtue be of the written or spoken sort, but of the practised. iii. the two chief differences among men (touching the talents) consist, 1, in the different degrees of attention they are able to command ; 2, in the unlike expression they give to the same ideas. iv. there is time enough for every business men are really resolved to do. v. obsta principiis. take heed of getting cloyed with that honeycomb which flattery tempts with. 'tis apt to blunt the edge of appetite for many wholesome viands, and rob you of many days of health. ome 394 journal (age 21 let no man flatter himself with the hope of true good or solid enjoyment from the study of shakspeare or scott. enjoy them as recreation. you cannot please yourself by going to stare at the moon; 't is beautiful when in your course it comes. end of volume i 3 2044 010 308 328 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower rom overdue fees. widener cancelled 1982 72892384 stern shoqenera 1993 carceler 30ox due scanice sled bsan1 352003 k woener 363 nedl, transfer | hn 5e g 7 tº cº. º. li brairy.y. dding . . . .-.-.-.-.-.-. ） -------====~~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~ ~~ ~~~~ _ _ · -*** ---------…） -------~--------e e s s a. y. s. e s s a. y s : by r. w. e m e r s o n. first series. new edition. bost on : phillips, samp so n & co., 1 1 0 was hing to n s teeet. 1852. harvard university library entered according to act of congress, in the year 1847, by james munroe and company., in the clerk’s office of the district court of the district of massachusetts. cam bridg e: 8tereotype d by metcalf and company., printed by wright and hasty. c o n t e n t s. essay i. pa history e e e = e e gº essay ii. self-reliance . e e e. e • 37 essay iii. compensation . e e e e e ... 81 essay iv . spiritual, laws . e e e e e . 115 essay w. love . e e e e e e e . 151 essay wi. friendship . e e e e © . 173 contents, prudence heroism the over-80ud, circuits intelliect art essay wii. essay wiii. essay ix. essay x. essay xi. essay xii. 199 221 241 271 293 315 h is to r y. there is no great and no small to the soul that maketh all: and where it cometh, all things are; and it cometh everywhere. i am owner of the sphere, of the seven stars and the solar year, of caesar's hand, and plato's brain, of lord christ's heart, and shakspeare's strain. essay i. h is to r y. —6– there is one mind common to all individual men. every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. he that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. what plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. of the works of this mind history is the record. its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. but the thought is always prior to the fact ; all the facts of history prečxist in the mind as laws. each law in turn is made by circum4 essay i. stances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. a man is the whole encyclopædia of facts. the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and egypt, greece, rome, gaul, britain, america, lie folded already in the first man. epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world. this human mind wrote history, and this must read it. the sphinx must solve her own riddle. if the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. there is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. as the air i breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages explained by the hours. of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. all its properties consist in him. each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. every reform was once a private opinion, and history. 5 when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age. the fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. we as we read must become greeks, romans, turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. what befell asdrubal or caesar borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as what has befallen us. each new law and political movement has meaning for you. stand before each of its tablets and say, “under this mask did my proteus nature hide itself.” this remedies the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. this throws our actions into perspective : and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance, and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so i can see my own vices without heat in the distant persons of solomon, alcibiades, and catiline. it is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. human life as containing this is mysterious and inviolable, and we hedge it round with penalties and laws. all laws derive hence their ultimate reason ; all express more or less distinctly some command of this supreme, illimitable essence. property also holds of the soul, covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively we at first hold to it with swords and laws, and wide and complex combi6 essay i. nations. the obscure consciousness of this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of claims; the plea for education, for justice, for charity, the foundation of friendship and love, and of the heroism and grandeur which belong to acts of self-reliance. it is remarkable that involuntarily we always read as superior beings. universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures—in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius — anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but rather is it true, that in their grandest strokes we feel most at home. all that shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. we sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us, as we ourselves in that place would have done or applauded. we have the same interest in condition and character. we honor the rich, because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper to man, proper to us. so all that is said of the wise man by stoic, or oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. all literhistory, 7 ature writes the character of the wise man. books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he is forming. the silent and the eloquent praise him and accost him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves as by personal allusions. a true aspirant, therefore, never needs look for allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. he hears the commendation, not of himself, but more sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning character, yea, further, in every fact and circumstance,—in the running river and the rustling corn. praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the firmament. these hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use in broad day. the student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. i have no expectation that any man will read history aright, who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today. the world exists for the education of each man. there is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat cort 8 essay i. responding in his life. every thing tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. he should see that he can live all history in his own person. he must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read, from rome and athens and london to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and if england or egypt have any thing to say to him, he will try the case ; if not, let them for ever be silent he must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. the instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history. time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. no anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact a fact. babylon, troy, tyre, palestine, and even early rome, are passing already into fiction. the garden of eden, the sun standing still in gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. who cares what the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign london and paris and new york must go the same way. “what is history,” said napoleon, “but a fable agreed uphistory. 9 on 2 ” this life of ours is stuck round with egypt, greece, gaul, england, war, colonization, church, court, and commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. i will not make more account of them. i believe in eternity. i can find greece, asia, italy, spain, and the islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. we are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience, and verifying them here. all history becomes subjective ; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, must go over the whole ground. what it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. what the former age has epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. somewhere, sometime, it will demand and find compensation for that loss by doing the work itself. ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had long been known. the better for him. history must be this or it is nothing. every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature ; that is all. we must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. so stand before every public and 10 essay i. private work; before an oration of burke, before a victory of napoleon, before a martyrdom of sir thomas more, of sidney, of marmaduke robinson, before a french reign of terror, and a salem hanging of witches, before a fanatic revival, and the animal magnetism in paris, or in providence. we assume that we under like influence should be alike affected, and should achieve the like ; and we aim to master intellectually the steps, and reach the same height or the same degradation, that our fellow, our proxy, has done. all inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the pyramids, the excavated cities, stonehenge, the ohio circles, mexico, memphis, – is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous there or then, and introduce in its place the here and the now. belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of thebes, until he can see the end of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. when he has satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was made by such a person as he, so armed and so motived, and to ends to which he himself should also have worked, the problem is solved ; his thought lives along the whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs, passes through them all with satisfaction, and they live again to the mind, or are now. a gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us, history. 11 and not done by us. surely it was by man, but we find it not in our man. but we apply ourselves to the history of its production. we put ourselves into the place and state of the builder. we remember the forest-dwellers, the first temples, the adherence to the first type, and the decoration of it as the wealth of the nation increased ; the value which is given to wood by carving led to the carving over the whole mountain of stone of a cathedral. when we have gone through this process, and added thereto the catholic church, its cross, its music, its processions, its saints’ days and image-worship, we have, as it were, been the man that made the minster ; we have seen how it could and must be. we have the sufficient reason. the difference between men is in their principle of association. some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance ; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. the progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface diſferences. to the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are 'friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. for the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circum stance. every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. 12 essay i. upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be such hard pedants, and magnify a few forms ? why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure ? the soul knows them not, and genius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches. genius studies the causal thought, and, far back in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type ; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same. she casts the same thought into troops of forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. through the bruteness and toughness of matter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. the adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, and, whilst i look at it, its outline and texture are changed again. nothing is so fleeting as form ; yet never does it quite deny itself. in man we still trace the remains or hints of all that we esteem badges of seriiistory. 13 witude in the lower races; yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace ; as io, in aeschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the imagination ; but how changed, when as isis in egypt she meets osirisjove, a beautiful woman, with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the splendid ornament of her brows the identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equally obvious. there is at the surface infinite variety of things; at the centre there is simplicity of cause. how many are the acts of one man in which we recognize the same character observe the sources of our information in respect to the greek genius. we have the civil history of that people, as herodotus, thucydides, xenophon, and plutarch have given it; a very sufficient account of what manner of persons they were, and what they did. we have the same national mind expressed for us again in their literature, in epic and lyric poems, drama, and philosophy ; a very complete form. then we have it once more in their architecture, a beauty as of temperance itself, limited to the straight line and the square, — a builded geometry. then we have it once again in sculpture, the “tongue on the balance of expression,” a multitude of forms in the utmost freedom of action, and never transgressing the ideal serenity; like votaries performing some religious dance before the gods, and, though in con14 essay i. vulsive pain or mortal combat, never daring to break the figure and decorum of their dance. thus, of the genius of one remarkable people, we have a fourfold representation : and to the senses what more unlike than an ode of pindar, a marble centaur, the peristyle of the parthenon, and the last actions of phocion ? every one must have observed faces and forms which, without any resembling feature, make a like impression on the beholder. a particular picture or copy of verses, if it do not awaken the same train of images, will yet superinduce the same sentiment as some wild mountain walk, although the resemblance is nowise obvious to the senses, but is occult and out of the reach of the understanding. nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. she hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her works; and delights in startling us with resemblances in the most unexpected quarters. i have seen the head of an old sachem of the forest, which at once reminded the eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. there are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the parthenon, and the remains of the earliest greek art. and there history. 15 are compositions of the same strain to be found in the books of all ages. what is guido's rospigliosi aurora but a morning thought, as the horses in it are only a morning cloud. if any one will but take pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally inclined in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, he will see how deep is the chain of affinity. a painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree ; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely, — but, by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature, and can then draw him at will in every attitude. so roos “entered into the inmost nature of a sheep.” i knew a draughtsman employed in a public survey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained to him. in a certain state of thought is the common origin of very diverse works. it is the spirit and not the fact that is identical. by a deeper apprehension, and not primarily by a painful acquisition of many manual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening other souls to a given activity. it has been said, that “common souls pay with what they do ; nobler souls with that which they are.” and why because a profound nature awakens in us by its actions and words, by its 16 essay i. very looks and manners, the same power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture, or of pictures, addresses. civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, must be explained from individual history, or must remain words. there is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us, – kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all things are in man. santa croce and the dome of st. peter's are lame copies after a divine model. strasburg cathedral is a material counterpart of the soul of erwin of steinbach. the true poem is the poet's mind; the true ship is the shipbuilder. in the man, could we lay him open, we should see the reason for the last flourish and tendril of his work; as every spine and tint in the sea-shell prečxist in the secreting organs of the fish. the whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. a man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. the trivial experience of every day is always verifying some old prediction to us, and converting into things the words and signs which we had heard and seen without heed. a lady, with whom i was riding in the forest, said to me, that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer has passed onward: a thought which poetry has celehistory. 17 brated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet. the man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world. i remember one summer day, in the fields, my companion pointed out to me a broad cloud, which might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the horizon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub as painted over churches, – a round block in the centre, which it was easy to animate with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by wide-stretched symmetrical wings. what appears once in the atmosphere may appear often, and it was undoubtedly the archetype of that familiar ornament. i have seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning which at once showed to me that the greeks drew from nature when they painted the thunderbolt in the hand of jove. i have seen a snow-drift along the sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea of the common architectural scroll to abut a tower. by surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances, we invent anew the orders and the ornaments of architecture, as we see how each people merely decorated its primitive abodes. the doric temple preserves the semblance of the wooden cabin in which the dorian dwelt. the chinese pagoda is plainly a tartar tent. the indian and egyptian temples still betray the mounds and subterranean 2 18 essay 1. houses of their forefathers. “the custom of making houses and tombs in the living rock,” says heeren, in his researches on the ethiopians, “determined very naturally the principal character of the nubian egyptian architecture to the colossal form which it assumed. in these caverns, already prepared by nature, the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses, so that, when art came to the assistance of nature, it could not move on a small scale without degrading itself. what would statues of the usual size, or neat porches and wings, have been, associated with those gigantic halls before which only colossi could sit as watchmen, or lean on the pillars of the interior 2 ° the gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest trees with all their boughs to a festal or solemn arcade, as the bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. no one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, when the barrenness of all other trees shows the low arch of the saxons. in the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which the gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest. . nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of history. 19 oxford and the english cathedrals, without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir, and spruce. the gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. the mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective, of vegetable beauty. in like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized. then at once history becomes fluid and true, and biography deep and sublime. as the persian imitated in the slender shafts and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower of the lotus and palm, so the persian court in its magnificent era never gave over the nomadism of its barbarous tribes, but travelled from ecbatana, where the spring was spent, to susa in summer, and to babylon for the winter. in the early history of asia and africa, nomadism and agriculture are the two antagonist facts. the geography of asia and of africa necessitated a nomadic life. but the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil, or the advantages of a market, had induced to build towns. agriculture, therefore, was a religious injunction, because of the perils of 20 essay 1. the state from nomadism. and in these late and civil countries of england and america, these propensities still fight out the old battle in the nation and in the individual. the nomads of africa were constrained to wander by the attacks of the gadfly, which drives the cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy season, and to drive off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. the nomads of asia follow the pasturage from month to month. in america and europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity ; a progress, certainly, from the gad-fly of astaboras to the anglo and italo-mania of boston bay. sacred cities, to which a periodical religious pilgrimage was enjoined, or stringent laws and customs, tending to invigorate the national bond, were the check on the old rovers ; and the cumulative values of long residence are the restraints on the itineracy of the present day. the antagonism of the two tendencies is not less active in individuals, as the love of adventure or the love of repose happens to predominate. a man of rude health and flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid domestication, lives in his wagon, and roams through all latitudes as easily as a calmuc. at sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as warm, dines with as good appetite, nd associates as happily, as beside his own chimeys. or perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in the increased range of his faculties of observation, history. 21 which yield him points of interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. the pastoral nations were needy and hungry to desperation ; and this intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind, through the dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. the home-keeping wit, on the other hand, is that continence or content which finds all the elements of life in its own soil ; and which has its own perils of monotony and deterioration, if not stimulated by foreign infusions. every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to his states of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward thinking leads him into the truth to which that fact or series belongs. the primeval world, the fore-world, as the germans say, i can dive to it in myself as well as grope for it with researching fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. what is the foundation of that interest all men feel in greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the heroic or homeric age down to the domestic life of the athenians and spartans, four or five centuries later what but this, that every man passes personally through a grecian period. the grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, – of the spirit22 essay i. ual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. in it existed those human forms which supplied the sculptor with his models of hercules, phoebus, and jove ; not like the forms abounding in the streets of modern cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, sharply defined, and symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets are so formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint, and take furtive glances on this side and on that, but they must turn the whole head. the manners of that period are plain and fierce. the reverence exhibited is for personal qualities, courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. luxury and elegance are not known. a sparse population and want make every man his own valet, cook, butcher, and soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. such are the agamemnon and diomed of homer, and not far diſferent is the picture xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the retreat of the ten thousand. “after the army had crossed the river teleboas in armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops lay miserably on the ground covered with it. but xenophon arose naked, and, taking an axe, began to split wood ; whereupon others rose and did the like.” throughout his army exists a boundless liberty of speech. they quarrel for plunder, they wrangle history. 23 with the generals on each new order, and xenophon is as sharp-tongued as any, and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as good as he gets. who does not see that this is a gang of great boys, with such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have 2 the costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the old literature, is, that the persons speak simply, -speak as persons who have great good sense without knowing it, before yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of the mind. our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. the greeks are not reflective, but perfect in their senses and in their health, with the finest physical organization in the world. adults acted with the simplicity and grace of children. they made vases, tragedies, and statues, such as healthy senses should, – that is, in good taste. such things have continued to be made in all ages, and are now, wherever a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, from their superior organization, they have surpassed all. they combine the energy of manhood with the engaging unconsciousness of childhood. the attraction of these manners is that they belong to man, and are known to every man in virtue of his being once a child; besides that there are always individuals who retain these characteristics. a person of childlike genius and inborn energy 24 essay i. is still a greek, and revives our love of the muse of hellas. i admire the love of nature in the philoctetes. in reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains, and waves, i feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. i feel the etermity of man, the identity of his thought. the greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as i. the sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. then the vaunted distinction between greek and english, between classic and romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. when a thought of plato becomes a thought to me, – when a truth that fired the soul of pindar fires mine, time is no more. when i feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do, as it were, run into one, why should i measure degrees of latitude, why should i count egyptian years 2 the student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chivalry, and the days of maritime adventure and circumnavigation by quite parallel miniature experiences of his own. to the sacred history of the world, he has the same key. when the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institu tlons. history. 25 rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. i see that men of god have, from time to time, walked among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer. hence, evidently, the tripod, the priest, the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. they cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with themselves. as they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains every fact, every word. how easily these old worships of moses, of zoroaster, of menu, of socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. i cannot find any antiquity in . them. they are mine as much as theirs. i have seen the first monks and anchorets without crossing seas or centuries. more than once some individual has appeared to me with such negligence of labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, begging in the name of god, as made good to the nineteenth century simeon the stylite, the thebais, and the first capuchins. the priestcraft of the east and west, of the magian, brahmin, druid, and inca, is expounded in the individual's private life. the cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and 26 essay i. that without producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much sympathy with the tyranny, is a familiar fact explained to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those names and words and forms, of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth. the fact teaches him how belus was worshipped, and how the pyramids were built, better than the discovery by champollion of the names of all the workmen and the cost of every tile. he finds assyria and the mounds of cholula at his door, and himself has laid the courses. again, in that protest which each considerate person makes against the superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old reformers, and in the search after truth finds like them new perils to virtue. he learns again what moral vigor is needed to supply the girdle of a superstition. a great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation. how many times in the history of the world has the luther of the day had to lament the decay of piety in his own household ! “idoctor,” said his wife to martin luther, one day, “how is it that, whilst subject to papacy, we prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom ** the advancing man discovers how deep a properhistory. 27 ty he has in literature, — in all fable as well as in all history. he finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. his own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. one after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of aesop, of homer, of hafiz, of ariosto, of chaucer, of scott, and verifies them with his own head and hands. the beautiful fables of the greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. what a range of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of prometheus ! beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages. prometheus is the jesus of the old mythology. he is the friend of man; stands between the unjust “justice ’’ of the eternal father and the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their account. but where it departs from the calvinistic christianity, and exhibits him as the defier of jove, it represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine of theism is taught in a crude, 2s essay i. objective form, and which seems the self-defence of man against this untruth, namely, a discontent with the believed fact that a god exists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous. it would steal, if it could, the fire of the creator, and live apart from him, and independent of him. the prometheus vinctus is the romance of skepticism. not less true to all time are the details of that stately apologue. apollo kept the flocks of admetus, said the poets. when the gods come among men, they are not known. jesus was not; socrates and shakspeare were not. antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of hercules, but every time he touched his mother earth, his strength was renewed. man is the broken giant, and, in all his weakness, both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature. the power of music, the power of poetry to unfix, and, as it were, clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of orpheus. the philosophical perception of identity through endless mutations of form makes him know the proteus. what else am i who laughed or wept yesterday, who slept last night like a corpse, and this morning stood and ran? and what see i on any side but the transmigrations of proteus 2 i can symbolize my thought by using the name of any creature, of any fact, because every creature is man agent or patient. tantalus is but a name for you and me. tantalus means the imposhistory. 29 sibility of drinking the waters of thought which are always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. the transmigration of souls is no fable. i would it were ; but men and women are only half human. every animal of the barn-yard, the field, and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of its features and form in some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing speakers. ah ! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul, -ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many years slid. as near and proper to us is also that old fable of the sphinx, who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. if the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. if he could solve the riddle, the sphinx was slain. what is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or events in splendid variety these changes come, all putting questions to the human spirit. those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man is truly man. but if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race, remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then 30 essay i. the facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him. see in goethe's helena the same desire that every word should be a thing. these figures, he would say, these chirons, griffins, phorkyas, helen, and leda, are somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on the mind. so far then are they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the first olympiad. much revolving them, he writes out freely his humor, and gives them body to his own imagination. and although that poem be as vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is it much more attractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of the same author, for the reason that it operates a wonderful relief to the mind from the routine of customary images, – awakens the reader’s invention and fancy by the wild freedom of the design, and by the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise. the universal nature, too strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits on his neck and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. hence plato said that “poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.” all the fictions of the middle age explain themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave earnest the mind of history. 31 that period toiled to achieve. magic, and all that is ascribed to it, is a deep presentiment of the powers of science. the shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction. the preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual youth, and the -like, are alike the endeavour of the human spirit “to bend the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” in perceforest and amadis de gaul, a garland and a rose bloom on the head of her who is faithful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant. in the story of the boy and the mantle, even a mature reader may be surprised with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gentle genelas ; and, indeed, all the postulates of elfin annals, — that the fairies do not like to be named ; that their gifts are capricious and not to be trusted ; that who seeks a treasure must not speak; and the like, – i find true in concord, however they might be in cornwall or bretagne. is it otherwise in the newest romance 2 i read the bride of lammermoor. sir william ashton is a mask for a vulgar temptation, ravenswood castle a fine name for proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only a bunyan disguise for honest industry. we may all shoot a wild bull that would 32 essay i. toss the good and beautiful, by fighting down the unjust and sensual. lucy ashton is another name for fidelity, which is always beautiful and always liable to calamity in this world. * but along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, another history goes daily forward, – that of the external world,—in which he is not less strictly implicated. he is the compend of time ; he is also the correlative of nature. his power consists in the multitude of his affinities, in the fact that his life is intertwined with the whole chain of organic and inorganic being. in old rome the public roads beginning at the forum proceeded north, south, east, west, to the centre of every province of the empire, making each market-town of persia, spain, and britain pervious to the soldiers of the capital : so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. a man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. his faculties refer to natures out of him, and predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose air. he cannot live without a world. put napoleon in an island prison, let his faculties find no men to act on, no alps to climb, no stake to history. 33 play for, and he would beat the air and appear stupid. transport him to large countries, dense population, complex interests, and antagonist power, and you shall see that the man napoleon, bounded, that is, by such a profile and outline, is not the virtual napoleon. this is but talbot's shadow; “his substance is not here : for what you see is but the smallest part and least proportion of humanity; but were the whole frame here, it is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, your roof were not sufficient to contain it.” henry vi. columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. newton and laplace need myriads of ages and thickstrewn celestial areas. one may say a gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the nature of newton’s mind. not less does the brain of davy or of gay-lussac, from childhood exploring the affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of organization. does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light 2 the ear of handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound 2 do not the constructive fingers of watt, fulton, whittemore, arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and temperable texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and wood do not the lovely attributes of the maiden child predict the refinements and decorations of civil society 2 here also we are reminded of the action 3 34 essay i. of man on man. a mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day. who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm * no man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for the first time. i will not now go behind the general statement to explore the reason of this correspondency. let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is one, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written. thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures for each pupil. he, too, shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. he shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. history no longer shall be a dull book. it shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. you shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. you shall make me feel what periods you have lived. a man shall be the temple of fame. he shall walk, as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences; —his history. 35 own form and features by their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. i shall find in him the foreworld ; in his childhood the age of gold ; the apples of knowledge ; the argonautic expedition; the calling of abraham ; the building of the temple; the advent of christ ; dark ages; the revival of letters ; the reformation ; the discovery of new lands; the opening of new sciences, and new regions in man. he shall be the priest of pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing of the morning stars and all the recorded benefits of heaven and earth. is there somewhat overweening in this claim : then i reject all i have written, for what is the use of pretending to know what we know not but it is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other. i hold our actual knowledge very cheap. hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. what do i know sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life as old as the caucasian man, – perhaps older, — these creatures have kept their counsel beside him, and there is no record of any word or sign that has passed from one to the other. what connection do the books show between the fifty or sixty chemical elements, and the historical eras p nay, what does history yet record of the metaphysical 36 essay i. annals of man 2 what light does it shed on those mysteries which we hide under the names death and immortality ? yet every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. i am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is. how many times we must say rome, and paris, and constantinople ! what does rome know of rat and lizard 2 what are olympiads and consulates to these neighbouring systems of being 2 nay, what food or experience or succour have they for the esquimaux seal-hunter, for the kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter * broader and deeper we must write our annals, — from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, — if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. the idiot, the indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. self-r e lian ce. “ne te quaesiveris extra.” “man is his own star; and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man, commands all light, all influence, all fate; nothing to him falls early or too late. our acts our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still.” epilogue to beaumont and fletcher's honest man's fortuna cast the bantling on the rocks, suckle him with the she-wolf's teat wintered with the hawk and fox, power and speed be hands and feet essay ii. s e l f-r e l i a n c e. -ºi read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. the soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. the sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, – that is genius. speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the last judgment. familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to moses, plato, and milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. a man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of 40 essay ii. the firmament of bards and sages. yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. in every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts : they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. they teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. there is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that initation is suicide ; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion ; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. the power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. this sculpture in the memory is not without prečstablished harmony. the eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. self-reliance. 41 we but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. it may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but god will not have his work made manifest by cowards. a man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best ; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. it is a de2 liverance which does not deliver. in the attempt his genius deserts him ; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. and we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the almighty effort, and advancing on chaos and the dark. what pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even 42 essay ii. brutes | that divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. infancy conforms to nobody : all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. so god has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. it seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. the nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. a boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse ; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. he cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests : self-reliance. 43 he gives an independent, genuine verdict. you must court him : he does not court you. but the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. as soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. there is no lethe for this. ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. he would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. these are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. the virtue in most request is conformity. self-reliance is its aversion. it loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. he who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore 44 essay ii. if it be goodness. nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. i remember an answer which when quite young i was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. on my saying, what have i to do with the sacredness of traditions, if i live wholly from within my friend suggested, – “but these impulses may be from below, not from above.” i replied, “they do not seem to me to be such ; but if i am the devil's child, i will live then from the devil.” no law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this ; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. a man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. i am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. i ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. if malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass 2 if an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of abolition, and comes to me with his last news from barbadoes, why should i not say to him, “go love thy infant; love thy self-reliance. 45 wood-chopper : be good-natured and modest: have that grace ; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. thy love afar is spite at home.” rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. the doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. i shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. i would write on the lintels of the door-post, whim. i hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. expect me not to show cause why i seek or why i exclude company. then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. are they my poor 2 i tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that i grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, i give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom i do not belong. there is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity i am bought and sold ; for them i will go to prison, if need be ; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand ; alms to sots; and the thousandfold relief societies;– though i confess with shame 46 essay ii. i sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by i shall have the manhood to withold. virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. there is the man and his virtues. men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, – as invalids and the insane pay a high board. their virtues are penances. i do not wish to expiate, but to live. my life is for itself and not for a spectacle. i much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. i wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. i ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. i know that for myself it makes no difference whether i do or for bear those actions which are reckoned excellent. i cannot consent to pay for a privilege where i have intrinsic right. few and mean as my gifts may be, i actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. what i must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. this rule, equally arduous in actual self-reliance. 47 and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. it is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. it is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. the objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. it loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. if you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, – under all these screens i have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. and, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. but do your work, and i shall know you. do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. a man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. if i know your sect, i anticipate your argument. i hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. do i not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word * do i not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds 48 essay ii. of the institution, he will do no such thing? do i not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,-the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? he is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. this conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. their every truth is not quite true. their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prisonuniform of the party to which we adhere. we come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. there is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; i mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. the muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. for nonconformity the world whips you with its * self-reliance. 49 displeasure. and therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. the by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the fricnd's parlour. if this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance ; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. it is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. but when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. the other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. but why should you keep your head over your shoulder why drag about this corpse of your • 4 50 essay ii. memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place suppose you should contradict yourself; what then it seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. in your metaphysics you have denied personality to the deity : yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe god with shape and color. leave your theory, as joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. with consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. he may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. —“ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.” – is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood pythagoras was misunderstood, and socrates, and jesus, and luther, and copernicus, and galileo, and newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. to be great is to be misunderstood. i suppose no man can violate his nature. all the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his beself-reliance. 51 ing, as the inequalities of andes and himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. a character is like an acrostic or alexandrian stanza;-read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. in this pleasing, contrite wood-life which god allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, i cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though i mean it not, and see it not. my book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. the swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. we pass for what we are. character teaches above our wills. men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every imoment. there will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. for of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. these varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. one tendency unites them all. the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. see the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain 52 essay ii. your other genuine actions. your conformity explains nothing. act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. greatness appeals to the future. if i can be firm enough today to do right, and scorn eyes, i must have done so much right before as to defend me now. be it how it will, do right now. always scorn appearances, and you always may. the force of character is cumulative. all the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. what makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination ? the consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. they shed an united light on the advancing actor. he is attended as by a visible escort of angels. that is it which throws thunder into chatham's voice, and dignity into washington's port, and america into adams's eye. honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. it is always ancient virtue. we worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. we love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. i hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. let the words begazetted and ridiculous henceforward. instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the sparself-reliance. 53 tan fife. let us never bow and apologize more. a great man is coming to eat at my house. i do not wish to please him ; i wish that he should wish to please me. i will stand here for humanity, and though i would make it kind, i would make it true. let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible thinker and actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. where he is, there is nature. he measures you, and all men, and all events. ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. the man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. every true man is a cause, a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design ; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. a man caesar is born, and for ages after we have a roman empire. christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man ; as, monachism, of the hermit antony; the reformation, of luther ; 54 essay ii. ! quakerism, of fox; methodism, of wesley; abolition, of clarkson. scipio, milton called “the height of rome’”; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. but the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. to him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, “who are you, sir p’ yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. the picture waits for my verdict : it is not to command me, but i am to settle its claims to praise. that popular ſable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. self-reliance. 55 our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. in history, our imagination plays us false. kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private john and edward in a small house and common day’s work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. why all this deference to alfred, and scanderbeg, and gustavus * suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue as great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. when private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. the world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. it has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. the joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. the magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. who is the trustee what is the aboriginal self, 56 essay ii. on which a universal reliance may be grounded ? what is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? the inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call spontaneity or instinct. we denote this primary wisdom as intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. in that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. for, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. we first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. here is the fountain of action and of thought. here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. we lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. when we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. if we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy self-reliance. 57 is at fault. its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. he may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. my wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily ; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. they fancy that i choose to see this or that thing. but perception is not whimsical, but fatal. if i see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. for my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. the relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. it must be that when god speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things ; should fill the world with his voice ; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought ; and new date and new create the whole. whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, -means, teachers, 58 essay ii. texts, temples fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. all things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. all things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. if, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of god, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion ? is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being whence, then, this worship of the past the centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night ; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “i think,’ ‘i am,” but quotes some saint or sage. he is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. these roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are ; they exist with god to-day. there is no time to them. there is simply the rose; it is perfect in self-reliance. 59 every moment of its existence. before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more ; in the leafless root there is no less. its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. but man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on titpoe to foresee the future. he cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. this should be plain enough. yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear god himself, unless he speak the phraseology of i know not what david, or jeremiah, or paul. we shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. we are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, – painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go ; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. if we live truly, we shall see truly. it is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. when we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as 60 essay ii. old rubbish. when a man lives with god, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. and now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said ; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. that thought, by what i can now nearest approach to say it, is this. when good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name ; – the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. it shall exclude example and experience. you take the way from man, not to man. all persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. fear and hope are alike beneath it. there is somewhat low even in hope. in the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. the soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of truth and right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. vast spaces of nature, the atlantic ocean, the south sea, –long intervals of time, years, centuries,—are of no account. this which i think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death. self-reliance. 6] life only avails, not the having lived. power ceases in the instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. this one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes ; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves jesus and judas equally aside. why, then, do we prate of self-reliance 2 inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent. to talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. who has more obedience than i masters me, though he should not raise his finger. round him i must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. we fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. we do not yet see that virtue is height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. this is the ultimate fact which we so quickly teach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed one. self-existence is the atribute of the supreme cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. all things real are so by so much 62 essay ii. virtue as they contain. commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. i see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. power is in nature the essential measure of right. nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. the genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore selfrelying soul. thus all concentrates: let us not rove ; let us sit at home with the cause. let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for god is here within. let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. but now we are a mob. man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. we must go alone. i like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. how far off, how cool, how self-reliance. 63 chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary 1 so let us always sit. why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood 2 all men have my blood, and i have all men’s. not for that will i adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. but your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. at times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, “come out unto us.” but keep thy state ; come not into their confusion. the power men possess to annoy me, i give them by a weak curiosity. no man can come near me but through my act. “what we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.” if we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake thor and woden, courage and constancy, in our saxon breasts. this is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. check this lying hospitality and lying affection. live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. say to them, o father, o mother, o 64 essay ii. wife, o brother, o friend, i have lived with you after appearances hitherto. henceforward i am the truth's. be it known unto you that henceforward i obey no law less than the eternal law. i will have no covenants but proximities. i shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, – but these relations i must fill after a new and unprecedented way. i appeal from your customs. i must be myself. i cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. if you can love me for what i am, we shall be the happier. if you cannot, i will still seek to deserve that you should. i will not hide my tastes or aversions. i will so trust that what is deep is holy, that i will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. if you are noble, i will love you ; if you are not, i will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. if you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; i will seek my own. i do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. it is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. does this sound harsh to-day you will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. —but so you may give these friends pain. yes, but i cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. self-reliance. 65 besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth ; then will they justify me, and do the same thing. the populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. but the law of consciousness abides. there are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. you may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflea way. consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog ; whether any of these can upbraid you. but i may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. i have my own stern claims and perfect circle. it denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. but if i can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. if any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. and truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. high be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others' 5 66 essay ii. if any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. the sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. we are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. our age yields no great and perfect persons. we want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. we are parlour soldiers. we shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. if our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. if the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. if the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of boston or new york, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. a sturdy lad from new hampshire or vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to conself-reliance, 67 gress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. he walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. he has not one chance, but a hundred chances. let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history. it is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion ; in their education ; in their pursuits; their modes of living ; their association ; in their property; in their speculative vlews. 1. in what prayers do men allow themselves | that which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign 68 essay ii. virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. prayer that craves a particular commodity, any thing less than all good, -is vicious. prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. it is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. it is the spirit of god pronouncing his works good. but prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. it supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. as soon as the man is at one with god, he will not beg. he will then see prayer in all action. the prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. caratach, in fletcher's bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god audate, replies, – “his hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; our valors are our best gods.” another sort of false prayers are our regrets. discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. our sympathy is just as base. we come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough elecself-reliance. 69 tric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. the secret of fortune is joy in our hands. welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. for him all doors are flung wide : him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. we solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. the gods love him because men hated him. “to the persevering mortal,” said zoroaster, “the blessed immortals are swift.” as men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. they say with those foolish israelites, ‘let not god speak to us, lest we die. speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.” everywhere i am hindered of meeting god in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother’s brother’s god. every new mind is a new classification. if it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a locke, a lavoisier, a hutton, a bentham, a fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. in proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. but chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, 70 essay ii, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the highest. such is calvinism, quakerism, swedenborgism. the pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. it will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. but in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe ; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. they cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, – how you can see; “it must be somehow that you stole the light from us.” they do not yet perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. let them chirp awhile and call it their own. if they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning. 2. it is for want of self-culture that the superstition of travelling, whose idols are italy, england, self-reliance. 71 egypt, retains its fascination for all educated americans. they who made england, italy, or greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. in manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. the soul is no traveller ; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. i have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. he who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. in thebes, in palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. he carries ruins to ruins. travelling is a fool’s paradise. our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. at home i dream that at naples, at rome, i can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. i pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the 72 essay ii. sea, and at last wake up in naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that i fled from. i seek the vatican, and the palaces. i affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but i am not intoxicated. my giant goes with me wherever i go. 3. but the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. the intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. we imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind our houses are built with foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the past and the distant. the soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. it was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. it was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. and why need we copy the doric or the gothic model p beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the american artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will self-reliance. 73 find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. insist on yourself; never imitate. your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation ; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. that which each can do best, none but his maker can teach him. no man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. where is the master who could have taught shakspeare where is the master who could have instructed franklin, or washington, or bacon, or newton 2 every great man is a unique. the scipionism of scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. shakspeare will never be made by the study of shakspeare. do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. there is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of phidias, or trowel of the egyptians, or the pen of moses, or dante, but different from all these. not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the foreworld again. 74 essay ii. 4. as our religion, our education, our art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. all men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. society never advances. it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. it undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but this change is not amelioration. for every thing that is given, something is taken. society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. what a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking american, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked new zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under but compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. if the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. the civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. he is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. he has a fine geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. a greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when self-reliance, 75 he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. the solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. his note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit ; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. for every stoic was a stoic ; but in christendom where is the christian * there is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk no greater men are now than ever were. a singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than plutarch’s heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. not in time is the race progressive. phocion, socrates, anaxagoras, diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. he who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. the arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. the 76 essay ii. harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. hudson and behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to astonish parry and franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. galileo, with an operaglass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. columbus found the new world in an undecked boat. it is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. the great genius returns to essential man. we reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet napoleon conquered europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. the emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says las casas, “without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself.” society is a wave. the wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. the same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. its unity is only phenomenal. the persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. self-reliance. 77 and so the reliance on property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. they measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. but a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; then he feels that it is not having ; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. but that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. “thy lot or portion of life,” said the caliph ali, “is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. the political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, the delegation from essex . the º 78 essay ii. democrats from new hampshire | the whigs of maine ! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. in like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. not so, o friends ! will the god deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. it is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that i see him to be strong and to prevail. he is weaker by every recruit to his banner. is not a man better than a town ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. he who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. so use all that is called fortune. most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. but do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with cause and effect, the chancellors of god. in the will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. a political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, self-reliance. 79 or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. do not believe it. nothing can bring you peace but yourself. nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. c o m p e n s a ti o n. the wings of time are black and white, pied with morning and with night. mountain tall and ocean deep trembling balance duly keep. in changing moon, in tidal wave, glows the feud of want and have. gauge of more and less through space electric star and pencil plays. the lonely earth amid the balls that hurry through the eternal halls, a makeweight flying to the void, supplemental asteroid, or compensatory spark, shoots across the neutral dark. man's the elm, and wealth the vine; stanch and strong the tendrils twine: though the frail ringlets thee deceive, none from its stock that vine can reave. fear not, then, thou child infirm, there's no god dare wrong a worm. laurel crowns cleave to deserts, and power to him who power exerts; hast not thy share on winged feet, lo it rushes thee to meet; and all that nature made thy own, floating in air or pent in stone, will rive the hills and swim the sea, and, like thy shadow, follow thee. essay iii. c o m p e n s a t i o n . ever since i was a boy, i have wished to write a discourse on compensation : for it seemed to me when very young, that on this subject life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught. the documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay. always before me, even in sleep ; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling-house, greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of character, the nature and endowment of all men. it seemed to me, also, that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with that which he knows was always and always must be, because it really is now. 84 essay ill. it appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey that would not suffer us to lose our way. i was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church. the preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the last judgment. he assumed, that judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful ; that the good are miserable ; and then urged from reason and from scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. no offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. as far as i could observe, when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark on the sermon. yet what was the import of this teaching 2 what did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life 2 was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised ; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another day, bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne 2 this must be the compensation intended ; for what else 2 is it that they are compensation, 85 to have leave to pray and praise 2 to love and serve men p why, that they can do now. the legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, – “we are to have such a good time as the sinners have now ’; — or, to push it to its extreme import, — ‘you sin now ; we shall sin by and by ; we would sin now, if we could ; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.” the fallacy lay in the immense concession, that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. the blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will : and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood. i find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they treat the related topics. i think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. but men are better than this theology. their daily life gives it the lie. every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. for men are wiser than they know. s6 essay iii. that which they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. if a man dogmatize in a mixed company on providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement. i shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts that indicate the path of the law of compensation ; happy beyond my expectation, if i shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in heat and cold ; in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male and female ; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals ; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound ; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity ; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle ; the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. if the south attracts, the north repels. to empty here, you must condense there. an inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole ; as, spirit, matter; man, woman ; odd, even ; subjective, obcompensation. s7 jective; in, out ; upper, under ; motion, rest 3 yea, nay. whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. the entire system of things gets represented in every particle. there is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. the reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. for example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. a surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature. if the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. the theory of the mechanic forces is another example. what we gain in power is lost in time; and the converse. the periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another instance. the influences of climate and soil in political history are another. the cold climate invigorates. the barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. the same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. every faculty which is a receiver of ss essay iii. pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. it is to answer for its moderation with its life. for every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. for every thing you have missed, you have gained something else ; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. if riches increase, they are increased that use them. if the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest ; swells the estate, but kills the owner. nature hates monopolies and exceptions. the waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. there is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a pad citizen, – a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him ; –nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true. the farmer imagines power and place are fine things. but the president has paid dear for his white house. it has commonly cost him all his compensation. 89 peace, and the best of his manly attributes. to preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius * neither has this an immunity. he who by force of will or of thought is great, and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. with every influx of light comes new danger. has he light 2 he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. he must hate father and mother, wife and child. has he all that the world loves and admires and covets 2 — he must cast behind him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a byword and a hissing. this law writes the laws of cities and nations. it is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. things refuse to be mismanaged long. res nolunt diu male administrari. though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. if the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. if you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. if you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. if the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in, . if the government is a terrific 90 essay iii, democracy, the pressure is resisted by an overcharge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer flame. the true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to establish themselves with great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. under all governments the influence of character remains the same, – in turkey and in new england about alike. under the primeval despots of egypt, history honestly confesses that man must have been as free as culture could make him. these appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in every one of its particles every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. each one is an entire emblem of human life ; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. and each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny. ~ compensation. 91 the world globes itself in a drop of dew. the microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity, -all find room to consist in the small creature. so do we put our life into every act. the true doctrine of omnipresence is, that god reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. the value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. if the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion ; if the force, so the limitation. thus is the universe alive. all things are moral. that soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. we feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. “it is in the world, and the world was made by it.” justice is not postponed. a perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. oi kūgot alès del stºrtirroval,—the dice of god are always loaded. the world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. what we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. if you 92 essay iii. see smoke, there must be fire. if you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature ; and secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. men call the circumstance the retribution. the causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. the retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct until after many years. the specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they accompany it. crime and punishment grow out of one stem. punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preéxists in the means, the fruit in the seed. whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example, – to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. the ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem,-how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the compensation. 93 sensual bright, &c., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless ; to get a one end, without an other end. the soul says, eat ; the body would feast. the soul says, the man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul; the body would join the flesh only. the soul says, have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue; the body would have the power over things to its own ends. the soul strives amain to live and work through all things. it would be the only fact. all things shall be added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. the particular man aims to be somebody; to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may ride ; to dress, that he may be dressed; to eat, that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. they think that to be great is to possess one side of nature, — the sweet, without the other side, – the bitter. this dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest success. the parted water reunites behind our hand. pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon as we 94 essay iii, seek to separate them from the whole. we can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. “drive out nature with a fork, she comes running back.” life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know ; that they do not touch him ; — but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. if he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part. if he has escaped them in form, and in the appearance, it is because he has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much death. so signal is the failure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried, – since to try it is to be mad, but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to see god whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; and thinks he can cut off that which he would have, from that which he would not have. “how secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, o thou only great god, sprinkling with an compensation. 95 unwearied providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires ’’ “ the human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. it finds a tongue in literature unawares. thus the greeks called jupiter, supreme mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying up the hands of so bad a god. he is made as helpless as a king of england. prometheus knows one secret which jove must bargain for; minerva, another. he cannot get his own thunders; minerva keeps the key of them. “of all the gods, i only know the keys that ope the solid doors within whose vaults his thunders sleep.” a plain confession of the in-working of the all, and of its moral aim. the indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented and get any currency which was not moral. aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though tithonus is immortal, he is old. achilles is not quite invulnerable ; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which thetis held him. siegfried, in the nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon’s blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. * st. augustine, confessions, b.i. 96 essay iii. and so it must be. there is a crack in every thing god has made. it would seem, there is always this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares, even into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake itself free of the old laws, – this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that in nature nothing can be given, all things are sold. this is that ancient doctrine of nemesis, who keeps watch in the universe, and lets no offence go unchastised. the furies, they said, are attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress his path, they would punish him. the poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which ajax gave hector dragged the trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of achilles; and the sword which hector gave ajax was that on whose point ajax fell. they recorded, that when the thasians erected a statue to theagenes, a victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by night, and endeavoured to throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal, and was crushed to death beneath its fall. this voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. it came from thought above the will of the writer. that is the best part of each writer, which has nothcompensation. 97 ing private in it; that which he does not know ; that which flowed out of his constitution, and not from his too active invention ; that which in the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many, you would abstract as the spirit of them all. phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early hellenic world, that i would know. the name and circumstance of phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass when we come to the highest criticism. we are to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of phidias, of dante, of shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought. still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth, without qualification. proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. that which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction. and this law of laws which the pulpit, the senate, and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of birds and flies. 7 98 essay iii. all things are double, one against another. — tit for tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a tooth ; blood for blood ; measure for measure ; love for love. — give and it shall be given you. — he that watereth shall be watered himself. —what will you have quoth god; pay for it and take it. — nothing venture, nothing have. — thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. – who doth not work shall not eat. — harm watch, harm catch. — curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. — if you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. — bad counsel confounds the adviser. — the devil is an ass. it is thus written, because it is thus in life. our action is overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of nature. we aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. a man cannot speak but he judges himself. with his will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. every opinion reacts on him who utters it. it is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. or, rather, it is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well compensation. 99 thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the boat. you cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. “no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him,” said burke. the exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. the exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. if you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. the senses would make things of all persons; of women, of children, of the poor. the vulgar proverb, “i will get it from his purse or get it from his skin,” is sound philosophy. all infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. they are punished by fear. whilst i stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, i have no displeasure in meeting him. we meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. but as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong ; he shrinks from me as far as i have shrunk from him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. 100 essay iii. all the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all unjust accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. fear is an instructer of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. one thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. he is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. that obscene bird is not there for nothing. he indicates great wrongs which must be revised. of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. the terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. experienced men of the world know very well that it is best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. the borrower runs in his own debt. has a man gained any thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none 2 has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbour's wares, compensation. 101 or horses, or money there arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on the other ; that is, of superiority and inferiority. the transaction remains in the memory of himself and his neighbour ; and every new trans, action alters, according to its nature, their relation to each other. he may soon come to see that he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his neighbour's coach, and that “the highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it.” a wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that it is the part of prudence to face every claimant, and pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. always pay ; for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. you must pay at last your own debt. if you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. benefit is the end of nature. but for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. he is great who confers the most benefits. he is base — and that is the one base thing in the universe — to receive favors and rendër none. " in the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. but the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, 102 essay iii. deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. beware of too much good staying in your hand. it will fast corrupt and worm worms. pay it away quickly in some sort. labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. what we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. it is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation ; in the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. so do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. but because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. the thief steals from himself. the swindler swindles himself. for the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. these signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. these ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. the cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. the law of compensation. 103 nature is, do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power. human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe. the absolute balance of give and take, the doctrine that every thing has its price, — and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing without its price, — is not less sublime in the columns of a leger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. i cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state, – do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination. the league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. the beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. he finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. commit a crime, and the 104 essay iii. earth is made of glass. commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. you cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. some damning circumstance always transpires. the laws and substances of nature — water, snow, wind, gravitation—become penalties to the thief. on the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. love, and you shall be loved. all love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. the good man has absolute good, which like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm ; but as the royal armies sent against napoleon, when he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors : — * winds blow and waters roll strength to the brave, and power and deity, yet in themselves are nothing.” the good are befriended even by weakness and defect. as no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. the stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed compensation. 105 his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. as no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society 2 thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help ; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. our strength grows out of our weakness. the indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. a great man is always willing to be little. whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. when he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood ; he has gained facts ; learns his ignorance ; is cured of the insanity of conceit ; has got moderation and real skill. the wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. it is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. the wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo he has passed on invulnerable. blame 106 essay iji is safer than praise. i hate to be defended in a newspaper. as long as all that is said is said against me, i feel a certain assurance of success. but as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, i feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. in general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. as the sandwich | islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist. the same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. bolts and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. but it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. there is a third silent party to all our bargains. the nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. if you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. put god in your debt. every stroke shall be repaid. the longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. compensation. 107 the history of persecution is a history of endeavours to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. it makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. a mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. the mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. its fit hour of activity is night. its actions are insane like its whole constitution. it persecutes ‘a principle ; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. it resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. the inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. the martyr cannot be dishonored. every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every prison, a more illustrious abode ; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the martyrs are justified. thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. the man is all. every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. every advantage has its 108 essay iii. tax. i learn to be content. but the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. the thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, – what boots it to do well ? there is one event to good and evil; if i gain any good, i must pay for it; if i lose any good, i gain some other ; all actions are indifferent. there is a deeper ſact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. the soul is not a compensation, but a life. the soul is. under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real being. essence, or god, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself. nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. vice is the absence or departure of the same. nothing, falsehood, may indeed stand as the great night or shade, on which, as a background, the living universe paints itself forth ; but no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot work; for it is not. it cannot work any good; it cannot work any harm. it is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be. we feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. there is no stuncompensation. 109 ning confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. has he therefore outwitted the law inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far deceases from nature. in some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding also ; but should we not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. there is no penalty to virtue ; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. in a virtuous action, i properly am ; in a virtuous act, i add to the world; i plant into deserts conquered from chaos and nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. there can be no excess to love ; none to knowledge ; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. the soul refuses limits, and always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism. his life is a progress, and not a station. his instinct is trust. our instinct uses “more ” and “less” in application to man, of the presence of the soul, and not of its absence ; the brave man is greater than the coward ; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man, and not less, than the fool and knave. there is no tax on the good of virtue; for that is the incoming of god himself, or absolute 110 essay iii. existence, without any comparative. material good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. but all the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. i no longer wish to meet a good i do not earn, for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens. i do not wish more external goods, – neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. the gain is apparent; the tax is certain. but there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. herein i rejoice with a serene eternal peace. i contract the boundaries of possible mischief. i learn the wisdom of st. bernard, – “nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that i sustain i carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault.” in the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of condition. the radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of more and less. how can less not feel the pain ; how not feel indignation or malevolence towards more ? look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. he almost shuns their eye; he fears they will upbraid god. compensation. 111 what should they do it seems a great injustice. but see the facts nearly, and these mountainous inequalities vanish. love reduces them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. the heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of his and jmine ceases. his is mine. i am my brother, and my brother is me. if i feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbours, i can yet love; i can still receive ; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. thereby i make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate i so admired and envied is my own. it is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. jesus and shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love i conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. his virtue, – is not that mine his wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. such, also, is the natural history of calamity. the changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, be-, cause it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. in proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in 112 essay iii. some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. then there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. and such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. but to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not coöperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. we cannot part with our friends. we cannot let our angels go. we do not see that they only go out, that archangels may come in. we are idolaters of the old. we do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper etermity and omnipresence. we do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. we linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. we cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. but we sit and weep in vain. the voice of the almighty saith, ‘up and onward for evermore l’ we cannot stay amid the ruins. neither will we compensation. 113 rely on the new ; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards. and yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. a fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. but the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. the death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. it permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny gardenflower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men. spiritual law s. the living heaven thy prayers respect, house at once and architect, quarrying man's rejected hours, builds therewith eternal towers; sole and self-commanded works, fears not undermining days, grows by decays, and, by the famous might that lurks in reaction and recoil, makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; forging, through swart arms of offence, the silver seat of innocence. essay iv. s p i r it u a l l a w. s. –0when the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory. the river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, — however neglected in the passing, – have a grace in the past. even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. the soul will not know either deformity or pain. if, in the hours of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we should say, that we had never made a sacrifice. in these hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken from us that seems much. all 118 essay iv. loss, all pain, is particular ; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. no man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. allow for exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. for it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered ; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. the intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his. no man need be perplexed in his speculations. let him do and say what strictly belongs to him, and, though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. these never presented a practical difficulty to any man, never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. these are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. a simple mind will not know these enemies. it is quite another thing that he should be able to give account of his faith, and expound to another the theory of his self-union and freedom. this requires rare giſts. yet, withspiritual laws. 119 out this self-knowledge, there may be a sylvan strength and integrity in that which he is. “a few strong instincts and a few plain rules” suffice us. my will never gave the images in my mind the rank they now take. the regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the latin school. what we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. we form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. and education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it. in like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our will. people represent virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon their attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed, when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better who strives with temptation. but there is no merit in the matter. either god is there, or he is not there. we love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. the less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him. timoleon’s victories are the best victories; which ran and flowed like homer's verses, plutarch said. when we see a soul 120 essay iv. whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank god that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel, and say, “crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his native devils.” not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all practical life. there is less intention in history than we ascribe to it. we im. pute deep-laid, far-sighted plans to caesar and napoleon; but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. men of an extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, ‘not unto us, not unto us.” according to the faith of their times, they have built altars to fortune, or to destiny, or to st. julian. their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel ; and the wonders of which they were the visible conductors seemed to the eye their deed. did the wires generate the galvanism it is even true that there was less in them on which they could reflect, than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow. that which externally seemed will and immovableness was willingness and self-annihilation. could shakspeare give a theory of shakspeare 2 could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to others any insight into his methods if he could communicate that secret, it would instantly spiritual laws. 121 lose its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and the vital energy the power to stand and to go. the lesson is forcibly taught by these observations, that our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it ; that the world might be a happier place than it is ; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. we interfere with the optimism of nature; for, whenever we get this vantageground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves. the face of external nature teaches the same lesson. nature will not have us fret and fume. she does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. when we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, ‘so hot my little sir.” we are full of mechanical actions. we must needs intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. our sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. we pain .* 122 essay iv. ourselves to please nobody. there are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. why should all virtue work in one and the same way ? why should all give dollars it is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. we have not dollars; merchants have ; let them give them. farmers will give corn ; poets will sing; women will sew ; laborers will lend a hand ; the children will bring flowers. and why drag this dead weight of a sunday-school over the whole christendom it is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teacn ; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will. if we look wider, things are all alike ; laws, and letters, and creeds, and modes of living, seem a travestie of truth. our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which the romans built over hill and dale, and which are superseded by the discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. it is a chinese wall which any nimble tartar can leap over. it is a standing army, not so good as a peace. it is a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answer just as well. spiritual laws. 123 let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. when the fruit is ripe, it falls. when the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. the circuit of the waters is mere falling. the walking of man and all animals is a falling forward. all our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing, and so forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever. the simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. he who sees moral nature out and out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. the simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. the last analysis can no wise be made. we judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. the wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our fluid consciousness. we pass in the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. one sees very well how pyrrhonism grew up. every man sees that he is that middle point, whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. he is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. he hears and feels what you say 124 essay iv. of the seraphim, and of the tin-pedler. there is no permanent wise man, except in the figment of the stoics." we side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the robber ; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again, not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul. a little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events ; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless ; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. belief and love, — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. o my brothers, god exists. there is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. it has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. the whole course of things goes to teach us faith. we need only obey. there is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes spiritual laws. 125 of action, and of entertainment * certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. for you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. if we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun. i say, do not choose ; but that is a figure of speech by which i would distinguish what is commonly called choice among men, and which is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole act of the man. but that which i call right or goodness is the choice of my constitution ; and that which i call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution ; and the action which i in all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties. we must hold a man ame126 essay iv. nable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. it is not an excuse any longer for his deeds, that they are the custom of his trade. what business has he with an evil trade 2 has he not a calling in his character. each man has his own vocation. the talent is the call. there is one direction in which all space is open to him. he has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. he is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one ; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. this talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. he inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. he has no rival. for the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. his ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. the height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. the pretence that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward “signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanaticism, and betrays obtusespiritual laws. 127 ness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein. by doing his work, he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. by doing his own work, he unfolds himself. it is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. the common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is lost. until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. he must find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to their eyes. if the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character make it liberal. whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims. we like only such actions as have already long 128 essay iv. had the praise of men, and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. we think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. what we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. in our estimates, let us take a lesson from kings. the parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. to make habitually a new estimate, – that is elevation. what a man does, that he has. what has he to do with hope or fear 2 in himself is his might. let him regard no good as solid, but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. the goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness. he may have his own. a man's genius, the spiritual laws. 129 quality that differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe. a man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. he takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. he is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. they are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. what attracts my attention shall have it, as i will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom i give no regard. it is enough that these particulars speak to me. a few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, nave an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. they relate to your gift. let them have their weight, and do 9 130 essay iv. not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. what your heart thinks great is great. the soul's emphasis is always right. over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius, the man has the highest right. everywhere he may take what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor can he take any thing else, though all doors were open, nor can all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. it is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. it will tell itself. that mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us. to the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. all the secrets of that state of mind he can compel. this is a law which statesmen use in practice. all the terrors of the french republic, which held austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. but napoleon sent to vienna m. de narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. m. de narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet. nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. yet a man may come to find that the spiritual laws. 131 strongest of defences and of ties, – that he has been understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it the most inconvenient of bonds. if a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes. if you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to say, i will pour it only into this or that ; – it will find its level in all. men feel and act the consequences of your doctrine, without being able to show how they follow. show us an arc of the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. we are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. a man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, but time and like-minded men will find them. plato had a secret doctrine, had he what secret can he conceal from the eyes of bacon 2 of montaigne 2 of kant 2 therefore, aristotle said of his works, “they are published and not published.” no man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. a chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser, — the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. god screens us evermore from 132 essay iv. premature ideas. our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened ; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. the world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. “earth fills her lap with splendors” not her own. the vale of tempe, tivoli, and rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. there are as good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting ! people are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the frees; as it is not observed that the keepers of roman galleries, or the valets of painters, have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are wiser men than others. there are graces in the demeanour of a polished and noble person, which are lost upon the eye of a churl. these are like the stars whose light has not yet reached us. he may see what he maketh. our dreams are the sequel of our waking knowledge. the visions of the night bear some proportion to the visions of the day. hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. we see our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. on the alps, spiritual laws. 133 the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific. “my children,” said an old man to his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, “my children, you will never see any thing worse than yourselves.” as in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of the world, every man sees himself in colossal, without knowing that it is himself. the good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. every quality of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of his heart in some one. he is like a quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, west, north, or south ; or, an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. and why not ? he cleaves to one person, and avoids another, according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking himself in his associates, and moreover in his trade, and habits, and gestures, and meats, and drinks; and comes at last to be faithfully represented by every view you take of his circumstances. he may read what he writes. what can we see or acquire, but what we are 2 you have observed a skilful man reading virgil. well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand persons. take the book into your two hands, and read your eyes out; you will never find what i find. if any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or 134 essay 1 w. * delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is englished, as if it were imprisoned in the pelews’ tongue. it is with a good book as it is with good company. introduce a base person among gentlemen ; it is all to no purpose ; he is not their fellow. every society protects itself. the company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body is in the room. what avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which adjust the relation of all persons to each other, by the mathematical measure of their havings and beings 2 gertrude is enamoured of guy ; how high, how aristocratic, how roman his mien and manners' to live with him were life indeed, and no purchase is too great ; and heaven and earth are moved to that end. well, gertrude has guy ; but what now avails how high, how aristocratic, how roman his mien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, in the theatre, and in the billiard-room, and she has no aims, no conversation, that can enchant her graceful lord he shall have his own society. we can love nothing but nature. the most wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions, really avail very little with us ; but nearness or likeness of nature, — how beautiful is the ease of its victory ! persons approach us famous for their beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their spiritual laws. 135 charms and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the company, with very imperfect result. to be sure, it would be ungrateful in us not to praise them loudly. then, when all is done, a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having come ; we are utterly relieved and refreshed ; it is a sort of joyful solitude. we foolishly think in our days of sin, that we must court friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. but only that soul can be my friend which i encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which i do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. the scholar forgets himself, and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the world, to deserve the smile of beauty, and follows some giddy girl, not yet taught by religious passion to know the noble woman with all that is serene, oraci’”, and beautiful in her soul. let him be great, allove shall follow him. nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others’ eyes. 136 essay iv. he may set his own rate. it is a maxim worthy of all acceptation, that a man may have that allowance he takes. take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all men acquiesce. the world must be just. it leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. it will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars. the same reality pervades all teaching. the man may teach by doing, and not otherwise. if he can communicate himself, he can teach, but not by words. he teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. there is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are ; a transfusion takes place ; he is you, and you are he ; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. but your propositions run out of one ear as they ran in at the other. we see it advertised that mr. grand will deliver an oration on the fourth of july, and mr. hand before the mechanics’ association, and we do not go thither, because we know that these gentlemen will not communicate their own character and experience to the comspiritual laws. 137 pany. if we had reason to expect such a confidence, we should go through all inconvenience and opposition. the sick would be carried in litters. but a public oration is an escapade, a noncommittal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man. a like nemesis presides over all intellectual works. we have yet to learn, that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. it must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. the sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken. the effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically measurable by its depth of thought. how much water does it draw 2 if it awaken you to think, if it lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men ; if the pages instruct you not, they will die like flies in the hour. the way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion is, to speak and write sincerely. the argument which has not power to reach my own practice, i may well doubt, will fail to reach yours. but take sidney's maxim : — “look in thy heart, and write.” he that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. that statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. 138 essay iv. the writer who takes his subject from his ear, and not from his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and half the people say, ‘what poetry ! what genius !’ it still needs fuel to make fire. that only profits which is profitable. life alone can impart life ; and though we should burst, we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. there is no luck in literary reputation. they who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears ; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. only those books come down which deserve to last. gilt edges, vellum, and morocco, and presentation-copies to all the libraries, will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date. it must go with all walpole's noble and royal authors to its fate. blackmore, kotzebue, or pollok may endure for a night, but moses and homer stand for ever. there are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand plato : — never enough to pay for an edition of his works ; a yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if god brought them in his hand. “no book,” said bentspiritual laws. 139 ley, “was ever written down by any but itself.” the permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. “do not trouble yourself too much about the light on your statue,” said michel angelo to the young sculptor; “the light of the public square will test its value.” in like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. the great man knew not that he was great. it took a century or two for that fact to appear. what he did, he did because he must ; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. but now, every thing he did, even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called an institution. these are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius of nature; they show the direction of the stream. but the stream is blood ; every drop is alive. truth has not single victories; all things are its organs, – not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. the laws of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health. our philosophy is affirmative, and readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every shadow points to the sun. by a divine necessity, every fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony. } 140 essay iv. human character evermore publishes itself. the most fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character. if you act, you show character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it. you think, because you have spoken nothing when others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. far otherwise; your silence answers very loud. you have no oracle to utter, and your fellowmen have learned that you cannot help them ; for, oracles speak. doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice 2 dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation. truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. faces never lie, it is said. no man need be deceived, who will study the changes of expression. when a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. when he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes asquint. i have heard an experienced counsellor say, that he never feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict. if he does not believe it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his protestaspiritual laws. 141 tions, and will become their unbelief. this is that law whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist was when he made it. that which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often. it was this conviction which swedenborg expressed, when he described a group of persons in the spiritual world endeavouring in vain to articulate a proposition which they did not believe; but they could not, though they twisted and folded their lips even to indignation. a man passes for that he is worth. very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so. if a man know that he can do any thing, — that he can do it better than any one else, – he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. the world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. in every troop of boys that whoop and run in each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and accurately weighed in the course of a few days, and stamped with his right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed, and temper. a stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions: an older boy says to himself, ‘it’s of no use ; we shall find 142 essay iv. him out to-morrow.” “what has he done p’ is the divine question which searches men, and transpierces every false reputation. a ſop may sit in any chair of the world, nor be distinguished for his hour from homer and washington ; but there need never be any doubt concerning the respective ability of human beings. pretension may sit still, but cannot act. pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. pretension never wrote an iliad, nor drove back xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. as much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. all the devils respect virtue. the high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will always instruct and command mankind. never was a sincere word utterly lost. never a magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. a man passes for that he is worth. what he is engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of light. concealment avails him nothing; boasting nothing. there is confession in the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations ; and the grasp of hands. his sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. men know not why they do not trust him; but they do not trust him. his vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in his cheek, pinches the nose, spiritual laws. 143 sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and writes o fool fool! on the forehead of a king. if you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. a man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see. he may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. a broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due knowledge, – all blab. can a cook, a chiffinch, an iachimo be mistaken for zeno or paul ? confucius exclaimed, – “how can a man be concealed ! how can a man be concealed !” on the other hand, the hero fears not, that, if he withhold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. one knows it, — himself, and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace, and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident. virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. it consists in a perpetual. substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety god is described as saying, i am. the lesson which these observations convey is, be, and not seem. let us acquiesce. let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. let us lie low in the lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and great. 144 essay iv. if you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act visit him now. let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee, its lowest organ. or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore ? be a gift and a benediction. shine with real light, and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. common men are apologies for men ; they bow the head, excuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances, because the substance is not. we are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude. we call the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a merchant, or a porter. we adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded on a thought which we have. but real action is in silent moments. the epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk ; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says, “thus hast thou done, but it were better thus.’ and all our after years, like menials, serve and wait on this, and, according to their ability, execute its will. this revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, spiritual laws. 145 reaches through our lifetime. the object of the man, the aim of these moments, is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without obstruction, so that, on what point soever of his doing your eye falls, it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. now he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse; there are no thorough lights: but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not yet at one. why should we make it a point with our false modesty to disparage that man we are, and that form of being assigned to us * a good man is contented. i love and honor epaminondas, but i do not wish to be epaminondas. i hold it more just to love the world of this hour, than the world of his hour. nor can you, if i am true, excite me to the least uneasi'ness by saying, “he acted, and thou sittest still.” i see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. epaminondas, if he was the man i take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. why should we be busybodies and superserviceable action and inaction are alike to the true. one piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and 10 146 essay iv. one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. i desire not to disgrace the soul. the fact that i am here certainly shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. shall i not assume the post 2 • shall i skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty, and imagine my being here impertinent 2 less pertinent than epaminondas or homer being there 2 and that the soul did not know its own needs 2 besides, without any reasoning on the matter, i have no discontent. the good soul nourishes me, and unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day. i will not meanly decline the immensity of good, because i have heard that it has come to others in another shape. besides, why should we be cowed by the name of action ? 't is a trick of the senses, – no more. we know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. the poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing, unless it have an outside badge, — some gentoo diet, or quaker coat, or calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it is somewhat. the rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is nature. to think is to act. let us, if we must have great actions, make our . spiritual laws. 147 own so. all action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. let us seek one peace by fidelity. let me heed my duties. why need i go gadding into the scenes and philosophy of greek and italian history, before i have justified myself to my benefactors how dare i read washington's campaigns, when i have not answered the letters of my own correspondents is not that a just objection to much of our reading 2 it is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbours. it is peeping. byron says of jack bunting, — “he knew not what to say, and so he swore.” i may say it of our preposterous use of books,— he knew not what to do, and so he read. i can think of nothing to fill my time with, and i find the life of brant. it is a very extravagant compliment to pay to brant, or to general schuyler, or to general washington. my time should be as good as their time, – my facts, my net of relations, as good as theirs, or either of theirs. rather let me do my work so well that other idlers, if they choose, may compare my texture with the texture of these and find it identical with the best. this over-estimate of the possibilities of paul and pericles, this under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical nature. bona148 essay iv. parte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player. the poet uses the names of caesar, of tamerlane, of bonduca, of belisarius; the painter uses the conventional story of the virgin mary, of paul, of peter. he does not, therefore, defer to the nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. if the poet write a true drama, then he is caesar, and not the player of caesar; then the selfsame strain of thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, selfsufficing, dauntless, which on the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid and precious in the world, – palaces, gardens, money, navies, kingdoms, – marking its own incomparable worth by the slight it casts on these gauds of men, – these all are his, and by the power of these he rouses the nations. let a man believe in god, and not in names and places and persons. let the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some dolly or joan, go out to service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until, lo suddenly the great soul has xt spiritual laws. 149 enshrined itself in some other form, and done some other deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature. we are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. we know the authentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises. l o w e. “i was as a gem concealed; me my burning ray revealed.” koran. ---_ __. _…：-* ---_**~*=--~~~~ essay w. l o w e . every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys ripens into a new want. nature, uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which shall lose all particular regards in its general light. the introduction to this felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period, and works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives permanence to human society. the natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the blood seems to require, that 154 essay v. in order to portray it in vivid tints, which every youth and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing experience, one must not be too old. the delicious fancies of youth reject the least savour of a mature philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their purple bloom. and, therefore, i know i incur the imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who compose the court and parliament of love. but from these formidable censors i shall appeal to my seniors. for it is to be considered that this passion of which we speak, though it begin with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but makes the aged participators of it, not less than the tender maiden, though in a different and nobler sort. for it is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames. it matters not, therefore, whether we attempt to describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. he who paints it at the first period will lose some of its later, he who paints it at the last, some of its earlier traits. only it is to be hoped that, by patience and the muses' aid, we may attain to that lowe. 155 inward view of the law, which shall describe a truth ever young and beautiful, so central that it shall commend itself to the eye, at whatever angle beholden. and the first condition is, that we must leave a too close and lingering adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope and not in history. for each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured, as the life of man is not, to his imagination. each man sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal. let any man go back to those delicious relations which make the beauty of his life, which have given him sincerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. alas! i know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the remembrances of budding joy, and cover every beloved name. every thing is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. but all is sour, if seen as experience. details are melancholy ; the plan is seemly and noble. in the actual world — the painful kingdom of time and place— dwell care, and canker, and fear. with thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. round it all the muses sing. but grief cleaves to names, and persons, and the partial interests of today and yesterday. the strong bent of nature is seen in the propor156 essay w. tion which this topic of personal relations usurps in the conversation of society. what do we wish to know of any worthy person so much, as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment 2 what books in the circulating libraries circulate 2 how we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature and what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties 2 perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. but we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. we understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. all mankind love a lover. the earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are nature's most winning pictures. it is the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. the rude village boy teases the girls about the schoolhouse door; — but to-day he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child disposing her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him ; and these two little neighbours, that were so close just now, have learned to respect each other's personality. or who can avert his love. 157 eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who go into the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. in the village they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out in this pretty gossip. the girls may have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between them and the good boy the most agreeable, confiding relations, what with their fun and their earnest, about edgar, and jonas, and almira, and who was invited to the party, and who danced at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school would begin, and other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. by and by that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk such as milton deplores as incident to scholars and great men. i have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. but now i almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. for persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treason15s essay w. able to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. for, though the celestial rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of tender age, and although a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison, and putting us quite beside ourselves, we can seldom see after thirty years, yet the remembrance of these visions outlasts all other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the oldest brows. but here is a strange fact ; it may seem to many men, in revising their experience, that they have no fairer page in their life's book than the delicious memory of some passages wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft surpassing the deep attraction of its own truth to a parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. in looking backward, they may find that several things which were not the charm have more reality to this groping memory than the charm itself which embalmed them. but be our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which created all things new ; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art ; which made the face of nature radiant with purple light, the morning and the night varied enchantments ; when a single tone of one voice could make the heart bound, and the most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in the amber of memory; when he became all eye when one was present, love. 159 and all memory when one was gone ; when the youth becomes a watcher of windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage; when no place is too solitary, and none too silent, for him who has richer company and sweeter conversation in his new thoughts, than any old friends, though best and purest, can give him; for the figures, the motions, the words of the beloved object are not like other images written in water, but, as plutarch said, “enamelled in fire,” and make the study of midnight. “thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art, thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.” in the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter, who said of love, – “all other pleasures are not worth its pains”; and when the day was not long enough, but the night, too, must be consumed in keen recollections; when the head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on ; when the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets, mere pictures. 160 essay w. the passion rebuilds the world for the youth. it makes all things alive and significant. nature grows conscious. every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. the notes are almost articulate. the clouds have faces as he looks on them. the trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. yet nature soothes and sympathizes. in the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men. “fountain-heads and pathless groves, places which pale passion loves, moonlight walks, when all the fowls are safely housed, save bats and owls, a midnight bell, a passing groan,— these are the sounds we feed upon.” behold there in the wood the fine madman he is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man ; he walks with arms akimbo ; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that wets his foot. the heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made him love music and verse. it is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other circumstances. love. 161 the like force has the passion over all his nature. it expands the sentiment; it makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward heart. into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to deſy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. in giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. he is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. he does not longer appertain to his family and society; he is somewhat ; he is a person; he is a soul. ' and here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence which is thus potent over the human youth. beauty, whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself. the lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing loveliness is society for itself, and she teaches his eye why beauty was pictured with loves and graces attending her steps. her existence makes the world rich. though she extrudes all other persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out her own being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that the maiden stands to him for a representative of all select things and virtues. for 11 162 essay w. that reason, the lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. his friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. the lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds. the ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. who can analyze the nameless charm which glances from one and another face and form 2 we are touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot find whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. it is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to refer it to organization. nor does it point to any relations of friendship or love known and described in society, but, as it seems to me, to a quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. we cannot approach beauty. its nature is like opaline doves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use. what else did jean paul richter signify, when he said to music, “away ! away ! thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless life i have not found, and shall not find.” the same fluency may be oblowe. 163 served in every work of the plastie arts. the statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuringwand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing. the god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not. then first it ceases to be a stone. the same remark holds of painting. and of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable. concerning it, landor inquires “whether it is not to be referred to some purer state of sensation and existence.” in like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end ; when it becomes a story without an end ; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset. hence arose the saying, “if i love you, what is that to you ?” we say so, because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it. it 164 essay w. is not you, but your radiance. it is that which you know not in yourself, and can never know. this agrees well with that high philosophy of beauty which the ancient writers delighted in ; for they said that the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went roaming up and down in quest of that other world of its own, out of which it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the light of the natural sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of this world, which are but shadows of real things. therefore, the deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and fair ; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex runs to her, and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, movement, and intelligence of this person, because it suggests to him the presence of that which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. if, however, from too much conversing with material objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through the body, and falls to admire strokes of character, and the lovers contemm.o.w.e. 165 plate one another in their discourses and their actions, then they pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. by conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. then he passes from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. . in the particular society of his mate, he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint, which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. and, beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls. somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages. the doctrine is not old, nor is it new. if plato, plutarch, and apuleius taught it, 166 essay w. so have petrarch, angelo, and milton. it awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar, so that its gravest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim. but this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our play. in the procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light proceeding from an orb. the rays of the soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house, and yard, and passengers, on the circle of household acquaintance, on politics, and geography, and history. but things are ever grouping themselves according to higher or more interior laws. neighbourhood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power over us. cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between the soul and the circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, predominate later, and the step backward from the higher to the lower relations is impossible. love. 167 thus even love, which is the deification of persons, must become more impersonal every day. of this at first it gives no hint. little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms, with eyes so full of mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. the work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. from exchanging glances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth, and marriage. passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. the soul is wholly embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled. “her pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, that one might almost say her body thought.” romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more, than juliet, — than romeo. night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, are all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul which is all form. the lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. when alone, they solace themselves with the remembered image of the other. does that other see the same star, the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emotion, that now delight me 2 they try and weigh their affec16s essay w. tion, and, adding up costly advantages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed. but the lot of humanity is on these children. danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to them, as to all. love prays. it makes covenants with eternal power in behalf of this dear mate. the union which is thus effected, and which adds a new value to every atom in nature, for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element, is yet a temporary state. not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay. it arouses itself at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts on the harness, and aspires to vast and universal aims. the soul which is in the soul of each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in the behaviour of the other. hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain. yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue ; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. they appear and reappear, and continue to attract; but the regard changes, quits the sign, and attaches to the substance. this repairs the wounded affection. meantime, as love. 169 life wears on, it proves a game of permutation and combination of all possible positions of the parties, to employ all the resources of each, and acquaint each with the strength and weakness of the other. for it is the nature and end of this relation, that they should represent the human race to each other. all that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman. “the person love does to us fit, like manna, has the taste of all in it.” the world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. the angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at the windows, and the gnomes and vices also. by all the virtues they are united. if there be virtue, all the vices are known as such ; they confess and flee. their once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and, losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. they resign each other, without complaint, to the good offices which man and woman are severally appointed to discharge in time, and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or absent, of each other's designs. at last they discover that all which at first drew them together, — those once sacred features, that magical play of charms, – was 170 essay w. deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart, from year to year, is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. looking at these aims with which two persons, a man and a woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, i do not wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature, and intellect, and art emulate each other in the gifts and the melody they bring to the epithalamium. thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. we are by nature observers, and thereby learners. that is our permanent state. but we are often made to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do. there are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. but in health the mind is presently seen again, -its overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and love. 171 fears that swept over us as clouds, must lose their finite character and blend with god, to attain their own perfection. but we need not fear that we can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. the soul may be trusted to the end. that which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on for ever. f r. i e n d s h i p. a ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs, the world uncertain comes and goes, the lover rooted stays. i fancied he was fled, and, after many a year, glowed unexhausted kindliness like daily sunrise there. my careful heart was free again, – o friend, my bosom said, through thee alone the sky is arched, through thee the rose is red, all things through thee take nobler form, and look beyond the earth, and is the mill-round of our fate a sun-path in thy worth. me too thy nobleness has taught to master my despair; the fountains of my hidden life are through thy friendship fair. essay wi. fr i e n d s h i p. –0– we have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. how many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! how many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with ! read the language of these wandering eye-beams. the heart knoweth. the effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. in poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material effects of fire ; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. from the highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good-will, they make the sweetness of life, 176 essay wi. our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. the scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend, – and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. see, in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. a commended stranger is expected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a household. his arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome him. the house is dusted, all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us. he stands to us for humanity. he is what we wish. having imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. the same idea exalts conversation with him. we talk better than we are wont. we have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. for long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they friendship. 177 who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. but as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. he has heard the first, the last and best he will ever hear from us. he is no stranger now. vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension are old acquaintances. now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress, and the dinner, — but the throbbing of the heart, and the communications of the soul, no more. what is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world for me again what so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling 2 how beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true ! the moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish, – all duties even ; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years. i awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. shall i not can god the beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts ichide society, i embrace solitude, 12 178 essay wi. and yet i am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, – a possession for all time. nor is nature so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. my friends have come to me unsought. the great god gave them to me. by oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, i find them, or rather not i, but the deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one. high thanks i owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. these are new poetry of the first bard, — poetry without stop, —hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still flowing, apollo and the muses chanting still. will these, too, separate themselves from me again, or some of them 2 i know not, but i fear it not ; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on friendship. 179 whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever i may be. i confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. it is almost dangerous to me to “crush the sweet poison of misused wine” of the affections. a new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. i have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. i must feel pride in my friend’s accomplishments as if they were mine, – and a property in his virtues. i feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. we over-estimate the conscience of our friend. his goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. every thing that is his, – his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, –ſancy enhances. our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth. yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. the lover, beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. we doubt that we bestow on our hero the vir180 essay wi. tues in which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. in strictness, the soul does not respect men as it respects itself. in strict science all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple 2 shall i not be as real as the things i see 2 if i am, i shall not fear to know them for what they are. their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. the root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. and i must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an egyptian skull at our banquet. a man who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of himself. he is conscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. no advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. i cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth. i cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. i hear what you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise, but i see well that for all his purple cloaks i shall not like him, unless he is at last a poor greek like me. i friendship. 181 cannot deny it, o friend, that the vast shadow of the phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted immensity, -thee, also, compared with whom all else is shadow. thou art not being, as truth is, as justice is, – thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. is it not that the soul puts forth friends as the tree puts forth. leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf 2 the law of nature is alternation for evermore. each electrical state superinduces the opposite. the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander selfacquaintance or solitude ; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. this method betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations. the instinct of affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of insulation recalls us from the chase. thus every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love. dear friend: — if i was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, i should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. 182 essay wi. i am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable; and i respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare i not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment. thine ever, or never. yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life. they are not to be indulged. this is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. the laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. but we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. we snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of god, which many summers and many winters must ripen. we seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. in vain. we are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. almost all people descend to meet. all association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. what a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of friendship. 183 the virtuous and gifted . after interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. our ſaculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. i ought to be equal to every relation. it makes no difference how many friends i have, and what content i can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom i am not equal. if i have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy i find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. i should hate myself, if then i made my other friends my asylum. “the valiant warrior famoused for fight, after a hundred victories, once foiled, is from the book of honor razed quite, and all the rest forgot for which he toiled.” our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. it would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. tespect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration, in which alps and andes come and go as rainbows. the good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of rashness. love, which is the essence of 184 essay wi. god, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man. let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations. the attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and i leave, for the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so much is this purer, and nothing is so much divine. i do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. when they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. for now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves * not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. in one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. but the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which i draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. happy is the house that shelters a friend it might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its friendship. 185 law he who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an olympian, to the great games, where the first-born of the world are the competitors. he proposes himself for contests where time, want, danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. the gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. there are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that i can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. one is truth. a friend is a person with whom i may be sincere. before him i may think aloud. i am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that i may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. every man alone is sincere. at the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. we parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gos186 essay wi. sip, by amusements, by affairs. we cover up our thought from him under a hundred ſolds. i knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. at first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. but persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. no man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or readingrooms. but every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. but to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. to stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not * we can seldom go erect. almost every man we meet requires some civility, -requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. but a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. my friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. a friendship. 187 friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. i who alone am, i who see nothing in nature whose existence i can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form ; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. the other element of friendship is tenderness. we are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love. can another be so blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness * when a man becomes dear to me, i have touched the goal of fortune. i find very little written directly to the heart of this matter in books. and yet i have one text which i cannot choose but remember. my author says, – “i offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose i effectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom i am the most devoted.” i wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. it must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. i wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub. we chide the citizen because he makes love a commodity. it is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neighbourhood; it watches with the jss essay wi. sick; it holds the pall at the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the relation. but though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity, and pity. i hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. i much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perſumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best taverns. the end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. it is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. it is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. it keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. we are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. it should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. friendship may be said to require natures so friendship. 189 rare and costly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced, (for even in that particular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether paired,) that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. it cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. i am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because i have never known so high a fellowship as others. i please my imagination more with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. but i find this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and consummation of friendship. do not mix waters too much. the best mix as ill as good and bad. you shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let all three of you come together, and you shall not have one new and hearty word. two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. in good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. in good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there present. no partialities of friend to friend, no fondness190 essay wi. es of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one. no two men but, being left alone with each other, enter into simpler relations. yet it is affinity that determines which two shall converse. unrelated men give little joy to each other ; will never suspect the latent powers of each. we talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. conversation is an evanescent relation, — no more. a man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. they accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. in the sun it will mark the hour. among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue. friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. i am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. let him not cease an infriendship. 191 stant to be himself. the only joy i have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. i hate, where i looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. the condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. that high office requires great and sublime parts. there must be very two, before there can be very one. let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them. he only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. let him not intermeddle with this. leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal. friendship demands a religious treatment. we talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. reverence is a great part of it. treat your friend as a spectacle. of course he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must needs hold him close to your person. stand aside ; give those merits room ; let them mount and expand. are you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of his thought 2 to a great heart he will still be a stranger in a 192 essay wi. thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit. let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them why insist on rash personal relations with your friend ? why go to his house, or know his mother and brother and sisters ? why be visited by him at your own 2 are these things material to our covenant 2 leave this touching and clawing. let him be to me a spirit. a message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, i want, but not news, nor pottage. i can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? ought i to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook 2 let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. that great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. guard him as thy counterpart. let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, defriendship. 193 voutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. the hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. to my friend i write a letter, and from him i receive a letter. that seems to you a little. it suffices me. it is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to receive. it profanes nobody. in these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good. respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. we must be our own before we can be another’s. there is at least this satisfaction in crime, according to the latin proverb;—you can speak to your accomplice on even terms. crimen quos inquinat, aquat. to those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. there can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world. what is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. let us not interfere. who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any 13 194 essay wi. thing to such * no matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. there are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. wait, and thy heart shall speak. wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. the only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. you shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. if unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance of his eye. we see the noble aſar off, and they repel us ; why should we intrude 2 late, – very late, – we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of society, would be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire, — but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them ; then shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they. in the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. the higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. we walk alone in the world. friends, such as we friendship. 195 desire, are dreams and fables. but a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. we may congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no god attends. by persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great. you demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world,— those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely. it is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. whatever correction of our popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater. let us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. we are sure that we have all in us. we go to europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will 196 essay wi. call it out and reveal us to ourselves. beggars all. the persons are such as we ; the europe an old faded garment of dead persons ; the books their ghosts. let us drop this idolatry. let us give over this mendicancy. let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, ‘who are you ? unhand me : i will be dependent no more.” ah! seest thou not, o brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own 2 a friend is janus-faced : he looks to the past and the future. he is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend. i do then with my friends as i do with my books. i would have them where i can find them, but i seldom use them. we must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. i cannot afford to speak much with my friend. if he is great, he makes me so great that i cannot descend to converse. in the great days, presentiments hover before me in the firmament. i ought then to dedicate myself to them. i go in that i may seize them, i go out that i may seize them. i fear only that i may lose them receding into the sky in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. then, though i prize my friends, i cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest i lose my * friendship. 197 own. it would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this loſty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you ; but then i know well i shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. it is true, next week i shall have languid moods, when i can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; then i shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. but if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with new visions, not with yourself but with your lustres, and i shall not be able any more than now to converse with you. so i will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. i will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. they shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. but they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. we will meet as though we met not, and part as though we parted not. it has seemed to me lately more possible than 1 knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. why should i cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious it never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. let your greatness educate the crude and cold com* 198 essay wi. panion. if he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. it is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. but the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. true love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. the essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. it must not surmise or provide for infirmity. it treats its object as a god, that it may deify both. pr u d e n c e. theme no poet gladly sung, fair to old and foul to young, scorn not thou the love of parts, and the articles of arts. . grandeur of the perfect sphere thanks the atoms that cohere. essay wii. p r u d e n c e. — e--what right have i to write on prudence, whereof i have little, and that of the negative sort 2 my prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gentle repairing. i have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that i must have some other garden. yet i love facts, and hate lubricity, and people without perception. then i have the same title to write on prudence, that i have to write on poetry or holiness. we write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. we paint those qualities which we do not possess. the poet admires the man of energy and tactics ; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the bar : and where a man is not vain and egotistic, you shall find what he has not by his praise. moreover, it would be hardly honest in me not to 202 essay wii. balance these fine lyric words of love and friendship with words of coarser sound, and, whilst my debt to my senses is real and constant, not to own it in passing. prudence is the virtue of the senses. it is the science of appearances. it is the outmost action of the inward life. it is god taking thought for oxen. it moves matter after the laws of matter. it is content to seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect. the world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws, and knows that its own office is subaltern ; knows that it is surface and not centre where it works. prudence is false when detached. it is legitimate when it is the natural history of the soul incarnate ; when it unſolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of the senses. there are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. it is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate three. one class live to the utility of the symbol; esteeming health and wealth a final good. another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol ; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of science. a third class prudence. 203 live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified ; these are wise men. the first class have common sense ; the second, taste ; and the third, spiritual perception. once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly ; then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns thereon, reverencing the splendor of the god which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny. the world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the rule of three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project, — will it bake bread 2 this is a disease like a thickening of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. but culture, revealing the high origin of the apparent world, and aiming at the perfection of the man as the end, degrades every thing else, as health and bodily life, into means. it sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants. cultivated men always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of a civil or social measure, great 204 essay wii. personal influence, a graceful and commanding address, had their value as proofs of the energy of the spirit. if a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. the spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. it is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. the true prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. this recognition once made, – the order of the world and the distribution of affairs and times being studied with the co-perception of their subordinate place, will reward any degree of attention. for our existence, thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and the returning moon and the periods which they mark, so susceptible to climate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond of splendor, and so tender to hunger and cold and debt, — reads all its primary lessons out of these books. prudence does not go behind naturc, and ask whence it is. it takes the laws of the world, whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws, that it may enjoy their proper good. it respects space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth, and death. there revolve prudence. 205 to give bound and period to his being, on all sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky : here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws, and fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions and properties which impose new restraints on the young inhabitant. we eat of the bread which grows in the field. we live by the air which blows around us, and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet. time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. a door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. i want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt ; the house smokes, or i have a headache ; then the tax ; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains ; and the stringing recollection of an injurious or very awkward word, – these eat up the hours. do what we can, summer will have its flies : if we walk in the woods, we must feed mosquitos : if we go a-fishing, we must expect a wet coat. then climate is a great impediment to idle persons: we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain. we are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. the hard soil 206 essay vii. and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. the islander may ramble all day at will. at night, he may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for his morning meal. the northerner is perforce a householder. he must brew, bake, salt, and preserve his food, and pile wood and coal. but as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to, without some new acquaintance with nature ; and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, the inhabitants of these climates have always excelled the southerner in force. such is the value of these matters, that a man who knows other things can never know too much of these. let him have accurate perceptions. let him, if he have hands, handle; if eyes, measure and discriminate ; let him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural history, and economics; the more he has, the less is he willing to spare any one. time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their value. some wisdom comes out of every natural and innocent action. the domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of. the application of means to ends insures victory and the prudence. 207 songs of victory, not less in a farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or of war. the good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in peninsular campaigns or the files of the department of state. in the rainy day, he builds a workbench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver, and chisel. herein he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses, and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. his garden or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant anecdotes. one might find argument for optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine element of pleasure in every suburb and extremity of the good world. let a man keep the law, -any law, and his way will be strown with satisfactions. there is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount. on the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. if you think the senses final, obey their law. if you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. it is vinegar to the eyes, to deal with men of loose and imperfect perception. dr. johnson is reported to have said, “if the child says he looked out of this window, when he looked out of that, — whip him.” our american character 208 essay wii. is marked by a more than average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by the currency of the byword, “no mistake.” but the discomfort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. the beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. if the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees. our words and actions to be fair must be timely. a gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of june ; yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower’s rifle, when it is too late in the season to make hay ? scatter-brained and “aſternoon men” spoil much more than their own affair, in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. i have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which i am reminded when i see the shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their senses. the last grand duke of weimar, a man of superior understanding, said : — “i have sometimes remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just now especially, in dresden, how much a certain property contributes to the effect which gives life to the figures, and to the life an irresistible truth. this property is the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. i mean, the placing the figures firm upon their feet, prudence. 209 making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where they should look. even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools, — let them be drawn ever so correctly, lose all effect so soon as they lack the resting upon their centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating appearance. the raphael, in the dresden gallery, (the only greatly affecting picture which i have seen,) is the quietest and most passionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship the virgin and child. nevertheless, it awakens a deeper impression than the contortions of ten crucified martyrs. for, beside all the resistless beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree the property of the perpendicularity of all the figures.” this perpendicularity we demand of all the figures in this picture of life. let them stand on their feet, and not float and swing. • let us know where to find them. let them discriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed, call a spade a spade, give us facts, and honor their own senses with trust. but what man shall dare tax another with imprudence 2 who is prudent 2 the men we call greatest are least in this kingdom. there is a certain fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, distorting our modes of living, and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to have aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to ponder the question of 14 210 essay wii. reform. we must call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask why health and beauty and genius should now be the exception, rather than the rule, of human nature ? we do not know the properties of plants and animals and the laws of nature through our sympathy with the same ; but this remains the dream of poets. poetry and prudence should be coincident. poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead, the civil code, and the day’s work. but now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. we have violated law upon law, until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a coincidence between reason and the phenomena, we are surprised. beauty should be the dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare. health or sound organization should be universal. genius should be the child of genius, and every child should be inspired ; but now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. we call partial half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day, that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow ; and society is officered by men of parts, as they are properly called, and not by divine men. these use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. genius is always ascetic ; and piety and love. appetite shows to the finer prudence. 211 souls as a disease, and they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. we have found out fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial, and to count them nothing considered with his devotion to his art. his art never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had not sowed. his art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense. on him who scorned the world, as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. he that despiseth small things will perish by little and little. goethe's tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is true tragedy. it does not seem to me so genuine grief when some tyrannous richard the third oppresses and slays a score of innocent persons, as when antonio and tasso, both apparently right, wrong each other. one living after the maxims of this world, and consistent and true to them, the other fired with all divine sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without submitting to their law. that is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. a man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a “ discomfortable cousin,” a thorn to himself and to others. 212 essay vii. the scholar shames us by his bifold life. whilst something higher than prudence is active, he is admirable ; when common sense is wanted, he is an encumbrance. yesterday, caesar was not so great; to-day, the felon at the gallows’ foot is not more miserable. yesterday, radiant with the light of an ideal world, in which he lives, the first of men; and now oppressed by wants and by sickness, for which he must thank himself. he resembles the pitiful drivellers, whom travellers describe as frequenting the bazaars of constantinople, who skulk about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking ; and at evening, when the bazaars are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel, and become tranquil, and glorified seers. and who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius, struggling for years with paltry. pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins 2. is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self-denial p health, bread, climate, social position, have their importance, and he will give them their due. let him esteem nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections the exact measure of our deviations. let him make the night night, and the day day. let him control the habit of expense. let prudence. 213 him see that as much wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. the laws of the world are written out for him on every piece of money in his hand. there is nothing he will not be the better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of poor richard ; or the state-street prudence of buying by the acre to sell by the foot; or the thriſt of the agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because it will grow whilst he sleeps ; or the prudence which consists in husbanding little strokes of the tool, little portions of time, particles of stock, and small gains. the eye of prudence may never shut. iron, if kept at the ironmonger's, will rust; beer, if not brewed in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour; timber of ships will rot at sea, or, if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp, and dry-rot; money, if kept by us, yields no rent, and is liable to loss; if invested, is liable to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. strike, says the smith, the iron is white; keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. our yankee trade is reputed to be very much on the extreme of this prudence. it takes bank-notes, – good, bad, clean, ragged, – and saves itself by the speed with which it passes them off. iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks depreciate, in the 214 essay wii. few swift moments in which the yankee suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. in skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. let him learn that every thing in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he sows he reaps. by diligence and self-command, let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other men; for the best good of wealth is freedom. let him practise the minor virtues. how much of human life is lost in waiting ! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. how many words and promises are promises of conversation let his be words of fate. when he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the globe in a pine ship, and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human word among the storms, distances, and accidents that. drive us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to redeem its pledge, after months and years, in the most distant climates. we must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that only. human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. the prudence j prudence. 215 which secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another, but they are reconcilable. prudence concerns the present time, persons, property, and existing forms. but as every fact hath its roots in the soul, and, if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become some other thing, the proper administration of outward things will always rest on a just apprehension of their cause and origin, that is, the good man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted, the politic man. : every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. on the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax ; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship. ; trust men, and they will be true to you ; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great, though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade. so, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but in courage. he who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up to resolution. let him front the object of his worst apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fear groundless. the 216 essay vii. latin proverb says, that “in battles the eye is first overcome.” entire self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match at ſoils or at football. examples are cited by soldiers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. the terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlour and the cabin. the drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet, as under the sun of june. in the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbours, fear comes readily to heart, and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but it is a bad counsellor. every man is actually weak, and apparently strong. to himself, he seems weak; to others, formidable. you are afraid of grim ; but grim also is afraid of you. you are solicitous of the good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will. but the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighbourhood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and timid as any ; and the peace of society is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. far off, men swell, bully, and threaten ; bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. it is a proverb, that “courtesy costs nothing’; but calculation might come to value love for its profit. love is fabled to be blind; but kindness is necessary prudence. 217 to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. if you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains, – if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both ; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air. if they set out to contend, saint paul will lie, and saint john will hate. what low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls . they will shuffle, and crow, crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. so neither should you put yourself in a false position with your contemporaries, by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. so at least shall you get an adequate deliverance. the natural motions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones, that you will never do yourself justice in dispute. the thought is not then taken hold of by the right handle, does not show itself proportioned, and in its true bearings, but 218 essay wii. bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. but assume a consent, and it shall presently be granted, since, really, and underneath their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind. wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly footing. we refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. but whence and when to-morrow will be like to-day. life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. . our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. scarcely can we say, we see new men, new women, approaching us. we are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater or more powerful. let us suck the sweetness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. these old shoes are easy to the feet. undoubtedly, we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. every man's imagination hath its friends ; and life would be dearer with such companions. but, if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. if not the deity, but our ambition, hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds. thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all the virtues, range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present well-being. prudence. 219 i do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and, begin where we will, we are pretty sure in a short space to be mumbling our ten commandments. * h e r o 1 s m . “paradise is under the shadow of swords.” jmahomet. ruby wine is drunk by knaves, sugar spends to fatten slaves, rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; thunderclouds are jove's festoons, drooping oft in wreaths of dread lightning-knotted round his head; the hero is not fed on sweets, daily his own heart he eats; chambers of the great are jails, and head-winds right for royal sails. essay wiii. h e r o i s m . –0– in the elder english dramatists, and mainly in the plays of beaumont and fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble behaviour were as easily marked in the society of their age, as color is in our american population. when any rodrigo, pedro, or valerio enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, this is a gentleman, — and proffers civilities without end ; but all the rest are slag and refuse. in harmony with this delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue, – as in bonduca, sophocles, the mad lover, the double marriage, – wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. among many texts, take the following. the roman martius has conquered athens, – all but the invincible spirits of 224 essay wiii. sophocles, the duke of athens, and dorigen, his wife. the beauty of the latter inflames martius, and he seeks to save her husband ; but sophocles will not ask his life, although assured that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds. “valerius. bid thy wife farewell. soph. no, i will take no leave. my dorigen, yonder, above, 'bout ariadne's crown, my spirit shall hover for thee. prithee, haste. dor. stay, sophocles, – with this tie up my sight; let not soft nature so transformed be, and lose her gentler sexed humanity, to make me see my lord bleed. so, 'tis well; never one object underneath the sun will i behold before my sophocles: farewell; now teach the romans how to die. jmar. dost know what "t is to die 2 soph. thou dost not, martius, and, therefore, not what 'tis to live ; to die is to begin to live. it is to end an old, stale, weary work, and to commence a newer and a better. 't is to leave deceitful knaves for the society of gods and goodness. thou thyself must part at last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, and prove thy fortitude what then 't will do. val. but art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? soph. why should i grieve or vex for being sent to them i ever loved best ? now i'll kneel, but with my back toward thee; ’t is the last duty this trunk can do the gods. jmar. strike, strike, valerius, or martius' heart will leap out at his mouth: this is a man, a woman! kiss thy lord, heroism. 225 and live with all the freedom you were wont. o love! thou doubly hast afflicted me with virtue and with beauty. treacherous heart, my hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, ere thou transgress this knot of piety. val. what ails my brother 2 soph. martius, o martius, thou now hast found a way to conquer me. dor. o star of rome ! what gratitude can speak fit words to follow such a deed as this 2 jmar. this admirable duke, valerius, with his disdain of fortune and of death, captived himself, has captivated me, and though my arm hath ta'en his body here, his soul hath subjugated martius' soul. by romulus, he is all soul, i think; he hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved; then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, and martius walks now in captivity.” i do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same tune. we have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. yet, wordsworth's laodamia, and the ode of “dion,” and some sonnets, have a certain noble music ; and scott will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of lord evandale, given by balfour of burley." thomas carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pictures. earlier, robert burns has given us a song or two. 15 226 ess ay viii. in the harleian miscellanies, there is an account of the battle of lutzen, which deserves to be read. and simon ockley's history of the saracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in christian oxford requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence. but, if we explore the literature of heroism, we shall quickly come to plutarch, who is its doctor and historian. to him we owe the brasidas, the dion, the epaminondas, the scipio of old, and i must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. each of his “lives” is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. a wild courage, a stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame. we need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of political science, or of private economy. life is a festival only to the wise. seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. the violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. the disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such compound misery. a lockheroism, 227 jaw that bends a man's head back to his heels, hydrophobia, that makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity, that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation. our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour. towards all this external evil, the man within the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. to this military attitude of the soul we give the name of heroism. its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. it is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its en228 essay wiii. ergy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. the hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. there is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it ; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual nature. nevertheless, we must profoundly revere it. there is somewhat in great actions, which does not allow us to go behind them. heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual activity would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. it is the avowal of the unschooled man, that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it heroism, 229 does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one else. therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their acts. all prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. but it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol. self-trust is the essence of heroism. it is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. it speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. it persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a ſortitude not to be wearied out. its jest is the littleness of common life. that false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment of heroism. heroism, like plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. what shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and custard, which rack the wit of all society. what joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures | there seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. when the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. yet the little 230 essay viii. man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. “indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with greatness. what a disgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, and one other for use !” citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of life, and says, i will obey the god, and the sacrifice and the fire he will provide. ibn hankal, the arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the hospitality of sogd, in bukharia. “when i was in sogd, i saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. i asked the reason, and was told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred years. strangers may present themselves at any hour, and in whatever number; the master has ~ heroism. 231 amply provided for the reception of the men and their animals, and is never happier than when they tarry for some time. nothing of the kind have i seen in any other country.” the magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger — so it be done for love, and not for ostentation — do, as it were, put god under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. in some way the time they seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they seem to take remunerate themselves. these men fan the flame of human love, and raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. but hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. the brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. it gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. the temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. but he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. it seems not worth his while to be solemn, and denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or winedrinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. a great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic. john eliot, 232 essay viii. the indian apostle, drank water, and said of wine, – “it is a noble, generous liquor, and we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as i remember, water was made before it.” better still is the temperance of ring david, who poured out on the ground unto the lord the water which three of his warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives. it is told of brutus, that when he fell on his sword, after the battle of philippi, he quoted a line of euripides, – “o virtue ! i have followed thee through life, and i find thee at last but a shade.” i doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. the heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. it does not ask to dine nicely, and to sleep warm. the essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. poverty is its ornament. it does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss. but that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, is the good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. it is a height to which common duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. but these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. scipio, charged with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces beheroism. 233 fore the tribunes. socrates's condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the prytaneum, during his life, and sir thomas more's playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. in beaumont and fletcher’s “sea voyage,” juletta tells the stout captain and his company, “jul. why, slaves, ’tis in our power to hang ye. jmaster. very likely, 't is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye.” these replies are sound and whole. sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. the great will not condescend to take any thing seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years. simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world behind them, and play their own game in innocent defiance of the bluelaws of the world; and such would appear, could we see the human race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influences. the interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. all these great and transcendent properties are ours. if 234 essay wiii. we dilate in beholding the greek energy, the roman pride, it is that we are already domesticating the same sentiment. let us find room for this great guest in our small houses. the first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times, with number and size. why should these words, athenian, roman, asia, and england, so tingle in the ear? where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. massachusetts, connecticut river, and boston bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. but here we are ; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. see to it, only, that thyself is here ; – and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the supreme being, shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need olympus to die upon, nor the syrian sunshine. he lies very well where he is. the jerseys were handsome ground enough for washington to tread, and london streets for the feet of milton. a great man makes his climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved element of all delicate spirits. that country is the fairest, which is inhabited by the noblest minds. the pictures which fill the imagination in reading the actions of pericles, xenophon, columheroism. 235 bus, bayard, sidney, hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our days. we have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. when we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, we admire their superiority, they seem to throw contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. but they enter an active profession, and the forming colossus shrinks to the common size of man. the magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. they found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. what then 2 the lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet true; and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their belief. or why should a woman liken herself to any historical woman, and think, because sappho, or sévigné, or de staël, or the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not satisfy the imagination 236 essay viii. and the serene themis, none can, – certainly not she. why not she has a new and 'unattempted problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever bloomed. let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way, accept the hint of each new experience, search in turn all the objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the charm of her new-born being, which is the kindling of a new dawn in the recesses of space. the fair girl, who repels interference by a decided and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. the silent heart encourages her; o friend, never strike sail to a fear ! come into port greatly, or sail with god the seas. not in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision. the characteristic of heroism is its persistency. all men have wandering impulses, fits, and starts df generosity. but when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. the heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of people in those actions whose excellence is that they outrun sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. if you would serve your brother, because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that heroism, 237 prudent people do not commend you. adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. it was a high counsel that i once heard given to a young person, — “always do what you are afraid to do.” a simple, manly character need never make an apology, but should regard its past action with the calmness of phocion, when he admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the battle. there is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation in the thought, — this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation and office to my fellow-creature. has nature covenanted with me that i should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure ? let us be generous of our dignity, as well as of our money. greatness once and for ever has done with opinion. we tell our charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they have great merit, but for our justification. it is a capital blunder ; as you discover, when another man recites his charities. to speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those 238 essay wiii. who are at ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffering men. and not only need we breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of violent death. times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work. the circumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat better in this country, and at this hour, than perhaps ever before. more freedom exists for culture. it will not now run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten track of opinion. but whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge. human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. it is but the other day that the brave lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live. i see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, but after the counsel of his own bosom. let him quit too much association, let him go home much, and stablish himself in those courses he apheroism. 239 proves. the unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold. whatever outrages have happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion. coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient number of his neighbours to pronounce his opinions incendiary. it may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice. we rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us. “let them rave: thou art quiet in thy grave.” 2.** **** in the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy those who have seen safely to an end their manful endeavour 2 who that sees the meanness of our politics, but inly congratulates washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe ; that he was laid sweet in his 240 essay wiii. grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him 2 who does not sometimes envy the good and brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature ? and yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being. t h e o v e r-s o u l. “but souls that of his own good life partake, he loves as his own self; dear as his eye they are to him: he 'll never them forsake : when they shall die, then god himself shall die they live, they live in blest eternity.” henry more. space is ample, east and west, but two cannot go abreast, cannot travel in it two: yonder masterful cuckoo crowds every egg out of the nest, quick or dead, except its own; a spell is laid on sod and stone, night and day've been tampered with, every quality and pith surcharged and sultry with a power that works its will on age and hour. 16 essay ix. t h e o w e r s o u l . –0– there is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. for this reason, the argument which is always forthcoming to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely, the appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and vain. we give up the past to the objector, and yet we hope. he must explain this hope. we grant that human life is mean ; but how did we find out that it was mean * what is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent 2 what is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine inuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim * why do men feel that the natural history of man has never been written, but he is always leaving behind what you have said of him, and it becomes old, and 244 essay ix. books of metaphysics worthless * the philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. in its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. man is a stream whose source is hidden. our being is descending into us from we know not whence. the most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. i am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will i call mine. as with events, so is it with thoughts. when i watch that flowing river, which, out of regions i see not, pours for a season its streams into me, i see that i am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that i desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come. the supreme critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere ; that unity, that over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks the over-soul. 245 and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. we live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. meantime within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal one. and this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. we see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. only by the vision of that wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith. every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. i dare not speak for it. my words do not carry its august sense ; they fall short and cold. only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold ! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. yet i desire, even by profane words, iſ 246 essay ix. i may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints i have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the highest law. if we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein oſten we see ourselves in masquerade, – the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct notice, — we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. all goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will ; is the background of our being, in which they lie, – an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. from within or from . behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. a man is the façade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. what we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it apthe over-soul. 247 pear through his action, would make our knees bend. when it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. and the blindness of the intellect begins, when it would be something of itself. the weakness of the will begins, when the individual would be something of himself. all reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey. of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. language cannot paint it with his colors. it is too subtile. it is undefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that it pervades and contains us. we know that all spiritual being is in man. a wise old proverb says, “god comes to see us without bell”; that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and god, the cause, begins. the walls are taken away. we lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of god. justice we see and know, love, freedom, power. these natures no man ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. the sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made known by its independency of those limita248 essay ix. tions which circumscribe us on every hand. the soul circumscribes all things. as i have said, it contradicts all experience. in like manner it abolishes time and space. the influence of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind to that degree, that the walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable ; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. the spirit sports with time, – “can crowd eternity into an hour, or stretch an hour to eternity.” we are often made to feel that there is another youth and age than that which is measured from the year of our natural birth. some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. every man parts from that contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. the least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from the conditions of time. in sickness, in languor, give us a strain of poetry, or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed ; or produce a volume of plato, or shakspeare, or remind us of their names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. see how the deep, divine thought reduces “enturies, and millenniums, and makes itself present through all ages. is the teaching of christ less efthe over-soul. 249 fective now than it was when first his mouth was opened the emphasis of facts and persons in my thought has nothing to do with time. and so, always, the soul's scale is one ; the scale of the senses and the understanding is another. before the revelations of the soul, time, space, and nature shrink away. in common speech, we refer all things to time, as we habitually refer the immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere. and so we say that the judgment is distant or near, that the millennium approaches, that a day of certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the like, when we mean, that, in the nature of things, one of the facts we contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and connate with the soul. the things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall. the wind shall blow them none knows whither. the landscape, the figures, boston, london, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world. the soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. she has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. the soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed. after its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress to be computed. the soul's advan250 essay ix. ces are not made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a straight line; but rather by ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis, – from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly. the growths of genius are of a certain total character, that does not advance the elect individual first over john, then adam, then richard, and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority, but by every throe of growth the man expands there where he works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations, of men. with each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. it converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with zeno and arrian, than with persons in the house. this is the law of moral and of mental gain. the simple rise as by specific levity, not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all the virtues. they are in the spirit which contains them all. the soul requires purity, but purity is not it ; requires justice, but justice is not that ; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better ; so that there is a kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral nature, to urge a virtue which it enjoins. to the well-born child, all the virtues are natural, and not painfully acquired. speak to his heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. the over-soul. 251 within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the same law. those who are capable of humility, of justice, of love, of aspiration, stand already on a platform that commands the sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. for whoso dwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special powers which men prize so highly. the lover has no talent, no skill, which passes for quite nothing with his enamoured maiden, however little she may possess of related faculty ; and the heart which abandons itself to the supreme mind finds itself related to all its works, and will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. in ascending to this primary and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, as in the closet of god, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect. one mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a form, -in forms, like my own. i live in society; with persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great instincts to which i live. i see its presence to them. i am certified of a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. they stir in me the new emotions we call passion ; of love, hatred, fear, 252 essay ix. admiration, pity; thence comes conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and war. persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. in youth we are mad for persons. childhood and youth see all the world in them. but the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. in all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. that third party or common nature is not social ; it is impersonal; is god. and so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions, the company become aware that the thought rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual property in what was said, as well as the sayer. they all become wiser than they were. it arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought, in which every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. all are conscious of attaining to a higher self-possession. it shines for all. there is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct. the mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, think much less of property in truth. they accept it thankfully everywhere, and do not * the over-soul. 253 label or stamp it with any man's name, for it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. the learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. we owe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort, which we want and have long been hunting in vain. the action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid, than in that which is said in any conversation. it broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. we know better than we do. we do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. i feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbours, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and jove nods to jove from behind each of us. men descend to meet. in their habitual and mean service to the world, for which they forsake their native nobleness, they resemble those arabian sheiks, who dwell in mean houses, and affect an external poverty, to escape the rapacity of the pacha, and reserve all their display of wealth for their interior and guarded retirements. as it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. it is adult already in the infant man. in my dealing with my child, my latin and greek, 254 essay 1x. my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as i have avails. if i am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if i please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. but if i renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me. the soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. we know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, “how do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own p’ we know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. it was a grand sentence of emanuel swedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of that man's perception, — “it is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence.” in the book i read, the good thought returns to me, as every truth will, the image of the whole soul. to the bad thought which i find in it, the same soul becomes a discerning, separating sword, and lops it away. we are wiser than we know. if we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, the over-soul. 255 or see how the thing stands in god, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. for the maker of all things and all persons stands behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us over things. but beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals truth. and here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain of that advent. for the soul's communication of truth is the highest event in nature, since it then does not give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes that man whom it enlightens; or, in proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to itself. we distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term revelation. these are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. for this communication is an influx of the divine mind into our mind. it is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. a thrill passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. in these communications, the power to see is not separated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from 256 essay ix, obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. every moment when the individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable. by the necessity of our constitution, a certain enthusiasm attends the individual’s consciousness of that divine presence. the character and duration of this enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration,-which is its rarer appearance,—to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, like our household fires, all the families and associations of men, and makes society possible. a certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they had been “blasted with excess of light.” the trances of socrates, the “union ” of plotinus, the vision of porphyry, the conversion of paul, the aurora of behmen, the convulsions of george fox and his quakers, the illumination of swedenborg, are of this kind. what was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment has, in innumerable instances in common life, been exhibited in less striking manner. everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. the rapture of the moravian and quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the word, in the language of the new jerusalem church; the revival of the calvinistic churches; the experiences of the methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of awe the over-soul. 257 and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with the universal soul. the nature of these revelations is the same ; they are perceptions of the absolute law. they are solutions of the soul's own questions. they do not answer the questions which the understanding asks. the soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after. revelation is the disclosure of the soul. the popular notion of a revelation is, that it is a telling of fortunes. in past oracles of the soul, the understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from god how long men shall exist, what their hands shall do, and who shall be their company, adding names, and dates, and places. but we must pick no locks. we must check this low curiosity. an answer in words is delusive ; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. the description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them. men ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of the sinner, and so forth. they even dream that jesus has left replies to precisely these interrogatories. never a moment did that sublime spirit speak in their patois. to truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of immutableness 17 258 essay ix. is essentially associated. jesus, living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of these, never made the separation of the idea of duration from the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. it was left to his disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. the moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. in the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question of continuance. no inspired man ever asks this question, or condescends to these evidences. for the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, to a future which would be finite. these questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession of sin. god has no answer for them. no answer in words can reply to a question of things. it is not in an arbitrary “decree of god,” but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow ; for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. by this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day. the only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, acceptthe over-soul. 259 ing the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are one. by the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean of light, we see and know each other, and what spirit each is of. who can tell the grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several individuals in his circle of friends 2 no man. yet their acts and words do not disappoint him. in that man, though he knew no ill of him, he put no trust. in that other, though they had seldom met, authentic signs had yet passed, to signify that he might be trusted as one who had an interest in his own character. we know each other very well, which of us has been just to himself, and whether that which we teach or behold is only an aspiration, or is our honest effort also. we are all discerners of spirits. that diagnosis lies aloft in our life or unconscious power. the intercourse of society, its trade, its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, —is one wide, judicial investigation of character. in full court, or in small committee, or confronted face to face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves to be judged. against their 260 essay ix. will they exhibit those decisive trifles by which character is read. but who judges 2 and what ? not our understanding. we do not read them by learning or craft. no ; the wisdom of the wise man consists herein, that he does not judge them; he lets them judge themselves, and merely reads and records their own verdict. by virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts or our imperſections, your genius will speak from you, and mine from me. that which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened. character teaches over our head. the infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes. neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together, can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. if he have not found his home in god, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, shall i say, of all his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he will. if he have found his centre, the deity will shine through him, through all the disguises of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. the tone of seeking is one, and the tone of having is another. the over-soul. 261 the great distinction between teachers sacred or literary, -between poets like herbert, and poets like pope, – between philosophers like spinoza, kant, and coleridge, and philosophers like locke, paley, mackintosh, and stewart, —between men of the world, who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying, half insane under the infinitude of his thought, — is, that one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact ; and the other class, from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons. it is of no use to preach to me from without. i can do that too easily myself. jesus speaks always from within, and in a degree that transcends all others. in that is the miracle. i believe beforehand that it ought so to be. all men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of such a teacher. but if a man do not speak from within the veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. the same omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes what we call genius. much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers. among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence ; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather 262 essay in. than of inspiration; they have a light, and know not whence it comes, and call it their own ; their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease. in these instances the intellectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue, but almost of vice ; and we feel that a man's talents stand in the way of his advancement in truth. but genius is religious. it is a larger imbibing of the common heart. it is not anomalous, but more like, and not less like other men. there is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise. the author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. humanity shines in homer, in chaucer, in spenser, in shakspeare, in milton. they are content with truth. they use the positive degree. they seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion and violent coloring of inferior, but popular writers. for they are poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes beholds again, and blesses the things which it hath made. the soul is superior to its knowledge; wiser than any of its works. the great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. his best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. shakspeare carries us to such a lofty the over-soul. 263 strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own ; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. the inspiration which uttered itself in hamlet and lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever. why, then, should i make account of hamlet and lear, as if we had not the soul from which they fell as syllables from the tongue 2 this energy does not descend into individual life on any other condition than entire possession. it comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whomsoever will put off what is foreign and proud ; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur. when we see those whom it inhabits, we are apprized of new degrees of greatness. from that inspiration the man comes back with a changed tone. he does not talk with men with an eye to their opinion. he tries them. it requires of us to be plain and true. the vain traveller attempts to embellish his life by quoting my lord, and the prince, and the countess, who thus said or did to him. the ambitious vulgar show you their spoons, and brooches, and rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. the more cultivated, in their account of their own experience, cull out the pleasing, poetic circum264 essay ix. stance, — the visit to rome, the man of genius they saw, the brilliant friend they know; still further on, perhaps, the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts, they enjoyed yesterday, -and so seek to throw a romantic color over their life. but the soul that ascends to worship the great god is plain and true; has no rose-color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures; does not want admiration ; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience of the common day, by reason of the present moment and the mere trifle having become porous to thought, and bibulous of the sea of light. converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. the simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. nothing can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation. souls such as these treat you as gods would ; walk as gods in the earth, accepting without any admiration your wit, your bounty, your virtue even, – say rather your act of duty, for your virtue they own the over-soul. 265 as their proper blood, royal as themselves, and overroyal, and the father of the gods. but what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts on the mutual flattery with which authors solace each other and wound themselves | these flatter not. i do not wonder that these men go to see cromwell, and christina, and charles the second, and james the first, and the grand turk. for they are, in their own elevation, the fellows of kings, and must feel the servile tone of conversation in the world. they must always be a godsend to princes, for they confront them, a king to a king, without ducking or concession, and give a high nature the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of even companionship, and of new ideas. they leave them wiser and superior men. souls like these make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than flattery. deal so plainly with man and woman, as to constrain the utmost sincerity, and destroy all hope of trifling with you. it is the highest compliment you can pay. their “highest praising,” said milton, “is not flattery, and their plainest advice is a kind of praising.” ineffable is the union of man and god in every act of the soul. the simplest person, who in his integrity worships god, becomes god; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. it inspires awe and astonishment. how dear, how soothing to man, arises 266 essay ix. the idea of god, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments when we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may god fire the heart with his presence. it is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. it inspires in man an infallible trust. he has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time, the solution of his private riddles. he is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. in the presence of law to his mind, he is overflowed with a reliance so universal, that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. he believes that he cannot escape from his good. the things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. you are running to seek your friend. let your feet run, but your mind need not. if you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him 2 for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. you are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. has it not oct the over-soul. 267 curred to you, that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going 2 o, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear ! every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. and this, because the heart in thee is the heart of all ; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. but if he would know what the great god speaketh, he must “go into his closet and shut the door,” as jesus said. god will not make himself manifest to cowards. he must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. even their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made his own. our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. whenever 26s essay ix. the appeal is made — no matter how indirectly — to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. he that finds god a sweet, enveloping thought to him never counts his company. when i sit in that presence, who shall dare to come in 2 when i rest in perfect humility, when i burn with pure love, what can calvin or swedenborg say ? it makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. the faith that stands on authority is not faith. the reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. the position men have given to jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. it characterizes themselves. it cannot alter the eternal facts. great is the soul, and plain. it is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. it believes in itself. before the immense possibilities of man, all mere experience, all past biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. before that heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any form of life we have seen or read of. we not only affirm that we have few great men, but, absolutely speaking, that we have none ; that we have no history, no record of any character or mode of living, that entirely contents us. the saints and demigods whom history worships we are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance. the over-soul. 269 though in our lonely hours we draw a new strength out of their memory, yet, pressed on our attention, as they are by the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. the soul gives itself, alone, original, and pure, to the lonely, original, and pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it. then is it glad, young, and nimble. it is not wise, but it sees through all things. it is not called religious, but it is innocent. it calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. behold, it saith, i am born into the great, the universal mind. i, the imperfect, adore my own perfect. i am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby i do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. more and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and i become public and human in my regards and actions. so come i to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that “its beauty is immense,” man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred ; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. he will weave no longer a spotted 270 essay ir. life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. he will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content with all places and with any service he can render. he will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries god with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart. ! c i r c l e s. nature centres into balls, and her proud ephemerals, fast to surface and outside, scan the profile of the sphere; knew they what that signified, a new genesis were here. essay x. c i r c l e s. the eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second ; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. it is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. st. augustine described the nature of god as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. we are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. one moral we have already deduced, in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. another analogy we shall now trace ; that every action admits of being outdone. our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. this fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact 18 274 essay x. of the unattainable, the flying perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department. there are no fixtures in nature. the universe is fluid and volatile. permanence is but a word of degrees. our globe seen by god is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. the law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. let us rise into another idea: they will disappear. the greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice ; here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts, in june and july. for the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. the greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. the new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. new arts destroy the old. see the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity. circles. 275 you admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. the hand that built can topple it down much faster. better than the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. a rich estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. an orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop. nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the rest; and when once i comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable * permanence is a word of degrees. every thing is medial. moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than batballs. the key to every man is his thought. sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. he can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. the life 276 essay x. of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. the extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. for it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance,—as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the liſe. but if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. but the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to immense and innumerable expansions. every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. every general law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. there is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. the man finishes his story, how good how final how it puts a new face on all things he fills the sky. lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. then already is our first speaker not man, but only circles, 277 a first speaker. his only redress is ſorthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. and so men do by themselves. the result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder generalization. in the thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures, of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. every man is not so much a workman in the world, as he is a suggestion of that he should be. men walk as prophecies of the next age. step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; the new prospect is power. every several result is threatened and judged by that which follows. every one seems to be contradicted by the new ; it is only limited by the new. the new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. but the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of one cause ; then its innocency and benefit appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour. fear not the new generalization. does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy 278 essay x. theory of spirit resist it not ; it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much. there are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, i see not how it can be otherwise. the last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened ; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. that is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility. our moods do not believe in each other. to-day i am full of thoughts, and can write what i please. i see no reason why i should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. what i write, whilst i write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday i saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now i see so much; and a month hence, i doubt not, i shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow ! i am god in nature; i am a weed by the wall. the continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. we thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. the sweet of nature is love ; yet, if i have a friend, i am tormented circles. 279 by my imperfections. the love of me accuses the other party. if he were high enough to slight me, then could i love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. a man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. for every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. i thought, as i walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why should i play with them this game of idolatry i know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. rich, noble, and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. o blessed spirit, whom i forsake for these, they are not thou ! every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. we sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure. how often must we learn this lesson 2 men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. the only sin is limitation. as soon as you once come up with a man’s limitations, it is all over with him. has he talents 2 has he enterprise 2 has he knowledge p it boots not. infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in ; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again. each new step we take in thought reconciles 280 essay x. twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. aristotle and plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. a wise man will see that aristotle platonizes. by going one step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision. beware when the great god lets loose a thinker on this planet. then all things are at risk. it is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. there is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow ; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. the very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. hence the thrill that attends it. valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. this can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction circles. . 281 that his laws, his relations to society, his christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease. there are degrees in idealism. we learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. it now shows itself ethical and practical. we learn that god is ; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. the idealism of berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact, that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. much more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the minds of men. the things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples. a new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits. conversation is a game of circles. in conversation we pluck up the termini which bound the common of silence on every side. the parties are not 282 essay x. to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this pentecost. to-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. to-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old packsaddles. yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. when each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men. o, what truths profound and executable only in ages and orbs are supposed in the announcement of every truth ! in common hours, society sits cold and statuesque. we all stand waiting, empty, — knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. then cometh the god, and converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. the facts which loomed so large in the fogs of yesterday, -property, climate, breeding, personal beauty, and the like, have strangely changed their proportions. all that we reckoned settled shakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, leave their foundations, and dance before our eyes. and yet here again see the circles. 283 swift circumspection | good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. the length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. if they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. if at one in all parts, no words would be suffered. literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, through which a new one may be described. the use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it. we fill ourselves with ancient learning, install ourselves the best we can in greek, in punic, in roman houses, only that we may wiselier see french, english, and american houses and modes of living. in like manner, we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. the field cannot be well seen from within the field. the astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to find the parallax of any star. therefore we value the poet. all the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopædia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the body of divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. in my daily work i incline to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the power of change and reform. but 284 essay x. some petrarch or ariosto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. he smites and arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and i open my eye on my own possibilities. he claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber of the world, and i am capable once more of choosing a straight path in theory and practice. we have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. we can never see christianity from the catechism: — from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of woodbirds, we possibly may. cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the christian church, by whom that brave text of paul's was not specially prized:– “then shall also the son be subject unto him who put all things under him, that god may be all in all.” let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out of the book itself. circles. 285 the natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations, which apprize us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. these manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods only, are words of god, and as fugitive as other words. has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a partial or approximate statement, namely, that like draws to like ; and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you, and need not be pursued with pains and cost 2 yet is that statement approximate also, and not final. omnipresence is a higher fact. not through subtle, subterranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the eternal generation of the soul. cause and effect are two sides of one fact. the same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. the great man will not be prudent in the popular sense ; all his prudence will be so much deduction from his grandeur. but it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he 286 essay x. devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he had better be prudent still ; if to a great trust, he can well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead. geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite of snakes; aaron never thinks of such a peril. in many years neither is harmed by such an accident. yet it seems to me, that, with every precaution you take against such an evil, you put yourself into the power of the evil. i suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence. is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to the verge of our orbit 2 think how many times we shall fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. besides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. the poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. “blessed be nothing,” and “the worse things are, the better they are,” are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life. one man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty, another's ugliness ; one man's wisdom, another’s folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. one man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty, and makes circles. 287 the creditor wait tediously. but that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself which debt must i pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature ? for you, o broker there is no other principle but arithmetic. for me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can i detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. if a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice does he owe no debt but money 2 and are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker’s there is no virtue which is final ; all are initial. the virtues of society are vices of the saint. the terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices. “forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, those smaller faults, half converts to the right.” it is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. i accuse myself 288 essay x. of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves of god flow into me, i no longer reckon lost time. i no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments conſer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done, without time. and thus, o circular philosopher, i hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would ſain teach us that, if we are true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true god | i am not careful to justify myself. i own i am gladdened by seeing the predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the principle of good into every chink and hole that selfishness has left open, yea, into selfishness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme satisfactions. but lest i should mislead any when i have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that i am only an experimenter. do not set the least value on what i do, or the least circles, 289 discredit on what i do not, as if i pretended to settle any thing as true or false. i unsettle all things. no facts are to me sacred; none are profane ; i simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back. yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability in the soul. whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. that central life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. for ever it labors to create a life and thought as large and excellent as itself; but in vain; for that which is made instructs how to make a better. thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, germinate, and spring. why should we import rags and relics into the new hour nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one. we call it by many names, – ſever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity, and crime; they are all forms of old age; they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not newness, not the way onward. we grizzle every day. i see no need of it. whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious 19 290 essay x. eye looking upward, counts itself nothing, and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. but the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young. let them, then, become organs of the holy ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. this old age ought not to creep on a human mind. in nature every moment is new ; the past is always swallowed and forgotten ; the coming only is sacred. nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. no love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. no truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. people wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. life is a series of surprises. we do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being. of lower states, –of acts of routine and sense, – we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of god, the total growths and universal movements of the soul, he hideth ; they are incalculable. i can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me i can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of circles. 291 so to know. the new position of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new. it carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning. i cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. now, for the first time, seem i to know any thing rightly. the simplest words, – we do not know what they mean, except when we love and aspire. the difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals. character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the company, by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. character dulls the impression of particular events. when we see the conqueror, we do not think much of any one battle or success. we see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. it was easy to him. the great man is not convulsible or tormentable ; events pass over him without much impression. people say sometimes, ‘see what i have overcome ; see how cheerful i am ; see how completely i have triumphed over these black events.” not if they still remind me of the black event. true conquest is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing. 292 essay x. the one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why ; in short, to draw a new circle. nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. the way of life is wonderful: it is by abandonment. the great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. “a man,” said oliver cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. for the like reason, they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart. i n t e l l e c t. go, speed the stars of thought on to their shining goals; — the sower scatters broad his seed, the wheat thou strew'st be souls. essay xi. i n t e l l e c t . -ºi’ve ry substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. water dissolves wood, and iron, and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature, in its resistless menstruum. intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive. intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or construction. gladly would i unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries of that transparent essence 2 the first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. how can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowl296 essay xi. edge into act 2 each becomes the other. itself alone is. its vision is not like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things known. intellect and intellection signify to the common ear consideration of abstract truth. the considerations of time and place, of you and me, of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's minds. intellect separates the fact considered from you, from all local and personal reference, and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense and colored mists. in the fog of good and evil affections, it is hard for man to walk forward in a straight line. intellect is void of affection, and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. the intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as i and mine. he who is immersed in what concerns person or place cannot see the problem of existence. this the intellect always ponders. nature shows all things formed and bound. the intellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness between remote things, and reduces all things into a few principles. the making a fact the subject of thought raises it. all that mass of mental and moral phenomena, which we do not make objects of voluntary thought, come within the power of fortune ; they constitute the cirintellect. 297 cumstance of daily life ; they are subject to change, to fear, and hope. every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. as a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. but a truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. we behold it as a god upraised above care and fear. and so any fact in our life, or any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and immortal. it is the past restored, but embalmed. a better art than that of egypt has taken fear and corruption out of it. it is eviscerated of care. it is offered for science. what is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings. the growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. the mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. god enters by a private door into every individual. long prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. out of darkness, it came insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. in the period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the surrounding creation after its own way. whatever any mind doth or saith is after a law; and this native law remains over it after it has come to 298 essay xi. reflection or conscious thought. in the most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormenter's life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself up by his own ears. what am i ? what has my will done to make me that i am 2 nothing. i have been floated into this thought, this hour, this connection of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and my ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. our spontaneous action is always the best. you cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad in the morning after meditating the matter before sleep on the previous night. our thinking is a pious reception. our truth of thought is therefore vitiated as much by too violent direction given by our will, as by too great negligence. we do not determine what we will think. we only open our senses, clear away, as we can, all obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. we have little control over our thoughts. we are the prisoners of ideas. they catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. by and by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have intellect. 299 been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as we can, what we have beheld. as far as we can recall these ecstasies, we carry away in the ineffaceable memory the result, and all men and all the ages confirm it. it is called truth. but the moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct and contrive, it is not truth. if we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, we shall perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the arithmetical or logical. the first contains the second, but virtual and latent. we want, in every man, a long logic ; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method ; the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, it is worthless. in every man’s mind, some images, words, and facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards these illustrate to him important laws. all our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. you have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. it is vain to hurry it. by trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe. 300 essay xi. each mind has its own method. a true man never acquires after college rules. what you have aggregated in a natural manner surprises and delights when it is produced. for we cannot oversee each other's secret. and hence the differences between men in natural endowment are insignificant in comparison with their common wealth. do you think the porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you ? every body knows as much as the savant. the walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. they shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. every man, in the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of other men, and especially of those classes whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of school education. this instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes richer and more frequent in its informations through all states of culture. at last comes the era of reflection, when we not only observe, but take pains to observe; when we of set purpose sit down to consider an abstract truth; when we keep the mind's eye open, whilst we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of some class of facts. what is the hardest task in the world 2 to think. i would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye intellect. 301 an abstract truth, and i cannot. i blench and withdraw on this side and on that. i seem to know what he meant who said, no man can see god face to face and live. for example, a man explores the basis of civil government. let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. his best heed long time avails him nothing. yet thoughts are flitting before him. we all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. we say, i will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. we go forth, but cannot find it. it seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed attitude of the library to seize the thought. but we come in, and are as far from it as at first. then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. a certain, wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the principle, we wanted. but the oracle comes, because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. it seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood, the law of undulation. so now you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity, and see what the great soul showeth. the immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the intellections as from the moral volitions. every intellection is mainly prospective. its pres302 essay xi. ent value is its least. inspect what delights you in plutarch, in shakspeare, in cervantes. each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. men say, where did he get this 2 and think there was something divine in his life. but no ; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp to ransack their attics withal. we are all wise. the difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. i knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me, who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst i saw that his experiences were as good as mine. give them to me, and i would make the same use of them. he held the old ; he holds the new ; i had the habit of tacking together the old and the new, which he did not use to exercise. this may hold in the great examples. perhaps if we should meet shakspeare, we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority; no: but of a great equality, -only that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, his facts, which we lacked. for, notwithstanding our utter incaintellect. 303 pacity to produce any thing like hamlet and othello, see the perfect reception this wit, and immense knowledge of life, and liquid eloquence find in us all. if you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and shut your eyes, and press them with your hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the bright light, with boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the cornflags, and this for five or six hours afterwards. there lie the impressions on the retentive organ, though you knew it not. so lies the whole series of natural images with which your life has made you acquainted in your memory, though you know it not, and a thrill of passion flashes light on their dark chamber, and the active power seizes instantly the fit image, as the word of its momentary thought. it is long ere we discover how rich we are. our history, we are sure, is quite tame : we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. but our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond ; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the universal history. in the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by the word genius, we observe the same 304 essay xi. balance of two elements as in intellect receptive. the constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. it is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. togenius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. the first is revelation, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. it is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now, for the first time, bursting into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. it seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to dictate to the unborn. it affects every thought of man, and goes to fashion every institution. but to make it available, it needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. to be communicable, it must become picture or sensible object. we must learn the language of facts. the most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. the ray of light passes invisible through space, and only when it falls on an object is it seen. when the spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then it is a thought. the relation between it and you first makes you, the value of you, apparent to me. the rich, inventive genius of the painter must be smothered and lost for want of the power of intellect. 305 drawing, and in our happy hours we should be inexhaustible poets, if once we could break through the silence into adequate rhyme. as all men have some access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communication in their head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. there is an inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and between two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. in common hours, we have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a web. the thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of picture or expression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, without which no production is possible. it is a conversion of all nature into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. and yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. it does not flow from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the grand strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to the ſountain-head of all forms in his mind. who is the first drawing-master without instruction we know very well the ideal of the human form. a child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture, if the attitude be natural or 20 306 essay xi. grand, or mean, though he has never received any instruction in drawing, or heard any conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a single feature. a good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. we may owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for, as soon as we let our will go, and let the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are l we entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of woods, and of monsters, and the mystic pencil wherewith we then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; it can design well, and group well; its composition is full of art, its colors are well laid on, and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike, and apt to touch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire, and with grief. neither are the artist's copies from experience ever mere copies, but always touched and softened by tints from this ideal domain. the conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear to be so often combined but that a good sentence or verse remains fresh and memorable for a long time. yet when we write with ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we seem to be asintellect. 307 sured that nothing is easier than to continue this communication at pleasure. up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no inclosures, but the muse makes us free of her city. well, the world has a million writers. one would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. yet we can count all our good books; nay, i remember any beautiful verse for twenty years. it is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are many competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books. but some of the conditions of intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. the intellect is a whole, and demands integrity in every work. this is resisted equally by a man's devotion to a single thought, and by his ambition to combine too many. truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood ; herein resembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of our nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. how wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed mortal whose balance 308 essay xi. is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. it is incipient insanity. every thought is a prison also. i cannot see what you see, because i am caught up by a strong wind, and blown so far in one direction that i am out of the hoop of your horizon. is it any better, if the student, to avoid this offence, and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that ſall within his vision ? the world refuses to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. when we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of religion, love, poetry, politics, art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopædia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. but year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. it must have the same wholeness which nature has. although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model, by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be intellect. 309 read in the smallest fact. the intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its works. for this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. we talk with accomplished persons who appear to be strangers in nature. the cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them: the world is only their lodging and table. but the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and complete, is one whom nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. he feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more likeness than variety in all her changes. we are stung by the desire for new thought; but when we receive a new thought, it is only the old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own, we instantly crave another ; we are not really enriched. for the truth was in us before it was reflected to us from natural objects ; and the profound genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of his wit. but if the constructive powers are rare, and it is given to few men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may well study the laws of its influx. exactly parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. a self-denial, no less austere than the saint’s, is demanded of the scholar. he must worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and 310 essay xi. pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. god offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. take which you please, — you can never have both. between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. he in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, – most likely his father's. he gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. he in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. he will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations, between which, as walls, his being is swung. he submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his being. the circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes, to find the man who can yield him truth. he shall then know that there is somewhat more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking. happy is the hearing man ; unhappy the speaking man. as long as i hear truth, i am bathed by a beautiful element, and am not conscious of any limits to my nature. the suggestions are thousandfold that i hear and see. the waters of the great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. but if i speak, i deintellect. 311 fine, i confine, and am less. when socrates speaks, lysis and menexenus are afflicted by no shame that they do not speak. they also are good. he likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. because a true and natural man contains and is the same truth which an eloquent man articulates: but in the eloquent man, because he can articulate it, it seems something the less to reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful with the more inclination and respect. the ancient sentence said, let us be silent, for so are the gods. silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal. every man's progress is through a succession of teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a superlative influence, but it at last gives place to a new. frankly let him accept it all. jesus says, leave father, mother, house and lands, and follow me. who leaves all, receives more. this is as true intellectually as morally. each new mind we approach seems to require an abdication of all our past and present possessions. a new doctrine seems, at first, a subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and manner of living. such has swedenborg, such has kant, such has coleridge, such has hegel or his interpreter cousin, seemed to many young men in this country. take thankfully and heartily all they can give. exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and, after a short 312 essay xi. season, the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light with all your day. but whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which draws him, because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to that which draws him not, whatsoever ſame and authority may attend it, because it is not his own. entire self-reliance belongs to the intellect. one soul is a counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance for the sea. it must treat things, and books, and sovereign genius, as itself also a sovereign. if aeschylus be that man he is taken for, he has not yet done his office, when he has educated the learned of europe for a thousand years. he is now to approve himself a master of delight to me also. if he cannot do that, all his ſame shall avail him nothing with me. i were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand aeschyluses to my intellectual integrity. especially take the same ground in regard to abstract truth, the science of the mind. the bacon, the spinoza, the hume, schelling, kant, or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, is only a more or less awkward translator of things in your consciousness, which you have also your way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. say, then, instead of too timidly poring into his obscure intellect. 313 sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back to you your consciousness. he has not succeeded; now let another try. if plato cannot, perhaps spinoza will. if spinoza cannot, then perhaps kant. anyhow, when at last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, common state, which the writer restores to you. but let us end these didactics. i will not, though the subject might provoke it, speak to the open question between truth and love. i shall not presume to interfere in the old politics of the skies;—“the cherubim know most ; the seraphim love most.” the gods shall settle their own quarrels. but i cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. when, at long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world,—these of the old religion, – dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of christianity look parvenues and popular; for “persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.” this band of grandees, hermes, heraclitus, empedocles, plato, plotinus, olympiodorus, proclus, synesius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so 314 essay xi. primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathematics. i am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. with a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature. the truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of things for its illustration. but what marks its elevation, and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like jupiters sit in their clouds, and from age to age prattle to each other, and to no contemporary. well assured that their sºeech is intelligible, and the most natural thing in the world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment's heed of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who do not comprehend their plainest argument; nor do they ever relent so much as to insert a popular or explaining sentence; nor testify the least displeasure or petulance at the dulness of their amazed auditory. the angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not. a. r. t. give to barrows, trays, and pans grace and glimmer of romance; bring the moonlight into noon hid in gleaming piles of stone; on the city's paved street plant gardens lined with lilac sweet; let spouting fountains cool the air, singing in the sun-baked square; let statue, picture, park, and hall, ballad, flag, and festival, the past restore, the day adorn, and make each morrow a new morn. so shall the drudge in dusty frock spy behind the city clock retinues of airy kings, skirts of angels, starry wings, his fathers shining in bright fables, his children fed at heavenly tables. 't is the privilege of art thus to play its cheerful part, man in earth to acclimate, and bend the exile to his fate, and, moulded of one element with the days and firmament, teach him on these as stairs to climb, and live on even terms with time; whilst upper life the slender rill of human sense doth overfill. essay xii. a r t . because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. this appears in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of works according to their aim either at use or beauty. thus in our fine arts, not imitation, but creation, is the aim. in landscapes, the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. the details, the prose of nature he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendor. he should know that the landscape has beauty for his eye, because it expresses a thought which is to him good; and this, because the same power which sees through his eyes is seen in that spectacle ; and he will come to value the expression of nature, and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please him. he will give the gloom of gloom, and the sunshine of sunshine. in 318 essay xii. e a portrait, he must inscribe the character, and not the features, and must esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring original within. what is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse 2 for it is the inlet of that higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. what is a man but nature's finer success in self-explication ? what is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than the horizon figures, – nature's eclecticism 2 and what is his speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but a still finer success all the weary miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the pencil but the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation, to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. thus the new in art is always formed out of the old. the genius of the hour sets his ineffaceable seal on the work, and gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagination. as far as the spiritual character of the period overpowers the artist, and finds expression in his work, so far it will retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future beholders the unknown, the inevitable, the divine. no man can quite exclude this element of necessity art. 319 from his labor. no man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no share. though he were never so original, never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. the very avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. above his will, and out of his sight, he is necessitated, by the air he breathes, and the idea on which he and his contemporaries live and toil, to share the manner of his times, without knowing what that manner is. now that which is inevitable in the work has a higher charm than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the history of the human race. this circumstance gives a value to the egyptian hieroglyphics, to the indian, chinese, and mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. they denote the height of the human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. shall i now add, that the whole extant product of the plastic arts has herein its highest value, as history; as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that ſate, perfect and beautiful, according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their beatitude 2 thus, historically viewed, it has been the office 320 essay xii. of art to educate the perception of beauty. we are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. it needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the dormant taste. we carve and paint, or we behold what is carved and painted, as students of the mystery of form. the virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. until one thing comes out from the connection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. the infant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individual character and his practical power depend on his daily progress in the separation of things, and dealing with one at a time. love and all the passions concentrate all existence around a single form. it is the habit of certain minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the time the deputy of the world. these are the artists, the orators, the leaders of society. the power to detach, and to magnify by detaching, is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. this rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of an object, — so remarkable in burke, in byron, in carlyle, – the painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. the power depends on the depth of the artist’s insight of that object he contemplates. for every object has its roots art. 321 in central nature, and may of course be so exhibited to us as to represent the world. therefore, each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour, and concentrates attention on itself. for the time, it is the only thing worth naming to do that, —be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of discovery. presently we pass to some other object, which rounds itself into a whole, as did the first ; for example, a well-laid garden: and nothing seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. i should think fire the best thing in the world, if i were not acquainted with air, and water, and earth. for it is the right and property of all natural objects, of all genuine talents, of all native properties whatsoever, to be for their moment the top of the world. a squirrel leaping from bough to bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion, — is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature. a good ballad draws my ear and heart whilst i listen, as much as an epic has done before. a dog, drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality not less than the frescoes of angelo. from this succession of excellent objects, we learn at last the immensity of the world, the opulence of human nature, which can run out to infinitude in any direction. but i also learn that what astonished and fascinated º 21 322 essay xii. me in the first work astonished me in the second work also ; that excellence of all things is one. the office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. the best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. the best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing “landscape with figures” amidst which we dwell. painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. when that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and, as i see many pictures and higher genius in the art, i see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. if he can draw every thing, why draw any thing 2 and then is my eye opened to the eternal picture which nature paints in the street with moving men and children, beggars, and fine ladies, draped in red, and green, and blue, and gray; longhaired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish, – capped and based by heaven, earth, and sea. a gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. as picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. when i have seen fine statues, and afterwards enter a public assembly, art. 323 i understand well what he meant who said, “when i have been reading homer, all men look like giants.” i too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities of its function. there is no statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. what a gallery of art have ihere ! no mannerist made these varied groups and diverse original single figures. here is the artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his block. now one thought strikes him, now another, and with each moment. he alters the whole air, attitude, and expression of his clay. away with your nonsense of oil and easels, of marble and chisels: except to open your eyes to the masteries of eternal art, they are hypocritical rubbish. the reference of all production at last to an aboriginal power explains the traits common to all works of the highest art, — that they are universally intelligible ; that they restore to us the simplest states of mind ; and are religious. since what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar impression to that made by natural objects. in happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected, – the work of genius. and the individual, in whom simple tastes and susceptibility to all the great human influences overpower the accidents of a local and 324 essay xii. special culture, is the best critic of art. though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. the best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes. in the sculptures of the greeks, in the masonry of the romans, and in the pictures of the tuscan and venetian masters, the highest charm is the universal language they speak. a confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes from them all. that which we carry to them, the same we bring back more fairly illustrated in the memory. the traveller who visits the vatican, and passes from chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi, and candelabra, through all forms of beauty, cut in the richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of which they all sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts and laws in his own breast. he studies the technical rules on these wonderful remains, but forgets that these works were not always thus constellated; that they are the contributions of many ages and many countries; that each came out of the solitary workshop of one artist, art. 325 who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the existence of other sculpture, created his work without other model, save life, household life, and the sweet and smart of personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes, of poverty, and necessity, and hope, and ſear. these were his inspirations, and these are the effects he carries home to your heart and mind. in proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper character. he must not be in any manner pinched or hindered by his material, but through his necessity of imparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate communication of himself, in his full stature and proportion. he need not cumber himself with a conventional nature and culture, nor ask what is the mode in rome or in paris, but that house, and weather, and manner of living which poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray, unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a new hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours itself indifferently through all. i remember, when in my younger days i had heard of the wonders of italian painting, i fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some surprising 326 essay xii. combination of color and form ; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. i was to see and acquire i knew not what. when i came at last to rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, i found that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple and true ; that it was familiar and sincere ; that it was the old, eternal fact i had met already in so many forms, – unto which i lived; that it was the plain you and me i knew so well, -had left at home in so many conversations. i had the same experience already in a church at naples. there i saw that nothing was changed with me but the place, and said to myself, -‘thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over four thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was perfect to thee there at home 2' —that fact i saw again in the academmia at naples, in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again when i came to rome, and to the paintings of raphael, angelo, sacchi, titian, and leonardo da vinci. “what, old mole! workest thou in the earth so fast?” it had travelled by my side : that which i ſancied i had left in boston was here in the vatican, and again at milan, and at paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as a treadmill. i now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. art. 327 pictures must not be too picturesque. nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. all great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are. the transfiguration, by raphael, is an eminent example of this peculiar merit. a calm, benignant beauty shines over all this picture, and goes directly to the heart. it seems almost to call you by name. the sweet and sublime face of jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid expectations ! this familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is as if one should meet a friend. the knowledge of picturedealers has its value, but listen not to their criticism when your heart is touched by genius. it was not painted for them, it was painted for you ; for such as had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we must end with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know them, are but initial. our best praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not to the actual result. he has conceived meanly of the resources of man, who believes that the best age of production is past. the real value of the iliad, or the transfiguration, is as signs of power; billows or ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays. art has not yet 328 essay xii. come to its maturity, if it do not put itself abreast with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. there is higher work for art than the arts. they are abortive births of an imperſect or vitiated instinct. art is the need to create ; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end. a man should find in it an outlet for his whole energy. he may paint and carve only as long as he can do that. art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists. already history is old enough to witness the old age and disappearance of particular arts. the art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect. it was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, a savage's record of gratitude or devotion, and among a people possessed of a wonderful perception of form this childish carving was refined to the utmost splendor of effect. but it is the game of a rude and youtha art. 329 ful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual nation. under an oak-tree loaded witn leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, i stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our plastic arts, and especially of sculpture, creation is driven into a corner. i cannot hide from myself that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as of toys, and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. but the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods, and there is a moment when it becomes frivolous. i do not wonder that newton, with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of planets and suns, should have wondered what the earl of pembroke found to admire in “stone dolls.” sculpture may serve to teach the pupil how deep is the secret of form, how purely the spirit can translate its meanings into that eloquent dialect. but the statue will look cold and false before that new activity which needs to roll through all things, and is impatient of counterfeits, and things not alive. picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. but true art is never fixed, but always flowing. the sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. the oratorio has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. 330 essay xii. all works of art should not be detached, but extempore performances. a great man is a new statue in every attitude and action. a beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a roinance. a true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were found worthy to declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and destroy its separate and contrasted existence. the fountains of invention and beauty in modern society are all but dried up. a popular novel, a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are all paupers in the almshouse of this world, without dignity, without skill, or industry. art is as poor and low. the old tragic necessity, which lowers on the brows even of the venuses and the cupids of the antique, and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous figures into nature, —namely, that they were inevitable ; that the artist was drunk with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which vented itself in these fine extravagances, – no longer dignifies the chisel or the pencil. but the artist and the connoisseur now seek in art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils of life. men are not well pleased with the figure they make in their own imaginations, and they flee to art, and convey their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. art art. 331 makes the same effort which a sensual prosperity makes; namely, to detach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to enjoyment. these solaces and compensations, this division of beauty from use, the laws of nature do not permit. as soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. high beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire. the art that thus separates is itself first separated. art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall be. they abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselves with color-bags, and blocks of marble. they reject life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. they despatch the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. they eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses ; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death from the first. would it not be better to begin higher up, — to serve the ideal bo332 essay xii. fore they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of life & beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. if history were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. in nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. it is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive ; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in england or america its history in greece. it will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. it is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we seek now only an economical use. is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, – to mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey when its errands art. 333 are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the atlantic between old and new england, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature. the boat at st. petersburgh, which plies along the lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. when science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation. the end, t _---*** -----------| | | | | | | | | | | | 595 591 593 3 2044 010 308 302 waldo emerfor aw1323.029.2 . stas harvard college library ralph waldo emerson. complete works. centenary edition. 12 vols., crown 8vo. with portraits, and copious notes by ldward waldo emerson. price per volume, $1.75. 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. 5. english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. 10. lectures and biographical sketches. 11. miscellanies. 12. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works. riverside edition. with 2 portraits. 12 vols., cac gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 13 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15.00. poems. household edition. with portrait. iamo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. essays. first and second series. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classica. crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emerson. introductory essay. household edition. 12mo, $..$o. holiday edition. 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. 18mo, $1.00. emerson calendar book. 32mo, parchment-paper, 35 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 1834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. 1 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. tamo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. emerson's journals. edited by edward w. emerson and waldo emerson forbes. ilustrated. crown 8vo, $1.75 net, per volume. for various other editions of emerson's works and emerson memoirs, sce catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820–1876 vol. x journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson „and waldo emerson forbes 1864-1876 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1914 al 1323.029.2 harvard rvard college cca 7:13,1942 library . ( gelnouloolidge ary c copyright, 1914, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published march 1914 contents journal lv 1864 (from journals for, war, dl and kl) beecher on mobs. dinner to general burnside; mr. storey's question. chapin as a lecturer. magnificent florence. obstacles to philanthropy. dr. jackson on gold mines. saturday club dinner. obituaries of thackeray. captain o. w. holmes. france's improvisations. berthollet's courage. talk with alcott; english and american genius. our clergy's weakening hold on tradition; a new religion of virtue and beauty; great sentiment; the spirit; enthusiasm. barriers. agassiz's success in chicago; club meeting; plan for shakspeare's birthday. mr. emerson's plea for concord schools. bons-mots. thoreau's letter to a lady. parents and children. aerial navigation coming. the hostile english press; infatuated aristocracy. new blood disease. unmindful nations; selfish leaders. congenial men. must read renan. conceit and humility; power of individuals. scholar's method. bandmann reads hamlet. thoreau on a book. invitations for shakspeare tercentenary festival. school committee notes. bias. letter to matthew arnold. blake on wordsworth. contents shakspeare; his felicities; does not speak of tobacco. the festival, the company; agassiz's speech. shakspeare's magic; the wonder at him grows; his courage and competence. conservative and reformer. pascal. shakspeare again; the sonnets; his language and direct power. a shakspeare professorship. in the plays the story distracts from the poetry . . . . . 3-31 physiology of taste; country life. no age in intellect. alcott on sons and daughters. translation of michel angelo's sonnet. college mathematics, their overemphasis and abuse; crowd out other studies. hawthorne's funeral, his friends; james freeman clarke's address; the tragic element; emerson's disappointment in not having reached companionship. the child on the clergyman. the genius of a race. health the helper. music's omniscience. opposition's value. lesson of the spider. a hotel helps the writer; other helpful circumstances. occidental respect for human life. the french on english art. atmospheric influences. the master of eton on its influence. renan on paris. advancing years. helplessness in new conditions. moral of latent disease. the joy of insight. raffaele. american reserves; the new inventions. solitary inspirations. kings. manners a castle. consolations of old age. every age winnows. talk with alcott; americans have silently passed debatable lands. writers' besetting puerilities. germany excels in culture; we lack repose. the good indian. excellent conveniences of european cities. american independent thought. niebuhr on oracles and on christ's rank. family events. effect of alcott. england's discontents vii creditable attitude and lost opportunity. the high school. orchard rule. the “cheating fund” for travel. affirmative. visitors at concord. agassiz’s excellence in counsel; his theory . . . . . 32-60 september walk with channing; nature's speed. “sacrifice," a verse. america fighting for humanity; napoleon's prophecy.' plea to carlyle. visits. beauty as a reward. harness of city conventionality; unspoiled men. we lack enthusiasm. nature gives wealth; blessings of obscure youth; aunt mary on old-time christians. the war appoints the generals. talent in reading. thoughts' retrospective value. faithful wordsworth comes to his fame. drawings in punch. holmes on lectures. nature's prodigality; cost of experience, of love; we have more material than we can work up. meeting with fowler, a tennessee union-man. historic expressions. visit at naushon; john murray forbes, his admirable qualities; his talk with goldwin smith on danger to england of her marine policy. the dire, id delvbv, in eloquence; otis. lafayette's return to the assembly. the age, and hour. nature in bryant's poems. talk with henry james; revolutionary force. skies. the tardy change of england's tone. adam smith's clothes and books. club meeting. the war has made patriotism. verse, the sea-gods. miss hosmer, the teacher. club again. cows' merit. praise of bryant. introduction to lecture « education”; omen of the hour; the union is triumphing ; what america means. napoleon iii's life of cæsar. lord ravensworth on the soil. victor cousin on the pope. reading . . 61-88 viii contents journal lvi 1865 (from journals kl, dl, ml, xo and it) chicago; the lecturer wins his bet. miss edith emerson marries colonel forbes. wilkinson's writing. hooker's fine general order. parisian literary men. the peace of victory; the reconstruction problem. church as an amusement. thunderbolt. samuel hoar's strength. reed on locke. playground as police. illusion of words. mystery of immortality. president lincoln's equality to his task. marcus antoninus. delmonico's. lafayette's nobility. the scribes' doom. talk with alcott on religion; america's coming religion; atheism of scientific men; there must be faith as well as works. elizabeth hoar's fair mind. tactics of argument. the bible's claimed authority arouses resistance as the pagan scriptures do not. affirm the moral sentiment with dazzling courage. limited american reading; select books; events that were eras; curious books. carlyle's demoniac fun. ethics. our young soldiers; war moralizes as well as demoralizes. america, what it means to the immigrant. the praise of intellect. a good cause supplies argument, illustrations, poetry. drugs and temperance. being. jones very's saying on shakspeare. children of the people. the pear blight. forms versus powers. writings on immortality do not satisfy. forceythe willson. wendell phillips's commanding talent. manners. scotus erigena. a resemblance to lincoln; nature's contents cunning repetition; the winthrops. lingering proslavery symptoms. webster's wrath at young men who forsook him. potential force. fitness outranks fashion. beware the minor key. stirling's secret of hegel. carlyle’s intolerances. collapse following victory. williamstown; constellations from the observatory. dr. jackson's conversation at thanksgiving. the story of cass and albert h. tracy. college days; unitarianism as a cure-all. carlyle’s astonishing style. virtues of reaction. illusion of surfaces. moral sentiment our protection. the old papyrus, memory; the past works. reading . . . . . . . 91-126 journal lvii 1866 (from journals dl, ln, and ml) lecturing. the task and the muse. the paid mourner. common sense; mansfield, brummel. love's imputation. all-powerful manners. song of the brook. home-critics. education. criticism from europe. caution to the university. charles xii on mathematics. sentences from the koran. napoleon and his genius. hesper. course on “ philosophy of the people.” laws of the mind. dr. johnson's sayings. intellect. the celestial mind. aunt mary on immortality; van helmont. the vikings' code. uses of an academy; “ chaldaic oracles”; zoroaster on death. identity. polarity. memory is man's lost pleiad; life's allurements to the mind. war clarifies, contents ty's.hs. we want old lights opens new doors that never shut. letter to a friend in europe; advance of old age; newcomb; holmes. what hegel says. hafiz plays greatly; fears nothing. america's political duty ethical. goethe. beauty a miniature of the world; hence concerns all men. deity and “god." the field and the seven men. taliessin; whitman. poets of a single utterance. aunt mary's manuscripts, their attraction and elevation. visit to the young people's camp on monadnoc; the storm, the glories. harvard gives degree of doctor of laws. wither and lovelace compared. drinking and tobacco. charles lamb. our debt to milton. humanity's nobility through the ages. calvinism and greek myths. we want heat. man and the muse. the new atlantic cable. old light better than new. political fanaticism. alcott in new york, .. 129–158 maya (illusion ) of hindoos. william forbes. gifts, flowers. visit to agassiz; brazil. biography. hindoo theology important; teaches nobility. self-respect in a family, anquetil duperron. atlantic cable succeeds. books as doors. egypt. hafiz plays with magnitudes; the manly positive degree. caprice of fame; degrees of greatness. masters. dr. charles t. jackson tells of wild music at lake superior; analyzed sound. home allows privacy. the two facts. the preacher. men and women. woman's help to cause of freedom. necessity. railroads make republics. wealth meets the unexpected. to writers. in dreams we play both parts. success. kindness. names. brag. useful theresa. the negro. reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 159-177 contents journal lviii 1867 (from journals ml, ln, and ny) western lecturing. pleasure in minnesota; wisconsin railroads; long sleigh-rides. taylor's and winckelmann's paganism. eloquence; landor. christ's preaching and ours. the mind is true. natural aristocracy. intellectual power the presence of god. the guiding whisper. men of talent, and those who delight in the eternal laws. the goading spirit hides, but is heaven. embodied thoughts. swedenborg's vision not clear; milton's vision. the writer's testimony on higher things. religion is vision enacted; the soul and the inward law. good universal, the law justifies itself. the questions of the age. american melioration; this country's office. the human race immortal. lessing on astronomy. coming era in universities. fathers and sons. nantasket beach. culture partial. the real, daily miracle. funeral of george l. stearns. treatment of negroes and jews. desired tutors. the stately hudson river. justice maule's rebuke. may-day published. collins's musical quality. aunt mary's reading of tasso, homer and milcon. immortality. dr. holmes. the old boston town-crier. stout hearts of pindar and kepler. the lost passage in a book. mrs. barbauld. emerson appointed overseer at harvard. nature's symbols; eyes that can see identity and centrality. death of mrs. ripley; her gifts and charm. charles newcontents comb's writing. parsons's translation of the inferno. dante's abnormal mind. quotation or originality. johnson on death; a representative englishman. elusive dream. strong preachers and outgrown forms. identity. the natural. light. things incomprehensible yet practical. zymosis. the grandchild. peace even-handed. matthew arnold on style. carlyle's perverse attitude. holmes on dr. james jackson. the deluge. consul grattan's wit. the tempting classics. the quoter gives his past: kean's admirable richard ii. architecture of thought. nature's charming repetitions; what is quotation? the joy of reading others' works. english guests. more western lectures, and peril of the freezing mississippi. reading . . . . . . . . . . . 181–224 journal lix 1868 (from journals ln and ny) sickness of william emerson. quarrel of boys. praise of harriet martineau's eastern life. free trade. unequal shares of beauty. charles norton's lecture. the gods of egypt. the banker's prophecy of fortunes in railroads. knowledge dies with its possessors. america's poets should be patriots. herodotus on the egyptians. aunt mary's attitude in heaven. colonel theodore lyman. dr. jackson on balloons. president johnson. “the eye altering alters all.” present day obstructives. horatio greenough. oneness contents xiii of religion. richard owen's request from turner. sunday school. the wished for tower. alexander and the brahmin. poetic results of science; unity. the world a school for heaven. revolutions wrought by time; great men. epigrams. goethe. books. aristophanes judged. education. tennyson's “ holy grail”; a later opinion. leisure. calvinism, its three legs; buddhism its opposite. the atlantic authors. the opposition. inspirations of fit company. gurney and others. john weiss. scott. absurd honorary degrees. fox on versifying. disraeli. william morris's earthly paradise. beauty a moral effect. duties done; a daughter. a friend may tell your fortune. metaphysicians, berkeley, hegel; the next step? enchantments; shakspeare's poems. the temple builders. the seashore. visit to miss clarke at newport . . . . . . . . . . 226–250 the sea not seen from the wharves; the ocean's surprise. mrs. helen hunt; george eliot's poems; wordsworth. vermont, middlebury. mount mansfield, george bradford, george bartlett. banquet to chinese embassy. the university question, faults and shortcomings. nature's bounty. evarts and williams. france's scientific achievement. joy in woods; in books of reference. boston course of lectures. memorable single poems or sentences. george e. tufts's line. mediocre books; blessing of libraries. zymosis, ferment of science. surprises from within. french tact in writing. john hunter; his museum; « arrested development.” william r. ware, his berkeley st. church and harvard memorial hall. xiy contents lowell's poems; tone in poetry. wordsworth and tennyson. michel angelo; thomas gray. english manners. strong new england families. culture. farming. intellect and physical laws. reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 251-272 journal lx 1869 (from journals ny and ml) plan for readings in boston; the bardic poetry, the morte d'artbur; byron, scott, tennyson. homer's impartiality. arab and greek hospitality. tone; french poetry, victor hugo. religion, the point of view. cheering men; the forbeses, judge hoar, agassiz. immortality. political managers. shakspeare the man. montaigne on socrates. richard hunt. readings to class; poetry and prose planned or actually read. the mountain, verse. pervading deity. incompatibles. memory. talk to alcott on the current of thought. bunsen. god's dealing with time. college committee on merit and discipline at harvard; marks, the antioch method. judge hoar at commencement dinner. charles sumner's character, learning, services; his detractors. landor compares austria with florence alone. hesiod's sayings. periodicity on nature and in fable. speech at humboldt centenary celebration. powers of intellect enumerated. command. experimental poetry. problem of dreams. general wayne's foresight. aunt xv contents mary and society. prune your writing. plutarch's immortality. the indian and eliot. blessing of warmth. latent harmony. threat of calvinism. elect persons. agassiz's illness. reading . . 275-306 journal lxi 1870 (from journals ny and st) goodwin's plutarch's morals. society and solitude. charles ware's dream; commemoration day at harvard; lowell's ode. bettine brentano and aunt mary. saturday club. lowell misprizes thoreau. the new book sells. vicious protection in trade. gentlemen rare. musagetes; a yankee muse helps. alvah crocker; his fitchburg railroad and hoosac tunnel; baldwin. jealousy of dream-spirits. montesquieu. use of clubs to hermits. arago. carlyle's bequest of books to harvard university. varnhagen on impressions. the exclusive englishman. goethe's musagetes again. university lectures established at harvard; mr. emerson asked to give course on philosophy. identity; bias; schelling and his pupils; hegel on sensibility? dog and dress. fichte. autograph letters. plutarch on reacting courtesy; montesquieu on age. philip physick randolph. alexander's weeping rightly told. “apophthegms of great commanders.” philosophies grow old. socrates's accusers. nouvelle biographie générale. nantasket beach; its riches and glories. can i have books hereafter ? xvi contents mrs. howe's “ battle hymn ” and “the flag." home. aunt mary's moral inspirations; the ancient ethics; the omnipotent rea. christianity and man react on each other. the september trip to waterford and mount washington. france's fate. saturday club. chivalry a good theme, imagination unextinguishable. the range of a thought, religion promotes this, in the great writers. memory. the master's degree made real at harvard. corner-stone of memorial hall laid; admirable services. freedom given by the private class. importance of foreign literature. couture's important rule applied to writing; holmes and hood as examples. education of familiar intercourse; heredity in culture. greatness. greek. objection to metaphysics. americans fortunate in individual freedom. plutarch's symposiacs. history shows that lapses beget protest and reform. voltaire's spinoza. classics over-esteemed; science asserts itself. plato on time. the rememberers. public speaking. oliver's puritan commonwealth underestimates force of conditions. stories of rhode island; holy ancestors. delight in men who can do things. the mystical double printing. reading · · 309-344 journal lxii 1871 (from journal st) lectures. organizing the boston museum of fine arts. course on philosophy at harvard. age, taliessin. contents xvii the spirit has no fear of science; identity. carlyle and mill. pusey sends an inscribed book. müller's gift. coleridge on greek women. chateaubriand and washington. john m. forbes carries mr. emerson off to california for a rest; the party. notes of the journey, the big tree, california boys. good comes of evil in the population. newton on gifts. coincidences suggest guardian angel. return home. the fountain inscription. beauty of woman's hair. nature's ground plan. “my men.” historical society; scott centennial; picturesque superstition. correlation of forces, sciences, men. splendors of this age. poetry must be fresh, avoid emphasis; the man and his visiting angel. the goth year after graduation. rhetoric. the whig poetry of charles i's time did not live. thought may expel memory. ellery channing's poems. alcott's words on memory. bret harte's visit. ruskin's two paths. names. those facts that nature teaches; their relation. poetic necessity of mind; beautiful revelations of science. thoughts fugitive. hero meets his enchanter. bacon's saying on testimony. tibullus, on venus; epicharmus on the mind. geoffroy saint hilaire's heroism, his contest with cuvier. culture increasing; more writers and lovers of verse; vers de société. blessed cheerfulness. poets have unlucky physique. the father fails to control child; the sympathetic man can. america at disadvantage in literary culture, but has many men of varied power and wit; fine women also. burnt chicago; the last western lecturing journey. reading . . . . . . . . . 347–373 xviii contents journal lxiii 1872 (from journal st) lectures at baltimore and washington. speech to freedmen at howard university; praise of george herbert; its result. james t. fields arranges saturday afternoon readings for mr. emerson; their success. notes on religion. lecture for concord on generosity in books and pictures. memories of childish delights and wonders. old age. the good writer will influence, independent of date. shakspeare a fixed star. the sixty-ninth birthday near childhood's home in boston; memories. beauty of girls in boston streets. sarah clarke's visit. address at amherst college, guest of president stearns. the great office of poetry. the burning of the concord home. the town family to the rescue; hospitality at the old manse. the munificence of the many friends; dr. lebaron russell and judge hoar. provisional arrangements. mr. emerson's illness and anxieties. visit to maine. naushon and its restoring hospitalities; its beauty. mr. emerson sent to europe by his friends. london; colonel lee and charles norton, william henry channing and moncure d. conway; their attentions. good effect of rest. carlyle; dean stanley. canterbury. at paris with lowell and john holmes. rome; the good von hoffmans. sailing for egypt; christmas at alexandria. reading . . . 377-401 contents xix journal lxiv 1873 (from journal st) the dismal delta. cairo. meeting friends. courtesy of general stone (pasha). sailing up the nile in a dahabeah; the party. humiliation of ignorance; the sphinxes' scorn. the stately people. summer in midwinter. thebes, assuan, philæ. the magnet's mystery. pleasant english visitors. return to cairo. crete. rome; friends. florence; john bigelow, herman grimm and his wife. latter march in paris with lowell and john holmes. j. c. morison. meeting with renan, taine, elie de beaumont. enjoyment of paris, its privileges and freedom. returning strength and spirits. april in london. happy meetings with carlyle. gladstone, mill, huxley, tysdall, dean stanley, thomas hughes, helps and others. visit to the amberleys. cyfarthra castle. oxford, guest of max müller; jewett, ruskin, prince leopold. visit to mr. flower, stratford on avon. the voyage home. birthday at sea; mr. norton's poem. concord's joyful welcome. wonder of the restored home. mrs. bell's mot. max müller's tribute. september, address at opening of munroe gift of free public library to concord. stallo forestalls darwin. theologic mysteries. overseer of college again. hegel on life. boston tea-party anniversary; reading of poem “ boston.” reading . . 405-425 xx contents journal lxv 1874 (from journal st) quiet life at home, reviewing the manuscripts. charles sumner's death; judge hoar's letter. death of two old and valued friends : abel adams; francis cabot lowell, obituary notice. the secret of poetry. candidacy for lord rectorship of glasgow university; disraeli wins. collection of poetry “ parnassus" published; its history. reading . . . . 429-438 journal lxvi 1875 (from journal st) mr. emerson unequal to arranging the promised volume. mr. cabot willingly gives the needed aid. letters and social aims published. lecture in philadelphia: the three old playfellows meet. centennial celebration of concord fight. emerson unveils french's minute man and speaks. human life and nature's teaching. children utter unconscious oracles. schleiermacher's impatience of university routine. emerson appointed on committee on philosophy at harvard college. carlyle's 80th birthday. reading . 441-445 contents xxi journal lxvii 1876 (from journal st; also passages from ledgers of uncertain date) the carlyle medal. address at the university of virginia in june. reminiscences at boston latin school celebration in november. william allingham's poem. ········· 449-451 the ledgers (from ledger ph) idealism, our need of ascent. the miracle of powers combined. sensibility, joy of human relation. abnormal minds, blake, swedenborg, behmen; oracular men, persian, hindoo. wonder. divination by sympathy; hegel and kant. the grand masters of thought; instinct to write in verse. no age to intellect. inspiration, its periods of sleep; its majesty. man's witness to the law. style. transition our privilege and power. your spirit should rank your talent, character must command; heroes win us. nature leads us. nature and mind. (from ledger to) hegel faltered, but his teaching did its work. skepticism useful. sieze on a man's sanity, ignore the rest. respect the exempts, they justify themselves. the ascending effort. hegel's dogma helped on science. melioration as well as transition. genius unsettles everything. writing must be like nature's works. xxii contents fame convenient. mankind's verdict good; jesus stands at the head of history. thought wins against fate; its harmony, its dawn; it is man's distinction. language proves your thought not new. divine genius; the sculptor's feeling imbues the marble. truth vanishes with contradiction; thoreau's word. the people prefer thoughts to truth. subjectiveness is dangerously great; bonaparte's genius dazzled him. automatic action of thought. religion is power. fancy and imagination; examples from thoreau's journals; wind, golden-rod, the eagle, the bluebird's song. the scholar's creed. (from ledger eo) fate; inherited opinions. may and must, shown in races; souls' varying ration of light; doctrine of fate hard to state; unity inspires all, yet passes understanding. hafiz on fate; love is the safeguard. (from ledger py) man's eastern horizon. the unseen treasure in uninteresting people, the gleams. psychology made up of many small contributions. we see what we make. mr. emerson's last years. a few lectures read near home. he reads again his own forgotten works • 452-476 index . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 illustrations thomas carlyle and ralph emerson forbes. frontispiece photogravure from a photograph in 1872. colonel william hathaway forbes . :... 160 from a photograph in 1885. mrs. sarah alden (bradford) ripley.... 208 from a painting in the possession of mrs. james b. thayer. . . . 254 george partridge bradford . . . . from a painting by miss sarah g. putnam. journal beecher. chapin american writers concord public schools england's attitude saturday club shakspeare's birthday celebration college curriculum mathematics hawthorne's death and burial inspiration. old age. agassiz. forbes. bryant journal lv 1864. (from for, war, dl and kl) [all page references to passages from the journals used by mr. emerson in his published works are to the centenary edition, 1903–05.] to the front! [it does not appear that the western lecturing trip was so far or so long this year as often. mr. emerson seems to have given lectures in erie and pittsburgh, pennsylvania, and cleveland, ohio, and probably other places, but reached home in the third week in january.] τέχνη τύχην έστερξε και τύχη τέχνην' agatho. (from for) january 13, 1864. beecher, at breakfast, illustrated the difference between the impulsive mobin new york cooper institute and the organized mob in liverpool 1 art (or skill) and luck are on good terms with one another. 4. journal (age 60 meeting. “in one you go by a corner where the wind sucks in, and blows your hat off, but, when you get by it, you go along comfortably to the next corner. in the other, you are on the prairie, with no escape from the irresistible northwester.” (from war) february 8. at the dinner given the other night, february 4, at the union club to general burnside, after much talk of the accounts of our several battles given by the reporters of the press, in which accounts the general plainly had no confidence, and so of the ignorance on the part of all subaltern officers, who could not know any more than they saw;in despair mr. charles storey looked up, and said, “well, general, do you then think we have true history, in cæsar's commentaries?” there was a sudden laugh which went round the whole table, gradually increasing in volume and cheer. february 19. last night heard chapin lecture, for the first time. he has a powerful, popular voice which agreeably stimulates the house, and, rarely, he drops the orotund, which is like an infantry company firing one at a time, and uses a quieter 1864) philanthropy tone which penetrates all ears, and deepens the silence. but i thought it is not a question whether we shall be a nation, or only a multitude of people; no, but whether we shall be the new nation, the leading guides and lawgivers of the world, as having clearly chosen and firmly held the simplest and best rule of political society. what a town was florence with dante, ghiberti, giotto, brunelleschi, da vinci, michael angelo, raffaelli, cellini, guicciardini, machiavelli, savonarola, alfieri, galileo! the obstacle the philanthropic movements meet is in the invincible depravity of the virtuous classes. the excellent women who have made an asylum for young offenders, boys of 10 to [18?] years, and who wish, after putting them through their school, to put them out to board in good farmers' or mechanics' families, find the boys do well enough, but the farmer and the farmer's wife, and the mechanic's wife, behave brutally. what then? one thinks of luttrell's speech about the soldiers fraternizing with the mob, “egad, it's awkward when the extinguisher catches fire." and i remember that charles barnard had not made up his mind whether journal (age 60 dr. tuckerman, his chief, relieved or made more pauperism. dr. charles t. jackson will have nothing to do with the survey of gold mines, because he has no confidence that they can be profitably worked by any stock company: the workmen in such mines will carry off all the gold. in california and oregon, every miner for himself: and on such terms only can they be wrought. february 28. yesterday at the club with cabot, ward, holmes, lowell, judge hoar, appleton, howe, woodman, forbes, whipple, with general barlow,' and mr. howe, of nova scotia, for guests; but cramped for time by late dinner and early hour of the return train, — a cramp which spoils a club. for you shall not, if you wish good fortune, even take pains to secure your right and left hand men. the least design instantly makes an obligation to make their time agreeable, which i can never assume. holmes was gay i francis c. barlow, whose brilliant military talent and utter courage raised him from a private volunteer soldier to a major-general's command, lived in concord with his mother in his boyhood and attended the academy. 1864) dickens on thackeray 7 with his “preadamite mentioned in the scriptures, chap. first,” and appleton with “that invariable love of hypocrisy which delights the saxon race," etc. the spectator says of the three obituary notices of thackeray by dickens, trollope, and kingsley, that only dickens's is equal to the subject; the others strain to write up, and fail. captain o. w. holmes? tells me that the army of the potomac is acquiring a professional feeling, and that they have neither panics nor excitements, but more self-reliance. france, in 1789, improvised war, and in 1803, improvised civilization. (see in saintebeuve, nouveaux causeries, article “ biot.”). berthollet's report on the poisoned brandy 1 what follows is printed in “greatness ” (letters and social aims, pp. 317, 318). 2 captain holmes, of the twentieth regiment, massachusetts volunteers, bore a gallant part in the fighting of the army of the potomac and had been severely wounded at the battle of antietam. (see “myhunt after the captain'" in the atlantic monthly, dec. 1862, by his father, the doctor.) journal [age 60 to the committee of public safety. he put the brandy through a filter and then drank it. “how dared you drink it?” said robespierre. “i did a bolder thing,” replied berthollet, “when i put my name to that report,” -as having resisted the panic of suspicion which made the tyranny of the committee of public safety. march 13. last night talked with alcott, who returns much lately to the comparison between english and american genius. i gratified him by saying that our intellectual performance, taken with our sentiment, is perhaps better worth than their performance, taken with their limitation or downward tendency. for certainly we cannot count or weigh living writers with theirs. but how to meet the demand for a religion? a few clergymen here, like hedge and clarke, retain the traditions, but they never mention them to i me, and, if they travelled in france, england, or italy, would leave them locked up in the same closet with their sermons at home, and, if they did not return, would never think to send for them. beecher, manning, bushnell hold a little firmer and more easily to theirs, as calvinism has a more tenacious vitality;— but that is doomed gh living will certainly weation or 1864) the new religion 9 also, and will only die last; for calvinism rushes to be unitarianism as unitarianism rushes to be naturalism. how, then, is the new generation to be edified? how should it not? the life of these once omnipotent traditions was really not in the legend, but in the moral sentiment and the metaphysical fact which the legends enclosed ;and these survive. a new socrates, or zeno, or swedenborg, or pascal, or a new crop of geniuses, like those of the elizabethan age, may be born in this age, and, with happy heat and a bias for theism, bring asceticism and duty and magnanimity into vogue again. in the most vulgar times, in the bronze as in the oaken age, a certain number of men of organic virtue are born – men and women of native integrity, and indifferently in high and low families. but there will always be a class of imaginative men, whom poetry, whom the love of beauty leads to the adoration of the moral sentiment. . . . at any time, it only needs the contemporaneous appearance of a few superior and i the last two sentences, without the names, are printed in “character” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 116). 2 the rest of the paragraph is found in “ character” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 117, 118). 10 (age 60 journal attractive men to give a new and noble turn to the public mind. i said to alcott that we old fellows occupy ourselves with the history or literature of the sentiment, and not, as once, with the essence itself. i remember in my life happy weeks when i said to myself, “ i will no longer respect success, or the finishing and exhibition of my work; but every stroke on the work, every step taken in the dark toward it, every defeat, even, shall be sacred and luminous also. am i not always in the great presence? i will not postpone my existence, but be always great and serene with that inspiration.” alcott thought that successful men were liable to such fall, but that unsuccessful men had nothing else but the sentiment to return to. and that is just, and the sentiment may, by such habitude, come to steep and meliorate the man, come to be character instead of a rhetoric. the resources, i say, remain, or renew, day by day. the old eternal ghost, the jove, refuses to be known, but refuses to depart: then, the sporadic probity i spoke of, capriciously scattered, is yet always present to keep society sweet. then enthusiasm — from pure vision down to its most clouded form of fanaticism measu 1864) agassiz in chicago i is the miraculous leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.' and the unanimous approbation of society and of governments is secured, as a rule, to godliness, because of its usefulness. barriers of man impassable. they who should be friends cannot pass into each other. friends are fictions founded on some single momentary experience. ... but what we want is consecutiveness. ... march 26. at the club, where was agassiz just returned from his lecturing tour, having created a natural history society in chicago, where four thousand five hundred dollars were subscribed as its foundation by nineteen persons. and to which he recommended the appointment of mr. kinnicott as the superintendent. 1 this sentence occurs in “ progress of culture” (letters and social aims, p. 228). 2 the rest of the paragraph is found in “inspiration” (letter and social aims, pp. 272, 273). 3 footnote by r. w. e. when i visited the “ chicago natural history museum” in 1865, the fund had become $50,000. 12 journal (age 60 dr. holmes had received a demand from geneva, new york, for fifty-one dollars as cost of preparing for his failed lecture. governor andrew was the only guest.' hedge, hoar, both the doctors howe, holmes, lowell, norton, woodman, whipple, were present. it was agreed that the april election should be put off till may, and that the next meeting should be on april 23, intead of 30th, and that we should, on that day, have an open club, allowing gentlemen whom we should designate to join us in honour of shakspeare's birthday. the committee of the club might invite certain gentlemen also, as the guests of the club, emerson, lowell, and holmes being the committee. on (from dl) [mr. emerson was at this time on the school committee, and the “ march meeting ” of the voters was at hand, when it might fall to him to urge the town to liberality in the annual appropriation for the schools.] school. first, see that the expense be for teaching, or that school be kept the greatest i he was chosen a member shortly after, as were also martin brimmer, james t. fields and samuel w. rowse. 1864) concord schools 13 number of days and for the greatest number of scholars. then that the best teachers and the best apparatus, namely, building, furniture, books, etc., be provided. school, because it is the cultus of our time and place, fit for the republic, fit for the times, which no longer can be reached and commanded by the church. what an education in the public spirit of massachusetts has been the war-songs, speeches, and readings of the schools ! every district school has been an anti-slavery convention for two or three years last past. this town has no seaport, no cotton, no shoe-trade, no water-power, no gold, lead, coal, or rock oil, nor marble; nothing but wood and grass, not even ice and granite, our new england staples; for the granite is better in fitchburg, and our ice, mr. tudor said, had bubbles in it. we are reduced, then, to manufacture school-teachers, which we do, for the southern and western market. i advise the town to stick to that staple, and make it the best in the world. it is your lot in the urn. and it is one of the commanding lots. get the best apparatus, the best overseer; and turn out the best possible article. mr. agassiz says, “i mean to make the harvard museum such that no european naturalist can afford to stay 14 journal [age 60 away from it.” let the town of concord say as much for its school. we will make our schools such that no family which has a new home to choose can fail to be attracted hither, as to the one town in which the best education can be secured. this is one of those long prospective economies which are sure and remunerative. bons-mots. i am always struck with the speed with which every new interest, party, or way of thinking gets its bon-mot and name and so adds a new word to language. thus higginson, and livermore, hosmer, and the fighting chaplains give necessity and vogue to “muscular christianity.” the language of the day readily suggested to some theological wit to call hell “a military necessity.” thoreau's letter.' “ do you read any noble verses ? for ny part, they have been the only things i remembered, or that which occasioned 1 the letter was written to mrs. lucy cotton (jackson) brown, mrs. emerson's elder sister, an invalid lady whose experiences had not been fortunate, and whom thoreau always tried to cheer up, besides being helpful to her in many practical ways. 1864) age. aviation 15 them, when all things else were blurred and defaced. all things have put on mourning but they; for the elegy itself is some victorious melody in you escaping from the wreck. it is relief to read some true books, wherein all are equally dead, equally alive. i think the best parts of shakspeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. i have found it so. and so much the more as they are not intended for consolation.” old age. i told richard fuller that he would soon come to a more perfect obedience to his children than he had ever been able to obtain from them. m. babinet informs us that the problem of aerial navigation is on the point of being solved. i am looking, therefore, for an arrival of the remainder of the prisoners of war from the libby and atlanta prisons, by the balloon, descending at some point in pennsylvania by a night voyage from the south. the english journals are flippant and spiteful in their notices of american politics and society, but mean abuse cannot be answered. 16 (age 60 journal if the writers were responsible, and could be held to the interrogatory, it would be easy to refresh their short memories with the history of english politics and society. the private memoirs of any age of england are full of scandal. read lord hervey to know how just king, ministers, lords, bishops, and commons were in george i's time. read wraxall for george iii's. were the interiors of the court and the behaviour of the great lords in any age great and disinterested ? ask pepys, ask swift, barnet, bacon. the illusion under which the aristocracy live amounts to insanity. lord bristol plainly believes that it is very good of him to exist and the government owes him unceasing thanks. he does nothing for them. well, that is the humour of them all in lord hervey's pictures. that immensity of condescension in a fat old lubber does not appear at washington except in men very long distinguished. it was curious, that, in the first volume of hervey, the mere mention of lord bristol's love for ickworth, and walpole's building of his grand seat at houghton, and lord townsend's raynham, more tickled my fancy, the vision of parks and gardens, than all the history. se 1864] family scene. stupidity 17 april. diplomatic. lord hervey affirms that, “however incredible, it is literally true, that, when queen caroline (of george ii) was dying, she advised the king to marry again ; whereupon the tears and sobs of the king were renewed, and he exclaimed, “non, j'aurai des maitresses”; to which the queen made no other reply than, 'ab! mon dieu! cela n'empêche pas.' · old age. the tribune reports that a new zealand physician, lecturing on the ignorance in people of their own complaints, was asked by a lady,“ what was the subject of his next lecture?” “the circulation of the blood,” he replied. she said she should certainly attend, for she had been troubled with that complaint for a long time. nations have no memories. they are all such unlicked cubs as we see; great mobs of young men, full of conceit and all manner of emptiness. lord hervey, pepys, clarendon, lord chesterfield, commines, wraxall, show up the aristocracy ; that it is a gang of rich thieves, instead of a gang of poor thieves. 18 journal (age 60 garrison. round him legislatures revolve. “father of his country more than washington,” said alcott. what unexpected revivals we have seen ! maryland and kentucky are converted. then concord may be. are conve if to the clubhouse people came; if, better, to some town of cheap living we could call twenty deep men to spend a month and take our chance of meeting each, in turn alone, that were worth while. when a man meets his accurate mate, then life is delicious. alcott said of preachers, the “people want some one who has been where they are now." i suppose i must read renan, vie de jésus, which i fancied was frenchy. it is a pregnant text, and a key to the moral and intellectual pauses and inactivity of men, “the creature is subject to vanity.” there is none almost who has not this misleading egotism. the efficient men are efficient by means of this flanders horse. but it destroys them for grandeur of aim, and for highest conversation. they all gravitate to cities. god, the inward life, is not enough 1864) renan's “life of jesus” 19 for them; they must have the million mirrors of other minds, must measure wit with others for mastery, and must have the crowns and rewards of wit that cities give. yet up and down in every nation, are scattered individual souls with the grace of humility. george fox, behmen, scougal, the mahometan saint rabia, and the hindoos, have the art to cheapen the world thereby. so ossian's “ cathmore dwelt in the wood to avoid the voice of praise.” jesus was grand where he stood, and let rome and london dance after nazareth. but the thinkers or littérateurs of humility are not humble. thus alcott, thoreau, and i know the use and superiority of it, but i cannot praise our practice. every saint as every man comes one day to be superfluous. who can doubt the potences of an individual mind, who sees the shock given to torpid races, torpid for ages, by mahomet, a vibration propagated over asia and africa, and not yet exhausted? what then of menu? what of buddh? the single word madame in french poetry, makes it instantly prose. 20 (age 60 journal 0 scholar. montaigne had rather take europe into his confidence than to tell so much to a french lord; as one may move awkwardly in a parlour, who walks well enough in a crowd. i heard bandmann read hamlet's soliloquy, the other day, at bartol's. in conversation he was polite and expansive enough, but plainly enjoyed the new expansion that the reading gave him. he stood up, and by musing distanced himself, then silences all the company, and gets out of doors, as it were, by a cheerful cry of a verse or two, and acquires a right to be the hero, and abounds in his own sense, and puts it despotically upon us, in look, manner, and elocution. he brought out the broad meaning of the soliloquy truly enough, but, as all actors will, with an overmuch, with emphasis and mouthing. they cannot let well alone, but must have the merit of all the refinements and second senses they have found or devised, and so drive it too finely. it is essential to reach this freedom, or gay self-possession, but temperance is essential, too. is henry thoreau wrote in 1840, “a good book will not be dropped by its author, but thrown up. it will be so long a promise that he 1864] shakspeare festival 21 will not overtake it soon. he will have slipped the leash of a fleet hound.” [it would appear that the celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of shakspeare's birth had its origin in the saturday club, and that mr. emerson had been appointed one of a committee of invitations and arrangements. evidently changes were made in the plan, for these lists and a later one do not quite agree.] address dr. frothingham, g. c. verplanck, j. g. whittier, dr. asa gray, r. h. dana. april 6, wrote to everett, bryant, bancroft, quincy, jr., ward; april 7, wrote to sanborn, john m. forbes, ticknor, governor andrew, richard grant white, cabot, lowell, appleton, holmes, gould, frothingham, whittier. (invitation to our centennial celebration of shakspeare's birthday :) club — agassiz, appleton, cabot, dana, dwight, emerson, forbes, hawthorne, hedge, hoar, howe, holmes, longfellow, lowell, (motley), norton, peirce,? sumner,? ward, whipple, woodman. outsiders — andrew, bryant, bancroft, verplanck, curtis, frothingham, dana, whittier, 1 22 [age бо journal everett, child, gray, white, clarke, hunt, fields, phillips, weiss, hill, rowse, conway, bigelow, hillard, brimmer, booth. april 8. school committee. examined miss e. skinner, miss laura dutton, miss tidd, miss e. brown, miss abby brown. elected miss eliza hosmer to the preparatory school; miss holden to the intermediate ; miss e. brown to the north quarter school, district no. 7; miss skinner to the north primary school; miss jeannie farmer, east quarter school, district no. 2; miss mary wood, bateman's pond school, district no. 6. my charge is chairman of the high school and of the east primary,' and i am to provide wood for my school, two and one half cords oak, one half cord pine. next school committee meeting is first saturday of may. the schools to begin again after the summer vacation on august 1. summer bias. how grateful to discover in man or woman a new emphasis, which they put on somewhat, to which you did not know they i opposite mr. emerson's house. 1864) bias. writers 23 attached value; quite out of themselves; and which they never learned of you or of any other ! how respectable they become ! i wrote to arnold, and should have said: i have heard that the engineers in the locomotives grow nervously vigilant with every year on the road, until the employment is intolerable to them; and, i think, writing is more and more a terror to old scribes. of wordsworth, blake writes: “this is all in the highest degree imaginative, and equal to any poet, but not superior. i cannot think that real poets have any competition. none are greatest in the kingdom of heaven. it is so in poetry.” shakspeare the only modern writer who has the honor of a concordance; the only painter who flatters nature. is pulverized into proverbs. all criticism is only a making of rules out of his beauties. “somnambulic security which makes the poet a poet.” — mommsen. [there are] great arts now, but no equal poetry celebrates them. 24 journal (age 60 the surprise in his choice of words so delights us : “foreign levy” — the trick of making verbs of nouns:“skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day." macbeth. « he lurched all swords o' the garland.” coriolanus. “ shunless destiny." coriolanus. 16 struck corioli like a planet.” coriolanus. “were i crowned the most imperial monarch, thereof most worthy; were i the fairest youth that ever made eye swerve; had force and knowledge more than was ever man's; i would not prize them without her love; for her employ them all, commend them, and condemn them, to her service, or to their own perdition.” winter's tale, iv, iii. i find no mention of tobacco in shakspeare, neither pipes nor snuff, which one would have said the dates permitted. 't is a remark1 to 1864) shakspeare 25 able case, like goethe's chronologic relation to steam locomotives. april 24. yesterday the saturday club met to keep the birthnight of shakspeare, at the end of the third century. we met at the revere house, at 4 o'clock p.m. members of the club present were seventeen: agassiz, appleton, cabot, dwight, emerson, forbes, hedge, hoar, holmes, s. g. howe, estes howe, longfellow, lowell, norton, peirce, whipple, woodman. guests: governor andrew, rev. dr. frothingham, r. h. dana, jr., esq., dr. j. g. palfrey, richard grant white, esq., robert c. winthrop, george s. hillard, george william curtis, james freeman clarke, francis j. child, dr. asa gray, james t. fields, john weiss, martin brimmer, george t. davis. we regretted much the absence of mr. bryant, and whittier, edward everett, and william hunt, who had at first accepted our invitations, but were prevented at last;— and of hawthorne, dana, sumner, motley, and ward, of the club, necessarily absent; also of charles sprague, and wendell phillips, and t. w. parsons, and george ticknor, who had declined our invitations. william hunt graced our hall our 26 journal (age 60 by sending us his full-length picture of hamlet, a noble sketch. it was a quiet and happy evening filled with many good speeches, from agassiz who presided (with longfellow as croupier, but silent), dr. frothingham, winthrop, palfrey, white, curtis, hedge, lowell, hillard, clarke, governor andrew, hoar, weiss, and a fine poem by holmes, read so admirably well that i could not tell whether in itself it were one of his best or not. the company broke up at 11.30. 'one of agassiz's introductory speeches was, “ many years ago, when i was a young man, i was introduced to a very estimable lady in paris, who in the conversation said to me that she wondered how a man of sense could spend his days in dissecting a fish. i replied, 'madam, if i could live by a brook which had plenty of gudgeons, i should ask nothing better than to spend all my life there. but since i have been in this country, i have become acquainted with a club, in which i meet men of various talents; one man of profound scholarship in the languages; one of elegant literature, or a high mystic poet; or one man of large experience in the conduct of affairs; one who teaches the blind to see, and, i confess, that i have enlarged my 1864) agassiz's speech 27 views of life; and i think that besides a brook full of gudgeons, i should wish to meet once a month such a society of friends.” and shakspeare.' how to say it, i know not, but i know that the point of praise of shakspeare is, the pure poetic power: he is the chosen closet companion, who can, at any moment, by incessant surprises, work the miracle of mythologising every fact of the common life ; as snow, or moonlight, or the level rays of sunrise — lend a momentary glory to every pump and woodpile. i in the following pages are many paragraphs on shakspeare, showing that mr. emerson was expected to speak. the address, much condensed, is printed in miscellanies. of the celebration mr. cabot, who was present, writes in his memoir of emerson (vol. 11, p. 261): “i remember his getting up, ... looking about him tranquilly for a minute or two, and then sitting down ; serene and unabashed, but unable to say a word [i. e. impromptu on a subject so familiar to his thoughts from his boyhood.” yet on the manuscript of his address mr. emerson noted that it was read at the club's celebration on that occasion, and at the revere house. the handwriting of this note looks like that when he was much older, and it may very likely have been written in his later years; so it is possible that mr. cabot was right. mr. emerson may have chanced to leave his notes at home, and without them would unwillingly have ventured to speak. 28 [age 60 journal when i read shakspeare, as lately, i think the criticism and study of him to be in their infancy. the wonder grows of his long obscurity; how could you hide the only man that ever wrote from all men who delight in reading ? then, the courage with which, in each play, he accosts the main issue, the highest problem, never dodging the difficult or impossible, but addressing himself instantly to that, — so conscious of his secret competence; and, at once, like an aeronaut fills his balloon with a whole atmosphere of hydrogen that will carry him over andes, if andes be in his path. the conservative sends for the doctor, when his child falls sick, though yesterday he affirmed, in the conversation, that the doctors did not know anything. in to-day's exigency he reinforces his faith. so, in politics, he votes new subsidies to the king, and when the reform agitation rages, he votes larger supplies to the government, — going it blind, so boys say. the reformer believes that there is no evil coming from change which a deeper thought cannot correct. we said that ours was the recuperative age; 1864) pascal. shakspeare 29 pascal is one of its recoveries ; not only the essay on love, but the pure text of the pensées. shakspeare puts us all out. no theory will account for him. he neglected his works. perchance he did not know their value? aye, but he did; witness the sonnets. he went into company as a listener, hiding himself,'08° ýel νυκτί έoικώς. was only remembered by all as a delightful companion. alcott thinks“ he was rhetorician, but did not propound new thoughts.” aye, he was rhetorician, as was never one before, but also had more thoughts than ever any had. say first, the greatest master of language, who could say the thing finer, nearer to the purity of thought itself than any other; and with the security of children playing, who talk without knowing it. (and to this point, what can carlyle mean by saying what he does of voltaire's superiority to all men in speech ? life of frederic, iv, p. 382.) i admire his wealth. i watch him, when he begins a play, to see what simple and directest means he uses ; never consulting his ease, never, in the way of common 1 he moved like night. 30 journal (age 60 artists, putting us off with ceremonies or declamations, but at once addressing himself to the noblest solution of the problem, having the gods and the course of human life in view. the wonder of his obscurity in his lifetime is to be explained by the egotism of literary men. tome the obscurity of alcott is a like wonder. shakspeare should be the study of the university. in florence, boccaccio was appointed to lecture on dante. but in english oxford, or in harvard college, i have never heard of a shakspeare professorship. yet the students should be educated, not only in the intelligence of, but in the sympathy with, the thought of great poets. the sonnets intimate the old aristotelian culture, and a poetic culture that we do not easily understand whence it came, smacks of the middle ages and parliaments of love and poesy (and i should say, that a string of poems prefixed to ben jonson's or beaumont and fletcher's plays, by their friends, are more seriously thought than the pieces which would now in england or america be contributed to any call of literary friendship). and yet, if whittier, holmes, lowell, channing, thoreau, bryant, sanborn, wasson, julia howe, had 1864] sonnets and plays : 31 each made their thoughtful contribution, there might be good reading. i must say that in reading the plays, i am a little shy where i begin; for the interest of the story is sadly in the way of poetry. it is safer, therefore, to read the play backwards. to know the beauty of shakspeare's level tone, one should read a few passages of what passes for good tragedy in other writers, and then try the opening of merchant of venice, antonio's first speech. i am inquisitive of all possible knowledge concerning shakspeare, and of all opinions. yet how few valuable criticisms, how few opinions i treasure ! how few besides my own! and each thoughtful reader, doubtless, has the like experience. sainte-beuve speaks wisely of the morals of homer, in portraits contemporains, volume iii, p. 434. physiology of taste were a good subject for a lecture.' my epicure should sow marjoram in 1 mr. emerson had been reading brillat-savarin's pbysiologie du gout. 32 journal [ace 60 his beds, if it were only to see with eyes the buds; and his windows should look into great gardens. my physiology, too, would in every point put the real against the showy; as, to live in the country, and not in town; to wear shoddy and old shoes; to have not a fine horse, but an old dobbin with only life enough to drag a jersey wagon to conantum, or estabrook, and there stand contented for half a day at a tree, whilst i forget him in the woods and pastures (as, in england the point is not to make strong beer, but beer weak enough to permit a great deal to be drunk in hot weather; as mr. flower explained to me at stratford). the intellect is alike old in the father and in the child. we old fellows affect a great deal of reticence with the young people, but their wit cannot wait for us. mrs. g— explained to me that her children (one was fourteen years old) did not know what beef was — she had never allowed them to know that sheep and oxen were killed for our food. but my children knew that her children knew as much as they. plutarch would use great precautions in young people's reading of the poets; and plato also. 1864) children's wits 33 but when young and old see faust on the stage, or midsummer night's dream, or read them in the closet, they come silently to the same conclusions. no age to intellect. the cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it. our chronology has lost all old distinctions in one date, — before the war, and since. it is hard to remember in glancing over our sumptuous library edition and excellent pocket editions of chaucer, that for one hundred years these works existed only in manuscripts, accumulating errors and false readings in every individual copy of every new transcriber. 't is alarming to reckon the risks, and judge of the damage done. a journalist in london or in new york acquires a facility and élan which throws the slow elaborators for the edinburgh and the north american into the shade. thus this lively article “schopenhauer,” in the new york commercial advertiser of may 31, eclipses hedge's learned paper in the examiner. schopenhauer said of 34 (age 60 journal chaste persons, “they are thorns which produce roses.” he said, “an impersonal god is a word void of sense, invented by professors of philosophy to satisfy fools and hack-drivers. ... my great discovery is to show how, at the bottom of all things, there is only one identical force, always equal, and ever the same, which slumbers in plants, awakens in animals, but finds its consciousness only in man — the will.” “that is (continues the journalist), the world which we all believe we see is only a phenomenal world; above it, but at a tremendous distance, we find the real world, and this real world is the will. between these two, he places a kind of plastic mediator, which he calls ideas.” but, it seems, schopenhauer, in his youth, learned sanscrit, and learned his secret of the buddhists. “de tribus impostoribus” means fichte, schelling, and hegel. 2s : it is, i own, difficult not to be intemperate in speaking of shakspeare; and most difficult, i should say, to the best readers. few, i think none, arrive at any intelligence of his methods. his intellect does not emit jets of light at intervals, but is incessant, always equal to the occasion, and addressing with equal readiness a 1864) shakspeare. alcott 35 comic, an ingenious, or a sublime problem. i find him an exceptional genius. if the world were on trial, it is the perfect success of this one man that might justify such expenditure of geology, chemistry, fauna, and flora, as the world was. and, i suppose, if intellect perceives and converses “in climes beyond the solar road,” they probably call this planet, not earth, but shakspeare. alcott said, in speaking of children, “ i think a son translates the privacy of the family to the public; daughters cannot do it.” michael angelo's third sonnet the power of a beautiful face lifts me to heaven, since else in earth is none that delights me, and i mount living among the elect souls, – a grace which seldom falls to a mortal. so well with its maker the work consents, that i rise to him through divine conceptions, and here i shape all thoughts and words, burning, loving, through this gentle form : whence, if ever from two beautiful eyes i know not how to turn my look, i know in them the light which shows me the way which guides me to god. 36 (age 60 journal and if, kindled at their light, i burn, in my noble alame sweetly shines the eternal joy which smiles in heaven. m college mathematics.' for a fraction of each class, say twenty (though i think that is too many), in a class of more than a hundred, the whole class is oppressed by a course of mathematics, which is a perpetual fatigue, costing frequently, i am told, five or six hours for the learning the daily lesson, and that imperfectly, and thus bereaving the student of his necessary outdoor exercise. add to this that, at short intervals, occur the mathematical examinations, which are serious, really testing the knowledge which the student has acquired in the foregoing weeks. the professor is impartial, and resolved to know the proficiency of each pupil. the few good mathematicians easily do their work and leave the room, which remains occupied for five or six hours by the rest, who peform in all that time only a part of the work and retire exhausted and unhappy. the young men are not i it does not appear for what purpose mr. emerson wrote out his views on this subject, for he had no official connection with harvard university until 1867, when he was chosen an overseer. 1864] college mathematics 37 thus worked with impunity. they lose flesh, vigour, and spirit. the college, which should be to them a place of delightful labour, where their faculties are invited out to studies useful and agreeable to them, is made odious and unhealthy, and they are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. it would be better, no doubt, if they had good teachers. but in the experience of colleges, it is found that, whilst good mathematicians are rare, good teachers of mathematics are much more rare. it has happened that two or three female teachers in our schools have had great success, and that in the college, geometers and analysts of unquestionable ability utterly fail in the power to impart their methods to the willing student. all the aid the student gets is from some chum who has a little more knowledge than he, and knows where the difficulty he has just surmounted lay. i have just seen four of these skeleton sufferers, to whom all the studies in the university are sufficiently attractive, excepting the mathematics, and who find this (which they do not wish to acquire) thrust into absurd eminence, absorbing nominally one third of the academic time in the two first years, and, practically, often two thirds, a dead weight on the 38 journal [ace 60 mind and heart of the pupil, to be utterly renounced and forgotten the moment he is left to the election of his studies, and a painful memory of wasted years and injured constitution, as long as he lives. language, rhetoric, logic, ethics, intellectual philosophy, poetry, natural history, civil history, political economy, technology, chemistry, agriculture, literary history, as, the genius of homer, dante, shakspeare, and goethe; music and drawing, even, — all these may rightly enter into the curriculum, as well as mathematics. but it were to hurt the university if any one of these should absorb a disproportionate share of time. the european universities gave a like supreme emphasis to the subtleties of logic in the days of ockham, to theology, when the priesthood controlled education. until recently, natural science was almost excluded, and it is inevitable that a man of genius with a good deal of general power will for a long period give a bias in his direction to a university. and that is a public mischief which the guardians of a college are there to watch and counterpoise. in the election of a president, it is not only the students who are to be controlled, but the professors, each of 18641 burial of hawthorne 39 which is, in proportion to his talents, a usurper who needs to be resisted. may 24. yesterday, may 23, we buried hawthorne in sleepy hollow, in a pomp of sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. james freeman clarke read the service in the church and at the grave. longfellow, lowell, holmes, agassiz, hoar, dwight, whipple, norton, alcott, hillard, fields, judge thomas, and i attended the hearse as pallbearers. franklin pierce was with the family. the church was copiously decorated with white flowers delicately arranged. the corpse was unwillingly shown, only a few moments to this company of his friends. but it was noble and serene in its aspect, nothing amiss, — a calm and powerful head. a large company filled the church and the grounds of the cemetery. all was so bright and quiet that pain or mourning was hardly suggested, and holmes said to me that it looked like a happy meeting. clarke in the church said that hawthorne had done more justice than any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy with the crime in our nature, and, like jesus, was the friend of sinners. i thought there was a tragic element in the as 40 [age 61 journal event, that might be more fully rendered, -in the painful solitude of the man, which, i suppose, could not longer be endured, and he died of it. i have found in his death a surprise and disappointment. i thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power. moreover, i have felt sure of him in his neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence, that i could well wait his time, his unwillingness and caprice, –and might one day conquer a friendship. it would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. it was easy to talk with him,there were no barriers, only, he said so little, that i talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, i feared to exceed. he showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. one day, when i found him on the top of his hill, in the woods, he paced back the path to his house, and said, “this path is the only remembrance of me that will remain.” now it appears that i waited too long. lately he had removed himself the more c c 1864] hawthorne. overmuch 41 by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry franklin pierce awakened, though it rather moved pity for hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive it, and come right at last. i have forgotten in what year' (sept. 27, 1842], but it was whilst he lived in the manse, soon after his marriage, that i said to him, “i shall never see you in this hazardous way; we must take a long walk together. will you go to harvard and visit the shakers ?”. he agreed, and we took a june day, and walked the twelve miles, got our dinner from the brethren, slept at the harvard inn, and returned home by another road, the next day. it was a satisfactory tramp, and we had good talk on the way, of which i set down some record in my journal. cs reginald taylor, a child of six years, was carried to see his mother's kinsman, president day. on his return home, he said, “mother, i think that old man loves god too much. you know i say my prayers when i go to bed; well, he talks just so all the time.” 1 the paragraph which follows was later added to the above by mr. emerson. journal [age 61 (from kl) june (?) “logic the fist, rhetoric the hand.” — zeno. the genius of a race or family is a stream always equal to itself and if the present tenant fishes it too much, the next tenant, his son, will find the stream poor, and must withhold his nets and seines. hence we say, a great man has not a great son. but this proverb has marked exceptions: and, it is also observed that intellect runs in races. i, too, am fighting my campaign. so many things require the top of health, the flower of the mind; the engraver must not lay stone walls, nor the king's lapidary pave streets. 'tis fine health that helps itself with lucky expressions and fitimages:— all things offer themselves to be words and convey its meaning. but lassitude has nothing but prose. what omniscience has music! so absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed. within, i do not find wrinkles and used heart, but unspent youth. 1864] opposition. a hotel 43 value of an opposition. only the heat of party can hatch the egg — can formulate the truth which your party overlooks, and which is, and will hereafter be admitted to be, the needed check on your statement. 'tis bad when believers and unbelievers live in the same manner; — i distrust the religion. la carrière ouverte aux talens. a good stand. i notice that the 'spider finds it a good stand wherever he falls: he takes the first corner, and the flies make haste to come. do inspiration. i have found my advantage in going to a hotel with a task which could not prosper at home. i secured so a more absolute solitude.' ... at home, the day is cut up into short strips. in the hotel, i forget rain, wind, cold, and heat.” at home, i remember in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too much sympathy. i envy the abstraction of some 1 much of this paragraph is omitted, as it is printed in full in “ inspiration ” (letters and social aims, pp. 288, 289). 2 in his lecturing journeys mr. emerson found it important to establish a rule (only broken in the case of especial 44 journal (age 61 scholars i have known. ... all the conditions must be right for my success, slight as that is. what untunes is as bad as what cripples or stuns me. therefore, i extol the prudence of carlyle, who, for years, projected a library at the top of his house, high above the orbit of all housemaids, and out of earshot of doorbells. could that be once secured, a whole floor, — room for books, and a good bolt, — he could hope for six years of history, and he kept it in view till it was done. . . . and george sand's love of heat agrees with mine. even the steel pen is a nuisance.' the capital rule must not be forgotten of“ une friends) to decline private hospitalities and go to a hotel, where his first demand was, “ now make me red-hot.” he also could command his time to revise or supplement his manuscript. 1 mr. emerson, when at home, wrote almost always with a quill pen. when the second storey of the house was enlarged, a few years before this time, a little room was made over the new bedroom with one pleasant window looking southward towards walden woods. it was hard to find, in a remote corner of the garret. mr. emerson called it his den ” and occasionally used it under stress of circumstances. but in its construction another possible use as a hiding-place for a fugitive slave had been in the minds of mr. and mrs. emerson, for 1864] right conditions. lives 45 demi-heure par jour de lecture suivie et sérieuse,” or, as van helmont says, “study of eternity.” and the first rule for me would be to defend the morning, keep all its dews on. goethe thanks the flies that waked him at dawn as the musagetes. and where shall i find the record of my brag of places, favourite spots in the woods and on the river, whither i once went with security for a poetic mood? in my paper on “ civilization,” i omitted an important trait, namely, the increased respect for human life. the difference between the oriental nations, on one side, and europe and america, on the other, lies mainly herein. the japanese in france are astonished, 't is said, at the vast apparatus and expense of a capital trial [examples of eastern slaughter referred to]. remember general scott's maxim, too, about the sacrifice of one life more than necessity requires. at that time he told his children, when “ the building of a house" was the subject given them for a school composition, to be sure to say, “ no house now is complete without such a hiding-place.” 46 (ace 61 journal the french say that “the special characteristic of english art is the absence of genius.” — apud m. chesneau. inspiration. aunt mary wrote, “how sad, that atmospheric influences should bring to dust the communions of soul with the infinite !” – meaning, how sad that the atmosphere should be an excitant. but no, she should be glad that the atmosphere and the dull rock itself should be deluged with deity, — should be theists, christian, unitarian, poetic. 06 dr. s. hawtry, master of eton, says, “ i refer to another feature which an eton education calls into existence, -i mean a kind of serenity and repose of character; this will be at once recognized as a well-known characteristic of freeminded english gentlemen, and i think eton has its full share in perpetuating this characteristic in an age in which there is much vieing with, much outrunning and outwitting one another.” this is not irony in dr. hawtry, though it reads so on this side the water. of paris, renan writes, after saying that the provincial academies of france have no original 1864] renan on paris. age 47 studies, — “cette brillante alexandrie sans succursales m'inquiète et m'effraie. aucun atelier de travail intellectuel ne peut être comparé à paris: on dirait une ville fait exprès pour l'usage des gens d'esprit : mais qu'il faut se défier de ces oasis au milieu d’un désert. des dangers perpétuels les assiégent. un coup de vent, une source tarie, quelques palmiers coupés, et le désert reprend ses droits.” when renan speaks of france, macaulay or any englishman of england, or any american of america, i feel how babyish they are. i suppose hardly newton, or swedenborg, or cervantes, or menu, can be trusted to speak of his nationality. the grief of old age is, that, now, only in rare moments, and by happiest combinations or consent of the elements, can we attain those enlargements and that intellectual élan, which were once a daily gift. men are good where they have experience, but not off their beat. hence dr. robert hare and mr. s, and many other men reckoned of excellent sense, tumble helplessly into mesmeric spiritism, and prove its most credulous dupes, because here they have no guide. it is 48 journal (age 61 in government as it is in war. it was said many officers can manœuvre a regiment or a division, who could not get a hundred thousand men in or out of hyde park, without confusion. so in government. there is plenty of administrative skill in trade and civil affairs, management of railroads and factories, which is at once at a loss and unequal to the disposition of the affairs of an empire. a good text was that medical observation suggested by the distemper of the cattle at chenery's and elsewhere, — namely, that men carry the seeds of diseases in their constitutions latent, and which remain latent, during much, perhaps during the whole, of their life. but if it happen that the patient loses, from any cause, his normal strength, instantly these seeds begin to ripen, and the disease, so long latent, becomes acute, and conquers him. june. i have more enjoyed, in the last hours of finishing a chapter, the insight which has come to me of how the truths really stand, than i suffered from seeing in what confusion i had left them in my statement. st. francis rode all day along the border of 1864) great men. reserves 49 the lake of geneva, and, at night, hearing his companions speak of the lake, inquired, “what lake?” — morison's life of st. francis. it is a tie between men to have read the same book.' . .. great men are the universal men, men of the common sense, not provincial ; raffaelle not a mannerist. everybody would paint like raffaelle, if every body could paint at all. [reserves.] “we can never compete with english in manufactures, because of the low price of labour in europe,” — say the merchants, day by day. yet this season, half or two thirds of our labourers are gone to the war, and we have reaped all the hay by the use of the horsemower and the horse-rake; the wheat, by mccormick's reaper; and, when the shoemakers went, then, by the use of the new peggingmachine and scrap-machine, we make six hundred pairs of shoes every day at feltonville, and can let weymouth send away one hundred i the rest of the passage is found in the “ address at the opening of the concord public library” (miscellanies, pp. 507, 508). 50 journal (age 61 shoemakers to the war in the regiment that has just departed. we make horseshoes by machine as well as pittsburg. we can spare all the whalemen to the navy, for we draw oil out of the rocks in pennsylvania; we can spare the cuba sugar, for we made seven million gallons of sorghum molasses in 1860, though the article was not known here in 1850. in that theme of inspiration, 't is to be noted that we use ourselves, and use each other: some perceptions i think the best-are granted to the single soul. kings. “quand la bonne foi serait bannie de la terre, elle devrait se retrouver dans le cæur des rois,” said the french king john, who was taken prisoner at poitier. manners. their vast convenience i must always admire. the perfect defence and isolation which they effect makes an insuperable protection. though he wrestle with you, or swim with you, lodge in the same chamber, sleep in the same bed, he is yet a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. manners seem to say, “you are you, and i am i.” 1864] 'a consolation. sifting 51 old age' brings along with its uglinesses the comfort that you will soon be out of it,which ought to be a substantial relief to such discontented pendulums as we are. to be out of the war, out of debt, out of the drouth, out of the blues, out of the dentist's hands, out of the second thoughts, mortifications, and remorses that inflict such twinges and shooting pains,out of the next winter, and the high prices, and company below your ambition,surely these are soothing hints. and, harbinger of this, what an alleviator is sleep, which muzzles all these dogs for me every day? old age; — 'tis proposed to call an indignation meeting. man. the body borrows the elements of its blood from the whole world, and the mind its belief. the tradition is never left at peace, but must be winnowed again by the new comers. “every age has another sieve, and will siſt it out again.” i the following page should have been printed in solitude and society, in the chapter called “ old age.” (r. w. e.'s note.) 52 journal (age 61 vn ven sc our democratic party shows itself very badly in these days, simply destructive, and “would tear down god from heaven if they could.” talk with alcott last night. men have no scale. talents warp them. they don't see when their tendency is wrong; don't discriminate between the rank of this and that perception. a gossiping, rambling talk, and yet kept the line of american tendencies. the english and french are still thirty or forty years back in theology. what questions do bishops and universities discuss? we have silently passed beyond all such debateable lands. want of scale appears in this; each of the masters has some puerility, as carlyle his proslavery whim ; tennyson, english class feeling; university men, churchmen, not humanity, heroism, truth. our faculties are of different ages —the memory is mature, sometimes the imagination adult, and yet the moral sense still swaddled and sheathed. yet on the credit of their talent, these masters are allowed to parade this baby faculty, all fits and folly, in the midst of grown company. we have freedom, are ready for truth, but we have not the executive culture of germany. 1864) german culture 53 they have good metaphysics,have made surveys, sounding every rod of way, set their foot on every rock, and where they felt the rock they planted a buoy and recorded it. kant, hegel, schelling are architects. scope is not sufficient. we have scope, but we want the copernicus of our inward heaven. let us be very mum at present about american literature. one of these ages, we too will set our feet on andes' tops. we lack repose. as soon as we stop working, or active thinking, we mope: there is no self-respect, no grand sense of sharing the divine presence. we are restless, run out and back, talk fast, and overdo. nothing in the universe so solid as a thought. an indian came to the white man's door and asked for rum. “oh, no,” said the farmer, “i don't give rum to indians, they steal my pigs and chickens.” “oh, me no steal; me good indian.” “but good indians don't ask for rum,” replied the farmer. “me no good indian; me dam rascal.” use of towns i considered in an old journal in many points. but we are far from having the best æsthetics out of them. the french and 54 (age 61 journal italians have made a nearer approach to it. a town in europe is a place where you can go into a café at a certain hour of every day, buy eau sucrée, or a cup of coffee, for six sous, and, at that price, have the company of the wits, scholars, and gentlemen fond of conversation. that is a cheap and excellent club, which finds and leaves all parties on a good mutual footing. that is the fame of the “ café procope,” the “ café grec" of rome, the “ café de trinità” of florence, and the principle of it exists in every town in france and italy. but we do not manage it so well in america. our clubbing is much more costly and cumbersome. the test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities. the young men in america take little thought of what men in england are thinking or doing.' ... it may be safely affirmed that when the highest conception, the lessons of religion, are imported, the nation is not culminating, has not genius, but is servile.? ... 'tis a good word of niebuhr in speaking of i see “social aims” (pp. 103, 104). 2 see « character" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. iii). 1864) niebuhr. the family 55 the respect which somehow the “oracles” obtained in the ancient world, “did man, in those early periods, stand nearer to nature ?” see lieber's reminiscences. in italy a nobleman said to niebuhr, “iunderstand the present pope is not even a man of family.” “oh,” replied niebuhr, “i have been told that christ himself was not a man of family; and st. peter, if i recollect well, was but of a vulgar origin. here in rome we don't mind these things. umer. [certain family events occurring in this year may be mentioned. mr. emerson's elder brother, william, on whom his early responsibilities and long years of assiduous professional work had worn heavily, came to concord with his wife for the summer. the year had for them been one of grief and anxiety. william, the eldest son, a young man of charming personality, scholarly habit, and a promising student of law, had died of consumption a few months after his marriage. john haven, the second son,gave his services, medical and surgical, to help care for the wounded during grant's wilderness campaign in may and june. charles, the youngest, after serving as a private in the new york seventh 56 (age 61 journal regiment, was commissioned a lieutenant in a new york regiment in 1862, and later served successively on the staffs of general banks and general emory in louisiana and virginia.] various powers : power of getting work out of others, which napoleon had. when i go to talk with alcott it is not so much to get his thoughts as to watch myself under his influence. he excites me, and i think freely. but he mistakes me, and thinks, if j [ames?] is right, that i come to feed on him. it is mortifying that all events must be seen, by wise men even, through the diminishing lens of a petty interest. could we have believed that england should have disappointed us thus?that no man in all that civil, reading, brave, cosmopolitan country, should have looked at our revolution as a student of history, as philanthropist, eager to see what new possibilities for humanity were to begin, what the inspirations were: what new move on the board the genius of the world was preparing? no, but every one squinted; lords, ladies, statesmen, scholars, poets, all squinted, — like borrow's gypsies when he read st. john's gospel. edinburgh, 1864] england's attitude 57 quarterly, saturday review, gladstone, russell, palmerston, brougham, nay, tennyson; carlyle, i blush to say it; arnold. everyone forgot his history, his poetry, his religion, and looked only at his shop-till, whether his salary, whether his small investment in the funds, would not be less; whether the stability of english order might not be in some degree endangered. no milton, no bacon, no berkeley, no montesquieu, no adam smith was there to hail a new dawn of hope and culture for men, to see the opportunity for riddance of this filthy pest which dishonoured human nature; to cry over to us, “up, and god with you! and for this slavery, off with its head! we see and applaud; the world is with you; such occasion does not come twice. strike for the universe of men!” no; but, on the other hand, every poet, every scholar, every great man, as well as the rich, thought only of his pocket-book, and to our astonishment cried, “ slavery forever! down with the north! why does not england join with france to protect the slaveholder ?” i thought they would have seized the occasion to forgive the northerner every old grudge; to forget their dislike of his rivalry, of his social short-comings; forget, in such a moment, all petty disgusts and 58 (age 61 journal would see in him the honoured instrument of heaven to destroy this rooted poison tree of five thousand years. we shall prosper, we shall destroy slavery, but by no help of theirs. they assailed us with mean cavils, they sneered at our manners, at our failures, at our shifts, at the poverty of our treasury, at our struggles, legal and municipal, and irregularities in the presence of mortal dangers. they cherished our enemies, they exulted at the factions which crippled us at home; whenever the allies of the rebels obstructed the great will and action of the government, they danced for joy. they ought to have remembered that great actions have mean beginnings; poor matters point to rich ends. alas, for england; she did not know her friends. 'tis a bad omen for england, that, in these years, her foreign policy is ignominious, that she plays a sneaking part with denmark, with france, with russia, with china, with america. august 31. high school. beginning of term. whole number, 32; present to-day, 22; class in arithmetic begin alligation; ist latin begin cicero; 1864) fruit. resources 59 2d, begin cæsar; 3d, begin viri romæ, 12 in class; greek, xenophon; french, 2 in class; geometry, i scholar; natural philosophy, 10 scholars ; bookkeeping, 6 scholars. remember madden's rule to dr. johnson about having fruit enough in an orchard, “enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.” among“ resources,” too, might be set down that rule of my travelling friend, “when i estimated the costs of my tour in europe, i added a couple of hundreds to the amount, to be cheated of, and gave myself no more uneasiness when i was overcharged here or there.” so thoreau's practice to put a hundred seeds into every melon hill, instead of eight or ten. affirmative. john newton said, “ the best way to prevent a bushel being filled with chaff, is to fill it with wheat.” trench“ on the study of words.” — past and present of the english language. when a man writes descriptions of the sun as seen through telescope, he is only writing 60 journal [age 61 autobiography, or an account of the habit and defects of his own eyes. henry thoreau found the height of the cliff' over the river to be 231.09 feet. september 21. hon. lyulph stanley, wendell phillips, and agassiz, channing, and alcott here. agassiz is really a man of great ability, breadth, and resources, a rare and rich nature, and always maintains himself, — in all companies, and on all occasions. i carried him to mrs. mann's, and, afterwards, to bull's, and, in each house he gave the fittest counsel in the best way. at the town hall, he made an excellent speech to the farmers, extemporaneous, of course, but with method and mastery, on the question of the location of the agricultural college, urging the claims of cambridge. judge french 3 followed him with a very good state1 exi overlooking “ fairhaven bay” on the south branch of the concord river. 2 the producer of the concord grape. 3 henry f. french, first president of the massachusetts agricultural college at amherst, and father of the sculptor, daniel chester french, who, ten years later, made the bronze 1864) agassiz. no pause 61 ment of the history of the affair from the beginning until now. agassiz thinks that, if he could get a calf elephant, and young enough, that is, before birth, he should find the form of the mastodon: that if he could get a tapir calf before birth, he should find the form of the megatherion. but, at present, these are practical impossibilities, as they require hundreds of dissections ; hundreds, that is, of live subjects. september 24. yesterday with ellery walked through“becky stow's hole,”. dry-shod, hitherto a feat for a muskrat alone. the sky and air and autumn woods in their early best. this year, the river meadows all dry and permeable to the walker. but why should nature always be on the gallop? look now and instantly, or you shall never see it: not ten minutes' repose allowed. incessant whirl. and't is the same with my companion's genius. you must carry a stenographic press in your pocket to save his commentaries on things and men, or they are irrecoverable. i er ma minute-man who guards the north bridge in concord, and now (1913) is finishing the marble statue of emerson. 1 a sphagnum swamp, in which some remarkable plants grew. 62 journal (age 61 tormented my memory just now in vain to restore a witty criticism of his, yesterday, on a book. though love recoil, and reason chafe, there came a voice without reply, 'tis man's perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die.' the american nationality is now within the republican party. hence its serenity. in like manner, in view of all the nationalities of the world, the battle of humanity is now in the american union, and hence the weakness of english and european opposition. napoleon's word, that in twenty-five years the united states would dictate the politics of the world, was a little early; but the sense was just, with a jewish interpretation of the “forty days” and “seventy weeks.” it is true that if we escape bravely from the present war, america will be the controlling power. [grieved at his friend's wilful hostility towards our country in its struggle for integrity i see the quatrain “sacrifice ”(poems, p. 296). the last two lines are a quotation from a sermon by caleb vines, a puritan, preached at st. margaret's, westminster, before the honourable house of commons, november 30, 1642. idiii со 1864] protest to carlyle 63 and freedom, mr. emerson wrote to carlyle, september 26, these words :“i have, in these last years, lamented that you had not made the visit to america which in earlier years you projected. ... it would have made it impossible that your name should be cited for one moment on the side of the enemies of mankind. ten days' residence in this country would have made you the organ of the sanity of england and of europe to us and to them, and have shown you the necessities and aspirations which struggle up in our free states, which, as yet, have no organ to others, and are ill and unsteadily articulated here. ... ah! how gladly i would enlist you, with your thunderbolt, on our part ! how gladly enlist the wise, thoughtful, efficient pens and voices of england! ... are english of this day incapable of a great sentiment ? can they not leave cavilling at petty failures and bad manners, and at the dunce part (always the largest part in human affairs) and leap to the suggestions and fingerpointings of the gods, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and guide the wills of men? this war has been conducted over the heads of all the actors in it.” carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 285, 286.] 64 journal (age 61 'tis a defect in our manners that they have not yet reached the prescribing a term to visits.' ... what a pity that beauty is not the rule, since every body might have been handsome as well as not. or, if the moral laws must have their revenge, like indians, for every violation, what pity that everybody is not promoted on the battle-field, as our generals are; that is, instantly embellished by a good action. my seryant squints and steals: i persuade her to better behaviour: she restores the long-lost trinkets, embroidered purse, and, at the same time, the strabismus should be healed. manners. what a harness of buckram wealth and city life put on our poets and literary men, even when men of great parts. alcott complained to me of want of simplicity in lowell, holmes, ward, and longfellow : and alcott is the right touchstone to test them; true litmus to detect the acid. agassiz is perfectly accessible, has a brave manliness which can meet a peasant, a mechanic, or a fine gentleman with 1 the whole passage may be found in “social aims” (p. 91). 1864] manners. rich nature 65 equal fulness. henry james is not spoiled; bryant is perfect; new york has not hurt him. whittier is unspoiled. wasson is good company for prince or ploughman. rowse also. i should be glad if james lowell were as simply noble as his cousin frank lowell, who, my wife once said, “appeared like a king.” cthas perfect manners. charles newcomb and channing are saved by genius. thoreau was with difficulty sweet. a— w— has never left her broad humanity, and suggests so much that is told of madame récamier. but in all the living circle of american wits and scholars is no enthusiasm. alcott alone has it. “enthusiasm a delight, but may not always be a virtue," wrote aunt mary. the enthusiast will not be irritated, sour, and sarcastic. wealth of nature the only good. 'tis vain to accuse scholars of solitude, and merchants of miserliness: they are really so poor that they cannot help it. poverty is universal. "ah, blessed ocean, 't is good to find enough of one thing." genius delights because of its opulence. we scorn the poor littérateurs who hide their want by patchwork of quotations and borrowings; and the poor artist, who, instead of the 66 journal (age 61 rapid drawing on a single conception, laboriously etches after his model with innumerable stipplings. what a saving grace is in poverty and solitude, that the obscure youth learns the practice instead of the literature of his virtues ! one or two or three ideas are the gods of his temple, and suffice him for intellect and heart for years. they condescend to his shoeshop, or his hoe and scythe and threshing-floor. the solitary worshipper knows the essence of the thought: the scholar in society sees only its fair face. aunt mary writes : “after all, some of the old christians were more delivered from external things than the (modern) speculative, who are anxious for society, books, ideas, – and become sensitive to all that affects the organs of thought. a few single grand ideas, which become objects, pursuits, and all in all !” aunt mary and her contemporaries spoke continually of angels and archangels, with a good faith, as they would have spoken of their parents, or their late minister. now the word palls, — all the credence gone. the war at last appoints the generals, in spite of parties and presidents. every one of 1864) generals. aunt mary 67 us had his pet, at the start, but none of us appointed grant, sherman, sheridan, and farragut,none but themselves. yet these are only shining examples; the fruit of small powers and virtues is as fixed. the harvest of potatoes is not more sure than the harvest of every talent. great difference in life of two consecutive days. now it has grip, tastes the hours, fills the horizon; and presently it recedes, has little possession, is somnambulic. we read often with as much talent as we write. the retrospective value of a new thought is immense. 't is like a torch applied to a long train of powder. a page of aunt mary's gives much to think of the felicity of greatness on a low ground of condition, as we have so often thought a rich englishman has better lot than a king. “no fair object but affords me gratification, and with common interests.” again, she writes, “they (probably the common farming people about 1 this passage is printed in natural history of intellect (p. 21). 68 journal (age 61 her] knew by hearsay of apes of men, vampire despots, crawling sycophants." criticism. i read with delight a casual notice of wordsworth in the london reader, in which, with perfect aplomb, his highest merits were affirmed, and his unquestionable superiority to all english poets since milton, and thought how long i travelled and talked in england, and found no person, or none but one, and that one clough, sympathetic with him, and admiring him aright, in face of tennyson's culminating talent, and genius in melodious verse. what struck me now was the certainty with which the best opinion comes to be the established opinion. this rugged, rough countryman walks and sits alone, assured of his sanity and his inspiration, and writes to no public, — sneered at by jeffrey and brougham, branded by byron, blackened by the gossip of barry cornwall and de quincey, down to bowring, — for they all had disparaging tales of him, — yet himself no more doubting the fine oracles that visited him than if apollo had brought them visibly in his hand : and here and there a solitary reader in country places had felt and owned them; and now, so few years after, it is lawful in that obese 1864) england. holmes 69 material england, whose vast strata of population are nowise converted or altered, yet to affirm unblamed, unresisted, that this is the genuine, and the rest the impure, metal. for, in their sane hours each of the fine minds in the country has found it, and imparted his conviction, so that every reader has somewhere heard it on the highest authority :« and thus the world is brought to sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.” english genius is more truly shown in the drawings in punch than in all their water-colour and royal academy exhibitions; just as their actors are dreary in tragedy, and admirable in low comedy. criticism. dr. holmes, one day, said to me that he disliked scientific matter introduced into (literary) lectures, “it was meretricious.” prodigality of nature. she can afford millions of lives of men to make the movement of the earth round the sun so much as “suspected.”:,.. how much time a man's poetic 1 this sentence occurs in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, pp. 23, 24). much of what 70 (age 61 journal experiences cost him. he abandons business and wealth for them. how much time love costs him ! “ the time i lost pursuing the light which lies in woman's eyes has been my heart's undoing." e was 8 ah, yes, but if his love was well directed, it has been his mind's upbuilding. how often i have to say that every man has material enough in his experience to exhaust the sagacity of newton in working it out. we have more than we use. we know vastly more than we digest. i never read poetry, or hear a good speech at a caucus, or a cattle-show, but it adds less stock to my knowledge than it apprises me of admirable uses to which what i knew can be turned. i write this now on remembrance of some structural experience of last night, a painful waking out of dreams as by violence, and a rapid succession of quasi-optical shows following like a pyrotechnic exhibition of architectural or grotesque flourishes, which indicate magazines of talent and invention in our struc(letters and social follows is printed in “ resources” aims, pp. 139, 140). 1864) fowler of tennessee 71 ture, which i shall not arrive at the control of in my time, but perhaps my great-grandson will mature and bring to-day. october 9. yesterday at mr. george l. stearns's, at medford, to meet wendell phillips, and mr. fowler of tennessee. the conversation political altogether, and though no very salient points, yet useful to me as clearing the air, and bringing to view the simplicity of the practical problem before us. right-minded men would very easily bring order out of our american chaos, if working with courage, and without by-ends. these tennessee slaveholders in the land of midian are far in advance of our new england politicians. they see and front the real questions. [one] point would seem to be absolute emancipation, — establishing the fact that the united states henceforward knows no colour, no race, in its law, but legislates for all alike, — one law for all men. ... it was good in fowler, his marked though obscure recognition of the higher element that works in affairs. we seem to do it, — it gets done; but for our will in it, it is much as if i claimed to have manufactured the beautiful skin and flavour of my pears. out rs. 72 journal [age 61 certain memorable words, expressions that flew out incidentally in late history, as, for example, in lincoln's letter, “to all whom it may concern,” are caught up by men,-go to england, go to france, — reëcho thence with thunderous report to us, and they are no longer the unconsidered words they were, but we must hold the government to them; they are powers, and are not to be set aside by reckless speeches of seward, putting all afloat again. october 12. returned from naushon, whither i went on saturday, the 8th, with professor goldwin smith, of oxford university, mr. charles b. sedgwick,' john weiss, and george c. ward. mr. forbes at naushon is the only “squire” in massachusetts, and no nobleman ever understood or performed his duties better. i divided my admiration between the landscape of naushon and him. he is an american to be proud of. never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with such domestic lovely behaviour, and such modesty and persistent preference of others. wheri of syracuse, an admirable man and member of congress. an1864) john murray forbes 73 ever he moves, he is the benefactor. it is of course that he should shoot well, ride well, sail well, administer railroads well, carve well, keep house well, but he was the best talker also in the company, — with the perpetual practical wisdom, seeing always the working of the thing, — with the multitude and distinction of his facts (and one detects continually that he has had a hand in everything that has been done), and in the temperance with which he parries all offence, and opens the eyes of his interlocutor without contradicting him.' i have been proud of many of my countrymen, but i think this is a good country that can breed such a creature as john m. forbes. there was something dramatic in the conversation of monday night between professor goldwin smith, forbes, and ward, chiefly, — the englishman being evidently alarmed at the near prospect of the retaliation of america's standing in the identical position soon in which england now and lately has stood to us, and play1 this description by mr. emerson of his friend mr. forbes, whose services throughout the war in every sort had been important and admirable (although he never allowed his name to get into the papers), is printed, though without his name, in letters and social aims (p. 103). 74 (ace 61 journal ing the same part towards her. forbes, a year ago, was in liverpool and london entreating them to respect their own neutrality, and disallow the piracy, and the blockade-running, and hard measure to us in their colonial ports, etc. and now, so soon, the parts were entirely reversed, and professor smith was showing us the power and irritability of england and the certainty that war would follow, if we should build and arm a ship in one of our ports, send her out to sea, and at sea sell her to their enemy, which would be a proceeding strictly in accordance with her present proclaimed law of nations. forbes thinks the americans are in such a temper toward england that they will do this if the opportunity occurs. when the american government urged england to make a new treaty to adjust and correct this anomalous rule, the english government refused. and 't is only ignorance that has prevented the rebel confederacy from availing themselves of it. mr. smith had never heard of j. j. garth wilkinson; nor had the trollopes heard of elizabeth sheppard," nor scarcely any english, fifteen years ago, of browning. i author of charles auchester and counterparts. 1864] naushon. to aeinon 75 at naushon, i recall what john smith said of the bermudas, and i think as well of mr. forbes's fences,' which are cheap and steep. “no place known had better walls or a broader ditch." what complete men are forbes, agassiz, and rockwood hoar ! i came away from naushon saying to myself of john forbes, how little this man suspects, with his sympathy for men, and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely ever to meet a man superior to himself! the dire, tò delvóv, is that which i used to long for in orators. i can still remember the imposing march of otis's eloquence, which, like burke's, swept into it all styles of address, all varieties of tone and incident, and in its skirts “far flashed the red artillery.” in modern eloquence what is more touching or sublime than the first words of lafayette's speech in the french assembly in 1815 (?), “when, after so many years silence (the whole consulate and empire], i raise a voice which the friends of liberty will still recognize,” etc. i buzzards bay and the vineyard sound. 76 [age 61 journal nemesis is that recoil of nature, not to be guarded against, which ever surprises the most wary transgressor (of the laws). not possibly can you shut up all the issues. wa ste.-beuve notes, in 1838, the charming letters of lafayette to his wife, just published. the age, and the hour. the party of virility rules the hour, the party of ideas and sentiments rules the age. october 19. yesterday, as i passed shannon's field, robins, blackbirds, bluebirds, and snowbirds (fringilla hiemalis) were enjoying themselves together. new york, october 20. bryant has learned where to hang his titles, namely, by tying his mind to autumn woods, winter mornings, rain, brooks, mountains, evening winds, and wood birds. who speaks of these is forced to remember bryant. [he is] american. never despaired of the republic. dared name a jay and a gentian, crows also. his poetry is sincere. i think of the young poets that they have seen pictures of mountains, 1864] reaction. sky-power 77 and sea-shores, but in his that he has seen mountains and has the staff in his hand. it occurred in talking with henry james yesterday, who attached a too exclusive originality to swedenborg, that he did not seem to recognize the eternal co-presence of the revolutionary force. the revolutionary force in intellect is never absent. such persons as my poor platonist taylor in amesbury; jones very; and the shoemaker, at berwick; tufts in lima (or cuba), new york, are always appearing in the deadest conservatism ; in an age of antiquaries, representing the most modern times ;in the heart of papacy and toryism, the seed of rebellion ; — for the world is ever equal to itself, and centripetence makes centrifugence. october 25. power of certain states of the sky. there is an astonishing magnificence even in this low town, and within a quarter of a mile of my doors, in the appearance of the lincoln hills now drest in their coloured forest, under the lights and clouds of morning, as i saw them at eight o'clock. when i see this spectacle so near, and so surprising, i think no house should be built so 78 (age 61 journal quite low, or should obstruct the prospect by trees. ai america makes its own precedents. the imperial voice of the age cannot be heard for the tin horns and charivari of the varlets of the hour, such as the london times, blackwoods, and the saturday review. but already these claqueurs have received their cue— i suppose it was hinted to them that the american people are not always to be trifled with ; they are ending their home war, and are exasperated at english bad behaviour, and are in force to destroy english trade. speak them fair; — and the times has just discovered what “temper, valour, constancy, the union has shown in the war," and what a noble “career of honour and prosperity lies before her,” etc. when a lady rallied adam smith on his plain dress, he pointed to his well-bound library, and said, “you see, madam, i am a beau in my books.” the farmer in this month is very patient of his coarse attire, and thinks, “at least, i am a beau in my woods.” october 30. at club, yesterday, we had a full table, agassiz, hoar, hedge, cabot, holmes, apple1864] patriotism. ocean 79 ton, peirce, norton, forbes, ward, sumner, whipple, woodman, dwight, emerson; andrew (who, with brimmer and fields, was elected yesterday); and, for guests, mr. c. g. loring, sterry hunt, and mr. godkin, the english correspondent of the daily news. before the war, our patriotism was a firework, a salute, a serenade, for holidays and summer evenings, but the reality was cotton thread and complaisance. now the deaths of thousands and the determination of millions of men and women show it real. rich are the sea-gods, who gives gifts but they? all hidden gems are theirs. what power is theirs, they give it to the wise, for every wave is wealth to dædalus, wealth to the cunning artist who can work the wave's immortal sinew.' november 18. the way that young woman' keeps her school 1 this addition to the earlier lines of seashore," written at pigeon cove, probably came in a walk on the south shore beach on the beautiful island of naushon, where mr. emerson could not resist the beauty of the pebbles. 2 miss eliza hosmer, daughter of mr. emerson's farmer friend and neighbour, edmund hosmer, often referred to in the earlier journals. 80 journal (age 61 was the best lesson i received in the preparatory school to-day. she knew so much, and carried it so well in her head, and gave it out so well, that the pupils had quite enough to think of, and not an idle moment to waste on noise or disorder. 'tis the best recipe i know for school discipline. november 26. agassiz, brimmer, cabot, holmes, hoar, fields, dana, norton, sumner, whipple, emerson, at the club; and senator wilson, m. laugel and m. duvergne d'hauranne guests. i promised sumner to attend to the question of the academy. cows are dull, sluggish creatures, but with a decided talent in one direction — for extracting milk out of meadows : — mine have a genius for it, — leaking cream,“larding the lean earth as they walk along.” wasps, too, for making paper. then what soothing objects are the hens! bryant.' his sincere, balanced mind has the enthusiasm which perception of nature inspires, 1 this passage was written for the bryant festival which was held in new york on november 8. it seems probable that mr. emerson took part in it. we 1864) bryant's magic 81 but it did not tear him; only enabled him; gave him twice his power; he did not parade it, but hid it in his verse. his connection with party usque ad aras.' “true bard, but simple,” i fear he has not escaped the infirmity of fame, like the presidential malady, a virus once in, not to be got out of the system: he has this, so cold and majestic as he sits there, — has this to a heat which has brought to him the devotion of all the young men and women who love poetry, and of all the old men and women who once were young. 't is a perfect tyranny. talk of the shopmen who advertise their drugs or cosmetics on the walls and on the palisades and huge rocks along the railways;— why, this man, more cunning by far, has contrived to levy on all american nature and subsidized every solitary forest and monument mountain in berkshire or the katskills, every waterfowl, every partridge, every gentian and goldenrod, the prairies, the gardens of the desert, the song of the stars, the evening wind, — has bribed every one of these to speak for him, so that there is scarcely a 1 even to the altars, a latin version of a greek expression for devotion, though mr. emerson, in his quatrain “ pericles,” makes the altar a bound beyond which right service may not go (poems, p. 296). 82 journal [age 61 feature of day and night in the country which does not — whether we will or not — recall the name of bryant. this high-handed usurpation i charge him with, and on the top of this, with persuading us and all mankind to hug our fetters and rejoice in our subjugation. (from ml) introduction to lecture on “education," in course on “american life” (read at the melodeon, november, 1864 ') i congratulate my countrymen on the great and good omens of the hour; that a great portion of mankind dwelling in the united states have given their decision in unmistakeable terms in favor of social and statute order, that a nation shall be a nation, and refuses to hold its existence on the tenure of a casual rencontre of passengers, who meet at the corner of a street, or on a railroad, or at a picnic, — held by no bond, but meeting and parting at pleasure ; that a nation cannot be trifled with, but involves interests so dear and so vast that it is intolerable crime to treat them with levity; they shall be n a i soon after lincoln had been elected president for a second term. 83 1864) the union held binding as marriage, binding as contracts of property, binding as laws which guard the life and honour of the citizen. the people, after the most searching discussion of every part of the subject, have decided that the unity of the nation shall be held by force against the forcible attempt of parties to break it. what gives commanding weight to this decision is that it has been made by the people sobered by the calam. ity of the war, the sacrifice of life, the waste of property, the burden of taxes, and the uncertainties of the result. they protest in arms against the attempt of any small or any numerous minority of citizens or states to proceed by stealth or by violence to dispart a country. they do not decide that if a part of the nation, from geographic necessities or from irreconcileable interests of production and trade, desires separation, no such separation can be. doubtless it may, because the permanent interest of one part to separate will come to be the interest and good will of the other part. but, at all events, it shall not be done in a corner, not by stealth, not by violence, but as a solemn act, with all the forms, with all deliberation, and on the declared opinions of the entire population concerned, and with mutual guaranties and compensations. 84 (age 61 journal e i need not go over the statistics of the country: those colossal lines are printed on your brain. these lines of land subject to one law are almost astronomical measures, containing a pretty large fraction of the planet. these grand material dimensions cannot suggest dwarfish and stunted manners and policy. everything on this side the water inspires large and prospective action. america means opportunity, freedom, power; and, very naturally, when these instincts have not been supported by adequate mental and moral training, they run into the grandiose, into exaggeration and vapouring. this is odious, but inevitable. the inhabitants of the great republic are taxed with rudeness and superficiality. it was said of louis xiv that his gait was becoming in a king, but, in a private man, would have been an insufferable strut. still, when we are reproached with vapouring by people of small home territory, like the english, i often think that ours is only the gait and bearing of a tall boy, a little too large for his trousers, by the side of small boys. they are jealous, quicksighted about their inches. but let us call bad manners by the right name. ... don't take any pains to praise good people. i delight in certain dear persons, that 1864] a critic. the soil 85 they need no letters of introduction, knowing well that, wherever they go, they are hung all over with eulogies. if there is any perception in the company, these will be found out as fountains of joy. na power of criticism. laugel said, the other day, that the french emperor censures and prohibits newspapers, but never meddles with books. but now i am glad to see laboulaye, in his critique on the life of julius cæsar, toss his emperor napoleon on his horns, and with invulnerable propriety. “ the late good and wise first lord ravensworth used to say, 'there was nothing grateful but the earch; you cannot do too much for it: it will continue to pay tenfold the pains and labour bestowed upon it.'” — bewick's life. victor cousin said, in conversation about the encyclical letter, that “the pope had missed an opportunity of keeping still, which would never occur again.” [as in previous volumes, a few of mr. emerson's favorite authors, from his early youth 86 (age 61 journal steadily recurring in the lists of the first volumes (as homer, plato, plutarch, montaigne, bacon, shakspeare, milton, herbert, swedenborg, wordsworth, and others), are not given in this list. in spite, however, of the frequent mention of plotinus, proclus, and the other neoplatonists, and of the oriental scriptures and poets, these names will appear, as showing when mr. emerson was reading them. carlyle and goethe will also be mentioned. it often happens that an allusion to an author may be in a passage not included in the selections here printed.] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1864 menu; aristotle ; zeno; suetonius; ossian; mahomet; walter mapes; dante; william of ockham; arthurian legends ; chronicle of the cid; chaucer; boccaccio; philippe de comines; savonarola; machiavelli; copernicus; michel angelo, sonnets; guicciardini; cervantes ; galileo; van helmont; captain john smith ; drummond of hawthornden; -1864) reading 87 clarendon ; d'herbelot, bibliothèque orientale; pepys; scougal ; swift; berkeley; chesterfield; hervey, history of george ii; montesquieu; kant; james otis ; goethe, correspondence, also translation of romaic poem “charon ” ; sir n. w. wraxall, our own times; bewick, life; fichte; william blake ; lafayette, letters to bis wife; hegel apud j. hutchison stirling; josiah quincy; jeremiah day; burns; schelling ; niebuhr; sir r. wilson, private journal ; brougham ; berthollet; nesselrode ; moore ; sir william napier; legardie, causeries parisiennes ; adam smith; palmerston; de quincey; schopenhauer; e.c.hawtrey, on eton ;“ barry cornwall” (b. w. procter); bowring; earl russell; bryant; alfieri ; carlyle; alcott; francis lieber, reminiscences; horace bushnell; george sand; sainte-beuve, nouveaux causeries and portraits contemporains ; hawthorne; hans andersen; w. l. garrison; john sterling; rev. f. h. hedge ; agassiz ; whittier ; longfellow; r. c. trench, english past and present ; napoleon iii, life of cæsar apud laboulaye; gladstone; tennyson ; cardinal manning; 88 journal [age 61 holmes; rev. james freeman clarke ; henry james ; harriet beecher stowe; dr. j. j. garth wilkinson ; jones very ; henry ward beecher; rev. edwin hubbell chapin ; thoreau ; w. e. channing; mommsen, history of rome ; clough; matthew arnold ; thomas w. parsons, translation of dante; julia ward howe; james hutchison stirling, the secret of hegel; ernest renan, vie de jésus; t. w. higginson; goldwin smith; david a. wasson; taine; elizabeth sara sheppard; theodore h. hittell, adventures of “grizzly bear adams"; f. b. sanborn ; james a. c. morison, life of st. francis; james kendall hosmer; punch, and revue des deux mondes. journal lecturing afar end of the war lincoln duties of the hour university culture williamstown address intellect. manners dr. jackson star-gazing cass and tracy carlyle journal lvi 1865 (from journals kl, dl, ml, xo, and it) [the war was drawing to a close, yet no one dared hope the end was so near; the times were hard, and the winter severe. mr. emerson went west in january, lectured in pittsburgh, in ohio, and apparently gave short courses in chicago and milwaukee. in his letters he spoke of “bitter weather.”] (from kl) concord, february 13, 1865. home from chicago and milwaukee. chicago grows so fast that one ceases to respect civic growth: as if all these solid and stately squares which we are wont to see as the slow growth of a century had come to be done by machinery as cloth and hardware are made, and were therefore shoddy architecture without honour. 't was tedious, the squalor and obstructions of travel; the advantage of their offers at 92 * journal (age 61 chicago made it necessary to go; in short, this dragging of a decorous old gentleman out of home and out of position to this juvenile career was tantamount to this,—“i'll bet you fifty dollars a day that you will not leave your library, and wade and ride and run and suffer all manner of indignities and stand up for an hour each night reading in a hall”; and i answered, “i'll bet i will." i do it and win the $900. [in the beginning of spring, a happy event had happened in mr. emerson's family. william hathaway forbes (elder son of john murray forbes), a major in the second massachusetts cavalry, had been taken in the previous may in hand-to-hand fight with mosby's guerrillas, when pinned down by his dying horse. he was held prisoner at columbia, south carolina, escaped in late autumn, and was retaken, but soon after released on parole. in march he became engaged to mr. emerson's younger daughter edith, and was exchanged just in time to rejoin his regiment as lieutenant-colonel, and he was present at lee's surrender.] wilkinson always an affirmative writer; radiant, intellectual, humane, brave as such are. 1865) hooker. paris. peace 93 april 10. general hooker, in his order from his headquarters at cincinnati, assuming command of the department of the northwest, says to every officer and soldier, “no one will consider the day as ended, until the duties it brings have been discharged.” i value the fortnightly publishers' circular, mainly for its paris correspondence, containing, as it does, biography of literary men in paris, and showing the identity of literary life in paris with our own, scattering the illusion that overhangs paris in the eyes and reports of frivolous travellers, and showing there just such a coarse and vindictive bohemia as new york is for dissipated young men of talent. 'tis far the best that the rebels have been pounded instead of negociated into a peace. they must remember it, and their inveterate brag will be humbled, if not cured. george minott used to tell me over the wall, when i urged him to go to town meeting and vote, that “votes did no good; what was done so would n't last, but what was done by bullets would stay put.” general grant's terms certainly 94 (age 61 journal look a little too easy,... and i fear that the high tragic historic justice which the nation, with severest consideration, should execute, will be softened and dissipated and toasted away at dinner-tables. but the problems that now remain to be solved are very intricate and perplexing, and men are very much at a loss as to the right action. if we let the southern states into congress, the northern democrats will join them in thwarting the will of the government. and the obvious remedy is to give the negro his vote. and then the difficult question comes, — what shall be the qualification of voters? we wish to raise the mean white to his right position, that he may withstand the planter. but the negro will learn to write and read (which should be a required qualification) before the white will. is rei to be amused. people go into the church, as they go into the parlour, to be amused. the frivolous mood takes the most of the time, as the frivolous people make the majority. and cicero said of the greeks, and eastern provinces, that they gave themselves to art for forgetfulness and the consolation of servitude;oblectamenta et solatium servitutis. 1865] hoar. locke. words. 95 the thunderbolt strikes on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills the horizon.' i should say of samuel hoar, senior, what clarendon writes of sir thomas coventry, that “he had a strange power of making himself believed, the only justifiable design of eloquence.” “ the mind of locke will not always be the measure of human understanding.” — sampson reed. c an run there is no police so effective as a good hill and wide pasture in the neighbourhood of a village, where the boys can run and play and dispose of their superfluous strength and spirits, to their own delight and the annoyance of nobody. criticism, illusion of words. there are really few people who distinguish, on reading, a page full of words from a page full of new experience. they are satisfied with the first, if it is in harmony with their habitual opinions. they say it is good, and put it in my hands, or will read i see poems, appendix, “ the poet” (p. 334). 96 (age 61 journal it to me, and are discontented if i slight it. but they never take it up again, because it makes no impression on their memory ; whilst they do remember and return to the page of real experiences, and thus vindicate the critic. for “inspiration,” the experience of writing letters is one of the best keys to the modus of it.' ... immortality. the path of spirits is in silence and hidden from sense. who knows where or how the soul has existed, before it was incarnated in mortal body? who knows where or how it thinks and works when it drops its fleshly frame? like those asteroids, which we call shooting stars, which revolve forever in space, but sweeping for a moment through some arc of our atmosphere and heated by the friction, give out a dazzling gleam, then pass out of it again on their endless orbit invisible. president lincoln.? why talk of president i this passage is printed in “ inspiration” (letters and social aims, p. 281). 2 on the nineteenth of april, concord's great day, instead of the customary celebration, the people gathered in the 1865] president lincoln 97 lincoln's equality of manners to the elegant or titled men with whom everett or others saw him? a sincerely upright and intelligent man as he was, placed in the chair, has no need to think of his manners or appearance. his work day by day educates him rapidly and to the best. he exerts the enormous power of this continent in every hour, in every conversation, in every act; — thinks and decides under this pressure, forced to see the vast and various bearings of the measures he adopts : be cannot palter, he cannot but carry a grace beyond his own, a dignity, by means of what he drops, e. g., all his pretension and trick, and arrives, of course, at a simplicity, which is the perfection of manners. may 6. in reading mark antonine last night, it was pleasant to be reminded, by some of his precepts, of a living example in a dear person near me. we are such vain peacocks that we read in old church in sorrow for the death of the great president who had bravely and wisely borne the burden of the war. mr. emerson made an address, printed in the “ miscellanies.” the following passage, probably written earlier, does not appear in that speech. 98 (age 61 journal an english journal, with joy, that no house in london or in paris can compare with the comfort and splendour at delmonico's in new york. but i was never in delmonico's. lafayette. “le bien et le mal de la révolution paraissaient en général separés par la ligne que j'avais suivie.” bonaparte said one day in a sally (sortie) to the council of state, “ tout le monde en france est corrigé : il n'y a qu'un seul homme qui ne le soit pas, lafayette! il n'a jamais reculé d'une ligne. vous le voyez tranquille; eb bien? je vous dis, moi, qu'il est tout prêt à recommencer.” saint-beuve ... vindicates the noble unique fidelity of lafayette, but finds in him credulity. ... and sumner, who read here in concord a lecture on lafayette, is of all americans the one who is best entitled by his own character and fortunes to read his eulogy. “la netteté est le vernis des maîtres." vauvenargues. boileau asks molière, “where the devil do you get your rhyme?” for inspiration has unknown resources; has cunning also. if i were successful abroad in talking and wn reso 1865] moral sentiment 99 dealing with men, i should not come back to my library and my work, as i do. when the spirit chooses you for the scribe to publish some commandment, if it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. the moth must fly to the lamp; the man must solve those questions, though he die. sv talk with alcott; assured him that character was the result of pagan morals. all the victories of religion belong to the moral sentiment.'... the parson calls it justification by faith. all the victories, all the convictions, all the anxieties of revivals are the old eternal fact of remorse for wrong, and joy in the right. it is becoming to the americans to dare in religion to be simple, as they have been in government, in trade, in social life; and they have rightly pronounced toleration, that no religious test shall be put. they are to abolish laws against atheism. they are not to allow immorality; they are to be strict in laws of marriage; they are to be just to women, in property, in votes, in personal 1 several omitted sentences are printed in “character” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 113, 114). 100 journal (age 61 rights; and they are to establish the pure religion, justice, asceticism, self-devotion, bounty. they will lead their language round the globe, and they will lead religion and freedom with them. ... it was his tender conviction of this power and presence that made jesus a light in the world, and the spirit that animated him is as swift and puissant to-day. scientific men with their atheism, like the french savants, appear to me insane men with a talent; and the cure would be the opening of the moral sentiment. there is far more than bare works: there is faith also ; that is, the raptures of goodness are as old as history, and new with this morning's sun. the language and the legends of arabia and india and persia are of the same complexion as the christian. vishnu purana bear witness — socrates, zeno, menu, zertusht, confucius, rabia are as tender as st. francis, st. augustine, and st. bernard. we say there exists a universal mind which imparts this perception of duty, opens the interior world to the humble obeyer. ... it has been imparted in all ages. religion is the homage to this presence. 1865) bible and pagans 101 admirable fairness of elizabeth hoar's mind. i think no one who writes or utilizes his opinions can possibly be fair. she will see finer nuances of equity which you will never see if untold. she applied the napoleon mot, “respect the burden,” so well to lincoln, as to [the attitude of] wendell phillips. and one may say, there is a genius for honesty, as well as for poetry, and nobody can anticipate the directness and simplicity of the true man. the best in argument is not the accosting in front the hostile premises, but the flanking them by a new generalization which incidentally disposes of them. it should be easy to say what i have always felt, that stanley's lives of the philosophers, or marcus antoninus, are agreeable and suggestive books to me, whilst st. paul or st. john are not, and i should never think of taking up these to start me on my task, as i often have used plato or plutarch. it is because the bible wears black cloth. it comes with a certain official claim against which the mind revolts. the book has its own nobilities — might well be charming, if it was left simply on its merits, as the others; but this “ you must,” — “it is your duty,” re102 journal (age 62 pels. 't is like the introduction of martial law into concord. if you should dot our farms with picket lines, and i could not go or come across lots without a pass, i should resist, or else emigrate. if concord were as beautiful as paradise, it would be detestable at once. when divine souls appear, men are compelled by their own self-respect to distinguish them. whenever the moral sentiment is affirmed, it must be with dazzling courage. as long as it is cowardly insinuated, as with the wish to show that it is just what the church receives to-day it is not imparted and cannot be owned may 28. in the acceptance that my papers find among my thoughtful countrymen, in these days, i cannot help seeing how limited is their reading. if they read only the books that i do, they would not exaggerate so wildly. select books, select anecdotes, select discoveries, select works of art, select men and women. the most accomplished man should bring his contemporaries to the high culture by pointing out these with insight and reverence. w 1865) triumphs and eras 103 the graduate at the university should know “the famed lines pythagoras devised for which a hecatomb he sacrificed”;' should know archimedes's eureka!’ should know newton's binomial theorem inscribed on his tomb, as well as his optical, and astronomic, and chemical insights; should know da vinci's cartoon, and michel angelo's pisan soldiers; should know brunelleschi’s dome, and michel's; should know columbus's guess, and its grounds; should know alfred's rough hints of english freedom; roger bacon's inventions; and, as far as possible, the history of the magnetic compass; should know the homeric controversy ; should know the wonderful illumination thrown on all history in our own day by the scholars of the sanscrit; should know the history of the mahabharata; should know the history of zoroaster, what, and who, and when was he (see nicholas grimvald's verses on zoroaster); should know how the decimal zero was invented. in literature, there are many curiosities of the 1 the relation of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle to the sides. 2 that is, the story of how he chanced on the discovery of the law of specific gravity. 104 journal [age 62 se second or third order which should be known, as the imitation of christ, of à kempis; or of gerson; as the farce of patelin; as the song of roland; as the mariage de figaro, and the marseillaise of rouget; so, in england, the sonnets of shakspeare; the paradise of dainty devices; specially, too, the morte d' arthur. i must think that carlyle's humour and demoniac fun, telling the story in a gale, bantering, scoffing, now at his hero, now at the enemy, always, too, at the learned reporters he has been consulting, will affect all good readers agreeably; for it is a perpetual flattery to the wise reader, a tête-à-tête with him, abusing the whole world as mad dunces; — all but you and i, reader![the rest of the journal kl is devoted to the poem “ may-day.”] (from dl) june (?). america shall introduce pure religion. ethics are thought not to satisfy affection. but all the religion we have is the ethics of one or another holy person.'.... 1 the rest of this long passage is printed in “sovereignty of ethics” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 212, 213). 1865) heroes. war's benefits 105 july. our young soldiers. these dedicated men! who knew on what duty they went, and whose fathers and mothers said, “ we gave him up when he enlisted.” we see the dawn of a new era, worth to the world the lives of all this generation of american men, if they had been demanded.' it is commonly said of the war of 1812 that it made the nation honourably known; it enlarged our politics, extinguished narrow sectional parties. but the states were young and unpeopled. the present war, on a prodigiously enlarged scale, has cost us how many valuable lives; but it has made many lives valuable that were not so before, through the start and expansion it has given. it has fired selfish old men to an incredible liberality, and young men to the last devotion. the journals say it has demoralized many rebel regiments, but also it has moralized many of our regiments, and not only so, but moralized cities and states. it added 1 these two sentences are found in the short speech mr. emerson made at the commemoration exercises on july 21, when harvard university assembled and did honour to her surviving soldiers. 106 journal . [age 62 to every house and heart a vast enlargement. in every house and shop, an american map has been unrolled, and daily studied, and now that peace has come, every citizen finds himself a skilled student of the condition, means, and future, of this continent. i think it a singular and marked result that the war has established a conviction in so many minds that the right will get done; has established a chronic hope for a chronic despair. this victory the most decisive. this will stay put. it will show your enemies that what has now been so well done will be surely better and quicker done, if need be, again. america. the irresistible convictions of men are sometimes as well expressed by braggart lips, or in jeers, that sound blasphemous; — and that word “manifest destiny,” which is profanely used, signifies the sense all men have of the prodigious energy and opportunity lying idle here. the poor prussian or austrian or italian, escaping hereto, discovers that he has been handcuffed and fettered and fast-tied all his lifetime, with monopolies and duties at every toll-gate on his little cart of corn, or wine, or straw, or on his cow, or ox, or donkey; and padcc 1865] praise of intellect 107 locked lips, padlocked mind, no country, no education, no vote, but passports, police, monks, and foreign soldiers. july 23. notes for williamstown.' returns the eternal topic, the praise of intellect. i gain my point, gain all points, whenever i can reach the young man with any statement which teaches him his own worth. thus, if i can touch his imagination, i serve him; he will never forget it. if i can open to him for a moment the superiority of knowledge to wealth or physical power. especially works on me at all times any statement of realism, and, old as my habit is of thrumming on this string, i must continue to try it, till in a manlier or a divine hour, i can see the truth, and say it. man it occurred the other day, with a force not retained, that the advocate of the good cause finds a wealth of arguments and illustrations on his way. he stands for truth, and truth and nature help him unexpectedly and irresistibly at every step. all the felicities of example, of imagery, of admirable poetry, old religion, new 1 mr. emerson addressed the society of the adelphi at williams college on july 31. . 108 journal (age 62 thought, the analogies of science, throng to him and strengthen his position. nay, when we had to praise john brown of ossawatomie, i remember that what a multitude of fine verses of old poetry fitted him exactly, and appeared to have been prophetically written for the occasion. one drug needs another drug to expel it, — if feasts, then wine; after wine, coffee; and after coffee, tobacco; if vanity, then pride; if anger, then war, sword, and musket. but temperance is strength, and essence is religion. to be is to live with god. miss peabody tells me that jones very one day said to her, “to the preëxistent shakspeare wisdom was offered, but he declined it, and took only genius." enfant du peuple. that fair, large, sound, wholesome youth or maid, whom we pick out in a whole street full of passengers as a model of native strength, is not to be raised by rule in schools or gymnasia. it is the vermont or new hampshire farm, and a series of farmers labouring on mountain and moor, that produced this rare result. when a good head for ciphering, 1865] country blood. writers 109 trade, and affairs is turned out, he drifts to the city counting-room, or perhaps to the law-school, and brings thither a constitution able to supply resources to all the demand made on him, and easily goes ahead of all competitors, has a firm will, cool head, and in the sequel, plants a family which becomes marked through two or three generations for force and beauty, until luxury corrupts them, as it had destroyed those whom they displaced. august 13. a disaster of this year has been the loss of six or seven valuable pear trees by the pearblight. i think, in preceding years, single boughs have withered and died, but these have not attracted much notice ; but now i cut off half of each tree with its coppery leaves and the mournful smell of the sick bark, and shall not save them so. the difference between writers is that one counts forms, and the other counts powers. the gazetteer, in describing boston, reckons up the schools, the churches, and the missionary societies; but the poet remembers the alcoves of the athenæum, or the bates library; certain wise and mannered men, certain fair women, and the 110 journal (age 62 happy homes in which he saw them. the friend, he is the power that abode with us; and the book, which made night better than day, — that may be well counted. in the revue des deux mondes i found a paper on the future life which suggested the thought that one abstains — i abstain, for example — from printing a chapter on the immortality of the soul, because, when i have come to the end of my statement, the hungry eyes that run through it will close disappointed ; — that is not bere which we desire; — and i shall be as much wronged by their halting conclusion as they feel themselyes by my shortcomings.' ... “michel angelo fut la conscience de l'italie.”— a. dumesnil, august 24. yesterday called on forceythe willson 3 at 1 this sentence, less personally stated, is found in “ immortality” (letters and social aims, pp. 345, 346). 2 with this sentence for a text, follows a similar passage on the loneliness and unpopularity of great souls to that printed in “ progress of culture” (letters and social aims, pp. 216, 217). 3 the strange and moving poem “ the old sergeant,” published in the west, attracted the attention of mr. lowell iii 1865] phillips. manners ii cambridge, went into the city with him, to the athenæum and union club. in how many people we feel the tyranny of their talent as the disposer of their activity. in wendell phillips, now the “ seul homme d'état in america,” i feel that his patriotism or his moral sentiment are not primarily the inspiration of his career, but this matchless talent of debate, of attack, of illustration, of statement, — this talent which was in him, and must be unfolded ; that drove him, in happy hours, under most fortunately determining auspices, into the lists, where kings were to be competitors, and nations spectators. the conduct of intellect must respect nothing so much as preserving the sensibility.' ... manners. there are things whose hour is always a little over or not quite come, as, for and mr. emerson. after a fruitless search to learn of the man and his residence, lowell found that he was his next-door neighbour on mount auburn street. he proved to be a young man, and, though of commanding stature and physique, with a sensitive and kindly shyness reminding one of hawthorne. his other notable war poem was “ in state," printed in the atlantic. mr. willson died in 1867. 1 the passage is printed in natural history of intellect (p. 43). 112 journal [age 62 example, the rule that you shall not go out to dine too well dressed; which means, that a certain slovenliness fits certain persons, but requires perfect aplomb and clear, sensible manners and conversation. cold scholars cannot afford these liberties. under a commanding thought, all people become as graceful as if they were asleep. that knows how to lay the hands and the feet, as, long since, it knew how to make them. scotus erigena, sitting at the table of charles the bald, when the king asked him how far a scot was removed from a sot, answered with irish wit, “by a table's breadth.” the old sharper said “his conscience was as good as ever it was; he had never used it any." september 30. yesterday, at our cattle-show, i saw a man sitting in the town hall so like to the late president lincoln, in the whole head, that i called the attention of rev. mr. reynolds to him, who at once recognized the fact. it was elijah wood of this town. the view was in 1865] resemblance 113 profile, and he had his hand against his face, covering it a little, and so probably increasing the likeness. nature is very rich in patterns, but cunningly; not so rich as she seems, and so repeats herself. cousins of fourth and fifth degree have sometimes striking resemblance, and are therefore both repetitions of the common ancestor. robert winthrop, when young, strongly resembled the portrait, in the historical society's rooms, of governor winthrop. indeed, i suppose the cunning artist does not quite repeat her type until after four or five generations when all the rememberers are gone, and she can just duplicate every face of the fifth back generation, without risk of confusion or discovery. but i don't think even this interval will be safe now, art having circumvented her with the photograph, which will force her to invent new varieties, or lose her reputation for fertility. mr. benjamin peter hunt' said that a young man of good position in philadelphia went to the war, and accepted the colonelcy of a colored regiment. on his return lately to philadelphia, i mr. emerson's pupil at the chelmsford academy, and valued friend later in philadelphia. 114 journal (age 62 all his acquaintances cut him. judge hoar said to me that he had long ago made up his mind that the cutting was to be from the other side ; that this country belonged to the men of the most liberal persuasion. now in the time of the fugitive slave law, when the best young men who had ranged themselves around mr. webster were already all of them in the interest of freedom, and threw themselves at once into opposition, mr. webster could no longer see one of them in the street; he glared on them, but knew them not; his resentments were implacable. what did they do? did they sit down and bewail themselves? no; sumner and his valiant young contemporaries set themselves to the task of making their views not only clear but prevailing. they proclaimed and defended them and inoculated with them the whole population, and drove mr. webster out of the world. all his mighty genius, which none had been so forward to acknowledge and magnify as they, availed him nothing; for they knew that the spirit of god and of humanity was with them, and he withered and died as by suicide. calhoun had already gone, as webster, by breaking his own head against the nature of things. 1865) fitness. minor key 115 potentiality. in estimating nations, 'tis well to remember the sovereign nature which often remains when the actual performance is inferior. thus, in england, what destroying criticism we can read or make on its education, its literature, its science, its politics ! and yet the force of that race may still any day turn out a better man than any other. theodore will buy a hat, a soft hat, or a beaver, for summer or winter. in his choice, he looks about him in the street, or he remembers that this friend or that reputable citizen wears one of a certain form or colour which is becoming. one good instance suffices him and guides to a certain extent his choice. but he does not consider that it is always character, personal force, of some kind in the individual he thinks of that makes the hat he wears so proper and perfect in its place. beware of the minor key. despair, whining, low spirits, only betray the fact that the man has been living in the low circle of the senses and the understanding. these are exhaustible, and he has exhausted them, and now looks backward and bewails them. 116 [age 62 journal in stirling's secret of hegel — . “the intellectual power from words to things went sounding on a dim and perilous way.” carlyle is to be defended plainly as a sincere man who is outraged by nothing so much as sentimentalism, or the simulating of reform, and love of nature, and love of truth. therefore he detests“ progress of civility,” “enlightenment,” “new ideas,” “diffusion of knowledge,” and all shallow insincerities coming under such names. november 5. we hoped that in the peace, after such a war, a great expansion would follow in the mind of the country; grand views in every direction, — true freedom in politics, in religion, in social science, in thought. but the energy of the nation seems to have expended itself in the war, and every interest is found as sectional and timorous as before. ... williamstown, november 14.' i saw to-night in the observatory, through alvan clark's telescope, the dumb-bell nebula i the address which mr. emerson had made to the society of the adelphi at williams college in july seems to have led 1865) the heavens 117 in the fox and goose constellation ; the four double stars in lyra; the double stars of castor ; the two hundred stars of the pleiades; the nebula in (perseus ?). mr. button, professor hopkins's assistant, was our star-showman, and stanbrough and hutton, who have been my committee of the “adelphic union,” inviting me here, carried me thither. i have rarely been so much gratified. early in the afternoon professor bascom carried me in a gig to the top of the west mountain, and showed me the admirable view down the valley in which this town and adams lie, with greylock and his attendant ranges towering in front. then we rose to the crest, and looked down into rensselaer county, new york, and the multitude of low hills that compose it, this was the noted anti-rent country, and beyond, in the horizon, the mountain range to the west. to his being asked to lecture there in the autumn, probably before the lyceum. but when he came, a spontaneous movement of the students, which pleased him, led to his staying there a day or two and reading other papers to them. one of these students, mr. charles j. woodbury, talked much with mr. emerson and after his death published his memories and notes in a remarkable and charming little book, talks with emerson (the baker and taylor co., new york). 118 journal [age 62 of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. and these mountains give an inestimable worth to williamstown and massachusetts. but, for the mountains, i don't quite like the proximity of a college and its noisy students. to enjoy the hills as poet, i prefer simple farmers as neighbours. the dim lanthorn which the astronomer used at first to find his object-glasses, etc., seemed to disturb and hinder him, preventing his seeing his heavens, and, though it was turned down lower and lower and lower, he was still impatient, and could not see until it was put out. when it had long been gone, and i had looked through the telescope a few times, the little garret at last grew positively lightsome, and the lamp would have been annoying to all of us. what is so good in a college as an observatory? the sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascend ;that this is the road to the stars. every fixture and instrument in the building, every nail and pin, has a direct reference to the milky way, the fixed stars, and the nebulæ, and we leave massachusetts and the americas and history outside at the door, when we come in. ass 1865] dr. charles t. jackson 119 december 10. dr. jackson shone in the talk on thanksgiving day,' explaining many things so successfully, — the possibility of the balloon by the aid of gun-cotton (one of whose principal merits, he asserted, was, that it does not foul the barrel or engine as powder does); the ocean telegraph, which he thinks far less practicable, and certainly less desirable to us than the siberian. then the fact that the patents of the telegraph companies do not really protect the monopoly, for what is patented they no longer use, as, the system of “marks on paper,” of morse's patent; for the telegraph is everywhere conducted without paper, being read by the ear. he thinks the united states post-office should take possession of the telegraph as part of the postal arrangement, pay a compensation to the companies, and give its use to the people at a cent a word, and so save the immense transportation of letters, by this e i dr. charles t. jackson, mrs. emerson's brother, who came with his large family to the thanksgiving gathering at concord, was the life of the occasion. mr. emerson sat at one end of the long table and he at the other. mrs. ripley always counted on sitting beside him to learn from him of all the wonders of advancing science, and his ready wit and skill as a raconteur gave pleasure to all. 120 journal [age 62 imponderable correspondence. he told the story of the rumford medal voted to ericsson by the american academy, and the money voted to roper and company for valuable improvements on ericsson; from which last he anticipates very great practical benefit. the union, or double-union, engine :1. t. williams told me, the other day, that ninety-seven per cent of caloric was wasted in all attempts to use caloric for force in mechanics. dr. jackson says much is lost, but nothing like so much. he knew amory's chimney which burns the smoke. its advantage is demonstrable, yet it is not used, resembling thus boyden's turbines, which pretend to save ninety-seven per cent of the power of a waterfall, and, being tested, were found to do what they claimed, yet are not used. it seems to be a fixed rule in the planting and growth of settlements, that the men follow the waters. thus, on each side of a height of land, the people will go to the market that is downstream. i. t. williams told me that the last time he saw albert h. tracy, he told him that when he and cass were in congress they became very 1865] the friends questions 121 intimate, and spent their time in conversation on the immortality of the soul,' and other intellectual questions, and cared for little else. when he left congress, they parted, and though mr. cass passed through buffalo twice, he did not come near him, and he never saw him again until twenty-five years afterward. they saw each other through open doors at a distance, in a great party at the president's house in washington. slowly they advanced towards each other as they could, and at last met, said nothing, but shook hands long and cordially. at last cass said, “any light, tracy?” “none,” answered tracy; and then said, “any light, cass ?” “none,” replied he. they looked in each other's eyes, gave one shake more each to the hand he held, and thus parted for the last time. when i was a senior in college, i think, samuel barrett, whom i had known in concord, was about to be ordained in the chambers street church and i called upon him in his room in college i think he must have been a proctor. we talked about the vices and calamities of the time, i don't recall what the grim 1 this story is given here, although printed in “immortality,” because of the added interest given by the names. i 22 journal (age 62 shadows were, or how we came on them, — but when i rose to go, and asked him what was the relief and cure of all this, he replied with cheerful ardour, “nothing but unitarianism.” from my remembrance of how this answer struck me, i am sure that this antidote must have looked as thin and poor and pale to me then, as now. carlyle. i have neglected badly carlyle, who is so steadily good to me. like a catholic in boston, he has put himself by his violent antiamericanism in false position, and it is not quite easy to deal with him. but his merits are overpowering, and when i read friedrich, i forget all else. his treatment of his subject is ever so masterly, so original, so self-respecting, so defiant, allowing himself all manner of liberties and confidences with his hero, as if he were his hero's father or benefactor ; that he is proud of him, and yet checks and chides, and sometimes puts him in the corner, when he is not a good boy; that, amid all his sneering and contempt for all other historians, and biographers, and princes, and peoples, the reader yet feels himself complimented by the confidences with which he is honoured by this free-tongued, dangerous companion, who discloses to him all his secret opin1865] reaction. illusion 123 ions, all his variety of moods, and varying estimates of his hero and every body else. he is as dangerous as a madman. nobody knows what he will say next, or whom he will strike. prudent people keep out of his way. if genius were cheap, we should do without carlyle; but, in the existing population, he cannot be spared. (from xo) reaction. its power is as the need. systole and diastole of the heart, ebb and flow of tide, centripetal and centrifugal, horse down-hill and up-hill; so the assailant makes the strength of the defence. therefore, we ought to pray, give us a good enemy, — like the southerner who exasperates the too good-natured north into resistance; or like president johnson, who outrages his opponents and mortifies his friends. illusion. “we know all things as in a dream, and are again ignorant of them according to vigilant perception.” — plato, in sophist. the first illusion that is put upon us in the world is the amusing miscellany of colours, forms, and properties. our education is through surfaces and particulars. nature masks under ostentatious sub-divisions and manifold partic124 [age 62 journal ulars the poverty of her elements, and the rigid economy of her rules. and, as infants are occupied wholly with surface-differences, so multitudes of adults remain in the infant or animal estate, and never see or know more. moral sentiment. as the flower precedes the fruit, and the bud the flower, so, long before the opinion, comes the instinct that a particular act is unfriendly, unsuitable, wrong. we are wonderfully protected. (from it) memory. if we pierce to the origin of knowledge, and explore the meaning of memory, we might find it some strange mutilated roll of celestial papyrus, on which only a disjointed jumble of universal traditions, of heavenly scriptures, of angelic biographies, were long ago written, — relics of a foreworld. the past will not sleep. it works still. with every new fact a ray of light shoots up from the long-buried years. 1865) reading 125 authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1865 vedas; vishnu purana ; zertusht (zoroaster); confucius; pythagoras; zeno; archimedes; persius; martial; marcus aurelius; st. augustine; mahomet; scotus erigena; king alfred; chanson de roland; morte d'artbur; st. bernard; st. francis of assisi ; chaucer; thomas à kempis, imitation of christ; jean de gerson, de consolatione theologiæ; savonarola; michel angelo; vittoria colonna ; ochino; reginald pole; calderon; clarendon; de retz; thomas stanley, history of philosophy; locke; spinoza; boileau ; newton; chesterfield ; duclos; vauvenargues ; beaumarchais, le mariage de figaro; goethe, correspondence with the grand duke of weimar; lafayette; rouget de l'isle, marseillaise; friedrich augustus wolf and others, homeric controversy; von gentz; john dalton ; cuvier; novalis (von hardenberg); malte brun; lewis cass; daniel webster; manzoni; labouton : 126 [age 62 journal martine ; michelet, renaissance; carlyle, frederick the great; alcott; sampson reed ; victor hugo ; sainte-beuve, portraits littéraires; dr. charles t. jackson; abraham lincoln; benjamin peirce; charles sumner ; wendell phillips; henry james, substance and shadow; dr. j. j. garth wilkinson; henry wilson ; henry ward beecher; jones very; matthew arnold; thomas w. parsons, translation of dante ; james hutchison stirling, the secret of hegel; a. dumesnil ; frank bird; ernest renan; goldwin smith ; lanfrey; forceythe willson. journal tasks. sense. manners criticism. love laws of mind polarity. reading's temptation war clarifies hegel america's moral basis the camp on monadnoc atlantic cable visit to agassiz hindoo theology universe of thought analyzed sound journal lvii 1866 (from journals dl, ln, and ml) [early in january mr. emerson set forth for his lecturing tour in the west. he no longer had the difficult task of arranging this, which was done for him, by some agency, a great relief and advantage. the conditions of travel were now more comfortable, yet the work was arduous. he was away from home till february 19, lecturing in new york, pennsylvania, ohio, indiana, illinois, michigan, and wisconsin. however, he almost invariably returned rather refreshed and stimulated by his winter's experiences in the advancing west.] vox immissa volat; litera scripta manet.' (from dl) january 5, 1866. i thought, last night, as so often before, that when one has a task before him in which literi the uttered word fies away, the written character abides. 130 journal [age 62 ary work becomes business, undertaken, that is, for money, — any hearing of poetry or any intellectual suggestion (as e. g. out of j. hutchison stirling's book lately) brings instant penitence, and the thoughts revert to the muse, and, under this high invitation, we think we will throw up our undertaking, and attempt once more this purer, loftier service. but if we obey this suggestion, the beaming goddess presently hides her face in clouds again. we have not learned the law of the mind, cannot control and bring at will or domesticate the high states of contemplation and continuous thought. “neither by sea nor by land canst thou find the way to the hyperboreans.” neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of three or of thumb. yet i find a mitigation or solace of the alternative which i accept (of the paid lectures, for instance) by providing always a good book for my journey, as horace, or martial, or the secret of hegel, some book which lifts quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which you draw some lasting knowledge. in the funeral of steele, sable, the undertaker, reproaches the too cheerful mute, “did i not give you ten, then fifteen and twenty 1866] common sense. love 131 shillings a week to be sorrowful ? and the more i give you, i think the gladder you are.” : february. common sense; — lord mansfield or any great lawyer an example of it, though they call it law. and beau brummel even surprised other fops by having this basis : as, when he was asked what scents he used for his linen, replied, “ country air and country washing.” love. the maiden only need consider that she passes securely through ten or a dozen appearances, as in the street, or at an evening party. the lover will do all the rest; since he is ever working up, enriching, enhancing her image and attributes, with the smallest aid from her; so that thus there are two working on her part, and none on his. the power of manners is a principal agent in human affairs. the rich and elegant and the strong-willed not so much talk down as look down and silence the well-disposed middle class. 'tis fine that the scholar or the red republican defies these people, or writes against them: he cannot get them out of his thoughts. when he 132 journal (age 62 meets them in the street, he cannot deny them his bow, and when he meets them in clubs or in drawing-rooms, he prizes their attentions, and easily leaves his own set on any advances from theirs. in england sir robert peel and thackeray are only two out of manifold examples. i myself always fall an easy prey to superior manners. i remember how admirable in my youth were to me the southern boys. andrew johnson, wont to look up to the planters as a superior race, cannot resist their condescensions and flatteries, and, though he could not be frightened by them, falls an easy victim to their caresses. this result was explicitly foretold by moncure d. conway and frederick douglass. the remedy of this political mischief should be to train a youth in poverty to a nobler style of manners than any palace can show him, by plato and plutarch, by the cid, and sidney, and george herbert, and chaucer. quick people touch and go, whilst heavy people insist on pounding. 'tis in vain to try to choke them off and change the conversation to avoid the slaughter-house details. straightway they begin at the beginning, and thrice they slay the slain; society shall be distressing, and there's an end of it. 1866] brook. critics. training 133 “ce que dit le ruisseau ; toujours, toujours, partout, dans tout, pour tout, toujours.” george sand. (from ml) criticism. best masters for the young writer and speaker are the fault finding brothers and sisters at home, who will not spare him, but will pick and cavil, and tell the odious truth. education. he who betaketh him to a good tree hath good shade; for the cid knew how to make a good knight, as a good groom knows how to make a good horse. talk of columbus or newton. i tell you the babe just born in the hovel yonder is the beginning of a revolution as great as theirs. i am far from thinking it late. i do not despond at all whilst i hear the verdicts of european juries against us. renan says so and so. that does not hurt us at all. arnold says thus or thus: neither does that touch us. i think it safer to be so blamed, than praised. listen to every censure in good part. it does not hit the quick since we do not wince. and if you do wince, that is best of all. set yourself instantly 134 journal (age 62 to mend the fault, and thank the critic as your benefactor. and ruskin has several rude and some ignorant things to say. university. but be sure that scholars are secured, that the scholar is not quite left out; that the imagination is cared for and cherished; that the money-spirit does not turn him out; that enthusiasm is not repressed; and professor granny does not absorb all. teach him shakspeare. teach him plato; and see that real examiners and awards are before you. in the college, 'tis complained, money and the vulgar respectability have the same ascendant as in the city. what remedy? there is but one, namely, the arrival of genius, which instantly takes the lead, and makes the fashion at cambridge. charles xii said to swedenborg, of the mathematics, “he who knew nothing of this science did not deserve to be considered a rational man”; “a sentiment,” adds swedenborg, “worthy of a king.” koran. “paradise, whose breadth equalleth the heavens and the earth.” 1866] koran. napoleon 135 “ hell is a circle about the unbelieving.” “only the law of god it is which has no antecedent, and in which no change can be discovered.” “sleeping are men, and when they die, they wake.” "the saint's best blush in heaven is from his heart-blood's red.” always falls on his feet. when one of napoleon's favorite schemes missed, he had the faculty of taking up his genius (esprit), as he said, and of carrying it somewhere else. sainte-beuve. ever since pericles, there has not been a young lover in all civil nations but has found his affection met and celebrated by the beautiful shining of the evening star. ’t is everywhere the symbol of warm and tender joy. but does aught of that glorious and penetrating power belong to the planet itself, as known to the astronomer? i must read [how] herschel, or leverrier, or whoever has best computed its elements describes it, but i shall find it chaotic and uninhabitable for a human race. the 136 journal [age 62 poetic and moral enchantment is wholly subjective, we know. ts [beginning in the middle of april, mr. emerson was to give in boston a series of lectures — philosophy of the people: i. seven metres of intellect; ii. instinct, perception, talent ; iii. genius, imagination, taste; iv. laws of mind; v. conduct of intellect; vi. relation of the intellect to morals. the extracts from ml (moral law) are mostly notes for these. a summary of this course may be found in the appendix to cabot's memoir, vol. ii, pp. 791796.] march. laws of the mind. i have first to keep the promise of the last lecture, by treating common sense, which, one would say, means the shortest line between two points, — how to come at a practical end, and requires indispensably an act of your mind and not a quotation. but things are rarely seen by direct light, but only by the reflex light of others' opinion and culture, and a new opinion drawn from the thing itself is almost as astonishing as if, in the dark, the faces of our friends should become luminous, and show by inward light. 1866] mind. work. aunt mary 137 laws of mind 1. identity. one law consumes all diversity. 2. flowing or transition, endless ascension. 3. individualism or bias. i want the world, but on my terms. 4. subjectiveness. all is as i am. 5. detachment. cell makes cell, and animal animal, and thought opens into thought. dr. johnson said: “to temperance every day is bright, and every hour propitious to diligence.” “a man can do anything, if he will doggedly set himself at work to it,” etc. intellect. “i have wandered,” says aunt mary, “into brown's idea of knowing nothing of mind but thoughts.” the celestial mind incapable of offence, of haste, of care, of in hospitality, of peeping, of memory, incapable of embarrassment, of discourtesy, treating all with a sovereign equality. me on aunt mary wrote: “religion, that home of genius, will strengthen the mind as it does the character.” 138 journal [age 62 immortality. “as a proof of endless being we may rank that novelty which perpetually attends life. on the borders of the grave the hoary sage looks forward with an invariable elasticity of mind or hope. after millions of years, when on the verge of a new existence, (for such is the nature of created existences to be forever new to life,”) etc. aunt mary's letters. van helmont says, “the soul understands in peace and rest, and not in doubting.” 't is the faith of swedenborg and of pascal, that piety is an essential condition of science. i should like to know what power to believe in immortality any one could possess who had not already a revelation of it in the phenomena of intellect. (from ln) “when the wind bloweth strong, hoist thy sail to the top, 't is joyous in storm not to ainch. keep her full! keep her full! none but cowards strike sail, sooner founder than take in an inch.” code of the vikings. 1866] zoroaster. identity 139 march 26. i often think of uses of an academy, though they did not rapidly appear when sumner proposed his bill; and perhaps if it was national, and must meet in washington, or philadelphia, even new york would be a far-away place for me, — such benefits as i crave, it could not serve. but to-day i should like to confide to a proper committee to report on what are called the “ sentences of zoroaster,” or the “ chaldaic oracles”; to examine and report on those extraordinary fragments, — so wise, deep, some of them poetic, — and such riddles, or so frivolous, others, — and pronounce shortly, but advisedly, what is their true history. zoroaster has a line saying that “violent deaths are friendliest to the health of the soul.” attribute that among his good fortunes to lincoln. and in the same connection remember the death of pindar. can identity be claimed for a being whose life is so often vicarious or belonging to an age or generation? he is fallen in another; he rises in another. polarity. every nature has its own. it was found, that, if iron ranged itself north and south, 140 journal [ace 62 nickel or other substance ranged itself east and west; and faraday expected to find that each chemic element might yet be found to have its own determination or pole; and every soul has a bias or polarity of its own, and each new. every one a magnet with a new north. not niebuhr only lost his power of divination, but every poet has on the hills counted the pleiads, and mourned his lost star. ah, the decays of memory, of fancy, of the saliency of thought! who would not rather have a perfect remembrance of all he thought and felt in a certain high week, than to read any book that has been published ? when i read a good book, say, one which opens a literary question, i wish that life were 3000 years long. who would not launch into this egyptian history, as opened by wilkinson, champollion, bunsen, but for the memento mori which he reads on all sides? who is not provoked by the temptation of the sanscrit literature? and, as i wrote above, the chaldaic oracles tempt me.' but so also does algebra, i many of these, with other extracts from the oriental scriptures, were printed by mr. emerson in the dial. their age and authenticity as teachings of zoroaster (zertusht) are doubtful. 1866] war opens new doors 141 and astronomy, and chemistry, and geology, and botany. perhaps, then, we must increase the appropriation, and write 30,000 years. and, if these years have correspondent effect with the sixty years we have experienced, some earnest scholar will have to amend by striking out the word “years” and inserting “centuries.” it is plain that the war has made many things public that were once quite too private. a man searches his mind for thoughts, and finds only the old commonplaces; but, at some moment, on the old topic of the days, politics, he makes a distinction he had not made; he discerns a little inlet not seen before. where was a wall is now a door. the mind goes in and out, and variously states in prose or poetry its new experience. it points it out to one and another, who, of course, deny the alleged discovery. but repeated experiments and affirmations make it visible soon to others. the point of interest is here, that these gates once opened never swing back. the observers may come at their leisure, and do at last satisfy themselves of the fact. the thought, the doctrine, the right, hitherto not affirmed, is published in set proposi142 journal (age 63 tions, in conversation of scholars, and at last in the very choruses of songs. the young hear it, and, as they have never fought it, never known otherwise, they accept it, vote for it at the polls, embody it in the laws. and this perception, thus satisfied, reacts on the senses to clarify them, so that it becomes more indisputable. thus it is no matter what the opposition may be of presidents or kings or majorities, but what the truth is as seen by one mind. i copy a scrap copy of my letter sent to mrs. c. t., when in europe (perhaps never sent), which i pick up to-day :“i have let go the unreturning opportunity which your visit to germany gave me to acquaint you with gisela von arnim, and herman grimm her husband, and joachim the violinist, — and i who prize myself only on my endurance, that i am as good as new when the others are gone, i to be slow, derelict, and dumb to you, in all your absence! i shall regret this as long as i live. how palsy creeps over us with gossamer first, and ropes afterwards! and you have the prisoner when you have once put your eye on him, as securely 1866] the secret of hegel 143 as after the bolts are drawn.— how strange that charles newcomb, whose secret you and i alone have, should come to write novels. holmes's genius is all that is new, nor that to you. the worst is that we can do without it. grand behavior is better, if it rest on the axis of the world.” cem e s hegel' seems to say, look, i have sat long gazing at the all but imperceptible transitions of thought to thought, until i have seen with eyes the true boundary. i know what is this, and that. i know it, and have recorded it. it can never be seen but by a patience like mine added to a perception like mine. i know the subtile boundary, as surely as the mineralogist haüy knows the normal lines of his crystal, and where the cleavage must begin. i know that all observation will justify me, and to the future metaphysician i say, that he may measure the power of his perception by the degree of his accord with mine. this is the twilight of the gods, predicted in the scandinavian mythology. 1 mr. emerson was reading the secret of hegel, sent him by j. hutchison stirling (of leith, scotland), a book in which he took much interest. 144 journal (age 63 hegel's definition of liberty was, the spirit's realization of itself. hafiz can only show a playing with magnitudes, but without ulterior aim. hafiz fears nothing; he sees too far; he sees throughout. van american politics. i have the belief that of all things the work of america is to make the advanced intelligence of mankind in the sufficiency of morals practical; since there is on every side a breaking up of the faith in the old traditions of religion, and, of necessity, a return to the omnipotence of the moral sentiment, that in america this conviction is to be embodied in the laws, in the jurisprudence, in international law, in political economy. the lawyers have always some glaring exceptions to their statements of public equity, some reserve of sovereignty, tantamount to the rob roy rule that might makes right. america should affirm and establish that in no instance should the guns go in advance of the perfect right. you shall not make coups d'état, and afterwards explain and pay, but shall proceed like william penn, or whatever other christian or humane person who 1866) fame. beauty in life 145 treats with the indian or foreigner on principles of honest trade and mutual advantage. let us wait a thousand years for the sandwich islands before we seize them by violence. fame is ever righting itself. in the jangle of criticism, goethe is that which the intelligent hermit supposes him to be, and can neither be talked up nor down. beauty in life. it is peremptory for good living in houses in a cultivated age, that the beautiful should never be out of thought. it is not more important that you should provide bread for the table, than that it should be put there and used in a comely manner. you have often a right to be angry with servants, but you must carry your anger and chide without offence to beauty. else, you have quarreled with yourself as well as with them. june 14. but the surprise and dazzle of beauty is such, that i thought to-day, that if beauty were the rule, instead of the exception, men would give up business. (from a loose sheet) thus lofty, thus universal is the principle which we call grace in nature; not lodged in 146 (age 63 journal certain lines or curves, not contained in colourboxes, or in rare and costly materials, but in every stroke in which it is found, presenting a kind of miniature of the world. herein, in its central character, we see our concern in it. the perception of beauty is an office of the reason — and therefore all men have property in it. (from ln) deity. in the speed of conversation l. said, “poor god did all he could to make them so, but they steadily undid,” etc. it recurs now as an example of the organic generalization. the speaker casts the apparent or hypothetical order of things into a word and names it god; but, in the instant, the mind makes the distinction or perceives the eternal and ever-present of the perfect, still whole and divine before him, and god quits the name of god, and fills the universe as he did the moment before. ven 1 nen w bias. seven men went through a field, one after another. one was a farmer, he saw only the grass; the next was an astronomer, he saw the horizon and the stars; the physician noticed the standing water and suspected miasma; 1866] whitman. single poems 147 he was followed by a soldier, who glanced over the ground, found it easy to hold, and saw in a moment how the troops could be disposed; then came the geologist, who noticed the boulders and the sandy loam ; after him came the real-estate broker, who bethought him how the line of the house-lots should run, where would be the drive-way, and the stables. the poet admired the shadows cast by some trees, and still more the music of some thrushes and a meadow lark. [some extracts attributed to taliessin, the welsh bard, precede this.] i suspect walt whitman had been reading these welsh remains when he wrote his “ leaves of grass.” thus taliessin sings :“i am water, i am a wren; i am a workman, i am a star; i am a serpent ; i am a cell, i am a chink; i am a depositary of song, i am a learned person.” single speech poets. hogg only wrote “ kilmeny”; sampson reed, “genius”; forceythe willson,“the old sergeant” ballad; matthew arnold, “thyrsis”; s. ferguson, “song of 148 journal [age 63 the anchor”; wolfe, “burial of sir john moore”; rouget de l'isle, “ marseillaise " ; halleck,“ marco bozzaris”; messenger,“old wine, old books ”; henry taylor, “ philip van artevelde”; daniel webster, “ speech against hayne”; lord caernarvon, “speech on lord danby's impeachment ...”; henry kirke white, “herb rosemary"; pollok,“oceana”; w. c. bryant, “waterfowl”; george borrow, single verse in “svend vonved ”; raleigh, (if “ soul's errand” is taken, nothing is left but) “pilgrimage.” read aunt mary's mss. yesterday — many pages. they keep for me the old attraction; though, when i sometimes have tried passages on a stranger, i find something of fairy gold ; they need too much commentary, and are not as incisive as on me. they make the best example i have known of the power of the religion of the puritans in full energy, until fifty years ago, in new england. the central theme of these endless diaries is her relation to the divine being; the absolute submission of her will, with the sole proviso, that she may know it is the direct agency of god (and not of cold laws of contingency, etc.), which bereaves and humiliates 1866) the monadnoc camp 149 her. but the religion of the diary, as of the class it represented, is biographical ; it is the culture, the poetry, the mythology, in which they personally believed themselves dignified, inspired, judged, and dealt with, in the present and in the future. and it certainly gives to life an earnestness, and to nature a sentiment, which lacking, our later generation appears frivolous. [mr. emerson's son and daughter ellen, one of their cousins, and some friends were camping on the rocky plateau of monadnoc for a week. miss keyes, daughter of hon. john s. keyes, of concord, later became mrs. edward w. emerson.] july 2. i went with annie keyes and mr. channing on wednesday, 27th june, to troy, n. h., thence to the mountain house in wagon, and, with edward and tom ward' who had come down to meet us, climbed the mountain. the party already encamped were moorfield storey, ward, and edward, for the men ; and una hawthorne, lizzie simmons, and ellen e. for the maidens. they lived on the plateau just i thomas wren ward, son of mr. emerson's friend, samuel gray ward. 150 journal (age 63 below the summit, and were just constructing their one tent by spreading and tying indiarubber blankets over a frame of spruce poles large enough to hold the four ladies with sleeping space, and to cover the knapsacks. the men must find shelter, if need is, under the rocks. the mountain at once justified the party and their enthusiasm. it was romance enough to be there, and behold the panorama, and learn one by one all the beautiful novelties. the country below is a vast champaign, — half cleared, half forest, — with forty ponds in sight, studded with villages and farmhouses, and, all around the horizon, closed with mountain ranges. the eye easily traces the valley followed by the cheshire railroad, and just beyond it the valley of the connecticut river, then the green mountain chain: in the north, the white hills can be seen; and, on the east, the low mountains of watatic and wachusett. we had hardly wonted our eyes to the new olympus, when the signs of a near storm set all the scattered party on the alert. the tent was to be finished and covered, and the knapsacks piled in it. the wanderers began to appear on the heights, and to descend, and much work in camp was done in brief time. i looked about for a shelter in the rocks, and c. 1866] the mountain storm 151 not till the rain began to fall, crept into it. i called to channing, and afterwards to tom ward, who came, and we sat substantially dry, if the seat was a little cold, and the wall a little dripping, and pretty soon, a large brook roared between the rocks, a little lower than our feet hung. meantime, the thunder shook the mountain, and much of the time was continuous cannonade. the storm refused to break up. one and another adventurer rushed out to see the signs, and especially the sudden torrents, little niagaras, that were pouring over the upper ledges, and descending upon our plateau. but everybody was getting uncomfortably wet, the prospect was not good for the night, and, in spite of all remonstrance on the part of the young ladies, i insisted that they must go down with me to the “ mountain house,” for the night. all the four girls at last were ready, and descended with storey and me, thus leaving the tent free to be occupied by mr. channing, tom ward, and edward. the storm held on most of the night, but we were slowly drying and warming in the comfortable inn. next day, the weather slowly changed, and we climbed again the hill, and were repaid for 152 journal (age 63 nce all mishaps by the glory of the afternoon and evening. edward went up with me to the summit, up all sorts of giant stairs, and showed the long spur with many descending peaks on the dublin side. the rock-work is interesting and grand; — the clean cleavage, the wonderful slabs, the quartz dikes, the rock torrents in some parts, the uniform presence on the upper surface of the glacial lines or scratches, all in one self-same direction. then every glance below apprises you how you are projected out into stellar space, as a sailor on a ship's bowsprit out into the sea. we look down here on a hundred farms and farmhouses, but never see horse or man. for our eyes the country is depopulated. around us the arctic sparrow, fringilla nivalis, flies and peeps, the ground-robin also; but you can hear the distant song of the wood-thrushes ascending from the green belts below. i found the picture charming, and more than remunerative. later, from the plateau, at sunset, i saw the great shadow of monadnoc lengthen over the vast plain, until it touched the horizon. the earth and sky filled themselves with all ornaments, haloes, rainbows, and little pendulums of cloud would hang down till they touched the top of a hill, giving it the appearance of a smok1866] the harvard degree 153 ing volcano. the wind was north, the evening cold, but the camp-fire kept the party comfortable, whilst storey, with edward for chorus, sang a multitude of songs to their great delectation. the night was forbiddingly cold, — the tent kept the girls in vital heat, but the youths could hardly keep their blood in circulation, the rather, that they had spared too many of their blankets to the girls and to the old men. themselves had nothing for it but to rise and cut wood and bring it to the fire, which mr. channing watched and fed; and this service of fetching wood was done by tom ward once to his great peril during the night. in pitching a formless stump over into the ravine, he fell, and in trying to clear himself from the stump now behind him, flying and falling, got a bad contusion. w [at commencement, mr. emerson received the degree of doctor of laws from harvard university.] i see with joy the irish emigrants landing at boston, at new york, and say to myself, there they go — to school. hazlitt, lovelace's editor, says, “wither's song, “shall i, wasting in despair,' is certainly 154 journal [age 63 superior to the ‘song to althea.'” – i will instantly seek and read it. i have read it, and find that of lovelace much the best. there is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world. the turk is for the late centuries “the sick man,” and sick, it is said, from his use of tobacco, which the great turks of mahomet's period did not know. the scatterbrain, tobacco. yet a man of no conversation should smoke. de in classes of men, what a figure is charles lamb! so much wit lodged in such a saccharine temperament. what a saint is milton! how grateful we are to the man of the world who obeys the morale, as in humility, and in the obligation to serve mankind. true genius always has these inspirations. humanity always equal to itself; the religious understand each other under all mythologies, and say the same thing. homer and æschylus in all the rubbish of fables speak out clearly ever and anon the noble sentiments of all ages. 18661 calvinism. the cable 155 calvinism was as injurious to the justice as greek myths were to the purity of the gods. yet noble souls carried themselves nobly, and drew what treasures of character from that grim system. . we want heat to execute our plans.' ... what said bettine to goethe? “go to ruin with your sentiments! 'tis the senses alone that work in art, as in love, and nobody knows this better than you." i find it a great and fatal difference whether i court the muse, or the muse courts me: that is the ugly disparity between age and youth. july 30. this morn came again the exhilarating news of the landing of the atlantic telegraph cable at heart's content, newfoundland, and we repeat the old wonder and delight we found on the adirondac, in august, 1858.” we have grown more skilful, it seems, in electric machinery, and may confide better in a lasting success. our political condition is better, and, though dashed 1 the rest of the paragraph is found in “ inspiration” (letters and social aims, p. 276). 2 see “ the adirondacs,” in poems (pp. 190-193). 156 (age 63 journal by the treachery of our american president, can hardly go backward to slavery and civil war. besides, the suggestion of an event so exceptional and astounding in the history of human arts is, that this instant and pitiless publicity now to be given to every public act must force on the actors a new sensibility to the opinion of mankind, and restrain folly and meanness. old light(polarized) is much better than new. the indirect and reflex ray sometimes better than the direct. quotation has its utilities. on a lower stage, see the history of quotation. leave the great wheat-countries, the egypts, and mississippi valleys, and follow the harvest into the bakers' shops and pedlers' carts. when the quakers settled in france (in the early part of the french revolution) asked of the national assembly to be released from military duty, mirabeau (president) replied, “the assembly will in its wisdom consider your requests, but, whenever i meet a quaker, i shall say, “my brother, if thou hast a right to be free, thou hast a right to prevent any one from making thee a slave : as thou lovest thy fellowe : 1866) fanaticisms. alcott 157 creature, suffer not a tyrant to destroy him: it would be killing him thyself.'” “the hero of the daityas, armed with his club, rushed against nrisimha. but, like the insect which falls in the fire, the asura disappeared, absorbed by the splendor of his enemy.” bhagavat purana. what fanatics in politics we are! there are far more important things than free suffrage ; namely, a pure will, pure and illumined. august 12. last night, in conversation with the new york ladies, alcott appeared to great advantage, and i saw again, as often before, his singular superiority. as pure intellect, i have never seen his equal. the people with whom he talks do not even understand him. they interrupt him with clamorous dissent, or what they think verbal endorsement of what they fancy he may have been saying, or with, “do you know mr. alcott, i think thus and so,” — some whim or sentimentalism ; and do not know that they have interrupted his large and progressive statement, do not know that all they have in their baby brains is spotty and incoher158 (age 63 journal ent, that all that he sees and says is like astronomy, lying there real and vast, and every part and fact in eternal connection with the whole, and that they ought to sit in silent gratitude, eager only to hear more, to hear the whole, and not interrupt him with their prattle. it is because his sight is so clear, commanding the whole ground, and he perfectly gifted to state adequately what he sees, that he does not lose his temper, when his glib interlocutors bore him with their dead texts and phrases. another, who sees in flashes, or only here and there a land-mark, has the like confidence in his own truth, and in the infinitude of the soul, but none in his competence to show it to the bores; and if they tease him, he is silent. power is not pettish, but want of power is. alcott's activity of mind is shown in the perpetual invention and felicity of his language ; the constitutionality of his thought, apparent in the fact that last night's discourse only brought out with new conviction the old fundamental thoughts which he had when i first knew him. the moral benefit of such a mind cannot be told. the world fades: men, reputations, politics shrivel: the interests, power, future of the soul beam a new dayspring. faith becomes sight. 159 1866) illusion maya (illusion) of the hindoos. rudra says, “o thou, who, always unalterable, createst, conservest, and destroyest this universe, by the aid of maya, that energy in numerous forms which, powerless when it reposes in thy bosom, makes believe that it is distinct from thee, and gives to the world an apparent reality.” — bhagavat purana, vol. ii, p. 127. maya. the assistants said: “in the road of birth, where is no shelter; — which great miseries make difficult; where the god of death presents himself as a frightful reptile; where they have before their eyes the mirage of objects; where the opposite affections (of pleasure and pain) are precipices; where they fear the wicked as ferocious beasts; where grief is like a fire in the forest; — how should a caravan of ignorant beings, loaded with the heavy burden of the body and the soul, tormented by desire, how, o god who givest asylum, should it ever arrive at thy feet?” the veda says: “ the world is born of maya.” “ brahma qui n'a pas de qualités.” “cet être exempt d'attributs et de personnalité, qui est à la fois ce qui existe et ce qui n'existe pas" (pour nos organes). — vol. ii, p. 111. 160 (age 63 journal there is a maxim which those who know the veda repeat in all places; this:“an action done in conformity to the law, becomes invisible, and does not reappear.” equivalent this to novalis's saying: “of the wrong we are always conscious : of the right never.” william forbes writes wisely, “ difficulties exist to be surmounted,”—a right heroic creed.' gifts. flowers grow in the garden to be given away. everybody feels that they appeal to finer senses than his own, and looks wistfully around in hope that possibly this friend or that may be nobler furnished than he to see and read them, 1 mr. emerson was already aware that his strength began to fail. his poem “ terminus," written in the previous year, was an admission of this. his book contracts were not properly remunerative. he saw that he could not continue his distant lecturing, the chief source of income, and his wife's invested property was unremunerative, through the dishonesty of her agent. all this his good son-in-law had discovered, and strove to win his permission to take such action as would ensure his receiving his real dues. he found mr. emerson reluctant because of his modesty and the difficulties with which the way seemed beset. but colonel forbes's affectionate zeal, clear head and energy won. he saved mrs. emerson's property just in time, and much increased mr. emerson's receipts from his books. colonel william hathaway forbes 1866] visit to agassiz 161 or at least a better naturalist. especially they are sent to ceremonies and assemblies sacred or festal or funereal, because, on occasions of passion and sentiment, there may be higher appreciation of these delicate wonders. august 31. visited agassiz by invitation, with lidian and ellen, and spent the day at his house and on the nahant rocks. he is a man to be thankful for, always cordial, full of facts, with unsleeping observation, and perfectly communicative. in brazil he saw on a half-mile square 117 different kinds of excellent timber, and not a saw-mill in brazil. a country thirsting for yankees to open and use its wealth. in brazil is no bread: manioca in pellets the substitute, at the side of your plate. no society, no culture; could only name three men, — the emperor, m. coutinho, and m. couteau. . . . for the rest, immense vulgarity; and, as longfellow said, the emperor wished he could swap places with agassiz, and be a professor,— which agassiz explained thus, that the emperor said; “now you, when you leave your work, can always return into cultivated society, i have none.” 162 journal (age 63 agassiz says, the whole population is wretchedly immoral, the colour and features of the people showing the entire intermixing of all the races. mrs. agassiz found the women ignorant, depressed, with no employment but needlework, with no future, negligent of their persons, shabby and sluttish at home, with their hair about their ears, only gay in the ballroom ; the men well dressed. i can find my biography in every fable that i read. in the history of intellect no more important fact than the hindoo theology, teaching that the beatitude or supreme good is to be attained through science : namely, by the perception of the real and unreal, setting aside matter, and qualities, and affections or emotions and persons, and actions, as maias or illusions, and thus arriving at the contemplation of the one eternal life and cause, and a perpetual approach and assimilation to him, thus escaping new births or transmigration. r trans truth is the principle, and the moral of the hindoo theology, — truth as against the maya 1866] nobility. self-respect 163 which deceives gods and men; truth the principle, and retirement and self-denial the means of attaining it. and they stop at no extreme in the statement. nobility. the extreme example of the sentiment, on which the distinction of rank rests, is not to be found in spain, germany, or england, but in india, where poverty and crime do not interrupt or diminish the reverence for a brahmin. in india, a brahmin may be very poor, and perform daily menial tasks for the english, as porters or servants, but the natives still kneel to him, and show him the highest respect. mr. dall testified this fact to me on his return from india. self-respect always commands. i see it here in a family little known, but each of whose members, without other gifts or advantages above the common, have that, in lieu of all: teaching that wealth, fashion, learning, talent, garden, fine house, servants, can be omitted, if you have quiet determination to keep your own way with good sense and energy. the best of it is that the family i speak of do not suspect the fact. se 164 [age 63 journal ron anquetil duperron. what a counterpart to all the bohemianism we attribute to parisian littérateurs, is the address of anquetil duperron to the indian brahmins. louis xvi sent one to anquetil duperron with 3000 francs in a leathern bag : his friend set it down beside the chimney, and departed. as soon as he was gone, anquetil snatched it up, ran out, and threw it at the heels of his friend, who found the bag arrived at the bottom of the staircase before him. the society of public instruction, later, voted him a pension of 6000 francs. anquetil returned the order, saying he had no need of it. when very near his end, he said to his physician, “ i am going to set out on a voyage much more considerable than all those i have already made, but i do not know where i shall arrive.” the year 1866 has its memorabilia in the success of atlantic cable; in the downfall of austria; in the checking of napoleon and of maximilian; in agassiz's south american science. (shall i say in the possession taken by the american government of the telegraph in the postal service? for i thought a public statement meant that.) 1866] books as doors. egypt 165 the promise of literature amazes, for none reads in a book in a happy hour without suggestion of immensities on the right hand and on the left — without seeing that all recorded experience is a drop of dew before the soliciting universe of thought. thought is more ductile than gold, more expansive than hydrogen gas; nations live on one · book, and, in active states, one thought, one perception, discloses endless possibilities. it is ever as the attention, as the activity of the mind, and not as the number of thoughts or sensations, that the result is.' lese egypt. “know that the gods hate impudence.” inscription on the temple of sais. a poem in praise of rameses ii says of the tower which he built, — “ the sunlight beams in its horizon, and sets within it. “the nile coming all along the heaven.” i compare in “ celebration of intellect”: “ keep the intellect sacred. revere it. give all to it. its oracles countervail all. attention is its acceptable prayer.” (natural his. tory of intellect, p. 130.) 166 journal [ace 63 hafiz's poetry is marked by nothing more than his habit of playing with all magnitudes, mocking at them. what is the moon or the sun's course or heaven, and the angels, to his darling's mole or eyebrow ? destiny is a scurvy night-thief who plays him or her a bad trick. i might and perhaps will collect presently a few examples, though, as i remember, they occur passim in the “divan.” but i am always struck with the fact that mind delights in measuring itself thus with matter, — with history. a thought, any thought, pressed, followed, opened, dwarfs nature, custom, and all but itself. the fancy carries out all the sentiments into form, and makes angels in the sky, and organizes remorse into a judgment day, and the universe at court; and so we have painted out our heaven and hell. but i do not know but the sad realist has an equal or better content in keeping his hard nut. he sees the eternal symmetry, the world persisting to be itself, the unstooping morals of nature, and says, “i can trust it.” there is no fancy in my innate, uniform essential perception of right, unique though million-formed or -faced. through all processes, through all enemies, the result is benefit, beauty, the aim 1866] positive degree. fame 167 is the best. i can well omit this parish propensity of casting it in small, in creeds, in punch pictures, as the popular religions do, into westminster catechisms; athanasian creeds ; egyptian, christian, mahometan or hindoo paradises and hells. i will not be the fool of fancy, nor a child with toys. the positive degree is manly, and suits me better: the truth is stranger and grander than the gayest fable. i cling to astronomy, botany, zoology, as read by the severe intellect, and will live and die assured that i cannot go out of the power and deity which rule in all my experience, whether sensuous or spiritual. es & fame. i confess there is sometimes a caprice in fame, like the unnecessary eternity given to these minute shells and antediluvian fishes, leaves, ferns, yea, ripples and raindrops, which have come safe down through a vast antiquity, with all its shocks, upheavals, deluges, and volcanoes, wherein everything noble in art and humanity had perished, yet these snails, periwinkles, and worthless dead leaves come staring and perfect into our daylight. what is fame, if every snail or ripple or raindrop shares it? 168 (age 63 journal it were good under the head of greatness to collect signal examples of those high steps in character by which a good greatness is dwarfed in the presence of a higher strain, and this again by another. aunt mary's history and letters would give many suggestions; as, e.g., her definition of fame, her confidence that she “would, in spite of all failures, know one day what true friendship is, for the love of superior virtue is mine own gift from god”: again; “ that greatest of all gifts, however small my power of receiving, the capacity, the element to love the all-perfect, without regard to personal happiness — happiness— 't is itself !” all greatness is in degree, and there's more above than below. thus, what epic greatness in dante's heaven and hell, revealing new powers in the human mind! what majestic power again in swedenborg's heaven and hell! what again in the popular calvinism of the last two centuries! each of these war against the other. now read the indian theory: “as to heaven and hell, they are inventions of maya, and are therefore both imaginary,” etc. it costs nothing to a commander to command : and everybody, the most powerful, finds 1866] analyzed sound 169 himself some time also in the hands of his commander, it may be a woman, or a child, or a favorite; but usually it is another man organically so related to you that he easily impresses and leads your will, neutralizes your superiorities; perhaps has less general ability than his victim, but is superior where the victim is weak, and most desires to be strong. but this locally stronger man has his dragon also, who flies at his throat, and so gives the first his revenges. thus every one has his master, and no one is stronger than all the others. dr. jackson'said he was at pulpit rock, lake superior, when he heard music, like rhythmical organ or vocal chanting, and believed it to come from some singers. but going on a little further, it ceased ; in another direction, heard it again, and by and by perceived that it was the beating of the waves on the shore deprived of its harshness by the atmosphere. he has never seen the subject treated scientifically, he thinks, i dr. charles t. jackson in 1844 and 1845 explored the unbroken wilderness on the shores of lake superior, examined its geology and made known its mineral resources, on which he made a report in 1850. 170 journal [age 63 except in a paper on sound by dr. wollaston.' (from ml) september. my idea of a home is a house in which each member of the family can on the instant kindle a fire in his or her private room. otherwise their society is compulsory and wasteful to the individual. 1 mr. emerson turned his brother-in-law's story of this strange experience to good account in his poem “ may-day." (compare poems, p. 179.) when going across the plains to california in an emigrant caravan, in july, 1862, while straying alone among some large cottonwood trees with little underbrush, about forty rods away from our camp close by the upper north platte river, not far from fort laramie, i heard suddenly wonderful music, not far away, which i could not account for : it was low, but rather sad, and seemed to come from many instruments, yet was indistinct. it was like no natural noise. it was wholly unlike indian music and no human settlement was near, except our camp. on my return thither i asked about the music. no one had heard it. the day was cold and cloudy with a strong “ norther," following very hot weather. we were close by the broad, rushing platte, troubled by the fresh wind, as were the great trees. after my return home i heard my uncle dr. jackson tell of his experience at lake superior, which i thought explained my own. he spoke of the phenomenon (perhaps quoting dr. wollaston) as “ analyzed sound.” edward w. emerson. 1866) preacher. sex 171 there may be two or three or four steps, according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, i and the abyss. september 15. i think the preacher had better first secure his acre and his independence. then let him know that the secrets are all disclosed in household talk — let him know that in every act and expression of men he can divine all the logical sequences or concomitants. speak the affirmative, which is always good. then you lose no time. you grow, whether the deacons like you or not, and are presently in a position to dictate to them and to the people. the old psalms and gospels, mighty as ever, showing that what people call religion is literature: this man knew how to put his statement, and the people said, thus saith the lord. men and women. man's conclusions are reached by toil. woman arrives at the same by sympathy. he studies details. she catches by instinct the character. i suppose women feel about men who huddle them aside in the press as geniuses feel about energetic workers, namely, that they see through these noisy masters. in the 172 (age 63 journal company of superior women we all know that we are overlooked, judged, and sometimes sentenced. they are better scholars than we, and if not now, yet better twenty years later. their organic share is education. they are by sympathy and quickness the right mediators between those who have knowledge and those who want it. man is a rude bear when men are separated in ships, in mines, in colleges, in monasteries. conversation descends; manners are coarse. let women sailas passengers, and allis righted. taste, beauty, order, grace; life is respectable, and has elevated aims. now she has been rightly drawn into interest in missions and various humanities, and at last the putting an end to slavery. woman could not refuse to take part. that organization in this country was, you know, an education. the executive committee was composed of men and women and continued so until the end was reached. one truth leads in another. that cause was an education, a university, and it compelled a constant inquisition into human rights. and woman has learned to ask for all her rights — and that of the vote. 'tis the right remedy at the right moment. every truth leads in another truth. a was 1866] necessity. railroads 173 as parry, as (others], in their several explorations in the arctic, came out each on the sea, so the independent thinkers, like behmen, like spinoza, came out each on an adamantine necessity: the theories of the students were weathercocks, but this inevitable result was final. (from ln) the progress of invention is really a threat. whenever i see a railroad i look for a republic. we must take care to induct free trade and abolish custom houses, before the passenger balloons begin to arrive from europe, and i think the railroad superintendent has a second and deeper sense when he inscribes his legend over the ways, “look out for the engine!” le the unexpected. wealth is chiefly convenient for emergencies. day by day, every family gets well enough through its common routine, the poor as the rich. only now and then comes a pinch, a sudden and violent call for means; as, a marriage, or a sickness, or a visitor, or a journey, or a subscription that must be met; then it is fortunate and indispensable to have new power. but emergencies are in the contract. they will and must occur to every susceptible 174 journal (age 63 person. therefore you must set your daily expense at the famine-pitch, live within your income all the year round, to be ready with your dollars for these occasions. october 12. to writers. if your subject does not appear the flower of the world at this moment, you have not yet rightly got it.' .... every word in the language has once been used happily. the ear caught by that felicity retains it.' . .. october 24. dreams. i have often experienced, and again last night, in my dreams, the surprise and curiosity of a stranger or indifferent observer to the trait or the motive and information communicated. thus some refractory youth, of whom i had some guidance or authority, expressed very frankly his dissent and dislike, disliked my way of laughing. i was curious to understand the objection, and endeavoured to penetrate and appreciate it, and, of course, with the usual misfortune, that, when i woke and ati see “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, pp. 33, 34). 2 printed in “imitation and originality” (letters and social aims, p. 193). 1866] success. manners. names 175 tempted to recover the specification, which was remarkable, it was utterly forgotten. but the fact that i, who must be the author of both parts of the dialogue, am thus remote and inquisitive in regard to one part, is ever wonderful. october 25. success in your work, the finding a better method, the better understanding that insures the better performing, is hat and coat, is food and wine, is fire and horse and health and holiday. at least, i find that any success in my work has the effect on my spirits of all these. what his right hand achieveth. i like my neighbour t.'s' manners; he has no deference, but a good deal of kindness, so that you see that his good offices come from no regard for you, but purely from his character. i don't know but i value the name of a thing, that is, the true poet's name for it, more than the thing. if i can get the right word for the moon, or about it, — the word that suggests to me and to all men its humane and universal i probably mr. augustus tuttle, whose farm was a halfmile below on the turnpike. 176 (age 63 journal beauty and significance, – then i have what i want of it, and shall not desire that a road may be made from my garden to the moon, or that the gift of this elephant be made over to me. cunning egotism. if i cannot brag of knowing something, then i brag of not knowing it. at any rate, brag. theresa made herself useful and indispensable to all her neighbours as well as inmates, by being always in possession of a match box, an awl, a measuring-tape, a mucilage-pot, a corkscrew; microscope, reading glass, and operaglass. the negro, thanks to his temperament, appears to make the greatest amount of happiness out of the smallest capital. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1866 the vedas; zoroaster (?), chaldean oracles; pindar; cicero, description of demosthenes; taliessin, apud nash; mahomet; hafiz; chaucer; scaliger; sir walter raleigh, the soul's er1866] reading 177 rand, pilgrimage ; sir philip sidney; van helmont; edward, lord herbert of cherbury; richard lovelace, to althea; pascal; newton; steele, the funeral; . lord mansfield; duclos; niebuhr; sir william herschel; goethe, “song of the parcæ” in iphigenia, musagetes ; john marshall; anquetil duperron ; hegel, apud j. h. stirling ; varnhagen von ense; james hogg; robert brown; charles lamb; rev. w. e. channing; daniel webster, speech against hayne; henry kirke white, the herb rosemary; bettine brentano, goethe's correspondence with a child; sir thomas fowell buxton ; sir robert peel; halleck, marco bozzaris; champollion; faraday; bunsen; charles wolfe, burial of sir john moore; bryant, to a waterfowl; carlyle ; robert pollok, the ocean; henry taylor, philip van artevelde; george ripley; sampson reed, genius; george borrow's translation of ballad svend vonved; saintebeuve; george sand; samuel ferguson, forging of the anchor; john sterling, alfred the harper ; j. s. mill; robert h. messenger, give me the old; dr. c. t. jackson ; tennyson ; gladstone. journal the west moral law. the newness nationality mary moody emerson progress of culture mrs. ripley's death quotation and originality the preacher false position of english authors the freezing mississippi journal lviii 1867 (from journals ml, ln, and ny) [the winter brought its usual task, and mr. emerson went westward in january, lecturing in nine states and not returning home until after the middle of march. he visited kansas for the first time, and took great pleasure in minnesota. from fond du lac, wisconsin, he wrote to a friend in chicago, “such a citizen of the world as you are should look once at these northern towns which i have seen under the perhaps too smiling face of the mildest, best winter weather. ... minneapolis would strongly attract me, if i were a young man, — more than st. paul;and this town [fond du lac] is a wonderful growth and shines like a dream, seen this morning from the top of amory hall.” at the time of the celebration of the centenary anniversary of emerson's birth, mr. b.j. brown wrote in the daily leader of menominee, wisconsin, reminiscences of mr. emerson's visit to saginaw, michigan. as president of the library 182 (age 63 journal es association, mr. brown called upon mr. emerson at the hotel. he wrote: “the enduring impression of greatness, majesty, and power which this interview with him left upon me was something akin to that which i experienced upon the first glimpse of the ocean. the tones of his voice long lingered in my ear.” ... mr. brown told mr. emerson of the new railroad that was to be (though the work had hardly begun) from lake superior to puget sound. “emerson felt the greatest interest in the project, and it needed slight sympathy and appreciation to kindle into speech the thoughts which at the moment evidently engrossed him. it strongly appealed to his imagination and his feelings, and nothing in his lecture on the following evening approached the lofty and sustained eloquence ... in which he clothed the subject. “at some time during the day he told me of an opinion he had once heard chief justice shaw deliver upon a question connecting itself with the law of highways, and how admirable it had seemed to him. professedly seeking to relate simply what the great chief justice had said, he so transmuted it in the alembic of his own 1867) iowa winter. horses 183 imagination as to invest the subject of the common roads of the country with a dignity which linked it to the movement of the tides and of the planets in their courses.”] (from ml) washington, iowa, february 13, 1867. in riding in an open sleigh, from oshkosh to ripon, in a fiercely cold snowstorm driving in my face, i blessed the speed and power of the horses. their endurance makes them inestimable in this rough country. they seem left out of doors in the snow and wind all day. around this square before the house, i counted just now twenty horses tied. some of them seem to stand tied all day. last night, just before going to bed, i looked out;there stood two or three at that hour, the farmers perhaps listening to the railroad men in the court-house, or sitting round the bar-room fire. mrs. carr gave me a speech of red jacket, that compares with my old one from him about time. when the young men were boasting of their deeds, he said, “ but the sixties have all the twenties and forties in them.” as soon as these people have got a shanty built to cover them, and have raised one crop 184 journal (age 63 of wheat, they want a railroad, as the breath of life; and, after one railroad, then a competing railroad. the first, because a railroad station is an instant market for the wheat; a second, because the first charges its own rates for freight, which takes half the price out of their crop, or, as much money to get it from their farm to chicago as it costs to get it from chicago to new york. and the second road underbids the first, and every new road underbids that. so that a web of roads has the like effect as the first creation of railways produced on the factories, which formerly turned out their new stocks only in spring and autumn, when the traders came to new york and boston, for their semi-annual supply. but the new roads enabled them to come often, and therefore the factories could sell and the traders buy, all the year round, so that it required less capital to be a country trader. now a market at each station makes a small new york near to every farm. then, socially, in spring, and in much of winter, the people of indiana, illinois, etc., are confined to their sidewalks or the rail. off these, they stick at once in bottomless universal quagmire, and, as here and now in a thaw, the melting snow makes a river of each run; in the vast level the 1867] modern pagans 185 poor water does not know where to go, and drowns, as yesterday here, a fine span of horses, because a boy in crossing a brook caught his wheel on a stone, and only saved his own life by climbing from his wagon on to a tree. mr. brown of saginaw tells me that “men that live by their own labour are almost always moral people.” thomas taylor and winckelmann would have preferred, to all meeting houses and churches, to have restored the old native seryice of the temples on whose ruins these had been constructed, and to have worshipped, with horace for the psalm-book, chanting, “ mercuri facunde nepos atlantis,” or, “ sic te diva potens cypri,” with tibia and theorbus and lyre, to all the psalters and all the organs of the romish or the english congregations. eloquence. “but what astonishes, what surprises you ?” “to hear an athenian talk two hours together, hold us silent and immovable as the figures of hermes before our doors, and find not a single one among us that can carry home with him a thought or an expression.” — landor, works, vol. i, p. 88. 186 journal (age 63 this passage reminds me of my own experience in hearing in old times jonathan phillips's speech at a unitarian meeting in dr. channing's church. christ preached the greatness of man: we preach the greatness of christ. the first is affirmative; the last negative. we measure religions by their civilizing power. christianity gains and thrives against worldly interests. so does buddhism, stoicism, and every high enthusiasm. the mind is true: though the premises are false, the conclusions are right. and this selfreliance which belongs to every healthy human being is proof of it, — proof that not a petty egoism, but the soul of the world is in him, and, in proportion as it penetrates his miserable crust of partiality, it saith, ‘here am i, here is the whole. therefore we require absoluteness in every soul, — absoluteness in the orator, in the poet, — in the hero, – in all manners; and if they have it not, they simulate it. the just pride of a man consists herein, that the recognition of him by others is nowise necessary to him. 1867] aristocracy. guidance 187 those persons who constitute the natural aristocracy i. e., sacred persons — are not found in the actual aristocracy or only on its edge ; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. the intellectual power is not the gift, but the presence of god. nor do we reason to the being of god, but god goes with us into nature, when we go or think at all. truth is always new and wild as the wild air, and is alive. ... “ this world is no place for the man who doth not worship, and where, o arjoon! is there another?” — bhagavat geeta. when we come into the world, a wonderful whisper gives us a direction for the whole road; much as if one should hear from a skilful guide, on starting out on a journey, that, to come at the point he sought, he should follow the setting sun. this whisper wonderfully impresses us, and is temperament, taste, bearing, talent. ’t is like the card of the compass, which arranges itself with the poles of the world. but having made and moulded the constitution, the creator contents himself, and is ever dumb. 188 journal (age 63 he that made the world lets that speak, and does not employ a town-crier, etc., etc. after much experience, we find literature the best thing, and men of thought, if still thinking, the best company. i went to england, and after allowing myself freely to be dazzled by the various brilliancy of men of talent;in calm hours, i found myself no way helped, my sequins were all yellow leaves. i said, i have valued days, and must still, by the number of clear insights i get, and i must estimate my company so. then i found i had scarcely had a good conversation, a solid dealing man with man, in england. only in such passages is a reason for human life given ; and every such meeting puts a mortal affront on kings and governments, by showing them to be of no account. of course, these people, these and no others, interest us, — the dear and beautiful beings, who are absorbed in their own dream. let us, then, have that told: let us have a record of friendship among six, or four, or two, if there be only two, of those who delight in each other only because both delight in the eternal laws : who forgive nothing to each other: who, by their joy and homage to these laws, are made 189 1867) the spirit incapable of conceit, which destroys the fine wits. any other affection between men than this geometric one of relation to the same thing is a mere mush of materialism. and the spirit drove him apart into a solitary place. — this does the spirit for every man. he or that which in despair of naming aright, some have called the newness, – as the hebrews did not like to pronounce the word, he lurks, he hides, he who is success, reality, joy, power,' — that which constitutes heaven, which reconciles impossibilities, atones for shortcomings, expiates sins or makes them virtues, buries in oblivion the crowded historical past, sinks religions, philosophies, nations, persons to legends, reverses the scale of opinion, of fame; reduces sciences to opinion, and makes the thought of the moment the key to the universe, and the egg of history to come. 't is all alike, – astronomy, metaphysics, sword, spade, pencil, or instruments and arts yet to be invented, this is the inventor, the worth-giver, the worth. this is he that shall come; or, if he come not, nothing comes : he 1 this expression occurs in “works and days” (society and solitude, p. 175). 190 journal (age 63 that disappears in the moment when we go to celebrate him. if we go to burn those that blame our celebration, he appears in them. the divine newness. hoe and spade, sword and pen, cities, pictures, gardens, laws, bibles, are prized only because they were means he sometime used. so with astronomy, music, arithmetic, castes, feudalism, — we kiss with devotion these hems of his garment, — we mistake them for him; they crumble to ashes on our lips. nd spade nem. the pictures, a omeevery innovation grows out of a thought, which hastens to embody itself in practical rules. these rules require much controversy, sifting, and amendment, to make them work well in practice, and the sentiment in which all agreed, the mother of all the rules, is soon overlaid and forgotten in the debate. but that also got expression at first. the rules become national, and fill the world with noise, and the sentiment passes for rhetoric. but the rules are changed every year, grow aged very soon, whilst the sentiment is immortal, and can at any time provide itself with new codes. swedenborg was never quite ideal. the eye must be achromatic, but swedenborg sees all 1867] faithful witness 191 amiss with this prismatic blur of misplaced gaudiness. why do his images give no pleasure? milton anticipated swedenborg when he wrote in paradise lost, book v,“what if earth be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein each to the other like, more than on earth is thought?” i am so purely a spectator that i have absolute confidence that all pure spectators will agree with me, whenever i make a careful report. i told alcott that every one of my expressions concerning “god,” or the “soul,” etc., is entitled to attention as testimony, because it is independent, not calculated, not part of any system, but spontaneous, and the nearest word i could find to the thing. “over the soul can and will god allow no one to rule but himself alone.” — martin luther. the moral sentiment is pure vision, and what is religion? religion is the architecture of the sentiment. the sentiment never rests in vision, but wishes to be enacted. it does not pause,' ... 1 for the rest of this paragraph, see « character” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 103). 192 journal (age 63 man is architectural; always goes to precipitate the particles held in solution by his thought into a form which obeys and represents the thought: aims always to turn his tent into a house; his camping ground into an estate, — garden and field; these lightning flashes of the divine soul into a good house-lamp, or, better, if he can, into an annual and perennial sun. i affirm that in all men is this majestic perception and command which we call moral sentiment:'... it is the truth itself. it is foolish cavil to say, — what? you will adore yourself? i find that all men are perishing, frivolous ghosts before this dread imperturbability which dwells in the heart of every person. don't be deceived by outsides. that is the stupendous mystery with which we are always familiar, but passes all explanation, that, in the rubbish of whims and appetites and sins of all these poor personalities, resides, at bottom, this sublime universality. the soul, as it obeys the inward law, reveres it, comes to feel that the listening after any saint or prophet were an impiety against this immediate revelation. what follows is found in “character” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 97, 98). 1867] universality of good 193 morals. the moral sentiment ... it is absolute and in every individual the law of the world. . . . it is found that the instinct of the brute creation has a certain faint coincidence with morals. the moral element is the reason of things applied to human action. we do not cite archimedes to establish the equality of the radii of the circle, nor pythagoras for the law of the hypothenuse, nor newton for laws of light, nor rumford for those of heat, though these may first have announced certain propositions. once announced, they are accepted by all and stand forevermore on the nature of things, though they were successively enunciated by these men. it had been vain to enunciate them if they had not been first true in the mind, and the true geometer passes over these perished announcers to the eternal nature of which they, as he, are the vehicles. so we do not attribute, except in the pleasing acts of imagination, authority to moses or to jesus or other moralists, as soon as we have seen that their lessons are really true in nature ; then we lose the words and the saint in the riches of the soul from which he spoke, and which is perfect to-day. it is not to be disputed that every opinion, edu inc 194 journal (age 63 every motive, every idea, plants itself in a man who becomes its representative and name for his age or ages, as solon or lycurgus, as homer, euclid, aristotle, as jesus, as mahomet, as cæsar, as brutus, as washington, as calhoun. it is doubtful whether london, whether paris, can answer the questions which now rise in the mind. sainte-beuve says, “j'ai l'idée qu'on est toujours de son temps, et ceux-là mêmes qui en ont le moins l'air.” , nationality. we americans have got suppled into the state of melioration. we have lived fast in ten years; in four years last past.' ... things once not possible are probable now. women dispose of their own property. wome will vote. women lecture, preach, are physicians, artists. stand where you are, and make the best of it. i cannot find any bar in the way of social life here.? . . . i see, too, happy homes, and true 1 most of what follows is printed in “ resources” (letters and social aims, pp. 141, 142). 2 see « fortune of the republic" (miscellanies, p. 535). 1867] office of america 195 gentlemen to live and die for, and friends to die with. nationality is often silly. every nation believes that the divine providence has a sneaking kindness for it; as, “god has been received a burgher of berne." .. america. i thought at chapin's lecture, it is not a question whether we shall be a nation, or only a multitude of people ; but whether we shall be the new nation, the leading guide and lawgiver of the world, as having clearly chosen and firmly held the simplest and best rule of political society. the office of america is to liberate, to abolish kingcraft, priestcraft, caste, monopoly, to pull down the gallows, to burn up the bloody statutebook, to take in the immigrant, to open the doors of the sea and the fields of the earth, — to extemporize government in texas, in california, in oregon, — to make provisional law where statute law is not ready. this liberation appears in the power of invention, the freedom of thinking, in readiness for reforms.' ... the human race is immortal: oppressed here, i see “ fortune of the republic” (miscellanies, p. 527). 196 (ace 63 journal isthey step aside into taverns or solitudes, and are free there. in the quiet of cottages, or of friendship, or of pot-houses, they see the passing of so many gods, whether jove, or hertha, or thor, or christ, or allah, which live longer or shorter terms, and then die;but the good human race outlives them all, and forever in the heart abides the old sovereign sentiment requiring justice and good will to all, and rebuilds the decayed temples, and with new names chants again the praise of eternal right. how shall it inaugurate its own ritual in the new age? it has the sunday, which is the wisdom and necessity of mankind; for inspiration, for solitude, for society." the morale is the source of inspiration ; it shall inspire whom it will to uplift and persuade men, will write hymns and meditations and histories that edify and provoke us. (from ln) march. lessing said of the astronomers, “it is easier for them to meet disaster than at sea, — and they make glorious shipwreck who are lost in seeking worlds.” i compare « character" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 117). 1867] education. nantasket 197 universities. the treatises that are written on university reform may be acute or not, but their chief value to the observer is the showing that a cleavage is occurring in the hitherto firm granite of the past, and a new era is nearly arrived. books. the advantage of the old-fashioned folio was, that it was safe from the borrowers. rowers gladly the boy learns that the 5 line in the multiplication table goes to tune of “yankee doodle.” if a man happens to have a good father, he needs less history: he quotes his father on each occasion, — his habits, manners, rules. if his father is dull and unmentionable, then his own reading becomes more important. colour. at nantasket beach, i cannot but approve the taste which clothed the emperors in purple, when i see the wet porphyry pebbles. culture is partial. i kriow so well that frequent unhappy figure with educated eyes, and uneducated body. 198 journal (age 63 the good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the universe which runs through himself, and all things. the word miracle, as it is used, only indicates the savage ignorance of the devotee, staring with wonder to see water turned into wine, and heedless of the stupendous fact of himself being there present.' if the water became wine, became fire, became a chorus of angels, it would not compare with the familiar fact of his own perception. here he stands, a lonely thought, harmoniously organized into correspondence with the universe of mind and matter. april 10. yesterday at the funeral of george l. stearns. rode to mount auburn in a carriage with mr. alcott and mr. p— , and had long conversation on swedenborg. mr. p, intelligent and well-versed on swedenborg; but his inteli the beginning of the paragraph is printed in the “sovereignty of ethics” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 200). 2 major george l. stearns, of medford, a merchant of boston, and, during the war, a most devoted patriot. mr. emerson’s notice of him is printed in lectures and biographical sketches. 1867) negroes. tutors n 199 ligence stops, as usual, at the hebrew symbolism. philosopher up to that limit, but there accepts the village church as part of the sky. in a day not far off this english obstinacy of patching the ecliptic of the universe with a small bit of tin will come to an end. [on the nineteenth of april — concord's proud day — of this year, a granite obelisk was dedicated, on the common, in honour of the soldiers connected with the town who lost their lives in the recent war. mr. emerson made the address which is printed in the miscellanies.] you complain that the negroes are a base class. who makes and keeps the jew or the negro base, who but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy? if i were rich, i should get the education i have always wished by persuading agassiz to let me carry him to canada : and dr. gray to go to examine the trans-mississippi flora ; and wyman should find me necessary to his excavations; and alvan clark should make a telescope for me too; and i can easily see how to find the gift for each master that would domesticate me with him for a time. 2 200 journal (age 63 i thought, as the train carried me so fast down the east bank of the hudson river, that nature had marked the site of new york with such rare combination of advantages, as she now and then furnishes a man or woman to a perfection in all parts, and in all details, as if to know the luxuriant type of the race; — finishing in one what is attempted or only begun in a thousand individuals. the length and volume of the river; the gentle beauty of the banks; the country rising immediately behind the bank on either side; the noble outlines of the katskills; the breadth of the bays at croton (?) and tarrytown(?); then, west point; then, as you approach new york, the sculptured palisades ; — then, at the city itself, the meeting of the waters, the riverlike sound; and the ocean at once, — instead of the weary chesapeake and delaware bays. mr. justice maule requested sir cresswell cresswell, then at the bar, “to remember that his opponents were vertebrate animals,” and “that his manner to them would be offensive from god almighty to a black beetle.” — pall mall gazette. 1867) may-day. collins 201 may 1. [the new volume of poems, may-day, was just printed, and here in the journal is a list of fifty friends and relatives to whom mr. emerson sent it on may-day. on may 3, mr. emerson read “the rule of life” to the radical association in boston, the substance of which was later incorporated in “the sovereignty of ethics” and “the preacher.”] nature sings, – he lives not who can refuse me, all my force saith, come and use me. a may-day sun, a may-day rain, and all the zone is green again. why is collins's “ode to evening” so charming? it proves nothing, it affirms nothing; it has no thought, no fable, no moral. i find it pleases only as music. it is as if one's head, which was full of the sights and sounds of a summer evening, should listen to a few strains of an æolian harp, and find it restoring to him those sights and sounds. 'tis good whistling. 202 journal (age 64 [on may 30, mr. emerson made a short address at the meeting for the organization of the free religious association in boston (see miscellanies, p. 475).] aunt mary read tasso in 1826. the story hurries her along, but she has “ too little imagination now to relish the inventions, and all the time thinks of homer's iliad. alas! how narrow the limits of human invention. the paradise lost gains in the comparison, yet had that never been, were it not for these. the moderns write better, but the readers are too wise to enjoy as in an unphilosophical age. a few pulsations of created beings, a few successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament, enable us to talk of time, make epochs, write histories, — to do more — to date the revelations of god to man. but these lamps are held to measure out some of the moments of eternity, to divide the history of god's operations in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. it is a goodly name for our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying, acting. we personify it. we call it by every name of fleeting, dreaming, vapouring, imagery. yet it is nothing. we exist in eternity; dissolve the body, s are a 1867] holmes. old boston 203 and the night is gone, the stars are extinguished, and we measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the acquirement of virtue, the approach to god.” immortality. the longest life is but a morning; but where is the day? july 2. i happen to day to fall upon a line in æschylus, seven against thebes, which says so long ago what dr. holmes talked of at the last club, — the alleged standing up of the hair in terror. tpixòs 8° ópólas tlókapos lotatal (line 564). ιται in old boston, a feature not to be forgotten was john wilson, the town crier, who rung his bell at each street corner,—“lost! a child strayed this morning from 49 marlborough street; four years old; had on check apron,” etc. “ auction! battery-march-square, "etc., etc. he cried so loud that you could not hear what he said, if you stood too near. pindar, in the first olympic ode, speaks with the robust courage of a prize-fighter of his 204 journal (age 64 ow ve own skill in verse, and as only kepler and shakspeare (in the sonnets) have done among the moderns. there is the like stoutness in his bust. wordsworth, however, has shown a stout heart, and landor, but none compare with kepler. reading. i suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book, and ransack every page. classic. mrs. barbauld's hymns for children are also classics, as well as pope and dryden. [on commencement day mr. emerson was chosen an overseer of harvard university, and on the following day, july 18, for the second time, after thirty years' interval, delivered the phi beta kappa address. it is printed, with some changes, under the name “ the progress of culture,” in letters and social aims.] the good augury of our larger dedication to natural science in this century is not so much 1867) nature's symbols 205 for the added material power which it has yielded (though that is conspicuous and we cannot have too much) as for the intellectual power it evokes, and, shall i say, the sublime delight with which the intellect contemplates each new analogy appearing between the laws of nature and its own law of life. newton, habitually regarding a particular fact in nature as an universal fact,what happens in one place, at one time, happens in all places at all times, — happens to see an apple fall, and says to himself, “ what is the moon but a bigger apple falling also to the earth? what is the earth but a much bigger apple falling to the sun? i see the law of all nature. every atom falls to every atom.” then comes the farther thought, herein i am apprised that this universal material attraction is only a particular example of a more universal law,we will call it centrality, — which holds for mind as well as matter. identity and centrality, the one law for atom and sphere, for atom and universe, is indignantly denied by children, whether two years old or a hundred, and is affirmed by those i compare a similar passage in “ progress of culture,” the phi beta kappa oration (letters and social aims, p. 222). 206 journal (age 64 whose eyes are opened. every breath of air is the carrier of the universal mind. the child sees the single fact; the philosopher sees in it only the eternal identity. i cannot yet say accurately what is the analogon of each cosmical or chemical law; swedenborg, or a possible swedenborg, can; but i affirm with perfect security that such analogon for each material law observed exists in the spiritual nature, and that, better than the satisfaction in arriving at the formula of the chemic law, is the spasm (shall i say) of pleasure which pervades the intellect in recognizing, however dimly, the instant perception of its equal holding through heaven, as well as through earth. the laws below are sisters of the laws above.' medical use of friendship. linnæus cured his gout by wood-strawberries, but when kalm returned from america, linnæus was laid up with severe gout. but the joy in his return, and the curiosity to see his plants, restored him instantly, and he found his old friend as good as the treatment by wood-strawberries. when i see my friend, his eyes testify of 1 this last sentence occurs in “ progress of culture" (letters and social aims, p. 223). 1867] mrs. ripley's death 207 much more good than his speech, for he leaves me to learn from others the benefits he has just conferred. great are the silences and the influences. (from ny) mrs. sarah alden (bradford) ripley was of so fine a nature that she could well afford to busy herself in any possible household chore. no dust nor grime could stick to the pure silver. [mrs. ripley died in concord in the summer of 1867. mr. emerson had known and prized her from the time of her marriage to his kind and helpful half-uncle samuel ripley, in whose school at waltham, of which she was a great part, he had, as a boy, studied and given some small help. rev. mr. ripley, after his retirement, moved back to his birthplace, the old manse in concord, but died very soon. mrs. ripley lived there with her daughters until her death, more than twenty years later, and she and her brother, george p. bradford, were constant and welcome visitors to mr. and mrs. emerson at their home. mr. emerson wrote of her,–] at a time when perhaps no other woman read greek, she acquired the language with 208 (age 64 journal ease, and read plato, adding soon the advantage of german commentators. after her marriage, when her husband, the well-known clergy man of waltham, received boys in his house to be fitted for college, she assumed the advanced instruction in greek and latin, and did not fail to turn it to account by extending her studies in the literature of both languages. ... she became one of the best greek scholars in the country, and continued in her latest • years the habit of reading homer, the tragedians, and plato. but her studies took a wide range in mathematics, in natural philosophy, in psychology, in theology, as well as in ancient and modern literature. she had always a keen ear open to whatever new facts, astronomy, chemistry, or the theories of light and heat, had to furnish. any knowledge, all knowledge, was welcome. her stores increased day by day. she was absolutely without pedantry. nobody ever heard of her learning until a necessity came for its use, and then nothing could be more simple than her solution of the problem proposed to her. the most intellectual gladly conversed with one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with her only the means of new acmrs. sarah alden (bradford) ripley 1867] parsons's dante 209 quaintance. . . . she was not only the most amiable, but the tenderest of women, wholly sincere, thoughtful for others. . . . she was absolutely without appetite for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire indifference to trifles. (from ln) charles newcomb has wonderful power of illustration of his refinements of sentiment by means of household experiences; e. g., “as the youth, sleeping with his brother, feels how much he is not to him.” “ bacon, at home in his reflections. when intellectual, then is he himself, as a childless woman, restless except when making bread, and is then happy and singing.” original power in men is usually accompanied with assimilating power.' ... read parsons's dante. the translation appears excellent, most faithful, yet flowing and elegant, with remarkable felicities, as when per tutti i cerchi dello inferno scuri is rendered, — “ through all the dingy circles down in hell.” i for the rest of this long passage, see “ quotation and originality” (letters and social aims, pp. 190, 191). 210 journal (age 64 w but dante still appears to me, as ever, an exceptional mind, a prodigy of imaginative function, executive rather than contemplative or wise. undeniable force of a peculiar kind, a prodigy, but not like shakspeare, or socrates, or goethe, a beneficent humanity. his fames and infamies are so capriciously distributed, what odd reasons for putting his men in inferno! the somnambulic genius of dante is dream strengthened to the tenth power, — dream so fierce that it grasps all the details of the phantom spectacle, and, in spite of itself, clutches and conveys them into the waking memory, and can recite what every other would forget. what pitiless minuteness of horrible details ! he is a curiosity like the mastodon, but one would not desire such for friends and contemporaries, abnormal throughout like swedenborg. but at a frightful cost these obtain their fame. dante a man to put in a museum, but not in your house. indeed i never read him, nor regret that i do not.' “and two i saw there leaning back to back propped like a pair of dishes put to warm.” 1 this is a characteristic expression of mr. emerson's aversion of the negative and the dismal. of course this refers to the inferno alone. ss 1867] originality. the dead 211 dante says, – “. living i am, and thou, if craving fame, mayst count it precious,' this was my reply, • that i with other notes record thy name.”” (parsons.) inf., canto xxxii. so « for 't is no task wherewith to be amused the bottom of the universe to paint.” “ quotation and originality” (subsequent to printing). leibnitz predicted the zoöphytes (penboen); kant the asteroids ; swedenborg, uranus; goethe found the true theory of colours; kenelm digby the same theory in 1580. columbus nor cabot not the first discoverer of america; linnæus did not find the sexes in plants so soon as van helmont by 100 years. will not an age or a man come, when it will be thought impertinent to say of him, as soon as he is dead, poor mr. a, or b, or c? there is no saying of rochefoucauld which is so bitter a satire on humanity as our religious dr. johnson's, when some one lamented the death of a friend: “we must either outlive our friends, you know, or our friends must outlive 212 journal [age 64 us; and i see no man who would hesitate about the choice.” johnson, with his force of thought and skill of expression, with his large learning and his true manliness, with his piety and his obstinate narrow prejudices, and withal his rude impulses, is the ideal or representative englishman. note also the sharp limitations of his thought. i never can read a page of without being reminded of aunt mary. ever can september 1. struggled hard last night in a dream to repeat and save a thought or sentence spoken in the dream ; but it eluded me at last : only came out of the pulling, with this rag, — “his the deeper problem, but mine the better ciphered.” [in september mr. emerson read “the preacher” to a company assembled at the house of rev. j. t. sargent in boston.] buckminster, channing, everett, taylor, beecher, bushnell, chapin, it is they who are necessary, and the opinions of the floating crowd 1867) preachers to-day 213 of no importance whatever. a vivid thought brings the power to paint it, and, in proportion to the depth of its source, is the force of its projection. i am happy and enriched. i go away invigorated, assisted in my own work, however different from his, and shall not forget to come again for new impulses. at the present day, thoughtful people must be struck with the fact that the old religious forms are outgrown; as shown by the fact that every intellectual man is out of the old church : all the young men of intelligence are on what is called the radical side. how long will the people continue to exclude these, and invite the dull men ? beecher told me that he did not hold one of the five points of calvinism in a way to satisfy his father. the good heaven is sending every hour good minds into the world, and all of them at maturity, on opening, discover the same expansion, the impatience of the old cramps, and a bias to the new interpretation. if you hold them in the old used-up air, they suffocate. would you in new massachusetts have an old spain ? the laws of nature are simple to poverty, but their applications immense and innumerable. 214 journal [age 64 i wish to find in my preacher that power to illuminate and warm and purify, which i know in the fiery souls which have cheered and lifted my life, and, if possible, that power to clothe every secret and abstract thought in its corresponding material symbol. seas and mountains, timber and metals, diamonds and fossils, interest the eye, but it is only with some preparatory or predicting charm ; their real value comes only when i hear their meaning made plain in the spiritual truth they cover. in that newtonian experiment we wrote of above, there is the surprise and delight of finding identity, which the deep mind always anticipates. the child is perpetually amused by a new object, by a chip, or a wad of wool, or a rope or a bed-key, — each of a hundred subjects, if before unseen, amuses him for a few moments, and he is long in learning, as the man is long in learning, that each is the old toy in a new mask. naturel. m. s. said, on hearing the parts at commencement, that she did not care so much for the improvement the speakers showed, as for how much of the boy they had kept. 1867] beauty. grandchild 215 the beauty of the landscape is in proportion to the quantity of light: 'from tragic to celestial. butler told fox he had never read smith's wealth of nations. “neither have i,” replied fox. “ there is something in all these subjects which passes my comprehension ; something so wide that i could never embrace them myself, or find any one who did. “peace to the strepent horn.'” neither can i comprehend the west wind; but i open my hay, when it blows, or lift the anchor, and go to sea, because i know it is the right wind for fair weather. another example of stirling's zymoses is the dramatic &úpools in elizabethan age, and the metaphysical, in germany, in the nineteenth century. september. ralph' looks as if he was afraid that all these beautiful things would vanish before he had time to see them. and now for my fagots of letters! it occurs 1 ralph emerson forbes, mr. emerson's first grandchild, then fifteen months old, and undoubtedly on the study floor at the time playing with an assortment of things from his grandfather's drawers. 216 (age 64 journal that in my doctrines of “classes” it cannot be forgotten how each passes to every person under different categories. in boston, i pass for a scholar, but to my friend “ras,” only in connection with the cows, and my name is moo. october 31. william forbes says that little ralph puts on his society-face when he sees his new-born sister in the cradle, and gives her a condescending kiss. the god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory to both sides. style. matthew arnold has the true critical perception and feeling of style, and has shown more insight on that subject than any contemporary. see his “celts” and his “homer.” earl grey said, in the old reform discussion, in 1832, when questioned by the tories, how far he should carry his principle, if the reformers should pull down the house of lords, etc.? — “i shall stand by my order.”' carlyle and his followers now stand as the tories did. and in their zeal to stand by the aristocratic order, one 1 this anecdote is told by mr. emerson in « the man of letters ” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 251). wiso ir 1867] perverse carlyle 217 wishes to ask them, — “but, if your order stands for injustice, do you not belong to a higher order ?” carlyle might well be allowed the liberty of genius of riding his hobby very hard, — of riding into the inferno, if he will, sure that he has the palm-branch of poets in his hand, and the power of genius will bring him safely back. but under the attraction and prestige of his name, tennyson, and ruskin, and kingsley, men of talent, but far inferior to him in character, venture to follow their party or society-proclivities also, and subscribe to the infamous eyre-fund. this is a grave misfortune to themselves, and to their society, which follows them. the like wrongs are found here, and our society needs a crusade preached by our peter hermits. holmes, in his lecture to the medical college, said that dr. james jackson's preface to his letters to a young physician compared well with the three famous prefaces, namely, calvin's to his institutes, casaubon's to polybius, and president de thou's to his history. 'tis very certain that when the deluge comes in, it will not mind our garden-fences nor bos218 journal [age 64 ton or portland, nor new york, but only the alleghanies and the andes, or, the lines where the pent-up fires are hottest, and the crust of the globe thinnest. mr. grattan, english consul, said at the dickens dinner in boston, that “the chairman's four vices were as good as the four cardinal virtues of any other man.” holmes, hillard, ellis grey loring, and t. j. stevenson, were the vice-presidents. i rarely take down horace or martial at home, but when reading in the athenæum, or union club, if i come upon a quotation from either, i resolve on the instant to read them every day. but, — at home again, homely thoughts. quotation yes, but how differently persons quote! i am as much informed of your genius by what you select as by what you originate. i read the quotation with your eyes, and find a new and fervent sense : thus shakspeare's richard ii has always borrowed much of its interest from edmund kean's rendering: though i had that play only at second-hand from him 1867] architecture 219 through william emerson, who heard him in london. when i saw kean in boston, he played nothing so high.' the reading of books is according to the sensibility of the scholar. ... one remembers his friends by their favourite poetry or other reading, as i recall shakspeare's “make mouths at the invisible event,” always from aunt mary's lips, and so many of antoninus's and milton's sentences. the synthesis, the architecture, gives the value to all the stones. a thought contents me, but has little value to any other to whom i speak it. but, as soon as greater mental activity, or more scope, places that thought with its right foregoers and followers, and we have a right discourse, we have somewhat impressive and powerful, and the worth of the solitary thought vastly enhanced. certain resemblances in nature, or unexpected repetitions of form, give keen pleasure 1 mr. emerson delighted in reading richard ii to his children, bearing kean's rendering, as given by his brother, in mind. 2 the rest of the paragraph is printed in “ quotation and originality” (letters and social aims, p. 194). 220 journal (age 64 when observed; as the figure of the oak leaf on the under shell of the tortoise ; the figure of the acanthus leaf in the flame of burning wood; or, better, as ellery channing said, that the oak wood burning gives again the form of the oak leaf. so the vegetable form of frost on the window pane suggesting the identity of vegetation with crystallization. so the piping of the hylas in the early days of april sounds at a little distance like the jingle of sleighbells. and quatremère de quincy's theory of art is resemblance in the work to something of a different kind. and why not in the repetition in nature of her scents, as of the orange in the little sarothra;' of black birch and chequerberry. in this old matter of originality and quotation, a few points to be made distinctly. the apparently immense amount of debt to the old. . . . at first view, 't is all quotation, – all we have. but presently we make distinction: first, by wise quotation. vast difference in the mode of quotation. one quotes so well that the person quoted is a gainer. the quoter's selection honours and celebrates the author. the quoter gives more fame than he receives aid. thus coleridge. quoting is often merely of a i false john's-wort. 21 1867] quoting. joy in books 221 suggestion which the quoter drew, but of which the author is quite innocent. for good quoting, then, there must be originality in the quoter, — bent, bias, delight in the truth, and only valuing the author in the measure of his agreement with the truth, which we see, and which he had the luck to see first. ... if another's words describe your fact, use them as freely as you use the language and the alphabet, whose use does not impair your originality. neither will another's sentiment or distinction impugn your sufficiency. yet in proportion to your reality of life and perception will be your difficulty of finding yourself expressed in others' words or deeds. and yet — and yet — i hesitate to denounce reading, as aught inferior or mean. when visions of my books come over me, as i sit writing, when the remembrance of some poet comes, i accept it with pure joy, and quit my thinking, as sad lumbering work; and hasten to my little heaven, if it is then accessible, as angels might. for these social affections also are part of nature and being, and the delight in another's superiority is, as aunt mary said, “my best gift from god.” for here the moral nature is involved, which is higher than the intellectual. 222 journal (age 64 the new knowledge is nothing but the old knowledge new vamped and painted. “the illusion of knowing.” (aunt mary.) december. [mr. emerson records the following guests from oversea who visited him during the autumn.] september 11. mr. h. lee warner, of st. john's college, cambridge, england. october. viscount and lady amberley. november 23. mr. cowper, earl morley, and lord camperdown with letter from froude. hon. mr. stratt and mr. j. r. holland with letter from mrs. ward. rev. leslie stephen and his wife, who is thackeray's daughter. [notwithstanding the first two months of the year having been spent in the west, lecturing, mr. emerson's calls carried him again thither in the last month. beginning in erie, pennsylvania, on the 5th, before the new year came in he had spoken in illinois, iowa, ohio, and missouri. he fulfilled his engagements at all sacrifice of comfort and even at serious risk, as this extract from a letter written to his family shows :-) 1867] freezing mississippi 223 december 17. yesterday morning in bitter cold weather i had the pleasure of crossing the mississippi in a skiff with mr. — , we the sole passengers, and a man and a boy for oarsmen. i have no doubt they did their work better than the harvard six could have done it, as much of the rowing was on the surface of fixed ice, in fault of running water. but we arrived without other accident than becoming almost fixed ice ourselves; but the long run to the tepfer house, the volunteered rubbing of our hands by the landlord and clerks, and good fire restored us.' authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1867 bhagavat geeta ; vishnu purana; lycurgus; solon; pythagoras; confucius; pindar; æschylus, seven against thebes ; socrates ; aristotle; euclid of alexandria; archimedes ; cæsar; martial; marcus aurelius; dante; luther; kepler ; de thou, historia sui temporis; casaubon; calvin ; van helmont; 1 it should be remembered that mr. emerson was sixtyfour years old. 224 journal (age 64 sir kenelm digby ; clarendon; la rochefoucauld ; george fox; bossuet ; spinoza ; newton ; leibnitz; linnæus; diderot; winckelmann; collins, ode to evening; kant; lessing; washington; hester lynch piozzi, anecdotes of dr. johnson; anna letitia barbauld; goethe; benjamin thompson (count rumford); charles butler, reminiscences; thomas taylor ; belzoni; calhoun; buckminster; channing; sir w. e. parry, arctic voyages; everett; edward taylor; gerrit smith; michelet, bible de l'humanité; alcott; bushnell; sainte-beuve; agassiz; holmes; tennyson; asa gray; charles kingsley; beecher; edwin h. chapin; thomas w. parsons, translation of inferno; matthew arnold, on translating homer; ruskin; max müller, the science of language; goldwin smith, life of pym. journal beauty free trade. suffrage. peace a world religion unity and evolution tennyson. william morris calvin and buddha the fortune-teller hegel and metaphysicians visit to newport middlebury vermont mountains harvard university lowell journal lix 1868 (from journals ln and ny) j'ai pris la vie par le côté poétique. franz woepke. [as usual, mr. emerson lectured, near and afar, during the winter and in the spring, but just what the tour was does not clearly appear. during his absence his brother william, who had lost his wife, and was now very feeble, came from new york to consult a boston physician and was a guest for some time at his brother's house. he returned to new york, where he died in september.] (from ln) sometimes you must speak, if only as aunt mary told me, when i was a boy, and quarrelled with elisha jones and frank barrett. dr. ripley sent for them one evening to come to the house, and there made us shake hands: aunt mary asked me, “well, what did you say to them?” “i did not say anything.” — “fie on you! you should have talked about your thumbs, or your toes, only to say something." 228 journal [age 64 admirable chapter of harriet martineau, in her eastern life, present and past, vol.i, p. 230. one would think it had never been read, or that the minds of the readers had been instantly dipped in. lethe. it needs instant republication, and the advertisement to be cried in the churches. it plays into my chapter of “ quotation” to find this necessity of repetition. if man takes any step, exerts any volition, initiates anything, no matter what, it is law of fate that another man shall repeat it, shall simply echo it. the egyptian legend got this tyrannical currency; ploughed itself into the hebrew captives. ma free trade. i have no knowledge of trade and there is not the sciolist who cannot shut my mouth and my understanding by strings of facts that seem to prove the wisdom of tariffs. but my faith in freedom of trade, as the rule, returns always. if the creator has made oranges, coffee, and pineapples in cuba, and refused them to massachusetts, i cannot see why we should put a fine on the cubans for bringing these to us,-a fine so heavy as to enable massachusetts men to build costly palm-houses and glass conservatories, under which to coax these poor plants to ripen under our hard skies, and 1868] tariff. beauty. norton 229 thus discourage the poor planter from sending them to gladden the very cottages here. we punish the planter there and punish the consumer here for adding these benefits to life. tax opium, tax poisons, tax brandy, gin, wine, hasheesh, tobacco, and whatever articles of pure luxury, but not healthy and delicious food. beauty unequally bestowed ; — yes, but the highest beauty is that of expression, and the same man is handsome or ugly as he gives utterance to good or base feeling. i noticed, the other day, that when a man whom i had always remarked as a handsome person was venting democratic politics, his whole expression changed, and became mean and paltry. that is, nature distributed vulgar beauty unequally, as if she did not value it; but the most precious beauty she put in our own hands, that of expression. norton read, the other night, in his lecture, the decree of the commune of florence for the rebuilding of the cathedral, but wholly without effect, from the omission (perhaps the scorn) of emphasis. it should be read with the cry of a herald. 230 journal [age 64 “each supreme,” says harriet martineau of the statues of the egyptian gods. and why not? and men also, as the sky is perfect and the sea; porphyry and marble and iron and bronze, each is perfect and best in its place to the architect, and roman cement under the sea, and wood and glass. were a banker, mr. manger, told me that such is the promise of the investments of the undertakers of the pacific railroad, that vaster fortunes will be made in this country than were ever amassed by private men: that men now alive will perhaps come to own a thousand millions of dollars. 'tis well that the constitution of the united states has forbidden entails, and the only defence of the people against this private power is from death the distributor. ons swer i have lately had repeated occasion to regret the omission to ask questions — while there was yet timeof persons who alone could answer them; and now that these are dead, there is none living who can give me the information. to have been so easily near the witnesses, and to have neglected an opportunity which now the whole world could not restore ! 1868] america's chance 231 i wish the american poet should let old times go and write on tariff, universal suffrage, woman's suffrage; science shall not be abused to make guns. the poet shall bring out the blazing truth that he who kills his brother commits suicide. the gold was not hid in the black mountains that one man should own it all. the telegraph shall be open as writing is to all men. the grape is fertile this year that men may be genial and gentle, and make better laws, and not for their set alone. thus shall the harvest of 1868 be memorable. the laws shall sternly hold men to their best, and fools shall not be allowed to administer what requires all the wisdom of the wisest. i read with interest this line in the second book of herodotus, “ the egyptians are the first of mankind who have defended the immortality of the soul.” extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility. no aristocrat, no porphyrogenite, can begin to compare with the self-respect of the saint. aunt mary in her vision of her place in heaven looks very coolly at her “divine master.” “i apverv 232 journal (age 64 proached no nearer the person of my divine master — but the infinite must forever and ever surround me. i had too proud a spirit, too elate, too complacent from constitution, maybe, ever to have that affinity to jesus which his better, holier ones have.” it is simply the consciousness, however yet obscure and undefined, of resting on deity, that destroys all other divinities, or so-called divinities, and can well afford to be disgraced and degraded in their presence. among the men who fulfil the part of the american gentleman, i place gladly theodore lyman, who went in a right spirit to the war, and who now works so faithfully and beneficently in this charge of establishing the pisciculture in massachusetts.' i understood dr. c. t. jackson in talk yesterday to say that the balloon can never be relied on as a machine for travel, since the attempt to resist the wind and sail against it will tear the balloon to pieces; that there must be i colonel theodore lyman, of brookline, a handsome, spirited and accomplished young officer on the staff of general meade, after the war became a worker and helper of agassiz at his museum in cambridge. 1868] balloons. the saint 233 wings invented to fly against the wind; and that guncotton which is so light, and, especially, which does not soil the barrel, is the best force yet found. the reliance on a permanent west wind in the upper region of the atmosphere may hold only over the land, and not over the sea. in the region of the trade-winds, the balloon may be applicable. the project has ceased to be presumptuous, since the ocean telegraph has become a fact. what a divine beneficence attaches to andrew johnson! in six troubles, and in seven, he has been an angel to the republican party, delivering them out of their distresses ses. “the eye altering alters all.” the saint, with grand healthy perception, in the atheism of byron reads the ciphers of eternity, finds in heathen fables and mythology the veiled truths of theism. a great cosmical intellect is indifferent to the arts, may easily look at them as poor toys, as he would look at a child's picture-alphabet. the saint only cares that the naturalist detects design in nature ; himself is quite careless of the vaunted evidences. he has vision. obstructives of the present day are the pope, with his encyclical letter, and his later dem234 (age 64 journal onstrations; bishop of orleans, dupanloup; bishop of oxford; the state of new jersey; andrew johnson. march, 1868. i hold it a proof of our high capabilities that horatio greenough was born in boston. can any one doubt that if the noblest saint among the buddhists, the noblest mahometan, the highest stoic of athens, the purest and wisest christian, menu in india, confucius in china, spinoza in holland, could somewhere meet and converse together, they would all find themselves of one religion, and all would find themselves denounced by their own sects, and sustained by these believed adversaries of their sects ? jeremy taylor, george herbert, pascal even, pythagoras, — if these could all converse intimately, two and two, how childish their country traditions would appear! march 18. i suppose that what richard owen told me in london of turner's coming to him to ask him to give him the natural history of the mollusk on which the whale fed, he wishing to understand it ab ovo thoroughly, because he was going to paint “the whaleship,” was just that 1868] education. alexander 235 chance of suggestion which i sought for my “song of boston," in going down the harbour, to nantasket, and in my visit not yet made to bunker hill monument. we cannot give ourselves too many advantages, and a hint to the centre of the subject may spring from these pensive strolls around the walls. education. the sunday-school man who said his class were already in the “ swiss robinson," and he hoped by next term to get them into “robinson crusoe.” i have a problem for an engineer, this, — to what height must i build a tower in my garden that shall show me the atlantic ocean from its top? where is the coast survey? “you,” said the brahmin mandanis to the king (alexander the great), “ are the only man whom i ever found curious in the investigation of philosophy at the head of an army.” — strabo. (from a loose sheet) man of science. common sense or law of bodies must be obeyed. but he finds limits to this, or, itself leading to contradictions, for mat236 (age 64 journal no pere ter is fluent, and has no solid bottom ; mere bubbles at last. then the very mathematician and materialist is forced to a poetic result, — as metamorphosis ; “progressive or arrested development.": ain unity. in vain he would keep up the bars of species or genera; the pedant becomes poet against his will; cuvier must approximate to geoffroy saint-hilaire in spite of himself. these dreadful okens and goethes will be born. unity! unity! there is this mischievous mind as tyrannical, nay, more tyrannic, than the other. the niagara currents in the mind. the mind must think by means of matter; find matter or nature the means and words of its thinking and expression. the world its school and university for heaven or thought. i mr. emerson, in “poetry and imagination ” (letters and social aims, p. 7), speaks of the electric word pronounced by john hunter a hundred years ago, arrested and progressive development.” the wonderful arrangement of the anatomical specimens in the museum of the jardin des plantes had suggested strange thoughts on evolution to mr. emerson in 1833. these and the above hint from john hunter, with reading of lamarck, had prepared mr. emerson in advance for darwin's teaching. 1868] revolutions 237 [here follows in the journal a list of the committee appointed to visit the greek department at harvard college the following year, in which mr. emerson's name appears. (from ny) revolutions. in my youth, spinoza was a hobgoblin; now he is a saint. when i see tracts of blowing sand planted with pitch pine trees and held fast as if granite slabs had been laid on them, and by the annual fall of the leaves made slowly but surely into a fertile soil; . ;. when i see the japanese building a steam navy, and their men of rank sending children to america for their education; the chinese, instead of stoning an anibassador if he steps out of the walls of canton, now choosing mr. burlingame as their ambassador to western courts; when i see a good spring of water found by a hazel-twig; and my message sent from boston to london in sixty seconds. the plough displaces the spade; the bridge displaces the ferryman; the press displaces the scrivener; the locomotive the coach ; the telegraph the courier. i this apparently unfinished sentence is a catalogue of • revolutions” of the day. 238 journal (ace 64 greatness. the appearance of a great man draws a new circle outside of our largest orbit, and surprises and commands us. it is as if to the girl fully occupied with her paper dolls a youth approaches and says, “i love you with all my heart; come to me.” instantly she leaves all, dolls, dances, maids, and youths, and dedicates herself to him; or, as california, in 1849, or the war in 1861, electrified the young men, and abolished all their little plans and projects with a magnificent hope or terror, requiring a whole new system of hopes and fears and means. our little circles absorb and occupy us as fully as the heavens; we can minimize as infinitely as maximize, and the only way out of it is (to use a country phrase) to kick the pail over, and accept the horizon instead of the pail, with celestial attractions and influences, instead of worms and mud pies. coleridge, goethe, the new naturalists in astronomy, geology, zoölogy, the correlations, the social science, the new readings of history through niebuhr, mommsen, max müller, champollion, lepsius, astonish the mind, and detach it effectually from a hopeless routine. “come out of that,” they say; “you lie sick and doting, only shifting from bed to bed.” and they dip the patient in 1868] epigrams. goethe 239 this russian bath, and he is at least well awake, and capable of sane activity. the perceptions which metaphysical and natural science cast upon the religious traditions are every day forcing people in conversation to take new and advanced position. we have been building on the ice, and lo! the ice has floated. and the man is reconciled to his losses when he sees the grandeur of his gains. henry clapp said that rev. dr. o— was always looking about to see if there was not a vacancy in the trinity. he said that greeley knew that he was a self-made man, and was always glorifying his maker. he said that taimed at nothing, and always hit it exactly. goethe. schiller wrote to humboldt, in 1802, “if goethe had only a spark of faith, many things here might be improved.” it takes twenty years to get a good book read. for each reader is struck with a new passage and at first only with the shining and superficial ones, and by this very attention to these the rest are slighted. but with time the graver and deeper thoughts are observed and pondered. 240 journal [age 64 new readers come from time to time, — their attention whetted by frequent and varied allusions to the book, until at last every passage has found its reader and commentator. may 22. education. i am delighted to-day in reading schwegler's account of socrates, to have intelligent justice done to aristophanes. the rogue gets his dues. go into the school or the college, and see the difference of faculty: some who lap knowledge as a cat laps milk, and others very slow blockheads. cowley considered the use of a university for the cherishing of gifted persons. [here follow most of pp. 32, 33 in “poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims).] tennyson's saint grail. tennyson has abundant invention, but contents himself with the just enough; is never obscure or harsh in a new or rare word. then he has marked virility, as if a surgeon or practical physiologist had no secrets to teach him, but he deals with these as abraham or moses would, and without prudery 1868] tennyson 241 or pruriency. his inventions are adequate to the dignity of the fable. the gift of adequate expression is his; [bacchic phrensy in maud. a nightingale drunken with his overflowing melody, an animal heat in the verse, and its opulent continuations.] the priest is astonished to find a holiness in this knight-errant which he himself never knew, and rubs his eyes. the fine invention of tennyson is in crowding into an hour the slow creations and destructions of centuries. it suggests besides, in the coming and vanishing of cities and temples, what really befalls in long durations on earth. how science of ethnology limps after these enchantments ! miracles of cities and temples made by merlin, like thoughts. what i wrote on the last leaf concerning tennyson is due perhaps to the first reading, to the new wine of his imagination, — and i may not enjoy it, or rate it so highly again. 1 the passage in brackets thrown in, a momentary remembrance, then the thread of the discourse is resumed and mr. emerson speaks of percival and the monk in the idyll. 2 in the journal the date january 1, 1870, follows this paragraph, but it does not appear how much was the later writing. 242 journal [age 64 [then mr. emerson writes into the journal three years later, under date of october, 1871, the following sentence :-) the only limit to the praise of tennyson as a lyric poet is, that he is alive. if he were an ancient, there would be none. may. dionysius the elder, when some one asked him if he was at leisure, replied, “may that never befall me.” calvinism is the breath of a hot village of teutonic peasants, exalted to the highest power, their notions of right and wrong, their loves and fears and hatreds, their notions of law and punishment and reward, — all acute but narrow, ignorant and revengeful, yet devout. dr. watts's hymns are its exponent. i remember that burnap in the cambridge divinity school used to say that calvinism stood on three legs, — dr. watts's psalms and hymns, milton's paradise lost, and the westminster catechism, or was there not a fourth, king james's translation of the bible? i should say that the opposite pole of theology was the hindoo buddhism, as represented in the prayers of the bhagavata purana. 1868] the opposition 243 we had a story one day of a meeting of the atlantic club, when the copies of the new number of the atlantic being brought in, every one rose eagerly to get a copy, and then each sat down, and read his own article. out of power a party is immensely strong; it stands for principles, and its opponents have nothing but possession. but the moment the radical or republican comes into place, he has then to consider not what should be, but also what can be, which he finds a very different and very difficult problem. “did you give athens the best laws?” “no," replied solon, “but the best it would receive.” old and new. we read the english and foreign news with relish, the american with disrelish. we read of socrates, antoninus, and menu gladly; not so gladly of our hodiernal churches. when i remember how easily and happily i think in certain company, -as, for instance, in former years, with alcott, and charles newcomb, earlier with peter hunt, though i must look far and wide for the persons and conditions, which yet were real,and how unfavorable my 244 journal (age 64 ப an ice cv daily habits and solitude are for this success, and consider also how essential this commerce is to fruitfulness in writing,—i see that i cannot exaggerate its importance among the resources of inspiration. gurney' seemed to me, in an hour i once spent with him, a fit companion. holmes has some rare qualities. horatio greenough shone, but one only listened to him; so carlyle. henry hedge, george ward especially, and if one could ever get over the fences, and actually on even terms, elliot cabot. but i should like to try george e. tufts,' my brilliant correspondent of three letters; and william b. wright, of the “ highland rambles.” there is an advantage of being somewhat in the chair of the company, a little older and better-read, — if one is aiming at searching thought. and yet, how heartily i could sit silent, purely listening, and receptive, beside a rich mind ! 1 ephraim wales gurney, beloved professor of latin at harvard college, and later dean. he died in his prime. he was chosen a member of the saturday club shortly before his death. 2 a man whose letters interested mr. emerson so much that once, while staying at saratoga, he went on a journey in quest of him, but in vain. he was an original thinker, a mechanic, crippled by some disease. 1868] weiss. scott. degrees 245 may 30. heard weiss speak on the platform of the free religious society, and was struck with his manhood. use and opportunity with such rare talent would have made him a great orator. he makes admirable points, but has the fault of lingering around a point, and repeats it, and dulls it. but sincerity and independence and courage, — in short, manhood, — he has, which the audience heartily enjoys, and tamer speakers learn a good lesson. he at least vindicates himself as a man, and one of great and subtile resources. how important an educator has scott been ! in the board of overseers of the college, the committee on honorary degrees reported unfavourably on all but the commanding names, and instantly the president and an ex-president pressed the action of the corporation, acknowledging that these men proposed for honours were not very able or distinguished persons, but it was the custom to give these degrees without insisting on eminent merit. i remember that dr. follen, in his disgust at the reverend and honourable doctors he saw in america, wished to drop the title and be called mister. w246 journal (age 65 who listens to eloquence makes discoveries. a man who thought he was in earnest hears, and finds out that he was not. how we then feel that we could wash the feet of the speaker for the right. c. j. fox said, if he had a boy, he would make him write verses, the only way of knowing the meaning of words. — recollections, of samuel rogers. what landor said of canning is truer of disraeli, that “he is an understrapper made an overstrapper." june 16. in reading these fine poems of morris, i see but one defect, but that is fatal, namely, that the credence of the reader no longer exists. i wrote thus last night, after reading “king acrisius,” but this evening i have read “the proud king,” wherein the fable is excellent, and the story fits this and all times. beauty is in great part a moral effect. it comes to serenity, to cheerfulness, to benignity, to innocence, to settled noble purpose. it flees · from the perplexed, the self-seeking, the cow1868] a daughter. a friend 247 ardly, the mean, the despairing, the frivolous, and the stupid. self-respect, how indispensable to it! a free and contented air. the roots of to-day are in yesterday and the days and days before. why is this girl always unaccountably cheerful? only because the due letter was written and posted yesterday, the valise of her brother's clothes went by the express, and he must have received them hours ago, and there is time this forenoon for all that is to be done. so with the weeks and the months. 't is her habit, and every day brings the gay acknowledgment of these petty fidelities, by letter or by the faces of all whom she meets." ve the youth gets on obscurely well enough from day to day, but once he chances to meet a young man who tells him something. he rolls it over in his mind for a day or two and must go back to him. the friend has told him his fortune; he has given him his character; he now sees somewhat he never saw, though the same things were close beside him. every talk with that youth interests him, and all his life has a new look, whilst with him. he does not i a tribute to his daughter ellen. 248 (age 65 journal care longer for the old companions; they are tame and superficial; he wants a witch, he wants an interpreter, a poet, a sympathizer; he has heard of books, and finds one at last that reminds him of his friend. this also is a dear companion. dreary are the names and numbers of volumes of hegel and the hegelians, — to me, who only want to know at the shortest the few steps, the two steps, or the one taken. i know what step berkeley took, and recognize the same in the hindoo books. hegel took a second, and said, that there are two elements, something and nothing, and that the two are indispensable at every subsequent step, as well as at the first. well, we have familiarized that dogma, and at least found a kind of necessity in it, even if poor human nature still feels the paradox. now is there any third step which germany has made of like importance and renown? it needs no encyclopædia of volumes to tell. i want not the metaphysics, but only the literature of them.' ... enchantments. there are inner chambers of 1 see for the substance of what follows natural history of intellect (p. 13). 1868] enchantments. agra 249 poetry, which only poets enter. thus loosely we might say, shakspeare's sonnets are readable only by poets, and it is a test of poetic apprehension, the value which a reader attaches to them. but also the poem, — “ let the bird of loudest lay on the sole arabian tree,” etc., etc., — and the “ threnos” that follows it, if published for the first time to-day anonymously, would be hooted in all journals; and yet such a poem comes but once in a century, and only from a genius. i prize beaumont and fletcher's song, “ fountain heads and pathless groves,” etc., in the same way.' ... we think we have a key to the affair if we can find that italian artists were at agra four centuries ago, and so the taj is accounted for. or, if greeks were in egypt earlier than we had found, and ties of one race can be detected, the architectural race that built in both lands. but the wonder is the one man that built one temple ; and after that, the creation of two temples, or two styles, or twenty, is easy to accept. 1 what follows is printed in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, pp. 55, 56). 250 journal [ace 65 yea and nay. we go to the artist's studio, and see his plans. they do not satisfy this exigeant eye, which yet knows not what it wants, only knows that these drawings do not content it. but any number of nays does not help us in the smallest degree. nothing will but the blessed appearance from any quarter of a plan of genius that meets all the conditions, and delights us, and we all say, that is it. the cabots built the athenæum;' billings went into it and said, this hall and staircase want greatness, and drew his plans. the committee and the cabots assented at once, and billings was added to the cabots as one of the architects. newport, july. seashore here chimes no clock, no pedant calendar, my waves abolish time, dwarf days to hours, and give my guest eternal afternoon. july 13. i have seen sarah clarke and her friends at newport, with great pleasure and content, — at least with as much as so bad a traveller and visitor as i can find. the land and water have 1 the athenæum library in boston on beacon street. 2 mr. and mrs. emerson had a happy week or more with their friend, miss clarke (his pupil in the boston school for re 1868] the real ocean 251 the unfailing charm of the sea, which abolishes time, makes it all “afternoon," or vacation, and always tells us how far we are from nature, and that the first poetry is not yet written. we as i was told in venice that there were plenty of people who never stirred out of it to the main land, and, as my mrs. holbrook, with whom i went from boston to malta, never went on deck or saw the sea; so it is in seaports; the wharves are practically as far from the ocean as are the mountains. a boy born in boston may often wander with boys down to the wharves, see the ships, boats, and sailors, but his attention is occupied by the rough men and boys, very likely by the fruit ships and their cargoes, specially the molasses casks. his eye may never get beyond the islands and the lighthouse to the sea. he remains a cockney, and, years later, chances to visit far from his town the shore where the ocean is not hidden by ships and the wharf population, but fills the horizon. its chill breath comes to him a snuff of defiance, he young ladies, where he assisted and succeeded his brother william). she was an artist, sister of rev. james freeman clarke. the presence of mrs. helen hunt, some of whose poems mr. emerson valued, added much pleasure to their stay. 252 journal [age 65 realizes its wonder for the first time, and now first beholds the maker of cities and of civilization and may come to understand how greece came to exist, and tyre, and england. newport. the admirable sites for building and the combination of so many advantages point plainly to its future as the attractive waterside in the country. my chief acquisition was the acquaintance of mrs. helen hunt, sarah clarke's friend, and her poetry i could heartily praise. the sonnet“ thought” and “ ariadne's farewell ” were the best, but all had the merit of originality, elegance, and compression. mrs. hunt wished me to admire george eliot's “spanish gypsy,” but on superficial trial by hearing passages, i refused. it was manufactured, not natural, poetry. any elegant and cultivated mind can write as well, but she has not insight into nature, nor a poetic ear. such poetry satisfies readers, and scholars, too, at first sight, — does not offend, conciliates respect, and it is not easy to show the fault. but let it lie awhile, and nobody will return to it. indeed, time, as i so often feel, is an indispensable element of criticism. you cannot judge of nahant, or newport, or of a gallery, or a 1868] wordsworth. vermont 253 poem, until you have outlived the dismay or overpowering of a new impression. i took a volume of wordsworth in my valise, and read for the first time, i believe, carefully “the white doe of rylstone,” a poem in a singularly simple and temperate key, without ornament or sparkle, but tender, wise, and religious, such as only a true poet could write, honouring the poet and the reader. august 16. came home last night from vermont with ellen. stopped at middlebury on the lith, tuesday, and read my discourse on greatness, and the good work and influence of heroic scholars. on wednesday spent the day at essex junction, and traversed the banks and much of the bed of the winooski river, much admiring the falls, and the noble mountain peaks of mansfield and camel's hump (which there appears to be the highest), and the view of the adirondacs across 1 this address, of the same title as the last lecture of the course which mr. emerson gave in the autumn in boston, was probably not quite identical with the essay “greatness” in letters and social aims, and very probably contained matter which now appears in “ the scholar" and the “man of letters” in lectures and biographical sketches. 254 journal (age 65 the lake. in the evening, took the stage to underhill centre, and, the next morning, in unpromising weather, strolled away with ellen towards the mansfield mountain, four miles off; and, the clouds gradually rising and passing from the summit, we decided to proceed towards the top, which we reached (with many rests at the half-way house and at broad stones on the path) a little before 2 o'clock, and found george bradford' at the mountain house. we were cold and a little wet, but found the house warm with stoves. after dinner, ellen was thoroughly warmed and recruited lying on a settee by the stove, and meanwhile i went up with mr. bradford and a party to the top of “the chin,” which is the highest land in the state, — 4400 feet. i have later heard it stated 4389 feet. lake champlain lay below us, but was a perpetual illusion, as it would appear a piece of yellow sky, until careful examination of the islands in it and the adirondac summits beyond brought it to the earth for a moment; but, if we looked away an instant, and then returned, it was in i george partridge bradford, mr. emerson's valued friend, refined, sensitive, and affectionate, a scholar and teacher, mrs. ripley's brother. george partridge bradford 1868] mount mansfield 255 the sky again. when we reached the summit, we looked down upon the “ lake of the clouds,” and the party which reached the height .a few minutes before us had a tame cloud which floated by a little below them. this summer, bears and a panther have been seen on the mountain, and we peeped into some rocky caves which might house them. we came, on the way, to the edge of a crag, which we approached carefully, and lying on our bellies; and it was easy to see how dangerous a walk this might be at night, or in a snowstorm. the white mountains, it was too misty to see; but “ owl's head,” near lake memphremagog, was pointed out. perhaps it was a half-mile only from the house to the top of “the chin,” but it was a rough and grand walk. on such occasions, i always return to my fancy that the best use of wealth would be to carry a good professor of geology, and another of botany, with you. in the house were perhaps twenty visitors besides ourselves. a mr. taylor, of cincinnati, a very intelligent gentleman, — with excellent political views, republican and free-trader; george bartlett was there with a gay company of his friends, who had come up from stowe, where he had given a theatrical 256 (age 65 journal entertainment of amateurs, the night before.' in the evening, they amused us mightily with charades of violent fun. the next morning a man went through the house ringing a large bell, and shouting “sunrise," and everybody dressed in haste, and went down to the piazza. mount washington and the franconia mountains.were clearly visible, and ellen and i climbed now the nose, to which the ascent is made easy by means of a stout rope firmly attached near the top, and reaching down to the bottom of the hill, near the house. twenty people are using it at once at different heights. after many sharp looks at the heavens and the earth, we descended to breakfast. i found in this company ... [many] agreeable people. at 9.30 a. m. ellen and i, accompanied for some distance by george bradford, set forth on our descent, in the loveliest of mornings, and, parting from him at one of the galleries, ari george bradford bartlett, of concord, son of the admirable village doctor josiah bartlett, and nephew of mr. bradford. when failing eyesight obliged him to leave business he used his gift as an actor and manager of private theatricals often for charitable purposes (as for the sanitary commission during the war). his fame spread widely, and summer hotels welcomed him, for his wit, his picnics, games and charades greatly helped their seasons. vens 1868] chinese embassy 257 rived safely at the half-way house, there to find a troop of our fellow boarders of the “ underhill house "just mounting their horses to climb the mountain. they advised us to take a little forest path to the “mossy glen,” before we continued our journey from this point, which we did, and found a pretty fall. returning to the half-way house, which is empty, and only affords at this time a restingplace for travellers and a barn for horses, we resumed our walk, and arrived (without other event than a little delay among the raspberries) at mr. prouty's hotel at underhill, say at 1.30; dined, re-packed our trunk, and took a wagon to stowe, thence the stage-coach to essex junction, and thence the train, which brought us to burlington, where we spent the night; and, the next morning, the rutland and burlington train, which brought us safely to westminster, massachusetts, where ellen took a wagon for princeton, and i continued my railroad ride to concord, arriving at 6.30 in the evening. [on august 21, the city of boston gave a banquet in honor of the chinese embassy and the recently ratified treaty with china, negotiated by our minister to that country, also its 258 [age 65 journal ambassador to ours, mr. burlingame. mr. emerson made a short address on the occasion which is printed in the miscellanies.) university. the university question divides people with some rancour, which blinds the eyes, and i hope will be avoided, in consideration of the gravity of the subject. we might as well come to it after a late dinner in the strength of wine, as to hope to treat it wisely on the strength of party and passion. the general uneasiness and movement in the public in regard to education shows a certain cleavage. evils of the college it does not justify itself to the pupil. it does not open its doors to him. balks him with petty delays and refusals. the instructors are in false relations to the student. instead of an avenue, it is a barrier. let him find good advice, but of a wise man, sympathetic, a patron of the youth on entering the gate. it gives degrees on time, on the number of dinners eaten (“ea at your terms”), not on examination. se crv 1868] university criticised 259 it gives foolish diplomas of honour to every old clergyman, or successfulgentleman, who lives within ten miles. ball and boat clubs do not hurt, but help the morals of the students. if the college falls behind the culture of the people, it is instantly ridiculous. for my report on the greek committee i must not forget to insert my opinion on examinations; – that whenever one is on trial, two are on trial; the examiner is instructed whenever the pupil is examined. at monadnoc, the final cause of towns appears to be to be seen from the mountains. nature day by day for her darlings to her much she added more; in her hundred-gated thebes every chamber was a door, a door to something grander, — loftier walls, and vaster aloor. j. t. williams said that he told a friend of evarts that he considered evarts the best candidate for the united states senate from new york, and should labor for his election. afterwards he met evarts, who came up to him and 260 journal (age 65 thanked him for the kind expression he had used. after evarts had entered the president's cabinet, williams saw him again and told him that his new action had lost him the opportunity forever. he would never be united states senator from new york. evarts said, no, he was quite mistaken, and that he was now secure of being the man, whichever party prevailed; for, said he, unquestionably the democratic party will carry the next election in new york. « advances with rapturous lyrical glances, singing the song of the earth, singing hymns to the gods.” is it goethe's? france is a country of method and numerical order, the palace of arithmetic; everything is centralized, and, by a necessity of their nature, the french have introduced the decimal system of weights and measures, and made it perfect. they measured the first degree of the meridian, picard's. they published the first national dictionary of the language. in the revolution, they abolished the chronology of the world, and began with the year one. “on se contentait de vivre au jour en jour.” — biographie générale. 1868] joy in woods and books 261 the only place where i feel the joy of eminent domain is in my woodlot. my spirits rise whenever i enter it. i can spend the entire day there with hatchet or pruning-shears making paths, without a remorse of wasting time. i fancy the birds know me, and even the trees make little speeches or hint them. then allah does not count the time which the arab spends in the chase. ah, what a blessing to live in a house which has on the ground floor one room or one cabinet in which a worcester's unabridged; a liddell and scott; an andrews and stoddard; lemprière's classical; a “gradus ad parnassum”; a haydn's dictionary of dates ; a biographie générale; a spiers' french, and flügel's german dictionary, even if grimm is not yet complete, where these and their equivalents, if equivalents can be, are always at hand, — and yet i might add, as i often do, ah! happier, if these or their substitutes have been in that house for two generations or for three, — for horace's metres and greek literature will not be thoroughly domesticated in one life. a house, i mean, where the seniors, who are at fault about school questions, can inquire of the juniors with 262 journal [age 65 some security of a right answer. this is one of my dreams for the american house. [during october and november, mr. emerson gave a course of six lectures in boston. the subjects were:-1, art; ii, poetry and criticism ; iii, historic notes of life and letters in new england; iv, leasts and mosts; v, hospitality, homes; vi, greatness.] the distinction of the poet is ever this force of imagination which puts its objects before him with such deceptive power that he treats them as real.' ... single speech. “laodamia” is almost entitled to that eminence in wordsworth's literary performance. that and the “ode on immortality” are the best. 'tis really by a sentence or a phrase or two that many great men are remembered. zoroaster has three or four, and marcus aurelius only as many. george tufts wrote me, — “life is a fame whose splendor hides its base.” 1 the rest of the passage is found in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 44). 1868] books. libraries 263 mediocre books. there are the sound stomachs and the sick; the farmer and the butcher minister to the sound, the physician and the confectioner to the sick. the well can look at the sun, and use all his light and heat; the sick only what is reflected and shaded. it is the same in literature. strong minds ask principles, direct aperçus, and original forms. the sick public want what is secondary, conventional, and imitations of imitations. there is need of shakspeare and hegel, and also of martin tupper (if that is his name) and mccosh. in the perplexity in which the literary public now stands with regard to university education, whether studies shall be compulsory or elective; whether by lectures of professors, or whether by private tutors; whether the stress shall be on latin and greek, or on modern sciences, – the one safe investment which all can agree to increase is the library. a good book can wait for a reader hundreds of years. once lodged in the library, it is unexpensive and harmless while it waits. then it is a good of the most generous kind, not only serving the undergraduates of the college, but much more the alumni, and probably much more still, the scattered community of scholars. 264 journal (age 65 ours is the zymosis' of science. the heavens open, and the earth, and every element, and disclose their secrets. the large utterance of the gods which in every organism nature retains, the great style, the fate or invariable adherence to its qualities and methods, and the unity of system which reigns through all the innumerable and immense parts, we are daily learning; and what beams of light have shone upon men now first in this century! the genius, nature, is ever putting conundrums to us, and the savants, as in the girls' game of “twenty questions,” are every month solving them successively by skilful, exhaustive method. this success makes the student cheerful and confident, and his new illumination makes it impossible for him to acquiesce in the old barbarous routine, whether of politics, or religion, or commerce, or social arrangements. nature will not longer be kinged, or churched, or colleged, or drawing-roomed as before. a man never gets acquainted with himself, but is always a surprise. we get news daily of the world within, as well as of the world outside, and not less of the central than of the surstate of fermentation. 1868] john hunter 265 face facts. a new thought is awaiting him every morning. i often think how hard it is to say with sweetness your thought, when you know that it affronts and exasperates your audience. it is even difficult to write it for such readers without leaving on the line some bitterness. but the french do this, and the french alone, with perfect equanimity in their excellent revue des deux mondes. john hunter was so far from resting his mind in society, that he felt real fatigue in the midst of company where the conversation n'avait pas de suite. (biographie générale.) his museum cost him £70,000. the government bought it for £15,000, after long negotiation. pitt said, “'tis not a time to buy anatomical pieces, when i want money to buy powder.” “don't ask me,” he said to his pupils, “what i thought a year ago on this or that; ask me what i think to-day.” he, hunter, first used the expression “arrested development, which plays so important a part in modern science. 266 journal [ace 65 november 11. yesterday was well occupied in accompanying william robert ware to the church he is building for the first church society, on berkeley street. it has a completeness and uniformity of strength, richness, and taste, perfect adaptation to its present purpose, and an antiquity in all its ornamentation that give delight. it seemed to threaten ruin to the radical club, retroaction in all people who shall sit down in its sumptuous twilight. i lamented for my old friend dr. frothingham his loss of sight, once more, that he could not enjoy this faultless temple. i looked through all the details of the drawings for the alumni hall at ware's office, which conciliate the eye very fast, and the capital suggestion that the dining-hall shall be used for daily commons, if properly accepted and followed up, will go far to remove every point of objection on the old ground that this vast expense is for three or four days only in the year. in his technologic chambers, he showed me a multitude of interesting fragments of art, casts mainly, from trajan's column, from english, french, and italian churches, a head from a statue at rheims cathedral of the thirteenth [16th?] century by john of bologna (?) which gives, what i always 1868] lowell. wordsworth 267 seek, when i see new sculpture — decisive proof of a master. ware believes the romans were their own artists, and not greeks; confirmed by specimens of etruscan art which he saw. december 9. in poetry, tone. i have been reading some of lowell's new poems, in which he shows unexpected advance on himself, but perhaps most in technical skill and courage. it is in talent rather than in poetic tone, and rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem, and which is unanalysable, and makes the merit of an ode of collins, or gray, or wordsworth, or herbert, or byron, — and which is felt in the pervading tone, rather than in brilliant parts or lines; as if the sound of a bell, or a certain cadence expressed in a low whistle or booming, or humming, to which the poet first timed his step, as he looked at the sunset, or thought, was the incipient form of the piece, and was regnant through the whole. wordsworth is manly, the manliest poet of his age. his poems record the thoughts and emotions which have occupied his mind, and 268 journal (age 65 which he reports because of their reality. he has great skill in rendering them into simple and sometimes happiest poetic speech. tennyson has incomparable felicity in all poetic forms, and is a brave, thoughtful englishman; exceeds wordsworth a hundredfold in rhythmic power and variety, but far less manly compass; and tennyson's main purpose is the rendering, whilst wordsworth's is just value of the dignity of the thought. v2 i told ware that i prize michel angelo so much that, whilst i look at his figures, i come to believe the grandiose is grand. thomas gray in poetry has relations to michel angelo, and the like question between the grandiose and grand is suggested in reading his odes. mann esis an englishman has firm manners. he rests secure on the reputation of his country, on his family, his education, and his expectations at home. there is in his manners a suspicion of insolence. if his belief in the thirty-nine articles does not bind him much, his belief in the fortieth does;namely, that he shall not find his superiors elsewhere. hence a complaint you shall often find made against him here, that, 1868] families. culture 269 whilst at his house he would resent as unpermissible that a guest should come to a seven o'clock dinner in undress, he bursts into yours in shooting-jacket. well, it is for the company to put him in the wrong by their perfect politeness. when i find in people narrow religion, i find narrow reading. remarkable [new england] families were: the three jackson brothers, – dr. james, judge charles, and patrick; the three lowell brothers, john, rev. dr. charles, and francis cabot lowell; the four lawrences, abbott, amos, luther, william; the cabots; the three hunts, william, richard, and leavitt (william hunt tells me also of his brother john, in paris); the washburns, three governors, i believe. culture is one thing, and varnish another. there can be no high culture without pure morals. with the truly cultivated man, — the maiden, the orphan, the poor man, and the hunted slave feel safe. there are so many men in the world that i can be spared to work a great while on one 270 journal (age 65 chapter;—so long that, when at last it is finished and printed and returns to me, i can read it without pain, and know that others can. farming. marshall miles said to me that he wants to come home to his old farm, and thinks he shall, presently; “for it is what you get out of the earth that is pure gain, but what we get by speculating, each on the other, is not.” a chapter on the intellect should begin low by examples; as thales and his shadow of the pyramid; or haüy and his finding the laws of cleavage in crystals, — and so instructing the lapidary how to cut; and plenty of other illustrations how the laws of real nature are turned into rules of thumb; and, if i understood them, that law of the “catenary” (is it?) of hooke's:' and the corollaries of chladni’s central discovery of music on the steel filings (for which see tyndall on sound); and if i could understand it again, the related suggestion of the form of the skeleton of mammals by dr. wyman from the iron filings on [a paper over] the magnet. i that the curve of a hanging chain, if reversed, will give a safe model for an arch. 271 1868] reading mrs. sarah alden ripley said that the farmers like to be complimented with thought. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1868 menu; bhagavat geeta; vishnu purana; pythagoras; confucius; æschylus; herodotus ; aristophanes; strabo; marcus aurelius; hafiz; tycho brahe; cudworth; pascal ; spinoza; robert hooke; dr. isaac watts, hymns and spiritual songs; jonathan edwards; franklin; gray; collins, ode to evening ; john hunter; niebuhr; washington; john adams; william vincent, voyage of nearchus; haüy; herder ; geoffroy sainthilaire; goethe; james madison; chladni, acoustics; alexander hamilton; schiller; samuel rogers, recollections ; cuvier ; hegel; oken; rev. w. e. channing; de quincey; keats ; champollion ; balzac; alcott; harriet martineau, eastern life; dupanloup; sainte-beuve, portraits contemporains; richard owen, paleontology; frederic h. hedge; disraeli; tennyson, the holy grail; o.w.holmes; martin tupper; 272 journal (age 65 lepsius; john bright; james mccosh; hay on etruscan pottery; jeffries wyman, symmetry and homology in human limbs; mommsen; w.e. channing; schwegler, history of philosophy; matthew arnold, thyrsis; lowell; charles k. newcomb; “george eliot,” the spanish gypsy; tyndall, on sound; max müller; charles eliot norton; john weiss; taine, nouveaux essais de critique ; ephraim wales gurney; william morris, king acrisius, the proud king; mrs. helen hunt, thought, ariadne's farewell. u rnal celtic bards and morte d’arthur tone in poetry friends richard hunt readings to class college marking judge hoar charles sumner hesiod. humboldt. agassiz poetry. good writing journal lx 1869 (from journals ny and ml) [in january, mr. emerson seems to have made a shorter lecturing trip than usual, going no farther west than cleveland.] (from ny) in this proposition lately brought to me by a class, it occurs that i could by readings show the difference between good poetry and what passes for good; that i could show how much so-called poetry is only eloquence; that i could vindicate the genius of wordsworth, and show his distinctive merits. i should like to call attention to the critical superiority of arnold, his excellent ear for style, and the singular poverty of his poetry, that in fact he has written but one poem, “thyrsis,” and that on an inspiration borrowed from milton. a topic would be this welsh genius (and arnold, too, has been attracted to that) which i recognized to-day in reading this new translator, skene, and which i find, as long ago, far more suggestive, conta276 journal [age 65 gious, or i will say, more inoculating the reader with poetic madness, than any poet i now think of, except hafiz. i can easily believe this an idiosyncrasy of mine, and, to describe it more accurately, i will add that i place these as not equal, but of like kind in genius and influence with the zoroastrian sentences, and those of the bhagavat geeta and the vishnu purana. ore there is always a height of land which, in a walk for pleasure or business, the party seek as the natural centre, or point of view; and there is in every book, whether poem or history, or treatise of philosophy, a height which attracts more than other parts, and which is best remembered. thus, in morte d'arthur, i remember nothing so well as merlin's cry from his invisible, inaccessible prison. to be sure, different readers select by natural affinity different points. in the proposed class, it would be my wish to indicate such points in literature, and thus be an “old guide,” like stephen, who shows, after ten years' daily trudging through the subterranean holes, the best wonders of the mammoth cave. the gripe of byron has not been repeated, and the delightful romance which came from scott to young america has not. tennyson has 1869) homer. tone in poetry 277 finer, more delicate beauty and variety, but does not possess men as the others did. tennyson has a perfect english culture, and its petulance. homer has this prerogative, that he never discovers in the iliad a preference to the greeks over the trojans. it were good to contrast the hospitality of abu bekr in the sahara with that of admetus in euripides's alcestis. that of the arab is at once noble, yet human; that of the king in the play is overstrained to absurdity. i have said above that tone, rather than lines, marks a genuine poem. wolfe's “not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,” is an example, so is sterling's “dædalus,” so “dinas emlinn” of scott, and scott always has that merit; and byron's incantation in “manfred,” and the whole of [the poem] charms, in spite of its shallowness, by that unity; and beaumont and fletcher's “melancholy." i think the vice of the french, their notorious incapacity of poetic power, is the total want of this music, which all their brilliant talent cannot supply. voltaire could see wholes as well as parts, and his testimony to french unpoetical278 journal (age 65 ness is distinct. “si le roi m'avait donné," etc., has right tone, and that little carol is still their best poem. many poems owe their fame to tone, as others to their sense. but victor hugo has genius in le semeur, and the star-piece, which i have saved. and, i must repeat, that one genial thought is the source of every true poem. i have heard that a unity of this kind pervades beethoven's great pieces in music. and why, but because tone gives unity? in the matter of religion, men eagerly fasten their eyes on the differences between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of men. the few stout and sincere persons, whom each one of us knows, recommend the country and the planet to us. 'tis not a bad world this, as long as i know that john m. forbes or william h. forbes and judge hoar, and agassiz, and my three children, and twenty other shining creatures whose faces i see looming through the mist, are walking in it. is it the thirty millions of america, or is it your ten 1869) immortality. speeches 279 inits that encourage your heart from day to day? seen of immortality, i should say that it is at least equally and perhaps better seen in little than in large angles. i mean, that in a calm and clear state of mind, we have no fears, no prayers, even; that we feel all is well. we have arrived at an enjoyment so pure, as to imply and affirm its perfect accord with the nature of things, so that it alone appears durable, and all mixed or inferior states accidental and temporary. the managers of the public conventions, political and other, understand well that they must set the fire going by ready popular speakers, like wilson, and russell, and swift, who will crackle and kindle, and afterwards they may venture to pile on the slow anthracite of argumentative judges and political economists; kindlings first, and then hard coal. m shakspeare. i think, with all due respect to aubrey, and dyce, and delia bacon, and judge holmes, that it is not by discovery of contemporary documents, but by more cunning 280 journal (age 65 reading of the book itself, that we shall at last eliminate the true biography of shakspeare. [on march 1, mr. emerson read before the woman's club an account of his aunt, mary moody emerson, with some extracts from her letters and journal. (see lectures and biographical sketches.)] montaigne says that “ socrates's virtue does seem to have been ever on the rack to perform its actions, but to have done them naturally and gracefully. ’t was a better born virtue than other men's.” in my visit to new york i saw one remarkable person new to me, richard hunt,' the architect. his conversation was spirited beyond any that i could easily remember, loaded with matter, and expressed with the vigour and fury of a member of the harvard boat or ball club relating the adventures of one of their matches; inspired, meantime, throughout, with fine theories of the possibilities of art. yet the tone of i as has been said before, mr. emerson always used eliminate as bring out, instead of leave out. 2 brother of william morris hunt, the painter. 1869) richard hunt 281 his voice and the accent of his conversation so strongly reminded me of my rural neighbour sam staples as to be in ludicrous contrast with the egyptian and greek grandeurs he was hinting or portraying. i could only think of the immense advantage which a thinking soul possesses when horsed on a robust and vivacious temperament. the combination is so rare of an irish labourer's nerve and elasticity with winckelmann's experience and cultivation as to fill one with immense hope of great results when he meets it in the new york of to-day. erve [mr. emerson's friend, james t. fields, the genial publisher and author, and his son-in-law, colonel william h. forbes, did him the friendly office of arranging for him a “class,” to whom he read, in chickering hall, on ten saturday afternoons in the spring, his favourite pieces of prose or verse, with some short introduction. among the subjects were, chivalry (extracts from old chronicles); chaucer; shakspeare ; ben jonson and lord bacon; herrick ; donne; herbert; vaughan; marvell; milton; johnson ; gibbon; burke ; cowper; wordsworth. these readings were much enjoyed by the class, but, in this wealth of material and 282 journal (age 65 the limits of an hour, many things that mr. emerson wished to read were not included, as appears from the following entry, which yet tells of many that were.] (from ml) march 21, 1869. readings at chickering hall. yesterday finished the tenth reading at chickering hall. many good things were read in these ten saturdays, and some important passages that had been selected were not read. read nothing of byron but the lines, “i twine my hopes of being remembered,” etc., from “childe harold”; nothing of sterling but “alfred the harper”; nothing of wordsworth but “helvellyn," “dion,” and verses from the “ode”; nothing from coleridge, prose or verse. from scott, i read the abbot and bruce in lord of the isles ; “helvellyn”; “look not thou when beauty's charming." read nothing from blake but“ persecution.” from gray, nothing. from campbell, nothing. from clough, thoreau, channing, brownell, mellen, longfellow, arnold, willis, sprague, nothing. of moore, nothing. i had designed to read some pages on the art of writing, on language, compression, etc.; se 1869) boston readings 283 but with the exception of a page or two on the dire, tò delvóv, omitted them. little searching criticism was given. i meant to show some inspired prose from charles k. newcomb, sampson reed, mary moody emerson, etc., but did not. i meant to have one ethical reading, and one oriental : but they came not. nothing from goethe except the “song of the parcæ” in iphigenia. nothing from horatio greenough. did not read the proposed hymns of watts, and barbauld, or sir thomas browne. i designed to read from montaigne, of “friendship,” of “ socrates,” but did not. from goethe, west östlichen divan. from coleridge, lay sermons, literary biography, friend. from plutarch’s morals; synesius; plotinus. from james hogg, read only “kilmeny”; had wished to read “the witch of fife.” of samuel ferguson, should have read “forging of the anchor”; of frederic h. hedge, should have read lines in the dial; and from brownell, “the old cove”; and from ellen hooper, “sweep ho!” what selections from plato i might read! e.g., theages, and the beginning and end of phadon, and the naïvetés of the apology. carlyle's por284 journal [age 65 trait of webster in letter to me. story of berthollet, and examples of courage; fra cristoforo, in i promessi sposi. and, in american poets remember sarah palfrey's “sir pavon,” and helen hunt's “ thought.”. eugène fromentin on arab hospitality ; lord carnarvon's speech in the house of lords on the impeachment of the earl of danby ; faryabi, in d’herbelot; the cid's arraignment of his sons-inlaw before the cortes ; romeo, in cary; lord bacon's “young scholar,” “ships of time,” speech for essex; earl of devonshire, from coleridge's “ puritan soldier"; lay sermons ; story of marvell's refusal of royal bounty. gibbon's conception and conclusion of the history. hobbes's definition of laughter (not read); hobbes's barbarous society (not read); john quincy adams's peroration; behmen, life of christ. milton, prose and poetry. charles k. newcomb, of swedenborg and brook farm; dr. johnson, “iona”; hindoo books; chivalry, lord herbert; chief justice crewe; merlin in morte d'arthur; the lion story; “ celinda”; cid; horn of roland in chanson de roland; voltaire on french poetry; niei most of what is above and what follows are reminders for another year. 1869) poetical readings 285 buhr's view of poetry; creation of new characters; pepys's notices of shakspeare and clarendon. poetry. “dædalus,” unread; wordsworth, “ the intellectual power from words to things went sounding on, a dim and perilous way”; “ russian snow," not read; beaumont and fletcher, “ melancholy,” “ lines on an honest man's fortune”; speech of caratach in bonduca, scene i; gray and collins — inimitable skill in perfectly modern verse; had digested their classics. jones very's two poems, “the strangers ”and “barberry bush," with notes of jones very. william blake's “persecution,” and allingham's “touchstone”; clough; henry kirke white's “herb rosemary”; waller's “rose,” and bayly's “round my own lovely rose,” and mrs. hemans's “nightingale”; hogg's “witch of fife”; tennyson's “memory”; byron's “shipwreck,” and “out upon time”; bryant's “waterfowl.” ... coup-de-force poetry, everett; lapidary or gem-carving; eloquent; biblical; sculpturesque, m. angelo; vers de société, daniel webster. 286 journal (age 65 the mountain seemed, though the soft sheen all enchants, cheers the rough crag and mournful dell, as if on such stern forms and haunts a wintry storm more fitly fell. et vocatus et non vocatus deus aderit. invoked or uninvoked, the god will be present. who was the king to whom the sophist wished to teach the art of memory, and who replied, that he would give him a greater reward if he could teach him to forget? no more irreconcilable persons brought to annoy and confound each other in one room than are sometimes actually lodged by nature in one man's skin. memory. it sometimes occurs that memory has a personality of its own, and volunteers or refuses its information at its will, not at mine. i ask myself, is it not some old aunt who goes in and out of the house, and occasionally recites anecdotes of old times and persons, which i recognize as having heard before, — and she being gone again, i search in vain for any trace of the anecdotes ? 1869] the current. bunsen 287 march 29. alcott came, and talked plato and socrates, extolling them with gravity. i bore it long, and then said, that was a song for others, not for him. he should find what was the equivalent for these masters in our times; for surely the world was always equal to itself, and it was for him to detect what was the counter-weight and compensation to us. was it natural science ? was it the immense dilution of the same amount of thought into nations? i told him to shut his eyes, and let his thoughts run into reverie or whithersoever, — and then take an observation. he would find that the current went outward from man, not to man. consciousness was upstream. bunsen's physiognomy, as i remember him in london, suggested not a noble, but the common german scholar, with marked sentimentalism, or, as we commonly say, gushing ; and these prayers, and violent conventicle utterances to which he runs in his correspondence and diary, betray that temperament. yet he had talent and generosity, and appears to have been highly useful. 288 journal (age 66 may 5, died philip physick randolph, son of the late jacob randolph, m. d.' "son on may 17, mr. emerson read a paper on religion at the house of the rev. j.t. sargent; and on may 28, spoke at the second annual meeting of the free religious association.] god had infinite time to give us; but how did he give it? in one immense tract of a lazy millennium? no, but he cut it up into neat succession of new mornings, and, with each, therefore, a new idea, new inventions, and new applications. “the door of intercourse is closed between those confined and those unconfined by space," say the ali ilahi an.dabistan. the religions are the amusements of the intellect. хипе. yesterday, saturday, june 12, the committee on scale of merit and discipline met at dr. walker's in cambridge. present, dr. walker, professor runkle, theodore lyman, and i. rev. mr. hale alone was absent. dr. walker 1 a young man of high and serious mind living in philadelphia, valued by mr. emerson. re 1869) college discipline 289 gave some details of the manner in which the scale is made up, and stated that the faculty were for the most part contented with it as it stands, and do not wish any alteration. he added that there is question and inconvenience in regard to elective studies. for the poor men, it is matter of grave importance that they shall have rank sufficient to obtain a scholarship, that is, an income; and when elective studies are proposed, they do not choose that which they wish to learn, but that which will give the most marks, that is, highest rank. it was stated that the idle boys would choose botany, or some other study which cost no thought and little attention, and it was not quite fair that for such idle reading they should receive equally high marks with those who elected severer studies as trigonometry, or metaphysics, or advanced studies in greek. mr. lyman said the state of study was much superior at present to that which he remembered when in college, and alluded to the performance of young hill at the examination. some of the professors, as mr. lowell and mr. peirce, senior, do not keep a daily account of merits of the students, but make up a general average, each in a way of his own. it was sug290 journal (age 66 wgested that whilst each teacher should keep a daily record of the quality of recitations, he should by no means present that in his final report, but should correct it by his growing knowledge of the depth of real merit of the student, as shown to him by his proficiency and power, or his want of success, as made known in decisive strokes from time to time. it is the necessary result of the existing system the mixing of the record of deportment with that of scholarship, and thus degrading a good scholar, if by neglect of prayers or recitations he had incurred a “public admonition," or raising the rank of a dull scholar if he was punctual and in deportment blameless. president hosmer, of antioch college, tells me that there they do not mark for merit; and that, for discipline they organize the students in the dormitory into a society for noting and resisting all breaches of order. the students have a president and other officers, and when any disturbance occurs they examine, and vote perhaps to recommend the expulsion of the offenders, -'which the college government then considers and decides. at present, the friends of harvard are possessed in greater or less degree by the idea of 1869) college marking 291 making it a university for men, instead of a college for boys. one would say that this better moral record should only serve to give the casting vote in favour of good behaviour, where the marks for scholarship were equal. i think every one who has had any experience in marking a series of recitations has found how uncertainly his 6, and 7, and 8 are given. his first attempt will be worthless except in the extreme numbers, and can only be approximately trustworthy in a great number of days. july 1. judge hoar, in his speech at the alumni dinner at cambridge yesterday, was a perfect example of coleridge's definition of genius, “ the carrying the feelings of youth into the powers of manhood”; and the audience were impressed and delighted with the rare combination of the innocence of a boy with the faculty of a hero. (from loose sheets of uncertain date) charles sumner.' clean, self-poised, greati it is possible that this tribute to sumner may have been written much earlier during president johnson's administration, when sumner was striving to prevent any reconstruction 292 journal (age 66 hearted man, noble in person, incorruptible in life, the friend of the poor, the champion of the oppressed. of course, congress must draw from every part of the country swarms of individuals intent only on their private interests, eager only for private interests who could not love his stern justice. but if they gave him no high employment, he made low work high by the dignity of honesty and truth. but men cannot long do without faculty and perseverance, and he rose, step by step, to the mastery of all affairs entrusted to him, and by those lights and upliftings with which the spirit that makes the universe rewards labour and brave truth. he became learned and adequate to the highest questions, and the counsellor of every correction of old errors and of every noble reform. how nobly he bore himself in disastrous times ! every reform he led or assisted. in the shock of the war his patriotism never failed. a man of varied learning and accomplishments. he held that every man is to be judged by the horizon of his mind, and fame he defined as the shadow of excellence, but that which follows him, not which he follows after. a measures that would keep the franchise from the coloured people and fail to secure their equal rights as citizens. ise re 0 man 1869) charles sumner 293 tragic character, like algernon sydney; a man of conscience and courage, but without humour. fear did not exist for him. sumner has been collecting his works. they will be the history of the republic for the last twenty-five years, as told by a brave, perfectly honest, and well-instructed man with social culture and relation to all eminent persons. diligent and able workman, without humour, but with persevering study while reading, excellent memory, high sense of honour, disdaining any bribe, any compliances, and incapable of falsehood. his singular advantages of person, of manners, and a statesman's conversation, impress every one favourably. he has the foible of most public men, the egotism which seems almost unavoidable at washington. i sat in his room once at washington whilst he wrote a weary succession of letters, — he writing without pause as fast as if he were copying. he outshines all his mates in historical conversation and is so public in his regards that he cannot be relied on to push an office-seeker, so that he is no favourite with politicians. but wherever i have met with a dear lover of the country and its moral interests, he is sure to be a supporter of sumner. 294 journal [age 66 it characterizes a man for me that he hates charles sumner: for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible and a vice. sumner's moral instinct and character are so exceptionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for honest men; his ability and working energy such, that every good friend of the republic must stand by him. those who come near him and are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if you please) of using classic quotations, or other bad taste, easily forgive these whims, if themselves are good; or magnify them into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his virtue. and when he read one night in concord a lecture on lafayette we felt that of all americans he was best entitled by his own character and fortunes to read that eulogy. every pericles must have his creon; sumner had his adversaries, his wasps and backbiters. we almost wished that he had not stooped to answer them. but he condescended to give them truth and patriotism, without asking whether they could appreciate the instruction or not. a man of such truth that he can be truly described : he needs no exaggerated praise. not a man of extraordinary genius, but a man 1869] sumner. austria 295 of great heart, of a perpetual youth, incapable of any fraud, little or large; loving his friend, and loving his country, with perfect steadiness to his purpose, shunning no labour that his aim required; and his works justified him by their scope and thoroughness. he had good masters, who quickly found that they had a good scholar. he read law with judge story, who was at the head of the law school of harvard university, and who speedily discovered the value of his pupil, and called him to his assistance in the law school. he had great talent for labour, and spared no time and no research to make himself master of his subject. his treatment of every question was faithful and exhaustive and marked always by the noble sentiment. (from ny) july 26. this morning sent my six prose volumes, revised and corrected, to fields and company for their new edition in two volumes. landor says, “a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole extent of austria, an extent several thousand times greater than 296 journal (age 66 our city (florence); and this very street has given birth to fifty.” -works, vol. i, p. 191. “annibal caracci said to his scholar, what you do not understand, you must darken.” – landor. at walden, the other day, with george bradford, i was struck, as often, with the expression of refinement which nature wears often in such places ; — the bright sunshine reflected by the agreeable forms of the water, the shore-line, and the forest, the soft lapping sound of the water. at my club, i suppose i behave very ill in securing always, if i can, a place by a valued friend, and, though i suppose (though i have never heard it) that i offend by this selection, sometimes too visible, my reason is that i, who rarely see, in ordinary, select society, must make the best use of this opportunity, having, at the same time, the feeling that “i could be happy with either, were the other dear charmer away." sam i am interested not only in my advantages, but in my disadvantages, that is, in my fortunes proper; that is, in watching my fate, to notice, after each act of mine, what result. is it prosperous? is it adverse ? and thus i find a pure swe 1869) politicians. hesiod 297 entertainment of the intellect, alike in what is called good or bad. in xenophon’s banquet, critobulus says, “i swear by all the gods, i would not choose the power of the persian king in preference to beauty.” washington city. i notice that they who drink for some time the potomac water lose their relish for the water of the charles river, the merrimack, and the connecticut. but i think the public health requires that the potomac water should be corrected by copious infusions of these provincial streams. rockwood hoar retains his relish for the musketaquid. sumner cites cato as saying “that kings were carnivorous animals.” in looking into hesiod's works and days, i am reminded how much harm our clocks and almanacs do us by withdrawing our attention from the stars, the annual winds, and rains, habits of animals, and whatever primary observations of nature the ancient nations relied on. their year was throughout religious and imaginative. “sit in the shade, and drink moreover dark298 [age 66 journal hued wine — pour in three cups of water first and add the fourth of wine.” — hesiod. “you, perses, flattered much the bribeswallowing judges. fools, they know neither how much half exceeds the whole, nor how great advantage is in mallow and asphodel.” — bohn's hesiod, p. 76. “sow stripped, plough stripped, and reap stripped, if thou wouldst gather the works of ceres.” — idem, p. 95. the same periodicity — shall i say — reigns in fable, and brings the wildest curve round to a true moral, as works in electricity, gravitation, and the crystal. and this is also expressed in tone and rhythm. [the boston society of natural history celebrated, on september 14, the centennial anniversary of the birth of alexander von humboldt. mr. emerson was invited to speak, and an abstract of his remarks is printed in the miscellanies. some additional sentences are given in what follows.] september. humboldt one of those wonders of the world like aristotle, like crichton, like newton, apney 1869) humboldt 299 pearing now and then as if to show us the possibilities of the genus homo, the powers of the eye, the range of the faculties; whose eyes are natural telescopes and microscopes and whose faculties are so symmetrically joined that they have perpetual presence of mind, and can read nature by bringing instantly their insight and their momentary observation together; whilst men ordinarily are, as it were, astonished by the new object, and do not on the instant bring their knowledge to bear on it. other men have memory which they can ransack, but humboldt's memory was wide awake to assist his observation. our faculties are a committee that slowly, one at a time, give their attention and opinion, – but his, all united by electric chain, ... you could not lose him. he was the man of the world, if ever there was one. you could not lose him ; you could not detain him; you could not disappoint him. the tardy spaniards were months in getting their expedition ready and it was a year that he waited; but spain or africa or asia were all harvest fields to this armed eye, to this lyncæus who could see through the earth, and through the ocean, who knew how mountains were built, and seas drained. ... we p. ari e 300 journal (age 66 agassiz never appeared to such advantage as in his biographical discourse on humboldt, at the music hall in boston, yesterday. what is unusual for him, he read a written discourse, about two hours long; yet all of it strong, nothing to spare, not a weak point, no rhetoric, no falsetto ; — his personal recollections and anecdotes of their intercourse, simple, frank, and tender in the tone of voice, too, no error of egotism or of self-assertion, and far enough from french sentimentalism. he is quite as good a man as his hero, and not to be duplicated, i fear. i admire his manliness, his equality always to the occasion, to any and every company, — never a fop, never can his manners be separated from himself. i never could get beyond five steps in my enumeration of intellectual powers ; say, instinct, perception, memory, imagination (including fancy as a subaltern), reasoning or understanding. some of the lower divisions, as genius, talent, logic, wit, and humour, pathos, can be dealt with more easily. the person who commands the servant successfully is the one who does not think of the 1869) real poems. dream 301 manner, solely thinking that this thing must be done. command is constitutional. october 19. carried to fields and company to-day the copy of the four first chapters of my so-called new book, society and solitude. i read a good deal of experimental poetry in the new books. the author has said to himself, “who knows but this may please, and become famous ? did not goethe experiment? does not this read like the ancients ? ” but good poetry was not written thus, but it delighted the poet first; he said and wrote it for joy, and it pleases the reader for the same reason. october 21. i wish i could recall my singular dream of last night with its physics, metaphysics, and rapid transformations, all impressive at the moment, that on waking at midnight i tried to rehearse them, that i might keep them till morn. i fear 't is all vanished. i noted how we magnify the inward world, and emphasize it to hypocrisy by contempt of house and land and man's condition, which we call shabby and beastly. but in a few minutes these have their 302 journal (age 66 revenge, for we look to their chemistry and perceive that they are miracles of combination of ethereal elements, and do point instantly to moral causes. general wayne was the commissioner of the government who first saw the importance of the nook of land at the foot of lake michigan round which the road to the northwest must run, and managed to run the boundary line of illinois in such manner as to include this swamp, called chicago, within it. aunt mary held a relation to good society not very uncommon. she was strongly drawn to it as to the reputed theatre for genius, but her eccentricity disgusted it, and she was quite too proud and impulsive to sit and conform. so she acquiesced, and made no attempt to keep place, and knew it only in the narratives of a few friends like mrs. george lee, mrs. mary schalkwic, miss searle, etc., with whom she had been early intimate, and who for her genius tolerated or forgave her oddities. but her sympathy and delight in its existence daily appear through all her disclaimers and fine scorn. good writing. all writing should be selecwriti 09 1869] cancelling. plutarch 303 tion in order to drop every dead word. why do you not save out of your speech or thinking only the vital things, — the spirited mot which amused or warmed you when you spoke it, — because of its luck and newness? i have just been reading, in this careful book of a most intelligent and learned man, any number of flat conventional words and sentences. if a man would learn to read his own manuscript severely, — becoming really a third person, and search only for what interested him, he would blot to purpose, — and how every page would gain! then all the words will be sprightly, and every sentence a surprise. i will tell you what it is to be immortal, this, namely, that i cannot read plutarch without perpetual reminders of men and women whom i know. e dr. hedge tells us that the indian asked john eliot,“ why god did not kill the devil ?” one would like to know what was eliot's answer. december 8. the scholar wants not only time but warm time, good anthracite or cannel coal to make every minute in the hour avail. 304 journal (age 66 “harmony latent is of greater value than that which is visible.” – heraclitus. calvinism. there is a certain weakness in solemnly threatening the human being with the revelations of the judgment day, as mrs. stowe winds up her appeal to the executors of lady byron. an honest man would say, why refer it? all that is true and weighty with me has all its force now. we meet people who seem to overlook and read us with a smile, but they do not tell us what they read. now and then we say things to our mates, or hear things from them, which seem to put it out of the power of the parties to be strangers again.' especially if any one show me a stroke of courage, a piece of inventive wit, a trait of character, or a pure delight in character when shown by others, henceforward i must be that man's or that woman's debtor, as one who has discovered to me among perishing men somewhat more clean and incorruptible than the light of these midnight stars. indeed, the only real benefit of which we are susceptible is (is it not?) to have man dignified for us. 1 this sentence occurs in social aims (p. 89). 1869) agassiz's illness 305 “to declare war against length of time.” — simonides. compensation of failing memory in age by the increased power and means of generalization. i asked theodore lyman on saturday how it was exactly with agassiz's health. he said “ that no further paralysis had appeared, and that he seemed not threatened. it was not apoplexy, but a peculiarity of his constitution, — these turns of insensibility which had occurred. it was bysteria." i replied that i had often said that agassiz appeared to have two or three men rolled up into his personality, but i had never suspected there was any woman also in his make. lyman replied that he had himself seen hysteria oftener in men than in women. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1869 zoroaster; hesiod, works and days; simonides; heracleitus; euripides, alcestis; xenophon, banquet; cato the elder; proclus; arthurian romances; dabistan ; james (“ the admirable ") crichton; sir philip sidney, life of, by lord brooke; de 306 (age 66 journal retz ; aubrey ; sprat, death of cromwell, apud johnson; addison, cato; voltaire; winckelmann; humboldt; rev. w. e. channing; varnhagen von ense; haydon; chevalier bunsen; alexander dyce ; alcott; victor hugo, le semeur ; agassiz ; tennyson ; crabbe robinson, diary; la cité antique; charles sumner; harriet beecher stowe, lady byron vindicated; fromentin, un été dans le sabara; w. ellery channing, poems ; matthew arnold, poems; m. h. cobb, outward bound; o. w. holmes, jr. see also the list of authors and poems and passages quoted in the readings on pages 282285. journal memory. dreams thoreau. alvah crocker sampson reed metaphysicians plutarch. his morals nantasket beach mary moody emerson mount washington. the notch imagination. chivalry harvard memorial hall foreign culture the pilgrims journal lxi 1870 (from journals ny and st) [during january, mr. emerson was preparing his preface to a new translation, by professor william watson goodwin, of plutarcb's morals. this, by the kindness of messrs. little and brown, the publishers, is included in the works (lectures and biographical sketches).] (from ny) february 3, 1870. the last proof-sheet of society and solitude comes back to me to-day for correction. mr. charles p. ware tells edward that the night before the cambridge commemoration day he spent at mr. hudson's room, in cambridge, and woke from a dream which he could not remember, repeating these words, and what they dare to dream of, dare to die for. he went to the pavilion dinner, and there heard mr. lowell read his poem, and when he came to the lines :310 journal (age 66 “those love her best who to themselves are true and what” — ware said, “now i know what's coming, but it won't rhyme ;” and mr. lowell proceeded, " they dare to dream of, dare to do.” no mention of lectures is found until the spring, except before lyceums in neighboring towns, and one in philadelphia, february 7, an excursion always pleasant, for there mr. emerson met his old schoolmates of his boston boyhood, rev. william h. furness and mr. samuel bradford.] february 24. bettine, in varnhagen's diary, reminds me continually of aunt mary, though the first is ever helping herself with a lie, which the other abhorred. but the dwelling long with grief and with genius on your wrongs and wrongdoers, exasperating the offender with habitual reproaches, puts the parties in the worst relation and at last incapacitates the complaining woman from seeing what degree of right or of necessity there is on the side of her offender, and what good reason he has to complain of her wrath and insults. ci 11870] lowell on thoreau 311 this ever increasing bias of the injured party has all the mischief of lying. february 27. at club yesterday, lowell, longfellow, cabot, brimmer, appleton, hunt, james, forbes, fields. erastus bigelow' was a guest. how dangerous is criticism. my brilliant friend’ cannot see any healthy power in thoreau's thoughts. at first i suspect, of course, that he oversees me, who admire thoreau's power. but when i meet again fine perceptions in thoreau's papers, i see that there is defect in his critic that he should undervalue them. thoreau writes, in his field notes, “i look back for the era of this creation not into the 1 the inventor and improver of various looms, and writer on the tariff. 2 probably lowell. there is some reason to believe that lowell, later, came to revise his superficial view in his chapter on thoreau, which, however, unfortunately remains to amuse and prejudice his readers against thoreau. when the criticism was written, lowell probably founded it on walden, in which thoreau felt the need of giving the conventional religion, timid politics, and blindness to nature of his fellowcitizens a shake. of the beauty and height of his thought, as seen in the journals — the poet-naturalist aspect — lowell had little knowledge when that paper was written. 312 journal (age 66 night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.” a fine example of his affirmative genius. march 15. my new book sells faster, it appears, than either of its foregoers. this is not for its merit, but only shows that old age is a good advertisement. your name has been seen so often that your book must be worth buying. i hate protection of trade in our politics, and now i recall in what stillman said of the greek war, — that the english opposition to the independence of greece is merely out of fear of its depriving them of the eastern trade. a gentleman, english, french, or american, is rare; i think i remember every one i have ever seen. march 16. musagetes. after the social circle had broken up, last night, and only two remained with me, one said that a cigar had uses. if you found yourself in a hotel with writing to do, fire just kindled in a cold room,-it was hard to begin; but light a cigar, and you were presently comfortable, and in condition to work. mr. 1870] alvah crocker's road 313 simon brown then said, that he had never smoked, but as an editor (of the new england farmer) he had much writing, and he often found himself taking up a little stick and whittling away on it, and, in a short time, brought into tune and temper by that yankee method. alvah crocker gave me in the cars a history of his activity in the matter of the fitchburg railroad, beginning, i think, in 1837. he is the author of the road. he was a paper manufacturer, and could not get the material for making paper for less than eight cents a pound, whilst in boston and elsewhere it could be got for two, three, and four cents. he must find a way to bring fitchburg nearer to boston. he knew the country round him and studied the possibilities of each connection. he found he must study the nearest practicable paths to tidewater. no man but he had faith in the rivers; nashua river. after studying the hoosac mountains well, he decided that the mountain must be perforated. he must see loammi baldwin, who was the best engineer in the state. he could not get at that busy man. he knew that his own mother's dearest friend had been the lady who 314 journal (age 66 was now mr. baldwin's wife. to her he went, and told her who he was, and that he wished of all things to see mr. baldwin. the lady said, “i loved your mother dearly, but i know nothing of you; but for her sake, i will take care that you shall see him. come here, say, next sunday after dinner, about 3 o'clock, that is the right time, and i will see that mr. baldwin shall answer all your questions.” he did so. dream. the waking from an impressive dream is a curious example of the jealousy of the gods. there is an air as if the sender of the illusion had been heedless for a moment that the reason had returned to its seat, and was startled into attention. instantly, there is a rush from some quarter to break up the drama into a chaos of parts, then of particles, then of ether, like smoke dissolving in a wind; it cannot be disintegrated fast enough or fine enough. if you could give the waked watchman the smallest fragment, he could reconstruct the whole; for the moment, he is sure he can and will; but his attention is so divided on the disappearing parts, that he cannot grasp the least atomy, and the last fragment or film disappears before he could say, “i have it.” 1870) clubs. arago. carlyle 315 “aimer à lire, c'est faire un échange des heures d'ennui que l'on doit avoir en sa vie, contre des beures délicieuses.” — montesquieu, pensées. march. in “clubs” i ought to have said that men being each a treasure-house of valuable experiences,—and yet the man often shy and daunted by company into dumbness,it needs to court him, to put him at his ease, to make him laugh or weep, and so at last to get his naturel confessions, and his best experience. the blinded arago's “ ardent age.” — “ sa vieillesse est aussi remarquable que celle de m.de humboldt, elle est même plus ardente.” – varnhagen, vol. x, p. 100. i ought to have had arago among my heroes in “old age,” and humboldt, and agesilaus. s . march 23. on the 31st, i received president eliot's letter signifying the acceptance of carlyle's bequest of the cromwellian and friedrich books by the corporation of harvard college, and enclosing the vote of the corporation. i wrote to carlyle the same day enclosing the president's letter to 316 [age 66 journal me, and the record of their vote, and mailed it yesterday morning to him.' “study for eternity smiled on me.” varnhagen says, “ goethe once said to me, “how can the narrative be always right? the things themselves are not always right'"; and varnhagen adds: “a microscopic history is not better than one seen with the natural, unarmed eye; — not the rightness of the now invisible littles, but the gross impression is the main thing.” – varnhagen, vol. x, p. 174. at wiesbaden, an englishman being addressed by another guest at the table, called the waiter, and said to him aloud, “waiter, say to that gentleman that i won't speak with him.” this delighted varnhagen, and he adds, “ worthy of imitation. nothing more odious than table d'hôte conversation.” i for the account of the generous gift which carlyle felt moved to make to the college, see the carlyle-emerson correspondence. the widow of general charles russell lowell (sister of colonel robert g. shaw) had visited carlyle with a letter of introduction from mr. emerson, had talked freely with him about our war and sent him the harvard memorial biographies to enlighten him on the cause and its heroes. 1870] university lectures 317 musagetes. goethe's fly. read not in your official professional direction too steadily, — rather less and less, but, where you find excitement, awakening, for every surface is equally near to the centre. every one has his own experience, – but i find the contrasts most suggestive. [under the new and more liberal dispensation of president eliot's administration, courses of “university lectures” were established, and mr. emerson was invited to give a course of sixteen in the philosophical department in april and may. these were:-1, introductory, the praise of knowledge; ii, transcendency of physics; iii and iv, perception; v and vi, memory; vii, imagination ; viii, inspiration; ix, genius; x, common sense ; xi, identity; xii, xiii, metres of mind; xiv, the platonists; xv, conduct of intellect ; xvi, relation of intellect to morals. 7 identity. bias. the best identity is the practical one, as in the pure satisfaction felt in finding that we have long since said, written, or done somewhat quite true and fit for ourselves. steffens relates that he went into schelling's lecture-room at jena (?). schelling said, “gen318 (age 66 journal tlemen, think of the wall.” all the class at once took attitudes of thought; some stiffened themselves up; some shut their eyes; all concentrated themselves. after a time, he said, “gentlemen, think of that which thought the wall.” then there was trouble in all the camp. the scholar who abstracted himself with pain to make the analysis of hegel is less enriched than when the beauty and depth of any thought by the wayside has commanded his mind and led to new thought and action; for this is healthy, and these thoughts light up the mind. he is made aware of the walls, and also of the open way leading outward and upward, whilst the other analytic process is cold and bereaving, and, — shall i say it? — somewhat mean, as spying. the delicate lines of character in aunt mary, rahel, margaret fuller, sarah a. ripley, need good metaphysic, better than hegel's, to read and delineate. there is one other reason for dressing well than i have ever considered, namely, that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes. the strength of his moral convictions is the charm of the character of fichte. 1870] plutarch. randolph 319 autograph letters. wise was the turkish cadi who said, “o my friend, my liver, the questioner is one, and the answer is another.” i find plutarch a richer teacher of rhetoric than any modern. plutarch quotes, as a true judgment, this, “that this courteous, gentle, and benign disposition and behaviour is not so acceptable, so obliging, and delightful to any of those with whom they converse, as it is to those who have it.” – plutarch, morals, vol. i, p. 59. old age. here is a good text from montesquieu : “ les vieillards qui ont étudié dans leur jeunesse n'ont besoin que de se ressouvenir, et non d'apprendre. cela est bien beureux.” — pensées, p. 232. june 9. i find philip randolph almost if not quite on a level with my one or two olympic friends in his insight, as shown in his manuscript, which i have been reading. he made that impression on me once and again in our interviews whilst he lived, and in his paper which was promised to the north american review. but in these papers on science, philosophy, poetry, 320 (age 67 journal painting, and music, the supremacy of his faith purely shines. how much it ever pleases me that this pure spiritualist was the best chess-player in philadelphia, and, according to evan randolph's account to me, had beaten the best players in paris! plutarch rightly tells the anecdote of alexander (badly remembered and misrelated usually) that he wept when he heard from anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds ; and his friends asking if any accident had befallen him, he replied, “don't you think it a matter for my lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of them, i have not yet conquered one?” — plutarch, morals, vol. i, p. 134. were i professor of rhetoric, i would urge my class to read plutarch's morals in english, and cotton's montaigne for their english style. we think we do a great service to our country in publishing this book if we hereby force our public men to read the “apophthegms of great commanders,” before they make their speeches to caucuses and conventions. if i could keep the secret, and communicate it only 1870] philosophies grow old 321 to one or two chosen youths, i should know that they would by this noble infiltration easily carry the victory over all competitors. but as it was the desire of these old patriots to fill rome or sparta with this majestic spirit, and not a few leaders only, we desire to offer them to the american people. the reason of a new philosophy or philosopher is ever that a man of thought finds that he cannot read in the old books. i can't read hegel, or schelling, or find interest in what is told me from them, so i persist in my own idle and easy way, and write down my thoughts, and find presently that there are congenial persons who like them, so i persist, until some sort of outline or system grows. 'tis the common course : ever a new bias. it happened to each of these, heraclitus, or hegel, or whosoever. june 30. i cannot but please myself with the recoil when plutarch tells me that “the athenians had such an abhorrence of those who accused socrates that they would neither lend them fire, nor answer them any question, nor wash with them in the same water, but commanded 322 journal (age 67 the servants to pour it out as polluted, till these sycophants, no longer able to bear up under the pressure of this hatred, put an end to their own lives.” – plutarch, morals, vol. ii, p. 96. ure i find nouvelle biographie générale a perpetual benefactor,—almost sure on every consultation to answer promptly and well. long live m. le docteur hoefer! just now he has answered fully on plutarch, suetonius, amyot, but i dared not believe he would know dr. philemon holland, — yet he answered at once joyfully concerning him; and even cites the epigram upon him :“ philemon with translations will so fill us he cannot let suetonius be tranquillus.” july 14. here at nantasket beach, with ellen, i wonder that so few men do penetrate what seems the secret of the innkeeper. he runs along the coast, and perceives that by buying a few acres, well chosen, of the seashore, which cost no more or not so much as good land elsewhere, and building a good house, he shifts upon nature the whole duty of filling it with guests, the sun, the moon, the stars, the rainbow, the 1870) nantasket 323 sea, the islands, the whole horizon, not elsewhere seen, ships of all nations. all of these (and all unpaid) take on themselves the whole charge of entertaining his guests, and filling and delighting their senses with shows; and it were long to tell in detail the attractions which these furnish. everything here is picturesque: the long beach is every day renewed with pleasing and magical shows, with variety of colour, with the varied music of the rising and falling water, with the multitudes of fishes, and the birds and men that prey on them; with the strange forms of the radiates sprawling on the beach; with shells ; with the beautiful variety of sea-rolled pebbles, — of quartz, porphyry, sienite, mica, and limestone. the man buys a few acres, but he has all the good and all the glory of a hundred square miles, by the cunning choice of the place; for the storm is one of the grand entertainers of his company; so is the sun, and the moon, and all the stars of heaven, since they who see them here, in all their beauty, and in the grand area or amphitheatre which they need for their right exhibition, feel that they have never rightly seen them before. the men and women who come to the house, and swarm or scatter in groups along the 324 (age 67 journal spacious beach, or in yachts, or boats, or in carriages, or as bathers, never appeared before so gracious and inoffensive. in these wide stretches, the largest company do not jostle one another. then to help him, even the poor indians from maine and canada creep on to the outskirts of the hotel to pitch their tents, and make baskets and bows and arrows to add a picturesque feature. multitudes of children decorate the piazza, and the grounds in front, with their babble and games; and in this broad area every individual from least to largest is inoffensive and an entertaining variety. to make the day complete, i saw from the deck of our boat this morning, coming out of the bay, the english steamer which lately made the perilous jump on minot's ledge, and this afternoon i saw the turret monitor, miantonomob, sailing into boston. the parlours, chambers, and the table of the rockland house were all good, but the supreme relish of these conveniences was this superb panorama which the wise choice of the place on which the house was built afforded. this selection of the site gives this house the like advantage over other houses that an astronomical observatory has over other towers, namely, that this particular tower leads you to the 1870] mrs. howe. aunt mary 325 heavens, and searches depths of space before inconceivable. july 21. i am filling my house with books which i am bound to read, and wondering whether the new heavens which await the soul (after the fatal hour) will allow the consultation of these. i honour the author of the “battle hymn,” and of “the flag.” she was born in the city of new york. i could well wish she were a native of massachusetts. we have had no such poetess in new england. august 7. this morning i think no subject so fit for poetry as home, the massachusetts or the american home. 10 i find my readings of aunt mary ever monitory and healthful as of old, and for the reason that they are moral inspirations. all the men and women whose talents challenge my admiration from time to time lack this depth of source, and are therefore comparatively shallow. they amuse, they may be inimitable ; i am proud of them as countrymen and contemporaries; but it is as music or pictures, — and other music and pictures would have served me as well; but. 326 journal (age 67 they do not take rank hold of me as consolers, uplifters, and hinderers from sleep. but the moral muse is eternal, and wakes us to eternity, pervades the whole man. socrates is not distant; sparta is nearer than new york; marcus antoninus is of no age; plotinus and porphyry, confucius and menu had a deeper civilization than paris or london; and the deeply religious men and women in or out of our churches are really the salt of our civilization, and constitute the nerve and tension of our politics in germany, england, and america. the men of talent see the power of principle, and the necessity of respecting it, but they deal with its phenomena, and not with the source. it is learned and wielded as an accomplishment and a weapon. as i have before written, that no number of nays will help,only one rea, and this is moral. strength enters according to the presence of the moral element. there are no bounds to this power. if it have limits, we have not found them. it domesticates. they are not our friends who are of our household, but they who think and see with us. but it is ever wonderful where the moral element comes from. · the christian doctrine not only modifies the irce 1870] the white mountains 327 individual character, but the individual character modifies the christian doctrine in luther, in augustine, in fénelon, in milton.— something like this i read in lévêque or antoninus. pm september 2. with edward took the 7.30 a. m. train from boston to portland, thence to south paris, where we took a carriage and reached waterford, mr. houghton's inn, at 5 p. m. thence, the next afternoon, to south paris, carried by mr. wilkins, and took the train for gorham, and thence immediately the stage to the glen house, mount washington, where we arrived near 9 o'clock in the evening. spent sunday, september 4, and on monday, september 5, at 8 o'clock, ascended the mountain in open carriage ; descended in the railway [funicular] car, at 3, and reached the crawford house. next morning, september 6, took stage to whitefield, arriving to dine, thence by railway to plymouth, arriving at 9 p. m. next morning, at 5 o'clock, took railroad, and arrived in boston at 11.30 and home in an hour. [to fill out this rather bald itinerary, it may be said that mr. emerson's family, seeing that the philosophy course (sixteen lectures in a few 328 journal (ace 67 weeks) had been a tax on his strength, betrayed him into a journey to maine on the plea of showing to his son the village of waterford, of which mr. emerson had a happy remembrance from the days long past when he went there to visit his haskins relations, and his aunt mary. his consent was won, and reaching waterford we climbed bear mountain and from its sheer cliff looked down into the blue lake below. then he eagerly led the way to a broad brook whose clear waters, rushing over smooth ledges and boulders, had long delighted him in memory, and now gave like joy. we were glad to find at gorham, where we passed sunday, mr. james bryce, now noted, who had lately brought his letter of introduction to concord. next morning he and young emerson climbed the mountain, and mr. emerson followed in the stage from the great heat and moisture below into a fierce, cold snow-squall which blew almost dangerously on the top. we saw nothing but that, shivered through dinner, and gladly descended to crawford's notch, where mr. emerson had stayed with ellen tucker and her family some forty years before. e. w. emerson.] 1870] france. chivalry 329 very much afflicted in these days with stupor: acute attacks whenever a visit is proposed or made. montesquieu's prediction is fulfilled, “la france se perdra par les gens de guerre.” — pensées. september 24. on saturday, at the club; present, sumner, longfellow, lowell, hoar, james, brimmer, fields, estes howe, holmes, r. w. e., and, as guests, mr. catacazy, the russian minister, hon. samuel hooper, and henry lee, esq. september 26. chivalry, i fancied, this afternoon, would serve as a good title for many topics, and some good readings which i might offer to the fraternity [course of lectures] on december 6. george ticknor, hallam, and renan (in his paper on the paris exposition) have each given me good texts ; fauriel has others; and the wonderful mythology and poetry of wales, of brittany, of germany in the nibelungenlied), and scott and joinville and froissart can add their stores. it might be called “imagination” as well, and what we call chivalry be only a rich me 330 (age 67 journal illustration. every reading boy has marched to school and on his errands, to fragments of this magic, and swinging a cut stick for his broadsword, brandishing it, and plunging it into the swarm of airy enemies whom his fancy arrayed on his right and left. the life of the topic, of course, would be the impatience in every man of his limits; the inextinguishableness of the imagination. we cannot crouch in our hovels or our experience. we have an immense elasticity. every reader takes part with the king, or the angel, or the god, in the novel or poem he reads, and not with dwarfs and cockneys. that healthy surprise which a sunset sky gives to a man coming out on it alone, and from his day's work; or which the stars unexpectedly seen give. (from st) october 2. la portée, the range of a thought, of a fact observed, and thence of the word by which we denote it, makes its value. only whilst it has new values does it warm and invite and enable to write. and this range or ulterior outlook appears to be rare in men;a slight primitive difference, but essential to the work. for this possessor has the necessity to write, 'tis 1870] plutarch's genius 331 easy and delightful to him; the other, finding no continuity, — must begin again uphill at every step. now plutarch is not a deep man, and might well not be personally impressive to his contemporaries; but, having this facile association in his thought, – a wide horizon to every fact or maxim or character which engaged him, every new topic reanimated all his experience or memory, and he was impelled with joy to begin a new chapter. then there is no such chord in nature for fagoting thoughts as well as actions, as religion, which means fagoting. plutarch had a commanding moral sentiment, which, indeed, is common to all men, but in very unlike degree, so that in multitudes it appears secondary, as if aped only from eminent characters, and not native. but in plutarch was his genius. this clear morale is the foundation of genius in milton, in burke, in herbert, in socrates, in wordsworth, michael angelo, and, i think, also in many men who like to mask or disguise it in the variety of their powers, as shakespeare and goethe. indeed, we are sure to feel the discord and limitation in men of rare talent in whom this sentiment has not its healthy or normal superiority; as, byron, voltaire, daniel webster. 332 journal [age 67 the writer is an explorer. every step is an advance into new land. memory. the compensation of failing memory is,—the assistance of increased and increasing generalization. “old age stands not in years, but in directed activity.” among my mnemonics i recorded that i went into france just three hundred years after montaigne did. he was born, 1533 ; i visited it in 1833. [during this year the government of harvard university determined that it should no longer discredit itself by conferring the degree of master of arts on any graduate who should have survived five years and have five dollars to pay into the treasury for receiving it. mr. emerson was appointed one of a committee of harvard teachers to prepare a plan for conferring that degree. he was also made one of the committee to visit the academic department of the university. ] october 6. to-day at the laying of the corner-stone of the “memorial hall,” at cambridge. all was 10 zas su 1870) memorial hall 333 well and wisely done. the storm ceased for us, the company was large, — the best men and the best women all there, — or all but a few ; – the arrangements simple and excellent, and every speaker successful. henry lee, with his uniform sense and courage, the manager; the chaplain, rev. phillips brooks, offered a prayer, in which not a word was superfluous, and every right thing was said. henry rogers, william gray, dr. palfrey, made each his proper report. luther's hymn in dr. hedge's translation was sung by a great choir, the corner-stone was laid, and then rockwood hoar read a discourse of perfect sense, taste, and feeling, full of virtue and of tenderness. after this, an original song by wendell holmes was given by the choir. every part in all these performances was in such true feeling that people praised them with broken voices, and we all proudly wept. our harvard soldiers of the war were in their uniforms, and heard their own praises, and the tender allusions to their dead comrades. general meade was present, and "adopted by the college,” as judge hoar said, and governor claflin sat by president eliot. our english guests, hughes, rawlins, dicey, and bryce, sat and listened. 334 journal (age 67 n “i bear no ill will to my contemporaries,” said cumberland. “ after you, ma'am, in manners,” said swett. the only point in which i regret priority of departure is that i, as every one, keep many stories of which the etiquette of contemporariness forbids the airing, and which burn uncomfortably being untold. i positively resolve not to kill a. nor c. nor n. but i could a tale unfold, like hamlet's father. now a private class gives just this liberty which in book or public lecture were unparliamentary, and of course because here, at least, one is safe from the unamiable presence of reporters. another point. i set great value in culture on foreign literature — the farther off the better – much on french, on italian, on german, or welsh — more on persian or hindu, because if one read and write only english, he soon slides into narrow conventions, and believes there is no other way to write poetry than as pope or milton. but a quite foreign mind born and grown in different latitude and longitude, — nearer to the pole or to the equator, a child of mount hecla, like sturluson, or of the sahara, like averroës, astonishes us with a new nature, gives a fillip to our indolence, and we 1870) couture's rule 335 promptly learn that we have faculties which we have never used. how right is couture's rule' of looking three times at the object, for one at your drawing, — of looking at nature, and not at your whim; and william hunt's emphasis, after him, on the mass, instead of the details! and how perfectly (as i wrote upon couture long ago) the same rule applies in rhetoric or writing! wendell holmes hits right in every affectionate poem he scribbles, by his instinct at obeying a just perception of what is important, instead of feeling about how he shall write some verses touching the subject : and eminently this is true in rockwood hoar's mind, his tendency to the integrity of the thing! what a lesson on culture is drawn from every day's intercourse with men and women. the rude youth or maid comes as a visitor to a house, and at the table cannot understand half the conversation that passes, — so many allusions to books, to anecdotes, to persons,hints of a song, or a fashion of the war, or the college, or the boatmen, or a single french or i in his admirable méthode et entretiens d'atelier. 336 (age 67 journal latin word to suggest a line or sentence familiar to inmates, unknown to the stranger, — so that practically 't is as if the family spoke another language than the guest. well, there is an equal difference if their culture is better, in all their ways, and the like abbreviation by better methods, and only long acquaintance, that is, slow education, step by step, in their arts and knowledge can breed a practical equality. the like difference, of course, must appear in the father, the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson, if better opportunities of education are provided to each successor than his parent enjoyed. greatness. “they deride thee, o diogenes!” he replied, “but i am not derided.” — plutarch, morals. but, memo. i must procure a greek grammar. o for my old gloucester again! a passage in the convito of dante testifies that he knew greek too imperfectly to read homer in the original. (see biographie générale.) objection to metaphysics. the poet sees wholes, and avoids analysis. ellery channing said to me, he would not know the botanical name of the flower, for fear he should never see the flower 1870] fortunate america 337 again. the metaphysician, dealing, as it were, with the mathematics of the mind, puts himself out of the way of the inspiration, loses that which is the miracle, and which creates the worship. necesamerica. we get rid in this republic of a great deal of nonsense which disgusts us in european biography. there a superior mind, a hegel, sincerely and scientifically exploring the laws of thought, is suddenly called by a necessity of pleasing some king, or conciliating some catholics, to give a twist to his universal propositions to fit these absurd people, and not satisfying them even by these sacrifices of truth and manhood; another great genius, schelling, is called in, when hegel dies, to come to berlin, and bend truth to the crotchets of the king and rabble. not so here. the paucity of population, the vast extent of territory, the solitude of each family and each man, allow some approximation to the result that every citizen has a religion of his own, — is a church by himself, — and worships and speculates in a new, quite independent fashion. plutarch treats every subject except art. he is ingenious to draw medical virtue from every 338 journal [ace 67 poison, to detect the good that may be made of evil. an admirable passage concerning plato's expression “that god geometrizes,” in plutarch's symposiacs. (see especially in the old edition, vol. iii, p. 434.) 0 in the history of opinion, the pinch of falsehood shows itself, not first in argument and formal protest, but in insincerity, indifference, and abandonment of the church, or the scientific or political or economic institution, for other better or worse forms. then good heads, feeling or observing this loss, formulate the fact in protest and argument, and suggest the correction and superior form. rabelais, voltaire, heine, are earlier reformers than huss, and luther, and strauss, and parker, though less solemn and to less solemn readers. voltaire's spinoza, —“je soupçonne, entre nous, que vous n'existez pas.” – satires. les systèmes. it really appears that the latin and greek continue to be forced in education, just as chignons must be worn, in spite of the disgust 1870] time. rememberers 339 against both, for fashion. if a wise traveller should visit england to study the causes of her power, it is not the universities in which he would find them; but mr. owen, mr. armstrong, mr. airy, mr. stephenson, sir john lubbock, mr. huxley, mr. scott russell, boulton, watt, faraday, tyndall, darwin. if any of these were college men, 't is only the good luck of the universities, and not their normal fruit. what these men have done, they did not learn there. “ plato says that time had its original from an intelligence.” – plutarch, morals, vol. iii, p. 158. * the greek text is, πλάτων δε γεννητών κατ' ¿tivolav, and goodwin prints (vol. iii, p. 128) thus, —“that time had only an ideal beginning." : miéw urňuova oyunótav' (and i remember that mr. tom lee complained of margaret fuller that she remembered things); “and the ancients used to consecrate forgetfulness, with a ferula in hand, to bacchus, thereby intimating that we should either not remember any irregularity committed in mirth and company, or i i hate a fellow-reveller who remembers things. 340 journal [age 67 should apply a gentle and childish correction to the faults.” — idem. plutarch loves apples like our thoreau, and well praises them.— see morals, vol. iii, p. 362. let a scholar begin to read something to a few strangers in a parlour, and he may find his voice disobedient, and he reads badly. let him go to an assembly of intelligent people in a public hall, and his voice will behave beautifully, and he is another person, and contented. a scholar forgives everything to him whose fault gives him a new insight, a new fact. peter oliver,' in the puritan commonwealth, insists like a lawyer on the duty the pilgrims owed to their charter, and the presumed spirit and intent in which it was given. he overlooks the irresistible instruction which the actual arrival in the new continent gave. that was a greater king than charles, and insisted on making the law for those who live in it. they could not shut their eyes on the terms on which alone they could live in it. the savages, the sands, i chief justice of massachusetts, 1771, until the evacuation of boston by the tories with whom he cast his lot. so 1870] a retort. holy people 341 the snow, the mutineers, and the french were antagonists who must be dealt with on the instant, and there was no clause in the charter that could deal with these. no lawyer could help them to read the pitiless alternative which plymouth rock offered them,self-help or ruin: come up to the real conditions, or die.' november 30. judge wof rhode island was not a great man, and resented some slight he received from tristram burgess at the bar, by asking him if he knew before whom he was speaking. he replied, “yes, your honour; before the inferior court of the inferior bench of the inferior state of rhode island.” mr. weeden º told me, that his old aunt said of the people whom she knew in her youth that “they had to hold on hard to the huckleberry bushes to hinder themselves from being translated.” i delight ever in having to do with the drastic class, the men who can do things, as dr. charles i mr. emerson was reading with reference to the address on forefathers' day in new york. 2 colonel william b. weeden, of providence, often mr. emerson's host when lecturing there. 342 journal (age 67 t. jackson; and jim bartlett,' and boynton. such was thoreau. once out of doors, the poets paled like ghosts before them. i met boynton in rochester, new york, and was cold enough to a popular and unscientific lecturer on geology. but i talked to him of the notice i had read of repulsion of incandescent bodies, and new experiments. “o,” he said, “nothing is plainer: i have tried it”; and, on my way to mr. ward's, he led me into a forge, where a stream of melted iron was running out of a furnace, and he passed his finger through the streamlet again and again, and invited me to do the same. i said, “do you not wet your finger?” “no,” he said, “the hand sweats a little and that suffices.” iii on v is runi parnassus. so words must sparks be of those fires they strike.' i saw that no pressman could lay his sheets so deftly but that under every one a second sheet was inadvertently laid; and no bookbinder could bind so carefully but that a second sheet was bound in the book: then i saw that if the i son of the honoured physician of concord for more than half a century. mr. bartlett was a mechanical engineer of importance in detroit. 1870] reading 343 writer was skilful, every word he wrote sank into the inner sheet, and there remained indelible; and if he was not skilful, it did not penetrate, and the ink faded, and the writing was effaced. quotque aderant vates rebar adesse deos.' – ovid. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1870 menu; confucius ; heracleitus; ovid; suetonius; marcus aurelius; plotinus; porphyry; st. augustine; averroës (ibn roshd); snorre sturluson; nibelungenlied; de joinville, chronicle of saint louis; froissart, chronicles; huss; luther; michel angelo; rabelais; amyot, philemon holland (translators of plutarch’s morals into french and english respectively); thomas stanley, history of philosophy ; spinoza; fénelon; montesquieu, pensées ; voltaire; peter oliver, the puritan commonwealth; matthew boulton; james watt; goethe; eckermann, conversations with goethe; dumont, i i will hold all bards that come my way to be gods. 344 journal (age 67 souvenirs sur mirabeau; fichte; richter; alexander von humboldt; hegel; heinrich steffens, review of schelling's philosophy; fauriel; schelling; hallam; varnhagen von ense, tagebucher; arago; george ticknor; faraday ; john g. palfrey, history of new england; carlyle ; heine; george b. airy ; george sand; richard owen; strauss; john scott russell; o. w. holmes; charles darwin; margaret fuller; theodore parker; sir william armstrong;j.w. foster, geology; erastus b. bigelow; thomas couture, méthode et entretiens d'atelier; j. r. lowell; thoreau, field notes ; lévêque ; julia ward howe, battle hymn of the republic; tyndall; william j. stillman; ernest renan; huxley, lay sermons; sir john lubbuck; phillips brooks; hoefer, nouvelle biographie générale. journal museum of fine arts university lectures organic chemistry mill, pusey, froude john murray forbes the california excursion splendors of the age channing. bret harte poetry in science geoffroy saint-hilaire sympathy with boys culture in england and here boyhood journal lxii 1871 (from journal st) [mr. emerson seems to have lectured in some massachusetts towns; also at buffalo, cleveland, and new brunswick, new jersey, during january. on february 3, he spoke by request at a meeting held for the purpose of organizing the museum of fine arts in boston.' in a letter of thanks, mr. martin brimmer expressed his belief that the good effects of this speech in awakening substantial interest in the museum soon appeared. but through the winter mr. emerson had the serious task of preparing for a course of lectures on philosophy for a new class at the university. according to mr. cabot, the lectures were mainly the same as those given in the previous spring, except that “identity” and “the platonists” were omitted, but “ wit and humour,” “demonology,” and another on “the 1 see boston daily advertiser of february 4. 348 journal (age 67 conduct of the intellect” were added. a large part of the new matter in this course was later used in “poetry and imagination,” in letters and social aims, the next published volume.] january, 1871. old age. “ man is oldest when he is born, and is younger and younger continually.”— taliessen, apud skene. february 10. i do not know that i should feel threatened or insulted if a chemist should take his protoplasm or mix his hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and make an animalcule incontestably swimming and jumping before my eyes. i should only feel that it indicated that the day had arrived when the human race might be trusted with a new degree of power, and its immense responsibility; for these steps are not solitary or local, but only a hint of an advanced frontier supported by an advancing race behind it. what at first scares the spiritualist in the experiments of natural science — as if thought were only finer chyle, fine to aroma — now redounds to the credit of matter, which, it appears, is impregnated with thought and heaven, and is really of god, and not of the devil, as 1871 mill. carlyle. pusey 349 he had too hastily believed. all is resolved into unity again. my chemistry, he will say, was blind and barbarous, but my intuition is, was, and will be true. i believe that every man belongs to his time, if our newtons and philosophers belong also to the next age which they help to form. “our progress appears great, only because the future of science is hidden from us.” — philip randolph. of gravitation, john mill said to carlyle, “a force can act but where it is.” “ with all my heart,” replied carlyle, “but where is it?” march 5. dr. e. b. pusey of oxford surprised me two or three days ago with sending me, “with greetings,” a book, lectures on daniel and the prophets, with the following inscription written on the blank leaf, to the unwise and wise a debtor i. 't is strange if true, and yet the old is often new. when in england, i did not meet him, but 350 journal (age 67 i remember that, in oxford, froude one day, walking with me, pointed to his window, and said, “there is where all our light came from.” e i ought also to have recorded that max müller, on last christmas day, surprised me with the gift of a book. coleridge says, “the greeks, except perhaps in homer, seem to have had no way of making their women interesting, but by unsexing them, as in the instances of the tragic medea, electra, etc. contrast such characters with spenser's una, who exhibits no prominent feature, has no particularization, but produces the same feeling that a statue does, when contemplated at a distance. · from her fair head her fillet she undight, and laid her stole aside : her angel's face as the great eye of heaven shined bright, and made a sunshine in a shady place: did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace?'” greatness. chateaubriand says that president washington granted him an audience in philadelphia, and adds, “ happy am i that the looks of washington fell on me. i felt my1871) mr. forbes's invitation 351 self warmed by them for the rest of my life.” calvert gives the anecdote. none is so great but finds one who apprehends him, and no historical person begins to content us; and this is our pledge of a higher height than he has reached. and when we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near. april 7. [mr. emerson's good friend mr. john m. forbes, hearing that he seemed worn and jaded by the strain of his philosophy lectures, — two or more a week,– invited him to be his guest on an excursion in a private car to california. in the party, besides mr. and mrs. forbes and their youngest daughter, were colonel forbes, with his wife (mr. emerson's daughter edith), mrs. george russell, james b. thayer (late royall professor of law at cambridge), garth wilkinson james, late the adjutant of colonel robert shaw, and wounded on the slopes of fort wagner. mr. emerson's inborn reluctance to receive favours even from near friends, and his scruples about leaving his work, stood in the way, but at last he yielded to mr. forbes's tactful ingenuity of plea, and to his daughter's urgency, and went. the journey across the 352 journal (age 67 prairie, mountains, and desert (including a short stay at salt lake city and conversation with brigham young), the weeks in california in its spring freshness and sheets of flowers, were to mr. emerson an unforeseen delight and refreshment. the good friends in the party, with their tactful and affectionate care of him, each contributed to his pleasure, and his respect and admiration for the quality of his host grew with each day. professor thayer in a little volume gave a pleasant account of the journey.' mr. emerson was enjoying the rest, and did little writing. but few notes of the trip occur.] california notes. irrigation. tea, impossible culture where labor is dear as in america. silk (?) wine is not adulterated; because grapes at one cent a pound are cheaper than any substitute. cape donner. golden gate, named of old 1 a western journey with mr. emerson, by james bradley thayer, boston, 1884. there is also in mr. emerson's letters to carlyle, written after his return, a short mention of this journey and its pleasures and experiences, among others, the visit to brigham young. (carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 343–345.) in mr. cabot's memoir (vol. ii, pp. 644-648) are extracts from mr. emerson's letters to his family from california. 1871] california notes 353 from its flowers. asia at your doors and south america. inflamed expectation haunting men. henry pierce's opinion of the need of check, calamity, punishment, to teach economy. nickels [for] cents. mission dolores. flora. the altered year. (see hittel on california.) john muir. general sumner. antelopes, prairie-dogs, elk-horns, wolves, eagles, vultures, prairie-hen, owls. sequoias generally have marks of fire: haying lived thirteen hundred years must have met that danger, and every other, in turn. yet they possess great power of resistance to fire. (see cronise, pp. 507-508.) sarcodes sanguinea, snow plant growing in the snow, a parasite from decayed wood; monotropa. ceanothus; wild lilac ; madrona ; — arbutus menziesii ; manzanita; acrostaphylos glaucus. black sand at lake tahoe, and carnelians. mono lake. glaciers; clarence king. volcanic mountains, cones, enneo county. the attraction and superiority of california are in its days. it has better days, and more of them, than any other country. mount shasta, 14,440 feet high, in northeastern corner of the state. mount whitney, 354 journal (age 67 15,000 feet, in tulare county. in yosemite, grandeur of these mountains perhaps unmatched in the globe; for here they strip themselves like athletes for exhibition, and stand perpendicular granite walls, showing their entire height, and wearing a liberty cap of snow on their head. sequoia gigantea, pinus lambertiana, sugar pine, 10 feet diameter ; 300 feet height; cones 18 inches. pinus ponderosa, yellow pine. pinus albicaulis. may 12. at the request of galen clark, our host at mariposa, and who is, by state appointment, the protector of the trees, and who went with us to the mammoth groves, i selected a sequoia gigantea, near galen's hospice, in the presence of our party, and named it samoset, in memory of the first indian ally of the plymouth colony, and i gave mr. clark directions to procure a tin plate, and have the inscription painted thereon in the usual form of the named trees: and paid him its cost:samoset. 12 may 1871. 1871] california people 355 the tree was a strong healthy one; girth, at 21 feet from the ground, 50 feet. what they once told me at st. louis is truer in california, that there is no difference between a boy and a man: as soon as a boy is “that high” [high as the table], he contradicts his father. when introduced to the stranger, he says, “i am happy to make your acquaintance,” and shakes hands like a senior." california is teaching in its history and its poetry the good of evil, and confirming my thought, one day in five points in new york, twenty years ago, that the ruffians and amazons in that district were only superficially such, but carried underneath this bronze about the same morals as their civil and well-dressed neighbours. gifts. the pleasing humiliation of gifts. the saying is attributed to sir isaac newton that “they who give nothing before their death never in fact give at all.” 1 mr. emerson, by invitation, gave two lectures in san francisco. of his « immortality” the california alta of next day said that “ an elegant tribute had been paid by mr. emerson to the creative genius of the great first cause, and a masterly use of the english language had contributed to that end.” 356 [age 68 journal we are sometimes startled by coincidences so friendly as to suggest a guardian angel: and sometimes, when they would be so fit, and every way desirable, nothing but disincidences occur. 'tis perhaps thus; the coincidence is probably the rule, and if we could retain our early innocence, we might trust our feet uncommanded to take the right path to our friend in the woods.' ... [mr. emerson reached home in the last week in may, much refreshed, and having had pleasure in the company of his good friends. perhaps on the journey, he wrote, at her request, the following] inscription for mrs. sarah swain forbes's memorial fountain:fall, stream! to bless. return to heaven as well: so, did our sons, heaven met them as they fell.” what was the name of the nymph “whom young apollo courted for her hair”? that fable renews itself every day in the street and in the drawing room. nothing in nature is i see natural history of intellect (p. 37). 2 the roadside drinking-fountain is in milton, on adams street, in front of the home of mr. and mrs. forbes. 1871) women's hair. real men 357 more ideal than the hair. analyze it by taking a single hair, and it is characterless and worthless: but in the mass it is recipient of such variety of form, and momentary change from form to form, that it vies in expression with the eye and the countenance. the wind and the sun play with it and enhance it, and its coils and its mass are a perpetual mystery and attraction to the young poet. but the doleful imposture of buying it at the shops is suicidal, and disgusts. nature lays the ground-plan of each creature, accurately, sternly fit for all his functions, then veils it. (from ny) my men.' thomas carlyle, louis agassiz, e. rockwood hoar, j. elliot cabot, john m. forbes, charles k. newcomb, philip p. randolph, richard hunt, alvah crocker, william b. ogden, samuel g. ward, j. r. lowell, sampson reed, henry d. thoreau, a. b. alcott, horatio greenough, oliver wendell holmes, john muir. i this list seems an extempore recalling, not merely of near personal friends, but of men whose various powers had won mr. emerson's respect, from thomas carlyle, first met in 1833, to john muir, his genius loci but a month before in the sequoia forest. 358 journal [age 68 [in june, mr. emerson had been chosen a member of the massachusetts historical society, and on august 15, when the society celebrated the centennial anniversary of scott's birth, mr. emerson spoke. what he said is printed in miscellanies.] (from st) scott said to mr. cheney, “superstition is very picturesque, and i make it at times stand me in great stead; but i never allow it to interfere with interest or conscience.” — lockhart, vol. viii, p. 81. i think he spoke honestly and well, but his superstition was dearer to him and more comprehensive than he well knew : i mean that it made him a sterner royalist, churchman, and conservative than his intellect should allow. omcorrelation of forces is an irrepressible hint which must compel the widest application of it. it gives unforeseen force to the old word of cicero's aliquid commune vinculum, and we realize the correlation of sciences. but poetry correlates men, and genius, and every fine talent, and men the most diverse; and men that are enemies hug each other when they hear from 1871] splendors of the age 359 that once hated neighbour the synonym of their own cherished belief. se the splendors of this age outshine all other recorded ages. in my lifetime have been wrought five miracles, — namely, 1, the steamboat; 2, the railroad ; 3, the electric telegraph; 4, the application of the spectroscope to astronomy; 5, the photograph ;– five miracles which have altered the relations of nations to each other. add cheap postage ; and the mowing-machine and the horse-rake. a corresponding power has been given to manufactures by the machine for pegging shoes, and the power-loom, and the power-press of the printers. and in dentistry and in surgery, dr. jackson's discovery of anæsthesia. it only needs to add the power which, up to this hour, eludes all human ingenuity, namely, a rudder to the balloon, to give us the dominion of the air, as well as of the sea and the land. but the account is not complete until we add the discovery of oersted, of the identity of electricity and magnetism, and the generalization of that conversion by its application to light, heat, and gravitation. the geologist has found the correspondence of the age of stratified remains to the ascending scale of structure in 360 (age 68 journal animal life. add now, the daily predictions of the weather for the next twenty-four hours for north america, by the observatory at washington. poetry. “the newness.” every day must be a new morn. clothe the new object with a coat that fits it alone of all things in the world. i can see in many poems that the coat is secondhand. emphasis betrays poverty of thought, as if the man did not know that all things are full of meaning, and not his trumpery thing only. 'tis one of the mysteries of our condition that the poet seems sometimes to have a mere talent, a chamber in his brain into which an angel flies with divine messages, but the man, apart from this privilege, commonplace. wordsworth is an example (and channing's poetry is apart from the man). those who know and meet him day by day cannot reconcile the verses with their man. ah, not to me these heights belong; a better voice sings through my song. wc ni [in july, at the commencement dinner at harvard college, it being the fiftieth year si mr. emerson graduated, mr. william gray, 1871) writing. memory 361 who presided, called upon him to speak. he did so, but what he said is not preserved.] rhetoric. all conversation and writing is rhetoric, and the great secret is to know thoroughly, and not to be affected, and to have a steel spring. the english write better than we, but i fancy we read more out of their books than they do. for history of liberty.' there was a great deal of whig poetry written in charles and cromwell's time : not a line of it has survived. in certain minds thought expels memory. i have this example, that, eager as i am to fix and record each experience, the interest of a new thought is sometimes such that i do not think of pen and paper at all, and the next day i puzzle myself in a vain attempt to recall the new perception that had so captivated me. channing's poetry does not regard the пей i mr. emerson was moved, during the struggle against the encroachments of slavery, to write a history of liberty, and collected matter to this end, never reached, much of which appeared in his anti-slavery speeches and, in fragments, in the earlier volumes of his journal. 362 journal [age 68 reader. it is written to himself; is his strict experience, the record of his moods, of his fancies, of his observations and studies, and will interest good readers as such. he does not flatter the reader by any attempt to meet his expectation, or to polish his record that he may gratify him, as readers expect to be gratified. he confides entirely in his own bent or bias for meditation and writing. he will write as he has ever written, whether he has readers or not. but his poems have to me and to others an exceptional value for this reason. we have not been considered in their composition, but either defied or forgotten, and therefore read them securely, as original pictures which add something to our knowledge, and with a fair chance to be surprised and refreshed by novel experience. george bradford said that mr. alcott once said to him, “ that as the child loses, as he comes into the world, his angelic memory, so the man, as he grows old, loses his memory of this world.” october 18. bret harte's visit. bret harte referred to my essay on civilization, that the piano comes so quickly into the shanty, etc., and said, “do you 1871 bret harte. ruskin 363 know that, on the contrary, it is vice that brings them in? it is the gamblers who bring in the music to california. it is the prostitute who brings in the new york fashions of dress there, and so throughout.” i told him that i spoke also from pilgrim experience, and knew on good grounds the resistless culture that religion effects. october 21. ruskin is a surprise to me. this old book, two paths, is original, acute, thoroughly informed, and religious. “ wie der fischer aus dem meer fische zieht die niemand sah.” as the fisher from the sea pulls the fish that no man saw. names should be of good omen, of agreeable sound, commending the person in advance, and, if possible, keeping the old belief of the greeks, “ that the name borne by each man and woman has some connection with their part in the drama of life.” the name, then, should look before and after. we have two or three facts of natural education: 1. first, the common sense of merciless 364 journal [age 68 dealing of matter with us, punishing us instantly for any mistake about fire, water, iron, food, and poison. 2. and this world perfectly symmetrical, so that its laws can be reduced to one law. 3. then we have the world of thought, and its laws, like niagara currents. 4. then the astonishing relation between these two. the necessity of the mind is poetic. . . . it is plain that kepler, hunter, bonnet, buffon, geoffroy saint-hilaire, linnæus, haüy, oken, goethe, and faraday were poets in science as compared with cuvier. the physicists in general repel me. i have no wish to read them, and thus do not know their names. but the anecdotes of these men of ideas wake curiosity and delight. thus goethe's and oken's theory of the skull as a metamorphosed vertebra; and hunter's “arrested development”; and oersted's “correlation of forces”; and hay's theory of the form of vases; and garbett's and ruskin's architectural theories; and vitruvius's relation between the human form and the temple; and peirce's showing that the orbits of comets (parabolics) make the forms of flowers; and kepler's relation of planetary laws to music; and franklin's kite. rid 365 1871] thoughts reality, however, has a sliding floor. look sharply after your thoughts. they come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again ; never, i say, but perhaps years, ages, and i know not what events and worlds may lie between you and its return! in the novel, the hero meets with a person who astonishes him with a perfect knowledge of his history and character, and draws from him a promise that, whenever and wherever he shall next find him, the youth shall instantly follow and obey him. so is it with you, and the new thought. “ for deathless powers to verse belong, and they like demigods are strong on whom the muses smile.” in twistleton's handwriting of junius (p. xiv) i find the quotation from johnson, of bacon's remark, “testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow: the force of it depends on the strength of the hand that draws it. argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has equal force, though shot by a child.” 366 journal (age 68 tibullus (on sulpicia) says of venus :illam, quidquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit, componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.' then twistleton's motto from epicharmus is good — νούς όρη και νούς ακούει, τάλλα κωφά και τυφλά geoffroy saint-hilaire is a true hero. read his behaviour, in august, 1792, when his masters lhomonde and haüy, professors in his college of cardinal-lemoine, and all the rest of the professors were arrested and sent to the prison of saint-firmin. .... [here follows the account of his repeated attempts, at desperate risk to himself, and his final success in accomplishing the escape of twelve of his friends.] saint-hilaire was very ill in consequence of these exertions. haüy wrote to him : “ leave your problems of crystals, rhomboids, and dodécaèdres; stick to plants, which are fullof beauty; 1 whatsoe'er she does grace prompts unseen, and wheresoe'er she wanders attends her footsteps. 2 the mind sees, the mind hears ; all other things are deaf and blind. 1871) saint-hilaire 367 a course of botany is pure hygiene.” he went with bonaparte to egypt, and saved the scientific results, by a brillant stroke of heroism. in the debate in the académie des sciences, in 1830 (?), july 19, the contest between cuvier and geoffroy saint-hilaire broke out, and reminded of the old sects of philosophers who shook the world with their contests. the austere and regulated thinkers, men of severe science, took part with cuvier ; the bold minds ranged themselves with geoffroy. what changes have come into the contests of churches ! the debates of the ecumenical council are only interesting to the catholics and a few abnormal readers, interested as the billiard players in the contests of the billiard champions. culture. the wide diffusion of taste for poetry is a new fact. we receive twelve newspapers in this house every week, and eleven of them contain a new poem or poems, – all of these respectable,perhaps one or two fit to clip from the paper, and put into your anthology. many of these poems are quite as good as many of the pieces in aikin's or anderson's standard collections, and recall walter scott's reply when tom moore said, “ now, scott, it seems to me that 368 (age 68 journal these young fellows write better poetry than we did, and nobody reads it. see how good this poetry is of so many young writers, and the public takes no note of them.” scott replied, “egad, man, we were in the luck of time.” verses of conversation are now written in a hundred houses, or [for] “ picnics” or “private theatricals,” which would have made reputation a century ago, but are now unknown out of some family circle. webster wrote excellent lines in an album ; macaulay did the same, his “god”: then byrch's “riddle on the letter h.” george bartlett's' wit and luck in the privatest“game parties” are charming. yet the public never heard of his name. arthur gilman, too. in england, in france, appear the frères, tom taylors, luttrells, hendersons (newton's cotes, too, of whom but for newton's one remark we should have never heard). yet good poetry is as rare as ever. what a benediction of heaven is this cheerfulness which i observe with delight,—which i mr. bartlett has been mentioned in connection with the amusements at the hotel in the account of the emerson visit to mount mansfield. when mr. emerson's children came home from a “game party” at dr. bartlett's house, mr. emerson always wished to hear george bartlett's witty verses.. no 1871) poets. boys 369 no wrath and no fretting and no disaster can disturb, but keeps its perfect key and heals insanity in all companies and crises. “little boys should be seen, and not heard”: very well, but poets are not to be seen. look at the foolish portraits of herrick and gray, one a butcher, and the other silly. the greek form answered to the greek character, but poets are divided from their forms, live an official life. intellect is impersonal. the father cannot control the child, from defect of sympathy. the man with a longer scale of sympathy, the man who feels the boy's sense and piety and imagination, and also his rough play and impatience and revolt, — who knows the whole gamut in himself, — knows also a way out of the one into the other, and can play on the boy, as on a harp, and easily lead him up from the scamp to the angel. america. oxford, working steadily now for a thousand years, — or the sorbonne in france, and a royal court steadily drawing for centuries men and women of talent and grace throughout the kingdom to the capital city, 370 (ace 68 jou journal ens might give an impulse and sequence to learning and genius. and the history of this country has been far less friendly to a rich and polished literature than england and france. count our literary men, and they are few, and their works not commanding. but if the question be not of books, but of men, question of intellect, not of literature, — there would be no steep inferiority. for every one knows men of wit and special or general power, whom to compare with citizens of any nation. edward taylor lavished more wit and imagination on his motley congregation of sailors and caulkers than you might find in all france. the coarsest experiences he melted and purified, like shakspeare, into eloquence. wendell phillips is a pericles whilst you hear him speaking. beecher, i am sure, is a master in addressing an assembly, though i have never heard such good speeches of his as i have read. webster was majestic in his best days: and the better audience these men had, the higher would be the appreciation. neither of them could write as well as he spoke. appleton's wit is quite as good as frère's or selby's or luttrell's, who shine in the biographies. and england has no occasional poet to surpass holmes. dr. channing, i must believe, had no ce 1871] american talents 371 equal as a preacher in the world of his time. then we have men of affairs, who would rule wherever there were men, masters in commerce, in law, in politics, in society. every civil country has such, but i doubt if any has more or better than we. add, that the adamses have shown hereditary skill in public affairs, and judge hoar is as good a lawyer, a statesman, and an influence in public and in private, as any city could hope to find. i pass over my own list of thinkers and friends (often referred to], and only add, that i believe our soil yields as good women, too, as england or france, though we have not a book from them to compare with allemagne.' yet aunt mary's journals shine with genius, and margaret fuller's conversation did. [the burning of chicago occurred in early october. mr. emerson had not meant to go on a far journey to lecture again, but could not resist the appeal to go there and speak, which he did, and incidentally lectured in other cities.] home again from chicago, quincy, springfield, and dubuque, which i had not believed i i by madame de staël. 372 (age 68 journal should see again, yet found it easier to visit than before, and the kindest reception in each city. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1871 epicharmus; heracleitus ; vitruvius ; tibullus, elegia; iamblichus; taliessin, apud skene; kepler ; robert hooke; newton; roger cotes ; buffon; linnæus; gray; bonnet; john hunter; john adams; haüy; henry mckenzie ; playfair; goethe; dugald stewart; mackintosh; john quincy adams; john hookham frère; chateaubriand; cuvier ; sir john leslie; geoffroy saint-hilaire ; james hogg; jeffrey; oersted; oken ; lord brougham; lord cockburn; rev. w. e. channing; chalmers ; general gourgaud ; daniel webster; “father” edward taylor ; robert knox; john wilson (“ christopher north"); de quincey; allan cunningham ; sir william hamilton; lockhart; carlyle; flourens, debat entre cuvier et geoffroy sainthilaire ; rev. edward b. pusey, lectures on daniel and the prophets; macaulay; cardinal wiseman; luttrell; byrch, riddle on the letter h; m 1871) reading 373 j. s. mill; dr. charles t. jackson ; benjamin peirce; holmes; wendell phillips; beecher ; dr. jeffries wyman, symmetry and homology in human limbs; thomas g. appleton ; tom taylor; froude; w. ellery channing, poems; ruskin, the two paths; hay, on vases ; tyndall, on sound; max müller; lacy garbett, design in architecture; charles francis adams; arthur gilman; twistleton, the handwriting of junius; francis bret harte; john muir; cronise, on trees (?) journal baltimore and washington boston readings childhood's memories parallel in literature old summer street amherst burning of the home friends to the rescue failing health england. france. italy journal lxiii 1872 (from journal st) [in january, mr. emerson gave a course of four lectures in baltimore, and at washington, where he was the guest of senator sumner, was asked to speak to the students (freedmen) of howard university. the address was partly extempore, but he probably, to help out the address, read them some sheets from his lecture on books, to guide the reading of the more earnest and intellectual among them. the occasion was reported in all the papers,' and, after his return, mr. emerson was almost annoyed, but soon rather amused, by the many letters which he received. he told his family that the speech was “very poor; merely talking against time.” in the course of it he praised george herbert's poems as “a sunday book, and a monday book, too,” asked if it were in their library, and said he should have the privilege of giving it to them. 1 there was a report in the boston evening transcript january 22, 1872. 378 (age 68 journal when he went to the bookstore in boston to buy it he was told, “there is n’t a herbert to be had, sir. since your speech was published there has been such a demand for them that they are all sold out, and none left in boston.” however, he found one, and came home better pleased with the result of his speech than he had ever thought to be. then more letters came, one suggesting that he should write on the subject of books. comparatively few persons had probably then read society and solitude, the volume published nearly two years before. mr. james t. fields, who, with colonel forbes, had arranged the saturday afternoon readings of english prose and verse in 1869, again kindly bestirred himself (colonel forbes having gone to europe with his family) to have such another course. this plan was most successful, and the tickets were in great demand for the six readings, in mechanics' hall, boston, beginning in the middle of april. mr. emerson enjoyed sharing with an audience of friends, old and young, the pleasure that he had in these selections, made from his boyhood on. the poems and selections were of authors of various periods, and on widely differing themes. mr. emerson read his favorites, whether recent, or 1872] readings in boston 379 dear from the associations of his youth, not caring greatly whether all were illustrations of the short discourse at the beginning. as his memory was now imperfect, he, once at least, read a sheet which he had already read a few minutes before. his daughter ellen, who had always accompanied him, was troubled at this and begged him always to read his lectures to her in advance. but he answered,“ things that go wrong about these lectures don't disturb me, because i know that everyone knows that i am worn out and passed by, and that it is only my old friends come for friendship's sake to have one last season with me.” wever, seems to have been very successful, and to have given great pleasure week by week to a large number of the best of boston and the neighborhood. what follows may have been some notes for the last of these readings, or possibly for some sunday address to the parker society at the music hall.] ev 't is becoming in the americans to dare in religion to be simple, as they have been in government, in trade, in social life. christianity is pure deism. 380 journal [age 68 “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” “the kingdom of god cometh not by observation”; is “received as a little child.” “god considers integrity, not munificence.” socrates. power belongeth unto god, but his secret is with them that fear him. schleiermacher said, “the human soul is by nature a christian.” one thing is certain: the religions are obsolete when the reforms do not proceed from them. you say, the church is an institution of god. yes, but are not wit, and wise men, and good judgment whether a thing be so or no, — also institutions of god, and older than the other? concord lyceum. for that local lecture which i still propose to read at our town hall [remember to speak] concerning the hanging of private pictures, each for one month, in the library, etc., etc. remember that a scholar wishes that every book, chart, and plate belonging to him should draw interest every moment by circulation: for “ no man is the lord of anything till he communicate his part to others; nor doth he of himself know them for aught 1872) joys as a child 381 till he behold them formed in the applause where they ’re extended; where, like an arch, reverberates the voice again, or, like a gate of steel fronting the sún, receives and renders back the figure and its heat.” (troilus and cressida.) when a boy i used to go to the wharves, and pick up shells out of the sand which vessels had brought as ballast, and also plenty of stones, gypsum, which i discovered would be luminous when i rubbed two bits together in a dark closet, to my great wonder; — and i do not know why luminous to this day. that, and the magnetizing my penknife, till it would hold a needle; and the fact that blue and gamboge would make green in my pictures of mountains; and the charm of drawing vases by scrawling with ink heavy random lines, and then doubling the paper, so as to make another side symmetrical,what was chaos, becoming symmetrical; then halloing to an echo at the pond, and getting wonderful replies. still earlier, what silent wonder is waked in the boy by blowing bubbles from soap and water with a pipe ! 382 (age 68 journal old age. we spend a great deal of time in waiting. “no more i seek, the prize is found; i furl my sail, the voyage is o'er.” whose lines ? mine, i believe, part of translation of some latin lines for mrs. drury. the good writer is sure of his influence, because, as he is always copying not from his fancy, but from real facts, — when his reader afterwards comes to like experiences of his own he is always reminded of the writer. nor do i much care for the question whether the zend-avesta or the desatir are genuine antiques, or modern counterfeits, as i am only concerned with the good sentences; and it is indifferent how old a truth is, whether an hour or five centuries, whether it first shot into the mind of adam, or your own. if it be truth it is certainly much older than both of us. sbakspeare. parallax, as you know, is the apparent displacement of an object from two points of view;less and less of the heavenly bodies, because of their remoteness, -and of the fixed stars, none at all. well it is thus that we have found shakspeare to be a fixed star. 1872] the birthplace 383 because all sorts of men have in three centuries found him still unapproachable. the merit of a poem is decided by long experience. may 26, 1872. yesterday, my sixty-ninth birthday, i found myself on my round of errands in summer street, and, though close on the spot where i was born, was looking into a street with some bewilderment and read on the sign kingston street, with surprise, finding in the granite blocks no hint of nathaniel goddard's pasture and long wooden fence, and so of my nearness to my native corner of chauncy place. it occurred to me that few living persons ought to know so much of the families of this fast-growing city, for the reason, that aunt marywhose manuscripts i had been reading to hedge and bartol, on friday evening — had such a keen perception of character, and taste for aristocracy, and i heard in my youth and manhood every name she knew. it is now nearly a hundred years since she was born, and the founders of the oldest families that are still notable were known to her as retail merchants, milliners, tailors, distillers, as well as the ministers, lawyers, and doctors of the time. she was a realist, 384 journal (age 69 and knew a great man or “a whale hearted woman” — as she called one of her pets — from a successful money-maker. if i should live another year, i think i shall cite still the last stanza of my own poem, “the world-soul.”: walk in the city for an hour, and you shall see the whole history of female beauty. here are the school-girls in the first profusion of their hair covering them to the waist, and now and then one maiden of eighteen or nineteen years, in the moment of her perfect beauty. look quick and sharply, this is her one meridian day. to find the like again, you must meet, on your next visit, one who is a month younger to-day. then troops of pleasing, well-dressed ladies, sufficiently good looking and graceful, but without claims to the prize of the goddess of discord. i spring still makes spring in the mind when sixty years are told; love wakes anew this throbbing heart, and we are never old. over the winter glaciers i see the summer glow, and through the wild-piled snowdrift the warm rosebuds below. os 1872] friends 385 “no sign that our mighty rocks had ever tingled with earthquake,” said john muir. he said he slept in a wrinkle of the bark of a sequoia on the night after we left him. june 12. sarah clarke gratified us with her visit of twenty-six hours, ever the same peaceful, wise, just, and benevolent spirit, open, gentle, skilful, without a word of self-assertion. i regret that i did not recall and testify to her my oft recollection of her noble and oft-needed and repeated sisterly aid to margaret fuller, in old times, in her cruel headaches. we talked of many friends of both of us, but of charles newcomb it seems she knew nothing. of greenough she did not know much. i was glad, in describing his last visit to me, to add that he was one who to his varied perception added the rare one of tò delvóv (the dire). what proof of goethe's wealth of mind like the sprüche? .... july 11. yesterday read my paper on “character” or “greatness” to the “social union” comprising the four classes at amherst college. stayed with ellen at president stearns's house, there was 386 journal [ace 69 finding henry ward beecher, judge lord, and other gentlemen, with miss gleason, miss goodman, of lenox, miss annie lee, of charlestown, and the daughters of president stearns. visited the boltwoods, and with professor charles u. shepard,' went through his rich collection of minerals in the walker hall. 'tis easy to write the technics of poetry, to discriminate imagination and fancy, etc.; but the office and power which that word poetry covers and suggests are not so easily reached and defined. what heaven and earth and sea and the forms of men and women are speaking or hinting to us in our healthiest and most impressionable hours, — what fresh perceptions a new day will give us of the old problems of our own being and its hidden source; what is this sky of law, and what the future hides. wednesday, july 24. house burned. [the above is all the record that mr. emerson i a cousin of mr. emerson's, the professor of anatomy at amherst, and, in winter, at charleston, south carolina ; also a geologist. 1872] burning of the house 387 left of the temporary destruction of his home. by unhappy chance not one of their children was at hand to help their father and mother when, on a rainy morning, they were waked by the crackling of fire in the walls of their room. their daughter ellen was visiting friends at the seashore; mrs. forbes (edith) was, with her husband and family,on the homeward voyage from england, and edward, then convalescent from a surgical operation, had remained there, to pursue his medical studies. but the immediate neighbours, and soon agreat number of the townspeople as well as the fire-company, were quickly on the spot, men and boys with great energy and courage saving property and fighting the fire, and women and girls sorting and gathering the household goods intelligently and quickly and saving them from the rain by carrying them to the houses near by. the occurrences at a fire in a village and the actions of kind-hearted but inexperienced neighbours have been a stock subject for ridicule in newspapers and stories, but here was an occasion when good sense and brave and affectionate neighbourly action reached a highwater mark, and never did the town family, as it used to exist in simpler days, and still in a measure remains, show forth more finely. the fire ure rem no 388 journal (age 69 u originated in the attic, almost surely from a kerosene lamp charring the timbers hot and dry from the summer. a woman, engaged the day before for domestic service, had apparently spent a part of the night in prowling among the chests and trunks there. when help began to arrive the house was filling with choking black smoke, making it hard to save furniture and clothing upstairs. by the time this was done and the falling ceilings drove out the men, the lower storey was so filled with smoke that, when the booksin mr. emerson's study were remembered, they were felt there by brave boys, who rushed in, holding their breath, and pulled them out into baskets or blankets and all were saved; happily the manuscripts also. mr. and mrs. emerson, imperfectly clothed, wet by the rain, fatigued and worn by excitement, were taken home and cared for by judge keyes and his family, and the next day were welcomed to the manse, the ancestral home, dear to mr.emerson from his boy hood, by his cousin, miss elizabeth ripley. all sorts of exciting and some dangerous incidents occurred during the fire. when a hole chopped in the roof let out the smoke and let in the water which put out the fire, the roof and the top of the walls of 1872] the friends gift 389 the main house were ruined and the interior greatly damaged by smoke and water. mr. cabot, in the memoir, gives some account of the fire and its effects on mr. emerson, and he also prints in appendix e of the second volume dr. le baron russell's moving story of the "friendly conspiracy,” the instant and unsolicited action of friends old and new, some of them hardly known to mr. emerson, in testimony of affection and gratitude, to rebuild his house and send him abroad for rest and recreation meanwhile. there also, in judge hoar's letter to dr. russell, appears the judge's happy and affectionate wit in presenting the matter to mr. emerson, as ambassador of his friends, in such a way that the gift was impossible to refuse, though mr. emerson pleaded for time to consider it, saying that thus far in life he “had been allowed to stand on his own feet.” mr. emerson seemed brave and cheerful during the fire, and for more than a week afterwards it looked as if he had suffered no harm. his daughter wrote that it did not seem as if that experience would seriously affect him. “there is no doubt,” she wrote, “that it was a tragedy to him at the time, and that he suffered very much. nothing ever showed me so distinctly how faith390 journal (age 69 ful he is never to mention himself, as this week has.” a room in the court-house was secured for mr. emerson, to which his manuscripts and needed books were brought, and there he tried to work at the anxious and unwelcome task of preparing a new volume. this had been forced upon him by an english publishing-house who, otherwise, proposed to print earlier scattered works of his (from the dial and elsewhere), but they consented to desist if in a very short time he would let them, in connection with his boston publishers, bring out in england a new volume of his essays. but, about a fortnight after the fire, mr. emerson began to be very unwell, and, though he kept about, a low feverish condition with cough and weakness came on. growing no better, he * went for a day or two to rye beach with his daughter and thence to waterford, maine. improvement came slowly; he was distressed about the urgency of the publishers for the new volume on which he was quite unable to work. at waterford he began to think that possibly the end of his life might be at hand, and to consider what would become of his manuscripts and journals, saying that, if his son were a scholar, they would 1872) illness and anxiety 391 be most valuable to him, “ otherwise they are worthless.” he dreaded their falling into the hands of the wrong persons. his friend mr. j. elliot cabot and dr. frederic h. hedge were the only persons that he would consider, but he did not feel that he could ask either of them to leave their work for his, should his powers fail. it was explained to the publishers in london and here that it was absolutely out of the question for mr. emerson to do any work upon letters and social aims until he had recovered his health by entire rest. next year, mr. cabot most kindly arranged the material for it and prepared it for the press.' not long after the fire, miss emerson wrote to dr. edward h. clarke, whom her father was about to consult, a letter telling of the failure of his memory and working powers, which now the family began to realize had been imperceptibly coming on him for five or six years,– mr. emerson had calmly recognized this in 1866, when he wrote “terminus.” the fire and subsequent illness had increased this trouble, and now aphasia, the difficulty of associating the fit word to the idea, appeared, though not at first seriously, i see mr. cabot's preface to letters and social aims. 392 (age 69 journal and also being very variable according to the state of his health.] ec norway, maine, august 20. forgot, in leaving home, twenty necessities, forgot to put horace, or martial, or cicero's letters, la cité antique, or taine's england, in my wallet: forgot even the sacred chocolate satchel itself, to hold them or their like. well, at the dear vale,' eleven miles off yet, i may recall or invoke things as good. yet i should there remember that letters are due ... [to many dear friends who had joined in the generous provision for restoring the house and giving a restful vacation). perhaps i will venture on a letter of proposals of a voyage to elliot cabot, and a letter to the kindly alexander ireland ? is more than due. colonel william forbes and his wife and children had returned from abroad, and mr. emerson, now recovered from his acute attack, joyfully accepted his daughter's invitation to spend a month with them on the forbes's beau1 the old home of the haskins relatives and his aunt mary in waterford. 2 the loyal friend in manchester, england, since 1833. 1872) naushon 393 tiful island, mrs. emerson and their daughter ellen going too.] o naushon, august 31. i thought to-day, in these rare seaside woods, that if absolute leisure were offered me, i should run to the college or the scientific school which offered best lectures on geology, chemistry, minerals, botany, and seek to make the alphabets of those sciences clear to me. how could leisure or labour be better employed ? 'tis never late to learn them, and every secret opened goes to authorize our æsthetics. cato learned greek at eighty years, but these are older bibles and oracles than greek. certainly this were a good pis aller if elliot cabot and athens and egypt should prove an abortive dream. i think one must go to the tropics to find any match to this enchanting isle of prospero. it needs and ought to find its shakspeare. what dells! what lakelets ! what groves ! what clumps of historic trees of unknown age, hinti rev. edward everett hale once wrote an ingenious article showing the possibility of prospero's island in the tempest having been suggested to the poet by gosnold's description of one of the group of elizabeth islands, which mr. hale thought preceded the presentation of the play. 394 journal (age 69 ing annals of white men and indians, histories of fire and of storm and of peaceful ages of social growth! nature shows her secret wonders, and seems to have impressed her fortunate landlords with instant and constant respect for her solitudes and centennial growths. where else do such oaks and beeches and vines grow, which the winds and storms seem rather to adorn than spoil by their hurts and devastations, touching them as with fate, and not wanton interference? and the sea binds the paradise with its grand belt of blue, with its margin of beautiful pebbles, with its watching herons and hawks and eagles, and its endless fleet of barques, steamers, yachts, and fishers' boats. the island compels them — glad to be compelled — to be skilful sailors, yachtsmen, fishermen, and swimmers, thus adding all the charm of the sea to their abode, and adds the surprise and romance of hunting. i[it was not quite easy to persuade mr. emerson to go abroad for the winter and spring. the thought of seeing a few friends, old and new, in england, attracted him, but he always held himself as unfit for visiting and society, and now the limitations and growing infirmities 1872] third english visit 395 of age were mortifying. yet the thought of seeing the ancient nile, and perhaps greece, drew him, and at last he was persuaded to sail, in the last week in october, with his daughter ellen, for liverpool, leaving mrs. emerson with their daughter mrs. forbes. mr. and miss emerson were met on arriving in england by his son edward, then a student at st. thomas's hospital in london, whither, after a short rest at chester, they went early in november. edward then had to sail for home. mr. emerson and his daughter were mostaffeceionately welcomed on their arrival in london, and every delicate aid and guidance was given them by american friends who should be here mentioned. colonel henry lee, who had in the winter lost two of his daughters by diphtheria in florence, whose wife was ill, and his oldest son then struggling between life and death with typhoid fever, yet came daily to see them, and, keeping back his own troubles, cheered them with his friendly and witty talk; mr. charles eliot norton who, within a year, had lost his beautiful wife, was then resident in london with his family, and gave help and wise counsel as to planning the trip to france and italy on the way to egypt. his sister, too, gave sisterly 396 (age 69 journal is help to miss emerson, who was temporarily lame; rev. william henry channing, then a unitarian preacher in kensington, with affectionate zeal did everything possible to make their stay in london in their invalid condition easy and pleasant, as did also mr. moncure d. conway, then minister of the south place ethical society. mr. emerson had also the unexpected pleasure of meeting charles k. newcomb, the valued friend of many years ago. of english friends, first came mr. thomas hughes, then dean stanley and lady augusta his wife, the admirable surgeon (soon after knighted) william maccormac, who had taken care of young emerson, and, best valued, carlyle, though old, broken, and sad. in chester, and in london, as far as his friends would allow, mr. emerson took great comfort in absence of responsibility and quiet, declared that “idlesse is the business of age. i love above all things to do nothing”; he said he never before had discovered this privilege of seventy years: also that he finds “there is a convenience of having a name, -it serves one as well as having a good coat.” he began to eat better than he had for a long time, and made long nights, saying, “a warm bed is the best medicine, — and one gets 1872) norton and carlyle 397 such good sleep in this country, -good strong sleep.” at the table he said, “the land of england desires much food in its inhabitants." when plans were made for him, he would smile and say, “old age loves leisure.” nevertheless, in this short stay, though he felt reluctant to go into company, he enjoyed in moderation seeing the sights of london. mr. norton, during the last year, as far as possible had sunk his own sorrows in cheering ruskin and carlyle, both sick and utterly downhearted, and had made himself much beloved by them. carlyle said to him, speaking of a letter from emerson acknowledging the last volumes of the completed frederick the great, “i have a letter received from him, after a long silence, and though there were few words in it that did not give me pain, it says the only thing that has been said about my book that was worth saying; and therefore, when i had read it through, i wrapped it up in a piece of paper and put it inside the book, and there it will stay till i am dead and it will fall into other hands than mine.” this interesting sentence miss emerson, whose verbal memory was excellent, wrote in a letter to her sister soon after mr. norton's visit. it probably refers to letter 398 journal (age 69 iv clv (january 7, 1866) of the carlyle-emerson correspondence, and yet what is said of the pain-giving words might well refer to the letter from emerson preceding it (cliii, september 26, 1864), referring to carlyle's perverse hostility to the north during the war. the last letters that passed between them were most friendly. after staying but one week of chill and rainy november in london, mr. emerson and his daughter moved on to canterbury — so attractive that he proposed they should send for mrs. emerson and settle there. however, after two days they went direct to paris. there they had a happy week at the same hotel with mr. and mrs. james russell lowell and the charming mr. john holmes (brother of the doctor), whose acquaintance mr. emerson had made fourteen years before at their adirondac camp. in paris they were joined by the admirable swiss travelling servant recommended to them by dean stanley, without whose services their farther journeyings would have been spoiled by cares and difficulties, thus avoided. they went thence by rail to marseilles and nice and by boat to genoa, and thence again by boat to leghorn. making but short stays at pisa and 1872) in rome 399 florence, they reached rome on the last day of november. the weather was fine, they met friends, and had especial good fortune in being the guests during their last week of baron von hoffman and his wife, who was the daughter of samuel gray ward, of boston, mr. emerson's early and valued friend. their villa and garden high on the cælian hill were most beautiful and commanded a wonderful view of the campagna and distant mountains. under the baron's admirable guidance they saw the ancient city to best advantage. thence they went to naples, and after four days sailed for egypt. christmas found them in alexandria, and in the last days of the year they proceeded to cairo.] ve authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1872' zend-avesta; heracleitus ; socrates; cicero; martial; taliessin ; saadi; valtral i among these are given poems used by mr. emerson in his readings, although by favourite authors not usually given in the yearly list. 400 (age 69 * journal leonardo da vinci ; vasari, life of raphael; spenser, muiopotmos; ben jonson, ode to himself ; john fletcher,'epilogue to an honest man's fortune; waller, apology for having loved before; montrose, love song ; richard lovelace, to altbea ; crashaw, sospetto d'herode; bishop berkeley ; pope; david lewis, lines to pope ; thomson, seasons; john wesley, hymn, o draw me, father, after thee; john hunter; sir william jones, translation of hindu poem, to narayena; goethe, sprüche, west-östlichen divan; schleiermacher; wordsworth, sonnet to schill, the force of prayer ; scott, songs of the white lady of avenel; ballad, thomas the rbymer; byron, murat in ode to napoleon, when coldness wraps this suffering clay; varnhagen von ense; boucher de perthes, de l'homme antédiluvien ; josiah conder, the modern traveller; translations of klephtic ballads (from the dial), a romaic lochinvar, and olympus and kissarvos; arab ballad; agassiz; tennyson, maud; richard monckton milnes, the lay of the humble ; julia c. r. dorr, outgrown; mrs. caroline tappan, lines to the poet; j. g. saxe; thoreau, inspiration ; ruskin, sesame and lilies; j. r. lowell; 401 1872) reading coventry patmore; herman grimm, leben raphaels; henry timrod, ode to the confederate dead; edmund c. stedman, john brown of ossawatomie ; helen hunt, thought. journal the nile rome, florence, paris three weeks of london oxford return home journal lxiv 1873 (from journal st) [in spite of rest, friendly faces, and interesting scenes, the old feeling of the unprofitableness of travel for travel's sake, which has appeared so often in mr. emerson's writings, would assert itself, especially in the early part of the journey. his daughter records some of the “dismally witty remarks” that he made on the delta as they passed through it to cairo: “ could anything argue wilder insanity than leaving a country like ours to see this bareness of mud? — look ! there is some water, and see! there is a crowd of people. they have collected with a purpose of drowning themselves.” although he would have been quite willing to go home, he said that he would gladly spend a fortnight with mr. lowell in paris, and desired to find in england tennyson, ruskin, and browning before his return. also, before leaving home, when egypt was suggested, he said, “yes, i should like to see the tomb of him who sleeps at phylæ.'” 406 journal (age 69 at cairo, he was pleased to find mr. bancroft, and went about the city with him. mr. charles g. leland and mr. augustus julius hare were also agreeable. general charles stone (formerly of the united states army, then chief-of-staff of the turkish force in egypt) and his family showed great courtesy to mr. emerson and his daughter.] shepherd's hotel, cairo, january, 1873. nothing has struck me more in the streets here than the erect carriage and walking of the copts (i suppose them); better and nobler in figure and movement than any passengers in our cities at home. oars on tuesday, january 7, we sailed from cairo for philæ, in the dahabeah aurora, with mahmoud bedowa, dragoman; a reis or captain, and his mate ; ten oarsmen, two cooks, a factotum boy, a head waiter named marzook, and second waiter hassan, in all eighteen : the company in the cabin were mr. and mrs. whitwell, miss may whitwell, and miss bessie whitwell, miss farquharſa scotch lady, ellen, and i. 1873) egypt. its riddles 407 egypt very poor in trees: we have seen hardly an orange tree. palms are the chief tree along the banks of the river, from cairo to assuan; acacias, the fig. in cairo, we had a banian with its boughs planting themselves around it under my window at shepheard's hotel. egypt is the nile and its shores. the cultivated land is a mere green ribbon on either shore of the river. you can see, as you sail, its quick boundary in rocky mountains or desart sands. day after day and week after week of unbroken sunshine, and though you may see clouds in the sky, they are merely for ornament, and never rain. the prophet says of the egyptians, “it is their strength to sit still.”. papyrus is of more importance to history than cotton. all this journey is a perpetual humiliation, satirizing and whipping our ignorance. the people despise us because we are helpless i isaiah xxx, 7. mr. emerson, in quoting this, said to one of the party on the dahabeah, “the yankee learns that strength for the first time when he comes to egypt.” 408 [age 69 journal babies who cannot speak or understand a word they say ; the sphinxes scorn dunces; the obelisks, the temple walls, defy us with their histories which we cannot spell. every new object only makes new questions which each traveller asks of the other, and none of us can answer, and each sinks lower in the opinion of his companion. the people, whether in the boat, or out of it, are a perpetual study for the excellence and grace of their forms and motion. no people walk so well, so upright as they are, and strong, and flexible; and for studying the nude, our artists should come here and not to paris. every group of the country people on the shores, as seen from our dahabeah, look like the ancient philosophers going to the school of athens. in swimming, the arabs show great strength and speed, all using what at cambridge we used to call the “southern stroke,” alternating the right arm and the left. all the boys and all the babes have flies roosting about their eyes, which they do not disturb, nor seem to know their presence. it is rare to find sound eyes among them. blind beggars appear at every landing led about by their children. 1873) egypt. the magnet 409 from the time of our arrival at cairo to our return thither, six weeks, we have had no rain; – unclouded summer on the nile to assuan and back, and have required the awning to be spread over us on the deck from 10 a. m. till late in the afternoon. in egypt the sandstone or limestone instructs men how to build, — stands in square blocks, and they have only to make a square door for tombs, and the shore is a pair or a series of steps or stairs. the lateen sail is the shadow of a pyramid; and the pyramid is the simplest copy of a mountain, or of the form which a pile of sand or earth takes when dropped from a cart. i saw a crocodile in the nile at a distance. we arrived at thebes 19th january ; esne (?), 24th; and at assuan, 28th january; visited philæ, on wednesday, 29th january; arrived in cairo thursday, 13th february, making 38 days for our expedition and return. the magnet is the mystery which i would fain have explained to me, though i doubt if there be any teachers. it is the wonder of the child and not less of the philosopher." goethe i mr. charles eliot norton said that on the return voyage from england, in the following may, mr. emerson, as 410 journal (age 69 says, “ the magnet is a primary phenomenon, which we must only express in order to have it explained. thereby is it then also a symbol for all besides for which we use to speak no word or name.” see plutarch, morals, vol. i, p. 156, old copy [edition]. tuesday, january 28. met mr. george l. owen at assuan, our party and his exchanging visits. i found him a very intelligent and agreeable companion. in the dahabeah in which we found him on the nile, he shared the cabin with only one companion, mr. ralph elliot. [this meeting with mr. owen (also a second, soon after, in going down the nile) was a very agreeable episode. mr. emerson's health was steadily improving, and with it his enjoyment. at cairo, mr. emerson and his daughter parted from their friendly travelling companions, took ship for italy — in passing he enjoyed the sight of crete, and its mountains, birthplace of zeus, and after landing hastened on to rome. they had little time for sightthey walked the deck and spoke of the steersman, took from his own pocket his little compass, saying, “i like to hold the god in my hands." soo s 1873) florence. grimm 411 seeing in eleven days, but received constant visits and kind attentions. mr. marsh, the american minister, and his wife were very kind, and they saw their friends the von hoffmans ; also the storys, the howitts, lady ashburton, mr. tilton the artist, miss sarah clarke, and dr. wister, of philadelphia.] in florence, i hoped to find herman grimm, who, as i had heard, was residing there to complete his life of raffaelle. immediately on my arrival, i sent curnex [the travelling servant] to the german bookstores to inquire his address. neither of these knew of his presence in the city. in the street, i met mr. bigelow, our american minister at paris, and asked him for news of grimm. he did not know that he was here. on my return to the hotel du nord, i found mr. bigelow's card saying that, immediately after leaving me, he had met grimm in the street, and learned his address which he had written out for me on his card : and grimm had also called and left his own. i went at once to grimm, and was received and introduced to gisela his wife, and invited them to dine with us that evening, which they did, to the great satisfaction of ellen and me. he speaks engme412 (age 69 journal lish very well, and gisela, who does not, talked with ellen in german. [mr. emerson had never met grimm, although he and his wife (daughter of bettine [brentano] von arnim) had corresponded with him occasionally for years. the meeting was very pleasant and fortunate, as mr. emerson and his daughter were to set out for paris the next morning. in herman grimm's essays is a very interesting account of how he first became acquainted with emerson's writings. grimm's comments to miss emerson on her father's appearance are interesting as showing not only the benefit of the egyptian voyage, but what a wholesome looking man he was, even to the time of his last illness, and how much certain pictures belied him. his daughter, writing home from florence, said, “herman now began telling me of his pleasure in beholding father, and said every photograph did him great injustice;they all represent a feeble old man of seventy; he looks a strong man of fifty. they look as if he were made of iron, of copper. he looks as if he were made of steel. he has a fine, sharp, manly face; and such bright colouring, which is all lost, of course, in the photographs.'”] 1873) joy of a new city 413 [march 16 to april.] in the hotel de lorraine, rue de beaune, paris, where ellen and i took rooms for some weeks during both our visits to paris, we lived with james r. lowell and his wife, and john holmes, to our great satisfaction. there also i received, one evening, a long and happy visit from mr. james cotter morison, who is writing the life of comte. at the house of mr. laugel, i was introduced to ernest renan ; to henri taine; to elie de beaumont; and to some other noted gentlemen. m. taine sent me, the next day, his littérature anglaise, in five volumes. the enjoyment of travel is in the arrival at a new city, as paris, or florence, or rome,the feeling of free adventure, you have no duties, nobody knows you, nobody has claims, you are like a boy on his first visit to the common on election day. old civilization offers to you alone this huge city, all its wonders, architecture, gardens, ornaments, galleries, which had never cost you so much as a thought. for the first time for many years you wake master of the bright day, in a bright world without a claim on you;only leave to enjoy. this drop414 journal [ace 69 ping, for the first time, the doleful bundle of duty creates, day after day, a health as of new youth. in paris, your mere passport admits you to the vast and costly public galleries on days on which the natives of the city cannot pass the doors. household cares you have none: you take your dinner, lunch, or supper where and when you will: cheap cabs wait for you at every corner, -guides at every door, magazines of sumptuous goods and attractive fairings, unknown hitherto, solicit your eyes. your health mends every day. every word spoken to you is a wonderful and agreeable riddle which it is a pleasure to solve, a pleasure and a pride. every experience of the day is important, and furnishes conversation to you who were so silent at home. [mr. emerson now, as witnessed above, was greatly improved in health, and his memory and power of finding the right word in conversation had so far returned towards the normal that he no longer shrank from going into society. he and his daughter arrived in london on saturday, april 5, and went to comfortable s. wisc 1873) london. old friends 415 lodgings. they remained in the city three weeks. on their previous stay, london had been comparatively empty of persons whom they would naturally have seen, but now friends and visitors were most attentive and they had little time for sight-seeing, as they had daily invitations to lunches and dinners. of course the meeting with his oldest and best friend in england was what was foremost in mr. emerson's mind. of the call on carlyle miss emerson wrote, “he was in more amiable and cheerful humour than he had been a few days before when father walked with him, and father has been very happy in the remembrance of this call.” just before leaving london, she writes, “ father, after breakfast with mr. gladstone, spent the forenoon with mr. carlyle with real comfort, bade him good-bye, and then went to the howards' and lunched with mrs. lewes.”] april. in london, i saw fergusson the architect; browning the poet;' john stuart mill; sir i miss emerson writes of her father's " breakfasting at lady amberley's where he met mr. browning and was well pleased. they disagreed about poetry: mr. browning praised shelley.” mr. emerson would never admit the claims of 416 journal (age 69 henry holland; huxley; tyndall; lord houghton; mr. gladstone; dean stanley ; lecky; froude; thomas hughes ; lyon playfair; sir arthur helps; the duke of argyle; the duke of cleveland; the duke of bedford; sir frederick pollock; charles reade; mr. dasent;with the amberleys i paid a visit to lord russell at his house, and lunched there. i failed to see garth wilkinson, though i called on him twice, and he left his card twice at my door, in my absence. william h. channing was, as always, the kindest of friends. moncure conway was incessant in his attentions, and william allingham gave us excellent aid. george howard, who will one day, i hope, be earl of carlisle, was the most attentive and generous of friends. mr. thomas hughes introduced me to the cosmopolitan club, which meets every sunday and wednesday night at 10 o'clock, and there i saw on two evenings very agreeable gentlemen, sir frederick pollock, fergusson, lord houghton, william story, and others. professor tyndall procured me the privileges of the athenæum, which is still the best of the great london clubs; and also of the royal shelley, except in the case of “the skylark” and perhaps one or two more. 1873] days in oxford 417 institution, in albemarle street, where he presides since the death of faraday. visited john forster at his own house, palace gate house, kensington, west. [from london mr. emerson and his daughter went to chester for a day or two, the guests of lord and lady amberley, who showed them tintern abbey, and thence they went to cyfarthra castle to visit mr. and mrs. crawshay.] at oxford [april 30 to may 3] i was the guest of professor max müller,' and was introduced to jowett and to ruskin and to mr. dodgson, author of alice in wonderland, and to many of the university dignitaries. prince leopold was a student, and came home from max müller's lecture to lunch with us, and then invited ellen and me to go to his house, and there showed us his pictures and his album, and there we drank tea. the next day i heard ruskin's lecture, and we then went home with ruskin to his chambers, where he showed us his pictures, and told us his doleful opinions 1 this visit was much enjoyed. professor müller had invited mr. emerson to give two lectures, but he was not prepared to do so. 418 [age 70 journal of modern society. in the evening we dined with vice-chancellor liddell and a large company. [on may 3, the emersons left oxford for warwick, where, after seeing the castle, they were met by mr. e. f. flower, an old friend, who took them to his home at stratford-uponavon, where they spent ten days. on sunday, at the door of the church, they were met by the clerk, who led them to seats in the chancel near shakspeare's tomb. before sailing for home they made a short visit to edinburgh, but no record appears in journal or letters. the presence of mr. norton and his family helped to make the homeward voyage pleasant. on the morning of mr. emerson's seventieth birthday his friend met him on deck and put into his hands the following verses.] to r. w. emerson blest of the highest gods are they who die ere youth is aed. for them their mother fate, 1 with mr. ruskin's constant jeremiades on the state of the world, and especially of england, mr. emerson was annoyed and displeased to such a point that he roundly rebuked --him. 1873) concord's welcome clasping from happy earth to happier sky, frees life, and joy, and love from dread of date. but thee, revered of men, the gods have blest with fruitful years. and yet for thee, in sooth, they have reserved of all their gifts the best ;and, thou, though full of days, shalt die in youth. may 25, 1873. charles e. norton. [mr. emerson landed in boston, may 27, before sailing, his home in concord had been burned, and now from the steamer he looked on his native city, which since his departure had been devastated by fire even to his birthplace, which was where the great establishment of c. f. hovey & co. now stands. that was in the autumn, and now the statelier building was rapidly advancing. when he and his daughter got out of the cars at concord, to their astonishment they found a large part of the population assembled there to greet them. they welcomed the two returned travellers with a cheer, echoed from the passengers in the train as it moved on. then, as the reunited family entered the carriages, the local band played, and, escorted by the children of all the schools and many friends and neighbors, they drove home, passing under a welcoming triumphal arch. there stood the house ise 420 journal (age 70 among the trees, except for its freshness looking without and within as if nothing had ever happened. mr. emerson entered and saw; then turned, rapidly walked to the gate and said such words of joy and gratitude as his emotion would allow. the smiling crowd dispersed and he reentered his home to realize its restoration and greet his nearer friends.] egypt. mrs. helen bell,' it seems, was asked, “ what do you think the sphinx said to mr. emerson?” “why,” replied mrs. bell, “ the sphinx probably said to him, “you're another."" for the writers on religion, none should speak on this matter polemically: it is the gai science and only to be chanted by troubadours. professor max müller has dedicated his new book to me, and sent me a copy. i have read it, and though i am too dull a scholar to judge of the correctness of his courageous deductions from resembling names, or to relish this as i did his earlier books, i respect and thank his erudition and its results. i daughter of rufus choate. 1873] the concord library 421 [mr. emerson was invited to make the address at the opening of the concord free public library, in september, built and given to the town by one of its sons, william munroe. the following paragraphs were written while he was preparing for this occasion. the address is printed in miscellanies.] be a little careful about your library. do you foresee what you will do with it? very little, to be sure. but the real question is, what it will do with you? you will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in. you will find a book here that will tell you such news of what has been seen lately at the observatories in the sun and the other stars that you will not rest until you find a telescope to see the eclipse with your own eyes. 'tis only the other day that they found out what the stars are made of: what chemical elements, identical with those that are in our planet, are found in saturn; what in the sun; and that human life could not exist in the moon. they have just learned that italy had people before the romans, before the etruscans, who made just such arrow-heads as we find in concord, 422 (age 70 journal ar and all their tools were stone: mr. marsh told me he picked them up in africa as in vermont; and they find these all over the world, and the world, instead of being six thousand years old, has had men on it a hundred thousand years. all the new facts of science are not only interesting for themselves, but their best value is the rare effect on the mind, the electric shock; each new law of nature speaks to a related fact in our thought: for every law of chemistry has some analogon in the soul, and however skilful the chemist may be, and how much soever he may push and multiply his researches, he is a superficial trifler in the presence of the student who sees the strict analogy of the experiment to the laws of thought and of morals. we read a line, a word, that lifts us : we rise into a succession of thoughts that is better than the book. the old saying of montluc, that “one man is worth a hundred, and a hundred are not worth one,” is quite as true of books. our reading sometimes seems guided. i open a book which happens to be near me, –a book i had not thought of before, — and, seeing the name of a known writer, i sit down to read the chapter, which presently fixes my attention as if it were an important message directly sent to me. 1873] stallo. identity. life 423 darwin's origin of species was published in 1859, but stallo, in 1849, writes, “animals are but fætal forms of man.” stallo quotes liebig as saying, “the secret of all those who make discoveries is that they regard nothing as impossible.” “the lines of our ancestry run into all the phenomena of the material world.” — stallo. theologic mysteries. our theology ignores the identity of the worshipper; he has fallen in another, he rises in another. can identity be claimed for a being whose life is so often vicarious, or belonging to an age or generation? harvard college. my new term as overseer begun at the close of commencement day, 1873, and ends at the close of commencement day, 1879. life. “we do not take into account what life is in the concrete, — the agreeable habit of working and doing, as goethe names it, the steadily engaging, incessant in-streaming of sensations into the bodily comfortableness.” — hegel, apud varnhagen. 424 journal (age 70 [the latter half of the year was quietly passed in concord by mr. emerson, except for a visit to his daughter mrs. forbes and her husband at naushon. as the english publisher with whom he had had dealings, and, as it were, an enforced arrangement about a new volume (only suspended by his illness), had died, that matter was not troubling him. on december 16, the centennial anniversary of the “ boston tea party,” mr. emerson completed his poem “boston,” so long meditated, and, by request, read it at the celebration in faneuil hall.] latter authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1873 [the greater part of the authors mentioned in this list are included because mr. emerson met them upon his recent journey, principally in england.] kalevala of the finns; edward, lord herbert, autobiography; heeren, ancient world, egypt; hegel ; stendhal (m. h. bayle); sir henry holland; elie de beaumont; thomas carlyle; earl russell ; george bancroft; richard owen; liebig ; francis w. esherr i meni jot 2221 1873] reading 425 newman ; j. s. mill; james fergusson ; r. m. milnes; gladstone; charles darwin ; vicechancellor liddell; dean church; robert browning; j. j. garth wilkinson ; dr. w. b. carpenter; charles reade; daniel kirkwood, comets and meteors; dean stanley; henry lewes and mrs. lewes (george eliot); sir arthur helps ; jowett ; dasent; turgénieff; froude; william w. story ; lyon playfair ; ruskin; j. r. lowell ; alexander c. fraser; thomas hughes ; max müller; stallo ; duke of argyle ; sir frederick pollock; dr. hinton; ernest renan ; charles g. leland; huxley, lay sermons; charles e. norton; william allingham; moncure d. conway; herman grimm; taine ; canon liddon; charles flower; professor lecky ; smalley. inics scico journal death of sumner abel adams francis c. lowell candidacy for lord rectorship of glasgow university parnassus journal lxv 1874 (from journal st) [no longer pledged to far-away lecture engagements, but at home with his family, mr. emerson passed his days in his study looking over the sheets of manuscript still unprinted, which might or might not have done duty in lectures or occasional speeches, selecting and planning for their use, but making little progress, for arrangement of sibylline leaves, always difficult, was now almost impossible. he hardly realized this, but was under no pressure, and so undisturbed. he took pleasure in reading; he kept up his afternoon solitary walk, and enjoyed the monthly meeting with his friends at the dinner of the saturday club. the journal was almost entirely neglected. the following entry is the first, and must have been in latter march, after receiving the letter from judge hoar which follows it.] charles sumner. for sumner's merit, go back 430 journal (age 70 to the dark times of 1850 and see the position of boston and its eminent men. washington, march 11, 1874. my dear mr. emerson: sumner is dead, as the telegraph will have told you before you receive this. he died at thirteen minutes before three this afternoon. i held his hand when he died; and, except his secretary and the attending physician, was the only one of his near friends who was in the room. his last words (except to say “ sit down” to mr. hooper, who came to his bedside, but had gone out before his death) were these : “ judge, tell emerson how much i love and revere him." i replied, “he said of you once that he never knew so white a soul.” during the morning, he had repeated to several persons, to me among the rest, “ you must take care of the civil rights bill.” that was his last public thought. very sorrowfully and affectionately yours, e. r. hoar. [mr. emerson, being asked for some lines that would be appropriate to be read or printed with regard to senator sumner, took these from 1874) sumner. abel adams 431 his poem in memory of his own brother edward bliss emerson. (see“ in memoriam e. b. e.," poems.)] all inborn power that could consist with homage to the good flamed from his martial eye; ... fronting foes of god and man, frowning down the evil-doer, battling for the weak and poor. his from youth the leader's look gave the law which others took, and never poor beseeching glance shamed that sculptured countenance. es [two notices of valued and early friends who died about this time follow. mr. abel adams, of the firm of barnard and adams, was mr. emerson's parishioner, and neighbor in his chardon street housekeeping. he was also his business adviser, and was so troubled that the venture in vermont and canada railroad stock turned out ill that he insisted on assuming the expenses of edward emerson in college, a great help to mr. emerson in the hard times of the war.] i ought to have many notes of my pleasant memories of abel adams, one of the best of my 432 journal (age 71 friends, whose hospitable house was always open to me by day or by night for so many years in boston, lynn, or west roxbury. his experiences as a merchant were always interesting to me. i think i must have somewhere recorded the fact, which i recall to-day, that he told me that he and two or three merchants had been counting up, in the globe bank, out of a hundred boston merchants how many had not once failed, and they could only count three. abel adams was the benefactor of edward w. e, in college, and of all of us in his last will. ce september (?). the death of francis cabot lowell is a great loss to me. now for fifty-seven years since we entered college together, we have been friends, meeting sometimes rarely, sometimes often; seldom living in the same town, we have always met gladly on the old simple terms. he was a conservative, i always of a speculative habit; and often in the wayward politics of former years, we had to compare our different opinions. he was a native gentleman, thoroughly true, and of decided opinions, always frank, considerate, and kind. on all questions his opinions were his own, and deliberately formed. one day he came 1874) francis cabot lowell 433 to concord to read to me some opinions he had written out in regard to the education now given at cambridge. he did not leave the paper with me and i regret that i cannot recall its substance. however you might differ from him, he always inspired respect and love. i have never known a man of more simplicity and truth. i heard gladly, long since, from dr. hobbs, of waltham, what i had never heard from himself, — the story of lowell's relation to the chemical mills in waltham. his father, mr. frank lowell, senior, had founded them, and his son inherited in them an important interest. from whatever causes, the property had sadly depreciated. but mr. lowell undertook the charge of them himself, studied chemistry with direct reference to the work done in this mill, made himself master of all the processes required; corrected the mistakes; and against all advice stayed therein until its depreciated shares came up to par; then he sold his shares in the property and retired. a man of a quiet inward life, silent and grave, but with opinions and purposes which he quietly held and frankly stated, when his opinion was asked; gently, but with a strong will, and a perseverance which at last carried his point. mr. henry lee higginson told me how 434 (age 71 journal scrupulously honest he was, how slow to avail himself of the right to take up mortgages, the terms of which had not been kept. mr. h. thought him romantically honest. and his truth was of the like strain. he said to me, at his house, that when his club had lately met there, several gentlemen expressed to him their satisfaction at being his guests; and this led him to say that he did not believe he had ever expressed to any man more regard for the person than he really felt. exact and literal in affairs and in intercourse, he was the most affectionate parent, and his children's children filled the house with their joy. his generosity was quiet, but sure and effective. very strict in its direction, but ample in amount. he was the friend in need, silent but sure, and the character of the giver added rare value to the gift, as if an angel brought you gold. i may well say this, when i recall the fact that on the next day after my house was burned, he came to concord to express his sympathy in my misfortune, and a few days afterward surprised me with a munificent donation from himself and his children which went far to rebuild it. in college, i well remember the innocence of the youth when we first met;— and the pernei 1874] f. c. lowell. poetry 435 fect simplicity of his manners he never lost. yet long years afterward i well remember that when we stood together to witness a marriage in the stone chapel, my wife inquired who was the gentleman who stood by me, and who looked so like a king; i was delighted by the perception. i dearly prize the photograph taken from rowse's drawing of his head, which is an admirable likeness, my gift from his daughter, georgina lowell. his daughter tells me that he thought he did not interest his acquaintances. i believe he always had their entire respect, and a friendship akin to love. fortunate in his birth and education, accustomed always to a connection of excellent society, he was never confounded with others by the facility of interest and neighbourhood, but remained as independent in his thought as if he had lived alone. parker house, monday night, november. the secret of poetry is never explained, is always new. we have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, and the eternity it inherits. in every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, and knows not that they are such. 't is as easy as breath. 'tis new 436 (age 71 journal like this gravity, which holds the universe together, and none knows what it is. “ the arch is the parent of the vault, the vault is the parent of the cupola." edward a. freeman. the boy grew to man and never asked a question, for every problem quickly developed its law. [in the spring, mr. emerson had been surprised by an invitation from the independent club of the university of glasgow to accept their nomination as candidate for the office of lord rector for that year, the duty involved being the delivery of the annual address. mr. emerson was pleased with the compliment, and, after some consideration, and consultation with near friends, sent his acceptance, but with little expectation of election-especially as disraeli was the candidate of the conservative body of students. the campaign, as shown by manifestoes, songs, etc., constantly sent to mr. emerson through the mail by his enthusiastic adherents, was conducted with great spirit and excitement. in november he was notified of the result. he 1874) emerson's parnassus 437 had received more than five hundred votes, and disraeli was chosen lord rector by a majority of some two hundred. in december, the collection of poems, parnassus, was published, which owes its existence to the urgency and activity through several years of mr. emerson's younger daughter. she loved to hear her father read poems and fragments collected through years in his “ black anthology” (so called from its leather covers) and another. as his favourites were often hard to find, especially those from the older poets, and not in such collections as were at hand, the idea of publishing such a volume pleased him, when suggested, and he said, and, when urged again another year, repeated,“we must.” then the zealous school girl began herself to seize occasions to bring volumes of the poets to her father in his study and insist on his choosing, and began herself to copy the favourites. this went on through several years until she became mrs. forbes, and then, whenever she was with her father either in milton or concord, she succeeded in commanding attention to the work, and herself had the copying done. thus, when the lecturing ceased, there was more time to attend to the selections. it should be said also 438 journal (age 71 that mr. emerson became less exacting in his criticisms of newer verses. in the preface to parnassus he gives in the first paragraph an account of his selection of poems from his early youth, followed by a short essay on the poets.] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1874 alexis, lines on sleep; plotinus; dr. charles r. lowell ; charles sumner ; edward a. freeman, cathedral architecture ; william morris, proem to the earthly paradise ; charles warren stoddard; titus m. coan, the tree of life. journal cabot the helper meeting of old schoolmates the minute man life and the child carlyle's birthday journal lxvi 1875 (from journal st) [the flame of mr. emerson's powers of writing, faint in the last three years, now flickered to extinction in the journals of this and the following year. yet the instinct of work remained, and he passed most of each day in his study still working at arranging his manuscripts, and his daughter ellen helped him as far as she could. in the year before, the question of who should deal with his manuscripts when he was gone had been in his thought, and mr. cabot's name was the one which he wistfully mentioned, but felt that the favour was so great that he could not venture to ask it from his friend. but now the case became urgent, for the promised book was called for by the successors of the english publishers who had first wrung consent from mr. emerson by threatening to collect a book of old dial papers, and other rejected material, out of copyright. so, with mr. emerson's permission, the matter was presented for mr. cabot's 442 (age 71 journal ne consideration. he consented with entire kindness to give what help he could, and thus lifted the last load from mr. emerson's shoulders. the relief was complete and rendered his remaining years happy. at last he could see and come near to the friend whom he had valued at a distance for years. mr. cabot's frequent visits, often for several days at a time, were a great pleasure. just how large mr. cabot's share in preparing for the press letters and social aims was he tells with entire frankness in the preface to that volume. mr. emerson furnished the matter, — almost all written years before, — but mr. cabot the arrangement and much of the selection. all was submitted to mr. emerson's approval, but he always spoke to his friend of the volume as “your book.” early in the year his crony of the boston school boy days, dr. william h. furness, wrote to him begging him to accept an invitation to lecture in philadelphia and to be his guest. in the affectionate letter in answer, given in full in mr. cabot's memoir, mr. emerson writes: “well, what shall i say in defence of my stolid silence at which you hint? why, only this:... that the gods have given you some draught of their perennial cup, and withheld 1875) nineteenth of april 443 the same from me. i have, for the last two years, written nothing in my once diurnal manuscripts; and never a letter that i could omit. . . . now comes your new letter with all your affectionate memories and preference fresh as roses. ... i must obey it. my daughter ellen, who goes always with my antiquity, insists that we shall. ... my love to sam bradford.” they went and the three playfellows had a happy reunion. on march 18, mr. emerson read in boston a lecture “true oratory,” probably nearly the same as the chapter “eloquence” in letters and social aims. on the nineteenth of april, the town celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of concord fight. president grant and members of his cabinet were present, the governors of all the new england states with their escorting regiments, the massachusetts general court, the eminent writers of new england, and an immense concourse of people. at the end of the north bridge (built anew for the occasion), where stood the american force, the bronze minute man made by daniel c. french had been placed, and, when the throng arrived, mr. emerson unveiled it and made a short speech, the last he ever composed. then, in the tent 444 journal [age 71 beyond, lowell and curtis delivered respectively the admirable ode and address. mr. emerson's speech was not included in the works. it is to be found in the boston papers of the next day, the commonwealth of april 27, and in the concord pamphlet recording that celebration.] in 1775, the patriotism in massachusetts was so hot that it melted the snow, and the rye waved on the 19th april. our farmers have never seen it so early. the very air and the soil felt the anger of the people. it occurs that the short limit of human life is set in relation to the instruction man can draw of nature. no one has lived long enough to exhaust its laws. the delicacy of the touch and the eternity it inherits — in every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, and knows not that they are such: 'tis as easy as breathing. 'tis like gravity which holds the universe together, and none knows what it is. [it should be mentioned that mr. emerson had been appointed a member of the sub-com445 1875) reading mittee on philosophy at harvard university for the year.] “ eichhorn would have the order of studies and the establishment of rigor therein in our universities increased. others agreed. then schleiermacher quite simply said, he did not see how each must prescribe the way by which he came to his knowledge : the routine was in our ways of study so demolished, the rules of all kinds so heaped, that to him nothing seemed better to do than to pull down all the universities. “and what to put in their place?' they asked: “that would it find of itself at once, and quite rightly,"answered schleiermacher.” — varnhagen von ense. blätter aus der preussischen geschichte, v, 44. nhagen v december 5, 1875. thomas carlyle's 80th birthday. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1875 gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire ; eichhorn and schleiermacher apud von ense; charles levigne, un médecin de l'ame. nal carlyle medal university of virginia latin school centenary allingham's poem journal lxvii 1876 (from journal st) on saturday, february 5, received through the post-office a pacquet containing a silver medal, on one face bearing the profile of carlyle, with the name “thomas carlyle” inscribed ; on the other face, “in commemoration 1875 december 4.” a card enclosed reads, “to r. w. emerson from alexander macmillan" [london]; for which welcome and precious gift i wish to write immediately my thanks to the kind sender. [in march, mr. emerson read a lecture in lexington. an invitation from the washington and jefferson literary societies of the university of virginia to give an address at their commencement pleased him as a token from the south and he accepted it, and went with his daughter to charlottesville in june. he 450 journal (age 73 was hospitably received, and read there “the scholar”(in lectures and biographical sketches). on november 8, at a meeting of the latin school association in boston, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the reopening of the school after the evacuation of the city by the british, he gave his pleasant reminiscences of his school-days. his remarks were reported in the boston papers of next day. the year's journal, hardly begun, or rather the journal of more than half a century, closes with a poem of william allingham, sent and signed by the author, whom mr. emerson valued, enclosed between the leaves. it might seem, perhaps, a grateful tribute of a disciple to a master.] poesis humana what is the artist's duty ? his work, however wrought, shape, color, word or tone is to make better known (himself divinely taught), to praise and celebrate, because his love is great, the lovely miracle of universal beauty. this message would he tell. 1876] 451 allingham's poem this message is his trust, amidst the day's crude strife, with all his heart and soul, with all his skill and strength seeking to add at length, — (because he may and must,-) some atom to the whole of man's inheritance ; some fineness to the glance, some richness to the life. if he shall deal perforce with evil and with pain, with horror and affright, he does it to our gain ; makes felt the mighty course of law — whose atmosphere is beauty and delight; nay, these its very source. his work, however small, itself hath rounded well, even like earth's own ball in softly tinted shell of air. his magic brings the mystery of things; it gives dead substance wings; it shows in little, much; and by an artful touch conveys the hint of all. 452 journal [age 59-69 (from ledgers of uncertain date) [mr. emerson, with all the temperamental difficulty he found in arrangement of the abundant material received from nature and man, had something of business method in his bookkeeping. besides his journals — day-books — he had also a few books which might be called ledgers, into which irregularly he copied, or wrote, good material according to subject. such were il (intellect), py (poetry), ph (philosophy), li (literature), to (tolerance ?) and others less easily guessed. the editors have ventured to give here a few concluding passages, of uncertain date, from some of these manuscripts, which they do not find among the journal se works. ] (from ph) idealism. is it thought that to reduce the divine mode of existence to a state of ideas is deducting with a high hand of idealism and unfastening the logic of the universe? we are mammals of a higher element, and, as the whale must come to the top of the water for air, we must go to the top of the air, now and then, for thought. the guiding star to the arrangement and use arral se ven 1862-1872] sensibility 453 of facts is in your leading thought. the heaven of intellect is profoundly solitary, it is unprofitable, it is to be despised and rejected of men. if i recall the happiest hours of existence, those which really make a man an inmate of a better world, it is a lonely and undescribed joy, but it is the door that leads to joys ear hath not heard nor eye seen. each power of the mind is well in itself; as, perception, or memory : but we are first sensible of the miracle when these powers combine or interact. mathematic combinations are potent only in the first degree, until powerful memory is joined to them; then you have archimedes and laplace. sensibility. the poorest place has all the wealth of the richest, as soon as genius arrives. ... ah, could i quicken your attention to your society by whispering to you its immense wealth of nature, and genius's possibility. there are persons who might take their seat on the throne of this globe without real or false shame. the real estate of the universe is space and matter; the proprietor is intellect, and what belongs to intellect, will or good will. 454 journal [age 59-69 abnormal minds. william blake, swedenborg, behmen, and what other men of abnormal experience, — as, for example, some trustworthy second-sighted or forewarned seers or dreamers who are apprised in one country of the death or danger of their twin or brother in another country (if ever one could get a proven fact of this kind), — are important examples each to the metaphysician; blake [also], who affirmed that he did not see the phenomenon, as the marble, the harp, or the cloud, but looked ever through it, and saw its meaning. the zoroasters and sibyls and oracular men to whom we owe some profoundest sentences are essential parts of our knowledge of the human mind, or the possible omnificence (latent but for these flashes) of the intellect. the hindu specimens have their value. every such mind is a new key to the secret of mind. m wonder. the most advanced man in his most advanced moment — contemplating himself and nature — sees how rude an idiot he is, how utterly unknown is the cause and the necessity, its roots and its future all unknown, a gigantic dream. 1862-1872) the masters 455 divination. i think that not by analytic inspection, but by sympathy and piety, we correct our metaphysics. thus hegel and kant have become possible by the extraordinary wealth of all natural sciences, which waked and tested every faculty of thought, and thus finer distinctions could be felt and expressed. the analysis of intellect and nature which the grand masters, heraclitus, parmenides, plato, spinoza, hume, kant, schelling, hegel, have attempted are of primary value to science, like the work of the great geometers and mathematicians, and cannot be spared or overpraised: they are dear to us as vindications of the sufficiency of the intellect, and pledges of future advances. they seem to the scholar to degrade all inferior and less ambitious observation as needless and of no worth. they freeze his invention and hope. they write ne plus ultra on the dizzy pinnacle to which in the thin air their almost winged footsteps have climbed. they have marked, once for all, distinctions which are inherent in the sound mind, and which we must henceforth respect. the instinct that led heraclitus and parmenides and lucretius to write in verse was 456 [age 59-69 journal just, however imperfect their success. the world lies so in heaps that it is not strange that there should yet be no painters, no homer of our thoughts, far higher than the homer of greek thoughts. intellect. there is no age to intellect. read plato at twenty or at sixty years, the impression is about equal. the joy of the thinker in detecting his errors : i have more enjoyed, in the last hours of finishing a chapter, the insight attained of how the truths really stand, than i suffer from seeing the confusion i had left in the statement. inspiration. our music-box only plays certain tunes, and rarely a sweeter strain: but we are assured that our barrel is not a dead, but a live barrel, nay, is only a part of the tune, and changes like that. a larger dialectic conveys a sense of power and feeling of terror unknown; and henry thoreau said, “that a thought would destroy most persons,” and yet we apologize for the power, and bow to the persons. i want an electrical machine. slumbering power we have, but not excited, collected, and discharged. if i should be honest, i should say, my 1862-1872) the law. transit 457 my exploring of life presents little or nothing of respectable event or action, or, in myself, of a personality. too composite to offer a positive unity: but it is a recipiency, a percipiency. and 1, and far weaker persons (if it were possible) than i, who pass for nothing but imbeciles, do yet affirm by our own percipiency the presence and perfection of law, as much as all the martyrs. a man's style is his mind's voice. wooden minds, wooden voices. truth is shrill as a fife, various as a panharmonium. v ? sasa transition. transition the organic destiny of the mind. the value of a trope is that the hearer is one. 'tis the great law of nature, that the more transit, the more continuity; or, we are immortal by force of transits. we ask a selfish, selfsame immortality. nature replies by steeping us in the sea which girds the seven worlds, and makes us free of them all. at any pitch, a higher pitch. what we call the universe to-day is only a symptom or omen of that to which we are passing. every atom is on its way? onward. the universe circulates in thought. every thought 458 journal [age 59-69 is fleeting. our power lies in transition, there is said to be a certain infinite of power which is availed us in the power-press. ps there's not only your talent, but your spirit. easy to give your colour or character to any assembly, if your spirit is better than the speaker’s. [my brother] edward, with his wit, never failed to check any trifling with morals in his presence. 'tis impossible that the divine order be broken without resistance, and the remorses, wraths, indecisions, violence, and runnings away into solitude of men are the checks and recoils. the wonder of the world in good hours — i might say whenever we go home from the streets —is, that so many men of various talent, including men of eminent special ability, do not recognize the supreme value of character. in history we appreciate it fully. we all read plutarch with one mind, and unanimously take sides with agesilaus in sparta, with aristides, phocion, demosthenes, in athens, with epaminondas in thebes, and wonder how the athenians could be such fools as to take such bravos as the creons against these grave, just, and noble heroes. in rome, we give our suffrages again to scipio, regulus, paulus æmilius, and cato, and 1862–1872) nature and mind 459 trajan, and marcus aurelius against their profligate rivals. in england, we know the worth of sidney, alfred, of more, of burke. in america, we see the purity and exceptional elevation of washington. and, at this moment, we see in the english minister at the head of the government the immense comfort and trust reposed in a competent minister of a high and blameless character.' nature. the secret of nature glimmers to all eyes in these days, namely, that her ulterior meaning dwarfs all her wonders before the grandeur to which she leads us on. for she apprises man that he converses with reality, with the cause of causes, and her fairest pictures are only part of the immense procession of effects. mind and nature. on this(unity) the emphasis of heaven and earth is laid. nature is brute, but as this animates it, only a language, a noun, for the poet. nature always the effect; mind the flowing cause. nature, we find, is as is our sensibility; hostile to ignorance, -plastic, transparent, delightful to knowledge. mind contains the law; history is the slow and atomic un1 probably gladstone. 460 journal [age 59-69 folding: the universe, at last, only prophetic, or, shall we say, symptomatic of vaster interpretation and result. (from to) 'tis fine, that hegel“ dared not unfold or pursue the surprising revolutionary conclusions of his own method," but not the less did the young hegelians consummate the work, so that quickly, in all departments of life, in natural sciences, politics, ethics, laws, and in art, the rigorous dogma of immanent necessity exterminated all the old tottering, shadowy forms. 'tis like goethe and wordsworth disowning their poetry. room must be allowed for the skepticism. it was always in use that certain belligerent minds had a suicidal, a scorpion-sting-scorpion talent, as, it is said, the gastric juices sometimes eat up the stomach: so these have the whim to go behind the institutions also, and ask the foundation of the foundation, “the guide of my guide," as m. r. asked me. and there is, as my brother edward said, in boyhood, always“the other way"; or, as shakspeare says, “a plague of opinion! a man can wear on both sides, like a leather jerkin." they are all cracked; every one of them has or 1862-1872] a man's strength 461 his egotism, or mania, or gluttony, or vulgarity, or flattery of some kind, as he has his rheumatism, or scrofula, or sixth toe, or other flaw in his body. all i want is his sanity, his specialty of acuteness, his fluency, his knack; and i should as soon think of asking after the old shoes of an observer as after his gluttonies, or his debts, or his conceit, or whatever infirmities. “did the troops carry the battery?” “sire, here is the list of the wounded.” “take that to the surgeon. did they carry the battery? vive la france !” allowance always for the exempts, who, by strong call of nature, [haunt] the pond-sides, groping for plants (as bishop turpin for the talisman which charlemagne threw into the pond): or, lost in the allurement of colour, mix pigments on a pallet; or study the surfaces and mantles and runes on seashells, heedless of france or england or prussia, or what the pope, the emperor, the congress, or the stock exchange, may do; or carnot buried in his mathematics; or kant in his climbing from round to round the steps of the mysterious ladder which is the scale of metaphysic powers. these are always justified sooner or later: point for point, the whole noisy fracas of politics or interest is 462 journal (age 59-69 truly and divinely recognized and counted for them, there in their spiritual coil or cælum. there is sardinia, and london, rome, and vienna, and washington, sternly abstracted into its salt and essence. transition. ever the ascending effort. the greeks and the scandinavians hold that men had one name and the gods another for heaven, hell, water, cloud, and mountain. and the edda, when it has named and dealt with the asa and the elfin, speaks of the “higher gods.” see the ascending scale of plato and especially of plotinus. natural sciences have made great stride by means of hegel's dogma which put nature, and thought, matter and spirit, in right relation, one the expression or externalization of the other. observation was the right method, and metaphysics was nature and subject to observation also. but (hegel and all his followers) shunned to apply the new arm to what most of all belonged to it, to anthropology, morals, politics, etc. for this at once touched conservatism, church, jurisprudence, etc. therefore the natural sciences made great progress and philosou 1862–1872] science. ethics 463 phy none. but natural science, without philosophy, without ethics, was unsouled. presently natural science, which the governments have befriended, will disclose the liberalizing as well as the dynamic strength; then natural science will be presented as, e. g., geology, astronomy, ethnology, as contradicting the bible. difference of the two is: natural sciences, a circle, morals and metaphysics a line of advance; one the basis, the other the completion. not only transition but melioration. the good soul took you up, and showed you for an instant of time something to the purpose. well, in this way, it educates the youth of the universe, warms, suns, refines each particle; then drops the little channel, through which the life rolled beatific, to the ground, — touched and educated by a moment of sunshine, to be the fairer material for future channels, through which the old glory shall dart again in new directions, until the universe shall have been shot through and through, tilled with light. with this eternal demand for more which belongs to our modest constitutions, how can we be helped ? the gods themselves cannot help us; they are just as badly off themselves. 464 journal (age 59-69 genius unsettles everything. it is fixed, is it? that after the reflective age arrives, there can be no quite rustic and united man born? yes, quite fixed. ah! this unlucky shakspeare! and ah! this hybrid goethe! make a new rule, my dear, can you not ? and to-morrow genius shall stamp on it with his starry sandals. genius consists neither in improvising, nor in remembering, but in both. o means writing should be like the settlement of dew on the leaf, of stalactites on the cavern wall, the deposit of flesh from the blood, of woody fibre from the sap. the poem is made up of lines each of which filled the sky of the poet in its turn; so that mere synthesis produces a work quite superhuman. for that reason, a true poem by no means yields all its virtue at the first reading, but is best when we have slowly and by repeated attention felt the truth of all the details. fame is a signal convenience. do we read all the authors, to grope our way to the best? no, but the world selects for us the best, and we select from the best, our best. mankind have ever a deep common sense that guides their judgments, so that they are 1862-1872) thought and fate 465 always right in their fames. how strange that jesus should stand at the head of history, the first character of the world, without doubt, but the unlikeliest of all men, one would say, to take such a ground in such a world. yet he dates our chronology. well, as if to indemnify themselves for this vast concession to truth, they must put up the militia — alexander, cæsar, napoleon, etc. — into the next place of proclamation. yet 't is a pit to olympus, this fame to that; or were by the place of plato, homer, pindar, etc. thoughts. against fate, thought; for, though that force be infinitely small, infinitesimal against the bulky masses of nature, and the universal chemistry, 't is of that subtlety that it homeopathically doses the system. thought is nothing but the circulations made harmonious. every thought, like every man, wears, at its first emergence from the creative night, its rank stamped on it:this is a witticism, and this is a power. .... thoughts come to those who have thoughts, as banks lend to capitalists and not to paupers. every new thought which makes day in our souls has its long morning twilight to announce 466 journal [age 59-69 its coming. add the aurora that precedes a beloved name. the distinction of a man is that he thinks. let that be so. for a man cannot otherwise compare with a steam-engine or the self-acting spinning-mule which is never tired, and makes no fault. but a man thinks and adapts. a man is not a man, then, until he have his own thoughts : that first; then, that he can detach them. but what thoughts of his own are in abner or guy? they are clean, well-built men enough to look at, have money, and houses and books, but they are not yet arrived at humanity, but remain idiots and minors. . [language.] you can find an old philosopher who has anticipated most of your theses; but, if you cannot find the antisthenes or the proclus that did, you can find in language that some unknown man has done it, inasmuch as words exist which cover your thought. thus there is a day when the boy arrives at wanting a word to express his sense of relation between two things or two classes of things and finds the word analogy or identity of ratio. a day comes when men of all countries are compelled to use the french word solidarité to sig. nify inseparable individualities. 1862-1872) divine genius 467 (from il) genius. genius loves truth, and clings to it, so that what it says and does is not in a byroad visited only by curiosity, but on the great highways of the world, which were before the appian way, and will long outlast it, and which all souls must travel. genius delights in statements which are themselves true, which attack and wound any who opposes them. they called ideas gods, and worshipped intellect. they dared not contravene with knacks and talents the divinity which they recognized in genius. when the greeks in the iliad perceived that the gods mixed in the fray, they drew off. wonderful is the alembic of nature, through which the sentiment of tranquillity in the mind of the sculptor becomes, at the end of his fingers, a marble hesperus: but the feeling manages somehow to shed itself over the stone, as if that were porous to love and truth. truth. truth does not come with jangle and contradiction, but it is what all sects accept, what recommends their tenets to right-minded men. truth is mine, though i never spoke it. 468 [age 59-69 journal “unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution.” — h. d. thoreau. people value thoughts, not truths; truth, not until it has passed through the mould of some man's mind, and so is a curiosity, and an individualism. but ideas, as powers, they are not up to valuing. we say that the characteristic of the teutonic race is, to prefer an idea to a phenomenon; and of the celtic, to prefer the phenomenon to the idea. higher is it to prize the power above the thought, i. e., above the idea individualized or domesticated. subjectiveness. dangerously great, immoral even in its violence of power. the man sees as he is. add the least power of vision, and the tyranny of duties slackens. i am afraid to trust you with the statement. the genius of bonaparte gilds his crimes to us; but that is only a hint of what it was to him. it converts every s obstruction into facilities and fuel of force; dwarfs into giants. his aim, so dim before, beams like the morning star, and every cloud is touched by its rays. ... 1862-1872] thought. religion 469 subjectiveness itself is the question, and nature is the answer : the universe is the blackboard on which we write. philosophy is called the homesickness of the soul. automatic action of thought. there is a process in the mind analogous to crystallization in the mineral. i think of some fact. in thinking of it, i am led to more thoughts, which show themselves, first partially, and afterwards more fully. but in them i see no order. when i would present them to others, they have no beginning. leave them now, and return later. do not force them into arrangement, and by and bye you shall find they will take their own order, and the order they assume is divine. thought has its own foregoers and followers, that is, its own current. thoughts have a life of their own. a thought takes its own true rank in the memory by surviving other thoughts that were preferred. but also thought ranks itself at its first emergence. religion. religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours. 470 journal [age 59-69 m fancy and imagination. examples. henry thoreau writes, — “the day has gone by with its wind, like the wind of a cannon ball, and now far in the west it blows; by that dim colored sky you may track it.” (june 18, 1853.) “the solidago nemoralis now yellows the dry fields with its recurved standard a little more than a foot high, marching to the holy land, a countless host of crusaders.” (august 23.) flight of eagle. “ circling, or rather looping along westward.” “and where are gone the bluebirds, whose warble was wafted to me so lately like a blue wavelet through the air ?”. “the air over these fields is a foundry full of moulds for casting the bluebird's warbles.” (feb. 18, 1857.) “the bird withdrew by his aërial turnpikes.” (oct. 5, 1857.) scholar's creed. i believe that all men are born free and equal quoad the laws. that all men have a right to their life, quoad the laws. i believe in freedom of opinion religious and political. 1862-1872] beliefs. fate 471 i believe in universal suffrage,' in public schools, in free trade. i believe the soul makes the body. i believe that casualty is perfect. (from eo) fate. the opinions of men lose all worth to him who observes that they are accurately predictable from the ground of their sect. well, they are still valuable as representatives of that fagot of circumstances, if they are not themselves primary parties. but even the chickens running up and down, and pecking at each white spot and at each other as ridden by chicken nature, seem ever and anon to have a pause of consideration, then hurry on again to be chickens. men have more pause. we are to each other results. as my perception or sensibility is exalted, i see the genesis of your action, and of your thought. i see you in your debt, and fountains; and, to my eye, instead of a little pond of life, you are a rivulet fed by rills from every plain and height in nature and antiquity ; and reviving a remote origin from the source of things. 1 with the exception that known crime should withdraw the right of suffrage. [r. w. e.'s note.] 472 journal (age 59-69 may and must. the musts are a safe company to follow, and even agreeable. if we are whigs, let us be whigs of nature and science, and go for the necessities. the must is as fixed in civil history and political economy as in chemistry. how much will has been expended to extinguish the jews ! yet the tenacities of the race resist and prevail. so the negro sees with glee, through all his miseries, his future possession of the west indies (and of the southern states of america) assured. for he accumulates and buys, whilst climate, etc., favour him, against the white. souls with a certain quantity of light are in excess, and, once for all, belong to the moral class, what animal force they may retain, to the contrary, notwithstanding. souls with less light, it is chemically impossible that they be moral, what talent or good they have, to the contrary notwithstanding; and these belong to the world of fate, or animal good: the minors of the universe, not yet twenty-one, — not yet voters, — not robed in the toga virilis. fate. we are talkative, but heaven is silent. i have puzzled myself like a mob of writers before me in trying to state the doctrine of fate 1862–1872] fate withstood 473 for the printer. i wish to sum the conflicting impressions by saying that all point at last to an unity which inspires all, but disdains words and passes understanding.' ... the first cause; as soon as it is uttered, it is profaned. the thinker denies personality out of piety, not out of pride. it refuses a personality which is instantly imprisoned in human measures. “it stands written on the gate of heaven woe to him who suffers himself to be betrayed by fate.” hafiz. i have heard that they seem fools who allow themselves to be engaged and compromised in undertakings, but that at last it appears quite otherwise, and to the gods otherwise from the first. i affix a like sense to this text of hafiz: for he who loves is not betrayed, but makes an ass of fate. (from py) [man's eastern horizon.] the men in the street fail to interest us, because at first view they seem thoroughly known and exhausted. as if an inventory of all man's parts and qualities had been taken. ... but after the most exact i here follows the concluding passage of “ powers and laws of thought" (natural history of intellect, p. 64). 474 journal [age 59-69 ai a 10 count has been taken, there remains as much more, which no tongue can tell. this remainder is that which genius works upon. this is that which the preacher, the poet, the artist, and love, and nature, speak unto, the region of power and aspiration. these men have a secret persuasion, that, as little as they pass for in the world, they are immensely rich in expectancy and power. the best part of truth is certainly that which hovers in gleams and suggestions unpossessed before man. his recorded knowledge is dead and cold. but this chorus of thoughts and hopes, these dawning truths, like great stars just lifting themselves into his horizon, they are his future, and console him for the ridiculous brevity and meanness of his civic life. psychology is fragmentarily taught. one man sees a sparkle or shimmer of the truth, and reports it, and his saying becomes a legend or golden proverb for all ages. and other men see and try to say as much, but no man wholly and well. we see what we make. we can see only what we make. all our perceptions, all our desires, are procreant. perception has a destiny.' ... 1 what follows is printed in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 42). 1875-1881) the last years 475 [in the last six years of his life, after the journals had no entries save for a few memoranda, mr. emerson, though he wrote nothing, could hardly answer a letter, — still, occasionally, when urged, read a discourse near home, among old friends. on these occasions his daughter always sat near him to make sure that the sheets of his manuscript did not get out of order, or even to prompt him, in case he mistook a word. in april, 1877, he read his affectionate paper on his native city “boston” at the old south church, and, a year later, in the same place, “the fortune of the republic.” in the spring of 1879, he read“ eloquence” at cambridge, and also “the preacher”in the divinity school chapel, where, forty-one years before, he had startled his hearers with the address which banished him from the university for so many years. the school of philosophy was established in concord in that year by mr. alcott's friends, and there mr. emerson read “memory,” and in the following year, “ aristocracy,” to its assembled company. in 1880, it has been said, mr. emerson read his hundredth lecture to his townsfolk in the concord lyceum. rson 476 (age 78 journal his last public reading was probably his paper on carlyle (see lectures and biograpbical sketches) before the massachusetts historical society. it is a pleasant circumstance to remember that in his last years mr. emerson took from the study shelves the volumes of his own printed works. they seemed new to him, and when his daughter came in, he looked up, smiling, and said, “why, these things are really very good.” to readers of these journals talks of a poet and scholar, who was also a good citizen of the republic, with himself in varying moods — the words of the east indian mozoomdar may seem appropriate :“yes, emerson had all the wisdom and spirit. uality of the brahmans. brahmanism is an acquirement, a state of being rather than a creed.”] 20the end index index abaddon, vii, 97. | adirondac club, ix, 159-61; ix, abandon, v, 239; viii, 106. 193, 194. abandonment, continence and, vi, adirondacs, visit to, ix, 158-61. 203. admiration, ii, 378. abernethy on flies, ii, 471. adrastia, law of, viii, 456. abolition cause, merits of, iii, 469. advance in truth, iii, 224. abolition grows strong, iii, 522. advance necessary for truth, iii, abolitionist, duties of, vi, 534-36; 477. vii, 12; must be gentleman, ix, advancing men humble,v,318,319. 148. advantages, unsafe, iv, 34. abolitionists, vii, 221, 222. adversity, education for. v. 70. absoluteness, x, 186. advertisements, v, 356. abstract, the, is practical, v, 69. æolus, royal, 111, 10. abuse, viii, 100. æschylus, judging of, iv, 326; v, academy exhibition, vii, 488. _437. accademia in naples, iii, 66. æsthetic club, iv, 292. acceleration of thought, viii, 53. affectation, iv, 222, 223. acquaintances, ii, 445; new york, affinity, law of, vii, 301. vi, 163; intellectual, vii, 366; affirmative, vi, 10; and david's english, vii, 489; x, 415-17; new, inventory, vi, 126; ever good, vi, ix, 261; manners of literary, x, 135; the, tx, 41, 42. 64, 65; french, x, 413. afternoon man, iv, 202, 203. acquiescence, vi, 56. agassiz, on embryos, vii, 557; lecaction, 11, 62; and thought, i, 316, tures of, vii, 424; viii, 341; and 317; and contemplation, ii, 239 water, viii, 425; ix, 80, 81; birth41; single-minded, iii, 338; de day of, ix, 95; ix, 149; 270; and light in heroic, iv, 320; and idea, tiedemann, ix, 521; in chicago, vii, 554; physical and intellect x, 11; speech of, at saturday ual, ix, 88. club, x, 26; in concord, x, 60; actions, few, iv, 226. visit to, x, 161; on humboldt, x, acton, walk, with thoreau, to, 300; health of, x, 305. viii, 40, 41. age, sorrow and, v, 267, 268. see actual, the, v, 562. also old age. adam, fall of, iv, 287. age, the reforming, iv, 465; trust adams, abel, death of, x, 431, 432. | your own, v, 293; our, our all, v, adams, john, and jefferson, fu | 323; our, living, the creator's neral rites of, ii, 113. latest work, vi, 58-60; our, a readams, john, ii, 216; on courage, naissance, rx, 320; of bronze in his sayings, viii, 228, 229. england, viii, 579. adams, john quincy, ii, 205; his age, the, spirit of, ii, ioi; viii, 7; eulogy on monroe, ii, 411; iv, 233; art proper to, iv, 87, 88; iv, 137vi, 349, 350; compared with web 39; what is? v, 306; alive, v, 351; ster, vi, 508; rules of, viii, 353. eternity's fruit, v, 359, 360; seradaptability in author, ix, 8. vice for cash — or grandeur? vii, adaptiveness, vii, 61; 103. 525, 526; viii, 98; a critic, ix, addison never knew nature, iv, 197; splendors of, x, 259. see also 259. present age. 480 index ages, verdict of the, iv, 150. versation, viii, 562; his account of agent and reagent, vii, 324. himself, viii, 565; is never dazagra, taj, x, 249. zled, ix, 35, 36; insight of, ix, 38, agriculture, iii, 125. 39; on fate, ix, 503, 504; like a agrippa, cornelius and robert labrador spar, ix, 540; talk burton, vi, 291. with, x, 10; 52; 99; new york aim, a grand, saves, v, 396, 397; | ladies and, x, 157; on memory, in book, vii, 433; man's, viii, x, 362. 255, 256. alcott, junius, paper of, vi, 184. akhlak-1-jalaly, vii, 107. alcuin, viii, 373. alboni, hearing, vii, 443. alexander, moonlight walk with alcott, a. b., iii, 501; 573; v, 322; cranch and, iii, 87. vi, 291, 301; vii, 222;ix, 119, 120; alexandria, ii, 201; 203. his record of a school, iii, 509; alfieri, iv, 343; vii, 239, 240; on visit of, iii, 559; journals of, iv, french, viii, 521. ii; writing of, iv, 61; 462; school alfred the great, 1, 206; viii, 564; of, iv, 69; thought of, his limitaasser and, viii, 381. tions, iv, 71, 72; school conversa| algebraic x, viii, 419. tions of, iv, 75; symposium at ali ben abu taleb, viii, 6. house of, iv, 113, 114; his large all. see also each and all. thought, iv, 149; attack on, iv, all in one; one tree a grove, iv, 485. 205; vision of, iv, 237; austerity all, the, every violation and miraof, iv, 334; views of, on a school, cle melts into, iv, 56. iv, 348; though possessed of one allegory, history and, viii, 251. idea, large and human, iv, 403; allen, judge, on juries, vi, 433. the teacher, iv, 454; the believer, allingham, william, viii, 207; his iv, 494; ray of oldest light, v, 51; "morning thoughts,” viii, 161; and margaret fuller, visit of, v, poem of, x, 450, 451. 292; ground of, v, 388; and e. alloy in men, vii, 180. seeing law of compensation, vi, allston, iii, 487; v, 379; ix, 212; 74; english project of, vi, 169; verses of, iv, 295; pictures of, v, described at length; his greatness 205; 219; strength of, vi, 501; and faults, vi, 170–78; fate of his methods of, vini, 108. book, vi, 217; english allies of, allyne, dr., vii, 171. vi, 225; criticism of, vi, 386; the almanac, soul's, vii, 553. wandering emperor, vi, 472; alpine flowers, ii, 216. underprizes labor, vi, 544; comalterity, v, 569. munity of, vii, 148; and his vicalternation, iv, 478. tims, vii, 179; on e.'s poems, | amalgam, vii, 125–27. vii, 234; senses of, vii, 309; visit america, i, 201, 202; viii, 343; the of, to england, vii, 422; barriers | spirit of, i, 100-62; a field for of, vii, 498; thoreau and, vii, work, i, 245-48; young, i, 356; 499; service of, incommunicable, 388; pride in, iii, 189; arts in, vii, 524; schemes of, vii, 535; iv, 109; all races come to, iv, channing and thoreau 'on, vii, 138; lags and pretends, iv, 183, 552; the pencil and sponge, viii, 484; lost in her area, vi, 119; 70; parliament of, viii, 96; and seems trade and convention, vi, platonic world, viii, 303; visits 390; free thought in, vi, 516; his birthplace, viii, 316; problem wants male principle, vii, 218; of, viii, 362, 363; as companion, diffuse, unformed, vii, 286; demhis strength and weakness, viii. ocratic. vii. 477; unlearned, 396; expansion of, and trust in ix, 89; england and, ix, 571nature, viii, 413; courage of, 73; and english behavior in viii, 520; triumph of, at the con-1 civil war, x, 78; speecb on the index 481 union, x, 84; opportunity of, x, | angelo, michel, v, 299; 307; rx, 106; the leading guide of the 281; the moses of, iii, 99; homworld, x, 195; truth in, x, 337. age to, iii, 100; such men american artists, walk with, iii, strengthen ideals, in, 252, 253; 90. his seventh sonnet, iii, 399, american clergy, iv, 413. 400; giants of, created by jewish american conditions, v, 529. idea, v, 348; and raffaele, viii, american duties, x, 99. 63; poems of, ix, 170; his third american elementary education, sonnet, x, 35; and thomas english and, vu, 530. gray, x, 268. american genius, unreal, v, 205; | angels, iv, 392. english and, x, 8. angle, a man's, vii, 333. american instability, vi, 330. animal food, v, 392. american politics, x, 144. animal magnetism, iv, 311, 312; american seamen, iii, 4. 488. american standards, v, 316. animal share in writing, vin, 496. american talents, x, 370, 371. animal spirits, vi, 447. american thought; its obstacles, | animals, i, 224; v, 532; sermon subproperty, and imitation of eu-l ject, ii, 471; visit to menagerie, rope, iv, 89, 90; present, iv, 472. iii, 306; dreams and, iii, 533. american writers, pioneer, vi, 472. annals of thought, v, 191. american writing, untrained, vi, “another state," v, 172. 105, 106. anquetil duperron, x, 164. american, verses on the travelling, answer, unanswerable, vin, 537. m, 206; irresistible, vii, 294; antagonisms, ni, 304; balanced, englishman and, vii, 405. viii, 207. americans, thin blood in, vi, 501;| anthony, st., to the fishes, viii, 27. light-weight, vii, 254; idealistic, anthropomorphism, ii, 63. vii, 332, 333; underdosed, vin, antigone, iii, 569. 398. antinomianism, iv, 449. amherst address, notes for, viri, antique, the, iv, 171; 197; no time 572, 573. in the, v, 434. amherst professors, viii, 576. antiquity, real, 11, 503; sacred, vi, amherst college, i, 273–77; x, 385. 127; cause and humility, vi, 104. amici and his microscopes, iii, iii. | anti-slavery conventions, vii, 17. amiens, vii, 473. anti-slavery, ix, 151. amusement, vii, 170. anti-transcendentalists, vi, 125. analogies, viii, 493; nature's, v, antoine, père, of new orleans, vi, 327, 328. 351. analogist, man an, iv, 28; 33. | apathy, iv, 400. analogy, viii, 271; ix, 176; hints apennine, father; statue of, iii, of, iv, 303. 125. analysis, v, 217; may be sublime, aphorisms, 11, 529. v, 327; important, x, 455. aplomb, ix, 531, 532. anaxagoras, ii, 337-39. apocalypse, the, 1, 335. anaximander, ii, 337. appeal, nature's, iii, 227. ancestry of e., ii, 41. appendages, men are, iv, 240. ancestry, our wild, m, 562; advanapplause, iv, 289. tages of a pious, iv, 229–32. apple-blossom, v, 396. ancient poets, held sacred, i, apples, vii, 552; viii, 238; and men, 570. v, 64; and pears, ix, 466. andover seminary, 1, 287. appleton, thomas g., vii, 416; andrew, john a., ix, 377; 391. 495. androcles, ix, 211. | arabian quotations, ix, 408. 482 index arago, iii, 170; quoted, ix, 109. i immortality, landscape, love, arbor, vii, 307. plotinus, reason, selection, arbors, vii, 295. strength, “symposium," thoarc and orbit, iii, 343. reau. archelaus, ii, 339. art galleries, vii, 478. archimedes, vii, 559; stark thinker, artificial life, yet greatness always viii, 382. there, iii, 325. architecture, v, 395; as imitation, artist, in society, vii, 457; chance iii, 146; art and, reason makes of, to show beauty and law, viii, them, iv, 102, 103; composition | 125, 126; mannered, ix, 578. like, iv, 170, 171; gardens and, artists, studios of, 111, 84; the great, v, 27, 28. vii, 173.. archytas, ii, 341. arts, correspondence of, in, 390; arcueil, mémoires, or transactions, harmonious, iii, 403; languishix, 521. ing, it, 501. arethusa, fountain of, iii, 43. ascendency, v, 536. argument unprofitable, iv, 484. | ascension festival, 11, 116. ariosto, iii, 127. ascent, verse, ix, 87. aristippus quoted, vii, 522. asia, bossuet on, i, 340-42. aristocracies, various, inevitable, asia, verses, 1, 380. vi, 457, 458. asiatic genius, v, 570. aristocracy, i, 311, 312; and ideal| asiatic journal, the, iv, 318. ism, v, 276, 277; nature covers, aspirations for art, letters, and scivi, 462; in hamlet, vii, 320; ence an argument for immortalconditions of, vii, 321; real, vil, | ity, ii, 205. 335; a right, vii, 384, 385; deassaults, western doctrine, viii, grees of, viii, 216; now diffused, 326. viii, 576. assemblée nationale, vii, 469. aristocrats, natural, vi, 388. asser and alfred, vi, 381. aristotle, iii, 528; vii, 516; viii, assessors, the soul's, vii, 426. 49; his system an experiment, association universal, vi, 300. 11, 285. astronomers, ix, 29. armadillo-skinned man, vii, 377. | astronomy, viii, 139; effect of, on arnim, bettina von, v, 237; vi, 229; religion, ii, 489-91;(herschel and, ix, 212, 213; in varnhagen's iii, 197; overprized, ix, 16. diary, x, 310. asylum, beauty our, iv, 467. arnold, matthew, x, 275; quoted, asylums of the mind: natural sciix, 435; 480. ence, fancy, inventions, music, arnold, mr., on merchants, viii, v, 120, 121. 275. at the old manse, verse, ii, 208. arnott, dr., vii, 412. atheist, theist or, v, 198. aroma, v, 225 athenæum, the boston, iv, 258; art, resemblance versus implied 317-20; v, 229. power, i, 29; and architecture, athenæum, a concord, vi, 210. reason makes them, iv, 102, athenæum club, the, vii, 483. 103; strong from within, v, 182; athenians, the, vii, 548. power of, v, 488; direction of, athens, viii, 26. vii, 33; miraculous, vii, 535; gi| atlantic, bridging the, vii, 245. ants of, viii, 252, 253; orders of atlantic monthly, the, ix, 117, architecture, ix, 323; two things 118. in a picture, ix, 424, 425; definiatmosphere, vii, 312; an excittion of, ix, 528. see also age, ant, x, 46. beauty, country, disappointattitude, ix, 543; your, vi, 168. ment, dismal, english, gods, | audience, e.'s, ix, 33. index 483 augustine, st., viii, 97; de libero | balzac, v, 371; vi, 231. arbitrio, iii, 500; a confession of, | bancroft, george, moral beauty, i, v, 180; on memory and plato, 346; his history of the u.s., iv, vii, 528, 529. 304, 305; on newspapers, iv, 410; auld lang syne, 1, 342. and bryant, vi, 315. aunt, a good, m, 409. bancroft, mrs., vii, 348, 349. aurora, v, 252. bandmann, x, 20. austen, miss, novels of, ix, 336, bangor sights and men, vii, 231, 337. 232. australia, women for, vii, 434. banks, the, ii, 217. austria, x, 295. barbarian voters, vri, 545. austrians in venice, iii, 135. barbès and blanqui; causes of upauthor, pay of. iv. o. rising. vii. 462. authors, over-influence of, iv, 281; barbour, john, bruce of, iii, 522. influence of, v, 391; our, vi, 47; bard, ix, 472. pay of, vi, 249. bards; thomas taylor, ossian, “authority, one having,” ii, 296. viii, 361. autobiographies, diaries and, v,516. bargain, a, v, 414. autobiography, ix, 306; based on bargaining, vi, 270. choice, vii, 264, 265. baring, lady harriet, at dinner of, avarice, vi, 314. vii, 411. avernus, iii, 72-74. bar-keepers, iv, 20. axis, every man's, iv, 132. barker, anna, v, 278-80. azores, iii, 13. barnard and raby castles, vii, 387. | barnwell and upham, oratory of, i, babcock, j. s., ix, 156. 68. babe, the, vi, 184. barren days, vii, 45, 46. baby. see e.'s children. barrett, samuel, x, 121. bacon, delia, belief of, viii, 288; on barrow, john, imitation of, 1, 24. lord bacon, viu, 314, 315; and “barrows,” natural, vii, 538. hawthorne, ix, 90. bartlett, dr., bog of, iv, 342. bacon, lord, ii, 326; iii, 414; vi, bartlett, george, x, 255. 43; the novum organum, i, 26, bartlett, robert, vi, 214. 27; his prima philosophia, 1, bassett, g. w., quoted, ix, 363. 330, 332; quotations from, ii, bat and ball, v, 410. 410; juvenile critics of, iv, 429; bates, joshua, vii, 405. his “leges legum," viii, 134; bath, the, ix, 251. delia bacon on, viii, 314, 315; battery, man a, viii, 280. milton and, viii, 408; macaulay battle, wind of, ix, 429. on, viii, 483, 484; pivotal, viii, bayle, quoted, ix, 570. 492; life of, explained, viii, 492, bead-eyes, iii, 545. 493 beards, v, 232. bacon, roger, viii, 349. beast lingers in man, iii, 318. bailey, vi, 286; his festus, vii, 284. beasts and man, iv, 381. balance, v, 537 beatitudes of intellect, ix, 221. ball at the governor's, iii, 35. beattie, vii, 311. ball, benjamin west, visit of, vi, beaumarchais, ix, 109. 398, 399. | beautiful, the, everything its effort ballad, the knight and the hag, i, at, v, 121. 123-25. beauty, 1, 304; v, 118; immunity balloon, x, 232, 233. of, 11, 252; embosomed in, iv, 23; ballot or gun? viii, 206. a sword and shield, v, 223; cannot baltimore, lecturing in, vi, 335, be held, v, 494; goes with truth, 336. v, 537; found in work or worship, 484 index vi, 30; in world of thought, vi, | best thought, speak your, ii, 336. 123; flits before possession, vi, bettina. see arnim. 202; demand of, vi, 445; and phibetting, vii, 495. lanthropists, vii, 7; joy of, viii, bewick, liſe, x. 85. 178; and strength in poetry and bhagavat geta, v11,67,68,511;x, 187. art, viii, 300, 301; spiritual causes bhagavat purana, quoted, x, 157. under, ix, 279; and moral laws, x, bias, viii, 226, 543; ix, 539; x, 22; 64; perception of, in life, x, 145, seven men in a field, x, 146, 147. 146; highest, is of expression, x, bible, the, iv, 24; vi, 168; educates, 220; women and girls in the ii, 176; your own, iv, 78: mandate street, x, 384. see also artist, for charity, iv, 357; misused, v, asylum, book, common life, 4; only defect of, v, 140; primary, faith, hero, infancy, intellect, scriptures of the nations, v, 334, lethe, life, moral, sense, ser 335; a coming, vi, 425; and pamons. strength. temperance, gans, x, 100. universal, winckelmann. bigelow, erastus b., viii, 341. beckford, t. a., his vathek, vi, 444; big endians and little endians, his italy and spain, vi, 410-12. viii, 62. “becky stow's hole,” x, 61. | biographie générale, nouvelle, x, beecher, henry ward, x, 3; talk. 322. with, ix, 509; at exeter hall, ix, biographies for lectures, iii, 387. 570. biography, uses of, ii, 279; a spiritbeethoven, v, 19; 145; 506; his sin ual help, iii, 440; interests not fonia eroica, ix, 68; homage from nations, iv, 421; individuals new, goethe, ix, 213. v, 208; history is, v, 223; autobibeginnings, i, 315. ography, vii, 332. behavior, fine, v, 442. biot, iii, 170. behmen, jacob, vii, 575; viii, 551; bipolarity, iii, 355; viii, 86. his aurora, iii, 524; excellence of, bird, singing, and talker, iii, 304. vi, 517, 518; on the stars, viii, bird songs, viii, 77. 549. birds, hawk and sea fowl, ii, 283; being, against seeming, iv, 299; at study window, vii, 199; on and organizing, vi, 5, 6; and intel walk, ix, 43, 44. lect, ix, 343. bird-while, a, iv, 453. belief in our own work, vi, 126; and birmingham, vii, 358. unbelief, vi, 482. birmingham lustre, vii, 438. believer, the, viii, 543. birthplace, viii, 557. bell, iv, 359. birthplace, e.'s, x, 383. bell, the, poem, i, 238. black, mrs. rebecca, vi, 197, 198. benefits, doctrine of, v, 28, 29. black art, v, 151. benevolence, iii, 416; god's, 1, 191blackbird, the, poem, 1, 353. 95; 198-200. blackstone, on god's law, viii, 133, bentley, scholarship of, iv, 151. 134. béranger, democracy of, viii, 216. blagden, rev. george, preaching bereavement, iii, 454; iv, 67, 68; of, iii, 339. 125. blake, h. g. o., walk with, v, 133. berkeley, bishop, vii, 44. blake, william, quoted on wordsberkshire dream, the, ni, 301. worth, ix, 558; x, 23; quoted, ix, berth meditations, iii, 4. 575. berthollet, x, 7. blanqui, barbès and; causes of upberyl, viii, 502. rising, vii, 462. best, sifted by fame, ii, 464; the, blood, thaddeus, on concord fight, here and cheap, vii, 175; get the, iii, 516; his memories of april, vii, 549. 1775, iii, 534. index 485 blood-fusions, viii, 230. but do not feed, vi, 496; recomblouse, the, the day of, vii, 454. mended, vii, 328, 329; advised by bluebird, ix, 275. carlyle, vii, 367; e.'s, survive, boccaccio, iii, 456; iv, 76. vii, 428; brought home, vii, 488; bodleian library, vii, 423. rainy day, viii, 418; theft of, ix, body, and soul, i, 225-31; man a 269; a little heaven, x, 221. stranger in his, v, 52. bores, vi, 158. boissier, gaston, quoted, ix, 369. borromeo, st. charles, iii, 160. boldness the sign of spirit, vi, borrow, on wales, ix, 471. 205. bossuet, 1, 340-42. bologna, iii, 126. boston, ix, 303; room in, iii, 232; bonaparte, jerome, i, 110. visit to, v, 231; bill of fare of, vi, bonaparte, napoleon, ii, 407; iv, 58; life in, in two acts, vi, 99; 421, 422; vi, 137; viii, 204; the steam's lift to, vi, 270; meeting simplon, iii, 148; temperament, friends in, vi, 290; friends in, vi, varied genius, iv, 437; rewards 324; offerings of, vi, 512; societies impersonality, iv, 463; and chapel of, vii, 267; adulation of webster bell, vi, 542; fortune of, vii, ii; in, viii, iii; the true, viii, 223; between thought and matter, vii, || low estate of, viii, 364; false posi24; genius of, vii, 35; on leon tion of, viii, 449; eminent names idas, viii, 151; head of, viii, 221; of, ix, 568; old, x, 203. on science, viii, 451; his sense boston christianity, vii, 197. and admirable criticism, viii, 456, boston hymn, ix, 193. 457; and beethoven, ix, 68; his boston poem, vi, 249. fortune turned, ix, 336; quoted, bostonian and civilization, vii, ix, 445; x, 98. 315. “bonduca," v, 185, 186; 474. boswellism of travel, 111, 340. bonnets, women's, viii, 40. boswellism, iv, 332, 333. bons-mots, x, 14. botany, curiosity in, iii, 482; with book, the proposed, 11, 445; different george b. emerson, v, 3. to different men, iii, 551; a hu| botts, j. m., ix, 574. man, v, 39; man and, v, 54; yield| boucher, viii, 347. ing to, viii, 56; author can write ite | boulogne, sails from, ull, 171 sails from, iii, 171." but one, viii, 486; written for boutwell, ix, 565. beauty versus moral, ix, 317; | boy and alphabet, ni, 289. twenty years for, x, 239; scholboy, nature leads the, vi, 252; and ar's, circulating, x, 380. girl, ix, 300; sympathy with, x, book-rcaders, v, 18. 309. books, lists of, 1, 32; 11, 68; of wis| boyden, uriah, viii, 341. dom, i, 392; of the centuries, ii, boynton, dr., ix, 76; x, 342. 5,6; and men, ii, 13; justified, ii, | boys, viii, 86; and girls, v, 37; at 411; each finds his own in, ii, 465; baseball, vi, 191; ticket of admisconvert action to thought, iii, sion, ix, 323. 286; are blessings, iii, 490; of the bradford, dr. gamaliel, his verses future, iii, 518; perusal or chance on e.'s poem, viii, 442. readings of, mi, 536; mind has bradford, george p., ii, 444; iii, room for, iv, 63; others', v, 37; 573; v, 35, 248; vii, 379; and fames, v, 63; secondary, v, 74; as plymouth, iii, 262; charles newgardens of delight, v, 189, 190; 1 comb and, vi, 374; letter to, ix, convicting, v, 258; of all time, v, 569. 282-84; like divers and dippers, bradley, discovery of, iv, 362. v, 406; beguile, v, 561; to read, brag, x, 176. vi, 282; the few great, vi, 300; re| brahma, ix, 57. lation of man to, vi, 300; that stir | brahmin, x, 163. 486 index 368. brant and gansevoort, v, 170 | bull, john, vin, 416. brazer, professor, dr. kirkland bull, ole, performance of, vi, 512. and, viii, 350, 351. buller, charles, vii, 411. brazil, x, 161, 162. bulletin, nature's, is man, vi, 296. brescia, iii, 140, 141. bulwer; his caxtons, viii, 250. bridlington saddler, vii, 376. bunker hill monument dedicabrig jasper, the, iii, 3. tion, vi, 415, 416. briggs, governor, viii, 112, bunsen, x, 287. brillat-savarin, x, 31. bunsens, the, vii, 485. brisbane, albert, vi, 169, 355; on bunyan, iv, 421; verses of, iv, 367, education, vii, 535. british museum, the, vii, 433, 434, | burglars, iv, 496. 435. | burke, i, 317-20; ii, 122; iii, 567; broadway, a symbol, iii, 355. viii, 340; rhetoric of, v, 244; and brontë, charlotte; her shirley, schiller believers, vi, 512; and viii, 109. webster, vii, 234; growth of, vii, brook, need of, vii, 531. 262, 263; sayings of, viii, 528; brook farm, vi, 34; 373, 374; 491; quoted, ix, 372, 468. project does not attract, v, 473, burnap, rev. george washington, 474; relations, vi, 391; difficul| on dr. watts and dr. doddridge, ties,'vi, 396; visit to, vi, 416,417; ii, 236, 237: pleasant, vi, 443. burning, of the house, x, 386-89. brooke, lord, viii, 46; life of sydburns, robert, iii, 449; vi, 43; vi, ney, ix, 319. 286; praise and criticism, ii, 428; brookfield, i, 269, 270. and language, viii, 313. brookfield (man), visit to, vii, 445, burnside, x, 4. 446. | burton, robert, cornelius agrippa brothers, vi, 165; viii, 307. and, vi, 291. brothers of e., ii, 42. burton, warren, letter to, bereavebrown, b. j., x, 181-83. ment, iv, 124, 125. brown, john, ix, 248, 251; in conbusiness, men of, iii, 458; literary, cord, ix, 81-83; raid, ix, 238-40; x, 130. governor wise and, ix, 245; | busybodies, vii, 29. thoreau on, ix, 247, 248; execubutler, joseph, on translations, a, tion of, ix, 253 130. brown, dr. samuel, vii, 388. buttrick, david, the market-man, browne, sir thomas, 11,327; v, 146; iv, 373. quoted, ix, 295. byron, 11, 86; iii, 127; vii, 92, 285; browning, vi, 286; viii, 455. death of, 11, 4; “the gladiator," brownson, orestes a., iv, 166; list, iii, 99; rooms of, 111, 108; failure vi, 297. of, vii, 163; feats of, viii, 36; sugbruno, giordano, extracts from, 11, gested partnerships of authors, 388. viii, 89. bryant, iii, 449; iv, 423; x, 76; bancroft and, vi, 315; magic of, x, cable, atlantic, x, 155. 80-82. cabot, j. elliot, x, 441, 442; buchner, ix, 112. quoted, ix, 58; on art, ix, 549. buckminster, philosophic imagina-cæsar, and cicero, i, 332; poet's tion, i, 323; all subjects good, ii, use of heroes, v, 187; in britain, 304. viii, 411. buddha, icy light, vii, 110. cadet at west point, ix, 517. buddhism, vi, 382; vii, 122; recafé, the, v, 527. morseless, vi, 318. cairo, x, 406. buddhist hospitality, v, 408. calculation, vi, 109. index 487 calderon, ix, 67, 68. fechan, visit to, his talk on percalhoun, j. c., viii, 337. sons and books, measure of his california, viii, 4, 7, 8; notes on, loyalty, m, 180-82; reports x, 352-55. about wordsworth and, m, 188; california people, x, 355. thoughts about, m, 190; charles call to the second church, 11, 261, emerson on, m, 557; wide genius 262. of, his strength-worship, his style, call, await your, iii, 462; obey iv, 195, 196; desired companionyour, v, 476. ship of, iv, 258; nobility of, his calling, follow your, iii, 232; v, acceptance, iv, 272–74; ameri390. can edition of works of, iv, 346; calm, 11, 368; iv, 272; wind and, letter of, iv, 389; love for, iv, iii, 7. 398, 399; his french revolution — calmness, godlike, v, 490. his astonishing style, iv, 405, calvin, against, 11, 33. 406; 410, 411; poverty of, iv, calvinism, 11, 420; iii, 398; v, 245; 446; sterling and, v, 352; has x, 155; and unitarianism, 11, 424; power and wit, no philosopher, strength of, and weak unitarian exhaustive, v, 440, 441; rhetoric ism, iii, 199, 200; dying, m, of, v, 571; vii, 367; ignores dis323; early terrors from, iv, 286; senters and radicals, vi, 222; five points of, vi, 387; power of, milnes and, vi, 251; in past and viii, 32; three legs of, x, 242. present, vi, 387; on english woes, calvinist, by temperament, vi, vi, 394, 395; manlike style of, 208; inconvertible, vi, 377. vi, 410; portrait of, vi, 196, 197; cambridge jail, iii, 231. medium of, vii, 216; exchange of cambridge, visit to, vii, 489. pictures with, vii, 224, 225; welcameron, vii, 383. come of, his wife and mother, campbell, thomas, ii, 410; moore his conversation, vii, 344-48; on, 1, 471; elizabeth hoar on reputation of, vii, 367; views of, life of, viii, 205. vii, 402-04; disciples of, vii, 437; camper, iv, 205. on clubs, society, and plato vii, camping, v, 345: 439, 440; no idealist, insular, incandidacy, presidential, ix, 14. tolerant, the voice of london, canning, landor on, vii, iii. vii, 441-43; stands tests, vii, cannon, x, 33. 561; refrains of, viii, 95; his mircanova, iii, 133; on phidias, viii, ror of writing, vii, 250; his life 220. of sterling, vin, 261, 262; step cant, iv, 246; v, 81, 149, 271; viii, from johnson to, vni, 463; his 346; of the day, viii, 477. history of frederick, ix, 105, 106. canterbury, i, 232. 423, 424; channing praises his cants here and abroad, viii, 550. history, ix, 204; insight of, ix, capable men, iii, 25. 465; projectile style of, ix, 529; cape cod, the visit to, vin, 399 protest to, x, 63; demoniac fun 401. of, x, 104; hating sentimentalcapital, man's, v, 408. ism, x, 116; his anti-americancapitol, the, ix, 395. ism, x, 122; perverse, x, 217; becapitoline, “the gladiator" and quest to harvard, x, 315; norton byron, iii, 98. and, x, 397. captain and scholar, in, 19. carlyle, medal, x, 449. care and caress, poem, i, 62. carlyle, mrs., tells of goethe, mi, caricatures, iv, 450. 182. carlyle, 11, 524; 315, 472, 573; iv, carnarvon, earl, speech of, 1, 328, 180, 181; vi, 400; vii, 285, 384; | 329. • first reading of, 11, 515; at ecclei carnot, ix, 40. 488 index carolina, massachusetts dishon-1 vember walk, viii, 65; his critiored by, vii, 13-15. see olso cisms, viii, 74, 75; on goodness, south carolina. viii, 215; on nahant and truro, carpenter, the, iv, 57. viii, 252; on hawthorne, viii, casella, song of, v, 61. 257; views of “the arboretum," cash payment, vii, 525. viii, 297, 298; drive with, viii, cass, lewis, x, 121. 371-73; poetry of, viii, 541; ix, casting composition, iii, 446. 180; x, 361, 362; ward quoted cat, vii, 544. on, ix, 54; on frogs, ix, 105; on catalogue, value of, v, 190, 191. river with, ix, 106; on golden rod, catania mule-ride to, its churches ix, 185; advice on book, ix, 238; and museums, iii, 49-53. to white pond with, ix, 523. catbird, vi, 208. channing, w. h., v, 56. cathedral, v, 29, 30. channings, the, vi, 328. catholic church, ix, 500. chapin, x, 4. cause and effect, iv, 270; v, 62. chaos, advance from, vii, 131. cause, wait for strong, vii, 221; character, no hiding, ii, 300; not our, against fugitive slave law, chance, tells, iv, 160, 161; above viii, 215; a good, ix, 490. intellect, iv, 224; comes out, v, cavendish, v, 315, 316. 458; counterpoise to surface discedar-birds, the fable of, iv, 352. tinctions, vi, 30-32; rich, vi, 507; censure, v, 33, 34, 69. men of, vii, 78; universal belief centrality, x, 205 in, x, 458, 459. see also self-recentre, each man a, iv, 295. liance, greatness, and similar century, the, its combinations and headings; fate, talent, thcoinventions, viii, 344. cracy, war, woman. ceremony baulks, iv, 236. chardon street convention, vi, chains, iii, 399. 118. chaise, père la, iii, 165. charity, iv, 342, 343; v, iii; comchaldean oracles, v, 560; vi, 499, mon nature demands, iv, 452. 500; viii, 534. charles ii, manners, viii, 562. chalmers, vii, 396. charleston, ii, 196; tides of thought, champion boxer, vi, 82. ii, 135, 136; at, good gifts of travchange required for e., vii, 253. el, ii, 183-85. change, perpetual, ix, 482. | chartism, six points of, vii, 494. channing, dr. ellery, sermon of, 1, chartist meeting, the, vii, 414. 290, 291; and inferior clergy, ii, chartists, vii, 402. 202; on war, ii, 456; wordschase, salmon p., ix, 381. worth speaks of, iii, 183; visit chaste attitude, iii, 251. of, iv, 236; strength of, vi, 271; chastity, vii, 289; viii, 236. letter on death of, vi, 284, 285. chateaubriand, viii, 402; imitation channing, william ellery, vi, 46, of, 1, 75; of washington, x, 350. 47, 492; viii, 503; walk with, vi, chatel, abbé; eglise catholique 235, 236; vii, 506, 510, 531, 532, frand 536-40; to marlboro' with, viii, chaucer, v, 116; viii, 349; x, 33; 130; walk with, viii, 294, 295, | and saadi, vi, 223; on poet and 297, 298; viii, 352, 485; ix, 110;| scholar, viii, 238, 239. x, 61; as a poet, vi, 357-59; vii, chauncy and whitefield, 1, 330. 230; humors of, vi, 422, 423; cheating, vii, 194. viii, 352; his book on rome, cheerfulness, iii, 161; viii, 554; vii, 303; on nature, vii, 330; on ix, 562; x, 368; infants teach, herrick, vii, 532; talk with, vii, | vi, 276. 538-40: as showman. vii. 540: and cheering. iv. 360. thoreau on alcott, vii, 552; no| cheering books, ix, 469. charlest, mannerands, iv, as tos index 489 chelmsford, ix, 235. his command of silence, v, 491; chemistry, ii, 288; human, iv, 133; } love of, reasonable, v, 500; great the noblest, vii, 182; powers and defeat of, power of character, vi, limits, ix, 18; and moral science, 188; not yet portrayed, viii, 52. ix, 31. christendom, renouncing soul's cherokee "scream," the, iv, 426, birthright the madness of, v, 272, 427. 273 cherokees, the, iv, 424. christian, gentleman and, v, 549. chesterfield, vii, 358. christianity, iii, 415; value of, 11, chevelure, dangerous, vii, 509. 78; and morals, 11, 120; weighed cheyne row, iii, 230. by truth, ii, 326; educates and chicago, x, 91, 371; birth of, lx, 76, frees, ii, 510; truth precedes, ii, 77. 516; and slavery, iii, 446, 447; child, the, 111, 325; civilizes the fa-|| and the english church, charles ther, iii, 511; parents and, iv, emerson on, iii, 547, 548; misre134, 135; out of doors, iv, 298; presented, iv, 168; traces of delives with god, iv, 382; the sob monology in, v, 163, 164; now inbing, iv, 481; love of, v, 135; has sists on persons, not ideas, v, poetry of life, v, 211; power of, 454; old as creation, vii, 418; arv, 238; truth of, vi, 35; rules, vi, gument for, ix, 510. 468; early teaching of, viii, 129; christians, dying, ii, 317; savage, e.'s joys as a, x, 381. viii, 523. childhood, e.'s, vi, 305. church, the parish, iv, 443; desire children, viii, 296; foreigners, v, for a fit, iv, 462; must respect the 262; speech of, v, 435; precepts soul, v, 171; poverty of, v, 370; to, v, 528; directness of, vi, 35; ! its office and benefit to the peoe.'s, vi, 266; versus conversation, | ple, vi, 6-9; and trade, viii, 334. vi, 348; sacred, vi, 473; teachers church of st. augustine, ii, 175. of, viii, 23; in heaven's gardens, church of england, vin, 368. viii, 465; wits of, x, 32. church of rome, conversion to, ix, chinese reformers, vi, 458. 243, 244. chivalry, age of, charles's remark, church bells of boston, v, 281. ii, 87. church clock, the, v, 24. chladni an orpheus, viii, 79. church-going, iv, 377. choate, rufus, vii, 69; vii, 112, churches, 111, 79; pictures, gardens, 183, 184, 508; webster and, vii, iii, 94-96. 87; on english and fox, viii, 558. churchman, transcendentalist and, choice abdication of, iii, 337, 338. vi, 380. cholera times, value of death and church-member, lady turned, vi, life, ni, 505, 506. 160. christ, jesus, ii, 129; iii, 413; iv, church-members, ix, 322. 213, 214; suspecting defects in, cicero, quotation, ii, 422; quoted, 11, 323; love not by compulsion, ix, 362, 556. ii, 410; real love for, iii, 223; cid, the, viii, 557; chronicle of, stream and source, ii, 324; influ vii, 307, 308. ence of, iii, 433; vi, 438; not final, cipher, nature's, v, 421. iii, 518; beautiful but incomplete, circles, little and greater, x, 238. iii, 531; a fellow-worshipper, iv, circles, the poem, vii, 212, 213. 129; message of, iv, 277; acted circumstance, viii, 4. thought, iv, 435; human, iv, 444; circumstances in presence of soul, love due to, iv, 496; reverence v, 312. for what he represents, v, 7; true circus, the, v, 402. help of, v, 274; no institution, v, cities, like shells, vi, 9. 389; history of, typical, v, 478;' citizen, true, v, 357, 358. 490 index 350. city, joy of a new, x, 413. | clubs, ix, 103; value of, ix, 469. city and country, v, 310. coal, man a, in the fire, iv, 18. city-builders, viii, 145. coals to a market, vii, 338. city founders, viii, 223. coat, a, iv, 314, 315. civil history, iv, 125. coincidences, v, 107; x, 356. civilization, ii, 18; its triumphs coke, viii, 134; quoted, viii, 135. treacherous, ix, 27, 28. colburn, zerah, iv, 159. clapp, henry, quoted, x, 239. coldness as disguise, v, 348. clare, poem of, vi, 168. coleman, his agriculture in mosseclarendon, lord, iv, 269; viii, 405; chusetts, vi, 196. on falkland, iv, 264. coleridge, 11, 278; friend, ii, 277; clark, galen, x, 354. translation of wallenstein, quoclarke, james freeman, on haw tation, ii, 377; mouthpiece of thorne, x, 39. mind of man, iii, 328; immortalclarke, sarah, v, 458; x, 385. ity will be proved from intellect, class of 1821, meeting of, vii, 226, iii, 539, 540; a churchman, iv, 227. 152, 153; solitary, v, 528; at anclasses, three, vi, 220, 221. dover, vi, 266; influence of, viii, classic and romantic, ix, 24, 25, | 558; quoted on greek women, x, 26, 27. classic authors, supremacy of, vi, colfax, schuyler, ix, 393. 268. college, revisited, 1, 116; e.'s, v, classics, vi, 289. 203; futile, v, 254; hide-bound, classification, iv, 100, 487; true, vii, 56. iii, 294. college anniversaries, vii, 60. classmates meeting, no disguises, collins, in the kitchen, viii, 130; vi, 37-39. ode to evening, x, 201. clay, cassius m., and wendell columbus, iii, 12; at veragua, phillips, ix, 267, 268. viii, 152, 153; letter of, viii, 171, clay, henry, ii, 53: 172. clergy, vii, 413; in america, vi, combinations and inventions of 423. the century, viii, 341. clerisy, the, or learned class, v, 337, comines, ix, 562. 338. commandments, creeds or, 11, 419, cleveland, duke of, vri, 387. 420. cliff, the, ix, 94; the day at, v, commencement day, iv, 83. 423. commerce, makes love, iii, 379; climate, our happy, vii, 294; ex| dangers of, v, 285. haustion of our, ix, 333. common life, beauty in, classificaclimbers, viii, 24. tion, iv, 99, 100. clipper-ships, american, viii, 370. common mind, trust the, iv, 211. clothes-pins, vi, 370. common people interest, v, 253. clouds, v, 450. common people, vii, 84, 85. common sense, iv, 434; vi, 477; x, clough, arthur hugh, meeting | 136; divinity of, 11, 64; against with, vii, 453; his bothie, vii, doctrinaires, iv, 112; and vitality, 560; viii, 16; in new england, viii, 506; examples, x, 131. viii, 375–77; departure of, viii, commons, the, vii, 407, 408. 388. communion with god, iv, 62. club, hedges', reaction from liter communism eagerly attacked, vii, ary discussion, iv, 456, 457; for 427. literature, vii, 255, 256; des communist apostles, vii, 186. femmes, vii, 456; des clubs, vii, community wages, vii, 274. 457; town and country, viii, 10. | community, experiments in, v, 458. cloud-shows, 1: 20 hugh, meeting doctrinaires, i les, 131. index 491 communities, vi, 292; friendship in, concord schools, x, 13, 14. _vi, 70. condé, viii, 100. companion, fit, x, 244. condition, virtue and, vi, 473. companions of italian journey, conditions, face, viii, 55; right, x, iii, 106. 44. company, unprofitable, iv, 441, conduct of life, begin small, 11, 476; 442; inviting, v, 426; inhumanity kingdom of heaven begins, ii, and geniality in, vi, 96; unde 512. sired, vri, 534; and inspiration, conduct of life, ix, 287, 288. x, 243, 244. confessions help, v, 378. comparative anatomy, iv, 358, 359. confidence, feeling of, iv, 119. comparison, v, 5. confidences, editorial: ancestry, comparisons, v, 336. brothers, ii, 40-45. compass, the, viii, 556. confucius, vi, 403; 126; sentences compensation, i, 249; people who of, iv, 10; on ceremony, viii, 516; sell themselves, 11, 72-77; always quotations from, ix, 533-35. a price, ii, 201; all teaches, ii, congelation, viii, 292. 389; com pensation, origin of congeries, man a. of spirits, iii. 562. poem, 11,432; ini, 376; doctrine of, congregation, the, iv, 470. be, not seem, mi, 486, 487; conficonscience, 11, 368; iv, 97, 98; vi, dence in, v, 175; examples in 107; combats of, 11, 126; rights faust and edda, vii, 311. see es of, 11, 157; connects god to man, pecially man, nature and fate. ii, 248; a friend's, iv, 53; must complaisance, mean, watch intellect, vi, 376; local, or composer and underparts, vi, iii. in veins, vi, 440; ix, 84... composition, ii, 478; human chem consciousness, private and univeristry, iv, 132; like architecture, sal, vii, 431. iv, 170, 171; justified, iv, 246; conservatism, best argument of, joy in, v, 12; necessary, v, 224. vi, 522. composure, v, 411; vi, 16. conservative, theorists and, vi, compression, v, 213. 136; and reformer, vi, 141; x, 28. compromise, vii, 18. considerateness, vii, 322. concealment, no, iv, 97; v, 201. consolation of nature, iii, 452. conceit, ix, 437; of bathing, vii, consolations, slow, v, 206, 207. 527. constancy, 11, 212; ii, 484; v, 565; concentration, ix, 547. vi, 26. concert, musical, v, 516; ix, 301; constitution, rugged, viii, 584. oddity and, ix, 498. constitution, the, union and, v, conclusion to wide world, i, 393. 328; vii, 27; and fugitive slave concord, greeting to, as home, new | law, viii, 338. resolves, iii, 361; joy in, m, 430; construction, man's, iv, 129. the coolidge house in, purchase consuelo, as devil's advocate, vi, of, description of place, iii, 540 498. 42; life and character in, iv, 352 contemplation, action and, action 54: advantages of. vi. 383, 384: is not all. ii, 239-41. magic places of, vii, 249; possible contemporaries, iv, 311; v, 85; professors of, viii, 41, 42; celebra vii, 150; x, 334; our, vi, 106; tion of, vin, 112; worth of, ix. e.'s, x, 102. 266; return to, x, 419, 420. content, v, 177. concord athenæum, vi, 230. continence and abandonment, vi, concord fight, vi, 36; veterans' 203. stories of, m, 507; thaddeus continuity, vii, 195; prayer for, blood on, iii, 516; anniversary viii, 46 of, x, 443, 444. contradictions, viii, 8. 492 index contrast, 1, 06. country blood, x, 109. contritions, vi, 133. country health, vi, 329. conventicle club, song for, 1, 7-9. country life, i, 349-51, 354-56; convention, the, stephen phillips verses on, ii, 367. and garrison, vii, 96, 97. country preacher, the strong, iii, convention, servants of, iv, 302. i 556. conventions, a safeguard, vi, 232; courage, in daily act, iii, 335; society's, avoid or conquer equality of opponent, iv, 257; them, vi, 242. the scholar's, v, 532, 533; vii, conversation, v, 196; value of un252; indicates love of idea, ix, spoken part, ni, 440; common, 246. 11, 457; right, v, 173, 174; living, courages, cheap and high, vii, 257, v, 215; charles lane at the, vi, 258. 319, 320; and writing, vi, 348; courses of lectures, vii, 474, 475; good and poor, vii, 304, 305; on human culture, iv, 392, 393; beatitude of, vii, 529, 530; unexon the times, vi, 131. pected, eloquence in, ix, 37, 38; court house shows man, iii, 468. nature's way, viii, 404. court session at concord, vii, 87. conversazione, literary, iii, 450. courtesies, cowardl i, 452. conversion, hourly, of life to truth, courtesy, iii, 445; iv, 181; viii, iv, 227. 238; viii, 323; republican, iii, conversion to church of rome, ix, 566. 243; 244. courts, v, 455. converting, iv, 426. cousin, book of, french eclecticonway, n. h., ii, 492. · cism, iv, 404; and jouffroy, iv, coolidge house, in concord, pur400. chase of the description of cousins, the baby, iv, 235; v, 180. place, iii, 540-42. coutts, miss, and street-girls, vii, copernicus, viii, 478; ix, 17. 435. corinne, iii, 254; vii, 292. couture, rule of, x, 335. corn, kinds of, vi, 67. cowley and donne proverbs, iv, cornwallis, historic farce of sur254. render, v, 290. cows, vi, 424. corrective wisdom, vi, 199. “coxcombs, the," v, 186. correctness, ix, 398, 399. crabbe, iv, 257. correlation of forces, x, 358. cranch and alexander, moonlight cosmogonies, v, 399, 400; ancient, walk with, iii, 87. ii, 333. crawford, samanthe, vii, 193. costume, vii, 175. crawshay, mr., trip-hammer of, cotton, binds the union, vii, 201; | vii, 387. power of, vii, 242. creation, vii, 105; going on, v, 152; cotton, sarah, iv, 295. ix, 101; higher logic of, viii, 409; counsellor, man's, vii, 43. theories of, viii, 561. countenance of the first-born, iii, creative spirit, ix, ii. 66. creator, the, latest work of, vi, counter parts, ix, 170. 59. counter-revolution is extinguished, creeds do not satisfy, nor metavii, 460-62. physics, nor ethics, 1, 378, 379; counter-workings, iii, 303.. dissolving of, after death, 11, 211; counting-room, education of, vi, grow from structure of creature, ii, 290; or commandments, ii, country, the, nature versus art, 1, 419, 420. 146; and city, vi, 476. crimes not absolute, viii, 412. country blessings, iv, 187. criminal statute illegal, viii, 196. 451. index 493 crisis, in emerson's life, visit to the , dæmons, vi, 528, 529; vii, 17; white mountains, ii, 491-97; of friend quoted on, viii, 247. trade, lesson of, iv, 375, 376. daguerre, vi, 418; guess of, vi, 110. crises, iii, 289; each age has a new, daguerreotype, vi, 87; sitting for, iii, 356. vi, 100. critics, ii, 284; borers, v, 561. daguesseau, viii, 411. criticism, vii, 291; obstructive, iv, daimonisches, iv, 224. 464; a woman's, v, 447; must be damascene writing, iv, 278. transcendental, v, 398; written damascus, woman of, ix, 339. in poetry, vi, 249; first impresdancing test, viii, 277. sions, vii, 39; misleads, vii, 26; 1 dandies, vi, 525; of moral sentiwhitewashing, ix, 201; on conment, vi, 45, 116. duct of life, ix, 307; power of, x, danger, resources in, iii, 195. 85; brothers and sisters, x, 133; | daniel, samuel, extracts from, ii, foreign, x, 133. 347. crocker, alvah, x, 313, 314. dante, v, 265; vi, 244; seat of, iii, cromwell, ii, 407; vii, 404; apud 115; flaxman's, iv, 77; his vita forster, v, 262, 263. nuova, vi, 418; strength of, viri, crossing stocks, 1, 304; vii, 156. 32-34; transcendent eyes, ix, crossings, vii, 116. 206; parsons's, x, 209-11. crowe, mrs., dinner of, vii, 389. dark hours, rights of conscience, cruikshank, vii, 86. doubts, ii, 156-61. crump, mr., ix, 230, 231. darkness, iv, 358. crystallization, mental, 11, 446. dartmouth college, ix, 525, 526. cudworth, n, 489; iv, 7, 8; vii, dartmouth college address, v, 10. 95. d'auvergne, pierre, quoted, ix, culmination, vii, 131, 132. 249. cultivated class, ix, 554. davy, dr., m, 36. culture, ini, 547; v, 111; viii, 552; day, a winter's, 11, 532-34, 536; german and english, iv, 208; in gifts and demands of a, in, 2 high sense, iv, 339, 340; its manieach new, iv, 302; a great man's, fold agents, iv, 366, 367; teaches iv, 444, 445; glowing with magniproportion, the methods, iv, 368| ficence, vi, 113 70; highest requirement of, iv, day, president, x, 41. 372; and cheer, v, 41; spoiled days, how to spend, v, 249. child of, vii, 516; convenience of, days, viii, 18; dealing with, viii, 47. vii, 549; plato required, viii, 14; | days, poem, vii, 277; the writing the highest, viii, 79; man can of, viii, 273, 274. spare nothing, viii, 258; common deacon, the, ii, 296. people unconsciously value, viii, dead-alive, the, iv, 188. 530; for results, viii, 539; is a death, 1, 126, 207; ii, 444: iv. 335: pagan, ix, 187; discarding hob ix, 272; education after, ii, 91; goblin of the popery, ix, 371; and fcar of, ii, 212; 315-17; 438; morals, x, 269; from every social verses on, ii, 394; coming, ii, intercourse, x, 335, 336; new 413; vii, 174; value of, 11, 506; england taste for poetry, x, 367. what is? iv, 343,344; life and, are curb rein, man is held on, iv, 20. apparitions, iv, 453, 454; suicide, curiosity-shop, society's, vii, 211. v, 331, 332; in story, v, 379; elecurrency, viii, 265; and personal mental, v, 482; poetic, vi, 230; values, ix, 563. life and, vi, 404; natural and current, of thought, x, 287. sweet, vi, 520; and judgment, currents, the universal, vii, 195. viii, 445; attitude towards, viii, custom, the circe's cup of, iv, 325; 551; and landscape, ix, 59; when shun, vi, 228; dead, ix, 175. i unfamiliar, ix, 470. 494 index debate, v, 78. derby, vii, 356. debater, vi, 27. derry academy, ii, 426. debts, pay, ix, 299. dervish, the, viii, 519. december show, viii, 72. descartes, viii, 18. de clifford, vi, 69, 70. descent, our, vi, 497. decorum now in demand, iii, 549. deserted house, the, vi, 162. dedication, i, iii; 132, 133; 176; | design, ii, 488; ix, 301; above fin205; 231-34; the spirit of amerish, viii, 532. ica, i, 160-62. despair, ix, 175; time of, viii, 210. dedication to wide world (jour despondents, their remedy, v, 45, nals), 1, 10, ii. 46. deed, word and, viii, 15. destiny, vii, 512; and toleration, deep natures, vi, 71. vi, 19. see also fate. defeat may be gain, lv, 310. detachment, vii, 509; x, 309; defects, natural, i, 365. power of, vii, 518. defences, vii, 194. details, viii, 571, 572; principles deference, vi, 439; excess of, iii, not, v, 306. 470; and room, vi, 513. determination of character in men, definitions, v, 74. iii, 416. degeneracy, vii, 34. de tocqueville, vii, 485. de gérando, 11, 283; on ancient de tocqueville, mme., on language, philosophies, 11, 330-34. vii, 551. deinon, to, x, 75 de vere, tennyson and, vii, 404; deist, nature a, a resource, no fool, | his care of tennyson, vii, 447. v, 57-59.. devil's-needle day, iv, 22. deity, inquiry concerning, ii, 237; dew, v, 550; spiritual, iv, 494. poor god, x, 146. dewey, chester, iv, 423; his plants delight, wild, in man, ii, 459. in massachusetts, vi, 193, 194. deliverances, vii, 138. diagonal in teaching, vii, 83. de loy, aimé, quoted, ix, 558. dial, the, new journal's position, v, deluge, x, 217. 386; purposes of, v, 448; attack demiurgus, the, vi, 400; question upon, v, 471; problem, vi, 163, of, vi, 318. 164; writers, vi, 367. democracy, iv, 95; viii, 140; root diamond, invention of, vi, 370. of, iii, 369; seamy side of, iii, diamond edition, man a, v, 270. 405; english view of our, iii, 509; diamonds, viii, 168. new york, vi, 311; american, vi, diaries and autobiographies, v, 353; versus aristocracy, ix, 460. 1 516. democratic party, x, 52. dickens, iv, 436; his american democrats, the, magnetic, v, 423; noles, vi, 312, 313; service of, and whigs, vi, 275, 276. vii, 186; on thackeray, x, 7. demoniacal force, the, iv, 26. dictionaries, x, 261. demonology; its traces in chrisdictionary, life a, iv, 276. tianity, v, 163, 164. diet, sun-spiced, v, 342; trifle of, v, de montluc, maréchal, ix, 486. 428. demosthenes, iii, 386, 387. diet whims, v, 413. denial, strength wasted in. vi, 122. differential, the. vii. 175. dependence on others, v, 486. difficulty, brain and, vii, 479. depression, viii, 566. digby, kenelm, quoted, ix, 199. depression of e., ii, 117. dignity and opportunity, man's, de quincey, anecdotes of him, vii, v, 356, 357. 388-91; dinner with, at lassdilettante politics, vii, 533. wade, vii, 397; attends lecture, dilettanti of liberty, ix, 243. vii, 398. dilettantism may teach, ii, 307. index 495 diligence journey to paris, pleasant | doherty, hugh, vii, 459. companions, iii, 147-55. dollar, the, vii, 288. dinner-bell, the, vi, 475. dollars, v, 379. dinners in england, vii, 417. domestic manners, and morals, i, diogenes of apollonia, ii, 339. 221, 222. dionysius the elder, x, 242. domestication, vi, 12. direct speech saves, v, 80-83. domo d'ossola, iii, 147. directions, excess of, v, 483; of the donne, viii, 40; counsel of, 11, 291; soul, vi, 80, 81. extracts from, ii, 347; verse of, disappointment in art and splen on unity, iv, 252; cowley, and, dor, iii, 100. proverbs, iv, 254. disciples, iv, 461; 1x, 189; beware doubts, 11, 159. of, iii, 280; enslaved, iv, 434. drake, sir francis, verses on, vii, discipline, the soul's, iv, 486, 487. 1.365. discourse, unsaid part of, 11, 444; drama, 1, 54-57; 106-08; 127;147architecture of, x, 219. 50; 166; 169, 170; 335. discoverers, creative, vii, 316, 317; dramatic fragment (blank verse), inspired, viii, 222. 1, 254-56. discoveries, viii, 466. dramatic material, vii, 512. discussion, reform, x, 216. dramatists, the old, vii, 88. disease, laws of, iv, 455. dream, a pictorial, ix, 338; of physdiseases, seeds of, x, 48. ics and metaphysics, x, 301. disguised gods, iii, 443. dreams, ii, 448; iii, 334; iv, 287: disguises, thin, ji, 406; the spirit 323; 424; vii, 409; and beasts, ii, behind, iv, 163. 453; of idealists, iii, 463; and anidisillusioning, life's, viii, 402. mals, iii, 533; landscape not fitdisillusionment, iii, 69. ting, iv, 388; debate on marriage, dismal art, viii, 553. v, 499; supply part of education, dispute, rude, vi, 389. vi, 178–80; alarming hints from, disproportion, vice in manners, ix, ix, 120, 121; cannot be recalled, 341. ix, 354; wonder of, x, 174; illudisraeli, vi, 526; vii, 485, 503; sions of, x, 314. o'connell on, vii, 172. dress, mood and, vi, 40. dissatisfaction, ii, 469. drifting, study and, in, 460. dissenter, the, vii, 359. | drill, viii, 165; or creation, iv, 269. distinction, iv, 437. drones, ix, 186. districts of thought, vi, 42. dualism, iv, 248; 435, 436; v, 206; disunion, ix, 211. viii, 211. divine, the, v, 223; in all, iii, 321. duelling, 11, 249. divinity school, cambridge, the, dull, the, vii, 495; freemasonry of vi, 104; e. enters, reflections, ii, the, ii, 147. 54; starved at, iii, 502. dumas, vii, 302. divinity school address, v, 21. dumesnil, a., quoted, x, 110. divinity students, talk to, iv, 420. dunbar of saltoun, iii, 537. dixon, ix, 4. dundee church, vii, 399. doctors, vi, 402; enthusiasm of, duomo, m, 104. iv, 455, 456. duties, viii, 76; coming, 11, 166; doctrines, essential, 11, 355. done, mi, 519. doddridge, dr., burnap on, 11, 237. duty, reality of, 11, 455; glorious dodging truth, vi, 301. post of, iii, 286; is plain, ii, 472; dodington, bubb, viii, 576. a god in disguise, iv, 37; others' dog on stage, ix, 146. opinion of your, iv, 64; first, viii, dogmas, religious, pass, 11, 120; 13; our representative, viii, 469. mischievous, vii, 467. dwight, john s., iv, 456. 496 index each and all, 11, 7; iii, 298; iii, 373; | elasticity of a man, ix, 491. v, 184; treatise on perspective, eleatic school, xenophanes, pariv, 21; a day a child, iv, 26; menides, zeno, heraclitus, hiphumblest facts serving educa| pocrates, ii, 342-45. tion, lv, 70; drop a small ocean, elect, the, v, 375. iv, 71; and human will, iv, ioi; election, v, 78; november, iv, 148; nature flowering of soul, iv, 282; | the presidential, vii, 548; of know all to know one, v, 191; | abraham lincoln, ix, 286. nature microscopically rich, v, elections, the, iii, 358. 418; lesson of, vi, 186. see espeelectricity of thought, vi, 328. cially passages on nature. elegance, v, 194.. earning a living, iv, 341, 342. elements, all, needed, v, 237; and earth, illusion of, viii, 553. animals, vi, 407. “earth song," vii, 127-29. elevation in sorrow, ii, 433. earth spirit, vi, 347. eliot, john, x, 303. east and west, vii, 291. elizabethan, the, viii, 325 easter mass in st. peter's, ii, 88. eloquence, iv, 360; value of simeating, man's repulsive, v. 345. plicity in, i, 73; written or ecclesiastical councils, viii, 495. spoken, v, 6; wish for, vi, 493; ecclesiastical manners, iv, 171. prodigality, vii, 105; hot or high, echo, the horn's, v, 246. vii, 152; enriching, viii, 147,148; eckermann, iv, 199-201. its difficulties, viii, 170; war of eclipse of sun, iii, 374. posts, viii, 242; test of, viii, 313. economies, individual, vi, 327. i see also conversation, market, economy, ix, 162; brave, 11, 322; in phillips, w., pulpit. work agreeable to one's nature, eloquent man, the, v, 48, 49. v, 320; real, vi, 513; nature's, elssler, fanny, dancing of, vi, 89viii, 232. ecstasy and the soul, v, 514. emancipation, ix, 441-43. edda, vii, 304, 561; hafiz and, on emblems, iii, 225, 226; life all, v, fate and freedom, vii, 269, 270. 461. edinburgh, vii, 388; 395. emerson, charles chauncy, iv, edinburgh review, i, 293. 396; remark of, ii, 87; letters education, nowadays, 1, 343, 344; to, ii, 162; letter to, on writing, good signs in children, ii, 246; ii, 170–72; departure of, ii, 436; means of, ii, 412; true, coming, on christianity and the english iii, 350; for adversity, for princes, i church, iii, 547, 548; on carlyle, v, 71; ineffective, roman rule iii, 557; quoted, iii, 560; walk better, v, 250; raises man above and talk with, iii, 570-72; talk circumstance, v, 441, 442; from with, on motives, iv, 14, 15; plato, vi, 186; importance of out death of, his life, thought and letdoor life and games, ix, 40, 41; ters, iv, 39-50; letters about, lv, at university, x, 38; from inti 63; memories of, iv, 139–41; macy with masters, x, 199; latin quoted on love, iv, 409; edward and greek in, x, 338. and, the brothers, v, 545; attracedwards, on the will, 1, 286. tion of, family history, v. 546, église catholique française, iii, 547; edward lowell and, vi, 168. 394. ego, the solemn, v, 277. emerson, edith, birth of, vi, 130; egotism, v, 431; ix, 519; nemesis rejects heaven, viii, 256. of, v, 384. emerson, edward bliss, 11, 245; iv, egypt, x, 165; 400-10. 396; letter to, ii, 113; return egyptian temples, ix, 123. from europe of, 11, 117; letters to, egyptians, the, i, 321. on moments, ii, 170; letter to: 91. index 497 dr. channing and inferior clergy, | family, trust against misgiving, 11, 202; sketch for sermon by, i ii, 258-60; letter to, human proii, 247; letter in verse to, iii, 215, gress, cheering miracle of life, the 216; death of, his deliverance, idea of god, 11, 272-74; letter to, iii, 346-48; “farewell” of, iii, coleridge, conventional or living 450; epigrammatic answers, iii, sermon, ii, 276-79; quoted, ii, 565; superiority of, iv, 27; high 281; x, 67; 137; 168; letter to, ii, tone of, v, 545; and charles, the 440; penetration of, ii, 525; letter brothers, v, 545. . to, iii, 100-03; on prayer, 111,383; emerson, ellen t. (daughter), vi, her watcher, iv, 262, 263; on ser215; x, 247; birth of, v, 166, 167. mons, iv, 445; subtlety of, iv, emerson, ellen tucker (wife), ii, 480; letters to, ideals and society, 218; 293; 406; iii, 570; v, 165; vi, v, 95-97; original wild genius of, 379; engagement to, ii, 255, 256; family quotations, her letter to lines to, ii, 257; 265, 266; 406; charles, waterford, v, 539-43; words of, 11, 434; death of, 11, 356; letters and influence of, vi, 468; verses to, ii, 384; memories of, double prayer of, vii, 331; and iii, 258; verses of, vii, 357. medicine, viii, 53; writing of, emerson, george b., iv, 139; bot viii, 152; on the soul, viii, 167; any with, v, 3; on trees, vi, 456. blessing of, vini, 523; amenities emerson, joseph, of malden, his of, viii, 569; and dr. johnson, diary, vii, 338-41. ix, 234; quotations from, ix, 264, emerson, mrs. lidian, iii, 446; mar 265; 570, 571; death of, ix, 508; riage to, iii, 543; on gossip of the speaking of angels, x, 66; read hour, v, 70; the wife's counsel, tasso, x, 202; and good society, v, 93, 94; on reform-diet, vi, 346. x, 302; inspiration of her writing, emerson, mary moody, v, 547; vi, x, 325; perception of character, 107; 390; ix, 26, 28, 29; x, 148; x, 383. her religion, i, 77; on genius, 1, emerson, ralph, cousin, iii, 156. 97; letter to, 1, 324-27; letter emerson, ruth haskins, madam, from: reproof, i, 330-35; letter iii, 269; remark of, 11, 430; death to, 1, 356-59; letter from, 1, 370of, her influence and character, 73; letter to, 1, 374-77; letter to, l viii, 427, 428. byron's death, ii, 4; reproving emerson, waldo, iv, 198; 255; v, letter, “holy ghost," ii, 27-32; 9;387;411; birth of, iv, 134; bapletter to, 11, 63-66; 77, 78; 83-85; tism of, iv, 232; and his mother, 90-92; 99-105; 105-10; iii, 112; iv, 432, 433; sayings of, v, 166; 121-23; 124; 173-75; letter to, prayer of, v, 496; death of, his e.'s improving health, house of sayings, vi, 150-54; memory of, pain, its benefit, resignation not vi, 165, 166; anniversary of easy. u. 178-81: letter to mrs. death. vi. 488. ripley, 11, 191-94; letter to, alexemerson, william, e.'s brother, iv, andria, bride of lammermoor, 65; vi, 165; letters to, ii, 162; aspirations for art, letters, and 182; visit of, iv, 235; his probity, science an argument for immor ix, 319. tality, ii, 203-05; letter to, disemerson, william, e.'s grandfasolving of creed after death, imther, iii, 444; walking proudly, mortality, fear of death, 1, 210-1 vi, 469; family of, x, 55. 12; letter, let preacher give from | emigrants, irish, x, 153. own store, ii, 214; genius and endymion, the capitoline, v, 341. domesticity of, 11, 216; letter to, engineers and writers, x, 23. religious feeling keeps alive; reaengland, ii, 171-76; viii, 343; voyson in religion, god within, ii, | age to, thoreau left as guardian, 220–25; letter to, prosperity of vii, 336, 337; landing, vii, 342, 498 index mate a 343; street sights, vii, 355; cli| english despair, viii, 416. nd manners, vii, 375; english dinner, the, vii, 487. birth and manners in, toughness | english elegies, iii, 371. and materialism, vii, 400, 401; english finality, viii, 507. the country of the rich, vii, 409; english finish, vii, 438. return to, vii, 474; limitations english flowers, m, 175. and solidity of, viii, 73; amerenglish genius, viii, 360. ica's claim on, viii, 317; her fear english government generous, viii, of science, her lacks, viii, 337; 383. measure of, vini, 349; results of, english great men, want of religion viii, 361, 362; wealth and inven in, iii, 198. tions of, viii, 370; wealth of able english language, fine old, viii, men, viii, 384: spell of. viii. 388: 401. and france, viii, 402; flowering english limitations, viii, 302, 303. of, viii, 407; is two nations, viii, english literary history, vi, 481. 447; rome of to-day, her solidarenglish merchants and scholars, ity, viii, 464; the two nations in, vii, 419. viii, 500; cause of first visit to, english names, viii, 325. viii, 500; view of, viii, 522; her english poetry, the splendor of, n, epic, ix, 208; no higher worship | 253. than fate, ix, 367; ticketing english poets, old, vil, 503. men, ix, 554; during civil war, | english precedent mischievous in · ix, 555; x, 56-58; and america, america, ix, 9. ix, 571-73. english reformers, no affinity with, england, true account of the island vi, 385, 386; and conservatives, oj, vii, 378. viii, 469. english, childish in middle ages, english religion, viii, 321. iii, 554; impressions of the, vii, english reserves, exclusiveness, 352-55; and american, viii, 136; viii, 391. and ambassadors, viii, 275; a english scholarship, viii, ii. good mixture, viii, 374; the athenglish speech, strong, iv, 304. letic, viii, 489; of 16th and 17th english statesmen, viii, 365, 366. ** centuries, viii, 544; defoe quotenglish talent, modern advance, ed, ix, 299.. viii, 381. english acquaintance, vii, 489. english tenacity, vii, 415, 416. english and american elementary english traits, ix, 64. education, vii, 530. english triumphs in science, art, english and french characteristics, and letters, vii, 363. viii, 400. english unchastity, talk on, vii, english aristocracy, x, 16. 440, 441. english authors, weighed, man and english university men, v!ii, 353, writer must be one, iv, 356, 357; 354. debt to a few, viii, 494. english vessels, iii, 17. english bards, vii, 158. | english visit, result of, vii, 524. english blank verse, iii, 554.. . english women, vii, 413. english book versus german book, english worthies, vii, 363, 364. ix, 182. english writers, individual, iii, 508; english brag, viii, 326. old and modern, viii, 550. english castles, ix, 220. englishman and american, vi1,405; english chapel, the, iii, 33. practical, heavy, vii, 419; pocket english church, christianity and of, viii, 545; firm manners of, x, the, charles emerson on, m, 268. englishmen, good, vii, 551. english coachmen, vii, 361. | ennui, viii, 405. en 47, 548. les emerstianity an index 499 enthusiasm, 1, 211-13; needed, ix, | event, tie of person and, viii, 244. 559. events, ix, 188; help, iv, 334; seen enthusiasts, swedenborgians, quak freshly, vi, 453, 454. ers, methodists, 11, 318. everett, alexander and james envy, unreasonable, ii, 483. savage, iii, 375. enweri; his spring, viii, 105. everett, edward, plymouth oraepaminondas, v, 165. | tion of, 11, 45-47; 11, 123; iii, 471; epigrams, ix, 13, 14. iv, 359; iv, 471; viii, i12; lecture epilogue, to wide world, i, 265. of, 1, 21; 207; quoted, i, 67: serepitaph, viii, 109; of charle| • mon of, 1, 76, 81; phi beta kappa magne's mother, viii, 428. oration of, ii, 100; and slavery, epochs of life, v, 198. ini, 517; account of, vi, 255-57; equality, vii, 229; of great men, service of, vi, 403; inauguration iii, 410; mystical in nature, v, of, vii, 166-69; tarnished fame 487. of, viri, 182; forgets his speeches, equalizations, viii, 328. viii, 199; (brought us german eras, vii, 68; three, viii, 77, 78; in | thought, viii, 225; pictured terphilosophy, ix, 295; triumphs rors of, viii, 232. and, x, 103. evidences of heaven, ii, 215. erigena, johannes scotus, quoted, evil, existence of, 1, 115; reason of, x, 112. ii, 120; not normal, iv, 167. espinesse, vii, 384. | evil days cry for cure, iii, 348. essays, matter for, ii, 480; the evil times also do good, iii, first, v, 506; given to friends, 256. v, 519, 520. exact sciences, the, i, 59. essence of life, x, 460. exaggeration, vi, 65. estabrook farms, viii, 485; walk to, exaltation, viii, 291. ix, 274. example, v, 108; do not worry eternal, party of the, ix, 217. about, ii, 287. eternal man, the, vi, 20. excellence, vi, 414; justifies, ex, eternity, v, 209; scholar's assur 1449. ance of, ini, 563. exchanges of pulpit, 11, 428. ethics, do not satisfy, 1, 379; sovexclusion, viii, 582. ereignty of, 11, 160; bind christian exclusives, vi, 81. and theist, ii, 355; sovereignty exhibition day, 1, 67. of, truth precedes christianity, expense for conformity, v, 429. ii, 516. experience not valid against soul, eton, x, 46; visit to, vii, 490. v, 519; and idea the twins, vi, eudoxus, ii, 342. 61: promise from, viii, 257. euler, iii, 356. experiment, life is, vi, 302. europe, v, 393; old, iii, 16; comes experimental writing, vi, 160. to us in books, iii, 202; culture experimenting in life, v, 460. from, vi, 264; england and, experiments on living, iv, 194. viii, 43; aim in, viii, 516. explanation of men, iii, 466. european characteristics, vii, 240, explorers needed, iv, 388. 241. expressing one's self, iv, 418. european influences, viii, 334. expression, iii, 417; sir james european stock, viii, 524. mackintosh on, ii, 477; imitative european writers, iv, 92-95. writing unsound, iv, 34-36; imevangelical lady and her uncle, portance of a line, iv, 321; full, vii, 412. rare, vi, 84; good, rare, vi, 92. eve has no clock, iv, 9. expressors the gods, viii, 95. evelyn, story of, vii, 453. extempore speaking, ix, 58. evening star, x, 135. extravagance, public, viii, 279. 500 index eye, the, discerning, ii, 403; wit| family types, viii, 263. ness of, iii, 564; joy of, iv, 358. fanaticism for performance, ix, eyes, v, 21; vi, 327; value of, 11, 99; 203. and tongue, happy, iii, 521; new, fancies, boy's, vi, 46. iv, 321; of women and men, v, fancy, v, 121; the gift of, 1, 63, 64; 335; revealing, v, 537; seeing and imagination, iii, 525. without, vi, 157; asking, vi, 347; fancy, verses, 1, 65, 66. and no eyes, viii, 42. faneuil hall canons, the, iv, 359, 360. fables, a collection, ix, 208. faraday, x, 140; liebig to, on pure face, vi, 40. science, viii, 487; on force, ix, faces, v, 79; v, 269; viii, 85; iv, 63; 106, 107. two, iv, 291; expression of, v, farewell to st. augustine, verses, ii, 126. 181. facility, a walking. viii. 258. farie, models of, vii, 450. fact, interpreting of, v, 298. farm, boy on a, iv, 239; the, as faction, v, 64. school, v, 251; e.'s, viii, 274. facts, iv, 473; 498; marriage of, ii, farm pests, vi, 388. 288; the great, ii, 327; ideas or, farm work, effect of, vii, 63. iii, 519; rank themselves, 111, 553; farmer, the, 1, 322; vi, 402; indipoetry in humblest, iv, 70; the rect good deeds of, vi, 442. day's gift of, iv, 488; use of, v, farmers, vii, 50; brave, iv, 429, 44; detached ugly, v, 54; over430; alliance of coming, vi, 193; valued, v, 77; settle into place, old-time, vii, 506, 507; respect v, 79; or doctrines, v, 92; hive, v, for, viii, 72, 73. 418; god gives, find their reason, farming, x, 270; follow your callv, 513; as horses, vi, 157; beautiing, v, 390. ful, vi, 275; one's own, vii, 465; fashion, vi, 96; vii, 130; infernal a superstition to english, viii, infantry of, vi, 93. 417; and ideas, ix, 409. fashionist in novels, ii, 263. failures make success, iii, 334. fashionists, barometers, v, 319. fairy gifts, vi, 415. fast-day sermon, ii, 369–71. faith, a telescope, ii, 27; when in fate, vi, 225; vii, 553; viii, 239; study, 11, 441; sincere, suspected, ix, 162; time and, fix relations, v, iii, 479; beauty needs, v, 236; in 429; character over, vi, 188, 189; crease our, v, 428; poetry of, viri, music-box, vi, 317; part of, vii, 367. 559; and freedom, hafiz and faiths, curiosity as to other, iv, edda on, vii, 269, 270; part of, vii, 101, 102, 559; view of, in society, viii, 218; falkland, iv, 320; clarendon on, competition, viii, 222; child of, iv, 264. history selects, ix, 114; or cirfall, the soul's, iv, 490. cumstance, ix, 115; the necessary falling, v, 163 and the eternal, ix, 216; and false one, the, v, 186. opinions of men, x, 471; souls false, true and, viii, 223, with and without light, x, 472. falsehood, x, 338. see also england, hafiz, india, fame, vii, 53; 198; viii, 140; ix, instinct, rectitude. 214: mankind awards, v, 266; fate, verses, 11, 80. house of, viii, 205; common, vini, father, mother, and child, iv, 134, 528-30; righting itself, x, 145; 135; good, x, 197. and fossils, x, 167. fathers, iv, 80. fame, added verse to poem, ii, 210. favors, conferring, ii, 437. familiarity, ix, 436. fear, of criticism, i, 295, 296; of families, new england, x, 269. i light, v, 149; instructs, v, 202. . index 501 fears, transient, iii, 353 forbes, miss margaret p., letter feats, ix, 63; seemingly impossible, to, ix, 170. viii, 137 force, ii, 276; within, ii, 472. february thaw, vii, 6. forces, composition of, iv, 305, federal government, war-power of, 300; insufficient, vii, 305; moral, viii, 28. ix, 491; live, ix, 573. feminine genius of americans, iv, forefathers, honor to the, ii, 371. 87. forefathers' day, verses, ii, 33, 34. fénelon, 11, 387; saying of, 11, 285. foreignness, loved one's, viii, 540. ferney, and voltaire, iii, 152. forerunners, vii, 79. fero, the family of, iii, 232. foresight, v, 390. ferrara: tasso, ariosto, byron, forest, v, 456; go to the, if poet, v, jews, ni, 127. 444; alluring, vi, 516. feuerbach, viii, 77. forest joys, iv, 439. fichte, iii, 260; vi, 62. foresters, e.'s thoughts are, v, fiction, 1, 128. 513. finalities, none in nature, viii, 446. forethought and afterthought, 11, financial crisis, the, iv, 209, 210. 94. finishers, viii, 17. foreworld, the, v, 184. firdousi, saying of, viii, 426. forgiveness, ii, 254. fire, symbolism, vi, 316, 317; the form, pathos of, v, 25. village, viii, 26, 27. forms, shaking off, v, 349. fireflies, dew and, vi, 212. forster, john, carlyle, and dickfirst in one's career, vii, 58. ens, dinner with, vii, 440, 441. first philosophy, great laws of, in, fort hatteras, ix, 337. 489. fortune, you carry your own, ii, first thoughts, and second, 11, 436; 250. coincidence of, and third, 11, 435; fortunate generation, ii, 147. from god, ili, 323. fortunes, vast, x, 230. fisher the quaker, viii, 141. fossil remains, ix, 343. fitchburg railroad, x, 313. fosters, the, mobbed, vii, 178. fitness, 11, 82. | foundation, our perilous, v, 427. flag, the, ii, 148; ix, 410. four walls, vi, 315. flattery in dedications, viii, 540. fourier, vi, 439; 516; vii, 20; 161. flaxman, dante of, iv, 77. fourth of july dinner, iii, 158. fletcher, john, v, 185. fowler of tennessee, x, 71. flint's pond, ix, 110. fox, charles james, i, 317-20; vii, floating ice, vii, 527. 515; viii, 340; choate on english florence, ni, 104; x, 5; 411; leaving, and, viii, 558. iii, 125. fox, captain, clipper voyage of, ni, flower and immortality, v, 425. 204. flower-girl, the, erminia, iii, 119. fox, george, 11, 497-500; iii, 493. flowers, iii, 284; viii, 312; on walk, fragments of men, vi, 129. ix, 43-45; as gifts, x, 160. france, iii, 154; vii, 409; vii, 450flowing, the, heed the lesson, v, 74; viii, 343; 429; and england, 494, 495. vii, 122; notes on, quotations, fluxions, ix, 361. viii, 430-33; montalembert's focus, the mind's far, iii, 537. statement, ix, 63; palace of fontenelle, viii, 348. arithmetic, x, 260. fool of the family, viii, 348. francis, eben, viii, 227. “foolish face of praise," iv, 290. franklin, benjamin, i, 320; versus fools, wise, ix, 179. homer, 1, 376; transcendentalforbes, john murray, ix, 377, 378; ! ist and, vii, 268; on babies, viii, x, 72-75; 351. 502. 502 index , 272;uoted, p11, 23% ii, 5o meme frascati's, iii, 169. of, vi, 505; is truth, vii, 30; and free thinking, 1, 238-42; explosive, eternal laws, x, 188. see also vi, 470. communities, mass. free trade, ii, 314; x, 228. friendships, two strong natures, iv, freedom, v, 119; of man, ii, 272; 77. heaven guards, ii, 376; of the fringes, the, of life, vi, 419. wise, ii, 388; the terrible, 11, 517; frothingham, nathaniel langdon, and conviction, iii, 328; devout, iv, 272. iii, 378, 379; the scholar's, v, 31; froude, quoted, ix, 215. cherish, v, 220; only way to, vi, fruit and seed, viii, 238. 270; of slaveholder, viii, 382; fruit trees, planters of, vii, 501. party of, ix, 49; of the town, ix, fruitlands, alcott describes scheme, 329. vi, 304, 305; visit to, vi, 420, 421; freed-woman, the plymouth, rv, limitations, vi, 452; tragedy and 184. alcott, vi, 503-05. frémont, vanity of, vii, 206. fugitive slave law, viii, 179-82; frémont, mrs., ix, 382, 383. | the old and the new, viii, 193, french, v, 522; rising esteem for 194. the, vii, 468; have street courage, fugitive slave law speech in new vii, 487; and english, viii, 37; york, viii, 447, 448. english and, characteristics, viii, | fuller, margaret, iv, 333; vi, 87; 460; and metaphysics, ix, 147; 233, 234; visit of, iv, 79; german the, on english, ix, 200. lessons from, iv, 225; letter to, french architecture, vii, 452. the period of unrest, iv, 256, 257; french boulevards, vii, 452. portfolio of pictures, iv, 465; letfrench calculation. vii. ii. ter to, v, 65-67; and f. h. hedge, french eclecticism, cousin's book, v, 248; visit of alcott and, v, iv, 404. 292; and intervening gulf, v, 324, french influence, vii, 465. 325; talk with, vi, 78; unsettled french lack of morale, viii, 249. rank of, vi, 97; gypsy talent, vi, french language, viii, 474. 277, 278; riches of thought, genfrench poetry, vii, 451. erosity, elevation, nuovissimo french revolution, iii, 448; vii, vila, vi, 363-66; verses of, vi, 403. 369; letter to, in rome, vii, french sentences, viii, 154. 283; word from, vii, 368; dies in french traits, vii, 452. wreck, her friends, her traits, friction, vii, 153. testimonies of friends, viii, 115friend, the possible, 1, 28; 80; de|| 19; letters of, viii, 142-44; in sonied, i, 197; idealizing a, ix, 538; ciety, viii, 173; gentilesse of, viii, effect of, x, 247. 217; illuminator not writer, viii, friend, the possible, verses, 1, 70. 249, 250. friend, to the possible, poem, 1,61. fuller, thomas, his worthies of friends, sacred property, 11, 242; england, iv, 322. aid of, iii, 268; exacting, v, 451, furness, william h., x, 442, 443. 452; love of, v, 453; superior, vii, fuseli, on the greeks, viii, 560. 243; contrasts in, viii, 293; x, future, living in the, i, 168; e. faces 278; e.'s, x, 357; help of, x, 389; || the uncertain, ii, 71; the unin england, x, 395, 396. known, ii, 511; the appeal to the, friendship, i, 314; ix, 273; phan iv, 328, 329; present and, vii, toms, ii, 95; longing for, ii, 404;1 332. an ideal, iv, 464; troubles of, v, future state, ii, 427. 343; reverent, its tides, v, 362; guy learns, v, 367; true, v, 467, galen, 11, 473. 1 468; imperfect, vi, 244; paradox galileo, 11, 466; homage to, iii, 106. index 503 galleries, ii, iii. 530; draws the curtain, v, 553, gallic cock, vii, 457. 554; unsettles all, vi, 23; shafts gambler, vi, 338. uniting, vi, 86; all pardoned to, game, the, vi, 60; the old, vi, 5. vi, 237; and talent, vi, 370,371; is garden, vii, 293; is honest, vi, 397. tyrannical, vi, 474; the, of the garden diary, viii, 47, 48. world, vii, 59; unavailable, vii, gardening, iv, 271; v, 457. 120; balance in, vii, 155; charm gardening medicine, iv, 236. of, vii, 197; feat of, vii, 295; pengardens, iii, 95; vi, 448; and archi alty of, vii, 466; traits of, ix, 312, tecture, v, 27, 28. 313; meets all the conditions, x, gardiner, william, quotations from, 250; devotion of, x, 461;is on great iv, 364, 365. highways, x, 467; works upon ingardiner, mr., american consul in exhaustible part of man, x, 474. palermo, iii, 59. see also asiatic, bonaparte, cargarrison, william lloyd, v, 302, lyle, emerson, m. m., english, 303; vii, 97; ix, 49; x, 18; thun greek, health, influence, morale, ders for peace, vi, 101, 102; honor talent, temperance, transfer, to, vi, 541; virtue and fault of, uproar, virtue, wonder. viii, 99; and phillips, viii, 433, gentility, real, vi, 71. 434; ix, 455 gentleman, a, v, 169; the english, gaston de foy, v, 452. iii, 494; and christian, v, 549; gates and burgoyne, v, 170. truth and, viii, 75. gates of thought are found late, vi, | gentlemen, vii, 10; meeting of, vi, 196. 197. gauge, everyman's, ii, 413. gentz, diary, quoted, ix, 445. gauss, ix, 117. genuineness, ii, 507. gay lussac, iii, 170. geology, sublime, ix, 122. gay, martin, i, 28. geometer, trust the great, viri, 91. gazetted terms, viii, 280. german, reading, vi, 357. gems, v, 375. german, the startled, vi, 79; hidden genealogy, vii, 121; of thought, dreamer, vii, 151. iii, 363. german criticism of christian evi generals of civil war, x, 66. dences, ii, 83. generation, duty of our, v, 311. german culture, x, 53. generation, the, unconscious, vi, germans, ix, 30, 31; and english, 60. ix, 22. generalization, ix, 125. germany, viii, 69; and america, y, generalizers are the nobility, viri, 203; elusive, vii, 532. 419, 420. giant of chimborazo, i, 133. generalizing. power of, vii. 330. giants, vii. 335. generic man, acts and emotions in gibbet at liverpool, vii, 379. common, iv, 228. gibbet-irons, ii, 163. generous feelings, iii, 394. gibbon, edward, i, 290; vii, 100; geneva, gibbon's house, iii, 151. hume and, ii, 121, 122; house of, geneva ministers, iii, 153. geneva, ini, 151. genius, versus knowledge, i, 312, gibraltar, straits of, iii, 21, 22. 313; is reception, ii, 363; is true gift (ability), to each his, ii, 457; seeing, ii, 474; the creator, iv, apparent to those it helps, vi, 186. 252-54; surprises, iv, 284; growth gift, a wedding, v, 479, 480. of, iv, 421; anything serves, iv, gifts (abilities), iii, 384; sympa6; rare, v, 6; charm, an emanathy with others', iii, 384; of man, tion, v, 144; shirking reform, v, the, iv, 120; others', v, 19; varied, 344, 345; bids work, v, 443; obey ix, 41. even when leading to deserts, v, \ gifts, iv, 214; 440; x, 160. 504 index giotto, iii, 115. tycho brahe, iv, 221, 222; namgirl, the high-minded, iv, 379. ing of, v, 59, 60; help of, v, 222; girls, idealizing, iv, 380; golden service of, v, 395; his helena, vi, mean in temperaments of, viii, 466; breadth and felicity of, vi, 314; boarding-schools for, viii, 514; strength of, vi, 544, 545; 397. profusion of, vii, 176; quoted, on gladiator, the, and byron, m, 99. napoleon, vii, 280; on megadglances, iv, 204. huta, vii, 291, 292; his faust, glasgow, iii, 179; vii, 393. viii, 70; his winckelmann, viii, glasgow university, x, 436. 91, 92; the pivot, viii, 249. gleams, iii, 277; from nature, v, golden mean, the, vi, 22; resources 489. in danger, iii, 195. gloucester land-purchase, viii, 170. golden age, the, v, 401. gnothi seauton, 11, 395. goldoni, ii, 8; iv, 343. god, i, 150-57; 164; within, ii, 23; gonzalo, kingdom of, vi, 461. 225; ideas of, ii, 289; thought, good, seen everywhere, ii, ii ; the not experiment, finds, ii, 317; unseen, in man, ii, 434; normal, substratum of souls, 11,323; neighevil not, iv, 167; of evil, ix, bor's claim through, ii, 353; in 304. all, ii, 358; misrepresenting, ii, good action, set to grow, ii, 442. 408; door of, ii, 409; the soul, ii, good-bye, proud world, poem, 1, 501; clear relation to, iii, 274 ; 347; 368. all works for, iii, 282; idea of good cause, furtherance of nature, changes, iii, 465; cannot be de x, 107. scribed, iii, 517; in man, individgood company: fire, water, woods, ual and universal, iv, 121; in writbirds, v, 134. ing always suppose, iv, 270; be not good sense, v, 556. too wise, iv, 417; do not speak of, good writing rare, ix, 345. much, iv, 475; ideas of, v, 73; now, goodies, iv, 443; 491, 492. here, face to face, v, 135, 136; the goodness, natural, ii, 285; smiles, living, neglected, v, 498; your iv, 112. share of, v, 498; the word, viii, 4. goodwin, rev. hersey, sermon of, see also benevolence, child, comiii, 563. munion, conscience, deity, em-| goose pond, iv, 118; v, 161; ix, 91. erson, m. m., facts, first, great, gorgias, vii, 309, 310. idea, idolatries, invention, light, gospel, at first hand, viii, 532. living, nature, person, personalgospels, and literature, x, 171. ity, pilot, plotinus, prayer, pri| gothic, cross of greek and, viii, vate, reason, religion, renunci417. ation, resources, seed, sermon, governing machine, the, viii, 217. servant, silsbee, w., thought, government, vi, 527; an obstructruth, universe, woods, writing. tion, ix, 51, 52; god's message, verses, iii, 212. our, our people and, ix, 369. godliness, iv, 21. governments, unheroic, ix, 364, gods in ancient art, ix, 136. goethe, iii, 474; iv, 116; 468; v, governor of malta,' iii, 35. 506; vii, 303; extracts from, ii, grace, x, 145. 348-50; vanity of, iii, 251 ; angrace, robin says, vi, 29. other poor monad, iii, 309; and grahamite gospel, the, v, ioi. morals, self-culture, iii, 313, 314; grandeur, in common folk, vi, 16; quotations from, iv, 16, 17; 27;1 time necessary to, vi, 329; from time's verdict on him, iv, 29, 30;' war opportunity, ix, 519. judgment of, iv, 212, 213; estigrandfather, word of, iii, 234; and mates of, iv, 218; on seneca and ) baby, vi, 203. 365. index 505 grant, general, x, 93. of, his praise, viii, 389, 390; on gratitude, 11, 375. influence of climate, viii, 552. grattan, x, 218; quoted, ix, 299. greville, fulke, viii, 5. gravestones, two, viii, 20. grey, earl, x, 216. gravitation, viii, 8.... grief, v, 110; cure of, v, 115; man gray, thomas, and michel angelo, sheds, vi, 403. x, 268. grimm, friedrich, quoted, viii, great, the way of the, ii, 167. 425. great ages, the, v, 565.' grimm, herman, quoted, ix, 233; great causes belittled by converts, on vasari, ix, 307; friend not invi, 120, 121. troduced to, x, 142; meeting in great man, a contradiction to his florence, x, 411, 412. age, ix, 192; between god and grove, the, iv, 433. mob, iv, 150. growth, lx, 520. great men, "limitations of, their guest in your own house, be, iv, value, iii, 185, 186; ties of, iii, 189; or friend, vi, 41, 42. 211; alfred, washington, iv, | guide, the, viii, 206. 183, 184; history in a few names, guido, aurora of, v, 217; 341. v, 132, 133; uses of, vii, 32. guizot, ix, 87. greatness, i, 121-23; 200; imper-| gurney, ephraim wales, x, 244. fect, ii, 79; elevation of reason, gurowski, adam, ix, 303. 11, 354; we postpone our, iii, 272; gustavus adolphus, v, 315. not cheaply won, ii, 476; simple gypsies and apostles, vi, 184. and kindly, iv, 391; plato and gypsy talent, vi, 278. swedenborg, viii, 39; from one gift, ix, 114, 115; thoughts rule | habit, 1, 136; 11, 275; the sermon the world, ix, 175; high steps in on, iii, 346. character, x, 168; expansion of, | hafiz, vii, 170; viii, 328; ix, 145; x, 238. see also artificial, riches. x, 144; 166; transforms surroundgreaves library, the, vi, 290, 291. ings, v, 562; poem of, vii, 181, greece, 1, 158; our debt to, iii, 418, 182; 277, 278; and edda on fate 419; art of, iv, 327; fate in india and freedom, vii, 269, 270; and, vii, 123; games of, ix, 279. spirit of, vii, 278, 279; on thought, greek and gothic, vii, 247; cross viii, 19; on cheerfulness, viii, of, viii, 417. 458; on love, viii, 487, 488; on greek courage and humors, vii, 257. the sonnet, viii, 542. greek drama, chorus, iv, 25. hair, x, 357. greek fable, viii, 410. halifax mills, the, vii, 378. greek genius, the, iv, 144. hallam, viii, 454; on swedenborg, greek language, resolution about, | vii, 450 ; merits and limitations i, 22. of, viii, 461. greek mythology, viii, 360, 361. hamatreya, vii, 127-29. greek philosophers, ii, 336-45. hamilton, ontario, england in, greeks, the, i, 388; v, 434; picture viii, 523. of, v, 15; old english study of hamlel, lear and, v, 124–26; aristhe, viii, 499; immortality of, tocracy in, vii, 320. viii, 525, 526; wrote their metahampden, lv, 320. physics in names, ix, 559, 560. hand, the, iv, 291, 494. greeley, horace, vii, 136; ix, 49; handel, his messiah, vi, 479. energy of, viii, 229. handles, right, to thought, iv, 416. greenfield, 1, 280, 281. | happiness, defined, ii, iii; or segreenough, horatio, visit of, his! renity, ii, 306, 307; unearned, 11, philosophy and art, viii, 318-21; 307; e.'s, iv, 398. sayings of, viii, 331, 332; death | happy temper, vii, 246. 506 index x, 317. hard times, ii, 475; iv, 214; 236; | heaven, here, ii, 421; the world of ix, 137; their stern revelations, reason, iii, 488; is sense of power, iv, 241-44. viii, 571; and hell, x, 168. hardness, vi, 457.. heaven-born, results of, vi, 49. harleian miscellanies, v, 315. heavenward view, iv, 288. harlequin, the great, vi, 84. hecker, isaac t. (father), ix, 467. harmony, of the world, iv, 111; hedge, dr. f. h., iii, 573; v, 206; want of, v, 19. visit of, iv, 235; talk with, iv, harp-shell, ix, 310. 1.250; margaret fuller and, v, 248. harrison, president, v, 549. | heeren, his egypt, tragedy of the harrison campaign, symbols of, v, negro, v, 26, 27. 425, 426. | hegel, vii, 152; x, 143; 248; 318; harte, bret, visit of, x, 362, 363. scherb expounds, vin,69; quoted, harvard college, iii, 543; jubilee, x, 423; and followers, x, 460; and ghosts and boys, iv,84; education | natural science, x, 462. at. iv. 202: and state street. ix. heliodorus, founder of novels. vii. 215; criticized, x, 258, 259; dis549. cipline, x, 288-91;e.'s lecture at, hell, and heaven, your attitude, vi, 168. harvard festivals, vii, 169. help, from diverse men, iii, 439; or haskins, robert, proverb of, ii, 442. mind your business, iv, 245. hatem tai, ix, 539. helpers in life, iv, 51. haven, alfred, v, 142.. hemlocks, the, iv, 142. hawthorne, nathaniel, iv, 479; henri quatre, with tricolor, iii, 155. above his writing, vi, 240; walk heraclitus, , 344, 345; splendid with, to harvard, vi, 258-63; sentences of, iv, 267. talk with, vi, 414; on brook heralds suffer, vi, 411. farm, vi, 441; method of, vii, | herbert, george, ii, 415; iv, 173; 188; channing on, viii, 257; delia extracts from, ii, 348; poems of, bacon and, ix, 90; burial of, x, v, 5; verses of, vi, 509; his man, 39. vii, 104. hawtry, dr. s., x, 46. herbert, lord, life of, ix, 519. haydon, ix, 225; on english navy, hereafter, unworthily pictured, 11, viii, 501, 502. 103. hayne avenged, viii, 197. heredity, its moral, iii, 381. heads, v, 169; the few good, vii, hermit, the, ix, 153. 552. hero, viii, 123. health, v, 309; e.'s improving, let-hero, loyal to beauty, vii, 42. ter to m.m.e., ii, 179; physique herodotus, vii, 512. of great men, iv, 477; and rules, heroes, iv, 451; provided, v, 62; vi, 267; spread your, vi, 361; poet's use of, v, 187; of the north, genius is, vii, 98; influx and ef ix, 485; of the war, ix, 577. flux, ix, 294; subjugation of heroic, the, rare, iv, 343. matter, ix, 298; top of, required, heroic characters, ii, 372. x, 42. heroic manners, iv, 226. hearing and speaking, iii, 559. heroism means difficulty, v, 427. heart of men, speak to, iv, 172. herrick, robert, iii, 483.; viii, 25; heart, the, iv, 340; deep aborigi-l the poet's lure, vi, 144; channing nal region, v, 500; a gate, v, 552, on, vii, 532. 553; above intellect, vi, 28; bad, herschel, ni, 197. vii, 548. hervey, lord, x, 16. heat, magic of, iv, 453; v, 421; and hesiod, quoted, x, 297, 298. imagination in savants, viii, hesperus, the marble, vi, 325. 177 | heterogeneity, viii, 218, 219. index 507 heywood, dr., and school-boy, iv, / hodson, william s. r., life of, ix, 395. 331. hierarchy, vi, 417. hogg, james, kilmeny, ix, 346. higginson, t. w., vii, 558. holidays, exhilarating, iv, 442, 443. high church, iii, 572. holmes, o. w., vii, 169; ix, 227high reason, low understanding, 29; 404; on lecturing, viii, 424; iii, 311. convivial talent, ix, 466. high sentiments, nourish, 11, 391. holmes, captain o. w., x, 7. high thoughts, iv, 461. holy days, ii, 326. higher law, viii, 132; derided, viii, holy ghost, n, 27; 359; taming 110. the, vii, 16. highlands, trip to the, iii, 176-79. holy people, x, 341. highway, good by the, vi, 273. holy river, viii, 519. hinckes, preaching of, iii, 187. holyoke, mount, 1, 277. hindoo, theology, x, 162. home, vii, 230; x, 170; use your hints, of history, 11, 97. eyes at, iii, 341; picture of e.'s, hippocrates, ii, 345. iv, 372, 373; the cure, iv, 423; historians, do not portray man, iv, sweet, but sacred, v, 239; in au164; advocates, viii, 518. gust, ix, 224. historical discourse at concord, homer, iv, 439; mouthpiece of introduction, iii, 497-99. mind of man, i, 329; questions histories, two, of man, vii, 80, for, iii, 490; value of, to ameri81. cans, vi, 281. history, its dark side, meagreness | homerides, v, 331, 332. in prosperous times, i, 217-21; homes, snug and bleak, viii, 288. its help for ideals, ii, 89; study of, homology, viii, 272. ii, 127; lessons of, iii, 365, 366; | hooker, general, x, 93. we preserve a few anecdotes, hooker, richard, defines imaginafacts rank themselves, , 552, tion, viii, 405; and ideal dogmas, 553; philosophic, iv, 153, 154; viii, 497, 498. true use of, iv, 157, 158; soul in, hoosac, ix, 577. iv, 165; science and, the service hoosiers, ix, 9. of, iv, 377, 378; writing of, v, 65; hope, iii, 18; vi, 543; dupe of,'ı, all personal, v, 448; is striving 367; a good, ii, 213; and trust, v, thought, vi, 323; teaches prin119; beginning of, its own fulfilciples, vii, 533. ment, v, 251. hoar, elizabeth, x, 101; the sister, hopes, e.'s, ii, 86. vi, 85; on campbell's life, viii, horace, x, 218. 205; on common sense, viii, 498. horatii, the, viii, 321. hoar, madam, view of, iv, 407. horizon feeds us, iv, 288; of brass, hoar, e. r., judge, ix, 566, 567; x, english, viii, 405. 297; genius of, x, 291. horoscope, vii, 331; your powers hoar, samuel, v, 24; vi, 43; 220; your, ii, 513. 523; viii, 93; 180; ix, 542; sober horse-chestnuts, illusion of, viri, age, m, 526; on just causes, iv, 578. 321; outrage of south carolina horses, of romance, viii, 404; in on, vii, 20-23. iowa, x, 183. hoar, samuel (senior), x, 95. hosmer, edmund, and henry hoar, samud, quatrain, viii, 330. thoreau, iv, 395; account of, vi, hobbes, thomas, on books and con 180-82; victories of, vi, 201; on versation, viii, 324; on demo| alcott, vi, 240, 241; honesty of, cracy, viii, 402. vi, 303; neighbor, viii, 261; his hobbies, good, vii, 324. serenity, ix, 356. hobby-riding, 11, 479. | hospitality, v, 552; law of, iv, 3, 4; 508 index problem of, iv, 105, 106; to unbid| hunter, john, ix, 149; x, 265. den guests, iv, 262; to thoughts, hunterian museum and turner's v, 138; vi, 128; of minds, vii, studio, with owen to, vii, 480 551. 82. hospitalities, v, 270. hurry, v, 519. host, over-anxious, v, 321, 322. husks, feeding with, iii, 273, 274. hostility, foolish, iv, 460. hymn, there is in all the sons of hotel, fire in, ix, 479; and inspira men, ii, 346. tion, x, 43. hymn-books, vii, ioi. hotel air, vii, 545. hypocrisy, ii, 509; viii, 194; sin hotel rules in davenport, viii, 585. | carries its reward, ii, 139, 140; hotels, vi, 337 shun, iii, 332. house, e.'s, v, 422; small versus large, vii, 47; american, x, 262. iamblichus, ix, 88; on pythagoras, house-hero, ii, 454. v, 522. household help, vi, 421. iceland, vii, 561. house-hunting, viii, 538. idea, of god, the, ii, 274; the hidhousekeeping, v, 183; a college, v, den, iii, 292; no wall like, iii, 565; 48-50. tyrannous, vii, 106. see also housewife, yield to, iv, 310; the action, christianity, courage, young, iv, 430. experience, facts, god, one, house of commons, viii, 583. universe. houssaye, stories from, viii, 347. ideal, vi, 397; when practised, howe, judge, ii, 308. alarms, v, 312, 313; ideal comhowe, julia ward, x, 325. munity, vii, 199–201. huddersfield, vii, 381. ideal men, 11, 505. hudson river, x, 200. idealism, in, 486; x, 452, 453; peter human desires, ii, 285. hunt, ii, 335; yearning, iii, 395; human life, lectures on, v, 159, 160. discomfort shakes, iii, 495; human race, and gods, x, 196. books, worship, friends, iv, 12human relations, ii, 476. 14; notes on, iv, 25; aristocracy humanity, greater than manners, and, v, 276, 277; the child's, vi, v, 379; trust your, viii, 410. 26; drops of, viii, 408. see also humble-bee, the, iv, 235. aristocracy, new england. humboldt, alexander von, iii, 356; | idealism, verses, 1, 109. vi, 400; x, 298, 299; his cosmos, idealist, always wanted, viii, 543; vii, 100. danger of hypocrisy, ix, 6. hume, ii, 77; viii, 426; essay of, 1, idealists, vi, 323; no pure, in eng292; and gibbon, ii, 121, 122; / land, vii, 478; rare yet present, history of, and modern history, viii, 508; ideas applied, ix, 246; viii, 322. greeks and judea, ix, 552. humiliation, vi, 356; in mood of, idealizing, iii, 352; 467. iii, 131. ideas, men open themselves to, iv, humility, 11, 476; iii, 496; viii, 14; 26; sovereignty of, iv, 32; succesx, 19; and pride, ii, 300; is a time sive, working, v, 333; impregnasaver, iii, 516; of great poets, iv, ble, ix, 371. 83; secret of, vii, 286; haughtiidentity, vii, 54; 89; x, 139; 214; ness of, x, 231. man clings to, ii, ioi; spiritual hunger, wolfish, for knowledge, vi, man sees, iii, 568; perception of, 295. vin, 46; and centrality, x, 205. hunt, leigh, his abou ben adhem, identities for intellect, viii, 547. vi, 200. idleness, sermon subject, 11, 472. hunt, peter, 11, 335. idols, v, 95; vii, 294. hunt, richard, x, 280, 281. idolaters, v, 209. index 509 53. idolatries or god, 11, 269. | impressions, vi, 6; respect your, v, idolatry the backward eye, vi, 1. 144; dulling of, vii, 546. 190. improvisation, viii, 541. ignorance, shame of, 11, 393; the inaptitude, vi, 69. wisdom of, ii, 328. income of scholar, v, 43. ill health, 11, 68; of e., ii, 117. incomes, large, vii, 460. illinois, winter in, ix, 7; hard incomprehensible, the, x, 215. times in, ix, 9. inconsistencies, on, v, 67, 68. illinois settlers, ix, 5. independence, ii, 301; brave, ii, illness, e.'s, x, 390-92. 451; value of, iv, 351; your own, illumination, ii, 381. viii, 482. illuminations of science, emblems, india, x, 163; doctrines from, vii, iii, 225, 226. 127; and greece, fate in, vii, 123; illusion, x, 123; 159; of horse-chest-| theologic literature of, ix, 197. nuts, viii, 578. indian, the, vii, 23; the poor, viii, illusions, ix, 264; are many and 9; oldtown, ix, iii; and rum, x, pure, ix, 357. illustrations, viii, 280. | indian ethics, vii, 129, 130. images, inborn, 1, 334. indian summer, vi, 281. imagination, evils of, ii, 25; its two | indians, vii, 184; at st. augustine, powers, vii, 160; cultivate, vii, ii, 169; north american, in bos328; flute of, vini, 21; heat and, ton, iv, 345. in savants, vili, 177; we live by, indirection, vi, 77; utterance by, v, viii, 504; and memory, ix, 127. | 189. imbecility of good party, viii, indirections, fatal, vii, 199. 212. individual and universal mind, iv, imitators, ii, 522. 247-49. immigrants, the drifting, vi, 443; individualism must remain, vii, america's sifted, viii, 226. 322, 323: immoral laws scarce in history, individuality, arethusa fountain, viii, 200. ix, 550. immortal, the, vii, 228. individuals, riddle of, iv, 14; and immortal deeps, vi, 478. communities, vi 314. immortal life, few fit for, ix, 348. indolent minds, working and, vii, immortality, 11, 211; viii, 561; x, 541. 203; virtue, and vice, ii, 98; | induction, vii, 266. aspirations for art, letters and indulgence, nature's, v, 308. science an argument for, ii, 205; inequality, necessary, viii, 166. high aims assure of, 11, 392; felt, inertia, ii, 135; vii, 96; man's, ii, not shown, ii, 210; at hand, iii, 373; falsely taught, the soul afinfancy, beauty of, iv, 279, 280. firms, v, 241, 242; best of literainfant composure, vi, 197. ture and, v, 340; materialist and, inferno, iv, 216. v, 377; real or absurd, v, 497; perinfinite, the foam of the, v, 209. sonal, vii, 176; goethe on, vii, infinite being, justify yourself to, 522; shooting stars and, x, 96; iv, 16. abstinence from subject of, x, influence, v, 510; of genius, m, 351. 110; with tracy and cass anec| influences, vii, 137; shed, v, 355. dote, x, 121; and intellect, x, information, neglected, x, 230. 138; viewpoints for, x, 279; and ingratitude, ii, 165. transition, x, 457. inherited bonds, vii, 156. impersonality, elegance of, iv, 54. innocence, v, 309; native, viii, 555. imperturbability, x, 192. insane success, vii, 348. impression personal, iv, 79. insanity, repose, v, 117. 376. 510 index insanities, humoring, vi, 24, 25. internal evidence, 11, 325. insects, vii, 293. interval, intellect puts an, vi, 242. insight, peace of, v, 150; good will intimations of higher riches, v, 76. makes, vi, 224; in finishing a intoxications, v, 413. chapter, x, 48. intuitions, vi, 315. inspiration, ii, 242; x, 46; of nainvention, v, 121; god's gift, vii, ture, 11, 495; fortunate hours, iii, 84. 561; "unconscious,” explained, inventions, 1, 340; x, 359; or moral v, 384, 385; and depths of force, vi, 14, 15. thought, vi, 115; and talent, vii, inventors, boyden, bigelow, viii, 517; two bids to, vii, 542; l. 341. homer and pindar, ix, 80; newinvocation of spirits, i, 23. ness of subject indifferent, ix, inward eye, vi, 489. 207; hotel versus home, x, 43; ionian school of philosophers, the: task or muse, x, 130; electric thales, anaximander, anaxagmachine needed, x, 456. oras, diogenes of apollonia, instinct, trust, iii, 299; retiring, archelaus, ii, 336-39. iii, 369; and zeal, iv, 301; resistiowa, x, 183. less, vii, 99; fate and, viii, 391; i promessi sposi, iii, 122. boy runs to market or wharf, ix, | ireland, alexander, vii, 344. 125. irish mother, the, vi, 239. instincts, trust your, ii, 426; let, irishman, railroad president and, write, viii, 40; guiding war, ix, viii, 460. 363. iron, ii, 148. institutions, clothe themselves, ironclad, ix, 458. iii, 370; illusory, v, 175; divinity irving, viii, 97. behind, vi, 269. isolation, secure through elevation, insularity of man, iv, 238. v, 188; scholar's, viii, 387. insurance, nature's, v, 62. italy, visit to, iii, 62-147; reflecintegrity, iv, 341. tions on, iii, 172; boswellism of intellect, vii, 432; 516, 517; viii, travel, iii, 340; letter to mar102; powers of, iii, 341; charac garet fuller on, vii, 368. ter above, iv, 224; its beauty is iteration, v, 218; principles of, ix, not partisan, observes, dissolves, | 447. reduces, iv, 380-82; love and, v, ivanhoe, opera, iii, 119. 431; conversion of, vi, 492; alone a devil, vi, 497; scepticism of, jackson, abraham, ix, 504. vii, 296; detaches, vii, 325; and jackson, andrew, ii, 408; vi, 351, love, viii, 236; celebration of, | 352. viii, 257; the king, viii, 264; jackson, dr. charles t., x, 6; 119, threads from fact to fact, viii, 120 ; 169; on ordnance and ana504; the sky of, its priest, vn, lyzed sound, vii, 556. 567, 568; dates from itself, ix, jackson, dr. james, vi, 206; vii, 223; flowing, ix, 251 ; no age 267. to, x, 32, 456 ; praise of, x, 107; jackson, lydia. see mrs. lidian a great cosmical, x, 233; chap-| emerson. ter for examples, x, 270. see jacobi, friedrich heinrich, quoted, also beatitude, being, character, viii, 418. coleridge, conscience, heart, jacoby, ix, 503. identities, immortality, interval, james, henry, viii, 109; ix, 278; light, morals, natural science, 190; x, 77; wish of, viii, 280; on obedience, thoreau. thackeray, new york and bosintellectual powers, x, 300. ton, viii, 393-95; on governing, interchange, nature forces, v, 68. ix, 297. index 511 james, king, remark of, vin, ( june blood, vri, 287. 134. juno, the, viii, 6. janus-faced preacher, iv, 462. juries, judge allen on, vi, 433. janus reputations, iii, 553. jussieu, iii, 164. jardin des plantes, visit to: strange justice, i, 188-91; lasts always, ii, sympathies in, "striving to be 251; seeking absolute good, v, man," iii, 161-64. 329. jefferson, thomas, funeral rites of adams and, ii, 113; quoted, ix, kalamazoo, ix, 261-63. 181. kane, dr., quoted, ix, 481. jeffrey, vii, 388. kansas, aid for, ix, 51; relief meetjests, iii, 529. ing, ix, 62. jew, baptism of, in, 88. kant, v, 306; vi, 482. jews, iii, 127 kaufmann, peter, ix, 93. job, book of, 1, 264. keats, v, 346. johnson, dr. samuel, vii, 285; “keeping," ii, 48. life of, and his books, reading, kemble, fanny, mrs. siddons and, iv, 251, 252; never knew nature, _vi, 337. iv, 259; step from, to carlyle, kenilworth, iii, 175. viii, 463; on adam smith, ix, kentuckian, viii, 31. 214; quoted, ix, 231, 232; x, 211, kepler, vi, 143; robust courage, x, 212; m. m. e. and, ix, 234. 204. joinville, quoted, ix, 407. kew gardens, vii, 438, 439. joking, odious, vii, 459. keys, vi, 250. jonson, ben, 1, 24; ii, 234; iii, 217; kindness, elegance of, iii, 311; univ, 78; quoted, i, 125; ix, 202; spoken, iv, 305. his fame, vi, 466. king laurin, iii, 545. jortin, ii, 486. kings, vi, 367. jouffroy, ii, 170; cousin and, iv, | king's chapel, vii, 317. kirkland, dr., and professor journal, e.'s, consideration of, 1, brazer, viii, 350, 351. 31; proposal for a, v, 38; diskitten, the, vi, 245. cussed, vii, 268, 269. knight, the, and the hag, ballad, journal-keeping, e.'s, iii, 527. 1, 123-25. journal-writing versus mathemat. knowledge, keys of, and, progress ics, i, 67. of, ii, 95; all, valuable, ii, 229; journalist, london or new york, stored, iii, 248; each must arx, 33. range his own, iii, 545, 546; projourney abroad, x, 394-99; north gress of, v, 510; in use, vii, 106; ward in italy, iii, 103-06. wisdom and virtue, vii, 114, 115; jove, the, viii, 6. all gives superiority, ix, 224; joy, in thought, 11, 195; deep, in only newest is inspiration, ix, nature, v, 118, 119; not pain, 310; is in the world, ix, 348; great endures, v, 487; or power, vi, 282. unused stock of, x, 70. joys, human, iv, 147; homely, iv, koran, quotations from, x, 135. 405. kossuth, viii, 288; on english and judæa, iv, 361. french soldier, viii, 521. judd, sylvester, viii. 200. kurroglou, vii, 291; the minstreljudgment, doomed ghosts, iv, 98; bandit, vii, 280-82. good, iii, 248. judgment day, vii, 292. labor, vi, 229; virtues of, v, 210, judgment days, iv, 110. 211; calming, v, 218; and letters, judges, few great, viii, 468. v, 517; held in poor repute, vi, july, on the river, vii, 311. 51; writing and, vii, 187. 400. 512 index laborer, manly grace of, vi, 448; | law, the, 11, 400; why reverenced, and idealist, vii, 327. ii, 321; moral, infinite, ii, 417; laborers, seek the, vii, 66. judge each by his, 11, 419; be the lafayette, iii, 158; x, 98; death of, channel of, iii, 555; of mind, iv, iii, 310; mirabeau's letter to, 303; animated, v, 560; and excepviii, 429, 430. tions, vi, 24; working of, vii, 88; laing, vii, 517. confidence in, vii, 101; compenlake michigan, ix, 12. sation of, bad, viii, 242; respect lamarck, monad to man, iv, 116, for, viii, 327; undue reverence for, 117. when immoral, viii, 479, 480; lamartine, vii, 469. physical, moral, ix, 490. see lancaster to manchester, first ex also artist, higher, hospitality, perience on railway, iii, 183, newton. 184. laws, maintenance of, v, 303; adorlandor, v, 23; 202; vi, 32-34; 263; er of the, vii, 542; and will, vii, viii, 526; extracts from, ii, 350; 547. quotation, ii, 422; 519; at his lawyer and abolition, ix, 448. . villa, iii, 115; pictures of, talk | leaders, our great, viii, 216. with him, iii, 117; on argument, lear and hamlet, v, 124-26. iii, 455; wilfulness, iv, 56; perilearning for the people, viii, 330. cles and aspasia of, v, 194; quotleasts, ix, 306; 558; doctrine of, ed, x, 185; quoted on austria, x, vii, 523; vii, 145, 146; 236. 295. le blaie, v, 59. landscape, the riddle of the, v, leclaire the half-breed, viii, 585. 470. lecture, offensive, iii, 395; a new landscape art, v, 33. organ, v, 234; fault of the, viii, lane, charles, and henry g. 167; philadelphia, ix, 163; e.'s, wright, vi, 291; at the conversa-l in virginia, x, 449. tion, vi, 319, 320; description of, lecture topics, v, 17. vi, 411, 412; on costume, diet, lectures, vi, 362; vii, 82; viii, 441; clergy, animals, vi, 451, 452. e.'s, ix, 177, 178; 259; 293; lanfrey, ix, 51; quoted, ix, 53. 321; x, 377, 378; plan of, iv, 118, language, learning a new, iii, 390; 119; themes for, iv, 391; on the of thought, iii, 491; clothes napresent age, disappointment in, ture, iv, 146; only symbols and v, 372–74. suggestions, iv, 266; from spoils lecturing, iv, 189; viii, 205; x, 129; of all action, v, 213; building of, e.'s, v, 287-89; ix, 75; x, 253; viii, 100; anticipating thought, 347. x, 466. lecturing tour, viii, 109. language-making, vii, 142. lee, sarah, her life of cuvier, exlanguage-study, iv, 202. tracts from, ii, 351, 352. languages, charles v quoted, iii, lee, colonel henry, x, 395. 317; as discipline, iii, 300; let, lie leeds, vii, 378. awhile, vi, 204; passions, ix, 563. legal crime, mischief of, viii, 187, lantara, viii, 348. 188. laocoon, the, iv, 318. legaré, vii, 243. la peau d'ane, vi, 273. legislators, character in, vi, 507, laplace, ix, 295. 508. latent heat, ix, 186. leibnitz, vi, 143, latent joy, v, 308. leicester, vii, 360. latin and greek, x, 338. lenox, viii, 392, 393. laughing, v, 98; weeding and, iv, leonardo da vinci, 11, 464; iii, 156. 256. lessing, x, 190; extracts from, ii, lausanne, iii, 150. 351. index 513 lessons for the wise all around, ii, lights, vii, 155. 228. limit, v, 42. les stériles, viii, 178. limitation, v, 12. lethe, vi, 310; and beauty, v, 269. limitations, ii, 426; adamantine, letter around world, iii, 482; value vii, 179. of, ii, 172; ix, 252. limits, iii, 289. liberia, iv, 162. lincoln, president, ix, 345; 499; libertine, a dupe, iv, 212. seen in washington, ix, 375; 387; liberty, ix, 309; as against mediæpolicy of, ix, 457; criticism and val religion, i, 375; history of, praise of, ix, 556,557; memorable viii, 204; at stake, ix, 396; for words of, x, 72; manners of, x, 97. america, x, 231. lincoln bell, iii, 316. libraries, duties of, v, 22. lind, jenny, viii, 129; 247. library, carlyle's, x, 44, value of, x, line, no straight, vi, 350. 263; influence of, x, 421. lines, to ellen tucker, ii, 257; on licoö, song of the tonga islanders, death, 11, 383. 1, 159. links, in chain of facts dropt, v, 63. lie, weakness of a, viii, 194. linnæus, x, 206; and french novliebig to faraday on pure science, els, v, 317., viii, 487. lion, small red, vi, 295. life, value of, ii, 506; spellbound, lions of new york and philadelphia, iii, 239; true, makes every spot a | the, ii, 206. centre, 111, 402; tentative, iv, 201; listening, activity or, vii, 521. of earth and air and mankind, literary discussion, reaction from, iv, 355; thought and, interact-| iv, 457. ing, iv, 440, 441; means and ends literary justice, vi, 292, 293. of, v, 394; and poems, v, 441; | literary meetings, poor, v, 256. talking on. vi. 280: game of. vii, 1 literary warfare, v. 60 49; is in thinking, vii, 319; rich, literary work, unfinished, vi, 98. viii, 155; god communicates, ix, literary world, joy in, vi, 33. 298 ; dignity of hard, ix, 439; | literature, of a country, iii, 555; perception of beauty in, x, 145, science and, the old and new, iv, 146; short limit of human, x, 444. 90-95; on, v, 102; abroad and see also beauty, child, cholera, here, rejection, discontent, slight conduct, conversion, country, reformers, v, 528-30; waiting for death, dictionary, disillusion helpful, viii, 342. ing, emblems, emerson, m. m., liturgy, the english, vii, 257. epochs, experiment, fringes, live magnets, vii, 252. helpers, human, immortal, | live people, viii, 13. miracle, natural, optical osliverpool, in, 185; sailing from, man, persons, poetry, religion, iii, 193, 194; and manchester, romantic, selection, sleep, lectures in, vii, 352-55. symbolism, thoreau, tides, | lives, value of, x, 45. wasted, way, weather. living, think of, ii, 511. life of death, verses, ii, 130-32. | living god, the, vii, 159. light, iii, 413; within, the, ii, 520| living-prayer, verses, ii, 97. 22; always on path, iii, 282; for living times, v, 34. all men, iii, 389; god hides in, livy, vii, 135. iii, 526; and music, iv, 173; a loadstone, vin, 411; divine in man wandering, iv, 248, 249; tragedy | is, vi, 406. of, that does not guide, v, 103; | locke, iii, 501; vin, 492; reed coming, v, 461-64; the, older. quoted on, x, 95. than intellect, vi, 377; icy, vri, locomotive, farmer and, ni, 482; 110; and shade, vii, 263. the, calls, vi, 322. 514 index 522. london, vii, 401;437; x, 413; landluigi monti, mother of, iv, 342. ing in, iii, 171; a magnet, vi, 265; luther, iii, 377; vii, 515; quoted, immeasurable characteristics, iii, 354; praise of, iii, 366; pious vii, 406; and paris, water, vii, | spite of, ui, 558; two styles of, 465; courses of lectures, vii, 474, vi, 405; his cure for morbid con475; topics in, vii, 486. science, vii, 304; his effect on loneliness, viii, 260. . thought, viii, 151. lonely society, v, 457. luxury, 1, 324; vii, 323. long life implied, vi, 524. lyceum, the, iii, 409; opporlong wharf, iv, 377. tunity of, v, 280, 281; slavery longanimity, v, 355. question in, vii, 5, 6. longevity, vii, 217; 266; x, 140. lycian marbles, the, vii, 435. longing for persons, for a teacher, lycurgus, solon and, ii, 283. iii, 100, 101. lyman, theodore, x, 232. looking-glass, vii, 155. lyndhurst, lord, remark of, viii, looking outward, v, 51. looking straight forward, iii, 343. lyons, lord, ix, 379. looking upward or downward, vi, 408, 409. mabinogion, ix, 346. lord's supper, the, v, 160; quesmacaulay, thomas b., vii, 485; tion of, ii, 496–97. viii, 12; 462; story of, vii, 412; loss, gain in, iv, 316; v, 207. strength of, vii, 418; his history lot, our strange, iv, 215. of england, viii, 28-30; critilotus-eaters, v, 212; vi, 43. cized, viii, 59; on bacon, vii, louis philippe, vii, 411. 483, 484. louis xi, ix, 562. machiavelli, vii, 241. louvre, the, vii, 455; leonardo, machinery, vi, 397; vii, 430. iii, 156. mackintosh, sir james, 11, 470; on love, i, 293-95; true and faint, iii, slave-owners, viii, 382. 535; man in, interesting, iv, 331, madrepores, ix, 296. 332; just and measured, iv, 394; magazine, staff for, vii, 38, 39. miracles of, v, 216; a reflection, | magazines, audiences and, vi, 354. v, 359; transcribing, essay on, v, magic, ix, 212 411, 412; picturing of, v, 418; be magnet, 11, 213; viii, 39; ix, 183; thy art, v, 444; makes us chil x, 409; and mirror, vii, 99. dren, v, 451; is of virtue, v, 464; magnetism, vi, 489; vii, 62; in paradox of, vi, 30; the large view sexes, vi, 500. of it, vi, 467; initial and celestial, magnetizers, vii, 91. vii, 65, 66; view of, in youth magnetizing of the spirit, vi, 120. and later, viii, 162; spring, ix, / mahomet, ix, 109; and woman, vi, 178; lover and maiden, x, 131. 353. see also commerce, friends, maias of vishnu, ix, 302. hafiz, intellect, persons, personmaiden, the, v, 374; the magnetic, ality, property, rest, woman. v, 131. lovejoy, elijah, heroic death of, mails, the, 111, 201. iv, 371, 372. maine, visit, x, 392. lovelace, x, 153. majority, viii, 101; 429; dupe and lowell, edward, and charles em victim, viii, 449. erson, vi, 394. majorities, vii, 148; rather uncul. lowell,' francis cabot, ix, 188; tured than wicked, viii, 508. death of, x, 432–35. makebelieve, city of, vii, 195. lowell, james russell, x, 267; the male words, ix, 198. biglow papers, ix, 359. malta, quarantine at, iii, 25-30. ludgate, vii, 437. malthus, yin, 389. index 515 man, position of, 1, 379; is his own ix, 265; vast convenience of, x, star, 11, 250; marriage of spirit 50; simplicity and, x, 64; and and matter, iv, 78; marries all | dress, x, iii, 112; power of sunature, iv, 136; incalculable, v, perior, x, 131, 132. 131;is above measures, v,328; the manners, notes for, viii, 146. wise, portrait of, v, 360, 361; bemanse, at the, iii, 422. fore measure, v. 368: o leopard| mansfield, lord, decisions of, viri, skinned, v, 375; the receiver, to 96; in somersett case, viii, 132; re-create, v, 524; dimensions of, on investment, viii, 226. v, 566; not class, vi, 142; invenmansfield, mount, x, 253--57. tory of, vii, 137, 138; representa| manuscript, a fresh, vi, 393. tive, vii, 139; not men, vii, 165; a | man-woman, vi, 210. new vil 180: fits his place. vill, / many-sided man. a. an essay. ym. 245, 246; all-related, viii, 264;1 148-50. genius, x, 171, 172; is architecmanzoni, vi, 533. tural, . x, 192; insight into an| maple sap, ix, 10. other, x, 304. see also analogist, marble lady, the, iii, 108. battery, beast, body, books, marcus antoninus, viii, 19. bulletin, capital, centre, coal, | mariposa, x, 354. congeries, conscience, construc market, poetry and eloquence tion, counsellor, curb rein, day, brought to, iv, 82. delight, dignity, eating, educa | market-wagon procession, the, iv, tion, english, eternal, freedom, | 203, 204. gifts, god, good, great, grief, marlboro', to, with channing, viu, historians, histories, homer, / 130. identity, inertia, insularity, marlboro' road, the, viii, 122. loadstone, love, milton, nature, marriage, viii, 87; ix, 488; e.'s, 11, natural opportunity, orien| 266; its gradual unfolding, iv, tal, poetry, portrait, poverty, 104. prophet, public, questions, marriage, institution, the, vi,72,73. range, religious, representamars, madame, ii, 168. tive, rich, riches, scott, self, | marsden lead, ix, 5. sermons, shakespeare, shrine, marseillaise, rachel sings, vii, 464. sick, speculative, standard, marshall, john, iii, 445; viii, 584. state, sympathy, teachers, marshfield, viii, 335. temperance, things, thoreau, | marston, his patrician's daughter, torpedo, tree, unmagnetic, vi, 238. vegetation, weeds, wild, will, martial, x, 218; power of, viii, 12; wise, woman, words, wordson portia, viii, 25. worth, world, zodiac. | martineau, preaching of, iii, 187. manchester, vii, 382; liverpool martineau, harriet, miss, iv, 3; and, lectures, in vii, 352-58. vi, 378; x, 228; visit to, ni, 542; manfred and beppo, iv, 251. book of, iv, 267, 268; her deermanhood, rarity of, ix, 150. brook, v, 445; trance of, visit to manilius, an early newton, viii, her, vii, 399; quoted, x, 230. 203. martyr, don't play the, v, 123. mann, horace, v, 250; visit of, iv, martyrdom, i, 136; reserve your, 361, 362. iv, 462. manners, 1, 389-9r; demonological, martyrs, vi, 367; viii, 350; cheap, v, 240; have no hurry, v, 244; iv, 459, 460. power of, yet humanity greater, marx, karl, quoted, viii, 351. v, 378, 379; require time, vii, 17; masked power, the, viii, 240. one must be rich in, viii, 521; mason, jeremiah, on law-school, charles ii, vin, 562; simplicity in, / vili, 275. 516 index mass, in writing, vi, 155; in friend| meeting men, lv, 363. | ship, vi, i56. meetings, reform, iv, 431. mass-meetings, vi, 530. melioration, viii, 86; x, 463; in massachusetts, vii, 23; viii, 30; 1x, fruit, viii, 577, 578. 574; dishonored by carolina, melody, strain of, iii, 274. vii, 13-15; humiliation of, vii, memorial hall, x, 332, 333. 192, 193; poor in literature, viii, | memory, v, 438; viii, 534; power 339; politics of, ix, 146. and peace in, iii, 15; delicious, massachusetts quarterly, vii, 314. iii, 437; books and, iii, 506; enmasses, property and, vi, 100. chantment of, v, 133, 134; fixes master, x, 169; be, 11, 478; adver rank, v, 167; not wit, v, 271; tising for a, v, 406; discipline of, knocking in nail overnight, vri, ix, 304. 528; papyrus of, vri, 553; world masters, viii, 34; glory of, v, 148; | full of, viii, 422; little known on, young poets and the, viii, 207; in ix, 127; by cause and effect, ix, philosophy, x, 455. 171; celestial papyrus, x, 124; mastery, viii, 329. some old aunt, x, 286; thought mastodons of literature, vii, 120. expels, x, 361. materialists, ix, 35. memories of lost friends, iv, 401, mathematics, vii, 513; journal 402. writing versus, 1, 67; compulsory, men, of god, i, 230; gregarious, vi, ii, 535; college, x, 36-39. 250; rare, vii, 50; are lawful, vii, matlock, iii, 174. 78; in nature, viii, 35; fit for the matter, v, 282; vi, 141; and the day, viii, 241; our four good and hereafter, ii, 105; respect, stand strong, viii, 320. for the ideal, iv, 32; impregnated | mencius, vi, 459-61. with thought, x, 348. mendelssohn's phædo, 11, 446. maud, empress, verses on, vii, merchant, iv, 216, 217; vii, 528; 365. viii, 151; compared to negro, vi, maximum and minimum, ix, 115. | 66; and hermit, ix, 18, 19. maxwell, mr., speech of, 111, 359. merchants, nothing new, vi, 279; may, samuel j., iii, 520; and praise of, vi, 339. george thompson, visit of, iii, merck, iv, 205. 546. “mere morality,” iii, 424. maya (illusion), x, 159. merlin, foresight of, vii, 545. may-day, x, 201. mesmerism, vii, 258-60; ix, 61. may-game, lífe a, v, 215. | messina, ride to, kindly companmayhew school committee, i1,. ions, iii, 54-56. 431. metamorphosis, vii, 313; viii, 217; mcclellan, grand style, ix, 435. human, ii, 271; doctrine of, viii, meaning of texts, inner, 11, 508. 557. meanings, new, iv, 337. metaphors, i, 349. meanness and grandeur, ii, 173. metaphysician, a true, ix, 126. means and ends, ii, 322. metaphysics, do not satisfy, i, 379; means, strongest are cheapest, vii, critics, ii, 284; passing into his522. tory, vii, 284; new, wanted, vini, measure, vi, 22; of men, ix, 103. 254; practice needed in, viii, 263; measures, weights and, viii, 555. awaits its author, viii, 507; barmechanics' institutions, vii, 381. ren, ix, 147; objection to, x, 336; mediation, viii, 243. sympathy and piety correct, x, medical sceptics, iv, 334. 455. mediocre books, x, 263. meter, riches a, vi, 82. meditation, sad, ii, 368. method, e.'s, viii, 124. meditations, ii, 493. | methodist preaching, 11, 178. index 517 methodists, the, ii, 284; enthusi| ministry of the day, sages of old, 11, asts, ii, 318. 58-60. metonomy, viii, 296. mino, speaking bird, ix, 219. metres, humming, viii, 444. minor key, x, 115. metric system, i, 327. minorcans, and indians, 11, 163. mexican war, vii, 206; 242. minority, the, vii, 267; viii, 456. mexico, ruins in, v, 523; war with, | minot, george, iv, 203; 471; x, 93. vii, 219; cannon in, ix, 407. minot house, viii, 483. michelet, vii, 464. minute man, x, 443. michigan railroads, ix, 10. minutes, use the, ni, 215. midsummer, vii, 553: , mirabeau, vi, 543; letter of, to lamilan, the cathedral and sights, fayette, viii, 429, 430. good houses, iii, 142-46. miracle, iv, 24; of life, cheering, ii, military band, vi, 211. 273; of the universe, 11, 487; the military experience, ix, 42. daily, iv, 354-56; one, v, 370; military eye, v, 269. poet must work a, vi, 118; and millerite, vi, 388. stupendous fact, x, 198. milnes, richard monckton, vii, miracles, ii, 289; vii, 44; christian 411; and carlyle, vi, 251; stories 11, 325; greater knowledge of naconcerning, vii, 482-86. ture, 11, 414; vulgar view of, iv, milton. john. 1. 71: 11, 236: iii, 414: 1 427-30: always spiritual. v. 236. 449; iv, 400; prose of, i, 297; | miraculous, the, v, 135. mouthpiece of mind of man, ii, mirror, a, the sentence, iv, 180; 328; association with edward magnet and, viii, 99. and charles, iv, -395, 396; and mirrors, vi, 9. young, v, 548; evolution of, miscellanies, harleian, v, 315. vii, 213, 214; on his age, vii, 366; | miserere, the, twice heard, iii, 85, reserve of, viii, 540; a saint, x, 86. 154; and swedenborg, x, 191. misericordia, the, in, 114. mimicry, v, 325. misery, wealth, power and, vii, mind, must have material, ii, 478, 423. 479; the rich and poor, v, 206; the mis-estimates among men, mi, 406. rule of it, ix, 177; laws of, x, 137; misfortunes, e.'s, of 1855, viii, and matter, x, 236; powers of 580. the, x, 453; and nature, cause missionaries, 11, 487. and effect, x, 459. see also asymissionary press, iii, 34. jums, books, individual, indomississippi, the, viii, 585; crossing, lent, law, parallax, plagiarism, x, 223. presence, scott, states, unity, mixtures, nature's, vii, 214. universal, woman-part. mob, boston, ix, 305; organized, x, minds, viviparous and oviparous, 4. viii. 52: of abnormal and oracu| mobs, insignificant, 111, 562. lar cast, x, 454. model person, the, vii, 512. mines of truth, the, verses, ii, 417. models, artists', vi, 83. minister, revolt against being, ii, modern antiques, vi, 400. 448; problems of a, ii, 520; must modern facts, poet and, vi, 251. be simple in manners, decorum molecular interspace, vi, 207. now in demand. prune the sermoment, the, is all, vi, 44; in writmon, writing, much self-reli ing, vi, 94; in history, vii, 288. ance, iii, 548-51; library of moments, v, 489; of our lives, ii, young, iv, 324. iii; letters to edward and ministers, conduct of, self-denial, charles on, ii, 170-172; wise, iii, do not worry about example, ii, 231. 286, 287; concord, v, 45. | monadnoc, inspiration of, vii, 41. 518 index monadnoc camp, x, 149-53. | “more and less,” tragedy of, iv, monarchs and courts, iii, 405. 1.497. money, no-money reform, v, 87; morning, vi, 422; hear what it says, no-money doctrine, v, 235; noviii, 167. • money morality, vi, 62; love of, | mornings, vi, 322. viii, 175; power of, ix, 542, 543. | morris, william, x, 246. money matters, iii, 371. morte d'arthur, x, 276. monochord, ix, 28. mortification (personal), i, 139-42. monotones, iv, 491; v, 99. moses, the, of michel angelo, iii, monroe, president, ii, 395; adams's! 99. eulogy on, ii, 411. most high, go to the, iv, 120. montaigne, ii, 440; v, 419, 420; mother, and child, iv, 134, 135. viii, 97; his rules of rhetoric, iii, mother-wit, viii, 414. 272; praise of, 1, 538; charities, motives, talk with charles on, iv, iv, 406, 407; acquaintance with, 14, 15. vi, 371, 372; his journey to italy, / mott, lucretia, viii, ito. vi, 454; charm of, ix, 357. mount auburn, spring day at, iii, montesquieu, quoted, ix, 499; x,. 270, 271. 315 mount washington, x, 327. montgomery, and worsdworth, mountain, the, verse, x, 286. ii, 235 mountains, vi, 410; afar, vii, 328. montmorenci, hotel, iii, 155. mourning, gradual, vi, 271, 272. montreal, viii, 281-87. moving universe, the, i, 13. moods, and weather, v, 479. muir, john, x, 385. moon, the, iv, 80; and daylight, v, müller, max, x, 417; 420. 8; phases of, and the spirit's, v, multiple lives, our, iii, 511. 488; stars and, v, 559. mundane soul, the, ii, 101. moore, on campbell, ii, 471; his murat, achille, ii, 155; friendship sheridan, iv, 161, 162; memory with, 11, 183, 185; account of, and of, viii, 570; memoirs of, viii, his letter to emerson, ii, 185-91; 573; quoted, ix, 124. visit to, ii, 161; remembrance of, moral, at home in the, vi, 348, 349. wild weather at sea, iii, 213, 214. moral beauty, bancroft, i, 345, muse, the, vii, 173; serene, iv, 481; 346. the city of, v, 323; is feminine, moral harmony, vii, 188, 189. l. vi, 361. moral law, the, 1, 162-64; 186-188. muses, pan and the, viii, 230. moral obligation, i, 250-54. museum, natural history, iii, 118. moral sense, i. 200-11: native, dis-/ museums, mortify, viii, 525. coveries in morals, ii, 137, 138. | music, v, 121; viii, 154; keeping in, moral sentiment, must act, iv, ii, 49; inward, iii, 20; ringing iii; and religion, x, 9; courage to from the past, in, 442; village, affirm, x, 102. see also dandies. iii, 464; nursery, iv, 147; of namorale, foundation of genius, x, ture, iv, 364; masses, v, 189; 331. thoughts during, v, 492; effect of, morals, pervading the universe, 1, vi, 91; hearing, vi, 519; heard but 256-59; discoveries in, ii, 138; once, vii, 66; for sorrow, vii, 265; and intellect, ii, 399; the great at york, vii, 375, 376; prior to harmony, iii, 207-09; leaving, at thought, viii, 123; universal nahome, vi, 10; grim, vi, 480; daily ture of, ix, 359. help of, vii, 250; where from, music-box, of intellect, x, 456. viii, 558; creating new channels musical eyes, v, 138. and forms, ix, 501; sufficiency of, musician, the farmer a, vii, 297. in politics, x, 144. musketaquid, ix, 27. morbidness, iv, 475. musts, x, 472. index 519 mystery of poetry, vii, 296. musical, has no shock, v, 463, mystic, the, vii, 171; in power, vi, 464; message of, derided, yet 354; materialism does not alarm, true, v, 493; continence of, v, viii, 421. 506; song of, ever new, v, 507; mysticism, vii, 20. questions of, vi, 340; puzzles of, mysticisms, vi, 19. vi, 462; no depth but lateral mythology, east indian, 1. 304; | spaces, vi, 490; never draws the vii, 121; history in perspective is, moral. vii, 100; uses all things, vii, 383; serves, viii, 17. vii, 312; oceanic working of, vii, mythologies, thread uniting, mi, 415; sympathy of, vii, 558; 412. against metaphysics, viii, 19; myths, beauty of national, vii, 284. great students of, viii, 51; her dealing with us, viii, 57, 58; nahant, viii, 388; channing on, teaching of, viii, 105; hard to viii, 252. find, viii, 208; fine instruments napier, lord, iv, 318. of, viii, 406; helps us to express names, x, 363; be not overawed by, thought, viii, 536; shows everyiii, 62; exchanging, v, 93; charm thing once in the large, viii, of, vi, 193, 194; valuing, x, 175, 546: and man, ix, 132; yie 176. each only his own, ix, 440; wealth naming, vi, 330. of, x, 65, 66. see also analogies, nantasket, vi, 4. appeal, aristocracy, boy, bullenantasket beach, x, 322–24. tin, channing, w. e., cipher, nantucket shore, people and stoconsolation, country, deist, ries, vi, 270-74. each and all, economy, equalnaples, iii, 62–75. ity, finalities, good cause, innapoleon iii, viii, 155, 347, 559; dulgence, inspiration, insurance, england and, viii, 563. interchange, johnson, joy, lannational will, creating a, viii, 377, guage, man, men, miracles, 378. mixtures, music, physician, nationality, vi, 350; x, 194; war police, pope, a., power, record, giving us, ix, 552. repetitions, repose, resources, nations, differing rank of, 1, 157, screen, sight, significance, stal158; estimating, v, 369; culmi lo, sublime, surprises, temple, nate, viii, 345; of one book, viii, thermometer, thoreau, thought, 575: truth, workshop, worship, “native americans," vii, 115, 116. youth. native force, ix, 128-30. nature, e. likes his new book, iii, natural aristocracy, and spectrum, 196; notes for, iii, 192, 193; x, 187. proof-sheets of, iv, 81, 82; new natural history, study for resource, chapter, v, 420, 421. iii, 297; marry, to life, iii, 326; | nature, addresses and lectures pubsymbolic, vii, 312. lished, vini, 48. natural science, v, 120; x, 348; and naturel of each man, ix, 128; x, intellect, x, 204-206; and hegel's 315. dogma, x, 462 naushon, x, 75; 393, 394. naturalist, a village needs, viii, 131. nearness, the soul's, viu, 22. nature, v, 57; simple steps of, i, nebraska bill, the, viii, 442, 443. 287, 288; a book of, uniting bot. necessity, ii, 165; the beautiful, any, etc., and poetry, iii, 461; vi, 185; farms, vi, 202; explorers projection of god. iv. 76; workand, x, 173. ing in myriad forms, iv, 122; still | nectar, drop of, vi, 381. undescribed, iv, 145; harmonizes, nectarius, viii, 496. iv, 331; teaching of, she is allnegatives, ix, 367. 520 index negro, x, 176; tragedy of the, v, 26, | newton, mass., sunday with mo27; advances, vi, 533; heatheniz-| ther at, iii, 220. ing whites, ix, 421. newton, sir isaac, i, 174, 326; ii, negro soldiers, ix, 484. 288, 326, 464; iv, 116; epitaph of, negroes, enlisting, ix, 483 iv, 152; discoverers of law, viii, neighborhood, a projected, vi, 207; 102; stark thinker, viii, 382; pipgood, viii, 315. pins of, viii, 385; anecdotes of, nemesis, x, 76; levels, viii, 113; apviii, 545; quoted, ix, 499; parpears in slavery question, viii, ticular as universal, x, 205. 201. newton, stewart, sketches of, v, neoplatonists, vi, 376; vii, 93. 162. nest of boxes, ii, 523. new truths, use carefully, iv, 449. new, the old in the, v, 449. new york, viii, 30, 393, 394; the new bedford, preaching at, iii, 258; lions of philadelphia and, 11, 206; mr. arnold on, viii, 276. landing in, iii, 220; lectures and newcastle, eng., vii, 387. acquaintances, vi, 163; lecturing newcastle, duke of, ix, 389. in, vi, 335, 336; site of, x, 200. newcomb, charles k., vi, 162; x, nichol, john pringle, astronomy of, 209; a religious intellect, vi, 213, v, 526; in the observatory, vii, 214; and george bradford, vi, 395. 374; vii, 60, 61; visit of, vii, 321; niebuhr, viii, 524; x, 55; on man on thoreau, vii, 386; a wasted and country, viii, 552; on many light, viii, 60-62; viii, 121; noble books, viii, 553. letters of, viii, 395; his rich mind, niedrig tone, the, iii, 380. ix, 199, 200; quoted, on dante “nigger," vii, 38. and goethe, ix, 328, 329. | night, influences of, rv, 450, 451; new england, factories of, iv, 207, four steps, iv, 468, 469; enchants, d to serve, iv, 298; old iv, 499; pageant of, v, 240; enreligion of, v, 543-45; 547; ideal chantment of, v, 557. ism of, vi, 300; needs a history, nightingale, the, poem, 11, 313. vii, 232, 233; and servant, vii, nine acre corner, walk to, viii, 315. 297, 298. new england morale, viii, 152. | nineteenth century, ii, 71; blessed, new england women at brook ii, 400; events of, viii, 214. farm, vi, 386. nitrous oxide, v, 490. new hampshire, vii, 26; hills and no, say, viii, 261. lakes, poverty, v, 244-47. nobility, ii, 354; social, x, 163. new hampshire boys, viii, 174. noddle's island, ix, 42. new hampshire public men, viii, nomad and pivot, v, 52. 299. nomads, v, 51. new hampshire statesmen, viii, nomenclature in religion, 11, 478. 180, 181. nonconformist, vi, 454. new jerusalem church, ii, 267. non-resistance, ii, 418, 419; v, new lights, ii, 482. 303. “newness, the," viii, 579. nonsense, vii, 260. newness, ix, 207; divine, x, 189, non-voters, vi, 162. normanby, lord, ix, 86, 87. newport, x, 250; 252, 253. norris, john, ideal world, in, 500. new questions, iv, 95; v, 458, 459. | north, the, strength of, ix, 368. newspaper praise, v, 69. northampton, mass., i, 278-80. newspapers, bancroft on, iv, 410. northampton, marquis of, soirée new spirit, inevitableness of, vi, 58. / of, vii, 423. new thought out of ruins of old, vi, north end picturesqueness stirs ιιω. the painter within, v, 538. 20 190. index 521 northman, quatrain, vin, 279. old second church, closing the, vi, north wind, ix, 139. 497, 498. norton, andrews, i, 195; v, 34. old writers, vii, 502. norton, charles eliot, ix, 30; 225; oldest thing, the, vii, 244. x, 229; 395; and carlyle, x, 397; oliphant, quoted, ix, 264. verse to e., x, 418, 419. oliver twisi, v, 261. nose and teeth, v, 310. omens, vini, 339. not, land of, 1, 173. one, glory of the, iv, 250. note-books, ii, 146. one idea, the lie of, iv, 380. nottingham, vii, 358. one mind, iv, 60, 61; the generic nouvelle biographie générale, x, soul, iv, 52, 53. 322. open-mindedness, vii, 80. novalis, iii, 313; extracts from, n, opera, iii, 61; in catania, the, i, 348. 53, 54; prima donna and ballet, novel writing, vi, 226–28. iii, 112, 113; attractions of paris, novelist, task of, vii, 501. iii, 167. novels. i. 116: 11, 372-74; v, 514-opera ivanhoe, iii, 119. 16; vii, 511; disraeli, vi, 526. opinion, hold your own, iii, 124; alnoviciate, v, 275. ways helpful, iv, 394. now, the living, sought in antiopinions, iv, 207. quity, v, 93. | opportunity, v, 534; vii, 100; viii, nowadays, education, i, 343, 344. | 274; man's dignity and, v, 356, nugent, lord, justice of, vi, 192. | 357. numbers do not count, iv, 185, 186. opposition good, v, 351; tonic, viii, nuns taking the veil, iii, 99. 544; value of, x, 43. oppositions in philosophy, viii, 86. oaths, meaning, iii, 560. optical deceptions, iii, 408. obedience, v, 122; conquers, ii, optical life, vi, 158. 393; intellect grows by, vi, 212. optimates, vi, 21; 49. object, the momentary, v, 8. optimism, i, 205, 206. observatory, x, 118. oracles, certain persons utter, ix, observer, candid, the, iii, 484. 210; of a child, x, 444. “occasional poems," iv, 212. orator, v, 21; strength of, viii, 206; o'connell, daniel, vi, 449; and the and conservative assembly, ix, slaveholder, v, 107; on disraeli, 275-78.. vii, 172. oratory, of barnwell and upham, october, ix, 452. 1, 68. odium, signs of, v, 30. order, aristocratic, x, 216, 217. egger, his true messiah, ii, 505; organic remains, modern study of, quotations from, iii, 512-15. iv, 129-31. cillade, the, 111, 436; iv, 280. organization, v, 276; inward and ogden, w. b., ix, 77-79. outward, ix, 21. old age, v, 405; x, 47; 382; and oriental, and occidental, ix, 116. grief wrong, v, 550; graceful, oriental cure, the, viii, 37. viii, 56, 57; advantages of, ix, oriental man, iii, 566. 273; insignificance of, a success, oriental scriptures, vii, 241. ix, 322; and stone chapel, ix, oriental superlative, vii, 280; viii, 347; death of friends, ix, 360; au | 129. tumnal haze, ix, 560; its consola-oriental type of thought, vi, 494. tion, x, 51. orientation, iii, 476. old and new, stamp of the, iv, 190. originalities, vii, 317. old english writers, the, 11, 402. originality, v, 416; 419; vi, 124; old religion of new england, v, difficult, v, 56; and quoting, ix, 543-45; 547 | *344; new crater, ix, 555; predic522 index tions, x, 211; of good writer, x, paper money, ix, 138. 382. parable, the urn and the fountain, orpheus, the right, viii, 353. iv, 58, 59; jock and dick, vi, 360. orphic words, iv, 154. | parables, force of, iii, 510. osman, vi, 137; vii, 203; 260; his | paracelsus, vi, 293. endowment and fortune, v, 431paradise lost, iv, 216. 33; and the fine folk, v, 481; parallax, different states of mind, and schill, simple life, v, 563, ii, 486. 564; and success, vi, 20; goes ss. vi. 20goes parallelism, vii, 103. a-berrying, vi, 48; autobiographparis, x, 93, 413, 414; entrance to, ical, vi, 49, 50. ii, 155; news from, vii, 408; ossian, viii, 361. seems theatrical, vii, 463; lonossoli. see margaret fuller. don and, water, vii, 465; life otherism, iv, 155; v, 44. cheap in, vii, 467; merits and atothers, ourselves in, ii, 324; en tractions of, vii, 470-73; and dorsement of, vi, 477. london to travelers, vii, 486; others, vision of, hope in, vii, 184. renan on, x, 47. otis, harrison gray, in faneuil hali, paris lodgings, shops, vii, 450, 451. i, 142; and judge spencer, ii, 238; | parker, theodore, e. and his conon women, viii, 36. gregation, ix, 233; death of, ix, out-of-door thoughts, viii, 532. 270. outgrowing, vi, 221. parkman, dr. francis, vii, 233, overseers of harvard, x, 245. parliament house, vii, 407. ovid, v, 452; quoted to tiberius, parmenides, ii, 343, 344. ix, 556. parnassus, x, 437; your, iv, 52. owen, george l., 410. parochial memoranda, ii, 437; duowen, robert, lecture of, vii, 133-1_ties, iv, 455. 35. parrot, the, ix, 218, 219. owen, richard, lectures of, vii, 420, parties, political, 111, 292, 421; with, to hunterian museum parties, evening, v, 23. and turner's studio, vii, 480-82. | party, drunk with, v, 235; reveals oxford, vii, 423; x, 417; grace at, public men, vi, 466; imbecility of vii, 493. good, viii, 212; democratic, ix, 84, 85; in and out of power, x, pace, ix, 183. 243. padua, iii, 129. party lies, iv, 188. pagan, poets are, vii, 123. party politics, viii, 265. pain, house of, its benefit, 11, 180. | party tactics, thoughtless votes, painters, house, iv, 59. iii, 350, 351. painters, the old, viii, 20; 466. pascal, i, 338; x, 29. pairs, ix, 272. passengers, iii, 11; nautical glory palermo, e. sails to, sights there, iii, of, iii, 8. 56-60. passion, viii, 536. paley, i, 174. passions, ix, 563. palfrey, dr., baptizing, v, 55. past, the, v, 302; becoming beautipalm sunday, rome, iii, 81. ful, iii, 563; lives, iv, 324, 325; palmer, edward, v, 233; vi, 180, leave, iv, 484, 485; ever new, vi, 181; no-money reform, his prac-1 505. tice, another view, quoting texts, pastorate, resignation of, n, 510; v, 86-89. 1 resignation of, accepted, ii, 525. palmerstons, the, vii, 485. pathetic, the, v, 165. panic, the, ix, 138, 139. patience of thoreau, ix, 154. pantheism, v, 552; viii, 329; ix, 45, patmore, coventry, visit to, with 46; and atheism, ii, 178. tennyson, vii, 444, 445. index 523 patriotism, ii, 174; anaxagoras, ' vii, 334; commands, viii, 107; is ii, 321; is it a duty? iii, 543; the interest of universe, ix, 190, 191. large, vii, 326; from war, x, 79. perspective, v1,361; in writing, viii, paul, st., extracts from, ii, 348. 35. paule de viguier, iv, 206; viii, 93. persuasion, iii, 557. pauperizing, vii, 184. pertinence, ii, 305. payne, j. t., ix, 355. pestalozzi, 11, 475; on effect of surpeabody, miss, letter to, on sweden roundings, ii, 416; method of, iv, borg, iii, 530–32.. 335. peace, x, 216; strength of, iv, 297; petrarch, house and tomb of, iii, lecture on, iv, 409, 410; end of 129. civil war, x, 93, 94; after civil | phaedo, vii, 102. war, x, 116. phædrus, vii, 545. peace manifesto, the, v, 91. phantom men, vii, 336. pear tree, vii, 300; 308; viii, i1;31; pherecydes, vii, 28. signal of the, viii, 23, 24. phi beta kappa, 11, 404; cold hurpearls, casting, vi, 352. rabs, vi, 230; sumner at, vii, 228. pedantry, vi, 42; viii, 323. phi beta kappa day, v, 3o. peel, sir robert, vii, 403; viii, 323, phi beta kappa oration, the, in de340. mand, iv, 341. peeping, v, 176. phi beta kappa poem, the, iii, 333. peevishness, iv, 241. phidias, v, 308. penetration, vii, 13. philadelphia, and new york, the penn, william, 11, 418. lions of, 11, 200; lecturing in, vi, people, poet should trust the, iv, l. 335, 336.. 199, 200; language of the, vii, philanthropies, respect the, v, 196. philanthropy and depravity, x, 5. pepys, viii, 496. philisterei, iv, 81. perceivers, v, 18. phillips, jonathan, on behavior, perceptions, varied, x, 146. iv, 224; visit of, iv, 236. percival, viii, 535. phillips, stephen, vii, 97. pericles and aspasia, v, 447; vi, 69. phillips, wendell, vii, 5; ix, 232; perkins, jacob, meeting with, iii, 305; fact-basis for eloquence, vi, 184; on locomotives and steam 542, 543; garrison and, viri, 433, ships, iii, 191. 434; ix, 455; and popular assempermanence is nobility of men, vi, bly, ix, 250; cassius m. clay and, 98. ix, 267, 268; tyranny of talent in, perpetual flux, ix, 220. x, iii. persecution, silken, v, 42. philosophers, the early, ii, 386; perseverance, ii, 274; temperan visit of the, iv, 278, 279; the old, 11, 319, 320. iv, 472, 473; half-sighted, vi, 361. persian scriptures, 11, 473. philosophic imagination, buckperson, god not a, iv, 185. minster, i, 323. persons, talk of, iv, 53-55; or philosophy, ix, 520; true, ii, 450; thoughts, iv, 424; not things, v, the first, iii, 235-39; three deii; are the age, vi, 19; accept not, grees, viii, 37; new, x, 321. vi, 160; and property, love can | photometers, men are, v, 188. reconcile, vi, 311; in our life, vi, phrases, poetical, 1,7; cant, vi, 525. 407-408; a luxury and conven| phrenology, iv, 297, 298. ience, vii, 65, 66. physical science, strong fancy, iii, personal, ignore the, v, 36. 538. personal influence, viii, 262. | physician, ix, 263; nature teaches, personality, vii, 150; ix, 191; too 11, 473; divine, viii, 408. little for god, iv, 404; love gives, | physicians, v, 85. 561. 524 index physiologie du goût, ix, 97. 1 iv, 141, 284-86; elixir of greece physiology of taste, x, 31, 32. and rome, ix, 273; quoted, x, picture, pocm or, v, 305 319, 320, 322; 339, 340; moral pictures, iii, 93, 94; v, 199, 232;! sentiment of, x, 331. judging, iv, 465, 466; seeing, v, plymouth, iii, 445; v, 161; ocean, 14-16; how to see, v, 410. people, flowers, iii, 264, 265; visit piety, fragrant, iv, 31; surprise at, to, iv, 255; vi, 426–29. iv, 432; sins of, v, 569. plymouth beach and boats, viii, pigeon cove, ix, 54. 331. pilgrims, x, 340, 341. plymouth rock, iii, 255. pilot, god the, ii, 241. plymouth usage, vii, 543. pillsbury, parker, quality of, vii, po, valley of the, ni, 128. 201-03; tactics of, vii, 243. poem, marathon, i, 143; the river, pindar, splendid sentences of, iv, i, 165; riches (the caterpillar), 267; robust courage, x, 203, 204. 11, 62; the nightingale, 11, 313; pines, by house, vi, 396; planting, circles, vii, 212, 213; days, vei, ix, 96, 97. 277; freedom, viii, 407. pitt, william, i, 317-20; viii, 340. poem, the effective, vii, 114; of pivot, nomad and, v, 52. hafiz, vii, 277, 278; takes care of places and days, ii, 219. itself, viii, 176. plagiarism due to common mind, poem-making, v, 287. iv, 131. poems, original, ii, 293. plague and fear, vi, 349. poet, needs material form, ii, 106; plain dealing, vi, ii. must teach citizen, v, 425; cannot plantain, the, vi, 229. spare grief or pain, v, 450; who plants, future men, vi, 251. gives wisdom and faith, v, 483; plato, iii, 528; vi, 456; vii, 28; let and poem, the sincere dissemter to, 1, 380-88; splendid sen bler, v, 520-22; method adding tences of, iv, 267; politician of, reflection to reflection, vi, 47, 48; v, 369; terrible dialectic of, the incorrigible, vi, 243; meals of, vi, republic, his commentators, vii, 320; blessed lot of, vi, 413; a 54-56; and his interpreters, vii, gambler, vi, 467; duty of the, and 94-96; a poet, vii, 119; his title his measure, vii, 216; thought of, to fame, viii, 43, 44; power of, practical, viii, 429; goes straight viii, 54; and his followers, viii, forward to say thought, ix, 312; 474; critic of, ix, 119; votaries of, and religion, ix, 546;'and pleiades, ix, 187. x, 140. see also cæsar, forest, platonist region, the, vi, 200. heroes, herrick, humility, modplay, vi, 229. ern, people, plato, politics, preplaythings, new, v, 383. sence, reflective, savant, shelley, pledges, di, 267; choice not, iii, thoreau, tone, wind, wine. 385; avoided, v, 252, 253. poetaster, vii, 183. pleiad, lost, ix, 222. poet-crop, the, vii, 53. pliny, quoted, ix, 323. poet-paradox, the, viii, 209. plotinus, if, 323; 377; v, 510; viii, poetry, of, 1, 10 105; notes on: criti310; 451, 452; on god, ii, 357; on cism of wordsworth, shakart, iv, 218-21; quoted, iv, 306; | speare, ben jonson, montgomix, 283; on light, vi, 476; on the ery and wordsworth, ii, 232-36; dance of the universe, viii, 518. precedes prose, iii, 492; wise, iii, plus man, the, viii, 141. 544; true ethical, iv, 425; makes plutarch, iii, 567; vii, 92; story its pertinence, v, 343; crude, v, from, 11,281; design for a modern, 417; finest rhymes and cadences ii, 503, 504; his apothegms, iii, yet unfound, vi, 75, 76; miracle 544; his morals, passages from, of, transit of vast to the particuindex 525 w lar, vi, 124; all life has, vi, 446; | pope, the, blesses the palms, iii, aids of, vii, 64; is truth, it creates, 81. viii, 321; seeks resemblance, populace, 1, 134. viii, 493; which no man wrote, population, vii, 514; of naples, ix, 37; word dragging, ix, 214; worthless, iii, 67; conditional, vi, power of thought, ix, 460; dif183. ference in, x, 275; experimental populations versus locke and newand real, x, 301; "the newton, ii, 308. ness," x, 360; in newspapers and porosity, vii, 10. private circles, x, 367, 368; porphyry, viii, 451. magnitude of its suggestion, x, portableness, vi, 24. •386; secret of never explained, x, porto rico, ii, 477. 435. see also beauty, child, portrait, a man, ii, 6, 7; the, of criticism, english, facts, french, man, iii, 361. mystery, practical, prose, sense, position, iv, 89; and will, in, 257. strength, tone, wild. | positive, great poets use the, iv, poets, strong old, iii, 532; summons 324; and superlative, viii, 520. to, v, 112; guardians of admirapositive degree, x, 167. tion, v, 140; message of, vi, 190; 1 possessions, selfish, ii, 407. tennyson, burns, browning, posterity and ultimate tribunal, bailey, vi, 286-88; and stars, vi, viii, 94. 53; old and new, vii, 163, 164; postponing, iii, 276. needed, vii, 165; brave, viii, 87; potato, v, 208. of the middle classes, viii, 294; potatoes, v, 86. pretended, ix, 17; single speech, x, potomac water, x, 297. 147, 148; some unsightly, x, 369. poverty, ii, 412; vii, 19; and riches, poikilus, professor, ix, 54. ii, 463; blessed, ii, 480; the wise point of view, ii, 399. man's ornament, iv, 244, 245; poisons, ii, 121. honorable, iv, 350; intelligible, polarity, iv, 209; x, 139, 140; amer vi, 338. ican, vi, 346. poverty's praise, ix, 199. poles, political, vi, 390; of philosopower, the real, napoleon, cromphy, vii, 118. well, andrew jackson. 11. 407. police, nature's, vii, 256. 408; dangerous, ii, 450; iii, 360; political economy, sure taxes, iv, nature's lesson of, iv, 67; unripe, 107, 108; and morality, ix, 13; v, 265; exhilarates, v, 417; destimulus from, ix, 340. grees of, vii, 12; and acting realpolitical parties, slight differences, ity, vii, 81; and probity, vii, 430; viii, 333. private, ix, 191; notes on, ix, 489. politicians, tricky, viii, 230. see also art, child, christ, depolitics, v, 77-79; recoils in, iii, tachment, heaven, joy, man359; measures and popular opin ners, martial, masked, memory, ion, v, 330, 331; impure, vii, 253; } misery, money, mystic, party, poet and, vii, 513; our, like eu smallness, waste, wealth. ropean, viii, 277; privileged powers, forms versus, x, 109. thieves in, ix, 121, 122; english practical poetry, ii, 47. and american, ix, 157; ours petty, practical men yet sleep, iii, 237. ix, 364; american, x, 144. practical and poetical, vii, 85. poltroonery, vii, 64. practicalness, ix, 23, 24. pond, be not a, vii, 48. praise, i, 338-40; v, 193; a bad poore, major ben. perley, ix, 551. omen, v, 320. pope, alexander, viii, 98; couplet prating, vi, 299. of, 11, 527; never knew nature, iv, prayer, ii, 270; ignorance of influ259. ence, i, 79; discussion of, 1, 213526 index 16; public, 11, 92-94; letter to primitive poems, charm of, vi, 441. m. m. e., ii, 175; relation to primogeniture, vii, 420. god, ii, 294; entrance into god's princes, education for, v, 71. mind, ii, 431, 432. principle, ii, 145; male and female, prayers, god makes us answer our, iv, 248. 11, 393; particular, iv, 478, 479. principles, hidden in base politics, preach and practice, ii, 437. | iii, 465; open eyes, iii, 517; we preacher, let give from own store, are porous to, iv, 271; keep to, ii, 214; opportunity of, iii, 475; iv, 308. must be universal, iii, 564, 565; | prison, visit to the, ii, 229. secure his acre and independence, prisoners, returned, ix, 433. x, 171. private door, god's, iii, 557. preachers, the coming, iii, 331; private energy best, vi, 198. young, vi, 266; the truckling, private theatres, our, vii, 74. viii, 189; to-day, x, 213. privileged thieves in politics, ix, preaching, vi, 363; and practice, 121, 122. ii, 227, 228; topics in, ii, 294; at problem, the, v, 30; of three bodies, waltham, hearers of, iv, 115; iv, 22. down, iv, 143; from memory, iv, problems, universal, viii, 63. 300; and study sickly, home the proclus, vi, 157; vii, 7, 262, 516; cure, iv, 423; worthless, iv, 457; viii, 92; magnificent suggestion, foolish, iv, 480, 481; v, 172. vi, 159; intellect communicable, preachings, emerson's, on the way vi, 199; strong-winged, vi, 205; home, ii, 207. read for opinion, vi, 376; interprecedent, ix, 151. prets the oracle on socrates, viii, prefaces, iv, 486; x, 217. 468. preliminaries, spare, iii, 368. profanation, iv, 5. prescott william h., ix, 195. profession, choice of, i, 377. presence of mind, poet's power, v, | professions, the new, viii, 574. 86. profile, the, v, 246. present, the, ii, 485; vii, 323; past, progress, modern, ii, 67; human, future, v, 197; knowledge of, v, ii, 272; only in individuals, iv, 304. 85; in individuals, not in race, present age, the, v, 353; defense of, iv, 158; of species, iv, 306; the 1, 374; peculiarities of, ii, 164; mercury of, v, 509. characterized by gentleman and prometheus, iii, 435; v, 437, 438. christian, v, 549. prompter, the, vi, 17. presentiments, great discoveries property, owning, position and are, viii, 127, 128. will, ii, 256, 257; a test, iv, 299; press, the boastful, iv, 458. talk on, v, 128; question of, v, preston, vii, 300; ix, 159. 459; unimportant, vi, 50; quesprice, on morals, 1, 78. tion love only can solve, vi, 128; pride, forlorn, affectation, iv, 222, the web of, vi, 404:. 223; dishonest, iv, 268, 269; of prophecy, i, 129-31; ideals are, vii, saint, iv, 278; and vanity, vi, 35. 362. prophet, practical man and, v, 430; priest, st. augustine's, ii, 169; careless of fulfilment, ix, 409. must be human, ii, 366. proportion, iv, 335, 336; v, 356; priestcraft, 1, 331-37. culture teaches, the methods, iv, priests, seeking, vii, 419. 368–70. prima philosophie, viii, 533. propriety, v, 198. primal powers, great, ix, 332. prose, poetry and, ix, 561. primary men, secondary men and, | prosperity, and arms, ii, 40; of famix, 184, 185. ily, 11, 259; and slavery, ix, 453. index 527 protectors, our disguised, ii, 315. question, facing the, iii, 295. protest, attitude of, ix, 482. questioner, and answers, vii, 125. protesters, the band of, v, 259, 260. questionings, good seen everyproteus, iii, 344. where, 11, 9-13. proverbs, v, 35; 55; ix, 536, 537. questions, vii, 102; unanswered, providence, i, 112-15; ii, 26; 288; ii, 467; each man's, iv, 19. visits of, viii, 249. quetelet statistics, viii, 478. providences, iv, 199; petty, ii, 291. queteletism, viii, 505. provocation of thought, vi, 138. queue, soldier's, iv, 291. prudence, vin, 208; reign of, v, 314. quiddle, 11, 114. pseudo sciences mask truth, vi, quietude, ii, 212. 245. quincy, josiah, vii, 168. pseudo-spiritualism, ix, 502. quincy, josiah, jr., ix, 103, 104. puberty, iii, 376. quotation, iii, 503; x, 156; helps public concern, or private, ii, 527. conviction, ii, 466; coming first, public man, the born, vi, 32. vi, 199; dangers of, viii, 415; public opinion, 11, 229. adds value, viii, 490; rightly public schools, vii, 362. used, viii, 527, 528; difference in publishing, the good of, 111, 492; be rendering, x, 218, 220. slow in, v, 402. quotations, ii, 439, 440; poetical, pückler-muskau, iv, 362; on eng ii, 57; from egger, iii, 512-15. lish dandy, iv, 9. quoting, nothing new, 11, 466. pulpit eloquence, i, 14, 15. punch, x, 69. rabelais, vi, 278, 279; 281. purist voter, the, viii, 280. raby castle, vii, 387. puritan movement, the, 1, 306-08. race, genius, of x, 42. puritans, the, melioration, 1, 351races, v, 59. 53; rear-guard of the, vi, 52. rachel, vii, 119; sings marseillaise, purity necessary for judgment, ni, vii, 464; person and action of, 504. vii, 468, 469. pursuits, ix, 155. radiation, viii, 525; of manners, pusey, dr. e. b., x, 349. viii, 585. push, perpetual, viii, 248. radicals, tracts of english, vi, 221, pym, iv, 320. 222. pythagoras, 11,340, 341; iamblichus railing, v, 4. on, v, 522; incarnation, viii, 239, railroad, v, 380; vii, 297; 504; new, 240; just fame of, viii, 474. vi, 336; westerners wanting, x, pythologian society, records of 184. the, 1, 33-51. railroad rates and stock, ix, 12. railroads, vin, 4; x, 173; prophecy quaker, iii, 426. for, vi, 450. quaker conversation, iii, 229. railway, first experience on, lanquaker meetings, iii, 265. caster to manchester, ill, 183, quakers, ix, 15; enthusiasts, n, 184; visit to new, mr. perkins on 318; in france, x, 156. locomotives and steamships, iii, qualities, vi, 408. 191. quality and amount, viii, 126, 127. railway pictures, vi, 339. quarrels, vi, 25. railway ride, m, 305. quarterly journal, a, vii, 263, 264. railway stocks, ix, 122. quatrain, "nature in leasts,” yili, rainy-day treats, iii, 536. 327; "samuel hoar," viii, 330. raleigh, sir walter, vi, 433; quotquebec, vini, 281. ed, ix, 397 quentin durward, v, 514 ramble, evening, florence, ini, 109. quest, hold to your, v, 533, 534. randolph, john, ix, 66. 528 index 458 randolph, philip, x, 319, 320; x, recipes to occupy time, i, 72. 349; and e.'s anti-slavery work, recluse, the, vi, 500. viii, 531. reconstruction, ix, 463-65. range, man's, viii, 409. record, reading nature's, iv, 130. rantoul, viii, 113. rectitude, viii, 14; fate and, viii, raphael, v, 265, 308, 314; angels 88. of, sibyls, v, 15, 16; four sibyls reed, sampson, book of, ii, 116; of, v, 340; originality of, vii, 523; his growih of the mind, 11, 124; michel angelo and, viii, 63; and thomas worcester, talk with, quoted, ix, 205; universal, x, 49. ii, 455; talk with, on swedenrarey, ix, 149; 318. borg, vi, 219. rawdon, vii, 382. reed, dr., of bridgewater, ix, 366. raw material for poems and lec reference, weak, vi, 373. tures, vii, 215. reflection, an age of, iv, 110. ion, x, 77; assailant and dereflections, ii, 144; from senior to fence, x, 123. school teacher, mortification, i, readiness, vi, 425. 137-42; e.'s, on closing school, it, reading, ii, 251; iii, 519; letter to 36-38; entering divinity school, elizabeth tucker advising, ii, ii, 55; bowing to necessity, ii, task, iv, 132; gives 115; religion, not of tradition, vocabulary for ideas, iv, 256; but of soul, iii, 159, 160. good, v, 248; pertinent, vii, 257; reflective poet, the, iv, 18. right, vii, 319; lost passages, x, reform, license of, v, 40; dreaded, 204; seems guided, x, 422. v, 109; perspective of, v, 212; reading man, a, vi, 206. source of, v, 236; lack of zeal for, readings, at chickering hall, x, v, 252; looks not back, v, 406; 282-85; in boston, x, 378, 379; | value of, appears late, vi, 272; e.'s last, x, 475. standing committee on, vi, 368; real, the seeming, ideal truth, ini, and actual world, vi, 503; insight, 349. in, vii, 57; true, vii, 148; sacred, realism, viii. 18. vii, 158; masks reform, vii, 205. realists, kant and blacksmith, reform discussion, x, 216. viii, 210. reform ideas, v, 405. realities, which are? viii, 240. | reformer, path of, iv, 349; the reality, iv, 459; vii, 270; viii, 272; brave, or penitent, vi, 28; the in writing, viii, 446; rules desrude, and boston, vi, 134. tiny, ix, 199. reformers, v, 403; slight, v, 529; reason, and scripture, 1, 167-69; alcott's english, vi, 294. and science in religion, i, 324reforming age, v, 215. 27; in religion, ii, 85, 222; trust, reforms, teach, v, 234; enlisting in, ii, 409; is the divine essence, iii, v, 293-97; abortive, vi, 405, 400; 235; guidance of, 111, 389; perfect, crude writing, vi, 475. iii, 394; illumination, ii, 456; refuge, cities of, vii, 82. hours of, immortal, iii, 500; eye regiment, massachusetts fifth, ix, of, iron lids of, iii, 539; hours of, 324; massachusetts eighth, ix, few, iv, 90; makes art and archi325. tecture, iv, 102, 103; above un| rejection, vii, 287. derstanding, v, 310, 311; is prerelation, vii, 154. sence not gift of god, ix, 14. see religion, its history, i, 98-104; also architecture, greatness, each must have his own, ii, 77; heaven, high, science, under office of, action and contemplastanding. tion, action is not all, god the rebellion of 1820, 1, 7-9. pilot, ii, 239-41; sublimed, ii, rebels, ix, 574. 289; must not fear science, 11, 362; index 529 narrow, iii, 199; pasteboard, resources, x, 59; use god's riches, mi, 331; must come through the ii, 518; knowledge of nature, heart, iv, 30, 31; changes, iv, 95ix, 417; of inspiration, x, 244. 98; starving, iv, 420; numerical, respect, for men, iii, 221; for v. 117: low, v, 180-82: now looks friends, v, 416. to life, v, 227-29; cry for, v, 380; rest and love, v, 301. flowing, v, 551; gives refinement, restaurant, vii, 470. vi, 328; catholic and protestant, result, not artist, counts, viii, 570. vii, 341, 342; and tyranny, ix, resurrection, belief in the, 11, 126. 203; varnhagen quoted, ix, 495; | retzsch, iv, 204. universality in, x, 234; notes on, revelations, true, v, 353. x, 379, 380; centuries and hours, review of closing journey, thankx, 469. see also astronomy, ! ful, ii, 185. english, moral sentiment, noreviews, hostile, v, 75. menclature, poet, reason, reflecrevival, coming, iv, 15. tions, science, shakers, spir | revolution, viri, 37; documents of, itual. iii, 320; french, iii, 448; vii, 403; religions, changing yet save, vi, sign of, vii, 454; old and new, vii, 306. 464; and anti-revolution, ix, 553; religious enthusiasts, iii, 432. a volcano, ix, 573. religious feeling keeps alive, ii, revolutions, vii, 429, 430; x, 237; 221. in england, silent, ili, 494. religious forms, outgrown, x, 213. revolutionary clubs, vii, 454, 455. religious man, who is? 11, 303. revue des deux mondes, x, 265. repan, ernest, ix, 451; quoted, ix, rewards, v, 527. 446; his vie de jésus, ix, 579; x, reynolds, governor, viii, 522. 18; on paris, x, 47. rhetoric, elevated writing, ii, 415; renunciation, first thoughts from fact or name, iv, 169; charm of, god, iii, 323. v, 465; takes space, v, 482; culrepairs, bodily and spiritual, ii, ture's, viii, 449; omit negative 502. propositions, ix, 85; plutarch repetitions of history, v, 219; in and montaigne for, x, 320. nature, x, 219, 220. rhyme, its privilege of truth, pinrepose, nature invites to, v, 439. i daric, warlike daring, v, 225representative at congress, fright 27; and rhetoric, viii, 527. en your, viii, 392. rhymes, viii, 46. representative man, viii. 50. rich and poor, v, 71; vii, 302; 358; representative men sent to friends, viii, 73. viii, 70. rich man, iv, 408; wise man canrepresentatives in congress, timid, not be, iv, 448; to help, vi, 15. viii, 101. rich mind, vii, 457. republic of letters, ix, 527. riches, viii, 25; spiritual, m, 410; republican party, x, 62. of man's nature, iii, 438; freedom republicans, weak, ix, 403. through, iv, 409; accident of, v, repulsions, iv, 239. 257; acquired or inherited, v, reputation, i1, 411; in universe, vi, 478; knowing how to use, vi, 67; 139. greatness not leaning on, vi, 469; resemblance, x, 113. the undoing of, viii, 276, 277. reserves, vii, 427; x, 49. riches (the caterpillar), poem, ii, resignation, not easy, 11, 180; of 62. pastorate, ii, 510; accepted, ii, richter, iii, 473; vi, 283; 1x, 496, 525. | 497; on women, vi, 253. resolves, 11, 309; iii, 422; new, in, riding school, ix, 229. 361. | right, determination of, ii, 1541 . 530 index 42. struggle for, viii, 516; perception, rotch, mary, vi, 280; religion of, of, x, 166. her experience, iii, 258-60. rig veda sanhita, viii, 547–49. rothschilds, the, vii, 424. ripley, dr. ezra, v, 20; 143; iii, rousseau, his confessions, vii, 318. 364, 365; utterances of, iii, 391, roussel, on women, viii, 401. 392; solid facts of, iv, 234; prayer | rowse, samuel, ix, 154. of, v, 18; death of, vi, 52-55. roxbury, i, 232; and cambridge, ripley, george, vi, 392, 393. teaching in, ii, 70. ripley, mrs. george, vi, 392, 393; ruggles, in debate, vii, 203. vi, 386. rulers, the real, 11, 81. ripley, samuel, v, 270; real preach-rules of the gods, vii, 496, 497; esing of, iv, 379; and southern coxtablished, and sentiment, x, 190. comb, vi, 239. rural proverbs, vi, 202. ripley, mrs. sarah alden, iv, 433; ruskin, vii, 367; x, 363, 417. v, 103; ix, 426; miss emerson's russell, john l., walk with, v, 61; letter to, ii, 191-94; eager scholsaadi, vi, 537; viii, 310; ix, 564; arship of, vi, 72; account of, vi, quotations from, vi, 463-65: ix. 545-50; on holidays, vii, 47; 544, 545; classes of, vii, 245; death of, x, 207-09. cheerfulness of, ix, 561. ripple pond, ix, 179. ritson, verses from, viii, 542. sabbath, 11, 80; ii, 317; v, 172; & rivalry, v, 8. new, iii, 263; consecrated berivarol, on mirabeau, viii, 347. cause other days are not, v, 214; river, the, poem, i, 165. a day outweighs a, vi, 216. river, v, 423; immersed in a spiritsaccharine principle, v, 465; 481. ual, v, 427, 428. sacred persons, the, vii, 84. river, the concord, v, 558; blessed, | sacrifice, vii, 121; making none, vi, 401. iii, 453. rivers, the two, ix, 27. safeguards, iii, 63; vi, 277. robin hood, vi, 131. safford, henry truman, boy matbrobbins, chandler, vi, 455. ematician, vii, 274-76. roederer, on napoleon, his sayings, sages, of old, 11, 58. viii, 462, 463. said. see saadi. rogers, samuel, breakfast with, sailors, iii, 12. his house and his anecdotes, vii, saint, x, 233; and scholar, viii, 92. 348-51; and aristocracy, viii, st. augustine, florida, visit to, 11, 149-82. roman catholic convert, vi, 217. st. augustine (florida), verses, 11, romance, 1, 302-04; a venture in, 149-51. i, 108-10; waning, i, 119; e.'s, sainte-beuve, quoted, ix, 525; 530; viii, 124; imaginative book, ix, 544; 556; 575; 578. 422. st. george's society, speech to, romance, a, verses, i, 117. viii, 283-86. romance writers, ix, 420. saint grail, tennyson's, x, 240. romans still masters, v, 382. saint-hilaire, geoffroy, x, 366, 367. romantic dreams, 1, 19. st. paul's, vii, 434.. romantic power of life, v, 468–70. | st. peter's, moonlight walk with romany girl, the, viii, 518. cranch and alexander, iii, 87; rome, iii, 75-103; by stage to, iii, easter mass in, in, 88. 74; the gift of, iii, 102. saint-simon, mémoires of, v, 526. romeo, story of, vi, 320, 321. saint-skeptics, vii, 136. room-mate in hotel, iii, 463. saints, poets and, vii, 229. rosebugs, vi, 225. sákoontala, ix, 105. rotation, viii, 165. | salesman, vii, 526. 278. index 531 saliency, vii, 317. scholar class, the, viii, 471-73. salisbury, visit to, vii, 490. scholars, should be happy and salt fish, sign, v, 36. brave, iv, 56, 57; few, v, 113; sameness, i, 299-301. slackness of, v, 214; question for, şampson, george a., letter to, 11, v, 445; subservient, v, 536; 537. timid, vii, 36; untrained, vii, sand, george, vi, 533; vii, 500;559; iii; perpetual, sacred, vii, 244; sincerity of, vii, 503; quoted, x, hunger of the, vii, 259; posts his 133. books, vii, 542; surrender of, to sanity, rare, v, 12. the worldly, viii, 486; and times, santa croce, iii, 118, 123; homage ix, 100; and invitations, ix, 530. to galileo and michel angelo, see also courage, english, eteriii, 105, 106. nity, freedom, income, isolasan zenobia, iii, 122. tion, saint school, soldier, sartor resartus, ii, 530. treasure. saturday club, ix, 320; x, 6; ii, 12; school, a, 1, 308-ii. 25-27; 78; foreshadowed, viii, school committee, scholar and, 104; behavior at, x, 296. vii, 30; philosopher and, vii, 56. saturn, iii, 461. schooling. winter, vi, 302. saunterings -autobiographical, 11, schoolmaster, in, 307. 244-46. schoolmen, viii, 49. savage, james, alexander everett school-room, escape from his, 1, 75. and, iii, 375. school-tax, viii, 237. savagery, return to, vii, 508. schools, visiting the, ix, 315; consavant, v, 222; poet and, iv, 117. cord, x, 13, 14. saving instincts, ii, 268. schopenhauer, quotations from, x, saxondom, viii, 345. 33, 34. scaffoldings, ii, 470. science, ix, 125; reason and, in rescale, vi, 22. ligion, 1, 324-27; and religion, ii, scandinavian custom, vm, 566. 362: ethical. ii, 488: kills legend, sceptic, service of, vii, 59. iii, 558; the humanity of, iv, 59, schelling, x, 317, 318; quotation, 60; and literature, the old and ii, 422; thought of, its growth new, iv, 90-95; in humanity, iv, through others, viii, 76, 77; dis 113; and history, the service of, tinction of, viri, 126. iv, 377, 378; new, looks within, scherb, expounds hegel, viii, 69; v, 94; each can explain universe, lecture of, viii, 246. vi, 246; as a barrier, vi, 529; schiller, 11, 525-27; wallenstein of, symbolic, vii, 52; dull, viii, 9; not quotation from, ii, 377; burke chronological, viii, 478; must and, believers, vi, 512; on poems, have soul, viii, 505; inspired or vii, 48; on burial, viii, 554. dull, viii, 525; warped, viii, 565; schleiermacher, 11, 393. not a finality, ix, 278; zymosis scholar, in company, iii, 319; in of, x, 264. visible tools, facts his treasure, sciences, apprentice, vii, 252. iv, 6, 7; office of the, iv, 259; 280scientists, poetic, x, 364. 83; investment of the, iv, 274, sciolist, the young, viii, 426. 275; must be fearless, v, 82, 83; scotland, ii, 176; english judges must not stop for attacks, v, 100; | in, viii, 469. in fashionable society, v, 145, scots, v, 413. 146; voice of, heard afar, vi, 166; | scott, david, vi, 264; vii, 92; vii, the story of the. vi. 216; his 388; paints e.'s portrait, vii, 392. weapons, relation to society, vii, scott, sir walter, abbot, 1, 71; 71; progress of, vii, 113; creed of, bride of lammermoor, 11, 203; x, 470, 471. | heroic characters in, ii, 371, 372; 532 index shakspeare and, ii, 327; and self-help and social relations, ix, coleridge, ii, 328; line of, iii, 400. 539; and superstitions, x, 358. selfishness, vii, 37. scottish speech, vii, 394. self-justifying, vi, 531. scougal, 11, 387. self-reliance, ii, 249; 309-11; v, screen, nature too thin, iv, 250. 480; viii, 562; advice, pledges, scribe, chosen by spirit, x, 99. iii, 267. scriptures, of the nations, v, 335; self-reliance, verses, ii, 518. love of the great, v, 500. self-respect, x, 163. sculpture, the ancient, iv, 98. self-seeker, nemesis of, vi, 70. scythe, the, v, 414. self-service elegant, v, 491. sea, the, sunday at, in, 205; nineself-subsistent and sneer, iv, 365. vehs and karnacs at, ix, 55. self-testing, iii, 28. sea-line, the, vii, 386. self-trust, v, 192; 433, 434; of diseaports, x, 251. e man, iii, 14. search, edward, 1, ii. seneca, goethe on, iv, 221. sea-serpent, viii, 366. sennott, george, ix, 437, 438. seashore, vii, 104. | sensation, and soul. vi. 108. seashore rhymes, vi, 13. sense of beauty, viii, 251. seaside abolishes time, viii, 380. sense under poetry, iii, 451. sea-skies, iii, 450. sensibility, ix, 487, 537; x, 453; sea voyage versus college examina character plus, v, 372. tion, vii, 457. sentence, maker of, 111, 395; good, second advent hymns, vi, 457. and book, iii, 529; a mirror, iv, second church, the call to, ii, 261, 180. 262. sentences, iv, 81, 82; from ancient second essays sent to friends, vi, philosophers, vi, 436. 536, 537. sentiment, 1, 346, 347; ix, 137; husecret doctrines, iii, 468. man, ix, 277; literature of the, x, secrets, iv, 78. 10. sect begets sect, iv, 135. sentimentalist, ix, 427. sectarian, be not a, ii, 385. september afternoon, a, iii, 342; sects, ix, 309; claude lorraine, golden, iv, 288. iii, 377; feed on one another, iii, | serenity, ii, 270. 459; and saints, x, 234. sermon, mi, 220; fragment for, god sedgwick, miss, characters of, within, ii, 22, 23; conventional or novels, iv, 458. living, ii, 278; subject for a, ii, sedgwick, mrs., ix, 450. 507; prune the, iii, 549. seed, god a, iii, 497; divine, iv, sermon subjects, animals, idleness, 73. ii, 471, 472. seed-thought, ii, 97. sermons, ii, 477; subjects: unseen seer, child or, vi, 253. good in man, wisdom and ignoselection, iv, 330; vi, 23; life is, vii, rance, first and third thoughts, 203; in art, viii, 253; in good ii, 434-36; living, iii, 421; real, writing, x, 303. iv, 232, 233; beauty shuns, v, self, 11, 319; ix, 190; the higher, iv, 39; re-reading, old, v, 271. 315, 316; revere, viii, 517; a surservant, god the, iv, 57; new engprise, x, 264. land, and, vii, 315. self-culture, goethe and, 11, 314. servants, domestic, vi, 444. see self-denial, u, 287. also domestics. self-depreciation, e.'s, ix, 355. service, vi, 34; by what you are, self-esteem, 1, 301, 302. iii, 404. self-examination, 1, 242-44; 360seward, william h., ix, 377, 378; 67; 377-80. 383-91. index 533 shackford, charles chauncy, iv, shrine, man needs a, iii, 503. 166. sibylline leaves, viii, 220. shadow, viii, 422. sicilian crew, absurd, iii, 37, 38. shaker folly. vii, 40. sicily, embarks for, iii, 37; episode shakers, the, vii, 15, 16; visit to, vi, | in, iii, 481. 261-63; sacrifice culture, vi, 502; sick man, indulgence of, iv, 362. second visit to, their dance and sickness, iv, 251; ,63; use of, 1, 78; religion, vi, 523, 524. heroes of, vi, 116. shakspeare, william, 1, 145; 11, siddons, mrs., and fanny kemble, ioi; 122; 233; iii, 414; 453; iv, vi, 337. 269; viii, 39; x, 249; and wordssidney, sir philip, on puglione's worth contrasted, 11, 106; and praise of horsemen, viii, 503. right words, ii, 402; sonnets of, sierra nevada, iii, 23. quotations, ii, 422, 423; creations sifting, x, 51. of, 11, 481; hamlei quoted, mi, sight, nature gives, v, 407; wait for, 260; sonnets of, iii, 290; and vii, 520, 521. scott, iii, 327; mouthpiece of significance of nature, iii, 466. mind of man, iii, 329; not popu| silence, ii, 243, 412; of orator, ix, lar in his day, iv, 186; curiosity 152. about, iv, 332; must be realized, silsbee, w., letter to, ideas of god, v, 104; the wonder of, v, 127; as v, 73. metaphysician, vi, 79; fault of, similes, ix, 285. vii, 140; fancy of, viii, 154; height simonides, ix, 209. of, viii, 245; plays of, vin, 350; simple life, v, 397; 564. english osiris, viii, 359, 360; susimplon, the, napoleon, and, iii, 148. periority of, ix, 187; e.'s notes for sims case, viii, 202. speaking at saturday club, x, 27, sin, ii, 467; v, 38; is ignorance, ii, 28, 29-31, 34; true biography of, 75; carries its reward, ii, 140; x, 290; no parallax, x, 382. the unpardoned, v, 570; is trifling, shakspeare festival, x, 21. ix, 20. shakspeare quotations, x, 24. sincerity, teaching, iii, 374. sham fight, v, 291. singer, the village, v, 269. shaw, judge, viii, 201; 509. singers, two, v, 255. shawsheen river, vin, 371. sins may help, even, iii, 352. “shay, the," vii, 339-41. siphar trees, i, 170-73. she-king, the, quoted, vi, 437. sismondi, viii, 574. shelley, vi, 114; 213; vii, 284; sistine chapel, the, iii, 81-83. quoted, iv, 198; never true poet, situation, ii, 250. v, 344. sixteenth-century poets, viii, 287. shells, 11, 283; brought home, in, skating, writing like, vii, 334. skepticism, vi, 116; vii, 112. shepherd, dr. t.p., his finding ten skidbladnir, ship, vii, 314. nyson in holland, vii, 448, 449. sky, vi, 20; blue, vi, 319; sculpture sherlock, i, 174. in clouds, vi, 410; our, viii, 42; ship. praise of, iii, 218; of state, states of the, x, 77. viii, 236. slave-auction, the, and the bible ship life, iii, 201. meeting, ii, 177. ship-worm, ix, 307. slaveholder and cotton manufacshipyard, viii, 374. turer, honor to garrison, vi, ships, names of, iv, 308. 538-39. short mantle, the, iii, 473. slaveholders, short way with, viii, shortcomings, iv, 371. shoul to the shepherds, a, poem, i, slave-labor products, vii, 38. 245 | slave-trade, ii, 80; iv, 302, 303. 298. 386. 534 index 3 slavery, iv, 200; vii, 84; viii, 337, | society and solitude, x, 312. visid f, 1, 177-86: chris-socrates, i, 5. 6: iii, 260: proclus tianity and, iii, 446, 447; warninterprets the oracle on, viii, ings from, iv, 374; arouses con468. science, viii, 164; entering ques| soirées, v, iii. tion of, viii, 316; the constitusoldier, scholar and, v, 336. tion and fugitive slave law, soldiers, vi, 115; needed for civil viii, 337, 338; our fathers' blunwar, ix, 575, 576; our young, x, ders in concessions to, viii, 475, 125. 476; the resistance to, ix, 241, solger, dr., ix, 113. 242; the destruction of, ix, 434; | solitary fancies, verses, i, 196. dangers of, escaped, ix, 566. volitary, the, viii, 55. slavery question, x, 113, 114; in solitude, i, 222; ii, 49-53; 215; or lyceum, vii, 5, 6. society, ii, 60-62; the soul in, sleep, iv, 142, 143, 373; unbecom ii, 299; of the soul among friends, ing, iv, 442; graces of, v, 440; of ii, 403; gain from, iii, 222; not a child, v, 459; life a, vii, 161; alone in, iii, 263; devils of, iii, pranks of, vii, 458. 305; independence of, in crowd, sleep, medicine, iv, 236. iii, 401; doom of, 111, 501; iv, 229; sleepy hollow, viii, 554; autumn depressing, iv, 398; search for. in, iv, 326, 327. viii, 538. sleet, in woods, v, 512. solon and lycurgus, ii, 283. sleigh-ride, boy's, ix, 200. song, verses, 11, 132. smallness, power of, viii, 220, 221. sonnet in sickness, ii, 217. smith, adam, ix, 340. sons of great men, vi, 267. smith, goldwin, x, 72–75. soprano, the village, iv, 468. smith, sydney, opinion of, viii, | sorbonne, the, 111, 156. 577. sorrow and age, v, 267, 268. snubs, of e.'s new book, viii, 88. sortes virgiliana, 1, 23. social circle, the, x, 312; candi soul, the, reserves her word, 11, 509; dates for, viii, 168, 179. the kingdom of, iv, 330; judges social feelings, 1, 118, 125. but is not judged, v, 140; affirms, social principle, the, 11, 268. v, 242; renouncing birthright of social tests for all, v, 525, 526. the madness of christendom. v. socialism, vii, 410; oracle dumb on, 272, 273; meeting your, v, 569. vii, 428; question of, vii, 431. see also almanac, assessors, socialist convention, vi, 480, 481. body, christendom, church, socialist orator, vii, 487. circumstance, directions, discisociety, i, 314; or solitude, ii, 19; pline, ecstasy, emerson, m.m., obligations to, iii, 124; and realiperience, fall, god, history, ties, iii, 262; fatal machinery of, immortality, nearness, one iii, 275; always, but best men mind, reflections, science, senalone, iii, 321; good, four views sation, solitude, speech, tides. of, iii, 496; relations in, iv, 270: / souls, viii, 311. a test, iv, 358; and solitude, iv, sound, analyzed, x, 169, 170. 473; ideal, v, 115; good for those source of things venerable, iii, 433. who understand it, v, 349; ends south, visit to, ii, 133; and north, of, v, 429; constricts, v, 475; iv, 275; compensation to, would debt to, vi, 352; a boardingbe cheap, viii, 202; shooting comhouse, vii, 60; treating as a child, plexion, ix, 121; insanity of, ix, vii, 335; pallid, viii, 120; laws of, 211, 212; self-reliance of, ix, 308. ix, 531. see also artist, consouth carolina, ix, 49; outrage of, ventions, curiosity shop, emeron samuel hoar, vii, 20-23. son, m. m., unmaskers. | south wind, the, verses, vi, 321. index 535 379. southern courtesy, ii, 141. spontaneous thought, v, 385, 392. southern life, vili, 218. sprained foot, ix, 223. southern students, iv, 312, 313. spring, v, 519; ix, 178, 216, 488; southern victories, ix, 456. return of, i, 19; promise of, vi. southerner, the, vri, 206; viii, 100. southerners, the, ix, 328; bad cause spring day at mount auburn, iii, of, ix, 327. 271, 272. southey, chronicle of the cid, ix, stable-men, talk of, ix, 497. 168. stage-driver, vi, 528. space and time, ix, 100. stage passengers, iv, 193. spanish proverbs, ii, 480. stagnation, days of, vii, 210. spanish paintings, vii, 455, 456. stallo, on nature, viii, 77; quoted, spartan, the, iv, 5. x, 423. speaker, not topic, vi, 296; young, standard man, the, , 249. viii, 221. standing, v, 409. speaking, extempore, 11, 440; good, stanfield, mr., vii, 479. 111, 485; for courtesy, x, 227. "stanton, edwin m., 1x, 376. spectator, a proposed, ii, 15-17. staples, sam, neighbor, v, 194, spectator, or actor, vi, 133; e. call195; ix, 413. ing himself a, x, 191. star, the unsuspected, vi, 210. spectatorship, vi, 275. stars, iii, 13; iv, 492; v, 392; real spectrum, x, 187. influence from, ni, 264; conjuncspeculations in the future, 1, 30. 1 tion of, inspiration, fortunate speculative man in conversation, hours, iii, 561; falling, iv, 148; iv, 309. antidote of pyrrhonism, vi, 403; speculators, yankee, vii, 299, 300. nkee, vii, 299, 300. seen through telescope, x, 117. speech, 11, 412; native vigor in, 11, star-shower of 1834, the, iii, 372. 449; thought and, ii, 522; the starving, fear of, vi, 303. soul's, iv, 124; or writing, v, 257; state, man implies the, ii, 414; climate of, vii, 553; heat in, viii, what is the ? vii, 18; poor, well 147. meaning, vii, 220-23. spencer, judge, mr. otis and, n, state department, ix, 379. 238. states of mind, 11, 219; viii, 274. spending, wise, v, 27; is gain, vii, statues help us, viii, 557. 156; of poor and rich, ix, 52. stave, origin of, viii, 566. spenser, edmund, vii, 229. steam-engine, ix, 495. spheral people, viii, 230. steamships, the first ocean, lv, 430. spheres, vi, 480. steerage, the, iii, 214. sphinx, iii, 525; viii, 345. steps, vi, 317; geology shows the, spinoza, x, 237. lviii, 524. spirit, the, x, 189; trust, m, 435; stereopticon, ix, 287. essentially vital, endures, iv, 127; sterling, john, iv, 389, 390; v, 313; heed, v, 289. see also boldness, and carlyle, v, 352; on sculpture, creative, disguises, magnetizvi, 248. ing, man, moon, scribe, strength, stewart, dugald, ii, 308; extracts time. 1 from, 11, 388. spirit-rappings, viii, 452. | stimulation, low, viii, 560. “spiritual," popular use of the stoicism, ix, 500. word, ix, 189 stoke pogis, visit to, vii, 490. spiritual religion self-evident, m, stonehenge, visit to, vii, 490. 397, 398. storey, charles, x, 4. spiritual laws, nii, 423. stories illustrating the times, vi, 78. spiritual laws, verses for, vii, 217. storm, at sea, iii, 203; the winter, spontaneity, iv, 292. iii, 422. 536 index rules, vii, zifferent, false, v, 3468. swar'vil, 30 storm, the, verse, ii, 209. | superiority, a surprise, iv, 391; in story, v, 94. persons, vii, 86. stove when ill, v, 162. | superiors and inferiors, vii, 527. stow, cyrus, viii, 156; redeems superlative, v, 387; vi, 22; positive bog, vii, 306. sufficient, iv, 162, 163; love of, strabo, quoted, x, 235. viii, 74; true and false, viii, 324. stranger, v, 47, 49. superlatives, iii, 484; italian, ili, strawberries, v, 238. 120; avoid affection's, iii, 383. street sights, iii, 157. supernatural, the, ix, 193. street singers and caffès, iii, 06. superstition of knowledge, iv, 388. strength, unconscious, iii, 345; superstitions, present, vii, 204; of waste, iv, 368; the true, of the the age, vii, 317, 318. spirit, vi, 309; beauty and, in supreme court, united states, ix, poetry and art, viii, 300, 301. 186. stubler the quaker, iii, 228. surface, vii, 191; prevails, vi, 206. study, plan of, 11, 21; and drifting, surface-life, vi, 165. iii, 460; preaching and, sickly, surfaces, ix, 116. home the cure, iv, 423. surprises, nature's, iv, 123; life's style, ii, 96; a test, viii, 489; notes daily, vi, 324. on, viii, 491. surroundings, your own, iii, 536. susceptibility, vi, 56. subject, indifferent, ix, 23. suum cuique, ii, 471. subjective, true and false, v, 347. swamp-flowers, the, vi, 393. subjectiveness, bonaparte, x, 468. swan, margaret, high experience subjects, iv, 263. of, viii, 306. sublime, moral, ii, 405. swearing, v, 484; vi, 236; innocent, sublime law, nature's, v, 512. | vi, 357. success, deprivation of, v, 570; is swedenborg, iv, 482; v, 145; 477; adjustment, vii, 515; a measure vii, 515; viii, 22; x, 198; quoted, ' of brain, viii, 505; of george iv, 6; position of, iv, 497; force stephenson, ix, 125; of colum of, v, 350; an interpreter, danbus, ix, 125; of the north, ix, gerous teacher, vi, 185; hopeless 428; stimulus of, x, 175. hebraism of, gates of thought successful americans, vii, 204. are found late, vi, 196; talk with suggestion for writing, x, 235. sampson reed on, vi, 219; falsuicide, iii, 231. lacy of “the word,” did not see sumner, charles, viii, 210; ix, 375, “the flowing," vii, 116, 117; 393, 452; at phi beta kappa and sin, vii, 123; and very, vii, meeting, vii, 228; attack upon, 136; result of, vii, 154; large ix. 46; and brooks, ix, 156; stature, viii, 16; does not awaken tribute to, x, 291-95; death of, sentiment of piety, viii, 72; ideas x, 429, 430. of, received to-day, viii, 477; sumner outrage, the, ix, 47. good for his age, viii, 507; quosun, to find the, iii, 239; and shade, | tations from, ix, 326, 480, 481; v, 443; equalizes places, vi, 449. milton and, x, 191. sunday, iv, 477. swedenborgian, v, 142; 76. sunday-school meetings, ii, 379. swedenborgian sermon, mi, 430. sunday schools, origin of, ii, 413. | swedenborgianism, v, 80; e.'s, iii, sunset, iii, 418; viii, 419; 503; 266. from the hill, v, 46, 47; liquid, v, swedenborgians, ii, 124; iv, 333; 558; buying a, viii, 13. enthusiasts, ii, 318. sunsets, vi, 235. swiss landscapes and heroes, ix, 280. superficiality, profoundness of, vi, switzerland, `a taste of, vevay, | lausanne, iii, 148-50. 27. index 537 19. sword, the, use of, ix, 362. | tasso, iii, 95, 127; m. m. e. read, sylvan, possession of land, vini, x, 202. 379. | taste, iv, 194; respect your, ii, symbolism, vi, 317; of life, iv, 245; 337. nature's, vi, 77; meaning of tax, none on daybreak, iv, 64; rewhat i do, viii, 63. fusing the, vii, 221. symbols, iii, 358; cabinet of shells, taxes, sure, iv, 108. ii, 478; help, instances, i, 528; taylor, edward (father), iii, 421; their use, iv, 240; works as, vi, vii, 75, 76; ix, 498; sermon of, 191. iii, 431; at battle-ground, iii, symmetry, vi, 499. 543; his power and charm insympathies, strange, in jardin des stinctive, iv, 155-57: eloquence plantes, iii, 162. and happiness of, his similes, sympathy, ix, 272; 355; with iv, 191, 192; his power and others' gifts (abilities), iii, 384; charm, v, 404; on insults, vi, due, iv, 288; for mourner, iv, 345; 63; in concord, vii, 70-74; elothe might of, v, 19, 20; is missed, quence of, vii, 90-91; quoted, ix, v, 41; man thankful for, v, 137; but partial, vi, 471. taylor, henry, van artselde of, ili, “symposium, the," iv, 250; 289; 453. v, 196; of e.'s friends: alcott, taylor, thomas, viii, 361; x, 185; hedge, etc., feminine genius of defines christianity, vi, 470; americans, art proper to the age, novel and solitary path of, vi, iv, 85-89; at alcott's, iv, 113, 509, 510; on bacon, vii, 36. 114; meets, v, 168; alcott de| tea, poetry in chest of, v, 517. sires, vii, 248, 249. teacher, true attitude of a, 11, 380; synesius, viii, 452. longing for, iii, 101. syracuse, its sights, iii, 38-48. teachers, must study man, not system, postpone your, iv, 294; text, 111, 225; the two sorts of, iv, love of vitiating, v, 321. 457, 458; from within and withsystem-grinders, iii, 523. out, v, 143-45; real tests, vii, 224. systems, v, 326. teachers' meeting, iv, 126; 394, 395. table d'hôte, vii, 456. teamsters, vii, 184. tabooed subjects, iv, 293. tears, iv, 339 tacitus, on north sea, viii, 369. tecumseh, colton's, vi, 167. tail, the, vii, 151. tediousness, rustic, iv, 408. taine, quoted, ix, 529. teeth, v, 56; nose and, v, 310. talent, and character, iii, 374; telegraph and human heart, viii, comforts of, vi, 210; genius and, viii, 581. telegraph operators, ix, 8. tales, sad, v, 258. temperament, emerson's own, cold, taliessin, x, 147; 348. 11, 123; scale of, vi, 55. “talking shop," ii, 314. temperaments, of too much detertalking from memory, ii, 441. mination, ix, 222. tallahassee, ii, 161. temperance, ii, 320; 468; v, 333; talleyrand, vii, 9, 24; hamilton vii, 246; rigorous for man of let. burr anecdote, ix, 392. ters, iv, 36; false, v, 258; sign of tamlane, ili, 544. intrinsic worth, v, 299, 300; in tantalus-life, iii, 556. love of beauty, vi, 4; elegant, vi, taormina, iii, 56. 69; makes genius, viii, 499. tardy spring, the, ix, 415. temple of nature, i, 355. tariff, viii, 265. temple, solomon's, iii, 330. tasks, iv, 18; home, v, 257. temptation, i, 265; ii, 415; v, 491. 459. 538 index ten seditious commandments, viii, language, v, 376; man must con236. quer, vi, i2. tenacities, vii, 162. thinkers, and livers, vi, 517; not tendency and men, vi, 451. partisans, viii, i20. tending, vii, 194. thinking class in war-time, ix, tennyson, v, 6, 57; vi, 243, 286–88, 366. 465; viii, 455, 526; new volume | thirty nations, our, viii, 232, 233. of, iv, 411, 412; vi, 218; and de thomas à kempis, iii, 528; fénevere, vii, 404; will not go to lon, scougal and, ii, 387. france, his habits, de vere's thompson, george, ni, 548; samcare of him, his brothers, anecuel j. may and, visit of, iii, 546. dotes, vii, 446-48; dr. shep| thoreau, henry d., vi, 74:371; vii, herd's finding him in holland, 241; viii, 273; ix, 401; edmund vii, 448, 449; his in memoriam, hosmer and, iv, 395; walk with, viii, 163; verses from, viii, 450; his view of college, iv, 397; walk lines of, viii, 406; poems of, ix, with, iv, 432; ix, 47, 48; 91, 152; his idylls of the king, ix, 207; 92; 96, 97; 99; 112, 113; 155, 156; saint grail, x, 240-42. talk on property and on writing, tests, v, 151; use our own, v, 355; v, 128-30; lives now, v, 208; of writer and speaker, vii, 215; sympathy of, v, 241; on diet, v, suggested for colleges, viii, 582; | 414; as helpful friend, v, 505; for men of letters, ix, 7. as poet and helper, v, 557; saying teutonic granite, vii, 554. of, on man, vi, 298; verses of, vi, texas, vii, 26; annexation of, vi, 304, 305; paradoxes of, vi, 440; 494, 495; anti-annexation con his inspiration, vi, 494; viii, 64; vention, vii, 4. his secret of life, vi, 496; in texts, quoting, v, 89. word and act, vi, 515; on philosothackeray, william makepeace, phies, vii, 99; on society, vii, 209, viii, 393, 416; his vanity fair, 210; in jail, vii, 219; on food and viii, 113; story of, viii, 577; art, vii, 321; left as guardian, vii, dickens on, x, 7. 336, 337; newcomb on, vii, 386; thales, ii, 336.. the wood-god, vii, 498; and al"thank you,” life in the expres cott, vii, 499; channing and, on sion, vi, 86. alcott, vii, 552; and heaton, vii, theanor and amphitryon, a para 557; walk with, to acton, vii, ble, vi, 310. 40, 41; and concord, viii, 62; on théâtre français, iii, 168. thought, viii, 119; a talk with, theism, iv, 55, 403. viii, 135-38; 260; gifts of, vili, theocracy, character brings, v, 368. 227. 228; meets his walking theogonies, ii, 334. thoughts, viii, 294; on lightningtheologic war, ii, 140. rods, viii, 300; e.'s debt to, viii, theology, objective, a discipline, 303; and the preacher, viii, ii, 509; pagan, of our churches, 305, 306; hope of, vini, 339; ausiv, 305; new, ix, 521. terity of, viii, 375; the stoic, vin, theorists and conservative, vi, 136. 397; standard of, viii, 415; and theory, beware, v, 149. little girl's question, viii, 425; there is in all the sons of men, hymn, helpful counsel of, viii, 450; on ii, 346. california gold-digging, viii, 467; thermometer, nature a differen question of, viii, 567; on health tial, v, 456. of intellect, viii, 569; and coöperthierry, his history of the normans, ation, ix, 15; reporting his observiii, 378, 379. vations, ix, 34; as naturalist, ix, things, preacher must preach, v, 45; august walk with, ix, 59, 60; 200; and men, v, 254; the divine and nature, ix, 144; patience, ix, index 539 153, 154; on john brown, ix, 247,1 389; uncovering, vi, 123; few be248; when dying, ix, 413; death, cause elastic, viii, 575; dealing ix, 417, 418; his bequest of books, with, ix, 109. ix, 419, 420; choice of, ix, 425; | thrasimenus, lake, iii, 103. quotations, ix, 427; 441; 547; three dimensions, the, vi, 419. x, 20; 470; selections from his | thrones, ix, 92. journal, ix, 430-32; and blue| tiberius, 11, 8. bird, ix, 498; and meeting-house ticknor, george, lecture, 1, 65. bell, ix, 507; journal of, ix, 522; tide of life, ebb, v, 276. letter of, x, 14; criticism of, x, tides, iv, 225; viii, 254; of thought, 311. 1, 284, 285; ii, 136; of the soul, iii, thoreau, john, jr., kindness of, ix, 304. 300. tiedemann, ix, 521. thoreaus, voyage of the, v, 251. timaus, the, vi, 213; vii, 74. thorwaldsen, ii, 79; v, 14. time, iv, 122; x, 288; infancy has thought, your, god's gift, ii, 282; / fled, i, 208; terrible flight of, 1, the stirring of, 11, 494; like travel 234-37; optical, iv, 476; and ler, iii, 532; the common, v, 25;/ space illusions, v, 123, 124; and hunger for, its joy, v, 147, 148; fate fix relations, v, 429; infinite, visible, eternal, universal, v, v, 481; if world would wait, v, 177-79; not absorbed, vii, 78; 518; inversely as spirit, vi, 117; glittering and turning to dead breast-pocket of, vi, 305; hurtful, scale. v ii, 278; for sale, viii, 365; ix, 32; space and, ix, 100. an invisible horse, viri, 522; | timeliness, viii, 208. nature helps us to express, viii, | times, express life of your own, iv, 536; the thin stream of, viii, 542; 38; stories illustrating, vi, 78; identical, oceanic, vini, 563; utbrain and solar system, viii, 90tered in virile manner, ix, 197, 92; parliament on, viii, 93. 108: ductile, expansive. x. 165: times, the, course on, vi. 131. enriched by vivid, x, 213; expels | | the times (london), vii, 380; influmemory, x, 361; like new bird ence of, vii, 360; writers of, vii, may not come again, x, 365; its 415. rank stamped on it, x, 465; auto| timing, vii, 118. matic action of, x, 469. see also | tischbein, iv, 206. acceleration, action, america, tissenet and indians, viii, 279. american, annals, beauty, best, | titmouse, the, ix, 405. bonaparte, books, christ, cur| tivoli and villa d'este, expedition rent, districts, electricity, ever to, iii, 97, 98. ett, e., first, fuller, margaret, tobacco, x, 154. gates, genealogy, god, hafiz, to-day, vi, 477; its shining rememhandles, high, history, hospibrance, v, 514; all important, vi, tality, inspiration, joy, lan211; impenetrable folds of, viii, guage, life, luther, music, na453. ture, new,oriental, persons, poet, to-day, poem, 1, 368. provocation, speech, | toilers, respect the, vii. 510. spontaneous, swedenborg, tho | token from mountain or tree, viii, reau, tides, trade, twilight, 247. woodman, work, writing. tokens, v, 72. thoughtfulness of great men, mi, tombs, iv, 322, 323. tone, iv, 364; v, 110; 314; shows thought-givers, iv, 307. advance, v, 141; signifies, vi, 88; thoughts, that set one aglow, 11, poet must strike true, vii, 207, 405; waiting for, iii, 443; inexor208; low, vii, 169; in poetry, x, able, iv, 123; few in an age, iv, 277. 333. 540 index tonga islanders, the, licoö song of, transparency, theory of, vii, 546. 1, 159. transubstantiation, ix, 546. tool-room in the barn, the, iv, 283. travel, vi, 382; vii, 141; overtools, vi, 425; lesson of, vii, 306; of estimated, ii, 453, 454; boswelthe age, viii, 244. · lism of, iii, 340; your native spot, topics, favorite, viii, 488; for lec| iv, 296; real, vi, ii; without a tures, x, 329, 330. call, vi, 265; humiliates, vi, 329; torchlight processions, vii, 458. help of, vii, 69. torpedo, man a. to man, viii, 290. "traveller, the," v, 140. torpor, intellectual, iii, 485. travelling, v, 106. torrey, funeral of, vii, 183; burial treasure everywhere for scholar, of, vii, 192. iii, 247. toussenel, his passional zoology, trebellius on the gauls, viii, 582. viii, 403. tree, nourishment of, iv, 308; and town, unit of republic, viii, 420. man, v, 561. town and country club, viii, 103, trees, v, 9; the gift of, iv, 225; my, 104, iv, 228; teach the planter, v, town crier, x, 203. 567, 568; and cultivation, viii, 23. town-meeting, ix, 566. tremont house, landlord of, iv, towns, use of, x, 53, 54. 399. toys, children's, v, 163. trent affair, ix, 387. tracy, albert h., of buffalo, viii, trial by war, ix, 459. 172, 173; x, 121; talk with, ix, tribal bias, viii, 564. 64-67. tribulations, ix, 230. trade, 1, 259-64; iv, 311; vi, 503; tribunal, posterity and ultimate, triumphs of, vi, 481; thought fol| viii, 94. lows, vii, 8, 9. trick in conversation, vi, 257. traders and thinkers, vii, 557. trifles, eat the hours, iii, 562; age tradition, loss of the christian, ii, of, iv, 479, 480; manners in, viii, 85; beware, iii, 420; in teaching | |_299. omit, iv, 119. trismegisti, iv, 498; v, 112. traditions of ancestors, iv, 230. triumphs and eras, x, 103. tragic characters, ix, 50. troilus and cressida, viii, 367. trances for hire, viii, 298. tropes, vi, 18; vii, 177; and transtranscendental movement, the, vi, migration, vi, 40. 98; vi, 521. true men, iii, 477. transcendentalism, defined, iv, 114. true thomas, verse, vii, 251. transcendentalist, and franklin, | truro, channing on, viii, 252. vii, 268. trust, ideal doctrine of, gratitude, transcendentalists (rev. t. t. 11, 375; joyful, ir, 454. stone), vi, 52. | truth, simple, ii, 311; every one's transfer, genius making, vii, 519. concern, 11, 324; to self, ii, 379; transfiguration, the, iii, 78. abysmal our ignorance, ii, 481; transformation, rule of, v, 484. immortal, ii, 501; seek, ii, 513transit, thinker must furnish, viii, 15; many-sided, ii, 523; demands 529, 530. your defence, iii, 269; ideal, iii, transition, charm and power of, 349; luther's creed will need litviii, 501; and immortality, x, tle adjustment, iii, 382; sacrific457; ascending effort, x, 462. ing, iii, 412; or appearance, iii, translation, vii, 89. 488; speaking, iv, 4; people huntranslations, viii, 35; of the clas gry for, iv, 391; all nature helps sics, viii, 289. him who speaks, iv, 484; the startransmigration, vi, 419; vii, 93, 94; lit deserts of, iv, 493; rich if we 120, 121; tropes and, vi, 40. could speak; v, 455; against what index 541 tion, wtb 29. x, 14 sformed calis called god, vi, 161; serve, vii,' tion, v, 328; made odious, viii, 141; and not citing authority, x, 187; infirm, ix, 148. 193; and phenomenon, x, 468. unitarian, when transformed calsee also advance, beauty, child, vinist, ix, 408. christianity, conversion, dodg unitarian preacher, and orthodox ing, friendship gentleman, hearer, iii, 426. poetry, pseudo-sciences, real, unitarian weakness, v, 243. rhyme. unitarianism, calvinism and, ii, tucker, ellen. see ellen tucker 424; weak, calvinism's strength emerson. and, iii, 199, 200. tucker, elizabeth, letter to, advisunited states, napoleon quoted ing reading, ii, 458-62. on, x, 62. tucker, margaret, death of, 11, 530, united states commissioner, viii, 531; notice of, 11, 538, 539. 235. tucker, mrs. (ellen's mother), units and laws, iii, 291; iv, 436; vi, death of, m, 110. 25; x, 236; the mind seeks, iv, tuckerman, f. g., rhotruda, ix, 115-17; and variety, ix, 168. 318. universal beauty, iii, 372. tulips and corn, viii, 213. universal forces, ix, 490. turbine, ix, 145. universal language, iii, 495. turk, the, x, 154. universal laws, iv, 107. turn, your, v, 60, 61. universal mind, ii, 217; vii, 436. turner, studio of, with owen to, universalists, be, v, 499. vii, 480-82. universe, god's orderly, ii, 437; turner, j. m. w., pictures of, vai, miracle of the, ii, 487; the hos479; viii, 164. pitable, iii, 6; from an idea, vii, turner, sharon, systematizing of, 172; tilled with light, x, 463. iii, 567. universe, the, a quotation-book, i, turnpikes, 1, 269. 86-91. turns, iv, 362, 363; v, 79. universities, help of, vii, 536; retuscany, iii, 103. trospective, viii, 412; accomplish twilight, thought's, v, 484. something, viii, 580. tycho brahe, iv, 221, 222. university, vii, 470; scholar setyler, g. w., his prowess, vi, 68, cured, x, 134. university reform, x, 197. tyrants, disguised, viii, 243. university system, vii, 362. unmagnetic man, the, vii, 247. uffizzi, the, the marble lady, m, unmaskers, society bates, vi, 103. 108. unsaid, the, iv, 495. umbrian towns, iii, 103, 104. | upanishad, quoted, ix, 56; 303. uncle tom's cabin, viii, 346. upham, charles w., iv, 5; barnunconscious writing, v, 342. well and, oratory of, 1, 68. underlings, our public men, vi, 446. uprising, causes of, vii, 462. understanding, ix, 206; of friends, uproar, or genius? vii, 31. ii, 482; and reason, iv, 74; v, 13; urn, the, and the fountain, para. the apostle of, iv, 379; reason hle, iv, 58, 59. above, v, 310, 311. 'age hardens, vi, 31, 32. uneasiness in society, iv, 65. sefulness honorable, v, 264. union, imperfect, with friends, iv, utilitarianism, ii, 455. 238; and independence, vi, 297, 298; in individualism, vi, 316; vain world, 1, 134.' moral and intellectual, viii, 260; valetta, st. john's at, iii, 31. of ideas, ix, 249. valuations of cities, viii, 166. union, the, x, 82-84; and constituvalue, intrinsic, ix, 116. 69. 542 index van buren, letter to, iv, 430. i trial, song of nature, and walvan burenism, v, 76. deinsamkeit, ix, 130-32; e.'s van helmont, viii, 76; 121. trial, ix, 314; for may-day, ix, vanity, v, 172. 505, 506; for spiritual laws, vii, van mons, nurseries of, vir, 290, 217. 291. very, jones, lv, 423; v, 110, iii; variety, v, 567. 141; 221; vi, 51; 290; vii, 120; varnhagen, ix, 459; quoted, ix, 398; | visit of, v, 98; his attitude of pro495; 505; 450; x, 315, 316; 445. test, spiritual state, manners, v, varuna, viii, 549. 104-06; walk in autumn woods vasari, anecdotes of, viii, 211; with, v, 381, 382; admissions and grimm quoted on, ix, 307. objections of, vi, 131, 132; quotvase, etruscan, iv, 491. ed, x, 1-8. vast, the, v, 48. vesicle, the, viii, 244. vatican galleries, the, iii, 77. vestiges of creation, vi, 51, 52. vatican splendors, the, iii, 91-94. vevay, iii, 150. vauvenargues, x, 98. vice, v, 71. veda, quoted, x, 159. vicenza, iii, 137. vedanta, vii, 110. victims, alcott's, vi, 284. vegetation, the, in man, vir, 135. vigor, vi, 530; viii, 422; wild, 11, veneration, iv, 495; incarnated, iv, 441. 446. vikings, code of, x, 138. venetian pictures, churches, iii, villa d'este, expedition to tivoli 132, 133. and, iii, 97. 98. venice, iii, 130-37. village, explains world, vi, 110; all veracity, vi, 386. characters in your, viii, 488. vermont, x, 253; visit to, 11, 384. village manners of politicians, iv, verona, iii, 139. 112. versatility, ii, 133. villagers, the reverend, iv, 444. verse: al the old manse, the vine, the, viii, 34. storm, added verse to poem violets, boy and, vi, 157. fame, ii, 208-10; to ocean, x, 79. virgil, tomb of, iii, 67. verses, 1, 291; 321; 75; iii, 10, 11; virgin, the, viii, 467. 64; a romance, i, 117; solilary virginia, ix, 248. fancies, i, 196; shakspeare, i, virility, viii, 340. 297; thought, 1, 305; forefathers' virtue, and genius, ii, 165; enterday, 11, 33, 34; leaving the old life, prising, ii, 311; temperamental, ii, 38-40; fale, 11, 80; living ii, 313; purges the eye, iii, 211; prayer, 11, 97; life or death; song, elegance of, iii, 427; sure of its ii, 131, 132; st. augustine, 11. | due, 111, 520; adherence to nature 149-51; in exile, ii, 179; farewell of things, iv, 97; genuine, prevailto sl. augustine, ii, 181; on sponing, iv, 183; obscure, ix, 237. laneous ullerance, ii, 196; autovirtues, the circle of the, i, 110; c, ii, 197-201; on the in-1 severe and restrictive, ii, 321. dependent life, ii, 264; on counvishnu purana, vii, 124; 127; 258. iry life, 11, 367; the days pass over vishnu, three steps of, viii, 549. me, ii, 388; on death, ii, 394; vision, a, 1, 119, 120; of retribution, the mines of truth, i1, 417; self! v, 485; when it comes, v, 511. reliance, ii, 518; on the travelling visions, perception of, vi, 113. american. iii. 206; god's mes visit, short, v, 445. sage, iii, 212; compensation, iii, visit, the, poem, vi, 442, 443. 376; the south wind, vi, 321; | visitor, iv, 474. the poel, vi, 187, 188; elernity, visitors, ix, 108; serious, v, 193; time, the poet, viii, 66-68;! tedious, vi, 280; exacting, vi, 392. bio index 543 visits to sick and dying, ii, 438. i dynamometer, ix, 411, 412; vitality, v, 535, 536. north and south, ix, 443; euvivian grey, disraeli's, iv, 216; vi, ropean opinion of civil, ix, 444; 228. service of, ix, 461-63; uses of the, vocabularies, v, 99. ix, 492-94; northern elements of vocabulary treacherous, v, 135. success, ix, 541; men needed, ix, vocation must express itself, iv, 576; benefits of, x, 105, 106; 418. opens new doors, x, 141. voice in choir, v, 167. war, verse, ix, 246. voices, effect of, ix, 406. warblers, ix, 204. voltaire, ferney and, iii, 152; ward, samuel g., v, 530; vii, 242, quoted, ix, 507. 243; ix, 500, 501; letter to, v, volunteer army, ix, 446. 305; marriage of, v, 468 ; on von hammer, ix, 539. women, vi, 240; view of, viii, votes, thoughtless, iii, 351. 234. voters, ix, 454. ward, thomas wren, view of, vii, voyage, southward, 11, 133; to 233. england, thoreau left as guar-ware, charles p., x, 309. dian, vii, 336, 337; homeward, ware, henry, vi, 455, 456; letter vii, 493. to, on abolition of war, iii, 574. vulgarity, excuse of, iv, 489. ware, william robert, x, 266. warnings, iv, 186. waiting, ii, 427; iii, 273; 403; iv, warren, charles henry, toast of, 498; v, 469; vi, 397. iv, 294. walden pond, ix, 415; frozen, iv, washington, city of, vi, 389; vii, 166; afternoon by, iv, 265, 266;| 253; ix, 333; lecturing in, vi, 335, visitors of, vi, 66. 336; visit to, ix, 372-96. walk, to the connecticut, 1, 268washington, george, noble face of, 84; to fairhaven hill, v, 266; in viii, 300; and chateaubriand, x, autumn woods with jones very, 350. v, 381, 382. waste power, v, 563. walking, ix, 33, 34. wasted life, 11, 528. walking-journey, 1, 144.. watchers, scholars are, iii, 407. walks, twilight and morning, it, water, v, 257; the age of, vii, 198. 120, 121; with channing, vii, waler, verse, vi, 92. 506, 510, 531, 536; viii, 65, 294, waterford, x, 327, 328. 297, 352, 485; ix, 110; with thowatts, dr. burnap on, n1, 236. reau, ix, 43, 59, 91, 112, 155. wave, teaching of the, iii, 291. wall, william, sayings of, viii, 453. way of life, e.'s own, v, 114. walpole, horace, v, 281. wayne, general, x, 302. waltham, preaching at, iii, 302; wayside inn, vii, 555. hearers of preaching, iv, 115. wealth, vii, 359; quiet strength of, wanderings, first, mi, 76. vi, 444; real, vii, 117; is reverwant and have, iv, 99. ence for superiority, vii, 320; is wants, three, vi, 112. power not a toy, viii, 219; and war, 11, 529; letter to henry ware labor, viii, 328; vulgarity of, on the abolition of, ini, 574; fool-1viii, 449; a commanding position ish, iv, 275, 276; iron lobsters of, as regards ends, ix, 162; for emeriv, 325; the state of, iv, 351; po gencies, x, 173; advantages of, lite, v, 531; a teacher, viii, 481, x, 199. 482; ix, 335; clears the air, ix, | weans and wife, v, 112. 325: educating us, ix. 330; misforweather. v. 287; at sea, wild, retune of, ix, 330; a new glass, ix, membrance of achille murat, 358; the searcher of character,' iii, 213, 214; life's, vii, 13. 544 index weathers of life, march, vii, 289. whigs, v, 466; vii, 179; and tories, webster, daniel, 1, 174; iii, 308; underlying merits, iii, 356-58; 455; 471; 565; iv, 172; 359; vi, school to teach, idealism, vi, 57; 455; vii, 219; 234; description of admit a sick world, vi, 65; demoby mr. k., i, 16, 17; reply of, to crats and, vi, 275, 276; sages, hayne, ii, 295; oratory of, iii, poets, women and, vii, 122. 255; carlyle sees, v, 243; editors whiggery timid, vi, 88. and, vi, 79; changed, vi, 91; estiwhiggism, vii, 99. mate of, vi, 341-46; ambition whip, needed, vii, 268; for top, of, vi, 381; oration of, vi, 416; vii, 313. at concord, vi, 429; and choate, whipple, ix, 187. vi. 432: vi. 87: his force and whisper, wonderful, x, 187. standing, vi, 433-35; adams white house, the, iv, 320. compared with, vi, 508; comwhite lies, vi, 254. ing of, to everett's inaugurawhite mountains, visit to, ii, 492. tion, vii, 167; method of, vir, white pond, vii, 536; with chan223; secondary, vii, 543; wanted v. vi. 543; wanted ning, ix, 523. courage, viii, 45, 46; desertion whitefield, chauncy and, 1, 330; on of, viii, 111; in the senate, viii, his wife, vii, 233. 174; and liberty, viii, 180-82; whitewashing, vi, 35. fall of, vin, 180-89; and materialwhitgift, archbishop, vii, 132. ism, viii, 216; treachery of, viri, / whitman, walt, ix, 401; 540; x, 231; fate of, overtakes him, viii, 147. 301, 302; dying, praise and blame, whole and parts, v, 84. viii, 335, 336; and the judge, wholes, ix, 422. viii, 537, 538; and young patriwild fire, the, of eloquence, vri, ots, x, 114. 185 weeding and laughing, iv, 256. wild geese, iv, 415. weeds, man and, iv, 467: v, 550; wild man, tame men, lv, 331. thoreau praises the, viii, 307; wild poetry, v, 476. suggestion from, viii, 571. wild stock in nations, vi, 67. weiss, john, vi, 214; x, 245, wild type of man, vi, 45. wellington, superiority of, viii, wilds, mr., ix, 301, 302. 368. wilhelm meister, iii, 309; v, 515. welsh triad, vin, 367. wilkinson, j. j. g., viii, 224; vii, west, the unpoetic, iii, 308; the ad319; x, 92; on swedenborg, viii, vancing. v, 531: journey to. viii.1 21; quoted, ix, i24. 114. | will, the, education of, 111, 249, 250; western banker, ix, ii. harmony of, iii, 345; the man of, western journey, x, 351, 352. v, 130; keep the, true, v. 130: western lecturing, ix, 3; x, 92; 181; breath of, in universe, ix, 217; 222 acts of, are rare, ix, 345. western railroad trip, ix, 260-63. william of wykebam, vii, 550. western trip, viii, 161. williams, i. t., x, 120. westminster, iii, 173. williamstown, x, 116. westminster abbey, ix, 221. williamstown address, the, viii, west point, visit to, ix, 511-18. 470. whalers, stories of the, iii, 261. willson, forceythe, x, 110. what and how, iv, 211. wilson, john, vii, 388; lecture of, whewell, vii, 439.. vii, 395. whig and spiritualist, vi, 10. wilson, sir robert, quoted, ix, 334, whig depression, vii, 12. whig doctrine, viii, 310, 311. winckelmann, x, 185: defines whig party, vii, 54. beauty, iii, 451. 335. index 545 wind, a poet, 11, 82; and calm, 111, 1 looking to man as guardian, ix, 7; of time, iv, 498. 23; sarcasm and attraction, ix, wind-harp, ix, 334. 210; man, genius and, x, 171, 172. windsor, visit to, vii, 491, 492. | woman, from calidasa, iv, 316, 317. wine, poet's, vi, 375, 376; wealth woman-part in mind, vi, 192. and, ix, 232. woman's convention, viii, 258-60. wings or boots? vi, 475. women, fine, iii, 311; vi, 356; winter, iv, 136; mild, iv, 387; a minds of, iv, 81; love appeargeneral, with e., v, 516. ances, iv, 299, 300; pathos of, v, winter drive in west, ix, 263. 26; in england, vi, 298; critical winter ride, thoughts in, iii, 392. eyes of, vi, 390; devoted, vii, 498; winthrop, robert, his oration of sail, not steer, viii, 175; side-issues despair, viii, 307-10. of, viii, 414; teach us, viii, 425; wisconsin, viii, 443. rights and interests of, viii, 559. wisdom, vii, 130; and virtue bound wonder, ii, 479; x, 454; attitude together, ii, 299; and goodness of, 11, 304; before genius, vi, 121. one, ii, 361; the unteachable, ii, wood, antony à, vii, 534. 387; and ignorance, ii, 434; mani| wood, price of, iv, 145, 146. fold, iv, 37; not personal, vii, 357; wood-god, the american, iv, 289. in reform, vii, 425. wood-god, thoreau the, vii, 498. wise man's matter, ii, 463. wood-gods, i, 146. wise man sides with assailants, iv, woodlot, x, 261. 370. woodman, the, real thought of, v, wise word, one, v, 138. 436. wise, governor, and john brown, wood-thrush, v, 237. 1x, 245. woods, going into, ii, 222; blessed wit, elastic, iii, 504; history of hu are, iii, 378; oracular, iv, 66; the man, iii, 523; troublesome, iv, may, iv, 459; live with god, iv, 188, 189; ready, vi, 247; in trade, 466; waiting, v, 32; a prose sonvii, 543. net, v, 263, 264; a temple, v, 339; witch-laws. vii. 108. not taxed for use of, v, 422; the withington, william, i, 286; letter sabbath of the, v, 549. to, on studies and reading, 1, 288. worcester cathedral, vii, 361. wits, anomalous, iii, 493. worcester, thomas, talk with woes, do not waste time on, iv, 29; sampson reed and, ii, 455. the time's, v, 278. word, the right, 11, 401; a millionwolf unreformed, viii, 183. faced, vi, 139; one, in a book, wollaton hall, vii, 357. “arrested development,” vii, 69; wolsey, viii, 102. the solving, vii, 91; men existing woman, burns's remark, i1, 479; to say a, viii, 422. natural trait, iii, 301; limitations words, preaching, iv, 277; age of, of, yet trust, iv, 337, 338; the new, v, 254; man returns to old, vi, iv, 338, 339; the fine, iv. 423; 127; mere suggestions, vi, 274.; tragedy of, v, 16, 17; attraction classifying, vi, 514; new use of, of, v, 361; unsphered, vi, 63; ideal vii, 359; old, wise, viii, 17; slang, place of, vi, 73; our help from, viii, 20; great, viii, 277; saxon vi, 134; our conscience, vi, 299; and latin, viii, 421; versus expercal state of, vi. 360; the soul rience in writing, x, 05. hermaphrodite, vi, 378; position wordsworth, iv, 55; 246; vi, 244; of normal, vi, 405; and marriage, 264; ix, 53; shakspeare and, vi, 514; musical character of, her contrasted, ii, 106; selections pathos, vi, 519; love must right, from, ii, 230, 231; criticism of, ii, vii, 534; internal neatness, vili, 232; montgomery and, ii, 235; 253; lours de force of, vill, 305;) extracts from, ii, 388; and right 546 index words, 11, 402; praise and criti401; silence on subject of, ini, cism, ii, 420, 430: chagrin at 273; mischief in art of, iii, 332; reading, ii, 534; anecdote of, iii, | much self-reliance, iii, 550, 551; 174; visit to, he repeats his architecture of, iv, 336; do not verses, speaks of dr. channing, save thought in, iv, 347; art of, iii, 182, 183; and carlyle, reports iv, 483; faithful, v, 21, 22; talk about, iii, 188; mouthpiece of on, v, 128, i 29; no age in good, v, mind of man, iii, 329; ode lo 286; comes by grace of god, vi, duty, iii, 532; limitations of, iii, 21; reading and, vi, 41; auto535; security in, iii, 560; plati biographical, vi, 73, 74; by god's tudes of, iii, 561; image of, from grace, vi, 132; impossibility until skating, iv, 398; makes sane, v, done, vi, 506; at odd times, vii, 393; call on, vii, 400; his royal 186, 187; manner necessitated, osmunda, viu, 558; his prelude, vii, 319; omit all that can be ix, 151; preëminence gradually ac spared, ix, 436. see also ameriknowledged, x,68; ismanly,x, 267. can, conversation, damascene, work, ephemeral or lasting, iv, 180; experimental, experimenting, gives thought, viii, 74. expression, god, labor, mass, work-cure, viii, 171. moment, perspective, reality, “work on," vi, 398. reforms, rhetoric, skating, working, necessity of, iv, 447. speech, selection, suggestion, works, find their level, iii, 300; | unconscious, words. proper, vii, 140. “writing down," 11, 243. workshop, nature's, iv, 131. writings, town and field, ii, 307; world, our teacher, 11, 87; man creendure, iii, 411. ates his, iv, 64; scriptures of, iv, wyer, robert, on women, iii, 538. 415; your, is new, iv, 475; the wykeham, viii, 349. rich, iv, 481; propping the, v, wyman case, vi, 429. 230, 231; eaten as apple, v, 485; | and opinions, vi, 64; many baits xenophanes, ii, 342, 343. of, vi, 324; self-sufficient, vi, 355; xenophon, iv, 147. odd, vi, 356; the opaline, vi, 401; wears well, viii, 140. | yankee, the, fatal grip of, vi, 326. world-flower, viii, 69. yankeedom, vii, 211. world secret, the, vi, 494. yates, preaching of, iii, 187. world-temple, the, viii, 52. yea, x, 326; and nay, x, 250. worship, vii, 68; formal and poyear, the, 11, 299; the closing, ii, lemic, ii, 424; misplaced, iii, 324; 441. reason of need of, 111, 330; nature year-flower, the, viii, 557. prompts, iv, 36; saint's danger-yearnings, v, 567. ous, v, 555; and invulnerability, york minster, vii, 375. ix, 211. young, milton and, v, 548. worth, in the worthless, 11, 382. young. brigham, ix, 540. wreaths, ix, 92. yourself, true to, iii, 205. wren, christopher, viii, 455. youth, ix, 322; do not lose, v, 307; wright, henry g., charles lane of nature, vi, 112; joy of, ix, 311. and, vi, 291. writer, who has message, ix, 423;| zanoni, bulwer's, vi, 226, 227. and real facts, x, 382. zenith, vi, 394. writers, unmagnetic, v, 403; sug| zeno, ii, 344. gestive, vi, 291, 292; unpopuzodiac, man's, vii, 120. larity of, vii, 502. zobak and eblis, vii, 323. writing, for americans, 11, 14; joy zoroaster, ii, 475; x, 139. in, ii, 71; test of good, poems, ii, 1 zymoses, x, 215. be riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s. a 3 2044 010 308 302 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. wide nors widener book duen book dhe 1302598 sep 10 1990 sep 1 l. 1995 ookpuem denes led 33 de ned ancelled han 3213 widener 299 300 al1323.494 van et taro mia.. risto eccle n.no tas adem esia chr tov an pov tharvard college library from .. the.estate . poe wgurmee top representative men. -representative men: seven lectures. .by r. w. emerson. boston: phillips, sampson, and company. new york : james c. derby. a l/3 & 2, #7 /. harvard college library. from the estate of professor e. w. gurney, march 6, 1907. entered according to act of congress, in the year 1849, my phillips, sampson and company., in the clerk’s office of the district court of massachusetts, printed by wright and hasty, no. 3 water street. contents. vi. uses of great men, .......... 9 4. plato; or, the pallosopher, · ... plato: new readings, ......... 82 iij. — swedenborg ; or, the mystic, . . .. iv. montaigne ; or, the skeptic, • ...... 149 v.— shakspeare ; or, the poet, . .... vi. napoleon ; or, the man of the world, . . . 219 wii. – goethe ; or, the writer, ........ 257 （±（--~~~~♥~==~№. ！7 _）~~~~ …，~（_）~ā …_-+，…） №！~. uses of great men i. uses of great men. it is natural to believe in great men. if the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. all mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. in the legends of the gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. nature seems to exist for the excellent. the world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. they who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and actually, or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. we call our children and our lands by their names. their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every cir10 representative men. cumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them. the search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood. we travel into foreign parts to find his works, – if possible, to get a glimpse of him. but we are put off with fortune instead. you say, the english are practical; the germans are hospitable; in walencia, the climate is delicious; and in the hills of the sacramento, there is gold for the gathering. yes, but i do not travel to find comfortable, rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. but if there were any magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, i would sell all, and buy it, and put myself on the road to-day. the race goes with us on their credit. the knowledge, that in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens. but enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, or of fleas — the more, the worse. our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. the gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. we run all our vessels into one mould. our colossal theologies of judaism, christism, buddhism, mahometism, uses of great men. 11 | | in hp gia c hº e ? are the necessary and structural action of the human mind. the student of history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. he fancies he has a new article. if he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls of the pyramids of thebes. our theism is the purification of the human mind. man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. he believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought. and our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed. if now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern studies, and begin low enough. we must not contend against love, or deny the substantial existence of other people. i know not what would happen to us. we have social strengths. our affection towards others creates a sort of vantage or purchase which nothing will supply. i can do that by another which i cannot do alone. i can say to you what i cannot first say to myself. other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind ; that is, 12 representative men. he seeks other men, and the otherest. the stronger the nature, the more it is reactive. let us have the quality pure. a little genius let us leave alone. a main difference betwixt men is, whether they attend their own affair or not. man is that noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from within, outward. his own affair; though impossible to others, he can open with celerity and in sport. it is easy to sugar to be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. we take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will fall into our hands. i count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. his service to us is of like sort. it costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! it costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men. and every one can do his best thing easiest. “peu de moyens, beaucoup d'effét." he is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others. but he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some promise of explanation. i cannot uses of great men. 13 tell what i would know; but i have observed there are persons who, in their character and actions, answer questions which i have not skill to put. one man answers some question which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. the past and passing religions and philosophies answer some other question. certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless to themselves and to their times, — the sport, perhaps, of some instinct that rules in the air ; — they do not speak to our want. but the great are near; we know them at sight. they satisfy expectation, and fall into place. what is good is effective, generative ; makes for itself room, food, and allies. a sound apple produces seed, — a hybrid does not. is a man in his place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating armies with his purpose, which is thus executed. the river makes its own shores, and each legitimate idea makes its own channels and welcome, — harvests for food, institutions for expression, weapons to fight with, and disciples to explain it. the true artist has the planet for his pedestal ; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes. our common discourse respects two kinds of use or service from superior men. direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men ; direct 14 representative men. giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power, and prophecy. the boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. churches believe in imputed merit. but, in strictness, we are not much cognizant of direct serving. man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. the aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. what is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains. right ethics are central, and go from the soul outward. gift is contrary to the law of the universe. serving others is serving us. i must absolve me to myself. “mind thy affair,' says the spirit : — 'coxcomb, would you meddle with the skies, or with other people ?' indirect service is left. men have a pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in the intellect. behmen and swedenborg saw that things were representative. men are also representative; first, of things, and secondly, of ideas. as plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. the inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; the musician, — severally make an easy way for uses of great men. 15 all, through unknown and impossible confusions. each man is, by secret liking, connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is, as linnaeus, of plants; huber, of bees; fries, of lichens; wan mons, of pears; dalton, of atomic forms; , euclid, of lines; newton, of fluxions. a man is a centre for nature, running out threads of relation through every thing, fluid and solid, material and elemental. the earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to the meridian : so every organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the brain. it waits long, but its turn comes. each plant has its parasite, and each created thing its lover and poet. justice has akready been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine, to corn, and cotton ; but how few materials are yet used by our arts : the mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. it would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined human deliverer. each must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the day in human shape. in the history of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have fashioned a brain for itself. a magnet must be made man, in some gilbert, or swedenborg, or oersted, before the general mind can come to entertain its powers. 16 representative men. if we limit ourselves to the first advantages;– a sober grace adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, comes up as the charm of nature, — the glitter of the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity of angles. light and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, beguile the day of life. the eye repeats every day the first eulogy on things – “he saw that they were good.” we know where to find them; and these performers are relished all the more, after a little experience of the pretending races. we are entitled, also, to higher advantages. something is wanting to science, until it has been humanized. the table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital play, in botany, music, optics, and architecture, another, there are advancements to numbers, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little suspected at first, … when, by union with intellect and will, they ascend into the life, and reappear in conversation, character, and politics. ... but this comes later. we speak now only of our acquaintance with them in their own sphere, and the way in which they seem to fascinate and º draw to them some genius who occupies himself with one thing, all his life long. the possibility , a uses of great men. 17 of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed. each material thing has its celestial side: has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any other. and to these, their ends, all things continually ascend. the gases gather to the solid firmament: the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows; arrives at the quadruped, and walks ; arrives at the man, and thinks. but also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. he is not only representative, but participant. like can only be known by like. the reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of that thing. animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc, of zinc. their quality makes his career; and he can variously publish their virtues, because they compose him. man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason. unpublished nature will have its whole secret told. shall we say that quartz mountains will pulverize into innumerable werners, von buchs, and beaumonts; and the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution i know not what berzeliuses and davys ? 2* 18 representative men. thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of the earth. this quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility of our condition. in one of those celestial days, when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we can only spend it once : we wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate its immense beauty in many ways and places. is this fancy well, in good faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. how easily we adopt their labors | every ship that comes to america got its chart from columbus. every novel is a debtor to homer. every carpenter who shaves with a foreplane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he has any science, is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes and longitudes of our condition. these road-makers on every hand enrich us. we must extend the area of life, and multiply our relations. we are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old earth, as by acquiring a new planet. we are too passive in the reception of these material or semi-material aids. we must not be sacks and stomachs. to ascend one step, — we are uses of great men. 19 better served through our sympathy. activity is contagious. looking where others look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the charm which lured them. napoleon said, “ you must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.” talk much with any man of vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of looking at things in the same light, and, on each occurrence, we anticipate his thought. men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. other help, i find a false appearance. if you affect to give me bread and fire, i perceive that i pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor worse : but all mental and moral force is a positive good. it goes out from you, whether you will or not, and profits me whom you never thought of. i cannot even hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution. we are emulous of all that man can do. cecil's saying of sir walter raleigh, “i know that he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. so are clarendon's portraits,of hampden; “who was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts," 20 representative men. of falkland ; " who was so severe an adorer of truth, that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal, as to dissemble.” we cannot read plutarch, without a tingling of the blood ; and i accept the saying of the chinese mencius : “a sage is the instructer of a hundred ages. when the manners of loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined.” this is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for departed men to touch the quick like our own companions, whose names may not last as long. what is he whom i never think of? whilst in every solitude are those who succor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful manners. there is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. what has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? we will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. we are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the railroad will not again shame us. under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as i think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from coriolanus and gracchus, down to pitt, lafayette, wellington, webster, lamartine. hear the shouts in the street! the people cannot see him enough. they delight in a man. uses of great men. 21 here is a head and a trunk! what a front ! what eyes! atlantean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal inward force to guide the great machine! this pleasure of full expression to that which, in their private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also, much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in literary genius. nothing is kept back. there is fire enough to fuse the mountain of ore. shakspeare's principal merit may be conveyed, in saying that he, of all men, best understands the english language, and can say what he will yet these, unchoked channels and floodgates of expression are only health or fortunate constitution. shakspeare's name suggests other and purely intellectual benefits. senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their medals, swords, and armorial coats, like the addressing to a human being thoughts out of a certain height, and presupposing his intelligence. this honor, which is possible in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius perpetually pays; contented, if now and then, in a century, the proffer is accepted. the indicators of the values of matter are degraded to a sort of cooks and confectioners, on the appearance of the indicators of ideas. genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and 22 representative men. draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. these are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show. we go to the gymnasium and the swimmingschool to see the power and beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure, and a higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as, feats of memory, of mathematical combination, great power of abstraction, the transmutings of the imagination, even versatility, and concentration, as these acts expose the invisible organs and members of the mind, which respond, member for member, to the parts of the body. for, we thus enter a new gymnasium, and learn to choose men by their truest marks, taught, with plato, “to choose those who can, without aid from the eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth and to being.” foremost among these activities, are the summersaults, spells, and resurrections, wrought by the imagination. when this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a thousand times his force. it opens the delicious sense of indeterminate size, and inspires an audacious mental habit. we are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly uses of great men. 23 our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the pit. and this benefit is real, because we are entitled to these enlargements, and, once having passed the bounds, shall never again be quite the miserable pedants we were. the high functions of the intellect are so allied, · that some imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. this class serve us, so that they have the perception of identity and the perception of reaction. the eyes of plato, shakspeare, swedenborg, goethe, never shut on either of these laws. the perception of these laws is a kind of metre of the mind. little minds are little, through failure to see them. even these feasts have their surfeit. our delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald. especially when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we find the examples of oppression. the dominion of aristotle, the ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of luther, of bacon, of locke, — in religion, the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken the name of each founder, are in point. alas! every man is such a victim. the imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. it is the delight of vulgar talent to daz24 representative men. zle and to bind the beholder. but true genius seeks to defend us from itself. true genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new. senses. if a wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. the rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their resources. but nature brings all this about in due time. rotation is her remedy. the soul is impatient of masters, and eager for change. housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable, “she had lived with me long enough.” we are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. we touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. rotation is the law of nature. when nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor ; but none comes, and none will. his class is extinguished with him. in some other and quite different field, the next man will appear; not jefferson, not franklin, but now a great salesman; then a road-contractor ; then a student of fishes; then a buffalo-hunting uses of great men. 25 explorer, or a semi-savage western general. thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but against the best there is a finer remedy. the power which they communicate is not theirs. when we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to plato, but to the idea, to which, also, plato was debtor. i must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class. life is a scale of degrees. between rank and rank of our great men are · wide intervals. mankind have in all ages, attached themselves to a few persons who either by the -quality of that idea they embodied, or by the largeness of their reception, were entitled to the position of leaders and law-givers. these teach us the qualities of primary nature, admit us to the constitution of things. we swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. but life is a sincerity. in lucid intervals we say, “let there be an entrance opened for me into realities ; i have worn the fool's cap too long.' we will know the meaning of our economies and politics. give us the cipher, and, if persons and things are scores of a celestial music, let us read off the strains. we have been cheated of our reason; yet there have been sane men, who enjoyed a rich and related existence. what they 26 representative men. know, they know for us. with each new mind, a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the bible be closed, until the last great man is born. these men correct the delirium of the animal spirits, make us considerate, and engage us to new aims and powers. the veneration of mankind selects these for the highest place. witness the multitude of statues, pictures, and memorials which recall their genius in every city, village, house, and ship:“ ever their phantoms arise oefore us, our loftier brothers, but one in blood; at bed and table they lord it o'er us, with looks of beauty, and words of good.” how to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general mind ? — i am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices. if i work in my garden, and prune an apple-tree, i am well enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. but it comes to mind that a day is gone, and i have got this precious 'nothing done. i go to boston or new york, and run up and down on my affairs : they are sped, but so is the day. i am vexed by the recollection of this price i have paid for a trifling advantage. i remember the peau d'ane, uses of great men. on which whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of the skin was gone for every wish. i go to a convention of philanthropists. do what i can, i cannot keep my eyes off the clock. but if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of carolina or cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me; i forget the clock. i pass out of the sore relation to persons. i am healed of my hurts. i am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods. here is great competition of rich and poor. we live in a market, where is only so much wheat, or wool, or land ; and if i have so much more, every other must have so much less. i seem to have no good, without breach of good manners. nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. every child of the saxon race is educated to wish to be first. it is our system ; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors. but in these new fields there is room : here are no self-esteems, no exclusions. die ser 28 representative men. i admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, and for thoughts ; i like rough and smooth, “scourges of god,” and “darlings of the human race.” i like the first cæsar; and charles v., of spain ; and charles xii., of sweden; richard plantagenet; and bonaparte, in france. i applaud a sufficient man, an officer equal to his office ; captains, ministers, senators. i like a master standing firm on legs of iron, wellborn, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters of his power. sword and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of the world. but i find him greater, when he can abolish himself, and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of persons; this subtiliser, and irresistible upward force, into our thought, destroying individualism; the power so great, that the potentate is nothing. then he is a monarch, who gives a constitution to his people ; a pontiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and releases his servants from their barbarous homages ; an emperor, who can spare his empire. but i intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or three points of service. nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but, wheruses of great men. 29 horns rx ever she mars her creature with some deformity , or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the . bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, · though all the world point their finger at it every day. the worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries. our globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and archangels, but in gossips and nurses. is it not a rare contrivance that lodged the due inertia in every creature, the conserving, resisting energy, the anger at being waked or changed? altogether independent of the intellectual force in each, is the pride of opinion, the security that we are right. not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of perception and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities of all the rest. difference from me is the measure of absurdity. not one lias a misgiving of being wrong. was it not a bright thought that made things cohere with this bitumen, fastest of cements ? but, in the midst of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes by, which thersites too can love and admire 3* 30 representative men. our this is he that should marshal us the way we were going. there is no end to his aid. without plato, we should almost lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. we seem ;" to want, but one, but we want one. we love to associate with heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; and, with the great, our thoughts and manners easily become great. we are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy. there needs, but one wise man in a company, and all are wise.. so rapid is the contagion. great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from egotism, and enable us to see other people and their works. but there are vices and follies incident to whole populations and ages. men resemble their contemporaries, even more than their progenitors. it is observed in old couples, or in persons who have been housemates for a course of years, that they grow alike ; and, if they should live long enough, we should not be able to know them apart. nature abhors these complaisances, which threaten to melt the world into a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin agglutinations. the like assimilation goes on between men of one town, of one sect, of one political party; and the ideas of the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it. viewed from any high point, this city of new york, uses of great men. 31 yonder city of london, the western civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. we keep each other in countenance, and exasperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. the shield against the stingings of conscience, is the universal practice, or our contemporaries. again; it is very easy to be as wise and good as your companions. we learn of our contemporaries what they know, without effort, and almost through the pores of the skin. we catch it by sympathy, or, as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral elevations of her husband. but we stop where they stop. wery hardly can we take another step. the great, or such as hold of nature, and transcend fashions, by their fidelity to universal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, and defend us from our contemporatics. they are the exceptions which we want, where all grows alike. a foreign greatness is the antidote for cabalism. thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in that direction in which he leads us. what indemnification is one great man for populations of pigmies' every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. but a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man. 32 representative men, his attractions warp us from our place. we have become underlings and intellectual suicides. ah! yonder in the horizon is our help:— other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each other. we cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. every hero becomes a bore at last. perhaps voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good jesus, even, “i pray you, let me never hear that man's name again.” they cry up the virtues of george washington, “damn george washington!” is the poor jacobin's whole speech and confutation. but it is human nature's indispensable defence. the centripetence augments the centrifugence. we balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw. there is, however, a speedy limit to the use of heroes. every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness. they are very attractive, and seem at a distance our own: but we are hindered on all sides from approach. the more we are drawn, the more we are repelled. there is something not solid in the good that is done for us. the best discovery the discoverer makes for himself. it has something unreal for his companion, until he too has substantiated it. it seems as if the deity dressed each soul which he sends uses of great men. 33 ces? lors, see these tolero, into nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and, sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote “ not transferable,” and “good for this trip only," on these garments of the soul. there is somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds. the boundaries are invisible, but they are never crossed. there is such good will to impart, and such good will to receive, that each threatens to become the other; but the law of individuality collects its secret strength : you are you, and i am i, and so we remain. for nature wishes every thing to remain itself; and, whilst every individual strives to grow and exclude, and to exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature, nature steadily aims to protect each against every other. each is self-defended. nothing is more marked than the power by which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a world where every benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor, only by continuation of his activity into places where it is not due; where children seem so much at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men are ·too social and interfering. we rightly speak 34 representative men. c of the guardian angels of children. how superior in their security from infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought ! they shed their own abundant beauty on the objects they behold. therefore, they are not at the mercy of such poor educators as we adults. if we huff and chide them, they soon come not to mind it, and get a self-reliance; and if we indulge them to folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere. we need not fear excessive influence. a more generous trust is, permitted. serve the great. stick at no humiliation. grudge no office thou canst render. be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth. compromise thy egotism. who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler ? never mind the taunt of boswellism: the devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. be another: not thyself, but a platonist; not a soul, but a christian ; not a naturalist, but a cartesian ; not a poet, but a shaksperian. in vain, the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee there. on, and forever onward ! the microscope observes a monad or wheelinsect among the infusories circulating in water. con uses of great men. 35 : presently, a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. the ever-proceeding detachment appears not less in all thought, and in society. children think they cannot live without their parents. but, long before they are aware of it, the black dot has appeared, and the detachment taken place. any accident will now reveal to them their independence. but great men:— the word is injurious. is there caste? is there fate? what becomes of the promise to virtue ? the thoughtful youth laments the superfætation of nature. "generous and handsome,' he says, 'is your hero; but look at yonder poor paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of paddies.' why are the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder ? the idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion ; and they make war and death sacred ; — but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill? the cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. it is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low ; for we must have society. is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, 36 representative men. society is a pestalozzian school: all are teachers and pupils in turn. we are equally served by receiving and by imparting. men who know the same things, are not long the best company for each other. but bring to each an intelligent person of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a lake, by cutting a lower basin. it seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. we pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence. and if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about. as to what we call the masses, and common men; there are no common men. all men are at last of a size ; and true art is . only possible, on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! but heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in: its last nobility and exaltation. the heroes of the hour are relatively great : uses of great men. 37 is nisi of a faster growth; or they are such, in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is ripe which is then in request. other days will demand other qualities. some rays escape the common observer, and want a finely adapted eye. ask the great man if there be none greater. his companions are; and not the less great, but the more, that society cannot see them. nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul. one gracious fact emerges from these studies, – that there is true ascension in our love. the reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted, to prove its barbarism. the genius of humanity is the real subject whose biography is written in our annals. we must infer much, and supply many chasms in the record. the history of the universe is symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. no man, in all the procession of famous men, is reason or illumination, or that_essence. we were looking for; but is an exhibition, in some quarter, of new possibilities. could we one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant points compose! the study of many individuals leads us to an elemental region wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all touch by their summits. thought route 38 representative men. and feeling, that break out there, cannot be im. pounded by any fence of personality. this is the key to the power of the greatest men, — their spirit diffuses itself. a new quality of mind travels by night and by day, in concentric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by unknown methods : the union of all minds appears intimate : what gets admission to one, cannot be kept out of any other : the smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the commonwealth of souls. if the disparities of talent and position vanish, when the individuals are seen in the duration which is necessary to complete the career of each ; even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears, when we ascend to the central identity of all the individuals, and know that they are made of the substance which ordaineth and doeth. the genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. the qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more, now less, and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow. no experience is more familiar. once you saw phenixes: they are gone; the world is not therefore disenchanted. the vessels on which you read sacred emblems turn out to be common pottery; but the sense of the pictures is sacred, and you may still read them transferred to the walls uses of great men. 39 of the world. for a time, our teachers serve us personally, as metres or milestones of progress. once they were angels of knowledge, and their figures touched the sky. then we drew near, saw their means, culture, and limits; and they yielded their place to other geniuses. happy, if a few names remain so high, that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed them of a ray. but, at last, we shall cease to look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegated quality. all that respects the individual is temporary and prospective, like the individual himself, who is ascending out of his limits, into a catholic existence. we have never come at the true and best benefit of any genius, so long as we believe him an original force. in the moment when he ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an effect. then he appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and will. the opaque self becomes transparent with the light of the first cause yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we may say, great men exist that there may be greater men. the destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? it is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, sauna online 40 representative men. plato; or, the philosopher. ii. plato; or, the philosopher. among books, plato only is entitled to omar's fanatical compliment to the koran, when he said, “ burn the libraries; for, their value is in this book.” these sentences contain the culture of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools ; these are the fountain-head of literatures. a discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. there was never such range of speculation. qut_of. plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. great havoc makes he among our originalities. we have reached the mountain from which all these drift boulders were detached. the bible of the learned for twenty-two hundred years, every brisk young man, who says in succession fine things to each reluctant generation,-boethius, rabelais, erasmus, bruno, locke, rousseau, naman 44 representative men. alfieri, coleridge, – is some reader of plato, translating into the vernacular, wittily, his good things. even the men of grander proportion suffer some deduction from the misfortune (shall i say?) of coming after this exhausting generalizer. st. augustine, copernicus, newton, behmen, swedenborg, goethe, are likewise his debtors, and must say after him. for it is fair to credit the broadest generalizer with all the particulars deducible from his thesis. plato is philosophy, and philosophy, plato, at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither saxon nor roman have availed to add any idea to his categories. no wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity, and are tinged with his mind. how many great men nature is incessäntly sending up out of night, to be his men, –platonists the alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the elizabethans, not less; sir thomas more, henry more, john hales, john smith, lord bacon, jeremy taylor, ralph cudworth, sydenham, thomas taylor; marcilius ficinus, and picus mirandola. calvinism is in his phaedo: christianity is in it. mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its handbook of morals, the akhlak-y-jalaly, from him. mysticism finds in plato all its texts. this plato; or, the philosopher. 45 citizen of a town in greece is no villager nor patriot. an englishman reads and says, "how english !' a german, — 'how teutonic !' an italian, 'how roman and how greek!! as they say that helen of argos, had that universal beauty that every body felt related to her, so plato seems, to a reader in new england, an american genius. his broad humanity transcends all sectional lines. this range of plato instructs us what to think of the vexed question concerning his reputed works, — what are genuine, what spurious. it is singular that wherever we find a man higher, by a whole head, than any of his contemporaries, it is sure to come into doubt, what are his real works. thus, homer, plato, raffaelle, shakspeare. for these men magnetise their contemporaries, so that their companions can do for them what they can never do for themselves; and the ' great man does thus live in several bodies, and write, or paint, or act, by many hands: and, after some time, it is not easy to say what is the authentic work of the master, and what is only of his school. plato, too, like every great man, consumed his own times. what is a great man, but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food ? he can 46 representative men. spare nothing; he can dispose of every thing. what is not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. hence his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism. but the inventor only knows how to borrow; and society is glad to forget the innumerable laborers who ministered to this architect, and reserves all its gratitude for him. when we are praising plato, it seems we are praising quotations from solon, and sophron, and philolaus. be it so. every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. and this grasping inventor puts all nations under contribution. plato absorbed the learning of his times, — philolaus, timæus, heraclitus, parmenides, and what else; then his master, socrates; and, finding himself still capable of a larger synthesis, — beyond all example then or since,he travelled into italy, to gain what pythagoras had for him; then into egypt, and perhaps still farther east, to import the other element, which europe wanted, into the european mind. this breadth entitles him to stand as the representative of philosophy. he says, in the republic, “such a genius as philosophers must of necessity have, is wont but seldom, in all its parts, to meet in one man; but its different parts generally spring up in different plato ; or, the philosopher. 47 // persons.” every man, who would do any thing well, must come to it from a higher ground. a philosopher must be more than a philosopher. plato is clothed with the powers of a poet, stands upon the highest place of the poet, and, (though i doubt he wanted the decisive gift of lyric expression,) mainly is not a poet, because he chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior purpose. great geniuses have the shortest biographies. their cousins can tell you nothing about them. they lived in their writings, and so their house and street life was trivial and commonplace. if you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them. plato, especially, has no external biography. if he had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing of them. he ground them all into paint. as a good chimney burns its smoke, so a philosopher converts the value of all his fortunes into his intellectual performances. he was born 430, a. c., about the time of the death of pericles; was of patrician connection in his times and city; and is said to have had an early inclination for war; but, in his twentieth year, meeting with socrates, was easily dissuaded from this pursuit, and remained for ten years his scholar, until the death of socrates. he then went to megara; accepted the invitations of dion g. 48 representative men. and of dionysius, to the court of sicily; and went thither three times, though very capriciously treated. he travelled into italy; then into egypt, where he stayed a long time; some say three, some say thirteen years. it is said, he went farther, into babylonia : this is uncertain. returning to athens, he gave lessons, in the academy, to those whom his fame drew thither; and died, as we have received it, in the act of writing, at eighty-one years. but the biography of plato is interior. we are to account for the supreme elevation of this man, in the intellectual history of our race, how it happens that, in proportion to the culture of men, they become his scholars; that, as our jewish bible has implanted itself in the tabletalk and household life of every man and woman in the european and american nations, so the writings of plato have preoccupied every school of learning, every lover of thought, every church, every poet, — making it impossible to think, on certain levels, except through him. he stands between the truth and every man's mind, and has almost impressed language, and the primary forms of thought, with his name and seal. i am struck, in reading him, with the extreme modernness of his style and spirit. here is the germ of that europe we know so well, in its long history of : plato ; or, the philosopher. 49 : arts and arms: here are all its traits, already discernible in the mind of plato, and in none before him. it has spread itself since into a hundred histories, but has added no new element. this perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by any thing short-lived or local, but abode by real and abiding traits. how plato came thus to be europe, and philosophy-andthis could not have happened, without a sound, sincere, and catholic man, able to honor, at the same time, the ideal, or laws of the mind, and fate, or the order of nature.the first period of a nation, as of an individual, is the period of unconscious strength. children cry, scream, and stamp with fury, unable to express their desires. as soon as they can speak and tell their want, and the reason of it, they become gentle. in adult life, whilst the perceptions are obtuse, men and women talk vehemently and superlatively, blunder and quarrel: their manners are full of desperation; their speech is full of oaths. as soon as, with culture, things have cleared up a little, and they see them no longer in lumps and masses, but accurately distributed, they desist from that weak vehemence, and explain their 5 50 representative men. meaning in detail. if the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest. the same weakness and want, on a higher plane, occurs daily in the education of ardent young men and women. 'ah! you don't understand me; i have never met with any one who comprehends me :' and they sigh and weep, write verses, and walk alone, — fault of power to express their precise meaning. in a month or two, through the favor of their good genius, they meet some one so related as to assist their volcanic estate ; and, good communication being once established, they are thenceforward good citizens. it is ever thus. the progress is to accuracy, to skill, to truth, from blind force. sit there is a moment, in the history of every nation, when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripeness, and have not yet become microscopic : so that man, at ine that instant, extends across the entire scale ; and, with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses, by his eyes and brain, with a solar and stellar creation. that is the moment :,"of adult health, the culmination of power. sim. such is the history of europe, in all points; and such in philosophy. its early records, almost per. ished, are of the immigrations from asia, bringing with them the dreams of barbarians ; a confusion plato ; or, the philosopher. 51 of crude notions of morals, and of natural philosophy, gradually subsiding, through the partial insight of single teachers. before pericles, came the seven wise masters; and we have the beginnings of geometry, metaphysics, and ethics: then the partialists, – deducing the origin of things from flux or water, or from air, or from fire, or from mind. all mix with these causes mythologic pictures. at last, comes plato, the distributor, who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or whooping; for he can define. he leaves with asia the vast and superlative; he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. “he shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define.” this defining is philosophy. philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world. two cardinal facts lie forever at the base ; the one, and the two. — 1. unity, or identity; and, 2. variety. we unite all things, by perceiving the law which pervades them; by perceiving the superficial differences, and the profound resemblances. but every mental act, — this very perception of identity or oneness, recognizes the difference of things. oneness and otherness. it is impossible to speak, or to think, without embracing both. the mind is urged to ask for one cause of many 52 representative men. effects; then for the cause of that; and again the cause, diving still into the profound : self-assured that it shall arrive at an absolute and sufficient one, – a one that shall be all. “in the midst of the sun is the light, in the midst of the light is truth, and in the midst of truth is the imperishable being,” say the vedas. all philosophy, of east and west, has the same centripetence. · urged by an opposite necessity, the mind returns from the one, to that which is not one, but other for many; from cause to effect; and affirms the necessary existence of variety, the self-existence of both, as each is involved in the other. these strictly-blended elements it is the problem of thought to separate, and to reconcile. their existence is mutually contradictory and exclusive ; and each so fast slides into the other, that we can never say what is one, and what it is not. the proteus is as nimble in the highest as in the lowest grounds, when we contemplate the one, the true, the good, — as in the surfaces and extremities of matter. in all nations, there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the fundamental unity. the raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one being. this tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the east, and chiefly, in the indian seriptures, in no plato ; or, the philosopher. 53 the vedas, the bhagavat geeta, and the vishnu, purana. those writings contain little else than this idea, and they rise to pure and sublime strains in celebrating it. e, the same : friend and foe are of one stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff; and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of form are unimportant. “you are fit,” (says the supreme krishna to a sage,) “to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. that which i am, thou art, and that also is this world, with its gods, and heroes, and mankind. men contemplate distinctions, because they are stupefied with ignorance.” “the words i and mine constitute ignorance. what is the great end of all, you shall now learn from me. it is soul, -one in all bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, prečminent over nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities, with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present, and to come. the knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one’s own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of things. as one diffusive air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a scale, so the nature of the great spirit is single, though its 5% 54 representative men. forms be manifold, arising from the consequences of acts. when the difference of the investing form, as that of god, or the rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction.” “ the whole world is but a manifestation of vishnu, who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise, as not differing from, but as the same as themselves. i neither am going nor coming; nor is my dwelling in any one place; nor art thou, thou; nor are others, others; nor am i, i.” as if he had said, “ all is for the soul, and the soul is vishnu; and animals and stars are transient paintings; and light is whitewash; and durations are deceptive ; and form is imprisonment; and heaven itself a decoy. that which the soul seeks is resolution into being, above form, out of tartarus, and out of heaven, --liberation from nature. if speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly backwards to diversity. the first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. nature is the manifold. the unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. nature opens and creates. these two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many. one is being; the other, intellect: one is necessity; the other, freedom: one, rest; the other, motion: one, power; the other, distribution: one, plato; or, the philosopher. 55 strength; the other, pleasure: one, consciousness; the other, definition: one, genius; the other, talent: one, earnestness; the other, knowledge : one, possession; the other, trade : one, caste ; the other, culture : one, king; the other, democracy: and, if we dare carry these generalizations a step higher, and name the last tendency of both, we might say, that the end of the one is escape from organization,– pure science; and the end of the other is the highest instrumentality, or use of means, or executive deity. each student adheres, by temperament and by habit, to the first or to the second of these gods of the mind. by religion, he tends to unity; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. a too rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to parts and particulars, are the twin dangers of speculation. to this partiality the history of nations corresponded. the country of unity, of immovable institutions, the seat 'of a philosophy delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, immense fate, is asia ; and it realizes this faith in the social institution of caste. on the other side, the genius of europe is active and creative : it resists caste by culture ; its philosophy was a discipline; it is a land of arts, inventions, trade, 56 representative men. freedom. if the east loved infinity, the west delighted in boundaries. european civility is the triumph of talent, the extension of system, the sharpened understanding, adaptive skill, delight in forms, delight in manifestation, in comprehensible results. pericles, athens, greece, had been working in this element with the joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of the detriment of an excess. they saw before them no sinister political economy; no ominous malthus; no paris or london ; no pitiless subdivision of classes, — the doom of the pin-makers, the doom of the weavers, of dressers, of stockingers, of carders, of spinners, of colliers; no ireland ; no indian caste, superinduced by the efforts of europe to throw it off. the understanding was in its health and prime. art was in its splendid novelty. they cut the pentelican marble as if it were snow, and their perfect works in architecture and sculpture seemed things of course, not more difficult than the completion of a new ship at the medford yards, or new mills at lowell. these things are in course, and may be taken for granted. the roman legion, byzantine legislation, english trade, the saloons of versailles, the cafés of paris, the steam-mill, steamboat, steam-coach, may all be seen in perspective; the plato; or, the philosopher. 57 town-meeting, the ballot-box, the newspaper and cheap press. meantime, plato, in egypt and in eastern pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one deity, in which all things are absorbed. the unity of asia, and the detail of europe ; the infinitude of the asiatic soul, and the defining, result-loving, machinemaking, surface-seeking, opera-going europe, — plato came to join, and by contact, to enhance the energy of each. the excellence of europe and asia are in his brain. metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of europe ; he substructs the religion of asia, as the base. in short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements. it is as easy to be great as to be small. the reason why we do not at once believe in admirable souls, is because they are not in our experience. in actual life, they are so rare, as to be incredible ; but, primarily, there is not only no presumption against them, but the strongest presumption in favor of their appearance. but whether voices were heard in the sky, or not; whether his mother or his father dreamed that the infant man-child was the son of apollo; whether a swarm of bees settled on his lips, or not; a man who could see two sides of a thing was born. the wonderful synthesis só familiar in nature; in 58 representative men. the upper and the under side of the medal of jove; the union of impossibilities, which reappears in every object; its real and its ideal power, — was now, also, transferred entire to the consciousness of a man. the balanced soul came. if he loved abstract truth, he saved himself by propounding the most popular of all principles, the absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges the judge. if he made transcendental distinctions, he fortified himself by drawing all his illustrations from sources disdained by orators and polite conversers; from mares and puppies; from pitchers and soup-ladles; from cooks and criers ; the shops of potters, horse-doctors, butchers, and fishmongers. he cannot forgive in himself a partiality, but is resolved that the two poles of thought shall appear in his statement. his argument and his sentence are self-poised and spherical. the two poles appear; yes, and become two hands, to grasp and appropriate their own. every great artist has been such by synthesis. our strength is transitional, alternating; or, shall i say, a thread of two strands. the sea-shore, sea seen from shore, shore seen from sea; the taste of two metals in contact; and our enlarged powers at the approach and at the departure of a friend ; the experience of poetic creativeness, plato; or, the philosopher. 59 which is not found in staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one to the other, which must therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitional surface as possible ; this command of two elements must explain the power and the charm of plato. art expresses the one, or the same by the different. thought seeks to know unity in unity i poetry to show it by variety; that is always by an object or symbolplato keeps the two vases, one of aether and one of pigment, at his side, and invariably uses both. things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive. plato turns incessantly the obverse and the reverse of the medal of jove. to take an example: — the physical philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit; theories mechanical and chemical in their genius. plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the world, but bare inventories and lists. to the study of nature he therefore prefixes the dogma, – “let us declare the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose the universe. he was good; and he who is good has no kind of envy. ex60 representative mex. empt from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth.” “ all things are for the sake of the good, and it is the cause of erery thing beautiful.” this dogma animates and impersonates his philosophy. the synthesis which makes the character of his mind appears in all his talents. where there is great compass of wit, we usually find excelleni cies that combine easily in the living man, but in description appear incompatible. the mind of plato is not to be exhibited by a chinese catalogue, but is to be apprehended by an original i mind in the exercise of its original power. in · him the freest abandonment is united with the precision of a geometer. his daring imagination · gives him the more solid grasp of facts; as the birds of highest flight have the strongest alar bones. his patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance, edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and paralyses, adorn the soundest health and strength of frame. according to the old sentence, “ if jove should descend to the earth, he would speak in the style of plato.” with this palatial air, there is, for the direct aim of several of his works, and running through the plato ; or, the philosopher. 61 tenor of them all, a certain earnestness, which mounts, in the republic, and in the phaedo, to piety. he has been charged with feigning sickness at the time of the death of socrates. but the anecdotes that have come down from the times attest his manly interference before the people in his master's behalf, since even the savage cry of the assembly to plato is preserved; and the indignation towards popular government, in many of his pieces, expresses a personal exasperation. he has a probity, a native reverence for justice and honor, and a humanity which makes him tender for the superstitions of the people. add to this, he believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, are from a wisdom of which man is not master; that the gods never philosophise; but, by a celestial mania, these miracles are accomplished. horsed on these winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits worlds which flesh cannot enter: he saw the souls in pain; he hears the doom of the judge; he beholds the penal metempsychosis; the fates, with the rock and shears; and hears the intoxicating hum of their spindle. but his circumspection never forsook him. one would say, he had read the inscription on the gates of busyrane, – “be bold; ” and on the second gate, – “be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold:” and then again had paused well at the third gate, – 6 62 representative men. “be not too bold.” his strength is like the momentum of a falling planet; and his discretion, the return of its due and perfect curve, – so excellent is his greek love of boundary, and his skill in definition. in reading logarithms, one is not more secure, than in following plato in his flights. nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky. he has finished his thinking, before he brings it to the reader; and he abounds in the surprises of a literary master. he has that opulence which furnishes, at every turn, the precise weapon he needs. as the rich man wears no more garments, drives no more horses, sits in no more chambers, than the poor, – but has that one dress, or equipage, or instrument, which is fit for the hour and the need; so plato, in his plenty, is never restricted, but has the fit word. there is, indeed, no weapon in all the armory of wit which he did not possess and use, – epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, satire, and irony, down to the customary and polite. his illustrations are poetry, and his jests illustrations. socrates' profession of obstetric art is good philosophy; and his finding that word “cookery,” and “adulatory art,” for rhetoric, in the gorgias, does us a substantial service still. no orator can measure in effect with him who can give good nicknames. plato; or, the philosopher. 63 what moderation, and understatement, and checking his thunder in mid volley! he has good-naturedly furnished the courtier and citizen with all that can be said against the schools. “for philosophy is an elegant thing, if any one modestly meddles with it; but, if he is conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts the man.” he could well afford to be generous, – he, who from the sunlike centrality and reach of his vision, had a faith without cloud. such as his perception, was his speech : he plays with the doubt, and makes the most of it: he paints and quibbles; and by and by comes a sentence that moves the sea and land. the admirable earnest comes not only at intervals, in the perfect yes and no of the dialogue, but in bursts of light. “i, therefore, callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how i may exhibit my soul before the judge in a healthy condition. wherefore, disregarding the honors that most men value, and looking to the truth, i shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as i can; and, when i die, to die so. and i invite all other men, to the utmost of my power; and you, too, i in turn invite to this contest, which, i affirm, surpasses all contests here." he is a great average man; one who, to the best thinking, adds a proportion and equality in his 64 representative men. faculties, so that men see in him their own dreams and glimpses made available, and made to pass for what they are. a great common sense is his warrant and qualification to be the world's interpreter. he has reason, as all the philosophic and poetic class have : but he has, also, what they have not, — this strong solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the appearances of the world, and build a bridge from the streets of cities to the atlantis. he omits never this graduation, but slopes his thought, however picturesque the precipice on one side, to an access from the plain. he never writes in ecstasy, or catches us up into poetic raptures. plato apprehended the cardinal facts. he could prostrate himself on the earth, and cover his eyes, whilst he adored that which cannot be numbered, or guaged, or known, or named : that of which every thing can be affirmed and denied: that “which is entity and nonentity.” he called it super-essential. he even stood ready, as in the parmenides, to demonstrate that it was so, -that this being exceeded the limits of intellect. no man ever more fully acknowledged the ineffable. having paid his homage, as for the human race, to the illimitable, he then stood erect, and for the human race affirmed, “and yet things are knowplato; or, the philosopher. 65 able !'-that is, the asia in his mind was first heartily honored, — the ocean of love and power, before form, before will, before knowledge, the same, the good, the one ; and now, refreshed and empowered by this worship, the instinct of europe, namely, culture, returns; and he cries, yet things are knowable! they are knowable, because, being from one, things correspond. there is a scale : and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide. as there is a science of stars, called astronomy; a science of quantities, called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences, — i call it dialectic, — which is the intellect discriminating the false and the true. it rests on the observation of identity and diversity ; for, to judge, is to unite to an object the notion which belongs to it. the sciences, even the best, — mathematics, and astronomy, -are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it. dialectic must teach the use of them. “this is of that rank that no intellectual man will enter on any study for its own sake, but only with a view to advance himself in that one sole science which embraces all.” “the essence or peculiarity of man is to comprehend a whole; or that which, in the diversity 6* 66 representative men. of sensations, can be comprised under a rational unity.” “the soul which has never perceived the truth, cannot pass into the human form.” i announce to men the intellect. i announce the good of being interpenetrated by the mind that made nature : this benefit, namely, that it can understand nature, which it made and maketh. nature is good, but intellect is better: as the lawgiver is before the law-receiver. i give you joy, o sons of men that truth is altogether wholesome ; that we have hope to search out what might be the very self of every thing. the misery of man is to be baulked of the sight of essence, and to be stuffed with conjectures: but the supreme good is reality; the supreme beauty is reality; and all virtue and all felicity depend on this science of the real : for courage is nothing else than knowledge : the fairest fortune that can befall man, is to be guided by his damon to that which is truly his own. this also is the essence of justice, — to attend every one his own: nay, the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at, except through direct contemplation of the divine essence. courage, then for, “the persuasion that we must search that which we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, braver, and more industrious, than if we thought it impossible to discover what we do not know, and useless to plato; or, the philosopher. 67 search for it.” he secures a position not to be commanded, by his passion for reality; valuing hilosophy only as it is the pleasure of con. with rºi being -thus, full of the genius of europe, he said, culture. he saw the institutions of sparta, and recognized more genially, one would say, than any since, the hope of education. he delighted in every accomplishment, in every graceful and useful and truthful performance i above all, in the splendors of genius and intellectual achievement. “the whole of life, o socrates, said glauco, is, with the wise, the measure of hearing such discourses as these.” what a price he sets on the feats of talent, on the powers of pericles, of isocrates, of parmenides | what price, above price, on the talents themselves! he called the several faculties, gods, in his beautiful personation, what value he gives to the art of gymnastic in education; what to geometry; what to music ; what to astronomy, whose appeasing and medicinal power he celebrates . in the timaeus, he indicates the highest employment of the eyes. “by us it is asserted, that god invented and bestowed sight on us for this purpose, – that, on surveying the circles of intelligence in the heavens, we might properly employ those of our own minds, which, though disturbed when com68 representative men. pared with the others that are uniform, are still allied to their circulations; and that; having thus learned, and being naturally possessed of a correct reasoning faculty, we might, by imitating the uniform revolutions of divinity, set right our own wanderings and blunders.” and in the republic, — 5 by each of these disciplines, a certain organ of the soul is both purified and reanimated, which is blinded and buried by studies of another kind ; an organ better worth saving than ten thousand eyes, since truth is perceived by this alone.” he said, culture; but he first admitted its basis, and gave immeasurably the first place to advantages of nature. his patrician tastes laid stress on the distinctions of birth in the doctrine of the organic character and disposition is the origin of caste. “such as were fit to govern, «into their composition the informing deity mingled gold: into the military, silver ; iron and in brass for husbandmen and artificers.” the east confirms itself, in all ages, in this faith. the i'? koran is explicit on this point of caste. “men have their metal, as of gold and silver. those of you who were the worthy ones in the state of ignorance, will be the worthy ones in the state of faith, as soon as you embrace it.” plato was not less firm. “of the five orders of things, only plato ; or, the philosopher. 69 four can be taught to the generality of men.” in the republic, he insists on the temperaments of the youth, as first of the first. a happier example of the stress laid on nature, is in the dialogue with the young theages, who wishes to receive lessons from socrates. socrates declares that, if some have grown wise by associating with him, no thanks are due to him ; but, simply, whilst they were with him, they grew wise, not because of him ; he pretends not to know the way of it. “it is adverse to many, nor can those be benefited by associating with me, whom the daemon opposes; so that it is not possible for me to live with these. with many, however, he does not prevent me from conversing, who yet are not at all benefited by associating with me. such, o theages, is the association with me; for, if it pleases the god, you will make great and rapid proficiency: you will not, if he does not please. judge whether it is not safer to be instructed by some one of those who have power over the benefit which they impart to men, than by me, who benefit or not, just as it may happen.” as if he had said, ‘i have no system. i cannot be answerable for you. you will be what you must. if there is love between us, inconceivably delicious and profitable will our intercourse be; if not, your time is lost, and you 70 representative men. will only annoy me. i shall seem to you stupid, and the reputation i have, false. quite above us, beyond the will of you or me, is this secret affinity or repulsion laid. all my good is magnetic, and i educate, not by lessons, but by going about my business. he said, culture ; he said, nature : and he failed not to add, "there is also the divine.' there is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power, and organizes a huge instrumentality of means. plato, lover of limits, loved the illimitable, saw the enlargement and nobility which come from truth itself and good itself, and attempted, as if on the part of the human intellect, once for all, to do it adequate homage, — homage fit for the immense soul to receive, and yet homage becoming the intellect to render. he said, then, “our faculties run out into infinity, and return to us thence. we can define but a little way; but here is a fact which will not be skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is suicide. all things are in a scale ; and, begin where we will, ascend and ascend. all things are symbolical; and what we call results are beginnings.' a key to the method and completeness of plato is his twice bisected line. after he has illustrated the relation between the absolute good and true, plato the philosopher. and the forms of the intelligible world, he says:“let there be a line cut in two unequal parts. cut again each of these two parts, — one representing the visible, the other the intelligible world, and these two new sections, representing the bright part and the dark part of these worlds, you will have, for one of the sections of the visible world, — images, that is, both shadows and reflections; for the other section, the objects of these images, — that is, plants, animals, and the works of art and nature. then divide the intelligible world in like manner; the one section will be of opinions and hypotheses, and the other section, of truths.” to these four sections, the four operations of the soul correspond, — conjecture, faith, understanding, reason. as every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme good. the universe is perforated by a million channels for his activity. all things mount and mount. all his thought has this ascension ; in phædrus, teaching that beauty is the most lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, and shedding desire and confidence through the universe, wherever it onters, and it enters, in some degree into all things: but that there is another, which is as much more beautiful than beauty, as beauty is than chaos; namely, wisdom, which our wonderful organ of 72 representative men, sight cannot reach unto, but which, could it be seen, would ravish us with its perfect reality.” he has the same regard to it as the source of excellence in works of art. “when an artificer, in the fabrication of any work, looks to that which always subsists according to the same; and, employing a model of this kind, expresses its idea and power in his work; it must follow, that his production should be beautiful. but when he beholds that 'which is born and dies, it will be far from beautiful.” thus ever : the banquet is a teaching in the same spirit, familiar now to all the poetry, and to all the sermons of the world, that the love of the sexes is initial; and symbolizes, at a distance, the passion of the soul for that immense lake of beauty it exists to seek. this faith in the divinity is never out of mind, and constitutes the limitation of all his dogmas. body cannot teach wisdom; — god only. in the same mind, he constantly affirms that virtue cannot be taught; that it is not a science, but an inspiration ; that the greatest goods are produced to us through mania, and are assigned to us by a divine gift. this leads me to that central figure, which he has established in his academy, as the organ through which every considered opinion shall be announced, and whose biography he has likewise plato ; or, the philosopher. • 73 so labored, that the historic facts are lost in the light of plato's mind. socrates and plato are the double star, which the most powerful instruments will not entirely separate. socrates, again, in his traits and genius, is the best example of that synthesis which constitutes plato's extraordinary power. socrates, a man of humble stem, but honest enough ; of the commonest history; of a personal homeliness so remarkable, as to be a cause of wit in others, – the rather that his broad good nature and exquisite taste for a joke invited the sally, which was sure to be paid. the players personated him on the stage; the potters copied his ugly face on their stone jugs. he was a cool fellow, adding to his humor a perfect temper, and a knowledge of his man, be he who he might whom he talked with, which laid the companion open to certain defeat in any debate, – and in debate he immoderately delighted. the young men are prodigiously fond of him, and invite him to their feasts, whither he goes for conversation. he can drink, too ; has the strongest head in athens; and, after leaving the whole party under the table, goes away, as if nothing had happened, to begin new dialogues with somebody that is sober. in short, he was what our countrypeople call an old one. he affected a good many citizen-like tastes, was * 7 74 representative men. monstrously fond of athens, hated trees, never willingly went beyond the walls, knew the old characters, valued the bores and philistines, thought every thing in athens a little better than any thing in any other place. he was plain as a quaker in habit and speech, affected low phrases, and illustrations from cocks and quails, soup-pans and sycamore-spoons, grooms and farriers, and unnameable offices, – especially if he talked with any superfine person. he had a franklinlike wisdom. thus, he showed one who was afraid to go on foot to olympia, that it was no more than his daily walk within doors, if continuously extended, would easily reach. plain old uncle as he was, with his great ears, – an immense talker, — the rumor ran, that, on one or two occasions, in the war with boeotia, he had shown a determination which had covered the retreat of a troop ; and there was some story that, under cover of folly, he had, in the city government, when one day he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a courage in opposing singly the popular voice, which had well-nigh ruined him. he is very poor; but then he is hardy as a soldier, and can live on a few olives; usually, in the strictest sense, on bread and water, except when entertained by his friends. his necessary expenses were exceedingly small, and no one could plato; or, the philosopher. 75 live as he did. he wore no under garment; his upper garment was the same for summer and winter; and he went barefooted; and it is said that, to procure the pleasure, which he loves, of talking at his ease all day with the most elegant and cultivated young men, he will now and then return to his shop, and carve statues, good or bad, for sale. however that be, it is certain that he had grown to delight in nothing else than this conversation; and that, under his hypocritical pretence of knowing nothing, he attacks and brings down all the fine speakers, all the fine philosophers of athens, whether natives, or strangers from asia* minor and the islands. nobody can refuse to talk with him, he is so honest, and really curious to know; a man who was willingly confuted, if he did not speak the truth, and who willingly confuted others, asserting what was false ; and not less pleased when confuted than when confuting; for he thought not any evil happened to men, of such a magnitude as false opinion respecting the just and unjust. a pitiless disputant, who knows nothing, but the bounds of whose conquering intelligence no man had ever reached; whose temper was imperturbable; whose dreadful logic was always leisurely and sportive; so careless and ignorant, as to disarm the wariest, and draw them, in the pleasantest manner, into horrible doubts 76 representative men. and confusion. but he always knew the way out; knew it, yet would not tell it. no escape; he drives them to terrible choices by his dilemmas, and tosses the hippiases and gorgiases, with their grand reputations, as a boy tosses his balls. the tyrannous realist — meno has discoursed a thousand times, at length, on virtue, before many companies, and very well, as it appeared to him; but, at this moment, he cannot even tell what it is, – this cramp-fish of a socrates has so bewitched him. this hard-headed humorist, whose strange conceits, drollery, and bonhommie, diverted the young patricians, whilst the rumor of his sayings and quibbles gets abroad every day, turns out, in the sequel, to have a probity as invincible as his logic, and to be either insane, or, at least, under cover of this play, enthusiastic in his religion. when accused before the judges of subverting the popular creed, he affirms the immortality of the soul, the future reward and punishment; and, refusing to recant, in a caprice of the popular government, was condemned to die, and sent to the prison. socrates entered the prison, and took away all ignominy from the place, which could not be a prison, whilst he was there. crito bribed the jailer; but socrates would not go out by treachery. “whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is plato ; or, the philosopher. 77 to be preferred before justice. these things i hear like pipes and drums, whose sound makes me deaf to every thing you say.” the fame of this prison, the fame of the discourses there, and the drinking of the hemlock, are one of the most precious passages in the history of the world. the rare coincidence, in one ugly body, of the droll and the martyr, the keen street and market debater with the sweetest saint known to any history at that time, had forcibly struck the mind of plato, so capacious of these contrasts; and the figure of socrates, by a necessity, placed itself in the foreground of the scene, as the fittest dispenser of the intellectual treasures he had to communicate. it was a rare fortune, that this aesop of the mob, and this robed scholar, should meet, to make each other immortal in their mutual faculty. the strange synthesis, in the character of socrates, capped the synthesis in the mind of plato. moreover, by this means, he was able, in the direct way, and without envy, to avail himself of the wit and weight of socrates, to which unquestionably his own debt was great ; and these derived again their principal advantage from the perfect art of plato. it remains to say, that the defect of plato in power is only that which results inevitably from his quality. he is intellectual in his aim; and, 7% 78 representative men. therefore, in expression, literary. mounting into heaven, diving into the pit, expounding the laws of the state, the passion of love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the parting soul, — he is literary, and never otherwise. it is almost the sole deduction from the merit of plato, that his writings have not, what is, no doubt, incident to this regnancy of intellect in his work, — the vital authority which the screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered arabs and jews possess. there is an interval ; and to cohesion, contact is necessary. i know not what can be said in reply to this criticism, but that we have come to a fact in the nature of things : an oak is not an orange. the qualities of sugar remain with sugar, and those of salt, with salt. in the second place, he has not a system. the dearest defenders and disciples are at fault. he attempted a theory of the universe, and his theory is not complete or self-evident. one man thinks he means this; and another, that: he has said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in another place. he is charged with having failed to make the transition from ideas to matter. here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or plato; or, the philosopher. 79 second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches. the longest wave is quickly lost in the sea. plato would willingly have a platonism, a known and accurate expression for the world, and it should be accurate. it shall be the world passed through the mind of plato, — nothing less. every atom shall have the platonic tinge; every atom, every relation or quality you knew before, you shall know again, and find here, but now ordered ; not nature, but art. and you shall feel that alexander indeed overran, with men and horses, some countries of the planet ; but countries, and things of which countries are made, elements, planet itself, laws of planet and of men, have passed through this man as bread into his body, and become no longer bread, but body: so all this mammoth morsel has become plato. he has clanned copyright on the world. this is the ambition of individualism. but the mouthful proves too large. boa constrictor has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. he falls abroad in the attempt; and biting, gets strangled: the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth. there he perishes : unconquered nature lives on, and forgets him. so it fares with all: so must it. fare with plato. in view of eternal nature, plato turns out to be philosophical exercitations. he 80 representative men. argues on this side, and on that. the acutest german, the lovingest disciple, could never tell what platonism was ; indeed, admirable texts can be quoted on both sides of every great question from him. these things we are forced to say, if we must "a consider the effort of plato, or of any philosopher, to dispose of nature, — which will not be disposed of. no power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. the perfect enigma remains. but there is an injustice in assuming this ambition for plato. let us not seem to treat with flippancy his venerable name. men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted his transcendant claims. the way to know him, is to compare him, not with nature, but with other men. how many ages have gone by, and he remains unapproached ! a chief structure of human wit, like karnac, or the mediæval cathedrals, or the etrurian remains, it requires all the breadth of human faculty to know it. i think it is trueliest seen, when seen with the most respect. his sense deepens, his merits multiply, with study. when we say, here is a fine collection of fables; or, when we praise the style ; or the common sense ; or arithmetic; we speak as boys, and much of our impatient criticism of the dialectic, i suspect, is no better. plato ; or, the philosopher. 81 the criticism is like our impatience of miles, when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards. the great-eyed plato proportioned the lights and shades after the genius of our life. plato: new readings. the publication, in mr. bohn's “serial library,” of the excellent translations of plato, which we esteem one of the chief benefits the cheap press has yielded, gives us an occasion to take hastily a few more notes of the elevation and bearings of this fixed star; or, to add a bulletin, like the journals, of plato at the latest dates. modern science, by the extent of its generalization, has learned to indemnify the student of man for the defects of individuals, by tracing growth and ascent in races; and, by the simple expedient of lighting up the vast background, generates a feeling of complacency and hope. the human being has the saurian and the plant in his rear. his arts and sciences, the easy issue of his brain, look glorious when prospectively beheld from the distant brain of ox, crocodile, and fish. it seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she plato : new readings. 83 had turned out five or six men, as homer, phidias, menu, and columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. these samples attested the virtue of the tree. these were a clear amelioration of trilobite and saurus, and a good basis for further proceeding. with this artist, time and space are cheap, and she is insensible to what you say of tedious preparation. she waited tranquilly the flowing periods of paleontology, for the hour to be struck when man should arrive. then periods must pass before the motion of the earth can be suspected; then before the map of the instincts and the cultivable powers can be drawn. but as of races, so the succession of individual men is fatal and beautiful, and plato has the fortune, in the history of mankind, to mark an epoch. plato's fame does not stand on a syllogism, or on any masterpieces of the socratic reasoning, or on any thesis, as, for example, the immortality of the soul. he is more than an expert, or a schoolman, or a geometer, or the prophet of a peculiar message. he represents the privilege of the intollect, the power, namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so disclosing, in. eyery fact, a germ of expansion. these expansions are in the essence of thought. the naturalist would never help us to them by any discoveries of the extent of the universe, but is as poor, 84 representative men. when cataloguing the resolved nebula of orion, as when measuring the angles of an acre. but the republic of plato, by these expansions, may be said to require, and so to anticipate, the astronomy of laplace. the expansions are organic. the mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose. in ascribing to plato the merit of announcing them, we only say, here was a more complete man, who could apply to nature the whole scale of the senses, the understanding, and the reason. these expansions, or extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon falls on . . . our natural vision, and, by this second sight, dis* : “covering the long lines of law which shoot in every direction. everywhere he stands on a path which has no end, but runs continuously round the universe. therefore, every word becomes an exponent of nature. whatever he looks upon discloses a second sense, and ulterior senses. his perception of the generation of contraries, of death out of life, and life out of death, – that law by which, in nature, decomposition is recomposition, and putrefaction and cholera are only signals of a new creation; his discernment of the little in the large, and the large in the small; studying the state in the citizen, and the citizen in the state; and leaving it doubtful whether he exhibited the * * * plato: new readings. 85 republic as an allegory on the education of the private soul ; his beautiful definitions of ideas, of time, of form, of figure, of the line, sometimes hypothetically given, as his defining of virtue, courage, justice, temperance; his love of the apologue, and his apologues themselves; the cave of trophonius; the ring of gyges; the charioteer and two horses ; the golden, silver, brass, and iron temperaments; theuth and thamus; and the visions of hades and the fates, — fables which have imprinted themselves in the human memory like the signs of the zodiac ; his soliform eye and his boniform soul; his doctrine of assimilation; his doctrine of reminiscence; his clear vision of the laws of return, or reaction, which secure instant justice throughout the universe, instanced every where, but specially in the doctrine, “what comes from god to us, returns from us to god," and in socrates' belief that the laws below are sisters of the laws above. more striking examples are his moral conclusions. plato affirms the coincidence of science and virtue ; for vice can never know itself and virtue ; but virtue knows both itself and vice. the eye attested that justice was best, as long as it was profitable ; plato affirms that it is profitable throughout; that the profit is intrinsic, though the just conceal his justice from gods and men ; that 86 representative men. it is better to suffer injustice, than to do it; thar the sinner ought to covet punishment; that the lie was more hurtful than homicide ; and that ignorance, or the involuntary lie, was more calami'tous than involuntary homicide ; that the soul is unwillingly deprived of true opinions; and that no man sins willingly ; that the order or proceeding of nature was from the mind to the body; and, though a sound body cannot restore an unsound mind, yet a good soul can, by its virtue, render the body the best possible. the intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. the right punishment of one out of tune, is to make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them every thing which they need. this second sight explains the stress laid on geometry. he saw that the globe of earth 'was not more lawful and precise than was the supersensible ; that a celestial geometry was in place there, as a logic of lines and angles here below; that the world was throughout mathematical ; the proportions are constant of oxygen, azote, and lime; there is just so much water, and slate, and plato: new readings. 87 magnesia; not less are the proportions constant of the moral elements. this eldest goethe, hating varnish and falsehood, delighted in revealing the real at the base of the accidental; in discovering connection, continuity, and representation, everywhere, hating insulation ; and appears like the god of wealth among the cabins of vagabonds, opening power and capability in every thing he touches. ethical science was new and vacant, when plato could write thus :-“ of all whose arguments are left to the men of the present time, no one has ever yet condemned injustice, or praised justice, otherwise than as respects the repute, honors, and emoluments arising therefrom ; while, as respects either of them in itself, and subsisting by its own power in the soul of the possessor, and concealed both from gods and men, no one has yet sufficiently investigated, either in poetry or prose writings, how, namely, that the one is the greatest of all the evils that the soul has within it, and justice the greatest good.” his definition of ideas, as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era in the world. he was born to behold the self-evolving power of spirit, endless generator of new ends; a power 88 representative men. which is the key at once to the centrality and the evanescence of things. plato is so centred, that he can well spare all his dogmas. thus the fact of knowledge and ideas reveals to him—the fact of eternity; and the doctrine of reminiscence he offers as the most probable particular explication. call that fanciful, it matters not : the connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent. he has indicated every eminent point in speculation. he wrote on the scale of the mind itself, so that all things have symmetry in his tablet. he put in all the past, without weariness, and descended into detail with a courage like that he witnessed in nature. one would say, that his forerunners had mapped out each a farm, or a district, or an island, in intellectual geography, but that plato first drew the sphere. he domesticates the soul in nature: man is the microcosm. all the circles of the visible heaven represent as many circles in the rational soul. there is no lawless particle, and there is nothing casual in the action of the human mind. the names of things, too, are fatal, following the nature of things. all the gods of the pantheon are, by their names, significant of a profound sense. the gods are the ideas. pan is speech, or manplato: new readings. 89 ifestation; saturn, the contemplative ; jove, the regal soul; and mars, passion. venus is proportion; calliope, the soul of the world; aglaia, intellectual illustration. these thoughts, in sparkles of light, had appeared often to pious and to poetic souls; but this well-bred, all-knowing greek geometer comes with command, gathers them all up into rank and gradation, the euclid of holiness, and marries the two parts of nature. before all men, he saw the intellectual values of the moral sentiment. he describes his own ideal, when he paints in timæus a god leading things from disorder into order. he kindled a fire so truly in the centre, that we see the sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, equator, and lines of latitude, every arc and node: a theory so averaged, so modulated, that you would say, the winds of ages had swept through this rhythmic structure, and not that it was the brief extempore blotting of one short-lived scribe. hence it has happened that a very well-marked class of souls, namely, those who delight in giving a spiritual that is, an ethico-intellectual expression to every truth, by exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet legitimate to it, are said to platonise.com thus, michel angelo is a platonist, in his sonnets. shakspeare is a 8* 90 representative men. platonist, when he writes, “ nature is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean,” or, “he, that can endure to follow with allegiance a fallen lord, does conquer him that did his master conquer, and earns a place in the story." hamlet is a pure platonist, and 'tis the magnitude only of shakspeare's proper genius that hinders him from being classed as the most eminent of this school. swedenborg, throughout his prose poem of “ conjugal love,” is a platonist. his subtlety commended him to men of thought. the secret of his popular success is the moral aim, which endeared him to mankind. « intellect.” he said, "is king of .heaven and of earth ; " but, in plato, intellect is always moral. his writings have also the sempiternal youth of poetry. for their arguments, most of them, might have been couched in sonnets : and poetry has never soared higher than in the timæus and the phædrus. as the poet, too, he is only contemplative. he did not, like pythagoras, break himself with an institution. all his painting in the republic must be esteemed mythical, with intent to bring out, sometimes in violent colors, his thought. you cannot institute, without peril of charlatan. it was a high scheme, his absolute privilege plato: new readings. 91 for the best, (which, to make emphatic, he expressed by community of women,) as the premium which he would set on grandeur. there shall be exempts of two kinds: first, those who by demerit have put themselves below protection, outlaws; and secondly, those who by eminence of nature and desert are out of the reach of your rewards : let such be free of the city, and above the law. we confide them to themselves ; let them do with us as they will. let none presume to measure the irregularities of michel angelo and socrates by village scales. . in his eighth book of the republic, he throws a little mathematical dust in our eyes. i am sorry to see him, after such noble superiorities, permitting the lie to governors. plato plays providence a little with the baser sort, as people allow themselves with their dogs and cats. swedenborg; or, the mystic. iii. sweden borg; 0r, the mystic. among eminent persons, those who are most dear to men are not of the class which the economist calls producers: they have nothing in their hands; they have not cultivated corn, nor made bread; they have not led out a colony, nor invented a loom. a higher class, in the estimation and love of this city-building, market-going race of mankind, are the poets, who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and imagination with ideas and pictures which raise men out of the world of corn and money, and console them for the short-comings of the day, and the meannesses of labor and traffic. then, also, the philosopher has his value, who flatters the intellect of this laborer, by engaging him with subtleties which instruct him in new faculties. others may build cities; he is to understand them, and keep them in awe. but there is a 96 representative men. class who lead us into another region, — the world of morals, or of will. what is singular about this region of thought, is, its claim. wherever the sentiment of right comes in, it takes precedence of every thing else. for other things, i make poetry of them ; but the moral sentiment makes poetry of me. i have sometimes thought that he would render the greatest service to modern criticism, who shall draw the line of relation that subsists between shakspeare and swedenborg. the human mind stands ever in perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally of each without the other. the reconciler has not yet appeared. if we tire of the saints, shakspeare is our city of refuge. yet the instincts presently teach, that the problem of essence must take precedence of all others, – the questions of whence? what ? and whither ? and the solution of these must be in a life, and not in a book. a drama or poem is a proximate or oblique reply; but moses, menu, jesus, work directly on this problem. the atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grandeur which reduces all material magnificence to toys, yet opens to every wretch that has reason the doors of the universe. almost with a fierce haste it lays its empire on the man. in the language of the koran, “god said, the swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 97 heaven and the earth, and all that is between them, think ye that we created them in jest, and that ye shall not return to us?” it is the kingdom of the will, and by inspiring the will, which is the seat of personality, seems to convert the universe into a person; — “the realms of being to no other bow, not only all are thine, but all are thou.” all men are commanded by the saint. the koran makes a distinct class of those who are by nature good, and whose goodness has an influence on others, and pronounces this class to be the aim of creation : the other classes are admitted to the feast of being, only as following in the train of this. and the persian poet exclaims to a soul of this kind, “go boldly forth, and feast on being's banquet; thou art the called, – the rest admitted with thee.” the privilege of this caste is an access to the secrets and structure of nature, by some higher method than by experience. in common parlance, what one man is said to learn by experience, a man of extraordinary sagacity is said, without experience, to divine. the arabians say, that abul khain, the mystic, and abu ali seena, the 9 98 representative men. philosopher, conferred together; and, on parting, the philosopher said, “all that he sees, i know ; ” and the mystic said, “all that he knows, i see.” if one should ask the reason of this intuition, the solution would lead us into that property which plato denoted as reminiscence, and which is implied by the bramins in the tenet of transmigration. the soul having been often born, or, as the hindoos say, “travelling the path of existence through thousands of births,” having beheld the things which are here, those which are in heaven, and those which are beneath, there is nothing of which she has not gained the knowledge: no wonder that she is able to recollect, in regard to any one thing, what formerly she knew. “for, all things in nature being linked and related, and the soul having heretofore known all, nothing hinders but that any man who has recalled to mind, or, according to the common phrase, has learned one thing only, should of himself recover all his ancient knowledge, and find out again all the rest, if he have but courage, and faint not in the midst of his researches. for inquiry and learning is reminiscence all.” how much more, if he that inquires be a holy and godlike soul! for, by being assimilated to the original soul, by whom, and after whom, all things subsist, the soul of man does then easily flow into all things, swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 99 and all things flow into it: they mix; and he is present and sympathetic with their structure and law. this path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror. the ancients called it ecstacy or absence, a getting out of their bodies to think. all religious history contains traces of the trance of saints, — a beatitude, but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad; "the flight,” plotinus called it, “ of the alone to the alone;"> musois, the closing of the eyes, — whence our word, mystic. the trances of socrates, plotinus, porphyry, behmen, bunyan, fox, pascal, guion, swedenborg, will readily come to mind. but what as readily comes to mind, is, the accompaniment of disease. this beatitude comes in terror, and with shocks to the mind of the receiver. “it o’erinforms the tenement of clay," and drives the man mad; or, gives a certain violent bias, which taints his judgment. in the chief examples of religious illumination, somewhat morbid has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable increase of mental power. must the highest good drag after it a quality which neutra'izes and discredits it ? “ indeed, it takes from our achievements, when performed at height, the pith and marrow of our attribute." 100 representative men. shall we say, that the economical mother disburses so much earth and so much fire, by weight and metre, to make a man, and will not add a pennyweight, though a nation is perishing for a leader 2 therefore, the men of god purchased their science by folly or pain. if you will have pure carbon, carbuncle, or diamond, to make the brain transparent, the trunk and organs shall be so much the grosser: instead of porcelain, they are potter's earth, clay, or mud. in modern times, no such remarkable example of this introverted mind has occurred, as in emanuel swedenborg, born in stockholm, in 1688. this man, who appeared to his contemporaries a visionary, and elixir of moonbeams, no doubt led the most real life of any man then in the world: and now, when the royal and ducal frederics, cristierns, and brunswicks, of that day, have slid into oblivion, he begins to spread himself into the minds of thousands. as happens in great men, he seemed, by the variety and amount of his powers, to be a composition of several persons, – like the giant fruits which are matured in gardens by the union of four or five single blossoms. his frame is on a larger scale, and possesses the advantages of size. as it is easier to see the reflection of the great sphere in large globes, though defaced by some crack or blemish, than in drops of swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 101 water, so men of large calibre, though with some eccentricity or madness, like pascal or newton, help us more than balanced mediocre minds. his youth and training could not fail to be extraordinary. such a boy could not whistle or dance, but goes grubbing into mines and mountains, prying into chemistry and optics, physiology, mathematics, and astronomy, to find images fit for the measure of his versatile and capacious brain. he was a scholar from a child, and was educated at upsala. at the age of twenty-eight, he was made assessor of the board of mines, by charles xii. in 1716, he left home for four years, and visited the universities of england, holland, france, and germany. he performed a notable feat of engineering in 1718, at the siege of fredericshall, by hauling two galleys, five boats, and a sloop, some fourteen english miles overland, for the royal service. in 1721, he journeyed over europe, to examine mines and smelting works. he published, in 1716, his daedalus hyperboreus, and, from this time, for the next thirty years, was employed in the composition and publication of his scientific works. with the like force, he threw himself into theology. in 1743, when he was fifty-four years old, what is called his illumination began. all his metallurgy, and transportation of ships overland, was absorbed into 9% 102 representative men. this ecstasy. he ceased to publish any more scientific books, withdrew from his practical labors, and devoted himself to the writing and publication of his voluminous theological works, which were printed at his own expense, or at that of the duke of brunswick, or other prince, at dresden, leipsic, london, or amsterdam. later, he resigned his office of assessor: the salary attached to this office continued to be paid to him during his life. his duties had brought him into intimate acquaintance with king charles xii., by whom he was much consulted and honored. the like favor was continued to him by his successor. at the diet of 1751, count hopken says, the most solid memorials on finance were from his pen. in sweden, he appears to have attracted a marked regard. his rare science and practical skill, and the added fame of second sight and extraordinary religious knowledge and gifts, drew to him queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters, and people about the ports through which he was wont to pass in his many voyages. the clergy interfered a little with the importation and publication of his religious works; but he seems to have kept the friendship of men in power. he was never married. he had great modesty arid gentleness of bearing. his habits were simple ; he lived on bread, milk, and vegetables; he lived in a house swedenborg; or, the myst1c. 103 situated in a large garden: he went several times to england, where he does not seem to have attracted any attention whatever from the learned or the eminent; and died at london, march 29, 1772, of apoplexy, in his eighty-fifth year. he is described, when in london, as a man of a quiet, clerical habit, not averse to tea and coffee, and kind to children. he wore a sword when in full velvet dress, and, whenever he walked out, carried a gold-headed cane. there is a common portrait of him in antique coat and wig, but the face has a wandering or vacant air. the genius which was to penetrate the science of the age with a far more subtle science; to pass the bounds of space and time; venture into the dim spirit-realm, and attempt to establish a new religion in the world,— began its lessons in quarries and forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards and dissecting-rooms. no one man is perhaps able to judge of the merits of his works on so many subjects. one is glad to learn that his books on mines and metals are held in the highest esteem by those who understand these matters. it seems that he anticipated much science of the nineteenth century; anticipated, in astronomy, the discovery of the seventh planet, — but, unhappily, not also of the eighth ; anticipated the views of modern astronomy in regard to the 104 representative men. generation of earths by the sun ; in magnetism, some important experiments and conclusions of later students; in chemistry, the atomic theory; in anatomy, the discoveries of schlichting, monro, and wilson; and first demonstrated the office of the lungs. his excellent english editor magnanimously lays no stress on his discoveries, since he was too great to care to be original ; and we are to judge, by what he can spare, of what remains. a colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended by them, and requires a long focal distance to be seen; suggests, as aristotle, bacon, selden, humboldt, that a certain vastness of learning, or quasi omnipresence of the human soul in nature, is possible. his superb speculation, as from a tower, over nature and arts, without ever losing sight of the texture and sequence of things, almost realizes his own picture, in the principia," of the original integrity of man. over and above the merit of his particular discoveries, is the capital merit of his self-equality. a drop of water has the properties of the sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. there is beauty of a concert, as well as of a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero; and, in swedenborg, those who are best acquainted with modern books will most admire the merit of mass. one of the missouriums and swedenborg; or, the mystic. 105 * mastodons of literature, he is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars. his stalwart presence would flutter the gowns of an university. our books are false by being fragmentary: their sentences are bonmots, and not parts of natural discourse; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure in nature; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to their petulance, or aversion from the order of nature, — being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not in harmony with nature, and purposely framed to excite surprise, as jugglers do by concealing their means. but swedenborg is systematic, and respective of the world in every sentence: all the means are orderly given; his faculties work with astronomic punctuality, and this admirable writing is pure from all pertness or egotism. swedenborg was born into an atmosphere of great ideas. 'tis hard to say what was his own: yet his life was dignified by noblest pictures of the universe. the robust aristotelian method, with its breadth and adequateness, shaming our sterile and linear logic by its genial radiation, conversant with series and degree, with effects and ends, skilful to discriminate power from form, essence from accident, and opening, by its terminology and definition, high roads into nature, had trained a race of athletic philosophers. harvey had 106 representative men. shown the circulation of the blood : gilbert had shown that the earth was a magnet: descartes, taught by gilbert's magnet, with its vortex, spiral, and polarity, had filled europe with the leading thought of vortical motion, as the secret of nature. newton, in the year in which swedenborg was born, published the “principia,” and established the universal gravity. malpighi, following the high doctrines of hippocrates, leucippus, and lucretius, had given emphasis to the dogma that nature works in leasts, — "tota in minimis existit natura.” unrivalled dissectors, swammerdam, leeuwenhoek, winslow, eustachius, heister, vesalius, boerhaave, had left nothing for scalpel or microscope to reveal in human or comparative anatomy: linnæus, his contemporary, was affirming, in his beautiful science, that “nature is always like herself:” and, lastly, the nobility of method, the largest application of principles, had been exhibited by leibnitz and christian wolff, in cosmology; whilst locke and grotius had drawn the moral argument. what was left for a genius of the largest calibre, but to go over their ground, and verify and unite? it is easy to see, in these minds, the origin of swedenborg's studies, and the suggestion of his problems. he had a capacity to entertain and vivify these volumes of thought. yet the proximity of these geniuses, one swedenborg; or, the mystic. 107 or other of whom had introduced all his leading ideas, makes swedenborg another example of the difficulty, even in a highly fertile genius, of proving originality, the first birth and annunciation of one of the laws of nature. he named his favorite views, the doctrine of forms, the doctrine of series and degrees, the doctrine of influx, the doctrine of correspondence. his statement of these doctrines deserves to be studied in his books. not every man can read them, but they will reward him who can. his theologic works are valuable to illustrate these. his writings would be a sufficient library to a lonely and athletic student; and the “economy of the animal kingdom '' is one of those books which, by the sustained dignity of thinking, is an honor to the human race. he had studied spars and metals to some purpose. his varied and solid knowledge makes his style lustrous with points and shooting spicula of thought, and resembling one of those winter mornings when the air sparkles with crystals. the grandeur of the topics makes the grandeur of the style. he was apt for cosmology, because of that native perception of identity which made mere size of no account to him. in the atom of magnetic iron, he saw the quality which would generate the spiral motion of sun and planet. 108 representative men. the thoughts in which he lived were, the universality of each law in nature; the platonic doctrine of the scale or degrees; the version or conversion of each into other, and so the correspondence of all the parts; the fine secret that little explains large, and large, little; the centrality of man in nature, and the connection that subsists throughout all things: he saw that the human body was strictly universal, or an instrument through which the soul feeds and is fed by the whole of matter : so that he held, in exact antagonism to the skeptics, that, “the wiser a man is, the more will he be a worshipper of the deity.” in short, he was a believer in the identity-philosophy, which he held not idly, as the dreamers of berlin or boston, but which he experimented with and stablished through years of labor, with the heart and strength of the rudest viking that his rough sweden ever sent to battle. this theory dates from the oldest philosophers, and derives perhaps its best illustration from the newest. it is this : that nature iterates her means perpetually on successive planes. in the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar. in the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, swepenbofg ; or, the mystic. 109 petal, bract, sepal, or seed. the whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end; the more or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. . in the animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of vertebrae, and helps herself still by a new spine, with a limited power of modifying its form, -spine on spine, to the end of the world. a poetic anatomist, in qur own day, teaches that a snake, being a horizontal line, and man, being an erect line, constitute a right angle; and, between the lines of this mystical quadrant, all animated beings find their place: and he assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or the snake, as the type or prediction of the spine. manifestly, at the end of the spine, nature puts out smaller spines, as arms; at the end of the arms, new spines, as hands; at the other end, she repeats the process, as legs and feet. at the top of the column, she puts out another spine, which doubles or loops itself over, as a span-worm, into a ball, and forms the skull, with extremities again: the hands being now the upper jaw, the feet the lower jaw, the fingers and toes being represented this time by upper and lower teeth. this new spine is destined to high uses. it is a new man on the shoulders of the last. it can almost shed its trunk, and manage to live alone, according to the 10 110 representative men. platonic idea in the timaeus. within it, on a higher plane, all that was done in the trunk repeats itself. nature recites her lesson once more in a higher mood. the mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. here again is the mystery of generation repeated. in the brain are male and female faculties: here is marriage, here is fruit. and there is no limit to this ascending scale, but series on series. every thing, at the end of one use, is taken up into the next, each series punctually repeating every organ and process of the last. we are adapted to infinity. we are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures. creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant. gravitation, as explained by newton, is good; but grander, when we find chemistry only an exswedenborg; or, the mystic. 111 tension of the law of masses into particles, and that the atomic theory shows the action of chemistry to be mechanical also. metaphysics shows us a sort of gravitation, operative also in the mental phenomena; and the terrible tabulation of the french statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. if one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother. what we call gravitation, and fancy ultimate, is one fork of a mightier. stream, for which we have yet no name. astronomy is excellent; but it must come up into life to have its full value, and not remain there in globes and spaces. the globule of blood gyrates around its own axis in the human veins, as the planet in the sky; and the circles of intellect relate to those of the heavens. each law of nature has the like universality; eating, sleep or hybernation, rotation, generation, metamorphosis, vortical motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets. these grand rhymes or returns in nature, — the dear, best-known face startling us at every turn, under a mask so unexpected that we think it the face of a stranger, and, carrying up the semblance into divine forms, – delighted the prophetic eye of swedenborg; and 112 representative men. he must be reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by giving to science an idea, has given to an aimless accumulation of experiments, guidance and form, and a beating heart. i own, with some regret, that his printed works amount to about fifty stout octavos, his scientific works being about half of the whole number; and it appears that a mass of manuscript still unedited remains in the royal library at stockholm. the scientific works have just now been translated into english, in an excellent edition. swedenborg printed these scientific books in the ten years from 1734 to 1744, and they remained from that time neglected: and now, after their century is complete, he has at last found a pupil in mr. wilkinson, in london, a philosophic critic, with a coequal vigor of understanding and imagination comparable only to lord bacon's, who has produced his master's buried books to the day, and transferred them, with every advantage, from their forgotten latin into english, to go round the world in our commercial and conquering tongue. this startling reappearance of swedenborg, after a hundred years, in his pupil, is not the least remarkable fact in his history. aided, it is said, by the munificence of mr. clissold, and also by his literary skill, this piece of poetic justice is done. the admirable preliminary discourses with which swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 113 mr. wilkinson has enriched these volumes, throw all the cotemporary philosophy of england into shade, and leave me nothing to say on their proper grounds. the “ animal kingdom” is a book of wonderful merits. it was written with the highest end, to put science and the soul, long estranged from each other, at one again. it was an anatomist's account of the human body, in the highest style of poetry. nothing can exceed the bold and briiliant treatment of a subject usually so dry and repulsive. he saw nature “wreathing through an everlasting spiral, with wheels that never dry, on axes that never creak," and sometimes sought "to uncover those secret recesses where nature is sitting at the fires in the depths of her laboratory;" whilst the picture comes recommended by the hard fidelity with which it is based on practical anatomy. it is remarkable that this sublime genius decides, peremptorily for the analytic, against the synthetic method; and, in a book whose genius is a daring poetic synthesis, claims to confine himself to a rigid experience. he knows, if he only, the flowing of nature, and how wise was that old answer of amasis to him who bade him drink up the sea, — “ yes, willingly, if you will stop the rivers that flow in.” few knew as much about nature and her 10* 114 representative men. subtle manners, or expressed more subtly hor goings. he thought as large a demand is made on our faith by nature, as by miracles. “he noted that in her proceeding from first principles through her several subordinations, there was no state through which she did not pass, as if her path lay through all things.” “for as often as she betakes herself upward from visible phenomena, or, in other words, withdraws herself inward, she instantly, as it were, disappears, while no one knows what has become of her, or whither she is gone : so that it is necessary to take science as a guide in pursuing her steps.” the pursuing the inquiry under the light of an end or final cause, gives wonderful animation, a sort of personality to the whole writing. this book announces his favorite dogmas. the ancient doctrine of hippocrates, that the brain is a gland; and of leucippus, that the atom may be known by the mass; or, in plato, the macrocosm by the microcosm; and, in the verses of lucretius, — ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis ossibus sic et de pauxillis atque minutis visceribus viscus gigni, sanguenque crcari sanguinis inter se multis cocuntibus guttis ; ex aurique putat micis consistere posse aurum, et de terris terram concrescere parvis; ignibus ex igneis, humorem humoribus esse. lin. i. 835. swedenborg; or, the mystic. 115 “ the principle of all things entrails made of smallest entrails ; bone, of smallest bone; blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one; gold, of small grains ; earth, of small sands compacted; small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted :" and which malpighi had summed in his maxim, that “nature exists entire in leasts," — is a favorite thought of swedenborg. “it is a constant law of the organic body, that large, compound, or visible forms exist and subsist from smaller, simpler, and ultimately from invisible forms, which act similarly to the larger ones, but more perfectly and more universally; and the least forms so perfectly and universally, as to involve an idea representative of their entire universe.” the unities of each organ are so many little organs, homogeneous with their compound : the unities of the tongue are little tongues; those of the stomach, little stomachs; those of the heart are little hearts. this fruitful idea furnishes a key to every secret. what was too small for the eye to detect was read by the aggregates; what was too large, by the units. there is no end to his application of the thought. “hunger is an aggregate of very many. little hungers, or losses of blood by the little veins all over the body.” it is a key to his theology, also. “ man is a kind of very minute heaven, corresponding to the world of spirits and to 116 representative men. heaven. every particular idea of man, and every affection, yea, every smallest part of his affection, is an image and effigy of him. a spirit may be known from only a single thought. god is the grand man.” the hardihood and thoroughness of his study of nature required a theory of forms, also. “forms ascend in order from the lowest to the highest. the lowest form is angular, or the terrestrial and corporeal. the second and next higher form is the circular, which is also called the perpetual-angular, because the circumference of a circle is a perpetual angle. the form above this is the spiral, parent and measure of circular forms: its diameters are not rectilinear, but variously circular, and have a spherical surface for centre; therefore it is called the perpetual-circular. the form above this is the vortical, or perpetual-spiral: next, the perpetual-vortical, or celestial: last, the perpetual-celestial, or spiritual.” was it strange that a genius so bold should take the last step, also, -conceive that he might attain the science of all sciences, to unlock the meaning of the world in the first volume of the “animal kingdom,” he broaches the subject, in a remarkable note. — “in our doctrine of representations and correspondences, we shall treat of both these sym swedenborg; or, the mystic. 117 bolical and typical resemblances, and of the astonishing things which occur, i will not say, in the living body only, but throughout nature, and which correspond so entirely to supreme and spiritual things, that one would swear that the physical world was purely symbolical of the spiritual world; insomuch, that if we choose to express any natural truth in physical and definite vocal terms, and to convert these terms only into the corresponding and spiritual terms, we shall by this means elicit a spiritual truth, or theological dogma, in place of the physical truth or precept: although no mortal would have predicted that any thing of the kind could possibly arise by bare literal transposition; inasmuch as the one precept, considered separately from the other, appears to have absolutely no relation to it. i intend, hereafter, to communicate a number of examples of such correspondences, together with a vocabulary containing the terms of spiritual things, as well as of the physical things for which they are to be substituted. this symbolism pervades the living body.” the fact, thus explicitly stated, is implied in all poetry, in allegory, in fable, in the use of emblems, and in the structure of language. plato knew of it, as is evident from his twice bisected . line, in the sixth book of the republic. lord 118 representative men. bacon had found that truth and nature differed only as seal and print; and he instanced some physical propositions, with their translation into a moral or political sense. behmen, and all mystics, imply this law, in their dark riddle-writing. … the poets, in as far as they are poets, use it; but it is known to them only, as the magnet was ... . .4, known for ages, as a toy. swedenborg first put * ~ * the fact into a detached and scientific statement, because it was habitually present to him, and never not seen. it was involved, as we explained already, in the doctrine of identity and iteration, because the mental series exactly tallies with the material series. it required an insight that could rank things in order-and series; or, rather, it required such rightness of position, that the poles of the eye should coincide with the axis of the world. the earth had fed its mankind through five or six milleniums, and they had sciences, religions, philosophies; and yet had failed to see the correspondence of meaning between every part and every other part. and, down to this hour, literature has no book in which the symbolism of things is scientifically opened. one would say, that, as soon as men had the first hint that every sensible object, — animal, rock, river, air, – nay, space and time, subsists not for itself, nor finally to a material end, but as a picture-language swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 119 to tell another story of beings and duties, other science would be put by, and a science of such grand presage would absorb all faculties: that each man would ask of all objects, what they mean: why does the horizon hold me fast, with my joy and grief, in this centre ? why hear i the same sense from countless differing voices; and read one never quite expressed fact in endless picture-language ? yet, whether it be, that these things will not be intellectually learned, or, that many centuries must elaborate and compose so rare and opulent a soul, —there is no comet, rockstratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does not interest more scholars and classifiers, than the meaning and upshot of the frame of things. but swedenborg was not content with the que culinary use of the world. in his fifty-fourth view.com year, these thoughts held him fast, and his profound mind admitted the perilous opinion, too frequent in religious history, that he was an abnormal person, to whom was granted the privilege of conversing with angels and spirits; and this ecstasy connected itself with just this office of explaining the moral import of the sensible world. to a right perception, at once broad and minute, of the order of nature, he added the comprehension of the moral laws in their widest 120 representative men. social aspects; but whatever he saw, through some excessive determination to form, in his constitution, he saw not abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, constructed it in events. when he attempted to announce the law most sanely, he was forced to couch it in parable. modern psychology offers no similar example of a deranged balance. the principal powers continued to maintain a healthy action; and, to a reader who can make due allowance in the report for the reporter's peculiarities, the results are still instructive, and a more striking testimony to the sublime laws he announced, than any that balanced dulness could afford. he attempts to give some account of the modus of the new state, affirming that “his presence in the spiritual world is attended with a certain separation, but only as to the intellectual part of his mind, not as to the will part ;” and he affirms that "he sees, with the internal sight, the things that are in another life, more clearly than he sees the things which are here in the world.” having adopted the belief that certain books of the old and new testaments were exact allegories, or written in the angelic and ecstatic mode, he employed his remaining years in extricating from the literal, the universal sense. he had borrowed from plato the fine fable of "a swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 121 most ancient people, men better than we, and dwelling nigher to the gods ;” and swedenborg added, that they used the earth symbolically; duca that these, when they saw terrestrial objects, did å not think at all about them, but only about those of this which they signified. the correspondence between thoughts and things henceforward occupied him. “the very organic form resembles the end inscribed on it.” a man is in general, and in particular, an organized justice or injustice, selfishness or gratitude. and the cause of this harmony he assigned in the arcana: “ the reason why all and single things, in the heavens and on earth, are representative, is because they exist from an influx of the lord, through heaven.” this design of exhibiting such correspondences, which, if adequately executed, would be the poem of the world, in which all history and science would play an essential part, was narrowed and defeated by the exclusively theologic direction which his inquiries took. his perception of nature is not human and universal, but is mystical and hebraic. he fastens each natural object to a theologic notion ;-a horse signifies carnal understanding; a tree, perception; the moon, faith ; a cat means this; an ostrich, that; , an artichoke, this other; and poorly tethers every symbol to a several ecclesiastic sense. the 11 122 representative men. slippery proteus is not so easily caught. in nature, each individual symbol plays innumerable parts, as each particle of matter circulates in turn through every system. the central identity enables any one symbol to express successively all the qualities and shades of real being. in the transmission of the heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant. nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. she is no literalist. every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition, to understand any thing rightly. his theological bias thus fatally narrowed his interpretation of nature, and the dictionary of symbols is yet to be written. but the interpreter, whom mankind must still expect, will find no predecessor who has approached so near to the true problem. swedenborg styles himself, in the title-page of his books, “servant of the lord jesus christ; ” and by force of intellect, and in effect, he is the last father in the church, and is not likely to have a successor. no wonder that his depth of ethical wisdom should give him influence as a teacher. to the withered traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he let in nature again, and the worshipper, escaping from the vestry of sº swedenborg; or, the mystic. 123 verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a party to the whole of his religion. his religion thinks for him, and is of universal application. he turns it on every side; it fits every part of life, interprets and dignifies every circumstance. instead ef a religion which visited him diplomatically three or four times, – when he was born, when he married, when he fell sick, and when he died, and for the rest never interfered with him, -here was a teaching which accompanied him all day, accompanied him even into sleep and dreams; into his thinking, and showed him through what a long ancestry his thoughts descend; into society, and showed by what affinities he was girt to his equals and his counterparts; into natural objects, and showed their origin and meaning, what are friendly, and what are hurtful; and opened the future world, by indicating the continuity of the same laws. his disciples allege that their intellect is invigorated by the study of his books. there is no such problem for criticism as his theological writings, their merits are so commanding; yet such grave deductions must be made. their immense and sandy diffuseness is like the prairie, or the desert, and their incongruities are like the last deliration. he is superfluously explanatory, and his feeling of the ignorance of men, 124 representative men. strangely exaggerated. men take truths of this nature very fast. yet he abounds in assertions: he is a rich discoverer, and of things which most import us to know. his thought dwells in essential resemblances, like the resemblance of a house to the man who built it. he saw things in their law, in likeness of function, not of structure. there is an invariable method and order in his delivery of his truth, the habitual proceeding: of the mind from inmost to outmost. what earnestness and weightiness, – his eye never roving, without one swell of vanity, or one look to self, in any common form of literary pride a theoretic or speculative man, but whom no practical man in the universe could affect to scorn. plato is a gownsman : his garment, though of purple, and almost sky-woven, is an academic robe, and hinders action with its voluminous folds. but this mystic is awful to caesar. lycurgus himself would bow. the moral insight of swedenborg, the correction of popular errors, the announcement of ethical laws, take him out of comparison with any other modern writer, and entitle him to a place, vacant for some ages, among the lawgivers of mankind. that slow but commanding influence which he has acquired, like that of other religious geniuses, must be excessive also, and have swepenborg ; or, the mystic. 125 its tides, before it subsides into a permanent amount. of course, what is real and universal cannot be confined to the circle of those who sympathize strictly with his genius, but will pass forth into the common stock of wise and just thinking. the world has a sure chemistry, by which it extracts what is excellent in its children, and lets fall the infirmities and limitations of the grandest mind. that metempsychosis which is familiar in the old mythology of the greeks, collected in ovid, and in the indian transmigration, and is there objective, or really takes place in bodies by alien will, in swedenborg's mind, has a more philosophic character. it is subjective, or depends entirely upon the thought of the person. all things in the universe arrange themselves to each person anew, according to his ruling love. man is such as his affection and thought are. man is man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of knowing and understanding. as he is, so he sees. . the marriages of the world are broken up. interiors associate all in the spiritual world. whatever the angels looked upon was to them celestial. each satan appears to himself a man; to those as bad as he, a comely man ; to the purified, a heap of carrion. nothing can resist states: every thing gravitates: like will to like : what 1.1% 126 representative men. we call poetic justice takes effect on the spot. we have come into a world which is a living poem. every thing is as i am. bird and beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and effluvia of the minds and wills of men there present. every one makes his own house and state. the ghosts are tormented with the fear of death, and cannot remember that they have died. they who are in evil and falsehood are afraid of all others. such as have deprived themselves of charity, wander and flee: the societies which they approach discover their quality, and drive them away. the covetous seem to themselves to be abiding in cells where their money is deposited, and these to be infested with mice. they who place merit in good works seem to themselves to cut wood. “i asked such, if they were not wearied ? they replied, that they have not yet done work enough to merit heaven.” he delivers golden sayings, which express with singular beauty the ethical laws; as when he uttered that famed sentence, that, “in heaven the angels are advancing continually to the spring-time of their youth, so that the oldest angel appears the youngest: ” “the more angels, the more room :” “the perfection of man is the love of use:” “man, in his perfect form, is swedenborg; or, the mystic. 127 heaven: ” “what is from him, is him:” “ends always ascend as nature descends: ” and the truly poetic account of the writing in the inmost heaven, which, as it consists of inflexions according to the form of heaven, can be read without instruction. he almost justifies his claim to preternatural vision, by strange insights of the structure of the human body and mind. “it is never permitted to any one, in heaven, to stand behind another and look at the back of his head: for then the influx which is from the lord is disturbed.” the angels, from the sound of the voice, know a man's love; from the articulation of the sound, his wisdom; and from the sense of the words, his science. in the “conjugal love,” he has unfolded the science of marriage. of this book, one would say, that, with the highest elements, it has failed of success. it came near to be the hymn of love, which plato attempted in the “banquet; ” the love, which, dante says, casella sang among the angels in paradise; and which, as rightly celebrated, in its genesis, fruition, and effect, might well entrance the souls, as it would lay open the genesis of all institutions, customs, and manners. the book had been grand, if the hebraism had been omitted, and the law stated without gothicism, as ethics, and with that scope for 128 representative men. ascension of state which the nature of things requires. it is a fine platonic development of the science of marriage; teaching that sex is universal, and not local; virility in the male qualifying every organ, act, and thought; and the feminine in woman. therefore, in the real or spiritual world, the nuptial union is not momentary, but incessant and total ; and chastity not a local, but a universal virtue ; unchastity being discovered as much in the trading, or planting, or speaking, or philosophizing, as in generation; and that, though the virgins he saw in heaven were beautiful, the wives were incomparably more beautiful, and went on increasing in beauty evermore. yet swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his theory to a temporary form. he exaggerates the circumstance of marriage; and, though he finds false marriages on earth, fancies a wiser choice in heaven. but of progressive souls, all loves and friendships are momentary. do you love me? means, do you see the same truth? if you do, we are happy with the same happiness: but presently one of us passes into the perception of new truth; — we are divorced, and no tension in nature can hold us to each other. i know how delicious is this cup of love, — i existing for you, you existing for me; but it is a child's clinging to his toy; an attempt to eternize the fireside and nupswedenborg; or, the mystic. 129 tial chamber; to keep the picture-alphabet through which our first lessons are prettily conveyed. the eden of god is bare and grand : like the out-door landscape, remembered from the evening fireside, it seems cold and desolate, whilst you cower over the coals; but, once abroad again, we pity those who can forego the magnificence of nature, for candle-light and cards. perhaps the true subject of the “conjugal love" is conversation, whose laws are profoundly eliminated. it is false, if literally applied to marriage. for god is the bride or bridegroom of the soul. heaven is not the pairing of two, but the communion of all souls. we meet, and dwell an instant under the temple of one thought, and part as though we parted not, to join another thought in other fellowships of joy. so far from there being any thing divine in the low and proprietary sense of do you love me? it is only when you leave and lose me, by casting yourself on a sentiment which is higher than both of us, that i draw near, and find myself at your side; and i am repelled, if you fix your eye on me, and demand love. in airdrofotene fact, in the spiritual world, we change sexes last every moment. you love the worth in me; then reature porn i am your husband : but it is not me, but the presser worth, that fixes the love ; and that worth is a drop of the ocean of worth that is beyond me. 130 representative men. meantime, i adore the greater worth in another, and so become his wife. he aspires to a higher worth in another spirit, and is wife or receiver of that influence. whether a self-inquisitorial habit, that he grew into, from jealousy of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentangling and demonstrating that particular form of moral disease, an acumen which no conscience can resist. i refer to his feeling of the profanation of thinking to what is good “from scientifics.” “to reason about faith, is to doubt and deny.” he was painfully alive to the difference between knowing and doing, and this sensibility is incessantly expressed. philosophers are, therefore, vipers, cockatrices, asps, hemorrhoids, presters, and flying serpents; literary men are conjurors and charlatans. but this topic suggests a sad afterthought, that here we find the seat of his own pain. possibly swedenborg paid the penalty of introverted faculties. success, or a fortunate genius, seems to depend on a happy adjustment of heart and brain; on a due proportion, hard to hit, of moral and mental power, which, perhaps, obeys the law of those chemical ratios which make a proportion in volumes necessary to combination, as when gases swedenborg; or, the mystic. 131 will combine in certain fixed rates, but not at any rate. it is hard to carry a full cup: and this man, profusely endowed in heart and mind, early fell into dangerous discord with himself. in his animal kingdom, he surprised us, by declaring that he loved analysis, and not synthesis; and now, after his fiftieth year, he falls into jealousy of his intellect; and, though aware that truth is not solitary, nor is goodness solitary, but both must ever mix and marry, he makes war on his mind, takes the part of the conscience against it, and, on all occasions, traduces and blasphemes it. the violence is instantly avenged. beauty is disgraced, love is unlovely, when truth, the half part of heaven, is denied, as much as when a bitterness in men of talent leads to satire, and destroys the judgment. he is wise, but wise in his own despite. there is an air of infinite grief, and the sound of wailing, all over and through this lurid universe. a vampyre sits in the seat of the prophet, and turns with gloomy appetite to the images of pain. indeed, a bird does not more readily weave its nest, or a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of the souls substructs a new hell and pit, each more abominable than the last, round every new crew of offenders. he was let down through a column that seemed of brass, but it was formed of angelic spirits, that he might descend safely amongst 132 representative men. the unhappy, and witness the vastation of souls; and heard there, for a long continuance, their lamentations; he saw their tormentors, who increase and strain pangs to infinity; he saw the hell of the jugglers, the hell of the assassins, the hell of the lascivious; the hell of robbers, who kill and boil men; the infernal tun of the deceitful; the excrementitious hells; the hell of the revengeful, whose faces resembled a round, broad cake, and their arms rotate like a wheel. except rabelais and dean swift, nobody ever had such science of filth and corruption. these books should be used with caution. it is dangerous to sculpture these evanescing images of thought. true in transition, they become false if fixed. it requires, for his just apprehension, almost a genius equal to his own. but when his visions become the stereotyped language of multitudes of persons, of all degrees of age and capacity, they are perverted. the wise people of the greek race were accustomed to lead the most intelligent and virtuous young men, as part of their education, through the eleusinian mysteries, wherein, with much pomp and graduation, the highest truths known to ancient wisdom were taught. an ardent and contemplative young man, at eighteen or twenty years, might read once these books of swedenborg, these mysteries of swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 133 love and conscience, and then throw them aside for ever. genius is ever haunted by similar dreams, when the hells and the heavens are opened to it. but these pictures are to be held as mystical, that is, as a quite arbitrary and accidental picture of the truth, – not as the truth. any other symbol would be as good: then this is safely seen. swedenborg's system of the world wants central spontaneity; it is dynamic, not vital, and lacks power to generate life. there is no individual in it. the universe is a gigantic crystal, all whose atoms and lamina lie in uninterrupted order, and with unbroken unity, but cold and still. what seems an individual and a will, is none. there is an immense chain of intermediation, extending from centre to extremes, which bereaves every agency of all freedom and character. the universe, in his poem, suffers under a magnetic sleep, and only reflects the mind of the magnetizer. every thought comes into each mind by influence from a society of spirits that surround it, and into these from a higher society, and so on. all his types mean the same few things. all his figures speak one speech. all his interlocutors swedenborgise. be they who they may, to this complexion must 12 134 representative men. they come at last. this charon ferries them all over in his boat; kings, counsellors, cavaliers, doctors, sir isaac newton, sir hans sloane, king george ii., mahomet, or whosoever, and all gather one grimness of hue and style. only when cicero comes by, our gentle seer sticks a little at saying he talked with cicero, and, with a touch of human relenting, remarks, “one whom it was given me to believe was cicero; ” and when the soi disant roman opens his mouth, rome and eloquence have ebbed away, it is plain theologic swedenborg, like the rest. his heavens and hells are dull; fault of want of individualism. the thousand-fold relation of men is not there. the interest that attaches in nature to each man, because he is right by his wrong, and wrong by his right, because he defies all dogmatising and classification, so many allowances, and contingences, and futurities, are to be taken into account, strong by his vices, often paralysed by his virtues, – sinks into entire sympathy with his society. this want reacts to the centre of the system. though the agency of “the lord ” is in every line referred to by name, it never becomes alive. there is no lustre in that eye which gazes from the centre, and which should vivify the immense dependency of beings. the vice of swedenborg's mind is its theologic swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 135 determination, nothing with him has the liberality of universal wisdom, but we are always in a church. that hebrew muse, which taught the lore of right and wrong to men, had the same excess of influence for him, it has had for the nations. the mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. palestine is ever the more valuable as a chapter in universal history, and ever the less an available element in education. the genius of swedenborg, largest of all modern souls in this department of thought, wasted itself in the endeavor to reanimate and conserve what had already arrived at its natural term, and, in the great secular providence, was retiring from its prominence, before western modes of thought and expression. swedenborg and behmen both * -failed by attaching themselves to the christian / . . . . symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities, in its bosom. the excess of influence shows itself in the incongruous inportation of a foreign rhetoric. ‘what have i to do,” asks the impatient reader, ‘with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and chalcedony; what with arks and passovers, ephahs and ephods; what with lepers and emerods; what with heave-offerings and unleavened bread ; chariots of fire, dragons crowned and horned, 136 representative men. behemoth and unicorn ? good for orientals, these are nothing to me. the more learning you bring to explain them, the more glaring the impertinence. the more coherent and elaborate the system, the less i like it. i say, with the spartan, “why do you speak so much to the purpose, of that which is nothing to the purpose ?” my learning is such as god gave me in my birth and habit, in the delight and study of my eyes, and not of another man's. of all absurdities, this of some foreigner, proposing to take away my rhetoric, and substitute his own, and amuse me with pelican and stork, instead of thrush and robin ; palmtrees and shittim-wood, instead of sassafras and hickory, — seems the most needless.' locke said, "god, when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man.” swedenborg's history points the remark. the parish disputes, in the swedish church, between the friends and foes of luther and melancthon, concerning “faith alone,” and “works alone,” intrude themselves into his speculations upon the economy of the universe, and of the celestial societies. the lutheran bishop's son, for whom the heavens are opened, so that he sees with eyes, and in the richest symbolic forms, the awful truth of things, and utters again, in his books, as under a heavenly mandate, the indisputable secrets of moral nature, swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 137 with all these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the lutheran bishop's son ; his judgments are those of a swedish polemic, and his vast enlargements purchased by adamantine limitations. he carries his controversial memory with him, in his visits to the souls. he is like michel angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the cardinal who had offended him to roast under a mountain of devils; or, like dante, who avenged, in vindictive melodies, all his private wrongs; or, perhaps still more like montaigne's parish priest, who, if a hail-storm passes over the village, thinks the day of doom is come, and the cannibals already have got the pip. swedenborg confounds us not less with the pains of melancthon, and luther, and wolfius, and his own books, which he advertises among the angels. under the same theologic cramp, many of his dogmas are bound. his cardinal position in morals is, that evils should be shunned as sins. but he does not know what evil is, or what good · is, who thinks any ground remains to be occupied, after saying that evil is to be shunned as evil. i. doubt not he was led by the desire to insert the role element of personality of deity. but nothing is added. one man, you say, dreads erysipelas, — 7 the show him that this dread is evil: or, one dreads, hell, -show him that dread is evil. he who loves goodness, harbors angels, reveres reverence,...; 12* 138 representative men. and lives with god. the less we have to do with our sins, the better. no man can afford to waste his moments in compunctions." that is active duty," say the hindoos, " which is not for our bondage ; that is knowledge, which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness.” another dogma, growing out of this pernicious theologic limitation, is this inferno. swedenborg has devils. evil, according to old philosophers, is good in the making. that pure malignity can exist, is the extreme proposition of unbelief. it is not to be entertained by a rational agent; it is atheism; it is the last profanation. euripides rightly said, “goodness and being in the gods are one; he who imputes ill to them makes them none." to what a painful perversion had gothic theology arrived, that swedenborg admitted no conversion for evil spirits! but the divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true. burns, with the wild humor of his apostrophe to “poor old nickie ben," “o wad ye tak a thought, and mend!” swedenborg ; or, the mystic. 139 has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. every thing is superficial, and perishes, but love and truth only. the largest is always the truest sentiment, and we feel the more generous spirit of the indian vishnu, — "i am the same to all mankind. there is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred. they who serve me with adoration, i am in them, and they in me. if one whose ways are altogether evil, serve me alone, he is as respectable as the just man ; he is altogether well employed; he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal happiness.” for the anomalous pretension of revelations of the other world, — only his probity and genius can entitle it to any serious regard. his revelations destroy their credit by running into detail. if a man say, that the holy ghost has informed him that the last judgment, (or the last of the judgments,) took place in 1757; or, that the dutch, in the other world, live in a heaven by themselves, and the english, in a heaven by themselves; i reply, that the spirit which is holy, is reserved, taciturn, and deals in laws. the rumors of ghosts and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes. the teachings of the high spirit are abstemious, and, in regard to particulars, negative. socrates's genius did not advise him to act or to find, but if he purposed to do 140 representative men. somewhat not advantageous, it dissuaded him. “what god is,” he said, “i know not; what he is not, i know.” the hindoos have denominated the supreme being, the “internal check.” the illuminated quakers explained their light, not as somewhat which leads to any action, but it appears as an obstruction to any thing unfit. but the right examples are private experiences, which are absolutely at one on this point. strictly speaking, swedenborg's revelation is a confounding of planes, – a capital offence in so learned a categorist. this is to carry the law of surface into the plane of substance, to carry individualism and its fopperies into the realm of essences and generals, which is dislocation and chaos. the secret of heaven is kept from age to age. no imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. we should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul. but it is certain that it must tally with what is best in nature. it must not be inferior in tone to the already known works of the artist who sculptures the globes of the firmament, and writes the moral law. it must swedenborg; or, the mystic. 141be fresher than rainbows, stabler than mountains, agreeing with flowers, with tides, and the rising and setting of autumnal stars. melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating key-note of nature and spirit is sounded, the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which makes the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood, and the sap of trees. in this mood, we hear the rumor that the seer has arrived, and his tale is told. but there is no beauty, no heaven: for angels, goblins. the sad muse loves night and death, and the pit. his inferno is mesmeric. his spiritual world bears the same relation to the generosities and joys of truth, of which human souls have already made us cognisant, as a man's bad dreams bear to his ideal life. it is indeed very like, in its endless power of lurid pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming, which nightly turns many an honest gentleman, benevolent, but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulking like a dog about the outer yards and kennels of creation. when he mounts into the heaven, i do not hear its language. a man should not tell me that he has walked among the angels; his proof is, that his eloquence makes me one. shall the archangels be less majestic and sweet than the figures that have actually walked the earth? these angels that sweden142 representative men. borg paints give us no very high idea of their discipline and culture: they are all country parsons: their heaven is a fête champétre, an evangelical picnic, or french distribution of prizes to virtuous peasants. strange, scholastic, didactic, passionless, bloodless man, who denotes classes of souls as a botanist disposes of a carex, and visits doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende! he has no sympathy. he goes up and down the world of men, a modern rhadamanthus in gold-headed cane and peruke, and with nonchalance, and the air of a referee, distributes souls. the warm, many-weathered, passionatepeopled world is to him a grammar of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic freemason's procession. how different is jacob behmen he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe-struck, with the gentlest humanity, to the teacher whose lessons he conveys; and when he asserts that, “in some sort, love is greater than god,” his heart beats so high that the thumping against his leathern coat is audible across the centuries. 'tis a great difference. behmen is healthily and beautifully wise, notwithstanding the mystical narrowness and incommunicableness. swedenborg is disagreeably wise, and, with all his accumulated gifts, paralyzes and repels. it is the best sign of a great nature, that it * swf:denborg; or, the mystic. 143 opens a foreground, and, like the breath of morning landscapes, invites us onward. swedenborg is retrospective, nor can we divest him of his. mattock and shroud. some minds are for ever restrained from descending into nature; others are for ever prevented from ascending out of it. with a force of many men, he could never break the umbilical cord which held him to nature, and he did not rise to the platform of pure genius. it is remarkable that this man, who, by his perception of symbols, saw the poetic construction of things, and the primary relation of mind to matter, remained entirely devoid of the whole apparatus of poetic expression, which that perception creates. he knew the grammar and rudiments of the mother-tongue, how could he not read off one strain into music was he like saadi, who, in his vision, designed to fill his lap with the celestial flowers, as presents for his friends; but the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him, that the skirt dropped from his hands? or, is reporting a breach of the manners of that heavenly society 2 or, was it that he saw the vision intellectually, and hence that chiding of the intellectual that pervades his books? be it as it may, his books have no melody, no emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic level. in his profuse and accurate imagery is no pleasure, for there is no beauty. 144 representative men. we wander forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. no bird ever sang in all these gardens of the dead. . the entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and, like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warning. i think, sometimes, he will not be read longer. his great name will turn a sentence. his books have become a monument. his laurel so largely mixed with cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with the temple incense, that boys and maids will shun the spot. yet, in this immolation of genius and fame at the shrine of conscience, is a merit sublime beyond praise. he lived to purpose : he gave a verdict. he elected goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling in all this labyrinth of nature. many opinions conflict as to the true centre. in the shipwreck, some cling to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, some to spars, some to mast; the pilot chooses with science, — i plant myself here; all will sink before this; "he comes to land who sails with me.” do not rely on heavenly favor, or on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common sense, the old usage and main chance of men: nothing can keep you, — not fate, nor health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep you, but rectitude only, rectitude for ever and ever! and, with a tenacity that never swerved in all his swedenborg; or, the mystic. 145 studies, inventions, dreams, he adheres to this brave choice. i think of him as of some transmigrating votary of indian legend, who says, ‘though i be dog, or jackal, or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature, under what integument or ferocity, i cleave to right, as the sure ladder that leads up to man and to god.” swedenborg has rendered a double service to mankind, which is now only beginning to be known. by the science of experiment and use, he made his first steps: he observed and published the laws of nature ; and, ascending by just degrees, from events to their summits and causes, he was fired with piety at the harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to his joy and worship. this was his first service. if the glory was too bright for his eyes to bear, if he staggered under the trance of delight, the more excellent is the spectacle he saw, the realities of being which beam and blaze through him, and which no infirmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure; and he renders a second passive service to men, not less than the first, — perhaps, in the great circle of being, and in the retributions of spiritual nature, not less glorious or less beautiful to himself. 13 ze calle de 1 ) age trumpisa lite fende 1:37. ei -cer! gemens of o, hemen ļ its f or the less jelena bonetti montaigne; polisiekes les 2 or, the skeptic. antenne m ...men guage temple alrtm sorbaan eu$64.7474 headers ine. abery beerty's anniesliecas vi ;,.., .. ..po plose gerens f 8, minin. yan birijority skeissm logotii montaigne; pesierhes 18 zom the skeptic. iv. montaig ne; 0 r, the skeptic. every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. the game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side. nothing so thin, but has these two faces; and, when the observer has seen the obverse, he turns it over to see the reverse. life is a pitching of this penny, heads or tails. we never tire of this game, because there is still a slight shudder of astonishment at the exhibition of the other face, at the contrast of the two faces. a man is flushed with success, and bethinks himself what this good luck signifies. he drives his bargain in the street; but it occurs, that he also is bought and sold. he sees the beauty of a human face, and searches the cause of that beauty, which must be more beautiful. he builds his fortunes, maintains the laws, cherishes 13% 150 representative men. his children; but he asks himself, why? and whereto ? this head and this tail are called, in the language of philosophy, infinite and finite; relative and absolute; apparent and real ; and many fine names beside. each man is born with a predisposition to one or the other of these sides of nature; and, it will easily happen that men will be found devoted to one or the other. one class has the perception of difference, and is conversant with facts and surfaces; cities and persons; and the bringing certain things to pass ; the men of talent and action. another class have the perception of identity, and are men of faith and philosophy, men of genius. each of these riders drives too fast. plotinus believes only in philosophers; fenelon, in saints; , pindar and byron, in poets. read the haughty language in which plato and the platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions : other men are rats and mice. the literary class is usually proud and exclusive. the correspondence of pope and swift describes mankind around them as monsters; and that of goethe and schiller, in ('ur own time, is scarcely more kind. it is easy to see how this arrogance comes. the genius is a genius by the first look he casts montaigne; or, the skeptic. 151 on any object. is his eye creative ? does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design, — he will presently undervalue the actual object. in powerful moments, his thought has dissolved the works of art and nature into their causes, so that the works appear heavy and faulty. he has a conception of beauty which the sculptor cannot embody. picture, statue, temple, railroad, steam-engine, existed first in an artist's mind, without flaw, mistake, or friction, which impair the executed models. so did the church, the state, college, court, social circle, and all the institutions. it is not strange that these men, remembering what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. having at some time seen that the happy soul will carry all the arts in power, they say, why cumber ourselves with superfluous realizations ? and, like dreaming beggars, they assume to speak and act as if these values were already substantiated. on the other part, the men of toil and trade and luxury, — the animal world, including the animal in the philosopher and poet also, and the practical world, including the painful drudgeries which are never excused to philosopher or poet any more than to the rest,-weigh heavily on the other side. the trade in our streets believes 152 representative men. in no metaphysical causes, thinks nothing of the force which necessitated traders and a trading planet to exist : no, but sticks to cotton, sugar, wool, and salt. the ward meetings, on election days, are not softened ly any misgiving of the value of these ballotings. hot life is streaming in a single direction. to the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. they alone have reason. things always bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence. no man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic, also. in england, the richest country that ever existed, property stands for more, compared with personal ability, than in any other. after dinner, a man believes less, denies more: verities have lost some charm. after dinner, arithmetic is the only science: ideas are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young men, repudiated by the solid portion of society: and a man comes to be valued by his athletic and animal qualities. spence relates, that mr. pope was with sir godfrey kneller, one day, when his nephew, a guinea trader, came in. « nephew,” said sir godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world.” “i don't know how great montaigne ; or, the skeptic. 153 men you may be," said the guinea man, but i don't like your looks. i have often bought a man much better than both of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.” thus, the men of the senses revenge themselves on the professors, and repay scorn for scorn. the first had leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say more than is true; the others make themselves merry with the philosopher, and weigh man by the pound. they believe that mustard bites the tongue, that pepper is hot, friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to be avoided, and suspenders hold up pantaloons; that there is much sentiment in a chest of tea; and a man will be eloquent, if you give him good wine. are you tender and scrupulous, you must eat more mince-pie. they hold that luther had milk in him when he said, “ wer nicht liebt wein, weib, und gesang, der bleibt ein narr sein leben lang;” and when he advised a young scholar, perplexed with fore-ordination and free-will, to get well drunk. “the nerves," says cabanis, “they are the man.” my neighbor, a jolly farmer, in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of money is sure and speedy spending. “for his part," he says, "he puts his down his neck, and gets the good of it." 154 representative men. the inconvenience of this way.of thinking is, that it runs into indifferentism, and then into disgust. life is eating us up. we shall be fables presently. keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence. life's well enough; but we shall be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have us. why should we fret and drudge ? our meat will taste to-morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had enough of it. “ah,” said my languid gentleman at oxford, “there's nothing new or true, and no matter.” · with a little more bitterness, the cynic moans : our life is like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay being carried before him: he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. “there is so much trouble in coming into the world,” said lord bolingbroke, “and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all.” i knew a philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed briefly to sum up his experience of human nature in saying, “mankind is a damned rascal:" and the natural corollary is pretty sure to follow,"the world lives by humbug, and so will i.' the abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there arises montaigne; or, the skeptic. 155 a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. he finds both wrong by being in extremes. he labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. he will not go beyond his card. he sees the one-sidedness of these men of the street; he will not be a gibeonite; he stands for the intellectual faculties, a cool head, and whatever serves to keep it cool: no unadvised industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss of the brains in toil. am i an ox, or a dray 2–you are both in extremes, he says. you that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead, deceive yourselves grossly. you believe yourselves rooted and grounded on adamant; and yet, if we uncover the last facts of our knowledge, you are spinning like bubbles in a river, you know not whither or whence, and you are bottomed and capped and wrapped in delusions. neither will he be betrayed to a book, and , wrapped in a gown. the studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption, — pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. if you come near them, and see what conceits they entertain, – they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the 156 representative men. homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it. but i see plainly, he says, that i cannot see. i know that human strength is not in extremes, but in avoiding extremes. i, at least, will shun the weakness of philosophizing beyond my depth. what is the use of pretending to powers we have not? what is the use of pretending to assurances we have not, respecting the other life? why exaggerate the power of virtue? why be an angel before your time? these strings, wound up too high, will snap. if there is a wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not say just that ? if there are conflicting evidences, why not state them? if there is not ground for a candid thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay, — why not suspend the judgment? i weary of these dogmatizers. i tire of these hacks of routine, who deny the dogmas. i neither affirm nor deny. i stand here to try the case. i am here to consider, oxettew, to consider how it is. i will try to keep the balance true. of what use to take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories of society, religion, and nature, when i know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable by me montaigne; or, the skeptic. 157 and by my mates? why so talkative in public, when each of my neighbors can pin me to my seat by arguments i cannot refute 7 why pretend that life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle and elusive the proteus is? why think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thousand things, and unlike * why fancy that you have all the truth in your keeping there is much to say on all sides. who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which any thing more than an approximate solution can be had 2 is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in 7 and the reply of socrates, to him who asked whether he should choose a wife, still remains reasonable, “that, whether he should choose one or not, he would repent it.” is not the state a question ? all society is divided in opinion on the subject of the state. nobody loves it ; great numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance: and the only defence set up, is, the fear of doing worse in disorganizing. is it otherwise with the church 2 or, to put any of the questions which touch mankind nearest, —shall the young man aim 14 158 representative men. sviat a leading part in law, in politics, in trade ? it will not be pretended that a success in either of these kinds is quite coincident with what is best and inmost in his mind. shall he, then, cutting the stays that hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea with no guidance but his genius ? there is much to say on both sides. remember the open question between the present order of “competition," and the friends of "attractive and associated labor.” the generous minds embrace the proposition of labor shared by all; it is the only honesty; nothing else is safe. it is from the poor man's hut alone, that strength and virtue come: and yet, on the other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the laborers cry unanimously, 'we have no thoughts.' culture, how indispensable! i cannot forgive you the want of accomplishments; and yet, culture will instantly destroy that chiefest beauty of spontaneousness. excellent is culture for a savage ; but once let him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to think of plutarch's heroes. in short, since true fortitude of understanding consists “in not letting what we know be embarrassed by what we do not know,” we ought to secure those advantages which we can command, and not risk them by clutching after the airy and unattainable. come, no chimeras! montaigne; or, the skeptic. 159 let us go abroad ; let us mix in affairs ; let us learn, and get, and have, and climb. "men are a sort of moving plants, and, like trees, receive a great part of their nourishment from the air. if they keep too much at home, they pine." let us have a robust, manly life; let us know what we know, for certain ; what we have, let it be solid, and seasonable, and our own. a world in the hand is worth two in the bush. let us have to do with real men and women, and not with skipping ghosts. this, then, is the right ground of the skeptic, — this of consideration, of self-containing; not at all of unbelief; not at all of universal denying, nor of universal doubting, doubting even that he doubts ; least of all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at all that is stable and good. these are no more his moods than are those of religion and philosophy. he is the considerer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting stock, husbanding his means, believing that a man has too many enemies, than that he can afford to be his own; that we can not give ourselves too many advantages, in this unequal conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up and down into every danger, on the other. it is a position taken up for better 160 representative men. defence, as of more safety, and one that can be maintained; and it is one of more opportunity and range: as, when we build a house, the rule is, to set it not too high nor too low, under the wind, but out of the dirt. the philosophy we want is one of fluxions and mobility. the spartan and stoic schemes are too stark and stiff for our occasion. a theory of saint john, and of nonresistance, seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. we want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. we want a ship in these billows we inhabit. an angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. no, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea. the soul of man must be the type of our scheme, just as the body of man is the type after which a dwelling-house is built. adaptiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. we are golden averages, volitant stabilities, compensated or periodic errors, houses founded on the sea. the wise skeptic wishes to have a near view of the best game, and the chief players; what is best in the planet; art and nature, places and events, but mainly men. every thing that is excellent in mankind, a form of grace, an montaigne ; or, the skeptic. 161 arm of iron, lips of persuasion, a brain of resources, every one skilful to play and win, – he will see and judge. the terms of admission to this spectacle, are, that he have a certain solid and intelligible way of hiving of his own; some method of answering the inevitable needs of human life; proof that he has played with skill and success; that he has evinced the temper, stoutness, and the range of qualities which, among his contemporaries and countrymen, entitle him to fellowship and trust. for, the secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness. men do not confide themselves to boys, or coxcombs, or pedants, but to their peers. some wise limitation, as the modern phrase is ; some condition between the extremes, and having itself a positive quality; some stark and sufficient man, who is not salt or sugar, but sufficiently related to the world to do justice to paris or london, and, at the same time, a vigorous and original thinker, whom cities can not overawe, but who uses them, is the fit person to occupy this ground of speculation. these qualities meet in the character of montaigne. and yet, since the personal regard which i entertain for montaigne may be unduly great, i will, under the shield of this prince of egotists, oſſor, as an apology for electing him as the repre1.4% 162 representative men. sentative of skepticism, a word or two to explain how my love began and grew for this admirable gossip. a single odd volume of cotton's translation of the essays remained to me from my father's library, when a boy. it lay long neglected, until, after many years, when i was newly escaped from college, i read the book, and procured the remaining volumes. i remember the delight and wonder in which i lived with it. it seemed to me as if i had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience. it happened, when in paris, in 1833, that, in the cemetery of pere le chaise, i came to a tomb of auguste collignon, who died in 1830, aged sixty-eight years, and who, said the monument, “lived to do right, and had formed himself to virtue on the essays of montaigne.” some years later, i became acquainted with an accomplished english poet, john sterling; and, in prosecuting my correspondence, i found that, from a love of montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage to his chateau, still standing near castellan, in perigord, and, after two hundred and fifty years, had copied from the walls of his library the inscriptions which montaigne had written there. that journal of mr. sterling’s, published in the westminster review, mr. hazlitt has reprinted in the montaigne ; or, the skeptic. 163 prolegomena to his edition of the essays. i heard with pleasure that one of the newly-discovered autographs of william shakspeare was in a copy of florio's translation of montaigne. it is the only book which we certainly know to have been in the poet's library. and, oddly enough, the duplicate copy of florio, which the british museum purchased, with a view of protecting the shakspeare autograph, (as i was informed in the museum,) turned out to have the autograph of ben jonson in the fly-leaf. leigh hunt relates of lord byron, that montaigne was the only great writer of past times whom he read with avowed satisfaction. other coincidences, not needful to be mentioned here, concurred to make this old gascon still new and immortal for me. in 1571, on the death of his father, montaigne, then thirty-eight years old, retired from the practice of law, at bordeaux, and settled himself on his estate. though he had been a man of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his studious habits now grew on him, and he loved the compass, staidness, and independence, of the country gentleman's life. he took up his economy in good earnest, and made his farms yield the most. downright and plain-dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and probity. in the civil wars of the 164 representative men. league, which converted every house into a fort, montaigne kept his gates open, and his house without defence. all parties freely came and went, his courage and honor being universally esteemed. the neighboring lords and gentry brought jewels and papers to him for safe-keeping. gibbon reckons, in these bigoted times, but two men of liberality in france, henry iv. and montaigne. montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all writers. his french freedom runs into grossness; but he has anticipated all censure by the bounty of his own confessions. in his times, books were written to one sex only, and almost all were written in latin ; so that, in a humorist, a. certain nakedness of statement was permitted, which our manners, of a literature addressed equally to both sexes, do not allow. but, though a biblical plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical levity, may shut his pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence is superficial. he parades it : he makes the most of it : nobody can think or say worse of him than he does. he pretends to most of the vices; and, if there be any virtue in him, he says, it got in by stealth. there is no man, in his opinion, who has not deserved hanging five or six times; and he pretends no exception in his own behalf. five or montajgne; or, the skeptic. 165 six as ridiculous stories,” too, he says, “can be told of me, as of any man living." but, with all this really superfluous frankness, the opinion of an invincible probity grows into every reader's mind. " when i the most strictly and religiously confess myself, i find that the best virtue i have has in it some tincture of vice; and i am afraid that plato, in his purest virtue, (i, who am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of that stamp as any other whatever,) if he had listened, and laid his ear close to himself, would have heard some jarring sound of human mixture ; but faint and remote, and only to be perceived by himself.” here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pretence of any kind. he has been in courts so long as to have conceived a furious disgust at appearances; he will indulge himself with a little cursing and swearing ; he will talk with sailors and gipsies, use flash and street ballads : he has stayed in-doors till he is deadly sick; he will to the open air, though it rain bullets. he has seen too much of gentlemen of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals; and is so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks, the more barbarous man is, the better he is. he likes his saddle. you may read theology, and 166 representative men. grammar, and metaphysics elsewhere. whatever you get here, shall smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or smart, or stinging. he makes no hesitation to entertain you with the records of his disease; and his journey to italy is quite full of that matter. he took and kept this position of equilibrium. over his name, he drew an emblematic pair of scales, and wrote que scais je ? under it. as i look at his effigy opposite the title-page, i seem to hear him say, ‘you may play old poz, if you will; you may rail and exaggerate, –i stand here for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches, and revenues, and personal reputations of europe, overstate the dry fact, as i see it; i will rather mumble and prose about what i certainly know, -my house and barns; my father, my wife, and my tenants; my old lean bald pate; my knives and forks; what meats i eat, and what drinks i prefer; and a hundred straws just as ridiculous, – than i will write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine romance. i like gray days, and autumn and winter weather. i am gray and autumnal myself, and think an undress, and old shoes that do not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not constrain me, and plain topics where i do not need to strain myself and pump my brains, the most suitable. our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. montaigne; or, the skeptic. 167 one can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight. why should i vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best i can, this dancing balloon ? so, at least, i live within compass, keep myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with decency. if there be any thing farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine: let it lie at fate's and nature's door. , the essays, therefore, are an entertaining soliloquy on every random topic that comes into his head; treating every thing without ceremony, yet with masculine sense. there have been men with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such abundance of thoughts: he is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares for. the sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences. i know not any where the book that seems less written. it is the language of conversation transferred to a book. cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive. one has the same pleasure in it that we have in listening to the necessary speech of men about their work, when any unusual circumstance gives momentary importance to the dialogue. for blacksmiths and teamsters do not 168 representative men. trip in their speech ; it is a shower of bullets. it is cambridge men who correct themselves, and begin again at every half sentence, and, moreover, will pun, and refine too much, and swerve from the matter to the expression. montaigne talks with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, and himself, and uses the positive degree: never shrieks, or protests, or prays: no weakness, no convulsion, no superlative: does not wish to jump out of his skin, or play any antics, or annihilate space or time; but is stout and solid ; tastes every moment of the day ; likes pain, because it makes him feel himself, and realize things; as we pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. he keeps the plain; he rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid ground, and the stones underneath. his writing has no enthusiasms, no aspiration; contented, self-respecting, and keeping the middle of the road. there is but one exception, in his love for socrates. in speaking of him, for once his cheek flushes, and his style rises to passion. montaigne died of a quinsy, at the age of sixty, in 1592. when he came to die, he caused the mass to be celebrated in his chamber. at the age of thirty-three, he had been married. “but,” he says, "might i have had my own will, i would not have married wisdom herself, montaigne; or, the skeptic. 169 if she would have had me: but 'tis to much purpose to evade it, the common custom and use of life will have it so. most of my actions are guided by example, not choice.” in the hour of death, he gave the same weight to custom. que scais je ? what do i know? this book of montaigne the world has endorsed, by translating it into all tongues, and printing seventy-five editions of it in europe: and that, too, a circulation somewhat chosen, namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men of the world, and men of wit and generosity. shall we say that montaigne has spoken wisely, and given the right and permanent expression of the human mind, on the conduct of life? we are natural believers. truth, or the connection between cause and effect, alone interests us. we are persuaded that a thread runs through all things: all worlds are strung on it, as beads: and men, and events, and life, come to us, only because of that thread: they pass and repass, only that we may know the direction and continuity of that line. a book or statement which goes to show that there is no line, but random and chaos, a calamity out of nothing, a prosperity and no account of it, a hero born from a 15 *170 representative men. * fool, a fool from a hero, dispirits us. seen or unseen, we believe the tie exists. talent makes counterfeit ties; genius finds the real ones. we hearken to the man of science, because we anticipate the sequence in natural phenomena which he uncovers. we love whatever affirms, connects, preserves; and dislike what scatters or pulls down. one man appears whose nature is to all men's eyes conserving and constructive : his presence supposes a well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large institutions, and empire. if these did not exist, they would begin to exist through his endeavors. therefore, he cheers and comforts men, who feel all this in him very readily. the nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own. therefore, though the town, and state, and way of living, which our counsellor contemplated, might be a very modest or musty prosperity, yet men rightly go for him, and reject the reformer, so long as he comes only with axe and crowbar. but though we are natural conservers and causationists, and reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, the skeptical class, which montaigne represents, have reason, and every man, at some time, belongs to it. every superior mind will pass through this montaigne ; or, the skeptic.. 17 like . domain of equilibration, i should rather say, will know how to avail "himself of the checks and balances in nature, as a natural weapon against the exaggeration and formalism of bigots and blockheads. skepticism is the attitude assumed by the student in relation to the particulars which society adores, but which he sees to be reverend only in their tendency and spirit. the ground occupied by the skeptic is the vestibule of the temple. society does not like to have any breath of question blown on the existing order. but the interrogation of custom at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth of every superior mind, and is the evidence of its perception of the flowing power which remains itself in all changes. the superior mind will find itself equally at odds with the evils of society, and with the projects that are offered to relieve them. the wise skeptic is a bad citizen; no conservative; he sees the selfishness of property, and the drowsiness of institutions. but neither is he fit to work with any democratic party that ever was constituted; for parties wish every one committed, and he penetrates the popular patriotism. his politics are those of the “soul's errand” of sir polter raleigh ; or of krishna, in the bha.. 172 representative men. gavat, « there is none who is worthy of my love or hatred;" whilst he sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce, and custom. he is a reformer: yet he is no better member of the philanthropic association. it turns out that he is not the champion of the operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. it stands in his mind, that our life in this world is not of quite so easy interpretation as churches and school-books say. he does not wish to take ground against these benevolences, to play the part of devil's attorney, and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. but he says, there are doubts. i mean to use the occasion, and celebrate the calendar-day of our saint michel de montaigne, by counting and describing these doubts or negations. i wish to ferret them out of their holes, and sun them a little. we must do with them as. the police do with old rogues, who are shown up to the public at the marshal's office. they will never be so formidable, when once they have been identified and registered. but i mean honestly by them, that justice shall be done to their terrors. i shall not take sunday objections, made up on purpose to be put down. i shall take the worst i can find, whether i can dispose of them, or they of me. montaigne; or, the skeptic. 173 i do not press the skepticism of the materialist. i know, the quadruped opinion will not prevail, 'tis of no importance what bats and oxen think. the first dangerous symptom i report, is, the levity of intellect; as if it were fatal to earnestness to know much. knowledge is the knowing that we can not know. the dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers. how respectable is earnestness on every platform! but intellect kills it. nay, san carlo, my subtle and admirable friend, one of the most penetrating of men, finds that all direct ascension, even of lofty piety, leads to this ghastly insight, and sends back the votary orphaned. my astonishing san carlo thought the lawgivers and saints infected. they found the ark empty; saw, and would not tell; and tried to choke off their approaching followers, by saying, 'action, action, my dear fellows, is 'for you!' bad as was to me this detection by san carlo, this frost in july, this blow from a bride, there was still a worse, namely, the cloy or satiety of the saints. in the mount of vision, ere they have yet risen from their knees, they say, "we discover that this our homage and beatitude is partial and deformed: we must fly for relief to the suspected and reviled intellect, to the understanding, the mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of talent.' this is hobgoblin the first; and, though it 15* 174 representative men. has been the subject of much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from byron, goethe, and other poets of less fame, not to mention many distinguished private observers, – i confess it is not very affecting to my imagination; for it seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops. what flutters the church of rome, or of england, or of geneva, or of boston, may yet be very far from touching any principle of faith. i think that the intellect and moral . sentiment are unanimous ; and that, though philosophy extirpates bugbears, yet it supplies the natural checks of vice, and polarity to the soul. i think that the wiser a man is, the more stupendous he finds the natural and moral economy, and lifts himself to a more absolute reliance. there is the power of moods, each setting at nought all but its own tissue of facts and beliefs. there is the power of complexions, obviously modifying the dispositions and sentiments. the beliefs and unbeliefs appear to be structural; and, as soon as each man attains the poise and vivacity which allow the whole machinery to play, he will not need extreme examples, but will rapidly alternate all opinions in his own life. our life is march weather, savage and serene in one hour. we go forth austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of destiny, and will not turn on 2 montaigne; or, the skeptic. 175 our heel to save our life: but a book, or a bust, or only the sound of a name, shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly believe in will: my finger-ring shall be the seal of solomon : fate is for imbeciles: all is possible to the resolved mind. presently, a new experience gives a new turn to our thoughts : common sense resumes its tyranny : we say, "well, the army, after all, is the gate to fame, manners, and poetry: and, look you, on the whole, selfishness plants best, prunes best, makes the best commerce, and the best citizen.' are the opinions of a man on right and wrong, on fate and causation, at the mercy of a broken sleep or an indigestion? is his belief in god and duty no deeper than a stomach evidence? and what guaranty for the permanence of his opinions ? i like not the french celerity, a new church and state once a week.—this is the second negation ; and i shall let it pass for what it will. as far as it asserts rotation of states of mind, i suppose it suggests its own remedy, namely, in the record of larger periods. what is the mean of many states; of all the states? does the general voice of ages affirm any principle, or is no community of sentiment discoverable in distant times and places? and when it shows the power of selfinterest, i accept that as part of the divine law, 176 representative men. and must reconcile it with aspiration the best i can. the word fate, or destiny, expresses the sense of mankind, in all ages, that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us. fate, in the shape of kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. we paint time with a scythe ; love and fortune, blind ; and destiny, deaf. we have too little power of resistance against this ferocity which champs us up. what front can we make against these unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? what can i do against the influence of race, in my history? what can i do against hereditary and constitutional habits, against scrofula, lymph, impotence ? against climate, against barbarism, in my country? i can reason down or deny every thing, except this perpetual belly : feed he must and will, and i cannot make him respectable. but the main resistance which the affirmative impulse finds, and one including all others, is in the doctrine of the illusionists. there is a painful rumor in circulation, that we have been practised upon in all the principal performances of life, and free agency is the emptiest name. we have been sopped and drugged with the air, with food, with woman, with children, with montaigne; or, the skeptic. 177 sciences, with events, which leave us exactly where they found us. the mathematics, 'tis complained, leave the mind where they find it: so do all sciences; and so do all events and actions. i find a man who has passed through all the sciences, the churl he was ; and, through all the offices, learned, civil, and social, can detect the child. we are not the less necessitated to dedicate life to them. in fact, we may come to accept it as the fixed rule and theory of our state of education, that god is a substance, and his method is illusion. the eastern sages owned the goddess yoganidra, the great illusory energy of wishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole world is beguiled. or, shall i state it thus? — the astonishment of life, is, the absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory and practice of life. reason, the prized reality, the law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it; —is then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. if we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours. but what are these cares and works the better? a method in the world we do not see, but this parallelism of great 178 representative men. and little, which never react on each other, nor discover the smallest tendency to converge. experiences, fortunes, governings, readings, writings, are nothing to the purpose; as when a man comes into the room, it does not appear whether he has been fed on yams or buffalo, -he has contrived to get so much bone and fibre as he wants, out of rice or out of snow. so vast is the disproportion between the sky of law and the pismire of performance under it, that, whether he is a man of worth or a sot, is not so great a matter as we say. shall i add, as one juggle of this enchantment, the stunning non-intercourse law which makes coöperation impossible 2 the young spirit pants to enter society. but all the ways of culture and greatness lead to solitary imprisonment. he has been often baulked. he did not expect a sympathy with his thought from the village, but he went with it to the chosen and intelligent, and found no entertainment for it, but mere misapprehension, distaste, and scoffing. men are strangely mistimed and misapplied; and the excellence of each is an inflamed individualism which separates him more. there are these, and more than these diseases of thought, which our ordinary teachers do not attempt to remove. now shall we, because a good nature inclines us to virtue's side, say, there are montaigne; or, the skeptic. 179 no doubts, – and lie for the right? is life to be led in a brave or in a cowardly manner 2 and is not the satisfaction of the doubts essential to all. manliness? is the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which is virtue 2 can you not believe that a man of earnest and burly habit may find small good in tea, essays, and catechism, and want a rougher instruction, want men, labor, trade, farming, war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt, and terror, to make things plain to him; and has he not a right to insist on being convinced in his own way? when he is convinced, he will be worth the pains. belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them. some minds are incapable of skepticism. the doubts they profess to entertain are rather a civility or accommodation to the common discourse of their company. they may well give themselves leave to speculate, for they are secure of a return. once admitted to the heaven of thought, they see no relapse into night, but infinite invitation on the other side. heaven is within heaven, and sky over sky, and they are encompassed with divinities. others there are, to whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down to the surface of the earth. it is a question of temperament, or of more or less immersion in nature. the last class must 180 representative men. needs have a reflex or parasite faith; not a sight of realities, but an instinctive reliance on the seers and believers of realities. the manners and thoughts of believers astonish them, and convince them that these have seen something which is hid from themselves. but their sensual habit would fix the believer to his last position, whilst he as inevitably advances; and presently the unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the believer. great believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, fantastic, atheistic, and really men of no account. the spiritualist finds himself driven to express his faith by a series of skepticisms. charitable souls come with their projects, and ask his coöperation. how can he hesitate 2 it is the rule of mere comity and courtesy to agree where you can, and to turn your sentence with something auspicious, and not freezing and sinister. but he is forced to say, ‘o, these things will be as they must be : what can you do 2 these particular griefs and crimes are the foliage and fruit of such trees as we see growing. it is vain to complain of the leaf or the berry: cut it off; it will bear another just as bad. you must begin your cure lower down.” the generosities of the day prove an intractable element for him. the people's questions are not his; their methods are not his; and, against all the dictates of good montaigne; or, the skeptic. 181 nature, he is driven to say, he has no pleasure in them. even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, of the divine providence, and of the immortality of the soul, his neighbors can not put the statement so that he shall affirm it. but he denies out of more faith, and not less. he denies out of honesty. he had rather stand charged with the imbecility of skepticism, than with untruth. i believe, he says, in the moral design of the universe; it exists hospitably for the weal of souls; but your dogmas seem to me caricatures : why should i make believe them? will any say, this is cold and infidel? the wise and magnanimous will not say so. they will exult in his far-sighted good-will, that can abandon to the adversary all the ground of tradition and common belief, without losing a jot of strength. it sees to the end of all transgression. george fox saw " that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but withal, an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over that of darkness.” the final solution in which skepticism is lost, is, in the moral sentiment, which never forfeits its supremacy. all moods may be safely tried, and their weight allowed to all objections : the moral sentiment as easily outweighs them all, as any one. this is the drop which balances the 16 182 representative men. sea. i play with the miscellany of facts, and take those superficial views which we call skepticism ; but i know that they will presently appear to me in that order which makes skepticism impossible. a man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe: that the masses of nature do undulate and flow. this faith avails to the whole emergency of life and objects. the world is saturated with deity and with law. he is content with just and unjust, with sots and fools, with the triumph of folly and fraud. he can behold with serenity the yawning gulf between the ambition of man and his power of performance, between the demand and supply of power, which makes the tragedy of all souls. charles fourier announced that “the attractions of man are proportioned to his destinies; ” in other words, that every desire predicts its own satisfaction. yet, all experience exhibits the reverse of this; the incompetency of power is the universal grief of young and ardent minds. they accuse the divine providence of a certain parsimony. it has shown the heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with a desire for the whole; a desire raging, infinite; a hunger, as of space to be filled with planets; a cry of famine, as of devils for souls. then for the montaigne; or, the skeptic.: 183 satisfaction, to each man is administered a single drop, a bead of dew of vital power, per day, a cup as large as space, and one drop of the water of life in it. each man woke in the morning, with an appetite that could eat the solar system like a cake; a spirit for action and passion without bounds; he could lay his hand on the morning star: he could try conclusions with gravitation or chemistry ; but, on the first motion to prove his strength, — hands, feet, senses, gave way, and would not serve him. he was an emperor deserted by his states, and left to whistle by himself, or thrust into a mob of emperors, all whistling: and still the sirens sang, “ the attractions are proportioned to the destinies.” in every house, in the heart of each maiden, and of each boy, in the soul of the soaring saint, this chasm is found, — between the largest promise of ideal power, and the shabby experience. the expansive nature of truth comes to our succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. man helps himself by larger generalizations. the lesson of life is practically to generalize ; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense. things seem to say one thing, and say the reverse. the appearance is immoral; the result is 184 representative men. moral. things seem to tend downward, to justify despondency, to promote rogues, to defeat the just; and, by knaves, as by martyrs, the just cause is carried forward. although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered. we see, now, events forced on, which seem to retard or retrograde the civility of ages. but the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. he snaps his finger at laws: and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams. let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence, without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the eternal cause. — “if my bark sink, 'tis to another sea.” shakspeare ов, the poet. w. shakspeare; or, the poet. great men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by originality. if we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and making bricks, and building the house; no great men are original. nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. the hero is in the press of knights, and the thick of events; and, seeing what men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of sight and of arm, to come at the desired point. the greatest genius is the most indebted man. a poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. there is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, 188 representative men. and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times. the genius of our life is jealous of individuals, and will not have any individual great, except through the general. there is no choice to genius. a great man does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, 'i am full of life, i will go to sea, and find an antarctic continent: to-day i will square the circle : i will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: i have a new architecture in my mind : i foresee a new mechanic power :' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. he stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and their hands all point in the direction in which he should go. the church has reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carries out the advice which her music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by her chants and processions. he finds a war raging : it educates him, by trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruction. he finds two counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of production to the place of consumption, and he hits on a railroad. every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his people, and in his love of the materials he wrought in. what sharspeare ; ur, the poet. 189 an economy of power! and what a compensation for the shortness of life! all is done to his hand. the world has brought him thus far on his way. the human race has gone out before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into their sabors. choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations. great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all ; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind. shakspeare's youth fell in a time when the english people were importunate for dramatic entertainments. the court took offence easily at political allusions, and attempted to suppress them. the puritans, a growing and energetic party, and the religious among the anglican church, would suppress them. but the people wanted them. inn-yards, houses without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures at country fairs, were the ready theatres of strolling players. the people had tasted this new joy; and, as we · could not hope to suppress newspapers now, no, 190 representative men. . not by the strongest party, — neither then could king, prelate, or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ, which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, punch, and library, at the same time. probably king, prelate, and puritan, all found their own account in it. it had become, by all causes, a national interest, — by no means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would have thought of treating it in an english history, but not a whit less considerablc, because it was cheap, and of no account, like a baker's-shop. the best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field; kyd, marlow, greene, jonson, chapman, dekker, webster, heywood, middleton, peele, ford, massinger, beaumont, and fletcher. the secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works for it. he loses no time in idle experiments. here is audience and expectation prepared. in the case of shakspeare there is much more. at the time when he left stratford, and went up to london, a great body of stage-plays, of all dates and writers, existed in manuscript, and were in turn produced on the boards. here is the tale of troy, which the audience will bear hearing some part of every week ; the death of julius cæsar, and other stories out of plutarch, shakspeare; or, the poet. 191 which they never tire of; a shelf full of english history, from the chronicles of brut and arthur, down to the royal henries, which men hear eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry italian tales, and spanish voyages, which all the london prentices know. all the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. it is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. they have been the property of the theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole scene, or adding a song, that no man can any longer claim copyright on this work of numbers. happily, no man wishes to. they are not yet desired in that way. we have few readers, many spectators and hearers. they had best lie where they are. shakspeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. had the prestige which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. the rude warm blood of the living england circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and gave body which he wanted to his airy and majestic fancy. the poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may 192 representative men. restrain his art within the due temperance. it holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination. in short, the poet owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the temple. sculpture in egypt, and in greece, grew up in subordination to architecture. it was the ornament of the temple wall: at first, a rude relief carved on pediments, then the relief became bolder, and a head or arm was projected from the wall, the groups being still arrayed with reference to the building, which serves also as a frame to hold the figures; and when, at last, the greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. as soon as the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art began to decline : freak, extravagance, and exhibition, took the place of the old temperance. this balance-wheel, which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous irritability of poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the people were already wonted, and which had a certain excellence which no single genius, however extraordinary, could hope to create. shakspeare; or, the poet. . 193 in point of fact, it appears that shakspeare did owe debts in all directions, and was able to use whatever he found; and the amount of indebtedness may be inferred from malone's laborious computations in regard to the first, second, and third parts of henry vi., in which, “out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written by some author preceding shakspeare ; 2373 by him, on the foundation laid by his predecessors; and 1899 were entirely his own.” and the proceeding investigation hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. malone's sentence is an important piece of external history. in henry viii., i think i see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. the first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. i can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. see wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with cromwell, where, instead of the metre of shakspeare, whose secret is, that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm, here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. but the play contains, through all its length, unmistakable traits of shakspeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the coronation, are like autographs. what is odd, 17 194 representative men. the compliment to queen elizabeth is in the bad rhythm. shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any invention can. if he lost any credit of design, he augmented his resources; and, at that day, our petulant demand for originality was not so much pressed. there was no literature for the million. the universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. a great poet, who appears in illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is any where radiating. every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his people ; and he comes to value his memory equally with his invention. he is therefore little solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether through translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in distant countries, whether by inspiration; from whatever source, they are equally welcome to his uncritical audience. nay, he borrows very near home. other men say wise things as well as he ; only they say a good many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken wisely. he knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place, wherever he finds it. such is the happy position of homer, perhaps; of chaucer, of saadi. they felt that all wit was their wit. and they are librarians shakspeare ; or, the poet. 195 and historiographers, as well as poets. each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales of the world, “ presenting thebes' and pelops' line and the tale of troy divine.” i the influence of chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature; and, more recently, not only pope and dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the whole society of english writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily traced. one is charmed with the opulence which feeds so many pensioners. but chaucer is a huge borrower. chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through lydgate and caxton, from guido di colonna, whose latin romance of the trojan war was in turn a compilation from dares phrygius, ovid, and statius. then petrarch, boccaccio, and the provençal poets, are his benefactors : the romaunt of the rose is only judicious translation from william of lorris and john of meun: troilus and creseide, from lollius of urbino : the cock and the fox, from the lais of marie : the house of fame, from the french or italian : and poor gower he uses as if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build his house. he steals by this apology, that what 196 representative men. he takes has no worth where he finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it. it has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. a certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own. thus, all originality is relative. every thinker is retrospective. the learned member of the legislature, at westminster, or at washington, speaks and votes for thousands. show us the constituency, and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of their wishes, the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and resistance of something of their impressiveness. as sir robert peel and mr. webster vote, so locke and rousseau think for thousands; and so there were fountains all around homer, menu, saadi, or milton, from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs, – all perished, which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. shakspeare ; or, the poet. 197 did the hard speak with authority? did he feel himself overmatched by any companion ? the appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. is there at last in his breast a delphi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that ? all the debts which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has conversed. it is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. our english bible is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the english language. but it was not made by one man, or at one time ; but centuries and churches brought it to perfection. there never was a time when there was not some translation existing. the liturgy, admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the catholic church, these coliected, too, in long periods, from the prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer, all 17* 198 representative men. over the world. grotius makes the like remark in respect to the lord's prayer, that' the single clauses of which it is composed were already in use, in the time of christ, in the rabbinical forms. he picked out the grains of gold. the nervous language of the common law, the impressive forms of our courts, and the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these laws govern. the translation of plutarch gets its excellence by being translation on translation. there never was a time when there was none. all the truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out, and thrown away. something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. the world takes liberties with world-books. vedas, æsop's fables, pilpay, arabian nights, cid, iliad, robin hood, scottish minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. in the composition of such works, the time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think for us. every book supplies its time with one good word ; every municipal law, every trade, every folly of the day, and the generic catholic genius who is not afraid or ashamed to owe his originality to the originalshakspeare; or, the poet. 199 wa ersal ity of all, stands with the next age as the recorder and embodiment of his own. we have to thank the researches of antiquaries, and the shakspeare society, for ascertaining the steps of the english drama, from the mysteries celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the final detachment from the church, and the completion of secular plays, from ferrex and porrex, and gammer gurton's needle, down to the possession of the stage by the very pieces which shakspeare altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. elated with success, and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no book-stall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy shakspeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed to ann hathaway, his wife. there is somewhat touching in the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned ; the care with which it registers every trifle touching queen elizabeth, and king james, and the essexes, leicesters, burleighs, and buckinghams; and lets pass without a single valuable note the 200 representative men. founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause the tudor dynasty to be remembered, -the man who carries the saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias. a popular player, — nobody suspected he was the poet of the human race; and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men, as from courtiers and frivolous people. bacon, who took the inventory of the human understanding for his times, never mentioned his name. ben jonson, though we have strained his few words of regard and panegyric, had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was attempting. he no doubt thought the praise he has conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question, the better poet of the two. if it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, shakspeare's time should be capable of recognizing it. sir henry wotton was born four years after shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after him; and i find, among his correspondents and acquaintances, the following persons: theodore beza, isaac casaubon, sir philip sidney, earl of essex, lord bacon, sir walter raleigh, john milton, sir henry wane, isaac shakspeare ; or, the poet. 201 walton, dr. donne, abraham cowley, bellarmine, charles cotton, john pym, john hales, kepler, vieta, albericus gentilis, paul sarpi, arminius; with all of whom exists some token' of his having communicated, without enumerating many others, whom doubtless he saw,shakspeare, spenser, jonson, beaumont, massinger, two herberts, marlow, chapman, and the rest. since the constellation of great men who appeared in greece in the time of pericles, there was never any such society; — yet their genius failed them to find out the best head in the universe. our poet's mask was impenetrable. you cannot see the mountain near. it took a century to make it suspected ; and not until two centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear. it was not possible to write the history of shakspeare till now; for he is the father of german literature: it was on the introduction of shakspeare into german, by lessing, and the translation of his works by wieland and schlegel, that the rapid burst of german literature was most intimately connected. it was. not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative_genius is a sort of living hamlet, that the tragedy of hamlet could find such wondering readers. now, literature, philosoply, and thought, are shakspearized. his mind is the horizon belad 202 representative men. yond which, at present, we do not see. our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. coleridge and goethe are the only critics who have expressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity: but there is in all cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like christianity, qualifies the period. the shakspeare society have inquired in all directions, advertised the missing facts, offered money for any information that will lead to proof; and with what result beside some important illustration of the history of the english stage, to which i have adverted, they have gleaned a few facts touching the property, and dealings in regard to property, of the poet. it appears that, from year to year, he owned a larger share in the blackfriars' theatre: its wardrobe and other appurtenances were his : that he bought an estate in his native village, with his earnings, as writer and shareholder; that he lived in the best house in stratford; was intrusted by his neighbors with their commissions in london, as of borrowing money, and the like; that he was a veritable farmer. about the time when he was writing macbeth, he sues philip rogers, in the boroughcourt of stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, for corn delivered to him at different times; and, in all respects, appears as a good husband, shakspeare ; or, the poet. 203 with no reputation for eccentricity or excess. he was a good-natured sort of man, an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors and managers. i admit the importance of this information. it was well worth the pains that have been taken to procure it. but whatever scraps of information concerning his condition these researches may have rescued, they can shed no light upon that infinite invention which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. we are very clumsy writers of history. we tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birth-place, schooling, school-mates, earning of money, marriage, publication of books, celebrity, death; and when we have come to an end of this gossip, no ray of relation appears between it and the goddess-born ; and it seems as if, had we dipped at random into the “modern plutarch,” and read any other life there, it would have fitted the poems as well. it is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history. malone, warburton, dyce, and collier, , have wasted their oil. the famed theatres, covent garden, drury lane, the park, and tremont, have vainly assisted. betterton, garrick, kemble, kean, and macready, dedicate their lives 204 representative men. to this genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. the genius knows them not. the recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. i remember, i went once to see the hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the english stage; and all i then heard, and all i now remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the tragedian had no part; simply, hamlet's question to the ghost, — what may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again in complete steel revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?” that imagination which dilates the closet he ; writes in to the world's dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly reduces i the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. these tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. can any biography shed light on the localities into which the midsummer night's dream admits me? did shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? the forest of arden, the nimble air of scone castle, the moonlight of portia's villa, “the antres vast and desarts shakspeare; or, the poet. 205 idle," of othello's captivity, where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or private letter, that has kept one word of those transcendent secrets ? in fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art, — in the cyclopæan architecture of egypt and india ; in the phidian sculpture; the gothic minsters; the italian painting; the ballads of spain and scotland, — the genius draws up the ladder after him, when the creative age goes up to heaven, and gives way to a new, who see the works, and ask in vain for a history. shakspeare is the only biographer of shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the shakspeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. he cannot step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. read the antique documents extricated, analyzed, and compared, by the assiduous dyce and collier; and now read one of those skiey sentences, — aerolites, — which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they match ; it the former account in any manner for the latter; or, which gives the most historical insight into the man. hence, though our external history is so mea18 206 representative men. gre, yet, with shakspeare for biographer, instead of aubrey and rowe, we have really the information which is material, that which describes character and fortune, that which, if we were about to meet the man and deal with him, would most import us to know. we have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart, — on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science, and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. who ever read the volume of the sonnets, without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men 2 what trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? one can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman and the king, what forms and humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. let timon, let warwick, let antonio the merchant, answer for his great heart. so far from shakspeare ; 0 , the poet. 207 shakspeare's being the least known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to us. what point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled 2 what mystery has he not signified his knowledge of what office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? what king has he not taught state, as talma taught napoleon what maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy 2 what lover has he not outloved 2 what sage has he not outseen 2 what gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior 2 some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on shakspeare valuable, that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit; that he is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. i think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. he was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. had he been less, we should have had to consider how well he filled his place, how good. a dramatist he was, and he is the best in the world. but it turns out, that what he has to say is of that weight, as to withdraw some attention from the vehicle; and he is like some saint whose history is to be rendered into all languages, into 208 representative men. verse and prose, into songs and pictures, and cut up into proverbs; so that the occasion which gave the saint's meaning the form of a conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is immaterial, compared with the universality of its application. so it fares with the wise shakspeare and his book of life. he wrote the airs for all our modern music: he wrote the text of modern life; the text of manners: he drew the man of england and europe ; the father of the man in america : he drew the man, and described the day, and what is done in it: he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries : he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression which make the police of nature : and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the landscape lies on the eye, and the importance of this wisdom of life sinks the form, as of drama or epic, out of notice. "tis like making a question concerning the paper on which a king's message is written. shakspeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. he shakspeari 209 shakspeare ; or, the poet. is inconceivably wise ; the others, conceivably. a good reader can, in a sort, nestle into plato's brain, and think from thence; but not into shakspeare's. we are still out of doors. for executive faculty, for creation, shakspeare is unique. no man can imagine it better. he was the farthest reach of subtlety compatible with an individual self, the subtilest of authors, and only just within the possibility of authorship. with this wisdom of life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and of lyric power. he clothed the creatures of his legend with form and sentiments, as if they were people who had lived under his roof; and few real men have left such distinct characters as these fictions. and they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit. yet his talents never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string. an omnipresent humanity coördinates all his faculties. give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality will presently appear. he has certain observations, opinions, topics, which have some accidental prominence, and which he disposes all to exhibit. he crams this part, and starves that other part, consulting not the fitness of the thing, but his fitness and strength. but shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate topic; but all is duly given; no veins, no curiosities : no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no manner18* 210 representative men. ist is he: he has no discoverable egotism : the great he tells greatly; the small, subordinately. he is wise without emphasis or assertion; he is strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as , well to do the one as the other. this makes that equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs; a merit so incessant, that each reader is incredulous of the perception of other readers. this power of expression, or of transferring the inmost truth of things into music and verse, makes him the type of the poet, and has added a new problem to metaphysics. this is that which throws him into natural history, as a main production of the globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations. things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur : he could paint the fine with precision, the great with compass; the tragic and the comic indifferently, and without any distortion or favor. he carried his powerful execution into minute details, to a hair point; finishes an eyelash or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain ; and yet these, like nature's, will bear the scrutiny of the solar microscope. in short, he is the chief example to prove that more or less of production, more or fewer pictures, is a thing indifferent. he had the power to make shakspeare ; or, the poet. 211 one picture. daguerre learned how to let one flower etch its image on his plate of iodine; and then proceeds at leisure to etch a million. there are always objects; but there was never representation. here is perfect representation, at last; and now let the world of figures sit for their portraits. no recipe can be given for the making of a shakspeare; but the possibility of the translation of things into song is demonstrated. his lyric power lies in the genius of the piece. the sonnets, though their excellence is lost in the splendor of the dramas, are as inimitable as they : and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit of the piece ; like the tone of voice of some incomparable person, so is this a speech of poetic beings, and any clause as unproducible now as a whole poem. though the speeches in the plays, and single lines, have a beauty which tempts the ear to pause on them for their euphuism, yet the sentence is so loaded with meaning, and so linked with its foregoers and followers, that the logician is satisfied. his means are as admirable as his ends ; every subordinate invention, by which he helps himself to connect some irreconcilable opposites, is a poem too. he is not reduced to dismount and walk, because his horses are running off with him in some distant direction: he always rides. 212 representative men. the finest poetry was first experience: but the thought has suffered a transformation since it was an experience. cultivated men often attain a good degree of skill in writing verses; but it is easy to read, through their poems, their personal history: any one acquainted with parties can name every figure: this is andrew, and that is rachel. the sense thus remains prosaic. it is a caterpillar with wings, and not yet a butterfly. in the poet's mind, the fact has gone quite over into the new element of thought, and has lost all that is exuvial. this generosity abides with shakspeare. we say, from the truth and closeness of his pictures, that he knows the lesson by heart. yet there is not a trace of egotism. one more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. i mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet, — for beauty is his aim. he loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace : he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. epicurus relates, that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. and the true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. homer lies in sunshine; chaucer is glad and erect; and saadi says, “it was ----------~ * —-1. shakspeare ; or, the poet. 213 rumored abroad that i was penitent; but what had i to do with repentance f * not less sovereign and cheerful, much more sovereign and cheerful, is the tone of shakspeare. his name suggests joy and emancipation to the heart of men. if he should appear in any company of human souls, who would not march in his troop? he touches nothing that does not borrow health and longevity from his festal style. and now, how stands the account of man with this bard and benefactor, when in solitude, shut. ting our ears to the reverberations of his fame, we seek to strike the balance 2 solitude has austere lessons; it can teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and it weighs shakspeare also, and finds him to share the halfness and imperfection of humanity. shakspeare, homer, dante, chaucer, saw the splendor of meaning that plays over the visible world ; knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: that these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life. shakspeare employed them as colors to compose his picture. 214 representative men. he rested in their beauty; and never took the step which seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to explore the virtue which resides in these symbols, and imparts this power, — what is that which they themselves say? he converted the elements, which waited on his command, into entertainments. he was master of the revels to mankind. is it not as if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, “very superior pyrotechny this evening!” are the agents of nature, and the power to understand them, worth no more than a street serenade, or the breath of a cigar ? one remembers again the trumpet-text in the koran, — " the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them, think ye we have created them in jest ?” as long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show. but when the question is to life, and its materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me? what does it signify? it is but a twelfth night, or midsummer-night's dream, or a winter evening's tale : what signifies another picture more or less ? the egyptian shakspeari shakspeare ; or, the poet. the poet. 215 verdict of the shakspeare societies comes to mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. i can not marry this fact to his verse. other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast. had he been less, had he reached only the common measure of great authors, of bacon, milton, tasso, cervantes, we might leave the fact in the twilight of human fate : but, that this man of men, he who gave to the science of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity some furlongs forward into chaos, — that he should not be wise for himself, — it must even go into the world's history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement. well, other men, priest and prophet, israelite, german, and swede, beheld the same objects: they also saw through them that which was contained. and to what purpose ? the beauty straightway vanished; they read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered round with doleful histories of adam's fall and curse, behind 216 representative men, • us; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal fires before us; and the heart of the seer and the heart of the listener sank in them. it must be conceded that these are half-views of half-men. the world still wants its poetpriest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. for knowledge will brighten the sunshine ; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom. napoleon; or, the man of the world. vi. napoleon; or, the man of the world, among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, bonaparte is far the best known, and the most powerful; and owes his predominance to the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of thought and belief, the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men. it is swedenborg's theory, that every organ is made up of homogeneous particles; or, as it is sometimes expressed, every whole is made of similars; that is, the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs; the liver, of infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little kidneys, &c. following this analogy, if any man is found to carry with him the power and affections of vast numbers, if napoleon is france, if napoleon is europe, it is because the people whom he sways are little napoleons. in our society, there is a standing antagonism between the conservative and the democratic 220 representative men. classes; between those who have made their fortunes, and the young and the poor who have fortunes to make; between the interests of dead labor, — that is, the labor of hands long ago still in the grave, which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land and buildings owned by idle capitalists, and the interests of living labor, which seeks to possess itself of land, and buildings, and money stocks. the first class is timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation, and continually losing numbers by death. the second class is selfish also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, always outnumbering the other, and recruiting its numbers every hour by births. it desires to keep open every avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply avenues; the class of business men in america, in england, in france, and throughout europe; the class of industry and skill. napoleon is its representative. the instinct of active, brave, able men, throughout the middle class every where, has pointed out napoleon as the incarnate democrat. he had their virtues and their vices; above all, he had their spirit or aim. that tendency is material, pointing at a sensual success, and employing the richest and most various means to that end; conversant with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, widely and accurately learned and skilful, but subordinapoleon; or, the man of the world. 221 nating all intellectual and spiritual forces into means to a material success. to be the rich man, is the end. “god has granted,” says the koran, “to every people a prophet in its own tongue." paris, and london, and new york, the spirit of commerce, of money, and material power, were also to have their prophet; and bonaparte was qualified and sent. every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, or lives of napoleon, delights in the page, because he studies in it his own history. napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. he is no saint, — to use his own word, “no capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. the man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other men in the street. he finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position, that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny: good society, good books, fast travelling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight, the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues, music, palaces, and conventional honors, pre19* 222 representative men. . cisely what is agreeable to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century, this powerful man possessed. it is true that a man of napoleon's truth of adaptation to the mind of the masses around him, becomes not merely representative, but actually a monopolizer and usurper of other minds. thus mirabeau plagiarized every good thought, every good word, that was spoken in france. dumont relates, that he sat in the gallery of the convention, and heard mirabeau make a speech. it struck dumont that he could fit it with a peroration, which he wrote in pencil immediately, and showed it to lord elgin, who sat by him. lord elgin approved it, and dumont, in the evening, showed it to mirabeau. mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, and declared he would incorporate it into his harangue, to-morrow, to the assembly. “it is impossible,” said dumont, “as, unfortunately, i have shown it to lord elgin." " if you have shown it to lord elgin, and to fifty persons beside, i shall still speak it to-morrow :" and he did speak it, with much effect, at the next day's session. for mirabeau, with his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which his presence inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said them, and that his adoption of them gave them their napoleon; or, the man of the world. 223 * weight. much more absolute and centralizing was the successor to mirabeau's popularity, and to much more than his predominance in france. indeed, a man of napoleon's stamp almost ceases to have a private speech and opinion. he is so largely receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for all the intelligence, wit, and power, of the age and country. he gains the battle; he makes the code ; he makes the system of weights and measures; he levels the alps; he builds the road. all distinguished engineers, savans, statists, report to him: so, likewise, do all good heads in every kind: he adopts the best measures, sets his stamp on them, and not these alone, but on every happy and memorable expression. every sentence spoken by napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of france. bonaparte was the idol of common men, because he had in transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common men. there is a certain satifaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy. bonaparte wrought, in common with that great class he represented, for power and wealth, – but bonaparte, specially, without any scruple as to the means. all the sentiments which embarrass men's pursuit of these objects, 224 representative men. he set aside. the sentiments were for women and children. fontanes, in 1804, expressed napoleon's own sense, when, in behalf of the senate, he addressed him, “sire, the desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever afflicted the human mind.” the advocates of liberty, and of progress, are “ideologists; ” — a word of contempt often in his mouth ; – “necker is an ideologist:” “lafayette is an ideologist.” an italian proverb, too well known, declares that, “if you would succeed, you must not be too good.” it is an advantage, within certain limits, to have renounced the dominion of the sentiments of piety, gratitude, and generosity; since, what was an impassable bar to us, and still is to others, becomes a convenient weapon for our purposes; just as the river which was a formidable barrier, winter transforms into the smoothest of roads. napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, and would help himself with his hands and his head. with him is no miracle, and no magic. he is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very consistent and wise master-workman. he is never weak and literary, but acts with the solidity and the precision of natural agents. he has not lost his native sense napoleon ; or, the man of the world. 225 and sympathy with things. men give way before such a man, as before natural events. to be sure, there are men enough who are immersed in things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics generally; and we know how real and solid such men appear in the presence of scholars and grammarians: but these men ordinarily lack the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a head. but bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and generalization, so that men saw in him combined the natural and the intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him. he came unto his own, and they received him. this ciphering operative knows what he is working with, and what is the product. he knew the properties of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and required that each should do after its kind. the art of war was the game in which he exerted his arithmetic. it consisted, according to him, in having always more forces than the enemy, on the point where the enemy is attacked, or where he attacks: and his whole talent is strained by endless manoeuvre and evolution, to march always on the enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in detail. it is obvious that 226 representative men. a very small force, skilfully and rapidly maneuvring, so as always to bring two men against one at the point of engagement, will be an overmatch for a much larger body of men. the times, his constitution, and his early circumstances, combined to develop this pattern democrat. he had the virtues of his class, and the conditions for their activity. that common sense, which no sooner respects any end, than it finds the means to effect it; the delight in the use of means; in the choice, simplification, and combining of means; the directness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence with which all was seen, and the energy with which all was done, make him the natural organ and head of what i may almost call, from its extent, the modern party. nature must have far the greatest share in every success, and so in his. such a man was wanted, and such a man was born; a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours, of going many days together without rest or food, except by snatches, and with the speed and spring of a tiger in action; a man not embarrassed by any scruples ; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, and of a perception which did not suffer itself to be baulked or misled by any pretences of others, or any superstition, or any ņapoleon; or, the man of the world. 227 heat or haste of his own. "my hand of iron," he said, “was not at the extremity of my arm ; it was immediately connected with my head.” he respected the power of nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opinionativeness, and waging war with nature. his favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star; and he pleased himself, as well as the people, when he styled himself the “child of destiny.” 6 they charge me,” he said, “ with the commission of great crimes : men of my stamp do not commit crimes. nothing has been more simple than my elevation : 'tis in vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime : it was owing to the peculiarity of the times, and to my reputation of having fought well against the enemies of my country. i have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and with events. of what use, then, would crimes be to me?” again he said, speaking of his son, “my son can not replace me; i could not replace myself. i am the creature of circumstances." he had a directness of action never before combined with so much comprehension. he is a realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused truthobscuring persons. he sees where the matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point of resistance, and slights all other considerations. 228 representative men. he is strong in the right manner, namely, by insight. he never blundered into victory, but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field. his principal means are in himself. he asks counsel of no other. in 1796, he writes to the directory; “i have conducted the campaign without consulting any one. i should have done no good, if i had been under the necessity of conforming to the notions of another person. i have gained some advantages over superior forces, and when totally destitute of every thing, because, in the persuasion that your confidence was reposed in me, my actions were as prompt as my thoughts.” history is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. they are a class of persons much to be pitied; for they know not what they should do. the weavers strike for bread ; and the king and his ministers, not knowing what to do, meet them with bayonets. but napoleon understood his business. here was a man who, in each moment and emergency, knew what to do next. it is an immense comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens. few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their -line, and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad. napoleon had been the first man napoleon; or, the man of the world. 229 of the world, if his ends had been purely public. as he is, he inspires confidence and vigor by the extraordinary unity of his action. he is firm, sure, self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing every thing to his aim, — money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his aim; not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means. “incidents ought not to govern policy,” he said, “but policy, incidents.” “ to be hurried away by every event, is to have no political system at all.” his victories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. he knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. he would shorten a straight line to come at his object. horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price at which he bought his successes; but he must not therefore be set down as cruel ; but only as one who knew no impediment to his will; not bloodthirsty, not cruel, — but wo to what thing or person stood in his way! not bloodthirsty, but not sparing of blood, — and pitiless. he saw only the object : the obstacle must give way. “sire, general clarke can not combine with general junot, for the dreadful fire of the austrian battery.” — “let him carry the battery." "sire, every regiment that approaches 20 230 representative men. the heavy artillery is sacrificed : sire, what orders ?” — “forward, forward !" seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his military memoirs, the following sketch of a scene after the battle of austerlitz. — “at the moment in which the russian army was making its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, the emperor napoleon came riding at full speed toward the artillery. "you are losing time, he cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be engulfed : fire upon the ice !' the order remained unexecuted for ten minutes. in vain several officers and myself were placed on the slope of a hill to produce the effect : their balls and mine rolled upon the ice, without breaking it up. seeing that, i tried a simple method of elevating light howitzers. the almost perpendicular fall of the heavy projectiles produced the desired effect. · my method was immediately followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less than no time we buried ” some* "thousands of russians and austrians under the waters of the lake.” in the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle seemed to vanish. “ there shall be no alps," * as i quote at second hand, and cannot procure seruzier, i dare not adopt the high figure i find. napoleon; or, the man of the world. 231 he said ; and he built his perfect roads, climbing by graded galleries their steepest precipices, until italy was as open to paris as any town in france. he laid his bones to, and wrought for his crown. having decided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. he put out all his strength. he risked every thing, and spared nothing, neither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor generals, nor himself. we like to see every thing do its office after its kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattle-snake; and, if fighting be the best mode of adjusting national differences, (as large majorities of men seem to agree,) certainly bonaparte was right in making it thorough. "the grand principle of war," he said, “ was, that an army ought always to be ready, by day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resistance it is capable of making." he never economized his ammunition, but, on a hostile position, rained a torrent of iron, shells, balls, grape-shot, to annihilate all defence. on any point of resistance, he concentrated squadron on squadron in overwhelming numbers, until it was swept out of existence. to a regiment of horse-chasseurs at lobenstein, two days before the battle of jena, napoleon said, “my lads, you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they drive him into the enemy's ranks." in the 232 representative men. fury of assault, he no more spared himself. he went to the edge of his possibility. it is plain that in italy he did what he could, and all that he could. he came, several times, within an inch of ruin; and his own person was all but lost. he was flung into the marsh at arcola. the austrians were between him and his troops, in the melée, and he was brought off with desperate efforts. at lonato, and at other places, he was on the point of being taken prisoner. he fought sixty battles. he had never enough. each victory was a new weapon. “my power would fall, were i not to support it by new achievments. conquest has made me what i am, and conquest must maintain me.” he felt, with every wise man, that as much life is needed for conservation, as for creation. we are always in peril, always in a bad plight, just on the edge of destruction, and only to be saved by invention and courage. this vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and punctuality. a thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable in his intrenchments. his very attack was never the inspiration of courage, but the result of calculation. his idea of the best defence consists in being still the attacking party. “my ambition," he says, was great, but was of a cold nanapoleon; or, the man of the world. 233 ture.” in one of his conversations with las casas, he remarked, “as to moral courage, i have rarely met with the two-o'clock-in-themorning kind : i mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion ; and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and decision :" and he did not hesitate to declare that he was himself eminently endowed with this “twoo'clock-in-the-morning courage, and that he had met with few persons equal to himself in this respect.” every thing depended on the nicety of his combinations, and the stars were not more punctual than his arithmetic. his personal attention descended to the smallest particulars. "at montebello, i ordered kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse, and with these he separated the six thousand hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes of the austrian cavalry. this cavalry was half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and i have observed, that it is always these quarters of an hour that decide the fate of a battle.” “before he fought a battle, bonaparte thought little about what he should do in case of success, but a great deal about what he should do in case of a reverse of fortune.” the same prudence and 20* 234 representative men. good sense mark all his behavior. his instructions to his secretary at the tuilleries are worth remembering. “during the night, enter my chamber as seldom as possible. do not awake me when you have any good news to communicate; with that there is no hurry. but when you bring bad news, rouse me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be lost.” it was a whimsical economy of the same kind which dictated his practice, when general in italy, in regard to his vurdensome correspondence. he directed bourienne to leave all letters unopened for three weeks, and then observed with satisfaction how large a part of the correspondence had thus disposed of itself, and no longer required an answer. his achievement of business was immense, and enlarges the known powers of man. there have been many working kings, from ulysses to william of orange, but none who accomplished a tithe of this man's performance. to these gifts of nature, napoleon added the advantage of having been born to a private and humble fortune. in his later days, he had the weakness of wishing to add to his crowns and badges the prescription of aristocracy : but he knew his debt to his austere education, and made no secret of his contempt for the born kings, and for “the hereditary asses,” as he coarsely styled napoleon; or, the man of the world. 235 the bourbons. he said that, “in their exile, they had learned nothing, and forgot nothing." bonaparte had passed through all the degrees of military service, but also was citizen before he was emperor, and so has the key to citizenship. his remarks and estimates discover the information and justness of measurement of the middle class. those who had to deal with him, found that he was not to be imposed upon, but could cipher as well as another man. this appears in all parts of his memoirs, dictated at st. helena. when the expenses of the empress, of his household, of his palaces, had accumulated great debts, napoleon examined the bills of the creditors himself, detected overcharges and errors, and reduced the claims by considerable sums. his grand weapon, namely, the millions whom he directed, he owed to the representative character which clothed him. he interests us as he stands for france and for, europe ; and he exists as captain and king, only as far as the revolution, or the interest of the industrious masses, found an organ and a leader in him. in the social interests, he knew the meaning and value of labor, and threw himself naturally on that side. i like an incident mentioned by one of his biographers at st. helena. “when walking with mrs. balcombe, some servants, carrying heavy 236 representative men. boxes, passed by on the road, and mrs. balcombe desired them, in rather an angry tone, to keep back. napoleon interfered, saying, 'respect the burden, madam.'” in the time of the empire, he directed attention to the improvement and embellishment of the markets of the capital. “ the market-place,” he said, “is the louvre of the common people.” the principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. he filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between the officers and himself. they performed, under his eye, that which no others could do. the best document of his relation to his troops is the order of the day on the morning of the battle of austerlitz, in whịch napoleon promises the troops that he will keep his person out of reach of fire. this declaration, which is the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devotion of the army to their leader. but though there is in particulars this identity between napoleon and the mass of the people, his real strength lay in their conviction that he was their representative in his genius and aims, not only .when he courted, but when he connapoleon; or, the man of the world. 237 trolled and even when he decimated them by his conscriptions. he knew, as well as any jacobin in france, how to philosophize on liberty and equality; and, when allusion was made to the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled by the killing of the duc d'enghien, he suggested, “neither is my blood ditch-water.” the people felt that no longer the throne was occupied, and the land sucked of its nourishment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded from all community with the children of the soil, and holding the ideas and superstitions of a longforgotten state of society. instead of that vampyre, a man of themselves held, in the tuilleries, knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, of course, to them and their children, all places of power and trust. the day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever narrowing the means and opportunities of young men, was ended, and a day of expansion and demand was come. a market for all the powers and productions of man was opened; brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes of youth and talent. the old, iron-bound, feudal france was changed into a young ohio or new york; and those who smarted under the immediate rigors of the new monarch, pardoned them, as the necessary severities of the military system which had driven out the oppressor. and even 238 representative men. when the majority of the people had begun to ask, whether they had really gained any thing under the exhausting levies of men and money of the new master, the whole talent of the country, in every rank and kindred, took his part, and defended him as its natural patron. in 1814, when advised to rely on the higher classes, napoleon said to those around him, “gentlemen, in the situation in which i stand, my only nobility is the rabble of the faubourgs." napoleon met this natural expectation. the necessity of his position required a hospitality to every sort of talent, and its appointment to trusts; and his feeling went along with this policy. like every superior person, he undoubtedly felt a desire for men and compeers, and a wish to measure his power with other masters, and an impatience of fools and underlings. in italy, he sought for men, and found none. “good god!” he said, “how rare men are! there are eighteen millions in italy, and i have with difficulty found two,— dandolo and melzi.” in later years, with larger experience, his respect for mankind was not increased. in a moment of bitterness, he said, to one of his oldest friends, “ men deserve the contempt with which they inspire me. i have only to put some gold lace on the coat of napoleon; or, the man of the world. 239 my virtuous republicans, and they immediately become just what i wish them.” this impatience at levity was, however, an oblique tribute of respect to those able persons who commanded his regard, not only when he found them friends and coadjutors, but also when they resisted his will. he could not confound fox and pitt, carnot, lafayette, and bernadotte, with the danglers of his court; and, in spite of the detraction which his systematic egotism dictated toward the great captains who conquered with and for him, ample acknowledgments are made by him to lannes, duroc, kleber, dessaix, massena, murat, ney, and augereau. if he felt himself their patron, and the founder of their fortunes, as when he said, “i made my generals out of mud,” he could not hide his satisfaction in receiving from them a seconding and support commensurate with the grandeur of his enterprise. in the russian campaign, he was so much impressed by the courage and resources of marshal ney, that he said, “i have two hundred millions in my coffers, and i would give them all for ney.” the characters which he has drawn of several of his marshals, are discriminating, and, though they did not content the insatiable vanity of french officers, are, no doubt, substantially just. and, in fact, every species of merit was sought and advanced under 240 representative men. his government. “i know," he said, “the depth and draught of water of every one of my generals.” natural power was sure to be well received at his court. seventeen men, in his time, were raised from common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal, duke, or general ; and the crosses of his legion of honor were given to personal valor, and not to family connexion. 6 when soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.” when a natural king becomes a titular king, every body is pleased and satisfied. the revolution entitled the strong populace of the faubourg st. antoine, and every horse-boy and powdermonkey in the army, to look on napoleon, as flesh of his flesh, and the creature of his party : but there is something in the success of grand talent which enlists an universal sympathy. for, in the prevalence of sense and spirit over stupidity and malversation, all reasonable men have an interest; and, as intellectual beings, we feel the air purified by the electric shock, when material force is overthrown by intellectual energies. as soon as we are removed out of the reach of local and accidental partialities, man feels that napoleon fights for him ; these are honest victories; this strong steam-engine does our work. whatever napoleon ; or, the man of the world. 241 appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us. this capacious head, revolving and disposing sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating such multitudes of agents; this eye, which looked through europe; this prompt invention; this inexhaustible resource; —what events what romantic pictures what strange situations ! — when spying the alps, by a sunset in the sicilian sea; drawing up his army for battle, in sight of the pyramids, and saying to his troops, “from the tops of those pyramids, forty centuries look down on you ; ” fording the red sea; wading in the gulf of the isthmus of suez. on the shore of plotemais, gigantic projects agitated him. “had acre fallen, i should have changed the face of the world.” his army, on the night of the battle of austerlitz, which was the anniversary of his inauguration as emperor, presented him with a bouquet of forty standards taken in the fight. perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure he took in making these contrasts glaring; as when he pleased himself with making kings wait in his antechambers, at tilsit, at paris, and at erfurt. we cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor, who 21 242 representative men. took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees ; namely, by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage, and thoroughness. “the austrians," he said, “ do not know the value of time." i should cite him, in his earlier years, as a model of prudence. his power does not consists in any wild or extravagant force ; in any enthusiasm, like mahomet's; or singular power of persuasion ; but in the exercise of common sense on each emergency, instead of abiding by rules and customs. the lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches, — that there is always room for it. to what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's life an answer. when he appeared, it was the belief of all military men that there could be nothing new in war; as it is the belief of men to-day, that nothing new can be undertaken in politics, or in church, or in letters, or in trade, or in farming, or in our social manners and customs; and as it is, at all times, the belief of society that the world is used up. but bonaparte knew better than society; and, moreover, knew that he knew better. i think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they dare not trust their presentiments. bonaparte relied napoleon ; or, the man of the world. 243 on his own sense, and did not care a bean for other people's. the world treated his novelties just as it treats every body's novelties, – made infinite objection; mustered all the impediments: but he snapped his finger at their objections. “what creates great difficulty,” he remarks, “in the profession of the land-commander, is the necessity of feeding so many men and animals. if he allows himself to be guided by the commissaries, he will never stir, and all his expeditions will fail.” an example of his common sense is what he says of the passage of the alps in winter, which, all writers, one repeating after the other, had described as impracticable. “the winter,” says napoleon, “is not the most unfavorable season for the passage of lofty mountains. the snow is then firm, the weather settled, and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, the real and only danger to be apprehended in the alps. on those high mountains, there are often very fine days in december, of a dry cold, with extreme calmness in the air.” read his account, too, of the way in which battles are gained. “in all battles, a moment occurs, when the bravest troops, after having made the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run. that terror proceeds from a want of confidence in their own courage; and it only requires a slight opportunity, a pretence, to restore confi244 representative men. dence to them. the art is to give rise to the opportunity, and to invent the pretence. at arcola, i won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. i seized that moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, and gained the day with this handful. you see that two armies are two bodies which meet, and endeavor to frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, and that moment must be turned to advantage. when a man has been present in many actions, he distinguishes that moment without difficulty: it is as easy as casting up an addition.” this deputy of the nineteenth century added to his gifts a capacity for speculation on general topics. he delighted in running through the range of practical, of literary, and of abstract questions. his opinion is always original, and to the purpose. on the voyage to egypt, he liked, after dinner, to fix on three or four persons to support a proposition, and as many to oppose it. he gave a subject, and the discussions turned on questions of religion, the different kinds of government, and the art of war. one day, he asked, whether the planets were inhabited on another, what was the age of the world? then he proposed to consider the probability of the destruction of the globe, either by water or by fire: at another time, the truth or fallacy of presentinapoleon; or, the man of the world. 245 ments, and the interpretation of dreams. he was very fond of talking of religion. in 1806, he conversed with fournier, bishop of montpellier, on matters of theology. there were two points on which they could not agree, viz., that of hell, and that of salvation out of the pale of the church. the emperor told josephine, that he disputed like a devil on these two points, on which the bishop was inexorable. to the philosophers he readily yielded all that was proved against religion as the work of men and time; but he would not hear of materialism. one fine night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism, bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said, “you may talk as long as you please, gentlemen, but who made all that ?" he delighted in the conversation of men of science, particularly of monge and berthollet; but the men of letters he slighted; "they were manufacturers of phrases.” of medicine, too, he was fond of talking, and with those of its practitioners whom he most esteemed, — with corvisart at paris, and with antonomarchi at st. helena. "believe me," he said to the last, "we had better leave off all these remedies: life is a fortress which neither you nor i know any thing about. why throw obstacles in the way of its defence? its own means are superior to all the apparatus of your laboratories. corvisart candidly 21* 246 representative men. agreed with me, that all your filthy mixtures are good for nothing. medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind. water, air, and cleanliness, are the chief articles in my pharmacopeia." his memoirs, dictated to count montholon and general gourgaud, at st. helena, have great value, after all the deduction that, it seems, is to be made from them, on account of his known disingenuousness. he has the good-nature of strength and conscious superiority. i admire his simple, clear narrative of his battles;—good as cæsar's; his good-natured and sufficiently respectful account of marshal wurmser and his other antagonists, and his own equality as a writer to his varying subject. the most agreeable portion is the campaign in egypt. he had hours of thought and wisdom. in intervals of leisure, either in the camp or the palace, napoleon appears as a man of genius, directing on abstract questions the native appetite for truth, and the impatience of words, he was wont to show in war. he could enjoy every play of invention, a romance, a bon mot, as well as a stratagem in a campaign. he delighted to fascinate josephine and her ladies, in a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of a fiction, to which napoleon ; or, the man of the world. 247 his voice and dramatic power lent every addition. i call napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. he was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. of course, the rich and aristocratic did not like him. england, the centre of capital, and rome and austria, centres of tradition and genealogy, opposed him. the consternation of the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the foolish old men and old women of the roman conclave, – who in their despair took hold of any thing, and would cling to redhot iron, — the vain attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active men, every where, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle class, make his history bright and commanding. he had the virtues of the masses of his constituents: he had also their vices. i am sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse. but that is the fatal quality which we discover in our pursuit of 248 representative men. wealth, that it is treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the sentiments : and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means. bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. the highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and population of the world, — he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. he is unjust to his generals ; egotistic, and monopolizing ; meanly stealing the credit of their great actions from kellermann, from bernadotte ; intriguing to involve his faithful junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance from paris, because the familiarity of his manners offends the new pride of his throne. he is a boundless liar. the official paper, his “ moniteurs,” and all his bulletins, are proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed; and worse, he sat, in his premature old age, in his lonely island, coldly falsifying facts, and dates, and characters, and giving to history a theatrical eclat. like all frenchmen, he has a passion for stage effect. every action that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this calculation. his star, his love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the soul, are all napoleon; or, the man of the world. 249 french. "i must dazzle and astonish. if i were to give the liberty of the press, my power could not last three days.” to make a great noise is his favorite design. “a great reputation is a great noise : the more there is made, the farther off it is heard. laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." his doctrine of immortality is simply fame. his theory of influence is not flattering. “ there are two levers for moving men, interest and fear. love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. friendship is but a name. i love nobody. i do not even love my brothers : perhaps joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and duroc, i love him too ; but why ? — because his character pleases me: he is stern and resolute, and, i believe, the fellow never shed a tear. for my part, i know very well that i have no true friends. as long as i continue to be what i am, i may have as many pretended friends as i please. leave sensibility. to women: but men should be firm in heart and purpose, or they should have nothing to do with war and government." . he was thoroughly unscrupulous. he would steal, slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest dictated. he had no generosity ; but mere vulgar hatred : he was intensely selfish : he was perfidious : he 250 representative men. cheated at cards: he was a prodigious gossip; and opened letters ; and delighted in his infamous police ; and rubbed his hands with joy when he had intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning the men and women about him, boasting that “ he knew everything ;” and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the women; and listened after the hurrahs and the compliments of the street, incognito. his manners were coarse. he treated women with low familiarity. he had the habit of pulling their ears, and pinching their cheeks, when he was in good humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of men, and of striking and horse-play with them, to his last days. it does not appear that he listened at keyholes, or, at least, that he was caught at it. in short, when you have penetrated through all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman, at last; but with an impostor and a rogue: and he fully deserves the epithet of jupiter scapin, or a sort of scamp jupiter. in describing the two parties into which modern society divides itself, — the democrat and the conservative, i said, bonaparte represents the democrat, or the party of men of business, against the stationary or conservative party. i omitted then to say, what is material to the statement, napoleon; or, the man of the world. 251 namely, that these two parties differ only as young and old. the democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. the aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed, – because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep. bonaparte may be said to represent the whole history of this party, its youth and its age; yes, and with poetic justice, its fate, in his own. the counter-revolution, the counter-party, still waits for its organ and representative, in a lover and a man of truly public and universal aims. here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. never was such a leader so endowed, and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers. and what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of this demoralized europe? it came to no result. all passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. he left france smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again. the attempt was, in principle, suicidal. france served him-with life, and limb, and estate, as long as it could identify its interest with him ; 252 representative men. but when men saw that after victory was another war; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions; and they who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to the reward, – they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux, — they deserted him. men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. it resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man can not open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. so, this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power and existence of those who served him ; and the universal cry of france, and, of europe, in 1814, was, “enough of him; ” “assex de bonaparte.” it was not bonaparte's fault. he did all that in him lay, to live and thrive without moral principle. it was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the result, in a million experiments, will be the same. every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. the pacific fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious napoleon. napoleon; or, the man of the world. 253 as long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men. 22 g o et h e : or, t h e w rite r. vii. goethe; 0 r, the writer. i find a provision, in the constitution of the world, for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that every where throbs and works. his office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences. nature will be reported. all things are engaged in writing their history. the planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. the rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. the falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. every act of the man inscribes itself in the mem22% 258 representative men. ories of his fellows, and in his own manners and face. the air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent. in nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal. it neither exceeds nor comes short of the fact. but nature strives upward ; and, in man, the report is something more than print of the seal. it is a new and finer form of the original. the record is alive, as that which it recorded is alive. in man, the memory is a kind of looking-glass, which, having received the images of surrounding objects, is touched with life, and disposes them in a new order. the facts which transpired do not lie in it inert; but some subside, and others shine ; so that soon we have a new picture, composed of the eminent experiences. the man coöperates. he loves to communicate; and that which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart until it is delivered. but, besides the universal joy of conversation, some men are born with exalted powers for this second creation. men are born to write. the gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone : his vocation is to be a planter of plants. not less does the writer attend his affair. whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him gofthe ; or, the writer. 259 as a model, and sits for its picture. he counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. he believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the holy ghost, or attempt it. nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes therefore commended to his pen, – and he will write. in his eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the possibility of being reported. in conversation, in calamity, he finds new materials; as our german poet said, “some god gave me the power to paint what i suffer.” he draws his rents from rage and pain. by acting rashly, he buys the power of talking wisely. wexations, and a tempest of passion, only fill his sail; as the good luther writes, “when i am angry, i can pray well, and preach well:” and, if we knew the genesis of fine strokes of eloquence, they might recall the complaisance of sultan amurath, who struck off some persian heads, that his physician, wesalius, might see the spasms in the muscles of the neck. his failures are the preparation of his victories. a new thought, or a crisis of passion, apprises him that all that he has yet learned and written is exoteric, —is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact. what then 2 does he throw away the pen? no; he begins again to describe in the new light 260 represent ative men. which has shined on him, -if, by some means, he may yet save some true word. nature con, spires. whatever can be thought can be spoken, and still rises for utterance, though to rude and stammering organs. if they cannot compass it, it waits and works, until, at last, it moulds them to its perfect will, and is articulated. this striving after imitative expression, which one meets every where, is significant of the aim of nature, but is mere stenography. there are higher degrees, and nature has more splendid endowments for those whom she elects to a superior office; for the class of scholars or writers, who see connection where the multitude see ffragments, and who are impelled to exhibit he facts in order, and so to supply the axis on which the frame of things turns. nature has dearly at heart the formation of the speculative man, or scholar. it is an end never lost sight of, and is prepared in the original casting of things. he is no permissive or accidental appearance, but an organic agent, one of the estates of the realm, provided and prepared, from of old and from everlasting, in the knitting and contexture of things. presentiments, impulses, cheer him. there is a certain heat in the breast, which attends the perception of a primary truth, which is the shining of the spiritual sun down into the gofthe ; or, the writer. 261 shaft of the mine. every thought which dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergence announces its own rank, -whether it is some whimsy, or whether it is a power. if he have his incitements, there is, on the other side, invitation and need enough of his gift. society has, at all times, the same want, namely, of one sane man with adequate powers of expression to hold up each object of monomania in its right relations. the ambitious and mercenary bring their last new mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, texas, railroad, romanism, mesmerism, or california; and, by detaching the object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare; and a multitude go mad about it, and they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crotchet. but let one man have the comprehensive eye that can replace this isolated prodigy in its right neighborhood and bearings, – the illusion vanishes, and the returning reason of the community thanks the reason of the monitor. the scholar is the man of the ages, but he must also wish with other men to stand well with his contemporaries. but there is a certain ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, unless 262 representative men. the scholar heed it. in this country, the eme phasis of conversation, and of public opinion, commends the practical man; and the solid portion of the community is named with significant respect in every circle. our people are of bonaparte's opinion concerning ideologists. ideas are subversive of social order and comfort, and at last make a fool of the possessor. it is believed, the ordering a cargo of goods from new york to smyrna; or, the running up and down to procure a company of subscribers to set a-going five or ten thousand spindles; or, the negotiations of a caucus, and the practising on the prejudices and facility of country-people, to secure their votes in november, – is practical and commendable. if i were to compare action of a much higher strain with a life of contemplation, i should not venture to pronounce with much confidence in favor of the former. mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer. a certain partiality, a headiness, and loss of balance, is the tax which all action must pay. act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. men's actions are too strong for them. show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. what they have done commits and goethe ; or, the writer. 263 enforces them to do the same again. the first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. the fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form, and lose the aspiration. the quaker has established quakerism, the shaker has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is antispiritual. but where are his new things of to-day? in actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears : but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. the hindoos write in their sacred books, “children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative and the practical faculties as two. they are but one, for both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained by the followers of the one, is gained by the followers of the other. that man seeth, who seeth that the speculative and the practical doctrines are one.” for great action must draw on the spiritual nature. the measure of action is the sentiment from which it 264 representative men. proceeds. the greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance. this disparagement will not come from the leaders, but from inferior persons. the robust gentlemen who stand at the head of the practical class, share the ideas of the time, and have too much sympathy with the speculative class. it is not from men excellent in any kind, that disparagement of any other is to be looked for. with such, talleyrand's question is ever the main one ; not, is he rich ? is he committed ? is he well-meaning ? has he this or that faculty ? is he of the movement ? is he of the establishment? — but, is he any body ? does he stand for something ? he must be good of his kind. that is all that talleyrand, all that state-street, all that the common sense of mankind asks. be real and admirable, not as we know, but as you know. able men do not care in what kind a man is able, so only that he is able. a master likes a master, and does not stipulate whether it be orator, artist, craftsman, or king. society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class. and it is not to be denied that men are cordial in their recognition and welcome of intellectual accomplishments. still the writer does not stand with us on any commanding ground. i think this to be his own goethe ; or, the writer. 265 fault. a pound passes for a pound. there have been times when he was a sacred person : he wrote bibles; the first hymns; the codes; the epics; tragic songs; sibylline verses; chaldean oracles ; laconian sentences, inscribed on temple walls. every word was true, and woke the nations to new life. he wrote without levity, and without choice. every word was carved before his eyes, into the earth and the sky; and the sun and stars were only letters of the same purport, and of no more necessity. but how can he be nonored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public; when he must sustain with shameless advocacy some bad government, or must bark, all the year round, in opposition; or write conventional criticism, or profligate novels; or, at any rate, write without thought, and without recurrence, by day and by night, to the sources of inspiration ? some reply to these questions may be furnished by looking over the list of men of literary genius in our age. among these, no more instructive name occurs than that of goethe, to represent the powers and duties of the scholar or writer. i described bonaparte as a representative of the popular external life and aims of the nineteenth 23 266 representative men. century. its other half, its poet, is goethe, a man quite domesticated in the century, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, impossible at any earlier time, and taking away, by his colossal parts, the reproach of weakness, which, but for him, would lie on the intellectual works of the period. he appears at a time when a general culture has spread itself, and has smoothed down all sharp individual traits; when, in the absence of heroic characters, a social comfort and coöperation have come in. there is no poet, but scores of poetic writers; no columbus, but hundreds of postcaptains, with transit-telescope, barometer, and concentrated soup and pemmican; no demosthenes, no chatham, but any number of clever parliamentary and forensic debaters; no prophet or saint, but colleges of divinity; no learned man, but learned societies, a cheap press, reading-rooms, and book-clubs, without number. there was never such a miscellany of facts. the world extends itself like american trade. we conceive greek or roman life, — life in the middle ages, to be a simple and comprehensible affair; but modern life to respect a multitude of things, which is distracting. . goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity; hundred-handed, argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of facts and gofthe ; or, the writer. 267 sciences, and, by his own versatility, to dispose of them with ease ; a manly mind, unembarrassed by the variety of coats of convention with which life had got encrusted, easily able by his subtlety to pierce these, and to draw his strength from nature, with which he lived in full communion. what is strange, too, he lived in a small town, in a petty state, in a defeated state, and in a time when germany played no such leading part in the world's affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons with any metropolitan pride, such as might have cheered a french, or english, or once, a roman or attic genius. yet there is no trace of provincial limitation in his muse. he is not a debtor to his position, but was born with a free and controlling genius. the helena, or the second part of faust, is a philosophy of literature set in poetry; the work of one who found himself the master of histories, mythologies, philosophies, sciences, and national literatures, in the encyclopaedical manner in which modern erudition, with its international intercourse of the whole earth's population, researches into indian, etruscan, and all cyclopaean arts, geology, chemistry, astronomy; and every one of these kingdoms assuming a certain aerial and poetic character, by reason of the multitude. one looks at a king with reverence ; but if one 26s representative men. should chance to be at a congress of kings, the eye would take liberties with the peculiarities of each. these are not wild miraculous songs, but elaborate forms, to which the poet has confided the results of eighty years of observation. this reflective and critical wisdom makes the poem more truly the flower of this time. it dates itself. still he is a poet, — poet of a prouder laurel than any contemporary, and, under this plague of microscopes, (for he seems to see out of every pore of his skin,) strikes the harp with a hero's strength and grace. the wonder of the book is its superior intelligence. in the menstruum of this man’s wit, the past and the present ages, and their religions, politics, and modes of thinking, are dissolved into archetypes and ideas. what new mythologies sail through his head | the greeks said, that alexander went as far as chaos; goethe went, only the other day, as far; and one step farther he hazarded, and brought himself safe back. there is a heart-cheering freedom in his speculation. the immense horizon which journeys with us lends its majesty to trifles, and to matters of convenience and necessity, as to solemn and festal performances. he was the soul of his century. if that was learned, and had become, by population, compact organization, and drill of goethe ; or, the writer. 269 parts, one great exploring expedition, accumulating a glut of facts and fruits too fast for any hitherto-existing savans to classify, this man's mind had ample chambers for the distribution of all. he had a power to unite the detached atoms again by their own law. he has clothed our modern existence with poetry. amid littleness and detail, he detected the genius of life, the old cunning proteus, nestling close beside us, and showed that the dulness and prose we ascribe to the age was only another of his masks: — “his very flight is presence in disguise:” that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue dress, and was not a whit less vivacious or rich in liverpool or the hague, than once in rome or antioch. he sought him in public squares and main streets, in boulevards and hotels; and, in the solidest kingdom of routine and the senses, he showed the lurking daimonic power; that, in actions of routine, a thread of mythology and fable spins itself: and this, by tracing the pedigree of every usage and practice, every institution, utensil, and means, home to its origin in the structure of man. he had an extreme impatience of conjecture and of rhetoric. “i have guesses enough of my own; if a man write a book, let him set down only what he knows.” he writes 23# 270 representative men. in the plainest and lowest tone, omitting a great deal more than he writes, and putting ever a thing for a word. he has explained the distinction between the antique and the modern spirit and art. he has defined art, its scope and laws. he has said the best things about nature that ever were said. he treats nature as the old philosophers, as the seven wise masters did, –and, with whatever loss of french tabulation and dissection, poetry and humanity remain to us; and they have some doctoral skill. eyes are better, on the whole, than telescopes or microscopes. he has contributed a key to many parts of nature, through the rare turn for unity and simplicity in his mind. thus goethe suggested the leading idea of modern botany, that a leaf, or the eye of a leaf, is the unit of botany, and that every part of the plant is only a transformed leaf to meet a new condition; and, by varying the conditions, a leaf may be converted into any other organ, and any other organ into a leaf. in like manner, in osteology, he assumed that one vertebra of the spine might be considered the unit of the skeleton: the head was only the uppermost vertebra transformed. “the plant goes from knot to knot, closing, at last, with the flower and the seed. so the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from knot to knot, and closes gofthe ; or, the writfr. 271 with the head. man and the higher animals are built up through the vertebrae, the powers being concentrated in the head.” in optics, again, he rejected the artificial theory of seven colors, and considered that every color was the mixture of light and darkness in new proportions. it is really of very little consequence what topic he writes upon. he sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation towards truth. he will realize what you say. he hates to be trifled with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable, that has had possession of men's faith these thousand years. he may as well see if it is true as another. he sifts it. i am here, he would say, to be the measure and judge of these things. why should i take them on trust? and, therefore, what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of manners, of property, of paper money, of periods of belief, of omens, of luck, or whatever else, refuses to be forgotten. take the most remarkable example that could occur of this tendency to verify every term in popular use. the devil had played an important part in mythology in all times. goethe would have no word that does not cover a thing. the same measure will still serve : “i have never heard of any crime which i might not have committed.” so he flies at the throat of this 272 representative men. imp. he shall be real; he shall be modern; he shall be european ; he shall dress like a gentleman, and accept the manners, and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life of vienna, and of heidelberg, in 1820, or he shall not exist. accordingly, he stripped him of mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures, looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness, and unbelief that, in crowds, or in solitude, darkens over the human thought, — and found that the portrait gained reality and terror by every thing he added, and by every thing he took away. he found that the essence of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow about the habitations of men, ever since there were men, was pure intellect, applied, – as always there is a tendency, — to the service of the senses: and he flung into literature, in his mephistopheles, the first organic figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain as long as the prometheus. i have no design to enter into any analysis of his numerous works. they consist of translations, criticism, dramas, lyric and every other description of poems, literary journals, and portraits of distinguished men. yet i cannot omit •o specify the wilhelm meister. fl goethe ; or, the writer. 273 ~ wilhelm meister is a novel in every sense, the first of its kind, called by its admirers the only delineation of modern society, -as if other novels, those of scott, for example, dealt with costume and condition, this with the spirit of life. it is a book over which some veil is still drawn. it is read by very intelligent persons with wonder and delight. it is preferred by some such to hamlet, as a work of genius. i suppose, no book of this century can compare with it in its delicious sweetness, so new, so provoking to the mind, gratifying it with so many and so solid thoughts, just insights into life, and manners, and characters; so many good hints for the conduct of life, so many unexpected glimpses into a higher sphere, and never a trace of rhetoric or dulness. a very provoking book to the curiosity of young men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one. lovers of light reading, those who look in it for the entertainment they find in a romance, are disappointed. on the other hand, those who begin it with the higher hope to read in it a worthy history of genius, and the just award of the laurel to its toils and denials, have also reason to complain. we had an english romance here, not long ago, professing to embody the hope of a new age, and to unfold the political hope of the party called ‘young england,’ in which the only 274 representative men. reward of virtue is a seat in parliament, and a peerage. goethe's romance has a conclusion as lame and immoral. george sand, in consuelo and its continuation, has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. in the progress of the story, the characters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic convention: they quit the society and habits of their rank; they lose their wealth; they become the servants of great ideas, and of the most generous social ends; until, at last, the hero, who is the centre and fountain of an association for the rendering of the noblest benefits to the human race, no longer answers to his own titled name: it sounds foreign and remote in his ear. “i am only man,” he says; “i breathe and work for man,” and this in poverty and extreme sacrifices. goethe's hero, on the contrary, has so many weaknesses and impurities, and keeps such bad company, that the sober english public, when the book was translated, were disgusted. and yet it is so crammed with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and with knowledge of laws; the persons so truly and subtly drawn, and with such few strokes, and not a word too much, the book remains ever so new and unexhausted, that we must even let it go its way, and be willing to get what good from it we can, assured that it has goethe; or., the writer. 275 only begun its office, and has millions of readers yet to serve. the argument is the passage of a democrat to the aristocracy, using both words in their best sense. and this passage is not made in any mean or creeping way, but through the hall door. nature and character assist, and the rank is made real by sense and probity in the nobles. no generous youth can escape this charm of reality in the book, so that it is highly stimulating to intellect and courage. the ardent and holy novalis characterized the book as “thoroughly modern and prosaic ; the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. the book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. the wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming :” — and yet, what is also characteristic, novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life. what distinguishes goethe for french and english readers, is a property which he shares with his nation, a habitual reference to interior truth. in england and in america, there is a respect for talent; and, if it is exerted in support of any ascertained or intelligible interest or party, 276 representative men. or in regular opposition to any, the public is satisfied. in france, there is even a greater delight in intellectual brilliancy, for its own sake. and, in all these countries, men of talent write from talent. it is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated, so many columns. so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. the german intellect wants the french sprightliness, the fine practical understanding at the english, and the american adventure ; but : has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, to what end ? a german public asks for a controlling sincerity. here is activity of thought; but what is it for? what does the man mean? whence, whence all these thoughts ? talent alone can not make a writer. there must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise; holding things because they are things. if he can not rightly express himself to-day, the same things subsist, and will open themselves to-morrow. there lies the burden on his mind, the burden of truth to be declared, — more or less understood ; and it constitutes his business and calling in the world, to see those facts through, and to make. goethe; or, the writer. 277 them known. what signifies that he trips and stammers ; that his voice is harsh or hissing ; that his method or his tropes are inadequate ? that message will find method and imagery, articulation and melody. though he were dumb, it would speak. if not, — if there be no such god's word in the man, — what care we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant he is ? it makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, whether there be a man behind it, or no. in the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, i discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. but, through every clause and part of speech of a right book, i meet the eyes of the most determined of men: his force and terror inundate every word : the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble, — can go far and live long. in england and america, one may be an adept in the writing of a greek or latin poet, without any poetic taste or fire. that a man has spent years on plato and proclus, does not afford a presumption that he holds heroic opinions, or undervalues the fashions of his town. but the german nation have the most ridiculous good faith on these subjects: the student, out of the lecture-room, still 24 278 ° representative men. broods on the lessons; and the professor can not divest himself of the fancy, that the truths of philosophy have some application to berlin and munich. this earnestness enables them to outsee men of much more talent. hence, almost all the valuable distinctions which are current in higher conversation, have been derived to us from germany. but, whilst men distinguished for wit and learning, in england and france, adopt their study and their side with a certain levity, and are not understood to be very deeply engaged, from grounds of character, to the topic or the part they espouse, –goethe, the head and body of the german nation, does not speak from talent, but the truth shines through: he is very wise, though his talent often veils his wisdom. however excellent his sentence is, he has somewhat better in view. it awakens my curiosity. he has the formidable independence which converse with truth gives: hear you, or forbear, his fact abides; and your interest in the writer is not confined to his story, and he dismissed from memory, when he has performed his task creditably, as a baker when he has left his loaf; but his work is the least part of him. the old eternal genius who built the world has confided himself more to this man than to any other. i dare not say that goethe ascended to the highest grounds from which genius has goethe; or, the writer. 279 spoken. he has not worshipped the highest unity; he is incapable of a self-surrender to the moral sentiment. there are nobler strains in poetry than any he has sounded. there are writers poorer in talent, whose tone is purer, and more touches the heart. goethe can never be dear to men. his is not even the devotion to pure truth; but to truth for the sake of culture. he has no aims less large than the conquest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be his portion : a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed; of a stoical self-command and self-denial, and having one test for all men, — what can you teach me? all possessions are valued by him for that only; rank, privileges, health, time, being itself. he is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts, and sciences, and events; artistic, but not artist ; spiritual, but not spiritualist. there is nothing he had not right to know: there is no weapon in the armory of universal genius he did not take into his hand, but with peremptory heed that he should not be for a moment prejudiced by his instruments. he lays a ray of light under every fact, and between himself and his dearest property. from him nothing was hid, nothing withholden. the lurking dæmons sat to him, and the saint who saw the dæmons; and the metaphysical elements took form. “piety itself in 280 representative men. no aim, but only a means, whereby, through purest inward peace, we may attain to highesi culture." and his penetration of every secret of the fine arts will make goethe still more statuesque. his affections help him, like women employed by cicero to worm out the secret of conspirators. enmities he has none. enemy of him you may be,—if so you shall teach him aught which your good-will can not, — were it only what experience will accrue from your ruin. enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. he can not hate any body; his time is worth too much. temperamental antagonisms may be suffered, but like feuds of emperors, who fight dignifiedly across kingdoms. :. his autobiography, under the title of “poetry and truth out of my life,” is the expression of the idea, — now familiar to the world through the german mind, but a novelty to england, old and new, when that book appeared, — that a man exists for culture; not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him. the reaction of things on the man is the only noteworthy result. an intellectual man can see himself as a third person; therefore his faults and delusions interest him equally with his successes. though he wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to know the history and destiny of man ; goethe ; or, the writer. 281 whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him are only interested in a low success. this idea reigns in the dichtung und wahrheit, and directs the selection of the incidents; and nowise the external importance of events, the rank of the personages, or the bulk of incomes. of course, the book affords slender materials for what would be reckoned with us a “life of goethe ; ” — few dates; no correspondence; no details of offices or employments; no light on his marriage; and, a period of ten years, that should be the most active in his life, after his settlement at weimar, is sunk in silence. meantime, certain love-affairs, that came to nothing, as people say, have the strangest importance : he crowds us with details :certain whimsical opinions, cosmogonies, and religions of his own invention, and, especially his relations to remarkable minds, and to critical epochs of thought :— these he magnifies. his “ daily and yearly journal,” his “ italian travels,” his “campaign in france," and the historical part of his “ theory of colors," have the same interest. in the last, he rapidly notices kepler, roger bacon, galileo, newton, voltaire, &c.; and the charm of this portion of the book consists in the simplest statement of the relation betwixt these grandees of europea:1 scientific history and himself; the mere drawing 24* 2s2 representative men. of the lines from goethe to kepler, from goethe to bacon, from goethe to newton. the drawing of the line is for the time and person, a solution of the formidable problem, and gives pleasure when iphigenia and faust do not, without any cost of invention comparable to that of iphigenia and faust. this lawgiver of art is not an artist. was it that he knew too much, that his sight was microscopic, and interfered with the just perspective, the seeing of the whole he is fragmentary; a writer of occasional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of sentences. when he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he collects and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, and combines them into the body as fitly as he can. a great deal refuses to incorporate: this he adds loosely, as letters of the parties, leaves from their journals, or the like. a great deal still is left that will not find any place. this the bookbinder alone can give any cohesion to : and hence, notwithstanding the looseness of many of his works, we have volumes of detached paragraphs, aphorisms, arenien, &c. i suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew out of the calculations of self-culture. it was the infirmity of an admirable scholar, who loved the world out of gratitude; who knew where gobthe ; or, the writer. 283 libraries, galleries, architecture, laboratories, savans, and leisure, were to be had, and who did not quite trust the compensations of poverty and nakedness. socrates loved athens; montaigne, paris; and madame de staël said, she was only vulnerable on that side; (namely, of paris.) it has its favorable aspect. all the geniuses are usually so ill-assorted and sickly, that one is ever wishing them somewhere else. we seldom see any body who is not uneasy or afraid to live. there is a slight blush of shame on the cheek of good men and aspiring men, and a spice of caricature. but this man was entirely at home and happy in his century and the world. none was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed the game. in this aim of culture, which is the genius of his works; is their power. the idea of absolute, eternal truth, without reference to my own enlargement by it, is higher. the surrender to the torrent of poetic inspiration is higher; but, compared with any motives on which books are written in england and america, this is very truth, and has the power to inspire which belongs to truth. thus has he brought back to a book some of its ancient might and dignity. goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and country, when original talent was oppressed under the load of books and mechanical auxiliaries, and 284 representative men. the distracting variety of claims, taught men how to dispose of this mountainous miscellany, and make it subservient. i join napoleon with him, as being both representatives of the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions, two stern realists, who, with their scholars, have severally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant and seeming, for this time, and for ail time. this cheerful laborer, with no external popularity or provocation, drawing his motive and his plan from his own breast, tasked himself with stints for a giant, and, without relaxation or rest, except by alternating his pursuits, worked on for eighty years with the steadiness of his first zeal. it is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity. man is the most composite of all creatures: the wheel-insect, volvox globator, is at the other extreme. we shall learn to draw rents and revenues from the immense patrimony of the old and the recent ages. goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence of all times; that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted. genius hovers with his sunshine and music close by the darkest and deafest eras. no mortgage, no attainder, will hold on men or hours. the gofthe, or, the writfr. 285 world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. we too must write bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world. the secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use. the end, -， *， __---------------~~~~）-3 2044 009 864 794 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. loent look due 09 981 dec 1 5 1990 leden septen 409 411 410 ibarvaro college xtbrarg from the library of james hardy ropes class of 1889 iiollia professor of divinity 1910-1933 01 » nature. addresses, and lectures. f 0 nature; addresses, and lectures. by r. w. emerson. boston and cambridge; james munroe and company. m dccc xlix. a ■^harvard college l.'brary from the lifmry of prof, james hardy r0pe8 march 14, 1934 entoicd according to act of congress, in the year 1849, by james munroe and company, in the clerk's office of the district court of the district of massachusetts. boston: th17bston, tobby and company, 31 devonshire street. n; contents. nature the american scholar. an oration before the phi beta kappa society, at cambridge, august 31, 1837 75 an address to the senior class in divinity college, cambridge, july 15, 1838 . . . 113 literary ethics. an address to the literary societies in dartmouth college, july 24, 1838 . 147 the method of nature. an address to the society of the adelphi, in "waterville college, maine, august 11, 1841 .... 181 man the reformer. a lecture read before the mechanics' apprentices' library association, boston, january 25, 1841 .... 217 introductory lecture on the ttmes. read in the masonic temple, boston, dec. 2, 1841 . 249 vi contents. the conservative. a. lecture read in the masonic temple, boston, december 9, 1841 . 283 the transcendentalist. a. lecture read in the masonic temple, boston, january, 1842 . 316 the young american. a. lecture read to the mercantil e library association, in boston, february 7, 1844 . . 349 errata. pages 317 and 319 — for 1841 read 1842. / nature. a subtle chain of countless rings the next unto the farthest brings; the eye reads omens where it goes, and speaks all languages the rose; and, striving to be man, the worm mounts through all the spires of form. introduction. our age is retrospective. it builds the sepulchres of the fathers. it writes biographies, histories, and criticism. the foregoing generation^ beheld god and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? the sun shines to-day also. there is more wool and flax in the fields. there are new lands, new men, new thoughts. let us demand our own works and laws and worship. 1 -a introduction. undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. we must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. he acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. in like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. let us inquire, to what end is nature? 0 all science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. we have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. we are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. but to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. philosophically considered, the universe is composed of nature and the soul. strictly introduction. 6 speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which philosophy distinguishes as the not me, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, nature. in enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, i shall use the word in both senses; — in its common and in its philosophical import. in inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. but his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result. nature chapter i. to go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. i am not solitary whilst i read and write, though nobody is with me. but if a man would be alonelet him look at the stars. the rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what ho touches. one might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! if the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of god which had been shown! but ' 6 nature. every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. the stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. nature never wears a mean appearance. neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. nature never becamea toy to a wise spirit. the flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. when we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. we mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. it is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. the charming landscape which i saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. miller owns this field, locke that, and manning the woodland beyond. but none of them owns the landscape. there is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. this is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. nature. / to speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. most persons do not see the sun. at least they have a very superficial seeing. the sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. the lover of^nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. his intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. in the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. in good health-, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, i have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. i am glad to the brink of fear. in the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of 0 nature. life, is always a child. in the woods, is perpetual youth. within these plantations of god, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. in the woods, we return to reason and faith. there i feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. 1 become a transparent eye-ball; i am nothing; i see all; the currents of the universal being circulate through me; i am part or particle of god. the name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. i am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. in the wilderness, i find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. in the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. the greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. i am not alone and unacknowledged. they nod to me, and i nature. y to them. the waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. it takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when i deemed i was thinking justly or doing right. yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or ^.jgjiarjilpilil^f botrl it is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. for, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread avith melancholy to-day. nature always wears the colors of the spirit. to a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. the sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population. chapter ii. commodity. whoever considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that enter as parts into that result. they all admit of being thrown into one of the following classes; commodity; beauty; language; and discipline. under the general name of commodity, i rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. this, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. yet although low, it is perfje£l-in-its._kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. the misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. what angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, commodity. 11 this fourfold year? beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. the field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed. "more servants wait on man than he '11 take notice of." nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. all the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. the wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man. the useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. he no longer waits for favoring gales, but by means of steam, he realizes the fable of bolus's bag, and carries the two and thirty winds in the boiler of his boat. to diminish friction, he paves the road with iron bars, and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise behind him, he darts through the country, from town to town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. by the 12 commodity. aggregate of these aids, how is the face of the world changed, from the era of noah to that of napoleon! the private poor man hath cities, shipscanalsbridgesbuilt for him. he goes to the post-officeand the human race run on his errands: to the book-shop, and the human race read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-houseand nations repair his wrongs. he sets his house upon the road, and the human race sro forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut a path for him. but there is no need of specifying particulars in this class of uses. the catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that i shall leave them to the reader-s reflection, with the general remarkthat this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a farther good. a man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work. chapter iii. beauty. a nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of beauty. the ancient greeks called the world xo<v«>?, beauty. such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. this seems partly owing to the eye itself. the eye is the best of artists. by the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. and as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. there is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. and the stimulus it affords to r 14 beauty. the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. even the corpse has its own beauty. but besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our# endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm. for better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of beauty in a threefold manner. 1. first, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. the influence of the forms and actions in nature, is so needful to man, that, in its lowest functions, it seems to lie on the confines of commodity and beauty. to the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. the tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. in their eternal calm, he finds himself. the health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. we are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. but in other hours, nature satisfies by its , beauty. 15 loveliness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. i see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sun-rise, with emotions which an angel might share. the long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. from the earth, as a shore, i look out into that silent sea. i seem to partake its rapid transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, and i dilate and conspire with the morning wind. how does nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! give me health and a day, and i will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. the dawn is my assyria; the sun-set and moonrise my paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my england of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the afternoon, was the charm, last evening, of a january sunset. the western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness; and the air had so much life and sweetness, that it was a pain to come within doors. what was it that nature would say? was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and which homer or shakspeare 16 beauty. could not re-form for me in words? the leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the hlue east for their back-ground, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, contribute something to the mute music. the inhabitants of cities suppose that the country landscape is pleasant only half the year. i please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer. to the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again. the heavens change every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on the plains beneath. the state of the crop in the surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from week to week. the succession of native plants in the pastures and roadsides, which makes the silent clock by which time tells the summer hours, will make even the divisions of the day sensible to a keen observer. the tribes of birds and insects, like the plants punctual to their time, follow each other, and the year has room for all. by watercourses, the variety is greater. in july, the blue pontederia or pickerel-weed blooms in large beds beauty. 17 in the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and swarms with yellow butterflies in continual motion. art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold. indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament. but this beauty of nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. the shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. the beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of october, who ever could clutch it? go forth to find it, and it is gone: 't is only a mirage asjou look from the windows of diligence. 2. the presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. the high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. beauty is the mark god sets upon virtue. every natural action is graceful. every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. we are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual 2 18 beautt. in it. every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. it is his, if he will. he may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and ahdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. in proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. "all those things for which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue ;" said sallust. "the winds and waves," said gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigators." so are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. when a noble act is done, — perchance in a scene of great natural beauty; when leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of thermopylae; when arnold winkelried, in the high alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of austrian spears to break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed? when the bark of columbus nears the shore of america; — before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane; the sea behind; and the purple mountains of the indian archipelago around, can we separate the man from the living beauty. 19 picture? does not the new world clothe his form with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit. drapery? ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelope great actions. when sir harry vane was dragged up the tower-hill, sitting on a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of the english laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, "you never sate on so glorious a seat." charles ii., to intimidate the citizens of london, caused the patriot lord russel to be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. "but," his biographer says, "the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side." in private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its te-mple, the sun as its candle. nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. only let his thoughts be of equal scope, ahd the frame will suit the picture. a virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere. homer, pindar, socrates, phocion, associate themselves fitly in our memory with the geography and climate of 20 beauty. greece. the visible heavens and earth sympathize with jesus. and in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will have remarked how easily he took all things along with him, — the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became i ancillary to a man. 3. there is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of the intellect. beside the relation of things to virtue^ they have a relation to thought. the intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of god, and without the colors of affection. the intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one, generates the exclusive activity of the other. there is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other. therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect; and then again, in its turn, of the active power. nothing divine dies. all good is eternally reproductive. the beauty of nature rebeauty. 21 forms itself in the mind,, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation. all men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. this love of beauty is taste. others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. the creation of beauty is art. the production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. a work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. it is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. for, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. a leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. what is common to them all, — that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. the standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, — the totality of nature; which the italians expressed by defining beauty "il piu nell' uno." nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. a single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. the poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concen22 beauty. trate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. thus is art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works. the world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. this element i call an ultimate end. no reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. god is the all-fair. truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same all. but beauty in nature is not ultimate. it is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. it must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of nature. 4 ~s\ chapter iv. language. language is a third use which nature subserves to man. nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a simple, double, and threefold degree. 1. words are signs of natural facts. 2. particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. i 3. nature is the symbol of spirit. 1. words are signs of natural facts. the use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. right means straight; wrong means twisted. spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow. we say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now '• s 24 language. appropriated to spiritual nature. most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language wasframed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts. 2. but this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import, — so conspicuous a fact in the history of language, — is our least debt to nature. it is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. an enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. a lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope. who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? language. 25 throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of justice, truth, love, freedom, arise and shine. this universal soul, he calls reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. and the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of reason. that which, intellectually considered, we call reason, considered in relation to nature, we call spirit. spirit is the creator. spirit hath life in itself. and man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the father. it is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade nature. these are not the dreams of a few poets, here and there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. he is placed in the centre of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. and neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man. all the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are 26 language. barren, like a single sex. but marry it to human history, and it is full of life. whole floras, all linnaeus' and buffon's volumes, are dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable manner. the seed of a plant, — to what affecting analogies in the nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in all discourse, up to the voice of paul, who calls the human corpse a seed, — " it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." the motion of the earth round its axis, and round the sun, makes the day, and the year. these are certain amounts of brute light and heat. but is there no intent of an analogy between man's life and the seasons? and do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? the instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant's; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. because of this radical correspondence between ^ . language. 27 visible things and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. as we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. the same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages. it has moreover been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. and as this is the first language, so is it the last. this immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. it is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman, which all men relish. a man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his -desire to communicate it without loss. the corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. when simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falser 28 language. hood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. in due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature. but wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and god. the moment our discourse rises above the-ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. a man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, cotemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the language. 29 vestment of the thought. hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. this imagery is spontaneous. it is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. it is proper creation. it is the working of the original cause through the instruments he has already made. these facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. we know more from nature than we can at will communicate. its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence. the poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without design and without heed, — shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. long hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in national councils, — in the hour of revolution, — these solemn images shall reappear in their morning lustre, as fit symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing events shall awaken. at the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. and with these forms, the spells of 30 language. persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands. 3. we are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. but how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations! did it need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. we are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the characters are not significant of themselves. have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? the world is emblematic. parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. the laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. "the visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." the axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. thus, "the whole is greater than its language. 31 part;" "reaction is equal to action ;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. these propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use. — in like manner, the memorable words of history, and the proverbs of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture or parable of a moral truth. thus; a rolling stone gathers no moss; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; a cripple in the right way, will beat a racer in the wrong; make hay while the sun shines; 't is hard to carry a full cup even; vinegar is the son of wine; the last ounce broke the camel's back; long-lived trees make roots first; — and the like. in their primary sense these are trivial facts, but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. what is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. this relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of god, and so is free to be known by all men. it appears to men, or it does not appear. when in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the r 32 language. wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; 1 can these things be, and overcome us like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder?" for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. it is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the egyptians and the brahmins, to that of pythagoras, of plato, of bacon, of leibnitz, of swedenborg. there sits the sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. there seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary ideas in the mind of god, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. a fact is the end or last issue of spirit. the visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. "material objects," said a french philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of scoria of the substantial thoughts of the creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to language. 33 their first origin; in other words, visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side." this doctrine is abstruse, and though the images of "garment," "scoriae," "mirror," &c, may stimulate the fancy, we must summon the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to make it plain. "every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth," — is the fundamental law of criticism. a life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. by degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. a new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now suggested, we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects; since "every object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the soul." that which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge. — a new weapon in the magazine of power. * 3 ' chapter v. discipline. in view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new fact, that nature is a discipline. this use of the world includes the preceding uses, as parts of itself. space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is unlimited. they educate both the understanding and the reason. every property of matter is a school for the understanding, — its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. the understanding adds, divides, combines, measures, and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. meantime, reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries matter and mind. 1. nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of discipline. 35 being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces. proportioned to the importance of the organ tobe formed, is the extreme care with which its tuition is provided, — a care pretermitted in no single case. what tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest, — and all to form the hand of the mind; — to instruct us that "good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!" the same good office is performed by property and its filial systems of debt and credit. debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; — debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most. more-over, property, which has been well compared to snow,— "if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow,"— is the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of r <5d discipline. # a clock. whilst now it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiving in the foresight of the spirit, experience in profounder laws. the whole character and fortune of the individual are affected by the least inequalities in the culture of the understanding; for example, in the perception of differences. therefore is space, and therefore time, that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. a bell and a plough have each their use, and neither can do the office of the other. water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. the wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. the foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. what is not good they call the worst, and what is not hateful, they call the best. in like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us! she pardons no mistakes. her yea is yea, and her nay, nay. the first steps in agriculture, astronomy, zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results. discipline. 37 how calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the laws of physics! what noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the privilege to be! his insight refines him. the beauty of nature shines in his own breast. man is greater than he can see this, and the universe less, because time and space relations vanish as laws are known. here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense universe to be explored. "what we know, is a point to what we do not know." open any recent journal of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning light, heat, electricity, magnetism, physiology, geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted. passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we must not omit to specify two. the exercise of the will or the lesson of power is taught in every event. from the child's successive possession of his several senses up to the hour when he saith, "thy will be done!" he is learning the secret, that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay the whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his character. nature is thoroughly mediate. it is made to serve. it ' 38 discipline. receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the saviour rode. it offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful. man is never weary of working it up. he forges the subtile and delicate air into wise and melodious words, and gives them wing as angels of persuasion and command. one after another, his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all-things, until the world becomes, at last, only a realized will, — the double of the man. 2. sensible objects conform to the premonitions of reason and reflect the conscience. all things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the ten commandments. therefore is nature ever the ally of religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment. prophet and priest, david, isaiah, jesus, have drawn discipline. 39 deeply from this source. this ethical character so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature, as to seem the end for which it was made. whatever private purpose is answered by any member or part, this is its public and universal function, and is never omitted. nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use. when a thing has served an end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior service. jn god, every end is converted into a new means. thus the u#e of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. but it is to the mind an education in the doctrine of use, namely, that a thing is good only so far as it serves; that a conspiring of parts and efforts to the production of an end, is essential to any being. the first and gross manifestation of this truth, is our inevitable and hated training in values and wants, in corn and meat. it has already been illustrated, that every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. the moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. it is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. all things with which we deal, preach to us. what is a farm but a mute gospel? the chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, — it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the <40 discipline. last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. but the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, have each an experience precisely parallel, and leading to the same conclusion: because all organizations are radically alike. nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks info his soul. the moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. who can estimate this? who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? how much tranquillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle or stain? how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? what a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health! herein is especially apprehended the unity of nature, — the unity in variety, — which meets us everywhere. all the endless variety of things make an identical impression. xenophanes complained in his old age, that, look where he discipline. 41 would, all things hastened back to unity. he was weary of seeing the same entity in the tedious variety of forms. the fable of proteus has a cordial truth. a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole. each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world. not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is obvious, as when we detect the type of the human hand in the nipper of the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial unlikeness. thus architecture is called "frozen music," by de stael and goethe. vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. "a gothic church," said coleridge, "is a petrified religion." michael angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is essential. in haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass. the law of harmonic sounds reappears in the harmonic colors. the granite is differenced in its laws only by the more or less of heat, from the river that wears it away. the river, as .it flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtile curr 42 discipline. rents; the light resembles the heat which rides with it through space. each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same. a rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true throughout nature. so intimate is this unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in universal spirit. for, it pervades thought also. every universal truth which we express in words, implies or supposes every other truth. omne verum vero consonat. it is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and comprise it, in like manner. every such truth is the absolute ens seen from one side. but it has innumerable sides. the central unity is still more conspicuous in actions. words are finite organs of the infinite mind. they cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. they break, chop, and impoverish it. an action is the perfection and publication of thought. a right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. "the wise man, in doing one thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly." words and actions are not the attributes of discipline. 43 brute nature. they introduce us to the human form, of which all other organizations appear to "be degradations. when this appears among so many that surround it, the spirit prefers it to all others. it says, 'from such as this, have i drawn joy and knowledge; in such as this, have i found and beheld myself; i will speak to it; it can speak again; it can yield me thought already formed and alive.' in fact, the eye,— the mind, — is always accompanied by these forms, male and female; and these are incomparably the richest informations of the power and order that lie at the heart of things. unfortunately, every one of them bears the marks as of some injury; is marred and superficially defective. nevertheless, far different from the deaf and dumb nature around them, these all rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of thought and virtue whereto they alone, of all organizations, are the entrances. it were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their ministry to our education, but where would it stop? we are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack power to put at such focal distance from us, that r 44 discipline. we can mend or even analyze them. we cannot choose but love them. when much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources of god who thus sends a real person to outgo our ideal; when he has, moreover, become an object of thought, and, whilst his character retains all its unconscious effect, is converted in the mind into solid and sweet wisdom,— it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time. " chapter vi. idealism. thus is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable meaning of the world conveyed to man, the immortal pupil, in every object of sense. to this one end of discipline, all parts of nature conspire. a noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this end be not the final cause of the universe; and whether nature outwardly exists. it is a sufficient account of that appearance we call the world, that god will teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade. in my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul? the relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining the same, what is the diff 46 idealism. ference, whether land and sea interact, and worlds revolve and intermingle without number or end, — deep yawning under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout absolute space, — or, whether, without relations of time and space, the same appearances are inscribed in the constant faith of man? whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. be it what it may, it is ideal to me, so long as i cannot try the accuracy of my senses. the frivolous make themselves merry with the ideal theory, as if its consequences were burlesque; as if it affected the stability of nature. it surely does not. god never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. any distrust. of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man. their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is perfect. the wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. we are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand. it is a natural consequence of this structure, that, so long as the active powers predominate over the reflective, we resist with indignation any hint that nature is idealism. 47 more short-lived or mutable than spirit. the broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the tollman, are much displeased at the intimation. but whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. it is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance; to attribute necessary existence to spirit; to esteem nature as an accident and an effect. to the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. in their view, man and nature are indissolubly joined. things are ultimates, and they never look beyond their sphere. the presence of reason mars this faith. the first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses, which binds us to nature as if we were a part of ita and shows us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. until this higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees, with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and colored surfaces. when the eye of reason opens, to outline and surface are at once added, grace and expression. these proceed from imaginar 48 idealism. tion and affection, and abate somewhat of the angular distinctness of objects. if the reason be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines and surfaces become transparent, and are no longer seen; causesandspirits are seen through them. the best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its god. let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 1. our first institution in the ideal philosophy is a hint from nature herself. nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position apprizes us of a dualism. we are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky. the least change in our point of view, gives the whole world a pictorial air. a man who seldom rides, needs only to get into a coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppetshow. the men, the women, — talking, running, bartering, fighting, — the earnest mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are unrealized at once, or, at least, wholly detached from all relation to the observer, and seen as apparent, not substantial beings. what new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of a idealism. 49 country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car! nay, the most wonted objects, (make a very slight change in the point of vision,) please us most. in a camera obscura, the butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own family amuse us. so a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years! in these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference between the observer and the spectacle, — between man and nature. hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; i may say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprized, that, whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable. 2. in a higher manner, the poet communicates the same pleasure. by a few strokes he delineates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the camp, the city, the hero, the maiden, not different from what we know them, but only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye. he unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew. possessed himself by a heroic 4 5u idealism. passion, he uses matter as symbols of it. the sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. the one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon. to him, the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the reason. the imagination may be defined to be, the use which the reason makes of the material world. shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. his imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. the remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. we are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament; the ornament of beauty is suspect, a crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air. idealism. 51 his passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he speaks, to a city, or a state. no, it was builded far from accident; it suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls under the brow of thralling discontent; it fears not policy, that heretic, that works on leases of short numbered hours, but all alone stands hugely politic. in the strength of his constancy, the pyramids seem to him recent and transitory. the freshness of youth and love dazzles him with its resemblance to morning. take those lips away which so sweetly were forsworn; and those eyes, — the break of day, lights that do mislead the morn. the wild beauty of this hyperbole, i may say, in passing, it would not be easy to match in literature. this transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the passion of the poet, — this power which he exerts to dwarf the great, to magnify the small, — might be illustrated by a thousand examples from his plays. i have before me the tempest, and will cite only these few lines. ariel. the strong based promontory have i made shake, and by the spurs plucked up the pine and cedar. r go idealisst. prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic alonzo, and his companions; a solemn air, and the best comforter to an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains now useless, boiled within thy skull. again; the charm dissolves apace, atid, as the morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness, so their rising senses begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason. their understanding begins to swell: and the approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shores that now lie foul and muddy. the perception of real affinities between events, (that is to say, of ideal affinities, for those only are real,) enables the poet thus to make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the world, and to assert the predominance of the soul. 3 whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes beauty as his main end; the other truth. but the philosopher not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. "the problem of philosophy » according to plato, "is, for all that exists idealism. 53 conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute." it proceeds on the faith that a lawdetermines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. that law, when in the mind, is an idea. its beauty is infinite. the true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. is not the charm of one of plato's or aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the antigone of sophocles? it is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. in physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars; and carries centuries of observation in a single formula. thus even in physics, the material is degraded before the spiritual. the astronomer, the geometer, rely on their irrefragable analysis, and disdain the results of observation. the sublime remark of euler on his law of arches, "this will be found contrary to all experience, yet is r 54 idealism. true;" had already transferred nature into the mind, and left matter like an outcast corpse. 4. intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter. turgot said, "he that has never doubted the existence of matter, may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." it fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon ideas; and in their presence, we feel that the outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. whilst we wait in this olympus of gods, we think of nature as an appendix to the soul. we ascend into their region, and know that these are the thoughts of the supreme being. "these are they who were set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. when he prepared the heavens, they were there; when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep. then they were by him, as one brought up with him. of them took he counsel." their influence is proportionate. as objects of science, they are accessible to few men. yet all men are capable of being raised by piety or by passion, into their region. and no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. like a new n idealism. 55 soul, they renew the body. we become physically nimble and lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be so. no man fears age or misfortune or death, in their serene company, for he is transported out of the district of change. whilst we behold unveiled the nature of justice and truth, we learn the difference between the absolute and the conditional or relative. we apprehend the absolute. as it were, for the first time, we exist. we become immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity. 5. finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called, — the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life, — have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from god. religion includes the personality of god; ethics does not. they are one to our present design. they both put nature under foot. the first and last lesson of religion is, "the things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." it puts an affront upon nature. it does that for oo idealism. the unschooled, which philosophy does for berkeley and viasa. the uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is, — " contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of religion." the devotee flouts nature. some theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards matter, as the manichean and plotinus. they distrusted in themselves any looking back to these flesh-pots of egypt. plotinus was ashamed of his body. in short, they might all say of matter, what michael angelo said of external beauty, "it is the frail and weary weed, in which god dresses the soul, which he has called into time." it appears that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and religion, all tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the external world. but i own there is something ungrateful in expanding too curiously the particulars of the general proposition, that all culture tends to imbue us witli idealism. i have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. i expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons. let us speak her fair. i do not wish to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest. i only wish to indicate the > idealism. 57 true position of nature in regard to man, wherein to establish man, all right education tends; as the ground which to attain is the object of human life, that is, of man's connection with nature. culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, and brings the mind to call that apparent, which it uses to call real, and that real, which it uses to call visionary. children, it is true, believe hi the external world. the belief that it appears -only, is an afterthought, but with culture, this faith will as surely arise on the mind as did the first. the advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to the mind. it is, in fact, the view which reason, both speculative and practical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take. for, seen in the light of thought, the world always is phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it to the mind. idealism sees the world in god. it beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping past, but as one vast picture, which god paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. therefore the soul holds itself off from a too trivial and microscopic r 58 idealism. study of the universal tablet. it respects the end too much, to immerse itself in the means. it sees something more important in christianity, than the scandals of ecclesiastical history, or the niceties of criticism; and, very incurious concerning persons or miracles, and not at all disturbed by chasms of historical evidence, it accepts from god the phenomenon, as it finds it, as the pure and awful form of religion in the world. it is not hot and passionate at the appearance of what it calls its own good or bad fortune, at the union or opposition of other persons. no man is its enemy. it accepts whatsoever befalls, as part of its lesson. it is a watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer, only that it may the better watch. * chapter vii. it is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should contain somewhat progressive. uses that are exhausted or that may be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true of this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. and all the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope. through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin. it always speaks of spirit. it suggests the absolute. it is a perpetual effect. it is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us. the aspect of nature is devout. like the figure of jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. the happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship. of that ineffable essence which we call spirit, 60 spirit. he that thinks most, will say least. we can foresee god in the coarse, and, as it were, distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. that essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of god. it is_the organ through which the universaljpirit speakajo the individual, and strives to lead back back the individual to it. when we consider spirit, we see that the views already presented do not include the whole circumference of man. we must add some related thpughts. three problems are put by nature to the mind; what is matter? whence is it? and whereto? the first of these questions only, the ideal theory answers. idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being. the one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. > spirit. 61 idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. yet, if it only deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. it leaves god out of me. it leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end. then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and women. nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in every particular. but this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that consanguinity which we acknowledge to it. let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, merely as a useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal distinction between the soul and the world. but when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to inquire, whence is matter? and whereto? many truths arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness. we learn that the highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is r 62 spirit. present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, the supreme being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. as a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of god; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the creator, is himself the creator in the finite. this view, which admonishes me where the sources of wisdom and power lie, and points to virtue as to "the golden key which opes the palace of eternity," carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul. the world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. it is a remoter and inferior incarnation of god, a projection of god in the spirit. 63 unconscious. but it differs from the body in one important respect. it is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. its serene order is inviolable by us. it is, therefore, to us, the pressent expositor of the divine mind. it is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. as we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident. we are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from god. we do not understand the notes of birds. the fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. we do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him? jfet this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. the poet finds something ridiculous in his i delight, until he is out of the sight of men. " chapter viii. prospects. in inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest. that which seems faintly possible — it is so refined, is often faint and dim because it is deepest seated in the mind among the eternal verities. empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. the savant becomes unpoetic. but the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. he will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a -> prospects. 65 dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments. for, the problems to be solved are precisely those which the physiologist and the naturalist omit to state. it is not so pertinent to man to know all the individuals of the animal kingdom, as it is to know whence and whereto is this tyrannizing unity in his constitution, which evermore separates and classifies things, endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one form. when i behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. i cannot greatly honor minuteness in details, so long as there is no hint to explain the relation between things and thoughts; no ray upon the metaphysics of conchology, of botany, of the arts, to show the relation of the forms of flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the mind, and build science upon ideas. in a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldly and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect. the american who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering york minster or st. peter's at 66 prospects. rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also, — faint copies of an invisible archetype. nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open. a perception of this mystery inspires the muse of george herbert, the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth century. the following lines are part of his little poem on man. "man is all symmetry, full of proportions, one limb to another, and to all the world besides. each part may call the farthest, brother; for head with foot hath private amity, and both with moons and tides. '' nothing hath got so far but man hath caught and kept it as his prey; his eyes dismount the highest star; he is in little all the sphere. herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they find their acquaintance there. ^ prospects. 67 "for us, the winds do blow, the earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow; nothing we see, but means our good, as our delight, or as our treasure; the whole is either our cupboard of food, or cabinet of pleasure. "the stars have us to bed: night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws. music and light attend our head. all things unto our flesh are kind, in their descent and being; to our mind, in their ascent and cause. "more servants wait on man than he'll take notice of. in every path, lie treads down that which doth befriend him when sickness makes him pale and wan. oh mighty love! man is one world, and hath another to attend him." the perception of this class of truths makes the attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. in view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of plato, that, "poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion. a wise wrir 68 prospects. v..ter will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit. i shall therefore conclude this essay with some traditions of man and nature, which a certain poet sang to me; and which, as they have always been in the world, and perhaps reappear to every bard, may be both history and prophecy. 'the foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit. but the element of spirit is eternity^ to it, therefore, the longest series of events, the oldest chronologies are young and recent. in the cycle of the universal man, from whom the known individuals proceed, centuries are points, and all history is but the epoch of one degradation. 'we distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with nature. we own and disown our relation to it, by turns. we are, like nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eatinggrass like an ox. but who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit? 'a man is a god in ruins. when men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams. now, the world would be insane and rabid, if prospects. 9 these disorganizations should last for hundreds of years. it is kept in check by death and infancy. infancy is the perpetual messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise. 'man is the dwarf of himself. once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. he filled nature with his overflowing currents. out from him sprang the sun and moon; from man, the sun; from woman, the moon. the laws of his mind, the periods of his actions externized themselves into day and night, into the year and the seasons. but, having made for himself this huge shell, his waters retired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk to a drop. he sees, that the structure still fits him, but fits him colossally. say, rather, once it fitted him, now it corresponds to him from far and on high. he adores timidly his own work. now is man the follower of the sun, and woman the follower of the moon. yet sometimes he starts in his slumber, and wonders at himself and his house, and muses strangely at the resemblance betwixt him and it. he perceives that if his law is still paramount, if still he have elemental power, if hisjvvord is sterling yet in nature, it is not conscious power, it is not inferior but superior to his will. it is instinct.' thus my orphic poet sang. 70 prospects. at present, man applies to nature but half his force. he works on the world with his understanding alone. he lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. his relation to nature, his power over it, is through the understanding; as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner's needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture; the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. this is such a resumption of power, as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne. meantime, in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light, — occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with his entire force, —with reason as well as understanding. such examples are; the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations; the history of jesus christ; the achievments of a principle, as in religious and political revolutions, and in the abolition of the slave-trade; the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of swedenborg, hohenlohe, and the shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of animal magnetism; prospects. 71 prayer; eloquence; self-healing ; and the wisdom of children. these are examples of reason's momentary grasp of the sceptre; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power. the difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, vesperlina cognitio, but that of god is a morning knowledge, matulina cognitio. the problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul. the ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. the axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not transparent but opake. the reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. he cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. love is as much its demand, as perception. indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. in the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. deep calls unto deep. but in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. there are innocent men who worship god after the tra72 pnospects. dition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their faculties. and there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding. is not prayer also a study of truth, — a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? no man ever prayed heartily, without learning something. but when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of .the holiest affections, then will god go forth anew into the creation. it will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for objects. the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. what is a day? what is a year? what is summer? what is woman? what is a child? what is sleep? to our blindness, these things seem unaffecting. we make fables to hide the baldness of the fact and conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. but when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. we behold the real higher law. to the wise, therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. these wonders are brought to our own door. you also are a man. man and woman, prospects. 73 and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to you. learn that none of these things is superficial, but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections of the mind. whilst the abstract question occupies your intellect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your hands. it were a wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our daily history, with the rise and progress of ideas in the mind. so shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. it shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — what is truth? and of the affections, — what is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated will. then shall come to pass what my poet said; 'nature is not fixed but fluid. spirit alters, moulds, makes it. the immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. know then, that the world exists for you. for you is the phenomenon perfect. what we are, that only can we see. all that adam had, all that caesar could, you have and can do. adam called his house, heaven and earth; caesar called his house, rome; you per-■ 74 prospects. haps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. build, therefore, your own world.. as fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your niindvlhalwill unfold its great proportions. a correspondent revolution in things will .attend the influx of the spirit. so fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. the sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. as when the .summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. the kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,— a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of god, — he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.' • * the american scholar. an oration delivered before the phi beta kappa society, at cambridge, august 31, 1837. the american scholar. mr. president and gentlemen, i greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year. our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. we do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our cotemporaries in the british and european capitals. thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. as such, it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under " 78 the american scholar. its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. the millions, that around us are rushing into life, camiot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years? in this hope, i accept the topic which not only usage, but the nature of our association, seem to prescribe to this day, — the american scholar. year by year, we come up hither to read one more chapter of his biography. let us inquire what light new days and events have thrown on his character, and his hopes. it is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end. the old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is one man, — present to " the american scholar. 79 all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. in the divided or social state, these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. the fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. but unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. the state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. . man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. the planter, who is man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. he sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of man on the farm. the tradesman scarcely ever < 80 the american scholar. gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. the priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book ; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship. in this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. in the right state, he is, man thinking. in the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking. in this view of him, as man thinking, the theory of his office is contained. him nature solicits with all her placid, all her monitory pictures; him the past instructs; him the future invites. is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof? and, finally, is not the true scholar the only true master? but the old oracle said, 'all things have two handles: beware of the wrong one.' in life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. let us see him in his school, and consider him in reference to the main influences he receives. i. the first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. ^ the american scholab. 81 * every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. the scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. he must settle its value in his mind. what is nature to him? there is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of god, but always circular power returning into itself. therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he neve/ can find, — so entire, so boundless. far, too, as her splendors shine, system on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without centre, without circumference, — in the mass and in the particle, nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind. classification begins. to the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. by and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem. it presently learns, that, since the dawn of history, there has been a constant accumulation and clase ' 82 the american scholar. sifying of facts. but what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? the astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. the chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter ; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. the ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight. thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. and what is that root? is not that the soul of his soul ? — a thought too bold, — a dream too wild. yet when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures, — when he has learned to worship the soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator. he shall the american scholar. 83 see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. one is seal, and one is print. its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. its laws are the laws of his own mind. nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. so much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. and, in fine, the ancient precept, "know thyself," and the modern precept, "study nature," become at last one maxim. ii. the next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the past, — in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth, — learn the amount of this influence more conveniently, — by considering their value alone. the theory of books is noble. the scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. it came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. it came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. it came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. it was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. it 84 the american scholar. can stand, and it can go. it now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing. or, i might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. in proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be. but none is quite perfect. as no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to cotemporaries, or rather to the second age. each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. the books of an older period will not fit this. yet hence arises a grave mischief. the sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. the poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. the writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. the american scholar. 85 the sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. colleges are built on it. books are written on it by thinkers, not by man thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which cicero, which locke, which bacon, have given, forgetful that cicero, locke, and bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. hence, instead of man thinking, we have the bookworm. hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of third estate with the world and the soul. hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. what is the right use? what is the one end, which all means go to effect? they are for nothing but to inspire. i had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. the one " 86 the american scholar. thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. this every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. the soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. in this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. in its essence, it is progressive. the book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. this is good, say they, — let us hold by this. they pin me down. they look backward and not forward. but genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the deity is not his; — cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. there are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and fair. on the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery, n. the american scholar. 87 and a fatal disservice is done. genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. the literature of every nation bear me witness. the english dramatic poets have shakspearized now for two hundred years. undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. man thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. books are for the scholar's idle times. when he can read god directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. but when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, — when the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining, — we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the east again, where the dawn is. we hear, that we may speak. the arabian proverb says, "a fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful." it is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. they impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads. we read the verses of one of the great english poets, of chaucer, of marveil, of dryden, with the most modern joy,— with a pleasure, i mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of all time from their verses. there is some awe mixed with the joy ' hh the american scholar. of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which i also had wellnigh thought and said. but for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some preestablished harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub they shall never see. i would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the book. we all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. and great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no other information than by the printed page. i only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. one must be an inventor to read well. as the proverb says, "he that would bring home the wealth of the indies, must carry out the wealth of the indies." there is then creative reading as well as creative writing. when the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we the american scholar. 89 read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. we then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. the discerning will read, in his plato or shakspeare, only that least part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times plato's and shakspeare's. of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to*a wise man. history and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, — to teach elements. but they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. forget this, and our american colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year. " 90 the american scholar. iii. there goes in the world a notion, that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe. the so-called 'practical men' sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing. i have heard it said that the clergy, — who are always, more universally than any other class, the scholars of their day, -— are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing and diluted speech. they are often virtually disfranchised; and, indeed, there are advocates for their celibacy. as far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. without it, he is not yet man. without it, thought can never ripen into truth. whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. the preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. only so much do i know, as i have lived. instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not. the world, — this shadow of the soul, or the american scholar. 91 other me, lies wide around. its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. i run eagerly into this resounding tumult. i grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech. i pierce its order; i dissipate its fear; i dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. so much only of life as i know by experience, so much of the wilderness have i vanquished and planted, or so far have i extended my being, my dominion. i do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. it is pearls and rubies to his discourse. drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructers in eloquence and wisdom. the true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power. it is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products. a strange process too, this, by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. the manufacture goes forward at all hours. the actions and events of our childhood and youth, are now matters of calmest observation. ' 92 the american scholar. they lie like fair pictures in the air. not so with our recent actions, — with the business which we now have in hand. on this we are quite unable to speculate. our affections as yet circulate through it. we no more feel or know it, than we feel the feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. the new deed is yet a part of life, — remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. in some contemplative hour, it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a thought of the mind. instantly, it is raised, transfigured; the corruptible has put on incorruption. henceforth it is an object of beauty, however base its origin and neighborhood. observe, too, the impossibility of antedating this act. in its grub state, it cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. but suddenly, without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is an angel of wisdom. so is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean. cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and coun> the american scholar. 93 try, nation and world, must also soar and sing. of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom. i will not shut myself out of this globe of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot, there to hunger and pine; nor trust the revenue of some single faculty, and exhaust one vein of thought, much like those savoyards, who, getting their livelihood by carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking dutchmen, for all europe, went out one day to the mountain to find stock, and discovered that they had whittled up the last of their pine-trees. authors we have, in numbers, who have written out their vein, and who, moved by a commendable prudence, sail for greece or palestine, follow the trapper into the prairie, or ramble round algiers, to replenish their merchantable stock. if it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. life is our dictionary. years are well spent in country labors; in town, — in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. i learn immediately from any speaker how much ' 94 the american scholar. he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. this is the way to learn grammar. colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the workyard made. but the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is, that it is a resource. that great principle of undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us under the name of polarity, — these "fits of easy transmission and reflection," as newton called them, are the law of nature because they are the law of spirit. the mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. when the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness, — he has always the resource to live. character is higher than intellect. thinking is the function. living is the functionary. the stream retreats to its source. a great soul will be strong to live, the american scholar. 95 as well as strong to think. does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? he can still fall back on this elemental force of living them. this is a total act. thinking is a partial act. let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. those 'far from fame,' who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display. time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his instinct, screened from influence. what is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible druids and berserkirs, come at last alfred and skakspeare. i hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. there is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. and labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any r 96 the american scholar. opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action. i have now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books, and by action. it remains to say somewhat of his duties. they are such as become man thinking. they may all be comprised in self-trust. the office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. he plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. flamsteed and herschel, in their glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and useful, honor is sure. but he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, — watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records; — must relinquish display and immediate fame. in the long period of his preparation, he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. worse yet, he must accept, — how often! poverty and solitude. for the ease and n the american scholar. 97 pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. for all this loss and scorn, what offset? he is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. he is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. he is the world's eye. he is the world's heart. he is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive and impart. and whatsoever new verdict reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate. these being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never 7 98 * the american scholar. to the popular cry. he and he only knows the ■world. the world of any moment is the merest appearance. some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. the odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. in silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and bide his own time, — happy enough, if he can satify himself alone, that this day he has seen something truly. success treads on every right step. for the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. he then learns, that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds. he learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated. the poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous the american scholar. 99 thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that, which men in crowded cities find true for them also. the orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, — his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses,— until he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; — that they drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable, most public, and universally true. the people delight in it; the better part of every man feels, this is my music; this is myself. in self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. free should the scholar be, — free and brave. free even to the definition of freedom, "without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution." brave; for fear is a thing, which a scholar by his very function puts behind him. fear always springs from ignorance. it is a shame to him if his tranquillity, amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption, that, like children and women, his is a protected class; or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and 100 the american scholar. turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. so is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. manlike let him turn and face it. let him look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of this lion, — which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it, and pass on superior. the world is his, who can see through its pretension. what deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance, — by your sufferance. see it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow. yes, .we are the cowed, — we the trustless. it is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. as the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of god, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. to ignorance and sin, it is flint. they adapt themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has any thing in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form. not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. they are the kings of "the world who give the color of their present thought the american scholar. 101 to all nature and all art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of their carrying the matter, that this thing which they do, is the apple which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the harvest. the great man makes the great thing. wherever macdonald sits, there is the head of the table. linnaeus makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman; davy, chemistry; and cuvier, fossils. the day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims. the unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the atlantic follow the moon. for this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed, — darker than can be enlightened. i might not carry with me the feeling of my audience in stating my own belief. but i have already shown the ground of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine that man is one. i believe man has been wronged; he has wronged himself. he has almost lost the light, that can lead him back to his prerogatives. men are become of no account. men in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are called 'the mass' and 'the herd.' in a century, in a millennium, one or two men; that is to say, ' 102 the american scholar. — one or two approximations to the right state of every man. all the rest behold in the hero or the poet their own green and crude being, — ripened; yes, and are content to be less, so that may attain to its full stature. what a testimony,—full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. the poor and the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority. they are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified. they sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own element. they cast the dignity of man from their downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and conquer. he lives for us, and we live in him. men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money, — the "spoils," so called, "of office." and why not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they ^ the american scholar. 103 dream is highest. wake them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. this revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of culture. the main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. here are the materials strown along the ground. the private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,— more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. for a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day i can do for myself. the books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. what is that but saying, that we have come up with the point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. first, one; then, another; we drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. the man has never lived that can feed us ever. the human mind cannot be enshrined in a person, who shall set a barrier on any one side to this r 104 the american scholar. unbounded, unboundable empire. it is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of etna, lightens the capes of sicily; and, now out of the throat of vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of naples. it is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. it is one soul which animates all men. but i have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of the scholar. i ought not to delay longer to add what i have to say, of nearer reference to the time and to this country. historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas which predominate over successive epochs, and there are data for marking the genius of the classic, of the romantic, and now of the reflective or philosophical age. with the views i have intimated of the oneness or the identity of the mind through all individuals, i do not much dwell on these differences. in fact, i believe each individual passes through all three. the boy is a greek; the youth, romantic; the adult, reflective. i deny not, however, that a revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly enough traced. our age is bewailed as the age of introversion. must that needs be evil? we, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed with second thoughts; ^ the american scholar. 105 we cannot enjoy any thing for hankering to know whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with eyes; we see with our feet; the time is infected with hamlet's unhappiness, — "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." is it so bad then? sight is the last thing to be pitied. would we be blind? do we fear lest we should outsee nature and god, and drink truth dry? i look upon the discontent of the literary class, as a mere announcement of the fact, that they find themselves not in the state of mind of their fathers, and regret the coming state as untried; as a boy dreads the water before he has learned that he can swim. if there is any period one would desire to be born in, — is it not the age of revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? this time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. i read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and science, through church and state. 106 the american scholar. one of these signs is the fact, that the same movement which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the state, assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. that, which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. the literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. it is a great stride. it is a sign, —is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. i ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in italy or arabia; what is greek art, or provencal minstrelsy; i embrace the common, i explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. what would we really know the meaning of? the meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body ; — show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show the american scholar. 107 me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the leger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing ; — and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench. this idea has inspired the genius of goldsmith, burns, cowper, and, in a newer time, of goethe, wordsworth, and carlyle. this idea they have differently followed and with various success. in contrast with their writing, the style of pope, of johnson, of gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. this writing is blood-warm. man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. the near explains the far. the drop is a small ocean. a man is related to all nature. this perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients. there is one man of genius, who has done 108 the american scholar. much for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated; — i mean emanuel swedenborg. the most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical ethics on the popular christianity of his time. such an attempt, of course, must have difficulty, which no genius could surmount. but he saw and showed the connection between nature and the affections of the soul. he pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangible world. especially did his shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul material forms, and has given in epical paraables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean and fearful things. another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement, is, the new importance given to the single person. every thing that tends to insulate the individual, — to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state ; — tends to true union as well as greatness. "i learned," said the melancholy pestalozzi, "that no man in god's the american scholar. 109 • wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man." help must come from the bosom alone. the scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. he must be an university of knowledges. if there be one lesson more than another, which should pierce his ear, it is, the world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. mr. president and gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the american scholar. we have listened too long to the courtly muses of europe. the spirit of the american freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. the scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. see already the tragic consequence. the mind of this cbuntry, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. there is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of 110 thk american scholar. • god, find the earth below not in unison with these,—but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust,—some of them suicides. what is the remedy? they did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career, do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. patience,—patience; — with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace, the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work, the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; — not to be reckoned one character; — not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south? not so, brothers and friends, — please god, ours shall not be so. we will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. the study of letters shall be the american scholar. ill no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. the dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy around all. a nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the divine soul which also inspires all men. " x an address delivered before the senior class in divinity college, cambridge, sfndav evening, july 15, 1838. ■ address. in this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. the grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. the air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-gilead, and the new hay. night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. the cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. the mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. the corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of 116 address. explanation. one is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. how wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! in its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone ; in its forests of all woods; in its animals ; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life, it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. the planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor. but when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great . world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. what am i? and what is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. behold these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehension can see tend this way and that, but not come full circle. behold these infinite relations, so like, so unlike; many, yet one. i would study, i would know, i would admire forever. these works of thought have been the entertainments of the human spirit in all ages. a more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty >» address. 117 appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. then he is instructed in what is above him. he learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness. that which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized it yet. he ought. he knows the sense of that grand word, though his analysis fails entirely to render account of it. when in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he attains to say, — 'i love the right; truth isbeautiful within and without, forevermore. virtue, i am thine: save me: use me: thee will i serve, day and night, in great, in small, that i may be not virtuous, but virtue ;' — then is the end of the creation answered, and god is well pleased. the sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. it perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. the child amidst his baubles, is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and god, interact. these laws refuse to be adequately stated. they will not be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. they " 118 address. elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse. the moral traits which are all globed into every virtuous act and thought, — in speech, we must sever, and describe or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars. yet, as this sentiment is the essence of all religion, let me guide your eye to the precise objects of the sentiment, by an enumeration of some of those classes of facts in which this element is conspicuous. the intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. these laws execute themselves. they are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. he who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. he who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. he who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. if a man is at heart just, then in so far is he god; the safety of god, the immortality of god, the majesty of god do enter into that man with justice. if a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. a man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. every step so downward, is a step upward. address. 119 the man who renounces himself, comes to himself. see how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh everywhere, righting wrongs, correcting appearances, and bringing up facts to a harmony with thoughts. its operation in life, though slow to the senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. by it, a man is made the providence to himself, dispensing good to his goodness, and evil to his sin. character is always known. thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. the least admixture of a lie, — for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance, — will instantly vitiate the effect. but speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness. see again the perfection of the law as it applies itself to the affections, and becomes the law of society. as we are, so we associate. the good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. thus of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell. these facts have always suggested to man the " 120 address. sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise. good is positive. evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. all evil is so much -death or nonentity. benevolence is absolute and real. so much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. for all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. all things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. in so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. the perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. wonderful is its power to charm and a address. 121 » i to command. it is a mountain air. it is the embalmer of the world. it is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary. it makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. by it, is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power. thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity; but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart, gives and is the assurance that law is sovereign over all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy. this sentiment is divine and deifying. it is the beatitude of man. it makes him illimitable. through it, the soul first knows itself. it corrects the capital mistake of the infant man, who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages from another, — by showing the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of reason. when he says, "i ought;" when love warms him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul from supreme wisdom. then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. in the sublimest flights of the soul, ' 122 address. rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. this sentiment lies at the foundation of society, and successively creates all forms of worship. the principle of veneration never dies out. man fallen into superstition, into sensuality, is never quite without the visions of the moral sentiment. in like manner, all the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. the expressions of this sentiment affect us more than all other compositions. the sentences of the oldest time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. this thought dwelled always deepest in the minds of men in the devout and contemplative east; not alone in palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in egypt, in persia, in india, in china. europe has always owed to oriental genius, its divine impulses. what these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true. and the unique impression of jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an inn. address. 123 tuition. it cannot be received at second hand. truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that i can receive from another soul. what he announces, i must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, i can accept nothing. on the contrary, the absence of this primary faith is the presence of degradation. as is the flood so is the ebb. let this faith depart, and the very words it spake, and the things it made, become false and hurtful. then falls the church, the state, art, letters, life. the doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. once man was all; now he is an appendage, a nuisance. and because the indwelling supreme spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. the doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul. miracles, prophecy, poetry; the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief, nor in the aspiration of society; but, when suggested, seem ridiculous. life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and 124 address. man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses. these general views, which, whilst they are general, none will contest, find abundant illustration in the history of religion, and especially in the history of the christian church. in that, all of us have had our birth and nurture. the truth contained in that, you, my young friends, are now setting forth to teach. as the cultus, or established worship of the civilized world, it has great historical interest for us. of its blessed words, which have been the consolation of humanity, you need not that i should speak. i shall endeavor to discharge my duty to you, on this occasion, by pointing out two errors in its administration, which daily appear more gross from the point of view we have just now taken. jesus christ belonged to the true race of prophets. he saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. one man was true to what is in you and me. he saw that god incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. he said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'i am ^ v address. 125 divine. through me, god acts; through me, speaks. would you see god, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as i now think.' but what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! there is no doctrine of the reason which will bear to be taught by the understanding. the understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'this was jehovah come down out of heaven. i will kill you, if you say he was a man.' the idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. christianity became a mythus, as the poetic teaching of greece and of egypt, before. he spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. but the word miracle, as pronounced by christian churches, gives a false impression; it is monster. it is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. he felt respect for moses and the prophets; but no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the heart. 126 address. thus was he a true man. having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was god. thus is he, as i think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man. 1. in this point of view we become very sensible of the first defect of historical christianity. historical christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. as it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. it has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of jesus. the soul knows no persons. it invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. but by this eastern monarchy of a christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. the manner in which his name is surrounded with expressions, which were once sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all generous sympathy and liking. all who hear me, feel, that the language that describes christ to europe and america, is not the style of frienda address. 127 ship and enthusiasm to a good and noble heart, but is appropriated and formal, — paints a demigod, as the orientals or the greeks would describe osiris or apollo. accept the injurious impositions of our early catachetical instruction, and even honesty and self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not wear the christian name. one would rather be 'a pagan, suckled in a deed outworn,' than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature, and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized. you shall not be a man even. you .shall not own the world; you shall not dare, and live after the infinite law that is in you, and in company with the infinite beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms; but you must subordinate your nature to christ's nature; you must accept our interpretations; and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it. that is always best which gives me to myself. the sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, obey thyself. that which shows god in me, fortifies me. that which shows god out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. there is no longer a necessary reason • r 128 address. for my being. already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and i shall decease forever. the divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intellect, of my strength. they admonish me, that the gleams which flash across my mind, are not mine, but god's; that they had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. so i love them. noble provocations go out from them, inviting me to resist evil; to subdue the world; and to be. and thus by his holy thoughts, jesus serves us, and thus only. to aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation of the soul. a true conversion, a true christ, is now, as always, to be made, by the reception of beautiful sentiments. it is true that a great and rich soul, like his, falling among the simple, does so preponderate, that, as his did, it names the world. the world seems to them to exist for him, and they have not yet drunk so deeply of his sense, as to see that only by coming again to themselves, or to god in themselves, can they grow forevermore. it is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of myself. the time is coming when all men will see, that the gift of god to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but address. 129 a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow. the injustice of the vulgar tone of preaching is not less flagrant to jesus, than to the souls which it profanes. the preachers do not see that they make his gospel not glad, and shear him of the locks of beauty and the attributes of heaven. when i see a majestic epaminondas, or washington; when i see among my contemporaries, a true orator, an upright judge, a dear friend; when i vibrate to the melody and fancy of a poem; i see beauty that is to be desired. and so lovely, and with yet more entire consent of my human being, sounds in my ear the severe music of the bards that have sung of the true god in all ages. now do not degrade the life and dialogues of christ out of the circle of this charm, by insulation and peculiarity. let them lie as they befel, alive and warm, part of human life, and of the landscape, and of the cheerful day. 2. the second defect of the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the moral nature, that law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, god himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the foun9 130 address. tain of the established teaching in society. men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if god were dead. the injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice. it is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to others the same knowledge and love. if utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. always the seer is a sayer. somehow his dream is told: somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with pencil on canvas; sometimes with chisel on stone; sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music; but clearest and most permanent, in words. the man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or poet. the office is coeval with the world. but observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of the office. the spirit only can teach. not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. the man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and address. 131 every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. but the man who aims to speak as books enable, as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest commands, babbles. let him hush. to this holy office, you propose to devote yourselves. i wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. the office is the first in the world. it is of that reality, that it cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. and it is my duty to say to you, that the need was never greater of new revelation than now. from the views i have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which i share, i believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. the soul is not preached. the church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. on this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal, which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of christ, that the faith of christ is preached. it is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of. all thoughtful men against the famine of our churches; this moaning of the heart because it is bereaved of the consolation, the hope, the grandeur, that come alone out of the culture of the moral nature; should be heard through the ^ 132 address. sleep of indolence, and over the din of routine. this great and perpetual office of the preacher is not discharged. preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. in how many churches, by how many prophets,, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of god? where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? where shall i hear words such as in elder ages drew men to leave all and follow, — father and mother, house and land, wife and child? where shall i hear these august laws of moral being so pronounced, as to fill my ear, and i feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action and passion? the test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands, — so commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying. the faith should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. but now the priest's sabbath has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done; we can make, we do address. 133 make, even sitting in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves. whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. we shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. we are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we can, a solitude that hears not. i once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, i would go to church no more. men go, thought i, where they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. a snow storm was falling around us. the snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. he had lived in vain. he had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. if he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. the capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. this man had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; 134 as>fike£&. its son thzxa* he main* ana sialeas: va tea* •zjvx irr. * buanffle-a ioia_ :m bl the fl«r-mn«fr. ask i* iiac er*r lrr*sd ac sl 36m £ imf nin i*e «swr <vee «f wsd jbsrarr. the aire jirbbr.tmr eat i* katnrs *t ta:* aac is oeak om it ike pk>:ie i_» ist.— 1% ^aaaed throoei die joe of citixaisb-jj «f aie lac ji»'«i^t'»i eimic sat be v.ud from ius sereiro. trhaa sec of the annua he vrl us.: arfceidw he had £ ttrvr or * chili; arih?cber he -was a £we*cu5et -or * arh«aer be vac a cjnata or a cmnerrinbx: act other fin « ls raaeaajct. fc atracze thai the pecctie saxus. -sane is rjhaadh. i* feeaaed as if zraex tosses ts* tstt ™mwta,-,-:-g. that they sb:^i prcoar ci ttinaefcziess cas=»:r. i: sbrr* ihe ibfr? s & c.^nmsmnimg anr2i::>.c sr :irr zsrrsl ^j*-—<*■. iis cam teai a fit-.ru tint ei l^t u g~-^w aoi isr-mcsace. eoes^sj a us boob? aai piaeet=* p>xi beaver is sure he has been t.-oriiec smaectses: is saw there is svesearhst to be reaciedl aoi srcs? a-ord thai cata reach a. whea be bsa«ss to these tain arords. b* ovttxvrts b-jasru by taeir rebi»a to his reujte*ttbtt«v« ol nf*ter hoecs* and so they cbtttet and echo wtkhjuccywd. 1 sou t*4 ^uorattt vife*« a-beat a* preach unworthjvx « » »o» *nf«vs *jtc» » "ljx. there is a $cvd *»rv m ^»*w jm^*. tb*t drasrs supplies address. 135 to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment. there is poetic truth concealed in all the common-places of prayer and of sermons, and though foolishly spoken, they may be wisely heard; for, each is some select expression that broke out in a moment of piety from some stricken or jubilant soul, and its excellency made it remembered. the prayers and even the dogmas of our church, are like the zodiac of denderah, and the astronomical monuments of the hindoos, wholly insulated from anything now extant in the life and business of the people. they mark the height to which the waters once rose. but this docility is a check upon the mischief from the good and devout. in a large portion of the community, the religious service gives rise to quite other thoughts and emotions. we need not chide the negligent servant. we are struck with pity, rather, at the swift retribution of his sloth. alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life. everything that befalls, accuses him. would he ask contributions for the missions, foreign or domestic? instantly his face is suffused with shame, to propose to his parish, that they should send money a hundred or a thousand miles, to furnish such poor fare as they have at home, and would do well to go the hundred or the thousand miles < 136 address. to escape. would he urge people to a godly way of living : — and can he ask a fellow-creature to come to sabbath meetingswhen he and they all know what is the poor uttermost they can hope for therein: will he invite them privately to the lord-s supper? he dares not. if no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking formality is too plain, than that he can face a man of wit and energy, and put the invitation without terror. in the street, what has he to say to the bold village blasphemer? the village blasphemer sees fear in the face, form, and gait of the minister. let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by any oversight of the claims of good men. i know and honor the purity and strict conscience of numbers of the clergy. what life the public worship retains, it owes to the scattered company of pious men, who minister here and there in the churches, and who, sometimes accepting with too great tenderness the tenet of the elders, have not accepted from others, but from their own heart, the genuine impulses of virtue, and so still command our love and awe, to the sanctity of character. moreover, the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few eminent preachers, as in the better hours, the truer inspirations of all, — nay, in the sincere moments of address. 137 every man. but with whatever exception, it is still true, that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal; that thus, historical christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of 'astonishment and power. what a cruel injustice it is to that law, the joy of the whole earth, which alone can make thought dear and rich; that law whose fatal sureness the astronomical orbits poorly emulate, that it is travestied and depreciated, that it is behooted and behowled, and not a trait, not a word of it articulated. the pulpit in losing sight of this law, loses its reason, and gropes after it knows not what. and for want of this culture, the soul of the community is sick and faithless. it wants nothing so much as a stern, high, stoical, christian discipline, to make it know itself and the divinity that speaks through it. now man is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneaks through the world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his kind. 138 address. certainly there have been periods when, from the inactivity of the intellect on certain truths, a greater faith was possible in names and persons. the puritans in england and america, found in the christ of the catholic church, and in the dogmas inherited from rome, scope for their austere piety, and their longings for civil freedom. but their creed is passing away, and none arises in its room. i think no man can go with his thoughts about him, into one of our churches, without feeling, that what hold the public worship had on men is gone, or going. it has lost its grasp on the affection of the good, and the fear of the bad. in the country, neighborhoods, half parishes are signing off, — to use the local term. it is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from the religious meetings. i have heard a devout person, who prized the sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, "on sundays, it seems wicked to go to church." -and the motive, that holds the best there, is now only a hope and a waiting. what was once a mere circumstance, that the best and the worst men in the parish, the poor and the rich, the learned and the ignorant, young and old, should meet one day as fellows in one house, in sign of an equal right in the soul, — has come to be a paramount motive for going thither. address. 139 my friends, in these two errors, i think, i find the causes of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief. and what greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of worship? then all things go to decay. genius leaves the temple, to haunt the senate, or the market. literature becomes frivolous. science is cold. the eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. society lives to trifles, and when men die, we do not mention them. and now, my brothers, you will ask, what in these desponding days can be done by us? the remedy is already declared in the ground of our complaint of the chinch. we have contrasted the church with the soul. in the soul, then, let the redemption be sought. wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. the old is for slaves. when a man comes, all books are legible, all things transparent, all religions are forms. he is religious. man is the wonderworker. he is seen amid miracles. all men bless and curse. he saith yea and nay, only. the stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of jesus by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology. it is 140 address. the office of a true teacher to show us that god is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake. the true christianity, — a faith like christ's in the infinitude of man, — is lost. none believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. ah me! no man goeth alone. all men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the god who seeth in secret. they cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. they think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world. see how nations and races flit by on the sea of time, and leave no ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one good soul shall make the name of moses, or of zeno, or of zoroaster, reverend forever. none assayeth the stern ambition to be the self of the nation, and of nature, but each would be an easy secondary to some christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man. once leave your own knowledge of god, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, as st. paul's, or george fox's, or swedenborg's, and you get wide from god with every year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries, — the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine. address. 141 let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love god without mediator or veil. friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation wesleys and oberlins, saints and prophets. thank god for these good men, but say, 'i also am a man.' imitation cannot go above its model. the imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. the inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. in the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. yourself a newborn bard of the holy ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with deity. look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each family in your parish connection, — when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a divine man; be to them thought and virtue; let their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts be genially tempted out in your atmosphere; let 142 address. their doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you have wondered. by trusting your own heart, you shall gain more confidence in other men. for all our pennywisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. we mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we inly were. discharge to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be followed with their love as by an angel. and, to this end, let us not aim at common degrees of merit. can we not leave, to such as love it, the virtue that glitters for the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes of absolute ability and worth? we easily come up to the standard of goodness in society. society's praise can be cheaply secured, and almost all men are content with those easy merits; but the instant effect of conversing with god, will be, to put them away. there are persons who are not actors, not speakers, but influaddress. 143 ences; persons too great for fame, for display who disdain eloquence; to whom all we call art and artist, seems too nearly allied to show and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the universal. the orators, the poets, the commanders encroach on us only as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. slight them by preoccupation of mind, slight them, as you can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you have right, and that it is in lower places that they must shine. they also feel your right; for they with you are open to the influx of the all-knowing spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest. in such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of rectitude: a bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes of those who love us, shall impair our freedom, but we shall resist for truth's sake the freest flow of kindness, and appeal to sympathies far in advance; and,—what is the highest form in which we know this beautiful element, — a certain solidity of merit, that has nothing to do with opinion, and which is so essentially and manifestly virtue, that it is taken for granted, 144 address. that the right, the brave, the generous step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending it. you would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. the silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause. such souls, when they appear, are the imperial guard of virtue, the perpetual reserve, the dictators of fortune. one needs not praise their courage, — they are the heart and soul of nature. o my friends, there are resources in us on which we have not drawn. there are men who rise refreshed on hearing a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority,— demanding not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice, — comes graceful and beloved as a bride. napoleon said of massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe. so it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of question, that the angel is shown. but these are heights that we can scarce remember and look up to, without contrition and shame. let us thank god that such things exist. address. 145 and now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. the evils of the church that now is are manifest. the question returns, what shall we do? i confess, all attempts to project and establish a cultus with new "rites and forms, seem to me vain. faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. all attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the french to the goddess of reason, — to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending tomorrow in madness and murder. rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. for, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. the remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. a whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. two inestimable advantages christianity has given us; first; the sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. let it stand forevermore, a temple, which new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to mankind. and 10 146 address. secondly, the institution of preaching, — the speech of man to men, — essentially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms. what hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecturerooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation? i look for the hour when that supreme beauty, which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the west also. the hebrew and greek scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions. but they have no epical integrity ; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. i look for the new teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the ought, that duty, is one thing with science, with beauty, and with joy. literary ethics. an oration delivered before the literary societies of dartmouth college, julv 24, 1833. oration. gentlemen, the invitation to address you this day, with which you have honored me, was a call so welcome, that i made haste to obey it. a summons to celebrate with scholars a literary festival, is so alluring to me, as to overcome the* doubts i might well entertain of my ability to bring you any thought worthy of your attention. i have reached the middle age of man; yet i believe i am not less glad or sanguine at the meeting of scholars, than when, a boy, i first saw the graduates of my own college assembled at their anniversary. neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. his duties lead him directly into the 150 literary ethics. holy ground where other men's aspirations only point. his successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. his failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages. and because the scholar, by every thought he thinks, extends his dominion into the general mind of men, he is not one, but many. the few scholars in each country, whose genius i know, seem to me not individuals, but societies; and, when events occur of great import, i count over these representatives ofopinion, whom they will affect, as if i were counting nations. j and, even if his results were incommunicable ; if they abode in his own spirit; the intellect hath somewhat so sacred in its possessions, that the fact of his existence and pursuits would be a happy omen. meantime i know that a very different estimate of the scholar's profession prevails in this country, and the importunity, with which society presses its claim upon young men, tends to pervert the views of the youth in respect to the culture of the intellect. hence the historical failure, on which europe and america have so freely commented. this country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expectation of mankind. men looked, when all feudal straps and bandages were snapped asunder, that nature, too literary ethics. 151 long the mother of dwarfs, should reimburse itself by a brood of titans, who should laugh and leap in the continent, and run up the mountains of the west with the errand of genius and of love. but the mark of american merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty, — which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders. i will not lose myself in the desultory questions, what are the limitations, and what the causes of the fact. it suffices me to say, in general, that the diffidence of mankind in the soul has crept over the american mind; that men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought. yet, in every sane hour, the service of thought appears reasonable, the despotism of the senses insane. the scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is a realist, and converses with things. for, the 152 literary ethics. scholar is the student of the world, and of what worth the world is, and with what emphasis it accosts the soul of man, such is the worth, such the call of the scholar. the want of the times, and the propriety of this anniversary, concur to draw attention to the doctrine of literary ethics. what i have to say on that doctrine distributes itself under the topics of the resources, the subject, and the discipline of the scholar. i. the resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect. the resources of the scholar are coextensive with nature and truth, yet can never be his, unless claimed by him with an equal greatness of mind. he cannot know them until he has beheld with awe the infinitude and impersonality of the intellectual power. when he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but that it is the soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it. a divine pilgrim in nature, all things attend his steps. over him stream the flying constellations; over him streams time, as they, scarcely divided into months and years. he inhales the year as a literary ethics. 153 vapor: its fragrant midsummer breath, its sparkling january heaven. and so pass into his mind, in bright transfiguration, the grand events of history, to take a new order and scale from him. he is the world; and the epochs and heroes of chronology are pictorial images, in which his thoughts are told. there is no event but sprung somewhere from the soul of man; and therefore there is none but the soul of man can interpret. every presentiment of the mind is executed somewhere in a gigantic fact. what else is greece, rome, england, france, st. helena? what else are churches, literatures, and empires? the new man must feel that he is new, and has not come into the world mortgaged to the opinions and usages of europe, and asia, and egypt. the sense of spiritual independence is like the lovely varnish of the dew, whereby the old, hard, peaked earth, and its old self-same productions, are made new every morning, and shining with the last touch of the artist's hand. a false humility, a complaisance to reigning schools, or to the wisdom of antiquity, must not defraud me of supreme possession of this hour. if any person have less love of liberty, and less jealousy to guard his integrity, shall he therefore dictate to you and me? say to such doctors, we are thankful to you, as we are to history, to the ' 154 literary ethic3. pyramids, and the authors; but now our day is come; we have been born out of the eternal silence; and now will we live, — live for ourselves, — and not as the pall-bearers of a funeral, but as the upholders and creators of our age; and neither greece nor rome, nor the three unities of aristotle, nor the three kings of cologne, nor the college of the sorbonne, nor the edinburgh review, is to command any longer. now that we are here, we will put our own interpretation on things, and our own things for interpretation. please himself with complaisance who will,—for me, things must take my scale, not i theirs. i will say with the warlike king, "god gave me this crown, and the whole world shall not take it away." the whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. this is the moral of the plutarchs, the cudworths, the tennemanns, who give us the story of men or of opinions. any history of philosophy fortifies my faith, by showing me, that what high dogmas i had supposed were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture, and only now possible to some recent kant or fichte,—were the prompt improvisations of the earliest inquirers; of parmenides, heraclitus, and xenophanes. in view of these literary ethics. 155 students, the soul seems to whisper, “there is a better way than this indolent learning of another. leave me alone; do not teach me out of leibnitz or schelling, and i shall find it all out myself.” still more do we owe to biography the fortification of our hope. if you would know the power of character, see how much you would impoverish the world, if you could take clean out of history the lives of milton, shakspeare, and plato, these three, and cause them not to be. see you not, how much less the power of man would be i console myself in the poverty of my thoughts; in the paucity of great men, in the malignity and dulness of the nations, by falling back on these sublime recollections, and seeing what the prolific soul could beget on actual nature; — seeing that plato was, and shakspeare, and milton, — three irrefragable facts. then i dare; i also will essay to be. the humblest, the most hopeless, in view of these radiant facts, may now theorize and hope. in spite of all the rueful abortions that squeak and gibber in the street, in spite of slumber and guilt, in spite of the army, the bar-room, and the jail, have been these glorious manifestations of the mind; and i will thank my great brothers so truly for the admonition of their being, as to 156 literary ethics. endeavor also to be just and brave, to aspire and to speak. plotinus too, and spinoza, and the immortal bards of philosophy, — that which they have written out with patient courage, makes me bold. no more will i dismiss, with haste, the visions which flash and sparkle across my sky; but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, brood on them, and draw out of the past, genuine life for the present hour. to feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and provocation, you must come to know, that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. the impoverishing philosophy of ages has laid stress on the distinctions of the individual, and not on the universal attributes of man. the youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires. in solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth loiters and mourns. with inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read the story of the emperor charles the fifth, until his fancy has brought ^iome to the surrounding woods, the faint roar of cannonades in the milanese, and marches in germany. he is curious concerning that man's day. what filled it? the crowded orders, the stern decisions, the foreign despatches, v literary ethics. 157 the castilian etiquette? the soul answers — behold his day here! in the sighing of these woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these northern mountains; in the workmen, the boys, the maidens, you meet, — in the hopes of the morning, the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon; in the disquieting comparisons; in the regrets at want of vigor; in the great idea, and the puny execution; — behold charles the fifth's day; another, yet the same; behold chatham's, hampden's, bayard's, alfred's, scipio's, perioles's day, — day of all that are born of women. the difference of circumstance is merely costume. i am tasting the self-same life, — its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, which i so admire in other men. do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past, what it cannot tell,—the details of that nature, of that day, called byron, or burke ; — but ask it of the enveloping now; the more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so much the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and every hero. be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books. an intimation of these broad rights is familiar 158 literary ethics. in the sense of injury which men feel in the assumption of any man to limit their possible progress. we resent all criticism, which denies us any thing that lies in our line of advance. say to the man of letters, that he cannot paint a transfiguration, or build a steamboat, or be a grand-marshal, — and he will not seem to himself depreciated. but deny to him any quality of literary or metaphysical power, and he is piqued. concede to him genius, which is a sort of stoical plenum annulling the comparative, and he is content; but concede him talents never so rare, denying him genius, and he is aggrieved. what does this mean? why simply, that the soul has assurance, by instincts and presentiments, of all power in the direction of its ray, as well as of the special skills it has already acquired. in order to a knowledge of the resources of the scholar, we must not rest in the use of slender accomplishments, — of faculties to do this and that other feat with words; but we must pay our vows to the highest power, and pass, if it be possible, by assiduous love and watching, into the visions of absolute truth. the growth of the intellect is strictly analogous in all individuals. it is larger reception. able men, in general, have good dispositions, and a respect for literary ethics. 159 justice; because an able man is nothing else than a good, free, vascular organization, whereinto the universal spirit freely flows; so that his fund of justice is not only vast, but infinite. all men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. the condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of universal being. the hero is great by means of the predominance of the universal nature; he has only to open his mouth, and it speaks; he has only to be forced to act, and it acts. all men catch the word, or embrace the deed, with the heart, for it is verily theirs as much as his; but in them this disease of an excess of organization cheats them of equal issues. nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. the vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. out of this must all that is alive and genial in thdught go. men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. but the moment they desert the tradition for a 160 literary ethics. spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid. observe the phenomenon of extempore debate. a man of cultivated mind, but reserved habits, sitting silent, admires the miracle of free, impassioned, picturesque speech, in the man addressing "an assembly ; — a state of being and power, how unlike his own! presently his own emotion rises to his lips, and overflows in speech. he must also rise and say somewhat. once embarked, once having overcome the novelty of the situation, he finds it just as easy and natural to speak,—to speak with thoughts, with pictures, with rhythmical balance of sentences, — as it was to sit silent; for, it needs not to do, but to suffer; he only adjusts himself to the free spirit which gladly utters itself through him; and motion is as easy as rest. ii. i pass now to consider the task offered to the intellect of this country. the view i have taken of the resources of the scholar, presupposes a subject as broad. we do not seem to have imagined its riches. we have not heeded the invitation it holds out. to be as good a scholar as englishmen are; to have as much learning as our contemporaries; to have written a book that is read; satisfies us. we assume, that all literary ethics. 161 thought is already long ago adequately set down in books, — all imaginations in poems ; and what we say, we only throw in as confirmatory of this supposed complete body of literature. a very shallow assumption. say rather, all literature is yet to be written. poetry has scarce chanted its first song. the perpetual admonition of nature to us, is, 'the world is new, untried. do not believe the past. i give you the universe a virgin to-day.' by latin and english poetry, we were born and bred in an oratorio of praises of nature, — flowers, birds, mountains, sun,, and moon; — yet the naturalist of this hour finds that he knows nothing, by all their poems, of any of these fine things; that he has conversed with the mere surface and show of them all; and of their essence, or of their history, knows nothing. further inquiry will discover that nobody, — that not these chanting poets themselves, knew any thing sincere of these handsome natures they so commended; that they contented themselves with the passing chirp of a bird, that they saw one or two mornings, and listlessly looked at sunsets, and repeated idly these few glimpses in their song. but go into the forest, you shall find all new and undescribed. the screaming of the wild geese flying by night; the thin note -" 11 162 literary ethics. of the companionable titmouse, in the winter day; the fall of swarms of flies, in autumn, from combats high in the air, pattering down on the leaves like rain; the angry hiss of the woodbirds; the pine throwing out its pollep for the benefit of the next century; the turpentine exuding from the tree ;— and, indeed, any vegetation; any animation; any and all, are alike unattempted. the man who stands on the seashore, or who rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man that ever stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. whilst i read the poets, i think that nothing new can be said about morning and evening. but when i see the daybreak, i am not reminded of these homeric, or shakspearian, or miltonic, or chaucerian pictures. no; but i feel perhaps the pain of an alien world; a world not yet subdued by the thought; or, i am cheered by the moist, warm, glittering, budding, melodious hour, that takes down the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life and pulsation to the very horizon. that is morning, to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body, and to become as large as nature. the noonday darkness of the american forest, the deep, echoing, aboriginal woods, where the living columns of the oak and fir tower up literary ethics. 163 from the ruins of the trees of the last millennium; where, from year to year, the eagle and the crow see no intruder; the pines, bearded with savage moss, yet touched with grace by the violets at their feet; the broad, cold lowland, which forms its coat of vapor with the stillness of subterranean crystallization; and where the traveller, amid the repulsive plants that are native in the swamp, thinks with pleasing terror of the distant town; this beauty, — haggard and desert beauty, which the sun and the moon, the snow and the rain, repaint and vary, has never been recorded by art, yet is not indifferent to any passenger. all men are poets at heart. they serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes. what mean these journeys to niagara; these pilgrims to the white hills? men believe in the adaptations of utility, always: in the mountains, they may believe in the adaptations of the eye. undoubtedly, the changes of geology have a relation to the prosperous sprouting of the corn and peas in my kitchen garden; but not less is there a relation of beauty between my soul and the dim crags of agiocochook up there in the clouds. every man, when this is told, hearkens with joy, and yet his own conversation with nature is still unsung. 164 literary ethics. is it otherwise with civil history? is it not the lesson of our experience that every man, were life long enough, would write history for himself? what else do these volumes of extracts and manuscript commentaries, that every scholar writes, indicate? greek history is one thing to me; another to you. since the birth of niebuhr and wolf, roman and greek history have been written anew. since carlyle wrote french history, we see that no history, that we have, is safe, but a new classifier shall give it new and more philosophical arrangement. thucydides, livy, have only provided materials. the moment a man of genius pronounces the name of the pelasgi, of athens, of the etrurian, of the roman people, we see their state under a new aspect. as in poetry and history, so in the other departments. there are few masters or none. religion is yet to be settled on its fast foundations in the breast of man; and politics, and philosophy, and letters, and art. as yet we have nothing but tendency and indication. this starting, this warping of the best literary works from the adamant of nature, is especially observable in philosophy. let it take what tone of pretension it will, to this complexion must it come, at last. take, for example, the french eclecticism, which cousin esteems so concluliterary ethics. 165 sive; there is an optical illusion in it. it avows great pretensions. it looks as if they had all truth, in taking all the systems, and had nothing to do, but to sift and wash and strain, and the gold and diamonds would remain in the last colander. but, truth is such a flyaway, such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light. shut the shutters never so quick, to keep all the light in, it is all in vain; it is gone before you can cry, hold. and so it happens with our philosophy. translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be compelled, in any mechanical manner. but the first observation you make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new view of nature and of man, that, like a menstruum, shall dissolve all theories in it; shall take up greece, rome, stoicism, eclecticism, and what not, as mere data and food for analysis, and dispose of your world-containing system, as a very little unit. a profound thought, anywhere, classifies all things: a profound thought will tyft olympus. the book of philosophy is only a fact, and no more inspiring fact than another, and no less; but a wise man will never esteem it anything final and transcending. go 166 literary ethics. and talk with a man of genius, and the first word he utters, sets all your so-called knowledge afloat and at large. then plato, bacon, kant, and the eclectic cousin, condescend instantly to be men and mere facts. i by no means aim, in these remarks, to disparage the merit of these or of any existing compositions; i only say that any particular portraiture does not in any manner exclude or forestall a new attempt, but, when considered by the soul, warps and shrinks away. the inundation of the spirit sweeps away before it all our little architecture of wit and memory, as straws and straw-huts before the torrent. works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other; ivanhoe and waverley compared with castle radcliffe and the porter novels; but nothing is great, — not mighty homer and milton, — beside the infinite reason. it carries them away as a flood. they are as a sleep. thus is justice done to each generation and individual, — wisdom teaching man that he shall not hate, or fear, or mimic his ancestors; that he shall not bewail himself, as if the world was old, and thought was spent, and he was born into the dotage of things; for, by virtue of the deity, thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were literary ethics. 167 dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations. iii. having thus spoken of the resources and the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith proceeds also the rule of his ambition and life. let him know that the world is his, but he must possess it by putting himself into harmony with the constitution of things. he must be a. solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable soul. he must embrace solitude as a bride. he must have his> glees and his glooms alone. his own estimate must be measure enough, his own praise reward enough for him. and why must the student be solitary and silent? that he may become acquainted with his thoughts. if he pines in a lonely place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely place; his heart is in the market; he does not see; he does not hear; he does not think. but go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; you will have results, which, when you meet your fellow-men, you can communicate, and they will gladly receive. do not go into solitude only that you may presently come into 168 litekary ethics. m public. such solitude denies itself; is public and stale. the public can get public experience, but they wish the scholar to replace to them those private, sincere, divine experiences, of which they have been defrauded by dwelling in the street. it is the noble, manlike, just thought, which is the superiority demanded of you, and not crowds but solitude confers this elevation. not insulation of place, but independence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock, are a sort of mechanical aids to this, that they are of value. think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. the poets who have lived in cities have been hermits still. inspiration makes solitude anywhere. pindar, raphael, angelo, dryden, de stael, dwell in crowds, it may be, but the instant thought comes, the crowd grows dim to their eye; their eye fixes on the horizon, — on vacant space; they forget the bystanders; they spurn personal relations; they deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. they are alone with the mind. of course, i would not have any superstition about solitude. let the youth study the uses of solitude and of society. let him use both, not serve either. the reason why an ingenious soul shuns society, is to the end of finding society. literary ethics. 169 it repudiates the false, out of love of the true. you can very soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. its foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. then accept the hint of shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which true nature gives you, and retire, and hide; lock the door; shut the shutters; then welcome falls the imprisoning rain, — dear hermitage of nature. re-collect the spirits. have solitary prayer and praise. digest and correct the past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life. you will pardon me, gentlemen, if i say, i think that we have need of a more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, i mean, as only the hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. we live in the sun and on the surface, — a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. but out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? come now, let us go and be dumb. let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, pythagorean lustrum. let us live in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the lord. silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into 170 literary ethics. the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. how mean to go blazing, a gaudy butterfly, in fashionable or political saloons, the fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a topic for newspapers, a piece of the street, and forfeiting the real prerogative of the russet coat, the privacy, and the true and warm heart of the citizen! fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. a mistake of the main end to which they labor, is incident to literary men, who, dealing with the organ of language, — the subtlest, strongest, and longest-lived of man's creations, and only fitly used as the weapon of thought and of justice, — learn to enjoy the pride of playing with this splendid engine, but rob it of its almightiness by failing to work with it. extricating themselves from the tasks of the world, the world revenges itself by exposing, at every turn, the folly of these incomplete, pedantic, useless, ghostly creatures. the scholar will feel, that the richest romance, —the noblest fiction that was ever woven, — the heart and soul of beauty, — lies enclosed in human life. itself of surpassing value, it is also the richest material for his creations. how shall literary ethics. 171 he know its secrets of tenderness, of terror, of will, and of fate? how can" he catch and keep the strain of upper music that peals from it? its laws are concealed under the details of daily action. all action is an experiment upon them. he must bear his share of the common load. he must work with men in houses, and not with their names in books. his needs, appetites, talents, affections, accomplishments, are keys that open to him the beautiful museum of human life. why should he read it as an arabian tale, and not know, in his own beating bosom, its sweet and smart? out of love and hatred, out of earnings, and borrowings, and lendings, and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of travelling, and voting, and watching, and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws. let him not slur his lesson; let him learn it by heart. let him endeavor exactly, bravely, and cheerfully, to solve the problem of that life which is set before him. and this, by punctual action, and not by promises or dreams. believing, as in god, in the presence and favor of the grandest influences, let him deserve that favor, and learn how to receive and use it, by fidelity also to the lower observances. this lesson is taught with emphasis in the 172 literary ethics. life of the great actor of this age, and affords the explanation of his success. bonaparte represents truly a great recent revolution, which we in this country, please god, shall carry to its farthest consummation. not the least instructive passage in modern history, seems to me a trait of napoleon, exhibited to the english when he became their prisoner. > on coming on board the bellerophon, a file of english soldiers drawn up on deck, gave him a military salute. napoleon observed, that their manner of handling their arms differed from the french exercise, and, putting aside the guns of those nearest him, walked up to a soldier, took his gun, and himself went through the motion in the french mode. the english officers and men looked on with astonishment, and inquired if such familiarity was usual with the emperor. in this instance, as always, that man, with whatever defects or vices, represented performance in lieu of pretension. feudalism and orientalism had long enough thought it majestic to do nothing; the modern majesty consists in work. he belonged to a class, fast growing in the world, who think, that what a man can do is his greatest ornament, and that he always consults his dignity by doing it. he was not a believer in luck; he had a faith, like sight, litebaky ethics. 173 in the application of means to ends. means to ends, is the motto of all his behavior. he believed that the great captains of antiquity performed their exploits only by correct combinations, and by justly comparing the relation between means and consequences; efforts and obstacles. the vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius. but napoleon, thus faithful to facts, had also this crowning merit; that, whilst he believed in number and weight, and omitted no part of prudence, he believed also in the freedom and quite incalculable force of the soul. a man of infinite caution, he neglected never the least particular of preparation, of patient adaptation; yet nevertheless he had a sublime confidence, as in his all, in the sallies of the courage, and the faith in his destiny, which, at the right moment, repaired all losses, and demolished cavalry, infantry, king, and kaisar, as with irresistible thunderbolts. as they say the bough of the tree has the character of the leaf, and the whole tree of the bough, so, it is curious to remark, bonaparte's army partook of this double strength of the captain ; for, whilst strictly supplied in all its appointments, and everything expected from the valor and discipline of every platoon, in flank and centre, yet always remained his total trust in the pro" 174 literary ethics. digious revolutions of fortune, which his reserved imperial guard were capable of working, if, in all else, the day was lost. here he was sublime. he no" longer calculated the chance of the cannon-ball. he was faithful to tactics to the uttermost,-*—and when all tactics had come to an end, then, he dilated, and availed himself of the mighty saltations of the most formidable soldiers in nature. let the scholar appreciate this combination of gifts, which, applied to better purpose, make true wisdom. he is a revealer of things. let him first learn the things. let him not, too eager to grasp some badge of reward, omit the work to be done. let him know, that, though the success of the market is in the reward, true success is the doing; that, in the private obedience to his mind; in the sedulous inquiry, day after day, year after year, to know how the thing stands; in the use of all means, and most in the reverence of the humble commerce and humble needs of life, — to hearken what they say, and so, by mutual reaction of thought and life, to make thought solid, and life wise; and in a contempt for the gabble of to-day's opinions, the secret of the world is to be learned, and the skill truly to unfold it is acquired. or, rather, is it not, that, by this discipline, the usurpation of the senses is literary ethics. 175 overcome, and the lower faculties of man are subdued to docility; through which, as an unobstructed channel, the soul now easily and gladly flows? the good scholar will not refuse to bear the yoke in his youth; to know, if he can, the uttermost secret of toil and endurance; to make his own hands acquainted with the soil by which he is fed, and the sweat that goes before comfort and luxury. let him pay his tithe, and serve the world as a true and noble man; never forgetting to worship the immortal divinities, who whisper to the poet, and make him the utterer of melodies that pierce the ear of eternal time. if he have this twofold goodness, — the drill and the inspiration, — then he has health; then he is a whole, and not a fragment; and the perfection of his endowment will appear in his compositions. indeed, this twofold merit characterizes ever the productions of great masters. the man of genius should occupy the whole space between god or pure mind, and the multitude of uneducated men. he must draw from the infinite reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. from one, he must draw his strength; to the other, he must owe his aim. the one yokes him to the real; the other, to the apparent. at 176 "literary ethics. one pole, is reason; at the other, common . sense. if he be defective at either extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low and utilitarian; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life. the student, as we all along insist, is great only by being passive to the superincumbent spirit. let this faith, then, dictate all his action. snares and bribes abound to mislead him; let him be true nevertheless. his success has its perils too. there is somewhat inconvenient and injurious in his position. they whom his thoughts have entertained or inflamed, seek him before yet they have learned the hard conditions of thought. they seek him, that he may turn his lamp on the dark riddles whose solution they think is inscribed on the walls of their being. they find that he is a poor, ignorant man, in a white-seamed, rusty coat, like themselves, no wise emitting a continuous stream of light, but now and then a jet of luminous thought, followed by total darkness; moreover, that he cannot make of his infrequent illumination a portable taper to carry whither he would,, and explain now this dark riddle, now that. sorrow ensues. the scholar regrets to damp the hope of ingenuous boys; and the youth has lost a star out of his new flaming firmament. hence the literary ethics. 177 temptation to the scholar to mystify; to hear the question; to sit upon it; to make an answer" of words, in lack of the oracle of things. not the less let him be cold and true, and wait in patience, knowing that truth can make even silence eloquent and memorable. truth shall be policy enough for him. let him open his breast to all honest inquiry, and be an artist superior to tricks of art. show frankly as a saint would do, your experience, methods, tools, and means. welcome all comers to the freest use of the same. and out of this superior frankness and charity, you shall learn higher secrets of your nature, which gods will bend and aid you to communicate. if, with a high trust, he can thus submit himself, he will find that ample returns are poured into his bosom, out of what seemed hours of obstruction and loss. let him not grieve too much on account of unfit associates. when he sees how much thought he owes to the disagreeable antagonism of various persons who pass and cross him, he can easily think that in a society of perfect sympathy, no word, no act, no record, would be. he will learn, that it is not much matter what he reads, what he does. be a scholar, and he shall have the scholar's part of every thing. as, in the counting-room, the merchant' 13 178 literary ethics. cares little whether the cargo be hides or barilla; the transaction, a letter of credit or a transfer of stocks; be it what it may, his commission comes gently out of it; so you shall get your lesson out of the hour, and the object, whether it be a concentrated or a wasteful employment, even in reading a dull book, or working off a stint of mechanical day labor, which your necessities or the necessities of others impose. gentlemen, i have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholar's place, and hope, because i thought, that, standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this college, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished of those primary duties of the intellect, whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. you will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. you will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 'what is this truth you seek? what is this beauty?' men will ask, with derision. if, nevertheless, god have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. when you shall say, 'as others do, so will i: i renounce, i am sorry for it, my early visions; i must eat the good of the laud, literary ethics. 179 and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;' — then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. the hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. it is this domineering temper of the sensual world, that creates the extreme need of the priests of science; and it is the office and right of the intellect to make and not take its estimate. bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. forewarned that the vice of the times and the country is an excessive pretension, let us seek the shade, and find wisdom in neglect. be content with a little light, so it be your own. explore, and explore. be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. neither dogmatize, nor accept another's dogmatism. why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take 180 literaky ethics. away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope. you will not fear, that i am enjoining too stern an asceticism. ask not, of what use is a scholarship that systematically retreats? or, who is the better for the philosopher who conceals his accomplishments, and hides his thoughts from the waiting world? hides his thoughts! hide the sun and moon. thought is all light, and publishes itself to the universe. it will speak, though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. it will flow out of your actions, your manners, and your face. it will bring you friendships. it will impledge you to truth by the love and expectation of generous minds. by virtue of the laws of that nature, which is one and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven. the method of nature. an or ation delivered before the society of the adelphi, in waterville college, maine, august 11, 1841. the method of nature. gentlemen, let us exchange congratulations on the enjoyments and the promises of this literary anniversary. the land we live in has no interest so dear, if it knew its want, as the fit consecration of days of reason and thought. where there is no vision, the people perish. the scholars are the priests of that thought which establishes the foundations of the earth. no matter what is their special work or profession, they stand for the spiritual interest of the world, and it is a common calamity if they neglect their post in a country where the material interest is so predominant as it is in america. we hear something too much of the results of machinery, commerce, and the useful arts. we are a puny and a fickle folk. avarice, hesitation, and fol184 the method of nature. lowing, are our diseases. the rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man. i do not wish to look with sour aspect at the industrious manufacturing village, or the mart of commerce. i love the music of the water-wheel; i value the railway; i feel the pride which the sight of a ship inspires; i look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. but let me discriminate what is precious herein. there is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times. and i will not be deceived into admiring the routine of handicrafts and mechanics, how splendid soever the result, any more than i admire the routine of the scholars or clerical class. that splendid results ensue from the labors of stupid men, is the fruit of higher laws than their will, and the routine is not to be praised for it. i would not have the laborer sacrificed to the v the method of nature. 185 result, — i would not have the laborer sacrificed to my convenience and pride, nor to that of a great class of such as me. let there be worse cotton and better men. the weaver should not be bereaved of his superiority to his work, and his knowledge that the product or the skill is of no value, except so far as it embodies his spiritual prerogatives. if i see nothing to admire in the unit, shall i admire a million units? men stand in awe of the city, but do not honor any individual citizen; and are continually yielding to this dazzling result of numbers, that which they would never yield to the solitary example of any one. whilst the multitude of men degrade each other, and give currency to desponding doctrines, the scholar must be a bringer of hope, and must reinforce man against himself. i sometimes believe that our literary anniversaries will presently assume a greater importance, as the eyes of men open to their capabilities. here, a new set of distinctions, a new order of ideas, prevail. here, we set a bound to the respectability of wealth, and a bound to the pretensions of the law and the church. the bigot must cease to be a bigot to-day. into our charmed circle, power cannot enter; and the sturdiest defender of existing institutions feels the terrific inflammability of this 186 the method of satukk. air which condenses heat in every comer that may restore to the elements the fabrics of ages. nothing solid is secure: every thing tilts and rocks. even the scholar is not safe; he too is searched and revised. is his learning dead? is he living in his memory? the power of mind is not mortification, but life. but come forth, thou curious child! hither, thou loving, all-hoping poet! hither, thou tender, doubting heart, who has not yet found any place in the world's market fit for thee: any wares which thou couldst buy or sell, — so large is thy love and ambition, — thine and not theirs is the hour. smooth thy brow, and hope and love on, for the kind heaven justifies thee, and the whole world feels that thou art in the right. we ought to celebrate this hour by expressions of manly joy. not thanks, not prayer seem quite the highest or truest name for our communication with the infinite, — but glad and conspiring reception, — reception that becomes giving in its turn, as the receiver is only the all-giver in part and in infancy. i cannot,—nor can any man,— speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me, the wit of man, his strength, his grace, his tendency, his art, is the grace and the presence of god. it is beyond explanation. when all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the the method of nature. 187 only logician. not exhortation, not argument becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise. but not of adulation: we are too nearly related in the deep of the mind to that we honor. it is god in us which checks the language of petition by a grander thought. in the bottom of the heart, it is said; 'i am. and by me, o child! this fair body and world of thine stands and grows. i am; all things are mine: and all mine are thine.' the festival of the intellect, and the return to its source, cast a strong light on the always interesting topics of man and nature. we are forcibly reminded of the old want. there is no man; there hath never been. the intellect still asks that a man may be born. the flame of life flickers feebly in human breasts. we demand of men a richness and universality we do not find. great men do not content us. it is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous. there is somewhat indigent and tedious about them. they are poorly tied to one thought. if they are prophets, they are egotists; if polite and various, they are shallow. how tardily men arrive at any result! how tardily they pass from it to another! the crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. as our soils and 188 the method of nature. rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically. here comes by a great inquisitor with auger and plumb-line, and will bore an artesian well through our conventions and theories, and pierce to the core of things. but as soon as he probes the crust, behold gimlet, plumb-line, and philosopher take a lateral direction, in spite of all resistance, as if some strong wind took everything off its feet, and if you come month after month to see what progress our reformer has made, — not an inch has he pierced, — you still find him with new words in the old place, floating about in new parts of the same old vein or crust. the new book says, 'i will give you the key to nature,' and we expect to go like a thunderbolt to the centre. but the thunder is a surface phenomenon, makes a skin-deep cut, and so does the sage. the wedge turns out to be a rocket. thus a man lasts but a very little while, for his monomania becomes insupportably tedious in a few months. it is so with every book and person: and yet — and yet — we do not take up a new book, or meet a new man, without a pulse-beat of expectation. and this invincible hope of a more adequate interpreter is the sure prediction of his advent. in the absence of man, we turn to nature, the method of nature. 189 which stands next. in the divine order, intellect is primary; nature, secondary; it is the memory of the mind. that which once existed in intellect as pure law, has now taken body as nature. it existed already in the mind in solution; now, it has been precipitated, and the bright sediment is the world. we can never be quite strangers or inferiors in nature. it is flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone.. but we no longer hold it by the hand; we have lost our miraculous power; our arm is no more as strong as the frost; nor our will equivalent to gravity and the elective attractions. yet we can use nature as a convenient standard, and the meter of our rise and fall. it has this advantage as a witness, it cannot be debauched. when man curses, nature still testifies to truth and love. we may, therefore, safely study the mind in nature, because we cannot steadily gaze on it in mind; as we explore the face of the sun in a pool, when our eyes cannot brook his direct splendors. it seems to me, therefore, that it were some suitable psean, if we should piously celebrate this hour by exploring the method of nature. let us see that, as nearly as we can, and try how far it is transferable to the literary life. every earnest glance we give to the realities around us, with intent to learn, proceeds from a holy im190 the method of nature. pulse, and is really songs of praise. what difference can it make whether it take the shape of exhortation, or of passionate exclamation, or of scientific statement? these are forms merely. through them we express, at last, the fact, that god has done thus or thus. in treating a subject so large, in which we must necessarily appeal to the intuition, and aim much more to suggest, than to describe, i know it is not easy to speak with the precision attainable on topics of less scope. i do not wish in attempting to paint a man, to describe an air-fed, unimpassioned, impossible ghost. my eyes and ears are revolted by any neglect of the physical facts, the limitations of man. and yet one who conceives the true order of nature, and beholds the visible as proceeding from the invisible, cannot state his thought, without seeming to those who study the physical laws, to do them some injustice. there is an intrinsic defect in tho organ. language overstates. statements of the infinite are usually felt to be unjust to the finite, and blasphemous. empedocles undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought, when he said, "i am god;" but the moment it was out of his mouth, it became a lie to the ear; and the world revenged itself for the seeming arrogance, by the good story about his shoe. how can i hope for the method of natuhe. 191 better hap in my attempts to enunciate spiritual facts? yet let us hope, that as far as we receive the truth, so far shall we be felt by every true person to say what is just. the method of nature: who could ever analyze it? that rushing stream will not stop to be observed. we can never surprise nature in a corner; never find the end of a thread; never tell where to set the first stone. the bird hastens to lay her egg: the egg hastens to be a bird. the wholeness we admire in the order of the world, is the result of infinite distribution. its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. its permanence is a perpetual inchoation. every natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation also, and from every emanation is a new emanation. if anything could stand still, it would be crushed and dissipated by the torrent it resisted, and if it were a mind, would be crazed; as insane persons are those who hold fast to one thought, and do not flow with the course of nature. not the cause, but an ever novel effect, nature descends always from above. it is unbroken obedience. the beauty of these fanobjects is imported into them from a metaphysical and eternal spring. in all animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist concedes that no 192 the method of nature. chemistry, no mechanics, can account for the facts, but a mysterious principle of life must be assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, but makes the organ. how silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom, — in graceful succession, in equal fulness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. it will not be dissected, nor unravelled, nor shown. away profane philosopher! seekest thou in nature the cause? this refers to that, and that to the next, and the next to the third, and everything refers. thou must ask in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, ere thou canst know the law. known it will not be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed. the simultaneous life throughout the whole body, the equal serving of innumerable ends without the least emphasis or preference to any, but the steady degradation of each to the success of all, allows the understanding no place to work. nature can only be conceived as existing to a universal and not to a particular end, to a universe of ends, and not to one, — a work of the method of nature. 193 ecstasy, to be represented by a circular movement, as intention might be signified by a straight line of definite length. each effect strengthens every other. there is no revolt in all the kingdoms from the commonweal: no detachment of an individual. hence the catholic character which makes every leaf an exponent of the world. when we behold the landscape in a poetic spirit, we do not reckon individuals. nature knows neither palm nor oak, but only vegetable life, which sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe with a garland of 'grasses and vines. that no single end may be selected, and nature judged thereby, appears from this, that if man himself be considered as the end, and it be assumed that the final cause of the world is to make holy or wise or beautiful men, we see that it has not succeeded. read alternately in natural and in civil history, a treatise of astronomy, for example, with a volume of french memoires pour servir. when we have spent our wonder in computing this wasteful hospitality with which boon nature turns off new firmaments without end into her wide common, as fast as the madrepores make coral, — suns and planets hospitable to souls, — and then shorten the sight to look into this court of louis quatorze, and 13 194 the method of nature. see the game that is played there, — duke and marshal, abbe and madame, — a gambling table where each is laying traps for the other, where the end is ever by some lie or fetch to outwit your rival and ruin him with this solemn fop in wig and stars, — the king; one can hardly help asking if this planet is a fair specimen of the so generous astronomy, and if so, whether the experiment have not failed, and whether it be quite worth while to make more, and glut the innocent space with so poor an article. i think we feel not much otherwise if, instead of beholding foolish nations, we take the great and wise men, the eminent souls, and narrowly inspect their biography. none of them seen by himself—and his performance compared with his promise or idea, will justify the cost of that enormous apparatus of means by which this spotted and defective person was at last procured. to questions of this sort, nature replies, 'i grow.' all is nascent, infant. when we are dizzied with the arithmetic of the savant toiling to compute the length of her line, the return of her curve, we are steadied by the perception that a great deal is doing; that all seems just begun; remote aims are in active accomplishment. we can point nowhere to anything final; but tenthe method of nature. 195 dency appears on all hands: planet, system, constellation, total nature is growing like a field of maize in july; is becoming somewhat else; is in rapid metamorphosis. the embryo does not more strive to be man, than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars. why should not then these messieurs of versailles strut and plot for tabourets and ribbons, for a season, without prejudice to their faculty to run on better errands by and by? but nature seems further to reply, 'i have ventured so great a stake as my success, in no single creature. i have not yet arrived at any end. the gardener aims to produce a fine peach or pear, but my aim is the health of the whole tree, — root, stem, leaf, flower, and seed, — and by no means the pampering of a monstrous pericarp at the expense of all the other functions.' in short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us, is this, that it does not exist to any one or to any number of particular ends, but to numberless and endless benefit; that there is in it no private will, no rebel leaf or limb, but the whole is oppressed by one superincumbent tendency, obeys that redundancy or excess of life which in conscious beings we call ecstasy 196 the method of nature. with this conception of the genius or method of nature, let us go back to man. it is true, he pretends to give account of himself to himself, but, at last, what has he to recite but the fact that there is a life not to be described or known otherwise than by possession? what account can he give of his essence more than so it was to be? the royal reason, the grace of god seems the only description of our multiform but ever identical fact. there is virtue, there is genius, there is success, or there is not. there is the incoming or the receding of god: that is all we can affirm; and we can show neither how nor why. self-accusation, remorse, and the didactic morals of self-denial and strife with sin, is a view we are constrained by our constitution to take of the fact seen from the platform of action; but seen from the platform of intellection, there is nothing for us but praise and wonder. the termination of the world in a man, appears to be the last victory of intelligence. the universal does not attract us until housed in an individual. who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? the ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no character until seen with the shore or the ship. who would value any number of miles of atlantic brine bounded by lines the method of nature. 197 of latitude and longitude? confine it by granite rocks, let it wash a shore where wise men dwell, and it is filled with expression; and the point of greatest interest is where the land and water meet. so must we admire in man, the form of the formless, the concentration of the vast, the house of reason, the cave of memory. see the play of thoughts! what nimble gigantic creatures are these! what saurians, what palaiotheria shall be named with these agile movers? the great pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify the beautiful variety of things and the firmament, his coat of stars, — was but the representative of thee, o rich and various man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain, the geometry of the city of god; in thy heart, the bower of love and the realms of right and wrong. an individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. the history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. he too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order. each individual soul is such, in virtue of its being a power to translate the world into some particular language of 198 the method of nature. its own; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance, — why, then, into a trade, an art, a science, a mode of living, a conversation, a character, an influence. you admire pictures, but it is as impossible for you to paint a right picture, as for grass to bear apples. but when the genius comes, it makes fingers: it is pliancy, and the power of transferring the affair in the street into oils and colors. raphael must be born, and salvator must be born. there is no attractiveness like that of a new man. the sleepy nations are occupied with their political routine. england, france and america read parliamentary debates, which no high genius now enlivens; and nobody will read them who trusts his own eye: only they who are deceived by the popular repetition of distinguished names. but when napoleon unrolls his map, the eye is commanded by original power. when chatham leads the debate, men may well listen, because they must listen. a man, a personal ascendency is the only great phenomenon. when nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. follow the great man, and you shall see what the world has at heart in these ages. there is no omen like that. but what strikes us in the fine genius is that which belongs of right to every one. a the method of nature. 199 man should know himself for a necessary actor. a link was wanting between two craving parts of nature, and he was hurled into being as the bridge over that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two else unmarriageable facts. his two parents held each of one of the wants, and the union of foreign constitutions in him enables him to do gladly and gracefully what the assembled human race could not have sufficed to do. he knows his materials; he applies himself to his work; he cannot read, or think, or look, but he unites the hitherto separated strands into a perfect cord. the thoughts he delights to utter are the reason of his incarnation? is it for him to account himself cheap and superfluous, or to linger by the wayside for opportunities? did he not come into being because something must be done which he and no other is and does? if only he sees, the world will be visible enough. he need not study where to stand, nor to put things in favorable lights; in him is the light, from him all things are illuminated to their centre. what patron shall he ask for employment and reward? hereto was he born, to deliver the thought of his heart from the universe to the universe, to do an office which nature could not forego, nor he be discharged from rendering, and then immerge again into the 200 the method of natuhe. holy silence and eternity out of which as a man he arose. god is rich, and many more men than one he harbors in his bosom, biding their time and the needs and the beauty of all. is not this the theory of every man's genius or faculty? why then goest thou as some boswell or listening worshipper to this saint or to that? that is the only lese-majesty. here art thou with whom so long the universe travailed in labor; darest thou think meanly of thyself whom the stalwart fate brought forth to unite his ragged sides, to shoot the gulf, to reconcile the irreconcilable? whilst a necessity so great caused the man to exist, his health and erectness consist in the fidelity with which he transmits influences from the vast and universal to the point on which his genius can act. the ends are momentary: they are vents for the current of inward life which increases as it is spent. a man's wisdom is to know that all ends are momentary, that the best end must be superseded by a better. but there is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and rest in his acts: the tools runs away with the workman, the human with the divine. i conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, and. unable to turn his head and see the the method of nature. 201 speaker. in all the millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face. as children in their play run behind each other, and seize one by the ears and make him walk before them, so is the spirit our unseen pilot. that wellknown voice speaks in all languages, governs all men, and none ever caught a glimpse of its form. if the man will exactly obey it, it will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer separate it from himself in his thought, he shall seem to be it, he shall be it. if he listen with insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is taught him, the sound swells to a ravishing music, he is borne away as with a flood, he becomes careless of his food and of his house, he is the fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. but if his eye is set on the things to be done, and not on the truth that is still taught, and for the sake of which the things are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a humming in his ears. his health and greatness consist in his being the channel through which heaven flows to earth, in short, in the fulness in which an ecstatical state takes place in him. it is pitiful to be an artist, when, by forbearing to be artists, we might be vessels filled with the divine overflowings, enriched by the circulations of omniscience and omnipresence. are there not moments 202 the method of nature. in the history of heaven when the human race was not counted by individuals, but was only the influenced, was god in distribution, god rushing into multiform benefit? it is sublime to receive, sublime to love, but this lust of imparting as from us, this desire to be loved, the wish to be recognized as individuals, — is finite, comes of a lower strain. shall i say, then, that, as far as we can trace the natural history of the soul, its health consists in the fulness of its reception, — call it piety, call it veneration — in the fact, that enthusiasm is organized therein. what is best in any work of art, but that part which the work itself seems to require and do; that which the man cannot do again, that which flows from the hour and the occasion, like the eloquence of men in a tumultuous debate? it was always the theory of literature, that the word of a poet was authoritative and final. he was supposed to be the mouth of a divine wisdom. we rather envied his circumstance than his talent. we too could have gladly prophesied standing in that place. we so quote our scriptures; and the greeks so quoted homer, theognis, pindar, and the rest. if the theory has receded out of modern criticism, it is because we have not had poets. whenever they appear,, they will redeem their own credit. the method of nature. 203 this ecstatical state seems to direct a regard to the whole and not to the parts; to the cause and not to the ends; to the tendency, and not to the act. it respects genius and not talent; hope, and not possession: the anticipation of all things by the intellect, and not the history itself; art, and not works of art; poetry, and not experiment; virtue, and not duties. there is no office or function of man but is rightly discharged by this divine method, and nothing that is not noxious to him if detached from its universal relations. is it his work in the world to study nature, or the laws of the world? let him beware of proposing to himself any end. is it for use? nature is debased, as if one looking at the ocean can remember only the price of fish. or is it for pleasure? he is mocked: there is a certain infatuating air in woods and mountains which draws on the idler to want and misery. there is something social and* intrusive in the nature of all things; they seek to penetrate and overpower, each the nature of every other creature, and itself alone in all modes and throughout space and spirit to prevail and possess. every star in heaven is discontented and insatiable. gravitation and chemistry cannot content them. ever they woo and court the eye of every beholder. every man who comes 204 the method of nature. into the world they seek to fascinate and possess, to pass into his mind, for they desire to republish themselves in a more delicate world than that they occupy. it is not enough that they are jove, mars, orion, and the north star, in the gravitating firmament: they would have such poets as newton, herschel and laplace, that they may re-exist and re-appear in the finer world of rational souls, and fill that realm with their fame. so is it with all immaterial objects. these beautiful basilisks set their brute, glorious eyes on the eye of every child, and, if they can, cause their nature to pass through his wondering eyes into him, and so all things are mixed. therefore man must be on his guard against this cup of enchantments, and must look at nature with a supernatural eye. by piety alone, by conversing with the cause of nature, is he safe and commands it. and because all knowledge is assimilation to the object of knowledge, as the power or genius of nature is ecstatic, so must its science or the description of it be. the poet must be a rhapsodist: his inspiration a sort of bright casualty: his will in it only the surrender of will to the universal power, which will not be seen face to face, but must be received and sympathetically known. it is remarkable that we have out of the deeps of antiquity in the the method of nature. 205 oracles ascribed to the half fabulous zoroaster, a statement of this fact, which every lover and seeker of truth will recognize. "it is not proper," said zoroaster, "to understand the intelligible with vehemence, but if you incline your mind, you will apprehend it: not too earnestly, but bringing a pure and inquiring eye. you will not understand it as when understanding some particular thing, but with the flower of the mind. things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand sensual things, but only the light-armed arrive at the summit." and because ecstasy is the law and cause of nature, therefore you cannot interpret it in too high and deep a sense. nature represents the best meaning of the wisest man. does the sunset landscape seem to you the palace of friendship, — those purple skies and lovely waters the amphitheatre dressed and garnished only for the exchange of thought and love of the purest souls? it is that. all other meanings which base men have put on it are conjectural and false. you cannot bathe twice in the same river, said heraclitus; and i add, a man never sees the same object twice: with his own enlargement the object acquires new aspects. does not the same law hold for virtue? it is vitiated by too much will. he who aims at 206 the method of nature. progress, should aim at an infinite, not at a special benefit. the reforms whose fame now fills the land with temperance, anti-slavery, nonresistance, no government, equal labor, fair and generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end. to every reform, in proportion to its energy, early disgusts are incident, so that the disciple is surprised at the very hour of his first triumphs, with chagrins, and sickness, and a general distrust: so that he shuns his associates, hates the enterprise which lately seemed so fair, and meditates to cast himself into the arms of that society and manner of life which he had newly abandoned with so much pride and hope. is it that he attached the value of virtue to some particular practices, as, the denial of certain appetites in certain specified indulgences, and, afterward, found himself still as wicked and as far from happiness in that abstinence, as he had been in the abuse? but the soul can be appeased not by a deed but by a tendency. it is in a hope that she feels her wings. you shall love rectitude and not the disuse of money or the avoidance of trade: an unimpeded mind, and not a monkish diet; sympathy and usefulness, and not hoeing or coopering. tell me not how great your project is, the civil liberation of the world, its the method of nature. 207 conversion into a christian church, the establishment of public education, cleaner diet, a new division of labor and of land, laws of love for laws of property ; —i say to you plainly there is no end to which your practical faculty can aim, so sacred or so large, that, if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an offence to the nostril. the imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal. your end should be one inapprehensible to the senses: then will it be a god always approached, — never touched; always giving health. a man adorns himself with prayer and love, as an . aim adorns an action. what is strong but goodness, and what is energetic but the presence of a brave man? the doctrine in vegetable physiology of the presence, or the general influence of any substance over and above its chemical influence, as of an alkali or a living plant, is more predicable of man. you need not speak to me, i need not go where you are, that you should exert magnetism on me. be you only whole and sufficient, and i shall feel you in every part of my life and fortune, and i can as easily dodge the gravitation of the globe as escape your influence. but there are other examples of this total and supreme influence, besides nature and the con208 the method of nature. science. "from the poisonous tree, the world," say the brahmins, "two species of fruit are produced, sweet as the waters of life, love or the society of beautiful souls, and poetry, whose taste is like the immortal juice of vishnu." what is love, and why is it the chief good, but because it is an overpowering enthusiasm? never self-possessed or prudent, it is all abandonment. is it not a certain admirable wisdom, preferable to all other advantages, and whereof all others are only secondaries and indemnities, because this is that in which the individual is no longer his own foolish master, but inhales an odorous and celestial air, is wrapped round with awe of the object, blending for the time that object with the real and only good, and consults every omen in nature with tremulous interest when we speak truly, — is not he only unhappy who is not in love? his fancied freedom and self-rule — is it not so much death? he who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. therefore if the object be not itself a living and expanding soul, he presently exhausts it. but the love remains in his mind, and the wisdom it brought him; and it craves a new and higher object. and the reason the method of nature. 209 why all men honor love, is because it looks up and not down; aspires and not despairs. and what is genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? it looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst talent goes from without inward. talent finds its models, methods, and ends, in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience, and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to. all your learning of all literatures would never enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts or expressions, and yet each is natural and familiar as household words. here about us coils forever the ancient enigma, so old and so unutterable. behold! there is the sun, and the rain, and the rocks: the old sun, the old stones. how easy were it to describe all this fitly; yet no word can pass. nature is a mute, and man, her articulate speaking brother, lo! he also is a mute. yet when genius arrives, its speech is like a river; it has no straining to describe, more than there is straining in nature to exist. when 14 210 the method of nature. thought is best, there is most of it. genius sheds -wisdom like perfume, and advertises us that it flows out of a deeper source than the foregoing silence, that it knows so deeply and speaks so musically, because it is itself a mutation of the thing it describes. it is sun and moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy is thought and harmony in masses of matter. what is all history but the work of ideas, a record of the incomputable energy which his infinite aspirations infuse into man? has any thing grand and lasting been done? who did it? plainly not any man, but all men: it was the prevalence and inundation of an idea. what brought the pilgrims here? one man says, civil liberty; another, the desire of founding a church; and a third, discovers that the motive force was plantation and trade. but if the puritans could rise from the dust, they could not answer. it is to be seen in what they were, and not in what they designed; it was the growth and expansion of the human race, and resembled herein the sequent revolution, which was not begun in concord, or lexington, or virginia, but was the overflowing of the sense .of natural right in every clear and active spirit of the period. is a man boastful and knowing, and his own master?—we turn from him without hope: but let the method of natuee. 211 him be filled with awe and dread before the vast and the divine, which uses him glad to be used, and our eye is riveted to the chain of events. what a debt is ours to that old religion which, \-. in the childhood of most of us, still dwelt like a sabbath morning in the country of new england, teaching privation, self-denial and sorrow! a man was born not for prosperity, but to suffer for the benefit of others, like the noble rock-maple which all around our villages bleeds for the service of man. not praise, not men's acceptance of our doing, but the spirit's holy errand through us absorbed the thought. how dignified was this! how all that is called talents and success, in our noisy capitals, becomes buzz and din before this man-worthiness! how our friendships and the complaisances we use, shame us now! shall we not quit our companions, as if they were thieves and pot-companions, and betake ourselves to some desert cliff of mount katahdin, some unvisited recess in moosehead lake, to bewail our innocency and to recover it, and with it the power to communicate again with these sharers of a more sacred idea? and what is to replace for us the piety of that race? we cannot have theirs: it glides away from us day by day, but we also can bask in the great morning which rises forever out of 212 the method of nature. the eastern sea, and be ourselves the children of the light. i stand here to say, let us worship the mighty and transcendent soul. it is the office, i doubt not, of this age to annul that adulterous divorce which the superstition of many ages has effected between the intellect and holiness. the lovers of goodness have been one class, the students of wisdom another, as if either could exist in any purity without the other. truth is always holy, holiness always wise. i will that we keep terms with sin, and a sinful literature and society, no longer, but live a life of discovery and performance. accept the intellect, and it will accept us. be the lowly ministers of that pure omniscience, and deny it not before men. it will burn up all profane literature, all base current opinions, all the false powers of the world, as in a moment of time. i draw from nature the lesson of an intimate divinity. our health and reason as men needs our respect to this fact, against the heedlessness and against the contradiction of society. the sanity of man needs the poise of this immanent force. his nobility needs the assurance of this inexhaustible reserved power. how great soever have been its bounties, they are a drop to the sea whence they flow. if you say, 'the acceptance of the vision is also the act of god:' — i shall not seek the method of nature. 213 to penetrate the mystery, i admit the force of what you say. if you ask, 'how can any rules be given for the attainment of gifts so sublime?' i shall only remark that the solicitations of this spirit, as long as there is life, are never forborne. tenderly, tenderly, they woo and court us from every object in nature, from every fact in life, from every thought in the mind. the one condition coupled with the gift of truth is its use. that man shall be learned who reduceth .his learning to practice. emanuel swedenborg affirmed that it was opened to him, "that the spirits who knew truth in this life, but did it not, at death shall lose their knowledge." "if knowledge," said ali the caliph, "calleth unto practice, well; if not, it goeth away." the only way into nature is to enact our best insight. instantly we are higher poets, and can speak a deeper law. do what you know, and perception is converted into character, as islands and continents were built by invisible infusories, or, as these forest leaves absorb light, electricity, and volatile gases, and the gnarled oak to live a thousand years is the arrest and fixation of the most volatile and ethereal currents. the doctrine of this supreme presence is a cry of joy and exultation. who shall dare think he has come late into nature, or has missed anything excellent in the past, who 214 the method of nature. seeth the admirable stars of possibility, and the yet untouched continent of hope glittering with all its mountains in the vast west? i praise with wonder this great reality, which seems to drown all things in the deluge of its light. what man seeing this, can lose it from his thoughts, or entertain a meaner subject? the entrance of this into his mind seems to be the birth of man. we cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. i cannot tell if these wonderful qualities which house today in this mortal frame, shall ever re-assemble in equal activity in a similar frame, or whether they have before had a natural history like that of this body you see before you; but this one thing i know, that these qualities did not now begin to exist, cannot be sick with my sickness, nor buried in any grave; but that they circulate through the universe: before the world was, they were. nothing can bar them out, or shut them in, but they penetrate the ocean and land, space and time, form and essence, and hold the key to universal nature. i draw from this faith courage and hope. all things are known to the soul. it is not to be surprised by any communication. nothing can be greater than it. let those fear and those fawn who will. the soul is in her native realm, and it is wider than space, older the method of nature. 215 than time, wide as hope, rich as love. pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn: they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power. man the reformer. a lecture read before the mechanics' apprentices' library association, boston, january 25, 1841. man the reformer. mr. president, and gentlemen, i wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on the particular and general relations of man as a reformer. i shall assume that the aim of each young man in this association is the very highest that belongs to a rational mind. let it be granted, that our life, as we lead it, is common and mean; that some of those offices and functions for which we were mainly created are grown so rare in society, that the memory of them is only kept alive in old books and in dim traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and perfect men, we are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some sources of human instruction are almost unnamed and unknown among us; that the community in which we live will hardly bear to be told that every 220 man the reformer. man should be open to ecstasy or a divine illumination, and his daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world. grant all this, as we must, yet i suppose none of my auditors will deny that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in such disciplines and courses as will deserve that guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual nature. and further, i will not dissemble my hope, that each person whom i address has felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, notcontent to slip along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight road to everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him, to go in honor and with benefit. in the history of the world the doctrine of reform had never such scope as at the present hour. lutherans, hernhutters, jesuits, monks, quakers, knox, wesley, swedenborg, bentham, in their accusations of society, all respected something,—church or state, literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the man the reformer. 221 dinner table, coined money. but now all these and all things else hear the trumpet, and must rush to judgment,— christianity, the laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, or woman, but is threatened by the new spirit. what if some of the objections whereby our institutions are assailed are extreme and speculative, and the reformers tend to idealism; that only shows the extravagance of the abuses which have driven the mind into the opposite extreme. it is when your facts and persons grow unreal and fantastic by too much falsehood, that the scholar flies for refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to recruit and replenish nature from that source. let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists. it will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of a hundred cities, are built on other foundations. the demon of reform has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every city. the fact, that a new thought and hope have dawned in your breast, should apprize you that in the same hour a new light broke in upon a 222 man the reformer. thousand private hearts. that secret which you would fain keep, — as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one standing on the doorstep, to tell you the same. there is not the most bronzed and sharpened money-catcher, who does not, to your consternation, almost, quail and shake the moment he hears a question prompted by the new ideas. we thought he had some semblance of ground to stand upon, that such as he at least would die hard; but he trembles and flees. then the scholar says, 'cities and coaches shall never impose on me again; for, behold every solitary dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. that fancy i had, and hesitated to utter because you would laugh, — the broker, the attorney, the market-man are saying the same thing. had i waited a day longer to speak, i had been too late. behold, state street thinks, and wall street doubts, and begins to prophecy!' it cannot be wondered at, that this general inquest into abuses should arise in the bosom of society, when oneconsiders the practical impediments that stand in the way of virtuous young men. the young man, on entering life, finds the way to lucrative employments blocked with abuses. the ways of trade are grown selfish to the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the borders) of fraud. the employman the reformer. 223 ments of commerce are not intrinsically unfit for a man, or less genial to his faculties, but these are now in their general course so vitiated byderelictions and abuses at which all connive, that it requires more vigor and resources than can be expected of every young man, to right himself in them; he is lost in them; he cannot move hand or foot in them. has he genius and virtue? the less does he find them fit for him to grow in, and if he would thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood and youth as dreams; he must forget the prayers of his childhood; and must take on him the harness of routine and obsequiousness. if not so minded, nothing is left him but to begin the world anew, as he does who puts the spade into the ground for food. we are all implicated, of course, in this charge; it is only necessary to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities. how many articles of daily consumption are furnished us from the west indies; yet it is said, that, in the spanish islands, the venality of the officers of the government has passed into usage, and that no article passes into our ships which has not been 224 man the reformer. fraudulently cheapened. in the spanish islands, every agent or factor of the americans, unless he be a consul, has taken oath that he is a catholic, or has caused a priest to make that declaration for him. the abolitionist has shown us our dreadful debt to the southern negro. in the island of cuba, in addition to the ordinary abominatious of slavery, it appears, only men are bought for the plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of these miserable bachelors, to yield us sugar. i leave for those who have the knowledge the part of sifting the oaths of our customhouses; i will not inquire into the oppression of the sailors; i will not pry into the usages of ■ our retail trade. i content myself with the fact, that the general system of our trade, (apart from the blacker traits, which, i hope, are exceptions denounced and unshared by all reputable men,) is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature; is not measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage. it is not that which a man delights to unlock to a noble friend; which he meditates on with joy and self-approval in his hour of love and aspiration; but rather what he then puts out of man the reformer. 225 sight, only showing the brilliant result, and atoning for the manner of acquiring, by the manner of expending it. i do not charge the merchant or the manufacturer. the sins of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. one plucks, one distributes, one eats. every body partakes, every body confesses, — with cap and knee volunteers his confession, yet none feels himself accountable. he did not create the abuse; he cannot alter it. what is he? an obscure private person who must get his bread. that is the vice, — that no one feels himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction of man. it happens therefore that all such ingenuous souls as feel within themselves the irrepressible strivings of a noble aim, who by the law of their nature must act simply, find these ways of trade unfit for them, and they come forth from it. such cases are becoming more numerous every year. but by coming out of trade you have not cleared yourself. the trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. each has its own wrongs. each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, 15 226 man the reformer. an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity. nay, the evil custom reaches into the whole institution of property, until our laws which establish and protect it, seem not to be the issue of love and reason, but of selfishness. suppose a man is so unhappy as to be born a saint, with keen perceptions, but with the conscience and love of an angel, and he is to get his living in the world; he finds himself excluded from all lucrative works; he has no farm, and he cannot get one; for, to earn money enough to buy one, requires a sort of concentration toward money, which is the selling himself for a number of years, and to him the present hour is as sacred and inviolable as any future hour. of course, whilst another man has no land, my title to mine, your title to yours, is at once vitiated. inextricable seem to be the twinings and tendrils of this evil, and we all involve ourselves in it the deeper by forming connections, by wives and children, by benefits and debts. considerations of this kind have turned the attention of many philanthropic and intelligent persons to the claims of manual labor, as a part of the education of every young man. if the accumulated wealth of the past generations is man the reformer. 227 thus tainted, — no matter how much of it is offered to us, — we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves into primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world. but it is said, 'what! will you give up the immense advantages reaped from the division of labor, and set every man to make his own shoes, bureau, knife, wagon, sails, and needle? this would be to put men back into barbarism by their own act.' i see no instant prospect of a virtuous revolution; yet i confess, i should not be pained at a change which threatened a loss of some of the luxuries or conveniences of society, if it proceeded from a preference of the agricultural life out of the belief, that our primary duties as men could be better discharged in that calling. who could regret to see a high conscience and a purer taste exercising a sensible effect on young men in their choice of occupation, and thinning the ranks of competition in the labors of commerce, of law, and of state? it is easy to see that the inconvenience would last but a short time. this would be great action, which always opens the eyes of men. 228 man the reformer. when many persons shall have done this, when the majority shall admit the necessity of reform in all these institutions, their abuses will be redressed, and the way will be open again to the advantages which arise from the division of labor, and a man may select the fittest employment for his peculiar talent again, without compromise. but quite apart from the emphasis which the times give to the doctrine, that the manual labor of society ought to be shared among all the members, there are reasons proper to every individual, why he should not be deprived of it. the use of manual labor is one which never grows obsolete, and which is inapplicable to no person. a man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. we must'have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands. we must have an antagonism in the tough world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties, or they will not be born. manual labor is the study of the external world. the advantage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir. when i go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, i feel such an exhilaration and health, that i discover that i have been defrauding myself all this man the reformer. 229 time in letting others do for me what i should have done with my own hands. but not only health, but education is in the work. is it possible that i who get indefinite quantities of sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets, crockery ware, and letter paper, by simply signing my name once in three months to a cheque in favor of john smith and co. traders, get the fair share of exercise to my faculties by that act, which nature intended for me in making all these farfetched matters important to my comfort? it is smith himself, and his carriers, and dealers, and manufacturers, it is the sailor, the hidedrogher, the butcher, the negro, the hunter, and the planter, who have intercepted the sugar of the sugar, and the cotton of the cotton. they have got the education, i only the commodity. this were all very well if i were necessarily absent, being detained by work of my own, like theirs, work of the same faculties; then should i -be sure of my hands and feet, but now i feel some shame before my wood-chopper, my ploughman, and my cook, for they have some sort of selfsufficiency, they can contrive without my aid to bring the day and year round, but i depend on them, and have not earned by use a right to my arms and feet. consider further the difference between the 230 man the reformer. first and second owner of property. every species of property is preyed on by its own enemies, as iron by rust; timber by rot; cloth by moths; provisions by mould, putridity, or vermin; money by thieves; an orchard by insects; a planted field by weeds and the inroad of cattle; a stock of cattle by hunger; a road by rain and frost; a bridge by freshets. and whoever takes any of these things into his possession, takes the charge of defending them from this troop of enemies, or of keeping them in repair. a man who supplies his own want, who builds a raft or a boat to go a fishing, finds it easy to caulk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder. what he gets only as fast as he wants for his own ends, does not embarrass him, or take away his sleep with looking after. but when he comes to give all the goods he has year after year collected, in one estate to his son, house, orchard, ploughed land, cattle, bridges, hardware, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths, provisions, books, money, and cannot give him the skill and experience which made or collected these, and the method and place they have in his own life, the son finds his hands full, —not to use these things, — but to look after them and defend them from their natural enemies. to him they are not means, but masters. their enemies will not man the reformer. 231 remit; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun, freshet, fire, all seize their own, fill him with vexation, and he is converted from the owner into a watchman or a watch-dog to this magazine of old and new chattels. what a change! instead of the masterly good humor, and sense of power, and fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that supple body, and that mighty and prevailing heart, which the father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow and rain, water and land, beast and fish seemed all to know and to serve, we have now a puny, protected person, guarded by walls and curtains, stoves and down beds, coaches, and men-servants and women-servants from the earth and the sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, is made anxious by all that endangers those possessions, and is forced to spend so much time in guarding them, that he has quite lost sight of their original use, namely, to help him to his ends, — to the prosecution of his love; to the helping of his friend, to the worship of his god, to the enlargement of his knowledge, to the serving of his country, to the indulgence of his sentiment, and he is now what is called a rich man, — the menial and runner of his riches. 232 man the reformer. hence it happens that the whole interest of history lies in the fortunes of the poor. knowledge, virtue, power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world. every man ought to have this opportunity to conquer the world for himself. only such persons interest us, spartans, romans, saracens, english, americans, who have stood in the jaws of need, and have by their own wit and might extricated themselves, and made man victorious. i do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor, or insist that every man should be a farmer, any more than that every man should be a lexicographer. in general, one may say, that the husbandman's is the oldest, and most universal profession, and that where a man does not yet discover in himself any fitness for one work more than another, this may be preferred. but the doctrine of the farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations with the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties; and for this reason, that labor is god's education; that he only is a sincere learner, he only can become a master, who learns man the reformer. 233 the secrets of labor, and who by real cunning extorts from nature its sceptre. neither would i shut my ears to the plea of the learned professions, of the poet, the priest, the lawgiver, and men of study generally; namely, that in the experience of all men of that class, the amount of manual labor which is necessary to the maintenance of a family, indisposes and disqualifies for intellectual exertion. i know, it often, perhaps usually, happens, that where there is a fine organization apt for poetry and philosophy, that individual finds himself compelled to wait on his thoughts, to waste several days that he may enhance and glorify one; and is better taught by a moderate and dainty exercise, such as rambling in the fields, rowing, skating, hunting, than by the downright drudgery of the farmer and the smith. i would not quite forget the venerable counsel of the egyptian mysteries, which declared that "there were two pairs of eyes in man, and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath should be closed, when the pair that are above them perceive, and that when the pair above are closed, those which are beneath should be opened." yet i will suggest that no separation from labor can be without some loss of power and of truth to the seer himself; that, i doubt not, the 234 man the reformer. faults and vices of our literature and philosophy, their too great fineness, effeminacy, and melancholy, are attributable to the enervated and sickly habits of the literary class. better that the book should not be quite so good, and the bookmaker abler and better, and not himself often a ludicrous contrast to all that he has written. but granting that for ends so sacred and dear, some relaxation must be had, i think, that if a man find in himself any strong bias to poetry, to art, to the contemplative life,. drawing him to these things with a devotion incompatible with good husbandry, that man ought to reckon early with himself, and, respecting the compensations of the universe, ought to ransom himself from the duties of economy, by a certain rigor and privation in his habits. for privileges so rare and grand, let him not stint to pay a great tax. let him be a csenobite, a pauper, and if need be, celibate also. let him learn to eat his meals standing, and to relish the taste of fair water and black bread. he may leave to others the costly conveniences of housekeeping, and large hospitality, and the possession of works of art. let him feel that genius is a hospitality, and that he who can create works of art needs not collect them. he must live in a chamber, and man the reformer. 235 postpone his self-indulgence, forewarned and forearmed against that frequent misfortune of men of genius, — the taste for luxury. this is the tragedy of genius, — attempting to drive along the ecliptic with one horse of the heavens and one horse of the earth, there is only discord and ruin and downfall to chariot and charioteer. the duty that every man should assume his own vows, should call the institutions of society to account, and examine their fitness to him, gains in emphasis, if we look at our modes ofliving. is our housekeeping sacred and honorable? does it raise and inspire us, or does it cripple us instead? i ought to be armed by every part and function of my household, by all my social function, by my economy, by my feasting, by my voting, by my traffic. yet i am almost no party to any of these things. custom does it for me, gives me no power therefrom, and runs me in debt to boot. we spend our incomes for paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, i know not what, and not for the things of a man. our expense is almost all for conformity. it is for cake that we run in debt; 't is not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much. why needs any man be rich? why must he have horses, 236 man the reformer. fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? only for want of thought. give his mind a new image, and he flees into a solitary garden or garret to enjoy it, and is richer with that dream, than the fee of a county could make him. but we are first thoughtless, and then find that we are moneyless. we are first sensual, and then must be rich. we dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we buy ice-creams. he is accustomed to carpets, and we have not sufficient character to put floor-cloths out of his mind whilst he stays in the house, and so we pile the floor with carpets. let the house rather be a temple of the furies of lacedsemon, formidable and holy to all, which none but a spartan may enter or so much as behold. as soon as there is faith, as soon as there is society, comfits and cushions will be left to slaves. expense will be inventive and heroic. we shall eat hard and lie hard, we shall dwell like the ancient romans in narrow tenements, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, will be worthy for their proportion of the landscape in which we set them, for conversation, for art, for music, for worship, we shall be rich to great purposes; poor only for selfish ones. man the reformer. 237 now what help for these evils? how can the man who has learned but one art, procure all the conveniences of life honestly? shall we say all we think ? — perhaps with his own hands. suppose he collects or makes them ill; —yet he has learned their lesson. if he cannot do that.— then perhaps he can go without. immense wisdom and riches are in that. it is better to go without, than to have them at too great a cost. let us learn the meaning of economy. economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practised for freedom, or love, or devotion. much of the economy which we see in houses, is of a base origin, and is best kept out of sight. parched corn eaten to-day that i may have roast fowl to my dinner on sunday, is a baseness; but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that i may be free of all perturbations, that i may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and roadready for the lowest mission of knowledge or goodwill, is frugality for gods and heroes. can we not learn the lesson of self-help? society is full of infirm people, who incessantly summon others to serve them. they contrive everywhere to exhaust for their single comfort the entire means and appliances of that luxury 238 man the reformer. to which our invention has yet attained. sofas, ottomans, stoves, wine, game-fowl, spices, perfumes, rides, the theatre, entertainments,—all these they want, they need, and whatever can be suggested more than these, they crave also, as if it was the bread which should keep them from starving; and if they miss any one, they represent themselves as the most wronged and most wretched persons on earth. one must have been born and bred with them to know how to prepare a meal for their learned stomach. meantime, they never bestir themselves to serve another person; not they! they have a great deal more to do for themselves than they can possibly perform, nor do they once perceive the cruel joke of their lives, but the more odious they grow, the sharper is the tone of their complaining and craving. can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one's self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab? it is more elegant to answer one's own needs, than to be richly served; inelegant perhaps it may look to-day, and to a few, but it is an elegance forever and to all. i do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform. i do not wish to push my criticism on the state of things around me to that extravagant man the reformer. 239 mark, that shall compel me to suicide, or to an absolute isolation from the advantages of civil society. if we suddenly plant our foot, and say, — i will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food or fabric which i do not know to be innocent, or deal with any person whose whole manner of life is not clear and rational, we shall stand still. whose is so? not mine; not thine; not his; but i think we must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether we have earned our bread to-day by the hearty contribution of our energies to the common benefit? and we must not cease to tend to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one stone aright every day. but the idea which now begins to agitate society has a wider scope than our daily employments, our households, and the institutions of property. we are to revise the whole of our social structure, the state, the school, religion, marriage, trade, science, and explore their foundations in our own nature; we are to see that the world not only fitted the former men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of every usage which has not its roots in our own mind. what is a man born for but to be a reformer, a re-maker of what man has made; a renouncer oflies; a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great 240 man the reformer. nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a new life? let him renounce everything which is not true to him, and put all his practices back on their first thoughts, and do nothing for which he has not the whole world for his reason. if there are inconveniences, and what is called ruin in the way, because we have so enervated and maimed ourselves, yet it would be like dying of perfumes to sink in the effort to reattach the deeds of every day to the holy and mysterious recesses of life. the power, which is at once spring and regulator in all efforts of reform, is the conviction that there is an infinite worthiness in man which will appear at the call of worth, and that all particular reforms are the removing of some impediment. is it not the highest duty that man should be honored in us? i ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. i ought to make him feel that i can do without his riches, that i cannot be bought, —neither by comfort, neither by pride, — and though i be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me. and if, at the same time, a woman or a child discovers a sentiment man the reformer. 241 of piety, or a juster way of thinking than mine, i ought to confess it by my respect and obedience, though it go to alter my whole way of life. the americans have many virtues, but they have not faith and hope. i know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of. we use these words as if they were as obsolete as selah and amen. and yet they have the broadest meaning, and the most cogent application to boston in 1841. the americans have no faith. they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to a sentiment. they think you may talk the north wind down as easily as raise society; and no class more faithless than the scholars or intellectual men. now if i talk with a sincere wise man, and my friend, with a poet, with a conscientious youth who is still under the dominion of his own wild thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the team of society to drag with us all in the ruts of custom, i see at once how paltry is all this generation of unbelievers, and what a house of cards their institutions are, and i see what one brave man, what one great thought executed might effect. i see that the reason of the distrust of the practical man in all theory, is his inability to perceive the means whereby we work. look, he says, at the tools with which 16 242 man the reformer. this world of yours is to be built. as we cannot make a planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and forests, by means of the best carpenters' or engineers' tools, with chemist's laboratory and smith's forge to boot, — so neither can we ever construct that heavenly society you prate of, out of foolish, sick, selfish men and women, such as we know them to be. but the believer not only beholds his heaven to be possible, but already to begin to exist, —not by the men or materials the statesman uses, but by men transfigured and raised above themselves by the power of principles. to principles something else is possible that transcends all the power of expedients. every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm. the victories of the arabs after mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of rome, is an example. they did they knew not what. the naked derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of roman cavalry. the women fought like men, and conquered the roman men. they were miserably equipped, miserably fed. they were temperance troops. there was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. they man the reformer. 243 conquered asia, and africa, and spain, on barley. the caliph omar's walking stick struck more terror into those who saw it, than another man's sword. his diet was barley bread; his sauce was salt; and oftentimes by way of abstinence he ate his bread without salt. his drink was water. his palace was built of mud; and when he left medina to go to the conquest of jerusalem, he rode on a red camel, with a wooden platter hanging at his saddle, with a bottle of water and two sacks, one holding barley, and the other dried fruits. but there will dawn ere long on our politics, on our modes of living, a nobler morning than that arabian faith, in the sentiment of love. this is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea of nature. we must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible. our age and history, for these thousand years, has not been the history of kindness, but of selfishness. our distrust is very expensive. the money we spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. we make, by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him so. an acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout christendom for a season, would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our 244 man the reformer. service. see this wide society of laboring men and women. we allow ourselves to be served by them, we live apart from them, and meet them without a salute in the streets. we do not greet their talents, nor rejoice in their good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the assembly of the people vote for what is dear to them. thus we enact the part of the selfish noble and king from the foundation of the world. see, this tree always bears one fruit. in every household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by the malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of domestics. let any two matrons meet, and observe how soon their conversation turns on the troubles from their "help" as our phrase is. in every knot of laborers, the rich man does not feel himself among his friends,—and at the polls he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct opposition to him. we complain that the politics of masses of the people are controlled by designing men, and led in opposition to manifest justice and the common weal, and to their own interest. but the people do not wish to be represented or ruled by the ignorant and base. they only vote for these, because they were asked with the voice and semblance of kindness. they will not vote for them long. they inevitably prefer wit and probity. to use an man the reformer. 245 egyptian metaphor, it is not their will for any long time "to raise the nails of wild beasts, and to depress the heads of the sacred birds." let our affection flow out to our fellows; it would operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions. it is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the wind. the state must consider the poor man, and all voices must speak for him. every child that is born must have a just chance for his bread. let the amelioration in our laws of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. let us begin by habitual imparting. let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich. let me feel that i am to be a lover. i am to see to it that the world is the better for me, and to find my reward in the act. love would put a new face on this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies, and navies, and lines of defence, would be superseded by this unarmed child. love will creep where it cannot go, will accomplish that by imperceptible methods, — being its own lever, fulcrum, and power, — which force could never achieve. have you not seen in the woods, in a 246 man the reformer. late autumn morning, a poor fungus or mushroom, — a plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly, — by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head? it is the symbol of the power of kindness. the virtue of this principle in human society in application to great interests is obsolete and forgotten. once or twice in history it has been tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. this great, overgrown, dead christendom of ours still keeps alive at least the name of a lover of mankind. but one day all men will be lovers; and every calamity will be dissolved in the universal sunshine. will you suffer me to add one trait more to this portrait of man the reformer? the mediator between the spiritual and the actual world should have a great prospective prudence. an arabian poet describes his hero by saying, "sunshine was he in the winter day; and in the midsummer coolness and shade." he who would help himself and others, should not be a subject of irregular and interrupted impulses of virtue, but a continent, persisting, man the reformer. 247 immovable person, — such as we have seen a few scattered up and down in time for the blessing of the world; men who have in the gravity of their nature a quality which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which distributes the motion equably over all the wheels, and hinders it from falling unequally and suddenly in destructive shocks. it is better that joy should be spread over all the day in the form of strength, than that it should be concentrated into ecstasies, full of danger and followed by reactions. there is a sublime prudence, which is the very highest that we know of man, which, believing in a vast future, — sure of more to come than is yet seen, — postpones always the present hour to the whole life; postpones talent to genius, and special results to character. as the merchant gladly takes money from his income to add to his capital, so is the great man very willing to lose particular powers and talents, so that he gain in the elevation of his life. the opening of the spiritual senses disposes men ever to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, their best means and skill of procuring a present success, their power and their fame, — to cast all things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine communications. a purer fame, a greater power rewards the sacrifice. it is the conversion of ' 248 man the reformer. our harvest into seed. as the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds. lecture on the times. read at the masonic temple, boston, december 2, 1841. lecture on the times. the times, as we say— or the present aspects of our social state, the laws, divinity. natural science, agriculture, art, trade, letters, have their root in an invisible spiritual reality. to appear in these aspects, they must first exist, or have some necessary foundation. beside all the small re.asons_ we assign, there is a great reason for the existence of every extant_fact.; a reason which lies grand" and "immovable, often unsuspected behind it in silence. the timfis^are fhe masquerade of the eternities.; trivial to the dull, && i-h+xy tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the past leaves its history; the quarrry out of which the genius of to-day is building up the future. the times — the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, are to be studied as omens, as sacred leaves, whereon a weighty sense is inscribed, if we 252 lecture on the times. have the wit and the love to search it out. nature itself seems to propound to us this topic, and to invite us to explore the meaning of the conspicuous facts of the day. everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of the philosopher: and this for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people. here is very good matter to be handled, if we are skilful; an abundance of important practical questions which it behoves us to understand. let us examine the pretensions of the attacking and defending parties. here is this great fact of conservatism, entrenched in its immense redoubts, with himmaleh for its front, and atlas for its flank, and andes for its rear,-and the atlantic and pacific seas for its ditches and trenches, which has planted its crosses, and crescents, and stars and stripes, and various signs and badges of possession, over every rood of the planet, and says, 'i will hold fast; and to whom i will, will i give; and whom i will, will i exclude and starve:' so says conservatism; and all the children of men attack the colossus in their youth, and all, or all but a few, bow before it when they are old. a necessity not yet commanded, a negative imposed on the will of man by his condition, a deficiency in his force, is the lecture on the times. 253 foundation on which it. rests. let this side be fairly stated. meantime, on the other part, arises reform, and offers the sentiment of love as an overmatch to this material might. i wish to consider well this affirmative side, which has a loftier port and reason than heretofore, which encroaches on the other every day, puts it out of countenance, out of reason, and out of temper, and leaves it nothing but silence and possession. the fact of aristocracy, with its two weapons of wealth and manners, is as commanding a feature of the nineteenth century, and the american republic, as of old rome, or modern england. the reason and influence of wealth, the aspect, of philosophy and religion, and the tendencies which have acquired the name of transcendentalism in old and new england; the aspect of poetry, as the exponent and interpretation of these things; the fuller development and the freer play of character as a social and political agent; — these and other related topics will in turn come to be considered. but-the subject of the times is not an abstract question. we talk of the world, but we mean a few men and women. if you speak of the age, you mean your own platoon of people, as milton and dante painted in colossal their platoons, and called them heaven and hell. in 254 lecture on the times. our idea of progress, we. do not go out of this personal picture. we do not think the sky will be bluer, or honey sweeter, or our climate more temperate, but only that our relation to our fellows will be simpler and happier. what is the reason to be given for this extreme attraction which persons have for us, but that they are the age? they are the results of the past; they are the heralds of the future. they indicate, — these witty, suffering, blushing, intimidating figures of the only race in which there are individuals or changes, how far on the fate has gone, and what it drives at. as trees make scenery, and constitute the hospitality of the landscape, so persons are the world to persons. a cunning mystery by which the great desart of thoughts and of planets takes this engaging form, to bring, as it would seem, its meanings nearer to the mind. thoughts walk and speak, and look with eyes at me, and transport me into new and magnificent scenes. these are the pungent instructors who thrill the heart of each of us, and make all other teaching formal and cold. how i follow them with aching heart, with pining desire! i count myself nothing before them. i would die for them with joy. they can do what they will with me. how they lash us with those tongues! how they lecture on the times. 255 make the tears start, make us blush and turn pale, and lap us in elysium to soothing dreams, and castles in the air! by tones of triumph; of dear love; by threats; by pride that freezes; these have the skill to make the world look bleak and inhospitable, or seem the nest of tenderness and joy. i do not wonder at the miracles which poetry attributes to the music of orpheus, when i remember what i have experienced from the varied notes of the human voice. they are an incalculable energy which countervails all other forces in nature, because they are the channel of supernatural powers. there is no interest or institution so poor and withered, but if a new strong man could be born into it, he would immediately redeem and replace it. a personal ascendency, — that is the only fact much worth considering. i remember, some years ago, somebody shocked a circle of friends of order here in boston, who supposed that our people were identified with their religious denominations, by declaring that an eloquent man, — let him be of what sect soever, — would be ordained at once in one of our metropolitan churches. to be sure he would; and not only in ours, but in any church, mosque, or temple, on the planet; but he must be eloquent, able to supplant our method and classification, by the 256 lecture on the times. superior beauty of his own. every fact we have was brought here by some person; and there is none that will not change and pass away before a person, whose nature is broader than the person which the fact in question represents. and so i find the age walking about in happy and hopeful natures, in strong eyes, and pleasant thoughts, and think i read it nearer and truer so, than in the statute-book, or in the investments of capital, which rather celebrate with mournful music the obsequies of the last age. in the brain of a fanatic; in the wild hope of a mountain boy, called by city boys very ignorant, because they do not know what his hope has certainly apprised him shall be; in the love-glance of a girl; in the hair-splitting conscientiousness of some eccentric person, who has found some new scruple to embarrass himself and his neighbors withal; is to be found that which shall constitute the times to come, more than in the now organized and accredited oracles. for, whatever is affirmative and now advancing, contains it. i think that only is real, which men love and rejoice in; not what they tolerate, but what they choose; what they embrace and avow, and not the things which chill, benumb, and terrify them. and so why not chaw for these times a portrait lectuke on the times. 257 gallery? let us paint the painters. whilst the daguerreotypist, with camera-obscura and silver plate, begins now to traverse the land, let us set up our camera also, and let the sun paint the people. let us paint the agitator, and the man of the old school, and the member of congress, and the college-professor, the formidable editor, the priest, and reformer, the contemplative girl, and the fair aspirant for fashion and opportunilies, the woman of the world who has tried and knows ;—let us examine how well she knows. could we indicate the indicators, indicate those who most accurately represent every good and evil tendency of the general mind, in the just order which they take on this canvass of time; so that all witnesses should recognise a spiritual law, as each well known form flitted for a moment across the wall, we should have a series of sketches which would report to the next ages the color and quality of ours. certainly, i think, if this were done, there would be much to admire as well as to condemn; souls of as lofty a port, as any in greek or roman fame, might appear; men of great heart, of strong hand, and of persuasive speech; subtle thinkers, and men of wide sympathy, and an apprehension which looks over all history, and everywhere recognises its own. to be sure, 17 258 lecture on the times. there will be fragments and hints of men, more than enough: bloated promises, which end in nothing or little. and then truly great men, but with some defect in their composition, which neutralizes their whole force. here is a damascus blade, such as you may search through nature in vain to parallel, laid up on the shelf in some village to rust and ruin. and how many seem not quite available for that idea which they represent! now and then comes a bolder spirit, i should rather say, a more surrendered soul, more informed and led by god, which is much in advance of the rest, quite beyond their sympathy, but predicts what shall soon be the general fulness; as when we stand by the seashore, whilst the tide is coming in, a wave comes up the beach far higher than any foregoing one, and recedes; and for a long while none comes up to that mark; but after some time the whole sea is there and beyond it. but we are not permitted to stand as spectators of the pageant which the times exhibit: we are parties also, and have a responsibility which is not to be declined. a little while this interval of wonder and comparison is permitted us, but to the end that we shall play a manly part. as the solar system moves forward in the heavens, certain stars open before us, and certain stars lecture on the times. 259 close up behind us; so is man's life. the reputations that were great and inaccessible change and tarnish. how great were once lord bacon's dimensions! he is now reduced almost to the middle height; and many another star has turned out to be a planet or an asteroid: only a few are the fixed stars which have no parallax, or none for us. the change and decline of old reputations are the gracious marks of our own growth. slowly, like light of morning, it steals on us, the new fact, that we, who were pupils or aspirants, are now society: do compose a portion of that head and heart we are wont to think worthy of all reverence and heed. we are the representatives of religion and intellect, and stand in the light of ideas, whose rays stream through us to those younger and more in the dark. what further relations we sustain, what new lodges we are entering, is now unknown. to-day is a king in disguise. to-day always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an uniform experience, that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank to-days. let us not be so deceived. let us unmask the king as he passes. let us not inhabit times of wonderful and various promise without divining their tendency. let us not see the foundations of nations, and of a new and 260 lecture on the times. better order of things laid, with roving eyes, and an attention preoccupied with trifles. the two omnipresent parties of history, the party of the past and the party of the future, divide society to-day as of old. here is the innumerable multitude of those who accept the state and the church from the last generation, and stand on no argument but possession. they have reason also, and, as i think, better reason than is commonly stated. no burke, no metternich has yet done full justice to the side of conservatism. but this class, however large, relying not on the intellect but on instinct, blends itself with the brute forces of nature, is respectable only as nature is, but the individuals have no attraction for us. it is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students. the actors constitute that great army of martyrs who, at least in america, by their conscience and philanthropy, occupy the ground which calvinism occupied in the last age, and compose the visible church of the existing generation. the present age will be marked by its harvest o lecture on the times. 263 effort to raise the life of man by putting it in harmony with his idea of the beautiful and the just. the history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. we suspect they are unworthy. we arraign our daily employments. they appear to us unfit, unworthy of the faculties we spend on them. in conversation with a wise man, we find ourselves apologizing for our employments; we speak of them with shame. nature, literature, science, childhood, appear to us beautiful; but hot our own daily work, not the ripe fruit and considered labors of man. this beauty which the fancy finds in everything else, certainly accuses that manner of life we lead. why should it be hateful? why should it contrast thus with all natural beauty? why should it not be poetic, and invite and raise us? is there a necessity that the works of man should be sordid? perhaps not. — out of this fair idea in the mind springs the effort at the perfect. it is the interior testimony to a fairer possibility of life and manners, which agitates society every day with the offer of some new amendment. if we would make more strict inquiry concerning its origin, we find ourselves rapidly approaching the inner boun262 lecture on the times. the casuistry and conscience of the time. antimasonry had a deep right and wrong, which gradually emerged to sight out of the turbid controversy. the political questions touching the banks; the tariff; the limits of the executive power; the right of the constituent to instruct the representative; the treatment of the indians; the boundary wars; the congress of nations; are all pregnant with ethical conclusions; and it is well if government and our social order can extricate themselves from these alembics, and find themselves still government and social order. the student of history will hereafter compute the singular value of our endless discussion of questions, to the mind of the period. whilst each of these aspirations and attempts of the people for the better is magnified by the natural exaggeration of its advocates, until it excludes the others from sight, and repels discreet persons by the unfairness of the plea, the movements are in reality all parts of one movement. there is a perfect chain, — see it, or see it not, — of reforms emerging from the surrounding darkness, each cherishing some part of the general idea, and all must be seen, in order to do justice to any one. seen in this their natural connection, they are sublime. the conscience of the age demonstrates itself in this lecture on the times. 263 effort to raise the life of man by putting it in harmony with his idea of the beautiful and the just. the history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. we suspect they are unworthy. we arraign our daily employments. they appear to us unfit, unworthy of the faculties we spend on them. in conversation with a wise man, we find ourselves apologizing for our employments; we speak of them with shame. nature, literature, science, childhood, appear to us beautiful; but not our own daily work, not the ripe fruit and considered labors of man. this beauty which the fancy finds in everything else, certainly accuses that manner of life we lead. why should it be hateful? why should it contrast thus with all natural beauty? why should it not be poetic, and invite and raise us? is there a necessity that the works of man should be sordid? perhaps not. — out of this fair idea in the mind springs the effort at the perfect. it is the interior testimony to a fairer possibility of life and manners, which agitates society every day with the offer of some new amendment. if we would make more strict inquiry concerning its origin, we find ourselves rapidly approaching the inner boun264 lecture on the times. daries of thought, that term where speech becomes silence, and science conscience. for the origin of all reform is in that mysterious fountain of the moral sentiment in man, which, amidst the natural, ever contains the supernatural for men. that is new and creative. that is alive. that alone can make a man other than he is. here or nowhere resides unbounded energy, unbounded power. the new voices in the wilderness crying "repent," have revived a hope, which had well nigh perished out of the world, that the thoughts of the mind may yet, in some distant age, in some happy hour, be executed by the hands. that is the hope, of which all other hopes are parts. for some ages, these ideas have been consigned to the poet and musical composer, to the prayers and the sermons of churches; but the thought, that they can ever have any footing in real life, seems long since to have been exploded by all judicious persons. milton, in his best tract, describes a relation between religion and the daily occupations, which is true until this time. "a wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock lecture on the times. 265 going upon that trade. what should he do? fain he would have the name to be religious; fain he would bear up with his neighbors in that. what does he, therefore, but resolve to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some divine of note and estimation that must be. to him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his custody; and indeed makes the very person of that man his religion; esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. so that a man may say, his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual moveable, and goes and comes near him, according as that good man frequents the house. he entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well spiced beverage, and better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between bethany and jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion." 266 lecture on the times. this picture would serve for our times. religion was not invited to eat or drink or sleep with us, or to make or divide an estate, but was a holiday guest. such omissions judge the church; as the compromise made with the slaveholder, not much noticed at first, every day appears more flagrant mischief to the american constitution. but now the purists are looking into all these matters. the more intelligent are growing uneasy on the subject of marriage. they wish to see the character represented also in that covenant. there shall be nothing brutal in it, but it shall honor the man and the woman, as much as the most diffusive and universal action. grimly the same spirit looks into the law of property, and accuses men of driving a trade in the great boundless providence which had given the air, the water, and the land to men, to use and not to fence in and monopolize. it casts its eye on trade, and day labor, and so it goes up and down, paving the earth with eyes, destroying privacy, and making thoroughlights. is all this for nothing? do you suppose that the reforms, which are preparing, will be as superficial as those we know? by the books it reads and translates, judge what books it will presently print. a great deal of the profoundest thinking of antiquity, which lecture on the times. 267 had become as good as obsolete for us, is now re-appearing in extracts and allusions, and in twenty years will get all printed anew. see how daring is the reading, the speculation, the experimenting of the time. if now some genius shall arise who could unite these scattered rays! and always such a genius does embody the ideas of each time. here is great variety and richness of mysticism, each part of which now only disgusts, whilst it forms the sole thought of some poor perfectionist or "comer out," yet, when it shall be taken up as the garniture of some profound and all-reconciling thinker, will appear the rich and appropriate decoration of his robes. these reforms are our contemporaries; they are ourselves; our own light, and sight, and conscience; they only name the relation which subsists between us and the vicious institutions which they go to rectify. they are the simplest statements of man in these matters; the plain right and wrong. i cannot choose but allow and honor them. the impulse is good, and the theory; the practice is less beautiful. the reformers affirm the inward life, but they do not trust it, but use outward and vulgar means. they do not rely on precisely that strength which wins me to their cause; not on love, not on a principle, but on men, on multitudes, on 268 lecture on the times. circumstances, on money, on party; that is, on fear, on wrath, and pride. the love which lifted men to the sight of these better ends, was the true and best distinction of this time, the. disposition to trust a principle more than a material force. i think that the soul of reform; the conviction, that not sensualism, not slavery, not war, not imprisonment, not even government, are needed, — but in lieu of them all, reliance on •he sentiment of man, which will work best the more it is trusted; not reliance on numbers, but, contrariwise, distrust of numbers, and the feeling that then are we strongest, when most private and alone. the young men, who have been vexing society for these last years with regenerative methods, seem to have made this mistake; they all exaggerated some special means, and all failed to see that the reform of reforms must be accomplished without means. the reforms have their high origin in an ideal justice, but they do not retain the purity of an idea. they are quickly organized in some low, inadequate form, and present no more poetic image to the mind, than the evil tradition which they reprobated. they mix the fire of the moral sentiment with personal and party heats, with measureless exaggerations, and the blindness that prefers some darling measure to lecture on the times. 269 justice and truth. those, who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefits of mankind, are narrow, self-pleasing, conceited men, and affect us as the insane do. they bite us, and we run mad also. i think the work of the reformer as innocent as other work that is done around him; but when i have seen it near, i do not like it better. it is done in the same way, it is done profanely, not piously; by management, by tactics, and clamor. it is a buzz in the ear. i cannot feel any pleasure in sacrifices which display to me such partiality of character. we do not want actions, but men; not a chemical drop of water, but rain; the spirit that sheds -and showers actions, countless, endless actions. you have on some occasion played a bold part. you have set your heart and face against society, when you thought it wrong, and returned it frown for frown. excellent: now can you afford to forget it, reckoning all your action no more than the passing of your hand through the air, or a little breath of your mouth? the world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea. to the youth diffident of his ability, and full of compunction at his unprofitable existence, the temptation is always great to lend himself to public movements, and as one of a 270 lecture ox the times. party accomplish what he cannot hope to effect alone. but he must resist the degradation of a man to a measure. i must act with truth, though i should never come to act, as you call it, with effect. i must consent to inaction. a patience which is grand; a brave and cold neglect of the offices which prudence exacts, so it be done in a deep, upper piety; a consent to solitude and inaction, which proceeds out of an unwillingness to violate character, is the century which makes the gem. whilst therefore i desire to express the respect and joy i feel before this sublime connection of reforms, now in their infancy around us, i urge the more earnestly the paramount duties of self-reliance: i cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. all men, all things, the state, the church, yea the friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal beside the sanctuary of the heart. with so much awe, with so much fear, let it be respected. the great majority of men, unable to judge of any principle until its light falls on a fact, are not aware of the evil that is around them, until they see it in some gross form, as in a class of intemperate men, or slaveholders, or soldiers, or fraudulent persons. then they are greatly lecture on the times. 271 moved; and magnifying the importance of that wrong, they fancy that if that abuse were redressed, all would go well, and they fill the land with clamor to correct it. hence the missionary and other religious efforts. if every island and every house had a bible, if every child was brought into the sunday school, would the wounds of the world heal, and man be upright? but the man of ideas, accounting the circumstance nothing, judges of the commonwealth from the state of his own mind. 'if,' he says, 'i am selfish, then is there slavery, or the effort to establish it, wherever i go. but if i am just, then is there no slavery, let the laws say what they will. for if i treat all men as gods, how to me can there be such a thing as a slave?' but how frivolous is your war against circumstances. this denouncing philanthropist is himself a slaveholder in every word and look. does he free me? does he cheer me? he is the state of georgia, or alabama, with their sanguinary slave-laws walking here on our northeastern shores. we are all thankful he has no more political power, as we are fond of liberty ourselves. i am afraid our virtue is a little geographical. i am not mortified by our vice; that is obduracy; it colors and palters, it curses and 272 lecture on the times. swears, and i can see to the end of it; but, i own, our virtue makes me ashamed; so sour and narrow, so thin and blind, virtue so vice-like. then again, how trivial seem the contests of the abolitionist, whilst he aims merely at the circumstance of the slave. give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is no slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. he is the master. the exaggeration, which our young people make of his wrongs, characterizes themselves. what are no trifles to them, they naturally think are no trifles to pompey. we say, then, that the reforming movement is sacred in its origin; in its management and details timid and profane. these benefactors hope to raise man by improving his circumstances: by combination of that which is dead, they hope to make something alive. in vain. by new infusions alone of the spirit by which he is made and directed, can he be re-made and reinforced. the sad pestalozzi, who shared with all ardent spirits the hope of europe on the outbreak of the french revolution, after witnessing its sequel, recorded his conviction, that " the amelioration of outward circumstances lecture on the times. 273 will be the effect, but can never be the means of mental and moral improvement." quitting now the class of actors, let us turn to see how it stands with the other class of which we spoke, namely, the students. a new disease has fallen on the life of man. every age, like every human body, has its own distemper. other times have had war, or famine, or a barbarism domestic or bordering, as their antagonism. our forefathers walked in the world and went to their graves, tormented with the fear of sin, and the terror of the day of judgment. these terrors have lost their force, and our torment is unbelief, the uncertainty as to what we ought to do; the distrust of the value of what we do, and the distrust that the necessity (which we all at last believe in) is fair and beneficent. our religion assumes the negative form of rejection. out of love of the true, we repudiate the false: and the religion is an abolishing criticism. a great perplexity hangs like a cloud on the brow of all cultivated persons, a certain imbecility in the best spirits, which distinguishes the period. we do not find the same trait in the arabian, in the hebrew, in greek, roman, norman, english periods; no, but in other men a natural firmness. the men did not see beyond the need of 18 274 lecture on the times. the hour. they planted their foot strong, and doubted nothing. we mistrust every step we take. we find it the worst thing about time, that we know not what to do with it. we are so sharp-sighted that we can neither work nor think, neither read plato nor not read him. then there is what is called a too intellectual tendency. can there be too much intellect? we have never met with any such excess. but the criticism, which is levelled at the laws and manners, ends in thought, without causing a new method of life. the genius of the day does not incline to a deed, but to a beholding. it is not that men do not wish to act; they pine to be employed, but are paralyzed by the uncertainty what they should do. the inadequacy of the work to the faculties, is the painful perception which keeps them still. this happens to the best. then, talents bring their usual temptations, and the current literature and poetry with perverse ingenuity draw us away from life to solitude and meditation. this could well be borne, if it were great and involuntary; if the men were ravished by their thought, and hurried into ascetic extravagances. society could then manage to release their shoulder from its wheel, and grant them for a time this privilege of sabbath. but they are not so. thinklecture on the times. 275 ing, which was a rage, is become an art. the thinker gives me results, and never invites me to be present with him at his invocation of truth, and to enjoy with him its proceeding into his mind. so little action amidst such audacious and yet sincere profession, that we begin to doubt if that great revolution in the art of war, which has made it a game of posts instead of a game of battles, has not operated on reform; whether this be not also a war of posts, a paper blockade, in which each party is to display the utmost resources of his spirit and belief, and no conflict occur; but the world shall take that course which the demonstration of the truth shall indicate. but we must pay for being too intellectual, as they call it. people are not as light-hearted for it. i think men never loved life less. i question if care and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the faces of any population. this ennui, for which we saxons had no name, this word of france has got a terrific significance. it shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light. old age begins in the nursery, and before the young american is put into jacket and trowsers, he says, 'i want something which i never saw before ;' and 'i wish i was not i.' i have 276 lecture on the times. seen the same gloom on the brow even of those adventurers from the intellectual class, who had dived deepest and with most success into active life. i have seen the authentic sign of anxiety and perplexity on the greatest forehead of the state. the canker worms have crawled to the topmost bough of the wild elm, and swing down from that. is there less oxygen in the atmosphere? what has checked in this age the animal spirits which gave to our forefathers their bounding pulse? but have a little patience with this melancholy humor. their unbelief arises out of a greater belief; their inaction out of a scorn of inadequate action. by the side of these men, the hot agitators have a certain cheap and ridiculous air; they even look smaller than the others. of the two, i own, i like the speculators best. they have some piety which looks with faith to a fair future, unprofaned by rash and unequal attempts to realize it. and truly we shall find much to console us, when we consider the cause of their uneasiness. it is the love of greatness, it is the need of harmony, the contrast of the dwarfish actual with the exorbitant idea. no man can compare the ideas and aspirations of the innovators of the present day, with those of former periods, without feeling lecture on the times. 277 how great and high this criticism is. the revolutions that impend over society are not now from ambition and rapacity, from impatience of one or another form of government, but from new modes of thinking, which shall recompose society after a new order, which shall animate labor by love and science, which shall destroy the value of many kinds of property, and replace all property within the dominion of reason and equity. there was never so great a thought laboring in the breasts of men, as now. it almost seems as if what was aforetime spoken fabulously and hieroglyphically, was now spoken plainly, the doctrine, namely, of the indwelling of the creator in man. the spiritualist wishes this only, that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual, that is, anything positive, dogmatic, or personal. the excellence of this class consists in this, that they have believed; that, affirming the need of new and higher modes of living and action, they have abstained from the recommendation of low methods. their fault is that they have stopped at the intellectual perception; that their will is not yet inspired from the fountain of love. but whose fault is this? and what a fault, 278 lecture on the times. > n and to what inquiry does it lead! we have come to that which is the spring of all power, of beauty and virtue, of art and poetry : and who shall tell us according to what law its inspirations and its informations are given or withholden? i do not wish to be guilty of the narrowness and pedantry of inferring the tendency and genius of the age from a few and insufficient facts or persons. every age has a thousand sides and signs and tendencies; and it is only when surveyed from inferior points of view, that great varieties of character appear. our time too is full of activity and performance. is there not something comprehensive in the grasp of a society which to great mechanical invention, and the best institutions of property, adds the most daring theories; which explores the subtlest and most universal problems? at the manifest risk of repeating what every other age has thought of itself, we might say, we think the genius of this age more philosophical than any other has been, righter in its aims, truer, with less fear, less fable, less mixture of any sort. but turn it how we will, as we ponder this meaning of the times, every new thought drives us to the deep fact, that the time is the child of the eternity. the main interest which any lecture on the times. 279 aspects of the times can have for us, is the great spirit which gazes through them, the light which they can shed on the wonderful questions, what we are? and whither we tend? we do not wish to be deceived. here we drift, like white sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the wave, now darkling in the trough of the sea; — but from what port did we sail? who knows? or to what port are we bound? who knows? there is no one to tell us but such poor weathertossed mariners as ourselves, whom we speak as we pass, or who have hoisted some signal, or floated to us some letter in a bottle from far. but what know they more than we? they also found themselves on this wondrous sea. no; from the older sailors, nothing. over all their speaking-trumpets, the gray sea and the loud winds answer, not in us; not in time. where then but in ourselves, where but in that thought through which we communicate with absolute nature, and are made aware that, whilst we shed the dust of which we are built, grain by grain, till it is all gone, the law which clothes us with humanity remains new? where, but in the intuitions which are vouchsafed us from within, shall we learn the truth? faithless, faithless, we fancy that with the dust we depart and are not; and do not know that the law and 280 lecture on the times. the perception of the law are at last one; that only as much as the law enters us, becomes us, we are living men, — immortal with the immortality of this law. underneath all these appearances, lies that which is, that which lives, that which causes. this ever renewing generation of appearances rests on a reality, and a reality that is alive. to a true scholar the attraction of the aspects of nature, the departments of life, and the passages of his experience, is simply the information they yield him of this supreme nature which lurks within all. that reality, that causing force is moral. the moral sentiment is but its other name. it makes by its presence or absence right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, genius or depravation. as the granite comes to the surface, and towers into the highest mountains, and, if we dig down, we find it below the superficial strata, so in all the details of our domestic or civil life, is hidden the elemental reality, which ever and anon comes to the surface, and forms the grand men, who are the leaders and examples, rather than the companions of the race. the granite is curiously concealed under a thousand formations and surfaces, under fertile soils, and grasses, and flowers, under well-manured, arable fields, and large towns and cities, but it lecture on the times. 281 makes the foundation of these, and is always indicating its presence by slight but sure signs. so is it with the life of our life; so close does that also hide. i read it in glad and in weeping eyes: i read it in the pride and in the humility of people: it is recognized in every bargain and in every complaisance, in every criticism, and in all praise: it is voted for at elections; it wins the cause with juries; it rides the stormy eloquence of the senate, sole victor; histories are written of it, holidays decreed to it; statues, tombs, churches, built to its honor; yet men seem to fear and to shun it, when it comes barely to view in our immediate neighborhood. for that reality let us stand: that let us serve, and for that speak. only as far as that shines through them, are these times or any times worth consideration. i wish to speak of the politics, education, business, and religion around us, without ceremony or false deference. you will absolve me from the charge of flippancy, or malignity, or the desire to say smart things at the expense of whomsoever, when you see that reality is all we prize, and that we are bound on our entrance into nature to speak for that. let it not be recorded in our own memories, that in this moment of the eternity, when we who were named by our names, flitted across the 282 lectuee os the times. ^ light, we were afraid of any fact, or disgraced the fair day by a pusillanimous preference of our bread to our freedom. what is the scholar, what is the man for, but for hospitality to every new thought of his time? have you leisure, power, property, friends? you shall be the asylum and patron of every new thought, every unproven opinion, every untried project, which proceeds out of good will and honest seeking. all the newspapers, all the tongues of to-day will of course at first defame what is noble; but you who hold not of to-day, not of the times, but of the everlasting, are to stand for it: and the highest compliment man ever receives from heaven, is the sending to him its disguised and discredited angels. s i the conservative. a lecture delivered at the masonic temple, boston, december 9, 1841. the conservative. the two parties which divide the state, the party of conservatism and that of innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. this quarrel is the subject of civil history. the conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world. the battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times. the war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour. on rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities. /■"" 286 the conservative. such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. it is the opposition of past and future, of memory and hope, of the understanding and the reason. it is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature. there is a fragment of old fable which seems somehow to have been dropped from the current mythologies, which may deserve attention, as it appears to relate to this subject. saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none but the great uranus or heaven beholding him, and he created an oyster. then he would act again, but he made nothing more, but went on creating the race of oysters. then uranus cried, 'a new work, o saturn! the old is not good again.' saturn replied. 'i fear. there is* not only the alternative of making and not making, but also of unmaking. seest thou the great sea. how it ebbs and flows? so is it with me; my power ebbs; and if i put forth my hands, i shall not do, but undo. therefore i do what i have done; i hold what i have got; and so i resist night and chaos.' , 'o saturn,' replied uranus, 'thou canst not hold thine own, but by making more. thy the conservative. 287 oysters are barnacles and cockles, and with the next flowing of the tide, they will be pebbles and sea-foam.' 'i see,' rejoins saturn, 'thou art in league with night, thou art become an evil eye; thou spakest from love; now thy words smite me with hatred. i appeal to fate, must there not be rest?' — 'i appeal to fate also,' said uranus, 'must there not be motion ?' — but saturn was silent, and went on making oysters for a thousand years. after that, the word of uranus came into his mind like a ray of the sun, and he made jupiter; and then he feared again; and nature froze, the things that were made went backward, and, to save the world, jupiter slew his father saturn. this may stand for the earliest account of a conversation on politics between a conservative and a radical, which has come down to us. it is ever thus. it is the counteraction of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces. innovation is the salient energy; conservatism the pause on the last movement. 'that which is was made by god,' saith conservatism. 'he is leaving that, he is entering this other ;' rejoins innovation. there is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain 288 the conservative. superiority in its fact. it affirms because it holds. its ringers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes to see a better fact. the castle, which conservatism is set to defend, is the actual state of things, good and bad. the project of innovation is the best possible state of things. of course, conservatism always has the worst of the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to change would be to deteriorate; it must saddle itself with the mountainous load of the violence and vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet; whilst innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success. conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude ; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonnair and social; reform is individual and imperious. we are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. conservatism is more candid to behold the conservative. 289 another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. it makes a great difference to your figure and to your thought, whether your foot is advancing or receding, conservatism never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that, it is not establishment, but reform. conservatism tends to universal seeming and treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that men's temper governs them; that for me, it avails not to trust in principles; they will fail me; i must bend a little; it distrusts nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application,— law for all that does not include any one. reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. and so whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a good half, but an impossible whole. each exposes the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both must combine. na19 290 the conservative. ture does not give the crown of its approbation, namely, beauty, to any action or emblem or actor, but to one which combines both these elements; not to the rock which resists the waves from age to age, nor to the wave which lashes incessantly the rock, but the superior beauty is with the oak which stands with its hundred arms against the storms of a century, and grows every year like a sapling; or the river which ever flowing, yet is found in the same bed from age to age; or, greatest of all, the man who has subsisted for years amid the changes of nature, yet has distanced himself, so that when you remember what he was, and see what he is, you say, what strides! what a disparity is here! throughout nature the past combines in every creature with the present. each of the convolutions of the sea-shell, each node and spine marks one year of the fish's life, what was the mouth of the shell for one season, with the addition of new matter by the growth of the animal, becoming an ornamental node. the leaves and a shell of soft wood are all that the vegetation of this summer has made, but the solid columnar stem, which lifts that bank of foliage into the air to draw the eye and to cool us with its shade, is the gift and legacy of dead and buried years. the conservative. 291 in nature, each of these elements being always present, each theory has a natural support. as we take our stand on necessity, or on ethics, shall we go for the conservative, or for the reformer. if we read the world historically, we shall say, of all the ages, the present hour and circumstance is the cumulative result; this is the best throw of the dice of nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible. if we see it from the side of will, or the moral sentiment, we shall accuse the past and the present, and require the impossible of the future. but although this bifold fact lies thus united in real nature, and so united that no man can continue to exist in whom both these elements do not work, yet men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. there is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood. as this is the invariable method of our training, we must give it allowance, and suffer men to learn as they have done for six millenniums, a word at a time, to pair off into insane parties, and 292 the coxsekvative. learn the amount of truth each knows, by the denial of an equal amount of truth. for the present, thento come at what sum is attainable to us, we must even hear the parties plead as parties. that which is best about conservatism, that which, though it cannot be expressed in detail, inspires reverence in all, is the inevitable. there is the question not only, what the conservative says for himself? but, why must he say it? what insurmountable fact binds him to that side? here is the fact which men call fate, and fate in dread degrees, fate behind fate, not to be disposed of by the consideration that the conscience commands this or that, but necessitating the question, whether the faculties of man will play him true in resisting the facts of universal experience? for although the commands of the conscience are essentially absolute, they are historically limitary. wisdom does not seek a literal rectitude, but an useful, that is, a conditioned one, such a one as the faculties of man and the constitution of things will warrant. the reformer, the partisan loses himself in driving to the utmost some specialty of right conduct, until his own nature and all nature resist him; but wisdom attempts nothing enormous and disproportioned to its powers, nothing which it cannot the conservative. 293 perform or nearly perform. we have all a certain intellection or presentiment of reform existing in the mind, which does not yet descend into the character, and those who throw themselves blindly on this lose themselves. whatever they attempt in that direction, fails, and reacts suicidally on the actor himself. this is the penalty of having transcended nature. for the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born. reform converses with possibilities, perchance with impossibilities; but here is sacred fact. this also was true, or it could not be: it had life in it, or it could not have existed; it has life in it, or it could not continue. your schemes may be feasible, or may not be, but this has the endorsement of nature and a long friendship and cohabitation with the powers of nature. this will stand until a better cast of the dice is made. the contest between the future and the past is one between divinity entering, and divinity departing. you are welcome to try your experiments, and, if you can, to displace the actual order by that ideal republic you announce, for nothing but god will expel god. but plainly the burden of proof must lie with the projector. 294 the conservative. we hold to this, until you can demonstrate something better. the system of property and law goes back for its origin to barbarous and sacred times; it is the fruit of the same mysterious cause as the mineral or animal world. there is a natural sentiment and prepossession in favor of age, of ancestors, of barbarous and aboriginal usages, which is a homage to the element of necessity and divinity which is in them. the respect for the old names of places, of mountains, and streams, is universal. the indian and barbarous name can never be supplanted without loss. the ancients tell us that the gods loved the ethiopians for their stable customs; and the egyptians and chaldeans, whose origin could not be explored, passed among the junior tribes of greece and italy for sacred nations. moreover, so deep is the foundation of the existing social sytem, that it leaves no one out of it. we may be partial, but fate is not. all men have their root in it. you who quarrel with the arrangements of society, and are willing to embroil all, and risk the indisputable good that exists, for the chance of better, live, move, and have your being in this, and your deeds contradict your words every day. for as you cannot jump from the ground without using the the conservative. 295 resistance of the ground, nor put out the boat to sea, without shoving from the shore, nor attain liberty without rejecting obligation, so you are under the necessity of using the actual order of things, in order to disuse it; to live by it, whilst you wish to take away its life. the past has baked your loaf, and in the strength of its bread you would break up the oven. but you are betrayed by your own nature. you also are conservatives. however men please to style themselves, i see no other than a conservative party. you are not only identical with us in your needs, but also in your methods and aims. you quarrel with my conservatism, but it is to build up one of your own; it will have a new beginning, but the same course and end, the the same trials, the same passions; among the lovers of the new i observe that there is a jealousy of the newest, and that the seceder from the seceder is as damnable as the pope himself. on these and the like grounds of general statement, conservatism plants itself without danger of being displaced. especially before this personal appeal, the innovator must confess his weakness, must confess that no man is to be found good enough to be entitled to stand champion for the principle. but when this great tendency comes to practical encounters, and is 296 the conservative. challenged by young men, to whom it is no abstraction, but a fact of hunger, distress, and exclusion from opportunities, it must needs seem injurious. the youth, of course, is an innovator by the fact of his birth. there he stands, newly born on the planet, a universal beggar, with all the reason of things, one would say, on his side. in his first consideration how to feed, clothe, and warm himself, he is met by warnings on every hand, that this thing and that thing have owners, and he must go elsewhere. then he says; if i am born into the earth, where is my part? have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood-lot, where i may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin. 'touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on your peril,' cry all the gentlemen of this world; 'but you may come and work in ours, for us, and we will give you a piece of bread.' and what is that peril? knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act; imprisonment, if we find you afterward. and by what authority, kind gentlemen? by our law. and your law, — is it just? as just for you as it was for us. we wrought for others under this law, and got our lands so. the conservative. 297 i repeat the question, is your law just? not quite just, but necessary. moreover, it is juster now than it was when we were born; we have made it milder and more equal. , i will none of your law, returns the youth; it encumbers me. i cannot understand, or so much as spare time to read that needless library of your laws. nature has sufficiently provided me with rewards and sharp penalties, to bind me not to transgress. like the persian noble of old, i ask "that i may neither command nor obey." i do not wish to enter into your complex social system. i shall serve those whom i can, and they who can will serve me. i shall seek those whom i love, and shun those whom i love not, and what more can all your laws render me? with equal earnestness and good faith, replies to this plaintiff an upholder of the establishment, a man of many virtues: your opposition is feather-brained and overfine. young man, i have no skill to talk with you, but look at me; i have risen early and sat late, and toiled honestly, and painfully for very many years. i never dreamed about methods; i laid my bones to, and drudged for the good i possess; it was not got by fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you must show me a warrant 298 the conservative. like these stubborn facts in your own fidelity and labor, before i suffer you, on the faith of a few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim to scatter it as your own. now you touch the heart of the matter, replies the reformer. to that fidelity and labor, i pay homage. i am unworthy to arraign your manner of living, until i too have been tried. but i should be more unworthy, if i did not tell you why i cannot walk in your steps. i find this vast network, which you call property, extended over the whole planet. i cannot occupy the bleakest crag of the white hills or the alleghany range, but some man or corporation steps up to me to show me that it is his. now, though i am very peaceable, and on my private account could well enough die, since it appears there was some mistake in my creation, and that i have been wussent to this earth, where all the seats were already taken,— yet i feel called upon in behalf of rational nature, which i represent, to declare to you my opinion, that, if the earth is yours, so also is it mine. all your aggregate existences are less to me a fact than is my own; as i am born to the earth, so the earth is given to me, what i want of it to till and to plant; nor could i, without pusillanimity, omit to claim so much. i must not only have a name to live, the conservative. 299 i must live. my genius leads me to build a different manner of life from any of yours. i cannot then spare you the whole world. i love you better. i must tell you the truth practically; and take that which you call yours. it is god's world and mine; yours as much as you want, mine as much as i want. besides, i know your ways; i know the symptoms of the disease. to the end of your power, you will serve this lie which cheats you. your want is a gulf which the possession of the broad earth would not fill. yonder sun in heaven you would pluck down from shining on the universe, and make him a property and privacy, if you could; and the moon and the north star you would quickly have occasion for in your closet and bed-chamber. what you do not want for use, you crave for ornament, and what your convenience could spare, your pride cannot. on the other hand, precisely the defence which was set up for the british constitution, namely, that with all its admitted defects, rotten boroughs and monopolies, it worked werl, and substantial justice was somehow done; the wisdom and the worth did get into parliament, and every interest did by right, or might, or sleight, get represented ; — the same defence is set up for the existing institutions. they are not the best; 300 the conservative. they are not just; and in respect to you, personally, o brave young man! they cannot be justified. they have, it is most true, left you no acre for your own, and no law but our law, to the ordaining of which, you were no party. but they do answer the end, they are really friendly to the good; unfriendly to the bad; they second the industrious, and the kind; they foster genius. they really have so much flexibility as to afford your talent and character, on the whole, the same chance of demonstration and success which they might have, if there was no law and no property. it is trivial and merely superstitious to say that nothing is given you, no outfit, no exhibition; for in this institution of credit, which is as universal as honesty and promise in the human countenance, always some neighbor stands ready to be bread and land and tools and stock to the young adventurer. and if in any one respect they have come short, see what ample retribution of good they have made. they have lost no time and spared no expense to collect libraries, museums, galleries, colleges, palaces, hospitals, observatories, cities. the ages have not been idle, nor kings slack, nor the rich niggardly. have we not atoned for this small offence (which we could not help) of leaving the conservative. 301 you no right in the soil, by this splendid indemnity of ancestral and national wealth? would you have been born like a gipsy in a hedge, and preferred your freedom on a heath, and the range of a planet which had no shed or boscage to cover you from sun and wind, — to this towered and citied world? to this world of rome, and memphis, and constantinople, and vienna, and paris, and london, and new york? for thee naples, florence, and venice, for thee the fair mediterranean, the sunny adriatic; for thee both indies smile; for thee the hospitable north opens its heated palaces under the polar circle; for thee roads have been cut in every direction across the land, and fleets of floating palaces with every security for strength, and provision for luxury, swim by sail and by steam through all the waters of this world. every island for thee has a town; every town a hotel. though thou wast born landless, yet to thy industry and thrift and small condescension to the established usage, — scores of servants are swarming in every strange place with cap and knee to thy command, scores, nay hundreds and thousands, for thy wardrobe, thy table, thy chamber, thy library, thy leisure; and every whim is anticipated and served by the best ability of the whole population of each country. the king on the 302 the conservative. throne governs for thee, and the judge judges; the barrister pleads, the farmer tills, the joiner hammers, the postman rides. is it not exaggerating a trifle to insist on a formal acknowledgment of your claims, when these substantial advantages have been secured to you? now can your children be educated, your labor turned to their advantage, and its fruits secured to them after your death. it is frivolous to say, you have no acre, because you have not a mathematically measured piece of land. providence takes care that you shall have a place, that you are waited for, and come accredited; and, as soon as you put your gift to use, you shall have acre or acre's worth according to your exhibition of desert, — acre, if you need land; — acre's worth, if you prefer to draw, or carve, or make shoes, or wheels, to the tilling of the soil. besides, it might temper your indignation at the supposed wrong which society has done you, to keep the question before you, how society got into this predicament? who put things on this false basis? no single man, but all men. no man voluntarily and knowingly; but it is the result of that degree of culture there is in the planet. the order of things is as good as the character of the population permits. consider it as the work of a great and beneficent and prothe consekvative. 303 gressive necessity, which, from the first pulsation of the first animal life, up to the present high culture of the best nations, has advanced thus far. thank the rude fostermother though she has taught you a better wisdom than her own, and has set hopes in your heart which shall be history in the next ages. you are yourself the result of this manner of living, this foul compromise, this vituperated sodom. it nourished you with care and love on its breast, as it had nourished many a lover of the right, and many a poet, and prophet, and teacher of men. is it so irremediably bad? then again, if the mitigations are considered, do not all the mischiefs virtually vanish? the form is bad, but see you not how every personal character reacts on the form, and makes it new? a strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will. then the principle of love and truth reappears in the strictest courts of fashion and property. under the richest robes, in the darlings of the selectest circles of european or american aristocracy, the strong heart will beat with love of mankind, with impatience of accidental distinctions, with the desire to achieve its own fate, and make every ornament it wears authentic and real. moreover, as we have already shown that there 304 the conservative. is no pure reformer, so it is to be considered that there is no pure conservative, no man who from the beginning to the end of his life maintains the defective institutions; but he who sets his face like a flint against every novelty, when approached in the confidence of conversation, in the presence of friendly and generous persons, has also his gracious and relenting motions, and espouses for the time the cause of man; and even if this be a shortlived emotion, yet the remembrance of it in private hours mitigates his selfishness and compliance with custom. the friar bernard lamented in his cell on mount cenis the crimes of mankind, and rising one morning before day from his bed of moss and dry leaves, he gnawed his roots and berries, drank of the spring, and set forth to go to rome to reform the corruption of mankind. on his way he encountered many travellers who greeted him courteously; and the cabins of the peasants and the castles of the lords supplied his few wants. when he came at last to rome, his piety and good will easily introduced him to many families of the rich, and on the first day he saw and talked with gentle mothers with their babes at their breasts, who told him how much love they bore their children, and how they were perplexed in their daily walk lest they > the conservative. 305 should fail in their duty to them. 'what!' he said, 'and this on rich embroidered carpets, on marble floors, with cunning sculpture, and carved wood, and rich pictures, and piles of books about you ?' — ' look at our pictures and books, they said, and we will tell you, good father, how we spent the last evening. these are stories of godly children and holy families and romantic sacrifices made in old or in recent times by great and not mean persons; and last evening, our family was collected, and our husbands and brothers discoursed sadly on what we could save and give in the hard times.' then came in the men, and they said, 'what cheer, brother? does thy convent want gifts?' then the friar bernard went home swiftly with other thoughts than he brought, saying, 'this way of life is wrong, yet these romans, whom i prayed god to destroy, are lovers, they are lovers; what can i do?' the reformer concedes that these mitigations exist, and that, if he proposed comfort, he should take sides with the establishment. your words are excellent, but they do not tell the whole. conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. i observe that they take somewhat for everything they give. i look bigger, but am less; i have more clothes, 20 306 the conservative. but am not so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit. what you say of your planted, builded and decorated world, is true enough, and i gladly avail myself of its convenience; yet i have remarked that what holds in particular, holds in general, that the plant man does not require for his most glorious flowering this pomp of preparation and convenience, but the thoughts of some beggarly homer who strolled, god knows when, in the infancy and barbarism of the old world; the gravity and sense of some slave moses who leads away his fellow slaves from their masters; the contemplation of some scythian anacharsis; the erect, formidable valor of some dorian townsmen in the town of sparta; the vigor of clovis the frank, and alfred the saxon, and alaric the goth, and mahomet, ali, and omar the arabians, saladin the curd, and othman the turk, sufficed to build what you call society, on the spot and in the instant when the sound mind in a sound body appeared. rich and fine is your dress, 0 conservatism! your horses are of the best blood; your roads are well cut and well paved; your pantry is full of meats and your cellar of wines, and a very good state and condition are you for gentlemen and ladies to live under; but every one of these goods steals away a drop of my the conservative. 307 blood. i want the necessity of supplying my own wants. all this costly culture of yours is not necessary. greatness does not need it. yonder peasant, who sits neglected there in a corner, carries a whole revolution of man and nature in his head, which shall be a sacred history to some future ages. for man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easily born; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love. these considerations, urged by those whose characters and whose fortunes are yet to be formed, must needs command the sympathy of all reasonable persons. but beside that charity which should make all adult persons interested for the youth, and engage them to see that he has a free field and fair play on his entrance into life, we are bound to see that the society, of which we compose a part, does not permit the formation or continuance of views and practices injurious to the honor and welfare of mankind. the objection to conservatism, when embodied 30s the conservative. in a party, is, that in its love of acts, it hates principles; it jives in the senses, not in truth; it sacrifices to despair; it goes for availableness in its candidate, not for worth; and for expediency in its measures, and not for the right. under pretence of allowing for friction, it makes so many additions and supplements to the machine of society, that it will play smoothly and softly, but will no longer grind any grist. the conservative party in the universe concedes that the radical would talk sufficiently to the purpose, if we were still in the garden of eden; he legislates for man as he ought to be; his theory is right, but he makes no allowance for friction; and this omission makes his whole doctrine false. the idealist retorts, that the conservative falls into a far more noxious error in the other extreme. the conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea. sickness gets organized as well as health, the vice as well as the virtue. now that a vicious system of trade has existed so long, it has stereotyped itself in the human generation, and misers are born. and now that sickness has got such a foothold, leprosy has grown cunning, the conservative. 309 has got into the ballot-box; the lepers outvote the clean; society has resolved itself into a hospital committee, and all its laws are quarantine. if any man resist, and set up a foolish hope he has entertained as good against the general despair, society frowns on him, shuts him out of her opportunities, her granaries, her refectories, her water and bread, and will serve him a sexton's turn. conservatism takes as low a view of every part of human action and passion. its religion is just as bad; a lozenge for the sick; a dolorous tune to beguile the distemper; mitigations of pain by pillows and anodynes; always mitigations, never remedies; pardons for sin, funeral honors, — never selfhelp, renovation, and virtue. its social and political action has no better aim; to keep out wind and weather, to bring the day and year about, and make the world last our day; not to sit on the world and steer it; not to sink the memory of the past in the glory of a new and more excellent creation; a timid cobbler and patcher, it degrades whatever it touches. the cause of education is urged in this country with the utmost earnestness, — on what ground? why on this, that the people have the power, and if they are not instructed to sympathize with the intelligent, reading, trading, and governing class, 310 the conservative. inspired with a taste for the same competitions and prizes, they will upset the fair pageant of judicature, and perhaps lay a hand on the sacred muniments of wealth itself, and new distribute the land. religion is taught in the same spirit. the contractors who were building a road out of baltimore, some years ago, found the irish laborers quarrelsome and refractory, to a degree that embarrassed the agents, and seriously interrupted the progress of the work. the corporation were advised to call off the police, and build a catholic chapel; which they did; the priest presently restored order, and the work went on prosperously. such hints, be sure, are too valuable to be lost. if you do not value the sabbath, or other religious institutions, give yourself no concern about maintaining them. they have already acquired a market value as conservators of property; and if priest and church-member should fail, the chambers of commerce and the presidents of the banks, the very innholders and landlords of the county would muster with fury to their support. of course, religion in such hands loses its essence. instead of that reliance, which the soul suggests on the eternity of truth and duty, men are misled into a reliance on institutions, which, the moment they cease to be the instantaneous the conservative. 311 creations of the devout sentiment, are worthless. religion among the low becomes low. as it loses its truth, it loses credit with the sagacious. they detect the falsehood of the preaching, but when they say so, all good citizens cry, hush; do not weaken the state, do not take off the strait jacket from dangerous persons. every honest fellow must keep up the hoax the best he can; must patronize providence and piety, and wherever he sees anything that will keep men amused, schools or churches or poetry, or picture-galleries or music, or what not, he must cry "hist-a-boy," and urge the game on. what a compliment we pay to the good spirit with our superserviceable zeal! but not to balance reasons for and against the establishment any longer, and if it still be asked in this necessity of partial organization, which party on the whole has the highest claims on our sympathy? i bring it home to the private heart, where all such questions must have their final arbitrement. how will every strong and generous mind choose its ground, — with the defenders of the old? or with the seekers of the new? which is that state which promises to edify a great, brave, and beneficent man; to throw him on his resources, and tax the strength of his character? on which part will each of 312 the conservative. us find himself in the hour of health and of aspiration? i understand well the respect of mankind for war, because that breaks up the chinese stagnation of society, and demonstrates the personal merits of all men. a state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man on trial. the man of principle is known as such, and even in the fury of faction is respected. in the civil wars of france, montaigne alone, among all the french gentry, kept his castle gates unbarred, and made his personal integrity as good at least as a regiment. the man of courage and resources is shown, and the effeminate and base person. those who rise above war, and those who fall below it, it easily discriminates, as well as those, who, accepting its rude conditions, keep their own head by their own sword. but in peace and a commercial state we depend, not as we ought, on our knowledge and all men's knowledge that we are honest men, but we cowardly lean on the virtue of others. for it is always at last the virtue of some men in the society, which keeps the law in any reverence and power. is there not something shameful that i should owe my peaceful occupancy of my house and field, not to the knowledge of my the conservative. 313 countrymen that i am useful, but to their respect for sundry other reputable persons, i know not whom, whose joint virtues still keep the law in good odor? it will never make any difference to a hero what the laws are. his greatness will shine and accomplish itself unto the end, whether they second him or not. if he have earned his bread by drudgery, and in the narrow and crooked ways which were all an evil law had left him, he will make it at least honorable by his expenditure. of the past he will take no heed; for its wrongs he will not hold himself responsible: he will say, all the meanness of my progenitors shall not bereave me of the power to make this hour and company fair and fortunate. whatsoever streams of power and commodity flow to me, shall of me acquire healing virtue, and become fountains of safety. cannot i too descend a redeemer into nature? whosoever hereafter shall name my name, shall not record a malefactor, but a benefactor in the earth. if there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that i have lived. i am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence and good 314 the conservative. will at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings. these are my engagements; how can your law further or hinder me in what i shall do to men ?, on the other hand, these dispositions establish their relations to me. wherever there is worth, i shall be greeted. wherever there are men, are the objects of my study and love. sooner or later all men will be my friends, and will testify in all methods the energy of their regard. i cannot thank your law for my protection. i protect it. it is not in its power to protect me. it is my business to make myself revered. i depend on my honor, my labor, and my dispositions, for my place in the affections of mankind, and not on any conventions or parchments of yours. but if i allow myself in derelictions, and become idle and dissolute, i quickly come to love the protection of a strong law, because i feel no title in myself to my advantages. to the intemperate and covetous person no love flows; to him mankind would pay no rent, no dividend, if force were once relaxed; nay, if they could give their verdict, they would say, that his selfindulgence and his oppression deserved punishment from society, and not that rich board and lodging he now enjoys. the law acts then as a screen of his unworthiness, and makes him worse the longer it protects him. the conservative. 315 in conclusion, to return from this alternation of partial views, to the high platform of universal and necessary history, it is a happiness for mankind that innovation has got on so far, and has so free a field before it. the boldness of the hope men entertain transcends all former experience. it calms and cheers them with the picture of a simple and equal life of truth and piety. and this hope flowered on what tree? it was not imported from the stock of some celestial plant, but grew here on the wild crab of conservatism. it is much that this old and vituperated system of things has borne so fair a child. it predicts that amidst a planet peopled with conservatives, one reformer may yet be born. the transcendentalist. a lecture read at the masonic temple, boston, january, 1841. the transcendentalism the first thing we have to say respecting what are called new views here in new england, at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times. the light is always identical in its composition, but it falls on a great variety of objects, and by so falling is first revealed to us, not in its own form, for it is formless, but in theirs; in like manner, thought only appears in the objects it classifies. what is popularly called transcendentalism among us, ig_ idealismj idealism as it appears in 1841. as thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, materialists and idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness.; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give 320 the transcendentalist. us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. the materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force yof circumstances, and the animal wants of man; / the idealist on the power of thought and of i will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual vculture. these two modes of thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher nature. he concedes all that the other affirms, admits the impressions of sense, admits their coherency, their use and beauty, and then asks the materialist for his grounds of assurance that things are as his senses represent them. but i, he says, affirm facts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts which are of the same nature as the faculty which reports them, and not liable to doubt; facts which in their first appearance to us assume a native superiority to material facts, degrading these into a language by which the first are to be spoken; facts which it only needs a retirement from the senses to discern. every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist. the idealist, in speaking of events, sees them as spirits. he does not deny the sensuous fact: by no means; but he will not see that alone. he does not deny the presence of this table, this ^ the transcendentalist. 321 chair, and the walls of this room, but he looks at these things as the reverse side of the tapestry,, as the other end, each being a sequel or completion of a spiritual fact which nearly concerns him. this manner of looking at things, transfers every object in nature from an independent and anomalous position without there, into the consciousness. even the materialist condillac, perhaps the most logical expounder of materialism, was constrained to say, "though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves; it is always our own thought that we perceive." what more could an idealist say? the materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, and believes that his life is solid, that he at least takes nothing for granted, but knows where he stands, and what he does. yet how easy it is to show him, that he also is a phantom walking and working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily questions, to find his solid universe growing dim and impalpable before his sense. the sturdy capitalist, no matter how deep and square on blocks of q.uincy granite he lays the foundations of his banking-house or exchange, must set it, at last, not on a cube. 21 322 the transcendent alist. corresponding to the angles of his structure, but .on a mass of unknown materials and solidity, red-hot or white-hot, perhaps at the core, which rounds off to an almost perfect sphericity, and lies floating in soft air, and goes spinning away, dragging bank and banker with it at a rate of thousands of miles the hour, he knows not whither, — a bit of bullet, now glimmering, now darkling through a small cubic space on the edge of an unimaginable pit of emptiness. and this wild balloon, in which his whole venture is embarked, is a just symbol of his whole state and faculty. one thing, at least, he says is certain, and does not give me the headache, that figures do not lie; the multiplication table has been hitherto found unimpeachable truth; and, moreover, if i put a gold eagle in my safe, i find it again to-morrow;—but for these thoughts, i know not whence they are. they change and pass away. but ask him why he believes that an uniform experience will continue uniform, or on what grounds he founds his faith in his figures, and he will perceive that his mental fabric is built up on just as strange and quaking foundations as his proud edifice of stone. in the order of thought, the materialist takes his departure from the external world, and esteems a man as one product of that. the idealist the transcendentalist. 323 takes his departure from his consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance. the materialist respects sensible masses, society, government, social art, and luxury, every establishment, every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of space, or amount of objects, every social action. the idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical, namely, the rank which things themselves take in his consciousness; not at all, the size or appearance. mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors. nature, literature, history, are only subjective phenomena. although in his action overpowered by the laws of action, and so, warmly cooperating with men, even preferring them to himself, yet when he speaks scientifically, or after the order of thought, he is constrained to degrade persons into representatives of truths. he does not respect labor, ■ or the products of labor, namely, property, otherwise than as a manifold symbol, illustrating with wonderful fidelity of details the laws of being; he does not respect government, except as far as it reiterates the law of his mind; nor the church; nor charities; nor arts, for themselves; but hears, as at a vast distance, what they say, as if his consciousness would speak to him through a pantomimic scene. his thought, — that is the 324 the trahscendentalist. universe. his experience inclines him to behold the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard all things as having a subjective or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid unknown centre of him. from this transfer of the world into the consciousness, this beholding of all things in the mind, follow easily his whole ethics. it is simpler to be self-dependent. the height, the deity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. society is good when it does not violate me; but best when it is likest to solitude. everything real is self-existent. everything divine shares the self-existence of deity. all that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of those that are independent of your will. do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well. you think me the child of my circumstances: i make my circumstance. lot any thought or motive of mine be different from that they are, the difference will transform *he transcendentalist. 325 my condition and economy. i—this thought which is called i, — is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. the mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. you call it the power of circumstance, but it is the power of me. am i in harmony with myself? my position will seem to you just and commanding. am i vicious and insane? my fortunes will seem to you obscure and descending. as i am, so shall i associate, and, so shall i act; cassar's history will paint out caesar. jesus acted so, because he thought so. i do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any reality; i say, i make my circumstance: but if you ask me, whence am i? i feel like other men my relation to that fact which cannot be spoken, or defined, nor even thought, but which exists, and will exist. the transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. he believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. he wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. thus, the 326 the transcendentalist. spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? and so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own. in action, he easily incurs the charge of antinomianism by his avowal that he, who has the lawgiver, may with safety not only neglect, but even contravene every written commandment. in the play of othello, the expiring desdemona absolves her husband of the murder, to her attendant emilia. afterwards, when emilia charges him with the crime, othello exclaims, "you heard her say herself it was not i." emilia replies, "the more angel she, and thou the blacker devil." of this fine incident, jacobi, the transcendental moralist, makes use, with other parallel instances, in his reply to fichte. jacobi, refusing all measure of right and wrong except the determinations of the private spirit, remarks that there is no crime but has sometimes been a virtue. "i," he says, "am that atheist, that godless person who, in opposition to an imaginary doctrine of calculation, would lie as the dying desdemona lied; would lie and deceive, as pylades when he personated orestes; the transcendentalist. 327 would assassinate like timoleon; would perjure myself like epaminondas, and john de witt; i would resolve on suicide like cato; i would commit sacrilege with david; yea, and pluck ears of corn on the sabbath, for no other reason than that i was fainting for lack of food. for, i have assurance in myself, that, in pardoning these faults according to the letter, man exerts the sovereign right which the majesty of his being confers on him; he sets the seal of his divine nature to the grace he accords."* in like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in human thought or virtue, any reliance on the vast, the unknown; any presentiment; any extravagance of faith, the spiritualist adopts it as most in nature. the oriental mind has always tended to this largeness. buddhism is an expression of it. the buddhist who thanks no man, who says, "do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a transcendentalist. you will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there * coleridge-s translation. 328 the transcendentalism is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of none but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. we have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. i mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. only in the instinct of the lower animals, we find the suggestion of the methods of it, and something higher than our understanding. the squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace. shall we say, then, that transcendentalism ja the saturnalia qr_excess of—eaith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish. nature is transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet takes no thought for the morrow. man owns the dignity of the life the transcendentalism 329 which throbs around him in chemistry, and tree, and animal, and in the involuntary functions of his own body; yet he is balked when he tries to fling himself into this enchanted circle, where all is done without degradation. yet genius and virtue predict in man the same absence of private ends, and of condescension to circumstances, united with every trait and talent of beauty and power. this way of thinking, falling on roman times, made stoic philosophers; falling on despotic times, made patriot catos and brutuses; falling on superstitious times, made prophets and apostles; on popish times, made protestants and ascetic monks, preachers of faith against the preacher-s of works; on prelatical times, made puritans and quakers; and falling on unitarian and commercial times, makes the peculiar shades of idealism which we know. it is well known to most of my audience, that the idealism of the present day acquired the name of transcendental, from the use of that term by immanuel kant, of konigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, or imperative 330 the transcendentalist. forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them transcendental forms. the extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man's thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature, in europe and america, to that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is popularly called at the present day transcendental. although, as we have said, there is no pure transcendentalist, yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply colored the conversation and poetry of the present day; and the history of genius and of religion in these times, though impure, and as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the history of this tendency. it is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. they hold themselves aloof: they feel the disproportion between their faculthe transcendentalist. 331 ties and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. they are striking work, and crying out for somewhat worthy to do! what they do, is done only because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides; and they consent to such labor as is open to them, though to their lofty dream the writing of iliads or hamlets, or the building of cities or empires seems drudgery. now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, and these must. the question, which a wise man and a student of modern history will ask, is, what that kind is? and truly, as in ecclesiastical history we take so much pains to know what the gnostics, what the essenes, what the manichees, and what the reformers believed, it would not misbecome us to inquire nearer home, what these companions and contemporaries of ours think and do, at least so far as these thoughts and actions appear to be not accidental and personal, but common to many, and the inevitable flower of the tree of time. our american literature and spiritual history are, we confess, in the optative mood; but whoso knows these seething brains, these admirable radicals, these unsocial worshippers, these talkers 332 the transcendentalism who talk the sun and moon away, will believe that this heresy cannot pass away without leaving its mark. they are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live in the country rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude. society, to be sure, "does not like this very well; it saith, whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; society will retaliate. meantime, this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of these separators; but if any one will take pains to talk with them, he will find that this part is chosen both from temperament and from principle; with some unwillingness, too, and as a choice of the less of two evils; for these persons are not by nature melancholy, sour, and unsocial, — they are not stockish or brute, — but joyous; susceptible, affectionate; they have even more than others a great wish to be loved. like the young mozart, they are rather ready to cry ten times a day, "but are you sure you love me?" nay, if they tell you their whole thought, they will own that love seems to them the transcendentalist. 333 the last and highest gift of nature; that there are persons whom in their hearts they daily thank for existing, — persons whose faces are perhaps unknown to them, but whose fame and spirit have penetrated their solitude, — and for whose sake they wish to exist. to behold the beauty of another character, which inspires a new interest in our own; to behold the beauty lodged in a human being, with such vivacity of apprehension, that i am instantly forced home to inquire if i am not deformity itself: to behold in another the expression of a love so high that it assures itself, — assures itself also to me against every possible casualty except my unworthiness ; — these are degrees on the scale of human happiness, to which they have ascended; and it is a fidelity to this sentiment which has made common association distasteful to them. they wish a just and even fellowship, or none. they cannot gossip with you, and they do not wish, as they are sincere and religious, to gratify any mere curiosity which you may entertain. like fairies, they do not wish to be spoken of. love me, they say, but do not ask who is my cousin and my uncle. if you do not need to hear my thought, because you can read it in my face and behavior, then i will tell it you from sunrise to sunset. if you cannot divine it, you would 334 the transcendentalism not understand what i say. i will not molest myself for you. i do not wish to be profaned. and yet, it seems as if this loneliness, and not this love, would prevail in their circumstances, because of the extravagant demand they make on human nature. that, indeed, constitutes a new feature in their portrait, that they are the most exacting and extortionate critics. their quarrel with every man they meet, is not with his kind, but with his degree. there is not enough of him, — that is the only fault. they prolong their privilege of childhood in this wise, of doing nothing,—but making immense demands on all the gladiators in the lists of action and fame. they make us feel the strange disappointment which overcasts every human youth. so many promising youths, and never a finished man! the profound nature will have a savage rudeness; the delicate one will be shallow, or the victim of sensibility; the richly accomplished will have some capital absurdity; and so every piece has a crack. 'tis strange, but this masterpiece is a result of such an extreme delicacy, that the most unobserved flaw in the boy will neutralize the most aspiring genius, and spoil the work. talk with a seaman of the hazards to life in his profession, and he will ask you, "where are the old sailors? do you not see the transcendentalism". 335 that all are young men?" and we, on this sea of human thought, in like manner inquire, where are the old idealists? where are they who represented to the last generation that extravagant hope, which a few happy aspirants suggest to ours? in looking at the class of counsel, and power, and wealth, and at the matronage of the land, amidst all the prudence and all the triviality, one asks, where are they who represented genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenly world, to these? are they dead, — taken in early ripeness to the gods, — as ancient wisdom foretold their fate? or did the high idea die out of them, and leave their unperfumed body as its tomb and tablet, announcing to all that the celestial inhabi. tant, who once gave them beauty, had departed? will it be better with the new generation? we easily predict a fair future to each new candidate who enters the lists, but we are frivolous and volatile, and by low aims and ill example do what we can to defeat this hope. then these youths bring us a rough but effectual aid. by their unconcealed dissatisfaction, they expose our poverty, and the insignificance of man to man. a man is a poor limitary benefactor. he ought to be a shower of benefits — a great influence, which should never let his brother go, but should refresh old merits continually with new 336 the thanscendental:st. ones; so that, though absent, he should never be out of my mind, his name never far from my lips; but if the earth should open at my side, or my last hour were come, his name should be the prayer i should utter to the universe. but in our experience, man is cheap, and friendship wants its deep sense. we affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go. these exacting children advertise us of our wants. there is no compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you only this one compliment, of insatiable expectation; they aspire, they severely exact, and if they only stand fast in this watch-tower, and persist in demanding unto the end, and without end, then are they terrible friends, whereof poet and priest cannot choose but stand in awe; and what if they eat clouds, and drink wind, they have not been without service to the race of man. with this passion for what is great and extraordinary, it cannot be wondered at, that they are repelled by vulgarity and frivolity in people. they say to themselves, it is better to be alone than in bad company. and it is really a wish to be met, — the wish to find society for their hope and religion, — which prompts them to shun what is called society. they feel that they the transckndentalist. 337 are never so fit for friendship, as when they have quitted mankind, and taken themselves to friend. a picture, a book, a favorite spot in the hills or the woods, which they can people with the fair and worthy creation of the fancy, can give them often forms so vivid, that these for the time shall seem real, and society the illusion. but their solitary and fastidious manners not only withdraw them from the conversation, but from the labors of the world; they are not good citizens, not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the temperance society. they do not even like to vote. the philanthropists iuquire whether transcendentalism does not mean sloth: they had as lief hear that their friend is dead, as that he is a transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can never do anything for humanity. what right, cries the good world, has the man of genius to retreat from work, and indulge himself? the popular literary creed seems to be, 'i am a sublime genius; i ought not therefore to labor.' but genius is the power to labor better and 22 338 the transcendentalist. i more availably. deserve thy genius: exalt it. the good, the illuminated, sit apart from the rest, censuring their dulness and vices, as if they thought that, by sitting very grand in their chairs, the very brokers, attorneys, and congressmen would see the error of their ways, and flock to them. but the good and wise must learn to act, and carry salvation to the combatants and demagogues in the dusty arena below. on the part of these children, it is replied, that life and their faculty seem to them gifts too rich to be squandered on such trifles as you propose to them. what you call your fundamental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters. each 'cause,' as it is called, — sayabolition, temperance, say calvinism, or unitarianism, — becomes speedily a little shop, where the article, let it have been at first never so subtle and ethereal, is now made up into portable and convenient cakes, and retailed in small quantities to suit purchasers. you make very free use of these words 'great' and 'holy,' but few things appear to them such. few persons have any magnificence of nature to inspire enthusiasm, and the philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery. as to the general the transcendentalism 339 course of living, and the daily employments -of men, they cannot see much virtue in these, since they are parts of this vicious circle; and, as no great ends are answered by the men, there is nothing noble in the arts by which they are maintained. nay, they have made the experiment, and found that, from the liberal professions to the coarsest manual labor, and from the courtesies of the academy and the college to the conventions of the cotillon-room and the morning call, there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which intimates a frightful skepticism, a life without love, and an activity without an aim. unless the action is necessary, unless it is adequate, i do not wish to perform it. i do not wish to do one thing but once. i do not love routine. once possessed of the principle, it is equally easy to make four or forty thousand applications of it. a great man will be content to have indicated in any the slightest manner his perception of the reigning idea of his time, and will leave to those who like it the multiplication of examples. when he has hit the white, the rest may shatter the target. every thing admonishes us how needlessly long life is. every moment of a hero so raises and cheers us, that a twelvemonth is an age. all that the brave 340 the tka2jscexdentai.ist. xanthus brings home from his wars, is the recollection that, at the storming of samos, "in the heat of the battle, pericles smiled on me, and passed on to another detachment." it is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, of events, or of actors, that imports. new, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. we are miserable with inaction. we perish of rest and rust: but we do not like your work. 'then,' says the world,'show me your own.' 'we have none.' 'what will you do, then?' cries the world. 'we will wait.' 'how long?' 'until the universe rises up and calls us to work.' 'but whilst you wait, you grow old and useless.' 'be it so: i can sit in a corner and perish, (as you call it,) but i will not move until i have the highest command. if no call should come for years, for centuries, then i know that the want of the universe is the attestation of faith by my abstinence. your virtuous projects, so called, do not cheer me. i know that which shall come will cheer me. if i cannot work, at least i need the tbanscendentalist. 341 not lie. all that is clearly due to-day is not to lie. in other places, other men have encountered sharp trials, and have behaved themselves "well. the martyrs were sawn asunder, or hung alive on meat-hooks. cannot we screw out courage to patience and truth, and without complaint, or even with good-humor, await our turn of action in the infinite counsels?' but, to come a little closer to the secret of these persons, we must say, that to them it seems a very easy matter to answer the objections of the man of the world, but not so easy to dispose of the doubts and objections that occur to themselves. they are exercised in their own spirit with queries, which acquaint them with all adversity, and with the trials of the bravest heroes. when i asked them concerning their private experience, they answered somewhat in this wise: it is not to be denied that there must be some wide difference between my faith and other faith; and mine is a certain brief experience, which surprised me in the highway or in the market, in some place, at some time, — whether in the body or out of the body, god knoweth, — and made me aware that i had played the fool with fools all this time, but that law existed for me and for all; that to me belonged trust, a child's trust and obedience, and , the worship of ideas, and i 342 the thanscendentalist. should never be fool more. well, in the space of an hour, probably, i was let down from this height; i was at my old tricks, the selfish member of a selfish society. my life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; i ask, when shall i die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing an universe which i do not use? i wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate. these two states of thought diverge every moment, and stand in wild contrast. to him who looks at his life from these moments of illumination, it will seem that he skulks and plays a mean, shiftless, and subaltern part in the world. that is to be done which he has not skill to do, or to be said which others can say better, and he lies by, or occupies his hands with some plaything, until his hour comes again. much of our reading, much of our labor, seems mere waiting: it was not that we were born for. any other could do it as well, or better. so little skill enters into these works, so little do they mix with the divine life, that it really signifies little what we do, whether we turn a grindstone, or ride, or run, or make fortunes, or govern the state. the worst feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, of the tkanscendentalist. 343 the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, really show very little relation to each other, never meet and measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz and din; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and, with the progress of life, the two discoxexno greater disposition to reconcile themselves. yet, what is my faith? what am i? what but a thought of serenity and independence, an abode in the deep blue sky? presently the clouds shut down again; yet we retain the belief that this petty web we weave will at last be overshot and reticulated with veins of the blue, and that the moments will characterize the days. patience, then, is for us, is it not? patience, and still patience. when we pass, as presently we shall, into some new infinitude, out of this iceland of negations, it will please us to reflect that, though we had few virtues or consolations, we bore with our indigence, nor once strove to repair it with hypocrisy or false heat of any kind. but this class are not sufficiently characterized, if we omit to add that they are lovers and worshippers of beauty. in the eternal trinity of truth, goodness, and beauty, each in its perfection including the three, they prefer to make beauty the sign and head. something of the 344 the tbanscenbentalist. same taste is observable in all the moral movements of the time, in the religious and benevolent enterprises. they have a liberal, even an aesthetic spirit. a reference to beauty in action sounds, to be sure, a little hollow and ridiculous in the ears of the old church. in politics, it has often sufficed, when they treated of justice, if they kept the bounds of selfish calculation. if they granted restitution, it was prudence which granted it. but the justice which is now claimed for the black, and the pauper, and the drunkard is for beauty, — is for a necessity to the soul of the agent, not of the beneficiary. i say, this is the tendency, not yet the realization. our virtue totters and trips, does not yet walk firmly. its representatives are austere ; they preach and denounce; their rectitude is not yet a grace. they are still liable to that slight taint of burlesque which, in our strange world, attaches to the zealot. a saint should be as dear as the apple of the eye. yet we are tempted to smile, and we flee from the working to the speculative reformer, to escape that same slight ridicule. alas for these days of derision and criticism! we call the beautiful the highest, because it appears to us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the good, and the heartlessness of the true. — they are lovers of nature also, and the tkanscendentalist. 345 find an indemnity in the inviolable order of the world for the violated order and grace of man. there is, no doubt, a great deal of well-founded objection to be spoken or felt against the sayings and doings of this class, some of whose traits we have selected; no doubt, they will lay themselves open to criticism and to lampoons, and as ridiculous stories will be to be told of them as of any. there will be cant and pretension; there will be subtilty and moonshine. these persons are of unequal strength, and do not all prosper. they complain that everything around them must be denied; and if feeble, it takes all their strength to deny, before they can begin to lead their own life. grave seniors insist on their respect to this institution, and that usage; to an obsolete history; to some vocation, or college, or etiquette, or beneficiary, or charity, or morning or evening call, which they resist, as what does not concern them. but it costs such sleepless nights, alienations and misgivings, — they have so many moods about it; — these old guardians never change their minds; they have but one mood on the subject, namely, that antony is very perverse, —that it is quite as much as antony can do, to assert his rights, abstain from what he thinks foolish, and keep his temper. he cannot help the reaction of this injustice in 346 the transcendentalism his own mind. he is braced-up and stilted; all freedom and flowing genius, all sallies of wit and frolic nature are quite out of the question; it is well if he can keep from lying, injustice, and suicide. this is no time for gaiety and grace. his strength and spirits are wasted in rejection. but the strong spirits overpower those around them without effort. their thought and emotion comes in like a flood, quite withdraws them from all notice of these carping critics; they surrender themselves with glad heart to the heavenly guide, and only by implication reject the clamorous nonsense of the hour. grave seniors talk to the deaf, — church and old book mumble and ritualize to an unheeding, preoccupied and advancing mind, and thus they by happiness of greater momentum lose no time, but take the right road at first. but all these of whom i speak are not proficients; they are novices ; they only show the road in which man should travel, when the soul has greater health and prowess. yet let them feel the dignity of their charge, and deserve a larger power. their heart is the ark in which the fire is concealed, which shall burn in a broader and universal flame. let them obey the genius then most when his impulse is wildest; then most when he seems to lead to uninhabitable the transcendentalism 347 desarts of thought and life; for the path which the hero travels alone is the highway of health and benefit to mankind. what is the privilege and nobility of our nature, but its persistency, through its power to attach itself to what is permanent? society also has its duties in reference to this class, and must behold them with what charity it can. possibly some benefit may yet accrue from them to the state. in our mechanics' fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenters' planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments, — rainguages, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as guages and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who betray the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander. perhaps too there might be room for the exciters and monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark with power to convey the electricity to others. or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks the frigate or 'line packet' to learn its longitude, so it may not be without its advantage that we should now and then encounter rare and gifted men, to compare the points of our spiritual compass, and verify our bearings from superior chronometers. 348 the transcendentalist. amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute, or a subscription of stock, for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry, for a new house or a larger business, for a political party, or the division of an estate, — will you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable? soon these improvements and mechanical inventions will be superseded; these modes of living lost out of memory; these cities rotted, ruined by war, by new inventions, by new seats of trade, or the geologic changes : — all gone, like the shells which sprinkle the seabeach with a white colony to-day, forever renewed to be forever destroyed. but the thoughts which these few hermits strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not only by what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide in beauty and strength, to reorganize themselves in nature, to invest themselves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed and happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller union with the surrounding system. the young american. a lecture read before the mercantile library association, boston, february 7, 1844. ------------------the young american. gentlemen: it is remarkable, that our people have their intellectual culture from one country, and their duties from another. this false state of things is newly in a way to be corrected. america is beginning to assert itself to the senses and to the imagination of her children, and europe is receding in the same degree. this their reaction on education gives a new importance to the internal improvements and to the politics of the country. who has not been stimulated to reflection by the facilities now in progress of construction for travel and the transportation of goods in the united states? this rage for road building is beneficent for america, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the 352 the young american. invention is to hold the union staunch, whose days seemed already numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges, and officers across such tedious distances of land and water. not only is distance annihilated, but when, as now, the locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot every day across the thousand various threads of national descent and employment, and bind them fast in one web, an hourly assimilation goes forward, and there is no danger that local peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved. 1. but i hasten to speak of the utility of these improvements in creating an american sentiment. an unlooked for consequence of the railroad, is the increased acquaintance it has given the american people with the boundless resources of their own soil. if this invention has reduced england to a third of its size, by bringing people so much nearer, in this country it has given a new celerity to time, or anticipated by fifty years the planting of tracts of land, the choice of water privileges, the working of mines, and other natural advantages. railroad iron is a magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water. the railroad is but one arrow in our quiver, though it has great value as a sort of yard-stick, the young american. 353 stick, and surveyor's line. the bountiful continent is ours, state on state, and territory on territory, to the waves of the pacific sea; "our garden is the immeasurable earth, the heaven's blue pillars are medea-s house." the task of surveying, planting, and building upon this immense tract, requires an education and a sentiment commensurate thereto. a consciousness of this fact, is beginning to take the place of the purely trading spirit and education which sprang up whilst all the population lived on the fringe of sea-coast. and even on the coast, prudent men have begun to see that every american should be educated with a view to the values of land. the arts of engineering and of architecture are studied; scientific agriculture is an object of growing attention; the mineral riches are explored; limestone, coal, slate, and iron; and the value of timber-lands is enhanced. columbus alleged as a reason for seeking a continent in the west, that the harmony of nature required a great tract of land in the western hemisphere, to balance the known extent of land in the eastern; and it now appears that we must estimate the native values of this broad region to redress the balance of our own judgments, and appreciate the advantages opened to 23 354 the toung american. the human race in this country, which is our fortunate home. the land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. the continent we inhabit is to be physic and food for our mind, as well as our body. the land, with its tranquilizing, sanative influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic and traditional education, and bring us into just relations with men and things. the habit of living in the presence of these invitations of natural wealth is not inoperative; and this habit, combined with the moral sentiment which, in the recent years, has interrogated every institution, usage, and law, has, naturally, given a strong direction to the wishes and aims of active young men to withdraw from cities, and cultivate the soil. this inclination has appeared in the most unlooked for quarters, in men supposed to be absorbed in business, and in those connected with the liberal professions. and, since the walks of trade were crowded, whilst that of agriculture cannot easily be, inasmuch as the farmer who is not wanted by others can yet grow his own bread, whilst the manufacturer or the trader, who is not wanted, cannot, — this seemed a happy tendency. for. beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man the young american. 355 enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest. meantime, with cheap land, and the pacific disposition of the people, every thing invites to the arts of agriculture, of gardening, and domestic architecture. public gardens, on the scale of such plantations in europe and asia, are now unknown to us. there is no feature of the old countries that strikes an american with more agreeable surprise than the beautiful gardens of europe; such as the boboli in florence, the villa borghese in rome, the villa d'este in tivoli, the gardens at munich, and at frankfort on the maine: works easily imitated here, and which might well make the land dear to the citizen, and inflame patriotism. it is the fine art which is left for us, now that sculpture, painting, and religious and civil architecture have become effete, and have passed into second childhood. we have twenty degrees of latitude wherein to choose a seat, and the new modes of travelling enlarge the opportunity of selection, by making it easy to cultivate very distant tracts, and yet remain in strict intercourse with the centres of trade and population. and 356 the young american. the -whole force of all the arts goes to facilitate the decoration of lands and dwellings. a garden has this advantage, that it makes it indifferent "where you live. a well-laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode worthy of man. if the landscape is pleasing, the garden shows it, —if tame, it excludes it. a little grove, which any farmer can find, or cause to grow near his house, will, in a few years, make cataracts and chains of mountains quite unnecessary to his scenery; and he is so contented with his alleys, woodlands, orchards, and river, that niagara, and the notch of the white hills, and nantasket beach, are superfluities. and yet the selection of a fit houselot has the same advantage over an indifferent one, as the selection to a given employment of a man who has a genius for that work. in the last case, the culture of years will never make the most painstaking apprentice his equal: no more will gardening gire the advantage of a happy site to a house in a hole or on a pinnacle. in america, we have hitherto little to boast in this kind. the cities drain the country of the best part of its population: the flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into the towns, and the country is the young american. 357 cultivated by a so much inferior class. the land, — travel a whole day together, — looks poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and poor. in europe, where society has an aristocratic structure, the land is full of men of the best stock, and the best culture, whose interest and pride it is to remain half the year on their estates, and to fill them with every convenience and ornament. of course, these make model farms, and model architecture, and are a constant education to the eye of the surrounding population. whatever events in progress shall go to disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape. i look on such improvements, also, as directly tending to endear the land to the inhabitant. any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. he who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less. the vast majority of the people of this country live by the land, 35s the young american. and carry its quality in their manners and opinions. we in the atlantic states, by position, have been commercial, and have, as i said, imbibed easily an european culture. luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky west is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, and we shall yet have an american genius. how much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise. without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, i think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come. 2. in the second place, the uprise and culmination of the new and anti-feudal power of commerce, is the political fact of most significance to the american at this hour. we cannot look on the freedom of this country, in connexion with its youth, without a presentiment that here shall laws and institutions exist on some scale of proportion to the majesty of nature. to men legislating for the area the young american. 359 betwixt the two oceans, betwixt the snows and the tropics, somewhat of the gravity of nature will infuse itself into the code. a heterogeneous population crowding on all ships from all corners of the world to the great gates of north america, namely, boston, new york, and new orleans, and thence proceeding inward to the prairie and the mountains, and quickly contributing their private thought to the public opinion, their toll to the treasury, and their vote to the election, it cannot be doubted that the legislation of this country should become more catholic and cosmopolitan than that of any other. it seems so easy for america to inspire and express the most expansive and humane spirit; new-born, free, healthful, strong, the land of the laborer, of the democrat, of the philanthropist, of the believer, of the saint, she should speak for.the human race. it is the country of the future. from washington, proverbially 'the city of magnificent distances,' through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations. gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly destiny by which the human race is guided, — the race never dying, the individual never spared, — to results affecting masses and ages. 360 the young american. men are narrow and selfish, but the genius or destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. it is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. that genius has infused itself into nature. it indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason. all the facts in any part of nature shall be tabulated, and the results shall indicate the same security and benefit; so slight as to be hardly observable, and yet it is there. the sphere is flattened at the poles, and swelled at the equator; a form flowing necessarily from the fluid state, yet the form, the mathematician assures us, required to prevent the protuberances of the continent, or even of lesser mountains cast up at any time by earthquakes, from continually deranging the axis of the earth. the census of the population is found to keep an invariable equality in the sexes, with a trifling predominance in favor of the male, as if to counterbalance the necessarily increased exposure of male life in war, navigation, and other accidents. remark the unceasing effort throughout nature at somewhat better than the actual the young american. 361 creatures: amelioration in nature, which alone permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. the population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please god. this genius, or destiny, is of the sternest administration, though rumors exist of its secret tenderness. it may be styled a cruel kindness, serving the whole even to the ruin of the member; a terrible communist, reserving all profits to the community, without dividend to individuals. its law is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to yourself. for nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into tomorrow's creation ; — not a superfluous grain of sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. it is because nature thus saves and uses, laboring for the general, that we poor particulars are so crushed and straitened, and find it so hard to live. she flung us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair, or a paring of a nail, but instantly she snatches at the shred, and appropriates it to the general stock. our condition is like that of the poor wolves: if one of the flock wound himself, or 362 the toung american. so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. that serene power interposes the check upon the caprices and officiousness of our wills. its charity is not our charity. one of its agents is our will, but that which expresses itself in our will, is stronger than our will. we are very forward to help it, but it will not be accelerated. it resists our meddling, eleemosynary contrivances. we devise sumptuary and relief laws, but the principle of population is always reducing wages to the lowest pittance on which human life can be sustained. we legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards the corn for high prices, is the preventive of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be. we concoct eleemosynary systems, and it turns out that our charity increases pauperism. we inflate our paper currency, we repair commerce with unlimited credit, and are presently visited with unlimited bankruptcy. it is easy to see that the existing generation are conspiring with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming generations, sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the most selfthe young american. 363 ish men to act against their private interest for the public welfare. we build railroads, we know not for what or for whom; but one thing is certain, that we who build will receive the very smallest share of benefit. benefit will accrue; they are essential to the country, but that will be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. we do the like in all matters: — "man's heart the almighty to the future set by secret and inviolable springs." we plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations. we should be mortified to learn that the little benefit we chanced in our own persons to receive was the utmost they would yield. the history of commerce, is the record of this beneficent tendency. the patriarchal form of government readily becomes despotic, as each person may see in his own family. fathers wish to be the fathers of the minds of their children, and behold with impatience a new character and way of thinking presuming to show itself in their own son or daughter. this feeling, which all their love and pride in the powers of their children cannot subdue, becomes 364 the young american. petulance and tyranny when the head of the clan, the emperor of an empire, deals with the same difference of opinion in his subjects. difference of opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive. an empire is an immense egotism. "i am the state," said the french louis. when a french ambassador mentioned to paul of russia, that a man of consequence in st. petersburg was interesting himself in some matter, the czar interrupted him, — " there is no man of consequence in this empire, but he with whom i am actually speaking; and so long only as i am speaking to him, is he of any consequence." and nicholas, the present emperor, is reported to have said to his council, "the age is embarrassed with new opinions; rely on me, gentlemen, i shall oppose an iron will to the progress of liberal opinions." it is easy to see that this patriarchal or family management gets to be rather troublesome tp all but the papa; the sceptre comes to be a crowbar. and this unpleasant egotism, feudalism opposes, and finally destroys. the king is compelled to call in the aid of his brothers and cousins, and remote relations, to help him keep his overgrown house in order; and this club of noblemen always come at last to have a will of their own; they combine to brave the young american. 365 the sovereign, and call in the aid of the people. each chief attaches as many followers as he can, by kindness, maintenance, and gifts; and as long as war lasts, the nobles, who most be soldiers, rule very well. but when peace comes, the nobles prove very whimsical and uncomfortable masters; their frolics turn out to be insulting and degrading to the commoner. feudalism grew to be a bandit and brigand. meantime trade had begun to appear: trade, a plant which grows wherever there is peace, as soon as there is peace, and as long as there is peace. the luxury and necessity of the noble fostered it. and as quickly as men go to foreign parts, in ships or caravans, a new order of things springs up; new command takes place, new servants and new masters. their information, their wealth, their correspondence, have made them quite other men than left their native shore. they are nobles now, and by another patent than the king's. feudalism had been good, had broken the power of the kings, and had some good traits of its own; but it had grown mischievous, it was time for it to die, and, as they say of dying people, all its faults came out. trade was the strong man that broke it down, and raised a new and unknown power in its 366 the young american. place. it is a new agent in the world, and one of great function; it is a very intellectual force. this displaces physical strength, and instals computation, combination, information, science, in its room. it calls out all force of a certain kind that slumbered in the former dynasties. it is now in the midst of its career. feudalism is not ended yet. our governments still partake largely of that element. trade goes to make the governments insignificant, and to bring every kind of faculty of every individual that can in any manner serve any person, on sale. instead of a huge army and navy, and executive departments, it converts government into an intelligence-office, where every man may find what he wishes to buy, and expose what he has to sell, not only produce and manufactures, but art, skill, and intellectual and moral values. this is the good and this the evil of trade, that it would put everything into market, talent. beauty, virtue, and man himself. by this means, however, it has done its work. it has its faults, and will come to an end, as the others do. the philosopher and lover of man have much harm to say of trade; but the historian will see that trade was the principle of liberty; that trade planted america and destroyed feudalism; that it makes peace the young american. 367 and keeps peace, and it will abolish slavery. we complain of its oppression of the poor, and of its building up a new aristocracy on the ruins of the aristocracy it destroyed. but the aristocracy of trade has no permanence, is not entailed, was the result of toil and talent, the result of merit of some kind, and is continually falling, like the waves of the sea, before new claims of the same sort. trade is an instrument in the hands of that friendly power which works for us in our own despite. we design it thus and thus; it turns out otherwise and far better. this beneficent tendency, omnipotent without violence, exists and works. every line of history inspires a confidence that we shall not go far wrong; that things mend. that is the moral of all we learn, that it warrants hope, the prolific mother of reforms. our part is plainly not to throw ourselves across the track, to block improvement, and sit till we are stone, but to watch the uprise of successive mornings, and to conspire with the new works of new days. government has been a fossil; it should be a plant. i conceive that the office of statute law should be to express, and not to impede the mind of mankind. new thoughts, new things. trade was one instrument, but trade is also but for a time, and must 368 the young american. give way to somewhat broader and better, whose signs are already dawning in the sky. 3. i pass to speak of the signs of that which is the sequel of trade. in consequence of the revolution in the state of society wrought by trade, government in our times is beginning to wear a clumsy and cumbrous appearance. we have already seen our way to shorter methods. the time is full of good signs. some of them shall ripen to fruit. all this beneficent socialism is a friendly omen, and the swelling cry of voices for the education of the people, indicates that government has other offices than those of banker and executioner. witness the new movements in the civilized world, the communism of france, germany, and switzerland; the trades' unions; the english league against the corn laws; and the whole industrial statistics, so called. in paris, the blouse, the badge of the operative, has begun to make its appearance in the saloons. witness, too, the spectacle of three communities which have within a very short time sprung up within this commonwealth, besides several others undertaken by citizens of massachusetts within the territory of other states. these proceeded from a variety of motives, from an impatience of many usages in common life, from a the young american. 369 wish for greater freedom than the manners and opinions of society permitted, but in great part from a feeling that the true offices of the state, the state had let fall to the ground; that in the scramble of parties for the public purse, the main duties of government were omitted, — the duty to instruct the ignorant, to supply the poor with work and with good guidance. these communists preferred the agricultural life as the most favorable condition for human culture; but they thought that the farm, as we manage it, did not satisfy the right ambition of man. the farmer, after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant. this result might well seem astounding. all this drudgery, from cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. it is time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool. it seemed a great deal worse, because the farmer is living in the same town with men who pretend to know exactly what he wants. on one side, is agricultural chemistry, coolly exposing the nonsense of our spendthrift agriculture and ruinous expense of manures, and offering, by means of a teaspoonful of artificial guano, to turn a sandbank 24 370 the young american. into corn ; and, on the other, the farmer, not only eager for the information, but with bad crops and in debt and bankruptcy, for want of it. here are etzlers and mechanical projectors, who, with the fourierists, undoubtingly affirm that the smallest union would make every man rich;—and, on the other side, a multitude of poor men and women seeking work, and who cannot find enough to pay their board. the science is confident, and surely the poverty is real. if any means could be found to bring these two together! this was one design of the projectors of the associations which are now making their first feeble experiments. they were founded in love, and in labor. they proposed, as you know, that all men should take a part in the manual toil, and proposed to amend the condition of men, by substituting harmonious for hostile industry. it was a noble thought of fourier, which gives a favorable idea of his system, to distinguish in his phalanx a class as the sacred band, by whom whatever duties were disagreeable, and likely to be omitted, were to be assumed. at least, an economical success seemed certain for the enterprise, and that agricultural association must, sooner or later, fix the price of bread, the young american. 371 and drive single farmers into association, in selfdefence; as the great commercial and manufacturing companies had already done. the community is only the continuation of the same movement which made the joint-stock companies for manufactures, mining, insurance, banking, and so forth. it has turned out cheaper to make calico by companies; and it is proposed to plant corn, and to bake bread by companies. undoubtedly, abundant mistakes will be made by these first adventurers, which will draw ridicule on their schemes. i think, for example, that they exaggerate the importance of a favorite project of theirs, that of paying talent and labor at one rate, paying all sorts of service at one rate, say ten cents the hour. they have paid it so; but not an instant would a dime remain a dime. in one hand it became an eagle as it fell, and in another hand a copper cent. for the whole value of the dime is in knowing what to do with it. one man buys with it a land-title of an indian, and makes his posterity princes; or buys corn enough to feed the world; or pen, ink, and paper, or a painter's brush, by which he can communicate himself to the human race as if he were fire; and the other buys barley candy. money is of no value; 372 the young american. it cannot spend itself. all depends on the skill of the spender. whether, too, the objection almost universally felt by such women in the community as were mothers, to an associate life, to a common table, and a common nursery, &c, setting a higher value on the private family with poverty, than on an association with wealth, will not prove insuperable, remains to be determined. but the communities aimed at a higher success in securing to all their members an equal and thorough education. and on the whole, one may say, that aims so generous, and so forced on them by the times, will not be relinquished, even if these attempts fail, but will be prosecuted until they succeed. this is the value of the communities; not what they have done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way. yes, government must educate the poor man. look across the country from any hill-side around us, and the landscape seems to crave government. the actual differences of men must be acknowledged, and met with love and wisdom. these rising grounds which command the champaign below, seem to ask for lords, true lords, fanrf-lords, who understand the land and its uses, and the applicabilities of men, and whose government would be what it should, namely, mediation between the young american. 373 want and supply. how gladly would each citizen pay a commission for the support and continuation of good guidance. none should be a governor who has not a talent for governing. now many people have a native skill for carving out business for many hands; a genius for the disposition of affairs; and are never happier than when difficult practical questions, which embarrass other men, are to be solved. all lies in light before them; they are in their element. could any means be contrived to appoint only these! there really seems a progress towards such a state of things, in which this work shall be done by these natural workmen; and this, not certainly through any increased discretion shown by the citizens at elections, but by the gradual contempt into which official government falls, and the increasing disposition of private adventurers to assume its fallen functions. thus the costly post office is likely to go into disuse before the private transportationshop of harnden and his competitors. the currency threatens to fall entirely into private hands. justice is continually administered more and more by private reference, and not by litigation. we have feudal governments in a commercial age. it would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private em374 the young american. peror a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. if any man has a talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county-town, or in courtstreet, put up his sign-board, mr. smith, governor, mr. johnson, working king. how can our young men complain of the poverty of things in new england, and not feel that poverty as a demand on their charity to make new england rich? where is he who seeing a thousand men useless and unhappy, and making the whole region forlorn by their inaction, and conscious himself of possessing the faculty they want, does not hear his call to go and be their king? we must have kings, and we must have nobles. nature provides such in every society, — only let us have the real instead of the titular. let us have our leading and our inspiration from the best. in every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise. let the powers be well directed, directed by love, and they would everywhere be greeted with joy and honor. the chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and his plume. it is only their disthe young american. 375 like of the pretender, which makes men sometimes unjust to the accomplished man. if society were transparent, the noble would everywhere be gladly received and accredited, and would not be asked for his day's work, but would be felt as benefit, inasmuch as he was noble. that were his duty and stint, — to keep himself pure and purifying, the leaven of his nation. i think i see place and duties for a nobleman in every society ; but it is not to drink wine and ride in a fine coach, but to guide and adorn life for the multitude by forethought, by elegant studies, by perseverance, self-devotion, and the remembrance of the humble old friend, by making his life secretly beautiful. i call upon you, young men, to obey your heart, and be the nobility of this land. in every age of the world, there has been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. which should be that nation but these states? which should lead that movement, if not new england? who should lead the leaders, but the young american? the people, and the world, is now suftering from the want of religion and honor in its 376 the young american. public mind. in america, out of doors all seems a market; in doors, an air-tight stove of conventionalism. every body who comes into our houses savors of these habits; the men, of the market; the women, of the custom. i find no expression in our state papers or legislative debate, in our lyceums or churches, specially in our newspapers, of a high national feeling, no lofty counsels that rightfully stir the blood. i speak of those organs which can be presumed to speak a popular sense. they recommend conventional virtues, whatever will earn and preserve property; always the capitalist; the college, the church, the hospital, the theatre, the hotel, the road, the ship, of the capitalist,— whatever goes to secure, adorn, enlarge these, is good; what jeopardizes any of these, is damnable. the (opposition' papers, so called, are on the same side. they attack the great capitalist, but with the aim to make a capitalist of the poor man. the opposition is against those who have money, from those who wish to have money. but who announces to us in journal, or in pulpit, or in the street, the secret of heroism, "man alone can perform the impossible?" i shall not need to go into an enumeration of the young american. 377 our national defects and vices which require this order of censors in the state. i might not set down our most proclaimed offences as the worst. it is not often the worst trait that occasions the loudest outcry. men complain of their suffering, and not of the crime. i fear little from the bad effect of repudiation; i do not fear that it will spread. stealing is a suicidal business; you cannot repudiate but once. but the bold face and tardy repentance permitted to this local mischief, reveal a public mind so preoccupied with the love of gain, that the common sentiment of indignation at fraud does not act with its natural force. the more need of a withdrawal from the crowd, and a resort to the fountain of right, by the brave. the timidity of our public opinion, is our disease, or, shall i say, the publicness of opinion, the absence of private opinion. goodnature is plentiful, but we want justice, with heart of steel, to fight down the proud. the private mind has the access to the totality of goodness and truth, that it may be a balance to a corrupt society; and to stand for the private verdict against popular clamor, is the office of the noble. if a humane measure is propounded in behalf of the slave, or of the irishman, or the catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that sentiment, that project, will have the homage of the 378 the young american. hero. that is his nobility, his oath of knighthood, to succor the helpless and oppressed; always to throw himself on the side of weakness, of youth, of hope, on the liberal, on the expansive side, never on the defensive, the conserving, the timorous, the lock and bolt system. more than our good-will we may not be able to give. we have our own affairs, our own genius, which chains us to our proper work. we cannot give our life to the cause of the debtor, of the slave, or the pauper, as another is doing; but to one thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the sentiment and the work of that man, not to throw stumbling-blocks in the way of the abolitionist, the philanthropist, as the organs of influence and opinion are swift to do. it is for us to confide in the beneficent supreme power, and not to rely on our money, and on the state because it is the guard of money. at this moment, the terror of old people and of vicious people, is lest the union of these states be destroyed: as if the union had any other real basis than the good pleasure of a majority of the citizens to be united. but the wise and just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; and that if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily the young american. 379 combine in a new and better constitution. every great and memorable community has consisted of formidable individuals, who, like the roman or the spartan, lent his own spirit to the state and made it great. yet only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing is so weak as an egotist. nothing is mightier than we, when we are vehicles of a truth before which the state and the individual are alike ephemeral. gentlemen, the development of our american internal resources, the extension to the utmost of the commercial system, and the appearance of new moral causes which are to modify the state, are giving an aspect of greatness to the future, which the imagination fears to open. one thing is plain for all men of common sense and common conscience, that here, here in america, is the home of man. after all the deductions which are to be made for our pitiful politics, which stake every gravest national question on the silly die, whether james or whether jonathan shall sit in the chair and hold the purse; after all the deduction is made for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, which offers opportunity to the human mind not known in any other region. 380 the young american. it is true, the public miad wants self-respect. we are full of vanity, of which the most signal proof is our sensitiveness to foreign and especially english censure. one cause of this is our immense reading, and that reading chiefly confined to the productions of the english press. it is also true, that, to imaginative persons in this country, there is somewhat bare and bald in our short history, and unsettled wilderness. they ask, who would live in a new country, that can live in an old? and it is not strange that our youths and maidens should burn to see the picturesque extremes of an antiquated country. but it is one thing to visit the pyramids, and another to wish to live there. would they like tithes to the clergy, and sevenths to the government, and horse-guards, and licensed press, and grief when a child is born, and threatening, starved weavers, and a pauperism now constituting one-thirteenth of the population? instead of the open future expanding here before the eye of every boy to vastness, would they like the closing in of the future to a narrow slit of sky, and that fast contracting to be no future? one thing, for instance, the beauties of aristocracy, we commend to the study of the travelling american. the english, the most conservative people this side of india, are not the young american. 381 sensible of the restraint, but an american would seriously resent it. the aristocracy, incorporated by law and education, degrades life for the unprivileged classes. it is a questionable compensation to the embittered feeling of a proud commoner, the reflection that a fop, who, by the magic of title, paralyzes his arm, and plucks from him half the graces and rights of a man, is himself also an aspirant excluded with the same ruthlessness from higher circles, since there is no end to the wheels within wheels of this spiral heaven. something may be pardoned to the spirit of loyalty when it becomes fantastic; and something to the imagination, for the baldest life is symbolic. philip ii. of spain rated his ambassador for neglecting serious affairs in italy, whilst he debated some point of honor with the french ambassador; "you have left a business of importance for a ceremony." the ambassador replied, "your majesty's self is but a ceremony." in the east, where the religious sentiment comes in to the support of the aristocracy, and in the romish church also, there is a grain of sweetness in the tyranny; but in england, the fact seems to me intolerable, what is commonly affirmed, that such is the transcendent honor accorded to wealth and birth, that no man of letters, be his eminence what 382 the young american. it may, is received into the best society, except as a lion and a show. the english have many virtues, many advantages, and the proudest history of the world; but they need all, and more than all the resources of the past to indemnify a heroic gentleman in that country for the mortifications prepared for him by the system of society, and which seem to impose the alternative to resist or to avoid it. that there are mitigations and practical alleviations to this rigor, is not an excuse for the rule. commanding worth, and personal power, must sit crowned in all companies, nor will extraordinary persons be slighted or affronted in any company of civilized men. but the system is an invasion of the sentiment of justice and the native rights of men, which, however decorated, must lessen the value of english citizenship. it is for englishmen to consider, not for us; we only say, let us live in america, too thankful for our want of feudal institutions. our houses and towns are like mosses and lichens, so slight and new; but youth is a fault of which we shall daily mend. this land, too, is as old as the flood, and wants no ornament or privilege which nature could bestow. here stars, here woods, here hills, here animals, here men abound, and the vast tendencies concur of a new order. if only the men are emthe young american. 383 ployed in conspiring with the designs of the spirit who led us hither, and is leading us still, we shall quickly enough advance out of all hearing of other's censures, out of all regrets of our own, into a new and more excellent social state than history has recorded. sept. 1840. james munroe and company, 134 ketasjrtnflton, ©pposfte scjwol street, boston, and lyceum building, cambridge, have recently published. fkiends in council. friends in council: a series of readings and discourse thereon. contents. — truth; conformity; 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the set, $21.00. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and con. tents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 12 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15oo. poems. household edition. with portrait. 13mo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. essays. first and second series. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emer. son. introductory essay. household edition. 12mo, $ı. so. holiday edition, 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. 18mo, $1.00. emerson calendar book. 32mo, parchment-paper, 25 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. 2 ols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. the correspondence between emerson and grimm. edited by f. w. holls. with portraits. 16mo, $1.00, ret. postpaid, $1.05. for various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son memoirs see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820-1872 vol. iv mrs. ralph waldo emerson journals, of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1836–1838) boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1910 al 1323. 029.2 (4). prvard college ( t.13,1943) vibrary libidofollipe perrin cificletas libr aw copyright, 1910, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1910 contents journal xxvii. 1836 (from journal b) miss martineau; law of hospitality. truth. spartan. profanation. charles w. upham. quoted verses. swedenborg. the scholar's lot; facts his treasure. cudworth. the poet must have faith. pückler-muskau on english dandy. eve has no clock. authors' pay. sentences of confucius. alcott's journals. idealism; books, worship, friends, nature as aids. riddle of individuals. talk with charles on motives. coming revival. trust and act the god in you. quotations from goethe. man a coal in the fire. tasks. the reflective poet. each man's questions. man is curbed. god finds joys for bar-keepers. “godliness." all is in each. the problem of three bodies. devil'sneedle day. truth heals. weigh books. miracle. the brave speaker wins. greek drama; chorus. notes on idealism. a day, a child; their significance. ideas. goethe quoted. edward's superiority. look for symbols and learn. do not waste time on woes. goethe; time's verdict on him. religion must come through the heart. fragrant piety. stand for the ideal, respect matter. man the analogist. unsafe advantages. expression; imitative writing unsound. nature contents prompts worship. self-control. wisdom manifold; duty. express the life of your day. charles's death; his life, thought, and letters . . . . . . . 3-50 helpers in life; your parnassus. the one mind; the generic soul. a friend's conscience. talk of persons; elegance of impersonality in science and ethics. theism. wordsworth. natural education. the odd is transient. landor. scholars should be happy and brave. god the servant. the carpenter. use nature's help. parable, the urn and fountain. house painters. the humanity of science; study humanly. mind is one. alcott's writing. communion with god consoles. faces. mind has room for books. your duty, or others'? estate untaxed. man creates his world. william emerson. uneasiness in society. writers do not go to nature; her lesson of power. bereavement. alcott's school. poetry in humblest facts. one in all. alcott's thought, his limitations. pan. divine seed. understanding and reason. alcott's school conversations. problem of nature. boccaccio. flaxman's dante. friendships. your own bible. man. secrets. the mind's walls. personal impression. margaret fuller's visit. fathers. the moon. women's minds. philisterei. proof-sheets of nature ; sentences; selling thought. the great poets humble. commencement day. harvard's jubilee; ghosts and boys. progress. suum cuique. “the symposium"; feminine genius, art proper to the age; return to nature. position. american thought; its obstacles, property and imitation of europe. reason's hours few. science and literature, the old and new; european writers; new contents questions ; democracy. religion changes ; the demoniacal force; virtue; no concealment; conscience. judgment; the ancient sculpture. want and have. beauty in common life; classification. all in each; the world's will. curiosity as to other faiths. art and architecture; reason makes them. marriage, its gradual unfolding. problem of hospitality. universal laws. political economy; sure taxes. arts in america pause; an age of reflection. judgment days; obstacles. harmony of the world. moral sentiment must act; goodness smiles. gruff village manners have their use; common sense against doctrinaires or dreamers. soul in science . . . . . . . . . 51-113 symposium at alcott's. transcendentalism defined. preaching at waltham; the hearers. the mind seeks unity; goethe; newton; lamarck, monad to man. poet and savant. goose pond. plan of lectures; unity. self-trust. in teaching omit tradition; go to the most high. the gifts of man. the god in man; individual and universal; myriad-handed nature. time. nature's surprises. inexorable thoughts. the soul's speech. letter to warren burton; bereavement. civil history. teachers' meeting; spirit endures; christ a fellow worshipper. man's construction. modern study of organic remains; reading nature's record; her workshop. plagiarism due to common mind. every man's axis. reading for a task. composition; human chemistry. birth of a son; father, mother and child. sect begets sect. man and nature. winter. the age; speculation in america; all races come. memories of charles. george b. emerson. passages from pluviii contents tarch's morals. the hemlocks. sleep. preaching down. the greek genius. nature still undescribed. price of wood. language clothes nature. xenophon. nursery music. human joys. falling stars. november election. alcott; large thought; man between god and the mob. verdict of the ages. bentley's scholarship. newton's epitaph. coleridge a churchman. philosophic history. orphic words. otherism. edward taylor, his power and charm instinctive. true use of history. individuals progress, the race not. colburn. character, not chance, tells. moore's sheridan liberia. superlative. the spirit behind disguises. historians do not portray man; soul in history. frozen walden. shackford; brownson; good normal, evil not; christianity misrepresented. truth stands alone. wood-thought. rhetoric. composition like architecture. ecclesiastical manners. the antique. speak to men as souls. webster. george herbert. harmonies. reading . . . . . . . . . 114-175 journal xxviii 1837 (from journal c) the poem, the sentence, a mirror; ephemeral or lasting work. carlyle. courtesy; influence. a family. prevailing virtue. great men. education by facts. the plymouth freed-woman. god not a person. numbers do not count. warnings. shakspear. country blessings. the dead-alive. party lies. troublesome wit. contents be guest in your house. lecturing. stamp of the old and new on all. edward taylor's eloquence and happiness; his similes. trust the genius. stage passengers. taste. experiments on living. carlyle's wide genius; his strength-worship; his style. the antique. the baby. shelley quoted. providences. in writing, trust the people. slavery. life tentative. eckermann. education at harvard. language-study. george minot. the market-wagon procession. glances. retzsch. attack on alcott. camper, merck, tischbein. new england's factories. progress. culture, german and english. polarity. the financial crisis. what and how. the good villager. trust the common mind. “ occasional poems." indulgence and command. judgment of goethe. jesus. spring and hard times. gifts. our strange lot. vivian gray. paradise lost and inferno. the merchant. goethe's estimates. plotinus on art quoted. goethe on seneca and tycho brahe. forlorn pride; affectation. character above intellect; daimonisches. jonathan phillips on behavior. german lessons from margaret fuller. tides. the gift of a grove. original action and thought. heroic manners. hourly conversion. my trees. acts and emotions common . . . . . . 179–228 doom of solitude. advantages in boyhood of a pious ancestry: their traditions. waldo's baptism. starving souls; real sermons : john quincy adams. dr. ripley's solid facts. engagement. the baby cousins. the humble-bee. visits of william, dr. hedge, dr. channing, jonathan phillips; ceremony baulks. hard times; sleep, gardening and nature the medicine. contents alcott's vision. imperfect union with friends. boys on a farm. repulsions. live toward insight. men are appendages. symbols, their use. peevishness. hard times show failure of the real”; their stern revelations. poverty the wise man's ornament; yet pity the common man. symbolism. help, or mind your business. cant; wordsworth. composition justified. the individual; god in us; dualism; the male and female principle; light returns. nature the thin screen of unity. symposium; talk with hedge; overdeference; nancy's apology. may days. manfred and beppo. sickness; reading johnson's life, and his books. donne's verse on unity. genius the creator. cowley and donne proverbs. visit to plymouth; the baby. weeding and laughing. reading gives vocabulary for ideas. letter to margaret fuller; the period of unrest. courage. crabbe. the athenæum library; books or nature. carlyle's desired companionship. the scholar's office. pope, johnson, addison never knew nature. thirty years. beauty of night. hospitality to unbidden guests. aunt mary's watcher. subjects. clarendon on falkland. afternoon by walden. language. the splendid sentences of pindar, plato, heraclitus. miss martineau's book. dishonest pride. drill or creation? shakspear; clarendon. in talk or writing always suppose god; effect sundered from cause worthless in education; we are porous to principles. gardening. calm. dr. frothingham. carlyle's nobility; his acceptance. the scholar's investment. south and north. foolish war. life gives language. preaching words. message of jesus. morals balance. contents pride. damascene writing. the philosophers' visit. society. beauty of infancy ...... 229–279 illade. the scholar's office; freedom from authors, masters; everything teaches. the tool-room in the barn; children's delights. genius. quotations from plutarch's morals. early terrors from calvinism. dreams. adam's fall. the soul's expansion. golden september. due sympathy. the horizon feeds us. the heavenward view. symposium. the american wood-god. applause. the insect battle. “ the foolish face of praise.” the old-time soldier. two faces. the hand. impersonal talk. æsthetic club. spontaneity. the afternoon man. tabooed subjects. must not remember. postpone your system. charles henry warren's toast. each man a centre. the democratic aunt. allston's verses. your native spot; travel. strength of peace. phrenology. new england proud to serve. the child out of doors. property a test. women love appearances. preaching from memory. instinct or zeal? each day a step. servants of convention. the slave-trade. beauty. law of mind. analogy's hints. bancroft's history. strong english speech. in preaching “ truth will out.” unspoken kindness. composition of forces. progress of species. plotinus quoted. thought-givers. symbol of food from above. keep to principles. ships' names. stand your ground; defeat may be gain. yield to the housewife. trade. accept your day and deal with it. animal magnetism. southern students. teach women character. a coat. the higher self. listen. gain in loss. woman, from calidasa. the laocoön. the asiatic journal, lord xii contents napier. athenæum reading-room. delight in heroic action; hampden, pym, falkland: the white house. expression. new eyes. squire hoar on just causes. instincts of bank director and scholar. tombs. dreams. starvation library. great poets use the positive. the past lives, though time ruins its temples. the circe's cup of custom; war's iron lobsters. judge the author yourself; words must be kings. autumn in sleepy hollow. art of greece. the appeal to the future; your present makes it. the kingdom of the soul. selection. nature harmonizes . . . . . 280-330 the wild man; tame men; love may waken. curiosity as to great men's greatness; boswellism. swedenborgians. margaret fuller. alcott's austerity. medical skeptics. events help. pestalozzi's method. death. proportion; architecture of writing, and new meanings. woman's limitations, yet trust. the new woman. tears. culture; trust entirely; the heart. the 0 b k oration in demand. earning a living; integrity. dr. bartlett's bog. luigi monti's mother; charity. the heroic rare; alfieri, goldoni. what is death ? a reason for the parting. sympathy but sincerity. sacs, foxes, and sioux in boston. american edition of carlyle's work. write your word briefly and sincerely. alcott's views on a school. the reformer must go his own way; perplexities and courage; honourable poverty. freedom of the outcast. the state of war. the fable of the cedar-birds. life and characters in concord. the daily miracle; life of earth and air and mankind. man and writer must be one; english authors weighed. the bible mandate for charxiii contents ity. society a test. darkness. joy of the eye; its purpose. comparative anatomy. the faneuil hall canons; webster, everett, bell; eloquence. judæa. horace mann's visit. sick man's indulgence. pücklermuskau. bradley's discovery. turns. meeting men. tone. music of nature, quotations from william gardiner. weakness of the self-sufficient. culture, its manifold agents, yet human relation more. bunyan's verses. culture teaches proportion; the methods. wise man sides with assailants; the real skeptic. your own call, but note others'. lovejoy's heroic death. highest culture's requirements; picture of the home. sleep; david buttrick the market-man. warnings from slavery. lesson of crisis of trade, its far-reaching causes. church-going. ends meet; the service of science and of history. waste strength. the high-minded girl. the apostle of “understanding." mr. sam ripley's real preaching. the lie of one idea. idealizing girls. the intellect; its beauty; is not partisan, observes, dissolves, reduces; beasts and man; the child; dwells with the cause. reading · · · · · · 331-383 journal xxix 1838 (from journal c) mild winter. sleep and dreams. superstition of knowledge; explorers needed; few thoughts in an age. carlyle's letter; the unseen friend, john sterling. themes for lectures. people hungry for truth; all superiority a xiv contents surprise. greatness simple and kindly; hidden virtues; angels unawares. account of course on human cul ture; its success; gratitude. opinion also helpful. just and measured love. teachers' meeting; edmund hosmer and henry thoreau. dr. heywood and schoolboy. milton; association with edward and charles. walk with thoreau; his view of college. wordsworth’s image from skating. solitude depressing; happy lot; love for carlyle. landlord of tremont house. cousin and jouffroy count for little in the woods; accomplished but not inspired; milton. all memories painful of lost friends. sights at church helpful, not the minister. peaceful winter sunday. alcott, though possessed of one idea, large and human. theism; personality too little for god. french eclecticism, cousin's book. carlyle's french revolution — his astonishing style. preach man's soul, not tradition. montaigne charities; madam hoar's view. fear of the rich man. rustic tediousness, and expressions. freedom through riches. love. lecture on peace; friends in boston; bancroft on newspapers. carlyle's french revolution ; he leaves too little to reader; his moral ascents, rare in authors; found in tennyson's new volume. aspiration. world's scriptures. wild geese. right handles to thought. god. speak your belief, not wish or authority. vocation must express itself. mean complaisance. starving religion. talk to divinity students . . . . . . . . . 387-420bunyan. biography interests not nations. napoleon; growth of genius. the fine woman. preaching and study sickly; home the cure. bryant, dewey, very, xv contents and aspiring youths. the cherokees. dreams. persons or thoughts. true poetry ethical. “ always pay.” example needs time. the cherokee “scream.” miracles. bacon's juvenile critics. brave farmers. the young housewife. the first ocean steamships. letter to van buren. philanthropic meetings. walk with thoreau. surprise of piety. waldo and his mother. the grove. mrs. ripley. spontaneous sentiment; enslaved disciples, the saving common sense. jesus acted thought. dualism; unity. anything serves genius; dickens. distinction; napoleon temperament; varied genius. forest joys. homer. gifts. apathy hard to understand. thought and life. problem of unprofitable company; the wife's solution. sleep unbecoming. exhilarating holidays. the parish church. goodies. the human jesus helpful. the reverend villagers. a great man's day. aunt mary on sermons. carlyle’s poverty. incarnated veneration and love. bear your part of the burden. the wise cannot be rich. use new truths carefully. caricatures. influences of night. the baby. heroes. our common nature demands charity. magic of heat. a bird-while. life and death are apparitions. alcott the teacher. do your parochial duties freely. doctors' enthusiasm. john s. dwight. the club; reaction from literary discussion. worthless preaching; the two sorts of teachers. the boastful press. miss sedgwick's characters; novels. the may woods. reality. cheap martyrs. foolish hostility. the hopeless followers. high thoughts. obstructive criticism. happy the janus-faced preacher . 421-461 xvi contents alcott's writing. desire for a fit church. reserve your martyrdom. napoleon rewards, impersonality. an ideal friendship. the reforming age. homely joys. the portfolio; judging pictures. woods; live with god. man and weeds. beauty our asylum. the village soprano. goethe. night; four steps. the congregation. great men. everett. neighbor minot. present american thought. the old philosophers. facts. society and solitude. the visitor. no morbidness. do not speak of god much. your world is new. time optical. alternations. sunday. health. change. particular prayers. hawthorne. age of trifles. aunt mary's subtlety. foolish preaching. the sobbing child. the rich world. the serene muse. swedenborg. attitude of protest. art of writing. america lags and pretends. do not argue. strong truth. leave the past. all in one. prefaces. the soul's discipline. classification. animal magnetism. the day's gift of facts. vulgarity's excuse. courage. the soul's fall. monotones. the precious vase. goodies. the stars. the star-lit desarts of truth. the hand. spiritual dew. alcott the believer. the unsaid. the emancipation. veneration. love due to christ. night alarms. swedenborg's position. tragedy of more and less. waiting. wind of time. trismegisti. facts. night enchants ... 462-499 illustrations mrs. ralph waldo emerson. (photogravure) frontispiece from a daguerreotype about 1847. ..... 40 charles chauncy emerson .. from a silhouette about 1834. william emerson. (photogravure)..... 234 from a miniature in 1834. mary moody emerson . . . . . . . . . 480 from a silhouette, about 1800. journal nature charles's death new friends birth of waldo journal xxvii 1836 (from journal b) [mr. and mrs. emerson were now settled in their new home, his younger brother charles being an inmate there, beloved and reverenced by both. each week, the stage which passed their house brought friends or visitors, for mr. emerson's door was always open to high-minded persons, known or unknown. he preached every sunday at east lexington, where he was much esteemed, or elsewhere by exchange, and his lectures were increasingly in demand. the journal opens, january 16, with one of the passages in nature (here omitted because already printed), about the titular owners of concord's fields, while the poet has property in the horizon.] january 16, 1836. what can be more clownish than this foolish charging of miss martineau with ingratitude for differing in opinion from her southern friends? i take the law of hospitality to be this:i concures 4 journal [age 32 fer on the friend whom i visit the highest compliment, in giving him my time. he gives me shelter and bread. does he therewith buy my suffrage to his opinions henceforward? nomorethan by giving him my time, i have bought his. we stand just where we did before. the fact is, before we met he was bound to “speak the truth (of me) in love”; and he is bound to the same now. ma on truth. — the story of captain ross's company is good example of the policy of honesty. “what do the guns speak?” asked the esquimaux, when they saw the english levelling them. the english replied that they told what esquimaux stole files and iron. “where shall i find seals and musk oxen? ” said the esquimaux. the english ventured to point where, and the hunter was lucky. presently the esquimaux boy was killed by an accident, and the tribe ascribed it to english magic and had almost exterminated the english crew. then the saying of george fox's father: “ truly i see that if a man will but stand by the truth it will carry him out.” then the sublimity of keeping one's word across years and years. 1836] profanation. upham 5 317 b.c., attica had seven hundred and twenty square miles with a population of five hundred and twenty-seven thousand souls, and nearly four fifths of that number were slaves. january 21. the spartan is respectable and strong who speaks what must be spoken ; but these gay athenians that go up and down the world making all talk a recitation, talking for display, disgust. january 22. i think profanity to be as real a violation of nature as any other crime. i have as sensible intimations from within of any profanation as i should have if i stole. upham' thinks it fatal to the happiness of a young man to set out with ultra-conservative notions in this country. he must settle it in his mind that the human race have got possession, and, though they will make many blunders and do some great wrongs, yet on the whole will consult the interest of the whole. 1 charles wentworth upham, emerson's classmate and friend, a distinguished citizen of salem, and author of a work on salem witchcraft, and other books. journal [ace 32 let not the mouse of my good meaning, lady, be snapped up in the trap of your suspicion, to lose the tail there, either of her truth, or swallowed by the cat of misconstruction. ben jonson, tale of a tub, act iv, scene 4. wherein minerva had been vanquished had she by it her sacred looms advanced and thro' thy subject woven her graphick thread. george chapman, on sejanus. swedenborg said, “man, in proportion as he is more nearly conjoined to the lord, in the same proportion appeareth to himself more distinctly to be his own, and perceiveth more evidently that he is the lord's. ..." [here follow several quotations from swedenborg's apocalypse revealed, some of them now in representative men.] the scholar works with invisible tools to invisible ends, so passes for an idler, or worse, brain-sick, defenceless to idle carpenters, masons, and merchants, that, having done nothing most laboriously all day, pounce on him fresh for spoil at night. character founded on natural gifts as specific 1836] the scholar's lot 7 and as rare as military genius; the power to stand beside his thoughts, or to hold off his thoughts at arm's length and give them perspective; to form il piu nell' uno; he studies the art of solitude; he is gravelled in every discourse with common people; he shows thought to be infinite which you had thought exhausted. there is a real object in nature to which the grocer turns, the intellectual man præstantia norat plurima, mentis opes amplas sub pectore servans, omnia vestigans sapientum docta reperta. empedocles, on pythagoras, cudworth, vol. ii. so bacon's globe of crystal and globe of matter. the thinker, like glauber, keeps what others throw away. he is aware of god's way of hiding things, i. e., in light; also he knows all by one. set men upon thinking, and you have been to them a god. all history is poetry ; the globe of facts whereon they trample is bullion to the scientific eye. meanest life a thread of empyrean light. scholar converts for them the dishonored facts which they know, into trees of life; their daily routine into a garden of god, by suggesting the principle which classifies the journal [age 32 facts.' we build the sepulchres of our fathers : can we never behold the universe as new, and feel that we have a stake as much as our predecessors? january 24. cudworth is an armory for a poet to furnish himself withal. he should look at every writer in that light and read no poor book. why should the poet bereave himself of the sweetest as well as grandest thoughts by yielding deference to the miserly, indigent unbelief of this age, and leaving god and moral nature out of his catalogue of beings ? i know my soul is immortal if it were only by the sublime emotion i taste in reading these lines of swedenborg: “the organical body with which the soul clothes itself is here compared to a garment, because a garment invests the body, and the soul also puts off the body and casts it away as old clothes (exuviæ), when it emigrates by means of death from the natural world into its own spiritual world.” — influx, p. 26. february 8. “the sinner is the savage who hews down the whole tree in order to come at the fruit.” i compare passage in “ education” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 132, centenary ed.) about dull, despised facts being gems and gold. 1836] englishman. money 9 pückler-muskau'describes the english dandy. “his highest triumph is to appear with the most wooden manners as little polished as will suffice to avoid castigation; nay, to contrive even his civilities so that they may appear as near as may be to affronts. instead of a noble, high-bred ease —to have the courage to offend against every restraint of decorum: to invert the relation in which our sex stands to women so that they appear the attacking and he the passive or defensive party,” etc. sure women have less accurate measure of time than men. there is a clock in adam: none in eve. the philosopher, the priest, hesitates to receive money for his instructions,—the author for his works. instead of this scruple, let them make filthy lucre beautiful by its just expenditure. it becomes the young american to learn the geography of his country in these days as much 1 count von pückler-muskau, later prince, a soldier, scholar, traveller, and prolific writer (1785-1871). his tour in england was translated by mrs. sarah austin in 1832. 10 journal [age 32 as it did our fathers to know the streets of their town; for steam and rails convert roads into streets and regions into neighborhoods. steam realizes the story of æolus's bag. it carries the thirty-two winds in the boiler. sentences of confucius (from marshman's confucius) “ have no friend unlike yourself.” “ chee says, grieve not that men know not you; grieve that you are ignorant of men.” “how can a man remain concealed? how can a man remain concealed ?” “chee entered the great temple. frequently inquiring about things, one said, who says that the son of the chou man understands propriety? in the great temple he is constantly asking questions.' chee heard and replied, “this is propriety.'” “koong chee is a man who, through his earnestness in seeking knowledge, forgets his food, and in his joy for having found it, loses all sense of his toil; who, thus occupied, is unconscious that he has almost arrived at old age." “chee was in the chhi country for three months hearing sun's music, and knew not the 1836) alcott's journals 11 taste of his meat. he said, 'i had no idea of music arriving at this degree of perfection.'” february. “nothing is complete until it is enacted. a fact is spirit having completed its mission, attained its end, fully revealed itself.” alcott manuscripts. “her dreams are so vivid and impressive that they are taken for realities of sense, and she refers to them afterwards as facts in her experience. so strong is her faith in them, that no reasoning, not even the faith she places in the assurance of her parents, makes her relinquish the conviction.' “thus unconsciously, even to us perchance, doth our waking and sleeping life coalesce and lose their separate forms in one predominating sentiment or idea, and take a common unity in the spirit from whence they sprung into life and shaping.” alcott. february 24. we are idealists whenever we prefer an idea to a sensation, as when we make personal sacrifices for the sake of freedom or religion.' ... 1 mr. alcott was probably writing of one of his little daughters. 2 here follows the passage about the eye of reason (nature, “ idealism,” pp. 49, 50, centenary ed.). 12 journal (age 32 as character is more to us, our fellow men cease to exist to us in space and time, and we hold them by real ties. the idealist regards matter scientifically; the sensualist exclusively. the physical sciences are only well studied when they are explored for ideas. the moment the law is attained, i.e., the idea, the memory disburthens herself of her centuries of observation. the book is always dear which has made us for moments idealists. that which can dissipate this block of earth into shining ether is genius. i have no hatred to the round earth and its gray mountains. i see well enough the sand-hill opposite my window. i see with as much pleasure as another a field of corn or a rich pasture, whilst i dispute their absolute being. their phenomenal being i no more dispute than i do my own. i do not dispute, but point out the just way of viewing them. religion makes us idealists. any strong passion does. the best, the happiest moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its god. it is remarkable that the greater the material apparatus, the more the material disappears, ion 1836] idealism 13 as in alps and niagara, in st. peter's and naples. we are all aiming to be idealists, and covet the society of those who make us so, as the sweet singer, the orator, the ideal painter. what nimbleness and buoyancy the conversation of the spiritualist produces in us. we tread on air; the world begins to dislimn. for the education of the understanding the earth and world serve.' ... nature, from an immoveable god, on which, as reptiles, we creep, and to which we must conform our being, becomes an instrument, and serves us with all her kingdoms : then becomes a spectacle. to the rude it seems as if matter had absolute existence, existed from an intrinsic necessity. the first effect of thought is to make us sensible that spirit exists from an intrinsic necessity, that matter has a merely phenomenal or accidental being, being created from spirit, or being the manifestation of spirit. the moment our higher faculties are called into activity we are domesticated, and our awkwardness or torpor or discomi here follows the passage on science teaching that nature's dice are always loaded, etc. (nature, “ discipline,” pp. 38, 39, centenary ed.). 14 [age 32 journal fort gives place to natural and agreeable movements. the first lesson of religion is, the things that are seen are temporal; the unseen, eternal. it is easy to solve the problem of individual existence. why milton, shakspear, or canova should be, there is reason enough. but why the million should exist, drunk with the opium of time and custom, does not appear. if their existence is phenomenal, they serve so valuable a purpose to the education of milton, that, grant us the ideal theory, and the universe is solved. otherwise, the moment a man discovers that he has aims which his faculties cannot answer, the world becomes a riddle. yet piety restores him to health. february 28. cold, bright sunday morn, white with deep snow. charles thinks if a superior being should look into families, he would find natural relations existing, and man a worthy being, but if he followed them into shops, senates, churches, and societies, they would appear wholly artificial and worthless. society seems noxious. i believe that against these baleful influences nature is the antidote. the man comes out of the wrangle of 1836] motives 15 the shop and office, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. he not only quits the cabal, but he finds himself. but how few men see the sky and the woods ! good talk to-day with charles of motives that may be addressed by a wise man to a wise man. first, self-improvement; and secondly, it were equipollent could he announce that elsewhere companions, or a companion, were being nourished and disciplined whose virtues and talents might tax all the pupil's faculties in honorable and sweet emulation. charles thinks it a motive also to leave the world richer by some such bequest as the iliad or paradise lost, a splendid munificence which must give the man an affection to the race he had benefitted wherever he goes. another is the power that virtue and wisdom acquire. the man takes up the world into his proper being. the two oared boat may be swamped in a squall. the vessels of rothschild every wind blows to port. he insures himself. the revival that comes next must be preached to man's moral nature, and from a height of principle that subordinates all persons. it must forget historical christianity and preach 16 journal (age 32 god who is, not god who was. eripitur persona, manet res. it must preach the eternity of god as a practical doctrine. god manifest in the flesh of every man is a perfect rule of social life. justify yourself to an infinite being in the ostler and dandy and stranger, and you shall never repent. the same view might hinder me from signing a pledge. there is such an immense background to my nature that i must treat my fellow as empire treats empire, and god, god. my whole being is to be my pledge and declaration, and not a signature of ink. that life alone is beautiful which is conformed to an idea. let us not live from hand to mouth now, that we may not ever. i would not have a man dainty in his conduct. let him not be afraid of being besmirched by being advertised in the newspapers, or by going into athenæums and town meetings, or by making speeches in public. let his chapel of private thoughts be so holy that it shall perfume and separate him unto the lord, though he lay in a kennel. let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him. 1836] goethe 17: this passing hour is an edifice which the omnipotent cannot rebuild. goethe writes to his friend, september 22, 1787, from rome, “it is really cheering that these four pretty volumes, the result of half a life, should seek me out in rome. i can truly say, there is no word therein which has not been lived, felt, enjoyed, suffered, thought, and they speak to me now all the livelier.” the vessel that carried him from palermo to naples was in danger, and the ship's company roared at the master. “the master was silent, and seemed ever to think only of the chance of saving the ship; but for me, to whom from youth anarchy was more dreadful than death itself, it was impossible longer to be silent.” “for the narrowed mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher an art; and the highest, in doing one thing, does all: or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly.” (volume xxi, p. 51.)'... 1 here follow many pages of translations, made by mr. emerson, from goethe's letters, observations on travel, italy, ancient art, the beautiful, the human form, anatomy. he had the nachgelassene werke in fifty-five leather-bound duodecimo volumes, printed at stuttgart and tübingen in 1832. then sa · 18 journal [age 32 march 5. a man should stand among his fellow men as one coal lies in the fire it has kindled, radiating heat, but lost in the general flame. task work is good for idlers, and man is an idler. its greatest disadvantage is that when you accept mechanical measures instead of spiritual ones, you are prone to fill up the chasms of your prophecy with prose. the moment we enter into the higher thoughts, fame is no more affecting to the ear than the faint tinkle of the passing sleigh bell. gradation : that is one of the lessons which human life is appointed to learn.' ... charles thinks that homer is the first poet, shakspear the second, and that the third will be greatest of all, the reflective. follow some remarks and criticisms on goethe which were later published in the dial, under the title “ modern literature," and are reprinted in the volume natural history of intellect, centenary and riverside editions. i here follows the passage on the uses of space and time (nature, “ discipline,” p. 38, centenary ed.). 1836] each man's questions 19 nature has that congruity that all its parts make a similar impression on one mind; of the beautiful on the poet; of the lucrative on the merchant; etc. in the talk this afternoon i was instructed that every man has certain questions which always he proposes to the eternal, and that his life and fortune, his ascetic, are so moulded as to constitute the answers, if only he will read his consciousness aright. i ask one question with eagerness; my friend, another. i have no curiosity respecting historical christianity; respecting persons and miracles : i take the phenomenon as i find it, and let it have its effect on me, careless whether it is a poem or a chronicle. charles would know whether it covers the dimensions of what is in man; whether the cross is an idea in the divine mind? i am the practical idealist in the view mentioned above. the comfort is great of looking out of the straw and rags of our fortune steadfastly to the first cause, and saying, whilst i hold my faith, i have the virtue that can turn these cobwebs into majesty, whilst i remain a watcher for what thought, what revelation, thou canst yet impart. ... a all cultivation tends steadily to degrade 20 journal [age 32 nature into an organ, a spectacle, an expedient. man's enchanted dust." strange is it to me how man is holden on a curb-rein and hindered from knowing, and drop by drop or shade by shade thoughts trickle and loiter upon him, and no reason under heaven can he give, or get a glimpse of why he should not grow wiser faster, moving about in worlds not realized. all things work together for good unto them that love god. no man is the idealist's enemy. he accepts all. last week i went to salem. at the lafayette hotel where i lodged, every five or ten minutes the barkeepers came into the sitting-room to arrange their hair and collars at the lookingglass. so many joys has the kind god provided for us dear creatures. march 9. how important is the education of the understanding may be inferred from the extreme care i on nature's wheels there is no rust, nor less on man's enchanted dust beauty and force alight. poems, “ the poet," p. 320, centenary ed. 1836] unity. proverbs 21 bestowed upon it, the care pretermitted in no single case.' ... godliness. how strange that such a word exists applied to men ! it was a masterpiece of wisdom to inoculate every biped crawling round after his bread with this sublime maggot. march 11. all is in each. xenophanes complained in his old age that all things hastened back to unity, identity.” hence i might have said above the value of proverbs, or the significance of every trivial speech, as of a blacksmith or teamster concerning his tools or his beasts, [this] namely, that the same thing is found to hold true throughout nature. thus, this morning i read in a treatise on perspective that “the end of a picture was to give exclusive prominence to the object represented and to keep out of sight the means whereby it was done." change the terms, and of what art is this not true? it is an attribute of i see nature, « discipline,” p. 37, centenary ed. 2 here follows a long passage (printed in nature, pp. 43, 44, centenary ed.); and on the fable of proteus, the microcosm, comparative anatomy, architecture, etc., in the essays, 22 journal (age 32 the supreme being so to do, and therefore will be met throughout creation. every primal truth is alone an expression of all nature. it is the absolute ens seen from one side, and any other truths shall only seem altered expressions of this. a leaf is a compend of nature, and nature a colossal leaf. an animal is a compend of the world, and the world is an enlargement of an animal. there is more family likeness than individuality. hence goethe's striving to find the arch-plant. the problem which life has to solve is, how to exist in harmonious relation to a certain number of perceptions, such as hunger, thirst, cold, society, self, god;it is the problem of three bodies. um(writ june, 1835.) it is luxury to live in this beautiful month. one never dares expect a happy day, but the hardest ascetic may inhale delighted this breath of june. it is devil's-needle's day, i judge from the millions of sheeny fliers with green body and crape wing that overhang the grass and water. then the inertia of my blue river down there in the grass, is even sublime. does not this fine season help to edify your body and spirit? 1836) truth heals. books 23 march 14. misery is superficial, and the remedy, when it can be attained, of presenting to the mind universal truths, is a perfect one. the wise may, that is, the healthy mind learns ... that every event, every pain, every misfortune, seen in the perspective of the past, is beautiful; that we are embosomed in beauty; and if, in long retrospect, things are yet ugly, it is because the mind is diseased, and the rays are dislocated and not suffered to fall in a focus and so present a just perspective to the reason. of course the aim of the wise physician will then be to repair the general health.' it is a rule of rhetoric, always to have an eye to the primary sense of the words we use. i cultivate ever my humanity. this i would always propitiate, and judge of a book as a peasant does, not as a book by pedantic and individual measures, but by number and weight, counting the things that are in it. my debt to plato is a certain number of sentences: the like to aristotle. a larger number, yet still a finite i compare with opening passage of “spiritual laws," essays 1, p. 131, centenary ed. 24 [age 32 journal number, make the worth of milton and shakspear to me. i would . . . run over what i have written, save the good sentences, and destroy the rest. charles asks, if i were condemned to solitude and one book, which i would choose. we agreed that milton would have no claims, and that the bible must be preferred to shakspear, because the last, one could better supply himself. the first has a higher strain. a miracle is a patch. it is an after-thought. the history of man must be an idea, a self-existent perfect circle, and admit of no miracle that does not cease to be such, and melt into nature, when the wise eye is turned upon it. all things are moral, and thereto is nature thus superfluously magnificent. for lecture i. mem. “shearing the wolf,” and matutina and vespertina cognitio.' i mr. emerson was planning his course given the following winter at the tremont temple in boston. the first was on “ the philosophy of history.” “ shear the wolf” was: burke's exclamation when it was proposed to tax the american colonies. “the difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen in saying that the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, 1836] greek chorus. ideas 25 march 17. i pitied — for his ill speaking, until i found him not at all disheartened, not at all curious concerning the effect of his speech, but eager to speak again, and speak better on a new matter. then i see him destined to move society. the germans as a nation have no taste. the english are the tyrants of taste. fine thought was this chorus of the greek drama. it is like the invention of the cipher in arithmetic, so perfect an aid and so little obvious. an elegant outer conscience to the interlocutors ; charles says it was the not-me. idealism, ideas domesticate us. friends become ideas. virtue is, subordinating things to thoughts. in his sensations and perceptions, i. e., in nature, is a perfect order not violable by him. in himself as much disorder as vice. nature is therefore an everlasting hint. vespertina cognitio, but that of god is a morning knowledge, matutina cognitio." nature, “ prospects,” p. 73, centenary ed. 26 (age 32 journal magnanimity consists in scorning circumstance. “our country is where we can live as we ought.” utterance is place enough. ev kài tây. a day is a miniature eternity; an hour, a moment, is the same. a child's game hints to an intelligent beholder all the attributes of the supreme being. an intelligent painter, for example, cannot give rules for his art, or suggest hints for the correction or direction of his scholar, without saying what is pertinent and true to a far greater extent than the circle of painting ; e. g., “no great painter is nice in pencils ”; “ nulla dies sine linea.” how eagerly men seize on the classification of phrenology, which gives them, as they think, an idea ; whereby the most familiar and important facts are arranged.' much more heartily do they open themselves to a true and divine idea, as that of freedom or right. 1 dr. spurzheim had aroused great interest in this subject by his lectures in boston in 1832. 1836] goethe. edward 27 “all which we call invention, discovery, in the higher sense, is the important practice or setting at work of an original perception of truth, which, long formed in silence, unexpectedly, as with lightning speed, leads to a useful cognition. it is an opening that is made from the inner to the outward which lets man anticipate his resemblance to god. it is a synthesis of the world and the spirit which gives the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of being.” goethe, vol. xxii, p. 248. “literature is the fragment of fragments. the least of what was done or said was written. of what was written the least part has remained.” ibid., p. 235. “the question whence had the poet this? refers to the what not the how.” ibid. edward bliss emerson charles writes to aunt mary (january 26, 1833); —“edward has a soul in him, — no shadow at all, — though sarah alden' say it, but a large and glowing soul, — lighted up by fits with the flame of an irregular genius, but always odorous with the perfume of a taintless 1 miss emerson always called mrs. ripley thus, her maiden name being sarah alden bradford. 28 (age 32 journal generosity. he is far greater and more admirable than when he was most admired." ; ser march 21. only last evening i found the following sentence in goethe, a comment and consent to my speculations on the all in each in nature this last week:“every existing thing is an analogon of all existing things. thence appears to us being ever at once sundered and connected. if we follow the analogy too far, all things confound themselves in identity. if we avoid it, then all things scatter into infinity. in both cases, observation is at a stand, in the one as too lively, in the other as dead.” (volume xxii, p. 245.) man is an analogist, and therefore no man loses any time or any means who studies that one thing that is before him, though a log or a snail. i waste, you say, an hour in watching one crab's motions, one butterfly's intrigues; i learn therein the whole family of crab and butterfly. i read man in his remoter symbols. only trust yourself, and do the present duty, and god has 1 this was written when edward, his health broken and his promising future blighted, was bravely doing routine work in a commercial house in porto rico. 1836] needless woe. goethe 29 provided for your access to infinite truths and richest opportunities. i find an old letter to l.' which may stand here. has not life woes enough to drug its children with, without their brewing and seething such themselves ? should they not forget all, renounce all but the simple purpose to extort as much wit and worth from the departing hour as they jointly can? it is strange, strangest, this omnipresent riddle of life. nobody can state it. speech pants after it in vain; all poetry, all philosophy, in their parts, or entire, never express it, though that is still their aim; they only approximate. nobody can say what everybody feels, and what all would jump to hear, if it should be said, and, moreover, which all have a confused belief might be said. now this open secret, as he called it, is what our wise but sensual, loved and hated goethe loved to contemplate, and to exercise his wits in trying to embody. i have been reading him these two or three days, and i think him far more lucky than most of his contemporaries at this game. there sits he at the centre of all visibles and knowables, blowing bubble after bubble, so transparent, so round, so coloured that he thinks, and you think, 1 probably to his wife before their marriage. 30 journal (age 32 they are pretty good miniatures of the all. such attempts are all his minor poems, proverbs, xenien, parables. have you read the weltseele? the danger of such attempts as this striving to write universal poetry is, that nothing is so shabby as to fail. you may write an ill romance or play, and 't is no great matter. better men have done so. but when what should be greatest truths flat out into shallow truisms, then are we all sick. but much i fear that time, the serene judge, will not be able to make out so good a verdict for goethe as did and doth carlyle. i am afraid that under his faith is no-faith, that under his love is love-of-ease. however, his muse is catholic as ever any was. . . . a human soul is an awesome thing, and when this point-world, this something-nothing, is reabsorbed into the infinite, let it be recorded of us that we have not defaced the page of time with any voluntary blemish of folly and malignity. how well men know in what churches and individuals the religious principle is found. yet we think we can convince men, by talking, that we are in the right. all the reasons in the world may be piled together, all the solemn words in 1836] fragrant piety 31 the language may be repeated, yet, if only the understanding is addressed, your cause is not won. but let a graceless and ignorant man arise who is now exercised by the religious sentiment, who follows after the beauty of holiness, and he out of his heart will speak to yours. his words are loaded. they penetrate into the soul and will call up the deep and divine powers from their long sleep, and the awestruck understanding shall now be still and docile. let the laws of thought be stated, and people learn that master rule of rhetoric, that things go by number and weight, and pass for what they be, not by seeming. i thought yesterday morning of the sweetness of that fragrant piety which is almost departed out of the world, which makes the genius of a-kempis, scougal, herbert, jeremy taylor. it is a beautiful mean, equi-distant from the hard, sour, iron puritan on one side, and the empty negation of the unitarian on the other. it is the spirit of david and of paul.' ... david is a beauty; and read third chapter of i here follows the passage about « those odoriferous sabbaths,” and the spirit of stoicism, printed in “ boston” (natural history of intellect, pp. 194, 195, centenary ed.). 32 journal [age 32 ephesians. and yet i see not very well how the rose of sharon could bloom so freshly in our affection but for these ancient men who, like great gardens with banks of flowers, do send out their perfumed breath across the great tracts of time. ... life, action, is perfected science. under strong, virtuous excitement we contemn the body. march 22. it is now four months that we have had uninterrupted sleighing in concord; and to-day it snows fast. it is a small and mean thing to attempt too hardly to disprove the being of matter. i have no hostility to oxygen or hydrogen, to the sun, or the hyacinth that opened this morning its little censer in his beam. this is not for one of my complexion, who do expand like a plant in the sunshine, who do really love the warm day like an indian or a bird. i only aim to speak for the great soul; to speak for the sovereignty of ideas.' 1 the substance of the above extract may be found in nature, “ idealism,” p. 59, centenary edition, but the expression is quite different. 1836] man the analogist 33 science immature is arbitrary classification. science perfect is classification through an idea. march 27. man is an analogist. he cannot help seeing everything under its relations to all other things and to himself. the most conspicuous example of this habit of his mind is his naming the deity father. the delight that man finds in classification is the first index of his destiny. he is to put nature under his feet by a knowledge of laws. . . . ethics, again, is to live ideas ; science to apprehend nature in ideas. the moment an idea is introduced among facts the god takes possession. until then, facts conquer us. the beast rules man. thus through nature is there a striving upward. commodity points to a greater good. beauty is nought until the spiritual element. language refers to that which is to be said. finally ; nature is a discipline, and points to the pupil and exists for the pupil. her being is subordinate ; his is superior; man underlies ideas. nature receives them as her god. he only is a good writer who keeps but one eye on his page, and with the other sweeps over 34 [age 32 journal things; so that every sentence brings us a new contribution of observation. march 28. “ all that frees talent without increasing self-command is noxious."' ... nature gives us no sudden advantages. by the time we have acquired great power, we have acquired therewith sufficient wisdom to use it well. animal magnetism inspires us, the prudent and moral, with a certain terror. men are not good enough to be trusted with such power. see goethe's superstition in his demonology (nachgelassene werke), vol. viii, p. 178, which describes van buren and jackson. april 1. beautiful morn, follower of a beautiful moon. yet lies the snow on the ground. birds sing, mosses creep, grass grows on the edge of the snow-bank. read yesterday goethe's iphigenia. a pleasing, moving, even heroic work, yet with the great deduction of being an imitation of the antique. how can a great genius endure to make paste-jewels? it must always have the effect compared with the great originals, of franklin's or ren 2 . snc ca i here follows the paragraph so beginning in “ demonology” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 20, 21, centenary ed.). 1836] form of expression 35 taylor's apologue of abraham, or everett's burdens of the nations compared with the comforting or alarming words of david and isaiah. yet when in the evening we read sophocles, the shadow of a like criticism fell broad over almost all that is called modern literature. the words of electra and orestes are like actions. so live the thoughts of shakspear. they have a necessary being. they live like men. to such productions it is obviously necessary that they should take that form which is then alive before the poet. the playhouse must have been the daily resort of shakspear and that profession on which his circumstances had concentrated his attention. that is essential to the production of his plays. it is quite otherwise with taylor and his van artevelde. his playhouse and muse is the reading of shakspear. sermons were thus a living form to taylor, barrow, south and donne; novels and parliamentary speeches since fielding and burke. the instauratio was a natural effect of the revival of ancient learning. but thus it always must happen that the true work of genius should proceed out of the wants and deeds of the age as well as the writer, and so be the first form with which his genius combines, as sculpture was perfect in phidias's age, 36 (age 32 journal because the marble was the first form with which the creative genius combined. homer is the only true epic. milton is to him what michel angelo is to phidias. but shakspear is like homer or phidias himself. do that which lies next you, o man! april 2. in these uses of nature which i explore, the common sense of man requires that, at last, nature be referred to the deity, be viewed in god. this, which looks so prosaic on paper, is the highest fight of genius, the last conclusion of philosophy, the inspiration of all grand character. shall i say then that a several use of nature is worship? mein the ascetic of the man of letters, i see not well how he can avoid a persistent and somewhat rigorous temperance. saved from so many hurts and griefs, he must impose a discipline on himself. he must, out of sympathetic humanity, wound his own bosom, bear some part of the load of wo, and the most convenient and graceful to him is a quiet but unrelaxing selfcommand. if he accept this and manfully stablish it, it shall stablish him. then without a i compare with the chapter spirit” in nature. 1836] wisdom manifold 37 blush he shall meet and console the muchenduring sons of toil and narrow [life]. [on april 8, mr. emerson wrote to carlyle of the republication in america, through the zeal of dr. le baron russell, of the sartor resartus, to which he, emerson, had furnished the preface.] salem, april 19. the philosopher should explain to us the laws of redeeming the time. the universal fact, says goethe, is that which takes place once. ... many are the paths that lead to wisdom and honor: nay, every man hath a private lane thereto from his own door. raphael paints wisdom, handel sings it, phidias carves it, shakspear writes it, washington enacts it, columbus sails it, wren builds it, watt mechanizes it, luther preaches it. let us take duty, this serving angel, for a god in disguise. without telling us why, he bids us ever do this and that irksomeness. what if it should prove that these very injunctions, so galling and unflattering, are precisely the redemptions of time for us? these books thrust into our hands are books selected for us, and the persons who take up our time are picked out to accompany us? i, at least, fully believe that god is in every place, and that, if the mind 38 (age 32 journal is excited, it may see him, and in him an infinite wisdom in every object that passes before us. april 22. i left boston with charles for new york, where we arrived april 26. i arrived in salem again, may 2. [mr. emerson was giving a course of lectures in salem. he accompanied charles, who was in rapid consumption, to his brother william's home in new york. madam emerson went with him. no one realized how near charles was to the end of his life.] salem, may 4. the marine railway, the united states bank, the bunker hill monument, are perfectly genuine works of the times. so is a speech in congress, so is a historical discourse, a novel, channing's work on slavery, and the volume of revised statutes. but taylor's van artevelde, byron's sardanapalus, and joanna bailey's dramas are futile endeavors to revive a dead form and cannot succeed, nor, i think, can greenough's sculpture. you must exercise your genius in some form that has essential life now; do something which is proper to the hour, and cannot is in ce 1836] charles's death 39 but be done. but what is once well done, lasts forever, as the gladiator, the apollo, the parthenon, the iliad. concord, may 16. and here i am again at home, but i have come alone. my brother, my friend, my ornament, my joy and pride, has fallen by the wayside, -or rather has risen out of this dust. charles died at new york, monday afternoon, 9 may. his prayer that he might not be sick was granted him. he was never confined to a bed. he rode out on monday afternoon with mother, promised himself to begin his journey with me on my arrival, the next day; on reaching home, he stepped out of the carriage alone, walked up the steps and into the house without assistance, sat down on the stairs, fainted and never recovered. beautiful without any parallel in my experience of young men, was his life, happiest his death. miserable is my own prospect from whom my friend is taken. clean and sweet was his life, untempted almost, and his action on others all-healing, uplifting and fragrant. i read now his pages, i remember all his words and motions without any pang, so healthy and human a life it was, and not like edward's, a tragedy of poverty and sickness tearing genius. ma 40 journal [age 32 his virtues were like the victories of timoleon, and homer's verses, they were so easy and natural. i cannot understand why his manuscript journal should have so bitter a strain of penitence and deprecation. i mourn that in losing him i have lost his all, for he was born an orator, not a writer. his written pages do him no justice, and as he felt the immense disparity between his power of conversation and his blotted paper, it was easy for him to speak with scorn of written composition. now commences a new and gloomy epoch of my life. i have used his society so fondly and solidly. it was pleasant to unfold my thought to so wise a hearer. it opened itself genially to his warm and bright light, and borrowed color and sometimes form from him. besides my direct debt to him of how many valued thoughts, through what orbits of speculation have we not travelled together, so that it would not be possible for either of us to say, this is my thought, that is yours. i have felt in him the inestimable advantage, when god allows it, of finding a brother and a friend in one. the mutual understanding is then perfect, because nature has settled the constitution of the amity on solidest foundations; and so it admits of mercenary charles chauncy emerson 1836] charles emerson 41 usefulness and of unsparing censure; there -exists the greatest convenience, inasmuch as the same persons and facts are known to each, and an occult, hereditary sympathy underlies all our intercourse and extends farther than we know. who can ever supply his place to me? none. i may live long. i may (though 'tis improbable) see many cultivated persons, but his elegance, his wit, his sense, his worship of principles, i shall not find united — i shall not find them separate. the eye is closed that was to see nature for me, and give me leave to see; the taste and soul which shakspear satisfied; the soul that loved st. john, st. paul, isaiah, and david; the acute discernment that divided the good from the evil in all objects around him, in society, in politics, in church, in books, in persons. the hilarity of thought which awakened good humor wherever it came, and laughter without shame; and the endless endeavor after a life of ideal beauty, — these are all gone from my actual world and will here be no more seen. ... his senses were those of a greek. i owe to them a thousand observations. to live with him was like living with a great painter. i used to say that i had no leave to see things till he sco 42 (age 32 journal lis powe his sensacility of pointed them out, and afterwards i never ceased to see them. the fine humor of his conversation seemed to make the world he saw. his power of illustration and the facility of his association embroidered his sentences with all his reading and all his seeing. he could not speak but in cheerful figures. when something was said of maritime people, the pilots and fishermen, he said, “they were the fringes of the human race.” when miss martineau was commended for the energy with which she had clung to society, despite her infirmity, he said, “she had brushed pretty well through that drift of deafness.” “the nap,” he said, “is worn off the world.” he said of the unfortunate mr. — : “as fast as mrs. — rows, mr.backs water." he said, the south wind made everybody handsome. there were two ways of living in the world, he said, viz., either to postpone your own ascetic entirely, and live among people as among aliens; or, to lead a life of endless warfare by forcing your ideal into act. in either of these ways the wise man may be blameless. no speculation interested him that could not vori m 1836] charles emerson 43 help him in action, and so become his daily bread. nothing disgusted him more than aimless activity. truth of character he worshipped, — truth to one's self, — and proportionally despised the excessive craving for sympathy and praise, the parasitic life. he could not bear to think that he should degenerate into a householder and lead the base life. he held at a very low rate the praise of fashionable people. he held at a very high rate the praise or gratitude of plain men, whose habits of life precluded compliment, and made their verdict unquestionable. a man is sure of nothing, he said, but what he got himself. let him count everything else mere good fortune, and expect to lose it any moment. he thought that jeremy taylor's sermons might be preached in an obscure country village with greatest advantage to the hearers; that they would be a sort of university ; in themselves an education to those who had no other. the religious sentiment, he thought, was the right of the poor at church; that any speculations merely ingenious, or literary merits of a discourse, did not excuse the defect of this, but defrauded the poor of his christianity. he thought christianity the philosophy of 44 journal (age 32 su suffering; the religion of pain : that its motto was, “thy will be done”; and that the print of the bended head of christ with hands folded on the breast should be the altar-piece and symbol in churches; and not the crucifixion. a measure of any man's ability, he thought, [was] the value he set upon his time. he sympathized wonderfully with all objects and natures, and, as by a spiritual ventriloquism, threw his mind into them, which appeared in the warm and genial traits by which he again pictured them to the eye. i find him saying to e. h., april 3, 1834, “i do not know but one of the ancient metamorphoses will some day happen to me, and i shall shoot into a tree, or flow into a stream, i do so lose my human nature and join myself to that which is without. to-day, even goethe would have been satisfied with the temper in which i became identified with what i saw, a part of what was around me.” ism extracts from c. c. e.'s letters to e. h. “the spirit of stoicism saith, “be highminded and fear not.' christianity says, "be not high-minded but fear.'” (he writes in 1834:) “ let noise and the unmeaning and undelightful society of those who se unme 1836] charles's letters 45 never knew what truth meant make us hug closer our 'eternal jewel.'” “there is so little romance in sleeping in washington street, and day-laboring in court street, that except i too was of carlyle's faith, and reverenced as part of the universe, or rather as an epitome of the universe and emanation of god, this thinking principle, this mysterious me, i could find in me a dry mirth at the idea of making a story of my epigæan life.” » each natural event, the finding of the epigæa, of the indigo bird, the cuckow, and of the palm tree, were the epochs of his life. “oh, sometimes i play teacher, but it is only in the forms of things, the dress of life, words, motions, manners. afterward, i am sorry that such outward things dwell in my thought. i am out of love, as prince hal says, with my greatness; as a child of god, that is, for entertaining these humble considerations.” 1 the epigæa is the mayflower, and charles was perhaps attending the may session of court in boston, or, more likely, used the derivation of the name of this creeping plant (él and r) for life on earth. 46 journal [age 32 “ april 24, 1834. “now your mother, would she say, ‘better leave reading the silly letter'? why then she frets against dear nature, and would have no violets grow because of them we cannot make a broom; but there is more of god in a violet than in a broom.” the horror of the house-keeper pervades his views of marriage. “what is it we seek each in the other? to enter into a community of being, giving and receiving the freedom of each other's immortal part. if the cares and endearments of earthly marriage cause us to lose sight of this its highest end, and dull in us the perception of this, its purest happiness, let us go mourning, let us live alone on the mountains, and bewail our virginity." “to-morrow i go to my sunday school. that ever i should be a shepherd,i who cry inly as a weak lamb to be folded and fed.”. “may 27, 1834. “something has glanced athwart my mind once or twice that i would say about manners. 1 judge john s. keyes said, “the hour in charles emerson's sunday school class was the one bright interval in the desperate new england sabbath of those days." 1836] charles's letters 47 they should be distinct, never slurred. whatever is said or done should be finished, waited on to its conclusion. a well-bred person shuns nothing, dodges no corners, evades no look or word, cuts short no introduction or farewell, but clearly and cheerfully upon the moment does and says what seemeth suitable and kind.” “wednesday night, september 4, 1834. “the days go and come and go. here from my window toward the east i shall presently peruse at length large-limbed orion, my shining chronicler of many a winter. god be thanked who set the stars in the sky! planted their bright watch along the infinite deep and ordained such fine intelligence betwixt us and them. yea, god be thanked for all in nature that is the symbol of purity and peace.” “ october 5, 1834. “do you look at men as i have become accustomed of late to consider them, stronger or feebler utterances of particular thoughts and affections ? so that a shrewd rochefoucault philosophy could calculate the phenomena they would each exhibit with pretty nearly the same precision as the eclipses of jupiter's moons. 48 journal [age 32 “i see a blood-warm, living man in the throng of his engagements, and i say to myself, what is the mission, the significancy of this creature? and when, in a few years, friendly hands shall wrap his dead body in grave clothes, what dot or line in [the] picture which is being finished in the world, will he have left engraved ? yet are they not mere 'hands,'artisans, for do i not myself feel a common nature in me, whereby i am drawn towards certain points in the boundless sphere wherein we act? and while busy about these, my back is turned upon a hemisphere, and a great portion of the centimanous me must lie unexercised. yet is there a recognition all the while in my soul of the whole, and the curve of the least arc of the circle tells the dimensions of radius and circumference, and keeps alive the consciousness of unseen relations in them, who seem as fast fixed to that differential point as the ephemerides to their leaf or petal.” “ february 12, 1835. “i shall come to concord. for homesickness, — trust me, a rood of earth that is mine, four walls, a lamp, and a book will kill that vermin.” “it is night. night is a leveller, a restorer, a e 1836) charles's letters 49 comforter. good night, i desire acquaintance with thee. things look hard and peaked in the day. one cannot so well be an idealist, no, nor a stoic. you see your neighbors, and you are cowed by circumstances. but night is like the grave, and buries all distinctions. i am myself: thanks, medea, for the word, "what i have learned is mine, i have my thought and me the muses noble truths have taught.' “will you have me write more, or is the cocoon quite spun, and shall i, poor grub, go sleep? that 's no bad image. for a man's evening reveries are a sort of soft drapery, a silk night-gown, which he wraps round his more serious and intenser soul, and this last starts winged from its slumber when the hours of rest are fulfilled.” “march 30, 1835. “you never blame me. i will not believe you wanting in the angel office which only great and loving spirits can fitly discharge one to another, that of rebuke, yea, of indignation, which yet is only the surge and foam upheaved from the deep sea of affection.” “let us not veil our bonnets to circumstance. journal [age 32 if we 'act so, because we are so,' if we sin from strong bias of temper and constitution, at least we have in ourselves the measure and the curb of our aberration. but if they who are around us sway us, if we think ourselves incapable of resisting the drawing of the cords with which fathers and mothers and a host of unsuitable expectations and duties, falsely so-called, seek to bind us, alas ! into what helpless disorder shall we not fall!” “march 18, 1836. “waldo and i read, as we have opportunity, in the electra. it is very charming to me, the severe taste of these greeks. i am never offended, and there is an aristocratic pleasure in these lofty and removed studies. it is as if you had left the noisy fuming world of mortal men, and taken passage with that grim ferryman whom poets speak of,' and the slow styx, novies interfusa, lay between you and all earthly interests.” “ april 3, 1836. “ waldo and i have finished the electra, and he is quite enamored of the severe beauty of the greek tragic muse. do you not think it sets the action before you with a more real presence se 51 1836] the helpers than even shakspear's drama? or is it because this is a new story? i was thinking the splendor of the particular passages in shakspear withdrew you continually from the steadfast contemplation of the action.” here end my extracts from the letters of my brother charles. concord, may 19. i find myself slowly, after this helpless mourning. i remember states of mind that perhaps i had long lost before this grief, the native mountains whose tops reappear after we have traversed many a mile of weary region from home. them shall i ever revisit? i refer now to last evening's lively remembrance of the scattered company who have ministered to my highest wants: edward stubler, peter hunt, sampson reed, my peasant tarbox, mary rotch, jonathan phillips, a. b. alcott, —even murat has a claim,'—a strange class, plain, and wise, whose ouni stubler the quaker has already been alluded to. peter hunt was a scholar in his chelmsford school, valued through life. tarbox was the laborer who said to him in the hay-field that men are always praying, and their prayers are always answered; which gave him the theme for his first sermon. jonathan phillips was an old bostonian whose plain words he prized. prince murat was his friend in florida. 52 (age 32 . journal charm to me is wonderful, how elevating! how far was their voice from the voice of vanity, of display, of interest, of tradition ! they are to me what the wanderer in the excursion is to the poet, — and wordsworth's total value is of this kind; — they are described in the lines at the end of the yarrow revisited. theirs is the true light of all our day. they are the argument for the spiritual world, for their spirit is it. nothing is impossible, since such communion has already been. whilst we hear them speak, how frivolous are the distinctions of fortune ! and the voice of fame is as unaffecting as the tinkle of the passing sleigh-bell. every man has his parnassus somewhere, though in a band of music, or the theatre, or gazing at a regiment come home from the wars, or a frigate from the main. the mob draws its attraction out of high, obscure, infinital regions. by the permanence of nature, minds are trained alike and made intelligible to each other. the one mind. — a great danger, or a strong desire, as a war of defence, or an enterprise of enthusiasm, or even of gain, will at any time pvc 1836] the generic soul 53 knit a multitude into one man and, whilst it lasts, bring every individual into his exact place; one to watch, one to deliberate, one to act, one to speak, and one to record. the generic soul in each individual is a giant overcome with sleep which locks up almost all his senses, and only leaves him a little superficial animation. once in an age at hearing some deeper voice, he lifts his iron lids, and his eyes straight pierce through all appearances, and his tongue tells what shall be in the latest times: then is he obeyed like a god, but quickly the lids fall, and sleep returns. overcoi otherism. we overestimate the conscience of our friend.' ... it is the action of the social principle “aiming above the mark that it ma hit the mark.” ... sunday, may 22. persons the talk of the kitchen and the cottage is exclusively occupied with persons. it is the sickness, crimes, disasters, airs, fortunes of persons; never is the character of the action or the object abstracted. go into the parlor and into fashionable society. the persons are more i here follows the passage thus beginning in “ friendship,” essays, first series, pp. 195, 196, centenary ed. 54 [age 32 journal conspicuous, but the fact is the same. the conversation still hovers over persons, over political connexions, over events as they related to individuals. go at last into the cultivated class; who ask, what is beauty? how shall i be perfect? to what end exists the world ? and you shall find in proportion to their cultivation a studious separation of personal history from their analysis of character and their study of things. natural history is elegant, astronomy sublime for this reason, their impersonality. and yet, when cultivated men speak of god they demand a biography of him, as steadily as the kitchen and the bar-room demand personalities of men. absolute goodness, absolute truth must leave their infinity and take form for us. we want fingers and sides and hair. yet certainly it is more grand, and therefore more true, to say, “goodness is its own reward,” “be sure your sin will find you out,” than to say, “god will give long life to the upright; god will punish the sinner in hell,” in any popular sense of these words. but the angels will worship virtue and truth, not gathered into a person, but inly seen in the perspective of their own progressive being. they see the dream and the interpretation of the world in the faith that god is within them. 1836] god 55 as a spiritual truth needs no proof, but is its own reason, so the universe needs no outer cause, but exists by its own perfection, and the sum of it all is this, god is. theism must be, and the name of god must be, because it is a necessity of the human mind to apprehend the relative as flowing from the absolute, and we shall always give the absolute a name. but a storm of calumny will always pelt him whose view of god is highest and purest. i heard to-day a preacher who made me think that thestern compensations work themselves out in pulpits too, since, if a preacher treats the people as children, they too will treat him as a child. . ir 0 it is strange, how simple a thing it is to be a man; so simple that almost all fail by overdoing. there is nothing vulgar in wordsworth's idea of man. to believe your own thought, that is genius. to believe that a man intended to produce the emotion we feel before his work is the highest praise, so high that we ever hesitate to give it. may 23. after reading has become stale, and thoughts truisms, the meeting a young man who has a 56 journal [agė 33 lively interest in your speculations shall revive the faded colors and restore the price of thought. so thought i at salem. this is the foundation, in nature, of education. may 28. nothing bizarre, nothing whimsical will endure. nature is ever interfering with art.'... every violation, every suicide, every miracle, every wilfulness, however large it may show near us, melts quickly into the all and at a distance is not seen. the outline is as smooth as the curve of the moon. landor has too much wilfulness : he will not let his genius speak, but must make it all himself. a writer must have l'abandon, he must be content to stand aside and let truth and beauty speak for him, or he cannot expect to be heard far. may 30. in that sermon to literary men which i propose to make, be sure to admonish them not to be ashamed of their gospel. the mason, the carpenter hold up their trowel and saw with honest pride : the scholar thrusts his book into i here follows the passage thus beginning in society and solitude, “ art,” pp. 41, 42, centenary ed. 1836] god the servant 57 his pocket, drops the nosegay he has gathered in his walk into the fields, and in conversation with the grocer and farmer affects to talk of business and farms. "faint heart never won.” other professions thrive because they who drive them do that one thing with a single and entire mind. feel that fair weather or foul weather, good for grass or bad for grass, scarcity or plenty, is all nothing to you: that your plough may go every day; and leave to god the care of the world. it is a sublime illustration of the christian doctrine of humility, — the fact that god is the servant of the universe. if there were any being whom he did not serve, he would not be the god of that being. put in the sermon to scholars the brave maxim of the code of menu: “a teacher of the veda should rather die with his learning than sow it in sterile soil, even though he be in grievous distress for subsistence.” (approved by c, c. e.) ou please god the curse of the carpenter shall never lie on my roof.' i in the building on of the new parlor and chamber above, there was some bad work which caused delay, and 58 journal (age 33 fine thoughts flowing from an idea perceived by the mind, and fine thoughts wilfully recollected and exhibited, differ as leaves and flowers growing from the branch, and leaves and flowers tied together by a string. may 31. all powerful action is by bringing the forces of nature to bear upon our objects.' ... june 1. once there was an urn which received water out of a fountain. but sometimes the fountain spouted so far as to fall beyond the lips of the urn, and sometimes not far enough to fill it; so that sometimes it was only sprinkled. but the urn desired to be always full, and nature saw the urn, and made it alive, so that it could move this way and that to meet the waterfall, and even when the water did not rise out of the spring, it could change its shape, and with a long neck suck up the water from hollows with its mr. emerson was urged to be severe with the carpenter and insist on a rebate; but he was unwilling that any jarring note should occur in the building of the home. i the rest of this paragraph is essentially the same as the passages in society and solitude to be found in “ civilization” (p. 27, centenary ed.) and “ art" (p. 49) as to the planet, rather than man's muscle, splitting his wood, etc. 1836] urn and fountain 59 lips. then it began to go far from the fountain, looking in many places for wells, and sometimes when the fountain was full, the urn was gone, and did not come back until the fountain was a thread; and often, the walking urn lost its way and came into sands and was long empty. moreover, though nature gave it life, she did not give it more body, so that what was spent in making feet and legs was lost from the belly of the urn; and in the motion of going, much water was spilled so that now it was never full as before. so the urn came to nature, and besought her to take away its life, and replace it at the old fountain. хипе 3. shall i not treat all men as gods ? june 4. the painters have driven me from my apartment. what a droll craft is theirs, generically considered! there certainly is a ridiculous air over much of our life. со sai here are two or three facts respecting science. 1. the tendency to order and classification in the mind. 2. the correspondent order actually subsisting in nature. 3. hence the humanity of 60 journal (age 33 science or the naturalness of knowing; the perception that the world was made by mind like ours; the recognition of design like ours; the seeing in the brutes analogous intelligence to ours. otherwise, – man puts things in a row; things belong in a row; the showing of the true row is science. history teaches 1. the presence of spirit; 2. the antecedence of spirit; 3. the humanity of spirit. corollary: science must be studied humanly. we are always learning that duration and magnitude are of no account to the soul. in the eternity of nature centuries are lost as moments are. in the immensity of matter, there is no great and no small. the grass and foliage that cover the whole globe, from the snow that caps the north-pole to the snow that caps the southpole, cost no more design or effort than went to the opening the bell of one lily, or to the germination of a grain of wheat. time is nothing to laws. the ocean is a large drop; a drop is a small ocean. there is one mind. inspiration is larger reception of it: fanaticism is predominance of the individual. the greater genius, the more like 1836) one mind 61 all other men, therefore. a man's call to do any particular work, as to go supercargo to calcutta, or missionary to serampore,.or pioneer to the western country, is his fitness to do that thing he proposes. any thought that he has a personal summons — “ signs that mark [him] extraordinary, ... not in the role of common men,” — is dreaming, is so much insanity. it denotes deficiency of perceiving that there is one mind in all the individuals. in like manner, guessing at the modes of divine action, as norton's about electricity, etc., betrays ignorance of the truth that all men have access to the divine counsels, for god is the universal mind. june 5. i have read with interest mr. alcott's journal in ms. for 1835. he has attained at least to a perfectly simple and elegant utterance. there is no inflation and no cramp in his writing. i complained that there did not seem to be quite that facility of association which we expect in the man of genius and which is to interlace his work with all nature by its radiating upon all. but the sincerity of his speculation is a better merit. this is no theory of a month's standing; no peg 62 journal [age 33 to hang fine things on; no sham enthusiasm; no cant; but his hearty faith and study by night and by day. he writes it in the book, he discourses it in the parlor, he instructs it in the school. and whatever defects as fine writers such men may have, it is because colossal foundations are not for summer-houses, but for temples and cities. but come again a hundred years hence, and compare alcott and his little critics. arc june 6. last saturday evening, i had a conversation with elizabeth hoar which i cannot recal, but of which the theme was, that when we deal truly and lay judgment to the line and rule, we are no longer permitted to think that the presence or absence of friends is material to our highest states of mind. in those few moments which are the life of our life, when we were in the state of clear vision, we were taught that god is here no respecter of persons, that into that communion with him which is absolute life, and where names and ceremonies and traditions are no longer known, but the virtues are loved for their loveliness alone, for their conformity to god,– in that communion our dearest friends are strangers. there is no personeity in it. 1836] faces. books 63 yesterday i remembered the saying of coleridge's friend moxon, that he would go to the cabinet ministers to read their faces, for nature never lies. also by writing is the character made known. and he who is dumb and motionless for fear of betraying his thought, does by very silence and inaction tell it. dum tacet, clamat.' so irresistibly does human nature ever publish itself. june 7. many letters from friends who loved or honored charles. i know not why it is, but a letter is scarcely welcome to me. i expect to be lacerated by it, and if i come safe to the end of it, i feel like one escaped. “ wishing good and doing good is laboring, lord, with thee. charity is gratitude, and piety, best understood, is sweet humanity.” the value of so many persons is like that of an unit in decimal notation which is determined altogether by the place of the number. do not fear the multitude of books. they all have their place. shakspear, moses, cicero, 1 cicero, oration against catiline. 64 . (age 33 journal bacon, a-kempis, cervantes, bunyan, dwell together without crowding in the mind, as in nature there is room for all the succession of herbs and trees, of birds and beasts. the world is large enough, the year is long enough for all that is to be done in it. so you have undertaken to solve the problem of the world. god speed you, fair sir, in your modest attempt. remember this, however, that the greatest reason is always the truest. you will always find those who think they know what is your duty far better than you know it yourself, so go to the sunday school if they bid you; there 's a good boy. . june 10. i gladly pay the rent of my house because i therewith get the horizon and the woods which i pay no rent for. for daybreak and evening and night, i pay no tax. i think it is a glorious bargain which i drive with the town. the pilgrim goes into the woods, but he carries with him the beauty which he visits. for the eye is the painter and the ear the singer. where is not man is neither color nor sound. the man is the creator of his world. i choose to pursue certain thoughts, to enter certain states of mind, and forthwith i seem to walk into woods 1836] the woods. william 65 by known ways and to hear woodbirds and see pines and birches. i choose to pursue certain other thoughts, and lo! i seem to visit the wharves and market. the visible sky in which the ball of earth is buried with its eternal calm and filled with lights seems to be the true type of the eternal reason into which we are born and the truths which revolve therein. shall i say, what hovers often among the whimsies of the mind, that blows are aimed at him in broad daylight, but that, protected and defended by a circle of friendly power, he passes on in safety? june 11. william e.' visited us a few hours this day. a pleasing day. in that rare society of which i wrote above (see entry of may 19] i dilate and am wise, good, and hopeful by sympathy, but in ordinary company and what is not so (non è nel mondo, 1 his elder brother, a respected and able lawyer in new york all his life, after he abandoned the studying for the ministry from conscientious scruples. he was a man of high standards of life and profession, of taste and refinement, and always a scholar. 66 journal (age 33 se non volgo), i shrink and palter and apologize. i know not why, but i hate to be asked to preach here in concord.' i never go to the sunday school teachers without fear and shame. i take admonitions from every passenger with the attitude and feeling of a willow. ... i am afraid that the brilliant writers very rarely feel the deepest interest in truth itself. even my noble scotchman, i fancy, feels so strongly his vocation to produce, that he would not listen with half the unfeigned joy to a simple oracle in the woods that hosmer or hunt 3 would find. he is certainly dedicated to his book, to the communication and the form of that he knows. yet he ought to feel more curious to know the truth than anxious to exhibit what he knows. yet what is any man's book compared with the undiscoverable all? june 14. what learned i this morning in the woods, the oracular woods? wise are they, the ancient i it appears from his account book that mr. emerson or supplied the pulpit" in concord for seven sundays during the middle of the summer. 2 here follows the passage about the glorified opium-eaters. (see « prudence," essays, first series, p. 233, cent. ed.) 3 concord neighbors. 1836] power. bereavement 67 nymphs; pleasing, sober, melancholy truth say those untameable savages, the pines. under them bend and reign, each in his tiny sphere surrounded by a company of his own race and family, the violets, thesiums, cypripediums, etc. the windflower (rue leaved) is the bride. but thus they said :power is one great lesson which nature teaches man. the secret that he can, not only reduce under his will, that is, conform to his character particular events, but classes of events, and so harmonize all the outward occurrences with the states of mind,that must he learn; worship must he learn. is the pretension of the ideal theory enormous ? every possible statement of the connexion between the world and you involves pretensions as enormous. [although part of the following extract is printed in the last paragraph of “ discipline” in nature, yet because of its evident reference to the loss of charles, and also because of its greater beauty in the original, it is kept here.] have you been associated with any friend whose charm over you was coextensive with your 68 (age 33 journal idea, that is, was infinite; who filled your thought on that side ; and so, as most certainly befals us, you were enamoured of the person? and from that person have you at last, by incessant love and study, acquired a new measure of excellence, also a confidence in the resources of god who thus sends you a real person to outgo your ideal, — you will readily see, when you are separated, as you shortly will be, the bud, flower, and fruit of the whole fact. as soon as your friend has become to you an object of thought, has revealed to you with great prominence a new nature, and has become a measure whereof you are fully possessed to gauge and test more, as his character becomes solid and sweet wisdom, it is already a sign to you that his office to you is closing: expect thenceforward the hour in which he shall be withdrawn from your sight. to you he was manifest in flesh. he is not manifest in flesh. has that portion of spiritual life which he represented to you any less reality? all which was is now, and ever shall be. see then whether you do not over-esteem the greatness of your labors, and instead of vaunting so loudly your mission to the world, look perhaps if the world have not a mission to you. truth and originality go abreast always. 1836] alcott's school 69 june 16. yesterday i went to mr. alcott's school and heard a conversation upon the gospel of st. john. i thought the experiment of engaging young children upon questions of taste and truth successful. a few striking things were said by them. i felt strongly as i watched the gradual dawn of a thought upon the minds of all, that to truth is no age or season. it appears, or it does not appear, and when the child perceives it, he is no more a child ; age, sex, are nothing: we are all alike before the great whole. little josiah quincy,'now six years, six months old, is a child having something wonderful and divine in him. he is a youthful prophet. monsters and aberrations give us glimpses of the higher law; — let us into the secret of nature, thought goethe. well. we fable to conform things better to our higher law, but when, by and by, we see the true cause, the fable fades and shrivels up. we see then the true higher law. to the wise therefore a fact is true poetry and the most beautiful of fables. hence doubtless that secret value we attach to facts that in1 josiah p. quincy, son of mr. emerson's classmate hon. josiah quincy. 70 journal [age 33 terest us much beyond their seeming importance. we think it frivolous to record them, but a wise man records them, and they agree with the experience and feelings of others. they no doubt are points in this curve of the great circle. the èv kài tâv is the reason why our education can be carried on and perfected anywhere and with any bias whatever. if i study an anthill and neglect all business, all history, all conversation, yet shall that ant hill, humbly and lovingly and unceasingly explored, furnish me with a parallel experience and the same conclusions to which business, history and conversation would have brought me. so the sculptor, the dragoon, the trader, the shepherd, come to the same conclusions. allis economized. when you are doing, you lose no time from your book, because you still study and still learn. do what you will, you learn, so that you have a right mind and a right heart. but if not, i think you still learn, though all is mislearned. pains and prayer will do anything. swedenborg, i am persuaded, will presently become popular. he needs only to be regarded as a poet, instead of a sectarian and low religious dogmatist, to be read and admired for his verities. 1836] one in all 71 june 17. · a fact is only a fulcrum of the spirit. it is the terminus of a past thought, but only a means now to new sallies of the imagination and new progress of wisdom.'.... a fact, we said, was the terminus of spirit. a man, i, am the remote circumference, the skirt, the thin suburb, or frontier post of god, but go inward and find the ocean ; i lose my individuality in its waves. god is unity, but always works in variety. i go inward until i find unity universal, that is before the world was. i come outward to this body, a point of variety. the drop is a small ocean, the ocean a large drop. a leaf is a simplified world, the world a compound leaf. june 22. mr. alcott has been here with his olympian dreams. he is a world-builder. evermore he toils to solve the problem, whence is the world? the point at which he prefers to begin is the mystery of the birth of a child. i tell him it is i from this page are omitted the passages, on a farm being a sacred emblem (nature, “ discipline,” p. 42, centenary ed.), and on the economy of paying a man for “good sense applied to gardening.” (essays, first series, “ compensation,” p. 114.) 72 journal [age 33 idle for him to affect to feel an interest in the compositions of any one else. particulars — particular thoughts, sentences, facts even — cannot interest him, except as for a moment they take their place as a ray from his orb. the whole, — nature proceeding from himself, is what he studies. but he loses, like other sovereigns, great pleasures by reason of his grandeur. i go to shakspear, goethe, swift, even to tennyson, submit myself to them, become merely an organ of hearing, and yield to the law of their being. i am paid for thus being nothing by an entire new mind, and thus, a proteus, i enjoy the universe through the powers and organs of a hundred different men. but alcott cannot delight in shakspear, cannot get near him. and so with all things. what is characteristic also, he cannot recal one word or part of his own conversation or of any one's, let the expression be never so happy. he made here some majestic utterances, but so inspired me that even i forgot the words often. the grass, the earth, seemed to him “the refuse of spirit.”. ... 1 here follows the passage on the effect of each new doctrine, beginning with jesus's bidding, to leave father, mother, etc. (see « intellect," essays, first series, p. 343, centenary ed.) 1836] pan. divine seed 73 i love the wood-god. i love the mighty pan. yesterday i walked in the storm. and truly in the fields i am not alone or unacknowledged. they nod to me and i to them.' ... we distrust and deny inwardly our own sympathy with nature. we own and disown our relation to it. we are like nebuchadnezzar, cast down from our throne, bereft of our reason, and eating grass like an ox. ... it is the property of the divine to be reproductive. the harvest is seed. the good sermon becomes a text in the hearer's mind. that is the good book which sets us at work. the highest science is prophecy. jesus is but the harbinger and announcer of the comforter to come, and his continual office is to make himself less to us by making us demand more. ! the understanding, the usurping underi see nature (p. 10, centenary ed.) as to the effect on the mind of the waving of boughs in the storm. 2 almost the whole of the long passage attributed to "a certain poet” in the chapter “prospects” in nature here follows, with slight variations and no quotation marks. it is evidently mr. emerson's record of the thoughts that came from the meeting of his mind and alcott's. immediately after, in the journal, comes a large part of the conclusion of the chapter following the utterance of the “ orphic poet.” 74 [age 33 journal standing, the lieutenant of reason, his hired man, — the moment the master is gone, steps into his place; this usher commands, sets himself to finish what he was doing, but instantly proceeds with his own dwarf architecture, and thoroughly cheats us, until presently for a moment reason returns, and the slave obeys, and his work shrinks into tatters and cobwebs. not whilst the wise are one class and the good another, not whilst the physiologist and the psychologist are twain, can a man exist, and messiah come.' ... how hard to write the truth. “let a man rejoice in the truth, and not that he has found it,” said my early oracle.? well, so soon as i have seen the truth i clap my hands and rejoice, and go back to see it and forward to tell men. i am so pleased therewith that presently it vanishes. then am i submiss, and it appears “without observation.” i write it down, and it is gone. yet is the benefit of others and their love of receiving truth from me the reason of my in1 followed by the passage « man is a god in ruins," etc. (nature, p. 71, centenary ed.) 2 miss mary moody emerson. 1836] alcott's school 75 terest and effort to obtain it, and thus do i double and treble with god. the reason refuses to play at couples with understanding; to subserve the private ends of the understanding. june 24. i have read with great pleasure, sometimes with delight, no. 5 of mr. alcott's record of conversations on the gospels. the internal evidence of the genuineness of the thinking on the part of the children is often very strong. their wisdom is something the less surprising because of the simplicity of the instrument on which they play these fine airs. it is a harp of two strings, matter and spirit, and in whatever combination or contrast or harmony you strike them, always the effect is sublime.' ire as a insist upon seeing nature as a problem to be solved. it is a question addressed to you. what is a child? what is a woman? what is a year or a season? what do they signify and say to me? i this passage is followed by those about prayer being “a true study of truth” (nature, “. prospects,” p. 74, centenary ed.), and chat about every man or boy having a trust of power, whether over a potato-field or the laws of a state. (lectures and biographical sketches, “ education,” p. 128.) 76 journal [age 33 nature is yet far from being exhausted.' nature is the projection of god. it is the expositor of the divine mind. chateaubriand called it the divine imagination. say they that geometry is the divine mind, and is the landscape less so? yet see how far man is at discord with nature, for you cannot at the same time admire the prospect, and sympathize with wyman and tuttle digging in the field. beauty and pleasure are no doubt the pilots of the mind, but it must first be healthy. july 2. mrs. ripley expressed a contempt for boccaccio, and we agreed that, in english, his was a wholly false reputation." july 5. it never rains but it pours. if you see pyrola you see nothing else but varieties of pyrola. to that one thing which a man had in his head all nature seems an illustration, all men martyrs : êv kàu nâv. 1 this is preceded by the passage on the pleasing, contrite wood-life which god allows me.” (see « self-reliance," essays, first series, p. 58, centenary ed.) 2 the passage about “the race not progressive in time" follows. (“. self-reliance," essays, first series, p. 86.) 1836] flaxman. friendship 77 human flora. subgenus, arid, lachrymose, apologetic, adhesive, wiry. afternoon man, wholesale speaker, conservative. july 9. i have looked over the designs for dante by flaxman. flaxman was a disciple of swedenborg, and the result is accordingly a threefold cord in which each may claim his strand. as wind and sun play into one another's hands in nature, so do human minds. several geniuses of the past generations are reproduced for us today in their pupils. the corn in my garden, the child of to-day, is a compound cord of which the sun, air, water, carbon, azote, and oxygen, are the plies.' july 21. pleasant it is to see two persons acting habitually and harmoniously together of entirely different manner and voice; two strong natures, neither of which impairs the other by any direct modification. the more perfect the union, the concession at the same time of individual peculiarity being the least, makes the best society. i here follow the passages upon the difficult guest, whom you must furnish ropes of sand to twist (see conduct of life), and on trusting one's instinct (essays, first series, « intellect,” p. 330, centenary ed.). 78 (age 33 journal make your own bible. select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of shakspear, seneca, moses, john and paul. july 30. man is the point wherein matter and spirit meet and marry. the idealist says, god paints the world around your soul. the spiritualist saith, yea, but lo! god is within you. the self of self creates the world through you, and organizations like you. the universal central soul comes to the surface in my body. july 31. the wise man has no secrets. secrets belong to the individual, local. he strives evermore to sink the individual in the universal. the friend who can bring him into a certain mood has a right to all the privacies that belong to that mood. moreover, he believes that no secrets can be: that the nature of the man does forever publish itself, and that all laborious concealments lose their labor. august 6. the grey past, the white future. · a year ago i studied ben jonson a good deal. you may learn much from so complete records 1836] personal impression 79 of one mind as his works are. there is something fearful in coming up against the walls of a mind on every side, and learning to describe their invisible circumference. “i know not what you think of me,” said my friend. are you sure? you know all i think of you by those things i say to you. you know all which can be of any use to you. if i, if all your friends, should draw your portrait to you — faults and graces, — it would mislead you, embarrass you; you must not ask how you please me for curiosity. . . . certainly i know what impression i made on any man, by remembering what communications he made to me.' in the scholar's ethics, i would put down bebarre wo du stehst, stick by yourself; and goethe's practice to publish his book without preface and let it be unexplained; and further the sentence in west östlichen divan about freedom. august 12. yesterday margaret fuller returned home 1 this passage seems to refer to miss margaret fuller who was visiting mr. and mrs. emerson. ne 80 journal (age 33 after making us a visit of three weeks —a very accomplished and very intelligent person.' fathers wish to be fathers of the mind as well as of the body of their children. but in my experience they seem to be merely the occasion of new beings coming into the world (rather] than parents of their life, or seers of their own affection incarnated, as alcott would think. at times, as in the wood on wednesday, it seems as if all the particular life were mere byplay and in no way of cause and effect connected with the absolute life. i said once that if you go expressly to look at the moon, it becomes tinsel. a party of viewhunters will see no divine landscape. there is, however, in moon-gazing something analogous to newton's fits of easy transmission and reflection. you catch the charm one moment, then it is gone, then it returns to go again, and, spoken i mr. cabot (memoir, pp. 274–279) gives a very just account of miss fuller's friendly but difficult relations with mr. emerson, who came to value her, but this friendship was never very intimate. mrs. emerson had a great regard for her, and miss fuller in her frequent visits stirred the minds of the young people of concord, who flocked to hear her. 2 nature, p. 19, centenary ed. 1836) margaret fuller 81 of, it becomes flat enough. perhaps the “fits” depend on the pulsations of the heart. august 13. some men have a heart, and feel the claims of others. other men have an intellectual heart, or a perception of the claims of others. a third class have neither, and are neither desired nor approved. how rarely can a female mind be impersonal. sarah r[ipley] is wonderfully free from egotism of place and time and blood. margaret f[uller] by no means so free, with all her superiority. what shall i say of aunt mary? august 17. “our part in public occasions,” says goethe, “is, for the most part, philisterei." true of commencement, and this cambridge jubilee. wa august 27. to-day came to me the first proof-sheet of nature to be corrected, like a new coat, full of vexations; with the first sentences of the chapters perched like mottoes aloft in small type ! the peace of the author cannot be wounded by 82 (age 33 journal such trifles, if he sees that the sentences are still good. a good sentence can never be put out of countenance by any blunder of compositors. it is good in text or note, in poetry or prose, as title or corollary. but a bad sentence shows all his flaws instantly by such dislocation. so that a certain sublime serenity is generated in the soul of the poet by the annoyances of the press. he sees that the spirit may infuse a subtle logic into the parts of the piece which shall defy all accidents to break their connexion. the man of talents who brings his poetry and eloquence to market is like the hawk which i have seen wheeling up to heaven in the face of noon, and all to have a better view of mice and moles and chickens. august 29. en peu d'heure dieu labeure. god works in moments. with what satisfaction i read last night with george b[radford] some lines from milton. in samson agonistes and elsewhere, with what dignity he felt the office of the bard, the solemn office borne by the great and grave of every age for the behoof of all men; a call which never 1836) commencement 83 was heard in the frivolous brains of the moores and hugos and bérangers of the day. the “threnes” of shakspear seem to belong to a “purer state of sensation and existence,” to use landor's word. humility characterises the highest class of genius, homer, milton, shakspear. we expect flashes of thought, but this is highest yet; the sorrows of adam and eve. there is a difference between the waiting of the prophet and the standing still of the fool. george bradford says of alcott that he destroys too many illusions. september 2. we see much truth under the glitter and ribbons of a festival like commencement. each year the same faces come there, but each elongated or whitened or fallen a little. the courage too that is felt at presenting your own face before the well-known assembly, is not an extempore feeling, but is based on a long memory of studies and actions. an assembly is a sort of judgment day, before whose face every soul is tried. fat and foolish faces, to be sure, there are in the forefront of the crowd, but they are are 84 journal (age 33 only warnings, and the imps and examples of doom. the scholar looks in at the door, but unwilling to face this ordeal to little purpose, he retreats and walks along solitary streets and lanes far from the show. every principle is a war-note. september 13. i went to the college jubilee on the 8th instant. a noble and well-thought-of anniversary. the pathos of the occasion was extreme, and not much noted by the speakers. cambridge at any time is full of ghosts; but on that day the anointed eye saw the crowd of spirits that mingled with the procession in the vacant spaces, year by year, as the classes proceeded; and then the far longer train of ghosts that followed the company, of the men that wore before us the college honors and the laurels of the state the long, winding train reaching back into eternity. but among the living was more melancholy reflection, namely, the identity of all the persons with that which they were in youth, in college halls. i found my old friends the same; the same jokes pleased, the same straws tickled; the manhood and offices they brought 1836) progress. suum cuique 85 hither to-day seemed masks; underneath we were still boys. “dulness of the age.” what age was not dull? when were not the majority wicked? or what progress was ever made by society? society is always flat and foolish. the only progress ever known was of the individual. a great wit is, at any time, great solitude. a barnyard is full of chirping and cackle, but no fowl claps wings on chimborazo. own w the rain has spoiled the farmer's day, shall sorrow put my books away? thereby are two days lost. nature will speed her own affairs, i will attend my proper cares, come rain or sun or frost.' september 20. yesterday despatched a letter to thomas carlyle.? in the afternoon attended a meeting of friends at mr. ripley's house; present i printed in the first volume of poems under the title suum cuique ; omitted by mr. emerson in selected poems, and by the editors in the later editions. 2 with this letter, written sept. 17 (see carlyle-emerson correspondence), was sent a copy of nature, published anonymously a few days earlier. the edition was only five hundred, and no new edition appeared for thirteen years. 86 journal (age 33 ma frederic h. hedge, convers francis, a. bronson alcott, james freeman clarke, orestes a. brownson, george ripley.' the conversation was earnest and hopeful. it inspired hope. george ripley said that a man should strive to be an idea and merge all his personalities, in debate. we agreed to bury fear, even the fear of man, and if dr. c. and mr. j. p. or dr. j. w.; should join us, no man should look at the spout, but only at the flowing water. incidentally we had some character-drawing. i said of mr. f.,he has a french mind and should have been born at paris in the era of brilliant conversation, with the diderots, grimms, rousseaus, de staëls. pit him against a brilliant mate i for an interesting account by dr. frederic h. hedge of the gathering of friends here referred to, and the formation of what has been sometimes called “ the transcendental club,” see mr. cabot's memoir, vol. i, chapter vii ; also the memoir of bronson alcott, by william t. harris and f. b. sanborn, vol. i, chapter vi. mr. ripley was george ripley, later the founder of the brook farm community. 2 perhaps these initials stand for rev. dr. channing, mr. jonathan phillips, a leading citizen of boston, and dr. john ware, or dr. john c. warren, the eminent surgeon. 3 mr. f. probably was rev. nathaniel frothingham, a valued friend of mr. emerson, and successor of his father as minister of the first church in boston. 1836] the symposium 87 and he will sparkle and star away by the hour together. but he is hopeless, he has no hope for society. the rule suggested for the club was this, that no man should be admitted whose presence excluded any one topic. i said in the beginning of the afternoon, — present only g. ripley and james f. clarke, — that ’t was pity that in this titantic continent, where nature is so grand, genius should be so tame. not one unchallengeable reputation. i felt towards allston, as landor said of his picture, “i would give fifty guineas to the artist would swear it was a domenichino.” so allston was a beautiful draughtsman, but the soul of his picture is imputed by the spectator. his merit is, like that of kean's recitation, merely outlinear, strictly emptied of all obtrusive individuality, but a vase to receive, and not a fountain to impart character. so of bryant's poems, — chaste, faultless, beautiful, but uncharacterized. so of greenough's sculpture, — picturesque, but not creative and in the severe style of old art. so of dr. channing's preaching. they are all feminine or receptive, and not masculine or creative. a railroad, state street, bunker hill monument, are genuine productions of the age, but no art. ... the reason is manifest. they [i. e. ob88 journal [age 33 jects of art] are not wanted. the statue of jove was to be worshipped. the virgin of titian was to be worshipped. jesus, luther were reformers; moses, david did something; the builders of gothic cathedrals feared. love and fear laid the stones in their own order.' what interest has greenough to make a good statue? who cares whether it is good ? a few prosperous gentlemen and ladies; but the universal yankee nation roaring in the capitol to approve or condemn would make his eye and hand and heart go to a new tune. well, what shall nourish the sense of beauty now? speech is an art of eternal riches and fitness. it was requested that this be the subject of discussion at the next meeting, and i should open the debate. these things now are merely ornamental. nothing that is so can be beautiful. whatsoever is beautiful must rest on a basis as broad as man. there can be no handsomeness that is not such of necessity, that does not proceed from the nature of the man that made it. poetry, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, were all enlisted in the service of religion. the gayest petal serves i compare the similar expression in « the problem,” poems. 1836] american hindrances 89 the flower. the finest form in woman is only perfected health. the steady tendency, i think, of things now, is to a reduction of speculation of all sorts to science, that is, to a conformity with the nature of things (as observed). swedenborg's reform was from dogmas to the nature of things : he had no ornament, no diction, no choice of words. sir walter raleigh's conclusion of his history of the world is sublime only because it closes a history of the world. in a sermon it would not be of much mark. the top stone of a pyramid is sublime by position; so the sentence admired by warburton in milton's history. seni think two causes operate against our intellectual performances : 1, our devotion to property. the love of liberty in the revolution made some great men. but now the sentiment of patriotism can hardly exist in a country so vast. it can be fired in carolina by contracting the country to carolina. it might be, here, by separating massachusetts from the union. however, i confess i see nothing in the outward condition of a native of this country which 90 [ace 33 journal any but a sickly, effeminate person can arraign. 2, but the influence of europe certainly seems to me prejudicial. genius is the enemy of genius. september 21. the ship, beating at sea, gains a small commission of miles for her true course on every tack. so in life, our profession, our dilettantism, gives us with much parade a little solid wisdom: the days and hours of reason will shine with steady light as the life of life, and all the other days and weeks appear as hyphens to join these. [mr. emerson refers here to an entry concerning reason in the journal, on july 10, 1835.] the bird of passage, what does he signify ? nature. she keeps the market stocked with her article at the lowest price, but never sells her secret. september 23. “should,” says goethe, “was the genius of the antique drama; would of the modern, but should is always great and stern; would is weak and small." shall i write on the tendency of modern mind to lop off all superfluity and tradition, and fall 1836] writing, old and new 91 back on the nature of things ? science had much charlatanism, once, of magic and gowns and methods; now it is reduced to strict observation. its very experiments are simple and cheap, and it perceives the truth, that the universal fact is what happens once. it works too with a certain praise of the mind towards simplicity, unity, in process and cause. davy, playfair, de candolle, black, cuvier, la place, arago are its names. in literature it is not different. the romantic ate up the doric letters and life of the old nations. the middle age delighted in excessive ornament, in foreign and fabulous particulars. it was farthest from the nature of things. it did not voluntarily clothe truth with fable, but any high-colored, picturesque fiction pleased the savages. roman de la rose, saracen giant, horse of brass, arabian nights, amadis, morte d arthur. these were true without knowing it and against their will. and, all along, the chaucer, the spenser, the shakspear, who fell into this taste of the wild and wonderful, by divine instinct drew near to man, held fast to the common. yet they too exaggerated circumstance, and thought a king as necessary as the sky to a poem. bacon at the same time wrote of states 92 journal (age 33 and kingdoms and kings and wealth, — and sidney's arcadia, how far from truth! ben jonson how fantastical and pedantic!— and, spite of the depth of their genius and their noble height of spirit and earnestness, they are very tedious writers, the hookers, and beaumont and fletchers. we come to milton; learning threatened to make him giddy, but he was wise by ancient laws and clave to the piety and principle of his times. a whole new world of science and reflective thought has since opened which he knew not. addison, pope and swift played with trappings and not with the awful facts of nature. there is in all the great writers, especially in dr. johnson and burke, occasional perception and representation of the necessary, the plain, the true, the human; intimations that they saw the adamant under all the upholstery of which their age made so much. but the political changes of the time, which have unfolded every day with a rapidity sometimes terrific, the democratic element, have shown the nullity of these once highly prized circumstances and given a hollow sound to the name of king and earl and lord. vast quantities of the stock literature of the past, the pastoral poems, the essays, the ser1836] european writers 93 mons, the politics, the novels, turning on merely local and phenomenal questions, written from the understanding and vital with no inspiration of reason, is perishing. the french period brought rousseau and voltaire into the field and their army of encyclopædists, to speak for the people and protest against the corruptions and tyrannies of monarchy. pascal uttered amidst his polemics a few thrilling words. paine and the infidels began with good intentions, and the cobbetts and malthuses and benthams have aimed at the same; foolish men, but dominated by a wisdom of humanity. franklin popularized. in england, however, at last there arose coleridge, southey, and wordsworth, men who appreciated man and saw the nullity of circumstances. smollett, fielding, and goldsmith treat only of the life of common sense; the apparent. these writers perceive the dependence of that on the life of the reason; or the real. their spirit diffuses itself into pulpits and parliaments and magazines and newspapers. this came deepest and loudest out of germany, where it is not the word of few, but of all the wise. the professors of germany, a secluded race, free to think, but not invited to action, osa 94 (age 33 journal poor and crowded, went back into the recesses of consciousness with kant, and whilst his philosophy was popular, and by its striking nomenclature had imprinted itself on the memory, as that of phrenology does now, they analysed in its light the history of past and present times which their encyclopædiacal study had explored. all geography, all statistics, all philology was read with reason and understanding in view, and hence the reflective and penetrating sight of their research. niebuhr, humboldt, müller, heeren, herder, schiller, fichte, schlegel. a portion of their poets and writers are introversive to a fault, and pick every rose to pieces, tieck and richter. wieland writes of real man, and herder, and, above all, goethe. he is the high priest of the age. he is the truest of all writers. his books are all records of what has been lived, and his sentences and words seem to see. what is good that is said or written now lies nearer to men's business and bosoms than of old. what is good goes now to all. what was good a century ago is written under the manifest belief that it was as safe from the eye of the common people as from the tartars. the universal man is now as real an existence as the devil was then. prester john no more shall .95 1836] new questions be heard of. tamerlane and the buccaneers vanish before texas, oregon territory, the reform bill, the abolition of slavery and of capital punishment, questions of education, and the reading of reviews; and in these all men take part. the human race have got possession, and it is all questions that pertain to their interest, outward or inward, that are now discussed, and many words leap out alive from bar-rooms, lyceums, committee rooms, that escape out of doors and fill the world with their thunder. when i spoke or speak of the democratic element, i do not mean that ill thing, vain and loud, which writes lying newspapers, spouts at caucuses, and sells its lies for gold, but that spirit of love for the general good whose name this assumes. there is nothing of the true democratic element in what is called democracy; it must fall, being wholly commercial. i beg i may not be understood to praise anything which the soul in you does not honor, however grateful may be names to your ear and your pocket. september 24. i think the same spirit of reform in the same direction, by applying itself more truly to the nature of things, may be seen in the religion 96 [age 33 journal of this day. it repudiates the unnecessary traditions, and says, what have i to do with them? give me truth. the unbelief of the day proceeds out of the deepest belief. it is because men see that the personalities of christendom and its ecclesiastical history are a pile of draff and jackstraws beside the immutable laws of moral nature, a doctrine about baptism, for example, compared with the obligation to veracity, and any picture or declamation about the employments and felicities of the good in heaven compared with what man doth, and therefore teacheth, by all his organs every day. all the devils respect virtue. there is, it has been said, -and perhaps we all have seen history enough to prove it, -a certain demoniacal force in some men which, without virtue and without eminent talents, yet makes them strong and prevailing. no equal appears in the field against them. a force goes out from them which draws all men and events into their favor. lies and truths, crimes and mistakes seem equally to turn to their account, and only virtue beats them. their own vice poisons their life, defeats their victory, besmears their glory, and unmakes their being, so that in a few years their whole fame goes out in unclean 1836] virtue. concealment 97 smoke. but virtue, or the sentiment of the right, is the immutable victor of the universe. and what is virtue? it is adherence of actions to the nature of things. it remains to be taught in no words that can be evaded, but in words of fate, that what a man does, that he has; that he is his own giver of joy and pain; that with god is no paltering or double dealing, and all hope may, in front of him, be left behind; that a man may regard no good as solid but that which is the fruit of his nature and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. this is to walk in the light. here is no hope and no fear, but plain sight. there is no concealment. there is no truth in the proverb, that if you get up your name, you may safely play the rogue. thence the balancing proverb, that in every wit is a grain of fool. you are known.” ... on the other hand, can you not withhold the avowal of a just and brave act for fear it will go unwitnessed and unloved? one knows it. who? yourself, and i part of this paragraph is in “ spiritual laws” (essays, first series, p. 143, centenary ed.). 2 here follows the passage, “ his sin bedaubs him,” etc. (see “spiritual laws,” essays, first series, p. 159), also the passage about unavowed fine actions helping the hero. 98 journal (age 33 are pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, and will not that be a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident? look into the stage-coach and see the faces ! stand in state street and see the heads and the gait and gesture of the men; they are doomed ghosts going under judgment all day long. this is the effervescence and result of all religions; this is what remains at the core of each, when all forms are taken away. that is the law of laws, vedas, zoroaster, koran, golden verses of pythagoras, bible, confucius. this is that which is carved in mythology, and the undersong of epics, and the genius of history and birth and marriage and war and trade do only typify this, and the world as it whirls round its solar centre sings this perpetual hymn, and nature writes it in flame characters of meteor and orb and system on every far and silent wall of the temple of space. why do i like the old sculpture? because it is, like the works of nature, made after a high and severe pattern made by men in whom the moral law inhered. the jove, the apollo and the phidian works are related to virtue. gladly, gladly would i come nearer to the fact, but i 0 € 1836] want and have 99 must content myself with this coarse and remote generality. (see also what is writ in my journal at naples on this subject.) september 26. the young man apologizes for his smoky room and slender fire, and promises himself that after a year or two he shall have things as he wishes. but the love of display is too strong for him still. he builds a bigger house than he ought, keeps a better table, and the third or fourth year still finds him apologizing for an ill-contrived fireplace which he wants means promptly and thoroughly to remedy. want is a growing giant, and have could never cut a coat large enough to cover him. an ov very strange and worthy of study is the pleasure we derive from a description of something we recognize in our past life; as when i read goethe's account of the feelings of a bridegroom. the subjective is made objective. that which we had only lived, and not thought and not valued, is now seen to have the greatest beauty as picture; and as we value a dutch painting of a kitchen, or a frolic of blackguards, or a beggar catching a flea, when the scene itself we should avoid, so we see worth in things we had slighted 100 journal (age 33 these many years. a making it a subject of thought, the glance of the intellect raises it. we look at it now as a god upraised above care or fear. it admonishes us instantly of the worth of the present moment. it apprizes us of our wealth, for if that hour and object can be so valuable, why not every hour and event in our life, if passed through the same process? i learn (such is the inherent dignity of all intellectual activity) that i am a being of more worth than i knew, and all my acts are enhanced in value. the deepest pleasure comes, i think, from the occult belief that an unknown meaning and consequence work in the common, every-day facts, and, as a panoramic or pictorial beauty can arise from it, so can a solid wisdom, when the idea shall be seen as such which binds these gay shadows together. it is the pleasure arising from classification that makes calvinism, popery, phrenology run and prosper. calvinism organizes the best-known facts of the world's history into a convenient mythus, and, what is best, applied to the individual. we are always at the mercy of a better classifier than ourselves. i read in sir christopher wren:“variety of uniformities makes complete the world's will 101 beauty.” “uniformities are best tempered, as rhymes in poetry, alternately, or sometimes with more variety, as in stanzas. ... “the doric architecture, recording in its metopes all the eloquence of sculpture.” – life of wren, “ library of useful knowledge.” all in each. the movements and forms of all beings in nature, except man, are beautiful from their consonance to the whole. the world seems to be guarantee for every particular movement. the all finds its bloom or flowering in that act we at the moment observe. the human will is an exception. human acts are short, shallow and awkward, proceeding out of so shallow a source as the individuality of each. those acts which voluntarily or involuntarily take hold on the will of the world seem great, on the contrary, as they fall into this divine order, as when a man plants a field, or builds a house. i like that commendation of cato, that he seemed born for that one thing he did, be it what it might, because that is the character of every natural action, that it seems the end which all things conspire to produce. how curious we are respecting the attain102 journal (age 33 ments of another mind in the knowledge of deity, is shown by our desire to know of calvinism and swedenborgianism. the man of another church is no nearer to god than you are, yet you feel so far from god as to be curious concerning what each bigot can say. in other words, sectarianism is the ignorance of god. when i am sane and devout, i see well what sort of revelation a good man hath; i see my curiosity concerning revivals and devotees to be vain. i oversee them. september 27. let us continue the application of our criticism to art. what must be the principles after which it can be reformed ? art is the creation of beauty. but nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty.' ... why not in architecture? the temple decorated with sculptures is better for religious worship than one unadorned. i suppose that a painting pleases somewhat as a poem does : it is an impersonated action. it is the past restored; the fear is taken out of it. it is eviscerated of care: it is offered merely for contemplation as a part of i here follows the passage on fitness of coloration in the birds and creatures in the essay “ art.” (see conduct of life, pp. 52, 53, centenary ed.) na ne 1836] reason makes art 103 the universe of god. what is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings, and appeals to the vaticinating reason, and asks whether the object be agreeable to the preëxistent harmonies. a work of art is something which the reason created in spite of the hands; it was the work of inspired moments, and now it is presented to the reason again for judgment. its charm, its wonder, is heightened by its contrast to the things around and vulgar thoughts, and by its kindred to the works of nature. pr september 28. some kindred pleasure does architecture give. the cobweb, the bird's-nest, the silver counterpane of the stone-spider, the cocoon, the honeycomb, the beaver-dam are the wild notes of nature: the wigwam, the tent, the mound, are the elements of it in man. rome, athens, the coliseum, the cathedral of strasburg, the obelisk, are the poems in which he has allowed his higher thought on the foundation of the necessary to fulfil its demands to the last hair.' ... i here follows the passage on strasburg cathedral, etc, (see essays, first series, “ history," pp. 17, 18, centenary ed.) also that on the origin of the obelisk, amphi104 journal (age 33 a very good discourse on marriage might be written by him who would preach the nature of things. let him teach how fast the frivolous external fancying fades out of the mind. let him teach both husband and wife to mourn for the rapid ebb of inclination not one moment, to yield it no tear. as this fancy picture, these fata-morgana, this cloud scenery fades forever; the solid mountain chains whereupon the sky rests in the far perspective of the soul begin to appear. the parties discover every day the deep and permanent character each of the other as a rock foundation on which they may safely build their nuptial bower. they learn slowly that all other affection than that which rests upon what they are is superstitious and evanescent; that all concealment, all pretension, is wholly vain, that to the amiable and useful and heroic qualities which inhere in the other belong a certain portion of love, of pleasure, of veneration, which is as exactly measured as the attraction of a pound of iron; that there is no luck, nor witchcraft, nor destiny, nor divinity in marriage theatre, and many customs and ceremonies as nature working through man. (see society and solitude, “ art," p. 54, and natural history of intellect, “ papers from the dial,” pp. 324, 325.) 1836) hospitality 105 that can produce affection, but only those qualities that by their nature extort it; that all love is mathematical. 1us. he who seeks self-union is accused of injusd inhospitality. people stretch out to him their mendicant arms, to whom he feels that he does not belong and who do not belong to him. he freezes them with his face of apathy, and they very naturally tax him with selfishness. he knows it is unjust. send me, he says, cold, despised and naked, the man who loves what i love, the man whose soul is regulated and great, and he shall share my loaf and my cloak. but people of this class do not approach him, but the most unfit associates hasten to him with joy and confidence that they are the very ones whom his faith and philosophy invites; they mar all his days with their follies, and then with their tacit reproaches, so that his fair ideal of domestic life and serene household gods he cannot realize, but is afflicted instead with censures from the inmate, censures from the observer, and necessarily, if he be of a sympathetic character, censures from himself also. i suppose he must betimes take notice of this fact, that the like-minded shall not be sent 106 journal (age 33 him; that apollo sojourns always with the herdsmen of admetus; that he must not be too much a utilitarian with too exact calculation of profit and loss, but must cast his odors round broadcast to the gods, heedless if they fall upon the altar or upon the ground, for all the world is god's altar. let his music be heard, let his flowers open, let his light shine, believing that invisible spectators and friends environ him, and honorable afar is a kindness done to the obscure. moreover, when once he attains a spiritual elevation sufficient to understand his daily life and the ministry to him of this motley crew, this galling prose will be poetry. for hospitality, however, the duties will clear themselves: give cake and lemons to those who come for such, and give them nothing else, and account yourself cheaply let off. and if those seek you whom you do not seek, hold them stiffly to their rightful claims. give them your conversation; be to them a teacher, utter oracles, but admit them never into any infringement on your hours; keep state: be their priest, not their companion, for you cannot further their plans, you cannot counsel them on their affairs, and you have never pledged yourself to do so by confounding your relation to them. 1836] universal laws 107 every law will, some time or other, become a fact. it is idle talking to discourse of history unless i can persuade you to think reverently of the attributes of your own mind. if you persist in calling a quadrant a crooked stick, and will not sufficiently credit its relation to the sun and the celestial sphere, to put it to your eye and so find the sun, you can never learn your latitude. but true it is that the intelligent mind is forever coming into relation with all the objects of nature and time, until from a vital point it becomes a great heart from which the blood rolls to the distant channels of things, and to which, from those distant channels, it returns. the fine prints and pictures which the dentist hangs in his ante-room have a satirical air to the waiting patient. political economy. every cent in a dollar covers its worth; perhaps also covers its wo.. if you covet the wealth of london, undoubtedly it would be a great power and convenience, but each pound and penny is a representative of so much commodity, so much corn and labor, and, of necessity, also of so much mould and pain, of so much good certainly, but, of necessity 108 journal (age 33 also, of so much evil. could your wish transfer out of london a million pounds sterling into your chest, so would also, against your wish, just so massive an ill-will and fear concentrate its black rays upon you. it follows that whatever property you have must pay its full tax; if it come not out of the head, it comes out of the tail. pay the state its full dividends and, if your means increase, pay society its full dividend, by new exertion of your faculty for its service, or you must pay a debt to fate, to the eumenides, in such doom of loss, degradation or death as they shall choose. anable man is as rich as the world. how much water is there? you ask, when the rain begins to fall. why, all in the planet, if wanted. and an able merchant takes up into his operations first and last all the property of the world; he bases his projects upon it. why is there no genius in the fine arts in this country? in sculpture greenough is picturesque; in painting, allston ; in poetry, bryant; in eloquence, channing; in architecture, — ; in fiction, irving, cooper; in all, feminine, no character. os 1836] arts in america 109 ist reason : influence of europe, mainly of england. all genius fatal to genius. come not too near: keep off. sculpture did not spring up here, but imported. our painter is the most successful imitator of the titianesque. poetry – pope and shakspear destroy all. in england, the same — van artevelde. eloquence, canning and brougham. architecture 2nd reason. they are not called out by the necessity of the people. poetry, music, sculpture, painting were all enlisted in the service of patriotism and religion. the statue was to be worshipped, the picture also. the poem was a confession of faith. a vital faith built the cathedrals of europe. but who cares to see a poem of bryant's, or a statue of greenough, or a picture of allston? the people never see them. the mind of the race has taken another direction, — property. patriotism, none. religion has no enthusiasm. it is external, prudential. but these are only statements of a fact that there is no fine art now; not explanation of it. i believe the destitution is merely apparent. it is sickly and effeminate to arraign. the sense of beauty springs ever new; the sentiment of good; the idea of truth. and every age has 110 [age 33 journal its own forms for them. the greek was the age of observation; the middle age, that of fact and thought; ours, that of reflection and ideas. that people are as hungry now as ever is proved by the success of scott and byron. what can be done by us? 1. redeem them from imitation; jacobinism will. ne te quaesiveris extra. 2. preach the nature of things. eve the world is full of judgment days. the event is always modified by the nature of the being on whom it falls. an assembly of men, or a wise man, do always try us. as a snow-flake falling on the ground is white; falling on a man's hand becomes water; falling on the fire becomes steam. very disagreeable rencontres are there all the way. to meet those who expect light from you, and to be provoked to thwart and discountenance and unsettle them by all you say, is pathetical. again, to make an effort to raise the conversation of your company by communicating your recondite thought, and to behold it received with patronizing interest by one of the company, and with liberal and foolish illustration returned to you, may make you hang 1836] harmony of world wi your head. my visit to groton was variously instructive. the house praises the carpenter. when we study architecture, everything seems architectural, the forms of animals, the building of the world, clouds, crystals, flowers, trees, skeletons. when we treat of poetry, all these things begin to sing. when of music, lichfield cathedral is a tune. the world is picturesque to allston, dramatic to garrick, symbolical to swedenborg, utilitarian to franklin, a seat of war to napoleon, etc., etc. i observe that after looking at the print of a cathedral the house-prints and trade-illustrations are offensive, but a greek statue not; animals and plants not; and especially grateful and homogeneous was the print of organic remains of the elder world restored.' ... moral sentiment must act, or there is no selfrespect. the most brilliant achievement of the intellect would not reconcile me to myself, or make me feel that there was any stability and i here follows the passage on forest forms blossoming into stone in gothic cathedrals, from « history,” essays, first series, pp. 20-22, centenary ed. 112 journal [age 33 worth in human society. but if i command myself and help others, i believe in and love man. intellect has its own ethics. let it work to cheer all, and say to all, “ hope in god,” and chill no man and no woman. where it cometh let it smile, that all who see it may feel, good times are coming. genius works ever in sport, and goodness hath ever a smile. september 30. i dislike the gruff, jacobin manners of our village politicians, but i reconcile myself to them by the reflection that genius hurts us by its excessive influence, hurts the freedom and inborn faculty of the individual; and, if webster, everett, channing, yea, plato and shakspear, found such cordial adorers in the populace as in the scholars, no more platos and shakspears could arise. but by this screen of porcupine quills, of bad manners and hatred, is the sacred germ of individual genius concealed and guarded in secular darkness. after centuries, will it be born a god. out of druids and berserkirs were alfred and shakspear made. observe how strongly guarded is the common sense. if men were left to contemplation, if the contemplative life were practicable, to 1836] soul in science 113 what subtilties, to what dreams and extravagancies would not all run! laputa, a court of love, a college of schoolmen, would be the result. how is this hindered? poverty, frost, famine, rain, disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to common sense. nandoes it not seem that the tendency of science is now from hard figures and marrowless particulars, dead analysis, back to synthesis ; that now ideology mixes therewith; that the education of the people forces the savant to show the people something of his lore which they can comprehend, and that he looks for what humanity there remains in his science, and calls to mind, by finding it valued, much that he had forgotten? geoffrey de saint hilaire, cuvier, hunter, everard home, davy. everything is necessary in its foundation. the oath that is heard in the street, and the jargon profanity of boys, point not less distinctly than a church at the conviction in man of absolute nature, as distinct from apparent and derivative nature. october 6. i neglected on my return from boston to record the pleasant impression made by the mon114 journal (age 33 day afternoon meeting at mr. alcott's house. present, alcott, bartol, brownson, clarke, francis, hedge, ripley, emerson. alcott maintained that every man is a genius, that he looks peculiar, individual, only from the point of view of others. genius has two faces, one towards the infinite god, one towards men, but i cannot report him. bartol too spoke very well. and clarke gave examples from the west of the genesis of art; as oratory and painting.' transcendentalism means, says our accomplished mrs. b.,' with a wave of her hand, a little beyond. shall i call my subject the philosophy of modern history, and consider the action of the same general causes upon religion, art, science, literature; consider the common principles on which they are based; the present condition of these severally; and the intellectual duties of 1 james freeman clarke had been a pioneer preacher in louisville, kentucky, where he edited the western messenger, to which mr. emerson contributed several of his early poems. 2 probably mrs. barlow, the mother of the gallant general francis c. barlow. 1836] preacher and hearer 115 the present generation, and the tendencies of the times, inferred from the popular science?' october 11. in the pulpit at waltham, i felt that the composition of his audience was not of importance to him who possessed true eloquence; smooth or rugged, good-natured or ill-natured, religious or scoffers, — he takes them all as they come, he proceeds in the faith that all differences are superficial, that they all have one fundamental nature which he knows how to address. this is to be eloquent; and having this skill to speak to their pervading soul, he can make them smooth or rugged, good-natured or ill-natured, saints or scoffers, at his will. eloquence always tyrannical; never complaisant or convertible. october 13. observe this invincible tendency of the mind to unify. it is a law of our constitution that we 1 the course, called the philosophy of history, was given in boston in the following december and january, twelve lectures, viz.: “introductory,” “humanity of science,” “ art,” « literature,” « politics,” “ religion,” “society," « trades and professions,” « manners," ethics,” “the present age,” • individualism.” (see cabot's memoir of emerson, vol. ii, appendix f.) 116 [age 33 journal should not contemplate things apart without the effort to arrange them in order with known facts and ascribe them to the same law. i do not choose to say, “god is within me — i do not like your picture of an external god. i suppose there is one spirit, and only one, the selfsame which i behold inly when i am overcome by an aweful moral sentiment, and he made the world.” i do not choose to say this. it is said for me by tyrannical instincts. hence goethe, beholding the plant in an hour of reason and seeing a petal in transition from a leaf, exclaims, every part of the plant is a leaf; a petal is a leaf; a fruit is a leaf; a seed is a leaf — metamorphosed; and slow-paced experiment makes good this prophetic vision. in like manner, the skull is with him a vertebra of the spine metamorphosed. for seven colors he seeks the simplest mixture, viz. : darkness and light. newton sees an apple fall and says, “the motion of the moon is nothing but an applefall, the motion of the earth is nothing but a larger apple-fall. i see the law of all nature”; and slow observation makes good this bold word. the universal law is the single fact. the system of lamarck is an imperfect ress 3 ame 1836] monad to man 117 sult of the same force. it aims to find one monad of organic life which shall be the common element of every animal, and becoming an infusory, a poplar-worm, or a man according to circumstances. it says to the canker-worm, “how dost thou, brother? please god you shall yet be a philosopher!”. and in the same audacious spirit our weimar man would say, the monad is man or plant only according to the element of darkness or light which it unfolds. another demand of this constitution is, there shall be no miracle. another is, a moment is a concentrated eternity. all that ever was is now. nature teaches all this herself, the spines of the shell, the layers of the tree, the colors of the blossom, the veins of the marble. the savant is unpoetic, the poet is unscientific. i do not remember but a few names of savants who subordinated the details to the law and never lost sight of the law. kepler, newton, davy. but a chemist, — what dull lec. tures he can contrive to make of that charming 1 this passage is a reflection of the visit to the jardin des plantes in paris, in 1833. the paragraph was part of the second lecture, “ the humanity of science.” 118 journal [age 33 science ! a chemistry is but a catalogue, as dull reading as a manual of law-forms. “as sure as death and rates.”: death and rates are sure. october 15. the brilliant and warm day led me out this morn into the wood and to goose pond. amid the many-colored trees i thought what principles i might lay down as the foundations of this course of lectures i shall read to my fellow citizens. 1. there is one mind common to all individual men. 2. there is a relation between man and nature, so that whatever is in matter is in mind. 3. it is a necessity of the human nature that it should express itself outwardly and embody its thought. as all creatures are allured to reproduce themselves, so must the thought be imparted in speech. the more profound the thought, the more burdensome. what is in will out. action is as great a pleasure and cannot be forborne. 4. it is the constant endeavor of the mind to 1 a saying of franklin's. ccom ts 1836) unity. self-trust 119 idealize the actual, “ to accommodate the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” hence architecture and all art. 5. it is the constant tendency of the mind to unify all it beholds, or to reduce the remotest facts to a single law. hence all endeavors at classification. 6. there is a parallel tendency (corresponding unity) in nature which makes this just, as in the composition of the compound shell, or leaf, or animal from few elements. 7. there is a tendency in the mind to separate particulars, and, in magifying them, to lose sight of the connexion of the object with the whole. hence all false views, sects. , 8. underneath all appearances, and causing all appearances, are certain eternal laws which we call the nature of things. october 18. when i see a man of genius, he always inspires me with a feeling of boundless confidence in my own powers. yesternight i talked with mr. alcott of education. he proposes still the old receipt, the illustration of humanity in the life of jesus. i say, no, let us postpone everything historical to the dignity and grandeur of the present hour. 120 journal [age 33 take no thought for “the great mass,” and “the evil of being misunderstood,” etc., etc., and “what and how ye shall say.” in that hour it shall be given you what ye shall say. say the thing that is fit for this new-born and infinite hour. come, forsake, this once, this balmy time, the historical, and let us go to the most high, and go forth with him now that he is to say, let there be light. propose no methods, prepare no words, select no traditions, but fix your eye on the audience, and the fit word will utter itself, as, when the eye seeks the person in the remote corner of the house, the voice accommodates itself to the area to be filled. i rejoice in human riches when i see how manifold are the gifts of men. he is the rich man who can see and avail himself of all their faculties. what should i know of the world but that one man is forever rubbing glass, grinding lenses, cutting with diamonds, etc.; another would always be mixing colors; another is a hunter, and puts his dog's nose into every thicket, and knows what the partridge and the musquash are doing; another mines for coal; another makes almanacks; another traverses iceland ; another prints the book; and so i, in w 1836] the god in man 121 my country farmhouse, for 1500 dollars can have the good of all. october 19. as long as the soul seeks an external god, it never can have peace, it always must be uncertain what may be done, what may become of it. but when it sees the great god far within its own nature, then it sees that always itself is a party to all that can be, that always it will be informed of that which will happen, and therefore it is pervaded with a great peace. the individual is always dying. the universal is life. as much truth and goodness as enters into me, so much i live; as much error and sin, so much death is in me. yet reason never informs us how the world was made. i suppose my friends have some relation to my mind. perhaps they are its thoughts taking form and outness, though in a region above my will, and that in that fact, my plastic nature, i have a pledge of their restoration ; that is, again, hereafter, i shall be able to give my thoughts outness and enjoy myself in persons again. 'tis very strange how much we owe the perception of the absolute solitude of the spirit to 122 journal (age 33 the affections. i sit alone and cannot arouse myself to thoughts. i go and sit with my friend and in the endeavor to explain my thought to him or her, i lay bare the awful mystery to myself as never before, and start at the total loneliness and infinity of one man. october 20. nature works unique, we say, through myriad forms, so that music, optics, galvanism, mechanics, still are only divers versions of one law. is it that she pervades the soul of man with the same unity that thus he will classify and unify? are they two facts or one, these? — man aims ever to reduce compound appearances to one law. the complex appearances are reducible to a few principles, as the history of literature is one of few ideas and even of few tales. el car. october 21. on time; three sentences i am glad of a day when i know what i am to do in it. there is no time to brutes. the only economy of time is in every moment to stick by yourself. 1836] inexorable thoughts 123 october 22. the unity in nature never invites us to indolence, but to everlasting and joyful labor. you learn as much from chemistry as from a farm or a shop; that to negligence and pleasure things are dark, brutish and malignant. chemistry, astronomy, surprise all the time, and the appointed way of man from infancy to omniscience is through an infinite series of pleasant surprises. october 23. i wrote to william to-night. how little masters we are of our wits! mine run away with me. i don't know how to drive. i see them from far: then they whisk by me. i supplicate, i grieve, i point to the assembly that shall be, but the inexorable thoughts will neither run in pairs, nor in strings, nor in any manageable system. but necessity is lord of all, and when the day comes, comes always the old lord, and will harness the very air, if need be, to the cart. my lectures are anything but civil history; modern history is but a nom de guerre. but so much lecturing, and now a little printing, has bronzed me, and i am growing very dogmatic and i mean to insist that whatsoever elements of humanity have been the subjects of my studies constitute 124 journal [age 33 the indisputable core of modern history,to such lengths of madness trot we, when we have not the fear of criticism before our eyes, and the literary man in this country has no critic. october 24. the understanding speaks much, the passions much, the soul seldom. the only friend that can persuade the soul to speak is a good and great cause. out it comes, now and then, like the lightning from the cloud, and with an effect as prodigious. october 25. i wrote to warren burton' thus:in the newness of bereavement we are deaf to consolation, the spirit being occupied with exploring the facts, acquainting itself with the length and breadth of its disaster when a beloved person quits our society. what we are slow to learn we learn at last, that this affliction has no acme, and, truly speaking, no end. a passion of sorrow, even though we seek it, does not exhaust it, but there stands the irreparable fact, i the rev. warren burton, emerson's classmate, had probably written to him when charles died. mr. burton was an earnest swedenborgian and a worker in the cause of education. 1836] loss of a friend 125 more grievous when all the mourners are gone than before, that our being is henceforward the poorer by the loss of all the talents and affections of another soul. we may find many friends and other and noble gifts, but this loss is never the less. my own faith teaches me that when one of these losses befals me it is because the hour is struck in my own constitution, a crisis has there taken place which makes it best for my whole being, makes it necessary for my whole being, that this influence be withdrawn. a purer vision, an advanced state of the faculties, shall hereafter inform you and me, i doubt not, of all those reasons and necessities which now transcend our faculties.' reason wl eco ns a man knows no more to any purpose than he practises. “he that despises little things shall perish by little and little.” civil history. the man, the nation, writes out its character in every thing and action, in every name it gives. thus the noble puritans 1 something like this passage is to be found in the last two pages of “compensation ” (essays, first series). 126 (age 33 journal of massachusetts called the first vessel which they built, “the blessing of the bay.” god screens men from premature ideas. it seemed to me last night at the teachers' meeting, as so often before, that the mind is now mature enough to offer a consistent, simple system of religious faith. what is true is selfaffirmed. there are two facts, the individual and the universal. to this belong the finite, the temporal, ignorance, sin, death; to that belong the infinite, the immutable, truth, goodness, life. in man they both consist. the all is in man. in man the perpetual progress is from the individual to the universal, from that which is human to that which is divine. “self dies, and dies perpetually.” the circumstances, the persons, the body, the world, the memory are forever perishing, as the bark peels off the expanding tree; the facts so familiar to me in infancy, my cradle and porringer, my nurse and nursery, have died out of my world forever. the images of the following period are fading, and will presently be obliterated. can i doubt that the facts and events and persons and personal relations that now appertain to me will ar sos 1836] spirit endures 127 perish as utterly when the soul shall have exhausted their meaning and use? the world is the gymnasium on which the youth of the universe are trained to strength and skill. when they have become masters of strength and skill, who cares what becomes of the masts and bars and ropes on which they strained their muscle? and what is god? we cannot say, but we see clearly enough. we cannot say, because he is the unspeakable, the immeasureable, the perfect; but we see plain enough in what direction it lies. first, we see plainly that the all is in man: that, as the proverb says, “god comes to see us without bell.”. ... love, freedom, power, these are of god. for all these and much more there is a general nature in which they inhere, or of which they are phases, and this is spirit. it is essentially vital. the love that is in me, the justice, the truth, can never die, and that is all of me that will not die. all the rest of me is so much death, – my ignorance, my vice, my corporeal pleasure. but i am nothing else than a capacity for justice, truth, love, freedom, power. i can inhale, imi here follows the passage beginning with this proverb which occurs in “ the oversoul.” (essays, first series, pp. 272, 273, centenary ed.) 128 (age 33 journal bibe them forevermore. they shall be so much to me that i am nothing, they all. then shall god be all in all. herein is my immortality. and the soul affirms with the same assurance i shall live forever, as it affirms justice shall be forever. the same absurdity is involved in the contradiction of both. again : because the all is in man, we know that nothing arbitrary, nothing alien shall take place in the universe, nothing contrary to the nature in us. the soul is a party to everything that is, and therefore to everything that shall be done. we pronounce therefore with the voice of fate that such and such things must be, that such and such other things are impossible. never need we ask calvin or swedenborg, never need we ask moses or the prophets, if we are in danger, or what god will do. there is god in you. whilst god is external to the soul, it can never be safe or serene, because uncertain what may befal, but having learned to see god far within itself, it shall now be informed of all and is pervaded with a great peace. “ if our hearts condemn us, god is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things; if our hearts condemn us not, then have we confidence toward god.” 1836] god is all and here 129 the all is in man. ask no idle questions concerning the nature or deeds of christ. see thou do it not. he is thy fellow worshipper, and all power belongeth unto god. seest thou not, dear brother! what joy and peace flows out of this faith? october 27. do they not make a bridge somewhere of such construction that the strength of the whole is made to bear the strain on any one plank? do they not charter banks on the provision that the entire property of all the stockholders is accountable for every dollar of their issue? such a bridge, such a bank is a man. “he who calls what has vanished back again into being enjoys a bliss like that of creating." hare and thirlwall's niebuhr, apud lyell. the present age distinguished by the study of organic remains. the ancients studied not, but formed them. it is a type of our reflective character. well, solid learning is got from the fossils, and solid wisdom shall be got from the reflexion. geology teaches in a very impressive manner the value of facts and the laws of our 130 journal (age 33 learning from nature. plain, staring facts that have always been under everybody's foot, the slab of the pavement, the stone of the wall, the side of a hill, the gravel of the brook, in these crypts has nature deposited her secret, and notched every day of her thousand thousand millenniums. a wood sawyer may read it. the facts are capable of but one interpretation, as the rings on the tree or on the cow's horn record every year of their age. no leaps, no magic, eternal tranquil procession of old, familiar laws, the wildest convulsions never overstepping the calculable powers of the agents, the earthquake and geyser as perfect results of known laws as the rosebud and the hatching of a robin's egg. and a perpetual solicitation of man's faculties to read the riddle is made by the prominence and the beauty of the mountains and the streams under the sun and moon, meeting him everywhere in his daily walk. meantime by these archaic calendars of the sun and the internal fire, of the wash of rivers and oceans for durations inconceivable; by chimborazo and mont blanc and himmaleh, these monuments of nature and pyramids of the elements, by the side of this silent procession of brute elements, is the poem of man's life. 1836) nature's building 131 much of the process she conceals in her secret shop. her architecture is commenced and perfected in darkness and under sea. under the ooze of the atlantic she builds her basalts and pours melted granite, like warm wax, into fissures of clay and lime, and when the deposits of a thousand rivers have strewn the bed of the ocean with every year a new floor of spoils, she blows her furnaces with a gas and lifts the bed of the ocean above the water, and man enters from a boat and makes a fire on the new world and worships god thereon, plants a field and builds a school. october 29. this very plagiarism to which scholars incline (and it is often hard to acknowledge a debt) arises out of the community of mind. there is one mind. the man of genius apprises us not so much of his wealth as of the common wealth. are his illustrations happy, so, feel we, do our race illustrate their thoughts. “that's the way they show things in my country.” are his thoughts profound, so much the less are they his, so much more the property of all. nor i have always distinguished sampson reed's 132 journal (age 33 ure e ic oration on genius, and collins's ode on the passions, and all of shakspear as being works of genius, inasmuch as i read them with extreme pleasure and see no clue to guide me to their origin, whilst moore's poetry or scott's was much more comprehensible and subject to me. but, as i become acquainted with sampson reed's books and lectures, the miracle is somewhat lessened in the same manner as i once found that burke's was. as we advance, shall every man of genius turn to us the axis of his mind, then shall he be transparent, retaining, however, always the prerogative of an original mind, that is, the love of truth in god, and not the love of truth for the market. we shall exhaust shakspear. there is one advantage which every man finds in setting himself a literary task, — as these my lectures, — that it gives him the high pleasure of reading, which does not in other circumstances attain all its zest.' ... when the mind is braced by the weighty expectation of a prepared work, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. every seni here follows the passage on creative reading. (nature, etc., p. 93, centenary ed.) 1836] human chemistry 133 tence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. there is creative reading as well as creative writing. if one man gave me a loadstone, and another taught me its property of turning to the north when suspended, i think i should owe more to him who showed me its properties, than to him who gave me the mineral. the diamond and lampblack it seems are the same substance differently arranged. let it teach the importance of composition. read chemistry a little and you will quickly see that its laws and experiments will furnish an alphabet or vocabulary for all your moral observations. thus very few substances are found pure in nature. there are metals, like potassium and sodium, that, to be kept pure, must be kept under naphtha. such are the decided talents which a culminating civilization produces in illuminated theatres, or royal chambers. but those souls that can bear in open day the rough and tumble of the world must be of that mixed earthy and average structure, such as iron and salt, atmospheric air, and water. fontenelle, keats, allston. 134 journal [age 33 heard fine music at wayland from mrs. mellen; what wreaths of sound! look now, at the arrangements of society, at the parties, the education, the manners, the laws and it looks as if man were endeavoring to traverse every purpose of god. concord, october 31. last night, at ii o'clock, a son was born to me. blessed child! a lovely wonder to me, and which makes the universe look friendly to me. how remote from my knowledge, how alien, yet how kind, does it make the cause of causes appear! the stimulated curiosity of the father sees the graces and instincts which exist indeed in every babe, but unnoticed in others; the right to see all, know all, to examine nearly, distinguishes the relation, and endears this sweet child. otherwise i see nothing in it of mine; i am no conscious party to any feature, any function, any perfection i behold in it. i seem to be merely a brute occasion of its being, and nowise attaining to the dignity even of a second cause, no more than i taught it to suck the breast. please god, that “he, like a tree of generous kind, by living waters set," 1836] the first child 135 may draw endless nourishment from the fountains of wisdom and virtue. now am i pygmalion. every day a child presents a new aspect, lidian says, as the face of the sky is different every hour, so that we never get tired. the truth seems to be that every child is infinitely beautiful, but the father alone by position and by duty is led to look near enough to see. he looks with microscope. but what is most beautiful is to see the babe and the mother together, the contrast of size makes the little nestler appear so cunning, and its tiny beseeching weakness is compensated so perfectly by the happy patronizing look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing providence toward it, that they make a perfect group. there would be no sect if there were no sect. is this a foolish identical proposition? i mean that the reason why the universalist appears is because something has been overstated or omitted by the antecedent sect, and the human mind feels itself wronged, and overstates on the other side as in this. each of our sects is an extreme statement and therefore obnoxious to contradiction and reproof. but each rests on this strong 136 journal [age 33 but obscure instinct of an outraged truth. each is a cry of pain from the wounded soul. the universalist comes out of the uneducated classes where the instinct of right is very strong, but the acumen of criticism and power of drawing distinctions very little. the child preaches to us ever the divinity of nature, the shallowness of our will. shall i say “as ungrateful as an infant?” the world is full of happy marriages of faculty to object, of means to end; and all of man marries all of nature, and makes it fruitful. man may be read therefore, if you choose, in a history of the arts, or in a history of sciences. every tendency in him writes itself out somewhere to its last effort. he is a quincunx, and may be read forward, backward, or across. it seemed, yesterday morn, as the snow fell, that the adult looks more sourly than the child at the phenomena of approaching winter. the child delights in the first snow and sees with it the spruce and hemlock boughs they bring for christmas with glee. the man sees it all sourly, expecting the cold days and inconvenient roads and labors of winter. but the experience of a 1836] the present age 137 thousand years has shown him that his faculties are quite equal to master these inconveniences, and despite of them to get his bread and wisdom. therefore the child is the wiser of the two. “ disasters, do the best we can, will come to great and small, and he is oft the wisest man who is not wise at all.” the age this age will be characterized as the era of trade, for everything is made subservient to that agency. . . . superstition gives way ; patriotism; martial ardor; romance in the peon ple; but avarice does not. meantime, it is also a social era ; the age of associations, the powers of combination are discovered, and hence, of course, the age of constitutions, of universal suffrage, of schools, of revision of laws, abolition of imprisonment, of railroads. it is the age of humboldt, brougham, o'connell, scott, mahomet ali, paganini, baring, wilberforce. striking likeness in the mode of government and of trade. the fever of speculation in maine and the prairies is matched by the ardor and 138 [age 33 journal restlessness of politicians— reckless experiment." a man can make himself believe that a barren sand-bank streams with rivers that shall bear his logs, which now are blackberry bushes, into the penobscot, which is flowing 90 miles off, quite heedless of his logs or bushes. and a man caucus-wise, whose whole political skill ends in managing a newspaper and a county convention, can make himself believe that the currency or the trade or the productions of a country can be altered by a law. one of the marks by which an american vessel is known at sea is the quantity of canvas. talleyrand's thousand miles and thousand years. chateaubriand's popular character of the roman church. on us the most picturesque contrasts are crowded. we have the beautiful costume of the hindoo and the turk in our streets. our labor is done by the african. here are some present who have seen the pacific islands and the chinese. we have the american indian squaw at our doors, and all those contrasts, which commerce so fast abolishes, are brought within a holiday excursion, of the softness and refinement of syria or rome. the unitarian rajah. 1836] new land. charles 139 the founding of cities to which the course of rivers, the richness of soils, and the meridians of climate predict enormous growth, we see laid. we see the camp pitched, and the fire lighted which shall never be extinguished until great natural revolutions set a limit to human empire. we are come up to nature's feast. but the careful mother has made long prospective provision for our entertainment. many thousand years has the land we dwell on been preparing for our habitation. the wood of our fire the trees were planted many years before most of us were born. the peat of the vegetable had been crystallizing for a thousand years to form the basket of coals which this moment warms us. ... ocean is of all things the kind genesis. plutarch. i ought not to forget, in characterizing charles, the things he remarked and loved in nature. g. b. e.' truly said, “we shall think of i george barrell emerson, a distant cousin and life-long friend. he was born in wells, maine, in 1797, graduated at harvard, 1817, was tutor in mathematics there, and chosen master of the english classical school in boston when it was established, and, later, for many years conducted an admirable school for young ladies in boston. he was one of 140 journal [age 33 him when the june birds return.” the birds he loved and discriminated, and showed them us. the founders of the boston society of natural history, and, as chairman of a committee of the american institute of instruction, took a leading part in causing the establishment by the state of normal schools. through life he served wisely and well the cause of education. he was the author of the admirable work, the trees and shrubs of massachusetts. mr. emerson, in a letter written to him in 1872, said: — my dear george, — if there be one person whom i have, from my first acquaintance with him, held in unbroken honor, it is yourself. little time as four or five years appears to us now, at the day when i first saw you it was serious and impressive, you just graduated at college, i just leaving school to enter, a freshman. all the years that have gone since have not quite availed to span that gulf to my imagination. but i know not the person who has more invariably been to me the object of respect and love. you speak to my delight of your relations to my brothers, william and charles and edward. ... yours affectionately always, r. w. emerson. in mr. george b. emerson's reminiscences of an old teacher he tells that, while teaching in boston, he longed for a home, and “this longing led me to apply to a very noble lady whom i had long known, and to beg her to let me become one of her family. she granted my request in the kindest manner possible. “ she was the widow of rev. william emerson, and among her sons i found william, whom i had long known and loved, the best reader and with the sweetest voice i ever 1836] gods of antiquity 141 so the pleasing effect of the grey oak leaf on the snow pleased him well; next it was, he said, in liveliness to green and white of pine tree and snow. like my brother edward, charles had a certain severity of character which did not permit him to be silly — no, not for moments, but always self-possessed and elegant, whether morose or playful; no funning for him or for edward. it was also remarkable in charles that he contemplated with satisfaction the departure of a day. “another day is gone: i am thankful,” he said. and to elizabeth hoar, “put me by the world-wheels, and if i would n't give them a twirl!” november 5. the reality which the ancient mind attributed to all things, equally to the fictions of the poets and to the facts observed by their own eyes, is most remarkable. “for neptune, though he came last into the assembly, . "sate in the middle seat' heard, and a pleasant talker; ralph waldo, whom i had known and admired, and whom all the world now knows almost as well as i do; edward bliss, the most modest and genial, the most beautiful and the most graceful speaker, a universal favorite; and charles chauncy, bright and ready, full of sense, ambitious of distinction, and capable of it.” 142 journal (age 33 and minerva seems to have that assigned her which is next jupiter himself: ... pindar plainly says. she sits just next the thunder-breathing aames,'” says plutarch, in describing the etiquette of a feast of his own. (see morals, “symposiacs," question ii.) then they charm me with their taste, their wantonly beautiful superstitions. thus, “some that put borage into wine, or sprinkle the floor with water in which vervain and maidenhair have been steeped, as good to raise mirth and jollity in the guests,” etc. (“symposiacs,” question i.) they seem to be no transcendentalists,to rest always in the spontaneous consciousness. ow this day i have been scrambling in the woods, and with help of peter howe i have got six hemlock trees to plant in my yard, which may grow whilst my boy is sleeping. november 7. sleep for five minutes seems an indispensable cordial to the human system. no rest is like the rest of sleep. all other balm differs from the balm of sleep as mechanical mixture differs from chemical. for this is the abdication of will and 1836] sleep. preaching 143 the accepting of a supernatural aid. it is the introduction of the supernatural into the familiar day. if i have weak or sore eyes, no looking at green curtains, no shutting them, no cold water, no electuaries are of certain virtue; whatever my will doth seems tentative, but when at last i wake up from a sound sleep, then i know that he that made the eye has dealt with it for the time and the wisest physician is he. november 8. i dislike to hear the patronizing tone in which the self-sufficient young men of the day talk of ministers “adapting their preaching to the great mass.” was the sermon good? “oyes, good for you and me, but not understood by the great mass.” don't you deceive yourself, say i, the great mass understand what's what, as well as the little mass. the self-conceit of this tone is not more provoking than the profound ignorance it argues is pitiable. the fit attitude of a man is humble wonder and gratitude, a meek watching of the marvels of the creation, to the end that he may know and do what is fit. but these pert gentlemen assume that the whole object is to manage “the great mass” and they, forsooth, are behind the curtain with the deity and mean to help manage. they know all, and will now smirk 144 journal (age 33 and maneuvre and condescendingly yield the droppings of their wisdom to the poor people. the antique a man is the prisoner of ideas and must be unconscious. every man is unconscious, let him be as wise as he may, and must always be so until he can lift himself up by his own ears. i have read in english (for want of thee, dear charles !) this afternoon the ajax and the philoctetes of sophocles, of which plays the costly charm is that the persons speak simply. a great boy, a great girl with good sense, is a greek. webster was a greek when he looked so good-humoredly at major ben russell at a caucus once. beautiful is the love of nature in philoctetes.' ... under the great and permanent influences of nature all others seem insignificant. i think we make rather too much of the greek genius. as in old botanical gardens they turn up in the soil every now and then seeds that have lain dormant for ages, and as in families they say a feature will sometimes sleep for a hundred years and then reappear in a descendant of the line, i here follows the passage about the community of genuine thought, modern and ancient. (“history,” essays, second series, p. 26, centenary ed.) w 1836] the greek. nature 145 so i believe that this greek genius is ever reappearing in society, and that each of us knows one or more of the class. aunt mary is a greek, and i have more in memory. every child is a greek. yet, as i looked at some wild, tall trees this afternoon, i felt that nature was still inaccessible; that, for all the fine poems that have been written, the word is not yet spoken that can cover the charm of morning or evening or woods or lakes, and to-morrow something may be uttered better than any strain of pindar or shakspear. a wife, a babe, a brother, poverty, and a country, which the greek had, i have. see the naïveté of xenophon's account of horse troops. anabasis. is there not an improvement in modern medicine whereby the physician exhibits a very small portion of the drug with like effect as a large portion formerly? that were a right modern improvement, characteristic of our history. november 10. for form's sake, or for wantonness, i sometimes chaffer with the farmer on the price of a cord of wood, but if he said twenty dollars in146 (age 33 journal stead of five, i should think it cheap when i remember the beautiful botanical wonder — the bough of an oak— which he brings me so freely out of the enchanted forest where the sun and water, air and earth and god formed it. in like manner i go joyfully through the mire in a wet day and admire the inconvenience, delighted with the chemistry of a shower. live in the fields, and god will give you lectures on natural philosophy every day. you shall have the snowbunting, the chickadee, the jay, the partridge, the chrysalis and wasp for your neighbors. language clothes nature, as the air clothes the earth, taking the exact form and pressure of every object. only words that are new fit exactly the thing, those that are old, like old scoriæ that have been long exposed to the air and sunshine, have lost the sharpness of their mould and fit loosely. but in new objects and new names one is delighted with the plastic nature of man as much as in picture or sculpture. thus humboldt's “volcanic paps,” and “magnetic storms,” are the very mnemonics of science, and so in general in books of modern science the vocabulary yields this poetic pleasure. “ veins inosculate." 1836] xenophon. human joys 147 the idea is spiritual sight; the idealess research of facts is natural sight. cannot the natural see better when assisted by the spiritual? i read the anabasis in english to-day with great pleasure. xenophon draws characters like clarendon. his speeches are excellent: none better than that upon horses, and that where, having seen the sea, he draws up against the opposing barbarians and tells them “that these being all the obstacle that is left, they ought to eat these few alive.” he is an ancient hero; he splits wood, he defends himself by his tongue against every man in his army, as by his sword against the enemy. i will tell you where there is music in those that cannot sing: in the mother's earnest talk to her baby, shouts of love. november 12. how many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. a lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment. 148 journal [age 33 november 15. on sunday morn, 13th, at 4 o'clock, and again at 5 and at 6 o'clock, i saw falling stars in unusual numbers and dropping all perpendicular to the horizon. it was a pleasing testimony to the theory of arago. sco yesterday, the election of state and town officers. one must be of a robust temper and much familiar with general views to avoid disgust from seeing the way in which a young fellow with talents for intrigue can come into a peaceful town like this, besot all the ignorant and simple farmers and laborers, and ride on their necks until, as yesterday, they reject their long honoured townsman who had become a sort of second conscience to them, a washington in his county,' and choose in his place an obscure stranger whom they know not, and have no right to trust. yet the philosopher ought to learn hence how greedy man is of fellowship and of guidance. the low can best win the low, and all men like to be made much of. when fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the state safe, but 1 hon. samuel hoar. 1836] alcott. large thought 149 when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the commonwealth sick or dead. november 19. went to see alcott in town, and heard him read his excellent introduction to the new book he is printing of recorded conversations, an admirable piece full of profound anticipations. i listen with joy. i feel how much greater it is to hear and receive than to speak or do. every description of man seems at the moment to cover the whole ground and leave no room for future poets. but it is as goethe said, “twenty great masters have painted the madonna and child, but not one can be spared,” and no two interfere. we talked of the men of talent and men of genius and spared nobody. ... i acknowledge at once the better gifts of this and that friend who yet lack, in my judgment, the great gift whereby alone they can become of great value to me, namely, the simple sight of universal truth. these young men, it seems, now go away, and count our little club arrogant and hurtful. ... i said to alcott that i thought that the great man should occupy the whole space between 150 journal [age 33 god and the mob. ... thus did jesus, dwelling in mind with pure god, and dwelling in social position and hearty love with fishers and women. thus did shakspear, the great englishman, drawing direct from the soul at one end, and piercing into the play-going populace at the other. the one yokes him to the real, the other to the apparent; at one pole, is reason; at the other, common sense. plotinus, united with god, is not united with the world ; napoleon, rothschild, falstaff, united with the world, have no communion with the divine. ... remember in this connexion the old woman of molière; the aunt of genius. e the poet, the moralist, have not yet rendered us their entire service when they have written and published their books. the book and its direct influence on my mind, are one fact, but a more important fact is the verdict of humanity upon it, a thing not suddenly settled, and, in the case of great works, not for an age. not until the french revolution, is the character of locke's essay on the human understanding finally determined. we form opinions in the first place upon the talents of a writer, but the creeping ages bring with their verdict so much man 21. 1836) book and man. bentley 151 knowledge of the nature of man. sir humphrey davy is not estimable by his contemporaries, but having once filled the whole sky of science by his nearness, and been to beholders instead of chemistry, now globes himself into an unit and so he passes. once he was chemistry; now he is davy. november 21. i read with pleasure this morning everett's notice of bentley in the north american review for october, 1836. the beautiful facts are, that bentley having published conjectural emendations of homer, in opposition to all known manuscripts, his nephew finds at rome, sixteen years afterwards, more correct mss. in which his conjectural readings are exactly confirmed. and wheeler and spon, two learned travellers, having separately copied and published an inscription on an ancient temple of jupiter at the entrance of the euxine, chishull corrected it and published it in his antiquitates asiaticæ. bentley undertook to restore the eight lines to their original form. chishull received some and rejected some of his emendations. in 1731, the original marble was brought to england and found to coincide precisely with bentley's conjectural emendations. on an ice 152 (age 33 journal he had said he thought himself likely to live to fourscore, which was long enough to read everything that was worth reading; et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago. he compared himself in old age to “ an old trunk which, if you let it alone, will last a long time, but if you jumble it by moving, will soon fall to pieces.” he had a club which consisted of sir christopher wren, sir isaac newton, evelyn, john locke, and himself. here is his epitaph on newton:hic quiescunt ossa et pulvis isaaci newtoni. si quæris, quis et qualis fuerit, abi: sin ex ipso nomine reliqua novisti, siste paulisper et mortale illud philosophiæ numen grata mente venerare. november 25. nothing is useless. a superstition is a hamper or basket to carry useful lessons in. i told miss peabody last night that mr. coleridge's churchmanship is thought to affect the value of his criticism, etc. i do not feel it. it is a harmless freak and sometimes occurs in a wrong 1836] coleridge. history 153 place, as when he refuses to translate some alleged blasphemy in wallenstein. some men are affected with hemorrhage of the nose; it is of no danger, but unlucky when it befals where it should not, as at a wedding or in the rostrum. but coleridge's is perfectly separable. i know no such critic. every opinion he expresses is a canon of criticism that should be writ in steel, and his italics are italics of the mind. here are two or three facts plain and clear : that histories are not yet history; that the historian should be a philosopher, for surely he can describe the outward event better, if assisted by the sight of the cause; historians are men of talents, and of the market, and not devout, benevolent, with eyes that make walls no walls; that history is written to enhance the present hour; that all history is to be written from man, is all to be explained from individual history, or must remain words. we, as we read, must be romans, greeks, barbarians, priest and king, martyr and executioner, or we shall see nothing, keep nothing, learn nothing. there is nothing but is related to us; nothing that does not interest the historian in its relation; tree, horse, iron, that the roots of all things are in man and 154 journal (age 33 therefore the philosophy of history is a consideration of science, art, literature, religion, as well as politics. sallust, i think, said that men would put down to the account of romance whatever exceeded their own power to perform. a very safe and salutary truth. november 28. i thought, as i rode in the cold, pleasant light of sunday morning, how silent and passive nature offers, every morn, her wealth to man.'... dv in what i call the cyclus of orphic words, which i find in bacon, in cudworth, in plutarch, in plato, in that which the new church would indicate when it speaks of the truths possessed by the primeval church broken up into fragments and floating hither and thither in the corrupt church, i perceive myself addressed thoroughly. they do touch the intellect and cause a gush of emotion which we call the moral sublime; they pervade also the moral nature. now the universal man, when he comes, must so speak. he must not be one-toned. he must recognize by addressing the whole nature. i for the rest of this passage, see natural history of intellect, p. 28, centenary ed. 1836] otherism 155 of these truths jesus uttered many, such as: god is no respecter of persons:' his kingdom cometh without observation. his kingdom is a little child. otherism. i see plainly the charm which belongs to alienation or otherism.“what wine do you like best, o diogenes? ” “ another's,” replied the sage. what fact, thought, word, like we best? another's. the very sentiment i expressed yesterday without heed, shall sound memorable to me to-morrow if i hear it from another. my own book i read with new eyes when a stranger has praised it. no man need be perplexed in his speculation. let him keep his mind healthy, and though very ignorant of books, his nature shall keep him free from any intellectual embarrassment.” edward taylor: is a noble work of the divine i st. paul said this. romans ii, 11. 2 here follows the passage about problems of original sin, etc., being the “ soul's mumps and measles.” he says in the journal that he never had them and cannot prescribe their cure. see “spiritual laws,” essays, secord series, p. 132, centenary ed. 3. “ father taylor,” of the seaman's bethel at the north end. 156 journal [age 33 cunning who suggests the wealth of nature. if he were not so strong, i should call him lovely. what cheerfulness in his genius, and what consciousness of strength. “my voice is thunder," he said in telling me how well he was; and what teeth and eyes and brow and aspect. i study him as a jaguar or an indian, for his untamed physical perfections. he is a work, a man, not to be predicted. his vision poetic and pathetic, sight of love, is unequalled. how can he transform all those whiskered, shaggy, untrim tarpaulins into sons of light and hope, by seeing the man within the sailor, seeing them to be sons, lovers, brothers, husbands. but hopeless it is to make him that he is not; to try to bring him to account to you, or to himself, for aught of his inspiration. a creature of instinct, his colors are all opaline and dove's-neck-lustre and can only be seen at a distance. examine them, and they disappear. if you see the ignis fatuus in a swamp, and go to the place, the light vanishes; if you retire to the spot whereon you stood, it reappears. so with taylor's muse. it is a panorama of images from all nature and art, whereon the sun and stars shine; but go up to it, and nothing is there. his instinct, unconscious instinct, is the 1836) true use of history 157 nucleus or point of view, and this defies science and eludes it. do not forget charles's love of him, who said, if he were in town, he would go and record all his fine sayings. come, let us not be an appanage to alexander, charles v, or any of history's heroes. dead men all! but for me the earth is new today, and the sun is raining light. the doctrine of the amiable swedenborgian and of the subtle goethe is, that “we murder to dissect"; that nature has told everything once, if only we seek the fact where it is told in colossal. therefore are so manifold objects, to present each fact in capitals somewhere. what else is history? we see not the perspective of our own life. we see the ruts, pebbles and straws of the road where we walk, but cannot see the chart of the land. “we are not sufficiently elevated with respect to ourselves to comprehend ourselves.” our own life we cannot subject to the eye of the intellect. what remedy? why, history is the remedy. its volumes vast have but one page; it writes in many forms but one record, this human nature of mine. like [as] the signs of the zodiac, the crab, the goat, the 158 [age 33 journal scorpion, the balance, the water-pot, have lost all their meanness when hung in the blue spaces of the empyrean from an unrecorded age, so i can see the familiar and sordid attributes of human nature' without emotion as objects of pure science, when removed into this distant firmament of time.' my appetites, my weaknesses, my vices, i can see in alexander, alcibiades, and cataline, without heat, and study their laws without anger or personal pique or contrition. scythian, hebrew and gaul serve as algebraic exponents in which i can read my own good and evil without pleasure and without pain. whilst thus i use the universal humanity, i see plainly the fact that there is no progress to the race, that the progress is of individuals. one element is predominant in one; another is carried to perfection in the next; art in the greek; power in the roman; piety in the hebrew; letters in the old english; commerce in the late english ; empire in austria ; erudition in germany; free institutions in america. but in turn the whole man is brought to the light. it is like the revolution of the globe in the 1 this and the following sentence appear in a less interesting form in “ history.” (essays, second series, p. 5, centenary ed.) 1836] history. the child 159 ecliptic: each part is brought in turn under the more direct beams of the sun to be illuminated and warmed, and to each a summer in turn arrives, and the seeds of that soil have their time to be animated and ripened into flowers and fruits. mr. colburn' told me he did not understand history. the historian should be a religious man and have knowledge of the real, and not alone of the apparent, in man's nature. all histories are memoires pour servir. history must be rewritten. the fact is the phenomenon in nature, the principle is the fact in spirit, and transcends all limits of space and time. all history is in the mind, as thought, long before it is executed. the child. i think hope should be painted with an infant on her arm. november 29. a beautiful object at this season in the oak woods on the way to goose pond is the carpet formed entirely of oak leaves thickly strown and matted so as entirely to cover the ground. where snow has fallen, the contrast of the colors is still better. i probably zerah colburn, the remarkable mathematician. 160 journal [age 33 fire is the sweetest of sauces, said prodicus. it is remarkable that the greater the material apparatus, the more the material disappears, as in alps and niagara, in st. peter's and naples. there is no more chance goes to making towns than to making quadrants. knowledge of business and the world tends to acquaint a man with values. every minute of the day of a good workman is worth something in dollars and cents. the novice thinks this and that labor is of quite inappreciable value, it is so little like a bushel of corn, or so short in time in the doing. so ought men to feel about character, and history. the most fugitive deed or word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character, and the remote results of character are civil history and events that shake or settle the world. if you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep. but in analysing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial. in the present state of spain, in the old state of france, and in general in the reigns of terror, 1836] history. moore 161 everywhere, there is no idea, no principle. it is all scrambling for bread and money. it is the absence of all profound views; of all principle. it is the triumph of the senses, a total skepticism. they are all down on the floor striving each to pick the pocket, or cut the throat that he may pick the pocket, of the other, and the farthest view the miscreants have is the next tavern or brothel where their plunder may glut them. if presently one among the mob possesses ulterior aims, and these inspire him with skill, he masters all these brutes, as oxen and dogs are mastered by a man, and turns them to work for him and his thought. november 30. “ thus when the gods are pleased to plague mankind, to our rash hands our ruin is assigned.” moore's life of sheridan is a flagrant example of a book which damns itself. he writes with the manifest design of securing our sympathies for sheridan, our tears for his misfortunes and poverty, our admiration for his genius, and our indignation against the king and grandees who befriended that butterfly in his prosperity and forsook him in his jail. he details the life of a mean, fraudulent, vain, quarrelsome play-actor, 162 journal [age 33 whose wit lay in cheating tradesmen, whose genius was used in studying jokes and bons mots at home for a dinner or a club, who laid traps for the admiration of coxcombs, who never did anything good and never said anything wise. he came, as he deserved, to a bad end. the contrast between him and burke is very instructive and redounds to the praise of one and the infamy of the other. moore involves himself in the ruin and confusion of his culprit. december 2. the present state of the colony at liberia is a memorable fact. it is found that the black merchants are so fond of their lucrative occupations that it is with difficulty that any of them can be prevailed upon to take office in the colony. they dislike the trouble of it. civilized arts are found to be as attractive to the wild negro as they are disagreeable to the wild indian. december 3. i have been making war against the superlative degree in the rhetoric of my fair visitor. she has no positive degree in her description of characters and scenes. you would think she had dwelt in a museum where all things were 1836] superlative. history 163 extremes and extraordinary. her good people are very good, her naughty so naughty that they cannot be eaten. but beside the superlative of her mind, she has a superlative of grammar which is suicidal and defeats its end. her minds are “most perfect,” “most exquisite,” and “most masculine." i tell her the positive degree is the sinew of speech, the superlative is the fat. “surely all that is simple is sufficient for all that is good,” said madame de staël. december 6. look then at history as the illustration by facts of all the spiritual elements. stand before each of its tablets with the faith, here is one of my coverings; under this heavy and odious mask did my proteus nature hide itself, but look there and see the effort it made to be a god again.' see how never is it quite poor. see the divine spirit shaping itself a tabernacle in the worst depravations, and mitigating where it cannot heal disease. it occurs this evening from the great spirit (who always offers us truth, but does never volunteer to write lectures) that we must not com1 this sentence only of the present matter occurs in “ history,” essays, first series, p. 5. inven 164 (age 33 journal plain of the meagre historians who wrote what they should have omitted, and omitted what they should have written, for they and their works are also part of history: these surely manifest the tendency, the genius of the time; what ideas usurped the intellect, and to what others they were blindfolded. always history must be written by men, and when will men be unbiased? the explanation of it must come from the advancing mind of each student, each man. he must sit upon the case and judge it for himself. his own experience is piercing antiquity and commenting on roman politics and the feudal tenures. but the important suggestion is this: you say the human mind wrote on the world history, that is, did it; and now the same mind must explain it. and because every man is potentially universal, and wherever he is doing right is becoming universal, therefore must everyone, out of principles in his constitution, interpret the persian invasion, the institution of the macedonian phalanx, and the eleusinian mysteries. very well; granted. but i add, if there is unity in the human mind which originated all this wild variety of actions, then, wild as they seem, they must all proceed after a regular and gradse 1836] soul in history 165 uated plan which will only disclose itself to our future thought. the great fault of history is that it does not portray man for me. it presents me with an alaric or a bourbon, with fighters or law-makers, but it does not satisfy this great ideal we contain or which contains us. but now, when so many toiling ages have turned to the sun all sides of man, shall we not have pictures that are panoramic, shall not the great and noble laws of the human being meet us in representations of him? but when i look for the soul, shall i find a jackson caucus? it seems to me that always he is described from a point too low, his essential characteristics are not recognized, this stupendous fact of the identity, radical identity of all men, the one mind which makes each the measure of all, which makes each intelligible to all, and him most so who has striven to cleanse out of his thought every personal, parental, patrial tinge, and utter the bare thought. then that other fitness and co-nature with all beings; and so, i hope, his relation to all things, to science, to art, to men, to young and old, to books and churches, will be made to appear. 166 journal [age 33 december 10. pleasant walk yesterday, the most pleasant of days. at walden pond i found a new musical instrument which i call the ice-harp. a thin coat of ice covered a part of the pond, but melted around the edge of the shore. i threw a stone upon the ice which rebounded with a shrill sound, and falling again and again, repeated the note with pleasing modulation. i thought at first it was the “peep, peep” of a bird i had scared. i was so taken with the music that i threw down my stick and spent twenty minutes in throwing stones single or in handfuls on this crystal drum. at night, with other friends, came shackford' with a good heart and inquisitive mind. he broached the question out of brownson's book, of the positiveness or entity of moral evil; which i gladly and strenuously denied, – as a corollary to my preceding night's discourse on the unity of mind, “there is one mind in many individuals.". . i charles chauncy shackford, who about this time came to teach at the concord academy. he was, later, a writer and lecturer, and professor of rhetoric and literature at cornell university. 2 orestes a. brownson, an eager preacher, writer, and 1836] good normal, evil not 167 i maintained that evil is merely privative, not absolute.' . .. do you not see that a man is a bundle of relations, that his entire strength consists not in his properties, but in his innumerable relations? if you embrace the cause of right, of your country, of mankind, all things work with and for you, the sun and moon, stocks and stones. the virtuous man and the seeker of truth finds brotherhood and countenance in so far forth, in the stars, the trees, and the water. all nature cries to him, all hail! the bad man finds opposition, aversation, death in them all. all mankind oppose him. no whisper from secret reformer. he was successively a presbyterian, universalist, unitarian, and catholic. born in vermont in 1803, he preached in villages there and in new york, then came for a time to boston. interested in social reforms by the works of robert owen, he formed a working-men's party in new york. in boston he organized a society for christian union and progress, and wrote for and edited the quarterly review, later merged in the democratic review in new york. in 1844 he joined the catholic church, of which thereafter he was an active champion. he declined a chair in the new university of dublin offered him by dr. francis h. newman. i here follows the passage to this purpose in the address at the divinity college. (see nature, “ addresses and lectures,” p. 124, centenary ed.) 168 journal . (age 33 beauty or grandeur cheers him. the world is silent, the heaven frowns. what is that star to him which prompted a heroic sentiment of love in the hero? a white point; and being not in the current of things, an outlaw, a stoppage, — the wheels of god must grind him to powder in their very mission of charity. we talked further of christianity. i think that the whole modus loquendi about believing christianity is vicious. it has no pertinence to the state of the case. it grows out of the calvinistic nonsense of a gospel-scheme, a dogmatic architecture which one is to admit came from the god of nature; or it grows out of the figment that to believe a given miracle is a spiritual merit. believe christianity. what else can you do? it is not matter of doubt. what is good about it is self-affirming. when jesus says the kingdom of god comes without observation; comes as a little child; is within you, etc., these are not propositions upon which you can exercise any election, but are philosophical verities quite independent of any asseveration, or testimony, or abnegation. never a magnanimity fell to the ground. al1836] truth stands alone 169 ways the heart of man greets it and accepts it unexpectedly. a thought in the woods was that i cannot marshal and insert in my compositions my genuine thoughts, which are in themselves vital and life-communicating. the reason is, you do not yet take sufficiently noble and capacious views of man and nature, whereinto your honest observation would certainly fall, as physical phenomena under chemical or physiological laws.' rhetoric.— i cannot hear a sermon without being struck by the fact that amid drowsy series of sentences what a sensation a historical fact, a biographical name, a sharply objective illustration makes! why will not the preacher heed the admonition of the momentary silence of his congregation and (often what is shown him) that this particular sentence is all they carry away? is he not taught hereby that the synthesis is to all grateful, and to most indispensable, of abstract thought and concrete body? principles should i here follows the passage, printed in “the oversoul,” as to there being no “property in truth.” see essays, first series, p. 271. 170 journal [age 33 be verified by the adducing of facts and sentiments incorporated by their appropriate imagery. only in a purely scientific composition, which by its text and structure addresses itself to philosophers, is a writer at liberty to use mere abstractions. · a preacher should be a live coal to kindle all the church. i wrote elsewhere of composition. yet to-day the old view came back again with new force, on seeing and hearing about king's college, cambridge, – that it is what is already done that enables the artist to accomplish the wonderful. that hall is covered with a profusion of richest fan-work in solid stone to which a charming tint is given by the stained-glass windows. the artist who has this talent for delicate embellishment and splendid softening tints, has not usually the talent for massive masonry and cyclopean architecture. one man built a church on solid blocks able to uphold a mountain; another took advantage of this alpine mass to spring an airy arch thereon; a third adopted this foundation and superstructure, the fruit of talents not his own, and converted the rigid surface into garlands and lace; and thus is the chapel a work of the hu1836] building of thought 171 man mind, and altogether transcending the abilities of any one man. this is my belief of written composition, that it can surpass any unwritten effusions of however profound genius; for what is writ is a foundation of a new superstructure, and a guide to the eye for new foundation, so that the work rises, tower upon tower, with ever new and total strength of the builder. ecclesiastical manners. there is one mind, and every man is a porch leading into it. prayer is an address to it. religion is the self-respect of this mind. but to be its organ is so much that a man should never in any act, least of all in a religious rite, have any trick, or sneaking, apologetic scraping or leering, demure depressing of the eyes, or any hypocritical nonsense. let him never, when perfect beauty and wisdom are addressed in a high act of the abstract soul, palter or do aught unmanly, but, inspired with a noble daring, let him then most feel the majesty of being, and, though he be a beggar, let him behave himself greatly. antique. our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. 172 [age 33 journal we admire the greek in an american ploughboy often.'... nothing is more melancholy than to treat men as pawns and ninepins. if i leave out their heart, they take out mine. but speak to the soul, and always the soul will reply. to treat of the nature of things is to show his life in new glory to every man; when he sees he is no sport of circumstances, but that all nature is his friend, and he is related to natures so great that, if his private selfish good suffer shipwreck, he yet must rejoice. yet do you think a dinner brings a man less surely home than would a sheriff, or that hatred less surely removes him from another than a chain of mountains? a man's wife has more power over him than the state has. mr. webster never loses sight of his relation to nature. the day is always part of him. “but, mr. president, the shades of evening which close around us, admonish us to conclude,” he said at cambridge. i here follows the passage on the greeks, as not reflective but perfect in healthy senses, hence in taste. (“ history,” essays, first series, pp. 25, 26.) 1836] herbert. harmony 173 i notice george herbert's identification of himself with jewish genius. “list, you may hear great aaron's bell.” “aaron's drest !” and the like. it reminds me of that criticism i heard in italy of michel angelo, viz., that he painted prophets and patriarchs like a hebrew, that they were not merely old men in robes and beards, but a sanctity and the character of the pentateuch and the prophecy were conspicuous in them. light and music are analogous in their law. light is merely arithmetic and geometry painted or diagrammatized. a musician draws a picture on air. (norris.) vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. “ architecture elevates mathematical laws to rules of beauty.” (american encyclopædia.) thorso ted or referred to authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1836 [certain standard or favorite authors were specified in the list for 1834 as not to be thereafter mentioned.] code of menu; confucius, apud marshman; empedocles; xenophanes ; sophocles, pbil174 journal (age 33 octetes, ajax, electra; xenophon, anabasis ; prodicus; sallust; st. augustine; boccaccio; à kempis; amadis de gaul; morte d'arthur; sidney, arcadia; chapman; sir walter raleigh, history of the world; robert leighton; molière; locke, on the human understanding ; life of george fox; john eliot, apud allen, biographical dictionary; sir christopher wren; scougal; john bartram, travels ; voltaire; rousseau; norris, ideal world; fielding; smollett; collins, ode on the passions; joseph black; playfair; la place; goethe (nachgelassene werke), egmont, letters to herder; .cuvier; de candolle; davy; arago ; niebuhr; pestalozzi; bentham; malthus; chateaubriand; herder; heeren; fichte; tieck; pücklermuskau, tour in england; joanna baillie ; moore, life of sheridan ; sir john ross, voyages ; keats; southey ; arabian nights; combe, constitution of man; lyell, geology; 175 1836] books dr. channing, on slavery; sampson reed, oration on genius; allston ; bryant; irving; cooper; everett, on bentley, north american review; tennyson; victor hugo; béranger; alcott, record of conversations on the gospels, manuscripts, psyche, etc. journal the concord home and woods lecturing and preaching defence of alcott phi beta kappa oration journal xxviii 1837 (from journal c) ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim credebat libris, neque si male cesserat, usquam decurrens alio, neque si bene ; quo fit ut omnis votiva pateat, veluti descripta tabella, vita. horace, satires, lib. ii, 1. i write the laws, not plead a cause. [the happy domestic life went on, with friends and visitors coming and going, and the lecturing in boston, involving long and cold stagerides, continued until midwinter was past. the course, the philosophy of history, was largely attended and very successful. meantime, mr. emerson preached each sunday at east lexington.] concord, january 3, 1837. it occurred last night in groping after the elements of that pleasure we derive from literary compositions, that it is like the pleasure which 180 journal (age 33 the prince le boo received from seeing himself for the first time in a mirror,-a mysterious and delightful surprise. a poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. i be, and i see my being, at the same time. it is not some wild ornithorhynchus nondescript that attracts the most attention, but it was the man of the new world that concentrated the curiosity of the contemporaries of columbus. after i got into bed, somewhat else rolled through my head and returned betwixt dreams, which i fear i have lost. it seems as if it were to this purport: that every particular composition takes its fit place in the intellectual sphere; the light and gay, a light and fugitive place; the wise, a permanent place; but only those works are everlasting which have caught, not the ephemeral and local, but the universal symbols of thought, and so written themselves in a language that needs no translation into the sympathies and intellectual habits of all men. homer and shakspear. ..." january 7. received, day before yesterday, a letter from thomas carlyle, dated 5 november :as ever i here follows the passage on all the beauty and worth that man sees being in man. (“spiritual laws," essays, first series, p. 147, centenary ed.) c 1837] carlyle. courtesy 181 a cordial influence. strong he is, upright, noble and sweet, and makes good how much of our human nature. quite in consonance with my delight in his eloquent letters, i read in bacon this afternoon this sentence (of letters), “and such as are written from wise men are of all the words of man, in my judgment, the best, for they are more natural than orations and public speeches, and more advised than conferences or present speeches.” let nothing be lost that is good. is chivalry graceful in your imagination? be courteous to every boy and girl in the village, and so keep its soul alive. is honor majestic? with the courtesy, be doggedly just, and speak the truth, and you shall call out the angel everywhere, who lurks under ignorance and cunning. discourtesy and selfishness are the shortest-sighted owls. hold all conventions of society light in your reverence for simple instinct, so shall you receive the age of the greeks and of shakspear. 1 this was letter xiii in the carlyle-emerson correspondence, in answer to emerson's, telling of his brother's death, sending a copy of nature, and urging the carlyles to come to america. carlyle speaks of the remote possibility of his coming to concord, and tells of his french revolution, nearly finished. 182 journal [age 33 fear god, and where you go men shall feel as if they walked in hallowed cathedrals. make your perceptions accurate, and the sound of your voice, or sight of your name, shall be useful to men as institutes and scientific societies are, suggesting the just use of the faculties to great ends. this is the way to be a universal man, or take the ages up into an hour and one person. january 8. can you not show the man of genius that always genius is situated in the world as it is with him? lidian emerson. waldo emerson. r. waldo emerson.' i have come no farther in my query than this, when mine asia came in and wrote her name, her son's and her husband's to warm my cold page. тапиary 9. always a fresh swarm is alighting in the places of power to suck suddenly all its sweets. and with such guides rehoboam's young men would discard ever the wise, and run riot, but that things refuse to be ill-administered. nothing satisfies i these names are in mrs. emerson's handwriting. 1837] prevailing virtue 183 all men but justice, and especially when time and much debate has accurately ascertained what justice is in respect to any measure. the interests of all classes are so intimately united that, although the rivalry in which they are often set may please one for a short time with the distress of another, yet very quickly they will make common cause against any great offence. ... virtue is continually reproduced in the young, and the selfish statesman has some. great men arise, like alfred, washington, la fayette, and virtue has resistless effect. nothing is more apparent than that genuine virtue always tells for such. the majesty of these men impresses the people, and the government are forced to defer to it.' . .. the éclat of a good code, or a domestic improvement, or a commercial treaty, or a scientific survey, or expedition is desired, and each of these things stimulates the mind of the people, cultivates them, and so tends to acquaint them with their true interest. the expedition of alexander, of cæsar, of napoleon, not without good fruit. the interests of persons and property are so difficult to separate, that it is very happy that the progress 1 some passages printed in “ politics” (essays, second series) are omitted from this entry. 184 journal [age 33 of society tends to reconcile and to identify them. by destroying the class of paupers, of slaves, and making every man a proprietor, then, as every penny carries with it some knowledge, he becomes fit to distribute it; thus the peace and trade party grows up, the lovers of useful knowledge. “ man has no predilection for absurdity.” the law, the polity, that endures a thousand years has some fitness to the human constitution. every law that continues long alive tallies to something in man. january 14. lidian's grandmother had a slave, phillis, whom she freed. phillis went to a little colony on the outside of plymouth which they called new guinea. soon after, she visited her old mistress. “well, phillis, what did you have for dinner on thanksgiving day?” “fried ’taters, missy,” replied phillis. “and what had you to fry the potatoes in?" said mrs. cotton. "fried in water, missy,” answered the girl. “well, phillis,” said mrs. cotton, “how can you bear to live up there, so poor, when here you used to have everything comfortable, and such a good dinner at thanksgiving ?” “ah, missy, freedom's sweet,” returned phillis. 18371 god not a person 185 january 16. how evanescent is the idea of spirit, how incomprehensible; strange obstinacy of the human affections, to enshrine wisdom and virtue in a person, and no less obstinacy in the reason not to admit the picture. the mystery is to be explained only by the personability of virtue and wisdom in the seer himself. but as far as history is concerned, can i not show that in regard to this element of civilization man underlies the same necessity as in science, art, letters, politics ? for, always as much religion as there is, so much appears. all the devils respect virtue. always the high, heroic, self-devoted sect, shall instruct and command mankind. hypocrisy is a foolish suicide. all virtue consists in substituting being for seeming, and therefore god sublimely saith, i am. yes, justice is; love is; and that deep cause of causes which they, as it were, outwardly represent; but is god a person? no. that is a contradiction; the personality of god. a person is finite personality, is finiteness." the universal mind is so far from being measured in any finite numbers, that its verdict i one or two sentences in the above passage occur in “spiritual laws.” (essays, first series, pp. 158, 160.) 186 journal (age 33 would be vitiated at once by any reference to numbers, however large. “the multitude is the worst argument,” and, in fact, the only way of arriving at this universal mind is to quit the whole world, and take counsel of the bosom alone. january 21, every change in the physical constitution has its external sign, although for the most part it is not heeded. hemorrhage of the lungs, or palsy, does not suddenly overtake a man, but after long warnings which he had disregarded. look at the clock; you have only noticed the striking of the hours, but it struck the seconds, and showed the seconds and minutes on the dial, which were making up the hour; but you had no ears and no eyes. i either read or inferred to-day, in the westminster review, that shakspear was not a popular man in his day. how true and wise. he sat alone and walked alone, a visionary poet, and came with his piece, modest but discerning, to the players, and was too glad to get it received, whilst he was too superior not to see its transcendant claims. 1837] country blessings 187 january 22. being a lover of solitude, i went to live in the country, seventeen miles from boston, and there the northwest wind with all his snows took me in charge, and defended me from all company in winter, and the hills and sand-banks that intervened between me and the city kept guard in summer. january 25 this evening the heavens afford us the most remarkable spectacle of aurora borealis. a deep red plume in the east and west streaming almost from the horizon to the zenith, forming at the zenith a sublime coronet ; the stars peep delicately through the ruddy folds, and the whole landscape below covered with snow is crimsoned. the light meantime equal nearly to that of full moon, although the moon was not risen. january 27. “the best use of money is to pay debts with it.” the only aristocracy in this country is — the editors of newspapers. as goethe says that any particular bone that is in one animal may be found in every other, how188 journal [age 33 ever abridged or obscure, so i am never quite acquainted with my neighbor until i have found somewhat in his nature and life to tally with everything i know of myself. january 29. one has patience with every kind of living thing, but not with the dead alive. i, at least, hate to see persons of that lumpish class who are here, they know not why and ask not whereto, but live as the larva of the ant or the bee, to be lugged into the sun, and then lugged back into the cell, and then fed. the end of nature for such, is that they should be fatted. if mankind should pass a vote on the subject, i think they would throw them in sacks into the sea. party. the “globe” newspaper has its lie for each new emergency to hood-wink its honest millions, as we in massachusetts put a headboard on a cow lest she break fences. february 3. whilst stetson whispered at the ordination, i could not help thinking that next to so notable a wit should always be posted a phlegmatic, bolt upright man, able to stand without movement of muscle whole broadsides of this 189 1837) the lectures greek fire. and yet the person who has just received this discharge, if in a solemn company, has the air very much of a stout vessel which has just shipped a heavy sea, and though it does not split it, the poor bark is for the moment critically staggered. charles, in a conversation i have mentioned in my old journal, expressed much such an opinion as montaigne, who says of himself that, “ if there is any good in him, it came in by treachery.” nunc non e manibus illis nunc non e tumulo, fortunataque favilla nascuntur viola? persius. let a man behave in his own house as a guest. february 6. in these lectures which from week to week i read, each on a topic which is a main interest of man, and may be made an object of exclusive interest, i seem to vie with the brag of puck; _“i can put a girdle round about the world in forty minutes.” i take fifty. a great law, “what we have within, that only ve 190 journal (age 33 can we see without.” only so much of arabian history can i read as i am arabian within, though i should parse and spell ockley and abulfeda. february 20. life tends to be picturesque. i think o'connell's south sea islands the best book we have published in this country this long while. warren street chapel is all a holy hurrah. old and new put their stamp to everything in nature. the snow-flake that is now falling is marked by both. the present moment gives the motion and the color of the flake; antiquity, its form and properties. all things wear a lustre which is the gift of the present, and a tarnish of time. march 4. i have finished, on thursday evening last, my course of twelve lectures on the philosophy of history. i read the first on the 8 december, 1836. the audience attending them might average 350 persons. i acknowledge the divine providence which has given me perfect health and smoothed the way unto the end. sm nar 1837] father taylor 191 march 14. edward taylor came last night and gave us in the old church a lecture on temperance. a wonderful man; i had almost said, a perfect orator. the utter want and loss of all method, the ridicule of all method, the bright chaos come again of his bewildering oratory, certainly bereaves it of power, — but what splendor! what sweetness! what richness! what depth! what cheer! how he conciliates, how he humanizes ! how he exhilarates and ennobles! beautiful philanthropist! godly poet ! the shakspear of the sailor and the poor. god has found one harp of divine melody to ring and sigh sweet music amidst caves and cellars. he spent the night with me. he says he lives a monarch's life, he has none to control him, or to divide the power with him. his word is law for all his people and his coadjutors. he is a very charming object to me. i delight in his great personality, the way and sweep of the man which, like a frigate's way, takes up for the time the centre of the ocean, paves it with a white street, and all the lesser craft “do curtsey to him, do him reverence.” every body plays a second part in his presence, and takes a deferential and apologetic tone. in (192 journal (age 33 the church, likewise, everybody, the rich, the poor, the scoffer, the drunkard, the exquisite, and the populace, acknowledge the man, and feel that to be right and lordly which he doth, so that his prayer is a winged ship in which all are floated forward. the wonderful and laughing life of his illustration keeps us broad awake. a string of rockets all night. he described his bar-room gentry as “hanging like a half-dead bird over a counter.” he describes helen loring as out on her errands of charity, and “running through the rain like a beach-bird." he speaks of poor ministers coming out of divinity schools, &c., as “poor fellows hobbling out of jerusalem.” “we'll give you hypocrites for honest men, two for one, and trade all night.” “ the world is just large enough for the people. there is no room for a partition wall.” march 18. a strong south wind to-day set all the hills and fields afloat under melting snow banks. tempted out by the new brown of the hillsides, i climbed for the first time since autumn the opposite hill to see if the snows were abated and my wood alleys open, but there was too much winter left, and i retreated. *1837] trust the genius 193 march 19. to-day at waltham i talked of the potential invention of all men. caroline sturgis” can sketch with invention ; others can draw as well, but cannot design. i call it self-distrust — a fear to launch away into the deep, which they might freely and safely do. it is as if the dolphins should float on rafts, or creep and squirm along the shore in fear to trust themselves to the element which is really native to them. i read not long ago in the newspapers that the school committee in boston had sustained the master of one of the public schools in his forbiddal of the practice of the girls to come to school occasionally with their hair in papers. every man has hydrophobia the first time in summer he goes into the salt water baths. as you sit in the tavern and see the stagepassengers come in to warm them, a new generation each hour, men seem to be on the confines of uncontrollable laughter all the time, and al1 a friend and frequent visitor, later mrs. william tappan. her outline pencil drawings of women and children were simple and charming, the women's heads suggesting the sketches of raphael. 194 journal (age 33 ways too on the edge of the sublime. we are up to anything, ligariuslike, godlike, or devilish. our carpets and paper-hangings and moulded wood-work in every house show the existence of fine taste somewhere, which, like the blue of the sky, or the gayety of the clouds, blesses every eye without being noticed by hardly one. ... the popularity of thom's statues of old mortality and tam o'shanter is a good problem; so the experiments on living. the papers say that 10,000 copies of living without means were sold in less than ten days— twelve editions in eleven days. i doubt they lie. and 20,000 copies of the three experiments have been sold. “lively feeling of the circumstance, and faculty to express it makes the poet." goethe. “they say much of the study of the ancients, but what else does that signify than, direct your attention to the real world and seek to express it, since that did the ancients whilst they lived." goethe.. wifey says, “ as proud as the child that has sewed her first stitch.” 1837] carlyle's mirabeau 195 march 29. noble paper of carlyle on mirabeau. this piece will establish his kingdom, i forebode, in the mind of his countrymen. how he gropes with giant fingers into the dark of man, into the obscure recesses of power in human will, and we are encouraged by his word to feel the might that is in a man. come “ the ruggedest hour that time and fate dare bring to frown upon the enraged northumberland.” indeed this piece is all thunder. (gigantic portrait painting.) the diamond necklace too, i doubt not, is the sifted story, the veritable fact, as it fell out, yet so strangely told by a series of pictures, cloud upon cloud, that the eye of the exact man is speedily confused and annoyed. it seems to me his genius is the redolence of london, “the great metropolis.” so vast, enormous, with endless details, and so related to all the world is he. it would seem as if no baker-shop, no mutton-stall, no academy, no church, no placard, no coronation, but he saw and sympathized with all, and took all up into his omnivorous fancy (memory); thence his panoramic style, and this encyclopædiacal allusion to all knowables. 196 (age 33 journal e un u then he is a worshipper of strength, heedless much whether its present phase be divine or diabolic. burns, george fox, luther, and those un clean beasts diderot, danton, mirabeau, whose sinews are their own and who trample on the tutoring and conventions of society, he loves. for he believes that every noble nature was made by god, and contains, if savage passions, also fit checks and grand impulses within it, hath its own resources, and however erring, will return from far. then he writes english and crowds meaning into all the nooks and corners of his sentences. once read, he is but half read. i rode well; my horse took hold of the road as if he loved it. i saw in boston my fair young l., but so rashly grown that her sweet face was like a violet on the top of a pole. carlyle again. i think he has seen, as no other in our time, how inexhaustible a mine is the language of conversation. he does not use the written dialect of the time, in which scholars, pamphleteers and the clergy write, nor the parliamentary dialect, in which the lawyer, the statesman, and the better newpapers write, but 1837] the ancients 197 draws strength and mother-wit out of a poetic use of the spoken vocabulary, so that his paragraphs are all a sort of splendid conversation. the antique “ the lacedemonians entering into battle sacrificed to the muses, to the end that their actions might be well and worthily writ.” montaigne. “ the ancient romans kept their youth always standing, and taught them nothing that they were to learn sitting.” seneca, apud montaigne. i learn from montaigne, a master of antiquity, also, that when the ancient greeks would accuse any one of extreme insufficiency, they would say, that he could neither read nor swim. the peloponnesian league stipulated that “whatever was agreed on by a majority of the confederates should be binding on all, unless some god or hero enjoined a dissent.” thucydides, vol. ii. the ethical writings of the ancients are without cant. the ancients are no transcendentalists: they rest always in the spontaneous consciousness. 198 journal (age 33 april 1. yesterday i received from carlyle a letter, a copy of mirabeau, of the diamond necklace, and a proof sheet of the french revolution. blessings on the friend ! to-day i finished a letter to him.' april 7. my baby's lovely drama still goes forward, though he catches sad colds, and wheezes and grieves. yet again he sputters and spurs, and puts on his little important faces, and looks dignified, and frets and sleeps again. we call him little pharisee, who when he fasts, sounds a trumpet before him.' 0 mthe man of genius — swedenborg, or carlyle, or alcott — is ever, as shelley says of his skylark, « like a poet hidden in the light of thought, singing hymns unbidden till the world is wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.” i see carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. i, letter xv. 2 see “ domestic life,” society and solitude, p. 103, centenary ed. 1837) providence 199 april 8. ah! my darling boy, so lately received out of heaven, leave me not now! please god, this sweet symbol of love and wisdom may be spared to rejoice, teach and accompany me. people expect to read a lesson of the divine providence in a death, or a lunacy, as they would read a paragraph in a newspaper, and when they cannot, they say, like my irishman roger herring to the probate court, “well, i am not satisfied.” but one lesson we are to learn is the course or genius of the divine providence, which a malady or any fact cannot teach, but a sober view of the events of years, the action and reaction of character and events, may.' april 10. very just are the views of goethe in eckermann, that the poet stands too high than that he should be a partisan. i thought, as i rode through the sloughs yesterday, that nothing is more untrue, as well as unfavorable to power, than that the thinker should open his mind to fear of the people among whom he works. 1 mr. emerson, in the journal, here refers to the same subject carried on in the last sentences in the entries of october 17, in the account of the walk to sleepy hollow, 200 journal (age 33 rather let him exult in his force. whichever way he turns, he sees the pleasure and deference which these faculties of writing and speaking excite. the people call them out; the people delight in them; the better part of every man feels, this is my music; surely therefore the poet should respond and say, “the people and not solitude is my home.” never my lands, my stocks, my salary, but this power to help and to charm the disguised soul that sits veiled under this whiskered and that smooth visage, this is my rent and ration.' love an eye-water.” slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys. * all the professions are timid and incomplete agencies. the priest has some reference to the exigencies of the parish, some to his own, and much regard to the faculty and course of his own thought. he says his prayers and his sermon, and is very glad if they answer to the case of any one 1 see entry of april 23, second paragraph. 2 here follows the passage on this subject printed in “ prudence," essays, first series, p. 238, centenary ed. 1837] life tentative 201 individual, if they bring the smallest spiritual aid to any soul; if to two, if to ten, it is a signal success. but he walked to the church without any assurance that he knew the distemper or could heal it. the physician prescribes hesitatingly out of his few resources the same stimulus or sedative to this new and peculiar constitution which he has applied with various success to a thousand men before. if the patient mends, he is glad and surprised, but to himself he could not predict it. the lawyer advises the client, and tells his story to the jury and leaves it with them, and is as gay and as much relieved as the client, if it turns out that he has a verdict. he could not predict it. the judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice, and given satisfaction to the community, but is only an advocate after all. and so is all life a timid and unskilful spectator. “ if god to build the house deny, the builders work in vain.” april 11. i wrote george bradford that eckermann was full of fine things and helps one much in the 1. 202 (age 33 journal study of goethe. always the man of genius dwells alone and, like the mountain, pays the tax of snows and silence for elevation. it would seem as if he hunted out this poor dutch boswell for a thing to talk to, that his thoughts might not pass in smother. his thinking, as far as i read him, is of great altitude and all level. ... but he is a pledge that the antique force of nature is not spent, and 't is gay to think what men shall be. is not life a puny, unprofitable discipline, whose direct advantage may be fairly represented by the direct education that is got at harvard college ? as is the real learning gained there, such is the proportion of the lesson in life. april 12. i find it the worst thing in life that i can put it to no better use. one would say that he can have little to do with his time who sits down to so slow labor and of such doubtful return as studying greek or german; as he must be an unskilful merchant who should invest his money at three per cent. yet i know not how better to 1 here follows the criticism on goethe in “ papers from the dial,” natural history of intellect, pp. 326, 327, centenary ed. 1837] george minot 203 employ a good many hours in the year. if there were not a general as well as a direct advantage herein, we might shoot ourselves. where i see anything done, i behold the presence of the creator. peter howe knows what to do in the garden, and sullivan at a ball, and webster in the senate, and i over my page. exchange any of our works, and we should be to seek. and any work looks wonderful to me except that one which i can do. how little of the man see we in his person. the man minot, who busies himself all the year round under my windows, writes out his nature in a hundred works, in drawing water, hewing wood, building fence, feeding his cows, hay making, and a few times in the year he goes into the woods. thus his human spirit unites itself with nature. why need i ever hear him speak articulate words? i listen by night, i gaze by day at the endless procession of wagons loaded with the wealth of i for some account of this good neighbor, across the fence west of the study, whose little weather-stained house then stood on the hillside above, see emerson in concord, pp. 80, 137, 139. 204 journal [age 33 all regions of england and china, of turkey, of the indies, which from boston creep by my gate to all the towns of new hampshire and vermont. with creaking wheels at midsummer, and, crunching the snows, on huge sledges in january, the train goes forward at all hours, bearing this cargo of inexhaustible comfort and luxury to every cabin in the hills.' april 16. how little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across a mixed company with eyes so full of mutual intelligence — how little think they of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this now quite external stimulus.... e retzsch is a gothic genius; not the greek simplicity, but the gothic redundancy of meaning and elaboration of details. his pictures are like herbert's poems, hard to read, for every word is to be emphasized. 3 lean1 before the coming of the fitchburg railroad, most of the northward teaming passed the house on the great road” from boston. 2 here follows a large part of what is printed on pp. 184, 186, and 187 in “ love," essays, second series, cent. ed. 3 retzsch's outline illustrations of the poems of goethe, 1837] attack on alcott 205 the newspapers persecute alcott. i have never more regretted my inefficiency in practical ends. i was born a seeing eye, not a helping hand. i can only comfort my friends by thought, and not by love or aid. but they naturally look for this other also, and thereby vitiate our relation throughout.' camper complains to merck that“ what happened in regard to petrifications has happened to him in regard to his collection of diseased bones, to wit, that he created the taste in holland, in france, in germany, and now is not able to get any specimen, — no not for money.". sömmering possessed in his cabinet the hand schiller, and shakespeare were in singular contrast to those of his contemporary, flaxman, of greek subjects. 1 yet mr. emerson not only wrote a friendly letter of comfort to mr. alcott, but tried to get the editors of the advertiser and courier to publish letters that he wrote in his friend's defense. mr. buckingham of the courier courteously published the one sent to him, yet expressing unchanged disapproval of mr. alcott's book, the occasion of the attack on him. see memoir of bronson alcott, by f. b. sanborn and w. t. harris, vol. i, pp. 214-226. 2 here follows the passage printed in “ the comic” (letters and social aims, p. 167), where camper tells that, after studying the cetaceans, he classified ali women as narwhale, porpoise or marsonin. 206 journal [age 33 son v s of a certain paule de viguier, nearly 300 years old. this beautiful person was such an object of universal wonder to her contemporaries for her enchanting form, virtue and accomplishments, that, according to the assurances of one of them, the citizens of her native city, tholouse, obtained the aid of the civil authorities to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at least twice a week, and as often as she showed herself the crowd was dangerous to life." so lady hamilton was a modern helen. mine asia grudges the time she is called away from her babe, because he grows so fast that each look is new, and each is never to be repeated. dr. ripley told us of the clergy man in marlborough who in the revolution prayed the lord “to look on us in these very peaked times." good letter, from tischbein to merck describing michael angelo's last judgment, which he had the opportunity of seeing very near, and was astonished at the minute finish of muscles and nerves, finished like a miniature. “a group of conduct of life, p. 269, and note, i see beauty,” centenary ed. 1837] factories. opinions 207 the damned whom the devils drive into hell made me so much distress that i feared i should fall from the ladder; i was forced to hold on with both hands and to banish the shuddering thoughts.” april 21. new england. it has been to me a sensible relief to learn that the destiny of new england is to be the manufacturing country of america. i no longer suffer in the cold out of morbid sympathy with the farmer. the love of the farmer shall spoil no more days for me. climate touches not my own work. the foulest or the coldest wind is as dear to the muses as the sweet southwest, and so to the manufacturer and the merchant. where they have the sun, let them plant; we who have it not, will drive our pens and water-wheels. i am as gay as a canary bird with this new knowledge. an opinion is seldom given; and every one we have heard of weighs with us. let an opinion be given upon a book, the vis inertiæ of the general mind is proved by the circulation this sentence has. it runs through a round of newspapers, and of social circles, and finds mere acquiescence in thousands. if the subject is one which has a political or commercial bearing, it er208 journal [age 33 commonly happens that another individual protests against the opinion and affirms his own to be just the reverse. in that case, still i should think is there but one opinion affirmed and denied; there is yet no new quality shown. wo unto you, critics ! for an opinion is indeed not the safest ware to deal in.' ... i learn evermore. in smooth water i discover the motion of my boat by the motion of the trees and houses on shore; so the progress of my mind is proved by the perpetual change in the persons and things i daily behold. “ the alphabet is a work of the mouth, metre a work of the pulse,” says zelter. napoleon said, “ l'empereur ne connoît autre maladie que la mort." april 22. culture. how much meaning the germans affix to the word, and how unlike to the english sense! the englishman goes to see a museum or a mountain for itself; the german i here follow the similes, as to opinions, of the cottonball and the harpoon. (“compensation,” essays, first series, p. 110, centenary ed.) 2 the passage on beauty as a divine thing follows in the journal. (“love,” essays, first series, p. 179, centenary ed.) 1837] culture 209 for himself; the englishman for entertainment, the german for culture. the german is conscious, and his aims are great. the englishman lives from his eyes, and immersed in the apparent world. our culture comes not alone from the grand and beautiful, but also from the trivial and sordid. we wash and cleanse out every day for sixty years this temple of the human body. we buy wood and tend our fires, and deal with the baker and fisherman and grocer, and take a world of pains which nothing but concealed moral and intellectual ends of great worth can exalt to an ideal level. if we knew we were in a purgatory, if we knew of crimes, and are now in hell, the lowness and filths of life were then explained. but we are void of such consciousness. polarity is a law of all being.' . . . if the mind idealizes at one end perfect goodness into god, coexistently it abhors at the other end a devil. cold april; hard times ; men breaking who ought not to break; banks bullied into the boli most of the paragraph is omitted as essentially the same as that in “compensation.” (essays, first series, p. 96, centenary ed.) 210 journal [age 33 ro stering of desperate speculators; all the newspapers a chorus of owls. “ tobacco, cotton, teas, indigo and timber, all at tremendous discount, and the end not yet.” eight firms in london gave the bank a round-robin bond for £3,800,000 of discounts — such things i read in the papers, specially london age of march 12. loud cracks in the social edifice— sixty thousand laborers, says rumor, to be presently thrown out of work, and these make a formidable mob to break open banks and rob the rich, and brave the domestic government. may 5.' in new york, the president (fleming) of the mechanics bank resigns, and the next morning is found dead in his bed “by mental excitement” according to the verdict of the coroner. added bitterness from the burning of the exchange in new orleans by an incendiary; the park mobs, and the running on banks for specie in new york. fine weather; yes, but cold. warm day; yes; but dry. you look well; i am very well, except a little cold. the case of damaged hats, i mr. emerson wrote tnis paragraph in later, as dealing with the same subject. 2 ii 1837] the good villager 211 one a broken brim, the other perfect in the brim, but rubbed on the side, the third whole in the cylinder, but bruised on the crown. i say to lidian that in composition the what is of no importance compared with the how. the most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the supreme being. april 23. how much benefit in the common well-meaning private person. i was at wayland to-day and could not help feeling and expressing a gratitude to that worthy r. heard, as to a main column on which their municipal and ecclesiastical well being leans; and again, what a benefactress to the place is the beautiful singer mrs. m.' only by her voice in the church. trust your nature, the common mind; fear not to sound its depths, to ejaculate its grander emotions. fear not how men shall take it. see you not they are following your thought and emotion because it leads them deeper into their own? i see with joy i am speaking their word, fulfilling their nature, when i thought the word and nature most my own. i mrs. mellen. 212 journal [age 33 all good writing might be called occasional poems, as it is only a composition of many visions in the writer's private experience. the young find a keener pleasure in the riot of the imagination than any which nature has in store, and by means of natural pleasures in later life they are cured of their delicious madness. meantime, what a dupe is the libertine; he thinks he has the sparkle and the color of the cup, and the chaste married pair only the lees. they see that he stays always in the base court and never has one glimpse of the high joys of a perfect wedlock. “what you love not, you cannot do." zelter. what pleases me will please many. april 26. more conversation about the german man.' ... furthermore, as he describes the devil as the great negation, or, as carlyle says, the lie is the second best, god and truth being the i here follows much that is printed in the « papers from the dial, modern literature,” in natural history of intellect, pp. 326, 327, centenary ed. 1837] judgment of goethe 213 first, so it would appear as if he aimed himself to be the third term, or the universal quiz, a sort of bridge from the truth to the lie. he thought it necessary therefore to dot round, as it were, the entire sphere of knowables, and for many of his stories this seems the only reason. ... on the whole, what have these german weimarish art friends done? they have rejected all the traditions and conventions, have sought to come thereby one step nearer to absolute truth. but still they are not nearer than others. i do not draw from them great influence. the heroic, the holy, i lack. they are contemptuous. they fail in sympathy with humanity. the voice of nature they bring me to hear is not divine, but ghastly, hard and ironical. they do not illuminate me: they do not edify me. plutarch's heroes cheer, exalt. the old bloodwarm miltons and sydneys and pauls help and aggrandize me. the roots of what is great and high must still be in the common life. christianity. to those fundamental natures that lie at the basis of the soul, truth, justice, love, etc., the idea of eternity is essentially asso214 journal (age 33 ciated. jesus, a pure intellect, exclusively devoted to this class of abstractions (the ethical), did never yet utter one syllable about the naked immortality of the soul, never spoke of simple duration." his disciples felt, as all must, the coexisting perception of eternity, and separated it, and taught it as a doctrine, and maintained it by evidences. it ought never to be. it is an impertinence to struggle up for the immortality. it is inevitable to believe it, if you come down upon the conviction from the seeing these primary natures in the mind. april 29. warm and welcome blows the south wind at last, and the sun and moon shine again to raise the desponding hearts of the people in these black times. yet our idle, dallying, tentative conversation goes on, sunshine still lying kindly on my hearthstone. therefor be lowly, interceding praise from me and mine. gifts. mrs. lee gave me beautiful flowers. these gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of the world in these latitudes. they are like music heard out of a workhouse i compare passage in “ immortality,” letters and social aims, p. 348, centenary ed. sui 1837] our strange lot 215 orjail.'... something like that pleasure the star, the flower and the tinted cloud give us. well, what am i, to whom those sweet and sublime hints are addressed ? how wild and mysterious our position as individuals to the universe ; here is always a certain amount of truth lodged as intrinsic foundation in the depths of the soul, a certain perception of absolute being, as justice, love, and the like, natures which must be the god of god, and this is our capital stock, this is our centripetal force. we can never quite doubt, we can never be adrift, we can never be nothing, because of this holy of holies, out of sight of which we cannot go. then, on the other side, all is to seek. we understand nothing ; our ignorance is abysmal, the overhanging immensity staggers us, whither we go, what we do, who we are, we cannot even so much as guess. we stagger and grope. fine manners present themselves first as formidable.? ... i here follows the passage on flowers on the first page of “gifts," essays, second series. 2 see “ manners,” essays, second series, pp. 126, 127, centenary ed. 216 journal (age 33 miss fuller read vivian gray and made me very merry. beckendorf is a fine teaching that he who can once conquer his own face can have no farther difficulty. nothing in the world is to him impossible; as napoleon who discharged his face of all expression whilst madame de staël gazed at him. the existence of a paradise lost, a dante's inferno, argues a half disbelief of the immortality of the soul. if with a lowly mind you elect writing for your task in life, i believe you must renounce all pretensions to reading. i will add it to my distinctive marks of man and woman — the man loves hard wood, the woman loves pitch-pine. the merchant fails. he has put more than labor, he has put character and ambition into his fortune, and cannot lose it without bitter mortification. it is not clear to the recluse, the ambition of a merchant. it seems that he could and should have been content with safe wealth, and not so ventured and so fallen. but the merchant 1837] the merchant 217 in every conversation in the insurance office feels the weight of his neighbor, a greater capitalist; in every transaction of business he feels his own and his neighbor's measure. he sees that he can augment his own consideration and wield as enviable power. he sees, moreover, that a great fortune has not an evil, a dishonorable influence, that is, its influence is very far from being built on the weakness and sycophancy of men, but it is a certificate of great faculty, of virtues of a certain sort. moral considerations give currency every day to notes of hand. success and credit depend on enterprise, on accurate perceptions, on honesty, on steadiness of mind. this man in the land-fever bought no acre in maine or michigan. his notes of hand have a better currency as long as he lives. that man is a commission merchant, and in the midst of a vast business, does not trade on his own account to the amount of a dollar. everybody gladly buys his paper. steady, steady! eve s [two pages of extracts follow, concerning french traits, from eckermann, zeutner, cartyle, las cases, o'meara, and others: then a careful list of all carlyle's writings in the english reviews, and his books up to this time. 218 journal [age 33 after these, come several extracts translated from eckermann's spräche mit goethe and the correspondence of goethe with zelter.] a characteristic of goethe is his choice of topics. what an eye for the measure of things ! perhaps he is out in regard to byron, but not of shakspear; and in byron he has grasped all the peculiarities. paper-money; periods of belief; cheerfulness of the poet; french revolution;how just are his views of these trite things; what a multitude of opinions, and how few blunders ; the estimate of sterne, i suppose to be one. it is to me very plain that no recent genius can work with equal effect upon mankind as goethe, for no intelligent young man can read him without finding that his own compositions are immediately modified by his new knowledge. i do not remember a joke or aught laughable in all goethe, except philina cracking nuts upon the trunk, and perhaps friedrich’s gibe at natalia. o plotinus on art'. “ whilst we are convinced that those who i translated by goethe, in letters to zelter, vol. i, p. 90. en 1837] plotinus on art 219 behold the intellectual world and the beauty of the true intellect can also well behold their father, who is exalted over all sense, so let us attempt then to inquire after the powers, and ourselves to express, so far as things of this kind can be explained, in what manner we can apprehend the beauty of the soul and of the world. “let two stone blocks be placed together whereof one is rough and without artificial labor, but the other is formed by art to a human or divine statue. were it of a god, so might it represent a grace or a muse. were it of a man, so is it not a historical man, but rather of some one whom art has collected out of all beauties. “but to you will the stone which is brought by art into a beautiful form appear altogether beautiful, yet not because it is stone, since then will the other block also pass for beautiful, but because it has a form which art has imparted to it. “but matter has no such form ; but this was in the thinker before it came to the stone. it the translation into english is evidently mr. emerson's. he never became familiar enough with german to render it easily. & ca 220 journal (age 33 was already in the artist, not because he had eyes and hands, but because he was endowed with art. “also was in art a far greater beauty, since not that form which resides in art came to the stone, but that remains where it was, and there went out into the stone another, inferior, which does not abide pure in itself, nor quite as the artist wishes, but only as far as the material would obey art. “butif art should also produce what it is and possesses, and produce the beautiful after reason, according to which it evermore worketh, yet would the reason the more and truer possess a greater and more conspicuous beauty of art, perfecter than all which exists outwardly.' “since, whilst the form proceeding into matter is already extended, so is it weaker than that which abides in unity. since what in itself endures a removal departs away from itself. strength from strength, heat from heat, force from force, so also beauty from beauty. therefore must the workman be more excellent than the work. since not the un-music makes the musician, but the music and the supersensual music produces the music in sensuous sound. “but would any one despise art because it 1837) goethe's method 221 imitates nature? let us reply, that the natures also imitate many others; that, moreover, art does not directly imitate that which eyes can see, but goes back upon the rational out of which nature consists, and after which nature worketh. “furthermore, the arts produce many things out of themselves, and add, on the other hand, many things hereto which lack perfectness, whilst yet they have beauty in themselves. so coula phidias form the god, although he imitated nothing perceptible to the senses, but made, himself, in his mind, such a form as jove himself would appear if he should become obvious to our eyes.” goethe prefers to drop a profound observation incidentally to stating it circumstantially ; for example, “seneca sees nature as an uncultivated man; since not it, but its events interest him.” – nachgelassene werke, vol. xiii, p. 68. “yet was tycho brahe, with all his merits, one of those limited minds who feel themselves to be in some measure in contradiction with nature, and, on that account, love complex paradoxes more than simple truth, and enjoy them2222 journal [age 33 selves in error because it gives them occasion to show the sharpness of their wit; whilst he who recognizes the true seems ever to honor god and nature, but not himself, and of this last sort was kepler.” vol. xiii, p. 171. i owe the presentation of a book to n. l. f., s. a. d., c. w. u., b. d., dr. e. h., mrs. a. d. a. (waltham), dr. j. ware.' may 1. i do not forgive in any man this forlorn pride, as if he were an ultimus romanorum. i am more american in my feeling. this country is full of people whose fathers were judges, generals and bank presidents, and if all their boys should give* themselves airs thereon and rest henceforth on the oars of their fathers' merit, we should be a sad, hungry generation. moreover i esteem it my best birthright that our people are not crippled by family and official pride, that the best broadcloth coat in the country is put off to put on a blue frock, that the best man in town may steer his plough-tail or may drive a milk-cart. there is a great deal of work in our men, and i rev. nathaniel l. frothingham, mrs. dewey(?), charles w. upham, b. d.(?), dr. ebenezer hobbs, mrs. a. d. adams, dr. john ware. e 1837] social affectation 223 a false pride has not yet made them idle or ashamed. moreover i am more philosophical than to love this retrospect. i believe in the being god, not in the god that has been. i work; my fathers may have wrought or rested. what have i to do with them, or with the fellatahs, or the great khan! i know a worthy man who walks the streets with silent indignation as a last of his race, quite contemptuously eyeing the passing multitude, as if none of them were for him, and he for none of them; as if he belonged to the club and age of shakspear, bacon, milton, but by some untoward slip in old spiritual causes had been left behind by the ethereal boat that ferried them into life, and came now scornful, an age too late. but what a foolish spirit, to pout and sneer. that did not these able persons; and, if some good-natured angel should transport him into their serene company, they would say unto him, “we know you not.” what if a man has great tastes and tendencies. is not that the charm and wonder of time, the oil of life, that in common men everywhere gleam out these majestical traits so wildly contrasting with their trivial employments, decking their narrow patch of black loam with sunshine and violets, so that the lowest being, intimately seen, never 224 journal (age 33 suffers you to lose sight of his relations to the highest and to all? character is higher than intellect,' and character is what the german means when he speaks of the daimonisches. ... webster in his speech does but half engage himself. i feel that there is a great deal of waste strength. therefore i say, let me not meet a great man in a drawing-room or in an academy, or even in my own library, but let him, bound on his private errand, meet me, bound on mine, in the stage-coach, our road being the same for two or three hundred miles; then will a right natural conversation grow out of our mutual want of relief and entertainment, or better yet, put us into the cabin of a little coasting merchantman to roll and welter in the gulf stream for a fortnight towards savannah or st. croix. ... i went to see mr. jonathan phillips once, and he said to me, “when you come into the room, i endeavor to present humanity to you in a lovely and worthy form, to put away everything that can mar the beauty of the image." he also said that “ life appeared to him very i see “ the american scholar,” nature, p. 99, centenary ed. 18371 margaret fuller 225 long; his existence had stretched over a vast experience.” may 4. margaret fuller left us yesterday morning. among many things that make her visit valuable and memorable, this is not the least, that she gave me five or six lessons in german pronunciation, never by my offer and rather against my will each time, so that now, spite of myself, i shall always have to thank her for a great convenience — which she foresaw. economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time whilst it burns. in conversation there are tides, and the visitor of a few days will see the ebb and the succeeding mud; but living is the channel which upbears ships and boats at all hours. day before yesterday (may 2), dr. hobbs, dr. adams, and mr. ripley, sent me from waltham thirty-one trees, which i have planted by my house. what shall i render to my benefactors ? ' 1 these trees, mainly white pines, with one or two chestnuts, were planted west of mr. emerson's house, where many 226 journal [age 33 be and seem. creation is genius, however, whenever. there are few actions. almost all is appetite and custom. a new action commands us and is the napoleon or luther of the hour. so with manners. they are sometimes a perpetual creation, and so do charm and govern us. so with opinions. miss edgeworth has not genius, nor miss fuller; but the one has genius-in-narrative, and the other has geniusin-conversation. at palermo, i remember how shabby and pitiable seemed the poor opera company to me until the prima donna appeared and spoke. presently she uttered cries of passion, and the mimic scene becomes instantly real, and vies at once with whatever is human and heroic. the lady' told me that she had never seen heroic manners. i think she has in fragments, or the word would not be significant to her. i know them well, yet am the least heroic of persons, and i see well that my types of them are not one but many. murat, wordsworth ; sweettempered ability and a scientific estimate of popular opinion, are essential. of them still aourish. two chestnut trees have outstripped by nearly one half the growth of the pines. i probably miss fuller. 1837] conversion ever 227 the law of communication is this: here am i a complex human being — welcome to me all creatures ; welcome each of you to your part in me; st. paul to his; the eagle to his; the horse and the bat to theirs. vivian gray is a bible to a class of young persons. may 5. it is curious to observe how strangely experience becomes thought; or life, truth. the conversion is hourly going on. will and necessity, or if you please, character and condition beget an act. it is a part of life and remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life.'... to make the omnipresence of god a fact and not a name to the mind, we must look at spiritual laws. the history of the mind is a constant creation. it sleeps on a past law no moment. let me make a few notes towards a report of the decisions of this supreme court. it is strange that i find no such attempt in all the ages at a digest or even a catalogue of them. i here follows the passage, thus beginning in “ the amer. ican scholar," pp. 96, 97, centenary ed. 228 journal (age 33 may 6. i see with joy the visits of heat and moisture to my trees, and please myself with this new property. i strangely mix myself with nature, and the universal god works, buds, and blooms in my grove and parterre. i seem to myself an enchanter who by some rune or dumb-gesture compels the service of superior beings. but the instant i separate my own from the tree and the potato field, it loses this piquancy. i presently see that i also am but an instrument like the tree, a reagent. the tree was to grow; i was to transplant and water it, not for me, not for it, but for all. it occurred to-day how slowly we learn to trust ourselves as adepts of the common nature. when a fashionable man, when a great judge or engineer performs a charity, it gives us pause, it seems strange and admirable, we fear it will not last. yet the same thing would appear not strange in me, but quite natural. slowly i learn with amazement that in my wildest dream, in my softest emotion, in my tear of contrition, i but repeat moment for moment the impulses and experience of the fashionist, the buccaneer, the slave, or whatever other variety may be of the generic man. 1837) doom of solitude 229 sad is this continual postponement of life. i refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if in view of some better sympathy and intimacy to come. but whence and when? i am already thirty-four years old. already my friends and fellow workers are dying from me. scarcely can i say that i see any new men or women approaching me; i am too old to regard fashion; too old to expect patronage of any greater or more powerful. let me suck the sweetness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near me that the divine providence offers me.' these old shoes are easy to the feet. but no, not for mine, if they have an ill savor. i was made a hermit, and am content with my lot. i pluck golden fruit from rare meetings with wise men. i can well abide alone in the intervals, and the fruit of my own tree shall have a better flavor. lcd * me may 7. the sabbath reminds me of an advantage which education may give, namely, a normal piety, a certain levitical education which only rarely devout genius could countervail. i can1 the substance of the first part of this entry occurs in the last paragraph but one of “ prudence,” but here the form is quite different, and the ending unexpected. 230 journal (age 33 not hear the young men whose theological instruction is exclusively owed to cambridge and to public institution, without feeling how much happier was my star, which rained on me influences of ancestral religion. the depth of the religious sentiment which i knew in my aunt mary, imbuing all her genius and derived to her from such hoarded family traditions, from so many godly lives and godly deaths of sainted kindred at concord, malden, york, was itself a culture, an education. i heard with awe her tales of the pale stranger who, at the time her grandfather lay on his death-bed, tapped at the window and asked to come in. the dying man said, “open the door”; but the timid family did not; immediately he breathed his last, and they said one to another, “ it was the angel of death.” another of her ancestors, when near his end, had lost the power of speech, and his minister came to him and said, “if the lord christ is with you, hold up your hand”; and he stretched up both hands and died. with these i heard the anecdotes of the charities of father moody' and his commanding administration of his holy office. when the offended i rev. samuel moody of york, maine, called “ father moody." 1837] the pious ancestors 231 parishioners would rise to go out of the church he cried, “come back, you graceless sinner, come back!” and when his parishioners ventured into the ale-house on a saturday night, the valiant pastor went in, collared them, and dragged them forth and sent them home. charity then went hand in hand with zeal. they gave alms profusely, and the barrel of meal wasted not. who was it among this venerable line who, whilst his house was burning, stood apart with some of his church and sang, “there is a house not made with hands”?' another was wont to go into the road whenever a traveller past on sunday, and entreat him to tarry with him during holy time, himself furnishing food for man and beast. in my childhood, aunt mary herself wrote the prayers which first my brother william, and, when he went to college, i read aloud morning and evening at the family devotions, and they still sound in my ear with their prophetic and apocalyptic ejaculations. religion was her occupation, and when, years after, i came to write sermons for my own church, i could not find 1 rev. joseph emerson of malden (who married mary moody, daughter of father moody), mr. emerson's greatgrandfather. 232 journal (age 33 any examples or treasuries of piety so hightoned, so profound, or promising such rich influence, as my remembrances of her conversation and letters. this day my boy was baptized in the old church by dr. ripley. they dressed him in the self-same robe in which, twenty-seven years ago, my brother charles was baptized. lidian has a group of departed spirits in her eye who hovered around the patriarch and the babe. “where there is no vision, the people perish.” i could ill dissemble my impatience at the show of instruction without one single real and penetrating word. here is a young man who has not yet learned the capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth. and there he stands pitiable and magisterial, and, without nausea, reads page after page of mouth-filling words and seems to himself to be doing a deed.'... i thought we might well propose that, as the end of education,to teach the pupil the symbolicai character of life. let him know that a people 1 here come the passages in the “ divinity school address ” (nature, p. 138), about the minister not bringing experiences of life into the sermon. 1837] real sermons. adams 233 can well afford to settle large incomes on a man, that he may marry, buy and sell, and administer his own good, if the practical lesson that he thus learns he can translate into general terms and yield them its poetry from week to week. truly they will find their account in it. it would elevate their life, also, which is contemporary and homogeneous, and that is what the priest is for. mr. flint and mr. buttrick can well afford to come to church to hear edward taylor, and will feel that it is the best day in the week, and that they are abler and nobler men for the hearing; but sooner or later they must find out their mistake, and with indignation, when they have nothing for their time and their pew-tax, but a house full of words. indeed, indeed the bitter rebuke which such a preacher has is the attentive face and drinking ear of the poor farmer. ... john quincy adams. perhaps [the recluse] thinks he has got the whole secret of manner when he has learned that disengaged manners are commanding; but if he sees john quincy adams, then he learns that a man may have extreme irritability of face, voice and bearing, and yet, underneath, so puissant a will as to lose no 1837] babies. hard times 235 charles said when his friend was engaged, “at such times it is a comfort to feel that you are something to offer." may 9. two babies, willie and wallie,' and excellent cousins they prove. willie conscious of seniority in all the dignity of twenty-two months ; wallie six and a fortnight, anything but indifferent to his handsome cousin, whom he regards as a capital plaything, and his hair is divine to pull. so says wallie's mamma, and moreover that he accounts her a porridge-pot, and pap a prime horse. yesterday in the woods i followed the fine humble bee with rhymes and fancies fine.? may 14. harder times. two days since, the suspension of specie payments by the new york and boston banks. william and his wife and child have spent a little time with us. f. h. hedge was here day before yesterday. we walked in the wood and sat down there to discuss why i was i. i mr. emerson's brother william and his wife were visiting at the concord house with their eldest son, william. 2 probably the origin of “ the humble-bee.” 236 journal (age 33 yesterday came dr. channing and mr. jonathan phillips, and honored our house with a call. but sages of the crowd are like kings, so environed with deference and ceremony that a call like this gives no true word for the mind and heart. the true medicine for hard times seems to be sleep. use so much bodily labor as shall insure sleep, then you arise refreshed and in good spirits and in hope. that have i this morn. yesterday afternoon, i stirred the earth about my shrubs and trees and quarrelled with the pipergrass, and now i have slept, and no longer am morose nor feel twitchings in the muscles of my face when a visitor is by. the humble-bee and the pine-warbler seem to me the proper objects of attention in these disastrous times. the hollowness so sad we feel after too much talking is an expressive hint. i am less inclined to ethics, to history, to aught wise and grave and practick, and feel a new joy in nature. i am glad it is not my duty to preach, these few sundays, and i would invite the sufferers by this screwing panic to recover peace through these fantastic amusements during the tornado. our age is ocular. 1837] alcott's vision 237 may 19. yesterday alcott left me after three days spent here. i had “lain down a man and waked up a bruise,” by reason of a bad cold, and was lumpish, tardy and cold. yet could i see plainly that i conversed with the most extraordinary man and the highest genius of the time. he is a man. he is erect; he sees; let whoever be overthrown or parasitic or blind. life he would have, and enact, and not nestle into any cast-off shell and form of the old time; and now proposes to preach to the people, or to take his staff and walk through the country conversing with the schoolteachers, and holding conversations in the villages. and so he ought to go publishing through the land his gospel, like them of old times. wonderful is his vision; the steadiness and scope of his eye at once rebukes all before it, and we little men creep about ashamed. it is amusing even to see how this great visual orb rolls round upon object after object, and threatens them all with annihilation,-seemeth to wither and scorch. coldly he asks “whether milton is to continue to meet the wants of the mind”? and so bacon, and so of all. he is, to be sure, monotonous; you may say, one gets tired of the uniformity, he will not be amused, he never cares 238. journal [ace 33 for the pleasant side of things, but always truth and their origin he seeketh after. society an imperfect union. is it not pathetic that the action of men on men is so partial? we never touch but at points. the most that i can have or be to my fellow man, is it the reading of his book, or the hearing of his project in conversation? i approach some carlyle with desire and joy. i am led on from month to month with an expectation of some total embrace and oneness with a noble mind, and learn at last that it is only so feeble and remote and hiant action as reading a mirabeau or diderot paper, and a few the like. this is all that can be looked for. more we shall not be to each other. baulked soul! it is not that the sea and poverty and pursuit separate us. here is alcott by my door, yet is the union more profound ? no, the sea, vocation, poverty, are seeming fences, but man is insular and cannot be touched. every man is an infinitely repellent orb, and holds his individual being on that condition.' 1 although carlyle's not coming with his wife to live in one household with mr. emerson and his wife (who loyally joined in the invitation) was, at the time, a disappointment, the “ three thousand miles of mountainous water" were a 1837] boy on farm. barriers 239 george bradford compares the happiness of gore ripley'riding the horse to plough, with boys in boston of his age, who are too old to play on the common, and who can only dress and fix straps to their pantaloons. men are continually separating, and not nearing by acquaintance. once dr. channing filled our sky. now we become so conscious of his limits and of the difficulty attending any effort to show him our point of view that we doubt if it be worth while. best amputate. then we come to speak with those who most fully accord in life and doctrine with ourselves, and lo! what mountains high and rivers wide; how still the word is to seek which can, like a ferry-man, transport either into the point of view of the other. invisible repulsions take effect also. the conversation is tentative, groping, only partially successful; and although real gratification arises out of it, both parties are relieved by solitude; i more. i hug the absolute being, unbroken, undefined, of my desart. fortunate barrier. neither pair could have found community life helpful or pleasant as, with the ocean between, the ideal friendship proved. i christopher gore ripley, son of rev. samuel ripley, and, later, chief justice of minnesota. 240 journal (age 33 i bask in beauty. but i may be inspired with a greater ambition and taught to conquer in my own person every calamity by understanding it and its cause. ... i ought ... to live toward it, grasping firm in one hand the hand of the invisible guide, until gradually a perfect insight of the disaster is an everlasting deliverance from its fear. yes ! it is true there are no men. men hang upon things. they are over-crowed by their own creation. a man is not able to subdue the world. he is a greek grammar. he is a money machine. he is an appendage to a great fortune, or to a legislative majority, or to the massachusetts revised statutes, or to some barking and bellowing institution, association or church. but the deep and high and entire man, not parasitic upon time and space, upon traditions, upon his senses, or his organs, but who utters out of a central hope an eternal voice of sovereignty, we are not, and when he comes, we hoot at him: behold this dreamer cometh! symbols on symbols, riddles, phantoms, lo! how they rise. idealism may be held steadily and ethically. i see a certain obstruction, as 1837] hard times. temper 241 a depreciation of my property. the creative me is then to energize and countercreate, which it does in certain wills and affections whose external signs and termini are lucrative labors, property, stocks, and the like. may 20. the man of strong understanding always acts unfavorably upon the man of reason, disconcerts, and makes him less than he is. is the world sick? bankruptcy in england and america; tardy rainy season; snow in france; plague in asia and africa, these are the morning's news. man d onill nature, peevishness, is a cutaneous matter. it is seated no deeper than temperaments, and inflamed or allayed by weather, quantity of food, of sleep, and the news. may 21. he judgeth every man yet is judged by no man. i see a good in such emphatic and universal calamity as the times bring. that they dissatisfy me with society. under common burdens we say there is much virtue in the world, and what evil co-exists is inevitable. i am not 242 journal (age 33 aroused to say, 'i have sinned; i am in the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity'; but when these full measures come, it then stands confessed, — society has played out its last stake; it is check-mated. young men have no hope. adults stand like day-laborers idle in the streets. none calleth us to labor. the old wear no crown of warm life on their gray hairs. the present generation is bankrupt of principles and hope, as of property. i see man is not what man should be. he is the treadle of a wheel. he is a tassel at the apron-string of society. he is a money-chest. he is the servant of his belly. this is the causal bankruptcy, this the cruel oppression, that the ideal should serve the actual, that the head should serve the feet. then first, i am forced to inquire if the ideal might not also be tried. is it to be taken for granted that it is impracticable? behold the boasted world has come to nothing. prudence itself is at her wits' end. pride, and thrift, and expediency, who jeered and chirped and were so well pleased with themselves, and made merry with the dream, as they termed it, of philosophy and love, — behold they are all flat, and here is the soul erect and unconquered still. what answer is it now to 1837] lesson of the crisis 243 say, it has always been so ? i acknowledge that, as far back as i can see the widening procession of humanity, the marchers are lame and blind and deaf; but to the soul that whole past is but one finite series in its infinite scope. deteriorating ever and now desperate. let me begin anew; let me teach the finite to know its master. let me ascend above my fate and work down upon my world. may 22. let us not sit like snarling dogs working not at all, but snapping at those who work ill. i said, “if you sleep, you show character," and the young girls asked what it could mean. i will tell you.' ... the black times have a great scientific value. it is an epoch so critical a philosopher would not miss. as i would willingly carry myself to be played upon at faneuil hall by the stormy winds and strong fingers of the enraged boston, so is this era more rich in the central tones than many languid centuries. what was, ever since my memory, solid continent, now yawns apart and discloses its composition and genesis. i i here occurs the passage on this subject printed in “spiritual laws,” essays, first series, p. 156, centenary ed. ma ve ince 244 journal (age 33 learn geology the morning after an earthquake. i learn fast on the ghastly diagrams of the cloven mountain and upheaved plain and the dry bottom of the sea. the roots of orchards and the cellars of palaces and the corner stones of cities are dragged into melancholy sunshine. i see the natural fracture of the stone. i see the tearing of the tree and learn its fibre and its rooting. the artificial is read from the eternal. among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. i have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times. it is easy for the philosophic class to be poor. poverty is their ornament, they wear with it a sort of silent protest, and challenge admiration. they need not immerse themselves in sense; they scorn to knit their brows on the merits of a sauce and a soup, because they are haunted with a thought that matter has higher uses, namely, its poetical use or language. but not so easy is it to the unphilosophical class to be poor. my friend has no books, no conversation, no fine ini the last two sentences appear in “ considerations by the way,” conduct of life, p. 262, centenary ed. 1837] symbolism of life 245 sight, in short, no certificate that he is any better man than his thousand neighbors, except his great house and marble mantel-pieces, his superb centre-table, and the portfolio of engravings lying on it. these realize to him his inward merit. these are tough medals of his honesty and labor and the regard of fellow men. it is very cruel of you to insist, because you can very well forego them, that he shall. e ceri wrote that men class themselves by their perception of the symbolical character of life. as a stepping-stone to this perception they have certain translations to be made intellectually in their common life. thus, every object of convenience, whether food or dress or utensil, is readily and habitually considered as property, and immediately appraised in money. and the master of a family learns to translate every article that passes before him as household commodity into a money value, which he measures as a proportion to the income of his estate. may 23. you may regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, but if you cannot, mind yourown business. then instantly you are comforted. then instantly the evil begins to be repaired. insi 246 (age 34 journal may 25. “my dear sir, clear your mind of cant,” said dr. johnson. wordsworth, whom i read last night, is garrulous and weak often, but quite free from cant. i think i could easily make a small selection from his volumes which should contain all their poetry. it would take fidelity, tintern abbey, cumberland beggar, ode to duty, september, the force of prayer, lycoris, lines on the death of fox, dion, happy warrior, laodamia, the ode. composition. let not a man decline being an artist under any greenhorn notion of intermeddling with sacred thought. it is surely foolish to adhere rigidly to the order of time in putting down one's thoughts, and to neglect the order of thought. i put like things together. let a man be a guest in his own house. let him be a spectator of his own life. let him heal himself, not by drugs, but by sleep. let him not only do, but be. let him not vaticinate, but hear. let him bask in beauty, but not always carry on a farm. a young man told edmund hosmer that he had come for the honeysuckles because his father 1837] the god in us 247 liked them, but, for his own part, he would rather see a hill of potatoes. hillman'could not see in the yellow warbler on the fir tree any more beauty than in a rat. may 26. the individual. who shall define to me an individual? i behold with awe and delight many illustrations of the one universal mind. i see my being imbedded in it; as a plant in the earth so i grow in god.” i am only a form of him. he is the soul of me. i can even with a mountainous aspiring say, i am god, by transferring my me out of the flimsy and unclean precinct of my body, my fortunes, my private will, and meekly retiring upon the holy austerities of the just and the loving, upon the secret fountains of nature.3 that thin and difficult ether, i also can breathe. the mortal lungs and nostrils burst and shrivel, but the soul itself needeth no organs; it is all element and all organ. yet why not always so? hillman sampson, the son of mr. emerson's friend george sampson. the little boy lived for a short time with the emersons, giving such help about the house as he could. 2 compare “spirit,” nature, p. 64, centenary ed. 3 compare “the oversoul," essays, first series, p. 292; also “ immortality,” letters and social aims, pp. 348, 349, centenary ed. 248 journal (age 34 how came the individual, thus armed and impassioned, to parricide thus murderously inclined, ever to traverse and kill the divine life? ah, wicked manichee!' into that dim problem i cannot enter. a believer in unity, a seer of unity, i yet behold two. whilst i feel myself in sympathy with nature, and rejoice with greatly beating heart in the course of justice and benevolence overpowering me, i yet find little access to this me of me. i fear what shall befal: i am not enough a party to the great order to be tranquil. i hope and i fear. i do not see. at one time, i am a doer. a divine life, i create scenes and persons around and for me, and unfold my thought by a perpetual, successive projection. at least i so say, i so feel, — but presently i return to the habitual attitude of suffering. i behold; i bask in beauty; i await; i wonder; where is my godhead now? this is the male and female principle in nature. one man, male and female, created he him. hard as it is to describe god, it is harder to describe the individual. a certain wandering light comes to me which 1 the manichæan sect in the third century a. d. held doctrines partly christian and partly derived from the magi, including dualism. 1837] the life of life 249 i instantly perceive to be the cause of causes. it transcends all proving. it is itself the ground of being; and i see that it is not one, and i another, but this is the life of my life. that is one fact then; that in certain moments i have known that i existed directly from god, and am, as it were, his organ, and in my ultimate consciousness am he. then, secondly, the contradictory fact is familiar, that i am a surprised spectator and learner of all my life. this is the habitual posture of the mind — beholding. but whenever the day dawns, the great day of truth on the soul, it comes with awful invitation to me to accept it, to blend with its aurora. cannot i conceive the universe without a contradiction? why rake up old mss. to find therein a man's soul? you do not look for conversation in a corpse. to behold the great in the small, the law in one fact, the vegetation of all the forests on the globe in the sprouting of one acorn, this is the vision of genius. i hail with glad augury from afar, that kindred emotion which the grand work of genius awakens, kindred with that awakened 250 journal (age 34 by works of nature. the identity of their origin at the fountain-head, i augur with a thrill of joy. nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the one breaks through everywhere.' may 30. yesterday i attended in boston hedge's club. eleven persons were present, messrs. francis, stetson, ripley, hedge, brownson, alcott, bartol, putnam, dwight, osgood, emerson. we met at mr. ripley's house. the other day, talking with hedge of the deference paid to talent, i said there was a pathetic sentiment in receiving such, for it showed how little wit was in the world when an individual pittance is so much accounted. hedge applied wordsworth's line “ alas the gratitude of man hath oftener left me mourning.” it occurred to me again that another instance of this sentiment was a fact that chanced lately and gave me pain, when the good nancy 3 apologised for going out of the front door to church. 1 this sentence was used in « the preacher,” lectures and biographical sketches, p. 223. 2 « the symposium.” 3 the housemaid, a capable, independent new england ccu ce girl. 1837] may. byron. johnson 251 may 31. we have had two peerless summer days after all our cold winds and rains. i have weeded corn and strawberries, intent on being fat, and have foreborne study. the maryland yellow-throat pipes to me all day long, seeming to say extacy! extacy! and the bob-o'-lincoln flies and sings. i read during the heat of the day beppo and manfred. what famine of meaning! manfred is ridiculous for its purposeless raving, not all the genuine love of nature, nor all the skill of utterance can save it. it is all one circular proposition. june 29. almost one month lost to study by bodily weakness and disease. lately i have been reading with much exhilaration boswell's life of johnson, and was glad i had remembered such a book was. then by easy steps i came to his journey to the western islands, then to the life of pope, of cowley. strong good sense has johnson, but he is no philosopher, as likewise he says philosophical when he means scientific. "judgment is forced upon us by experience.” ...“of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without which judgment is 252 journal (age 34 cold and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates, the superiority must,” etc. “the true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction.” — life of cowley. such are the doctor's poor definitions. his best is that of wit in cowley's life (volumei, p. 20), yet he is a mutton-head at a definition. before coleridge he would be dumb. much of his fame is doubtless owing to the fact that he concentrates the traits of the english character. he is a glorified john bull, so downright, so honest, so strong-minded and so headstrong. “εν και παν “ if men be worlds, there is in every one something to answer in some proportion all the world's riches; and in good men, this virtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul is.” donne." july 17. did i read somewhere lately that the sum of virtue was to know and dare? the analogy is always perfect between virtue and genius. one i here follow several quotations from donne and cowley. vci 1837] genius creates 253 is ethical, the other intellectual creation. to create, to create is the proof of a divine presence. whoever creates is god, and whatever talents are, if the man create not, the pure efflux of deity is not his.' . .. here are things just hinted which not one reader in a hundred would take, but which lie so near to the favorite walks of my imagination and to the facts of my experience that i read them with a surprise and delight as if i were finding very good things in a forgotten manuscript of my own. creation is always the style and act of these minds. you shall not predict what the poet shall say, and whilst ephemeral poetry hath its form, its contents, and almost its phrase out of the books, and is only a skilful paraphrase or permutation of good authors, in these the good human soul speaks because it has something new to say. it is only another face of the same fact to denominate them sincere. the way to avoid mannerism, the way to write what shall not go out of fashion, is to write sincerely,' to transcribe your doubt or regret or 1 the last sentence occurs in « the american scholar," and in the journal follows the paragraph in the same address as to the verses of the great english poets. (nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 91, 92, centenary ed.) 2 this sentence is found in “ spiritual laws," essays, first series, p. 153. 254 journal [age 34 whatever state of mind, without the airs of a fine gentleman or great philosopher, without timidity or display, just as they lie in your consciousness, casting on god the responsibility of the facts. this is to dare. cowley and donne are philosophers. to their insight there is no trifle, but philosophy or insight is so much the habit of their minds that they can hardly see, as a poet should, the beautiful forms and colors of things, as a chemist may be less alive to the picturesque. at the same time their poems, like life, afford the chance of richest instruction amid frivolous and familiar objects; the loose and the grand, religion and mirth stand in surprising neighborhood, and like the words of great men, without cant. two proverbs i found lately: one, “he who would bring home the wealth of the indies, must carry out the wealth of the indies.” the other may serve as foil to this magnificent sentence, “small pot, soon hot.” then again i found in the phenix the persian sentence, “remember always that the gods are good,” which for genius equals any other golden saying. 1837] plymouth. waldo 255 at plymouth, which is one of the most picturesque of towns with its two hundred ponds, its hills, and the great sea-line always, visible from their tops, i enjoyed the repose that seems native to the place. on the shore of halfway pond, our party ate their gipsy dinner. the next day we rolled on the beach in the sun and dipped our spread fingers in the warm sand, and peeped after bugs, and botanized and rode and walked, and so yielded ourselves to the italian genius of the time, the dolce far niente. it is even so, that the population of the historical town is on its back presently after dinner.' lidian says that they who have only seen her baby well, do not know but half of his perfections; they do not [know] how patient he is, and suffers just like a little angel; they must see him sick. if he should fap his little wings and fly straight up to heaven, he would not find there anything purer than himself. he coos like a pigeon-house. 1 mr. and mrs. emerson had gone on a visit to her ancestral town, where she had the pleasure of showing her little boy to her many friends. plymouth differed much from concord in its customs, and was distinctly more aristocratic. mr. emerson was always amused by the general custom among the ladies there of taking a nap in the afternoon. 256 journal (age 34 july 19. if you go into the garden and hoe corn or kill bugs on the vines, or pick pease, when you come into the house you shall still for some time see simulacra of weeds and vines or pea-pods, as you see the image of the sun some time after looking at the sun. both are disagreeable phenomena, as bad as laughing.' noi11 the office of reading is wholly subordinate. ... by knowing the systems of philosophy that have flourished under the names of heraclitus, zoroaster, plato, kant; by knowing the life and conversation of jesus, of napoleon, of shakspear, and of dante; by knowing chemistry and commerce, i get thereby a vocabulary for my ideas. i get no ideas. i wrote this afternoon to miss fuller, that power and aim seldom meet in one soul. the wit of our time is sick for an object. genius is homesick. i cannot but think that our age is somewhat distinguished hereby, for you cannot talk with any intelligent company without finding expressions of regret and impatience that i mr. emerson hated to be made to laugh; he could not command his face well. 1837] unrest. courage 257 attack the whole structure of our worship, education, and social manners. we all undoubtedly expect that time will bring amelioration, but whilst the grass grows the noble steed starves, we die of the numb palsy. but ethics stand when wit fails. fall back on the simplest sentiment, be heroic, deal justly, walk humbly, and you do something and do invest the capital of your being in a bank that cannot break, and that will surely yield ample rents.' july 21. courage consists in the conviction that they with whom you contend are no more than you. if we believed in the existence of strict individuals, natures, that is, not radically identical but unknown, immeasurable, we should never dare to fight. crabbe knew men, but to read one of his poems seems to me all one with taking a dose of medicine. 1 the passage in “ self-reliance," on abiding good-humoredly by your spontaneous impressions then most when the cry is on the other side, follows this in the journal. (essays, first series, p. 46, centenary ed.) 258 journal [age 34 july 26. yesterday i went to the athenæum and looked through journals and books—for wit, for excitement, to wake in me the muse. in vain, and in vain. and am i yet to learn that the god dwells within? that books are but crutches, the resorts of the feeble and lame, which, if used by the strong, weaken the muscular power, and become necessary aids. i return home. nature still solicits me. overhead the sanctities of the stars shine forevermore, and to me also, pouring satire on the pompous business of the day which they close, and making the generations of men show slight and evanescent. a man is but a bug, the earth but a boat, a cockle, drifting under their old light. july 27. a letter from carlyle to-day rejoiced me. pleasant would life be with such companions. but if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. if not the deity but our willfulness hews and shapes the new relations, their sweetness escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor by cultivation.' 1 this passage, printed here because of its personal connection, occurs in “ prudence" (essays, first series, p. 240, centenary ed.). 1837] scholar and books 259 “ es ist alles wahr wodurch du besser wirst.” “ poets are the natural guardians of admiration in the hearts of the people.” many trees bear only in alternate years. why should you write a book every year? july 29. if the all-wise would give me light, i should write for the cambridge men a theory of the scholar's office.' it is not all books which it behooves him to know, least of all to be a bookworshipper, but he must be able to read in all books that which alone gives value to books — in all to read one, the one incorruptible text of truth. that alone of their style is intelligible, acceptable to him. books are for the scholar's idle times.' . .. pope and johnson and addison write as if they had never seen the face of the country, but had only read of trees and rivers in books. 1 the coming phi beta kappa address, “ the american scholar.” 2 here follows much of what is said about use and abuse of books on pp. 90-93 of “ the american scholar" (nature, addresses, and lectures). 260 [age 34 journal the striped fly that eats our squash and melon vines, the rosebug, the corn worm, the red old leaf of the vines that entices the eye to new search for the lurking strawberry, the thicket and little bowers of the pea-vine, the signs of ripeness and all the hints of the garden, these grave city writers never knew. the towers of white blossoms which the chestnut tree uplifts in the landscape in july, the angle of strength, (almost a right angle) at which the oak puts out its iron arms; the botany of the meadows and water sides — what had queen anne's wits to do with these creatures ? did they ever prick their fingers with a thorn of a gooseberry? did they ever hear the squeak of a bat or see his flitting?' august 1. i should think water the best of inventions if i were not acquainted also with air and fire. 1 these are echoes of the gardening experiences of mr. emerson in his early housekeeping, when he had put a small vegetable garden in his two acres, mrs. emerson having her flower garden just below the house. as the farm increased mr. emerson confined his attention to his growing fruit-trees, among which he spent an hour after breakfast, taking his children with him on sunday mornings, telling them about the trees and naming the varieties. 1837] beauty. night 261 august 2. the farmer's rule for making hay is, to keep the rake as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison and putting us quite beside ourselves we can seldom see after thirty. gertrude had a cheek like a sunset.' ... the two most noble things in the world are learning and virtue. the latter is health, the former is power. the latter is being, the former is action. but let them go erect evermore and strike sail to none. an enchanting night of south wind and clouds; mercury at 73° ; all the trees are windharps; blessed be light and darkness; ebb and flow, cold and heat; these restless pulsations of nature which by and by will throb no more. i the entry following this contains the long passage in “the american scholar” (p. 105, centenary ed.) about the mischievous notion that we had “come too late into nature,” etc.; which is followed by the passage in “self-reliance” about infants and boys conforming to nobody. (essays, first series, p. 28.) 262 journal (age 34 poetry, i augur, shall revive, and stamp a new age as the astronomers assure us that the star in the constellation harp shall be, in its turn, the pole star for a thousand years.' i knew a man scared by the rustle of his own hat-band. when the narrow-minded and unworthy shall knock at my gate i will say, “ come, now will i sacrifice to the gods below.” then will i entertain my guest heartily and handsomely. besides, is it for thee to choose what shadows shall pass over thy magical mirror ? august 3. hannah haskins? tells well the story of aunt mary's watcher, whilst she had a felon on her thumb. she had never a watcher in her life and was resolved to have one once, so seized the chance; all day was making preparations for her i compare the end of the opening paragraph of “ the american scholar." 2 later, mrs. parsons, mr. emerson's double cousin, who during her youth, and occasionally after her marriage, took care of miss mary moody emerson. she was a woman of great sweetness, combined with originality and spirit, unchanged to the last. she died at a great age at mr. emerson's house in concord, where she and her sister, mrs. sarah ripley ansley, spent their last years with miss ellen emerson. саи 1837] the watcher 263 coming and requiring the family to have things in readiness. twice or thrice she sent messages over to the woman's house to tell her to sleep, and to fix the hour of her coming. when at last she came, she first put the watcher to bed that she might be ready, and watched her herself, but presently woke her because she thought her head did not lie comfortably; then again because she snored, to forbid her making such a shocking noise. at last she became anxious lest her watcher should spend the night, and day break before she had got any service from her; so she determined to get up and have her own bed made for the sake of giving her something to do. but at last, growing very impatient of her attendance, she dismissed her before light, declaring she never would have a watcher again; she had passed the worst night she remembered. on the other part, miss — , the watcher, declared that no consideration would tempt her to watch with miss emerson again. sa ver w e a “by the shadow of the stone of hours.” it is ignorance only which complains of a trite subject. every subject is new to the wise, and trite to the incapable. 264 journal [age 34 it was a just sentiment of clarendon’s which induces him to stop the thread of his narrative when falkland dies, that he may describe the perfections of that eminent person, saying that the celebrating the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons and transmitting their great virtues for the imitation of posterity is one of the principal ends and duties of history. (vol. iii, p. 151.) falkland “cared only that his actions should be just, not that they should be acceptable.” plutarch i esteem a greater benefactor than aristotle. a scholar is one attuned to nature and life, so that heaven and earth traverse freely with their influences his heart and meet in him.'... august 4. punishment grows out of the same stem as crime, like the bedysarum nudicaulis.” 1 followed by passage about raising himself above private considerations (“the american scholar,” p. 101); and that about thoughts always fitting before us (« intellect," essays, first series, p. 331). 2 this entry is preceded by a part of the paragraph in « the american scholar” (p. 111) about embracing the common, not the romantic ; asking " insight into to-day,” etc. 1837] walden 265 eloquence washes the ears into which it flows. the grass is mown, the corn is ripe, autumnal stars arise. after raffling all day in plutarch's morals, or shall i say angling there, for such fish as i might find, i sallied out this fine afternoon through the woods to walden water. the woods were too full of mosquitoes to offer any hospitality to the muse, and when i came to the blackberry vines the plucking the crude berries at the risk of splintering my hand, and with a mosquito mounting guard over every particular berry, seemed a little too emblematical of general life, whose shining and glossy fruits are very hard beset with thorns, and very sour and good for nothing when gathered; but the pond was all blue and beautiful in the bosom of the woods and under the amber sky, like a sapphire lying in the moss. i sat down a long time on the shore to see the show. the variety and density of the foliage at the eastern end of the pond is worth seeing; then the extreme softness and holiday beauty of the summer clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as i fancied, their height and privilege of motion and yet, and yet, not seeming so much the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to um266 journal (age 34 some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. i rejected this fancy with a becoming spirit and insisted that clouds, woods and water were all there for me. the waterflies were full of happiness. the frogs that shoot from the land as fast as you walk along, a yard ahead of you, are a meritorious beastie. for their cowardice is only greater than their curiosity and desire of acquaintance with you. three strokes from the shore the little swimmer turns short round, spreads his webbed paddles and hangs at the surface, looks you in the face, and so continues as long as you do not assault him. co language. as boscovich taught that two particles of matter never touch, so it seems true that nothing can be described as it is. the most accurate picture is only symbols and suggestions of the thing, but from the nature of language all remote. august 5. a man should behave himself as a guest of nature but not as a drone. god never cants. and the charm of plutarch and plato and thucydides for me, i believe, is that there i get ethics without cant. 1837] harriet martineau 267 i am struck with the splendor of the sentences i meet in books, especially in plutarch, taken from pindar, plato and heraclitus, these three. it was menander who said, “whom the gods love die young.” august 8.' i have read miss martineau's first volume with great pleasure. i growled at first at the difference betwixt it and the plutarch i had just left. the sailors refuse lemonade and cake and sugar plums, and ask for pork and biscuit, — “something to line their ribs with,” and pleasant and exhilarating as the book is, i lack the solids. it pleases like a novel, the brilliant pictures of scenery and of towns and things which she sketches, but i feel, as i read, i enrich myself not at all. yet, better pleased as i read on, i honored the courage and rectitude of the woman. how faithful is she found, where to be faithful is praise enough. she gives that pleasure which i have felt before, when a good cause which has been trampled on is freshly and cheerily maintained by some undaunted man of good this entry is preceded by the passage in “ the american scholar” (pp. 106, 107), as to humbler men being content that the hero or poet should come to honor as representing their own possibilities. 268 journal [age 34 a sense and good principle, and we are all contrite that we had not done it, as if we could have done it. this attribute of genius she has, that she talks so copiously and elegantly upon subjects so familiar that they seemed desperate, and writes evermore from one point of view. the woman is manifest, as she seems quite willing, in the superfluous tenderness for the fine boy, and the snug farmhouse, and other privacies. but the respect for principles is the genius of the book and teaches a noble lesson through every page. i will thank those who teach me not to be easily depressed. an excellent specimen of poetry of its kind is the epitaph on the criminal who was killed by a fall from his horse. « between the stirrup and the ground i mercy asked and mercy found.” vide boswell's johnson. which word can you spare, what can you add ? a proud man should not wear shoes, nor eat sugar in his tea, nor walk in the road nor ride, no, nor eat nor drink nor wear anything. if he is so good that he cannot associate with men, 1837] shakspear. clarendon 269 let him not creep about, their debtor for everything. we are so helplessly mendicant in our relations to each other, that pride is dishonest. robinson crusoe may be as proud as he pleases. the aim of churches and colleges and parties is to drill; the aim of reason and of god is to create. i read with pleasure in miss martineau's book the lines of brutus in shakspear. “countrymen, my heart doth joy that yet in all my life i found no man but he was true to me.” shakspear knew better than to put the coxcomb speech that has been reported of old in brutus’ mouth at his death, “that he had worshipped virtue all his life, and found it but a shadow." i read with pleasure and for quite a different reason, the vivacious expression that the western emigrants were “the perspiration of the eastern states.” august 9. clarendon alone among the english authors (though i think i see the love of clarendon in burke) has successfully transplanted the italian superlative style. nec intersit deus, dignus nisi vindice nodus. horace. 270 journal [age 34 this rule of rhetoric is a rule of conversation also. always suppose god; and do not cant upon interpositions here and there, as if anywhere he were absent, or you were anything. what is man but god impure? se the world seems very simple and easily dispatched to the theorist. there are but two things, or but one thing and its shadow-cause and effect, and effect is itself worthless, if separated from cause. it is cause still that must be worshipped in effect, so that it is only one thing. the worship of effect is idolatry. the church, including under the name doctrine, forms, discipline, members, is the instant effect: weak man adheres to the effect and lets god go. the iliad, the porch, the academy is the effect, admirable, adorable, in the moment of their appearance and their spontaneous working on the mind; but when, as speedily happens, severed from the cause, and regarded as having a perfection per se, they spawn with rules, prescriptions, observances, they become noxious idols. the indisposition of men to go back to the source and mix with deity is the reason of de, gradation and decay. education is expended in rval come 1837] greatness. garden 271 the measurement and imitation of effects, in the study of shakspear, for example, as itself a perfect being, instead of using shakspear merely as an effect of which the cause is with every scholar. thus the college becomes idolatrous — a temple full of idols. shakspear will never be made by the study of shakspear. i know not how directions for greatness can be given, yet greatness may be inspired. always cast back the child, the man, on himself. teach him to treat things and books and sovereign genius, as himself also a sovereign, that he is porous to principles, by nature a perfect conductor of that electricity and when he is in the circuit, divine ; when not, dead.' my garden is a mat of vines, herbs, corn and shrubs. one must pick strawberries and pease before he can know that there are as many to glean as to gather. i like the fragrance that floats by from i know not what weeds or plants, as i stand in the pea vines and pluck the little pendulums. every time i pull one his neighbors make a gentle rattle in their pod to invite the hand to them. i here follows the passage in “ the american scholar” (p. 105) about the world, “plastic in the hands of god, alint to ignorance and sin,” etc. " sn 272 journal [ace 34 i sit and have nothing to say. in the great calm my ship can do nothing. i have confidence that if the winds arise and the waves toss, i have rigging and rudder, and hands to sail my ship. but when the sea is full, there is no whirlpool; when the river is flooded, no falls; in the stoical plenum, no motion. i had a letter from dr. frothingham' to-day. the sight of that man's handwriting is parnassian. nothing vulgar is connected with his name, but, on the contrary, every remembrance of wit and learning, and contempt of cant. in our olympic games we love his fame. but that fame was bought by many years' steady rejection of all that is popular with our saints, and as persevering study of books which none else reads, and which he can convert to no temporary purpose. there is a scholar doing a scholar's office. carlyle: how the sight of his handwriting warms my heart at the little post-window; how i rev. nathaniel langdon frothingham, s. t. d., pastor of the first church in boston (in which office he was a successor of mr. emerson's father), and at one time instructor in rhetoric and oratory at harvard college. he was a man of taste and letters, always honored and valued by mr. emerson. 273 1837] carlyle's course noble it seems to me that his words should run out of nithsdale or london over land and sea to weimar, to rome, to america, to watertown, to concord, to louisville; that they should cheer and delight and invigorate me. a man seeking no reward, warping his genius, filing his mind' to no dull public, but content with the splendors of nature and art as he beholds them, and resolute to announce them if his voice is orotund and shrill, in his own proper accents — please or displease the world. how noble that he should trust his eye and ear above all london, and know that in all england is no man that can see so far behind or forward; how good and just that amid the hootings of malignant men he should hear this and that whispered qualification of praise of schiller, burns, diderot, etc., the commended papers being more every year and the commendation louder. how · noble that, alone and unpraised, he should still write for he knew not whom, and find at last his readers in the valley of the mississippi, and they should brood on the pictures he had painted, and untwist the many-colored meanings which he i the expression is borrowed from shakespeare. macbeth says, for banquo's issue have i fil'd my mind. (act iii, scene 1.) 274 (age 34 journal had spun and woven into so rich a web of sentences; and domesticate in so many and remote heads the humor, the learning and the philosophy which, year by year, in summer and in frost, this lonely man had lived in the moors of scotland. this man upholds and propels civilization. for every wooden post he knocks away he replaces one of stone. he cleanses and exalts men and leaves the world better. he knows and loves the heavenly stars, and sees fields below with trees and animals. he sees towered cities, royal houses, and poor men's chambers, and reports the good he sees, god through him telling this generation also that he has beholden his work and sees that it is good. he discharges his duty as one of the world's scholars. the farmer turns his capital once a year. the merchant many times oftener. the scholar cannot. the knowledge which he acquires will not become bread or reputation to him in a year, or two years, or ten. there is no double speeder, no railroad, no mechanical multiplication. he gives himself to the slow and unhonored task of observation.'... for all this loss and scorn he is i here follows the long passage comparing the scholar in his private observatory to the astronomer, except that he may 1837] scholar. war 275 to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. ... the wisdom that he painfully gathers sweetens his own life; he is made gentle, noble and self-centred, and who is so becomes, in the heart of all clear-seeing men, venerable and salutary and oracular. he preserves for another generation the knowledge of what is noble and good. the southerner asks concerning any man, “how does he fight?” the northerner asks, " what can he do?” august 12. it is a sublime thing to oversee one's self as we do in memory. the general has only to stimulate the mind of his troop to that degree that they ascend to the perception that they are men, and the enemy is no more, and they are bold, and the victory is already won.... how foolish is war. let the injured party speak to the injurer until their minds meet, be long obscure and poor; that he must seem to be hostile to society; must resist vulgar prosperity and decadence by communicating heroic sentiments, etc. (“the american scholar," pp. 101, 102.) 276 journal [age 34 and the artillery is discharged, and the forced marches of the army, that were clambering in six weeks over mountains and rivers, are too slow and cumberous; the blow is already struck, the victory gained, the peace sworn. i fear the cochran rifle or the perkins steam-battery will never do. these are wrath and wrong embodied, but, unhappily for their patentees, they are finite, and the force opposed to them is infinite, and if they could contrive an engine to rain cannonballs all day over an acre, as we water a gardenbed, it would prove nothing but ingenious and speedy transportation of iron, a pretty toy, but for tyranny or anger quite useless." all the life i have lived lies as my dictionary, from which to extract the word which i want to dress the new perception of this moment. this is the way to learn grammar. god never meant that we should learn language by colleges or books. that only can we say which we have lived. life lies behind us, as the quarry i the entry following this is the simile which mr. emerson drew from his gardening experience of the images of apples in the sunshine remaining on the retina, when excited hours later. see “ intellect," essays, first series, pp. 333, 334, centenary ed. 1837] jesus 277 from whence we get tiles and cope-stones for the masonry of to-day.' august 14. the preacher enumerates his classes of men, and i do not find my place therein. i suspect then that no man does. everything is my cousin, and when he speaks things, i immediately feel he is touching some of my relations, and i am uneasy, but whilst he deals in words i can slumber and sleep. am u wo ... the flowering weed and sere stubble, gay facts or grave facts, alike confirm his [the wise man's] thought, not less than if there were a voice, “ as thou hast said."? : if jesus came now into the world, he would say, you, you! he said to his age, i. he that perceives that the moral sentiment is the highest in god's order, rights himself, he stands in the erect position, and therefore is strong, uses his hands, works miracles, just as i compare with last sentences of the paragraph on vocabulary, « the american scholar,” pp. 97, 98. 2 here follows the paragraph, “ all literature writes the character of the wise man,” etc. see “ history,” essays, first series, p. 7. 278 journal [age 34 a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. there never was a saint but was pleased to be accused of pride and this because pride is a form of self-trust. i like not to have the day hurry away under me whilst i sit at my desk; i wish not reveries, i like to taste my time and spread myself through all the hour. do they think the composition too highly wrought? a poem should be a blade of damascus steel, made up a mass of knife-blades and nails, and parts every one of which has had its whole surface hammered and wrought before it was welded into the sword, to be wrought over anew. the least effect of the oration is on the orator; yet it is something; a faint recoil; a kicking of the gun. august 17. this morning mr. alcott and mr. hedge left me. four or five days full of discourse, and much was seen. i incline to withdraw continually as from a surfeit, but the stomach of my 1837] alcott's talk 279 wise guests being stronger, i strain my courtesy to sit by, though drowsy. in able conversation we have glimpses of the universe, perceptions of the souls omnipotence, but not much to record. i, who enjoin on alcott records, can attain to none myself, to no register of these far-darting lights and shadows, or any sketch of the mountain landscape which has opened itself to the eye. it would be a valuable piece of literature, could a report of these extended and desultory but occasionally profound, often ornamented, often sprightly and comic dialogues, be made, sinking some parts, fulfilling others, and chiefly putting together things that belong together. i would rather have a perfect recollection of all this, of all that i have thought and felt in the last week than any book that can now be published. society. these caducous relations are in the soul as leaves, flowers and fruits are in the arboreous nature, and wherever it is put, and how often soever they are lopped off, yet still it renews them ever. infancy, coleridge says, is body and spirit in unity, the body is all animated. if this state 280 journal (age 34 should be perpetuated, we should have men like the gods and heroes carved on the friezes of the parthenon. now the adult figure is ugly, and we are thankful it is clothed to save our eyes from offence. but phidias's men are as lovely and majestic in their nakedness as is the child. the æillade is to be explained on the principle of community or oneness of nature. it is the body's perception of difference based on radical oneness. strange that anybody who ever met another person's eyes should doubt that all men have one soul. august 18. the hope to arouse young men at cambridge to a worthier view of their literary duties prompts me to offer the theory of the scholar's function. he has an office to perform in society. what is it? to arouse the intellect; to keep it erect and sound; to keep admiration in the hearts of the people; to keep the eye open upon its spiritual aims. how shall he render this service? by being a soul among those things with which he deals. let us look at the world as it aids his function. 1837] freedom from authors 281 one thing is plain, he must have a training by himself. the training of another age will not fit him. he himself, and not others, must judge what is good for him. now the young are oppressed by their instructors. bacon or locke saw and thought, and inspired by their thinking a generation, and now all must be pinned to their thinking, which a year after was already too narrow for them. the coverlet is too narrow and too short. they were born heirs of the dome of god, thereunder or therein to move unshackled and unbounded, and we would confine them under a coverlet. meek young men grow up in colleges' and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves. some good angel in the shape of a turnkey bids them demand a habeas corpus, and the moment they come out of durance the heaven opens and the earth smiles. narro they say the insane like a master; so always does the human heart hunger after a leader, a master through truth. august 19. the secret of the scholar or intellectual man i compare with the sentence thus beginning in “the american scholar,” p. 89. 282 journal (age 34 is that all nature is only the foliage, the flowering and the fruit of the soul, and that every part therefore exists as emblem and sign of some fact in the soul. instantly rags and offal are elevated into hieroglyphics ; as the chemist sees nothing unclean, so the poet does not. this needed the reflective age. the near explains the far; a drop of water tells all that is true of the ocean; a family will reveal the state, and one man the all. the reflective age should make the greatest discoveries. . . . let me once go behind any material fact and see its cause in an affection, an idea, and the fact assumes at once a scientific value. facts are disagreeable or loathsome to me so long as i have no clue to them; persons are formidable or tedious. but give me the chain that connects them to the universal consciousness, and i shall see them to be necessary and see them to be convenient, and enlarge my charity one circle more and let them in. let me see how the man, not “is tyrannized over by his members,” but by his thoughts, and these thoughts of mine, — thoughts that i have also, though qualified in me by other thoughts not yet ripened in him,and i can pardon and rejoice in him also. community, identity of nature is the ground of that 1837] tool-room in barn 283 boundless trust in men which always has its reward in reciprocal trust.'... i please myself with getting my nail-box set in the snuggest corner of the barn-chamber and well filled with nails, and gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. herein i find an old joy of youth, of childhood, which perhaps all domestic children share, — the catlike love of garrets, barns and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. it is quite genuine. when it occurs to-day, i ask, have others the same? once i should not have thought of such a question. what i loved, i supposed all children loved and knew, and therefore i did not name them. we were at accord. but much conversation, much comparison, apprises us of difference. the first effect of this new learning is to incline us to hide our tastes. as they differ, we must be wrong. afterwards some person comes and wins éclat by simply describing this old but concealed fancy of ours. then we immediately learn to value all the parts of our i many omitted passages in this entry of august 19 are scattered through pp. 109-113 of “the american scholar." 2 this autobiographical passage does duty in “ prudence" (essays, first series, p. 227, centenary ed.). 284 journal (age 34 nature, to rely on them as self-authorized and that to publish them is to please others. so now the nail-box figures for its value in my journal. we are indeed discriminated from each other by very slight inequalities which, by their accumulation, constitute at last broad contrasts. genius surprises us with every word. it does not surprise itself. it is moving by the self-same law as you obey in your daily cogitation, and one day you will tread without wonder the same steps. plutarch. [here follow many quotations from plutarch's “morals,” many of them quoted by him from the poets. a few are here given.] “hesiod says :• bad counsel, so the gods ordain, is most of all the advisers' bane.'” morals, iv, p. 158. “they should have left every one in those sentiments which they had from the laws and custom concerning the divinity, •since neither now nor yesterday began these thoughts, that have been ever, nor yet can a man be found who their first entrance knew.'” morals, iv, p. 391. (from sophocles, antigone.) 1837] plutarch's morals 285 « dost thou behold the vast and azure sky how in its liquid arms the earth doth lie?” morals, iv, p. 320. “truth being the greatest good that man can receive and the goodliest blessing that god can give.” – morals, iv, p. 60. “nature sent us out free and loose, we bind and straiten and pin up ourselves in houses, and reduce ourselves into a scant and little room.” — morals, iii, p. 50. “ stern jove has in some angry mood bereft us of his solitude.” telemachus, in homer, apud plutarch, morals, iii, p. 73. “ unvanquished love! whatever else deceives our trust, 't is this our very selves outlives.” morals, ii, p. 74. “ it is an expression of pindar, that we tread the dark bottom of hell with necessities as hard as iron.” — morals, 1, p. 288. after a festival you may see “the dirt of wine.” “ the sea was the tear of saturn." 286 (age 34 journal “a walk near the sea, and a sail near the shore are best.” august 20. carlyle and wordsworth now act out of england on us, — coleridge also. lidian remembers the religious terrors of her childhood, when young tinged her day and night thoughts, and the doubts of cowper were her own; when every lightning seemed the beginning of conflagration, and every noise in the street the crack of doom. i have some parallel recollections at the latin school when i lived in beacon street. afterwards, what remained for one to learn was cleansed by books and poetry and philosophy, and came in purer forms of literature at college. these spiritual crises no doubt are periods of as certain occurrence in some form of agitation to every mind as dentition or puberty. lidian was at that time alarmed by the lines on the gravestones. the babe cheers me with his hearty and protracted laugh, which sounds to me like thunder in the woods.' í laughter rich as woodland thunder. « threnody," poems, p. 155, centenary ed. 1837] dreams. soul's growth 287 august 21. a dream of a duel. dreams may explain the magnetic directed dream. dreams are the sequel of waking knowledge. awake, i know the character of andrew, but do not think what he may do.... we say paradise was ; adam fell; the golden age, and the like. we mean man is not as he ought to be; but our way of painting this is on time and we say was. i believe i shall some time cease to be an individual, that the eternal tendency of the soul is to become universal, to animate the last extremities of organization. august 22. i received this morning “the french revolution, a history, by thomas carlyle” from him.” [on the last day of august mr. emerson delivered the address before the phi beta kappa society, “ the american scholar."] 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “demonology,” lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 8, 9, centenary ed. 2 this entry is followed by one on « circles" printed in essays, first series, pp. 304, 305. 288 journal (age 34 september 6. not a word is inscribed for ten days. and now we bask in warm and yellow light of three pearly days — corn, beans, and squashes ripening every hour; the garden, the field, an indian paradise. it seemed the other day a fact of some moment that the project of our companion, be he who he may, and that what it may, is always entitled in courteous society to deference and superiority. september 13. we need nature, and cities give the human senses not room enough. i go out daily and nightly to feed my eyes on the horizon and the sky, and come to feel the want of this scope as i do of water for my washing. yesterday, as i watched the flight of some crows, i suddenly discovered a hawk high overhead and then directly four others at such a height they seemed smallest sparrows. there on high they swooped and circled in the pure heaven. after watching them for a time, i turned my eye to my path, and was struck with the dim and leaden color, all unattractive and shorn of beams, of this earth to him whose eye has conversed with heaven. to-day i wrote a letter to carlyle. s 1837] our wood-god 289 on the first of september the club spent the day with me; present, alcott, barlow, bradford, clarke, dwight,' emerson, francis, hedge, osgood,“ peabody,} putnam,* ripley, robbins, stetson. elizabeth hoar, mrs. ripley, and margaret fuller also honored our séance. the american artist who would carve a woodgod, and who was familiar with the forest in maine, where enormous fallen pine trees “cumber the forest floor,” where huge mosses depending from the trees and the mass of the timber give a savage and haggard strength to the grove, would produce a very different statue from the sculptor who only knew a european woodland the tasteful greek, for example. the german printed type resembles the gothic architecture. it occurred the other day, in hearing some clapping of hands after a speech, that the orator's value might be measured by every additional i rev. john sullivan dwight. 2 rev. samuel osgood, s. t. d. 3 rev. ephraim peabody, later, minister of king's chapel. 4. rev. george putnam, s. t. d.(?) 290 journal [age 34 round after the three first claps, just as jockeys are wont to pay ten dollars for every additional roll of a horse who rolls himself on the ground. for in both cases the first and second roll come very easily off, but it gets beyond the third very hardly. september 18. in the woods to-day i heard a pattering like rain and looking up i beheld the air over and about the trees full of insects (the winged ant) in violent motion and gyrations, and some of them continually dropping out of the flying or fighting swarm, and causing the rain-like sound as they fell upon the oak leaves. the fallers consisted of little knots of two or three insects apparently biting each other, and so twisted or holden together as to encumber the wings." september 19. there are few experiences in common life more mortifying and disagreeable than “the foolish face of praise.”? ... 1 alluded to in “literary ethics,” nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 168, centenary ed. 2 the whole passage occurs in “ self-reliance," essays, first series, p. 55. 1837] two faces. the hand 291 i should like very well to get the data of the good story which lidian tells of the stout soldier who persisted in wearing his military queue when the reforming major ordered all queues to be cut off in the regiment; the soldier held fast to his own, and, dying, required that a hole should be made underneath his head in his coffin and the dear queue should project, decent and honorable, thereout. charles, talking of mrs. — , said that she had two faces, and, when conversing with her, you looked up and would suddenly find that, instead of talking with the beautiful mrs. you were talking with a ghoul. the hand is needed to teach the use of the eye. we can hardly speak of our own experience and the names of our family sparingly enough. the rule seems to be, that we should not use these dangerous personalities any more than we are sure the sympathies of the interlocutors will go along with us.' ... the rest of the paragraph is on avoiding demonstrations in conversation in company. (“friendship,” essays, first series, p. 207.) 292 journal. (age 34 the æsthetic club met at mr. clark's in newton on september 6. present:— alcott, clarke, dwight, emerson, francis, hedge, osgood, ripley, stetson. miss clarke,' miss fuller, and miss peabody were also present. our spontaneous action is always our best. come out of the study and walk abroad, and you shall get suddenly a spontaneous glance of the soul at your subject more searching and just than any the hours of labor had given. yet was the labor a needful preamble. so the first retrospect on yesterday's thought which we have on waking; mark, keep and deepen that." i have among my kinsmen a man to whom, more than anyone i have known, i may apply the phrase "an afternoon man.” he rolls and riots in delays. his wife and daughters beseech him to plant his corn early, that it may not be killed by frost as it was last year. “pooh,” he says, 1 miss sarah clarke, the artist, a pupil of allston, and sister of rev. james freeman clarke, had been one of mr. emerson's scholars and continued to be his friend through life. 2 much the same matter is printed in “ intellect” (essays, first series, p. 328), but the form seems more interesting here. 1837] tabooed subjects 293 “i hate to have all the corn ripe; i like to see some of it cut in the stalk for fodder.” the horse i bought of him was very small. — “o, yes,” he says, “none of those great overgrown creatures that eat all before them.” mr. lamb complained of the very bad roads in maine, which had racked his chaise badly. “why, mr. lamb,” said my friend, “i always think that it does a chaise good to come down into this country, it drives in the spokes of the wheels and makes all tight and strong.” on the 29th august, i received a letter from the salem lyceum, signed i. f. worcester, requesting me to lecture before the institution next winter, and adding, “the subject is, of course, discretionary with yourself, provided no allusions are made to religious controversy, or other exciting topics upon which the public mind is honestly divided!” i replied, on the same day, to mr. w. by quoting these words, and adding, “i am really sorry that any person in salem should think me capable of accepting an invitation so incumbered.” “the motto on all palace gates is, hush." lady louisa stewart, anecdotes of lady mary wortley montagu. .. 294 journal (age 34 mr. lee said, “miss fuller remembers; it is very ill-bred to remember.” nothing is more carefully secured in our constitution than that we shall not systematize or integrate too fast. carry it how we will, always something refuses to be subordinated and to drill. it will not toe the line. the facts of animal magnetism are now extravagant. we can make nothing of them. what then? why, own that you are a tyro. we make a dear little cosmogony of our own that makes the world, and tucks in all nations like cherries into a tart, — and 'tis all finished and rounded into compass and shape ; but unluckily we find that it will not explain the existence of the african race. it was the happiest turn to my old thrum which charles henry warren' gave as a toast at the $ b k dinner. “mr. president,” he said, “i suppose all know where the orator comes from ; and i suppose all know what he has said; i give you the spirit of concord; it makes us all of one mind." i charles henry warren, of plymouth, later of boston, always a friend of mr. and mrs. emerson. a1837] blue blood. allston 295 that a man appears scornful, and claims to belong to another age and race, is only affirmation of weakness. a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. he measures you, and all men, and all events. you are constrained to accept his standard. lidian's aunt sarah cotton, when washing clothes with her sisters, was addressed by her father who passed through the kitchen, “girls, who that saw you now would think you the descendants of robert bruce?” “father,” said she, “if i knew in which of my veins his blood flowed i would instantly let it out into the washv tub.”, september 20. i read this morning some lines written by mr. allston to mrs. jameson on the diary of an ennuyée, very good and entirely self-taught, original — not conventional. and always we hear a sublime admonition in any such line. but the verses celebrate italy, not as it is, but as it is imagined. that earth “fills her lap with pleasures not her own,” but supplied from self-deceived imaginations. i must think the man is 1 “ aunt harlow” – mrs. emerson always called her by her married name — was fiercely democratic. 296 journal (age 34 not yet married to nature who sighs ever for some foreign land. italy can never show me a better earth and heaven than many a time have intoxicated my senses within a mile of my house. then i must think the man is not yet ripe who is not yet domesticated in his native spot, who has not yet domesticated art and nature, grandeur and beauty, hope and fear, friendship, angels, and god, in the chamber where he sits, in the half acre where his chimney rises.' ... the passion for travelling is a mark of our age and of this country and indicates youth, novitiate, and not yet the reign of heroic instincts. it is like the conjugating french verbs which has in some families been called education. some people are curious about reliques, shakespeare's mulberry, and the houses in which milton lived: about removing from city to city, or country to country, the remains of a dead friend. he who has indeed a friend, who has the passage follows about epaminondas or washington having no need of picturesque surroundings (“. heroism," essays, first series, pp. 258, 259). 2 compare, in “ culture," an eminent teacher's saying, “ the idea of a girl's education is, whatever qualifies her for going to europe.” (conduct of life, p. 145, centenary ed.). 10usness 1837) strength of peace 297 found an unity of consciousness with his brother, and seeing into the glorious goal of right and great with him, will think little of bringing home his shoes or his body. september 21. the autumnal equinox comes with sparkling stars and thoughtful days. i think the principles of the peace party sublime, and that the opposers of this philanthropy do not sufficiently consider the positive side of the spiritualist, but only see his negative or abstaining side. but if a nation of men is exalted to that height of morals as to refuse to fight and choose rather to suffer loss of goods and loss of life than to use violence, they must be not helpless, but most effective and great men; they would overawe their invader, and make him ridiculous; they would communicate the contagion of their virtue and inoculate all mankind. september 23. i wrote, long since, thus:when phrenology came, men listened with alarm to the adept, who i compare the lecture on peace, given in the following year by mr. emerson, in a series arranged for by the peace society in boston. later, he changed the title to “ war," under which name it is printed in miscellanies. nan 298 (age 34 journal wao seemed to insinuate with knowing looks that they had let out their secret; that, maugre themselves, he was reading them to the bone and marrow. they were presently comforted by learning that their human incognito would be indulged to them a short time longer, until the artists had settled what allowance was to be made for temperament, and what for counteracting organs, which trifling circumstances hindered the most exact observation from being of any value. september 28. i hope new england will come to boast itself in being a nation of servants, and leave to the planters the misery of being a nation of served. september 30. the child delights in shadows on the wall. the child prattles in the house, but if you carry him out of doors, he is overpowered by the light and extent of natural objects, and is silent. but there never was child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.' i get no further than my old doctrine, that the whole is in each man, and that a man may, 1 retained, though partly printed in “ domestic life" (society and solitude, p. 104, centenary ed.). . . 18371 property. women 200 if he will, as truly and fully illustrate the laws of nature in his own experience as in the history of rome or palestine or england. a great deal of pregnant business is done daily before our eyes, of which we take very little note. sift, for instance, what people say in reference to property, when the character of any man is considered. it will appear that it is an essential element to our knowledge of the man, what was his opinion, practice, and success in regard to the institution of property. it tells a great deal of his spiritual history, this part. he was no whole man until he knew how to earn a blameless livelihood. society is barbarous until every industrious man can get his living without dishonest customs. when eli robbins insists that rules of trade apply to clergy as well as shop-keepers, he means no insult, but a recognition only that there is a just law of humanity now hid under the canting of society. october 1. i thought again to-day how much it needs to preach the doctrine of being against seeming, especially to young women; the tendency of example, of precept, of constitution and of their first experience, is almost irresistible in favor of 300 (age 34 journal preferring appearances. let them know that, whatever they may think they know to the contrary, it is not the pretty form, face, or fair hair that wins, much less the skill of dress, but that faces are but urns into which they may infuse an inexpressible loveliness, and that everything they do, every noble choice they make, every forbearance, every virtue beautifies them with a charm to all beholders. let them know, that, as god liveth, they that be, shall have, and not they that seem. one class wins now, glitters and disappears; the other class begins, and grows, and becomes forever. already i see an early old age creeping over faces that were yesterday rosebuds, because they aimed to seem. i see again the divinity of hope and power beaming out of eyes that never sparkled with gratified vanity. the young preacher preached from his ears and his memory, and never a word from his soul. his sermon was loud and hollow. it was not the report so much as the rimbombo, the reverberation of calvinism. a solemn conclusion of a calvinistic discourse imitated at the end of a unitarian sermon is surely ludicrous, like grandfather's hat and spectacles on a rogue of six years. alas, i could not help thinking how е siy rs. 1837] instinct or zeal 301 few prophets are left; there are five or six seers and sayers in the land; all the rest of the preaching is the reverberation of theirs. the young man relying on his instincts, who has only a good intention, is apt to feel ashamed of his inaction and the slightness of his virtue when in the presence of the active and zealous leaders of the philanthropic enterprises of universal temperance, peace, abolition, of slavery. he only loves like cordelia, after his duty, — trusted nevertheless. a man's income is not sufficient for all things. if he spends here, he must save there. if he choose to build a solid hearth, he must postpone painting his house. let each follow his taste, but let not him that loves fine porticoes and avenues reprove him that chooses to have all weather-tight and solid within. it is a grandeur of character which must have unity, and reviews and pries ever into its domestic truth and justice, loving quiet honor better than a proclaiming zeal. i think the zealot goes abroad from ignorance of the riches of his home. but this good intention, which i here follows the passage in the divinity school address about “the good hearer.” nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 139. 302 journal (age 34 seems s ve seems so cheap beside this brave zeal, is the back-bone of the world ; when the trumpeters and heralds have been scattered, it is this which must bear the brunt of the fight. this is the martyrable stuff. let it, for god's sake, grow free and wild, under wind, under sun, to be solid heart of oak and last forever. every day is new; every glance i throw upon nature ought to bring me new information; the gains of each day ought to bestow a new vision on to-morrow's eyes, a new melody on to-morrow's ears. it is very shallow to think the world full of vice because the conventions of society are little worth. henry and james and jane and anna are generous, tender-hearted, and of scrupulous conscience, whilst they are entirely immersed in these poor forms and conventions. only they are not critical. they may make very great growth too before they shall become critical. by and by, that unfolding must be also, and then they will snap asunder the social cords like green withes. lidian grieves aloud about the wretched negro in the horrors of the middle passage, and 1837] beauty. law of mind 303 they are bad enough.' ... the horrors of the middle passage are the wens and ulcers that admonish us that a violation of nature has preceded. i should not — the nations would not know of the extremity of the wrong but for the terrors of the retribution. october 2. my classmate, turnbull, said of some praised belle, that he had seen her on a certain day and did not think her handsome. gourdin replied, that it was a rainy day and she was not well drest. turnbull insisted that was fudge; that beauty was that which looked well wet days and dry, in silks or flannel. whatsoever the mind doth or saith is after a law. hence the most random word can be set in a place by a philosopher. why, then, should we think it strange that critics of to-day should find wonderful ideal truth in shakspear's tempest, or much more, in the homeric mythology? i must think that every analogical hint is, to our science, precious, however odious at first 1 what follows, the consolation that the negro savage has coarser sensibilities, is omitted, because printed in « the tragic" (natural history of intellect, p. 415). 304 journal (age 34 sight its tendency may be. knowledge is undoubtedly lodged in the affinity betwixt man and ape; in equivocal generation. ei i have read the second volume of bancroft's history of the united states. it is very pleasing. he does not, i think, ever originate his views, but he imports very good views into his book, and parades his facts by the brave light of his principles. a very pleasant book, for here, lo! the huge world has at last come round to roger williams, george fox, and william penn; and time-honored john locke received kicks. an objection to the book is the insertion of a boyish hurrah, every now and then, for each state in turn, which resembles the fortune of the good professor in mathematics in a southern college, who was not permitted to go on with his exercise on election day without interposing in his demonstration, abf=ghi, hurrah for jackson! and so on. one would think the right use of words is almost lost who reads such a sentence as that of lord jeffreys to richard baxter, and compares it with our latinized formulas. “richard, thou artan old knave; thou hast written books enough to load a cart; every one as full of sedition as se 18371 heaven inevitable 305 an egg is full of meat. i know thou hast a mighty party, and a great many of the brotherhood are waiting in corners to see what will become of their mighty don; but by the grace of almighty god, i'll crush you all.” bancroft, vol. ii, p. 441. the pagan theology of our churches treats heaven as an inevitable evil, which, as there is no help against, the best way is to put the best face on the matter we can. “from whence," said the good preacher yesterday in his prayer, “ we shall not be able to return.” truth will out. we have vastly more kindness than is ever spoken.'... maugre all the selfishness, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. how many persons i meet in houses whom i scarcely speak to, who yet honor me and i them. how many i see in the street or sit with in the church, whom i warmly rejoice to be with. the heart knoweth. we owe much illustration of moral truth to such teaching as the composition of forces, which i here follows the opening paragraph of « friendship” (essays, first series). 306 journal [age 34 was also mechanically shown us in the college apparatus. progress of the species. every soul has to learn the whole lesson for itself. it must go over the whole ground. what it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. what the former age has epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying for itself by means of the wall of that rule. some time or other, somewhere or other, it will demand and find compensation for that loss by doing the work itself. how, then, since each must go over every line of the ground, can there be any progress of the species? ferguson discovered many things which had long been very well known. the better for him that he did not know. is it not a reason and a topic for discoursing that the soul is not admired? let me say with plotinus, “since therefore, you admire soul in another thing, admire yourself.” admire the world, and admire the more true world of which this is the image. october 3. the very naming of a subject by a man of genius is the beginning of insight. 18371 thought-givers 307 we do not love the man who gives us thoughts in conversation. we do not love that act. why? does it violate our thinking? does it accuse our unthinking? we like the company of him whose manners or unconscious talk set our own minds in action, and we take occasions of rich opinions from him, as we take apples off a tree, without any thanks. how seldom we meet a man who gives us thoughts directly. it seems as if i could name all my benefactors, though i remember them as i do the lady who made me shirts. say dr. g. b.; a. b. a.; m. m. e.; c. c. e.; h. h.; g. p. b.; 0. d.;' and now that i name them, i see that what i have said is not true, for these, and needs much sharp qualification. but we feel towards a person who gives us beforehand what should be one of our thoughts, as we do to one who insists on telling us a conundrum we had all but guessed; he has defrauded us of a pleasant labor and a just honor. i dr. gamaliel bradford (brother of mrs. sarah alden ripley); mr. alcott; miss mary moody emerson; charles emerson; rev. (frederic ) henry hedge; george p. bradford; rev. orville dewey, s. t. d., akin by marriage to mr. emerson, dr. channing's assistant, and later, minister in new bedford and of the church of the messiah in new york. 308 [age 34 journal october 5. i was glad to learn that the tree gets only one twentieth of its nourishment from the ground, the rest it drinks in by its aerial roots, the leaves, from the air. the advantage of a tree-covered country over bald hills and fields in attracting electricity and rain, was also alluded to in the most ridiculous discourse of yesterday's cattle show. rest is only in principles. keep the valve open and let them in; the conversation bobs up and down uneasy, immethodical, unsatisfying, heartless, until at last some one opens the soul to it; then the waters without mix with the great deep, and equilibrium and peace ensue. as long as you name persons, there can be parties; when you speak of the human soul, there can be none. i gladly see in the last foreign quarterly review the same doctrine preached in reference to architecture which i preach in literature and life. the list of ships' names in the newspaper is worth considering. like the moon, the sea seems the refuge of things lost on earth, fairy, sylph, neptune, britomart, ivanhoe, rob roy. as v inal e c man n a great man must always be willing to be little. captain pitts was the most important wa 1837] stand your ground 309 person, by his own account, of any in the world. no man had ever the advantage of him. but the speculative man has not the temper of the world's man, and his voice becomes husky and his eyes look down as the conversation wakens the partisan in him. instantly the changed tone alters the tone of the other speakers, invites attack, scrutiny, lowers their respect, and throws him at once into a new position where he can no longer fight at arm's length, but must fight hand to hand with dirk and short sword. then he has a chance to learn something. then his memory serves him no longer. now he is put on his wits — on his manhood; if he is defeated, all the better : he has gained facts; knowledge of himself, of his ignorance; of the strength of others; is cured of some insanity of conceit; and got some moderation and real skill in defence instead. never sit on the cushion of your advantages. do not, like a coward, fly to sanctuary either of place, profession or manners at the first onset. you must pay dearly for the momentary shelter. thereby you set to a seal and put under lock and key your acquisitions thus far, and enrol yourself emeritus, and forgo the prerogative of humanity, of using your acquisitions as seed-wheat, and of acquiring the all. id 310 journal [age 34 go rather and court defeat, mortification and disgrace. nothing venture, nothing have. you might as well expect the cannon on the north side of a fort to fire also south and east, as look for victory from the same man in every crisis. there is a time when common sense is impertinent, for foresight and philosophy are wanted ; a time when arithmetic is vain, for wit and imagination are in request; a time when philosophy and imagination are absurd, for one must act, count, measure, plunge, strike, and die. i suppose there was seldom a person of my age and advantages whom so little people could pull down and overcrow. the least people do most entirely demolish me. i always find some quarter, and some orts of respect from the mediocre. but a snipper-snapper eats me whole. there is no activity but accomplishes somewhat. a man is sometimes offended at the superfluous, supererogatory order and nicety of a woman who is the good housewife. but he must bear with little extremities and flourishes of a quality that makes comfort for all his senses throughout his house. he must look at a virtue whole, and not only at the skirt of its garment where it gathers up a little dust. 1837] trade. your own day 311 in the days in which there is no vision we learn that instructive negative. there are other advantages to be won besides money in the trading of every man. i covet the genuine conversation of my workmen. where money is the main object in view, it is the least thing gained in the transaction. october 6. a great man must not grumble at his contemporaries. god saith to him what the poet said, the piece, you say, is incorrect, why, take it. i'm all submission. what you 'd have it, make it. if you don't like the world, make it to suit you. all true men have done so before you. mr. allston heroically says, “his art must be sufficient to the artist.” but the — sgrumble like sick women. i wonder at the interest that animal magnetism inspires in fine persons; not at all that it startles the thoughtless. i feel no strong interest in it. i do not doubt the wonder, but 1 one or two of the sentences in this paragraph occur in “ demonology” (lectures and biographical sketches). 312 journal [age 34 there is wonder enough in my thumbnail already. its phenomena belong to the copious chapter of demonology, under which category i suppose everybody's experience might write a few facts. these obscure facts are only to suggest that our being is richer than we knew, and we are now only in the forecourt or portico. the hints we have, the dreams, the coincidences, do make each man stare once or twice in a lifetime. but animal magnetism seems the phenomena of disease, and too fuliginous and typhoid in their character to attract any but the physician. ... animal magnetism is the shovel put under the feet to show how poor our foundations are. october 8. last evening i had a good hour with mrs. ripley.' the young southerner comes here a spoiled child, with graceful manners, excellent self-command, very good to be spoiled more, but good for nothing else, a mere parader. he has conversed so much with rifles, horses and dogs i rev. samuel ripley kept a boarding-school for boys, of which his wife was the literary strength. many young southerners fitted for college there. mr. ripley kind, generous, and impulsive, was also choleric and hasty of speech. 1837] southern students 313 that he has become himself a rifle, a horse and a dog, and in civil, educated company, where anything human is going forward, he is dumb and unhappy, like an indian in a church. treat them with great deference, as we often do, and they accept it all as their due without misgiving. give them an inch, and they take a mile. they are mere bladders of conceit. each snippersnapper of them all undertakes to speak for the entire southern states. “at the south, the reputation of cambridge,” etc., etc., which being interpreted, is, in my negro village of tuscaloosa, or cheraw, or st. mark's, i supposed so and so. “we, at the south,” forsooth. they are more civilized than the seminoles, however, in my opinion ; a little more. their question respecting any man is like a seminole's, how can he fight? in this country, we ask, what can he do? his pugnacity is all they prize in man, dog, or turkey. the proper way of treating them is not deference, but to say as mr. ripley does, “fiddle faddle,” in answer to each solemn remark about “the south.” “it must be confessed,” said the young man, “that in alabama, we are dead to everything, as respects politics.” “very true,” replied mr. ripley,“ leaving out the last clause.” ot 314 journal (age 34 i scarce ever see young women who are not remarkably attractive without a wish, an impulse, to preach to them the doctrine of character. i have sad foresight of the mortifications that await them when i see what they look on. could once their eye be turned on the beauty of being, as it outshines the beauty of seeming, they would be saved. how is a man wise? by the perception of a principle. the immortality is as legitimately preached from the intellections as from the moral volitions.' ... a coat. a good coat is always respected, they say, in the stage-coach. good reason; a good coat stands for something, implies a small history; it shows that the wearer had some kind of a coat before, probably a good one, and will have another when this is worn out; it shows 1 here follows the paragraph thus beginning in “intellect” (essays, first series, p. 332, centenary ed.). it is followed in the journal by the passage in “ intellect” (p. 344) beginning “the bacon, the spinoza, the hume, schelling, kant, or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, is only ... a translator of things in your consciousness," etc. ; but in the ms., the names given are schelling, schleiermacher, ackermann. 18321 the higher self 315 that the wearer lives among people who wear good coats. besides, a man's coat-money is usually only a small proportion to his food-, and fireand house, and travelling-money, and by the outlay he can afford in the coat, we infer what outlay he can make in all. i maintain that all melancholy belongs to the exterior of man; i claim to be a part of the all. all exterior life declares interior life. i could not be, but that absolute life circulated in me, and i could not think this without being that absolute life. the constant warfare in each heart is betwixt reason and commodity. the victory is won as soon as any soul has learned always to take sides with reason against himself; to transfer his me from his person, his name, his interests, back upon truth and justice, so that when he is disgraced and defeated and fretted and disheartened, and wasted by nothings, he bears it well, never one instant relaxing his watchfulness, and, as soon as he can get a respite from the insults or the sadness, records all these phenomena, pierces their beauty as phenomena, and, like a god, oversees himself. thus he harvests his losses, and turns the dust of his shoes to gems. keep the habit of the observer, and, as 316 [age 34 journal fast as you can, break off your association with your personality and identify yourself with the universe. be a football to time and chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its uttermost law. as true is this ethics for trivial as for calamitous days. it is better to hear than to speak.'... let me add, of the winning loser described above, that a wise man will come to see the truth and wit of all the censures he received during his nonage, and to apply the very same with better wit and skill to the same faults as they reappear elsewhere, like the defenders of a besieged town who gather up the dead balls that have been discharged at them and launch them at the enemy. we are carried by destiny along our life's course, looking as grave and knowing as little as the infant who is carried in his wicker coach through the street. october 12. woman (from calidasa's megha duta, translated by professor wilson.) 1 the rest of this paragraph is printed in “intellect " (p. 342, centenary ed.). е •) 1837] calidasa. athenæum 317 there, in the fane, a beauteous creature stands, the first, best work of the creator's hands, whose slender limbs inadequately bear a full-orbed bosom and a weight of care ; whose teeth like pearls, whose lips like cherries show, and fawn-like eyes still tremble as they glow. asiatic journal, august, 1837. the words entered not the grieving heart, but returned to him that spoke them. “he that taketh off weights advantageth motion as much as he that addeth wings,” said pym, when he proposed to remove grievances before granting subsidies. . “principle is a passion for truth.” hazlitt. p.“ it is not permitted to a man to corrupt himself for the sake of mankind.” rousseau. october 13. with much to say, i put off writing until perhaps i shall have nothing in my memory. now too soon, then too late. i must try the pen and . make a beginning. · at boston, thursday, i found myself nearly alone in the athenæum, and so dropt my book 318 (age 34 journal to gaze at the laocoön. the main figure is great: the two youths work harmoniously on the eye, producing great admiration, so long as the eye is directed at the old man; but look at them, and they are slight and unaffecting statues. no miniature copy and no single busts can do justice to this work. its mass and its integrity are essential. at the athenæum, you cannot see it unless the room is nearly empty. for you must stand at the distance of nearly the whole hall to see it, and interposing bystanders eclipse the statue. how is time abolished by the delight i have in this old work, and, without a name, i receive it as a gift from the universal mind. then i read with great content the august number of the asiatic journal. herein is always . the piquancy of the meeting of civilization and barbarism. calcutta or canton are twilights where night and day contend. a very good paper is the narrative of lord napier's mission to china (who arrived at macao 15 july, 1834, and died 11 october). there stand in close contrast the brief, wise english despatches, with the mountainous nonsense of the chinese diplomacy. the “red permit” writ by the vermilion na ce ve mac 18371 food in books 319 pencil of the emperor, the super-african ignorance with which england is disdained as out of the bounds of civilization, and her king called “reverently submissive,” etc., etc. there is no farce in fiction better than this historical one of john bull and the yellow man: albeit it ends tragically, as lord napier died of vexation apparently. i must get that book again. then i read an ascent of the himmaleh mounts, and the terror of the cold, and the river seen bursting through caves of snow, and the traveller finding all over the desolate mountains bears' dung. then a duel, — pistols for two, and coffee for the survivor. then an escape from a tiger in a canebrake. then, thinking of the trees which draw out of the air their food by their aerial roots the leaves, i mused on the strange versatility of the mind's appetite and food. here were in the reading room some four or five men besides me, feeding on newspapers and journals, unfolding our being thereby. secluded from war, from trade, and from tillage, we were making amends to ourselves by devouring the descriptions of these things, and atoning for the thinness by the quantity of our fare. yet i read with joy the life of hampden, 320 journal (age 34 pym, or penn, of men conversant with governments and revolutions, and dilate in the swelling scene.' is not the delight i there find an intimation that not always in speculation, not always by the poetic imagination alone, shall the scholar, the private soul, be great, but one day in action also? when private men shall act with vast views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. it made my heart beat quicker to think that the gorgeous pictures which fill my imagination in reading the actions of hampden, pym, falkland, are only a revelation to me how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the depth of our living should deck it with more than regal or national splendor. very coarse, very abhorrent to the imagination is the american white house. because it has no historic lustre and natural growth out of feudalism, etc., like theirs, and is not, on the other hand, a new creation out of the soul, out of virtue and truth outshining theirs, but is an imitation of their gaudiness, like a negro gay with cast-off epaulettes and gold-laced hat of his master. i preceded by the passage about the things of life being the same to private john and edward as to kings and statesmen. (“self-reliance,” essays, first series, p. 62.) 1837] expression. new eyes 321 expression. how few lines tell how complex a story. a man whose coat has lost the haunchbutton; a man with a ragged coat ; a man with a good coat. a neck is a neck, we say, but the limner knows better, knows that if the pencil swerve this way, it draws a beast; if that way, a god. the addition of a little capacity of attention would change a fool into a shakspear. do manners tell no story? did you ever see a poor child to whom if you offered a piece of cake it would grab it with a scream and put it behind its back, as a broad street child will do ? new eyes. what is, appears. go out to walk with a painter, and you shall see for the first time groups, colors, clouds and keepings, and shall have the pleasure of discovering resources in a hitherto barren ground, of finding as good as a new sense in such skill to use an old one. gentilhomme bourgeois was really right in being glad to know that he was talking prose. when the telescope turns on our own barn and chimney, we like the new-old sight better than the finest foreign turrets. october 15. mr. hoar says he would not give one cent for the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not w 322 journal (age 34 believe in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict.' . .. october 16. scholastic fancies which i account to be at least as good as those of my financial fathers whom i encountered in solemn session in the bank parlor. i was caught by the name of “fuller's worthies of england” and tempted, like some great columbus or ledyard, instantly to get to horse and travel to cambridge library and spend a day with fuller. the same emo tions take different directions and of course clothe themselves at last in strangest varied acts, as the same drop that fell on the ridge of mount washington goes half to new york and half to canada. noartombs. the grandeur of england, the sepulchral monuments of old families came up in my imagination as i read ben jonson. those marble scrolls and heraldic pomps that, so cold and dim, deck the tombs in churches, were not meant to project on the eye like the blue slate stone of john crosby, which yesterday i saw outside of billerica graveyard; their office is, not to 1 the rest of the paragraph is given in “spiritual laws," essays, first series, pp. 156, 157. nan 1837] tombs. dreams 323 shine as a rocket, but to be aloof, a faint departing vision to fill up, as tassel or fringe, the hollow places of the memory of the name they bear. it is well to study the necessary cause of the marble tomb in the religion and culture of the society. the roman church built tombs; the theology of the verse i have copied above' was saving of the dust; a philosophic period would build everything but tombs. the babe stands alone to-day for the first time. in history our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. why all this deference to sidney and hampden?'... culture inspects our dreams also. the pictures of the night will always bear some proportion to the visions of the day.3 i stir not my bones, which are laid in clay ; for i must rise at the resurrection day. 2 see the same sentence with names of alfred, scanderbeg, and gustavus, “ self-reliance," essays, first series, pp. 62, 63. 3 night-dreams trace on memory's wall shadows of the thoughts of day; and thy fortunes as they fall the bias of thy will betray. poems, “ quatrains.” 324 journal [age 34 i looked over the few books in the young clergyman's study yesterday till i shivered with cold: priestley; noyes; rosenmuller; joseph allen, and other sunday school books; schleusner; norton; and the saturday night of taylor; the dirty comfort of the farmer could easily seem preferable to the elegant poverty of the young clergyman. the great poets are content with truth. they use the positive degree. they seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion and violent coloring of the modern byrons and hemanses and shelleys. but it is like taking a walk or drinking cold water, to the simple who read them. such is ben jonson, whose epistles to wroth and others, and penshurst and a masque (in volume iii) of nature and prometheus, etc., i read this month. i call this their humanity. a lovely afternoon and i went to walden water, and read goethe on the bank. in the present moment all the past is ever represented. the strong roots of ancient trees still bind the soil. the provençal literature is 1837] the past. time. custom 325 not obsolete for me, for i have spenser's faerie queen to read, and all that faded splendor revives again in him for some centuries yet. nor will homer or sophocles let me go, though i read them not, for they have formed those whom i read. nor will the egyptian designer die to me; my chair and tables forget him not. time is the principle of levity, dissipating solidest things like exhalations. the monasteries of the middle ages were builded of timber, brick and stone. so were the temples of jove and those of osiris, yet they dance now before me, late come into their globe, like words, or less. october 18. custom is the circe whose cup makes fool and beast of us. would you know how abhorrent to all right reason is war, see what horrid spectres it creates, when it locks up the beauty of man in one of those brass or iron lobsters that we so wisely admire in the tower of london. · every man is weak himself, but strong in relation to others.' ... 1 the paragraph about the mutual fear of grim and you follows. (“. prudence,” essays, first series, p. 238, centenary ed.) 326 [age 34 journal i am willing to know in my bosom these palpitations for a time that i may learn their law. one of the last secrets we learn as scholars is to confide in our own impressions of a book. if æschylus is that man he is taken for, he has not yet done his office when he has educated the learned of europe for a thousand years. he is now to approve himself a master of delight to me. if he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing. i were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand æschyluses to my intellectual integrity. skill in writing consists in making every word cover a thing. in the tragedies of æschylus the thing is tragic and all the fine names of gods and goddesses stand for something in the reader's mind. the human mind is impatient of falsehood, and drops all words that do not stand for verities.' ... i went through the wood to sleepy hollow and sat down to hear the harmless roarings of the sunny south wind. into the narrow throat of the vale flew dust and leaves from the fields, and straggling leaves mounted and mounted to 1 illustrated in “compensation ” by the promethean myth. (essays, first series, p. 106, centenary ed.) ves . 1837] nature's rule. greece 327 great heights. the shining boughs of the trees in the sun, the swift sailing clouds and the warm air made me think a man is a fool to be mean and unhappy, when every day is made illustrious by these splendid shows. if nature relented at all from her transcending laws, if there were any traces in the daily obituary that the yellowfever spared this doctor or that sunday school teacher, if any sign were that a "good man” was governing, we should lose all our confidence, the world all its sublimity. october 19. we demand the sufficient reason for every fact. the greek marbles amaze us until our knowledge or our reflection has supplied every step from the common human consciousness to such peculiar excellence; as, e.g., a religion asking statues; pentelican quarries; the egyptian arts; the happy climate and presence of perfect naked forms in the games; the unchained imagination, now experimenting in a new direction and so unfettered by any conventions; the unreflecting genius of the people, which permitted them to surrender themselves to the instincts of taste. in skating over thin ice, your safety is in your speed, and a critical judgment would have r 328 (age 34 journal checked and so broken the invention of phidias and his fellows.' the appeal to the future. the appeal to the future is a great part of life. the boy is allowed to be ignorant and helpless because of the tacit appeal to what he shall be and do. then comes the young man, the young woman; they have studied much latin and german, but do not know the meaning of this sentence, and are ashamed to use the dictionary, or to say, “i do not know.” consent to be despised as ignorant now, and boldly appeal to the future still. you are old, if you reckon the short human life, but, if you compare your years with the eternity into which you advance to your extreme youth, this unskilfulness will seem very reasonable. and this, i think, is the reason why genius is said to retain the feelings and freshness of childhood, because to it the horizon does not shut down a short way before the eye, but opens indefinitely. 1 two paragraphs printed in history” follow; the first beginning “ a gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and yet not done by us” (essays, first series, p. 11); the second, and continuous with it, is that beginning “so stand before every public and private work," etc. (ibid., p. 10). 1837] present makes future 329 trust the future, and it shall not betray you. the young man finds the present hostile and cold, it pays him no dividend, it bakes him no bread. he takes this to be an unequivocal hint that he should abandon his poetic thoughts and all his higher culture, and should accept the vulgar maxims of thrift as the only trustworthy truth. but let him, on the contrary, according to the spartan maxim of fighting better in the shade, thank god for, use, this cold eclipse as happiest leisure which he shall not always have, and bend himself with nimble vigor to laying up the stores of rare knowledge, court the sublime muse, and if his lodging is narrow and his fare the pythagorean bean,' regale himself with the august society with all the bards and philosophers, — verily he has chosen well, he shall never be ashamed. ... this is the discipline of the mind in the degrees of property. he learns that, above the merely external rights to the picture, i the use of the bean was forbidden, not prescribed, by pythagoras, but the association in memory of the bean with the philosopher seems to have misled the writer. 2 a long passage follows headed “taking possession,” mostly printed in “self-reliance,” beginning “ there let a man know his own worth,” and ending with the allusion to the induction of the taming of the shrew. 330 journal (age 34 to the equipage, which the law protects, – is a spiritual property which is insight. the kingdom of the soul transcendeth all the walls and muniments of possession, and taketh higher rights, not only in the possession, but in the possessor, and with this royal reservation can very well afford to leave the so-called proprietor undisturbed as its keeper or trustee. therefore the wise soul cares little to whom belongs the legal ownership of the grand monadnoc, of the cataract of niagara, or of the belvedere apollo, or whatever else it prizes. it soon finds that no cabinet, though decorated with colonnades miles long, were large enough to hold the beautiful wonders it has made its own. it has found the beauty and the wonder progressive; the street is not without its charm; the blacksmith's shop is a picture; the motion and the sound, the play of living light on things, it cannot spare. at last it discovers that the whole world is a museum, and that things are more glorious in their order and home than when a few are carried away to glitter alone. let us be honest. selection is beautiful also. a well-chosen nosegay has its own charm, and affects the eye, as fields of the same flowers cannot. use 1837] the wild man 331 when you are sincerely pleased (without any misgiving) you are nourished. nature softens and harmonizes; she curls the hair where it terminates above the neck; she curves the margin of lakes and ponds, and breaks the waves into loveliest forms, and paints shadows on the ground and the wall. october 20. wild man attracts. as the contemporaries of columbus hungered to see the wild man, so undoubtedly we should have the liveliest interest in a wild man, but men in society do not interest us because they are tame. we know all they will do, and man is like man as one steamboat is like another. tame men are inexpressibly tedious, like the talking with a young southerner who says,“ yes, sir,” indifferently to every sort of thing you say, thinking yes, sir, to mean nothing. from every man, even from great men as the world goes, a large deduction is to be made on account of this taming, or conventions. his going to church does not interest me because all men go to church. his staying at home would, until i see why he stays at home, if from vulgar reasons,it is dulness still. but he falls desperately in love. ah, ha! does he? now i as 332 journal (age 34 am wide-awake, this is not conventional, but the great epoch of the revelation of beauty to his soul. now let me see every line he writes, every step he makes, every kiss which makes him immortal; let those laugh who never were worthy to love; to me each act of his in these golden hours is holy and beautiful. the eternal beauty of this passion is sufficiently shown from the interest which attaches to every sort of love tale in verse or prose which the press spawns from january to december. we are eager to know what shakspear said at the boar's head in eastcheap. we should like to see him bring wood to his fire, or walking in his yard, but rather would we see what book he chose to entertain a solitary evening, or, refusing all books, what he did. rather would i know how he looked at the supreme being in some lonely hour of fear or gratitude, hear what he said, or know what he forbore to say. boswellism scrapes all together and would know how the hero did what everybody does, and what he did as everybody does it. but the philosopher drops all the conventional part, and only studies the new and voluntary part of each man. as far as sir walter scott aspired to be wn 1837] scott. swedenborgians 333 known for a fine gentleman, so far our sympathies leave him. we know very well the height of that doll, and do not suppose he was any finer gentleman than beau brummel or lord chesterfield. our concern is only with the residue, where the man scott was warmed with a divine ray that clad with beauty every sheet of water, every bald hill in the country he looked upon, and so reanimated the well-nigh obsolete feudal history and illustrated every trivial corner of a barren and disagreeable territory.' in our times, a good example was set by the members of the new jerusalem church in london. somebody, at great pains, violated the tomb of swedenborg and brought away the skull from the body. it was then offered at a great price to his disciples. not one of them cared to look at it. ... margaret fuller talking of women, said, who would be a goody that could be a genius? 1 the worst form of scottish weather that mr. emerson encountered on his short trip to the highlands, as chronicled by him in 1833, accounts for this strangely johnsonian description of the region. 334 journal [age 34 when i commended the adroit new york broker to alcott, he replied that he saw he had more austerity than i, and that he gave his hand with some reluctance to mere merchant or banker. what is so comic, i pray, as the mutual condescension with which alcott and colonel perkins' would give the hand to each other? the same complaint i have heard is made against the boston medical college as against the cambridge divinity school, that those who there receive their education, want faith, and so are not as successful as practitioners from the country schools who believe in the power of medicine. october 21. one of the facts which i contemplate with awe, because it is the beneficence of the circumabient soul and no way a benefit of consciousness, is the aid we get from alien events. i fully intended to have done a deed which i esteemed not unfit nor unnecessary. i was hindered by the absence of the parties concerned. now i see that the deed is far better undone, i colonel thomas handasyd perkins, a leading citizen and prosperous merchant of boston. 1837] pestalozzi. death 335 and thankfully owe the hint for my future guidance to the god. a valuable fact is, that mutual teaching which went on in pestalozzi's school, where the tutors quitted their chair at the end of an hour to go and become with their scholars a class to receive instruction of another teacher, each being thus in turn teacher and pupil. ... but this relation is instantly vitiated the moment there is the least affectation. if an old man runs and sits down on the same bench with rosy-cheeked boys to hear some formal, not real teaching, for the sake of example, he is a fool for his pains, and they may well cry,“ go up, thou baldhead, go! solus docet qui dat, et discit qui recipit.”. i said when i awoke, after some more sleepings and wakings i shall lie on this mattrass sick; then, dead; and through my gay entry they will carry these bones. where shall i be then? i lifted my head and beheld the spotless orange light of the morning beaming up from the dark hills into the wide universe. proportion. it is well and truly said that proportion is beauty ; that no ornament in the 336 (age 34 journal details can compensate for want of this; nay, that ornamented details only make disproportion more unsightly; and that proportion charms us even more perhaps when the materials are coarse and unadorned. i see these truths chiefly in that species of architecture which i study and practice, namely, rhetoric, or the building of discourse. profoundest thoughts, sublime images, dazzling figures are squandered and lost in an immethodical harangue. we are fatigued, and glad when it is done. we say of the writer, nobody understood him: he does not understand himself. but let the same number of thoughts be dealt with by a natural rhetoric, let the question be asked — what is said? how many things? which are they? count and number them: put together those that belong together. now say what your subject is, for now first you know: and now state your inference or peroration in what calm or inflammatory temper you must, and behold! out of the quarry you have erected a temple, soaring in due gradation, turret over tower, to heaven, cheerful with thorough-lights, majestic with strength, desired of all eyes. you will find the matter less cumbersome, – it even seems less when put in order, — and the disen 1837] writing. woman 337 course as fresh and agreeable at the conclusion as at the commencement. moreover, if a natural order is obediently followed, the composition will have an abiding charm to yourself as well as to others; you will see that you were the scribe of a higher wisdom than your own, and it will remain to you, like one of nature's works, pleasant and wholesome, and not, as our books so often are, a disagreeable remembrance to the author. a man may find his words mean more than he thought when he uttered them, and be glad to employ them again in a new sense. october 23. it is very hard to be simple enough to be good. an individual is the all subordinated to a peculium. in conversing with a lady it sometimes seems a bitterness and unnecessary wound to insist, as i incline to, on this self-sufficiency of man. there is no society, say i; there can be none. “very true, but very mournful,” replies my friend. we talk of courses of action. but to women my paths are shut up, and the fine 338 [age 34 journal women i think of who have had genius and cultivation, who have not been wives, but muses, have something tragic in their lot and i shun to name them. then i say, despondency bears no fruit. we do nothing whilst we distrust. it is ignoble also to owe our success to the coaxing and clapping of society, to be told by the incapable, “that's capital. do some more.” that only is great that is thoroughly so and from the egg, a god. [the paragraph that follows, though essentially printed in “heroism ” (essays, first series), is given here as originally written, and with its personal allusions. the occasion was probably the generous discontent of the aspiring margaret fuller.] therefore, i think a woman does herself injustice who likens herself to any historical woman, who thinks because corinna or de staël or m. m. e.' do not satisfy the imagination and the serene themis, none can, — certainly not she. it needs that she feel that a new woman has a new, as yet inviolate, problem to solve; perchance the happiest nature that yet has bloomed is hers, let it not be ruined beforei mary moody emerson. 1837] the new woman. tears 339 hand on despair grounded on their failure ; but let the maiden with erect soul walk serenely on her way, accept the hint of each new pleasure she finds, try in turn all the known resources, experiments, pleasures, that she may learn from what she cannot as well as what she can do, the power and the charm that — like a new dawn radiating out of the deep of space, — her new born being is. tears are never far from a woman's eye. the loveliest maiden on whom every grace sits, who is followed by all eyes, and never knew anything but admiration, weeps much, and, if unexpected changes should blast her hopes, then the tears fall so naturally as nothing but grief seems her native element. it seems to me as if the high idea of culture as the end of existence, does not pervade the mind of the thinking people of our community, the conviction that a discovery of human power, to which the trades and occupations they follow, the connexions they form, and the motley tissue of their common experience are quite subordinate and auxiliary, is the main interest of une 101 340 journal (age 34 history. could this be properly taught, i think it must provoke and overmaster the young and ambitious, and yield rich fruits. culture, in the high sense, does not consist in polishing or varnishing, but in so presenting the attractions of nature that the slumbering attributes of man may burst their iron sleep and rush, full-grown, into day. culture is not the trimming and turfing of gardens, but the showing the true harmony of the unshorn landscape with horrid thickets and bald mountains and the balance of the land and sea. . the heart, in a cultivated nature, is the emotion of delight which is awakened by any manifestation of goodness; ... is the unerring measure of genuine goodness in any person, and is not betrayed by penchants or passions to honor the semblance of goodness. the heart ... knows its own. nobody need tell it what its friend said or did, ... it knows its friend, ... knows that such and such persons are constitutionally its friends, because they are lovers of the same things with it. the heart, alike in a conscious or an unconscious mind, is the reverence for moral beauty. that is its god. meekly as a maiden when that appears, it bows itself and worships. 1837] earning a living 341 october 24. i find, in town, the phi beta kappa oration, of which 500 copies were printed, all sold, in just one month. the habitual attitude of the wise mind must be adoration. october 27. i suppose it must be true that each man is able, in a right state of society, to maintain five or six persons beside himself, and still have leisure for self-cultivation; or rather maintain them by such labor as might be called all leisure, all being the species of employment most agreeable to his constitution. yet now, if some persons are credible, a man cannot honestly get a livelihood by trade in the city. his integrity would be a disqualification. he might, however, they agree, if he had sufficient time to build up a credit for honesty; but no poor man proceeding on borrowed capital can afford to wait so long. what does this show? why, that the true way now of beginning is to play the hero in commerce, as it has been done in war, in church, in schools, in state, — not begin with a borrowed capital, but [he] must raise an estate from the seed, must begin with his hands, and earn one 342 journal (age 34 cent; then two; then a dollar; then stock a basket; then a barrow; then a booth; then a shop; and then a warehouse; and not on this dangerous balloon of a credit make his first structure. franklin, william hutton, and many new england merchant princes are men of this merit. iron, if kept at the iron monger’s, will rust.' ... dr. bartlett' has reclaimed a bog at the bottom of his garden, ditching and earthing it for $27.08; a quarter of an acre. r remo when monti's 3 mother removed to majano where the charitable habits of the family were unknown, she complained in a sort of alarm that they were no longer visited by the poor. how short is the distance from the two alarms. the ready hand is too frequently put under contribution until the man becomes prudent and rei here follows the paragraph thus beginning in “ prudence” (essays, first series, pp. 234, 235, centenary ed.). 2 dr. josiah bartlett, excellent and honorable physician in concord for more than fifty years. 3 luigi monti, an italian exile, instructor in that language at harvard university for many years. longfellow had him in mind in describing the sicilian in the tales of a wayside inn. 1837] friendship. death 343 fuses to give. instantly pride, resentment, and inexpectancy hinder all petitioners from asking at his gate. then the man, self-reproached, is alarmed on the other side, and saith, the curse of the poor is falling on my roof. this is progress, as it is progress from pride to humility. the heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.? . . . alfieri lived after his way, and so counts one. metastasio was a gentleman. goldoni was none. who are you, sir? do. you feed very nicely and sleep very warm ? a friendship is good which begins on sentiment and proceeds into all mutual convenience, and alternation of great benefits. less good that which begins in commodity and proceeds to sentiment. october 28. the event of death is always astounding; our philosophy never reaches, never possesses it; we are always at the beginning of our catechism; always the definition is yet to be made. what is death? in comr eni here follows the paragraph beginning thus in “ heroism” (essays, first series, p. 260). 2 this is followed by the remarks on goethe's tasso, printed in “ prudence” (essays, first series, p. 232). 344 journal (age 34 i see nothing to help beyond observing what the mind's habit is in regard to that crisis. simply i have nothing to do with it. it is nothing to me. after i have made my will and set my house in order, i shall do in the immediate expectation of death the same things i should do without it. but more difficult is it to know the death of another. mrs. ripley says that her little sophia told the mantua-maker this morning “that in heaven she was going to ask dod to let her sit by mother all the time,” and if this little darling should die, mrs. r. thinks she could not live. so with the expectation of the death of persons who are conveniently situated, who have all they desire, and to whom death is fearful, she looks in vain for a consolation. in us there ought to be remedy. there ought to be, there can be nothing to which the soul is called, to which the soul is not equal. and i suppose that the roots of my relation to every individual are in my own constitution, and not less the causes of his disappearance from me. why should we lie so? a question is asked of the understanding which lies in the province of the reason, and we foolishly try to make an answer. our constructiveness overpowers our 1837) sympathy. indians 345 love of truth. how noble is it when the mourner looks for comfort in your face to give only sympathy and confession; confession that it is a great grief, and the greater because the apprehension of its nature still loiters. who set you up for professor of omniscience and cicerone to the universe? why teach? learn rather. when the conversation soars to principles unitarianism is boyish. november 2. immense curiosity in boston to see the delegation of the sacs and foxes, of the sioux and the ioways. i saw the sacs and foxes at the state house on monday, about thirty in number. edward everett addressed them, and they replied. one chief said, “they had no land to put their words upon, but they were nevertheless true.” one chief wore the skin of a buffalo's head with the horns attached on his head, others birds with outspread wings. immense breadth of shoulder and very muscular persons. our picts were so savage in their head-dress and nakedness that it seemed as if the bears and catamounts had sent a deputation. they danced a war dance on the common, in the centre of the greatest crowd ever seen on that area. the governor cau346 journal [age 34 tioned us of the gravity of the tribe, and that we should beware of any expression of the ridiculous, and the people all seemed to treat their guests gingerly, as the keepers of lions and jaguars do those creatures whose taming is not quite yet trustworthy. certainly it is right and natural that the indian should come and see the civil white men, but this was hardly genuine, but a show; so we were not parties, but spectators. therefore a man looks up and laughs and meets the eyes of some bystander who also laughs. keokuk, black hawk, roaring thunder. at faneuil hall they built a partition between the two tribes because the tribes are at war.' november 3. last night i wrote to carlyle to inform him of the new edition of his history ;' and to mr. landor i sent nature and the oration (phi beta kappa) by charles sumner, esq. our calendar: new year's day; 4th march; i that is, between the sioux and the sacs and foxes. 2 the french revolution, which mr. emerson had arranged to have published in boston at his own risk, for carlyle. see carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. i, letters xviii, xix (in which carlyle praises the oration), xx, and xxii. 1837] good writing 347 april fool's; may day; election;' fourth of july; independence; commencement; phi beta kappa ; cattle show; muster; thanksgiving; christmas. it is the right economy of time to do nothing by halves, nothing for show, nothing perfunctorily. if you write a letter, put your earnest meaning in, and god shall reward you by enlarging your sight. but save your thought, and you shall find it worthless, and your wordy letter worthless also. in writing a review, put in only that you have to say, only the things, and leave the consideration of the greeks and romans and the universal history quite out. stop when you have done. and stop when you have begun, if it is not something to you. poetry precedes prose as the child sings all his words before he speaks them. people are not the better for the sun and moon.' ... i election day, in and around boston, used to mean the day on which the ancient and honorable artillery chose their officers. the company paraded, and heard a sermon from some eminent preacher. the day was observed as a general holiday. 2 here follows the passage beginning thus in “spiritual laws,” and it is followed by that about “ curiosity concern348 journal (age 34 november 6. fuller,' at providence, explained to me his plans, “that he was to keep the school five years — income so much, outlay so much; then he should be able to go to europe," etc., etc. when i repeated all this to alcott he expressed chagrin and contempt. for alcott holds the school in so high regard that he would scorn to exchange it for the presidency of the united states. the school is his europe, and this is a just example of the true rule of choice of pursuit. you may do nothing to get money which is not worth your doing on its own account. this is the sense of “he that serves at the altar shall live by it.” every vocation is an altar. there must be injury to the constitution from all faults, from all half action, nor will the ing other people's estimate of us” (essays, first series, pp. 147 and 157). 1 the head of the school in which miss margaret fuller taught for a time. 2 the rest of this whole long entry of november 6 has a line drawn through it by mr. emerson, as is usual in passages which had been used by him, yet we do not find it in the works. it was perhaps used in a lecture, or the cancelling may mean that it was too expanded, and the same ideas appeared in “self-reliance," " heroism,” and “man the reformer.” 1837] the reformer’s path 349 plainly expressed wishes of other people be a reason why you should do, to oblige them, what violates your sense, what breaks your integrity, and shows you falsely, not the man you are. they do not know yet what their importunity hinders you from being. resist their windy requests. give leave to great nature to unbind, fold after fold, the tough integuments in which your secret character lies, and let it open its proud flower and fruitage to the day; and when they see what costly and hitherto unknown blessing they had well-nigh defrauded the world, and they will thank you for denying their prayer, and will say, we would have used you as a handy tool; now we worship you as a redeemer. the difficulty in each particular case is the greater, that the recusant himself seldom sees clearly enough what he wants, whither he tends, to be able to justify himself for shoving by gilded invitations, and seems to his friends, and sometimes to himself, a tedious refiner and windy talker. he reserves, however, the spartan in us, the grit, the terror., the indomitable will. let them denounce, let them laugh, let them scold, let them hint extreme measures, and take extreme measures, and, if it come to that, let the best friend you have shut the door in your face. 350 journal (age 34 and now under the cold heaven, with literal grim poverty to meet as you can, is something for a man to do; here is need for your pluck, and kings for your competitors. poverty is commonly lamentable because there is no soul; the poor are chicken-hearted people who desire to save appearances, to eat roast meat and dress in a gentlemanlike manner and be thought to have business in state street; and all the charity and all the sighing of his friends is directed to that end, to new paint him. if poverty is merely culinary, it is very sad, because it is very helpless; but if his poverty is want of bread to eat and clothes to wear, simply because he will not sell his will, his tastes, his honor, for that pottage, and he keeps, of course, his will, his tastes, and his honor, it is very remediable and no wise lamentable poverty. it is a time, as burke said, for a man to act in. now is the time to set the teeth, to plant the foot. he is now to convert the warlike part of his nature, always the attractive, always the salient, the almighty part, and which lies in the lukewarm milky dog-days of common village life, quite stupid, and so leaves common life so unattractive, — he is to bring this artillery to bear. he is to 1837] a state of war 351 “cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.” he has now field, and hour, and judges, and is to fight out, with all gods to friend, his just cause with a resolution and address like alexander's at arbela. cæsar, bonaparte, alexander, had not just cause; even tell, washington, and miltiades, in the judgment of william penn and william ladd, had not just cause, but he has. in the common life a man feels hampered and bandaged. he cannot play the hero; there would be affectation in it; he must fight, like poor — with his pump head, but if he is once rejected by all patrons and all relatives, is fairly set adrift, why then let him thank his gods that he has sea-room and use his freedom so as never to lose it again. it is an immense gain, if he reckon it well, to have no longer false feelings and conventional appearances to consult. a few shillings a day will keep out cold and hunger, and he will not need to study long how to get a few shillings a day honestly. why yes, perhaps he said wisely who said that war is the natural state of man and the nurse of all virtues. i will not say man is to man a wolf, but man should be to man a hero. 352 [age 34 journal it is a question of culture, which is best, a fair or a blotted page? the ultra benevolence of mine asia reminds me of the pretty fable of the seven cedar birds sitting on the bough, who passed the morsel which one had taken, from bird to bird with courtesy, until it returned again to the first. none cared for the morsel; all are fed with love. asia makes my gods hers. in perhaps in the village we have manners to paint which the city life does not know. here we have mr. s., who is man enough to turn away the butcher who cheats in weight, and introduce another butcher into town. the other neighbors could not take such a step. here is mr. e., who, when the moderator of the townmeeting is candidate for representative, and so stands in the centre of the box inspecting each vote and each voter, dares carry up a vote for the opposite candidate and put it in. there is the hero who will not subscribe to the flag-staff or the engine, though all say it is mean. there is the man who gives his dollar, but refuses to give his name, though all other contributors are set down. there is mr. h., who never loses 353 no 1837) village life his spirits, though always in the minority, and, though “the people behave as bad as if they were drunk,” he is just as determined in opposition and just as cheerful as ever. here is mr. c., who says “honor bright” and keeps it so. here is mr. s., who warmly assents to whatever proposition you please to make, and mr. m., who roundly tells you he will have nothing to do with the thing. the high people in the village are timid; the low people are bold and nonchalant, negligent too of each other's opposition, for they see the amount of it and know its uttermost limits, which the more remote proprietor does not. here, too, are not to be forgotten our two companies, the light infantry and the artillery, who brought up, one the brigade band, and one the brass band from boston, set the musicians side by side under the great tree on the common, and let them play two tunes and jangle and drown each other, and presently got the companies into actual hustling and kicking. to show the force that is in you, and (whether you are a philosopher and call it heroism, or are a farmer and call it pluck) you need not go beyond the tinman's shop or the first corner; nay, the first man you meet who bows to you may 354 journal (age 34 look you in the eye and call it out. here is j. m., not so much a citizen as a part of nature, in perfect rapport with the trout in the stream, the bird in the wood or pond side, and the plant in the garden ; whatsoever is early, or rare, or nocturnal; game, or agriculture, he knows; he being awake when others sleep and asleep when others wake. snipe, pelican, or breed of hogs, or grafting or cutting, woodcraft, or bees. “miracles have ceased.” have they indeed? when? they had not ceased this afternoon when i walked into the wood and got into bright, miraculous sunshine, in shelter from the roaring wind. who sees a pine-cone, or the turpentine exuding from the tree, or a leaf, the unit of vegetation, fall from its bough, as if it said, “the year is finished,” or hears in the quiet, piny glen the chickadee chirping his cheerful note, or walks along the lofty promontory-like ridges which, like natural causeways, traverse the morass, or gazes upward at the rushing clouds, or downward at a moss or a stone and says to himself, “ miracles have ceased”? tell me, good friend, when this hillock on which your foot stands swelled from the level of the sphere by volcanic force ; pick up that pebble at your foot; 1837] the daily miracle 355 look at its gray sides, its sharp crystal, and tell me what fiery inundation of the world melted the minerals like wax, and, as if the globe were one glowing crucible, gave this stone its shape. there is the truth-speaking pebble itself, to affirm to endless ages the thing was so. tell me where is the manufactory of this air, so thin, so blue, so restless, which eddies around you, in which your life floats, of which your lungs are but an organ, and which you coin into musical words. i am agitated with curiosity to know the secret of nature. why cannot geology, why cannot botany speak and tell me what has been, what is, as i run along the forest promontory, and ask when it rose like a blister on heated steel? then i looked up and saw the sun shining in the vast sky, and heard the wind bellow above and the water glistened in the vale. these were the forces that wrought then and work now. yes, there they grandly speak to all plainly, in proportion as we are quick to apprehend. go into a botanical garden; is not that a place of some delight? go to a muster-field, where four regiments are marching with flags, music, and artillery; is not that a moving spectacle? go to a dance, and watch the forms and movements of the youths and maidens; have they nothing 356 [age 34 journal of you in keeping? go to a church, where gray old men and matrons and children bend and sit still in pious frames. go to the top of monadnoc; to the vatican ; to the unburied pompeii. november 8. yesterday william channing and john s. dwight came here, and found me just ready to go to lowell to read the first lecture of my course. as they seemed to be bearers of the right promethean fire, i hated the contretemps. to lowell also went wife and child. i believe the man and the writer should be one, and not diverse, as they say bancroft, as we know bulwer is. wordsworth gives us the image of the true-hearted man, as milton, chaucer, herbert do; not ruffled fine gentlemen who condescend to write, like shaftesbury, congreve, and, greater far, walter scott. let not the author eat up the man, so that he shall be a balcony and no house. let him not be turned into a dapper, clerical anatomy, to be assisted like a lady over a gutter or a stone wall. in meeting milton, i feel that i should encounter a real man; but coleridge is a writer, and pope, waller, addison and swift and gibbon, though with n 1837] bible mandates 357 attributes, are too modish. it is not man, but the fashionable wit they would be. yet swift has properties. allston is respectable to me. novalis, schiller are only voices, no men. dr. johnson was a man, though he lived in unfavorable solitude and society of one sort, so that he was an unleavened lump at least on which a genial unfolding had only begun. humanity cannot be the attribute of these people's writing; humanity, which smiles in homer, in chaucer, in shakspear, in milton, in wordsworth. montaigne is a man. lidian made a very just remark to-day, that certainly she gave clothes, bedding or money to her sick and poor neighbors lately with the greater confidence, because of the written verse, “give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” it is true that the inclination to bestow gets edge from the time-honoured text in which it is embodied. as good a commentary as need be on the power of a sentence. as good a commentary on christianity as is often to be found. the eyes of men converse.' . . . to what i passage printed in “ behaviour" (conduct of life, pp. 179, 180). 358 (age 34 journal end all the forms of society, all these meetings and partings, these professions, invitations, courtesies, if by them all a man cannot learn something vastly more weighty than the mere formal occasion and pretext of the hour? in every company into which a man goes, there is he gauged. there he feels himself tried, assayed and stamped with his right number. ... darkness. milton's expression of “music smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled,” has great beauty. nothing in nature has the softness of darkness. ride in the night through a wood, and the overhanging boughs shall become to the eye lumps of darkness, and of an unutterable gentleness to the sense. how graceful and lively a spectacle is a squirrel on a bough cracking a nut! how sylvan beautiful a stag bounding through plymouth woods ! how like a smile of the earth is the first violet we meet in spring! well, it was meant that i should see these and partake this agreeable emotion, — was it not? and was it not further designed that i should thereby be prompted to ask the relation of these natures to my own? and so the great word compara1837] faneuil hall caucus 359 tive anatomy has now leaped out of the womb of the unconscious. i feel a cabinet in my mind unlocked by each of these new interests. wherever i go, the related objects crowd on my sense and i explore backward, and wonder how the same things looked to me before my attention had been aroused. right-minded men have recently been called to decide for abolition. it is long ere we discover how rich we are.'... november 11. in boston, yesterday, heard governor everett read a lecture to the diffusion society, and thence went to faneuil hall where webster presided at the caucus, and heard bell of tennessee, graves and underwood of kentucky, and hoffmann of new york. the speaking was slovenly, small, and tiresome, but the crowd exciting, and the sound of the cheering extraordinarily fine. webster said, when bell ended, that “it was not a festive occasion, yet he would venture to propose a sentiment to the meeting: the health i here follows the paragraph thus beginning printed in • intellect” (essays, first series, p. 334). sc 360 journal (age 34 of mr. bell and the whigs of tennessee, and three times three!” then was heard the splendid voice of four or five thousand men in full cry together. such voice might well predominate over brute beasts. it was merely a spectacle to me. but the genius loci is more commanding at faneuil hall than at any other spot in america. the air is electric. every man thinks he can speak whilst he hears — lifted off his feet oftentimes — the multitude swaying alternately this side and that. in such crowds few old men; mostly young and middle-aged, with shining heads and swollen veins. the mob is all the time interlocutor, and the bucket goes up and down according to the success of the speaker. the pinched, wedged, elbowed, sweltering multitude, as soon as the speaker loses their ear by tameness of his harangue, feel all sorely how ill accommodated they are, and begin to attend only to themselves and the coarse outcries made all around them. then they push, resist, swear, and fill the hall with cries of tumult. the speaker stops; the moderator persuades, commands, entreats, “ order !” the speaker gets breath, and a new hint, and resumes, goes to the right place, his voice alters, vibrates, pierces the private ear of every one, the mob quiets itself somehow, 1837] judæa. horace mann 361 every one being magnetized, and the hall hangs suspended on the lips of one man. a happy deliverance of common sentiments charms them [the people]. never the fineness or depth of the thought, but the good saying of the very few and very poor particulars which lie uppermost in every man's mind at the meeting. all appear struck with wonder and delight at this cheap and mediocre faculty, so rarely is it found. if the speaker become dull again, instantly our poor wedges begin to feel their pains and strive and cry. a musical tone out of judæa makes itself heard farther on time than the mad hurly burly of the reign of terror. november 16. day before yesterday the board of education sent their secretary hither to form a county association, and mr. mann spent his time, in the intervals, at my house. hither came too dr. walker and mr. stetson. prudence is a virtue also, and when you are tempted out to expound your deeper mind, it is as disagreeable to have the conversation instantaneously changed as to find the stair much 362 (age 34 journal longer than you have stepped for. one of the fine things said by mr. mann was, that “we should think on oath.”: in these days i sardanapalize, being sick, and sit by the fire, and read three new reviews. a review is a stage-coach or a ferryboat, for the incongruity of the company it assorts. i pass from ciceronian splendor to hand-bill writers. i am glad to have poor pückler-muskau, however so butchered as he is in the quarterly. ... very sweet words these must be to a german fop who rates england so high, and would so gladly pass for an englishman. but he seems to be such a mischievous scamp that i give him up. more gladly i read of bradley and his beautiful discovery of the aberration of light, guided thereto by the striking analogy of the shifting of the vane on a boat's mast. turns. a fine scholar may appear very silly 1 mr. george willis cooke gives a very interesting letter about mr. emerson, written by mr. mann the year before this visit. it is curious to find that he compares him, with his central point of view and belief in the great harmony, to one observing from the sun. compare emerson's “uriel.” (ralph waldo emerson, life, writings and philosophy.) 1837] meeting men 363 to every one in succession of the audience whom he delights with his eloquence. he is a lens that has no power, but at its focus; at any other distance it gives all blur and dislocation. he is a cannon that destroys at a distance; but, bring the battle hand to hand, and the weapon is cumbrous and useless, no match for a knife. in the common progress of life we feel that our acquaintance with a few lawyers, with a few political men, with a few merchants, has fitted us adequately to converse with all others of those classes, that is, when we are conscious of having mastered the difficulties which once made our talk with either of these tribes useless or embarrassing. when we no longer fear or hate them, then we are quite assured in the expectation of meeting any new individuals of the same class. so, according to our success in talk with one score, would be our chance with ten score. can you justify your secretest thought to another man, and find that with him it still tells as with you for somewhat important, — so will it seem to the human race. november 23. this morning i sent to dr. walker a critical notice of carlyle, but i doubt it will return to me. 364 journal (age 34 tone. a fine paper ascribed to parsons in the daily advertiser, not so much for the thing said as for the masterly tone. it is as hard to get the right tone as to say good things. one indicates character, the other intellect. music. beethoven sat upon a stile near vienna one hot summer's day and caught the tone of the choral flies whose hum filled the air, and introduced it with charming effect into his pastoral sinfony.' “in brightness of tone the flute so transcends the other instruments that the composer reserves it for particular occasions. in the song which describes the creation of man,‘in his eyes brightness,' how beautifully is it introduced. the few pointed notes impart the same brilliancy as the spots of light upon the eyes given by the painter.” (music of nature, p. 310.) “probably the greatest good effected by the thirty years' war was the improvement of the wind instruments” (p. 352). the trumpet. “its splendid tone is heard at a greater distance than that of any other instru1 this anecdote is followed by many extracts from the music of nature, by william gardiner (wilkins & cabot, boston, 1841), of which a few are here given. 1837] music carries far 365 ment; hence it is pressed into the service of arms. no one has felt its powerful clang like the soldier. amidst the thunder of the war its lancet tone cuts through the air and drives the cohorts to battle” (p. 364). iva tone. “it is a curious fact that musical sounds fly farther and are heard at a greater distance than those which are more loud and noisy. when bartholemon led, the opera connoisseurs would go into the gallery to hear the effect of his cremona violin, which at this distance predominated greatly above all the other instruments, though in the orchestra it was not perceptibly louder than any of the rest” (p. 12). “the strains of the irish and welsh may be referred to the harp. the dance tunes of spain to the guitar; the mountain airs of the swiss to the hunting-horn, and the music of the turks to the rhythmical clangor of the ancient greeks” (p. 460). november 24. the self-subsistent shakes like a reed before a sneering paragraph in the newspaper, or even at a difference of opinion, concerning something to be done, expressed in a private letter from just such another shaking bullrush as himself. 366 [age 34 journal he sits expecting a dinner-guest with a suspense which paralyses his inventive or his acquiring faculties. he finds the solitude of two or three entire days, when mother, wife and child are gone, tedious and dispiriting. let him not wrong the truth and his own experience by too stiffly standing on the cold and proud doctrine of selfsufficiency.' culture. to what end existed those gods of olympus, or the tradition so irresistibly embodied in sculpture, architecture and a perdurable literature, that the names jupiter, apollo, venus, still haunt us in this cold, christian, saxon america, and will not be shaken off? to what end the ethical revelation which we call christianity, with all its history, its corruption, its reformation; the revivals of letters; the press; the planting of america; the conversion of the powers of nature to the domestic service of man, so that the ocean is but a water-wheel, and the solar system but a clock? to what end are we distributed into electoral nations made 1 mr. emerson’s habit was to state his thesis strongly, not breaking it by much qualification, and stating another aspect at another time. but as for courage, whatever trepidations he felt, he did not allow to influence his action, thereby showing the best courage. 1837] culture and persons 367 to know and do; half subject still to england through the dominion of british intellect, and, in common with england, not yet recovered from the astonishing infusions of the hebrew soul in the beginning of the world? why is never a pencil moved in the hand of raphael or rembrandt, and never a pen in that of moses or shakspear, but it communicates emotion and thought to me at the end of five hundred years and across the breadth of half a globe? and, whilst thus the prolific powers of nature, over a period of three or four thousand years, to yield spiritual ailment are epitomized and brought to a focus on the stripling now at school, why does yet his relation to a few men and women close by him outweigh in intensity the entire congregated attractions of worlds and ages ? “ he that is down needs fear no fall, he that is low no pride, he that is humble ever shall have god to be his guide. fullness to such a burden is that go on pilgrimage ; here little, and hereafter bliss is best from age to age. the dunghill-raker, spider, hen, the chicken too, to me 368 [age 34 journal have taught a lesson; let me then conformed to it be. the butcher, gardener and the field, the robin and his bait, also the rotten tree, doth yield me argument of weight.”. john bunyan. proportion certainly is a great end of culture. a man should ask god morning and evening, with the philosopher, that he might be instructed to give to every being and thing in the universe its just measure of importance; but let not any say that the only remedy against the idols of the cave is conversation with many men, and a knowledge of the world. this is also distorting; state street, or the boulevards of paris, are no truer pictures of the world than is a monastery or a laboratory. the brokers and attorneys are quite as far wide of the mark on one side as monks and academicians on the other. their multitude is no argument, even to themselves. there are two ways of cultivating the proportion of character:i compare the passage in “ education” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 132, centenary ed.) on the symbolism of life ; also the poem beginning “let me go where'er i will” (poems, appendix, p. 365, centenary ed.). 1837] proportion 369 1. the habit of attending to all sensations, and putting ourselves in a way to receive a variety, as by attending spectacles, visiting theatres, prisons, senate, factories, ships, museums, churches and hells; a thing impossible to many and except in merest superficiality impossible to any, for a man is not in the place to which he goes unless his mind is there, and, moreover, let him go to all such places as i have named, what does he know about the miners of cornwall? is he sure to allow all that is due to that phase of human nature disclosed in thugs of the desart? does he appreciate insanity? or know the military life of russia ? or that of the italian lazzaroni ? or the aspirations and tendencies of the sacs and foxes ? 2. the other mode of cultivating gradation and forming a just scale is to compare the depth of thought to which different objects appeal. nature and the course of life furnish every man, the most recluse, with a sufficient variety of objects to supply him with the elements and divisions of a scale. let him look back upon any portion of his life; he will see that things have entirely lost the relative proportions which they wore to the eye at the moment when they transpired. the dearest aims of his ambi370 journal (age 34 tion have sunk out of sight, and some transient shade of thought looms up out of forgotten years. proportion is not the effect of circumstances, but a habit of mind. the truth is, the mind is a perfect measure of all things, and the only measure. buds. in the woods this afternoon the red bud on the dry twig appeared to reach out the wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants.' . . . he is not a skeptic who denies a miracle, who denies both angel and resurrection, who does not believe in the existence of such a city as ancient rome or thebes; but he is a skeptic and attacks the constitution of human society, who does not think it always an absolute duty to speak the truth, who pretends not to know how to discriminate between a duty and an inclination; and who thinks the mind is not itself a perfect measure. when a zealot comes to me and represents the importance of this temperance reform, my 1 the next two sentences occur in “ compensation.” 1837] choose your own 371 hands drop — i have no excuse — i honor him with shame at my own inaction. then a friend of the slave shows me the horrors of southern slavery — i cry, guilty !guilty! then a philanthropist tells me the shameful neglect of the schools by the citizens ; i feel guilty again. then i hear of byron or milton, who drank sodawater and ate a crust whilst others fed fat, and i take the confessional anew. then i hear that my friend has finished aristophanes, plato, cicero, and grotius; and i take shame to myself. then i hear of the generous morton, who offers a thousand dollars to the cause of socialism, and i applaud and envy. then of a brave man who resists a wrong to the death, and i sacrifice anew. i cannot do all these things, but these my shames are illustrious token that i have strict relations to them all. none of these causes are foreigners to me. my universal nature is thus marked. these accusations are part of me too. they are not for nothing. it seems to me that the circumstances of man are historically somewhat better here and now than ever, — that more freedom exists for culture. it will not now run against an axe at the first step. in other places it is not so. the brave 372 journal [ace 34 lovejoy has given his breast to the bullet for his part, and has died when it was better not to live.' he is absolved. there are always men enough ready to die for the silliest punctilio; to die like dogs, who fall down under each other's teeth, but i sternly rejoice that one was found to die for humanity and the rights of free speech and opinion. the highest culture asks no costly apparatus, neither telescope nor observatory nor college; everywhere its apparatus is where are human beings and necessity and love. november 25. what is that society which unites the most advantages to the culture of each? the poor but educated family. the eager blushing boys discharging as they can their little chores, and hastening into the little parlor to the study of to-morrow's merciless lesson, yet stealing time i soon after the cold-blooded murder by the mob of elijah lovejoy at alton, illinois, for speaking against slavery in his paper, mr. emerson in his lecture on heroism, suddenly looking his boston audience in the eyes, said these words. his friend george bradford said that a shudder seemed to run through the audience, yet unprepared for this bold word for a martyr of an unpopular cause. 1837] the market-man 373 to read a novel hardly smuggled into the tolerance of father and mother, and atoning for the same by some pages of plutarch or goldsmith.' ... sleep. i supposed that it was only soldiers and emperors that slept but four hours in the twenty-four; but david buttrickº told me that since he had followed teaming, he had not averaged more than this, and further that it sometimes happened that he would be so overcome with drowsiness on the road that he could not proceed. then he stops his team, turns into a bush at the roadside and sleeps for five minutes. this satisfies him, and he goes on as wakeful as after a night's sleep. 1 the rest of this passage, touchingly describing the early home life of himself and his brothers, may be found in “domestic life” (conduct of life, pp. 119-121). in the journal, the passage about self-possession follows, beginning “ in battles the eye is first overcome.” (see “ prudence,” essays, first series, p. 237.) 2 a concord farmer, and an excellent man. after mr. emerson's farm had grown in acreage and productions, mr. buttrick sold his apples and pears for him at the quincy market. in spite of his irregular hours, mr. buttrick kept his health and his remarkable beauty until he was nearly ninety. 374 journal (age 34 sv a i do not like to see a sword at a man's side. if it threaten man, it threatens me. a company of soldiers is an offensive spectacle. ca november 26. .. 'the fury with which the slaveholder and the slavetrader defend every inch of their plunder, of their bloody deck and howling auction, only serves as a trump of doom to alarum the ear of mankind, to wake the sleepers and drag all neutrals to take sides and listen to the argument which justice shall finally pronounce, and to the verdict. ... [these questions] are pregnant with doctrine; can a war pass over a nation without leaving some ethical conclusions laid up in the mind of all intelligent citizens? can an election ? an appeal for the greeks, an appeal for the poles, an appeal for the little island of cape de verde? i this sentence from a long passage on the slave trade, the temperance movement, anti-masonry, tariff, the duties of the executive and of representatives, treatment of indians, and boundary wars, is preserved to show how alive mr. emerson was at this early period to questions of national ethics. the passage, in condensed form, is printed in the « lecture on the times,” nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 269, 270, centenary ed. 1837] lessons of the crisis 375 the visit of a stranger like lafayette, spurzheim, hall, martineau, has great uses of thought and culture. the crisis of trade, contrasting with the flowing sheet'that just before was wafting us overillimitable spaces, — the crisis of trade, which always teaches political economy and constrains every man to explore the process involving the labors of so many by which a loaf of bread comes from the seed-wheat to his table. all these get epitomized into a song, a proverb, a byword, — and so their spirit stays. all these instructive slides in our lantern show us something of ethics and something of practicks. whom do they teach? do not ask who. they teach you, and, if you, then tens of thousands. they settle what is, and what ought to be. the gloomy catastrophe of a bankruptcy, of a revolution, of a war, which wrap cities and nations in black, is only an emphatic exposition of the natural results of given courses of action, as we look at a pod to learn the virtues of a plant. does any say that it does no good; for those who have learned, by mistakes of policy which extend over fifteen or twenty years, what is right, die, and their wisdom dies with them, for time ca 376 (age 34 journal or saturn is always devouring his children? with that death i have no concern — the soul in us gives us no anticipation of any such fate; on the contrary, never looks that way ; says, what have i to do with it? and craves always this nectar of the gods, knowledge, ambrosia. the earth is not a place of results, but a place of lessons, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. it does not exactly fit the thing to say it was designed that these transactions should so teach us as they have, but this effect and this action meet as accurately as the splendid lights of morning and evening meet the configuration of the human eye, and the more interior eye of taste. november 27. what is culture? the chief end of man. what is the apparatus ? his related nature. what is the scale? himself. what are my advantages ? the total new england. expressiveness. i magnify instincts.' ... 1 here follows the passage about such facts, words, persons as dwell in our memory, rightly bespeaking our attention as symbols of value. (“spiritual laws,” essays, first series, p. 144.) 1837] service of science 377 december 3. lidian says, it is wicked to go to church sundays." december 8. waldo walks alone. whilst meditating on the ideal, i hear today from the pulpit, “the friendship of the world is enmity with god,” which thus translates itself into the language of philosophy ; harmony with the actual is discord with the ideal. 18od mes ends meet, or the modern use of antiquity. the progress of science is to bring the remote near. the kelp which grew neglected on the roaring sea-heach of the orkneys, now comes to the shops; the seal, the otter, the ermine, that none saw but the esquimaux in the rocky mountains, they must come to long wharf also; the shells; the strombus, the turbe, the pearl that hid six hundred fathoms down in the 1 this saying mr. emerson quotes in the “ divinity school address ” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 143), but it was only the momentary utterance of some disappointment, for mrs. emerson, to whom things spiritual were the bread of life, made, if the priest's sabbath were unlovely, “in the pew, a far better, holier, sweeter for herself as long as she lived.". 378 journal (age 34 warm waters of the gulf, they must take the bait and leave their silent houses and come to long wharf also; even the birds of labrador that laid their eggs for ages on the rocky coast must send their green eggs now to long wharf whilst this happens. so i think will it be the effect of insight to show nearer relations than are yet known between remote periods of history and the present moment. the assyrian, the persian, the egyptian era, now fading fast into twilight, must reappear to-day, and, as a varnish brings out the original colors of an antique picture, so a better knowledge of our own time will be a sunbeam to search the faintest traces of character in the foundations in the world. so i think olympus and memphis, and moses, and zoroaster and tubal cain have not done all their duty yet. homer, greece, rome and egypt certainly have come nearer to us for wolf, bentley, niebuhr, müller, winckelmann and champollion. how much waste strength is in the world, since no man works with half, or a quarter, or a tithe of his strength, considering his profession or office not his proper work, but only perfunctorily done. 1837) the hearty preacher 379 the fair girl whom i saw in town expressing so decided and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and so lofty a will, inspires the wish to come nearer to and speak to this nobleness : so shall we be ennobled also. i wish to say to her, never strike sail to any. come into port greatly, or sail with god the seas. not in vain you live, for the passing stranger is cheered, refined and raised by the vision.' seas “ understanding.” the small man's part in the conversation seems to be to keep by him an ewer containing cold water, and as fast as in different parts of the room a little blaze is generated, he applies a little cold water with his hand to the place. sunday, i could not help remarking at church how much humanity was in the preaching of my good uncle, mr. sam ripley. the rough farmers had their hands at their eyes repeatedly. but the old hardened sinners, the arid, educated men, ministers and others, were dry as stones. 1 this passage, in less personal form, is printed in “heroism” (essays, first series, p. 250). 380 [age 34 journal december 9. truth is our element and life, yet if a man fasten his attention upon a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth itself becomes distorted, and, as it were, false.' . . . the lie of one idea. elizabeth hoar made a just remark the other evening about the fair girl i spoke of, that among grown up or among married women she knew no one who fulfilled the promise of that one. but there were idealizing girls when these women were young. she said she never knew a woman excepting m. m. e. (aunt mary), who gave high counsels. december 18. ! ah! that we had power to trace the parentage and the high distinctions of the intellect. god is pure intellect, where it becomes one with truth, — or is it bipolar there also, and to be called reason subjectively, truth objectively? of this deity the old sage might well say, its beauty is immense. as it enters our lower sphere, the vision, that high power which perceives the excellence of truth and justice, is called reason; the perception of the relations i see • intellect” (essays, first series, p. 339). 1837] intellect 381 of the apparent world is called common sense, and we apply the term understanding to the activity of the mind upon the apparent objects, comparing, reasoning, constructing. but intellect and intellection signify to the common ear something else, the consideration of abstract truth.' ... i and mine cannot see the wonder of their existence. this the intellect always ponders ; it is never a partisan. it is always an observer. god shows all things bound and formed. the subtle intellect detects the secret intrinsic likeness between remotest things, and as a menstruum dissolves all things into a few principles. this power does not appear in beasts. they are wholly immersed in the apparent, and do never, as we say, float over it, and see themselves also as facts. the order of the universe seems always one, not diverse, but more and less. thus over all the brute creation seems to brood a common soul, — the same in all, and never individualized. each ox, each sheep, is not an individual as a man is, but only one piece more of the ox kind, of the sheep kind. their life, which coni here follows the paragraph thus beginning in “intellect” (essays, first series, pp. 325, 326). 382 journal (age 34 tains their instincts, is over them, according to the ancient saying, god is the soul of brutes. in a higher sphere of rational life dwells the infant man. the child is pervaded by an element of reason, but does not individualize himself, or say i. the child lives with god, but as a dweller in this higher sphere, that of absolute truth ; this infinite nature bursts through at last into the affirmative of real being; i am. feebly, it enters into him; his life is the life of the senses, of the apparent, of the actual. but he is continually impelled by the influx of the higher principle to abstract himself from effects, and dwell with causes. this is the region of laws, the sphere of the intellect, the native air of the human soul. few men enter it, but all men belong there. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1837 thucydides ; seneca ; persius ; plotinus; calidasa, megha duta, apud asiatic journal; abulfeda, historia muslemica ; poems of samuel daniel, donne, waller and cowley ; clarendon, history; shaftesbury; bunyan, pilgrim's progress; 1837) reading 383 swift; congreve ; metastasio; goldoni; johnson, lives of the poets; boswell, life of johnson ; boscovich; rousseau ; niebuhr; james ferguson; captain james cook, voyages; . heinrich johann merck, correspondence with goethe, herder, wieland, camper, tischbein and others; zelter, correspondence with goetbe; schiller, correspondence with goethe; friedrich august wolf; friedrich von hardenberg (novalis); sir humphry davy, consolations of travel; hazlitt ; las cases; o'meara; eckermann, gespräche mit goethe; karl otfried müller; winckelmann; james ferguson; lady louisa stewart, anecdotes of lady mary wortley montagu; mrs. hemans; shelley; carlyle, french revolution; bulwer; bentley ; washington allston, poem to mrs. jameson; bancroft, history of the united states; miss harriet martineau ; mcclelland, geology of kemaon; william gardiner, the music of nature. mes journal boston lectures the pulpit from the pew address to the senior class in the divinity college the resulting storm oration at dartmouth college journal xxix 1838 (from journal c) “non hic centauros, non gorgonas, harpyiasque invenies : hominem pagina nostra sapit.” martial. as s icc [the boston course of lectures on human culture was successful; meantime the quiet home life went on, brightened by the charm of the little waldo. friends came and went, as did philosophers, and unbidden reformers. beside his daily record of thoughts, mr. emerson had to prepare a lecture on peace for the american peace society, and invitations came for discourses during the summer from the senior class in the cambridge divinity college and the literary societies of dartmouth college.] january 26, 1838. all this mild winter, hygeia and the muse befriend with the elements the poor, driven scribe. eight lectures have been read on eight fine evenings, and to-day the mercury stands 388 journal [age 34 at 52° (3 o'clock p. m.) in the shade. to-day i send the oration to press again. sleep and dreams. the landscape and scenery of dreams seem not to fit us, but like a cloak or coat of some other person, to overlap and incumber the wearer. so is the ground, the road, the house, in dreams too long or too short, and, if it serve no other purpose, would at least show us how accurately nature fits man awake.” m id january 27. how much superstition in the learned and unlearned! all take for granted that a great deal — nay, almost all — is known and forever settled. that which a man now says, he merely throws in as confirmatory of this corpse, or corporation universal, of science. whilst the fact is, that nothing is known; and every new mind ought to take the attitude of columbus, – launch out from the ignorant, gaping world, and sail west for a new world. very, very few 1 there are no earlier entries except on the weather. mr. emerson remarks that in the last days of december, and up to january 12, the days had been pleasant and mild, sometimes warm. 2 compare “demonology,” lectures and biographical sketches, p. 5, centenary ed. 1838] few thoughts 389 thoughts in an age.' now; wordsworth has thought, and more truly goethe has thought. both have perceived the extreme poverty of literature, but all the rest of the learned were men of talents merely, who had some feat which each could do with words, moore, campbell, scott, mackintosh, niebuhr; and the rest. i think, too, that, if there were philosophers, orators, men, to think boldly, there would be no difficulty in carrying with you the mind of any mixed audience. as soon as you became yourself dilated with a thought, you carry men with you as by miraculous uplifting; you lose them by your own want of thought, of which impotence they become instantly aware. ... february 3. five days ago came carlyle's letter, and has kept me warm ever since with its affection and praise. it seems his friend john sterling loves waldo emerson also, by reason of reading the book nature. i am quite bewitched, maugre all my unamiableness, with so dainty a relation as a friendship for a scholar and poet i have never seen, and he carlyle's friend. i read his papers i compare « quotation and originality,” letters and social aims, p. 179, centenary ed. 390 journal [age 34 new eem immediately in blackwood, and see a thinker, if not a poet. thought he has, and right in every line, but music he cares not for. i had certainly supposed that a lover of carlyle and of me must needs love rhythm and music of style. so pleasant a piece of sentiment as this new relation, it does not seem very probable that any harsh experience will be allowed to disturb. it is not very probable that we shall meet bodily, to put the ethereal web we weave to the test of any rending or straining. and yet, god knows, i dare and i will boldly impawn his temper, that he dares meet and coöperate until we are assayed and proven. i am not a sickly sentimentalist, though the name of a friend warms my heart and makes me feel as a girl, but must and will have in my companion sense and virtue.' february 5. but the lecture must be writ — friend or no friend. and it seems as if condition might be i he found both, and from this time until sterling's death, six years later, these friends, who never met, gave joy and support to each other. they met on grounds where carlyle, “the great anti-poet” as sterling called him, could not follow them. see the correspondence of sterling and emerson (houghton, mifflin & co., 1897). 1838] lecturer and hearer 391 treated. fate, fortune, love, demonology, sleep; death — what deities or demons environ man; nothing but aids him. then the fact that we lie open to god, and what may he not do! but no, we can predict very well that, though new thoughts may come, and cheer, and gild, they shall not transport us. there are limits to our mutability. time seems to make these shadows that we are, tough and peaked. yet remember that the hunger of people for truth is immense. the reason why they yawn is because you have it not. consider, too, how shakspear and milton are formed. they are just such men as we all are to their contemporaries, and none suspected their superiority, but after all were dead, and a generation or two besides, it is discovered that they surpass all. each of us then take the same moral to himself. true greatness will preach its own contentment. it will not sneer; it will not scold; it will smile at the pomp-encumbered king; it will pity those who harness themselves with cares, but will persist, itself, in wearing a simpler and lighter costume. it will reckon all its own. there are merits we cannot estimate, the 392 journal (age 34 military and the arithmetical and the intellectual, we can, but scarce any others. observe our defective names for character. but piety transcends. and there may be many elements of character that we want skill now to detect, as we cannot find any virus in the air of a plague hospital, but the air of alps and the air of the dead-room give the same result. we walk with angels unawares. fame is not the result we seek. fame to my man shall be as the tinkle of a passing sleighbell. but he shall have the past in the present, he shall forsee himself in scanning the genius of divine providence. february 9. in boston, wednesday night, i read at the masonic temple the tenth and last lecture of my course on human culture. lecture i, introductory. ii, the hands. iii, the head. iv, the eye and the ear. v, the heart. vi, the heart, continued. vii, prudence. viii, heroism. ix, holiness. x, general views.' scann uus 1 in mr. cabot's memoir, vol. ii, in appendix f, some abstract of these lectures is given, especially of the parts not printed in the essays. 1838] success of lectures 393 the pecuniary advantage of the course has been considerable. season tickets sold 319 for $620. single tickets sold 373 for 186. $806. deduct error somewhere 13 $793. deduct expenses 225 $568. net profit. the attendance on this course (adding to the above list 85 tickets distributed by me to friends) will be about 439 persons, on the average, of an evening — and, as it was much larger at the close than at the beginning, i think five hundred persons at the closing lectures. a very gratifying interest on the part of the audience was evinced in the views offered, which were drawn chiefly out of the materials already collected in this journal. the ten lectures were read on ten pleasant winter evenings, on consecutive wednesdays. thanks to the teacher, of me and of all, the upholder, the healthgiver; thanks and lowliest wondering acknowledgment. 394 journal (age 34 opinion is our secondary or outward conscience — very unworthy to be compared with the primary, but, when that is seared, this becomes of great importance. a man whose legs are sound may play with his cane or throw it away, but if his legs are gouty, he must lean on his cane. you must love me as i am. do not tell me how much i should love you. i am content. i find my satisfactions in a calm, considerate reverence, measured by the virtues which provoke it. so love me as i am. when i am virtuous, love me; when i am vicious, hate me; when i am lukewarm, neither good nor bad, care not for me. but do not by your sorrow or your affection solicit me to be somewhat else than i by nature am.' february 11. at the " teachers' meeting”, last night, my | this paragraph versified may be found in the poems, appendix, fragments on “ life," p. 352, centenary ed. 2 on sunday evenings, friends, many of them teachers in the sunday school, gathered in the emerson parlor for serious talk. among them came mr. edmund hosmer, a neighboring farmer who had also a philosophic mind and was liked and respected by mr. emerson, whose agricultural adviser and executor he was. ne 1838) hosmer. thoreau 395 good edmund, after disclaiming any wish to difference jesus from a human mind, suddenly seemed to alter his tone, and said that jesus made the world and was the eternal god. henry thoreau merely remarked that “mr. hosmer had kicked the pail over.” i delight much in my young friend [thoreau), who seems to have as free and erect a mind as any i have ever met. he told as we walked this afternoon a good story about a boy who went to school with him, wentworth, who resisted the school mistress's command that the children should bow to dr. heywood' and other gentlemen as they went by, and when dr. heywood stood waiting and cleared his throat with a hem, wentworth said, “you need n't hem, doctor. i shan't bow.” february 16. and what can you say for milton, the king of song in the last ages ? milton the heroic, the continuator of the series of the bards, the representative of the immortal band with fillet and harp, and soul all melody. to me he is associated with my family, with my two glori1 a respected practitioner of medicine, and the town clerk of concord for a generation, succeeded in this office by his son, george heywood, esq., for a like period. 396 [age 34 journal ous dead,edward and charles, — whose ear tingled with his melodies, with charles especially, who, i think, knew the delight of that man's genius as well or better than any one who ever loved it. it was worth milton's labor on his poems to give so much clear joy and manly satisfaction to a noble soul in this distant time. of this i am very sure, that milton himself would more prize the admiration, — nay that is almost too strong a word, i may dare to say, rather, the even love of charles than of any other person who has written about him. for charles's severe, delicate, discriminating taste read in milton what seemed, i doubt not, rather his own writing than another man's. charles could not write as he could read, and milton wrote for charles. my own ear still rings with the diamond sharpness of his poetic recitations of samson agonistes, “ can this be he, that heroic, that renowned, irresistible samson ? whom, unarmed, no strength of man or fiercest wild beast could withstand; who tore the lion as the lion tears the kid; ran on embattled armies clad in iron, and weaponless himself”; and; 1838] thoreau on college 397 and the “ tame, villatic fowl” and “ held up their pearlèd wrists and took him in.” and so does milton seem to me a poet who had a majestic ear, and an ear for all the delicacies of rhythm; not at all squeamish. february 17. my good henry thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity and clear perception. how comic is simplicity in this double dealing, quacking world. everything that boy says makes merry with society, though nothing can be graver than his meaning. i told him he should write out the history of his college life, as carlyle has his tutoring. we agreed that the seeing the stars through a telescope would be worth all the astronomical lectures. then he described mr. quimby's electrical lecture here, and the experiment of the shock, and added that “college corporations are very blind to the fact that that twinge in the elbow is worth all the lecturing.” to-night, i walked under the stars through the snow, and stopped and looked at my far no 398 (age 34 journal sparklers and heard the voice of the wind, so slight and pure and deep, as if it were the sound of the stars themselves revolving. how much self-reliance it implies to write a true description of anything, for example, wordsworth's picture of skating; that leaning back on your heels and stopping in mid-career. so simple a fact no common man would have trusted himself to detach as a thought. february 19. solitude is fearsome and heavy-hearted. i have never known a man who had so much good accumulated upon him as i have. reason, health, wife, child, friends, competence, reputation, the power to inspire, and the power to please ; yet, leave me alone a few days, and i creep about as if in expectation of a calamity. my mother, my brother, are at new york. a little farther, across the sea, is my friend thomas carlyle. in the islands i have another friend, it seems. i will love you all and be happy in your love. my gentle wife has an angel's heart, and for my boy, his grief is more beautiful than other people's joy. carlyle, too: ah, my friend! i thought, as i looked at your book to-day, which all the bril1838] love for carlyle 399 liant so admire, that you have spoiled it for me. why, i say, should i read this book? the man himself is mine: he can sit under trees of paradise and tell me a hundred histories deeper, truer, dearer than this, all the eternal days of god. i shall not tire, i shall not shame him: we shall be children in heart and men in counsel and in act. the pages which to others look so rich and alluring, to me have a frigid and marrowless air, for the warm hand and heart i have an estate in, and the living eye of which i can almost discern across the sea some sparkles. i think my affection to that man really incapacitates me from reading his book. in the windy night, in the sordid day, out of banks and bargains and disagreeable business, i espy you; and run to my pleasant thoughts. an february 23. abel adams' told me that boyden, the late landlord of the tremont house, told him that he made forty-five thousand dollars in one year in that establishment, and was frightened at his i mr. abel adams (of the form of barnard and adams) was mr. emerson's life-long friend. during the short housekeeping that followed mr. emerson's first marriage, mr. adams was a near neighbour in chardon place. 400 journal (age 34 success. another year he made nearly so much. but it nearly killed him with care and confinement. he kept it eight years. march 4. . i told alcott that in the city, cousin and jouffroy, and the opinion of this and that doctor, showed very large; a fame of the bookstores seemed commanding; but as soon as we got ten miles out of town, in the bushes, we whistled at such matters, cared little for societies, systèmes, or book-stores. god and the world return again to mind, sole problem, and we value an observation upon a brass knob, a genuine observation on a button, more than whole encyclopædias. it is even so; as i read this new book of ripley's' it looks to me neat, elegant, accurate, as it is – a mere superficiality: in my jack cade way of counting by number and weight, counting the things, i find nothing worth in the accomplished cousin and the mild jouffroy; the most unexceptionable clearness, precision and good sense, — never a slip, never an ignorance, but, unluckily, never an inspiration. one page of milton's poorest tract is worth the whole. i specimens of foreign standard literature, edited by george ripley, later, the head of the brook farm community. ne nu 1838) memories 401 last night a remembering and remembering talk with lidian. i went back to the first smile of ellen on the door-stone at concord. i went back to all that delicious relation to feel, as ever how many shades, how much reproach. strange is it that i can go back to no part of youth, no past relation, without shrinking and shrinking. not ellen, not edward, not charles. infinite compunctions embitter each of those dear names, and all who surrounded them.” ah! could i have felt in the presence of the first, as now i feel, my own power and hope, and so have offered her in every word and look the heart of a man humble and wise, but resolved to be true and perfect with god, and not, as i fear it seemed, the uneasy, uncentred joy of one who received in her a good — a lovely good — out of all proportion to his deserts, i might haply have made her days longer and certainly sweeter, and at least have recalled her seraph smile without a pang. i console myself with the thought that if ellen, if edward, if charles, could have read my entire heart, they should have seen nothing but rectitude of purpose and generosity 1 new hampshire. 2 the substance of the last sentences is to be found in “love," essays, first series, p. 171, centenary ed. 402 journal [age 34 conquering the superficial coldness and prudence. but i ask now, why was not i made like all these beatified mates of mine, superficially generous and noble, as well as internally so? they never needed to shrink at any remembrance; — and i at so many sad passages that look to me now as if i had been blind and mad. well, o god, i will try and learn from this sad memory to be brave and circumspect and true henceforth and weave now a web that will not shrink. this is the thorn in the flesh. at church i saw that beautiful child a. p., and my fine, natural, manly neighbor who bore the bread and wine to the communicants with so clear an eye and excellent face and manners. that was all i saw that looked like god, at church. let the clergy beware when the welldisposed scholar begins to say, i cannot go to church, time is too precious.' . .. bad to see a row of children looking old. 1 the passage about the motive for going to church as a meeting place of high and low, follows. see “ divinity school address,” nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 143. 1838) alcott. theism 403 march 5. yesterday (sunday) was a beautiful day, mild, calm, and though the earth is covered with snow, somewheres two feet deep, yet the day and the night, moonlit, were as good for thought, if the man were rested and peaceful, as any in the year. the meteorology of thought i like to note. they say of alcott, and i have sometimes assented, that he is one-toned, and hearkens with no interest to books or conversation out of the scope of his one commanding idea. maybe so, but very different is his centralism from that of vulgar monomaniacs, for he looks with wise love at all real facts, at street faces, at the broadshouldered, long-haired farmer, at the domestic woman, at the kitchen, at the furniture, at the season as related to man, and so on. he can hear the voice which said to george fox, “that which others trample on must be thy food.” • what shall i answer to these friendly youths who ask of me an account of theism, and think the views i have expressed of the impersonality of god desolating and ghastly? i say, that i cannot find, when i explore my own consciouscai own con 10us404 [age 34 journal ness, any truth in saying that god is a person, but the reverse. i feel that there is some profanation in saying, he is personal. to represent him as an individual is to shut him out of my consciousness. he is then but a great man such as the crowd worships. yet, yet, cor purgat oratio. of the french eclecticism, and what cousin thinks so conclusive (see george ripley's specimens, etc., vol. i, p. 45), i would say there is an optical illusion in it.' ... take cousin's philosophy — (a kissed finger cannot write?) — well, this book (if the pretension they make be good) ought to be wisdom's wisdom, and we can hug the volume to our heart and make a bonfire of all the libraries. but here are people who have read it and still survive, nor is it at once perceptible in their future reasonings that they have talked with god, face to face. indeed i have read it myself, as i have read any other book. i found i here follows the passage thus beginning in “ literary ethics” (nature addresses, etc., pp. 171, 172), as to truth being “such a fly-away ... gone before you can cry, hold!" 2 mrs. emerson had evidently brought little waldo into the study. 1838] carlyle's writing 405 in it a few memorable thoughts, for philosophy does not absolutely hinder people from having thought, but by no means so many memorable thoughts as i could have got out of many another book. say, for example, montaigne's essays. a profound thought anywhere classifies all things. a profound thought will lift olympus.'.... i have read with astonishment and unabated curiosity and pleasure carlyle's revolution again, half through the second volume. i cannot help feeling that he squanders his genius. why should an imagination such as never rejoiced before the face of god, since shakespeare, be content to play? why should he trifle and joke? i cannot see; i cannot praise. it seems to me, he should have writ in such deep earnest that he should have trembled to his fingers' ends with the terror and the beauty of his visions. it is not true that, with all his majestic toleration, his infinite superiority as a man to the flocks of clean and unclean creatures he describes,—that yet he takes a point of view somewhat higher than his insight or any human insight can proi for the rest of the paragraph, see « divinity school address,” p. 172. 406 (age 34 journal fitably use and maintain ; that there is, therefore, some inequality between his power of painting, which is matchless, and his power of explaining, which satisfies not. somewhere you must let out all the length of all the reins. there is somewhat real; there is god. ... i regret one thing omitted in my late course of lectures: that i did not state with distinctness and conspicuously the great error of modern society in respect to religion, and say, you can never come to any peace or power until you put your whole reliance in the moral constitution of man, and not at all in a historical christianity. the belief in christianity that now prevails is the unbelief of men. they will have christ for a lord and not for a brother. christ preaches the greatness of man, but we hear only the greatness of christ. march 6. read in montaigne's chapter on seneca and plutarch a very good critique on the systems and methods on which i expended my petulance in these pages yesterday. montaigne is spiced throughout with rebellion, as much as alcott or my young henry thoreau. a it is a mystery of numbers, that in loss and 407 1838] charities gain, whether of finances or of political majorities, the transfer of one counts not one but two. well, in magnanimities it is not otherwise. i have generous purposes and go on benefiting somebody, well pleased with myself. presently i listen to the prudences, and say, this person is heedless and ungrateful — i withhold my hand. instantly the new coldness awakens resentment in the other party, and all the feelings that naturally respond to selfishness. i, who pleased myself with my generosity, and am still the same person, find no sort of complacency toward myself in the supposed beneficiary, but only hard thoughts. and the difference of cost betwixt munificence and meanness may amount to one dollar, fifty-three cents. i like, to be sure, mrs. hoar's good saying, when that transcendent beggar ma'am bliss received the beefsteak she had sent her, saying, “yes, you can leave it; mrs. d. has sent me some turkey, but this will do for the cat,” — mrs. h. told elizabeth that, “ it would do her as much good as if she thanked us.” very true and noble mrs. hoar! and yet i grudged the dollar and a half paid to my stupid, beggar-mannered, thankless mrs. w., because all that i gave to this lump of tallow was so much taken 408 [age 34 journal from my friend and brother whom i ought to go labor on day wages to help.' march 9. there was a simple man grew so suddenly rich that, coming one day into his own stately door and hall in a reverie, he felt on his mind the accustomed burden of fear that now he should see a great person, and was making up his mouth to ask firmly if — was at home, when he bethought himself who is ? who is it i should ask for? and on second thought, he saw it was his own house, and he was – we take great pleasure in meeting a cultivated peasant, and think his independence of thought and his power of language surprising, but it is soon tedious to talk with him, for there is no progress in his conversation, no speed, no prompt intelligence, but a steady ox-team portage, that you can see from where you stand where it will have got half an hour hence. the scholar is a comfort to your heart, for he leaves all the details of the way and will jump with you over a few centuries when we have got into a bog. of droll word-blunders lidian could i mr. emerson wrote elsewhere, that every man has his own poor, whom no mortal but he would help. 1838] freedom of riches 409 never cure mrs. w. of calling mashed, smashed. “oh, yes, she had fed baby with a smashed potato.” snowed, “snew.” “you fired the scissors at me.” march 11. the advantage of riches seems to be in the skin or not much deeper. ... i am quite free to go to my work, the work which is my joy to do. this makes a state of perfect preparation for the work. if i wake up in another man's house, or in a hotel, or place of constraint where i have come to do a forced work, — come, not with ideal of freedom, but with external compulsion of some sort, — then i feel an irritability, as much in the skin as in the soul, that pesters and hinders me. if i were master of millions i should not feel such vexation, but should control the circumstances, and, in as much as i am master of hundreds or thousands, i do. and such, and no other, seems the advantage of riches. if a man have more soul, more will, less skin, he can do without riches. “love is the sole title-deed to property in the spiritual world,” [said] c. c. e. march 14. read a lecture on peace at the odeon on monday evening, 12th. yesterday saw mar410 journal [age 34 garet fuller and the tremont pictures, and talked of carlyle and cousin, and at the soirée saw bancroft and ripley and loring, and so had a pleasant boston visit. bancroft talked of the foolish globe newspaper. it has a circulation of 30,000, and as he said, each copy is read by ten persons, so that an editorial article is read by three hundred thousand persons, which he pronounced with all deep-mouthed elocution. i only told him then i wished they would write better if they wrote for so many. i ought to have said what utter nonsense to name in my ear this number, as if that were anything. three million such people as can read the globe with interest are as yet in too crude a state of nonage to deserve any regard. i ought to have expressed a sincere contempt for the scramble newspaper. march 18. i was so ungrateful in reading and finishing carlyle’s history yesterday as to say, but philosophes must not write history for me. they know too much. i read some plutarch, or even dull belknap or williamson, and in their dry, dead annals i get thought which they never put there. i hear a voice of great nature through these wooden pipes ; but my wise poet sees, himself, 1838) carlyle. tennyson 411 all that i can see of the divine in events, and, however slightly, says that he sees it. so is my subject exhausted, and my end as an artist not furthered, for do they not say that the highest joy is the creator's, not the receiver's ? yet wiser i have been, and am, whenever i sit and hear, and wiser i am in this reading when my poet soars highest. it is strange how little moral sentence, how few moral sentences there are in literature. they affect us deeper, greatlier than all else. yet how rare! the whole praise of wordsworth is based on some ten pages or less of such matter. herbert's is that; shakspear has spoken a little; and carlyle has uttered both before and again in this book some immortal accents. thus what is said of de launay, who could not fire the bastile magazine; what is said of danton the realist, and of the moral to go and do otherwise, issuing from this era, abide in my memory with vital heat. i have read the second volume of poems by tennyson, with like delight to that i found in the first and with like criticism. drenched he is in shakspear, born, baptized and bred in shakspear, yet has his own humor, and original rhythm, music and images. how ring his humorsome lines in the ear, 412 [age 34 journal “in the afternoon they came unto a land in which it seemèd always afternoon.” the old year's death pleases me most. but why i speak of him now is because he had a line or two that looked like the moral strain amaranthine i spake of. e at church all day, but almost tempted to say i would go no more. men go where they are wont to go, else had no soul gone this afternoon.' ... yet no fault in the good man. evidently he thought himself a faithful, searching preacher, — mentioned that he thought so several times; and seemed to be one of that large class, sincere persons based on sham; sincere persons who are bred and do live in shams. ... but why do i blame the preachers? what is so rare among men, may be rare among preachers; all men are bound to articulate speaking as well as they. i doubt i shall never hear the august laws of morals as i am capable of them. no pronouncer of them shall fill my ear. carlyle has too much reason for his insisting so oft on articulate speech as opposed to hys1 much of what follows is found in the “ divinity school address,” nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 137, rar 138. 1838] the pulpit and nature 413 terics. there is but little. even the few speeches he quotes from his great men in his history, after the first or second sentence, do merely verb it, — verbs and not thoughts. the church is a good place to study theism by comparing the things said with your consciousness. there is no better subject for effective writing than the clergy. i ought to sit and think, and then write a discourse to the american clergy, showing them the ugliness and unprofitableness of theology and churches at this day, and the glory and sweetness of the moral nature out of whose pale they are almost wholly shut. present realism as the front face, and remind them of the fact that i shrink and wince as soon as the prayers begin, and am very glad if my tailor has given me a large velvet collar to my wrapper or cloak, the prayers are so bad.' a good subject, because we can see always the good ideal, the noble ethics of nature, as contrast to the poverty-stricken pulpit. ... see how easily these old worships of moses, of socrates, of zoroaster, of jesus, domesticate themselves in my mind. it will be admitted i 1 see divinity school address,” p. 137. much follows that is found on pp. 138 and 145. 414 journal (age 34 have great susceptibility to such. will it not be as easy to say they are other waldos? as ena man comes now into the world a slave. he comes saddled with twenty or forty centuries. asia has arrearages and egypt arrearages; not to mention all the subsequent history of europe and america. but he is not his own man, but the hapless bondman of time, with these continents and æons of prejudice to carry on his back. it is now grown so bad that he cannot carry the mountain any longer and be a man. there must be a revolution. let the revolution come, and let one come breathing free into the earth to walk by hope alone. it were a new world, and perhaps the ideal would seem possible, but now it seems to me they are cheated out of themselves and live on another's sleeve. astronomy is sedative to the human mind. in skeptical hours when things go whirling and we doubt if all is not an extemporary dream: the calm, remote and secular character of astronomical facts composes us to a sublime peace. march 19. yesterday a snow-storm, lying to-day as in january banks; and the bluebirds have disap1838] deity. scriptures 415 peared. if the best people i know — say a and b and cand l and s— should meet with highest aims, should meet for worship, i think they would say, come, now let us join in aspirations to the soul — how little a portion is known of him! what needs but lowly, utter sincerity? and let us say together what we feel. ... to absolute mind a person is but a fact, but consciousness is god. of the new testament the supreme value is the charm i wrote of yesterday, which attaches to moral sentences, to the veda, to seneca, to all the vaticinations, and highest to the hebrew muse.' ... march 21. last night, george minot says he heard, in his bed, the screaming and squalling of the wild geese flying over, between nine and ten o'clock. the newspaper notices the same thing. i, riding from framingham at the same hour, heard nothing. the collar of my wrapper did shut out nature. march 24. the natural motions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will 1 the concluding paragraph of the “ divinity school address" here follows. nat 2 s 416 journal (age 34 never do yourself justice in dispute. the thought is not then taken hold of by the “right handle,” does not show itself proportioned and in its true bearings. it bears extorted, hoarse and half witness. i have been led yesterday into a rambling exculpatory talk on theism. i say that here we feel at once that we have no language; that words are only auxiliary and not adequate, are suggestions and not copies of our cogitation. i deny personality to god because it is too little, not too much. life, personal life, is faint and cold to the energy of god. for reason and love and beauty, or that which is all these, is the life of life, the reason of reason, the love of love. in the highest moments we are a vision.'... on march 26. law of conversation. thought is only to be answered by thought, not by authority, not by wishes. i tell men what i find in my consciousness. they answer me, it is wrong; it is false; for we wish otherwise. i report to them from my thought how little we know of god, and they 1 the rest of the passage so opening is in “self-reliance,” essays, first series, p. 69. 1838] thought and god 417 reply, “we think you have no father. we love to address the father.” yes, i say, the father is a convenient name and image to the affections; but drop all images, if you wish to come at the elements of your thought, and use as mathematical words as you can. we must not be so wise. we must not affect, as all mankind do, to know all things, and to have quite finished and done god and heaven. we must come back to our real, initial state and see and own that we have yet beheld but the first ray of being. in strict speech it seems fittest to say, i become, rather than i am. i am a becoming, so do i less sever or divide the one. i am now nothing but a prophecy of that i shall be. to me sing and chant sun and stars and persons. they all manifest to me my far-off rights. they foreshow, or they are the first ripples and wavelets of that vast inundation of the all which is beyond and which i tend and labor to be. march 27. this is one of the chilly, white days that deform my spring.' it seems as if we owed to i mr. emerson always objected to " white days,” when there was a slight film over the sun, but rejoiced in a “yellow day," with its splendor of colour. 418 [ace 34 journal literature certain impressions concerning nature which nature did not justify.' . ... somewhere, as i have often said, not only every orator, but every man should let out all the length of all the reins, should find or make a frank and hearty expression of himself. if george bradford keeps school, and in the details of his week loses himself or fails to communicate himself to the minds of his scholars in his full stature and proportion as a wise and good man, he does not yet find his vocation; he must find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify himself to their minds for doing what he does. he must take some trivial exercise or lesson, and make it liberal. whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth his doing, that let him communicate, or they will never know him and honor him aright. george b. emerson is more interested in his trees and cabinet of shells than in books; he has not then given his lesson to his school until he has shown them the shells and the shrubs. i here follows what is said in the dartmouth college address, “ literary ethics," on the utter newness of actual nature to one versed in the classic poets. (nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 167, 168.) 1838] . mean complaisance 419 i thought, as i rode to acton, that we all betray god to the devil, being to negation. i know well the value of a sentiment and of sincerity, yet how easily will any fop, any coat and boots, draw me to an appearance of sympathy with him and to an air of patronizing the sentiments; the commonest person of condition and fashion affects me more than is right, and i am mute, passive, and let their world wag, let them make the world, i being but a block of the same. i ought to go upright and vital and say the truth in all ways.' . . . do not carry love to affectation and slaver. plain it is that our culture is not come, that none are cultivated, that it could not be said by the traveller, i met in that country one high-souled and prevailing man. foolish whenever you take the meanness and formality of what thing you do, as a lecture, a preaching, a school, a teachers' meeting, and do not rather magnify it to be the unwilling spiracle of all your character and aims. let their ears tingle, let them say, we never saw it in this manner. i here follows the passage thus beginning, in “self-reliance," on the uncharitable philanthropist. (essays, first series, p. 51, centenary ed.) 420 journal (age 34 it seemed, when i described the possible church the other day, as if very hardly could any such sincerity and singleness be retained as was needful to a worship; very hardly even by such saints and philosophers as i could name. this morbid delicacy of the religious sentiment, this thin existence fluttering on the very verge of non-existence, accuses our poverty, jejune life. it will be better by and by, will it not? will it not when habitual be more solid, and admit of the action of the will without deceasing? april 1. cool or cold, windy, clear day. the divinity school youths wish to talk with me concerning theism. i went rather heavy-hearted, for i always find that my views chill or shock people at the first opening. but the conversation went well and i came away cheered. i told them that the preacher should be a poet smit with love of the harmonies of moral nature; — and yet look at the unitarian association and see if its aspect is poetic. they all smiled no. a minister nowadays is plainest prose, the prose of prose. he is a warming-pan, a night-chair at sickbeds and rheumatic souls; and the fire of the minstrel's eye and the vivacity of his word is exchanged 1838] bunyan. persons 421 for intense, grumbling enunciation of the cambridge sort, and for scripture phraseology. lidian said, as i awoke this morning, a lively verse enough of some hymn of bunyan. there is no fanaticism as long as there is the creative muse. genius is a character of illimitable freedom. and as long as i hear one graceful modulation of wit, i know the genial soul and do not smell fagots. the bunyan, the boehmen, is nearer far to rabelais and montaigne than to bloody mary and becket and inquisitions. how well the newspapers illustrate the truth, that only biography, not nations, interest. the reporters tell us nothing but of calhoun, clay and webster; not the sub-treasury bill, but the personal controversy absorbs them. i thought, as i read of napoleon yesterday in o'meara, that the growths of genius, even of the nocturnal sort like his (or will without love), are of a certain voluminous, secular, federal, cosmic, cyclic unfolding, that does not advance the elect individual first over john, then adam, then richard, and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority, but by every pulsation 422 journal [age 34 he expands there where he works, passing at each pulsation classes, populations of men, as the plumule of the oak passes the proportions of the plumule of the whortleberry. he was a plebeian. when emperor, he felt that a baron, a count of the old noblesse, had certain advantages of him, not felt whilst his genius was in place and could justify its upstart growth by his prodigious energy, fashioning italy, fashioning spain, but visible to both when he sat discrowned in a paltry house at st. helena. i like the man in o'meara's picture. he is good-natured as greatness always is, and not pompous. ... ample good nature; able men are moral. “ tell him” (sir h. lowe), said bonaparte, “that when a man has lost his word, he has lost everything which distinguishes him from the brute.” consider that it is a refreshment to the eyes to look at a poultry-yard. i hear the hen cluck and see her stepping round with perfect complacency, but if a man goes by, i have a sorrowful feeling; but if a friend, if a man of genius, if a hero passes, then i rejoice and can no longer 1 various other quotations from o'meara and from las cases follow. 1838) woman. home, new york 423 see hens. why, since a babe is beautiful, should a man, almost every man, be ugly? in conversation, women run on, as it is called. a great vice. a fine woman keeps her purpose and maintains her ground with integrity of manner, whilst you censure or rally her. if she is disconcerted and grieved, the game is up and society a gloom. preaching, especially false preaching, is for able men a sickly employment. study of books is also sickly; and the garden and the family, wife, mother, son, and brother are a balsam. there is health in table-talk and nursery play. we must wear old shoes and have aunts and cousins. april 19. i have been to new york and seen bryant and dewey, and at home seen young jones very, and two youthful philosophers who came here from cambridge, — edward washburn and renouf, — and who told me fine hopeful things of their mates in the senior class. and now young eustis has been here and tells me of more aspiring and heroical young men, and i begin to conceive hopes of the republic. 424 journal [age 34 then is this disaster of cherokees brought to me by a sad friend to blacken my days and nights. i can do nothing.' why shriek? why strike ineffectual blows? april 20. last night ill dreams. dreams are true to nature and, like monstrous formations (e.g. the horse-hoof divided into toes), show the law. their double consciousness, their suband objectiveness is the wonder. i call the phantoms that rise the creation of my fancy, but they act like volunteers, and counteract my inclination. they make me feel that every act, every thought, every cause, is bipolar, and in the act is contained the counter act. if i strike, i am struck. if i chase, i am pursued. if i push, i am resisted. i have mentioned the fine persons i have seen, but i must add human nature's postscript, that persons, unless they be of commanding excellence, do not rejoice heads as old as mine like thoughts. persons i labor at, and grope after, and experiment upon, make continual effort at sympathy, which sometimes is found and sometimes is missed; but i tire at last, and the fruit 1 yet he wrote his strong protest to president van buren. (see miscellanies, p. 87, centenary ed.) 1838] true poetry ethical 425 they bring to my intellect or affections is oft small and poor. but a thought has its own proper motion which it communicates to me, not borrows of me, and on its pegasus back i override and overlook the world. i said to bryant and to these young people, that the high poetry of the world from the beginning has been ethical, and it is the tendency of the ripe modern mind to produce it. wordsworth's merit is that he saw the truly great across the perverting influences of society and of english literature; and though he lacks executive power, yet his poetry is of the right kind. he shows, and is, the tendency. as i think no man could be better occupied than in making up his own bible by hearkening to all those sentences which, now here, now there, now in nursery-rhymes, now in hebrew, now in english bards, thrill him like the sound of a trumpet; so i think the true poetry which mankind craves is that moral poem of which jesus chanted to the ages stanzas so celestial, yet only stanzas. the epos is not yet sung. that is the gospel of glad tidings kings and prophets wait for. cudworth is a magazine or album of such. herbert is its lyrist, milton, marvell, shake426 journal . (age 34 spear, orpheus, hesiod and the dramatists, zoroaster, vedas, confucius, plato. “always pay.” i am praised by some halfseeing friends for punctuality and common sense. they see not as i see, that for just that seemliness and passableness i fail so much to think and live in the right olympian loftiness. better be a guest in thine own house than too shrewd a world's man.' april 21. the condition of influence by virtue is time. to convert a congregation in a four days' meeting is possible to a calvinistic sermon; but to convert one man by the persuasion of your character needs time. april 23. this tragic cherokee business which we stirred at a meeting in the church yesterday will look to me degrading and injurious, do i mr. emerson has sometimes been called “ shrewd,” an inappropriate adjective. he had good sense, and, withal, a horror of being in debt of money or of obligation. what with constant hospitality, and persons properly or improperly dependent on him, he had to spend thought and time on economics. occasionally therefore olympian or apostolic carelessness of such things looked attractive; as expressed in the above passage. 1838] the cherokee letter 427 what i can. it is like dead cats around one's neck. it is like school committees and sunday school classes and teachers' meetings and the warren street chapel and all the other holy hurrahs. i stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move, and if i do not, why it is left undone. the amount of it, be sure, is merely a scream, but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. last night the old question of miracles was broached again at the teachers' meeting, and shown up and torn up in the usual manners. they think that god causes a miracle to make men stare and then says, here is truth. they do not and will not perceive that it is to distrust the deity of truth—its invincible beauty — to do god a high dishonor, — so to depict him. they represent the old trumpery of god sending a messenger to raise man from his low estate. well, then, he must have credentials, and miracle is the credentials. i answer, god sends me messengers alway. i am surrounded by messengers of god who show me credentials day by day. jesus is not a solitary, but still a lovely herald.' ... i here follows the passage in the “ divinity school es428 journal (age 34 once more; there is no miracle to the believing soul. when i ascend to the spiritual state of a holy soul, enter into the rapture of a christ, the miracle seems fit drapery enough of . such a man and such a thought. when i do not so ascend, i cannot be said to believe the . miracle. there it lies, a lump. any annotator may show the text to be spurious and i shall thank him. any caviller may suggest the profusion of testimony to this sort of marvel, and i shall not care to refute him. any philosopher may have my ear who offers me other truth in her own native lineament and proportion. it is idle to represent the historical glories of christianity as we do. there are no christians now, but two or three or six or ten. there never were at any time but a few. the accepted christianity of the mob of churches is now, as always, a caricature of the real. the heart of christianity is the heart of all philosophy. it is the sentiment of piety which stoic and chinese, mahometan and hindoo labor to awaken. the miracles, if you please, add proselytes of the thousand and thousand to christianity, as in other climates other miracles (reputed) do to the shaster and address," against making the gospel unlovely. nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 133. 1838] miracles. bacon 429 koran and mass-book. but converts to the soul of christianity, sympathisers with the man jesus, are as rare as lovers of socrates, and are added by the same means, the reception of beautiful sentiments, never by miracle. young — slightly said he had not read bacon except the apothegms, he has seen those, etc. so pass the essays that were meat and drink to plodding me in early years over the gay brain of the juniors. yet is this the right way for a thinker to speak of them slightinglythe apothegms? yes, but after their value has been probed and settled by microscopic loving study, then to be able to throw them into due perspective, and sternly refuse them, for all our labor and old love, any higher place than belongs to them in god and call them apothegms, and pass on, that were well. the glance of the ignorant gentleman has justice in it; and the sincere knowledge of the scholar has disproportion in it. april 24. this cold, dreary, desponding weather seems to threaten the farmer, who sourly follows his plough or drops pea-seed in the garden. i like to think that instinct, impulse, would carry on 430 journal [age 34 the world; that nature gives hints when to plant and when to stick poles and when to gather. but the turning out of the farmers in this november sky with coats and mittens to spring work seems to show that calculation as well as instinct must be, or that calculation must contravene instinct. yesterday peter howe planted peas for me, and the garden was ploughed the 21st. lidian says that when she gives any new direction in the kitchen she feels like a boy who throws a stone and runs. april 26. the “ sirius" and the “great western” steam-packets have arrived at new york from england, and so england is a thousand or fifteen hundred miles nearer than it was to me and to all. yesterday went the letter to van buren, a letter hated of me, a deliverance that does not deliver the soul. what i do, be sure, is all that concerns my majesty, and not what men great or small think of it. yet i accept the dartmouth college invitation to speak to the boys with great delight. i write my journal, i read my lecture, with joy, but this stirring in the philan1838) reform meetings 431 thropic mud gives me no peace. i will let the republic alone until the republic comes to me. i fully sympathize, be sure, with the sentiment i write, but i accept it rather from my friends than dictate it. it is not my impulse to say it, and therefore my genius deserts me. no muse befriends, no music of thought or of word accompanies. bah! as far as i notice what passes in philanthropic meetings and holy hurrahs there is very little depth of interest. the speakers warm each other's skin and lubricate each other's tongue, and the words flow and the superlatives thicken and the lips quiver and the eyes moisten, and an observer new to such scenes would say, here was true fire; the assembly were all ready to be martyred, and the effect of such a spirit on the community would be irresistible; but they separate and go to the shop, to a dance, to bed, and an hour afterwards they care so little for the matter that on slightest temptation each one would disclaim the meeting. “yes, he went, but they were for carrying it too far,” etc., etc. the lesson is, to know that men are superficially very inflammable, but that these fervors do not strike down and reach the action and habit of the man. wa 432 (age 34 journal yesterday afternoon i went to the cliff with henry thoreau. warm, pleasant, misty weather, which the great mountain amphitheatre seemed to drink in with gladness. a crow's voice filled all the miles of air with sound. a bird's voice, even a piping frog, enlivens a solitude and makes world enough for us. at night i went out into the dark and saw a glimmering star and heard a frog, and nature seemed to say, well do not these suffice? here is a new scene, a new experience. ponder it, emerson, and not like the foolish world, hanker after thunders and multitudes and vast landscapes, the sea or niagara. have i said it before in these pages ? then i will say it again, that it is a curious commentary on society that the expression of a devout sentiment by any young man who lives in society strikes me with surprise and has all the air and effect of genius; as when jones very spoke of “sin” and of “love," and so on. in spite of all we can do, every moment is new. lidian came into the study this afternoon and found the towerlet that wallie had built, half an hour before, of two spools, a card, an awl1838] the grove. thought 433 case and a flower-box top, each perpendicularly balanced on the other, and could scarce believe that her boy had built the pyramid, and then fell into such a fit of affection that she lay down by the structure and kissed it down and declared she could possibly stay no longer with papa, but must go off to the nursery to see with eyes the lovely creature; and so departed. april 30. saturday, cyrus warren set out forty-one white pines, two hemlocks, one white maple, and two apple trees, in my lot. yesterday at waltham. the kindness and genius that blend their light in the eyes of mrs. ripley inspire me with some feeling of unworthiness, at least with impatience of doing so little to deserve so much confidence. could not the natural history of the reason or universal sentiment be written? one trait would be that all that is alive and genial in thought must come out of that. here is friend b. f. grinds and grinds in the mill of a truism and nothing comes out but what was put in. but the moment he or i desert the tradition and speak a spontaneous thought, instantly, poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to our aid. this topic were no bad one for the dartmouth 434 journal (age 34 ar college boys whom i am to address in july. let them know how prompt the limiting instinct is in our constitution, so that the moment the mind by one bold leap (an impulse from the universal) has set itself free from the old church, and of a thousand years of dogma, and seen the light of moral nature, say with swedenborg,on the instant the defining lockjaw shuts down his fetters and cramps all round us, and we must needs think in the genius and speak in the phraseology of swedenborg, and the last slavery is even worse than the first. even the disciples of the new unnamed or misnamed transcendentalism that now is, vain of the same, do already dogmatize and rail at such as hold it not, and cannot see the worth of the antagonism also. the great common sense (using the word in its higher sense) is the umpire that holds the balance of these kingdoms. we come from the college or the coterie to the village and the farm, and find the natural sentiment in the shrewd yet religious farmer. we see the manly beauty in his life, the tenderness (even) of his sense of right and wrong, of wise and silly, and we are ashamed of our pedantries and pitiful chinese estimates. “friends, sit low in the lord's power." precipitandus est liber spiritus. ense 1838] jesus acted thought 435 it is perfectly legitimate to generalize in the common way and call jesus a poet and his labor a poem. people very significantly distinguish betwixt plato, a thinker, and jesus, a doer, and suppose that the former acts upon a few, the latter (through the difference of doing) upon millions and all history. the difference is in the thought still. the moral sentiment affects men omnipotently and instantly raises the receiving mind to the level of the supernatural and miraculous and it has upon all receivers abiding effect. jesus taught that. but he was in love with his thought and quitted all for it. any mind that thought so would have acted so. he must live somehow, and his life can be discerned through the fragmentary and distorted story to have been just the life of a soul enamored of moral truth. the difference betwixt the thinker and doer, when it appears, is that of the man of talents and of genius. m write the natural history of reason. recognize the inextinguishable dualism. show that, after the broadest assertions of the one nature, we must yet admit always the co-presence of a superior influx; must pray, must hope, (and what is hope but affirmation of two?) must doubt, etc. 436 [age 34 journal but also show that to seek the unity is a necessity of the mind ; that we do not choose to resist duality, complexity; show that will is absurd in the matter. napoleon, in las cases, has an admirable candor which belongs to philosophy ; rails at no enemy,puts every crime down to the ignorance of the agent, and stands ready to make a marshal of him one day. ev kai tây. two or three events, two or three objects, large or small, suffice to genius. let dullness work with multitudes and magnitudes. the poor pickwick stuff (into which i have only looked and with no wish for more) teaches this, that prose and parlors and shops and city widows, the tradesman's dinner and such matters, are as good materials in a skilful hand for interest and art as palaces and revolutions. over me branched a tree of buds, and over the tree was the moon, and over the moon were the starry studs that dropped from the angel's shoon.' i compare poems, « quatrains,” where verse begins, “ over his head were the maple buds." 1838] distinction. napoleon 437 may 1. distinction gives freedom to the wise man. it gives him leave to speak the truth and act with spirit. forever more let him say what he thinks, instead of being a brute echo, as webster is webster in passing conversation. if people say the spring is beautiful, let him think whether it is or is not, before he ducks to the remark with a paraphrastic yes. so in all estimates most are foolish.' ... las cases pleases me by describing napoleon thus: “the emperor is eminently gifted with two excellent qualities, a vast fund of justice and a disposition naturally open to attachment.” nothing is more simple than greatness; ... yet always it astonishes because matter, appetite and individuality always exist and rule from the earth upward six feet, or hat-high. the advantage of the napoleon temperament, impassive, unimpressible by others, is a signal i here follows the passage on estimates, in “spiritual laws,” essays, first series, p. 143, centenary ed. 2 the passage follows about able men usually being goodnatured and inclined to justice because of openness to universal influences. see « literary ethics,” nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 164, centenary ed. 438 journal [age 34 convenience over this other tender one, which every aunt and every gossiping girl can daunt and tether. this weakness, be sure, is merely cutaneous, and the sufferer gets his revenge by the sharpened observation that belongs to such sympathetic fibre, as even in college i was already content to be “screwed” in the recitation room, if, on my return, i could accurately paint the fact in my youthful journal. i sat in sunshine, this afternoon, beside my little pond in the woods, and thought how wide are my works and my plays from those of the great men i read of or think of. and yet the solution of napoleon, whose life i have been reading, lies in my feelings and fancies as i loiter by this rippling water. i am curious concerning his day, what filled it,' ... the crowded orders, the stern determinations. the first men had no glory, they did necessary actions, and all actions were alike creditable. presently, peculiar vigor would somewhere appear. a man would yield himself to great natural influences, and all would see that the act was 1 the passage follows as to what the day has stood for to the great, and may to you. (see “ literary ethics,” nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 163.) 1838] forest joys. homer 439 admirable, and, of course, also would be deceived into the belief that the only divinity of action lay in just that species of works in which this individual labored, whether law making, music, war, colonies, arts, or whatever else. new impulses would, however, come to others and to many in different sorts of activity, genius in eloquence, in affairs, in agriculture, in inventions, and yet at this day the first opinion seems to hold still.' ... beautiful leaping of the squirrel up the long bough of pine, then instantly on to the stem of an oak, and on again to another tree. this motion and the motion of a bird is the right perfection for foresters, as these creatures are. they taste the forest joy. man creeps along so slowly through the woods that he is annoyed by all the details and loses the floating, exhaling, evanescent beauty which these speedy movers find. may 2. homer's is the only epic. how great a deduction do all the rest suffer from the fact of i here follows the passage in “spiritual laws” as to the use of their conditions by paganini, eulenstein and landseer. (essays, first series, p. 143.) 440 journal [age 34 their imitated form. it is especially fatal to poetry, thought's chosen and beloved form,the encroachment of these traditions. may 4. walter scott says, that “at night, the kind are savage.” how painful to give a gift to any person of sensibility, or of equality! it is next worst to receiving one. the new remembrance of either is a scorpion. to keep a party conveniently small is the trick of our local politics. may 5. last night described the apathy from which she suffers. i own i was at a loss to prescribe, as i did not sufficiently understand the state of mind she paints. it seems to me as if what we mainly need, is the power of recurring to the sublime at pleasure. and this we possess. if the splendid function of seeing should lose its interest, i can still flee to the sanctity of my moral nature, and trust, renounce, suffer, bleed. i complain in my own experience of the feeble influence of thought on life, a ray as pale and 18381. thought and life 441 ineffectual as that of the sun in our cold and bleak spring. they seem to lie — the actual life and the intellectual intervals — in parallel lines and never meet. yet we doubt not they act and react ever, that one is even cause of the other; that one is causal and one servile, a mere vesture. yet it takes a great deal of elevation of thought to produce a very little elevation of life. how slowly the highest raptures of the intellect break through the trivial forms of habit. yet imperceptibly they do. gradually, in long years, we bend our living toward our idea, but we serve seven years and twice seven for rachel. if mr. g., that old gander . . . should now stop at my gate, i should duck to him as to an angel, and waste all my time for him, etc., etc., instead of telling him, as truth seems to require, that his visit and his babble was an impertinence, and bidding him begone. just so, when miss x and mrs. y and miss z come, i straightway sit glued to my chair, all thought, all action, all play, departed and paralyzed, and acquiesce, and become less than they are, instead of nodding slightly to them and treating them like shadows, and persisting in the whim of pathos, or the whim of fun, or the whim of poetry in which they found me, and constraineems 442 journal (age 34 ing them to accept the law of this higher thought (also theirs) instead of kneeling to their triviality. i'll tell you what to do; try to make bumanity lovely unto them.' limitation. sad is sleep. what a satire to behold the man who has been astonishing a company with his assurances of the infinite faculties and destiny of man, nodding in his chair. may 6. on anniversaries. not without some remnant of its old radiance dawns yet the sabbath on the heart. any holiday communicates to me its color. i wear its cockade in my feelings, were it the christmas which, by the way, has lent its poetry to the hemlock-pine, with the boughs of which in my infancy i saw the roman and episcopal churches decorated, to the commencement day, whose light, though in a swamp, would be to me festive, and its air faintly echoing with plausive academic thunders; the fourth of july, red with artillery; the common full of children, the woods full of gunners, and at 1 this sentence is faintly pencilled underneath, and very possibly was written by mrs. emerson. 1838) holidays. goodies 443 night the sky crackling with rockets, even down to the election, miscalled by wanton boys “nigger 'lection.” i have kindly vision out in these lone fields of marching ranks with red facings and white shoes; of boys in vacation; and on such a no day as that, i still feel a gayer air. ... at church, the slender occupation of the minds of so many persons, and the willingness with which it is borne, seem to show that the people have a plenty of time. yet, though the patience seems turkish, i still think it safe to argue from one to all, from me to the congregation, and to infer a preference of realities." i hear in the church with joy the music of two or three delicious voices. there in music is the world idealized, in poor men's parlors, in the washroom and in the kitchen. every strain of a rich voice does instantly imparadise the ear. i cannot wonder that it is the popular heaven. the antagonism of goodies. “sir, sir, did you speak of the sunday school?” “pardon me, sir, i did.” “sir, you are an antinomian.” i here follows most of the long paragraph in the “ divinity school address” (pp. 148, 149), beginning “ in such high communion let us study the grand strokes of rectitude." 444 journal [age 34 the fear of degrading the character of jesus by representing him as a man indicates with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology.' the inexhaustible soul is insulted by this low, paltering superstition, no more commendable in us than the mythology of other heathens. we would speak the words of jesus and use his name only, as if we would play the tunes of handel only, or learn handel's music, instead of becoming handels ourselves by expressing the beauty that enamours the soul through the modulations of the air. do not charge me with egotism and presumption. i see with awe the attributes of the farmers and villagers whom you despise. a man saluted me to-day in a manner which at once stamped him for a theist, a self-respecting gentleman, a lover of truth and virtue. how venerable are the manners often of the poor. a great man escapes out of the kingdom of time; he puts time under his feet. he does not look at his performance and say, i am twenty, 1 this passage is preceded in the “ divinity school address," by that beginning “wherever a man comes, then comes revolution.” nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 144. 1838) a great man's day 445 i am thirty, i am forty years old, and i must therefore accomplish somewhat conspicuous. see napoleon at twenty-five, see what he had done at forty. he says rather, is this that i do genuine and fit? then it contributes no doubt to immortal and sublime results; no doubt it partakes of the same lustre itself. dark though the hour be, and dull the wit, no flood of thoughts, no lovely pictures in memory or in hope, only heavy, weary duty, moving on cartwheels along the old ruts of life, — i will still trust. was not luther's bible, shakspear's hamlet, paul's letter, a deed as notable and farreaching as marengo or the dike of arcola. yet these were written by dint of flagging spirits. sobs of the heart, and dull, waste, unprofitable hours, taught the master how to write to apprehensive thousands the tragedy of these same. may 7. aunt mary said of a sermon she had heard : “if they say it's good, then 't is good ; if they say it's bad, then 't is bad.” it is even so. in all that we hear and read there ever is so much of nature that a trifle hath some majesty, and the mediocre production may be cracked up by the affectionate into a sort of olympian merit 446 [age 34 journal and find allowance from us, though not its spontaneous praisers. bowles's sonnets, southey's roderick, wordsworth's waggoner, may come to be esteemed very fine, — such latitude of aboriginal worth. nature yields to everything not contrarious. may 9. a letter this morning from t. carlyle. how should he be so poor? it is the most creditable poverty i know of. it seems as if a wise man would be an incarnated veneration. he would revere everything, even folly, crime, ignorance, not as far as they were these, but as also demonstrations of the dazzling beauty of the cause. how shallow is contempt! i will never scorn a man again. to a difference of opinion i will kneel as to an unrevealed face of god. anciently friends exchanged names in sign of love. henceforth i will call my enemy by my own name, for he is serving me with his might, exposing my errors, stigmatising my faults. it seems to me that we should load our shoulders with love till we bend, kneel and lie down under the burden. why need you think afar off of one or two acts of virtue, as you pay thirty dollars 1838] bear your part 447 ver to constitute you a life member of the charities? go to it, man! set down your shoulder with a reo beave o! and understand well without mincing the matter, there are you to sweat and drudge and toil forever and ever. condition, your private condition of riches or talents or seclusion — what difference does that make? as a man that once came to summon my brother william and me to train replied to the excuse that we were instructors of youth,“ well, and i am a watchmaker.”: it is not other people's wants, but your own wants that crave devotion. you will find, be your condition what it may, that the world, your native world, is a poor beggar, naked, cold, starving, sick, whom you must clothe, warm, feed and restore. unless you kill yourself, you cannot get out of the sight of its wants nor out of the hearing of its piteous moanings. you are rich, you are literm i all men of military age were, in those days, required by law to present themselves for training by the militia officers on a certain day in may. unless they belonged to volunteer corps, they were without uniforms and variously armed. their motley appearance and awkwardness made them objects of derision, and they were often called the “shad companies.” when the drum ar.d fife were heard, people would say, • let's go and see the trainers." 448 [age 34 journal ary, you lament you have not the helping hand. i think no wise man will ever be rich; none, that is, will have anything at his disposal, for, unless he had the riches of nature at hand, he could not supply all the needs that look to him for relief. friends near, and friends afar, brothers, cousins, parents, virtuous men unkindly used by the world, bereaved women and children, beside that creative charity which will never let us be, but as if out of the wantonness and ingenuity of goodness, is contriving objects and inventing new subscription papers. the richest man needs to economize his clothes, his pay, his house labor, wear the white seam, the soiled hat, of his fellows' need, if not of his own. i must regard the old coat, the dusty shoes, the weary limbs of the man frugal from benevolence as luminous points that ray out glory to , all the sundered friends he loves and serves. the call comes. death and rates, men say are sure. these poor rates are surest of all. they knock at every door. they go to every room; they levy a poll-tax. fool, you will not decline it. then look ahead a little, and see that this ugly beggar is the deity in disguise, this sturdy beggar that takes substance and time and pleasures and peace, is enriching you by every1838] use truths carefully 449 thing he seems to take. he has given you learning and wit and sympathy and insight and noble manners, and the blessing of every eye that sees and ear that hears you. how came that great heart to such a huge compass of love? how but because it has loved and served so many that it is now charged with the life of thousands, of countries, of races. no another thought of like color has affected me. you have good philosophy, and disdain the feeble routine and mere verbal learning and ritual virtue of the school and the church. well, beware of antinomianism. all men have a slight distrust of your novelties and think you do not esteem the old laws of true witness, just dealing, chaste conversing, as much as they. they have some reason. for as they make a . bad use of their old truths, so we make a bad use of our new ones. they know that we have brought with us the clinging temptations that whisper so softly by night and by day in lonely places, in seductive company, and they query whether the loss of the old checks will not sometimes be a temptation which the unripeness of the new will not countervail. therefore if you hear or read a word which us r new 450 journal (age 34 galls you, which accuses you, be to it all ear. if it pricks your ear it is for something. it points at a weak side, at a peccant humor, at a spiritual defect. expose freely the place to the thorn, to the knife. may 10. caricatures are often the truest history of the time, for they only express in a pointed, unequivocal action what really lies at the bottom of a great many plausible public hypocritical maneuvres. may il. last night the moon rose behind four distinct pine-tree tops in the distant woods and the night at ten was so bright that i walked abroad. but the sublime light of night is unsatisfying, provoking; it astonishes but explains not. its charm floats, dances, disappears, comes and goes, but palls in five minutes after you have left the house. come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a presence as a full moon in the clouds, and you are struck with poetic wonder. in the instant you leave far behind all human relations, wife, mother and child, and live only with the savages — water, air, light, carbon, lime, and granite. i is r w 1838) night. influences 451 think of kuhleborn.' i become a moist, cold element. “nature grows over me.” frogs pipe; waters far off tinkle; dry leaves hiss; grass bends and rustles, and i have died out of the human world and come to feel a strange, cold, aqueous, terraqueous, aerial, ethereal sympathy and existence. i sow the sun and moon for seeds. may 12. baby warbles quite irresistibly, as if telling a secret too to all the house, “ mamma ky, mamma ky!” thus blabbing mamma's flebile tendencies. may 13. there are sublime merits, persons who are not actors, not speakers, but influences.3 ... these are great only by comparison with each other, ivanhoe and waverley compared with castle radcliffe and the porter novels ;but nothing is great, not mighty homer and milton, beside the infinite reason. it carries them all away as a flood. they are as a sleep. 1 the fierce spirit of the torrent or stormy mist in fouqué's undine. 2 compare « the poet," zd stanza, poems, appendix. 3 here follows the passage thus beginning in the “ divinity school address" (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 148). 452 journal (age 34 last night walking under the pleasant, cloudstrown, dim-starred sky, i sought for topics for the young men at dartmouth, and could only think one thing, namely, that the cure for bigotry and for all partiality is the recurrence to the experience, that we have been in our proper person robinson crusoe and saint john, dr. pedant and sardanapalus. in the hour of spiritual pride, when unsuspecting, and as it were of course, we don the judgment-robes, let it qualify the sentence that damns my brother, that i have been him, and presently shall, very naturally, become him again. may 14. what do we chiefly recommend to the student? solitude-silence. why? that he may become acquainted with his thoughts.' . .. it is yourself which is the self of all, whereof all wish to know, and it is solitude and virtue which can furnish farther informations. another example of the entsagen is the fine admonition in sprague's centennial ode, in boston, in which the present generation are told i here follows the long passage on the gifts which solitude has for the scholar, printed in « literary ethics," pp. 173, 174. 1838) heat. a bird-while 453 that their part in history is not to shine like their fathers, but to be obscurely good. how simple the causes of how various effects ! a little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald dazzling white deadly cold poles of the earth from the golden tropical climates, the cumbrous gigantic vegetation, the air loaded to sickness with aromatics, the sky full of birds, the huge animals that browse, leap or glide, the young lions playing in the sand, and man with a dilated, flexible, elegant form with gentle and majestic manners. a bird-while. in a natural chronometer, a bird-while may be admitted as one of the metres, since the space most of the wild birds will allow you to make your observations on them when they alight near you in the woods, is a pretty equal and familiar measure. life and death are apparitions. last night the teachers' sunday school met here, and the theme was judgment. i affirmed that we were spirits now incarnated, and should always be spirits incarnated. our thought is the income of god. i taste therefore of eternity and pronounce of eternal law now, and not hereafter. space and time are but forms of income | 454 journal (age 34 thought. i proceed from god now, and ever shall so proceed. death is but an appearance. yes, and life's circumstances are but an appearance through which the firm virtue of this god-law penetrates and which it moulds. the inertia of matter and of fortune and of our employment is the feebleness of our spirit. may 17. we talked yesterday of alcott's school. john s. dwight thought he should not feel the less certain of the good influence of his teaching on the boys, though he never recognised it. yes, that is right. the unspoken influence of nature we know is greatest, yet we do not recognise and specify it in the man, and alcott's aim is to make a spoken teaching that shall blend perfectly therewith. may 18. the public necessarily pick out for the emulation of the young men, the oberlins, the wesleys, dr. lowell, and dr. ware. but with worst effect. all this excellence kills beforehand their own. they ought to come out to their work ignorant that ever another had wrought.' ... the young preacher comes to his parish and i here follows the passage on imitation (“* divinity school address,” pp. 145, 146). 1838) parish duties. doctor 455 learns there are three hundred families which he must visit, each once in a year. instead of groping to get exactly the old threads of relation to bind him to the people, that bound his venerable predecessor, let him quit all leather and twine, let him so highly and gladly entertain his most poetic and exhilarating office as to cast all this nonsense of false expectation and drivelling chinese secondariness behind him and acquaint them at first hand with deity. ... scorn trifles. leave to the man-milliners the question of coat and hat and gown, the color of your dress, the mode of riding, of the question of dancing, of parties, and all the jackstraws on which doctors have debated. the sailor“ damns the proprieties.” it is the only good sense on the subject, though coarse the expression. it is an infallible sign of the torpidity of the priest and poet soul when the minor faculties of taste and of decorum emerge into distinct consideration. may 22. dr. jackson once said that the laws of disease were as beautiful as the laws of health. our good dr. hurd came to me yesterday before i had yet seen dr. ripley (yesterday represented as in a dying condition) — with joy sparkling in 456 [age 34 journal his eyes. “and how is the doctor, sir?” i said. “i have not seen him to-day,” he replied, “but it is the most correct apoplexy i have ever seen, face and hands livid, breathing sonorous, and all the symptoms perfect”; and he rubbed his hands with delight. may 24. (to s. m. fuller.) dwight came here and we got as far as speech this time. i think i told you that between him and me, as chances so often with those we reckon intelligent, a good understanding was supposed, not certified. but i find him now a very accurate mind, active and genial with fine moral qualities, though not of great reading or variously cultivated. what is a great satisfaction, too, he has his own subject, music. a man must never ask another for an aim. i was at medford the other day at a meeting of hedge's club. i was unlucky in going after several nights of vigils, and heard as though i heard not, and among gifted men i had not one thought or aspiration. but alcott acquitted himself well, and made a due impression. so the meeting was good. i nevertheless read today with wicked pleasure the saying ascribed to kant, that “detestable was the society of mere literary men.” it must be tasted sparingly to 1838) teachers, two sorts 457 keep its gusto. if you do not quit the high chair, lie quite down and roll on the ground a good deal, you become nervous and heavyhearted. the poverty of topics, the very names of carlyle, channing, cambridge, and the reviews become presently insupportable. the dog that was fed on sugar died. so all this summer i shall talk of chenangoes and my new garden spout; have you heard of my pig? i have planted forty-four pine-trees; what will my tax be this year? — and never a word more of goethe or tennyson. may 26. nettled again and nervous ... by the wretched sunday's preaching of mr. you cambridge men affect to think it desirable that there should be light in the people. but the elevation of the people by one degree of thought would blow to shreds all this nightmare preaching. how miserable is that which stands only in the wooden ignorance of villages. as the dull man droned and droned and wound his stertorous horn upon the main doctrine of christianity, the resurrection, namely, and how little it was remembered in modern preaching and modern prayers, i could not help thinking that there are two emphases that distinguish the two sorts 458 journal [age 35 of teachers: 1, human life: 2, thought. those who remain fast in the first, respect facts supremely; and thought is but a tool for them. those who dwell in the second, respect principles; and facts and persons and themselves they regard only as slovenly, unperfect manifestations of these; they care not for christ, nor for death, nor for resurrection, except as illustrations. i found hedge the other day fully disposed to agree with me in regard to the social position of domestics. in the little village newspapers, i observe, stick in regularly every week paragraphs about the value of newspapers, which are true of the great newspapers, as the national gazette or boston advertiser, but ludicrously untrue of these pert little country sheets. so wordsworth, for a great man, has a great deal too much to say about what he, the poet, writes or does. how noble a trait does miss sedgwick draw in her mrs. hyde, when lucy lee says, “it makes people civil to speak to her.” how we glow over these novels ! how we drivel and calculate and shuffle and lie and skulk in life! 1838) may woods. reality 459 in the wood, god was manifest, as he was not in the sermon. in the cathedralled larches the ground-pine crept him, the thrush sung him, the robin complained him, the cat-bird mewed him, the anemone vibrated him, the wild apple bloomed him; the ants built their little timbuctoo wide abroad; the wild grape budded ; the rye was in the blade; high overhead, high over cloud, the faint, sharp-horned moon sailed steadily west through fleets of little clouds; the sheaves of the birch brightened into green below. the pines kneaded their aromatics in the sun. all prepared itself for the warm thunder-days of july. in. realist seems the true name for the movement party among our scholars here. i at least endeavor to make the exchange evermore, of a reality for a name. i say there is no teaching until the child is brought into the same place, state, principle in which you are.' ... at dinner to-day we wickedly roasted the martyrs. i say that nothing is so disgusting in our days, as nothing is so dog-cheap, as martyri the rest of the passage thus beginning is in “spiritual laws,” essays, second series, p. 152. 460 journal (age 35 dom. dr. a., or mr. m., the messieurs bookmakers should be requested to prepare a work immediately on the duties of martyrs of all sizes and sexes. x, the abolitionist, came here to concord where every third man lectures on slavery, and being welcomed by some gentleman at the church to concord, replied, “yes, we that turn the world upside down have come hither also.” it reminds one of a sophomore's exclamation during a college rebellion, “ come, bowers! let us go join those noble fellows.” next worst to the martyrs are the officers of the philanthropic societies who have just got letters from antigua, and so on. ... (a woman's strength is not masculine, but is the unresistible might of weakness.) june 2. hostility, bitterness to persons or to the age indicate infirm sense, unacquaintance with men who are really at top selfish, and really at bottom fraternal, alike, identical. there is somewhat inconvenient and injurious in the position of the scholar. they whom his thoughts have entertained or inflamed seek 1838] disciples. thoughts 401 him before yet they have learned the hard conditions of thought. they seek him that he may turn his lamp upon the dark riddles whose solution they think is scrawled on the walls of their being.' ... june 6. everybody, i think, has sublime thoughts sometimes. at times they lie parallel with the world, or the axes coincide so that you can see through them the great laws. then be of their side. let your influence be so true and simple as to bring them into these frames. another thing: we resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance. . ... another thing: a man that can speak well belongs to the new era as well as to the old. a revolution is welcome to him, and oriental stability is friendly to him. i look with pity upon the young preachers who float into the profession thinking all is safe. but as soon as i hear one of them uttering out of the old veli the rest of the passage thus beginning is in “ literary ethics," p. 183, centenary ed. 2 for the rest of the paragraph, see “« literary ethics,” p. 164. 462 (age 35 journal veted tub manly, poetic words, i see him to be janus-faced and well to do in past or future. when i told alcott that i would not criticise his compositions; that it would be as absurd to require them to conform to my way of writing and aiming, as it would be to reject wordsworth because he was wholly unlike campbell; that here was a new mind, and it was welcome to a new style; — he replied, well pleased, “ that is criticism.” june 7. i wish a church to worship in, where all the people are better than i am, and not spotted souls. nothing shows more plainly the bad state of society than the difficulty or impossibility of representing to the mind any fit church or cultus. take care, o ye martyrs ! who, like st. ursula and her choir, number eleven thousand, if, of all, one of you, one single soul is true, take care not to snap in petulance instead of jetting out in spouts of true flame. reserve your fire. keep your temper. render soft answers. bear and forbear. do not dream of suffering for ten years yet. do not let the word martyrdom ever sui is 1838) the hero. napoleon 463 escape out of the white fence of your teeth. be sweet and courtly and merry these many long summers and autumns yet, and husband your strength, so that when an authentic, inevitable crisis comes, and you are fairly driven to the wall, cornered up in your utica, you may then at last turn fairly round on the baying dogs, all steel — with all heaven in your eye — and die for love, with all heroes and angels to friend. as napoleon. “in napoleon's eyes merit was by itself and he recompensed it in one manner. thus the same titles, the same decorations were awarded equally to the ecclesiastic, the soldier, the artist, the philosopher and the man of letters.” las cases. it was observed that the emperor was not fond of setting forward his own merits. “that is,” said he, “because with me morality and generosity are not in my mouth but in my nerves.” napoleon, like all men of genius, is greatly impersonal in his habit of thought. he sees the sublime laws, and not the individual men. men are to him but illustrations, and hence a magnanimous tolerance. sot 464 journal (age 35 (from journal d) i told my friend last night i could think of nothing more deeply satisfactory than to be shut up in a little schooner bound on a voyage of three or four weeks, with a man an entire stranger of a great and regular mind, of vast resources in his nature. i would not speak to him, i would not look at him ; i would eat my supper; i would pack my trunk; i would read the newspaper; i would roll in my berth; so sure should i be of him, so luxuriously should i husband my joys that i should steadily hold back all the time, make no advances, leaving altogether to fortune for hours, for days, for weeks even, the manner and degrees of intercourse. yet what a proud peace would soothe the soul to know that — heads and points, as we lie and welter out at sea, all etiquette impossible, all routine far out of sight here close by me was grandeur of mind, grandeur of character; that here was element wherein all i am, and more than i am yet, could bathe and dilate; that here by me was my greater self; he is me, and i am him. give me, not a thought, but a magazine of a man. 11 agazine an 1838) the age. pictures 465 june 8. a good deal of character in our abused age. the rights of woman, the antislavery-, temperance-, peace-, health-, and money-movements; female speakers, mobs and martyrs, the paradoxes, the antagonism of old and new, the anomalous church, the daring mysticism and the plain prose, the uneasy relation of domestics, the struggling toward better household arrangements, all indicate life at the heart, not yet justly organized at the surface. a man must have aunts and cousins, must buy carrots and turnips, must have barn and woodshed, must go to market and to the blacksmith's shop, must saunter and sleep and be inferior and silly. i pleased myself in seeing the pictures brought in her portfolio by margaret fuller: guercino, piranesi, leyden,' etc. it takes me long to know what to think of them, but i think i find out at last. i am quite confident in my criticism upon that infernal architecture of piranesi, and very delicious it is to me to judge them when at last i begin to see. the difficulty consists in į see poems, “ode to beauty.” 466 (age 35 journal righting one's self before them; in arriving at a quite simple conviction that the sketch appeals to me, and coming at a state of perfect equilibrium, leaving all allowance to spontaneous criticisms. fear to judge, or haste to judge, alike vitiate the insight. many good pictures, as much knowledge of the artist and his times as can be ; and perfect equilibrium of mind;are the conditions of right judgment. in this glorious summer day, i have taken a turn in my woods. how gaily the wind practices his graces there, and every tree and all the woods bow with gentlest yet majestic elegance, and the pine shakes out its pollen for the benefit of the next century. there i feel the newness and prerogative of me and of today. i would say to the young scholar, permit none to invade your mind. live with god alone. see how the spirit does execute every presentiment in some gigantic fact. what else is egypt, greece, rome?'... insight comes all ways. 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in « literary ethics,” nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 159, 160. this is fol. lowed by the passage beginning “we live in the sun," etc., occupying most of page 176, and that beginning “out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings," on pp. 177, 178. me 1838] beauty our asylum 467 i refuse the insinuation that there is no perfect education of the genius but by violent passion. day and martin seem to have deserved well of history for auguring and uttering the secret of the age in their cosmopolitan placarding. a placarding age. oak hall. in nature all the growth is contemporary. man's labor in the garden is successive, but the weeds and plants swell, root and ripen all over the farm in the same instant of time. why do we seek this lurking beauty in skies, in poems, in drawings ? ah! because there we are safe, there we neither sicken nor die. i think we fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature. we are made immortal by this kiss, by the contemplation of beauty. strange, strange that the door to it should thus perversely be through the prudent, the punctual, the frugal, the careful; that the adorers of beauty, musicians, painters, byrons, shelleys, keatses, and such like men, should turn themselves out of doors, and out of sympathies, and out of themselves. whilst i behold the holy lights of the june sunset, last evening or to468 (age 35 journal im raise те night, i am raised instantly out of fear and out of time, and care not for the knell of this coughing body. — strange the succession of humors that pass through this human spirit. sometimes i am the organ of the holy ghost and sometimes of a vixen petulance. i delight in our pretty country church music, and to hear that poor slip of a girl without education, without thought, yet show this fine instinct in her singing, so that every note of her song sounds to me like an adventure and a victory in the ton-welt, and whilst all the choir beside stay fast by their leader and the bass viol, this angel voice goes choosing, choosing, choosing on, and with the precision of genius keeps its faithful road and floods the house with melody. se goethe certainly had good thoughts on the subject of female culture. how respectful to woman and hopeful are the portraits in wilhelm meister,— natalia, theresa. june 10. night : progress, or, a ladder of four steps. last night, at ten, i left my dreamy journal and went abroad to receive the fair inscriptions of night. the moon was making amber of the io 1838] night. four steps 469 world. every cottage pane glittered into silver. the trees were beautiful, yet ominous with gloom. the meadows sent up the rank smells of all their ferns and grasses and folded flowers into a nocturnal fragrance. the little harlot flies of the lowlands sparkled in the grass and in the air.' it is all music. then we see that martin's creation picture was true, and that the man who has seen the moon break out of clouds at night, arising, has been present, like an archangel, at the creation of light and of the world; and that he who has been in love has assisted at a new and second morning; that he in whose soul art has been born has seen a greater day; and finally, (where indeed there is no final), he who has through weary experience of sweet and smart in life attained to know character, and to worship that slow, secular, divine product, has beheld a worthier creation, that great day of the feast. w noon. mercury 90° in the shade. rivers of heat, yea, a circumambient sea. welcome as truly as finer and coarser influences to this mystic, soli1 this description of a summer's night in almost the same words may be found in verse in the appendix to the poems, pp. 346, 347, centenary ed. 470 journal (age 35 tary “purple island” that i am! i celebrate the holy hour at church amid these fine creative deluges of light and heat which evoke so many gentle traits, gentle and bold, in man and woman. man in summer is man intensated. see how truly the human history is written out in the faces around you. the silent assembly thus talks very loud. the old farmer, like daniel wood or david buttrick, carries, as it were palpable in his face, stone walls, rough woodlots, the meadows and the barnyard; the old doctor is a gallipot; the bookbinder binds books in his face; and the good landlord mixes liquors, yet in motionless pantomime. beauty, softness, piety and love come there also in female form, and touch the heart. vices even, in slight degree, improve the expression. malice and scorn add to beauty. i see eyes set too near, and limited faces, — faces, i mean, of one marked but invariable expression. i wonder how such wear with the husband. they pique, but must tire. i prefer universal faces, countenances of a general humane type which pique less, but to which i can always safely return home. i read plainly in these manifold persons the plain prose of life, timidity, caution, appetite, old houses, musty smells, stationary, retrograde, faculties se 1838) everett. george minot 471 puttering round (to borrow peter howe's garden phrase) in paltry routines from january to december. and i see, too, hope, and the far contributions of europe, palestine, and egypt, (so deep ingrained in american education) to the physiognomy of the house. if a man is self-exaggerating and does not embrace a great man with his heart and soul, expect no miracles of him. he is a seemer, and the truth is not in him. great men again do not brag of their personal attributes, but, like napoleon, generously belong to the connexion of events. he identified himself with the new age, and owned himself the passive organ of an idea.' ... everett has put more stories, sentences, verses, names in amber for me than any other person. “a wise limitation.” very refreshing it is to me to see minot: he is a man of no extravagant expectations; of no hypocrisy; of no pretension. he would not have his corn eaten by i here follows the passage in “self-reliance” about great men having always trusted themselves. (essays, first series, p. 47, centenary ed.) 472 [age 35 journal worms,he picks them out and kills them ; he would have his corn grow, — he weeds and hoes every hill; he would keep his cow well, — and he feeds and waters her. means to ends and george minot forever! they say he sleeps in his field. they say he hurts his corn by too much hoeing it. june 12. a good fruit of the day's philosophy would be some analysis of the various application of the infinite soul to æsthetics, to metaphysics, to ethics, to physics, and so show as they may the tendency, direction and prospects of the present tendency, the present movement in the american mind. when i hear the projects of the philosophers and reviewers, and am constrained to note how far off some of them are from any grasp of the real value of what thoughts have already appeared to the few observers on our towers, i am quickened in the ambition to attempt an enumeration of these. nenum the history of opinions, any history of philosophy, fortifies my faith in the treasuries of the soul by showing me that what dogmas i had supposed were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture, and only now possible to 1838] the ancients. society 473 some recent kant or fichte, were the prompt improvisations of the earliest inquirers, of parmenides, heraclitus and xenophanes. therefore leave me alone, do not teach me out of leibnitz or schelling, and i shall find it all myself.' ... ah, a fact is a great thing. the soul passed into nature. private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. clubs produce oftener words.” june 13. solitude is naught and society is naught. alternate them and the good of each is seen. you can soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. . . . after some interval when these delights have been sucked dry, accept again the opportunities of society. the same scenes revisited shall wear a new face, shall yield a higher culture. undulation, alternation is the condition of progress, of life. i the above paragraph and the long one on character which follows it, here omitted, occur in “ literary ethics,” pp. 160-162. 2 mr. emerson here has in mind such serious gatherings of ministers and philosophers as the “symposium.” he found much refreshment to mind and body in later years at the monthly dinners with his friends at the saturday club. 474 journal [age 35 do not be an unwise churl and rail at society, nor so worldly wise as to condemn solitude. but use them as conditions. be their master, not their slaves. make circumstance—all circumstance, conform to the law of your mind. be always a king, and not they, and nothing shall hurt you. to an earnest soul is always solitude. inspiration makes solitude anywhere.' .... • very pleasant to me were the glimpses i have got of the mind of c. s., who left us to-day, yet gave me only glimpses. yet twice she engaged my cold, pedantic self into a fine surprise of thought and hope. to-day she would know who the geniuses were in history and how many, — three, four, five, or six; and recognized the relation of jesus to shakspear, and lamented the impossibility of conversation in society; that in a dance they talked of miracles, and at concerts of spiritualism. .... use society: do not serve it; use books, do not serve them. why should you be less than a world? 1 for the rest of the passage so beginning, sce « literary ethics,” pp. 174, 175. 1838] speaking of god 475 i do not accept this complaint of the morbidness of this age of consciousness or introversion. i do not think there is any treachery in nature. i think the spirit will be true to itself in every emergency. this crisis or state is as natural as any state, must be foreseen and forearmed and forebalanced, and undoubtedly has its own checks and good fruit, though margaret fuller laughs at my word.' .... do not speak of god much. after a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism. al is yet to be done. consider that the perpetual admonition of nature to us is, the world is new, untried. do not believe the past. i give you the universe new and unhandselled every hour. you think in your idle hours that there is literature, history, science behind you so accumulated as to exhaust thought and prescribe your own future, and the future. in your sane hour you shall see that not a line has yet been written; that for all the poetry that is in i here follows the passage about being “floated into a thought.” (see “ intellect,” essays, first series, p. 328, centenary ed.) 476 [age 35 journal the world your first sensation on entering a wood or standing on the shore of a lake has not been chanted yet. it remains for you, so does all thought, all object, all life remain unwritten still. and yet for all this it must be owned that literature has truly told us that the cock crows in the mornings. time is optical. in the best thought, time is no more, and always it is full of illusion. to say that life is long, is tedious; is to say that it is in the constitution that we should wear out every thought, should slowly roll it all round and see it to tediousness before we can be permitted to see another. but the length of time or the prose of life accuses me. once or twice i have been a poet, have been caught up on to a very high mountain. why should i ever forego that privilege? when i read the north american review, or the london quarterly, i seem to hear the snore of the muses, not their waking voice. read and think. study now, and now garden. go alone, then go abroad. speculate awhile, then work in the world. 1838] sunday. health 477 a sense of want and ignorance is a fine innuendo by which the great soul makes its enormous claim. napoleon. means to ends, thought passing into action, the absence of all that was mean and pitiful, characterize him. i admit there was the filagree and gingerbread which enter into every frenchman except montaigne.' . the far is holy, the near is economical. go into the garden sunday morning and you may look across the fields to the distant woods. monday morning you peep after weeds and bugs. yet sunday morning you see the near flower with like emotion as the distant hill. health. we must envy the great spirits their great physique. goetheand napoleon and humboldt and scott, — what tough bodies answered to their unweariable souls ! now is there somewhat annoying and even comic in the fact that man may not sit down in the grass to inspect the wings, antennæ, etc., of his fellow creature nor yet on the stone wall in the june night to see the racing of the liquid lights in the nearing 1 this passage in the journal concludes the long account of napoleon in “ literary ethics,” pp. 179, 180. 478 (age 35 journal heavens because he has consumption in his side, sciatica in his shoulder. syria in a sensation. the iron hand must have an iron arm. alternation. the bath and the battle of pisa as drawn by michael angelo, exhibited the extremes of relaxation and strength. we like the girding belt; we like to be dissolved in liberty. when we have seen friends and talked for days until we are turned inside out,—then go lie down, then lock the study door; shut the shutters, then welcome fall the imprisoning rain, dear hermitage of nature. re-collect the spirits. close up the too expanded leaves. at church the minister reads all the notes describing the condition of sick or bereaved persons, and then patiently enumerates in his prayer all the degrees of kin, selecting and keeping each with botanical precision. it seems as if he should teach his parish rather that god is not a respecter of persons, that he is neither brother, sister, cousin or uncle. again, the prayer rendered such fervent thanks that the family of the good farmer who died last week “were not left to the cold charities of the world, but were abundantly blessed in the present life,' 1838) prayer. hawthorne 479 that i fancied the town's assessors would take a hint in their next invoice, not to say what should be the lesson to us all below. it seems as if the true preacher, if he would give a sermon on humility would know how to go to church and read chaucer's griselda; and charles said, when t's poor neighbor complained of his driving them from gathering chips and refuse cuttings out of his woodlot, that he should go to church, if he were minister, and read “goody blake and harry gill.” elizabeth peabody brought me yesterday hawthorne's footprints on the seashore to read. i complained that there was no inside to it. alcott and he together would make a man. the unbelief of the age is attested by the loud condemnation of trifles. look at our silly rei here follows the long passage in the “ divinity school address" lamenting the lot of “ the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit and not give the bread of life.” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 140.) 2 miss elizabeth peabody was the sister of mrs. hawthorne and of mrs. horace mann. beginning as assistant in mr. alcott's school, her whole long life, simple and brave, was devoted to humanity. 480 journal [age 35 ligious papers. let a minister wear a cane, or a white hat, go to a theatre, or avoid a sunday school, let a school book with a calvinistic sentence or a sunday school book without one be heard of, and instantly all the old grannies squeak and gibber and do what they call “sounding an alarm,” from bangor to mobile. alike nice and squeamish is its ear. you must on no account say “stink” or “ damn." yesterday elizabeth hoar's letter from aunt mary. it was a sort of argument for the immortality of the soul to see such a scripture; for whilst the thing certainly interests, yet is not life long enough to study out the tendency and idea which subterraneously shines, sparkles and glows in these sybilline leaves. it is a fragment of wisdom and poetry, yet now gives me neither; only affirms that it came from these. almost all souls intimate more of the divine than they see. and biography halts between that they were and that they suggested. this afternoon the foolishest preaching – which bayed at the moon. go, hush, old man, whom years have taught no truth. the hardness and ignorance with which the threat that mary moody emerson 1838] child's grief. wealth 481 the son of man when he cometh in clouds will be ashamed of a. and b., because they are not members of concord church, must have suggested to them “be it so; then i also will be ashamed of him.” such moabitish darkness, well typified in the perplexity about his glasses, reminded one of the squash-bugs, who stupid stare at you when you lift the rotten leaf of the vines. what is so beautiful as the sobbing of a child, the face all liquid grief as he tries to swallow his vexation? i feel also how rich the world is, when i read ben jonson's masques, or beaumont and fletcher; or when i go to the athenæum gallery and see traits of grandeur and beauty which i am yet assured are not by the masters, and were done by i know not who. they were done by the master. june 17. a cool, damp day, a cool evening, the first interruption we have had to the energy of the heat of the last eight or ten days wherein the mercury has ranged from 70° to 90°. when the cool wind blows, the serene muse parts her 482 journal (age 35 fragrant locks, and looks forth. what canst thou say, high daughter of god! to the waiting son of man? what canst thou teach to elevate these low relations, or to interpret them; to fill the day; to dispel the languor and dulness; and bring heaven into the house-door? ah! say it, and to me. the pages of swedenborg to one who does not yet penetrate to the man's thought, are as dull and stifling as a book describing the charlatanry of the freemasons. june 18. c. s. protests. that is a good deal. in these times, you shall find a small number of persons of whom only that can be affirmed that they protest. yet is it as divine to say no, as to say yes. you say they go too much alone. yea, but they shun society to the end of finding society. they repudiate the false out of love of the true. extravagance is a good token. in an extravagance, there is hope ; in routine, none. and who would ask that on such a rare soul as is made to see beauty and announce it, the same culture should be applied and the same social demands made as on the crowd. one beholder of beauty is as much wanted as a scribe 1838) writing. distrust 483 or a seamstress, o jack cade! i think the scholar, the artist must go alone and ask a somewhat dainty culture. the art of writing consists in putting two things together that are unlike and that belong together, like a horse and cart. then have we somewhat far more goodly and efficient than either. “may makes the cheerful sure ; may breeds and brings new blood; may marcheth throughout every limb; may makes the merry mood.” richard edwards, b. 1523, d. 1566. ah! my country! in thee is the reasonable hope of mankind not fulfilled.' . . . but the utmost thou hast yet produced, is a puny love of beauty in allston, in greenough, in bryant, in everett, in channing, in irving; an imitative love of grace. ... ah me! the cause is one; the diffidence of ages in the soul has crept over thee, too, america. no man here believeth in the soul i here occurs the passage in “ literary ethics” (pp. 156, 157), thus beginning. the following sentence is not printed. cause 484 journal [age 35 of man, but only in some name or person old and departed.' ... no lack of pretension is there. o no, all we be is placarded in square miles of newspapers, and the characteristic of the american in europe is “ pretension.” but it is fair to ask these reformers, democrats, new churches and transcendentalists, where is your poetry, your science, your art? why slumbers the creative hand ? i think we cannot safely argue. i think it needs a saint to dispute.? . . . but how i heard it in silent thunders one sunday in my pew that all nature helps him who speaks the truth. speak the truth, and the very roots of the grass underground there, move and stir to bear you witness. speak the truth, and the innocent day loves you and serves you. june 19. forget the past. be not the slave of your own past. in your prayer, in your teaching cumber not yourself with solicitude lest you 1 then follows the passage thus beginning in the “ divinity school address” (pp. 144, 145). 2 the passage of the wretched results of arguing follows. (“prudence,” essays, first series, p. 239.) 1838] forward. all in one 485 contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place. so you worship the dull god terminus, and not the lord of lords. but dare rather to quit the platform, plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old. trust your emotion.' ... êv kài tây. happy pilgrim of nature. over him streamed the flying constellations. . .. all, all he knew and loved ; all that grew in the growing earth and radiant heavens reappeared in soft transfiguration in that wise young head, and morning and evening he blessed the world. where he went, the trees knew him and the earth felt him to the roots of the grass. yet a few things sufficed; one tree was to him as a grove; the eyes of one maiden taught him all charms; and by a single wise man he knew jesus and plato, shakspear and the angels. it will take an imaginative and philosophical i some sentences of this paragraph, and its conclusion, may be found in self-reliance,' p. 57. 2 see « literary ethics," p. 158. 486 journal (age 35 writer nearly as long to write the preface to his book — a preface of a page — as the book itself; and an advertisement will pain him for a week, and then cost half a day to execute it. a young lady came here whose face was a blur and gave the eye no repose. june 21. have you had doubts? have you struggled with coldness ; with apathy; with self-contempt that made you pale and thin? george fox perambulated england in his perplexity. in elegant cambridge have you walked a mile in perturbation of the spirit? yet somehow you must come to the bottom of those doubts, or the human soul in its great ebbs and flows asking you for its law will call you, boy! life, authentic life you must have, or you can teach nothing. there is more to be learned by the poor passions which have here exercised many a pale boy in the little strife for the college honors, in the incommunicable irritations of hope and fear; of success, but still more of defeat; the remorse, the repentance, the resolution, that belong to conscientious youths in the false estimate they are apt to form here of duty and ambition, than there is in all the books of n 1838) discipline of soul 487 divinity. these trees, though not very old, if they could speak, could tell strange things. they could tell of tears; of the bright remembrance of domestic faces and virtues by young men who had just learned to wander; of homesickness; of piety that came after wine. i by no means believe in storms. quite as much as lord byron i hate scenes. i think i have not the common degree of sympathy with dark, turbid, mournful, passionate natures; but in compunction, in a keen resentment of violation, in shame for idleness, in shame at standing still, in remorse for meanness, in remorse for wounded affection, in rolling in the dust and crying, unclean ! unclean ! when we have debased ourselves to appetite, or undone ourselves with injustice, — i believe, i believe. i honor the retirements of men. i love the flush of hope. cyrus warren says that, “if you do not, in hoeing corn, pull up every mite of the pipergrass, it will live till it rains, and then it will en grow.” a church is a classification. say rather a new mind is; swedenborg is a new classification, as phrenology, as benthamism, as abolitionism, as calvinism is; and the neophytes take the same 488 journal [age 35 delight in subordinating everything to their new terminology that a girl does who has just learned botany.'... they call it christianity, i call it consciousness. animal magnetism peeps. if an adept should attempt to put me to sleep by the concentration of his will without my leave, i should feel unusual rights over that person's person and life. keep away from keyholes. usu son day creeps after day, each full of facts, dull, strange, despised things that we cannot enough despise, call heavy, prosaic, and desart. and presently the aroused intellect finds gold and gems in one of these scorned facts, then finds that the day of facts is a rock of diamonds, that a fact is an epiphany of god, that on every fact of his life he should rear a temple of wonder, joy, and praise; that in going to eat meat, to buy, or sell, to meet a friend, or thwart an adversary, to communicate a piece of news, or 1 here follows the long paragraph which begins thus in « self-reliance," pp. 79, 80. 2 thus far this passage is printed in “ education" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 78, centenary ed.), but it is here kept as leading to what follows. 1838] facts. vulgarity 489 buy a book, he celebrates the arrival of an inconceivably remote purpose and law at last on the shores of being, and into the ripeness and term of nature. and because nothing chances, but all is locked and wheeled and chained in law, in these motes and dust he can read the writing of the true life and of a startling sublimity. june 22. splendid summer, abounding in south wind whose fine haze makes the distant woods look twice as distant; and man and beast and bird and insect see their corn and wine grow in beauty. the low englishman begins to idealize his life by quoting lord a ; and sir john; and my lady b; who thus said or did to me.' ... bear with these little displays in little people as the far-off efforts at a better good. conjure with the great name. who forbade you to create ? fear. and who made fear? sin; i here occurs the passage on the self-display of the vulgar and of the cultivated contrasted with that of the high-minded. (see “ oversoul,” essays, first series, p. 290, centenary ed.) 490 journal [age 35 portrait hem delighedentity witheem so larco o inaction; ignorance. what is this astounding greatness of other men that they should be as god to you? why, it is two things: first, your littleness, which makes them seem so large ; and, second, your identity with them, which makes them delightful to you as the colossal portrait of yourself. if society sleeps and snores, if there is no art, no poetry, no genius, no virtue, do not say that such things cannot be, but remember in your own sorrowful life the sin that is also in theirs, namely, the surrender of hope, the voluntary abdication that somewhere was, covered up now in the bushes and wilderness of so many years. when you said, — “as others do, so will i ; i renounce — i am sorry for it — my early visions. i must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go until a more convenient season,” —then died the man in you; then perished the buds of art and poetry and genius.' had you stood firm, had many stood firm, oh god! had all, — we should no longer speak of society with cold disapproval, warning you against it, but we should see in it the halfi the last three sentences occur in “ literary ethics," p. 185. 1838] monotones. goodies 491 gods, whose traces are not yet quite obliterated, careering in contest or in love, in the still grand remains of greek art. [mr. emerson, after admitting his debt to the stimulation of thought excited by antagonism to the “monotones” who invaded his study (see“ literary ethics,” p. 184), permits himself to exclaim:-) but you must treat the men and women of one idea, the abolitionist, the phrenologist, the swedenborgian, as insane persons with a continual tenderness and special reference in every remark and action to their known state, which reference presently becomes embarrassing and tedious. “i am tired of fools,” said once my sharp-witted aunt to me with wonderful emphasis. you admire your etruscan vase, and with reason. but i have a cup and cover, also, that pleases me as well, to wit, the ocean and the sky. es 0 cean saturday, june 23. i hate goodies. i hate goodness that preaches. goodness that preaches undoes itself. a little electricity of virtue lurks here and there in kitchens and among the obscure, chiefly women, that 492 journal [age 35 flashes out occasional light and makes the existence of the thing still credible. but one had as lief curse and swear as be guilty of this odious religion that watches the beef and watches the cider in the pitcher at table, that shuts the mouth hard at any remark it cannot twist nor wrench into a sermon, and preaches as long as itself and its hearer is awake. goodies make us very bad. we should, if the race should increase, be scarce restrained from calling for bowl and dagger. we will almost sin to spite them. sunday, june 24. forever the night addresses the imagination and the interrogating soul within or behind all its functions, and now in the summer night which makes the earth more habitable, the more. strange that forever we do not exhaust the wonder and meaning of these stars, points of light merely, but still they speak, and ask, and warn, each moment with new mind. in the garden, the eye watches the flying cloud and walden woods, but turns from the village. poor society ! what hast thou done to be the aversion of us all? the wise is not to be preached and not to 1838) the truth-seeker 493 be flattered out of his position of perpetual inquiry. the young and admiring tend to make him quit his apprenticeship and sit down and build homestead, church and state, like other householders that have renounced their right to traverse the star-lit desarts of truth, for the comforts of an acre, house and barn.' the goodies, on the other hand, taunt him with inefficiency, with homelessness, with “having no shelter,” with pride in refusing to accept the revealed word of truth. but more sacred, more grand, forever dear, speaks the holy oracle to him in the silence of the passions, and rebukes these vain babblers of puny taste and of false religion. nothing is so shallow as dogmatism. your soaring thought is only a point more, a station more, whence you draw triangles for the survey of the illimitable field.' thou awful father! who so slowly uncoverest my nature and hope to my curiosity and faith, i lowly strive to keep thy law, to bow no knee to the baals, fine with what 1 two sentences in this paragraph occur near the close of “ literary ethics." 2 the passage follows as to the test of the scholar's theory by every event : but if he has accepted the dogma of some priest or philosopher, he renounces at once freedom and the treasures each day offers. 494 journal [age 35 jewels, mystic with what poetry soever, but to keep erect that head, which thou gavest me, erect against the solicitations, and, if it should so be, against the physical and metaphysical terrors of the universe. this it is to have immortal youth. i saw a hand whose beauty seemed to me to express hope and purity; and as that hand goes working, grasping, beckoning on, in the daily life of its owner, some of this high virtue, i think, will pass out of it. the softness and peace, the benignant humanity that hovers over our assembly when it sits down in the morning service in church, the cold gentleness of the women, the quietude of the men, are like that beautiful invention of the dew, whereby the old hard-peaked earth and its old selfsame productions are made new every morning, just dazzling with the latest touch of the artist's hand.' alcott has the merit of being a believer in the soul. i think he has more faith in the ideal than any man i have known. hence his welcome influence. a wise woman' said to me that i the simile of the dew, applied to spiritual independence, is used in “ literary ethics ” ; also in the poem “ sunrise" (poems, appendix, p. 346, centenary ed.). 2 margaret fuller. 1838] the unsaid. reverence 495 he has few thoughts, too few; she could count them all. well, books, conversation, discipline will give him more. but what were many thoughts, if he had not this distinguishing faith, which is a palpable proclamation out of the deeps of nature that god yet is? with many thoughts, and without this, he would be only one more of a countless throng of lettered men; but now you cannot spare the fortification that he is. how much is supposed in every discourse ! o poet! thou wert ten times a poet, if thou couldst articulate that unsaid part. it seems clear that it will be the distinction of the new age, the refusal of authority. men will not now say, as the emigrant french noblesse on their return under napoleon, “you know we must serve somebody.” but it will be the point of honor in literature and in life, and the principle in the church, to imbibe god without medium. beautiful is the veneration of men ; beautiful that it should be so dear to them, that they are jealous and furious if it be offended, and will immolate the offender. the flames they kindle 496 . journal (age 35 around the martyr are the far prophecy of the flames they will brave themselves, when their veneration is enlightened. our test of the true faith is, does it charm and command the soul?'... another wood-thought was, that, since the parrot world will be swift to renounce the name of christ in amends to its pride for having raised it so high, it behooves the lover of god to love that lover of god. june 25 they said in the french revolution there was a comte whose ruling passion was the fear of being guillotined. civil life may show many men whose ruling passion is the fear of being robbed. i woke and watched one night a dull hour on hearing noises, steps below stairs, or creaking of windows or doors. but the love of my spoons shall not again hinder me from sleep. perhaps we have not yet got to such a dis1 the passage follows about the faith that should blend with the light of rising and setting suns. (see the “ divinity school address," p. 137.) 1838) more and less 497 tance from swedenborg as rightly to appreciate him, or have not read him enough. and he may be a third or a fourth great genius of the world who is to set his mark on ages and on following millions. this, at least, i incline to concede to him, the truth of the remark made by a woman of his church, that her intellectual power had grown by the study of his writings. june 26. the radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of more and less. how can less not feel the pain? how not feel indignation and hatred at more? concede the literary man genius which is a sort of stoical plenum nullifying the comparative, and he is content; but concede him talents ever so exalted denying his genius, and he is aggrieved.' look at men of less intellectual power than yourself, and yet able; and one feels sad and knows not well what to make of it. almost you shun their eye. almost you fear they will upbraid god. what should they do? seemed to me yester1 of the opening sentences of this entry two appear in • compensation” (essays, first series, p. 123), and one in “ literary ethics" (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 164). 498 (age 35 journal day the answer was plain, that the basis of all was divine, and that if i feel overshadowed, forestalled, and outdone by great neighbors, i can yet love, i can still receive, but i will not poorly play a parrot's or a valet's part, i will not repeat all my primary saws, and weaken all i repeat. this better is a plain token that my lustrum of silence is not yet complete. why should i intrude into the guild of workmen before i receive a sign? i will retreat into solitudes of ability and love. ... the drying wind under this bright sun lifts up again the heads of the grass which were bent down and lodged in yesterday's storm. let in time as a drying wind into the seed field of today's thoughts, which are dank and warm and wet and low-bent. the west wind combed out the matted and dishevelled grass as it lay in night-locks on the ground. s trismegisti. moses, zoroaster, pythagoras, heraclitus, socrates, jesus, confucius, st. augustine, giordano bruno, spinoza, swedenborg, synesius, plotinus. facts. the only fault in napoleon's bio1838] night enchants 499 graphy is that he was beaten at waterloo. what can genius avail against facts, which are the genius of god? june 28. the moon and jupiter side by side last night stemmed the sea of clouds and plied their voyage in convoy through the sublime deep as i walked the old and dusty road. the snow and the enchantment of the moonlight make all landscapes alike, and the road that is so tedious and homely that i never take it by day, — by night is italy or palmyra. in these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the june night under moon and stars, i can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame. end of volume iv cbe riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s.a. 3 2044 010 371 169 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. app 03 990 40400p tzaneem 637 ralpb waldo emerson. complete works. centenary edition. 13 vols., crowa 8vo. with portraits, and copious notes by ward waldo emerson. price per volume, $1.75 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. . english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. 10. lectures and biographical sketches. 11. miscellanies. 13. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works. riverside edition. with a portraits. 13 vols., cach, tamo. gilt top, $1.75 i the set, $31.00 little classic edition. 13 vols., in arrangement and code tents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 13 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15.00. poems. household edition. with portrait. 1amo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. essays. first and second series in cambridge classico. crown 8vo, sr.oo. nature. lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classica crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emer. son. introductory essay. household edition, tamo, $i.go. holiday edition. 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. 18mo. $1.00. emerson calendar book. zamo, parchment-paper, 15 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 1834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. i vois. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emer. son. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00 letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. emerson's journals. edited by edward w. emerson and waldo emerson forbes. ilustrated. crown 8vo, $1.75 net, per volume. for various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son memoirs, see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820–1872 vol. viii journals ор ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1849-1855 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1912 al 1323.029 a fantad cilego oct 6 1913 librari. copyright, 1913, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1912 in compliance with current copyright law, lbs archival products produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ansi standard 239.48-1984 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1992 contents journal xl 1849 (from journals rs, tu, and az) the word god. circumstance. railroads ; california. a magnet. greville. the juno and the jove. ali ben abu taleb. spirit of the age ; california. contradictions. gravitation. dull science. the poor indian. town and country club. english scholarship. peartrees. martial's power. macaulay. buying a sunset. live people. duty first ; genius, rectitude, humility. plato required culture. word and deed. swedenborg. quetelet. clough's borbie. old words fit the heights ; mythology serves. realism. finishers. god with us. · days. descartes. hafiz on thought. nature calls from metaphysics. marcus antoninus. the old painters. the chimney-sweep. two gravestones. words. wilkinson on swedenborg. imagination's aute. swedenborg's crime. the soul's nearness. children's teachers. the garden alchemist ; the peartree's signal. climbers. riches. martial on portia ; herrick. athens. the village fire. st. anthony to the fishes. corrupting philosophy. federal government's war-power. macaulay's history. letterwriting. massachusetts. new york. the expansive kentuckian. mountain air. concord epitaphs. the contents pear-tree's appeal. calvinism's power. dante's strength ; the masters. hindoo books. the vine. greek books now translated. men in nature. perspective in writing. byron's feats. otis on women. loves. the oriental cure. revolution. fossils stay dead. philosophy; three degrees. french and english. buna's scheme of life. the magnet. shakspeare. greatness. let the instincts write. women's bonnets. walk with thoreau to acton. concord's possible professors. our sky. eyes and no eyes. england and europe. plato's title to fame ; his geometry ; his commentators ; his help. dante. webster wanted courage. perception of identity; brooke and donne. rhymes. dealing with the days. garden diary. . . . . . . . . . . . 1-47 nature, addresses and lectures published. aristotle, schoolmen, swedenborg. man representative of all life ; great students of nature, the flowing. minds viviparous and oviparous. christ not yet portrayed. the world-temple. aunt mary and medicine. acceleration of thought ; penetration equals longevity; plato's power. face your conditions. the solitary. yield somewhat to your book. graceful old age, still at school; nature's dealing with us. macaulay criticized. charles newcomb comes; subtle and daring writing; a wasted light. big-endians and little-endians. thoreau and concord. michael angelo and raffaele. solvers of universal problems. nature's way. symbolism. a chosen few. thoreau's “ inspiration.” november walk ; channing; verses, eternity, time, the poet. affirmative; germany; scherb expounds contents vi hegel. goethe. repiboring man's hegel. the world-flower. alcott, the pencil and sponge. goethe. representative men sent to friends; its shortcomings; the laboring man's greatness. swedenborg. nature's december show. respect for farmers. england's limitations and solidity. rich and poor. work gives thought. love of superlative. channing's criticisms. natural aristocracy, courage of truth. van helmont. duties. schelling's thought, its growth through others. stallo on naturc. bird songs; feuerbach. three eras. chladni an orpheus. culture. reading . . . . . . . . . 48–82 journal xli 1850 (from journals az and bo) faces, ideal or portraits. boys. two statements; bipolarity, melioration, and divinity of man. brave poets. marriage. english snubs of the new book. fate and rectitude. alcote's captious hearers. byron; suggested partnerships of authors. the times and the great tides. anxiety needless ; trust the great geometer to reconcile ; goethe's winckelmann. value of clergy. saint and scholar. proclus. paule de viguier. samuel hoar. parliament on the times. experimental philosopher. expressors the gods. carlyle's refrains. alcott's parliament. lord mansfield's decisions. saint augustine. seven years in the vat ; irving ; montaigne ; pope. the age ; magnet and mirror. garrison's virtue and fault. condé. abuse. viji contents building of language. southerner ; our timid representatives. majority. intellect ; newton ; discoverers of law, advances. wolsey. superstitions everywhere. town and country club. saturday club foreshadowed. enweri's “spring.” silent teachers. the impressionable man. abandon. orator's strength. personality commands. the enigmatical face. shirk. ing clergy. allston's methods. charlotte brontë's shirley. epitaph. the lecturing tour. henry james. higher law derided. lucrecia mott. webster's desertion ; boston's adulation. concord's celebration. everett, choate, governor briggs, rantoul. nemesis levels. vanity fair ; thackeray and bunyan. journey to west, the rivers and lakes. margaret fuller ossoli dies in wreck; her friends ; her traits ; testimonies of friends. thoreau on thought; stimulus needed; the percipients. pallid society ; “ the progressive god." thinkers not partisans. genealogy. gifts rare. charles newcomb. van helmont. the marlboro' road; channing and thoreau on life. 83-122 melody prior to thought. “ hero.” my method. my romance. the artist's chance to show beauty and law. schelling's distinction. quality and amount. great discoveries are presentiments; instances among the ancients. jenny lind. early teaching of child. oriental superlative. collins in the kitchen. to marlboro' with channing. a village needs naturalist. higher law ; archbishop whitgift ; mansfield in somersett case ; blackstone on god's law ; coke. king james's remark; bacon's “ leges legum.”_a talk with thoreau ; english and american ; no sucix contents cess yet; feats seemingly impossible. the world wears well. democracy. fame. culture. our children. the plus man. fisher the quaker. margaret fuller's letters ; her rhetoric ; her nobility ; first impressions on friends. the city-builders. doctrine of leasts. notes for “ manners." readings for ellen. heat in speech. true eloquence. tools. an essay, the manysided man. a judge. men of one idea ; the corpsedefender. napoleon on leonidas. the merchant. luther ; his effect on thought. new england's morale. aunt mary's writing. columbus at veragua. the disappointing visit. music ; french sentences. shakspeare's fancy. “life uninteresting”; all too short. napoleon iii. writer an orateur manqué. cyrus stow. readings . . . . 122-158 journal xlii 1851 (from journals bo and co.) western trip. allingham's “ morning thoughts." young ideals ; daunting facts ; divine reason reconciles. choate's alippancy. tennyson's “ in memoriam.” turner's expiation. slavery arouses conscience. drill. rotation. inequality necessary. valuations of cities. the lecture's fault. aunt mary on the soul. hear what the morning says. diamonds. candidates for social circle; the principle. low tone. eloquence. gloucester land-purchase. the workcure. columbus's letter. albert h. tracy of buffalo. contents margaret fuller in society. webster in the senate. seeing the world. love of money general. women sail, not steer. poem takes care of itself. heat and imagination in savants. les stériles. joy of beauty. the egyptian question of the soul-tests. infamy of the slave law; mr. hoar; new hampshire statesmen ; webster. everett's tarnished fame. the wolf unreformed. choate. webster's fall; the union made odious. mischief of legal crime. the truckling preachers. where are the men of honour ? the people must rise. the old fugitive slave law and the new; hypocrisy ; weakness of a lic. men of honour will still be born. criminal statute illegal. hayne avenged. demoralizing the people. everett forgets his speeches. immoral laws scarce in history. nemesis appears. judge shaw. compensation to south would be cheap. effect of sims case. manilius an early newton. napoleon. history of liberty. elizabeth hoar on campbell's life ; maudlin tears. the lecturing art. house of fame. ballot or gun? the guide. unfit companions. attachments ; balanced antagonisms. allingham ; young poets and the masters. prudence ; timeliness. nature hard to find ; the poet-paradox. knitters of the union. treat drastically. false to duty, time of despair. servant to one's lecture. dualism, double consciousness. vasari's anecdotes. concord votes. imbecility of good party ; lip-service. tulips . . . . . . . . . . . 159–213 illusions. events of nineteenth century. our cause ; destiny. channing on goodness. béranger's democracy. aristocracy's degrees ; our great leaders ; webvasari's app ; lip-serne 6.9-213 contents ster. the governing machine. metamorphosis. margaret fuller's gentilesse. fate should help, not dismay. southern life. heterogeneity ; character. wealth is power, not a toy. canova on phidias. sibylline leaves. power of smallness. the young speaker ; napoleon's head. inspired discoverers. fate, compensation. the man behind the town. true and false. boston. wilkinson, power held too lightly. everett brought us german thought. america's sifted immigrants. bias. mansfield on investment ; eben francis. thoreau's great gifts. john adams on courage ; his sayings. horace greeley's energy. pan and the muses. spheral people. greece and jewry. important blood-fusions. tricky politicians. webster's treachery ; everett's pictured terrors. nature's economy. our thirty nations. views of the wards, father and son. the older law. the united states commissioner. 1775 forgotten. the ship of state. intellect and love ; chastity. doctrine of leasts. liberty. the school-tax. nature's provident generosity. courtesy. chaucer on poet and scholar. fate. pythagoras; incarnation. the masked power. which are realities ? men fit for the day. autobiographical. eloquence. compensation of bad law. disguised tyrants. mediation always ; life's panorama. tie of person and event. tools of the age. the vesicle. shakspeare's pinnacle. man fits his place. emmanuel scherb's lecture. the longed-for sign. jenny lind. a friend on the dæmons. perpetual push. goethe the pivot. french morale. providence's visits. mar. garet fuller illuminator, not writer. bulwer's caxtons. xii contents carlyle's mirror of writing. sense of beauty. the pickerel. history an allegory. channing on nahant and truro; giants of art. beauty must penetrate. selection in art. the solvent mind. new metaphysics wanted ; tides; inner world. man's aim. edith rejects heaven. channing on hawthorne. experience. celebration of intellect. the walking facility. transmigration. woman's convention ; criticism. talk with thoreau ; loneliness ; moral union. neighbor hosmer. say, no; faith. car. lyle's life of sterling. personal influence. family types. culture will absorb hell. practice needed in metaphysics, all-related man. intellect the king ; culture. party politics ; currency ; tariff. reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 214–267 journal xliii 1852 (from journals do and go) our interest in the whole ; the great words. the chosen brave. reality. of henry thoreau. the writing of “ days." golden age of philosophy. opportunity ; my farm. canvas-back ducks. our statesmen. jeremiah mason on law-school. mr. arnold on merchants and new bedford. the undoing of riches. a strong person. our politics like european. right reading. dancing test. the tin-pan fable. little things beautiful. samuel rogers and aristocracy. tissenet and indians. public extravagance. « north. . contents xiii man” quatrain. gazetted terms. henry james's wish. man a battery. the purist voter. the pagan day. illustrations. montreal and quebec ; the seigneuries. speech to st. george's society. truthspeaking english. sixteenth century poets. snug and bleak homes. kossuth. delia bacon's belief. translations of the classics. sylvester judd. abuse of mind. man a torpedo to man; exaltation; congelation; the man who thaws us. what is there to save ? contrasts in friends. great poets of the middle classes. napoleon. thoreau meets his walking thoughts. walk with channing; the dog; haunting lines ; the lupines. children. pity to lose the old scholar's stores; conceit; equivalence. metonomy. walk to nine acre corner. channing's views ; “ the arboretum.” trances for hire. new hampshire public men. manners in trifles. washington's noble face. thoreau on lightning-rods. beauty and strength in poetry and art. · webster's fate overtakes him. english limitation. man's need of man. he sees and passes, but . light remains ; woman's tours de force. thoreau and the preacher. margaret swan's high experience. brothers. thoreau praises the weeds. robert c. winthrop ; his oration of despair. plotinus. saadi. whig doctrine. souls ; nature uses all things. flowers at the saw-mill brook. burns and language. test of eloquence . . . . . . . . . 269-313 golden mean in girls' temperaments. delia bacon on lord bacon. good neighborhood. which slaves to help? alcott visits his birthplace. america's claim on england. horatio greenough's visit ; his philosophy xiv contents and art. our four good and strong men ; the horati. english religion. poetry is truth ; it creates. cheap pessimism. efficiency. hume's history and modern history. robert peel. pedantry. courtesy. superlative, true and false. hobbes on books and conversation. swallowing lies. the elizabethan. english names. the lapidary. western doctrine of assaults. english brag. people's respect for law. quatrain, « nature in leasts."-wealth and labour ; the equalizations. mastery. “ pantheist." quatrain, “ samuel hoar.” learning for the people. transmigration. plymouth beach and boats. greenough's sayings. school girls. slight differences of our parties. european influences ; expense ; church and trade ; time-serving. the giants. marshfield ; webster dying; praise and blame. calhoun. england's fear of science ; her lacks. previous question. slavery ; che constitution and the odious law; thoreau's hope. man's power of thought. massachusetts poor in literature. omens. pitt, peel, burke, fox. virility; agassiz. inventors ; boyden, bigelow. we wait for helpful literature. ideals for nations; england, france, america. the century, its combinations and inventions. sphinx; nations culminate. cant. uncle tom's cabin. napoleon iii. stories from houssaye; rivarol on mirabeau; boucher, lantara, and fontenelle. fool of the family ; insane success. england's measure; roger bacon, wykeham, chaucer, shakspeare, the martyrs. dr. kirkland and professor brazer ; ministers. philadelphia boys. karl marx's statement versified. walk to lincoln. channing's humours ; x contents thoreau. countess of pembroke. true bards. john quincy adams's rules. english university men. reading . . . . . . . . . . . 314-356 journal xliv 1853 (from journals vs, do, and ho) shakspeare, english genius. greek mythology. bards ; thomas taylor, ossian. england's results. stand by your order. problem of alcott. boston's low estate. thought for sale. english statesmen. sea-serpent. poetry of faith. welsh triad. troilus and cressida. wellington's superiority. church of england. tacitus on north sea. german origin. england's wealth and inventions. american clipper-ships. drive with channing; his humours ; shawsheen river. alcuin ; the sea. the shipyard. nature's profit and loss. english a good mixture. thoreau's austerity. arthur hugh clough in new england. creating a national will. thierry's history of the normans. sylvan's (thoreau's) rightful possession of the land. the artist coffin-maker. the seaside abolishes time. nature's balanced gifts. asser and alfred. english talent ; modern advance. mackintosh on slave-owners. feats of thinking ; game of intellect. free or slave? english government generous, plenty of strong men; absurd fetiches. thurlow's question. newton's pippins. a poison-plot denounced. scholar must face alienation. nahant. clough's departure. england's xvi contents spell. malthus or poet? paradox of christians. horatio greenough's death ; his praise. english reserves ; exclusiveness. fate and instinct. frighten your representative. lenox; conformity or character ? new york. henry james; on thackeray, new york, and boston. charles newcomb's noble letters. alcott as companion, his strength and weakness. thoreau the stoic. thought. girls' boarding-schools. americans underdosed. the visit to cape cod. lion's roar. roussel on women. scholar must have convictions ; cannot escape his age. england and france, chateaubriand. ideas not prized; life's disillusioning. toussenel's passional zoology . 357-403 nature's ways. horses of romance. man's portion at creation. clarendon. england has no idealist since shakspeare. sub-mind. nature's fine instruments. poem “ freedom.” england's aowering. man's antechambers to eternity. drops of idealism; bacon; milton. divine physician's warning needed. man's range. the higher logic of creation. beauty of greek fable. trust your humanity and nature; the city. cæsar in britain. daguesseau and the poem. new power our loadstone. universities vs. the fountain. crimes not absolute. alcote's expansion, and trust in nature. superlative. a liturgy. women's side-issues. mother-wit. illusions. thoreau's standard. dangers of quotation. the author hides. a real john bull. english despair; thackeray; they reject the ideal, too personal; culture needed. cross of greek and gothic; facts a superstition. rainy day books. jacobi's saying on the poet. the sunset's spell. self-respect escontents 'xvii sential. the x, or missing link. generalizers are the nobility. the town the unit of the republic, saxon and latin words. materialism does not alarm mystic. teachers exist for one word. shadow. world full of memory. vigor welcome. the admirable x. dr. holmes on lecturing; and thoreau ; the little girl's question. agassiz and water. women teach us. friedrich grimm on money in politics. the young sciolist. hume. firdousi's saying. death of madam emerson ; her infuence and character. epitaph of. charlemagne's mother. poet's thought practical. the majority. france ; mirabeau's letter to lafayette. notes on france ; quotations. garrison and phillips. reading . . . . . . . . . 404-437 journal xlv 1854 (from journals ho, do, and 10) lectures. the michigan lawyer's compliment ; dr. bradford's verses on the school-boy's poem. the nebraska bill. big wisconsin; the sixty-five mile sleighride. humming metres. man must learn organically fike the early men. death and judgment; the door open. no finalities in nature. reality in writing. the great man in time; friends; england has two nations. speech on anniversary of webster's seventh of march speech; disappointment. alas for the majority. culture's rhetoric. vulgarity of wealth; boston's false position. invisible force. thoreau's helpful counxviii contents sel. verses from tennyson. napoleon on science. plotinus, porphyry, synesius. “ spirit”-rappings. the hidden to-day. evelyn's story. william wall's sayings. hallam, etc., and englishmen deaf to the ideal. browning and tennyson. christopher wren. the minority. law of adrastia. bonaparte, his sense and admirable criticism. man as his real faith. the indifferent voter. the man on horseback. hafiz on brave cheerfulness. knowledge of men equal to telegraph. english and french characteristics; the railroad-president and the irishman. hallam's merit and limitations. truth never barren. macaulay. solitude's harm. hobbes on democracy. roederer on napoleon ; his sayings. the step from johnson to carlyle. prayer for continuity. england can change front ; at need the rome of to-day ; her solidarity ; her men of ideas. children in heaven's gardens. the old painters. man's sequence of discoveries. good out of evil; tennyson's lines. thoreau on california gold-digging. men's views of the virgin and her son. english noble forerunners. the few great judges. proclus interprets the oracle on socrates. our representative duty. the english judges in scotland. strife between english reformers and conservatives. women must learn to listen. the williamstown address; the scholar class, their debt to the founders ; their past achievement ; the ebb of spirit; scholar responsible ; faith. pythagoras's just fame. plato and his followers. french language. our fathers' blunder in concessions to slavery; the bribe and the slow nemesis. abolition policy not broad and high enough. 439-476 contents xix swedenborg's ideas received to-day. cant of the day. our escort of friends. man, not a man ; universal in relations ; science not chronological. ends not means. illogical policy; undue reverence for law when immoral ; ascent the measure of a man; he must live to an end. the sacred lot of the scholar ; he must reverence his soul ; love shall expand his powers. war a teacher ; have you fought out yours ? history of the minot house. macaulay on bacon ; argument of sensualism ; bacon summoned as a witness. walk to estabrook farms with channing. scholars' surrender to the worldly. a day. priceless thought. man can write but one book. liebig to faraday on pure science. hafiz on love. favorite topics. all characters in your village. the athletic english. style a test. confidences of books. feats. quotation adds value. fine old english language. the pivotal bacon. notes on style. locke. bacon's life explained. poetry seeks resemblance; poem is welcomed, the poet's mind not. our debt to a few english authors. minds do after their kind. hooker defines imagination. ecclesiastical councils, their residuum. the “ white feather" questions. nectarius's good act. the animal share in writing. past legislatures like our own. hooker, and value of ideal dogmas. the originator of heaven's hierarchy. elizabeth hoar on common sense. old english study of the greeks. temperance makes genius. universities. the two nations in england again. cause of first visit to england. charm and power of transition. haydon on english navy. the envied wife. franklin on babies. xx contents solitude justified. the great beryl. channing. the sunset. old english poets. sidney on puglione's praise of horsemen. imagination. intellect. science must have soul. queteletism ; saving reactions in america. success a measure of brain ; common sense. madame de sablé on thanks to god. english and french before alma. nature gives us points. english finality ; yet melioration proceeds. swedenborg good for his age. idealists rare, yet present. majorities rather uncultured than wicked. choate. judge shaw. reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 477-511 journal xlvi 1855 (from journals no and ro) struggle for right. aim in europe. confucius on ceremony ; manners against extravagance. man's polarity. revere self. question to student. the romany girl. historians as advocates. plotinus on the dance of the universe. the dervish alcott, his magnanimity and tested courage. criticisms on carlyle (1). positive and superlative. alfieri on french. kossuth on english and french soldier. man must be rich in manners. subjectiveness ; governor reynolds ; thought explains man. view of england. lord lyndhurst's remark. integrity. england in hamil! ton, ontario. savage christians. aunt mary's blessing. niebuhr. learn the steps. the european stock. nature teaches radiation ; museums mortify. the xxi contents mighty greeks. landor. tennyson. rhyme and rhetoric. quotation rightly used ; burke's saying. common fame; the master-workman or the thinker must furnish the transit. common people unconsciously value culture. philip randolph's surprise at emerson's anti-slavery work. have your gospel at first-hand. out-of-door thoughts ; the design above the finish. prima pbilosopbia ; lamblichus, proclus, porphyry, heracleitus, chaldæan oracles. memory. science inspired or dull. percival. passion. nature helps man to express thought. jove and phæbus. the unanswerable answer. webster and the judge ; confidence and power in court. house-hunting ; search for solitude. culture for results : everything teaches ; take steps in order. milton's reserve; flattery in dedications. the loved one's foreignness. improvisation. channing's poetry. verses from ritson. hafiz on the sonnet. the thin stream of thought in the world. the believer. life expensive. idealist. bias. tonic opposition. english of xvi and xvii centuries. englishman's pocket. anecdotes of newton. nature shows everything once in the large. 514-546 identities for intellect. rig veda sanhita ; prayers to agni, the maruts and aswins. varuna. vishnu's three steps. behmen on the stars. cants here and abroad. old and modern english writers. our untrained eyes. jacob behmen. write what you know. our leading men. attitude towards death of different men. greenough on influence of climate. niebuhr on man and country. culture. dismal art. illusion of earth. niebuhr on many books. sleepy hollow. xxii contents schiller on burial. cheerfulness. native innocence. nature gives our weights and measures ; the compass. running. statues help us. the cid. birthplace. doctrine of metamorphosis. the year-flower. scholar's weakness. choate on english and fox. wordsworth's royal osmunda. morals. coleridge's influence. louis napoleon. late at meals. the question of women's rights and interests ; they live in the kingdom of illusion. low stimulation. fuseli on the greeks. the church and other institutions of god. theories of creation. immortality ; superlative. aristocracy, self-reliance, manners. alcott's triumph at the conversation. identical, oceanic thought. england's discreditable partnership with napoleon iii. king alfred. tribal bias. alcott's account of himself. self-occupation. warped science. builder and structure. depression. origin of “ stave" in music ; scandinavian custom. thoreau's question. the sky of intellect, its priest; the lords of mind. thoreau on health of intellect. aunt mary's amenities. moore's memory. result, not artist, counts. good and evil. suggestion even from weeds. heaven is sense of power. dangerous attraction of details. notes for amherst address; the wealth, the light, the distinction of thought ; the wise men call ideas gods. memoirs of moore. the new professions. richter's search. sismondi; men of one idea ; thoughts few because elastic ; nations of one book. the amherst professors. bubb dodington ; aristocracy now diffused. story of thackeray. sydney smith's opinion. melioration in fruit a hint on creation. illusion of contents xxiii horse-chestnuts. “the newness.” age of bronze in england ; their scientific conclusions ; stupid universities accomplish something. [some misfortunes of the year.] genius and talent. the mushroom-taster. trebellius on the gauls. real tests suggested for colleges ; hopes for live men there. exclusion is for cause. skepticism. house of commons. rugged constitution. chicago viewed from concord. radiation of manners. hotel rules in davenport ; the mississippi. leclaire the half-breed. emerson's titles in iowa. reading . . . . . . . . . 547-588 illustrations °william ellery channing . . . . . . frontispiece from the photograph by h. g. smith in “poems of sixty-five years,” edited by f. b. sanborn. 'margaret fuller ossoli........ 116 after the painting by william hicks in the possession of mrs. marion low. charles king newcomb . . . . . . . . . 396 from a daguerreotype. journal home lectures town and country club reading persian poetry preparing new book concord walks journal xl 1849 (from journals rs, tu, and az) [all page references to passages from the journals used by mr. emerson in his published works are to the centenary edition, 1903–05.] « parcite, dum propero; mergite, dum redeo.” : martialis. [the opening year found mr. emerson at his nornial winter task of lecturing, but refreshed by his visit to england, scotland, and france, and the meeting with interesting men and women: also he had the sure pleasure found in coming back to his family and near friends, and in bearing his part as an american. in this excursion he had found also what he sought, 1 mr. emerson loved to quote the verse in the scottish ballad « the drowned lovers,” the last lines of which are a good translation of that of martial: o roaring clyde, ye roar ower loud, your stream seems wondrous strang; make me your wreck when i come back, but spare me as i gang. buchan's ballads of the north of scotland. journal [age 45 “a whip for his top”; new experiences were to be digested, to find their place in his work. he gave a course in boston, and lectures in roxbury, cambridge, worcester, gloucester, framingham, northampton, providence, portland, and smaller towns. mr. alcott had moved to boston, and did not return to concord for nine years.] (from rs) january, 1849. the word god is the algebraicx.in morals, and the hebrews with right philosophy made it unspeakable. but the stupid world, finding a word, assumes this scientific for a baptismal name, and talks of him as easily as of captain gulliver. circumstance. napoleon said, “view man as we may, he is as much the result of his physical and moral atmosphere, as of his own organization.” – quételet. perhaps one of the most real advantages of railroads, and now of california, to the people of new england will be the knowledge of geography which they diffuse. if a man is going to california, he announces it with some hesitation; because it is a confession that he has failed at home. 1849) a magnet. greville 5 you tell me they are hospitable in germany; yes, but i do not travel to find hospitable people. if i knew of any magnet that would point to that quarter where are the people whom i wish to see, i would sell all to buy it, and to travel in the direction it indicated, though to samarcand or timbuctoo. from a treatise of humane learning. music instructs me which be lyric moods,let her instruct me rather how to show no weeping voice for loss of fortune's goods. geometry gives measure to th' earth below; rather let her instruct me how to measure what is enough for need, what fit for pleasure. she teacheth how to lose nought in my bounds, and i would learn with joy to lose them all. the artist shows which way to measure rounds, but i would know how first man's mind did fall, how great it was, how little now it is, and what that knowledge was which wrought us this. fulke greville, lord brooke. since to be reverenced, loved, obeyed, and known, man must effect with powers above his own. lord brooke, fame and honour. journal (age 45 all what the world admires comes from within; a doom whereby the sin condemns the sin. lord brooke, fame and honour. с was i saw on saturday at ward's the ludovisi juno, which is again one of the miracles of old sculpture, and indeed of human art, as unaccountable as shakspeare's drama. there was never that face or figure in nature, from which it could be modelled. i am sure that the artist drew from a cloud when he moulded these features. then the jove's head was a combed mountain. “seculum boc bumanum non est seculum.' “ quatuor [tres] in bominibus distinxi conditiones apertas evidentes. est cui vita baec arcta, quem gloriosa altera consequitur. est cui vita baec est excellens, ast postea non erit vita sequens. est qui utramque amittens, nec banc, nec sequentem vitam, babeat.”. — ali ben abu taleb. . 1 this human age is not an age. 2 among mankind i have noted three obvious and evident conditions:: the man who finds this life narrow, but followed by another glorious one; the man who finds this life excellent, but after it no other will follow; the man who, wasting both, may have life neither here nor hereafter. 1849] spirit of the age 7 spirit of the age. now that the man was ready, the horse was brought. the timeliness of this invention of the locomotive must be conceded. to us americans it seems to have fallen as a political aid. we could not else have held the vast north america together which now we engage to do. it was strange, too, that when it was time to build a road across to the pacific, a railroad, a shiproad, a telegraph, and, in short, a perfect communication in every manner for all nations, 't was strange to see how it is secured. the good world soul understands us well. how simple the means. suddenly the californian soil is spangled with a little gold-dust here and there in a mill race in a mountain cleft; an indian picks up a little, a farmer, and a hunter, and a soldier, each a little; the news flies here and there, to new york, to maine, to london, and an army of a hundred thousand picked volunteers, the ablest and keenest and boldest that could be collected, instantly organize and embark for this desart, bringing tools, instruments, books, and framed houses, with them. such a well-appointed colony as never was planted before arrive with the speed of sail and steam on these remote shores, bringing with them the necessity that the government ec vernmer journal (age 45 shall instantly proceed to make the road which they themselves are all intimately engaged to assist. it was strange, too, that all over the world about the same moment mineral treasures were uncovered. we heard of gold in various parts of the united states ; in siberia ; in africa on the lomat river; and in other parts of europe. silver, quicksilver, platina, copper, lead, iron, and coal, all appeared in new quarters about the same time, i. e., in the year 1848. contradictions. we remember that we forget. our freedom is necessary. the preacher of eternity dates our chronology. march 19. gravitation is the operator in what we call mechanical division. gravitation is nature's grand vizier and prime favorite. much that we call chemical, even electrical action, is really, at last, his deed. look at the sponge-like foliaceous forms which wet sand and clay take when falling with the water, in spring, on the steep sides of “the deep cut” in the railroad, and one will suspect that gravity, too, can ne 1849] gravity. dull science 9 make a leaf. in morals, again, gravity is the laissez-faire principle, or destiny, or optimism, than which nothing is wiser or stronger. that nature works after the same method as the human imagination. that nature makes flowers, as the mind makes images. that metaphysics might anticipate jussieu. that organic matter, and mind, got from the same law, so correspond. c. eas our science is very shiftless and morbidly wise, wise when it is not wanted, blind where we most wish to see. what a pother in the last twenty years about geology! geologists were crossing all seas and lands, like so many squibs. well, why did not they find california ? they all knew what all men most wanted. why did not they find the copper-mines? there is no columbus in these sciences with an anticipating mind; but they are like critics and amateurs; when the heel of a trapper's foot has turned up gold or copper or quicksilver, they come and give it a name. march 24. the indians were a sort of money, it seems, in spanish colonies. and the poor lucayans 10 journal (age 45 were treated according to the proverb: “the kid was seethed in its mother's milk.” columbus seems to have been the principal introducer of american slavery. see helps's history of the conquerors of america and their bondsmen. town and country club. at alcott's last tuesday (march 20) we had a meeting of thirty men, and discussed the expediency of a club and clubroom. alcott was festal and olympian, as always, when friends come; his heart is then too great; his voice falters and chokes in his throat. every newcomer seems large, sacred, and crowned to him. it was proposed that the club should rent the room in which we sat (alcott's), and that he should be declared perpetual secretary. it is much wanted by the country scholars, a café or reading-room in the city, where, for a moderate subscription, they can find a place to sit in and find their friends, when in town, and to write a letter in, or read a paper. better still, if you can add certain days of meeting when important questions can be debated, communications read, etc., etc. it was proposed by hale and others, some time since, to form in boston a “ graduates' club.” this would be that. 1849) clubs. english drill ii then the ministers have a “hook and ladder,” or a “ railroad club.” enthusiasm is a fine thing, my son, so it be guided by prudence, says the grocer; which is like ellery channing's saying of c, “yes, he would draw very well, if he had any talent for it.” april 1. imbecility and energy. the key to the age is this thing, and that thing.'.... england. the striking difference between english and our gentlemen is their thorough drill; they are all etonians, they know prosody, and tread securely through all the humanities. the university is felt. it needs that our people should have closer association as scholars, that they may have their grammar, gazetteer, and dibdin not so dusty and cobwebbed; and i wish our club to be dignified with literary exercises. may 3. i set out in the warren lot a couple of pears, seedlings from my bartlett, which i budded myself. the best had died in the i for the rest of the paragraph, see “ power" (conduct of life, p. 54). 12 journal (age 45 heater piece,' and these two poor old-looking young things remained. let us see if they can thrive. teschemacher rejected the suggestion of a quickness or scientific genius as being any substitute for constant industry in analysis and experiment. martial gave me to think of the faculty of writers. he can detach the object with unerring taste, and knows he can; sees that the power, perfect in him, differs infinitely from the imperfect approaches to the same power in ordinary scribblers. it is chemical mixture, and not mechanical, which makes the writer. the others have not intelligence enough to know they are not writers. one thing more. martial suggests again, as every purely literary book does, the immortality. we see we are wiser than we were: we are older. can nature afford to lose such improvements ? is nature a suicide? seen macaulay. the historian of england or france seems to be compelled to treat of england as i the little triangle of land which mr. emerson had bought near his home where the cambridge turnpike leaves the “great road” to boston via lexington. 1849) tides. duty first 13 of an englishman; the nation has a continuous existence, memory, history in his head, knows his rights. who buys channing's house buys a sunset.' it should be sold in a fair day; then the purchaser gets rivers, mountains, villages, in the bargain. i would not, if i owned that place, sell it. i would hold on to it as long as i could see. i meet in the street people full of life. i am, of course, at ebb tide ; they at flood; they seem to have come from the south, or from the west, or from europe. i see them pass with envy at this gift which includes all gifts. ness (from tu) valor pays rents as surely as land. up heart, and dispose of the day's duty first, and the dividend of peace and power will be paid. the proverb of “business before friends,” is god's truth too. the way to wealth of every kind is plainly along the upper road, and not by state street. 1 mr. channing at that time owned a house on the slope of punkatasset, north of the river below the old hunt farm. 14 journal (age 45 convert yourself into wealth, and you shall buy kings. sordid calculations convert you into punk and abhorrence. the doctrine that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude— that all beauty and power, which men covet, are born out of that humility egg which they disdain is alternately conceded and suggested. how we love nobility! priest, poet, republican cannot keep his eyes off it. yet how rare! the whole society and every member of it is first or last adjudged to be “snobbish.” why, because every member is referring or looking up to others, who, in their turn, are referring; and only one in ten thousand is a person of elevated sentiments whose condition flows from his character, — secure, serene, and his own friend? from a better man than myself (i used to say) i can easily expect a finer thought: from a worse, i am incredulous. but that better we so slowly believe. plato suggested, after pythagoras, thorough culture. 'tis pity our dismasted, rudderless hulks drifting about on the sea of life should not be taken into port. pity that the commonwealth should not set its horace manns on 1849) plato. word and deed 15 applying the stern culture suggested in the republic to the adults, and so keep them up. when the school and college drop them, let plato take them up, and life would no longer be forlorn, and they left to the stock quotations by day, and cards at night. i was about to add just now, in speaking of morals as the foundation of nobility, that we do with that as our farmers, who carry all their best peaches and apples to market and feed their families with the refuse. we parade our nobilities in poems, instead of working them up into happiness. then we must bring the day about with draff and prose. feats. he wrote a fair hand and he could draw the same lines in capitals with his skates on the ice. giotto, the painter, could draw with his pen a perfect circle. tu sei piu tondo che l'o di giotto. mr. sylvester told me that farie, the engineer, could draw a model of any loom or machine, after once seeing it. he went through mr. strutt's mills, and drew from memory designs of the machinery, which were printed in 16 journal [age 45 rees's cyclopædia, to the great indignation of mr. strutt. swedenborg. i look on swedenborg as on kant, newton, leibnitz, goethe, humboldt, men of a larger stature than others, and possessing very great advantages in that preternatural size. he and newton were both cracked or bursten; yet 't is easier to see the reflection of the sphere in globes of this magnitude, cracked or not, than in the common minute globe. one must study quételet to know the limits of human freedom. in 20,000 population, just so many men will marry their grandmothers.' ... clough's beautiful poem i read again last in the sitting-room. 't is a kind of new and better carlyle; the homeric iteration is one secret; the truly modern question and modern treatment another; and there is abundance of life and experience in it. good passages are, the prayer to the sun and moon and hours to pass slowly over philip and elspie; and good youth in it, as elizabeth hoar says. i passages which follow are printed in “ fate" (conduct of life, p. 18). 1849) realism. finishers 17 the wisdom of words every day might surprise us. after a man has made great progress, and has come, as he fancies, to heights hitherto unscaled, the common words still fit his thought; nay, he only now finds for the first time how wise they were ; — “macrocosm,” reason, conscience, substance, accidence, nature, relation, fortune, fate, genius, element, person; — 't will be long before he needs a new coat. the old mythology still serves us, not of jove, mars, etc., but of nature, destiny, fortune. words therefore seem wiser than any man, and to be tools provided by the genius of humanity. after the student has wasted all night speculating on his analogies and ties to the world and to the starry heaven, the first words he meets in the morning book are microcosm, macrocosm. realism. do it. bridge the gulf well and truly from edge to edge, and the dunces will find it out. there is but one verdict needful, and that is mine; if i do it, i shall know it. happy is he who finishes his work for its own sake; and the state and the world is happy that has the most of such finishers. the world will do justice to such. it cannot otherwise : but 18 (age 45 journal never on the day when the work is newly done and presented. every man settles his own rate. realism. one would think, from the talk of men, that riches and poverty were a great matter, — whilst they are really a thin costume,' and our life, the life of all of us, is identical. for we transcend circumstance continually, and taste the real quality of existence; as, in our employments, which only differ in the manipulation, but express the same laws; or, in our thoughts, which wear no broadcloth, and taste no ice creams. we see god face to face every hour and know the savor of nature. days. there is the least deliberation in our life. we worry through the world, and do not unfold ourselves with leisure and dignity, and adorn our days suitably. especially i observe that we have not learned the art to avail ourselves of the virtues and powers of our companions. the day is gloomy with politics or bitter with debt. common sense is the wick of the candle. intellect. descartes being asked, where was i see electra, in potter's euripides (r. w. e.'s note). 1849] thoughts. beauty 19 his library, showed a calf which he was dissecting, and said, “this is my library.". · we may well ask, “what is the effect of thoughts?” hafiz very properly inquires, “why changes not the inner mind violet earth into musk?” “ dürer's pencil, which first knew the laws of faces, and then faces drew.” reason of the aversation from metaphysics is the voice of nature. nature made the eye to see other things, but not itself. if you have sharp eyes, use them, not brag of them. beauty. “things that are natural are never without a certain grace and excellence. the cracks and rents of a well-baked loaf induce a desire to partake of it. so likewise the cleft fig, the luscious olive, the spiked grain,” etc. — marcus antoninus. oss those who painted angels and nativities and descents from the cross were also writing biographies and satires, though they knew it not. the history of humanity is no hopping squib, 20 journal (age 46 but all its discoveries in science, religion, and art, consecutive and correlated. “i had rather go a-fishing,” said the chimneysweep at marblehead, — when it was proposed to abate his price a little, and enraged the whole town. immortality. i notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. i hate quotations. tell me what you know. may 25. two gravestones have been planted in my path within the year, ellen hooper's and david scott's.' ellen hooper connected herself with all the noblest and most loved figures that have cheered and enriched me in my own land (or with all but one: my own ellen she never knew) and she gave a value by her interest in all my writings. words. the collegians have seldom made a better word than “squirt" for a showy sentence. so i find “tin” for money always comic. “honey-pie,” says state street, when there is flattery ; “all my eye,” when any exaggeration. 1 the edinburgh painter. 2 née miss sturgis. 1849] wilkinson. new church 21 in conversation the game is, to say something new with old words, and you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place. wilkinson, swedenborg's pupil, after one hundred years a philosopher-critic with a brain like bacon.— why not read in england? are there no mornings in england ? do they read dickens when they first get up, as well as overnight? swedenborgian church an imprisonment in the letter; never a hero stirs out of it. ah, the imagination has a flute that gets the atoms of our frame in a dance like planets, and once so flagellated, the whole man reeling drunk to the music, they never quite subside to their old marble.' 1 compare the closing lines, in the poems, of " merlin" ii:subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, murmur in the house of life, sung by the sisters as they spin ; in perfect time and measure they build and unbuild our echoing clay, as the two twilights of the day fold us music-drunken in. 22 journal (age 46 can't forgive swedenborg the confusion of planes.' we will pardon a popular orator for a mistake in categories, but not a categorist, not aristotle, kant, or swedenborg. has not the intellect sins? heshall be degraded out of olympus for a thousand years, and shall not eat ambrosia for that term. let him be tried by the law of his tribe. high crime and misdemeanor, ... swedenborg was the last christian. nearness. really the soul is near things, because it is the centre of the universe, so that astronomy and nature and theology date from where the observer stands. there is no quality in nature's vast magazines he cannot touch ; no truth in science he cannot see; no act in will he cannot verify, — there where he stands. i conceive the value of railroads to be this, in education, namely, to unite the advantages of town and country life, neither of which we can spare.'. .. a great deal that is not set down in the bill. 1 much that is omitted at the end of this paragraph is printed in “swedenborg" (representative men, p. 140). 2 the rest of this passage is printed in “ culture” (conduct of life, p. 48). 1849) children. alchemist 23 i pay the schoolmaster, but 't is the schoolboys that educate my son. the children divide their waking time between school, fruit, and the cats. i like to see them learn the use of cats; then 't is worth while to suffer a dog in the house a little; and after, be sure to let them learn the use of horses. the tree needs water, and digging about, and pruning, and protection from its enemies the slug, the louse, the borer, and so on. more than all, it needs food; it will die without food; if you want fruit, you must give manure. well, then, a pretty case you make out for the cultivator. well, it is not gainful, and yet it seems to me much that i have brought a skilful chemist into my ground and keep him there overnight, all day, all summer, for an art that can take common water and clod, and by means of sunshine, manufacture the handsomest and most delicious louise bonne de jerseys, bartletts, bergamots, and brown berries, an inimitable manner which no confectioner can approach; and his method of working is no less beautiful than his result.' i a portion of this passage is printed in “ country life," which is found only in the centenary edition (natural history of intellect, p. 146). 24 journal (age 46 in the drought, the pear-tree roots murmured in the dark, and said, they were sorely put to it for water, and could not go on another day, supplying food to the tree above them. but there is the kind old master who so tended us, and visits the tree daily; we hear his footsteps every morn. if we could only give him a sign of our condition. be it so. i will instantly, said the taproot, hang him out a signal on the highest bough of the tree, and we will see if he can understand us. so the taproot ceased working, and the top bough wanting food, drooped and hung its head. the master, you may be sure, was not long in seeing the withering of his favorite, and, much alarmed, he ran in haste and brought a water-pot and soon after a barrel of water, and abundantly refreshed the roots, which, thus restored, showed their good humor to the very top of the tree. “your pears, which you raise, cost you more than mine, which i buy.” — yes, they are costly, but we all have expensive vices; you play at billiards, and i at pear trees. who climbs best? the monkey; no, the squirrel goes higher. no, sap climbs better, and will go into the top bough, and to the last vein and 1849) riches. martial 25 edge of the highest leaf on the tree. yes, but a drop of water climbs higher, for look, there is a cloud above the tree. well, heat climbs higher than water, and space higher than heat. riches. neither will poverty suit every complexion. socrates and franklin may well go hungry and in plain clothes, if they like; but there are people who cannot afford this, but whose poverty of nature needs wealth of food and clothes to make them decent. martial is the literature of aristocracy. see the famous epigram de porsenna et mucio scavola (lib. i, 22). and now read this de porcia uxore bruti :conjugis audisset fatum cum porcia bruti, et subtracta sibi quæreret arma dolor: nondum scitis, ait, mortem non posse negari ? credideram satis hoc vos docuissc patrem. dixit, et ardentes avido bibit ore favillas. i nunc, et ferrum, turba molesta, nega. lib. i, epig. 43. “ ille ego sum nulli nugarum laude secundus," says this ancient herrick in the ode ad avitum, and all the english lyrists are much indebted 26 journal (age 46 to him ; herrick chiefly. here is the original doctor fell. ad sabidium. non amo te, sabidi, nec possum dicere quare; hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te. martial, like æsop, or horace, or homer, or a bible, shows that one book can avail to touch all the points in the circle of daily manners, and furnish a popular literature, -as well as a hundred. [here follow many references to the odes of martial, ending with this line in which mr. emerson delighted as showing the elegance of self-service, his own practice:-) at mihi succurrit pro ganymede manus. “the wisdom and the arts of athens form in all polished communities a principal object of study, and, to comprehend and to enjoy them, is to be a gentleman.” — st. john. june 20. at our sad fire last night at the old courthouse and the store on the east side, which burned the court-house, james connor found a door among the chattels of one family, and neans 1849] the fire. st. anthony 27 carrying off that prize, he and sam staples : protected their backs by means of it from the scorching heat, whilst they directed the engine-pipe against the ten-footer under the elm tree. i had not seen a door perform such good extra service since its famed feat of the coverlet.' at new york, (june 13, 14, 15,) i read st. anthony's sermon to the fishes, full of bonbomie in the idea and the expletives, but ludicrously inapt in some of the points, e. g., reminding them how much our lord loved to eat them ; but kindly considered in reminding them how safe they were from rain, wind, dust, and deluges ; not afraid of crevasses. he should have reminded them of their few duties, they have the vacation we men sigh for; suggested a piscine philosophy in view of pike and grampus, and not failed to throw in an effective hint of transmigration and ascent to the i the admirable concord citizen alluded to in an earlier journal as married by mr. emerson, and as jailer of thoreau, alcott, and lane. 2 the story referred to earlier in the journals in which the poor children wondered what “ the poor little children did who had no door to lay on top of the bedclothes to keep them warm.” 28 (age 46 journal inconveniences of pantaloons and westminster catechism one of these days. in new york i saw catherine sedgwick, daughter of roderick sedgwick; also henry james. “for philosophy, o socrates, is an elegant thing, if any one moderately meddles with it; but if he is conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts the man,” said callicles. — taylor's plato. i think it a consideration of some importance, that the federal union takes away from its members the power of declaring peace and war: so that, let texas, and california, and minnesota, and oregon, be never so quarrelsome, once in the union, their hands are tied. july 1. i find england again this summer in macaulay's two volumes, as i found it, last summer, in london. the same country of wealth, of birth, of precedent, of decorum. the story is told with all that ability which one meets so abundantly in england, and in no other counime 1849) macaulay's history uni 20 29 try, — full of knowledge of books, and men, and customs, which it is creditable to know. the story is quite full of bon-ton. it is written with extreme diligence and is very entertaining and valuable from the amount of good information and curious anecdote, and really has claims to be a history of the people of england, as the author has studied to make it. the second volume is far the best, the character of james is so dramatically bad, and the character and conduct of william so excellent. at last, in the success of william, tears almost come to the eyes. the persons and incidents are so fine that it seems strange this period has been neglected so long. one sad reflection arises on all the course of the narrative, of wonder, namely, at the depravity of men in power, and at the shocking tameness with which it is endured. one would think the nation was all tailors, and mince-piemakers. the writer has a great deal of talent, but no elevation of mind. there is not a novel or striking thought in the book,.not a new point of view from which to consider the events, and never one thrill or pulse of moral energy imparted. he is always a fine, artificial english30 journal (age 46 man, and keeping the highway invariably; well bred, but for sale (all dated windsor castle). here is good black blood, english pluck, but no philosophy ;a deal of pamphlets now well bound. i cannot get enough alone to write a letter to a friend.' ... brag. the feeling of boston and massachusetts for a few years past has been like that of the shopmen and of a village on the morning of a cattle-show, or other holiday, which is to bring a crowd of strangers into the town; everybody is building booths, or arranging shop-windows, or laying tables ; everywhere a small pan to gather some rill of the expected silver shower. so fuss boston and massachusetts on the eve of a prodigious prosperity; and we build, and plant, and lay roads, and set up sign-posts, to attract our share of the general blessing. in new york, they characterise our hats and books and beauties as frogpondish; but we, on the other hand, pity the whole un-cochituated creation. 1 the rest, about hiding the house with trees, is in society and solitude (p. 4). 1849) kentucky. orchard 31 the kentuckian said that his country was “bounded on the east by the rising sun, on the north by the aurora borealis, on the west by the precession of the equinoxes, and on the south by the day of judgment.” mountain air better than gas or tobacco. july 13. yesterday, the day before, and to-day, another storm of heat, like that three weeks ago. the day is dangerous, the sun acts like a burning-glass on the naked skin, and the very slugs on the pear leaves seem broiled in their own fat. mercury 94º at 3 p.m. when a man dies in concord the neighbors sum his epitaph,“ he was a good provider,” or a bad. i took my hoe and water-pail and fell upon my sleepy pear trees, broke up the soil, pulled out the weeds and grass, i manured, and mellowed, and watered, pruned, and washed, and staked, and separated the clinging boughs by shingles covered with list : i killed every slug on every leaf. the detestable pear worm, which 32 journal (age 46 mimics a twig, i detected and killed. the poor tree tormented by this excessive attention and industry, must do something, and began to grow. my pears and apples were well favored, as long as i did not go beyond my own hedge: butif i went down to edmund's (hosmer] farm, his trees were three stories high, and high up in the air hung a harvest of fruit. calvinism. 't is curious that swedenborg should be entangled with calvinism. 'tis curious that all the great mathematicians, be they never so grand, should be unable to pass the materialism barrier. newton is rusty with calvinism. cuvier is calvinistic. all the science of england and france is; all but goethe and oken. plato and kepler only have united geometry to the poetic spirit. what to do with the stupendous old prig? s in dante pleases the friendly conversation with brunetto latino. — inferno xv, 82. education. ... in la mente m'è fitta, ed or m'accuora la cara buona imagine paterna 1849) dante's power 3,3 di voi, quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora m'insegnavate come l'uom s'eterna.' i think, if i were professor of rhetoric, teacher of the art of writing well to young men, i should use dante for my text-book. come hither, youth, and learn how the brook that flows at the bottom of your garden, or the farmer who ploughs the adjacent field, your father and mother, your debts and credits, and your web of habits are the very best basis of poetry, and the material which you must work up. dante knew how to throw the weight of his body into each act, and is, like byron, burke, and carlyle, the rhetorician. i find him full of the nobil volgare eloquenza ; that he knows “god damn,” and can be rowdy if he please, and he does please. yet is not dante reason or illumination and that essence we were looking for, i “in my memory is fixed and now comes to my heart the dear, kind, paternal image of you when in the world, hour by hour, you caught me how man makes himself eternal.” mr. emerson was reading dr. john aitken carlyle's admirable prose translation of the inferno, the original verse being given on the same page. from a letter to carlyle, written in january of this year, it would seem that mr. emerson might have been helpful in having an american edition got out by the harpers (carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 173, 174). 34 journal [age 46 but only a new exhibition of the possibilities of genius? here is an imagination that rivals in closeness and precision the senses. but we must prize him as we do a rainbow, we can appropriate nothing of him. could we some day admit into our oyster heads the immense figure which these flagrant points compose when united; the hands of phidias, the conclusion of newton, the pantheism of goethe, the all-wise music of shakespeare, the robust eyes of swedenborg! i think hindoo books excellent gymnastic for the mind as showing treatment.' ... passion is logical; and i note that the vine, symbol of the bacchus which intoxicates the world, is the most geometrical and tractable of all plants. the times. the cheap press and the universal reading, which have come in together, have caused a great many translations to be made from the greek, the german, the italian, and the french. bohn's library now furnishes me 1 the rest of this passage is in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 15). 1849) the times. tendency 35 with a new and portable plato, as it had already done with new goethes: and john carlyle translates dante. to me the command is loud to use the time by reading these books, and i should as soon think of foregoing the railroad ne telegraph as to neglect these. with these belong the mediæval chronicles, — richard of devizes, asser's life of alfred and the rest in bohn. a feature of the times is, that when i was born, private and family prayer was in the use of all well-bred people, and now it is not known. another feature of the age is the paramount place of natural history. sons e s men-in-nature. some persons have such determination or tendency, that, if by any heat their particles could be set free, so as to obey it, they would at once assume the forked or horned or clubbed or scaly forms, which they now suggest. august. correcting manuscripts and proofs for printing makes apparent the value of perspective as essential to good writing. once we said genius was health; but now we say genius is time. this doctrine of results, too, from which 36 (age 46 journal flows genius, also [appears ?] to be geometrical and mechanical, or, that gravitation reaches up into the sacred soul. on the rhine, dr. polidori said to byron, “after all, what is there you can do that i cannot?” “why, since you force me to say,” answered the other, “ i think there are three things i can do which you cannot.” polidori defied him to name them. “ i can,” said lord byron," swim across that river; i can snuff out that candle with a pistol shot at the distance of twenty paces; and i have written a poem, of which 14,000 copies were sold in one day.” — moore's life of byron. mr. harrison gray otis said, “ that it was of no use to tie up a woman's property; by kissing or kicking, her husband would get it away from her.” the loves of aint and iron are naturally a little rougher than those of the nightingale and the rose. there is no remedy for the musty self-conceited english life made up of fictions, hating 1849) the orient. philosophy 37 ideas, like orientalism. that astonishes and disconcerts english decorum. for once there is thunder he never heard, light he never saw, and power which trifles with time and space. august 6. revolution is “ lord of the visionary eye whose lid once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall.” nature never reproduces the fossil strata. there are three degrees in philosophy. plato came with geometry; that was one degree. plotinus came with mythology, zoroastrian or magian illumination, etc., as exalted or stilted plato: that was the second degree. but now comes my friend with palmistry, phrenology, mesmerism, and davisian' revelation : this is the third degree; and bearing the same relation to plotinism which that bore to platonism. ow con the french follow the course of rivers, the english hug the seashore. la france est capable du tout selon qu'il est conduit. i andrew jackson davis wrote on the then new “spir. itualistic ” manifestations. 38 (age 46 journal the french change their constitution as often as their shirt. will you spend your income, or will you invest it?'... it could not be said of buna,' that she lived entirely for her dinner, – though she was tenderly, patiently absorbed in that capital event of the day; no; for she was not less dedicated to her supper, nor less to her breakfast. he had studied her character imperfectly who thought she lived in these. no; she wished to keep her feet warm, and she was addicted to a soft seat, and expended a skill and generalship on securing the red chair and a corner out of the draught and in the air, worthy of a higher seat in heaven. neither on these was she exhausted. in a frivolous age, buna was earnest. she screamed, she groaned, she watched at night, she waited by day for her omelet and her lamp with smooth handle, and when she went out of the house it was a perfect row for half an hour. buna had catarrh, pleurisy, rush of blood to 1 what follows is printed in «wealth” (conduct of life, p. 126). 2 this stands for a certain fussy visitor. 1849) magnet. shakspeare 39 the head, apoplexy, diabetes, diarrhea, sunstroke, atrophy, worms, palsy, erysipelas, consumption, and dropsy. the magnet was thrown into europe, and all philosophy has taken a direction from it. men have studied its currents and got the vortex, the spiral, and the polarity which now inundate all thinking and all language, and end in the charlatanism of tractors, of mesmerism and phrenology, pathetism and davis. shakspeare's fun is as wise as his earnest; its foundations are below the frost; his is a moral muse simply from its depth; and i value the intermixture of the common and the transcendental as in nature. then also his knowledge of structure and complexion ; — he knows what is in a blue eye, and what is in an adust skin, and does justice to both. he is all pulverized into proverbs, and dispersed into human discourse. greatness. the difference is immense to appearance certainly between man and man. plato i a portion of the above is printed in “ art and criticism,” which appeared only in the centenary edition (natural history of intellect, p. 294). 40 (age 46 journal . or swedenborg is just ready to make a world, if he do not like this: he is krishna. it is no matter how fine is your rhetoric, or how strong is your understanding, no book is good which is not written by the instincts. a fatal frost makes cheerless and undesirable every house where animal heat is not. cold allegory makes us yawn, whatever elegance it may have. the indian squaw with a decisive hat has saved herself a world of vexation. the tragedy of our women begins with the bonnet; only think of the whole caucasian race damning the women to cover themselves with this frippery of rye straw and tags, that they may be at the mercy of every shower of rain. a meetinghouse full of women and a shower coming up, —it is as if we had dressed them all in paper. put on the squaw's man's hat, and you amputate so much misery. yesterday a ride and walk with thoreau to acton. we climbed to the top of nagog hill, and afterward of nashobah, the old domain of tahatawan and his praying indians. the wide 1 tahatawan was the local sachem of musketaquid, now concord. from him and the squaw sachem (his superior, 41 on 1849) nashobah. sights landscape is one vast forest skirted by villages in the horizon. we saw littleton, acton, concord, chelmsford, tyngsboro, dracut. on the western side, the old mountains ending with uncanoonuc on the north. the geology is unlike ours, and the granite ledges are perpendicular. fort pond is a picturesque sheet with a fine peninsula scattered, park-like, with noble pines on the western side; grass pond a pretty lake; nagog seen from nagog hill is best, and long pond we came to the shore of. these four ponds dictated, of course, tahatawan's location of his six hundred acres. also we visited the top of strawberry hill, and a big chestnut tree. i thought the concord society should meet and assign its business to committees; thus:mr. channing presented a report on baker farm. mr. thoreau a report on fort pond, the cromlech, and the remains of a swamp-fort near the pond. mr. e. called attention to the dwelling in what is now woburn), and other prominent indians, rev. peter bulkeley and mr. simon willard bought the six-mile square forming the original township. (see miscellanies, “ historical address at concord,” pp. 36–38.) a very interesting account of this transaction, also of the “ praying indians,” is found in shattuck's history of concord. 42 journal (age 46 ebby hubbard park.' miss e. hoar presented a bunch of linnæa borealis found in concord. mr. c. read a paper on the foliaceous and sponge-like formations by spring thaw in the argillite of the deep cut on the railroad;—and so forth. there is something finer in our sky and climate than we have senses to appreciate; it escapes us : and yet is only just beyond our reach. tantalus must have finer senses. the houses in acton seemed to be filled with fat old people who looked like old tomatoes ; their faces crumpled into red collops, fatting and rotting at their ease. eyes and no eyes. one man sees the fact or object, and another sees the power of it; one the triangle, and the other the cone which is generated by the revolution of a triangle. i fine woods on the left of the walden road but a short distance from mr. emerson's house, the property of ebenezer hubbard, a farmer-recluse. it was he who left money for rebuilding the north bridge at the battle ground and marking the spot where the minute men received and delivered volleys. 1849) europe. plato's fame 43 august 29. love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self. hungary, it seems, must take the yoke again, and austria, and italy, and prussia, and france. only the english race can be trusted with freedom. the french proclamations are hysterical. if i had a barn-yard fowl that wanted a name, i should call him france. never was national symbol so comically fit. le plato's fame does not stand on a syllogism, or on any specimen of the socratic argumentation. he is much more than an expert.' . .. for we do not listen with much respect to the verses of a man who is only a poet, nor to the calculations of a man who is only an algebraist, but if the man is at the same time acquainted with the geometrical foundations of things, and with their moral purposes, and sees the festal splendor of the day, his poetry is exact, and his arithmetic musical. his poetry and his mathematics accredit each other. 1 the rest of the long paragraph is printed in “ plato" (representative men, pp. 81, 82). 44 journal (age 46 i look upon the stress laid by plato on geometry as highly significant.' ... of course, he cannot often find a reader; but of course he ought to have written so. parker thinks, that, to know plato, you must read plato thoroughly, and his commentators, and, i think, parker would require a good drill in greek history, too. i have no objection to hear this urged on any but a platonist. but when erudition is insisted on to herbert or henry more, i hear it as if, to know the tree, you should make me eat all the apples. it is not granted to one man to express himself adequately more than a few times: and i believe fully, in spite of sneers, in interpreting the french revolution by anecdotes, though not every diner-out can do it. to know the flavor of tansy, must i eat all the tansy that grows by the wall? ... but if a man cannot answer me in ten words, he is not wise. plato's vision is not illimitable, but it is not self-limited by its own obliquity, or by fogs and walls which its own vices create. plato is to mankind what paris or london is 1 what follows is in “ plato" (representative men, pp. 84-86). 1849] plato. webster. 45 to europe. europe concentrates itself into a capital. he has not seen europe who has not seen its cities. plato codifies and catalogues and distributes. in his broad daylight things reappear as they stood in the sunlight, hardly shorn of a ray, yet now portable and reportable. before, all things stood enchanted, — not tangible. he comes, and touches them, and henceforth any body may. doctrine of degrees. the excellence of men consists in the completeness with which the lower system is taken up into the higher.'... nature. in the last days of august, and the first of september, the woods are full of agarics. september 4. dante's imagination is the nearest to hands and feet that we have seen.' ... webster. it is true that webster has never done anything up to the promise of his faculi for the rest of the paragraph, see « sovereignty of ethics ” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 189). 2 what follows is printed in “ powers and laws of thought” (natural history of intellect, p. 49). 46 journal (age 46 ties. he is unmistakably able, and might have ruled america, but he was cowardly, and has spent his life on specialties. when shall we see as rich a vase again ? napoleon, on the other hemisphere, obeyed his instincts with a fine audacity, dared all, all; went up to his line, and over his line; found himself confronted by destiny, and yielded at last. i have many meters of men, one is, their perception of identity. 'tis a good mark of any genius, a single novel expression of the identity. thus lord brooke's “ so words should sparkes be of those fires they strike." or donne's “that one would almost say her body thought.” i hold that ecstasy will be found mechanical, if you please to say so, or, nothing but an example on a higher field of the same gentle gravitation by which rivers run.'... ar rhymes. the iterations or rhymes of nature are already an idea or principle of science, and i the rest of the passage beginning thus is found in “inspirations" (letters and social aims, p. 275). 1849) nature's rhymes. days 47 a guide. the sun and star reflect themselves all over the world in the form of flowers and fruits; and in the human head, the doctrine of series [appears], which takes up again the few functions and modes and repeats them with new and wondrous results on a higher plane. how difficult to deal erect with the days! each of these events which they bring, — this concord thieving, the muster, the ripening of plums, the shingling of the barn, all throw dust in your eyes, and distract your attention.' ... garden diary. august 15. apricot plums. september 7. we are so late this year that i picked the first muskmelons to-day, — four;— to-day the first ripe tomato : and all the bartlett pears to ripen in the house. the whole product of my bartlett at the corner of the garden might count forty-five pears. the green gages yield every day a supply, and the two purple plum trees. 1 the rest of the paragraph, though beginning slightly differently, is in “ works and deeds” (society and solitude, pp. 173, 174). 48 journal (age 46 to-day, too, we dig seven bushels of excellent chenangoes. 12th. to-day tomatoes for the first time on table. september is the month of melons: melons last with us till 15th october.' september 7 was published nature, addresses, and lectures." sent presentation copies to, — my mother ; lidian; elizabeth hoar; g. p. bradford ; h. d. thoreau ; mrs. barlow; w. e. channing; s. g. ward ; j. e. cabot; e. p. peabody; o. w. holmes; n. hawthorne; william emerson ; edward bangs ; 1 in those days, before the coming of curculio, wart, borer, “yellows,” canker-worm and the recent moths, when even the tent-caterpillar was rare, there flourished in the flower garden below the house sopsavine (sops o'wine), early sweet and sour apples, then porters, and the delicate queen apples, brought by mrs. emerson from plymouth, roxbury and york russets; also chelmsford, napoleon, seckel and winter nelis pears, red cherries, plums (apricot, green gage, two larger purple plums and smaller “ plymouth" plums), quinces, four kinds of currants and two of gooseberries. by the south-east door were two peach trees, and many young apple and pear trees in the new acres. 2 nature had been published in 1836 in a little volume by itself. now it was printed in a volume with the various addresses to literary societies and colleges. 49 1849) aristotle h. w. longfellow; w. h. channing; c. t. jackson; new york tribune; boston post; daily advertiser; chronotype; phila. literary world; christian examiner. the aristotelian method was the athletic training of the scholars of the seventeenth century, and a method so wide, and respective of such universal relations, that our education seems narrow, linear, and indigent. aristotle easily maintained his ground as master, by virtue of this real superiority, until it was found that his physics were unsound; then his metaphysics were discredited, and he was tumbled from his throne of a thousand years. but the schoolmen were his pupils, and the abélards, then the galileos, descartes, keplers, grotiuses, harveys, tschirnhausens, malpighis, and christian wolffs, that preceded swedenborg, show their rough training. like roman soldiers they were required to carry more weight in their daily discipline than they would need in war. and so, well born of stark norwegian berserkers, and with this iron training, comes swedenborg, and shows a power of performance incredible to the dryasdusts of the present day. nobody is entitled to ask for new great men, who has not 50 journal (age 46 tested his strength on this anthropometer. wilkinson is the only man i know who is broad-chested enough to cope with him. humboldt and goethe only rivals of their universality. the men of science, so-called, the scholars, are fops by the side of these colossi. true brahmin in the morning meadows wet expound the vedas of the violet; or hid in vines peeping through many a loop see my plums redden and my beurrés stoop.' representative. it is my belief that every animal in our scale of creatures leans upward on man, and man leans downward on it; that lynx, dog, tapir, lion, lizard, camel, and crocodile, all find their perfection in him; all add a support and some essential contribution to him. he is the grand lion, he the grand lynx, he the grand worm, the fish of fishes, and bird of birds ; so that if one of these tribes were struck out of being he would lose some one property of his nature. and i have no doubt that to each of these creatures man appears as of its own kind; to a lion, man appears the arch lion; to a stork, the arch stork. he is the master key for which i see “ gardener,” among the quatrains in the poems. 1849) masters in science 51 you must go back, to open each new door in this thousand-gated thebes." it was fine when the paleontologist learned that the frog's egg, on the thirteenth day, added the gills; and on the fourteenth day lengthened the tail; and then, referring to the fossils, showed that this type of animals with gills must have flourished in the thirteenth geologic age, and these with the long tails in the fourteenth period. it is clear that immense advantage comes from a superior simultaneous survey of all the kingdoms of nature. how different is the attitude of linnæus, cuvier, and agassiz, from that of leeuwenhök or our own dr. harris or professor peck! the comparison of tribes and kingdoms and the procession of structure in sunfish and mammal is open to one, whilst peck and harris count the cilia and spines on a beetle's wing. an individual body is the momentary fixation of a portion of the solids or auids of the universe. . . . the tenacity of retention must 1 compare in the poems (appendix) day by day for her darlings to her much she added more, etc. 2 the rest of the passage is printed in “ powers and laws of thought " (natural history of intellect, pp. 27, 28). compare the same thought in “ quotation and originality" (letters and social aims, p. 200). 52 (age 46 journal be in exact proportion to the rank of the idea which the individual represents. so a fixed idea is the unit of this. some minds are viviparous, like shakspeare and goethe. every word is a poem. others are oviparous, alive though incomplete;, and others are like trees which leave seeds and fruits on which the living can feed.' christ. modern philosophy has not yet attempted the portrait of the blessed jew, that wonderful youth who fascinated asia and europe. swedenborg has attempted it, but he is obviously not the person to do it. he showed his incapacity by binding himself hand and foot, and flinging himself at his feet by way of first salutation. the highest compliment that can be conferred, ... i figure to myself the world as a hollow temple, and every individual mind as an exponent i compare « powers and laws of thought” (natural history of intellect, p. 18). 2 see uses of great men”(representative men, p. 16). 1849] the temple. aunt mary 53 of some sacred part therein, as if each man were a jet of flame affixed to some capital, or node, or angle, or triglyph, or rosette, or spandril, bringing out its beauty and symmetry to the eye by his shining. but when the jet of light is gone, the groined arch and fluted column remain beautiful, and can in an instant be lighted again and vindicated. aunt mary never liked to throw away any medicine; but, if she found a drop of laudanum here, and a pill or two there, a little quinine and a little antimony, mixed them up and swallowed them. so when she came to the tea-table“oh, no, she never took tea”;— “can you get a little shells?” the cocoa came, and aunty took cocoa, because it was soothing, and put a little tea in it to make her lively, and if there was a little coffee, that was good for getting rid of the taste. i said that the least acceleration of thought would add indefinite longevity to the man." and we are to go to the best examples in each faculty to take notes for the creation of the complete brain. 1 see « memory" (natural history of intellect, p. 108). 54 journal (age 46 what differences! some men cannot see the house till it is built, — cannot see the machine till the model is placed before their eyes. moody, the machinist, when colburn described any improvement to him, cried immediately, “ah, but it hits, it hits”; a fatal objection. plato says, “ choose those who can proceed without aid from their eyes or any other sense, with truth to being.” well, now it seems as if this plato's power of grading or ranking all that offers itself at sight was as good as a duration of a thousand years. the reason why life is short is, because we are confounded by the dazzle of new things, and by the seeming equality which custom sheds on great and small; we are obliged to spend a large part of life in corrections which we should save, if our judgment was sure when we first beheld things. plato is like those tamers who have charmed down the ferocity of vicious animals, or who by some virulence or ferocity in their own nature have terrified frantic madmen. he looks through things at a glance, and they fly into place, and he walks in life with the security of a god. it seems as if the winds of ages swept through this universal thinking, so wide, so just, yet so minute, that it is impossible that c10us a 1849) face the conditions 55 an air of such calmness and long maturity can belong to the hasty, crude, experimental blotting of one lifetime. the celestial mind incapable of offence, of haste, of care, of inhospitality, of peeping, of memory, incapable of being embarrassed, incapable of discourtesy, treating all with a sovereign equality. to-day, carpets; yesterday, the aunts; the day before, the funeral of poor s.; and every day, the remembrance in the library of the rope of work which i must spin ;in this way life is dragged down and confuted. we try to listen to the hymn of gods, and must needs hear this perpetual cock-a-doodle-doo, and ke-tar-kut right under the library windows. they, the gods, ought to respect a life, you say, whose objects are their own. but steadily they throw mud and eggs at us, roll us in the dirt, and jump on us. solitary imprisonment is written on his coat and hat, on the lines of his face, and the limbs of his body, on his brow, and on the leaves of laurel on his brow. he wrestles hard with the judge, and does not believe he is in earnest. “solitary imprisonment,” replied the judge. 56 journal (age 46 yet with some mitigation. three times a day his keeper comes to the window, and puts bread and water on the shelf. the keeper's dog he may play with, if he will. bow-wow-wow, says the dog. people may come from asia to see him, if they like. he is only permitted to become his friend. for good reading, there must be, of course, a yielding, sometimes entire, but always some yielding to the book. then the reader is refreshed with a new atmosphere and foreign habits. but many minds are incapable of any surrender; they are like knights of a border castle, who “ carve at the meal in gloves of steel, and drink the red wine thro' the helmet barred”; and, of course, their dining is very unsatisfactory. how admirable a university is plato's republic; yet set x to read it, he would read nothing in it but x. for the conduct of life, let us not parade our rags, let us not, moved by vanity, confess and tear our hair at the corners of the streets, or in the sitting-room; but, as age and infirmity steal 1849) old age and study 57 on us, contentedly resign the front seat and the games to these bright children, our better representatives, nor expect compliments or inquiries — much less, gifts or love — any longer (which to expect is ridiculous), and, not at all wondering why our friends do not come to us, much more wondering when they do,decently withdraw ourselves into modest and solitary resignation and rest. believers give themselves most leave to speculate, as they are secure of a return: nature does not work for classes, but for the whole: so she absorbs them, occupies the adult masses with the care of providing for themselves and their families, to the exclusion of every other thought. nothing but the brandy of politics will wake them from their brute life. no song of any muse will they hear. but it is plain that the adults' education should be undertaken. when our republic, o plato ! shall begin, the education shall not end with the youth, but shall be as vigorously continued in maturity. we have in no wise exhausted the books. astronomy invites, and geology and geometry and chemistry. see how humboldt, and agassiz, and berzelius, and goethe, and faraday, use 58 (age 46 journal and brown, and lindley, work! let our state be provided with proctors who shall drive the old fellows to school. let our games offer competition and prizes, and let us keep the fathers up to as high a point of aim as we do the children. then you will have a state. now nothing can exceed the disappointment and despondency of such of the people as have arrived at maturity without marriage, in finding themselves absolutely without proper task, and compelled to be either brooms and dusters, or else drones and gourmands. yet nature selfishly puts them all to marrying and providing, and leaves the exceptions (which she, to be sure, winks at) to the care of higher power. i mean she always lets higher power look out for itself, and, if any soul has seen anything of truth, she knows it will revolt against all this musty housekeeping of hers and dedicate itself to sacred uses. “ every one for himself,” says nature. i look, then, at a soul, born with a task, as happy. in life. some of the sweetest hours of life, on retrospect, will be found to have been spent with books. yes; but the sweetness was your own. had you walked, or hoed, or swum, or 59 1849) macaulay sailed, or kept school, in the same hours, it would have endeared those employments and conditions. nature has taught each creature to put out from itself its own condition and sphere,' ... macaulay again. macaulay's history is full of low merits : it is like english manufactures of all kinds, neat, convenient, portable, saleable, made on purpose for the harpers to print a hundred thousand copies of. so far can birmingham go. macaulay is the banvard' of english history, good at drawing a mississippi panorama, but 'tis cheap work. no memorable line has he written, no sentence. he is remembered by flippancy on one occasion against plato and bacon, but has no affirmative talent: he can write quantities of verses, too, to order; wrote “ lays,” or something. no doubt wrote good nonsense verses at eton, better than virgil. his chef d'æuvre was a riddle on the codfish. that was really good. 1 this and much which follows is printed in “ fate" (conduct of life, p. 41). 2 john banvard of n. y. painted such a panorama, covering half a mile of canvas and known as the “ three-mile picture.” he also wrote 1700 poems. 3 it appears, however, that macaulay was prepared for the university by private instruction. 60 (age 46 journal october 19. charles newcomb came, but we grew incapable of events and influences. he, too, turns the conversation, if i try a general remark. his manuscripts which he brought were six years old, but full of subtle genius. intense solitude appears in every sentence. they are soliloquies, and the abridged stenographic wit and eloquence, like that or better than that we are wonted to in m. m. e. he is brahmin existing to little use, if prayer and beauty are not that. yet he humiliates the proud and staggers the dogmatist, and subverts all the mounds and fortification lines of accustomed thought; eminently aristocratic beyond any person i remember to have met, because self-centred on a deep centre of genius, easy, cheerful, condescending, condescending to the greatest, and mortifying plato and jesus, if it were possible, by his genuine preference of children, and ladies, and the first piece of nature, to all their fame and sanctity. if one's centrality is incomprehensible to us, we can do nothing with him; we may as well affect to snub the sun. one will shine as the other. but though charles's mind is unsounded, and the walls actually taken out, so that he seems open to nature, yet he does not accumu1849) charles newcomb 61 late his wisdom into any amounts of thought: rarely arrives at a result perhaps does not care to — so that i say, it seems, instead of my bare walls, your surrounding is really landscapes and perspectives of temples: yet they avail no more to you than if they were landscape paperhangings or fresco pictures of temples. will fortune never come with both hands full ? she either gives a stomach and no food, ... or else a feast and takes away the stomach. henry iv. charles newcomb. ah, dear old swedenborg, and is thy saw good,“ the perfection of man is the love of use"? and this fine luminary, brightest of all, can ill conceal his dislike of a general remark, spends his mornings at newport all summer, in walking; his afternoons, “in society”; and has read but one book, this year, namely, an old novel. dear swedenborg, if you can catch this american sprig, will you not whip him soundly! he had a fine subtlety like this, “ that, it is not what thought is, but how he stands to his thought, that we value in friendship.” shakspeare was “the farthest bound of sub62 journal (age 46 as tlety and universality compatible with individuality; the subtilest of authors, and only just within the possibility of authorship.” newcomb is my best key to shakspeare, and he is just beyond authorship. the impartiality of shakspeare is like that of the light itself, which is no aristocrat, but shines as mellowly on gipsies as on emperors, on bride and corpse, on city and swamp. “i believe that there is no true theory of disease that does not at once suggest cure." wilkinson. big-endians little-endians plato alcott swedenborg very shakspeare newcomb montaigne channing goethe r. w. e. napoleon thoreau concord. there is not a fox or a crow or a partridge in concord who knows the woodlands better than thoreau. identity-philosophy makes swinging a chain' every whit as good as a journey to oregon, but great is the illusory energy of vishnu. 1 thoreau was the local surveyor. race 1849] dæmons. the roadside 63 i supposed the landscape to be full of a race of dæmons who move at a faster rate than men, so fast as just to escape our organ of sight. michael angelo paints with more will; raffaelle, with the obedience of water and flame. everybody would paint like raffaelle, if the power of painting were added to everybody. once more, as i have somewhere written, he who addresses himself to modes or wants that can be dispensed with, goes out of fashion, builds his house off the road. but he who addresses himself to problems that every man must come to solve, builds his house on the road, and every man must come to it. jesus's problems are mine, and therefore to jesus and through jesus must we go, and swedenborg had the like wisdom. nature pays no respect to those who pay any respect to her, was h. j.'s' doctrine. symbolism. what i want to know is, the meaning of what i do; believing that any of henry james ? 64 [age 46 journal my current mondays or tuesdays is fatebook for me; and believing that hints and telegraphic signals are arriving to me every moment out of the interior eternity. i am tormented with impatience to make them out. we meet people who seem to overlook our game, and read us with a smile, but they do not tell us what they read. this is one kind of symbolism. a more limited one is swedenborg's fancy that certain books of scripture were exact allegories, or written in the angelic and ecstatic speech, as other books are not. to what purpose dark ages and barbarous irish, if i know, as i know, five or six men, without hardly going out of my village, to whom and with whom all is possible; who restore to me plato, shakspeare, montaigne, hindoo cosmology, yea, buddh himself, with their audacious intellectual adventure ? (from az) i hearing get, who had but ears, and sight, who had but eyes before, i moments live, who lived but years, and truth discern, who knew but learning's lore. h. d. thoreau. i from inspiration, perhaps thoreau's finest poem. 1849) november walk 65 hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla imbuti spectant. horace (epistola vi, lib. i). ov november 17. yesterday saw the fields covered with cobwebs in every direction, on which the wake of the setting sun appeared as on water. walked over hill and dale with channing, who found wonders of colour and landscape everywhere, but complained of the want of invention. “why, they had frozen water last year; why should they do it again? therefore it was so easy to be an artist, because they do the same thing always," and therefore he only wants time to make him perfect in the imitation. “and i believe, too, that pounding is one of the secrets.” all summer, he gets water au naturel, and, in winter, they serve it up artistically in this crystal johnny-cake. channing thought the cause of cows was, that they made good walking where they fed. 1 there be those who see this sun, and stars and seasons passing in their appointed times, unmoved by fear. journal (age 46 1 roomy eternity casts her schemes rarely, and a rounded age allows to every quality and part in the multitudinous and many-chambered heart. poet of poets ..is time the distiller; · time the refiner, he hath a vitriol which can dissolve towns into melody. burn up the libraries, down with the colleges, raze the foundations, drive out the doctors, rout the philosophers, harry the critics, men of particulars, narrowing niggardly something to nothing; all their ten thousand ways end in the néant. all through the countryside rush locomotives; 1849) the blessed poet 67 prospering grocers poring on newspapers over their shop-fires settle the state. but for the poet, — seldom in centuries comes the well-tempered musical man. he is the waited-for, he is the complement of one man and all men. the random wayfarer thinks the poet of his kin; this is he that should come, tongue of the secret, key of the caskets of past and of future. sudden, the lustre that hovered round cities, round closets of power, or chambers of commerce, round banks, or round beauties, or state-rending factions, has quit them, and perches well pleased on his form. the poet received foremost of all badge of nobility, 68 journal [age 46 charter of earth, free of the city, free of the field, knight of each order, mate of each class, fellow of monarchs, and, what is better, fellow of all men. ii but over all his crowning grace, wherefor thanks god his daily praise, is the purging of his eye to see the people of the sky. from blue mount and headland dim friendly hands stretch forth to him; him they beckon, him advise of heavenlier prosperities, and a more excelling grace. and a truer bosom-glow than the wine-fed feasters know. they turn his heart from lovely maids and make the darlings of the earth swainish, coarse, and nothing worth, teach him gladly to postpone pleasures to another stage beyond the scope of human age, freely as task at eve undone waits unblamed to-morrow's sun. 1849) intellect. germany 69 intellect. an affirmative talent is always safe. the critics may do their worst; it is victory. woi as for germany, we have had no interest in it since the death of goethe. all kinds of power usually develop themselves at the same time, and i look in the most active race for the idealism. the americans went to heidelberg to find germany, and discovered with surprise that they had left it behind them in new york. mr. scherb' attempted last night to unfold hegel for me, and i caught somewhat that seemed cheerful and large, and that might, and probably did, come by hindoo suggestion. but all abstract philosophy is easily anticipated, it is so structural, or necessitated by the mould of the human mind. schelling said, “the absolute is the union of the ideal and the real.” the world, the universe, is a gigantic flower, but the flower is one function or state of the plant, and the world but a stage or state of the pan. as i have written long ago, the universe is only in transit, or, we behold it shooting the gulf from the past to the future. 1 emmanuel vitalis scherb, a german patriot, exile or refugee, who lived for perhaps a year in concord. 70 journal [age 46 alcott is like a slate pencil which has a sponge tied to the other end, and, as the point of the pencil draws lines, the sponge follows as fast, and erases them. he talks high and wide, and expresses himself very happily, and forgets all he has said. if a skilful operator could introduce a lancet and sever the sponge, alcott would be the prince of writers. erases goethe. angel song and chorus at opening of faust is magazine or “squirt” poetry. goethe, as a man who wished to make the most of himself, was right in avoiding the horrors. an i sent chapman orders to send copies of representative men'to t. carlyle; j. a. carlyle; earl of lovelace; 'arthur helps; mrs. paulet; w. e. forster; john forster; arthur h. clough; miss ellen randall ; dr. samuel brown, edinburgh ; edwin field; j. j. g. wilkinson. i must add to the list by the next steamer, miss martineau; dr. jacobson (later bishop of chester]; c. e. rawlins, jr. ; john kenyon, esq. 1 the book was apparently not actually published until january 1, 1850, and sheets printed here were sent to chapman to come out simultaneously in london. 1849] representative men 71 * many after thoughts, as usual, with my printing, come just a little too late; and my new book seems to lose all value from their omission. plainly one is the justice that should have been done to the unexpressed greatness of the common farmer and laborer. a hundred times i have felt the superiority of george, and edmund, and barrows, and yet i continue the parrot echoes of the names of literary notabilities and mediocrities, which, bring them (if they dared) into presence of these concord and plymouth norsemen, would be as uncomfortable and ridiculous as mice before cats. ... it is rare to have the hero and professor united as in montaigne, or, i might say, churl and professor. i value hyde and therien because x would shrivel in their presence; they solid and unexpressed, he expressed into goldleaf. and yet the whole human race agree to value a man precisely in proportion to his power of expression, and to the most expressive man that has existed, namely, shakspeare, they have awarded the highest place. day laborers, the latter, a canadian wood-chopper celebrated by thoreau in walden. 2 a man of some eminence in society and letters in boston at that time. 72 journal (age 46 then again i have to regret that i have not stated of swedenborg the most important defect, this, namely, that he does not awaken the sentiment of piety. behmen does; st. bernard does; thomas à kempis, herbert, and that moravian hymn-maker do. december 14. every day shows a new thing to veteran walkers. yesterday reflections of trees in the ice: snowflakes, perfect rowels, on the ice; beautiful groups of icicles all along the eastern shore of flint's pond, in which, especially where encrusting the bough of a tree, you have the union of the most flowing with the most fixed. ellery all the way squandering his jewels as if they were icicles, sometimes not comprehended by me, sometimes not heard. how many days can methusalem go abroad and see somewhat new? when will he have counted the changes of the kaleidoscope ? mers farmers. when i see one of our young farmers in sunday clothes, i feel the greatest respect for and joy in them, because i know what powers and utilities are so meekly worn. what i wish to know, they know, what i would 1849] brave farmer. england 73 so gladly do, they can do. the cold, gloomy day, the rough, rocky pasture, the swamps, are invitations and opportunities to them. and yet there is no arrogance in their bearing, but a perfect gentleness, though they know how to take care of cattle, how to raise and cure and keep their crops. why a writer should be vain, and a farmer not, though the writer admires the farmer, and the farmer does n't admire the writer, does not appear. england. the dinner, the wine, the homes of england look attractive to the traveller, but they are the poor utmost that illiberal wealth can perform. alas! the halls of england are musty, the land is full of coal-smoke and carpet-smell: not a breath of mountain air dilates the languishing lungs, — and the englishman gets his amends by weaving his web very fine: he is bold and absolute in his narrow circle ; he is versed in all his routine, sure, and elegant; his stories are good, his sentences solid, and all his statesmen, lawyers, men of letters, and poets, finished and solid as the pavement. rich and poor. the rich man has twelve hundred acres of land; the poor man has the . 74 journal [age 46 universe, and much has he to say of it. but when he, too, comes to hold twelve hundred acres, we never hear any more about the universe. like the new england soil, my talent is good only whilst i work it. if i cease to task myself, i have no thoughts. this is a poor sterile yankeeism. what i admire and love is the generous and spontaneous soil which flowers and fruits at all seasons. superlative. people like exaggerated events, and activity, — like to run to a house on fire, to a murder, an execution ;like to tell of a bankruptcy, of a death, of a crime, or of an engagement. they like a rattling town, where a great deal of business is done. the student shuns all this. they like to be in a state of exaggeration. of course, manly greatness consists in being so much that the mere wash of the sea, the observed passage of the stars, or the almost beard current of time, is event enough and the full soul cries, let not the noise of what you call events disturb me ! here is a right bit of ellery channing : “helps's book called friends in council is 1849] the gentleman 75 inexpressibly dull. in this manufacture, the modern english excel. witness their taylors, wordsworths, arnolds, and scotts (not walter). wise, elegant, moderate, and cultivated, yet unreadable.” ellery says of thoreau, “his effects can all be produced by cork and sand: but the substance that produces them is godlike and divine.” natural aristocracy. it is a vulgar error to suppose that a gentleman must be ready to fight. the utmost that can be demanded of the gentleman is that he be incapable of a lie. there is a man who has good sense, is well informed, well read, obliging, cultivated, capable, and has an absolute devotion to truth. he always means what he says, and says what he means, however courteously. you may spit upon him ;— nothing could induce him to spit upon you, no praises, and no possessions, no compulsion of public opinion. you may kick him ; he will think it the kick of a brute: but he is not a brute, and will not kick you in return. but neither your knife and pistol, nor your gifts and courting will ever make the smallest impression on his vote or word; for he is the 76 journal (age 46 truth's man, and will speak and act the truth until he dies. he is the truth's thug, and goes willingly to ruin for his thuggee. is not he a gentleman ? nature. van helmont's definition of nature is, “nature is that command of god whereby a thing is that which it is, and doth what it is commanded to do.” duties are as much impediments to greatness as cares. if a man sets out to be rich, he cannot follow his genius; neither can he any more, if he wishes to be an estimable son, brother, husband, nephew, and cousin. neither is life long enough for friendship.' 'tis easy to see that the people will get science as well as [the?] state. schelling's aperçu and its statement was a forlorn hope, and all but fell into the pit. yet just on the eve of ruin, oken seized and made the most of it; of course, he was ridiculous, and nowhere but in germany could have survived. yet hegel, a still more robust dreamer, clung to this identical piece of nonsense. then it came rebounding to them in i the rest of this passage is in “ considerations by the way" (conduct of life, p. 273). 1849] growing idea. stallo 77 melody from songs of goethe, and, strange to say, from geoffroy saint-hilaire's mémoires to the institute in france. agassiz brought it to america, and tried it in popular lectures on the towns. it succeeded to admiration, the lesturer having, of course, the prudence to disown these bad names of his authors. the idea was that the form or type became transparent in the actual forms of successive ages as presented in geology. e are stallo.' geologic strata“ whose suprapositio in space is a sufficient warrant for their success sion in time.” “the configurations of nature are more than a symbol, they are the gesticular expression of nature's inner life.” “the development of all individual forms will be spiral.”. “in the song of birds, the animal kingdom celebrates its constitutional day with trumpets and fifes.” — feuerbach. i easily distinguish three eras. 1 johann b. stallo, born in germany, published in boston in 1848 general principles of the philosophy of nature. 2 many other quotations from stallo are given. stallo webby er ved in boge 78 journal [ace 46 me '1. the greek: when men deified nature, jove was in the air, neptune in the sea, pluto i12 the earth, naiads in the fountains, dryads in the woods, oreads on the mountains; happy tseautiful beatitude of nature; : 2. the christian : when the soul became pronounced, and craved a heaven out of nature and above it, looking on nature now as evil, the world was a mere stage and school, a snare, and the powers that ruled here were devils, hostile to the soul; and now, lastly,3. the modern: when the too idealistic tendencies of the christian period running into the diseases of cant, monachism, and a church, demonstrating the impossibility of christianity, have forced men to retrace their steps, and rally again on nature; but now the tendency is to marry mind to nature, and to put nature under the mind, convert the world into the instrument of right reason. man goes forth to the dominion of the world by commerce, by science, and by philosophy. van helmont's distribution is, understanding, will, memory. affirmative. “the soul understands in peace and rest, and not in doubting.” — van helmont. 1849] chladni.' culture' 79 the understanding transforms itself into the image of the thing understood. “indeed, study for eternity smiled on me.” eloquence. music. chladni's experiment seems to me central. he strewed sand on glass, and then struck the glass with tuneful accords, and the sand assumed symmetrical figures. with discords the sand was thrown about amorphously. it seems, then, that orpheus is no fable: you have only to sing, and the rocks will crystallize ; sing, and the plant will organize; sing, and the animal will be born. culture, the height of culture, highest behavior consist in the identification of the ego with the universe, so that when a man says i think, i hope, i find, — he might properly say, the human race thinks, hopes, finds, he states a fact which commands the understandings and affections of all the company, and yet, at the same time, he shall be able continually to keep sight of his biographical ego, i had an ague, i had a fortune; my father had black hair, etc., as rhetoric, fun, or footman, to his grand and public ego, without impertinence or ever confounding them. 80 journal [age 46 un [as in previous volumes, a few of mr. emerson's favorite authors from early youth, steadily recurring in the lists of the first volumes (as homer, plato, plutarch, montaigne, shakspeare, milton, herbert, swedenborg, wordsworth, and others), are not given in this list. in spite, however, of the frequent mention of plotinus, proclus, and the other neo-platonists and of the oriental scriptures and poets, these names will appear, as showing when mr. emerson was reading them. carlyle and goethe will also be mentioned. it often happens that an allusion to an author or book may be in a passage not included in the selections here printed.] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1849 desatir, or sacred writings of the ancient persian prophets; euripides, electra (potter's translation); aristotle; cicero; propertius; ovid, amores; lucan, pharsalia; martial, epigrams; marcus antoninus, meditations; saint anthony, sermon to the fishes ; 81 1849) reading asser, life of alfred the great; saint bernard; abélard; firdusi; enweri; saadi; jelaleddin; ammar asjedi of merw; hafiz; dante; richard of devizes, chronicle of king richard; chaucer; thomas à kempis; michael angelo; luther; richard edwards; eustachius; fulke greville (lord brooke), a treatise of humane learning, fame and honour; donne; ford, the sun's darling; galileo; kepler; van helmont; harvey; grotius; malpighi; henry more; sir christopher wren; newton; leeuwenhök; leibnitz; tschirnhausen; george powell, on fletcher; boerhaave; christian wolff; linnæus; winckelmann, history of ancient art; kant;laplace; goethe; chladni, acoustics; humboldt; cuvier; schelling; hegel; oken; teschemacher; samuel laing, heimskringla; von hammer-purgstall, geschichte der schönen redekünste persiens; campbell; moore, life of byron; keats; geoffroy saint-hilaire; berzelius; webster; miss catherine sedgwick; prichard, natural history of man; herschel, on stars of the southern hemisphere; t. w. harris, insects injurious to vegetation ; faraday; antoine 82 journal (age 46 jussieu; lindley ; lyell; thiers, histoire de la révolution française ; macaulay; james a. saint john, history of the manners and customs of ancient greece ; george sand; gervinus; l. a. feuerbach, das wesen des christianthums (?) lord mahon, life of louis, prince of condé; theophile gautier; agassiz; j. j. garth wilkinson, on swedenborg; henry james; jones very; theodore parker; parker pillsbury; dickens ; arthur helps, conquerors of america and their bondsmen; layard, nineveb; a. h. clough, borbie of toberna vuolich; charlotte brontë, jane eyre; froude, nemesis of faith; thoreau; w. e: channing; andrew jackson davis; stallo, general principles of the philosophy of nature. journal lectures near and far parliament on the times town and country club webster's fall death of margaret fuller ossoli higher law jrnal xli 1850 (from journals az and bo) [the old year ended and the new began as usual with lyceum lectures through new england. then followed the delivery before the mercantile library association in new york of two lectures, on “ the times” and “england.”] at (from az) january 13, 1850. in ideal faces i notice unity of expression, in portraits, variety and compromise, as if in each individual were four or five rival natures, one of which was now in the ascendant, and compelled at certain hours to yield the lead to the suppressed rival. every man finds room in his face for all his ancestors. every face an atrium. 1 mr. cabot in his memoir (vol. ii, p. 570) quotes nathaniel p. willis's account of his first hearing emerson at one of these lectures, giving a remarkable description of his wonderful voice and its effect. 86 journal (age 46 new york, january 23. what cunning magnets these boys are, — to draw all the iron out of the hour! [here follows mr. emerson's version of nisami's nightingale and falcon, from the german of von hammer-purgstall, which is printed in “persian poetry,” letters and social aims, pp. 261-262.] the two statements, or bipolarity. my geometry cannot span the extreme points which i see. i affirm melioration, — which nature teaches in pears, in the domesticated animals, and in her secular geology and the development of complex races. i affirm also the self-equality of nature; or that only that is true which is always true; and that, in california, or in greece, or in jewry, or in arcadia, existed the same amounts of private power, as now, and the same deductions, however differently distributed. but i cannot reconcile these two statements. i affirm the sacredness of the individual, the infinite reliance that may be put on his determination. i see also the benefits of cities, and the plausibility of phalansteries. but i cannot reconcile these oppositions. 1850) bipolarity. marriage 87 i affirm the divinity of man; but as i know well how much is my debt to bread and coffee and flannel and heated room, i shun to be tartuffe, and do affirm also with emphasis the value of these fomentations. but i cannot reconcile that absolute with this conditional. my ancient companion in charleston, south carolina, mr. martin luther hurlbut, used to reply to each statement of mine, “yes, to a certain extent." i am struck now and then with a passage of poetry or prose, which, especially if written some hundred years ago, amazes me by the fortitude or self-reliance it discovers in the man who dared thus firmly to trust his rare perception as to write it elaborately out. such a piece is donne's ecstasy. another is ferideddin attar, the persian poet's mysticism in the birdtalk, which i find in von hammer, when the three birds appear before the throne of the simorg. an love is temporary and ends with marriage. marriage is the perfection which love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought. marriage is a good 1 mr. emerson's translation is given in full in “ persian poetry” (letters and social aims, pp. 263–265). 88 (age 46 journal known only to the parties, – a relation of perfect understanding, aid, contentment, possession of themselves and of the world, which dwarfs love to green fruit. the english journals snub my new book; as, indeed, they have all its foregoers. only now they say that this has less vigor and originality than the others. where, then, was the degree of merit that entitled my books to their notice? they have never admitted the claims of either of them. the fate of my books is like the impression of my face. my acquaintances, as long back as i can remember, have always said, “seems to me you look a little thinner than when i saw you last.” the times. that is to say, there is fate; laws of the world; what then? we are thrown back on rectitude, forever and ever. only rectitude: to mend one; that is all we can do. but that the world stigmatizes as a sterile, chimney-corner philosophy. at alcott's conversation on “the times” each person who opened his lips seemed in snuffing the air to snuff nitrous oxide, and away he 1850) concerted writing 89 went, — a spinning dervish, — pleasing himself, annoying the rest. a talent is a nuisance. each rode his nag with devotion round the walls of the universe; i found no benefit in this jar and jangle. there was much ability and good meaning in the room, but some persons present who should not have been there, and these, like an east wind, checked every growth. byron's life suggests that a partnership of authors would have the same immense advantage for literature that concert has in war, in music, and in trade: byron's, because in his case, as in so many in mine, for example, who am hardly a writer), his talent is conspicuously partial, and needs a complement. but if one with solid knowledge— a man of massive mind, or a man of ideas, powerful generalizations, or both — had united with byron, with his unmatched expressiveness, his heat, his firm ductile thread of gold, a battery had been built, against which nothing could stand. but in his isolation byron is starved for material, has no thoughts; and his fiery affections are only so many women, though rigged out in men's clothes, garnished, too, with beards and mustachios. they vapor. 90 journal (age 46 it is well worth thinking on. thus, if thoreau, ellery, and i could (which is perhaps impossible) combine works heartily (being fired by such a desire to carry one point as to fuse all our repulsions and incompatibilities), i doubt not we could engender something superior for quality and for effect to any of the thin, coldblood creatures we have hitherto flung into the light. february 19. the times. i am part of the solar system. let the brain alone, and it will keep time with that, as the shell with the sea-tide. we are made of ideas. let the river roll which way it will, cities will rise on its banks. let us be glad to breathe the great air, and, if we are born in the geographical age, when the niger and sacramento are explored, and the north and south poles touched, roads built, seas sounded, and charts drawn, let us do these with good will. there is a curious shame in our faces. the age is convict, confessing, sits on the anxious benches. we say there is no religion, no poetry, no heroism, no rage ; death is unperfumed; age of debility, correctness, levity, of the lookingseas s 91 1850) the times glass. not to be bruised by the bruisers, not to despond in cities, is a mark of merit. i hold that all the elements are ever copresent, that what is once true is always true ; that every day is the finest in the year; what was background once is foreground now. you say, there is no religion now.'... above, i have written of the necessity of leaving much to the supreme geometer, nor being annoyed if we cannot demonstrate the theorem. we are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times. we men are necessary to each other, yet every one stands on the top of the world, over the nadir, and under the zenith. so the riddle of the age has always a private solution. read in goethe's winckelmann our cheerful, franklin-like philosopher's friendly view of the world. he is considerate and patronizing a little, be sure, to the gods. “ when the healthy nature of man works as 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in “ worship" (conduct of life, p. 112). 2. this sentence is printed in « fate" (conduct of life, p. 4). 92 (age 46 journal a whole; when he feels himself, in the world, as in a large, beautiful, worthy, and solid whole; when the harmonious well-being assures him a clear, free joy; then would the universe, if it could be conscious, exult as arrived at its aim, and admire the summit of its own becoming and being."... i value the clergy [on the ground] that it is the planting of a qualified man in every town whose whole business is to do good in every form. the difference between the saint and the scholar intellectually is that, whilst the scholar too has many divine thoughts, he uses them to a convenient and conventional purpose, for a “treatise,” for a “history”; but the other not only has thoughts, but the copula that joins them is also a thought. “knowledge subsists according to the nature of that which knows, and not according to the nature of that which is known.” — proclus, theol. plato, vol. ii, but original with jamblichus. i remember that when i read a lecture in new york in which i inserted some notices of 1850) samuel hoar 93 paule de viguier, mr. bartlett in his bookstore inquired where i found her story, and i having forgotten what german book it was, he believed that i had invented them.” samuel hoar, esq. mr. hoar is and remains an entire stranger all his life long, not only in his village, but in his family. he might bow and touch his hat to his wife and daughter as well as to the president. he does the same thing in politics and at the bar. it is not any new light that he sheds on the case, but his election of a side, and the giving his statuesque dignity to that side, that weighs with juries or with conventions. for he does this naturally. [in february was held, at 15 tremont place in boston, “a parliament on the times,” so called on the card announcing it, evidently for the purposes of gathering an audience for mr. i the lecture was ~ beauty," and mr. emerson found the charming story of this lady in a german book published in darmstadt, 1835, the letters to johann heinrich merck from goetbe, herder, wieland, and others. in a letter from sömmering to merck, the story rehearsed by mr. emerson is told. larousse, in his encyclopédie, tells of paule de viguier at more length. 94 journal (age 46 alcott. a report of the first meeting, written by miss ariana walker, is given in the memoirs of alcott, by f. b. sanborn and william t. harris (vol. ii, pp. 414-418). a later meeting was held at the town and country club.] [february.] i would have a man of large designs use our little boston and noisy new york as suburbs and villages, to try his pieces on, and find their faults and supply a good hint if they can.' then let him take them to london or to paris, to whatever rome his age affords him, and read them tentatively there, too, not trusting his audience much, since, “non è nel mondo se non volgo," with a reference still to his ultimate tribunal, namely, the few scattered, sensible men, two or three in the world at a time, who, scattered thinly over the ages, are called by excellence posterity, because they determine its opinion. 1 this was mr. emerson's custom. he used to say: "when i tell a country lyceum committee that i will read a new lecture, they are pleased — poor men! they do not know that the barber learns his trade on the orphan's chin.' by the time that lecture, after long trying on, is given in new york or philadelphia, it will be a very different affair." 1850] expressors. carlyle 95 superlative. the talent sucks the substance of the man. how often we repeat the disappointment of inferring general ability from conspicuous particular ability. but the accumulation on one point has drained the trunk. blessed are those who have no talent! the expressors are the gods of the world, — shakspeare and the rest, — but the same men whom these expressors revere are the solid, balanced, undemonstrative citizens who make the reserved guard, the central sense of the world. 'tis because he is not well mixed that he needs to do some feat by way of fine or expiation. on carlyle. carlyle is wonderful for his rhetorical skill. this trick of rhyme, burden, or refrain, which he uses so well, he not only employs in each new paragraph, suddenly treating you with the last ritornello, but in each new essay or book quoting the burden or chorus of the last book — you know me, and i know you; or, here we are again; come take me up again on your shoulders, – is the import of this. he has the skill to make divine oratorios in praise of the strand, kensington, and kew. ... he contrives in each piece to make, out of his theme or lucky expression, a proverb 96 journal (age 46 before he has done; and this conclusion of the last is the exordium of the next chapter. " it is not the least characteristic sign of the times that alcott should have been able to collect such a good company of the best heads for two monday evenings, for the expressed purpose of discussing the times. what was never done by human beings in another age was done now; there they met to discuss their own breath, to speculate on their own navels, with eyeglass and solar microscope, and no man wondered at them. but these very men came in the cars, by steam-ferry and locomotive to the meeting, and sympathized with engineers and californians. mad contradictions flavor all our dishes. common sense eloquence. lord mansfield's merit is like that of plato, montaigne, sam johnson, socrates, and shakspeare, namely, in his common sense. each of those decisions contains a level sentence or two which hit the mark. his sentences are not finished outwardly, but are inwardly. his sentences are involved, but a solid proposition is set forth; a true distinction is drawn. but alcott can never finish a 1850] mansfield. augustine 97 sentence, but revolves in spirals until he is lost in air. and it is true that johnson earned his fame. his reported conversation is up to his reputation. lords camden and kenyon sneered at mansfield's “equitable decisions,” meaning thereby to disparage his learning. saint augustine. of memory, admirable analysis (oxford edition, pp. 188-203) and with an admirable conclusion (p. 202). “but where in my memory residest thou, o lord,” etc. and “too late loved i thee, o thou beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late i love thee !” etc. seven years in the vat. ellery channing thinks the merit of irving's life of goldsmith is that he has not had the egotism to put in a single new sentence. it is nothing but an agreeable repetition of boswell, johnson, and company. and so montaigne is good, because there is nothing that has not already been in books, a good book being a damascus blade made by the welding of old nails and horse-shoes. everything has seen service, and been proved by wear and tear in the world for centuries, and yet now the article 98 (age 46 journal is brand-new. so pope had but one good line, and that he got from dryden, and therefore pope is the best and only readable english poet. 2 the age. god flung into the world in these last ages two toys, a magnet and a lookingglass; and the children of men have occupied themselves wholly with one or the other, or with both. swedenborg, descartes, and all the philosophers both natural and moral, turned themselves into magnets, and have not ceased to express in every way their sense of polarity; — schelling and the existing thinkers most of all. the most unexpected splendid effects are produced by this principle, as a cone is generated by the revolution of a triangle. religions, philosophies, friendships, loves, poetries, literatures, are all hid in the horse-shoe magnet; as galvanism, electricity, chemistry, heat, light, and life and thought are at last only powers of this fruitful phenomenon. a single example occurs for a thousand. society disgusts and the poet resolves to go into retirement and indulge this great heart and feed his thought henceforward with botany and astronomy ;behold on the instant, his appetites are exasperated, he wants dinners and concerts, 1850) magnet and mirror scholars and fine women, theatre and club. and life consists in managing adroitly these antagonisms to intensate each other. life must have continence and abandonment. for the looking-glass, the effect was scarcely less. poor dear narcissus pines on the fountainside. colonel frémont, on the rocky mountains, says, “how we look !” and all cities and all nations think what the english, what the french, what the americans will say. next, the trick of philosophizing is inveterate, and reaches its height; and, last, symbolism is the lookingglass raised to the highest power. i wrote above, “what i want to know is the meaning of what i do; believing that any of my current mondays or tuesdays is fatebook enough for me; believing that hints and telegraphic signals are arriving to me, every moment, out of the interior eternity, i am tormented with impatience to make them out.”: garrison is venerable in his place, like the tart luther; but he cannot understand anything you say, and neighs like a horse when you sug1 compare in the poems (appendix, p. 326) the lines beginning, — the free winds told him what they knew, etc. 100 journal (age 46 gest a new consideration, as when i told him that the fate-element in the negro question he had never considered. “so that the state only exists, i shall never want anything,” said the great condé, and paid the army himself. lord maron. au cæur vaillant rien impossible. abuse is a pledge that you are felt. if they praise you, you will work no revolution. language is a quite wonderful city which we all help to build. but each word is like a work of nature, determined a thousand years ago, and not alterable. we confer and dispute, and settle the meaning so or so, but it remains what it was in spite of us. the word beats all the speakers and definers of it, and stands to their children what it stood to their fathers. as far as i know, the misfortune of new england is, that the southerner always beats us in politics. and for this reason, that it comes at washington to a game of personalities. the southerner has personality, has temperament, has manners, persuasion, address, and terror. the cold yankee has wealth, numbers, intellect, 1850) timid representatives 101 material power of all sorts, but has not fire or firmness, and is coaxed and talked and bantered and shamed and scared till he votes away the dominion of his millions at home! he never comes back quite the same man he went; but has been handled, tampered with. what is the remedy? plainly, i think, that we must borrow a hint from the military art. the hungarians said they could have easily beaten the russians if in any manner they could have made them run: but the russian soldier is more afraid of his officers than of the enemy: if he runs, he will assuredly be shot: if he fights, he has a chance of escape; and therefore he is cut down and butchered, but dares not run. so let our representative know that if he misrepresents his constituency there is no recovery from social damnation at home.' is majority. “the army of unright is encamped from pole to pole, but the road to victory is known to the dervish.” i in these months the debate on further concessions to the south with regard to slavery, including the infamous fugitive slave law, was going on in congress, mr. webster, to the consternation and grief of the friends of liberty, justifying its sacrifice on the altar of the union. 102 journal [age 46 intellect. lagrange thought newton fortunate in this that the law of universal gravitation could be discovered but once, whilst the discoverer of the cape of good hope had a rival in the discoverer of cape horn, of arctic sea and land and antarctic sea and land. and yet in metaphysics there is no terminus, and therefore no final discovery. hegel or oken or whosoever shall enunciate the law which necessitates gravitation as a phenomenon of a larger law, enbracing mind and matter, diminishes newton. how many centres we have fondly found which proved soon to be circumferential points ! how many conversations or books seemed epochs at the moment, which we have now actually forgotten! 0 e now as i read of wolsey yesterday, the boybachelor at oxford (where afterwards he built the beautiful tower of magdalen college chapel), and his early success with the wise old henry vii, it seemed that the true distinction and royalty of kings consists in this privilege of having pure truth in business spoken to them. they have the telegraphic despatch. no man dare lie to them. for good account of wolsey, see wood's athena oxonienses, 1, p. 666. 1850) superstitions. club 103 these children of fashion have found no more satisfaction in their element than the other experimenters, and they are sallying into our pastures to see if (maybe) it is not there. i think how many superstitions we have. patrick jackson did not go to college, and therefore never quite felt himself the equal of his own brothers who did. dancing and equitation, which poverty denied to me, i beheld in all my youth with awe and unquestioning respect. ve town and country club members, 1849.' caleb stetson; hill; t. davis; samuel osgood; charles t. brooks; samuel longfellow; george f. simmons; francis cunningham; frederic a. eustis; c. farrar; thomas b. mackay ; henry d. thoreau; nathaniel gage; thompson ; joseph angier ; thomas starr king; william b. greene; james r. lowell; h. w. longi the editors have supplied the christian names or initials, where mr. emerson did not give them, in cases where they were sure. it is doubtful whether all mentioned in this list accepted, but this is probable in the list of 1850. it is curious that mr. emerson forgot to put his own name and alcott's with the others. thomas wentworth higginson was probably a member. 104 journal (age 46 fellow; william a. tappan; le baron russell; samuel gray ward; george b. emerson ; samuel k. lothrop; george p. bradford ; t. lee; g. russell ; edward bangs; j. elliot cabot; edward e. hale; c. c. shackford. honorary. c. p. cranch; horace bushnell; w. h. channing; duggan; hicks; powers; horatio greenough; n. hawthorne; h. w. beecher; j. whelpley; henry james; r. m. s. jackson ; j. peter lesley. 1850. s. g. ward; j. w. browne; edw. bangs; a. b. alcott; w. e. channing; j. e. cabot ; j. r. lowell ; t. s. king; l. b. russell; w. b. greene; e. e. hale; c. c. shackford; t. parker; j. s. dwight; w. e. goodson; g. p. bradford; j. f. clarke; w. h. channing; e. p. whipple; g. r. loring; w. f. channing. [but the vision of a club of friends, bound together, not by conscience, ideas of duty and of reform, but men genial, poets, and withal having a saving sense of humour, hovered before mr. emerson's eyes, — premonition of the saturday club. in a letter to mr. sam ward written february 24, he said: “i saw longfellow at lowell's, two days ago, and he de1850) enweri. hints in art 105 clared that his faith in clubs was firm. 'i will very gladly,' he said, 'meet with ward and you and lowell and three or four others, and dine together.' lowell remarked, 'well, if he agrees to the dinner, though he refuses the supper, we will continue the dinner until next morning.' . . . just now lowell has been seized with aggravated symptoms of the magazine.” (emerson's letters to a friend, no. xxx111.)] spring (from enweri) in the garden goes now the wind over the water to file and to polish the cheeks of the pond. on tulips plays now the reflection of fire which plays now no more in chimney and hearth. he who yesterday withdrew himself from affairs him now desire sets again in activity. the part that is built teaches the architect how to build the rest. the streets compress the mob into battalions. who taught raffaelle and correggio how to draw ? was it signor quadro, the perspective-master, with his rule and dividers? no, it was the weather-stains on the wall; the cloud over the house-roof yonder, with that shoulder of hercules and brow of jove; it was marbled paper; it was a lucky scratch with a bit of charcoal, which taught the secret of pos106 journal (age 46 sibility, and confounded and annihilated signor quadro and themselves also. the impressionable man. in the woods i have one guide, namely, to follow the light, — to go where the woods are thinnest; then at last i am sure to come out. so he cannot be betrayed or misguided, for he knows where the north is, knows painfully when he is going in the wrong direction. memory, imagination, reason are only modes of the same power, as lampblack and diamond are the same chemical matter in different arrangement. “animus habet, non habetur.” — sallust. abandon. men of genius“ give out oracles when they are agitated, but are no more than men, when they are calm.” — de staël. “to stand on one's own feet" is the maxim of demosthenes, as of chatham, says heeren, in all his orations; and it is in the oration of the συμμορίαι or classes. he has the best sense whose face is not good only for one particular thing, but, as rose flam1850] personality 107 mock says of her father's, it is like his yardstick, which will measure dowlas and also clothof-gold. shakspeare was like a looking-glass carried through the street. “did i not drum well?” said mr. gray to somebody who taunted him with being a drummer's boy. personality. the reason why the highwayman masters the traveller is not his pistol, but his personality. if the party attacked had really the superiority in character and love, he could really conquer without arms. but he must be so charged and surcharged with love that he is as good a highwayman as the highwayman. you shall not match the pirate with a goody, but with a pirate (i.e., in natural force), and more determined and absolute by dint of his heart than the other by help of his arms. colonel forbes [an englishman], who served in garibaldi's army, told me of his being stopped by brigands in the night in a carriage in italy. he got out of the coach and walked up to them. “ what do you want?” no answer. “do you want money?” yes. their guns were aimed. he walked directly up to them and they drew up their guns. “my good fellows, you have 108 (age 46 journal e no made a mistake. we are soldiers sent by the government to sienna. we have no money, not even to pay our fare or dinner. it is all paid by order of the government. i wish you better luck the next time.” “get in, get in ” (to his companions) and tied in the horses, and off with “ addio, a rivederci.” i should like to set a sculptor to put a face on a church door that should draw and keep a crowd about it all the daytime by its character, good nature, and inscrutable meaning. watson haynes, the sailor, testifies that when he attempted to enlist the clergy in his crusade against flogging in the navy, they replied, that their business was to preach the gospel and not to interfere with the regulations of the navy. and webster thinks the gospel was to touch the heart and not to abolish slavery. washington allston, when he painted blue sky, began, as nature does, with a ground of deep black and painted the light on that. and when he had occasion to paint a gem, he wrought on it as long as a lapidary. 1850) shirley. hotels 109 [in march and april mr. emerson gave courses in new york and philadelphia; also lectures in brooklyn and in paterson, new jersey.] philadelphia, april 6. i think a novel like shirley must cultivate its readers. it is very useful to each in his kind. i saw at once how a treatise on the conduct of life would draw men“ to the exclusion of caucus and theatre.” lal elph i read on a tombstone “elizabeth roe, died, aged 25. she was, — words is wanting to tell what she was, — think what a true friend can be, she was that.” i have made no note of these long weary absences at new york and philadelphia. i am a bad traveller, and the hotels are mortifications to all sense of well-being in me. the people who fill them oppress me with their excessive virility, and would soon become intolerable if it were not for a few friends, who, like women, tempered the acrid mass. henry james was true comfort, wise, gentle, polished, with heroic manners, and a serenity like the sun. ere iio journal (age 46 [april.] the worst symptom i have noticed in our politics lately is the attempt to make a gibe out of seward's appeal to a higher law than the constitution, and webster has taken part in it. i have seen him snubbed as “ higher-law seward.” and now followed by rufus choate in his phrase, “the trashy sentimentalism of our lutestring enthusiasts.": lucretia mott is the flower of quakerism. that woman has a unity of sense, virtue, and good meaning perfectly impressed on her countenance which are a guarantee of victory in all the fights to which her quaker faith and connection lead her. she told exceedingly well the story of her contest with the mob at dover and smyrna in delaware, she and the wife of mr. attending him down to the place where the mob were to tar and feather him, and it was perfectly easy to see that she might safely go, and would surely defend herself and him. no compare in « worship ” what is said at the bottom of p. 209 (conduct of life); also, in mr. emerson's speech on the “fugitive slave law," delivered in new york, march 7, 1854, his mention of webster's “ wretched atheism,” ridiculing higher law (miscellanies, p. 228). 1850] boston's subservience i mob could remain a mob where she went. she brings domesticity and common sense, and that propriety which every man loves, directly into this hurly-burly, and makes every bully ashamed. her courage is no merit, one almost says, where triumph is so sure. daniel webster. i think there was never an event half so painful occurred in boston as the letter with eight hundred signatures to webster.' the siege of boston was a day of glory. this was a day of petticoats, a day of imbecilities, the day of the old women, la veille. many of the names very properly belong there, — they are the names of aged and infirm people, who have outlived everything but their nightcap and their tea and toast. but i observe some names of men under forty! i observe that very few lawyers have set their names. they are a prudent race, though not very fond of liberty. it seems 't is now settled that men in con-l gress have no opinions; that they may be had 1 this was on the receipt of the news of his “ seventh of march speech” in congress, justifying the new compromises with the slave power, and especially the fugitive slave law.” som 112 journal (agb 46 for any opinion, any purpose. understanding is the thing required in a member. virtue is very good in country places, but impertinent in public men. 'tis virtue which they want, and, wanting it, honour no garment to their backs can fit. ben jonson, cynthia's revels. raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede poena claudo.' the badness of the times is making death atu tractive. andrew fletcher “would give his life to serve his country, but would not do a mean act to save it.” at the concord celebration. i was struck · with the talent of everett and choate, and the delight of the people in listening to their eloquence. ... there have been millions and millions of men, and a good stump orator only once in an age. governor briggs is an excellent middle man, i seldom does retribution with her lame foot forsake the trail of crime. 2 that is, of the nineteenth of april. everett was the orator 1850) rantoul. levelling 113 he looks well when speaking, and seems always just ready to say something good, but never said anything; he is an orateur manqué. rantoul had an inestimable advantage in belonging to the “ loco-foco party.” all his tediousness, all his wearisomeness about “ionic melody of the father of history,” and about the history of islamism, indeed, all those painful exertions which collegians call “squirts,” were patiently and even proudly heard by the multitude, who were proud of the college learning of their man. in a whig these would have been intolerable, and all scholars would have suffered from the supposed impatience of the company. now, we sat quite at ease and irresponsible. may 4. it may be assumed that nemesis is always levelling, and if by night you should chance to hear the burglar gathering your spoons into his bag, what is it but the caving-in of a little sand or pebbles at the edge of the bank which is always falling ? the levelling goes on surely at all hours, whether you watch it or no. thackeray's vanity fair is pathetic in its name, and in his use of the name; an admission 114 (age 47 journal it is from a man of fashion in the london of 1850 that poor old puritan bunyan was right in his perception of the london of 1650. and yet now in thackeray is the added wisdom or skepticism, that, though this be really so, he must yet live in tolerance of, and practically in homage and obedience, to these illusions. [it appears from mr. emerson's accountbook that in the middle of june he made a journey in the “new west,” first to cincinnati, and from there visited the mammoth cave (see “illusions,” conduct of life, pp. 309, 310). he went down the ohio river and up the mississippi to st. louis and then to galena, crossing illinois by stage and michigan by the new railroad, and then following lakes erie and ontario to connect with the railroad again at albany. at niagara falls, which he saw probably for the first time, he met his friend mr. john m. forbes, the deus ex machina of the roads under construction to chicago, and later to open iowa and nebraska and the region beyond. in a letter to carlyle (no. cxxx in the correspondence) mr. emerson tells of this western journey and of his walking and sailing eighteen miles underground in the mammoth cave. 1850] madame ossoli's death 115 it is the scholar's misfortune that his virtues are all on paper, and when the time comes to use them, he rubs his eyes and tries to remember what it is that he should do. july 21 [?]. on friday, july 19, margaret dies on rocks of fire island beach within sight of and within sixty rods of the shore. to the last her country proves inhospitable to her; brave, eloquent, subtle, accomplished, devoted, constant soul!" if nature availed in america to give birth to many such as she, freedom and honour and letters and art too were safe in this new world. she bound in the belt of her sympathy and friendship all whom i know and love, — elizabeth, caroline, ward, the channings, ellen hooper, charles newcomb, hedge, and sarah clarke. she knew more select people than any other i for the account of this tragedy as well as the strange, inspiring life of margaret fuller ossoli in new england, and her later heroism in the service of the italians in their unsuccessful rising for liberty in 1848-49, see her memoirs by her friends emerson, rev. william h. channing, and rev. james freeman clarke; also colonel thomas wentworth higginson's margaret fuller ossoli. 116 journal [age 47 son orc. person did, and her death will interest more. yet her taste in music, painting, poetry, character would not be on universal but on idiosyncratic grounds, yet would be genuine. she had a wonderful power of inspiring confidence and drawing out of people their last secret. the timorous said, “what shall we do? how shall she be received, now that she brings a husband and child home?” but she had only to open her mouth and a triumphant success awaited her. she would fast enough have disposed of the circumstances and the bystanders. for she had the impulse, and they wanted it. here were already mothers waiting tediously for her coming, for the education of their daughters. mrs. ripley thinks that the marriage with ossoli was like that of de staël in her widowhood with the young de rocca, who was enamoured of her. and mrs. barlow has an unshaken trust that what margaret did she could well defend. her love of art, like that of many, was only a confession of sympathy with the artist in the mute condemnation which his work gave to the deformity of our daily life; her co-perception with him of the eloquence of form; her aspiration with him to a life altogether beautiful. margaret filler ossoli 1850] margaret fuller 117 her heart, which few knew, was as great as her mind, which all knew (what jung stilling said of goethe) elizabeth hoar says of margaret; and that she was the largest woman; and not a woman who wished to be a man. i have lost in her my audience. i hurry now to my work admonished that i have few days left. there should be a gathering of her friends and some beethoven should play the dirge. she poured a stream of amber over the endless store of private anecdotes, of bosom histories which her wonderful persuasion drew out of all to her. when i heard that a trunk of her correspondence had been found and opened, i felt what a panic would strike all her friends, for it was as if a clever reporter had got underneath a confessional and agreed to report all that transpired there in wall street. oh, yes, “ margaret and her friends" must be written, but not post-haste. it is an essential line of american history. “yes, that is an example of a destiny springing from character.” "i see your destiny hovering before you, but it always escapes you." « nor custom stale her infinite variety." 118 journal (age 47 elizabeth hoar quotes mrs. barlow as saying that margaret never disappointed you. to any one whose confidence she had once drawn out, she was always faithful. she could (and she was alone in this) talk of persons and never gossip, for she had a fine instinct that kept her from any reality and from any effect of treachery. the fact is she had large sympathies. mrs. barlow has the superiority to say, of margaret, death seems to her a fit and good conclusion to the life. her life was romantic and exceptional: so let her death be; it sets the seal on her marriage, avoids all questions of society, all of employment, poverty, and old age, and besides was undoubtedly predetermined when the world was created. dr. w. e. channing said to her, “miss fuller, when i consider that you are all that miss p. wished to be, and that you despise her, and that she loves and honours you, i think her place in heaven must be very high.” lidian says that in the fly-leaf of margaret's bible was written a hymn of novalis. she had great tenderness and sympathy, as aunt mary has none. if aunt mary finds out anything is dear and sacred to you, she instantly flings broken crockery at that. was s 1850] margaret fuller 119 elizabeth hoar says of margaret, — her friends were a necklace of diamonds about her neck. the confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them; that the honor of the conversations was the high tone of sincerity and culture from so many consenting individuals, and that margaret was the keystone of the whole. she was perhaps impatient of complacency in people who thought they had claims and stated their contrary opinion with an air. for such she had no mercy. but though not agreeable, it was just. and so her enemies were made. a larger dialectic, i said, conveys a sense of power and feeling of terror before unknown, and henry thoreau said “that a thought would destroy like the jet of a blowpipe most persons,” and yet we apologize for the power and bow to the persons. i want an electrical machine. slumbering power we have, but not excited, collected, and discharged. if i should be honest, i should say my exploring of life presents little or nothing of respectable event or action, or, in myself, of a personality. too composite to offer a positive unity, but it is a recipiency, a percipiency. and 120 journal (age 47 1, and far weaker persons, if it were possible, than i, who pass for nothing but imbeciles, do yet affirm by their percipiency the presence and perfection of law as much as all the martyrs. it is the charm of practical men that outside of all their practicality are a certain poetry and play.' ... every glance at society pale, withered people with gold-filled teeth,ghastly, and with minds in the same dilapidated condition, drugged with books for want of wisdom — suggests at once the german thought of the progressive god, who has got thus far with his experiment, but will get out yet a triumphant and faultless race. men as naturally make a state as caterpillars a web. ... the relation of men of thought to society is always the same. they abhor whiggism, they abhor rebellion. they refuse the necessity of 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in “illusions” (conduct of life, p. 317). 2 the passage is printed in “worship” (conduct of life, p. 203). 121 1850) gifts rare. newcomb 121 mediocre men, that is, to take sides. they keep their own self-poise, and the ecliptic is never parallel with the earth's equator. two mottoes for a genealogy:gaudent compositi cineres sua nomina dici. claudian (?). et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis. virgil. august 25. in fifty or three hundred years, a poet; and the other demonstrations of divinity are as rare. in many days, a pleasure; in many months, a concatenating thought; in years, a law is discerned. a few words will give the curious the history of our age. what a fine, subtle, inward genius was charles newcomb, puny in body and habit as a girl, yet with an aplomb like a general's, never disconcerted. yet he lived and thought in 1842 such worlds of life, all hinging too on the idea of being or reality, on the one part, and consciousness on the other; hating intellect with the ferocity of a swedenborg, and valuing the hero in ! montaigne is his delight. 122 (age 47 journal cross i find in van helmont the same thought which is the genius of swedenborg too, and of pascal, that piety is an essential condition of science; that “the soul understands in peace and rest, and not in doubting,” and one would say that van helmont is a cross of aristotle and thomas à kempis. september 1. yesterday took that secluded marlboro' road with channing in a wagon. every rock was painted “marlboro’,”: and we proposed to take the longest day in the year and ride to marlboro', — that flying italy. we went to willis's pond in sudbury and paddled across it, and took a swim in its water, coloured like sugarbaker's molasses. nature, ellery thought, is less interesting. yesterday thoreau told me it was more so, and persons less. i think it must always combine with man. life is ecstatical, and we radiate joy and honour and gloom on the days and landscapes we converse with. but i must remember a real or imagined period in my youth when they who spoke to me of nature were religious, and made it so, was ot me 1 in their imagination; the curse of advertising had not yet fallen on the roadsides. 1850) melody. hero 123 and made it deep: now it is to the young sentimentalists frippery, and a milliner's shop has as much reason and worth. i have often observed the priority of music to thought in young writers, and last night remembered what fools a few sounding sentences made of me and my mates at cambridge, as in lee's' and john everett's orations. how long we lived on “licoö";' on moore's “go where glory waits thee”; and lalla rookh; and “when shall the swan his deathnote singing." i still remember a sentence in carter lee's oration, “and there was a band of heroes, and round their mountain was a wreath of light, and in the midst, on the mountain-top, stood liberty, feeding her eagle.” hero. how much language thinks for us, witness that word “hero.” what has carlyle, what has charles newcomb added to the bare word, which has been the inspiration of them both, and will be of all the generous ? i charles carter lee, of the class of 1819, one of those young southerners whose aorid or fiery rhetoric and declamation emerson admired in his college days. 2 “the song of the tonga islanders,” printed by mr. emerson in his collection parnassus. 124 journal [ace 47 my method. i write metaphysics, but my method is purely expectant. it is not even tentative. much less am i ingenious in instituting experimenta crucis to extort the secret and lay bare the reluctant lurking law. no, i confine my ambition to true reporting, though i only get one new fact in a year.' this, of course, is a corollary of the doctrine of inspiration. but the scholar may have the mechanical advantage of posting his observations, and so discovering neptune by three records in his day book. in my romance the lost prince shall be sung to sleep and again taught to play quorum” by nonsense lullabies, which, when he comes to age, and to the mountains of his country, shall translate themselves into advertisement of those particulars he is to know. in my romance, too, talbot was to come as poor as béranger's romeo 3 into town, yet was 1 this last sentence is in natural history of intellect (p. 11). 2 this game, a sort of hide-and-seek, was usually called • corum.” 3 the story of romeo, steward of count raymond béranger, who enriched his master, but when his accounts were questioned, took his staff and scrip and went away poor as he came. 1850] the artist's chance 125 to build his plain cottage with such beauty as to eclipse the villas of the grandees, and to cut his walks in curves of inimitable beauty, curves too whose law he only knew; and to add a fountainjet which tapped a mountain. the artist now should draw men together by praising nature, show them the joy of naturalists in famous indian glens, natural. botanic gardens,in the profusion of new genera, [so] that they could only relieve themselves by cries, of joy; then the joy of the conchologist in his belix pulcherrima, whose elegant white pattern becomes invisible in water, visible again when dry. let him unroll the earth and sky, and show the splendour of colour and of form; then let him, on the top of this delight, add a finer, by disclosing the secrets of intellectual law; tell them a secret that will drive them crazy; and things that require no system to make them pertinent, but make everything else impertinent. i think; give me the memory to tell of [these], — or the imagination, and i could win the ear of reasonable people, and make them think common daylight was worth something. afterwards let him whisper in their ear the moral laws, — 126 journal (age 47 “more fair than heaven's broad causeway paved with stars which dion learned to measure with sublime delight.”, beauty. it is curious that we so peremptorily require beauty, and if it do not exist in any one, we feel at liberty to insult over that subject, without end. thus the poor donkey is not handsome, and so is the gibe of all mankind in all ages, notwithstanding his eminent usefulness; whilst those handsome cats, the lion, leopard, tiger are allowed to tear and devour because handsome mischiefs, and are the badges of kings. amount and quality. schelling's distinction, “some minds speak about things, and some minds speak the things themselves,” remains by far the most important intellectual distinction, as the quality is the important moral distinction. searching tests these: what is the state of mind he leaves me in? and, what does he add? for quality, you must have fine disposition, it is more essential than talent for the works of talent. for amount, i look back over all my reading, 1 wordsworth's dion. 1850) amount and quality 127 and think how few authors have given me things: plato has, and shakspeare, and plutarch, and montaigne, and swedenborg. goethe abounds in things, and chaucer and donne and herbert and bacon had much to communicate. but the majority of writers had only their style or rhetoric, their claude lorraine glass. they were presentableness, parliamentariness, currency, birmingham. wordsworth almost alone in his times belongs to the giving, adding class, and coleridge also has been a benefactor. i was looking lately at a new volume of sermons of a preacher more intellectual than most of his class, and thought, how wanting in ideas ! how ill the whole printed ethics and religion, now, would compare with books, in the same department, of hooker, donne, herbert, taylor, john smith, henry more! as ill would the tribune verses or the london athenæum, or fraser's magazine verses, compare with donne, ben jonson, beaumont and fletcher; and all this in mere amount; in the modern, you can omit the whole without loss; in the old, somewhat is done and said in every piece. every great fact in natural science has been divined by the presentiment of somebody. 128 journal (age 47 when i looked into plutarch's placita philosophorum the other day, it was easy to see that spinoza, laplace, schelling, and oken, and plato are preëxistent; that these old men, in the beginning of science, as we are apt to say, had little to learn from all our accumulation of facts. thales, anaximines, air is the soul and source of things. empedocles, pythagoras, made the first discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic, but one enopides of chios challenges to himself the invention of it. aristarchus “places the sun among the fixed stars; that the earth is moved about the sun by its inclination and vergency towards it, intercepts its light, and shadows its orb.” what could copernicus add? thales, that the moon borrows all its light from the sun; that the earth is globular; the moon's eclipse is perfectly known. metrodorus, infinite worlds in infinite space. there are in this motley list plenty of fancies, notions that lead nowhere but into corners; thoughts that have no posterity. then comes one betraying a mind parallel to the movement of the world, and, as it is an aperçu of nature, so it can be applied again and again as an explanation. oc rows 1850) jenny lind. culture 129 jenny lind. of what use for one to go to california who has a fine talent that reaches men? all the contents of california, canton, india, turkey, france, england will be offered and urged on this swedish girl with a fine voice. jenny lind need not go to california. california comes to her. jenny lind needs no police. her voice is worth a hundred constables, and instantly silenced the uproar of the mob. children. i wrote that it is difficult to begin the culture too young. mrs. barbauld said they should never remember the time when they knew not the name of god, and a well-born boy never did not know the names of the men of genius who are to be his escort and fraternity through life. but the young barbarians i see knew nothing but footballs until they went to latin school and to college, and at cambridge first learn the names of the laureates, and use them, as country editors do, awkwardly and barbarously. george sand has the same thing in view when she points at the defective education of women. they learn casually and irregularly, and are not systematically drilled from childhood to letters. the superlative. in the east a war is as read130 (age 47 journal ily undertaken for an epigram or a distich as in europe for a duchy. the reader of hafiz would infer that all the food was either candy or wormwood. for the love of poetry, let it be remembered that mv copy of collins, after much search, was found smuggled away into the cold brick] oven in the kitchen. october 24. a ride yesterday to marlboro', though projected for years, was no good use of the day. that town has a most rich appearance of rural plenty and comfort; ample farms, good houses, profusion of apples, pumpkins, etc. yellow apple heaps in every enclosure, whole orchards left ungathered, and in the grecian piazzas of houses pumpkins ripening between the columns. at gates's, where dr. channing and mr. jonathan phillips used to resort, they no longer keep a public house; closed it to the public last spring. at cutting's, though there were oats for the horse, there was no dinner for men, so we repaired to the chestnut woods and an old orchard for ours. ellery, who is a perpetual holiday, and ought only to be used like an oriflamme or a garland for maydays and parliaments of 1850] a village naturalist 131 wit and love, was no better to-day, nor half so good, as in some walks. practical naturalist. now that the civil engineer is fairly established, i think we must have one day a naturalist in each village as invariably as a lawyer or doctor. it will be a new subdivision of the medical profession. i want to know what plant this is? pentborum. what is it good for? in medical botany? in industrial botany? now the indian doctor, if there were one, and not the sham of one, would be more consulted than the diplomatic one. what bird is this? what hyla? what caterpillar? here is a new bug on the trees. cure the warts on the plum and on the oak. how to attack the rose-bug and the curculio. show us the poisons. how to treat the cranberry meadow. the universal impulse toward natural science in the last twenty years promises this practical issue. and how beautiful would be the profession. c. t. jackson, john l. russell, henry thoreau, george bradford, and john lesley would find their employment. all questions answered for stipulated fees; and, on the other hand, new information paid for, as a newspaper office pays for news. 132 journal (age 47 [from bo] farà da se.' higher law october. “ archbishop whitgift (of canterbury), who had been coke's tutor, sent unto his pupil, when the queen's attorney, a fair new testament, with this message: 'he had now studied common law enough; let him hereafter study the law of god.'” fuller's wortbies (vol. ii, p. 130). lord mansfield. lord mansfield said in the case of the slave somersett, wherein dicta of lords talbot and hardwicke had been cited to the effect of carrying back the slave to the west indies, “i care not for the supposed dicta of judges, however eminent, if they be contrary to all principle. the dicta cited were probably misunderstood, and, at all events, they are to be disregarded.”.— campbell’s lives of the chief justices, vol. ii, p. 419. i he will act for himself. 2 mr. emerson's respect for lord mansfield's quality and brave rulings from a high plane is shown in his reference to him in “ eloquence" (society and solitude, p. 88). 133 on1850) higher law [in] blackstone's commentaries [it is written] :“the creator has laid down only such laws as were found in those relations of justice that existed in the nature of things, antecedent to any positive precept: these are, the eternal immutable laws of good and evil, . . . such, among others, are these principles; that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due, to which three general precepts justinian has reduced the whole doctrine of law.” “he has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual that the latter cannot be obtained but by observing the former.” after this, he says of “ ethics, or natural law”: “this law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by god himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. it is binding all over the globe in all countries and at all times. no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.” and he proceeds to say that the enacting of 134 journal (age 47 san asm human laws annexing a punishment to a crime, as murder, “do not superadd any fresh obligation to abstain from its perpetration; nay, if any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and divine.” (vol. i, § 2.) lord coke: “that the common law shall control acts of parliament and sometimes shall adjudge them to be merely void; for where an act of parliament is against common right and reason, the common law shall control it and adjudge it to be void.” —8 rep. f. 118a, apud lord campbell’s lives of the chief justices, vol. i, p. 290. king james said to coke, “my lords, i always thought, and by my soul, i have often heard the boast that your english law was founded upon reason. if that be so, why have not i and others reason, as well as the judges?” – lives of the chief justices, vol. i, p. 272. “leges legum ex quibus informatio peti possit quid in singulis legibus aut bene aut perperam positum aut constitutum sit.” – bacon's de fontibus juris, aphor. 6. . 1850) talk with thoreau 135 “the wisdom of our laws,” says lord coke, “is most apparent in this, that any departure from their established principles, although at the time wearing the specious appearance of advantage, never fails to bring along with it such a train of unforeseen inconveniences as to demonstrate their excellence and the necessity of again having recurrence to them.” —speech of sir f. burdett, 1809 (apud cobbett xv, 973). october 27. rambling talk with henry thoreau last night, in accordance with my proposal to hold a session, the first for a long time, with malice prepense, and take the bull by the horns. we disposed pretty fast of america and england, i maintaining that our people did not get ripened, but, like the peaches and grapes of this season, wanted a fortnight's more sun and remained green, whilst in england, because of the density, perhaps, of cultivated population, more caloric was generated and more completeness obtained. layard is good example, both of the efficiency as measured by effect on the arab, and in its reaction of his enterprise on him; for his enterprise proved a better university to him than oxford or sorbonne. 136 journal (age 47 henry thought“ the english all train,” are mere soldiers, as it were, in the world. and that their business is winding up, whilst our pioneer is unwinding his lines. i like the english better than our people, just as i like merchants better than scholars ; for, though on a lower platform, yet there is no cant, there is great directness, comprehension, health, and success. so with english. then came the difference between american and english scholars. henry said, the english were all bred in one way, to one thing; he had read many lives lately, and they were all one life, southey, campbell, leigh hunt, or whosoever; they went to eton, they went to college, they went to london, they all knew each other, and never did not feel the ability of each. but here, channing is obscure, newcomb is obscure, and so all the scholars are in a more natural, healthful, and independent condition. my own quarrel with america, of course, was that the geography is sublime, but the men are not;'... it was agreed, however, that what is called a success in america or in england is none; that 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in “ considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 256). 1850) talk with thoreau 137 w an their book or man or law had no root in nature, of course! but in the face of the facts which appear as soon as a couple of meditative men converse, i demand another sort of biography than any of which we have experience, bold, experimental, varied, availing itself of these unspeakable, incomputable advantages which this meditative conversation at once discloses as within reach. thus a man should do the feats he so admires. why not suddenly put himself to the learning of tongues, and, like borrow, master in a few months the dialects of europe, moor and gypsy, flash and patois: then, in another summer, put himself at the centre of sciences (which seems and is so easy when he meditates), and read from simple arithmetic the activities of chemistry, of geology, of astronomy; paint out the beautiful botany, as goethe wished, by figuring not only all actual but all possible plants; then work out a priori politics; then set himself, like walter raleigh and columbus and cabot, on the finding and survey of new kingdoms, and try, after other months, all the melodies of music and poetry with the boldest adventure? why only one humboldt, one crichton, one pythagoras, one napoleon, when 138 (age 47 journal every thinker, every mind, in the ascensions of conversation, sees his right to all these departments? ... why are we so excellent at the humdrum of our musty household life, when quite aware of the majestic prerogatives? we do not try the virtue of the amulets we have. thus we can think so much better by thinking with a wise man. yet we come together as a pair of sixfooters, always as six-footers, and never on the ground of the immensities, which we have together authentically and awefully surveyed. why not once meet and work on the basis of the immensities, and not of the six feet? ... when shall we attain our majority and come to our estate? i complain, too, that grandeurs do not ultimate themselves in grandeurs, but in paltriness. the idea of god ends in a paltry methodist meeting-house. mer w biggism. “a stubborn retention of customs is a turbulent thing, not less than the introduction of new.” – lord bacon. the secret of eloquence is to realize all you say. do not give us counters of base coin, but every word a real value. 1850] charity. astronomy 139 “ truth needs no colour with his colour fixed, beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay; but best is best, if never intermixed.” days. and you think another day another scream of the eternal wail ? “pan is a god, and apollo is no more.” — hazlitt (?). irtu incus elizabeth hoar says there are two kinds of love of our fellowmen ; one, such as her mother has, of doing good to them (a kind which she does not much value); and the other, that of enjoying their talents and virtues and advantages. astronomy kepler. 1. orbits elliptical. 2. radius vector describes equal areas in equal times. 3. squares of the periodic times as the cubes of their distances from the sun. newton. every particle of matter gravitates to every other particle with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distances. newton “found that the weight of the same body would be twenty-three times greater at the surface of the sun than at the surface of the earth.” — brewster. пе 140. (age 47 journal old age. the world wears well. these autumn afternoons and well-marbled landscapes of green and gold and russet, and steel-blue river, and smoke-blue new hampshire mountains, are and remain as bright and perfect pencilling as ever. democracy. the objection of practical men to free institutions is that responsibility is shirked. every power is exerted by a committee, which is every moment composed of new persons. if you should take an irishman out of the street, and make him despotic in your town, he would try to rule it well, because it was his own. but these rotating governors and legislators go for their own interest, which is the only permanency they know. they go for their party, which is much more permanent than their office, and for their contract, or claim, or whatever private interest. fame. it is long before tennyson writes a poem, but the morning after he sends it to the times it is reprinted in all the newspapers, and, in the course of a week or two, is as well known all over the world as the meeting of hector and andromache in homer. 1850) culture. a quaker 141 culture. it occurred yesterday, more strongly than i can now state it, that we must have an intellectual property in all property, and in all action, or they are naught.'... the one thing we watch with pathetic interest in our children is the degree in which they possess recuperative force. ... to the plus man the frost is a mere colour; l the rain, the wind is nothing. at harrisburg, [last] april, i met w. l. fisher. the good old quaker believes in individualism still: so do i. fourierism seemed to him boys' play; and so indeed did money; though he frankly admitted how much time he had spent about it: but a vital power in man, identical with that which makes grass grow, and the sweet breeze blow; and which should abolish slavery, and raise the pauper, that he believes in, against all experience. so we held sweet counsel together. a great curiosity he professed, 1 the rest of this passage is printed in “culture” (conduct of life, p. 158). 2 the rest of the paragraph is printed in “ power" (conduct of life, pp. 60, 61). 142 journal (age 47 in -and there again he met me,to know how the fact lies in the minds of these poor men that were sitting in the front car. if there is a right statement, he felt and said, it ought to satisfy paddy too. we agreed that the power of carolina over massachusetts and the states was in the personal force; and, therefore, it is a triumph of individualism. november 16. yesterday i read margaret's letters to c. s., full of probity, full of talent and wit, full of friendship, ardent affections, full of noble aspiration. they are tainted with a female mysticism which to me appears so merely an affair of constitution that it claims no more respect or reliance than the charity or patriotism of a man who has just dined well and feels good. when i talked with g. h., i remember the eggs and butter seemed to have got into his eyes. in our noble margaret her personal feeling colours all her judgments of persons, of books, of pictures, and of the laws of the world. this is easily felt in common women, and a large deduction is civilly made on the spot by whosoever replies to their remark. but when the speaker has such brilliant talent and literature as margaret, she gives so many fine names to these merely senan 1850) margaret fuller 143 suous and subjective objects that the hearer is long imposed upon, and thinks so precise and glittering nomenclature cannot be of mere muscæ volitantes, but must be of some real ornithology hitherto unknown to him. ' this mere feeling exaggerates a host of trifles, as birthdays, seals, bracelets, ciphers, coincidences, contretemps, into a dazzling mythology; but when one goes to sift it, and find if there be a real meaning, it eludes all search. whole sheets of warm, fluent, florid writing are here, in which the eye is caught by “carbuncle,” “heliotrope," "dragon,” “aloes," "magna dea,” “limboes,” “stars,” and “purgatory,” but can connect all this or any part of it with no universal experience. yet margaret had her own merits, and we shall not see her like. what a basis of earnest love of knowledge and love of character! her decided selection, so sagacious generally, of her friends; in some instances, her election anticipates for some years any personal intercourse, and her fidelity to them, and generous forgiving appreciation. she estimates society and its opinion very well, far better than so many people of talent. her expensiveness creates tragic relation and feeling to it, and thence with ill 144 journal (age 47 health comes all the unworthy sentimentalism of destiny, dæmon, gold, and the cross. yet i draw from this warm refreshening of fading tints on the canvas of the past admonitions always needed, that what spoke to the best minds among the young in those years, 1838 to 1842, was the spontaneous and solitary thought, and not the birmingham lacker, and though whiggism and cities condemn now, so did they then, and yet this, somewhat more real and strong than whigs or cities, made itself a place and name, and compelled the reiterated visit and inquest of these, though they still pronounce it imposture, and will require new visit and inquest, until at last it is stamped, as good whiggism and municipality. it is curious that margaret made a most disagreeable impression on her friends at first, — created a strong prejudice which she had then to conquer. it was so with elizabeth hoar, with sarah clarke, and with me. sarah clarke quotes spenser's sonnet:rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire in finding fault with her too portly pride ; the thing which i do most in her admire is of the world unworthy most envied; 1850) journal. city founders 145 for in those lofty looks is close implied scorn of base things and sdeign of foul dishonour, threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide that loosely they ne dare to look upon her. such pride is praise, such portliness is honour, that boldened innocence bears in her eyes, and her fair countenance like a goodly banner spreads in defiance of all enemies. was never in this world aught worthy tried without some spark of such self-pleasing pride. a journal is to the author a book of constants, each mind requiring (as i have so often said) to write the whole of literature and science for itself. το κινήτικον. “all the rest of the syracusans were no more than the body, in the batteries of archimedes, while he himself was the all moving and informing soul.” – plutarch, marcellus. certain persons naturally stand for cities, because they will certainly build them; as, erastus b. bigelow, patrick jackson, william emerson of bangor, alvah crocker, samuel lawrence, david neal. leasts. st. john and fénelon are made of ferocious animalcules; and homer's poetry be146 journal [age 47 gins with whistle, jingle, and word-catching; and revolutionary thoughts from single occasions and personalities; and the grandeur of centuries out of the paltriest hours; and the discoveries of stars and of gravity and of fluxions are attended by pitiful squabbles. “indeed, to play well, takes up the whole man,” says evelyn, speaking of the irish harp. architecture, the skeleton, the resistance to gravity, and the elements make one extreme; florid, petulant anthropomorphism, which carves every pump-handle and door-knob into a human face, is the other; midway between these is the sobriety and grace of art. memoranda for manners. john quincy adams, wavy iron, limp band.' claverhouse, feminine virility. english red-dough full of culture and power. never allude to sickness. people who are biped weeping willows. creep-mouse manners. call yourself preacher, pedler, lecturer, tinman, grocer, scrivener, jobber, or whatever low1 the allusion is to the apparently gossamer band which bound the terrible fenris-wolf, in the norse mythology. 1850] readings. helpful heat 147 est name your business admits, and leave your lovers to find the fine name. readings for ellen. archimedes in plutarch. professor wallraf and the medusa at cologne. lockhart's “count alarcos.” “the mighty tottipottimoy,” from hudibras. “ childe dyring.”. story of belisarius. heat. in talking with mr. hoar, last night, i found the advantage, as several times before in my life, of an inspiring subject. one likes in a companion phlegm that it is a triumph to disturb. so when we find that our habitual aridity, incapacity, and egotism can be overpowered by a generous cause, all impediment brushed away, and our long unused faculties arouse in perfect array, and at last obedient to the will, so that we nobodies are suddenly great and eloquent, – we can forgive the long hybernation, and impute our past insignificance to the triviality of the game. eloquence. you shall not impoverish me. when campbell heard joseph gerald defend 1 this ballad and the passage from hudibras are printed in mr. emerson's collection parnassus. 148 [age 47 journal himself in the court, at edinburgh, he said to the stranger next him, “by heavens, sir, that is a great man.” “yes, sir,” he answered ; “ he is not only a great man himself, but he makes every other man feel great who listens to him.” as soon as a man shows the power of expression, like chatham, canning, or erskine, or choate even, all the great mass interests crowd to him to be their spokesman, so that he is at once a potentate. tools. when will they arrive at manufacturving day out of night, time out of space, and space out of time? an essay, one of the most agreeable surprises is to fall in with mr. x. he comes in to borrow a light for his lamp or a shovel of coals to kindle his fire, and finding you hunting up a law-case he happens, by the oddest coincidence, to know the very book and page where it is to be found; but when the conversation diverges to politics, he is so at home that you think he must be a cabinet minister; and we should have set him down as such, but that there chanced to be a chemist in the room turning over dr. black's pamphlet, which drew x to make an 1850] a crichton 149 explanation of the new theory of heat, and the views he suggested inspired in the whole company a new interest in so wonderful a science; and i do not know how many crucibles and alembics would have been bought the next day if mr. y, mr. cowper's friend, had not come in with some verses of that poet. these, being read aloud, led x to warm praise, and then to discourse at large on modern and old poetry, which he esteemed the chief entertainment and the nobility of human wit, and drew from its flights a very curious evidence to the existence of new and more penetrating senses (to use his expression) than any that metaphysicians reckoned as proper to the human subject. but glancing at my brother, who is, you know, a lover of mathematics and still more of mechanics, he made a sudden transition in his talk to show how extremes were likely to meet, and how all the ancient fables of poetry were likely to be realized by the french engineers, and that he thought that the fancy and imagination of the century to come would find sufficient food in following or predicting the progress of the useful arts, without any need of recourse to nursery giants or truncated angels. and for this opinion he gave such solid reasons and exhibited such cou 150 journal (age 47 a picture of the resources of the machine-shop and of the laboratory that we all felt as rich as kings and that the human race were about to be relieved henceforward from personal labor. the conversation afterwards took new and various directions, but our new friend was never at fault. he added so many vivid details that he seemed to have been present at every scene he described. it was certain that he had lived in many countries, and he seemed to have lived in different ages of the world, so intimate was his acquaintance with so many historical persons.' mr. hoar told me that the lawyers said of judge prescott that he repeated his argument once for each juror. one idea, monomaniacs, kinds or specialties. besides the genealogists; besides sheriffs, like the dartmouth man; and antiquaries or pamphlet collectors, like mr. chandler; and deadmen's-men, like mr. walker of london, i recall the man who so amused the stage-coach once from middleborough with his contrivances for defending his own coffin in his grave from 1 of course this mr. x is a composite and idealized. 1850) one idea. luther 151 body-snatchers. he had contrived a pistol to go off — pop! from this end, and a pistol — pop! from that end of the coffin, and he was plainly spending his life in the sweets of the revenge he was going to take hereafter on the young doctors that should creep to his graveyard. one idea. when bonaparte saw david's picture of the straits of thermopylæ, he said, “a bad subject; after all, leonidas was turned.” i thought last night that the right conclusion of my chapter on political economy is the statement that the merchant is right,-infinitely right;—all his rules are laws of the universe,'... december 9. i thought, the other day, at mr. s.'s lecture, that luther's religious movement was the fountain of so much intellectual life in europe; that is, luther's conscience animating sympathetically the conscience of millions, the pulse passed into thought, and ultimated itself in galileos, keplers, swedenborgs, newtons, shakspeares, bacons, and miltons. i the rest of this passage is in “ wealth” (conduct of life, pp. 125, 126). 152 journal [age 47 the morale of new england makes its intellect possible. at the south, they are really insensible to the criminality of their laws and customs. ... i like to see the growth of material interests here, as power educates its potentate.' .... wer identity. but what is the cause, asked aunt mary once, that, after the sleep of ages, the human mind should arouse like a giant refreshed by slumber? [she wrote:] “illimitable prospects can best apply euphrasy to the understanding," etc. “religion, that home of genius, willstrengthen the mind, as it does the character.” columbus at veragua, 1503. “ i was alone on that dangerous coast suffering from a fever and worn with fatigue. all hope of escape was gone. i toiled up to the highest part of the ship, and with a quivering voice and fast-falling tears, i called upon your highness' war captains from each point of the compass, to come to my succor; but there was no reply. at length, groaning with exhaustion, i fell asleep, and heard a 1 what follows is found in “ power" (conduct of life, pp. 63, 64). 1850] columbus's prayer 153 compassionate voice address me thus, 'o fool, and slow to believe and serve thy god, the god of all. what did he do more for moses, or for david, than he has done for thee? from thine infancy he has kept thee under his constant and watchful care. he gave thee for thine own the indies, and thou hast divided them as it pleased thee. he gave thee also the keys of those barriers of the ocean sea which were closed with such mighty chains. turn to him and acknowledge thine error; his mercy is infinite. the privileges promised by god he never fails in bestowing, nor does he ever declare after a service has been rendered him that such was not agreeable to his intention or that he had regarded the matter in another light. his acts answer to his words, and it is his custom to perform all his promises with interest.' i heard all this, as it were, in a trance, but i had no answer to give in definite words, and could but weep for my errors. he who spoke to me, whoever it was, concluded by saying, 'fear not, but trust: all these tribulations are recorded on marble, and not without cause.'” — letter to king and queen, fourth voyage, major, p. 185. 154 journal (age 47 december 18. charles newcomb came, and yesterday departed. but i do not ask him again to come. he wastes my time; 'tis cruel to think of; destroyed three good days for me! the pythagoreans would have built a tomb for him, — the unique, inspired, wasted genius! music. “ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante; et ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être chanté, on le danse.” so the courrier des etats unis extends the mot of beaumarchais. “je crois que le ciel se moque de nous, car il donne toujours au voisin le sort qui nous conviendrait." “quand on paie, c'est pour se dispenser d'aimer.” shakspeare's fancy never flagged. he never appears the anatomist, never with a mere outline, which is to be filled up in a happier hour, but always gorgeous with new and shining draperies. as a dry thinker, too, he is one of the best in the world. 1 but not many months later mr. emerson was cheered by his friend, and hopeful of him, as the journal of 1853 will show. 155 1850) rich life. poet “ every action that hath gone before whereof we have record, trial did draw bias and thwart; not answering the aim and that unbodied figure of the thought that gave 't surmisèd shape.” x complained that life had lost its interest. 'tis very funny, be sure, to hear this. for most of us the world is all too interesting, l'embarras de richesses. we are wasted with our versatility; with the eagerness to grasp on every possible side, we all run to nothing. i cannot open an agricultural paper without finding objects enough for methusalem. i jilt twenty books whenever i fix on one. i stay away from boston, only because i cannot begin there to see those whom i should wish, the men and the things. i wish to know france. i wish to study art. i wish to read laws. napoleon iii acquired such skill in the art of lying that “the journals complained you could not depend on the exact contrary of that which he stated.” poet, — no, prose-writer is an orateur manqué. did not old goethe say that byron's poems 156 journal (age 47 wereu were undelivered parliamentary speeches? much more is it manifest, my dear carlyle, that your rage at stump oratory is inverted love. ellery says that “he likes stow; he is a very good character, there is only a spoonful of wit, and ten thousand feet of sandstone.": authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1850 thales, pythagoras, anaximenes apud plutarch; empedocles; metrodorus; aristarchus of samos; nopides ; . terence ; sallust; manilius; claudianus; proclus; st. augustine; bede; nisami; enweri; richard of devizes; chaucer; spanish ballads, translated by lockhart; columbus, letters, apud major; camden, 1 cyrus stow, farmer and butcher, a neighbour of mr. emerson's, a solid, stately bovine man. an anecdote of him should be preserved. he had no children, and when advanced in years and in very comfortable circumstances he realized his desire of going to washington. he reverently entered the capitol to see the chosen great and good of the land making wise laws. he stayed one day and returned to concord with changed face. with lowered voice he told his neighbours that in those marble corridors were senators and representatives “ drinking and swearing right before me." 1850) reading 157 britannia; sir edward coke, commentary on littleton; hooker; spenser, sonnets; bacon, de fontibus juris; van helmont; john smith; descartes ; thomas fuller, worthies of england; samuel butler; henry more; john evelyn; la fontaine, fables ; pascal; molière, tartuffe ; bunyan, pilgrim's progress; locke; spinoza; anthony à wood, athena oxonienses; newton; andrew fletcher ; kennett, history of england; robert blair; james thomson; linnæus, philosophia botanica; rousseau; lord mansfield, apud lord campbell; sir william blackstone, commentaries; lagrange; beaumarchais, mariage de figaro; goethe, correspondence with a child; jung stilling; mrs. barbauld; laplace; thomas erskine; eckermann, conversations with goetbe; sömmering; heeren; hegel ; schelling; oken; lord john campbell, lives of the chief justices; david brewster, life of newton; carlyle; webster; levi frisbie; rufus choate; karl otfried müller, mythologie; george calvert; william seward ; orestes a. brownson; w. l. garrison; cobden; robert rantoul; charles t. jackson; john mitchell kemble, the saxons in england; 158 journal (age 47 george sand; margaret fuller, marchioness d'ossoli; tennyson, in memoriam; thackeray, vanity fair ; hugh doherty; henry ward beecher; john c. frémont; layard, nineveh; charlotte brontë, jane eyre and shirley; froude, nemesis of faith; j. b. stallo, general principles of philosophy in nature; h. d. thoreau ; w. e. channing; charles newcomb. journal lectures on fate, power, culture, illusions the seventh of march webster's fall slavery at the door humiliation the woman's convention journal xlii 1851 (from journals bo and co) [in january mr. emerson lectured in new england, and in the following month in the towns of western new york. in march he gave a course of six lectures in pittsburg, pennsylvania ;— the discomforts of reaching which city, partly by canal-boat, sleeping on the floor “in a wreath of legs,” he told in a letter to his wife. (see cabot's memoir, vol. ii, p. 566.)] (from bo) morning thoughts sleep is like death, and after sleep the world seems new begun, its earnestness all clear and deep, its true solution won; white thoughts stand luminous and firm like statues in the sun. refreshed from supersensuous founts the soul to blotless vision mounts. william allingham.' i for emerson's relations with the poet, see letters to william allingham, edited by his wife. 162 journal [age 47 easures in the heats of youth we defend the stoical thesis, — faith without works, — the platonic plenum, etc., and scorn to degrade our life by the trivial measures of practice. of course, in the cardinal instance of love, the crimes of love are to be expiated and purified away only by more love, – the flame of love burning up all mortal taint, etc. but later we begin to see that some allowance, and always more and more, must be made to the poor whiggish facts; that is to say, the carnage made in human relations, the breach of the order of society, and the stings of remorse, from a false position in the actor, and the cruel false position given to the sufferer, together constitute such a mass of rancorous objection, that nothing but a supernatural magnanimity and aplomb in the hero can confront or make any head against; and all this is nothing but an expounding from facts of an occult law which the strutting pagan intellect had not descried, but which is integral part of theory, and which a christian soul, to be sure, would have divined without aid of the offensive facts. “ selon qu'il est conduit, le peuple français est capable de tout." — richelieu. 1851) higher law. tennyson 163 the “sickly sentimentalism,” the “ trashy sentimentalism,” as it is now called, of keeping the ten commandments ! these taunts upon sentimentalism, and higher law, and the like, which our senators use, are the screens of their cowardice. tennyson's in memoriam is the commonplaces of condolence among good unitarians in the first week of mourning. the consummate skill of the versification is the sole merit. the book has the advantage that was dr. channing's fortune, that all the merit was appreciable. he is never a moment too high for his audience. but to demonstrate this mediocrity i was forced to quote those moral sentences which make the fame of true bards; such as “in whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed," of wordsworth; “ 'tis crown enough to virtue, still, her own applause," of ben jonson; or “ it was for beauty that the world was made ”; and then to ask, now show me one such line in this book of tennyson. 164 journal (age 47 turner. the fact that the creator of beauty in english art, the man who has all his life been shedding lustre and loveliness in profuse works of his industrious pencil, is a poor hunks sulking in a lonely house with his woman jessica, a miser, too, who never asked anybody to dine, and has made £300,000 by his works, – is not a dead fact, but significant of the compensations of nature ; significant that every old, crooked curmudgeon has a soft place in his heart; and not without comfort, too, that when one feels the drawbacks and disgraces and diseases of his temperament and activity, he recalls that still he too may not be useless or pestiferous if he steadily retires on his task of even a usty, churlish, expiatory devotion to art and beauty, like j. m. w. turner. ver the principal thing that occurs now is the might of the law which makes slavery the single topic of conversation in this country. a great wrong is attempted to be done and the money power is engaged to do it. but unhappily because it is criminal the feeble force of conscience is found to set the whole world against it. 1851) drill. rotation 165 diamonds, i read, appear the same in a bowl of water as out of it, whilst glass loses its light. education. drill. it is better to teach the child arithmetic and latin grammar than geography or rhetoric or moral philosophy; because these first require an exactitude of performance in the pupil,' . .. man the inventor. it is frivolous, of course, to fix pedantically the date of this or that invention.' ... rotation. what an excellent principle our favorite rule of rotation in office would be if applied in industrial matters. you have been watchmaker long enough, now it is my turn to make watches, and you can bake muffins. the carpenter is to make glass this year, and the glass-blower staircases. the blacksmith is to cut me a coat, and the tailor to take charge of the machine-shop. mr. benton has served an apprenticeship of thirty years to the federal i the rest of the passage is found in “ education” (lec. tures and biographical sketches, p. 147). 2 much of what follows is found in “ fate” (conduct of life, p. 17). 166 journal (age 47 senate, has learned the routine, has opened his views to a national scope, and must now retire to give place to johnny raw. the odious inequality must be borne. a superintendent at the mills must have two thousand dollars, whilst the most industrious operative has only four hundred. because, order and faculty are rare and costly. why should not the wheels of the loom say, “see me, i whirl and buzz with two hundred revolutions in a minute, whilst that great lazy water-wheel, down below there, only turns five times. i will not go faster than he.” i learned also that the valuations of massachusetts, of boston, of new york, are nowise reliable for direct comparison. as, for example, the saying that boston could buy maine and have $80,000,000 left. because the values of boston are artificial values, the value of luxuries, furniture, books, pictures, inflated prices of land and house lots and houses, etc., whilst the values of maine are primary and necessary, and therefore permanent under any state of society. this consideration of inflation goes into all farming value. the farmer gets two hundred, 1851] immortality. morning 167 whilst the merchant gets two thousand dollars.' ... but the farmer's two hundred is far safer, and is more likely to remain to him. . . . so that the two sums turn out at last to be equivalent. i found when i had finished my new lecture that it was a very good house, only the architect had unfortunately omitted the stairs. if immortal, how rich the joy of that aspiring soul whose competitors find him higher than earthly hopes ! if “not to be," how like the bells of a fool the trump of fame! but what renders this idle, the spirit is framed for endless happiness in its origin, without one other object or pursuit — writes my antique saintsibyl. the morning. hear what the morning says, and believe that.' the house is full of noise, and contradicts all that the morning hints: worse, it distracts attention from what the morning beams on us to all the nonsense which the house 1 compare wealth” (conduct of life, p. 102). 2 this sentence occurs also in “ country life" (natural history of intellect, p. 157). 168 journal (age 47 chatters. but there is one good child in the house who furtively eyes from time to time the east, through the window, and so keeps his mind steadily fixed on that which it speaks, and defends his ears from the rattle around him. ears uro diamonds. “a lady in the reign of queen elizabeth would have as patiently digested a lie as the wearing of false stones, or pendants of counterfeit pearl, so common in our age.” thomas fuller's worthies, vol. ii, p. 294. january 15. last night at the social circle' it was urged that persons were much hurt who had failed to be elected, etc., and the committee of nomination which brings one candidate, out of all the list, before the club, was thought most invidious. and much was said on the natural indignation which the rejected candidates feel at having a better man preferred to those who stood prior to him in time of application, etc. 1 a club of concord's leading citizens, originating in the committee of safety in the days of the revolution. it still flourishes. mr. emerson was a member almost from the time of his making his home in concord until his death, and valued it highly. 18511 clubs. low tone 169 lan to which, two conclusive answers seemed to arise. if, when a vacancy occurs, there be several names and the first in order of time is a blameless candidate, but young and nowise clubable; and, next below him, is the name of a man who tells the best story in the county, and is as full of fun and information as judge warren or harry lee, or the like excellent talker, – is it not a cruel wrong to the club to deprive it, perhaps for years, of such a member? then, secondly, i have no sympathy with the wounded feelings of candidates who wish to be preferred to a better man, or who count themselves injured when an older or better man is chosen. let them sympathize with the club, and with good sense, instead of sympathizing with themselves. say for a boston club: j. peter lesley, cabot, ward, lowell, h. james, whipple, hale, curtis, norton, whittier.' low tone. burns and goethe and carlyle, with great difference of power, understand it well. goethe is in this way a great success. i more than twice as many names were written in the journal, but all but those here given were struck out by mr. emerson. 170 [ace 47 journal aunt mary and henry james are proficients, and charles newcomb, henry thoreau, and ellery channing. [several pages which follow are printed in “culture” (conduct of life, pp. 157, 158).] 26 7 eloquence. bad air, unfriendly audience, faint heart and vacant thought in the orator are things of course, and incident to demosthenes, to chatham, to webster, as inevitably as to the gentlemen who address the stifling concord vestry this week. but here and there fell the bolt of genius, astounding and dazzling, out of this very fog and stench, burned them all up, melted away bad air, rowdy mob, coldness, aversion, partisanship, sterility, in one blaze of wonder, sympathy, and delight, and the total consumption of all this fuel is the proof of eloquence. january 22. mr. rogers, of gloucester, who owns the rocking stone about half a mile from gloucester village, which stone the tide moves, told me a story of jarvis, of the sandwich glass company, who came down there with his gun, and bonded all the farms, the farmers thinking him a crazy man with a pocket full of money: so they fol1851) work cure. columbus 171 lowed him, and got each man ten dollars from him for a bond, and, last of all, his landlord also got a gold watch and five dollars. then jarvis went up to boston, put himself in funds, came down and demanded a deed of all these lands and houses, to the terror of the owners. to every reproach, i know now but one answer, namely, to go again to my own work. “ but you neglect your relations.” yes, too true; then i will work the harder. “but you have no genius.” yes; then i will work the harder. “but you have no virtues.” yes; then i will work the harder. “but you have detached yourself and acquired the aversion of all decent people. you must regain some position and relation.” yes; i will work harder. [columbus wrote to the king and queen;-] “the men with me were one hundred and fifty, — many fit for pilots and good sailors, but none of them can explain whither i went. i started from a point above the port of brazil. . . . storms. i put into an island called isla de las bocas, and then steered for terra firma ... but impossible to give correct account, because of currents. 172 journal (age 47 “i ascertained, however, by compass and by observation that i moved parallel with the coast of terra firma. no one could tell under what part of the heavens we were, nor at what period i bent my course for the island of española. the pilots thought we had come to the island of st. john, whereas it was the land of mango, four hundred leagues to the westward of where they said. let them answer and say if they know where veragua is situated. i assert that they can give no other account than that they went to lands where there was an abundance of gold; this they can certify : but they do not know the way to return thither for such a purpose ; they would be obliged to go on a voyage of discovery, as much as if they had never been there before. there is a mode of reckoning derived from astronomy which is sure and safe, and a sufficient guide to any who understands it. this resembles a prophetic vision.” — h. major, p. 191. february 12 (?). i must try to recall here, where i sit by the edge of seneca lake, my conversation yesterday with albert h. tracy, of buffalo.' he i in “ immortality” (letters and social aims, p. 332) is a story of the momentary meeting, in company, of two friends 18511 albert h. tracy 173 believed that europe was effete beside america, and fancied that the office of men here was in many ages to bring the material world into subserviency to the moral. and that, if one should expect only such a future as the past, nations and men might well despair. nor that yet were even the means of change apparent, and that it was utterly futile to hope anything from such arrangements or philanthropies as might now organize; for they begin by saying, now let us make a compact, — which is a solecism, inasmuch as it implies a sentimental resistance to the gravities and tendencies which will steadily, by little and little, pull over your air castle. there is nothing to tie it to. he believes in a future of great equalities; but all our experience, he sees, is of inequalities. some persons are thrown off their balance when in society; others are thrown on to balance; the excitement of company and the observation of other characters correct their biases. margaret fuller always appeared to unexpected advantage in conversation with a circle of perafter twenty-five years' separation, each vainly questioning the other if he had received any light. one of them was albert tracy, here mentioned; the other was lewis cass. 174 (age 47 journal sons, with more common sense and sanity than any other,—though her habitual vision was through coloured lenses. mr. moseley at buffalo described webster's attitude, when in the senate, seeking for a word that did not come: “he pauses, puts his hand to his brow,you would think then there was a mote in his eye. still it comes not; then he puts his hands — american fashion first into his breast under his waistcoat, deeper than i can, then, to the bottom of his fobs, bends forward, — then the word is bound to come; he throws back his head, and out it comes with a leap, and, i promise you, it has its full effect on the senate.” the country boys and men have in their mind the getting a knowledge of the world as a thing of main importance. the new hampshire man in the cars said that somebody grew up at home and his father whipped him for several years, — he would fall on him in the field and beat him as he would his cattle. but one day the boy faced him and held his hands. then the boy had never been to school, and he thought he would go to california. there mai 1851 dollars. women 175 he was, a man grown, good, stout, well-looking fellow, six feet, but as ignorant as a horse; be bad never had any chance ; how could he know anything? so he went to california, and stayed there a year, and has come back. he looks well, he has much improved in his appearance, but he has not got a ninepence. and really new hampshire and vermont look on california and railroads as formerly they did on a peddling trip to virginia, -as their education, as giving them a chance to know something. nothing can be more foolish than this reproach, which goes from nation to nation, of the love of dollars. it is like oxen taxing each other with eating grass, or a society of borers in an oak tree accusing one another of eating wood; or, in a great society of cheese-mites, if one should begin making insinuations that the other was eating cheese. and yet there stand the two creations of greek sculpture and of italian painting. women carry sail, and men rudders. women look very grave sometimes, and affect to steer, but their pretended rudder is only a masked sail. the rudder of the rudder is not there. 176 journal (age 47 the poets ends a copy of his verses to the printer. thenceforward he is relieved, the human race takes charge of it, and it flies from land to land, from language to language. it happens that they are in a new style, and he may even be forced, like coleridge, or like campbell, to prove painfully that he wrote the verses ; they have become so entirely the world's property that it is hard to prove that he had anything to do with them. but the poetaster, as our poor little mulchinock, having made what he calls verses, goes about reading them to you and me and all who can be made to listen; begs them to befriend them, to quote them; to sign a certificate that they are verses; to subscribe to his book, to write it up; and, in short, devotes himself to the business of nurse or attendant to these poor rhymes, which, god knows, need all this backing, and will go to the devil in spite of it. “an epic of a poet who has taken great pains to get favorable notices of his work in public prints. such notices, said goethe, have appeared in various papers. but at last comes the halle literary gazette, telling plainly what the poen is really worth, and thus all the compliments of the other papers are nullified.”— eckermann, vol. ii, p. 158. erma sc 1851) saving imagination 177 genial beat. imagination. there is and must be a little air-chamber, a sort of tiny bedlam in even the naturalist's or mathematician's brain who arrives at great results. they affect a sticking to facts; they repudiate all imagination and affection, as they would disown stealing. but cuvier, oken, geoffroy saint-hilaire, owen, agassiz, audubon, must all have this spark of fanaticism for the generation of steam, and there must be that judicious tubing in their brain that is in the boiler of the locomotive, or wherever steam must be swiftly generated. they all deny it, of course. goethe had this air-chamber so large that, like pericles, he must wear a helmet to conceal the dreaded infirmity; but he never owned it; he even persuaded the people that it was the county jail. if you have never so much faculty of detail, without this explosive gas it makes the dr. prichards and dr. worcesters and dr. warrens, men that hold hard to facts, dr. dryasdusts, the most tedious and dreaded of mankind. but add this fanaticism, and you have buffons and davys. dr. jackson's misfortune is that he has none, and, like his class, is imposed upon by the loud disclaimer of the fanatics, and takes goethe at his word that his air-chamber is the county jail. 178 [age 47 journal ✓ nothing so marks a man as bold imaginative expressions.' henry thoreau promised to make as good sentences of that kind as anybody. bettine is the most imaginative person in our day. the french call one class of malcontents with the present order of things, — those who espouse the liberal side in respect to the poor, the slave, etc., but who do not propose a remedy,— les stériles. beauty. “for there is a language in looks and gestures, there is a fountain of joy and delight concealed deep in the physical structure, and its waters laugh to the eye of intellect, and reflect into the hearts of those who behold it a sunniness and exhilaration greater than we derive from gazing on the summer sea.” — st. john, vol. ii, p. 191. among the nineteen or twenty things which make the test questions at the egyptian funeral i most of the rest of this passage is printed in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 12). 1851] fugitive slave law 179 is the question, how did he stand on the world?' ... tests. “who now awaits in the antechamber; johnson or chesterfield ?” (examiner.) sickness and poverty test the heart of the witness. ness bad times. we wake up with painful auguring, and, after exploring a little to know the cause, find it is the odious news in each day's paper, the infamy that has fallen on massachusetts, that clouds the daylight and takes away the comfort out of every hour. we shall never feel well again until that detestable law is nullified in massachusetts and until the government is assured that once for all it cannot and shall not be executed here. all i have and all i can do shall be given and done in opposition to the execution of the law.” 1 the passage in a condensed form is found in “ farming” (society and solitude, p. 153). 2 on sunday evening, may 3, mr. emerson made an address to his concord neighbors on the infamy and iniquity of the fugitive slave law. the question was no longer as to how the southern states should conduct their domestic affairs, but was brought to the door of every northern home. for by the new law any citizen could be required to aid the federal officials in securing a fugitive, and the helping or harbor180 journal (age 47 mr. hoar' has never raised his head since webster's speech in last march, and all the interim has really been a period of calamity to new england. that was a steep step downward. i had praised the tone and attitude of the country. my friends had mistrusted it. they say now, it is no worse than it was before; only it is manifest and acted out. well i think that worse. it shows the access of so much courage in the bad, so much check of virtue, terror of virtue, withdrawn. the tameness is shocking. i am sorry to say it, but new hampshire has always been distinguished for the servility of its eminent men. mr. webster had resisted ing him was punishable by fine and imprisonment. this address was for the first time included in the miscellanies in the centenary edition. i squire (samuel) hoar, the father of the judge. 2 the lament over the shame of boston and the subserviency of her people to the south, because of their business interests, follows. it is found in the first of the two speeches on the fugitive slave law (miscellanies, pp. 180-181). of this brave work mr. emerson wrote to carlyle in july, — “ in the spring the abomination of our fugitive slave bill drove me to some writing and speech-making without hope of effect, but to clear my own skirts." yet the work was strongly and faithfully done. 181 1851) webster's fall for a long time the habit of his compatriots, i mean no irony, — and by adopting the spirited tone of boston had recommended himself as much as by his great talents to the people of massachusetts; but blood is thicker than water, the deep servility of new hampshire politics which has marked all prominent statesmen from that district, with the great exception of mr. hale, has appeared late in life with all the more strength that it had been resisted so long, and he has renounced, — what must have cost him some perplexity, — all the great passages of his past career on which his fame is built. his great speeches are, — his discourse at plymouth denouncing slavery ; his speech against hayne and southern aggression; his eulogy on adams and jefferson, a speech which he is known by and in which he stands by the fathers of the revolution for the very resistance which he now denounces; and lastly, his speeches and recent writings on hungarian liberty. at this very moment his attitude, assumed as foreign secretary in his letter to mr. hulsemann, is printed in all newspapers before the people in the most awkward contradiction to his own domestic position, precisely like that of the french president between french liberty and roman 182 journal [ace 47 tyranny; or like hail columbia, when sung at a slave-auction. i opened a paper to-day in which he pounds on the old strings in a letter to the washington birthday feasters at new york. “ liberty! liberty !” pho! let mr. webster, for decency's sake, shut his lips once and forever on this word. the word liberty in the mouth of mr. webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtezan. the fame of everett is dear to me and to all his scholars, and i have watched with alarm his derelictions. whenever his genius shone, it of course was in the instinct of freedom, but one of his scholars cannot but ask him whether there was no sincerity in all those apostrophes to freedom and adjurations of the dying demosthenes : was it all claptrap? and as to the name of new england societies, which mr. choate, mr. webster and mr. foote, mr. clay and mr. everett address, and are responded to with enthusiasm,-it is all a disgusting obsequiousness. their names are tarnished: what we have tried to call great is little ; and the merely ethnographic fact remains that an immense ex1851] the converted wolf 183 ternal prosperity is possible, with pure cowardice and hollowness in all the conspicuous official men. i cannot read longer with any comfort the local good news even, education in massachusetts, art union, revival in religion.'... mes ord the little fact comes out more pi you cannot rely on any man for the defence of truth who is not constitutionally of that side. wolf, however long his nails have been pared, however neatly he has been shaved and tailored and taught and tuned to say “virtue" and “religion,” cannot be relied on when it comes to a pinch; he will forget his morality, and say morality means sucking blood.” the man only can be trusted to defend humanity. and women are really the heart and sanctuary of our civilization. mr. choate, whose talent consists in a fine choice of words which he can hang indiscriminately on any offender, has pushed the privilege of his profession so far as to ask, “ what would the puritans of 1620 say to the trashy sentimentalism of modern reformers?” and i see concord address on fugitive slave law” (miscellanies, p. 181). 2 this sentence occurs in the address. 184 (age 47 journal thus the stern old fathers of massachusetts who, mr. choate knows, would have died at the stake before soiling themselves with this damnation, are made to repudiate the “trashy sentimentalism” of the ten commandments. the joke is too impudent. the profession of the law has the old objection that it makes the practitioner callous and sceptical, — the practice of defending criminals of all dyes of guilt and holding them up with vehement protestations that they are injured but honest men, firm christians, models of virtue, only a little imprudent and open to practices of [bad men]. it is the need of mr. webster's position that he should have an opinion ; that he should be a step in advance of everybody else, and make the strongest statement in america ; that is vital to him. he cannot maintain himself otherwise. mr. webster has deliberately taken out his name from all the files of honour in which he had enrolled it, from all association with liberal, virtuous, and philanthropic men, and read his recantation on his knees at richmond and charleston. he has gone over in an hour to the party of force, and stands now on the pre1851) webster's fall 185 cise ground of the metternichs, the castlereaghs and the polignacs, without the excuse of hereditary bias and of ancient name and title, which they had. he has undone all that he has spent his years in doing, he has discredited himself. he to talk of liberty, and to rate an austrian! he would dragoon the hungarians, for all his fine words. i advise kossuth, after his experience of görgey, not to trust webster. he would in austria truckle to the czar, as he does in america to the carolinas; and hunt the hungarians from the sultan as he does the fugitives of virginia from massachusetts. he may bluster. it is his tactics. we shall make no more mistakes. he has taught us the ghastly meaning of liberty, in his mouth. it is kidnapping and hunting to death men and women, it is making treason and matter of fine and imprisonment and armed intervention of the resistance of (an immoral law?] ... the very question of property, the house and land we occupy, have lost all their sunlight, and a man looks gloomily on his children and thinks, what have i done that you should begin life in dishonour? i may then add the union ; nothing seems to me more bitterly futile than this bluster about sunout 186 journal (age 47 el erica ew co ou the union. a year ago we were all lovers and prizers of it. before the passage of that law which mr. webster made his own, we indulged in all the dreams which foreign nations still cherish of american destiny. but in the new attitude in which we find ourselves, the degradation and personal dishonour which now rest like miasma on every house in massachusetts, the sentiment is entirely changed. no man can look his neighbor in the face. we sneak about with the infamy of crime in the streets and cowardice in ourselves, and frankly, once for all, the union is sunk, the flag is hateful, and will be hissed. the union ! oh, yes, i prized that, other things being equal; but what is the union to a man self-condemned, with all sense of self-respect and chance of fair fame cut off, — with the names of conscience and religion become bitter ironies, and liberty the ghastly nothing which mr. webster means by that word? the worst mischiefs that could follow from secession and new combination of the smallest fragments of the wreck were slight and medicable to the calamity your union has brought us. another year, and a standing army, officered by southern gentlemen to protect the commissioners and to 1851) union made odious 187 hunt the fugitives, will be illustrating the new • sweets of union in boston, worcester, and springfield. it did not appear and it was incredible that the passage of the law would make the union odious; but from the day it was attempted to be executed in massachusetts, this result has appeared, that the union is no longer desirable. whose deed is that?' one more consideration occurs, — the mischief of a legal crime; the demoralization of the community. each of these per is who touches it is contaminated. there has not been in our lifetime another moment when public men were personally lowered by their political action. but here are gentlemen whose names stood as high as any, whose believed probity was the confidence and fortification of all, who, by fear of public opinion, or by that dangerous ascendency of southern manners, have been drawn into the support of this nefarious business, and have, of course, changed their relations to men. we 1 although mr. emerson's delivery was usually quiet, it was always pleasantly varied and modulated, yet, when the occasion demanded it, he could startle his hearers by its sudden strength and fire. the testimony to this range and power of voice by nathaniel p. willis, written, too, in this very year 1851, has been already referred to. 188 journal (age 47 poor men in the country, who might have thought it an honour to shake hands with them, would now shrink from their touch ; nor could they enter our humblest doors. can the reputed wealth of mr. erestore his good name? can mr. curtis' reinstate himself? or could mr. webster obtain now a vote in the state of massachusetts for the poorest municipal office? well, is not this a loss inevitable to a bad law? -a law which no man can countenance or abet the execution , without loss of all self-respect, and forfeiting forever the name of a gentleman? we therefore beg you to stand so far the friends of yourselves and of poor well-meaning men, your constituents, as not to suffer them to be put in a position where they cannot do right without breaking your law, or keep the law without corrupting and dishonouring the community. the college, the churches, the schools, the very shops and factories are discredited." ... i am surprised that lawyers can be so blind as to suffer the law to be discredited.3 . .. i the united states commissioner in boston, who, in that capacity, returned the fugitive slave sims to his master that very year in april. 2 see miscellanies, p. 182. 3 miscellanies, p. 190. 1851] the unfaithful clergy 189 the fame of webster ends in this nasty law. ✓ ras and as for andover and boston preachers, dr. d— and dr. s— , who deduce kid; } napping from their bible, tell the poor, dear doctor, if this be christianity, it is a religion of dead dogs, let it never pollute the ears and hearts of noble children again. oh, bring back then the age when valor was virtue, since what is called morality means nothing but pudding !pardon the spleen of a professed hermit. mr. webster cannot choose but regret his loss. tell him that those who make fame accuse him with one voice.' ... tell him that he who was their pride in the woods and mountains of new england is now their mortification, ... they never name him, they have taken his book of speeches from the shelf and put it in the stove; and all the fribble of the daily advertiser, and of its model, the new york journal of commerce, will not quite compensate him. i have no fear that any roars of new york mobs will be able to drown this voice in mr. webster's ear. it can outwhisper all the salvos 1 the rest of this eloquent paragraph is found in the speech referred to (miscellanies, pp. 201, 202). . ever 190 journal [age 47 • of their cannon. if it were mr. cass, it might be different; but mr. webster has the misfortune to know the voice of truth from the stupid hurrahs of new york. it will be his distinction to have changed in one day, by the most detestable law that was ever enacted by a civilized state, the fairest and most triumphant national escutcheon the sun ever shone upon, the free, the expanding, the hospitable, the irresistible america, home of the homeless, and pregnant with the blessing of the world, into a jail or barracoon for the slaves of a few thousand southern planters, and all the citizens of this hemisphere into kidnappers and drivers for the same. is that a name will feed his hungry ambition? “inconceivable levity of the public mind” – an unbroken prosperity the cause. there are or always were in each country certain gentlemen to whom the honour and dignity of the community were confided, persons of elevated sentiments, relieved, perhaps, by fortune from the necessity of injurious application to arts of gain, and who used that leisure for the benefit of their fellow citizens in the study of elegant learning, the learning of liberty, and in their forwardness on all emergencies to ere ons 1851] degenerate names 191 lead with courage and magnanimity against any peril in the state. i look in vain for such a class among us, and that is the worst symptom in our affairs. there are persons of fortune enough and men of breeding and of elegant learning, but they are the very leaders in vulgarity of sentiment. i need call no names. the fact stares us in the face. they are full of sneers and derision, and their reading of cicero and of plato and of tacitus has been drowned under grossness of feeding and the bad company they have kept. it is the want, perhaps, of a stern and high religious training, like the iron calvinism which steeled their fathers seventy-five years ago.' but though i find the names of old patriots still resident in boston, it is only the present venerable mr. quincy who has renewed the hereditary honour of his name by scenting the tyranny in the gale. the others are all lapped in after-dinner dreams and are as obsequious to mr. webster as he is to the gentlemen of richmond and charleston. the want of loftiness 1 your town is full of gentle names by patriots once were watchwords made; those war-cry names are muffled shames on recreant sons mislaid. note to “ boston hymn" (poems, p. 473). 192 (age 47 journal cil of sentiment in the class of wealth and education in the university, too, is deplorable. i am sorry to say i predict too readily their feeling. they will not even understand the depth of my regret and will find their own supercilious and foppish version. but i refer them back to their cicero and tacitus, and to their early resolutions. it was always reckoned, even in the rudest ages, the distinction of the gentleman, the oath of honour of the knight, to speak the truth to men of power or to angry communities, and uphold the poor man against the rich oppressor. will the educated people of boston ask themselves whether they side with the oppressor or the oppressed? yet i know no reason why a gentleman, who is, i take it, a natural formation, should not be true to his duties in boston in 1850, as haughtily faithful, and with as sovereign superiority to all hazards, as his fathers had in 1770, or as mr. hampden or mr. eliot in london in 1650, or arundel, or more, or milton. v i do not value any artificial enthusiasm of protest got up by individuals in corners, which, however vehement, tells for nothing on the 1851] the old law 193 public mind; but i look eagerly and shall not have to look long for a spontaneous expression of the injured people, in fault of leaders, creating their own, and shaking off from their back these degenerate and unworthy riders. i make no secret of my intention to keep them informed of the baseness of their accustomed leaders. it is well to quote cicero and tacitus when doing the deed of chiffinch and of buck-. ingham. in the weakness of the union the law of 1793 was framed, and much may be said in palliation of it. it was a law affirming the existence of two states of civilization, or an intimate union between two countries, one civilized and christian, and the other barbarous, where cannibalism was still permitted ... and the law became, as it should, a dead letter. it was merely there in the statute-book to soothe the dignity of the man-eaters. and we northerners had, on our part, indemnified and secured ourselves against any occasional eccentricity of appetite in our confederates by our own interpretation, and by offsetting state law by state laws. it was and is penal here in massachusetts for any sheriff or town or state officer to lend 194 journal (age 47 himself or his jail to the slave-hunter, and it is also settled that any slave brought here by his master becomes free. all this was well. what mr. webster has now done is not only to reenact the old law, but to give it force, which it never had before, or to bring down the free and christian state of massachusetts to the cannibal level. now this conspiring to hold up a bad law, and intimate correspondence of leading gentlemen mutually engaging to run to new york and to cambridge, and dine in public on poor washington's birthday, and the reading of the riot act, and of washington's legacy, and obtaining the preaching of rev. drs. s_ and d, seems for the moment successful; and i do not know but mr. fillmore and mr. webster and everett flatter themselves that the difficult massachusetts is somehow managed, and that they had really overestimated the traditionary rebellion of the town of boston. once for all the best lie has this insuperable objection. they are always at the mercy of a truth-speaker. it does very well as long as all the spectators agree to make-believe with them, but the first unlucky boy that calls things by their names will ruin the cheat, unless they can 1851] the universe is true 195 coax the good creator not to make any more men. ... [suppose it said to the president,] my dear sir, thomas melville is gone, mr. cabot is dead, mr. otis of the hartford convention is dead; mr. quincy is old; the turbulent quincy adams is at last still; and though there is an unlucky book of the old adams printing about these times, yet, north or south, we don't hear of anybody who will not be peaceable. i think you may venture it. ah, mr. president, trust not the information. the gravid old universe is spawning on, the wombs conceive and the breasts give suck to thousands and millions of hairy babes formed, not in the image of your statute, but in the image of the universe,' . .. unless you can suppress the english tongue in america, and hinder boys from declaiming webster's plymouth speech, and pass a law against libraries, — all is futile. then, sir, there is england itself, — faults of her own undoubtedly, — but unhappily now so clean on this question that she will give pubi for much that follows, here omitted, see miscellanies (p. 194). 196 journal [age 47 sons licity to every vice and trick of ours. there is france, there is germany, but worst, a thousand times worse than all, there is this yeaning america, the yeaning northwest, millions of souls to accuse us. if the thing were to be carried in a close corporation, all the persons might be sounded and secured. even in a senate, even in a house, they can calculate the exact amount of resistance; but this is quite impossible in a country. for one, only one truth-speaker will ruin them. what is the use of logic and legal acumen if it be not to demonstrate to the people what is metaphysically true? the fact that a criminal statute is illegal is admitted by lawyers, and, that fact once admitted by the people, the whole structure of this new tyranny falls to the ground. why do not the lawyers who are professionally its interpreters put this home to the people? there is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive, a statement possible, so pungent and so ample that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it.' else, there would be no such word as eloquence, which means this. 1 this sentence is used in “ eloquence" (society and solitude, pp. 91, 92). 18511 webster. hayne, choate 197 mr. webster did that thing in his better days for hayne. mr. hayne could not hide from himself that something had been shown him and shown the whole world which he did not wish to see. he left public life and retired, and, it is said, died of it. mr. webster has now in his turn chosen evil for good, less innocently than mr. hayne, and mr. hayne is avenged. for it is certain that he will be cast and ruined. he fights with an adversary not subject to casualties. ... but aristotle's reply to the question, what advantage a man may gain by lying ? is still true; “not to be believed when he speaks the truth,” — much more, “not to be believed when he lies again.” : webster and choate think to discredit the higher law by personalities; they insinuate much about transcendentalists and abstractionists and people of no weight. it is the cheap cant of lawyers and of merchants in a failing condition and of rogues. these classes usually defend an immorality by the practice of men of the world, and talk of dreamers and enthusiasts. every woman [that] has been debauched [has been so] by being made to believe that it is the mode, it is custom, and none but the priest and a few devout visionaries ever think otherwise. people 198 journal (age 47 never bring their history into politics, or this thin smoke would deceive nobody. it is the most impolitic of all steps, this demoralization of the people. “poets are the guardians of reverence in the hearts of the people.” it must always happen that the guiding counsels of ages and nations should come, not from statesmen or political leaders, always men of seared consciences, “half villains,” who, it has been said, are more dangerous than whole ones (mr. webster would be very sorry if this country should take his present counsel for any but this particular emergency), but from contemplative men aloof by taste and necessity from these .doubtful activities, and really aware of the truth long before the contemporary statesmen, because more impressionable. mr. webster never opened a jury case without praising the lawabiding disposition of the people. mr. everett, a man supposed aware of his own meaning, advises pathetically a reverence for the union. yes, but hides the other horn under this velvet? does he mean that we shall lay hands on a man who has escaped from slavery to the soil of massachusetts, and so has done more for freedom than ten thousand ora1851) everett’s position 199 tions, and tie him up and call in the marshal, and say, “i am an orator for freedom; a great many fine sentences have i turned, — none has turned finer, except mr. webster, -in favor of plebeian strength against aristocracy; and, as my last and finest sentence of all, to show the young men of the land who have bought my book and clapped my sentences and copied them in their memory, how much i mean by them, mr. marshal, here is a black man of my own age, and who does not know a great deal of demosthenes, but who means what he says, whom we will now handcuff and commit to the custody of this very worthy gentleman who has come on from georgia in search of him; i have no doubt he has much to say to him that is interesting, as the way is long. i don't care if i give them here are copies of my concord and lexington and plymouth and bunker hill addresses to beguile their journey from boston to the plantation whipping-post.” does mr. everett really mean this? — that he and i shall do this? mr. everett understands english, as few men do who speak it. does he mean this? union is a delectable thing, and so is wealth, and so is life, but they may all cost too much, if they cost honour. 200 journal (age 47 it is very remarkable how rare a bad law, an immoral law, is. does mr. everett know how few examples in civil history there are of bad laws? i do not think it will be easy to parallel the crime of mr. webster's law. but the crime of kidnapping is on a footing with the crimes of murder and of incest. ... how can mr. everett put at nought all manly qualities, all his claims to truth and sincerity, for the sake of backing up this cowardly nonsense? does he mean this, – that he and i shall do this, — or does he secretly know that he will die the death sooner than lift a finger in the matter, he or his son, or his son's son, and only hopes to persuade certain truckmen and constables to do this, that rich men may enjoy their estates in more security ? the historian tells us that “ thrasymachus's sophistry was political, and his aim the destruction of freedom, by extinguishing that sense of justice on which it must ever be based.” — j. a. st. john, p. 258. mr. webster is fond of fame; his taste is likely to be gratified. for there is not a man of thought or ingenuity but at every dinner 201 1851] the evil law table, in every private letter, in every newspaper i take up, is forced to say something biting of this enemy of the honor of massachusetts. he has the curse of all this country which he has afflicted. one way certainly the nemesis is seen. here is a measure of pacification and union. what is its effect? — that it has made one subject, one only subject for conversation and painful thought throughout the union, slavery. we eat it, we drink it, we breathe it, we trade, we study, we wear it. we are all poisoned with it, and after the fortnight the symptoms appear, purulent, making frenzy in the head and rabidness. what a moment was lost when judge shaw declined to affirm the unconstitutionality of the fugitive slave law!' the present crisis is not analogous to the i for a most interesting account of the doings in boston, day by day, and the fierce public feeling, during the period of the rendition of sims and burns, see the account by richard h. dana, who himself took a brave part, in his biography by charles francis adams. another remarkable contemporary document is the charge to the grand jury as to the fugitive slave law by judge hoar. (memoir of ebenezer rockwood hoar, by storey and emerson, houghton mifflin co., 1911.) 202 journal [ace 47 revolution. no liberty of the controlling classes is now threatened. if the south, or if the federal government threatened the liberty of any class, i doubt not there would be as violent reaction as was then. this is merely a case of conscience, not of anger, a call for compassion, a call for mercy. that is one thing; now it is not less imperative that this nation should say, this slavery shall not be, it poisons and depraves everything it touches. there can never be peace whilst this devilish seed of war is in our soil. root it out, burn it up, pay for the damage, and let us have done with it. it costs a hundred millions. twice so much were cheap for it. boston is a little city, and yet is worth near two hundred millions. boston itself would pay a large fraction of the sum, to be clean of it. i would pay a little of my estate with joy; for this calamity darkens my days. it is a local, accidental distemper, and the vast interests of a continent cannot be sacrificed for it. hosmer says, “sims come on a good errand; for sumner is elected ; rantoul and palfrey are likely to be; the state of massachusetts ought to buy that fellow.” 1851] buy the slaves 203 i find it has made every student a student of law. the destiny of america, the union,yes, great things, dear to the heart and imagination, and not to be put at risk by every young ranter. but a larger state, a prior union, still dearer to heart and imagination, and much longer to be our country is the world. we will not levy war against that, to please this new hampshire strapper nor the carolinas. we will buy the slaves at a hundred millions. it will be cheaper than any of our wars. it will be cheap at the cost of a national debt like england's. but we must put out this poison, this conflagration, this raging fever of slavery out of the constitution. if webster had known a true and generous policy, this would have made him. he is a spent ball. it is the combined wealth behind him that makes him of any avail. and that is as bad as europe.' pc. the doctrine of manilius is that the earth is i for an account of mr. emerson's delivery of this speech in cambridge in the face of tumultuous opposition, as told by professor james bradley thayer, see mr. cabot's memoir, vol. ii, pp. 585, 586. 204 journal [age 47 at rest, pressed on all sides by equal forces : yet his language is remarkably coincident with the newtonian theory of gravitation. imaque de cunctis mediam tenet undique sedem. idcircoque manet stabilis, quia totus ab illa tantundem refugit mundus : fecitque cadendo undique ne caderet. medium totius et imum est ictaque contractis consistunt corpora plagis.' manilius, lib. i, 167, 170. think, you rascal ! “réfléchissez, rappelez vous du mot que j'ai dicté, et écrivez le. je ne répéterai pas le mot.” — napoleon. oleon. history of liberty. 't is idle to complain of abolitionist and free-soiler. see-saw, up and down, tilts the pole, swings the pendulum of the world. violence is followed by collapse, cruelty by pity. you cannot get rid of women; you cannot cut the heart out, and leave the life in. the atrocities of savages exasperated 1 the editors hazard this translation of an obscure passage :and lowest of all [earth] holds a middle station and therefore remains at rest, because the whole universe draws back equally from this [place], and by its falling causes that it shall not fall abroad. midmost it is and lowest, and the smitten bodies hold together from the blows which struck them. 1851) maudlin tears 205 christianity into being and power. christianity lived by love of the people. ... “a nation never falls until the citadel of its moral being has been betrayed and become untenable.” — kemble. elizabeth hoar finds the life of campbell to send her back with new force of attachment to her temperance friends in america. every life of an european artist shows her that they have no self-command. their tears are maudlin, for they are the tears of wine ; but the ocean and the elements are at the back of the brave old puritans of the world. (from co) may. lecturing. experimentum in corpore vili. cobden and phillips learned their art at the expense of many a poor village lyceum and country church. house of fame hearest thou not the great swough? yes, perdie, quoth i, and well enow. and what sound is it like ? quoth he. like the beating of the sea, quoth i, against the rocks hollow . when tempests do their ships swallow, 206 journal (age 48 and that a man stand out of doubt a mile thence, and hear it route. aucer. george minot' thinks that it is of no use balloting, for it will not stay, but what you do with the gun will stay so. the old guide knows the passes from mountain to mountain, the bridges over gorge and torrent; and the salvation of numberless lives is in his oaken staff: and my guide knew not less the difficult roads of thought, the infinitely cunning transitions from law to law in metaphysics ; in the most hopeless mazes he could find a cheerful road, leading upward and lighted as by the midday sun. a topic of the conduct of life under the head of “prudence " should be how to live with unfit companions : for, with such, life is, for the most part, spent.' . .. when r don't care for julius, suddenly jui mr. emerson's kindly and simple neighbour in the little weather-stained house on the opposite hillside gave this reason for not going to vote. 2 see “works and days "(conduct of life, p. 270). 1851] william allingham 207 lius comes round and cares for r; and shows the involuntary revelation which character makes of itself. i think all solid values run directly into manners. this floor holds us up by a fight with agencies that go to pull us down. again balanced antagonisms. i like much in allingham's poetry, but you must not remember the masters. chaucer, milton, shakspeare, have seen mountains if they speak of them. young writers seem to have seen pictures of mountains. the wish to write poetry they have, instead of the poetic fury; and what they write is studies, sketches, fantasies, and not yet the inestimable poem.' the vein is too poor to be worth working : it affords specimens, but not ingots. it is, therefore, a mere luxury; their work, amateur poetry.' but whenever i meet true poetry, and though it appear only in a single mind, i shall sit down to it as the result and justification of the age, and think very little of histories and statutes. i mr. emerson highly valued allingham's « touchstone." 208 journal (age 48 prudence. one of the cardinal rules is timeliness. my neighbour, the carriage maker, all summer is making sleighs, and all winter is making light, gay gigs and chariots for june and august; and so, on the first days of the new season, is ready with his carriage, which is itself an invitation. and the putting the letter into the post one minute before the mail-bag is closed is a great triumph over fate. and in all our affairs the sense of being ready, and up with the hour imparts to a man's countenance and demeanour a wonderful air of leisure and success. a man who is always behind time is careworn and painful. prudence. “les bons comptes sont des bons amis.” where is nature? where shall we go to study her interior aspects? she is hard to find. the botanist, after completing his herbarium, remains a dry doctor, no poet. the lumberer in maine woods by moosehead lake does not get into the forest to any purpose, though he drives logs with his feet in the water all day. the poet goes untimely into a dozen inviting dells, and finds himself not yet admitted, but a poor excluded dilettante. 1851] the poet-paradox 209 he makes many desperate attempts to throw the brush at the picture, but rarely makes a good hit. ah, when! ah, how rarely! can he draw a true æolian note from the harp. and then comes some fine young gentleman like milton or goethe, who draws on his good london boots, and in coat of newest tailoring, with gold-headed cane, marches forth into the groves, and straight, as if he were going to his club, to the secret sacred dell, where all the muses and the shyest gods, fauns, and naiads have their home. so also did collins, and so did spenser: nay, walter scott himself, sheriff of selkirkshire, is admitted in full suit to the crag and burn. my texts are, moonlight caves when all the fowls are safely housed save bats and owls, etc. mountains on whose barren breast, etc. bubbling runnels joined the sound. shakspeare's threnes. the railroad and telegraph are great unionists. frank browne told me that whilst he was at savannah they were telegraphing to the 210 journal [age 48 president at washington, every hour, news of the cuban invaders. treat drastically. the scholar goes into the attorney's office, or the carpenter's shop, and, however civilly, is treated as a trifler. here is real business, and he is soon set aside: but archimedes and kant are as much realists as blacksmiths are ; and they are to deal with intellections as rigorously and drastically as the joiner with his chisel and board ; and set carpenter and merchant aside. i do not forgive any one for not knowing and standing by his own order. here are clergymen and scholars voting with the world, the flesh, and the devil, against sumner and freedom. new genius always flees to old. the new john baptist. it is not to be disguised that all our contemporaries, scholars as well as merchants, feel the great despair, are mere whigs, and believe in nothing. repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. lecturing. danger of doing something. you write a discourse, and, for the next weeks and w 1851] dualism. vasari 211 months, you are carted about the country at the tail of that discourse simply to read it over and over. sex a in feeble individuals, the sex and the digestion are all.' ... dualism. i see but one key to the mysteries of human condition, but one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge; the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. ... excellent tests of the artist's life in vasari's life of fra angelico (giovanni da fiesole). he said, “he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares or anxious thoughts.” "he altered nothing (of a painting once finished), but left all as it was done the first time, believing, he said, that such was the will of god”; like jones very. “he would never take a pencil in hand until he had first offered a prayer.” the rest of the long paragraph is printed in “ fate” (conduct of life, pp. 30–32). 2 for the rest of the paragraph, see « fate” (conduct of life, p. 11). 212 journal [age 48 votes in concord: for palfrey, 169; thompson, 101; frothingham, 28. imbecility of the good party. speak very modestly of the country and of its virtue. any action of the well-disposed and intelligent class in its affairs is uniformly reckoned an impertinence, and they are presently whipped back into their libraries and churches and sundayschools. there is one benefit derived from the movement lately. the most polite and decorous whigs, all for church and college and charity, have shown their teeth unmistakably. we shall not be deceived again. we believed, and they half believed, that they were honest men. they have been forced to take prematurely their true and ignominious place. i find a text for our very fact in an english paper speaking of their april 10, 1848: “it precipitated the whigs into toryism, making them rush into that political infamy for which they seem to have a constitutional predilection.” leader, may 3, 1851. our people mean that men of thought shall be dilettanti; ornamental merely ; if they dare to be practical with their ideas of beauty, it is on e a 1851) lip service. tulips 213 their peril. everett is ornamental with liberty and dying demosthenes, etc., but when he acts he comes with the planter’s whip in his buttonhole; and eliot writes, history of liberty and votes for south carolina, and at the university, mr. sparks and mr. felton carry demosthenes and general washington clean for slavery. the boston letter to webster was a shop-till letter, and the union party is a shop-till party. i like that sumner and mann and palfrey should not be scrupulous and stand on their dignity, but should go to the stump. they should not be above their business. the young minister did very well, but one day he married a wife, and, after that, he noticed, that, though he planted corn never so often, it was sure to come up tulips, contrary to all the laws of botany." every god is still there sitting in his sphere. i mr. emerson cared little for cultivated flowers, rejoicing in the wild ones. mrs. emerson delighted in bulbs, and soon the small garden close by the house was full of them, and the vegetables banished to the new acres. from her gifts many little gardens were begun where her roses now bloom. 214 journal (age 48 the young mortal comes in, and on the instant and incessantly fall snowstorms of illusions.'... it will hereafter be noted that the events of culture in the nineteenth century were, the new importance of the genius of dante, michel angelo, and raffaele to americans; the reading of shakspeare; and, above all, the reading of goethe. goethe was the cow from which all their milk was drawn. they all took the “european complaint" and went to italy. then there was an uprise of natural history, and in london, if you would see the fashionable and literary celebrities, you must go to the soirées of the marquis of northampton, president of the royal society, or to the geological club at somerset house. it seems, however, as if all the young gentlemen and gentlewomen of america spent several years in lying on the grass and watching “the grand movements of the clouds in the summer sky” during this century. s politics. bear in mind the difference between the opponents and the defenders of the shameful statute; that the opposition will never end, i sce « illusions” (conduct of life, p. 525). 1851) the cause. destiny 215 will never relax, whilst the statute exists; as long as grass grows, as long as there is summer and winter, night and day, world and man, so long the sentiments will condemn this. but your statute and its advocacy is a thing; is a phantasm, is a contrivance, a cat's cradle, a petty trap, a jackstraw that has no root in the world. but we saw longevity in our cause. it can well afford to wait; for ages and worlds the stars of heaven and the thoughts of the mind are the editors and vote-distributors of the free soil. “there is no happiness in this life but in intellect and virtue.” — wordsworth, letter to beaumont. margaret fuller. it fitted exactly, — that shipwreck, – thought ellery, to the life and genius of the person. 't was like socrates' poison, or christ's cross, or shelley's death. for goodness is a sad business, said ellery, and, if he was insurer, he would never insure any life that had any infirmity of goodness in it. it is goodwin' who will catch pickerel; if you have any moral traits, you 'll never get a bite. i an idle old river-god in concord, who had served a sentence in jail. 216 journal (ace 48 béranger's answer to those who asked about the “de” before his name:je suis vilain, vilain, vilain je honore une race commune, car sensible, quoique malin, je n'ai flatté que l'infortune. aristocracy. make yourself useful. that is the secret to clear your complexion, and make you desired. the four degrees of lordship :i, protection ; 2, hospitality ; 3, invention and art; 4, moral aid. webster truly represents the american people just as they are, with their vast material interests, materialized intellect, and low morals. heretofore, their great men [who] have led them have been better than they, as washington, hamilton, and madison. but webster's absence of moral faculty is degrading to the country. of this fatal defect, of course, webster himself has no perception.' why should we who believe in the intellect ever speak or lecture to a public meeting with1 the rest is found in the new york « speech on the fugitive slave law" (miscellanies, p. 228). 1851] election. symbolism 217 out yielding them a spark of lightning, some word of transforming, upbuilding truth? politics. in this age of tools, one of the best machines is certainly this governing machine, which we have brought to such mechanical perfection; the distributing political electricity over a vast area, so as to make the highest energy consistent with perfect safety. thus, yesterday was election day; and a revolution (for every election is a revolution) went off with the quietness of a picnic or a sermon. this by means of universal suffrage, and town-meetings and ward-meetings. con i believe so much in metamorphosis that i think the man will find the type, not only in kind, but in quantity, of all his moral and mental properties in the great world without. he is to hold to his purposes with the tough impracticability of gravitation itself. margaret had the attributes of a lady; a courtesy so real and sincere that it reached the chambermaid, the mantua-maker, and all who served her for money. 218 journal (age 48 the use made of fate in society is babyish. put your finger in your eye. it should rather be to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. the englishman and frenchman may have the november desolation, emptiness, which cannot see a lamp-post or a dangling rope without temptation to suicide, but to a charged, healthful, preoccupied mind, night and storm and cold are not grim, but sternly cheerful even. ... let him empty his breast of all that is superfluous and traditional, of all dependence on the accidental, on money, on false fame, falsehood of any kind ; and speak wild truth, and by manners and actions as unaffected as the weather, let him be instead of god to men, full of god, new and astonishing. i suppose i need not go to st. louis to know the flavor of southern life; there is not only st. louis, but all avernus, in a fiery cigar. goethe kept his acherontian experiences in a separate bag; and said, if he himself should happen to fall into that bag, he should be consumed, bones and all. heterogeneity. character. men are miscellanies, rag-bags, unannealed glass, utter discontin1851] boy and man. wealth 219 uity; and all their power absorbed in their individual antagonisms. “hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,” contend within the man. 'tis newton's heterogeneous body which loses the ray of light. now if a fire, as, for example, love's, could kindle and melt them over, recast the whole mass, then you should have logic, unity, and power; a man that would be felt to the centre of the copernican system. i noticed a little boy in the company whose speech in talking with his mates never went out as a mendicant from him, engaging him to what was said, but he remained quite entire when his speech was gone. so will it be when he is a man. was wealth. the world is babyish, and the use of wealth is : it is made a toy. men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting the sap and juices of the planet to the nutriment and incarnation of their design. power is what they want, not candy, and they will pay any prices. power for what? power to execute their idea, — which, in any well-constituted man, of course, appears the end to which the universe exists and all its resources might be well applied. each of the 220 journal (age 48 elm trees that you see over the land sends its roots far and wide; every great one to some river or water course; its roots will run a mile; and the education of each vascular man goes on well in proportion as his masculine roots draw from all the natures around him their tribute. “after all canova had seen, he. was astonished at the elgin marbles, and happy in finding them real flesh, nothing geometrical, nothing conventional, but a vera carne; and satisfied of what he had always believed, that the works which want this excellence are only copies from the great masters.” — m. fuller's journal. the best works are slanci spontanei ďuna musa e ďuna eloquenza ispirata, but these swift flashings are from minds full of heaped-up fuel well on fire, acted on by the muse; perfect births. never was truer fable than the sibyl's writing on leaves which the wind scatters.' ... the excellence of fairies is to be small. ... the pride of england is to rule the world in the little plain chamber of st. stephen's. in i see “ memory” (natural history of intellect, p. 95). 1851] the way. genius 221 like manner the whole battle of the world is fought in a few heads: a little finer order, a little larger angle of vision commands centuries of facts and millions of stupid people. we shall not long go on reckoning prosperity by the census, the more fools you have the worse, but by the competent heads. wor is the thing really desirable? then there is a way to it. in minimis natura. vishnu in his avatar came as a dwarf, and asked for as much earth as he could cover with three steps. the evil power was duped, and granted it; and the dwarf took in a world with each step. in the youth i heard last sunday (was] a sort of rattle of thunderbolts behind there in the back of his head. he threatened in every sentence to say somewhat new, bright, fatal. and that is the charm of eloquence, its potency. here is mere play, play of genius, improvisation for the artist's own delight, and out of the midst of it he hurls a winged word that becomes a proverb of the world and conquers kings, and clothes nations in its colors. i liked that margaret fuller should see in napoleon's head his mighty future, and, for all 222 journal (age 48 the beautiful, even voluptuous mouth, should find mountains of the slain and the snows of russia not irrelevant. snows i read somewhere that dalton did not wait for empirical confirmation of his “law," but promulgated it, struck by its internal evidence. probably kepler's laws were so seen: newton's was. and the transcendental anatomy stands so, the one animal, or the thoughts of god written out; and knox's law of races, that nature loves not hybrids, and extinguishes them; that the colony detached from the race deteriorates to the crab. it would be a great comfort in metaphysics to establish a good collection of these instances of accepted ideas, as a table of constants. fate. there is a thick skull, that is fate. the crustacea, the birds, the tortoises are fatalists, yet amelioration must be assumed. these very walls and jails must be believed to be charity and protection; and meanness the preparation of magnificence, as madness is assumed to be a screen of a too much tempted soul. in each town you visit, there is some man who is in his brain and performance an explana1851] city founders. boston 223 tion of all that meets the eye there.' ... if you see him, all will become plain. mr. erastus bigelow, mr. mcelrath, mr. lawrence, mr. crocker, mr. vanderbilt, the old rotch and rodman, jackson and lowell, the dwights at springfield, mr. mills, mr. forbes, are each a walking city, and, wherever you put them, will build one. also, i believe that nothing can be done except by inspiration.” ... [many pages of matter, printed in “fate,” are here omitted.] people often talk most of that which they do not represent. boston talks of union, and fevers into pro-slavery, but the genius of boston is seen in her real independence, productive power, and northern acuteness of mind, molvtpóros 'odúo devs, which is generically antislavery. boston common, boston athenæum, lowell institute, railroads, and the love of german literature, these are the true boston, and 1 the passage thus beginning is given in “fate" (conduct of life), but without the names of the men of brains and performance which are here retained. 2 the rest of the paragraph is in “inspiration” (letters and social aims, p. 271). 224 journal (age 48 not an accidental malignity, or a momentary importance of a few pug noses, — people too slight to sail in any but the fairest weather, and therefore by their very importance praising the great prosperity of boston. “if it were always such weather as this," my captain ellis used to say, “women might take his ship to sea.” i recall to-day in conversation with william h. channing' the impression made by wilkinson. he seemed full of ability, power of labor, acute vision, marvellous power of illustration, of great learning in certain directions, having also the power i so value and so rarely meet of expansion, expansion, such as alcott shines with; – but all this spoiled by a certain levity. ... · i should say of him that as we see children at school often expend a prodigality of memory and of arithmetical power, which, occurring in an adult subject, would make a porson, parr, or lacroix, -and see it in such children without respect, — mere boarding-school rattle, — i rev. william h. channing visited mr. emerson in july that they might work together on their memoir of margaret fuller ossoli, in which rev. james freeman clarke also bore a part. 2 dr. john james garth wilkinson, the english expositor of swedenborg. 1851] debt to everett 225 because it does not seem solid and enduring, or known to the mind itself, and so secured, but merely as this year's grass or annual plants, which a single night in november will annihilate, so i believe that all this unrealized ability seemed insecure. as soon as he himself has said, “these weapons are mine, and lo! by them i possess the universe, as yonder astronomer does the stars by his tube and chart: o joy, i cannot live, i am too happy. hold back thy thunderbolt, jove, envy me not my near approach," then we should sympathize with the terror and beauty of his gifts, and he would be sacred to himself and to us. it did not seem that he was enamoured of his thoughts, as all good thinkers ought to be. a fair ample house with excellent windows, but no fireplace. edward everett had in my youth an immense advantage in being the first american scholar who sat in the german universities and brought us home in his head their whole cultured method and results, — to us who did not so much as know the names of heyne, wolf, hug, and ruhnken. he dealt out his treasures, too, with such admirable prudence, so temperate and 226 journal (age 48 abstemious that our wonder and delight were still new. ... our w cre america. emigration. in the distinctions of the genius of the american race it is to be considered that it is not indiscriminate masses of europe that are shipped hitherward, but the atlantic is a sieve through which only or chiefly the liberal, adventurous, sensitive, america-loving part of each city, clan, family are brought. it is the light complexion, the blue eyes of europe that come: the black eyes, the black drop, the europe of europe, is left. bias. i have said so often, and must say once more, the first fortune is a controlling determination of genius that leaves haüy no choice but to be mineralogist, paxton no choice but to be landscape gardener and architect, and jackson a chemist; that abolishes so many perplexities. but that is not enough. he must have adaptation, besides, to men; or else that magazine of sufficiency that makes him indifferent to other men, like a statue of a roman emperor in a crowd. prudence. i was to have quoted respecting money lord mansfield's saying that the funds 1851] thoreau's value 227 gave interest without principal ; the land, principal without interest; but mortgages, both principal and interest. mr. eben francis told me, twenty years ago, that it was easy to invest a million, but by no means so easy to invest the second million. and i heard the other day that with all his care of his property, and with all the high rates that money rents at in boston, his property has not increased faster than six per cent for many years past. july. is it not a convenience to have a person in town who knows where pennyroyal grows, or sassafras, or punk for a slow-match ; or celtis, the false elm; or cats-o'-nine-tails; or wild cherries; or wild pears; where is the best apple tree, where is the norway pine, where the beech, or epigæa, or linnæa, or sanguinaria, or orchis pulcherrima, or drosera, or laurus benzoin, or pink huckleberry, or shag-barks; where is the best chestnut grove, hazelnuts; where are trout, where woodcocks, where wild bees, where pigeons; or who can tell where the stake-driver (bittern) can be heard; who has seen and can show you the wilson's plover?' 1 this expression of the constant pleasure thoreau's 228 journal (age 48 thoreau wants a little ambition in his mixture. fault of this, instead of being the head of american engineers, he is captain of huckleberry party. e john adams on courage. “i had formed an opinion that courage and reading were all that were necessary to the formation of an officer. “i had met with an observation among regular officers that mankind were naturally divided into three sorts; one third of them are animated at the first appearance of danger, and will press forward to meet and examine it: another third are alarmed by it, but will neither advance nor retreat, till they know the nature of it, but stand to meet it. the remaining third will run or fly upon the first thought of it.” – john adams, vol. iii, p. 86. he proceeds —“if this remark is just, as i believed it was, it appeared to me that the only way to form an army to be confided in was sysknowledge and good will gave his friends is kept here, although printed in “ country life" (natural history of intellect, pp. 161, 162), i mr. emerson, as is shown in this and one or two similar passages in his journals, did not foresee what a benefactor and influence thoreau was to become in his own country, and even abroad, when his short and pure life ended. 1851) john adams. greeley 229 tematic discipline, by which means all men may be made heroes.” john adams in 1782 (ætatis suæ 46) told the duke of vauguyon he was going to paris to treat of peace with the british commissioners, etc. “ he replied that he rejoiced to hear it, for he believed mr. jay and i were cordial, and he thought it absolutely necessary that i should be there, for that the immoveable firmness that heaven had given me would be useful and necessary upon this occasion.” — vol. iii, p. 281. loadstone. — “ this substance is in the secret of the whole globe. it must have a sympathy with the whole globe.” – john adams. i think horace greeley's career one of the most encouraging facts in our whiggish age. a white-haired man in the city of new york has adopted every benevolent crotchet and maintained it, until he commands an army of a million now in the heart of the united states. here we stand shivering on the north wall of opposition, -we new england idealists, –and might have taken boston long ago,“ had we had the pluck of a louse,” to use the more 230 journal (age 48 energetic than elegant expression of my travelling friend. conversation. whenever the muses sing, pan spirts poppy-juice all about, so that no one who hears them can carry any word away. true of fine conversation. i don't like linear, but spheral people; but discontent merely shows incompleteness as you measure yourself by times and events; as soon as you express yourself, you will round. art. two ideas, greece and jewry, sway us; look at our apish buildings. we pass from thought to thought easily, but not from realization to realization. rare me seems in rare moments there seems to have been a fusion of all the bloods of the world; as, in italy, in the fall of rome; and in the crusades. we are always out-generalled by tacticians, choked off by the previous question or by insidious assistance, or by sly amendments, or by false friends. 1851] webster's fall 231 “we shall sink at last into the arms of a vast conservatism embracing even the fiends in its charity. yet without losing sight of the immutable laws.” [here follow many passages about webster's treachery to liberty, most of which are here omitted, because printed in the concord “speech on the fugitive slave law” (miscellanies, pp. 204, 205).] 'tis inevitable in him, he has animal and animal-intellect, powers, but no morals; his religion is literal, calvinistic, formal; his minister, i know, esteems him a religious man. his rhetoric has got purged of the word liberty, for fate has been too strong for him. all the drops of his blood have eyes that look downward. but not by such as he have the steps for mankind been taken. we want an exploding bonaparte who could take forward steps, instead of these crabs. . . . now columbus was no crab, nor john adams, nor patrick henry, nor jefferson, nor martin luther, nor copernicus. and the american idea is no crab, but a man incessantly advancing as the shadow of the dial or the heavenly body 232 journal (age 48 that casts it. america is the idea of emancipation. abolish kingcraft, slavery, feudalism, black-letter monopoly ; pull down gallows, explode priestcraft, tariff, open the doors of the sea to all emigrants. ... mr. everett tells of a bloody line of castles along the frontier. on the contrary, the people are all cousins, traders, partners. the only castles they know or care for are depots, and the expressman is the only dragoon, and instead of a bloody line of castles there is a white line of flour barrels. he has been reading in his robertson instead of in the faces of the people. it amounts to this, nakedly,i will give you a pistareen or a mountain of pistareens, if you will be quiet about this. sot economy. nature says thou shalt keep the air, skate, swim, walk, ride, run. when you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the sole leather has passed into the fibre of your body. i measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. he is the richest man who pays the largest debt to his shoemaker. these thirty nations are equal to any work. they are to become fifty millions presently and 1851] thomas wren ward 233 should achieve something just and generous.' let them trample out this mischief before it has trampled out them. for the future of slavery is not inviting. but the destinies of nations are too great for our spanning, and what are the instruments no policy can show; whether liberia, whether flax, cotton, whether the working them out by irish and germans none can tell; or by what scourges god has guarded his law. but one thing is imperative, not to do unjustly, not to steal a man or help steal him, or to call stealing honest. mr. thomas wren ward, old merchant, sees what he foresaw; knows yankees can make everything as soon as it is certain to pay, and has found one nostrum sovereign, — not free trade, not laws, not morals, not anti-slavery, but only the natural growth of the thirty nations. one way or another they arrive at the same thing which you would compass with your law. thus they have got free trade in substance, though not in form; free trade with thirty nations. they wanted tariff to protect their iron. well, they did not get it; but in1 this sentence occurs in the concord speech. 2 father of mr. emerson's friend. 234 journal [ace 48 stead of twenty thousand tons, last year they manufactured eight hundred thousand : which is getting it. so peace, so abolition of slavery will be got by lying quiet a little. but liberty and land are the nostrum. “two wrongs don't make a right." sam ward thinks 't will do for carolina to be unreasonable and nullify. but not so with massachusetts, which is the head : the toe may nullify, but the head must not nullify ; thinks that the confidence of financiers proves nothing; — proves everything in reference to old and known dangers, but nothing in reference to new dangers. the french stocks stood firm until louis philippe fell. the union is part of the religion of this people. its dissolution has not been contemplated. his private opinion is that disunion is inevitable: the north and south are two nations, it is not slavery that separates them, but climate. without slavery they do not agree. the south does not like the north, and never did, slavery apart. the north likes the south well enough. but he reckons abolition by purchase impossible; thousand million of dollars; a financial measure so gigantic not to be thought of. in a 1851] the dark times 235 common financial measure such an onerous infinity of particulars, so many heart-burnings, so many sacrifices of character, conflict of interests. what would it be, then, with a complication so vast as this? it cannot be done. there must come an end of this too much prosperity of ours, or it would go on to madness. tone of the press not lower on slavery than on everything else; — criminal on that point, ready to be criminal on every other. no measures to be relied on, no concert; it will come by chance. we stand on a brink and somebody will get pushed further than he meant, and when the fat is on the fire we shall see the blaze.' old law of 1793 affirmed slavery in massachusetts pro honoris causa, just as king james was styled king of great britain, france, and ireland. one thing or the other. if it is ascertained that the commissioner is only a notary to suri probably all of the above was mr. ward's view. after some years devoted to letters and art, he came, at his father's desire, back to boston to help him in his mercantile business. later, he was a banker and for many years the agent of the baring brothers of london. 236 (age 48 journal render the black man to his hunter, then infamy attaches to the post. the dislike and contempt of society very properly attaches to the officer. people will not stick to what they say, and the number increases. they cannot remember 1775. their fathers were seditious. they kept those ten seditious commandments which god gave on sinai. this filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century, by people who could read and write. i will not obey it, by god. a voyage ! [of the ship of state) yes; but i do not like that craft which requires that we shall stand all hours at the pump. intellect strips, affection clothes. if the good god would perfect his police on any day, he has only to open that upper chamber in each man's and woman's brain which is his or her determinate love, and on the instant chastity is secured by an impregnable guard, as if all the population lived like naked children in one nursery. doctrine of leasts. nature makes everything cheap : the smallest amount of material; the 1851] . liberty. school tax 237 low-price, the low-fare system is hers ; least action, least pain. liberty. i think this matter of liberty is one of those rights which require fine sense to appreciate, and with every degree of civility it will be more truly felt and defined. ... there are points from which we can command our life, when the soul sweeps the future like a glass, and coming things, full freighted with our fate, jut out dark in the offing of the mind. festus. dives pays a tax of $1000, has but one child, and sends him to a private school. lazarus pays only his poll-tax, and has twenty children, and wishes to send them all to college. having thus got his hand once into the rich man's pocket, why not again? in maine, they spill the barrel of brandy by law. it is not property, by their law. it is but one step, now, to say to the drinker of the brandy, “you are a barrel of poison, and shall not be allowed to infect the state with your virus. you shall not marry; go into the street; go to poneropolis." nature never makes us a present of a fine 238 journal (age 48 fruit or berry, pear, peach, or plum without also packing up along with it a seed or two of the same. the apple is our national fruit, and in october the country is covered with this most ornamental harvest. the beautiful colour of the apple heaps, more lively and varied than the orange, — balls of scarlet fire, give a gaiety and depth to our russet massachusetts. i believe in society, in grace and courtesy, and mean therefore to write answers to my letters, and not rely longer on mere brute force of duty. me to keep from idleness truely i did my business to make songes as i best coude, and ofttime i sung them loude; and made songes a gret del, although i coude not make so well songes, nor knew the arte all as coude lamek's son tubal, that found out first the art of song, for as his brother's hammers rung upon his anvil up and down, thereof he took the first sowne. chaucer, book of the duchesse. 1851] scholar. fate 239 and also, beau sire, of other things that is, thou hast no tidings of love's folk, if they be glad, ne of nothing else that god made, and not only fro faare countree that no tidings come to thee, not of thy very neighbours, that dwellen almost at thy doors, thou hearest neither that nor this; for when thy labor all done is and hast made all thy reckonings, instead of rest and of new things thou goest home to thy house anon and also dumb as a stone thou sittest at another book 'till fully dazed is thy look and livest as an hermite although thy abstinence is lite chaucer, house of fame. we are examples of fate. toss up a pebble and it falls. and the soaring of your mind and the magnanimity you indulge will fall. but cannot we ride the horse which now throws us? ' the ancients most truly and poetically represented the incarnation or descent into nature i here follow other passages from “ fate” (conduct of life, pp. 8, 9, 20, 42). 240 journal (age 48 of pythagoras, his condescension to be born, as his first virtue. it is indeed a perilous adventure, this serious act of venturing into mortality, swimming in a sea strewn with wrecks, where none indeed go undamaged. it is as bad as going to congress; none comes back innocent. those who conquer,— the victory was born with them. they may well be serene. they seem to fight, but their lives are insured and their victories. you like better to hear what they say. well you may, for they announce this success in every syllable. memory, imagination, reason, sense are only masks of one power, as physical and spiritual laws are only new phases of limitation. the poet is the lover loving; the critic is the lover advised. which are the realities, the thoughts or the iron spikes? and who is truly wanted, the railroad engineer or the philosopher? it is a mere question of time. these roads and roadmakers must be had, i suppose, and are wanted now for fifty years good. the men of thought and of truth to thought are always wanted and for 18511 men fit for the day 241 all ages. you are to stand for that which is always good and the same. there is never a fine aspiration but is on its way to its body or institution. these people that are made now, and for the day's wants, journeymen, will be impossible to be organized in a more advanced society, and if they should there appear would shock by their barbarism. the world was once a rock and peopled itself with lichen, moss, and sponge, the first disintegrators. afterwards it was a cold swamp; sponge sphagnum, fly, fish, lizard, multiplied. by and by came men, but rude men; after all, came englishmen and planted america; but the wheel is not scotched, but rotates still, and the men of to-day cannot live in the warm aërial future any more than the sauri can escape extirpation in the man-bearing granite of massachusetts and new york.' rhyme. we are lovers of rhyme and return and period and reflection.'... autobiography. i am never beaten until i i compare in the poems, “the song of nature.” 2 then follow many sentences printed in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, pp. 46-49). 242 journal (age 48 know that i am beaten. i meet powerful people to whom i have no skill to reply.' ... all eloquence is a war of posts. what is said is the least part of the oration. it is the attitude taken, the unmistakable sign never so casually given (in the tone of voice, or manner, or word), that a greater spirit speaks from you than is spoken to in him.. i believe in the fable that the fates fell in love with hermes. fugitive slave law. we have got a better enemy than ever we had. perhaps that was all we wanted. that may accelerate the slow crystallizations of the new men against the antiquated, against the old dead folks. the state stands for property, and the slave, as the highest kind of property, is fitly made the question between the party of light and the party of darkness. we are not such pedants as to suppose a king comes only with a crown on his head. the moment a man says, “give up your rights, 1 the rest of the paragraph is found in “worship” (conduct of life, pp. 234, 235). 1851] the bond. mediation 243 here is money,” there is tyranny. it comes masquerading in monks' cowls and in citizens' coats; comes savagely or comes politely. but it is tyranny. nay, the gradation is endless, and the family resemblance meets us throughout creation. it is not so strange as we say that races mix.' we think the event severed from the person and do not see the inevitable tie. it is like the nudicaulis plant, — the leaf invariably accompanies it, though the stems are connected underground. mediator, mediation. there is nothing else; there is no immediate known to us. cloud on cloud, degree on degree; remove one coat, one lamina just like it is the result, — to be also removed. when the symbol is explained, the new truth turns out to be only a symbol of ulterior truth. the judgment day is in reality the past. we have all been judged, and we have judged all. we would gladly think highly of nature and life, but what a country-muster, what a vanity-fair full of noise, squibs and egg-pop i see english traits (pp. 49, 50). 244 (age 48 journal it is! pass your last week in review, and what figures move on the swelling scene! mr. potter, mr. minot, mr. garfield, tom hazel," and the ticket-master are among the best. 'tis a onecent farce; — am i deceived; — or is the low and absurd a little predominant in the piece? tools. the age. the age is marked by this wondrous nature philosophy as well as by its better chisels and roads and steamers. but the attention of mankind is now fixed on ruddering the balloon, and probably the next war the war of principles — is to be fought in the air. the naturalist can carry us no farther than the vesicle, which has the capacity of change into oak, ape, man, and god. alcott thinks the american mind a little superior to english, german, greek, or any other. it is a very amiable opinion and deserves encouragement; and certainly that is best which 1 respectively, the keeper of a village store where he dispensed his own “ hair balm," peppermints, and a few drugs ; the neighbour across the way; a second-class farmer ; and a vivacious irish boy at the primary school opposite mr. emerson's study-windows. 1851] shakspeare's height 245 recommends his home and the present hour to every man. shall i say it has the confirmation of having been held of his own country by every son of adam ? shakspeare. one listens to the magnifying of goethe's poem by his critic, and replies, “yes, it is good, if you all agree to come in and be pleased”; and you fall into another company and mood, and like it not. it is so with wordsworth. but to shakspeare alone god granted the power to dispense with the humours of his company: they must needs all take his. he is always good; and goethe knew it and said, “it is as idle to compare tieck to me as me to shakspeare.” i looked through the first part of faust to-day, and find it a little too modern and intelligible. we can make such a fabric at several mills, though a little inferior. the miraculous, the beauty which we can manufacture at no mill, can give no account of, it wants." it is impossible to detach an individual from the mass without injustice and caricature. do i the remainder of the paragraph is found in english traits (p. 256), and in “ poetry and imagination" (lerters and social aims, p. 69). 246 journal (age 48 not pity tom because he is low and will remain low all his life, but replace him in the circles and systems wherein he belongs, and there is reaction, compensation, old aboriginal necessity, far-reaching universal connection whose good as well as evil he shares, and in the scope of all of which only can he be rightly seen. onun i listen with great pleasure to the masterly lectures of mr. scherb, and with none the less that i reserved my opinion and by no means accept his national estimates. but it is a most gratifying monument of culture, his lecture. such a regnant good sense, such a calm, high, generalizing criticism, so sane, so superior, so catholic, so true to religion and reason ; if at all i feel that they are not his own, but that he is the good scholar of better masters, my joy is not the less in the reality of the benefit, or my satisfaction in the conveyance of these healthy waters into our american fields. he has more self-possession than i have seen in any literary man, and read his lecture to these twelve persons and the empty benches of the little orthodox vestry with an elegance and finish i emmanuel vitalis scherb, a cultivated german patriot carlier mentioned. 1851] a sign. angels near 247 as if he were addressing an audience of lords and duchesses in london, as c. remarked. c. said, too, that this elegance of his could not be preserved if he had ever once spoken to a labourer here on such a footing as we all use. if the tree, the mountain, the lake would only give a token — were it only a waving leaf, a sigh, a ripple — that it knew the man who was born by them, and carried them always in his blood and manners ! jenny lind is once for all the standard which every artist and scholar thinks of as the measure of remuneration. “even the dæmons cannot interfere among men, but that they are here close to us, all must believe who see the circles of life. all above, as below, is organized, and into the innermost being man may not enter. so let us return the smiles of the angels who look upon our sports, as children return those we so condescendingly bestow. but let the angels know, as we also know for the children, that our place in the universe holds good with theirs, and our games are a part of its music.” [quoted from a lady, one of mr. emerson's correspondents.] an 02 248 journal (age 48 i wish i could get the fact about horseshoe nails, which, after being hammered and worn and recast and hammered and worn, are made up into damascus steel, which is thus a result and simmering down, and last possibility of iron. i believe the tradition is fabulous. but such in nature are men made up of monads, each of which has held governance of fish or fowl or worm or fly, and is now promoted to be a particle of man. prudence. half measures fail. don't be leaky. power. the french papers say that somebody is revolutionizing mechanics by converting the come-and-go force of the pendulum into a perpetual push, as has been done by steam in the rotation of the paddle-wheel instead of the oar. well, this power of perpetual push, instead of the push spasmodic, is the differencing power of men. however mild and gentle the nature, if it has a steady push in one direction, it is soon a recognized element in society, and is entitled to shake its head at twenty times as much genius or force of the intermittent kind. сусг 1851) providence. memoir 249 goethe is the pivotal man of the old and new times with us. he shuts up the old, he opens the new. no matter that you were born since goethe died, — if you have not read goethe, or the goetheans, you are an old fogy, and belong with the antediluvians. та the old adams and jay, as nelson and wellington, think as i think about the french, that they have no morale. the shape in which providence appeared to me was in tradesman's bills, and to my dame in derangements of her domestic establishment, — cook, chambermaid, and seamstress. miss peabody ransacks her memory for anecdotes of margaret's youth, her self-devotion, her disappointments, which she tells with fervency, but i find myself always putting the previous question. these things have no value unless they lead somewhere. if a burns, if a de staël, if an artist is the result, our attention is pre1 miss elizabeth peabody, who devoted a long life with utter generosity and self-forgetfulness, and perhaps an overreceptive and trustful mind, to the service of humanity. she was mr. alcott's assistant in his school and was the sister of mrs. horace mann and mrs. nathaniel hawthorne. 250 journal (age 48 engaged; but quantities of rectitude, mountains of merit, chaos of ruins are of no account without result; — 't is all mere nightmare; false instincts ; wasted lives. now, unhappily, margaret's writing does not justify any such research. all that can be said is that she represents an interesting hour (and group in american cultivation; then that she was herself a fine, generous, inspiring, vinous, eloquent talker, who did not outlive her influence; and a kind of justice requires of us a monument, because crowds of vulgar people taunt her with want of position. novels. the merit of bulwer's caxtons, as of | ward's novel, is that his character has a basis of probity. thereby he is a gentleman. the vulgar novelist does not give a natural basis to a hero, but one of manners and fortune. it seems a cheap secret: yet it is the secret of the most high. august 11. carlyle is a better painter in the dutch style than we have had in literature before. it is terrible — his closeness and fidelity: he copies that which never was seen before. it is like see1851] beauty. the pickerel 251 ing your figure in a glass. it is an improvement in writing as strange as daguerre's in picture, and rightly fell in the same age with that; and yet there is withal an entire reserve on his own part and the hiding of his hand. what do we know of his own life? the courage which is grand, the courage to feel that nature who made me may be trusted, and one's self painted as also a piece of nature, he has not. beauty. once open the sense of beauty, aitd vulgar manners, tricks, bad eating, loudspeakeing, yelps, and all the miscreation of ugliness become intolerable, and we are reconciled to the intense selfishness and narrowness of “good society,” thinking that, bad as it is, the better alternative as long as health lasts. george minot says that old abel davis went up to temple, new hampshire, and was one day fishing there and pulled out a monstrous pickerel:“wal,” said he, “who'd ever have thought of finding you up here in temple? you and a slice of pork will make viny and me a good breakfast." symbol. yes, history is a vanishing allegory, and repeats itself to tediousness, a thousand and 252 journal (age 48 a million times. the rape of the sabines is perpetual, and the fairest sabine virgins are every day pounced upon by rough, victorious romans, masquerading under mere new hampshire and vermont and boston names, as webster, choate, thayer, bigelow, or other obscurity. ellery thinks these waterside cottages of nahant and chelsea, and so on, never see the sea. there, it is all dead water, and a place for dead horses, and the smell of mr. kip's omnibus stable. but go to truro, and go on to the beach there, on the atlantic side, and you will have every stroke of the sea like the cannon of the “ sea-fencibles." there is a solitude which you cannot stand more than ten minutes. he thinks the fine art of goethe and company very dubious, and 't is doubtful whether sam ward is quite in his senses in his value of that book of prints of the italian school, giotto and the rest. it may do for very idle gentlemen, etc., etc. i reply, there are a few giants who gave the thing vogue by their realism, — michel angelo and ribera and salvator rosa; and the man who made the old torso hercules, and man 1851] beauty. art. power 253 the phidias — man or men who made the parthenon reliefs — had a drastic style which a blacksmith or a stonemason would say was starker than their own. and i adhere to van waagen's belief, that there is a pleasure from works of art which nothing else can yield. a woman, never so trim and neat, does not please by inoffensiveness while she only complies with the exactions of our established decorum, but is coarse. but as soon as her own sense of beauty leads her to the same perfect neatness, and we ascribe to her secret neatness, then is she lovely, though sick, poor, and accidentally squalid. art. art lies not in making your object prominent, but in choosing objects that are prominent. to describe adequately is the high power and one of the highest enjoyments of man. 00 dan. our culture or art of life is sadly external. it is certain that the one thing we wish to know is, where is power to be bought?'... 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ inspiration” (letters and social aims, p. 269). 254 (age 48 journal i take it to be law that every solid in the universe is ready to become volatile on the approach of the mind.' ... our money is only a second-best, or pis-aller. we would jump to buy power with it, or first principles, or first-best. where is the new metaphysics? we are intent on meteorology, to find the law of the variable winds, to the end that we may not get our hay wet. i also wish a farmer's almanac of the mental moods, that i may farm my mind. there are undulations of power and imbecility and i lose days sitting at my table, which i should gain to my body and mind if i knew beforehand that no thought would come that day. i see plainly enough that ordinarily we take counters for gold, that our eating and trading and marrying and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities, whilst they are only symbols of true life; and as soon as we have come by a divine leading into the inner firmament, we are apprised of the unreality or representative character of what we had esteemed solidest. then we say, here and now! we 1 see representative men (p. 43). . 1851] inner world. man's aim 255 then see that before this terrific beauty nature too is cheap; that geometry and astronomy also are its cheap effects, before this pure glory. yet, ah! if we could once come in and plant our instruments and take some instant measurement and inventory of this dome, in whose light forms and substances and sciences are dissolved — but we never so much as to enter ! — ’t is a glimpse; 't is a peeping through a chink; the dream in a dream. we play at bo-peep with truth, and cannot write the chapter of metaphysics. we write books, “how to observe," etc., yet the kant or the plato of the inner world, which is heaven, has not come. september. art. 'tis indifferent whether you say, all is matter, or, all is spirit; and 'tis plain there is a tendency in the times to an identity-philosophy. you do not degrade man by saying, spirit is only finer body; nor exalt him by saying, matter is phenomenal merely; all rests on the affection of the theorist, on the question whether his aim be noble. here and there were souls which saw through peaches and wine, politics, money, and women, saw that these as objects of desire were all alike, 256 (age 48 journal 0 and all cheats: that the finest fruit is dirty, and must be seen by the soul as it is seen by the provision-dealer; and that all the other allurements that infatuate men, and which they play for, are the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or two of illusion overlaid. but the soul is distinguished by its aim, — what is its end? this reacts, this far future consummation which it seeks reacts through ages, and ennobles and beatifies every modern moment, and makes the individual grand among his coevals, though they had every advantage of skill, force, and favor. here and there is a soul which is a seed or principle of good, a needle pointing to the true north, thrown into the mountains of foolishness and desarts of evil, and therefore maligned and isolated by the rest. this soul has the secret of power, this soul achieves somewhat new and beautiful which endears heaven and earth to mankind and lends a domestic grace to the sun and the stars. edith's opinion. edith, when a little girl, whimpered when her mother described the joys of heaven. she did not want to go there, she “wanted to stay” (and she looked round the room) “where there was folks, and things, and a door.” 1851) experience. intellect 257 ellery thinks that he is the lucky man who can write in bulk forty pages on a hiccough, ten pages on a man's sitting down in a chair, like hawthorne, etc., that will go. in some sort the end of life is that the man should take up the universal into himself.' experience. i know that men are meteorous, and the world is, and that the truisms of morals are the eternal law: but my experience gives me no ground to believe that i can rashly realize my aspirations, and with these hands and feet and head obey the poetic rule. once again in celebration of the intellect, it is true that the world is wrong and we are right; that our conversation once or twice with our mates has apprised us that we belong to better circles than we have yet beheld ; that there is a music somewhere awaiting us that shall make us“ forget the taste of meat”; a mental power whose generalizations are more worth for joy and for avail than anything that is now called philosophy or literature;: ... 1 for the rest of this passage, see « education ” (letters and biographical sketches, p. 151). 2 for the rest of the paragraph, see “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 63). 258 (age 48 journal all men know the truth, but what of that? it is rare to find one that knows how to speak it.' . . . by and by comes by a facility, a walking facility. he can move the mountain and carry off yonder star as easily as he carries the hair on his head. yet who is he, and whence? god knows; his brother is an idiot, his father is a pawn-broker, his mother is a cow. culture. plainly, a man can spare nothing: he wants blackest night and whitest day, sharp eye, fleet foot, strong hand, head of jove, health, sleep, appetite, and conscience like a clock. the finest artist, the tenderest poet wants the ferocity of cannibals, only transmuted into his milder instruments, as battery or magazine to furnish out his long-drawn sweetness. michel angelo and raphael in the next age reappeared as milton and shakspeare. october 14. to-day is holden at worcester the “woman's convention.” i think that as long as they have not equal rights of property and right of voting they are not on the right footing. but 1 much of this passage is printed in natural history of intellect (pp. 46, 47). 1851 woman's convention 259 this wrong grew out of the savage and military period, when, because a woman could not defend herself, it was necessary that she should be assigned to some man who was paid for guarding her. now, in more tranquil and decorous times it is plain she should have her property, and, when she marries, the parties should, as regards property, go into a partnership full or limited, but explicit and recorded. for the rest, i do not think a woman's convention, called in the spirit of this at worcester, can much avail. it is an attempt to manufacture public opinion, and of course repels all persons who love the simple and direct method. i find the evils real and great. if i go from hanover street to atkinson street, -as i did yesterday, what hundreds of extremely ordinary, paltry, hopeless women i see, whose plight, inscribed on their forms, “leave all hope behind,” is piteous to think of. if it were possible to repair the rottenness of human nature, to provide a rejuvenescence, all were well, and no specific reform, no legislation would be needed. for as soon as you have a sound and beautiful woman, a figure in the style of the antique juno, diana, pallas, venus, and the graces, all falls into place, the men are magnetized, heaven opens, and no 260 journal (age 48 lawyer need be called in to prepare a clause, for woman moulds the lawgiver.' i should therefore advise that the woman's convention should be holden in the sculpture gallery, that this high remedy might be suggested. october 27. it would be hard to recall the rambles of last night's talk with henry thoreau. but we stated over again, to sadness almost, the eternal loneliness. i found that though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a moral union of two superior persons, and the confidence of each in the other, for long years, out of sight and in sight, and against all appearances, is at last justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, causing a gush of joyful emotion, tears, glory, or what-not, though there be for heroes this moral union, yet they, too, are still as far off as ever from an intellectual union, and this moral union is for comparatively low and external purposes, like the coöperation of a ship's crew or of a fire-club. but how insular and pathetically solitary are all the people we know!... 1 a similar sentence is found in the boston address «« woman,” given in 1855 (miscellanies, p. 425). 1851) hosmer. say no. carlyle 261 i saw yesterday, sunday, whilst at dinner, my neighbor hosmer creeping into my barn. at once it occurred, “well, men are lonely, to be sure, and here is this able, social, intellectual farmer under this grim day, as grimly, sidling into my barn, in the hope of some talk with me, showing me how to husband my cornstalks. forlorn enough!” 1 en beware of engagements. learn to say no, and drop resolutely all false claims. i suppose i have a letter, each week, asking an autograph; one each quarter, asking anti-slavery lecture; one yesterday, asking particulars of the life of mr. carlyle, etc., etc. and every day is taxed by the garden, the orchard, the barn. faith shall be justified. live for the year, not for the day. let logic, let character rule the hour. that is never vulgar. october. in reading carlyle's life of sterling, i still feel, as of old, that the best service carlyle has rendered is to rhetoric or the art of writing. now here is a book in which the vicious conventions of writing are all dropped; you have no board interposed between you and the writer's mind, but he talks flexibly, now high, 262 journal (age 48 now low, in loud, hard emphasis, then in undertones, then laughs outright, then calmly narrates, then hints or raises an eyebrow, and all this living narration is daguerreotyped for you in his page. he has gone nigher to the wind than any other craft. no book can any longer be tolerable in the old husky neal-on-the-puritans model. but he does not, for all that, very much uncover his secret mind.' a personal influence towers up in the memory only worthy when we would gladly forget numbers or money, or climate, gravitation, and 1 this passage, although printed in “ art and criticism,” is retained here because that lecture is only preserved in the centenary edition. observe that it is only the style and rhetoric that are praised. in the letter acknowledging the gift, mr. emerson said, “i rejoiced with the rest of mankind in the life of sterling ... yet i see well that i should have held to his opinion in all those conferences where you have so quietly assumed the palm.” it is remarkable how much more real sympathy was between emerson and sterling, brave poet and idealist and helpful man, as may be seen throughout their letters (though unhappily these friends never met) than between carlyle and emerson. their long and true friendship endured the better that they had the atlantic between them. (see emerson-sterling correspondence, passim. houghton, mifflin & co.) 1851] family types. culture 263 the rest of fate. margaret, wherever she came, fused people into society, and a glowing company was the result. when i think how few persons can do that feat for the intellectual class, i feel our squalid poverty. undoubtedly if a concord man of 1750 could come back in our street to-day, and walk from the meeting-house to the depot, he would recognize all the people as if they were his own contemporaries. yes, that is a buttrick; and that a flint; and that barrett or minot, ... for no doubt a regent atom or monad constrains all the other particles to take its feature and temperament. but no man outsees another: no man's verdict is final on another; the reserves, the remains are immense. the observer has really, though he were socrates, no sense to apprehend the other's peculiarity. november 1. i suppose at last culture will absorb the hells also. there is nothing that is not wanted for bone or fibre, for shade or for color. practice is as much wanted for metaphysical as for weaving or ploughing skill. it is not until 264 (age 48 journal after a long time exploring this dim field in conversation that we begin to see well what is there. we believe that men will not all or always be local, spotty, trifling, but that men will come native to all districts of nature, all related; who will suck the earth, the air, the sea; be solidly related to the forest and the mineral; amphibious, with one door down into tartarus, and one door upward into light, belonging to both; and when such men are possible, some of the meaner kinds will become impossible and pass into the fossil remains. culture. war, party, luxury, avarice, whiggery, radical are so many asses with loaded panniers, to serve the kitchen of the king, who is intellect. there is nothing that does not pass into lever or weapon, — masses of men, christianity. with culture, too, the self-direction develops. in the fables, the disk chakra (?), the weapon of hari, is self-directing, and leaps upon his enemies. in the edda, the ship of the gods is self-steered. in the persian fables, the divine horses refuse any rider but their own hero. a man might as easily mount a lion as kyrat if e 1851) party. currency. tariff 265 kyrat’s master have not laid the bridle in his hands; and the god freye has a sword so good that it will itself strew a field with carnage when the owner so ordered it. the malignity of parties betrays the want of great men. if there were a powerful person to be the belisarius of free soil, he would strike terror into these rich whigs and these organized vulgarities called the democracy. the puzzle of currency remains for rich and poor. i never saw a rich man who thought he knew whence the hard times came. but free trade must be right and the annexation of england to america, and as for the tariff, that interests only a few rich gentlemen in boston and philadelphia. the railroad capital vastly exceeds the manufacturing capital in boston, too. but i think we shall never understand political economy until we get béranger or burns or some poet to teach it in songs. as ot so s i think that a man should compare advantageously with a river, with an oak, with a mountain, endless flow, expansion, and grit. 266 (age 48 journal authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1851 the vedas; pythagoras; sophocles, electra ; herodotus; socrates; aristophanes, the acbarnians; aristotle ; manilius ; tacitus; firdusi; saadi; ammar; chaucer, house of fame, book of the duchesse; copernicus ; luther; columbus, apud h. major; spenser; samuel daniel ; donne; kepler; richelieu; algernon sidney; thomas fuller, worthies of england; fénelon; robert hooke; newton; daniel neal, history of the puritans; buffon ; collins; heyne ; john adams, in life and works, by c.f.adams; patrick henry; jefferson; john jay; josiah quincy; haüy; samuel parr; mirabeau ; thomas erskine; burns ; schiller; richard porson; friedrich august wolf; laing, heimskringla; de staël; john dalton, new system of chemical philosophy ; cuvier; geoffroy saint-hilaire ; ruhnken; hug; van waagen; southey; campbell; béranger, les mirmidons; oehlenschläger ; john c. warren ; oken; · davy; hallam ; audubon; bettine von arnim; 1851) reading 267 webster, seventh of march speech; j. e. worcester; j. c. prichard, physical history of man; j. fenimore cooper; jared sparks; john g. palfrey ; horace mann; edward everett; sir john herschel; knox, races of men; carlyle, life of sterling; rufus choate ; alcott; macaulay; j. a. st. john, manners and customs of ancient greece; joseph paxton ; richard owen; bulwer, the caxtons ; john m. kemble, the saxons in england; paul lacroix; charles t. jackson ; robert rantoul; whit-. tier; tennyson, in memoriam; r. m. milnes; c. c. felton; margaret fuller ossoli; w. h. channing; theodore parker; henry james ; charles sumner; horace greeley; dickens; j. j. garth wilkinson ; bailey, festus; arthur helps, friends in council; william allingham, sleep; thoreau ; w. e. channing ; j. r. lowell; j. elliot cabot ; samuel eliot, history of liberty; charles eliot norton; edwin p. whipple. journal conduct of life course speech to st. george's society montreal kossuth visits concord delia bacon walks and talks with channing glimpses of thoreau washington's portrait winthrop at commencement writing on england webster's disappointment and death journal xliii 1852 (from journals do and go) [in january mr. emerson delivered in boston the course on the conduct of life, and one or more lectures in many new england towns. in february he lectured in new york city and state, and in march in maine and massachusetts.] (from do) at mihi succurrit pro ganymede manus.' martial. the best in us is our profound feeling of interest in the whole of nature. every man feels that everything is his cousin, that he has to do with all. blot out any part of nature, and he too would lose. the great words of the world such as analogy : — what a step mankind took when plato first spoke that word! analogy is identity of ratio, and what civilization, what i freely rendered, my own right hand my cup-bearer shall be. 272 journal [age 48 mounting from savage beginnings does it not require ! the primary and secondary senses, the several planes or platforms on which the same truth is repeated. so the word of ambition, the proud word of modern science is homology. « these we must join to wake, for these are of the strain that justice dare defend, and will the age sustain.” horatio greenough edwin p. whipple h. d. thoreau wm. mathews j. elliot cabot j. g. whittier j. peter lesley j. r. lowell c. k. newcomb theodore parker john weiss w. e. channing henry james j. whelpley t. w. higginson david w. wasson george f.and t.h. talbot, portland, maine. rev. w. d. moore, greensburg, pa. frank b. sanborn, hampton falls, n. h. george moore, andover.' reality. the question of life is evermore between (1) doing something well, — which is an immense satisfaction to doer and beholder ; 1 all these mr. emerson counted sure friends of freedom. ne 1852] reality. thoreau 273 and (2) self-possession, being real. private life is the place of honour. 'tis said, a man can't be aught in politics without some cordial support in his own district; nor can a man dupe others long, who has not duped himself first. i prefer'... a little integrity to any career. come back from california, or japan, or heaven, or the pit, and find me there where i was. that reality is the charm on which a good novel relies, as villette. the animus disposes the form, as of man or woman and of every particular man or woman. c. of henry thoreau. he who sees the horizon may securely say what he pleases of any tree or twig between him and it. the misfortune of scholars is that people are non-conductors. the day will come when no badge, uniform, or star will be worn, ... i find one state of mind does not remember or conceive of another state. thus i have writ1 the omitted portion is in “ illusions” (conduct of life, p. 323). 2 the rest of the paragraph is found in “greatness" (letters and social aims, p. 312). 274 journal (age 48 ten within a twelvemonth verses (“days”) which i do not remember the composition or correction of, and could not write the like today, and have only, for proof of their being mine, various external evidences, as the ms. in which i find them, and the circumstance that i have sent copies of them to friends, etc., etc. well, if they had been better, if it had been a noble poem, perhaps it would have only more entirely taken up the ladder into heaven. see on this poppy journal ho." which was the best age of philosophy? that in which there were yet no philosophers. eternity is very long; opportunity is a very little portion of it, but worth the whole of it. if god gave me my choice of the whole planet, or my little farm, i should certainly take my farm. [tom appleton said at the dinner the other day,] “canvasback ducks eat the wild celery, and the common black duck, if it eats the wild celery, is just as good — only, damn them, they won't eat it.” i the sentence referred to, written the next year, is this: “ poppy leaves are strewn when a generalization is made, for i can never remember the circumstances to which i owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put myself in the conditions.” 1852] our statesmen. theory 275 the english are not particularly desirous that foreign nations should be ably represented at their court: and are very willing to soothe mr. everett or mr. lawrence, in all the journals of the kingdom to any extent of compliment, if they can get the best end of the bargain from them when it comes to business. and if mr. gallatin or mr. adams were sent, the journals would, no doubt, be ready to mortify them with any amount of slight and snubbing, if it would disgust and drive such formidable attorneys home. jeremiah mason said to richard h. dana : “law school! a man must read law in the court house.” and mr. arnold took “hoar's treatise on the vine" into his garden, but could not find that kind of buds and eyes on his vines: and it is true that all the theory in the world is vain without the thumb of practice. what could coke or blackstone do against the bullies of the middlesex bar, as fand butler? no, you must have equal spunk and face them down, -ready-witted, ready-handed. [new bedford, march (?) 1852.] mr. arnold thinks very humbly of the general ability of merchants: they have narrow 276 (age 48 journal views. each thinks in the morning, “ i must make a hundred dollars to-day," and if he looks further, it is only to reckon how much that will make in a year. but he has no knowledge of the scope and issues of his own trade. he thinks the lawyers have much more extent of view, and, if he must confide public business to a class, would confide it to them. mr. arnold explained the advantages and independence of new bedford trade. the hamburg ship is sent from new york to new bedford to load with oil : it is cheaper to load here, and it is better done. the coopers understand it. the cooper hugs the oil cask as if he loved it, and handles it well. i like that new england, like greece, should owe its power to the genius of its people. there is no prosperity here, no trade, or art, or city, or great wealth of any kind, but, if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in the energy of some individual; and it seems as if the welfare of the country were the deed of some twenty or thirty ingenious and forcible persons. if a young man come home from college, and find his father coming in every day to dinner in 1852) real men. reading 277 his shirt-sleeves, from the field, — he is forced himself to adopt, at once, some lucrative employment. but if he finds his father at ease in the parlour, he will never go to work himself. five hundred pounds a year is a sure recipe to make a fainéant in england. when a personality reaches such a strength as that of peter the great, or bonaparte, or kossuth, it is a fair offset to the andes of conventionalism. european politics are too translatable into american. the transcript, daily advertiser, etc., take, on each question, the metternich view. in our massachusetts courts, too, the judge is on the side of the criminal. few know how to read. women read to find a hero whom they can love; men, for amusement; editors, for something to crib; authors, for something that supports their view : and hardly one reads comprehensively and wisely. the new dances, in which the dancers walk single-file up and down the room, put every one on his means, and are a severe test. that is, dancing is only learned to teach us to walk, 278 (age 48 journal as the roman soldier carried heavier loads in peace than in war. tin pan. i am made happy by a new thought. ... while this thought glitters newly before me, i think wall street nothing. i accurately record the thought, and think i have got it. after a few months, i come again to the record, and it seems a mere bit of glistening tin or tinsel, and no such world wisdom. in fact, the universe had glowed with its eternal blaze, and i had chipped off this scale, through which its light shone, thinking this the diamond, and put it in my jewel box, and now it is nothing but a dead scale. beauty. little things are often filled with great beauty. the cigar makes visible the respiration of the body, an universal fact, of which the ebb and flow of the sea-tide is only one example. “i hate the aristocracy,” said samuel rogers to judge duer. “ i hate them.” “what, you ! the friend of lord holland, and lord essex, and of so many nobles?” “yes, i hate them. i never enter one of their houses, but i am made to feel that they are the great lords, and i the low plebeian.” 1852] tissenet. public waste 279 [here follows the remarkable story of m. tissenet and the indians, when he saved his life adroitly by pretended magic with mirror, wig, alcohol, and burning-glass, — drawn from nouveaux voyages dans l'amérique septentrionale, by capitaine bossu; for which see “resources” (letters and social aims, pp. 145, 146). carlyle sent the book to emerson (correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 197 and 209).] april 13. in the united states senate, april 12, mr. dawson of georgia presented a petition from harris county, georgia, calling the attention of congress to the enormous expenditures of the government: and, as one step toward arresting the lavish expenditures, he was against granting any additional aid to the collins line of steamers, “if the object be to enter into a contest with great britain to display finery and gewgaws.” — telegraphic report. northman the gale that wrecked you on the sand, it helped my rowers to row ; the storm is my best galley-hand, and drives me where i go. 280 journal (age 48 gazetted terms. after all; kindred spirit; yes, to a certain extent; as a general thing; quite a number. “i do not wish this or that thing my fortune will procure, i wish the great fortune," said henry james, and said it in the noble sense. ense. a man is a battery whose circuit should be complete, like the ball of the earth, which is also a battery ; but, for the most part, the circuit is interrupted, and you see only the gear or rigging of a battery. the purist who refuses to vote, because the government does not content him in all points, should refuse to feed a starving beggar, lest he should feed his vices. “bend one cubit to straighten eight.” ellery says, “what a fine day is this! nothing about immortality here!” the illustrations in modern books mark the decline of art. 'tis the dram-drinking of the eye, and candy for food; as whales and horses and elephants, produced on the stage, show decline of drama. 1852) montreal and quebec 281 “il faut écrire,” said mallet du pan,“ avec un fer rouge pour exciter maintenant aucune sensation.” trea montreal, april 19. saw this morning the shove in the st. lawrence, and, as i stood on the quay, acres of ice floated swiftly by downstream, and, with the rest, a large piece of the road which i had traversed across the ice on saturday. a part of the road was making formidable plunges and revolutions as it was jammed against the shore ice. ve tre montreal, april 21. the south shore of the st. lawrence between montreal and quebec is cut up into seigneuries, a tract of land of say three leagues square, being granted to a seigneur, who is to cut roads, build mills, etc., and he divides the land into lots among the censitaires who pay an annual rent of two or three sous on the arpent, and whenever they sell their farm, the seigneur receives one twelfth (?) of the purchase money under the name of lodes et ventes; and whenever the seigneur sells his seigneurie, the crown receives one fifth of the price of the seigneurie, and these rights are perpetual. if the land has a new tenant every year, the seigneur has a new twelfth; 282 journal (age 48 and if the seigneurie is sold every year, the crown a new fifth. the seigneuries are of all sizes and values, from £75 to £ 2000 a year; and are divided and subdivided by inheritance. the seminary of saint sulpice here owns the whole island of montreal, or did own it until the act was passed called commutation, by which the seigneur is compelled to sell the fee of the land, if five per cent be paid for his seigneural rights. the richest seigneurie is that of beauharnois. the land is settled in townships to the north of montreal, back for one hundred and fifty miles, almost exclusively by french farmers, though there are two or three english settlements, as new glasgow, and is a good wheat country. they make this year, and at this very time, april 20, a good deal of maple sugar; the country eighty miles to the north, now lying under two or three feet of snow. the arms or emblem of canada is a maple leaf and a beaver. mr. baxter's answer, procured from an engineer, to thoreau's queries is as follows:36,800 english feet in a french arpent. in canada, i french pied = 1.06575 eng. feet. 1852) montreal address 283 in france, 1 french pied=13.11 inches eng. in canada, i licue = 3 miles english. in lachine, i saw pass sir george simpson, governor of the hudson bay company, who, i was told, is the only man who has gone round the world by land; an expression which must be used, of course, with some latitude, as the first step of it is to sail from liverpool to new york. e ro [mr. emerson's speech at the dinner of the st. george's society, montreal, april 23, 1852:] mr. president, -i am flattered by the invitation to respond to the sentiment of the chair, though i am quite uncertain of being able to show this company how cordially i do it. but you are to know that we americans feel our relation to england to be so strict, — we have kept our pedigree so pure, — that we praise very willingly england, as a son praises his mother. i hope you will not recall m. talleyrand's speech to the youth who vaunted his mother's beauty, “ mais donc, c'était m. votre père qui n'était pas si bien." so i hope you will not be provoked to criticise the american element in us, that differences us from the english. 284 journal (age 48 i have taken up so much of the time of my friends in montreal that i must cut short what i have to say. but it strikes me that england owes her splendid career to the rare coincidence of a good race and good place. it was a lucky fit. we say in a yacht-race, that, if the boats are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man that wins. put the best sailing master into either boat, and he will win. england is like a ship anchored in the sea, at the side of europe and right in the heart of the modern world. as soon as this ship got a hardy crew into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and factors of the globe. it was like a man living in a lighthouse, — his boys learn to swim like fishes and their playthings are boats, and, as in sailing round the world (when there was “no peace beyond the line"), there were plenty of hard knocks going, they were good at that game too. so these stout fellows went up and down the world, and were more abroad than they were at home, and took early lessons in the game of annexation, until they have got a good part of the world in their hands. well, the more they went abroad, the more they found to do at home, for, having, as shopmen say, the very best business stand in the we nen vere sur 1852] montreal address 285 whole planet, they were sure of a sale of all the goods they can possibly manufacture. with this prosperity, the virtues of the race shone out. 'tis said, there are not as great individuals now as then on earth. some countries only furnish officers; and others, men; old persia, men, and sparta, officers. france, england, america furnish officers and engineers to russia and turkey. but england has good rank and file, and there is not a county or a town in england but has yielded its contingent of worthy men, in old or in new times, to the country and the race. the first name for intellect in the human race is shakspeare; the first for capacity in exact science is newton; and where, out of his country, has milton his superior in epic or in lyric song? what lawgiver in learning or reason has excelled bacon? these four; yet this is the country of chaucer, spenser, hooker, taylor, dryden, and locke, and the race is not yet extinct: witness scott, byron, coleridge, wordsworth. these heroes of peace have been flanked by the heroes of action, by the drakes, blakes, cavendishes, cooks, marlboroughs, nelsons, wellingtons. and, one would say, the island has so long been the abode of a civil and free race that the very dust is the s su 286 journal (age 48 remains of good and brave men, and the air retains the virtue their souls have shed into it, and they who inhale it feel its quality. but i do not say these things to feed your pride and mine, but because we are to hear the appeal of the ancestors to the children. we must feel as the romans who put the statues of their fathers in the atrium, that every time the man entered his door, he might pass through the line of his forefathers. “ we must be free or die, who speak the tongue that shakspeare spake; the faith and manners hold which milton held; in everything, we are sprung from earth's first blood, have titles manifold.” i must not omit to record the pleasure which a circumstance gave me at the st. george's festival in montreal. the english there complimented each other by saying that they hoped it would be found that, whenever they met an englishman, they found one who would speak the truth, and we cannot think this festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on april 23 (the birth and death day of shakspeare also), whereever two or three englishmen are found, they meet to encourage each other in the nationality of speaking the truth. 1852 montreal. old poets 287 it is noticeable in montreal that all the churches have a national attraction, as well as religious, for their votaries. st. andrew's is the scottish kirk; st. patrick's is the irish catholic; st. david's, the welsh; st. george's the english; the bostonians go to the unitarian. i found, on the 22d april, ten feet of old snow on each side of the carriage in riding out to judge day's, three miles from montreal. mr. mcdonald made me laugh with his account of lectures in montreal. he said, if there were only two fellows left in montreal, one would deliver a lecture and the other would hear co it. “ souffrir de tout le monde et ne faire souffrir personne," was the inscription over a door in the sæurs grises. there is wonderful prodigality about the english genius in the sixteenth century. their poets had marvellous stores to draw from, by simple force of mind equalizing themselves with the science of ours. there was a posset or drink called october, and they in like manner knew how to distil a whole september with harvests and astronomy into their verses,' ... i the rest of the paragraph thus beginning is in english traits (p. 237). 288 (ace 48 journal mr. downer at dorchester said to me that they found that, among those who came out of the city and built or bought country-seats, those who got snug homes remained, those who got bleak ones (fine view, etc.) did not stay long, but sold out; a fact worth inserting in the “ economy” lecture. i [louis kossuth, the hungarian patriot and exile, then striving to interest the people of the united states in his country's behalf, visited concord on may 11 and met with a cordial reception. he made an eloquent address in the town hall. hon. john s. keyes presided on this occasion, and mr. emerson made the address of welcome which is printed in the miscellanies.] wednesday, may 19. i saw miss delia bacon, at cambridge, at the house of mrs. becker, and conversed with her on the subject of shakspeare.' miss bacon i miss delia s. bacon, an american lady of great intelligence and nobility of character, who became utterly absorbed in the works attributed to shakespeare, but which she believed from her profound studies of the plays, and of bacon's writings, were surely mainly the work of the latter and some of his friends. she cared less about the establishing the authorship (the secret of which she was sure would be found in shake1852] miss bacon. classics 289 thinks that a key will yet be found to shakspeare's interior sense; that some key to his secret may yet be discovered at stratford, and i fancy, thinks the famous epitaph,“good friend, for jesus' sake forbear,” protects some explanation of it. her skepticism in regard to the authorship goes beyond the skepticism of wolf in regard to homer, or niebuhr to latin history. the multitude of translations from the latin and greek classics, that have been lately published, have made great havoc with the old study of those languages. at cambridge, every student is provided with a bohn's translation of his speare's coffin) than that the world should, through her explanations and promptings, learn the true science of all things which the plays were written to unfold. mr. emerson, carlyle, and especially hawthorne, our consul in england, while miss bacon was working herself to death there, though none of them accepted her belief, held this lonely and devoted apostle in high respect, and gave her all the help and furtherance they could. she literally gave her reason and life to her work, which she pursued in great poverty and absolute isolation in england for three or four years. (see various mentions of miss bacon in the carlyle-emerson correspondence, and in hawthorne's english note-books; also the interesting and tragic story of her life, delia bacon, by leonard bacon, houghton mifflin & co. 1888.) 290 journal (age 48 yan author, and much the same effect is produced as when lexicons were first introduced. the only remedy would be a rage for prosody, which would enforce attention to the words themselves of the latin or greek verse. i saw judd' in augusta, in february, and asked him who his companions were? he said, “sunsets.” i told him, i thought they needed men. he said, “he was a priest, and conversed with the sick and dying." i told him, yes, very well, if people were sick and died to any purpose; but, as far as i had observed, they were quite as frivolous as the rest, and that a man peremptorily needed now and then a reasonable word or two. to what base uses we put this ineffable intellect! to reading all day murders and railroad accidents, to choosing patterns for waistcoats and i scarfs. a man is a torpedo to a man. i see him with wonder; he looks open and radiant, a god in the world; he understands astronomy, love, and i rev. sylvester judd, the author of margaret, a tale of the real and ideal. sess 1852] fate of the man-child 291 heroism. but i touch him, and am frozen by him. wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother. beware of a pair of eyes! what a puzzle! he is little enough, and nobody; as he comes down the hill, the sun shining in his eyes, the east wind blowing, he is only sensible, like an ox, of petty inconveniences. but he takes a book, or hears a fact or sentiment, he dilates; he knows nature, and the unspoken, unpenetrated universe. in this exaltation all bars sink, he is open as the element, one man is suddenly tantamount to the race. these powers, so great, yet so haphazard discovered, how easily he might have missed them! well, now he has them, and the magnificent dreams begin. all history, nay, all fable, alexander, haroun alraschid, hari himself, could do no more than this unaided person will. we hear and believe. but, from month to month, from year to year, he delays, and does not. he has passed out of the exaltation, and his hands are not equal to his thought, nor are the hands of his mind equal to the eyes of his mind. this tremendous limitation, this fate, whereby that which seems so facile, and, of course, only gets done by here and there a special hero, to do one specialty of it, once in five hundred years; another to do another spe2 em 292 journal [age 49 cialty in another five hundred years; and so it takes two thousand years for the dream of one hour to be fulfilled. observe, that the whole history of the intellect is expansions and concentrations.' . .. but all this old song i have trolled a hundred times already, in better ways, only, last night, henry thoreau insisted much on“ expansions,” and it sounded new. but of the congelation i was to add one word, that, by experience, having learned that this old inertia, or quality of oak and granite, inheres in us, and punishes, as it were, any fit of geniality, we learn with surprise that our fellow man, or one of our fellow men or fellow women, is a doctor or enchanter, who snaps the staunch iron hoops that bind us, thaws the fatal frost, and sets all the particles dancing each round each. he must be inestimable to us to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves. june 1. the belief of some of our friends in their duration suggests one of those musty householders who keep every broomstick and old grate, put in a box every old tooth that falls out of 1 see natural history of intellect (p. 58). 1852] contrast in friends 293 their heads, preserve the ancient frippery of their juvenile wardrobe, and they think god saves all the old souls which he has used up. what does he save them for? smith, in the divine drama, rightly sees the unconventionality of the supreme actor. and i find in my platoon contrasted figures; as, my brothers, and everett, and caroline,' and margaret, and elizabeth, and jones very, and sam ward, and henry thoreau, and alcott, and channing. needs all these and many more to represent my relations." besides, what we ask daily is to be conveni caroline sturgis, later mrs. william tappan, of lenox. 2 in this connection it may be mentioned that, during the summer, hawthorne, returning from three years' sojourn in lenox, came to concord with his wife and three children and bought the “wayside” on the lexington road for his home, although his appointment in the next summer to the united states consulship at liverpool took him away from concord for seven years, the last three spent on the continent. his shyness and mr. emerson's preoccupation prevented their frequent meetings, though each was glad of the other's neighborhood. at about this time mr. emerson added to his small farm four acres for pasture and tillage on the south side of the mill brook which ran behind his garden. 294 journal (age 49 tional: . . . saadi and æsop and cervantes and ben jonson had, i doubt not, the tinker element and tinker experience which miss bacon wishes to ward off from shakspeare, but which he must also have, as well as the courtly, which she wishes to claim for him, yet a great poet must be of the middle classes. see what is said in eckermann, vol. i, p. 210. napoleon was intellectual; valued things as they were, and not after fear or favour. how few men wish to know how the thing really stands, what is the law of it, without reference to any persons ! henry thoreau's idea of the men he meets is, that they are his old thoughts walking. it is all affectation to make much of them, as if he did not long since know them thoroughly. (from go) prisca juvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum gratulor.! ovid. “sit nulla fides augentibus omnia musis.”? june 7. we had a good walk, channing and i, along i old things may give others joy, but happy am i that i was not born till now. 2 believe not that the muses will aid in all things. 1852] a walk. children 295 the bank of the north branch to the swamp, and to the “ harrington estate.” channing's young dog scampered and dived and swam at such a prodigal rate that one could not help grudging the youth of the universe (the animals) their heaven. they must think us poor pedants in petticoats, as poet cowper is painted in the westall editions. how much more the dog knows of nature than his master, though his master were an indian. the dog tastes, snuffs, rubs, feels, tries, everything, everywhere, through miles of bush, brush,grass, water, mud, lilies, mountain, and sky. at present, however, at night, i am haunted by the lines — “the stars are in the quiet sky,” etc.; which i first heard sung under the mimick stars of the mammoth cave, in kentucky. but there is a charm in the line for my ear and fancy, and i must inquire for the song. in our walk we came to ellery's garden of lupines, — a quarter of an acre covered over with a wild bed of lupines, which, when the sun shone, looked like saloons of beauties in mousseline de laines. nature's best feat is enamouring the man of сте с 296 (age 49 journal these children, like kissing the knife that is to cut his throat, they sucking, fretting, mortifying, ruining him, and upsetting him at last, because they want his chair, and he, dear old donkey, well pleased to the end. there is such an obvious accumulation of dexterity in the use of tools in the old scholar and thinker that it is not to be believed nature will be such a spendthrift as to sponge all this out, like figures from a slate. ellery replies, that there is a great deal of self-importance, and that the good oriental who cuts such a figure was bit by this aly. yes; but the key to the world is to transfer all those conceits to the gases of chemistry, and, though they have no value from the point of view of the individual, they have value as brute fact. men achieve a certain greatness, to their own surprise, whilst they were striving to achieve quite another conventional one. ere ve metonomy. poetry seems to begin in the slightest change of name, or, detecting identity under variety of surface. boys please themselves with crying to the coachman, “put on the string,” instead of lash. with calling a fireengine a tub; and the engine men tigers. a 1852] walk to conantum 297 boy's game of ball is called four old cats. poetry calls a snake a worm. in a shipwreck, the sea novel finds “cordilleras of water.” i can never lose the ludicrous effect of using the word tin for money. june 13. yesterday a walk with ellery to thc lincoln mill brook, to nine-acre corner, and conantum. it was the first right day of summer. air, cloud, river, meadow, upland, mountain, all were in their best. we took a swim at the outlet of the little brook at baker farm. ellery is grown an accomplished professor of the art of walking, and leads like an indian. he likes the comic surprise of his botanic information which is so suddenly enlarged. since he knew thoreau, he carries a little pocket book, in which he affects to write down the name of each new plant or the first day on which he finds the flower. he admires viburnum and cornel, and despises door-yards with foreign shrubs. mr. lee's farm at nine-acre corner, he thinks the best situated house in concord; — southern exposure, land rising behind close to the river, which lies in front, crossed by the bridge, and with wide outlook to the south and southwest. the view of the river from the top of the 298 journal age 49 ce anhill (mine hill) we found lovely, and had much to think of mr. gilpin' all the afternoon. the river just filled its banks to the brim, a rare sight. another fine picture from the top of conantum, where a view of concord village has newly been opened by cutting away the wood last winter. the red sorrel gives the rich hue to the pastures. at conantum, we visited the “ arboretum,” where we found sassafras, bass, cornel, viburnum, ash, oak, slippery elm in close vicinity. ellery has much to say of the abundance and perfection of lemon-yellow in nature which he finds in potentilla, ranunculus, cistus, yellow star of bethlehem, etc., and which chemistry cannot well produce. m. bouvières (i believe it is) spent his life in producing a good yellow pigment. miss b, a mantuamaker in concord, became a “ medium," and gave up her old trade for this new one; and is to charge a pistareen a spasm, and nine dollars for a fit. this is the rat-revelation, the gospel that comes by taps in the wall, and thumps in the table-drawer. 1 william gilpin, born 1724, author of works on english forest scenery, picturesque tours, and gardens. 1852) new hampshire 299 the spirits make themselves of no reputation. they are rats and mice of society. and one of the demure disciples of the rat-tat-too, the other day, remarked that “this, like every other communication from the spiritual world, began very low.” what is the reason of the extremely bad character of new hampshire politics ? “we ha'n't any honesty,” said jeremiah mason, speaking of his compatriots of new hampshire, to samuel hoar. mr. hoar thinks that the whole school of new hampshire public men, such as levi woodbury, differ toto cælo from such men as judge parsons, and his class, in massachusetts. he that commits a crime defeats the object of his existence. trifles, manners. 'tis a narrow line that divides an awkward act from the finish of gracefulness. every man eats well alone. let a stranger come in, and he misses his mouth, spills his butter boat, and fails of finding the joint in carving, and that by so little. “gold teaspoons constrain us, if we are used to silver." 300 journal' (age 49 july 6. the head of washington hangs in my diningroom for a few days past, and i cannot keep my eyes off of it. it has a certain appalachian strength, as if it were truly the first fruits of america, and expressed the country. the heavy, leaden eyes turn on you, as the eyes of an ox in a pasture. and the mouth has a gravity and depth of quiet, as if this man had absorbed all the serenity of america, and left none for his restless, rickety, hysterical countrymen. noble, aristocratic head, with all kinds of elevation in it, that come out by turns. such majestical ironies, as he hears the day's politics, at table. we imagine him hearing the letter of general cass, the letter of general scott, the letter of mr. pierce, the effronteries of mr. webster recited. this man listens like a god to these low conspirators. henry thoreau rightly said, the other evening, talking of lightning-rods, that the only rod of safety was in the vertebræ of his own spine.' euripides, æschylus, are again the wellknown pair of beauty and strength, which we i mr. emerson used this speech of thoreau in “ worship" and in “ aristocracy.' es1852] webster's defeat 301 had in raphael and angelo, in shakspeare and milton. what æschylus will translate our heaven-tempting politics into a warning ode, strophe and antistrophe? a slave, son of a member of congress, flees from the plantation-whip to boston, is snatched by the marshal, is rescued by the citizens; an excited population ; a strong chain is stretched round the court house. webster telegraphs from washington urgent orders to prosecute rigorously. whig orators and interests intervene. whig wisdom of waiting to be last devoured. slave is caught, tried, marched at midnight under guard of marshals and pikeand sword bearing police to long wharf and embarked for baltimore. “thank-god-choate" thanks god five times in one speech; boston thanks god. presidential election comes on, webster triumphant, boston sends a thousand rich men to baltimore: convention meets; webster cannot get one vote from baltimore to the gulf, not one. the competitor is chosen. the washington wine sour, dinners disturbed. the mob at washington turns out, at night, to exult in scott's election. goes to webster's house and raises an outcry for webster to come out and address them. he resists; the mob is violent, — will not be refused. he is obliged to 302 journal (age 49 come in his night shirt, and speak from his window to the riff-raff of washington in honor of the election of scott. pleasant conversation of the boston delegation on their return home! the cars unusually swift. webster (earlier in bowdoin square) exhorts the citizens to conquer their prejudices, to put down agitation; it is treason to feed or defend this young mulatto, — son of his friend, the member of congress, and who has escaped to boston, from his pursuers. i think the piece should open by an eulogy of webster by an ardent youth, first scholar at cambridge, reciting the sentences he chiefly admires from his speeches at plymouth, at new hampshire festival, at congress, and faneuil hall. are not sure about those english. we concede great power and culture to them, but it is in groups and classes. what extraordinary individuals, saw you, sir? those whom you see here are surely very trifling persons, with foolishsounding voices. who was this mighty man, unrivalable by americans, whom you saw? was it milnes? no. macaulay? no. disraeli? no. wilson? no. wordsworth, carlyle, tennyson! but they are as exceptional and admired there 1852) man's need of man 303 as here. and carlyle acknowledged, or rather affirmed loudly, the mediocrity of his circle. and i was struck with poverty and limitation of their men. on a man avails much to us, like a point of departure to the seaman, or his stake and stones to the surveyor. i am my own man more than most men, yet the loss of a few persons would be most impoverishing; — a few persons who give flesh to what were, else, mere thoughts, and which now i am not at liberty to slight, or in any manner treat as fictions. it were too much to say that the platonic world i might have learned to treat as cloud-land, had i not known alcott, who is a native of that country, yet i will say that he makes it as solid as massachusetts to me; and thoreau gives me, in flesh and blood and pertinacious saxon belief, my own ethics. he is far more real, and daily practically obeying them, than i; and fortifies my memory at all times with an affirmative experience which refuses to be set aside. i live a good while and acquire as much skill in literature as an old carpenter does in wood. it occurs, then, what pity! that now, when you know something, have at least learned eau 304 journal (age 49 so much good omission, your organs should fail you; your eyes, health, fire, and zeal of work, should decay daily. then i remember that it is the mind of the world which is the good carpenter, the good scholar, sailor, or blacksmith, thousand-handed, versatile, all-applicable, in all these indifferent channels entering with wild vigor, excited by novelty in that untried channel confined by dikes of pedantry. [it is this which] works out the proper results of that to the end, and surprises all with perfect consent, alter et idem, to every other excellence; lexicography or aristotelian logic being found consentaneous with music, with astronomy, with roses, with love. in you, this rich soul has peeped, despite your horny, muddy eyes, at books and poetry. well, it took you up, and showed you something to the purpose; that there was something there. look, look, old mole! there, straight up before you, is the magnificent sun. if only for the instant, you see it. well, in this way it educates the youth of the universe; in this way warms, suns, refines every particle; then it drops the little channel or canal, through which the life rolled beatific, like a fossil to the ground, thus touched and educated, by a moment of sunshine, to be the fairer material for 1852] divine laws. woman 305 future channels and canals, through which the old glory shall dart again, in new directions, until the universe shall have been shot through and through, tilled with light . . . self-disparagement ... is a human trick, but there remain unbroken by our defects the old laws, upspringing like the arch of the sky, or like sunlight, which all the wind in the universe cannot blow away; high, old laws, round, unremoveable; self-executing; it is noble, it is poetic, and makes poets, only to have seen them, to have computed their curve. dwarves may see the rainbow, as well as giants. tours de force. i have been told by women that whatever work they perform by dint of resolution, and without spontaneous flow of spirits, they invariably expiate by a fit of sickness (brute force of duty). everybody knows people who appear bedridden,' ... lovejoy, the preacher, came to concord, and hoped henry thoreau would go to hear him. “i have got a sermon on purpose for him.” . 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ beauty” (conduct of life, p. 288). 306 (age 49 journal “no," the aunts said, “we are afraid not.” then he wished to be introduced to him at the house. so he was confronted. then he put his hand from behind on henry, tapping his back, and said, “here's the chap who camped in the woods.” henry looked round, and said, “and here's the chap who camps in a pulpit.” lovejoy looked disconcerted, and said no more cole margaret swan.” “the thoughts that rushed upon me were unutterable: they seemed like the sound – i say sound of a cataract of light. ask me not what they were; i should perish in trying to give language to them,” said this new pythoness. “ thoughts that fill my mind are like consuming flames, and i am obliged to interpose a strong human will between myself and them, to sheathe my mind, as it were, against them, and admit them slowly, little by little.” “words,” she added, “are the embroidered curtain which then veils for me the holy of holies. . . . after the burning thoughts not to be uttered” (again an awe-struck look), “my mind seems a shower of words in all languages : they sail through it like little boats of light.” 1 a clairvoyant, of medford, said these things to miss osgood. man rc 1852] thoreau. winthrop 307 the two newmans in england are distinguished, one as papist, and one, extreme liberalist. the two junior quincys in boston are, one, hunker, and the other, abolitionist. these cases remind me of two brothers, one of whom, being a gardener, and suffering every year from the bugs, the other resolved to be entomologist, so that, the worse the case was for the garden, the better might his museum thrive. july 18. henry thoreau makes himself characteristically the admirer of the common weeds which have been hoed at by a million farmers all spring and summer and yet have prevailed, and just now come out triumphant over all lands, lanes, pastures, fields, and gardens, such is their pluck and vigor. we have insulted them with low names, too, pig-weed, smart-weed, red-root, lousewort, chickweed. he says that they have fine names, — amaranth, ambrosia. mr. winthrop is a strong example of the insufficiency of any and all outward advantages to resist public opinion in this country. he has good birth, rare as a gem with us, and his face still presents a striking resemblance to the pic308 (age 49 journal ture of his ancestor, the first governor of massachusetts, in the historical society's chambers. his name has been well marked by public esteem, by some scientific and other reputation, by wealth and fashion, ever since the pilgrim era. he has himself had the best education and the best introduction to public life. of blameless morals, elegant tastes, popular manners, he came early into distinction, the popular representative of boston in congress. he has enjoyed the rare honour, for a northern man, of being elected speaker of the house. he has added the complimentary distinction of being himself the head of one section of the whig party in this state, — not merely the permanent inferiority of mr. choate's position. one would say, if ability and position availed, mr. winthrop, of all men, would be justified in a manly independence. but such saying betrays a beautiful ignorance of the habits and exigencies of our happy land. the handsome oration pronounced to the alumni of the college, on thursday, will dissipate to the discerning this romancing. mr. winthrop introduced his discourse with much ease and beauty, and the audience had a moment's leave to indulge the hope that states1852] winthrop's oration 309 men and senators were as glad as others to throw off the harness and treat themselves to a pure dipping or two in the castalian pools. but if audiences forget themselves, statesmen do not. we were presently offered the old, well-known paragraph about religion, in which mr. webster, mr. choate, and other eminent moralists have so successfully employed their histrionic eloquence. boston immediately took outits handkerchief to the accustomed tenderness. the power of the written and spoken letter and the immense advantage the orator enjoys in the reporting and publication over empires were well stated: then the power of private as the source of public opinion was seriously indicated. here, it may be said, mr. winthrop not said, but allowed to transpire, the only serious thing in his oration to this effect, i am, as you see, a man virtuously inclined, and only corrupted by my profession of politics.' ... having made this manifesto, mr. winthrop proceeded with his work much in the tone and i for the rest of this long paragraph, see “ the fugitive slave law,” delivered in new york, march 7, 1854 (miscellanies, pp. 242, 243). ma 310 journal [ace 49 spirit with which lord bacon prosecuted his benefactor, the earl of essex. the whole of the discourse was therefore a profusion of bows to boston, to the supposed boston, though now and then a slight mistake we noticed in the guess of the orator as to what the true boston believed. of course not one clear statement of opinion, but every statement qualified with a considered recommendation to mercy, death, with recommendation to mercy. kossuth was praised because he was eloquent, and blamed because he was eloquent, and blamed because he meant sincerely. ... the newspapers were roasted for their sectionalism and slander, and applauded for their patriotism and power. mr. clay was safely praised; all literary men, if we rightly understood, were soundly whipped as very naughty ; mr. webster properly praised, and mr. everett. “the purified soul will fear nothing,” said plotinus. saadi says, the trees were in blossom when he begun his gulistan; before the fruit was ripe on them, he had ended. whiggery has found for itself a new formula 1852] whig view. souls 311 in boston, this, namely, that, when we go to drive, the breeching is as indispensable as the traces. its claim is that it blocks the wheels; that the democratic party goes with a rush for cuban invasion, mexico, canada, and all: that the whig party resists these; assuming, however, that the total population is bad, and means badly. ... but all this despair comes of incapacity; their eyes being only on money, they do not conceive hope or faith. they are the shop-till party. souls with a certain quantity of light are in excess, and irrevocably belong to the moral class, what animal force they may retain, to the contrary, notwithstanding. souls with less light, it is chemically impossible that they be moral, — what talent or good they have, to the contrary, notwithstanding; and these belong to the world of fate, or animal good: the youth of the universe; not yet twenty-one; not yet voter; not yet robed in the toga virilis. nor is it permitted to any soul, of the free or of the apprentice class, that is, to the free, or to the fated, to cast a vote for the other. the world wants so much alum, and so much saccharine; so much iron, and so much hemp; so 312 journal (age 49 much paper, and so much mahogany: nor could any rebellion or arbitrament be suffered in its atoms, without chaos: if a particle of lead were to prefer to mask its properties, and exert the energies of cork or of vitriol; if coal should undertake to be a lemon; or feathers, turpentine; we should have a pretty ruin, to be sure. but the laws use azote, oxygen, carbon, lime, magnesia, and so forth, as their means; and these very excesses and defects in you, these determinations to the moral or the animal, are the very means by which high nature works, and cannot afford to want. be her footmen, her fates, her couriers, muses, and angels. men a statesmen are the superficiality of surface. for, if slavery is a good, then is lying, theft, arson, incest, homicide, each and all goods, and to be maintained by union societies. why did all manly gifts in webster fail ? he wrote on nature's grandest brow, for sale. august 1. nobody knows what he shall see by going to a brookside or to a ball. at the saw-millbrook he might see to-day, as i saw, a profusion of handsome flowers, among which the or1852] burns. true eloquence 313 chis fimbriata, the stately stemmed eupatorium and the perfoliate, the noli me tangere, the mimulus, the thalictrum, the lobelia cardinalis, the lysimachia, and some of the mints are conspicuous. the oldest naturalist sees something new in every walk. it is the praise of burns that he made a language classical. eloquence. who could convince x' of any truth which he does not see (and what truth does he see?) must be a master of his art. and eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the persons to whom you speak. is this a vulgar power ? declamation is common; but such possession of thought as is here required, such practical chemistry as the conversion of a truth written in god's language, into a truth in x's language, is one of the most beautiful and cogent weapons ever forged in the shop of the divine artificer. the charm of the conversation of the old man (who is odin disguised), who talks with king olaf in his bed, is well described. — thorpe, vol. i, p. 160. 1 a unitarian clergyman. 314 journal (age 49 how delicate, difficult, unattainable the golden mean which nature yet knows how to attain of temperament and culture in a young girl's carriage and manners. here are girls beautiful without beauty, and ugly with it. ... birth has much to do with it and condition much, and society very much ; and wealth, and beauty, and tradition, and connection, are all elements; but no rules can be given, and the hazards are so great that the status and métier of a young girl, from fourteen to twenty-five, are beforehand pathetically perilous.' ... on her theory of the authorship of the “plays,” my correspondent, miss bacon, says, and says excellently well, “you see yourself how much this idea of the authorship controls our appreciation of the works themselves; and what new worlds such an authorship would enable us to see in them.”, “what, in such a tide of time as that, could i the omitted sentences are found in “ behaviour" (conduct of life, p. 197). 2 compare, in “ quotation and originality," the passage beginning, “the bold theory of delia bacon that shakspeare's plays were written by a society of wits," etc. (letters and social aims, pp. 197, 198.) 1852) delia bacon's belief 315 bacon do? he had made one attempt to be noble to himself, and the consequence was, that, without gaining anything for himself or others, he had brought, for a time, into mortal peril the life hopes so infinitely sweet to him. and thenceforth he took to himself other weapons than truth and eloquence: uncompromising submission, indefatigable perseverance, patience that knew no limit, sycophancy, or rather, a secret mockery of it, smiling to itself, sacrifices of all kinds, were henceforth the instruments of this lifelong warfare. ... “in all this there was a perpetual mental reservation, and according to my theory, by means of his 'ingenious instrument,' a solemn protest also perpetually set down by shining ariels on margins that will yet give out their colours. through all this, there was something that still sat within, in purple, crowned, unbending, that never stooped or wavered, smiling to see its high charms work.'” good neighborbood. neighborhood is of great importance, and you buy much with given prices that is not rightly rendered in the bill. you pay nominally for one thing. you buy really something worth incomparably more. 316 (age 49 journal also, every man who plants an estate must buy good tenants, as well as good land; buy a tutor, or other respectability, to dine with; buy companions for his children, and avoid misfits. i waked at night, and bemoaned myself, because i had not thrown myself into this deplorable question of slavery, which seems to want nothing so much as a few assured voices. but then, in hours of sanity, i recover myself, and say, “god must govern his own world, and knows his way out of this pit, without my desertion of my post, which has none to guard it but me. i have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts, far back in the brain of man, — far retired in the heaven of invention, and which, important to the republic of man, have no watchman, or lover, or defender, but i.” in july, mr. alcott went to connecticut to his native town of wolcott; found his father's farm in possession of a stranger; found many of his cousins still poor farmers in the town ; the town itself unchanged since his childhood, whilst all the country round has been changed by manufactures and railroads: wolcott, which 1852] alcott's old home 317 is a mountain, remains as it was, or with a still less population (ten thousand dollars, he said, would buy the whole town, and all the men in it) and now tributary entirely to the neighboring town of waterbury, which is a thriving factory village. alcott went about and invited all the people, his relatives and friends, to meet him at five o'clock at the school-house, where he had once learned, on sunday evening. thither they all came, and he sat at the desk, and gave them the story of his life. some of the audience went away discontented, because they had not heard a sermon, as they hoped. i read england as it is, by johnston, with interest. it is acute, learned, informed. what is said of england, -every particular,—we americans read with a secret interest, even when americans are expressly and, it may seem, on good grounds, affronted and disparaged; for we know that we are the heir, that not he who is meant to be praised is the englishman; but we, we are the englishman, by gravitation, by destiny, and laws of the universe. the good he praises is devolving to us, and our keen sympathy in every trait he draws is the best certificate that we are the lawful son:ts 318 [age 49 journal “ percy is but the factor, good my lord.” yet, i think, the final lesson taught by the book is, that, outside of all the plausibilities collected by the writer and wordsworth and coleridge and burke and the total aristippism of the world in behalf of the church and state of england, we must rally to the stoical banner, to the geometric, astronomic morals. august 18. horatio greenough,' lately returned from italy, came here and spent the day, an extraordinary man, a man of sense, of virtue, and of rare elevation of thought and carriage. one thought of heroes, — of alfieri, of michael angelo, of leonardo da vinci. how old ? “ fortyseven years of joy i have lived ” was his answer. he makes many of my accustomed stars pale by his clear light. his magnanimity, his idea of a great man, his courage, and cheer, and self-reliance, and depth, and self-derived knowledge, charmed and invigorated me, as none has, who has gone by, these many months. i told him i would fife in his regiment. the grandest of democrats. his democracy is very deep, and i the following is a composite from two accounts of this visit, written by mr. emerson. 1852) horatio greenough 319 for the most part free from crotchets, — not quite, — and philosophical. hefinds everybody believer in two gods, believer in the devil: he is not. again, everything is generative, and everything connected. if you take chastity apart, and make chastity a virtue, you create that sink of obscenity, a monk. the old ages, seeing that circumstances pinched them, and they got no divine man, tried to lift up one of their number out of the press, and so gain a right man. but it turned out that the new development really obtained was abnormal ; they got a bloated belly. then they tried to take twenty or fifty out, and, see if they could do better so. but no, instead of one huge kingly paunch, they got twenty or fifty with a round belly. the whole theory has been out of a prostrate humanity, as out of a bank and magazine to draw the materials for culture to a class. all a lie, and had the effect of a lie. take religion out, and make religion separate. still a lie and ruin. t is all experimenting on nature. whenever there is a wrong, the response is pain. the rowdy eyes that glare on you from the mob say plainly that they feel that you are doing them to death; you, you, have got the me natur 320 journal [age 49 chain somewhere round their limbs, and, though they know not how,— war, internecine war, to the knife, is between us and you. your six per cent is as deadly a weapon as the old knife and tomahawk. in the old egyptian, and in the middle age architecture, he sees only “cost to the constituency,” prodigious toil of prostrate humanity. in the greek alone, beauty. his idea of beauty is, (1) the true prophet of function, and, just as far as function is preparing, beauty will appear; then, (2) in action, the preserved function, the whole is resolved, into (3) character, the record of function. but everything of beauty for beauty's sake is embellishment, non-functional embellishment: that is false, childless, and moribund. he complains of england, that it never did or can look at art otherwise than as a commodity it can buy. of england, he thinks ill, its tactics is to live au jour à la journée,perpetual makeshifts. sa (from do) august. our four powerful men in the virtuous class in this country are horace greeley, theodore 1852] english religion 321 parker, henry ward beecher, and horace mann. we have our three of four horatii, horace greeley, horace mann, horace bushnell, horatio greenough. the english nation never flowered into their own religion, but borrowed this hebraism. they don't know where he got it, but [the] king set it finely into them and they are as happy as [sentence unfinished]. english transitional; greek, oriental, full of fate. i find that the americans have no passions, they have appetites. poetry is the only verity. wordsworth said of his ode it was poetry, but he did not know it was the only truth. poet sees the stars, because he makes them. perception makes. we can only see what we make, all our desires are procreant. perception has a destiny. i notice that all poetry comes, or all becomes poetry, when we look from within and are using all as if the mind made it. 0 c it is cheap and easy to destroy. there is not a joyful boy or an innocent girl, buoyant with 322 (age 49 journal fine purposes of duty, in all this street of rosy faces, but a cynic can dull and dishearten.'... (from go) in sir philip sidney's time, it was held as great a disgrace for a young gentleman to be seen riding in the streets in a coach as it would now to be seen in a petticoat.— aubrey, iii, 554. modern criticism is plainly coming to look on literature and arts as parts of history, that is, as growths. but hume looked steadily at the chronicle of the reigning family, and called it the history of england: did not look at the british mythology, poetry, philosophy; did not see what was agreeable to the british mind, and what was disgusting to it. but now calico has come to be an element of english history, calico; when the elder peel spoke in parliament they considered, this man employs 15,000 men, and pays £40,000 to the excise, on printed goods. the life of peel contains very appropriately, in the first pages, a picture of the spinning-jenny, as a life of a plantagenet would a battleaxe, or downing's, a loaded pear tree. i the whole passage is printed in “success” (society and solitude, pp. 310, 311). 1852) pedantry. courtesy 323 in peel's life the trait is dulness, and the result is that england resolves itself best nowadays into a dull man. good man, rich man, creditable speaker, well educated, — all these indispensable, but no genius. i believe, a double-first at oxford ? “ aliens in language, religion, and blood," was lord lyndhurst's unfortunate phrase concerning the irish, which made the strength of the repeal association. pedantry. don't ride because montaigne rode; nor fish because walton fished; nor build because ward told you how fine it was; nor collect books after reading dibdin, nor coins and antiques after winckelmann, nor let your gardening grow from evelyn's acetaria.' let your elevation make you courteous, else your courtesy is paint and varnish. the democrats are good-humoured; the whigs are angry; because the democrat has really the safeand broad ground. let your zeal for freedom proceed from grounds of character and insight, and you can afford a courtesy which webster cannot afford. i acetaria, or discourse on sallets, miscellaneous writings. 324 journal (age 49 cu say nothing, and your greeting and shaking of hands impress your occurrent with just your weight and quality. but what you say, if artificially got up for the moment, weakens your impression. let the superlative come from depth of thought, and all is right. material greatness captivates the vulgar; and egotists live in nervous exaggeration; as when a man sits under the dentist, he fancies his teeth have some acres of extent. but to show, in that thing he happens to be doing, grandeur, by acting simply, newly, and beautifully, and setting that act high in men's imaginations, is the right superlative. “molière, the implacable enemy of all exaggeration.” — cousin. club. of thomas hobbes, aubrey says: “i have heard him say that, in my lord's house in derbyshire, there was a good library, and books enough for him, and his lordship stored the library with what books he thought fit to be bought: but, he said, the want of good conversation was a very great inconvenience, and that, though he conceived he could order his thinking as well as another, yet he found a great de1852] the lie. elizabethans 325 fect. methinks, in the country, in long time, for want of good conversation, one's understanding and invention grow mouldy.” vol. iii, p. 610. if you take in a lie, you must take in all that belongs to it. england takes in this neat national church, and it glazes their eyes, and bloats the flesh, and deforms and debilitates, and translates the nervous young england so far into false, magisterial old polonius. my westminster man on hakluyt thinks the english of elizabeth's time were truly represented in the noble portraits of shakspeare. the silence on shakspeare of the same community that was so marked in its admiring reception of bacon is unexplained, except by the english idolatry of rank. [here follow many interesting quotations from fuller's wortbies of england.] truth of english names. buckingham, from buccen (saxon for beeches); exeter, ex castra ; wilton, willey river; ashwell, a fountain among the trees. 326 (age 49 journal trade. “a lapidary to be rich must buy of those who go to be executed, and sell to those who go to be married.” october. mr. s. s. prentiss, of new orleans, first established a new doctrine in western courts, this, namely, that the party attacked, in a personal conflict, only knows how formidable the assault is, and what extreme means he is justified in using. also (if i rightly understood mr. williams, of st. louis), even before any blow has been struck, and whilst the assaulting party is only uttering injurious words. english brag. i have found that englishmen have such a good opinion of england that the ordinary phrases of postponing or disparaging one's own things, in talking to a stranger, are quite seriously mistaken by them for the inevitable praise of their country. in compliment to them the other day, i spoke of baring as a great merchant; they answered, “o yes, bates was nobody”; and of russell sturgis, when i spoke, they said, “what a lucky thing for him the going to london,” etc. use such words as “not such as england,” “in our young country,” “poor country,” or the like, — 'tis all lost 1852) teaching behind law 327 on them, they hear it all as homage to england, and sympathize with you as really unhappy about it. the laws find their root in the credence of the people. a two-foot stone wall guards my fine pears and melons, all summer long, from droves of hungry boys and poor men and women. if one of these people should question my right and pluck my fruit, i should set the cumbrous machinery of the law slowly in motion, and by good luck of evidence and counsel, i might get my right asserted, and that particular offender daunted. but if every passenger should make the like attempt, though the law were perfect, my house would not be worth living in, nor my fields worth planting. it is the education of these people into the ideas and laws of property, and their loyalty, that makes those stones in the low wall so virtuous. october. as sings the pine tree in the wind so sings in the wind a sprig of the pine ; the strength and joy of laughing france are shed into its wine.' i « nature in leasts” (poems, p. 297). this quatrain evidently written in later. 328 [age 49 journal wealth and labour. what earldoms of guienne, champagne, bourgogne, in a grapestone ! what populations, cities, states, arts, arms, colleges, patriotisms, wars, laws, treaties; what haughty manners, tragedies, pride, and poetry ! what not less in a cotton-seed for carolina; and a sugar-cane for mississippi ; tobacco for virginia; rice-grain for georgia; peachstone for jersey. in massachusetts, every twelfth man is a shoemaker; tea-plant for china; oranges for spain; coal for england; wheat for canada. what in the unctuous quadruped that drags his larded sides like modest prosperity through the city of cincinnati ! then the equalizations. fate which appears in statistics exalts races by a cellule in their brain, that makes certain families miners, and others hunters, and levies her own tariffs by making dreadful boundaries of her own. to these families, forts and violence and hatred of foreigners, inborn dislike of other families white, red, and olive. others need no weapon but the sword of their climate, to drive off competitors. others have magnificent fields and watercourses, and sunshine, but a limit in the limestone in the waters, which kills every fourth man with ague, cholera, or the stone. 1852] mastery. pantheist 329 we tell our children and ourselves not to regard other people's opinion, but to respect themselves, and we send them to school or to company, and they meet (as we have so often met) some animosus infans, some companion rammed with life, whose manners tyrannize over them. they have no weapon of defence against this weapon. a pound will weigh down an ounce in spite of all precepts. a quality of a different kind is yet a counterpoise. са “ pantheism,” to be sure ! do you suppose the pale scholar who says, “ you do not know causes, or the cause of causes, any better for often repeating your stupid noun," deceives himself about his own powers ? does not he live in care, and suffer by trifles? ... has he not notes to pay ? — and is he likely to overestimate his powers of getting johnnycake for his breakfast, because he perceives that you use words without meaning ? ceiv use a mr. schaud, who printed an orthodox pamphlet lately at pittsburg, pennsylvania, says that “ mr. emerson is a pantheist 'by intuition, rather than by argument.” so it seems our intuitions are mistaken. who, then, can get us right? 330 (age 49 journal samuel hoar with beams december planets dart, his cold eyes truth and conduct scanned ; july was in his sunny heart, october in his liberal hand. the shoemakers and fishermen say in their shops, “ damn learning ! it spoils the boy; as soon as he gets a little, he won't work.” “yes,” answers lemuel, “but there is learning somewhere, and somebody will have it, and who has it will have the power, and will rule you: knowledge is power. why not, then, let your son get it, as well as another?” if i have a message to send, i prefer the telegraph to the wheelbarrow. n certain doctrines appear to be offensive to men, in every age, the metamorphosis or passage of souls. englishmen hate it. it vexes the common sense : gross materialism not nearly so much. “nescio quid, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum.". persius. 1 some star, i know nor which, surely softens me towards thee. 1852] · plymouth 331 october 25. at plymouth. i saw the beach under a fine splashing surf. a boy told me he shot all kinds of fowl there, and last night "old squaws,” but there was such a sea on that he could not, half the time, see the birds. each of the fishing boats is about seventy tons and worth five or six thousand dollars, and is manned by eight men. seventy-four of these vessels go out from plymouth. once they went out, every man on his own hook, carrying his own provisions, a little flour, pork, molasses and rum, and living on fish, and having three fourths of all he caught,-one fourth being for the ship. now they are paid from twelve to thirty dollars a month, and manned every year by young men coming down from new hampshire and vermont for the green hands, and, for the old ones, by men that make shoes all winter, and want to recruit, by going to sea in the spring. [here follow several pages which would seem to be mostly notes of horatio greenough's conversation with mr. emerson, of which only a few sentences are here given.] ✓ in england, they will not let science be free, sea 332 journal (age 49 not geology, without bringing its nose down to their church. the puritans would not allow anything histrionic, but the light would come into their square houses. the modern england has nothing else but vice, but the light has got excluded. obedience is worship. . . as soon as a deviation for the sake of a variety, for a luxurious variety, is allowed, it is easy to see that the whole race of depravation will be run. therefore greenough will not allow so much as a supporter to a porch to be varied by a parabola instead of a straight line. the adherence of the greeks to the osseous fabric and to all the geometric necessities enabled them, as soon as plastic ornament was to be attempted, to do it, and to carry into that also geometric truth. in the elgin marbles, by representing a procession of horsemen, in which, though each part is fixed, yet all the attitudes of the horse are given, the one figure supplies the defects of the other, and you have seen a horse put through all his motions, so that motion is enjoyed and you can almost see the dust. there is no surface finish. 1852] school girls. politics 333 the duties of man are to be measured by the powers of the instrument. greenough would stop commerce, if he could; would insulate the american, to stop the foreign influence, that denationalizes him. he thought, the old artists taught each other, made each other. i suppose that genius always has humility in the presence of genius,' but as mrs. lowell said to me of her girls of fashion, “ those who give themselves airs on no grounds whatever cannot be taught.” fate. politics. it is easy to see that what is done in this country in state and in trade is the result of the character and condition of the people, and that the difference of the two parties, whig and democrat, on the matter, is trifling; one party pushing forward, and the other holding back, but both irresistibly carried on, as by the planet itself. it is the difference of two i here mr. emerson begins again. mrs. charles russell lowell (anna jackson), a woman of nobility and refinement, had a private school in cambridge. she was mother of general charles russell lowell and lieutenant james lowell, both killed in battle during the civil war. 334 journal (age 49 runners in the same course, one of whom affects to hold his head back, and the other affects to throw his head forward, whilst both are at their speed. on european influence, we might treat the evil of expensiveness. a man values himself on what he can buy, and, if you have a house, he buys two, three; if you have a horse, he buys ten; dogs, deer, preserves, liveries; and will not speak to you, because you have only one horse. his expense is not his own, but a far-off copy.' ... the church is there for check of trade. but on examination all the deacons, ministers, and saints of this church are steering with all their sermons and prayers in the direction of the trade. if the city says, “freedom and no tax," they say so, and hunt up plenty of texts. but if the city says, “freedom is a humbug. we prefer a strong government,” the pulpit says the same, and finds a new set of applicable texts. but presently trade says,“ slavery too has been misunderstood: it is not so bad; nay, it is good; on the whole, it is the best possible thing." the i the rest of the passage is found in “ fortune of the republic” (miscellanies, p. 534). s 01 over a new 1852] texts. webster's death 335 dear pulpit and deacons must turn over a new leaf, and find a new string of texts, which they are forward to do. and sr, and 0— d— , and ms, and park street, and andover, will get up the new march of the hypocrites to pudding for the occasion. giants — napoleons, cannings, websters, kossuths, burkes— are the inevitable patriots until they too wane and their defects and gout and palsy and money warp their politics. e last sunday i was at plymouth on the beach, and looked across the hazy water — whose spray was blowing on to the hills and orchards — to marshfield. i supposed webster must have passed, as indeed he had died at three in the morning. the sea, the rocks, the woods, gave no sign that america and the world had lost the completest man. nature had not in our days, or not since napoleon, cut out such a masterpiece. he brought the strength of a savage into the height of culture. he was a man in equilibrio; a man within and without, the strong and perfect body of the first ages, with the civility and thought of the last. “os, oculosque jovi par.” and what he brought, he kept. cities had not hurt him; he held undiminished the power and wer 336 [age 49 journal terror of his strength, the majesty of his demeanour. he had a counsel in his breast. he was a statesman, and not the semblance of one. most of our statesmen are in their places by luck and vulpine skill, not by any fitness. webster was there for cause: the reality; the final person, who had to answer the questions of all the fainéants, and who had an answer. but alas ! he was the victim of his ambition; to please the south betrayed the north, and was thrown out by both. webster has been the teacher of the legislators of the country in style and eloquence. webster, clay, everett were imitable models, and have been chosen respectively by each young adventurer according to his own quality. we are under great obligations to webster for raising the tone of popular addresses out of rant and out of declamation to history and good sense. mr. foster' says that n. borden, of fall river, told him, that mr. fowler quoted 1 daniel foster, for a short time a preacher in the universalist church in concord, was a brave anti-slavery speaker who had suffered for his convictions. the editors have heard that he was captain of a company during the civil war. 1852] england's lack. slave 337 j. c. calhoun as saying, that “mr. webster's seventh of march speech was perfectly satisfactory, only that it was too late.” mr. calhoun had taken the liberator for eighteen years. england cannot receive oken, but nibbles, gnaws, accommodates, by owen and chambers; cannot receive goethe's botany; cannot receive geology without bringing down its nose to their church. what mean criticism they brought to bear on goethe in edinburgh review and blackwood; could not heartily receive wordsworth or coleridge; england has no music; england has no art, but buys for pride ; england cannot make a pattern for a pitcher. previous question. “ now you may just as well know what the previous question’ means. it is, that the whole house says, 'all these things are very true, and we have no answer to make, and therefore the less that's said about the matter the better.'” – mr. creevey. abolition. the argument of the slave-holder is one and simple: he pleads fate; here is an inferior race requiring wardship, it is sentimentality to deny it. the argument of the 338 journal (age 49 'co abolitionist is, it is inhuman to treat a man thus. then, for the fugitive slave bill, we say: i do not wish to hold, nor to help you to hold them. if you cannot keep them without my help, let them go. such provisions as you find in the constitution for your behoof, make the most of. you could not recover a load of hay, a barrel of potatoes, by such law. the constitution has expressly guaranteed your barrel of potatoes. no, the courts would say, it has not named them. if it especially and signally wished by compromise to protect your potato crop, it would have said so. laws are to be strictly interpreted, and laws of all things are understood to say exactly what they mean. but how, then, can you maintain such an incredible and damnable pretension as to steal a man on these loose innuendoes of the law that would not allow you to steal his shoes? how, but that all our northern judges have made a cowardly interpretation of the law, in favor of the crime, and not of the right. the leaning should be, should it not? to the right against the crime. the leaning has been invariably against the slave for the master. 1852] thought. omens 339 but thoreau remarks that the cause of freedom advances, for all the able debaters now are freesoilers, sumner, mann, giddings, hale, seward, burlingame. the power of generalizing differences men, and it shows the rudeness of our metaphysics, that this is not down in the books. the number of successive saltations this nimble thought can make measures the difference between the highest and the lowest of mankind. to write a history of massachusetts, i confess, is not inviting to an expansive thinker. i .. since, from 1790 to 1820, there was not a book, a speech, a conversation, or a thought, in the state. about 1820, the channing, webster, and everett era begun, and we have been bookish and poetical and cogitative since. edwards on the will was printed in 1754. omen and coincidence only show the symmetry or rhythmical structure of the man; just as his eye and hand work exactly together, and, to hit the mark with a stone, he has only to fasten his eye firmly on the mark, and his arm will swing true;—so the main ambition and 340 (age 49 journal genius being bestowed in one direction, many lesser spirits and involuntary aids within his sphere will follow. i do not think the fame of pitt very honourable to english mind; neither pitt nor peel. pitt is a mediocre man, is only explained by the commanding superiority which a good debater in a town meeting has, and there is not a quotable phrase or word from him, or measure. nothing for man. mere parliamentary plausibility and dexterity, and the right external conditions, namely, of name, birth, breeding, and relation to persons and parties. pitt is nothing without his victory. burke, on the other side, who had no victory, and nothing but defeat and disparagement, is an ornament of the human race; and fox had essential manliness. his speeches show a man, brave, generous, and sufficient, always on the right side. virility. agassiz. the democrats carry the country, because they have more virility : just as certain of my neighbors rule our little town, quite legitimately, by having more courage and animal force than those whom they overbear. it is a kind of victory like that of gravitation over 1852] agassiz. inventors : 341 all upraised bodies, sure, though it lie in wait for ages for them. i saw in the cars a broad-featured, unctuous man, fat and plenteous as some successful politician, and pretty soon divined it must be the foreign professor, who has had so marked a success in all our scientific and social circles, having established unquestionable leadership in them all; — and it was agassiz. uriah boyden' obtains, by his hydraulic inventions, ninety-six per cent of the power of a waterfall. the french had only obtained seventy per cent, the english, before that, only sixty. lowell mills at one time paid him thirty thousand dollars for the use of his turbines. america exceeds all nations in hydraulic improvements. ingenuity against cheap labor is our reliance. america lives by its wits. englishman cannot travel out of his road. erastus b. bigelow is paid by crossley of halifax, england, four (?) cents on every yard of carpet woven on his looms and in this country clinton company draws one cent, and bigelow three cents on every yard woven on his looms throughout america. 1 the introducer of the turbine wheel into the united states, with improvements. s 342 journal. (age 49 there is no literature none in england, none in america — which serves us. the “diffusion” literature describes the habits of kangaroos, and the english writes novels of society, and plenty of critical journals; but who gives high counsels to these twin nations? who points their duties, admonishes, animates, and holds them up to their highest aim? wordsworth spoke, milton-like, to their soul. carlyle by jerks and screams scolded, and sneered. but what high, equal, calm soul held them to their aim? we entreat you not to believe that anything is yet attained. all is in the gristle and preparation. your commerce is but a costly comfort, ease of life, no more; it belts the world for raisins, and oranges, and oil and wine, and gums, and drugs, and hides, and silk; but what for thought ? and what for humanity? out of five hundred ships, perhaps herschel, or a botanist, or a philologist buys or begs a cheap charitable passage in one, which goes for quite other designs, and he is reckoned a loafer, perhaps a jonah. and, as we do not want a sentimental or king rené era, perhaps it is safest so. but is science and the heart always to be merely endured, and ed oi 1852] ideals for nations 343 tolerated and never to walk to the quarterdeck and take the command? are the politics better? and are these legislatures convened, with the upheaving of all the peace of nations, in the canvass and fury of elections, to any noble, humane purpose? no, but to the most frivolous and selfish and paltry. will not nations one day soberly insist that justice shall be done, — justice, which satisfies everybody, and that grave and adequate ends be prosecuted by their money and their talent? are we always to be the victims of the meanest of mankind, who kill off as sentimental and visionary every generous and just design? england never stands for the cause of freedom on the continent, but always for her trade. ... few and poor chances for european emancipation : the disarming, the army, and the army of office-holders are the triple wall of monarchy. then consider that the people don't want liberty, they want bread; and, though republic canism would give them more bread after a year or two, it would not until then, and they want bread every day. louis napoleon says, “i will give you work,” and they believed him. in america, we hold out the same bribe,“ roast beef, and two dollars a day.” and our people 344 journal (age 49 will not go for liberty of other people, no, nor for their own, but for annexation of territory, or a tariff, or whatever promises new chances for young men, more money to men, of business. in either country, they want great men, and the cause of right can only succeed against all this gravitation or materialism by means of immense personalities. but webster, calhoun, clay, benton are not found to be philanthropists, but attorneys of great and gross interests. november. the saxons good combiners; and, though an idealist always prefers to trace a discovery or a success home to one mind, yet we must acquiesce in nineteenth century civilization, and accept the age of combined working, or jointstock companies. i liked to hear that mr. samuel lawrence invented the bay state shawl, which saved the so-called mills when all other manufacturing companies failed. but no, mr. lawrence gave the grand project — we must make a shawl — and even brought a pattern shawl to his designer. the designer, named edward everett, not of cambridge, but of lowell, prepared designs. they had an excellent dyer, who could give them fast colors and rich. they 1852) nations culminate 345 had looms, which they could and did adapt to this fabric. but the twisting the fringes would cost thirty cents a shawl :'tis too much. so mr. — invented a machine to twist fringes; and putting all these advantages together, they succeeded. sphinx. 'tis said that the age ends with the poet or successful man who knots up into himself the genius or idea of his nation; and that when the jews have at last flowered perfectly into jesus, there is the end of the nation. when greece is complete in plato, phidias, pericles, the race is spent and rapidly takes itself away. when rome has arrived at cæsar and cicero, it has no more that it can do, and retreats. when italy has got out dante, all the rest will be rubbish. so that we ought rather to be thankful that our hero or poet does not hasten to be born in america, but still allows us others to live a little and warm ourselves at the fire of the sun, for, when he comes, we others must pack our petty trunks and be gone. but i say saxondom is tough and manyheaded, and does not so readily admit of absorption and being sucked and vampyrized by a representative as fluider races. for have not 346 journal (age 49 the english stood chaucer? stood shakspeare? and milton? and newton? and survived unto this day with more diffusion of ability, with a larger number of able gentlemen in all departments of work than any nation ever had? sam johnson, wordsworth, coleridge, nelson, wellington had high abilities, and even byron and scott showed vivacity. they made these masculine locomotives and spinning-mules; or will you say that the old poets were norman and catholic; and that watt, fulton, arkwright, stephenson, brunel, chadwick, and paxton were the flowering of the saxon section of this doubleheaded race? ere england and america. the english and the americans cant beyond all other nations. the french relinquish all that nonsense to them. “ the only way to deal with a humbugger is to humbug him.” — moore's diary. it is the distinction of uncle tom's cabin that it is read equally in the parlour and the kitchen and the nursery of every house. what the lady read in the drawing-room in a few hours is retailed to her in the kitchen by the cook and 1852] napoleon iii. boucher 347 the chambermaid, week by week; they master one scene and character after another.' a crown once worn cleareth all defects of title. napoleon iii is bent on his pleasures, and scorneth the opinion of the people. the formula of society is, that you shall respect the decencies; but he knows they respect self-will more than they do decencies, and he outrages these last. the compiègne story gives reality, at least, to this fellow, and really brings him nearer to roman and plutarchian characters. he has taste for realities. m here follow many anecdotes taken from arsène houssaye, of which but a few are here given.] rivarol said, “this mirabeau is capable of anything for money, —even of a good action.” boucher found raphael insipid, michel angelo an artist of deformity, and nature wanting in harmony and attractiveness, — “ too green, badly managed as to light.” he threw the academy into the shade, he resigned himi printed in “ success,” but the book and authoress are not named there. (society and solitude, p. 286.) 348 journal (age 49 self to marriage, though he said, “marriage was not habitual to him.” “if the soul is immortal,” lantara must have thought,“ mine cannot run any risk of being in a worse place. the taverns and landscapes of the other world will be curious to examine." fontenelle said, “ there are three things in the world which i have loved very much, without knowing anything about them, music, painting, and women.” december (?). you cannot well know the genius, unless you also know the fool of the family. for the last possesses the dregs of that very quality, by the elixir of which the first achieved his success. many successes are won by help of insanities. politicians note this. i remember tracy told me he had known men obtain a great career in politics by some foible or insanity they had. and governor reynolds, of illinois, said to me that, if a man knew anything, he would go hide his head in a corner : but, as he does not, he blusters about, and thinks he can move the world, and really manages to do wonders.' 1 the substance of the two last sentences is used in english traits (p. 148), but without the names. 1852] england's measure 349 feats. sydney smith really did the feat of causing the state of pennsylvania to pay its bonds. he flooded the state with his ridicule. nobody could dodge it. his letters were reprinted all over the state. the jokes were in everybody's mouth. the stiffest repudiators laughed till they split, and, at last, no man dared to go to the legislature until he was prepared to provide for the payment. we must measure england, not by its census or money, but by its ability to stand the glance of a wise man, such as passes by perhaps only once in two ages. in one age, it might have satisfied lycurgus; in another age, franklin. would it at any time have contented socrates ? no; but the right measures are the men it actually yielded. roger bacon was its monk, sumptuous as the monastic piles that grew with him: but he was born in them, as the weevil is born in the wheat, to destroy them, and bring in a higher era. wykeham was an english pericles. chaucer was the fruit of the soil. nothing more genuine in flavor, more sound in health, did it ever bear. the note of each bird is not more proper to its kind than the genius of chaucer is the right music of britain. could its church 350 journal (age 49 stand the glances of the realist? could its science have satisfied him with some admirable benefit? did they then, as now, blunder into the admirable inventions? could the social arts and customs have invited him to leave his solitude without self-reproach? were the californias of that age found by fugitives or by geologists ? there was never anything more excellent came from a human brain than the plays of shakspeare; bating only that they were plays. the greek has a real advantage of them, in the degree in which his dramas had a religious office. could the priest look him in the face without blenching? oh, yes, the fagot was lighted. yes, the priest translated the vulgate and translated the sanctities of old hagiology into english virtues on english ground. george fox and anthony parsons and john bunyan and prynne. 0 dr. kirkland and professor brazer' mutually resolved one day to break off smoking for six months. soon after they met at a dinner party at colonel p.'s, where all the appointments were excellent. cigars were offered, and brazer de1 respectively the president of harvard college, 18101828, and the latin professor, and later, overseer. 1852] the clergy. fate 351 clined them. dr. kirkland lighted one, and after smoking with much content for a time, he said to nobody in particular, as he puffed away the smoke, “ it is doubtful whether we show more want of self-control in breaking good resolutions, or self-conceit in keeping them.” dr. channing asked dr. hare, of philadelphia, why he did not go to church. “because,” answered the doctor, “the ministers take too much for granted.” philadelphia boys. mr. william wistar met a youth at a dinner party, who took a cigar. “ how old are you?” said mr. w. “sixteen years.” “you are at school, are you not?” “i am at the university.” “you are just about as old as my boy; do you know him?” “yes,” answered the youth, “and i am damned glad to find the breed has improved.” fate. “the classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way.”. – karl marx. į see mr. emerson's use of this in the poems (appendix, p. 357). with the key of the secret he marches faster from strength to strength, and for night brings day; while classes or tribes too weak to master the flowing conditions of life give way. 352 journal (age 49 walk with ellery to lincoln. benzoin laurus, rich, beautiful shrub on this dried-up country ; parti-coloured warbler. ellery laughed at nuttall's description of birds, “ on the top of a high tree the bird pours all day the lays of affection,” etc. affection! why, what is it? a few feathers, with a hole at one end, and a point at the other, and a pair of wings : affection! why, just as much affection as there is in that lump of peat. thoreau at home; why, he has got to maximize the minimum; that will take him some days. we went to bear hill and had a fine outlook. descending, ellery got sight of some labourers in the field below. “look at them,” he said, " those four! four demoniacs scratching in their cell of pain ! live for the hour. just as much as any man has done, or laid up, in any way, unfits him for conversation. he has done something, makes him good for boys, but spoils him for the hour. that's the good of thoreau, that he puts his whole sublunary capital into the last quarter of an hour; carries his whole stock under his arm.” at home, i found henry himself, who complained of clough or somebody that he or they recited to every one at table the paragraph just 1852] true bard. j. q. adams 353 read by him and by them in the last newspaper and studiously avoided everything private. i should think he was complaining of one h.d.t. (from do) the countess of pembroke“ had forecast and aftercast,” said bishop rainbow. the high poetry is the subduing men to order and virtue. he is the right orpheus who writes his poetry not with syllables but with men; and shakspeare's poetry must suffer that deduction that it is an exhibition and amusement, and is not expected to be eaten and drunk as the bread of life by the people. but ossian's and taliessin's and regnar's and isaiah's is. john quincy adams was asked the results of his experience for the preservation of his health and faculties in old age. he said he owed everything to three rules, — (1) regularity; (2) regularity; (3) regularity. english university men are thoroughbred scholars, full readers, by no means idlers : hypercritical, no error can pass under their notice. learning — accurate, armed good sense — is 354 journal (age 49 cheap. hence the excellence of their paragraphs, leaders, and review articles, and the no-wonder that follows. wordsworth, coleridge, tennyson, carlyle, and macaulay cannot be matched in america. judge of the splendor of a nation by the insignificance of great individuals in it; and see what culture [appears in] the article on architecture in north british (edinburgh) review and the garbett book. ice “the heavy blue chain (of the sea) didst thou, o just man, endure.”—taliessin. liessin. at st. louis they say that there is no difference between a boy and a man. as soon as a boy is “that high,” high as the table, he contradicts his father. at oxford they lock up the young men every night. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1852 lycurgus; æsop; æschylus ; euripides ; socrates; ovid; martial, epigrams; persius, satires; tacitus, germania ; plotinus; porphyry; clausor 1852) reading 355 dian; sidonius apollinaris, apud kemble, saxons in england; ossian; taliessin, apud davies; roger bacon; saadi; cervantes; edward, lord herbert of cherbury; izaak walton; descartes; william prynne; madeleine de scudéry; thomas fuller, wortbies of england; evelyn, acetaria, or discourse on sallets; anthony parsons; george fox; john bunyan; aubrey; newton; fontenelle; cowper; franklin; jonathan edwards, on the will; hume; adam smith, wealth of nations ; niebuhr; jacobi ; bossu, nouveaux voyages dans l'amérique septentrionale; eckermann, conversations with goethe; rivarol, grétry, florian, apud houssaye; burns; william cobbett; canning, the rovers; sydney smith; john wilson; fourier; oersted, mechanical physics; oken; thomas moore, diary; webster; levi woodbury; joshua r. giddings; theophilus parsons; horace mann; sir robert peel; hayden; michelet; cousin; balzac, théorie de la démarche; alcott; rufus choate; macaulay; robert chambers, vestiges of 356 journal [age 49 creation ; richard owen; horace bushnell; w. h. seward; kossuth; general daumas (from abd-el-kader), les chevaux du sabara; disraeli; john p. hale; j. s. mill; johnston, england as it is; john m. kemble, saxons' in england; benjamin thorpe, northern mythology; knox, artistic anatomy; tennyson; milnes; margaret fuller; henry james ; horace greeley; harriet beecher stowe, uncle tom's cabin ; sylvester judd; jones very; arsène houssaye, histoire de la peinture flamande et bollandaise; charlotte brontë, villette ; thoreau ; w. e. channing; a. h. clough; delia s. bacon ; karl marx; smith, the divine drama of civilization; anson s. burlingame; charles astor bristed, three years in an english university. journal western lectures arthur hugh clough new york lenox and cape cod horatio greenough's death notes on english and french madam emerson's death rnal xliv 1853 (from journals vs, do, and ho) [during the first week in january mr. emerson gave a course on the conduct of life before the mercantile library association in new york, then lectured in the leading cities of ohio and illinois, and gave a course in st. louis. “the anglo-american” was one of the lectures. the rest of january was occupied with lectures in philadelphia and in western towns ; — see an amusing account of these experiences in his letter to carlyle (correspondence, vol. ii, p. 218).] (from vs) “puisque je suis laid, je veux être bien hardi,” said duguesclin. january. english poetry. yet it is fair (is it not?) to say that the ideal of any people is in their best writers, sculptors, painters, and builders, in their greatest heroes and creators in any and every kind. in hamlet, in othello, in coriolanus, in 360 journal (age 49 troilus and cressida, we shall pick up the scattered bones of the english osiris, as they haunted the mind of the greatest poet of the world; and he was english. but we pause expectant before the genius of shakspeare as if his biography were not yet written and cannot be written until the problem of the whole english race is solved. the english genius never parts with its materialistic tendency, and even in its inspirations is materialistic. milton, shakspeare, chaucer, spenser, herbert, who have carried it to its greatest height, are bound to satisfy the senses and the understanding, as well as the reason. if the question is asked whether the english repudiate thought, we remember there is always a minority in england who entertain whatever speculations the highest muse has attempted. no brain has dallied with finer imaginings than shakspeare (yet with mathematical accuracy), no richer thoughted man than bacon, no holier than milton or herbert. we have found english for behmen,—and english for swedenborg and readers for both. yet when i think of the robust greek mythology and what a cosmic imagination — i wish to say astronomic imagination—they had, a power, 1853] greek fable. poetry 361 i mean, of expressing in graceful fable the laws of the world, so that the mythology is beautiful poetry on one side, at any moment convertible into severe science on the other, then, the english verse looks poor and purposeless, as if written for hire, and not obeying the grandeur of ideas. i find or fancy more true poetry, the love of the vast in the welsh and bardic fragments of taliessin and his school, than in a good many volumes of british classics. it is curious that thomas taylor, the platonist, is really a better man of imagination, a better poet, than any writer between milton and wordsworth. he was a poet with a poet's life and aims. for poetry, ossian had superiorities over dryden and pope, but though seizing the poetry of storms and of the rude british landscape and the sentiment as they had never seen it, yet wanting every other gift, wanting their knowledge of the world, their understanding, their wit, their literature, he made no figure but a ridiculous one in the hands of men of letters. results. if, at this moment, a question is asked, who answers it? england. if telegraphs, 362 journal (age 49 if trade, if geology, if mesmeric rappings, if seaserpents, if paine's light, if ericsson's caloric engine, if the balloon, if a pauper system, if gold and silver currency must have their question answered, which way do men look, – to paris, to new york, or to london, for the final reply? where is faraday? where is owen? where is hume? where is stephenson? and brunel, and wheatstone, and gray, and ricardo, and paxton?. where are the barings and rothschild? stand by your order. we must sympathize, over all our cavils at their faults or vices, with jeffrey, with macaulay, with dickens, and the whole class of wits. we understand their means and success; they are the same with our own. their cause is ours: and, from plato, shakspeare, and bacon, down to the last writer of a leader in the london times, whenever the intellect tells on the public and is recognized as a power in the world, all the scholars in the world share the benefit. it is a bitter satire on our social order, just at present, ... for example the plight of mr. alcott, the most refined and the most advanced 1853] problem of alcott 363 soul we have had in new england, who makes all other souls appear slow and cheap and mechanical; a man of such a courtesy and greatness, that (in conversation) all others, even the intellectual, seem sharp and fighting for victory, and angry; – he has the unalterable sweetness of a muse, yet because he cannot earn money by his pen or his talk, or by school-keeping or book-keeping or editing or any kind of meanness, — nay, for this very cause, that he is ahead of his contemporaries, – is higher than they, . and keeps himself out of the shop-condescensions and smug arts which they stoop to, or, unhappily, need not stoop to, but find themselves, as it were, born to,—therefore, it is the unanimous opinion of new england judges that this man must die, — we shall all hear of his death with pleasure, and feel relieved that his board and clothes are saved! we do not adjudge him to hemlock, or to garroting, — we are much too hypocritical for that, but we not the less surely doom him, by refusing to protect against this doom, or combine to save him, and to set him on employments fit for him and salutary to the state, or to the senate of fine souls, which is the heart of the state. in boston is no company for a fine wit. 364 journal [age 49 there is a certain poor-smell in all the streets, in beacon street and park and mt. vernon, as well as in the lawyers' offices, and the wharves, the same meanness and sterility, and leave-allbope-bebind, as one finds in a boot manufacturer's premises, or a bonnet-factory; vamps, pasteboard, millinette, and an eye to profit. the want of elevation, the absence of ideas, the sovereignty of the abdomen, reduces all to the same poorness. one fancies that in the houses of the rich, as the temptation to servility is removed, there may chance to be generosity and elevation; but no; we send them to congress, and they originate nothing and, on whatever question, they instantly exhibit the vulgarity of the lowest populace, an absence of all perception and natural equity. they have no opinions, and cringe to their own attorney, when he tells the opinion of the insurance offices. but you can never have high aristocracy, without real elevation of ideas somewhere; otherwise, as in boston, it turns out punk and cheat at last. i wrote that england goes for trade, not for liberty:goes against hungary, against schleswig-holstein, against french republic. e 1853] lectures. statesmen 365 yes, that is the stern edict of providence, that liberty shall be no hasty fruit.'... certainly i go for culture, and not for multitudes. ... : 'tis very costly this thinking for the market in books or lectures : as soon as any one turns the conversation on my “representative men,” for instance, i am instantly sensible that there is nothing there for conversation, that the argument is all pinched and illiberal and popular. only what is private, and yours, and essential, should ever be printed or spoken. i will buy the suppressed part of the author's mind, — you are welcome to all he published. england yields men and opportunities of grandeur. the tone of napoleons, of charlemagne, of charles v, of absolute power reaching to interests of vast masses of men, when it falls into the hands of good sense and good will, is eminently humane. and the english system, which forces great merit up into great place, and relieves it of all nonsense on the way, by searching 1 the rest of the passage is printed in « the fugitive slave law” delivered the next year in new york on the 7th of march. 366 journal (age 49 school of parliament and parties and armed interests that will not be trified with, when it meets with a good natural statesman, enables him easily to take this right royal tone. both the pitts were of an imperial nature ; fox and burke had severally great abilities. mr. canning is on the whole the best example of manly attitude, or of a nearly absolute power wielded by hands able to hold it. peel, again, of heavy parts, by slow growth and with the mediocrity of a dull boy reached at last a certain grandeur by honesty, courage, and industry. and wellington by his native sagacity, and the unwearied application of his logic alike to large and small things, and his veracity and honour, came to be the pillar on which for the time english institutions rested. [here follow quotations from canning and lord brougham and from napoleon.] the sea-serpent may have an instinct to retire into the depths of the sea when about to die, and so leave no bones on the shore for naturalists. the sea-serpent is afraid of mr. owen; but his heart sunk within him when, at last, he heard that barnum was born. 1853] old poems. shakspeare 367 the saxon and norse poetry are warm with the faith and sentiment of the time; and the verbs are solid as church-walls. the religion, to be sure, wrote the chronicles, but the people believed the religion, which was alive, and served them, freed the serf, defended women, and allowed a mediation and poor-man's-friend in the ecclesiastic power. the poetry is imaginative, and the churches are great and poetic. look at theirs, and look at ours. “god himself cannot procure good for the wicked.” — welsh triad, davies. troilus and cressida contains many of those sentences which have procured a fame for shakspeare quite independent of his dramatic genius : and which, in their clear and disengaged sentences, their universal aptness, imply the widest knowledge of men, and one would say such experience and such easy command as only courts and intimate knowledge of affairs and habits of command could bestow. it requires the habits of leicester and essex, of burleigh and buckingham, to speak the expressed essence of life in so large and so easy a phrase. 368 (age 49 journal it is wellington's merit that he feels his personal superiority from the first; sees good-humouredly and patiently all the attacks and even the victories of the enemy, in the firm assurance, that the enemy proceeds on a lower principle than himself. he sees the french military science to be vain and ostentatious, sees their object to be egotistic, and therefore their whole tactic unsteady and heartless, and sure to fall into some error somewhere, by which they will certainly become his prey. wellington traces his success at assaye to his perception, in spite of the assertions of his guides, that, where two towns lay exactly opposite each other, on a river, there must be a ferry or a ford, probably the ford. he pushed for the river, and found one, and marched his army across. [february?] the merit claimed for the anglican church is, that if you let it alone, it will let you alone. it moves through a zodiack of feasts, and has dearly coupled itself with the almanac. at candlemas day half your roots and half your hay. hence its strength in the agricultural districts. . 1853] anglicans. north sea 369 ; “the established clergy have long been as they contrive to be the principal bulwark against barbarism, and the link which unites the sequestered peasants with the intellectual advancement of the age.” — wordsworth. the power of the established church consists in its disconnexion from all other countries. 'tis said that the discovery of milton's arianism in this rigid generation has already impaired the sale of paradise lost — hallam. : “this sea is so slow that it is almost immoveable, and thought of many to be the bounds which compass in the whole world, because the sun continueth so clear and bright from the setting unto the rising, that it darkeneth the stars: and some are persuaded that the sound of the sun is there heard, as he riseth out of the sea, and that the beams of his head are there seen ; as also, many shapes of gods ; and that there was the end of nature and the world.” verstegan, p. 34, translation from tacitus, de moribus germaniae. “noah begat japhet; japhet begat gomer ; gomer begat assenez or ascena ; ascena begat 370 journal (age 49 tuisco, the father and conductor of the tuytsh or germans out of asia into europe.” —verstegan, p. 9. the english have always been rich, but their immense power is recent. it is only just now that the old oak has blossomed out into such immoderate growth as we see. it is one of the maxims of political economy that all the wealth that exists was created within the last twelve months. but england, working long on the problem of her mines and her textile arts, at length produced her marquis of worcester, her watt, hargreaves, arkwright, and crompton, and by means of steam gave the immense expansion to her arts. 'tis wonderful how new all is. the iron plough was new in the eighteenth century; the cast iron plough in the nineteenth. two centuries ago, all sawing of timber was done by hand, and hence the extreme cost of building with wood. steam gave the whole value to the force pumps and the power looms. as america. one of the east india company's vessels is a year and a half in making the voyage out to calcutta and home, which an american performs in nine months . . . and it costs can one 1 1853] bedford 371 the company just twice as much to export a cargo of coffee from mocha to the mediterranean as it does an american merchant, namely, £30,000 vs. £15,000. — spence. [end of may?] yesterday a ride to bedford with ellery, along the “ bedford levels ” and walked all over the premises of the old mill, — king philip's mill, — on the shawsheen river ; — old mill, with sundry nondescript wooden antiquities, — boys with bare legs were fishing on the little islet in the stream ; we crossed and recrossed, saw the fine stumps of trees, rocks, and grove, and many callot' views of the bare legs. beautiful pastoral country, but needs sunshine. there were millions of light today, — so all went well, (all but the dismal tidings which knelled a funeral-bell through the whole afternoon, in the death of susan sturgis.) rich democratic land of massachusetts ; in every house well dressed women with air of town-ladies : in every house a clavecin and a copy of the spectator ; and some young lady a jacques callot, the admirable french engraver of the early 17th century. he did figures with much spirit and in skilful grouping. recro 372 journal (age 49 reader of willis. lantara' did not like the landscape; too many leaves, – one leaf is like another leaf, – and apt to be agitated by east wind. on the other hand, “professor” (ellery's dog) did; he strode gravely as a bear through all the sentimental parts, and fitted equally well the grave and the gay scenes. he has a stroke of humour in his eye, as if he enjoyed his master's jokes. ellery thinks “england a flash in the pan”; as english people, in 1848, had agreed that “egypt was humbug.” i am to put down among the monomaniacs the english agriculturist who only knows one revolution in political history, the rape-culture. but, as we rode, one thing was clear, as oft before, that it is favorable to sanity, – the occasional change of landscape. if a girl is mad to marry, let her take a ride of ten miles, and see meadows and mountains she never saw before; two villages, and an old mansion house ; and the odds are, it will change all her resolutions. world is full simon mathurin lantara, a gifted but eccentric french landscape painter, born in 1729. what is said of him and much that follows is evidently a fragmentary report of channing's whimsical conversation. 1853] channing's humours 373 of fools who get a-going and never stop: set them off on another tack, and they are half cured. from shawsheen we went to burlington; and ellery reiterated his conviction, that the only art in the world is landscape-painting. the boys held up their fish to us from far; a broad new placard on the walls announced to us that the shawsheen mill was for sale: but we bought neither the fish nor the mill. channing told mr. edmund hosmer “that he did not see but trouble was as good as anything else, if you only have enough of it.” swedenborg taught “ that the evil spirits in the hells have all the enjoyment of which they are capable.” sea. alcuin called the sea, the road of the bold; the hostelry of the rivers; and the source of the rains. the sea was the road of the bold; frontier of the wheat-sown plains; the pit wherein all rivers rolled, and fountain of the rains. of the ship. she looked into a port, and seeing nothing there, went on. 374 journal (age 50 june 14. i went to mckay's shipyard, and saw the king of the clippers on the stocks: length of the keel, 285 feet, breadth of the beam 50 feet, carries 1500 tons more than the sovereign of the seas. will be finished in august. onor in political economy, all capital is new, the fruit of the last year or two. waste england, waste france, belgium ; raze every city and town; in a year or two, there is just as much wheat and hay, as many animals, tools, barns, cloths, coaches, palaces, and ice-cream, as much revenue as before. counterpart of statement above; three or four days of rain reduce hundreds to starvation in london. english race must be a mean or mixture, for everything in that island is. and this result which constitutes so much of the joy of life of agreeable relief or contrast in the colors, sounds, savors, and forms, is never so magnificent in effect, as in the marriage of complementary qualities of mind and character in individuals, wherein the powers of one family are reinforced by the addition of a new class of powers from 1853] thoreau. clough 375 another. nature has a chemistry of her own, by which she can mix as well as make. henry'is military. he seemed stubborn and implacable; always manly and wise, but rarely sweet. one would say that, as webster could never speak without an antagonist, so henry does not feel himself except in opposition. he wants a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, requires a little sense of victory, a roll of the drums, to call his powers into full exercise.» [arthur hugh clough, the poet and scholar, probably encouraged by mr. emerson in his purpose of finding a field for his proper work, and i thoreau. 2 this was the way he appeared to his friend, older than he by fourteen years, for whom he had a high regard and reverence, as appears in his letters, in which, however, he allowed himself to be more human than in face to face speech. it is possible that he was on his guard not to be over-influenced. women found thoreau courteous and kind, and to children he was a delightful friend and companion, yet always with a sincere directness. farmers, mechanics, and labourers found him manly, simple and companionable if they were upright and direct. to all of this, from personal acquaintance for twenty-one years and much talk with thoreau's acquaintances in all walks of life, i unhesitatingly testify. e. w. e. 376 journal (age 50 even a home, here, landed in america in the late autumn of 1852. he was cordially welcomed in concord, in boston, and in cambridge where he went into lodgings, and tutored youth, lectured, or wrote for the north american and putnam's magazine, as opportunity offered. a few days after landing he wrote, “emerson carries me off to concord,”and next day (sunday, nov. 14), — “loads of talk with emerson all morning ... walk with him to a wood with a prettyish pool [walden]. ..6.30, tea and mr. thoreau; and presently mrs. ellery channing (sister of margaret fuller] and others. . .. i had abolition pretty well out with emerson, with whom one can talk with pleasure on the subject. his view is in the direction of purchasing emancipation.” again, november 21, “emerson gave a grand dinner in honour of my poor self apparently, at the tremont house, where were longfellow, hawthorne, greenough the sculptor, charles sumner, theodore parker, ellery channing, lowell, and v five others — a very swell dinner, i assure you."'] see poems and prose remains of artbur hugb clough, edited by his wife, vol. 1. the editors desire to express here their obligation to messrs. macmillan & co. for their courtesy in allowing them to quote a few passages from the above work. 1853] a national will 377 clough thinks that there is a stream of tradition in families and in men in england, that you can draw more from than from people in a new country. it does not come out at once. they are slow to speak, and when they speak, it means something, stands for a great deal that has been done. when you talk with people in this country, the climate stimulates them to talk, but you soon come to the end of all they know. in belgium and other countries, i have seen reports of model farms; they begun with downs or running sands,it makes no difference what bottom, mere land to lay their basket of loam down upon;— then, they proceed from beach grass, or whatever, and rye and clover, manuring all the time, until they formed a soil fourteen inches deep. well, so i conceive, it is in national genericulture, as in agriculture. you must manage to set up a national will ... you must find a land like england, where temperate and sharp northern breezes blow, to keep that will alive and alert; markets on every possible side, because it is an island; the people tasked and kept at the top of their condition by the continual activity of seafaring and the exciting nature of sea-risks, and the deep stimulus of gain: the 378 journal [age 50 is land not large enough, the population not large enough, to glut the market and depress one another; but so proportioned is it to the size of europe and of the world, that it keeps itself healthy and bright, and, like an immense manufactory, it yields, with perfect security and ease, incredible results. many things conduce to this. over them all works a sort of anima mundi or soul of the island, — the aggregation by time, experience, and demand and supply, of a great many personalities, – which fits them to each other, and enables them to keep step and time, coöperate as harmoniously and punctually as the parts of a human body. thierry's history of the norman conquest is written, i suspect, for the sake of blazoning its motto; and, in some manner, avenging the field of waterloo, and the other humblings of france before england. the conclusion of the book certainly warrants this suspicion; and, i observe, that, in the chapter referring to henry v's wars, poitiers and agincourt are not even named ; whilst the battle of castillon is exactly specified (p. 257). the motto with which the book begins and 1853) thierry. sylvan 379 ends is from robert of gloucester, as follows:“... the folc of normandie, that among us woneth yet and schulleth evermo! of the normannes beth thys hey men, that beth of thys lond, and the lowe men of saxons. ..." he delighted in finding the normans called franci in old documents “sworn to by all the french and all the english called villains, villani, -" sylvan could go wherever woods and waters were, and no man was asked for leave – once or twice the farmer withstood, but it was to no purpose, he could as easily prevent the sparrows or tortoises. it was their land before it was his, and their title was precedent. sylvan knew what was on their land, and they did not; and he sometimes brought them ostentatious gifts of flowers or fruits or shrubs which they would gladly have paid great prices for, and did not tell them that he took them from their own woods. moreover the very time at which he used their land and water (for his boat glided like a trout everywhere unseen,) was in hours when 380 journal [age 50 they were sound asleep. long before they were awake he went up and down to survey like a sovereign his possessions, and he passed onward, and left them before the farmer came out of doors. indeed, it was the common opinion of the day that mr. thoreau made concord.' ellery affirms that adams, the cabinet-maker, has a true artistic eye; for he is always measuring with his eye the man he talks with for his coffin. at nahant, the eternal play of the sea seems the anti-clock, or destroyer of the memory of time, and reminds me of what i have once heard, that the sea perpetually invading inch by inch the continents, rising, say, on the eastern shore of each continent, an inch in a century, wears off and consumes all the monuments of civility and of man. all day the waves assailed the rock, i heard no church bells chime ; the sea-beat scorns the minster clock and breaks the glass of time. magnae virtutes nec minora vitia. i knew the last sentence takes off sylvan's mask. 2 poems, appendix, p. 345. 1853) asser. english talent 381 well the indigence of nature, which usually starves one faculty, when another is to be enriched. it is the too well known poesy of the best natures, these compensatory glories. alfred. there is a passage in asser's life [p. 76] giving a certain emphasis to a single sentence which was read or said to alfred by asser, and this sentence and others like it were to be written, which exhibits the right instinct of education ; the feeling of joy and hope that in certain moments enshrines a thought and draws a whole pantheon out of it. english talent is working talent: it is like oak and pine among fancy trees; and like iron among the metals bismuth, nickel, iridium, seen only in laboratories. a better model of a steamboat or a clipper, a new channel of trade, a new engine, a bounty to fish, a law that abolishes tolls and fees at a port, changes the navigation of the world, and upsets a nobility and a nation. a new article of commerce like guano, a ship canal, leaves amsterdams and londons to rot with the tyres and sidons and venices of the past. s a 382 (age 50 journal i admire answers to which no answer can be made. “ the masters of slaves seem generally anxious to prove that they are not of a race superior in any noble quality to the meanest of their bondmen.” – mackintosh, history of england, i, p. 321. conduct of intellect. archimedes and newton and other stark thinkers stretched and breathed themselves by a matchless feat of thinking, now and then, and left it so. they did not go repeating the particular problem they had solved, and applying it to everything, but went on to something else. the game of intellect seems the perception in lucid moments that whatever befalls or can be stated is a universal proposition; and, contrariwise, that every general statement is poetical again by being particularized or impersonated. freedom, yes, but that is a thing of degrees. is one of the slaveholders free? not one. see the snakes wriggle and wind. is a man free whose conscience accuses him of thefts and lies e ccuses 1853) england's strong men 383 and indulgences without number? no. is he free whom i see, when my eyes are anointed, to be always egotistical, and blinded by his preference of himself? a humble man can see, but a proud man and a vain man are patients for the oculist. england. the english government is gentlemanlike. if any national benefit has been rendered, if the arts have been advanced, if science has been served, the government may be relied on to be just and generous to the man who has served them, as paxton, fellowes, stephenson, franklin, rowland hill. i believe that it is far better than the american government, in this point, where the venality of congress [sentence unfinished]. the english are like a family to which a promise has been given that a male heir shall never be wanting. they have always a wealth of men to fill important posts, and the concentrated attention on such posts ensures the selection of a competent person. the public service must not suffer. too much property is at stake. the younger pitt was a jockey to hold the reins of power, neither stiff nor slack; otherwise not a 384 journal (age 50 man of notable ability. thurlows and cannings and foxes and grenvilles abound in london. the whole civility and polity are rude and initial. it is only custom and ignorance which flatter it with superlatives. the giddy absurdity of tying up a nation and untying a badly educated, stubborn boy, because disqualified by his education as a prince; letting loose his folly and passion (which should be confined to a penitentiary) on the interests of a nation of men; and padlock progress and keep at a standstill all that has been gained, shows the extreme rudeness of europe. w biggery. the insufferable folly of keeping the weal of millions at risk and every interest of science, of charity, of morals, and of humanity, at a halt, on so despicable a chance as the will of a single russian gentleman, will not long impose on the common sense of mankind. some third way will be thought of between anarchy and this puerile makeshift of an irresponsible rogue. monarchy stands on the timidity of property: property must not be disturbed. it can better pay blackmail to one king than run the risk of revolution. 1853] newton's pippins 385 “ lord thurlow, when chancellor, asked me if i did not think that a wooden machine might be invented to draw bills and answers in chancery ? ” — eldon, i, p. 167. agricultural. cattle-show.' the newtown pippins, gentlemen, are they not the newton pippins or, is not this the very pippin that demonstrated to sir isaac newton the fall of the world, not the fall of adam, but of the moon to the earth, and universal gravity? well, here they are, a barrel of them; every one of them good to show gravitation, and good to i such, at first, was the title of the county fairs established about the middle of the 19th century under the auspices of the agricultural societies in massachusetts and held in the fine september days. horses, cattle, sheep, swine and poultry were shown, and the whole countryside came and had a delightful holiday. in the building was a beautiful and varied exhibition. the farmer brought his corn, vegetables, and fruit ; from the orchards and gardens of the town came wonderful apples, pears, plums, quinces and melons ; the farmer's wife showed her bread, butter, cheese, and quilts ; her daughters their sewing, flowers, and even drawings. small boys could get in free by bringing some crook-neck squashes of their own raising. there were ploughing and spading matches. finally came the dinner and address. mr. emerson's essay “ farming " was given as such in 1858. 386 journal (age 50 eat; every one as sound as the moon. what will you give me for a barrel of moons ? july. short way with slaveholders. i read last night a letter from l— t— to lfstating that he had learned from a scientific person that sulphate of copper, commonly called blue vitriol, used in small quantities in the manufacture of wheat flour, had important effects in increasing the docility of the people who eat it; and he proposed to introduce such manufacture on a large scale into the southern states, with a view to reduce the stubbornness of the population, to the end of an easier removal of slavery. he therefore asks mr. f— at what price he can supply him with 240 tons of this article, in the autumn, with a prospect of a much larger purchase hereafter. he proceeds to say that great caution must be used in the introduction of this article, and that a number of bakers must be sent with instructions to use it, and that the project should be confidential. would like also to have mr. f take the opinions of abbott lawrence, and senator everett, and others, who may have information as to the use of this article in europe. mr. fsent the letter to dr. charles t. 1853] scholar's isolation 387 jackson,' who replied, that the use of the article is an outrageous fraud, and is forbidden on high penalties in england and france, as it is rank poison. july. it is a great loss to lose the confidence of a class; yet the scholar, the thinker goes on losing the ear and love of class after class who once sustained him. the scholar isolates himself by the sweet opium which he has learned to chew, and which he calls muses, and memory, and philosophy. now and then, he meets another scholar, and then says, “see, i am rewarded for my truth to myself and calling, by the perfect sympathy i here find.” but, meantime, he is left out more and more, and at last utterly, by society, and his faculties languish for want of invitation, and objective work; until he becomes that very thing which they taunt him with being, a self-indulgent dreamer. in an intellectual community, he would be steeled and sharpened and burnished to a strong archimedes or newton. society makes him the imbecile it accuses him of being. the eminent chemist and geologist, mrs. emerson's bro. ther. 388 (age 50 journal on the rocks of nahant the chemical texture of the world appeared, and statistics is also a rock-of-nahant to show that the world is a crystal and god a chemist. issu [to the regret of mr. emerson, mr. norton, and his many friends in new england, clough had suddenly returned to england in july, having been offered a place in the education office, which, with its assured salary, would allow of his marriage. he had frequently spent sundays in mr. emerson's home, where he was most welcome to the elders and the children. carlyle, writing to mr. emerson in early autumn, said, “clough is settled in his office ... i think he is now likely to continue here; and here, too, he may do us some good. of america, at least of new england, i can perceive he has brought away an altogether kindly, almost filial impression, especially of a certain man who lives in that section of the earth. more power to his elbow!”] ps in england. my belief is that nobody landed on this island with impunity ; that the popular fable of spellbound homes of enchanters was fact in 1853] malthus or poet? 389 england; the climate and conditions, labor and rough weather, transformed every adventurer into a laborer, and each vagabond that arrived submitted his neck to the yoke of avarice and ambition, or found the air too tense for him to exist in. the race avails much, but the genius of the place also is despotic and will not have any friv. olous person. malthus is the right organ of english proprietors. but we shall never understand political economy until we get béranger or burns or some poet to teach it in songs; and they won't teach malthuism. and there is no subject that does not belong to the poet; manufactures and stock brokerage, as much as sunsets and souls; only the things placed in their true order are poetry; but displaced, or put in kitchen-order, they are unpoetic. (from do) 'tis curious that christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists. horatio greenough. [greenough had been cut off in his prime by brain fever, december 390 journal [age 50 18, 1852. at the time he was delivering a course of lectures on art in boston. it is said that he left sketches for the work of the next twenty years. a “ memorial ” of him containing his papers on art and other subjects, and preceded by a life of the artist by h. t. tuckerman, was published in 1853. in a letter to carlyle mr. emerson said, “our few fine persons are apt to die. horatio greenough, a sculptor, but whose tongue was far cunninger in talk than his chisel to carve, and who inspired great hopes, died two months ago at forty-seven years ” (correspondence, vol. ii, p. 219).] (from vs) i do not think of any american in the century who would make so good a subject for a lecture as greenough. but oh to hear again his own eloquent and abounding discourse! but he passed away suddenly like the brightest of mornings. i account that man, one product of american soil (born in boston), as one of the best proofs of the capability of this country — we have one memorial of him always before us. he gave the model of the bunker hill 1853] englishmen. fate 391 monument. he said, “an obelisk savs but one word, here! but it speaks very loud.” there is a kind of retardation in the english youth. every man is a possible lord. but they have so many men that they are obliged to keep back the vast majority by checking, and in the state of neuters, as candidates for place as soon as any accident happens to the queen or great officers. “par une conséquence nécessaire de sa forte nature, le peuple anglais est incompatible avec tout ce qui n'est pas lui. son génie est exclusif. il ne comprend pas qu'on puisse vivre, penser, et agir autrement que luimême.” – léonce de lavergne. (from do) july 21. fate and instinct. fatalism the right formula to be holden: but by a clever person who knows to allow the living instinct. for, though that force be infinitely small, infinitesimal against the universal chemistry, it is of that subtlety that it homeopathically doses the system. all hanover street was abroad; mountains of ordinary women; firm bounds of brass and 392 (age 50 journal puddingstone set to every one of them; and liquidity or flowing power nowhere. e abolition. if you can get russian tactics into your political representation, so as to ensure the fidelity of your representative to the sentiment of the constituency, by making him more afraid of his constituents than he is of his opponents, you will get your will done. august. at lenox,' miss — congratulated herself that — had settled down into sensible opinions and practices, like her neighbors. i asked her if she thought her two sisters, who had complied with sensible notions and practices, had quite succeeded; that i perhaps did not think quite as respectfully as she did of boston and new york; that what she called a success seemed to me a poor thing, and, as those examples betrayed, a mere fetch, or a dose of brandy to drown thought; but only the more degrading those who succeeded. had new york succeeded? were the gentlemen of new york en1 mr. emerson was visiting valued friends, the tappans and sedgwicks, in lenox, when during this year his eldest daughter, ellen, had been attending the excellent school of mrs. sedgwick. 1853] new york. thackeray 393 tirely satisfied with their manly performance? as far as i am informed, they are ruled by some rowdy aldermen who are notorious rogues and blacklegs. they must feel very clean in going down wall street, whilst mr. rhynders cows them. is their political conscience sweet and serene, as they find themselves represented at albany and at washington ? as for these people, they have miserably failed, and 't is very fine for them to put on airs. the veriest monk in a college is better than they. as to — i was far from thinking she had ended her experiments. it is her glory that she takes her life in her hand, and is ready for a new world. in new york, henry james quoted thackeray's speeches in society, “he liked to go to westminster abbey to say his prayers,” etc. “ it gave him the comfort, blest feeling.”... he thought thackeray could not see beyond his eyes, and has no ideas, and merely is a sounding-board against which his experiences thump and resound: he is the merest boy.' 1 in a letter to carlyle written august 10, mr. emerson says, “i was in new york lately for a few days, and fell into some traces of thackeray, who has made a good mark in this country by a certain manly blurting out of his opinion in va394 journal (age 50 these new yorkers and lenox people think much of new york; little of boston. the bostonians are stiff, dress badly, never can speak french with good accent: the new yorkers have exquisite millinery, tournure, great expense, and, on being presented, the men look at you, and instantly see whether your dress and style is up to their mark; if not (and expense is great part of the thing) they never notice you. “these girls — any one of them ” (said thackeray at a party, to a german prince in new york) “has more diamonds on her back than are in all your principality.” and c. said, that it was difficult to go into any society in new yorkwithout you were in condition to give parties too. the artists, she said, were very worldly, and will not go anywhere unless they are to have suppers and champagne, she told h she had heard more about money from him and them than ever before. henry james found all these artists poor things, vain, conceited nobodies; and e. h. finds in boston the question of society is that of who gives dinners? nn rious companies where so much honesty was rare and useful. i am sorry never to have been in the same town with him while he was here." 1853) newcomb's letters 395 the boston women spend a great deal of money on rich and rare dresses, and have no milliner of taste who can say, “ this stuff, this color, this trimming, this ensemble does not suit you.” in new york the milliners have this skill. mrs. perkins, at the opera, heard a dressmaker say, “how dowdy all the boston ladies are! mrs. perkins is dowdy." cheering amidst all this trifle was the reading of charles newcomb's letters: the golden age came again, the true youth, the true heroism, the future, the ideal. i could hardly sit to read them out. i was penitent for having ever mistrusted him, for having chided his impatience; and resolved at once to write him, and assure him of my loyalty. swedenborg rose too, and all the gods out of earth and air and ocean, if only they would reconcile the two worlds, and make us fit for and contented with either. only of charles i would give much to know how it all lies in his mind; i would know his inmost sincerity; know what reserves he makes when he talks divinely. i would rather know his real mind than any other person's i have ever met. for it is still true that each makes one immense exception in his love and homage to the canon of nature, 396 journal [age 50 -one reserve, — namely, of all his own rights and possibilities. i told alcott that i should describe him as a man with a divination or good instinct for the quality and character of wholes : as a man who looked at things in a little larger angle than most other persons; and as one who had a certain power of transition from thought to thought, as by secret passages, which it would tax the celerity and subtlety of good metaphysicians to follow. but he has the least shop value of any man. he were a very bad englishman. he has no wares, he has not wrought his fine clay into vases, nor his gold dust into ingots. all the great masters finish their works to the eye and hand, as well as to the divine reason: to the shop, as well as to the gods. but he is an inestimable companion, because he has no obligations to old or new; but is free as if new born. but he is not careful to understand you. if he get a half meaning that serves his purpose, 't is enough. henry thoreau'sturdily pushes his economy 1 thoreau was then living at staten island as private tutor to the eldest son of mr. emerson's brother william. charles king newcomb 1853] thoreau. girls' schools 397 into houses and thinks it the false mark of the gentleman that he is to pay much for his food. he ought to pay little for his food. ice, — he must have ice! and it is true, that, for each artificial want that can be invented and added to the ponderous expense, there is new clapping of hands of newspaper editors and the donkey public. to put one more rock to be lifted betwixt a man and his true ends. if socrates were here, we could go and talk with him; but longfellow, we cannot go and talk with ; there is a palace, and servants, and a row of bottles of different coloured wines, and wine glasses, and fine coats. thought is nothing but the circulations made luminous. there's no solitary flower, and no solitary thought. send your girls to boarding-schools, to madame hicks, or to french ladies in new york, to learn address; that they may surmount the platform of these female bullies who make thewomen of fashion, and be quite able to confront them ever after, as possessed of their secret also. it will save an impressionable child many mortifications, and need not make a fashionist of her.' this advice in somewhat differing form is found in • behavior” (conduct of life, pp. 170, 171). 398 [age 50 journal the americans have the underdose. i find them not spiced with a quality. what poor mots, — what poor speeches, they make! 't is all like miss joanna's stories, wherein all the meaning has to be imputed. “o, if you could only have heard him say it!” “ say what?” “why, he said 'yes,' but with so much intelligence !” well, john adams said, “independence forever !” and sam adams said, “o, what a glorious morning is this !” and daniel webster said, “i still live,” and edward everett will say, when he comes to die, “ o dear!” and general cushing will say,“o my!” (and general butler will say, “damn!"),' and however brilliant, in the first and second telling, these speeches may be, they somehow lack the plutarch virility. [mr. emerson was glad to take excursions from home during the months of august and september, for, with his growing family and frequent guests, the time had come to enlarge the upper storey of his house by building a spacious chamber for his wife and himself over the parlor, sunny and with pleasant outlooks towards the village and walden woods; also he had a · this was an interpolation of many years later. 1853) cape cod 399 concealed “den” in the garret to secure absolute privacy for himself in stress of writing, or perhaps afford refuge to a fugitive slave.] ape cape cod, september 5. went to yarmouth sunday, 5th; to orleans monday, 6th; to nauset light on the back side of cape cod. collins, the keeper, told us he found obstinate resistance on cape cod to the project of building a lighthouse on this coast, as it would injure the wrecking business. he had to go to boston, and obtain the strong recommendation of the port society. from the high hill in the rear of higgins's, in orleans, i had a good view of the whole cape and the sea on both sides. the cape looks like one of the newfoundland banks just emerged, a huge tract of sand half-covered with poverty grass and beach grass, and for trees, abele and locust and plantations of pitch pine. some good oak, and in dennis and brewster were lately good trees for ship lumber, and they still are well wooded on the east side. but the view i speak of looked like emaciated orkneys, — mull, islay, and so forth,—made of salt dust, gravel, and fish bones. they say the wind makes the roads, and, as at nantucket, a large part of the real estate was 400 journal [age 50 freely moving back and forth in the air. i heard much of the coming railroad which is about to reach yarmouth and hyannis, and they hope will come to provincetown. i fancied the people were only waiting for the railroad to reach them in order to evacuate the country. for the stark nakedness of the country could not be exaggerated. but no; nothing was less true. they are all attached to what they call the soil. mr. collins had been as far as indiana; but, he said, hill on hill, he felt stified, and “longed for the cape, where he could see out.” and whilst i was fancying that they would gladly give away land to anybody that would come and live there, and be a neighbor: no, they said, all real estate had risen, all over the cape, and you could not buy land at less than fifty dollars per acre. and, in provincetown, a lot on the front street of forty feet square would cost five or six hundred dollars. still, i saw at the cape, as at nantucket, they are a little tender about your good opinion : for if a gentleman at breakfast says he don't like yarmouth, all real estate seems to them at once depreciated two or three per cent. they are very careful to give you directions what road you shall take from town to town; 1853] lion. women, roussel 401 but, as the country has the shape of a piece of tape, it is not easy to lose your way. for the same reason it behooves everybody who goes on to the cape to behave well, as he must stop on his return at all the same houses, unless he takes the packet at provincetown for boston, six hours in good weather, and a week in bad. the sand grinds the glass at nauset light, and soon makes it unfit for use. the sand grinds the tires of the wheels of the stage-coach. i found at yarmouth the deerberry, vaccinium stamineum; and at dennis, the chrysopsis. the arabs say that the lion's roar says, i, and the son of the woman, — abna, ou el ben mera. “nature, which could not foresee our civil arrangements, contented herself with making women aimables et légères, but with a certain facility, and lighthearted, because that sufficed to her views. the same interest which has wished that there should be a constant association between the sexes has also exacted of them sentiments more stable than those which nature had given them. be it as it may, it is on this tottering base that the edifice of society reposes; and it is not doubtful that we ought to give them 402 [age 50 journal credit for the virtue or the address with which they sustain it.” — roussel, apud grimm, part 3, vol. i. the one thing not to be forgiven to intellectual persons is that they believe in the ideas of others.' . .. “on ne se dégage pas des voies où les siècles vous ont engagés.” (de noailles.) you cannot free yourself from your times. “pendant que l'angleterre passait à la liberté avec un front sévère, la france courait au despotisme en riant.” — chateaubriand. people value thoughts, not truths; truth, not until it has passed through the mould of some man's mind, and so is a curiosity, and an individualism! but ideas as powers, they are not up to valuing. it occurred in the crowd of beauties on the pavé of broadway that we grow so experienced that we are dreadfully quick-sighted, and in the youngest face detect the wrinkles that shall be, see “fugitive slave law,” concord address (miscellanies, p. 217). 1853] · passional zoölogy 403 and the grey that hastens to discolour these meteor tresses. we cannot afford, then, to live long, or nature, which lives by illusions, will have disenchanted us too far for happiness. (from ho) [here follow many quotations from toussenel's passional zoölogy, of which a few are given.] september 8. “ the rhodian (the double) rose solved malthus's problem, — since it had said that a flower which becomes double is a flower that transforms its stamens into petals, and which, consequently, becomes barren by exuberance of sap and richness." “fecundity is curbed by surrounding all women with the delights of luxury, comprising the incentives to attractive labor.” “no public establishment in paris possesses a hall vast enough to contain the crowds of both sexes that would be drawn by the mere announcement of a course of passional chemistry, physics, or astronomy. i ask only lamartine's gift of speech, with the right of opening a course on passional botany. they would come from naples and stockholm to hear me.” con 10€ surro 404 journal [age 50 nature is a mistress of conversation. she does not preach through pumpkin stalks discourses on the value of clothing, but contents herself with sending a cold day, and putting down a buffalo or an angola goat, a few sheep, and a few cotton plants, within sight. ue horses. bayard, horse of renaud de montauban, which roland, nephew of charlemagne, tried to obtain, understood his master's speech as if he had been his son,beat the earth with his forefeet as if it had been a harp; ran away from charlemagne, and still in the forest of ardennes neighs loud and clear, to be heard all over france on st. john's day. how bayard mystified the emperor charlemagne, see revue des deux mondes (tome v, p. 312). arnaud de gascoigne's horse could at the age of one hundred years make one hundred leagues in a day without stopping and without blowing. on the whole, in the stories of the round table, the horses show rather more good sense and conduct than their riders. the horse marco polo, of raphael fabretti, the antiquary, stood still and pointed when he came near an antiquity.' see his master's life by 1 in the life of meissonier is given a story, vouched for by 1853) man and his portion 405 visconti, in biographie universelle. hallam, iv, 69. being once present at the creation, i saw that, from each man as he was formed, a piece of the clay of which he was made was taken, and set apart for him as goods or property; and it was allowed him to receive this in whatever form he desired, whether as wife, friend, son, daughter, or as house, land, warehouses, merchandizes, horses, libraries, gardens, ships. also he might have it now in one of these forms, and at his will it was converted into another. but because it was one and the same lump out of which all these were fashioned, and as that was the clay of his own body, all these things had one and the same taste and quality to him, and he died at last of ennui. what a rich and extraordinary genius is lord clarendon, the historian, yet he is obscure in the crowd of english writers. what englishman has idealism enough to lift the horizon of brass which shuts down like the painter himself, of his horse's recognizing the picturesque in places. 406 journal [age 50 an umbrella close around his body.' when did he ever pierce his fogs to see the awful spinners and weavers that spin and weave and cut so short his web of rank and money and politics, and interrogate the vital powers that make him man. since shakspeare, never one; and shakspeare only for amusement of the play house. the power of fate, the dynastic oppression of submind. natúre shows everything once without need of microscope or anatomical dissection. it does not need barometer to find the height of mountains. the line of snow is surer than the barometer; and the zones of plants, as the savin, the pine, the laureole odorante, vernal gentian, aconitum napellus, geum, linnæa borealis, and the various lichens and grasses, are all thermometers which cannot be deceived, and will not lie. they are instruments by the best maker. she shows the pila in mullein; the spirals in hyacinth; the vesicles in a chara; chromate in the “splendid sage.” she shows every function once in great bodies.” 1 a similar sentence and several that are here omitted are found in the chapter « literature" in english traits (pp. 254, 255). 2 a passage to the same purpose as the above is in “ country life" (natural history of intellect, p. 160). 1853) freedom. english mind 407 once i wished i might rehearse freedom's pæan in my verse, that the slave who caught the strain should throb until he snapt his chain. but the spirit said, not so;'... ine the english mind flowered in every faculty. in the age when europe awoke like a giant refreshed by sleep, when the gothic nations brought the robust brain of unsunned barbarism into the warm regions of the vine and olive of roman method and rule, the two forces of judaism and of greek genius were poured like sunlight and heat into it.the tables of their brain were like plates of iodine long kept in the dark [several pages torn out]. nature is admirable, and exists for the present hour, as well as for the immense cycle; and, whilst man is for eternity, for poetry, for love, in the journal the first trials for the poem freedom" and its final form are given at this place and fix its date. it should be said, however, that the two lines preceding the last line in the poems are not found here, and that the last line differs thus : right thou feelest, rashly do. 2 compare a passage to the same purpose, but less picturesquely expressed, in english traits (p. 235). 408 (age 50 journal yet he has a greek, an english, an american career, which masks effectually the ulterior purpose from ordinary eyes. all the authors are enchanted men; intoxicated, plainly, with that stray drop of nectar of idealism they have imbibed; bacon, rich with lustres and powers stolen somehow from the upper world, and inevitably wonderful to men; but he has this plunder of ideas, or this degree of fine madness, to no purpose : he does nothing with it: it leads him nowhere; he is a poor mean fellow all the while; and in fine examples, in milton, it is not much better. it is not yet blood, this drop of ichor that tingles in them, and cannot lift the whole man to the digestion and function of ichor, — that is, of godlike action.'... ifa divine physician could come and say, “ah, you are hurt, — you are bleeding to death, not out of your body, but, far worse, out of your mind. you that are reckoned the pink of amiable and discreet men,you are in a raging typhoid, already comatose, blind, and deaf. 1 this sentence and the rest of the paragraph are essentially given in “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, pp. 73, 74). 1853] range. creation's logic 409 all the worse that you do not know it. men run away from the smallpox. but see the smallpox of small society, — the vermin, the tapeworm of politics, and of trilling city life, is eating your vitals. — save yourself. i call you to renunciation of trifles, of display, of custom. i lead you to an upright and simple friend who knows what truth means. see that one noble person dwarfs a nation of underlings, makes the day beautiful, and himself venerable, and you shall not fear to wake in the morning." men have a greater range than we think; if a man knows a hundred men, he treats each according to each's nature, and renders dust to dust, and miracle to miracle. ebba hubbard is as sensible of the difference between wheeler and channing, as of the difference between apple and turnip, and this quite irrespective of their clothes or money. we want a higher logic to put us in training for the laws of creation. how does the step forward from one species to a higher species of an existing genus take place? the ass is not the parent of the horse ; no fish begets a bird. but the concurrence of new conditions necessitates v 410 journal (age 50 a new object in which those conditions meet and flower. when the hour is struck in onward nature, announcing that all is ready for the birth of higher form and nobler function, not one pair of parents, but the whole consenting system thrills, yearns, and produces. it is a favor. able aspect of planets and of elements. i think it wonderful, the beauty of the greeks as contrasted with the unbeautiful english nursery-stories, which, though now and then rarely admitting in their fable a natural fact, as of frost, or effects of spring, to gleam through, yet in the main are childish and insignificant, like blue beard or jack giant-killer, whilst every word of the greek is at once beautiful and also science. i think no man is insensible to the figures that adorn the pages of the almanac, — aries, taurus, gemini, etc., from the greek mythology. rest on your humanity, and it will supply you with strength and hope and vision for the day. solitude and the country, books, and openness, will feed you ; but go into the cityi am afraid there is no morning in chestnut street, it is full of rememberers, they shun each 10 1853] cæsar in britain 411 other's eyes, they are all wrinkled with memory of the tricks they have played, or mean to play, each other, of petty arts and aims all contracting and lowering their aspect and character. they have great need of fine clothes. i advise they must buy richer laces yet, if they wish to hide their deformities. don't spare money. cæsar offered to venus on his return to rome a corslet of british pearls. the romans sent to england no mean man, but him in whom the power of that empire culminated, — and he found in britain a man in natural power as good as himself, though not so well equipped and seconded. the britons of that day ran with painted bodies into swamps up to their necks, and had a receipt of temperance, long since lost in the island, of holding a morsel in their teeth for days, to resist hunger, no bigger than a bean. daguesseau was reading one day with the learned boivin i know not what greek poem; “ hâtons nous," he cried, — “si nous allions mourir avant d'avoir achevé ! ” power, new power, is the talisman and loadstone which only a soul seeks. it cares not if 412 journal (age 50 it do not yet appear in a talent, or it likes it better if it have no talent. new power suggests vast hopes native to the mind. it sets it on experimenting, it brings it into creative moods. it does not promise to pay bills or build my house or barn, but it assures new expansions to religion, philosophy, science, and poetry. the university wholly retrospective. milton, juvenal, homer and the rest are old cups of which one cannot drink without some loss and degradation. the happy youth drinks at the fountain.. a creator columbus is, and newton, and the astronomers, and mckay with his clipper. so is bull” with his new grape, and shakspeare. but now seldom or never it comes of good college education or having the grammar at the tongue's end. nature made nothing in vain, neither poisons nor passions; and crimes are not absolute, but circumstantial and related to a higher harmony. 1 ephraim bull, a neighbor of mr. emerson's, who by his intelligent efforts developed the concord grape from the wild (labrusca) species in a few generations, a great gift to the nation, but he died poor. 1853] alcott's expansion 413 alcott was here, a baker who bakes a half a dozen worlds as easily as the cook so many loaves: the most obstinate unitarian that ever existed. he only believes in unity. plato is dualist to him. preëxistence is as familiar and essential in his mind as hydrogen or sulphur in a chemist's laboratory. metachemistry, his philosophy might be called with some show of truth. he believes in cause and effect and comes out of such vast caverns up to the surface of conversation that he has to rub his eyes and look about him not to break the proprieties of this trifling world. he relies on nature forever— wise, omnific, thousand-handed nature, equal to every emergency, which can do very well without colleges, and if the latin and greek and algebra and art were in the parents, is sure it will be in the children without being pasted on the outside.' i mr. emerson, through the long years of their acquaintance, always said that he found more stimulus and elevation in private talk with mr. alcott than with any other man. in his public “ conversations” — mainly monologue — mr. alcott was less surely at his best, especially if a disputatious and unsympathetic person were present, for he was a seer and not a dialectician. this paragraph, without reference to alcott, however, is printed in “ celebration of intellect " (natural history of intellect, p. 128). 414 journal' (age 50 superlative. a head or face magnified loses its expression. alcott tells me that mr. hedge is to write an essay on the importance of a liturgy i propose to add an essay on the importance of a rattle in the throat. women. how difficult to deal with them. you must interfere continually to steer their talk or they will be sure, if they meet a button or a thimble, to run against it and forget all in the too powerful associations of the worktable and the pantry. can't keep it impersonal. can't keep it afloat in the stream. m . mother wit. dr. johnson, milton, chaucer, and burns had it. unless we had boswell, we should hardly know how to account for johnson's fame, his wit is so muffled and choked in his scholastic style. yet it animates that, and makes his opinions real. aunt mary has it, and can write scrap letters. who has it, need never write anything but scraps. henry thoreau has it. in this kingdom of illusion life is a dream, in 1853] thoreau. quotation 415 the language of the ancient, — we change only from bed to bed.'.... henry thoreau says he values only the man who goes directly to his needs; who, wanting wood, goes to the woods and brings it home; or to the river, and collects the drift, and brings it in his boat to his door, and burns it: not him who keeps shop, that he may buy wood. one is pleasing to reason and imagination; the other not. [here follows much that is printed in “quotation and originality” (letters and social aims, p. 197).] quotation. admirable mimicks have nothing of their own. and in every kind of parasite, when nature has finished an excellent sucking-pipe to tap another animal, the self-supplying organs wither and dwindle as being superfluous : “et quand ils cessent d'être le personnage qu'ils ont choisi, et qui vous amuse tant, ils deviennent insipides et tristes, parce qu'ils ne sont plus qu'eux.” — grimm, part 2, vol. i, p. 434. i i often need the device of ascribing my sentence to another, in order to give it weight. carlyle does so with teufelsdröckh. 1 see “ illusions " (conduct of life, p. 322). 416 journal [ace 50 “god save the king,' it seems, has been, at last, ascertained to have been composed by a man of the name of john bull in the time of james i.” moore's diary, vol. iv, p. 148. the english despair of the heart; thackeray does; seems to think god has made no allowance for it in his universe; so he renounces ideals and accepts london;—so thought elizabeth hoar, or the like of this. but i thought, how these antagonistic, bornés, japanning english, as they build birmingham everywhere, as they trample on nationalities to reproduce london and the londoner in europe, in asia, in america, so they feel and resent the hostility of ideas, of poetry, of religion,' ... the englishman sits there full of his own affairs. he has an oppressive personality and with the best faith in the world, speaking or silent, puts upon the company with the importance of his things. if you could open his eyes to the insignificance of oxford and london, peel and paxton, rothschild and manchester, on any true scale, you would shock him to the point of jeopardizing his human spirits and efficiency. i for the rest of the paragraph, see english traits (p. 160). 1853) poetry's decline. fact 417 english personality. i wonder what is that chemical element which so differences the englishman from the yankee. it sculptures his large head and bust, and gives the firm lines of strength and the repose of felt superiority. but the triumph of culture is to overpower nationality, by importing the flower of each country's genius into the humanity of a gentleman. poetry. what is called the revival of letters, or the letting-in of hebrew and of greek mind on the gothic brain, wrought this miracle, and produced the english inspiration, which culminated in shakspeare. for two centuries england was philosophic, religious, poetic: as that influence declined, it cooled common sense into materialism again, and lost the fine power of transition, of imagination, and unity; lost profoundness and connection. and a mind with this endowment, like coleridge, wordsworth, swedenborg, is not only ungenial, but unintelligible. shakspeare's transcendences are only pardoned for his perfect objectiveness. the english mind now is superstitious before facts, facts, they make a great ado about a truth. the oldest, mustiest formularies we expect from them, and find; no deep aperçu, no all-binding 418 (age 50 journal theory, no glimpse of distant relations, and the quoddam vinculum. there is poor-smell, and learned trifling, and locke instead of berkeley.' books. resources for a rainy day. read dryden's aurungzebe (see moore, diary, iv, 306). sir fulke greville's life of sir p. sidney. president hénault, abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de france. galiani: dialogues sur le commerce des blés. the meaning of the famous saying of jacobiº (and of mr. dean) is the fact that the poet sprains or strains himself by attempting too much; he tries to reach the people, instead of contenting himself with the temperate expression of what he knows. sing he must and should, but not ballads; sing, but for gods or demigods. he need not transform himself into punch and judy. a man must not be a proletary or breeder, but only by mere superfluity of his strength he begets messiahs. he relieves himself, and makes a world. i some sentences of the above entry are found in a different connection in english traits (p. 235). 2 “when a man has fully expressed his thought he has somewhat less possession of it." friedrich heinrich jacobi. 1853) sunset. algebraic x 419 solitude of mind endangered in america by too much demonstration. look at the sunset when you are distant half a mile from the village, and i fear you will forget your engagement to the tea-party. that tint has a dispersive power not only of memory, but of duty. but the city lives by remembering. the main question of any person whatever is, does he respect himself? then i have no option. the universe will respect him. mirabeau said of robespierre, “that man will go far, he believes what he says.” wn a hypothesis, or algebraic x, or unknown quantity, must be signified until the truth can be arrived at. we are made logical, and are sure the missing link is there, though latent. we use semblances of logic,' . . . expansion, warmth, power, belong to every truth. the poet knows the missing link at once, as the lapidary knows the true stone from glass and paste. i call those persons who can make a general remark, provided also they have an equal spirit, i see “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 10). 420 * journal [age 50 aristocrats. all the rest, in palaces or in lanes, are snobs, to use the vulgar phrase. thus picard, who knows how to measure a degree on the earth's surface; vauban, who knows how to make a river and the rain avail to make fountains at versailles; cuvier, who sees his thought classify the creation anew; geoffroy saint-hilaire, laplace, napoleon, i call nobles. all the grands seigneurs who prate after them are rabble. i call these fellows nobles because they know something originally of the world. if the sun were extinguished and the solar system deranged, they could begin to replace it. the town is the unit of the republic. the new england states found their constitutions on towns, and not on committees, which districting leads to and is. and thus are politics the school of the people, the game which every one of them learns to play. and therefore they are all skilful in california, or on robinson crusoe's island, instantly to erect a working government, as french and germans are not. in the western states and in new york and pennsylvania, the town system is not the base, and therefore the expenditure of the legislature is not economical, but prodigal. by district, or whatever throws 1853) saxon and latin. ideas 42 1 the election into hands of committees, men are elected, who could not get the votes of those to whom they are best known. i neglected to set down among the antagonisms of england, that of the language, which composes out of its saxon and latin threads a perpetual harmony. in all english rhetoric we use alternately a saxon and a roman word; often, two saxon, but never willingly or wisely two roman: e.g. “a popular body of four hundred men.” “ a correct and manly debater." mystic or theist never scared by any startling materialism. he knows the laws of gravitation and of repulsion are deaf to french talkers, be they never so witty. and it is characteristic of the teutonic mind to prefer the idea to the phenomenon, and of the celtic, to prefer the phenomenon to the idea. higher yet, shall i say, is it to prefer the idea or power to the thought that is, to the i because this love of saxon words was so strong in mr. emerson this passage is given, although the substance, quite differently expressed, is printed. he would never allow his children to use the word " commence” wbich they brought home from school. (see english traits, p. 235.) 422 journal (age 50 idea once individualized or domesticated in one man's mind, as shakspeare or plato. malthus existed to say, population outruns food: owen existed to say, “ given the circumstance, the man is given. i can educate a tiger”: swedenborg, that inner and outer correspond : fourier, that the destinies are proportioned to the attractions ; bentham, the greatest good of the greatest number. but what do you exist to say? inici wc we can do nothing without the shadow. the sun were insipid if the universe was not opaque.' ... there's more memory in the world than we allow for; other things remember, as well as you. gold always remembers how it was got, and curses or blesses according to the 'manner of its coming. ca i like to hear of any strength, and, as soon as they speak of the malignity of swift, we prick up our ears. i fear there is not strength enough in america that any body can be qualified as 1 for the rest of the paragraph, see « considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 255). 1853] a disciple's praise 423 malignant. pâles filles du nord, vous n'êtes pas mes sæurs.' seems to me, the plant man has more vigor, more means, in europe, and permits more absolute action. excellent x, if i could write a comedy, should be the hero. he came with german enthusiasm sparkling out of his black eyes, and miss somewhat of georgia wrote that, if ever angel spoke in man, it was he. he came up country and mrs. s. and miss w. were at his feet. j. was so affected by his eloquence that she could not speak to him. he complained and scolded to mrs. s. that j. would not be acquainted with him, that he could not be acquainted with her. well, at last they got acquainted, and he told j. that she was his ideal of woman, and came daily there. she made him cakes and dinners and warmed his feet, and sat up nights, and stayed at home sundays to make his shirts, and make him fine. one day he came home to concord, delighted with the notice of his lecture in the transcript, showing it to all ; fancied i it does not appear whence comes this line, but it is evidently the source, in « the romany girl," of pale northern girls, you scorn our race. (poems, p. 227.) 424 journal (age 50 that mr. r. or miss p. or even l. [in boston or cambridge] might have done it. could j. have any possible idea who had written it? “why, yes,” said the happy j., “i have some idea, — for i wrote it myself." x was aghast. “never breathe that you wrote it,” he gasped out with passionate solemnity, being infinitely mortified that no distinguished town-body had been found to trumpet his fame. was wendell holmes, when i offered to go to his lecture on wordsworth, said, “i entreat you not to go. i am forced to study effects. you and others may be able to combine popular effect with the exhibition of truths. i cannot. i am compelled to study effects.” the other day, henry thoreau was speaking to me about my lecture on the anglo-american, and regretting that whatever was written for a lecture, or whatever succeeded with the audience was bad, etc. i said, i am ambitious to write something which all can read, like robinson crusoe. and when i have written a paper or a book, i see with regret that it is not solid, with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody. henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures which only reached a few persons. well, 1853) thoreau posed. women 425 yesterday, he came here, and at supper edith, understanding that he was to lecture at the lyceum, sharply asked him, “ whether his lecture would be a nice interesting story, such as she wanted to hear, or whether it was of those old philosophical things that she did not care about?" henry instantly turned to her, and bethought himself, and i saw was trying to believe that he had matter that might fit edith and edward, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, if it was a good one for them. when some one offered agassiz a glass of water, he said that he did not know whether he had ever drank a glass of that liquid before he came to this country. women teach us how much! we wish to please them, and say something they will like to hear, and not weary them: and by often meeting them we gain practice and skill in this. vernm “such is the nature of modern governments that money is at once the most dangerous weapon and the strongest curb of despotism. the expenses of states exceeding always their reve426 (age 50 journal nues, they have a constant need of credit, which, subject itself to opinion, puts the potentate into dependence on those whom he rules. when money is wanted, it must be borrowed. but it is confidence which lends; force can do nothing, for money can hide: thus credit favors disorder; disorder kills credit; the same causes operate to make the people never so happy nor so unhappy as they should be.” — friedrich melchior grimm. the sciolist oration. the young sciolist learns to say, what is true in this is not new, and what is new is not true; and of spanish literature, that the only good book is that which shows the worthlessness of all the rest. english results. england an island famous for immortal laws and for sentiments of freedom which none can forget. “hume's history could be entitled, the history of english passions, by the human reason.” — cerutti. “the poet wounded,” says firdousi, “writes a satire, and it remains to the day of the resurrection." 1853) madam emerson's death 427 fate makes, say the turks, that a man should not believe his own eyes. [on the 16th of november, mr. emerson's mother — madam emerson, as she was usually called died; a lady of character and dignity, . combined with sweetness and piety. she had been forty-two years a widow, and had brought up her five sons who survived their infancy in such a manner as always to keep their devoted love and reverence. in a letter to rev. william h. furness, dated december 18, 1853, mr. emerson wrote:you speak of my mother. i cannot tell you how much my house has suffered by the loss of that one more room, one more home in it for me and each of us. mamma was made to live, and her death at eighty-five years took us by surprise, and my wife mourns so many undone things. there was something majestic in one of those old strong frames built to live so tranquilly, usefully, and kindly. the later generation seem to me to spend faster. but one . of these days we too shall be better than now. then, now, and ever, your affectionate waldo emerson. urns so 428 [age 50 journal to carlyle he wrote: “my mother died in my house, in november, who had lived with me all my life and kept her heart and mind clear, and her own until the end. it is very necessary that we should have mothers, we that read and write, to keep us from becoming paper. i had found that age did not make that she should die without causing me pain. in my journeying lately, when i think of home my heart is taken out.”] (from do) elizabeth hoar said, the reason why mother's chamber was always radiant was that the pure in heart shall see god: and she wished so much to show this fact to the frivolous little woman who pretended sympathy when she died. dr. frothingham told me that the latin verse which he appended to his obituary notice of my mother was one which he had read on the tomb of the wife of charlemagne, in a chapel at mayence, and it struck him as very tender. he had never seen it elsewhere:spiritus hæres sit patriæ quæ tristia nescit.' the poet cannot make his thought available 1 may her soul inherit the land which knows no sorrow. 1853] the poet. majorities 429 for a law in the statute-book, much less for a practical end in farming or trading. what then? -every thought is practical at last. let him comfort himself that this respects a larger legislation and larger economy than now obtain, and that, if he is faithful to it, it will introduce him to that better world of which it is the sure announcement. the majority. alas for the majority! that old inevitable dupe and victim. what a dreary iliad of woes it goes wailing and mad withal. some dog of a cleon or robespierre or douglas or butler' is always riding it to ruin. (from ho) [mr. emerson was writing for his course of the next winter a lecture called “france, or urbanity.” a great many quotations from french statesmen or authors follow, but a few of which are given.] [december.] france. god will have life to be real, we will be damned but it shall be theatrical. mirabeau wrote to lafayette, “vos grandes qualités ont besoin de mon impulsion; mon imthis last name is pencilled in later. 430 journal (age 50 pulsion a besoin de vos grandes qualités ... et vous ne voyez pas qu'il faut que vous m'épousiez, et me croyiez en raison de ce que vos stupides partisans m'ont plus décrié. ab! vous forfaites à votre destinée." at court, said mirabeau, they wish to find for their service, “ des êtres amphibies, qui, avec le talent d'un homme, eussent l'âme d'un laquais. ce qui les perdra irrémédiablement, c'est d'avoir peur des hommes, et de transporter toujours les petites repugnances et les frèles attraits d'un autre ordre des choses dans celui où ce qu'il y a de plus fort ne l'est pas encore assez." mirabeau's father described him as having derived from his fathers the gift of command, and of adding to it that terrible gift of familiarity. “eb quoi !” said mirabeau, “en nul pays du monde la balle ne viendra-t-elle donc au joueur!” the last billet of mirabeau to the comte de la marche, nine days before his death, ends with these words,“ o légère et trois fois légère nation!” notes for french lecture. nationality. true respect for learning and talent. napoleon inexhaustible as plutarch's heroes. every new book or trait or mot interesting. eve 1853] notes on france 431 french inconsequent, english logical. i find a secondary tone in everything written in the french journals. the national vanity appears. england is never out of mind. napoleon's devouring eye, before which nothing but reality could stand. french have gained so much. before the revolution women were harnessed in the team with animals, and felt the whip. (dumont apud de quincey.) the hopeless exclusion of the lower class, permitted only to offer their money on their knees, permitted only to die in the army; had no law, but chicane. now they have a code, and a french lawyer can tell what the statute is. rien en relief, was madame de geoffrin's motto. voilà qui est bien. grimm“ déteste la méthode. c'est la pédanterie des lettres ; ceux qui ne savent qu'arranger feraient aussi bien de rester en repos,” etc. “it is natural, the language of the most social people in the world; the language of the nation which speaks more than it thinks; a nation which needs to speak in order to think, and which thinks only to speak, ought to be the most dialoguing language. ... “i observe that the dominant character of 432 journal (age 50 the french still pierces. they are talkers, reasoners, jokers, by essence ; a bad picture gives rise to a good pamphlet. thus you shall speak better of the arts than you shall ever do in them. it will be found, at the end of the reckoning in some ages, that you will have reasoned best and best discussed what all other nations shall have best done. cherish, then, printing; it is your lot in the world.” — galiani. all europe was like a park to balzac where to meet his friends and admirers, — poland, bohemia, russia, italy, spain, sweden. “il y a dans la puissance des français, il y a dans leur caractère, il y a dans leur langue surtout, une certaine force, prosélytique, qui passe l'imagination. la nation entière n'est qu'une vaste propagande.” – de maistre. france. rabelais, montaigne, pascal, la fontaine, fénelon, molière, montesquieu, sand, béranger, de staël. “ tout est spectacle pour une telle ville, — même sa propre bumiliation.” — lamartine, paris, 31 mars, 1814. “une question d'égalité, en un mot : c'est sur ce conflit infiniment plus que sur la liberté à ja1853] france and england 433 mais inintelligible pour les français, qu'a porté et que reposera jusqu'à la fin, la révolution.” — mallet du pan. would you send a youth to learn christianity or ethics or heroism in france ? in england, they spend for comfort; in france, for pleasure; and the lighter-minded english go to france, or establish a little france in england; and the soberer french, the huguenot or huguenotish, make a little england around them in france. i find the french awakening to alarm on the manifest decay of the latin nations, before the prodigious growth of the saxon race. bonaparte said, “in twenty-five years the united states will write the treaties of europe"; and xavier raimond, in the revue des deux mondes, tries to rouse his countrymen to the fact that they have lost the world. of phillips, garrison, and others i have always the feeling that they may wake up some morning and find that they have made a capital mistake, and are not the persons they took themselves for. very dangerous is this thor434 journal (age 50 oughly social and related life, whether antagonistic or coöperative. in a lonely world, or a world with half a dozen inhabitants, these would find nothing to do. the first discovery i made of phillips was, that while i admired his eloquence, i had not the faintest wish to meet the man. he had only a platform-existence, and no personality. mere mouthpieces of a party ; take away the party and they shrivel and vanish. they are inestimable for workers on audiences; but for a private conversation, one to one, i much prefer to take my chance with that boy in the corner. the liberator is a scold. a sibyl is quite another thing. 1 the age has an engine, but no engineer. [lecturing meantime on“ the anglo-saxon” and “the anglo-american,” mr. emerson was, as time served, preparing his english traits, which, however, was not published until 1856. a great part of the journals vs and ho have been omitted as consisting of matter there printed.] 1853] reading 435 authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1853 simonides; lucan, pbarsalia; tacitus, germania; ossian; taliessin, and welsh triad, apud davies; llewarch hen, apud owen; alcuin; asser, life of king alfred; anglosaxon chronicle; firdousi ; sbab nameb; snorri sturlason, younger edda apud laing; giraldus cambrensis apud camden, britannia; henry of huntingdon, chronicle ; six old englisb chronicles (bohn); froissart, cbronicle; copernicus; sir thomas more; sir fulke greville, life of sidney; john bolland, acta sanctorum; sir kenelm digby, bodies and soules ; clarendon; jean picard ; la fontaine ; pascal; dryden, aurungzebe; leeuwenhoek; locke; vauban; richard verstegan, restauration des notions erronées concernant la tres noble et tres renommée nation anglaise; thomas ryme, fædera; defoe; montesquieu, causeries ; spence, anecdotes ; lord mansfield; hume; diderot; william shenstone apud mirabeau ; malesherbes; fried436 [age 50 journal rich melchior grimm, correspondance littéraire, etc. ; william gilpin, forest scenery and western tour; mallet, northern antiquities; cerutti, mémoire pour le peuple français ; sir philip francis (junius?); paley;mirabeau, correspondence with la marck; abbé galiani ; laplace; lord eldon, letters, apud twiss; sir nathaniel william wraxall, our own times ; thomas taylor ; burns; andré chenier ; samuel laing, heimskringla; mackintosh, history of england; malthus; chateaubriand ; saint-just, esprit de la révolution ; canning; cuvier; fourier ; geoffroy saint-hilaire ; jeffrey; luttrel, apud moore ; hallam; brougham; béranger; moore, diary; william spence; jean bonald; guizot; de quincey; palmerston ; peel; haydon; lamartine; thierry, norman conquest; lyell; michelet, histoire de france; balzac; dr. henry maccormac; j. j. ampère; henry taylor, notes from life ; de noailles, histoire de madame de maintenon ; sir joseph whitworth; richard owen ; william lloyd garrison; frederick h. hedge; sainte-beuve, causeries du lundi; horatio greenough, memorial of ; j. s. mill, arris ommerce 1953) reading 437 political economy ; abd-el-kader, apud daumas, les chevaux du sabara; guyot, earth and man; hénault, abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de france ; galiani, dialogues sur le commerce des blés; ! benjamin thorpe, northern mythology; twiss, life and correspondence of lord eldon ; mauvel, life of wellington ; dickens ; dr. charles t. jackson ; wendell phillips; a. j. downing, on gardening ; toussenel, passional zoology; clough ; seaman, progress of na. tions; ernest renan. journal lectures far and near seventh of march address on fugitive slave law neoplatonists england, her writers, judges and statesmen williamstown college address kansas-nebraska bill journal xlv 1854 (from. journals ho, do and 10) [mr. emerson seems to have given no course of lectures in boston in this year, but in january gave five lectures in philadelphia; i,“ norseman, or english influence in civilization ”; ii (?); iii, “poetry and english poetry” (much of this printed later as “poetry and imagination ” in letters and social aims); iv, “manners ” (?) or “behavior”; v,“ france, or urbanity.” an abstract of the last is given by mr. cabot in his memoir, vol. ii, appendix f, pp. 755-757. in the same month he lectured in new york city and in many towns in that state and in new jersey, and last in detroit. february ist found him in michigan, whence he went to lecture in chicago and its neighborhood, also in milwaukee and beloit, and, on his homeward way, in towns in new york.] (from ho) january, 1854. at jackson, michigan, mr. davis, i believe, a lawyer of detroit, said to me, on coming out 442 journal [age 50 of the lecture-room, “mr. emerson, i see that you never learned to write from any book.” mem. in autobiography, to write dr. gamaliel bradford's lines written at the bottom of my school-boy poem on “ solitude," dr. bradford being then usher in the latin school.' there is nobody in washington who can explain this nebraska business ’ to the people, — i mr. emerson set down in a special notebook the dates of the leading events of his life and that of his family, and also copied into it entries made during the years in the journals (most of them included in these volumes) that bore on his character and life's experiences. these were usually from his own point of view, sometimes from that of others. the passage he alludes to is as follows: “when i had written my poem on · solitude' for the annual exhibition at the boston latin school, in august, 1816 or 1817, dr. gamaliel bradford, who was usher in the school, asked me to show it to him. he wrote in pencil at the bottom these lines :welcome to our sacred hill, drink freely of apollo's rill, and claim the right the god to genius gave to sip divine castalia's consecrated wave." 2 in this month stephen a. douglas, chairman of the senate committee on territories, reported a bill for the organization of two new territories, kansas and nebraska. by this bill the missouri compromise bill prohibiting slavery north of latitude 36° 30' was repealeds and the people of these new territories were free to determine whether or not slavery should ma 1854) nebraska. wisconsin 443 nobody of weight. and nobody of any importance on the bad side. it is only done by douglas and his accomplices by calculation on the brutal ignorance of the people, upon the wretched masses of pennsylvania, indiana, illinois, kentucky, and so on, people who can't read or know anything beyond what the village democrat tells them. but what effrontery it required to fly in the face of what was supposed settled law, and how it shows that we have no guards whatever, that there is no proposition whatever, that is too audacious to be offered us by the southerner. i found, in wisconsin, that the world was laid down in large lots. the member of congress there said that, up in the pine country, the trees were so large, and so many of them, that a man could not walk in the forest, and it was necessary to wade up the streams. dr. welsh at la salle told me that the prairie grass there was over the tops of carriages, or higher than be permitted there. great excitement prevailed during this year on this subject and the bill was finally passed. of this measure mr. emerson, writing to carlyle, said, “ america is growing furiously, town and state; new kansas, new nebraska looming up in these days, vicious politicians seething a wretched destiny for them already at washington. the politicians shall be sodden, the states escape, please god!” 444 journal (age 50 the head of a man riding on horseback, so that really a man not accustomed to the prairie could easily get lost in the grass ! [of this trip mr. emerson, in a letter to carlyle, said, “i went out northwest to great countries which i had not visited before ; rode one day — fault of broken railroads — in a sleigh, sixty-five miles through the snow, by lake michigan (seeing how prairies and oak-openings look in winter) to reach milwaukee. “the world there was done up in larger lots,' as a settler told me. the farmer, as he is now a colonist and has drawn from his local necessities great stores of energy, is interesting and makes the heroic age for wisconsin. he lives on venison and quails. i was made much of as the only man of the pen within five hundred miles, and by rarity worth more than venison and quails."] metres. i amuse myself often, as i walk, with humming the rhythm of the decasyllabic quatrain,... or other rhythms,'... i find a wonderful charm, heroic, and especially deeply pathetic or plaintive in cadences, and say to myself, ah, i see “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, p. 46). 1854) knowledge. realism 445 happy! if one could fill these small measures with words approaching to the power of these beats! the man thinks he can know this or that, by words and writing. it can only be known or done organically. he must plunge into the universe, and live in its forms, sink to rise. none any work can frame unless himself become the same. the first men saw heavens and earths, saw noble instruments of noble souls; we see railroads, banks, and mills. and we pity their poverty. there was as much creative force then as now, but it made globes instead of waterclosets. each sees what he makes. realism. we shall pass for what we are. do not fear to die because you have not done your task. whenever a noble soul comes, the audience awaits. and he is not judged by his performance, but by the spirit of his performance. ... when you hide something we see that you hide something and usually see what you hide. there is always admittance for you to the great, whispered the muse, for the nobles wish to be more noble. 446 lage 50 journal there are no finalities in nature. everything is streaming. the torricellian tube was thought to have made a vacuum ; but no; over the mercury is the vapor of mercury, and the mysterious ether too enters as readily through the pores of glass as through chimney of a volcano.' if i come to stoppages, it is i that am wanting. to the wise navigator, beyond even the polar ice is the polynia, or open water,-a vast expanse. realism in literature. i have no fear but that the reality i love will yet exist in literature. i do not go to any pope or president for my list of books. i read what i like. i learn what i do not already know. only those above me can give me this. they also do as i, read only such as know more than they : thus we all depend at last on the few heads or the one head that is nearest to the stars, nearest to the fountains of all science, and knowledge runs steadily down from class to class down to the lowest people, from the highest, as water does. the simplest forms of botany, as the lichens, are alike all over the globe: the lichens of sweden and brazil and massachusetts are the same. so i compare “ illusions” (conduct of life, p. 320). 1854) england's two nations 447 is it with the simple and grand characters among men, they do not hold of climate : and so of the grand ideas of religion and morals; viasa and swedenborg and pythagoras see the same thing. would you know a man's thoughts, — look at the circle of his friends, and you know all he likes to think of. well, is the life of the boston patrician so desirable, when you see the graceful fools who make all his company? 'tis certain, as so many writers agree, there are two nations in england, but it is not the poor and the rich, as disraeli the jew very nationally thinks; nor normans and saxons, as turner believes. these are each always becoming the other; but there the two complexions or two styles of mind, one, the practical finality class; and the other, the perceptive class with minds open as the sea, apprehensive, faithful, and always gathering and transmitting down to the whole chain of inferior intelligences the heavenly fluid. [mr. emerson, at the call of the anti-slavery society of new york, made an address there on the anniversary of webster's seventh of march speech in congress in 1850 (in which he aban448 (age 50 journal doned the wilmot proviso against the encroachment of slavery and justified the fugitive slave law), his “fall,” as the friends of freedom in their bitter sorrow called it. (see miscellanies. p. 215, and whittier's poem “ichabod.") after his return to concord he wrote to a friend, march 14th. i came home near three weeks ago, with good hope to write a plea for freedom addressed to my set; which, of course, like a divinity collegian's first sermon, was to exhaust the subject and moral science generally; but i fared much as these young gentlemen do, got no answer to my passionate queries — nothing but the echo of my own cries, and had to carry to new york a makeshift instead of an oracle. yet i am still so foolish as to believe again that the thing i wished can be done, and i shall not cease to try after a time.] swe (from do) at new york tabernacle, on the 7th march, i saw the great audience with dismay, and told the bragging secretary that i was most thankful to those who stayed at home; every auditor was a new affliction, and if all had stayed away, s 1854) majority. wealth 449 by rain, or preoccupation, i had been best pleased. majority. alas for the majority, that old, inevitable dupe and victim. what a dreary iliad of woes it goes wailing and mad withal. some dog of a cleon or robespierre or douglas is always riding it to ruin. culture teaches to omit the unnecessary word and to say the greatest things in the simplest way. “ le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.” the lesson of these days is the vulgarity of wealth. we know that wealth will vote for the same thing which the worst and meanest of the people vote for. wealth will vote for rum, will vote for tyranny, will vote for slavery, will vote against the ballot, will vote against international copyright, will vote against schools, colleges, or any high direction of public money. plainly boston does not wish liberty, and can only be pushed and tricked into a rescue of a slave. its attitude as loving liberty is affected and theatrical. do not then force it to assume a false position which it will not maintain. rather let the facts appear, and leave it to the natural 450 journal (age 50 aggressions and familiarities of the beast it loves, until it gets well bitten and torn by the dear wolf; perchance it may not be too late to turn and kill its deceiver. the invisible gas that we breathe in this room we know, if pent, has an elasticity that will lift the appalachian range as easily as a scrap of down; and a thought carries nations of men and ages of time on its shoulders. henry thoreau charged blake, if he could not do hard tasks, to take the soft ones, and when he liked anything, if it was only a picture or a tune, to stay by it, find out what he liked, and draw that sense or meaning out of it, and do that: harden it, somehow, and make it his own. blake thought and thought on this, and wrote afterwards to henry, that he had got his first glimpse of heaven. henry was a good physician. (from io) ah yet, though all the world forsake, tho' fortune clip my wings, i will not cramp my heart, nor take half-views of men and things. let whig and tory stir their blood, 1854) tennyson. plotinus 451 there must be stormy weather ; but for some true result of good all parties work together. this whole wide earth of light and shade comes out a perfect round. · tennyson. science. “in the government of states the power of science makes part of the science of power.” — napoleon. plotinus did not hastily disclose to every one the syllogistic necessities which were latent in his discourse. “i endeavored to show,” says porphyry, “that intellections are external to intellect.” [the following sentences are all from plotinus.] “ all the gods are venerable and beautiful, and their beauty is immense.” “nothing that is truly beautiful externally, is internally deformed.” of intellect. “it is ours when we use it, but not ours when we do not use it.” 452 journal (age 50 “necessity is in intellect, but persuasion in soul.” “ intellect is not at all in want of another life, or of other things.” “god is not external to any one, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that he is so.” the existence of evil and malignant men does not depend on themselves or on men; it indicates the virulence that still remains uncured in the universe, uncured and corrupting, and hurling out these pestilent rats and tigers, and men rat-like and wolf-like. • synesius said, “the calamities of nations are the banquets of evil dæmons.” they hurl out, now a soldier, now a jesuit, and now an editor, a glozing democrat, as an instrument of the evil which they inflict on mankind. to the rapping tables, i say, as percy to his kate, — i well believe thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, and so far will i trust thee, gentle (wood). an race nea the human race are a near-sighted people. we can see well into the past; we can see well see 453 1854) to-day. art into the dark ages ; we can guess shrewdly into the future. every man forms some probable sketch of the politics and mechanics and morals to which men tend. but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is to-day. see in evelyn's diary (vol. i, p. 147) the story of the unquenchable lamp found in a sepulchre in the time of paul iii. “the true and mature spirit of the age always elects an advocate who does not look backward with longing eyes, and who always, as the world thinks, arises an hour too soon.” wall.' “ nature herself is to be imitated, not an artist,” said eupompus to lysippus. “excellence is thy aim.” (quoted by mr. wall from vasari.) ut pictura, poesis. “ painting is silent poetry; poetry, speaking painting,” is ascribed to simonides. 1 william wall, of new bedford, an artist often referred to in mr. emerson's journal of 1833 as a helpful friend in italy. he painted the copy of the three fates (then ascribed to michael angelo) which hangs in mr. emerson's study. 454 journal (age 50 don hallam. hallam leaves out all those writers i read. his latimer is not the good bishop, but i know not what writer of latin. giordano bruno, behmen, van helmont, digby, lord herbert, george herbert, henry more, swedenborg, in vain you look in his pages for adequate mention of these men, for whose sake i want a history of literature: all these he passes, or names them for something else than their real merit, namely, their originality and faithful striving to write a line of the real history of the world." the englishman is with difficulty ideal.'... shakspeare even is so exact, and surrendered on the whole to the tastes of an audience, and so far from the world-building freedom and simplicity of the oriental sages. william law deals with english method, tries to make the wild inspirations of behmen grind a barrel organ. thomas taylor masquerades as alexandrian greek. greaves and lane: tried hard to be spiri a few pages later there is a more favorable account of hallam. compare also what is said of him in english traits, p. 245. 2 compare english traits, p. 252. 3 mr. alcott's admirers and friends, referred to in earlier journals. 1854) browning. tennyson 455 itualists, but the english coat was too strait for them. browning is ingenious. tennyson is the more public soul, walks on the ecliptic road, the path of gods and souls, and what he says is the expression of his contemporaries. like burke, or mirabeau, he says better than all men think. like these men, he is content to think and speak a sort of king's speech, embodying the sense of well-bred successful men, and by no means of the best and highest men : he speaks the sense of the day, and not the sense of grand men, the sense of the first class, identical in all ages. but for poetic expression, it is plain that now and then a man hits, by the health of his sensibility, the right key, and so speaks that every body around him or after him, aiming to talk of and to the times, is forced to quote him, or falls inevitably into his manner and phrase. it is like mr. whitworth's famous dividing-machine, which can divide or mark off a metallic bar with mathematical precision to the millionth of an inch. means dus sir christopher wren said, “ bernini showed me on five little pieces of paper his façade of the louvre. i would have given my skin for a 456 journal (age 50 copy of it.” louis xiv, however, did not build it, but accepted another plan. shall we judge the country by the majority or by the minority ? certainly, by the minority. the mass are animal, in state of pupilage, and nearer the chimpanzee. we are used as brute atoms, until we think. then we instantly use self-control, and control others. in astronomy, vast distance; but we never go into a foreign system.'... of reading. i once interpreted the law of adrastia,“ that he who had any truth should be safe from harm until another period,” as pronounced of originators. but i have discovered that the profound satisfactions — which i take to be the sentence of adrastia itself, belong to the truth received from another soul; come to us in reading, as well as in thinking. 'tis curious that one should owe such fine things to bonaparte. but there has been no better critic even literary critic — in these days, and carlyle must measure his pretensions not i the passage is printed in natural history of intellect, p. 7. 1854) napoleon as critic 457 by jeffrey or mackintosh, not even by coleridge or goethe, but by bonaparte. the best example i think of, at this moment, of bonaparte's is contained in causeries du lundi, vol. 8, p. 310. “ benjamin constant a fait une tragédie et une poétique. ces gens-là veulent écrire, et n'ont pas fait les premières études de littérature. qu'il lise les poétiques, celle d' aristote. ce n'est pas arbitrairement que la tragédie borne l'action à vingt quatre beures; c'est qu'elle prend les passions à leur maximum, à leur plus baut degré d'intensité, à ce point où il ne leur est possible ni de souffrir de distraction, ni de supporter une plus longue durée. il veut qu'on mange dans l'action : il s'agit bien de pareilles choses: quand l'action commence, les acteurs sont en émoi; au troisième acte, ils sont en sueur, tout en nage au dernier.” man is as his credence. swedenborg saw gravitation to be only an external of the irresistible attractions of affection and faith. realism. i never take them as theists, or as spiritualists, because they say they are; but the frame of their thought is determined by their credence: and, if you listen wisely, you will hear 458 (age 50 journal in their very oration on deity the confession of a stiff and indigent anthropomorphism. what they say about spiritualism is all copyslip piety. those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.' ... do you say that to man on horseback it makes no difference whether he believes that body makes soul, or, that soul makes body. o, but the difference is vast: in the better case, he believes that man and horse and nature exist to the highest end, to the highest use only, and not to foppery at all. the believer always feels himself held up by certain eternal threads which spin and hold from deity down, whilst the skeptic class is always peeping after his underpinning. drink, hear my counsel, my son, that the world fret thee not. though the heart bleed, let thy lips laugh, like the wine cup; is thy soul hurt, yet dance with the viol-strings : i see « fortune of the republic” (miscellanies, p. 523). 1854) hafiz. public opinion 459 thou learnest no secret, until thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge comes. hafiz, ii, 71. what's the use of telegraph ? what of newspapers ? (what of waiting to know what the convention in ohio, what that in michigan, is ready to do?) to know how men feel in wisconsin, in illinois, in minnesota, i wait for no mails, i read no telegraphs. i ask my own heart. if those men are made as i am, if they breathe the same air, eat the same wheator corn-bread, have wives and children, i know their resentment will boil at this legislation. i know it will boil until this wrong is righted. the interest of labor, the self-respect of mankind, that engages man not to be to man a wolf, secures their everlasting hostility to this shame. “it is one of the traits of a noble citizen, to be able to see one layer of public opinion through another; or, if he do not see it, to trust in god that it must be there, and act accordingly.” — lieber. england. the women have no vanity. the english wish that none but opulent men should represent them. 460 (age 50 journal dumont contrasts the reserve approaching timidity of the englishman with the self-confidence of the french. if a hundred persons were stopped in the streets at london, and as many at paris, and each individual invited to undertake the government, ninety-nine would accept the offer at paris, and ninety-nine refuse it at london. [mr. emerson enjoyed the following anecdote of an encounter between the president of the fitchburg railroad and an irish tracklayer whom he tried to correct.] whittemore. you must dig these sleepers out so and so. paddy. i shall do no such thing. w bittemore. but you must and shall. paddy. who the devil are you? w bittemore. i am mr. whittemore, the president of this road. paddy. you mr. whittemore! you go to hell ! wbittemore. my friend, that's the last place i wish to go to. paddy. and it's the last place you will go to. hallam is a proof of the english prowess oevo co 1854] hallam's history 461 to-day. a good mathematician, the historian of the middle ages, and of english liberty, he has written this history of european literature for three centuries. a vast performance attempting a judgment of every book. he has not genius, but has a candid mind : the englishman is too apparent, the judgments are all dated from london, and that expansive element which creates literature is steadily denied. plato is resisted, and giordano bruno, behmen, swedenborg, donne. the quakers or whosoever contains the seed of liberty, power, and truth is under ban. yet he lifts himself to own better than almost any the greatness of shakspeare ; and he shows so much more power of appreciating milton than johnson, and shows such true gentlemanlike and loving esteem for good books, that i respect him. shall i say that i often find a nearer coincidence, and find my own opinions and criticisms anticipated ? but at last,“ talis cum sis, utinam noster esses," i regret to have all this learning and worth throw a birmingham ballot, to see england go as by gravitation in her best and noblest sons always for materialism. mackintosh, jeffrey, southey, hallam -the last the best vote inevitably for church and state. za 462 journal (age 50 “is truth ever barren? ” then do not question the utility of the lovers of ethical or metaphysical laws. what a notable green-grocer was spoiled to make macaulay ! solitude. now and then a man exquisitely made can and must live alone; but coop up most men, and you undo them. the king lived and eat in hall, with men, and understood men, said selden. in democratia, tot possunt esse nerones quot sunt oratores qui populo adulantur. simul plures sunt in democratia, et quotidie novi suboriuntur. hobbes. “ sans la sécurité, il n'y a point de liberté.” “ le premier consul n'a en besoin que de ministres qui l'entendissent, jamais de ministres qui le suppléassent. “il n'est pas un bomme de quelque mérite qui ne préférât, près de bonaparte l'emploi qui occupe sous ces yeux, à la grandeur qui en éloigne; et qui, pour prix d'un long et pénible travail, ne se sentit mieux récompensé par un travail nouveau, que par le plus bonorable loisir.” — roederer. sous 1854) carlyle. continuity 463 bonaparte said, “j'ai plus d'esprit. et que me fait votre esprit ? c'est l'esprit de la chose, qu'il me faut. ... “moi, je sais toujours ma position. j'ai toujours présents mes états de situation. je n'ai pas de mémoire pour retenir un vers alexandrin, mais je n'oublie pas une syllable de mes états de situation. je sais toujours la position de mes troupes.” england makes what a step from dr. johnson to carlyle ! what wealth of thought and science, what expansion of views and profounder resources does the genius and performance of this last imply! if she can make another step as large, what new ages open! may. if minerva offered me a gift and an option, i would say give me continuity. i am tired of scraps. i do not wish to be a literary or intellectual chiffonier. away with this jew's ragbag of ends and tufts of brocade, velvet, and cloth-of-gold; let me spin some yards or miles of helpful twine, a clew to lead to one kingly truth, a cord to bind wholesome and belonging facts. the asmodæan feat be mine to spin my sand heaps into twine. 464 journal [age 50 change your front. england does not wish revolution or to befriend radicals. therefore you say, england must fall, because its moderate, mixed aristocratico-liberal or finality politics will putitin antagonism with the republicanism when that comes in. yes, but england has many moods, a war-class as well as nobles and merchants. it begun with poverty and piracy and trade, and has always those elements latent, as well as gold coaches and heraldry. it has only to let its fops and bankers succumb for a time, and its sailors, ploughmen, and bullies fall to the front. it will prove a stout buccaneer again, and weather the storm. england can only fall by suicide. english, the best of actual nations, and so you see the poor best you have yet got. the reason why you visit england, is, as the epitome of modern times, and the rome of today. i think the english have a certain solidarity ; not an unaccountable sprinkling of great men here in the midst of a population of dunces, not a talent for this or that thing, as an idiot is skilful sometimes in bees or in herbs, but what they 1854) english thought 465 have learned they record and incorporate, and have multitudes sufficiently taught to keep and use it. what newton knew is now possessed by the corps of astronomers at greenwich and slough and edinburgh and glasgow. hutton, herschel, harvey, hooke, dalton, hunter, hobbes, burke, berkeley, bentham were men of ideas. [here follow passages on english “ solidarity” printed in english traits, and, as illustrations, anecdotes and sayings of nelson drawn probably from southey's biography.] my englishman said, “o, it is very healthy there. they have quantities of children, and all that sort of thing." i read that, in the gardens of heaven, when the children came, the beds of flowers assumed an unusual splendor, — “at their entrance seemed to express joy by their increasing splendor.” [here follow lines later used in “may-day" (see poems, pp. 173, 174).] 466 (age 50 journal as if time brought a new relay of shining maidens every may, and summer came to ripen maids to a beauty that not fades. those who painted angels and nativities and descents from the cross, were also writing biographies and satires, though they knew it not. u nor we affirm and affirm, but neither you nor i know the value of what we say. the history of humanity is no hopping squib, , but all its discoveries in science, religion, and art are consecutive and correlated, every discovery leading to a new discovery. good out of evil. he that roars for liberty faster binds the tyrant's power; and the tyrant's cruel glee forces on the freer hour. fill the can, and fill the cup, all the windy ways of men are but dust that rises up, and is lightly laid again. tennyson. 1854) thoreau. gold. virgin 467 the truth that aies the flowing can will haunt the vacant cup. tennyson. thoreau thinks 't is immoral to dig gold in california ; immoral to leave creating value, and go to augmenting the representative of value, and so altering and diminishing real value, and, that, of course, the fraud will appear. i conceive that work to be as innocent as any other speculating. every man should do what he can; and he was created to augment some real value, and not for a speculator. when he leaves or postpones (as most men do) his proper work, and adopts some short or cunning method, as of watching markets, or farming in any manner the ignorance of people, as, in buying by the acre to sell by the foot, he is fraudulent, he is malefactor, so far; and is bringing society to bankruptcy. but nature watches over all this, too, and turns this malfaisance to some good.'.... the world is divided on the fame of the virgin mary. the catholics call her“ mother of god,” the skeptics think her the natural mother of an 1 the rest of the paragraph is found in “ considerations by the way” (conduct of life), pp. 255, 256. 468 (age 50 journal admirable child. but the last agree with the first in hailing the moral perfections of his character, and the immense benefit his life has exerted and exerts. in england we are treading in the footmarks of alfred, of bacon, of shakspeare, of newton, of milton, of raleigh, of nelson, of more, of whatever is sublime in thought or in determination. the credit of all the judges on earth stands on the probity and common sense shown by a few judges in their decisions. alfred judges wisely; coke, bracton, more; lord mansfield, judge parsons, judge marshall, use original sense and mother wit; and all mankind are impressed with the beauty and splendor of this office, and hundreds of mediocre judges who never dare use original power, but govern themselves by precedent, only live in safety and credit on the merits of these few. piety and theology too have but few fountains; and all the arts. proclus thinks that the pythian oracle concerning socrates meant that “not he who pos1854) duty. judges. romilly 469 sesses scientific knowledge, but the good alone possesses an exempt transcendency”; that is, he had the sense not to be “a man of information," such as charles lamb dreaded. i am here to represent humanity: it is by no means necessary that i should live, but it is by all means necessary that i should act rightly. if there is danger, i must face it. i tremble. what of that? so did he who said, “it is my body trembles, out of knowing into what dangers my spirit will carry it.” cromwell's english judges sent to scotland administered justice better than ever before or since. the old scotch judge said, “there was no great merit in their impartiality, — they were a kinless pack.” english antagonism, or two nations. side by side, the fierce aristocracy conserves, and the man of equity and mercy reforms; eldon and romilly; the king and clarkson. romilly a glorious minority in his age. an example he of the domestic englishman. he could not sustain the loss of his wife, and killed himself. he gave the real reason when he re470 journal [age 50 inic fused an offered seat in parliament, or at a public dinner. his religion on the same low footing as the rest, he thanks god for his money and his social position, like pepys. dr. parr is no sentimentalist and knows the full value of the silver he stoutly gives. they are not dodgers nor dough-faces. yet the votes on romilly's bills show strong wickedness. seven bishops vote the inhumanities, just as the dignified clergy here uniformly cast a dastardly vote. it does seem as if a vow of silence coupled with systematic lessons might teach women the outline and new direction of the philosopher, but they give themselves no leisure to hear; they are impatient to talk. [on august 15th mr. emerson delivered an address, at williams college (williamstown, mass.), on the invitation of the adelphi union, on his favourite subject for such occasions, the privilege and the duty of the scholar. matter was probably drawn from this address for “the scholar” and “ the man of letters ” (lectures and biographical sketches), and many leaves are torn out of this journal which probably did duty 18541 williamstown address 471 on that occasion when there was not time to copy them. what follows remained among mr. emerson's manuscripts.] the scholars are an organic caste or class in the state. men toil and sweat, earn money, save, consent to servile compliance, all to raise themselves out of the necessity of being menial and overborne. for this they educate their children to expiate their own shortcomings. art, libraries, colleges, churches, attest the respect to what is ulterior, — to theism, to thought, which superexist by the same elemental necessity as flame above fire. our anglo-saxon society is a great industrial corporation. it sees very well the rules indispensable to success. you must make trade everything. trade is not to know friends, or wife, or child, or country. but this walking ledger knows that though he, poor fellow, has put off his royal robes, somewhere the noble humanity survives, and this consoles him for the brevity and meanness of his streetlife. he has not been able to hide from himself that this devotion to means is an absurdity; is, for a livelihood, to defeat the ends of living. and it is out of the wish to preserve sanity, to establish the minor propositions without throw472 (age 50 journal ing overboard the major proposition, how not to lose the troop, in the care for the baggage, that he has said, “ let there be schools, a clergy, art, music, poetry, the college.” . but if the youth, looking over the college wall at the houses and the lives of the founders, make the mistake of imitating them, they may well say, “we paid you that you might not be a merchant. we bought and sold that you might not buy and sell, but reveal the reason of trade. we did not want apes of us, but guides and commanders.” this atheism of the priest, this prose in the poet, this cowardice and succumbing before material greatness is a treason one knows not how to excuse. let the scholar stand by his order. i wish the college not to make you rich or great, but to show you that the material pomps and possessions, that all the feats of our civility, were the thoughts of good heads. the shopkeeper's yardstick is measured from a degree of the meridian. all powers by which a man lays his hand on those advantages are intellectual; it is thoughts that make men great and strong; the material results are bubbles, filled only and coloured by this divine air. but this great ocean which in itself is always equal and full, in regard to men, 1854) scholars responsible 473 ebbs and flows. now for us it is in ebb. it is the vulgarity of this country — it came to us, with commerce, out of england — to believe that naked wealth, unrelieved by any use or design, is merit. who is accountable for this materialism? who but the scholars? when the poets do not believe in their own poetry, how should the bats and the swine? the world is always as bad as it dares to be, and if the majority are evil it is because the minority are not good. if the heathen rage, it is because the christians doubt. people wish to be amused, and they summon a lecturer or a poet to read to them for an hour; and so they do with a priest. they want leaders : intellect is the thread on which all their worldly prosperity is strung. yet i speak badly for the scholar if i seem to limit myself to secular and outward benefit. all that is urged by the saint for the superiority of faith over works is as truly urged for the highest state of intellectual perception over any performance. i, too, am an american and value practical ability. i delight in people who can do things, i prize talent, — perhaps no man more. but i think of the wind, and not of the weathercocks. 474 journal (age 50 [the following paragraph and others scattered through this part of the journal were very possibly notes from the address.] pythagoras deserves his fame with scholars, because we never heard the severity of literary discipline but from him. the severity of military discipline is familiar, and is justified by men's easy belief in the reality of those values it subserves. severity of mechanical toil we understand, seven years' apprenticeship, and twelve hours a day. but literary toil — so few men have literary faculty, that these few are not sustained by the expectation and loyalty of the community, and held to the most severe of disciplines proper to the highest of arts. in law is severity of teaching. plato, what a school had he! what wealth of perception in plotinus, proclus, jamblichus, porphyry, synesius. there is no meter of mind whereon readily, as on our thermometer, we may say he had 10°, 20°, 100°. vo french. heine thinks the office of the french language to test the sense that is in any philosophy or science. translate it into french, and 1854) english whim. slavery 475 you dispel instantly all the smoke and sorcery, and it passes for what it is. english whim. i admire as proof of their plenteousness of nature, the perpetual fun of antagonism. they are lions to fight, but it is for some old mummy of obsolete ages. claverhouse, a smooth fop, slashes like a steam-engine, and lord nelson is a little boy captain, of the most absurd appearance. mr. woodward, at a loss what to attack, writes against the lord's prayer. the most daring dragons in the universe, the island abounds in old women in men's clothes screaming like seasick females in a rough sea. the fathers made the blunder in the convention in the ordinance of 10 july, 1787, to adopt population as basis of representation, and count only three fifths of the slaves, and to concede the reclamation of fugitive slaves for the consideration of the prohibition that “there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said (northwest) territory, unless in punishment of crimes.” the bed of the ohio river was the line agreed on east of the mississippi. in 1820 when new territory west of the mississippi was to be dealt with, no such natural line offered; 476 [age 50 journal and a parallel of latitude was adopted, and 36°30' n. was agreed on as equitable. the fathers made the fatal blunder in agreeing to this false basis of representation, and to this criminal complicity of restoring fugitive slaves: and the splendor of the bribe, namely, the magnificent prosperity of america from 1787, is their excuse before god and men, for the crime. they ought never to have passed the ordinance. they ought to have refused it at the risk of making no union; and, if no solution could be had, it would have been better that two nations, one free and one slave-holding, should have started into existence at once. the bribe, if they foresaw the prosperity we have seen, was one to dazzle common men, and i do not wonder that most men now excuse and applaud it. but crime brings punishment, always so much crime, so much ruin : a little crime a minor penalty; a great crime, a great ruin; and now, after sixty years, the poison has crept into every vein and every artery of the state. our policy is too low. a high, true, abstract policy, a law of equity resting on love of men, does not provoke blind fury, but respect, and pause, and conviction, and tears of love and gratitude. the narrow, tricksy, time-serving policy 1854) devotion. the age. cant 477 is met by the like trick and cant, and is hated and resisted. william penn and clarkson, william jay and gerritt smith, and each partisan abolitionist, as fast as he is seen to be rooted in an idea of the human mind, and to have come into the world pledged to spend and be spent for something not selfish, not geographical, but human and divine, has the respect and tears of gratitude of mankind. this age is swedenborg's. i have said the ideas of the age so shine that even the nightmares, as they go, can see them. it is notable that all the rappers and mesmerists agree in a subjective religion; all agree that the departing human soul finds such a world as it left; sees and associates and acts according to what it is educated to be: repudiate the hebrew ideas, and embrace the subjective philosophy of the saxons, that the soul makes its own world. cant. we only use different names ; he calls it attar of rose, and i call it bilgewater. the english and the americans cant sadly. they cover over their greediness with a pretended zeal for religion or patriotism, and strew sugar on a bottled spider. choate's letter to the 478 [age 50 journal new england society, in 1851, pretending that the stern old puritans of 1620 would spurn tbe rosepink sentimentalism of resisting the fugitive slave bill, is an example. . . . copy-slip morality! they think the bible a better sort of copal varnish. the escort of friends with which cach spirit walks through time! fourier was right in his seventeen hundred and sixty men to make one man. i accept the quetelet statistics. in a million men, one homer, and in every million, and homer requires homer to read him. the doctrine of copernicus is not in one man, but in the air, and whenever a man has larger lungs, dilates enough to breathe universal air, he is copernican. archimedes, newton, euclid, laplace, bacon, are ample and think adequately to nature, which never alters. science is not chronological, but according to the health of the inquirer. . . . and so often amid myriads of invalids, fops, dunces, and all kinds of damaged individuals, one sound healthy brain will be turned out, in symmetry, and relation to the system of the world ; eyes that can see, ears that can hear, soul that can feel, 1854) discoverer. paradoxes 479 mind that can receive the resultant truth. then you have the copernicus without regard to his antecedents or to his geography. this person sees the simple and vast conditions which every law of nature must fulfil and is prepared to admit the circulation of the blood, the genesis of the planets, universal gravity, the analogy running through all parts of nature, and the correspondence of physics and metaphysics. our boys get caught in their own nets, marry the means, and defeat the ends. churches, colleges, nations, men, do. thus we get engines but no engineer. republics exerting their whole power for slavery. english illogical as others, punishing dissent, punishing education ; vast expense for suppression of slave trade and (yet] driving counties of poor children into cruel and demoralizing labor in factory and mines; subsidizing austria to rob and enslave poland and hungary. the capital example of our day is the reverence of law, because law is the expression of the will of mankind, and the obedience to it when it contravenes the will of all humanity; the obtuseness at seeing that an immoral law is void. all great men, all logical men, all original men, 480 (age 50 journal keep their eye on the major proposition, the object of law, and are keenly and instantly sensible when it is violated. the generalizing and ascending effort even in chemistry finds not atoms at last, but spherules of force, — that makes man not a citizen or a working bee, but a sovereign end to himself; that makes minds differ as they can take strides of advance, one, another, and another; onward there is always a better, a heaven, an inviting infinitude. well, this [the originating class] differs in kind from the working class. they live in means; this is contemplative of end;— they are working; this is poetic. they believe [those moved by this spirit] that the ship needed compass, as well as sails and rudder; they wished piety, they wished thought and inspiration, and secured it so by sequestration, leisure, elevation, generalization; laws of thought, they wished to secure ; somebody who could climb where they could not; could fly, if it were possible, to heavenly domes ; could sing as they had heard of singing -[several pages are torn out] [scholars.] how sacred, how sweet the function, to which these are reserved! the stars, the wind, the souls in heaven, have nothing se 1854) scholar, his wings 481 purer or more noble in charge. these are to gather the flowers of the past, to express the essence of old wisdom, to hold the unruly present firm to the sphere. to keep the first cause in mind, to consecrate all to an aim, to be the engineer of this wonderful engine which the nineteenth century in million workshops builds. but the scholar is to be a new potentate, and must be schooled in the rules of his conduct, like any other king. what he utters is to be true for the instruction of nations, and, that it may be commanding, it must be true. he must be in awe of himself. why is socrates invincible? because socrates is more afraid of socrates than of the thirty tyrants. and what means to do the impossible, to gripe the gliding proteus, to anchor this floating, escaping italy? i will tell you: the affections are the wings by which the intellect launches on the void, and is borne across it. great love is the inventor and expander of the frozen powers — feathers frozen to our sides. e heaven takes care to show us that war is a part of our education, as much as milk, or love, and is not to be escaped. we affect to put it all back in history, as the trojan war, the 482 (age 50 journal war wars of the roses, the revolutionary war. not so; it is your war. has that been declared ? has that been fought out? and where did the victory perch? the wars of other people and of history growl at a distance, but your war comes near, looks into your eyes, in politics, in professional pursuit, in choices in the street, in daily habit, in all the questions of the times, in the keeping or surrendering the control of your day, and your horse, and your opinion; in the terrors of the night; in the frauds and skepticism of the day. the american independence ! that is a legend: your independence! that is the question of all the present. have you fought out that? and settled it once and again, and once for all in the minds of all persons with whom you have to do, that you and your sense of right and fit and fair are an invincible, indestructible somewhat, which is not to be bought or cajoled or frightened away. that done, and victory inscribed on your eyes and brow and voice, the other american freedom begins instantly to have some meaning and support. an av isaac hoar, son of old tim hoar (who owned large land tracts in westminster) built the frame 1854) minot house. macaulay 483 of his house in east quarter of concord, over the cellar which he had dug and stoned. then he thought he would go up to westminster and look after his land there; so sold the frame to mr. minot, who removed it up to its present place, and built the house [at present] george minot's in 1803, or 4, and lived there till he died. george minot was fifteen years old when he came to live with his grandfather, and lived with him till he died ten years after. the other house in hawthorne's place, george minot was born in. it was an old house, two hundred years old.* as a s macaulay, the pride of england, the best example of her cleverness, writes elaborately and with talent his essay on bacon, to prove, not ironically, but in good faith,-in as good faith as he is capable of,— that“solid advantage,” as he calls it, a sensual benefit, is the only good.... this history is of the picturesque little unpainted house on the side of the hill opposite mr. emerson's house and a little nearer town. it was taken down in 1897. an oil painting of it by mr. robertson james is in the concord library. 2 this house seems to have been the one added by mr. alcott as an l to the “ orchard house.” 3 the substance of what follows, but more carefully written, is printed in english traits, p. 240. 484 journal (age 50 from this unworthy expositor whom bacon would disdain we refer to bacon himself: “if any man thinketh philosophy and universality to be idle studies,”:... see [what bacon) says (vol. i, p. 131), on rational philosophy, “ the lumen siccum,' which doth parch and offend most men's watery and soft natures” who esteemed “those discourses of socrates which were then termed corrupting of manners, and were after acknowledged for sovereign medicines of the mind and manners, and so have been received ever since until this day." bacon, who esteemed it the greatest error of all the rest, the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge as for ornament the rest of the quotation is found in english traits, p. 240. 2 bacon here quotes heracleitus's expression (dry light) as he found it in plutarch's morals, but, according to the late professor john wright, of harvard university, what heracleitus really said was, “ a dry soul is wisest and best,” as what is dry is most near to fire, and fire is at the top of heracleitus's upward way. for a curious account of the corruption of the original greek see note in english traits, p. 381, century edition. 3 mr. emerson is still comparing him with his "unworthy expositor." re or a 1854) the walk. realism 485 and reputation for lucre and profession or a shop, etc., who esteemed so highly the effect of learning on moral and private virtue. delicious summer stroll through the endless pastures of barrett, buttrick, – estabrook farms,'yesterday, with ellery, the glory of summer; what magnificence, yet none to see it. what magnificence, yet one night of frost will kill it all. ellery was witty on the biographie universelle de soi même. henry thoreau had been made to print his house into his title-page, in order that alcott might have that to stick into one of the biographie universelle." realism. a pythagorean discipline would ask, do you need to succumb? then depart. you have excluded yourself. we have no need of you. it is the decline of literature and poetry, when the frivolous throngs of gentlemen and ladies, 1 a very attractive region in the northeast part of concord ; seventeenth-century farms long since abandoned as dwellingplaces, — though the old orchards of cider apples remained, and lapsing into forest. 2 mr. channing's whimsical joke refers to thoreau's walden, and mr. alcott's love of pictures, which he liked to cut out from books. 486 (age 50 journal without thought or human aims, are suffered to assume a superiority and take it as allowed, that their pomps and palaces are anything but the tribute to wisdom; when they break their loyalty, and scholars court them, 't is time we went back to the morntains and began our civility answ with the first inventions. there are more inventions in the thoughts of. one happy day than ages could execute. hold thought cheap! it is the thread on which are surung the system of nature and the heaven of heavens. a man can only write one book. that is the reason why everybody begs readings and extracts of the young poet until thirty-five. when he is fifty, they still think they value him, and they tell him so; but they scatter like partridges, if he offer to read his paper. they think it is because they have some job to do. but they never allowed a job to stand in the way when he was twenty-five. cause skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.'... i the rest of the passage is in "worship" (conduct of life, p. 220). ne 1854) pure science. hafiz 487 liebig to faraday. “what struck me most in england was the perception that only those works that have a practical tendency awake attention and command respect, while the purely scientific, which possess far greater merit, are almost unknown. and yet the latter are the proper and true source from which the others flow. practice alone can never lead to the discovery of a truth or a principle. in germany it is quite the contrary. here, in the eyes of scientific men, no value, or at least but a trifling one, is placed on the practical results. the enrichment of science is alone considered worthy of attention. i do not mean to say it is better: for both nations the golden medium would certainly be a real good fortune.”—liebig ap. lyell's travels 1841, vol. 1, p. 246. ar big see, the chymist of love will the dust of the body convert into gold were it never so leaden. o hafiz, churls know the worth of great pearls. give high the prized stone only to sacred friends alone. hafiz, ii, 91. 488 (age 50 journal [two versifications by mr. emerson follow this mere translation from the german, of which the later and better is given.] thou foolish hafiz, say, do churls know the worth of oman's pearls ? give the sacred moon-like stone to the sacred friend alone. or give the gem which dims the moon to the noblest, or to none. 01 what said fontenelle about poetry, women, and the fine arts, three things on which he had written much and knew little? i suppose, every one has favorite topics, which make a sort of museum or privileged closet of whimsies in his mind, and which he thinks is a kind of aristocracy to know about. thus, i like to know about lions, diamonds, wine, and beauty; and martial, and hafiz. if you read cardinal de retz in a village, you will easily be able to plant his principal characters on various heads who play the like parts in the county which his heroes performed in france. we have our m. de rohan, whose only talent is to dance, and knows that his element 1854) athletic english 489 for rising in the state is at the drop-ins and military balls. we have our old granny of a m. d'angoulême or m. de beaufort, who is only a private man, and affects neutrality: our small mazarin, whose talent is to go about the bush, to give to understand; mr. e, of bangor, who never pronounces, never finishes his sentence, but “ you take the idee?” the one precept the english have retained of all their norse traditions is exercise; and it makes the rule of palaces as well as of farms. the roads, the london parks, the country-seats, the game preserves of scotland, europe, asia, and africa, are the riding-grounds of the english. the boating, yachting, cricket, skittles, shooting, deer-stalking, and every species of equitation are their twelfth commandment, on which national existence hangs : rule of the public schools, rule of the university, rule of every country-seat. at noble houses, even, may be seen an old serjeant kept to drill young ladies in military exercise, attitude, march, and exercise of the chest and arms to this sacred end of english health. le style, c'est l'homme, said buffon; and goethe said, that, as for poetry, etc., he had learned to 490 journal [age 50 speak german; and i say of burrill's fifty languages, that i shall be glad if he knows one; for if i be asked how many masters of english idiom i know, i shall be pestered to count three or four among living men. a good head cannot read amiss. in every book he finds passages which seem confidences.' . .. no book has worth by itself; but by the relation to what you have from many other books, it weighs. feats. cardan's praise of algebra (see hallam, i, 358) is beautiful; and newton's and leibnitz's quarrel about fluxions belongs to this category. quotation. it is curious what new interest an old sentence or poem acquires in quotation. hallam is never deep, but he is a fair mind, able to appreciate poetry, unless it becomes deep, ... and hallam cites a sentence from bacon or sydney, or distinguishes a lyric of edwards or vaux, and straightway it commends itself to me as if it had received the isthmian crown. i see “success” (society and solitude, p. 296). 1854) plain english '491 we say the english have a homely taste, a bible style, from first to last hate euphuism; as, in alfred, saxon chronicles, chaucer, ballads, gammer gurton, and ralph roister, latimer, shakspeare, cotton and other translators, defoe, bunyan, hudibras, swift, down to cowper and burns. then came the strife between the two principles, — platonism and materialism. bacon represents better than he knew the precise plight of english mind. for he held by divine nature on the divine side, and then by london birth, on the common sense, and commercial. he struggled hard to do justice to the muse, and prayed to his countrymen to hear ber ; but prayed to them that had no mercy. well so long as the muse ruled, so long we had poetry, and the common sense served well. but this rebelled and usurped the lead.' here are several facts which need notice: the plain style indicates that the people had their share in it. then i think it [style] is not easy or rightly measured by time, as decades or centuries, as by names of men. i compare what is said of bacon in the chapters on “ literature” (english traits, pp. 238–241). 492 (ace 50 journal are 1 w is then this pivotal lord bacon. his rules or reform or influence is nothing. he is a bubble of a certain stream of thought, which is of great importance. all his importance is the influx of idealism into england. where that goes is poetry, health, progress. the rules of its genesis or its diffusion are not known. it seems an affair of race or of chemistry. locke is as surely the influx of decomposition as bacon and the platonists of growth.' bacon held of both; of ideas in his genius, – of english trade in his politics. as to his doctrine of fruit, or to the direction of his centuries of observations on useful science, i think little of that. i suppose his experiments were worth nothing. he had no genius that way. franklin, or arkwright, or davy, or any one with a talent for experiment. the whole is told in saying bacon had genius and talent. genius always looks one way, always is ideal, or, as we say, platonist, and bacon had genius. but (a common case, too,) he had talents and the common ambition to sell them. hence his perfidies and sycophancy. his common sense held of his genius. there was i a few of the above sentences occur in english traits, but are kept here to keep the sequence. 1854) bacon. analogies 493 no treachery to the supreme reason in wishing the laws of meteorology or of political economy well understood. his treachery to his genius begins as soon as he left the employments he loved, and which ennobled him, for the lucrative jobs which the queen or the favorite imposed. i should say that all were told if one should trace the degree in which the sense of unity or the instinct of seeking resemblances predominated in the mind of england. for hence all poetry comes; and when a man comes who distrusts theory, discredits analogy, believes men must go on for ages accumulating facts before any sane generalizations can be attempted, it is certain that such an one has no poetic power, and that nothing original or beautiful will be produced by him.' it is droll that whilst men love the fruit, they hate the tree; that the animal instinct loves the music of poets; it hates the tendency of their minds. september 5. is it that wherever the mind takes a step, it is to put itself at one with a larger class discerned 1 the last sentence is found in “ literature” (englisb traits, p. 239). 494 journal [age 51 beyond the lesser class with which it has been conversing? there are a few astonishing generalizations which circulate in the world,'. .. if i reckon up my debts by particulars to english books, how fast they reduce themselves to a few authors, and how conspicuous shakspeare, bacon, and milton become; locke a cipher. i put the duty of being read, invariably on the author. if he is not read, whose fault is it? if he is very learned and yet heavy, it is a double-shot which fells both himself and his readers. whois selden? no sensible american, i take it, can spend much time on the subject of tithes. not because it is old, but because it is trifling. plutarch is much older, but his topics are interesting. and the criticism the poets suggest reaches them, too, for we perceive that they kept altogether too fair terms with their own times, and with this dull kind of learning; and that a new and better age will address itself more simply to what is really good. 1 the rest of the passage thus beginning and much that follows are found in english traits (pp. 237 and 239). 1854) the dull. histol. 495 all the thoughts of a turtle are turtle. underwitted persons who live in a perpetual sense of inferiority, if also they have the misfortune to have a bad temper, seek to avenge themselves by contriving little insults, which have the effect of making others momentarily inferior. somebody said, not ill, of these, that there was a variety of names and persons among them, but it signifies little which of them you meet, you find the same cast of character in all. see hooker's paragraph on music in ecclesiastical polity, book v, p. 238 fol. as va sons an hooker calls the imagination“the only storehouse of wit, and the peculiar chair of memory.” history of ecclesiastical councils arraying nations for and against some clause or quibble in a creed, and sucking the blood and treasure of ages to the one or the other part, as in the controversies of europe on the nicene and athanasian, or of the two sects of mahomet, or of catholic and protestant later, or now of the mesmerism, etc., are all only valuable after ages have cleared away the smoke with the lives, cities, and institutions of the parties, and disclose the structure of mind which necessitated these heats and rages. awa mi nec 490 journal (age 51 the w bite feather, a novel, in two volumes. who has signed the paper? what has been the usage ? what does the church say? what will be worn ? the poor keep perpetual fast, the rich perpetual feast. a great step (for good and evil) in liberty taken by nectarius at the advice of eudæmon, a priest at constantinople, to disuse penitentiaries, i.e., public confession of communicants. (see hooker, book vi, p. 343.) [here follow several extracts from pepys's diary.] the perfection of writing is when the animal thinks; and wine, no doubt, and all fine food furnishes some elemental wisdom; and the fire, too, as it burns; for i fancy that my logs, which have grown so long in the sun and wind, are a kind of muses. a greek epigram out of the anthology, a verse of herrick or dorset, are in harmony both with sense and spirit. it would seem all legislatures are alike, for pepys says, his cousin roger p., member of 1854) christian idealism 497 parliament, “ tells me that he thanks god, he never knew what it was to be tempted to be a knave in his life, till he did come into the house of commons, where there is nothing done but by passion and faction and private interest." (vol. ii, p. 150.) transfusion of blood of a sheep into a man, with benefit. (see pepys, ii, 160, 158.) hooker and his coevals show the power of an ideal dogma. christianity was an idealism which did a world of good in the materialism of old rome, and of the robbers and pirates of the middle age. it was a noble heart-warmer with the range and play it gave to thought and imagination, in opening the doctrine of love. these old fellows ranged like poets in these ethereal fields, and only quoted a text now and then, to give a quasi-authority to their fancies. but 't is wonderful the difference between their range, and the strait waistcoat and close corners of our priests. they quote condescendingly, and out of gentleman-like good humour, not needing it out of any poverty, for they have as good of their own; but ours in a cowed and servile way, never matching it by anything as good. then i notice the freedom with which they 498 journal [age 51 fill up the faint outline map which the christian hypothesis affords them with a bold mythology of their own. thus the heaven, on the sparsest hint, they populate with angels in rank and degree (borrowed, i believe, out of dionysius), and exercise their fancy very freely and well in this rhetoric, which, to the next age, or to the next writer, becomes instantly authority, and is repeated over, like holy writ, from one to another, till it becomes believed by being often said. hooker, however, it must be owned, calls, “this present age, full of tongue and weak of brain." elizabeth hoar. the last night talked with elizabeth the wise, who defined common sense as the perception of the inevitable laws of existence. the philosophers considered only such laws as could be stated; but sensible men, those also which could not be stated;-a very just distinction, which, i find, with contentment that i had recognized in my paragraph about dr. johnson, but had not rightly laid down beforehand. i find also in her a certain forward motion of the mind when at last, through a thousand silences and delays, she begins to speak, which is excellent, as being the mind's own motion, through o return 1854] money. greek. genius 499 beauty and sweetness of the thing perceived, and without any manner of reflection or return on one's self. her illustration of the common laws was, “you must count your money. for, if you call it petty, and count it not,'through greatness of soul,' it will have its revenge on your soul, by coming in thither also, in the sequel, with injurious suspicions of your best friends and other disquietudes.” izaak walton and all the writers of his age betray their reading in greek literature. plutarch, plato, and the greek philosophers, especially of the stoic sect, nourish them. sidney, sir philip, is platonist and stands well for poetry. genius. temperance in love: and the child of the god is the superfluity of strength. temperance in art: and the poet is never the poorer for his song. the masters painted and carved for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. alcott thought the father of the hebrew boy must have been superior to his son. genius. a few poems appear to have been 500 (age 51 journal written between sleeping and waking; irresponsibly.' universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses.... last night, talking with ellery channing, it appeared still more clear, the two nations in england, one in all time fierce only for mince pie, — the old, granniest, beef-eating solemn trifler, a cheapside 'prentice, and growing to be a cheapside lord ; — the other a fine, thoughtful, religious, poetical believer, — fit for hero, fit for martyr, deriving in his flights only the solidity, and square elbows, and method, from his cheapside brother, and rewarding him with puritanism, with drama, with letters and liberty. it would be well to begin the story with notice of my first visit to england. i was then more ignorant than now. i am ignorant enough now, heaven knows, — nay, i am of the hopelessly ignorant class, to whom the knowledge of scholars is always a marvel, — fault of some i the passage is printed in « works and days” (society and solitude, p. 182). 2 see english traits, p. 212. 3 english traits. 1854) persons. transition 501 method in my mind. but i was ignorant enough then to wish to go to europe only to see three of four persons, — wordsworth, coleridge, landor, and carlyle. i should have wished to see goethe in germany, but he was then just dead. after these, there was not in england, excepting — [page torn out]. . as i praise the expansive, the still generalizing, because it seems as if transition, shooting the gulf, were the essential act of life. nature forever aims and strives at a better, at a new degree, the same nature in and out of man, the same nature in a river-drop and in the soul of a hero. one class of minds delighting in a bounded fact ; and the other class in its relations or correspondency to all other facts. the art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect to the emergencies of the moment. “what a sublime and terrible simplicity there is in our navy. nothing is admitted but what is absolutely useful. cannon, decks, sailors, all wore the appearance of stern vigour; no beauti502 journal (age 51 ful forms in the gun-carriages ; no taste or elegance in the cannon; ports, square and hard, guns, iron ; sailors, muscular.” — haydon. james furness said, “there was only one person in the world he envied, and that was his wife.” franklin, when they questioned as to the utility of something, said, “what is the use of a baby?” solitary was he? why, yes, but he comforted himself by thinking that his society was limited only by the amount of brain nature appropriated in this age to carry on the government of the world. dr. jackson's big crystal of beryl comes from acworth, new hampshire. mr. francis alger has one in his yard at south boston weighing three tons,' which was offered to dr. jackson for twenty dollars. mr. alger was carried thither by dr. jackson and bought the mountain. dr. jackson said, he did not give more than two hundred dollars for the whole. i probably the block of quartz with three enormous beryls projecting from it (in the natural history society's building in boston) weighed so much, and not the beryl alone. 1854) poets. horsemen 503 when i showed ellery a finest sunset, in the central glory of which a telegraph-pole stood, like the spear of uriel, he looked and said, “why, yes, nature lies like the irish.” october 11. never was a more brilliant show of coloured landscape than yesterday afternoon incredibly excellent topaz and ruby at four o'clock; cold and shabby at six. si [old english poets.] the heart of the question is, how came such men as herbert, herrick, donne, chapman, and marvell to exist ? what made those natures? was that climate? was that race? for 'tis certain there were more where these came from; that the people who lived with them must be like them; the appreciation never lags far after the invention. the hearing ear is close to the speaking tongue, and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. sir philip sidney says of pietro puglione, when he praised horsemen as “the noblest of soldiers, masters of war, and ornaments of peace, 504 journal (age 51 speedy goers, and strong abiders, triumphers both in camps and courts”: “nay, to so unbelieved a point he proceeded as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince as to be a good horseman ;-skill of government was but a pedanterie in comparison.” imagination. we live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by our words. a man pays a debt quicker to a rich man than to a poor one; wishes the bow and compliment of a rich man, weighs what he says; he never comes nearer him for all that; but dies at last better contented for this amusement of his eyes and his imagination. · intellect. i notice that i value nothing so much as the threads that spin from a thought to a fact, and from one fact to another fact, making both experiences valuable and presentable, which were insignificant before, and weaving together into rich webs all solitary observations. the old men believed in magic.' ... 1 for the rest of the passage see or illusions” (conduct of life, pp. 318, 319). 1854) thought. minority 505 i wish to know the nomenclature of botany and astronomy. but these are soulless both, as we know them; vocabularies both. add astrology to astronomy, and 't is somewhat. add medicine and magic to botany, and that is something. but the english believe that by mountains of fact they can climb into the heaven of thought and truth: so the builders of babel believed. but the method of truth is quite other, and heaven descends, when it will, to the prepared soul. we must hold our science as mere convenience, expectant of a higher method from the mind itself. queteletism. the action of the saxons in america is bad, but has its checks, and though the evil lies nearer the hand than does the good, yet i never fear that people will be able to get away from their brain: the moment they run into extremes, the minority, always ready to become a majority, defeats them; they will not burn their fingers twice. success is a measure of brain. it requires one that can carry the conditions in his head, climate, politics, market, persons, -and enter bodily into the complications of the dance, and by keeping the figure, not jostle any of the partners. be 506 (age 51 journal “all difference is quantitative,” said schelling; and common sense seems a spread of vitality over the whole radiant brain, instead of only at points, so as to apprehend all the conditions of success, more vitality, like spallanzani's blinded bat, which yet fitted among stretched cords, in and out without touching one. “and if one ought to thank god for the joys that do not tend to salvation?” says mme. de sablé. english sense. a piece of ivory was found in an egyptian tomb four thousand years old. when exposed to the air it rapidly crumbled. buckland said, “ boil it in gelatine"; and it came out sound as new ivory. the french before the battle of alma issued an order of the day about glory and the emperor. lord raglan ordered the commissary to supply the troops with extra allowance of porter. as nature helps everybody, brings each to higher ground than he was wont to occupy. nature furnishes the nouns which must be of use whenever and wherever. all the verbs of language 1854) a living philosophy 507 express motion, which must exist wherever we go. we have reformed our botany, our chemistry, our geology, our anatomy, through the appearance of a several genius; but our metaphysics still awaits its author. a high, analogic mind; a mind, which, with one aperçu, penetrates many successive crusts, and strings them as beads on its thread of light, will delight us with mental structure as a naturalist with his architectures. now, our metaphysics are like kett and blair. english finality. englishmen think as far as the bishop and the chancellor. so we believe in melioration just as far as it has gone from fossil up to anglo-saxon, but we are passing into new heavens (and the earth and the atmosphere have not ended their purging chemistry) and so into new earths. swedenborg is the theosophist of the present age. ’t is very fine for england and america, boston and london, refined circles, to affect a scorn. some theory must be at the bottom; and these surface-creatures might be shown that they are swedenborgians, or else skeptics. they hate — all men hate — skepticism, and when shown 508 (age 51 journal what kind of rotten underpinning they are strutting upon, they will kiss the robe of swedenborg. an idealist rare. farmer hunt doubted whether there really were any tongs, which he seemed to hold in his hand; and rowse's scenepainter was a root-and-branch doubter : but most men have animal bias or beast bias, and are encumbered by their tools, that is, by matteş: only a supreme spirit plays with matter, and sees all history as a fluid ocean wrought up at will into every astonishing variety of form by nimble ideas. eans to say, “the majority are wicked,” means no malice, nor bad heart in the observer, but simply that the majority are young, are boys, are animals, and have not yet any opinion, but borrow their opinion of the newspaper, and, of course, are not worth considering: they have not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion. that, if they knew it, is an oracle of god, and worthy of all curiosity and respect from them, and from all. choate said of the testy chief justice shaw, “i perceive that he is ugly, but i know that he is divine.” 1854) judge shaw. reading 509 judge shaw said to mr. william sturgis, “when the pacific road is finished, i am going with you to see your old friends on the northwest coast." sturgis replied, “if i am only recently dead, i will go with you.” authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1854 bhagavat geeta; vyasa ; pythagoras; simonides ; aristotle; euclid of alexandria; martial ; dionysius of alexandria ; plotinus; porphyry; lamblichus ; synesius; proclus; sidonius; king alfred ; henry de bracton ; saadi, gulistan; hafiz; chaucer; robert de thornton ; machiavelli; copernicus ; latimer; nicholas udall, ralph roister doister; john still, gammer gurton; cardan apud hallam ; richard edwards; raleigh; coke; hooker, ecclesiastical polity; sir fulke greville, life of sidney ; sully, mémoires; van helmont; hobbes; lord herbert of cherbury; selden ; izaak walton; chief justice sir ranulph crewe, apud cruse's digest; john evelyn, diary; sir kenelm digby ; waller; suckling; rushworth, historical collec510 (age 51 journal tion of passages of state; butler, hudibras; lovelace; cardinal de retz, mémoires; giordano bruno; bunyan ; robert boyle; pepys, diary; charles sackville, earl of dorset; lady russell, letters; fontenelle ; defoe ; cowper; swift; harvey; berkeley ; william law; voltaire; lord mansfield ; buffon; john hunter; galiani, journal d'économie publique; burke ; bentham ; mirabeau ; goethe ; laplace; pierre louis roederer, histoire de la société polie ; chief justice marshall; sir samuel romilly; thomas taylor ; kirby and spence, entomology; pierre dumont, traités de législation ; ritson, select collection of english songs; mackintosh; sharon turner, history of the anglo-saxons; chateaubriand, etudes historiques; fourier; lord jeffrey ; schelling; niebuhr, roman history; life and letters of hallam; moore, life of sheridan ; southey, life of nelson ; von raumer, england; webster; audubon; william n. senior, political economy (?); sir j. f. davis, the chinese; hue, travels in china ; sir john herschel; haydon; theophilus parsons; guizot, love in marriage; heine; rufus choate, letter to the new england society; ading 511 1854] reading francis lieber, civil liberty and self-government ; baron liebig; g. p. r. james, history of the british navy; sainte-beuve, causeries du lundi ; disraeli; bulwer; chadwick, reports on administration of the poor laws; tennyson, vision of sin ; browning; j. j. g. wilkinson, human body, war, cholera ;. w. b. carpenter, physiology ; charles read, christie johnstone, peg woffington; ruskin ; w. e. channing, poems; stansbury, valley of the great salt lake. journal a long lecture season verses thoughts on science, nature and poetry finishing english traits lecture on woman amherst address sleepy hollow the far west again urnal xlvi 1855 (from journals no and ro) [for journal writing there was scant time when the winter's arduous and exposing work of lecturing began,-“whisked by the stormy wing of fate out of my chain and whirled like a dry leaf through the state of new york," as mr. emerson put it, in a letter to carlyle. during december he lectured, mostly before massachusetts lyceums, almost every other evening; in january thirteen were given, still in new england towns, only two of them in boston, one of these being his strong protest against advancing slavery and its demoralization of the north. the same lecture was given in philadelphia, and seventeen on various themes in the middle states, one in hamilton, ontario, during february. returning home in march, eleven more were read before new england audiences.] 516 (age 51 journal (from no) “ success shall be in thy courser tall, success in thyself, which is best of all, success in thy hand, success in thy foot, in struggle with man, in battle with brute, the holy god and saint drotten dear shall guide and bless thee through thy career. look out, look out, svend vonved!” from the danish; george borrow. february, 1855. they laughed us down. they treated the rule of right as puerile enthusiasm. we sacrifice the convenient, the pleasant, the expedient to the right. the real struggle of europe is for two things, 1, nationality ; 2, morality, as the fundamental guide of statesmanship; republicanism not being the end desired, but is the only means possible. “ connais les cérémonies. si tu en pénètres le sens, tu gouverneras un royaume avec la même facilité que tu regards dans ta main.” — confucius. don't attempt too many things. unlimited activity is bankruptcy. against the absurdity of expense, we set up 1855) thought. a question 517 the beauty of manners. they think it becoming in a gentleman to spend much for his dinner. we think it becoming to spend little for his dinner, much for his brain. man feels the antipodes and the pole: they are his, like the drops of his blood.' revere self. every thought not only a fount of a man and his career, but will have its glorification in the grand man; its star; and its age. who are you that you should desert it? it will have its literature and art, yet. alum is wanted in the strata, and so is marl and phosphorus. romulus threw his spear into the palatine hill. the spear took root, and became a tree. cur tor rome, n. y., february 18. what occurred this morning touching the imagination? in meeting a new student, i incline to ask him, do you know any deep man? has any one furnished you with a new image? for to see the world representatively, implies high gifts. 1 the rest of the passage thus beginning is found in “ beauty" (conduct of life, p. 283). many other sentences for that essay occur in this journal and are here omitted. 518 [age 51 journal [here first appears the poem “the romany girl' almost as in its finished form in the poems.] the sun goes down and with him takes the coarseness of my poor attire; the fair moon mounts, and aye the aame of gipsy beauty blazes higher, etc. history is all party pamphlets; lingard for catholics, hume for tories, hallam for whigs, brodie for radicals. mitford writes greek history for monarchists, grote for republicans. dance. under the soul of the world, “the bodies are moved in a beautiful manner, as being parts of the whole: but certain things are corrupted, in consequence of not being able to sustain the order of the whole. just as if, in a great dance, which is conducted in a becoming manner, a tortoise being caught in the middle of the progression, should be trod upon, not being able to escape the order of the dance; though, if the tortoise had arranged itself with the dance, it would not have suffered from those that composed it.” – plotinus. “ fortune and hope! i've made my port, farewell, ye twin deceivers ; ah! many a time i've been your sport, go, cozen new believers.” c m 1855) autobiography. alcott 519 πάντα ρεϊ. utica, february 11. ah! how few things! a warm room, and morning leisure. i sit by the holy river, and watch the waves. will it not cease to flow for me? i need not ask for more. let them ask for results and externals, they who have not this source. minima pars sui puella' – they who are not substance have need of the compensation of costume. i do not know that i am ready, like my dervish” in his more total devotion, to throw my babes into the stream. no, i am householder, and father, and citizen, far too much for that. but what blazing evidence his vices (so esteemed) afford to the pure beauty that intoxicates him! how far better his outward shiftlessness and insensibility to what are reckoned the primary claims, than the bulwer view of intellect, as a sort of bill of exchange easily convertible into fine chambers, wines, and cigars. of him, that is, of the dervish by the river, i think, this morning, most respectfully, when i remember his magnanimity, unparalleled i think among men of his class, – that he truly loves the 1 the girl is the least part of herself, (horace ?) 2 alcott ? no ess 520 (age 51 journal thought, and wishes its widest publication, and gladly hears his own from the lips of other men. what a fact, too, that when higginson went to the court-house, having made up his mind that he should not return thence, the only man that followed him into it was alcott ! ' we re when we read the criticism, it may be right or wrong, — we side with it; we think the critic may be in the right, but it is quickly forgotten. and long afterward we must still go back to london for the wise remark, imagery, the wit, the indignation that are unforgettable. the rule of positive and superlative is this: as long as you deal with sensible objects in the sphere of sense, call things by their right names. but every man may be, and some men are, raised to a platform whence he sees beyond sense to thomas wentworth higginson, then a clergyman at worcester, planned to lead a rush on the united states courthouse in boston to rescue the fugitive slave anthony burns. the assault failed from want of proper support, and higginson was wounded. alcott, armed only with his cane, braved the danger with philosophic composure and deliberateness. (for some account of this affair see life of richard h. dana, by .. c. f. adams, and the memoir of alcott, by w. e. harris and f. b. sanborn.) 1855] france. behaviour 521 moral and spiritual truth ; when he no longer sees snow as snow, or horses as horses, but only sees or names them representatively for those interior facts which they signify. this is the way the poets use them. and in that exalted state, the mind deals very easily with great and small material things, and strings worlds like beads upon its thought. the success with which this is done can alone determine how genuine is the inspiration. france. alfieri said, the character of the french consists in not having one. kossuth's remark contrasts the pound and shilling system of english army promotion with the opportunity of the french soldier, who finds the materials of a marshal's staff in his own knapsack. a man's manners, to be radiant, must announce his reality. his wealth is inexhaustible only in his proper vein. on every other ground, he soon acquaints you with all his collections. tour de force. r people fatigue us because they are apes and drilled. make a man happy by gratifying his powers with their legitimate objects and activity, and you make him strong. 522 [age 51 journal subjectiveness. governor reynolds, of illinois, said, “ the people were always right.” one said, “but they crucified our saviour; were they right then?” the governor looked about him and then replied, “ yes, they were right then, for if they had not crucified him, he could not have been our saviour.” this may serve as one out of a thousand examples that every proposition is true, or may be made true by an active wit. men ride on a thought, as if each bestrode an invisible horse, which, if it became visible, all their seemingly mad plunging motions would be explained. england. when my eyes opened i found i was jogging between the narrowest walls and seeing nothing else, and that i had mistaken those walls of the lane for england. thus, the religion of england, is it the establishment?'... lord lyndhurst said, “the man who has nothing must be a radical to get what other people have; he who has something, must be a conservative, to keep it.” i here follows the concluding paragraph of the chapter « religion " in english traits. 1855) england at hamilton 523 i prefer a little integrity to any career. reality the charm of a good novel like villette. february 24. but two good nights in a fortnight:one at buffalo; the second at hamilton (ontario), in finding myself in england, as it seemed, with english soft coal fire, my fine warm parlor hung round with wilkie prints, and with burrage's (?) print of a champion course at amesbury ; with english servant, and the hotel full of solid englishmen talking london politics in the dear island tones. hon. hugh cameron complimented me on the essay on friendship ! e me coa se curious to see these men standing there with bibles open, fiercely defending old bailey christianity, with finger on text,' — coarse and cruel men, constables and grocers, every feature and tone being only a placard, “ beware of pickpockets,” — and they fancying that we only know them by the texts they quote, and the words they articulate. i mr. emerson was still engaged in writing english traits, as appears by the passage on “ religion” following in the journal a little later, and, some crude religious talk, heard at hamilton, apparently revived impressions of insular narrowness. 524 journal [age 51 “may you lie down in that peace which escapeth explanation, and rise to the duties which go with the peace.” — aunt mary to elizabeth hoar. lizabeth “to move the reader deeply, the author must be in perfect repose.” — niebuhr. niebuhr lost his divination for some years, and it returned to him. it is as easy to twist beams of iron as candy braids, if only you take all the steps ; as the machine-shop can show you each step is simple and easy; and geology shows it just as easy to bend and twist and braid strata of ores, basalt, porphyry, and granite, as to make anchors:geology shows the steps.' 'tis clear that the european is a better animal than the american. here you can only have webster, or parsons, or washington, at the first descent from a farmer or people's man. theirsons will be mediocrities; but in england, in europe, the privileged classes shall continue to furnish the best specimens. the czars of russia shall continue to be good stock. 1 a similar sentence occurs in “considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 276). 1855) radiation. museums 525 i look on the homage paid by men to a great man, as the expression of their hope.' ... natural history. radiation is the lesson of natural history. every one of these monsters — a lizard, a mouse, a crocodile, a baboon is only some function of mine magnified. ... from your centre nature carries every integral part out to the horizon, and mirrors yourself to you in the universe. yet the effect of a museum of natural history is not to help and inspire us, but rather to mortify, by gigantising these limitations. these are the titans that warred with jove, and he only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. natural history builds up from oyster and tadpole. mythology gives us down from the heavens. beauty is the quality which makes to endure.' ... greeks. 'tis strange what immortality is in 1 the rest of the passage is printed in " progress of culture” (letters and social aims, pp. 226, 227). '2 the paragraph thus beginning is in " beauty” (conduct of life, p. 295). 526 [age 51 journal their very rags;so much mentality about the race has made every shred durable. we run very fast, but here is this horrible plato, at the end of the course, still abreast of us. our novelties we can find all in his book. he has anticipated our latest neology. the history says, the romans conquered the greeks: but i analyse the roman language, i read the roman books, i behold the roman buildings, i dig up marbles in the roman gardens; and i find greeks everywhere still paramount, in art, in thought;—and in my history, the greeks conquered rome. cen landor is a man of wit and versatile powers, who by pure affluence of his own wit creates a parnassus about him, is independent of his times, and seems like a king on his travels with his court about him. he is the steadfast friend of liberty and honour. then what to say of tennyson? when i read “maud" then i say, here is one of those english heads again such as in the elizabethan days were rammed full of delightful fancies. what colouring like titian, colour like the dawn.'.... the rest of the passage is printed in english traits, p. 257. e 4 verses 1855] chaucer. quotation 527 rhyme and rhetoric. as boys write verses from delight in the music or rhyme, before they learn to delight in the sense, so, when grown older, they write from love of the rhetoric, sooner than for the argument, and, in most instances, a sprightly genius chooses the topic and treatment that gives him room to say fine things, before the sad heroic truth. chaucer and chapman had legs and trunk to their poetry : the poem was a finer man, and had all the parts of a man. but these fine young wits who write exquisite verses now," the brain of a purple mountain,” etc., — their poetry has no legs. quotation. what i said in one of my saadi scraps of verse,'i might say in good sooth, that thus the high muse treated me directly never greeted me, but when she spread her dearest spells feigned to speak of some one else : 1 that is, not quoted from saadi, but mr. emerson used his name or other versions of it, said or seyd, when he wished to paint the poet, his characters and spiritual experiences. (sec “uriel,"' «rsaadi,” and also “fragments" on "the poet and the poetic gift ” in the appendix to the poems.) this passage in full is found on page 324 of the century edition of the poems. 528 (age 51 journal i was free to overhear, or i might at will forbear ; but that casual word thus at random overheard, was the symphony of spheres, and proverb of a thousand years. my best thought came from others. i heard in their words my own meaning, but a deeper sense than they put on them: and could well and best express myself in other people's phrases, but to finer purpose than they knew. “he that borrows the aid of an equal understanding,” said burke,“ doubles his own : he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates." common fame. i trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. if a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.' and if a man knows the law, people 1 there has been much inquiry in the newspapers recently as to whether mr. emerson wrote a sentence very like the above which has been attributed to him in print. the editors tu 1855) justice in fame 529 find it out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. and if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the prisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint landscape, and convey into oils and ochres all the enchantments of spring or autumn; or can liberate or intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses ; 'tis certain that the secret cannot be kept: the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his door. what a signal convenience is fame. well, it is still so with a thinker. if he proposes to show me any high secret, if he profess to have found the profoundly secret pass that leads from fate to freedom, all good heads and all mankind aspiringly and religiously wish to know it, and, though it sorely and unusually taxes their poor brain, they find out at last whether they have made the transit or no. if they have, they will know it; and his fame will surely be bruited abroad. if they come away unsatisfied, though it be easy to impute it (even in their belief) to their dulness in not being able do not find the latter in his works, but there can be little doubt that it was a memory-quotation by some hearer, or, quite probably, correctly reported from one of his lectures, the same image in difering words. tusu 530 [age 51 journal to keep step with his snow-shoes on the icy mountain paths, – i suspect it is because the transit has not been made. 'tis like that crooked hollow log through which the farmer's pig found access to the field; the farmer moved the log so that the pig, in returning to the hole, and passing through, found himself to his astonishment still on the outside of the field : he tried it again, and was still outside ; then he fled away, and would never go near it again. whatever transcendant abilities fichte, kant, schelling, and hegel have shown, i think they lack the confirmation of having given piggy a transit to the field. the log is very crooked, but still leaves grumphy on the same side of the fence he was before. if they had made the transit, common fame would have found it out. so i abide by my rule of not reading the book, until i hear of it through the newspapers. our concord mechanics and farmers are very doubtful on the subject of culture, and will vote against you: but i notice they will all send their children to the dancing-school. they are rather deaf on the subject of mental superiority; but they value the multiplication-table, and decimal fractions, and theodolites, and surveyas 1855] the scholar's duty 531 ing and navigation. they value reading and writing february. philip randolph' was surprised to find me speaking to the politics of anti-slavery, in philadelphia. i suppose, because he thought me a believer in general laws, and that it was a kind of distrust of my own general teachings to appear in active sympathy with these temporary heats. he is right so far as that it is becoming in the scholar to insist on central soundness, rather than on superficial applications. i am to give a wise and just ballot, though no man else in the republic doth. i am not to compromise or mix or accommodate. i am to demand the absolute right, affirm that, and do that; but not push boston into a false, showy, and theatrical attitude, endeavoring to persuade her she is more virtuous than she is. thereby i am robbing myself, more than i am enriching the public. after twenty, fifty, a hundred years, it will be a 1 a valued young friend and correspondent of mr. emerson's in philadelphia, who said in a letter to carlyle soon after: “ one day in philadelphia you should have heard the wise young philip randolph defend you against objections of mine" (carlyleemerson correspondence, vol. ï, p. 242). 532 (age 51 journal quite easy to discriminate who stood for the right, and who for the expedient. the vulgar, comprising ranks on ranks of fine gentlemen, clergymen, college presidents and professors, and great democratic statesmen bellowing for liberty, will of course go for safe degrees of liberty, that is, will side with property against the spirit, subtle and absolute, which keeps no terms. munroe seriously asked what i believed of jesus and prophets. i said, as so often, that it seemed to me an impiety to be listening to one and another, when the pure heaven was pouring itself into each of us, on the simple condition of obedience. to listen to any second-hand gospel is perdition of the first gospel. jesus was jesus because he refused to listen to another, and listened at home. august. out upon scholars with their pale, sickly, etiolated indoor thoughts. give me the out-ofdoor thoughts of sound men,the thoughts, all fresh, blooming. for the great poets, like the greek artists, elaborated their designs, but slighted their finish, and it is the office of poets to suggest a vast 1855) ancient philosophy 533 wealth, a background, a divinity, out of which all this and much more readily springs; and if this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to some purpose, and we can well afford some staidness -ór gravity in the verses. e a prima philosopbia. “ dissolvers of fate.”—iamblichus. “how can the soul be adjacent to the one, except by laying asleep the garrulous matter that is in her?” — proclus. “eternal beings only have a real existence.” proclus, providence and fate, ii, 464. “in last natures, there are representations of such as are first, and all things sympathize with all.” — proclus. “while life everywhere resounds, the most abject beings may be said to retain a faint echo of the melody produced by the mundane lyre.” taylor's proclus, ii, 395. “life is that which holds matter together.” — porphyry. res oi peovtes. for flowing is the secret of things and no wonder the children love masks,'... 1 what follows is printed in natural history of intellect, pp. 58, 59. 534 journal (age 51 a mythology discerning the eternal from the transitory, called ideas gods. and availing itself of that oblivion which accompanies any mind raised above the comprehension of his contemporaries (for he speaks as a man among oxen), easily imputed the strange imaginative words he dropped, to oracles and gods. the chaldæan oracles are plainly all esoteric metaphysics and ethics of a deep thinker speaking after truth, and not after appearance, and using whatever images occurred, to convey his grand perception. then proclus says, with perfect naiveté, “hence the gods exhort to understand the forerunning form of light,'” etc., citing the chaldear oracles. memory, connecting inconceivable mystery with inconceivable mystery. in children, thought is slow, therefore time is long. you shall hear, as soon as they are well into frocks and trousers, the young rememberers begin to say, “don't you berember how we used to do this and that,” as if recalling great spaces of time, and it was only a few months, or maybe, last year. these geologies, chemistries, astronomies, leave us where they found us. the invention 1855) inspired science 535 is of great use to the inventor, but harms the pupil, whom it hinders from helping himself. the facts that science collects are of no value to any one but the owner. mother wit animates mountains of facts by turning them to human use, milking the cow, suspending the loadstone, pouring human will and human wit through things till the world is a second self, — blushes with shame, laughs with health, is a temple of religion. but the moment these facts fall to dull man, they are like steel-filings when the magnet is withdrawn. 'tis science in england, science in america, very jealous of theory. a house held up by magnetism, — draw out the magnet, and the house falls and buries the inhabitant. percival (transcribed by robert de thornton in the fifteenth century). “give lythes' to me, two words or three, of one that was fair and free, and fell in his fight. his right name was percivell, he was fostered in the fell, he drank water of the well, and yet he was wight.” i ear. 536 (age 51 journal passion. when wrath and terror changed jove's regal port and the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short." m nature, — what we ask of her is only words to clothe our thoughts. the mind is to find the thought. chemistry, geology, hydraulics are secondary. the atomic theory is, of course, only an interior process produced, as the geometers say, or the outside effect of a foregone metaphysical theory ; hydrostatics only the surcoat of ideal necessities. yet the thoughts are few, the forms many; the large vocabulary, or many-coloured coat of the indigent unity. the savants are very chatty and vain; but, hold them hard to principle and definition, and they become very mute and near-sighted. what is motion? what is beauty? what is life? what is force? push them hard, drive them home. they will not be loquacious. i have heard that peirce, the cambridge mathematician, had come to plato at last. 't is clear that the invisible and imponderable is the sole fact. “why changes not the violet earth into musk?” asks hafiz. what is the term of this overflowing metamorphosis? i do not know what are the stoppages, i poems, appendix, “ fragments on life," p. 358. 1855] the answer. webster 537 but i see that an all-dissolving unity changes all that which changes not. 'tis a fine fable for the advantage of character over talent, the strife of jove and phebus.' ... the aim is ever to frame an answer that does not admit of an answer. but there is no such answer framable. “your cattle have broke into my woodlot, and browsed the trees,” says the gentleman. “the cattle must be damned fools,” replies the farmer, “to browse on pine-trees, when there's good grass in the road.” “cattle are damned fools,” returned the gentleman. the judge said at salem, “the law is so and so," and ruled the evidence out. webster asked a rehearing. “if that be law,” said mr. webster, " then it were better to run a ploughshare under the foundations of this court-house.” and webster got a reversed ruling and colman's evidence admitted. “i have great respect for the opinions of lord camden. i was bred to a high esteem for i for the fable see “works and days” (society and solitude, pp. 184, 185). 538 (age 51 journal his learning and wisdom. but, in regard to the point in question, i differ from lord camden,” said webster. “at last goodrich was put upon the stand. as soon as i looked him in the face, i saw that he had not been robbed. with my first question, i brought him, -and in twenty minutes there was not a person in the court-house who did not know that no robbery had been committed,” said webster, who had received casually in a stage-coach from jacob perkins the opinion that goodrich had wounded his own hand. house-bunting. everything is on the street: highways run through nature, as, in the human body, the veins percolate to every spot; you cannot prick with the finest needle anywhere but you draw blood. the young people do not like the town, do not like the seashore, they will go inland, find a dear cottage deep in the mountains, secret as their hearts. they set forth on their travels in search of a home.'... the youth must leave home; he must hide in the forest; he departs for katahdin, or moosei for the rest of this long passage see “ considerations by the way” (conduct of life, pp. 268, 269). 1855] culture. to-day 539 head lake: he cannot get enough alone to write to his friend, to worship his beloved. he finds, after much search, the italy flies faster than he; he chases a rainbow. culture is for the results. the best of education, the generalizations we make of our school and manipulating processes. we early find that one thing only translates another; that we draw the same ultimate knowledge from twenty studies, from twenty arts. it needs the apt scholar, capable of the lesson,and the school, the text, is indifferent. you must begin at the beginning, and you must take all the steps in order. only so shall you do the feat, in whichever art you select.' ... se. the past is worshipped, and the morrow prized. to-day, — what doth it to be so despised? future or past no stricter mystery folds, o friendless present, than thy bosom holds. i the rest of the passage, condensed, is found in “ considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 276). 2 see the perfected form of this quotation, called “ heri, cras, hodie” (yesterday, to-morrow, to-day) in the poems (p. 295). 540 [age 51 journal milton was abstemious of praise. and how odious are most dedications with their adulatory personalities, in bacon, in pliny the elder, in martial, in horace ! in hafiz only, the genial heaven-daring courage with which he sets his shah beside, and even above, allah, makes us pardon the flattery, for the poetry. excellent is the courageous treatment. the lover delights in the surprise of face and form yet so dearly related to him. the more foreign, the better. the lady's eye seemed always looking at distant lands and distant people: she could never be domesticated. it was like a young deer or a young leopard, or a forest bird, newly caught and brought into your yard. still descend to him, prefer him, but, for heaven's sake, do not lose this exotic charm, which fills his imagination. far capitals, and marble courts, her eye still seemed . to see, minstrels, and dames, and high-born men, and of the best that be. it is on the completeness with which metrical forms have covered the whole circle of routinary experience that improvisation is possible 1855] improvisation 541 to a rhymer familiar with this cyclus of forms, and quick and dexterous in combining them. most poetry – stock poetry we call it, that we see in the magazines — is nothing but this mosaic-work done slowly. but whether is improvisation of poetry possible, as well as this ballad-mongering? yes, no doubt, since geniuses have existed, we will not be disloyal or hopeless. but beside the strange power implied of passing at will into the state of vision and of utterance, is required huge means, vast health and vigor and celerity. ellery channing's poetry has the merit of being genuine, and not the metrical commonplaces of the magazine, but it is painfully incomplete. he has not kept faith with the reader; 't is shamefully indolent and slovenly. he should have lain awake all night to find the true rhyme for a verse, and he has availed himself of the first one that came ; so that it is all a babyish incompleteness. walter scott is the best example of this mastery of metrical commonplaces that makes vulgar improvisation. asi am to read guizot“ love in marriage" or at least lady russell. the song of 1596 says, 542 journal (age 52 the wife of every englishman is counted blest. ritson. bring me home no beef, for that is full of bones, but bring me home good ale enow, 't is bread and milk at once. ritson. hafiz. o follow, o see the sonnet's aight! thou seest a feet career, o child, begot in a night, that travels a thousand year. the chief fact in history of the world is the penury with which the stream of thought runs. in five hundred years millions and millions of men, and not a hundred lines of poetry; though almost all of them have some ear and apprehension for poetry, and not a few try to write. poetical persons hum a verse, and go as far as half a quatrain, which they cannot complete. exaggerating people talk of moments when their brain seemed bursting with the multitude of thoughts! i believe they were mistaken; there was no danger. yet nothing but thought is precious, and we must respect in ourselves this possibility, and abide its time. jones very, who 1855) thought. faith. bias 543 thought it an honour to wash his own face, seems to me less insane than men who hold themselves cheap. let us not be such that our thoughts should disdain us. if i could find that a perfect song could form itself in my brain, i should indulge it and pamper it as bees their queen. hour follows hour, and eternity eternity, without doubt for the believer. a man bears belief as a tree bears apples. life expensive, but probably was always, only we forget the shillings as we do the vermin. the present race are wanted for fifty years; the idealist for always. there is never a fine aspiration but is on its way to its body or institution. look up kant on history. bias. the writer who draws on his proper talent can neither be overshadowed nor supplanted. the oak may grow as beautifully and as vastly as it will, it never can take a ray of beauty from the palm; and both of them at their best will only set off the beauty of the pine or the elm. 544 (age 52 journal . opposition is our belt and tonic. no opinion will pass, but must stand the tug of war. men wish to pay homage to courage and perseverance, to a man whose steps have no choice, but are planted, each one. we know the austere law of liberty, — that it must be reconquered day by day, that it subsists in a state of war, that it is always slipping away from those who boast it, to those who fight for it. mor in race it is not the broad shoulders, or litheness, or stature, that give advantage.' . .. i find the writing and speaking of englishmen in elizabeth's, james's, and charles i and ii's days, to have a greater breadth, and, at the same time, more delicacy with a negligent greatness than any since george i came in. americans are hardly bred sufficiently to read and apprehend the sweetness of mrs. hutchinson,' of pierrepont, of lady russell, of vane, of herbert, and of kenelm digby. 1 what follows is printed in english traits, pp. 46, 47. 2 the wife of colonel thomas hutchinson (the governor of nottingham who defended it for the parliament) wrote his memoir ; several extracts from which follow (see society and solitude, p. 273, and miscellanies, p. 407). 1855) the pocket. newton 545 the englishman is wont to esteem his pocket a place of sanctity; a hold which no human hand but his own is allowed to enter. the habit of putting into it increases the passion to fill it, which, day by day, creeps on the man, until i fear at last he comes to value his mind as another pocket, into which no one ever goes but himself, and valuable for that reason; he can put away there what he does not like to have seen, and it is subservient to the first. newton. dr. boerhaave said of him, “that man comprehends as much as all mankind besides." newton told mr. machin,“that his head never ached but when he was studying the lunar irregularities.” and when dr. halley pressed him to complete his theory of the moon, he replied, “ that it made his head ache, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more.” he afterwards told conduitt, “that, if he lived till halley made six years' observations, he would have another stroke at the moon." newton composed his chronology at cambridge, where he was in the habit, he said, “of refreshing himself with history and chronology when weary of other studies.” leibnitz said, that he had consulted all the 546 [age 52 journal learned in europe upon some difficult points without having any satisfaction, and that when he applied to sir isaac, he wrote him in answer by the first post to do so and so, and then he would find it. bishop burnet valued newton for having the whitest soul he ever knew. nature shows everything once somewhere in large. your earthquake is the first chemist, goldsmith, and brazier : he wrought to purpose in his craters, before men borrowed the hint in their crucibles. bayle called the marine remains in mountain and mine the medals of the deluge. mr. owen saw the fibrous or tubular structure of the teeth of the mastodon; the microscope showed this to be an universal fact. hunter saw in the snail that the snail was to its shell as the pulp is to a tooth. flamsteed will cause his man to calculate more synopses of the moon's places both from the observations and tables as “ soon as observed, whereby it will be soon evident whether the heavens will allow these new equations you introduce." ; ens e new 1 all the above quotations seem to come from sir david 1855) homology. agni 547 identities for intellect. sallust's complaint that nobody will believe more than he can do himself; which is just. the universal belief that because you have such a form and organization as mine, — point for point, you must believe as i do. if you do more than i, the worse for you. and science of to-day is homologies. rig veda sanbita. “who, agni, among men is thy kinsman? "agni! (fire) bring the gods awaking with the morning, thou accepted messenger of the gods, bearer of oblations, giver of dwellings, beloved of many, the smoke-bannered, the lightshedding. i praise agni at the break of day, the best and youngest of the gods, the guest of man, exempt from death, preserver, the sacrificer ! juvenile agni ! whose flames delight, wafter of the burnt-offering! resplendent agni, visible to all, protector of people in villages, associate of man, lord of red coursers, son of strength. place upon the grass the morning-moving deities, to drink the soma juice, for it was yesterday expressed. brewster's memoirs of the life, writings, and discoveries of sir isaac newton, then newly published. 548 journal [age 52' “i invoke the lovely night and dawn to sit upon the sacred grass at this our sacrifice. “mortals, you owe your daily birth to indra, who, with the rays of the morning, gives sense to the senseless, and to the formless, form. the shedder of rain, the mighty lord, the always compliant, invests men with his strength, as a bull defends a herd of kine. “the hymn, the cause of increase, is to be repeated to indra. ... “maruts (winds?) sportive, without horses, borne by spotted deer (clouds) were born selfradiant, with weapons, war-cries, and decorations. i hear the cracking of the whips in their hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in the fight. praise the sportive and resistless strength of the maruts. “ which is the chief leader among you, agitators of heaven and earth, who shake all around, like the top of a tree? . . . at the roaring of the maruts, every dwelling of the earth shakes. “ maruts, with strong hands, come along the beautifully embanked rivers, with unobstructed progress. may the felloes of your wheels be firm! “utter the verse that is in your mouths : 1855) aswins. varuna. vishnu 549 spread it out like a cloud spreading rain; chant the measured hymn. ... “ aswins (waters?) long-armed, bearers of wealth, guides of men, sit down on the sacred grass. affluent aswins ! have you not ever drunk the soma juice?: come as a ship to bear us over the ocean of your praises. ... ambrosia is in the waters; in the waters are medicinal herbs.” varuna. “he who knows the path of the birds flying in the air, he abiding in the ocean, knows, also, the course of ships. he who knows the path of the vast, the graceful, and the excellent wind, and who knows those who reside above. through him the sage beholds all the marvels that have been or will be wrought." ... « vishnu traversed this world; three times he planted his foot, and the whole world was collected in the dust of his footstep." (the three steps are the present, the past, and the future.) “for the stars cast or inject their imagination or influence into the air,” says behmen. 1 mr. emerson notes that the soma comes from the acid milkweed ( aselepias viminalis). '550 journal (age 52 in youth, we admire much in ourselves or in others, as high individuality, which turns out later to be merely of temperament, or of sex, and therefore extremely common. cants. another of the cants is the cant about banks. ours is declared to be, says sam hooper,' “ the most perfect system of currency and banking in the world.” the most audacious cant of europe was “the holy alliance," — and of america, “the extending the area of freedom”; now “manifest destiny"; and “preservation of the union.” england has wilkinson, carlyle, tennyson, landor, dickens, thackeray, hallam, layard, bulwer, gladstone, henry drummond, cobden, chadwick, stephenson, owen. but what stout old fellows were bede, camden, newton, hooke, flamsteed, fuller, leland, hearne, dodsworth (162 volumes); bayle, dugdale, brian, walton, coke, littleton. sen an important defect in america, “the absence of a general education of the eye.” i senator from massachusetts. 1855] your gift. small men 551 jacob behmen's pictures are in the fine allegory of book ix, chapter 12, p. 280, and there only pleasing i hold that a wise man will write nothing but that which is known only to himself and that he will not produce his truth until it is imperatively demanded by the exigencies of the conversation which has arrived at that point. so is the shrine and pedestal ready, so he produces his statue, and it fills the eye. the english are stupid because they reserve their strength. the lowells ripen slowly. hurrying america makes out of little vanities its great men, as, now, the three leading men in america are of a small sort, who never saw a grander arch than their own eyebrow; never saw the sky of a principle which made them modest and contemners of themselves. yet washington, adams, quincy, franklin, i would willingly adorn my hall with, and i will have daguerres of alcott, channing, thoreau. a man of thought is willing to die, willing to live ; i suppose because he has seen the thread on which the beads are strung, and perceived that it reaches up and down, existing quite ineau. au, 552 (age 52 journal dependently of the present illusions. a man of affairs is afraid to die, is pestered with terrors, because he has not this vision. yet the first cannot explain it to the second. greenough thinks civility grew fast in east and south europe because the climate allowed them leisure to occupy themselves about matters of general and lasting import. “the leisure which nature gave them we may have, if we belong to our climate, and do not make our civilization merely a colossal one." “ for not only in servitude is man robbed of half his life. without a state, and an immediate fatherland, the noblest man is little worth: — with them, even the simple can do much.” – niebuhr, letters, iii, 129. 't is a measure of culture, the number of things taken for granted.' ... saadi. retzsch is one of those disconsolate 1 the rest of the paragraph may be found in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 56, 57). 2 the explanation of this heading is that the true poet — saadi as representative — from his insight is always cheerful. friedrich august moritz retzsch illustrated the poems of goethe, schiller, burger, and shakspeare's plays. 1855] earth-illusion. books 553 preachers. please don't put a dismal picture on the wall. david scott tinged his canvas with sable. but depth of intellect relieves even the ink of crime with a fringe of light, as in napoleon. “a sidney of tranquil principles.” — evelyn. mythology is no man's work.' ... the illusion of a firm earth is more useful and more composing than any narcotic. macaulay. no person ever knew so much that was so little to the purpose. “ immensi tremor oceani.” on de ruyter's monument at amsterdam. s non books are the destruction of literature. “the golden age of the greek literature was that in which no book grew under the stylus or the calamus, but these merely served as aids (and not probably until after the lapse of centuries) to the precarious tradition of the nation, and the overladen memory of the poetical singers and narrators.” — niebuhr, letters, iii, 217. i see “ quotations and originality” (letters and social aims, pp. 181, 182). 554 journal (age 52 sleepy hollow.' ellery channing says, “they will lay out the grounds in the way of a dentist. a dentist wants a good tooth, but it must be a false tooth.” trees should be the only ornaments. let the grounds well alone, or aim only at the purgation of superfluities. “ kings for such a tomb would wish to die,” etc. n . schiller said, “thoughtest thou that this infinite round is the sepulchre of thine ancestors ; that the wind brings thee, that the perfumes of the lindens bring, perhaps, the spent force of arminius to thy nostril; that thou, in the refreshing fountain, perhaps, tastest the balsamed bones of our great henry?” saadi. cheerfulness. in every cottage i heard complaint; in every middle class house i heard of bad servants. “where there is no gaiety and i mr. emerson had been invited to make the address at the consecration of “sleepy hollow" as a cemetery on september 29, and the following notes show that duty was in his mind. his address is printed in miscellanies, excepting such portions as were later used in the essay “immortality.” mr. channing wrote a beautiful poem, and mr. sanborn the hymn sung by the people. 1855) niebuhr. quetelet 555 no enjoyment of life, there can be no vigor and art in speech or thought,” says niebuhr. no a man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair; but he is to keep it. it is inestimable as a basis or accompaniment of his ability, but nothing alone. niebuhr's letter to savigny on his discovery of the survival of the roman jugerum in the italian pezze, is good queteletism again.' “the whole system of the roman weights and measures exhibits striking indications of a mathematical basis. their mile of one thousand paces bears an evident relation to a degree of the meridian, and, in all probability, the latter determined the length of the pace and the foot, which again determined, on the one hand, the land measure, and on the other, the measure of capacity; for the ampbora was a cubic foot.” letters, iii, 165. thus here again we have in a census of civil men the fair share of eulers and monges and la granges appearing.' 'tis the air, the air i quetelet demonstrated the working of natural laws on men and their institutions. 2 the letters to a german princess, of euler, the mathematician, were clear statements of important facts in mechanics, 556 journal (age 52 that is geometrical, and he who breathes it deeply begins at once to compute and measure. so it seems probable that the phænicians had the secret of the magnet, which is called lapis heracleus; and that hercules's golden cup in which he sailed the sea was a mariner's compass. “paris, that mass of iron deposited on the banks of the seine,” says babinet, complaining of the disturbance of his delicate magnets. “ no two terrestrial meridians can be found alike, any more than two oak leaves,” says babinet. · may 20. last week, in the race-ground at cambridge, a man from new york, named grindall, ran ten miles in fifty-seven minutes and some odd seconds. his competitor was stetson, who was only twenty-one seconds behind him. you may chide sculpture or drawing, if you will, as you may rail at orchards and cornfields; but i find the grand style in sculpture as admonitory and provoking to good life as marcus antoninus. i was in the athenæum, and looked optics, acoustics, etc. gaspard monge, the introducer of " descriptive geometry.” the mécanique analytique of la grange won his great fame and distinction. 1855) metamorphcsis. year 557 at the apollo, and saw that he did not drink much port wine. . the cid boasted that he never obtained his swords by barter or trade, but won them in fight. the life is sacred in each house, that did not come into the house by any door, but was born into it. series and degree. metamorphosis is intelligible only on the doctrine that world repeats world. in swimming world it swims; in creeping world, creeps; in flying world it flies. come up to higher plane still, act passes into thought, and aies with finer wing. the rear. there is no flower so sweet as the four-petalled flower, which science much neglects. one grey petal it has, one green, one red, and one white. (from ro) june. a scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know. 558 [age 5 journal how strange, said choate, all the english to this day love or hate charles fox so much that they cannot understand the history of greece. osmunda regalis. and chiefy that tall fern so stately, of the queen osmunda named plant lovelier in its own retired abode on grasmere's beach, than naiad by the side of grecian brook, or lady of the mere, sole sitting by the shores of old romance. wordsworth. july. morals. 't is wonderful where the moral influences come from, since no man is a moralist. 'tis like the generation of the atmosphere, which is a secret. coleridge is one of those who save england from the reproach of no longer possessing in the land the appreciation of what highest wit the land has yielded, as shakspeare, spenser, herbert, etc. but for coleridge, and a lurking, taciturn, or rarely speaking minority, one would say that in germany, and in america, is the best mind of england rightly respected. sutc 1855] napoleon iii. woman 559 and that is the sure sign of national decay, when the bramins can no longer read and understand the braminical science and philosophy. louis napoleon, the present emperor, is a plucky fellow who writes spirited terms for his general pelissier to offer the russians, and bolder far than the english would have dictated. he means to teach them how robbers rob. trifles. lone women, readers, etc., wish to live with good housekeepers, and never learn that good housekeepers cordially hate any body who does not dine at the family hour. woman. i think it impossible to separate their education and interest. the policy of defending their property is good; and if the women demand votes, offices, and political equality, as an elder and eldress are of equal power in the shaker families, refuse it not. 'tis very cheap wit that finds it so funny. certainly all my points would be sooner carried in the state if women voted. and the new movement is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and woman, and you may proceed in a faith 560 (age 52 journal that, whatever the woman's heart is prompted to desire, the man's mind is simultaneously prompted to execute. women more than all are the element and kingdom of illusion.' .. there is unbelief in a cigar, in wine, in all luxury. the poet doubts his access to the grand sources of inspiration, doubts the continuance of the supplies, and steals to these shabby pots. “de greeks be godes, de greeks be godes!” said fuseli, striding up and down among the elgin marbles. what adoptive arms their [english] genius has, hospitable to ability from every land. fuseli, kneller, romilly, ricardo, schomburgk, asser, handel, herschel. the church is an institution of god. yes, but are not wit, and wise men, and good judgment whether a thing be so or no, also institutions of god, and older than the other? i mr. emerson on the coming 20th september was to deliver the address ~ woman” before the woman's rights convention in boston. (scc miscellanies, pp. 493-426.) 1855) immortality. women 561 never to assume an obscure cause, when an obvious one exists, is a rule of the mind. it is therefore a little violent — is it not? — to contradict the universal traditions of mankind, in regard to the eastern origin of nations, by assuming independent creation of a several race for each country. sleepy hollow. the blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. all great natures love stability. our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day; and rest of brain and affection please. “when we pronounce the name of man, we pronounce the belief of immortality.” – lieber. “death takes us away from ill things, not from good.” superlative. ’t was a great discovery to me, that, when a lady says, “she shall die,” she means, take a nap. i want a horse that will run all day like a wolf. 562 (age 52 journal aristocracy. first come, first served. there is no rich man like the self-reliant; this is royalty; he walks in a long street. once for all he has abdicated second-thoughts, and asks no leave of other's eyes, and makes lanes and alleys palatial. what talent had this second charles, that he could hold his place among the wrens, hookes, newtons, flamsteeds, halleys, bentleys, pettys, coventrys that clustered in his “royal society,” and atone for the harpies and dragons and all unclean beasts which masqueraded in titles around him? manners, the manners of power, sense enough to see his advantage, and manners up to it; that is his cheap secret, and a boundless subserviency corresponding in the people. just what happens in every two persons who meet on any affair.'.. sw alcott. i was struck with the late superiority he showed. the interlocutors were all better than he; he seemed childish and helpless, not apprehending or answering their remarks aright; they masters of their weapons. but by and by, when he got upon a thought, like an indian 1 the rest of the passage occurs in behavior” (conduct of life, pp. 183, 184). 1855] thought. stooping 563 seizing by the mane and mounting a wild horse of the desert, he overrode them all, and showed such mastery and took up time and nature like a boy's marble in his hand, as to vindicate himself. (from no) thought is identical, the oceanic one, which flows hither and thither, and sees that all are its offspring : it coins itself indifferently into house or inhabitant, into plants, or man, or fish, or oak, or grain of sand. all are re-convertible into it. every atom is saturated with it, and will celebrate in its destiny the same laws. everything, by being, comes to see and to know. work is eyes, and the artist informs himself in efforming matter. * england. i wish they had made no exception to their dislike of adventurers in the recent reception of the emperor louis napoleon. the pride and traditions of the aristocracy and of the commons, at the moment when they might have rallied to the side of purest virtue, were ingloriously forgotten. it seems impossible to hold governments to the belief that the use of dishonest partnerships is as ruinous for nations as for private men. where were the viri romæ ? where was 564 journal (age 52 cromwell, where the elizabeth tudors and blakes and sandwiches, talbots of shrewsbury; where the nelsons and collingwoods and wellingtons when the haughty aristocracy and the haughty commons of london cringed like a neapolitan populace before this impudent thief? the capture of london by french cuirassiers, or by russian cossacks, had not been such a defeat. let an english gentleman walk very modestly henceforward. nature is a swamp, on whose purlieus we see prismatic dew-drops, but her interiors are terrific.'... king alfred. “good fortune accompanied him in all things like a gift from god.” good fortune is another name for perception and good will. what fortune can compare with intellect. does the early history of each tribe show the permanent bias of the tribe, which is then lost or masked in complex relations, as the tribe spreads and pronounces itself in colonies, commerce, codes, arts, letters ; the first simple tendency. 1 see « sovereignty of ethics" (lectures and biograpbical sketcbes, p. 188). 1855) alcott's lack. egotism 565 the early history shows it, as the musician plays the air which he proceeds to conceal in a tempest of variations. alcott thought he had not a lecture or a book, but was himself an influence. he justified himself by naming or letting you name an ideal assembly, of socrates, zoroaster, pythagoras, behmen, swedenborg, and, if such were bodily present, he should not be shamed, but would be free of that company. i hinted that all these were exact persons, severe with themselves, and could formulate something. could he formulate his dogma? i proposed to lock him up in prison, so that he might find out what was memory, what fancy, what instinct, what analysis? a horse doctor could give a prescription to cure a horse's heel. had he no recipe for a bad memory, or a sick angel? to all which he replied that he must have a scribe to report his thoughts which now escaped him. i dread autobiography which usurps the largest part, sometimes the whole of the discourse of very worthy persons whom i know. "sons ow. science. he erects himself into a barrier. the savant is not willing to report nature, to stand 566 (age 52 journal by report ; but must report nature cuvierized, or blainvillized, nature owenized, or agassizized, etc., which modification diminishes the attraction of the thing in a fatal manner. pyramids and catacombs are not built by whim, but by ideas. they grew from the credence of the builder, as our telegraphs and railroads from ours. a depression of spirits, in a nation as well as in an individual, develops the germs of a plague. “poetry (among the scandinavians) was inscribed on small quadrangular staves, which were conveniently adapted for the reception of a verse or stanza, each face containing a line. amongst us, therefore, a verse and a stave are still synonymous.” — edinburgh review. the [scandinavian?] law said that the unguarded open field “was under god's lock, with heaven for its roof, though but the hedge for its wall." the wedding formula of the english liturgy is saxon. the trygdamal, or assurance of truce, highly poetical. ssurance 1855] capuchins. ideal man 567 henry thoreau asks, fairly enough, when is it that the man is to begin to provide for himself? well, yes, of course, to-day, if ever. but i think some men are born capuchins. capuchins, too, are in the nature of things, and this is the best, or abbot of the order. he should have for his arms the cyclamen, which the italians call capuccino. i think genius has a preëmption, an antecedent or seignorial right in lands and chattels. just as man is conscious of the law of vegetable and animal nature, so he is aware of an intellect which overhangs his consciousness like a sky; of degree above degree; and heaven within heaven. number is lost in it. millions of observers could not suffice to write its first law. yet it seemed to him [the ideal man?] as if gladly he would dedicate himself to such a god, be a fakeer of the intellect, fast and pray, spend and be spent, wear its colours, wear the infirmities, were it pallor, sterility, celibacy, poverty, insignificance, were these the livery of its troop, as the smith wears his apron and the collier his smutted face, honest infirmities, honourable scars, so that he be rewarded by conquest of principles; or by being purified and admitted 568 [age 52 journal into the immortalities, mount and ride on the backs of these thoughts, steeds which course forever the ethereal plains. time was nothing. he had no hurry. time was well lavished, were it centuries and cycles, in these surveys. it seemed as if the very sentences he wrote, a few sentences after summers of contemplation, shone again with all the suns which had gone to contribute to his knowing. few, few were the lords he could reckon: memory, and imagination, and perception: he did not know more for living long. abandon yourself, he said, to the leading, when the leader comes; this was the sum of wisdom and duty. shake off from your shoes the dust of europe and asia, the rotten religions and personalities of nations. act from your heart, where the wise temperate guidance is instantly born. perception; memory; imagination; metamorphosis,' the flowing and the melioration or ascent. then, as dionysius described the orders of celestial angels, so the degrees of intellect are an organic fact, and indeed it is these which give birth to mythology. 1 after reflection another lord is added to the list in the above paragraph. 18551 strength. aunt mary 569 it is true — is it not ? that the intellectual man is stronger than the robust animal man; for he husbands his strength, and endures. “yet the puppies fight well,” said wellington of the overfine cultivated young londoners. henry thoreau notices that franklin and richardson of arctic expeditions outlived their robuster comrades by more intellect. frémont did the same. this is the tough tannin that cures the fibre, when irish and dutch are killed by fever and toil. aunt mary, if you praised a lady warmly, would stop you short, — “is it a coloured woman of whom you were speaking ?” when mrs. brown ran into any enthusiasms on italian patriots, etc., “mrs. brown, how's your cat?” when she had once bowed to goodnow and his wife at the lyceum, not quite knowing who they were (goodnow had offended her when she boarded with them), she afterwards went up to him, and said, “i did not know who you were, or should never have bowed to you.” “the verses i had composed on lady valletort, walking home one morning from lacoch, 570 journal . (age 52 remained in my memory floating in indistinct fragments for some weeks, during which time i was too busy about other things to write them down. from time to time i took a look, as it were, into my memory, to see if they were still there: at last i copied them out,” etc.— moore's diary. queteletism. if the picture is good, who cares who made it? better, of course, it should be the work of a man in the next street than of landseer. and the authorship of a good sentence, whether vedas or hermes or chaldæan oracle, or jack straw, is totally a trifle for pedants to discuss. only imports it that man should be wise, "apparent images of unapparent gods," – and montaigne's old remark that if we can fix it on homer, – but what do you know of homer? dead man and dead man i is it the letters of one name, and the letters of another name? the first lesson of history is the good of evil. good is a good doctor, but bad is a better.' i for the rest of the passage sec “ considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 253). 1855] two handles. heaven 571 suggestiveness. everything has two handles, or, like a seed, two nodes,'. .. one of which shoots down as rootlet, and one upward as tree. every thought is made poetical by converting it from a particular into a general proposition. as there is no flower or weed so low or lonely but is strictly related to its botanic family, so no thought is solitary, but will slowly disclose its root in a law of the mind." heaven is the exercise of the faculties: the added sense of power :) to the architect, it is architecture; to the broker it is money; to the orator it is force of statement, and rule of his audience; to the savant, it is discovery of the extension of his principle, a key to new facts, new dominion of nature. i cannot see the fault of a facade or of a temple, i am so much occupied and pleased with beautiful details. so i cannot remember and require the ideal integrity of man, i am so captivated with my friends. i compare natural history of intellect (p. 300) and “ poetry and imagination ” (letters and social aims, p. 71). 2 compare natural history of intellect, p. 21. 3 natural history of intellect, p. 46. 572 [age 52 journal they told the children that if they count a thousand stars, they would fall down dead ;and you will; but it is because details are fatal to the integral life. august. [during august, mr. emerson went to amherst, massachusetts, on the invitation of the students of the college, to deliver an address. on the following pages of the journal are many notes of material (much from earlier journals) for this occasion, a few of which are here given.] for amberst. could you show the riches of the poor? could you shame the vain ? could you make them think common daylight was worth something? the distinction of thought is an aristocratic distinction. instead of dealing with raw materials, it deals with methods. and it only obtains real progression. until we have intellectual property in a thing, we have no right property. as to first coming and finding, there were comers and finders before you, already in occupation when you came. there was the bird, and the beaver, and the buffalo, and the fox. but there were meliorations these could not reach, obstructions they could not surmount. 1855) ideas as gods." moore 573 second part which cambridge plays at its own feasts. interest of the class of reform dependent on their representing an unexplained thought; not spent volcanos. what have we to do with reading that ends in reading? they (the true philosophers] called ideas gods; they were worshippers. they dared not contravene with knacks and talents the divinity which they recognized in genius. when the greeks in the iliad perceived that the gods mingled in the fray, they drew off. moore's book is good reading through all the volumes, for any one who wishes to know english society. moore himself, on his very conditioned and rather low platform (of perfectly accepting english conventions without one breath of noble rebellion), is manly and resolute; he is sure to face every crisis and opponent, and do what society think the honorable thing. his affections are, however, very pale and permitted, and whatever is said about his father or his mother, or even his wife and child, is said to be overheard. it is a little transparent, through all his account of his high friends, 574 journal (age 52 that he is a kept poet, however they please to phrase it. if he is kept, so also are all the proprieties kept on their part at their peril. but the same web weaves itself in all times and countries, however the fashions and names vary. the new professions. the phrenologist; the railroad man; the landscape gardener; the lecturer ; the sorcerer, rapper, mesmeriser, medium; the daguerreotypist. proposed: the naturalist, and the social undertaker. jean paul asked — did he not? for a woman who should see nature as a whole, and not in parts. sismondi spent eight hours a day for twenty years on his histories. but somebody, meanwhile, was spending the same time to purpose ; the assiduity is the valuable fact. in thought 't is of more note. you laugh at the monotones, at the men of one idea.'... but if we look nearly at heroes, we may find the same poverty; and perhaps it is not poverty, but a fruitful law. thus, demosthenes, the 1 see natural history of intellect, p. 51. 1855] thought's elasticity 575 electrical head in the most electrical city, — all his speeches, 't is said, have one inspiration, which is self-reliance. and the like doctrine is the genius and guiding star of chatham's eloquence.' and, indeed, if one reduce the doctrine of zeno and the stoic sect, who were the prechristians, the religions of the greek and roman states; you will find not many thoughts, but a few thoughts; one thought, perhaps, self-reliance. christianity insisted on the obverse of the medal, on love, but not on any variety or wealth of thoughts. and the justification of this is in the nature of thought. . . . thought is the most elastic of things, and a whole nation has subsisted on one book, as the jews on their pentateuch, the mussulmen on their koran, the hindoos on the vedas, europe for a thousand years on aristotle, spain on cervantes and the chronicles of the cid, bohemia on a single history, and snorro sturleson is alone the norse history. a nation will subsist for centuries on one i compare « eloquence" (society and solitude, p. 99) and “ celebration of intellect " (natural history of intellect, p. 120). 576 journal (age 52 thought, and then every individual will be oppressed by the rush of ideas. and always a plenum, with one grain or sixty atmospheres. august 11. at amherst the learned professors in the parlor were pleased that the plurality of worlds was disproved, as that restored its lost dignity to the race of men, and made the old christian immortality valid again, and probable. i said, this was a poor mechanical elevation, and all true elevation must consist in a new and finer possession, by dint of finer organization, in the same things in which buffalo and fox had already a brutish, and indian and paddy a semi-brute possession. bubb dodington's book is the bare story of courtier servility, all atmosphere or music of honour quite left out. 'tis butcher's meat, nothing more. 'tis the result of aristocracy, that its distinctions are now shared by the whole middle class. the road which grandeur levelled for its coach, toil can travel in its cart. latin and greek and algebra are now cheap. 'tis the london times 1855) thackeray 577 that now keeps the poets, and the chemist; and not john of gaunt, or lord dorset, any longer. mr. bellew' told me that thackeray told him that he had employed mr. hanna to write up for him lectures on the wits of queen anne, which thackeray had undertaken to read in america. hanna has since produced for himself “ lectures on the satirists,” but no thackeray has been found to give them fame. august 27. sydney smith found, as he grew older, men were better and foolisher than he had believed. the melioration in pears, or in sheep and horses, is the only hint we have that suggests the creation of man. everything has a family likeness to him. all natural history from the first fossil points at him. the resemblances approach very near in the satyr, to the negro, or lowest man, and food, climate, and concurrence of happy stars, a guided fortune, will have at last piloted the poor quadrumanous over the awful bar that separates the fixed beast from the versatile man. in no other direction have we i a new york artist and illustrator, of english birth. 578 (ace 52 journal any hint of the modus in which the infant man could be preserved. the fixity or unpassableness or inconvertibility of races, as we see them, is a feeble argument, since all the historical period is but a point to the duration in which nature was wrought. any the least and solitariest fact in our natural history has the worth of a power in the opportunity of geologic periods. all our apples came from the little crab. our illusions borse-chestnuts! in this gale of warring elements, it was necessary to bind souls to human life, as mariners in a tempest lash themselves to the mast and bulwarks of a ship; so nature employed certain illusions as her ties and straps. a rattle, a red coral, a doll, an apple, a horse-chestnut for a child keeps him going, climbing, and tumbling about, and educates his muscle, blood, and bones; skates, a river, a boat, a horse, a gun, the boy; (esprit-du-corps) partyspirit, and maids draw the youth ; money and power and his children, the man. slowly and rarely and condescendingly the masking veil falls, and he is allowed to see that all is one stuff cooked and painted under a hundred counterfeit appearances. when the boys come into my yard for leave to gather the horse-chestnuts, i enter 1855] “the newness.” england 579 into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, — fearing that any moment they will find out they are fooled. intellect. one of the phrases which greaves' i believe, uses, i think particularly descriptive of inspiration, “the newness.” open the uncommanded doors whence the newness comes, and i truly live. eyes that the beam celestial view which evermore makes all things new. keble. england. landor is a plutarch again. and there is always a spiritual minority. thus, in the age of bronze, appeared wordsworth and coleridge; and now, wilkinson and carlyle ; and, earlier, thomas taylor. their skepticism is perfectly impious. certain conclusions of their science lasting, as newton's refractions, fits of easy reflection and transmission, leslie's latent heat, dalton's atoms, bradley's [aberration of light and nutation of the earth's axis). 1 the english scholar and philanthropist, the admirer of alcott. lane and wright, his disciples, brought the phrase to concord. 580 journal (age 52 the universities are wearisome old fogies, and very stupid with their aorists and alcaics and digammas, but they do teach what they pretend to teach, and whether by private tutor, or by lecturer or by examiner, with prizes and scholarships, they learn to read better and to write better than we do. [although no word of trouble appears in the journal, the year had been a hard one for mr. emerson in other respects than the toilsome lecturing afar for a livelihood. in may, a suit was brought against him by a neighbor who claimed that a considerable portion of the tract of woodland beyond walden on the lincoln side, which mr. emerson had bought a few years before from two other neighbors, belonged to him by an old deed which he had discovered. the case was tried and mr. emerson lost the part of the woods in question, much to his regret, but the pecuniary loss came to those who inadvertently sold him more land than they owned. by the advice of a valued and loyal friend mr. emerson had made some investments in the eric and mad river and also in the vermont and canada, and rutland railroads. in summer his letters show that the former began to appear rson 1855) genius and talent 581 doubtful, and in september no dividends came for the latter, and for several years thereafter his income was much reduced. it is due to the honoured memory of his old friend mr. abel adams to record that he insisted upon bearing the expenses of the college course of mr. emerson's son edward a few years later in the hard times of the civil war and also made a bequest to mr. emerson and his children.] october 4. wide the gulf between genius and talent. the men we know deal with their thoughts as jewellers with jewels which they sell but must not wear; like carpenters with houses too fine for such as they to live in. the mystic is as good as his gold and jewels, good as his house that he builds, goes always in purple apparel, a glistering angel. october 9. sent chapter i of english traits to phillips, sampson & co. at the albion hotel, we found that mr. w.'s' mushrooms tasted “like the roof of a house." 1 mr. w., a gourmand, but enjoying the company of literary men, gave a dinner. these recluses were unused to mush582 [age 52 journal trebellius, one of the five writers of the augustan history in the fourth century, says, “ galli, quibus insitum est esse levis," and see the identity of traits between the french and the ancient gauls, in article “ julius césar,” biograpbie générale. colleges should have a real examination or test, before granting diplomas, as by competition for valuable prizes ; so having rivals or enemies to adjudicate the crown, and this will come to be suggested and enforced by the neighborhood of the racecourse at cambridge, by the pugilistic prize-fights, by regattas, and cattle-shows. a fair mode is to propose problems chemical, mathematical, and botanical never yet solved, and rewards for the solution. the old custom of defending a thesis against all comers was a fair test, when there were comers. time was when we built castles in the air, – of the american college. allston, greenough, nuttall, audubon, frémont, irving, were to fill the chairs. god forbid i should complain of being excluded by this or that man or circle from this rooms. one, bolder than the others, tried them, and thus reported. 1855) merit wins. parliament 583 or that privilege. on the contrary, the most absolute submission on my part attends it. for do i not know that these parties are all eager to invite high merit to this privilege ; and that on the instant when that merit is demonstrated by me, or by any, they will fly to greet it, and will open every door to it, and bear it on their arms with joy unfeigned?" skepticism? yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours. the house of commons sits frequently fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen hours; whilst “it has been observed, by an irreverent wit, that the lords sit scarcely long enough to boil an egg ” (edinburgh review, jan., 1854). till at length the time arrives, when, in the words of sir f. baring, “any man who occui it is possible that in this paragraph mr. emerson had in mind his constant willingness and even wish to have opportunity to hold a chair of literature in some new england college. in later years he said that this was so. but no opportunity offered, and after the divinity school address in 1838 the doors of harvard were closed to him until 1867, when he was invited again to deliver the phi beta kappa oration, and, four years later, to give a course of lectures on philosophy at harvard university. 584 journal (age 52 pies the time of the house is a public enemy.” the charitable trusts bill proposed by lord brougham in 1816 has at length become a law in 1853, and lord john russell said that this was about the ordinary period for bringing any considerable measure to maturity. english have more constitution than other people. . . . [our john] marshall was a good specimen (of that vigor]; so much blood he did not know what to do with it, drank vast quantities of brandy like water, spent quantities of strength on swimming, hunting, riding, walking, and ready for the most absurd frolics, with the gravity of the eumenides. mr. blanchard, the carpenter in concord, reading in the newspaper the sale of buildinglots on lake street, in chicago, “ can't hardly believe that any lands can be worth so much money, so far off.” december.' the radiation of manners. the boundless america gives opportunity as wide as the morning, i on the edge of a severe winter, mr. emerson set forth to lecture before lyceums in the raw cities and towns of the then far west. 1855) iowa hotel. leclaire 585 and the effect is to change the peak of the mountain into a vast tableland, where millions can share the privilege of this handful of patricians. le claire house, davenport, iowa, december 31. rules of the house. “no gentlemen permitted to sit at the table without his coat." “no gambling permitted in the house.” i have crossed the mississippi on foot three times. soft coal, which comes to rock island from about twelve miles, sells for sixteen cents a bushel; wood at six dollars per cord. they talk “quarter-sections.” “i will take a quartersection of that pie.” leclaire being a half breed of the sacs and foxes (and of french-canadian) had a right to a location of a square mile of land, and with a more than indian sagacity of choosing his warpath, he chose his lot, one above the rapids, and the other below the rapids, at rock island. he chose his lot thirty years ago, and now the railroad to the pacific runs directly through bis log bouse, which is occupied by the company for wood and other purposes. his property has risen to the value of five or six hundred thou586 journal (age 52 even sand dollars. he is fifty-seven years old and weighs three hundred and eight pounds. december 31. in rock island i am advertised as “the celebrated metaphysician,” in davenport as “the essayist and poet.” authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1855 rig veda sanhita; vishnu purana; confucius; pentateuch; aristotle; varro apud pliny the elder; sallust; martial; trebellius; plotinus; porphyry; lamblichus; proclus; koran ; ali ben abu talib; bede; king alfred; asser; snorri sturlason; saadi; robert de thornton; sir thomas lyttelton; cervantes; william camden, britannia; sir edward coke; george chapman; bishop brian walton; sir william dugdale, the baronage of england; sir kenelm digby; thomas fuller; clarendon; colonel thomas hutchinson, memoirs by his wife; evelyn; sir henry vane; giordano bruno; robert boyle; pepys, diary ; hooke; систа, 1855] reading 587 newton; flamsteed; bishop burnet; leibnitz; molyneux; petty; pierre bayle; halley; lady russell, letters; richard bentley; boerhave; hearne, leland's itinerary; pierrepont; montesquieu; dodington, diary; james bradley ; lord chesterfield; franklin ; euler, letters to a german princess; hume, history of england; kant; john hunter; galiani; lagrange, mécanique analitique; burke; beaumarchais; washington ; john adams; josiah quincy; william mitford, history of greece; gaspard monge, géométrie descriptive; goethe; schiller; mirabeau; talleyrand; john marshall; dumont, traités de législation; fichte; ritson, select collection of english songs; abernethy; hegel; lingard; sydney smith; lord lyndhurst; ricardo; schelling; southey, chronicle of the cid; o'connell; niebuhr, letters, roman history; hallam; blainville; sir david brewster, memoirs of the life, writings, and discoveries of newton; webster; guizot, love in marriage; daniel treadwell; grote, history of greece; babinet, études et lectures; quetelet; choate; alcott; robert stephenson; stukeley, on stonebenge; george sand, consuelo; 588 (age journal schomburgk; cobden; richard owen; horat greenough; bulwer-lytton; tennyson, mau gladstone; thackeray; chadwick; j. j. g. wilkinso charles k. newcomb; john emile lemoin charlotte brontë, villette; layard; thorea w. e. channing. end of volume viii @be riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s.a 3 2044 013 641 121 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. 3 caicéles 1 0 1998 book due & bep'1 0997 casildak eveled bundanese busep 20 2002 kangelled widener idener may 2 8 2004 feb 1 0 2003 kcancelled 624 ( 132.34 029 harvard college library veturi from thb bright legacy one balf the income from this legacy, which was re. ceived in 1880 under the will of jonathan brown bright of waltham, massachusetts, is to be expended for books for the college library. the other half of the income is devoted to scholarships in harvard university for the benefit of descendants of henry bright, jr., who died at watertown, massachusetts, in 1686. lo the absence of such descendants, other persons are eligible to the scholarships. the will requires that this announcement shall be made in every book added to the library under its provisions. journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1856–1863 € boston and new york houghton mifflin company be riverside press cambridge 1913 am 1323.029 dec 2 1913 librars kright fund copyright, 1913, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1913 contents journal xlvii 1856 (from journals ro, do, so, and zo). winter exposures in the west. dixon. visionary settlers. 6 idealist, beloit. lyceum audiences. early illinois; its hard times. english law precedents. the sap of intellect. the banker. pure research. hospitality. lake 1 michigan. sermon on trifles. railroad property. epi/ 2 grams. choate on presidential virus. living truth. quakers. thoreau's combativeness. cold science. instant duty. false poets. copernicus versus calvin. herschel; chemistry versus famine. merchant and /? hermit. father taylor's trust. napoleon applied. artists. man completes nature. egyptiacus. english, american and german culture. indifference of subject. what is “ practical”? classic and romantic. aunt mary. false classicism. “ the two rivers." civilization's mistakes. flower-teachers. monochords. 21 noble astronomers. states of mind. scholar ill placed; andrews nortòn. the good germans. the magic song; wafthrudnir; time. whipple on whitman. boston audience. the intermediate. elizabeth hoar. ellery channing's strange quality. selfish science. alcott's unshaken faith and sight. . . . . 3-40 contents each man fits. the great poetry. temperance. unexpected genius in conversation. alcott's insight; few see it. carnot, lafayette, arago. maupertuis. education, symbols, varied gifts. the affirmative. blundering civilization. childish reminiscence of war of 1812. 4! walk with thoreau, birds and flowers. pantheism. outrage on sumner. with thoreau on the river. freedom's champions. instinetive martyrs. kansas; so emigrant aid society. cant. obstructive government. 52 the poor outspend the rich. wordsworth's praise. quotations from lanfrey. professor poikilos. channing's verses. pigeon cove; the poem “ seashore.” quotations from upanishad. poem “ brahma.” elliot cabot on beauty. mather's counsel on extempore speaking. death. the landscape mocks. august walk with thoreau. spiritism. kansas relief meetings. november walk with channing. french influence on oxford. feats. nobility and elegance. english traits published. talk with albert h. tracy. john randolph on roger sherman. resurrection day dinner party. criticism of calderon. napoleon and beethoven. reading . . . . . . . . 41-71 journal xlviii 1857 (from journals so and vo) the lecture tour. illinois towns. birth of chicago, og.: den; amazing sales. pindar. agassiz and turtles. john brown in concord. insolvent men; conscience in contents vii spots. democrats accept whig captains. southerny fighting quality. rhetoric omits negatives. shamelessness. lord normanby. guizot. ascension. stoic. jamblichus. art and facts. frye; french compliment. untutored america. delia bacon. shakspeare ? and the pilgrims. title deeds. may walk with thoreau. trees give crowns. the drunkard's secret. peter kaufmann, his letter. family walk to the cliff. fear of thunder as a test ; thoreau. celebrating agassiz's fiftieth birthday; saturday club. thoreau on trees. physiologie du goût. the timeless woods. june walk with thoreau. scholar in place and time. creation going on. verses for fourth of july. moving to sleepy hollow. measure of men and children. visit to josiah quincy, jr.; old president quincy. ellery channing on frogs and farmers; a july day with him. faraday on force. the sane men; their thoughts. taming thoughts. beaumarchais's verse on character. arago on force. august afternoon with channing. the stars' inconvenient hours. thoreau's indian guide. truth. september walk with thoreau. nature's illusions . . . . . . . . . 73-113 how we failed to be catholics. nature mocks language. 114 * great by one gift. maximum and minimum. plato's prescription. surfaces; good writing. determination. abolitionists? faults. the abstruse and the clear. the 116 atlantic monthly; contributors and editor; alcott's views. debt to dreams. the shooting complexion. thieves in politics, and in business. moore's fine lines. cuvier, bichat, schwann. success well won. men 11% of instinct versus professors. organic position. the viii contents coming metaphysician. memory and imagination. 128 honour. naturel, native force, poisoned by low will. verses fresh from walden woods. nature and man belong together. fontenelle, fauriel, michelet. pace. shakspeare and bacon. compensation. ideality; flowing. high criticism. few stars, few thoughts ; ballads and epics. the greeks, mythology; webster. 137 sentiment and thought. hard times; banks suspend; 8 paper money; panics are tests. imagination gives value to the day. reading . . . . . . 114-140 journal xlix 1858 (from journals vo and do) course of lectures in boston. get the interesting facts. 144 meeting thoreau in the woods. what is practical? the turbine. hafiz's barbarous splendor. cowardly politics of massachusetts. french metaphysicians. inferences from great minds. the part of a gentleman to-day. our nation aged at eighty-two. agassiz and hunter on earning money. rarey's horse-training. real human manhood against artificial. the rising 1:1 generation. morals; right or precedent? wordsworth, milton, tennyson. rainbow. eloquence of silence. talk with thoreau; the maine hermit; patience reveals bird or beast. rowse on portraits. occupations. birds and lowers. babcock the carpenter's opinions. aspects of man. fate's teaching. english politics. the adirondac club; camp on follansbee's pond. contents the osprey's nest; lowell's venture. boat trip with agassiz. cattle-show address. wealth considered. the pervasive aim. fate. mr. emerson's philadelphia 62 lecturing. reading · · · · · · · · 143-164 journal l 1859 (from journals ac and cl) the burns centenary. powers of the mind. ruy diaz, the cid. nature's vanity a mask, we are alike. michel angelo on time. the novel “counterparts.” minds differ in degree, pace, association. the gov! ?! ernment permits outrage if due form observed. dead usage and laws. despair is no muse. greatness the mover. the revolution when thinkers meet. analogy 174 the key of the universe. be yourself, and listen. course of lectures in boston. love; spring. the wisdom of fools. ripple pond. channing's poetry, “ near home.” jefferson on the federal judiciary. emerson only a writer in absence of natural writers. who wrote shakspeare ? english confusion of ideas; orderly germans; poetry is part of nature. the constant magnet. gazetted words. pace makes the difference in men. secondary and primary men. every man has all, if he knew how to get at it. im1 patient americans. channing on golden-rod as an investment. latent heat and intellect. real people and drones. whipple. votaries of shakspeare and plato. culture a pagan. we must be moral. events contents are as the person. no disciples: wish to bring men not to a master, but to themselves. henry james. the spiritual defined; man and his spirit. personality. power, outward and inward, and sensibility. trust utterly to your presentiments. spiritism. the poem “ boston.” prescott, and carlyle; frederick the 1?7 great. the age the great critic. the strong, original men, novalis, samuel hopkins, george fox, herbert; their repeaters. materialized sentiment. pov1179erty's praise subject for poem. reality. superiority of others. french and english. the rector's voice. catching rides. born cassandras. whitewashing; criticism. printing frightened the fairies. ben jonson on newspapers ; inheritance. america's want of -: character. some fanaticism needed. the may warblers. carlyle's frederick the great again ; surface in writing. raffaele's letter on his galatea. the understanding. dante's eyes. inspiration is in the newness. tennyson's idylls of the king justifies england. rhyme in the theme. simonides's verse on his memory. persons who utter oracles. nature's making of 11 woman. free and deathless worship. the south demands disunion . . . . . . . . . 166-21 1 magic in all things. bettine brentano; goethe on beethoven. choate and webster's credit for classical learning. fame. no word of poem must drag. england's statute on range for the long-bow. use of university; harvard's timidity. spring. will and fate. new birth. will a perception of the eternal necessity. the parrot; dr. bigelow's mino bird. trip to wachusett; disabling sprain. ilávta pei, the flowcontents ing. charm of mediæval buildings. beatitude of intellect; hints of power. the inconvertible. the lost pleiad. aboriginal intellect. doctors disagree; nature catches the sprain. august’s fruit. wonder of knowledge. beware collectors. haydon's autobiography. speech at the dinner to dr. holmes. the unskilled rider. mr. crump; avalanche of misfortunes. dr. johnson's sayings. phillips's letter to judge shaw and president walker ; wine. preaching to theodore parker's society. aunt mary like dr. johnson. restless travel. imagination. the chelmsford memorial; reminiscences, the brave ancestors. channing as a critic. g. w. tyler. common people. self-healing. john brown's raid at harper's ferry. freedom's necessary champions. on a friend turned catholic. heroism for to-day. respect won by. john brown's sincerity and courage from his enemies ; thoreau's speech in concord. ideas unite persons. pierre d'auvergne's songs. wendell phillips. intellect traces the law, must flow into action. tobacco's illusion. the cold bath. culture; books. the day of john brown's execution observed in concord. mr. sanborn's generosity. reading . . . . . 212-255 journal li 1860 (from journals cl and dl) the winter's lecturing. a railroad panorama. carlyle's relatives in canada. the hump-backed driver tells xii contents of his horses. arctic drives in michigan. medical dicta, bigelow, holmes, samuel jackson. nature's mirror. illusion. aunt mary on everett's shortcoming, and on solitude. manners, travel. concord's rescue of sanborn. our vicious government. cassius m. clay and wendell phillips. books, should free us; make thieves. thoreau's criticism of agassiz. religious traditions giving way; christianity must be realized. praise of theodore parker. death. a venial affectation. sympathy. pairs. age. friendship. plutarch invaluable. god tires of kings. september walk with channing. bluebirds. a dangerous speaker. human sentiment's appeal. alcott's gifts. imagination. henry james on civilization, louis napoleon, science. greek ideals, beauty. believing poets. the hero and the pace of the country; napoleon. point of view makes the critic. subjects. michel angelo. memorabilia of philosophy from plato, berkeley, socrates (tennyson), plotinus (the dance), doctrine of nirvana, heracleitus, aristotle. man's incessant need of a simile. valued tales, lincoln's election. dedication of agassiz museum. the first stereopticon. a strange tribute. conduct of life published, carlyle's letter. reading . . . . . . 257–289 journal lii 1861 (from journals cl, dl, and gl) health is circulation. stereoscopic pictures. discoveries are first divined. sir thomas browne's idealism. eight contents xiii eras. laplace's answer to napoleon. a criticism of 24 thoreau. aristotle's dying speech. we know not what we do. no “shall” or “shan't.” henry james's five spiritual statements. the illusion “no fit company.” the mount of vision. health is subjugation of matter. immortality. try to pay the debt. grattan on plutarch. classes of men. the attraction of boy and girl. music to the unprepared ear. magic of grand design. indian copper-mining. the buried bird's-nest. hindoos shed light on imagination. boston's worthies. brave count gurowski. good of evil. the martyrs' crown of flame. the boston mob breaks in on the anti-slavery meeting. 305 strong speech of the street. thoreau on music. lord dundonald and the shipwright. grimm on vasari. notices of conduct of life. southerner’s life prepares him for a soldier. liberty. detachment by illumi, nation. companions. we want spirit. sects. the harp shell's beauty; continual growth; the festal memory of young days, of collins, gray, moore. clough's bothie. the bluebird of auburndell. words and images fly to the inspired poet. dreary sabbaths. the traits of genius; its definition. as school-committee man. saturday club. recovered treasures of our age. boston course of lectures. a clergyman's supposed joy in religion; a strife of christians. an advantage of old age . . . . . . . 291-322 pliny on luxury. nature's architects. on boys. our massachusetts regiments. war has cleared the air. doctrine of leasts. a bad cause. our horizon. tufts college address. southern inconsistency. newcomb xiv contents 327 on dante. taste. freedom; boys have it. a misfortune of war. war rapidly educates to great principles. thought the one prosperity. captain hodson's life ; self-help ; honour, your closest friend. talk with alcott. the larger consideration. nation's capital can be moved. how best to repair oneself. resources. the æolian harp; nature's musicians. sir robert wilson's decoration, his counsel as to ? france. the war gives the chance to deal with 3?! slavery ; the great laws will control the issye. miss austen's novels. occupation of fort hatteras. the pictorial dream. story of friar ives and the woman of damascus. inspiration of political economy. partiality of minds ; disproportion and new scales : man like a revolving light. eloquence. “ american nationality” at music hall. good discipline for a writer. intellect rather valued than true being. the race advances. originality. social talent versus scholarship. lincoln ; brave will rare, also good writing ; the psalms and gospels stand the test, so do the old bards. luck in literature; hogg's “ kilmeny." alcott. under the snow. seeing eyes. 'benefits of old age. worldly london. literary heritage of the new generation. realism heard of, not used. could we use immortality? reading . . . . . 323–350 contents xv journal liji 1862 (from journals gl, war, and va) the pinch of war begins. memory, vanishing dreams. argument impossible. english and american em-' m ployers. serene farmer, anxious newspaper readers. . slavery's statistics unheeded. the inspiring woods. ?? talent without character ; montaigne. talk with chicadee ; illusions; how far to respect them? war .* a new glass to see old things; trades go on, and amusements. praise of lowell's verses. john thoreau's two wonderful gifts. friends begin to die. opinions are fuxional quantities. cicero on civil war. man's reserve right of war. bassett on out-?7. rages on northerners in slave states. the current guides us better than we ourselves. iron, not words. grand commerce, paralyzed politics. governments not heroic. the thinkers speak, not to their own, but next generation. dr. reed's strange experience. happily nations tire of a fetich, like union-saving. england's low plane of policy. snow and freedom. : be thankful for honest government, if slow, and for our good cause. revolution in france. keep our --record clean before the nations. hitch your wagon to a star. ideas triumph over numbers. richter's ?!!! ķ titan. burke on sentiment and policy. mr. emerson lectures in washington at the smithsonian. “civi.. lization at a pinch”: pleasant meeting with presi: ? dent lincoln. sees secretaries chase, stanton ; also xvi contents seward with j. m. forbes and governor andrew; visits sumner. dinner with chase. call on mrs. frémont; more talk with seward . . . . 352-383 seward's dislike of massachusetts and complaint of congress; he takes mr. emerson to episcopal church, then to call on president; his boys and their rabbit. the giving up mason and slidell ; lord lyons. seward's talk of the prince of wales's visit, and of thurlow weed. dinner at mr. hooper's with governor andrew. mrs. schuyler's story of talleyrand and aaron burr. sumner's letters from the argylls. reception at mr. c. eames's. the capitol and library. recreant northerners. raleigh on army in fleet. majorities. von ense on war and aristocracy. correctness is rare. the stuttering wit. good of antagonisms; man rooted in nature, self-helpful, then refined. thoreau's liking for whitman ; on false preachers; advice to drunkard. old-time bostonians in church. weak republicans in congress. holmes, and the lowells. the meeting with the titmouse. greenwood's oratory. joinville's story of the friar. shy goodness. the magic cannon in mexico. strong unitarians were originally calvinists. les cbevaux de sabara. facts and ideas ; materialist and prophet. freedom loves the north. whiggery. war the touchstone of reputations, corrects brag and sentimentality . . . . . . . . . . . 384-412 shallow poetry; wish to teach rhetoric and oratory. the dying thoreau brave and happy; his praise of concord river. our negative success. mommsen on the poet. brownell's “old cove." mid-april ice on xvii contents walden. cottle's reminiscences. spring's wise delay. florian. the birds. peace uses most gunpowder. *17 country resources. memory. thoreau's death and burial; his english friend cholmondeley and the gift of east indian scriptures; list of those bequeathed to emerson. writers of romance, harriet prescott, elizabeth s. sheppard, bettine von arnim, george borrow; disraeli, goethe. misfortune from the negro. 2: feats, victory over the calf. imaginative books ; nala and damayanti. wholes, you must take and give. the clear eye. pansies. real writing. carlyle's frederick. untuning. mcclellan. two things in a picture. memory of thoreau. farmer's standard of 4:6 living. the gracious lady. thoreau's sayings; the solitary rock. courage. the inconvertible sentimentalist. success of the north secure; the wind of battle scatters complications. useless ephemeral reading. thoreau's journals will beget naturalists; sentences from these. concord prisoners of bull run return; welcome to them. destruction of slavery worth the cost. the saints pictured as ugly. “the grand style.” sensitive reputation. strong homely speech. your own fault, if your book neglected. blessing of conceit. the wood tortoise. talk with george sennott. seventeenth-century writing. nature in leasts. beliefs. hold to your own standard. shallow talk about nature; she gives to each his own. sentences from thoreau, the motives to emancipation . . 413-442 the war north and south; our government might let it out to contractor; letter to c. g. loring. bonaparte's way; gentz's diary. renan on sacrifice. xviii contents the volunteer army. priends. iteration in verse. uninventoried goods of farm. delusions of lawyers and clergy. sensibility is all. excellence justifies. musicians. walden's bottom. levity of the people. the world comes to you. believing sceptics. the emancipation proclamation ; its opponents. november splendor. health. incubus of slavery. art -4 and religion. unintelligent or biased voting. garrison and phillips. victorious new generation. southern 6 victories but temporary ; moral law will win. lincoln's slow policy. armies or ships. von ense on the earthly and the heavenly alliance. the nation on trial. movements of an aristocracy and a democracy. the “divine institution.” poetry's charm. “ american nationality,” war's service and power; the coming reconstruction, let that be sound. carlyle fears hypocrisy, but blind as to hero's foibles. the orchard's great bounty. holmes's social talent. father isaac hecker comes to concord. seeking for the law. household worship. value of clubs, and of cheering books. the american problem. hazel blossoms. death in ancestral letters. lyceum's three needs. quotations from borrow. necessarily a bard. reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 443-474 journal liv 1863 (from journals war, gl, va, for, and dl) emancipation jubilee in boston. lecturing. escape from burning hotel; reuben n. rice's kindness. richter's contents xix titan. beauty; matthew arnold and swedenborg. 1 difficulties. negro soldiers. fallen heroes of the l.'' north ; the cause. resistless right. power of ciry, cumstance; sensibility. relenting march. marriage. power. perpetual forces. universal trinity. our roots are in nature. divine necessity; identity of ? law. ideal politics. elasticity of man. the greatest 471 force is the moral. the uses of this war now appear; its training; shows the moral force; elevates the youth; organizes and elevates; brings out munificence; has created patriotism; sharpens the eyes; brings emancipation. von ense on religion. force of circumstances; steam the ally. quotations from richter. the hostler's poem. little rhode island. father taylor's question. thoreau's delicacy. oddity and concert. mother-wit. pitch your tone low. excusable superlative. montesquieu on writing. newton on discoveries. lincoln's over-clemency. pugin. attraction of * catholicism accuses our religion : morals still awaits 5:1 its hymn. unfashionable spiritism. paris draws germany. alcott on personality. doctrine of spirit's universality disposes of fate: alcott on emerson. french sure aplomb. criticism of harvard college by a graduate. letters of kings. verses on spring. story of negro soldiers. voltaire's fighting courage. thoreau as anti-slavery man. nation's jokes. poets feed on poets. death and burial of mary moody emerson. talk with beecher on the constitution. low argument for christianity . . . . . . . 476-510 mr. emerson appointed on board of visitors to west point military academy; his pleasure and interest xx contents in the youth, their tone, and their performance. meigs and michie. notes for remarks to cadets and for report. a civilization built on powder. the young generation. egotism also a power. how nature teaches child. philosophy must have right tone. agassiz's bold demand for science; his teachers. great members of the institut de france. go to naturalists and artists for theology, and to humble women for sense of duty. thoreau's oaken strength also in s his writing. henry james's book; his logic and tone. horizons. with channing to white pond; its colours and reflections. minorities. the benefaction of the tuileries garden. dartmouth college the granny system.” rich states vulnerable. the republic of letters. talent deceives; inspiration and faithful work required. hawthorne's unhappy friendship for pierce. wordsworth. carlyle's sacrifice to projectile style. sainte-beuve's criticism on taine. his words reproach the scholar. society formidable. aplomb; hold your own attitude. consolations of school-keeping. confucius, his doctrine of the mean, “ book of poetry”; virtue, heaven, golden rule. nature's indignities to the aged. proverbs, persian, arabian, etc. sensibility; poet gets his experiences to work for him. books. imputed virtues of a friend. saadi quoted. hatem tai's hospitality. bias. alcott like labrador spar. brigham young; walt whitman. attitude. we gravitate to victory. some idealism essential. samuel hoar's advocacy. power of money. the orator's problem. saadi on old age . . . . . . 511-545 contents xxi poet a priest. transubstantia:ion. thought guides style. genius must fight worldliness in colleges. thoreau on 5 * artificial wants. importance of clergy. political duty. elliot cabot on art. art native to italians. triumphing individuality. oriental imagery. major poor's wager ; timid conformity. sources of greatness. thought makes solitude. plain talk to england needed. unpatriotic apathy in cities. moral or revo557 lutionary policy. effective orators. education. our attitude towards the english. originality well nigh impossible; the pen instructs. ovid's birthday wish. trinity of society. president lincoln; gratefully take him as he is. duty to our dead. beauty. northern and southern causes compared. froissart. the window test. “ trifles.” blake on wordsworth. enthusiasm needed. metaphysics of the greeks in their gods. economy in age. the blessed gathering haze. poetry and prose. saadi's happiness. commines on louis xi. passions as language teachers. the currency. saadi ; the people's demand for poetry. boston has its hull. boutwell on the war; our lucky escape at the outset. the good town-meeting, judge hoar's masterly speech. boston's crown of citizens; her influence. letter to george p. bradford. bayle on cities. beecher in england. english writers and american people; our happy advance, the great laws guiding. the earth getting anthropized. new england. the rebels teach us, especially their women. friendship involves immortality. quotations from franklin, and william blake, and sainte-beuve. the country asks for men, the sacrifice worth while; contents high-minded youths. sketches of men. hoosac tunnel. leonardo da vinci ; artists' favourite models. sainte-beuve, divination precedes knowledge. renan. jesus as a theme. the astounded soldier. reading · · · · · · · · · · · · 546-581 illustrations mrs. lidian jackson emerson (photogravure) frontispiece from a daguerreotype taken in 1853. "a virgil lesson (mr. emerson, his younger daughter and son) . . . . . . . . . . . 126 from an ambrotype taken in 1858. miss ellen tucker emerson . . . . . . . 426 from a daguerreotype taken by hawes in 1860. journal western experiences and acquaintance classic and romantic considerations by the way walks with thoreau the sumner outrage kansas meetings visit to cape ann brahma talk with a member of congress journal xlvii 1856 (from journals ro, do, so and zo) [all page references to passages from the journals used by mr. emerson in his published works are to the centenary edition, 1903-05.] [the new year found mr. emerson in the west where he gave a lecture almost every weekday night through january, in illinois, wisconsin, michigan, and ohio. the exposure and discomfort were great, but he bore them as a philosopher should. on january 3, he wrote: “a cold, raw country this, and plenty of night travelling and arriving at four in the morning to take the last and worst bed in the tavern. advancing day brings mercy and favor to me, but not the sleep. . . . mercury 15° below zero. ... i find well-disposed, kindly people among these sinewy farmers of the north, but in all that is called cultivation they are only ten years old ; so that there is plenty of non-adaptation and yawning gulfs never bridged in this ambitious lyceum system they are trying to import.” and, jocrval (age 52 a week later, he writes from springfield, illinois : “here i am in the deep mud of the prairies, misled, i fear, into this bog, not by a will-o'-thewisp, but by a young new hampshire editor, who over-estimated the strength of both of us, and fancied i should glitter in the prairie and draw the prairie birds and waders. it rains and thaws incessantly, and if we step off the short street we go up to the shoulders, perhaps, in mud. my chamber is a cabin, my fellow boarders are legislators. . . . two or three governors or exgovernors live in the house. but in the prairie we are new men just come, and must not stand for trifles.” a little later, cold set in beyond remembrance or tradition, the mississippi froze from natchez northward. yet mr. emerson's constitution withstood the hardships and he took an active interest in the growing country and the men who were breaking the way.] nunc pellite curas, cras ingens iterabimus æquor. horace. (from ro) january 1, 1856. in dixon i talked with mr. dixon, the piopeer founder of the city. his full-length por1856) illinois settlers we overer trait was hanging in the town hall where we were. he is eighty years old and a great favorite with the people. his family have all died, but some grandchildren remain. he, who has made so many rich, is a poor man, which, it seems, is a common fortune here ; sutter, the california discoverer of gold, is poor. it looks as if we must have a talent for misfortune, to miss so many opportunities, as these men who have owned the whole township and not saved a competence. he is a correct, quiet man; was first a tailor, then a stage owner, and mail agent, etc. i went down the galena river, once bean river, fève, then fever, now galena river, four or five miles in a sleigh, with mr. mcmasters to the “ marsden lead,” so called, a valuable lead-mine, and went into it. marsden, it seems, was a poor farmer here, and sold out his place and went to california ; found no gold, and came back, and bought his land again, and, in digging to clear out a spring of water, stumbled on this most valuable “ lead” (leed), as they call it, of lead-ore. they can get up 7000 pounds of the ore in a day (by a couple of laborers), and the smelters will come to the spot, and buy the ore at three cents a pound; so that he found journal [ace 52 california here. heat once called in his brothers, and divided the mine with them. one of them sold out his share (“ foolishly ") for $12,000; the others retain theirs. mr. shetland said seventy-five or a hundred thousand dollars had already been derived from this mine, and perhaps as much more remains. hon. mr. turner, of freeport, said to me that it is not usually the first settlers who become rich, but the second comers. the first, he said, are often visionary men, the second are practical. the first two settlers of rockford died insolvent, and he named similar cases in other towns; i think beloit. an idealist, if he have the sensibilities and habits of those whom i know, is very ungrateful. he craves and enjoys every chemical property, and every elemental force, loves pure air, water, light, caloric, wheat, flesh, salt, and sugar; the blood coursing in his own veins, and the grasp of friendly hands; and uses the meat he eats to preach against matter as malignant, and to praise mind, which he very hollowly and treacherously serves. beware of hypocrisy. 1856] cold. western lyceums 7 beloit, january 9. i fancied in this fierce cold weather — mercury varying from 20° to 30° below zero for the last week — that illinois lands would be at a discount, and the agent, who at dixon was selling great tracts, would be better advised to keep them for milder days, since a hundred miles of prairie in such days as these are not worth the poorest shed or cellar in the towns. but my easy landlord assured me “we had no cold weather in illinois, only now and then indian summer and cool nights.” he looked merrily at his window panes, opaque with a stratum of frost, and said that his was a fashionable firstclass hotel, with window lights of ground glass. re this climate and people are a new test for the wares of a man of letters. all his thin, watery. matter freezes; 't is only the smallest portion of alcohol that remains good. at the lyceum, the stout illinoian, after a short trial, walks out of the hall. the committee tell you that the people want a hearty laugh, and stark, and saxe, and park benjamin, who give them that, are heard with joy. well, i think with governor reynolds, the people are always right (in a sense), and that the man of letters is to say, . journal (age 52 these are the new conditions to which i must conform. the architect, who is asked to build a house to go upon the sea, must not build a parthenon, or a square house, but a ship. and shakspeare, or franklin, or æsop, coming to illinois, would say, i must give my wisdom a comic form, instead of tragics or elegiacs, and well i know to do it, and he is no master who cannot vary his forms, and carry his own end triumphantly through the most difficult. mr. sweet, a telegraph agent on the chicago and rock river line, said, he can tell the name of the operator, by the accent of his despatch, by the ear, just as readily as he knows the handwriting of his friends. every operator has his own manner or accent. an operator usually reads more correctly and quickly by the ear than by the eye. some good operators never learn to read by the ear. boys make the best operators, and, in six months, a boy of sixteen was worth $45.00 a month in an office at chicago. the rule of their experience is never to establish a telegraph line until after a railroad is built. it cannot sooner pay. at beloit, on tuesday night, january eight, the mercury was at 27° and 28° below zero. it 1856] hard times in illinois 9 has been bitterly cold for a fortnight. a cold night they call “ a singer.” the hard times of illinois were from 1837 to 1845 and onward; when pork was worth twelve shillings a hundred, and men journeyed with loads of wheat and pork a hundred miles or more to chicago, and sold their wheat for twenty-six cents a bushel, and were obliged to sell their team to get home again. mr. jenks, a stage agent and livery-stable keeper, told us of his experiences, and when he left chicago to go eastward, he would not have given $3.00 for a warranty deed of the state of illinois.' hoosier meant southerner. hoosiers and yankees would fight for the land. yankees, when fighting men, would fight by the day ;“the hoosiers are good to begin, but they cave.” emmons, esq., of michigan, said to me that he had said he wished it might be a criminal offence to bring an english lawbook into a court in this country,so foolish and mischievous is our slavery to english precedent.... i for an interesting account of the desperate condition of the settlers for want of a market before the railroads came to their salvation, see an american railroad builder, by h. g. pearson (houghton mifflin co., 1911). 2 the rest is printed in “ power" (conduct of life, p. 62). 10 journal [age 52 rui ow there are times when the intellect is so active that everything seems to run to meet it. its supplies are found without much thought as to studies. knowledge runs to the man, and the man runs to knowledge. in spring, when the snow melts, the maple trees run with sugar, and you cannot get tubs fast enough, but it is only for a few days. the hunter on the prairie at the right season has no need of choosing his ground. east, west, by the river, by the timber, near the farm, from the farm, he is everywhere by his game. here is a road, michigan southern, which runs through four sovereign states; a judicial being which has no judicial sovereign. ohio, indiana, michigan, illinois franchise has to yield to eminent domain, and the remedy is appraisal and payment of damages. but unfortunately, when, as now, the michigan central is to be bereaved of its monopoly, which it had bought and paid for, the jury to appraise the damage done is taken from the population aggrieved by the michigan central. i asked, why not take a jury from other states ? people here are alive to a benefaction derived from railroads which is inexpressibly great, and vastly exceeding any intentional philanthropy." i the rest of the passage is printed in “ consideration by the way” (conduct of life, p. 256). 1856] pure research ii ... my banker here at adrian, mr. lis of opinion that, to run on a bank for gold is a criminal offence, and ought to be punished by the state's prison! he delights, he frankly told me, to make such people pay three or four per cent a month for money. seek things in their purity. well, we try, on each subject we accost, to ascend to principles; to dip our pen in the blackest of the pot; and to be sure, find the cause of the trait in some organ, as spleen, or bone, or blood. we are not nearer; we are still outside. nature itself is nothing but a skin, and all these but coarser cuticles. a god or genius sits regent over every plant and animal, and causes this, and knits this to that, after an order or plan which is intellectual. the botanist, the physicist, is not then the man deepest immersed in nature, as if he were ready to bear apples or to shoot out four legs, but one filled with the lightest and purest air, who sympathizes with the creative spirit, anticipates the tendency, and where the bird will next alight; being himself full of the same tendency. hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, but enough, and an immense quiet. in england, umen 12 journal [age 52 it is a great deal of fine food, and of fire and immense decorum. when i see the waves of lake michigan toss in the bleak snowstorm, i see how small and inadequate the common poet is. but tennyson, with his eagle over the sea, has shown his sufficiency. “in the american backwoods there is nothing of those social and artistic enjoyments which ennoble man, whilst they dissatisfy him. what man would live without the poesy of sounds, colours, and rhymes ! unhappy people that is condemned to this privation !” — german paper. william little came to church and heard my sermon against minding trifles." he told me had he preached he should have taken the other side. probably not one hearer besides thought so far on the subject. the railroads have pretended low fares, and, instead of seventy-five cents, i pay for a passage to boston from concord, sixty cents; and the i of course this refers to the time of mr. emerson's pastorate. 1856] railway expense 13 trip costs one hour, instead of two and one half hours. well, i have really paid, in the depreciation of my railroad stock, six or seven hundred dollars a year, for the last few years, or, say, a hundred a year, since the roads were built. and i shall be glad to know that i am at the end of my losses on this head. a writer in the boston transcript says, that “just in proportion to the morality of a people, will be the expansion of the credit system,” which sounds to me like better political economy than i often hear. lectures. 1, france; 2, english civilization; 3, anglo-american; 4, stonehenge; 5, the age; 6, poetry; 7, beauty; 8, the scholar. for beauty. use of gems, in landor's “pericles and aspasia”; in patmore's “angel in the. house." : they called old france a despotism tempered with epigrams. wherever the epigrams grow, they are pretty sure to make room for themselves, i the verses from patmore alluded to are printed in “woman” (miscellanies, pp. 411, 412). 14 journal (age 52 and temper the despotism. what can you do with a talleyrand ? “sire, no government has prospered that has resisted me.” so in politics with deretz; or with webster. “where shall i go?” said webster. there is the whig party, and the democratic party, and mr. webster. it soon appears that the epigram, or webster, is a party too. much more in the courts, where he was really sovereign. choate said that, once a candidate for the presidency, it was impossible to get that virus quite out of a man's constitution:as everett, webster, cass, down to pratt and mellen. (from do) february 29. truth. it is not wise to talk, as men do, of reason as the gift of god bestowed, etc., or, of reasoning from nature up to nature's god, etc. the intellectual power is not the gift, but the presence of god. nor do we reason to the being of god, but god goes with us into nature, when we go or think at all. truth is always new and wild as the wild air, and is alive. the mind is always true, when there is mind, and it makes no difference that the premises are false, we arrive at true conclusions. 1856] quakers. thoreau 15 mr. arnold, with whom i talked at new bedford, saw as much as this, and, when penn's treacheries were enumerated, replied, “well, what if he did? it was only penn who did it.” he told of the talking quaker in maine who claimed acquaintance with pyot (?), saying to him, “ you know i am your convert.” pyot answered, “ yes, i see thee 's my convert, for my master knows nothing of thee.”:.... remember the indian hymn,“god only i perceive, god only i adore.” the bible will not be ended until the creation is. if i knew only thoreau, i should think coöperation of good men impossible. must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy? centrality he has, and penetration, strong understanding, and the higher gifts, — the insight of the real, or from the real, and the moral rectitude that belongs to it; but all this and all his resources of wit and invention are lost to me, in every experiment, year after i the first part of this passage, also what follows it, is printed in “sovereignty of ethics" (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 195, 196). 16 journal (age 52 year, that i make, to hold intercourse with his mind. always some weary captious paradox to fight you with, and the time and temper wasted.' i find good sense in the german atlantis, which thinks astronomy overprized, which, at present, is a cold, desart science, too dependent on the mechanic who grinds a lens, and too little on the philosopher. so of chemistry and geology; it finds few deeps in them, no genial universal maxims. the little world of the heart is larger, richer, deeper, than the spaces of astronomy, which take such a row of pompous ciphers to express. and when the same devotion shall be given to ethics and jurisprudence, as now is given to natural science, we shall have ideas and insights and wisdom, instead of numbers and formulas. the most important effect of modern astronomy has been the tapping our theological conceit, and upsetting calvinism. 1 with all their value one of another, and their silent affection, if one may so characterize their relation, satisfactory conversation at this period of their friendship seems to have been rare. perhaps thoreau's combative tendency, inherited through his mother from a scottish ancestry, and a desire to try strength with an approved champion were to blame. but yet they were true friends. 1856) false poets. copernicus 17 i value myself, not when i do what is called the commanding duty of this monday or tuesday, but when i leave it to do the duty of a remote day, as, for instance, to write a line, or find a new fact, a missing link, in my essay on“ memory” or on “ imagination.” “il ne manque à tous les bommes qu'un peu de courage pour être laches,” said the earl of rochester one day, in a fit of misanthropy. when the minister presented himself to the north carolina unitarian church agent to demand his wages for preaching, he asked, “who sent you here?” “the lord sent me.” “the lord sent you! i don't believe the lord knows there is any such man.” i have much that feeling about these pretended poets, whom i am sure the lord of parnassus knows not of. (from so) two ways. the most important effect of copernicus was not on astronomy, but on calvinism, — tapping the conceit of man; and geology introduces new measures of antiquity. now and then leaps a word or a fact to light which is no man's invention, but the common 18 [age 52 journal instinct. thus, “all men are born free and equal” though denied by all politics, is the key-word of our modern civilization. 'tis strange that sir john franklin and his picked men, with all the resources of english art, perished of famine where esquimaux lived, and found them, and continue to live. herschel said, chemistry had made such progress that it would no longer be that men would perish of famine, for sawdust could be made into food. and yet men in sligo and cape verde and new york have been dying of famine ever since. 'tis answered, yes, you can convert woolen and cotton rags into sugar, but 't is very expensive; and 't is like the duke of sussex's recommendation, that the poor should eat curry. 'tis a geographic problem whether the mississippi, running from the depressed polar zone to the elevated equatorial region, 2500 miles, does it not run uphill ? manners. if you talk with j. k. mills, or j. m. forbes, or any other state street man, you find that you are talking with all state street, and if you are impressionable to that force, why, 1856) merchant and hermit 19 0 they have great advantage, are very strong men. but if you talk with thoreau or newcomb, or alcott, you talk with only one man; he brings only his own force. but for that very reason (that the conventional requires softness or impressionability to the dear little urbanities in you), if you abound in your own sense, they [i.e., the first] are weak, and soon at your mercy.” but the others (those wise hermits), who speak from their thought, speak from the deep heart of men, from a far wide public, the public of all sane and good men, from a broad humanity: and greek and syrian, parthian and chinese, cherokee and kanaka, hear them speaking in their own tongue. mr. eaton, of malden, told me, that when father taylor was about going to europe, he heard him preach, and he said, “to be sure, i am sorry to leave my own babes, but he who takes care of every whale, and can give him a ton of herrings for a breakfast, will find food for my babes.” i later, mr. emerson learned to prize mr. forbes at a higher rate. 2 compare what the pine tree says in “ woodnotes," ii (poems, pp. 53, 54). 20 journal [age 52 i find it easy to translate all napoleon's technics into all of mine, and his official advices are to me more literary and philosophical than the mémoires of the academy. see in atlantis for february, 1856, p. 118, how carnot translated mechanics into politics. sin is when a man trifles with himself, and is untrue to his own constitution. everything is the cause of itself. we have seen art coming back to veracity. napoleon, from pedantry of old tactics to the making the art of war a piece of common sense. carlyle, armed with the same realism in his speculation on society and government, red tape, etc. nor let the musician think he can be a frivolous person and a parasite; he must be musician throughout, in his vote, in his economy, in his prayer. allston said, “his art should make the artist happy.” “a strong nature feels itself brought into the world for its own development, and not for the approbation of the public.” – goethe. here we stand, silent, unknown, dumb as mountains, inspiring curiosity in each other, and 1856] man completes nature 21 what we wish to know is whether there be in you an interior organization as finished and excellent as the body. for if there be, then is there a rider to the horse; then has nature a lord.' blow the horn at the gate of egremont castle, which none but the great egremont can blow." the outward organization is admirable, the geology, the astronomy, the anatomy, all excellent; but 't is all a half; and, enlarge it by astronomy never so far, remains a half; it requires a will as perfectly organiżed: a perfect freedom is the only counterpart to nature. when that is born, and ripened, and tried, and says, “here stand i, i cannot otherwise," – nature surrenders as meekly as the ass on which jesus rode.3 'tis because the man is by much the larger half; and, though we exaggerate his tools and sciences, yet the moment we face a hero or a sage, the arts and civilizations are peu de cas. there are four sweets in my confectionery, i this sentence ends “ country life” (natural history of intellect, p. 167). 2 referring to wordsworth's poem. 3 part of this passage is found in “country life” (pp. 165, 166). 22 [age 52 journal sugar, beauty, freedom, and revenge, said egyptiacus. black star, builders of dungeons in the air. through nature's ample range in thought to rove, and start at man the single mourner there. young. this passing hour is an edifice, which the omnipotent cannot rebuild. the missouri and the mississippi, after their junction, run forty miles side by side in the same bed before they fully mix. the rate of interest in illinois runs from ten to forty per cent; in boston, from five to ten and twelve per cent; yet does not the capital of boston realize this difference of level and flow down into illinois. well, in england and in america there is the widest difference of altitude between the culture of their scholars and that of the germans, and here are in america a nation of germans living with the organon of hegel in their hands, which makes the discoveries and thinking of the english and americans look of a chinese narrowness, and yet, good easy dunces that we are, we never suspect our inferiority. 1856) woman. subjects 23 woman should find in man her guardian. silently she looks for that, and when she finds, as she instantly does, that he is not, she betakes her to her own defences, and does the best she can. but when he is her guardian, all goes well for both. your subject is quite indifferent, if you really speak out. if i met shakspeare, or montaigne, or goethe, i should only aim to understand correctly what they said: they might talk of what they would. when people object to me my topics of england, or france, or natural history, 't is only that they fear i shall not think on these subjects, but shall consult my ease, and repeat commonplaces. the way to the centre is everywhere equally short. “a general has always troops enough, if he only knows how to employ those he has, and bivouacs with them,” said bonaparte. every breath of air is the carrier of the universal mind. thus, for subjects, i do not know what is more tedious than dedications, or pieces of flattery to grandees. yet in hafiz, it would not do to skip them, since his dare-devil muse is never better shown. a practical man is the hobby of the age. well, when i read german philosophy, or wrote verses, 24 (age 52 journal i was willing to concede there might be too much of these, and that the western pioneer with axe on his shoulder, and still moving west as the settlements approached him, had his merits. ... on further consideration of this practical quality, by which our people are proud to be marked, i concede its excellence; but practice or practicalness consists in the consequent or logical following out of a good theory. (see atlantis, february, 1855.) here are they practical, i.e., they confound the means with the ends, and lose the ends thereby out of sight freedom, worth, and beauty of life. classic and romantic. the classic art was the art of necessity : modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.'... republics run into romance when they lose sight of the inner necessity and organism that must be in their laws, and act from whim. wagner made music again classic. goethe says, “i call classic the sound, and romantic the sick.” sainte-beuve defines classic: “un auteur qui 1 what follows is, in substance, printed in “ art and criticism” (natural history of intellect, pp. 203, 204). 1856] classic and romantic 25 a fait faire un pas de plus, a découvert quelque vérité, qui a rendu sa pensée dans une forme large et grande, saine et belle en soi,” etc. i abridge much. (see causeries.) eugène sue, dumas, etc., when they begin a story, do not know how it will end ; but walter scott when he began the bride of lammermoor had no choice, nor shakspeare in macbeth. but madame george sand, though she writes fast and miscellaneously, is yet fundamentally classic and necessitated : and i, who tack things strangely enough together, and consult my ease rather than my strength, and often write on the other side, am yet an adorer of the one. to be classic, then, de rigueur, is the prerogative of a vigorous mind who is able to execute what he conceives. the classic unfolds : the romantic adds. the discovery of america is an antique or . classic work. paris. of great cities you cannot compute the influences.' ... april 5. walden fired a cannonade yesterday of a hun1 the paragraph is printed in “boston ” (natural history of intellect, p. 187). 26 journal [age 52 dred guns, but not in honour of the birth of napoleon.' aunt mary said of talleyrand, that he was not organized for the future state. aunt mary is jealous of all the newer friends of her friends and cannot bear either x or y, or the fame of z. she reminds one in these days of an old aristocrat, say queen elizabeth shaking the duchess of — on her death-bed, or of sarah of marlborough, as she walks with her stick to the oyster-shop. classic and romantic. i think i can show that france cleaves to the form, and loses the substance; as, in the famous unities of her drama; and in her poetry itself; in the whole “ classicality” of her turn of mind, which is only apery ; “for france doth ape the lion's shape.” menander's speech, “that he had finished the comedy, all but the verses,” and burke, who studied the statistics of his speech, but left the illustration and ornament to the impulse of speaking 1 not for a regiment's parade, nor evil laws or rulers made, blue walden rolls its cannonade. (“may day," poems.) 1856) the two rivers 27 thy voice is sweet, musketaquid; repeats the music of the rain; but sweeter rivers silent flit through thee, as thou through concord plain. thou art shut in thy banks; but the stream i love, flows in thy water, and flows through rocks and through the air, and through darkness, and through men, and women. i hear and" see the inundation and eternal spending of the stream, in winter and in summer, in men and animals, in passion and thought. happy are they who can hear it. i see thy brimming, eddying stream, and thy enchantment. for thou changest every rock in thy bed into a gem : all is real opal and agate, and at will thou pavest with diamonds. take them away from thy stream, and they are poor shards and flints : so is it with me to-day.' the property proves too much for the man, and now all the men of science, art, intellect, are pretty sure to degenerate into selfish housekeepers dependent on wine, coffee, furnace, gaslight, and furniture. then things swing the other way, and we suddenly find that civilization crowed too soon; that what we bragged as trii the first rhapsody for -the two rivers," as it came to mind, sitting by the river, one april day. (see the poems.) re 28 (agj 52 journal umphs were treacheries; that we have opened the wrong door, and let the enemy into the castle ; that civilization was a mistake; that nothing is so vulgar as a great warehouse of rooms full of furniture and trumpery; that, in the circumstances, the best wisdom were an auction, or a fire; since the foxes and birds have the right of it, with a warm hole to fend the weather, and no more ; that a pent-house, to fend the sun and wind and rain, is the house which makes no tax on the owner's time and thought, and which he can leave when the sun reaches noon. what need have i of book or priest ? and every star is bethlehem star,i have as many as there are yellow powers in the grass, so many saints and saviours, so many high behaviours, are there to him who is himself, as thou, alive and only sees what he doth give.' monochord. aunt mary cannot sympathize with children. i know several persons whose world is only large enough for one person, and each of them, though he were to be the last i see the finished verses in poems (appendix, p. 333). w 1856] aunt mary. astronomers 29 man, would, like the executioner in hood's poem, guillotine the last but one. elizabeth hoar said of aunt mary, —“she thinks much more of her bonnet and of other people's bonnets than they do”; and she sends elizabeth from dan to beersheba to find a bonnet that does not conform; while mrs. hoar, whom she severely taxes with conforming, is satisfied with anything she finds in the shops. she tramples on the common humanities all day, and they rise as ghosts and torment her at night. kings and nobles. tycho brahe refused (1574) for a long time to publish his observations upon the remarkable star in cassiopeia, lest he should thus cast a stain upon his nobility. fame. copernicus's discoveries “insinuated themselves into ecclesiastical minds by the very reluctance of their author to bring them into notice.” — brewster, life of newton, vol. i, p. 259. greatness. to a grand interest a superficial success is of no account.' . .. i this passage is printed in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 59). 30 journal (age 52 states. a man, to get the advantage of the ideal man, turns himself into several men, by using his eyes to-day, when he is loving; and tomorrow, when he is spiteful; and the third day, when he is merry; and so on; as the astronomer uses the earth as a cart to carry him to the two ends of its orbit, to find the parallax of a star. mer what a barren witted pate am i, says the scholar; i will go see whether i have lost my reason.' the right conditions must be observed. principally he must have leave to be himself. we go to dine with m and n and o and p, and, to be sure, they begin to be something else than they were. ... keep the ground, feel the roots, domesticate yourself. i think of andrews norton, who did not like toasts and sentiments because they interfered with the hilarity of the occasion. ... what kind of a pump is that which cannot draw, but only deliver ? i think the germans have an integrity of mind which sets their science above all other. they have not this science in scraps, this science i here follow several passages on unsatisfactory dinnerparty conversation which are printed in “ clubs” (society and solitude, pp. 229, 231, 232). 1856] the germans 31 v ev on stilts. they have posed certain philosophical facts on which all is built, the doctrine of immanence, as it is called, by which everything is the cause of itself, or stands there for its own, and repeats in its own all other; "the ground of everything is immanent in that thing." everything is organic, freedom also, not to add, but to grow and unfold. they purify, they sweeten, they warm and ennoble, by seeing the heart to be indispensable, not in scraps, not on stilts. in music, it was once the doctrine, the text is nothing, the score is all; and even, the worse the text, the better the score ; but wagner said the text must be fixed to the score and from the first; must be inspired with the score. so in chemistry, mülder said, — for a good chemist, the first condition is, he shall know nothing of philosophy ; but oersted and humboldt saw and said that chemistry must be the handmaid of moral science. do you not see how nature avenges herself of the pedantry? the wits excluded from the academies met in clubs and threw the academy into the shade. i know a song which, though it be sung never so loud, few can hear, — only six or seven or 32 journal (age 52 eight persons : yet they who hear it become young again. when it is sung, the stars twinkle gladly, and the moon bends nearer the earth.' waftbrudnir.' the horse taught me something, the titmouse whispered a secret in my ear, and the lespedeza looked at me, as i passed. will the academicians, in their “ annual report,” please tell me what they said ? i know a song which is more hurtful than strychnine or the kiss of the asp. it blasts those who hear it, changes their colour and shape, and dissipates their substance. it is called time. in this passage and the one with a similar beginning, soon following, mr. emerson has cast his thought in the form of the rhapsodies of the cymrian bards, quoted in “ poetry and imagination.” (see letters and social aims, pp. 58, 59; also in the poems, “ merlin's song.") 2 a giant in the norse mythology who asked questions, which the hearer must answer or forfeit his life. 3 in mr. emerson's poem, the “dirge," occur the lines i touch this flower of silken leaf which once our childhood knew; its soft leaves wound me with a grief whose balsam never grew; and as we walked with him through « peter's field,” an abandoned farm where he and his brothers played in their youth, he showed us the lespedeza as that flower. 33 1856] sayings. an amalgam yet they who hear it shed their age and take their youth again. whipple said of the author of “leaves of grass,” that he had every leaf but the fig leaf. april 26. the audience that assembled to hear my lectures in these six weeks was called “the effete of boston.” as linnæus delighted in finding that sevenstamened flower which alone gave him a seventh class, or filled a gap in his system, so i know a man who served as intermediate between two acquaintances of mine, not else to be approximated. “i can well wait,” said elizabeth hoar,“ all winter, if sure to blossom, an apple tree, in spring; but not, if, perhaps, i am dead wood, and ought to burn now.” subject for lecture is, the art of taking a walk. i would not ask ellery channing, like the little girl, “mamma wishes, sir, you would begin to be funny.” indeed, quite the reverse: for his written fun is very bad ; and as to his 34 journal (age 52 serious letter, the very best, that to ward in europe, is unreproducible. would you bottle the efflux of a june noon, and sell it in your shop? but if he could be engaged again into kindly letters, he has that which none else could give. but 't is rare and rich compound of gods and dwarfs, and best of humanity, that goes to walk. can you bring home the summits of wachusett and monadnoc, and the uncanoonuc, the savin fields of lincoln, and the sedge and reeds of flint pond, the savage woods beyond nut brook towards white pond? he can. do you think i am in such great terror of being shot?'... it is curious that thoreau goes to a house to say with little preface what he has just read or observed, delivers it in lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which any of the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, and when he has finished his report departs with precipitation. 1 this and what follows, purporting to be quoted from “a humorist,” but mainly autobiographical, is printed in society and solitude (p. 5). 35 1856] selfish science materialists. economical geology ; economical astronomy, with a view (to annexation, if it could be) to navigation: and chemistry and nata ural history, for utility. yes, rightly enough: but is there no right wishing to know what is, without reaping a rent or commission ? now, their natural history is profane. they do not know the bird, the fish, the tree they describe. the ambition that “hurries them after truth, takes away the power to attain it.” this charge that i make against english science, that it bereaves nature of its charm, lies equally against all european science. “mathematics,” said copernicus to the pope, “ are written for mathematicians.” the comfort of alcott's mind is, the connexion in which he sees whatever he sees. he is never dazzled by a spot of colour, or a gleam of light, to value that thing by itself; but forever and ever is prepossessed by the undivided one behind it and all. i do not know where to find in men or books a mind so valuable to faith. his own invariable faith inspires faith, in others. i valued miss bacon's studies of shakspeare, simply for the belief they showed in cause and effect; that a first-rate genius was not a prodigy 36 [age 52 journal and stupefying anomaly, but built up step by step as a tree or a house is, with a sufficient cause (and one that, with diligence, might be found or assigned) for every difference and every superiority to the dunce or average man. for every opinion or sentence of alcott, a reason may be sought and found, not in his will or fancy, but in the necessity of nature itself, which has daguerred that fatal impression on his susceptible soul. he is as good as a lens or a mirror, a beautiful susceptibility, every impression on which is not to be reasoned against, or derided, but to be accounted for, and until accounted for, registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts. there are defects in the lens, and errors of refraction and position, etc., to be allowed for, and it needs one acquainted with the lens by frequent use, to make these allowances; but 't is the best instrument i have ever met with. ca every man looks a piece of luck, but he is a piece of the mosaic accurately measured and ground to fit into the gap he fills, such as parker or garrison, or carlyle, or hegel is, and with good optics, i suppose, we should find as nice fitting down to the bores and loafers. man wr 1856] poetry. conversation 37 i admire that poetry which no man wrote, no poet less than the genius of humanity itself, and which is to be read in my theology, in the effect of pictures, or sculptures, or drama, or cities, or sciences, on me. my son is coming to get his latin lesson without me. my son is coming to do without me. and i am coming to do without plato, or goethe, or alcott. to carry temperance very high and very thoroughly into life and into intellect, and that with insight of its necessity and efficacy ! eco conversation. i ought to have said above, in respect to conversation, that our habit is squalid and beggarly.'... in a parlor, the unexpectedness of the effects. when we go to faneuil hall, we look for important events: facts, thoughts, and persuasions, that bear on them. but in your parlor, to find your companion who sits by your side start up into a more potent than demosthenes, and, in an instant, work a revolution that makes the rest of the passage is found in “ considerations by the way” (conduct of life, p. 271). 38 (age 52 journal sp athens and england and washington politics old carrion and dust-barrels, because his suggestions require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and sciences, yes, the lecture and the book seem vapid. eloquence is forever a power that shoves usurpers from their thrones, and sits down on them by allowance and acclaim of all. these black coats never can speak until they meet a black coat: then their tongues are loosed, and chatter like blackbirds. the“ practical” folks in the rail-car meet daily, and to their discourse there is no end. is univers is preparend see man as alco once more for alcott it is to be said that he is sincerely and necessarily engaged to his task and not wilfully or ostentatiously or pecuniarily. mr. johnson at manchester' said of him, “he is universally competent. whatever question is asked, he is prepared for.” i shall go far, and see many, before i find such an extraordinary insight as alcott's. in his fine talk, last evening, he ran up and down the scale of powers, with as much ease and precision as a squirrel the wires of his cage, and is never dazzled by his means, or by any particui probably manchester, england. 1856] alcott's insight 39 lar, and a fine heroic action or a poetic passage would make no impression on him, because he expects heroism and poetry in all. ideal purity, the poet, the artist, the man, must have. i have never seen any person who so fortifies the believer, so confutes the skeptic. and the almost uniform rejection of this man by men of parts, carlyle and browning inclusive, and by women of piety, might make one despair of society. if he came with a cannonade of acclaim from all nations, as the first wit on the planet, these masters would sustain the reputation : or if they could find him in a book a thousand years old, with a legend of miracles appended, there would be churches of disciples : but now they wish to know if his coat is out at the elbow, or whether somebody did not hear from somebody, that he had got a new hat, etc., etc. he has faults, no doubt, but i may safely know no more about them than he does; and some that are most severely imputed to him are only the omissions of a preoccupied mind. m w paris vaut bien un messe. her great names are carnot and francis arago. the last did not duck to the second napoleon, nor did carnot nor lafayette to the first. 40 journal (age 52 carnot's theorem was, “avoid sudden alterations of speed; since the loss of living power is equal to the living power which all the parts of the machine or system would possess, if you should give to every one of them the speed which it lost in the moment when the sudden alteration occurred.” (see atlantis, february, 1856, p. 118.) maupertuis's theorem. “la quantité d'action nécessaire pour produire un changement dans le mouvement des corps est toujours un minimum.” il entendait par quantité d'action le produit d'une masse par sa vitesse et par l'espace qu'elle parcourt. (“ principes de l'équilibre, et du mouvement,” carnot.) education. don't let them eat their seed-corn; don't let them anticipate, ante-date, and be young men, before they have finished their boyhood. let them have the fields and woods, and learn their secret and the baseand foot-ball, and wrestling, and brickbats, and suck all the strength and courage that lies for them in these games; let them ride bare-back, and catch their horse in his pasture, let them hook and spear their fish, and shin a post and a tall tree, and shoot their sere, 1856] symbols. varied gifts 41 partridge and trap the woodchuck, before they begin to dress like collegians and sing in serenades, and make polite calls. 'tis curious that there is not only an apothes osis of every power or faculty of mind and body, but also of every element, material, and tool we use; as, of fire, water, air, earth, the hammer of thor, the shoe of mercury, the belt of venus, the bracelet, balance, waterpot. one man is born to explain bones and animal architectures; and one, the expression of crooked and casual lines, spots on a turtle, or on the leaf of a plant; and one, machines, and the application of coil springs and steam and water-wheels to the weaving of cloth or paper; and one, morals; and one, a pot of brandy, and poisons; and the laws of disease are as beautiful as the laws of health. let each mind his own, and declare his own. the afirmative. to awake in man and to raise the feeling of his worth ; to educate his feeling and his judgment, that he must scorn himself for a bad action. my friend anna w. refuses to tell her children whether the act was right or wrong, but sends them away to find out what the little voice says, and at night they shall tell her. 42 (age 52 journal nerit must be admitted, that civilization is onerous and expensive; hideous expense to keep it up; — let it go, and be indians again ; but why indians ? — that is costly, too; the mud-turtle and trout life is easier and cheaper, and oyster, cheaper still. ... pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit :... ... curis acuens mortalia corda.' play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not. 0 i have but one military recollection in all my life. in 1813, or 1814, all boston, young and old, turned out to build the fortifications on noddle's island; and the schoolmaster at the latin school announced to the boys, that, if we wished, we might all go on a certain day to work on the island. i went with the rest in the ferry boat, and spent a summer day ; but i cannot remember that i did any kind of work. i remember only the pains we took to get water in our tin pails, to relieve our intolerable thirst. i am afraid no valuable effect of my labor remains in the existing defences. the father himself willed not the farmer's lot an easy one, sharpening men's minds by care. virgil, georgics, i, 121-123. an e 1856] flowers and birds 43 may 21. yesterday to the sawmill brook with henry. he was in search of yellow violet (pubescens) and menyanthes' which he waded into the water for; and which he concluded, on examination, had been out five days. having found his flowers, he drew out of his breast pocket his diary and read the names of all the plants that should bloom this day, may 20; whereof he keeps account as a banker when his notes fall due ; rubus triflora, quercus, vaccinium, etc. the cypripedium 3 not due till to-morrow. then we diverged to the brook, where was viburnum dentatum, arrow-wood. but his attention was drawn to the redstart which flew about with its cheap, cheap chevet, and presently to two fine grosbeaks, rose-breasted, whose brilliant scarlet “ bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,” and which he brought nearer with his spyglass, and whose fine, clear note he compares to that of a “tanager who has got 'rid of his hoarseness.” then he heard a note which he calls that of the night-warbler, a bird he has never identified, has been in search of for twelve years, which, always, when he sees it, is in the act of diving i buck-bean. 2 dwarf raspberry. 3 lady's slipper. 44 journal (age 52 . down into a tree or bush, and which 't is vain to seek; the only bird that sings indifferently by night and by day.' i told him, he must beware of finding and booking him, lest life should have nothing more to show him. he said, “ what you seek in vain for half your life, one day you come full upon — all the family at dinner. you seek him like a dream, and as soon as you find him, you become his prey.” he thinks he could tell by the flowers what day of the month it is, within two days. we found saxifraga pennsylvanica, and chrysosplenium oppositifolium,” by everett's spring, and stellaria 3 and cerastium * and arabis rbomboideas and veronica anagallis, which he thinks handsomer than the cultivated veronica, forgetme-not. solidago odora,” he says, is common in concord, and pennyroyal he gathers in quantity as berbs every season. sbad-blossom is no longer 1 i am told by mr. francis h. allen that he and mr. bradford torrey have thought that this bird must have been the “oven-bird” (golden-crowned thrush), whose aying note is more melodious than its cry of chi-chée! chi-chée! chi-chée ! when perched on a tree. 2 golden saxifrage. 3 stitchwort. 4 mouse-ear chickweed. 5 rock cress. 6 water-speedwell, or brook pimpernel. 7 sweet-scented goldenrod. 1856) thoreau. pantheism 45 a pyrus, which is now confined to choke-berry. shad-blossom is amelanchier botryapium. shadblossom because it comes when the shad come. water is the first gardener: he always plants grasses and flowers about his dwelling. there came henry with music-book under his arm, to press flowers in ; with telescope in his pocket, to see the birds, and microscope to count stamens; with a diary, jack-knife, and twine; in stout shoes, and strong grey trousers, ready to brave the shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb the tree for a hawk's nest. his strong legs, when he wades, were no insignificant part of his armour. two alders we have, and one of them is here on the northern border of its habitat. pantheism. in the woods, this afternoon, it seemed plain to me, that most men were pantheists at heart, say what they might of their theism. no other path is, indeed, open for them to the one, intellectually at least. man delights in freedom even to license, and claims infinite indulgence, from the powers seen, and unseen, to whom he would give indulgence on those [terms?]. in a word, he would conquer and surrender in his own way; living no less open to .86 journal (age 53 the power of soul than of state, swayed by gods and demons, he is never, in his fresh morninglove, quite himself. his audacity is immense. his impieties are his pieties : he wins and loses, to win and lose. he reveres, dallies with, defies, and overcomes every god and demigod of the pantheon, in quest of his freedom, and thus liberates humanity from the demons by these twelve labours. [the brutal attack on senator sumner by preston brooks, of south carolina, which resulted in painful and disabling illness for years, had roused the indignation of massachusetts. (mr. emerson's speech is printed in miscellanies.)] may 27 i am impressed at the indignation meeting last night, as ever, on like occasions, with the sweet nitrous oxide gas which the speakers seem to breathe. once they taste it, they cling like mad to the bladder, and will not let it go. and it is so plain to me that eloquence, like swimming, is an art which all men might learn, though so few do.'... 1 the rest of the passage is found in “ eloquence” (letters and social aims, p. 119). . se 1856] the sumner outrage 47 sumner's attack ... only a leaf of the tree; it is not sumner who must be avenged, but the tree must be cut down. but this stroke rouses the feeling of the people, and shows everybody where they are. all feel it. those who affect not to feel it must perforce share the shame, nor will hiding their heads, and pretending other tasks and a preoccupied mind, deceive themselves or us. we are all in this boat of the state, and cannot dodge the duties. this history teaches the fatal blunder of going into false position. let us not compromise again, or accept the aid of evil agents. our position, of the free states, very like that of covenanters against the cavaliers. massachusetts uniformly retreats from her resolutions. suppose we raise soldiers in massachusetts. suppose we propose a northern union. june 2. the finest day, the high noon of the year, went with thoreau in a wagon to perez blood's ' auction : found the myrica' flowering; it had 1 the old farmer had died who has been alluded to in earlier journals as having spent much of his inheritance on a telescope, globes, and books on astronomy. 48 (age 53 journal w sw already begun to shed its pollen one day, the lowest flowers being effete; found the english hawthorn on mrs. ripley's hill, ready to bloom; went up the assabet, and found the azalea nudiflora’in full bloom, a beautiful show; the viola muhlenbergi,3 the ranunculus recurvatus ; 4 saw swamp white oak (chestnut-like leaves), white maple, red maple, — no chestnut oak on the river. henry told his story of the ephemera, the manna of the fishes, which falls like a snowstorm one day in the year, only on this river, not on the concord, high up in the air as he can see, and blundering down to the river (the shad-fly), the true angler's fly; the fish die of repletion when it comes, the kingfishers wait for their prey. around us the pee pee pee of the kingbird kind was noisy. he showed the history of the river from the banks, the male and the female bank. the pontederias keeps the female bank, on whichever side. no “ avec un grand génie, il faut une grande volonté.” i sweet gale. 2 swamp pink. 3 dog-violet. 4 hooked crowfoot. 5 blue pickerel-weed. 1856] staunch freemen 49 “les faiblesses de voltaire! que nous importe à nous ses beritiers sous benefice d'inventaire ? nous ne sommes solidaires que de ses vertus.” (lanfrey.) i go for those who have received a retaining fee to this party of freedom, before they came into the world. i would trust garrison, i would trust henry thoreau, that they would make no compromises. i would trust horace greeley, i would trust my venerable friend mr. hoar, that they would be staunch for freedom to the death; but both of these would have a benevolent credulity in the honesty of the other party, that i think unsafe. the vote of a prophet is worth a hundred hands. if he knows it to be the true vote, it will be decisive of the question for his country. the want of profound sincerity is the cause of failures. south carolina is in earnest. i see the courtesy of the carolinians, but i know meanwhile that the only reason why they do not plant a cannon before faneuil hall, and blow bunker hill monument to fragments, as a nuisance, is because they have not the power. they are fast acquiring the power, and if they get it, they will do it. so (age 53 journal there are men who as soon as they are born take a bee-line to the axe of the inquisitor, like giordano bruno. in france, the fagots for vanini. in italy, the fagots for bruno. in england, the pillory for defoe. in new england, the whipping-post for the quakers. algernon sydney a tragic character; and sumner is; no humour. wonderful the way in which we are saved by this unfailing supply of the moral element. [in 1855, the emigrant aid society was formed in new england to advise, and help where needful, would-be settlers in the prairie country. in the following year george l. stearns, an able, patriotic and generous boston merchant, a resident of medford, organized the massachusetts state kansas committee to ensure that territory from the adoption of a constitution permitting slavery, by helping good men of “free state" principles to go thither with their families as bona fide settlers. funds were furnished to aid them to establish themselves, and when they were attacked by pro-slavery settlers and also by parties from missouri who crossed the river to ensure pro-slavery elections, sharp's rifles were also sent in quantities for defense.'] 1 see george l. stearns" (lectures and biographical sketches). 1856) aid for kansas. cant si june 14. at our kansas relief meeting, in concord, on june 12, $962.00 were subscribed on the spot. yesterday, the subscription had amounted to $1130.00; and it will probably reach $1200.00, or one per cent on the valuation of the town. $1360.00 i believe was the final amount. cant. “a character more common in the modern world is that of ambition without belief (with the mask of religion, deceiving men to enslave them), seeing in a dogma nothing but a twoedged glaive, to strike them down.” (see lanfrey.) voltaire enrolled fashion on his side, – the mode, – good society,-: il est de bon ton d'être libre penseur. to get the hurra on our side is well; but if you are a gentleman, you must have the hurra of gentlemen on your side. the government has been an obstruction, and nothing but an obstruction. the people by themselves would have settled iowa, and utah, and kansas, in a sufficient way. the government has made all the mischief. this for the people; then for the upper classes, who acquiesce in what 52 journal • (age 53 they call law and order of a government which exists for fraud and violence,' — they are properly paid by its excessive vulgarity. the refined boston upholds a gang of rhynderses, and toombses, and brookses, before whom it is obliged to be very quiet and dapper like a dear little rabbit, as it is, among the wolves. the choates and winthrops, and, at long interval, the hs, — we see through them very clearly, and their abject attitude. 10 no experience has shown that the aggregate of the spendings of the poor is more than equivalent to the large spending of the rich, to enrich a london or paris. it is shoes and cotton cloth, it is an apple-paring machine at a dime, newspaper at two cents, or a lamp, or a knife-scourer, that draws the shillings from millions, which none is too poor to buy. whilst the fine house, or the good horse, or the brave equipage, has only a few hundreds or a few scores of customers. 1 under president pierce's administration no attempt was made properly to protect the settlers, and the border ruffians, crossing the missouri, constantly interfered at elections, sacked towns, and committed murder and outrage on the scattered farms. 1856] wordsworth. lanfrey 53 i was to say at the end of my narrative of wordsworth, that i find nothing, in the disparaging speeches of the londoners about him, that would not easily be said of a faithful scholar who rated things after his own scale, and not by the conventional. he almost alone in his generation has treated the mind well. vf jesuits. “et chaque fois que le dogme embarrassa la marche triomphante des conquérants, ils laissèrent le dogme en chemin.” — lanfrey. montesquieu said, “ dans les pays où l'on a le malbeur d'avoir une religion que dieu n'a pas donnée, il est toujours nécessaire qu'elle s'accorde avec la morale.” — lanfrey, p. 156. literature. “le temps fera distinguer ce que nous avons pensé de ce que nous avons écrit," said diderot and voltaire. lorsqu'on cherche à préciser le rôle et l'influence des femmes à une époque donnée, une chose frappe tout d'abord l'esprit, c'est leur radicale inaptitude à généraliser, à embrasser de vastes horizons, à dégager les causes de leurs effets. est-ce à dire qu'elles soient condamnées à perpétuité aux servitudes intellectuelles ou seulement à le rôle, noble assurement, mais un peu sacrifié, — des sabines ? lanfrey, p. 202. 54 [age 53 journal " it is the quality of words that they imply a speaker.” — miss bacon. professor poikilus had one advantage over the rest of the university, that when the class gaped or began to diminish, he would with great celerity throw his heels into the air, and stand upon his head, and continue his lecture in that posture, a turn which seemed to invigorate his audience, who would listen with marked cheerfulness as long as he would speak to them in that attitude. when i said of ellery's new verses that“ they were as good as the old ones,” “yes,” said ward, “but those were excellent promise, and now he does no more.” he has a more poetic temperament than any other in america, but the artistic executive power of completing a design, he has not. his poetry is like the artless warbling of a vireo, which whistles prettily all day and all summer in the elm, but never rounds a tune, nor can increase the value of melody by the power of composition and cuneiform determination. he must have construction also. july 23. returned from pigeon cove, where we have 1856] the sea 55 made acquaintance with the sea, for seven days. 'tis a noble friendly power, and seemed to say to me, “why so late and slow to come to me? am i not here always thy proper summer home? is not my voice thy needful music: my breath, thy healthful climate in the heats ; my touch, thy cure? was ever building like my terraces? was ever couch so magnificent as mine? lie down on my warm ledges and learn that a very little hut is all you need. i have made thy architecture superfluous, and it is paltry beside mine. here are twenty romes and ninevehs and karnacs in ruins together, obelisk and pyramid and giant's causeway, here they all are prostrate or half piled.” and behold the sea, the opaline, plentiful and strong, yet beautiful as the rose or the rainbow, full of food, nourisher of men, purger of the world, creating a sweet climate, and, in its unchangeable ebb and flow, and in its beauty at a few furlongs, giving a hint of that which changes not, and is perfect.' i the day after our return from this visit to the rocks of cape ann, to which rev. cyrus bartol had led the way, my father came up to my mother's room looking much pleased, and said, “ i came in yesterday from the rocks and wrote down what the ocean had said to me, and to-day when 56 journal (age 53 “until man is able to compress the ether like leather, there will be no end of misery, except through the knowledge of god.”—upanishad. “from whom the sun rises, and in whom it sets again, him all the gods entered; from him none is separated; this is that. “what is here, the same is there, and what is there, the same is here. he proceeds from death to death who beholds here difference. “he (brahma, or the soul) does not move; is swifter than the mind: not the gods (the senses) did obtain him, he was gone before. standing, he outstrips all the other gods, how fast soever they run. “he moves, he does not move. he is far, and also near.” song of the soul (brahma) if the red slayer think he slays, or if the slain think he is slain, they know not well the subtle ways i keep, and pass, and turn again. i open my book, i find it blank verse by omitting a word here and there. listen ”; and he read the above passage from the journal. compare with the “ seashore,” in the poems. e.w. e. 1856] brahma 57 far or forgot to me is near ; shadow and sunlight are the same; the vanished gods not less appear ; and one to me are shame and fame. they reckon ill who leave me out; when me they ay, i am the wings; i am the doubter and the doubt, and i the hymn the brahmin sings. the strong gods pine for my abode, and pine in vain the sacred seven; but thou, meek lover of the good! find me, and turn thy back on heaven. “know that which does not see by the eye; and by which they see the eyes, as brahma, and not what is worshipped as this. “know that which does not think by the mind, and by which they say the mind is thought, as brahma, and not what is worshipped as this. “the soul declared by an inferior man is not easy to be known, but when it is declared by a teacher who beholds no difference, there is no doubt concerning it, the soul being more subtle than what is subtle, is not to be obtained by arguing.” 58 [age 53 journal a grander legend than western literature contains, is the story of nachiketas.' ... (from 20) “the complete incarnation of spirit, which is the definition of beauty, demands that there shall be no point from which it is absent, and none in which it abides.” — j. elliot cabot. of extempore speaking. when nineteen years of age, cotton mather received advice from his uncle nathaniel. “by any means, get to preach without any use or help by your notes. when i was in new england, no man that i remember used them except one, and he because of a special infirmity, the vertigo, as i take it, or some specie of it. neither of your grandfathers used any, nor did your uncle (samuel) here (in dublin), nor do i, though we both of us write generally the materials of our sermons.” (collections of mass. historical society, vol. viii, 4th series.) (from so) the swimmer standing on the land dreads the plunge, yet, having plunged, enjoys the 1 this in abbreviated form is told in “ immortality" (letters and social aims, pp. 349-352). 1856) death. august walk 59 water. the living fear death, yet, dying, enjoy the new life. how the landscape mocks the weakness of man! it is vast, beautiful, complete, and alive; and we can only dibble and step about, and dot it a little. the gulf between our seeing and doing is a symbol of that between faith and experience. august 8. a walk about conantum with henry thoreau and saw some of his botanical varieties. the vitis sinuata' of pursh and a vitis only rarely yielding a sinuated leaf and a small ivyleafed grape, with small edible fruit: saw the only slippery-elm in concord and under it the only parietaria · which he knows in town; three or four galiums,3 three or four polygonums, three lespedezas 5 and desmodiumsó or hedysarums, elecampane, pennyroyal (hedeoma pulegioides), lechea, looking like hypericum ;8 saw on the lanceolate thistle the ants and their milchcows the aphides, both larger than we are wont to see. saw spleen-wort, a fern, and the beaked i a variety of the summer grape. 2 pellitory. 3 bedstraw. 4 knotweed. 5 bush clover. 6 tick-trefoil. 7 pinweed. 8 st. johnswort. 60 (age 53 journal hazel; the low and early blueberry is the vaccinium pennsylvanicum; the large and conspicuous huckleberry is resinosum, another is vacillans. the huckleberry bird, which i used to call pine warbler," is a sparrow, fringilla pusilla ; the asclepias' has a stronger tension in its fibre than hemp, or than any other plant. all the asclepias kind have this strong fibre. henry expatiated on the omniscience of the indians. found calamint or basil and gerardia quercifolia.3 august 14. a walk again with henry, and found solidago odora,“ pellucid points on the leaves : found two polygalas with checkerberry scent! found pinesap (hypopytis), and aaron’s-rod in bloom, which is rare; and a tall shrub unknown to henry near and like the arrow-wood. solidago altissima, and gigantea ; three lecbeas; laurus benzoin.s 1 in his poem, the « dirge ” mr. emerson speaks of the song of the pine warbler as calling up visions of his brothers when they walked in their childhood in the fields by the river. 2 milkweed. 3 smooth false foxglove. 4 the delicate goldenrod which has the smell of anise. apropos of this plant and of the polygalas with checkerberry scent, mr. emerson often called his children's attention to nature's thrift in using one favoring for several plants. compare his poem “xenophanes.” 5 spice bush. 1856] walking. mesmerism 61 but i was taken with the aspects of the forest, and thought that, to nero advertising for a luxury, a walk in the woods should have been offered. 't is one of the secrets for dodging old age. pseudo-spiritism. mesmerised is part and parcel of the mesmeriser. could you mesmerise yourself! the amount of information i obtain from these mesmerised is, that pain is very unpleasing, my shoes are made of leather, etc., that the cock crows in the morning, that there is a great deal of water in the high seas. we used to ask triumphantly, where was a ghost that could bear the smell of printers' ink, etc., but ’t is the peculiarity of this sorcery that it has stood in the teeth of the press, nay, uses the press largely for its own propagandism. “the oracles assert, that the impressions of characters and other divine visions appear in æther.” — proclus? bettine says the reason spirits so seldom appear is that they do not like phantoms, ugly phantoms such as the men are. (correspondence with goethe.) the only objection to spiritism is, that it is 62 (age 53 journal in the wrong hands. new powers are to be looked for, — who has found the limits of human intelligence? — but not in the vile. [on september 10, mr. emerson made an earnest and indignant address on affairs in kansas before the relief meeting in cambridge. it is printed in miscellanies. in the conclusion he prophesied the revolution of the nineteenth century to be at hand, greater than that of 1775.) september 13. in this month was held another kansas relief meeting to hear the report of mr. sanborn, and the new subscription has reached $510.00, whilst an additional subscription among the ladies for clothing amounts to upwards of $130.00 more. november 15. walk with ellery, who finds in nature, or man, that whatever is done for beauty or in sport is excellent: but the moment there is any use in it or any kind of talent, 't is very bad and stupid. the fox sparrows and the blue snowbirds please him, and the water-cresses which we saw in the brook, but which, he said, were not in any botany. 63 1856) france. feats 't is a trait of france, that it rapidly acquires and rapidly loses. this is confirmed by montalembert's statement that the collegiate institutions of france, in the middle age, were identical with those of england; and the oxford history, lately, has been helped by examination of the history of french universities, which explains the oxford foundations and usages at the present day; which are lost in france, except in the record, l'histoire de l'université de paris, oy du boulars. i speak badly whilst i speak for feats. feats are no measure of the heaven of intellect. it is profoundly solitary, it is unprofitable, it is to be despised and forgotten of men. if i recall the happiest hours of existence, those which really make man an inmate of a better world, it is a lonely and undescribed joy; but it is the door to joys that ear hath not heard nor eye seen. knowing is the measure, for i suppose it will be conceded that the nobility of a company or of a period is always to be estimated by the depth of the ideas from which they live, and to which, of course, they appeal. knowledge is the only elegance. 64 journal (age 53 the scholar. apology for the subject, that it is the health of all. every man is a scholar potentially, and does not need any one good so much as this of right thought.' ... [in the autumn, eight years after his return from england, mr. emerson at last brought his english experiences, and the thoughts that these had given him, into book form. they had been sifted and tested and mellowed by use as lectures. in the first winter days carlyle wrote: “i got your book by post in the highlands and had such a day over it as falls rarely to my lot. . . . book by a real man with eyes in his head; nobleness, wisdom, humour, and many other things in the heart. ... franklin might have written such a thing (in his own way); no other since.” (carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, p. 262.) the following paragraphs are evidently mr. emerson's report of a conversation with albert h. tracy, a member of congress, from buffalo. he is the “albert” whose conversation with “lewis" (cass) on their fruitless search for 1 the rest of the paragraph is in “ the man of letters” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 249). re 1856] talk with a. h. tracy 65 light is given without their names in “immortality” (letters and social aims, pp. 331, 332).] half-headed men, by vicious organization, see only the object directly before them, and that in vast proportions, so as to engage their whole heat and faculty in the encounter with it. it awakens in them eloquence, industry, and passion; whilst people around them, in their accosting of the same object, are liable to returns of frigidity and indifference, from being forced to see both sides, many sides, and therefore cannot get up any furious zeal, as if this were the only point to be carried. of course, such monomaniacs (like quincy adams, or calhoun, in politics) seem to be deities to those near them, interested in the same things, because these have great endowments all bent on one focus. the other point which interested tracy was the ridiculous fame of the rhetoricians. in a senate or other business committee, all depends on a few men with working talent. they do everything, and value men only as they can forward the work. but some new man comes there who has no capacity for helping them at all, can't do the first thing, is insignificant, and no66 (age 53 journal body, but has a talent for speaking: this fellow gets up and makes a speech which is printed and read all over the union, and at once becomes famous, and takes the lead in public mind over all these executive men who, of course, are full of indignation to find one who has no tact or skill, and knows he has none, put over them, by means of this talking power which they despise.' john randolph said, there was one quality which was very rare, common sense. he had been, boy and man, twenty-four years in this body (house of representatives), and he had known one man who had it,he would n't say, had known but one, but he had seen one man who had it in a remarkable degree, his name was roger sherman. that man had made this remark: “when you are in the majority, vote; when you are in the minority, talk. well, mr. president, i am in the minority in this body, and i talk.” tracy said, “massachusetts was full of rhetoricians.” i forgot to tell him that every twelfth man in massachusetts was a shoemaker, and that erastus bigelow, uriah boyden, nathaniel i the above paragraph is printed in “ eloquence,” but is kept here for the connection. (society and solitude, pp. 75, 76.) u a 1856) talkers. calderon 67 bowditch, and mason, of taunton, were not rhetoricians, and the railroad projectors all over the united states and the merchants who planned so many voyages of vessels which distribute their cargoes at new york, and make so much of the importance of that city, did not so much create speeches, as business. december 1. one would say that such a dinner-party as l. desires could only be arranged on the resurrection day:-zeus of crete, pericles of athens, rabelais of paris, shakspeare of stratford, lord bacon, dr. franklin, montaigne, columbus, mr. alcott, and tom appleton, etc., etc. december 3. i have been reading some of french's translations of calderon, and i miss the expected power. he had not genius. his fancy is sprightly, but his construction is mechanical. the mark of genius is, that it has not only thoughts, but the copula that joins them is also a thought. it does not take some well-known fable, and use it, if a little more prettily, yet to the same predictable ends as others; but its fable and its use and end are unpredictable and its own. 'tis the difference between the carpenter who makes a 68 journal [age 53 box, and the mother who bears a child. the box was all in the carpenter; but the child was not all in the parents. they knew no more of the child's formation than they did of their own. they were merely channels through which the child's nature flowed from quite another and eternal power, and the child is as much a wonder to them as to any; and, like the child jesus, shall, as he matures, convert and guide them as if he were the parent. (from 20) napoleon. beethoven's sinfonia eroica was written in the fall of 1803. it was originally dedicated to bonaparte at the time when he was first consul for life. but when the news arrived that bonaparte intended to make himself emperor, beethoven tore in pieces the title-page with his inscription, threw the fragments on the floor, with savage imprecations against the despot, and refused for weeks to show the piece to any of his friends. ... when he spoke of napoleon he seemed to forget all the ordinary categories under which he judged the actions of ordinary mortals; the standard of rating historical character seemed insufficient to measure the grandeur of this giant among all the great 1854) beethoven. napoleon 69 men of his epoch. . . . he had an exceptional language for him. ... never before had any single man used so powerful levers in the accomplishment of his destiny, and never was there a greater purpose to be carried out than the one believed to be that of bonaparte. he was regarded as the embodiment of democracy,” etc., etc. (see article by charles s. bernays, journal of speculative pbilosopby,' vol. ii, no. 4.) characters. napoleon. fouché said of napoleon, “ ce n'est pas là un homme à arrêter; encore ne suis-je pas l'homme qui l'arrêtera.” [as in previous volumes, a few of mr. emerson's favorite authors, from his early youth steadily recurring in the lists of the first volumes (as homer, plato, plutarch, montaigne, bacon, shakspeare, milton, herbert, swedenborg, wordsworth, and others), are not given in this list. in spite, however, of the frequent mention of plotinus, proclus, and other neoplatonists, and of the oriental scriptures and poets, these names will appear as showing when mr. emerson was reading them. carlyle and goethe will also be mentioned. 1 this must have been a later entry than 1856. 70 journal (age 53 it often happens that an allusion to an author may be in a passage not included in the selections here printed.] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1856 upanishad; menander; aristotle, ethics ; varro; proclus ; dante; hafiz; chaucer ; erasmus ; copernicus ; luther ; rabelais ; vanini ; calderon ; algernon sydney ; giordano bruno ; dryden; newton ; defoe ; montesquieu, apud lanfrey ; voltaire ; maupertuis ; linnæus; diderot, apud lanfrey ; niebuhr; burke; carnot, principes d'équilibre et du mouvement; roederer; hahnemann; humboldt; napoleon, letters to his brother joseph; robert owen ; oersted; sir david brewster, life of newton; bettine brentano, correspondence with goethe ; herschel ; balzac ; alcott; mulder, dissertations et expérience de chimie; dumas ; sainte-beuve, causeries du lundi ; eugène sue; bulwer; william lloyd garrison; theodore parker; horace greeley ; charles sumner; thoreau ; w. e. channing ; delia 71 1856) reading s. bacon; f. l. olmsted, a journey in the seaboard slave states ; pierre lanfrey, l'église et les philosophes du xviii siècle ; atlantis (a german periodical). journal the wèst agassiz john brown and kansas walks with thoreau saturday club versifying the quincys faraday the atlantic monthly hard times journal xlviii 1857 (from journals so and vo) o hafiz, give me thought — in fiery figures cast, for all beside is naught, all else is din and blast. [the winter brought its usual tasks, constant travel, audiences, new and old, much exposure, but also much refreshment to the retired scholar, and interesting contact with builders of the country, eager and active, and also with thinkers and dreamers who found in mr. emerson the first sympathy that had come to them in their views of life and religion, not understood by those among whom they were born. beside lectures in lyceums near home, mr. emerson in january spoke at the people's literary institute in philadelphia, and in western new york, ohio, and illinois. in february he gave lectures of the conduct of life course in new york and newport.] 76 (age 53 journal (from so) chicago, tremont house, january, 1857. “ in 1838,” said dr. boynton, “ i came here to waukegan and there were not so many houses as there are towns now.” he got into the train at evansville, a town a year and a half old, where are now 600 inhabitants, a biblical institute, or divinity school of the methodists, to which a mrs. garrett lately gave some land in chicago appraised at $125,000; but which, when they came to sell it, the worser half brought $160,000, and the value of the whole donation, 'tis thought, will be half a million. they had in the same town a college, — a thriving institution, which unfortunately blew down one night, — but i believe they raised it again the next day, or built another, and no doubt in a few weeks it will eclipse cambridge and yale ! 'tis very droll to hear the comic stories of the rising values here, which, ludicrous though they seem, are justified by facts presently. mr. corwin's story of land offered for $50,000, and an hour given to consider of it. the buyer made up his mind to take it, but he could not have it; it was five minutes past the hour, and it was now worth do ens 1857] chicago's birth 77 $60,000. after dinner, he resolved to give the price, but he had overstayed the time again, and it was already $70,000; and it became $80,000, before night, — when he bought it. i believe it was mr. corwin's joke, but the solemn citizens who stood by, heard it approvingly, and said “yes, that is about the fair growth of chicago per bour.” however, a quite parallel case to this, i am told, actually occurred in the sale of the “american house” lot, which rose in a day from perhaps $40,000 to 50, 60, 70, 80, or 90,000, at which price it was sold. mr. foster, of evansville, when i asked about the once rival towns which competed with chicago, said,“ yes, at new city they once thought there was to be the great centre, and built sixty houses.” “was there, not a river and harbor there?” “oh, yes, there was a guzzle out of a sandbank, but now there are still the sixty houses, and when i passed by the last time, there was one owl, which was the only inhabitant.” mr. w. b. ogden told me that he came here from new york twenty-one years ago. in new york he had, in association with some others, made a large purchase here to the amount of $100,000. he had never been here, but wished to have a reason for coming beyond merely see78 [age 53 journal ing the country ; had never then been beyond buffalo westward. he arrived here one morning, june 11, 1836. he learned that one of the parties of whom he had purchased was in the house, on his arrival at the tavern or fort, and this person sent for him to come up and see him. this mr. bronson had heard some rumor that his brother had sold the land to a company in new york, but hoped it was not so. mr. ogden showed him his deed. bronson said it was all right, but it was injudicious in his brother. ogden said he was glad to hear that, for he had feared he had made a foolish bargain. while he was in bronson's room, somebody tapped at the door, and wished to know if the man who represented block no. i was here? mr. ogden knew nothing of it; but bronson told the man, yes, ogden represented that purchase. “well, will you sell block no. 1?” ogden replied he knew nothing of it, but after breakfast he would go and see the land. after breakfast, they crossed in a little boat, and looked about in the swamp and woods, and came to a stake. “here,” said bronson, “is block no. 1.” well, they were followed by several persons, and, among others, the one he had seen. these came up, and the man said, “ what will so co 1857] ogden's sales 79 you take for this property ?” ogden said he knew nothing of its value, but if they would make him an offer, he would inform himself, and answer. the man said, “we will give you $35,000 for eight blocks from no. i to no. 8.” ogden said, “i never altered a muscle of my face, but i looked him in the face, to see if he were joking, and expected they would all laugh; but they all looked solemn, and the speaker no more crazy than the rest. so i took bronson's arm, and walked apart, and said, “is this a joke, or are they crazy, or is this the value of the land ?' 'yes, this is the supposed value.' is it worth more?' 'perhaps, but you must wait.' so i went back, and said, as gravely as i could, that i would take it; but i expected them to laugh, but that would not harm me. but the man said, 'well we will pay 10 per cent down, and we will pay it now.' but i said, 'we will go back to the tavern.' but the man was uneasy, and wished to pay now. i said, 'i shall not vary from what i have said.' but the man inclined to pay now. so he took out of his pocket ten $1000 notes of the u. s. bank, and i put them in my waistcoat pocket.” and from that time mr. ogden proceeded to sell piece after piece of the land (about 150 acres) 80 journal (age 53 till in one year he had nearly sold the whole for $1,000,000. (from vo) inspiration. “the gods,” says homer,“ever give to mortals their apportioned share of reason only on one day.” pindar in one of his poems represented agamedes and trophonius as rewarded by sudden death for building the temple of apollo. he was afterwards referred by the priestess, on his inquiring what was best for mankind, to his own verses. he understood this reply as an intimation of his death, which soon after took place. (bohn's pindar, p. xi.) “neither by sea nor by land canst thou find the way to the hyperboreans.” “there are many swift darts under my elbow, within my quiver, which have a voice for those with understanding, but to the crowd they need interpreters.” — pindar. agassiz. the turtles in cambridge, on the publication of this book of agassiz, should hold an indignation meeting, and migrate from the charles river ; chelydra serpentina marching at the head, and “death to agassiz !” inscribed on their shields. 11 mo 1857] agassiz. john brown 81 no matter what the savants say, tortoise, or shark, or sheep, or ostrich, it is always man they have in their thought; both professor and public are surreptitiously studying man, whom they would gladly read directly, if they could.' 't is a vast æsop's fable, which prates about lions and foxes and storks, but means you, and me, from beginning to end. if natural philosophy is faithfully written, moral philosophy need not be, for that will find itself expressed in these theses to a perceptive soul. agassiz discovered “the coincidence between the embryonic development of beings, and the gradation which is wrought from age to age in organic forms." —a. laugel (revue des deux mondes, september). february. captain john brown of kansas gave a good account of himself in the town hall, last night, to a meeting of citizens. one of his good points was, the folly of the peace party in kansas, who believed that their strength lay in the greatness of their wrongs, and so discountenanced resistance. he wished to know if their wrong i compare a similar passage in “ country life" (natural history of intellect, pp. 184, 185). 82 journal (age 53 was greater than the negro's, and what kind of strength that gave to the negro? he believes on his own experience that one good, believing, strong-minded man is worth a hundred, nay, twenty thousand men without character, for a settler in a new country; and that the right men will give a permanent direction to the fortunes of a state. for one of these bullying, drinking rowdies, he seemed to think cholera, smallpox, and consumption were as valuable recruits. the first man who went into kansas from missouri to interfere in the elections, he thought, “had a perfect right to be shot.” he gave a circumstantial account of the battle at black-jack, where twenty-three missourians surrendered to nine abolitionists. he had 3000 sheep in ohio, and would instantly detect a strange sheep in his flock. a cow can tell its calf by secret signal, he thinks, by the eye, to run away or to lie down and hide itself. he always makes friends with his horse or mule (or with the deer that visit his ohio farm), and when he sleeps on his horse, as he does as readily as in his bed, his horse does not start or endanger him.' 1 the visit at my father's house of this farmer of natural 83 1857] the insolvent brown described the expensiveness of war in a country where everything that is to be eaten or worn or used by man or beast must be dragged a long distance on wheels. “god protects us in winter,” he said; “no missourian can be seen in the country until the grass comes up again.” us most men are insolvent, or promise by their countenance, and conversation, and by their early endeavor, much more than they ever perform. charles newcomb did, and coleridge did, and carlyle. dignity, mild but firm face, plain clothes with a black leather stock for collar, i remember perfectly. the remarks about his power over animals interested a boy. he said that he could always, without moving, make a dog or cat leave the room if he wished, by his eye. the mild but steady blue eyes, clean shaven face, and smoothly brushed hair but slightly turned, were in great contrast to the wild eyes, great beard, and upward brushed hair of the man whom i heard, a year or more later, tell in our town hall the story of the outrages of the border ruffians on the kansas settlers, the murder of one son, and how the other was made temporarily insane by being dragged to prison under a hot sun by the u. s. dragoons at the horses' heels for miles. he shook the chain as he indignantly told how it was then rusty, but his boy in his delirium had played with it until it was bright. e. w. e. 84 journal (age 53 men's conscience, i once wrote, is local in spots and veins, here and there, and not in healthy circulation through their system, so that they are unexpectedly good in some passage, and when you infer that they may be depended on in some other case, they heavily disappoint you. well, so is their thought. atdazzles with his intellectual light, but is a wretched hunker in politics, and hunks in social and practical life. and i learn from the photograph and daguerre men, that almost all faces and forms which come to their shops to be copied are irregular and unsymmetrical.' the democratic party is the party of the poor marshalled against the rich. they are sure they are excluded from rich houses and society, and they vote with the poor against you. that is the sting that exasperates them, and makes a strong party. but they are always officered by a few self-seeking deserters from the rich or whig party. they know the incapacity of their own rank and file, and would reject one of their own nobodies as a leader. a few rich men or whigs are therefore always ready to i the rest of the paragraph is found in “ beauty” (conduct of life, p. 299). 1857] democrats. rhetoric 85 accept the place of captain, and major, and colonel, and president, and wear their colours for the rewards which are only to be given to the officers, and never to rank and file. but these leaders are whigs, and associate with whigs, that is, they are the dining, drinking, and dancing and investing class, and by no means the digging and hoeing class. but 't is of no use to tell me, as brown and others do, that the southerner is not a better fighter than the northerner, — when i see that uniformly a southern minority prevails, and gives the law. why, but because the southerner is a fighting man, and the northerner is not? 10 means ler think not the gods receive thy prayer in ear and heart, but find it there. nature she paints with white and red the moors to draw the nations out of doors. rule for rhetoric. omit all the negative propositions. i fear agassiz takes quite too much time and space in denying popular science. he should electrify us by perpetual affirmations, unexplained. 86 journal (age 53 superlative. when a man says to me, “ i have. the intensest love of nature," at once i know that he has none. “the freedom of man consists herein, that he is his own aim.” “every man who stamps his personality on his life is the true, natural and free man.”— atlantis, february. i once knew of a man who drew a poor girl into his chamber. the girl quickly came to her penitence, and said she was bitterly ashamed. “ ashamed,” said the man; “ what is there to be ashamed of?” the speeches of our statesmen at washington are much in the same clear key of correct sentiment, or like talleyrand's reply to bonaparte when he asked, “what is all this about non-intervention?” “sire, it means about the same as intervention." lord normanby says of the french aristocracy in 1848,“ country retirement in their own land has done more for them than exile in foreign parts formerly did.” lord normanby, when in florence, had the foible of desiring to appear young. he quarrelled with landor, who published a letter against 1857] guizot. ascent the ex-minister which ended with these words, “ if we were not both, my lord, two miserable old dotards trembling on the brink of the grave, this letter would be more pointed than it is.” a deputy said of guizot, “ il ne pratique pas toutes ses maximes, mais il maxime toutes les pratiques.” guizot said, “the government would not engage itself for the future from the tribune; to promise was sometimes worse than to act, since to promise destroyed what existed without attempting to replace it.” nature, who made the lock, knows where to find the key. from high to higher forces the scale of power uprears, the heroes on their horses, the gods upon their spheres. the man of the world bows with a vertical movement of the head, up and down. my stoic used a horizontal salutation, as if always saying no. i suppose the same impulse of the air entering into the trachea of an ass will bray, and into 88 journal [age 53 the trachea of a nightingale will sing. inspiration is as the receiver. “we cannot speak rightly about the gods, without the gods.” — jamblichus. i remember that i expected a revival in the churches to be caused by the reading of jamblichus. i see the selfsame energy and action in a boy at football that i admire in the intellectual play of burke or pindar. art. all your facts, my dear doctor, leave us outside, but a good word lets us into the world: such is the eternal precedence of literature. 'tis the law that each kind, when it becomes aware of a higher life, gladly abandons its own, and exchanges it for that. what would become of a fox who found out that it was a fox? calvert said, that, when frye had sung at his chambers in paris to a french company, they were much struck with his person and performance, and one of the guests made his compliments to calvert, and told him how much he admired frye: “ c'est un bel homme ; quel 1857] unlearned america 89 visage! c'est précisement la figure de jésus”; and, turning to bryan, who stood by with his white hair and beard, he suddenly added, “et vous êtes le père eternel.” conduct of life. “wisdom is not found in the hand of those that live at their ease.” job. art. you cannot make a cheap palace. ance because our education is defective, because we are superficial and ill-read, we are forced to make the most of that position, of ignorance. hence america is a vast know-nothing party, and we disparage books, and cry up intuition. with a few clever men we have made a reputable thing of that, and denouncing libraries and severe culture, and magnifying the mother-wit swagger of bright boys from the country colleges, we have even come so far as to deceive everybody, except ourselves, into an admiration of un-learning and inspiration, forsooth. miss delia bacon. si non errasset, fecerit illa minus.' i had she not been mistaken she would have accomplished less. 90 journal [age 53 the author i bade rush to her proofs without digression or episode. “no man or woman has ever thought or written more sincerely than the author of this book." hawthorne (preface, p. xii). “'tis the school of a criticism much more severe than the criticism which calls its freedom in question.” (idem. p. lxxx.) “historical key to that art of delivery and tradition by means of which the secrets of the elizabethan age are conveyed.” (p. i.) she has the virtue to believe in cause and effect. miss bacon has read much in these plays that the critics of the athenæum, etc., never read there and will never read. shakspeare's plays, published in 1623, three years after plymouth colony. if they had been published first, the good forefathers had never been able to come away. 1 miss bacon's philosophy of shakspeare's plays unfolded, a remarkable work to which the author really sacrificed her life, had just appeared, with a preface by hawthorne whose chivalrous and constant kindness and help to miss bacon had really kept her alive and brought the work to publication, hopeless but for his aid. 1857] a may-day walk 91 the hater of property and of government takes care to have his warranty-deed recorded, and the book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page. för joy and beauty planted it, with faërie gardens cheered, and boding fancy haunted it with men and women weird. may 2. walk yesterday, first day of may, with henry thoreau to goose pond, and to the “red chokeberry lane.” found sedge flowering, and salix humilis later than salix discolor; found lycopodium dendroides and lucidulum;'found chimaphila maculata,' the only patch of it in town. found senecio3 and even solidago 4 in the water already forward, and the sawmill brook much adorned with hellebore, veratrum viride. saw the white-throated sparrow with a strong white stripe on the top of his head. saw a stump of a canoe-birch tree newly cut down, which had bled a barrel. from a white birch, henry cut a strip of bark to show how a naturalist would make the best box to carry a plant or other i club-mosses. 2 spotted wintergreen. 3 golden sagwort. 4 goldenrod. 92 (age 53 journal specimen requiring care, and thought the woodman would make a better hat of birch-bark than of felt, — hat, with cockade of lichens thrown in. i told him the birkebeiners of the heimskringla had been before him. we will make a book on walking, 'tis certain, and have easy lessons for beginners. “walking in ten lessons." the legs of the thrones are the plough, and the oar, the anvil, and the sewing-machine. a deep sympathy with intellect is what we require for any conversation, and it is hard to find among scholars. in writing, it is not propositions that are of the first need,' .., trees. they give us all our wreaths, but they reserve finer ; for a wreath has worth and beauty according to the head on which it falls. a wreath dies on touching the head of a president. a man signing himself george r(of madison, wis.) and who seems to be drunk, writes me, that “the secret of drunkenness is, 1 the rest of the passage is printed in « success” (society and solitude, p. 301). is won1857] peter kaufmann 93 that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.” may 19. i saw peter kaufmann in new york, a man of much intellectual power, and of expansive moral sympathy and purposes; another benjamin franklin in his practical skill and tastes. unhappily, he is without imagination, — the more to be regretted, that his life has kept him invariably bourgeois. his bonbommie and philanthropy occasionally changed his face to a wonderful degree, as if a young man looked out of an old mask. [seventeen years later mr. emerson wrote the following into this journal. february, 1874. . on looking — i fear too late into the singular diary which kaufmann sent me many years ago, i grieve that i neglected it until now. it is very imaginative and doubtless sincere, and . indicates a far more intellectual person than i suspected in our short and singular meeting in new york. alas, i have never heard from him, or of him, since, and i fear that this total silence on my part must have pained and alienated him.] 94 [age 54 journal may 25. yesterday, at the cliff, with a family party, and henry thoreau and ricketson.' found the“ trailing arbutus,”and the corydalis.' henry has found new willows, and has a natural salictum, where the seeds gather and plant themselves, near the railroad. saw the salix rostrata, discolor, bumilis; i think, he finds fourteen. at this time of the year, the old leaves of the forest are gone, and the new not yet opened, and for a few days the view of the landscape is more open. athome,expressed some sad views of life and religion. a thunderstorm is a terror to him, and his theism was judaical. henry thought a new pear-tree was more to purpose, etc., but said better, that an ecstasy was never interrupted. a theology of this kind is as good a meter or yardi daniel ricketson of new bedford, a kindly man of much originality of life and opinion, a friend and correspondent of thoreau's. his son and daughter have published his correspondence. 2 from the locality this was probably the bear-berry (arctostaphylos uva-ursi), not the mayflower (epigaa), both of which are called “ trailing árbutus.” dr. gray was very severe on the common false-quantity “ arbútus.” 3 probably corydalis glauca, rosy with yellow tips. 1857] agassiz's birthday 95 stick as any other. if i can be scared by a highwayman or a thunderclap, i should say, my performances were not very high, and should at once be mended. thursday, may 28. we kept agassiz's fiftieth birthday at the club.' three or four strangers were present, to wit, dresel, felton, holmes, and hilliard. for the rest, we had agassiz, peirce, ward, motley, longfellow, lowell, whipple, dwight, woodman, and i. cabot was due, but did not come. agassiz brought what had just been sent him, the last coloured plates to conclude the first volume of his contributions, etc., which will now be published incontinently. the 1 the saturday club had crystallized out of certain informal social meetings of friends at a boston hostelry, in the previous year. the following list of members in the first two years is copied from one of mr. emerson's note-books :1856 agassiz, r. h. dana, jr., j. l. motley, h. w. longfellow, j. s. dwight, e. r. hoar, s. g. ward, j. r. lowell, b. peirce, e. p. whipple, h. woodman, r. w. e. 1857 o. w. holmes, c. c. felton, j. e. cabot. as dr. holmes's presence as a “ stranger” at this meeting of the club in agassiz's honor is mentioned, it would appear that he was chosen a member very soon after. 96 (age 54 journal flower of the feast was the reading of three poems, written by our three poets, for the occasion. the first by longfellow, who presided; the second, by holmes; the third, by lowell; all excellent in their way. may 30. walk this afternoon with henry thoreau. found the perfoliata uvularia' for the first time in lincoln by flint's pond; found the chestnut sided warbler, which, i doubt not, i have seen already, and mistaken for the particolored. heard the note of the latter, which resembles a locustsound. saw the cuckoo. examined the young oak leaves by way of comparing the black, scarlet, and red, and think the penetrating the bark of the first to find the yellow quercitrum must be for me the final test. found the chestnut-oak, in lincoln, on thompson's land, not far from his boat-house, near large old chestnuts. saw the two poplars, grandidentata, and tremulifolia, which are both good for the powdermills. henry thinks that planting acres of barren sand by running a furrow every four feet across the field, with a plough, and following it with a planter, supplied with pine seed, would be lucrative. he proposes to plant my wyman i bellwort. acr 1857] planting pines 97 lot so. go in september, and gather white-pine cones with a hook at the end of a long pole, and let them dry and open in a chamber at home. add acorns, and birch-seed, and pitch-pines. he thinks it would be profitable to buy cheap land, and plant it so. edward gardner at nantucket sells the land at an advanced price as soon as he has planted it. it is a woodlot. henry says, that the flora of massachusetts embraces almost all the important plants of america. we have all the willows but one or two, all the oaks but one or two. furrows, 8 feet apart, and stick a pine along each at every 4 feet. physiologie du goût. longfellow avoids greedy smokers. a cigar lasts one hour: but is not allowed to lose fire. “give me the luxuries, the necessities may take their chance”; and the appendix to this is sam ward's rule, that the last thing an invalid is to give up is, the going out to places of amusement, — the theatre, balls, concerts, etc. and sir george cornewall lewis's saying, that “life would be tolerable, if it were not for the pleasures.” i do not count the hours i spend in the woods, though i forget my affairs there and my books. 98 (age 54 journal and, when there, i wander hither and thither : any bird, any plant, any spring detains me. i do not hurry homewards, for i think all affairs may be postponed to this walking, and it is for this idleness that all my businesses exist. i do not count the hours i spend in wandering by the sea.' our young men have nothing to do. let them plant the land with good trees; let them cut the sea with good boats. their friends like them best if they do nothing new or important, but win a living in the quietest old ways of shop and office. my naturalist has perfect magnanimity, he has no secrets, he will show you where his rare plants are, where the rare birds breed, carry you to the heron's haunt, or even to his most prized botanical swamp, confiding, i doubt not, that you can never find it again, yet willing to take his risks." to the pomologist the young june moon had a sad reminder of the print of a curculio on his i the beginning of the “waldeinsamkeit" in the poems. 2 this passage occurs in “ thoreau ” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 412). 11 1857] early june walk 99 blue plum. and shall the canary bird only remind him of yellow fever? and the fireflies of incendiaries ? june 9. yesterday a walk with henry in search of actæa alba,' which we found, but only one plant, and the petals were shed. the shrub also we saw which had puzzled him last year, and which was only viburnum nudum grown more erect in the damp woods than usual. we found at cyrus smith's the juglans nigra, black walnut, in flower. it blooms with the pignut, juglans glabra, and not with the butternut, juglans cinerea. i do not find black walnut in bigelow. henry praises bigelow's descriptions of plants : but knows sixty plants not recorded in his edition of bigelow (1840). we saw the hairy woodpecker watching his chirping brood in an apple-tree in wyman's orchard. spider will show whether the hole is inhabited or not. the red maples are conspicuous in these days with red keys. saw swamp white oak under the handsome pleached elm on the road from the manse to peter hutchinson's. the day was joyfully bright and warm, but, at night, coldish again. saw the leather-colored, or dead-oak-leaf1 white baneberry. 00 100 journal (age 54 colored rana sylvatica.” in the morning we saw krigia. on sunday (june 6) on our walk along the river-bank, the air was full of the ephemerides, which henry celebrates as the manna of the fishes. ss scholar and times. could i make you feel your indispensableness, — and yet it behooves first to show you the joy of your high place. you have the keys. you deal with design and the methods. here lies this wide aboriginal nature, old beyond figures, yet new and entire, the silver flame which flashes up the sky, — no æons can date it, yet there it burns as delicately as the passing cinder of the firefly with the lightness of a new petal. here you rest and work in this element of space, whose bewildering circuits make all the universe a dot on its margindwarfing the gods. to teach us the first lesson of humility, god set down man in these two vastitudes of space and time, yet is he such an incorrigible peacock that he thinks them only a perch to show his dirty feathers on. i wood frog. 2 dwarf-dandelion. ioi 1857] creation going on 101 • what we accept in generals, we deny in particulars. but the applicability is not capricious, this applicability, by which planets subside and crystallize and clothe themselves with forests, and animate themselves with beasts and men, will not stop; but will continue into finer particulars, and from finer to finest evermore. for every creature has a sphere and a predisposing power. he is not possible unless the invisible things are right for him as well as the visible. there are more belongings to every creature than his lair and his food.... i have sought for thee a costlier dome than mahmoud's palace high, and thou returned shall find thy home in the apple of lover's eye. [mr. emerson was translating german versions of hafiz into english. at this time he was preparing an ode for the fourth of july breakfast in the town hall. (see in the poems.) although he did not introduce the following verses, he did not omit his plea to the country to purge itself from the blot of slavery.] i the rest of the paragraph is printed in “ fate" (conduct of life, pp. 37, 38). 102 journal (age 54 o sun! take off thy hood of clouds, o land! take off thy chain, and fill the world with happy mood and love from main to main. ye shall not on this charter day disloyally withhold their household rights from captive men by pirates bought and sold. ah, little knew the innocent in throes of birth forlorn that wolves and foxes waited for their victim to be born. zoologists may dispute whether horsehairs in the water change to worms.' ... a wednesday, july 8. this morning i had the remains of my mother and of my son waldo removed from the tomb of mrs. ripley to my lot in “sleepy hollow." the sun shone brightly on the coffins, of which waldo's was well preserved now fifteen years i ventured to look into the coffin. i gave a few it white-oak leaves to each coffin, after they were li, tomt., the passage is printed in full in « works and days” (society and solitude, p. 177). rs. grout o 1857] measure of men 103 put in the new vault, and the vault was then covered with two slabs of granite. resc there is certainly a convenience in the money scale in the absence of finer meters.'.... clubs. in the east they buy their wives at stipulated prices. well, shall i not estimate, when the finer anthropometer is wanting, my social properties so? in our club, no man shall be admitted who is not worth in his skin five hundred thousand. one of them, i hold worth a million : for he bows to facts, has no impertinent will, and nobody has come to the end of his resources. so, in my house, i shall not deign to count myself by my poor taxable estate twenty or thirty thousand, but each of my children is worth, on leaving school, a hundred thousand, as being able to think, speak, feel, and act correctly, able to fill the vacant hours, and keep life up to a high point. sunday, july 19. a visit to josiah quincy, jr.,' on his old i for the remainder of the passage, see aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 48). 2 mr. emerson's classmate, mr. quincy, used to relate, that at the class election he and several others refused the honor of being poet before it was offered to emerson. ac 104 journal (age 54 place at quincy, which has been in the family for seven generations, since 1635, and the deed by which the place is holden is an order on the first page of the records of the town of boston, “ ordered, that edmund quincy and (one other named party) lay out 800 acres at mount wollaston.” there lives the old president, now eighty-five years old, in the house built by his father in 1770; and josiah, jr., in a new house built by billings, seven years ago. they hold five hundred acres, and the land runs down to the sea. from the piazza in the rear of the house of josiah quincy, jr., you may see every ship that comes in or goes out of boston, and most of the islands in the harbor. 't is the best placed house i know. the old man i visited on saturday evening, and on sunday he came and spent the evening with us at his son's house. he is the most fortunate of men; old john adams said that of him; and his good fortune has followed to this hour. his son said to me, “my father has thrown ten times, and every time got doublets." yet he was engaged to a lady whose existence he did not know of seven days before, and she proved the best of wives. i made a very pleasant acquaintance with young josiah 3d, the poet of“ lyteria,” 1857] channing on frogs 105 and i like him better than his poem. charles francis adams also was there in the sunday evening. old quincy still reads and writes with vigor and steadiness two or three hours every night after tea till ten. he has just finished his “life of john quincy adams.” cvc montaigne's story of the man who learned courage from the hare weighs with me. 'tis the best use of fate to teach us courage like the turk.' ... every man tries his hand at poetry somewhere, but most men don't know which their poems are. july 26. ellery channing thinks that these frogs at walden are very curious but final facts; that they will never be disappointed by finding themselves raised to “a higher state of intelligence.” the “sákoontala” ends with a prayer of the king, — “ and may the purple, self-existent god, whose vital energy pervades all space, from future transmigrations save my soul !” i the remainder of this paragraph is printed in fate" (conduct of life, pp. 24 and 47). 106 (age 54 journal he persists in his bad opinion of orchards and farming; declares, that the only success he ever had with the farmer was, that he once paid a cent for a russetin apple; and farming, he thinks, is an attempt to outwit god with a hoe: that they plant a great many potatoes, with much ado; but it is doubtful if they ever get the seed again. july 28. yesterday, the best day of the year, we spent in the afternoon on the river. a sky of calcutta ; light, air, clouds, water, banks, birds, grass, pads, lilies, were in perfection, and it was delicious to live. ellery and i went up the south branch, and took a bath from the bank behind cyrus hubbard's, where the river makes a bend. blackbirds in hundreds; swallows in tens sitting on the telegraph lines; and one heron (ardea minor) assisted. in these perfect pictures, one thinks what weary nonsense is all this painful collection of rubbish,pictures of rubbish masters, in the total neglect of this and every lovely river valley, where the multitudinous life and beauty make these pictures ridiculous, cold chalk and ochre. from faraday's lecture at the royal institution, 1857, on “ conservation of force":18571 faraday on force 107 “a grain of water is known to have electric relations equivalent to a very powerful flash of lightning.' it may therefore be supposed that a very large apparent amount of the force causing the phenomena of gravitation may be the equivalent of a very small change in the unknown condition of the bodies whose attraction is varying by change of distance. many considerations urge my mind toward the idea of a cause of gravity which is not resident in the particles of matter merely, but constantly in them and all space.” a particle of oxygen is ever a particle of oxygen, — nothing can in the least wear it.”. faraday is an excellent writer, and a wise man, and whilst i read him, i think that, if natural philosophy is faithfully written, moral philosophy need not be, for it will find itself expressed in these theses to a perceptive soul.3 that is, i this sentence mr. emerson used in “ perpetual forces,” showing what mighty forces might give the delicate flavor of a peach (conduct of life, p. 70). 2 no ray is dimmed, no atom worn, my oldest force is good as new, and the fresh rose on yonder thorn gives back the bending heavens in dew. (“c song of nature,” poems.) 3 compare worship”(conduct of life, pp. 218, 219). 108 journal [age 54 we shall read off the commandments and gospels in chemistry — without need of translation; as we read a latin or a french book to scholars without translation. i can count on my fingers all the sane men that ever came to me. were i to insist on silence until i was fully met, and all my faculty called out and tasked by my companion, i should have a solitary time of it. those who visit me are young men, imperfect persons, people with some partial thought, or local culture.' ... each man has, too, six or seven leading thoughts or observations, and his talk with a stranger, as it rises or falls, is usually a pure or a diluted statement of these, until they are all told. then, if the stranger has not evinced the power to excite and draw him out, they live thenceforward in heavy relation, as people who know each other to disadvantage, and who have nothing to expect from each other. thoughts. will he coax and stroke these de1 and yet he welcomed the youths, and heard their questions, answered them indirectly by throwing large lights, and many went away comforted with wide-opened eyes. 1857] dealing with thoughts 109 ities? i do. i can no more manage these thoughts that come into my head than thunderbolts. but once get them written down, i come and look at them every day, and get wonted to their faces, and by and by, am so far used to them that i see their family likeness, and can pair them and range them better, and if i once see where they belong and join them in that order, they will stay so. in the house of mahomet, the guests discussed gardens, architecture, diamonds, horses, chess, the natural history of certain trees, as, the palm, sandal-tree, wines, amber, steel, flowers. in tarare, beaumarchais directed to be sung “ majestically,” by nature and the genius of fire, the verses, “ mortel, qui que tu sois, prince, brahme, ou soldat, homme, ta grandeur sur la terre n'appartient point à ton état, elle est toute à ton caractère." all. “it must not be imagined that any force or fraction of a force can be ever annihilated. all that which is not found in the useful effect produced by the motive power, nor in the amount of force which it retains after having acted, must 110 journal [age 54 have gone towards the shaking and destroying of the machine.” — arago, life of carnot. august 2. yesterday with ellery at flint's pond. the pond was in its summer glory, the chestnuts in flower, two fishermen in a boat, thundertops in the sky, and the whole picture a study of all the secrets of landscape. “a place for everything, and everything in place”; “no waste and no want”; “ each minds his own part, and none overdo and none interfere,” – these and the like rules of good householding are kept here in nature. the great afternoon spends like fireworks, or festival of the gods, with a tranquil exultation, as of a boy that has launched his first boat, or his little balloon, and the experiment succeeds. ellery said, “ you must come here to see it: it can never be imagined. you must come here to see it, or you have lost your day.” 'tis an objection, i said, to astronomy, that you light your candle at both ends. after you have got through the day and 't is necessary you should give attention to the business of sleeping, all hands are called; here come canopus, aldebaran, and all stars, and you are to begin again. iii 1857) the oldtown indian ii the woods were in their best, high grown again, and flecked with spots of pure sunshine everywhere, paths for una and her lamb; say better, fit for the stoutest farmers and the greatest scholars. inspired we forget our books to see the landscape's royal looks. joseph polis is the hunter who went with henry thoreau and edward hoar. an indian has his knowledge for use, and it only appears in use. most white men that we know have theirs for talking purposes. the indian can call a muskrat swimming in the river to the side where he stands, and make him land. “see muskrat, me go talk with em.” he can go into the lakes, and be paddled round and round ten or twenty times and then can go off in straight line “to camp,” or to oldtown. white man cannot; and indian can't tell how he does it. he can give you a new tea every night, and a soup every day; lily soup; hemlock tea; tea from the snowberry. chiogenes hispidula is best. he can cut a string from spruce root, as you cannot. cornus sericea is the kinnik kinnik. ii2 journal (age 54 truth. “truth,” says buchner, “hides an inner attraction in itself, beside which all other respects easily vanish.” – apud frauenstadt. « de la part du roi défense à dieu de faire miracle dans ce lieu !” “ by royal decree, we prohibit the gods to work any miracle near these sods." i have quite forgot in what garden this compliment to religion was paid.' september 4. yesterday with henry at the estabrook farm, and ebba hubbard's swamp to see the yellow birches, which grow larger than i have seen them elsewhere. the biggest measured, at five feet from the ground, ten feet, five inches in circumference. we found bass, thorn-tree (cratagus), feverbush abounding; a huge ivy running up from the base round a (?) tree, to the height of twenty or thirty feet, like a hairy snake; osmunda regalis, white mint, pennyroyal, calamint, aster corymbosa, the bay-berry, ampbicarpæa, botrychium onoclea, brake tripartite. 1 this couplet was posted by some wit on the church of st. médard, one of the jansenist congregations, in the seventeenth century. the jansenists had alleged miracles (one at st. médard) in support of their heresy. 1857) autumn walk. illusions 113 a valuable walk through the savage, fertile, houseless land, where we saw pigeons and marshhawks, and ere we left it, the mists, which denote the haunt of the elder gods, were rising.' henry said of the railroad whistle, that nature had made up her mind not to hear it, she knew better than to wake up: and, “ the fact you tell is of no value, 't is only the impression.” curious that the best thing i saw in mammoth cave was an illusion. but i have had many experiences like that and many men have. our conversation with nature is not quite what it seems. the sunset glories are not quite so real as childhood thought them, and the part that our organization plays in them is too large. the same subjectiveness interferes everywhere. doctor solger. when the event is past and 1 down in yon watery nook where bearded mists divide, the grey old gods whom chaos knew, the sires of nature, hide. ("waldeinsamkeit,” poems.) 2 a learned german who gave a course on history in mr. sanborn's school in concord. 114 (age 54 journal remote, how insignificant the greatest, compared with the piquancy of the present! the professor interrogates annie in the class about odoacer and alaric.' ... how we failed to be catholics. the other lesson we got from the lecture was the pathetic one, that the poor goths or germans must needs come into the empire when valens was an arian, and therefore all goths and germans must be arians, and not the orthodox, catholic prevailing athanasian creed. in this first germ, one sees us nailed to the north wall of opposition, and foreordained to be pale protestants, unitarians, freesoilers, abolitionists. ere what baulks all language is, the broad, radiating, immensely distributive action of nature or spirit. if it were linear, if it were successive, step by step, jet after jet, like our small human agency, we could follow it with language; but it mocks us. greatness. every human being whom history selects is some child of fate, full of fate, who did what he did by this strong arm ; as the i see “ success” (letters and social aims, pp. 304, 305). 1857] great by one gift 115 woodchopper, by using the force of gravity, lets the planet chop his stick, so these men perceived each that he had inherited some trick of nature, a voice, or a face, or a sympathy, or a brutish courage, or skill, some fascination, which prevailed with his fellows, and he gladly threw himself on this, seeing how much it served him, though this all belonged to the kingdom of fate, and not to the sphere of souls. maximum and minimum. the doses of heaven are homeopathic. how little it is that differences the man from the woman; the animal from the plant; the most like from the most unlike things! the sun is as much a creature of fate as any worm which his heat engenders in the mud of earth. large and small are nothing. given a vesicle you have the cosmos. “for the living out of doors, and simple fare, and gymnastic exercises, and the morals of companions, produce the greatest effect in the way of virtue and of vice.” – plato, timæus. here again is the circumstance, is fate, so potent; or, shall i say, here the unity of things intimating that the moral is the highest chem116 journal (age 54 istry. put the atoms all right in their best order, and you get the unsophisticated countryman, body and mind in equal health; the crystallization is not interfered with, nor hastened, and the perfect diamond results. surfaces. good writing sips the foam of the cup. there are infinite degrees of delicacy in the use of the hands; and good workmen are so distinguished from laborers; and good horsemen, from rude riders; and people of elegant manners, from the vulgar. in writing, it is always at the surface, and can chip off a scale, where a coarser hand and eye find only solid wall. determination of blood is all one with intrinsic value. if a man is set on collecting diamonds, or arabian horses, or an arboretum, or a particular piece of land, or a telescope, his heat makes the value. we read the orientals, but remain occidental. the fewest men receive anything from their studies. the abolitionists are not better men for their zeal. they have neither abolished slavery in carolina, nor in me. if they cannot break one fetter of mine, i cannot hope they will of any 1857] the atlantic monthly 117 negro. they are bitter, sterile people, whom i flee from, to the unpretentious whom they disparage. i see them to be logically right, but — [the rest torn out.] the eye is final : what it tells is the last stroke of nature. beyond colour we cannot go. gauss, i believe it is, who writes books that nobody can understand but himself, and himself only in his best hours. and peirce and gould and others in cambridge are piqued with the like ambition. but i fancy more the wit of defoe, and cervantes, and montaigne, who make deep and abstruse things popular. henry avoids commonplace, and talks birch bark to all comers, reduces them all to the same insignificance. the atlantic monthly. a journal is an assuming to guide the age — very proper and necessary to be done, and good news that it shall be so. — but this journal, is this it? has apollo spoken? in this, the sentiment of freedom is the sting which all feel in common : a northern sentiment, the only tie; and the manifest conveniency of having a good vent for such wares as scholars 118 [age 54 journal have. there is this discrepancy in the nature of the thing: each of the contributors is content that the thing be to the largest aims; but when he is asked for his contribution, he considers where his strength lies: he has certain experiences which have impressed him lately, and which he can combine, but no choice, or a very narrow choice among such, and the best the editor can do is, to see that nothing goes into the book but important pieces ; every chapter must record of real experiences. it suffices that it be weighty. it matters not whether 't is upon religion, or balloons, or kneebuckles, so only that there is nothing fantastic or factitious in the subject and writing. great scope and illumination ought to be in the editor, to draw from the best in the land, and to defy the public, if he is only sure himself that the piece has worth, and is right. publics are very placable, and will soon find out when they have a master. the value of money-capital is to be able to hold out for a few months, and go on printing, until the discerning minority of the public have found out that the book is right, and must be humbly and thankfully accepted, and abandon themselves to this direction, too happy that they have got something good and wise to admire and obey. eason 1857] alcott’s large views 119 alcott makes his large demand on the lecture, that it is the university of the people, and 't is time they should know at the end of the season what their professors have taught this winter: and it should be gathered by a good reporter in a book what beecher, whipple, parker, bellows, king, solger, and emerson have taught. but the lecturer was not allowed to be quite simple, as if he were on his conscience to unfold himself to a college class. but he knew his audience, and used the “adulatory” and “confectionary” arts (according to plato) to keep them in their seats. he treats them as children; and mercantile libraries and lyceums will all vote, if the question be virtually put to them, — we prefer to be entertained ; nay, we must be entertained. my friend' has magnificent views, and looks habitually to the government of the country ; of the state ; of nature ; nothing less. his natural attitude explains plato. when has plato found a genial critic? no; always a silly village wondering what he could be at! what he said about women? did he mean athens, or mer е і. 1 mr. alcott, after several years' residence in walpole, returned with his family to concord. they made it their home until near the end of his life. 120 i 2 (age 54 journal hippias, or the thirty? none of it at all, but just what you mean, when you come to the morning mountains, and say, the soul made the world, and should govern it, and the right radiancy of the soul from the centre outward, making nature, and distributing it to the care of wise souls, would be thus and thus. here is my sketch; speaking really or scientifically, and not in your conventional gabble. alcott thinks socrates would not have known his own remark when plato repeated it! what an obstinate illusion is that which in youth gives respect to the old!'... dreams. i owe real knowledge and even alarming hints to dreams, and wonder to see people extracting emptiness from mahogany tables, when there is vaticination in their dreams. for the soul in dreams has a subtle synthetic power which it will not exert under the sharp eyes of day. it does not like to be watched or looked upon, and flies to real twilights, as the rappers do in their wretched mummeries. if in i this passage, slightly varied in form, is printed in “old age” (society and solitude, p. 316). 1857] southern violence 121 dreams you see loose and luxurious pictures, an inevitable tie drags in the sequel of cruelty and malignity. if you swallow the devil's bait, you will have a horizon full of dragons shortly. when i higgled for my dime and half-dime in the dream, and lost, — the parrots on the chimney tops, and church pinnacles scoffed at me, ho! ho ! the shooting complexion, like the cobra de capello and scorpion, grows in the south. it has no wisdom, no capacity of improvement: it looks in every landscape, only for partridges; in every society for duels. and, as it threatens life, all wise men, brave or peaceable, run away from the spider-man, as they run away from the black spider : for life to them is real and rich, and not to be risked on any curiosity as to whether spider or spider-man can bite a poisonous wound. with such a nation, or a nation with a predominance of this complexion, war is the safest terms. that marks them, and, if they cross the lines, they can be dealt with as all fanged animals must be. is there no check to this class of privileged thieves that infest our politics? we mark and i 22 journal (age 54 lock up the petty thief, or we raise the hue and cry in the street, and do not hesitate to draw our revolvers out of the box, when one is in the house. but here are certain well-dressed, wellbred fellows, infinitely more mischievous, who get into the government and rob without stint, and without disgrace. they do it with a high hand, and by the device of having a party to whitewash them, to abet the act, and lie, and vote for them. and often each of the larger rogues has his newspaper, called “his organ,” to say that it was not stealing, this which he did; that if there was stealing, it was you who stole, and not he. i took such pains not to keep my money in the house, but to put it out of the reach of burglars by buying stock, and had no guess that i was putting it into the hands of these very burglars now grown wiser and standing dressed as railway directors." wisdom has its root in goodness, and not goodness its root in wisdom. a thought is embosomed in a sentiment, which broadens in1 the financial crisis had now affected mr. emerson's other railroad securities. 1857] sublime geology 123 definitely around it, and the attempt to detach and blazon the thought by itself is like a show of cut flowers. wonders of arnica. i must surely see the plant growing. where's henry? if louis xvi had only in his pocket a phial of arnica, father edgeworth could have attached his falling head to his body, and with a little arnica made all whole again, and altered the fate of europe. it was a sublime sounding fact which we used to hear of egyptian temples, that the foundation stones showed carving on their under sides, showing that, old as they were, they were ruins of an older civilization. and i found in sicily, that the church in syracuse was an antique temple of diana; but that was a mushroom to the egyptian. but geology will show that first primeval carved stone to have been a stratum precipitated and crystallized in what far æons of uncounted time! neither then were the particles and atoms new and raw, but mellowed and charred and decomposed from older mixtures, when, when, and where to reach their youth? a particle of azote or carbon is and remains azote and carbon, “nothing can in the least n 124 [age 54 journal wear it.” well, the like ærugo, sacred rust, and smell of an immeasureable antiquity, is on all with which we deal or of which we are. “ and the ruby bricks of the human blood have of old been wicks in god's halls that stood” – as wilkinson huskily sings. do we suppose it is newer with our thoughts? do they come to us as for the first time? these wandering stars and sparks of truth that shone for eternity, and casually beamed this instant on us? the memory is made up of older memories. the blaze of genius owes its depth to our delighted recognition of the truth, as something older than the oldest, and which we knew aforetime, whether in the body or out of the body, we cannot tell; god knoweth. i recalled to-day, for the first time for many years, old lines of moore that once delighted me — the song of the peri, and his lines about campbell, i think:“ true bard and simple, as the race of heaven-born poets always are; when stooping from their starry place they're children, near, though gods afar.” 1857] science. work. instinct 125 generalization. the studies of cuvier showed that the classification of animals must be based on organs. but bichat showed that the organs depended on the tissues, and so undermined cuvier's system. but newer inquirers (schwann) showed that tissues depended on cellular structure, and so undermined bichat. and, when the microscope is improved, we shall have the cells analysed, and all will be electricity, or somewhat else. success. i like the successes of george stephenson and columbus, well-won, hard-earned, by fifty years of work, a sleepless eye, and an invincible will. do you not know that “wisdom is not found in the hands of those who live at their ease ” ? job. instinct. the girl deserts the parlor to hear the delightful naiveté of the milesians in the kitchen. the boy runs gladly from the tutors and parents to the uproarious life he finds in the market and the wharf. the college is not so wise as the shop, nor the quarter-deck as the forecastle.' ... if bowen or sir william ham1 the greater part of the paragraph is printed in “ country life" (natural history of intellect, p. 161). 126 journal (age 54 ilton were to lecture and at the same hour in which george melvin,' or joe polis, the bangor indian, would tell us what they knew of owls or of muskrats, sir william would be deserted. 't was a pythagorean rule, don't sail on the ground. am when a man defines his position, it must be his organic position, — that which he must occupy; then it is interesting, as every piece of natural history is : but not his expedient or selected position. for fraud and cunning are essentially uninteresting. if a true metaphysician should come, he would accompany each man through his own (the student's) mind, and would point at this treasure-crypt, and at that, indicating immense wealth lying here and there, which the student would joyfully perceive, and pass on from hall to hall, from recess to recess, ever to more interior and causal forces, being minded to come over again on the same tracks by himself at future leisure and explore more nearly the treasures now only 1 a concord pot-hunter and fisher. sa cs 12 a virgil lesson (mr. emerson, his younger daughter and son) 1857] metaphysics. memory 127 verified. but such as we now call metaphysicians, the lockes, and reeds, and stewarts, etc., are no more than the valets de place and custodi who lead travellers through the curiosities of rome or verona, and say over by rote the legends that have been repeated from father to son, “molto antico, signore”; “un tempio,” “ c'era battaglia,” etc., etc. why does the name of a chapter “on memory,” shoot a little chill to the mind of each auditor? there are few facts known on the subject of memory. in the minds of most men it is nothing but a calender on such a day.' . ... “you may perish out of your senses, but not out of your memory and imagination,” said alcott. but he says nothing satisfactory about either of these two immense powers. all that is good is his ranking them so high. i tell him, that no people have imagination. 't is the rarest gift. imagination is the nomination of the causal facts, the laws of the soul, by the physical facts. all physical facts are words for spiritual facts, and imagination, by naming them, is the interpreter, showing us the unity of the world. 1 much of what follows is printed in “ memory” (nat. ural history of intellect, p. 96). 128 journal (age 54 most men are cowed by society, and say good things to you in private, but will not stand to them in public.' ... i listen to every prompting of honour, believing that it can deliver itself through all the maze of relations to the end of nature. nature does not like criticism. there is much that a wise man would not know.” naiveté. uses of nature, to be sure !— why, this is foremost. what we value, all we value, is the naturel, or peculiar quality of each man; and, in a large, healthy individual, this is the antagonist of gravitation, vegetation, chemistry, nay, of matter itself, and as good at last as they, this is the saliency, the principle of levity, the sal volatile, which is the balance, or offset, to the mountains and masses. this is forever a surprise, and engaging, and a man is therefore and thus wonderful and lovely. now homer, shakspeare, burns, scott, voltaire, rabelais, montaigne, hafiz, have these spirits or intuii see society and solitude, p. 15. 2 here follow the passages on the concealment of the skeleton, in “ success” (society and solitude, pp. 308, 309), and on joking, in “ social aims" (letters and social aims, pp. 97, 98). 1857] native force 129 tions, and are magnetic, or interesting to all men.' we are curious about them, can't be satisfied with watching the primal springs, and their movements, wish to know their law, if we could. well, every man has the like potency in him, more or less. this wit is related to the secret of the world, to the primitive power, the incessant creation. it is in harmony with gravity, and the orbit of the stars, and the growth of grass, and the angles of crystals. there is no luck or choice about it, but law in it, from first to last. it is the next finer ascent or metamorphosis of gravity, chemistry, vegetation, animal life, the same thing, on the next higher plane; as the morale is a still higher ascent or metamorphosis, and kindred to it. but the essence of it is, that it be native and intuitive. . all facts in nature interest us, because they are deep, and not accidental, especially not tampered with, adulterated, doctored, or betraying any lower will, any quackery or falsehood. animals, indians, farmers' children, interest us so. but this native force has most unequal temperament. in the vast mass, it sleeps, and is hard i a portion of the above passage is found in “country life” (natural history of intellect, p. 163), and another in “ concord walks” in the same volume (pp. 178, 179). 130 journal (age 54 ito awaken. in rabelais, homer, and shakspeare, and cervantes, it is fortunately free, and escapes in fine jets, illuminating the time and place where they are. it subsists in the whole population, but is more or less torpid. then the problem was to free it. it was found that new aspects of nature, mountains, forests, sea-air, change of place, cities, and travel, had a good effect of disengaging this volatile principle. and the mediterranean sea and the atlantic ocean have this medical value in the history of man. but it was early discovered that the low will or selfishness of the individual could be disengaged at the same time and blend with this spirit or genius, and instantly rots it. better have none. cities are sure to corrupt it. [scattered along the next pages of the journal are trial verses, some of which are found in “waldeinsamkeit,” the “song of nature,” “ walden,” in the poems.] but oft at home mid tasks i heed, i heed how wears the day; we must not halt while fiercely speed the spans of life away. but here amid the hills sublime, or down the oaken glade, 1857] 131 trial verses o what have i to do with time? for this the day was made. [nature] what wealth of mornings in her year and planets in her sky! she chose the best thy heart to cheer thy beauty to supply. now younger lovers find the stream, the willow and the vine; — but aye to me the happiest seem to draw the dregs of wine. the air is wise, the wind thinks well, and all through which it blows, if plant or brain, if egg or cell, or bird or biped, knows. here the great planter plants of fruitful worlds the grain, and with a million spells enchants the souls that walk in pain. here are the types of all he made; the grace that gladly wins, words for all thoughts that can be said, and youth which aye begins: 132 (age 54 journal here works the craft that wove the robe of sky and broidered stars, that carved the cockle, cast the globe, scooped seas, and set their bars. he to the gentle virgin bold or humble careless boy tells what cannot with words be told but moulded into joy. whatever we study in nature, 'tis always found to be the study of man. that gives the edge to the inquiry. if you could once show an independency and foreignness in nature, we should never care for it more. . . . but this study has its stern, purifying, corrective effect. man's egotism will not be found there; man's crime or folly will be filtered out. 'tis only moral and rational man, that nature subserves. cro fontenelle (?) said, “when a learned man speaks to instruct other men, and exactly in that line of instruction they wish to acquire, he does them a favour: but, if he speaks only to show off his own learning, they do him a favour in listening.” — arago, p. 360. “ the twelfth century is an aurora, the fourteenth, a sunset,” said fauriel. su rie اک is a certail 1877] pace. shakspeare 133 “there is a certain village where the whole population reproduces still at the present day the features of the ancient seigneurs. i speak of the mirabeaus.” — michelet, renaissance. “god the father during fifteen centuries has no altar.” pace. the miracle in safford, and in corinne or cerella is only the acceleration of the processes which take place slower in the writer. and we say, in relating anybody's bon mot, that he replied instantly so and so; whilst l'esprit d'escalier, though it were better, is not much valued. rev. mr. stone,' of bolton, thought bacon monotonous, and 't is certain that shakspeare is murionous. bacon is worldly. shakspeare defies the world even, through falstaff and the clown, with his spiritual fun. miscellany is as bad as drunkenness. iness, the saddest fact i know, under the category of compensation, is, that, when we look at an 1 t. t. stone, one of the contributors to the dial. 134 journal [age 54 object, we turn away from every other object in the universe. answer. the redress is that we find every other object in that. my philosophy holds to a few laws ; 1. identity, whence comes the fact that metaphysical faculties and facts are the transcendency of physical. 2. flowing, or transition, or shooting the gulf, the perpetual striving to ascend to a higher platform, the same thing in new and higher form. • high criticism. you must draw your rule from the genius of that which you do, and not from by-ends. don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. you will spoil both. don't set out to teach theism from your natural history, like paley and agassiz. you spoil both. few stars, few thoughts. they say, that, though the stars appear so numberless, you cannot count more than a thousand. well, there are few thoughts. count the books and you would think there was immense wealth : but any expert knows that there are few thoughts which have emerged in his time. shut him up in a closet, 1857] few thoughts. greeks 135 and he could soon tell them all. they are quoted, contradicted, modified, but the amount remains computably small. “masterly inactivity,” “wise passiveness”; see how much has been made of that feather stolen from the plume of carlyle by calhoun and others. the ballads got their excellence, as perhaps homer and the cid did, by being conventional stories conventionally treated, with conventional rhymes and tunes and images, done over and over, until, at last, all the strokes were right, and the faults were thrown away. thus logan got his “ they sought him east, they sought him west,”: etc. somebody even borrowed “ parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo.” (see child's ballads, vol. ii, “ the drowned lovers.") society is very swift in its instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or, quietly drops you.' ... the reason why the greek mythology obtains to this day is, that it is more catholic than any other. i for the rest of the paragraph, see “ behavior" (conduct of life, p. 186). 136 [age 54 journal if men should take off their clothes, i think the aristocracy would not be less, but more pronounced than now. if men were as thick as snowflakes, millions of aakes, but there is still but one snowflake: but every man is a door to a single deep secret. the ancients, to make a god, added to the human figure some brutal exaggeration, as the leonine head of jove, the bull-neck of hercules; and michel angelo added horns to give mysterious strength to the head of moses.' so webster impressed by his superb animality, and was strong as nature, though weak in character. his understanding and his demonstrative talents were invigorated from these low sources, but he had vulgar ambition, and his power was only that of a lawyer,* and it perished utterly, even before his death. what is called his fame only marks the imbecility of those who invoke it. * no, he was a skilful statesman and a great orator. r. w. e. [this footnote added later.] wa i mr. emerson probably believed that artistic considerations influenced michel angelo rather than the vulgate rendering of the text, which, by selection of the meaning horns instead of rays of the hebrew word, pictures moses as seen by the congregation when he came down from the presence of jehovah as horned rather than radiant. the king james version gives the no 1857] sentiment 137 sentiment is always colour, as thought is form. when i talked with goodson, on a sunday morning, in cincinnati, of catholic churches, how warm and rich and sufficient was the hour and conversation : as the colours of the sunset, whilst we gaze, make life so great; but now no memory remains of conversation or sunset. but remember the high value of sentiment to deepen or fix the thought, as when wordsworth told me that a thought born and united to a sentiment was ktņua és åeí, or, as i wrote it elsewhere, we never attain a perfect sincerity in our speech unless we feel a degree of tenderness. october. october 14th, the new york and boston banks suspended specie payment, and, as usual in hard times, there are all sorts of petty and local reasons given for the pressure, but none that explain it to me. i suppose the reasons are not of yesterday or to-day; that the same danger has often approached and been avoided or postponed. 'tis like that destruction of st. petersburg, which was threatened by kohl, which may come whenever a great freshet in passage « moses knew not that the skin of his face shone" (exodus xxxiv. 29). 138 (age 54 journal the neva shall coincide with a long prevalence of northwest (?) wind. 'tis like the jam which the ice or the logs make in our rivers : there is ample room for all the ice and all the logs to go downstream, was, and is, and shall be;but, by unfavourable circumstances, they are heaped together in a deadlock, so as to dam up the backwater, till it accumulates to a deluge, and bursts at last, carrying bridges, houses, and half towns, to destruction. but i take it as an inevitable incident to this money of civilization. paper money is a wonderful convenience, which builds up cities and nations, but it has this danger in it, like a camphene lamp, or a steam boiler, it will sometimes explode. so excellent a tool we cannot spare, but must take it with its risks. we know the dangers of the railroad, but we prefer it with its dangers to the old coach, and we must not forego the high civility of paper and credit, though once in twenty years it breaks the banks, and puts all exchange and traffic at a stand. the financial panic has the value of a test. nobody knows how far each of these bankers and traders blows up his little air-ball, on what infinitely small supply of soap and water. they all float in the air alike as balloons, or planets, anv 1857] the panic. north wind 139 if you will, until they strike one another, or any house. but this panic is a severer examiner than any committee of bank commissioners to find out how much specie all this paper represents, and how much real value. the imagination gives all the value to the day. if we walk, if we work, if we talk, it is how many strokes vibrate on the mystic string. ... but 't is the north wind that thinks, and whatever it blows through, is it pinewood or biped, — thinks rightly and beautifully. 'tis the receptivity that is rare.' . .. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1857 æsop; pindar ; heracleitus ; iamblichus; hafiz; sákoontala, or the lost ring; rabelais; cervantes; locke; defoe; voltaire; thomas reid; lessing, emilia galotti; burke; john adams; herschel ; dugald stewart; laing, heimskringla; john quincy adams, apud josiah quincy (biography). cuvier; bichat; karl friedrich gauss; moore, 1 the rest of the passage occurs in “ inspirations ” (letters and social aims, p. 296). 140 journal (age 54 on campbell ; southey, chronicle of the cid; alcott; arago, life of carnot; guizot; faraday, conservation of force; beaumarchais, tarare; benjamin peirce; george calvert; hawthorne, preface to miss bacon's book; bulwer; victor hugo; agassiz; longfellow, holmes, lowell, poems on agassiz's birthday; schwann, microscopic researches; harriet beecher stowe, uncle tom's cabin ; j. j. garth wilkinson ; charles k. newcomb; jones very; frauenstädt; thoreau ; w.e. channing; delia s. bacon, the philosopby of shakspear's plays unfolded; friedrich k. c. büchner; josiah p. quincy, lyteria ; a. laugel,“agassiz,” revue des deux mondes; atlantis; the atlantic montbly. journal thoreau hafiz massachusetts politics french metaphysicians rarey rowse the adirondac camp stillman and lowell journal xlix 1858 (from journals vo and do) [mr. emerson seems to have made no distant lecturing tour in the winter; one lecture in philadelphia is recorded february 3. in march, he gave a course of six lectures in boston: i, “ country life”;ii, “works and days ";iii, “ powers of mind”; iv, “natural method of mental philosophy”; v, “memory”; vi, “ self-possession.” mr. cabot gives in the memoir an abstract of the parts not printed. (appendix f, pp. 753-756.) in january, mr. emerson wrote to his aunt mary; _“i abide in my old barrel, or, if you will, coop or tub, and mean to keep my eyes open, whether anything offers to be observed or not.”] (from vo) the question is, — have you got the interesting facts ? that yours have cost you time and labor, and that you are a person of wonderful parts, and of wonderful fame, in the so144 journal (age 54 ciety or town in which you live, is nothing to the purpose. society is a respecter of persons, but nature is not. 'tis fatal that i do not care a rush for all you have recorded, cannot read it, if i should try. henry thoreau says, “the indians know better natural history than you, they with their type fish, and fingers the sons of hands.” i should go to the naturalist with a new feeling if he had promised to teach me what birds say to each other at midsummer, and what when they convene at autumn. i found henry yesterday in my woods. he thought nothing to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet was not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world. we talked of the willows. he says, ’t is impossible to tell when they push the bud (which so marks the arrival of spring) out of its dark scales. it is done and doing all winter. it is begun in the previous autumn. it seems one steady push from autumn to spring. i say, how divine these studies ! here there is no taint of mortality. how aristocratic, and of how defiant a beauty! this is the garden of edelweissen.' i the swiss form of our “ everlasting” alower. see the 1858] the practical. hafiz 145 he says, wachusett is twenty-seven miles from fairhaven,' and monadnoc about fifty. perhaps it would be a safe episode to the intellect chapters, to give an account of the gentleman in search of the practical, as illustrated by the history of the turbine, which is valued here at $100,000, and there is discarded as useless, and on which there seems no settled verdict to be had. j. bright, of rochdale, said, the use of machinery in america and in england went by fancy: and [i learned in] my search for the pioneers in illinois and wisconsin, — "they were visionary men, not practical, and all bankrupted.” and my western banker at adrian, and mr. hooper's at lexington, may serve to show what practical people are. january 28, 1858. the panegyrics of hafiz addressed to his shahs and agas show poetry, but they show deficient civilization. the finest genius in england concluding passage of “ thoreau ” (lectures and biographical sketches). 1 a broadening of the south branch of concord river just below · the cliffs ” is called “ fairhaven bay.” 146 (age 54 journal or france would feel the absurdity of fabling such things to his queen or emperor about their saddle, as hafiz and enweri do not stick at. when a dog barks on the stage of a theatre, the audience are interested. what acting can take their attention from the dog? but if in the real action which their scene represents, a dog had barked, it would not have been heard. the politics of massachusetts are cowardly. o for a roman breath, and the courage that advances and dictates! when we get an advantage, as in congress, the other day, it is because our adversary has made a fault, and not that we have made a thrust. why do we not say, we are abolitionists of the most absolute abolition, as every man that is a man must be? only the hottentots, only the barbarous or semi-barbarous societies are not. we do not try to alter your laws in alabama, nor yours in japan, or the fee jee islands; but we do not admit them or permit a trace of them here. nor shall we suffer you to carry your thuggism north, south, east, or west into a single rod of territory which we control. 18581 barren metaphysics 147 we intend to set and keep a cordon sanitaire all around the infected district, and by no means suffer the pestilence to spread. at springfield, i told lamoureux that i thought metaphysics owed very little to the french mind. what we owe is not to the professors, but to the incidental remarks of a few deep men, namely, to montaigne, malebranche, pascal, and montesquieu. the analytic mind will not carry us far. taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct. in a healthy mind, the love of wholes, the power of generalizing, is usually joined with a keen appreciation of differences. but they are so bent on the aim and genius of the thing, that they don't mind the surface faults. but minds of low and surface power pounce on some fault of expression, of rhetoric, or petty mis-statement of fact, and quite lose sight of the main purpose. i knew a lady who thought she knew she had heard my discourse before, because the word “arena” was in both of the two discourses. (yet we must remember descartes and malebranche; cousin is only a pupil of hegel.) the english think, if you add a hundred facts, you will have made a right step towards 148 journal (age 54 a theory; if you add a thousand, so much the nearer. but these lines never meet. a good mind infers from two or three facts, or from one, as readily as from a legion. witness kepler, newton, dalton, etc., who are born with a taste for the manners of nature, and catch the whole tune from a few bars. it is impossible to be a gentleman, and not be an abolitionist. for a gentleman is one who is fulfilled with all nobleness, and imparts it; is the natural defender and raiser of the weak and oppressed, like the cid. but these are snobs. in the southern country, their idea of a gentleman is a striker. there are abundance of their gentlemen garroting in new york streets. re 1776 to 1858. eighty-two years count the age of the union, and yet they say the nation is as old and infirm as a man is with those years. now a building is not in its prime till after five hundred years. nor should a nation be; and we aged at eighty! the populace drag down the gods to their own level.' ... 1 the passage is printed in “ character” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 104). 1858] agassiz. rarey 149 gloumorceau' perfect in the centre of a barrel of baldwins this 20 february, 1858. [written in later.] as good to-day, 15 feb., 1864. february 27. felton told of agassiz, that when some one applied to him to read lectures, or some other paying employment, he answered, “i can't waste my time in earning money.” dr. holmes told a story of john hunter, that, being interrupted by a professional call, when he was dissecting a tiger, he said, “do you think i can leave my work for your damned guinea?” insw here is mr. rarey in london showing in 1858 how to tame a horse by appealing to his heart and his mind. 'tis as it should be, only we have been rather slow about it. it ought to be as old as homer and theseus, at least. so the taming or the conquering of a dog is not yet a science. and the language of birds is a fable still. i think the fame of theseus has come down a peg or two, since the appearance of mr. 1 mr. emerson had a tree of excellent and sweet winter pears of this name, and one was probably accidentally put into a barrel of baldwin apples. e.w.e. 150 journal [age 54 rarey. his maxim is, “he who would tame a horse must not know fear or anger.” it seems as if there should be new olympian games in which the unsolved questions should be proposed for prizes, what is imagination ? will? which is first, truth, or goodness? nor can we dispose of these gods by saying, these are simple acts of one power. i admit the perpetual pertinence of the reference to amount of manhood or humanity. what have all your inquiries, or skills, or reforms by you inaugurated, profited you? the roarers for liberty turn out to be slaves themselves; the thunderers of the senate are poor creatures in the street, and when canvassing for votes. and when, in their own village, the question is, how many honest men are there in town? men who will not take a petty advantage, and are severer watchers of themselves than of their debtor? why, they are as rare among the reputable as among the unreputed ; the great gentleman, scornful and lofty, will do very shabby things : and a career of triumphantly logical reform has consumed all the domestic virtue and private charm of the athlete. his wife hates him, children do not love him, scholars dislike him, and he is miserable alone. 1858) morals. precedent 151 races. all the children born in the last three years or eight years should be charged with love of liberty, for their parents have been filled with kansas and anti-slavery. moral sense makes genius in spite even of disowning by genius. why moral sentiment is laming? my theory of the present basis of society being brutish, each feeding on other; but the basis of intellect and morals is aid, and “the more angels the more room."-----you are too historical by half. i show you a grievance, and you proceed to inquire, not if it is mischievous, but if it is old. i point the redress, and you inquire about a constitutional precedent for the redress. that which only requires perception, mischiefs that are rank and intolerable, which only need to be seen, to be hated and attacked, with you are ground for argument, and you are already preparing to defend them. the reliance on simple perception constitutes genius and heroism; and that is the religion before us. с are wordsworth's ~ prelude” is not quite solid enough in its texture ; is rather a poetical pam152 journal (age 54 phlet, though proceeding from a new and genuine experience. it is like milton's areopagitica, an immortal pamphlet. many of tennyson's poems, like “ clara vere de vere," are only the sublime of magazine poems,admirable contributions for the atlantic monthly of the current month, but not classic and eternal. milton would have raised his eyebrow a little at such pieces. but the “ ulysses ” he would have approved. the sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin to use my land to put his rainbow in. eloquence. what unreckoned elements the orator carries with him, for example, silence. he performs as much or more with judicious pauses, as by his best stroke. we can't afford to take the horse out of montaigne's essays. may ii. yesterday with henry thoreau at the pond. saw the creeper, vesey, vesey vesey. yorick is the veery, or wilson's thrush. the lamprey-eel was seen by wetherell building the pebble nest in the river. the sucker, so 1858) landscape. the hermit 153 often seen dead in the river, needs a great deal of air, and hence perhaps dies when detained below. the trout was seen to kill the pickerel by darting at him and tearing off a fin every time. i hear the account of the man who lives in the wilderness of maine with respect, but with despair. it needs the doing hand to make the seeing eye, and my imbecile hands leave me always helpless and ignorant, after so many years in the country. the beauty of the spectacle i fully feel, but 'tis strange that, more than the miracle of the plant and animal, is the impression of mere mass of broken land and water, say a mountain, precipices, and waterfalls, or the ocean-side, and stars. these affect us more than anything except men and women. but neither is henry's hermit, forty-five miles from the nearest house, important, until we know what he is now, what he thinks of it on his return, and after a year. perhaps he has found it foolish and wasteful to spend a tenth or a twentieth of his active life with a muskrat and fried fishes. i tell him that a man was not made to live in a swamp, but a frog. if god meant him to live in a swamp, he would have made him a frog. the charm which henry uses for bird and 154 journal [age 54 frog and mink, is patience. they will not come to him, or show him aught, until he becomes a log among the logs, sitting still for hours in the same place; then they come around him and to him, and show themselves at home. peabody-bird; pee-pee, pee pee pee, five bars, that is the note of the myrtle-bird,' penetrating and like the note of the meadow lark. rowse · said that a portrait should be made by a few continuous strokes, giving the great lines; but if made by labour and by many corrections, though it became at last accurate, it would give an artist no pleasure, — would look muddy. anybody could make a likeness by main strength. [mr. emerson wrote in later “ see the contrast of these two pages,” that is, the account 1 the song described is evidently that of the white-throated sparrow, or peabody-bird. thoreau, as his journal shows, for a long time attributed it to the myrtle-bird (now commonly called the myrtle warbler), and it is probable that mr. emerson was misled by him. 2 samuel rowse, whose crayon portraits, though a little deficient in strength, were pleasing and good. mr. emerson sat to him for his portrait at mr. charles e. norton's request, and the picture, still in the possession of the norton family, has been often reproduced. 1858) pursuits. birds. flowers 155 of thoreau's patience and rowse's belief in dash.] we are all better in attack than in defence. it is very easy to make acute objections to any style of life, but the objector is quite as vulnerable. greenough (thought my speculations unnatural], but the artist life seems to me intolerably thin and superficial. i feel the reasonableness of what the lawyer or merchant or laborer has to allege against readers and thinkers, until i look at each of their wretched industries, and find them without end or aim. monotone. chicadee dee, says the titmouse; pee-pee, pee pee pee, says the “ peabody bird,” each as long as he lives; and the man who hears, goes all his life saying his one proverb, too. may 20. yesterday walked with henry thoreau to the spring in everett's pasture and found ranunculus abortivus and bulbosus, and the equisetum biemale, scouring rush, and saxifraga pennsylvanica, and golden saxifrage; heard a note of henry's nightwarbler and saw at gourgas's pond two yellow-legs flying like ducks, only 156 (age 55 journal with a curlew cry (“telltale”), and a pair of tatlers who continued their researches in the water without regard to our spyglasses ; saw the wood frog (rana sylvatica). nature has two ways of hiding her things, by light, and by darkness. we never see mosses, lichens, grasses, birds, or insects, which are near us every day, on account of our preoccupied mind. when our attention is at last called to them, they seem the only things worth minding. tp or june 8. i spent the evening of june 7 at the american house, with j. s. babcock, the carpenter, mr. rowse's friend,-a man of much reading, and a very active and independent mind, with an exclusive respect for intellectual power, not much sensibility to morals, though meaning to be fair, and of little hope for the race. the bully, he thinks, is the great god of the people, and, if sumner had killed brooks, he thought the people would have worshipped sumner. now, all the west despised him. i tried to show him how much the genius of burke was indebted to his affection; what insight good-will gives, and what eyewaters all the virtues are, as humility, love, courage, etc., and what a blindman's-buff 1858) fate. politics 157 self-conceit makes. and he was candid enough. i told him, that whatever was dreary and repels is not power, but the lack of power, — which he allowed. he struggled hard for webster, who is his idol. he thought the masses admire cushing, burlingame, wise, or any man who has done the feat, — who has succeeded. his opinions on books, which he has read a good deal, were his own, and just. a man of eminently fortunate aspects, who is cordially hailed as bringing the glitter of the muse and good omen into certain houses, has, in spite of himself, and to his deep regret, in other quarters, a dreary and withering aspect. what is the benefit of the doctrine of fate? because, under that form we learn the lesson of the immutability and universality of law. english politics are ever agreeable reading on this side the water, whilst our own are the reverse. 'tis partly that the virulent element is taken out by our disinterested position as spectators, like tobacco smoke strained through water, or the gas cleansed through water on its 158 journal (age 55 way to the jet, and partly the distinction of the persons who act in them, who, for the most part, are highly-bred men. [the following notes in the journal supplement mr. emerson's poetic chronicle in the poems of this happy experience in the primeval forest, so different from anything he had known before in its physical and social features. yet the enormous norway pines, cedars and maples spoke to him the same language as their kin by walden. in stillman's interesting and faithful painting of the scene, done on the spot,' between the group of agassiz, dr. jeffries wyman, and dr. estes howe, dissecting a fish, with the humorous john holmes (dr. holmes's charming brother) looking on, and the other of lowell, judge hoar, dr. binney, and horatio woodman trying their rifles under stillman's skilled instructions, stands emerson, friend and admirer of these companions, but alone, in thought. stillman in his autobiography tells at length of this first camp of the adirondac club.] i given by judge hoar to the concord public library, where it now hangs. 1858) the adirondac club 159 (from do) adirondac, august 2. • follansbee's pond. it should be called stillman's henceforward, from the good camp which this gallant artist has built, and the good party he has led and planted here for the present at the bottom of the little bay which lies near the head of the lake. the lake is two miles long, one to one and a half miles wide, and surrounded by low mountains. norway pine and white pine abound. an adirondac camp is a shanty [612] feet high at the top, [? ] feet long at the eaves, closed on three sides, and open to the fire, in one compartment of which [?] persons can comfortably sleep and in the other [?], besides containing the luggage. on the top of a large white pine in a bay was an osprey's nest around which the ospreys were screaming, five or six. we thought there were young birds in it, and sent preston to the top. this looked like an adventure. the tree might be a hundred and fifty feet high, at least ; sixty feet clean straight stem, without a single branch, and, as lowell and i measured it by the tape as high as we could reach, fourteen feet six inches wc x 1 160 (age 55 journal in girth. preston took advantage of a hemlock close by it and climbed till he got on the branches, then went to the top of the pine and found the nest empty, though the great birds wheeled and screamed about him. he said he could climb the bare stem of the pine “though it would be awful hard work.” when he came down, i asked him to go up it a little way, which he did, clinging to the corrugations of the bark. afterwards lowell watched long for a chance to shoot the osprey, but he soared magnificently, and would not alight. [around] the pond is totally virgin soil, without a clearing in any point, and covered with primitive woods, rock-maple, beech, spruce, arbor vitæ. we have seen bald eagles, loons, ravens, kingfishers, ducks, tattlers. we have killed two deer yesterday, both in the lakes, and otherwise fed our party with lake-trout and river-trout. river-, lake-, and brook-trout cannot be scientifically discriminated, nor yet male from female. the wood thrush we heard at stephen bartlett's camp, but not since, and no other thrush. lowell, next morning, was missing at breakfast, and when he came to camp, told me he had climbed preston's pine tree. the midges, black flies, and mosquitoes are 1858] the lakes 161 looked upon as the protectors of this superb solitude from the tourists, and also — creek leading from raquette river to follansbee's lake. there is no settler within twelve miles of our camp. every man has his guide and boat and gun. wednesday morn, agassiz, woodman, and i left the camp, each in a boat with his guide, for big tupper's lake; passed through the inlet into raquette river, and down it fourteen miles to tupper; then up the lake six miles to jenkins's, near the falls of the bog river. jenkins lives within the town of atherton, which contains eleven souls. he has lately sold his farm to colman, of lebanon county, pennsylvania. he assisted in surveying the town's lines and measured the breadth of the lake on the ice and reckons it one and a half miles broad by six long, and big tupper he thinks about the same size. se [mr. emerson, by invitation of the middlesex agricultural society, gave the address at the annual “ cattle show” in the end of september. he is said to have called it the the man with the hoe. it is essentially the same as the essay “farming,” in society and solitude.] 162 (age 55 journal (from vo) wealth consists in having at every moment a commanding position as regards your ends. a man in debt has not. every hour is bringing certain opportunities to do somewhat desirable. but we are not free to use to-day, or to promise to-morrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday, having eaten our cake before we had earned it. leisure, tranquillity, grace, and strength, belong to economy. calvert mows his grass. kant wears the same hat for twenty years, minot never rides. francis stays at home, and hosmer goes to work every day; and each of these are free and able to the new day, free and great as it, whilst the debtor is perplexed in the extreme, and, because he is low in his own esteem, loses rank in the world. a great aim infuses itself alike into hours and ages. quality makes all moments indifferent, and character pervades all acts. time is the quality of the moment. not fears, but forces. fate. he saw and spoke truly who said, when you have come to your highest thought, you say what is already known to the common man. 1858) philadelphia lecture 163 your fate is what you do, because first it is what you are. сс rses [it does not appear why mr. emerson wrote much less than usual in this year's journal, nor why he gave so few lectures, and did not go on far journeys for this purpose. perhaps the hard times had crippled the lyceum courses in many places. in december he went to new york, carrying with him his ancient and revered sibyl, aunt mary moody emerson, who was to pass the remainder of her days with her haskins relatives in williamsburg, now part of brooklyn. mr. emerson gave one or more lectures in new york and philadelphia in this month. the following lines, cut from the philadelphia medical journal, were found in one of his blankbooks; most of the notice was missing:“mr. emerson's lecture on town and country. “we listened with great pleasure to the chaste and beautiful lecture of the boston essayist. he is tall and literarily thin; as was remarked by a medical friend, 'the least remarkable man on the stage.' as usual in the lectures of our yankee brethren, a good degree of sensible and well-applied physiology entered into the discussion.”] 164 (age 55 journal authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1858 martial; enweri ; hafiz; rabelais; vasari, lives of the painters; kepler; descartes; pascal ; fontenelle; malebranche; newton; montesquieu ; voltaire ; thomson, seasons; beaumarchais; logan, the braes of yarrow; burns; john dalton; talleyrand; chateaubriand; cousin; horatio greenough; tennyson ; agassiz; holmes; thoreau. journal boston lecture course the burns centenary the sprain and its results dr. holmes's birthday celebration at chelmsford sunday discourses to parker fraternity john brown's raid and execution journal l 1859 (from journals ac and cl) [in january, mr. emerson seems to have lectured in baltimore, new york, and albany. on the twenty-fifth of that month, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of robert burns was celebrated in boston, and mr. emerson was one of the speakers. he never dared to trust himself without written notes, and used them on this occasion, but the atmosphere of the festival was so genial, and he so favoured in his delivery, that many of his delighted hearers were sure that his words were the inspiration of the moment.] (from ac) “ earth smiled with flowers, — forth rushed the god to light.” powers of the mind. a stern enumeration will find few thoughts; all that is known of love or memory is soon told; and hardly goethe, 168 journal [age 55 coleridge, or alcott will have added more than one observation apiece.' the cid. “god! how joyful was my cid with the fleecy beard! “glad was the cid; never had he such joy ; for tidings were come to him of what he loved best.” “ hear what he said when he was born in happy hour —” he replies to the herald, “tell him that i am not a man to be besieged.” he gave a feast, and “so well did he prepare for them, that all were joyful, and agreed in one thing, that they had not eaten better for three years.” — southey's chronicle of the cid. the mask of nature is variety; our education is through surfaces and particulars; and multitudes remain in the babe or animal state, and never see or know more: but in the measure in which there is wit, we learn that we are alike; that a fundamental unity or agreement exists, without which there could be neither marriage, nor politics, nor literature, nor science. we are 1 a similar sentence occurs in “quotation and originality” (letters and social aims, p. 179). 1859) michel angelo. time 169 born with an indestructible conviction that the reason why our fellow does not think as we do is because of some fraud he practises on himself. he holds up his milk, he checks the flow of his opinion. yes, and we look in his eye, and see that he knows it, too, and hides his eye. michel angelo “ alas, alas, that i am betrayed by my flying days; it is then the looking-glass, not the mind, if self-love do not tarnish it. alas that he who foolish frets in desire, not heeding the aying time, finds himself like me, at one instant old. nor know i how to repent, nor do i make myself ready, nor advise myself with death at the door. enemy of myself, vainly i pour out plaints and sighs since there is no harm equal to lost time." then follows a better form of the same [thought] : “ woe's me! woe's me! when i think of my spent years, i find not one among so many days, — not one was mine. hopes which betrayed me, vain longing, tears, love, fiery glow, and sigh, 170 journal [age 55 for not one mortal affection is longer new to me, * held me fast, and now, i know it, and learn it, and from goodness and truth ever severed, go i forth from day to day further ; ever the shadows grow longer; ever deeper sinks for me the sun; and i, infirm and outworn, am ready to fall.” michel angelo's poems. to miss margaret p. forbes february 14, 1859. i send you back counterparts, a talismanic book, full of secrets guarded so well that no profaner eye can read. for the gem will, i doubt not, be taken by most for a dull pebble, whilst you are sure you have seen it shoot rays of green, blue, and rosy fire. i don't know where a novel has contained so many searching glances into the house of life, and given the reader this joy of sincere conversation rightly made the culmination of interest. genius always treats us well, and we are not turned rudely out of doors at the end of the story, by a prosperity exclusively the hero's, but are delighted to find he means us. what a discovery to know there is an author * grimm's translation runs: “new to me is nothing which beguiles men,” (r.w.e.'s note.) 1859] counterparts. memory 171 of counterparts hidden among these slow british people ! send to caroline tappan to meet you at an evening with the author of counterparts,' in london. sweet is sleep — ah, sweeter, to be stone, whilst wrong and shame exist, and grow; not to see, not to feel, is boon, then not to wake me, pray speak low! m it seems as if all had the same power, but great difference in degree. one who remembers a little more than i, with equal opportunity, is a prodigy to me. then difference in pace makes a miracle not less. but the high difference is, in the quality of association by which each remembers, whether by puns, or by principles. the moment i discover that this man observes and recalls, not by yellow string, or a knot in his handkerchief, or gray's mnemonics, but by cause and effect, by the axis of the globe, or the axis of nature, every word of his represents the harmony of the cosmos, and i am as in che presence of jove. we are absurdly historical. when an outrage is charged on human rights, instead of i later found to be elizabeth sara sheppard. 172 journal [age 55 instant redress, the government answers, the form in which the wrong alleged was done was strictly routinary; and the manner in which you propose to redress it is not; and it would be so dreadful to have an unaccustomed statute. better endure tyranny according to law a thousand years, than irregular and unconstitutional happiness for a day. those poor, benighted fellows in kansas, how entirely they mistake the question! they complaining of the wrong, when the government shows them plainly that the forms of law were observed. “ but it was the missourians that voted, and not we.” — “ what of that? here is the certificate signed by the assessor.” — “ but they will kill me if i vote.” — “ what of that? here is the seal.” — “but they forged the votes, and invented the names of voters.” — “what of that? here is the signature and countersign as the law directs.” those benighted kansas men who wish to be unconstitutionally happy and free, deaf to the assurances of the government that all their rights have been taken away by the strictest forms of law! for the chapter on quotation much is to be said on the matter of originality. we have said 1859) real originality 173 all our life, whoever is original, i am not. what have i that i have not received? let every creditor take his own, and what would be left? t is the sea again, which, if you stop all the rivers, amasis can drink up. yet this is true, and not true. every man brings a certain difference of angle to the identical picture which makes all new. but this makes originality, that the beholder of this particular knot of things or thoughts has the habit of recurrence to universal views. the boy in the school, or in the sitting-room at home, sits there adorned with all the colour, health, and power which the day spent out of doors has lent him. the man interests in the same way, not for what he does in our presence, at the table, or in his chair, but for the authentic tokens he gives us of powers in the landscape, over ships, railroads, cities, or other outdoor organizations. the girl charms us with the distant contributions which she reconciles. she has inherited the feature which manly joy and energy of her ancestors formed, long ago, softened and masked under this present beauty, and she brings the hint of the romance of fields and forests and forest brooks, of the sunsets, and music, and all-various figures that deck it. a white invalid that sits in a chamber is good for 174 journal [age 55 nothing. to be isolated, is to be sick, and so far dead. that is, the life of the all must stream through us, to make the man and the moment great.' and the same law takes place in the thought that the mind has gone out of its little parlor into the great sky of universal truths, and has not come back the same it went, but ennobled; and with the necessity of giving back habitually to the same firmament, and importing its generosities into all its particular thought. he who compares all his traditions with this eternal standard, he who cannot be astonished by any tinsel or clap-trap or smartness or popgun; for the immensities and eternities, from which he newly came, to which he familiarly returns, have once for all put it out of his power to be surprised by trifles, – that man conveys the same ecstacy in which he lives, in some degree, into everything he says; it is in his manners, and feeds the root of his life. it is the magic of nature, that the whole life of the universe concentrates itself on its every point. the revolution of society is promised in every meeting of men of thought. that state of mind i the last two sentences are found in natural history of intellect, p. 21. 1859) dead custom. despair 175 in which they find themselves, those truths which are at once patent to them, condemn our customs and laws and people as irrational, and require new; show that we are living after customs whose root of thought has died out; point at a health so potent that all elements, all planets serve it, and it has no need to ask succor for its flaggings from narcotics and alcohol; a health and perception to which the earth speaks and the heaven glows. 'tis very important in writing that you do not lose your presence of mind. despair is no muse, and he who finds himself hurried, and gives up carrying his point this time, writes in vain. goethe had the “urkraftige behagen,” the stout comfortableness, the stomach for the fight, and you must. correspondence of the mind to the world.' ... hence intellect is æsculapian. greatness. kivýtikov, aboriginal mover. great men are they that see spiritual is greater than any material force; that thoughts rule the world. but a thought which does not go to embody or externize itself, is no thought. i see “success” (society and solitude, pp. 300, 301). 176 journal [age 55 society is revolutionized and a vast future provided whenever two contemplative men meet. do you suppose there is any doubt. every thought rushes to light, rushes to body. an immense future is before us. we are so bad and know it. these forms and customs rattle so. a reform such as never was, – a revolution that shall have no hypocrisy. now we say that, as the differences are superficial between james and john, and the agreements like two leaves of a tree, so is it between a man and a planet, that they also are leaves of a tree; all the parts and properties of one are in the other. then we add that, as man and his planet are analogous, so the same laws which are found in these run up into the invisible world) mind, chemistry, polarity, undulation, gravity, centrifugence, and that hereby we acquire the key to this dark, skulking, hide-and-seek, blindman's play of thoughts, namely, by the solar microscope of analogy. 'tis the key of the universe. great is the mind. ah! if we knew how to use it! ah! could you show me in every torpid hour how i could wake to full belief, and earnrn 1859) be yourself. listen 177 est labor. a man should know his way to his nectar. but see how we use it: how the memory? how the mind ? i propose, then, to draw from the mind itself some lights for the rule of it, even at the risk of repeating old sayings. 1. it must be by and through your individualism. opinions are organic. every man who stamps his personality on his life is great and free. 'tis a wonderful instrument, a sympathy with the whole frame of things. write what you are. yet we do not believe our own thought.' ... it does not need to pump your brains, and force thought to think well. oh, no: right thought comes spontaneously; it comes like the breath of the morning wind, comes daily, like our daily bread; to those who love it and obey it, it comes duly. when we wake, our thought is there waiting for us. yes, but it comes to health and temperance and willingness to believe, to those who use what they have, and embody their thoughts in action. [in march, mr. emerson began a course of six lectures in the freeman place chapel in i see “ success” (society and solitude, p. 292). 178 [ace 55 journal boston; — 1,“the law of success”; ii,“originality”; iii, “ clubs”; iv, “art and criticism” (perhaps much of the material printed in the paper of that name in natural history of intellect, century edition only); v, “manners” (probably“ behavior”in conduct of life); vi,“ morals ” (much of this is found in “character” and“ sovereignty of ethics”; lectures and biographical sketches).] march. love. all the veneration of spring connects itself with love; the marriage of the plants, the wedding of the birds, the pairing of all animals. even the frog and his mate have a new and gayer coat for this benign occasion. april. spring. what a joy to believe that nature loved me. i received hints in my dreams. i found the friends i went to seek on the way to my door. mallows, first sign celestial natures show of sympathy with ours below. pythagoras. spring, cold with dropping rain, willows and lilacs brings again ; 1859) 179 . wise fools the whistling of unnumbered birds and trumpet lowing of the herds.' the fool in goethe's helena when paper currency was invented, said, “what, do you say this is money? i will go and buy me a farm”; and mephistopheles points to the fact that the fool is the only one of the set who does a wise thing. i saw the same thing occur the other day, when the two girls passed me. the accomplished and promising young man chose, with the approbation of all surrounding society, the pretty girl, who went through all the steps unexceptionably. but the real person, the finehearted, witty sister, fit for all the range of real life, was left, and to her a foolish youth passionately attached himself, and said, “i shall be wretched and undone, but you i must have.” and he was right, and the other not. ripple pond. the rippling of the pond under a gusty south wind gives the like delight to the eye, as the fitful play of the same wind on the 1 these lines (with “ april” for “ spring,” to mend the metre) show that the poem “may day” was in progress. 180 journal (age 55 æolian harp to the ear. or the darting and scud of ripples is like the auroral shootings in the night heaven.' ellery channing's poetry is wanting in clear statement. rembrandt reaches effects without details, gives you the effect of a sharp nose or a gazing eye, when, if you look close, there is no point to the nose, and no eye is drawn. william hunt admires this, and in his own painting puts his eye in deep shadow; but i miss the eye, and the face seems to nod for want of it.” and ellery makes a hazy, indefinite impression, as of miscellaneous music, without any theme or tune. still, it is an autumnal air and like the smell of the herb “ life everlasting” and syngynecious 'aowers. “near home" is a poem which would delight the heart of wordsworth, though genuinely original, and with a simplicity of plan that allows the writer to leave out all the prose. 'tis a series of sketches of natural objects, such as abound in new england, enwreathed by the i see in “ fragments on the poet and the poetic gift” these sights done into verse. (poems, pp. 321, 322.) 2 mr. emerson had in mind hunt's portrait of chief justice shaw. 1859] channing. jefferson 181 thoughts they suggest to a contemplative pilgrim. “unsleeping truths by which wheels on heaven's prime.” there is a neglect of superficial correctness, which looks a little studied, as if perhaps the poet challenged notice to his subtler melody, and strokes of skill which recall the great masters. there is nothing conventional in the thought, or the illustration, but “thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers,” and pictures seen by an instructed eye. jefferson says in a letter to judge roane: “ the great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. that body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds (eats?) them.” – jefferson's works, vol. viii, p. 212. i am a natural reader, and only a writer in the absence of natural writers. in a true time, i should never have written. 182 journal (age 55 in literary circles they still discuss the question who wrote junius, – a matter of supreme unimportance. but in the whole world no one discusses the question who wrote hamlet and lear and the sonnets, which concerns mankind. you can always tell an english book by the confusion of ideas; a german by the ideal order. thus, an english speculator shows the wonders of electricity, and talks of its leaving poetry far behind, etc., or, perhaps, that it will yet show poetry new materials, etc. yet poetry is in nature just as much as carbon is: love and wonder and the delight in suddenly seen analogy exist as necessarily as space, or heat, or canada thistles; and have their legitimate functions: and where they have no play, the impatience of the mind betrays precisely the distance from the truth, — the truth which satisfies the mind and affections, and leaves the real and the ideal in equilibrium, which constitutes happiness. [the previous entries in this journal, marked 1859 by mr. emerson, have been rather scanty, and are mainly notes for his mental philosophy course written in, perhaps, partly before and partly after the following statement.] 1859) the magnet. pace 183 i have now for more than a year, i believe, ceased to write in my journal, in which i formerly wrote almost daily. i see few intellectual persons, and even those to no purpose, and sometimes believe that i have no new thoughts, and that my life is quite at an end. but the magnet that lies in my drawer, for years, may believe it has no magnetism, and, on touching it with steel, it knows the old virtue ; and, this morning, came by a man with knowledge and interests like mine, in his head, and suddenly i had thoughts again. among the words to be gazetted, pray insert the offensive americanism balance for remainder, and, what always accompanies it in this albany man's book, lay for lie. pace. the world is reckoned by dull men a dead subject, whilst it is quick and blazing. the house and farm are thought fixed and lasting, whilst they are rushing to ruin every moment. the difference between skilful and unskilful men is— that the one class are timed to this movement, and move with it, can load as they go, can read as they run, can write in a cab; whilst the heavy men wait for the eagle to a c 184 journal [age 55 alight, for the swallow to roost like a barn fowl, for the river to run by, for the pause in the conversation, which never comes till the guests take their hats. rarey can tame a wild horse, but can he make wild a tame horse; it were better. channing, who writes a poem for our fields, begins to help us. that is construction, and better than running to charlemagne and alfred for subjects. . secondary men and primary men. these travellers to europe, these readers of books, these youths rushing into counting-rooms of successful merchants, are all imitators, and we get only the same product weaker. but the man who never so slowly and patiently works out his native thought, is a primary person. the girl who does not visit, but follows her native tastes and objects, draws boston to her. if she do not follow fashion, fashion follows her. why do i hide in a library, read books, or write them, and skulk in the woods, and not dictate to these fellows, who, you say, dictate to me, as they should not? why, but because in my bones is none of the magnetism which flows in theirs ? they inundate all men with their streams. i have a reception and a perception, which they have not, but it is rare and casual, 1859] primariness 185 and yet it drives me forth to watch these workers, if so be i may derive from their performance a new insight for mine. but there are no equal terms for me and them. they all unwittingly perform for me the part of the gymnotus' on the fish. every man has the whole capital in him, but does not know how to turn it. every man knows all that plato or kant can teach him. when they have got out the proposition at last, 't is something which he recognizes, and feels himself entirely competent. he was already that which they say, and was that more profoundly than they can say it. yet from the inertness and phlegm of his nature, the seldomness with which a spark passes from him, he exists as a flint,he that should be a sun. “no author ever wrote, no speaker ever · said, anything to compare with what the most ordinary man can feel.” – j. thompson. we impatient americans ! if we came on the wires of the telegraph, yet, on arriving, every one would be striving to get ahead of the rest. ellery said, looking at a golden rod, — “ah! here they are. these things consume a great · electric eel. consume 186 (age 55 journal deal of time. i don't know but they are of more importance than any other of our investments.” the doctrine of latent heat is a key to the history of intellect. there is as much heat used in the conversion of ice to water as in raising water (?) degrees; and there is the total amount of mind that newton shows later, really active in the infant newton, in acquiring the knowledge of the first sensible objects. when we remember our first mental action, it does not seem unworthy or unequal to the latest. wyou must distinguish between people, in your serving, and leave alone those frivolous drones who exist only to be carted about, who have no object in life. if anybody has a thought or is in good earnest about anything worthy, prove him; “he ought to be forraded,” as the dollar-giving peasant said to bellows: “a man that has them 'ere sentiments ought to be forraded.” leave the others to fertilize the ground like guano. the supreme court of the united states declares “that negroes have no rights which white men are bound to respect.” 1859] whipple. culture 187 how delightful, after the conceited ruffians, is whipple's radiant, playful wit. good nature stronger than tomahawks. “for now a few have all, and all have nought.” — spenser, motber hubberd's tale. i delight in persons who clearly perceive the transcendant superiority of shakspeare to all other writers. i delight in the votaries of the genius of plato. because this clear love does not consist with self-conceit. culture is a pagan. it marks intellectual values, but is not lost in them, not the fool of them, but holding them under control, and socially. yes, a reference to society is part of the idea of culture, science of a gentleman, art of a gentleman, poetry in a gentleman; — intellectually held, that is, for their own sake, for · what they are, for their universal beauty and worth, and not for economy, which degrades them; but not over-intellectually, that is, not to an ecstacy, entrancing the man, — but redound.ing to his beauty and glory. i am forced to add that the cultivated person must have a moral determination. there will be a certain toleration, a letting be and letting 188 journal (age 55 do, a consideration and allowance for the faults of others, but a severity to his own. sportive in manner, inexorable in act. then in one of my truest gentlemen is an impossibility of taking an advantage. he will not foreclose a mortgage. such is frank c. lowell." man events are not as the brute circumstance that falls, but as the life which they fall upon. out of the same carbon and ammonia, the rose will make a rose, and the nettle a nettle. the same air in the trachea of an ass will bray, in the trachea of a nightingale will sing. i have been writing and speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty-five or thirty years, and have not now one disciple. why? not that what i said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers; but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men francis cabot lowell of waltham, mr. emerson's friend and classmate. after the partial destruction by fire of mr. emerson's house in 1872, mr. lowell was among the first to come to see him. after he had gone, it appeared that he had left a letter enclosing a large gift. mr. emerson was greatly moved, though somewhat disturbed, for such experiences were new to him. he exclaimed, “ he let me have his visit with no word of this — great gentleman that he is !” 1859] disciples. “spiritual” 189 to me, but to themselves. i delight in driving them from me. what could i do, if they came to me? — they would interrupt and encumber me. this is my boast that i have no school follower. i should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence. here came the sub-soil plougher h. j." the ease with which people use the word spiritual, to cover what is antagonistic to spiritual, suggests the popularity of a searching tuition in that direction. i fancy that, if you give me a class of intelligent youths and maidens, i could bring them to see the essential distinctions which i see; and could exercise them in that high department, so that they should not let go what they had seen. spiritual is that which is its own evidence; which is self-executing; which cannot be conceived not to be ;? that which sets aside you and me, and can very well let us drop; but not we it. the existence and history of i henry james, always a loyal friend, but — eager swedenborgian that he was, and accomplished dialectician — was impatient of emerson's religious attitude, which seemed cold to his fervor, and with the impossibility of getting closer to him by argument. 2 this definition occurs in “worship” (conduct of life, p. 215). 190 journal [age 55 christ are doubted and denied by some learned and critical persons in perfect good faith. of course, the existence and history of christ are not a spiritual reality, for they could not deny the existence of justice, of love, of the laws of time and space. henry james said of woman, “ that the flesh said, it is for me, and the spirit said, it is for me.” a man finds out that there is somewhat in him that knows more than he does. then he comes presently to the curious question, who's who? which of these two is really me?.the one that knows more, or the one that knows less ? the little fellow or the big fellow ? personality. no man's egotism covers his personality. personality is identical with the interest of the universe; the wind is obedient to the heavenly vision; suffers no regard to self to interfere. egotism looks after the little timothy that it is, and much over-estimates the importance of timothy. egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary strength and concentration to human beings.' ... 1 what follows is printed in “ success” (society and selitude, p. 289). ra 1859] personality. power 191 • broad as god is the personality we want, and which all great souls have or aspire to have. we stand for god. knights in romance must be majestic and compel reverence, and accept no conditions or disparagements. henry clay says, “i thank my god that he has given me a soul incapable of fear of the anger of any other being besides himself.” we grasp and pull down, and would pull down god if we could; and if a man get 10,000 votes, admire him ; but if another get 20,000, the universe of fools turns round to the new man; and excellence is lost sight of in this hunger for performance. let us rather prefer the private power of each person, — the door into nature that is opened to him ; that which each can, let him do, satisfied with his task and its instructions and its happiness. then, over all, let him value the sensibility that receives, that believes, that loves, that dares, that affirms. i value michel angelo's saying, “there is something i can do"; i value a man's trust in his fortune, when it is a hearing of voices that call him to his task; when he is conscious of a 192 journal (age 55 great work laid on him to do, and that nature cannot afford to lose him until it is done. [a large part of this portion of the journal is taken up with matter found in “success," “quotations and originality,” and “courage,” not here printed.] believe the faintest of your presentiments against the testimony of all sacred and profane history. a great man is always a contradiction to his age and to foregoing history. if plato has not been, you would say, no plato could be. if jesus had not been, would not the skeptic deny the possibility of so just a life? and yet steadily in the heart of every man the possibility of a greater than plato, of a greater than jesus, was always affirmed, and is affirmed; for every man carries with him the vision of the perfect. and the highest actual that fulfils any part of this promise exalts the ideal just so much higher, and it can no more be attained than he can set his foot on the horizon which flies before him. spiritism once more. the same things which you tell, or much better, i could well accept, if 1859) the supernatural 193 they were told me by poets, or of great and worthy persons. that the hero had intimations preternatural of what it behoved him to know,that a noble lover should be apprised by omens, or by presentiments, of what had befallen his friend in some distant place, is agreeable to believe; but angels do not appear to ask why mr. smith did not send home his cabbages, or dick his new shoes. we had much talk at the adirondac club on everett's extraordinary jump into the arms of bonner.' boston 2 the rocky nook with hill-tops three looked eastward from the farms, and twice a day the flowing sea took boston in its arms. 1 mr. everett, to help on the mount vernon fund, had accepted the offer of the editor of the new york ledger (a “story paper" recently set afoot by mr. bonner), of a large price for contributing articles during this year. everett's timid holding aloof from the cause of freedom in his own day, while he busied himself in a strange way in order to establish a memorial to its champion in the last century, was very displeasing to these northern patriots. 2 these are early trials for a poem that was not finished until the war was over and slavery overthrown. then the 194 [age 55 journal the youth of yore were stout and poor and sailed for bread to every shore. the waves that rocked them on the deep made them as free and bold, the winds that sung the boy to sleep sang freedom uncontrolled. the honest waves refuse to slaves the empire of the ocean caves. oh, once when they were few and brave they minded well their task; was nought too high for them to crave; they gave what they did ask. your town is full of gentle names by patriots once were watchwords made, the war-cry names are muffled shames, the men are menials made. but who would dare a name to wear the foe of freedom everywhere? at every parting with people who interest us at all, how the sense of demerit is forced upon each! poem, with the former sad verses, no longer true, omitted, was read in boston by mr. emerson at the anniversary of the “« boston tea-party.” for other verses on boston's divided attitude between conscience and cotton see poems (note), f: 573. 1859) prescott. carlyle 195 may (3) here dies the amiable and worthy prescott amid a chorus of eulogies, and, if you believe the american and almost the english newspapers for a year or two back, he is the very muse of history. and meantime here has come into the country three months ago a book of carlyle, history of frederick,' infinitely the wittiest book that ever was written, a book that one would think the english people would rise up in mass to thank him for by cordial acclamation, and congratulate themselves that such a head existed among them, and sympathising and much-reading america would make a new treaty extraordinary of joyful grateful delight with england, in acknowledgement of such a donation, a book with so many memorable and heroic facts, working directly, too, to practise, – with new heroes, — things unvoiced before, with a range of thought and wisdom, the largest and the most colloquially elastic, that ever was, not so much applying as inosculating to i william h. prescott had died three months earlier than this entry was made apropos of mr. emerson's receiving from carlyle the first volume of frederick the great. see carlyle-emerson correspondence (vol. 11, p. 270) for mr. emerson's joy in receiving it, accompanied by a letter. 196 (age 55 journal un every need and sensibility of a man, so that i do not so much read a stereotype page, as i see the eyes of the writer looking into my eyes; all the way, chuckling with undertones and puns and winks and shrugs and long commanding glances, and stereoscoping every figure that passes, and every hill, river, wood, hummock, and pebble in the long perspective, and withal a book that is a judgment day, too, for its moral verdict on men and nations and manners of modern times, with its wonderful new system of mnemonics, whereby great and insignificant men are ineffaceably ticketed and marked in the memory by what they were, had, and did. and this book makes no noise : i have hardly seen a notice of it in any newspaper or journal, and you would think there was no such book; but the secret interior wits and hearts of men take note of it, not the less surely. they have said nothing lately in praise of the air, or of fire, or of the blessing of love, and yet, i suppose, they are sensible of these, and not less of this book, which is like these.' en a 1 this passage on carlyle's frederick the great was embodied by mr. emerson in the lecture called “ art and criticism” in his boston course in the spring of this year. that lecture is printed in natural history of intellect (pp.'2831859] the age a critic 197 what a critic is the age! calvinism, how coherent! how sufficing! how poetic! it stood well every test but the telescope. when that showed the copernican system to be true, it was too ridiculous to pretend that our little speck of an earth was the central point of nature, etc. well, when india was explored, and the wonderful riches of indian theologic literature found, that dispelled once for all the dream about christianity being the sole revelation, — for, here in india, there in china, were the same principles, the same grandeurs, the like depths, moral and intellectual. well; we still maintained that we were the true men, — we were believers, — the rest were heathen. now comes this doctrine of the pseudo-spiritists to explain to us that we are not christians, are not believers, but totally unbelieving. now and then, rarely, comes a stout man like luther, montaigne, pascal, herbert, who utters a thought or feeling in a virile manner, and it is unforgettable. then follow any number of 305). as, however, it is included only in the centenary edition of the works and the text varies from that in the journal, it is given here. 198 (age 55 journal spiritual eunuchs and women, who talk about that thought, imply it, in pages and volumes. thus novalis said, “spinoza was a god-intoxicated man.” samuel hopkins said, “a man must be willing to be damned for the glory of god.” george fox said, “that which men trample on must be thy food.” swedenborg said, “the older the angels are, the more beautiful.” the eastern poet said, “when the jubilant oman prays, the ninth heaven vibrates to the tread of the soul.” herbert said, “let me not love thee, if i love thee not." each of these male words, being cast into the apprehension of pious souls, delight and occupy them, and they say them over in every form of song, prayer, and discourse. such is silesius angelus. such is u, such is asuch is pusey and his men. great bands of female souls who only receive the spermatic aura, and brood on the same but add nothing. do not spend one moment on the last ; they are mere publishers and diluters and critics. sentiment is materialized: that dear excellence of english intellect, materialized intellect, like kyanized wood, had already come into fashion. 1859) a subject. reality 199 “the deepest speculations are but difficult trifles, if they be not employed to guide men's actions in the path of virtue.” — kenelm digby, memoirs, p. 265. poverty's praise if bright the sun, he tarries; all day his song is heard; and when he goes he carries no more baggage than a bird. were it not fit subject for poem, to send a soul to doom in the charge of an angel, and trace the angel's vain attempts to find a hell for it, the assimilating energy of osman converting every place into the one thing needful, and every hobgoblin into the best company! reality rules destiny. they may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit and aim. but he who rests on what is, and what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and can make mouths at fortune. there are better pleasures than to be first. i keenly enjoyed c's pointed remark, after we had both known charles newcomb, that “no one could compare with him in original 200 journal (age 55 genius,” though i knew that she saw, as i saw, that his mind was far richer than mine, which fact nobody but she and i knew or suspected. nay, i rejoiced in this very proof of her perception. and now, sixteen years later, we two alone possess this secret still. the french wittily describe the english on a steamboat as each endeavoring to draw around himself an impassable space detaching him from his countrymen, in which he shall stand alone, clean and miserable. the french pay for their brilliant social cultivation herein, that they all write alike. i cannot tell whose book i am reading without looking at the cover; you would think all the novels and all the criticism were written by one and the same man. antony had heard too well the knell of thought and genius in the stertorous voice of the rector to have the smallest inclination to the church. people live like these boys who watch for a sleigh-ride and mount on the first that passes, and when they meet another that they know, swing themselves on to that, and ride in another sw1 s on 1859] cassandras. criticism 201 direction, until a third passes, and they change again ; 't is no matter where they go, as long as there is snow and company. people masquerade before us in their fortunes and titles.' . ..“ i had received,” said aunt mary, “the fatal gift of penetration.” and those cassandras are always born. margaret fuller was one, charles newcomb a delphic oracle. modern criticism has whitewashed richard iii; cromwell; froude has made out of henry viii a good family man ; robespierre is a genuine patriot and tender philanthropist ; 't is almost cæsar borgia's turn to become a saint. meantime, the other process now begins, and forschammer has blackwashed socrates. criticism. the two handles. herrick the most remarkable example of the low style.? “the divine art of printing frightened away robin goodfellow and the fairies.” 1 for the rest of the passage, see " behavior” (conduct of life, p. 188). 2 for the rest of the passage see “ art and criticism” (natural history of intellect, p. 296). 202 journal [age 55 “fairies lingered until people became readers.” rie ime “one is his printer in disguise and keeps his press in a hollow tree, where to conceal him he works by glow-worm light, the moon's too open ; the other zealous rag is his compositor.” time vindicated, ben jonson's last masque. ben jonson called the newspaper “a weekly cheat to draw money,” and “thought it an ephemeral taste easily to be put down.” — c. knight, “ once on a time.” shall i blame my mother, whitest of women, because she was not a gypsy, and gave me no swarthy ferocity ? or my father, because he came of a lettered race, and had no porter's shoulders ? in utah the leading issues are not those of our parties, yet the government invariably adopts the bad side. we have no character. in the european cities, we should be of great weight, if we had character. but austria and france and russia can say, look at america, 'tis worse than we. ! i think that the religious revolution ought to 1859) morals. performance 203 have shaken by this time the security of the european tyrannies. napoleon writes, “by the grace of god, and by the will of the french people,” but austria and russia still write, “by the grace of god,” and the cohesion of the system is in that dilapidated religion. well, here we think meanly enough of unitarianism. 'tis here a mere speck of whitewash, because the mind of our culture has already left it behind. nobody goes to church or longer holds the christian traditions. we rest on the moral nature, and the whole world shortly must. one would think, then, poor little unitarianism would have sapped these thrones. no so there is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer. that field yonder did not get such digging, ditching, filling, and planting for any pay. a fanaticism lucky for the owner did it. james burke opened my hay as fiercely on sunday as on monday. neither can any account be given of the fervid work in aunt mary's manuscripts, but the vehement religion which would not let her sleep, nor sit, but write, write, night and day, year after year. and charles newcomb had this aaluwv dazzling his eyes, and driving his pen. na ve204 journal [age 55 co unweariable fanaticism (which, if it could give account of itself to itself, were lost) is the troll that by night " threshed the corn which ten day laborers could not end.” cushing, and banks, and wilson are its victims, and, by means of it, vanquishers of men. but they whose eyes are prematurely opened with broad common-sense views, are hopeless dilettanti, and must obey these madmen. may 25. the warblers at this season make much of the beauty and interest of the woods. they are so eloquent in form and coat, and many of them here but for a short time; the blackburnian warbler rarely seen by henry thoreau ; the trees still allowing you to see far. their small leaflets do not vie, — with the spaces of the sky, — but let in the vision highand (yesterday) concord was all sicily. ian glad of ellery's cordial praise of carlyle's history, which, he thinks, well entitled to be called a “work,” and far superior to his early books. wonders at his imagination which can an 1859] carlyle. raffaelle 205 invest with such interest to himself these (one would think) hopeless details of german story. he is the only man who knows. — what a reader! how competent to give light now on the politics of europe ! to-day this history apa pears the best of all histories. 'tis worth remembering in connexion with what i have so often to say of surface, that our whole skill is in that direction. carlyle's frederick is a great book; opens new extension to history. how much event, perplexity, nationality, is there disclosed, or hinted at, and will draw multitudes of scholars to its exploring and illustration! so with every new vein that is opened. wide, east and west, north and south, immense lateral spaces, — but the sum and upshot of all, the aim and theory, is in few steps, or one; seen in an instant, or never seen. vast surface, short diameter. raffaelle's letter to count castiglione is as follows, – “on account of galatea, i should reckon myself a great master, were there in it only half of the great things which your excellency writes me. i recognize, nevertheless, in your words, the love which you bear me. besides, i must say to you, that, in order to paint va 206 : journal [age 56 a beautiful female form, i must see many of them, and certainly under the condition that your excellency stand near me in order to select the finest. but whilst still a right judgment is as rare as beautiful women are, therefore i use a certain idea which subsists in my mind. whether this possesses genuine artistic excellence, i know not, but i strive to reach it; and so i commend myself to your excellency.”— see grimm's essays, p. 194. the understanding is a sort of shop clerk: it is for petty ends. it has nothing catholic or noble in power or aim. it is the “ preception of a prince," direct, omniscient, self-contained, needing no ally. dante. dante cannot utter a few lines, but i am informed what transcendent eyes he had, as, for example, — “un fuoco chemisferio di tenebre vincia.” how many millions would have looked at candles, lamps, and fires, and planets, all their days, and never noticed this measure of their illuminating force, “of conquering a hemisphere of the darkness." yet he says nothing about his own eyes. 1859) newness. the idylls 207 inspiration. what marks right mental action is always newness, ignoring of the past; and the elasticity of the present object, — which makes all the magnitudes and magnates quite unneces. sary. this is what we mean when we say your subject is absolutely indifferent. you need not write the history of the world, nor the fall of man, nor king arthur, nor iliad, nor christianity ; but write of hay, or of cattle shows, or trade sales, or of a ship, or of ellen, or alcott, or of a couple of schoolboys, if only you can be the fanatic of your subject, and find a fibre reaching from it to the core of your heart, so that all your affection and all your thought can freely play. tennyson. england is solvent, no matter what rubbish and hypocrisy of palmerstons and malmesburys and disraelis she may have, for here comes tennyson's poem,' indicating a supreme social culture, a perfect insight, and the possession of all the weapons and all the functions of a man, with the skill to wield them which homer, aristophanes, or dante had. the long promise to pay that runs over ages the first four of the idylls of the king were newly published. 208 journal (age 56 from chaucer, spenser, milton, ben jonson, — the long promise to write the national poem of arthur, tennyson at last keeps, in these low self-despising times ; taliessin and ossian are at last edited, revised, expurgated, distilled. the national poem needed a national man. and the blood is still so rich, and healthful, that, at last in tennyson, a national soul comes to the olympic games, equal to the task. he is the pisistratus, who collects and publishes the homer, ripened at last by the infusion of so many harvests, and henceforth unchangeable and immortal. a collection there should be of those fables which are agreeable to the human mind. one is the orator or singer who can control all minds. the perfect poet again is described in taliessin's songs, in the mabinogion. tennyson has drawn merlin. england forever! what a secular genius is that which begins its purpose of writing the arthur epic with chaucer, and slowly ripens it until now, in 1859, it is done! and what a heart-whole race is that which in the same year can turn out two such sovereign productions as the history of frederick, and the four idylls. 1859) theme. simonides 209 channing's remark is that there is a prose tone running through the book, and certainly he has flat lines, e.g., the four lines, “forgetful of his promise to the king,” etc., which contrasts badly with a similar iteration in shakspeare's henry vi, the dying soliloquy of warwick, which is alive.? ... but he has known how to universalize his fable and fill it with his experience and wisdom. the eternal moral shines. but what landscape, and what words ! — "the stammering thunder.” (from cl) aliis lætus, sapiens sibi.3 june. i learned that therhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image, themselves. i learned that there is a beyond to every place, and the bird moving through the air by successive dartings taught me. simonides made an epigram in commendation of his memory. μνήμη δε ούτινά φημι σιμονίδη ισοφαρίζειν όγδωκουταέτει παιδί λεωπρέπεος i in enid. 2 part 3, act. v, sc. ii. 3 outwardly joyous, inwardly wise. 210 journal (age 56 nobody has a memory like to simonides, the man of eighty years, the son of leoprepes. certain persons utter oracles, as bettine, as aunt mary, as alcott, and charles newcomb. we hear awe-struck that the ancients recognized an omen or fatum, now and then, in chance words spoken ; and we cast about and wonder what these oracles were. and we hear some remark which explains our own character, or foible, or circumstance, and it does not occur to us that this is the very chance those ancients considered. this is the omen and fatum. but these oracles are simply perceptions of the intellect; and whenever the intellect acts, there is an oracle. nature wishes that woman should attract man, but she has cunningly made them with a little sarcasm in expression, which seems to say, “yes, i am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of man than any i yet see.” [the following is the first form of the thought which, turned to verse, is the motto of the essay “worship” and is printed in the poems.] 1859) worship. disunion 211 bridle him. yes, but he takes the bridle in his teeth. he invented locks and bolts and can unlock his own. this is he who invented the electric horse. he can swim across the ocean, and arrive in asia at an earlier date than he left new york. throw him to the lions. but this is androcles, van amburgh; the lions lick his feet. fire will not burn him, but plays the part of st. irenæus, flames, namely, of a wall or a vaulted shrine bending around and over him, without harm. the south has too large concession to begin with. disunion is excellent, if it is just disunion enough, but if it go too far, 't is bad. is the union a conveniency only, like the united states bank, which enabled a man to put in his pocket bills which were current everywhere, and so made us citizens from canada to the gulf? the insanity of the south. i acquit them of guilt on that plea; “but never more be officer of mine”; i othello's dismissal of his lieutenant for drunkenness :i love thee, cassio, but never more be officer of mine. 212 journal [age 56 wn they come to our colleges ; they travel in europe; they marry here. they hear at columbia college dr. lieber's lectures. europeans go, like gosse, into alabama, and write as he about the damnation, and such is the esprit de corps that their reason is dethroned. i see for such madness no hellebore. all things have an accompaniment of magic. if the fact seems plain and thoroughly known to thee, 't is plain thou knowest nothing about it. allston, the painter, came at last to say with alarm, “i have at last painted a picture which contents me.” magic needs finer organs, and its own time. you must not look at fireflies by daylight. a man must be a mystic or worshipper, he must carry with him an unsounded secret, or he is worthless. “ power as such is not known to the angels.” it must be magically easy. bettine is a wise child with her wit, humor, will, and pure inspirations. she utters oracles and is the best critic of goethe. her talk about music, and manners, and character, is like charles auchester's. but he has no wit like her fine things about the “flat seventh.” 'tis easy to see that carlyle has learned of 18591 bettine. beethoven 213 goethe his literary manners, and how to be condescending and courteous, and yet to keep himself always in rein. but when bettine writes from vienna her admirable reports of her conversation with beethoven, goethe in his reply comes at last out of his shell, and pays a homage to beethoven he has not expressed for any other; calls himself a “layman” before this “demon-possessed person,” and offers to meet him at carlsbad, etc. (vol. ii, p. 217.) but in varnhagen's journals, bettine makes a far different appearance, and never to her advantage. bettine says of the frau rath, “she let me do as i pleased and gave my manner of being no name.” “i am in low esteem with the philistines who find a row of talents valuable in a woman, – but not the woman herself without these.” very little reliance must be put on the common stories of mr. webster's or of mr. choate's learning, their greek, or their varied literature. that ice won't bear. reading ! to what purpose did they read?'... i the rest of this charge of fruitless reading on statesmen 214 journal [age 56 poor c— ,he is properly punished for his hypocritical church deaconing, etc., by having this poor dunce of a dr. abraying over his grave — that jesus christ is getting on, for mr. c— has signified his good opinion. even the old jehovah himself, good times must be coming to him; for mr. c— , etc. fame is the impression that a fine soul makes of itself; many a man has done no one thing up to his fame. yet the fame was inevitable. in reading prose, i am sensible as soon as a sentence drags, but in reading poetry, as soon as one word drags. “but had i known that he loved rhyme as much as you say he does, i should have hugged him,” said johnson of adam smith. when the railroad bridge breaks, or the road is washed away by the freshet, it is because the company breaks, and its integrity is corrupted. shall the “groundworks be all one cracking and pulverization?” who turned their backs on liberty in their own day is found in “ the man of letters” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 256). 1859) decadent university 215 “33 henry viii. it is ordered, that no person above the age of twenty-four shall shoot with the light-flight arrow at a distance under 220 yards." two hundred and twenty yards, then, was the effective range for fighting purposes of the heavy war-arrow. latimer says, “my father taught me how to lay my body in the bow, — not to draw with strength of arm, as other nations do, but with the strength of the body.” — froude. alcott said, that cowley considered the use of a university to be for the cherishing of gifted persons. it is true that the university and the church, which should be counterbalancing institutions and independent, do now express the sentiment of the popular politics, and the popular optimism, whatever it be. harvard college has no voice in harvard college, but state street votes it down on every ballot. everything will be permitted there which goes to adorn boston whiggism; it is geology, astronomy, poetry, antiquities, art, rhetoric; but that which it exists for, — to be a fountain of novelties out of heaven, a delphi uttering warning and ravishing oracles to elevate and lead mankind, -that it oi 216 journal [age 56 shall not be permitted to do or to think of. on the contrary, every generosity of thought is suspected, and gets a bad name. and all the young men come out decrepit bostonians ; not a poet, not a prophet, not a dæmon, but is gagged and stifled, or driven away. all that is sought in the instruction is drilling tutors, and not inspirers. may. the spring is the inundation of love. the marriage of the plants, the marriage of bird, beast, reptile, of the animal world, and of man, is the aim of all this new glory of colour and form. our doctrine must begin with the necessary and eternal, and discriminate fate from the necessary; there is no limitation about the eternal. thought, will, is co-eternal with the world; and, as soon as intellect is awaked in any man, it shares so far of the eternity, is of the maker, not of the made. but fate is the name we give to the action of that one eternal, allvarious necessity on the brute myriads, whether in things, animals, or in men in whom the intellect pore is not yet opened. to such it is only a burning wall which hurts those who run against it. 1859] new birth. will 217 the great day in the man is the birth of perception, which instantly throws him on the party of the eternal. he sees what must be, and that it is not more that which must be, than it is that which should be, or what is best. to be then becomes the infinite good, and breath is jubilation. a breath of will blows through the universe eternally in the direction of the right or necessary; it is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and all things are blown or moved by it in order and orbit. the secret of the will is that it doth what it knows absolutely good to be done, and so is greater than itself, and is divine in doing. whilst other choices are of an appetite, or of a disease, as of an itching skin, or of a thief, or sot, or striker. nature is the memory of the mind, said alcott (?). but come how it will, the only men of any account in nature are the three or five we have beheld who have a will. then we say, here is a man, and men obey him ; his body is sweet, and not putrid like others; his words are loaded, and all around him is eventful. come, then, count your reasons. 1. the belief in fate is unwholesome, and 218 journal (age 56 can only be good where it teaches the strength of nature to man. 2. we only value a stroke of will. he alone is happy who has will; the rest are herds. he uses, they are used." 3. this will derives from the aboriginal nature, is perception of the eternal necessity. it rests on god himself, and that is its power to shock, that it betrays his presence in this loafer ; but it winds through dark channels, and one knows not how it arrived here. it is a sharing of the true order of the world, and a push in that interest and direction. it is born, freedom, in the intellect. on that bright moment when we are born into thought, we are instantaneously uplifted out of the rank we had. now we are of the maker, not of the made. now all things have such a look as the horse has which we drive. but is there not another element, or people who are strong through love alone ? august 16. the parrot.? she has good uses for a detached family. poll is a socialist and knits a 1 this paragraph is in natural history of intellect (p. 46). 2 a devoted attendant of mr. emerson's children made 1859] parrot and mino 219 neighborhood very soon. every child stops before the gate to say, “poll wants a cracker," and is promptly answered by poll. when there is a lull, — to prevent all life going to ennui, poll scolds and screeches ; then, if you feed her and talk to her, rallies and shows her refinement by the sudden gentleness and delicacy of her tones. if she cannot say all that she is reputed to say, she still, as ann o'brien affirmed, “ makes a beautiful offer to say it.” then what a terrible test of people's truth was poll. to hear what they told of her! i saw dr. henry j. bigelow's bird, mino,' about the size of a cat-bird, black with a yellow collar. his speech was articulate as a man's. « what's your name?” “how d'ye do?” “go way.” “doctor bigelow.” “mino,” and a loud whistle, like a locomotive's, were his utterances. [in the end of july or early in august, mr. emerson made an excursion to wachusett, the od. them a present of a parrot, who, perched on the scraper of the sunny southeast doorstep in summer, endeavored to keep things pleasant in the neighborhood. 1 the editors are informed that this was the mynah (sturnia religiosa). the collar effect was due to two yellow attles which extend backward. 220 journal [age 56 mountain thirty miles away, which, like a blue whale, seems swimming southward along concord's western horizon. on his way down the steep path he sprained his foot so badly that he was crippled and consequently his health suffered for two or three months as will appear later in this journal. it was on a visit to boston's eminent surgeon that he saw this remarkable speaking bird.] πάντα ρεϊ. you think a farm and broad acres a solid property, but its value is flowing, like water. it requires as much watching as if you were decanting wine from a hogshead. bent, the farmer, knows what to do with it, and decants wine; but a blunderhead m — comes out of cornhill and it all leaks away. so is it with houses as with ships. what say you to the permanent value of an estate invested in railroad stocks? we ace the secret of the charm which english castles and cathedrals have for us is in the conviction they impress that the art and the race that made these is utterly gone. 'tis fine to tell us that, chemically, diamond is identical with coal-cinder, if there is no science in the world that can re-form such a crystal; and i must 1859) joys of the mind 221 respect the men who built westminster abbey, since they have left no posterity who can do the like. beatitudes of intellect. am i not, one of these days, to write consecutively of the beatitude of intellect? it is too great for feeble souls, and they are over-excited. the wineglass shakes, and the wine is spilled. what then? the joy which will not let me sit in my chair, which brings me bolt upright to my feet, and sends me striding around my room, like a tiger in his cage, and i cannot have composure and concentration enough even to set down in english words the thought which thrills me — is not that joy a certificate of the elevation? what if i never write a book or a line? for a moment, the eyes of my eyes were opened, the affirmative experience remains, and consoles through all suffering. for art, for music, overthrilled, the wineglass shakes, the wine is spilled. i admire those undescribable hints that power gives of itself. i find sublime that essence of the man which makes him pass for more than his performances, though he never told his se222 222 [age 56 journal cret, is aware that a few private persons alone know him, and not one of them thoroughly. ’t is a great misfortune of certain temperaments that they are by their own force, or too much determination, thrown out of all sympathy, and are therefore inconvertible. they cannot be made to see when they are in the wrong, and when they are rushing to ruin, taking the bits in their teeth, they are then triumphantly assured of their innocency, and mere phocions, scorning the universe of objectors. argument, appeal to bystanders, to a world of bystanders, masses of opposing fact, all is wasted; 't is only oil to flame, only mountains of confirmation to their insanity. in these tragic cases, their own talent, acuteness, cannot help them, even genius, as in aunt mary, only widens the hopeless "chasm. what is the poetic interest of the lost pleiad for so many minds ? each nun or hermit in the country towns has heard that there were once seven stars, and now the eye can count but six. (no matter about the fact; it is a numerous cluster, and more or fewer can be counted, as your eyes are better or worse.) but the legend is, as i have said, and each nun or hermit is ? nun 1859) eras. the sprain 223 struck with the circumstance and writes solitary verses about it. what is the charm of the incident? i think because it is to each a symbol of lost thoughts. winckelmann dates from pericles or augustus or the renaissance; hallam, from the revival or the reformation; coleridge, from shakspeare; but the intellect from itself. we like a person of will and of thought because there is nobody behind his chair. it is the year one, and the emperor is here. one wrong step. on wachusett, i sprained my foot. it was slow to heal, and i went to the doctors. dr. henry bigelow said, “splint and absolute rest.” dr. russell said, “ rest, yes ; but a splint, no.” dr. bartlett said, “neither splint nor rest, but go and walk.” dr. russell said, “ pour water on the foot, but it must be warm.” dr. jackson said, “ stand in a trout brook all day.” when i sprained my foot i soon found it was all one as if i had sprained my head, if i must sit in my chair. then i thought nature had sprained her foot; and that king lear had 224 journal (age 56 never sprained his, or he would have thought there were worse evils than unkind daughters. when i see a man unhappy, i ask, has a sprained foot brought him to this pass ? august 20. home is a good place in august. we have plenty of “ sopsovines,”; and moscow transparents, and the sweet apple we call early bough. our early pears (madeleine) are past, but bloodgoods are ripe and ripening. and apricot plums (if we had more trees than the one survivor) are mature. all knowledge gives superiority and it makes so little difference in what direction. 'tis wonderful to expound an assyrian inscription! but ’t is not less to know a greek or german word that i do not know; or to see through a galvanic battery, or a chemical combining, or a binomial theorem, which i see not at all. na nan w dread the collectors, whether of books, of shells, of coins, of eggs, of newspapers; they 1 evidently corruption of sops-of-wine, a deliciously fragrant early red apple, now seemingly extinct. 2 the curculio 'had just begun its destructive ravages. 1859) haydon's life 225 become alike trustless. their hunger overrides their honesty. a forte always makes a foible. remember norton's story of the gentleman who passed the antique coin which he believed to be an unique around his dinner-table, and lost it. one guest alone refused to be searched, and, after it was found on the floor, excused his refusal by announcing that he had a duplicate of the coin at that moment in his pocket. i find haydon's autobiography one of the best books. he admired boswell's johnson, and his book is precious like that. his estimate of himself, and his sanguine folly of hoping important results from every compliment or polite look with which any of his great men smoothed their leave-taking, reminds me of x fifty times. how weak and how strong these english are ! the way to make a man famous is to tell the result, and skip the means. sir george beaumont made the town rush to wilkie, by describing him as “a young man who came to london, saw a picture of teniers, went home, and at once painted the village politicians.” that was the wonder, —“at once! at once, my dear lady mulgrave, at once!” 226 (age 56 journal speech at the dinner to dr. holmes, august 29. mr. president, — when i read the atlantic, i have had much to think of the beneficence of wit, its vast utility; the extreme rarity, out of this presence, of the pure article. science has never measured the immense profundity of the dunce-power. the globe of the world — the diameter of the solar system, is nothing to it. everywhere, a thousand fathoms of sandstone to a teaspoonful of wit. and yet people speak with apprehension of the dangers of wit, as if there were, or could be, an excess. we all remember, in 1849, it was thought california would make gold so cheap that perhaps it would drive lead and zinc out of use for covering roofs and sink-spouts, but here we have had a mississippi river of gold pouring in from california, australia, and oregon for ten years, and all has not yet displaced one pewter basin from our kitchens, and i begin to believe that if heaven had sent us a dozen men as electrical as voltaire or sidney smith, the old dulness would hold its ground, and die hard. why, look at the fact. whilst, once, wit was extremely rare and sparse-sown, — rare as co1859] oliver wendell holmes 227 balt, rare as platina, — here comes the doctor and flings it about like sea-sand, threatens to make it common as newspapers ; is actually the man to contract to furnish a chapter of rabelais or sidney smith once a month — bucketsful of greek fire against tons of paunch and acres of bottom. of course, the danger was that he would throw out of employment all the dunces, the imposters, the slow men, the stock writers ; in short, all the respectabilities and professional learning of the time. no wonder the world was alarmed. and yet the old house of unreason stands firm at this day, when he is fifty years old, and he is bound to live a hundred in order to spend the half of his treasure. sir, i have heard that when nature concedes a true talent, she renounces for once all her avarice and parsimony, and gives without stint. our friend here was born in happy hour, with consenting stars. i think his least merits are not small. he is the best critic who constructs. la here is the war of dictionaries in this country : in england, a philological commission to draft a new lexicon. all very well; but the real dictionary is the correct writer, who makes the reader feel, as our friend does, the delicacy and 228 journal (age 56 a inevitableness of every word he uses, and whose book is so charming that the reader has never a suspicion, amid his peals of laughter, that he is learning the last niceties of grammar and rhetoric. what shall i say of his delight in manners, in society, in elegance, — in short, of his delight in culture, which make him a civilizer whom every man and woman secretly thanks for valuable hints ? what, then, of his correction of popular errors in taste, in behavior, in the uncertain sciences, and in theology, attested by the alarm of the synods? and this is only possible to the man who has the capital merit of healthy perception, who can draw all men to read him; whose thoughts leave such cheerful and perfumed memories, that when the newsboy enters the car, all over the wide wildernesses of america, the tired traveller says, “ here comes the autocrat to bring me one half-hour's absolute relief from the vacant mind.” now when a man can render this benefit to his country, or when men can, i cannot enter into the gay controversy between the rival helicons of croton and cochituate, but i desire all men of sense to come into a mutual admicr 1859) the unskilled rider 229 ration society, to praise and honor that power. the heartier the praise, the better for all parties. for, really, this is not praise of any man. i admire perception wherever it appears. that is the one eternal miracle. i hail the blessed mystery with ever new delight. it lets me into the same joy. who is wendell holmes? if it shines through him, it is not his, it belongs to all men, and we hail it as our own. honor to the gymnasium and the riding school ! when the learned thynnius took his first ride, — was it the earnest look of the rider, or some disharmony between the rider and the horse ? — he could not fail to notice the sympathizing looks of all the passengers, and the good-natured endeavor to look away, which all his acquaintances made. but the excellent thynnius did not like it.' 1 mr. emerson always wished that, in his youth, he had been made to learn to dance and to ride. poverty, of course, forbade. he took pains that his son had these advantages. once about this time when his son, returning from a ride, was about to lead the wide-awake but gentle morgan “ dolly” to the barn, mr. emerson stopped him, mounted the mare, and rode off in the twilight, the only occasion that his son recalls of his riding. 230 journal (age 56 ws 7 vici september. mr. crump. the unfortunate days of august and september, when the two cows were due from the temple pasture (new hampshire) and did not arrive, and we learn that they had strayed on the way, and are lost. when the muster approached, bringing alarms to all housekeepers and orchard-owners;' when the foot was lame, and the hand was palsied; and the foot mending was lame again. when a strong southwest wind blew in vicious gusts all day, stripping every loaded pear tree of its fruit, just six weeks too early. the beggars arrive every day, some on foot, the sardinians and sicilians, who cannot argue the question of labor and mendicity with you, since they do not speak a word of english; then the monumentals, who come in landaus or barouches, and wish your large aid to mount vernon, plymouth, ball's webster, or president quincy in marble; then the chipping lady from the cape, who has three blind sisters, and i know not how many dumb this was the great muster of the state militia held by governor banks at concord. 2 from long pressure of old-fashioned stick-crutches without the modern handles to prevent pressure on the nerves in the arm-pit. we 1859] mr. crump. dr. johnson 231 ones, and she had been advised to put them in the poor house. no, not she. as long as she had health, she would go about and sell these books for them, which i am to buy, and she tosses her head, and expects my praise and tears for her heroic resolution ; though i had a puzzled feeling that, if there was sacrifice anywhere, it was in me, if i should buy them; and i am sure i was very little inclined to toss my head on the occasion. mr. crump remarked that he hated lame folks : there was no telling how hypocritical they were. they are dreadful lame when you see them, but the lamest of them, if he wants something, and there's nobody will help him to it, will manage to get it himself, though it were a mile off; if you are not by. but the fortnight of vexations is not over. i received a letter, last night, to tell me that phillips and sampson will fail in a week. dr. johnson. he said of some ode, “bolder words and more timorous meaning, i think were never brought together.” the language might be well applied to dr. — 's sermons. “sir, if you had been dipped in pactolus, i should not have noticed you.” 232 journal [age 56 “but were there not six horses to each coach (at garrick's funeral)?” “madam, there were no more six horses than six phænixes.” “a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it,” said johnson. of beauclerk, “no man was ever so free, when he was going to say a good thing, from a look that expressed that it was coming, or, when he had said it, from a look that expressed that it had come.” phillips's letter to the judge and the president on dining at the revere house is only a logical hit. they are formalists, and he shows them they have outraged their own forms. but he, who is not a formalist, had not a good right to write the letter. i think wealth has lost much of its value, if it have not wine. i abstain from wine only on account of the expense. when i heard that mr. sturgis had given up wine, i 1 this has reference to an open letter addressed to chief justice lemuel shaw and president walker of harvard university by wendell phillips, in which the great orator sharply criticized them for having attended a banquet at the revere house when that hotel was defying the prohibitory law of the state. he held that their official positions and responsibilities should have deterred them from thus condoning violation of law. 1859) music hall sundays 233 had the same regret that i had lately in hearing that mr. bowditch had broken his hip; a millionaire without wine, and a millionaire that must lie on his bed. ou “we draw back into ourselves, and penetrate the false illusions, in order that we may better enjoy the true illusions.” — herman grimm. [theodore parker, whose free religious thought, high ethical teaching, and fearless humanity had drawn together a great congregation at the music hall on sundays, in spite of the attacks of all the sects, had sailed for the mediterranean shores in vain hope to prolong his life. on the first sunday of his voyage he smiled as he said “ emerson is speaking in the music hall to-day.” mr. parker's society — the twenty-eighth congregational, of boston — often asked mr. emerson to speak to them on sunday at the music hall, and he also appeared annually in the course of lectures conducted by the parker fraternity at the tremont temple. his lecture “courage” was there delivered in noyember of this year.] 234 journal (age 56 aunt mary. dr. johnson is a good example of the force of temperament. 'tis surprising how often i am reminded of my aunt mary emerson in reading boswell lately. johnson impresses his company as she does, not only by the point of the remark, but also when the point fails, because he makes it. like hers, his obvious religion or superstition, his deep wish that they should think so or so, weighs with them, so rare is depth of feeling, or a constitutional value for a thought or opinion, among the lightminded men and women who make up society. and this, though in both cases their companions know that there is a degree of shortcoming, and of insincerity, and of talking for victory. yet the existence of character, and habitual-reverence of principles over talent or learning, is felt by the frivolous. are you everywhere? then you misspend a great deal of money in buying railroad tickets ; and that property is worthless. the imagination enters into all the details and ennobles life. even the shopboy smoking his cigar assumes the attitude and air of rich gentlemen, and is raised in his own eyes. 1859] chelmsford memorial 235 chelmsford.' i know well the town in which they lived; the landscape which they saw. i spent an autumn and winter among these hills and plains. i knew where the chestnut first spread its brown harvest on a frosty morning for the boys; where the apples covered the ground with white fruit. i saw the last fires that burned in the old limekiln. i knew the ripples of the baptist pond, and the woods that grew where the corn is now ripening. plain homely land, sandy fields which the merrimack washes, but the sun and stars do not disdain to fill it with magnificence in june, and with sublime lights in autumn. and i can easily believe that the soldiers you celebrate deserved your praise. for i had an acquaintance with the young men and young women who grew up here in a poverty i suppose as severe, with manners as hardy and plain ; and i know that their feeling was as tender and their intellect as vigorous as that which opens under softer skies, and 1 mr. emerson had been the teacher of the academy at chelmsford for a season, before he began his studies at divinity hall in cambridge. on this account, he was invited to speak on the occasion of this dedication of a monument, on september 22, to the memory of chelmsford's soldiers who lost their lives in the war of the revolution. unfortunately an illness seems to have kept him at home. 236 (age 56 journal ma nis. in city palaces. i read and conversed with friends here, children of the soil, who showed that force of thought, and that sense of right, which are the warp and woof of which greatness is woven; that curiosity for knowledge and that delight in intellectual conversation which is the purest joy of youth, and the beginning of all national greatness. i suppose it is fair to judge the tree by its fruits, the fathers by the children. these people were original authors of liberty, and not plagiarists, not sentimental nations like the italians, french, and hungarians and germans. these all learned it of our people. our farmers were all orthodox, calvinists, mighty in the scriptures, had learned that life was a preparation, and “probation,” to use their word. they read no romances, but with the pulpit on one hand, and poverty and labour on another, they had a third training in the town meeting. they held the fee of their farms; no patron, no ground rents, and great proprietaries, but every man owned his acres. we go to plutarch and montaigne for our examples of character, but we might as well go to pliny and varro for oaks and firs, which grow as well in our own dooryards and cow-pastures. life is always rich, and spontaneous graces and 1859) obscure virtue 237 forces elevate life in every domestic circle, which are overlooked, whilst we are reading something less excellent in old authors. i think as i go through the streets, each one of these innumerable houses has its own calendar of saints, its unpublished anecdotes of courage, of patience, of wit, cheerfulness, for the best i know were in the most private corners. everything draws to its kind and frivolous people will not hear of its noble traits ; but let any good example of this secret virtue come accidentally to air, like florence nightingale, and you will have parallels in every direction. from the obscurity and casualty of those examples which i know, i infer the obscurity and casualty of the like balm and consolation and immortality in a thousand homes which i do not know, and all round the world. let it lie safe in the shade there, from the compliments and praise of foolish society. it is safer so. all it seems to demand is that we know it when we see it. this is no mean reward. if an intelligent and generous witness, passing by, sees our plight and so much as exchanges a searching glance of sympathy,“well done, brave heart !” it is better than the thunder of theatres, and the world full of newspapers, which only echo each other. s 238 journal (age 56 there are men whose opinion of a book is final. if ellery channing tells me, “ here is a good book," i know i have a day longer to live. but there are plenty of able men whose report in that kind is not to be trusted. and in clubs a person of the prowess of g. w. tyler is inestimable. ellen h—'s passionate inquiry twenty years ago was, what is the place and use of common people? or, i suppose, what tennyson also meant by “reflections of a sensitive secondclass mind.” let this question take the first page in the new edition of notes and queries.? the physicians wisely say that fevers are selflimiting ; so are all diseases, sprains, and headaches, and passions; and all errors, like jupiter's moons, periodical. [in october, the whole country was astonished, and the south startled, by john brown's i george washington tyler of charlestown, who has been alluded to in the journals before for his versatile and genial talents. 2 but mr. emerson would have enjoyed lincoln's saying, “the lord likes common people. that's the reason he makes so many of them.” 1859) the john brown raid 239 seizure of the united states arsenal and the town of harper's ferry, with his few followers, in pursuance of a project secretly cherished by him to effect in virginia what he had done often in a small way in missouri, namely, a gathering and wholesale exodus of slaves to freedom in canada. at the north, of the hundreds who had helped “free state ” settlers to homes in kansas and nebraska and furnished them with arms to defend these, only a very few — probably not ten persons — knew of this design, and very few would have countenanced it. mr. emerson knew nothing of it. the seizure of a national arsenal, the stopping of mails, and the proclamation of a provisional government of course made the action of brown treason. the north would not abet the act. the south naturally was in terror of a servile insurrection with frightful consequences. utter disapproval was general through the country. but when presently it appeared that it was john brown who was in command, his old acquaintances and friends felt sure that his purposes were humane, if militant, and believed that his fighting would be only defensive in leading away such fugitives as might flock to him. his was mm 240 journal [age 56 brave defense, when hemmed in, with his handful of men against surrounding hundreds of militia and volunteers, until a company of united states marines ended the matter in a few moments by assault with a ladder as battering-ram, won admiration; and the fortitude of the severely wounded man at his trial won sympathy, as it won respect from governor wise, colonel washington, and other virginians. finally, his manly speech, when asked if he had anything to say why the death sentence should not be passed, one of the most simple and eloquent in history, based absolutely on christ's words, and human rights, — showed him as one forced by his conscience to be a martyr for justice and humanity, victim of a mischievous system which was wrecking the country, and of the laws which guarded that system.]' i this speech, in the charleston, virginia, court house, may be found in full in the life of john brown, by james redpath. after explaining his design, and denying murderous intent or any plan for servile insurrection, brown, weak and wounded, went on :"i have another objection ; and that is that it is unjust that i shall suffer such a penalty. had i interfered . . . in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or of any of their friends ... or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what i have in this interference, it would have 1859) freedom's champion 241 the resistance to slavery. it is the old mistake of the slaveholder to impute the resistance to clarkson or pitt, to channing or garrison, or to some john brown whom he has just captured, and to make a personal affair of it; and he believes, whilst he chains and chops him, that he is getting rid of his tormentor; and does not see that the air which this man breathed is liberty, and is breathed by thousands and millions; that men of the same complexion as he, will look at slaveholders as felons who have disentitled been all right, and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. « this court acknowledges, as i suppose, the validity of the law of god; i see a book kissed which i suppose to be the bible . . . that teaches me that all things whatsoever i would that men should do unto me, i should do, even so, to them.' it teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.' i endeavored to act up to that instruction. i say i am yet too young to understand that god is any respecter of persons. i believe that to have interfered as i have done, as i have always freely admitted that i have done, in behalf of his despised poor was not wrong, but right. “now, if it is deemed necessary that i should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments i submit, so let it be done.” 242 journal (age 56 themselves to the protection of law, as the burglar has, whom i see breaking into my neighbor's house; and therefore no matter how many browns he can catch and kill, he does not make the number less, for the air breeds them, every school, every church (every domestic circle) every home of courtesy, genius and conscience is educating haters of him and his misdeeds." [on the conversion of a valued friend to the church of rome.] courage. here was happiest example of the best blood which, in meeting the best-born and best-bred people of europe, speaks with their speech, and deals with them with their own 1 in this connection should be remembered, though the increasing aggression of the slave power and interest and the resulting reaction at the north had brought on a state of great irritation, – how mr. emerson, though smarting under the humiliation of the fugitive slave law, had called his countrymen's attention to the misfortune into which the southerners were born, and had recommended purchasing their slaves at whatever price. he wrote in this month to his friend mr. ward : “our kansas cid is hard bested, but a lion to the last. i keep a hope for him yet. how so wise a soldier got into this corner i know not, but he is a true saint and miracles wait on such.” 1859) heroism for to-day 243 weapons. ah, i should have been so glad if it could have said to them, look, i do without your rococo. you have heard much ill of america. i know its good, its blessed simplicity, nor shall i make the mistake of baptizing the daylight and time and space by the name of jones or jenkins, in whose shop i chance to behold daylight and space and time. least of all will i call sacraments those legendary quips of yours which break the sacraments which are most my own, my duty to my wife, husband, son, friend, country; nor can i suffer a ... monk to whisper to me, to whom god has given such a person as (my husband) and such children for my confessors and absolvers. son 2s we talk of sparta and rome, we dilettanti of liberty. but the last thing a brave man thinks of is sparta or scythia or the gauls. he is up to the top of his boots in his own meadow, and can't be bothered with histories. that will do for a winter evening with schoolboys. as soon as a man talks washington and putnam and general jackson to me, i detect the coxcomb and charlatan. he is a frivolous nobody who has no duties of his own. “mount vernon ”; i never heard a brave man 244 journal (age 56 talk of mount vernon, or a religious man of mount sinai. they leave that to hypocrites. they have mount vernons enough in shoes, and mount sinai in their wish to pay their debts. [my friend who has just joined the church of rome] was at a loss in talking with me, because i had no church whose weakness she could show up, in return for my charges upon hers. i said to her, do you not see that, though i have no eloquence and no flow of thought, yet that i do not stoop to accept anything less than truth? that i sit here contented with my poverty, mendicity, and deaf and dumb estate, from year to year, from youth to age, rather than adorn myself with any red rag of false church or false association ? my low and lonely sitting here by the wayside is my homage to truth, which, i see, is sufficient without me; which is honoured by my abstaining, not by superserviceableness. i see how grand and selfsufficing it is; how it burns up, and will none of your shifty patchwork of additions and ingenuities. october. high courage, or a perfect will superior to all events, makes a bond of union between two 1859] union of the brave 245 enemies. inasmuch as governor wise is a superior man, he distinguished john brown. as they confer, they understand each other swiftly, each respects the other; if opportunity allowed, they would prefer each other's society and desert the rest; enemies would become affectionate. rivals and enemies. hector and achilles, wellington and soult, become aware that they are nearer and liker than any other two, and, if their nation and circumstances did not keep them apart, would fly into each other's arms. see, too, what contagion belongs to it. it finds its own with magnetic affinity, all over the land. heroic women offer themselves as nurses to the brave veteran. florence nightingale brings lint and the blessing of her shadow.' the troop of infantry that cut him down ask leave to pay their respects to the prisoner; poetry and eloquence catch the hint. everything feels the new breath, excepting the dead old doting as nurses i of course the name of the great english nurse is used here generically. mr. emerson had in mind longfellow's lines in “santa filomena”;" and slow, as in a dream of bliss, the speechless sufferer turns to kiss her shadow, as it falls upon the darkening walls.” 246 journal [ace 56 politicians, whom the trumpet of resurrection cannot maken. war there was no need of trumpets, there was no need of banners ; every zephyr was a bugle, every woodthrush sang hosannas. sharp steel was his lieutenant and powder was his men. the land was all electric, the mountain echoes roar, every crutch became a pike, the woods and meadows shouted war, every valley shouted, “ strike !” courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind. we value idealists who do not rest in ideas, but convey them into things. he converts the earth to its use, the earth is proud to bear him, the air to feed his lungs. he accepts an ideal standard. freedom is ideal. it means, not to have land or money or pleasure, but to have no 1859) thoreau on brown 247 other limitation than that which his own constitution imposes. i am free to speak the truth. i am free to do justly. i am not free to lie, and i wish to break every yoke all over the world which hinders my brother from acting after his best thought. brown shows us, said henry thoreau, another school to send our boys to, that the best lesson of oratory is to speak the truth. a lesson rarely learned — to stand by the truth. we stand by our party, our trade, our reputation, our talent, but these each lead away from the truth. that is so volatile, and vital, evanescing instantly from all but dedication to it. and yet inspiration is that, to be so quick as truth; to drop the load of memory and of futurity, memory and care, and let the moment suffice us; then one discovers that the first thought is related to all thought and carries power and fate in its womb.' so i while many of john brown's friends and helpers in kansas troubles were naturally in doubt as to their attitude in this crisis, thoreau, who had lately become more hopeless than ever of any good coming of the united states government, and thoroughly sympathized with any man who had courage to break its bonds in the cause of natural right, sent a messenger from house to house through the village to notify his neigh248 journal [age 56 there must of course be a minority of intelligent gentlemen in virginia sufficiently catholic to appreciate the public objection of all states where slavery does not exist, and to understand, therefore, the inevitable sympathy which all writers and through them the civilized world generally will feel with captain john brown, and virginians also as soon as the temporary heats are forgotten. i shall not insult you by referring to a public opinion changing every day, and which has softened every hour its first harsh judgment of him. the man is so transparent that all can see through him, that he had no second thought, but was the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own. he is, therefore, precisely what lawyers call crazy, being governed by ideas, and not by external circumstances. he has afforded them the first bors that he would speak on john brown that evening in the unitarian vestry. a friend sent back a note that it might be premature. thoreau sent back word, “you misunderstand; i did not ask advice. i am going to speak on john brown tonight.” the vestry was filled with people, many of them uneasy and doubting, but thoreau, usually cool and holding aloof from politics, spoke as one moved to the core, and turned the tide of public feeling into admiration for brown's courage and sacrifice, however they might halt at the method he had chosen for his endeavors to help the slave. 1859) ideas make bonds 249 trait marked in the books as betraying insanity, namely, disproportion between means and ends. ideas make real societies and states. my countryman is surely not james buchanan, nor caleb cushing, nor barnum, nor governor gardner, nor lot poole, nor fernando wood; but thoreau and alcott and sumner, and whoever lives in the same love and worship as i; every just person, every man or woman who knows what truth means. it will always be so. every principle is a warnote. whoever attempts to carry out the rule of right and love and freedom must take his life in his hand. pierre d'auvergne, troubadour of the twelfth century, sings, – “i will sing a new song which resounds in my breast. never was a song good or beautiful which resembled any other.” fauriel, ii, 13. “since the air renews itself, and softens, so must my heart renew itself, and what buds in it, buds and grows outside of it." “the nightingale glitters on the bough.” 250 journal (age 56 i see at the edge of the snowbank the hardy blades of young grass prying holes through the ice, and lifting themselves above it. phillips goes to the popular assembly, as the others go to their library. whilst he speaks, his mind feeds. animal spirits, enthusiasm, insight, and decision. to soon; law is its particle is of fate. " the intellect delights in seeing the traces of a law, which, hiding itself, yet indicates at distant points its presence. and that it is which makes us so fond of pictures of fate. we say there is no lawless particle. fate is the superstition; law is the science. but it needs virtue to see straight. intellect pure of action is skeptical. being, and so doing, must blend, before the eye has health to behold through sympathy and through presence, the spirit. then all flows, and is known without words. power even is not known to the pure. power indicates weakness and opposition. health exists and unfolds in the rose, in the sea, in the circular and endless astronomy. the electricity is not less present in my body and my joy, for twenty years that i never saw or suspected it, than in the twenty-first, when i drew by art a spark from my knuckle. 1859) flowing intellect 251 it may be that we have no right here as individuals; that the existence of an embodied man marks fall and sin. to be pure, we must live in god radiant and flowing, constituting the health and conservation of the universe. we have stopped, we have stagnated, we have opprobriated or become selfish, before we could arrest our immortality into this callus or wen of an individual, and have been punished by the wars, infirmities, and fate, of human life. the wise east indian seeks nirvana or re-absorption, as felicity. it is for this reason that we are dualists, and know the law of our members as opposed to the good. and hence the inexplicable jangle of fate and freedom, matter and spirit. hence the indignation of the poet, the scorn of the idealist, to whom geology and zoology are often an impertinence. the believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco. the bath. the cutaneous sublime, the extremes meet, the bittersweet, the pail of pleasure and of pain. o, if an enemy had done this! ure ene jobn brown. he drew this notice and distinction from the people among whom he fell 252 (age 56 journal from the fact that this boy of twelve had conducted his drove of cattle a hundred miles alone. culture. books. the indian who carried a letter from the french governor through the forest, hid it when he would eat, or do any unsightly office. atahnalfa caused a spaniard to write “ die ” on his thumbnail, and when pizarro could not read it, despised him. what a wonder we make of cadmus, or of whatever inventor of letters. and what an ado about the invention of printing; this month again on franklin's birthday! then what a debt is ours to books. how much we owe to imaginative books! the boy has no better friend or influence than his scott, shakspeare, plutarch, and homer. and if, in arkansaw or texas, i should meet a man reading horace, i were no stranger, and should forget the dreary land. yet there is a limit to this influence also. after reading adam smith or linnæus, i am no better mate for mr. hosmer or mr. potter. and one book crowds out another, so that, after years of study, we are not wiser. then books can't teach motherwit, sagacity, presence of mind, and humanity. 1859) brown's execution 253 [on the 2d of december john brown was hanged at charlestown, virginia. in concord on that afternoon — a strangely sultry day with threatening clouds and something ominous in the air — there was a gathering of persons who honoured his motives and great sacrifices in the cause of human freedom, in the town hall. rev. edmund sears of wayland made a prayer, mr. emerson and mr. alcott made brief speeches. mr. thoreau read sir walter raleigh's “soul's errand,” hon. john s. keyes selected verses from aytoun's “execution of montrose,” and mr. sanborn contributed a poem. mr. emerson spoke at boston on november 18, and at salem on january 6, at meetings for the relief of the brown family.' it should also be recorded that, soon after, mr. sanborn invited as pupils in his successful private school three daughters of john brown, anna, sarah, and the widow of thompson, killed at harper's ferry, and they came.] 1 see miscellanies. 254 (age 56 journal rnal for authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1859 viasa ; mahabarata, apud alger's oriental poetry ; pythagorus; simonides ; aristophanes; aristotle; valerius maximus; epictetus; apuleius; plotinus; st. augustine; taliessin ; st. anthony; pierre d'auvergne, apud fauriel ; dante, vita nuova; chaucer; michel angelo, sonnets; copernicus; luther ; latimer; calvin ; spenser, mother hub berd's tale; chief justice sir randolph crewe; herrick ; sir kenelm digby; sir p. warwick; pascal; silesius angelus; newton; young, night thoughts; berkeley; cotton mather, magnalia christi americana; franklin; winckelmann; linnæus; samuel hopkins, system of tbeology ; boswell, life of johnson; guthrie, tour through the taurids, apud southey ; goldsmith ; washington ; gibbon, autobiograpby; f. h. jacobi; jefferson ; goethe, helena; laplace; fuseli; madame piozzi; fauriel, histoire de la littérature provençale ; richter, titan; sydney smith ; davy; henry clay; novalis (von hardenburg); ducrotay de blainville, 1859) reading 255 osteographie; hallam; southey, chronicle of the cid; de candolle; webster ; adam smith ; bettine brentano; sir david brewster; haydon, autobiography; lamartine; charles knight, once on a time ; william h. prescott; edward everett, mount vernon papers; quetelet; carlyle, frederick the great ; wilhelm meister ; alcott; choate; pusey ; francis lieber; bancroft; charles w. upham; eugène sue, the wandering jew; mrs. browning, aurora leigh; agassiz; charles t. jackson ; tennyson, ode on wellington, idylls of the king ; o. w. holmes, the autocrat; jones very; a. r. ballantyne; thoreau ; w. h. channing; froude; c. k. newcomb; edwin p. whipple ; dr. kane, arctic explorations ; matthew arnold, on translating homer; frances power cobbe, intuitive morals ; william r. alger, oriental poetry; herman grimm, essays; elizabeth sara sheppard, charles auchester and counterparts; atlantis; atlantic montbly. rnal winter lecturing in canada and the west culture, politics phillips and cassius m. clay theodore parker dies estabrook farm the dangerous speaker henry james memorabilia of philosophy the election journal li 1860 (from journals cl and dl) at mihi succurit pro ganymede manus.' [on january 12, mr. emerson made a short speech at a meeting held in salem to raise money for the relief of the family of john brown. his speech is printed in miscellanies. it is probable that his bold words on this occasion and in the preceding months interfered with his invitations to lecture, and that from philadelphia was withdrawn. however, a chicago correspondent wrote him, “the west is in insurrection to hear ralph waldo emerson this season,” and a tour was accordingly arranged in the states of new york, ohio, indiana, michigan, and illinois ; also one or more lectures in toronto. some twenty-five lectures were given between the middle of january and the middle of february. he went to canada 1 this may be freely rendered, my own right hand my cupbearer shall be. 260 journal (age 56 again in march and read in montreal “poetry and criticism.” also, in march, he read his lecture “moral sense,” to theodore parker's society in the music hall.] r was (from cl) january 16, 1860. the engineer was goading his boilers with pitch-pine knots. the traveller looked out of the car window; the fences passed languidly by; he could scan curiously every post. but very soon the jerk of every pulse of the engine was felt; the whistle of the engineer moaned short moans, as it swept across any highway. he gazed out over the fields; the fences were tormented; every rail and rider writhed and twisted past the window; the snowbanks swam past like fishes; and the speed seemed to increase every moment. the near trees and bushes wove themselves into coloured ribbons. the rocks, walls, the fields themselves streaming like a mill-race. the train tore on with jumps and jerks that tested the strength of oak and iron. the passengers seemed to suffer their speed. meantime, the wind cried like a child, complained like a sawmill, whistled 1860] new acquaintances 261 like a fife, mowed like an idiot, roared like the sea, and yelled like a demon. january 28 (?). at buffalo, found william b. wright, my former correspondent from goshen, new york ; and on the way from rochester to toronto, j. b. hunter, of batavia, new york, once of louisville, kentucky; and at toronto, saw two carlyles, nephews of thomas c. and sons of john carlyle, of mohawk, canada west, his brother. another brother of thomas carlyle, alexander carlyle, lives at brentford, and a sister, mrs. haining, at hamilton. the young men did not know that their uncle, dr. john a. carlyle, of london, was named john like their father, but called dr. john“uncle aitkin.” one of these young men is teacher of the “model school” in toronto, and the other, i believe, is preparing for the ministry. at toronto, i had a telegraph from james e. day inviting me to lecture at the mechanics’ institute, hamilton (ontario); but could not go. my correspondent on ästhetics at toronto is j. d. edgar, to whom i must write. february 16. at kalamazoo, i had a humpbacked driver who took me to grand rapids and back. his te262 journal [age 56 name is church, and his father is a noted lawyer at syracuse, but this dwarf prefers to be an ostler. he talks to his horses all the way and praises them. “ha, ha, jimmy, what are you looking after? ha, ha, ha. take care, jimmy! st! st! john! john takes it easy,” he says, “ but whenever he's called on, he's on hand, ha! ha!” he says he slept for years in the same stall with the seed-horse, “sir henry,” which killed its dutch ostler, and was ironed, but church took the irons off, and gave it (first and last] a barrel of sugar. flora temple trotted for a purse of three thousand dollars at kalamazoo, and made the shortest time ever made in the union, “two minutes, nineteen seconds, and a half.” “she flew.” but, he thinks, the “princess," which was beaten, is the handsomer and the better horse. ohio, the buckeye state; illinois, the sucker state; indiana, the hoosier state; michigan, the wolverine state ; wisconsin, the badger state ; missouri, the pike state; iowa, the hawkeye state. 1860] the winter drive 263 when an eastern man is cheated by a hoosier, he is said to be wabashed. [of his kalamazoo adventure and cross-country ride in bitter cold, mr. emerson wrote to his family thus: “at kalamazoo a good visit, and made intimate acquaintance with a college wherein i found many personal friends, though unknown to me, and one emerson was an established authority. even a professor or two came along with me to marshall to hear another lecture. my chief adventure was the necessity of riding in a buggy forty-eight miles to grand rapids; then, after lecture, twenty more on the return; and the next morning getting back to kalamazoo in time for the train hither at twelve. so i saw michigan and its forests and wolverines pretty thoroughly.”] the postmaster, in each of our towns, is usually some sneak who reads the administration paper every day, and loudly defends the last measure of government. of course, in its varying policy, he is obliged to eat his words before the year is out. the boys at school call cicero “a regular postmaster.” dr. [jacob] bigelow's formula was, that fevers 264 journal [age 56 are self-limiting; afterwards that all disease is so; therefore no use in treatment. dr. holmes said, no use in drugs. dr. samuel jackson said, rest, absolute rest, is the panacea. “the two mandarins (namely, pihkwei and the tartar general) were in full official costume, and retained throughout that charmed and delighted manner, which a chinaman always puts on when he is powerless and alarmed.” when lord elgin put these two captured officials into temporary office again, after the taking of canton.oliphant. 'tis trite enough, but now and then it is seen with explaining light, that nature is a mere mirror and shows to each man only his own quality. illusions. colour is illusion, you say ; but how know i that the rock and mountain are more real than its hue and gleam ? « pardon me, but the moral impression (of everett's q. b. k. oration) is nothing to cicero's. could he with sincerity but once, if only 1860]. solitude. manners 265 once, have raised his gifted voice to the aegis of our salvation ! he would then have better resembled burke, who descended from a higher sphere, when he would influence human affairs." (from aunt mary's letter of 1825.) uns “then for culture, can solitude be spared ? solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold obscure shelter where moult the eagle wings which will bear one farther than suns and stars. byron and wordsworth there burnished their pens. ah! that you could be disunited from travelling with the souls of other men,of living, breathing, reading, and writing, with one livelong time-fated yoke, their opinions.” mary moody emerson. manners. have manners that can last. as these forms are to be repeated every day, perhaps every hour, nothing exaggerated will last. any excess, as grimace, or affected look or word, becomes intolerable. if a man declines the bread or meat you offer him, with “no, i'm obliged to you”; or when he assents to your remark, says, “decidedly,” or “exactly,” one soon hesitates to give him an opportunity. but the civility reduced to the simplest form, as “ please,” 266 journal [age 56 “no, thank you,” can be spoken ten thousand times with new propriety. the least mistake in sentiment takes all the beauty out of your clothes. travel, culture. we shall not always travel over seas and lands, with light purposes, and for pleasure, as we say; progress of culture will give gravity and domestic rest to the educated classes in this country. april. somebody said in my hearing lately, that a house in concord was worth half as much again as a house in any other town, since the people had shown a good will to defend each other.' . 1 the bailiffs of the united states marshal in massachusetts made an attempt at forcible arrest of mr. f. b. sanborn in this month, from his house in concord, he having disregarded the summons of the congressional committee to appear at washington on suspicion of having been implicated in the john brown raid. the seizure was made at midnight, but mr. sanborn could not be got into the carriage owing to the valiant defence made by his sister and another brave lady, giving time for a general alarm. the crowd of concord men and women and mr. sanborn's pupils made it impossible for the officers to take him away until a writ of habeas corpus was obtained and he released on his promise to appear in the united states court in boston next day. 1860] bad government. clay 267 the teaching of politics is that the government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend. wherever we look, whether to kansas, to utah, to the frontier — as mexico and cuba or to laws and contracts for internal improvement, the capital enemy in the way is always this ugly government. we could manage very well by private enterprise, for carrying the mails, associations for emigration, and emigrant aid, for local police and defence, and for prevention of crime; but the cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the government. this can only be counteracted by magnifying the local powers at its cost. take from the united states the appointment of postmasters and let the towns elect them, and you deprive the federal government of half a million defenders. c cassius m. clay gave wendell phillips his audience at new haven, by closing his own agricultural address at half-past seven and at a quarter to eight went to hear phillips, advising his hearers to go with him, which they did. so 268 journal [age 56 phillips opened his lecture with some compliment to him, and referred to the fact that clay had said that should war break out] between the negroes and the whites, his own part would be taken with the whites. the audience gave three cheers for mr. clay. “well,” said phillips, “this, then, we must reckon the roll-call on that side, — this distinguished leader and the white population in the slave states — ” the audience instantly repeated their cheers. phillips thought himself in a bad plight, but rescued himself by saying, “well, gentlemen, now let us see the muster on the other side. thomas jefferson says, that in this contest the almighty has no attribute, but must take part with the slave. mr. clay and the southern gentlemen on one side, and all the attributes of the almighty on the other.” the audience were utterly silenced, and phillips proceeded with his speech. we are realists through our politics, trade, and geography, and all the intellectual are emancipated. barbarism lingers with the feeble, the passionate, the unthinking, and they are domineered by the sect of their fathers or their companions. 1860) books 269 may. the costliest benefit of books is to set us free from themselves also. classification, a necessity of the human mind, and one of its main joys. it masters the mind, and makes rogues and thieves of learned men. a professor of theology at berlin (?) has just been convicted of stealing books from the library of the university. all collectors tend to this foible. w. s. shaw, the founder of the boston athenæum, used to steal from the private libraries of his friends any book he coveted to make his darling athenæum complete. collectors of shells steal orangias from mr. grinnell's mantelpiece and mrs. coffin's (?) house at siasconset. mellish motte told me that the books stolen from the boston athenæum are mostly from the theological department, so that they are forced to lock that up, as they do the fine arts alcoves. as an offset to this, mr. jewett, the librarian, assured me, at the “ city library," that it was necessary to guard in securest manner the one hundred volumes of“ patent reports” sent by the british government, for lawyers who had a case requiring the use of one 270 journal [age 57 of these books were utterly reckless, and would borrow and never return, or would cut out the plate or diagram they wanted. agassiz says, “there are no varieties in nature. all are species.” thoreau says, “if agassiz sees two thrushes so alike that they bother the ornithologist to discriminate them, he insists they are two species ; but if he sees humboldt and fred cogswell,' he insists that they come from one ancestor.” [theodore parker died in florence in may. mr. emerson was asked to speak at the memorial meeting in his honour on june 17. the following are notes in preparation for that occasion. the address is printed in full in the miscellanies.] religious sects have been displaced by progress of opinion, and traditions have lost their hold on the mind. the dogma of mystic offices being dropped, 't is impossible to maintain the emphasis of his [jesus's] personality, and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws. 1 a kindly, underwitted inmate of concord almshouse. 1860) theodore parker 271 the realization of christianity is the only way to get rid of it. theodore parker has filled up all his years and days and hours; a son of the energy of new england, restless, eager, manly, brave, early old, contumacious, clever. i can well praise him at a spectator's distance, for our minds and methods were unlike, — few people more unlike. all the virtues are solidaires. each man is related to persons who are not related to each other, and i saw with pleasure that men whom i could not approach were drawn through him to the admiration of that which i admire. the duc de brancas said, “why need i read the encyclopédie ? rivarol visits me.” i may well say it of theodore parker. 'tis vain to charge him with perverting the opinions of the new generation. the opinions of men are organic.' ... he was willing to perish in the using. he sacrificed the future to the present, was willing to spend and be spent; felt himself to belong to the day he lived in, and had too much to do than that he should be careful for fame. he used every day, hour, and minute; he lived to i the rest of the passage is printed in « theodore parker” (miscellanies, pp. 287, 288). 272 journal . (age 57 the latest moment, and his character appeared in the last moments with the same firm control as in the day of strength. fault of theodore parker, that there was no beauty. what he said as mere fact almost offended you, so bald and detached. death. when our friends die, we not only lose them, but we lose a great deal of life which in the survivors was related to them. i wrote that one affectation was venial, in prosperous men, — marked attention to their blood relations. i have discovered another of which i think still better, — when people have not common sense, at least to simulate it. if you have only sympathy, you cannot be spared. if you have a finer perception of beauty, he who has a portfolio of designs in his palace becomes soon aware that his portfolio waits for your praise, and he must climb to your garret to obtain it. pairs. i am a matchmaker, and delight in nothing more than in finding the husband or ayate of the trivial fact i have long carried in 1860] age. friends. plutarch 273 my memory (unable to offer any reason for the emphasis i gave it), until now, suddenly, it shows itself as the true symbol or expression of some abstraction. advantages of old age. i reached the other day the end of my fifty-seventh year, and am easier in my mind than hitherto. i could never give much reality to evil and pain. but now when my wife says perhaps this tumor on your shoulder is a cancer, i say, what if it is? aco of friendship. there is not only the unspeakable benefit of a reasonable creature to talk to, but also a certain increase of sanity, through testing one's health by the other's, and noting the accords and discords. and we appeal pathetically (as aunt mary did), when our sanity is questioned, to the certificate of their conversation. friendship, it is an order of nobility; from its elevations we come. plutarch, the elixir of greece and rome, that is the book which nations went to compose. if the world's library were burning, i should as soon ay to rescue that, as shakespeare and plato, or next afterwards. 274 journal [age 57 · clough says, “ plutarch's best life is antony, i think.” god getting tired of kings.' antonio perez quotes a wise counsellor of philip ii, who said to him, “should god once get tired of monarchies, he will give another form to the political world.” 2 september 11. fine walk yesterday with ellery to estabrook farm. finest day in the year, and best road, almost all the way “through the lots.” birds singing, -gotover their summer silence, -sunlight full of gnats; crickets in full cry; goldfinches (carduelis) on the thistle eating the seed, scattering the leaves ; boulder field; cooper's hawk; rock of sinai, all books and tables of law; wonderful hedges, barberry, apple, elder, viburnum, ivy, cornel, woodbine, grape, whitethorn; the brook through the wood; benzoin, the big birch. largeness of the estate; nobody can buy. came out at captain barrett's and through the fields again out at flint's. a cornucopia of golden joys. ellery says that i this quotation is embodied in the second verse of the “ boston hymn" in the poems. 2 see humboldt's letters. 1860] bluebird. the orator 275 he and henry thoreau have agreed that the only reason of turning out of the mowing is not to hurt the feelings of the farmers; but it never does, if they are out of sight. for the farmers have no imagination. and it does n't do a bit of hurt. thoreau says that when he goes surveying, the farmer leads him straight through the grass. 'tis strange, the bluebirds' song brings back vividly the cold spring days when we first hear them; those days were so severe and unlovely, and now seem so sweet ! there is one trap, into which the most cautious avoider of north street and broadway may fall. how unsuspectingly a quiet conservative assembly allows a man to speak to them! they would have called in the police, if he had come in with a club, but, the moment he opens his mouth, he begins to unseat them, bereave them of their property, their position, their reasons, their self-respect, to take them out of their possessions and into his, and, if he is the man i take him for, they will not soon be their own men again. the poor gentlemen go out of the meeting, 276 (age 57 journal cov when this outlaw ends his speech, and, rallying to recover their disturbed associations, they fancy that all is as it was when they came; that if they suspected a kind of threat and thunder in this strange harangue, probably the odd things dropped by the speaker were not noticed or understood by most people, and will be forgotten to-morrow. at all events, themselves will forget them as fast as they can, and faneuil hall market and the brokers' exchange, and the banks stand where they did, and will help to blot out these impertinences very soon. never believe it. younger people, and stronger than they, heard them also, and, above all, the speaker was very well convinced himself, and is already to-day taking more outrageous positions; and the speech of men and women, and the fingers of the press, are doing their utmost to give his words currency and experiment. eloquence is forever a power that shoves usurpers from their thrones, and sits down on them by allowance and acclaim of all. the feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility of every thing into every other thing.' ... i the two omitted portions of this entry are to be found in “ beauty” (conduct of life, pp. 303, 304). cod von 1860) human sentiment 1 277 now when i go to the pyramid, or to fountain abbey, or to stonehenge, i find the sentiment of ancient peoples, their delight in their gods, in the future, their humanity, expressed in this patience of labour that staggered under the toil of hewing and lifting these grey rocks into scientific symmetry. that sentiment of their hope and love touch me, and our associations (which are most pliant and placable) persuade the eye to forget its mathematics, and reconcile it to angles and distortions. the rainbow, the sky, niagara, the rose, a tone of music, have in them something which is not individual. ... alcott yonder, never learned in connecticut or in boston what he sees and declares to me, and his face and manners are sublime at times. the wonder of men is that the reason of things comes to my side moulded into a person like myself and full of universal relations. this power of imagination, the making of some familiar object, as fire or rain, or a bucket, or shovel do new duty as an exponent of some truth or general law, bewitches and delights men. it is a taking of dead sticks, and clothing about with immortality; it is music out of creaking and scouring. all opaque things are 278 journal (age 57 transparent, and the light of heaven struggles through. october 9. henry james thinks the upper powers don't care so much for talent now as once. it was once the great point to civilize and lead by these gods of the mind. now they are putting the material activities right, to sustain and order the masses of life. perhaps the fourierists have had a reaction upward. chacun à son tour. he talked well about louis napoleon, who is absolute master of all the crowned heads, because he has the revolution in his hand, and can at any time cry histaboy ! to the dogs, and pull them all down. and he knows that england is necessary to him, and has no thought of breaking with it, but likes the prestige which these great cry-babies in england by their terror give him with the french and with europe. then of science, — mansel's limits of knowledge. the blunder of the savants is to fancy science to be a finality; that it contains and is not contained; but a scientific fact is no more than the scratching of a nail if it stops. all the life of it is in its relatedness, its implication of the all. only the poetic savant is right, for it is not as a finality, but as a convertibility into 1860) greece. beauty 279 every other fact and system, and so indicative of first cause, that the mind cares for it. the games of greece were in the interest and honour of manhood. they called out every personal virtue and talent. ho! every one who can wrestle, run, lift, ride, fight, sing, narrate, or so much as look well! imagination transfigures, so that only the cosmical relations of the object are seen. the persons who rise to beauty must have this transcendency. the calm sky hides all wisdom and power in beauty. that haughty force of form, vis superba forma which poets praise, — this is that. under calm precise outline, the immeasurable and divine. it is as if new eyes were opened so that we saw under the lilac bush, or the oak, or the rock, or the tiger, the spiritual cause of the lilac, oak, stone, or tiger, the genius of that kind, and so could rightly and securely use the name for truth it stood for in the human mind; and still again, under this genius, its origin in a generic law, and thence its affinities to cosmical laws, and to myriads of particulars; and then again deeper causes below, and so on ad infinitum. but i do not wish to find that my poet be notv 280 journal (age 57 partaker, or that he amuses me with that which does not amuse him. he must believe in his poetry. homer, milton, hafiz, herbert, swedenborg, are heartily enamoured of their sweet thoughts. wordsworth, too. october 20. we heard across the bay, thirty miles, where the surf of the open ocean was pounding the land." in looking at the swiss landscapes one thinks of the heroes. rich europe! rich in men; themistocles has strictly applied himself to the sea and land of salamis, and each european hero to the rivered and mountained land. bonaparte must equal the material problem, must carry all these swiss angles, these rhine and danube water-lines, mediterranean bays, and impregnable magdeburg, olmutz, and coblentz, or whatever fortress; the italian quadrilateral, the warlike populations, the blood-lines, too, or races that easily unite, and those that instinctively disjoin and quarrel; he must have europe in his head, before he can hold europe in his hand. yet these are but rude pioneers and camp guides 1 probably mr. emerson was lecturing at one of the cape cod towns. 1860] michel angelo 281 to break ground and make way for the truer and finer european who must follow, with a grander map of europe in his brain; as carpenter and mason build a palace, which, when they have given up the keys, they enter no more. maso the most important difference in criticism is whether one writes from life, or from a literary point of view. 'tis difficult for a writer not to be bookish and conventional. if he writes from manly experience and feeling, his page is a power. (from dl) october. subjects. hospitality looks like a good title. the hospitality of manners is so vital. hospitality of mind so diverse in men. hospitality over nationality. hospitality in the arabs; le grand desert, daumas. michel angelo. in 1540, francesco d'ollanda, miniature painter in the service of the king of portugal, visited rome, and saw there michel angelo, as well as vittoria colonna. his manuscript journal was discovered by count raczynsky in lisbon. grimm uses a french translation of this. it seems that the manuscript cannot now 282 journal (age 57 be found in lisbon library and count raczynsky is believed to be a liar. the memorabilia of philosophy are:plato's doctrine of reminiscence; berkeley's ideal world ; socrates'interpretation of the delphian or. acle,' σοφος σοφοκλής, σοφώτερος ευριπίδης, ανδρών τε πάντων σωκράτης σοφώτατος; and tennyson's use of it in “ elaine,” — “ me you call great; mine is the firmer seat, the truer lance; but there is many a youth now crescent, who will come to all i am, and overcome it; and in me there dwells no greatness, save it be some far-off touch of greatness to know well i am not great; there is the man”; the “dance” of plotinus ; ? i that other wise men thought that they were wise, but his higher wisdom lay in knowing that he was not. 2 the editors are indebted to professor john s. harrison, of gambier, ohio, the author of the teachers of emerson, for the following information as well as for supplying the eng. lish version of the passage referred to:• “ plotinus is speaking of the soul of the universe, and shows how it differs in its relations with the universe from the individual souls to which our bodies are related. he then reasons 1860) plotinus 283 [" for the soul of the world stands, as it were, over its body and orders it to abide; but here the elements, secretly, as it were, withdrawing themselves, are bound in their proper order by a secondary bond. in the former case, however, they have no place into which they can fly; hence it is neither necessary to contain them internally, nor by external compression to impel them inwardly, but each remains where nature from the first intended it should remain. and if any one of them is naturally moved, those things to which motion is not natural are affected by it. the bodies, however, which are naturally moved, are moved in a beautiful manner, as being parts of the whole, but certain things are corrupted in consequence of not being able to sustain the order of the whole. just as if in a great dance, which is conducted in a becoming manner, a tortoise, being caught in the middle of the progression, should be trod upon, not being able to escape the order of the dance, though if the tortoise had arranged itself with the dance, it would not have suffered from those that composed it.” ] that, though in each of the elements of the universe there should be a certain world, this would not affect the soul of the universe, since the composition of the world is different from each of the individual things in it.” i professor harrison adds: -"i take it that mr. emerson c c 284 journal [age 57 doctrine of absorption; nirvana ; the greek saying, that the soul is absorbed into god as a phial of water broken in the sea; like can only be known by like; (heracleitus.) “nec sentire deum nisi qui pars ipse deorum est;' ne te quæsiveris extra; natura in minimis existat ;3 (aristotle.) hunger and thirst after righteousness. kingdom of god cometh not by observation; is received as a little child; christianity, pure deism; god considers integrity, not munificence. (socrates.) imagination. “names, countries, nations, and the like are not at all known to those who are in was struck by the conception of the universe moving in the ordered manner of a great dance, the animating spirit of which was the great soul of the universe. any trouble or disturbance of an individual kind was a mere accident which in no wise interfered with the beauty of the great dance, though being out of step, as it were, the suffering had a meaning given to it which the individual sufferer alone experienced.” i he only who is one with the gods can feel the god. 2 search not beyond thyself. 3 nature is in leasts. 1860] similes. success 285 heaven; they have no idea of such things, but of the realities signified thereby.” — swedenborg, arcana, ii, p. 9. plotinus says of the heavens, “ there, however, everybody is pure (transparent), and each inhabitant is as it were an eye.” like. note our incessant use of the word ;like a pelican pecking her breast to feed her young; like a horse, always at the end of his tether; athens, which has lost her young men, is like a year without a spring. the mind in conversation is perpetually provoked to see how all things reflect or image her momentary thought. whenever this resemblance is real, not playful, and is deep, or pointing at the causal identity, it is the act of imagination ; if superficial, and for entertainment, it is fancy. success. i have always one saw to say, and never get it rightly said. it is that if you work at your task, it signifies little or nothing that you do not yet find orders or customers.' . .. 1 the rest of this passage is printed in “ success” (society and solitude, p. 294). 286 journal (age 57 dr. rimmer wishes “ to make a statue which will not be bought.” stories agreeable to the human mind :pindar and his customer;' sigurd and eystein;• time, “the little grey man”; pied piper ; béranger's menetrier de meudon; oriental story in tholuck; orpheus'; ring of gyges; fortunatus's cap; aladdin's lamp; transmigrations of indra; seven sleepers ; the thawed tune; solomon and the spectre. (from cl) november 15. [the election]. the news of last wednesday morning (7th) was sublime, the pronunciation of the masses of america against slavery. and now on tuesday, the 14th, i attended the dedication of the zoological museum at cambridge, an auspicious and happy event, most honourable to agassiz and to the state. on wednesday, 7th, we had charles sumner here at concord and my house. 1 the athlete thought pindar's price for an ode in his honour too high, since he could have a statue cheaper, but chose the ode which outlasted it. 2 the debate between the brother kings in the heimskringla. 1860] stereopticon 287 yesterday eve i attended at the lyceum in the town hall the exhibition of stereoscopic views magnified on the wall, which seems to me the best and most important application of this wonderful art; for here was london, paris, switzerland, spain, and, at last, egypt, brought visibly and accurately to concord, for authentic examination by women and children who had never left their state. cornelius agrippa was fairly outdone. and the lovely manner in which one picture was changed for another beat the faculty of dreaming. an odd incident of yesterday was that i received a letter or envelope mailed from frazer, pennsylvania, enclosing no letter, but a blank envelope containing a ten-dollar bank-note. [there are comparatively few entries in the journal for this year. this was due to mr. emerson's occupation of severely pruning and refining for his book, conduct of life, the lectures which, as delivered, had much matter to hold the attention of lyceum audiences in the country at large. mrs. emerson remonstrated, missing good anecdotes and lighter touches, but her husband answered, “ no, we must put on their greek jackets for the book.” 288 journal [age 57 ci the book was published at the end of the year and mr. emerson sent copies to a long list of his friends. carlyle, in a letter acknowledging his copy, which for a moment drew him out of his “ prussian nightmares of a hideous nature,” wrote :-“i read it . . . with a satisfaction given me by the books of no other living mortal. i predicted to your english bookseller a great sale even, reckoning it the best of all your books. . . . you have grown older, more pungent, piercing ; — i never read from you before such lightning gleams of meaning as are to be found here. the finale of all, that of illusions' falling on us like snow-showers, but again of the gods sitting steadfast on their thrones' all the while, — what a fiat lux is there, into the deeps of a philosophy which the vulgar has not, which hardly three men living bave, yet dreamt of. well done, i say.”] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1860 upanishad; zoroaster; heracleitus; pindar; aristotle; plotinus ; euclid of alexandria ; ossian ; snorri sturleson, younger edda ; hafiz; ara1860) reading 289 bian nights; francesco d'ollanda, (alleged) ms. journal, apud herman grimm; montluc, mémoires. kepler; sir philip warwick ; sir thomas browne ; cowley; berkeley ; harleian miscellanies; charles chauncy; humboldt, letters; schelling; southey, commonplace book; béranger, le menetrier de meudon ; dr. jacob bigelow, on self-limited disease; haydon, autobiography; general edouard daumas and abd el kader, le grand désert; o. w. holmes; theodore parker; browning; wendell phillips ; henry james; mansel, limits of demonstrative science; laurence oliphant, narrative of the earl of elgin's mission to china. journal in theodore parker's pulpit riot at the anti-slavery meeting concord schools the war cloud life and literature course in boston addresses at tufts college and yarmouth journal lii 1861 (from journals cl, dl, and gl) sin the anxious times between the election of lincoln as president and his inauguration, there was possibly less interest in literary and philosophical lectures. mr. emerson gave, however, a number of lectures in new england in december, 1860, and on sunday, january 6, read a discourse, “cause and effect,” before the parker congregation in the music hall (see cabot's memoir, vol. ii, p. 772, appendix f.), and on february 3“natural religion” (cabot, vol. ii, p. 773). between these he had read several lectures in western new york.] (from cl) january 4, 1861. i hear this morning, whilst it is snowing fast, the chickadee singing. january 19. alcott's conversation on health. no inspiration this time. 294 (age 57 journal i affirmed, that health was as the perfectness of influx and efflux. a man must pump up the atlantic ocean, the whole atmosphere, all the electricity, all the universe, and pump it out again. any obstruction, any appropriation is tumour and mortification. how a boy tilts a mountain over! my measure of a picture is its power to speak to the imagination, and i can buy a few stereoscope views, at shop prices, more potent in this way than costly works of art. (from dl) never was any discovery by observation that had not already been divined by somebody'; as leibnitz, the zoophytes; newton, the combustibility of diamond; kant, the asteroids; digby, the law of colour; van helmont, the sex of plants. “o xpń oe voelv vóov avdel. ; idealism. more hurt by the base, and burlesque, and inconvenient, than by reason. “the severe schools shall never laugh me out i that which you must grasp with the full-flowering strength of your mind. 1861) eras in philosophy 295 of the philosophy of hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance, in that invisible fabric.” — sir thomas browne. eras — when the 47th proposition of euclid was demonstrated; when thales measured the pyramid by its shadow; when kepler announced his three laws; when newton declared the law of gravity ; dalton's atomic theory; when the doctrine of idealism was first taught; the doctrine of correspondences; schelling's “all difference is quantitative.” was n when napoleon asked laplace why there was no mention of god in the mécanique celeste -“sire, je n'avais pas besoin de cette bypothèse." * thoreau's page reminds me of farley, who went early into the wilderness in illinois, lived alone, and hewed down trees, and tilled the land, but retired again into newer country when the new er co 296 joti: (age 57 population cam p aim. yet, on being asked what he is,*, said he pleased himself that he is i. !'pop, ing the land for civilization. aristotle (dying speech?). λόγου αρχή, ου λόγος αλλά τι κρείττον poetry is something more philosophical and excellent than history. action comes less near to vital truth than description.— plato. the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms. (from gl) january. we have no guess what we are doing, even then when we do our best; perhaps it will not appear for an age or two yet; then the dim outline of the reef and new continent we madrepores were making, will sketch itself to the eyes of the dullest sailor. the furious slaveholder does not see that i the ultimate foundation of reason, not reason, but something better. 1861) henry james 297 the one thing he is doing, by night and by day, is to destroy slavery. they who help and they who hinder are all equally diligent in hastening its downfall. blessed be the inevitabilities. another topic is the reality as herein ; that the more reason, the less government; government is always superseded. in a sensible family nobody ever hears the words shall or shan't: nobody commands and none obeys; but all conspire and joyfully coöperate.' the best thing i heard yesterday was henry james's statement that, in the spiritual world, the very lowest function was governing. in heaven, as soon as one wishes to rule, or despises others, he is thrust out at the door. another fine spiritual statement which he made was to the effect that all which men value themselves for, as religious progress, – going alone, renouncing, and self-mortifying, to attain a certain religious superiority, — was the way from, not the way to, what they seek; for it is only as our existence is shared, not as it is selfhood, that it is divine. 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “character” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 121). enou 298 (age 57 journal among the illusions is to be remembered that, so frequent among young men, that there are no fit people near them, but elsewhere; no boys of john's age, no girls of almira's. as soon as one sees that life is one, and god does not create, but communicates his life, all is right. this self-love is much in our way. a wise man, an open mind, is as much interested in others as in himself; they are only extensions of himself. they stand on a hilltop, and see exactly what he would see if he were there. he cannot be offended by an honest partiality in others. perfect health is the subjugation of matter to be the servant, the instrument of thought and heart; for that matter is not felt as matter, but only as opulence, and light, and beauty, and joy. as soon as we know a particle of matter for itself, it is obstruction and defeat of health. it is not my duty to prove the immortality of the soul.' . . . yet i find the proofs noble, wholesome, and moral. i the omitted portion is found in “ immortality” (let: ters and social aims, p. 345). mo ov 1861] debts. grattan. english 299 pay every debt. if you cannot you may be bankrupt, and content with bankruptcy. tomorrow try again. 'tis not your duty to pay the debt, but to try to pay the debt. do all with a clear and perfect intent. call in the universe to witness and sanction, and not to skulk into a corner. if it is your part to kill, kill in the face of day, and with the plaudits of the universe. other world! there is no other world ; the god goes with you,is here in presence. what is here, that is there, and it is by his only strength that you lift your hand. “of all men," said grattan, “if i could call up one, it should be scipio africanus. hannibal was perhaps a greater captain, but not so great and good a man. epaminondas did not so much. themistocles was a rogue.” grattan said, “the finest passage in cicero is his panegyric on demosthenes.” classes of men. defoe said, “the english man of to-day is the mind of all nations.” hommes réglés, good providers, insure themselves, keep a secret, answer letters, know i compare a similar sentence in “sovereignty of ethics” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 199). 300 journal [age 57 where to find them, canonical, names in the directory, known at the post-office. talent and insight seem to make no difference in reconciling the disparity between demand and supply in each mental constitureco cen tion. immortality. all the comfort i have found shall teach me to confide that i shall not have less in times and places that i do not yet know.' ... the unity of god is the key to all science. there is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man, but in every particle. ... i watched the fair boy and girl —one as fair and sweet as the other; both surprised with a new consciousness, which made every hour delicious; each laying little traps for the attention of the other, and each jumping joyfully into the traps. 1 the rest of this passage is found in « immortality" (letters and social aims, p. 338). 2 here follows the greater part of the first paragraph of “sovereignty of ethics" (lectures and biographical sketches). 1861] the concert. design 301 because i have no ear for music, at the concert of the quintette club [at the lyceum), it looked to me as if the performers were crazy, and all the audience were making-believe crazy, in order to soothe the lunatics, and keep them amused. february. what magical merit belongs, over all the details of any work, to the grand design! the performance of steam and iron locomotive on an iron road is wonderful anywhere for a few rods or a mile, but is then only a toy; but continued or repeated for many miles, tens or hundreds, and directed on boston or new york, acquires suddenly an incredible grandeur. all the details are performed by very narrow, ordinary people, but the total effect seems quite out of the reach of any one man, and a godlike gift. february 13. i saw at augusta mr. wilds, a civil engineer, whom i had met at grand rapids, and who works for the mining companies at lake superior. his associate is edward emerson, of portland. he told me that at lake superior, last year (i think), they came, in their excavations, upon a mass of copper of (3? or 6?) tons, standing on end, and on wooden wedges with a 1 w 302 (age 57 journal wooden bowl or pan near it, and some storie axes or chisels lying around it. trees had grovn above it since it was thus lifted, and they counted on these trees three hundred and ninety rings. he told me that his friend mr. foster, who lives at montreal, when building the eastern railroad at kennebunk, had found a nest of bird's eggs ten feet below the surface, in the solid rock, and that they turned out a toad in the rock at the same place. he (wilds) himself was present, and he and the others thought that they saw the toad gasp on being thrown out. foster has the eggs now at montreal. february 16. the doctrine of the imagination can only be rightly opened by treating it in connection with the subject of illusions. and the hindoos alone have treated this last with sufficient breadth in their legends of the successive maias of vishnu. with them, youth, age, property, condition, events, persons, self, are only successive maias, through which vishnu mocks and instructs the soul. dream. “when he sleeps, then becomes this purusha unmingled light. no chariots are there, res 1861) boston men. gurowski 303 no horses, no roads; then he creates chariots, horses, roads; no pleasures are there, no tanks, no lakes, or rivers; then he creates joys, tanks, lakes, rivers; for he is the agent.” — bribaa aranyaka upanishad, p. 224. boston.' for a hundred years i suppose there has not been wanting a class of really superior men. see what a company they had in 1812; judge parsons, mr. gore, john adams, john quincy adams, harrison gray otis, george cabot, dr. kirkland, josiah quincy, colonel [thomas handasyd] perkins, samuel dexter, dr. channing, mr. allston, judge davis, tudor. gurowski asked, “where is this bog? i wish to earn some money: i wish to dig peat.” — “oh, no, indeed, sir, you cannot do this kind of degrading work.” –“i cannot be degraded. i am gurowski.". 1 mr. emerson was writing the lecture in his native city for his course there in april. in its final form it is printed in natural history of intellect, p. 181. 2 adam gurowski, a polish count, having suffered much on account of his radical patriotism in europe, came to this country. about this time he was appointed official translator in the department of state at washington. 304 journal (age 57 good of evil. is any one so childish as not to see the use of opposition, poverty, and insult? caricatures, nicknames, parody, and abuse are his instructions, no less than galleries, antiques, and literature. these echo and confirm his own doubts and suspicions of his short-comings, and, until he surmounts these by new performance and defying superiority, he is only clever, and, as we say, talented, — but not yet a master. i often say to young writers and speakers that their best masters are their fault-finding brothers and sisters at home, who will not spare them, but be sure to pick and cavil, and tell the odious truth. it is smooth mediocrity, weary elegance, surface finish of our voluminous stock-writers, or respectable artists, which easy times and a dull public call out, without any salient genius, with an indigence of all grand design, of all direct power. a hundred statesmen, historians, painters, and small poets are thus made: but burns, and carlyle, and bettine, and michel angelo, and thoreau were pupils in a rougher school. it is very hard to go beyond your public. if they are satisfied with your poor performance, you will not easily make better. but if they know what is good and delight in it, you will aspire, and burn, and toil, till you achieve it. 1861) martyr. boston mob 305 the chamber of flame in which the martyr passes is more magnificent than the royal apartment from which majesty looks out on his sufferings. ne do thy duty of the day. just now, the supreme public duty of all thinking men is to assert freedom. go where it is threatened, and say, “i am for it, and do not wish to live in the world a moment longer than it exists.” phillips has the supreme merit in this time, that he and he alone stands in the gap and breach against the assailants. hold up his hands. he did me the honour to ask me to come to the meeting at tremont temple, and, esteeming such invitation a command, though sorely against my inclination and habit, i went, and, though i. had nothing to say, showed myself. if i were dumb, yet i would have gone and mowed and muttered or made signs. the mob roared whenever i attempted to speak, and after several beginnings, i withdrew.' 1 this was the occasion referred to in a note to the journal of 1848 (vol. vii, p. 396). mr. francis j. garrison, who, as a boy, was present, wrote to one of the editors : “i remembered vividly your father's use of the anecdote about wilson. i always admired the way in which he held bis own 306 (age 57 journal the speech of the man in the street [is] invariably strong, nor can you mend it. you say, if he could only express himself — but he does already better than any one can for him. ... that something which each man was created to say and do, he only or he best can tell you, and has a right to supreme attention so far. and hence, too, the truth, that all biography is autobiography, or whatever floats in the world concerning any man was first communicated by himself to his companion ; all else is wide of the mark. leasts. all the music, henry thoreau says, is in the strain; the tune don't signify, 't is all one vibration of the string. he says, people sing a song, or play a tune, only for one strain that is in it. i don't understand this, and remind him that collocation makes the force of a word, and that wren's rule,“ position essential against the howling mob. the meeting was not broken up, however, for the society held the platform through both afternoon and morning sessions, and conquered the mob at the morning meeting through the cleverness of wendell phillips, and in the afternoon by the interposition of the mayor, who came to disperse the meeting and was obliged to disperse the mob.” 1861) ship-worm. critic 307 to beauty,” is universally true, but accept what i know of the doctrine of leasts. “my lord,” said the shipbuilder to lord dundonald,“we live by repairing ships, as well as by building them, and the worm is our best friend. rather than use your preparation, i would cover ships' bottoms with honey to attract worms." his [dundonald's] object was to induce government to use coal-tar for protecting the bottoms of inferior ships of war, before the days of copper sheathing. “but vasari's tears for liberty,” says grimm, “ are the tears of a historian; and, well as he speaks of the old free florence, he has nothing to say in this regard of the new florence, in which he lives so comfortably.” i read many friendly and many hostile paragraphs in the journals about my new book,' but seldom or never a just criticism. as long as i do not wince, it cannot be that the fault is touched. when the adept applies his galvanic battery now to this part, then to that, on the patient's head, the patient makes no sign, for i conduct of life. 308 journal [age 57 lungs are sound, and liver, and heart: but, at last, he touches another point, and the patient screams, for it seems there is bronchitis, or is hip disease.' and when the critics hit you, i suppose you i will know it. i often think i could write a criticism on emerson that would hit the white. february. long peace makes men routinary and gregarious. they all walk arm in arm. poverty, the sea, the frost, farming, hunting, the emigrant, the soldier must teach self-reliance, to take the initiative, and never lose their head. in the south, slavery and hunting, sportsmanship and the climate and politics give the men self-reliance; and the south is well officered, and, with some right, they despise the peaceful north people, leaning on the law and on each other. in proportion to the number of self-reliant persons will the power and attitude of the state be. theodore parker was our savonarola. 1 at this time mr. emerson was being told by credulous friends, stories of the diagnosis of visceral disease by the method described at the hands of an uneducated woman. he knew nothing about the fact, but as a symbol it was useful. 1861] detachment. ancestors 309 liberty, like religion, is a short and hasty fruit of rare and happy conditions. detachment by illumination is the gift of genius, as i have somewhere written. the poet sees some figure for a moment in an expressive attitude and surroundings, and, without hesitating because it is a mere purposeless fragment, he paints out that figure with what skill and energy he has. urro welfare consists in, or requires, one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace to wear out life with. we admire our fathers quite too much. it shows that we have no energy in ourselves, when we rate it so prodigiously high. rather let us shame the fathers by superior virtue in the sons. i like dry light, and hard clouds, hard expressions, and hard manners. “ for laughter never looked upon his brow.” giles fletcher. sects are stoves, but fire keeps its old properties through them all. 310 (age 57 journal every man has his diminisher and his enlarger in his set. every one admires the beauty of the harpshell (buccinum barpa); but when we observe that it adds, year by year, as it grows, a new lip, as the tree adds each year a new ring of liber or bark; that every one of these polished ridges that adorn its surface, like harpstrings, was in turn the outer lip of the shell, we see that the beauty was honestly gained. “nothing that is truly beautiful externally, is internally deformed,” says plotinus. only our newest knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought, as only the outmost layer of liber in the tree. not what you see instructs, but with what idea. the most tender, the most radiant, the most sublime landscape is stark as tombstones, except seen by the thoughtful. what came over me with delight as i sat on the ledge in the warm light of last sunday was the memory of young days at college, the delicious sensibility of youth, how the air rings to it! how all light is festal to it! how it at any moment extemporizes a holiday! i remember how boys riding out together on a fine day 1861] joy of youth 311 looked to me! ah, there was a romance! how sufficing was mere melody! the thought, the meaning, was insignificant; the whole joy was in the melody. for that i read poetry, and wrote it; and in the light of that memory i ought to understand the doctrine of musicians, that the words are nothing, the air is all. what a joy i found, and still can find, in the æolian harp! what a youth find i still in collins's “ode to evening,” and in gray's “ eton college”!: what delight i owed to moore's insignificant but melodious poetry. that is the merit of clough's “ bothie,” that the joy of youth is in it. oh the power of the spring! and, ah, the voice of the bluebird! and the witchcraft of the mount auburn dell, in those days !' i shall be a squire slender for a week. one thing strikes me in all good poetry, that 1 these memories are rendered in verse in « the harp” (poems, pp. 239, 241). 2 the world rolls round, — mistrust it not, befalls again what once befell ; all things return, both sphere and mote, and i shall hear my bluebird's note and dream the dream of auburn dell. “ may day," poems. 312 (age 57 journal the poet goes straight forward to say his thought, and the words and images fly to him to express it, whilst colder moods are forced to hint the matter, or insinuate, or perhaps only allude to it, being unable to fuse and mould their words and images to fluid obedience. aunt mary speaks of her attempts in malden “to wake up the soul amid the dreary scenes of monotonous sabbaths, when nature looked like a pulpit.” (from dl) february. genius. at mrs. hooper's, february 23, we had a conversation on genius, in which i enumerated the traits of genius :1. love of truth, distinguished from talent, which mackintosh defined,“ habitual facility of execution.” 2. surprises ; incalculable. 3. always the term genius, when used with emphasis, implies imagination, use of symbols, figurative speech. 4. creative. advancing, leading by new ways to the ever-new or infinite. 5. coleridge said, “ its accompaniment is the carrying the feelings and freshness of youth into the powers of manhood.” 1861) talk on genius 313 most men in their life and ways make us feel the arrested development; in genius the unfolding goes on,perfect metamorphosis, and again, new metamorphosis, and every soul is potentially genius, if not arrested. 5. moral. genius is always moral.' and, finally, my definition is, genius is a sensibility to the laws of the world; things make a natural impression on him, belongs to us as well. all its methods are a surprise when the indian mythology taught the people that, when brahma should come, the deep should be a ford to him ; they little suspected that the sailor was predicted who should make of the barrier the road of nations. i should have added, but did not, the catholicity of greek mythology. quoted pindar, and lessing concerning raphael without hands, and read from “ notes to the westöstlicher divan.” talked of browning, burke, bettine, burns, molière, father taylor, and read saadi's “ persian boy." 1 this fundamental belief of the impossibility of divorce between morals and the highest intellect, between goodness and truth, is dwelt upon in “ sovereignty of ethics ” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 185). 2 of genius. 314 journal (age 57 (from gl) march 16. i have seldom paid money with so much pleasure as to-day to dr. barrett, fifty cents, for taking with a probe a little cinder out of my left eye, which had annoyed me for a week. “ time is only truly precious to more highly organized natures.” — goethe. the stern old calvinist doubled religion in his fist. [many trial verses occur in the pages of this part of the journal for a description of the breaking-up of the winter, some of which occur in “ may day,” like the following, descriptive of the booming of the pond, especially at sunrise or sunset, when the temperature suddenly changes.] not for a regiment's parade, nor evil laws or rulers made, blue walden fired its cannonade. [mr. emerson was on the school committee, and it was the custom, at the end of the winter term, for the whole committee to attend the examinations, which lasted a week. the three primary schools, the intermediate, the grammar, 1861) visiting the schools 315 and high schools in the centre, and the schools in the six districts were visited. it was a pleasant occasion for the families of the pupils, and for the committee; less so for the children, and hard for the teachers. the members of the committee were invited to make remarks at the end. mr. emerson's delight in children and in scholarship made him take a keen interest in these occaisions.] i told the school company at the town hall, this afternoon, that i felt a little like the old gentleman, who had dandled ten sons and daughters of his own in succession on his knee, when his grandchild was brought to him. “no,” he said, “i have cried kitty-kitty long enough.” and yet when i heard new recitations and exercises i was willing to feel new interest still. i was reminded of dr. alexander's offer to dr. blair, of one thousand pounds, if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public; and i thought he might have been instructed for that price in the concord schools. i suggested, for the encouragement or the warning of the parents, my feeling to-day, that the new generation was an improved edition of the adult: then i spoke of faulkner, who had 316 (age 57 journal adorned and honoured the town by his sweet and faultless youth.' in conclusion, i said, that one thing was plain, that the end of the institutions of the town and the end of the town itself is education. i intended to say much more; to give an account of peter bulkeley's will, of english 1 a boy of charming personality and admirable scholarship from the neighbouring town of acton. he had entered college from mr. sanborn's school and was killed in crossing the railroad at cambridge. 2 rev. peter bulkeley, the founder of concord, and an ancestor of mr. emerson's, left to his son edward “these books :1. piscator's commentaries on the bible; 2. d. willett on exodus and leviticus, on samuel i and ii, and on daniel ; 3. tarnovius on prophetas minores ; 4. dr. owen against arminius ; 5. a part of english annotation on bible ; 6. mr. aynsworth’s notes upon five books of moses and upon psalms.” the will continues : -" i do give to my son eliezer either a farme wh. is now used by widow goble and her son thomas goble, or my mill here in the town, or the 100 acres of land wh. lies at the nearet end of the great meadow.” it is, however, but just to mention that, before the bequest of books, the will runs, “ to my son edward (to whom i did at the time of his marriage give such portion as i was then able to give).” 1861] beauty or moral 317 judges [in past times] recommending prisoners to mercy because they could read and write: of the sixteen peers of france who have no other distinction than thought and the arts of thought, that is, writing and speaking. “we mark the aim, (animus,) and are untuned,” said goethe: i.e., the book written for the irresistible beauty or force of the story, or of the thought, in the writer's mind, we freely · read; but if we detect that miss martineau wrote the story to bolster up some dogma of political economy, and thus the book is nothing but a paid opinion, we drop the book. lo we import our theology. i remember it was gossiped of — when he returned from paris, that, though a clergyman, he had accepted all the accommodations of the palais royal. so i think we feel that deduction to the merits of behmen, of swedenborg, and of other geniuses, that, though great men, they accepted the the younger sons were thus remembered in the will, though they also very likely had previous gifts: “i do give to my son john, mr. cartwright upon rhenish testament and willett's synopsis : item to my son joseph, mr. wildersham upon the 1500h psalm, and the history of the council of trent in english, and cornelius tacitus in english, and mr. bolton on genesis 6th, concerning a christian walking with god." 318 (age 57 journal accom cw accommodations of the hebrew dynasty, and, of course, cannot take rank with the masters of the world. blessed are the unconscious. i wish the man to please himself; then he will please me. yesterday i saw rarey's exhibition in boston. what a piece of clean good sense was the whole performance, the teaching and the doing! an attack on the customary nonsense of nations in one particular. the horse does not attack you till you attack him. he does not know his own strength until you teach it him. just keep yourself then in such position that he always finds you the strongest, and he believes you invincible. make him not resist you, by always stroking and conciliating him. hold the drum or strap up to his nose, let him get acquainted with it, and he will not fear it. when he shies, whip him, and he will shy again the more, because he has not only the terror of the object, but the terror of the whip, associated. march 26. yesterday wrote to f. g. tuckerman to thank him for his book, and praised “rhotruda.” ellery channing finds two or three good 1861) william emerson 319 lines and metres in the book, thinks it refined and delicate, but says the young poets run on a notion that they must name the flowers, talk about an orchis, and say something about indians; but he says, “i prefer passion and sense and genius to botany.” ellery says of tennyson, “what is best, is, the things he don't say." most men believe that their goodness is made of themselves. others have the converse opinion. what a probity has william emerson.' it shines in all his face and demeanour. he has never analysed or inquired into it. but if he thinks at all, he thinks it is a part of him. but, in reality, he exists from that, and all of him, but that, is caducous. lord brook, in his life of sir philip sydney, says, “of whose youth i will report no other wonder but this; that though i lived with him, i his elder brother william, mentioned in earlier volumes, continued through his active life the practice of law in new york, though living on the hills of staten island, where his brother waldo and his family were always welcomed. he was a man of literary tastes, thorough scholarship, and of great courtesy and observance of old-time decorum. the quotation that follows seems to have come to his brother's mind apropos of him. 320 (age 57 journal m and knew him from a child, yet i never knew him other than a man: with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years: his talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind.” see [boyhood] of gray, and of cowley, also. march 31. yesterday, march 30, at the club, which now numbers twenty (agassiz, appleton, cabot, dana, emerson, forbes, hawthorne, hedge, hoar, holmes, howe, longfellow, lowell, motley, norton, peirce, sumner, ward, whipple, woodman), we had present twelve members; and [as] guests, mr. booce (bruce?) of new york, mr. couthouy, mr. rowse. ic we might call our age the age of renaissance. we have recovered the elgin marbles, nineveh, the pyramid frescoes, cicero de republica, the tischendorf manuscript, the champollion inscriptions, giotto's head of dante, milton's christian doctrine; reading of papyri; publication of sanscrit vedas, twenty-five thousand years old; the forms and faces of the people of pompeii buried 1861] boston course 321 in the ashes of vesuvius; the accurately determined age of men of the stone, bronze, and iron ages; the lacustrine remains; the insight into mythology, alike everywhere in its element; recovery of antique statues; reconstruction of the ground-plan and elevation of temples which war, earthquake, and iconoclasts of all creeds had not been able to utterly disintegrate. april. [beginning early in the month, mr. emerson gave a course of lectures in boston; i, genius and temperament; ii, art; iii, civilization at a pinch (this, no doubt, was specially adapted to the new and hopeful conditions, for the war had begun that promised to solve the distressing problems of the last few years); iv, some good books; v, poetry and criticism in england and america; vi, boston. abstracts from the manuscripts of some of these lectures remaining are found in mr. cabot's memoir (appendix f), but a large part of the matter is incorporated in essays later printed.] april 5. when somebody said to rev. dr. payson, “how much you must enjoy religion, since you live always in administering it,” he replied, that 322 (age 57 journal nobody enjoyed religion less than ministers, as none enjoyed food so little as cooks. bishop clark, of rhode island, told of a dispute in a vestry at providence between two hot church-members. one said at last, “i should like to know who you are.” — “who i am!” cried the other, “who i am! i am a humble christian, you damned old heathen, you!” one capital advantage of old age is the absolute insignificance of a success more or less. i went to town and read a lecture yesterday. thirty years ago it had really been a matter of importance to me whether it was good and effective. now it is of none in relation to me. it is long already fixed what i can and what i cannot do.' ... great are the benefits of old age ! see swift's letter on old age; also, “old age is frowzy.” old men are drunk with time. the brook sings on, but sings in vain wanting the echo in my brain. in youth, the day is not long enough. i well i the rest of the paragraph is printed in “old age” (society and solitude, p. 326). rem 1861] nature's art. boys 323 remember my feeling (say in 1823, or 1824) that a day of eighteen hours would accommodate my plans of study and recreation much better than our poor copernican astronomy did. d . pliny says, “and luxury ceases not to busy itself, in order that as much as possible may be lost whenever a conflagration happens.” (bohn's translation, vol. vi, p. 221.) april 18. art. yesterday i read my lecture on art. i add: there are as many orders of architecture as creatures, or tenants, or reasons for erecting a building; a seashell, a bird's nest, a spider's web, a beaver-dam, a muskrat's house, a gopher's, a rabbit warren, a rock-spider's silver counterpane over its eggs, a cocoon; a woodpecker's hole in a tree; a field-mouse's gallery, wasppaper, a beehive, a lamprey's pyramid are examples. so a tree, so the shape of every animal, is the structure, the architecture, which nature builds for a purpose, which rules the whole building and declares itself at sight. boys. i delight to see boys, who have the same liberal ticket of admission to all shops, factories, armories, town meetings, caucuses, 324 journal [age 57 mobs, target-shootings as flies have;'... and i desire to be saved from their infinite contempt. if i can pass with them, i can manage well enough with their fathers. may 3. wednesday, i read my lecture on good books to the class.” an affecting incident of the war occurred on the arrival of the fifth regiment (of massachusetts) at springfield,' received with such enthusiasm by the people that a funeral procession, passing by, stopped, and joined in the cheers with which the troops were hailed. [see boston journal of tuesday, april 23.] the national intelligencer says of the arrival and performance i for the remainder of the long passage thus beginning see “ education ” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 138, 139). 2 a class, mainly of ladies, in some small hall or private parlour in boston. 3 this was on the way to washington. the concord company, at that time part of the sixth regiment, massachusetts volunteer militia, left the village on the nineteenth of april — auspicious day — under command of lieutenant george l. prescott, a brave and good man, who, as colonel of the thirty-second massachusetts regiment, was killed in battle before petersburg in july, 1864. 1861] war clears the air 325 of the massachusetts eighth regiment at annapolis, that probably no other regiment in the country could do what this regiment did, -put a locomotive together, lay the rails on the broken railroad,' and bend the sails of a man-of-war (the frigate constitution), which they manned. men delight in being well governed. when two men meet, one of them usually offers his vacant helm to the hands of the other. the country is cheerful and jocund in the belief that it has a government at last. the men in search of a party, parties in search of a principle, interests and dispositions that could not fuse for want of some base, — all joyfully unite in this great northern party, on the basis of freedom. what a healthy tone exists! i suppose when we come to fighting, and many of our people are killed, it will yet be found that the bills of mortality in the country will 1 a most interesting account of the fitness for all work of this, the essex county regiment, was published in the atlantic for june, 1861, written by the brave and accomplished theodore winthrop, then a private in the new york seventh regiment, who witnessed the performance. winthrop fell in the battle of big bethel in june. he was then major in a new york regiment. 326 [age 58 journal show a better result of this year than the last, on account of the general health ; no dyspepsia, no consumption, no fevers, where there is so much electricity, and conquering heart and mind. so in finance, the rise of wheat paid the cost of the mexican war; and the check on fraud and jobbing, and the new prosperity of the west will pay the new debt. (from dl) may 25. read “ doctrine of leasts” at mrs. parkman's. should have cited, but did not, swedenborg's saying, “ to construct a philosophy is nothing more than to give the best attention to the operations of one's own mind.” swedenborg said, “ touch apprehends the surfaces of parts; taste and smell, the surfaces of parts of parts. “everything is a series, and in a series.” — swedenborg. “hell itself may be contained within the compass of a spark.” – thoreau. use the low style. build low. mr. downer said the “snuggeries” in dorchester kept their tenants; the airy houses on the hills soon lost them. s 1861] a bad cause. horizon 327 i have heard that colonel wainwright (was it, or what gay gentleman ? ) took allston out to ride one day; allston painted out of that ride three pictures. faraday's subjects were, a tea-kettle, a chimney, a fire, soot, ashes, etc. [remember] nature's low fare system. (from gl) southerners do not shrink from the logical construction of their premises because it is immoral: neither will they shrink from the practical result, because it is degrading. “ short is the date of all immoderate fame, it looks as heaven our ruin had designed, and dared not trust thy fortune and thy mind.” dryden. our horizon is not far, say, one generation or thirty years, — we all see so much.' 'tis an inestimable hint that i owe to a few persons of fine manners, and is still as impressive, when i now rarely see them, as of old. ... 1 see « character” (lectures and biographical sketches). 2 the rest is printed in letters and social aims (pp. 79, 80). 328 journal (age 58 july. [on july 10, by invitation of the students, mr. emerson gave an address at tufts college. most of the matter is printed (in the centenary edition of the works only) under the title “ celebration of intellect.” (see natural history of intellect, pp. 111-132.) mr. cabot gives an abstract in appendix f of the memoir, pp. 780–782.] the southerners cannot sufficiently express to mr. russell their contempt and detestation of the northerners. meantime, they are carefully sending their wives and children to the northern states for protection during the war. “ dante is picturesque, for he is in an outward world where he feels forms as persons, and, while he feels as a child in a company, he only affirms facts, (rather than meets the idea as goethe does: he tells how nature has acted toward human persons who are forms, and he sees the power as lights of them, as we do in life, and describes them as forms and in the places which give us the fact. milton is picturesque in a grander and less outward [manner?] because he gives us character, though generally 1861) taste. freedom of boys 329 and outwardly, so individually [word omitted] to the forms of satan and eve.” —c. k. newcomb. he basked in friendships all the days of spring you have power or taste. but taste is power passive or feminine. and every one has some. take your stereoscope among your acquaintances and see how many find delight in it. try on the new poem, and see how many it will fit. on notable persons. people receive as compliment the freedom of cities. 'tis a sham gift, like so many of our doings. the personage, 't is likely, who receives it, is some poet, or some politician. what freedom will it give him?not of the river, for he cannot swim or row; not of the woods, for he is no hunter, and looks on the woods as a place to be avoided; not the hills, he has not the least inclination to climb barren mountains. i cannot see that the freedom of such a town as ours can be given to any adult who does not possess it already. but they who have the freedom of the town are the boys, who use the brook, the pond, the river, the use 330 journal (age 58 woods, the cliffs, the wild orchards, and huckleberry pastures. the misfortune of war is that it makes the country too dependent on the action of a few individuals, as the generals, cabinet officers, etc., who direct the important military movements, whilst, in peace, the course of things is the result of the movement and action of the great masses of citizens. august 5. the war goes on educating us to a trust in the simplicities, and to see the bankruptcy of all narrow views. the favourite pet policy of a district, the épicier party of boston or new york, is met by a conflicting épicier party in philadelphia, another in cincinnati, others in chicago and st. louis, so that we are forced still to grope deeper for something catholic and universal, wholesome for all. thus war for the union is broader than any state policy, or tariff, or maritime, or agricultural, or mining interest. each of these neutralizes the other. but, at last, union party is not broad enough, because of slavery, which poisons it; and we must come to “emancipation with compensation to the loyal states," as the only broad and 1861) relief of war. hodson 331 firm ground. this is a principle. everything else is an intrigue. i wrote to cabot, that, huge proportions as the war had attained from despicable beginnings, it is felt by all as immensely better than the so-called integrity of the republic, as amputation is better than cancer; and we find it out by wondering why we are so easy at heart in spite of being so beaten and so poor. a rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to me.' ca hodson's life, like this war, this teaching war, is a good chapter of the bible which the nations now want. self-help; trust against all appearances, — against all privations, in your own worth, and not in tricks and plotting. lose the good office, lose the good marriage, lose the coveted social consideration, that seem within your reach, if they do not constitutionally belong to you, but must be won by any i see “ inspiration” (letters and social aims, p. 272). 2 twelve years of a soldier's life in india, the life of captain william s. r. hodson, by his brother, with an introduction by his schoolmate at rugby, thomas hughes. mr. emerson was much pleased by this spirited story of a commander of native cavalry during the indian mutiny. hodson was the captor of the king of delhi. his scho, lodson ; life in 332 (age 58 journal shadow of intrigue, any departure from that utterly honest, solid, and venerable self-existency which you are. honour shall walk with me, though the footway is too narrow for friendship or success, or what is called power; and the great sacrifices which directly become necessary in such a resolution, force us on new and grander thoughts, open the eyes to the angels who attend us in phalanxes. all the pleasure and value of novels is in the exhibition of this poetic justice, the triumphs of being over appearance. in talking with alcott of ontology, etc., i said that few people were entitled to make the catalogue of the powers and the order of genesis ; that the great primal powers will not sit for their portraits, and are ever melting into each other, — dodging, one might almost say, behind each other, — and it is only a plato, a bacon, or a kant, that may presume to rank them, nor he but delicately and diffidently. alcott said, “yes, he must make up a ladder of lightning, and efface all the steps as he passed up or down.” there is always a larger consideration, just ahead, which the mind can be stimulated to 1861] the capital. repair 333 apperceive, and which is the consolation and the energy which in dulness and despair we need. if we americans should need presently to remove the capitol to harrisburg, or to chicago, there is almost nothing of rich association with washington city to deter us. more's the pity. but excepting webster's earlier eloquence, as against hayne, and john quincy adams's sublime behaviour in the house of representatives, and the fine military energy of jackson in his presidency, i find little or nothing to remember. it seems that i should like to have the statistics of bold experimenting on the husbandry of mental power. in england, men of letters drink wine ; in scotland, whiškey ; in france, wine; in germany, beer. in england, everybody rides in the saddle. in france, the theatre and the ball occupy the night. in this country, we have not learned how to repair the exhaustions of our climate. is the sea necessary in summer? is amusement, is fishing, is bowling, hunting, jumping, dancing, one or all needful? tristram (?) took care to fight in the hours 334 journal (age 58 when his strength increased, for from noon to night his strength abated. resources. if you want plinlimmon in your closet, caerleon, provence, ossian, and cadwallon, — tie a couple of strings across a board, and set it in your window, and you have a wind-harp that no artist's harp can rival. it has the tristesse of nature, yet, at the changes, a festal richness ringing out all kinds of loftiness.” sounds of the animals and of the winds, waters, and forest, are for the most part triste, whip-poor-will, owl, veery, night-hawk, cricket, frog, and toad, but the thrush, song sparrow, oriole, bobolink, and others are cheerful. ness sir robert wilson wrote:-“i transmit a piece of my new order ribbon. it is not beautiful, but 1 this passage, though printed in “inspiration,” is retained here because mr. emerson kept in his study an æolian harp, and, when the wind blew freshly, loved to place it in the western window. he delighted in this instrument played fitfully by the wind, though he cared little for piano or violin. the instrument was not of so rude domestic construction as one might infer from the description in the essay, but was made by the skilful hands of his wife's brother, dr. jackson, in his youth. for mr. emerson's delight in its singing see his poems • the harp” and “ maiden speech of the æolian harp." 1861] war a teacher 335 it becomes so when cannon-smoked.” “ bonaparte knows that every frenchman is a soldier in six weeks, — an advantage not appertaining to any other state.” “ every bullet has its billet,” “ but the men must have shoes.” the british nation is like old josiah quincy, always blundering into some good thing. “there are limits beyond which france cannot be beat back, and it is the part of a statesman to ascertain those limits, and not to force down public spirit to that point where the bounding spring destroys the hand that so unskilfully compressed its elastic power.” — sir robert wilson. the war is a great teacher, still opening our eyes wider to some larger consideration. it is a great reconciler, too, forgetting our petty quarrels as ridiculous:“on such a shrine, what are our petty griefs ? let me not number mine.” but to me the first advantage of the war is the favourable moment it has made for the cutting out of our cancerous slavery. better that 336 (age 58 journal war and defeats continue, until we have come to that amputation. i suppose, if the war goes on, it will be impossible to keep the combatants from the extreme ground on either side. in spite of themselves, one army will stand for slavery pure; the other for freedom pure. “famâ bella stant."'quintus curtius. ever the fortune of bonaparte turned. there is only one that is strong and unfailing, — god, nature, “ general causes,” if you wish to veil the power under neutral names. a nation never falls but by suicide. bonaparte conquered by using sense against nonsense, direction against indirection, geometry against red tape, nepotism, feudality. but presently he adopted falsehood, red tape, nepotism, and it became a question of numbers, and down he went. .: phelistune. i am at a loss to understand why people hold miss austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of english society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. never was life so 1 wars hold their own through fame. no 1861) miss austen. hatteras 337 pinched and narrow. the one problem in the mind of the writer in both the stories i have read, persuasion, and pride and prejudice, is marriageableness. all that interests in any character introduced is still this one, has he or she] the money to marry with, and conditions conforming? 'tis “the nympholepsy of a fond despair,” say, rather, of an english boarding-house. suicide is more respectable. september 1. when the troops left at fort hatteras wake up the next morning, they look out at their conquest with new eyes. if their commander knows what to do with it, the feeling of victory continues; but if not, they already are the timorous apprehensive party. a day in carolina or elsewhere is a splendour of beauty and opportunity to a rational man; to an ox, it is hay, grass, and water. 'tis heavy to an idle, empty man, for it will defeat him. the physician if he apply blister or external inflammation 1 the entrance of hatteras inlet and expulsion of the confederates from that region, infested by blockade-runners, between albemarle and pamlico sounds, was one of the first encouraging successes of the war. it was accomplished by commodore stringham and a land force of 860 men commanded by general butler, august 29. 338 journal (age 58 gives a drop or pill internally for the sake of reaction; and a day is an inflammation of nature, which requires an idea or purpose in the man to counteract. in the midst of stupendous difficulties, napoleon is cheerful and fat, because he sees clearly what to do, and has it to do. september 9. last night a pictorial dream fit for dante. i read a discourse somewhere to an assembly, and rallied in the course of it to find that i had nearly or quite fallen asleep. then presently i went into what seemed a new house, the inside wall of which had many shelves let into the wall, on which great and costly vases of etruscan and other richly adorned pottery stood. the wall itself was unfinished, and i presently noticed great clefts, intended to be filled with mortar or brickwork, but not yet filled, and the wall which held all these costly vases, threatening to fall. then i noticed in the centre shelf or alcove of the wall a man asleep, whom i understood to be the architect of the house. i called to my brother william, who was near me, and pointed to this sleeper as the architect, when the man turned, and partly arose, and muttered something about a plot to expose him. 1861) woman of damascus 339 when i fairly woke, and considered the picture, and the connection of the two dreams, – what could i think of the purpose of jove who sends the dream? va my long-sought story i find in joinville, histoire de saint louis. “whilst the king was at acre, the sultan of damascus sent to him messengers, and complained to him much of the emirs of egypt who had slain his cousin the sultan, and promised the king, that, if he would aid him, he would deliver to him the kingdom of jerusalem, which was in his hand. the king decided that he would make answer to the sultan of damascus by his own messengers. with these messengers went friar ives, the breton, of the order of preaching friars, who knew the saracenic. during their sojourn at damascus, as they were going from their hotel to the hotel of the sultan, friar ives saw an old woman who traversed the street, and carried, in her right hand, a vessel filled with fire, and, in the left, a vial full of water. friar ives asked her, “what will you do with that?' she answered him, that she would, with the fire, burn paradise ; and, with the water, extinguish hell, that it should no s wa oman ravei 340 journal (age 58 longer be'; and he asked her, 'why do you wish to do thus ?' * because,' replied she, “i wish that no one henceforth should do good to have paradise for a recompense, nor through the fear of hell, but purely for the love of god, who is so mighty, and can do all good to us' (peut nous faire tout le bien).” what inspiration in every assertion of the will: thus i find a stimulus in the first proposition of political economy, “everything in the world is purchased by labour, and our passions are only causes of labour.” (hume.) adam smith's first proposition is, “that all wealth is derived not from land, but from labour.” then again how can i read without new courage this sentence? “that security which the laws in great britain give to every man, that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour, is alone sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce.” [on september 27, mr. emerson gave an address on “ education ” (before some literary society ?) in yarmouth. it is mostly printed in “ education” (lectures and biographical sketches).] 1861] incomplete minds 341 october. lately i find myself oft recurring to the experience of the partiality of each mind i know. i so readily imputed symmetry to my fine geniuses, on perceiving their excellence in some insight. how could i doubt that thoreau, that charles newcomb, that alcott, or that henry james, as i successively met them, was the master-mind, which, in some act, he appeared. no, he was only master-mind in that particular act. he could repeat the like stroke a million times, but, in new conditions, he was inexpert, and in new company, he was dumb. the vice in manners is disproportion. 'tis right that the hearth be swept, and the lamps right, but never interrupt conversation, or so much as pass between the faces of the inmates, to adjust these things. for you lose the end in the means. every one has a new scale, and many tones are wanting in each. you shall not tax a man as frivolous, because you find him amusing himself with young people. the question is, through what length of scale does he run, and where does he lay the emphasis ? the revolving light resembles the man who oscillates from insignificance to glory, and 342 journal (age 58 every day, and all his life long. so does the waxing and waning moon. the man who can make hard things easy is the educator. whatever is dreary and repels is not power but the lack of power. eloquence is the art of speaking what you mean and are. before, all things stand enchanted, not tangible. he comes and touches them and henceforth anybody may. always let nature and reality, and not you, be at the expense of entertaining the audience. [on november 12, mr. emerson gave a lecture on “ american nationality” in the fraternity course in the music hall. mr. cabot gives an abstract of what was said in appendix f of the memoir (p. 783). the tone is hopeful. on december 29, mr. emerson read the lecture “ immortality” in the same course (printed in letters and social aims). on a sunday at some time between these two lectures he read a discourse, “truth,” before the parker congregation. this also in abstract appears in appendix f (pp. 784, 788).] i 1861) discipline. being 343 all greatness is in degree and there's more above than below. good of evil. give you a public not easily pleased, a pruner of your orations, an adversary whom you must confute and convince, and not one to whom you can dictate his opinions and his taste. “ more than the disciple trust i the sinner.” (eastern saying.) the persons generally most praised and esteemed are not those whom i most value, for the world is not receptive or intelligent of being, but intellect. but heroes are they who value being. being cannot be told, and is left alone not only because little appreciated, but that its influence is silent and quiet. the world is awed before the great, and is subdued without knowing why. if we look at the fossil remains of the earliest men and compare them with the best races of to-day, we shall have a hint that the like refinement in the type is still proceeding, and that the men of to-day cannot be organized in a more advanced age any more than the saurians in the granite of massachusetts. the homage 344 journal [age 58 paid to a great man is the expression of our own hope. “ severity is almost always a defect of memory.” — gasparin. originality. how easy it is to quote a sentence from our favourite author, after we have once heard it quoted! how unthought of before! 'tis like our knowledge of a language; we can read currently in german, but if you ask me what is german for horse, or spade, or pump, i cannot tell. 0 if you see, what often happens, a dull scholar outstripping his mates and coming into high stations, you will commonly find, on inquiry, that the successful person possesses some convivial talent; like b. s. originality. i am not sure that the english religion is not all quoted.' ... december. the war begins to turn, and mass to tell against activity. i for the rest of this passage see “ character ”' (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 1 ). 1861] brave will. writing 345 president lincoln said well, that the rebels “ carried only the ruin of their own country as ground to invoke the aid of foreign nations.” how rare are acts of will. captain ingraham became famous by taking away a subject of the united states from the austrians to whom he was a political offender. general jackson, by “assuming the responsibility”; and now commodore wilkes, by taking on his own responsibility mason and slidell. good writing, how rare! x writes affectedly or secondarily with all his talent and heat of purpose; so kingsley, and hepworth dixon, and others of carlyle's imitators. but the old psalms and gospels are mighty as ever; showing that what people call religion is literature ; that is to say, — here was one who knew how to put his statement, and it stands forever, and people feel its truth, as he did, and say, thus said the lord, whilst it is only that he had the true literary genius, which they fancy they despise. in the old grand books, there will be now and then a falsetto, as, in the cid, a moor who makes a malediction on valencia, before its fall: which is inflated, has no inspiration. but the chants of merlin or taliessin are good. a great deal of what is called luck, in literature, — not 346 journal (age 58 only in men, but in particular works. thus hogg's kilmeny. kilmeny is a true inspiration, wonderful as a chant of merlin, or sonnets of shakspeare, and how strange that it should have been written by such a muddlepate as james hogg, who has written nothing else that is not second or third rate. and our alcott (what a fruit of connecticut!) has only just missed being a seraph. a little english finish and articulation to his potencies, and he would have compared with the greatest. under the snow, the ground is covered all winter with evergreens, though not so-called, as, certain grasses, and the cinquefoil, and radical leaves of many plants, clover, whiteweed, buttercup, chickweed. read lately sir robert wilson; max müller; samuel brown's lectures; count agenor de gasparin; buckle, vol. 11. december. intellect egotistical, or, much fine metaphysics is only exultation of seeing farther than the rest. in “taliessin,” in the mabinogion, the man that feeds the fire under the pot is spattered 1861) age. boy's treasures 347 with three drops, and his eyes are opened, and he sees the danger he is in from the witch who set him to watch the pot, and he flees. suppose the three drops should spatter the crowd in the street, how many would go on to do the errand they are now running after? 1 old age. age puts the stone chapel on you to lift.' i ought to have added to my list of benefits of age the general views of life we get at sixty when we penetrate show and look at facts. i thought on the worldliness of london life: i most feel the heartlessness, when they talk of heart,“my dear fellow,” etc.; and their atheism, when they are religious. what provision stored and storing for the boy that shall be born to-morrow! here is plutarch, and scott, and milton, and shakspeare, waiting for him. what delicious songs, what i mr. emerson may refer to the task laid upon him by mr. parker to teach once more a freer religion, and from his pulpit, on sundays. king's chapel (“the stone chapel”), originally, of course, episcopalian, retained a modified liturgy, although unitarian, with a respectable and aristocratic conservatism. 348 (age 58 journal heroic tales, what delicate fancies? how they shall fit him, as if made for him only! realism. the knowledge is in the world, but the world lives as if it were not; the knowledge is all printed fairly out in books, which are on your shelves, but you are not less astonished and angry when it is spoken in church. the knowledge is familiar to you and applied every day by you in your social relations, to your visitors, and to those who you mean shall not visit you; and you are incredulous of the reality of such potency, when it is proposed to be applied in politics. si realism. paganism conquers christianity, just as greece, rome.' ... thought last night how ill agrees this majestical immortality of our popular religion with the population. will you build magnificently for rats and mice?: what could hanover street do in your eternal heaven? not once in five hundred years comes a soul organized for imi for the rest of the paragraph see “ character” (leto tures and biographical sketches, pp. 107–108). 2 the above two sentences are printed in “ immortality" (letters and social aims, p. 348). 1861) time's use. reading 349 mortal life. “time is only precious to highly organized natures.” what, then, eternity? these we see are raw recruits, — three-months' men, not to enlist for the war. do not sweep the streets to gather members for the academy, observatory. то jrnal for authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1861 upanishad; mababarata ; viasa; thales ; pythagoras; zeno; pliny the elder; martial; marcus antoninus; plotinus; taliessin; saga of burnt njal, dasent's translation; sieur de joinville, histoire de saint louis ; dante; saadi; rabelais; giles fletcher; hooker; kepler; hobbes; van helmont; clarendon; thomas fuller; jeremy taylor; cardinal de retz; cowley; molière ; dryden; henry vaughan; newton; leibnitz; defoe; swift ; lord brooke, life of sir philip sidney; maupertuis; linnæus; hume; thomas gray ; dr. alexander carlyle, autobiography; kant, general history and theory of the heavens (?); lessing; 350 journal (age 58 john adams; grattan; paley; hannah more; goethe; william blake; burns; john dalton ; john quincy adams; hegel ; samuel kirkland; josiah quincy; james hogg; jane austen, pride and prejudice and persuasion; theophilus parsons; sir robert wilson, private diary; dr. w. e. channing ; webster; adam smith; bettine brentano, correspondence with goetbe; allston; champollion; warren colburn; carlyle; alcott; henry taylor; lydia maria child ; charles kingsley; agénor de gasparin, les etats unis en 1861; henry james; robert browning; jones very; tischendorf, codex sinaiticus ; büchner, force and matter ; dr. samuel brown; thoreau ; w. e. channing; clough, bothie of tober-na-vuolicb; hodson, twelve years of a soldier's life in india; mabinogion, lady charlotte guest's translation; buckle, history of civilization; hepworth dixon; max müller, comparative mythology and science of language; herman grimm, life of michel angelo. journal washington visit plea for emancipation president lincoln the cabinet. sumner spring walks. the titmouse thoreau’s last days and death his journals wartime hopes and fears emancipation again the proclamation american nationality journal liii 1862 (from journals gl, war, and va) war is the father of all things. heracleitus. “ we sung the mass of lances from morn until the night.” “not hate but glory made these chiefs contend, and each brave foe was in his soul a friend.” lliad, book vıı. « faults lay on either side of the trojan towers.” elphinstone. [even thus early, the cost of the war began to be felt at the north, though, of course, far less than at the south. in a letter to his brother william quoted more fully in the memoir by mr. cabot, (vol. ii, p. 612), mr. emerson says: “the ist of january has found me in quite as poor a plight as the rest of the americans. not a penny from my books since last june, which usually yield five or six hundred a year. no us ir 354 journal (age 58 dividends from the banks, ... almost all income from lectures has quite ceased. meantime we are trying to be as unconsuming as candles under an extinguisher. ... but far better that this grinding should go on, bad and worse, than we be driven by any impatience into a hasty peace, or any peace restoring the old rottenness.”] (from gl) january 9, 1862. · memory. we should so gladly find the law of thoughts unmechanical: but 'tis a linked chain,-drop one link, and there is no recovery. when newly awaked from lively dreams, we are so near them, still in their sphere; give us one syllable, one feature, one hint, and we should re-possess the whole; hours of this strange entertainment and conversation would come trooping back to us; but we cannot get our hand on the first link or fibre, and the whole is forever lost. there is a strange wilfulness in the speed with which it disperses, and baffles your grasp. i ought to have preserved the medical journals notice of r. w. e. in philadelphia,' that, i given in the previous volume. ences 1862) logical defeats 355 of all the persons on the platform, mr. emerson was the least remarkable looking, etc., which i could very often match with experiences in hotels, and in private circles; as at the mayor elgie's in worcester, england. besides, i am not equal to any interview with able, practical men. nay, every boy out-argues, out-states me, insults over me, and leaves me rolling in the dirt. each thinks that 'tis he who has done it, and i know that everybody does or can as much. j. t. payne, of charlestown, said to me that he had noticed that englishmen never presume to go behind the workman whom they employ. if they order a coat, or a trunk, or a house, or a ship, they call in the proper person to make it, and they accept what he gives them; whilst an american makes himself a very active party to the whole performance. cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? you are trying to make that man another you. one's enough.'' sympathy, yes, but not surrender. when i fancy that all the farmers are despairing in the 1 see “education" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 138.). 356 (ace 58 journal drought, or the frost, i meet edmund hosmer, and find him serene, and making very slight account of the circumstance. in the cars, we all read the same fool bulletin, and smile or scowl as one man; and they who come to ask my opinion, find me only one flat looking-glass more, when i ought to have stayed at home in my mind, and to have afforded them the quite inestimable element of a new native opinion or feeling, – of a new quality. john quincy adams engraved on his seal, hæret.' the use of “occasional poems” is to give leave to originality. ... to what purpose make more big books of statistics of slavery? there are already mountains of facts, if any one wants them. ... sources of inspiration. solitary converse with nature is . . . perhaps the first, and there are 1 may it stick! 2 the rest of the paragraph thus beginning is found in “poetry and imagination ” (letters and social aims, p. 35). 3 the rest of this long passage, written for the address mr. emerson was to deliver at the end of the month at washington, may be found in “ american civilization," which essay is a part of that address. (see miscellanies, pp. 300–302.) 1862] montaigne. illusions 357 ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. ah, the spring days, summer dawns, and october woods ! talent without character is friskiness. the charm of montaigne's egotism and of his anecdotes is, that there is a stout cavalier, a seigneur of france at home in his château, responsible for all this chatting; and if it could be shown to be a jeu d'esprit of scaliger, or other scribacious person, written for the booksellers, and not resting on a real status picturesque in the eyes of all men, it would lose all its value. but montaigne is essentially unpoetic. january 16. it occurred yesterday, after my conversation with the chickadee,' that the illusions are many and pure. each has his own, and all are tripped up by one or the other. the men of hard heart and iron will, old merchants and lawyers, fall an early prey to mother deb saco, and hume, and the rappers, and converse with their dead 1 the conversation unhappily is not set down, unless the bird urged the advantage of “solitary converse with nature,” as above. it was more than six weeks later that the adventure with the chickadee that formed the basis for “ the tit. nouse" in the poems was recorded. 358 [age 58 journal au mes aunts, like dr. hare and mr.s.— and h— . meanwhile the subtlest intellectualist, alcott, runs about for books, which he does not understand, and which make a dilettante of him, and making thus scholars, his inferiors, his superiors, and forfeiting his immense and unique genius, to which all books are trivial. then again the question recurs daily, how far to respect the illusions? you cannot unmask or snub them with impunity. i know the hollowness and superstition of a dinner. yet a certain health and good repair of social status comes of the habitude and well-informed chat there which have great market value, though none to my solitude. the war is a new glass to see all our old things through, how they look. some of our trades stand the test well. baking and butchering are good under all skies and times. farming, haying, and wood-chopping don't go out of vogue. meat and coal and shoes we must have. but coach painting and bronze match-holders we can postpone for awhile yet. yet the music was heard with as much appetite as ever, and our quintettes had only to put the “ starspangled banner" into the programme, to gain my 1862) music. lowell 359 a hurra beside; but the concert could have prospered well without. and so if the union were beaten, and jeff davis ruled massachusetts, these flutes and fiddles would have piped and scraped all the same, and no questions asked. it only shows that those fellows have hitched on their apple-cart to a star, and so it gets dragged by might celestial. they know that few have thoughts or benefits, but all have ears; that the blood rolls to pulse-beat and tune; that the babe rhymes and the boy whistles; and they throw themselves on a want so universal, and as long as birds sing, ballad-singers will, and organ-grinders will grind out their bread. january 17. we will not again disparage america, now that we have seen what men it will bear. what a certificate of good elements in the soil, climate, and institutions is lowell, whose admirable verses i have just read ! such a creature more accredits the land than all the fops of carolina discredit it. long ago i wrote of “gifts,” and neglected i the biglow papers, 2d series, atlantic monthly, vol. 9, january, 1862. 360 journal (age 58 a capital example. john thoreau, jr., one day put up a bluebird box on my barn, — fifteen years ago, it must be, — and there it is still with every summer a melodious family in it, adorning the place, and singing his praises. there's a gift for you which cost the giver no money, but nothing he could have bought would be so good. i think of another quite inestimable. john thoreau (junior) knew how much i should value a head of little waldo, then five years old. he came to me, and offered to carry him to a daguerreotypist, who was then in town, and he, thoreau, would see it well done. he did it, and brought me the daguerre which i thankfully paid for. in a few months after, my boy died, and i have ever since had deeply to thank john thoreau for that wise and gentle piece of friendship. old age. as we live longer, it looks as if our company were picked out to die first, and we live on in a lessening minority. in england, i have lost john sterling, samuel brown, david scott, edward forbes, arthur clough; in rome, paul akers, mrs. browning, margaret fuller; giles waldo. here dies, last week, the excellent mary h. russell; and 1862] fluxions. the club 361 i am ever threatened by the decay of henry thoreau.' opinion. fluxional quantities. fluxions, i believe, treat of flowing numbers, as, for example, the path through space of a point on the rim of a cart-wheel. flowing or varying. most of my values are very variable, — my estimate of america which sometimes runs very low, sometimes to ideal prophetic proportions. my estimate of my own mental means and resources is all or nothing; in happy hours, life looking infinitely rich, and sterile at others. my value of my club is as elastic as steam or gunpowder, so great now, so little anon. literature looks now all-sufficient; but in high and happy conversation, it shrinks away to poor experimenting. 1 already in advanced consumption, of which disease his sister, and perhaps his father, had died. there was a constant irritant to the lungs in the house, as their black lead for the electrotypers, though ground in acton, was packed at home, and its impalpable powder settled in all parts of the house. a year before, henry became thoroughly chilled sitting in deep snow while he counted the growth-rings on the stump of a huge tree. unable to shake off his increasing cough and weakness after this exposure, he went with horace mann, jr., in the late summer of 1861, on a trip to minnesota, but without benefit. 362 journal (age 58 (from war) “ omnia sunt misera in bellis civilibus, quæ majores nostri ne semel quidem, nostra ætas saepe jam sensit : sed miserius nihil quam ipsa victoria : qua etiamsi ad meliores venit, tamen eos ipsos ferociores, impotentioresque reddit: ut, etiamsi natura tales non sint, necessitate esse ^. cogantur. multa enim victori, eorum arbitrio per quos vicit, etiam invito facienda sunt.” — cicero. letter to marcus marcellus. every principle is a war-note. though practically nothing is so improbable or perhaps impossible a contingency for me, yet i do not wish to abdicate so extreme a privilege as the use of the sword or the bullet. for the peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace. 1 in civil wars, which our ancestors never once experienced, but our times often have, all the conditions are pitiable, but none more than actual victory; for, even should it come to the better men, yet it makes them more savage, and more powerless, since even if by nature they are not so, they are forced to become so. for many acts have to be done, even against his wishes, by the conqueror at the will of those by whose help he has won. 1862) justice sovereign 363 “whilst a citizen of massachusetts can tra-verse the whole extent of the british empire, and, whatever his color, creed, or condition at home, his natural rights shall be as firmly protected as those of the queen on her throne; the moment he crosses the line which divides the slave from the non-slave states, he is subject to indignities and lawless outrage unsurpassed by the selfish cruelty of the most wild and in hospitable barbarians.” — g. w. bassett. “sovereignty ceases with the transgression of natural justice. then the sovereign, whether a monarch, or a tyrannical majority, becomes himself the culprit, and justly subject to any righteous power that may restrain him.” — idem. see to it, not that the republic receives no detriment, but that liberty receives no detriment. happily we are under better guidance than of statesmen. we are drifting in currents, and the currents know the way. it is, as i said, a war of instincts. then i think the difference, between our present and our past state, is in our favour; it was war then, and is war now, but war declared is better than undeclared war. 364 journal [age 58 the southerners complained of“ the electing of lincoln by insulting majorities.” “the wounds inflicted by iron are to be healed by iron, and not by words.” custom makes the soldier. english nationality is very babyish, and most exhibitions of nationality are babyish. american no ? pint me our commerce has somewhat grand in its power : the telegraph enterprise was grand in design, and is already of immense benefit. but our politics are petty and expectant. the government is paralyzed, the army paralyzed. and we are waiters on providence. better for us, perhaps, that we should be ruled by slow heads than by bold ones, whilst insight is withheld. yet one conceives of a head capable of taking in all the elements of this problem, the blockade, the stone fleet, the naval landings, insurrection, english ill will, french questionability, texas. governments are mercantile, interested, and not heroic. governments of nations of shopkeepers must keep shop also. there is very little in our history that rises above common1862] governments unheroic 365 place. in the greek revolution, clay and webster persuaded the congress into some qualified declaration of sympathy. once we tendered lafayette a national ship, gave him an ovation and a tract of public land (200,000 acres ?). we attempted some testimony of national sympathy to kossuth and hungary. we subscribed and sent out corn and money to the irish famine. these were spasmodic demonstrations. they were ridiculed as sentimentalism — they were sentimentalism, for it was not our natural attitude. we were not habitually and at home philanthropists, no, but timorous sharp shopmen, and each excuses himself, if he talks politics, for leaving his proper province; and we really care for our shop and family, and not for hungary and greece, except as an opera, private theatricals, or public theatricals. and so of slavery, we have only half a right to be so good; for temperament cracks the whip in every northern kitchen. government has no regard for men until they become property; then, it has the tenderest.' 1 this probably refers to the makeshift argument early in the war of allowing fugitive negroes to remain inside the union lines as “ contraband of war.” 366 journal [age 58 the thinking class are looked at inquisitively in these times by the actors, as if some counsel were expected from them. but the thinker seldom speaks to the actor in his time, but ever to actors in the next age. milton and algernon sidney were not listened to in their own time, but now are consulted with profit, and have just authority. the philosopher speaks over the heads of the contemporary audience to that advancing assembly he sees beyond; as dr. reed, of bridgewater, after he was blind, preaching one day in his church, saw the congregation, nor did it occur to him that it was strange that he should see them until he left the church, then he asked his son if he had said or done anything unusual to-day. his son said he had observed nothing more than that he spoke with unusual animation. but the doctor bethought him that he had seen the congregation, yet that the persons composing it were strange to him, and not his old acquaintances of the town ;and asked himself if it were, perhaps, an audience of persons in the spiritual world? un in lack of affirmatives, negatives. one of the best of our defences is this bad one, that, such is the levity and impatience of the 1862] negatives. england 367 mind, that tyranny and any falsehood becomes a bore at last, as well as aristides; and nations get weary of hearing of the divine origin of popery and of slavery. there came a day when union-saving became ridiculous. it is much as we used to comfort ourselves when douglas threatened to be president, that his habits were bad, and that he was killing himself with whiskey; or the assurances of louis napoleon's failing health with which the english journals periodically console their readers; or as when we meet a prosperity, because our enemy has made a blunder. we shall never be saved so. this world belongs to the energetical. england has no higher worship than fate. she lives in the low plane of the winds and waves, watches like a wolf a chance for plunder; values herself as she becomes wind and wave in the low circle of natural hunger and greed: never a lofty sentiment, never a duty to civilization, never a generosity, a moral self-restraint. in sight of a commodity her religion, her morals are forgotten. why need we be religious? have i not bishops and clergy at home punctually praying, and sanctimonious from head to foot? have they not been paid their last year's salary? 368 (age 58 journal wherever snow falls, man is free. where the orange blooms, man is the foe of man. president lincoln said well that “the rebels carried only the ruin of their own country as ground to invoke the aid of foreign nations." certainly it were happier, if energy, if genius, should appear in the government, to enact and transcend the desires of the people. but that is too much to hope for, as it is more than we deserve. for, how can the people censure the governmentas dilatory and cold,the people, which has been so cold and slow itself at home? i say it were happier, if genius should appear in the government, but if it do not, we have got the first essential element, namely, honesty. and let us hold that gift dear. our only safe rule in politics heretofore was always to believe that the worst would be done. then we were not deceived. i conceive the strength of the north to lie in (1) its moral rectitude on this matter. (2) its genius, manners, habits, tenure of land, and climate, all which indispose it to slavery. its weakness to lie in its timorous literalism. esse revolution. in 1848 a surprising discovery was, that paris was the capital of europe. both 1862] our government 369 government and people, throughout germany, took no primary step, but waited for paris, and made that their model. “c'était une génération révolutionnaire que la révolution moissonnait. car il est vrai de dire, selon le mot célèbre, que dans tous les temps, comme dans tous les pays, elle dévore ses enfans.” — gaston boissier. revue des deux mondes. the government is not to be blamed. the government, with all its merits, is to be thanked and praised for its angelic virtue compared with anything we have known for long.' ... it is impossible to extricate oneself from the questions in which your age is involved. you can no more keep out of politics than you can keep out of the frost. shall it be said of america, as of russia, “it was a fine fruit spoiled before it had ripened"? don't underestimate the wish to make out a presentable cause before foreign nations. we wish to come into court with clean hands; and, looking at our affair through the eyes of france or england or germany, through the eyes of liberal foreigners, wonderfully helps our comi for the rest of the paragraph see " american civilization” (miscellanies, pp. 302, 303). 370 journal (age 58 mon sense to rally. now the world is full of maxims to this purport: “ there can be no true valor in a bad cause.” “one omen is good, to fight for one's country.” “ye shall not count dead but living, those who are slain in the way of god.” “be sure you are right, then go ahead.” it is of immense force that you go for a public and universal end, and not for your pot and pantry. then not only england and austria, but the youth everywhere are with you : woman is with you.; genius is; religion is. otherwise, you work against the grain. you have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broadaxe chopping upward chips and slivers from a beam; — how awkward !? ... hitch your wagon to a star. do the like in your choice of tasks. let us not fag in paltry selfish tasks which aim at private benefit alone. no god will help. we shall find all the teains going the other way. charles's wain, the great bear, orion, leo, hercules. every god will leave us. let us work rather for those interests i hector's saying, in the iliad. 2 here follows the long passage, thus beginning, printed in “ civilization ” (society and solitude, pp. 27, 28). 1862] ideas win. advance 371 which the gods honour and promote : justice, love, utility, freedom, knowledge. ideas impregnable : numbers are nothing. who knows what was the population of jerusalem? 'tis of no importance whatever. we know that the saint and a handful of people held their great thoughts to the death ; and that the mob rejected and killed him; and, at the hour, fancied they were up, and he was down : when, at that very moment, the fact was the reverse. the principles triumphed and had begun to penetrate the world. and ’t is never of any account how many or how rich people resist a thought. culture. the world is full of pot-and-pan policy. every nation is degraded by the hobgoblins it worships, instead of the eternal gods. thus popery, thus calvinism, thus tariff, thus mesmerism, thus custom, thus luxury, thus slavery ; — and civility, as it advances to the light, casts away these crusts for simple food, sense, and universal modes. (from gl) indianapolis, january 26. titan i have read on this journey, and for its noble wisdom and insight forgive, what still 372 (age 58 journal annoys me, its excessive efflorescence and german superlative. how like to goethe's wilbelm meister in its culture, names, and wisdom! rome is the best part of it, and therein it resembles goethe the more. “ never was there a jar or discord between genuine sentiment and sound policy.” — burke. lan [mr. emerson was invited to the national capital to give a lecture before the smithsonian institution on january 31. in the first days of the war he had given in boston a lecture which he called “ civilization at a pinch.” this he expanded to meet the conditions of the hour,the unexpected length and magnitude of the strife, and the increased perception by the northern people that slavery was the basal cause of this upheaval and must be faced and dealt with before any lasting peace could come. negroes already flocked into every camp; a policy must be decided on. those who staid on the plantations raised the corn and bacon to feed the southern armies, and thus allowed every ablebodied white to serve in the army. from 1844, when mr. emerson made his address celebrating the success of england's act of justice and 1862] visit to washington 373 humanity by emancipating her slaves in her west indian possessions, he had always stood for emancipation in the united states, also urging a fair compensation to the “ owners.” now the hour seemed to have struck; the south had forced the issue, and a brave and just man filled the presidential chair. the gate of opportunity opened before mr. emerson to urge, perhaps in the presence of the men guiding the course of the country, the one great act of justice so long deferred which would hasten the coming of peace and wipe out a national stain.' there has been some doubt whether lincoln heard this earnest plea. mr. m. d. conway, in his emerson at home and abroad, states that the president and members of his cabinet were present. in answer to inquiries made in 1886, the librarian of congress wrote that the washington newspapers of the day, in their notices of the lecture, did not mention that these officials i it should be said that to mr. moncure d. conway — the high-minded virginian who abandoned home and his inheritance of slaves, years before the war, for conscience' sake and for freer thought, and who for his brave utterances lost his place as a settled minister in washington and in cincinnati — mr. emerson owed some of the more practical arguments used in this address as to the effect in the south of emancipation. 374 journal (age 58 cis were in the audience, and he thought it unlikely, as also did messrs. nicolay and hay, lincoln's secretaries. as for mr. lincoln, “ he was very busy at that time ; stanton, the new war secretary, having just come in, and storming like a fury at the business of his department. ... it is worth remarking that mr. emerson ... clearly foreshadowed the policy of emancipation some six or eight months in advance of mr. lincoln. he saw the logic of events leading up to a crisis in our affairs, to ‘emancipation as a platform, with compensation to loyal owners’ (his words as reported in the star). the notice states that the lecture was very fully attended.” at a much later date, miss boutwell, the daughter of the late distinguished senator from massachusetts, wrote, -“i was present at that lecture, as were also my father and mother. i have a very positive recollection that president lincoln was there; that he sat in one of the front seats. i can recall in my mind how he looked and where he sat; we were only a few seats behind him. mother and i have spoken of the fact, and father's memory confirms mine.” the greater part of this lecture is printed in “civilization” (society and solitude) and “american civilization ” (miscellanies).] 1862] president lincoln 375 (from war) visit to washington, 31 january, 1862 at washington, january 31, february 1, 2, and 3. saw sumner, who, on the 2d, carried me to mr. chase, mr. bates, mr. stanton, mr. welles, mr. seward, lord lyons, and president lincoln. the president impressed me more favourably than i had hoped. a frank, sincere, well-meaning man, with a lawyer's habit of mind, good clear statement of his fact; correct enough, not vulgar, as described, but with a sort of boyish cheerfulness, or that kind of sincerity and jolly good meaning that our class meetings on commencement days show, in telling our old stories over. when he has made his remark, he looks up at you with great satisfaction, and shows all his white teeth, and laughs. he argued to sumner the whole case of gordon, the slavetrader,' point by point, and added that he was not quite satisfied yet, and meant to refresh his memory by looking again at the evidence. all this showed a fidelity and conscientiousness very honourable to him. when i was introduced to him, he said, “oh, mr. emerson, i once heard you say in a lecture, 1 gordon was convicted and hanged for this crime. 376 journal (age 58 that a kentuckian seems to say by his air and manners, 'here am i; if you don't like me, the worse for you.'” in the treasury building i saw in an upper room a number of people, say, twenty or thirty, seated at long tables, all at work upon treasury notes, some cutting and some filling up, etc., but the quantity under their multitudinous operation looked like paper-hangings, and when i saw mr. chase, i told him i thought the public credit required the closing of that door on the promenaders of the gallery. mr. hooper told me that in the manufacture of a million notes (i think), $66 disappeared. mr. stanton, who resembles charles r. train, although a heavier and better head and eye, made a good impression, as of an able, determined man, very impatient of his instruments, and, though he named nobody, i thought he had mcclellan in mind. when somewhat was said of england, he said, “england is to be met in virginia. — mud! oh, yes, but there has been mud before. ah, the difficulty is n't outside, 't is inside.” he had heard that governor andrew had come to the city to see him 1 this was from one of the lectures in a course on “ new england” given in 1843. 1862] stanton. seward 377 about the butler-andrew difficulty. “well, why does n't he come here? if i could meet governor andrew under an umbrella at the corner of the street, we could settle that matter in five minutes, if he is the man i take him for. but i hear he is sitting on his dignity, and waiting for me to send for him. and at that rate, for i learn there are seventy letters, i don't know that anything can be done.” both sumner and i assured him that governor andrew was precisely the man to meet him cordially and sensibly without parade, and offhand. mr. seward received us in his dingy state department. we spoke as we entered the anteroom, or rather in the corridor, with governor andrew and mr. (john murray] forbes, who were waiting. sumner led me along, and upstairs, and into the secretary's presence. he began, “yes, i know mr. emerson, ..."and he proceeded to talk a little, when sumner said, “i met governor andrew waiting outside. shan't i call him in?” “oh, yes,” said seward. sumner went out and brought in him and mr. forbes. mr. seward took from the shelf a large half-smoked cigar, lighted and pulled at it. sumner went into a corner, with andrew, and mr. forbes seized the moment to say to the wo 378 [age 58 journal was an secretary that he saw there was an effort making to get gordon the slave-trader pardoned. he hoped the government would show to foreign nations that there was a change and a new spirit in it, which would not deal with this crime as heretofore. seward looked very cross and ugly at this; twisted his cigar about, and i thought, twisted his nose also, and said coarsely, “well, perhaps you would be willing to stand in his place,” or something like that, and rather surprised and disconcerted mr. forbes, but mr. forbes, seeing that, though we had risen to go, sumner still talked with andrew, went up to him, put his hands about him, and said, “don't you see you are obstructing the public business?” or somewhat to that effect, and so we made our adieus. mr. seward came up to me, and said, “will you come to church with me to-morrow, at 1074, and we will go home afterwards, and get some lunch or dinner.” i accepted, and sumner then carried me into some of the chambers of the department, into the office of mr. hunter, who has been chief clerk, i believe he said, for fourteen or fifteen years; into the library, where mr. derby presided, and where i found gurowski at his desk, growling; into the chamber where the treaties with foreign 1862) state department 379 nations, some of them most sumptuously engrossed and bound, and enclosed, were shown us, as the belgian treaty, and a treaty with the french republic signed by bonaparte, countersigned by talleyrand; and, far richer than all, the siamese treaty, and presents, — siamese, i think, not japanese treaty, tied up with rich red silken ropes and tassels, and the sublime of the tea-caddy style, written as on moonlight. then, in another chamber, the washington papers, bought of judge washington by congress for $20,000, were shown us. we opened several volumes to see the perfect method and clerical thoroughness with which washington did all his work. i turned to the page on which the opinion of marquis de lafayette was given in answer to a requisition of the general, before the battle of yorktown; volumes of original letters, etc., of washington. all these inestimable books preserved in plain wooden cabinets here on the ground floor, not defended from fire; and any eager autograph hunter might scale the windows, and carry them off. we then went to lord lyons, and had a pleasant interview. he told us that the queen had sent him the order of the bath, etc., on which sumner congratulated him. sumner in380 journal (age 58 sisted on carrying me to baron gerolt, the dean of the diplomatic corps, as the oldest resident, saying that nothing could be more charming than he and his family, his daughters looking like pastel pictures, and he told me very pleasing anecdotes of his intercourse with the baron. president lincoln had said to sumner, “if i could see lord lyons, i could show him in five minutes that i am heartily for peace.” sumner had thought nothing could be more desirable, but it would not do to come between seward and the president, nor to tell seward, who would embroil them, nor to tell lord lyons, whom it would embarrass; so he had gone to baron gerolt to state to him the president's remark, and ask his counsel. the baron was enchanted with the expression of the president, but agreed with sumner, it was impossible to put them (president and lord lyons) face to face, without grave impropriety and mischief; and seward and lyons, it seems, are strangers, and do not understand each other; whilst lyons and sumner are on the most confidential footing. well, now that the prisoners' are surrendered, sunner 1 mason and slidell, the agents of the confederacy taken by captain wilkes, u.s.n., from an english vessel, on their mission to seek help abroad. 1862 secretary chase 381 went to lyons, and told him what had passed, and he too was very much gratified with it, and thanked sumner for not telling him before, as it would only have distressed him. meantime, i did not see the baron, who was ill in bed, nor the pastel daughters. we called on the russian minister, but he was not at home. as judge chase had invited us to dine with him at 5 o'clock, we went thither, and saw his pretty daughter kate, who alone with her father did the honours of the house. mr. chase said, “ slavery was not to be destroyed by a stroke, but in detail. i have twelve thousand boys (slaves) at port royal, whom i am organizing, and paying wages for their work, and teaching them to read, and to maintain themselves. i have no objection to put muskets in their hands by and by. i have two men, mr. reynolds and edward l. pierce, who are taking the care, and i want congress to give me a little box of government, about as big as that escritoire — two or three officers, a superintendent, etc. — and i think we shall get on very well.” he and sumner appeared to agree entirely in their counsels. they both held that as soon as a state seceded, it gave up its state organization, but did not thereby touch the national governsu 382 journal (age 58 ment. the moment arkansas or mississippi seceded, they would have said, “certainly, if you do not like your state government, surrender it, and you lapse instantly into united states territory, again”; and they would have sent immediately a territorial governor to the first foot of that land which they could reach, and have established united states power in the old form. from mr. chase we went to general frémont, but unhappily he had stepped out, and mrs. frémont detained us, “ because he would surely step in again in a few minutes.” she was excellent company, a musical indignation, a piece of good sense and good humour, but incessantly accusing the government of the vast wrong that had been done to the general; how senator wade had read all their documents (wade, the chairman of the joint committee of inquiry of the two houses) and had expressed himself, in terms more terse than elegant, to her on the outrage done to frémont, and she sat wondering when the report of the committee was to burst like a shell on the government. she introduced me to major zagyoni, the captain of frémont's body guard, the hero of springfield, missouri, a soldierly figure, who 1862] mrs. fremont 383 said, that he was “as well as his inactive life permitted.” she showed me two letters of her son who had once been designed for our concord school, but when she came to find how much his reading, spelling, and writing had been neglected in his camp education, — for he could ride and perform the sword exercise, but was a shocking bad writer, she was afraid to send him among cultivated boys, and had sent him into connecticut, where he had made already great progress. she showed me two of his letters in proof, one written at his first coming to school, very rude, and one later, showing great improvement. the next morning, at 1014, i visited mr. seward, in his library, who was writing, surrounded by his secretary and some stockbrokers. after they were gone, i said, “you never come to massachusetts.” “no,” he said, “ i have neither had the power nor the inclination.” his father died early and left him the care, not only of his own family, but of his cousin's property, three fiduciary trusts, and he had much on his hands. then he early saw that whatever money he earned was slipping away from him, and he must put it in brick and stone, if he would keep it, and he had, later, obtained 384 journal (age 58 are a tract of land in chatauqua (?) county, which, by care and attention, had become valuable, and all this had occupied him until he came into public life, and for the last fifteen (?) years, he had been confined in washington. besides, massachusetts was under a cotton aristocracy, and mr. webster worked for them; he did not like them, and had as much as he could do to fight the cotton aristocracy in his own state ; so he had never gone thither on general politics. he said, “i am a peacemaker, i never work in another method. men are so constituted that the possession of force makes the demonstration of force quite unnecessary. if i am six feet high and well proportioned, and my adversary is four feet high and well proportioned, i need not strike him, — he will do as i say. on the day when the political power passed over to the free states, the fate of slavery was sealed. i saw it was only a question of time, and i have remained in that belief. i was not wise enough to foresee all that has happened since. but it is not important, all was then settled, and is turning out as i expected. all the incidents must follow, both at home and abroad. england and france are only incidents. there is no resisting this. the supreme court follows too. on is 1862] church with seward 385 grier and wayne at this moment are just as loyal as any judges.” but he spoke as if all was done and to be done by him, by the executive, and with little or no help from congress. they do nothing. “why, there are twelve points which i gave them, at the beginning of the session, on which i wished the action of the government legitimated, and they have not yet touched one of them. and i am liable for every one of all these parties whom i have touched in acting for the government. and the moment i go out of office, i shall put my property into the hands of my heirs, or it might all be taken from me by the people.”... we went to church. i told him i hoped he would not demoralize me; i was not much accustomed to churches, but trusted he would carry me to a safe place. he said, he attended rev. dr. pyne's church. on the way, we met governor fish, who was also to go with him. miss seward, to whom i had been presented, accompanied us. i was a little awkward in finding my place in the common prayer book, and mr. seward was obliging in guiding me, from time to time. but i had the old wonder come over me at the egyptian stationariness of the 386 (age 58 journal english church. the hopeless blind antiquity of life and thought — indicated alike by prayer and creed and sermon — was wonderful to see, and amid worshippers and in times like these. there was something exceptional, too, in the doctor's sermon. his church was all made up of secessionists; he had remained loyal, they had all left him and abused him in the papers. and in the sermon he represented his grief, and preached jacobitish passive obedience to powers that be, as his defence. in going out, mr. seward praised the sermon. i said that the doctor did not seem to have read the gospel according to san francisco, or the epistle to the californians; he had not got quite down into these noisy times. mr. seward said, “ will you go and call on the president? i usually call on him at this hour.” of course, i was glad to go. we found in the president's chamber his two little sons, — boys of seven and eight years, perhaps, — whom the barber was dressing and “whiskeying their hair” as he said, not much to the apparent contentment of the boys, when the cologne got into their eyes. the eldest boy immediately told mr. seward, “ he could not guess what they had got.” mr. seward “ bet a 1862) the trent affair quarter of a dollar that he could. was it a rabbit? was it a bird ? was it a pig?” he guessed always wrong, and paid his quarter to the youngest, before the eldest declared it was a rabbit. but he sent away the mulatto to find the president, and the boys disappeared. the president came, and mr. seward said, “you have not been to church to-day.” “no,” he said, “and, if he must make a frank confession, he had been reading for the first time mr. sumner's speech (on the trent affair).” something was said of newspapers, and of the story that appeared in the journals, of some one who selected all the articles which marcy should read, etc., etc. the president incidentally remarked, that for the new york herald, he certainly ought to be much obliged to it for the part it had taken for the government in the mason and slidell business. then seward said somewhat to explain the apparent steady malignity of the london times. it was all an affair of the great interests of markets. the great capitalists had got this or that stock. as soon as anything happens that affects their value, this value must be made real, and the times must say just what is required to sell those values, etc., etc. the government had little or no voice in the matter. 388 (age 58 journal “ but what news to-day?” “mr. fox' has sent none. send for mr. fox.” the servant could not find mr. fox. the president said, he had the most satisfactory communication from lord lyons; also had been notified by him, that he had received the order of the bath. he, the president, had received two communications from the french minister. france, on the moment of hearing the surrender of the prisoners, had ordered a message of gratification to be sent, without waiting to read the grounds. then, when the despatches had been read, had hastened to send a fresh message of thanks and gratulation. spain also had sent a message of the same kind. he was glad of this that spain had done. for he knew that, though cuba sympathized with secession, spain's interest lay the other way. spain knew that the secessionists wished to conquer cuba. mr. seward told the president somewhat of dr. pyne's sermon, and the president said he intended to show his respect for him some time by going to hear him. we left the president, and returned to mr. seward's house. at dinner his two sons, frederic, his private secretary, and william (i think), 1 assistant secretary of the navy. 1862] seward and newcastle 389 with miss seward, were present. mr. seward told the whole story of the conversation with the duke of newcastle. on seeing the absurd story in the english papers, he wrote to thurlow weed, to go to the duke, and ask an explanation.' mr. weed called on the duke, who said that he was exceedingly grieved that he had given publicity to the circumstances, but that the facts were substantially as they had been stated in the times. “now,” said seward, “i will tell you the whole affair as it happened. when those people came here, i gave them a precise programme for their whole journey, which they exactly kept. if they went to the prairie, it was because i had so set it down; if they went to new york or to boston, i had so directed ; if they were received at the white house, instead of being sent to a hotel in washington, i had so directed. i did not go to meet them at philadelphia, or new york, or boston, but kept away. but at last, when they were ready to leave the country, i went to albany, to dine with them at governor morgan's; there were twenty-four or twenty-five at table, and there never were people more happy than they this story seems to have been some disagreeable account of the prince of wales's reception on his tour in america. • 390 journal [age 58 were. they were entirely gratified and thankful for all that had been done for them, and at the course of the tour. the conversation lapsed at table, as it will, into tête-à-têtes, and i occasionally spoke across the table to the duke, and said to him that i had not joined them at boston or at new york; indeed, that, as there was always a certain jealousy of england in the dominant democratic party, and i wished to serve them, and keep up the most friendly feeling in the country toward them, i had avoided going too much to them. well, they all understood it, and we parted, both the prince and the duke expressed their gratitude and good feeling to me in language which i cannot repeat, it was so complimentary.” mr. seward said that his most intimate friend had been, for very many years, mr. thurlow weed, of albany. he was in habit of fullest correspondence with him on all subjects, and “every year on the first of january, mr. weed's daughter has my last year's letters bound up into a volume. and there they all lie, twelve volumes of my letters on her centre table, open to all to read them who will.” in all this talk, mr. seward's manner and face were so intelligent and amiable that i, who had thought him 1862] governor andrew 391 so ugly the day before, now thought him positively handsome. (mr. moseley told me, at buffalo, that there was a time when he thought mr. seward was in danger of being only a moral demagogue, and (i think) was only saved from it by mr. weed's influence. [written in later.]) at six o'clock, i obeyed mrs. hooper's invitation and went to dine (for the second time that day). i found mr. hooper' and his son and daughters, governor and mrs. andrew, and mrs. schuyler. governor andrew had much to say of mr. seward. he thought that he surpassed all men in the bold attempt at gasing other people, and pulling wool over their eyes. he thought it very offensive. he might be a donkey, a good many men are, but he did n't like to have a man by this practice show that he thought him one. i told him that i had much better impressions of mr. seward, but i did not relate to him any conversations. mrs. schuyler, i found, had very friendly feelings towards mr. seward, and i found he had told her the same story about the prince and newcastle. she told me how much attached i representative in congress from massachusetts. ay 392 journal (age 58 talleyrand, when in this country, had been to her grandfather, general hamilton; that, after his death, he had borrowed a miniature portrait of him of mrs. hamilton; that mrs. hamilton had begged him to bring it back to her, but he had refused and had carried it with him to france; that when colonel burr was in paris, he had written a note to talleyrand, expressing his wish to call on him, and asking him to appoint an hour. talleyrand did not wish to see him, but did not know how to decline it, so he wrote him a note, saying that he was ready to see him when he should call, but he thought it proper to say that the picture of colonel hamilton always hung in his cabinet. burr never called. i ought not to omit that, when sumner introduced me to mr. welles, secretary of the navy, and asked him if there were anything new, mr. welles said, “no, nothing of importance," and then remarked that “he observed the journals censured him for sending vessels drawing too much water, in the burnside expedition.” now, he said, this was not the fault of his department. “we [the navy] only sent seventeen [i think] vessels in all the hundred sail; and the war department sent all the rest; he had nothing to do with them, and the overdrawing vessels 1862] colfax. sumner 393 were all storeships and transports, etc., of the war department's sending." i breakfasted at mr. robbins's, with mr. sherman of the senate, and colfax of the house. in talking with the last, he said that congress had not yet come up to the point of confiscating slaves of rebel masters, no, but only such as were engaged in military service. i said, “how is it possible congress can be so slow ?” he replied, “ it is owing to the great social power here in washington of the border states. they step into the place of the southerners here, and wield the same power.” when i told sumner what seward had said to me about england, and duke of newcastle, he replied, “he has not been frank with you. i have heard him utter the most hostile sentiments to england.” ... sumner showed me several english letters of much interest which he had just received from bright, from the duke of argyll, and from the duchess of argyll, all relating to our politics, and pressing emancipation. bright writes that, thus far, the english have not suffered from the war, but rather been benefited by stopping manufacturing and clearing out their old stocks and bringing their trade into a more 394 journal (age 58 healthy state. but, after a few months, they will be importunate for cotton. the duchess of argyll sent sumner some fine lines of tennyson written at the request of lord dufferin for the tomb of his mother. the architect of the capitol is mr. walter, of boston. i spent sunday evening at the house of charles eames, late minister to venezuela, whom i knew many years since at the carlton house, new york. at his house i found many new and some old acquaintances, governor fish, governor andrew, n. p. willis, gurowski, mr. nicolay, the president's private secretary, and another young gentleman who shares, i believe, the same office,' and is also, i was told, a contributor to the atlantic monthly, but whose name i have forgotten. young robert lincoln, the president's son, was also there, and leutze, the painter, who invited me to see his pictures which he is painting for a panel in the capitol, “the emigration to the west." no military people, i think, were present. and when i went home at a late hour i was vexed to have forgotten that mr. secretary stanton had invited me to call on him at his house this evening. 1 mr. john hay. 1862] the capitol 395 i was delighted with the senate chamber in the capitol, and its approaches. i did not remember in france or in england that their legislative bodies were nobly housed. the staircase and surrounding chambers are sumptuous and beautiful. the structure is so large that i needed a guide and could not find my way out, after i left spofford. it is the fault of the building that the new wings are built in a larger style, so that the columns of the centre look small, and the capitol fronts the wrong way, its back being towards the present city of washington. it was designed that the city should occupy the other slope, and face the capitol. but the owners of the land held prices so high that people bought the other side of the capitol, and now the city is grown there. in the congressional library i found spofford, assistant librarian. he told me that, for the last twelve (?) years, it had been under southern domination, and as under dead men. thus the medical department was very large, and the theological very large, whilst of modern literature very imperfect. there was no copy of the atlantic monthly, or of the knickerbocker, none of the tribune or times, or any new york journal. there was no copy of the london saturday 396 (age 58 journal review taken, or any other live journal, but the london court journal, in a hundred volumes, duly bound. nor was it possible to mend matters, because no money could they get from congress, though an appropriation had been voted. “ quand on boit trop on s'assoupit, et pon tombe en delire ; buvons pour avoir de l'esprit, et non pour le detruire.” panard. at this hour when the magnitude of the stake is of the existence of liberty in this country, and the preservation of the liberty of mankind, when the value of a vote is a value to the whole world of sober men, i cannot affect to speak politely of the idle party who, professing to hate slavery, can divide the vote of massachusetts on this question. it is casting fire-brands and [saying,] am i not in sport? it is a dastardly treachery. they strew sugar on this bottled spider; and, as if it were a small thing; as if it were indifferent who governed, they peril the safety of mankind. i can understand it of the old who have ceased to think or to be responsible, men good in their so 1862] men and fleets 397 time but now in their easy-chairs; but for the men in their manhood to join with these for some petty griefs or personalities, or for good following and because they have eaten too much pound cake — it argues an incurable frivolity of character which has all the effect of a wilful treason. plenty of men. no lack of men in the railcars; in the hotels; going to see cubas, or booth; caravans of men going to idaho mines, to pike's peak, to lake superior. “a strong army in a good fleet, which neither foot nor horse is able to follow, cannot be denied to land where it list; for ships, without putting themselves out of breath, will easily outrun the soldiers that coast them.” “a fleet may sail in one night from point to point, what an army could not span in six days.” — sir w. raleigh. majorities, the argument of fools, the strength of the weak. one should recall what laertius records of socrates's opinion of the common people, that “it was as if a man should object against a piece of bad money, and accept a great sum of the same.” 398 journal (age 58 varnhagen von ense says, that, after all wars in germany, the aristocracy grow strong :in the “thirty years' war,”in the“ seven years'” and in the “ emancipation war.” frederic the great weeded out every officer not noble from his army. dr. erhard told of a fellow who reeled drunk out of a gin-shop, and, hearing the cannonade on account of the capture of paris, cried out, “there, do you hear? war is over, the nobility have conquered.” erhard thought this chap had shown the deepest political insight. “when the government fears, that is already a step forward” (for the people), said gans. “wenn die regierung sich furchtet, so ist das schon ein fortschritt.” – varnhagen, i, p. 29. for example. there comes a time when books, once printed with impunity, now make too much impression, and are suppressed. ectness are (from va) february. correctness very rare. it is difficult to get a new shirt made on the measures of the pattern. the value of a carpenter is that he is trained to measure exactly. but captain rich told me it is impossible to duplicate the model of a ship. and 't is said the emperor of austria, though 1862) correctness 399 he sent an architect to rome to get the dimensions of the sistine chapel, and sent mozart to write by ear the score of the miserere, failed at last to reproduce the perfect musical effect in vienna. no proof-reader believes that the author can correct his own proof; and i am sure no author believes that any reader of his verses will copy them accurately. an engraver like raffaelle morghen is as rare as a painter like raffaelle sanzio. the swedenborgians say with despair that there seems a fatality to hang over swedenborg's text, that, though with honest purpose, he cannot be correctly quoted by one out of their church. hence the inestimable value of photography. the englishman in china, seeing a doubtful dish set before him, inquired, “ quack-quack?” the chinese replied, “bow-wow.” mrs. livermore told us of a stuttering witin the west who was much offended with the rowdy manners of the son of a friend with whom he was talking. the father agreed he was very bad, but what could he do with him? “why, if he was my son, i'd app-p-point his f-f-funeral at 4 o'clock to-morrow, p.m., and i'd be sure to have him ready." 400 journal (age 58 everything good is the result of antagonisms, and the height of civilization is absolute selfhelp, combined with most generous social relation. a man must have his root in nature, draw his power directly from it, as a farmer, a miller, a smith, a shepherd, a sailor does; as bonaparte, or archimedes, or a railroad engineer, or thoreau, or agassiz does. he must be such that, set him down where you will, he shall find himself at home, shall see how he can weave his useful lines here as there, and make himself necessary to society by the method in his brain. this is self-help, and this is common; but the opposite element that makes him, while he draws all values to him, feel an equal necessity to radiate or communicate all, and combine the largest accumulation with bounteous imparting, raises the useful to the heroic. as men refine, they require manners indicating the highest style of man, and, as soon as they have seen this magnanimity, they exalt the saint as saint louis, or carlo borromeo, or the cid, or sir philip sidney, or bayard, over all the degrees in the golden book; and the church, with its martyrs and self-sacrificers, becomes adorable in their eyes. just in proportion as this healthy light comes upon the mind, it condemns the selfishness iccu 1862) thoreau and whitman 401 ness which accumulates and does not impart, and the ruder and grosser drone who does not even accumulate, but robs those who do. thoreau. perhaps his fancy for walt whitman grew out of his taste for wild nature, for an otter, a woodchuck, or a loon. he loved sufficiency, hated a sum that would not prove ; loved walt and hated alcott." “it were well if the false preacher of christianity were always met and balked by a superior, more living, and elastic faith in his audience, just as some missionaries in india are balked by the easiness with which the hindoos believe every word of miracle and prophecy, only surprised that they are much less wonderful than those of their own scriptures, which also they implicitly believe.” — h. d. t. t— ? came to see thoreau on business, but thoreau at once perceived that he had been 1 this is a rhetorical antithesis. thoreau was impatient of alcott, but did not hate him. in these days thoreau was unable to leave the house. he was utterly brave and uncomplaining, and responsive to the tender care of his mother and sister. 2 the french-canadian wood-chopper, whom thoreau liked and celebrated in his walden, had now sunk into intemperate habits. 402 (age 58 journal drinking, and advised him to go home and cut his throat, and that speedily. tdid not well know what to make of it, but went away, and thoreau said he learned that he had been repeating it about town, which he was glad to hear, and hoped that by this time he had begun to understand what it meant. the old school of boston citizens whom i remember in my childhood had great vigour, great noisy bodies; i think a certain sternutatory vigour the like whereof i have not heard again. when major b. or old mr. t. h. took out their pocket handkerchiefs at church, it was plain they meant business ; they would snort and roar through their noses, like the lowing of an ox, and make all ring again. ah, it takes a northender to do that!' it is curious how negligent the public is of the essential qualifications of its representatives. they ask if a man is a republican.' . . . but i mr. emerson, in remembering this incident of his early church-going, compared it to “ the service of the lord with horns in the tabernacle.” 2 the omitted portion of this passage on the fundamental importance of will in a public servant is printed in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 50). en i 1862] weak republicans 403 bas be a will ? can he carry his points against opposition? probably he has not. when he finds himself at washington with men of fixed ideas, with polite men from the southern and middle states, with hard-browed politicians from the border states who have no question about their view of the matter, and assume that any difference of opinion on your part is a momentary ignorance of the necessities of the position, your wise, honest republican, after making a few courteous attempts at arguing the point, and finding how weak his voice is compared with theirs, settles it in his mind that 't is of no use to talk with such people; that he can still vote against them. but those strong, wellpersuaded men have just the same power in the debate as in the hotel parlour, and give the worthy representative the same mortifying sense of incapacity there, and more mortifying, because his humiliation is exhibited on a public stage. now there is no real force in the reasons of these men. if he had presence of mind and diligence to analyze their argument, he could expose its weakness, but they have a habitual self-reliance, and a way of putting their personality over you, which he has not. this evil would be diminished if he had been long used to 404 journal (age 58 them, had come to know how much better is their onset than their real grounds and means warrant, how ignorant and vulnerable they are. but he finds them full-grown, in possession of the field, and talking down to him, and he overestimates their force. the southerners keep their representatives in congress for many years, and we commit the fault of sending new men every session.' holmes came out late in life with a strong sustained growth for two or three years, like old pear trees which have done nothing for ten years, and at last begin and grow great. the lowells come forward slowly, and henry thoreau remarks that men may have two growths like pears. march 3. the snow still lies even with the tops of the walls across the walden road, and, this afternoon, i waded through the woods to my grove. a chickadee came out to greet me, flew about i mr. emerson notes opposite this long entry, “ read at the music hall in march.” he gave a discourse there in march on “ natural religion” and in april on « moral forces,” but, unlike many congregations, mr. parker's people welcomed “ politics in the pulpit," in war time especially. 1862) the titmouse 405 within reach of my hands, perched on the nearest bough, flew down into the snow, rested there two seconds, then up again, just over my head, and busied himself on the dead bark. i whistled to him through my teeth, and (i think in response) he began at once to whistle. i promised him crumbs, and must not go again to these woods without them. i suppose the best food to carry would be the meat of shagbarks or castile nuts. thoreau tells me that they are very sociable with wood-choppers, and will take crumbs from their hands.' perched on the bough, then darts below and wrote his mark upon the snow. whistled his notes, ran through his fine gymnastic play, head downward, clinging to the spray. the little hermit, though he live apart hath a hospitable heart.' hastes when you pass his sylvan fort, to do the honours of his court as fits the owner of the land, 1 this was the meeting which mr. emerson celebrated later in « the titmouse,” in the poems. though he does not here mention the dangerous cold, that was quite probable in a march cold wave. 406 [age 58 journal flies round you, grazes your hand. taught by thy heart, i to my pet hold glad remembrance of my debt, and soon again thy comrade comes loaded with store of seeds and crumbs. thou first whilst teeming earth yields bread in sign of honour shalt be fed. voices have their various manners also. i remember when greenwood began to preach, though he indulged a playful fancy that had perhaps caught its truth from everett, yet the effect of that fine bass voice was, as if he were a rocky cliff, and these pretty descriptions only flowers and colours thereon. he could well afford them, they might bloom or fade, — he remained fast. other speakers have nothing left, but put themselves entirely into their speech, as phillips. some voices are warnings; some voices are like the bark of a dog. “ les caresses de la parole." “the cordelier said that he had found that, among believers or misbelievers, never kingdom ruined itself, or changed its master, except by defect of justice. now let the king of france take care to do true and prompt justice to his ce 1862] the cannon in mexico 407 people, for it is thereby that our lord will let him hold his kingdom in peace as long as he lives.” — joinville. pudency of goodness. the illusion that strikes me as the masterpiece of maia is the timidity with which we assert our moral sentiment.'... dr. jackson said that at jalapa, in mexico, the “army fuse” was first used by us, or first observed by the mexicans; two cannons having been left in the public square, a great crowd of mexicans ran up to capture them. when they were all rushing up in a mass, the cannons went off without any visible cannoneers and discharged shrapnel directly into the heart of the crowd. if the cannons had begun to sing, “oh, say do you see by the dawn's early light,” they would not have been more astonished, and were quite ready to believe that “ bayonets think,” and cannons also. blair rightly thinks that chase, because he was always a whig, will not have nerve. the unitarians, born unitarians, have a pale, shallow 1 for the rest of the paragraph see « perpetual forces” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 87). 408 journal (age 58 religion ; but the calvinist, born and reared under his vigorous, ascetic, scowling creed, and then ripened into a unitarian, becomes powerful, as dr. channing, dewey, horace mann, wasson, garrison, and others. so it is in politics. a man must have had the broad, audacious democratic party for his nursing-mother, and be ripened into a free-soiler, to be efficient; as jackson, as benton, as potter, wade, blair, hickman, johnson, and boutwell were. arabians say, “the horse was created a day or two before. adam.” “he fled on a mare which would catch a falling tear.” read les chevaux de sabara. [general daumas's editing of what he learned from the captive emir, abd el kader.] “ these are not courses for your horses,” said si ben zyan in conclusion, “you christians, who go from algiers to blidah, thirteen leagues, as far as from my nose to my ear, and yet believe you have made something of a journey.” these,' rightly seen, were but superficial effects, but the credence of men it is that moulds i apparently “ these ” refers to the great discoveries and inventions that have helped the lot of mankind. 1862] facts and ideas 409 them, and creates one or another surface. and the mind, as it opens, transfers very fast its choice from the circumstance to the cause, from the false to the true, from courtesy to love, from inventions to science, from law or public opinion in washington, or london, to the tyrannical idea that slowly reveals itself; from all that talent executes and vaunts, to the sentiment that fills the heart and dictates the future of nations. a new and purer moral sentiment civilizes civilization.' ... i know these powers are not often entrusted to the same hand. the hands to complete are not often given to the seeing soul. the prophet is filled with vision, and careless of its slow fulfilment in events. enough to him to behold it, and announce that which must be; careless even of its distinct declaration ; too happy in seeing its centrality and invincibility. what to him is its administration in the clumsy hands of dullmen, whom it confounds? the fire burns their hands, confounds their understandings. the higher law is a jibe ; apes and baboons chuckle and gibber over it, whilst it suffocates their laughter and decomposes them. what is a generation of able statesmen? what a demoi compare “civilization” (society and solitude, p. 33). cyc ns 410 journal (age 58 cratic party or a whig party, or a strong cabinet, or the largest political combination, the four great powers, or the five? in this august presence, they are thieves. well assured is he that what he beholds is not powerful, but power; that it measures time, and fashions its instruments. freedom does not love the hot zone. the snowflakes are the right stars of our flag, and the northern streamers the stripes.' (from war) march. w biggery. its doctrine is, — better endure tyranny according to law a thousand years than irregular and unconstitutional happiness for a day. of course, he had rather die in the hands of a physician than be cured by a quack. [here follows a newspaper cutting, president lincoln's tentative and somewhat obscure and feeble message to congress of march 6, proposing a scheme of gradual emancipation, as a war measure, for the border states, accompanied by compensation. this was rejected.] i see also “ voluntaries,” in the poems. 1862] war the tester 411 strange that our government, so stupid as it is, should never blunder into a good measure. in utah, the leading issues are not those of our national parties; yet the government invariably adopts the bad side. (from gl) marcb. war, the searcher of character, the test of men, has tried already so many reputations, has pricked so many bladders. 'tis like the financial crises, which, once in ten or twenty years, come to try the men and institutions of trade ; using, like them, no ceremony, but plain laws of gravity and force to try tension and resistance. scott, mcdowell, mcclellan, frémont, banks, butler, and i know not how many more, are brought up, each in turn, dragged up irresistibly to the anthropometer, measured and weighed, and the result proclaimed to the universe. with this dynamometer, and not so much that as rack to try the tension of your muscles and bones, standing close at hand, everybody takes the hint, drops much of brag and pretension, and shortens his speeches. the fop in the street, the beau at the ball, feels the war in the air, — the examiner, the insatiate demand for 412 journal [age 58 c a v reality, —and becomes modest and serious. the writer is less florid, the wit is less fantastical. the epicure and the man of pleasure put some check and cover on their amusements. every body studies retrenchment and economy. everybody bethinks himself how he shall behave, if worst should come to worst. it will not always serve, or may not, to stand aloof and contribute money. should we carry on a war by subscription, and politely? they will conquer who take up the bayonet, or leave their other business and apply themselves to the business of the war; the war searches character, and acquits those whom i acquit, whom life acquits, those whose reality and spontaneous honesty and singleness appear. force it requires. ’t is not so much that you are moral as that you are genuine, sincere, frank, and bold. i do not approve those who give money or give their voices for liberty from long habit and the feminine predominance of sentiment, but the rough democrat who hates garrison, but detests these southern traitors. the first class will go in the right way, but they are devoured by sentiments like premature fruit ripened by the worm. s se taneou 1862] the dying thoreau 413 (from va) the labial speech, instead of the stomachic, afflicts me in all the poetry i read, even though on a gay or trifling subject. why has never the poorest country college offered me a professorship of rhetoric? i think i could have taught an orator, though i am none. march 24. sam staples' yesterday had been to see henry thoreau. “never spent an hour with more satisfaction. never saw a man dying with so much pleasure and peace.” thinks that very few men in concord know mr. thoreau ; finds him serene and happy. henry praised to me lately the manners of an old-established, calm, well-behaved river, as perfectly distinguished from those of a new river. a new river is a torrent; an old one slow and steadily supplied. what happens in any part of this important and universally liked character of the village has been mentioned before in the journals as having been married by mr. emerson and as the constable and jailer who arrested and imprisoned thoreau, alcott, and the englishman lane for non-payment of taxes. he was always a friend of thoreau's and often acted as rodman or chainman on his surveys. 414 journal (age 58 the old river relates to what befals in every other part of it. 't is full of compensations, resources, and reserve funds. when we have a success, i wrote, it is because our adversary has made a fault. i hate that we should be saved only as providence takes care of idiots and drunkards, or, as we say, fortune favours fools. “the universe, said newton, was produced at a single cast.” – apud. st. pierre. elliot cabot quotes to me from “mommsen, who is full of good sayings,” “die schlafwandlerische sicherheit die den dichter zum dichter macht.” the somnambulic security which makes the poet a poet. c. g. leland writes me that the name of the author of the “old cove”.is henry howard brownell, of east hartford, connecticut. april 2. yesterday i walked across walden pond. to-day i walked across it again. i fancied it was 1 the amusing satire on the southern saying, “ all we ask is to be let alone,” which first brought brownell into notice. 1862) the tardy spring late in the season to do this ; but mr. thoreau told me, this afternoon, that he had known the ice hold to the 18th of april. april 9. the cold days have again arrested the melting of the ice, and yesterday i walked again across the middle of walden, from one side to the other. april 10. to-day, i crossed it again on foot. the valuable part of cottle's “reminiscences” is the account of john henderson the wonderful scholar (born at limerick, ireland), who died at oxford, in 1788, in the thirty-second year of his age. we should have an adequate sketch of cotes, of chatterton, of faryabi. spring. why complain of the cold, slow spring? the bluebirds don't complain, the blackbirds make the maples ring with the social cheer and jubilee; the robins know the snow must go, and sparrows, with prophetic eye that these bare osiers yet will hide their future nests in the pride of their foliage. and you alone, with all your six feet of experience, are the fool of the cold of the present moment, and cannot see the southing 416 (age 58 journal ut snow of the sun.' besides, the snowflake is freedom's star. see a poetical description of a calm at sea in dyer's poems. criticism. 'tis objected to florian, that there is no wolf in the story. marie antoinette said, she felt as if eating milk porridge. april 16. heard the purple finch this morning, for the first time this season. henry thoreau told me he found the blue snowbird (fringilla hiemalis) on monadnoc, where it breeds. it is never seen here in summer. red-winged blackbird sings gurgalee, and the grackle talks with it hoarsely. [later.] edward says he found the eggs of the fringilla hiemalis on monadnoc in july. april 18. the ice not broken up on walden, this very warm day, though i could not get on it from 1 this passage, turned into verse, is in the poem “ may day.” it is interesting that the association of « south” with warmth led mr. emerson unconsciously to speak of “ the southing of the sun," meaning, of course, the comfort of its return to the northern hemisphere. 1 1862] resources. thoreau 417 wyman's cottage landing. mr. channing was on the ice yesterday. addison fay' tells me that the expenditure of gunpowder in war does not compare in amount with that of peace. resources. i have earlier indicated some of my pastimes instead of whist and hunting. the chapter of these, however, is much longer, and should be most select. the first care of a man settling in the country should be to open the face of the earth to himself by a little knowledge of nature, or a great deal of knowledge, if he can, of birds, plants, and astronomy; in short, the art of taking a walk. ... may. of the most romantic fact, the memory is more romantic. see cowper's ice palace of moscow. e no [thoreau had written to a friend early in the spring, “i suppose i have not many months to live, but of course i know nothing about it. i may add that i am enjoying existence as much i superintendent of the powder-mills in acton. 2 the rest of the passage is in “ resources” (letters and social aims, pp. 151, 152). 418 (age 58 journal as ever, and regret nothing.” he died on may 6. the funeral ceremonies took place in the unitarian church. his neighbor, rev. grindall reynolds, made the prayer, mr. emerson the address (printed in lectures and biographical sketches); and a poem written by his friend channing was sung. thomas cholmondeley (pronounced chumley), an englishman from shropshire, friend of clough at oxford, but who had lived for years in new zealand, came to concord with a letter to mr. emerson in 1854. during his stay of some months in concord he boarded with thoreau's parents, and soon formed a strong friendship for him. he was quiet, open-minded, and brave, and before the end of the year returned to england to serve in the crimean war. just before sailing with his regiment, knowing thoreau's interest in the hindu scriptures, he sent him a large number of oriental works as a farewell gift. thoreau bequeathed part of these to harvard college library and part to mr. emerson. cholmondeley returned unscathed from the war, once more came to concord for a short visit after his stay in canada,,,then returned to england. he died in flo vice vo years after thoreau's death. 1862] thoreau's bequest 419 a very interesting correspondence between the friends was published by mr. f. b. sanborn (“ thoreau and his english friend thomas cholmondeley,” in the atlantic montbly, vol. 72, p. 741).] books bequeathed to me by henry d. thoreau. rig veda sanbita; first ashtaka, vol. 1, 1850; second ashtaka, vol. 11, 1854, translated by h. h. wilson; sankhya karika, translated by h. t. colebrooke; and the bhashya or commentary of gaurapada, translated by h. h. wilson, oxford, 1837 ; lotus de la bonne loi, traduit du sanscrit par m. e. burnouf, quarto, paris, 1852; le bhagavata purana, traduit par m. e. burnouf, 3 vols., quarto, paris, 1840–48; institutes of menu, translated by sir wm. jones, i vol., quarto, london, 1825; . treatise on the hindu law of inberitance, translated by h. t. colebrooke, i vol., quarto, calcutta, 1810; select specimens of the theatre of the hindus, translated from the sanscrit by h. h. wilson, in two volumes, octavo, london, 1835; 420 (age 59 journal vol. xv. of the bibliotheca indica, translated by e. roer, calcutta, 1853 ; upanishad; aphorisms of the nyaya, by gautama; english translation, i vol., duodecimo, allahabad, 1860; colebrooke's miscellaneous essays, vols. i and 2 ; vishnu purana, translated from the sanscrit by h. h. wilson, i vol., quarto, london, 1840; nala and damayanti, translated by rev. h. h. milman, 1 vol., octavo, 1835; aphorisms of the mimansa, by jaimini, sanscrit and english, 1857, pamphlet; lecture on the vedanta, pamphlet, 1860; bhasha parichchbeda, pamphlet, 1851. may 25. romance. harriet prescott has the courage of genius, as elizabeth sheppard had, whom she celebrates. it is an easy list to count off, our romantic writers; bettine von arnim, george borrow, elizabeth sheppard. there is too much vulgarity in d’israeli than that i should willingly add his name, for all the golden thread that he has woven into his diaper. 1862] romance. negro. feats 421 goethe only vitiates his claim to romance by his largeness, and by having valued himself more on his other and conventional merits. but the effect and the test of my romanticists is that they move me precisely as true poets do; as merlin, taliessin, or these few golden sentences that have come to me from the bards. much mischief from the negro race. we pretended to christianize them, but they heathenized us. the supreme court under southern dictation pronounced that, “the negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” to-day, by the rebellion, the same rule holds and is worked against the southerner: “the rebel has no rights which negro or white man is bound to respect.” the world is upside down when this dictum comes from the chief justice of the supreme court of the united states of america. resources or feats. i like people who can do things. when edward and i struggled in vain to drag our big calf into the barn, the irish girl put her finger into the calf's mouth, and led her in directly. when you find your boat full 422 journal (age 59 of water at the shore of the pond and strive to drag it ashore to empty it, tom puts a round stick underneath, and 'tis on wheels directly. june 6. romance. if we could tell accurately the evanescing effects of an imaginative book on us as we read! thus milman's translation of nala and damayanti is nearer to my business and bosom than is the news in to-day's boston journal. and i am admonished and comforted, as i read. it all very nearly concerns me. we are elevated by beauty. i walk in marble galleries and talk with kings the while. to my chapter on the celebration of intellect belongs the incident of nala's exchange of his skill in horses for rituparna's skill in dice or in mathematics. wholes. the correspondence, or balance, everywhere. if the host has duties, so has the guest. if i receive good news every day, and give none of myself, i am in false position, am a consumer and not a producer. what right has any one to read in the journal accounts of victories, if he has not bought them by his own valour, treasure, or personal sacrifice, or by 1862] a clear eye. writing 423 service as good in his own department? beware that national victories are not private defeats to you and me. a clear eye will find keeping and tie in all the circumstance, and its origin in self; will feel itself complimented equally by invitation and neglect. it is served by privacy as by crowds, itself tinges the sky with cherries and roses, or with ink. in the garden, put pansies that make mouths at you, every one droller and more elfish than the last, ... as if you had punch done in flowers. 'tis inexcusable in a man who has messages to men, who has truths to impart, to scribble flourishes. he should write that which cannot be omitted; every sentence a cube, standing on its bottom like a die, essential and immortal. when cities are sacked and libraries burned, this book will be saved, — prophetic, sacred, a book of life. for, truly considered, the work of writers is like that of capitalists. ... carlyle's third volume of friedrich a masterpiece; how sovereignly written, above all liter424 journal [age 59 ature, dictating to the world below, to citizens, statesmen, scholars, and kings, what they shall think and accept as fatal and final for their salvation. it is mankind's bill of rights, the magna charta, or declaration of independence, or right royal proclamation of the intellect ascending the throne, announcing its good pleasure that hereafter, as beretofore, and now once for all, the world shall be governed by common sense and law of morals, or shall go to ruin.' ... the disinfecting process, the untuning, who counts these in his economy of day and life? yet not to count these is to estimate by shows for substances. the man mcclellan ebbed like a sea. art. two things in picture: (1) representation of nature, which a photograph gives better than any pencil, and a camera obscura better than a photograph, and which is a miracle of delight to every eye. i the above sentence and much more that follows mr. emerson wrote to his friend in praise of the frederick the great. see correspondence (vol. 11, pp. 279, 280). 1862] art. thoreau's choice 425 (2) an ideal representation, which, by selection and much omission, and by adding something not in nature, but profoundly related to the subject, and so suggesting the heart of the thing, gives a higher delight, and shows an artist, a creator. i read a good sentence of general scott's in the newspaper, that“ resentment is a bad basis for a campaign.” june. henry thoreau' remains erect, calm, selfsubsistent, before me, and i read him not only truly in his journal, but he is not long out of mind when i walk, and, as to-day, row upon the pond. he chose wisely no doubt for himself to be the bachelor of thought and nature that he was, — how near to the old monks in their ascetic religion! he had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. perhaps he fell — all of us do— into his way of living, without forecasting it much, but approved and confirmed it with later wisdom.? 1 that is, his memory. 2 the last three sentences occur in “ thoreau ” tures and biographical sketches, p. 454). (lec426 (age 59 journal i find myself much approving lately the farmer's scale of living, over the villager's. plain plenty without luxury or show. this draws no wasteful company, and escapes an army of cares. what a ludicrous figure is a village gentleman defending his few rods of clover from the street boys who lose their ball in it once a day! june. i know a lady who has that sovereign sweetness of temper that she receives the simplest details of any statement of any business from woman or child with such happy anticipating intelligence, that it acquires at once importance, breadth, and better intent, from her welcome. mrs. ripley used to say in waltham, “i bless god every day for mary ripley's' existence.” so think i of my benvenuta. freckles are beautiful — in lilies. “there is sport in the boy's water-mill, which grinds no corn, and saws no logs, and yields no money, but not in the man's.” — thoreau, journal. peter robbins assured henry that yesterday's rain had not reached the potatoes after i her daughter, who became mrs. george l. simmons. miss ellen ticker emerson 1862) scraps from thoreau 427 all. “exorbitant potatoes!” henry adds; "it takes very serious preaching to convert them.” “every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”—thoreau. if there is a little strut in the style of henry, it is only from a vigour in excess of the size of his body. i see many generals without a command, besides henry. there is somewhere a pillar of rock, called “ adam's peak,” but that is not the usual style of nature ; not a column, not granite beanpole or flagstaff, but a mountain with due support; the nucleus may be a rocky shaft, but, unsupported, it would soon fall, as a bean-pole at the first storm. so it is with eminent men. a fine genius always implies some society of its mates, if unequal. what a new face courage puts on everything! 'tis the difference of midday from midnight. ah! the inconvertibility of the sentimentalist, the soul that is lost by mimicking soul.'... a deep aping or mimicry that has adhered like a parasite, until it sucks the vital juices, and 1 much is omitted from the passage, as being printed in social aims (pp. 105-106). 428 [age 59 journal makes the malformations as of false flowers on shrubs, which are found to be stingings of insects, or the warts on the plum tree. . . . in a world where a remedy exists for every mischief is there none for the sentimentalist, if it were only a boy's cracker to silence cats under dormitory windows! the points that glowed a little in yesterday's conversation were that the north must succeed. that is sure; was sure for thirty or sixty years back, was in the education, culture, and climate of our people; they are bound to put through their undertakings. . . . our success is sure. its roots are in our poverty, our calvinism, our schools, our thrifty habitual industry, in our snow, east wind, and farm life, and sea life. these able and generous merchants are the sons and grandsons of farmers and mechanics and sailors. in the caprice and credulity of people, all these rumours and opinions take their rise, to which whigs and statesmen and cities attach great weight, shaking their heads, and looking grave. “but kentucky, but baltimore, but wall street, and state street.” “aye, be sure we had not thought of that.” the rumours, the opin1862] the wind of battle 429 ions are allowed to have importance, and therefore we must wait, and congress is justified and the president is right in caution, and in suspending his purpose. but by listening thus in here, and out there, to each new report, one is left in a chronic puzzle, and incapacity to move. by and by, a strong wind of a battle or of one energetic mind appears, and the whole drift and scud, with all its forms of bears, mountains, and dragons, vanishes out of sight, and the plain way of reason and right reappears once and forever. why did we not obey it? this, only this, persists to be, and is forever wisdom and power. reading. i wish only to read that which it would be a serious disaster to have missed. now how many foreign or domestic opinions on our war shall i suffer from not knowing? i do not know that lord palmerston or lord russell's opinion or existence is of the least importance. not that fly of less. the human mind cannot be burned, nor bayonetted, nor wounded, nor missing. thoreau. “if you would obtain insight, avoid anatomy.” “it requires so much closer attention to the 430 · journal (age 59 habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, i am willing to omit the gun.” if we should ever print henry's journals, you may look for a plentiful crop of naturalists. young men of sensibility must fall an easy prey to the charming of pan's pipe. [out of many pages of mr. emerson's selections from thoreau's journals a few are given here.] “the river is my own highway, the only wild and unfenced part of the world hereabouts.” “how much of the world is widow's thirds, with a hired man to take negligent care of it.” “the constant inquiry which nature puts, is, *are you virtuous ? then you can behold me.' beauty, fragrance, music, sweetness, and joy of all kinds, are for the virtuous. that i thought when i heard the telegraph harp to-day.” june, 1852. “the perception of beauty is a moral test.” “how watchful we must be to keep the crystal well, that we were made, clear, – that it be not turbid by our contact with the world, so that it will not reflect objects. what other liberty is there worth having, if we have no 1862] thoreau's journal 431 freedom and peace in our minds, if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool ? ” “i look back for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.” “men may talk about measures till all is blue and smells of brimstone, and then go home and sit down and expect their measures to do their duty for them. the only measure is integrity and manhood.” “i am not so much reminded of former years as of existence prior to years.” “ah, how i have thriven on solitude and poverty. i cannot overstate this advantage.” “if i would preserve my relation to nature, i must make my life more moral, more pure, and innocent. the problem is as precise and simple as a mathematical one. i must not live loosely but more and more continently.” “the air over these fields is a foundry full of moulds for casting bluebirds' warbles.” (of the seasons and winter) “it is solid beauty. it has been subjected to the vicissitudes of millions of years of the gods, and not a single superfluous ornament remains. 432 journal [age 59 the severest and coldest of the immortal critics shot their arrows at and pruned it, till it cannot be amended.” “at this season (10 may) the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance of fairy land, and there will surely be found the yellow bird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tcbe tche tche — tcha tcha tcha. ah willow, willow! ah, could not he truly arrange for us the difficult family of the willows better than boner or barrett of middletown!” (from war) [at the battle of bull run, on july 21 of the previous year, two sergeants and three privates of the concord company of the fifth massachusetts regiment were taken prisoners. after months of confinement, successively at richmond, new orleans, and salisbury, north carolina, they were exchanged, and returned safely to concord in june. the following are evidently notes of what mr. emerson said on the occasion of welcoming them home.] you men who come back have not lost your time. certain truths have been imprinted on 1862) returned prisoners 433 you. you have seen the world. you have learned somewhat of your country. without dishonour you have seen virginia and carolina. it has been true, though people have tried to disguise it for years, that a man of the free states could not travel on his necessary business in that country without seeing or hearing something on which it was necessary he should shut his eyes and his ears. if he said what he thought, he was certain of injury or insult; if he did not speak, he lost his own respect. you have been able to see and hear much disagreeable truth, without loss of your own honour. no one will hereafter be able to persuade you that no state of society is sweet and happy and enlightened, unless it is founded on stealing. you can teach us, and i know that your votes, your charities, your plans of life, and courses of action will draw incessantly on this painful experience of the last year. you have earned the freedom of this town and this state. we welcome you home to the houses and lands that are dear to you, to your old companions and to new friends. we shall never see you without respect and gratitude. — these are they who bore our sins on their shoulders, and by their sufferings we are at peace. sweet are the uses of adversity, and i am sure 434 journal (age 59 that many a time in these weary weeks by night and by day, our quiet landscape, the silent river and the inland ponds and the plain houses thereby have loomed up in your fancy; and fairhaven and walden pond, and nine acre corner, and the east quarter schoolhouse, you would have given a month's wages to look upon. (from va) july. i suppose the war does not recommend slavery to anybody. if it cost ten years of war, and ten to recover the general prosperity, the destruction of slavery is worth so much. but it does not cost so much time to get well again. how many times france has been a warfield ! every one of her towns has been sacked; the harvest has been a hundred times trampled down by armies. and yet, when you suppose, as after the first napoleon's time, that the country must be desolate, a year's labour, a new harvest, almost the hours of one perfect summer day create prodigious wealth, and repair the damage of ten years of war. i read with entire complacency that part of the history of art when the new spiritualism set 1862] grandeur. mcclellan 435 the painters on painting the saints as ugly and inferior men, to hint the indifferency of all circumstance to the divine exuberance, and i remember this with great satisfaction at the photographist's shop. matthew arnold writes well of “the grand style,” but the secret of that is a finer moral sentiment. 'tis very easy for alcott to talk grandly; he will make no mistake. 'tis certain that the poetic temperament of channing will utter lines and passages inimitable by any talent.' “ cette splendeur d'expression qui emporte avec elle la preuve des grandes pensees.” vauvenargues. collins and gray are examples in english verse, and aunt mary in prose, and plotinus and proclus in prose. labour hides itself in every mode and form.? ... why are people so sensitive about the reputation of general mcclellan? there is always 1 yet mr. emerson was constantly impatient of his discords and wilful neglect to mend his poems. 2 the rest of the passage occurs in “ perpetual forces” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 75). 436 (age 59 journal something rotten about a sensitive reputation. besides, is not general mcclellan an american citizen? and is it not the first attribute and distinction of an american to be abused and slandered as long as he is heard of? le terrible don de la familiarité remains important. a man's connections must be looked after. if he surpasses every body in mother wit, yet is scholar like the rest, be sure he has got a mother or father or aunt or cousin who has the uncorrupted slang of the street, the pure mud, and which is inestimable to him as spice and alterative, and which delights you in his rhetoric, like the devil's tunes when put to slow time in church-music. all aunt mary's language was happy, but inimitable as if caught from some dream. the art of the writer is to speak his fact and have done. let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing, because you have omitted every word that he can spare you are annoyed — are you? — that your fine friends do not read you. they are better friends than you knew, and have done you the rarest service. now write so that they must. when 1862] conceit. wood-sights 437 it is a disgrace to them that they do not know what you have said, you will hear the echo. benefit of conceit. when you next write on conceit, have the good nature to see it as it is, a balsam, a sugar on the lip of the cup to sweeten the sad potation to all mortals. how kind this keeping the eyes shut! the little rhymester is just as much pleased with his vers de société as the poet with his images; on the whole is happier, for he thinks they are good, and the poet is always wretched at his shortcomings. on the bottom of the shell of the wood tortoise, emys insculpta, is painted an oak leaf. the stem of the arum has the colours of the parrot's neck. elizabeth hoar found a tortoise eating a yellow toadstool, a few days since. ellery channing finds the podalyria tinctoria to be the favourite flower of the humblebee. ck. august 28. yesterday in town talked with george sennott, esq., who hoped the rumour true that sigel had shot mcdowell, for he liked that any 438 (age 59 journal man should shoot any other, as that showed character, whilst most men would do nothing, either good or bad, but only compromise and neutralize. he railed at sumner, and thought the war had only brought out two new england men, butler and banks. banks had learned much from rantoul, who was far his superior. he invited me to attend a democratic primary meeting at young's hotel, september 5, at 12 o'clock. “this world belongs to the energetic.” the incisive style of all english writers from a.d. 1600 to 1700 seems no longer attainable. it resembles the force of the words of children. these old garden books, like evelyn, have it. 'tis a kind of baby-talk, which we can no longer use. when i compare my experience with that of my own family and coevals, i think that, in spite of the checks, i have had a triumphant health. the aphorism of the lawyers, non curat de minimis prætor, like most of their wisdom is to be reversed; for the truth is, in minimis existit 1862] sincere life 439 natura. in nature, nothing is insignificant because it is small. vard. ur lance i believe in the perseverance of the saints. i believe in effectual calling. i believe in life everlasting. as people grow old, they find a personal meaning in the word, “to the froward, thou shalt show thyself froward.” as people rise in the social scale, they think more of each other's opinion than of their own. and ’t is hard to find one who does not measure his business and daily performance from the supposed estimate. and yet, his own is the · only standard. down in the pits of hunger and want lite has a real dignity, from this doing the best, instead of the seemly. the sailor on the topmast in a storm, the hunter amidst the snowdrifts, the woodman in the depth of the forest, cannot stop to think how he looks, or what london or paris would say, and therefore his garb and behaviour have a certain dignity, like the works of nature around him; he would as soon ask what the crows and muskrats think of him. and this habit of self-reliance forms the manners you admire in kit carson or captain holdrege. 440 journal [age 59 how shallow seemed to me yesterday in the woods the speech one often hears from tired citizens who have spent their brief enthusiasm for the country, that nature is tedious, and they have had enough of green leaves. nature and the green leaves are a million fathoms deep, and it is these eyes that are superficial. homer, orpheus, and kalidasa have not exhausted nature so that shakespeare, burns, and wordsworth find no more to say. pliny had come to the end of natural history, but there was room left for linnæus, newton, goethe, cuvier, and agassiz. to the heroic i will show myself heroic, says nature. henry said, “i wish so to live as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbours, may inspire me, and i may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me." nature, like every language, yields each only his own. the scold and the felon draw all the baseness of english, the saint all the purity and rapture, the poet and artist, music and grandeur. “our stock in life, our real estate is that amount of thought which we have had, which 1862] beeches. emancipation 441 we have thought out. the ground we have thus created is forever pasturage for our thoughts.” thoreau. “we condescend to climb the crags of earth.” thoreau, may 23, 1854. beeches. “they impress you as full of health and vigour, so that the bark can hardly contain their spirits, but lies in folds or wrinkles about their ankles, like a sock, with the embonpoint wrinkle of fat infancy.” — thoreau. (from war) i grieve to see that the government is governed by the hurrahs of the soldiers or the citizens. it does not lead opinion, but follows it. august 30. several urgent motives point to the emancipation. 1. the eternal right of it. 2. the military necessity of creating an army in the rear of the enemy, and throughout his country, and in every plantation, compelling him to disband his army, and rush home to protect his family and estate. 442 (age 59 journal 3. the danger of the adoption by the south of the policy of emancipation. france and england may peaceably recognize the southern confederacy, on the condition of emancipation. instantly, we are thrown into falsest position. all europe will back france and england in the act, because the cause of the south will then be the cause of freedom, the cause of the north will be that of slavery. see the effect of recognition. it breaks at once the blockade. the south at once will acquire a navy, buying ships of france and england, and buying sailors and officers, too, if needed, of them, and will face us on the sea, and, at last, protect themselves. then our waris fruitless. our enormous debt remains real. the border states sympathize with the south, and, not wishing to pay this debt, join the south. neither will california, wisconsin, minnesota care to pay the debt but will secede. utah combines with california, being always hostile to the states. the mississippi valley north and south combines to save the river. and an eastern tier of states is left to bear the load, and the load is too great, and the debt is repudiated. emancipation makes all this impossible. european governments dare not interfere for 1862] war north and south 443 slavery, as soon as the union is pronounced for liberty. france says, i know very well the avoirdupois of the north, but it will not succeed, because it will not take this step (of emancipation) to make its weight tell. [written later.] 1863, 1 january ; 1864, february 15. now it has been fully taken. turn with the south the war is primary ; with the north it is secondary; secondary of course to their trade, then also to their pleasure. the theatres and concerts are filled as usual. i don't know that the government can carry on a war; and it has ever been in the minds of our people who know how public action drags, and how efficient is private enterprise, to turn it over to private hands, and let adams's express undertake by contract the capture of richmond, of charleston, of the pirate alabama, and any other designated parts of the war. but if england and france should really move to dismember the union, there might then be energy instantly roused to concentrate our force on the storming of richmond, charleston, 444 journal [age 59 savannah, and mobile, so as to make the government master of all the ports; then we should say to europe, “the ports are all open, we are happy to see your trade here,” and, if hostility were to follow with europe, it would probably soon be made the hoop to hold us stanch. i wrote charles g. loring, esq., who sent me his “correspondence with edwin field, esq.” [as follows]:the aspects of our problem are too complex than that a foreigner can be expected to do justice to them all. mr. field declines to look longer. an englishman is too preoccupied. one thing is plain to me, – that our constitutionality can only appear to ourselves. foreigners cannot give the requisite attention to see them. broad grounds, as, if one party fights for freedom, or for slavery, they can appreciate. but our constitutionality, on which we so pique ourselves, of one party fighting at the same time for slavery in the loyal states, and, in the rebel states, against it, is too technical for distant observers, and only supplies them with the reproach that our cause is immoral. and if the war will alter our status on this point, and alter it soon, it will be worth all our calamities. 2 o 1862] bonaparte 445 army, mutiny. —“when the extinguisher takes fire, 't is an awkward business.” bonaparte said to bubna, the austrian diplomatist, in 1809, speaking of the campaign of 1809; “my great advantage is in being constantly on the offensive with you, not only at large (en grand), but also in detail, and in every particular moment. i am not on the defensive except when i do not see you; for instance, in the night: but, as soon as i see you, i resume the offensive, i form my plan, and i force you to fly before my movements.” bubna relates of bonaparte :— il lui a juré qu'il ne faisait jamais de plan d'avance, pas même la veille d'une bataille, mais toujours dans le moment où il voit la position et les desseins probables de son ennemi. “votre armée serait tout aussi bonne que la mienne, si je la commandais; toute autre armée qui se mesurera avec vous, russe, prussienne, etc., sera sûre d'être battue." gentz's diary, p. 205. gentz's diary inevitably translates itself into american war, as i read. mutato nomine de te. (from va) “dès que le sacrifice devient un devoir et un besoin pour l'homme, je ne vois plus de limite à 446 (age 59 journal l'horizon qui s'ouvre devant moi.” — ernest renan. if we were truly to take account of stock before the last court of appeals, – that were an inventory. what are my resources ??... (from loose sheets in va) i hear with some surprise the uneasiness felt by army men at the temporary neglect of the interests of the army by the government and of the popular preference of the volunteer force. it is unavoidable that there should be a stress laid on the volunteer army, in a moment when a million of men were to be taken from their business, their families, and thrust into the risks of war, vastly more dreadful to them from their total unacquaintance with the science, that teaches to prevent and elude as well as to resist. but, of course, the numbers of the army and officers were totally incompetent to fulfil this duty, and it needed every inducement of honour, of reward, of public encouragement and thence conciliation of good will of the people to enrol and equip this army. the paragraph is printed in “ perpetual forces ” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 77). 1862] principle of iteration 447 (from va) resources. if cabot, if lowell, if agassiz, if alcott come to me to be messmates in some ship, or partners in the same colony, what they chiefly bring, all they bring, is their thoughts, their ways of classifying and seeing things; and how a sweet temper can cheer, how a fool can dishearten the days ! how remarkable the principle of iteration in rhetoric! we are delighted with it in rhyme, in poetic prose, in song, above all, allowing a line to be not only a burden to the whole song, but, as in negro melodies, to be steadily repeated three or four times in immediate succession. well, what shall we say of a liturgy? what of a litany? what of a lord's prayer, the burial seryice, which is echoed and reëchoed from one end of man's life to the other. in optics no number of reflections of the same object displeases; and, in acoustics, no number of echoes displeases; rather in both the more the better. wren said, colonnades may be continued ad infinitum. when i bought my farm, i did not know what a bargain i had in the bluebirds, bobo448 journal (age 59 links, and thrushes; as little did i know what sublime mornings and sunsets i was buying. singular delusion. a lawyer says, without shame, i am not an abolitionist. i am a lawyer; my life devoted to the study and maintenance of rights of persons and property, and i go for the last outrages on both. i have no objection to a strong white man, by the judicious use of handcuffs and cartwhip, forcing any number of black men and women to do his work. i am a lawyer, but have no objection to counterfeiting. god forbid i should resist a poisoner or practitioner of the garotte. i am a teacher of youth, and by taste a religionist, but i defy you to put your hand on any act or word of mine in behalf of what was unpopular. so far has slavery poisoned the air of america, that an assertion of freedom marks vulgarity. who can brand me with having ever spoken the truth if there was a whimper against it? i call heaven to witness that i will never do anything disagreeable to the respectable classes. sensibility is all. the poorest place has all the real wealth of the richest as soon as genius arrives. how magical the poor pond under 1862) excellence justifies 449 channing's eyes, and i remember cabot's thoughts on art. rem excellence is a perfect excuse. do it well, and it matters little what. classic poetry is very cold, but the omnipotence of the muse is in lycidas. how partial, like mutilated eunuchs, the musical artists appear to me in society! politics, bankruptcy, frost, famine, war, nothing concerns them but a scraping on a catgut, or tooting on a bass french horn. the crickets in the grass chirp their national song at all hours, quite heedless who conquers, federals or rebels, in the war, and so do these. from our boat in walden pond we saw the bottom at great depth, the stones all lying covered with moss or lichen as they looked of a greenish gray colour. ellery said, “there is antiquity, how long they have lain there unchanged.” october. the country seems to be ruined not so much by the malignity as by the levity of people. a vast force of voters allow themselves, by mere compliments and solicitations of a few welldressed intriguers, to promise their support to a 450 journal (age 59 party whose wish is to drag back slavery into the government of the union. great is the virtue of the proclamation. it works when men are sleeping, when the army goes into winter quarters, when generals are treacherous or imbecile. october (?). en france, tout arrive. mrs. sedgwick said that it was well enough to go to new york or to london, but she did not think it needful. she had found that by sitting still in lenox, year after year, all the people she had heard of and wished to see came by, sooner or later. i do not know but one might apply this to books. reading depends on the reader. a highly susceptible reader finds hints and oracles in a newspaper. all the sentences that make the best fruit of milton's, shakspeare's, plato's genius come to the attentive listener, though he have never ransacked libraries for them. “voltaire was an apostle of christian ideas, (gesinnungen), only were these names hostile to him, and he never knew it otherwise.” – varnhagen von ense, diary, vol. 1, 80. in this connection, later, von ense repeats 1862] the proclamation 451 the text, “one son said no, and went; the other said yes, and went not.” ernest renan says of the materialists of the eighteenth century and their continuators in the nineteenth, “ ils prêchaient le vrai spiritualisme, l'humanité, la pitié, l'équité sociale, et ils trouvaient bon de se dire matérialistes, denier dans les termes l'idée dont ils fondaient la réalité." essais de morale. [alluding to the above passages, mr. emerson wrote in a later journal:] i ought thereto to have added the sentence which follows, _“ils prêchaient le dieu véritable, celui qu'on sert par la justice et la droiture, et ils se disaient athées.” — essais de morale, p. 63. [the proclamation of emancipation to all slaves in states still in rebellion, on january 1, was promulgated on september 22. on that day a meeting of citizens, who had long waited for and now rejoiced in this act of the president, was held in boston. mr. emerson spoke. his speech was published in the atlantic monthly, november, 1862.] the proclamation has defined every man's position. in reading every speech, or any sen452 (age 59 journal once tence of any speech, but a few words show at once the animus of the men, show them friends of slavery; show us that the battle-ground is fast changing from richmond to boston. they unmask themselves, and though we tried to think them freemen, they are not. look where they rage at sumner. they find not lincoln, for they do not think him really anti-slavery, but the abolitionist they can find is sumner, and him they hate. if sumner were pro-slavery, there would be no chemical analysis and magnifying glass needed to exhibit his foibles. it seems to promise an extension of the war. for there can be no durable peace, no sound constitution, until we have fought this battle, and the rights of man are vindicated. it were to patch a peace to cry peace whilst this vital difference exists. november 1. yesterday, october 31, i found the foliage more richly coloured, i think, in the woods, than on any day of this season. earlier, at the time when we usually find the richest colour, some warm misty weather seemed to rob it prematurely, and, when the sun came out again, the landscape was rusty. yesterday and to-day the mildest, most poetic of days, and, as usual, this an a 1862] health. the future 453 equilibrium of the elements seems to be the normal state, and the northeast wind the exception. health. the flame of life sometimes flickers high above the wick, as if it could easily detach itself and leave your old body in the lurch. i call it health only when the flame jets equally and robustly from every part and particle. powers of a fine temper, how signal! prosperity begins with that presence. the bankers believe that the moment peace shall allow a return of trade we shall have better times than were ever known. the rotten firms broken up, the markets all cleaned out, the old stocks got rid of, all is hungry for supply. well, i think also it will be a better time in church and state. this detestable slavery being killed out, the lips of the churchman will no longer be padlocked on that and other public sins. it will be easy to stretch moral rules to their universal extent. we shall be able to say “moral” in the widest sense, and supply the names of saints by the diviner conscience, antoninus, and zeno, and pascal, and à kempis. in art, they have got thus far, the rage for saints and crucifixions and pietàs is past, and 454 (age 59 journal landscape and portrait, and history, and genres have come in. it is significant enough of the like advance in religion. in this country it is looked upon as unmanly not to vote. i suppose, if we could go into houses and family circles we should find that each of the independent electors and each of the high candidates, too, is not original in his vote, or his platform, but is under personal influences. he is very free and unembarrassed in his discourse with you, a man of the people, making up his mind on general grounds of public good. but, at last, he disappoints you, and, still talking plausibly, votes and acts with the enemy. it is that he has a tyrant in his acquaintance who takes care to visit him at proper moments, has acquired an influence by manners, and, belonging to a more accomplished circle, flatters his ambition, and poisons his ear against his natural allies and plain duties, and controls his vote. this is an affair of degrees. that mischievous person who poisons his ear is himself reached and used by another or by others. everything i is in series. but the whole interweaving of the social canvas betrays an absence of original pernvas 1862] garrison and phillips 455 ception and will, in any quarter, as if god had left himself out of the world. wendell phillips gives no intimation of his perfect eloquence in casual intercourse. how easily he wears his power, quite free and disengaged, nowise absorbed in any care or thought of the thunderbolt he carries concealed. i think he has more culture than his own, is debtor to generations of gentlemen behind him. conway says, that when phillips speaks, garrison observes delighted the effect on the audience and seems to see and hear everything except phillips; is the only one in the audience who does not hear and understand phillips. but i think phillips is entirely resolved into his talent. there is not an immense residuum left as in webster. every man is at the mercy of his own son. no matter how brave, talented, or dogmatic, he must have such breadth in his opinions that his son cannot outsee him, or he will have to surrender them.' ergo, the christian religion will triumph and slavery will go to the wall. i this passage probably refers to the notable fact that the sons of the aristocratic and conservative families of boston and 456 journal (age 59 i look on the southern victories as i look at those of the mussulman over christendom, due to fanaticism, to the petulance and valour of a people who had nothing else and must make a brilliant onset and raid here and there. but ideas and their slow massive might are irresistible at last. the few lessons which the first had to teach are learned by the last in one or two campaigns, but the last vegetates eternally. the other reaches its short acme and decomposes in a day; violence and cunning are no match for wisdom. for they must find dogmas that are not ridiculous, that none can travesty, but that still return immortal like the sky, how long soever you have hid yourself in cellars. such is the saturation of things with the moral law, that you cannot escape from it.' ... most men have so little hold on the sources of strength that the common accidents of every day prove defeats and are solemnly treated as such, and they are in the dumps over every day's bulletin, just as a boy's fort is blown down other cities and towns, pro-slavery whigs, after service at the front, had their eyes opened to the conditions and character of the war, and their proud parents rapidly changed their tone, see perpetual forces” for the rest of the passage (lec. tures and biographical sketches, p. 86). 1862] policy or principle 457 or undermined by the first wind or shower. as aunt mary said of talleyrand, “he is not constituted for a future state.” others, like alcott, never destroy, but are always busy in reconstructing ; look beyond the passing cloud to a clear horizon; know that serene weather, an equilibrium of elements, is the normal state. of alcott, the whim of writing is a false instinct, like goethe's for sculpture, over which both of them lost much good time. it is said mr. lincoln has a policy and adheres to it. he thinks emancipation almost morally wrong and resorts to it only as a desperate measure, and means never to put radicals into power. when he puts one into office, as frémont, or phelps, or lane, he takes care to neutralize him by a democrat or a kentuckian who will thwart him. and prudent people say, “quite right, for these hot-heads have no administrative talent.” perhaps not; but they cannot have less than the ruling party, which has shown none whatever. perhaps, also, they have a great deal. they respect principles, which, it may still be believed, have a certain force, if not in the whig club, yet in the universe of men. 458 journal (age 59 besides, those defeats are incidents and not crises to a well-principled man, not affecting the general result (which he contemplates as a foregone conclusion) any more than headwinds or calms to a good sailor, who uses them also to make his port. • moral tendency is the regnant west wind, resulting from the astronomic motion of the planets. i must think that the immense advantage of power of resistance on a foot of solid land outweighs all advantages of motion in the attack by ships. after ericsson has built his ironclad, if the problem is, how to resist it and destroy it from a battery in new york or boston harbour, i must think ericsson, or any other man in his senses, if you offer him the sea attack or the land defence, would choose the last as the most feasible. for it is a choice between an anvil afloat and an anvil on shore. there is a speedy limit to the weight of metal a ship can carry, and then to the explosive force its decks and timbers can resist; but there is no limit to the resistance of the planet; it is used to earthquakes and volcanoes and lightning, and minds them nó more than seas. why not, then, to a 1862] von ense. trial by war 459 gun which throws four hundred or eight hundred pounds of iron ball ? varnhagen von ense says, “no nut without a shell. without the earthly and common, no existence. the heavenly must dive into the impure, purify and raise it, whilst itself suffers thereby. who can have nothing to do with the unclean, must yet permit others to do so for him. how much that was necessary to the promulgation of christianity jesus could not do, but paul did it for him. schleiermacher said once, in halle, with frolic boldness, “ without paul, the thing would not have got on far.” — varnhagen's diary, vol. 1, p. 74. arnhage well, yes, all our political disasters grow as logically out of our attempts in the past to do without justice as thistles and nettles out of their seeds.' ... there never was a nation great except through trial. a religious revolution cuts sharpest, and tests the faith and endurance. a civil war sweeps away all the false issues on which it began, and arrives presently at real and lasting questions. i the rest of the passage is in “ perpetual forces" (lec. tures and biographical sketches, p. 86). 460 [age 59 journal a movement in an aristocratic state does not argue a deep cause. a dozen good fellows may have had a supper and warmed each other's blood to some act of spite or arrogance, which they talk up and carry out the next month; or one man, calhoun, or rhett, may have grown bilious, and his grumble and fury are making themselves felt at the legislature. but in a democracy, every movement has a deep-seated cause. george francis train said in a public speech in new york,“ slavery is a divine institution." “ so is hell,” exclaimed an old man in the crowd. . in poetry, the charm is, of course, in the power of the thought which enforces beautiful expression. but the common experience is, fine language to clothe commonplace thoughts, if i may say thoughts. and the effect is, dwarfs on stilts. 'tis a fine expression of arnold's, “ the lyrical cry,” though the examples he gives are not well chosen. [on november 12, mr. emerson was to deliver a lecture, “ american nationality,” in the fraternity course, and most of what follows in 1862] war’s service 461 the next few pages was probably written for that address.] when we build, our first care is to find good foundation. if the surface be loose, or sandy, or springy, we clear it away, and dig down to the hard pan, or, better, to the living rock, and bed our courses in that. so will we do with the state. the war is serving many good purposes. · it is no respecter of respectable persons or of worn-out party platforms. war is a realist, shatters everything flimsy and shifty, sets aside all false issues, and breaks through all that is not real as itself; comes to organize opinions and parties, resting on the necessities of man; like its own cannonade, comes crushing in through party walls that have stood fifty or sixty years as if they were solid. the screaming of leaders, the votes by acclamation, conventions, are all idle wind. they cry for mercy, but they cry to one who never knew the word. he is the arm of the fates, and, as has been said, “ nothing prevails against god but god.” everything must perish except that which must live. well, this is the task before us, to accept the benefit of the war; it has not created our false relations, they have created it. it simply demonin nno nic 462 (age 59 journal cou 'se as strates the rottenness it found. we watch its course as we did the cholera, which goes where predisposition already existed, took only the susceptible, set its seal on every putrid spot, and on none other; followed the limestone, and left the granite. so the war. anxious statesmen try to rule it, to slacken it here and let it rage there, to not exasperate, to keep the black man out of it; to keep it well in hand, nor let it ride over old party lines, nor much molest trade, and to confine it to the frontier of the two sections. why need cape cod, why need casco bay, why need lake superior, know anything of it? but the indians have been bought, and they came down on lake superior ; boston and portland are threatened by the pirate ; secession unexpectedly shows teeth in boston; our parties have just shown you that the war is already in massachusetts, as in richmond. let it search, let it grind, let it overturn, and, like the fire when it finds no more fuel, it burns out. the war will show, as all wars do, what is wrong is intolerable, what wrong makes and breeds all this bad blood. i suppose that it shows two incompatible states of society, freedom and slavery. if a part of this country is civilized up to a clean insight of freedom, 1862] hold the ideal 463 and of its necessity, and another part is not so far civilized, then i suppose that the same difficulties will continue; the war will not be extinguished; no treaties, no peace, no constitution can paper over the lips of that red crater. only when, at last, so many parts of the country as can combine on an equal and moral contract, — not to protect each other in polygamy, or in kidnapping, or in eating men, but in humane and just activities, only so many can combine firmly and durably. i speak the speech of an idealist. i say let the rule be right. if the theory is right, it is not so much matter about the facts. if the plan of your fort is right, it is not so much matter that you have got a rotten beam or a cracked gun somewhere; they can by and by be replaced by better without tearing your fort to pieces. but if the plan is wrong, then all is rotten, and every step adds to the ruin; every screw is loose, and all the machine crazy. the question stands thus. reconstruction is no longer matter of doubt. all our action now is new and unconstitutional, and necessarily so. to bargain or treat at all with the rebels, to make arrangements with them about exchange of prisoners, or hospitals, or truces to bury the dead, all e 464 journal . (age 59 unconstitutional and enough to drive a strict constructionist out of his wits. much more in our future action touching peace, any and every arrangement short of forcible subjugation of the rebel country, will be flat disloyalty, on our part. then how to reconstruct. i say, this time, go to work right. go down to the pan. see that your works turn on a jewel. do not make an impossible mixture. do not lay your cornerstone on a shaking morass that will let down the superstructure into a bottomless pit again. leave slavery out, since (unfortunately as some may think) god is god, and nothing gratifies all men but justice. let us have that, and let us stifle our prejudices against common sense and humanity, and agree that every man shall have what he honestly earns, and, if he is a sane and innocent man, have an equal vote in the state, and a fair chance in society. and i, speaking in the interest of no man and no party, but simply as a geometer of his forces, say that the smallest beginning, so that it is just, is better and stronger than the largest that is not quite just. this time, no compromises, no concealments, no crimes that cannot be called by name shall be tucked in under ani 1862) carlyle 465 other name, like “persons held to labour,” meaning persons stolen, and “held,” meaning held by handcuffs, when they are not under whips. now the smallest state so formed will and must be strong, the interest and the affection of every man will make it strong by his entire strength, and it will mightily persuade every other man, and every neighbouring territory to make it larger, and it will not reach its limits until it comes to people who think that they are a little cunninger than the maker of this world and of the consciences of men. carlyle at least is not deceived by the hypocrisies of his age. he knows what london religion and patriotism are worth, and the bellowing of their professions he does not mind. but he seems to have made a covenant with his eyes not to see the foibles of his cromwells and fredericks. of plutarch the surprising merit is the facility with which he deals with subjects which other men strain themselves to reach to.' ... i see “ plutarch” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 301). 466 journal (age 59 november 29. great harvest this year of apples and pears. i suppose i have sold a hundred barrels of apples, when i add the august and september sales to the winter apples. beurré diels (pears) have been an excellent fruit for the last month, and were still perfect at thanksgiving. passe colmars perfect also on that day. we had a profusion of seckels and of louise bonnes. we had two or three barrels of them, and not less than four barrels of gloutmorceaux (which proved excellent from december 22 to january 6; and now to february 6).' uary what a convivial talent is that of wendell holmes ! he is still at his club, when he travels in search of his wounded son ;' has the same delight in his perceptions, in his wit, in its effect, which he watches as a belle the effect of her beauty; would still hold each companion fast i note added by mr. emerson later. 2 mr. emerson had evidently been reading “ my hunt after the captain," dr. holmes's account in the atlantic monthly (december, 1862) of his southern journey to the front to find his son, captain o. w. holmes, jr., of the twentieth regiment, massachusetts volunteers — now justice of the united states supreme court. 1862] father hecker 467 by his spritely, sparkling, widely-allusive talk, as at the club table; tastes all his own talent, calculates every stroke, and yet the fountain is unfailing, the wit excellent, the savoir vivre and savoir parler admirable. isaac hecker,' the catholic priest, came to see me and desired to read lectures on the catholic church in concord. i told him that nobody would come to hear him, such was the aversation of people, at present, to theological questions; and not only so, but the drifting of the human mind was now quite in another direction than to any churches. nor could i possibly affect the smallest interest in anything that regarded his church. we are used to this whim of a man's choosing to put on and wear a painted petticoat, as we are to whims of artists who wear a mediæval cap or beard, and attach importance to it; but, of course, they must say nothing about it to us, and we will never notice it to 1 isaac t. hecker, who was thoreau's contemporary and much interested in him, had been one of the brook farm community. afterwards he became a zealous member of the paulist fathers. mr. e. h. russell contributed to the atlantic monthly (vol. 90, p. 370) “ a bit of unpublished correspondence between henry thoreau and isaac t. hecker.” 468 (age 59 journal them, but will carry on general conversation, with utter reticence as to each other's whimsies; but if once they speak of it, they are not the men we took them for, and we do not talk with them twice. but i doubt if any impression can be made on father isaac. he converted mrs. w, and, like the lion that has eaten a man, he wants to be at it again, and convert somebody. “a bank of england note is worth its nominal value on the exchange, for the very reason that it is not worth a farthing in westminster hall.” — burke. i write laboriously after a law, which i see, and then lose, and then see again. and, i doubt not, though i see around me many men of superior talent, that my reader will do me the justice to feel that i am not contriving something to surprise or to tickle him, but am seriously striving to say that, which is. we used, forty years ago, religious rites in every house, which have disappeared. there is no longer, in the houses of my acquaintances, morning or evening family prayer.' ... i for the rest of the passage see “character" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 107). 1862] clubs. cheering books 469 poverty, sickness, a lawsuit, even bad dark weather and politics (such as now), spoil a great many days in the scholar's year, hinder him of the frolic freedom friendly to spontaneous flow of thought. and that makes the use of clubs; in the large, discursive, happy talk, truths detach themselves as thoughts, spars flake off from the eternal wall, and not only the company enjoy them, but the scholar most of all; he takes possession of them, and uses them henceforward as powers. bad politics, the public disasters, instruct us heavily, sober us, cure us of bragging, but they are bad subjects for the muse; they drag us down usually into corners and party views. if i read a book on whatever subject, no matter how remote or how deeply buried the events and actors be, — if the author write deeply, and with a stroke of genius, he is instantly modern, though it be egypt and affairs of mummies, and i see that one fact is as good as another fact, a petty example as a near and great example, to show the omnipresent law of life and rational beings. december. this in answer to the query, is any person master of the american question at this moment? no, none can accost such question with 470 (age 59 journal advantage, unless he is born for it. that a man is wise or deep does not make his opinion important; for men are locally or topically wise and deep. burke had a genius for his politics, and was a prophet in parliament, but none“ on the sublime and beautiful.” alcott would be just the reverse. “ spring, when the minute crimson-starred female flowers of the hazel are peeping forth on the hillsides.” – thoreau. i should have noted whilst they were fresh in mind the consternation and religious excitement caused in my good grandfather and his companions by the death of one soldier at bunker hill. let us believe it was the first or it would discredit the history of the carnage. similar was the impression made by a death in their neighbourhood in the family of samuel moody, as appeared in a letter which ellen read to me. one would think that nobody ever died before, or, that our great-grandfathers were the longliving patriarchs of shem and seth and enoch's time. a lyceum needs three things, a great deal of 1862] borrow on wales 471 light, of heat, and of people. at pittsburgh we wanted all three, and usually we lack one or the other. at seydelmann's playing of goethe’s faust, were present bettine, the savignys, mendelssohn, gans, werder, etc. “i must laugh,” says v., “that they asked my judgment; a judgment is a landing, and i was sailing on the high sea.” “after all, what a beautiful thing it is, not to be, but to have been a genius” (says george borrow, at the birthplace of hun morris, the welsh poet who died 1708); and because the thinker seldom speaks to the actor in his time, but ever to actors in the next age. a welsh bard, robert lleiaf, two hundred and forty years ago, sang thus: “i will go to the land of mona, notwithstanding the water of the menai, across the sand, without waiting for the ebb.” — borrow, wild wales. on this verse, the people were expecting for two hundred years to see a bridge across the menai, which, at last, the genius of telford accomplished. almost as old as lleiaf, is another verse in the welsh “greal” which is thus translated : 472 journal (age 59 “i got up in mona, as soon as 't was light, at nine, in old chester my breakfast i took, in ireland i dined, and in mona, ere night, by the turf fire i sat in my own ingle nook.” borrow thinks this a prophecy of the power of steam, as the feat described it would be quite easy to accomplish in these days. i am a bard least of bards. i cannot, like them, make lofty arguments in stately, continuous verse, constraining the rocks, trees, animals, and the periodic stars to say my thoughts, — for that is the gift of great poets; but i am a bard because i stand near them, and apprehend all they utter, and with pure joy hear that which i also would say, and, moreover, i speak interruptedly words and half stanzas which have the like scope and aim:what i cannot declare, yet cannot all withhold." 1 this line occurs in mr. emerson's poem “my garden.” 1862) reading 473 authors or books mentioned or referred to in journal for 1862 pindar; kalidasa ; cicero, letter to marcus marcellus; pliny the elder; nala and damayanti; taliessin, and welsh bardic fragments; sieur de joinville, histoire de saint louis; latimer; sir edward dyer, poems; sir walter raleigh; robert lleiaf apud borrow; john evelyn, the complete gardener ; algernon sidney ; roger cotes; voltaire ; marshall saxe; linnæus; vauvenargues ; d'alembert; gray; collins ; cowper, ice palace at moscow ; saintpierre, études de la nature; chatterton; florian; richter, titan; gentz, diary; schleiermacher, apud varnhagen von ense; cuvier; cottle, early recollections ; mountstuart elphinstone; varnhagen von ense, diary; bettine von arnim ; panard, drinking song ; alcott; william h. seward ; george borrow, wild wales; abd el kader apud daumas; william lloyd garrison; de tocqueville; disraeli, novels ; abraham lincoln, emancipation proclamation; john sterling; wendell phillips ; charles sumner; 474 journal (age 59 thoreau, journals; w. e. channing, poems; lowell; henry howard brownell, the old cove; g. w. bassett, on slavery; j. elliot cabot, art; gaston boissier (revue des deux mondes); elizabeth sara sheppard, charles auchester and counterparts; harriet prescott. [see also pp. 419, 420, for list of oriental works bequeathed to mr. emerson by mr. thoreau.] journal the war negro soldiers visit to west point dartmouth and waterville address confucius saadi president lincoln concord town meeting judge hoar boston journal liv 1863 (from journals war, gl, va, for, and dl) “ if this great world of joy and pain revolve in one sure track; if freedom, set, will rise again, and virtue, aown, come back; peace, peace, o purblind crew, who fill the heart with each day's care ; nor gain, from past or future, skill to bear, and to forbear!” wordsworth. [on the opening day of the new year the president was to fulfil his promise of emancipation of the slaves (though the decree was limited to those states or portions of states still in rebellion), and this act of justice would lift a load from all champions or lovers of freedom, who could not but feel some anxiety lest some concession should be made to pro-slavery opinion or border state pressure. in response to a call of the leading patriots in and around boston, longfellow heading the list, co 478 journal (age 59 a musical festival of rejoicing was held in the music hall. mr. francis j. garrison, who, as a youth, was present, the son of the great apostle of emancipation, has, this year, the fiftieth anniversary of that event, chronicled it in a broadside. he believes the moving spirits to have been john s. dwight, the musical critic and composer, and otto dresel, the distinguished pianist and composer. when the musicians had tuned their instruments and the great audience were expectant of the glorious overture, josiah quincy, jr., came forward and announced that a prologue had been written by ralph waldo emerson, who himself would read it. a newspaper of that week, says, probably quoting mr. quincy,“ this was not in the bills. the committee, making a virtue of necessity, had kept it back for a surprise. the truth is, our poet, while he wished and strove to do it, feeling the imperative splendour of the opportunity, was far too true a poet and too much upon his honour with the muse to compromise her name by any rash announcement without authority of her own sign manual, to wit, the actual arrival of the poem.” this was the “boston hymn.” mr. francis j. garrison, speaking of the welcome with which the poem was received, says, se v vas 1863] the burning hotel 479 “but the quickest and heartiest response was to the verse manifestly prompted by lincoln's proposal [in an earlier proclamation] to indemnify the slaveholders in cash for their emancipated slaves. • pay ransom to the owner, and fill the bag to the brim. who is the owner ? the slave is owner, and ever was. pay him.' no one who heard this could ever forget the tone and emphasis of the speaker.” after two years with little call from lyceums for lectures mr. emerson seems to have been much in demand again. early in january he lectured in toronto, then two days later writes to his daughter from rochester of a serious adventure. while passing sunday at niagara he was waked in the night by a cry of fire. he hastily dressed, “threw things into my black bag in the dark and came out through smoke and cinders,” dragging his trunk. the house (hotel) was burnt. he lost his ticket to chicago, but at suspension bridge had the fortune to meet reuben n. rice, a concord youth, who, with one or two others, had come out and got employment on the michigan central railway 480 (age 59 journal and had risen to power. he gladly passed mr. emerson to chicago. apparently the western engagements lasted through most of february. then he returned to concord only to set forth immediately for montreal to give a lecture (“classes of men”) before the mercantile library society.] (from gl) indianapolis, january 26, 1863. titan' i have read on this journey, and, for its noble wisdom and insight, forgive, what still annoys me, its excessive efflorescence and german superlative. how like to goethe's wilbelm meister is its culture, manners, and wisdom! rome is the best part of it, and therein it resembles goethe the more. now and then i find a passage like charles newcomb. and how it restores to me the golden thoughts that once wreathed around margaret f. and caroline, and sam ward and anna. (from for) beauty. matthew arnold said, “nature would be a terror, were it not so full of beauty.” “if there is a spring, there will be a stream.” swedenborg. i by jean paul richter. 1863] swedenborg. dr. kane 481 “forms are perfect in proportion to the simplicity of the ideas that they commence from.... “nothing stands in nature's way, — nothing is difficult to her, as she goes by insensible degrees, proportionally and harmonically from one extreme to another. ... “there are some living creatures that can, out of their own natures, raise up a light in the dark when they are inflamed with desire.” — swedenborg. i suppose the reference is to fireflies and glowworms. but how shall weakness write of force ? ' e s [ i like to see our young irish people'... “ it is the experience of every man who has either combated difficulties himself, or attempted to guide others through them, that the controlling law shall be systematic action.” – dr. kane. it is never quite so dismal weather out of doors as it appears from the house window. neither is the hardship of campaigning so dreary 1 the for — mr. emerson's mark for this journal — stands for force. 2 for the rest of the passage see “ social aims” (p. 87). 482 [age 59 journal as it seems to us who see not the reaction. neither is the battle-field so horrible, nor wounds, nor death, as we imagine.. take up a spade full of loam. who can guess what it holds ?'... the poet knows the way to his nectar as well as toper to his tavern, or farmer to brighton. what central flowing forces, say, make up thy splendour, matchless day! the perpetual change; look at that cloudrack that overspreads us in the morning. tomorrow it will be a lake or a river flowing calmly in an old bed, bounded by firm shores, overhung by beautiful forests, and itself passing down to the sea, and there tossing in tempests against the rocky coast. look at these trees loaded with icicles; come again, and they will bend to the ground in the autumn sun with perfumed golden pears. we affirm and affirm, but neither you nor i know the value of what we say. every jersey wagon that goes by my gate moves from a motive and to an end as little contemplated by the rider as by his horse. if any of us knew what i see perpetual forces” (lectures and biographical sketches). 1863] enlisting negroes 483 we are doing, or whither we are going, then when we think we know best! (from war) [this was a period after the disastrous failure at fredericksburg, and the futile “mud campaign” on the potomac, when the war dragged, and recruiting, after the great losses, even more so. what was to be done with able-bodied negroes now flocking into the union lines? the propriety and desirability of making soldiers of them, in a war in the bringing-on and waging of which their condition had been so large a factor, now came up for instant consideration. at first the plan was unpopular, even seemed dangerous; but public opinion grew fast then, and soon it was adopted. major george l. stearns, of medford, a brave and liberal patriot, was most successful in enlisting coloured men, mostly in the middle border states and canada, for the fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth massachusetts volunteer infantry, and the fifth massachusetts cavalry regiments. mr. emerson may have been asked to speak in favor of negro troops, judging by the following notes.] 3 *484 journal (age 59 february (3) negro soldiers. if the war means liberty to you, you should enlist. it does mean liberty to you in the opinion of the south, for the south says, we fight to plant slavery as our foundation; and, of course, we who resist the south are forced to make liberty of the negro our foundation. i speak for the forces above us, those issues which are made for us, over our heads, under our feet, paramount to our wills. if you will not fight for your liberty, who will? if you will not, why, then, take men as they are, and the universe of men will say you are not worth fighting for; go and be slaves forever, and you shall have our aid to make you such. you had rather be slave than freemen ; go to your own place. plainly we must have a worthy cause for such soldiers as we send to battle, or they shall not go. do you think such lives as this state has yielded up already, the children of this famed city, the children of our public schools, the children of harvard college, the best blood of our educated counties, objects of the most romantic hope and love, poets and romancers themselves i attended the funeral of one of them and heard with hearty assent the voice that said that 1863] heroes of the north 485 the whole state of south carolina was not worth that one life — lander, lowell, putnam, dwight, willard well, that these precious young men the voice will choke to name them — are given up to bring back into the capitol of washington the reckless politicians who had reeled out of it with threats to destroy it, or come back into it to rule again? never ; better put gunpowder under its foundations and plough up the ground where its streets stand than that they die for the disgraceful dynasty which had brought our freedom to be a lie, and our civilization and wealth to dishonour as a partnership of thieves. no, they died for the largest and noblest sentiment, the largest interpretation that could be put on the meaning and action of the north ; died for what an american might die for; — and the governor of this commonwealth nobly spoke the sense of his people when he said, we will enlist, if you send us out for freedom, and not if you send us out to return slaves. whatever mean carpers and the owls and jackals who squeak and gibber to the contrary will say, he spoke the voice of patriot fathers and mothers who offered their sons, and of the patriot youths who offered up themselves, when he said, see 486 journal (age 59 that the cause is clear and great, and you shall have them and us; but we go not to restore those false-hearted usurpers of the power of union, or the like of them, to their places, — god in his mercy forbid ! but to restore the spirit of the american constitution, and not its forced and falsely construed letter. ... “nothing can more spite a man of courage than to be left at home to burn his shins by the fire, whilst other men are employed abroad in honourable action.” — maréchal de montluc (cotton's translation). in every crisis people look for the master of the situation, who is usually slow to appear. we have found none in america. but in england, which our politics immensely concern, they have found none. the one foreign interest of england is to assure herself in all times of the alliance of america, as bound by blood, language, trade, power, and equal civilization. (from for) and what number of southern majors and colonels, and of yankee lawyers and state secretaries thanking god in the boston tone, will suffice to persuade the dreadful secrecy of moral 1863) fine sensibility 487 nature to forego its appetency, and cause to decline its chase of effect? power of circumstance. the pentelican marble, its security and obedience under the chisel, made the sculptor; the sea makes the sailor. the sensibility is all. every one knows what are the ordinary effects of music, of putting people in gay or mournful or martial mood. but these are its effects on dull subjects, and only the hint of its power on a keener sensibility. the story of orpheus, of arion, of the arabian minstrel, are not fables, but the record of experiments of the same iron at white heat. thoreau's telegraph wire' is an example of wordsworth's poem on “ sound”; see “yarrow revisited,” etc. to prize sensibility, see the subjects of the poet; they were insignificant until he raised them. the human mind cannot be burned nor bayonetted, nor wounded, nor missing. i probably the allusion is to the fine passage in walden about the harping of the telegraph wires as heard with the ear against the pole on a winter's day. 488 journal (age 59 [end of marcb.] as dwelt in memory a trace of the old home of adam's race, as if in humankind abode of eden paths which adam trode and the old love through ages glowed." after the storm come perfect days, neither hot nor cold, when it is a joy to live; and the equilibrium of the elements is then felt by all to be the normal state, and the hurricane the exception. the delight in the first days of spring, the “wish to journeys make," seems to be a reminiscence of adam's paradise, and the longing to return thither. 'tis that which sets all mortals roving in the month of may. marriage. he who marries into a well-known and considered family, marries perhaps a little from his memory; but he who marries marked personal traits in a new and unknown race, as louis napoleon his eugénie, has a right to rely on forces fresh from the mint of nature, wherein labour, courage, common-sense, and health may have stored great resources. “power is never far from necessity.” — pythagoras. 1 see « may day.” 1863] power. trinity 489 power is as often in one head, as in a nation; for power is after reality, and not after appearance; after quality, and not after quantity. perpetual forces. how we love to be magnetized! ah, ye strong iron currents, take me in also! we are so apologetic, such waifs and straws, ducking and imitating, and then the mighty thought comes sailing on a silent wind, and fills us with its virtue, and we stand like atlas on our legs and can uphold the world. the earth's towers have no vertigo. talent is masterless. possession, the soul of god poured through the thoughts of men. what is the source of power? the two powers are genius and fortune. the mystery of triangulation, of the trinity in theology, and in philosophy, runs through nature. the father, mother, and child are a single example. you cannot coax powder to explode slowly ; swearing will not help; praying will not help; chemistry alone can. gravitation inexorable; also lightning and heat. 490 journal (age 59 the animal borrows the elements of its blood from the whole world. we breathe by all the air, we drink from rivers ; we stand and walk by the aid of the gravity of the planet. we are warmed by the sun, and succour ourselves daily from universal forces. our roots are in nature and draw out all her strengths, pump up the atlantic ocean, if we need, all the atmosphere, all the electricity of the world. “cause is an arrow which will go through a cart of sand to effect." the persians in their litanies praise that divine necessity, “not subject to novelties; and the great is small; the tall, short; the broad, narrow; and the deep is as a ford to him.” socrates says, “the laws below are sisters of the laws above.” so really are the material elements of close affinity to the moral elements. but they are not their cousins, they are themselves. on the lower plane, it is called heat; on the higher, love. whenever you enunciate a physical law, i hear in it a moral rule. ideal politics. a good cause, a universal interest. i like to have men or governments ride on these strong horses. thus a righteous edict 1863] a cause. man elastic 491 of the government works when we sleep, when the army goes into winter quarters, when generals are treacherous or imbecile; works at home among the women, among the troops; works down south among the planters, in the negro cabins; works oversea among candid, virtuous people discussing america in their sitting-rooms; comes thence in a time, ever growing firmer, up into cabinets and compels parliaments and privy councils to hear and obey it. elasticity of a man. a grain of air will expand and clothe the planet, and sixty atmospheres be condensed as one, if you have only force; cork, india-rubber, steel-spring, hydrogen, gunpowder, what are these to this airy agent, man, who now is fed on a few grains of corn, and finds his duties less and less till he comes to suicide, and now takes up the powers of other men, the reserved force of kingdoms, the accumulations of old ages, all the elements of nature, rules them, and wants nature to pass a new homestead bill and provide us with a world a piece. forces. my point is that the movement of the whole machine, the motive force of life, and 492 journal [age 59 of every particular life, is moral. the world stands on our thoughts, and not on iron or cotton; and the iron of iron, the fire of fire, the ether and source of all the elements, is moral forces. m.srl ! uses of the war. 1. diffusion of a taste for hardy habits. 2. appeal to the roots of strength. the benefit of war is that the appeal not being longer to letter and form, but now to the roots of strength in the people, the moral aspect becomes important; and is urgently, spręsented and debated; whilst, in preceding quiet times, custom is able to stifle this discussion as sentimental, and bring in the brazen devil himself. certain it is that never before since i read newspapers, have the morals played so large a part in them as now. as i have elsewhere written, when jove has points to carry, he impresses his will on the structure of minds. every one stands stupefied at the course of the war. none so wise as to have predicted anything that has occurred. every one reads the ballot of the people on each new question with surprise, and the pious and once hopeless lover of freedom with tremw 1863] uses of the war 493 bling joy. and this surprise shows that nobody did it, or thought it, but the lord alone. 3. besides, war is not the greatest calamity. i see in the street about the “saloon” plenty of boys and men who are nuisances, but who only want a master to make them useful to themselves and to society. ...“the saloons,” said edmund hosmer, “ are worse than war to their customers.” how the war teaches our youths of the baute volée. do i not know how to play billiards and whist? do i not know the violin and flute? yet i will throw myself on those bayonets. 4. war organizes. all decomposition is recomposition. what we call consumption is energetic growth of the fungus, or whatever new order. war disorganizes, but it also organizes; it forces individuals and states to combine and act with larger views, and sunder the best heads, and keeps the population together, producing the effect of cities; for camps are wandering cities. my interest in my country is not primary, but professional; i wish that war, as peace, shall bring out the genius of the men. in every company, in every town, i seek intellect and character, and so in every circumstance. war, i 494 journal (age 59 know, is a potent alterative, tonic, magnetizer, reinforces manly power a hundred and a thousand times. i see it come as a frosty october, which shall restore intellectual and moral power to these languid and dissipated populations. 5. what munificence has the war disclosed ! how a sentiment could unclasp the grip of avarice, and the painfullest economy ! 6. it has created patriotism. we regarded our country as we do the world. it had no enemy, and we should as soon have thought of vaunting the atmosphere or the sea; but let the comet or the moon or mercury or mars come down on us, we should get out our buffers and electricities and stand for the earth with fury against all comers. war sharpens the eyes, opens the mind of the people, so that truths we were once forbidden to speak, i hear shouted by mobs, saluted by cannon, redacted into laws. emancipation of maryland, of tennessee, of missouri, of louisiana. in quiet times, the wilful man has his way; in war, the truthful man. varnhagen. “i thought to-day much on the religions. they are the strongest helps of man co 1863] varnhagen. religion 495 and each takes to himself what fits him, the jew, jehovah; the catholic, the virgin mary; the protestant, jesus. to have religion, to have a creed, means to give up yourself unconditionally to an image, to a thought, and who can or must do that, to whom that thing succeeds, has incontestably a great hold and consolation (trost). whoever is directed on steady free thinking, whose piety fastens not on fixed images, seems in many respects to have a harder lot, and to represent a more difficult side of humanity. and the divinity, who sees the different strivings which belong to it, looks surely with greater approbation on those who have the most difficult approach to him, as a general reckons those troops the best, on whom he lays the most duties, to whom he gives the least rest and indulgence. i may say, for the alert outposts of the lord, it is impossible to expect a quiet watch. the proud line-troops, the old guard,' will ever think themselves better than the light chasseurs and sharpshooters.” varnhagen, vol. i, p. 45. arnhac force of circumstances. a steam-engine is nothing but a tea-kettle ; put a little card-wheel at the nose, and it turns it; make the kettle larger, 496 (age 59 journal and instead of the card, a wheel of wood or of iron, and it turns it as well. but if the tea-kettle is cold, or you have no water, the thing cannot be done. the enemy has surprised a town ten miles off. you load the cannon and ammunition and troops on the cars, but all the army cannot move or drag them. but if you can only get up fire, and get the wheel to the nose of the teakettle, it goes off like a bird. “«vesuvius,' said albano, 'stands there in this pastoral poem of nature, and exalts everything, as a war does the age. . . . and when it is over, the dead and the living stand exalted in the world, because they had not cared for life.'” richter, titan. “there is really an earthquake coming,' said agata, 'i actually feel it. good-night!' god grant one,' said albano. o why ? ' said linda eagerly, but in a low tone. all that the infinite mother wills and sends is to me to-day childishly dear, even death; are not we too part and parcel of her immortality?' said he. “yes,' replied linda; ‘man may feel and 1863] horse. affirmative 497 believe this in joy; only in sorrow let him not speak of immortality; in such impotency of soul he is not worthy of it.' ” — titan. “in the beauty of the boy, i detect somewhat passagère,—that is, that will not stay with me.” richter. [mr. emerson enjoyed the talk of the stablemen, and used to tell their anecdotes and boasts of their horses, when he came home.] “in the stable you'd take him for a slouch, but lead him to the door, and when he lifts up his eyes, and looks abroad, — by thunder! you'd think the sky was all horse.” the man at providence said he felt so cross before breakfast; but he got out of the door, and ran round the state two or three times, and then he felt better. and then england was such a little place that he did n't like to go out at night, for fear he should get pushed off into the sea. when we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless! afirmative and negative. “you tell me a 498 (age 59 journal · ) tagegreat deal of what the devil does, and what power he has; when did you hear from christ last?” asked father taylor of some calvinistic friends. when thoreau heard a cricket or a bluebird, he felt he was not far from home after all. he found confirmation of all his human hopes in the smell of a water lily. but the froth or spittle on the alders and andromedas in june made the walk disagreeable to him. oddity and concert. there must be concert, there must be compromise, if you call it so. suppose each railroad company preferred a gauge of its own, and a car wheel of its own, that would fit no other road. suppose the scholar preferred to use, instead of english letters, characters of his own, and printed his book in them; and rules of conduct, and of manners, which he had invented, against the accepted and universal rules of morals and behaviour. machinery is good, but mother-wit is better. telegraph, steam, and balloon and newspapers are like spectacles on the nose of age, but we will give them all gladly to have back again our young eyes. pitch your tone low. a prudent man accepts 1863] newton's word. lincoln 499 the lowest name with which his enemies seek to disgrace him, as tully takes cicero, as political parties “know nothings,” “copperheads,” “locofocos,” and the like. so he will be grubstreet, parson, atheist, or worse, if worse be, and by native force makes the nickname illustrious. 'tis the way to disarm malignity. the superlative, so dreary in dull people, in the hands of wit gives a fillip or shock most agreeable to the drowsy attention, and hints at poetic power. “un homme qui écrit bien n'écrit pas comme on écrit, mais comme il écrit; et c'est souvent en parlant mal, qu'il parle bien.”— montesquieu. “no great discovery was ever made without a great guess.”—sir isaac newton. old age. an indignation meeting proposed. president lincoln should remember that humanity in a ruler does not consist in running hither and thither in a cab to stop the execution of a deserter, but, as napoleon said, “justice is the humanity of kings.” pugin distinguishes “ornamented construction from constructive ornament.” 500 journal (age 59 april. this running into the catholic church is disgusting, just when one is looking amiably round at the culture and performance of the young people, and fancying that the new generation is an advance on the last. sam ward says the misfortune is that when the young people have this desire, there is nothing on the other side to offer them instead. and it is true that stoicism, always attractive to the intellectual and cultivated, has now no temples, no academy, no commanding zeno or antoninus. it accuses us that it has none, – that pure ethics is not now formulated and concreted into a cultus, a fraternity with assemblings and holy days, with song and book, with brick and stone. why have not those who believe in it, and love it, left all for this, and dedicated themselves to write out its scientific scripture to become its vulgate for millions? i answer, for one, that the inspirations we catch of this law are not continuous and technical, but joyful sparkles and flashes, and are recorded for their beauty, for the delight they give, not for their obligation; and that is their priceless good to men that they charm and uplift; not that they are imposed. these words out of heaven are imparted to happy unconnew incess ance 1863] church of pure ethics 501 trollable pindars, hafizes, shakspeares, and not to westminster assemblies of divines. and yet it must be confessed that the new world lies in chaos and expectation until now; that this mad war has made us all mad; that there was no minority to stand fast for eternal truth, and say, cannons and bayonets for such as already knew nothing stronger; but we are here for immortal resistance to wrong; we resist it by disobedience to every evil command, and by incessant furtherance of every right cause. but in regard to ward's remark, cited above, it must be said that there is the eternal offset of the moral sentiment. the catholic religion stands on morals and is only the effete state of formalism; and morals are ever creating new channels and forms. morals, it has not yet its first hymn. but, that every line and word may be coals of true fire, perhaps ages must roll ere these casual widefalling cinders can be gathered into a broad and steady altar-flame. “the mills of god grind slow but grind fine.” “don't cry, miss lizzie ; the lord is tedious, but he is sure.” е еу er ew 502 [age 59 journal april. i find walden entirely open, and i have failed to know on what day; probably on saturday, uth, and sunday, 12th. pseudo-spiritual. at portland, i found that the poor spirits who had afforded much information and exhibition of nimbleness, and jugglery to the w— family, and were rising to much importance in the gossip of the city, were suddenly silenced, disheartened, and quite extinguished, by mrs. w— 's finding that the aristocracy resisted the movement; instantly she withdrew her patronage, drove all the mediums and sympathizers from her house, and the poor spirits, being effectually snubbed, have not tapped or whimpered since. e the bird in the rain is well off, he is made of rain, but man is at many removes. state secretary antonio perez said, “if god should be weary of monarchies ": how can you stop the freedom of the press? in 1845, when the censorship was tyrannical in 1 this seems to have been the suggestion for the line, “god said, i am tired of kings,” in the “ boston hymn." 1863] jacoby. alcott on fate 503 prussia, “dr. jacoby, of köningsberg, printed a book which contained nothing else than royal orders in cabinet, addresses, letters, etc., of the present king, and by the mere arrangement of these made the bitterest satire, so scandalous did the contradictions and obscurities appear. the police sharply hunted out the book, and huddled it aside. that again was a satire.” (see varnhagen.) france. rahel said, that “you find germany in paris, but not paris in germany." april 17. alcott defended his thesis of personality, last night, but it is not a quite satisfactory use of words. we speak daily of a government of power used to personal ends. and i see profound need of distinguishing the first cause as superpersonal. it deluges us with power; we are filled with it, but there are skies of immensity between us and it. but alcott's true strength is in the emphasis he gives to partnership of power against the doctrine of fate. there is no passive reception. the receiver, to receive, must play the god also. god gives, but it is god, or it takes god also, to receive. he finds or fancies 504 journal (age 59 were vas goethe a priest of fate, and writing faust. he [i.e., goethe] never liberates, because he is prisoner himself. of me, alcott said, “some of the organs were free, some fated; the voice was entirely liberated; and my poems or essays were not rightly published, until i read them!” the french have good reason for their word aplomb; every one of them has it. see surette in the town hall.' april 20. abraham jackson, esq., was here yesterday, and speaks of his old experience of the college at cambridge. he owed more to jones very, who was greek tutor, than to almost any or all others in the faculty. any enthusiasm, any literary ambition or attempt was sure to be snubbed by teachers, as well as by public opinion of the classes. only expense, only money, was respectable. he remembers dr. walker with respect, and dr. breck, but not felton. in the law school he had better experience, from judge story, mr. greenleaf, and charles sumner. and now, when the question arises, how shall money be bestowed for the benefit of i a frenchman from acadie who married a daughter of concord and was very energetic in town affairs during the war. aris 1863] servile monarchs 505 learning? — his recollection of the university does not appear edifying. kings. “the king (of prussia] has said to the · graf von münch bellinghausen, in königsworth, that he uses quite no people with ideas; ideas he has enough himself, he uses only servants to execute them.” – varnhagen's diary, iii, 1845. "joseph bonaparte had in possession the letters of the last king of prussia to napoleon; they passed into the hands of his adjutants, and were bought of these, by our present king (1846), for twenty-six thousand thalers. it is said their tone was profoundly demüthig (servile) and highly disgraceful to the writer. “the czar nicholas has paid for similar letters of his brother alexander, thirty thousand thalers.” – varnhagen. sa us was it a squirrel's pettish bark, [or clarion of jay]? or hark where yon wedged line the nestor leads, steering north with raucous cry through tracts and provinces of sky; each night descending to a new landscape of romance by lonely lakes, to men unknown by purple peaks and rosy palaces 506 [age 59 journal in deep abysses of imperial sky." the hazel shows his crimson head to grace the roadside in the glen,a the maple bark is turned to red, whitest lakes are green again. (29 march.) april 28. self-sown my stately garden grows; the winds and windblown seed, cold april rain and colder snows my hedges plant and feed. from mountains far and valleys near the harvest brought to-day thrives in all weathers without fear, – wild planters, plant away ! 3 the herald's correspondence from washington, north carolina (general foster command1 these lines, except the last two, are found in the opening stanza of “ may-day," in the poems. 2 the beautiful red female blossoms of the hazel, close to the stalk, are so small that they are seen by few who may know well the tasselling male blossoms. 3 the poems « my garden” (the woods owned by mr. emerson on the lincoln side of walden) and “waldeinsamkeit" seem to have grown gradually out of many verses written during the solitary walks. many verses not included in these, when finished, were grouped in the appendix to the poems, under the title “ walden,” in the editions published since mr. emerson's death. 1863] thoreau 507 ing), speaks of the negroes seen lying behind the breastworks, with a musket in one hand and a spelling-book in the other. voltaire wrote in his eighty-third year to d'argental, “ il faut combattre jusqu'au dernier moment la nature et la fortune, et ne jamais désespérer de rien jusqu'à ce qu'on soit bien mort.” i have never recorded a fact, which perhaps ought to have gone into my sketch of “thoreau," that, on the ist august, 1844, when i read my discourse on emancipation [in the british west indies], in the town if hall, in concord, and the selectmen would not direct the sexton to ring the meeting-house bell, henry went himself, and rung the bell at the appointed hour. it were worth while to notice the jokes of nature, she so rarely departs from her serious mood. the punch faces in the english violets is one; the parrot is one; the monkey ; the lapwing's limping, and the like petty stratagems of other birds. we can easily tell, of whittier or longfellow or patmore, what suggestion they had, what 508 [ace 59 journal styles of contemporaries have affected their own. we know all their possible feeders. but of donne, of daniel, of butler, we do not, and read them as self-educated and originals, imputing to them the credit of now forgotten co-poets. still more is this true of saadi, cervantes. may 4. on friday morning, may ist, at 3 o'clock, died mary moody emerson, at williamsburg, new york, aged 88 years, 8 months. hannah haskins parsons, her niece, who has, since her childhood, been in some sort dedicated to the care and nursing of her aunt, has for the last four years taken entire charge of her, and having with incredible patience and tenderness attended her throughout her long decline, and closed her eyes, now attended the remains to concord, and arrived here on saturday night. this afternoon (monday) the body was taken from the receiving tomb to the grave in my lot in sleepy hollow, and deposited in a vault therein, in the presence of elizabeth hoar, elizabeth ripley, mary emerson simmons, lidian emerson, ellen tucker emerson, edith emerson, and myself. the day was cloudy and warm, with mist resting over the 1863) talk with beecher 509 south, and the rain waited until an hour after she was laid in the ground.' s i said, we have never a right to do wrong. it is our business to write the moral statute into the constitution, and give the written only a moral interpretation. beecher said, 't is very well for you and me to say this in lectures, but when it comes to practice, we can only go to the constitution. we might have bought our land with a different line, or ought to have bought more, or less; but all this is foreign to the subject; we have only to refer to the deeds. i answer, any right of land from written deeds is an imperfect right, a right only of agreement and convenience; but the right to freedom 1 for mr. emerson's account of his aunt, an inspiration to him in his youth, and proud of him and his brothers, yet severely critical and eccentric, see “ mary moody emerson ” (lectures and biographical sketches). hannah haskins parsons, mr. emerson's double first cousin (daughter of rebecca emerson and robert haskins), a woman of a charming naturel and wit, before her marriage took care of miss emerson at waterford, maine, and (after mr. parsons's death) at williamsburg, new york. she and her younger sister sarah (mrs. ansley) lived to a great age, and spent their last years in the concord house at mrs. emerson's invitation. they died in concord but a few years since. 510 (age 59 journal is a perfect right, and any invasion of it noxious to human nature, and invalid therefore. when the queen of sheba saw the ascent by which solomon went up to the temple of the lord, there was no more spirit in her. a guiding star to the arrangement and use of facts is in your leading thought. the argument for christianity in the dogmatic and mythologic extensions seems to rest on a certain low esteem of human nature, and so finds proof of inspiration and divine interference wherever there is believed to exist any foresight, or any fineness of adaptation. hence men of large mental and moral perception, having anticipated the revelation, do not need it, and the argument has no force for them. “ the coldest weather (writes aunt mary in her journal, concord, 1821) ever known. life truly resembles a river, ever 'the same, never the same. and perhaps a greater variety of internal emotions would be felt by remaining with books in one place, than pursuing the waves which are ever the same. is the melan1863] . visit to west point 511 choly bird of night covered with the dark foliage of the willow and cypress, less gratified than the gay lark amid flowers and suns?”. again she writes: “it is mortifying to fluctuate in our opinions respecting anything which is not novel, especially one's self. yet as to mind and heart, i alter very much. yet how stationary that little self! how many stars have set and risen, suns perhaps expired, and angels lost their glory, since i have droned in this place!” west point [during may, mr. emerson was surprised by an invitation from the secretary of war (stanton) to serve on the board of visitors to the united states military academy at west point. he was well content with this opportunity of seeing a class of scholars so new to him, and went thither in the first days of june. on his return, he showed great pleasure in all that he had seen, the recitations, the riding, the drill, and wonderful parade. he had talked with the cadets and was pleased with their manly bearing and honourable tone and tradition. the self-help and ascetic life appealed to him. — especially was he delighted with meigs and 512 (age 60 journal michie,' close and loyal friends, although ranking highest in the class and it was still a question who would graduate as first scholar.] (from war) west point academy makes a very agreeable impression on me. the innocence of the cadets, the air of probity, of veracity, and of loyalty to each other struck me, and the anecdotes told us confirmed this impression. i think it excellent that such tender youths should be made so manly and masterly in rough exercises of horse and gun and cannon and muster; so accurate in french, in mathematics, geology, and engineering; should learn to draw, to dance, and to swim. i think their ambition should be concentrated on their superiority in science, — being taught, that whoever knows the most must command of right, and must command in fact, if just to himself. 1 john r. meigs, son of quartermaster-general meigs, graduated first in his class, as an engineer. he was shot by guerrillas in the shenandoah valley the next year. peter s. michie was second scholar. both of these youths while cadets were acting assistant professors in mathematics. michie rendered important engineering service during the war in charleston harbor, in florida, and with the army of the james ; was for years on the teaching staff at west point, and was the author of various scientific works. ern 1863] west point notes 513 let them have no fears, then, of prejudice against west point. “west point a hotbed of aristocracy,” is a word of some political hack, which seems to rankle in their memories. rather let them accept it, and make west point a true aristocracy, or “the power of the best,” — best scholars, best soldiers, best engineers, best commanders, best men, — and they will be indispensable to their government and their country ; will be, as they ought, the nucleus of the army, though it be three fourths or nine tenths volunteers ; — they will be the shop of power, the source of instruction, the organization of victory. watt said he “sold power in his shop.” ah ! that is what all men wish to buy, if they can only have the pure article,-something finer, i think, than watt meant, or had, or if he had it, he forgot to tell us the number of the shop.' in regard to the points to which the attention of the board was called, the “administration” appeared to me judicious, and more mild, in fact, than the printed rules led us to look for. i it would seem that in the foregoing paragraph was matter that mr. emerson may have used in addressing the cadets. what follows seem to have been his comments designed for the visitors' report. 514 journal [age 60 thus, on inquiry for the “dark prison,” we found there was none, the room once used for this having been for some years appropriated to other uses. one fact appeared plainly, that this academy was free of the bête noir of colleges, namely, criminal justice. here they are once and forever freed from every question by means of martial law. every cadet is instantly responsible to his superior officer for his behavior, and is sent to the guard-house, or has one or two hours' patrol-duty added to his day's work, or is put down a long row of steps on his ladder of merit: if the offence is graver, is discharged from the academy.' i think that the point of competitive examinations should be urged on the congress, and that a severer preliminary test should be required for admission. the academy should be relieved of teaching to spell and parse english. thus the course of study might be less 1 at this time the absurd old system prevailed at harvard college of deducting from the credit marks won in scholarship a greater or less number for any breach of college rules or disorder. thus a quiet and punctual but dull youth might appear in the list as the equal in rank of a good scholar of disorderly tendencies. 1863] west point notes 515 superficial, or the application of science might be carried into detail in other schools. o the discipline is yet so strict that these military monks, in years, never pass the limits of the post, and know nothing of the country immediately around them. it is pleasant to see the excellence and beauty of their fences, which cost nothing and need no repairs ; namely, the hudson river on one or two sides, and the mountains on the other sides. there is nothing beyond the post, no village, no shops, no bad company. it is two miles to cozzens's new hotel, but over a desert road, and there any cadet would be under dangerous observation. [mr. emerson was pleased with the insistence on good hours, and the careful keeping of the cadets within bounds, protecting their innocence during the years when college boys in their first absence from home or school surveillance, are subjected to temptation and ill example.] (from a loose sheet) west point notes.' life is in short cycles or periods ; rapid rallies, as by a good night's sleep. i evidently for an informal address to the cadets. 516 (age 60 journal more the sublime point is the value of a sufficient man: cube this value by the meeting of two or more who perfectly understand and support each other, you have then organized victory. wherever one is tried, two are on trial. the examiner is instructed whenever the pupil is examined. is civilization built on powder? — built on buttons ? [remember there is a] difference between a soldier and his cannon. [increasing] leaning to pure science of the schools. “the humanity of kings is justice.” gen. scott's maxims, e. g., “resentment is a poor basis for a campaign." bonaparte called the école polytechnique « the hen that laid him golden eggs. your ways inspire lively curiosity. i thought two days sufficient. i could willingly spend twenty, and know the power and hope and career of each youth. i several of the upper class cadets were acting assistant professors in some branch, and the company officers were cadets. 1863] the cadet's training 517 books for west point' life of hodson; life of lord herbert of cherbury; tom brown at rugby; tom brown at oxford; correspondence between napoleon and joseph bonaparte; lives of the french savants, by arago; george herbert's poems; life of major general sir william napier. (from war) at west point, i entered some of the chambers of the cadets in the barracks, and found two cadets in each, standing, as if on guard. each chamber was perfectly clean, and every article orderly disposed. the mattrass on the camp iron bed was `rolled up into a scroll. “who makes your bed?” “i do.” “who brings your water ?” “i do.” in the battery drill, i saw each handsome dainty boy whom i had noticed in the examination, flying over the field on the caissons, or loading or working i probably suggested for their reading to the students, if mr. emerson addressed them, or else as desirable in the library. 518 (age 60 journal the gun, all begrimed with powder. in the mortar practice, in the siege battery drill, each was promptly performing his part in the perfect exercise. (from for) at west point, i saw a civilization built on powder. it is not quite creditable to our invention that all the instruction in engineering, infantry, cavalry, artillery, rigidly rests on this one accident of our chemistry, gunpowder. a new invention to-morrow would change all the art of war. just as our commerce and civilization are so built on cotton as to have deceived the southern states and many other states into neglect of all other possibility, and of morality. but cotton is only one of two hundred thousand plants known to our botany; and powder is but one of a million combinations that are to be tried in turn. june. sam ward thought the new generation better than the last. we have had peace and its disablings; you will have the excitement and training of war. the mischief is such that i hear sometimes the sentiment expressed that to remove this mountain of calamity from our in10 wc 1863] lord herbert. egotism 519 stitutions were worth the expenditure of an entire generation. who is he that will not be one? i believe, if men saw surely this issue in the sacrifice, that many are ready to be offered. it sweetens the cup of grief of mothers that the loss of their youthful hero has served to close up this crater of death in the forum. we do not often have a moment of grandeur in these hurried, slipshod, aimless lives. i find in “life of lord herbert”, a romantic state of society, in which courage and the readiness for extreme events give a wonderful superiority over any experience of our own. i wish society to play kings, to be kings; we are not, and these men are. take egotism out, and you would castrate the benefactors. luther, mirabeau, napoleon, john adams, andrew jackson ; and our nearer eminent public servants, — greeley, theodore parker, ward beecher, horace mann, garrison would lose their vigour. “in heaven,” said swedenborg, “no attention is paid to person, nor the things of person, i edward, lord herbert of cherbury, elder brother of the poet, george herbert. mr. emerson took great pleasure in his autobiography, a mixture of romantic chivalry and philosophic thoughts, but not without vanity. 520 journal [age 60 but to the things abstracted from person.” (see henry james, substance and shadow.) nature's education. nature wishes to grow, and to grow unobserved; so she allures the child out of doors, and puts a hoop and a ball in his hands; then he forgets himself, and rushes into the conditions of growth, and comes in to his supper hungry, and off, then, to solid sleep, and grows every minute of the day and night, like a cornfield. whenever we have true philosophy, it will surely be spoken in right tone. if kant and sir william hamilton are too arid, henry james is quite too petulant and scolding. socrates is humane, and his irony only covers a profound delight and piety. swedenborg deserves james's praise of sincere dealing, but this witty and elegant billingsgate which diverts james so hugely ought to warn the reader, whom first it scares, that it is not quite to be trusted, that there must be some deduction from pure truth to generate all this wrath. june 24. agassiz declares that he is going to demand of the community that provision should be made was 1863] agassiz. new theology 521 for the study of natural science on the same scale as that for the support of religion. agassiz says, at heidelberg, tiedemann was his teacher of anatomy; of whom he learned dissection. afterwards, at munich, dollinger was his teacher; and, one day, he asked dollinger, “why he was not enlarged by so much as tiedemann had taught him, whilst he was sensible of his progress since he had been with him?” dollinger answered, “tiedemann is a prosector. i am a professor.” at arcueil, near paris, laplace, cuvier, decandolle, gay lussac, biot, humboldt, berthollet, met once every week to prepare business for the institute; and there are four volumes published of mémoires, or transactions at arcueil, which are the essence of all that was done in that time. you must not go to the sermons in the churches for the true theology, but talk with artists, naturalists, and other thoughtful men who are interested in verities, and note how the idea of god lies in their minds. not the less how the sentiment of duty and impulse of virtue lies in the heart of the “bobbinwoman,” of any unspoiled daughter or matron in the farmhouse; these are the crucial e e 522 (age 60 journal experiments; these the wells where the coy truth lies hid. in reading henry thoreau's journal, i am very sensible of the vigour of his constitution. that oaken strength which i noted whenever he walked, or worked, or surveyed wood-lots, the same unhesitating hand with which a fieldlabourer accosts a piece of work, which i should shun as a waste of strength, henry shows in his literary task. he has muscle, and ventures on and performs feats which i am forced to decline. in reading him, i find the same thought, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step beyond, and illustrates by excellent images that which i should have conveyed in a sleepy generality.) 'tis as if i went into a gymnasium, and saw youths leap, climb, and swing with a force unapproachable, though their feats are only continuations of my initial grapplings and jumps. june 29. my feeling about henry james's book is that he is a certain saul among the prophets. the logical basis of his book a certain pure and absolute theism :— there is but one actor in the universe, there is no self but devil; all sav 1863] white pond 523 must be surrendered to ecstasy of the present deity. but the tone in which all this is taught is in perpetual contemptuous chiding and satire. the arabs measure distance by horizons, and scholars must. july 16. rode this afternoon with channing in the wagon to white pond. 'tis perhaps ten years ago since i was there with him before, and in the reflections of the larger grown trees in the lake noticed the same peculiarities. the trees were all done in minute squares, as in the crochet-work of girls. the colours of the foliage, russet and ruddy, added to the beauty. pines on the distant shore, — of which we saw only the short stem veiled above by the branches,– in the water showed the stem of the tree to the top! we were on the farther side of the pond at the“cove,” and talked with a party, a young man and three young women from sudbury, nine miles and a half distant. they left the shore in a boat. channing and i agreed that a picnic is like a "revival”; it changes a man in an instant, and he forgets his home and habits, and thinks he will come and live with nature. 524 journal (age 60 but he returns to his village to put up his horse, stops at the post-office, takes tea with his family, and does not for ten years get a glance at the paradise again. after a bath in the pond, came home by the beautiful road through nineacre-corner, where the farms were in richest array. an old hemlock tree in one field should teach everybody to plant and guard a hemlock, that it may some day be old. doctrine of leasts. i should write on the power of minorities. every book is written with a constant secret reference to the few intelligent persons.' .... see in politics the importance of minorities of .one. . . . silent minorities of one also, thoreau, very, newcomb, alcott. . . . christianity existed in one child.) . .. ellery channing always speaks of the landscape as of a painting. 1 the rest of this passage is in “ progress of culture” (letters and social aims, pp. 219, 220). 2 see « progress of culture” (letters and social aimas, p. 219). 3 for the rest see “ character” (lectures and biograpbical sketches, pp. 98, 99). 1863] dartmouth college 525 when le nôtre had completed the garden of the tuileries, colbert wished to close them on the public. charles perrault resisted the interdiction, and obtained that his promenade should remain open to the citizens of paris and to children. “ je suis persuadé,' disait il à colbert, au milieu de la grande allée, que les jardins des rois ne sont si grands et si spacieux qu'afin que tous leurs enfans puissent s'y promener.' la sourcilleux ministre ne put s'empêcher de sourire.” – sainte-beuve. [at the invitation of the literary societies of dartmouth college, mr. emerson went to hanover, new hampshire, and on july 22 gave the address, a part of which is printed, under the title “ the man of letters,” in lectures and biographical sketches.] july 24. i went to dartmouth college, and found the same old granny system which i met there twenty-five years ago. the president has an aversion to emulation, as injurious to the character of the pupils. he therefore forbids the election of members into the two literary societies by merit, but arranges that the first scholar alphabetically on the list shall be assigned to 526 (age 60 journal the adelphi, and the second to the mathesians, and the third to the adelphi, and the fourth to the mathesians; and so on. every student belonging to the one or the other. “well, but there is a first scholar in the class, is there not, and he has the first oration at commencement?” “oh, no, the parts are assigned by lot.” the amiable student who explained it added that it tended to remove disagreeable excitement from the societies. i answered, “certainly, and it would remove more if there were no college at all.” i recommended morphine in liberal doses at the college commons. the accusation of being a heretic, hitherto in every country formidable, is not so here to-day. catherine the great, after talking with diderot and grimm, said, on rising to go to a council of state, “ maintenant, il faut songer au gagnepain." the more ambitious a state is, the more vulnerable. england, france have ships, towns, colonies, treasure, and can very ill afford to give every yankee skipper a chance to hack at these. a mob has nothing to lose, and can afford to steal. but england and france not.' i at this time england was allowing the building of confederate cruisers in her ports to prey upon our commerce, or 1863] republic of letters 527 all degrees in the republic of letters, as in every other state ; men of useful and popular talent for daily use, whose efficiency is exactly limited, and not embarrassed by ideal expansions. they can, as lawyers and statesmen, furnish you with just the amount of information or explanation this quarter of an hour requires, just as a marketman measures out to you a peck or a half of a half-peck of peas. and there are those who cannot do this, but are not less wanted, — are much more wanted, — who know the foundations of law and politics, and are to the lawyer as the botanist is to the marketman. mediocre people wish to utilize you, to make of newton a bank clerk, and in all ways act to pull you down from a high career. creer. our people have false delight in talent, in a showy speech, a lawyer who can carry his point, in webster, choate, butler, banks, in macaulay, and in innumerable goughs and dunlaps, without considering their soundness or truth. and wise heads were foreseeing that if england, later, was at war with another power, this precedent could be used by the united states with even more harm to her than they had suffered. 528 (age 60 journal but the measure in art and in intellect is one; to what end? is it yours to do? are you bound by character and conviction to that part you take? the very definition of art is, the inspiration of a just design working through all the details. but the forsaking the design to produce effect by showy details is the ruin of any work. then begins shallowness of effect; intellectual bankruptcy of the artist. all goes wrong; artist and public corrupt each other. now the public are always children. the majority are young and ignorant, unable to distinguish tinsel from gold, ornament from beauty. but the scholar must keep faith with himself. his sheet-anchor is sincerity, and when he loses this, he loses really the talent of his talent. hawthorne unlucky in having for a friend a man who cannot be befriended; whose miserable administration admits but of one excuse, imbecility. pierce was either the worst, or he was the weakest, of all our presidents. [on august 11, mr. emerson had repeated the address on the “man of letters” at waterville college in maine.] 1863] carlyle. taine 529 august 25. in the war, the american government stands for the ideal or semi-ideal side. the regiment it is the colonel and the captains. is wordsworth a bell with a wooden tongue? carlyle has sacrificed to force of statement. one would say none has ever equalled his executive power in the use of english. he makes an irresistible statement, which stands, and which every body remembers and repeats. it is like the new parrott guns and powder. but here today are latest experiments and a success which exceeds all previous performance in throwing far, and in crushing effect. much is sacrificed to this, but this is done. so with carlyle's projec, tile style. sennott quotes, from calhoun (?), the phrase, “the fatal exercise of domineering talk.” i can almost pardon scorn in a person who walks well. taine generalizes rashly, and writes: “la race façonne l'individu, le pays façonne la race. un degré de chaleur dans l'air et d'inclinaison 530 journal [age 60 dans le sol est la cause première de nos facultés, et de nos passions,” etc. sainte-beuve remarks on this: “entre un fait aussi général et aussi commun à tous que le sol et le climat, et un résultat aussi compliqué et aussi divers que la variété des espèces et des individus qui y vivent, il y a place pour quantité de causes et de forces plus particulières, plus immédiates, et tant qu'on ne les a pas saisies, on n'a rien expliqué.” — causeries du lundi, vol. 13. see also a just censure in the like spirit on taine's proposed formula of each mind, as of livy. — ibid. madame de staël said, “ mes opinions politiques sont des noms propres." — sainte-beuve, portraits de femmes. october 7. when he passed the woods on the way to the city, how they reproached him ! scholar joined every club and society, accepted every invitation to soirées, but, when the hour came, declined one and the other, in favour of the book or meditation at the moment oc1 the rocky, wooded hill that mr. emerson called " my garden” (see poems) in lincoln, close to the concord line, was very near the railroad. 1863] society. aplomb 531 cupying him, and which derived a new zest from the offered invitation. and at last it appeared that this caprice was calculated. happy expression of daniel webster that “long island sound ought to be lighted up like a ballroom.” laws of society, a forever engaging topic. at sir william molesworth's house, i asked milnes to get me safely out; he behaved very well. an impassive temperament is a great fortune. que de choses dont je peux me passer ! even dancing and music, if i had that. f. b., the lawyer, told me that a couple of glasses of wine might be taken with advantage, when he was to address a jury, and the evening society is no doubt easilier faced for the preceding dinner. young men think that the manly character requires that they should go to california, or india, or to war.' ne aplomb. state your opinion affirmatively and without apology. why need you, who are not a gossip, talk as a gossip, and tell eagerly what the journals, or mr. sumner, or mr. stanton, į see « greatness ” (letters and social aims), p. 304. 532 journal (age 60 say? the attitude is the main thing. john bradshaw was all his life a consul sitting in judgment on kings. carlyle has, best of all men in england, kept the manly attitude in his time. his errors of opinion are as nothing in comparison with this merit, in my opinion. and, if i look for a counterpart in my neighbourhood, thoreau and alcott are the best, and in majesty alcott exceeds. this aplomb cannot be mimicked. it is the speaking to the heart of the thing. and a person of a feeble spirit, if intellectual, is instantly reinforced by being put into intellectual company, and to the surprise of everybody, becomes a lawgiver. another text of aplomb, besides that cited above, is, the senate of egyptian kings sitting silent in the hall of the dead from age to age, and when a new king arrives among them, they rise whilst he takes his seat. rise school-keeping is a dreary task, only relieved by the pleasure the teacher takes in two or three bright and beautiful pupils. the majority of the children will be brutal, or (to use a milder word) infidels, and the consoler is the appearance of genius and noble nature in one or another. 1863) the wise confucius 533 confucius says, “ now all over the empire carriages have wheels of the same size, all writing is with the same characters; and for conduct there are the same rules.” — doitrine of the mean. (confucius, apud legge.) “of their seeing and hearing, their thinking and revolving, their moving and acting, men all say, it is from me. every one thus brings out his self, and his smallness becomes known. but let the body be taken away, and all would be heaven. how can the body be taken away? simply by subduing and removing that selfhaving of the ego. this is the taking it away. that being done, so wide and great as heaven is, my mind is as wide and great, and production and transformation cannot be separated from me. hence it is said, — how vast is his heaven!” – idem, note, vol. i, p. 294. the text is, “ call him man in his ideal, how earnest is he! call him an abyss, how deep is he! call him heaven, how vast is he!” i am reading a better pascal. “ it is said in the book of poetry, 'over her embroidered robe she puts a plain single garment.' so it is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and the way of the mean man to way ma con 534 [age бо journal ma ever seek notoriety ; while he daily goes more and more to ruin. it is characteristic of the superior man, appearing insipid, yet never to produce satiety ; while showing a simple negligence, yet to have his accomplishments recognized; while seemingly plain, yet to be discriminating. he knows how what is distance lies in what is near, — whence the wind proceeds from, how what is minute becomes manifested.” — idem, vol. i, p. 295. “in hewing an axe-handle, the pattern is not far off.” we grasp one axe-handle to hew another. “is virtue a thing remote? i wish to be virtuous, and lo! virtue is at hand.” “ if one's actions be previously determined, there will be no sorrow in connection with them. if principles of conduct be, the practice of them will be inexhaustible.” “ it is characteristic of entire sincerity to be able to foreknow. the individual possessed of complete sincerity is like a spirit.” “the way of heaven and earth may be declared in a sentence:they are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable. heaven is a shin1863] sayings of confucius 535 ing spot, yet sun, moon, stars, constellations, are suspended in it; the earth is a handful of soil, but sustains mountains like hwa and yoh without feeling their weight, and contains rivers and seas without leaking away.” to the colleges : “ learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. the accomplished scholar is not a utensil.” here is an acute observation that belongs to “ classes of men”:“the master said, the faults of men are characteristic of the class to which they belong. by observing a man's faults, it may be known that he is virtuous.” “the superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort.” culture. “ it is from music that the finish is received.” — confucius. “the subjects on which the master did not talk were — extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings.” — legge, p. 65. he anticipated the speech of socrates, and the de as be done by, of jesus. 536 [age бо journal 'tis strange that it is not in vogue to commit hari-kari, as the japanese do at sixty. nature is so insulting in her hints and notices; does not pull you by the sleeve, but pulls out your teeth, tears off your hair in patches, steals your eyesight, twists your face into an ugly mask; in short, puts all contumelies upon you, without in the least abating your zeal to make a good appearance; and all this at the same time that she is moulding the new figures around you into wonderful beauty, which, of course, is only making your plight worse. ie a day is a magnificent work, but a day is one thing to shakspeare and another to john a. coomb. you can take better care of your secret than another can. “three things are known only in three places: valour, which knows itself only in war; wisdom, only in anger; and friendship, only in need.” — persian sayings. franklin said, “ travel lengthens life.” what arabian rochefoucauld said — “ the reason why grandfathers love their grandchildren 1863] proverbs. sensibility 537 so much is because they are the enemies of their enemies, inasmuch as they wish the death of those who wish theirs "? “pensez au voisin, avant que de penser à la maison.” “who cultivates one garden at a time will eat birds; who cultivates many gardens at once, the birds will eat up him.” well, our farmers cultivate many gardens,— in their too many acres. “use wine ill, you will become a wretch; use it well, you will become an illustrious man.” humility (apud chardin). “faites vous tendre, si vous voulez porter du fruit; c'est à dire, qu'il faut être humble pour faire de bonnes actions.” sensibility. the miller is an idle man and makes the brook or the wind do his work. the poet is an idler man, hates the trouble of consecutive thinking, but observing that these tempestuous passions of his search all his knowledge, all his thought, all his sentiment, in their fury,he fastens pens on these, and they write songs, prophecies, tragedies, and lampoons that last till the morning of the resurrection. the daily problem is how to get force. borrowed the hint of the self-registering thermometer. 538 (age 60 journal i love a book, as montaigne, bayle, or heyne did, not quite as sam bradford' does. people do not read much. the beautiful sentence on the 102d page of the printed volume, i know that the hundred pages will protect it, as well as if it were locked in my safe. he tears into a book for a sentence as a woodpecker grubs into a tree for a worm. the youth longs for a friend; when he forms a friendship he fills up the unknown parts of his friend's character with all virtues of man. the lover idealizes the maid, in like manner. the virtues and graces which they thus attribute, but fail to find in their chosen companions, belong to man and woman, and are therefore legitimately required, but are only really ripened, here one, and there the other, distributed in scattered individuals in a wide population. ... but this illusion is constant, — a siren song in the ears of every susceptible youth. saadi says in his kassaid, “ let no land, no friend, be to thy mind an end; for sea and land are wide, and there are many men. not one rose blooms, not one green tree, i a playmate in childhood in boston and life-long friend, living later in philadelphia. 1863] hospitality. bias 539 the trees are all green; full of roses is space; art thou confined to one door, as the hen to one corn grain ? why not soar up to heaven like the doves, fly from tree to tree, like the bul-bul, and run not like the foolish grouse into a net?” von hammer, p. 208. see also (in von hammer, p. 210) the excellent kassaid on old age, which follows this. arabian hospitality. “bring in the guest,” said hatem tai; “i never eat alone.” hatem tai, who roasted his wonderful horse to entertain the messengers of the sultan who had come to ask for the horse in the name of the sultan. bias. tremendous force of the spring which we call native bias of character. it needs this and that incessant nudge of necessity or of passion to drive us from idleness and bring the day about, but what prodigious force must that spring have, whose impulsion reaches through all the days, through all the years, and keeps the old man constant to the same pursuits as in youth! 'tis like the diurnal, annual, and centennial variations of the magnet. 540 journal [age 60 for alcott i have always the feeling that the visitor will not rightly see him ; for he is like a piece of labrador spar, which is a dull stone enough until you chance to turn it to the particular angle where its colours appear, and it becomes a jewel. good out of evil. one must thank the genius of brigham young for the creation of salt lake city,an inestimable hospitality to the overland emigrants, and an efficient example to all men in the vast desert, teaching how to subdue and turn it to a habitable garden. and one must thank walt whitman for service to american literature in the appalachian enlargement of his outline and treatment. attitude. nature the best posture-master.' ... so also will the thought control the sentence and the style, strive against it as you may. the subject i must so often say — is indifferent; any word, every word in the language, every circumstance, becomes poetic, when in the hands of a higher thought. 'tis a problem that genius can very wel! 1 the rest of this paragraph is in letters and social aims, p. 82. 1863] great laws victorious 541 solve — to illuminate every low or trite word you can offer it. give your rubbish to shakspeare, he will give it all back to you in gold and stars. the war. on the whole, i know that the cosmic results will be the same, whatever the daily events may be. the union may win or lose battles, win or lose in the first treaties and settlement; sutlers and pedlers may thrive on some abuse, but northwest trade, and northeastern production, and pennsylvania coal mines, and new york shipping, and white labour, though not idealists, gravitate in the ideal direction. nothing less large than justice to them all can keep them in good temper, because in matters of such compass as the interests of a nation, every partial action hurts and offends some party. the difficulty with the young men is not their opinion and its consequences, not that they are copperheads, but that they lack idealism. a man for success must not be pure idealist, — then he will practically fail; but he must have ideas, he must obey ideas, or he is a brute. a man does not want to be dazzled with a blaze of sunlight, — he will be sun-blind; but every man must have glimmer enough to keep him 542 journal (age 60 from knocking his head against the walls and posts. and it is in the interest of civilization, and good society, and friendship, that i hate to hear of well-born and gifted and amiable men, that they have this low tendency, this despair. their death is no loss to their country. — skeptical as felons. october 23. anecdote for ewould be sam dexter's defence of selfridge;' and also daniel webster's speech at salem, “if this be law, let the foundations of this house be turned up with the plough.” the reward which his puritan conscience brought to samuel hoar to indemnify him for all it had cost him was that his appearance in court for any party in a suit at once conciliated court, jury, and bystanders to that side which the incorruptible man defended. power of money. that it will buy the miraculous flowering of the night-blooming cereus or i was one of mr. emerson's blank books into which he copied stories. he liked to quote, and with some approval, dexter saying in his defence of young selfridge (who had killed a man in a quarrel in boston streets), “ and as for me, may my right arm drop powerless when it fails to defend my honour!” so 1863] money. attitude 543 the victoria regia in your parlour to add the splendour of secret nature to the lustres of your soirée; and, if your cause be really honest, that you can buy with money the immense weight of mr. hoar's seventy years of virtue to shine on your claim, and dazzle the jury to your benefit. i justified to wyesterday confucius's speech about making money, lest he should rashly resign his position at chicago, and cited david hume's autobiography in confirmation. i might have cited dr. johnson's story of the man who wanted to go somewhere in egypt; it was unsafe, so he hired a troop of dragoons. there is always something which the stingiest wishes to buy. a man who never gives will give an acre of land for a seat in a window where he can see a certain president, or general, or walter scott, go by once, to make the poor devil a happy poet for one moment. attitude. yes, that is all; that is what the orator brings, or he may leave his oration at home. how to make a poor, despised, seedylooking cause and thin, seedy-looking assembly, each person in which assembly seems to come in half-ashamed of the company, and only to stay through an odious sense of duty, how 544 [age 60 journal to make these warm, bright, firm, honourable, proud, populous, jubilant, and, in short, the only great cause and assembly in the world, that is, in each case, the orator's problem. we can let the year go round, if we know that october brings thoughts, and march lustres, and may love, and the tenth year honour for the insults and ribaldry of the nine foregoing winters. books. “les lettres, c'est un espèce de paisible et magnifique hôtel des invalides pour les passions; elles n'y sont plus qu'à l'état de gouts innocents, comme dans les champs elyseés du poête.”— sainte-beuve (following out a hint of frederic le grand), causeries. comme “ peculiar” children. mrs. m. said, “no, could n't stay from home a single night, for benjy was so constituted that he could not be left alone.” her sister added the testimony, that he would tell this and that lie barefacedly “ with perfect unconsciousness.” “ had i the world for my enemy, yet kept the treasures of a true friend, never should i ask whether things were or were not in this world. a ship on the high seas 545 1863) saadi doth the state of a lover resemble. overboard cast they the cargo if so they can save their lives.” saadi (from von hammer purgstall). saadi's poem on old age. now is the time when weakness comes, and strength goes; the magic of sweet words i lose ; the harvest wind cuts clean; the tender sheen and shade and pink and purple light upon thy garland fade. to my foot fails the power of manly stride in streets. happy he who soonest to his orchard hut retreats. saadi's whole power lies — in the sweet word; — keep this; all the rest may go to beast and bird. saadi. love's smart is more worth than the body's well-being. saadi. no soul has he who no friend has; little joy has he who no garden has. who with a moon-face can refresh his heart enjoys a luck which has no bounds. a dungeon is that house which solitude fills, if they have not, like saadi, a rose bed. “thus much weight of food will carry thee; if thou take more, thou must carry it,” says saadi's physician. 546 (age 60 journal the french claim that, “ l'art de conter sans art" belongs to lafontaine alone; “c'est la tout son secret, aucun de ses concurrens ne l'a deviné.” it was an excellent custom of the quakers (if only for a school of manners) the silent prayer before meals.' ... the poet or thinker must always be in a rude nation the chief authority on religion. all questions on its truth and obligation will surely come home to him for their answer. as he thinks and speaks, will the intelligent men believe. a certain deference must therefore be shown to him by the priests. mtransubstantiation. every one would be poet if his intellectual digestion were perfect; if the grass and carrots passed through all the four stomachs, and became pure milk. but in crumplehorn's cream, there is sometimes a tang of turnip; and in the gay pictures of the orator, a reminder now and then of autobiography, — staring eyes of duns, or schoolmasters, or cousins, or critics, who have tormented him, far on see letters and social aims, p. 86. 1863) concentration. genius 547 this side of heaven. i could guess his griefs better from his poetry than from the polite biography which introduces the book. (from dl) concentration indicates control of thoughts, holding them as lanthorns to light each other and the main fact. a guiding star to the arrangement and use of facts is in your leading thought. in the college, it is complained, money and the vulgar respectability have the same ascendant as in the city. what remedy? there is but one, namely, the arrival of genius, which instantly takes the lead, and makes the fashion. at cambridge, edward everett, buckminster, john everett, lee, and edward and charles emerson, each in their turn, gave vogue to literary taste and eloquence in their classes. sa zon thoreau writes in his journal:– “herndon says of the amazon country, ‘there is wanting an industrious and active population who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of 548 (age 60 journal the country.' but what are the artificial wants' and the 'great resources' of a country? surely not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of his native (?) virginia, or that fertility of soil which produces these. the chief want is ever a life of deep experiences, that is, character, which alone draws out the great resources of nature. when our wants cease to be chiefly superficial and trivial, which is commonly meant by artificial, and begin to be wants of character, then the great resources of a country are taxed and drawn out, and the result, the staple production, is poetry.” it is claimed for the clergy that it is the planting of a qualified man in every town whose whole business is to do good in every form. do not look sourly at the club which does not choose you.' ... it is impossible to extricate one's self from the questions in which our age is involved. you can no more keep out of politics than out of the frost. 1 the rest of the passage is printed in letters and social aims, p. 9o. 1863] cabot on art. aunts 549 nature says to the american, i understand mensuration and numbers. i have measured out to you by weight and tally the powers you need.' ... own w elliot cabot's paper on “ art” has given emphasis to one point among others, that people only see what they are prepared to see. thus, who sees birds, except the hunter, or the ornithologist? how difficult it is to me to see certain particulars in the dress of people with whom i sit for hours, and after i had wished to know what sort of waistcoat, or coat, or shirt-collar, or neckcloth they wore: i have gone to many dinners and parties with instructions from home and with my own wish to see the dress of the men, and can never remember to look for it. who teaches manners of majesty, of frankness, of grace, of humility? who but the adoring aunts and cousins that surround a young child ?:... (from for) i cannot read of madame récamier without thinking of anna ward. i see « the man of letters.” lectures and biographic al sketches, pp. 249, 250. 2 see letters and social aims, pp. 81, 82. 550 journal [ace 60 i remember haydon's measure of the beauty of a picture in the shop window was the regard of the poor italians in the street. individuality. there are people whose strong individuality traverses, like the arethusa fountain, the bitter waters of the sea, and arrives pure. we magnify our national customs, and fancy the barriers of the age and the nationality invincible ; but at any time, a new man will reestablish france, or feudal england, or ancient greece, in whatever is most exceptional in its genius and practice, through all his relations, in puritan boston. it is in vain to murmur at bonaparte or goethe or carlyle. they conquer for themselves an absolute allowance, which, however, does not extend beyond themselves or become hereditary, though elsewhere it may be or has been the custom of a country. it is with difficulty that we wont ourselves in the language of the eastern poets, in the melodramatic life, as if one should go down to lewis's wharf and find an ivory boat and a pink sea. he thinks he is at the opera. as, for example, in the chinese two fair cousins. exa courage. a political gentleman' wheeled a major ben : perley poore. 1863] major poore. greatness 551 barrel of apples in a wheelbarrow from newburyport to boston, and through the city to the tremont house, in obedience to a bet on the election he had made with a boarder of that hotel. it cost courage to undertake and perform it, but the less on account of the éclat, and the last miles were done with attendance of drum and trumpet. thoreau thought none of his acquaintances dare walk with a patch on the knee of his trousers to the concord post-office. what young lady in boston would go into washington street with a tin pail ? yes, but every sensible woman would carry a pail to the fire, and every man would stick on a patch if wounded or freezing. greatness. you must have a source higher than your tap. wedgewood bravely took flaxman to counsel, and drew on etruria in england.' ... see opening paragraph of the “ fortune of the republic" (miscellanies). mr. emerson was all this time preparing this patriotic lecture which he first gave in the fraternity course in boston in december. after the end of the war he made changes and added much. after he had ceased lecturing and all literary work, four years before his death, he was induced to read it in the old south church in boston. it was probably his last speech in public. 552 [age бо journal you must be idealists; as greeks were, and still give you the law; as judea was; as egypt was; as romans were. life is ideal; death is to break up our styles. this the use of war, to shatter your porcelain dolls; to break up in a nation chinese conservatism, death in life. a thought makes solitude in a crowd. the lover goes not into the street, where the silver feet are, but into the forest. we are coming (thanks to the war) to a nationality. put down your foot and say to england, i know your merits and have paid them in the past the homage of ignoring your faults. i see them still. but it is time to say the whole truth, that you have failed in an olympian hour, that when the occasion of magnanimity arrived, you had it not, — that you have lost character. besides, your insularity, your inches, are conspicuous, and they are to count against miles. when it comes to divide an estate, the politest men quarrel. justice is above your aim. you are self-condemned. when the merchant reads the broker's stock list, if his own shares are depreciated, he does 1863] moral policy 553 not less read with pleasure the firmness of the other quotations, as indicating the soundness and integrity of the community, which give value to all property, and his with all. : when our young officers come back from the army, on a forty days' furlough, they find apathy and opposition in the cities.' vere washington and cromwell, one using a moral, the other a revolutionary policy. the government of algiers and of turkey is, though it last for ages, revolutionary. if we continued in boston to throw tea into the bay at pleasure, that were revolutionary. but our revolution was in the interest of the moral or anti-revolutionary. slavery is algiers, or perpetual revolution; society upside down, head over heels, and man eating his breakfast with pistols by his plate. it is man degraded to cat and dog, and society has come to an end, and all gentlemen die out. thus a violent conservatism is more revolutionary than abolition or freedom of speech and of press. 'tis like shutting your window when 1 this was in a somewhat stagnant period of the war when volunteers were scanty and the conscription unpopular, when the interference of england and france was feared. 554 journal (age 60 you have lighted a pan of coals in the unchimneyed apartment. there are degrees and limits; a man may make a capital speech in exeter hall, and yet not dictate to the english throne. everybody likes a pronounced character. a man who makes a speech and does not wish to hurt anybody can be unheard without loss. in england, which is a better organized public than any other, they have a rapid ticketing of each man, and a rapid toleration of him when so ticketed. holyoake and urquhart and o'connell and smith o'brien. but nobody there or here likes a whiffler or a trimmer. november. education. “who does not teach his child a trade or profession brings him up to steal,” say the persians. eloquence. “on a toujours la voix de son esprit.” the world, it is an echo. in speaking of england, i lay out of question the truly cultivated class. they exist in england, as in france, in germany, in america, in italy, and they are like christians, or like poets, or chemists, existing for each other across all 18631 english sympathizers 555 possible nationalities, strangers to their people and brothers to you. i lay them out of question. they are sane men as far removed as we from the bluster and mendacity of the london times, and the shop-tone of liverpool. they, like us, wish to be exactly informed, and to speak and act for the public good and not for party. shall we go to war with england for punch's picture? or for the opinion of the drunken lord s.? having penetrated the people and known their unworthiness, we can well cease to respect their opinion, even their contempt, and not go to war at our disadvantage for the avoiding of this. who are they that they should despise? these people who cringe before gortchakoff and napoleon. let us remember the wise remark of general scott, “resentment is a bad basis for a campaign.” i am not sure of the wisdom of burke's saying, “contempt is not a thing to be despised.” n originality. a well-read man can always find the opinion and thesis of a new writer, be he who he will, and however original, already printed in an old book. thus madame du dessourd (?) had carlyle's horror at eloquence. every 556 (age 60 journal new writer is only a new crater of an old volcano. “la plume est le premier, on l'a dit, le plus sûr des maîtres pour façonner la parole.” -saintebeuve. “stylus optimus et præstantissimus effector et magister.' cicero. vm what are the fine verses of solon, to the effect that the orator has not the harmony of thought and speech until from forty-two to fifty-six years of age? sainte-beuve, causeries, vol. i. (from dl) a birthday. “ dii tibi dent annos, de te nam cætera sumes.” ovid to tiberius, lib. ii, ep. i. tournure, urbanité, entregent, this is the trinity which makes the creed and the cultus of society. (from war) lincoln. we must accept the results of universal suffrage, and not try to make it appear that we can elect fine gentlemen. we shall have coarse men, with a fair chance of worth and manly ability, but not polite men, not men to please the english or french. 1 the pen is the best and foremost accomplisher and master. 2 may the gods grant thee years, for all the rest is thy part. 1863] honest abraham 557 you cannot refine mr. lincoln's taste, extend his horizon, or clear his judgment; he will not walk dignifiedly through the traditional part of the president of america, but will pop out his head at each railroad station and make a little speech, and get into an argument with squire a. and judge b. he will write letters to horace greeley, and any editor or reporter or saucy party committee that writes to him, and cheapen himself. but this we must be ready for, and let the clown appear, and hug ourselves that we are well off, if we have got good nature, honest meaning, and fidelity to public interest, with bad manners, — instead of an elegant roué and malignant self-seeker. if our brothers or children are killed in the battle, we owe to them the same courage and self-renunciation in bearing well their death, which they showed us in sacrificing themselves. they who come to-day to his funeral (the soldier's), to-morrow will tread in his warpath, and show to his slayers the way to death. beauty. “for the eye altering alters all.” – blake. in seeing — the other day, i did not like 558 journal [age 60 it that she appeared rather to endure her beauty than to animate or create it. “ l'amour est; pæil aimer, c'est voir." — aimé de loy. you are the pickets. the difference between you and your enemies is eternal ; it is the difference of motive. your action is to build, and their action is to destroy : yours to protect and to establish the rights of men; and theirs to crush them. machiavel himself said, “'tis not the violence which repairs, but the violence which destroys, that is to be blamed.” friendship. chacun à son goût. froissart says of his youth, “i loved all those who loved dogs and birds.” homme amoureux was, in that age, equivalent to homme comme il faut. classes. it makes a great difference whether a man lives with his face or his back to the window. leasts. “ trifles” is a very convertible word. your trifles are my gods. the child's soapbubbles are newton's problems. of wordsworth's poem “to h. c., six years old,” william blake writes : “this is all in the 1863] enthusiasm needed 559 highest degree imaginative, and equal to any poet, but not superior. i cannot think that real poets have any competition. none are greatest in the kingdom of heaven. it is so in poetry.” we do not clearly see what shall be, or how religion and enthusiasm are to come to us americans, which we sorely need. for the imported religions are used up, and we want power to drive the ponderous state. incredulity verges on despair. we think we can defy any crisis, any teacher, any providence, to reproduce for us the enthusiasm of greece after the persian invasion, — the enthusiasm for beauty; or that of europe in early christianity, and, later in the crusades, and in the ages when plainly mankind expected that the world was shortly coming to an end; or the fire of arabia in islamism; or the power and terror of france in 1789. we can see that the constitution and law in america must be written on ethical principles, so that the entire power of the spiritual world can be enlisted to hold the loyalty of the citizen.'... icc see how the greeks wrote their metaphysics, i the rest of this long passage is printed in « character," lectures and biographical sketches,” pp. 111-112. 560 (age 60 journal in the names and attributes of their gods, apollo for genius, themis for ethics, mercury for eloquence, muses for poetry, dædalus for art; parcæ for fate; mnemosyne for memory; metis for counsel; prometheus, forethought; epimetheus, after-thought; jove for supreme reason; comus, and momus, and silenus, and graces, for laughter and wit. my humorous friend' told me that old age was cheap. time drew out his teeth gratis, and a suction-plate would last him as long as he lived; he does not go to the hairdresser, for time cut off his hair ; and he had lived so long, and bought so many clothes, that he should not need to buy any more. (from for) in october, sumner was elected to the saturdayrians. in that country, a peculiarity is that after sixty years a certain mist or dimness, a sort of autumnal haze, settled on the figure, veiling especially all decays. gradually, year by year, the outline became indistinct, and the halo gayer i probably mr. channing. 2 the saturday club. was sense 1863] poetry. saadi 561 and brighter. at last, there was only left a sense of presence, and the virtue of personality, as if gyges never turned his ring again. it was an immense social convenience. poetry and prose. in poetry, nature bears the whole expense. in prose, there must be concatenation, a mass of facts, and a method. ’t is very costly; only a capitalist can take hold of it; but in poetry, the mere enumeration of natural objects suffices. nay, tennyson is a poet, because he has said, “the stammering thunder,” or “the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls”; and longfellow, “the plunging wave.” saadi. the trait which most characterizes saadi, and has almost made his name a synonym for the quality, is cheerfulness.' his name means fortunate, and the quality betrays a well-constituted or healthy man. all the anecdotes intimate a happy soul to which victory is 1 two years later mr. emerson, at the request of messrs. ticknor and fields, wrote the preface to the american edition of gladwin's translation of the gulistan (rose garden) of saadi. his poem “ saadi ” was first printed in the dial for october, 1842. 562 journal (age 60 habitual, easily shedding mishaps and with sensibility to pleasure, and power of resources against pain. time is short, but always long enough for the finest trait of courtesy. cheerfulness flowing from the vision of the laws that control the world, and from the wise bounty of his own heart. then again this his genius, this his poet's robe and garland, beauty in the world and an answering beauty in his own artistic skill; the beauty that he sees he can create. “saadi's whole power lies in sweet words; let this remain, — i care not what is taken.” the human race is interested in saadi, whilst the cynical tone of byron, which helps nobody, only owes to his genuine talent for melodious expression its lingering longevity. saadi is the poet of friendship, of love, of heroism, self-devotion, joy, bounty, serenity, and of the divine providence. louis xi; comines tells us, none so humble in word and dress. admirable word applied to louis xi,“ le don de manier les esprits par son accent, et par les caresses de sa parole.” 1863] languages. currency 563 “notre seigneur,” says comines, “ne veut point qu'un royaume se moque de l'autre.” how we turn our passions to account! it is not arnault, it is not spiers, it is french novels that teach us french, and german that teach us german. the passions rush through the resistance of grammar and strange vocabulary, and facility being once obtained, the feebler appetite of taste and love of knowledge suffice to habituate us in the new land. what an element in our social fabric is money and the currency, war shows us fast enough. you have bought long mortgages on perfect security, you have bought city of boston's, or massachusetts fives or sixes, or annuities for sixty years. but specie currency stops, and you are paid in paper. how fares it at this moment with annuitants in richmond? but you have been wiser than your whole generation, and have stipulated to be paid in gold. but gold, it seems, through the immense yield of the mines, depreciated in value one half. (so i read in galbraith.) the only currency that is always sterling is personal values, — courage, self-command, manners, wit, learning, and geometry. 564 [age 60 journal saadi. the poet is always awaited by the people. he has only the overdose of that quality whereof they have the underdose. we do not know them until they show their taste by their enthusiastic welcome of his genius. a foreign criticism might easily affect to make little account of him, unless their applauses showed the high historicimportance of his powers. in these songs and elegies breaks into light the national mind of the persians and arabians. these monotonies which we accuse, accuse our own. a new landscape, new costume, new religion, new manners and customs, under which humanity nestles very comfortably at shiraz and mecca, with good appetite, and with moral and intellectual results that correspond point for point with ours at london and new york. it needs in every sense a free translation, just as they attribute to the east wind what we say of the west. co cuse ne every age has its true religion, and its mythology. in every company in which a poem is read, you may be sure a part hear the exoteric, and part the esoteric sense. every city has its rival city, its ridiculous 'suburb, its old times, and its joke. boston has 1863] boutwell. the cause 565 hull (“all are but parts of one majestic hull”) and its banter with new york journalism. one boutwell said to me the other day, “it makes no difference whether we gain or lose a battle, except the loss of valuable lives; we gain the advantage from month to month.” there has been no example like ours of the march of a good cause as by gravitation, or rather, by specific levity, against particular defeats. it is like the progress of health in sleep. you have removed the causes of disease (and one of them is your restless doing) and all mends of itself. it is like the replacement of the dislocated bone, as soon as you have removed the obstruction. the vanity of no man is gratified. the abolitionist would so willingly put in his claim; the sublime god puts him back into the same category of egotism with the copperhead. i remember when i feared — what one still newly escaped shudders to think of — that a little more success, a wiser choice of candidates by the southern party, — say, of jefferson davis, instead of pierce or buchanan, — had enabled them by a coup d'état to have strained the whole organism of the government to the behoof of 566 journal (age 60 n slavery, to have insisted, by all the courts, marshals, and army and navy of the union, on carrying into effect a right of transit with slaves, from state to state. it had then only been necessary for rich democrats in new york, pennsylvania, and connecticut to buy slaves, and it is not easy to see how the ardent abolitionists — always a minority hated by the rich class could have successfully resisted. the effect, however, would have been to put the onus of resistance on the north, and, at last, the north would have seceded. we had been the rebels, and would have had the like difficulty to put our states into secession as the southerners had. “these are matters of arrangement, not of legal value," said the broker. at the town-meeting, one is impressed with the accumulated virility of the four or five men, heywood, fay, brooks, hoar, — who speak so well to the point, and so easily handle the affairs of the town; only four last night, and all so good that they would have satisfied me, had it been in boston, or in washington. the speech of judge hoar was perfect, and to that handful of people, who heartily applauded it. when a good man rises in the cold and 1863] judge hoar 567 malicious assembly, you think,“well, it would be more prudent to be silent.' why not rest on a good past? nobody doubts your talent and power; and, for the present business, we know all about it, and are tired of being pushed into patriotism by people who stay at home.” but he, taking no counsel of past things, but only of the inspiration of his to-day's feelings, surprises them with his tidings, his better knowledge, his larger view, his steady gaze at the new and future event, whereof they had not thought, and they are interested like so many children, and carried off out of all recollection of their malignant nonsense, and he gains his victory by prophecy, where they expected repetition. he knew beforehand that they were looking behind, and that he was looking ahead, and therefore it was wise to speak. what a godsend are these people to a town! and the judge, what a faculty ! he is put together like a waltham watch, or like a locomotive just finished from the tredegar works. i this whole passage, though printed in “ eloquence” (letters and social aims, pp. 116, 117), is kept because of the tribute to judge hoar and its picture of his invariable influence through his virtues and patriotism on a concord town meeting 568 (age 60 journal boston. the boston of franklin, adams, otis, quincy, warren, of wendell phillips, of jonathan phillips, of edward everett, of horatio greenough, of allston, of brook farm, of edward taylor, of daniel webster, samuel dexter, buckminster, channing, greenwood, of charles sprague, of starr king, of billings the architect, of mrs. julia howe, margaret fuller, of a class of forgotten but wonderful young men, – burning too fast to live long, but who marked not less the powers of the air and soil, — john everett, clarke, harris the orientalist, edward lowell, edward and charles emerson. fisk, who wrote his greek grammar in his bed, not having clothes enough. the boston of beecher, horace mann, parker, of sumner, lowell, holmes, agassiz, longfellow, pierce, dana, ward, hoar, hunt, henry james, peter hunt, newcomb.' the boston which animates other souls born of it, or adopted spiritually into it, and in all quarters of their dispersion, drawing inspiration from it, — furness, beecher, channing, frémont, even, bryant, greeley. nay, the influences are so wide and the names crowd i mr. emerson in this enumeration seems in many cases to include persons who have felt the influence of boston and thus become her spiritual sons. mans 1863] george p. bradford 569 on me so fast, that i must take the boston directory or the national census to exhaust them. the neighbourhood of thanksgiving day makes me look at our cousins of new york with a kinder eye, and i remember that the germans say that vienna is the first german city, berlin the second, and new york the third ; and i shall say, that new york is the second city of bostonians; and, whenever we shall so far haye inoculated that centre of nations, by our crowding immigration from new england, that they shall give a republican vote, i will concede, that it is the first. lui [in earlier journals mr. emerson's life-long friend, george p. bradford, has been mentioned, a gentle, sensitive, affectionate scholar, brother of mrs. sarah alden ripley. on november 11, mr. emerson wrote as follows to him:dear george, i hope you do not need to be reminded that we rely on you at two o'clock on thanksgiving day. mr. lincoln in fixing the day has, in some sort, bound himself to furnish good news and victo570 journal (age 60 ries for it. if not, we must comfort each other with the good which already is and must be. yours affectionately, r. w. emerson.] merso you must live in great cities, as bayle writes, “j'ai fait comme toutes les grandes armées qui sont sur pied pour ou contre la france, elles decampent de partout ou elles ne trouvent point de fourrages ni de vivres.” nationality. come, for once get out of sight of the steeples of your town. beecher at exeter hall is superb:— his consciousness of power shown in his jocular good humour and entire presence of mind; the instant surrender of the english audience, as soon as they have found a master; he steers the behemoth, sits astride his very snout, strokes his fur, tickles his ear, and rules him ; secures the english by the method of circumstantiality of statement which they love, by figures, and then by downright homely illustration of important statements. his compliment to wendell phillips as the first orator of the world — did he not say so? — recalls byron's line, 1863) england and america 571 “ and jura answers from his misty shroud, back to the joyous alps that call to him aloud.” they (the english] write better, but we read more out of their books than they do. they have better blowpipe; we have not yet narrowed our heat to a focus, having a continent full of coal. england possesses drastic skill; always better artists than we. carlyle a better writer, gladstone or bright a better debater, i suppose, than any of ours. tennyson a better poet; but is the scope as high? is the material of tennyson better, or does not our dumb muse see stars and horizons they do not? in england, in france, in germany, is the popular sentiment as illuminated as here? as i wrote the other day, — our native politics are ideal. these women, old wives sitting by the chimneyside here, shrill their exclamations of impatience and indignation, shame on mr. seward, shame on the senate, etc., for their want of humanity, of mere morality; they stand on the ground of simple morality, and not on the class feeling which narrows the perception of english, french, german people, at home. we are affirmative; they live under obstructions and negations. england's six points of chartism are still postponed. they 572 journal {age 60 have all been granted here to begin with. england has taken in more partners and stands better on its legs than once, but still has huge load to carry. see how this moderates the ferocity incident elsewhere to political changes. we, in the midst of a great revolution, still enacting the sentiment of the puritans, and the dreams of young people thirty years ago; we, passing out of the old remainders of barbarism into pure christianity and humanity, into freedom of thought, of religion, of speech, of suffrage, or political right; and working through this tremendous ordeal, which elsewhere went by beheadings, of massacre, and reigns of terror, passing through all this and through states and territories, like a sleep, and drinking our tea the while. 'tis like a brick house moved from its old foundations and place, and passing through our streets, whilst all the family are pursuing their domestic work inside. i hate to have the egotism thrust in with such effrontery. this revolution is the work of no man, but the effervescence of nature. it never did not work. yet nothing that has occurred but has been a surprise, and as much to the leaders as to the hindmost. and not an abolitionist, not an idealist, can say without effront573 1863] live forces ery, i did it. it is the fly in the coach, again. go boost the globe, or scotch the globe, to accelerate or retard it in its orb! it is elemental, it is the old eternal gravitations : beware of the giving and of the recoil! who knows, or has computed, the periods ? a little earlier, and you would have been burned or crazed; a little later, you are unnecessary. “if i had attempted in 1806 what i performed in 1807,” said napoleon, “i had been lost.” frémont was superseded in 1861, for what his superseders are achieving in 1863. and many the like examples. the republicans of this year were the whigs and democrats of 1856. mazzini and kossuth, 't is fine for them to sit in committee in london, and hope to direct revolution in italy, hungary, and poland. committees don't manage revolutions. a revolution is a volcano, and from under every body's feet flings its sheet of fire into the sky. more than that, let not the old thinker flatter himself. “you may have your hour at thirty,” says jove, “and lay for a moment your hand on the helm, but not at sixty. i draft only between the ages of twenty and forty-five. only quincy adams in a whole generation of men do i allow to lay an iron hand on the helm at seventy-five.” 574 journal . (age 60 our civilization and these ideas are reducing the earth to a brain. see how by telegraph and steam, ... the earth is anthropized. has an occiput, and a fist that will knock down an empire. what a chemistry in her magazine. 'ns mor how all magnifies new england and massachusetts! a. said, “her ice burns more than others' fire.” i will tell you why i value boston: because, when i go to enumerate its excellent names, i do not take down the boston directory, but the national history, to find them. the rebels in the effrontery with which, in their failing fortunes, they adhere to their audacious terms of peace, have well instructed us; and i rejoice to see we are likely to plant ourselves with vigour on the condition of absolute emancipation as the first point with which each rebel state must comply. their women, too, have taught our women, who have excellently learned the lesson. it will go hard, but we shall better the instruction. remarkable letter of j. m. botts to the richmond examiner (?) in the journals, saying that every man in the confederacy regrets this 1863] the need of men 575 moment the rebellion, and, if the work were to do again, would not do it. friendship a better base for treating of the soul than immortality. then it affirms it inclusively. franklin, nous dit mallet du pan, répéta plus d'une fois à ses élèves de paris, que celui qui transporterait dans l'état politique les principes du cbristianisme primitif, changerait la face de la société. “one thought fills immensity.— blake. “the tigers of wrath are wiser than horses of instruction.” — idem. humility. “autant ils sembleront s'approcher de dieu par intelligence, autant ils s'en eloigneront par leur orgeuil.” — apud sainte-beuve. (from for) speech i should bave made november 22. the country wants men; no want of men in the railroad cars, in brighton market in the city, in washington street, men to see booth, to see cuba, to see the great organ, to fill faneuil hall. everywhere, hosts of men. in the swarm576 journal [age 60 ing population, the drain of the army, and all the loss by war, is a drop in the bucket. but the country wants them, wants every body. to be sure, there are many that should not go,those exempted by age, by infirmity, so held by peremptory engagements to their civil, domestic, or professional affairs, as that the loss of them out of these would be the greatest disaster. but for the multitude of young, able men, there is not this necessity to stay. let them go. “one omen is good, to fight for one's country.” every kind of man is wanted, every talent, every virtue; the artillerist, the horseman, sharp-shooter, engineer, secret-service man, carpenter, team ster, clerk; the good, to be the soul and religion of the camp; the bad, because to fight and die for one's country not covers, but atones for, a multitude of sins. and what? will you send them to die with winthrop, lowell, dwight, shaw, bowditch? yes, when i consider what they have sealed and saved, — freedom for the world; yes, a thousand times yes! young, they were old; had only crowded fourscore into thirty. it was well worth the inestimable sacrifice, or to blot out one generation were well. the war is an exceptional struggle, in which im1863] young heroes. hoosac 577 the first combatants are met,the highest principles against the worst. what a teacher! what a field! what results! now i well know how grave and searching this ordeal is; how it has taught courage! anxiety of the youth, sensible, tender, from school, college, counting-room, with no experience beyond football game, or school-yard quarrel, now to leap on a battery, or a rank of bayonets. he says, i know not how it will be with me; one thing is certain, i can well die, -oh, yes, but i cannot afford to misbehave. dearest friends will know to-morrow, as the whole earth will know, whether 1 have kept faith with them. but the experience is uniform, that the gentle soul makes the firm hero after all. the record of the troops, on the whole, is nobly honourable through the war, and lastly, the encouragements from the prodigious results already secured. culture. most people are not finished men, but sketches merely, and this for not finding their native bias. new york, december 22. the muskrat on our rivers has two doors, one to the water, and one to the land. our boston 578 [age 60 journal merchants have already a sea-door, but they are rather pinched by the hoosac mountain — on the landside — and they want a land-door; so they have made an extension of their gallery to new york, and build their land-door here, in new york, facing st. louis and chicago and the pacific railroad. 1 ее art. i must remember leonardo da vinci as a mannered artist, when i recall that one face which, in all his st. johns or madonnas looked out on me; as i once heard of newton, that some sally sullivan (?) was in all his pictures, and of greenough that he carved himself into his sculptures. i saw in his medora his own face, and in his achilles, i think, his form. dr. johnson, carlyle, and john wilson, in “moss side," etc., are victims of their own manner. parmegiano is mannered. his figures attitudinize as in second-class society, at wateringplaces. martin is mannered. you can tell his pictures at a look. in reply to the vulgar opinion of english and other savants, that we must accumulate facts, and distrust theory,i like well these sentences of sainte-beuve; “je ne sais plus qui a dit : on 1863] writing on jesus 579 commence toujours par parler des choses; on finit quelquefois par les apprendre. le fait est, que les mieux doués commencent par deviner ce qu'ils finissent ensuite par bien savoir.” — portraits con· temporaines, ii, 444. renan writes vie de jésus. many of his contemporaries have no doubt projected the same theme. when i wrote representative men, i felt that jesus was the “representative man” whom i ought to sketch; but the task required great gifts, — steadiest insight and perfect temper; else, the consciousness of want of sympathy in the audience would make one petulant or sore, in spite of himself. theodore parker, of course, wished to write this book; so did maria child in her book of religions, and miss cobb, and alcott, and i know not how many more. in town, a stout soldier, an irishman, walked before me, large, and with all too much motion. a little boy stopped him, “ please give me a cent.” soldier stooped to find out what he said, and then, with unfeigned astonishment, said, “a cent, -great god! i give you a cent!” and rushed indignantly forward. 580 journal [age 60 authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1863 solon; pythagoras; confucius, book of poetry, apud james legge; pindar; zeno; ammonius; marcus antoninus; plotinus; saadi, apud von hammer purgstall's german translations; hafiz; froissart; philippe de comines; machiavelli; edward, lord herbert of cherbury, autobiography; maréchal de montluc, mémoires, cotton's translation; samuel butler, hudibras; silesius angelus; d'herbelot, bibliothèque orientale; charles perrault; bayle; fontenelle; montesquieu; voltaire; franklin; dr.johnson; winckelmann; james otis; john adams; rousseau; heyne; fuseli; roederer, notices historiques; william blake; richter, titan; schlegel; john quincy adams; humboldt; varnhagen von ense, diary; madame rahel von ense; robert brown, botany; von hammer purgstall, translations from persian poets; fourier; gaus; josiah quincy; malte brun, geographie universelle ; charles chauncy; béranger; webster; john wilson, moss-side; sir william napier; arago, life of carnot; guizot; sir william hamilton. 1863] reading 581 les faraday; charles sprague; edward everett; bryant; horace mann; carlyle; alcott; prince gortchakoff; balzac; pusey; kossuth; lydia maria child; william h. furness; dumas; richard owen; sainte-beuve, causeries; albert brisbane; n. p. willis; agassiz; darwin; benjamin peirce; longfellow; tennyson; gladstone; o. w. holmes; theodore parker; margaret fuller; james freeman clarke; wendell phillips, horace greeley; pugin; henry james, substance and shadow; charles sumner; john bright; thoreau; channing; john a. andrew; c. k. newcomb; ruskin; lowell; julia ward howe; dr. kane, arctic voyages; matthew arnold; thomas hughes, tom brown; ernest renan, vie de jésus; thomas starr king; j. peter lesley; james elliot cabot, on art; theodore h. hittelle, resources of california; burton, handbook of the pruiries; elizabeth sara sheppard. end of volume ix cbe riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s.a 21.; 601 hw 1zwim kwaldo emefan ke og 03 vard co helen 7. bradfora ralph waldo emerson. complete works. centenary edition. 12 vols., crown 8vo. with portraits, and copious notes by edward waldo emerson. price per volume, $1.75. 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. 5. english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. 10. lectures and biographical sketches. 11. miscellanies. 12. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works. riverside edition. with 2 portraits. 12 vols., each, 12mo. gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 12 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15 oo. poems. household edition. with portrait. i2mo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. essays. first and second series. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emerson. introductory essay. household edition. 12mo, $1.50. holiday edition. 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. 18mo, $1.00. emerson calendar book. 32mo, parchment-paper, 25 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. 3 ols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. the correspondence between emerson and grimm. edited by f. w. holls. with portraits. 16mo, $1.00, net. postpaid, $1.05. for various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son memoirs see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820-1872 vol. vi $ waldo emerson journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1841-1844 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1911 keggob harvard university library copyright, 1911, by edward waldo emerson all rights reserved published november 1911 contents journal xxxii (continued) 1841 (from journals e, g, h, and j) nantasket. temperance in love of beauty. the old game, the one fact ; being and organizing. impressions ; art. sense and spirit. the church's office and benefit to the people ; self-respect. cities like shells. mirrors. leaving morals at home. theories, whig and spiritualist: affirmative. plain dealing. real travel. domestication. facts ; first or last, man must conquer things ; a man's tidings. sea-shore rhymes. community-living. inventions or moral force. persons light the way. rich ; rich to help? grandeur in common folk ; human relation. composure. trust the prompter. the passer-by. tropes. destiny and toleration. the age; mysticisms. our earth-fellows. the eternal man. osman and success. sky. ideal. advancing god. optimates. writing. steady light. superlative. scale. measure ; golden mean genius unsettles all. selection. portableness. be disposed to believe ; cavil easy. humoring insanities. quarrels. unity. the child's idealism. the nobly constant. the swordsman of debate. the brave reformer or contents penitent; heart above intellect. desert. robin says grace. beauty found in work or worship. love's paradox. character ; usage hardens ; keep human. the born public man. landor ; joy of letters; their help to man. service. vantage ground. black and white art. children's directness. whitewashing. concord fight. classmates meeting ; their progress ; no disguises. thought borrowed or kindred. face and head. mood and dress. tropes and transmigration. reading and writing. the cow speaks. guest or friend. pedantry ; districts of thought. samuel hoar. bacon. burns. lotus-eaters. boston routine. the moment is all. wild type of man. dandies of moral sentiment. boys' fancies. ellery channing. our authors. poet. osman goes a-berrying. heavenborn's results. osman ; autobiographical ; vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-50 property; labor. jones very. transcendentalists. (rev. t. t. stone.) dr. ripley's death; rear-guard of the puritans; generosity and limitations; transparent, harmonious life. scale of temperament. humility ; acquiescence ; susceptibility. school to teach whigs idealism. the new spirit fated. the pine wood. boston's bill-of-fare. our age living, the creator's latest work, the generation unconscious. the game. experience and idea the twins ; the revolution. nomoney morality. fichte. woman unsphered. father taylor on insults. the world and opinions. the poet and his house. exaggeration. whigs admit a sick world. walden's visitors. merchant more cramped than negro. knowing how to be rich. wild contents stock in nations. kinds of corn. g. w. tyler ; his prowess. temperance elegant. inaptitude. de clifford and pericles and aspasia teach behavior. selfseekers' nemesis. friendship in communities. deep natures have latitude. real gentility. mrs. ripley's eager scholarship. two or three persons. the marriage institution ; woman's ideal place. writing ; autobiographical. emerson, thoreau, alcott. poetry to come ; now too conscious ; should sweep away the poet ; the instinct. sky and earth. the man in black ; the swedenborgian. indirection. nature's symbolism. talk with margaret fuller. stories illustrating the times. the startled german. shakspeare as metaphysician. editors and webster. the soul's two directions ; does love reconcile these ? good courage. exclusives. the champion. riches a meter. speeches and protocols also in god's scheme. artists' models. the great harlequin. man and expression in books. elizabeth hoar, the sister. life's repetitions grateful. genius. hope. my book. life's sum. daguerreotype. margaret fuller. tone ; whiggery is secondary, timid. fanny elssler's dancing is new expression ; the moral. effect of music. webster ; the change. water. good expression rare. insanities. right aristocracy ; infernal infantry of fashion. the moment in writing ; its relief. the unrecognized great. the opening firmament. jesus at a club? two doors to high life. fashion. inhumanity and geniality in company. margaret fuller's unsettled rank. trade and holiness. unfinished literary work. the transcenviii contents dental movement. permanent nobility. reading helpful in two ways. prescribers. life in boston, in two acts. war of property and masses. sitting for a daguerreotype . . . . . . . . . . . 51-100 garrison thunders for peace ; the wrong way ; take man as he is, and give a better way. society hates unmaskers. the divinity school. fight slavery on a high plane. the webster boys. untrained american writing. our contemporaries. conscience. reform is elegance. aunt mary. bitterness talks itself out. thought immature not spirit. basis of ideals. advanced arithmetic transcendental. village explains world ; greatness near. daguerre's guess. the composer needs the underparts also. youth of nature. the three wants. the acquiescent attitude. heed the hints and miracles. the resplendent day. the man contrasted with his works. shelley. a test. soldiers. inspiration must make its own way. skepticism. heroes of sickness. dandies of moral sentiment. time conquerable. poet must work a miracle. workers and their critics. new thought out of ruins of old. america lost in her area. men magnetizable. great causes belittled by converts ; need long perspective. wonder before genius. strength wasted in denial. nature ignores our language. heart fears no uncovering to the better and wiser. beauty in world of thought. originality. miracle of poetry, god, from commonest materials. self-help. anti-transcendentalists, their reasons. believe in your work. affirmative. the writings of ancient world sacred. man still returns to the old words. our base of granite. the contents property question love only can solve. hospitality to thought. real men. the dream. edith's birth. course on the times. robin hood's foes and friends. jones very's admissions and objections. writing by god's grace. do or tell. contritions and faults. our help from woman. the rude reformer posed. the affirmative ever good ; whigs, protestants; raphael, shakspeare, affirm. theorists more formidable than conservative. osman. napoleon. circumstance. the coming perfected man. aërial roots. great writings and great life. reputation in universe. a word. the man inopportune, yet delighting in others. matter. a person. necessity or ethics. spontaneous men. objections. the man, not the class. oversubtlety. kepler. leibnitz. what helps man? the upright man. nature and man. herrick ; the poet's lure. reading . . . . . . . . 101-146 journal xxxiii 1842 (from journals e, j, k, and n) the happy household. death of waldo; the vacancy, relics; his happy life and friends ; his sayings. mass in writing; advancing steps ; perspective. mass in friendship. boy and violets. seeing without eyes. facts as horses. proclus. bores. jonson and tennyson. optical life. ignore the declaimer, speak the thought. proclus, magnificent suggestion. lady turned church-member. accept not persons. expericontents mental writing; truth. character. the deserted house. charles newcomb. new york lectures and acquaintances. the diál problem. surface-life. brothers; william emerson. memory of waldo; the mystery. the scholar's voice heard afar. colton's tecumseh. hell and heaven ; your attitude. the bible. clare's poem. albert brisbane. alcott's english project; alcott described at length; greatness and faults. dreams. edward palmer; his no-money gospel. neighbor edmund hosmer. conditional population. prune doctrines for truth. swedenborg a poet. junius alcott's paper. gypsies and apostles. the babe a divine conductor. swedenborg an interpreter of nature; the beautiful necessity; a dangerous teacher. lesson of all in each. education, from plato. your gift apparent to those it helps. verses, the poet. christ's victory ; character over fate ; victory follows defeat. idolatry the backward, victory the forward eye. poets' message. lesson of works as symbols. the boys and the passenger. shakspeare and swedenborg. the woman-part in the mind. lord nugent's justice. farmers' alliance coming. dewey's plants in massachusetts ; charm of names. swedenborg's hopeless hebraism ; gates of thought are found late. coleman's agriculture in massachusetts. infant composure. meeting of gentlemen; country culture. mrs. rebecca black. insight; private energy best. proclus ; intellect communicable. quotation. corrective wisdom. imperfect relation. the platonist region . . . . . . . . . . . . 150-200 edmund hosmer's victories. necessity farms. rural contents proverbs. beauty fits. the fields correct us. both continence and abandonment. grandfather and baby. beware magnificent souls. let languages lie awhile. self and god. strong-winged proclus. goodness and greatness should win their way. boldness the presence of the spirit. doctor james jackson; the scale of patients. a reading man. surface prevails; molecular interspace. evening and morning. a projected neighborhood. the calvinist by temperament; the over contrite and the hopeful. catbird poetry. milton and others on marriage. leigh hunt's “ abou ben adhem.” affirm; denial gets nowhere. talent's comforts. a village athenæum. the man-woman. the unsuspected star. to-day all important. what a military band can bring you. born out of time. shun egotism. intellect grows by obedience. dew and fireflies. choose your morning for plato. shelley. charles king newcomb, a religious intellect; his restoring manuscript. robert bartlett, john weiss. the little daughter's victory. do not shirk in language. the story of the scholar. a day outweighs a sabbath. fate of alcott's book. a convert to rome congratulated. a new volume of tennyson found liberating. talk with sampson reed on swedenborg. scale from deity to dust. childish argument. three classes; samuel hoar; conscience. outgrowing. tracts of english radicals; carlyle ignores them; a real author yet worldly; no milton. chaucer and saadi. poet's susceptibility ; religious sentiment; yet intellect is cheerful. order in the mind, goodwill makes insight. herbs. rosebugs. genius a telescope. xii contents fate. alcott's english allies. novel writing; bulwer's zanoni, disraeli's vivian grey. shun custom. work; play. bettina. labor. the plantain. concord athenæum. death poetic. lesson to 0 b k from concord cattleshow. balzac. a wrong step. great persons independent; yet conventions a safeguard. the village stoic. margaret fuller; tendencies; autobiographical. keys of faiths lost. walk with channing ; sunsets; nature; swearing. report of one on nature; want and have; compensation. blessed genius. joy needs vitality. the workers. marston's patrician's daughter. mr. ripley's good example with talkers. the irish mother. hawthorne above his writing. ward on women. edmund hosmer on alcott; the high plane; helpers in life. society's conventions, to face them or fly? intellect puts an interval, affection none. marriage in spiritual world. the tutor. the incorrigible poet. tennyson; dante; wordsworth. imperfect friendship. the kitten. pseudo-sciences mask a truth undiscovered. the writer like the sick man. each science can explain universe. nature answers what language cannot. dear old surroundings. blind love. the eternal craving. gifts. ready wit. sterling on sculpture. test questions on apples or thought. criticism. authors' pay. boston poem. alcott in london. keys. men gregarious 201-250 plants future men. milnes and carlyle. poet and modern facts. nature leads the boy. alcott on emerson. playing with nature, yet may wake. richter on women. singing to deaf ears. white lies. edward everett; his charm for youth; beauty and eloquence; professor; contents xiii lured by politics. trick in conversation. walk with hawthorne to harvard and visit to shakers. landor; scott; piety; wordsworth; culture from europe; travel without a call. london a magnet. young preachers. coleridge at andover. the little girls. hosmer on farm animals. health and rules. sons. economy. supremacy of classic authors. divinity behind man's institutions. steam's lift to boston. bargaining. man's one way to freedom. doctor channing's strength. mourning gradual; reform's value appears late. la peau d'ane. life's goods by the highway. imposition. take turns. words mere suggestions; beautiful facts. spectatorship. democrats and whigs. useless genius. infants teach cheerfulness. underlying seriousness; the soul's safeguards. margaret fuller; gypsy talent and custom; rabelais. merchants; nothing new. thoughts on tedious visitors. mary rotch on guidance of the friends. indian summer. homer's value to americans. rabelais again. books to read. society must not be overdone. god offers alternatives. truth gives good utterance; richter. the human housedog. alcott's risky imports. letter on doctor channing's death; the minister and author. poets; tennyson, burns, browning, bailey, verse inspired and uninspired. the poor stove. classics. talking on life. boston's hospitality. jones very's influence. the greaves library; charles lane and henry g. wright; alcott. suggestive writers; cornelius agrippa and robert burton. basal mistake of communities. persons are not ideas. literary justice. paracelsus. the reformers claim they bring all that xiv contents is good in england. an incubus; their small red lion. man's wolfish hunger; he is nature's bulletin. speaker, not topic. these helpless newcomers. orestes brownson's list of great americans. ideal union involves independence. rebounding facts. women in england. thoreau's saying on man. woman our conscience. prating. the spirit detaches. new england's idealism. relation of man to books . 251-300 books ; the few great. dodging truth. life's experiment worth risks. winter schooling. hosmer's honesty. fear of starving. cannot deal with others' facts. henry thoreau's verses. time's breast-pocket ; autobiographical. men's changing religions yet save. alcott describes fruitlands scheme ; its worldly propping condemns the dreamers ; the true strength of the spirit. theanor and amphitryon, a parable. lethe. persons or property ; love can reconcile. new york democracy. dickens's american notes. gospel of the race, not the individual. avarice seeks objects, science relation. bancroft and bryant. four walls. intuitions. union in individualism. fire; symbolism. fate is part of a tune. bible. steps. remorseless buddhism. question of the demiurgus. blue sky. charles lane at the conversation. the poet's meals. story of romeo. verses, the south wind. mornings. the locomotive calls. history is striving thought. idealists. the world's many baits. friends in boston. life's daily surprises. the marble hesperus. too little affirming; man intermittent. the yankee's fatal gripe. eyes. individual economies. the channings. religion gives refinement. xv contents electricity of thought. travel humiliates. time necessary to grandeur. country health. american instability. naming. reading . . . . 301-332 journal xxxiv 1843 (from journals z, r, and u) lecturing in philadelphia, new york, baltimore, washington. the new railroad. god's grace. the hit. hotels. mrs. siddons and fanny kemble. transmigration. good of novels. poverty intelligible; the gambler. praise of merchants. railway pictures. nature's questions and views. webster, his presence, speech, rearing, faults, rules ; allowance for, lost opportunity, pure intellect, his terrors. american polarity. mrs. emerson on reform-diet. earth spirit. asking eyes ; balanced men. talk and writing. the speaker's desire. children versus conversation. at home in the moral. the plague and fear. john quincy adams the fighter. no straight line. nationality disappears in presence of human nature. père antoine of new orleans ; general jackson. men cast away pearls. debt to society. american democracy. mahomet and woman. beware a mystic in power. leisures of the spirit. the pit-audience in america. brisbane. world self-sufficient ; land-hunger. odd world; fine women. humiliation's gift. i and my day. innocent swearing. the solitary spirit. reading german ; goethe. channing as a poet ; his freaks. jock and xvi contents dick, a parable. criticism ; do a new thing. poet must heed perspective. spread your health. the muse is feminine. the half-sighted philosophers. lectures. pride and vanity. the english disputants. recognize god in persons. margaret fuller ; her riches of thought, generosity, elevation ; heroic eloquence ; nuovissima vita. kings. martyrs. the dial writers. reform must be new and warm. multiplication table. woman's real state. margaret fuller's verses. invention of the diamond. clothes-pins. genius and talent. the incorrigible philosophers. henry thoreau. acquaintance with montaigne. weak reference. brook farm favours impulse ; newcomb and bradford. poets' wine ; proclus. the neoplatonists. conscience must watch intellect. inconvertible calvinist. the light shining through the great. woman; the soul hermaphrodite ; harriet martineau ; ellen tucker. spring's promise. transcendentalist and churchman. webster's ambition. drop of nectar. buddhism. travel. concord's advantages. good will but no affinity with english reformers . . . . 335-385 alcott's criticism. veracity. mrs. george ripley on new england women. five points of calvinism. carlyle in past and present. natural aristocrats. the millerite. farm pests. rude dispute. city of washington ; its poles. aunt mary. america seems trade and convention ; women's critical eyes. brook farm relations. exacting visitors. george ripley and wife. a fresh manuscript. the swampflowers. edward lowell and charles emerson. blue zenith. carlyle on english woes, could he redress contents xvii them? brook farm's difficulties. the pines by the house. the ideal. railroads allies of transcendentalists. the honest garden. wait, pallid america. work on. young ball's visit. modern antiques. the demiurgus. carlyle ; humboldt. the opaline world; the blessed river. the farmer. doctors. stars. man sheds grief. everett's service. confucius. life and death good. the web of property. woman's position normal. luther's two styles. abortive reforms. god even in man, a loadstone. elements and animals. daily bread. persons in our life; qualities. upward and downward look. flying-machines. mountains. carlyle's manlike style. the novel writer. sky. no death. heralds suffer. charles lane described. the poet's lot in life blessed. talk with hawthorne. excellence high and low. pride. fairy gifts. bunker hill monument dedication : webster's oration. visit to brook farm. hierarchy. daguerre. dante's vita nuova. the three dimensions. the fringes of life. transmigration. visit to. fruitlands. household help. morning. channing's humours. the office of the clergy. cows. montaigne. a coming bible. duty. readiness ; the moral. the bench and tools. visit to plymouth ; its people, landscape, aowers. the wyman case tried in concord. webster and choate. judge allen on juries. raleigh. webster socially ; his force and standing. nature; is man rising or falling ? . 386–435 sentences from the philosophers. barriers to friends. fear and ignorance. the she-king quoted. persons melt. influence of jesus and good men. fourier. xviii contents deference ; low sympathy. irresponsibility ; conscience in streaks. thoreau's paradoxes. churchman and thinker. charm of primitive poems ; hawthorne on brook farm. farmer's indirect good deeds. the visit. brook farm pleasant. the drifting immigrants. wealth's quiet strength. beckford's vathek. domestic servants. men representative. demand of beauty. all life has poetry. our public men underlings. annual spirits. laborer's manly grace. gardens, romantic spots ; nature's larger beauty. test of face. o'connell. poor life. prophecy for railroads. reformers' weakness and merit. what can you do? education of counting-room. tendency and men. charles lane on costume, diet, clergy, animals. fruitlands limitations. the poet and the stars. events seen freshly. honor the reformer — get commonsense. montaigne's journey to italy. chandler robbins. henry ware. webster. plato. george b. emerson on trees. second advent hymns. hardness. various aristocracies ; inevitable. chinese reformers ; mencius ; gonzalo's kingdom. mrs. emerson on fruitlands. nature covers aristocracy ; her puzzles. the one straight line. saadi ; quotations, god's approbation of the poet ; his death. wordsworth. tennyson. one person writes the books. party reveals public men. goethe's helena. ben jonson's fame. love; the large view of it, and of life. poet a gambler. channing on writers. the child rules. aunt mary's letters and influence. william emerson of concord; autobiographical. greatness not leaning on riches. explosive free-thinking. thomas taylor decontents xix fines christianity. the painter and the realist. sympathy but partial. alcott the wandering emperor. pioneer american writers. children sacred. virtue and condition. genius is tyrannical. the dinner-bell. sect and spirit. reforms crude writing ; wings or boots ? married women in communities. country and city ; the sun's call. plotinus on light. others' endorsement. to-day. the common sense. the soul's flow and ebb. thought's quantity and depth ; life one and eternal. handel's messiah. grim morals. spheres. tears. socialist convention. english literary history. trade's triumphs. kant. belief and unbelief. intellect. reading . . . . . . 436-484 journal xxxv 1844 (from journals u and v) lyceum lectures lack aspiration. anniversary of waldo's death. the inward eye. magnetism. reform's pitfall. charlatanism. nature's willfulness. the dead. daguerreotype of soul. brook farm's new life. ellery channing. conversion of intellect. wish for eloquence. oriental type of thought. the world's secret. dreams. thoreau's inspiration.” annexation of texas. individuals ? books that stir but do not feed. thoreau's secret of life. otherism. intellect alone a devil. our descent ? personal criticism. closing the old second church. consuelo as devil's advocate. symmetry. “ chaldæan oracles.” magnetism xx contents in sexes. preacher and doer. debile american schol. ars. allston's strength. our authors thin-blooded. shakers sacrifice culture. duty in the actual world. trade's reprieve. the fruitlands tragedy and alcott. the cool beggar. the past ever new. paradox of friendship. the recluse. writing. rich character. moving useless. character in legislators; adams compared with webster. god ever new. herbert's verses. taylor's “ novel and solitary path”; the platonists. beckford's italy and spain. ole bull's performance. burke and schiller believers. boston's offerings. deference and room. real economy. classifying words. goethe's breadth and felicity. woman and marriage. thoreau in word and act. our free thought. fourier. alluring forest. thinkers, and livers of their thought. jesus and immortality. behmen's excellence. life's recipe. woman's musical character; her pathos. hearing music. death natural and sweet. poor or brave life. the transcendental movement, conquering ideas. conservatism. samuel hoar. second visit to shakers; their dance and religion. long life implied. humility. cant phrases. the dandies. novels; disraeli government. real sentiment. the stagedriver. the new railroad. the redeeming dæmons. science as a barrier. prophecy of railroad tunnels. the gardener. swedenborg's vice. life, vigor and performance . ......... 485-530 mass-meetings. boys. self-justifying ; demiurgus. geology. evolution; reason and love; the black man advances. novels; george sand, manzoni. duties of abolitionist. second essays sent to friends. sentixxi contents ments, make poet. said. solitude. topics. slaveholder and cringing cotton manufacturer; honor to garrison. bonaparte and the chapel bell. wendell phillips; his strong fact-basis for eloquence. hope. mirabeau. jesus as a theme to-day. alcott underprizes labor. goethe's strength; our debt to him. sarah alden ripley; her gifts, impulses, scholarship and virtues. nature outwits the writer. reading . . . . . . 531-550 illustrations waldo emerson ......... frontispiece from a daguerreotype. . . . . . 86 elizabeth hoar . . . . . from a crayon by a. hartwell. . . . . . 298 henry david thoreau . . . . from the bust by walton ricketson. . . . . . . . . 410 thomas carlyle . . . from an old engraving. journal nantasket waterville address lectures on the times journal xxxii (continued) 1841 (from journal g) [all page references to passages from the journals used by mr. emerson in his published works are to the centenary edition, 1903-05.] [during this year it is evident that mr. emerson's forces had ebbed, in spite of the gardening hours with his friend henry thoreau, and the change to the lonely hostelry on nantasket beach, whither he went to write his “waterville address," was important. in mr. cabot's memoir of emerson he gives several letters written from nantasket to mr. emerson's wife and friends with pleasant mention of that fortnight's sojourn.] i on july 13 he wrote :dear lidian, ... i find this place very good for me on many accounts. ... i read and write, and have a scheme of my speech in my head. i read plato, i swim, and be it known unto you i did verily catch with hook and line yesterday morning two haddocks, a cod, a flounder, and a pollock, journal [age 38 nantasket beach, july 10. you shall not love beautiful objects ardently: you will not, if you are beautiful. he who is enamoured of a statue, a picture, a tune, or even of the stars and the ocean, finds in them some contrast to his own life. his own life is ugly, and he sickly prefers some marble antinous or cupid to the living images of his father and mother, and whole towns of his countrymen dwelling around him. but when a man's life is concordant with nature, he will behold all that is most beautiful in the universe with a fraternal regard unsurprised. (from loose sheet) [the following, though undated, was evidently written in july at nantasket.] and a perch. ... the sea is great, and reminds me all the time of malta, sicily, and my mediterranean experiences, which are the most that i know of the ocean; for the sea is the same in summer all the world over. nothing can be so bland and delicious as it is. i had fancied something austere and savage, a touch of iron in it, which it hardly makes good. i love the dear children and miss their prattle. take great care of yourself, and send me immediate word that you are well and hope everything good. that hope shall the infinite benevolence always justify. your affectionate husband, waldo e. 1841] the old game 5 we have two needs, being and organization. see how much pains we take here in plato's dialogues to set in order the one fact in two or three or four steps, and renew as oft as we can the pleasure, the eternal surprise of coming at the last fact, as children run up steps to jump down, or up a hill to coast down on sleds, or run far for one slide, or as we get fishing-tackle and go many miles to a watering-place to catch fish, and having caught one and learned the whole mystery, we still repeat the process for the same result, though perhaps the fish are thrown overboard at the last. the merchant plays the same game on 'change, the card-lover at whist, — and what else does the scholar? he knows how the poetry, he knows how the novel or the demonstration will affect him,no new result but the oldest of all, yet he still craves a new book and bathes himself anew with the plunge at the last. the young men here, this morning, who have tried all the six or seven things to be done, namely, the sail, the bowlingalley, the ride to hull and to cohasset, the bath, and the spyglass, they are in a rage just now to do something: these itching fingers, this short activity, these nerves, this plasticity or creativeness accompanies forever and ever the profound being. journal [age 38 and yet the secret is kept. it is only known to plato that we can do without plato. being costs me nothing. i need not be rich, nor pay taxes, nor leave home, nor buy books for that. it is the organizing that costs. and the moment i am, i despise city and the seashore, yes, earth and the galaxy also. lor “when nature is forsaken by her lord, be she ever so great, she doth not survive.” — veeshnoo sarma. too feeble fall the impressions of our sense upon us to make us artists. every touch should thrill: now ’t is good for life, not for poetry. it seems as if every man ought to be so much an artist that he could report in conversation what has befallen him. aristotle defined space as a certain immoveable vessel in which things were contained. every sensual pleasure is private and mortal: every spiritual action is public and generative. the church aërates my good neighbors and serves them as a somewhat stricter and finer ablution than a clean shirt or a bath or a sham7 1841) church-going pooing. the minister is a functionary and the meeting-house a functionary: they are one and, when they have spent all their week in private and selfish action, the sunday reminds them of a need they have to stand again in social and public and ideal relations beyond neighborhood, higher than the town-meeting — to their fellow men. they marry, and the minister who represents this high public, celebrates the fact; their child is baptized, and again they are published by his intervention. one of their family dies, he comes again, and the family go up publicly to the church to be publicised or churched in this official sympathy of mankind. it is all good as far as it goes. it is homage to the ideal church, which they have not: which the actual church so foully misrepresents. but it is better so than nohow. these people have no fine arts, no literature, no great men to boswellize, no fine speculation to entertain their family board or their solitary toil with. their talk is of oxen and pigs and hay and corn and apples. whatsoever liberal aspirations they at any time have, whatsoever spiritual experiences, have looked this way, and the church is their fact for such things. it has not been discredited in their eyes as books, lectures, or living men of genius have journal [age 38 anbeen. it is still to them the accredited symbol of the religious idea. the church is not to be defended against any spiritualist clamoring for its reform, but against such as say it is expedient to shut it up and have none, this much may be said. it stands in the history of the present time as a high school for the civility and mansuetude of the people.' (i might prefer the church of england or of rome as the medium of those superior ablutions described above, only that i think the unitarian church, like the lyceum, as yet an open and uncommitted organ, free to admit the ministrations of any inspired man that shall pass by: whilst the other churches are committed and will exclude him.) i should add that, although this is the real account to be given of the church-going of the farmers and villagers, yet it is not known to them, only felt. do you not suppose that it is some benefit to a young villager who comes out of the woods of new hampshire to boston and serves his apprenticeship in a shop, and now opens his own store, to hang up his name in bright gold letters a foot long ? his father could not write his name: it is only lately that he could: i the passage in parentheses was written a day or two later, but referred to this place. 1841) self-respect the name is mean and unknown: now the sun shines on it: all men, all women, fairest eyes read it. it is a fact in the great city. perhaps he shall be successful and make it wider known: shall leave it greatly brightened to his son. his son may be head of a party : governor of the state: a poet: a powerful thinker: and send the knowledge of this name over the habitable earth. by all these suggestions, he is at least made responsible and thoughtful by this public relation of a seen and aërated name. let him modestly accept those hints of a more beautiful life which he meets with ; how to do with few and easily gotten things: but let him seize with enthusiasm the opportunity of doing what he can, for the virtues are natural to each man and the talents are little perfections. let him hope infinitely with a patience as large as the sky. nothing is so young and untaught as time.' cities of men are like the perpetual succession of shells on the beach. this world is a palace whose walls are lined with mirrors. 10 journal (age 38 [of a] preacher. “there he has been at it, as tight as he could spring for an hour and a half.” a vulgar man in leaving the eaves of his house has left the moral law and the gods. at paris, at new orleans he gives himself up to his appetite. the theory of the whig, carried out, requires that government should be paternal, and teach paddy where is land, and how he should till it, that he may get bread. but the governments that now are, are improvident. the spiritualist who goes for principles, and for the high and pure self, has none of this tenderness for individuals. do not waste yourself in rejection ; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. i take pleasure only in coming near to people. what avails any conversation but the sincere? uncover thy face, uncover thy heart to me, be thou who thou may, and the purpose of purposes is answered to us both. we may well play ii man 1841) plain dealing together, or eat or swim or travel or labor together, if this is the result: if this is not, all that we have accomplished together is naught. is plain dealing the summit of human well-being? what serenity and independence proceed out of it! then i have not lost the day: then i have not lived in vain. to be a lover with a lover, to be a god with a god, seems to be only this happiness, no more, namely, the being truer: with a broader and deeper yes and no. is this also a fortune, a felicity, coming by the grace of god, and not to be compassed by any effort or genius, when it does not descend on us like beauty or light? i cannot establish it with all, or with most, or with many; then i could be happy with all : no, but only with a few. travel, i think, consists really and spiritually in sounding all the stops of our instrument. if i have had a good indignation and a good complacency with my brother, if i have had reverence and compassion, had fine weather and good luck in my fishing excursion, and profound thought in my studies at home, seen a disaster well through, and wrought well in my garden, nor failed in my part at a banquet, then i have travelled, though all was within the limits of a 12 journal {age 38 mile from my house. domestication consists in the unique art of living in the fact, and not in the appearance. who has learned to root himself in being, and wholly to cease from seeming, he is domestic, he is at the heart of nature. he must be sustained by the sense of having labored, or nothing an yield him cheerfulness. co facts. all is for thee; but thence results the inconvenience that all is against thee which thou dost not make thine own. victory over things is the destiny of man; of course, until it be accomplished, it is the war and insult of things over him. he may have as much time as he pleases, as long as he likes to be a coward, and a disgraced person, so long as he may delay to fight, but there is no escape from the alternative. i may not read schleiermacher or plato, i may : even rejoice that germany and greece are too far off in time and space than that they can insult over my ignorance of their works, i may even have a secret joy that the heroes and giants of intellectual labor, say, for instance, these very platos and schleiermachers are dead, and cannot taunt me with a look: my soul knows better: they are not dead, for the nature of things is alive, ., and that passes its fatal word to me that these 1841) a man's tidings 13 men shall yet meet me and shall yet tax me line for line, fact for fact, with all my pusillanimity. all that we care for in a man is the tidings he gives us of our own faculty through the new conditions under which he exhibits the common soul. i would know how calm, how grand, how playful, how helpful, i can be. yet we care for individuals, not for the waste universality. it is the same ocean everywhere." ... so can dante or plato call the nations about them to hear what the mind would say of those particulars which it happened to meet in their personality. lobster-car, boat, or fish-basket, peeps, noddies, old-squaws, or quail, — to musketaquid what from nantasket, what token of greeting and hail ? we cannot send you our thunder, pulse-beat of the sea on the shore, nor our rainbow, the daughter of wonder, nor our rock, new england's front door. white pebbles from nantasket beach whereon to write the maiden's name, i the substance of what follows is in “ the method of nature” (p. 205). 14 journal [age 38 shells, sea-eggs, sea-flowers, — could they teach thee the fair haunts from whence they came ! neve shall i write a sincerity' or two? — , who never write anything else, except dullness? and yet all truth is ever the new morn risen on noon. but i shall say that i think no persons whom i know could afford to live together on their merits. some of us, or of them, could much better than others live together, but not by their power to command respect, but because of their easy, genial ways: that is, could live together by aid of their weakness and inferiority. understand that the history of modern improvements is good as matter of boast only for the twelve or twenty or two hundred who made them, not for those who adopted them and said we. the smallest sign of moral force in any i on the last day of july mr. emerson wrote to carlyle, who in many letters was preaching silence to him :“ as usual at this season of the year, i, incorrigible, spouting yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the boys in one of our little country colleges. . . . you will say that i do not deserve the aid of any muse. o, but if you knew how natural it is to me to run to those places ! besides, i am always lured on by the hope of saying something which shall stick by the good boys." (carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. ii, letter lxii.) 1841) persons light the way 15 person countervails all the models in quincy hall. the inventor may indeed show his model as sign of a moral force of some sort, but not the user. i only need to meet one agreeable person, boy or man or woman, to make my journey a happy one. but lately it has been my misfortune to meet young men with a certain impudence on their brow, and who speak and answer with that offensive assumption, that what i say i say to fill up the time, and not that i mean anything. not so with that fair and noble boy, whom i saw at nantasket, and whom all good auguries attend ! ascending souls sing a pæan. we will not exhort, but study the natural history of souls, and congratulate one another on the admirable harmonies. rich, say you? are you rich? how rich? rich enough to help anybody?' rich enough to suci this passage is essentially printed in manners” (essays, second series, pp. 153, 154), but it so truly represents mr. emerson's human kindness and hospitality to souls in trouble that it is here given to offset the many theoretical utterances of impatience or of exclusion, which he entered in the journal of this period when the mood was on him. 16 journal [age 38 ovcise an cor the friendless, the unfashionable, the eccentric, rich enough to make the canadian in his wagon, the travelling beggar with his written paper which recommends him to the charitable, the italian foreigner with his few broken words of english, the ugly, lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or half-insane wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with a voice that made them both remember and hope? what is vulgar but to refuse the claim? what is gentle but to allow it? he is very young in his education who needs distinguished men in order to see grand traits. if there is grandeur in you, you will detect grandeur in laborers and washerwomen. and very fine relations are always established between a clear spirit and all the bystanders. do you think there is no tie but your dollar between you and your landlord or your merchant? have these made no distinction between their customers or guests? be calm, sit still in your chair, though the company be dull and unworthy. are you not there? there then is the choir of your friends; 1841) the adviser. the passer 17 for subtle influences are always arriving at you from them, and you represent them, do you not? to all who stand here. it is not a word, that “i am a gentleman and the king is no more,” but is a fact expressed in every passage between the king and a gentleman. with our faith that every man is a possessed person having that admirable prompter at his ear, is it not a little superfluous to go about to reason with a person so advised? we treat him as a detachment. do people expect the world to drop into their mouths like a peach. га i wish i could see a child go to school or a boy carrying a basket without a feeling of envy, but now i am so idle that everybody shames me.? i mr. emerson wrote to mr. ward at this time :“ is it the picture of the unbounded sea, or is it the lassitude of this syrian summer, that more and more draws the cords of will out of my thoughts, and leaves me nothing but perpetual acquiescence and perpetual thankfulness? ... i find no emblems here that speak any other language than the sleep and abandonment of my woods and blueberry pastures at home. ... ah, my friend, i fear you will think it is to little purpose that i have for once forsaken my house and crept 18 [age 38 journal tropes. the metamorphosis of nature shows itself in nothing more than this, that there is no word in our language that cannot become typical to us of nature by giving it emphasis. the world is a dancer; it is a rosary; it is a torrent; it is a boat; a mist; a spider's snare; it is what you will; and the metaphor will hold, and it will give the imagination keen pleasure. swifter than light the world converts itself into that thing you name, and all things find their right place under this new and capricious classification. there is nothing small or mean to the soul. it derives as grand a joy from symbolizing the godhead or his universe under the form of a moth or a gnat as of a lord of hosts. must i call the heaven and the earth a maypole and country fair with booths, or an anthill, or an old coat, in order to give you the shock of pleasure which the imagination loves and the sense of spiritual greatness? call it a blossom, a rod, a wreath of parsley, a tamarisk-crown, a cock, a down hither to the water side, if i have not prevailed to get away from the old dreams. well, these too have their golden side, and we are optimists when the sun shines. . . . you have been here ? it is a sunny, breezy place with delicious afternoons and nights to such as can be delighted.” (letters from emerson to a friend.) 1841] destiny. mysticisms 19 sparrow, the ear instantly hears and the spirit leaps to the trope. the doctrine of necessity or destiny is the doctrine of toleration, but every moment, whilst we think of this offending person that he is ridden by a devil and go to pity him, comes in our sensibility to persuade us that the person is the devil, then the poison works, the devil jumps on our neck, and back again wilder on the other: jumps from neck to neck, and the kingdom of hell comes in. the age. what is the reason to be given for this extreme attraction which persons have for us but that they are the age? well, now we have some fine figures in the great group and many who promise to be fine. i think the nobility of the company or period is always to be estimated from the depth of the ideas. here is great variety and great richness of mysticism. ... but how many mysticisms of alchemy, magic, second sight and the like, can a grand genius like leibnitz, newton, or milton dispose of amongst his shining parts, and be never the worse? 1 the passage thus beginning is found in “ lecture on the times” (nature, addresses, etc., p. 262). 20 journal [age 38 motley assemblage on the planet; no conspiring as in an anthill. every one his own huckster to the ruin of the rest, for aught he cares. in perspective one may find symmetry, and unconscious furtherance. ... as soon as a man gets his suction-hose down into the great deep he belongs to no age, but is eternal man. and as soon as there is elevation of thought we leave the times. i will add to the portrait of osman that he was never interrupted by success: he had never to look after his fame and his compliments, his claps and editions. in very sooth shall i not say that one of the wisest men i have known was one who began life as fool, at least, with a settled reputation of being underwitted ? “to me men are for what they are, they wear no masks for me." when i was praised i lost my time, for instantly i turned round to look at the work i had thought slightly of, and that day i made nothing new. the dissipation of praise, the dissipation of newspapers, and of evening parties. it is the blue sky for background that makes the fine building 1841) godhead. writing 21 ideal. i think there are better things to be said for the conservative side than have yet been said. certainly the onus of proving somewhat striking and grand should be with the idealist. his defects are the strength of the man of the world. nothing but god can root out god. the whole contest between the present and the past is one between the divinity entering and the divinity departing. napoleon said that he had always noticed that providence favored the heaviest battalion. optimates. elizabeth hoar says that the fine young people break off all their flowers and leave none to ripen to fruit. so we have fine letters and a too imaginative and intellectual period, but no deep and well adapted character. scholar. we all know enough to be endless writers. those who have written best are not those who have known most, but those to whom writing was natural and necessary let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood. all writing comes by the grace of god. 22 journal (age 38 character. i do not wish to appear at one time great, at another small, but to be of a stellar and undiminishable light. superlative. the greatest wit, the most space. it is the little wit that is always in extremes and sees no alternative but revelry or daggers. trev scale. we are to each other results. as your perception or sensibility is exalted, you see the genesis of my action and of my thought, you see me in my debt and fountains, and to your eye instead of a little pond of the water of life i am a rivulet fed by rills from every plain and height in nature and antiquity and deriving a remote origin from the foundation of all things. august 22. measure is a virtue which society always appreciates, and it is hard to excuse the want of it.'... society may well value measure, for all its law and order is nothing else. there is a combat of opposite instincts and a golden mean, that is right. what is the argument for marriage but this? what for a church, a state, or any existing 1 the substance of what follows is found in “ manners" (essays, second series, p. 139). 23 1841) genius is all institution, but just this — we must have a mean? genius unsettles everything. it is fixed (is it?) that after the reflective age arrives there can be no quite rustic and united man born. yes, quite fixed. ah, this unlucky shakspeare! and ah, this hybrid goethe! make a new rule, my dear, can you not? and to-morrow genius shall stamp on it with his starry sandal. “then it is very easy to write as mr. pericles writes. why, i have been reading the books he read before he wrote his dialogue, and i have traced him in them all and know where he got the things you most admire.” yes, and the turnip grows in the same soil with the strawberry; knows all the nourishment that it gets, and feeds on the very same itself; yet is a turnip still. all histories, all times, equally furnish examples of the spiritual economy; so does every kitchen and hen-coop. but i may choose then to use those which have got themselves well written. the annals of poland would be as good to a philosopher as those of greece, but these last are well composed. 24 journal (age 38 portableness. the meaner the type by which a spiritual law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories of men, just as we value most the smallest box or case in which any needful utensil can be carried. the telescope is a screen: that is all. “and when adam heard the voice of the lord god in the garden he hid himself.” “remember to be sober and to be disposed to believe ; for these are the nerves of wisdom.” the reformer affirms the tendency, the law. vulgar people show much acuteness in stating exceptions. he is not careful to answer them or to show that they are only exceptions. enough for him that he has an advocate in their consciences also declaring the law. they ought, instead of cavilling, to arm his hands, to thank him in the name of mankind, to see that he is the friend of humanity against their foolish brawling. me humoring. i weary of dealing with people, each cased in his several insanity. here is a fine person with wonderful gifts, but mad as the rest, and madder, and, by reason of his great genius, 1841) humoring. quarrels 25 which he can use as weapon too, harder to deal with. i would gladly stand to him in relation of a benefactor as screen and defence to me, thereby having him at some advantage and on my own terms — that so his frenzy may not annoy me. i know well that this wish is not great but small, is mere apology for not treating him frankly and manlike: but i am not large man enough to treat him firmly and unsympathetically as a patient, and, if treated equally and sympathetically as sane, his disease makes him the worst of bores. quarrels are not composed on their own grounds, but only by the growth of the character which subverts their place and memory. we form in the life of a new idea new relations to all persons; we have become new persons and do not inherit the wars or the friendships of that person we were. “if the misunderstanding could be healed, it would not have existed,” added l.' unity. “ev kai nav,nature is too thin a screen: the glory of the one breaks through everywhere.3 i lidian? 2 one, yet all. 3 this sentence, first written in the journal of 1837, is 26 journal [age 38 i remember, when a child, in the pew on sundays amusing myself with saying over common words as “black,” « white,” “ board,” etc., twenty or thirty times, until the word lost all meaning and fixedness, and i began to doubt which was the right name for the thing, when i saw that neither had any natural relation, but all were arbitrary. it was a child's first lesson in idealism. august 27. how noble in secret are the men who have never stooped nor betrayed their faith! the two or three rusty, perchance wearisome, souls, who could never bring themselves to the smallest composition with society, rise with grandeur in the background like statues of the gods, whilst we listen in the dusty crowd to the adroit flattery and literary politics of those who stoop a little. if these also had stooped a little, then had we no examples, our ideas had been all unexecuted: we had been alone with the mind. the solitary hours — who are their favorites ? who cares for the summer fruit, the “sopsavines” that are early ripe by help of the worm at the core? give me the winter apple, the rusprinted in « the preacher” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 223). 1841] the swordsman 27 settin and pippin, cured and sweetened by all the heat and all the frost of the year. in regard to hi suppose we all feel alike that we care very little what he says, provided only that he says it well. what he establishes with so much ingenuity to-day, we know he will demolish with equal ingenuity to-morrow, not valuing any position or any principle, but only the tactics or method of the fight. intellectual play is his delight, the question is indifferent. he is a warrior, and so only there be war, he is not scrupulous on which side his aid is wanted. in his oration there was universal attack, chivalry all round the field, but he cut up all so fast and with right good will that he left himself no ground to stand on; universal offence, but no power of retreat or resistance in him, so that we agreed it was a triumphant success for his troop, but no sincerity, a devastation and no home. it was the profoundness of superficiality, the most universal and triumphant seeming. the sentence which began with an attack on the conservatives ended with a blow at the reformers: the first clause was applauded by one party, and the other party had their revenge and gave their applause before the period was closed. 28 [age 38 journal it is not to be denied that the pious youth who in his closet espouses some rude and harsh reform, such as anti-slavery or the abstinence from animal food, lays himself open to the witty attacks of the intellectual man; is partial; and apt to magnify his own : yes, and the prostrate penitent also, he is not comprehensive, he is not philosophical in those tears and groans. yet i feel that under him and his partiality and exclusiveness is the earth and sea and all that in them is, and the axis around which the eternal universe revolves passes through his body there where he stands, while the outcast that affects to pity his narrowness and chains is a wanderer, free as the unloved and the unloving are free and independent of the state, just as bachelors and beggars are homeless, companionless, useless. the heart detects immediately, whether the head find it out or not, whether you exist for purposes of exhibition or are holden by all the force of god to the place you occupy and the thing you do. this abuse of the conservative to win the reformer, and abuse of the reformer to win the conserver, may deceive the head, but not the heart. the heart knows that it is the fear and love of beacon street which got this bottle-green flesh-fly, and that only the 1841] helpers. doubt. robin 29 love and the terror of the eternal god begets the angel which it waiteth for. there is no depth to the intellectual pleasure which this speculation gives. but let in one of those men of love in the shade there, whom you affect to compassionate, and you shall feel instantly how shallow all this entertainment was, for he shall exercise your affection as well as your thought, and confront you with the realities that analyze heaven and hell. long ago i said, i have every inch of my merits allowed me, and was sad because my success was more than i deserved, sad for others who had less. now the beam trembles, and i see with some bitterness the slender claims i can make on fortune and the inevitable parsimony with which they will be answered. robin went to the house of his uncle, who was a clergyman, to assist him in the care of his private scholars. the boys were nearly or quite as old as he and they played together on the ice and in the field. one day the uncle was gone all day and the lady with whom they boarded called on robin to say grace at dinner. robin was at his wits' end; he laughed, he looked grave, he 30 journal [age 38 said something, nobody knew what, and then laughed again, as if to indemnify himself with the boys for assuming one moment the cant of a man. and yet at home perhaps robin had often said grace at dinner.' the woman spoken of to-day who finds beauty in every household work is right. and why not beauty in the sunday church? i never wonder that the people like to go thither. i am interested in every shoe that goes into the meeting-house. yes, love relieves us of all timidities and superstitious fears by the most confident, mutual prophecy of each other: so that it is suicidal to this extent, that it can do without interviews, which once it existed for. to there follows much that is printed in “manners” (essays, second series).] character is the one counterpoise to all artificial, or say rather surface distinctions. let a man be self-reposed and he shames a whole 1 a reminiscence, no doubt, of the time just before he entered college, when mr. emerson was allowed by his uncle, rev. samuel ripley, to assist in his private school at waltham. 1841) usage hardens 31 court, a whole city, who are not so. do not care for society, and you put it away into your pocket. i saw a young man who had a rare gift for pulpit eloquence: his whole constitution seemed to qualify him for that office, and to see and hear him produced an effect like a strain of music: not what he said, but the pleasing efflux of the spirit of the man through his sentences and gesture, suggested a thousand things, and i enjoyed it as i do a painting or poetry, and said to myself, “ here is creation again.” i was touched and taken out of my numbness and un. belief, and wished to go out and speak and write all things. after months i heard the favored youth speak again. perhaps i was critical, perhaps he was cold. but too much praise i fancied had hurt him, had given to his flowing gesture the slightest possible fixedness; to his glowing rhetoric an artful return. it was later in the season, yet the plant was all in flower still, and no signs of fruit. could the flowers be barren, or was an artificial stimulus kept upon the plant to convert all the leaves and fruit-buds to flowers? we love young bachelors and maidens, but not old bachelors and old maids. it seemed to me that i had seen before an example of the finest graces of youthful eloquence, hardened by ers 32 journal : (age 38 the habit of haranguing, into grimace. it seemed that if, instead of the certainty of a throng of admirers, the youth had felt assured every sunday that he spoke to hunger and debt, to lone women and poor boys, to grief, and to the friends of some sick or insane or felonious person, he would have lopped some of these redundant flowers, and given us with all the rest one or two plain and portable propositions. praise is not so safe as austere exactors, and of all teachers of eloquence the best is a man's own penitence and shame. e there are some public persons born not for privacy, but for publicity, who are dull and even silly in a tête-à-tête, but the moment they are called to preside, the form dilates, the senatorial teeth appear, the eye brightens, a certain majesty sits on the shoulders, and they have a wit and happy deliverance you should never have found in them in the closet. august 31. i know not why landor should have so few readers. his book seems to me as original in its form as in its substance. he has no dramatic, no epic power, but he makes sentences, which, though not gravitation and electricity, is still 1841] landor vegetation. after twenty years i still read his strange dialogues with pleasure, not only sentences, but, page after page, the whole discourse.' ... i value a book which like this or montaigne proves the existence of a literary world. what boundless leisure, what original jurisdiction, what new heavens and new earth! the old constellations have set, new and brighter have arisen: we have eaten lotus, we have tasted nectar. o that the dream might last! there is no man in this age who so truly belongs to this dispensation as landor. to the performer this appears luxury; well, when he has quite got his new views through, when he sees how he can mend the old house, we will quit this entertainment. until then, leave us the land where horace and ovid, erasmus and scaliger, izaak walton and ben jonson, dryden and pope had their whole existence. “ in the afternoon we came unto a land in which it seemed always afternoon.” but consider, o reformers, ere you denounce the house of fame and the land whose intoxii almost the whole of what follows was used by mr. emerson in the dial paper, “walter savage landor,” printed in natural history of intellect. 34 [age 38 journal cations homer and milton, plato and shakspeare have partaken, that a shade of uncertainty still hangs over all that is actual. alas, that i must hint to you that poverty is not an unmixed good; that labor may easily exceed. the sons of the rich have finer forms and in some respects a better organization than the sons of the laborer. the irish population in our towns is the most laborious, but neither the most moral nor the most intelligent: the experience of the colleagues of brook farm was unanimous, “we have no thoughts." he who serves some, shall be served by some: he who serves all, shall be served by all." when we quarrel, o then we wish we had always kept our appetites in rein, that we might speak so coolly and majestically from unquestionable heights of character. black and white art. the sibyl’ treats every person with some art, flatters them, respects popular prejudices, accuses rum and slavery, and i he that feeds men serveth few; he serves all who dares be true. poems, « the celestial love." 2 probably his aunt mary. 1841] child's truth. apology 35 so appears cunning. the little boy who walks with me to the woods, has no design in his questions, the question which is asked in his mind he articulates to me, over him, over me, — we exist in an element of awe and singleness. not all children do so. some have a fraud under their tongue before they can speak plain. but the art of the artist, how differs that from the art of sin? he too has a design on us, but it is not for his benefit, but for ours. that which first charms him and still charms him, he endeavors to convey, so that it shall work on us its legitimate effect. that is worship still. well for us that we cannot make good apologies. if i had skill that way, i should spend much of my time at that. not being able, i leave it with nature, who makes the best; meantime i am doing something new, which crowns the apology. w bitewashing. we embellish involuntarily all stories, facts, and persons. in nature there is no emphasis. by detaching and reciting a fact, we already have added emphasis to it and begun to give a wrong impression, which is inflamed by the new point given every time it is told. all 36 [age 38 journal persons exist to society by some shining trait of beauty or utility they have. we borrow the proportions of the man from that one fine feature we see, and finish the portrait symmetrically, which is false; for the rest of his body is small or deformed. concord fight. i had occasion, in 1835, to inquire for the facts that befel on the nineteenth april, 1775. doctor ripley carried me to abel davis and jonas buttrick and master blood. the doctor carried in his mind what he wished them to testify, and extorted, where he could, their assent to his forewritten history. i, who had no theory, was anxious to get at their recollections, but could learn little. blood's impression plainly was that there was no great courage exhibited, except by a few. i suppose we know how brave they were by considering how the present inhabitants would behave in the like emergency. no history is true but that which is always true. it is plain that there is little of “the two o'clock in the morning courage” which, napoleon said, he had known few to possess. these thoughts of which the universe is the celebration are, no doubt, as readily and thor37 1841) class meeting oughly denoted in the nature and habits of animals and in those of plants as in men. the words dog and snake and crocodile are very significant to us. at cambridge, the last wednesday, i met twenty members of my college class and spent the day with them. governor kent of maine presided, upham, quincy, lowell, gardner, loring, gorham, motte, wood, blood, cheney, withington, bulfinch, . reed, burton, stetson, lane, angier, hilliard, farnsworth, dexter, emerson. it was strange how fast the company returned to their old relation, and the whole mass of college nonsense came back in a flood. they all associated perfectly, were an unit for the day — men who now never meet. each resumed his old place. the change in them was really very little in twenty years, although every man present was married, and all but one fathers. i too resumed my old place and found myself as of old a spectator rather than a fellow. i drank a great deal of wine (for me) with the wish to raise my spirits to the pitch of good fellowship, but wine produced on me its old effect, and i grew graver with every glass. indignation and eloquence will excite me, but wine does not. 38 (age 38 journal one poor man came whom fortune had not favored, and we carried round a hat, and collected one hundred and fifteen dollars for him in two minutes. almost all these were prosperous men, but there was something sad and affecting in their prosperity. very easy it was to see that each owed his success to some one trait or talent not supported by his other properties. there is no symmetry in great men of the first or of the tenth class. often the division of talents is very minute. one man can pronounce well; another has a voice like a bell and the “orotund tone.” edward everett's beautiful elocution and rhetoric had charms for the dull. i remember charles jarvis in my class, who said “he did not care what the subject was; he would hear him lecture on hebrew or persian.” there is this pleasure in a class meeting. each has been thoroughly measured and known to the other as a boy, and they are not to be imposed upon by later circumstances and acquisitions. one is a governor of a state, one is a president of a college, one is president of a senate, two or three are bank presidents. they have removed from new hampshire or from massachusetts or from vermont into the state where they live. well, 1841] the classmates 39 all these are imposing facts in the new neighborhood, in the imaginations of the young men among whom they come; but not for us. when they come into the presence of either of their old mates, off goes every disguise, and the boy meets the boy as of old. this was ludicrously illustrated in the good story wood told us of his visit to moody in his office among his clients at bangor. “how are you, moody?” with a slap on the back. — “how do you do, sir?” with a stare and a civil but formal bow. “sir, you have the advantage of me.” — “yes, and i mean to keep it. but i am in no hurry. go on with your business. i will sit here and look at this newspaper until your client is gone.” m.looked up every now and then from his bond and his bondsman, but could not recollect the stranger. by and by they were left alone. “well,” said wood, “and you have not found me out?” – “hell!” cried moody, with the utmost prolongation of accent, “it's wood!” what you owe to me, you will vary the phrase — but i shall still recognize my thought. but what you say from the same idea, will have to me also the expected unexpectedness which belongs to every new work of nature. 40 journal (age 38 amongst us only the face is well alive: the trunk and limbs have an inferior and subsidiary life, seeming to be only supporters to the head. the head is finished, the body only blocked. now and then in a southerner we see a body which is also alive, as in young eustis. so is it with our manners and letters. a beautiful woman varies her dress with her mood, as our lovely walden pond wears a new weather each time i see it, and all are so comely that i can prefer none. but there must be agreement between the mood and the dress. vain and forgotten are the fine things if there is no holiday in the eye. tropes. every gardener can change his flowers and leaves into fruit and so is the genius that today can upheave and balance and toss every object in nature for his metaphor, capable in his next manifestation of playing such a game with his hands instead of his brain. an instinctive suspicion that this may befal, seems to have crept into the mind of men. what would happen to us who live on the surface, if this fellow in some new transmigration should have acquired power to do what he now delights to say ? he must be watched. 1841) writing. response 41 for me, what i may call the autumnal style of montaigne keeps all its old attraction. your reading you may use in conversation, but your writing should stop with your own thought. the whole history of sparta seems to be a picture or text of self-reliance. waldo's diplomacy in giving account of ellen's loud cries declares that she put her foot into his sandhouse, and got pushed. democracy. caius gracchus, plutarch says, first among the romans turned himself in addressing the people from facing the senate-house, as was usual, and faced the forum. the trumpet-like lowing of a cow – what does that speak to in me? not to my understanding. no. yet somewhat in me hears and loves it well. i am glad to have guests who can entertain each other, and if i cannot find a second guest in our narrow village to keep the first in play, then i would have pictures, statues, an obsery82 (age 38 journal atory and telescope, a garden, — somewhat that can bear the brunt of the stranger's arrival and allow me to play a second part and be a guest in my own house. but when the friend shall come, then the smallest closet in my house is wide enough for our entertainment. has not pedantry been defined, a transference of the language of one district of thought or action to another district, not in the way of rhetoric, but from a bigoted belief that it is intrinsically preferable? i remember some remark of coleridge that is tantamount to this. i easily see that the spirit of life finds equal exercise in war, in chemistry, or in poetry. i see the law of nature equally exemplified in bar-room and in a saloon of philosophers. i get instruction and the opportunities of my genius indifferently in all places, companies and pursuits, so only that there be antagonism. yet there would be the greatest practical inconvenience, if, because the same law appears indifferently in all, we should bring the philosophers of the bar-room and of the saloon together. like to like. [here follows most of the matter printed in the first two pages of “ character” (essays, second series).] 1841] hoar. lotus-eaters 43 character is that reserved force which acts only by presence, and not by visible or analysable methods. samuel hoar accomplishes everything by the aid of this weapon, not by talent, not by eloquence, not by magnetism. we feel that the largest part of the man has never yet been brought into action. as modern warfare is war of posts and not of battles, so these victories are by demonstration of superiority and not by conflict. if one should go into state street or much lower places, he would find that the battle there also is fought and won by the same grand agents.'... lord bacon's method in his books is of the understanding, but his sentences are lighted by ideas. the fame of burns also is too great for the facts. lotus-eaters. i suppose there is no more abandoned epicure or opium-eater than i. i taste every hour of these autumn days. every light from the sky, every shadow on the earth, ministers to my pleasure. i love this gas. i grudge to move or i here follow other sentences printed in «character." 44 journal (age 38 to labor or to change my book or to will, lest i should disturb the sweet dream. our people are easily pleased: but i wonder to see how rare is any deviation from the routine. . . . if mr. and mrs. wigglesworth go to walk with their family in the mornings they are the speculation of boston. the momentis all. the boys like to have their swing of peaches once in the season, and it suffices them; or of plums, or cherries. we like to be rested; we like to be thoroughly tired by labor; i sit on a stone and look at the pond and feel that having basked in a nature so vast and splendid i can afford to decease, and yet the antecedent generations have not quite lost their labor. “in the heat of the battle pericles smiled on me, and passed on to another detachment.”: i find a few passages in my biography noticeable. but it is the present state of mind which selects those anecdotes, and the selection characterizes the state of mind. all the passages will in turn be brought out. i quoted from landor's imaginary conversations. 1841) wild stock. pretence 45 dr. osgood said of p's sermon that it was patty cake. in history the soul spreads itself, enormous, eccentricand allows norash inductions. themen who evince the force of the moral sentiment and of genius are not normal, canonical people, but wild and ishmaelitish — cromwells, napoleons, shakspeares, and the like. the fine doctrine of availableness which gave the whig party john tyler for their president reaches into the politics of every parish and school district. in plutarch's life of demosthenesit is quoted from the philosopher that through all his orations runs one idea, that virtue secures its own success. dandies of moral sentiment. i, credulous, listened to his fine sentiment and wondered what must be the life of which the ornaments were so costly: and coming again, he lived there no longer: he was now such a tradesman as other tradesmen are, and he recognized my face with patronage and pity. 46 [age 38 journal the fancies of the boy exceed a hundredfold the fruitions of the man. (from e) september. a poet is very rare. i spoke the other day to ellery's ambition and said, think thatin so many millions, perhaps there is not another one whose thought can flow into music. will you not do what you are created to do? ... but ellery, though he has fine glances and a poetry that is like an exquisite nerve communicating by thrills, yet is a very imperfect artist, and, as it now seems, will never finish anything. he does not even like to distinguish between what is good and what is not, in his verses, would fain have it all pass for good,for the best, —and claim inspiration for the worst lines. but he is very good company, with his taste, and his cool, hard, sensible behaviour, yet with the capacity of melting to emotion, or of wakening to the most genial mirth. it is no affectation in him to talk of politics, of knives and forks, or of sanded floors, if you will; indeed, the conversation always begins low down, and, at the least faltering or excess on the high keys, instantly returns to the weather, the concord reading room, and mr. rice's shop. now and 1841] channing. our authors 47 then something appears that gives you to pause and think. first, i ask myself if it is real, or only a flitting shade of thought, spoken before it was half realized; then, if it sometimes appears, as it does, that there is in him a wonderful respect for mere humours of the mind, for very gentle and delicate courses of behaviour, then i am tempted to ask if the poet will not be too expensive to the man; whether the man can afford such costly self-denials and finenesses to the poet. but his feeling, as his poetry, only runs in veins, and he is, much of the time, a very common and unedifying sort of person. (from g) september 4. rightly says elizabeth, that we do not like to hear our authors censured, for we love them by sympathy as well as for cause, and do not wish to have a reason put in the mouth of their enemies. it is excellent criticism and i will write it into my piece. september 11. the poet, the maker. it is much to write sentences: it is more to add method, and write out the spirit of your life symmetrically. of all the persons who read good books and converse about 48 (age 38 journal е was them, the greater part are content to say, i was pleased; or i was displeased; it made me active or inactive; and rarely does one eliminate' and express the peculiar quality of that life which the book awoke in him. so rare is a general reflection. but to arrange many general reflections in their natural order so that i shall have one homogeneous piece, a lycidas, an allegro, a penseroso, a hamlet, a macbeth, a midsummer-night's dream, — this continuity is for the great. the wonderful men are wonderful hereby. the observations that pythagoras made respecting sound and music are not in themselves unusually acute; but he goes on: adds fact to fact, makes two steps, three, or even four, and every additional step counts a thousand years to his fame. september 12. osman said that when he went a-berrying the devil got into the blueberries and tempted him to eat a bellyful, but if he came to a spring of water he would wash his hands and mouth and promise himself that he would eat no more. instantly the devil would come to him again in the shape of larger and fairer berriers than any he had i it is a curious fact that in many places mr. emerson uses eliminate as meaning to separate for use instead of to get rid of. 49 1841] optimates. osman yet found, and if he still passed them by, he would bring him blackberries, and if that would not serve, then grapes. he said, of one thing he was persuaded, that wisdom and berries grew on the same bushes, but that only one could ever be plucked at one time." optimates. sir, said heavenborn, the amount of labor you have spent on that piece is disgraceful. for me, not even my industry shall violate my sentiment. i will sit down in that corner and perish, unless i am commanded by the universe to rise and work. and what became of heavenborn? what a pragmatical question! nothing to tell of: yet i suppose the new spirit that animates this crop of young philosophers, and perhaps the fine weather at this very hour, this thoughtful autumnal air, may be some of his work, since he is now, as we say, dead. osman. our low and flat experiences have no right to speak of what is sacred. out of a true reverence, which is all the good we have left us, we do not recognize the existence of god and nature, but do what we can to exterminate them i compare the little poem “berrying” (poems, p. 41). 48 journal (age 38 them, the greater part are content to say, i was pleased; or i was displeased; it made me active or inactive; and rarely does one eliminate and express the peculiar quality of that life which the book awoke in him. so rare is a general reflection. but to arrange many general reflections in their natural order so that i shall have one homogeneous piece, a lycidas, an allegro, a penseroso, a hamlet, a macbeth, a midsummer-night's dream, — this continuity is for the great. the wonderful men are wonderful hereby. the observations that pythagoras made respecting sound and music are not in themselves unusually acute; but he goes on: adds fact to fact, makes two steps, three, or even four, and every additional step counts a thousand years to his fame. september 12. • osman said that when he went a-berrying the devil got into the blueberries and tempted him to eat a bellyful, but if he came to a spring of water he would wash his hands and mouth and promise himself that he would eat no more. instantly the devil would come to him again in the shape of larger and fairer berriers than any he had 1 it is a curious fact that in many places mr. emerson uses eliminate as meaning to separate for use instead of to get rid of. 1841] wealth. labor. poet 51 it. can i not play the game with these counters as well as with those with land and money as well as with brown bread and serge? a good wrestler does not need the costume of the ring, and it is only indifferent writers who are so hard to be suited with a pen. “i will not sign any petition that mr. d. may hold his office: he and his party have been doing all they could to destroy my business, and drive me to saw wood for a living, and now he may saw wood himself,” said my neighbor the manufacturer. and that is the repute in which “the solid part of the community ” hold labor. to such men no wonder that the fact of george ripley's association should appear wonderful, men of the highest cultivation leaving their libraries and going out in blue frocks and cowhide boots into the barnyard and peat-bog. they think it a freak, but when they find it lasting, and that the plans of years are based on it, they revise their own positions. antony and cleopatra, and old king george iii drest themselves in kersey and went out incogniti. jones very told george bradford that “he valued his poems, not because they were his, but because they were not.” 52 journal [age 38 “the transcendentalists do not err in excess, but in defect, if i understand the case. they do not hold wild dreams for realities : the vision is deeper, broader, more spiritual than they have seen. they do not believe with too strong faith: their faith is too dim of sight, too feeble of grasp, too wanting in certainty.” (rev.) thomas t. stone's letter to m. m. e., june, 1841. september 21. dr. ripley died this morning.' the fall of this oak of ninety years makes some sensation in the forest, old and doomed as it was. he has identified himself with the forms at least of the old church of the new england puritans, his nature was eminently loyal, not in the least adventurous or democratical; and his whole being leaned backward on the departed, so that he seemed one of the rear-guard of this great camp and army which have filled the world with fame, and with him passes out of sight almost the last banner and guidon flag of a mighty epoch. for i mr. emerson's interesting account of his good and hospitable step-grandfather, who had always welcomed him and his mother and brothers to the ancestral home, is printed in lectures and biographical sketches, but most of what is printed there is here omitted. 53 1841] dr. ripley dies these puritans, however in our last days they have declined into ritualists, solemnized the heyday of their strength by the planting and the liberating of america. great, grim, earnest men, i belong by natural affinity to other thoughts and schools than yours, but my affection hovers respectfully about your retiring footprints, your unpainted churches, strict platforms, and sad offices; the iron-gray deacon and the wearisome prayer rich with the diction of ages. well, the new is only the seed of the old. what is this abolition and non-resistance and temperance but the continuation of puritanism, though it operate inevitably the destruction of the church in which it grew, as the new is always making the old superfluous? ... he was a punctual fulfiller of all duties. what order, what prudence! no waste, and no stint, always open-handed; just and generous. my little boy, a week ago, carried him a peach in a calabash, but the calabash brought home two pears. i carried him melons in a basket, but the basket came home with apples. he subscribed to all charities; he was the most public-spirited citizen in this town. he gave the land for the monument. he knew the value of a dollar as 54 [age 38 journal well as another man. yet he always sold cheaper than any other man. ... • woe that the linden and the vine should bloom and a just man be gathered to the tomb." but out of his own ground he was not good for aught. to talk with the insane he was as mad as they ; to speculate with the thoughtful and the haters of forms he was lost and foolish. ... credulous and opinionative, a great browbeater of the poor old fathers who still survived from the nineteenth of april in order to make them testify to his history as he had written it. a man of no enthusiasm, no sentiment. his horror at the doctrine of non-resistance was amusing.... he was a man very easy to read, for his whole life and conversation was consistent and transparent. ... in college, f. king told me from governor gore, who was the doctor's classmate, he was called “holy ripley,” perhaps in derision, perhaps in sadness, and now in his old age when all the antique hebraism and customs are going to pieces, it is fit he too should depart, most fit that in the fall of laws a loyal man should die. shall i not say in general of him, that, given 55 rior 1841) temperament his constitution, his life was harmonious and perfect ? his body is a handsome and noble spectacle. my mother was moved just now to call it“ the beauty of the dead.” he looks like a sachem fallen in the forest, or rather like “a warrior taking his rest with his martial cloak around him.” i carried waldo to see him, and he testified neither repulsion nor surprise, but only the quietest curiosity. he was ninety years old the last may, yet this face has the tension and resolution of vigorous manhood. he has been a very temperate man. a man is but a little thing in the midst of these great objects of nature, the mountains, the clouds, and the cope of the horizon, and the globes of heaven, yet a man by moral quality may abolish all thoughts of magnitude and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. september 28. temperament. every man, no doubt, is eloquent once in his life. the only difference betwixt us is that we boil at different degrees of the thermometer. this man is brought to the boiling-point by the excitement of conversation in the parlor; that man requires the additional caloric of a large meeting, a public debate ; and mo 56 journal [age 38 zen a a third needs an antagonist, or a great indignation; a fourth must have a revolution; and a fifth nothing less than the grandeur of absolute ideas, the splendors of heaven and hell, the vastness of truth and love. the whole state of society of course depends on that law of the soul which all must read sooner or later, — as i am, so i see; my state for the time must always get represented in my companion's nuptial, mercantile, or municipal, as well as in my face and my fortunes. “a new friend is like new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.” (ecclesiasticus ix, 10.) (from h) “one avenue was shaded from thine eyes through which i wandered to eternal truth.” acquiescence, patience, have a large part to play. the plenty of the poorest place is too great,—the harvest cannot be gathered. the thought that i think excludes me from all other thoughts. culture is to cherish a great susceptibility, to turn the man into eyes, but as the eye can see only that which is eye-form, or of 1841) vision. idealism 57 its own state, we tumble on our walls in every part of the universe, and must take such luck as we find, and be thankful. let us deserve to see. too feeble and faint fall the impressions of nature on the sense. let us not dull them by intemperance and sleep. too partially we utter them again : the symbols in which i had hoped to convey a universal sense are rejected as partial. what remains but to acquiesce in the faith that by not lying, nor being angry, we shall at last acquire the voice and language of a man. sun and moon are the tablets on which the name and fame of the good are inscribed. nature is a silent man. were it would be well if at our schools some course of lessons in idealism were given by way of showing each good whig the gunpowder train which lies under the ground on which he stands so firmly. let him know that he speaks to ghosts and phantasms, let him distinguish between a true man and a ghost. “we do not wake up every morning at four to write what all the world thinks,” said the good german. 58 [age 38 journal the inevitableness of the new spirit is the grand fact, and that no man lays to heart, or sees how the hope and palladium of mankind is there; but one blushes and timidly insinuates palliating circumstances, and one jeers at the foible or absurdity of some of its advocates, but on comes the god to confirm and to destroy, to work through us if we be willing, to crush us if we resist. no great cause is ever defended on its merits. if i should take the sum of the annual registers, of the red books, of the scientific associations, of the lloyds' lists, and bicknell's reporters, i should not get the age which this pine wood speaks of. boston. natural history society; athenæum and galleries; lowell institute ; lyceum; mechanics' fair; cambridge college; father taylor; statehouse; faneuil hall; bookshops; tremont theatre. men. taylor, webster, bancroft, frothingham, reed, ward." there is a great destiny which comes in with i rev. edward taylor, rev. nathaniel l. frothingham, sampson reed, the swedenborgian, and samuel gray ward. 1841] our age is living 59 this as with every age, which is colossal in its traits, terrible in its strength, which cannot be tamed, or criticised, or subdued. it is shared by every man and woman of the time, for it is by it they live. as a vast, solid phalanx the generation comes on, they have the same features, and their pattern is new in the world. all wear the same expression, but it is that which they do not detect in each other. it is this one life which ponders in the philosophers, which drudges in the laborers, which basks in the poets, which dilates in the love of the women. fear not but this is full of romance, the wildest sea, or mountain, or desert — life is not more instinct with aboriginal force. this is that which inspires every new exertion that is made. it is this which makes life sweet to them; this which the ambitious seek power that they may control; this they wish to be rich that they may buy ; when they marry, it is out of love of this; when they study, it is this which they pore after, and would read, or would write. it is new in the universe, it is the attraction of time: it is the wonder of the infinite: this is the last painting of the creator : calm and perfect it lies on the brow of the enormous eternity, and if, in the superior recesses of nature there be any abode for perma60 [age 38 journal nent spectators, what is there they would study but this, — the cumulative result, the new morning with all its dews, rich with the spoils of all foregoing time? is there not something droll to see the first-born of this age ignorant of the deep, prophetic charm that makes the individual nothing; interrupting the awe and gladness of the time with their officious lamentations that they are critical, and know too much? are they not torn up in a whirlwind, — borne by its force, they know not whence, they know not whither, yet settling their robes and faces in the moment they fly by me with this self-crimination of ennui ? if ever anybody had found out how so much as a rye-straw is made! feeble persons are occupied with themselves, — with what they have knowingly done, and what they propose to do, and they talk much hereof with modesty and fear. the strong persons look at themselves as facts, in which the involuntary part is so much as to fill all their wonder, and leave them no countenance to say anything of what is so trivial as their private thinking and doing. i can well speak of myself as a figure in a panorama so absorbing. o the whole game at which the philosopher busies himself every day, year in, year out, is to 1841) the game. the twins 61 find the upper and the under side of every block in his way. nothing so large and nothing so thin but it has two sides, and when he has seen the outside, he turns it over to see the other face. we never tire of this game, because ever a slight shudder of astonishment pervades us at the exhibition of the other side of the button, — at the contrast of the two sides. the head and the tail are called in the language of philosophy finite and infinite. visible and spiritual, relative and absolute, apparent and eternal, and many more fine names. the poet. i was astonished one morning by tidings that genius had appeared in a youth who sat near me at table.' . .. it is strange how fast experience and idea, the wonderful twins, the castor and pollux of our firmament, change places; one rises and the other instantaneously sets. to-day and for a hundred days experience has been in the ascendant, and idea has lurked about the life merely to enhance sensation, the fireworkmaker, master of the revels, and hired poet of i here follows the imaginary story told in the poet” (essays, second series, p. 10). 62 [age 38 journal the powers that be: but in a moment a revolution ! the dream displaces the working day and working world, and they are now the dream and this the reality. all the old landmarks are swept away in a flood, and geography and history, the laws and manners, aim and method of society are as fugitive as the colors which chase each other when we close our eyes. all experience has become mere language now. idea drags it now, a chained poet, to adorn and sing his triumph. chilmark. sir, i have your note for a small debt, can you pay it to-day? hyannis. far otherwise : perhaps you have brought me money. chil. no. hy. i contracted that debt when i bought and sold; now i protest against the market. the word pay is immoral.. chil. “it is best to be off wi' the old love, before ye be on wi' the new.” in berlin it was publicly reported at the teatables that fichte had declared his disbelief in the existence of heinrich schlossen, who was worth two hundred thousand thalers. nay, it 1841] woman unsphered 63 was currently whispered that he did not credit the existence of madame fichte. i stood one day in the court house talking with luther lawrence when the sheriff introduced through the crowd a number of women who were witnesses in the trial that was pending. as they filed rapidly through the crowd, mr. lawrence said, “ there go the light troops !” neither plato, mahomet, nor goethe have said a severer thing on our fair eve. yet the old lawyer did not mean to be satanic. the ridicule lies in the misplacement of our good angel, in the violence of direction with which this string of maids and matrons are coming with hot heads to testify what gossip they know about mr. gulliver or mrs. veal, being quite dislodged from that shrine of sanctity, sentiment, and solitude in which they make courts and forums appear absurd.' ... i remember edward taylor's indignation at the kind admonitions of dr. p. the right answer is, 'my friend, a man can neither be praised nor insulted.' i here follow sentences printed in “ character” (essays, second series). 64 journal [age 38 on rolls the old world, and these fugitive colors of political opinion, like doves' neck lustres, chase each other over the wide encampments of mankind, whig, tory; proand antislavery ; catholic, protestant; the clamor lasts for some time, but the persons who make it change; the mob remains, the persons who compose it change every moment. the world hears what both parties say and swear, accepts both statements, and takes the line of conduct recommended by neither, but a diagonal line of advance which partakes of both courses. aster solidagineus or solidago bicolor.' i many of the botanical names used by mr. emerson are not to be found in gray's botany. his manual probably was dr. jacob bigelow's book on the plants in the neighbourhood of boston. scattered through this journal are notes of aowers or birds probably pointed out by mr. thoreau as nature's calendar. compare in “may day” the lines: — ah! well i mind the calendar, faithful through a thousand years, of the painted race of flowers, exact to days, exact to hours, counted on the spacious dial the broidered zodiac girds, etc. poems, p. 176. 1841) poet a partner. bias 65 the poet. the idealist at least should be free of envy; for every poet is only a ray of his wit, and every beauty is his own beauty reflected. he is ever a guest in his own house and his house is the biggest possible. in exaggeration is a law of nature. as we have not given a peck of apples or potatoes, until we have heaped the measure, so nature sends no creature, no man into the world without adding a small excess of his proper quality.' ... every sentence hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. for the infinite diffuseness refuses to be epigrammatized, the world to be shut in a word. the thought being spoken in a sentence becomes by mere detachment falsely emphatic. g.w.tyler patronizes providence.? ... the whig party in the universe concedes that the radical enunciates the primal law, but makes no allowance for friction, and this omission makes their whole doctrine impertinent. the whig assumes sickness, and his social frame is a hospi1 then follows a passage thus beginning in “ nature" (essays, second series, pp. 184, 185). 2 here follow sentences printed in “ the conservative” on the absence of long sight and elevation of purpose among the whigs (nature, addresses, etc., p. 319). n 66 journal [age 38 tal, his total legislation is for the present distress, -a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and pap-spoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea. whig preaching, whig poetry, whig philosophy, whig marriages. no rough, truth-telling miltons, rousseaus. blue heron, loon, and sheldrake come to fairhaven pond; raccoon and otter to walden. the merchant will not allow a book in the counting-house, suspects every taste and tendency but that for goods, has no conversation, no thought but cotton, qualities of cotton, and its advance or fall a penny or a farthing. what a cramping of the form in wooden cap, wooden belt, and wooden shoes, is this, and how should not the negro be more a man than one of these victims? — the negro, who, if low and imperfect in organization, is yet no wooden sink, but a wild cedar swamp, rich with all vegetation of grass and moss and confervæ and ferns and flags, with rains and sunshine; mists and moonlight, birds and insects filling its wilderness with life and promise. on it is plain that none should be rich but those who understand it. cushings and perkinses 1841) rich. wild stock. corn 67 ought to be rich, who incline to subscribe to college and railroad, to endow athenæums, and open public gardens, and buy and exhibit pictures, liberalities which very good and industrious men, who have earned their money a penny or a shilling at a time, would never think of. yet what are rich men for? it is a most unnecessarily large and cumbrous apparatus for anybody who has not a genius for it to produce no other result than the most simple contrivance of an acre and a cabin. every nation, to emerge from barbarism, must have a foreign impulse, a graft on the wild stock, and every man must. he may go to college for it, or to conversation, or to affairs, or to the successes and mortifications of his private biography, war, politics, fishing, or love, — some antagonism he must have as projectile force to balance his centripetence. master cheney 'says there is the eight-rowed corn, and the twelve-rowed, and the brindled, and the badger corn, and the canada corn, and the sweet, and the white, and the missouri. 1 an old schoolmaster turned farmer, in concord, father of mr. emerson's friend and classmate, john milton cheney. 68 [age 38 journal fifty pounds to the bushel makes corn merchantable, and he weighed a bushel of the bigelow (?) corn and there were seventy pounds. o master cheney! i catch the tune in your talk, and see well that you have no need of poetry. i see its silver thread gleaming in your homespun. you do not break off your flowers. you plough your crops in. g. w. tyler' came here with all his rattle. the attributes of god, he said, were two, power and risibility. it was the duty of every pious man, he said, to keep up the hoax the best he could, and so to patronize whiggism, piety, and providence, and wherever he saw anything that would help keep the people in order, schools or churches, or poetry, or what-not, he must cry hist-a-boy ! and urge the game on. it was like eli robbins's theory of amusements. he sleeps four hours, from three to seven. he outwitted mr. greenleaf in the courts. he practised medicine somewhere in the barracks, and, at st. johns, having in a freak called himself a free-will bapi george washington tyler. part of this passage is used in « the conservative," p. 322. 2 perhaps one of mr. emerson's friendly hearers when he filled the pulpit at east lexington. a 1841 personality. novels 69 tist, he was immediately carried off to preach at a meeting, which he did for fifty-five minutes, and left the audience in tears, and got up a revival. a pound and a half of coffee to a pint of water, he drinks every night, of the thickness of molasses, and when he had headache, he piled a peck of ice on his head, by means of an iron hoop. “ fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise to scorn delights and live laborious days.” the philosopher sat with his face to the east until cobwebs were spun over the brim of his pot of porridge. intemperance is the only vulgarity. inaptitude. i will never wonder at mr. pickens, who said “he would not go to mr. r's church until the interesting times were quite over” (i.e., until the ordination and personal topics were exhausted). people's personality, their biography, their brother and sister, uncle and aunt, are sadly in the way. the novel of de clifford gave me to think of aristocracy. i should like to have this and pericles and aspasia circulate freely in this country as lessons in the beauty of behavior which 70 journal [age 38 we greatly need, — lessons on personal merit and manners; but this book is superstitious and has no conception of the despotic power of character.' ... but, in miss edgeworth, and in this story of de clifford, the hero in the crisis speaks with the utmost spirit and nature, and so the scene is blood-warm, and does your heart good. sco this hold we have on the selfish man, that he always values consequences, reputation, or after-clap of some sort; but the benevolent man never looks so far. let the self-seeker be never so sharp, this unlucky trick of nature is sharper than he, and has him on the hip. false connections have some good in them. all our solitudes yield a precious fruit, and this is the most remarkable of all our solitudes. i value the tenderness of a stern nature more than all the tenderness of the susceptible. when such a one is moved, the tears are precious. the only bribe the “community” has for us, is that it permits the association of friends without any compromise on any part, as our other hospitalities do not. we see now sundry persons whose slowness of friendship makes it plain that life is not 1 here follows a passage printed in “ manners” (essays, second series, p. 148). 1841] friendship. behavior 71 long enough, with its rare opportunities, that we and they should ever be anything valuable to each other. they are constitutionally good and great, yet only by living in the house with them for years, could we realize the promise we read in their eye. they now are only the lord's pledge to us that worth exists, and will somewhere be available to us. what has life more to offer me than assurance ? all their foring to a deer are just as i can forgive anything to a deep nature, for they outlive all their foibles and pedantries, and are just as good ten years hence and much better. strange it is so hard to find good ones: the profound nature will have a savage rudeness, the delicate one will be shallow or have a great crack running through it, and so every piece has a flaw. i suppose that, if i should see all the gentry of england pass in review, i should find no gentleman and no lady.' ... it must be genius which takes that direction [i.e., friendship]: it must be not courteous, but courtesy ; not tasteful, but taste; not gilt, but gold. o men of buckram and women of blonde, is civilization buckram and is gentleness blonde ? 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in « manners" (essays, second series, pp. 147, 148). 72 journal [age 38 sarah alden ripley is a bright foreigner: she signalizes herself among the figures of this masquerade. i do not hope when i see her to gain anything, any thought: she is choked, too, by the multitude of all her riches, greek and german, biot and bichat, chemistry and philosophy. all this is bright obstruction. but capable she is of high and calm intelligence, and of putting all the facts, all life aloof, as we sometimes have done. but when she does not, and only has a tumultuous time, it is time well wasted. i think her worth throwing time away upon. eupatorium, white and red. on i see only two or three persons and allow them all their room: they spread themselves at large to the horizon. if i looked at many, as you do, or compared these habitually with others, these would look less. yet are they not entitled to this magnificence? is it not their own? and is not munificence the only insight? we cannot rectify marriage, because it would introduce such carnage into our social relations, and it seems the most rabid radical is a good whig in relation to the theory of marriage. 0 1841] woman. writing 73 yet perhaps we can see how the facts stand in heaven. woman hides her form from the eyes of men in our world: they cannot, she rightly thinks, be trusted. in a right state the love of one, which each man carried in his heart, should protect all women from his eyes as by an impenetrable veil of indifference. the love of one should make him indifferent to all others, or rather their protector and saintly friend, as if for her sake. but now there is in the eyes of all men a certain evil light, a vague desire which attaches them to the forms of many women, whilst their affections fasten on some one. their natural eye is not fixed into coincidence with their spiritual eye. men a spiræa tomentosa. why do i write another lirie, since my best friends assure me that in every line i repeat myself? yet the god must be obeyed even to ridicule. the criticism of the public is, as i have often noted, much in advance of its invention. the ear is not to be cheated. a continuous effect cannot be produced by discontinuous thought, and when the eye cannot detect the juncture of the skilful mosaic, the spirit is apprised of dis74 journal [age 38 union simply by the failure to affect the spirit. this other thing i will also concede, — that the man fingal is rather too swiftly plastic, or, shall i say, works more in the spirit of a cabinetmaker, than of an architect. the thought which strikes him as great and dantesque, and opens an abyss, he instantly presents to another transformed into a chamber or a neat parlor, and degrades ideas. i told henry thoreau that his freedom is in the form, but he does not disclose new matter. i am very familiar with all his thoughts, — they are my own quite originally drest. but if the question be, what new ideas has he thrown into circulation, he has not yet told what that is which he was created to say. i said to him what i often feel, i only know three persons who seem to me fully to see this law of reciprocity or compensation,himself, alcott, and myself: and 't is odd that we should all be neighbors, for in the wide land or the wide earth i do not know another who seems to have it as deeply and originally as these three gothamites. poetry. but now of poetry i would say, that when i go out into the fields in a still sultry day, i himself, or some other? 10 e 1841) poetry. possession 75 in a still sultry humor, i do perceive that the finest rhythms and cadences of poetry are yet unfound, and that in that purer state which glimmers before us, rhythms of a faery and dreamlike music shall enchant us, compared with which the finest measures of english poetry are psalmtunes. i think now that the very finest and sweetest closes and falls are not in our metres, but in the measures of eloquence, which have greater variety and richness than verse. ... now, alas, we know something too much about our poetry, we are not part and parcel of it: it does not descend like a foreign conqueror from an unexpected quarter of the horizon upon us, carry us away with our flocks and herds into a strange and appalling captivity, to make us, at a later period, adopted children of the great king, and, in the end, to disclose to us that he was our real parent, and this realm and palace is really our native country. yet i please myself with thinking that there may yet be somewhere such elation of heart, such continuity of thought, that a man shall see the little sun and moon whisk about, making day and night, making month and month, without heed, in the grandeur of his absorption. now we know not only when it is day, and when night, but we hear the 76 [age 38 journal dinner-bell ring with the most laudable punctuality. i am not such a fool but that i taste the joy which comes from a new and prodigious person, from dante, from rabelais, from piranesi, flinging wide to me the doors of new modes of existence, and even if i should intimate by a premature nod my too economical perception of the old thrum, that the basis of this joy is at last the instinct, that i am only let into my own estate, that the poet and his book and his story are only fictions and semblances in which my thought is pleased to dress itself, i do not the less yield myself to the keen delight of difference and newness. i think that the importance of fine scenery is usually greatly exaggerated, for the astonishing part of every landscape is the meeting of the sky and the earth.' ... a man in black came in while i spoke and my countenance fell. then i said, surely i see that the swedenborgian finds a sweetness in his church and is enveloped by it in a love and society that haunts him by night and by day, but if the uni1 the rest of this passage, and also the one about the cool, disengaged air” of natural objects which follows, are printed in nature” (essays, second series, p. 176 and p. 183). 1841) indirection. symbol 77 tarian is invited to go out and preach to unitarians at peoria, illinois, i see no question so fit or inevitable as that he should ask whether they will pay the expense of his journey and maintain him well. ... in good society, — say among the angels in heaven, — is not everything spoken by indirection and nothing quite straight as it befel? ecit seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which i have seen with interest a natural object.3 . . . at least these things are not drenched in our personalities and village ambition, pay no tax, own no city bank stock, and need not engage their wood to be sawed. and yet whilst they rescue me from my village, i know that they attract me for somewhat which they symbolize: i here follow long passages which occur in « the transcendentalist” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 352–354). 2 when visitors, young or old, came with their questions to mr. emerson, he never gave categorical answers, but looking beside the questioner, spoke the thought that suggested itself, as thoreau said, “ listening behind me for my wit,” and thus showed new proportions to the problem and set the visitor thinking anew. 3 a sentence or two here is printed in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 172). 78 journal [age 38 that they are not foreign as they seem, but related. wait a little, and i shall see the return even of this remote and hyperbolic curve. margaret fuller talked of ballads, and our love for them : strange that we should so value the wild man, the ishmaelite, and his slogan, claymore, and tomahawk rhymes, and yet every step we take, everything we do, is to tame him. it is like farley's pioneer hatred of civilization, and absconding from it to cut down trees all winter and comfort himself that he was preparing for civilization! margaret does not think, she says, in the woods, only “finds herself expressed.” one of my stories promised above to embody the history of the times — a life and times' should be that of little edward webster, who asked his father one day, after grace had been said at dinner, “who would say wis-wis at dinner when he should be gone to washington?” another of like import in the chapter of religion would be lieutenant bliss's reply to me when i asked him if they had morning prayers at west point as at a college? he said, “we have reveille beat, which is the same thing.” of the best jokes of these days is that told of 1841) thin life. party 79 poor bokum, that when he went to hire a horse and chaise at a stable in cambridge, and the man inquired whether he should put in a buffalo? “my god! no,” cried the astonished german, “put in a horse!” i value shakspeare, yes, as a metaphysician, and admire the unspoken logic which upholds the structure of iago, macbeth, antony, and the rest. is it the real poverty at the bottom of all this seeming affluence, the headlong speed with which in london, paris, and cochin china, each seeing soul comes straight through all the thin masquerade on the old fact, is it the disgust at this indigence of nature which makes these raging livers like napoleon, timour, byron, trelawney, and john quincy adams drive their steed so hard, in the fury of living to forget the soupe maigre of life? ... it is a bad fact that our editors fancy they have a right to call on daniel webster to resign his office, or, much more, resign his opinion and accept theirs. that is the madness of party. i account it a good sign, indicative of public virtue in the whigs, that there are so many opinions among them, and that they are not organized and drilled. 80 journal [age 38 there are two directions in which souls move: one is trust, religion, consent to be nothing for eternity, entranced waiting, the worship of ideas: the other is activity, the busybody, the following of that practical talent which we have, in the belief that what is so natural, easy, and pleasant to us and desirable to others will surely lead us out safely:' in this direction lies usefulness, comfort, society, low power of all sorts. the other is solitary, grand, secular. i see not but these diverge from every moment, and that either may be chosen. when i was in college john l. gardiner said one day that“ he had serious thoughts of becoming religious next week, but perhaps he should join the porcellians.” it is no joke: i have often thought the same thing. whether does love reconcile these two divergencies ? for it is certain that every impulse of that sentiment exalts, and yet it brings all practical power into play. here i am in a dark corner again. we have no one example of the poetic life realized, therefore all we say seems bloated. if life is sad and do not content us, if the heavens are brass, and rain no sweet thoughts on us, and especially i compare a similar passage in natural history of intellect, p. 56, in which, however, the education of the man” takes the place of trust here. 1841] good cheer. exclusives 81 we have nothing to say to shipwrecked and selftormenting and young-old people, let us hold our tongues. . . . and if to my soul the day does not seem dark, nor the cause lost, why should i use such ruinous courtesy as to concede that god has failed, because the plain colors or the storm-suit of grey clouds in which the day is drest, do not please the rash fancy of my companions? patience and truth, patience with our own frosts and negations, and few words must serve. . . . if our sleeps are long, if our flights are short, if we are not plumed and painted like orioles and birds of paradise, but like sparrows and plebeian birds, if our taste and training are earthen, let that fact be humbly and happily borne with. the wise god beholds that also with complacency. wine and honey are good, but so are rice and meal. perhaps all that is not performance is preparation, or performance that shall be. october 8. exclusives. the close communion baptists have a crowded communion : the open communion unitarians have an empty table. if you wish to fill your house, make the door so narrow that a fat man cannot get in, and you shall be sure to be crammed with company. 82 journal [age 38 the “ champion of england” is never called on until what new boxer has appeared has beaten all others who have met him in the ring. then the existing “ champion ” must appear, or forfeit his dignity and his pension. so the wise man need never trouble himself about the writings of the philosophers of the day until they have hit the white, and come within his bolt. “ o golden lads and lasses must, like chimney sweepers come to dust.” riches. few may be trusted to speak of wealth. quicksilver is our gauge of temperature of air and water, clay is our pyrometer, silver our photometer, feathers our electrometer, catgut our hygrometer, — but what is our meter of man, our anthropometer? poverty is the mercury. wealth seems the state of man. the view taken of transcendentalism in state street is that it threatens to invalidate contracts. : plutarch's heroes are my friends and relatives. as we drive it, the artist is in some degree sacrificed. michel angelo, to paint sistine fres1841] each and all. beauty 83 coes, must lose for a time the power to read without holding the book over his head, and doctor herschel, to keep his eyes for nocturnal observation, must shield them from daylight. thomas h. benton's speeches, and the protocols of vienna and st. petersburg are as much in the circuit of to-day's universe — have got to be accounted for as are the most vital and beautiful appearance; and the theory of heaven and earth can be equally established on the lowest and the highest fact. the permissive as much characterises god as the beloved. las as i looked at the madonnas and magdalens in the athenæum, i saw that for the most part the painter seemed to draw from models, and from such beauties, therefore, as models are likely to be, flesh and color and emotion; but from lordly, intellectual, spiritual beauties, “the great seraphic lords and cherubim” of the sex, no sign but in raphaels. yet two or three greek women, clear, serene, and organically noble as any forms which remain to us on vase or temple, adorn my group and picture of life. and we demand that character shall have nothing muddy m acte e 84 [age 38 journal or turbid, but shall be transparent, — sublime as god pleases, but not eccentric. saturday, october 9. hippomachus knew a good wrestler by his gait in the street, and an old stager like myself will recognize the subtle harlequin in his most uncouth frocks, in an olmsted stove, in a horned ox, in a parliamentary speech, or a bushel of cranberries. hurrah for the camera obscura! the less we are, the better we look. books, — yes, if worst comes to worst: but not yet. a cup of tea, or a cup of wrath, or a good book will kindle the tinderbox. the poultry must have gravel or egg shells, the swallow and bluebird must have a thread or a wisp of straw for his nest. have you got the whole beaver, before you have seen his amphibious house? the man is only half himself. let me see the other half, namely, his expression. strange, strange, we value this half the most. we worship expressors; we forgive every crime to them. full expression is very rare. music, sculpture, painting, poetry, speech, action, war, trade, manufacture is expres85 1841] a true sister sion. a portrait is this translation of the thing into a new language. what passion all men have to see it done for themselves or others. now see how small is the list of memorable expressions by book, picture, house, or institution, after so many millions have panted under the idea ! elizabeth hoar consecrates. i have no friend whom i more wish to be immortal than she, an influence i cannot spare, but must always have at hand for recourse. when margaret mentioned “an expression of unbroken purity,” i said, “ that is hers.” m. replied, “yes, but she knows.” i answer, — know or know not, the impression she makes is that her part is taken, she has joined herself irrevocably to the sanctities, to the muses, and the gods. others suggest often that they still balance; their genius draws them to happiness; they contemplate experiment; they have not abdicated the power of election. opium and honey, the dagger and madness, they like should still lie there in the background, as shadows and possibilities. but elizabeth's mind is made up, and she has soared into another firmament, and these exist not for her. bonaparte did not like ideologists : elizabeth is no poet, but her holiness is substantive and must 86 [age 38 journal be felt, like the heat of a stove, or the gravity of a stone: and bonaparte would respect her. life. is identity tedious ? not if we can see to the life. that always stupefies us with sweet astonishment. a million times since the sun rose have the words “i thank you” been spoken. yet are they just as graceful and musical in my ear when spoken with living emotion as if now first coined. riches. people say law, but they mean wealth. genius. the observations of talent are punctures ; but, of genius, shafts which unite at the bottom of the mine. but ah ! this scud of opinions. hope. we sit chatting here in the dark, but do we not all know that the sun will yet again shine, and we shall depart each to our work? god will resolve all doubts, fill all measures. i would have my book read as i have read my favorite books, not with explosion and astonishment, a marvel and a rocket, but a friendly nai elizabeth hoar 1841) portrait. miss fuller 87 and agreeable influence stealing like the scent of a flower, or the sight of a new landscape on a traveller. i neither wish to be hated and defied by such as i startle, nor to be kissed and hugged by the young whose thoughts i stimulate. partridge berry, white alder or prinos. the sum of life ought to be valuable when the fractions and particles are so sweet. the daguerreotype is good for its authenticity. no man quarrels with his shadow, nor will he with his miniature when the sun was the painter. here is no interference, and the distortions are not the blunders of an artist, but only those of motion, imperfect light, and the like. october 12. i would that i could, i know afar off that i cannot, give the lights and shades, the hopes and outlooks that come to me in these strange, coldwarm, attractive repelling conversations with margaret, whom i always admire, most revere when i nearest see, and sometimes love, – yet whom i freeze, and who freezes me to silence, when we seem to promise to come nearest.' i see cabot's memoir of emerson, pp. 275-279. 88 [age 38 journal october 14. (from a loose sheet in g) it is not the proposition, but the tone that signifies. is it a man that speaks, or the mimic of a man? universal whiggery is tame and weak. every proclamation, dinner-speech, report of victory, or protest against the government it publishes betrays its thin and watery blood. it is never serene nor angry nor formidable, neither cool nor red hot. instead of having its own aims passionately in view, it cants about the policy of a washington and a jefferson. it speaks to expectation, and not the torrent of its wishes and needs, waits for its antagonist to speak that it may have something to oppose, and, failing that, having nothing to say, is happy to hurrah. what business have washington or jefferson in this age? ... they lived in the greenness and timidity of the political experiment. the kitten's eyes were not yet opened. they shocked their contemporaries with their daring wisdom: have you not something which would have shocked them? if not, be silent, for others have. passion, appetite, seem to have self-reliance and reality ; but whiggery is a great fear. 1841) the dancer 89 (from h) i saw in boston fanny elssler in the ballet of nathalie. she must show, i suppose, the whole compass of her instrument, and add to her softest graces of motion or “the wisdom of her feet,” the feats of the rope-dancer and tumbler : and perhaps on the whole the beauty of the exhibition is enhanced by this that is strong and strange, as when she stands erect on the extremities of her toes or on one toe, or“performs the impossible” in attitude. but the chief beauty is in the extreme grace of her movement, the variety and nature of her attitude, the winning fun and spirit of all her little coquetries, the beautiful erectness of her body, and the freedom and determination which she can so easily assume, and, what struck me much, the air of perfect sympathy with the house, and that mixture of deference and conscious superiority which puts her in perfect spirits and equality to her part. when she courtesies, her sweet and slow and prolonged salaam which descends and still descends whilst the curtain falls, until she seems to have invented new depths of grace and condescension,she earns well the profusion of bouquets of flowers which are hurled on to the stage. as to the morals, as it is called, of this exhibine 90. journal [age 38 tion, that lies wholly with the spectator. the basis of this exhibition, like that of every human talent, is moral, is the sport and triumph of health or the virtue of organization. her charm for the house is that she dances for them or they dance in her, not being (fault of some defect in their forms and educations) able to dance themselves. we must be expressed. hence all the cheer and exhilaration which the spectacle imparts and the intimate property which each beholder feels in the dancer, and the joy with which he hears good anecdotes of her spirit and her benevolence. they know that such surpassing grace must rest on some occult foundations of inward harmony. but over and above her genius for dancing are the incidental vices of this individual, her own false taste or her meretricious arts to please the groundlings and which must displease the judicious. the immorality the immoral will see ; the very immoral will see that only; the pure will not heed it, — for it is not obtrusive, – perhaps will not see it at all. i should not think of danger to young women stepping with their father or brother out of happy and guarded parlors into this theatre to return in a few hours to the same; but i can easily suppose that it is not ia 1841] fanny elssler 91 the safest resort for college boys who have left metaphysics, conic sections, or tacitus to see these tripping satin slippers, and they may not forget this graceful, silvery swimmer when they have retreated again to their baccalaureate cells. it is a great satisfaction to see the best in each kind, and as a good student of the world, i desire to let pass nothing that is excellent in its own kind unseen, unheard. in town i also heard some admirable music. it seemed, as i groped for the meaning, as if i were hearing a history of the adventures of fairy knights, — some wace, or monstrelet, or froissart, was telling, in a language which i very imperfectly understood, the most minute and laughable particulars of the tournaments and loves and quarrels and religion and tears and fate of airy adventurers, small as moths, fine as light, swifter than shadows, — and these anecdotes were illustrated with all sorts of mimicry and scene-painting, all fun and humor and grief, and, now and then, the very persons described broke in and answered and danced and fought and sung for themselves. i saw webster on the street, — but he was changed since i saw him last, black as a thun92 journal [age 38 der-cloud, and careworn; the anxiety that withers this generation among the young and thinking class had crept up also into the great lawyer's chair, and too plainly, too plainly he was one of us. i did not wonder that he depressed his eyes when he saw me, and would not meet my face. the cankerworms have crawled to the topmost bough of the wild elm and swing down from that. no wonder the elm is a little uneasy. water the water understands civilization well — it wets my foot, but prettily ; it chills my life, but wittily; it is not disconcerted, it is not broken-hearted. well used, it decketh joy, adorneth, doubleth joy. ill used, it will destroy; in perfect time and measure with a face of golden pleasure elegantly destroy. on the great rarity of good expressions. fanny elssler is a good expression. she can say in her language what her neighbors cannot say in theirs. part of the reason why elssler is so bewitch93 · 1841] false usage ing to the gay people is, that they are pinched and restrained by the decorums of city life, and she shows them freedom. they walk through their cotillions in papanti's assemblies, but fanny's arms, head and body dance as well as her feet, and they are greatly refreshed to see. i rode to town with some insane people: the worst of such company is that they always bite you, and then you run mad also. the aim of aristocracy is to secure the ends of good sense and beauty without vulgarity, or deformity of any kind, but they use a very operose method. what an apparatus of means to secure a little conversation.' ... it would give me no pleasure to sit in your house, it would give me none to be caressed by you, so long as this infernal infantry [fine clothes, dinners, and servants] hinder me from that dear and spiritual conversation that i desire. there will come a time when these obstructions, arising from i know not what cause, will pass away; if it is a poorness of spirit in me, i shall be warmed with the wine of god, and 1 the passage beginning thus is printed in nature" (essays, second series, p. 190). 94 [age 38 journal shall walk with a firmer step; if it is some unreasonable demand in you, experience will have reduced your terms to the level of practicability. the tone, the tone is all. . . in writing, the casting moment is of greatest importance, just as it avails not in daguerre portraits that you have the very man before you, if his expression has escaped. october 21. yet is it not ridiculous, this that we do in this languid idle trick that we have gradually fallen into of writing and writing without end? after a day of humiliation and stripes, if i can write it down, i am straightway relieved and can sleep well. after a day of joy, the beating heart is calmed again by the diary. if grace is given me by all angels and i pray, if then i can catch one ejaculation of humility or hope and set it down in syllables, devotion is at an end. when the great man comes, he will have that social strength which doctor kirkland or doctor franklin or robert burns had, and will so engage us to the moment that we shall not suspect his greatness until late afterward in some dull hour we shall say, i am enlarged: how dull 1841) conquering society 95 was i! is not of late my horizon wider and new? this man! this man! whence came he! one thing more. as the solar system moves forward in the heavens, certain stars open before us, and certain stars close up behind us. so is man's life.' ... october 22. would jesus be received at almacks? would the manners of adam and eve be admired at the thuilleries? in the lonely woods i remember london, and think i should like to be initiated in the exclusive circles. there are two ways: one, to conquer them and go as attila to rome, or as napoleon married into the house of austria: it has this condition that it be of the greatest kind, such conquest as grand genius makes, and so the individual demonstrates his natural aristocracy, best of the best. . . . it must hold its place subject to this condition of refreshing instantly old merits with new ones or making its first stroke one of those strokes for empire which perpetuates position. ... i in this and the next pages, passages are omitted which are printed in the « lecture on the times” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 264–267). 2 here occurs the long passage printed in “ manners” (essays, second series, pp. 143, 144). 96 [age 38 journal fashion is a large region and reaches from the precincts of heaven to the purlieus of hell. mr. philip sidney is the presiding deity. inbumanity. you come into this company meanly. how so? we have come for the love of seeing each other and of conversing together. you have come to give us things which are written already in your note-books (and when you have told them, you are spent). the best of our talk is invented here, and we go hence greater than we came by so much life as we have awakened in each other; but you, when your quiver is emptied, must sit dumb and careful the rest of the evening. everything you say makes you poorer, and everything we say makes us richer: you go home, when the company breaks up, forlorn: we go home (without a thought on ourselves) full of happiness to pleasant dreams. to be sure there is a class of discreet citizens like secret-keeping men, good providers for their households, whom you know where to find: but do not measure by their law this wild influence which i found, to be sure, in space and time, but knew at once it could not be there imprisoned; a nature that lay enormous, indefinite, hastening every moment out of all limitation and to be 1841] miss fuller. honesty 97 treated like oxygen and hydrogen, of a diffusive, universal, irrevocable elasticity. he could keep no secret, he could keep no property, he could keep no law but his own. margaret is “a being of unsettled rank in the universe.” so proud and presumptuous, yet so meek; so worldly and artificial and with keenest sense and taste for all pleasures of luxurious society, yet living more than any other for long periods in a trance of religious sentiment; a person who, according to her own account of herself, expects everything for herself from the universe. october 23. milton describes religion in his time as leaving the tradesman when he goes into his shop to meet him again when he comes out. . . . in so pure a church as the swedenborgian i cannot help feeling the neglect which leaves holiness out of trade. these omissions damn the church.” we forget in taking up a contemporary book that we see the house that is building and not the i the passage thus beginning and much that is omitted below are printed in the “ lecture on the times” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 273-275). 98 [age 38 journal house that is built. a glance at my own manuscripts might teach me that all my poems are unfinished, heaps of sketches but no masterpiece, yet when i open a printed volume of poems i look imperatively for art. i think society has the highest interest in seeing that this movement called the transcendental is no boys' play or girls' play, but has an interest very near and dear to him; that it has a necessary place in history, is a fact not to be overlooked, not possibly to be prevented, and, however discredited to the heedless and to the moderate and conservative persons by the foibles or inadequacy of those who partake the movement, yet is it the pledge and the herald of all that is dear to the human heart, grand and inspiring to human faith. i think the genius of this age more philosophical than any other has been, righter in its aims, truer, with less fear, less fable, less mixture of any sort. october 24. permanence is the nobility of human beings. we love that lover whose gayest love-song, whose fieriest engagement of romantic devotion is made good by all the days of all the years of strenuous 1841) recoil. boston life 99 long-suffering, ever-renewing benefit. the old count said to the old countess of ilchester, “i know that wherever thou goest, thou wilt both trust and honor me, and thou knowest that wherever i am, i shall honor thee.” we read either for antagonism or for confirmation. it matters not which way the book works on us, whether to contradict and enrage, or to edify and inspire. “bubb dodington ”is of the first class, which i read to-day. a good indignation brings out all one's powers. everybody, old men, young women, boys, play the doctor with me and prescribe for me. they always did so.. life in boston; a play in two acts. youth and age. toys, dancing school, sets, parties, picturegalleries, sleigh-rides, nahant, saratoga springs, lectures, concerts, — sets through them all; solitude and poetry, friendship, ennui, desolation, decline, meanness; plausibility, old age, death. in the republic must always happen what happened here, that the steamboats and stages and hotels vote one way and the nation votes the other: 100 journal [age 38 and it seems to every meeting of readers and writ-' ers as if it were intolerable that broad street paddies and bar-room politicians, the sots and loafers and all manner of ragged and unclean and foulmouthed persons without a dollar in their pocket should control the property of the country and make the lawgiver and the law. but is that any more than their share whilst you hold property selfishly? they are opposed to you: yes, but first you are opposed to them: they, to be sure, malevolently, menacingly, with songs and rowdies and mobs; you cunningly, plausibly, and wellbred; you cheat and they strike; you sleep and eat at their expense; they vote and threaten and sometimes throw stones, at yours. were you ever daguerrotyped, 0 immortal man? and did you look with all vigor at the lens of the camera, or rather, by the direction of the operator, at the brass peg a little below it, to give the picture the full benefit of your expanded and flashing eye? and in your zeal not to blur the image, did you keep every finger in its place with such energy that your hands became clenched as for fight or despair, and in your resolution to keep your face still, did you feel every muscle becoming every moment more rigid; the brows ioi 1841) garrison contracted into a tartarean frown, and the eyes fixed as they are fixed in a fit, in madness, or in death? and when, at last you are relieved of your dismal duties, did you find the curtain drawn perfectly, and the coat perfectly, and the hands true, clenched for combat, and the shape of the face and head ? but, unhappily, the total expression escaped from the face and the portrait of a mask instead of a man? could you not by grasping it very tight hold the stream of a river, or of a small brook, and prevent it from flowing? i told garrison that i thought he must be a very young man, or his time hang very heavy on his hands, who can afford to think much and talk much about the foibles of his neighbors, or 'denounce,' and play the son of thunder' as he called it. i am one who believe all times to be pretty much alike, and yet i sympathize so keenly with this. we want to be expressed, yet you take from us war, that great opportunity which allowed the accumulations of electricity to stream off from both poles, the positive and the negative, — well, now you take from us our cup of alcohol, as before you took our cup of wrath. we had become canting moths of peace, 102 journal [age 38 our helm was a skillet, and now we must become temperance water-sops. you take away, but what do you give? mr. jefts has been preached into tipping up his barrel of rum into the brook, but day after to-morrow when he wakes up cold and poor, will he feel that he has somewhat for somewhat! no, this is mere thieving. . . . if i could lift him by happy violence into a religious beatitude, orinto a socratic trance and imparadise him in ideas, or into the pursuit of human beauty, a divine lover, then should i have greatly more than indemnified him for what i have taken. i should not take; he would put away, or rather ascend out of this litter and sty, in which he had rolled, to go up clothed and in his right mind into the assembly and conversation of men. i fight in my fashion, but you, o paddies and roarers, must not fight in yours. i drink my tea and coffee, but as for you and your cups, here is the pledge and the temperance society. i walk on sundays, and read aristophanes and rabelais in church hours: but for you, go to church. good vent or bad we must have for our nature. .. make love a crime, and we shall have lust. if you cannot contrive to raise us up to the love of science and make brute matter our antagonist which we shall have joy in handling, mastering, 1841) scope. unmaskers 103 penetrating, condensing to adamant, dissolving to light, then we must brawl, carouse, gamble, or go to bull-fights. if we can get no full demonstration of our heart and mind, we feel wronged and incarcerated: the philosophers and divines we shall hate most, as the upper turnkeys. we wish to take the gas which allows us to break through your wearisome proprieties, to plant the foot, to set the teeth, to fling abroad the arms, and dance and sing. here follow many passages printed in “the transcendentalist," and the “ lecture on the times.”] vsociety ought to be forgiven if it do not love its rude unmaskers. the council of trent did not love father paul sarpi. “but i show you,” says the philosopher, “the leprosy which is covered by these gay coats.” “well, i had rather see the handsome mask than the unhandsome skin,” replies beacon street. do you not know that this is a masquerade? did you suppose i took these harlequins for the kings and queens, the gods and goddesses they represent? i am not such a child. there is a terrific skepticism at the bottom of the determined conservers. 104 . journal [age 38 the rhine of our divinity school has strangely lost itself in the sands. a man enters the divinity school, but knows not what shall befall him there, or where he shall come out of its tortuous track. some reappear in trade, some in the navy, some in swedenborg chapels, some in landscape painting. confide to the end in spiritual, and not in carnal weapons. it needs not to fight the battle of anti-slavery on the question of the seat in the cars: the doctrine advances every day among all people that a high chair, a platform, a strip of gold lace, a sword, a title, is not to protect an individual; but himself alone, his ability, his knowledge, his character. a clown, an idiot, may sit next him: he is begirt with an army of guards in the faculties and influences of his spirit: how can they contaminate him? presently a man will commonly put his pride in sitting in low seats, in mean dress, in mean company, with mulattoes and blacks; and the legislature or the anti-slavery society will not need to interfere. nce “what are you doing, zeke?” said judge webster to his eldest boy. “nothing.” 1841) untrained writing 105 “what are you doing, daniel ? ” “ helping zeke.” a tolerably correct account of most of our activity to-day. it seems to me sometimes that we get our education ended a little too quick in this country. as soon as we have learned to read and write and cipher, we are dismissed from school and we set up for ourselves. we are writers and leaders of opinion and we write away without check of any kind, play whatsoever mad prank, indulge whatever spleen, or oddity, or obstinacy, comes into our dear head, and even feed our complacency thereon, and thus fine wits come to nothing, as good horses spoil themselves by running away and straining themselves. i cannot help seeing that doctor channing would have been a much greater writer had he found a strict tribunal of writers, a graduated intellectual empire established in the land, and knew that bad logic would not pass, and that the most severe exaction was to be made on all who enter these lists. now, if a man can write a paragraph for a newspaper, next year he writes what he calls a history, and reckons himself a classic incontinently, nor will his contemporaries in critical journal or review question his claims. it is . io6 [age 38 journal very easy to reach the degree of culture that prevails around us; very hard to pass it, and doctor channing, had he found wordsworth, southey, coleridge, and lamb around him, would as easily have been severe with himself and risen a degree higher as he has stood where he is. i mean, of course, a genuine intellectual tribunal, not a literary junto of edinburgh wits, or dull conventions of quarterly or gentleman's reviews. somebody offers to teach me mathematics. i would fain learn. the man is right. i wish that the writers of this country would begin where they now end their culture. are the writers, then, to be reproached with writing to the english public? no, but to be congratulated. it shows they oversee their own, and propose to themselves the best existing standard. our contemporaries. as charles said, we have one set. it takes time to learn their names and allow for their humors so as to draw the most advantage from them. we all know the same stories, have read the same books, know the same politics, churches, geniuses, felons, bores, hoaxes, gossip, so that there is nothing to explain, but we can fall into conversation very 1841] reform. aunt mary 107 quickly and get and give such information by the road as we want without needing to collect lexicons and dragomans when we wish to ask the way to the next village. october 28. good not to let the conscience sleep, but to keep it irritated by the presence and reiterated action of reforms and ideas. ellen h. asks “whether reform is not always in bad taste?" oh no, the poet, the saint are not only elegant, but elegance. it is only the half poet, the half saint, who disgust. thus now, the saint in us proposes, but the sinner in us executes so lamely. but who can be misled who trusts to a thought? that profound deep whereunto it leads is the heaven of heavens. on that pillow, softer than darkness, he that falls can never be bruised. i told c. and m. that aunt mary was no easy flute, but a quite national and clanlike instrument; a bagpipe, for instance, from which none but a native highlandman could draw music. i sometimes fancy that the bitterness and prosaic side of our condition only obtrude in 108 journal (age 38 our conversation, or attempt to paint our portrait to another. silent and alone, i have no such sad, unredeemed side. remove two miles, if you suffer from the influences of fashion.' ... why should i still postpone my existence and not take the ground to which i already feel that i am at last entitled? why do i suffer a reference to others, and to such others, to keep me out of that which is most mine? because, dear friend, it is as yet a thought, and not yet a spirit. you have not quite served up to it. a foundation and cellar are good when one is going to build a house, but what is a foundation without a house but an offence to the eye and a stumbling-block to the feet?? sensation is good as the organ, the servant, the body of the soul, but a world of sensations is a world of men without heads. once they dined, that they might pray and praise, and so dining the function itself was prayer and praise : now they 1 the rest of this paragraph is printed in “ manners” (essays, second series, pp. 152, 153). 2 this passage is the conclusion of one printed in “ nature” (essays, second series, pp. 191, 192). nov 1841) basis of ideals 109 dine that they may dine again, and pray and praise (as they call it) in order that they may dine. hence the appearance — which everywhere strikes the eye of an aimless society, an aimless nation, an aimless world. the earth is sick with that sickness. the man was made for activity, and action to any end has some health and pleasure for him. calculation, if that would only go far enough, would go for enthusiasm too. we only ask arithmetic to go on, not to stop and bolt, and the conclusions of the broker and of the poet shall be one. we are not manichæans, not believers in two hostile principles, but we think evil arises from disproportion, interruption, mistake of means for end. is transcendentalism so bad? and is there a christian, or a civilian, a lawyer, a naturalist, or a physician so bold as not to rely at last on transcendental truths ? he dares not say it, the blind man. we can well enough discuss this topic with any one because we believe we are all too deeply implicated for any man to give himself airs and talk down to the rest.' ... i here follow passages printed in the « lecture on the times” with regard to uncharitable philanthropy. 110 journal [age 38 “ donde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie ? ” and where did you pick up all this heap of fripperies, messer lodovico ariosto? said the duke to the poet. “here in your court, your highness,” he replied. i own that all my universal pictures are nothing but very private sketches; that i live in a small village, and am obliged to guess at the composition of society from very few and very obscure specimens, and to tell revolutions of france by anecdotes, etc., etc. yet i supposed myself borne out in my confidence that each individual stands for a class by my own experience. few as i have seen, i could do with fewer, and i shrink from seeing thousands when in fifteen or twenty i have already many duplicates. we are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe : can we not take the leap? daguerre. the strangeness of the discovery is that daguerre should have known that a picture was there when he could not see any. when the plate is taken from the camera, it appears just as when it was put there spotless silver : it is then laid over steaming mercury and the picture comes out. 'tis certain that the daguerreotype is the true republican style of painting. the artist 1841) daguerre. your voice 11 stands aside and lets you paint yourself. if you make an ill head, not he but yourself are responsible, and so people who go daguerreotyping have a pretty solemn time. they come home confessing and lamenting their sins. a daguerreotype institute is as good as a national fast.' false valuations are not in nature; a pound of water in the ocean tempest or in the landflood has no more momentum than in a midsummer pond. ... we are equal to something, if it is only silence, waiting, and dying. let us do that. the piece must have shades too. when the musicians are learning their first scores, every one wishes to scream, and country orchestras usually have a reasonable volume of voice. afterwards, they learn to be still and to sing underparts. perhaps we may trust the composer of our great music to give us voice when our aid is needed, i though the beautiful sun-portraits of daguerre's invention always appealed to mr. emerson's imagination, he hated to sit himself; said that his pictures showed that he was “ no subject for art, but looked like a pirate.” 2 the rest of the passage is in “character” (essays, second series, p. 101). ii2 journal [age 38 and to apply the bellows to other stops when we should mar the harmony. ... do what you can, and the world will feel you: speak what you must, and only that, and the echoes will ring with music. if any sign could appear in nature of decay, imperfect chemistry, or the like, men are very ready to believe that the best age is gone. but the youth of nature which astounds the imagination repudiates the thought. there are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the traveller, who says, “ anywhere but bere"; that of the rich who wants something more; and that of the sick who wants something different. the willing or acquiescent are certainly better candidates for that idea which is creating the new world than the recalcitrating. steam should be solid. every man somewhere solid. poor men at six hours, six weeks, six months, six years. 1841] scholar. hints. days 113 scholars should not carry their memories to balls. e do you not believe that advertisements are given you continually of that which most imports you to know; but you, in the din and buzz of the senses, do not regard the vision ? miracles are continually occurring in the privatest spiritual experience which the man heeds not in his headlong partisan fury to celebrate and assert the miracles of the church. by attention and obedience to the heavenly vision he would bring his perception to a finer delicacy. why cupid did not assault the muses may be found in rabelais, 3d vol., p. 25. october 30. on this wonderful day when heaven and earth seem to glow with magnificence, and all the wealth of all the elements is put under contribution to make the world fine, as if nature would indulge her offspring, it seemed ungrateful to hide in the house. are there not dull days enough in the year for you to write and read in, that you should waste this glittering season when florida and cuba seem to have left their seats and come to 114 journal [age 38 visit us, with all their shining hours, and almost we expect to see the jasmine and the cactus burst from the ground instead of these last gentians and asters which have loitered to attend this latter glory of the year? all insects are out, all birds .come forth,—the very cattle that lie on theground seem to have great thoughts, and egypt and india look from their eyes.' “how dare i go to a person who will look at me only as a psychological fact?” said the threadwoman of g. r., and said well. but alas, that this awe which the writers inspire should prove at last to be so ill-founded! they ought to inspire most reverence when seen, and when they can thunder so loud at a distance not cheep so small in the chamber. “ah! if they knew john as well as i!” said mrs. mgood paul whose letter was so mighty, and whose bodily presence mean and contemptible, has too many imitators. the age. shelley is wholly unaffecting to me. i was born a little too soon: but his power is so i this passage, although much of it appears in the opening page of the essay “ nature” (in the second series), is' preserved because of the freshness and beauty of its expression on the day of the experience. 1841) soldier. thought 115 manifest over a large class of the best persons, that he is not to be overlooked. there are tests enough of character if we really dare to apply them. are you setting your expectation of happiness on any circumstance or event not within your control? vagueness of character. i overheard jove one day talking of destroying the earth.”... soldier. can one nowadays see a soldier without a slight feeling—the slightest possible-of the ridiculous? the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought: how deep? — how great its power to agitate and lift me? and never, who said it? but the world answers, “paul was inspired,” and would crave a space and indulgence for him in my consciousness. i reply, i do not know the man. it makes then a claim for jesus. but the great soul says, he shall not come in, no man shall come in, how amiable, how holy soever. i here follows the fable with which « manners” concludes (essays, second series). 116 journal [age 38 skepticism esteems ignorance organic and irremovable, believes in the existence of pure malignity, believes in a poor decayed god who does what he can to keep down the nuisances, and to keep the world going for our day. it believes the actual to be necessary; it argues habitually from the exception instead of the rule; and, if it went to the legitimate extreme, the earth would smell with suicide. to believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism. sickness also has its hero and brilliant vindication. fontenelle, born feeble, a puny delicate creature, by care and nursing was preserved for a hundred years to be the delight of france and of europe laid up, they said, like a vase of porcelain in a cabinet and railed up and guarded to hold the softest and most volatile of perfumes. mr. pope also was born sick and a cripple, yet by care and study of these facts, and engaging, wherever he went, nursing and rubbing from the domestics, he lived long and enjoyed much and gave others much to enjoy. dandies of moral sentiment. our contemporaries do not always contemporize us, but 1841) the newcomer. time 117 now one is continually surprised to find some stranger, who has been educated in the most different manner, dreaming the same dream. we like all the better to see some graceful youth, free and beautiful as a palm ora pine tree, who hears with curiosity and intelligence our theory of the world and has his own, and does not hiss with our hiss, but only has the same mother-tongue. yet do not mistake a fine tulip for good timber. do not fancy when you have vivacity and innocence and the charm of youthful manners, and have got for the time the ear of such an one to the gravest themes, do not rely on this polite and facile stripling as on a native and hereditary scholar. the newcomer for the moment casts all merits into eclipse, and the heart gives itself so gladly to the hope of indefinite and paradisaical times at hand. but none can adhere but the men that are born of that idea which they express. but there are ways of anticipating time. always this cry of “time, time; give us time: men are not ready for it,” means deficiency of spiritual force. time is an inverse measure of the amount of spirit. if you are sure of your truth, if you are sure of yourself, you ascend now 118 journal [age 38 into eternity; you have already arrived at that, and that takes place with you which other men promise themselves. marjoram, nong the the require the in poetry we say we require the miracle. the bee flies among the flowers and gets mint and marjoram, and generates a new product which is not mint or marjoram but honey: and the chemist mixes hydrogen and oxygen to yield a new product which is not hydrogen or oxygen but water: and the poet listens to all conversations and receives all objects of nature to give back, not them, but a new and perfect and radiant whole. we concede, o miss p.," there is a difference between the spirit in which these poor men struggling to emancipate themselves from the yoke of a traditional worship, and crying out in their sorrow and hope, speak at the chardon street convention, and the spirit in which he who is long already free from these fears turns i miss peabody? apparently miss elizabeth peabody had been troubled by mr. emerson's notice in the dial of the convention held in boston the previous year, by the assembled friends of universal reform, as unsympathetic and holding of well-meaning people up to ridicule. (see lectures and bio'graphical sketches, pp. 371-377. 1841] advances. america 119 back and knowingly shoots sarcasms at the old and venerated names. cs “that influence which every strong mind bas over a weak one.” you believe in magnetism, in new and preternatural powers, powers contrary to all experience, and do you not think then that cæsar in irons can shuffle off the irons ? '... the new vegetable is always made out of the materials of the decomposed vegetable, and the triumph of thought to-day is over the ruin of some old triumph of thought. i saw a man who religiously burned his bible and other books : and yet the publication of the bible and milton and the rest was the same act, namely, the burning of the then books of the world which had also once been a cremation of more. our american geography is so large that the noisy make no noise. whoever hears of the american army? or of the formidable sophomores who are said to rebel in our colleges ? or of the law students, or the medical students, or of any other local village incendiaries who, i here follows the passage printed in “ character” (pp. 94, 95). 120 journal [age 38 when we were young, filled whole neighborhoods with alarm? the american government is fast becoming quite as innocent. what can be affirmed of magnetisable subjects? to-day, seen unaffected, they are larvæ; they are so low and earthy and bestial, they bark and neigh, a good man or a poet is repelled who goes near them, as if they would one day be his executioners. but to-morrow, a great spirit chances to approach them in a happy and unsuspected way, and they receive his light and influence into all the channels of their being and are filled with him, enriched and ennobled by this virtue, they are godlike, and he too is twice himself. straightway the earth seems to have emerged from the primal curse and a new day has dawned. great causes are never tried, assaulted, or defended on their merits: they need so long perspective, and the habits of the race are marked with so strong a tendency to particulars. the stake is europe or asia, and the battle is for some contemptible village or dog-hutch. a man shares the new light that irradiates the world and promises the establishment of the kingdom of 1841] belittling ideals 121 heaven, and ends with champing unleavened bread or devoting himself to the nourishment of a beard, or making a fool of himself about his hat or his shoes. a man is furnished with this superb case of instruments, the senses, and perceptive and executive faculties, and they betray him every day. he transfers his allegiance from instinct and god to this adroit little committee. a man is an exaggerator. in every conversation see how the main end is still lost sight of by all but the best, and with slight apology or none, a digression made to a creaking door or a buzzing fly. what heavenly eloquence could hold the ear of an audience if a child cried! a man with a truth to express is caught by the beauty of his own words and ends with being a rhymester or critic. and genius is sacrificed to talent every day. [here follows the passage about osman, the ideal man, and the broad hospitality to persons half-crazed with poor reforms which is printed in the last pages of “manners."] november 10. genius is very well, but it is enveloped and undermined by wonder. the last fact is still i22 journal [age 38 astonishment, — mute, bottomless, boundless, endless wonder. when we meet an intelligent soul, all that we wish to ask him-phrase it how we will — is, 'brother have you wondered? have you seen the fact?' to come out from a forest in which we have always lived, unexpectedly on the ocean, startles us, for it is a symbol of this. ... originality. all originality is relative.' the young people complain that everything around them must be denied, and therefore, if feeble, it takes all their strength to deny, before they can begin to lead their own life. aunt betsey and uncle gulliver insist on their respect to this sabbath and that rollin's history or fragment society or some other school, or charity, or morning call, which, to preserve their integrity, they resist.” nature never troubles herself with the difficulty which language finds in expressing her. 1 the passage beginning thus is printed in “ shakspeare" (representative men, pp. 198, 199). 2 the long passage beginning thus is, with slight variations, printed in "the transcendentalist” (pp. 356, 357). 1841] revealing character 123 man begets man who begets man, heedless of the world of contradictions which the metaphysician finds in this cotemporaneous procession of body, soul, and mind. is character an educated will ? “ but bad thoughts,” said m., “who could dare to uncover all the thoughts of a single hour?” indeed! is it so bad? i own that to a witness worse than myself and less intelligent, i should not willingly put a window into my breast, but to a witness more intelligent and virtuous than i, or to one precisely as intelligent and well intentioned, i have no objection to uncover my heart. certainly the progress of character is in that direction, namely, to introduce beauty, the order of beauty, into that invisible and private world of my thoughts, and make them public and heavenly in their discipline. it is a part of friendship with me to carry its courtesies and sacred boundaries into my silent solitude, and not confound distinctions in my fancy which i respect in my reason. · november 13. originality. the great majority of men are not original, for they are not primary, have not assumed their own vows, but are secondaries, i 24 journal [age 38 grow up and grow old in seeming and following; and when they die they occupy themselves to the last with what others will think, and whether mr. a and mr. b will go to their funeral. the poet has pierced the shows and come out on the wonder which envelopes all: more, he has conspired with the high cause and felt the holy glee with which man detects the ultimate oneness of the seer and the spectacle. ... as to the miracle, too, of poetry. there is truly but one miracle, the perpetual fact of being and becoming, the ceaseless saliency, the transit from the vast to the particular, which miracle, one and the same, has for its most universal name the word god. take one or two or three steps where you will, from any fact in nature or art, and you come out full on this fact; as you may penetrate the forest in any direction and go straight on, you will come to the sea. but all the particulars of the poet's merit, his sweetest rhythms, the subtlest thoughts, the richest images, if you could pass into his consciousness, or rather if you could exalt his consciousness, would class themselves in the common chemistry of thought, and obey the laws of the cheapest mental combinations. 1841] self-help. attacks 125 in every moment and action and passion, you must be a man, must be a whole olympus of gods. i surprised you, o waldo emerson, yesterday eve hurrying up one page and down another of a little book of some menzel, panting and straining after the sense of some mob, better or worse, of german authors. i thought you had known better. adhere, sit fast, lie low. anti-transcendentalists. yet we must not blame those who make the outcry against these refiners. it comes from one of two causes : either an instinctive fear that this philosophy threatens property and sensual comfort; or a distrust of the sincerity and virtue of persons who preach an impracticable elevation of life. if from the first, it is a good sign, an eulogy of the innovators which should encourage them. and let them not be too anxious to show how their new world is to realize itself to men, but know that, as the lord liveth, it shall be well with them who obey a spiritual law. if from the second, —why, perhaps the world is in the right, and the reformer is not sound. there is an instinct about this too. it is in vain that you gild gold and whiten snow in your preaching, if, when i see you, i do not look 126 journal [age 38 through your pure eye into a society of angels and angelic thoughts within. no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is for the time the history of the world,' ... or do anything well who does not suppose his work to be of greatest importance. my work may be of none, but i must not think it of none, or i shall not do it with impunity. whoso does what he thinks mean, is mean. how finely we are told in the hebrew story that the anger of the lord was kindled against david because he had made a census of the people. philosophy also takes an inventory of her possessions: and an inventory is of pride: it is the negative state. but poetry is always affirmative, and prayer is affirmative. how much of life is affirmative? how many dare show their whole hand? for the most part we hide, and parry as we can the inquisition of each other. i am for preserving all those religious writings which were in their origin poetic, ecstatic i see nature” (essays, second series, p. 189). 1841) sacred antiquity 127 expressions which the first user of did not know what he said, but they were spoken through him and from above, not from his level; things which seemed a happy casualty, but which were no more random than the human race are a random formation. “it is necessary,” says lamblichus, “that ancient prayers, like sacred asyla, should be preserved invariably the same, neither taking anything from them nor adding anything to them which is elsewhere derived.” this is the reason, doubtless, why homer declares that jove loved the ethiopians. and iamblichus in answer to the query, “why of significant names we prefer such as are barbaric to our own?” says, among other reasons: “barbarous names have much emphasis, great conciseness, and less ambiguity, variety, and multitude”; and then afterwards: “ but the barbarians are stable in their manners, and firmly continue to employ the same words. hence they are dear to the gods, and proffer words which are grateful to them.” and the ancients spoke of the egyptians and chaldæans as “sacred nations.” now the words “god,” “ grace,” “ prayer,” “ heaven,” “hell,” are these barbarous and sacred words, to which we must still return, 128 [age 38 journal whenever we would speak an ecstatic and universal sense? there are objections to them, no doubt, for academical use, but when the professor's gown is taken off, man will come back to them. the granite comes to the surface and towers into the highest mountains, and if we could dig down we should find it below all the superficial strata.'... the question of property wants seers. ... the staunchest whig and the poorest philosopher are all on the property side, all abettors of the present abuse, all either owners or enviers : no man is on the other side, no man can give us any insight into the remedy, no man deserves to be heard against property; only love, only an idea, is on the right side against property as we hold it. good scholar, what are you for but for hospitality to every new thought of your time? have you property, have you leisure, have you accomplishments and the eye of command, you 1 the long passage thus beginning is found in the « lecture on the times” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 289, 290). 1841) real men. the dream 129 shall be the mæcenas of every new thought, every untried project that proceeds from good will and honest seeking. the newspapers, of course, will defame what is noble, and what are you for but to withstand the newspapers and all the other tongues of to-day? you do not hold of to-day, but of an age, as the rapt and truly great man holds of all ages or of eternity. if you defer to the newspaper, where is the scholar? hints, fragments, scintillations of men enough and more than enough, but men valiant and who can execute the project they learned of no man, but which was born with them, there are none. perfect and execute yourself an orson, if orson ; a valentine, if valentine. let us see at least a good orson, and know the best and worst of that. (from h) november 18. queenie's' dream of the statue so beautiful that the blooming child who was in the room looked pale and sallow beside it, and of the speech of the statue, which was not quite speech either, but something better, which seemed at so mr. emerson often called his wife. 130 (age 38 journal last identical with the thing itself spoken of. it described to the fair girl who sat by, and whose face became flushed with her earnest attention, life and being; — and then, by a few slight movements of the head and body, it gave the most forcible picture of decay and death and corruption, and then became all radiant again with the signs of resurrection. i thought it a just description of that eloquence to which we are all entitled — are we not? — which shall be no idle tale, but the suffering of the action, and the action it describes. that shall make intent and privileged hearers. the blue vault silver-lined with hills of snow. (from g) november 22. edith.' there came into the house a young maiden, but she seemed to be more than a thousand years old. she came into the house naked and helpless, but she had for her defence more than the strength of millions. she brought into the day the manners of the night. on the second day of december, mr. emerson began his course of lectures on “the 1 his second daughter. 1841] ballads. jones very 131 times,” in the masonic temple in boston: i, the “introductory,” is printed in the first volume of the works as“ lecture on the times”; ii, “the conservative”; iii, “the poet” (much of the matter is in “ poetry and imagination,” in lectures and biographical sketches); iv, “the transcendentalist”; v, “manners”; vi, “ character”; vii, “relation to nature”; viii, “ prospects.”] (from j) robin hood. little john asks robin“where shall we take? where shall we leave? where shall we rob and beat and bind ?” robin says:“ look ye do no husband harm that tilleth with his plough. « these bishops and these archbishops ye shall them beat and bind; the high sheriff of nottingham, him holde in your mind.” when jones very was in concord, he said to me, “ i always felt when i heard you speak or read your writings that you saw the truth better than others, yet i felt that your spirit was not quite right. it was as if a vein of colder was 132 journal [age 38 air blew across me.” he seemed to expect from me a full acknowledgment of his mission and a participation of the same. seeing this, i asked him if he did not see that my thoughts and my position were constitutional, that it would be false and impossible for me to say his things or try to occupy his ground as for him to usurp mine? after some frank and full explanation, he conceded this. when i met him afterwards one evening at my lecture in boston, i invited him to go home to mr. adams's with me and sleep, which he did. he slept in the chamber adjoining mine. early the next day, in the grey dawn, he came into my room and talked whilst i dressed. he said, “when i was at concord i tried to say you were also right; but the spirit said, you were not right. it is just as if i should say, it is not morning; but the morning says, it is the morning.” “use what language you will,” he said, “you can never say anything but what you are.” all writing is by the grace of god. people do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. in these sentences that you show me, i can find no beauty, for i see death in every clause and every word. there is a fossil 1841] do or tell. faults 133 or a mummy character which pervades this book. the best sepulchres, the vastest catacombs, thebes and cairo, pyramids, are sepulchres to me. i like gardens and nurseries. give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words. am i am probably all the better spectator that i am so indifferent an actor. some who hear or read my reports misjudged me as being a good actor in the scene which i could so well describe; but, when they came to talk with me, even those who fancied they strictly sympathized with me found i was dumb for them as well as for others. in this, both i and they must be passive and acquiescent, and take our fortune. and now that i have said it, i shall not suffer again from this misadventure. it is never worth while to worry people with your contritions. we shed our follies and absurdities as fast as the rosebugs drop off in july and leave the apple tree which they so threatened. nothing dies so fast as a fault and the memory of a fault. i am awkward, sour, saturnine, lump1 this sentence occurs in “ character” (letters and social aims, p. 98). 134 journal (age 38 ish, pedantic, and thoroughly disagreeable and oppressive to the people around me. yet if i am born to write a few good sentences or verses, these shall endure, and my disgraces utterly perish out of memory. woman should not be expected to write, or fight, or build, or compose scores ; she does all by inspiring man to do all. the poet finds her eyes anticipating all his ode, the sculptor his god, the architect his house. she looks at it. she is the requiring genius. we ask to be self-sustained, nothing less." the rude reformer rose from his bed of moss and dry leaves, gnawed his roots and drank water, and went to boston. there he met fair maidens who smiled kindly on him, then gentle mothers with their babes at their breasts who told them how much love they bore them and how they were perplexed in their daily walk. what! he said, and this on rich, embroidered carpets, with fine marbles and costly woods ! the rest of the passage is in “gifts” (essays, second series, p. 162). 2 this long passage with some additions — the reformer appearing as friar bernard — is found in “ the conserva1841] the affirmative 135 who is up so high as to receive a gift well? we are either glad or sorry at a gift.'... (from j) december 12. we cannot forgive another for not being ourselves. yet that is not all my dream just now; but this also, that only the affirmative is good, and methinks that is as much in what is called whiggery as in protestantism, for the latter falls into cold recusances, and love is the affirmative. whigs love; protestants have a good deal of hating to do. loyalty is affirming; idleness is denying. but out on your exhibitions ! there is somewhat a little scenic and showy in your lecturing. those who take up thus much thought into action, have nothing to say, no rhetoric to please with, but it is elemental, strong. it is like that great quantity of heat which ice absorbs in becoming water without any indication on the thermometer. ... tive” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 314-316). the relief to mr. emerson of his occasional visits to the wards and other high-minded and refined friends in boston, after persecution by the unkempt or tedious “monotones” who sought him in concord, must have been great. 1 the passage beginning thus is found in “ gifts." 136 [age 38 journal and yet raphael's picture is bold and beautiful, affirming, and the midsummer night's dream, and every thought of mine which i naturally and happily speak. let me not be witty, but only faithful and bold and happy, and i put all nature in the wrong. we lose time in trying to be like others, accusing ourselves because we are not like others. if something surprises us from our propriety, we act well and strong, because we lose in our fright the recollection of others. those who defend the establishment are less than it. those who speak from a thought must always be greater than any actual fact. i see behind the whig no mighty matter, nothing but a very trite fact of his land titles and certificates of stock. but through the eyes of the theorist stares at me a formidable, gigantic spirit who will not undo if i bid him, who has much more to say and do than he has yet told, and who can do great things with the same facility as little. in the feudal table the humblest retainer sat in the company of his lord, and so had some indemnity for his thraldom in the education he derived from the spectacle of the wit, the grace, and the valor of his superiors. ma 1841) osman. napoleon 137 mr. frost' thought that there would not be many of these recusants who declared against the state, etc. i told him he was like the good man of noah's neighbors who said, “go to thunder with your old ark! i don't think there'll be much of a shower.” osman. seemed to me that i had the keeping of a secret too great to be confided to one man; that a divine man dwelt near me in a hollow tree. a dandy, godelureau’ in french, a favorite word with napoleon. napoleon was calm, serious, and well calculated to stand the gaze of millions : and d’abrantès describes the splendor of his smile. and cakes by female hands wrought artfully, well steep'd in the liquid of the gold-wing'd bee. plutarch. atque ego peccati vellem modo conscius essem ; aequo animo poenam qui meruere ferunt. ovid, amor 2, vii, 11. i the unitarian clergyman of concord. 2 this word, of uncertain origin, means, according to littré, delight of the ladies. journal [age 38 historians of reform are not necessarily lovers of reform among their contemporaries. among the powers of circumstance none so striking as the provocation of thought in particular companies. every art may be learned for itself, as, e.g., that of composure and good behavior in all companies; but a better way is to be inspired by a sentiment which shall ennoble the behaviour without intention. the man is yet to arise who eats angels' food; who, working for universal aims, finds himself fed, he knows not how, and clothed he knows not how, and yet it is done by his own hands. the squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, each without knowing what he does, and thus they are provided, without any degradation or selfishness. in the man, i should look to see it adorned, beyond this innocency, with conscious efforts for the general good. o ce trees draw nineteen twentieths of their nourishment from their aërial roots, the leaves. the pis aller of romanism for tieck, winckelmann, schlegel, schelling, montaigne, dana, coleridge-men. 1841) a great life. a word 139 midsummer night entertainment can easily seem to me profane and i shall do penance for having delighted in such toys: and dante must shrink before a great life, and appear a permitted greatness. to those who have been accustomed to lead, it is not quite indifferent to find their word or deed for the first time unimportant to society. yet a human being always has the indemnity of acting religiously, and then he exchanges an éclat with the society of his town, for a reputation and weight with the society of the universe. every word we speak is million-faced, or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. if it were not so, we could read no book. your remark would only fit your case, not mine. and dante, who described his circumstance, would be unintelligible now. but a thousand readers in a thousand different years shall read his story and find it a picture of their story by making, of course, a new application of every word. all bernardo's wit and study did not enable him to answer m. de gullivere's question. as 140 journal [age 38 it happened once, so it happened twenty times. m. de gullivere asked pointedly of the scholar for information which he should certainly have supplied; but poor bernardo always wondered that he should have failed to inform himself of just that particular fact. afterwards he found that it was just the same with his actions: he was very able and very willing to do a thousand things: but the particular action which must now be done, he was not ready for: and so he played at crosspurposes with all men in this world. one thing more bernardo remarked, and said as much to xavier, — that he was convinced it was a chance and not a right that he had received the laurel of the sorbonne: “for i,” said he, “was not made by nature for an original genius, but to take delight in the genius of others. i was made to read virgil, and not to write bucolics of my own; for always if i have anything to say, it clothes itself in the language of some poet or author i have been reading, or perhaps of one of my friends with whom i daily converse. the thought is not born sufficiently vigorous to clothe itself.” credit, it seems, is to be abolished. ... i most of what follows is printed in social aims ” (letters and social aims, p. 84). 1841) matter. a person 141 december 18. we believe in the existence of matter, not because we can touch it or conceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves, and the universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest. a man founding a reputation for benevolence on his expenditure! a great blunder.'... how much one person sways us, we have so few. the presence or absence of milton will very sensibly affect the result of human history: the presence or absence of jesus, how greatly! well, to-morrow a new man may be born, not indebted like milton to the old, and more entirely dedicated than he to the new, yet clothed like him with beauty. as we take our stand on necessity or on ethics, shall we go for the conservative or the reformer?? ... the view of necessity is always good-tempered, permits wit and pleasantry. the view of liberty is sour and dogmatical. both 1 here follows much that is printed in “character” (essays, second series, p. 103). 2 several following sentences are omitted, as printed in “the conservative” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 301). 142 journal [age 38 may be equally free of personal consideration. wo unto me if i preach not the gospel. i like the spontaneous persons of both classes : and those in the conservative side have as much truth and progressive force as those on the liberal. do not be so grand with your one objection. do you think there is only one? if i should go out of church whenever i hear a false sentiment, i could never stay there five minutes.' ... according to boehmen, the world was nothing else than the relievo, the print of a seal of an invisible world concealed in his own bosom. (see penhoen, vol. i, p. 123.) when, in our discontent with the pedantry of scholars, we prefer farmers, and when, suspecting their conservatism, we hearken after the hard words of drovers and irishmen, this is only subjective or relative criticism, this is alkali to our acid, or shade to our too much sunshine; but abide with these, and you will presently find they are the same men you left. a coat has cheated you. what a plague is this perplexity. we are so sharpsighted that we are miserable and, as i here follow sentences printed in “ new england reformers” (essays, second series, pp. 262, 263). . • 1841] kepler. advance. now 143 e. h. says, can neither read homer, nor not read him. “kepler's science was a strange alliance of that sublime science of antiquity which proceeded by inspiration with that modern science which measures, compares, analyses.” (penhoen.) leibnitz predicted the zoöphytes; kant predicted the asteroids; newton the decomposition of the diamond; swedenborg, uranus. (penhoen, vol. i, p. 159.) they say that the mathematics leave the mind where they found it. what if life or experience should do the same? writing, also, is a knack and leaves the man where it found him. and literature and nature and life. all that a man hath will he give for his erect demeanor, that he may never more be ashamed, — society the measure. i go to you and i expand, and i go to another and i contract. look out of the window and it is eternal now. look in faces of men and it varies every minute. 144 journal [age 38 reading herrick, i feel how rich is nature. this art of poetry,– i see that here is work and beauty enough to justify a man for quitting all else and sitting down with the muses. did not cæsar say to the egyptian priest, come, i will quit army, empire, and all if you will show me the fountains of the nile? well, all topics are indifferent: you may reach the centre by boring a shaft from any point on the surface, with equal ease. and yet in this instance of poetry the provocation is not that the law is there, but the means are alluring. authors or books quoted or referred to in the journal for 1841 (including also books mentioned in letters) vishnu sarna; zoroaster ; confucius; hesiod; heraclitus; empedocles; æschylus; plato, banquet and phædrus; aristophanes; aristotle; ovid, ars amatoria ; lucan, pharsalia ; . hermes trismegistus; plotinus; porphyry (taylor's), on abstinence from animal food; iamblichus, life of pythagoras; synesius; proclus; olympiadorus ; robert wace; dante, paradiso; saadi; hafiz; n1841) reading 145 monstrelet; froissart, chronicles; ariosto; rabelais; fra paolo sarpi; kepler; burton; boehme (behmen), the aurora; herrick; izaak walton; waller; dryden; locke; leibnitz, apud penhoen; fontenelle; rollin, history; bentley; thomas hearne ; pitt (lord chatham); winckelmann, history of ancient art; merck, correspondence with goethe; laplace; fox; william pitt; goethe ; burns; saint-simon; dodington; duchesse d'abrantès, mémoires, ou souvenirs sur napoléon, la révolution, etc.; canning; shelley ; southey ; schleiermacher; schlegel; tieck; schelling; menzel, apud george ripley's specimens of foreign literature; ritter; sir william edward parry, arctic voyages; charles lamb, essays ; manzoni, i promessi sposi; dr. channing, milton and napoleon ; carlyle, heroes and hero worship, french revolution ; nichol, architecture of the heavens; miss edgeworth, novels; béranger, chansons ; george sand, letters; 146 journal. [age 38 de tocqueville ; barchon de penhoen, history of german philosophy from leibnitz to hegel; westland martin, the patrician's daughter; · robert p. ward, de clifford; tennyson, the lotus-eaters, locksley hall; hawthorne; frederic henry hedge; william lloyd garrison. journal waldo's death courses in providence and new york alcott visits england hawthorne comes to concord alcott's return journal xxxiii 1842 (from journals e, j, k, and n) betrayed me to a book and wrapped me in a gown. herbert. [the year opened happily. a daughter (edith) had come safely into the family. little ellen, the eldest, was thriving. waldo, now five years old, gave to his father and mother every promise for the future, while : . “gentlest guardians marked serene his early hope, his liberal mien," . for every friend that came to the house, and henry thoreau, who then formed one of the family, delighted in the child. mr. emerson was going once a week to boston, by the stage which passed his door, giving the last lectures of the course on “the times.” suddenly malignant scarlet fever struck the little boy and he lived but a few days. bowed down by the blow, mr. emerson yet had to fulfil his engagements for lectures in providence and also cs 150 journal [age 38 for a short course in new york. these were a fortunate distraction for him, away from associations that met him at home at every turn, and he met at his lectures new and earnest young friends. his brother william, with his good and refined wife (susan haven of portsmouth), received him into their home at staten island. of him mr. emerson wrote to his wife, “william is not the isolated man i used to find or fancy him, but, under the name of the judge,' seems to be an important part of the web of life here at the island.”] (from j) january 28, 1842. yesterday night, at fifteen minutes after eight, my little waldo ended his life. january 30. what he looked upon is better; what he looked not upon is insignificant. the morning of friday, i woke at three o'clock, and every cock in every barnyard was shrilling with the most unnecessary noise. the sun went up the morning sky with all his light, but the landscape was dishonored by this loss. for this boy, in whose remembrance i have both slept and awaked so oft, decorated for me the mornma se 1842] waldo's death 151 ing star, the evening cloud, how much more all the particulars of daily economy; for he had touched with his lively curiosity every trivial fact and circumstance in the household, the hard coal and the soft coal which i put into my stove; the wood, of which he brought his little quota for grandmother's fire; the hammer, the pincers and file he was so eager to use; the microscope, the magnet, the little globe, and every trinket and instrument in the study; the loads of gravel on the meadow, the nests in the hen-house, and many and many a little visit to the dog-house and to the barn. — for everything he had his own name and way of thinking, his own pronunciation and manner. and every word came mended from that tongue. a boy of early wisdom, of a grave and even majestic deportment, of a perfect gentleness. every tramper that ever tramped is abroad, but the little feet are still. he gave up his little innocent breath like a bird. he dictated a letter to his cousin willie on monday night, to thank him for the magic lantern which he had sent him, and said, “i wish you would tell cousin willie that i have so many presents that i do not need that he 152 journal (age 38 nev should send me any more unless he wishes to very much.” the boy had his full swing in this world; never, i think, did a child enjoy more; he had been thoroughly respected by his parents and those around him, and not interfered with ; and he had been the most fortunate in respect to the influences near him, for his aunt elizabeth had adopted him from his infancy and treated him ever with that plain and wise love which belongs to her and, as she boasted, had never given him sugarplums. so he was won to her, and always signalized her arrival as a visit to him, and left playmates, playthings, and all to go to her. then mary russell' had been his friend and teacher for two summers, with true love and wisdom. then henry thoreau had been one of the family for the last year, and charmed waldo by the variety of toys,—whistles, boats, popguns, -and all kinds of instruments which he could make and mend; and possessed his love and respect by the gentle firmness with i a much valued friend of mr. and mrs. emerson, from plymouth, who had a little infant school which waldo and other children attended. later, she married mr. benjamin marston watson, of plymouth. in “ threnody,” mr. emerson describes “ the school march, each day's festival.” nces '1842] the lost child 153 which he always treated him. margaret fuller and caroline sturgis had also marked the boy and caressed and conversed with him whenever they were here. meantime every day his grandmother gave him his reading lesson and had by patience taught him to read and spell; by patience and by love, for she loved him dearly. sorrow makes us all children again, — destroys all differences of intellect. the wisest knows nothing. it seems as if i ought to call upon the winds to describe my boy, my fast receding boy, a child of so large and generous a nature that i cannot paint him by specialties, as i might another. “are there any other countries?” “yes. i wish you to name the other countries”; so i went on to name london, paris, amsterdam, cairo, etc. but henry thoreau well said, in allusion to his large way of speech, that “his questions did not admit of an answer; they were the same which you would ask yourself.” he named the parts of the toy house he was always building by fancy names which had a good sound, as “the interspeglium” and “the coridaga,” which names, he told margaret,“ the children could not understand.” na '154 [age 38 journal if i go down to the bottom of the garden it seems as if some one had fallen into the brook. every place is handsome or tolerable where he has been. once he sat in the pew. his house he proposed to build in summer of burrs and in winter of snow. “my music,” he said, “ makes the thunder dance,” for it thundered when he was blowing his willow whistle. “mamma, may i have this bell which i have been making, to stand by the side of my bed?” “yes, it may stand there.” “but, mamma, i am afraid it will alarm you. it may sound in the middle of the night, and it will be heard over the whole town; it will be louder than ten thousand hawks; it will be heard across the water, and in all the countries. it will be heard all over the world. it will sound like some great glass thing which falls down and breaks all to pieces." ; 1 in the first part of « threnody,” in the poems, several of the sentences written just after waldo's death are found in poetic form. the latter part of the poem was written nearly two years later, when calm vision had returned. waldo's death was a blow to thoreau, coming, too, soon after the heavier one, the sudden death of his beloved brother john, a bright and genial presence. henry wrote to mrs. emerson's sister of this new death thus bravely, however: “ as for waldo, he died as the mist rises from the brook, 1842] mass in writing 155 masses; is the attraction of cohesion the same as the attraction of gravity? is the law of masses one with the law of particles. and there is a certain momentum of mass which i recognize readily enough in literature. chaucer affects me when i read many pages of romaunt of love or the canterbury tales by his mass, as much as by the merit of single passages. so does shakspeare eminently: he adds architecture to costliness of material, and beauty of single chambers and chapels. so does milton. then, as i have remarked of pythagoras, so i feel in reference to all great masters, that they are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. many a man had taken their first step. with every additional which the sun will soon dart his rays through. do not the flowers die every autumn ? he had not even taken root here. i was not startled to hear that he was dead ; it seemed the most natural death that could happen. his fine organization demanded it, and nature gently yielded its request. it would have been strange if he had lived. neither will nature manifest any sorrow at his death, but soon the note of the lark will be heard down in the meadow, and fresh dandelions will spring from the old stocks where he plucked them last summer.” (familiar letters of henry david thoreau. edited by f. b. sanborn, with introduction and notes. houghton, mifflin & co., 1894.) for accounts of waldo, see mr. cabot's memoir of emerson, vol. ii, pp. 481-483. 156 journal (age 38 step you enhance immensely the value of your first. it is like the price which is sometimes set on a horse by jockeys; a price is agreed upon in the stall, and then he is turned into a pasture and allowed to roll, and for every time he shall roll himself over, ten dollars are added to the price. neal masses again. if you go near to the white mountains, you cannot see them; you must go off thirty or forty miles to get a good view. well, so is it with men, and with all that is high in our life, it is a total and distant effect, a mass effect, that instructs us, and not the first apprehension of them. then our relation to our friends is not only one of particular good offices, but one of the purest pleasures of life is the mutual consciousness of a long and uniform exchange of good offices between two persons; so that a good man seems to draw both simple and compound interest from his capital of love, both a particular and a mass benefit from his good deeds. will is a particular, habit a massive force ; speech a particular, manners a mass. take thy body away that i may see thee. thou showest me this mask all the time. 1842] flowers. sight. osman 157 i have seen the poor boy, when he came to a tuft of violets in the wood, kneel down on the ground, smell of them, kiss them, and depart without plucking them. as if one needed eyes in order to see. look at yonder tree which the sun has drawn out of the ground by its continual love and striving towards him, and which now spreads a hundred arms, a thousand boughs, in gratitude, basking in his presence. does that not see? it sees all over, with every leaf and every blossom. i am not a man to read books, but one receiving that which books are written to report, said the poet. my thoughts run about vainly seeking to arrive at those distant persons. then i see facts or objects which serve me as horses. each of my thoughts seizes one of these, and, being mounted, rides directly to men. when osman came to read a page of proclus, he was impatient of reading, and wished to hear the horn sound from the farmhouse that he might put in practice what he had learned of the elegance of dancing in a temperate life, but the 158 [age 38 journal s horn delaying to sound, he bethought himself that his temperance should begin now and he would establish tranquillity and order in his thoughts. bores are good, too. they may help you to a good indignation, if not to a sympathy; to a “mania better than temperance,” as proclus would say. long beard and short beard, who came hither the other day with intent as it seemed to make artesian wells of us, taught me something. ben jonson is rude and tennyson is fine, but ben's beauty is worth more than tennyson's.' ... my life is optical, not practical. i go out to walk for exercise and not to answer a necessity. i speculate on virtue, not burn with love. is not this as if one should quiz michael and gabriel through an opera-glass? it would be easy, would it not, to give your own color and character to any meeting, if your 1 mr. emerson was now editing the dial. this sentence and what follows is printed in the dial paper, “europe and european books” (natural history of intellect, p. 371). 1842) proclus 159 spirit and insight was better than that of the speakers. wait till the noisy man has done, and then speak and leave him out: he will feel that he is left out. what takes place in every parlor will take place there, that the less will yield to the greater and feel that his contribution is unnecessary. such a sense as dwells in these purple deeps of proclus transforms every page into a slab of marble, and the book seems monumental. they suggest what magnificent dreams and projects they show what literature should be. rarely, rarely, does the imagination awake; he alone knows astronomy and geology, the laws of chemistry and animation. he, the imagination, knows why the plain or meadow of space is strown with these flowers we call suns, moons, and stars: why the great deep is adorned with animals, with men and gods; for in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought." 1 this passage, though printed in “the poet,” is given because here applied to proclus, whose writings mr. emerson read, not continuously, nor necessarily always understandingly, but “ for lustres," as he says in “ nominalist and realist" (see essays, second series, pp. 21 and 233). 160 journal [age 38 i see, in reading this, that a man ought to renounce writing for his townsmen or his countrymen and express his spiritual history and motions in such images as have a private significance to him. hither came a lady with as much remoteness, fromness, or aversation expressed in her countenance as it could carry. all her speech was in the dialect of her church, and as unintelligible to others as a flash conversation. such a person ceases to be a woman that she may be a churchmember, and is necessarily treated like the insane in all companies. yet every one must respect her eminent truth. nature is very clear in her teachings on one point, that you shall not accept any man's person; for just as much as she distinguishes any man for wit or character, to the same extent she deforms him in some particular to the eye. and see the mountainous greatness of shakspeare is given to a man of a common life, and not himself, it would seem, aware of his possession. (from k) friday evening, february 4. i have heard that sheridan made a good deal of experimental writing with a view to take what 1842] truth. character 161 might fall, if any wit should transpire in all the waste pages. i, in my dark hours, may scratch the page, if perchance any hour of recent life may project a hand from the darkness and inscribe a record. twice to-day it has seemed to me that truth is our only armor in all passages of life and death.' ... i will speak the truth also in my secret heart, or, think the truth against what is called god. born and bred as we are in traditions, we easily find ourselves denying what seems to us sacred. i must resist the tradition, however subtile and encroaching, and say, truth against the universe. truth has its holidays which seem to come but once in a century, when she absolves her children with triumph to all souls. saturday morn, february 5. character. there are many gross and obscure natures whose bodies seem impure as shambles or grocers' shops, but character makes flesh and blood comely and alive. a meek allegiance to the supreme law consecrates youth and age alike, refines the whole body, gives a charm to wrinkles and silver hairs.? ... character, in i here occurs the passage beginning thus in “worship” (conduct of life, p. 230). 2 here follows a passage on character as self-sufficingness (“character,” essays, second series, p. 99). 162 journal [age 38 short, is conquest, and if there is not that, there is not character.' february 21. home again from providence to the deserted house. dear friends find i, but the wonderful boy is gone. what a looking for miracles have i! as his walking into the room where we are would not surprise ellen, so it would seem to me the most natural of all things. in providence i found charles newcomb, who made me happy by his conversation and his reading of his tales. 1 the next entries in this journal are printed in the essay • experience," namely, those on the “middle region of life,” and on the “ opinion instilled into disaster” (essays, second series, p. 62 and p. 48). 2 a young idealist and scholar, who had a great charm for mr. emerson; a man of great refinement and sensibility but strong originality, shy, and a bachelor all his life. mr. emerson valued his occasional visits and made him bring his journal and read it to him. much of this he transcribed, to make sure to keep a copy, should the author destroy the original. we believe that the only practical experience of charles newcomb was his service as a private in the civil war. but at brook farm, where he was for a time a member or a boarder in the community, he probably had to do his share in house or field work, but he is said to have had a marked influence. he wrote « the two dolons” in the dial. 1842] new york course. dial 163 march 18. home from new york, where i read six lectures on the times, viz., introductory ; the poet; the conservative; the transcendentalist; manners; prospects. they were read in the “ society library,” were attended by three or four hundred persons, and after all expenses were paid yielded me about two hundred dollars. in new york i became acquainted with henry james, john james, william greene, mrs. rebecca black, thomas truesdale, horace greeley, albert brisbane, j. l. h. mccracken, mr. field, maxwell, mason, nathan, delf, eames, besides bryant and miss sedgwick, whom i knew before. letters from beloved persons found me there. my lectures had about the same reception there as elsewhere: very fine and poetical, but a little puzzling. one thought it “ as good as a kaleidoscope.” another, a good staten islander, would go hear, “for he had heard i was a rattler.” march 20. the dial is to be sustained or ended, and i must settle the question, it seems, of its life or death. i wish it to live, but do not wish to be 164 (age 38 journal its life. neither do i like to put it in the hands of the humanity and reform men, because they trample on letters and poetry; nor in the hands of the scholars, for they are dead and dry. i do not like the plain speaker so well as the edinburgh review. the spirit of the last may be conventional and artificial, but that of the first is coarse, sour, indigent, dwells in a cellar kitchen, and goes to make suicides. in new york, thomas delf modestly inquired, as if the question lay hard on his conscience, whether there could not be in every number of the dial at least one article which should be a statement of principles, good for doctrine, good for edification, so that there should be somewhat solid and distinct for the eye of the constant reader to rest upon, and an advancing evolution of truth. a very reasonable question. life goes headlong.' ... when i read the “ lord of the isles” last week at staten island, and when i meet my friend, i have the same feeling of shame at havi the rest of the paragraph thus beginning is printed in “ character” (essays, second series, p. 113). 1842] brothers. waldo 165 ing allowed myself to be a mere huntsman and follower. why art thou disquieted, o soul? in new york lately, as in cities generally, one seems to lose all substance, and become surface in a world of surfaces. everything is external, and i remember my hat and coat, and all my other surfaces, and nothing else. if suddenly a reasonable question is addressed to me, what refreshment and relief! i visited twice and parted with a most polite lady without giving her reason to believe that she had met any other in me than a worshipper of surfaces, like all broadway. it stings me yet. “what are brothers for?” said charles g. loring, when somebody praised a man who helped his brother. william emerson is a faithful brother. the least differences in intellect are immeasurable. this beloved and now departed boy, this image in every part beautiful, how he expands in his dimensions in this fond memory to the dimensions of nature! ellen asks her grandmother “whether god can't stay alone with the angels a little while and let waldo come down?” 166 journal (age 38 the chrysalis which he brought in with care and tenderness and gave to his mother to keep is still alive, and he, most beautiful of the children of men, is not here. i comprehend nothing of this fact but its bitterness. explanation i have none, consolation none that rises out of the fact itself; only diversion; only oblivion of this, and pursuit of new objects. march 23. to-day nelly thinks “the snow is on the ground and the trees so white as a tablecloth and so white as parched corn.” sio ew the scholar is a man of no more account in the street than another man; as the sound of a flute is not louder than the noise of a saw. but as the tone of the flute is heard at a greater distance than any noise, so the fame of the scholar reaches farther than the credit of the banker. osric was always great in the present time.' ... tecumseh: a poem. a well-read, clerical person, with a skilful ear and with scott and camp1 this and what follows is in “worship,” benedict being substituted for osric (conduct of life, p. 234). 1842) “ tecumseh” 167 bell in full possession of his memory, has written this poem in the feeling that the delight he has experienced from scott's effective list of names might be reproduced in america from the enumeration of sweet or sonorous indian names. the costume, as is usual in all such essays, crowds the man out of nature. the most indian thing about the indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatchet, but traits of character and sagacity, skill or passion which would be intelligible to all men and which scipio or sidney or colonel worth or lord clive would be as likely to exhibit as osceola and black hawk. as johnson remarked that there was a middle style in english above vulgarity and below pedantry, which never became obsolete and in which the plays of shakspeare were written, so is there in human language a middle style, proper to all nations and spoken by indians and by frenchmen, so they be men of personal force. colonel worth has lately declared halleck tastenugge one of the best infantry officers, and william greene? said he found the spirit among the indians. i william b. greene, who had been an officer in the united states army during the seminole war, and later was 168 journal [age 38 hell is better than heaven, if the man in hell knows his place, and the man in heaven does not. it is in vain you pretend that you are not responsible for the evil law because you are not a magistrate, or a party to a civil process, or do not vote. you eat the law in a crust of bread, you wear it in your hat and shoes. the man—it is his attitude: the attitude makes the man. are instead of wondering that there is a bible, i wonder that there are not a thousand. toiling in the naked fields where no bush a shelter yields, needy labor dithering stands, beats and blows his numbing hands, and upon the crumping snows stamps in vain to warm his toes. though all's in vain to keep him warm, poverty must brave the storm; friendship none its aid to lend constant health his only friend; granting leave to live in pain, giving strength to toil in vain. clare. for a time a preacher. in the civil war, colonel greene commanded the 14th infantry, m. v. 1842] brisbane. alcott 169 brisbane in new york pushed his fourierism with all the force of memory, talent, honest faith, and impudence. it was the sublime of mechanics.' ... here prepares now the good alcott to go to england,' after so long and strict acquaintance 1 what follows is, in substance, printed in “historic notes of life and letters in new england” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 348–354). albert brisbane was an eager disciple of fourier. mr. emerson published in the dial of july of this year a paper by brisbane called “ means of effecting a final reconciliation between religion and science.” after pointing out the principles by which this could be effected, he considered the practical means by which mankind can be elevated in this line, and said, “a genius equal to the task has arisen, and in our age, and has accomplished it. that genius is charles fourier.” 2 mr. alcott's high thoughts on life and on the education of the young had reached certain englishmen, notably james pierrepont greaves, a retired merchant turned scholar and philanthropist, a friend of pestalozzi and of strauss, and of mr. john a. heraud, editor of a reform magazine. mr. alcott's “records of a school ” so interested these and others that a school was established at ham, surrey, on alcott's principles and named for him. letters from these friends urged mr. alcott to come where he would be warmly welcomed and eagerly heard. the voyage was made possible by the good offices of his friends here. 170 [age 38 journal as i have had with him for seven years. i saw him for the first time in boston in 1835. what shall we say of him to the wise englishman? he is a man of ideas, a man of faith. expect contempt for all usages which are simply such. his social nature and his taste for beauty and magnificence will betray him into tolerance and indulgence, even, to men and to magnificence, but a statute or a practice he is coni the subjoined letter, and not what follows in the succeeding pages of the journal, is what mr. emerson did write to carlyle of his friend, over and above some note of introduction, kindly and brief:concord, march 21, 1842. i write now to tell you of a piece of life. i wish you to know that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of bronson alcott. if you have heard his name before, forget what you have heard. especially if you have read anything to which his name was attached, be sure to forget that ; and, inasmuch as in you lies, permit this stranger, when he arrives at your gate, to make a new and primary impression. i do not wish to bespeak any courtesies, or good or bad opinion concerning him. you may love him or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius shall dictate ; only i entreat this, that you do not let him quite go out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him and know for certain the nature of the man. and so i leave contentedly my pilgrim to his fate. 1842] alcott's conversation 171 demned to measure by its essential wisdom or folly. he delights in speculation, in nothing so much, and is very well endowed and weaponed for that work with a copious, accurate and elegant vocabulary; i may say poetic; so that i know no man who speaks such good english as he, and is so inventive withal. he speaks truth truly; or the expression is adequate. yet he knows only this one language. he hardly needs an antagonist, — he needs only an intelligent ear. where he is greeted by loving and intelligent persons, his discourse soars to a wonderful height, so regular, so lucid, so playful, so new and disdainful of all boundaries of tradition and experience, that the hearers seem no longer to have bodies or material gravity, but almost they can mount into the air at pleasure, or leap at one bound out of this poor solar system. i say this of his speech exclusively, for when he attempts to write, he loses, in my judgment, all his power, and i derive more pain than pleasure from the perusal. the post expresses the feeling of most readers in its rude joke, when it said of his orphic sayings that they “resembled a train of fifteen railroad cars with one passenger.” he has moreover the greatest possession both 172 journal [age 38 of mind and of temper in his discourse, so that the mastery and moderation and foresight, and yet felicity, with which he unfolds his thought, are not to be surpassed. this is of importance to such a broacher of novelties as he is, and to one baited, as he is very apt to be, by the sticklers for old books or old institutions. he takes such delight in the exercise of this faculty that he will willingly talk the whole of a day, and most part of the night, and then again tomorrow, for days successively, and if i, who am impatient of much speaking, draw him out to walk in the woods or fields, he will stop at the first fence and very soon propose either to sit down or to return. he seems to think society exists for this function, and that all literature is good or bad as it approaches colloquy, which is its perfection. poems and histories may be good, but only as adumbrations of this; and the only true manner of writing the literature of a nation would be to convene the best heads in the community, set them talking, and then introduce stenographers to record what they say. he so swiftly and naturally plants himself on the moral sentiment in any conversation that no man will ever get any advantage of him, unless he be a saint, as jones very was. every one else alcott will put in the wrong. ic 1842] alcott described 173 · it must be conceded that it is speculation which he loves, and not action. therefore he dissatisfies everybody and disgusts many. when the conversation is ended, all is over. he lives to-morrow, as he lived to-day, for further discourse, not to begin, as he seemed pledged to do, a new celestial life. the ladies fancied that he loved cake; very likely; most people do. yet in the last two years he has changed his way of living, which was perhaps a little easy and self-indulgent for such a zenu, so far as to become ascetically temperate. he has no vocation to labor, and, although he strenuously preached it for a time, and made some efforts to practise it, he soon found he had no genius for it, and that it was a cruel waste of his time. it depressed his spirits even to tears. he is very noble in his carriage to all men, of a serene and lofty aspect and deportment in the street and in the house. of simple but graceful and majestic manners, having a great sense of his own worth, so that not willingly will he give his hand to a merchant, though he be never so rich, — yet with a strong love of men, and an insatiable curiosity concerning all who were distinguished either by their intellect or by their character. he is the most generous and hospitable of men, so 174 · journal [age 38 that he has been as munificent in his long poverty as mr. perkins in his wealth, or i should say much more munificent. and for his hospitality, every thing in the form of man that entered his door as a suppliant would be made master of all the house contained. moreover, every man who converses with him is presently made sensible that, although this person has no faculty or patience for our trivial hodiernal labors, yet if there were a great courage, a great sacrifice, a self-immolation to be made, this and no other is the man for a crisis, -and with such grandeur, yet with such temperance in his mien. such a man, with no talent for household uses, none for action, and whose taste is for precisely that which is most rare and unattainable, could not be popular, he could never be a doll, nor a beau, nor a bestower of money or presents, nor even a model of good daily life to propose to virtuous young persons. his greatness consists in his attitude merely; of course he found very few to relish or appreciate him; and very many to dispraise him. somebody called him a “moral sam patch.” another circumstance marks this extreme love of speculation. he carries all his opinions and all his condition and manner of life in his hand, 100 e 1842] alcott's faults 175 and, whilst you talk with him, it is plain he has put out no roots, but is an air-plant, which can readily and without any ill consequence be transported to any place. he is quite ready at any moment to abandon his present residence and employment, his country, nay, his wife and children, on very short notice, to put any new dream into practice which has bubbled up in the effervescence of discourse. if it is so with his way of living, much more so is it with his opinions. he never remembers. he never affirms anything to-day because he has affirmed it before. you are rather astonished, having left him in the morning with one set of opinions, to find him in the evening totally escaped from all recollection of them, as confident of a new line of conduct and heedless of his old advocacy. sauve qui peut. another effect of this speculation is that he is preternaturally acute and ingenious to the extent sometimes of a little jesuitry in his action. he contemns the facts so far that his poetic representations have the effect of a falsehood, and those who are deceived by them ascribe the falsehood to him: and sometimes he plays with actions unimportant to him in a manner not justifiable to any observers but those who are : 176 journal [age 38 competent to do justice to his real magnanimity and conscience. like all virtuous persons he is destitute of the appearance of virtue, and so shocks all persons of decorum by the imprudence of his behavior and the enormity of his expressions. ... this man entertained in his spirit all vast and magnificent problems. none came to him so much recommended as the most universal. he delighted in the fable of prometheus; in all the dim, gigantic pictures of the most ancient mythology;in the indian and egyptian traditions; in the history of magic, of palmistry, of temperaments, of astrology, of whatever showed any impatience of custom and limits, anyimpulse to dare the solution of the total problem of man's nature, finding in every such experiment an implied pledge and prophecy of worlds of science and power yet unknown to us. he seems often to realize the pictures of the old alchemists: for he stood brooding on the edge of discovery of the absolute from month to month, ever and anon affirming that it was within his reach, and nowise discomfited by uniform shortcomings. the other tendency of his mind was to realize a reform in the life of man. this was the steadily returning, the monotonous topic of 1842] alcott's subject 177 years of conversation. this drew him to a constant intercourse with the projectors and saints of all shades, who preached or practised any part or particle of reform, and to a continual coldness, quarrel, and non-intercourse with the scholars and men of refinement who are usually found in the ranks of conservatism. very soon the reformers whom he had joined would disappoint him; they were pitiful persons, and, in their coarseness and ignorance, he began to pine again for literary society. in these oscillations from the scholars to the reformers, and back again, he spent his days. his vice, an intellectual vice, grew out of this constitution, and was that to which almost all spiritualists have been liable, a certain brooding on the private thought which produces monotony in the conversation, and egotism in the character. steadily subjective himself, the variety of facts which seem necessary to the health of most minds, yielded him no variety of meaning, and he quickly quitted the play on objects, to come to the subject, which was always the same, viz., alcott in reference to the world of to-day. from a stray leaf i copy this :alcott sees the law of man truer and farther than any one ever did. unhappily, his conver178 journal [age 38 sation never loses sight of his own personality. he never quotes; he never refers ; his only illustration is his own biography. his topic yesterday is alcott on the 17th october; to-day, alcott on the 18th october; to-morrow, on the 19th. so will it be always. the poet, rapt into future times or into deeps of nature admired for themselves, lost in their law, cheers us with a lively charm; but this noble genius discredits genius to me. i do not want any more such persons to exist." en what for the visions of the night? our life is so safe and regular that we hardly know the emotion of terror. neither public nor private i it would seem that mr. emerson sat down to make a rough draft of a letter of introduction for mr. alcott and was led on by interest in the subject to write the above (never sent) resultant of seven years' experience of this strange nineteenthcentury apostle with his gifts and his gaps. twenty-five years later, mr. emerson said to his son, “ it will be a thousand pities if i don't outlive alcott and ellery channing, for nobody else knows them well enough to do them justice.” this long entry in the journal is the fullest statement that mr. emerson left, and it was written at the time when mr. alcott's theories were at their highest flight, just before the tragic fall to earth in the winter of the following year when the fruitlands community went to wreck. 1842] dreams 179 violence, neither natural catastrophes, as earthquake, volcano, or deluge; nor the expectation of supernatural agents in the form of ghosts, or of purgatory and devils and hell fire, disturb the sleepy circulations of our blood in these calm, well-spoken days. and yet dreams acquaint us with what the day omits. eat a hearty supper, tuck up your bed tightly, put an additional bedspread over your three blankets, and lie on your back, and you may, in the course of an hour or two, have this neglected part of your education in some measure supplied. let me consider : i found myself in a garret disturbed by the noise of some one sawing wood. on walking towards the sound, i saw lying in a crib an insane person whom i very well knew, and the noise instantly stopped : there was no saw, a mere stirring among several trumpery matters, fur muffs and empty baskets that lay on the floor. as i tried to approach, the muffs swelled themselves a little, as with wind, and whirled off into a corner of the garret, as if alive, and a kind of animation appeared in all the objects in that corner. seeing this, and instantly aware that here was witchcraft, that here was a devilish will which signified itself plainly enough in the stir and the sound of the wind, i was unable to '180 (age 38 journal move; my limbs were frozen with fear; i was bold and would go forward, but my limbs i could not move; i mowed the defiance i could not articulate, and woke with the ugly sound i made. after i woke and recalled the impressions, my brain tingled with repeated vibrations of terror; and yet was the sensation pleasing, as it was a sort of rehearsal of a tragedy. what room for fourier phalanxes, for large and remote schemes of happiness, when i may be in any moment surprised by contentment? here was edward palmer, with somewhat ridiculous, yet much nobility, always combined in his person and conversation, truth, honesty, love, independence, yet this listening to men, and this credulity in days and conventions and brisbane projects. his look has somewhat too priestly and ecclesiastic in its cut. he looks like an universalist minister. but though his intellect is something low and limitary, prosaic, and a good roadster, yet he has great depth of character, and grows on your eye. pathetic it was to hear of his little circle of six young men who met one evening long ago in a little chamber in boston, and talked over his project of no-money 1842] edmund hosmer 181 until all saw that it was true, and had new faith in the omnipotence of love. in alabama and georgia, he seems to have stopped in every printing-house, and the only signs of hope and comfort he found were newspapers, like brisbane's “future,” which he found in these dusky universities. when shall we see a man whose image blends with nature? so that when he is gone, he shall not seem a little ridiculous, that same small man! edmund hosmer' is a noble creature, so manly, so sweet-tempered, so faithful, so disdainful of all appearances, who always looks respectable and excellent to you in his old shabby cap and blue frock bedaubed with the slime of the marsh, and makes you respect and honor him through all. a man to deal with who always 1 mr. emerson's neighbor, half a mile away in the last house in concord, on the sandy pond road to lincoln. mr. hosmer, a hard-working farmer with a large family, was mr. emerson's adviser and helper in his family needs, ploughed and harrowed for him with his oxen, and carted sand from the hill opposite on to the too wet meadow to make grass-land. he also liked to attend evening gatherings for conversation in mr. emerson's parlor when not too busy or tired. in the poems he figures as hassan the camel-driver (“fragments on the poet and the poetic gift,” p. 323). 182 journal [age 38 needs to be watched lest he should cheat himself; with his admiration of his wife, harried by the care of her poor household and ten children. edmund says, the first time he saw her, he did not observe that she was niuch different from other women, but now he thinks her the handsomest woman he ever saw! and so you come to think also when you see [her] ... in her house at her work, or hear her artless stories of her sufferings and her works and opinions and tastes. lons friendship, five people; yes; association and grand phalanx of the best of the human race.' ... opus superabat materiem, said the transcendentalist to the man who gave him money: or, all my concern is with the expenditure. “the devil is the lord's bulldog,” said the good dow. april 3. “the peculiarity of divine souls is shown by parmenides to consist in their being younger and at the same time older both than themselves and other things.” — proclus. i the rest of this passage occurs in “ new england reformers” (essays, second series, pp. 264, 265). 2 probably lorenzo dow, the vigorous methodist apostle. 1842) truth cumbered 183 the population of the world is a conditional population. these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals. shall the new thought make the magnificence of england rags? an immense deduction is to be made from the doctrine of the wisest man to arrive at his truth. all his dogmatick is mere flourish and grammar. what a mass of nonsense in st. paul, and again in swedenborg, that has no relation to rain and sun and bird. yet truth will resolve a magpie as well as a creed when once you get it pure. he should not see poorest culinary stove but he saw its relation to the charity which is the fountain of nature. swedenborg a right poet. everything protean to his eye.' ... in his eye the eternal flux of things goes always on, there is no material kernel, only a spiritual centre. ! the passage about his vision, printed in " the poet” (essays, second series, pp. 35, 36). 184 journal [age 38 april 5. alcott brought here this day a manuscript paper written by his brother junius, which had three good things in it, first, that it was a prayer, written in this prayerless age; second, that he thanks god for the continuance of their love, the one for the other; and third, he thanks him for the knowledge he has attained of him by his sons. truth; realism. are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles ? for though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.' the feeblest babe is a channel through which, the tremendous energies stream which we call life, fate, love, conscience, thought, hope, sensibility. i began to write of poetry and was driven at once to think of swedenborg as the person who, 1 mr. emerson was reading george borrow's gypsies in spain, which he reviewed in the dial in july. from borrow's books came the suggestions of the poem, “the romany girl.:) 1842] swedenborg 185 of all the men in the recent ages, stands eminently for the translator of nature into thought. i do not know a man in history to whom things stood so uniformly for words. before him the metamorphosis continually plays. and if there be in heaven museums of psychology, the most scientific angel could scarcely find a better example than the brain of swedenborg, of the tendency to interpret the moral by the material.' ... swedenborg never indicates any emotion, a cold, passionless man. what we admire is the majestic and beautiful necessity which necessitated him to see these heavens and hells of his. the heaven, which i overpowered his and every human mind in proportion to the apprehensiveness of each, is more excellent than his picture; the hell, which is its negation, is more formidable than he had skill to draw. very dangerous study will swedenborg be to any but a mind of great elasticity. like napoleon as a military leader, a master of such extraordinary extent of nature, and not to be acted 1 one or two sentences in the above are printed in representative men. the omitted sentences which follow are found in that volume on pages 36 and 37. 186 journal [age 38 on by any other, that he must needs be a god to the young and enthusiastic. april 6. having once learned that in some one thing, although externally small, greatness might be contained, so that in doing that, it was all one as if i had builded a world; i was thereby taught, that every thing in nature should represent total nature; and that whatsoever thing did not represent to me the sea and sky, day and night, was something forbidden or wrong. heroes. heaven's exiles straying from the orb of light. empedocles. pericles, the father of these youths, has beautifully and well instructed them in those things which are taught by masters; but in those things in which he is wise he has neither instructed them himself, nor has he sent them to another to be instructed; but they, feeding, as it were, without restraint, wander about, to see if they can casually meet with virtue. — plato, in protagoras. you should never ask me what i can do. if you do not find my gift without asking, i have none for you. would you ask a woman wherein 1842) the poet 187 her loveliness consists ? those to whom she is lovely will not discover it so. such questions are but curiosity and gossip. besides, i cannot tell you what my gift is unless you can find it without my description. the poet' on that night the poet went from the lighted halls. beneath the darkling firmament to the seashore, to the old sea walls. dark was night upon the seas, darker was the poet's mind; for his shallow suppleness black abyss of penitence. the wind blew keen, the poet threw his cloak apart, to feel the cold; the wind, he said, is free and true, but i am mean and sold. i perhaps as early as 1838, and onward for years, mr. emerson was writing fragmentary verses on this theme, at first uneven in quality in a period of unrest, later improving. they began with “ the discontented poet, a masque.” a large part of them are gathered in the riverside and centenary editions of the poems in the appendix. the portion occurring here in this journal may be there found in a smoother form. at this period mr. emerson used to walk out under the stars the last thing before going to rest. 188 journal (age 38 out shone a star between the clouds, the constellation glittered soon, you have no lapse : so have ye glowed but once in your dominion. and i to whom your light has spoken, i pining to be one of you, i fall, my faith is broken; ye scorn me from your deeps of blue — and yet, dear stars, i know ye shine only by needs and loves of mine; light-loving, light-asking life in me feeds those eternal lamps i see. the history of christ is the best document of the power of character which we have. a youth who owed nothing to fortune and who was “hanged at tyburn,” — by the pure quality of his nature has shed this epic splendor around the facts of his death which has transfigured every particular into a grand universal symbol for the eyes of all mankind ever since." he did well. this great defeat is hitherto the highest fact we have. but he that shall come shall do better. the mind requires a far higher 1 although this passage, in substance, is given in “ character” (essays, second series, p. 114), the original form, full and more daring, is preserved here. aan 1842] character over fate 189 exhibition of character, one which shall make itself good to the senses as well as to the soul; a success to the senses as well as to the soul. this was a great defeat; we demand victory. more character will convert judge and jury, soldier and king; will rule human and animal and mineral nature; will command irresistibly and blend with the course of universal nature. in short, there ought to be no such thing as fate. as long as we use this word, it is a sign of our impotence and that we are not yet ourselves. ... whilst i adore this ineffable life which is at my heart, it will not condescend to gossip with me, it will not announce to me any particulars of science, it will not enter into the details of my biography, and say to me why i have a son and daughters born to me, or why my son dies in his sixth year of joy. herein, then, i have this latent omniscience coexistent with omnignorance. moreover, whilst this deity glows at the heart, and by his unlimited presentiments gives me all power, i know that to-morrow will be as this day, i am a dwarf, and i remain a dwarf. that is to say, i believe in fate. as long as i am weak, i shall talk of fate; whenever the god fills me with his fulness, i shall see the disappearance of fate. 190 [age 38 journal i am defeated all the time; yet to victory i am born.' but the objection to idolatry of which all christendom is guilty, why do you not feel? viz., that it is retrospective, whilst all the health and power of man consists in the prospective eye. a saint, an angel, a chorus of saints, a myriad of christs, are alike worthless and forgotten by the soul, as the leaves that fall, or the fruit that was gathered in the garden of eden in the golden age. a new day, a new harvest, new duties, new men, new fields of thought, new powers call you, and an eye fastened on the past unsuns nature, bereaves me of hope, and ruins me with a squalid indigence which nothing but death can adequately symbolize. the poet should not only be able to use nature as his hieroglyphic, but he should have a still higher power, namely, an adequate message to communicate; a vision fit for such a 1 the archangel hope looks to the azure cope, waits through dark ages for the morn, defeated day by day, but unto victory born. poems, appendix, p. 354. 1842] symbols. boys 191 faculty. therefore, when we speak of poet in the great sense, we seem to be driven to such examples as ezekiel and saint john and menu with their moral burdens; and all those we commonly call poets become rhymesters and poetasters by their side. all our works which we do not understand are symbolical. if i appear to myself to carry rails into the shed under my barn, if i appear to myself to dig parsnips with a dung-fork, there is reason, no doubt, in these special appearances as much as in the study of metaphysics or mythology, in which i do not see meaning. we are greatly more poetic than we know; poets in our drudgery, poets in our eyes, and ears, and skin. the schoolboys went on with their game of baseball without regard to the passenger, and the ball struck him smartly in the back. he was angry. little cared the boys. if you had learned how to play when you was at school, they said, you would have known better than to be hit. if you did not learn then, you had better stop short where you are, and learn now. hit him again, dick! 192 journal [age 38 sunday eve. i say that he will render the greatest service to criticism which has been known for ages who shall draw the line of relation that subsists between shakspeare and swedenborg.' ... always there is this woman as well as this man in the mind; affection as well as intellect. you might know beforehand that your friends will not succeed, since you have never been able to find the institution in the institutor. “ if he who brings corn to sale be entitled to a remunerating price for it by law, by what just law is he disentitled to a remunerating price who likewise brings his property to sale — his labour ? ” — lord nugent. if i go into the churches in these days, i usually find the preacher in proportion to his intelligence to be cunning, so that the whole i for the rest of the passage, see “swedenborg” (representative men, p. 94). 2 the rest of this passage is in “ character” (essays, second series, pp. 101, 102). 1842) farmers. plants' names 193. institution sounds hollow. x, the ablest of all the unitarian clergy, spread popular traps all over the lecture which i heard in the odeon. but in the days of the pilgrims and the puritans, the preachers were the victims of the same faith with which they whipped and persecuted other men, and their sermons are strong, imaginative, fervid, and every word a cube of stone. as soon as my guests are gone, they show like dreams. mr. clapp, of dorchester, to whom i described the fourier project, thought it must not only succeed, but that agricultural association must presently fix the price of bread, and drive single farmers into association in self-defence, as the great commercial and manufacturing companies had done. last night i read many pages in chester dewey's report of herbaceous plants in massachusetts. with what delight we always come to these images ! the mere names of reeds and grasses, of the milkweeds, of the mint tribe and the gentians, of mallows and trefoils, are a lively pleasure. the odorous waving of these children of 194 journal [age 38 beauty soothes and heals us. the names are poems often. erigeron, because it grows old early, is thus named the old man of the spring. the pyrola umbellata is called chimaphila, lover of winter, because of its bright green leaves in the snow; called also prince's pine. the plantain (plantago major), which follows man wherever he builds a hut, is called by the indians “white man's foot.” and it is always affecting to see lidian or one of her girls stepping outside the door with a lamp at night to gather a few plantain leaves to dress some slight wound or inflamed hand or foot. what acres of houstonia whiten and ripple before the eye with innumerable pretty florets at the mention of may. my beloved liatris in the end of august and september acquires some added interest from being an approved remedy for the bite of serpents, and so called “rattlesnake's master.” the naming of the localities comforts us — “ponds,” “shady roads,” “ sandy woods,” “ wet pastures,” etc. i begin to see the sun and moon, and to share the life of nature, as under the spell of the sweetest pastoral poet. fireweed, a hieracium which springs up abundantly on newly cleared land. the aromatic fields of dry gnaphalium; the sweet flags live in 1842] swedenborg's hebraism 195 my memory this april day. but this dull country professor insults some of my favorites, as the well beloved lespedeza,' for instance. the beautiful epigea, pride of plymouth woods, he utterly omits. he who loves a flower, though he knows nothing of its botany or medicine, is nearer to it than one of these cataloguemakers.? . .. these are our poetry. what, i pray thee, o emanuel swedenborg, have i to do with jasper, sardonyx, beryl, and chalcedony ?3 ... one would think that god made fig trees and dates, grapes and olives, but the devil made baldwin apples and pound-pears, cherries and whortleberries, indian corn and irish potatoes. i tell you, i love the peeping of a hyla in a pond in april, or the evening cry of a whip-poor-will, better than all the bellowing of all the bulls of bashan or all the turtles of whole palestina. the ces 1 in his poem, the “ dirge,” commemorating his lost brothers, mr. emerson speaks of it as this flower of silken leaf which once our childhood knew. 2 here follows the passage about the aowers jilting us, in « nature” (essays, second series, p. 182). 3 the rest of the passage is printed in “swedenborg" (representative men, pp. 135, 136). 196 journal [age 38 county of berkshire is worth all moab, gog, and kadesh, put together. when swedenborg described the roads leading up from the “ world of spirit” into heaven as not visible at first to any spirit, but after some time visible to such as are pure, he figuratively reports a familiar truth in relation to the history of thought. the gates of thought, how slow and late they discover themselves! yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open. april 13. read last night mr. colman’s fourth report of the agriculture of massachusetts. the account he gives of the fat cattle raised on connecticut river and sold at brighton is pathetic almost. the sale sometimes will not pay the note the farmer gave for the money with which he bought his stock in the fall. the miseries of brighton would make a new chapter in porphyry on “abstinence from animal food.” the maple sugar business is far more agreeable to read of. one tree may be tapped for eighty or ninety years and not injured. one man can tap three hundred in a day. i read with less pleasure that a principal crop of franklin county is broomcorn. 1842] babe. true countryman 197 the babe is not disconcerted. i delight in her eyes: they receive good-humoredly everything that appears before them, but give way to nothing. scrap as she is, she is never displaced, as older children are. i like a meeting of gentlemen; for they also bring each one a certain cumulative result. from every company they have visited, from every business they have transacted, they have brought away something which they wear as a certain complexion or permanent coat, and their manners are a certificate, a trophy of their culture. what we want when you come to see us is country culture. we have town culture enough and to spare. show us your own, inimitable and charming to us, o countryman! at new york i saw mrs. black, a devout woman bred in the presbyterian church, but who had left it and come out into the light, as she said, “ in a moment of time.” she was spiritual and serene. the contemplation of the presence and perfection of the moral law contented her. she had read madame guion and jacob behmen, and now, lately, the book of esdras, the author of which she said was an impatient sen co 198 journal [age 38 spirit, but yet wise. she quoted scripture a good deal, but in the poetic and original way of jones very. i was greatly contented with her, at my first interview ; but at the second i asked her, “ had she no temptations?” no. “had she no wish to serve some creature who could only be served by her involving herself in affairs ?” no. for herself she satisfied me pretty well, but i soon felt that she had no answers to give the inquirers whom i usually meet. she only said, they must be willing to be fools. “yes,” i said, “but they already are fools and have been so a long time, and now they begin to whimper, how long, o lord !” goodness is not good enough, unless it has insight, universal insights, results that are of universal application. men whom we see are whipped through the world;' . .. the most private is the most public energy. we shall see that quality atones for quantity ; that creative action in one outvalues feeble exhibition and philanthropic declamation to crowds; and that grandeur of character acts in the dark, and succors them who never saw it. i the part omitted of this passage is printed in “ domestic life" (society and solitude, p. 125). 1842] intellect. quotation 199 i ought to be obeyed. the reason i am not is because i am not real. let me be a lover, and no man can resist me. i am not united, i am not friendly to myself, i bite and tear myself. i am ashamed of myself. when will the day dawn, of peace and reconcilement, when, self-united and friendly, i shall display one heart and energy to the world? “ every intellect,” says proclus, “is an impartible essence.” very likely and very unimportant; but that every intellect is an impartable essence, or is communicable in the same proportion with its amount or depth, — is a theme for the song of angels. quotation. it is a great advantage to come first in time. he that comes second must needs quote him that came first. you say that square never quotes : you say something absurd. let him speak a word, only to say “ chair,” “table,” “ fire,” “ bread,"— what are these but quotations from some ancient savage ? i have sometimes fancied my friend's wisdom rather corrective than initiative, an excellent element in conversation to counteract the com200 journal (age 38 mon exaggerations and preserve the sanity, but chiefly valuable so, and not for its adventure and exploration or for its satisfying peace. (from e) april 14. if i should write an honest diary, what should i say? alas, that life has halfness, shallowness. i have almost completed thirty-nine years, and i have not yet adjusted my relation to my fellows on the planet, or to my own work. always too young or too old, i do not justify myself; how can i satisfy others ? christianity. i do not wonder that there was a christ; i wonder that there were not a thousand. dull, cheerless business this of playing lion and talking down to people. rather let me be scourged and humiliated; then the exaltation is sure and speedy. (from k) april 19. my daily life is miscellaneous enough, but when i read plato or proclus, or, without plato, when i ascend to thought, i do not at once ar1842] the brave farmer 201 rive at satisfactions, as when i drink being thirsty, or go to the fire being cold; no; i am only apprized at first of my vicinity to a new and most bright region of life.' . .. life. where do we find ourselves? ... april 22. this afternoon i found edmund hosmer in his field, after traversing his orchard where two of his boys were grafting trees ; mr. hosmer was ploughing and andrew driving the oxen. i could not help feeling the highest respect as i approached this brave laborer. here is the napoleon, the alexander of the soil, conquering and to conquer, after how many and many a hard-fought summer's day and winter's day, not like napoleon of sixty battles only, but of six thousand, and out of every one he has come victor. ... i am ashamed of these slight and useless limbs of mine before this strong soldier.3. .. i the rest of this long passage is in “ experience” (essays, second series, pp. 71, 72). 2 here follows the opening passage, on stairs, in “ experience.” 3 the episode, of which the above is the first paragraph, mr. emerson published in the dial, july, 1842, and the 202 journal (age 38 true it is, i thought, as he talked, that necessity farms it, that necessity finds out when to go to brighton, and when to feed in stall, better than mr. colman. elizabeth gives me two proverbs to-day, which are both bucolic poetry :« when the oaks are in the grey, then, farmers, plant away." and the other:“ the mistress makes the morning, but the lord makes the afternoon.” strange that what i have not is always more excellent than what i have, and that beauty, no, not beauty, but a beauty instantly deserts possession, and flies to an object in the horizon. if i could put my hand on the evening star, would it be as beautiful? in the fields, this lovely day, i was ashamed of the inhospitality of disputing. very hoarsely whole is printed under the title “ agriculture in massachusetts” (see natural history of intellect, pp. 358–363). in the appendix to the poems (p. 322) mr. hosmer, in the guise of hassan the camel-driver, receives the poet's homage. sc 1842] wish for trial. buds 203 sounds the parlor debate on theology from the lonely, sunny hill, or the meadow where the children play. as sings the pine tree in the wind, so sings in the wind a sprig of the pine. as proclus ascribes to the deity the property of being in contact, and of not being in contact at the same moment of time, so we demand of men that they should exhibit a conduct which is at once continence and abandonment; “a wanton heed, and giddy cunning.” we look wishfully to emergencies, to eventful revolutionary times from the desart of our ennui, and think how easy to have taken our part when the drum was rolling and the house was burning over our heads. but is not peace greater than war, and has it not greater wars and victories? is there no progress? to wish for war is atheism. when i saw the sylvan youth, i said, “ very good promise, but i cannot now watch any more buds: like the good grandfather when they brought him the twentieth babe, he declined the dandling, he had said kitty, kitty' long enough.” 204 journal [age 38 queenie says, “save me from magnificent souls. i like a small common-sized one.” as they say that when your razor is dull, lay it away in your drawer and use another until that becomes dull, then take the old one and you shall find it sharp again, so i have heard scholars remark of their skill in languages, that by putting away the greek or german book for a time, when they resumed it afterwards, they were surprised at their own facility. (from j) april 28. q. why not great and good ? ans. because i am not what i ought to be. q. but why not what you ought? ans. the deity still solicits me, but this self, this individuality, this will resists. q. well for you that it does : if it did yield, you would die, as it is called. but why does it resist? ans. i can only reply, god is great: it is the will of god. when he wills, he enters: when he does not will, he enters not. 205 1842] weak wings. spirit (from k) may 1. “and the most difficult of tasks to keep heights which the soul is competent to gain.” these lines of wordsworth are a sort of elegy on these times. when i read proclus, i am astonished with the vigor and breadth of his performance. here is no epileptic modern muse, with short breath and short flight, but an atlantic strength which is everywhere equal to itself and dares great attempts, because of the life with which it feels itself filled. there will come a day when a man shall appear who will so draw men to him as a mistress or a friend draws a lover or a friend, making it the happiness and honor of the other party to serve him. in that way character will inspire the kindness it requires, and will not need to provide in the direct way for its bodily wants. then every man will “live by his strength and not by his weakness," as a said. god hates inquisitiveness, said euclides. boldness we wish to see, boldness in any kind, whether in behavior and action, or in thought or poetry or music or building. but whence is boldness? what is it but the badge 206 journal [age 38 and sign of life, of spirit? and sometimes that wind bloweth here, and sometimes there, none can tell why, or how, or when, it listeth. am i master of any of the conditions of its presence, or must i fold my hands and wait until i be bold? now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. nu doctor james jackson said it always took some time to learn the scale of patients and nurses; what they meant by “violent pain," “feeling that they should die,” etc., etc. almost all persons delight in the superlative, and for this reason seize upon an exaggeration, as on sugar, in all their actual observations of each character. it proceeds from the want of skill to detect quality that they hope to move your admiration by quantity: for they feel that here in this or that person is somewhat remarkable. a reading man, or a child self-entertained, is the serpent with its tail in the mouth.' let saadi sit alone. the surfaces threaten to carry it in nature. the fox and musquash, the hawk and snipe and 1 the symbol of continuity, hence eternity. 1842] a neighborhood 207 bittern, when near by seen, are found to have no more root than man, to be just such superficial tenants in the globe. then this new molecular philosophy goes to show that there are astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom; the world is all outside; it has no inside. atom from atom yawns as far as moon from earth, as star from star. elizabeth hoar says, when we spoke of the beauty of morning and the beauty of evening, _“i go a beggar to the sunset, but in the morning i am equal to nature.” (from j) may 6. here is a proposition for the formation of a good neighborhood : hedge shall live at concord, and mr. hawthorne; george bradford shall come then; and mrs. ripley afterward. who knows but margaret fuller and charles newcomb would presently be added? these, if added to our present kings and queens, would make a rare, an unrivalled company. if these all had their hearth and home here, we might have a solid social satisfaction, instead of the disgust and depression of visitation. we might find that 208 [age 38 journal each of us was more completely isolated and sacred than before. you may come — no matter how near in place, so that you have metes and bounds, instead of the confounding and chaos of visiting may 15. the instruction at church seemed very infantile. calvinism seems complexional merely;... ve in general, i recognize, in stagecoach and elsewhere, the constitutional calvinist, the inconvertible. and in all companies we find those who are self-accused, who live in their memories and charge themselves with the seven deadly sins daily, like my queen without guile;? and the other class, who cumber themselves never with contrition, but appeal from their experience always hopefully to their faith. co it our poetry reminds me of the catbird, who sings so affectedly and vaingloriously to me near walden. very sweet and musical! very various! fine execution! but so conscious, and such a per1 mr. emerson does not class his wife with calvinists, but refers to her saintly, oversensitive conscience. she abhorred the doctrines representing the father as foreordaining most of his children for eternal fires, and all for his own glory. 1842] marriage. ben adhem 209 former! not a note is his own, except at last, miou, miou. of recent men, one may say that milton's opinion might be adduced on marriage, and swedenborg's and even shelley's. goethe gave none that i remember, and no others occur to me. “ abou ben adhem” seems to promise its own immortality beyond all the contemporary poems. and how long will one search books to find as good a story as that of the woman of alexandria with her torch and bucket of water to burn heaven and extinguish hell?" soeve stick to thy affirming, how faint and feeble soever. a poet is an affirmer. such loud and manifold denial as certain chemists, astronomers, and geologists make, imposing on me and all, and we think they will do wonders. years pass and they are still exposing errors, and some quiet body has done in a corner the deed which they must worship. it seems a mark of rarest genius to be able to distinguish the affirmative talent. such geniuses 1 she said that she would do this that men might practise goodness for itself alone. 210 journal [age 39 as we know are deceived every day, as grossly almost as common society. june 14. talent makes comfort. i propose to set an athenæum on foot in this village; but to what end? we know very well what is its utmost, to make, namely, such agreeable and adorned men as we ourselves, but not to open doors into heaven, as genius does in every deed of genius. this goes rather to fix and to content with fixedness; the comfort of talent. london is the kingdom of talent. every paper and book and journal comes from that tree. civilization is talent's version of human life. a highly endowed man with good intellect and good conscience is a man-woman and does not so much need the complement of woman to his being as another. hence his relations to the sex are somewhat dislocated and unsatisfactory. he asks in woman sometimes the woman, sometimes the man. as when i have walked long in one direction, and then, if i turn around, discover that a large fair star has long risen and shined on me, i feel a kind of wonder that i should be so long in 1842) to-day. music. humility 211 such a presence without knowing it, so feel i when a fine genius, which has been born and growing to full age in my neighborhood, now first turns its full deep light on my eyes. june 15. to-day. the ascetic of every day is how to keep me at the top of my condition ; because a good day of work is too important a possession to be risked for any chance of good days to come. ause a shut your eyes and hear a military band play on the field at night and you shall have kings and queens and all regal behavior and beautiful society, all chivalry walking visibly before you.' ... doctor bradford said it was a misfortune to be born when children were nothing and live until men were nothing. june 16. literary criticism, how beautiful to me, and i am shocked lately to detect such omnipresent egotism in my things. my prayer is that i may 1 the above lines and a long passage about the magic of a horn, and the romantic imagination concerning the rich, are printed in “ nature” (essays, second series). an 212 journal [age 39 be never deprived of a fact, but be always so rich in objects of study as never to feel this impoverishment of remembering myself. that the intellect grows by moral obedience seems to me the judgment day. let that fact once obtain credence, and all wrongs are righted; sorrow and pity are no more, nor fear nor hatred; but a justice as shining and palpable as the best we know of kings and caliphs and ordeals, and what we call “poetical justice,” – that is, thorough justice, justice to the eye and justice to the mind — takes place. friendship. for gods are to each other not unknown. odyssey, v, 79. the same depth which dew gives to the morning meadow, the fireflies give to the evening meadow. fire, though a spark on the chimneyback, is always a deep. i compare the verses beginning — power that by obedience grows, knowledge which its source not knows, in the appendix to the poems, to which the editor gave the title “ insight.” 1842] plato. shelley. genius 213 i read the timæus in these days, but am never sufficiently in a sacred and holiday health for the task. the man must be equal to the book. a man does not know how fine a morning he wants until he goes to read plato and proclus. elizabeth hoar says that shelley is like shining sand; it always looks attractive and valuable, but, try never so many times, you cannot get anything good. and yet the mica-glitter will still remain after all. i admire the unerring instinct with which, like an arrow to its mark, the newborn fine genius always flies to the geniuses. here is this young stripling darting upon shakspeare, dante, spenser, coleridge, and can see nothing intervening. charles king newcomb took us all captive. he had grown so fast that i told him i should not show him the many things i had bribed him with. why teaze him with multitude ? multitude is for children. i should let him alone. his criticism in his “book-journal” was captivating and in its devotion to the author, whether æschylus, dante, shakspeare, austin, or scott, as feeling that he had a stake in that 214 journal (age 39 book, – “who touches that, touches me”;and in the total solitude of the critic, the patmos of thought from which he writes, in total unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever read this writing, he reminds me of aunt mary. charles is a religious intellect. let it be his praise that when i carried his manuscript story to the woods, and read it in the armchair of the upturned root of a pine tree, i felt for the first time since waldo's death some efficient faith again in the repairs of the universe, some independency of natural relations whilst spiritual affinities can be so perfect and compensating. robert bartlett defined the church as “the organic medium of life from the lord to the divine humanity.” he and weiss gave an amusing account of the truckman who came with the square-cap mob' to the college yard and bullied for an hour. it was the richest swearing, the most æsthetic, fertilizing, and they took notes. nelly waked and fretted at night and put all sleep of her seniors to rout. seniors grew very 1 this refers, not to the “ mortarboard” cap of english universities, not introduced here until the latter part of the nineteenth century, but probably to the square brown-paper cap often then worn by mechanics. .1842] little ellen. words 215 cross, but nell conquered soon by the pathos and eloquence of childhood and its words of fate. thus, after wishing it would be morning, she broke out into sublimity:“ mother, it must be morning.” presently after, in her sleep, she rolled out of bed; i heard the little feet running round on the floor, and then, “o dear! where's my bed?” she slept again, and then woke: “mother, i am afraid; i wish i could sleep in the bed beside of you. i am afraid i shall tumble into the waters — it is all water!” what else could papa do? he jumped out of bed and laid himself down by the little mischief, and soothed her the best he might. i think that language should aim to describe the fact, and not merely suggest it. if you, with these sketchers and dilettanti, give me some conscious, indeterminate compound word, it is like a daub of color to hide the defects of your drawing. sharper sight would see and indicate the true line. the poet both draws well, and colors at the same time. when c. says, “if i were a transcendentalist i should not seal my letters,” what does · 216 journal [age 39 he truly say but that he sees he ought not to seal his letters ? “when i shall be deserted,” said the scholar. and he told his thoughts and read his favorite pieces to many visitors, and when he saw the club-moss, or when he saw the night heaven, and when he saw his dead mistress, he knew that this, though fair and sorrowful, was good for his song; and it seemed then as if what had been a sphere of polished steel became a surface, or a convex mirror. then he defended copyright until the muse left him, and apollo said, he may die. yet before this befel, he had been a lover of things which he did not know how to praise, nor suspected they were loved by others. again the scholar will come to scorn this putting his gods at vendue. the loosestrife waved over him its pagoda of yellow bells. none longs for a church so much as he who stays at home. · but my increasing value of the present moment, to which i gladly abandon myself when i can, is destroying my sunday respects, which always, no doubt, have some regard to the state and conservatism. but when to-day is great i fling all the world's future into the sea. lan 1842] a convert 217 in june, about the time when alcott sailed for england, manlius c. clarke, a lawyer, came to elizabeth peabody and told her that he was going to sell seven hundred and fifty copies of alcott's conversations on the gospels in sheets, for the sum of fifty dollars to trunkmakers for waste paper. there are nine hundred pounds and they are sold at five cents a pound.' i hear with pleasure that a young girl in the midst of rich, decorous unitarian friends in boston is well-nigh persuaded to join the roman catholic church. her friends, who are also my friends, lamented to me the growth of this inclination. but i told them that i think she is to be greatly congratulated on the event. she has lived in great poverty of events. in form and years a woman, she is still a child, having had no experiences, and although of a fine, liberal, susceptible, expanding nature, has never yet found any worthy object of attention; has not been in love, nor been called out by any taste, except lately by music, and sadly wants adequate objects. in this church, perhaps, she shall find what she needs, in a power to call out the slumi on may 8, mr. alcott sailed for england in response to the cordial invitations of friends, whom his books, especially the record of a school, had made for him there." si ev 218 journal [age 39 bering religious sentiment. it is unfortunate that the guide who has led her into this path is a young girl of a lively, forcible, but quite external character, who teaches her the historical argument for the catholic faith. i told a. that i hoped she would not be misled by attaching any importance to that. if the offices of the church attracted her, if its beautiful forms and humane spirit draw her, if st. augustine and st. bernard, jesus and madonna, cathedral music and masses, then go, for thy dear heart's sake, but do not go out of this icehouse of unitarianism, all external, into an icehouse again of external. at all events, i charged her to pay no regard to dissenters, but to suck that orange thoroughly. in boston i saw the new second volume of tennyson's poems. it had many merits, but the question might remain whether it has the merit. one would say it was the poetry of an exquisite ; that it was prettiness carried out to the infinite, but with no one great heroic stroke; a too vigorous exclusion of all mere natural influences. in reading aloud, you soon become sensible of a monotony of elegance. it wants a little northwest wind, or a northeast storm; it is a ca 1842] tennyson. other world 219 lady's bower-garden-spot; or a lord's conservatory, aviary, apiary, and musky greenhouse. and yet, tried by one of my tests, it was not found wholly wanting i mean that it was liberating; it slipped or caused to slide a little “this mortal coil.” the poem of “ locksley,” and “the talking oak,”— i bear cheerful witness both gave me to feel a momentary sense of freedom and power. in town i also talked with sampson reed, of swedenborg, and the rest. “it is not so in your experience, but is so in the other world.” other world? i reply, there is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact,' all the universe over, there is but one thing, — this old double, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong. he would have devils, objective devils. i replied, that pure malignity exists, is an absurd proposition.? . . . in regard to swedenborg, i commended him as a grand poet. reed wished that if i admired the poetry, i should feel it as a fact. i told him, all my concern is with the subjective truth of jesus's or swedenborg's or homer's remark, not at all 1 this sentence is printed in “ sovereignty of ethics" (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 199). 2 see “swedenborg” (representative men, p. 138). 220 journal [age 39 with the object. to care too much for the object were low and gossiping. he may and must speak to his circumstance and the way of events and of belief around him; he may speak of angels, or jews, or gods, or lutherans, or gypsies, or whatsoever figures come next to his hand; i can readily enough translate his rhetoric into mine. every consciousness repeats mine and is a sliding scale from deity to dust. sometimes the man conspires with the universe, and sometimes he is at the other extreme and abides there, a criminal confessing sin. the moment he begins to speak i apprehend his whole relations and fix him at his point in the scale. es one seems in debate to play a foolish game for mastery, so inconvertible men are. ... there is a formula well known to children, “ did,” “ did n't,” “did,” “did n't,” etc. three classes. i had occasion to say the other day to elizabeth hoar that i like best the strong and worthy persons like her father, who support the social order without hesitation or misgiving. i like these : they never incommode us by exciting grief, pity, or perturbation of any sort. 1842] the elect. 221 but my conscience, my unhappy conscience, respects that hapless class who see the faults and stains of our social order and who pray and strive incessantly to right the wrong. this annoying class of men and women commonly find the work altogether beyond their faculty, and though their honesty is commendable, their results are for this present distressing. but there is a third class who are born into a new heaven and earth with organs for the new element, and who from that better behold this bad world in which the million gropes and suffers. by their life and happiness in the new, i am assured of the doom of the old, and these, therefore, i love and worship. july 12. looking in the wrong directions for light. obedience is the only ladder to the throne. it is sad to outgrow our preachers, our friends, and our books, and find them no longer potent. proclus and plato last me still, yet i do not read them in a manner to honor the writer. ... . i read these english tracts with interest. goodwyn barmby is another ebenezer elliot, but more practical. revolution is no longer formidi here follows the passage about “ reading for lustres” in « nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 233). 222 journal [age 39 able when the radicals are amiable. if jack cade loves poetry, and goes for“ love marriage” with milton and shelley, for community, phalanxes, dietetics, and so forth, i no longer smell fagots. strange it is that carlyle should skip this remarkable class of dissenters and radicals so near him, lane, owen, wright, fry, etc., etc. it probably arises from that necessity of isolation which genius so often feels. he must stand on his glass tripod if he would keep his electricity. keep them off, then, my brave carlyle, thou worshipper of beauty, and publisher of beauty to the world. every sentence of thine is joyful proclamation that beauty the creator, venus creatrix, yet exists; the sentences are written for no utility, to no moral, but for the joy of writing. yes, carlyle represents very well the literary man, makes good the place of and function of erasmus and johnson, of dryden and swift, to our generation. he is thoroughly a gentleman and deserves well of the whole fraternity of scholars, for sustaining the dignity of his profession of author in england. yet i always feel his limitation, and praise him as one who plays his part well according to his light, as i praise the clays and websters. for carlyle is worldly, and an 1842] chaucer. the spirit 223 speaks not out of the celestial region of milton and angels. july 16. chaucer is such a poet as i have described saadi, possessing that advantage of being the most cultivated man of the times. so he speaks always sovereignly and cheerfully. for the most part, the poet nature, being very susceptible, is overacted on by others. the most affecting experience, that of the religious sentiment, goes to teach the immensity of every moment, the indifferency of magnitudes. the present moment is all that the soul is god; — a great, ineffable lesson whose particulars are innumerable. yet experience shows that, great as is this lesson, great and greatest, yet this discipline also has its limits. one must not seek to dwell always in contemplation of the spirit. so should the man decline into an indolent and unskilful person and stop short of his possible enlargement into a gloomy person; under churches are tombs, but intellect is cheerful. as bookbinders separate each sheet or each set of sheets in a large pile, by interposing a small block of pasteboard, so it seemed as if some genius had laid a ray of light underneath every 224 journal [age 39 thought and fact in nature to this man's eye, so that all things separated themselves according to their laws before him and he never confounded the similar with the same. july 21. profound meaning of " good will makes insight.” it is as when one finds his way to the sea by embarking on a river; or finds a passage for the mind through a lump of matter by following the path of electricity, or magnetism, or heat, or light, through it; anyhow, knows the nature by sharing the nature; is at once victim and victor. all our days are so unprofitable whilst they pass.' re seems very often there seems so little affinity between the man and his works that it seems as if the wind wrote the book and not he. put dittany in your greenhouse, asphodel, nepenthe, moly, poppy, rue, self-heal.” i here follows the passage in “ experience” thus beginning, about hermes playing at dice with the moon (essays, second series, p. 46). 2 compare, in “ concord walks,” a similar passage as to plants that by their romantic or classic association stir the imagination (natural history of intellect, p. 174). 1842] july. sight. your fate 225 rosebugs of splendid fate living on apple trees and roses and dying by an apoplexy of sweet sensations in the golden days, middle days of july. he hoed the desart, his potatoes were poled, his asparagus grew to trees, his melons and gourds ran for miles, and had roots like oak trees. the telescope. the greatest genius adds nothing; he only detaches from the mass of life a particle not before detached, so that i see it separated. fate takes in the holidays and the work-minutes; it was writ on your brow before you were born; the watch was wound up to go seventy years, and here to stop, and there to hasten. just this neuralgia and that typhus fever, this good october and that most auspicious friendship were all rolled in. the little barrel of the music-box revolves until all its ditties are played. wright, lane, barmby, harwood, heraud, doherty, barham, greaves, marston, owen.' 1 these are the names of the persons in england especially interested in the new movement of thought and reform in new 226 [age 39 journal august 2. zanoni. we must not rail if we read the book. of all the ministers to luxury these novelwrights are the best. it is a trick, a juggle. we are cheated into laughter or wonder by feats which only oddly combine acts that we do every day. england. many of them gave hospitable reception to mr. alcott and his ideas. h. g. wright was the head of the alcott house school in surrey; he, with charles lane and his son, came to america with mr. alcott on his return; goodwyn barmby was editor of the promethean, or communitarian apostle ; harwood wrote for some of the reform journals; john a. heraud was the editor of the london monthly magazine, to which journal mr. emerson gave some praise in vol. iii of the dial. in the editorial record of the months of this magazine of january, 1843, a life of charles fourier, by hugh doherty, is mentioned ; also the london phalanx as from him. francis barham wrote dramatic poetry, the death of socrates, etc. he was editor of the alist, a monthly magazine of divinity and universal literature. john pierrepont greaves has been already mentioned in these notes as a retired merchant who became the friend of pestalozzi and of strauss and devoted himself, on returning to england, to improvement of english schools, especially the establishment of infant schools : he died in 1842. j. westland marston has been praised in this journal for his dramatic poem the patrician's daughter. robert owen, brother of the great anatomist, was the promoter of community life in england and america. in the dial of october, 1842, in a paper called “ english reformers” mr. emerson tells of most of these men. 227 1842) novel-writing there is no new element, no power, no furtherance. it is only confectionery, not the raising of new corn; and being such, there is no limit to its extension and multiplication. mr. babbage will presently invent a novel-writing machine. the old machinery cannot be disguised, however gaily vamped. money and killing and the wandering jew, these are the mainsprings still; new names, but no new qualities in the dramatis persona. italics and capitals are the stale substitutes for natural epigram and the revelations of loving speech. therefore the vain endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold which has rolled like a brook through our hands. a thousand thoughts awoke, great rainbows seemed to span the sky. a morning among the mountains; but as we close the book, we end the remembrance, nothing survives, not a ray. the power to excite which the page for moments possessed is derived from you. you read it as you read words in a dictionary, or hear a sonorous name of some foreigner and invest the stranger with some eminent gifts. but because there was not wisdom in the book, nothing fixes itself; all floats, hovers, and is dissipated forever. the young men are the readers and victims 228 journal [age 39 of vivian grey.' ... one would say of vivian grey that it was written by a person of lively talent who had rare opportunities of society and access to the best anecdotes of europe. beckendorf is a sketch after nature, and whoever was the model was a strong head, a strong humorist, who deserved his empire for a day over these college boys. bulwer evidently is the dissolute alcibiades, who has been the pupil once of socrates, and now and then recites a lesson which his master taught him. but the worst of bulwer is that he has no style of his own; he is always a collector, and neither contributes flash, nor low life, nor learning, nor poetry, nor religion, nor description, from his own stores. august 3. our eagerness for anecdotes of the face, form, manners, dress, dwelling, etc., of any remarkable mind should teach us that the man should make all these anew, and not borrow them from custom. a noble brain, a searching eye, but alas! he hath no hands. i the rest of the paragraph is printed in the dial paper, “ europe and european books” (natural history of intellect, p. 377). 1842] play. bettine. labor 229 work in every hour; paid or unpaid, see only that thou work;'... some play at chess, some at cards, some at the stock exchange. i prefer to play at cause and effect. bettine is more real, more witty than george sand or mme. de staël; as profound and greatly more readable. gold represents labor and rightly opens all doors, but labor is higher and opens secreter doors, opens man, and finds new place in the kingdom of intelligence. we read zanoni with pleasure because magic is natural; ? ... a mean, obscure weed by the doorstep, trodden by every foot that entered the house, was the plantain, yet, when the master's foot was wounded and lame, they went out at night with a lamp to seek its leaves, and it brought re1 the rest of the paragraph occurs in “ new england reformers” (essays, second series, p. 283). 2 the rest of this long paragraph is found in “ europe and european books," a dial paper ( natural history of intellect, p. 374). 230 journal (age 39 freshment and healing. temperance is the poor plantain, a mean virtue in its daily details, but what an interest — compound on compound interest it yields at last. 's newspaper ant to be cele ay but that it our concord athenæum ought to be celebrated in the town's newspaper. what shall we say but that it is good for us to club our newspapers and journals, that it will liberalize the village to make readers here, that it will give a new and handsome hospitality to our guests : and that we shall value small subscriptions more than large ones, for they always look sincere and affectionate. (from e) august. the only poetic fact in the life of thousands and thousands is their death. no wonder they specify all the circumstances of the death of another person. ce in· to give eminency to facts : to select facts, requires genius. indigence of egotists. phi beta kappa. nine cold hurrahs at cambridge to lord ashburton. pity they should 1842] 0 b k. balzac 231 lie so about their keen sensibility to cold hurrahs. men of the world value truth in proportion to their ability. of such, and especially of diplomatists, one has a right to [expect] wit and ingenuity to avoid the lie, if they must comply with the form. elizabeth hoar repeats colonel shattuck's' toast to poor k:“the orator of the day. his subject deserves the attention of every agriculturist.” it does honor to colonel shattuck. i wish the great lords and diplomatists at cambridge had only as much ingenuity and respect for truth. the speeches froze me to my place. at last bancroft thawed the ice, and released us, and i inwardly thanked him. balzac has two merits, talent and paris. the doctrine in which the world has acquiesced (has it not?) on this much agitated question of the classic and romantic is, that it is not a question of times, nor of forms, but of methods; that the classic is creative and the romantic is aggregative; that the greek in the christian i colonel shattuck kept a large country store on the common in concord, where now the colonial hotel stands. he presided at the “ cattie show dinner” in 1842. 2 this incident is introduced without local color in “the superlative” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 170, 171). 232 (age 39 journal germany would have built a cathedral; and that the romantic in our time builds a parthenon custom house. we stopped at a farmhouse at lincoln, and asked for milk, and when we came away i offered money, but this was wrong. we injure everybody with this money, both ourselves and the receivers. we owe men a great behavior, and knowing that we have half a dollar in our pocket, we skulk and idle and misbehave, and do not put ourselves on our courtesy and sentiment. never look at my book and perhaps it will be better worth looking at. my thought to-day was how rightly swedenborg pictured each man with a sphere, for we use for moral qualities the word great, and really conceive of socrates, milton, or goethe, as a large personality. but this also occurred as the security of the institution of marriage against the shelleys of the time, that we need in these twilights of the gods all the conventions of the most regulated life to crutch our lame and indigent loves. the least departure from the usage of marriage would bring too strong a tide against us for so 1842] margaret fuller 233 weak a reed as modern love to withstand. its frigidities, its ebbs already need all the protection and humoring they can get from the forms and manners. (from j) august 11. yes, they are all children, and when we speak of actual parties, that must be borne in mind. ne 1 queenie says that, according to edmund hosmer, it was a piece of weak indulgence in the good god to make plums and peaches. august 20. last night a walk to the river with margaret, and saw the moon broken in the water, interrogating, interrogating. thence followed the history of the surrounding minds. margaret said she felt herself amidst tendencies : did not regret life, nor accuse the imperfections of her own or their performance whilst these strong native tendencies so appeared, and in the children of all of us will be ripened. i told her that i could not discern the least difference between the first experience and the latest in my own case. i had never been otherwise than indolent, never strained a muscle, and only saw a difference in 234 journal [age 39 the circumstance, not in the man; at first a circle of boys — my brothers at home, with aunt and cousins, or the schoolroom; all agreed that my verses were obscure nonsense; and now a larger public say the same thing, “ obscure nonsense,” and yet both conceded that the boy had wit. a little more excitement now, but the fact identical, both in my consciousness and in my relations. margaret would beat with the beating heart of nature; i feel that underneath the greatest life, though it were jove's or jehovah's, must lie an astonishment that embosoms both action and thought. in talking with w. ellery channing on greek mythology as it was believed at athens, i could not help feeling how fast the key to such possibilities is lost, the key to the faith of men perishes with the faith. a thousand years hence it will seem less monstrous that those acute greeks believed in the fables of mercury and pan, than that these learned and practical nations of modern europe and america, these physicians, metaphysicians, mathematicians, critics, and merchants, believed this jewish apologue of the poor jewish boy, and how they contrived 1842] walk with channing 235 to attach that accidental history to the religious idea, and this famous dogma of the triune god, etc., etc. nothing more facile, so long as the detachment is not made; nothing so wild and incredible the moment after that shall happen. lecturers. bancroft, giles, mann, rantoul, longfellow, theodore parker, doctor [s. g.] howe, doctor [charles t.] jackson, george b. emerson.' (from e) september 1. a walk in the most wonderful sunset this afternoon with w. e. channing. the sunset is very unlike anything that is underneath it. but it must always seem unreal, until it has figures that are equal to it. the sunset wanted men. but unutterable is all we know of nature.? how well we know certain winds, certain lights, certain aspects of the soil and the grove. yet no words can begin to convey that which they express to us monthly and daily. the reason why lunatics swear is because 1 suggestions or engagements for the concord lyceum. 2 one or two sentences printed in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 178). 236 journal (age 39 their exaggerated sensation requires an exaggerated speech. but nature never swears, loves temperate expressions and sober colors, green grass, fawns and drabs, greys and blues and dark mixed; now and then a grim acherontian fungus. yet the sunset was vows of love of the angels. swearing has gone out of vogue on the earth, because society, which means discriminating persons, rejects unmeasured speech. oaths never go out of fashion, but are always beautiful and thrilling; but the sham of them, which is called profane swearing, is rightly voted a bore. sham damns we do not like. results. report of a committee of one on the subject of nature. if this is the age of criticism, let it be written greatly from a point of view that is at least olympian or super-olympian, and treats gods and men alike.' ... it must be roundly told the upper power that, though there is a landscape, it is not yet peopled; that nature is not enjoyed or enjoyable until man finds his completion; that we have examined very carefully both sides of the thing, and have ascertained and do here declare that there is no re1 here follow sentences used in “the superlative" (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 174, 175). 1842] genius. vitality 237 concilement; want is always larger than have, idea than fact. consider also that our practical pyrrhonism is increased by our observation that the most lamented circumstance is the source of new power, and that we owe our wisdom to our folly. it is much to know that poetry has been written this very day, under this very roof, by your side.' ... we may well be slow of belief concerning genius, since we give up all to it as soon as we know it. i pardon everything to it: everything is trifling before it; i will wait for it for years, and sit in contempt before the doors of that inexhaustible blessing. you say, perhaps nature will yet give me the joy of friendship. but our pleasures are in some proportion to our forces. i have so little vital force that i could not stand the dissipation of a flowing and friendly life; i should die of consumption in three months. but now i husband all my strength in this bachelor life i lead; no doubt shall be a well-preserved old gentleman. i the rest of the passage is in « the poet” (essays, second series, pp. 10, 11). 238 [age 39 journal september 4. a few noble victims life shows us who do and suffer with temper and proportion; the rest are slight people, and shirk work, to use the common phrase. but every deed deepens the literture and exalts the art of the doer, and the soul doubles, trebles, quadruples, and infinitely multiplies itself. mo marston's tragedy, the patrician's daughter. when we have such a gift, let us read it and thank god. undoubtedly it may have faults, but what a benefit to speak to my imagination and paint with electric pencil a new form, new forms on my vacant sky. this is refreshing to read, — written with so much simplicity and spirit; the character of mordaunt very natural and familiar to english experience in the cannings, pulteneys, burkes, foxes: the lady mabel also well and easily conceived. pity that the catastrophe should be wrought by a wholesale lie on the part of the lady lydia, which lovers can so easily pierce. it is a weak way of making a play whose crises ought, as in life, to grow out of the faults and the conditions of the parties, as in goethe's tasso. the play seems on all accounts but one, namely, the lapse of five years 1842] talkers. the mother 239 between two acts, to be eminently fit for representation. the “no” of mordaunt is wonderful for the stage. [passages from “experience,” on nature and books, and on optical illusion about persons, followed (essays, second series, pp. 50 and 52).] i remember that mr. [samuel] ripley said to the young coxcomb from the south, “fiddle, faddle,” in reply to all his brag. pity that we do not know how to say fiddle faddle to people who take our time and do not exercise our wit. most men are dupes of the hour, dupes of the nearest object: they cannot put things in perspective; but the nearest is still the largest. they talk with inferiors and do not know it, do not know that they are talking down. as on a mountain, you must level your gun at another mountain and see if the shot run out of the barrel, to know that the summit is lower than yours. the eye cannot measure it. the poor irish mary corbet, whose five weeks'infant died here three months ago, sends word to lidian that“she cannot send back her bandbox (in which the child's body was carried 240 journal (age 3 to boston): she must please give it to her; and she cannot send back the little handkerchief(with which its head was bound up): she must please give it to her.” nathaniel hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man. sam ward says, “i like women, they are so finished.” edmund hosmer's suffrage on sunday evening to alcott was good, so qualified and so strong. i said to him, what is really alcott's distinction, that, rejoicing or desponding, this man always trusts his principle, never deserts it, never mistakes the convenient, customary way of doing the thing for the right and might, whilst all vulgar reformers, like these community people, after sounding their sentimental trumpet, rely on the arm of money and the law. it is the effect of his nature, of his natural clearness of spiritual sight, which makes this confusion of thought impossible to him. i have a company who travel with me in the world, and one or 1842] helpers by the way 241 other of whom i must still meet, whose office none can supply to me: edward stubler;' my methodist tarbox;' wordsworth's pedlar; mary rotch ;3 alcott; manzoni's fra cristoforo; swedenborg; mrs. black ;4 and now greaves, and his disciple lane ;5 supreme people who represent, with whatever defects, the ethical idea. elizabeth hoar, the true elizabeth hoar, that is, felt the element of self in her intellectual and in her devout friends; the former loved truth, but loved self in the truth; the latter would make sacrifices, but never forgot their claims. strange, all is strange. o edith small, thyself strange, life is strange, and god the greatest strange and stranger in his universe. the lady said that s— never forgot himself, he was affected, but his affectation was natural i the quaker chance acquaintance met by mr. emerson in his youth. 2 this was the man who, working in the hayfield at uncle ladd's in newton, suggested to mr. emerson the idea of his first sermon. 3 the new bedford friend, whose doctrine of acquiescence so interested him. 4 mrs. rebecca black, a lady in new york of liberal ideas. 5 mr. alcott's english friends and admirers. 6 his second daughter, then not quite ten months old. 242 journal [age 39 to him; also that the only thing she was afraid of was of being frightened. mr. c— sold his boston house, and went to live in the country, because he found he could not make a bow. it was a very sensible reason, and yet charles's criticism on it was, that he should have raised his ceiling and made his rooms larger; because an awkward man in the area of the state house, or on the common, is no longer awkward. large space, high rooms, have the same exhilarating and liberating quality as great light. a dance in a half-lighted ballroom would be a sad affair, but make the light intense, and the spirits of the party all rise instantly. there are two choices for one who is unhappy in an evening party: one, to go no more into such companies, which is flight; the other, to frequent them until their law is wholly learned and they become indifferent, which is conquest. o fine victim, martyrchild! clowns and scullions are content with themselves, and thou art not. intellect always puts an interval between the subject and the object. affection would blend the two. for weal or for woe, i clear myself from the thing i contemplate: i grieve, but am not a grief. i love, but am not a love. ---------ause ween 1842] tutor. stubborn poet 243. marriage in what is called the spiritual world is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object.'... young s— went out tutor in the family travelling through italy. it would have been so easy to have made his life joyful, one human creature made happy ; yet they contrived to make him feel that he was a servant, and poisoned every day, and he has come back with a fixed disgust at aristocracy. too happy if he has. too cheap the price he paid, if he has really attained to despise or to pity their joyless joys. but i doubt, i doubt. i hate this sudden crystallization in my poets. a pleasing poem, but here is a rude expression, a feeble line, a wrong word. “i am sorry,"returns the poet, “but it stands so written.” “ but you can alter it,” i say. “not one letter,” replies the hardened bard. i question when i read tennyson's ulysses, whether there is taste in england to do justice i the rest of this long paragraph is found in experience” (essays, second series, p. 77). 2 mr. emerson always found his friend mr. channing hopelessly obdurate about the faults in his verses, interrupting admirable lines. 244 journal [age 39 to the poet; whether the riches of dante's greatness would find an equal apprehension. yet it seems feeble to deny it. the poet and the lover of poetry are born at one instant twins; and when wordsworth wrote laodamia, landor found it out and celebrated it, and so did an edinboro' critic. ... we are dissipated with our fine reading, we have too many fine books, and as those who have had too much cake and candy long for a brown crust, so we like the albany cultivator. (from n) september. there is reality, however, in our relations to our friend, is there not? yes, and i hail the grander lights and hints that proceed from these, as the worthiest fruits of our being, thus far. but do not these show that the existence you so loved is not closed? i have no presentiment of that. alas, my friend, you have no generosity; you cannot give yourself away. i see the law of all your friendships. it is a bargain. you tell your things, your friend tells his things, and as soon as the inventory is complete, you take your hats. surro son 1842] real magic 245 do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? if you could see with her eyes, you would see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas."... how slowly, how slowly we learn that witchcraft and ghostcraft, palmistry and magic, and all the other so-called superstitions, which, with so much police, boastful skepticism, and scientific committees, we had finally dismissed to the moon as nonsense, are really no nonsense at all, but subtle and valid influences, always starting up, mowing, muttering in our path, and shading our day. the things are real, only they have shed their skin which with much insult we have gibbeted and buried. one person fastens an eye on us, and the very graves of the memory render up their dead. .... e r ii. it is with literature as it is with the faculty of medicine. the poor man catches the disease and dies, nobody knows how; the rich man takes the same disease and dies also, but has the honor and the satisfaction of having the disease named by his physician and a council of physii for the rest of the passage, see experience” (essays, second series, p. 80). 2 see • character” (essays, second series, p. 110). 246 journal [age 39 cians. it is a great matter to have the thing named. chemistry, entomology, conic sections, medicine, each science, each province of science, will come to satisfy all demands: the whole of poetry, of mythology, of ethics, of demonology, will be expressed by it: a new rhetoric, new methods of philosophy, perhaps new political parties, will celebrate the culmination of each one. just to fill the hour, that is happiness. ... it pains me never that i cannot give you an accurate answer to the question, what is god? what is the operation we call providence ? and the like. there lies the answer: there it exists, present, omnipresent to you, to me. ... i woke up and found the dear old world, wife, babe and mother, concord and boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off.” “blind love,” yes, love lives in the stratum of the relative and is blind to the absoi the rest of the passage is printed in “ works and days” (society and solitude, p. 181). 2 used in “ experience.” 1842] more. ready wit 247 lute. but self is blind too, and not lovelily but odiously. as far as that element comes in, we run on about ourselves and never perceive that we have long lost the ear of our companion. transcendental criticism. with this eternal demand for more, which belongs to our modest constitutions, how can we be helped ? the gods themselves could not help us, they are just as badly off themselves. t. p. has beautiful fangs, and the whole amphitheatre delights to see him worry and tear his victim. ringsand jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. the only gift is a portion of thyself.? ... that were a right problem for a dramatist to solve; given a bandit, the strongest temptation and opportunity for violence or plunder, — how to bring off the man of wit by his wit only, exercised not immediately, but directly through speech. it is a problem perfectly easy to solve i theodore parker ? 2 here follows much of the matter of the opening pages of “gifts” but differently arranged (essays, second series). 248 journal [age 39 in action whenever the right cæsar comes. he does not exert courage but wit. the corsair has caught a captain.' sterling writes well of sculpture, and if i were rich, i would have my reception-room for my friends filled with statues or casts of all the gods, to preach serenity to me, and my friends. but it is vain to make a matter of conscience of calmness ; a man will not become grand by accusing himself, but grandeur will come in where god wills, like a fine day. t. sells me peat or wood or apples for more money than he sells the same to hosmer, who can use certain test questions or examinations 1 this subject is treated in more concrete form in “ character”(p. 96). 2 mr. emerson probably refers to john sterling's beautiful lament for greek art, the poem “ dædalus.” mr. emerson included it in his parnassus. the following two verses are here suggested :ever thy phantoms arise before us, our loftier brothers, but one in blood; by bed and table they lord it o'er us with looks of beauty and words of good. calmly they show us mankind victorious o’er all that is aimless, blind and base ; their presence has made our nature glorious, unveiling our night's illumined face. 1842] a boston poem 249 which i cannot apply. well, do i not exclude t. also from the use of certain test questions and examinations in reference to other matters more important to his honor and standing as a man than are his peat and apples to me? the highest criticism should be written in poetry. goethe received four, fichte five, and richter seven louis d'ors a sheet for their best works. a louis= $4.00. i have a kind of promise to write, one of these days, a verse or two to the praise of my native city, which in common days we often rail at, yet which has great merits to usward. that, too, like every city, has certain virtues, as a museum of the arts. the parlors of private collectors; the athenæum gallery; and the college; become the city of the city. then a city has this praise, that, as the bell or band of music i a score of years later were published boston,” which, begun in the sad days preceding the war, was finished in happier times; and the “ boston hymn,” which mr. emerson read ili the miusic hall in his native city on the celebration of the emancipation of the slaves, january 1, 1863. 250 [age 39 journal is heard outside, beyond the din of carts, so the beautiful in architecture, or in political and social institutions, endures: all else comes to nought. so that the antiquities and permanent things in each city are good and fine. mes in london, alcott saw carlyle, lane, o'connell; robert owen, heraud, marston, wright, barham, browning, milnes, w. j. fox, harwood, doctor bowring, doctor elliotson, morgan, doherty, barmby, george thompson. all persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us. men are so gregarious that they have no solitary merits. they all — the reputed leaders and all lean on some other, — and this superstitiously, and not from insight of his merit. they follow a fact, they follow success, and not skill. therefore, as soon as the success stops, fails, and mr. jackson blunders in building pemberton square, they quit him; already they remember that long ago they suspected mr. jackson's judgment, and they transfer the repute 1842] plants. railways 251 of judgment to the next succeeder who has not yet blundered. vegetables, plants, are the young of the universe, the future men, but not yet ripe for that rank in nature. yet they are all handsome, and men, let them once be fifteen years old, are for the most part unsightly. the reason is that the men, though young, are already dissipated, but the maples and ferns are not. yet, no doubt, when they come to it, they, too, will curse and swear.' in the wood i heard the laughter of the crows. milnes brought carlyle to the railway, and showed him the departing train. carlyle looked at it and then said, “these are our poems, milnes.” milnes ought to have answered, “aye, and our histories, carlyle.” but it is worth noticing how fast the poet can dispose of these formidable facts. one sees the factory village and the railway, and thinks of wordsworth and what will be his dismay. wordsworth has the sense to see that this also 1 the foregoing passage in a less entertaining form is printed in “ nature” (essays, second series, pp. 181, 182). 252 journal [age 39 falls in, un bête de plus, with the known multitude of mechanical facts and that all mechanics have not gained a grain's weight from the addition. the spiritual fact alike remains unalterable by many or by few particulars, as no mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.' men are great in their own despite. they achieve a certain greatness, but it was while they were toiling to achieve another conventional one. the boy at college apologizes for not learning the tutor's task, and tries to learn it, but stronger nature gives him otway and massinger to read, or betrays him into a stroll to mount auburn in study hours. the poor boy, instead of thanking the gods and slighting the mathematical tutor, ducks before the functionary, and poisons his own fine pleasures by a perpetual penitence. well, at least let that one never brag of the choice he made; as he might have well done, if he had known what he did when he was doing it. i sentences to the same purpose without mention of wordsworth occur in “ the poet” (essays, second series). 2 compare the above bit of autobiography with similar passages in “spiritual laws” and in “heroism ” (essays, first series, pp. 133 and 237). 1842] child or seer 253 alcott, when he went to england, wished to carry with him miniatures of elizabeth peabody, of margaret fuller, and of me. — i remember once that a. thought that the head would soon put off from it the trunk, which would perish, whilst the brain would unfold a new and higher organization. (from a loose sheet) i am most of the time a very young child who does not pretend to oversee nature and dictate its law. i play with it, like other infants, as my toy. i see sun and moon and river without asking their causes. i am pleased by the mysterious music of falling water or the rippling and washing against the shores, without knowing why. yet, child as i am, i know that i may in any moment wake up to the sense of authority and deity herein. a seer, a prophet, passing by, will bring me to it; poetry will; nay, i shall think it in the austere woods and they will tremble and turn to dreams. (from n) richter said, “in the great world i despise the men and their joyless joys, but i esteem the women ; in them alone can one investigate the spirit of the times.” 254 journal [age 39 i think that in my house where there are no ears, no fine person should be so much wronged as to be asked to sing. white lies. it shall be the law of this society that no member shall be reckoned a liar who is a sportsman, and indicates the wrong place when asked where he shot his partridge; or who is an angler, and misremembers where he took his trout; or who is an engineer, and misdirects his inquiring friends as to the best mill privilege; or who is a merchant, and forgets in what stock he proposes to invest; or who is an author, and being asked if he wrote an anonymous book, replies in the negative. ghost (under the floor). it shall not be the law. [the account of edward everett, which occupies the following nine pages of the journal, seems to have been written at this time. mr. emerson introduced almost all of it into a lecture delivered in the later years of his active life (perhaps 1867 and later) after everett's death. this, called “historic notes of life and letters in new england,” mr. cabot first published in the riverside edition of the works, in the vol1842] edward everett 255 ume lectures and biographical sketches, a year or two after mr. emerson died. the opening passage of the journal entry, and one or two others that showed his young enthusiasm for everett, also one or two not printed in the posthumous volume, are here given.] aredward everett. there was an influence on the young people from everett's genius which was almost comparable to that of pericles in athens. that man had an inspiration that did not go beyond his head, but which made him the genius of elegance. he had a radiant beauty of person, of a classic style, a heavy, large eye, marble lids, which gave the impression of mass which the slightness of his form needed, sculptured lips, a voice of such rich tones, such precise and perfect utterance that, although slightly nasal, it was the most mellow and beautiful and correct of all the instruments of the time. the word that he spoke, in the manner in which he spoke it, became current and classical in new england. especially beautiful were his poetic quotations. he quoted milton; more rarely byron; and sometimes a verse from watts, and with such sweet and perfect modulation that he seemed to give as much beauty as he borrowed, and what256 journal [age 39 ever he had quoted will seldom be remembered by any who heard him without inseparable association with his voice and genius. this eminently beautiful person was followed like an apollo from church to church, wherever the fame that he would preach led, by all the most cultivated and intelligent youths with grateful admiration his appearance in any pulpit lighted up all countenances with delight. the smallest anecdote of his behavior or conversation was eagerly caught and repeated, and every young scholar could repeat brilliant sentences from his sermons with mimicry; good or bad, of his voice. ... the church was dismissed, but the bright image of that eloquent form followed the boy home to his bedchamber, and not a sentence was written in a theme, not a declamation attempted in the college chapel, but showed the omnipresence of his genius to youthful heads. he thus raised the standard of taste in writing and speaking in new england. meantime all this was a pure triumph of rhetoric. this man had neither intellectual nor moral principles to teach. he had no thoughts. it was early asked, when massachusetts was full of his fame, what truths he had thrown into circulation, and how he had enriched the general mind, and ou 1842] edward everett 257 agreed that only in graces of manner, only in a new perception of grecian beauty, had he opened our eyes. it was early observed that he had no warm personal friends. yet his genius made every youth his defender and boys filled their mouths with arguments to prove that the orator had a heart. ... everett's fame had the effect of giving a new lustre to the university — which it greatly needed. students flocked thither from the south and the west, from the remote points of georgia, tennessee, alabama, and louisiana. well, this bright morning had a short continuance. mr. everett was soon attracted by the vulgar prizes of politics, and quit coldly the splendid career which opened before him (and which, not circumstances, but his own genius had made) for the road to washington, where it is said he has had the usual fortune of flattery and mortification, butis wholly lost to any real and manly usefulness. everett had as lief his manuscript was in your pocket, he read so well. in every conversation, even the highest, there is a certain trick, one may say, which may be soon learned by an acute person, and then that particular style be continued indefinitely. this 258 journal [age 39 is true of very's, alcott's, lane's, and all such specialists or mystics ; more true of these than of other classes. sam ward said that men died to break up their styles; but nature had no objection to goethe's living, for he did not form one. september 27 was a fine day, and hawthorne and i set forth on a walk. we went first to the factory where mr. damon makes domett cloths, but his mills were standing still, his houses empty. nothing so small but comes to honor and has its shining moment somewhere; and so was it here with our little assabet or north branch ; it was falling over the rocks into silver, and above was expanded into this tranquil lake. after looking about us a few moments, we took the road to stow. the day was full of sunshine, and it was a luxury to walk in the midst of all this warm and colored light. the days of september are so rich that it seems natural to walk to the end of one's strength, and then fall prostrate, saturated with the fine floods, and cry, nunc dimittis me. fringed gentians, a thornbush with red fruit, wild apple trees whose fruit hung like berries, and grapevines were the decorations of the path. we scarcely encountered man or 1842] walk with hawthorne 250 boy in our road nor saw any in the fields. this depopulation lasted all day. but the outlines of the landscape were so gentle that it seemed as if we were in a very cultivated country, and elegant persons must be living just over yonder hills. three or four times, or oftener, we saw the entrance to their lordly park. but nothing in the farms or in the houses made this good. and it is to be considered that when any large brain is born in these towns, it is sent, at sixteen or twenty years, to boston or new york, and the country is tilled only by the inferior class of the people, by the second crop or rowan of the men. hence all these shiftless poverty-struck pig-farms. in europe, where society has an aristocratic structure, the land is full of men of the best stock, and the best culture, whose interest and pride it is to remain half of the year at least on their estates and to fill these with every convenience and ornament. of course these make model-farms and model-architecture, and are a constant education to the eye and hand of the surrounding population. our walk had no incidents. it needed none, for we were in excellent spirits, had much conversation, for we were both old collectors who had never had opportunity before to show each 260 journal [age 39 c other our cabinets, so that we could have filled with matter much longer days. we agreed that it needed a little dash of humor or extravagance in the traveller to give occasion to incident in his journey. here we sober men, easily pleased, kept on the outside of the land and did not by so much as a request for a cup of milk creep into any farmhouse. if want of pence in our pocket or some vagary in our brain drove us into these “ huts where poor men lie,” to crave dinner or night's lodging, it would be so easy to break into some mesh of domestic romance, learn so much pathetic private history, perchance see the first blush mantle on the cheeks of the young girl when the mail stage came or did not come, or even get entangled ourselves in some thread of gold or grey. then again the opportunities which the taverns once offered the traveller, of witnessing and even sharing in the joke and the politics of the teamster and farmers on the road, are now no more. the temperance society emptied the bar-room. it is a cold place. hawthorne tried to smoke a cigar, but i observed he was soon out on the 'piazza. after noon we reached stow, and dined, and then continued our journey towards harvard, making our day's walk, according to our best computation, about 1842] the harvard shakers 261 twenty miles. the last miles, however, we rode in a wagon, having been challenged by a friendly, fatherly gentleman, who knew my name, and my father's name and history, and who insisted on doing the honors of his town to us, and of us to his townsmen; for he fairly installed us at the tavern, introduced us to the doctor, and to general , and bespoke the landlord's best attention to our wants. we get the view of the nashua river valley from the top of oak hill, as we enter harvard village. next morning we began our walk at 6.30 o'clock for the shaker village, distant three and a half miles. whilst the good sisters were getting ready our breakfast, we had a conversation with seth blanchard and cloutman of the brethren, who gave an honest account, by yea and by nay, of their faith and practice. they were not stupid, like some whom i have seen of their society, and not worldly like others. the conversation on both parts was frank enough; with the downright i will be downright, thought i, and seth showed some humor. i doubt not we should have had our own way with them to a good extent (not quite after the manner of hayraddin maugrabin with the monks of liège) if we could have stayed twenty-four hours ; although my powers 262 journal [age 39 of persuasion were crippled by a disgraceful barking cold, and hawthorne inclined to play jove more than mercurius. after breakfast cloutman showed us the farm, vineyard, orchard, barn, pressing-room, etc. the vineyard contained two noble arcades of grapes, both white and isabella, full of fruit; the orchard, fine varieties of pears and peaches and apples. they have fifteen hundred acres here, a tract of woodland in ashburnham, and a sheep pasture somewhere else, enough to supply the wants of the two hundred souls in this family. they are in many ways an interesting society, but at present have an additional importance as an experiment of socialism which so falls in with the temper of the times. what improvement is made is made forever; this capitalist is old and never dies, his subsistence was long ago secured, and he has gone on now for long scores of years in adding easily compound interests to his stock. moreover, this settlement is of great value in the heart of the country as a model-farm, in the absence of that rural nobility we talked of yesterday. here are improvements invented, or adopted from the other shaker communities, which the neighboring farmers see and copy. from the shaker village we 1842] landor. the shakers 263 came to littleton and thence to acton, still in the same redundance of splendor. it was like a day of july, and from acton we sauntered leisurely homeward, to finish the nineteen miles of our second day before four in the afternoon. in a town which you enter for the first time at late sunset, the trees and houses look pictorial in the twilight, but you can never play tricks with old acquaintances. there is something very agreeable in fatigue. i am willinger to die, having had my swing of the fair day; and seven times in his life, i suppose, every man sings, now, lord, let thy servant depart. landor, though like other poets he has not been happy in love, has written admirable sentences on the passion. perhaps, said hawthorne, their disappointment taught them to write these things. well, it is probable. one of landor's sentences was worth a divorce; “those to whom love is a secondary thing love more than those to whom it is a primary.” this thought appeared in all the shakers said about admission of members to their society, that people came and proved themselves; they soon showed what they were, and remained or departed, as the spirit made manifest, alike to 264 journal [age 39 themselves and to the society. no man should join them for a living: and no man should be turned off because he was poor or bedridden, but only for not being of them. cloutman told us their hospitality was costly, for they entertain without price all the friends of any member who visit them. we talked of scott. there is some greatness in defying posterity and writing for the hour, and so being a harper. piety, like chivalry, has no stationary exemplar, but is evanescent and receding like rainbows. you cannot find any specimen of a religious man now in your society; you hear the fame of one; you go far and find him; and he begins, “i had a friend in my youth,” etc. yet it seems as if nothing would make such good picture in national sketches as genuine connecticut, if you could lay your hand on it. at night the frogs were loud, but the eagle was silent in his cliff. if in this last book of wordsworth there be dulness, it is yet the dulness of a great and cultivated mind. we have our culture, like allston, from europe, and are europeans. perhaps we must be 1842] europe. travel 265 content with this and thank god for europe for a while yet, and there shall be no great yankee, until, in the unfolding of our population and power, england kicks the beam, and english authors write to america; which must happen ere long. i have not yet begun to regret much the omission to see any particular part of nature or art, but perhaps, as we live longer, we begin to compare more narrowly the chances of life with the things to be seen in it, and count the niagaras we have not visited. for me, not only niagara, but the prairie, and the ohio and the mississippi rivers are still only names. and yet, better see nothing beyond your village than to go coldly and hardly to work to see the meccas of the mind. it were indeed an enlargement, a duplication of life, if, in fit company and with good reason, i can go to italy; but florence is not florence if the visit is forced. avarice, ambition, almost all talents, are restless and vagrant; they go up to the cities; but religion is a good rooter. october 8. the commercial relations of the world are so intimately drawn to london, that it seems as 266 journal [age 39 if every dollar in the world contributed to strengthen the english government. it is ridiculous to quote solemnly what the young w. said in his sermon as decisive of his faith in this or that. these young preachers are but chipping birds, who chirp now on the bushes, now on the ground, but do not mean anything by their chirping. he must be very green who would go to infer anything in respect to their character from what they say. what does the extraordinary taste for indian names which now appear on every hotel and every omnibus, betoken? edward washburn told me that at andover they sell shelvesful of coleridge's aids to reflection in a year. queenie says that edie spends half her time in looking innocent, and the other half in looking dignified. nelly, asleep in her bed, had the air and attitude of one who rides a horse of night. edmund hosmer thinks there is a good deal of unnecessary labor spent to feed the ani1842] the imprudent. sons 267 mals, especially the pig and horse. many a farmer is but a horse's horse or a pig's pig.' at the shakers' house in harvard i found a spirit-level on the window-seat, a very good emblem for the society; but, unfortunately, neither the table nor the shelf nor the window-seat were plumb. it appears that there are people, both men and women, who transgress every rule of prudence, and yet have unexceptional health and bring much to pass; and it seems just as well, if one can get on a good exception, to live off the road as to keep the highway. the sons of great men should be great; if they are little, it is because they eat too much pound cake, which is an accident; or, because their fathers married dolls. “the spring of her economy fed the fountain of her bounty.” october 12. the merit of a poem or tragedy is a matter i this entry might be the origin of the lines in the “ ode," inscribed to w. h. channing, in the poems :the horseman serves the horse, the neatherd serves the neat. 268 : [age 39 journal of experience. an intelligent youth can find little wonderful in the greeks or romans. these tragedies, these poems, are cold and tame. nature and all the events passing in the street are more to him, he says, than the stark, unchangeable crisis of the iliad or the antigone ; and as for thoughts, his own thoughts are better and are more numerous. so says one, so say all. presently, each of them tries his hand at expressing his thought; — but there is a certain stiffness, or a certain extravagance in it. all try, and all fail, each from some peculiar and different defect. the whole age of authors tries; many ages try; and in the millions and millions of experiments these confessedly tame and stark-poems of the ancient are still the best. it seems to be certain that they will go on discontenting yet excelling the intelligent youths of the generations to come. but always they will find their admirers, not in the creative and enthusiastic few, who will always feel their ideal inferiority, but in the elegant, cultivated and conservative class. you praise homer and disesteem the art that makes the tragedy. to me it seems higher — the unpopular and austere muse that casts human life into a high tragedy, prometheus, edi1842) god behind. prayer 269 pus, hamlet (midway between the epic and the ode) — than the art of the epic poet, which condescends more to common humanity, and approaches the ballad. man is nine parts fool for one part wise, and therefore homer and chaucer more read than antigone, hamlet, or comus. making money.' men think there is some magic about this. ... the worst times that ever fell were good times to somebody. there is always some one in the gap. en mehe is shallow who rails at men and their contrivances and does not see divinity behind all their institutions and all their fetiches, even behind such as are odious and paltry ; they are documents of beauty also. the practice of prayer is not philosophical, there is somewhat of absurd and ridiculous in it to the eye of science; it is juvenile, and, like plays of children, though nonsense, yet very useful and educative nonsense. well, so with all our things. ... the prosperity of boston is an unexpected i see the passage beginning thus in “ wealth” (conduct of life, p. 100). 270 journal [age 39 consequence of steam communication. the frightful expenses of steam make the greater neighborhood of boston to europe a circumstance of commanding importance, — and the ports of havre and liverpool are two days nearer to boston than to new york. this superiority for the steam-post added to the contemporaneous opening of its great lines of railroad, like iron rivers, which already are making it the dépôt for flour from western new york, michigan, illinois, promise a great prosperity to that city. i woke with a regret that i had made a bargain at b. and had not rather thrown myself wholly on their sense of justice. the olympian must be olympian in carriage and deeds wherever he can be symmetrically, not rudely, —and he must dare a little, and try olympian experiments. well, courage, and do better again. a man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes nor by violent passivities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crop or squatting on his land, — by none of these ways can he free him1842] channing. mourning 271 self; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise and lead him by the hand out of all wards of the prison.' pecunia est alter sanguis. the seamstress' wax, the woodman's axe, these pay the tax. i think doctor channing was intellectual by dint of his fine moral sentiment, and not primarily.” . . . his paper on milton contained the true doctrine of inspiration; “milton observes higher laws than he transgresses." when the friend has newly died, the survivor has not yet grief, but the expectation of grief. he has not long enough been deprived of his society to feel yet the want of it. he is surprised, and is now under a certain intellectual 1 the last part of the sentence, in a similar connection, occurs in the last pages of “ new england reformers” (essays, second series). 2 more is said of doctor channing in “ historic notes of life and letters in new england” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 339, 340). 272 journal [age 39 excitement, being occupied and in a manner amused by the novelty of the event, and is exploring his changed condition. this defends him from sorrow. it is not until the funeral procession has departed from his doors, and the mourners have all returned to their ordinary pursuits, and forgotten the deceased, that the grief of the friend begins. in the midst of his work, in the midst of his leisure, in his thoughts which are now uncommunicated, in his successes which are now in vain, in his hopes which now are quickly checked and run low, he sees with bitterness how poor he is. as it is with the mourner, so it is with the man of virtue in respect to the practice of virtue. the evil practice of the country and the time is exposed by some preacher of righteousness, and after some time the land is filled with the noise of the reform. men congratulate themselves on the great evil they have escaped and on the signal progress of society. but it is not until after this tumult is over, and all have, one after another, come in to the new practice, and the reaction has occurred, and great numbers are disgusted and have gone back again, not until then does the true reformer, the noble man, begin to find his virtue and advantage. through the clamor he has said nothing, 1842] gain. rich life 273 he embraced the right which was shown, at once and forever. now society is back again where it was before, but he has added this beauty to his life. · le peau d'ane. you can do two things at a time; and when you have got your pockets full of chestnuts, and say i have lost my half-hour, behold you have got something besides, for the tops of the silver mountains of the white island loomed up whilst you stood under the tree, and glittered for an instant; therefore there is no peau de chagrin. life. everything good, we say, is on the highway. a virtuoso hunts up with great pains a landscape of guercino, a crayon sketch of salvator, but the transfiguration, the last judgment, the communion, are on the walls of the vatican where every footman may see them without price. you have got for five hundred pounds an autograph receipt of shakspeare; but for nothing a schoolboy can read hamlet, and, if he has eyes, can detect secrets yet unpublished and of highest concernment therein. i think i will never read any but the commonest of all books: the bible, shakspeare, milton, dante, homer, 274 journal (age 39 somebody cried to him out of the walnut woods, “ho! ho! be sure not to get imposed upon. ho! ho!” and arthur rubbed his eyes, looked round him, and bethought him that he would not again. but at night he found the whole journey was a blunder, and he was a dupe. the next morning when he woke, he heard his old neighbor calling to the cattle in the yard under his window, and when arthur looked out, the man said, “ho! ho! be sure you don't get imposed upon. ho! ho!” forewarned, thought arthur once more. the sannup and the squaw do not get drunk at the same time. they take turns in keeping sober, and husband and wife should never be low-spirited at the same time, but each should be able to cheer the other. we learn with joy and wonder this new and flattering art of language, deceived by the exhilaration which accompanies the attainment of each new word. we fancy we gain somewhat. we gain nothing. it seemed to men that words come nearer to the thing; described the fact; were the fact. they learn later that they only suggest it. it is an operose, circuitous way of 1842] beautiful facts. sight 275 putting us in mind of the thing, — of flagellating our attention. but this was slowly discovered. with what good faith these old books of barbarous men record the genesis of the world. their best attempts to narrate how it is that star and earth and man exist, run out into some gigantic mythology, which, when it is ended, leaves the beautiful principal facts where they were, and the stupid gazing fabulist just as far from them as at first. garrulity is our religion and philosophy. they wonder and are angry that some persons slight their books and prefer the thing itself. but with all progress this happens, that speech becomes less, and finally ceases in a noble silence. i, oh, i am only here to see. droll privilege of spectatorship that we all feel; i have an unquestioning presumption, on hearing that a good man is coming by, that this man is true, consistent, and his conscience greatly more faithful and effective than mine. and unluckily he has the same feeling respecting me and others, that not he, but i and they, are the responsible persons. in our parties there is no great difference: the democratic party is not more human than the 276 journal (age 39 vorse me whig. i think the leaders, in my little experience, to be worse men than the whig leaders. i think their democracy no more principled than the conservatism; that it is only a little worse whiggism. they have no higher objects. to vote at all for either party is whiggism, and it is only a little more to vote for those whose bias is conservatism. i have many points of sympathy with the whigs in these “ dregs of romulus,” and i cannot for a moment permit these profligate tammany hall and morning post adventurers to represent the cause of humanity and love. it is odious that our fine geniuses should all have this imperfection, that they cannot do anything useful.' ... eamcheerfulness is so much the order of nature that the superabundant glee of a child lying on its back and not yet strong enough to get up or to sit up, yet cooing, warbling, laughing, screaming with joy, is an image of independence which makes power no part of independence. queenie looks at edie kicking up both feet into the air, and thinks that edie says “the world was made 1 the rest of this paragraph is printed in society and solitude (pp. 6, 7). 1842] soul's safeguards 277 on purpose to carry round the little baby; and the world goes round the sun only to bring tittytime and creeping on the floor time to the baby.” ogden respected nothing in — so much as this tenacious trick of asking at breakfast and on 'change, at work and at bedtime, between glasses of wine or drops taken for fever, questions touching god and duty, the salvation of the soul. the devil take you and your soul! said ogden; but on second thought nothing seemed to him that he had met within marseilles more respectable than this determined curiosity and thoughtfulness in a being in so many ways inferior, in one so superior. and really and truly, — so ought a person to end, — we cannot spare any the coarsest muniment of virtue, and the purest sense of justice that lives in any human breast needs a law founded on force as index and remembrancer." margaret [fuller] described e. as hobgoblin nature and full of indirections. but he is a good i compare « grace,” beginning — how much, preventing god, to thee i owe for the defences thou hast round me set. poems, appendix. 278 journal. [age 39 vagabond and knows how to take a walk. the gipsy talent is inestimable in the country, and so rare. in a woman it would be bewitching. margaret fuller has not a particle, and only the possibility. and yet this is a relative talent, and to each there doubtless exists a gipsy-maker. i told hawthorne yesterday that i think every young man at some time inclines to make the experiment of a dare-god and dare-devil originality like that of rabelais. he would jump on the top of the nearest fence and crow. he makes the experiment, but it proves like the flight of pig-lead into the air, which cannot cope with the poorest hen. irresistible custom brings him plump down, and he finds himself, instead of odes, writing gazettes and leases. yet there is imitation and model, or suggestion, to the very archangels, if we knew their history, and if we knew rabelais's reading we should see the rill of the rabelais river. yet his hold of his place in parnassus is as firm as homer's. a jester, but his is the jest of the world, and not of touchstone or clown or harlequin. his wit is universal, not accidental, and the anecdotes of the time, which made the first butt of the satire and which are lost, are of no importance, as the wit transcends any particular mark, and pierces to '1842] rabelais. merchants 279 permanent relations and interests. his joke will fit any town or community of men. the style at once decides the high quality of the man. it flows like the river amazon, so rich, so plentiful, so transparent, and with such long reaches, that longanimity or longsightedness which belongs to the platos. no sand without lime, no short, chippy, indigent epigrammatist or proverbialist with docked sentences, but an exhaustless affluence. it is only a young man who supposes there is anything new in wall street. the merchant who figures there, so much to his own satisfaction and to the admiration or fear or hatred of the younger or weaker competitors, is a very old business. you shall find him, his way, that is, of thinking concerning the world and men and property and eating and drinking and marriage and education and religion and government, — the whole concatenation of his opinions, the very shade of their color, the same laughter, the same knowingness, the same unbelief, and the same ability and taste, in rabelais and aristophanes. panurge was good wall street. pyrrhonism and transcendentalism are just as old ; and i am persuaded that by and by we shall find them sc 280 journal (age 39 in the chemical element, that excess of oxygen makes the sinner, and of hydrogen the saint. “my evening visitors,” said that excellent professor fortinbras, “if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face. as soon as it is nine, i begin to curse them with internal execrations that are minute guns.” and yet, he added, “the devil take half-hospitalities, this self-protecting civility whose invitations to dinner are determined exclusions from the heart of the inviter, as if he said, 'i invite you to eat, because i will not converse with you. if he dared only say it, that exception would be hospitality of angels, an admission to the thought of his heart.” mary rotch inclined to speak of the spirit negatively and instead of calling it a light, “an oracle,” a “leading,” she said, “when she would do that she should not, she found an objection.” sad the swiftness with which life culminates and the humility of the expectations of the greatest part of men.'... i the long passage following, about the event which seems to cach a crisis of life and from which he dates his 1842] indian summer. greek 281 in the indian summers, of which we have eight or ten every year, you can almost see the indians under the trees in the wood. these are the reconciling days which come to graduate the autumn into winter, and to comfort us after the first attacks of the cold. soothsayers, prediction as well as memory, they look over december and january into the crepuscular light of march and april. no this feeling i have respecting homer and greek, that in this great, empty continent of ours, stretching enormous almost from pole to pole, with thousands of long rivers and thousands of ranges of mountains, the rare scholar, who, under a farmhouse roof, reads homer and the tragedies, adorns the land. he begins to fill it with wit, to counterbalance the enormous disproportion of the unquickened earth. he who first reads homer in america is its cadmus and numa, and a subtle but unlimited benefactor. norrabelais is not to be skipped in literary history, as he is the source of so much proverb, later experience, is printed in "domestic life,” society and solitude (pp. 123–125). 282 journal [age 39 story, and joke which are derived from him into all modern books in all languages. he is the joe miller of modern literature. thou shalt read homer, æschylus, sophocles, euripides, aristophanes, plato, proclus, plotinus, jamblichus, porphyry, aristotle, virgil, plutarch, apuleius, chaucer, dante,rabelais, montaigne, cervantes, shakspeare, jonson, ford, chapman, beaumont and fletcher, bacon, marvell, more, milton, molière, swedenborg, goethe. every spinner is not a spider. society — what a delicate result! no matter how good the associates, the society is sure to spoil, if the least overdone,' . .. do not let us meet to argue; let us meet to rest. let us dispose quite unceremoniously of these obstreperous selves and of their vain talents, and dwell, for a little, in the great peace. self-respect and brotherly love seem equally to demand silence. you shall have joy, or you shall have power, said god; you shall not have both. 1 what is omitted is printed in “ character” (p. 112). 1842] books. the strangers 283 books. theophrastus said “that the most illiterate were able to speak in the presence of the most elegant persons, while they spake nothing but truth and reason.” every man writes after a trick, and you need not read many sentences to learn his whole trick. richter is a perpetual exaggeration and i get nervous. october is come, and the harvest home, and the need that the journalist should make his indexes for the winter's prælections. let us consider.'... conour fine cousin reminded us of a fierce terrier who conceives it a duty for a dog of honor to bark at every passer by, whether poet or reformer, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight. mo men are delicate ware to bring across the sea, more delicate than sèvres porcelain and glass, or than tropical fruit, for the least non-reception of them in the thought and heart of those to whom they come makes cruelty, futility, and i here mr. emerson takes account of material available for the new york course on new england in february, 284 journal (age 39 confusion.' the thought that at once occurred when the strangers came was, have you been victimized in being brought hither? yea or nay? or, prior to that, answer me this, are you victimizable? then, will you waste my time? or, are you afraid i shall waste yours? if so, we shall agree like lovers. (from e) october 19. to bis aunt mary. nothing has occurred to interest us so much as doctor channing's departure, and perhaps it is saddest that this should interest us no more. our broad country has few men; none that one would die for ; worse, none that one could live for. if the great god shined so near in the breast that we could not look aside to other manifestations, such defamation of our channings and websters would be joy and praise; but if we are neither pious nor admirers of men— i wish you would write me what you think, after so long a perspective as his good days have afforded, of your old preacher. for 1 apropos of “ alcott's victims," as mr. emerson called the englishmen whom his friend had encouraged to come, and who weighed sorely upon him. (compare “ character,” p. 107.) 1842] channing's death 285 a sick man, he has managed to shame many sound ones, and seems to have made the most of his time, and was bright to the last month and week. a most respectable life; and deserves the more praise that there is so much merely external, and a sort of creature of society, in it; — that sort of merit of which praise is the legitimate fee. he seems sometimes as the sublime of calculation, as the nearest that mechanism could get to the flowing of genius. his later years— perhaps his earlier — have been adorned by a series of sacrifices. . . . he has been, whilst he lived, the star of the american church, and has left no successor in the pulpit.' . . . the sternest judges of the dead, who shall consider our wants and his austere self-application to them, and his fidelity to his lights, will absolve this soul as it passes, and say, this man has done well. perhaps i think much better things of him too. his milton and napoleon were excellent for the time (the want of drill and thorough breeding as a writer from which he suffered, being considered), and will be great ornaments of his biography. i a large part of what follows is found in « life and letters in new england” (lectures and biographical sketches). 286 journal (age 39 we are very ungrateful, but we do not willingly give the name of poet to any the rarest talents, or industry and skill in metre.' here is tennyson, a man of subtle and progressive mind, a perfect music-box for all manner of delicate tones and rhythms, to whom the language seems plastic, so superior and forceful in his thought. but is he a poet? we read burns and said, he is a poet. we read tennyson and do him the indignity of asking the question, is he poet? i feel in him the misfortune of the time. he is a strict contemporary, not eternal man. he does not stand out of our low limitations like a chimborazo under the line, running up from the torrid base through all the climates of the globe on its high and mottled sides with rings of the herbage of every latitude, but in him as in the authors of paracelsus, and festus, i hear through all the varied music the native tones of an ordinary, to make my meaning plainer, say, of a vulgar man. they are men of talents who sing, but they are not the children na 1 a large part of this entry was used in « the poet” (essays, second series), but as tennyson and burns are not there named, nor the paracelsus of browning nor the festus of bailey spoken of, the passage is printed here entire. in his later years mr. emerson valued tennyson more. 1842] tennyson's poems 287 of music. the particular which under this generality deserves most notice is this (and it is a black ingratitude to receive it so), that the argument of the poem is secondary, the finish of the verses primary. it is the splendor of the versification that draws me to the sense, and not the reverse. who that has read the “ ode to memory,” the “ poet,” the “ confessions of a sensitive mind,” the “ two voices,” remembers the scope of the poem when it is named, and does not rather call to mind some beautiful lines; or, when reading it, does not need some effort of attention to find the thought of the writer, which is also rather poor and mean? even in “ locksley hall,” which is in a prouder tone, i have to keep a sharp lookout for the thought, or it will desert me. it is the merit of a poet to be unanalyzable. we cannot sever his word and thought. we listen because we must, and become aware of a crowd of particular merits, after we have been thoroughly commanded and elevated. i should not go to these books for a total diversion, and the stimulus of thought, as i should go to the catskills or the sea, or to homer, chaucer, or shakspeare. to the makers of artificial flowers, we say 288 journal [age 39 “ the better, the worse.” the best verse-maker, not inspired, is accountable for the sentiment and spirit of his piece ; it never exceeds his own dimensions. but the inspired writer, let his verse be never so frivolous in its subject, or treatment, a mere catch or street verse, is yet not accountable for the piece, but it came as if out of a spiracle of the great animal world. therefore, these little pieces about owls and autumn gardens and the sea are not tinged with london philosophy, which makes all the best pieces“ disconsolate preachers,” but are quite independent of mr. alfred tennyson, and are natural. a poor man had an insufficient stove which it took him a great part of the winter to tend: he was up early to make the fire and very careful to keep it from going out. he interrupted his work at all hours of the day to feed it: he kept it late into the night, that the chamber walls need not get hopelessly cold. but it never warmed the room, he shivered over it, hoping it would be better, but he lost a great deal of time and comfort.' . 1 this is a bit of autobiography. mr. emerson's study, a northwest room with four large windows, was, before the days 1842] classics. confidences 289 once latin and greek had a strict relation to all the science and culture there was in europe, and the mathematics had a momentary importance at some era of activity in physical science. these things became stereotyped as education." life is so much greater than thought, that when we talk on an affair of grave personal interest with one with whom hitherto we have had only intellectual discourse, we use lower tones, much less oratory, but we come much nearer and are quickly acquainted. of furnaces (about 1852), very hard to heat, without a sufficiently large air-tight stove, which it seems for a time he lacked. he was sensitive to cold, and mrs. emerson made him a large, dark-purple study-gown, with a broad velvet collar. this he enjoyed, and called his “ gaberlunzie.” he always insisted on bringing in his wood by the armful himself from the great woodpile in the yard, which interruptions gave him air and exercise in the forenoons. i the long passage thus beginning is printed in “ new england reformers” (essays, second series, pp. 258–260). mr. emerson « liked people who were able to do things,” and would have liked to see much that is now being done towards vocational instruction. at the same time it should be remembered in spite of what he says in that essay, that he valued the classics greatly, and would have deplored the effect of their neglect on the spoken and written english of to-day. 290 [age 39 journal (from n) october 26. boston is not quite a mean place, since in walking yesterday in the street i met george bancroft, horatio greenough, sampson reed, sam ward, theodore parker, george bradford, and had a little talk with each of them. i doubt if i recorded what pleased me so well, when jones very related it, years ago, that at the mclean asylum the patients severally thanked him when he came away, and told him that he had been of great service to them. the strangers have brought with them a complete library of the mystical writers, and the first feeling i have in looking at them is, i am too old for so many books. these are for younger i mr. james pierrepont greaves, who died in england early in the year, has been already mentioned as a man of virtues and learning. the library here referred to, which the philosophers brought with them from england, was a remarkable one, containing many rare volumes. among mr. emerson's papers is a list of these books, more than three hundred titles, of works often in several volumes. they are the books of the neoplatonists (in translation) and works of philosophy, religion, or of reform. one oriental book, the desatir, appears among them. they were, probably, sold to various persons after the breaking-up of the fruitlands community. 1842] the new reformers 291 men, and what fuel, what food for an open youth is here! then comes the suggestion of our old plan of the university, but these men, though excellent, are none of them gifted for leaders. they are admirable instruments for a master's hand, if some instituting pythagoras, some marshalling mirabeau, some royal alfred were here; he could not have better professors than alcott and lane and wright. but they are too desultory, ignorant, imperfect, and whimsical to be trusted for any progress, — excellent springs, worthless regulators. alcott is a singular person, a natural levite, a priest forever after the order of melchizedek, whom all good persons would readily combine, one would say, to maintain as a priest by voluntary contribution to live in his own cottage, literary, spiritual, and choosing his own methods of teaching and action. but for a founder of a family or institution, i would as soon exert myself to collect money for a madman. read cornelius agrippa this morning on the vanity of arts and sciences; another specimen of that scribaciousness which distinguishes the immense readers of his time. robert burton is the head of the class.... one cannot i the rest of the passage is found in “ books” (society and solitude, p. 211). os 1 soo n. 292 journal [age 39 afford to read for a few sentences. he will learn more by praying. they are good to read ... for suggestion, i use them much for that. plato or shakspeare are not suggestive. their method is so high and fine, that they take too much possession of us. the communities will never have men in them, but only halves and quarters. they require a sacrifice of what cannot be sacrificed without detriment. the community must always be ideal. ... men talk about ideas all the time, not persons; they name persons, but it is only illustratively, they are really pursuing thoughts — the men they speak of are like metaphors which will not bear to be too hard driven — will not go on all fours, as we say. thus they praise the farmer's life, but it is only to express their sense of some wrong in the merchants: praise the farmers a little more, you shall find they do not like it. a man is a partiality. to-day i think the common people very right, and literary justice to be certain. these london newspapers are sure to be just to each new book. books full of matter they accept; 1842] criticism. paracelsus 293 for the matter is like the atmosphere or bread, and small thanks to the author of the book. but other books of thought, of poetry, of taste, in which the author mainly appears, they readily damn, if they are not admirable; and if they are not admirable, such books are damnable. but the people — no thanks to them are always nearly right, have a low sort of right, that of common sense and instinct; and the man of talent and transcendent ingenuity is wrong. “ waste not thy gifts in profitless waiting for the gods' descent.” “ would god translate me to his throne, believe that i should only listen to his words to further my own aims.” paracelsus is written for a natural history of a scholar, who, following his ambition through great successes, at last finds himself arrived at being a quack. he is too proud for this, very impatient of quackery, and tells his friend that he cannot afford to spare the luxury of being sincere to one friend, so unbosoms himself to him and in all scorn and bitterness depicts the quackery and the barrenness of his results and the despair into which he seems sinking. and here the poet leaves him, a disease without a 294 [age 39 journal remedy. the laws of disease are as beautiful as the laws of health, say the physicians, and the poet is of that mind, and so contents himself with painting with great accuracy and eloquence the symptoms. but the poem is withering, the wolfish hunger for knowledge for its own sake. lane and wright, our friends, have brought with them a thousand volumes, making, no doubt, one of the best mystical libraries in the world, and twelve manuscript volumes of j. p. greaves, and his head in a plaster cast; and with these professions they think they have brought england with them; that the england they have left behind is a congregation of nothings, spiritless, and therefore not to be taxed or starved or whipped into revolution. could they not die? or succeed? or help themselves? or draw others ? in any manner, i care not how, could they not be disposed of, and cease to hang there in the horizon an unsettled appearance, too great to be neglected, and not great enough to be of any aid or comfort to this great craving humanity ?" 1. mr. emerson was human, and though he showed all kindness and hospitality to the worthy englishmen, and re1842] period of unrest 295 few strokes and much color: they draw a lion, and then a lion, and then a small red lion!' there is a fact in the mind of the writer, but so near to the known facts in other minds that he does not venture to say it quite simply lest it should not prove worth saying, but partly conceals it in rich dress and figures. yet each near fact, like these which paracelsus celebrates and which george bradford bemoans, the wolfish hunger for knowledge which still leaves us hungry, and the defaced and degraded condition of the scholar, as if his heart and bowels had been drawn out, deserves nearest study, for this way of seeing it in men, in ferred to them with great respect in the dial, they were not of his kind, and his journal had to be his safety-valve now and then. 1 this was a favorite story of mrs. emerson's of a decorator employed by the owner of a baronial mansion. lions were all he could execute well. “ what shall we have at the gate ?” “ two lions couchant would be admirable.” “ and what over the door ?” “ lions rampant would produce a fine effect, sir.” “what can you have for a frieze ?” “don't you think, sir, that a fine processional effect could be produced of lions ?” “well, perhaps. but now here is a beautiful dark panel in a fine light. think of something very effective there.” “a small red lion,” said the little man with a persuasive smile. 296 [age 39 journal carlyle, or whatever dried and so-called dead scholar, is only the announcement of the shortcomings of the universe. nature itself has not been able, up to this moment, to drive her tendencies farther: and the bulletin or gazette in which always she announces her news is a man. so carlyle, browning, bradford, must represent the court of god up to the latest dates. we do not care for the topic, but for the speaker. mr. webster, or mr. allston, may give me his opinions on what he will, i shall learn his philosophy; for really every point is equidistant from the centre, whether it be beets, rutabaga, or the gnostic sect. the material is nothing; proportion is all. fourier our paracelsus. oh, if they could take a second step, and a third ! the reformer is so confident, that all are erect whilst he puts the finger on your special abuse, and tells you your great want in america. i tell him, yea, bụt notin america only, but in the universe ever since it was known, just this defect has appeared. but when he has anatomized the evil, he will be called out of 1842] orestes brownson 297 the room, or have got something else in his head. remedied it never will be. but charles lane gives a very good account of his conversation with brownson, who would drive him to an argument. he took his paper and pencil out of his pocket, and asked brownson to give him the names of the profoundest men in america. brownson stopped, and gave him one, and then another, and then his own for a third. brownson never will stop and listen, neither in conversation, but what is more, not in solitude. men of aim must always rule the aimless. and yet there will always be singing-birds. union. many voices call for it, fourier, owen, alcott, channing. and its effect will be magical. that is it which shall renovate institutions and destroy drudgery. but not in the way these i orestes a. brownson, a vermonter, vigorous in body and mind, but unstable. he passed from presbyterianism, through universalism and unitarianism, into the catholic church at last. for years he was the pastor of the society for christian union and progress in boston, where he edited and mainly wrote the boston quarterly magazine, later merged in the democratic quarterly magazine. he wrote also for the dial. 298 (age 39 journal men think, in none of their ways. but only in a method that combines union with isolation : silent union, actual separateness; ideal union, actual independence. if a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner. time respects only what he has himself made. tinio the englishmen remarked that the greatest interior advantage which they observed in our community over theirs was in the women. in england the women were quite obtuse to any liberal thought; whilst here they are intelligent and ready. henry thoreau made, last night, the fine remark that, as long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way, governments, society, and even the sun and moon and stars, as astrology may testify. 'tis a pity that we should fail in our ambition to live well, since, i suppose, all considerate persons must agree that, although there is selfishness and frivolity, yet the general purpose in the henry david thoreau 1842] woman. discussions 299 great number of people is fidelity. . . each of us, too, has at home in the shape of woman (who is naturally good) a directing conscience to hold him in the right. and yet we do no better; yet we get on so little way; it seems as if there must be mountains of difficulty to lift. mou november 11. the selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.' ... to-day i have the feeling, to a degree not experienced by me before, that discussions, like that of yesterday and many the like in which i have participated, invade and injure me. i often have felt emptiness and restlessness to a sort of hatred of the human race after such prating by me and my fellows, but, never so seriously as now, that absence from them is better for me than the taking an active part in them. you may associate on what grounds you like, for economy, or for good neighborhood, for a school, or for whatever reason, only do not say 1 the long passage thus beginning is found in “ new england reformers” (pp. 277, 278). 300 journal [age 39 that the divine spirit enjoins it. the spirit detaches you from all associations, and makes you, to your own astonishment, secretly a member of the universal association, but it descends to no specialties, draws up no articles of a society, but leaves you just as you were for that matter, to be guided by your particular convenience and circumstance whether to join with others, or whether to go alone. it seems to be true that our new england population was settled by the most religious and ideal of the puritans of england. it is natural enough that we should be more ideal than old england. it is taking a great liberty with a man to offer to lend him a book, as if he also had not access to that truth to which the bookmaker had access. each of the books, if i read, invades me, displaces me; the law of it is, that it should be first, that i should give way to it; i, who have no right to give way, and, if i would be tranquil and divine again, i must dismiss the book. and yet i expect a great man to be a good reader, or in proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. 1842] books. dodging 301 every book serves us at last only by adding some one word to our vocabulary, or perhaps two or three. and perhaps that word shall not be in the volume, or shall only be the author's name. and yet there are books of no vulgar origin, but the work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, so nearly equal to the universe which they paint, that although one shuts them also with meaner ones, yet he says with a sigh the while, this were to be read in long thousands of years by some stream in paradise. do not gloze 'and prate and mystify. here is our dear, grand alcott says, you shall dig in my field for a day and i will give you a dollar when it is done, and it shall not be a business transaction! it makes me sick. whilst money is the measure really adopted by us all as the most convenient measure of all material values, let us not affectedly disuse the name, and mystify ourselves and others ; let us not “say no, and take it.” we may very well and honestly have theoretical and practical objections to it; if they are fatal to the use of money and barter, let us disuse them ; if they are less grave than the inconvenience of abolishing traffic, let us 302 journal [age 39 not pretend to have done with it, whilst we eat and drink and wear and breathe it. do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. all life is an experiment. the more experiments you make the better. what if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? what if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. this matter of the lectures, for instance. the engagement drives your thoughts and studies to a head, and enables you to do somewhat not otherwise practicable; that is the action. then there is the reaction; for when you bring your discourse to your auditory, it shows differently. you have more power than you had thought of, or less. the thing fits, or does not fit; is good or detestable. it is a peculiar feature of new england that young farmers and mechanics who work all summer on the soil, or in a shop, take a school in the winter months. mr. fay, the pumpmaker in this town, goes to marlborough this winter for that purpose; young wheeler and wood do the same thing. 1842 hosmer's honesty 202 edmund hosmer was willing to sell his farm five years ago for $3800 and go to the west. he found and still finds that the irish, of which there are two hundred in this town, are underselling him in labor, and he does not see how he and his boys can do those things which only he is willing to do; for, go to market he will not, nor shall his boys with his consent do any of those things for which high wages are paid, as, for example, take any shop, or the office of foreman or agent in any corporation wherein there seems to be a premium paid for faculty, as if it were paid for the faculty of cheating. he does not see how he and his children are to prosper here, and the only way for them is to run, the caucasian before the irishman. i call the terror of starving, skepticism, and say that i do not believe that i can be put in any condition in which i cannot honestly maintain myself, and honestly be rich, that is, not be poor. it is in vain that you put to me any case of misfortune or calamity — the extremest, the manchester weaver; the carolina slave; i doubt not that in the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be party to his present estate. put me in his condition, and i should see its 304 journal (age 39 outlets and reliefs, though now i see them not. the main and capital remedy of the religious sentiment and all the abundance of its counsels for his special distresses, it were atheism to doubt. but do not require of me, sitting out here, to say what he, within there, ought to do. i can never meddle with other people's facts, i have enough of my own. but this one thing i know, that, if i do not clear myself, i am in fault, and that my condition is matched, point for point, with every other man's. i can only dispose of my own facts. last night henry thoreau read me verses which pleased, if not by beauty of particular lines, yet by the honest truth, and by the length of flight and strength of wing; for most of our poets are only writers of lines or of epigrams. these of henry's at least have rude strength, and we do not come to the bottom of the mine. their fault is, that the gold does not yet flow pure, but is drossy and crude. the thyme and marjoram are not yet made into honey; the assimilation is imperfect. it seems as if the poetry was all written before time was.' ... but it is a s i the rest of the passage, slightly varied, is found in “the poet” (essays, second series, p. 8). 1842] time. childhood 305 great pleasure to have poetry of the second degree also, and mass here, as in other instances, is some compensation for superior quality, for i find myself stimulated and rejoiced like one who should see a cargo of sea-shells discharged on the wharf, whole boxes and crates of conchs, cypreas, cones, neritas,cardiums, murexes, though there should be no pearl-oyster nor one shell of great rarity and value among them. time is the little grey man who takes out of his breast-pocket first a pocketbook, then a dollond telescope, then a turkey carpet, then four saddled and bridled nags and a sumptuous canvas tent. we are accustomed to chemistry and it does not surprise us. but chemistry is but a name for changes and developments as wonderful as those of this breast-pocket. i was a little chubby boy trundling a hoop in chauncy place, and spouting poetry from scott and campbell at the latin school. but time, the little grey man, has taken out of his vest-pocket a great, awkward house (in a corner of which i sit down and write of him), some acres of land, several full-grown and several very young persons, and seated them close beside me; then he has taken that chubbiness and 306 [age 39 journal that hoop quite away (to be sure he has left the declamation and the poetry), and here left a long, lean person threatening to be a little grey man, like himself. religion has failed! yes, the religion of another man has failed to save me. but it has saved him. we speak of the past with pity and reprobation, but through the enormities, evils, and temptations of the past, saints and heroes slipped into heaven. there is no spot in europe but has been a battle-field ; there is no religion, no church, no sect, no year of history, but has served men to rise by, to scale. the walls of heaven, and enter into the banquets of angels. our fathers are saved. the same, precisely the same conflicts have always stood as now, with slight shiftings of scene and costume. (from z) november 19. i should willingly give you an account of one of these conversations. for example, we had one yesterday afternoon. i begged alcott to paint out his project, and he proceeded to say that there should be found a farm of a hundred acres in excellent condition, with good build1842] helpless reformers 307 ings, a good orchard, and grounds which admitted of being laid out with great beauty; and this should be purchased and given to them, in the first place. i replied, you ask too much. this is not solving the problem ; there are hundreds of innocent young persons, whom, if you will thus stablish and endow and protect, will find it no hard matter to keep their innocency. and to see their tranquil household, after all this has been done for them, will in no wise instruct or strengthen me. but he will instruct and strengthen me, who, there where he is, unaided, in the midst of poverty, toil, and traffic, extricates himself from the corruptions of the same and builds on his land a house of peace and benefit, good customs, and free thoughts. but, replied alcott, how is this to be done? how can i do it who have a wife and family to maintain? i answered that he was not the person to do it, or he would not ask the question. when he that shall come is born, he will not only see the thing to be done, but invent the life, invent the ways and means of doing it. the way you would show me does not commend itself to me as the way of greatness. the spirit does not stipulate for land and exemption from taxes, but, in great straits and 308 [age 39 journal want, or even on no land, nowhere to lay its head, it manages, without asking for land, to occupy and enjoy all land, for it is the law by which land exists ; it classifies and distributes the whole creation anew. if you ask for application to particulars of this way of the spirit, i shall say that the coöperation you look for is such coöperation as colleges and all secular institutions look for, money. true coöperation comes in another manner. a man quite unexpectedly shows me that which i and all souls looked for, and i cry, “that is it; take me and mine; i count it my chief good, to do in my way that very thing.” — that is real coöperation, unlimited, uncalculating, infinite coöperation. the spirit is not half so slow or mediate, or needful of conditions or organs, as you suppose. a few persons in the course of my life have at certain moments appeared to me, not measured men of five feet, five or ten inches, but large, enormous, indefinite; but these were not great proprietors, nor heads of communities, nor men in office, or in any action which affected large numbers of men, but, on the contrary, nothing could be more private, they were in some want, or affliction, or other relation ema 1842] spirit, not money 309 which called out the emanation of the spirit, which dignified and transfigured them to my eye. and the good spirit will burn and blaze in the cinders of your condition, in the drudgeries of your endeavor, – in the very process of extricating us from the evils of want and of a bad society. this fatal fault in the logic of our friends still appears: their whole doctrine is spiritual, but they always end with saying, give us much land and money. if i should give them anything, it would be facility and not beneficence. unless one should say after the maxims of the world, let them drink their own error to saturation, and this will be the best hellebore. i know the spirit by its victorious tone. an immense force has that man whose part is taken, and who does not wait for society in any part of his conduct of life. now it is plain, of our three adventurers, that this gives them the most of their importance with us, and the deductions to be made from each are the hesitations at the plunge, the reserves which they still make and the reliances and expectations they still cherish on the arm of flesh, the aid of others. i and this remedy worked most effectually in the coming winter, — the pitiful breaking up of fruitlands. 310 [age 39 journal a reformer must be born; he can never be made such by reasons. all reform, like all form, is by the grace of god, and not otherwise. nu you ask, o theanor, said amphitryon, that i should go forth from this palace with my wife and my children and that you and your family may enter and possess it. the same request in substance has been often made to me before by numbers of persons. now i also think that i and my wife ought to go forth from this house, and work all day in the fields, and lie at night under some thicket, but i am waiting where i am, only until some god shall point out to me which among all these applicants, yourself or some other, is the rightful claimant. transcendentalism is the saturnalia of faith. it is faith run mad. nature is transcendental'... letbe. it seemed strange to men that they should thus forget so fast, that they became suspicious, that there was some treachery, and began to suspect their food that perhaps the bread they eat, or the flesh, was narcotic. hence rose graham societies. 1 the rest of this paragraph is in “the transcendentalist” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 338, 339). 1842] persons. property 311 government should find its perfectness in its obedience and good conduction of the elemental fluids. because persons will have their effect, and things theirs — we are safe anyhow. i think the power of things such that property's will is done whether by law, or against law, openly or underhand. it was obviously the feeling and the right of a ruder age to say persons must make law for persons, property for property. but now we begin to feel that persons are the only interest, and that property will follow them; that a special care need not be given to the farm. let us be wise, and the culture of men being the end of government, love will write the law, and the law which has been so given will be gentle.' since i have been here in new york i have grown less diffident of my political opinions. i supposed once the democracy must be right. i see that they are aimless. whigs have the best men, democrats the best cause. but the last are destructive, not constructive. what hope, what end have they? i compare «politics” (essays, second series, p. 202). 312 journal (age 39 vy ds (from k) november 25. yesterday i read dickens's american notes. it answers its end very well, which plainly was to make a readable book, nothing more. truth is not his object for a single instant, but merely to make good points in a lively sequence, and he proceeds very well. as an account of america it is not to be considered for a moment: it is too short, and too narrow, too superficial, and too ignorant, too slight, and too fabulous, and the man totally unequal to the work. a very lively rattle on that nuisance, a sea voyage, is the first chapter; and a pretty fair example of the historical truth of the whole book. we can hear throughout every page the dialogue between the author and his publisher,—“mr. dickens, the book must be entertaining that is the essential point. truth? damn truth! i tell you, it must be entertaining.” as a picture of american manners nothing can be falser. no such conversations ever occur in this country in real life, as he relates. he has picked up and noted with eagerness each odd local phrase that he met with, and, when he had a story to relate, has joined them together, so that the result is the broadest caricature; and the scene might as truly have been 1842] dickens on america 313 laid in wales or in england as in the states. monstrous exaggeration is an easy secret of romance. but americans who, like some of us massachusetts people, are not fond of spitting, will go from maine to new orleans, and meet no more annoyance than we should in britain or france. so with "yes,” so with "fixings,” so with soap and towels; and all the other trivialities which this trifler detected in travelling over half the world. the book makes but a poor apology for its author, who certainly appears in no dignified or enviable position. ... (from n) november 26. the young people, like brownson, channing, greene, elizabeth p. peabody, and possibly 1 it is not unlikely that mr. emerson would have modified these last sentences after his experiences a few years later as a lyceum lecturer in the pioneer west. 2 brownson has been already spoken of in these notes. william henry channing, nephew and biographer of rev. dr. channing, and cousin of william ellery channing, the concord poet, was a minister, lovable and eager in all good causes. he was pastor of various unitarian churches, among others, at cincinnati, at washington during the war, and in london. william b. greene was a west point graduate, served in 314 journal (age 39 bancroft, think that the vice of the age is to exaggerate individualism, and they adopt the word l'humanité from le roux, and go for “the race.” hence the phalanx, owenism, simonism, the communities. the same spirit in theology has produced the puseyism, which endeavors to rear “the church” as a balance and overpoise to the conscience. london, new york, boston, are phalanxes ready-made, where you shall find concerts, books, balls, medical lectures, prayers, or punch and judy, according to your fancy, on any night or ar day. it is indifferent whether you show a new object to the child, or a new relation in an old object. you may give him another toy, or you may show him the iron block among his blocks is a magnet. the avaricious man seeks to add to the number of his toys, the scientific man to find new relations. you never can hurt us by new ideas. god speed you, gentlemen reformers. the seminole war, then became a clergyman, and in the civil war was colonel of the 14th infantry, massachusetts volunteers (later, the ist massachusetts heavy artillery). 1842] bancroft. four walls 315 bancroft and bryant are historical democrats who are interested in dead or organized, but not in organizing, liberty. bancroft would not know george fox, whom he had so well eulogized, if he should meet him in the street. it is like lyell's science, who did not know by sight, when george b. emerson showed him them, the shells he has described in his geology. i think four walls one of the best of our institutions. a man comes to me, and oppresses me by his presence; he looks very large and unanswerable. i cannot dispose of him whilst he stays; he quits the room, and passes, not only out of the house, but, as it were, out of the horizon; he is a mere phantom or ghost. i think of him no more. i recover my sanity, the universe dawns on me again. w. h. channing thinks that, not in solitude, but in love, in the actual society of beloved persons, have been his highest intuitions. to me it sounds like shallow verbs and nouns; for in closest society a man is by thought wrapt into remotest isolation. no man can be criticised but by a greater than he. do not, then, read the reviews. · 316 [age 39 journal wordsworth dismisses a whole regiment of poets from their vocation. the world is waking up to the idea of union." ... [but] the union is only perfect when all the unities are absolutely isolated. each man being the universe, if he attempt to join himself to others, he instantly is jostled, crowded, cramped, halved, quartered, or on all sides diminished of his proportion, and, the stricter the union, the less and more pitiful he is. but let him go alone, and recognizing the perfect in every moment with entire obedience, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the whole work will be done with concert, though no man spoke; government will be adamantine without any governor. union ideal,in actual individualism, actual union; then would be the culmination of science, useful art, fine art, and culmination on culmination. the tongue of flame, the picture the newspapers give, at the late fire in liverpool, of news1 the omitted portion of the passage is printed in “ new england reformers.” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 266, 267). er an 1842] fate. bible. steps the mountains of burning cotton over which the flame arose to twice their height, the volcano also from which the conflagration rises toward the zenith an appreciable distance toward the stars, — these are the most affecting : symbols of what man should be. a spark of fire is infinitely deep, but a mass of fire reaching from earth upward into the heaven, this is the fire of the robust, united, burning, radiant fuel. fate, yes, our music-box only plays certain tunes, and never a sweeter strain but we are assured that our barrel is not a dead, but a live barrel, — nay, is only a part of the tune, and changes like that. conservatism stands on this, that a man cannot jump out of his skin ; and well for him that he cannot, for his skin is the world; and the stars of heaven do hold him there : in the folly of men glitters the wisdom of god. this old bible, if you pitch it out of the window with a fork, it comes bounce back again. several steps. a man's greatness is to advance on a line. simple recipiency is the virtue 318 journal ::. [age 39 of space not of man; to him belongs progress, he builds himself on himself. angelo, dante, milton, swedenborg, pythagoras, paracelsus were men of great robustness; they built, not only with energy but symmetry, and their work could be called architecture. napoleon lately was an architect.... (from e) december. the trick of every man's conversation we soon learn. in one, this remorseless buddhism lies all around, threatening with death and night. we make a little fire in our cabin, but we dare not go abroad one furlong into the murderous cold. every thought, every enterprise, every sentiment, has its ruin in this horrid infinite which circles us and awaits our dropping into it. if killing all buddhists would do the least good, we would have a slaughter of the innocents directly. 20in orpheus, the demiurgus interrogates night, thus, – “ tell me how all things will as one subsist, yet each its nature separate preserve.” it is the problem proposed to the fourierist. 1842] blue sky. lane 319 the blue sky is a fit covering for a cottage or a market and for the meeting of supernatural forms and events of magic and of fairyland. could my most poetic dream fall true and realize itself to my faith in some golden moment in the presence and by the concurrence of all gods, i should look upward into the identical web of blue depth which i see as i trudge along the road to the post-office. and yet no dream could have that sky. it is like the touch of god, it discerns between shadow and substance. the look of the zenith, — would not our friend lane reckon that a “real experience”? there was a conversation last evening at our good mrs. b.'s on “the family,” which was quite too narrowing and exclusive. there was a very unnecessary hostility in a great deal of the talk. a hostility in the hearers was presumed, and we were valiant men full of fight, ready and able to break a lance for our faith. lane is so skilful, instant, and witty, there is no loitering or repetition in his speech, that i delight to hear him and forgive everything to so much ability : yet he is very provoking and warlike in his manner. he rails at trades and cities, and yet it is obvious in every word he says how 320 journal [age 39 much he is the debtor to both. there is a wisdom of life about them, a toughness and solidity of experience, that makes them always entertaining and makes alcott's words look pale. and lifeless. i came away from the company in better spirits than from any party this long time, for i did not speak one word. perhaps the proper reply to the tone of dogmatism should have been, shall there be no more cakes and ale ? why so much stress ? two meals a day. a poet may eat bread for his breakfast, and bread and flesh for his dinner, but for his supper he must eat stars only. romeo was minister of raymond béranger, count of provence. he managed the affairs of his master so well that each one of his four daughters became a queen. margaret, the eldest, was married to louis ix of france; eleanor, 1 mr. lane had been the manager of the london mercantile price current. 2 at this period the habit of walking out under the stars before going to rest, shown in « the poet,” was mr. emerson's. (poems, appendix, pp. 312, 315, 317.) 1842) raymond beranger 321 the next, to henry iii, of england; sancha, the third, to richard, henry's brother, and king of the romans; and beatrice, the youngest, to charles i, king of naples and sicily, and brother to louis. the provençal barons, enviers of romeo, instigated the count his master to demand of him an account of the revenues he had so carefully husbanded, and the prince as lavishly disbursed. then romeo demanded the little mule, the staff, and the scrip, with which he had first entered into the count's service, a stranger pilgrim from the shrine of st. james in galicia, and departed as he came, nor was it ever known whence he was, or whither he went. (see dante, paradiso, canto vi.) o what would nature say? she spared no speech to-day; the fungus and the bulrush spoke, answered the pine-tree and the oak, the wizard south blew down the glen, filled the straits and filled the wide ; each maple leaf turned up its silver side. the south wind blows; i leave my book. i need not bide in nature long, could i transfer my life to song; it needs the lapsing centuries 322 (age 39 journal to tell you the wit of the passing breeze. and yet the landscape taunts me, advancing, then receding. ... “full many a glorious morning have i seen.” that is a bold saying. few men have seen many mornings. this day when i woke i felt the peace of the morning, and knew that i seldom behold it. i hear the whistle of the locomotive in the woods. wherever that music comes it has its sequel. it is the voice of the civility of the nineteenth century saying, “here i am.” it is interrogative: it is prophetic: and this cassandra is believed: “whew! whew! whew! how is real estate here in the swamp and wilderness? ho for boston ! whew! whew! down with that forest on the side of the hill. i want ten thousand chestnut sleepers. i want cedar posts, and hundreds of thousands of feet of boards. up! my masters of oak and pine! you have waited long enough — a good part of a century in the wind and stupid sky. ho for axes and saws, and away with me to boston! whew! whew! i will plant a dozen houses on this pasture next moon, and a village anon; and i ci1842] history. idealists 323 will sprinkle yonder square mile with white houses like the broken snow-banks that strow it in march.” history. something gets possession and elbows all the rest aside. yet there hang these clouds of dissenters and fanatics and prophets, like arabs in the horizon or on the mountains waiting their turn and kingdom. fixtures none. the world is the prey and dominion of thoughts. history is a foolish, pragmatic misstatement. as easily might you survey a cloud, which is now as big as your hat, and before you have measured its first angle, covers ten acres. thoughts work and make what you call the world. heroes are the lucky individuals who stand at the pole and are the largest and ripest. miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician.'... these [idealists] have no memory, no retrospect, no baggage-waggon of a tradition at their back, but have their eye forward and their foot forward, for their whole attention is to the fact of creation, – of creation now being and to be. i most of what follows is printed in “worship" (conduct of life, p. 238). 324 journal (age 39 the world is too rich for us. we have hardly set our hearts on one toy, say a house and land, before a poetic reputation seems the high prize, then eloquence, then political power, then asceticism, and then art; and thus each of many things draws us aside from the other. if in choosing one, we could drink a cup of lethe to the others, we should not be robbed of satisfaction. (from z) december 10. a good visit to boston, and saw sam ward and ellery to advantage, and my parian sister. ellery has such an affectionate speech, and a tone that is tremulous with emotion, that he is a flower in the wind. he says he has an immense dispersing power. ward is wise and beautiful: and said and admitted the best things. he had found out, he said, why people die: it is to break up their style. me life would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not full of surprises. i wake in the morning, and go to my window, and see the day break, and receive from the spectacle a new secret of nature that goes to compromise all my past manner of living, and invite me to a new anne new. 1842) the marble hesperus 325 i am filled with a great tranquillity. i seek to express this somehow and find that i have cut out a hesperus in marble. wonderful is the alembic of nature through which the sentient mind of tranquillity becomes the figure of a youth ; but the feeling manages somehow to shed itself over the stone, as if that were porous to love and truth." yet is not that figure final or adequate; it is a prison rather of the thought, of the emotion, if i am contented with it. the thought scorns it, mocks at it as some wretched caricature; the thought has already transcended it, is already something else, has taken twenty thousand shapes, whilst poor hans was hammering at this one. the oak leaf is perfect, a kind of absolute realized, but every work of art is only relatively good; — the artist advances, and finds all his fine things naught. nature tends to a fact. she will be expressed. then scholars are her victims of expression. you who see the artist, the orator, the poet too near, and find them victims of partiality, ... pronounce them failures? ... 1 evidently this thought was the origin of the passage in « the poet” about the sculptor who made the statue of phosphorus, the morning star (essays, second series, p. 24). 2 see • experience” (essays, second series, p. 66). onou 326 journal [age 39° very hard it is to keep the middle point. it is a very narrow line. w. said, that there was a great deal of deferring and a great deal of wondering and quoting, but of calm affirming very little. cannot a man only communicate that which he knows? but nature hates calm system-makers, her methods are saltatory, impulsive. man lives by pulses, all his organic movements are such, and all chemical, and ethereal; even seem to be undulatory or alternate. and so with the mind, it antagonizes ever, and gets on so. the yankee is one who if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go; who, if he can get hold anywhere of a rope's end or a spar, will not let it go, but will make it carry him ; if he can but find so much as a stump or a log, will hold on to it and whittle out of it a house and barn, a farm and stock, a mill-seat and a village, a railroad and a bank, and various other things equally useful and entertaining, a seat in congress or a foreign mission, for example. but these no doubt are inventions of the enemy. 18421 individual economies 327 c.'s eyes are a compliment to the human race; that steady look from year to year makes phidian sculpture and poussin landscape still real and contemporary. the harvest will be better preserved and go farther, laid up in private bins, in each farmer's corn-barn, and each woman's basket, than if it were kept in national granaries. in like manner, an amount of money will go farther if expended by each man and woman for their own wants, and in the feeling that this is their all, than if expended by a great steward, or national commissioners of the treasury. take away from me the feeling that i must depend on myself, give me the least hint that i have good friends and backers there in reserve who will gladly help me, and instantly i relax my diligence. i obey the first impulse of generosity that is to cost me nothing, and a certain slackness will creep over my conduct of my affairs. here is a bank-note found of one hundred dollars. let it fall into the hands of an easy man who never earned the estate he spends, and see how little difference it will make in his affairs. at the end of the year he is just as much behind hand as ever, and could not have done 328 [age 39 : journal at all without that hundred. let it fall into the hands of a poor and prudent woman, and every shilling and every cent of it tells, goes to reduce debt, or to add to instant and constant comfort, mends a window, buys a blanket or a pelisse, gets a stove instead of the old cavernous fireplace, all chimney all the channings are men of the world; have a little silex in their composition, which gives a good edge, and protects them like a coat of mail. ellery has the manners and address of a merchant. а ) elizabeth hoar affirms that religion bestows a refinement which she misses in the best-bred people not religious, and she considers it essential therefore to the flower of gentleness. come dal fuoco il caldo, esser diviso non può 'l bel dall'eterno. michel angelo. ' i have no thoughts to-day; what then? what difference does it make? it is only that there does not chance to-day to be an antagonism to evolve them, the electricity is the more accumulated ; a week hence you shall meet some1842] time. country health 329 body or something that shall draw from you a shower of sparks. travelling is a very humiliating experience to me. i never go to any church like a railroad car for teaching me my deficiencies. for any grandeur of circumstance length of time seems an indispensable element. who can attach anything majestic to creatures so shortlived as we men? the time that is proper to spend in mere musing is too large a fraction of threescore years and ten to be indulged to that greatness of behavior. the brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect. there is a comparative innocence in this country and a corresponding health. we do not often see bald boys and gray-haired girls ; children victims of gout and apoplexy; the street is not full of near-sighted and deaf people; nor do we see those horrid mutilations and disgusting forms of disease as leprosy and undescribed varieties of plague which european streets exhibit, stumps of men. charles lane said that our people do not 330 journal [age 39 appear to him to have that steadfastness that can be calculated on. thus, green may be a trader, or a priest, or a soldier as probably as a progressive reformer. and so davis and robbins and the rest. this results from the greater freedom of circumstance. english and europeans are guided as with iron belt of condition. the fine and finest young people despise life;' ... naming, yes, that is the office of the newspapers of the world, these famous editors from moses, homer, confucius, and so on, down to goethe and kant: they name what the people have already done, and the thankful people say, “ doctor, 't is a great comfort to know the disease whereof i die.” in urnal for authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1842 vishnu sarna ; pythagoras; æschylus; sophocles; euripides; aristophanes ; symposium of plato, xenophon, and phocion ; theophrastus; plotinus; porphyry; iamblichus; st. aui see “ experience” (p. 61). 1842] reading 331 gustine, confessions ; synesius, on providence; proclus; apuleius; saadi; dante, paradiso ; chaucer; erasmus; michel angelo, sonnets; sir thomas' more; rabelais; cornelius agrippa, the vanity of arts and sciences; cervantes; robert burton; chapman; behmen; massinger; ford; george fox; marvell; molière; dryden ; otway; swift; pope; doctor johnson; pestalozzi; goethe; sheridan; talleyrand; richter; reimer; robert owen; fourier; manzoni, i promessi sposi ; daniel webster ; doctor channing; edward everett; shelley ; bryant; carlyle; james p. greaves; lyell; john clare, poems descriptive of rural life and scenery; pusey ; bancroft; george b. emerson ; hawthorne; john sterling, dedalus ; disraeli, vivian grey; bulwer, zanoni; george borrow, the zincali; tennyson, second volume of poems; browning, paracelsus ; bailey, festus ; westland marston, the patrician's daughter; george h. colton, tecumseh; 332 journal (age 39 william henry channing; william ellery channing, poems; thoreau, poems; alcott; orestes a. brownson; albert brisbane; theodore parker; margaret fuller; charles k. newcomb; balzac, peau de chagrin; [english writers, friends of mr. alcott] charles lane; henry g. wright; john a. heraud; goodwyn barmby; frances barham; “corporal spohn”; ernest, a poem; the plain speaker, edited by christopher greene and william m. chace of providence. journal lectures in new york and baltimore visit to washington editing dial webster in concord brook farm journal xxxiv 1843 (from journals 2, r, and u) kall' åvrò, ped' åvrov, povoeld's čeà ðv.* secondo alla fede di ciascuno.2 and whatsoever soul has perceived anything of truth shall be safe from harm until another period.3 plato, phædrus. [in january, mr. emerson set forth on a long lecturing trip. he went to philadelphia, probably visiting there his friend and loving schoolmate, rev. william h. furness; thence by rail to baltimore, where he gave two lectures, visiting washington, between them, after an interval of sixteen years. he then gave his course on “new england” in new york, in february before the berean society: i, genius of the anglo-saxon race; ii, trade ; iii, manners 1 according to itself, by means of itself, always of one kind. 2 according to each man's faith. 3 this is the law of adrastia.” (see “experience," essays, second series, p. 84.) adrastia was a name for fate or nemesis. 336 journal [age 39 and customs of new england; iv, recent literature and spiritual influences ; v, results. meantime henry thoreau, chivalrous, universally helpful, witty, and kind, had manned the wall at home for his absent friend, and had also relieved him of much editorial work for the dial. this will appear in the familiar letters of henry david thoreau, edited by mr. f. b. sanborn, for that period.'] (from z) baltimore, barnum's hotel, january 7, 1843. here to-day from philadelphia. the railroad, which was but a toy coach the other day, is now a dowdy, lumbering country wagon. yet it is not prosaic, as people say, but highly poetic, this strong shuttle which shoots across the forest, swamp, river, and arms of the sea, binding city to city. the americans take to the little contrivance as if it were the cradle in which they were born. at philadelphia. philosophy shakes hands at last with the simplest methodist and teaches one fact with him, namely, that it is the grace of god, — all grace, 1 houghton, mifflin & co., 1894. 1843] god's grace. siddons 337 no inch of space left for the impertinence of human will. everything is good which a man does naturally, and nothing else: and sitting in railroad cars, happy is he who is moved to talk, and knows nothing about it; and happy he who is moved to sit still, and knows not that he sits still; but i hate him with a perfect hatred who thinks of himself. let a man hate eddies, hate the sides of the river, but keep the middle of the stream. the hero did nothing apart and odd, but travelled on the highway and went to the same tavern as the whole people, and was very heartily and naturally there, no dainty, protected person. “every bullet will hit its mark if it is first dipped in the marksman's blood.” it makes men very bad to talk good. an american is served like a noble in these city hotels; and his individuality as much respected; and he may go imperially along all the highways of iron or of water. i like it very well that in the heart of democracy i find such practical illustration of high theories. mrs. siddons said to her niece, fanny kemble, “ you are an extraordinary girl, but you are 338 journal [age 39 not mrs. siddons yet, though many will tell you that you are." at washington, january 11, 12, 13, 14. “ the winter arrangement to the south” advertises “the great central mail route through from baltimore to charleston, with but three changes of person and baggage.” january 16. so much novel-reading ought not to leave the young men of the land quite unaffected, and doubtless does idealize them. they must study noble behavior, and this dignity of hotel armchairs is not quite unsupported by inward dignity. i understand poverty much better than riches; and it is odd that one of my friends who is rich seems to me always accidentally so, and in character made to be poor. i do not observe that many men can aid others in the direct way. commonly every man occupies every inch of his ground. the poor or the middle class can better help than the richer. giles waldo told me of one of his friends who gambled, not for winnings, but for bread, and 1843] chess. merchants 339 with the members of the legislature of indiana; and the men whose money he won liked him so well that they one day made him clerk of the house of representatives, much to his surprise, and, if he had remained in that country, would have made him secretary of state. in philadelphia, they play chess in all houses. at the athenæum, a game goes on behind a screen at all hours, and whenever i was in the room i noticed several spectators watching the moves of the players. new york, february 7. i am greatly pleased with the merchants. in rail car and hotel it is common to meet only the successful class, and so we have favorable specimens: but these discover more manly power of all kinds than scholars; behave a great deal better, converse better, and have inexpensive and sufficient manners. dreamlike travelling on the railroad. the towns through which i pass between philadelphia and new york make no distinct impression. they are like pictures on a wall. the more, that you can read all the way in a car a french novel. 340 journal (age 39 february 7. nature. nature asked, whether troop and baggage be two things ; whether the world is all troop or all baggage, or whether there be any troop that shall not one day be baggage? easy, she thinks it, to show you the universal soul: we have all sucked that orange; but would you please to mention what is an individual? she apologized for trifling with you in your nonage, and adding a little sugar to your milk that you might draw the teat, and a little glory afterward to important lessons, but declared she would never tell you another fib, if you had quite settled that buddhism was better than hands and feet, and would keep that conviction in the presence of two persons. as for far and too far, she wondered what it meant. she admires people who read, and people who look at pictures, but if they read until they write, or look at pictures until they draw them, she curses them up and down. she has the oddest tastes and behavior. an onion, which is all coat, she dotes on; and among birds she admires the godwit; but when i hinted that a blue weed grew about my house called self-beal,' she said, — a coxcomb named i see the allusion to this humble little flower, which grew close under his study window, in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 195). 341 1843] webster it; but she teaches cobwebs to resist the tempest, and when a babe's cries drove away a lion, she almost devoured the darling with kisses.. she says her office of dragoman is vacant, though she has been much pestered with applications, and if you have a talent of asking questions, she will play with you all your life; but if you can answer questions, she will propose one, which, if you answer, she will die first. she hates authors, but likes montaigne. webster.' webster is very dear to the yankees because he is a person of very commanding understanding with every talent for its adequate expression. the american, foreigners say, always reasons, and he is the most american of the americans. they have no abandonment, but dearly love logic, as all their churches have so long witnessed. his external advantages are very rare and admirable; his noble and majestic frame, his breadth and projection of brows, his coal-black hair, his great cinderous eyes, his perfect self-possession, and the rich and well-modulated thunder of his voice (to which i used to listen, sometimes, abstracting myself from his i mr. webster was still secretary of state under president tyler. he resigned the office in the spring. 342 journal (age 39 sense merely for the luxury of such noble explosions of sound) distinguish him above all other men. in a million you would single him out. in england, he made the same impression by his personal advantages as at home, and was called the great western. in speech he has a great good sense, — is always pertinent to time and place, and has an eye to the simple facts of nature, — to the place where he is, to the hour of the day, to the sun in heaven, to his neighborhood to the sea or to the mountains, but very sparingly notices these things, and clings closely to the business part of his speech with great gravity and faithfulness. “i do not inflame,” he said on one occasion, “i do not exaggerate; i avoid all incendiary allusion.” he trusts to his simple strength of statement — in which he excels all men— for the attention of his assembly. his statement is lucid throughout, and of equal strength. he has great fairness and deserves all his success in debate, for he always carries a point from his adversary by really taking superior ground, as in the hayne debate. there are no puerilities, no tricks, no academical play in any of his speeches, they are all majestic men of business. every one is a first-rate yankee. he has had a faithful apprenticeship to his 1843] webster pictured 343 position, for he was born in new hampshire, a farmer's son, and his youth spent in those hardships and privations which add such edge to every simple pleasure and every liberalizing opportunity. the almanac does not come unnoticed, but is read and committed to heart by the farmer's boys. and when it was announced to him by his father that he would send him to college he could not speak. the struggles, — brothers and sisters in poor men's houses in new england are dear to each other, and the bringing up of a family involves many sacrifices, each for the other. the faults that shade his character are not such as to hurt his popularity. he is very expensive, and always in debt; but this rather commends him, as he is known to be generous, and his countrymen make for him the apology of themistocles, that to keep treasure undiminished is the virtue of a chest and not of a man. then there is in him a large share of good nature and a sort of bonhomie. it is sometimes complained of him that he is a man of pleasure, and all his chosen friends are easy epicures and debauchees. but this is after talleyrand's taste, who said of his foolish wife that he found nonsense very refreshing : so webster, after he has 344 journal (age 39 been pumping his brains in the courts and the senate, is, no doubt, heartily glad to get among cronies and gossips where he can stretch himself at his ease and drink his mulled wine. they also quote as his three rules of living : (1) never to pay any debt that can by any possibility be avoided; (2) never to do anything to-day that can be put off till to-morrow ; (3) never to do anything himself which he can get anybody else to do for him. all is forgiven to a man of such surpassing intellect, and such prodigious powers of business which have so long been exerted. there is no malice in the man, but broad good humor and much enjoyment of the hour; so that stetson said of him, “ it is true that he sometimes commits crimes, but without any guilt.” a great man is always entitled to the most liberal interpretation, and the few anecdotes by which his opponents have most deeply stabbed at his reputation admit of explanation. i cannot but think, however, that his speech at richmond was made to bear a meaning by his southern backers which he did not intend, and i have never forgiven him that he did not say, not so fast, good friends, i did not mean what you say. nan as 1843] webster the lawyer 345 he has misused the opportunity of making himself the darling of the american world in all coming time by abstaining from putting himself at the head of the anti-slavery interest, by standing for new england and for man against the bullying and barbarism of the south. i should say of him that he was not at all majestic, but the purest intellect that was ever applied to business. he is intellect applied to affairs. he is the greatest of lawyers; but a very indifferent statesman for carrying his points. he carries points with the bench, but not with the caucus. no following has he, no troop of friends, .but those whose intellect he fires. no sweaty mob will carry him on their shoulders. and yet all new england to the remotest farmhouse, or lumberers' camp in the woods of maine, delights to tell and hear of anecdotes of his forensic eloquence. what he said at salem, at the knapp trial ; and how in boston he looked a witness out of court, once, he set his great eyes on him, and searched him through and through; then as the cause went on, and this prisoner's perjury was not yet called for, he looked round on him as if to see if he was safe and ready for the inquisition he was preparing to inflict on him. the witness felt for his hat, and edged 346 journal [age 39 towards the door; a third time he looked on him, and the witness could sit no longer, but seized his opportunity, fled out of court, and could nowhere be found, such was the terror of those eyes. people think that in our license of construing the constitution, and the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor, and one frenchman thinks he has found it in our marriage, and one in our calvinism. but the fact of two poles is universal; the fact of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each develops the other, each by its own activity. wild liberty develops iron conscience; want of liberty strengthens decorous and convenient law, which supersedes in a measure the native conscience. queenie makes herself merry with the reformers who make unleavened bread, and are foes to the death to fermentation. queenie says, god made yeast as well as wheat, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation ; that the fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. but that they wish 1 mrs. emerson had much to bear from the whims of the * 18431 earth spirit. faces 347 the “pure wheat ” and will die but it shall not ferment. stop, dear nature, these incessant advances; let me scotch these ever-rolling wheels. earth spirit, living, a black river like that swarthy stream which rushes through the human body is thy nature, demoniacal, warm, fruitful, sad, nocturnal. february 8. as we go along the street, the eyes of all the passengers either ask, ask, continually of all they meet, or else assert, assert to all. only rarely do we meet a face which has the balance of expression, neither asking leave to be, nor rudely egotistic, but equally receptive and affirmative. w. a. tappan says, that when a man is looked at, he instantly assumes a new expression, and strangers whom he meets every day in the street grow angry at being regarded.' crude reformers who so constantly presented themselves as guests at her table, and criticized and ate or abstained. like her brother, doctor charles t. jackson, the distinguished chemist and geologist, she had a scientific taste, and used the knowledge she learned from him in her household management. i william a. tappan, like giles waldo and edward palmer, who have been alluded to, was one of the young “ sons of the morning" in whom mr. emerson felt an interest. he wrote some verses for the dial. he married miss sturgis, a 348 journal [age 39 strict conversation with a friend is the magazine out of which all good writing is drawn. [here follow the passages from “experience” on god's delight in isolating us and hiding the past and future; on the eye making the horizon, and the mind's eye deifying persons; and on skepticisms as limitations of the affirmative. see essays, second series, pp. 67, 68; 76, 77 ; 75.] men may affect modesty as much as they will, every speaker wants the most intelligent audience, wants genius to hear him. it is very funny to go in to a family where the father and mother are devoted to the children. you flatter yourself for an instant that you have secured your friend's ear, for his countenance brightens; then you discover that he has just caught the eye of his babe over your shoulder, and is chirruping to him. the moral must have its origin from inward fountains, but must have its objects in the variety of social life; how much we are domesticated valued friend of mr. and mrs. emerson, and, later, moved to lenox, where he passed his days as a scholar-farmer. 1843] john quincy adams 349 by the moral. “i feel at home,” said mrs. b., “more than among my relations, for you are honest people.” so in my experience with the praying traveller at the hotel. so when i go abroad, if i enter a church, the first godly sentiment makes me truly at home. the source must not be the expectations of others, but a delight in serving, an effusion of good will, a delight in serving and not in being seen to serve, not the feeling of duty, but the wish to make happy. a man going out of constantinople met the plague coming in, who said he was sent thither for twenty thousand souls. forty thousand persons were swept off, and when the traveller came back, he met the plague coming out of the city. “why did you kill forty thousand ? ” he asked. “i only killed twenty,” replied the pest; “ fear killed the rest.” mr. adams chose wisely and according to his constitution, when, on leaving the presidency, he went into congress. he is no literary old gentleman, but a bruiser, and loves the mêlée. when they talk about his age and venerableness and nearness to the grave, he knows better, nessa earne 350 journal [age 39 he is like one of those old cardinals, who, as quick as he is chosen pope, throws away his crutches and his crookedness, and is as straight as a boy. he is an old roué who cannot live on slops, but must have sulphuric acid in his tea. there is no line that does not return; i suppose the mathematicians will tell us that what are called straight lines are lines with long curves, but that there is no straight line in nature. if, as you say, we are destroying number by affirming the strict infinite, why then i concede that number also is swallowable, and that one of these days we shall eat it like custard. national characteristics stand no chance beside intellectual. physicians say every constitution makes a new case of fever. so it is with persons. our national traits may appear so long as we are drowsy and have headache, but put me in good spirits, search me with thought, and all nations are men together. the first englishman i met in travelling was a frank, affectionate fellow, and the first frenchman was a mystic. major davezac at the carlton house, new i compare the heresy of the archangel of the sun in « uriel ” in the poems. 351 1843] père antoine york, told me of father antoine at new orleans, the only man left attached to the spanish government when the americans took possession of the city. he never dined at home, but when the noon came, went into the nearest house wherever he walked, and said, “my child, i have come to dine with you.” then they made festival. after dinner, he smoked a cigar, slept half an hour, blessed the house, and departed. when he fell sick, hourly bulletins were issued of his health : when he died, all shops were shut, all courts and legislatures adjourned. two shillings were found in his desk, and his testament begged all his children of all sects — for he would not separate in this instrument those whom in heart he had never separated — to kneel down for five minutes and pray that his term of purgatory might be shortened. and protestant and catholic knelt down and prayed. he preached a crusade against the english during the siege. and general jackson came and thanked him, and told him that his prayers and urgent addresses were as good to him as a thousand men. he had te deum sung in the church. abbess of the ursuline convent and her bell of st. victoire. a vow of a bell of one thousand ame 352 [age 39 journal pounds' weight, not if the victory, but because the victory. the book opened of itself to the prayer of the day, it was the prayer to st. victoire. general jackson said, “ this was very extraordinary, major davezac, and i tell you, sir, that something very remarkable has attended this campaign. ever since the battle on the night of the 23d, until the retreat of the british, i have had the sense that these things had occurred to me before, and been obliterated; and when i observed it, i was sure of success, for i knew that god would not give me previsions of disaster, but signs of victory. he said, this ditch can never be passed. it cannot be done.” we are all chemists who only know our own gold. men cast pearls about in large companies where i go, and none but i seems to know that they are pearls. society. i feel and own your power, but i lament that your power smothers mine. this i regret, not for my sake, for i am well content to lie hid a year, but for yours, that it prevents me making that just return which your merit demands; and i should like to justify to you your good deed and will towards me. 1843] mahomet and woman 353 democracy with us is charged with being malignant, and i think it seems aimless, selfish resistance, pulling down, and wild wish to have physical freedom, — but for what? only for freedom; not to any noble end. vethake' thought that society was fast arriving at the excess of democracy, — universal abolition, i think, he called it, which he thought the absolute extinction of the feminine principle. then woman will say, i cannot stand this death, and will rise in indignation and end that epoch. mr. v's opinion was that mahomet had tried power, and jesus, or, i think, john, persuasion; that mahomet had felt that persuasion, this john-persuasion had miserably failed, was a pretty poor shift or system of shifts, this expediency or system of coaxing and example and so forth, precisely that against which nowadays we write essays and lectures; and he said, i will try this oriental weapon, the sword, which never, never will go west; and he said to ayesha, “i have found out how to work it. this woman element will not bear the sword; well, i will dispose of woman: she may exist; but henceforward i will veil it :” so he veiled woman. then the sword could work and eat. a man and a woman he thought the true social unit, born of 1 an acquaintance in new york. 354 journal [age 39 the community, and that the old and the young could only exist in a state of tutelage or protection; that the only holders of property were the married couple, who should not take either the name of husband or wife, but a new name common to both, and have but one vote. three ways of killing there were. in the third, i smelt fagots : society, he said, should not put to death, but should say, this cannot be, and it would cease. i remembered what i have heard or dreamed, that the most terrific of hierarchs would be a mystic. beware of swedenborg in power. swedenborg in minority, swedenborg contemplative, is excellent company; but swedenborg executive would be the devil in crown and sceptre. fagots! in the capacious leisures of the spirit i think we may beguile the time by the play of the understanding and the use of the hands, and yet be candidates for the divine succors and the use of divine methods as truly as if we should fold our hands and rely on transcendent methods only. cheap literature makes new markets. we have thought only of a box audience, or at most of box and pit; but now it appears there is also slip audience, and galleries one, two, three; and back 1843] world self-sufficient 355 stairs, and street listeners, besides. greeley tells me that graham's magazine has seventy thousand subscribers, and i may write a lecture, if i will, to seventy thousand readers. like vethake, brisbane thought the democracy did not wish to build, but only to tear down; “ to tear down,” as he said, “god and the bank, and everything else they could see.” concord, march 12. home again from my long journey to count my treasures old and new, and, might it be, to impart them. the world has since the beginning an incurable trick of taking care of itself, or every hilltop in america would have counsel to offer. we sit and think how richly ornamented the wide champaign and yonder woodlands to the foot of those blue mountains shall be, and meanwhile here are ready and willing thousands strong and teachable who have no land to till. if government in our present clumsy fashion must go on, could it not assume the charge of providing each citizen, on his coming of age, with a pair of acres, to enable him to get his bread honestly? perhaps one day it will be done by the state's assuming to 356 journal [age 39 distribute the estates of the dead. in the united states almost every state owns so much public land, that it would be practicable to give what they have, and devise a system by which the state should continue to possess a fund of this sort. gypsies and militia captains, paddies and chinese, all manner of cunning and pragmatical men and a few fine women, a strange world made up of such oddities; the only beings that belong to the horizon being the fine women. cheap is the humiliation of to-day which gives wit, eloquence, poetry to-morrow. all work for me. i and my day. some persons use my language, but are foreign to me, and others who use a language foreign to me are very near me. events are the clothes of the spirit. why should we try to steal and strip them. and we know god so, as we know each other by our garments. “you flee fast, but the pursuers flee after you as fast.” so said to me mrs. rebecca black in new york. at the five points i heard a woman swearing very liberally as she talked with her com1843] oaths. goethe 357 panions; but when i looked at her face, i saw that she was no worse than other women; that she used the dialect of her class, as all others do, and are neither better nor worse for it; but under this bad costume was the same repose, the same probity as in broadway. nor was she misinterpreted by her mates. there is a virtue of vice as well as of virtue. and the spirit drove him apart into a solitary place. this does the spirit for every man. (from r) . i find it easier to read goethe than mundt, and it must always be easier to understand a sensible than a weak man in a foreign tongue, because things themselves translate for the one, and not for the other. yet very pleasant is the progress which we make in a new language, the medium through which we explore the thoughts ever growing rarer, until at last we become unconscious of its presence in its transparency. ellery's verses should be called poetry for poets, they touch the fine pulses of thought and will be the cause of more poetry and of verses more finished and better turned than them358 [age 39 journal selves; but i cannot blame the north americans and knickerbockers if they should not suspect his genius. when the rudder is invented for the balloon, railroads will be superseded. and when ellery's muse finds an aim, whether some passion or some fast faith, any kind of thing on which all these wild and sometimes brilliant beads can be strung, we shall have a poet. now he fantasies merely, as dilettanti in music. he breaks faith continually with the intellect. the sonnet has merits, fine lines, gleams of deep thought; well worth sounding, worth studying, if only i could confide that he had any steady meaning before him, that he kept faith. with himself; but i fear that he changed his purpose with every verse; was led up and down, to this or that, with the exigencies of the rhyme, and only wanted to write and rhyme somewhat, careless how or what, and stopped when he came to the end of the paper. he breaks faith with the reader ; wants integrity. yet for poets it will be a better book than a whole volume of bryant and campbell. miss peabody has beautiful colors to sell, but her shop has no attraction for house-builders and merchants : mr. allston and mr. cheney will probably find the way to it. a man of genius is privileged only as far as 1843] channing as poet 359 he is a genius. his dulness is as insupportable as any other dulness. only success will justify a departure and a license. but ellery has freaks which are entitled to no more charity than the dulness and madness of others, which he despises. he uses a license continually which would be just in oral improvisation, but is not pardonable in written verses. he fantasies on his piano. e. h. said, that he was a wood-elf which one of the maids in a story fell in love with, and then grew uneasy, desiring that he might be baptized. margaret said, he reminded one of a great genius with a little wretched boy trotting beside him., « for in thee hides a matchless light that splendors all the dreaming night; thy bark shall be a precious stone in whose red veins deep magic hides, thy ecstasies be known to none, except those vast ethereal tides that circulate our being round but whisper not the slightest sound.” : “ away, away, thou starlit breath! on bended knees i pray thee go; 1 this and the following verse seem the best of the short extracts from poems by channing copied on this page of the journal. 360 journal (age 39 o bind thy temples not with death, nor let thy shadow fall on snow." jock could not eat rice, because it came west, nor molasses because it came north, nor put on leathern shoes because of the methods by which leather was procured, nor indeed wear a woolen coat. but dick gave him a gold eagle that he might buy wheat and rye, maple sugar and an oaken chest, and said, this gold-piece, unhappy jock! is molasses, and rice, and horsehide and sheepskin.' [here follow sentences from the chinese classical work, commonly called the four books, translated by rev. david collier. these and other oriental religious sayings were printed in the dial, there called “ethnical scriptures.”] criticism. so the gothic cathedral and the shakspeare perfection is as wild and unaccountable as a geranium or a rabbit or an ornithorhynchus. it is done, and we must go to work and do something else, that undone something which is now hinting and working and impatient here in and around us. 1 the superfine abstinences of the fruitlands projectors are here in mind. 361 1843] poet. health drawing, m. r. said from mr. cheney, was only a good eye for distances; and the descriptive talent in the poet seems to depend on a certain lakelike passiveness to receive the picture of the whole landscape in its native proportions, uninjured, and then with sweet heedfulness the caution of love, to transfer it to the tablet of language. health. health is the most objective of subjects. the vishnu sarna said, “ it is the same to him who wears a shoe as if the whole earth were covered with leather.” so i spread my health over the whole world and make it strong, happy, and serviceable. to the sick man, the world is a medicine chest. poet. it is true that when a man writes poetry, he appears to assume the high feminine part of his nature. we clothe the poet, therefore, in robes and garlands, which are proper to woman. the muse is feminine. but action is male. and a king is draped almost in feminine attire. the philosophers at fruitlands have such an image of virtue before their eyes, that the poetry of man and nature they never see; the poetry 362 journal [age 39 that is in man's life, the poorest pastoral clownish life; the light that shines on a man's hat, in a child's spoon, the sparkle on every wave and on every mote of dust, they see not. lectures. “ aristo said, that neither a bath nor a lecture did signify anything unless they scoured and made men clean.” pride is a great convenience,' . . . so much handsomer and cheaper than vanity, but proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving translations. i thank the translators. ... march 23. two brave chanticleers 3 go up and down stripping the plumes from all the fine birds, showing that all are not in the best health. it makes much unhappiness on all sides; much crowing it occasions on the part of the two cockerels who so shrewdly discoverand dismantle all the young i compare wealth” (conduct of life, p. 114). 2 the rest of the passage, telling mr. emerson's views and practice, is printed in “ books” (society and solitude, p. 204). 3 probably the englishmen lane and wright. 1843] dispute. miss fuller 363 re beaux of the aviary. but alas, the two valiant cocks who strip are no better than those who are stripped, only they have sharper beak and talons. in plain prose, i grieved so much to hear the most intellectual youth i have met, charles newcomb, so disparaged, and our good and most deserving scholar, theodore parker, threatened as a morsel to be swallowed when he shall come to-morrow, and all this by my brave friends, who are only brave, not helpful, not loving, not creative, that i said, cursed is preaching, the better it is, the worse. a preacher is a bully: i who have preached so much, — by the help of god will never preach more. we want the fortification of an acknowledgment of the good in us. “the girl is the least part of herself”; god is in the girl. that is the reason why fools can be so beloved by sages; that, under all the corsets and infirmities, is life, and the revelation of reason and of conscience. margaret. a pure and purifying mind, selfpurifying also, full of faith in men, and inspiring it. unable to find any companion great enough to receive the rich effusions of her thought, so that her riches are still unknown and seem un364 journal (age 39 ii knowable. it is a great joy to find that we have underrated our friend, that he or she is far more excellent than we had thought. all natures seem poor beside one so rich, which pours a stream of amber over all objects, clean and unclean, that lie in its path, and makes that comely and presentable which was mean in itself. we are taught by her plenty how lifeless and outward we were, what poor laplanders burrowing under the snows of prudence and pedantry. beside her friendship, other friendships seem trade, and by the firmness with which she treads her upward path, all mortals are convinced that another road exists than that which their feet know." the wonderful generosity of her sentiments pours a contempt on books and writing at the very time when one asks how shall this fiery picture be kept in its glow and variety for other eyes. she excels other intellectual persons in this, that her sentiments are more blended with her life; so the expression of them has greater steadiness and greater clearness. i have never known any example of such steady progress from stage to stage of thought and of character. an inspirer of i this and part of the following sentence are used, but not personally applied, in “ manners” (essays, second series, p. 150). 1843] a heroine 365 courage, the secret friend of all nobleness, the patient waiter for the realization of character, forgiver of injuries, gracefully waving aside folly, and elevating lowness, —in her presence all were apprised of their fettered estate and longed for liberation, of ugliness and longed for their beauty; of meanness and panted for grandeur. her growth is visible. all the persons whom we know have reached their height, or else their growth is so nearly at the same rate with ours, that it is imperceptible, but this child inspires always more faith in her. she rose before me at times into heroical and godlike regions, and i could remember no superior women, but thought of ceres, minerva, proserpine, and the august ideal forms of the foreworld. she said that no man gave such invitation to her mind as to tempt her to full expression; that she felt a power to enrich her thought with such wealth and variety of embellishment as would, no doubt, be tedious to such as she conversed with. and there is no form that does not seem to wait her beck, — dramatic, lyric, epic, passionate, pictorial, humorous. she has great sincerity, force, and fluency as a writer, yet her powers of speech throw her 1 this sentence is used impersonally in “ manners.” 366 journal [age 39 writing into the shade. what method, what exquisite judgment, as well as energy, in the selection of her words; what character and wisdom they convey! you cannot predict her opinion. she sympathizes so fast with all forms of life, that she talks never narrowly or hostilely, nor betrays, like all the rest, under a thin garb of new words, the old droning cast-iron opinions or notions of many years' standing. what richness of experience, what newness of dress, and fast as olympus to her principle. anda silver eloquence, which inmost polymnia taught. meantime, all this pathos of sentiment and riches of literature, and of invention, and this march of character threatening to arrive presently at the shores and plunge into the sea of buddhism and mystic trances, consists with a boundless fun and drollery, with light satire, and the most entertaining conversation in america. her experience contains, i know, golden moments, which, if they could be fitly narrated, would stand equally beside any histories of magnanimity which the world contains; and whilst dante's nuova vita is almost unique in the literature of sentiment, i have called the imperfect record she gave me of two of her days, “ nuovissima vita.” 1843] king. martyr. dial 367 a working king is one of the best symbols. alfred and ulysses are such. and we see them now and then in society ; — oftener off the throne, of course, than on it. this is the right country for them.' a chamber of flame in which the martyr passes is more magnificent than any royal apartment; and this martyr palace may be built up on any waste place instantly. persons are fine things, but they cost so much! for thee i must pay me. fine constellation of people; rare force of character and wealth of truth; they ought to cluster and shine and illuminate the nation and the nations. alcott said reasonable words about the dial, that it ought to be waited for by all the newspapers and journals, the abolitionists ought to get their leading from it, and not be able to spurn it as they do. it should lead. here the sceptre is offered us, and we refuse it from poorness of spirit. when i see what fine people we have, i think it a sort of king réné period : there is no doi compare what is said of a working king in “the young american” (nature, addresses, etc., p. 386). 368 journal [age 39 ing, but rare and shrilling prophecy from bands of competing minstrels and the age shall not sneak out, but affirm all the beauty and truth in its heart. “dial has not piety.” the same persons should not constitute a standing committee on reform. a man may say, i am the chief of sinners, but once. he is already damned, if having come once to the insight of that condition, he remains there to say it again. but the committee on reform should be made of new persons every day ; of those just arrived at the power of comparing the state of society with their own daily expanding spirit. fatal to discuss reform weekly! the poorest poet or young beginner in the fine arts hesitates to speak of the design he wishes to execute, lest it die in your cold fingers. and this art of life has the same pudency and will not be exposed. it is a great joy to get away from persons, and live under the dominion of the multiplication table.' i it should be remembered that mr. emerson had been much at the mercy of mr. alcott and his new disciples for several months, which probably was partly the cause of his 1843] truth. woman. poem 369 milton is the most literary man in literature. we are greatly vexed when poets, who are by excellence the thinking and feeling of the world, are deficient in truth of intellect and of affection. then is feeling unfeeling and thought unwise. the conversation turned upon the state and duties of woman. as always, it was historically considered, and had a certain falseness so. for me, to-day, woman is not a degraded person with duties forgotten, but a docile daughter of god with her face heavenward endeavoring to hear the divine word and to convey it to me. i read again the verses of margaret with the new commentary of beautiful anecdotes she had given, freshly in my mind. of course the poems grew golden, the twig blossomed in my hands: but a poem should not need its relation to life to explain it; it should be a new life, not still half engaged in the soil, like the new created lions in eden. long absence from home in the winter, but it was yet some weeks before they moved to the poor farm, which they had “ redeemed from human ownership” for their experiment of a new eden at harvard, massachusetts. 370 journal [age 39 do you know how diamonds and other gems were invented ? rim, wishing to go on the errands of ormuzd through the kingdoms of ariman without discovery, received from ormuzd in a pod of lupine seven days in the form of seven diamonds. he used each of them as a lamp, which, spent, gave him a sharp and wise light for his path for twenty-four degrees of the way. on other occasions, ormuzd gave him spring days in the form of emeralds, midsummer days in the shape of rubies, and autumn in topazes. all these stones are children of day. the world must be new as we know it, for see how lately it has bethought itself of so many articles of the simplest convenience; as, for example, wooden clothes-pins to pinch the clothes to the line, instead of metallic pins, were introduced since the peace of 1783. my mother remembers when her sister, mrs. inman, returned from england at that time, and brought these articles with her furniture, then new in this country; then the india-rubber shoe; the railroad; the steamboat; and the air-tight stove; the friction match ; and cut nails. the difference between talent and genius is, that talent says things which he has never heard 1843] genius. talk. thoreau 371 but once, and genius things which he has never heard. genius is power; talent is applicability. a human body, an animal, is an applicability; the life, the soul is genius. “mamma,” said the child,“they have begun again !”, elizabeth hoar says, “i love henry, but do not like him.” young men, like henry thoreau, owe us a new world, and they have not acquitted the debt. for the most part, such die young, and so dodge the fulfilment. one of our girls said, that henry never went through the kitchen without coloring.” do not mince your speech. power fraternizes with power.... montaigne. in roxbury, in 1825, i read cotton's translation of montaigne. it seemed to i louisa alcott, or one of her sisters, was sent by her mother to find out whether the philosophers had desisted from their speculations and got to some needed task, and came in with this hopeless report. 2 mr. thoreau was always most modest and yet chivalrous in his treatment of women of high or low degree. 3 the rest of the paragraph is found in natural history of intellect (p. 30). 372 [age 39 journal me as if i had written the book myself in some former life, so sincerely it spoke my thought and experience. no book before or since was ever so much to me as that. how i delighted afterward in reading cotton's dedication to halifax, and the reply of halifax, which seemed no words, of course, but genuine suffrages. afterwards i went to paris in 1833, and to the père le chaise, and stumbled on the tomb of auguste collignon, who, said the stone, formed himself to virtue on the essays of montaigne. afterwards john sterling wrote a loving criticism on montaigne in the westminster review, with a journal of his own pilgrimage to montaigne's estate and château,' — and, soon after, carlyle writes me word that this same lover of montaigne is a lover of me. now, i have been introducing to his genius two of my friends, james and tappan, who both warm to him as to their brother. i some sentences from the above are printed in “ montaigne” (representative men, pp. 162, 163). 2 henry james and william a. tappan, the former a lifelong friend of mr. emerson, and a man of great charm, originality, and wit. he early became interested in swedenborg, and was the author of several philosophical and religious works, among them substance and shadow and the secret of swedenborg. man 1843] weakness. brook farm 373 reference. we praise the pine because it looks like a palm, the oriole because it looks like equatorial birds, and all our view of nature is adjusted to a tropical standard. the man under the line delights as much in the alpine and arctic type and dreams of the cool water and the apple and pear and peach of the temperate climates where nature serves man. endless weak reference. grief and joy, charity and faith get derivative and referring. dire necessity is good and strong; — i love him, i hate him; i like, i dislike. once there was a race that subsisted, but these seeming, spectral fellows that ask even when they curse and swear — or but affect to curse and swear! i wish there was no more good nature left in the world ; tomahawks are better. i think the reason why we value mystics so much is, as oaks indicate a strong soil, so a thick crop of mystics shows like redemption from our universal supplication of each other. of books. he is a poor writer who does not teach courage of treatment. the brook farm community is an expression in plain prose and actuality of the theory 374 journal [age 39 of impulse. it contains several bold and consistent philosophers, both men and women, who carry out the theory, odiously enough, inasmuch as this centripetence of theirs is balanced by no centrifugence; this wish to obey impulse is guarded by no old, old intellect — or that which knows metes and bounds. the young people who have been faithful to this, their testimony, have lived a great deal in a short time, but have come forth with shattered constitutions. it is an intellectual sansculottism. happily, charles newcomb and george bradford have been there, and their presence could not but be felt as, sanitary and retentive. charles newcomb, i hear, was greatly respected, and his conduct, even in trifles, observed and imitated, — the quiet, retreating, demoniacal youth. nathaniel hawthorne said that burton felt the presence of newcomb all the time.' i read in ward's chinese book, the other day, of bards; many sentences purporting that 1 interesting and almost uniformly pleasant accounts of life at brook farm are “ reminiscences of brook farm,” by george p. bradford, century magazine, vol. xxiii; “ a girl of sixteen at brook farm," by mrs. sedgwick, atlantic monthly, vol. lxxxv; and “ a visit to brook farm," by mrs. kirby, overland monthly, vol. v. 1843] poets wine 375 bards love wine. tea and coffee are my wine, and i have finer and lighter wines than these." but some nectar an intellectual man will naturally use. for he will soon learn the secret that beside the energy of his conscious intellect, his intellect is capable of new energy by abandonment to the nature of things. . . . all persons avail themselves of such means as they can to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers. one finds it in music, one in war, one in great pictures or sculpture; one in travelling; one in conversation; in politics, in mobs, in fires, in theatres, in love, in science ; in animal intoxication. i take many stimulants and often make an art of my inebriation. i read proclus for my opium; it excites my imagination to let sail before me the pleasing and grand figures of gods and dæmons and demoniacal men. i hear of rumors rife among the most ancient gods, of azonic gods who are itinerants, of dæmons with fulgid eyes, of the unenvying and exuberant will of the gods; the aquatic gods, the plain of truth, the meadow, the nutriment of the gods, the paternal port, and all the i mr. emerson tells of these in his poem bacchus.” 2 what follows is printed in the poet” (essays, second series, pp. 26, 27). 376 (age 39 journal rest of the platonic rhetoric quoted as household words.' by all these and so many rare and brave words i am filled with hilarity and spring, my heart dances, my sight is quickened, i behold shining relations between all beings, and am impelled to write and almost to sing. i think one would grow handsome who read proclus much and well. but of this inebriation i spoke of, it is an old knowledge that intellect by its relation to what is prior to intellect is a god. this is inspiration. they (the neoplatonists speak of the gods with such pictorial distinctness often that one would think they had actually been present, swedenborg-like, at the olympic feasts; e.g., “ this is that which emits the intelligible light, that, when it appeared, astonished the intellectual gods and made them admire their father, as orpheus says. how often i have said, what this morning i must say once more, that the conscience of the coming age will put its surveillance on the intellect. we accuse ourselves that we have been useless, but not that we have been thoughtless. i these are also alluded to in “books” (society and solitude, p. 203). 18431 calvinist. the light 377 thou oughtest to have listened, will it say, so shouldest thou have heard the oracles, which would elevate every day of life. it is not in the power of god to make a communication of his will to a calvinist. for to every inward revelation he holds up his silly book, and quotes chapter and verse against the bookmaker and man-maker, against that which quotes not, but is and cometh. there is a light older than intellect, by which the intellect lives and works, always new, and which degrades every past and particular shining of itself. this light, calvinism denies, in its idolatry of a certain past shining swedenborg, behmen, spinoza, will appear original to uninstructed and thoughtless persons." ... a thinker, or a man through whom shineth that light which is older than intellect and through which alone intellect is a god, will undervalue each reporter when he beholds the splendor of the truth itself. and though such a person will do justice to the good intention of one of these men of god who strove to say truly what they had seen, yet he will see that to such as quote 1 two sentences immediately following are in “ quotations and originality” (letters and social aims, p. 181). 378 [age 39 journal their words instead of listening to the truth itself, they falsify the truth: for his book is not truth, but truth swedenborgized or behmenized or spinozised. much poor talk concerning woman, which at least had the effect of revealing the true sex of several of the party who usually go disguised in the form of the other sex. thus mrs. b. is a man. the finest people marry the two sexes in their own person. hermaphrodite is then the symbol of the finished soul. it was agreed that in every act should appear the married pair : the two elements should mix in every act. to me it sounded hoarsely, the attempt to prescribe didactically to woman her duties. man can never tell woman what her duties are: he will certainly end in describing a man in female attire, as harriet martineau, a masculine woman, solved her problem of woman. no, woman only can tell the heights of feminine nature, and the only way in which man can help her, is by observing woman reverently, and whenever she speaks from herself, and catches him in inspired moments up to a heaven of honor and religion, to hold her to that point by reverential recognition of the divinity that speaks through her. 1843] ellen tucker. spring 379 i can never think of woman without gratitude for the bright revelations of her best nature which have been made to me, unworthy. the angel who walked with me in younger days shamed my ambition and prudence by her generous love in our first interview. i described my prospects. she said, i do not wish to hear of your prospects. april 10. the slowly retreating snow blocks the roads and wood paths and shuts me in the house. but yesterday the warm south wind drew me to the top of the hill, like the dove from the ark, to see if these white waters were abated, and there was place for the foot. the grass springs up already between the holes in the snow, and i walked along the knolls and edges of the hill wherever the winter bank was melted, but i thrust my cane into the bank two feet perpendicular. i greeted the well-known pine grove which i could not reach; the pine tops seemed to cast a friendly gold-green smile of acquaintance toward me, for it was in my heart that i had not yet quite got home from my late journey, until i had revisited and rejoined these vegetable dæmons. the air was kind and clear, the sky southward was full of comets, so white and fan-shaped and ethereal 380 journal [age 39 lay the clouds, as if the late visit of this foreign wonder had set the fashion for the humbler meteors. and all around me the new-come sparrows, robins, bluebirds, and blackbirds were announcing their arrival with great spirit. the transcendentalist or realist is distinguished from the churchman herein, that he limits his affirmation to his perception, and never goes beyond the warrant of his experience (spiritual and sensuous) in his creed. whilst the churchman affirms many things received on testimony as of equal value with the moral intuitions. i told mr. means that he need not consult the germans, but, if he wished at any time to know what the transcendentalists believed, he might simply omit what in his own mind he added from the tradition, and the rest would be transcendentalism. the church affirms this and that fact of time and place; describes circumstances; a circumstantial heaven; a circumstantial hell. the way of the spirit is different. it never antedates its revelations, it does not tell you when or how; but it says, be thus and thus, and in our doing, 1843] webster's ambition 381 it opens the path, shines in the way we are to go, and creates around us new unpredicted relations. daniel webster is a great man with a small ambition. nature has built him and holds him forth as a sample of the heroic mould to this puny generation. he was virtual president of the united states from the hour of the speech on foot's resolutions in the united states senate in 1832, being regarded as the expounder of the constitution and the defender of law. but this did not suffice; he wished to be an officer, also; wished to add a title to his name, and be a president. that ruined him. he should have learned from the chinese that “it has never been the case that, when a man in a place where no mulberry trees yet grew could cause the aged to wear silks, and where there were no breeders of fowls or hogs or sheep could cause the aged to eat flesh and the young did not suffer hunger or cold, — he did not become emperor.” the drop of nectar. in nature the “woodness ” or tendency to make an idle savage and idiot of a man, through the seduction of forests, mountains, and waters, is a conspicuous example 382 (age 39 journal of the bias or small excess of force which is always added in the vital directions. buddhism. winter, night, sleep, are all the invasions of eternal buddh, and it gains a point every day. let be, laissez-faire, so popular now in philosophy and in politics, that is bald buddhism; and then very fine names has it got to cover up its chaos withal, namely, trances, raptures, abandonment, ecstasy,—all buddh, naked buddh. travelling, forsooth! as if every traveller did not feel himself an impertinence when he came among the diligent in their places. do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald the milk pans, and clout the infants, and burn the brushwood? and yet humboldt may travel, or any other man, when the state seems to travel in his legs, as these railway levellers whom i met this afternoon.' nature is the strictest economist,» ... 1 the fitchburg railroad was in course of construction, and passed mr. emerson's beloved walden. 2 the rest of the passage thus beginning is in “the young american” (nature, addresses, etc., p. 373). 1843] concord's advantages 383 ellen wishes to know if she may come and see when the railroad goes by ? “father, what makes the railroad grow worse?” i said she must come in, for it was damp, and she would get sick, and i could not spare my little daughter. she answered, “could you not spare her to god?” it is a compensation for the habitual moderation of nature in these concord fields and the want of picturesque outlines, the ease of getting about. i long sometimes to have mountains, ravines, and aumes like that in lincoln, new hampshire, within reach of my eyes and feet; but the thickets of the forest and the fatigue of mountains are spared me and i go through concord as through a park. concord is a little town, and yet has its honors. we get our handful of every ton that comes to the city. we have had our share of everett and webster, who have both spoken here. so has edward taylor. so did george bancroft, and bronson alcott, and charles lane, and garrison and phillips, the abolition orators. we have had our shows and processions, conjurors, and beargardens, and here, too, came herr driesbach 384 [age 39 journal with his cats and snakes, lying down on a lioness, and kissing a tiger, and rolling himself up, not in leopard-skins, but in live leopards, and his companion with his tippet of anacondas. hither come in summer the penobscot indians, and make baskets for us on the river-bank. doctor channing and harriet martineau were here and — what i think much morehere was aunt mary, ellen, edward, and charles; here is elizabeth hoar; here have been, or are, margaret fuller, sam and anna ward, caroline sturgis, charles newcomb, george bradford, ellery channing, nathaniel hawthorne, sarah alden ripley; henry thoreau, james elliot cabot. in the old time, john winthrop, john eliot, peter bulkeley; then whitefield; then hancock, adams and the college were here in 1775. [mr. emerson, years later, added the following:-] kossuth spoke to us in the court-house in 1852. agassiz, greenough, clough, jeffries wyman, samuel hoar, lafayette. april 17. how sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feelaf 1843] no affinity 385 ing that we have spun a rope of sand, that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same words.'... could they but once understand that i loved to know that they existed and heartily wished them godspeed, yet out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and could well consent to their living in another town, from any claim that i felt on them, it would be great satisfaction. not this, but something like this, i said, and then, as the discourse, as so often, touched character, i added, that they were both intellectual, they assumed to be substantial and central, to be the thing they said, but were not; but only intellectual, or the scholars, the learned, of the spirit or central life. if they were that, if the centres of their life were coincident with the centre of life, i should bow the knee, i should accept without gainsaying all that they said, as if i had said it: just as our saint (though morbid), jones very, had affected us with what was best in him, but i felt in them the slight dislocation of these centres which allowed them 1 the passage beginning thus forms the conclusion of nominalist and realist” (essays, second series). the philosophers there alluded to were alcott and lane. 386 [age 39 journal to stand aside and speak of these facts knowingly. therefore, i was at liberty to look at them, not as the commanding fact, but as one of the whole circle of facts. they did not like pictures, marbles, woodlands, and poetry ; i liked all these, and lane and alcott too, as one figure more in the various landscape. and now, i said, will you not please to pound me a little before i go, just by way of squaring the account, that i may not remember that i alone was saucy ? alcott contented himself with quarrelling with the injury done to greater qualities in my company, by the tyranny of my taste; — which certainly was very soft pounding. and so i departed from the divine lotuseaters. саveracity. almost every writing of a liberal kind when at last it is done assumes the air of an escapade, it is done to get rid of it, done for editors, booksellers, and all miscellaneous occasions, and not out of a dire or divine intrinsic necessity. so much deduction from veracity. intellectual race are the new englanders. mrs. ripley' at brook farm said that the young 1 mrs. george ripley. she is not to be confounded with mr. emerson's kinswoman by marriage and lifelong friend, 1843) calvinism. carlyle 387 women who came thither from farms elsewhere would work faithfully and do whatever was given them without grumbling, but there was no heart in it, but their whole interest was in their intellectual culture. “ open the mouth of the cave, and bring out those five kings unto me out of the cave " (joshua x, 22), was dr. frothingham's text on the five points of calvinism. carlyle esteems all living men mice and rats, but that is one of the conditions of his genius. take away that feeling, and you would possibly make him dumb. carlyle in his new book,' as everywhere, is a continuer of the great line of scholars in the world, of horace, varro, pliny, erasmus, scaliger, milton, and well sustains their office in ample credit and honor. if the good heaven have any truth to impart, there he is at his post, a fit organ to say it well. not a prophet, not a poet, but a master of that cunning art which can clothe any fact with a fine robe of words. first in waltham, and, in her later years, in concord, sarah alden bradford ripley, wife of rev. samuel ripley. i past and present. an 388 [age 39 journal nature gives me precious signs in such persons as william tappan, nathaniel hawthorne, and now eminently in l. m. w.,' that in democratic america, she will not be democratized. how cloistered and constitutionally sequestered from the market and gossips ! second advent. i read of an excellent millerite who gives out that he expects the second advent of the lord in 1843, but if there is any error in his computation, — he shall look for him until he comes. the hurts of the husbandmen are many. as soon as the heat bursts his vine-seed and the cotyledons open, the striped yellow bugs and the stupid squash-bug, smelling like a decomposing pear, sting the little plants to death and destroy the hope of melons. and as soon as the grass is well cut and spread on the ground, the thunderclouds, which are the bugs of the haymakers, come growling down the heaven and make tea of his hay. we cannot forgive you that worst want of tact which incapacitates you from discriminating i a writer, not identified, whose offered work interested mr. emerson; but he had, once at least, to reject. 1843] disputing. washington 389 between what is to be disputed, and what is to be reverenced or cherished in your friend's communications. the babe of a choctaw, the cub of a lion, may be strangled by a boy: and the ablest genius, if he trust you with his yet unripe fancies, casts himself helpless on your compassion. life and death are in your hands, let his power and renown be what they may. there is no part then to be taken but to throw yourself as much as possible into the neutral state of mind and entertain his thought as far as you can; and where you cannot, be satisfied that you cannot, without criticism. it is, though you can kill it, the babe of a choctaw, the cub of a lion, and will yet approve its sinewy stock. i wrote to thomas carlyle of his new book, past and present.'... i went to washington and spent four days. the two poles of an enormous political battery, galvanic coil on coil, self-increased by series on series of plates from mexico to canada and from the sea westward to the rocky mountains, here 1 the letter is given in the carlyle-emerson correspondence (vol. ii, no. lxvii), and the criticism of the book is on pp. 29, 30. 2 that is, in january. 390 journal (age 39 terminate and play and make the air electric and violent. yet one feels how little, more than how much, man is represented there. i think, in the higher societies of the universe, it will turn out that the angels are molecules, as the devils were always titans, since the dulness of the world needs such mountainous demonstration, and the virtue is so modest and concentrating. may 2. yesterday i read an old file of aunt mary's letters, and felt how she still gains by all comparison with later friends. never any gave higher counsels, as elizabeth hoar most truly said, nor played with all the household incidents with more wit and humor. my life and its early events never look trivial in her letters, but full of eyes, and acquire deepest expression. in america, out-of-doors all seems a market, in-doors an air-tight stove of conventionalism. everybody who comes into the house savors of these precious habits: the men, of the market; the women, of the custom. in every woman's conversation and total influence, mild or acid, lurks the conventional devil. they look at your carpet, they look at your cap, at your salt-cel18431 brook farm relations 391 lar, at your cook and waiting-maid, conventionally,– to see how close they square with the customary cut in boston and salem and new bedford. but aunt mary and elizabeth do not bring into a house with them a platoon of conventional devils. may 7. yesterday george bradford walked and talked of the community and cleared up some of the mists which gossip had made: and expressed the conviction, shared by himself and his friends there, that plain dealing was the best defence of manners and morals between the sexes. i suppose that the danger arises whenever bodily familiarity grows up without a spiritual intimacy. the reason why there is purity in marriage is, that the parties are universally near and helpful, and not only near bodily. if their wisdoms come near and meet, there is no danger of passion. therefore, the remedy of impurity is to come nearer. many events on the light-winged hours. alcott and lane make ready to depart. channing has brought his lares to concord, and henry thoreau is gone yesterday to new york whence come the warm south winds. 1 mr. thoreau went to the home of mr. emerson's older 392 journal [age 39 at brook farm this peculiarity, that there is no head. in every family, a paterfamilias; in every factory, a foreman; in a shop, a master; in a boat, a boatswain; but in brook farm, no authority, but each master and mistress of their own actions, — happy, hapless, sansculottes. yesterday, english visitors, and i waited all day when they should go. if we could establish the rule that each man was a guest in his own house, and when we had shown our visitors the passages of the house, the way to fire, to bread, and water, and thus made them as much at home as the inhabitant, did then leave them to the accidents of intercourse, and went about our ordinary business, a guest would no longer be formidable. at brook farm again, i understand the authority of mr. and mrs. ripley is felt unconsciously by all; and this is ground of regret to individuals, who see that this particular power is thrown into the conservative scale. but mr. and mrs. ripley are the only ones who have identified themselves with the community. they brother william in staten island for the summer and autumn as tutor to his son. 18431 the ripleys. brook farm 393 have married it, and they are it. the others are experimenters who will stay by this if it thrives, being always ready to retire, but these have burned their ships, and are entitled to the moral consideration which this position gives. the young people agree that they have had more rapid experiences than elsewhere befel them; have lived faster. may 1o. this morning sent away l. m. w.'s manuscript with some regret that my wild flowers must ever go back. their value is as a relief from literature, these unhackneyed fresh draughts from the sources of sentiment and thought, far, far from shop and market, or the aim at effect. it is read as we read in an age of polish and criticism the first lines of written prose and verse in a nation. sw george bradford yesterday dug with me in the swamp his young larches, and we sat with the sphagnum and the budding coptis and the blooming white violet, sweet-scented. he talks happily of his new friends. but it is not enough that people should be intelligent and interested in themselves. they must also make me feel that they have a controlling happy future opening before them and inevitably bright, and brightening their 394 journal [age 39 present hour. edward lowell'and charles emerson suggested their promise in their salutation, or in the least transaction. freedom is frivolous beside the tyranny of our genius. the blue sky in the zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with gabriel, michael, uriel, the blue sky would be all that would remain of our furniture. — i have written this or the like of this somewhere else, i know not where. ellery has reticency, carlyle has not. how many things this book of carlyle gives us to think. it is a brave grappling with the problem of the times, no luxurious holding aloof, as is the custom of men of letters, who are usually bachelors and not husbands in the state, but literature here has thrown off his gown and descended into the open lists. the gods are come . among us in the likeness of men. an honest iliad 1 edward jackson lowell, a youth of great promise, the brother of mr. emerson's loved classmate francis cabot lowell, and of john lowell, founder of the lowell institute, studied law but died early. 1843] carlyle's new book 395 of english woes. who is he that can trust himself in the fray? only such as cannot be familiarized, but, nearest seen and touched, is not seen and touched, but remains inviolate, inaccessible, because a higher interest, the politics of a higher sphere bring him here and environ him, as the ambassador carries his country with him. love protects him from profanation. what a book this is in its relation to english privileged estates!' ... gulliver among the lilliputians. this book comes so near to life and men, that one can hardly help looking ahead a little and inquiring whether this strong brain will always be shut up in a scholar's library; whether the most intelligent englishman will nourish no ambition to do that which he describes, and when the hour comes that these volleys of pungent counsels shall have got thoroughly sunk into the ear and heart of the population, and the population is carlyle's, whether our vigorous samson will not have a ruler's part to play. yet nobody, neither law-sergeant nor newspaper, yet cries “ cromwell.” : 1 past and present. then follows the passage (originally printed in the dial, but to be found on pages 384, 385 of the natural history of intellect) pitying the queen, the dukes and lords and bishops, now that carlyle deals with them. 396 journal [age 39 a londoner must exaggerate the social problem. brook farm again! the freaks of the young philosophers show how much life they have, as jockeys, when a horse rolls on the ground, add a gold eagle to his price for every turn he makes. but nothing will take the place of fidelity. the final result will be the same to mrs. ripley and the true workers. yet one would fain say to the dear youths, that pride and bearing will serve for a year or two, but are serpents' eggs, and will end in serpents, though they look now like alabaster and the egg of jove's eagle; that god has suffered us to be represented in genius, but in virtue we must appear in person. brook farm will show a few noble victims, who act and suffer with temper and proportion, but the larger part will be slight adventurers and will shirk work. may 18. i set out yesterday, by the hands of cyrus warren, nineteen young pine trees west of my house and four in the triangle. i never see a quite unmusical character. beautiful results are everywhere lodged. course 18431 ideal. garden. wait 397 · all intercourse is random and remote, yet what fiery and consoling friendships we have ! the ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam. we never know while the days pass which day is valuable. the surface is vexation, but the serene lies underneath. nature lives by making fools of us all, adds a drop of nectar to every man's cup. machinery and transcendentalism agree well. stage-coach and railroad are bursting the old legislation like green withes. my garden is an honest place. every tree and every vine are incapable of concealment, and tell after two or three months exactly what sort of treatment they have had. the sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly: the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line. no matter how long you are silent. silence is only postponement: the retained thought takes a softer form. ... you must hear the birds sing without attempting to render it into verbs and nouns. let it lie a while and at night you shall find you have transferred its expression into the history of the day. our american 398 [age 39 journal lives are somewhat poor and pallid, franklins and washingtons, no fiery grain; staid men, like our pale and timid flora. we have too much freedom, need an austerity, need some iron girth. the poets, the great, have been illustrious wretches who have beggared the world which has beggared them. work on; the bee works all day, all summer, not knowing whom he works for, until the hive is full. then comes a higher being, man, and takes the store. as long as you feel the voracity of reading, read in god's name, asking no questions of why and whereto. by and by, some man or men, a continent, or perhaps a higher sphere of beings, will be served by you. may 19. a youth of the name of ball, a native, as he told me, of concord, came to me yesterday, who towered away in such declamatory talk that at first i thought it rhodomontade and we should soon have done with each other. but he turned out to be a prodigious reader, and writer, too (for he spoke of whole volumes of prose 1843] an eager scholar 399 and poetry barrelled away), and discovered great sagacity and insight in his criticisms, – a great impatience of our strait new england ways, and a wish to go to the ganges, or at the least to live in greece and italy. there was little precision in his thinking, great discontent with metaphysics, and he seemed of a musical rather than a mathematical structure. with a little more repose of thought, he would be a great companion. he thought very humbly of most of his contemporaries: and napoleon he thought good to turn periods with, but that he could see through him; buț lord bacon he could not pardon for not seeing shakspeare, for, said he, “ as many lord bacons as could stand in concord could find ample room in shakspeare's brain"; and pope's mean thought and splendid rhetoric he thought“ resembled rats' nests in kings' closets, made up in a crown and purple robe and regalia.” he knows greek well, and reads italian, german, and spanish. he spent five hours with me and carried off a pile of books. he had never known but one person of extraordinary promise, a youth at dartmouth of the name of hobart." 1 the young man described in the above paragraph was probably benjamin west ball, born in concord in 1823. the 400 journal [age 39 critical. do not write modern antiques like landor's pericles, or goethe's iphigenia, or wieland's abderites, or coleridge's ancient mariner, or scott's lay of the last minstrel. they are paste jewels. you may well take an ancient subject where the form is incidental merely, like shakspeare's plays, and the treatment and dialogue is simple, and most modern. but do not make much of the costume. for such things have no verity ; no man will live or die by them: the way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent, like cupid in anacreon. shakspeare's speeches in lear are in the very dialect of 1843. high speech of demiurgus to his gods in the timæus. goethe's world-soul is a sequel of the same thought. and that does the intellect; it goes ordering, distributing, and by order making beauty. this creative vortex has not spun over london, over our modern europe, until now in carlyle. humboldt is magnificent, too, as a diseditors have not been able to learn more about him. harrison carroll hobart went to wisconsin, where he took a prominent position in the legislature. he served through the civil war and became a brigadier-general. , 1843] the opaline world 401 tributing eye. his glance is stratification; geography of plants, etc. may 20. walked with ellery. in the landscape felt the magic of color; the world is all opal, and those ethereal tints the mountains wear have the finest effects of music on us. mountains are great poets, and one glance at this fine cliff scene undoes a great deal of prose, and reinstates us wronged men in our rights. all life, all society begins to get illuminated and transparent, and we generalize boldly and well. space is felt as a great thing. there is some pinch and narrowness to us, and we laugh and leap to see the world, and what amplitudes it has of meadow, stream, upland, forest, and sea, which yet are but lanes and crevices to the great space in which the world swims like a cockboat in the sea. a little canoe with three figures put out from a creek into the river and sailed downstream to the bridge, and we rejoiced in the blessed water inviolable, magical, whose nature is beauty, which instantly began to play its sweet games, all circles and dimples and lovely gleaming motions, — always ganges, the sacred river, and which cannot be desecrated or made to forget itself. but there below are these farms, yet narrow ce 402 journal [age 39 are the farmers unpoetic. the life of labor does not make men, but drudges. pleasant it is, as the habits of all poets may testify, to think of great proprietors, to reckon this grove we walk in a park of the noble; but a continent cut up into ten-acre farms is not desirable to the imagination. the farmer is an enchanted laborer, and after toiling his brains out, sacrificing thought, religion, taste, love, hope, courage at the shrine of toil, turns out a bankrupt as well as the merchant. itis time to have the thing looked into, and with a transpiercing criticism settled whether life is worth having on such terms.' ... ellery said, “ the village [of concord] did not look so very bad from our point; — the three churches looked like geese swimming about in a pond.” all the physicians i have ever seen call themselves believers, but are materialists; they believe only in the existence of matter, and not in matter as an appearance, but as substance, and do not contemplate a cause. their idea of spirit is a chemical agent. i these last two sentences are printed in “ the young american” (essays, second series, p. 381). 1843] stars. grief. everett 403 the stars i think the antidotes of pyrrhonism. in the fuss of the sunlight and the rapid succession of moods, one might doubt his identity ; but these expressive points, always in their place so immutable, are the tranquillizers of men. no narcotic so sedative or sanative as this. man sheds grief as his skin sheds rain. a preoccupied mind an immense protection. there is a great concession on all hands to the ideal decorum in grief, as well as joy, but few hearts are broken. edward everett did long ago for boston what carlyle is doing now for england and europe, in rhetoricizing the conspicuous objects. reform. chang tsoo and kee neih retired from the state to the fields on account of misrule, and showed their displeasure at confucius who remained in the world. confucius sighed and said, “i cannot associate with birds and beasts. if i follow not man, whom shall i follow? if the world were in possession of right principles, i should not seek to change it.” see the four books; translated from the chinese by rev. d. collier, malacca, 1828. 404 journal (age 39 [here follow several extracts from the same work.] i enjoy all the hours of life. few persons have such susceptibility to pleasure; as a countryman will say, “i was at sea a month and never missed a meal,” so i eat my dinner and sow my turnips, yet do i never, i think, fear death. it seems to me so often a relief, a rendering-up of responsibility, a quittance of so many vexatious trifles. how poetic this wondrous web of property! j. p. sitting in his parlor talking of philanthropy has his pocket full of papers, representing dead labor done long ago, not by him, not by his ancestor, but by hands which his ancestor had skill to set at work and get the certificates of. and now these signs of the work of hands, long ago mouldered in the grave, are honored by all men, and for them j. p. can get what vast amounts of work done by new young hands, – canals, railways, houses, gardens, coaches, pastures, sheep, oxen, and corn. one great wrong must soon disappear, — this right to burden the unborn with state loans. 1843] woman. luther. reform 405 it is folly to imagine that there can be anything very bad in the position of woman compared with that of man, at any time; for since every woman is a man's daughter, and every man is a woman's son, every woman is too near to man, was too recently a man, than that possibly any wide disparity can be. as is the man will be the woman; and as is the woman, the man. it is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in. it is very odd that nature should be so unscrupulous. she is no saint;' ... luther said he “ preached coarsely; that giveth content to all: hebrew, greek, and latin i spare until we learned ones come together, and then we make it so curled and finical that god himself wondereth at us.” reform, people hate the sound of now that they have begun to think it is like reading novels, which, when they are done, leave them just where they were, carpenters, and merchants, 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ experience” (p. 64). 406 (age 39 journal and debtors, and poor ladies — only they disbelieved the novel, and believed at first the reformer. but with any faith that would give a new face to the world for poor old eyes, lank hair, and wrinkled brows — as millerism and fourierism and other of our superstitions attest. acr ann the smallest piece of god in a man makes him as attractive as loadstone. a scholar shines and immediately draws many youth around him, and, if he have not god enough in him to know how to say no, he finds himself inconveniently attractive. the man, the god, is awakening; the door bolt will be broken, the iron fence melted in the forge; a man will yet measure his acres by his need and ability. i can manage ten and do take ten; i forty, and take forty ; i a hundred, and will farm a hundred. he will know how to stand in his garden and in his house as steward, and say, this is right that you should take; this is wrong; therefore, leave it, o guest! and by his just standing there, as a channel of law and not of self, the human race will feel that they occupy it by his occupation, they are excluded in his departure.' 1 much of what follows is printed in “ the young american” (essays, second series, p. 386). 1843] the pond. daily bread 407 in dreamy woods, what forms abound that elsewhere never poet found! here voices ring, and pictures burn, and grace on grace, where'er i turn." in the dreaming woods, i find what is nowhere else, and pictures on pictures whithersoever i turn. over our little “god's pond” the birds flitted spectrally ; nothing could look more elysian and unreal. i think that at some parliament of beauty, fire and water will contend for the apple which mistaken paris gave, and it will be adjudged to neither but to animal, who is the child of both. for the red bird is fire and the running horse is water. it is agreeable and picturesque to see a man drink water and eat bread; not so, coffee and cake. ons it is not travelling, it is not residence, it is relations that make life much or little. a few grand persons coming to us and weaving duties and offices between us and them, shall make our bread ambrosial. — but now it seems to me i these verses were evidently written in later, as the handwriting shows. they come, of course, from the sentence which follows. '408 journal (age 39 that i know persons enough of the first class, if only they were necessarily related. three, four, five, six, seven, or eight persons, who look at nature and existence with no unworthy eye, but they are players, and rather melancholy players in the world, for want of work. i have seen no one who wore on his face an expression of habitual energy, but rather of indolence, the great faculties lie idle, whilst the hands and feet bustle. we do not live by times; we do not belong to this or that century; but we live by qualities. a new style of face, a new person, would be a new age and regeneration to us. nature, a mountain walk, always gives us to suspect the poverty of life, and we believe that we have run along only one thread of experience out of millions of varied threads which we were competent to combine with that single-string of ours. life must look forlorn, if we have nothing above us. paddy values life, and it looks solid to him, because he sees and feels so much and so many above him. it looks to us sad enough that not even a superstition should remain to us, no ghosts in the broad land and social sys1843] downward eyes. flying 409 tem of millions, no play for the imagination of millions; and yet it has so appeared to all peoples, for no man knew his superstition as superstition. and we who lie under this enchantment of desiring money, may find ours there, when we consider that the net result of the life which is bestowed on drudging for an estate, and of that which is merrily trifled away, does not much vary. the farmer, as we passed, was leading a small company of men in their eleusinian mysteries along the furrows of the field. one step each and then seeds were dropped and the soil smoothed and then another step and no man lifted his face from the ground. this country must be filled with incident, and then how will the landscape look! now our houses and towns are like mosses and lichens, so thin laid on the rock. one day they will get rooted like oaks and be a part of the globe. ou is i think we are not quite yet fit for flying machines, and therefore there will be none.'... 1 this and the substance of what follows are from “ a letter,” first printed in the dial, now included in natural history of intellect (p. 393); also what is there said of railroads. 410 journal (age 40 the mountains in the horizon acquaint us with more exalted relations to our friends than any we sustain. drunken man who can run, but cannot walk. what a man's book is that! no prudences, no compromises, but a thorough independence. a masterly criticism on the times. fault perhaps the excess of importance given to the circumstance of to-day. the poet is here for this, to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circumstance, and to glorify the perpetual circumstance of men, e.g., dwarf british debt and raise nature and social life. may 25. criticism. it is for the novelist to make no character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by the others.' ... the sky is the daily bread of the eyes. what sculpture in these hard clouds; what expression of immense amplitude in this dotted and rippled rack, here firm and continental, there vanishing into plumes and auroral gleams. no crowding; boundless, cheerful, and strong. 1 the rest of the passage is in natural history of intellect (p. 54). thomas carlyle 1843] heralds. charles lane 411 men representative. nothing is dead. men and things feign themselves dead.'... the gods are jealous, and their finest gifts of men they deface with some shrewd fault, that we may hate the vessel which holds the nectar. and hence men have in all ages suffered the heralds of heaven to starve and struggle with evils of all kinds; for the gods will not have their heralds amiable; lest men should love the cup and not the nectar. my friends are leaving the town, and i am sad at heart that they cannot have that love and service from me to which they seem by their aims and the complexion of their minds, and by their unpopularity, to have rich claims. especially charles lane i seem to myself to have treated with the worst in hospitality, inasmuch as i have never received that man to me not for so much as one moment. a pure, superior, mystical, intellectual, and gentle soul, free and youthful, too, in character, and treating me ever with 1 the rest of the passage is in “ nominalist and realist," except that in the journal are the names montaigne, rabelais, swift, scaliger, calvin, and becket in place of john, paul, mahomet, and aristotle. 412 (age 40 journal marked forbearance, he so formidable,-a fighter in the ring, yet he has come, and has stayed so long in my neighborhood an alien: for his nature and influence do not invite mine, but always freeze me. it sometimes seems to me strange that english and new englanders should be so little capable of blending. their methods and temperaments so differ from ours. they strike twelve the first time. our people have more than meets the ear. this man seems to me born a warrior, the most expert swordsman we have ever seen; good when the trumpet sounds. metallic in his nature, not vegetable enough. no eye for nature, and his hands as far from his head as alcott's own. we are not willing to trust the universe to give the hospitality of the omnipresent to the good, but we, too, must assume to do the honors with offices, money, and clatter of plates. o poet, by rock and bird is conferred a new nobility, and not in palaces any longer. would you know the conditions, hard but equal? thou shalt leave the world and know the muse only. ... [this, the concluding passage of “the poet” (essays, second series) varies, it seems to the en s 1843] poet's blessed lot 413 editors for the better, in the journal, in the following passage :-] for the time of towns is measured by funeral chimes, and every hour is tolled away from the world, but in nature the merry hours are dialled by flowers on the hillside and growth of joy on joy. thou shalt have a new census and calendar; for a long september day between sun and sun shall hold centuries in its rosy and yellow deeps, and thy calendar shall be thoughts and thy action as thou ought. god wills also that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life? ... and a tomb is all that shall be denied thee. for the universe is thy house to live in and thou shalt not die. if thou keep these laws, thou shalt have a leader's eye, or live always in the mountain, seeing all the details, but seeing them all in their place and tendency. and thou shalt be greeted by omens that are prosperity and fill thee with light. and thou shalt serve the god terminus, the bounding intellect, and love boundary or form; believing that form is an oracle which never n is n lies. and every man shall be to thee for all men, 1 for the rest, see last page of “ the poet.” 414 journal [age 40 each man being alone in the vast desart; and thou shalt worship him, for he is the universe in a mask. june 10. hawthorne and i talked of the number of superior young men we have seen. h. said, that he had seen several from whom he had expected much, but they had not distinguished themselves; and he had inferred that he must not expect a popular success from such; he had in nowise lost his confidence in their power. i am often refreshed by seeing marks of excellence, and of excellence which makes no impression on people at large, who reckon it a bar-room wit, and swaggering intellect, not presentable, and of no great value. — then i take comfort that these gifts are so cheap, and it would seem that all men are great, only some are adjusted to the delicate mean of this world and can swim in it wherever put. june ii. pride. pride is so handsome, pride is so economical, pride eradicates so many vices '-... no so the men show the quality of the land. 1 the rest of this paragraph is in « wealth” (conduct of life, p. 114). 1843] webster. bunker hill 415 my chinese book does not forget to record of confucius, that his night-gown was one length and a half of his body. there are some persons from whom we always expect fairy gifts. let us not cease to expect them. june 18. yesterday at bunker hill, a prodigious concourse of people, but a village green could not be more peaceful, orderly, sober, and even affectionate. webster gave us his plain statement like good bread, yet the oration was feeble compared with his other efforts, and even seemed poor and polonius-like with its indigent conservations. when there is no antagonism, as in these holiday speeches, and no religion, things sound not heroically. it is a poor oration that finds washington for its highest mark. the audience give one much to observe, they are so light-headed and light-timbered, every man thinking more of his inconveniences than of the objects of the occasion, and the hurrahs are so slight and easily procured. webster is very good america himself. wonderful multitudes: on the top of a house i saw a company protecting themselves from the sun by an old large map of the united states. a 416 [age 40 journal charitable lumber merchant near the bridge had chalked up over his counting-room door “ 500 seats for ladies, free”; and there the five hundred sat in white tiers. the ground within the square at the monument was arranged to hold 80,000 persons. it was evident that there was the monument and here was webster, and he knew well that a little more or less of rhetoric signified nothing:'... he was there as the representative of the american continent, there in his adamitic capacity, and that is the basis of the satisfaction the people have in hearing him, that he alone of all men does not disappoint the eye and ear, but is a fit figure in the landscape. june 22. i was at brook farm and had a cheerful time. some confidences were granted me; and grief softened the somewhat hard nature of mrs. george ripley, so that i had never seen her to such advantage. fine weather, cheerful uplands, and every person you meet is a character and in free costume. charles newcomb i saw, and was 1 this and more that is here omitted is printed in mr. emerson's remarkable picturing of webster, in his speech on the “ fugitive slave law,” given in new york, march 7, 1854 (miscellanies, p. 221). 1843] sacred scholars 417 relieved to meet again on something of the old footing, after hearing of so much illness and sensitiveness. but charles is not a person to be seen on a holiday or in holiday places, but one should live in solitude and obscurity, with him for the only person in the county to speak to. also george bradford let me a little into the spiritual history and relations that go forward, but one has this feeling in hearing of their spiritualism,ah! had they never heard of it first ! and did not know it was spiritualism. the scholars are the true hierarchy, only that now they are displaced by hypocrites, that is, sciolists. for is not that the one want of the man, to meet a brother who, being fuller of god than he, can hold him steady to a truth until he has made it his own? o with what joy i begin to read a poem which i confide in as an inspiration.'... [under the ink writing of this page in the journal can be traced the pencilled lines on “ the poet,” beginning – i here follows the long passage in “ the poet” thus beginning (essays, second series pp. 12, 13). 418 . journal (age 40 but oh, to see his solar eyes like meteors which chose the way and rived the dark like a new day, etc. which form the end of the first division of the verses with that title printed in the appendix to the poems.] the chinese are as wonderful for their etiquette as the hebrews for their piety. those men who are noised all their lifetime as on the edge of some great discovery, never discover anything. but nobody ever heard of monsieur daguerre until the daguerreotype appeared. and now i do not know who invented the railroad. dante's vita nuova reads like the book of genesis, as if written before literature, whilst truth yet existed. a few incidents are sufficient, and are displayed with oriental amplitude and leisure. it is the bible of love. the interim. so many things are unsettled which it is of the first importance to settle — and, pending their settlement, we will do as we do.'... i here follows a long passage printed in “ experience” (pp. 64, 65), thus beginning. 1843] dimensions. life 419 variety. [here follows the passage on the successive delights that various authors have given, which is printed in “experience."] però si muove. and when at night i look at moon and stars, i seem stationary and they to hurry. the three dimensions room ! cried the spheres when first they shined, and dived into the ample sky: room ! room! cried the new mankind, and took the oath of liberty : room ! room ! willed the opening mind, and found it in variety.". life. fools and clowns and sots make the fringes of every one's tapestry of life, and give a certain reality to the picture. what could we do in concord without bigelow's and wesson's bar-rooms and their dependencies? what without such fixtures as uncle sol, and old moore who sleeps in doctor hurd's barn, and the red charity-house over the brook? tragedy and comedy always go hand in hand. life itself is an interim and a transition; this, o indur, is my one and twenty thousandth form, and already i feel the old life sprouting i these verses, printed in the dial, were never included by mr. emerson in his published poems. 420 journal (age 40 underneath in the twenty thousand and first, and i know well that he builds no new world but by tearing down the old for materials.' an [in july, mr. emerson, by invitation, gave an address to the temperance society at harvard, massachusetts. the extract which mr. cabot gives in the appendix to his memoir shows that he treated his subject largely and by no means in the usual narrow and specific way. ] july 8. the sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than alcott and his family at fruitlands. they seemed to have arrived at the fact, to have got rid of the show, and so to be serene. their manners and behavior in the house and in the field were those of superior men, of men at rest. what had they to conceal? what had they to exhibit? and it seemed so high an attainment that i thought, as often before, so now more, because they had a fit home or the i when the old world is sterile and the ages are effete, he will from wrecks and sediments a fairer world complete. « the world-soul,” poems. 1843] fruitlands. help 421 picture was fitly framed, that these men ought to be maintained in their place by the country for its culture. young men and young maidens, old men and women, should visit them and be inspired. i think there is as much merit in beautiful manners as in hard work. i will not prejudge them successful. they look well in july. we will see them in december. i know they are better for themselves than as partners. one can easily see that they have yet to settle several things. their saying that things are clear, and they sane, does not make them so. if they will in every deed be lovers and not selfish; if they will serve the town of harvard, and make their neighbors feel them as benefactors wherever they touch them, they are as safe as the sun. we spend our money for that which is not belp and have the inconvenience of the reputation of money without its advantage. those who have no appearance to keep up, the dowdy farmer's wife who meets you at her door, broom in hand, or pauses at her washtub to answer your question, — their house is serene and majestic, if their natures are; but ours is not, let our ideas be what they may, whilst we may not 422 (age 40 journal appear except in costume, and our immunity at the same time is bought by money and not by love and nature. and far away the purple morn concealed by intervening fruits and flowers lies buried in the abundance of the hours. july 10. ellery channing railed an hour in good set terms at the usurpation of the past, at the great hoaxes of the homers and shakspeares, hindering the books and the men of to-day of their just meed. oh certainly; i assure him that oaks and horse-chestnuts are entirely obsolete, that the horticultural society are about to recommend the introduction of cabbages as a shade tree, so much more convenient and every way comprehensible; all grown from the seed upward to its most generous crumpled extremity within one's own short memory; past contradiction the ornament of the world, and then so good to eat, as acorns and horse-chestnuts are not. shade trees for breakfast! then this whole business of one man taking the praise of all or more than his share of the praise. as all are alike in nature and possibility, it is absurd that 1843) channing’s humors 423 any should pretend to exhibit more reason or virtue than i do. a man of genius, did you say? a man of virtue? i tell you both are malformations, painful inflammations of the brain and of the liver and such shall be punishable in the new commonwealth. and if any such appear they shall be dealt with as all reasonable spartans and indians do with lame and deformed infants, toss them into the river and the average of the race improved. nothing that is not ex tempore shall now be tolerated: pyramids and cities shall give place to tents. the man, the skeleton and body, which many years have built up, shall go for nothing: his dinner, the mutton and rice he ate two hours ago, now fast flowing into chyle, that is all we consider; and the problem how to detach new dinner from old man—what we respect from what we scorn — deserves the study of the scientific. [the poem “blight” follows.] the clergy are the etiquette or chinese empire of our american society. they are here that we may not be fed and bedded and die and be buried as dogs, but, in the want of dignity, we may be treated to a sufficiency of parade and 424 journal (age 40 gentle gradations of salutation at coming and parting. if anybody dies and grieves us to the heart, so that the people might be melted to tears by a hearty word, the minister shuts his lips and preaches on the miracles, or the parables, or solomon's temple, because the family have not bad up their note ;' if any new outrage on law or any pregnant event fills the mind of people with queries and omens, the pulpit is dumb. ellery, who hopes there will be no cows in heaven, has discovered what cows are for, namely, to give the farmers something to do in summertime. all this haying comes at midsummer between planting and harvest, when all hands would be idle, but for this cow and ox, which must be fed and mowed for; and thus intemperance and the progress of crime is prevented! july 16. montaigne has the de quoi which the french cherubs had not, when the courteous archbishop implored them to sit down. his reading was plutarch. i that is, sent to the minister, by the sexton, a note requesting mention in his prayer. 1843] a bible. duty. tools 425 'tis high time we had a bible that should be no provincial record, but should open the history of the planet and bind all tendencies and dwarf all the epics and philosophies we have. it will have no books of ruth and esther, no song of solomon, nor excellent, sophistical pauls. as if any taste or imagination could supply identity. the old duty is the old god. readiness is youthfulness; to hold the old world in our hand, awaiting our new errand, and to be rebuked by a child, by a sot, by a philistine, and thankfully take a new course. the moral sentiment is well called the newness, for it is never other than a surprise, and the oldest angels are the boys whom it doth whip and scourge, though its scars give the gladness of the martyr flame. i have got in my barn a carpenter's bench and two planes, a shave, a saw, a chisel, a vise, and a square. these planes seem to me great institutions, whose inventor no man knoweth, yet what a stroke of genius was each of these tools! when you have them, you must watch 426 (age 40 journal a workman for a month, or a year, or seven years, as our boys do, to know all his tricks with them. great is tubal cain. a good pen is a finer, stronger instrument, and a language, an algebra, a calculus, music, or poetic metre, more wondrous tools yet, for this polygon or pentagon that is called man. thanks, too, to pythagoras for the multiplication table. to lay down the heavy burden of herself as woman would. august 5. home from plymouth, where i spent a fine day in an excursion to half way pond, dining at the house of mrs. r. mary and lucia russell made the party for us, and abraham jackson and helen russell accompanied us. mrs. r. was a genuine yankee, and so fluent in her provincial english that walter scott or dickens could not desire a better sample of local life. mr. faunce, mr. swift, and mr. stetson, her ministers at “ponds” (meaning monument ponds), baptism by immersion and by sprinkling, mr. whitefield's “sarmons,” the “ univarsallers,” the schools, and the reformation of the church at ponds and elsewhere, and the drowning of her son allen in a vessel loaded with ex va 1843) plymouth visit 427 paving-stones which sunk in a tempest near boston light, and the marriage of her son's widow, were the principal events of her life, and the topics of her conversation. she lives alone in this pleasing, tranquil scene at the head of a pond, and never is uneasy except in a tempest in the night. i cannot well say what i found at plymouth, beyond the uneasiness of seeing people. every person of worth, man or woman, whom i see, gives me a pain as if i injured them, because of my incapacity to do them justice in the intercourse that passes between us. two or more persons together deoxygenate the air, apathize and paralyze me. i twist like the poor eel in the exhausted receiver, and my conviction of their sense and virtue only makes matters worse for me by accusing my injustice. i am made for chronic relations, not for moments, and am wretched with fine people who are only there for an hour. it is a town of great local and social advantages, plymouth ; lying on the sea with this fine, so ze 1 this must have been the old lady whose remark on the latitudinarianism of the times was often quoted by mr. emerson. she said that “ arrors [errors] was creepin' into ponds." 428 (age 40 journal broken, inland country,pine-covered and scooped into beds of two hundred lakes. their proverb is that there is a pond in plymouth for every day of the year. billington sea is the best of all, and yet this superb chain oi lakes which we pass in returning from half way pond might content one a hundred years. • the botany of the region is rare. the epigæa, named mayflower at plymouth, is now found elsewhere. the beautiful and fragrant sabbatia, the empetrum, the sun-dew, the rhinanthus or yellow-rattle and other plants are almost peculiar to this spot. great linden trees lift their green domes above the town, as seen from the sea, and the graveyard hill shows the monuments of the pilgrims and their children as far out to sea as we could see anything of the town. the virtues of the russells are as eminent and fragrant here, at this moment, as ever were the glories of that name in england: and lis a flower of the sweetest and softest beauty which real life ever exhibited. these people know so well how to live, and have such perfect adjustment in their tastes and their power to gratify them, that the ideal life is necessarily thrown into the shade, and i have never seen a strong conservatism appear so amiable and wise. we saw re v so 1843] webster at concord 429 their well-built houses which an equal and generous economy warmed and animated ; and their good neighborhood was never surpassed : the use of the door-bell and knocker seems unknown. and the fine children who played in the yards and piazzas appeared to come of a more amiable and gentle stock. [concord was, until about 1852, a “shire town” and the courts, later transferred to lowell, were held there. in the summer of 1843 a somewhat notable case, commonwealth us. wyman, from the eminence of the counsel employed, was tried there, an officer of a charlestown bank having been charged with misappropriation of its funds. several passages of this entry were used by mr. emerson in 1854 in his address in new york on “the fugitive slave law”; but it seemed best to keep them here, not to interrupt the continuity of the text. (see miscellanies, pp. 222, 223.)] august 17. webster at concord. mr. webster loses nothing by comparison with brilliant men in the legal profession : he is as much before them as before the ordinary lawyer. at least i thought he appeared among these best lawyers of the suffolk bar, like a schoolmaster among his boys. 430 journal (age 40 his wonderful organization, the perfection of his elocution, and all that thereto belongs,voice, accent, intonation, attitude, manner, —are such as one cannot hope to see again in a century; then he is so thoroughly simple and wise in his rhetoric. understanding language and the use of the positive degree, all his words tell, and his rhetoric is perfect, so homely, so fit, so strong. then he manages his matter so well, he hugs his fact so close, and will not let it go, and never indulges in a weak flourish, though he knows perfectly well how to make such exordiums and episodes and perorations as may give perspective to his harangue, without in the least embarrassing his plan or confounding his transitions. what is small, he shows as small, and makes the great, great. in speech he sometimes roars, and his words are like blows of an axe. his force of personal attack is terrible, he lays out his strength so directly in honest blows, and all his powers of voice, arm, eye, and whole man are so heartily united and bestowed on the adversary that he cannot fail to be felt. i his“ christian religion” is always weak, being merely popular, and so most of his religion. thus, he spoke of the value of character; it was simply mercantile; it was to defend 1843] webster's plane 431 a man in criminal prosecutions, and the like; and bear him up against the inspection of all but the almighty, etc. and in describing wyman's character, he said, he wanted that sternness of christian principle which teaches to “ avoid even the appearance of evil.” and one feels every moment that he goes for the actual world, and never one moment for the ideal. he is the triumph of the understanding and is undermined and supplanted by the reason for which yet he is so good a witness, being all the time fed therefrom, and his whole nature and faculty presupposing that, that i felt as if the children of reason might gladly see his success as a homage to their law, and regard him as a poor, rude soldier hired for sixpence a day to fight their battles. i looked at him sometimes with the same feeling with which i see one of these strong paddies on the railroad. perhaps it was this, perhaps it was a mark of having outlived some of my once finest pleasures, that i found no appetite to return to the court in the afternoon and hear the conclusion of his argument. the green fields on my way home were too fresh and fair, and forbade me to go again. his splendid wrath, when his eyes became fires, is as good to see, so intellectual it is, and 432 journal (age 40 the wrath of the fact and cause he espouses, and not at all personal to himself. rockwood hoar said, nothing amused him more than to see mr. webster adjourn the court every day, which he did by rising, and taking his hat and looking the judge coolly in the face; who then bade the crier adjourn the court. choate and webster. rufus choate is a favorite with the bar, and a nervous, fluent speaker, with a little too much fire for the occasion, yet with a certain temperance in his fury and a perfect self-command; but he uses the superlative degree, and speaks of affairs altogether too rhetorically. this property of $300,000, the property of a bank, he speaks of as “vast,” and quite academically. and there was no perspective in his speech; the transitions were too slight and sudden. but the cast-iron tones of the man of men, the perfect machine that he is for arguing a case, dwarfed instantly choate and all the rest of the learned counselors. webster behaves admirably well in society. these village parties must be dishwater to him, yet he shows himself just good-natured, just 1843] juries. raleigh 433 nonchalant enough, and has his own way without offending any one or losing any ground. he told us that he never read by candle-light. judge allen told me last night that he had great and increasing confidence in juries, and thought that in nine cases out of ten they rendered a satisfactory and a right verdict. he appealed to mr. hoar, who thought this true in five cases out of six. “ sir walter raleigh was such a person every way, that, as king charles i says of the lord strafford, a prince would rather be afraid of than ashamed of. he had that awfulness and ascendancy in his aspect over other mortals, that the king ” and here aubrey's manuscript stops. webster quite fills our little town, and i doubt if i shall get settled down to writing until he is well gone from the county. he is a natural emperor of men; they remark in him the kingly talent of remembering persons accurately, and knowing at once to whom he has been introduced, and to whom not. he has lately bought his father's farm in 434 journal [age 40 franklin (formerly salisbury), new hampshire, as waller the poet wished to buy his birthplace, winchmore hill, saying to his cousin hampden, “a stag, when he is hunted and near spent, always returns home.” elizabeth hoar says that she talked with him, as one likes to go behind the niagara falls, so she tried to look into those famed caverns of eyes, and see how deep they were, and the whole man was magnificent. mr. choate told her that he should not sleep for a week when a cause like this was pending, but that when they met in boston on saturday afternoon to talk over the matter, the rest of them were wide awake, but mr. webster went fast asleep amidst the consultation. it seems to me the quixotism of criticism to quarrel with webster because he has not this or that fine evangelical property. he is no saint, but the wild olive wood, ungrafted yet by grace, but according to his lights a very true and admirable man. his expensiveness seems to be necessary to him. were he too prudent a yankee it would be a sad deduction from his magnificence. i only wish he would never truckle; i do not care how much he spends. :. webster's force is part of nature and the 1843] webster alone. nature 435 world, like any given amount of azote or electricity. ... after all his great talents have been told, there remains that perfect propriety, which belongs to every world-genius, which animates all the details of action and speech with the character of the whole so that his beauties of detail are endless. great is life. i cannot consent to compare him [webster] with his competitors, but when the clay men and van buren men and the calhoun men have had all their way and all their political objections have been conceded, and they have settled their little man, whichever it be, on the top of the martin-box of state, then and not before will we begin to state the claims of this world's man, this strong paddy of the times and laws and state, to his place in history. nature. in nature the doubt occurs whether the man is the cause or the effect. are beasts and plants degradations of man? or are these the prophecies and preparations of nature practising herself for her master-piece in man? culminate we do not; but that point of imperfection which we occupy – is it on the way up or down? again, is the world (according to the old doubt) to be criticized otherwise than as the best 436 (age 40 journal possible in the existing system: and the population of the world the best that soils, climates, and animals permit? “will is the measure of power.” — proclus on timæus. “prudence is a medium between intellect and opinion.” — idem. "intellect is that by which we know terms or boundaries." —aristotle. “beauty swims on the light of forms.” proclus. “intellect,” according to amelius, “is threefold, that which is, that which has, and that which sees.” — proclus. “law is the distribution of intellect.” proclus. “every soul pays a guardian attention to that which is inanimate.” – plato, in phædrus. it is a pathetic thing to meet a friend prepared to love you, to whom yet, from some inaptitude, you cannot communicate yourself with that grace and power which only love will allow you wish to repay his goodness by showing him i compare in the “ode to beauty,” in the poems, – thee, gliding through a sea of form. 1843] chinese classics 437 the dear relations that subsist between you and your chosen friends, but you feel that he cannot conceive of you whom he knows so slow and cold, under these sweet and gentle aspects. confide in your power, whether it be to be a wet-nurse or a wood-sawyer, lion-taming van amburgh, or stewart maker of steam candy, keep your shop, magnify your office. fear smears our work, and ignorance gilds our neighbor's, but the sure years punish our faint-heartedness. [here follow many extracts from the sheking, the third member of the pentateuch of most ancient chinese classics. a few are here given.] “the way of chow is even as a whetstone and as straight as an arrow. superior men tread in it and inferior men view it as their pattern.” “sorry sorry is my heart; i am hated by the low herd.” “he who neither errs nor forgets is the man who accords with the ancient canons.” “let the rain descend first on our public and then on our private fields." 438 journal [age 40 (from u) apparent imitations of unapparent natures.' victurus genium debet habere liber. — martial. i wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes i find it needs much heedfulness to preserve the due decorum, they melt so fast into each other.3. .. august 25. the railroad whose building i inspected this afternoon brings a multitude of picturesque traits into our pastoral scenery.* there is nothing in history to parallel the influence of jesus christ. the chinese books say i the first motto comes from the so-called chaldean oracles. mr. emerson quotes thomas taylor as saying that these were either delivered by theurgists under the reign of marcus antoninus, or by zoroaster. 2 the book that shall win its way ought to have genius. 3 the rest of the passage is in “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 236). 4. the long passage, almost tragic, about the new-come irish laborers and their families, camped along the railroad line and working from dark to dark for fifty cents a day, was originally in “ the young american” as printed in the dial, vol. iv. it is not printed here because it is given in full in the notes to that address in the centenary edition (vol. i, pp. 451455). 1843] mencius. good breeding 439 of wan wang, one of their kings, “from the west, from the east, from the south, and from the north there was not one thought not brought in subjection to him.” this can be more truly said of jesus than of any mortal. mencius says, “a sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. when the manners of pih e are heard of, the stupid become intelligent and the wavering determined.” fourier carries a whole french revolution in his head, and much more. this is arithmetic with a vengeance." in the points of good breeding, what i most require and insist upon is deference. i like that every chair should be a throne and hold a king. and what i most dislike is a low sympathy of each with his neighbor's palate. . . . i respect cats, they seem to have so much else in their heads besides their mess. ... i prefer a tendency to stateliness to an excess of fellowship. i see life and letters in new england” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 348). 2 much of this paragraph is omitted as printed in “ manners” (essays, second series, pp. 136, 137, 138). 440 journal (age 40 in all things i would have the island of a man inviolate. no degree of affection is to invade this religion. ·.. the charge which a lady in much trust made to me against her companions was that people on whom beforehand all persons would put the utmost reliance were not responsible. they saw the necessity that the work must be done, and did it not; and it of course fell to be done by herself and the few principals.' i replied, that in my experience good people were as bad as rogues, that the conscience of the conscientious ran in veins, and the most punctilious in some particulars were latitudinarian in others. henry thoreau sends me a paper with the old fault of unlimited contradiction. the trick of his rhetoric is soon learned: it consists in substituting for the obvious word and thought its diametrical antagonist. he praises wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air; snow and ice for their warmth; villagers and wood-choppers for their urbanity, and the wilderness for resembling rome and paris. with the constant 1 this apparently refers to members of the brook farm community. 18431 god. ancient poems 441 inclination to dispraise cities and civilization, he yet can find no way to know woods and woodmen except by paralleling them with towns and townsmen. channing declared the piece is excellent: but it makes me nervous and wretched to read it, with all its merits." the thinker looks for god in the direction of the consciousness, the churchman out of it. if you ask the former for his definition of god, he would answer, “my possibility”; for his definition of man, “my actuality.” “stand up straight,” said the stage-coachman, “and the rain won't wet you a mite." we like the strong objectiveness of homer and of the primitive poems of each country, ballads and the chinese and indian sentences, but that cannot be preserved in a large and civilized population. the scholar will inevitably be detached from the mechanic, and will not dwell in the same house, nor see his handiworks so near by, and must adopt new classification and a more metaphysical vocabulary. hawthorne boasts that he lived at brook farm during its heroic i this probably refers to some paper offered for the dial. 442 journal (age 40 age: then all were intimate and each knew the other's work: priest and cook conversed at night of the day's work. now they complain that they are separated and such intimacy cannot be; there are a hundred souls. it seems as if we had abundance of insight and a great taste for writing in this country: only the describers wanted subjects. but that is deceptive. the great describer is known hereby, that he finds topics. art the farmer whom i visited this afternoon works very hard and very skillfully to get a good estate, and gets it. but by his skilland diligence and that of thousands more, his competitors, the wheat and milk by which i live are made so cheap that they are within reach of my scanty monies, and i am not yet forced to go to work and produce them for myself. tuttle told me that he had once carried forty-one hundredweight of hay to boston and received $61.50 for the load. but it is no part of t.'s design to keep down the price of hay or wheat or milk. how long shalt thou stay, thou devastator of thy friend's day? each substance and relation 1843] visit the immigrants 443 in nature's operation hath its unit and metre; and the new compounds are multiples of that. but the unit of the visit, or the meeting of friends, is the meeting of their eyes.' the founders of brook farm ought to have this praise, that they have made what all people try to make, an agreeable place to live in. all comers, and the most fastidious, find it the pleasantest of residences. if you look at these railroad laborers and hear their stories, their fortunes appear as little controlled as those of the forest leaves. one is whirled off to albany, one to ohio, one digs on the levee at new orleans and one at walden pond; others on the wharves in boston or the woods in maine, and they have too little foresight and too little money to leave them any more election of whither to go or what to do than the poor leaf which is blown into this dike or that brook to perish. “to work from dark to dark for fifty cents the day,” as the poor 1 this is the poem “ the visit” – a very real issue to mr. emerson in the making. 444 journal (age 40 woman in the shanty told us, is but pitiful wages for a married man. few people know how to spend a large fortune. a beauty of wealth is power without pretension, a despotism under the quietest speech and under the plainest garb, neither rich nor poor. ... the money-lord should have no fine furniture or fine equipage, but should open all doors, be warm, be cool, ride, fly, execute or suspend execution, at his will, and see what he willed come to pass. si ellery's poetry shows the art, though the poems are imperfect, as the first daguerres are grim things, yet show that a great engine has been invented. superiority of vathek over vivian grey.' is life a thunderstorm that we can see now by a flash the whole horizon, and then cannot see our right hand? families should be formed on a higher method than by the intelligence office. a man will come to think it as absurd to send thither for his nurse or farmer, as for a wife. domestics i beckford's novel over disraeli's. oms 1843) demand of beauty 445 pass in silence through the social rooms and recover their tongues at the kitchen door — to bless you ? september 3. representative. we pursue ideas, not persons, the man momentarily stands for the thought.' ... many ways, and, as usual, dissatisfied me with myself. she increased my knowledge of life, and her sketches of manners and persons are always valuable, she sees so clearly and steadily through the veils. but best of all is the admonition that comes to me from a demand of beauty so naturally made wheresoever her eye rests, that our ways of life, our indolences, our indulgences, our want of heroic action are shamed. yet i cordially greet the reproof. when that which is so fair and noble passes, i seem enlarged; all my thoughts are spacious ; the chambers of the brain and the lobes of the heart are bigger. how am i cheered always by traits of that “vis superba formæ” which inspires art and genius but not passion : there is 1 this passage occurs in “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 225). 446 journal (age 40 that in beauty which cannot be caressed, but which demands the utmost wealth of nature in the beholder properly to meet it. we cannot quite pull down and degrade our life and divest it of poetry. the day-laborer is popularly reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale: yet, talk with him, he is saturated with the beautiful laws of the world. ... any form of government would content me in which the rulers were gentlemen, but it is in vain that i have tried to persuade myself that mr. calhoun or mr. clay or mr. webster were such; they are underlings, and take the law from the dirtiest fellows. in england it usually appears as if the power were confided to persons of superior sentiment, but they have not treated russia as they ought in the affair of poland. it is true these fellows should hear the truth from other quarters than the anti-slavery papers and whig papers and investigators and all other committed organs. we have allowed them to take a certain i compare line in “ode to beauty.” 2 for the rest of the passage on the laborer, and on property, see “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 231). 447, 1843] animal spirits place in private society as if they were at the head of their countrymen. they must be told that they have dishonored themselves and it can be allowed no longer, they are not now to be admitted to the society of scholars. the capital defect of my nature for society (as it is of so many others) is the want of animal spirits. they seem to me a thing incredible, as if god should raise the dead. i hear of what others perform by their aid, with fear. it is as much out of my hospitality as the prowess of cour de lion, or an irishman's day's work on the railroad. animal spirits seem the power of the present, and their feats equal to the pyramids of karnac. before them what a base mendicant is memory with his leathern badge. i cannot suddenly form my relation to my friend, or rather, can very slowly arrive at its satisfaction. i make new friendships on the old: we shall meet on higher and higher platforms until our first intercourse shall seem like an acquaintance of tops, marbles, and ball-time. i am an architect and ask a thousand years for my probation. meantime i am very sensible to the deep flattery of omens. -448 journal (age 40 has the south european more animal spirits than we, that he is so joyous a companion? a visit to the railroad yesterday, in lincoln, showed me the laborers — how grand they are; all their postures, their air, and their very dress. they are men, manlike employed, and the art of the sculptor is to take these forms and set on them a cultivated face and head. but cultivation never, except in war, makes such forms and carriage as these. i think it will soon become the pride of the country to make gardens and adorn countryhouses. that is the fine art which especially fits us. sculpture, painting, music, architecture, do not thrive with us.' .... the other day came c. s., with eyes full of naushon and nahant and niagara, dreaming by day and night of canoes, and lightning, and deer-parks, and silver waves, and could hardly disguise her disdain for our poor cold, low life in concord, like rabbits in a warren. yet the interiors of our woodland which recommend the 1 here follows the passage urging fine gardens in america, to be found in “ the young american” (essays, second series, pp. 367, 368). 1843] concord. o'connell 449 place to us, she did not see. ... the great sun equalizes all places, — the sun and the stars. the grand features of nature are so identical that, whether in a mountain or a waterfall, or whether in a flat meadow, the presence of the great agents makes the presence or absence of the inferior features insignificant. with the sun, with morning and evening. the difference between men, if one could accept exterior tests, is in power of face. ... but it is easy to see that as soon as one acts for large masses, the moral element will and must be allowed for, will and must work. daniel o'connell is no saint, yet at this vast meeting on the hill of tara, eighteen miles from dublin, of five hundred thousand persons, he almost preaches; he goes for temperance, for law and order, and suggests every reconciling, gentilizing, humanizing consideration. there is little difference between him and father mathew, when the audience is thus enormously swelled. ellery says that at brook farm they keep curtis and charles newcomb and a few others as decoy-ducks. life. a great lack of vital energy; excellent 450 journal (age 40 beginners, infirm executors. i should think there were factories above us which stop the water. ... god will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical. fear haunts the building railroad, but it will be american power and beauty, when it is done. and these peaceful shovels are better, dull as they are, than pikes in the hands of these kernes; and this stern day's work of fifteen or sixteen hours, though deplored by all the humanity of the neighborhood, and, though all concord cries shame! on the contractors, is a better police than the sheriff and his deputies to let off the peccant humors. the appeal to the public indicates infirm faith.' . . . yet this must be said in defense of alcott and lane, that their appeal to the public is a recognition of mankind as proof of abiding interest in other men, of whom they wish to be saviours. it is in vain to tell me that you are sufficient to yourself, but have not anything to impart. i know and am assured that whoever is sufficient to himself will, if only by existing, suffice me also. see « experience” (p. 100). 18431 counting-room. lane 451 'tis a great convenience to be educated for a time in a counting-room or attorney's business; then you may safely be a scholar the rest of your life, and will find the use of that partial thickening of the skin every day as you will of your shoes or your hat. what mountains of nonsense will you have cleared your brain of forever! we admire the tendency, but the men who exhibit it are grass and waves, until they are conscious of that which they share: then it is still admirable in them, as out of them; yea, how much more dear! there is no chance for the æsthetic village.' ... september 26. this morning charles lane left us after a two days' visit. he was dressed in linen altogether, with the exception of his shoes, which were lined with linen, and he wore no stockings. he was full of methods of an improved life: valued himself chiefly just now on getting rid of the animals; thinks there is no economy in using them on a farm. he said that they could carry on their family at fruitlands in many respects 1 see dial papers, “ a letter” (natural history of inte!lect, p. 397). 452 (age 40 journal better, no doubt, if they wished to play it well. he said that the clergy for the most part opposed the temperance reform, and conspicuously this simplicity in diet, because they were alarmed, as soon as such nonconformity appeared, by the conviction that the next question people would ask, would be, “of what use are the clergy?” in the college he found an arithmetic class, latin, german, hebrew classes, but no creative class. he had this confidence, namely, that qui facit per alium, facit per se: that it was of no use to put off upon a second or third person the act of serving or of killing cattle; as in cities, for example, it would be sure to come back on the offending party in some shape, as in the brutality of the person or persons you have brutalized." 1 the farming problem at fruitlands was hopeless, though only events could convince the members. first of all, they spent large portions of the day in high conversation. second, the farm is said to have had a northward slope and poor soil. third, the use of animal manure was abhorrent, and also the enslavement, robbing, or killing of animals. fourth, commodities produced by slave labor were against conscience. thus, leaves and green crops, spaded in, must suffice for fertilizers (mineral fertilizers were then unknown); the wheelbarrow, hoe and spade must do duty for cart, plough, etc.; sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, wine, spices, rice, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk, butter, 1843] poet and stars. forms 453 [here follow some trial lines for the “ode to beauty.”] the poet should walk in the fields, drawn on by new scenes, supplied with vivid pictures and thoughts, until insensibly the recollection of his home was crowded out of his mind, and all memory obliterated, and he was led in triumph by nature. when he spoke of the stars he should be innocent of what he said; for it seemed that the stars, as they rolled over him, mirrored themselves in his mind as in a deep well, and it was their image and not his thought that you saw. it is of no importance to real wisdom how many propositions you add on the same platform, but only what new forms. i knew somewhat concerning the american revolution, the action at bunker hill, the battle of monmouth, of yorktown, etc. to-day i learn new particulars of general greene, of lee, of rochambeau. cheese, honey, and even fine flour were excluded; also wool and cotton. hence, corn, rye, buckwheat, unbolted wheat bread without yeast, vegetables and local fruit, unsweetened unless by maple sugar, must serve for diet, and linen for clothing. 454 journal [age 40 but now that i think of that event with a changed mind and see what a compliment to england is all this self-glorification, and betrays a servile mind in us who think it so overgreat an action; it makes the courage and the wit of the admirers suspected, who ought to look at such things as things of course. let us shame the fathers by the virtue of the sons, and not belittle us by brag. we ought to thank the nonconformist for everything good he does. who has a right to ask him why he compounds with this or that wrong? certainly the objection to reform is the common sense of mankind, which seems to have settled several things; as traffic, and the use of the animals for labor and food. but it will not do to offer this by way of argument, as that is precisely the ground of dispute. read montaigne's journey into italy, which is an important part of his biography. i like him so well that i value even his register of his disease. is it that the valetudinarian gives the assurance that he is not ashamed of himself? then what a treasure, to enlarge my knowledge of his friend by his narrative of the last days and the 1843] robbins. ware 455 death of etienne de la boëtie. in boston, when i heard lately chandler robbins preach so well the funeral sermon of henry ware, i thought of montaigne, who would also have felt how much this surface called unitarianism admits of being opened and deepened, and that this was as good and defensible a post of life to occupy as any other. it was a true cathedral music and brought chancels and choirs, surplices, ephods and arks and hierarchies into presence. certainly montaigne is the antagonist of the fanatic reformer. under the oldest, mouldiest conventions he would prosper just as well as in the newest world. his is the common sense which, though no science, is fairly worth the seven. no a newspaper lately called daniel webster“ a steam engine in breeches,” and the people are apt to speak of him as “daniel,” and it is a sort of proverb in new england of a vast knowledge “if i knew as much as daniel webster.” os, oculosque jovi par. henry ware, with his benevolence and frigid manners, reminded men how often of a volcano covered with snow. but there was no deep enthusiasm. ... all his talent was available, and 456 journal (age 40 he was a good example of the proverb, no doubt a hundred times applied to him, of “a free steed driven to death.” he ought to have been dead ten years ago, but hard work had kept him alive. a very slight and puny frame he had, and the impression of size was derived from his head. then he was dressed with heroical plainness. i think him well entitled to the dangerous style of professor of pulpit eloquence, – none but channing so well, and he had ten times the business valor of channing. this was a soldier that flung himself into all risks at all hours, not a solemn martyr kept to be burned once and make the flames proud. in calm hours and friendly company, his face expanded into broad simple sunshine; and i thought le bon henri a pumpkin-sweeting. es plato paints and quibbles, and by and by a sentence that moves the sea and land. george b. emerson read me a criticism on spenser, who makes twenty trees of different kinds grow in one grove, whereof the critic says it was an imaginary grove. george, however, doubts not it was after nature, for he knows a piece of natural woodland near boston, wherein 1843] millerism. caste 457 twenty-four different trees grow together in a small grove. new england cannot be painted without a portrait of millerism with the new advent of hymns. “ you will see the lord a-coming to the old churchyards, with a band of music, etc. “he'll awake all the nations in the old churchyards. “we will march into the city from the old churchyards.” hard clouds, and hard expressions, and hard manners, i love. aristocracy. in salem, the aristocracy is often merchants; even the lawyers are a second class. in boston, is aristocracy of families which have inherited their wealth and position, and of lawyers and of merchants. in charleston, the merchants are an inferior class, the planters are the aristocracy. in england, the aristocracy, incorporated by law and education, degrades life for the unprivileged classes. long ago they wrote 458 (age 40 journal on placards in the streets, “ of what use are the lords?” and now that the misery of ireland and of english manufacturing counties famishes and growls around the park fences of lord shannon, lord cork, and sir robert peel, a park and a castle will be a less pleasant abode.'... i must nevertheless respect this order as “a part of the order of providence,” as my good aunt used to say of the rich, when i see, as i do everywhere, a class born with these attributes of rule. the class of officers i recognize everywhere in town or country. these gallants come into the world to ruffle it, and by rough or smooth to find their way to the top. when i spoke to nathaniel hawthorne of the class who hold the keys of state street and are yet excluded from the best-boston circles, he said, “perhaps he has a heavy wife.” the reformer (after the chinese). there is a class whom i call the thieves of virtue. they are those who mock the simple and sincere endeavorers after a better way of life, and say, these are pompous talkers; but when they come to i here follows the anecdote of the reply of his ambassador to philip ii of spain: «your majesty's self is but a ceremony,” given in “ the young american.” 1843] chinese reformer 459 act they are weak, nor do they regard what they have said. these mockers are continually appealing to the ancients, and they say, why make ourselves singular? let those who are born in this age, act as men of this age. thus they secretly obtain the flattery of the age. ... the multitude all delight in them and they confuse virtue. chin seang praised heu tsze to mencius as a prince who taught and exemplified a righteous life. a truly virtuous prince, he added, will plough along with his people, and while he rules will cook his own food. mencius. does heu tsze sow the grain which he eats ? seang. yes. m. does heu tsze weave cloth and then wear it? s. no: heu tsze wears coarse hair-cloth. m. does heu tsze wear a cap ? s. yes. m. what sort of a cap ? s. a coarse cap. m. does he make it himself? s. no: he gives grain in exchange for it. m. why does n't he make it himself? 460 (age 40 journal s. it would be injurious to his farming. m. does he use earthenware in cooking his victuals, or iron utensils in tilling his farm? s. yes. m. does he make them himself? s. no, he gives grain in barter for them. m. why does not heu tsze act the potter, and take everything from his own shop he wants to use? why should he be in the confused bustle exchanging articles with the mechanics ? he is not afraid of labor, surely? s. the work of the mechanic and that of the husbandman ought not to be united. m. oh, then the government of the empire and the labor of the husbandman are the only employments that ought to be united. were every man to do all kinds of work, it would be necessary that he should first make his implements, and then use them: thus all men would constantly crowd the roads. some men labor with their minds, and some with bodily strength. those who labor with their strength are ruled by men. those who are governed by others, feed others. this is a general rule under the whole heavens. mencius proceeds to instance yu, who, after the deluge, was eight years abroad directing the m 1843] gonzalo's reform 461 opening of channels to let off the inundation into the sea, and the burning of forests and marshes to clear the land of beasts of prey, so that he had no time to go home even, but passed his own door repeatedly without entering; and asks if he had leisure for husbandry, if he had been inclined? yu and shun employed their whole minds in governing the empire, yet they did not plough the fields. ... gonzalo in the tempest anticipates our reformers. gonzalo. had i plantation of this isle, my lord, and were the king of it, what would i do? in the commonwealth i would by contraries execute all things ; for no kind of traffic would i admit; no name of magistrate; letters should not be known; riches, poverty, and use of service none; contract, succession, bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; no use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil : no occupation; all men idle, all; and women too; but innocent and pure: no sovereignty. sebastian. yet he would be king on't. gon. all things in common nature should produce without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, would i not have; but nature should bring forth, 462 journal (age 40 of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, to feed my innocent people. i would with such perfection govern, sir, to excel the golden age. act ii, scene 1. queenie thinks the fruitlands people far too gross in their way of living. she prefers to live on snow. aristocracy. in solitude, — in the woods, for example, every man is a noble, and we cannot prize too highly the staid and erect and plain manners of our farmers. nature seems a little wicked and to delight in mystifying us. everything changes in ourselves and our relations, and for twenty or thirty years i shall find some old cider barrel or wellknown rusty nail or hook, or rag of dish clout unchanged. the only straight line in nature that i remember is the spider swinging down from a twig. the rainbow and the horizon seen at sea are good curves. 2 seei sea are for laughter never looked upon his brow. giles fletcher. 1843] saadi 463 m in saadi's gulistan, i find many traits which comport with the portrait i drew." he replied to nizan: “it was rumored abroad that i was penitent and had forsaken wine, but this was a gross calumny, for what have i to do with repentance?” like montaigne, he learns manners from the unmannerly, and he says “there is a tradition of the prophet that poverty has a gloomy aspect in this world and in the next!” there is a spice of gibbon in him when he describes a schoolmaster so ugly and crabbed that the sight of him would damage the ecstasies of the orthodox. like homer and dante and chaucer, saadi possessed a great advantage over poets of cultivated times in being the representative of learning and thought to his countrymen. these old poets felt that all wit was their wit, they used their memory as readily as their invention, and were at once the librarian as well as the poet, historiographer as well as priest of the muses. “the blow of our beloved has the relish of raisins.” “the dervish in his prayer is saying, o god! have compassion on the wicked; for thou hast 1 in the poem “ saadi” which mr. emerson printed in the dial of october, 1842. 464 journal (age 40 given all things to the good in making them good.” saadi found in a mosque at damascus an old persian of an hundred and fifty years, who was dying, and was saying to himself, “i said, i will enjoy myself for a few moments; alas ! that my soul took the path of departure. alas! at the variegated table of life, i partook a few mouthfuls, and the fates said, enough!” “take heed that the orphan weep not; for the throne of the almighty is shaken to and fro when the orphan sets a-crying.” [in 1865, at the request of the publishers, mr. emerson wrote the introduction to the american edition of gladwin's translation of the gulistan. this explains the omission of any account of saadi in the essay on“persian poetry,” printed in letters and social aims.] saadi was long a sacayi or water-drawer in the holy land,“ till found worthy of an introduction to the prophet khizr (elias, or the syrian and greek hermes) who moistened his mouth with the water of immortality.” somebody doubted this and saw in a dream a host of angels descending with salvers of glory in their 1843] saadi. tennyson 465 hands. on asking one of them for whom those were intended, he answered, “for shaikh saadi of shiraz, who has written a stanza of poetry that has met with the approbation of god almighty.” “khosraw of delhi asked khzir for a mouthful of this inspiring beverage; but he told him, that saadi had got the last of it.” “it was on the evening of friday in the month showal, of the arabian year 690, that the eagle of the immaterial soul of shaikh saadi shook from his plumage the dust of his body.” no wonder the farmer is so stingy of his dollar.' ... ellery says, wordsworth writes like a man who takes snuff. a m tennyson is a master of metre, but it is as an artist who has learned admirable mechanical secrets. he has no wood-notes. great are the dangers of education. le i will say it again to-day, i am very much struck in literature by the appearance that one person wrote all the books.” ... 1 see wealth” (conduct of life, pp. 101, 102). 2 the rest of this passage thus beginning is in “ nominalist and realist” (p. 232). 466 (age 40 journal immense benefit of party i feel to-day in seeing how it reveals faults of character in such an idol as webster.'. .. the great men dull their palm by entertainment of those they dare not refuse. and lose the tact of greeting the wits with sincerity, but give that odious brassiness to those who would forgive coldness, silence, dislike, everything but simulation and duping. in goethe is that sincerity which makes the value of literature and is that one voice or one writer who wrote all the good books. in helena, faust is sincere and represents actual, cultivated, strong-natured man; the book would be farrago without the sincerity of faust. i think the second part of faust the grandest enterprise of literature that has been attempted since the paradise lost. it is a philosophy of history set in poetry. ... fame her house is all of echo made where never dies the sound, and as her brows the clouds invade her feet do strike the ground. ben jonson. 1 see “ nominalist and realist” (pp. 239, 240). 2 the long passage which follows is printed in representative men (pp. 272, 273). 1843] the universal view 467 the skeptic says: how can any man love any woman, except by delusion, and ignorance? brothers do not wish to marry sisters because they see them too nearly, and all attractiveness, like fame, requires some distance. but the lover of nature loves nature in his mistress or his friend; he sees the faults and absurdities of the individual as well as you. no familiarity can exhaust the chasm. it is not personalities but universalities that draw him. the like is true of life. it seems to me that he has learned its lesson who has come to feel so assured of his well-being as to hold lightly all particulars of to-day and to-morrow, and to count death amongst the particulars. he must have such a grasp of the whole as to be willing to be ridiculous and unfortunate. • literature is the only art that is ashamed of itself. the poet should be delivered as much as may be from routine, to increase his chances. it is a game of luck that he plays, and he must be liberated and ready to use the opportunities. every one of them has been a high gambler. ellery says, that writers never do anything: they are passive observers. some of them seem 468 (age 40 journal to do, but they do not; h.' will never be a writer; he is as active as a shoemaker. a it is vain to attempt to get rid of the children by not minding them, ye parents dear; for the children measure their own life by the reaction, and if purring and humming is not noticed, they begin to squeal; if that is neglected, to screech; then, if you chide and console them, they find the experiment succeeds, and they begin again. the child will sit in your arms if you do nothing, contented; but if you read, it misses the reaction, and commences hostile operations : “pourvu seulement qu'un s'occupe d'eux,” is the law. i thought yesterday, as i read letters of aunt mary's, that i would attempt the arrangement of them. with a little selection and compiling and a little narrative thinly veiled of the youth of ellen and charles, and, if brought far enough, with letters from charles and later letters from my sweet saint, there should be a picture of a new england youth and education, so connected with the story of religious opinion in new england as to be a warm and bright life picture. 1 probably henry thoreau. 1843] william of concord 469 autobiography. my great grandfather was rev. joseph emerson of malden, son of edward emerson, esq., of newbury(port). i used often to hear that when william, son of joseph, was yet a boy walking before his father to church, on a sunday, his father checked him: “william, you walk as if the earth was not good enough for you.” “i did not know it, sir,” he replied, with the utmost humility.' this is one of the household anecdotes in which i have found a relationship. 'tis curious, but the same remark was made to me, by mrs. lucy brown, when i walked one day under her windows here in concord. what confidence can i have in a fine behavior and way of life that requires riches to bear it out? shall i never see a greatness of carriage and thought combined with a power that actually earns its bread and teaches others to earn theirs ? 1 this was william, the young minister of concord, and builder of the "old manse,” eloquent preacher, and eager son of liberty, who stirred his people to “ stand for the chartered rights of englishmen” on the village green on the morning of the nineteenth of april, 1775. next year he joined the northern army at ticonderoga and died of camp fever at rutland, vermont. 2 mrs. emerson's sister. 470 journal (age 40 we come down with free thinking into the dear institutions, and at once make carnage amongst them. we are innocent of any such fell purpose as the sequel seems to impute to us. we were only smoking a cigar, but it turns out to be a powder-mill that we are promenading. if one could have any security against moods!'... the best yet, or t. t.'s last. my divine thomas taylor in his translation of cratylus (p. 30, note) calls christianity “a certain most irrational and gigantic impiety,” ålóylotos και γιγαντίκη ανοσιουργία. people came, it seems, to my lectures with expectation that i was to realize the republic i described, and ceased to come when they found this reality no nearer. they mistook me. i am and always was a painter. i paint still with might and main, and choose the best subjects i can. many have i seen come and go with false hopes and fears, and dubiously affected by my pictures. but i paint on. i count i the rest of the passage is printed in “ nominalist and realist” (p. 247). 18431 painter and realist 471 this distinct vocation which never leaves me in doubt what to do, but in all times, places, and fortunes gives me an open future, to be the great felicity of my lot. doctor c. t. j.,' too, was born to his chemistry and his minerals. “men who in the present life knew the particular deity from whom they descended, and gave themselves always to their proper employment, were called by the ancient, divine men.” see taylor's cratylus, p. 32. . yet what to say to the sighing realist as he passes and comes to the vivid painter with a profound assurance of sympathy, saying, “he surely must be charmed to scale with me the silver mountains whose dim enchantments he has so affectionately sketched.” the painter does not like the realist; sees his faults; doubts his means and methods; in what experiments they make, both are baffled; no joy. the painter is early warned that he is jeopardizing his genius in these premature actualizations. very painful is the discovery we are always making that we can only give to each other a rare and partial sympathy; for as much time as we have spent in looking over into our neighbor's field and chatting with him is lost to our i doctor charles t. jackson, mrs. emerson's brother. 472 journal (age 40 own, and must be made up by haste and renewed solitude. “l'esprit est une sorte de luxe qui détruit le bon sens, comme le luxe détruit la fortune.” alcott came, the magnificent dreamer, brooding, as ever, on the renewal or reëdification of the social fabric after ideal law, heedless that he had been uniformly rejected by every class to whom he has addressed himself, and just as sanguine and vast as ever;— the most cogent example of the drop too much which nature adds of each man's peculiarity. to himself he seems the only realist, and whilst i and other men wish to deck the dullness of the months with here and there a fine action or hope, he would weave the whole, a new texture of truth and beauty. ... very pathetic it is to see this wandering emperor from year to year making his round of visits from house to house of such as do not exclude him, seeking a companion, tired of pupils. we early men at least have a vast advantage: we are up at four o'clock in the morning and have the whole market, we enniuses and venerable bedes of the empty american parnassus. 1843) children. condition 473 wish not a man from england. henry v. it is hardly rhetoric to speak of the guardian angels of children. how beautiful they are, so protected from all infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought. well-bred people ignore trifles and unsightly things ; but heroes do not see them, through an attention preëngaged to beauty. “that is musk, which discloses itself by its smell, and not what the perfumers impose upon us,” said saadi. ce i began to write saadi’s sentence above as a text to some homily of my own which muttered aloud as i walked this morning, to the effect, that the force of character is quite too faint and insignificant. the good are the poor, but if the poor were but once rich, how many fine scruples would melt away; how many blossoming reforms would be nipped in the bud. i ought to see that you must do that you say, as tomato-vines bear tomatoes and meadows yield grass. but i find the seed comes in the manure, and it is your condition, not your genius, which yields all this democratical and tender-hearted harvest. 474 journal (age 40 november 5. to genius everything is permitted, and not only that, but it enters into all other men's labors. a tyrannical privilege to convert every man's wisdom or skill, as it would seem, to its own use, or to show for the first time what all these fine and complex preparations were for. see how many libraries one master absorbs. who hereafter will go gleaning in those contemporary and anterior books, from each of which he has taken the only grain of truth it had, and has given it tenfold value by placing it? the railroad was built for him; for him history laboriously registered; for him arms and arts and politics and commerce waited, like so many servants until the heir of the manor arrived, which he quite easily administers. genius is a poor man and has no house; but see this proud landlord, who has built the great house and furnished it delicately, opens it all to him and beseeches him respectfully to make it honorable by entering there and eating bread. se some philosophers went out of town, founded a community in which they proposed to pay 1843] bell. poor reformers 475 talent and labor at one rate, say, ten cents the hour!'... punctuality. on the dinner bell was written, “ i laughed at them and they believed me not.” the sect is the stove, gets old, worn out, there are a hundred kinds, but the fire keeps its properties. calvinism is a fine history to show you how peasants, paddies, and old country crones may be liberalized and beatified. the reformers wrote very ill. they made it a rule not to bolt their flour, and unfortunately neglected also to sift their thoughts. but hesiod's great discovery, aléov ý ulov mávros, is truest in writing, where half is a great deal more than the whole. give us only the eminent experiences.: alcott and lane want feet: they are always feeling of their shoulders to find if their wings 1 this brook farm (?) theory is printed in full in “ the young american” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 283). 2 mr. emerson, who was punctual, used to quote this line from scripture when the dinner bell reminded every one of something they had planned to do before dinner and so disappeared to do it. it was finally engraved on the bell. 476 (age 40 journal are sprouting; but next best to wings are cowhide boots, which society is always advising them to put on. . married women uniformly decided against the communities.' november 12. it is wiser to live in the country and have poverty instead of pauperism. yet citizens or cockneys are a natural formation also, a secondary formation, and their relation to the town is organic, — but there are all shades of it, and we dwellers in the country are only half countrymen. as i run along the yard from my woodpile i chance to see the sun as he rises or as he hangs in beauty over a cloud, and am apprised how far off from that beauty i live, how careful and little i am. he calls me to solitude. where does the light come from that shines on things ? from the soul of the sufferer, of the enjoyer. minerva and telemachus, plotinus, 452. i have known a person of extraordinary intellectual power, on some real or supposed imputation of weakness of her reasoning faculty from i lectures and biographical sketches, p. 365. 18431 to-day. common sense 477 another party, enter with heat into a defence of the same by naming the eminent individuals who had trusted and respected her genius. the moment we quote a man to prove our sanity, we give up all. no authority can establish it, and if i have lost confidence in myself i have the universe against me. five minutes of to-day, as i used to preach, are worth as much to me as five minutes a million years hence. we fathers of american nations should not set the bad example of repudiation to the centuries. the years are the moments of the life of this nation. common sense knows its own, and so recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical experiment. the common sense of dalton, davy, black, is that common sense which made these arrangements which now it discovers. eternity of the world. the different ages of man, in hesiod's works and days, signify the mutations of human lives from virtue to vice and from vice to virtue. there are periods of fertility and of sterility of souls; sometimes men 478 journal (age 40 descend for the benevolent purpose of leading back apostate souls to right principles. hades signified the profound union of the soul with the present body. see taylor's cratylus. euclid, plato, and the multiplication table are spheres in your thought. bail up with a spoon and you shall get mrs. glass or the newspaper: bail up with a bucket and you shall have purer water: dive yourself and you shall come to the immortal deeps. therefore, we feel that one man wrote all the books of literature. it will certainly so appear at a distance. neither is any dead, neither christ nor plato. each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious. there are many audiences in every public assembly.' ... [early in december, mr. emerson wrote to his brother william that he had had, for the second time, an application from a bookseller to print a volume of poems.” he had, at the rei the rest of this passage is found in “ eloquence” (s0ciety and solitude, p. 66). 2 see cabot's memoir of emerson, vol. i, pp. 480, 481. 1843] handel's messiah 479 quest of rev. james freeman clarke, allowed him to print several in the western messenger, at louisville, kentucky; and he had contributed several to the dial, and many friends urged their publication.] december 25. at the performing of handel's messiah i heard some delicious strains and understood a very little of all that was told me. my ear received but a little thereof.' ... the genius of nature could well be discerned. by right and might we should become participant of her invention, and not wait for morning and evening to know their peace, but prepossess it. i walked in the bright paths of sound, and liked it best when the long continuance of a chorus . had made the ear insensible to the music, made it as if there was none; then i was quite solitary and at ease in the melodious uproar. once or twice in the solos, when well sung, i could play tricks, as i like to do, with my eyes, darken the whole house and brighten and transfigure the central singer, and enjoy the enchantment. this wonderful piece of music carried us back 1 the omitted portion is printed in “ nominalist and realist” (p. 233). 480 journal (age 40 into the rich, historical past. it is full of the roman church and its hierarchy and its architecture. then, further, it rests on and requires so deep a faith in christianity that it seems bereft of half and more than half its power when sung to-day in this unbelieving city. we love morals until they come to us with mountainous melancholy and grim overcharged rebuke: then we so gladly prefer intellect, the light-maker. dear sir, you treat these fantastical fellow men too seriously, you seem to believe that they exist. the solid earth exhales a certain permanent average gas which we call the atmosphere; and the spiritual solid sphere of mankind emits the volatile sphere of literature of which books are single and inferior effects. december 31. the year ends, and how much the years teach which the days never know!'... but the individual is always mistaken. at the convention of socialists in boston last week alcott was present, and was solicited to speak, but had no disposition, he said, to do so. i see « experience” (p. 69). 1843] english letters. trade 481 although none of the representatives of the “communities” present would probably admit it, yet in truth he is more the cause of their movements than any other man. he feels a certain parental relation to them without approving either of their establishments. his presence could not be indifferent to any speaker, and has not been nothing to any of them in the past years. a true course of english literary history would contain what i may read the wartons and not learn: e.g., of marlowe's mighty line; of crashaw's musician and nightingale; of ben jonson's visit to drummond; of wotton's list of contemporaries; of the history of john dennis; of the rehearsal; of the critic; a history of bishop berkeley; of the scriblerus club; of wood, and aubrey; of shakspeare at the last dates; of cotton's montaigne; of the translators of plutarch; of the forgeries of chatterton, landor, and ireland; of robert of gloucester; of the roxburgh club; of thomas taylor. we rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty ; that it settled america, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery. 482 journal [age 40 belief and unbelief. kant, it seems, searched the metaphysics of the self-reverence which is the favorite position of modern ethics, and demonstrated to the consciousness that itself alone exists. amuses the two parties in life are the believers and unbelievers, variously named. the believer is poet, saint, democrat, theocrat, free-trade, no church, no capital punishment, idealist. the unbeliever supports the church, education, the fine arts, etc., as amusements. but the unbelief is very profound: who can escape it? i am nominally a believer: yet i hold on to property:i eat my bread with unbelief. i approve every wild action of the experimenters. i say what they say concerning celibacy, or money, or community of goods, and my only apology for not doing their work is preoccupation of mind. i have a work of my own which i know i can do with some success. it would leave that undone if i should undertake with them, and i do not see in myself any vigor equal to such an enterprise. my genius loudly calls me to stay where i am, even with the degradation of owning bank-stock and seeing poor men suffer, whilst the universal genius apprises me of this 18431 intellect. reading 483 disgrace and beckons me to the martyrs and redeemer's office.' this is belief, too, this debility of practice, this staying by our work. for the obedience to a man's genius is the particular of faith: by and by, shall i come to the universal of faith. i take the law on the subject of education to read thus, the intellect sees by moral obedience. (thomas taylor's translations.) alypius in lamblichus had the true doctrine of money. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1843 the she-king; the four books (chinese classics), translated by rev. d. collier, malacca; vishnu sarna; the desatir (persian), translation of mr. duncan, bombay; æschylus, prometheus bound; martial; marcus terentius varro; pliny the elder; plotinus, iamblichus, synesius, proclus (thomas taylor's translations); 1 this sympathy with extreme reformers, here confessed, was mr. emerson's native hospitality to thought, but also largely a matter of moods as described by him on page 471 of this volume. his saving common sense came to his aid in time. 484 [age 40 journal william lorris and jean de meung, roman de la rose; dante; saadi; erasmus; calvin ; scaliger; raleigh; marlowe; behmen; giles fletcher, christ's victory and triumph; crashaw, musician and nightingale; anthony à wood; spinoza; swift, gulliver's travels; berkeley; beckford, vatbek; joseph and thomas warton; beaumarchais; wieland, the abderites; goethe, iphigenia, faust (second part), wilhelm meister; chatterton; william h. ireland; thomas taylor, translations of the cratylus and the neoplatonists; o'connell; campbell; ludwig borne; bettina von arnim; webster; carlyle, past and present; rev. henry ware; rev. lyman beecher; rev. nathaniel frothingham; eugene bernouf; george borrow, the zincali; disraeli, vivian grey; theodore mundt; john sterling; nathaniel hawthorne; rev. chandler robbins; goodwyn barmby; margaret fuller; thoreau; william ellery channing. journal lyceum lectures addresses end of the dial west indian emancipation the second essays journal xxxv 1844 (from journals u and v) [mr. emerson did not begin the year with the winter, to give a lecture — sometimes two in boston, providence, salem, fall river, cambridge, dorchester, and smaller towns, for lyceums were everywhere, and well attended. he had to prepare the final issue of the dial, now moribund. the correspondence with carlyle shows that each was looking after the interests of the other's books and sending proceeds across the ocean.] (from u) january, 1844. there is no expression in any of our poetry, state papers, lecture-rooms, or churches, of a high national feeling. only the conventional life is considered. i think the german papers greatly more earnest and aspiring. “ conventional worth is intolerable, where personal is no ven488 (age 40 journal wanting,” said schlegel. who announces to us in journal, or pulpit, or lecture-room “ alone may man do the impossible”? finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between two. this you cannot do without temperance. january 30. i wrote to mr. f. that i had no experiences nor progress to reconcile me to the calamity whose anniversary returned the second time last saturday." the senses have a right to their method as well as the mind; there should be harmony in facts as well as in truths. yet these ugly breaks happen there, which the continuity of theory does not contemplate. the amends are of a different kind from the mischief. but the astonishment of life is the absence of any appearances of reconciliation between the theory and practice of life. ... 1 the death of his child. 2 the rest of the long passage beginning thus is printed in “ montaigne” (representative men, pp. 178, 179), except its concluding paragraph as to the instability of our opinions, depending on moods, which is in “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 247). 1844) inward eye. magnetism 489 introvert your eye, and your consciousness is a taper in the desart of eternity. it is the channel, though now demolished to a thread, through which torrents of light roll and flow in the high tides of spontaneity and reveal the landscape of the dusky universe. that idea which i approach and am magnetized by — is my country. how we love to be magnetized! ah, ye strong iron currents, take me in also ! we are so apologetic, such waifs and straws, ducking and imitating, and then the mighty thought comes sailing on a silent wind and fills us also with its virtue, and we stand like atlas on our legs and uphold the world. the magnetism is alone to be respected; the men are steel filings.' ... i am sorry to say that the numas and pythagorases have usually a spice of charlatanism, and that abolition societies and communities are dangerous fixtures. the manliness of man is a frail and exquisite fruit which does not keep its perfection twenty-four hours. its sweet frai the rest of the paragraph is in “ nominalist and realist ” (essays, second series, p. 228). 490 journal (age 40 grance cannot be bottled or barrelled or exported. carlyle is an eloquent writer, but his recommendations of emigration and education appear very inadequate. noble as it seems to work for the race and hammer out constitutions for phalanxes, it can only be justly done by mediocre thinkers, or men of practical, not theoretic faculty. as soon as a scholar attempts it, i suspect him. good physicians have least faith in medicine. good priests the least faith in churchforms. mer that bread which we ask of nature is that she should entrance us, but amidst her beautiful or her grandest pictures i cannot escape the second thought. . . . we have the wish to forget night and day, father and mother, food and ambition, but we never lose our dualism. blessed, wonderful nature, nevertheless ! without depth, but with immeasurable lateral spaces, if we look before us, if we compute our path, it is very short. nature has only the thickness of a shingle or a slate: we come straight to the extremes; but sidewise, and at unawares, the present moment opens into other moods and moments, rich, prolific, leading onward without eas 1844) visions. brook farm 491 end. impossible to bring her, the goddess, to praise: coquettes with us, hides herself in coolness and generalities : pointed and personal is she never. the dead. zuev tóv ékeivwv dávatov, teovýkajev sè tòvékeivov bíov.'— heraclitus. the daguerreotype of the soul. “the oracles assert that the impressions of characters and other divine visions appear in æther” (toús τύπους των χαρακτήρων και των άλλων θειών φασμάτων εν τω αιθέρι φαίνεσθαι τα λόγια déyovoiv). simplic. in phys. apud thomas taylor, vol. iii. “and fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” so say i of brook farm. let it live. its merit is that it is a new life. why should we have only two or three ways of life, and not thousands and millions? this is a new one so fresh and expensive that they are all homesick when they go away. the shy sentiments are there expressed. the correspondence of that place would be a historiette of the spirit of this age. they 1 we live their death, but we have died the life of each. 492 journal (age 40 arran might see that in the arrangements of brook farm, as out of them, it is the person, not the communist, that avails. ellery channing is quite assured that he has a natural malice of expression, which is wanting in all the so-called poets of the day. he is very good-natured, and will allow them any merit you choose to claim; but this he always feels to be true. it is infinitely easy to him, as easy as it is for running water to warble, but at the same time impossible to any to whom it is not natural. the highest should alternate the two states, of the contemplation of the fact in pure intellect, and the total conversion of intellect into energy: angelic insight alternating with bestial activity: sage and tiger. when i address a large assembly, as last wednesday, i am always apprised what an opportunity is there: not for reading to them, as i do, lively miscellanies, but for painting in fire my thought, and being agitated to agitate. one must dedicate himself to it and think with his | audience in his mind, so as to keep the perspec1844] wish for eloquence 493 tive and symmetry of the oration, and enter into all the easily forgotten secrets of a great nocturnal assembly and their relation to the speaker. but it would be fine music and in the present well rewarded; that is, he should have his audience at his devotion, and all other fames would hush before his. now eloquence is merely fabulous. when we talk of it, we draw on our fancy. it is one of many things which i should like to do, but it requires a seven years' wooing.'... henry thoreau, with whom i talked of this, last night, does not or will not perceive how natural is this, and only hears the word art in a sinister sense. but i speak of instincts. i did not make the desires or know anything about them: i went to the public assembly, put myself in the conditions, and instantly feel this new craving, -i hear the voice, i see the beckoning of this ghost. to me it is vegetation, the pullulation and universal budding of the plant man. some men have the perception of difference predominant, and are conversant with surfaces i here, and a few pages later in the journal, follow, but in different order, the sentences printed in “ the poet,” there beginning “ art is the path of the creator to his work” (essays, second series, pp. 39, 40, 41). 494 journal (age 40 and trifles, with coats and coaches, and faces, and cities; these are the men of talent. ... and other men abide by the perception of identity; these are the orientals, the philosophers, the men of faith and divinity, the men of genius. these men, whose contempt of soi-disant conservatism cannot be concealed, — which is such a conserving as the quaker's, who keeps in his garments the cut of queen anne's time, but has let slip the fire and the love of the first friends, -are the real loyalists. : then i discovered the secret of the world; that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. comme ams. the text of our life is accompanied all along by this commentary or gloss of dreams. henry thoreau's lines which pleased me so. well were, “i hearing get, who had but ears, and sight, who had but eyes before; i moments live, who lived but years, and truth discern, who had but learning's lore." the question of the annexation of texas is one of those which look very differently to the 1844) texas. a fountain 495 centuries and to the years. it is very certain that the strong british race, which have now overrun so much of this continent, must also overrun that tract, and mexico and oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and methods it was done. it is a secular question. it is quite necessary and true to our new england character that we should consider the question in its local and temporary bearings, and resist the annexation with tooth and nail. it is a measure which goes not by right, nor by wisdom, but by feeling. it would be a pity to dissolve the union and so diminish immensely every man's personal importance. we are just beginning to feel our oats. what a pity that a farmer should not live three hundred years. we fancy that men are individuals; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.'... ah, if any man could conduct into me the pure stream of that which he pretends to be. i the rest of the paragraph thus beginning is in “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 246), and the passage is immediately followed in the journal by the opening paragraphs of the same essay. 496 journal [age 40 long afterwards, i find that quality elsewhere which he promised me. intoxicating is to me the genius of plotinus or of swedenborg. yet how few particulars of it can i glean from their books. my debt to them is for a few thoughts. they cannot feed that appetite they have created. i should know it well enough if they gave me that which i seek of them. otherness. henry thoreau said, he knew but one secret, which was to do one thing at a time, and though he has his evenings for study, if he was in the day inventing machines for sawing his plumbago, he invents wheels all the evening and night also; and if this week he has some good reading and thoughts before him, his brain runs on that all day, whilst pencils pass through his hands. i find in me an opposite facility or perversity, that i never seem well to do a particular work until another is done. i cannot write the poem, though you give me a week, but if i promise to read a lecture day after tomorrow, at once the poem comes into my head and now the rhymes will flow. and let the proofs of the dial be crowding on me from the printer, and i am full of faculty how to make the lecture. 1844] intellect. descent 497 skeptic. pure intellect is the pure devil when you have got off all the masks of mephistopheles. it is a painful symbol to me that the index or forefinger is always the most soiled of all the fingers. the two histories. the question is whether the trilobites, or whether the gods, are our grandfathers; and whether the actual existing men are an amelioration or a degradation arises from the contingence whether we look from the material or from the poetic side. railroads make the country transparent. 2 ) somebody said of me after the lecture at amory hall, within hearing of a. w.,“ the secret of his popularity is, that he has a damn for everybody march 12. on sunday evening, roth instant, at the close of the fifteenth year since my ordination as minister in the second church, i made an admr. emerson gave, at amory hall, boston, on february 21, an address, “the young american,” before the mercantile library association, and on sunday, march 3, read “ new england reformers” to the society of amory hall,” probably a religious society. 498 journal [age 40 dress to the people on the occasion of closing the old house, now a hundred and twenty-three years old, and the oldest church in boston. yesterday they began to pull it down.' bohemian. intellect is a piratical schooner cruising in all latitudes for its own pot. consuelo, as elizabeth hoar remarked, was the crown of fulfillment of all the tendencies of literary parties in respect to a certain dark knight who has been hovering about in the purlieus of heaven and hell for some ages. the young people have shown him much kindness for some time back. burns advised him to “take advice and mend”; goethe inclined to convert him and save his soul in the friendship of faust; he has, here in america, been gaining golden opinions lately, and now in consuelo he actually mounts the shrine and becomes an object of worship under the name and style of “he to whom wrong has been done.” 1 the society were building a new church in hanover street. an extract from his address to the congregation, with which he had had so close association, telling how little the years had changed the leading belief of his youth, is found in mr. cabot's memoir, vol. ii, p. 413. 2 george sand's novel. 1 w 1844] consuelo. wholes. poet 499 a capital merit of consuelo, the instant mutual understanding between the great, as between albert and consuelo. art seems to me to be in the artist a steady respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details.... symmetry. most lovers of beauty are dazzled by the details. to have seen many beautiful details cloys us and we are better able to keep our rectitude. the straight line is better than the square: a man is the one; a horse the other. poet. among the “chaldæan oracles, which were either delivered by theurgists under the reign of marcus antoninus, or by zoroaster,” taylor inserts the following:“rulers who understand the intelligible works of the father : these he spread like a veil over sensible works and bodies. they are standing transporters, whose employment consists in speaking to the father and to matter; in producing 1 the rest of this paragraph is in “nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 234). 500 journal (age 40 apparent imitations of unapparent natures, and in inscribing things unapparent in the apparent fabrication of the world.” concerning the universe. “it is an imitation of intellect, but that which is fabricated possesses something of body.” concerning the light above the empyrean world. “in this light things without figure become figured.” see monthly magazine, vol. iii, p. 509 (a.d. 1797). it is curious that intellectual men should be most attractive to women. but women are magnetic; intellectual men are unmagnetic: therefore, as soon as they meet, communication is found difficult or impossible. by acting rashly, we buy the power of talking wisely. people who know how to act are never preachers. i have always found our american day short. the constitution of a teutonic scholar with his twelve, thirteen, or fourteen hours a day, is fabulous to me. i become nervous and peaked with a few days editing the dial, and watching the stage-coach to send proofs to printers. if i try to get many hours in a day, i shall not have any. 1844] allston. pale america 501 we work hard in the garden and do it badly and often twice or thrice over, but“ we get our journey out of the curses,” as mr. h.'s brighton drover said of his pigs. allston is adamas ex veteri rupe, chip of the old block; boulder of the european ledge; a spur of those apennines on which titian, raphael, paul veronese, and michael angelo sat, cropping out here in this remote america and unlike anything around it, and not reaching its natural elevation. what a just piece of history it is that he should have left this great picture of belshazzar in two proportions! the times are out of joint, and so is his masterpiece. allston and irving and dana are all european. e see but in america i grieve to miss the strong black blood of the english race: ours is a pale, diluted stream. what a company of brilliant young persons i have seen with so much expectation ! the sort is very good, but none is good enough of his sort. every one an imperfect specimen; respectable, not valid. irving thin, and channing thin, and bryant and dana; prescott and bancroft. there is webster, but he 502 [age 40 journal cannot do what he would; he cannot do webster. the orientals behave well, but who cannot behave well who has nothing else to do? the poor yankees who are doing the work are all wrinkled and vexed. the shaker told me they did not read history, not because they had not inclination, for there were some who “took up a sound cross in not reading.” milton's paradise lost, he knew, was among charles lane's books, but he had never read it. most of them did not know it was there; he knew. there would be an objection to reading it. they read the bible and their own publications. they write their own poetry. “all their hymns and songs of every description are manufactured in the society." in the actual world, the population, we say, is the best that could yet be. its evils, as war and property, are acknowledged, which is a new fact, and the first step to the remedying of them. but the remedying is not a work for society, but for me to do. if i am born to it, i shall see the way. if the evil is an evil to you, you are party, chief party to it; say not, you are not covetous, if the chief evil of the world seem to 1844] duty. trade. alcott 503 you covetousness. i am always environed by myself: what i am, all things reflect to me. the state of me makes massachusetts and the united states out there. i also feel the evil, for i am covetous, and i do not prosecute the reform because i have another task nearer. i think substantial justice can be done maugre or through the money of society; and though it is an imperfect system and noxious, yet i do not know how to attack it directly, and am assured that the directest attack which i can make on it is to lose no time in fumbling and striking about in all directions, but to mind the work that is mine, and accept the facilities and openings which my constitution affords me. the peace society speaks civilly of trade, in its attacks on war. well, let trade make hay whilst the sun shines; but know very well that when the war is disposed of, trade is the next object of incessant attack, and has only the privilege of being last devoured. very sad, indeed, it was to see this half-god driven to the wall, reproaching men, and hesitating whether he should not reproach the gods. the world was not, on trial, a possible element 504 journal (age 40 for him to live in. a lover of law had tried whether law could be kept in this world, and all things answered, no. he had entertained the thought of leaving it, and going where freedom and an element could be found. and if he should be found to-morrow at the roadside, it would be the act of the world. we pleaded guilty to perceiving the inconvenience and the inequality of property, and he said, “i will not be a convict.” very tedious and prosing and egotistical and narrow he is, but a profound insight, a power, a majestical man, looking easily along the centuries to explore his contemporaries, with a painful sense of being an orphan and a hermit here. i feel his statement to be partial and to have fatal omissions, but i think i shall never attempt to set him right any more. it is not for me to answer him: though i feel the limitations and exaggeration of his picture, and the wearisome personalities. his statement proves too much: it is a reductio ad absurdum. but i was quite ashamed to have just revised and printed last week the old paper denying the answ i after the tragic breaking-down of his fruitlands endeavor for the ideal life, mr. alcott was so grieved that he was in despair and refused food, and was restored to normal life and cheer with difficulty. 1844) alcott's defeat. dream 505 existence of tragedy, when this modern prometheus was in the heat of his quarrel with the gods. alcott has been writing poetry, he says, all winter. i fear there is nothing for me in it. his overpowering personality destroys all poetic faculty. it is strange that he has not the confidence of one woman. he would be greater if he were good-humoured, but such as he is, he “enlarges the known powers of man,” as was said of michael angelo. a man sends to me for money that he may pursue his studies in theology; he wants fifty or sixty dollars, and says he wants it the “last of this week or the fore part of next.” w. g. dreamed that he had disposed of books and the world in his fontal peace of mind-but did not well know what to do with the reply that the past has a new value every moment to the advancing mind. i find it settled that while many persons have attraction for me, these styles are incompatible. each is mine, but i love one, because it is not 1 that is, his theories had not. mrs. alcott was a loyal wife. 506 (age 40 journal the other. what skepticism is like this? hence the philosophers concluded that the turk was right: mahomet was right and jesus was wrong. i wish to have rural strength and religion for my children, and i wish city facility and polish. i find with chagrin that i cannot have both. carlo. i spent the winter in the country. thick-starred orion was my only companion.' i preferred the forest, dry forest. water made me feel forlorn. a ost writers are so few that there are none: writing is an impossibility, until it is done. a man gives you his paper and hopes there is something in it, but does not know. there is nothing in it: do not open it. when a man makes what he calls an answer to a speculative question, he commonly changes the phrase of the question. but the only conversation we wish to hear is two affirmatives, and again two affirmatives, and so on. able men do not care in what work a man is able so only he is able.' ... 1 these two sentences, used in “ worship,” are evidently quoted from charles k. newcomb, who, in that essay, is called benedict. (see conduct of life, pp. 234, 235.) 2 see • goethe”. (representative men, p. 268). 1844) moving. legislators 507 character brings to whatever it does a great superfluity of strength which plays a gay accompaniment; the air with variations. hear daniel webster argue a jury cause. he imports all the experience of the senate, and the state, and the man of the world into the county court. c. inquired why i would not go to b?' but the great inconvenience is sufficient answer. if i could freely and manly go to the mountains, or to the prairie, or to the sea, i would not hesitate for inconvenience: but to cart all my pots and kettles, kegs and clothespins, and all that belongs thereunto, over the mountains, seems not worth while. i should not be nearer to sun or star. may 8. this morn the air smells of vanilla and oranges. our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to congress. again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him i berkshire ? 508 [age 40 journal up in his hand like a bit of paper. at last they sent a man with a back, and he defied the whole southern delegation when they attempted to smother him, and has conquered them. mr. adams is a man of great powers, but chiefly he is a sincere man and not a man of the moment and of a single measure. and besides the success or failure of the measure, there remains to him the respect of all men for his earnestness. when mr. webster argues the case, there is the success, or the failure, and the admiration of the unerring talent and intellectual nature, but no respect for an affection to a principle. could mr. webster have given himself to the cause of abolition of slavery in congress, he would have been the darling of this continent of all the youth, all the genius, all the virtue in america. had an angel whispered in his young ear, “never mind the newspapers. fling yourself on this principle of freedom. show the legality of freedom; though they frown and bluster, they are already half-convinced and at last you shall have their votes," — the tears of the love and joy and pride of the world would have been his." i it is possible that this passage, written in pencil, was of a few years later date. 1844) god new. taylor's path 509 ar god, the moral element, must ever be new, an electric spark; then it agitates and deifies us. the instant when it is fixed and made chronic, it is hollowness and cant. it is the difference between poets and preachers. (from v) “ concordia res parvæ crescunt.” how finely dost thou times and seasons spin, and make a twist chequered with night and day! which, as it lengthens, winds, and winds us in, as bowls go on, but turning all the way. george herbert. but jove was the eldest born and knows most. homer. “i conduct the reader through novel and solitary paths, -solitary, indeed, they must be, since they have been unfrequented from the reign of the emperor justinian to the present time; and novel, doubtless, to readers of every description, and particularly to those who have been nursed, as it were, in the bosom of matter, the pupils of experiment, darlings of sense, and legitimate descendants of the earth-born race that warred on the olympian gods.” — thomas taylor,“ general introduction” to his works of plato. 510 (age 40 journal these are they, in taylor's mind, “whose whole life is a sleep, a transmigration from dream to dream, like men passing from bed to bed." he contrasts ever the knowledge of experiment with that of abstract science: the former is the cause of a mighty calamity to the soul, extinguishing her principle and brightest eye, the knowledge of divinity. one makes piety, the other atheism. there can be no other remedy for this enormous evil than the philosophy of plato. then follow taylor's rich apostrophes to the stupid and experimental — “abandon, then, ye grovelling souls,” etc. thomas taylor died at walworth, near london, november 1, 1835, aged seventy-seven. he was born in london in 1758, and learned the rudiments of latin and greek at st. paul's school. he translated aristotle, plato, proclus, plotinus, pausanias, lamblichus, porphyry. tom appleton beckford.' beckford's italy and spain is the book of a sybarite of the talleyi beckford's name was william, — he had just died, but mr. thomas gold appleton, of boston, was a traveller 80 appreciative of the good things in european travel and so witty a narrator that mr. emerson was reminded of him by so 1844) beckford 511 rand, brummel, vivian grey school, written in 1787-89, and much of the humor consist in the contrast between the volume of this johnson and gibbon sentence and the ballroom petulance it expresses. he delights in classic antiquity; in sunsets, as associated with that mythology; in music, in picturesque nature. he is only a dilettante, and before the humblest original worker would feel the rebuke of a solid, domestic being, as of a creator of that classic world, which he only gazes at, but lays no stone of it. he would affect contempt, but his confidence would be the great foolish multitude, and that steads him not; for when a man has once met his master, that is a secret which he cannot keep. yet the travellers why should we blame any more than the thousands who stay at home and do less, or worse? he loves twilight, and sleep. many of his criticisms are excellent. he says of the duomo at florence that the architect seems to have turned his church inside out, such is the ornate exterior and so simple is the interior. he says of paul veronese's cana in galilee, that the beckford's book. this heading of the paragraph with the nickname is in mr. emerson's later handwriting, after he had known appleton at the saturday club. 512 journal (age 40 people at the table seem to be decent persons accustomed to miracles. ole bull, a dignifying, civilizing influence. yet he was there for exhibition, not for music; for the wonders of his execution, not as saint cecilia incarnated, who would be there to carry a point, and degrading all her instruments into meekest means. yet he played as a man who found a violin in his hand, and so was bent to make much of that, but if he had found a chisel or a sword or a spyglass, or a troop of boys, would have made much of them. it was a beautiful spectacle. i have not seen an artist with manners so pleasing. what a sleep as of egypt on his lips in the midst of his rapturous music! we are impressed by a burke or a schiller who believes in embodying in practice ideas; because literary men, for the most part, who are cognizant of ideas, have a settled despair as to the realization of ideas in their own times. in boston, i trod the street a little proudly, that i could walk from allston's belshazzar's feast to the sculpture gallery, and sit before michael angelo's day and night, and the antiques; then into the library; then to ole bull. 1844) room. economy 513 we want deference, and, when we come to realize that thing mechanically, we want acres. scatter this hot, crowded population at respectful distances each from each over the vacant world. lane and his friends thought the cattle made all this wide space necessary, and that if there were no cows to pasture, less land would suffice. but a cow does not need so much land as my eyes require between me and my neighbor. for economy it is not sufficient that you make now and then a sharp reduction, or that you deny yourself and your family, to meanness, things within their system of expense; but it needs a constant eye to the whole. you yourself must be always present throughout your system. you must hold the reins in your own hands, and not trust to your horse. the farm must be a system, a circle, or its economy is naught; and the fantastic farmers piece out their omissions with cunning. the effect of these calamitous pictures of pauperism which obtrude everywhere even in the comic literature, in punch and judy, in hood and dickens, suggests an admonition not so much to charity as to economy, that we may be self514 journal (age 40 contained and ready, when the calamity comes nearer, to do our part. i think genius alone finishes. classifying words outvalue many arguments; upstart, cockney, granny, pedant, prig, precisian, rowdy, niggers. goethe, with his extraordinary breadth of experience and culture, the security with which, like a great continental gentleman, he looks impartially over all literatures of the mountains, the provinces, and the sea, and avails himself of the best in all, contrasts with the rigor of the english, and superciliousness and flippancy of the french. his perfect taste, the austere felicities of his style. it is delightful to find our own thought in so great a man. the finest women have a feeling we cannot sympathize with in regard to marriage. they cannot spare the exaltation of love and the experiences of marriage from their history. but shall a virgin descend to marry below her? does she not see that nature may be trusted for completing her own circle? the true virgin will 1844] thoreau. word and act 515 raise herself by just degrees into a goddess, admirable and helpful to all beholders. henry thoreau's conversation consisted of a continual coining of the present moment into a sentence and offering it to me. i compared it to a boy, who, from the universal snow lying on the earth, gathers up a little in his hand, rolls it into a ball, and flings it at me. henry said that the other world was all his art; that his pencils would draw no other; that his jackknife would cut nothing else. he does not use it as a means. henry is a good substantial childe, not encumbered with himself. he has no troublesome memory, no wake, but lives ex tempore, and brings to-day a new proposition as radical and revolutionary as that of yesterday, but different. the only man of leisure in the town. he is a good abbot samson: and carries counsel in his breast. if i cannot show his performance much more manifest than that of the other grand promisers, at least i can see that, with his practical faculty, he has declined all the kingdoms of this world. satan has no bribe for him. 516 (age 40 journal in america we are such rowdies in church and state, and the very boys are so soon ripe, that i think no philosophical skepticism will make much sensation. spinoza pronounced that there was but one substance; yes, verily; but that boy yonder told me yesterday he thought the pine log was god! ... what can spinoza tell the boy? fourier has the immense merits of originality and hope. whilst society is distracted with disputes concerning the negro race, he comes to prescribe the methods of removing this mask and caricature of humanity, by bringing out the true and real form from underneath. in the woods, with their ever festal look, i am ever reminded of that parable which commends the merchant, who, seeing a pearl of great price, sold all to buy that: so i could not find it in my heart to chide the yankee who should ruin himself to buy a patch of heavy-timbered oakland. i admire the taste which makes the avenue to a house, were the house ever so small, through a wood, as it disposes the mind of guest and host alike to the deference due to each. hail vegetable gods! 1844) two classes. jesus 517 i observe two classes very easily among those capable of thought and spiritual life, namely, those who are very intelligent of this matter, and can rise easily into it on the call of conversation, and can write strongly of it, and secondly, those who think nothing else and live on that level, and are conscious of no effort or even variety in experience. life is made up of the interlude and interlabor of these two amicable worlds. we are amphibious and weaponed to live in both. we have two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic, like a boat furnished with wheels for land and water travel. it is never strange, an unfit marriage, since man is the child of this most impossible marriage, this of the two worlds. ma marit is strange that jesus is esteemed by mankind the bringer of the doctrine of immortality." the lyceum should refuse all such pieces as were written to it. behmen. i read a little in behmen. in reading there is a sort of half-and-half mixture. the i see « immortality” (letters and social aims, p. 348). 518 (age 40 journal book must be good, but the reader must also be active. i have never had good luck with behmen before to-day. and now i see that his excellence is in his comprehensiveness, not, like plato, in his precision. his propositions are vague, inadequate, and straining. it is his aim that is great. he will know, not one thing, but all things. he is like those great swaggering country geniuses that come now and then down from new hampshire to college and soon demand to learn, not horace and homer, but also euclid and spinoza and voltaire and palladio and columbus and bonaparte and linnæus.... i read in him to-day this sentence,“ men do with truths as children with birds, either they crush them or they let them fly away.” again, “ this new wine made the bottle new.” of adam, “his bones were strengths.” “ thus hath this rose of sharon perfumed our graves.” jacob behmen is a great man, but he accepted the accommodations of the hebrew dynasty. of course he cannot take rank with the masters of the world. his value, like that of proclus, is chiefly for rhetoric. theory and practice in life. in our recipe, the ingredients are separately named, but in the 1844] woman's lot. music 519 cup which we drink, the elements are exquisitely mixed; the heart and head are both nourished, and without fumes or repentance. our greatest debt to woman is of a musical character, and not describable. harriet martineau solved the problem of woman by describing a man! woman. ... to-day, in our civilization, her position is often pathetic. what is she not expected to do and suffer for some invitation to strawberries and cream ? mercifully their eyes are holden that they cannot see. pythagoras was right, who used music as a medicine. i lament my want of ear, but never quite despair of becoming sensible to this discipline. we cannot spare any stimulant or any purgative, we lapse so quickly into flesh and sleep. we must use all the exalters that will bring us into an expensive and productive state, or to the top of our condition. but to hear music, as one would take an ice-cream, or a bath, and to forget it the next day, gives me a humble picture. of what use is genius if the organ ... cannot find a focal distance? '... i here follows the passage so beginning in “ experience” 520 (age 40 journal the day of triviality and verbiage. once “the rose of sharon perfumed our graves," as behmen said; but now, if a man dies, it is like a grave dug in the snow, it is a ghastly fact abhorrent to nature, and we never mention it. death is as natural as life, and should be sweet and graceful. god only knew how saadi dined; roses he ate, and drank the wind." and this one thing is certain, that the benefactor of his country shall not propose to himself models, nor content himself with outstripping his neighbors and contemporaries in the race of honor, pausing when he is the best in his little circle; that leads to atheism and despair. new hampshire and vermont will in six months let loose some young savage from their wilds who shall take this petit maître of virtue and culture like a doll in their hands and shatter the pretty porcelain. all reference to models, all comparison with neighboring abilities and reputations, is (essays, second series, pp. 50, 51), and that in the same essay on the pseudo-science, phrenology (p. 53). 1 at various points in this journal occur lines on the life and experience of the poet under the name of saadi or seyd. (see poems, appendix, pp. 320-326.) i 1844) the new movement 521 the road to mediocrity.”... calm, pure, effectual service distinguishes the generous soul from the vulgar great. he is one who without phrase does what was hitherto impossible. in general, i am pained by observing the indigence of nature in this american commonwealth. ellen h. said she sympathized with the transcendental movement, but she sympathized even more with the objectors. i replied that, when i saw how little kernel there was to that comet which had shed terror from its flaming hair on the nations, how few and what cinders of genius, i was rather struck with surprise at the largeness of the reflect, and drew a favorable inference as to the intellectual and spiritual tendencies of our people. for there had not yet appeared one man among us of a great talent. if two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach. go to hear a great orator, to see how presentable truth and right are, and how presentable are common facts.... i for the rest of this passage, see “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 61). 2 the rest of this striking passage on the might of right when bravely presented is in « the scholar” (lectures and biographical sketches, pp. 281, 282). 522 (age 40 journal “o i did get the rose water whair ye wull neir get nane, for i did get that very rose water into my mither's wame.” the new races rise all pre-divided into parties, ready-armed and angry to fight for they know not what. yet easy it is to see that they all share, to the rankest philistines, the same idea; ... the idea rides and rules like the sun. therefore, then, philosopher, rely on thy truth ; bear down on it with all thy weight; add the weight of thy town, thy country, and the whole world : triumphantly, thou shalt see, it will bear it all like a scrap of down.' i think the best argument of the conservative is this bad one : that he is convinced that the angry democrat, who wishes him to divide his park and château with him, will, on entering into the possession, instantly become conservative, and hold the property and spend it as selfishly as himself. for a better man, i might dare to renounce my estate; for a worse man, or for as bad a man as i, why should i? all the history of man with unbroken sequence of 1 this is printed in somewhat different form in « instinct and inspiration” (natural history of intellect, p. 81). 1844] samuel hoar. shakers 523 examples establishes this inference. yet it is very low and degrading ground to stand upon. we must never reason from history, but plant ourselves on the ideal. men are edificant or otherwise. samuel hoar is to all men's eyes conservative and constructive: his presence supposes a well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large institutions and empire: if these things did not exist, they would begin to exist through his steady will and endeavors. therefore he cheers and comforts men, who all feel this in him very readily. the reformer, the rebel, who comes by, says all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discovers to my groping dæmon no plan of house or empire of his own. therefore, though samuel hoar's town and state are a very cheap and modest commonwealth, men very rightly go to him and flout the reformer. june 15. a second visit to the shakers with mr. hecker.' their family worship was a painful spectacle. i could remember nothing but the spedale dei pazziat palermo; this shaking of their hands, i rev. isaac hecker. 2 insane asylum. 524 journal (age 41 like the paws of dogs, before them as they shuffled in this dunce-dance seemed the last deliration. if there was anything of heart and life in this, it did not appear to me: and as swedenborg said that the angels never look at the back of the head, so i felt that and saw nothing else. my fellow men could hardly appear to less advantage before me than in this senseless jumping. the music seemed to me dragged down nearly to the same bottom. and when you come to talk with them on their topic, which they are very ready to do, you find such exaggeration of the virtue of celibacy that you might think you had come into a hospital-ward of invalids afflicted with priapism. yet the women were well dressed and appeared with dignity as honored persons. and i judge the whole society to be cleanly and industrious, but stupid people. and these poor countrymen with their nasty religion fancy themselves the church of the world, and are as arrogant as the poor negroes on the gambia river. the long life. wemustinfer our destiny from the preparation. we are driven by instincts to higher innumerable experiences which are of no visible value, and which we may revolve through 1844] modesty. cant. dandies 525 many lives in the eternal whirl of generation before we shall assimilate and exhaust. it is the rank of the spirit makes the merit of the deed. les attractions sont proportionelles aux destinés. yes, cries the angel, but my attractions transcend all your system. mrs. snow confessed, when the phrenologist found love of approbation, that “she did like to suit." if i made laws for shakers or a school, i should gazette every saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “god,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent. be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley. the right dandies. we have, it is true, a class of golden young men and maidens, of whom 1 mrs. snow was a kind and comforting old-fashioned nurse. the humility of this speech delighted mr. emerson and he often quoted it, 526 (age 41 journal we say that for practical purposes they need a grain or two of alloy to make them good coin. if society were composed of such, the race would speedily be extinct by reason of bears and wolves who would eat them up. granted. but perhaps it is in the great system that society shall have always some pensioners and pets, and how much better that such musical souls as these, worshippers of true beauty, objects of friendship, and monks and vestals in sacred culture, should be the exempts than the present muscadins of civilized society, the dandies, namely, who inherit an estate without wit or virtue. novels make us skeptical by giving prominence to wealth and social position, but i think them to be fine occasional stimulants, and, though with some shame, i am brought into an intellectual state. but great is the poverty of their inventions. the perpetual motive and means of accelerating or retarding interest is the dull device of persuading a lover that his mistress is betrothed to another. disraeli is well worth reading; quite a good student of his english world, and a very clever expounder of its wisdom and craft: never quite a master. novels make us great gentlemen whilst we read them. how generous, 1844] government 527 how energetic should we be in the crisis described; but unhappy is the wife, or brother, or stranger who interrupts us whilst we read: nothing but frowns and tart replies from the reading gentleman for them. our novel-reading is a passion for results; we admire parks and the love of beauties, and the homage of parliaments. government. a fire breaking out in a village makes immediately a natural government. the most able and energetic take the command, and are gladly obeyed by the rest. the feeble individuals take their place in the line to hand buckets, and the boys pass the empty ones." i can well hear a stranger converse on mysteries of love and romance of character; can easily become interested in his private love and fortunes; but as soon as i learn that he eats cucumbers, or hates parsnip, values his luncheon, and eats his dinner over again in his talk, i can 1 mr. emerson, like most of his neighbors, was a member of the village fire association, and the two leathern buckets, with the green baize bag for saving property, hung always in the east entry of his house, over the stairway. after handpumping engines were bought by the town, and fire-companies formed, the necessity for his personal service passed away, but he used to go to fight fire in the woods with a pine bough. 528 journal (age 41 never thenceforward hear that man talk of sentiment. i rode with a merry sea captain, between whom and the stage-coachman was a continual banter. we stopped at the poor-house. “mr. winchester,” said the captain, "your passengers say you ought to stop at the poor-house every day.” the driver replied, “if we should both stop there, captain davis, we should only stop where we started from.” the fitchburg road cost $1,100,000, fifty miles. the worcester $3,000,000, forty miles. new church in hanover street cost $65,000. people seem to me often sheathed in their tough organization. i know those who are the charge each of their several dæmon, and in whom the dæmon at intervals appears at the gates of their eyes. they have intervals, god knows, of weakness and folly like other people. of these i take no heed. i wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure and beautiful." i compare the lines • to and fro the genius fies” in « the dæmonic love” (poems, p. 110; also in appendix to poems, p. 352). 1844] dæmon. man of science 529 the lover transcends the person of the beloved; he is as sensible of her defects and weaknesses as another; he verily loves the tutelar and guiding damon who is at each instant throwing itself into the eyes, the air and carriage of his mistress, and giving to them this unearthly and insurmountable charm. do not lead me to question whether what we call science is help or hurt. yet unluckily in my experience of the scientific, it is a screen between you and the man having the science. he has his string of anecdotes and rules, as a physician, which he must show you, and you must endure, before you can come at the color and quality of the man. phrenology, too, i hate. c. adapts his conversation to the form of the head of the man he talks with! ... alas!" presently the railroads will not stop at boston, but will tunnel the city to communicate with each other. the same mob which has beat down the bastille will soon be ready to storm the tuileries. 1 the rest of this passage is in “ experience” (essays, second series, pp. 53, 54). 530 (age 41 journal henry described hugh' as saving every slip and stone and seed, and planting it. he picks up a peach-stone and puts it in his pocket to plant. that is his vocation in the world, to be a planter of plants. not less is a writer to heed his vocation of reporting. ... the vice of swedenborg's mind is its theologic determination. ... but a rose, a sunbeam, the human face, do not remind us of deacons. life which finishes and enjoys ! life is so affirmative that i can never hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without lively sympathy and fresh resolutions. the power of a straight line is a square, and wisdom is the power, or rather the powers, of the present hour. we have no prizes offered to the ambition of generous young men. there is with us no theban band.3 ... our mass meetings are a sad spectacle: they show great men put to a bad use, men consent1 the gardener. 2 the rest of the passage is printed in “ goethe” (representative men, pp. 262, 263). 3. the rest is printed in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 59). 1844] boy. self-justifying 531 ing to be managed by committees, and worse, consenting to manage men. the retribution is instant diminution, bereavement of ideas and of power, of all loveliness and of all growth. it is in vain to bawl “constitution” and “patriotism”; those words repeated once too often have a most ironical hoarseness. in common with all boys, i held a river to be good, but the name of it in a grammar hateful. ah! how different it is to render an account to ourselves of ourselves and to render account to the public of ourselves. “'tis the most difficult of tasks to keep heights which the soul is competent to gain.” granted; sadly granted; but the necessity by which deity rushes into distribution into variety and particles, is not less divine than the unity from which all begins. forever the demiurgus speaks to the junior gods as in the old tradition of the timæus, “ gods of gods, that mortal natures may subsist and that the universe may be truly all, convert (or distribute] yourselves according to your nature to the fabrication of animals,” etc. 532 (age 41 journal the use of geology has been to wont the mind to a new chronology.' ... the progress of physics and of metaphysics is parallel at first; it is lowest instinctive life, loathsome to the succeeding tribes like the generation of sour paste. it is animalcules, earwigs, and caterpillars writhing, wriggling, devouring and devoured. as the races advance and rise, order and rank appear, and the aurora of reason and of love.? ... nature will only save what is worth saving, and it saves, not by compassion, but by power. it saves men through themselves. ... if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization, for the sake of that element no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him, he will survive and play his part. so now it seems to me that the arrival of such men as toussaint, if he is pure blood, or of douglass, if he is pure blood, i here follows the passage in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 180) on the vast period from the first breaking of the rock to plato and the preaching of immortality. 2 see the “ address on the anniversary of the emancipation of the negroes in the british west indies," delivered in concord, august, 1844 (miscellanies, pp. 142, 145), only a few passages being here included. 1844] man the anti-slave 533 outweighs all the english and american humanity. the anti-slavery of the whole world is but dust in the balance, a poor squeamishness and nervousness; the might and the right is here. here is the anti-slave: here is man; and if you have man, black or white is an insignificance. why, at night all men are black. the intellect, that is miraculous. . . . let us not be our own dupes; all the songs and newspapers and subscriptions of money and vituperation of those who do not agree with us will avail nothing against eternal fact. i say to you, you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman. other half there is none. i esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be that proud discovery that the black race can begin to contend with the white; that in the great anthem of the world which we call history, a piece of many parts and vast compass, after playing a long time a very low and subdued accompaniment, they perceive the time arrived where they can strike in with force and effect and take a master's part in the music. ... but i am struck, in george sand, with the instant understanding between the great; and in i promessi sposi with the humility of fra cristofero; and in faustina with the silent acquiesan cs534 journal (age 41 cence of andlau in the new choice of faustina; for truth is the best thing in novels also. ne does he not do more to abolish slavery who works all day steadily in his garden than he who goes to the abolition meeting and makes a speech? the anti-slavery agency, like so many of our employments, is a suicidal business. whilst i talk, some poor farmer drudges and slaves for me. it requires a just costume, then, — the office of agent or speaker, -he should sit very low and speak very meekly, like one compelled to do a degrading thing. do not, then, i pray you, talk of the work and the fight, as if it were anything more than a pleasant oxygenation of your lungs. it is easy and pleasant to ride about the country amidst the peaceful farms of new england and new york, and sure everywhere of a strict sympathy from the intelligent and good, argue for liberty, and browbeat and chastise the dull clergyman or lawyer that ventures to limit or qualify our statement. this is not work. it needs to be done, but it does not consume heart and brain, does not shut out culture, does not imprison you, as the farm and the shoeshop and the forge. there is really no danger and no extraordinary energy demanded : 1844) true abolitionists 535 it supplies what it wants. i think if the witnesses of the truth would do their work symmetrically, they must stop all this boast and frolic and vituperation, and in lowliness free the slave by love in the heart. let the diet be low, and a daily feast of commemoration of their brother in bonds. . . . let them leave long discourses to the defender of slavery, and show the power of true words, which are always few. ... let us, if we assume the dangerous pretension of being abolitionists, and make that our calling in the world, let us do it symmetrically. the world asks, do the abolitionists eat sugar? do they wear cotton? do they smoke tobacco? are they their own servants? have they managed to put that dubious institution of servile labor on an agreeable and thoroughly intelligible and transparent foundation? ... the planter does not want slaves ; give him money; give him a machine that will provide him with as much money as the slaves yield, and he will thankfully let them go; he does not love whips, or usurping overseers, or sulky, swarthy giants creeping round his house and barns by night with lucifer matches in their hands and knives in their pockets. no; only he wants his luxury, and he will pay even this price for it. it is not 536 [age 41 journal possible, then, that the abolitionist will begin the assault on his luxury by any other means than the abating of his own. a silent fight, without war-cry or triumphant brag, then, is the new abolition of new england, shifting the thronging ranks of the champions and the speakers, the poets, the editors, the subscribers, the givers, and reducing the armies to a handful of just men and women. alas ! alas ! my brothers, there is never an abolitionist in new england." october 15. [here follows a list of the persons to whom mr. emerson is sending his second volume of essays. besides his mother, his wife, and aunt mary and nearest friends, the following names appear among the fifty-one mentioned: ogden 1 this was written in the early stages of the abolition movement. yet it should be said that mr. emerson, even when minister of the second church, had willingly admitted a speaker against slavery into his pulpit. it was the methods, not the cause, of the anti-slavery workers that dissatisfied him. when the fugiive slave law was passed, and the matter brought to his own door and heart, bis tone was different. he spoke with fire and eloquence and arguments against slavery. (see the two speeches on the fugitive slave law given in miscellanies; also, in the poems, his “ fourth of july ode,” • voluntaries,” and “ boston hymn.") cc 1844] said 537 haggerty, benjamin rodman, horace greeley, giles waldo, w. a. tappan, william m. prichard, christopher p. cranch, charles k. newcomb, r. w. griswold, sarah clarke, h. w. longfellow, george bemis, j. r. lowell, w. h. dennett, mrs. lydia maria child, c. c. hazewell, mrs. hildreth, mrs. w. pope, miss m. c. adams, nathaniel hawthorne, warren burton, benjamin peter hunt, charles lane, harriet martineau, j. w. morgan, john sterling, cornelius matthews, john g. whittier.] for the fine things, i make poetry of them; but the moral sentiments make poetry of me. there are beggars in iran and araby ; said was hungrier than all." was never form and never face so sweet to him as only grace, which did not last like a stone, but gleamed in sunlight and was gone. beauty chased he everywhere, in flame, in storm, in clouds of air ; he smote the lake to feed his eye i these are fragments of verses, long after mended and filled out. (see poems, appendix, pp. 320–322.) 538 [age 41 journal with the precious' green of the broken wave; he aung in pebbles well to hear the moment's music which they gave; loved harebells nodding on a rock, a cabin topped with curling smoke. ... the sun and moon are in my way when i would be solitary. there are many topics which ought not to be approached except in the plentitude of health and playfully. in maine they have not a summer, but a thaw. i understand very well in cities how the southerner finds sympathy. the heat drives, every summer, the planter to the north. he comes from west and south and southwest to the astor and the tremont houses. the boston merchant bargains for his cotton at his counting house, then calls on him at the hotel, politely sympathizes with all his modes of thinking,—“he never sided with these violent men,” — poor garrison, poor phillips i later the fortunate word beryl was substituted. 1844] our share in slavery 539 are on the coals. well, all that is very intelligible, but the planter does not come to concord. rum comes to concord, but not the slave-driver, and we are comparatively safe from his infusions. i hardly understand how he persuades so many dignified persons — who were never meant for tools — to become his tools.' intense selfishness which we all share. planter will not hesitate to eat his negro, because he can. we eat him in milder fashion by pelting the negro's friend. we cannot lash him with a whip, because we dare not. we lash him with our tongues. i like the southerner the best; he deals roundly and does not cant. the northerner is surrounded with churches and sunday schools and is hypocritical. how gladly, how gladly, if he dared, he would seal the lips of these poor men and poor women who speak for him. i see a few persons in the church, who, i fancy, will soon look about them with some surprise to see what company they are keeping. i do not wonder at feeble men being strong advocates for slavery. they have no feeling or 1 this passage shows that, whatever petulant outbreakings about the abolitionists' methods and speech mr. emerson allowed himself in his journal, the national curse and disgrace of slavery weighed always on his mind as on theirs. 540 journal (age 41 worthiness which assures them of their own safety. in a new state of things they are by no means sure it would go well with them. they cannot work or facilitate work, or cheer or decorate labor. no; they live by certain privileges which the actual order of the community yields them. take those and you take all. i do not wonder that such would fain raise a mob, for fear is very cruel. instinct of whigs may shudder at napoleon. but what does webster or andrew jackson, or what does crocker or belknap, or the hosmers fear from the elevation of irish or negroes? they know they can defy competition from the best whites or saxons. they should be abolitionists. a gentleman may have many innocent propensities, but if he chances to have the habit of slipping arsenic into the soup of whatever person sits next him at table, he must expect some inconvenience. he may call it his “ peculiar institution,” a mere way of his ; he never puts it in his own soup, only in the soup of his neighbor, and even only in some of his neighbors'; for example, he is partial to light hair, and only spices the dish of such as have black hair, and he may persuade his chaplain to find him a text, and be very indignant and patriotic and inne 1844) garrison 541 quarrelsome and moral-religious on the subject, and swear to die in defence of this old and strong habit he has contracted. the conscience of the white and the improvement of the black coöperated, and the emancipation became inevitable. it is a great deed with a great sequel, and cannot now be put back. the same movement goes forward with advantage; the conscience is more tender, and the black more respectable. meantime the belly is also represented, and the ignorant and sensual feel the danger and resist, so it goes slower. but it gains, and the haters of garrison have lived to rejoice in that grand world-movement which, every age or two, casts out so masterly an agent of good. i cannot speak of that gentleman without respect. i found him the other day in his dingy office. ore i have no doubt there was as much intense selfishness, as much cowardice, as much paltering then' as now; many held back and called the redeemers of their race fanatics and methodists; there were many who with the utmost dignity and sweetness gave such pepper-corn reasons, there were church carpets, etc. then, 1 in england before west indian emancipation. 542 (age 41 journal too, died many an old aunt in man's clothes that would nail up her pew to keep clarkson out. bonaparte was sensible to the music of bells. hearing the bell of a parish church, he would pause, and his voice faltered as he said, “ah! that reminds me of the first years i spent at briennei was then happy.”,... add as much force of intellect again to repair the immense defects of bonaparte's morale, and he would have been in harmony with the ideal world. wendell phillips. i wish that webster and everett and also the young political aspirants of massachusetts should hear wendell phillips speak, were it only for the capital lesson in eloquence they might learn of him. this, namely, that the first and the second and the third part of the art is, to keep your feet always firm on a fact. they talk about the whig party. there i the sexton, tolling his bell at noon, deems not that great napoleon stops his horse and thrills with delight as his files sweep round yon alpine height. poems, “ each and all.” 1844) phillips. hope 543 is no such thing in nature. they talk about the constitution. it is a scorned piece of paper. he feels after a fact, and finds it in the moneymaking, in the commerce of new england, and in the devotion of the slave states to their interest, which enforces them to the crimes which they avow or disavow, but do and will do. he keeps no terms with sham churches or shamming legislatures, and must and will grope till he feels the stones. then his other and better part, his subsoil, is the morale, which he solidly shows. eloquence, poetry, friendship, philosophy, politics, in short, all power must and will have the real, or they cannot exist. the ground of hope is in the infinity of the world, which infinitely reappears in every particle. i know, against all appearances, that there is a remedy to every wrong, and that every wall is a gate. dumont's mirabeau. mirabeau said of barnave, “he is a tree growing to become some time the mast of a line-of-battle ship.” target was said to be “ drowned in his talents.” “i could not puncture his dropsical eloquence,” says dumont. 546 (age 41 journal and perceptions and ready sympathies which put her into just relations with all persons, and a tender sense of propriety which recommends her to persons of all conditions. her bias is intellectual. it is not her delicacy of moral sentiment that sways her, but the absence of all motive to vice in one whose passion is for the beauty of laws. she would pardon any vice in another which did not obscure his intellect or deform him as a companion. she knows perfectly well what is right and wrong, but it is not from conscience that she acts, but from sense of propriety, in the absence, too, of all motives to vice. she has not a profound mind, but her faculties are very muscular, and she is endowed with a certain restless and impatient temperament, which drives her to the pursuit of knowledge, not so much for the value of the knowledge, but for some rope to twist, some grist to her mill. for this reason it is almost indifferent to her what she studies, — languages, chemistry, botany, metaphysics, — with equal zeal, and equal success, grasping over all the details with great precision and tenacity, yet keeping them details and means to a general end, which yet is not the most general and grand. i should say that her love of ends is less than w 1844] mrs. ripley 547 her impartial delight in all means ; delight in the exercise of her faculties, and not her love of truth, is her passion. she has a wonderful catholicity, not at all agreeable to precisians, in her creed and in her morality. she sympathizes with de staël, and with goethe, as living in this world, and frankly regrets that such beings should die as had more fitness to live in this world than any others in her experience. in like manner, whilst she would rapidly appreciate all the objections which speculative men would offer to the actual society among us, she would deprecate any declaration or step which pledged one of her friends to any hostility to society, ci to one she loved, than gratified by his opportunity of spiritual enlargement. this delight in detail, this pleasure in the work, and not in a result, appears in her conversation, wherein she does not rest for the tardy suggestions of nature and occasion, but eagerly recalls her books, her studies, her newest persons, and recites them with heat and enjoyment to her companion. [her] extreme gentleness : [she] excels in what is called using philosophy against the hurts of life. she follows nature in many particulars 546 (age 41 journal and perceptions and ready sympathies which put her into just relations with all persons, and a tender sense of propriety which recommends her to persons of all conditions. her bias is intellectual. it is not her delicacy of moral sentiment that sways her, but the absence of all motive to vice in one whose passion is for the beauty of laws. she would pardon any vice in another which did not obscure his intellect or deform him as a companion. she knows perfectly well what is right and wrong, but it is not from conscience that she acts, but from sense of propriety, in the absence, too, of all motives to vice. she has not a profound mind, but her faculties are very muscular, and she is endowed with a certain restless and impatient temperament, which drives her to the pursuit of knowledge, not so much for the value of the knowledge, but for some rope to twist, some grist to her mill. for this reason it is almost indifferent to her what she studies, — languages, chemistry, botany, metaphysics, — with equal zeal, and equal success, grasping over all the details with great precision and tenacity, yet keeping them details and means to a general end, which yet is not the most general and grand. i should say that her love of ends is less than 547 1844] mrs. ripley her impartial delight in all means ; delight in the exercise of her faculties, and not her love of truth, is her passion. she has a wonderful catholicity, not at all agreeable to precisians, in her creed and in her morality. she sympathizes with de staël, and with goethe, as living in this world, and frankly regrets that such beings should die as had more fitness to live in this world than any others in her experience. in like manner, whilst she would rapidly appreciate all the objections which speculative men would offer to the actual society among us, she would deprecate any declaration or step which pledged one of her friends to any hostility to society, fearing much more the personal inconvenience to one she loved, than gratified by his opportunity of spiritual enlargement. this delight in detail, this pleasure in the work, and not in a result, appears in her conversation, wherein she does not rest for the tardy suggestions of nature and occasion, but eagerly recalls her books, her studies, her newest persons, and recites them with heat and enjoyment to her companion. [her] extreme gentleness : [she] excels in what is called using philosophy against the hurts of life. she follows nature in many particulars 548 journal (age 41 of life where others obtrude their own will and theory. she leaves a dunce to be a dunce, and rather observes and humors than guides a scholar. she is necessitarian in her opinions, and believes that a loom which turns out huckabuck can never be talked into making damask. this makes her very despondent in seeing faults of character in others, as she deems them incurable. she, however, has much faith in the maturation and mellowing of characters, which often supplies some early defect. she will by no means content an abolitionist by her reliance on principles. she has too much respect to facts. she delights in french science for its precision and experiment, and its freedom from english convention. very little taste in the fine arts, — not at all disposed to hazard a judgment on a picture, or a statue, or a building, — and only a secondary taste in music, and even in poetry, — admiring what those whom she loves and trusts admire, and so capable of pleasure that she can easily be pleased by what she is assured by those she trusts is pleasing: if they say 'tis good, 'tis good; if they say 't is bad, 't is bad. she is feminine in her character, though she talks with men. she has no disposition to preach, 1844] mrs. ripley 549 or to vote, or to lead society. she is superior to any appetites or arts. she wishes to please and to live well with a few, but in the frankest, most universal and humane mode; but in her unselfishness and inattention to trifles, likes very well to be treated as a child and to have her toilette made for her by her young people, too confident in her own legitimate powers of engaging the best, to take any inferior methods. an innate purity and nobility, which releases her once for all from any solicitudes for decorum, or dress, or other appearances. she knows her own worth, and that she cannot be soiled by a plain dress, or by the hardest household drudgery. she is a pelican mother, and though one might not say of her what was said of the princess vaudemont, “ ask any beggar the way to her house; they all know it,” yet of her house and her husband's, it is certain that every beggar and every guest who has once visited it, will never forget it. it is very certain that every young man of parts remembers it as the temple of learning and ideas. after all, we have not described her, for she is obviously inspired by a great, bright, fortunate dæmon. she is of that truth of character that she toricess 550 (age 41 journal ments herself with any injustice, real or imagined, she may have done another. nature will outwit the wisest writer, though it were plato or spinoza, and his book will fall into this dead limbo we call literature ; else the writer were god, too, and his work another nature. authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1844 zoroaster (?), chaldæan oracles; pythagoras; heraclitus; plato; martial; plotinus; proclus; dante ; chaucer ; behmen; spinoza; voltaire; . linnæus; bausset; goethe and schiller, correspondence; burns; talleyrand;dumont, souvenirs sur mirabeau ; thomas taylor, translations from plato and neoplatonists; beckford, vathek, italy and spain; dr. ebenezer porter ; schelling ; schlegel; fourier; bettina von arnim; faustina; napoleon, and books on napoleon, antommarchi, bourrienne, etc.; r. chambers, vestiges of creation ; washington irving; allston; r. h. dana (senior); bryant; webster; everett; william 1844) reading 551 h. prescott; bancroft ; dr. channing; rev. henry ware; alcott; brisbane ; charles lane; george sand, consuelo; disraeli, vivian grey ; dickens; william lloyd garrison; wendell phillips ; charles k. newcomb; henry thoreau ; w. e. channing. end of volume vi che riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s. a hdi hw 1zwi m 45 /\u3z^.^s>-5 harvard college library * 1 /\u3z^4-a3-5 f harvard college library f~ i an address delivered before the senior class divinity college, cambridge, sunday evening, 15 july, 1838. by ralph waldo emerson. boston: james munroe and company. 1838. al ii; :<, i v (<~ / cambridge press: metcalf, toi1hv, and ballou. '* ;x address. in this refulgent summer it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. the grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. the air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-ofgilead, and the new hay. night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. through the transparent darkness pour the stars their almost spiritual rays. man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. the cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. the mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. the corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. one is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. how wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! in its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its forests of all woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life, is it well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. the planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor. but the moment the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. what am i? and what is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. behold these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehension can see tend this way and that, but not come full circle. behold these infinite relations, so like, so unlike; many, yet one. i would study, i would know, i would admire forever. these works of thought have been the entertainments of the human spirit in all ages. a more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. then instantly he is instructed in what is above him. he learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness. that which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized it yet. he ought. he knows the sense of that grand word, though his analysis fails entirely to render account of it. when in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he attains to say, — ' i love the right; truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore. virtue, i am thine: save me: use me: thee will i serve, day and night, in great, in small, that i maybe not virtuous, but virtue ;' — then is the end of the creation answered, and god is well pleased. the sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. it perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. the child amidst his baubles, is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and god, interact. these laws refuse to be adequately stated. they will not by us or for us be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. they elude, evade our persevering thought, and yet we read them hourly in each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse. the moral traits which are all globed into every virtuous act and thought, — in speech, we must sever, and describe or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars. yet, as this sentiment is the essence of all religion, let me guide your eye to the precise objects of the sentiment, by an enumeration '6 of some of those classes of facts in which this element is conspicuous. the intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. these laws execute themselves. they are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. he who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled himself. he who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. he who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. if a man is at heart just, then in so far is he god; the safety of god, the immortality of god, the majesty of god do enter into that man with justice. if a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. a man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. every step so downward, is a step upward. the man who renounces himself, comes to himself by so doing. see how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh everywhere, righting wrongs, correcting appearances, and bringing up facts to a harmony with thoughts. its operation in life, though slow to the senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. by it, a man is made the providence to himself, dispensing good to his goodness, and evil to his sin. character is always known. thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. the least admixture of a lie, — for example, the smallest mixture of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance, — will instantly vitiate the effect. but speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness. see again the perfection of the law as it applies itself to the affections, and becomes the law of society. as we are, so we associate. the good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. thus of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell. these facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool, active ; and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere baulked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise. good is positive. evil is merely privative, not absolute. it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. all evil is so much death or nonentity. benevolence is absolute and real. so much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. for all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its 8 different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. all things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. in so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, be becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. the perception of this law of laws always awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. wonderful is its power to charm and to command. it is a mountain air. it is the embalmer of the world. it is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary. it makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. by it, is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power. thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity. but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart, gives and is the assurance that law is sovereign over all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy. this sentiment is divine and deifying. it is the beatitude of man. it makes him illimitable. through it, the soul first knows itself. it corrects the capital mistake of the infant man, who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages from another, — by showing the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is a door into the deeps of reason. when he says, "i ought;" when love warms him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul from supreme wisdom. then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. in the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. this sentiment lies at the foundation of society, and successively creates all forms of worship. the principle of veneration never dies out. man fallen into superstition, into sensuality, is never wholly without the visions of the moral sentiment. in like manner, all the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. the expressions of this sentiment affect us deeper, greatlier, than all other compositions. the sentences of the oldest time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. this thought dwelled always deepest in the minds of men in the devout and contemplative east; not alone in palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in egypt, in persia, in india, in china. europe has always owed to oriental genius, its divine impulses. what these holy bards said, all sane men found 2 10 agreeable and true. and the unique impression of jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely ; it is an intuition. it cannot be received at second hand. truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that i can receive from another soul. what he announces, i must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, i can accept nothing. on the contrary, the absence of this primary faith is the presence of degradation. as is the flood so is the ebb. let this faith depart, and the very words it spake, and the things it made, become false and hurtfifl. then falls the church, the state, art, letters, life. the doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. once man was all; now he is an appendage, a nuisance. and because the indwelling supreme spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. the doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul. miracles, prophecy, poe11 try, the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief, nor in the aspiration of society; but, when suggested, seem ridiculous. life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses. these general views, which, whilst they are general, none will contest, find abundant illustration in the history of religion, and especially in the history of the christian church. in that, all of us have had our birth and nurture. the truth contained in that, you, my young friends, are now setting forth to teach. as the cultus, or established worship of the civilized world, it has great historical interest for us. of its blessed words, which have been the consolation of humanity, you need not that i should speak. i shall endeavor to discharge my duty to you, on this occasion, by pointing out two errors in its administration, which daily appear more gross from the point of view we have just now taken. jesus christ belonged to the true race of prophets. he saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. one man was true to what is in you and me. he saw that god incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his 12 world. he said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'i am divine. through me, god acts; through me, speaks. would you see god, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as i now think.' but what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! there is no doctrine of the reason which will bear to be taught by the understanding. the understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'this was jehovah come down out of heaven. i will kill you, if you say he was a man.' the idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. christianity became a mythus, as the poetic teaching of greece and of egypt, before. he spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the man is diviner. but the very word miracle, as pronounced by christian churches, gives a false impression; it is monster. it is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. he felt respect for moses and the prophets; but no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the heart. thus was he a true man. having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. bold13 ly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was god. thus was he a true man. thus is he, as i think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man. 1. in thus contemplating jesus, we become very sensible of the first defect of historical christianity. historical christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. as it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. it has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of jesus. the soul knows no persons. it invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. but by this eastern monarchy of a christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. the manner in which his name is surrounded with expressions, which were once sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all generous sympathy and liking. all who hear me, feel, that the language that describes christ to europe and america, is not the style of friendship and enthusiasm to a good and noble heart, but is appropriated and formal, — paints a demigod, as the orientals or the greeks would describe osiris or apollo. accept the injurious impositions of our early catachetical instruction, and even honesty and 14 self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not wear the christian name. one would rather be 'a pagan suckled in a creed outworn,' than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature, and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but even virtue^ and truth foreclosed and monopolized. you shall not be a man even. you shall not own the world; you shall not dare, and live after the infinite law that is in you, and in company with the infinite beauty ,which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms; but you must subordinate your nature to christ's nature; you must accept our interpretations; and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it. that is always best which gives me to myself. the sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, obey thyself. that which shows god in me, fortifies me. that which shows god out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. there is no longer a necessary reason for my being. already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and i shall decease forever. the divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intellect, of my strength. they admonish me, that the gleams which flash across my mind, are not mine, but god's; that they had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. so i love them. noble provocations go out from them, invit15 ing me also to emancipate myself; to resist evil; to subdue the world ; and to be. and thus by his holy thoughts, jesus serves us, and thus only. to aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation of the soul. a true conversion, a true christ, is now, as always, to be made, by the reception of beautiful sentiments. it is true that a great and rich soul, like his, falling among the simple, does so preponderate, that, as his did, it names the world. the world seems to them to exist for him, and they have not yet drunk so deeply of his sense, as to see that only by coming again to themselves, or to god in themselves, can they grow forevermore. it is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of myself. the time is coming when all men will see, that the gift of god to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow. the injustice of the vulgar tone of preaching is not less flagrant to jesus, than it is to the souls which it profanes. the preachers do not see that they make his gospel not glad, and shear him of the locks of beauty and the attributes of heaven. when i see a majestic epaminondas, or washington; when i see among my contemporaries, a true orator, an upright judge, a dear friend; when i vibrate to the melody and fancy of a poem; i see beauty that 16 is to be desired. and so lovely, and with yet more entire consent of my human being, sounds in my ear the severe music of the bards that have sung of the true god in all ages. now do not degrade the life and dialogues of christ out of the circle of this charm, by insulation and peculiarity. let them lie as they befel, alive and warm, part of human life, and of the landscape, and of the cheerful day. 2. the second defect of the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the moral nature, that law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, god himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if god were dead. the injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice. it is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to others the same knowledge and love. if utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. always the seer is a sayer. somehow his dream is told. somehow he publishes it with solemn joy. sometimes with pencil on canvas; sometimes with chisel on stone; sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of 17 indefinite music ; but clearest and most permanent, in words. the man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or poet. the office is coeval with the world. but observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of the office. the spirit only can teach. not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. the man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. but the man who aims to speak as books enable, as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest commands, babbles. let him hush. to this holy office, you propose to devote yourselves. i wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. the office is the first in the world. it is of that reality, that it cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. and it is my duty to say to you, that the need was never greater of new revelation than now. from the views i have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which i share, i believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. the soul is not preached. the church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. on this occasion, any complaisance, would be criminal, which 3 18 told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of christ, that the faith of christ is preached. it is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of all thoughtful men against the famine of our churches; this moaning of the heart because it is bereaved of the consolation, the hope, the grandeur, that come alone out of the culture of the moral nature ; should be heard through the sleep of indolence, and over the din of routine. this great and perpetual office of the preacher is not discharged. preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. in how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of god? where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? where shall i hear words such as in elder ages drew men to leave all and follow, — father and mother, house and land, wife and child? where shall i hear these august laws of moral being so pronounced, as to fill my ear, and i feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action and passion? the test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands, — so commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying. the faith 19 should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. but now the priest's sabbath has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done; we can make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves. whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. we shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. we are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we can, a solitude that hears not. i once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, i would go to church no more. men go, thought i, where they are wont to go, else had no spul entered the temple in the afternoon. a snowstorm was falling around us. the snowstorm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. he had lived in vain. he had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. if he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. the capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. this man had 20 ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; bis heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he had ever lived at all. not a line did he draw out of real history. the true preacher can always be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, — life passed through the fire of thought. but of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman; or any other fact of his biography. it seemed strange that the people should come to church. it seemed as if their houses were very unentertaining, that they should prefer this thoughtless clamor. it shows that there is a commanding attraction in the moral sentiment, that can lend a faint tint of light to dulness and ignorance, coming in its name and place. the good hearer is sure he has been touched sometimes; is sure there is somewhat to be reached, and some word that can reach it. when he listens to these vain words, he comforts himself by their relation to his remembrance of better hours, and so they clatter and echo unchallenged. i am not ignorant that when we preach unworthily, it is not always quite in vain. there is a good . 21 , ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment. there is poetic truth concealed in all the common-places of prayer and of sermons, and though foolishly spoken, they may be wisely heard; for, each is some select expression that broke out in a moment of piety from some stricken or jubilant soul, and its excellency made it remembered. the prayers and even the dogmas of our church, are like the zodiac of denderah, and the astronomical monuments of the hindoos, wholly insulated from anything now extant in the life and business of the people. they mark the height to which the waters once rose. but this docility is a check upon the mischief from the good and devout. in a large portion of the community, the religious service gives rise to quite other thoughts and emotions. we need not chide the negligent servant. we are struck with pity, rather, at the swift retribution of his sloth. alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life. everything that befals, accuses him. would he ask contributions for the missions, foreign or domestic? instantly his face is suffused with shame, to propose to his parish, that they should send money a hundred or a thousand miles, to furnish such poor fare as they have at home, and would do well to go the hundred or the thousand miles, to escape. would he urge people to a godly way of living; — and can he ask a fellow creature to come to sab22 bath meetings, when he and they all know what is the poor uttermost they can hope for therein? will he invite them privately to the lord's supper? he dares not. if no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking formality is too plain, than that he can face a man of wit and energy, and put the invitation without terror. in the street, what has he to say to the bold village blasphemer? the village blasphemer sees fear in the face, form, and gait of the minister. let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by any oversight of the claims of good men. i know and honor the purity and strict conscience of numbers of the clergy. what life the public worship retains, it owes to the scattered company of pious men, who minister here and there in the churches, and who, sometimes accepting with too great tenderness the tenet of the elders, have not accepted from others, but from their own heart, the genuine impulses of virtue, and so still command our love and awe, to the sanctity of character. moreover, the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few eminent preachers, as in the better hours, the truer inspirations of all, — nay, in the sincere moments of every man. but with whatever exception, it is still true, that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal; that thus, 23 historical christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. what a cruel injustice it is to that law, the joy of the whole earth, which alone can make thought dear and rich; that law whose fatal sureness the astronomical orbits poorly emulate, that it is travestied and depreciated, that it is behooted and behowled, and not a trait, not a word of it articulated. the pulpit in losing sight of this law, loses all its inspiration, and gropes after it knows not what. and for want of this culture, the soul of the community is sick and faithless. it wants nothing so much as a stern, high, stoical, christian discipline, to make it know itself and the divinity that speaks .through it. now man is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneaks through the world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his kind. certainly there have been periods when, from the inactivity of the intellect on certain truths, a greater faith was possible in names and persons. the puritans in england and america, found in the christ of the catholic church, and in the dogmas inherited from rome, scope for their austere piety, and their longings for civil freedom. but their creed is passing away, and none arises in its room. i think no 24 man can go with his thoughts about him, into one of our churches, without feeling that what hold the public worship had on men, is gone or going. it has lost its grasp on the affection of the good, and the fear of the bad. in the country,—neighborhoods, half parishes are signing off, — to use the local term. it is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from the religious meetings. i have heard a devout person, who prized the sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, "on sundays, it seems wicked to go to church." and the motive, that holds the best there, is now only a hope and a waiting. what was once a mere circumstance, that the best and the worst men in the parish, the poor and the rich, the learned and the ignorant, young and old, should meet one day as fellows in one house, in sign of an equal right in the soul, — has come to be a paramount motive for going thither. my friends, in these two errors, i think, i find the causes of that calamity of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief, which are casting malignant influences around us, and making the hearts of good men sad. and what greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of worship? then all things go to decay. genius leaves the temple, to haunt the senate, or the market. literature becomes frivolous. science is cold. the eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is i 25 without honor. society lives to trifles, and when men die, we do not mention them. and now, my brothers, you will ask, what in these desponding days can be done by us? the remedy is already declared in the ground of our complaint of the church. we have contrasted the church with the soul. in the soul, then, let the redemption be sought. in one soul, in your soul, there are resources for the world. wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. the old is for slaves. when a man comes, all books are legible, all things transparent, all religions are forms. he is religious. man is the wonderworker. he is seen amid miracles. all men bless and curse. he saith yea and nay, only. the stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of jesus by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology. it is the office of a true teacher to show us that god is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake. the true christianity, — a faith like christ's in the infinitude of man, — is lost. none believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. ah me! no man goeth alone. all men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the god who seeth in secret. they cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. they think society wiser than their soul, and 4 26 know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world. see how nations and races flit by on the sea of time, and leave no ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one good soul shall make the name of moses, or of zeno, or of zoroaster, reverend forever. none assayeth the stern ambition to be the self of the nation, and of nature, but each would be an easy secondary to some christian scheme, or sectarian connexion, or some eminent man. once leave your own knowledge of god, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, as st. paul's, or george fox's, or swedenborg's, and you get wide from god with every year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries, — the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine. let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love god without mediator or veil. friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation wesleys and oberlins, saints and prophets. thank god for these good men, but say, ' i also am a man.' imitation cannot go above its model. the imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. the inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. in the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. 27 yourself a newborn bard of the holy ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with deity. be to them a man. look to it first and only, that you are such; that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, —but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each family in your parish connexion, —when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a divine man; be to them thought and virtue; let their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts be genially tempted out in your atmosphere; let their doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you have wondered. by trusting your own soul, you shall gain a greater confidence in other men. for all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men do value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. we mark with light in the memory the few interviews, we have had in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we inly were. discharge to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be followed with their love as by an angel. t 28 and, to this end, let us not aim at common degrees of merit. can we not leave, to such as love it, the virtue that glitters for the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes of absolute ability and worth? we easily come up to the standard of goodness in society. society's praise can be cheaply secured, and almost all men are content with those easy merits ; but the instant effect of conversing with god, will be, to put them away. there are sublime merits; persons who are not actors, not speakers, but influences; persons too great for fame, for display; who disdain eloquence; to whom all we call art and artist, seems too nearly allied to show and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the universal. the orators, the poets, the commanders encroach on us only as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. slight them by preoccupation of mind, slight them, as you can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you have right, and that it is in lower places that they must shine. they also feel your right; for they with you are open to the influx of the all-knowing spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest. in such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of rectitude: a bold benevolence, an inde29 pendence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes of those who love us, shall impair our freedom, but we shall resist for truth's sake the freest flow of kindness, and appeal to sympathies far in advance; and, —what is the highest form in which we know this beautiful element, — a certain solidity of merit, that has nothing to do with opinion, and which is so essentially and manifestly virtue, that it is taken for granted, that the right, the brave, the generous step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending it. you would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. the silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause. such souls, when they appear, are the imperial guard of virtue, the perpetual reserve, the dictators of fortune. one needs not praise their courage, — they are the heart and soul of nature. 0 my friends, there are resources in us on which we have not drawn. there are men who rise refreshed on hearing a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority—demanding not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice, — comes graceful and beloved as a bride. napoleon said of massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead , began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as 30 a robe. so it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of question, that the angel is shown. but these are heights that we can scarce remember and look up to, without contrition and shame. let us thank god that such things exist. and now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. the evils of that church that now is, are manifest. the question returns, what shall we do? i confess, all attempts to project and establish a cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. all attempts to contrive a system, are as cold as the new worship introduced by the french to the goddess of reason, — to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. rather let the breath of new life be breathed by' you through the forms already existing. for, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. the remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. a whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. two inestimable advantages christianity has given us; first; the sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the 31 vile, a thought of the dignity of spiritual being. let it stand forevermore, a temple, which new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to mankind. and secondly, the institution of preaching, — the speech of man to men, — essentially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms. what hinders that . now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation. i look for the hour when that supreme beauty, which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the west also. the hebrew and greek scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions. but they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. i look for the new teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the ought, that duty, is one thing with science, with beauty, and with joy. k b —— oc charged the bobbow<*l«\ufl "s book 13 belowno,l"!cn0t ekempt the n°t,c^es?bomnsveboueeees. bobronneb f» w|dwe> librae book ' .-e^?^^^!* w* canc aug 0 8 2005 ^jsl^'t s/n/v42 44 43 41 al 3639.03.10 thoreau emersons obituary al 3639 03.10 {| l ju v. jo verit itas harvard college library i henry d. thoreau emerson's obituary 318 1 1 ! i collectanea henry d. thoreau emerson's obituary nuiber one lakelani), michigan edwin b. hill 1904 a !.03.10 v harvard university library man lo 1952 henry d. thoreau. d". ied at concord, on tuesday, 6 may, henry d. thoreau, aged 44 years. the premature death of mr. thoreau is a bitter disappointment to many friends who had set no limit to their confidence in his power and future performance. he is known to the public as the author of two remarkable books, “a week on the concord and merrimack rivers," published in 1849, and “walden, or life in the woods," published in 1854. these books have never had a wide circulation, but are well known to the best readers, and have exerted a powerful influence on an important class of earnest and contemplative persons. mr. thoreau was born in concord, in 1817; was graduated at harvard university, in 1837. resisting the example of his companions, and the advice of friends, he declined entering either of the learned professions, and for a long time pursued his studies as his 4. henry d. thoreau, 7 ill genius led him without apparent method. but being a good mathematician and with an early and controlling love of nature, he afterwards came by imperceptible steps into active employment as a land-surveyor,whose art he had first learned in the satisfaction of his private questions, a profession which gave him lucrative work, and not too much of it, and in the running of town lines and the boundaries to farms and woodlands, carried him precisely where he wished to go, to the homes of new plants, and of swamp and forest birds, as well as of wild landscape, and indian relics. a man of simple tastes, hardy habiis, and of preternatural powers of ol servation, he became a patient and successful student of nature in every aspect, and obtained an acquaintance with the history of the river on whose banks he lived, and with the habits of plants and animals, which made him known and valued by naturalists. lle gathered a private museum of natural curiosities, and has left a large collection of manuscript records of bis varied experiments and observations, which are of much more than scientific value. liis latest studies were in forest trees, the succession of forest growths, and the annual increment of wood. he knew the literature of natural history, from aristotle and pliny, down to the english writers on his favorite departments. henry d. thoreau. 5 he was a 1 but his study as a naturalist, which went on increasing, and had no vacations, was less remarkable than the power of his mind and the strength of his character. man of stoic temperament, highly intellectual, of a perfect probity, full of practical skill, an expert woodsman and boatman, acquainted with the use of tools, a good planter and cultivator, when he saw fit to plant, but without any taste for luxury, without the least ambition to be rich, or to be popular, and almost without sympathy in any of the common motives of men around him. he led the life of a philosopher, subordinating all other pursuits and so-called duties to his pursuit of knowledge and to his own estimate of duty. he was a man of firm mind and direct dealing, never disconcerted, and not to be bent by any inducement from his own he had a penetrating insight into men with whom he conversed, and was not to be deceived or used by any party, and did not conceal his disgust at any duplicity. as he was incapable of any the least dishonesty or untruth, he had nothing to hide, and kept his haughty independence to the end. and when we now look back at the solitude of this erect and spotless person, we lament that he did not live long enough for all men to know him. e. course, : henry d. thoreau emerson's obituary 1 318 collectanea henry d. thoreau emerson's obituary number one lakeland, michigan edwin b. hill 1904 collectanea, henry d. thoreau emerson's obituary number one lakelani), michigan edwin b. iiill 1904 a ll .03.10 harvard university library marzo 1962 17 henry d. thoreau. die ied at concord, on tuesday, 6 may, henry d. thoreau, aged 44 years. the premature death of mr. thoreau is a bitter disappointment to many friends who had set no limit to their confidence in his power and future performance. he is known to the public as the author of two remarkable books, “a week on the concord and merrimack rivers,” published in 1849, and “walden, or life in the woods,” published in 1854. these books have never had a wide circulation, but are well known to the best readers, and have exerted a powerful influence on an important class of earnest and contemplative persons. mr. thoreau was born in concord, in 1817; was graduated at harvard university, in 1837. resisting the example of his companions, and the advice of friends, he declined entering either of the learned professions, and for a long time pursued his studies as his 4 henry 1). thoreal. t genius led him without apparent method. but being a good mathematician and with an early and controlling love of nature, he afterwards came by imperceptible teps into active employment as a land-surveyor, whose art he had first learned in the satisfaction of his private questions, --a profession which gave him lucrative work, and not too much of it, and in the running of town lines and the boundaries to farms and woodlands, carried him precisely where he wished to go, to the homes of new plants, and of swamp and forest birds, as well as of wild landscape, and indian relics. a man of simple tastes, hardy habits, and of preternatural powers of ol'servation, he became a patient and successful student of nature in every aspect, and obtained an acquaintance with the history of the river on whose banks he lived, and with the habits of plants and animals, wbich made him known and valued by naturalists. he gathered a private museum of natural curiosities, and bas left a large collection of manuscript records of his varied experiments and observations, which are of much more than scientific value. this latest studies were in forest trees, the succession of forest growths, and the annual increment of wood. ile knew the literature of natural bistory, from aristotle and pliny, down to the english writers on his favorite departments. henry d. thoreau. 5 he was a but his study as a naturalist, which went on increasing, and had no vacations, was less remarkable than the power of his mind and the strength of his character. man of stoic temperament, highly intellectual, of a perfect probity, full of practical skill, an expert woodsman and boatman, acquainted with the use of tools, a good planter and cultivator, when he saw fit to plant, but without any taste for luxury, without the least ambition to be rich, or to be popular, and almost without sympathy in any of the common motives of men around him. he led the life of a philosopher, subordinating all other pursuits and so-called duties to his pursuit of knowledge and to his own estimate of duty. he was a man of firm mind and direct dealing, never disconcerted, and not to be bent by any inducement from his own he had a penetrating insight into men with whom he conversed, and was not to be deceived or used by any party, and did not conceal his disgust at any duplicity. as he was incapable of any the least dishonesty or untruth, he had nothing to hide, and kept his haughty independence to the end. and when we now look back at the solitude of this erect and spotless person, we lament that he did not live long enough for all men to know him. e. course. note. ir is believed that a peculiar interest attaches to this reprint of emerson's obituary on the death of thoreau. perhaps the history of the “copy” from which it is now reprinted will make this plain. it is known to but a few that thoreau had a cor correspondent in michigan and as early as 1856. the reading of “ walden” had filled the earnest michigan man with a fierce hunger for thoreau's first book,“ a week on the concord and merrimack rivers,” and failing to find a bookseller who could supply a copy, he had written directly to thoreau, whose reply we are permitted to publish through the courtesy of the present owner of the holograph: concord, jan’y 18th, 1856. dear sir: i am glad to hear that my " walden” has interested you that perchance it holds some truth still as far off as michigan. i thank you for your note. the week” had so poor a publisher that it is quite uncer. tain whether you will find it in any shop. i am not sure but authors must turn booksellers themselves. the price is $1.25. if you care enough for it to send me that sum by mail (stamps will do for change), i will forward you a copy by the same conveyance. as for the “ more” that is to come, i cannot speak definitely at present, but i trust that the mine -be it silver or lead -is 8 henry d. thoreac. not yet exhausted. at any rate, i shall be encouraged by the fact that you are interested in its yield. yours respectfully, tienry d. thoreal.! the correspondence thus begun ended in november, 1859, at which time thoreau was devoting himself to defending the despised captain john brown and fervently advocating his cause. it was not until the month following thoreau's death that his michigan admirer learned of it, and he at once wrote a letter of condolence to the surviving mother and sister. then, beside letters from sophia thoreau, the following came to him, in reply to a direct enquiry which had been directed to one of thoreau's concord intimates : concord, june uth, 1862. my dear sir: your letter of the 8th instant inquiring concerning the death of henry thoreau is just received, and i hasten to answer it. a slight notice of the funeral was printed in the boston • transcript” of may 10th (i think), and the “ advertiser” of the 9th had a notice of himself by mr. emerson. a more extended notice, consisting of the eulogy spoken at the funeral, with additions, will appear in the “atlantic monthly” for august and will be the answer to many of your enquiries. his illness was a lingering one – a year and a half, at least, the last six months of which he was able to go out doors but little. he endured it with great patience and sweetness, preserving his gayety and wit to the last. i was often with him, having known him well for the last seven years. you have indeed missed much in not having met him, for he well supported the impression left by his writings. some unpublished letters of thenry d. and sophia e. thoreau: d chapter in the listory of a still-born book. p. 27. the marion press. 1899. henry d. thoreal. 9 ilis mother and sister, who survive him, mrs. cynthia and miss sophia thoreau, desire me to say that they remember your friendly letters to mr. thoreau, and have desired to send some token of their remembraance. they therefore enclose these verses of ellery channing's and mr. emerson's “advertiser” sketch. at the funeral, which was in the church, mr. emerson spoke after the clergyman – mr. channing's hymn was sung, and mr. alcott read some passages from the writings of mr. thoreau. i hope you may carry out your purpose of visiting concord, and shall be glad to talk with you then on a subject so dear to us both. yours truly, f. b. sanborn. after being carefully kept for thirty-five years the original recipient of these posthumous tributes transferred them to the present editor, and thus it is that they are no longer entrusted to the precarious keeping of a scrap-book. doubtless many who read emerson's obituary notice in the “advertiser” some forty years ago (when thoreau's fame was but “a cloud out of the sea, as large as a man's hand”') thought the eulogium only the fond exaggeration of a fervent friendship, but to-day time, the incorruptible arbiter, has confirmed the judgment pronounced while yet the mother's tears were warm upon the face of her dead son. not only confirmed, but enlarged the judgment; for emerson himself had not fully known the extent of thoreau's acquirements and capacity. it will be a matter of astonishment and of surprise to many other than the few now living in “old concord” who had known thoreau in the flesh, to learn on the best of authority that as a classical scholar he was far superior to emerson and fully the equal of the over self-conscious lowell ; and as an original thinker, it is safe to declare that thoreau will be read when lowell is forgotten and emerson remembered chiefly as the ܕ ܕ το henry d. thoreal'. leading exponent of “the transcendental movement” in the united states. the charm of personality perishes with the memory of those who felt its spell; the inspiration of the thinker is the deathless inheritance of the race: and this pronouncement confidently abides the incorruptible arbitration of the coming centuries. • it is noteworthy that emerson's obituary notice, written as it was while yet thoreau's clay was uncotfined, contains all of real worth and importance that was included in the more carefully prepared eulogy which was spoken in the very church wherein thoreau had made his impassioned “ plea for captain john brown” and which subsequently appeared in the “atlantic monthly,” but without the “ additions” predicted by the concord correspondent: at least any additions that are now detectable, for ei son's spoken words were not “reported." as the “atlantic” paper forms the biographical introduction to thoreau's first posthumous book, the student of literature can pass an interesting hour by comparing the germ from the boston “ advertiser” with the later and carefully finished product of the scholar's study; the former reveals emerson as a friend, the latter shows his consummate art as a writer. 19 1 3 2044 018 865 758 the star the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. bey all rener gasile boo book pue jul 5 1985 o a 245606 win dener my. 19.2005 9,6925 un' 1 3 1995 cancelledsi book due 2 222 hd widener hw kizb 4 le al 1323.268 harvard college library (g csc co (( ( zu ei . c former let 10th 1876 may-day and other pieces. ralph waldo emerson. and boston: james r. osgood and company. late ticknor & fields, and fields, osgood, & co. 1875. al 1323.368 entered according to act of congress, in the year 1867, by ralpii waldo emerson, in the clerk's office of the district court of the district of massachusetts harvard university library dec 1912 university press: welch, bigelow, & com cambridge. con te nts. page page may-day . . . . . . . . . . . i the adirondacs. . . . . . 41 occasional and miscellaneous pieces. brahma. . . . . . . nemesis , . . . . . . . . fate . . . . . . . . . . freedom . . . . . . . . . ode sung in the town hall, concord, july 4, 1857 . . . . . . . . . boston hymn . . . . . . . . . 75 voluntaries . . . . . . . . 81 love and thought. . . . . . . fate 's petition una . . . letters . . . . . . . . rubies . . . . . . . . merlin's song .. . . . the test : . . . . solution . . . . . . . . nature and life. nature . . . . . the romany girl . . . . . . . 94 . . 95 . 96 . . 97 . 98 . . 105 109 . contents. . . days · · the chartist's complaint . my garden . . . . . the titmouse . . . sea-shore: . . . . song of nature . . . two rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . · . . . . . . . . iii . 112 114 . 119 125 . 128 134 • 136 140 . 143 145 . 148 . waldeinsamkeit . . . . . . . . . terminus . . . the past . . . the last farewell . in memoriam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . elements. experience . compensation . politics . . heroism . . . character . culture. . friendship . beauty • . . manners . . art . . spiritual laws unity · · worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . · · . . . . 157 159 . 161 163 . 164 . 165 . 166 168 . 170 172 . 174 175 . 176 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . · · · · . . . . . . . . . . . 179 quatrains . translations . . . translations . . . . . 193 193 m a y day. may-day. . aughter of heaven and earth, coy spring, with sudden passion languishing, maketh all things softly smile, painteth pictures mile on mile, holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, whence a smokeless incense breathes. girls are peeling the sweet willow, poplar white, and gilead-tree, and troops of boys shouting with whoop and hilloa, and hip, hip, three times three. the air is full of whistlings bland; what was that i heard may-day. out of the hazy land ? * iiarp of the wind, or song of bird, or clapping of shepherd's hands, or vagrant booming of the air, voice of a meteor lost in day? such tidings of the starry sphere can this elastic air convey. or haply 't was the cannonade of the pent and darkened lake, cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, whuse deeps, till beanis of noonday break, afflicted moan, and latest hold even into may the iceberg cold. was it a squirrel's pettish bark, or clarionet of jay? or hark, , where yon wedged line the nestor leads, steering north with raucous cry through tracts and provinces of sky, every night alighting down may-day. in new landscapes of romance, where darkling feed the clamorous clans by lonely lakes to men unknown. come the tumult whence it will, voice of sport, or rush of wings, it is a sound, it is a token that the marble sleep is broken, and a change has passed on things. beneath the calm, within the light, a hid unruly appetite. of swifter life, a surer hope, strains every sense to larger scope, impatient to anticipate the halting steps of aged fate. slow grows the palm, too siow the pearl : when nature falters, fain would zeal grasp the felloes of her wheel, and grasping give the orbs another whirl. may-day. turn swiftlier round, o tardy ball! and sun this frozen side, bring hither back the robin's call, bring back the tulip's pride. . why chidest thou the tardy spring ? the hardy bunting does not chide ; the blackbirds make the maples ring with social cheer and jubilee ; the redwing flutes his o-ka-lee, the robins know the melting snow ; the sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed, her nest beside the snow-drift weaves, secure the osier yet will hide her callow brood in mantling leaves ; and thou, by science all undone, why only must thy reason fail to see the southing of the sun ? jay-day. as we thaw frozen flesh with snow, so spring will not, foolish fond, mix polar night with tropic glow, nor cloy us with unshaded sun, nor wanton skip with bacchic dance, but she has the temperance of the gods, whereof she is one, – masks her treasury of heat under east-winds crossed with sleet. plants and birds and humble creatures well accept her rule austere ; titan-born, to hardy natures cold is genial and dear. as southern wrath to northern right is but straw to anthracite ; as in the day of sacrifice, when heroes piled the pyre, the dismal massachusetts ice burned more than others' fire, may-day. so spring guards with surface cold the garnered heat of ages old : hers to sow the seed of bread, that man and all the kinds be fed ; and, when the sunlight fills the hours, dissolves the crust, displays the flowers. the world rolls round,-mistrust it not, befalls again what once befell; all things return, both sphere and mote, and i shall hear my bluebird's note, and dream the dream of auburn dell. when late i walked, in earlier days, all was stiff and stark ; knee-deep snows choked all the ways, in the sky no spark ; firm-braced" i sought my ancient woods, struggling through the drifted roads ; may-day. the whited desert knew me not, snow-ridges masked each darling spot; the summer dells, by genius haunted, one arctic moon had disenchanted. all the sweet secrets therein hid by fancy, ghastly spells undid. . eldest mason, frost, had piled, with wicked ingenuity, swift cathedrals in the wild ; the piny hosts were sheeted ghosts in the star-lit minster aisled. i found no joy : the icy wind might rule the forest to his mind. who would freeze in frozen brakes ? back to books and sheltered home, and wood-fire flickering on the walls, to hear, when, 'mid our talk and games, without the baffled north-wind calls. but soft! a sultry morning breaks ; 10 may-day. the cowslips make the brown brook gay; a happier hour, a longer day. now the sun leads in the may, now desire of action wakes, and the wish to roam. the caged linnet in the spring hearkens for the choral glee, when his fellows on the wing migrate from the southern sea ; when trellised grapes their flowers unmask, and the new-born tendrils twiné, the old wine darkling in the cask feels the bloom on the living vine, and bursts the hoops at hint of spring: and so, perchance, in adam's race, of eden's bower some dream-like trace survived the flight, and swam the flood, and wakes the wish in youngest blood may-day. to tread the forfeit paradise, and feed once more the exile's eyes; and ever when the happy child in may beholds the blooming wild, and hears in heaven the bluebird sing, " onward,” he cries, “your baskets bring, in the next field is air more mild, and o'er yon hazy crest is eden's balmier spring." not for a regiment's parade, nor evil laws or rulers made, blue walden rolls its cannonade, but for a lofty sign which the zodiac threw, that the bondage-days are told, and waters free as winds shall flow. lo! how all the tribes combine to rout the flying foe. see, every patriot oak-leaf throws may-day. his elfin length upon the snows, not idle, since the leaf all day draws to the spot the solar ray, ere sunset quarrying inches a. 1, and half-way to the mosses brown; while the grass beneath the rime has hints of the propitious time, and upward pries and perforates through the cold slab a thousand gates, till green lances peering through bend happy in the welkin blue. april cold with dropping rain willows and lilacs brings again, the whistle of returning birds, and trumpet-lowing of the herds. the scarlet maple-keys betray what potent blood hath modest may; what fiery force the earth renevis, may-day. 13 the wealth of forms, the, flush of hues; joy shed in rosy waves abroad flows from the heart of love, the lord. hither rolls the storm of heat; i feel its finer billows beat like a sea which me infolds ; heat with viewless fingers moulds, swells, and mellows, and matures, paints, and flavors, and allures, bird and brier inly warms, still enriches and transforms, gives the reed and lily length, adds to oak and oxen strength, boils the world in tepid lakes, burns the world, yet burnt remakes ; enveloping heat, enchanted robe, wraps the daisy and the globe, transforming what it doth infold, may-day. life out of death, new out of old, painting fawns' and leopards’ fells, seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells, fires gardens with a joyful blaze of tulips, in the morning's rays. the dead log touched bursts into leaf, the wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf. what god is this imperial heat, earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat ? doth it bear hidden in its heart water-line patterns of all art, all figures, organs, hues, and graces ? is it dædalus ? is it love? or walks in mask almighty jove, and drops from power's redundant horn all seeds of beauty to be born ? where shall we keep the holiday, and duly greet the entering may ? may-day. too strait and low our cottage doors, and all unmeet our carpet floors ; nor spacious court, nor monarch’s hall, suffice to hold the festival. up and away! where haughty woods front the liberated floods: we will climb the broad-backed hills, hear the uproar of their joy ; we will mark the leaps and gleams of the new-delivered streams, and the murmuring rivers of sap mount in the pipes of the trees, giddy with day, to the topmost spire, which for a spike of tender green bartered its powdery cap; and the colors of joy in the bird, and the love in its carol heard, frog and lizard in holiday coats, and turtle brave in his golden spots : may-day. we will hear the tiny roar of the insects evermore, while cheerful cries of crag and plain reply to the thunder of river and 'main. as poured the flood of the ancient sea spilling over mountain chains, bending forests as bends the sedge, faster flowing o'er the plains, — a world-wide wave with a foaming edge that rims the running silver sheet, – so pours the deluge of the heat broad northward o'er the land, painting artless paradises, drugging herbs with syrian spices, fanning secret fires which glow in columbine and clover-blow. climbing the northern zones, where a thousand pallid towns may-day. lie like cockles by the main, or tented armies on a plain. the million-handed sculptor moulds quaintest bud and blossom folds, the million-handed painter pours opal hues and purple dye ; azaleas flush the island floors, and the tints of heaven reply. wreaths for the may! for happy spring to-day shall all her dowry bring, the love of kind, the joy, the grace, hymen of element and race, knowing well to celebrate with song and hue and star and state, with tender light and youthful cheer, the spousals of the new-born year. lo love's inundation poured over space and race abroad! may-day spring is strong and virtuous, broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous, quickening underneath the mould grains beyond the price of gold. so deep and large her bounties are, that one broad, long midsummer day shall to the planet overpay the ravage of a year of war. drug the cup, thou butler sweet, and send the nectar round; the feet that slid so long on sleet are glad to feel the ground. fill and saturate each kind with good according to its mind, fill each kind and saturate with good agreeing with its fate, willow and violet, maiden and man. may-day. the bitter-sweet, the haunting air creepeth, bloweth everywhere ; it preys on all, all prey on it, blooms in beauty, thinks in wit, stings the strong with enterprise, makes travellers long for indian skies, and where it comes this courier fleet fans in all hearts expectance sweet, as if to-morrow should redeem the vanished rose of evening's dream by houses lies a fresher green, on men and maids a ruddier mien, as if time brought a new relay of shining virgins every may, and summer came to ripen maids to a beauty that not fades. the ground-pines wash their rusty green, the maple-tops their crimson tint, may-day. on the soft path each track is seen, the girl's foot leaves its neater print. the pebble loosened from the frost asks of the urchin to be tost. in flint and marble beats a heart, the kind earth takes her children's part, the green lane is the school-boy's friend, low leaves his quarrel apprehend, the fresh ground loves his top and ball, the air rings jocund to his call, the brimming brook invites à leap, . he dives the hollow, climbs the steep.". the youth reads omens where he goes, and speaks all languages the rose. the wood-fly mocks with tiny noise the far halloo of human voice ; the perfumed berry on the spray smacks of faint memories far away. a subtle chain of countless rings may-day. the next unto the farthest brings, and, striving to be man, the worm mounts through all the spires of form. i saw the bud-crowned spring go forth, stepping daily onward north to greet staid ancient cavaliers filing single in stately train. and who, and who are the travellers ? they were night and day, and day and night, pilgrims wight with step forthright. i saw the days deformed and low, short and bent by cold and snow; the merry spring threw wreaths on them, flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell ; many a flower and many a gem, they were refreshed by the smell, they shook the snow from hats and shoon, they put their april raiment on ; 22 may-day. and those eternal forms, unhurt by a thousand storms, shot up to the height of the sky again, and danced as merrily as young men. i saw them mask their awful glance sidewise meek in gossamer lids ; and to speak my thought if none forbide, it was as if the eternal gods, tired of their starry periods, hid their majesty in cloth woven of tulips and painted moth. on carpets green the maskers march below may's well-appointed arch, each star, each god, each grace amain, every joy and virtue speed, marching duly in her train, and fainting nature at her need is made whole again. may-day. 23 't was the vintage-day of field and wood, when magic wine for bards is brewed ; every tree and stem and chink gushed with syrup to the brink. the air stole into the streets of towns, and betrayed the fund of joy to the high-school and medalled boy: on from hall to chamber ran, from youth to maid, from boy to man, to babes, and to old eyes as well. once more,' the old man cried, 'ye clouds, airy turrets purple-piled, which once my infancy beguiled, beguile me with the wonted spell. i know ye skilful to convoy the total freight of hope and joy into rude and homely nooks, shed mocking lustres on shelf of books, on farmer's byre, on meadow-pipes, . 24 may-day. or on a pool of dancing chips. i care not if the pomps you show be what they soothfast appear, or if yon realms in sunset glow be bubbles of the atmosphere.. and if it be to you allowed to fool me with a shining cloud, so only new griefs are consoled by new delights, as old hy old, frankly i will be your guest, count your change and cheer the lest. the world hath overmuch of pain, — if nature give me joy again, of such deceit i'll not complain.' . ah! well i mind the calendar, faithful through a thousand years, of the painted race of flowers, exact to days, exact to hours, may-day. 25 counted on the spacious dial yon broidered zodiac girds. i know the pretty almanac of the punctual coming-back, on their due days, of the birds. i marked them yestermorn, a flock of finches darting beneath the crystal arch, piping, as they flew, a march, – belike the one they used in parting last year from yon oak or larch ; dusky sparrows in a crowd, diving, darting northward free, suddenly betook them all, every one to his hole in the wall, or to his niche in the apple-tree. i greet with joy the choral trains fresh from palms and cuba's canes. best gems of nature's cabinet, may-day. with dews of tropic morning wet, beloved of children, bards, and spring, o birds, your perfect virtues bring, your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight, your manners for the heart's delight, nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof, here weave your chamber weather-proof, forgive our harms, and condescend to man, as to a lubber friend, and, generous, teach his awkward race courage, and probity, and grace ! poets praise that hidden wine hid in milk we drew at the barrier of time, when our life was new. we had eaten fairy fruit, we were quick from head to foot, all the forms we looked on shone may-day. as with diamond dews thereon. what cared we for costly joys, the museum's far-fetched toys ? gleam of sunshine on the wall poured a deeper cheer than all the revels of the carnival. we a pine-grove did prefer to a marble theatre, could with gods on mallows dine, nor cared for spices or for wine. wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned, arch on arch, the grimmest land ; whistle of a woodland bird made the pulses dance, note of horn in valleys heard filled the region with romance. none can tell how sweet, iiow virtuous, the morning air; 28 may-day. every accent vibrates well ; not alone the wood-bird's call, or shouting boys that chase their ball, pass the height of minstrel skill, but the ploughman's thoughtless cry, lowing oxen, sheep that bleat, and the joiner's hammer-beat, softened are above their will. all grating discords melt, no dissonant note is dealt, and though thy voice be shrill like rasping file on steel, such is the temper of the air, echo waits with art and care, and will the faults of song repair. so by remote superior lake, and by resounding mackinac, when northern storms the forest shake, may-day. and billows on the long beach break, the artful air doth separate note by note all sounds that grate, smothering in her ample breast all but godlike words, reporting to the happy ear only purified accords. strangely wrought from barking waves, soft music daunts the indian braves, – convent-chanting which the child hears pealing from the panther's cave and the impenetrable wild. one musician is sure, his wisdom will not fail, iie has not tasted wine impure, nor bent to passion frail. age cannot cloud his memory, nor grief untune his voice, .30 may-day. ranging down the ruled scale from tone of joy to inward wail, tempering the pitch of all in his windy cave. he all the fables knows, and in their causes tells, – knows nature's rarest moods, ever on her secret broods. the muse of men is coy, oft courted will not come ; in palaces and market squares entreated, she is dumb; but my minstrel knows and tells the counsel of the gods, knows of holy book the spells, knows the law of night and day, and the heart of girl and boy, the tragic and the gay, and what is writ on table round may-day. of arthur and his peers, what sea and land discoursing say in sidereal years. he renders all his lore in numbers wild as dreams, modulating all extremes, – what the spangled meadow saith to the children who have faith ; only to children children sing, only to youth will spring be spring. who is the bard thus magnified ? when did he sing? and where abide ? chief of song where poets feast is the wind-harp which thou seest in the casement at my side. æolian harp, how strangely wise thy strain ! 32 may-day. gay for youth, gay for youth, (sweet is art, but sweeter truth,) in the hall at summer eve fate and beauty skilled to weave. from the eager opening strings rung loud and bold the song. who but loved the wind-harp's note ? how should not the poet doat on its mystic tongue, with its primeval memory, reporting what old minstrels said of merlin locked the harp within, – merlin paying the pain of sin, pent in a dungeon made of air, — and some attain his voice to hear, words of pain and cries of fear, but pillowed all on melody, as fits the griefs of bards to be. and what if that all-echoing shell, may-day. which thus the buried past can tell, should rive the future, and reveal what his dread folds would fain conceal ? it shares the secret of the earth, and of the kinds that owe her birth. speaks not of self that mystic tone, but of the overgods alone : it trembles to the cosmic breath, as it heareth, so it saith ; obeying meek the primal cause, it is the tongue of mundane laws... and this, at least, i dare affirm, since genius too has bound and term, there is no bard in all the choir, not homer's self, the poet sire, wise milton's odes of pensive pleasure, or shakspeare, whom no niind can measure, nor collins' verse of tender pain, vor byron's clarion of disdain, 2 * may-day scott, the delight of generous boys, or wordsworth, pan's recording voice, – not one of all can put in verse, or to this presence could rehearse, the sights and voices ravishing the boy knew on the hills in spring, when pacing through the oaks he heard sharp queries of the sentry-bird, the heavy grouse's sudden whir, the rattle of the kingfisher; saw bonfires of the harlot flies in the lowland, when day dies; or marked, benighted and forlorn, the first far signal-fire of morn. these syllables that nature spoke, and the thoughts that in him woke, can adequately utter none save to his ear the wind-harp lone. and best can teach its delphian chord may-day. 35 how nature to the soul is moored, if once again that silent string, as erst it wont, would thrill and ring. not long ago, at eventide, it seemed, so listening, at my side a window rose, and, to say sooth. i looked forth on the fields of youth : i saw fair boys bestriding steeds, i knew their forms in fancy weeds, long, long concealed by sundering fates, mates of my youth, yet not my mates, stronger and bolder far than i, with grace, with genius, well attired, and then as now from far admired, followed with love they knew not of, with passion cold and shy. o joy, for what recoveries rare ! 36 may-day. renewed, i breathe elysian air, see youth's glad mates in earliest bloom, break not my dream, obtrusive tomb ! or teach thou, spring! the grand recoil of life resurgent from the soil wherein was dropped the mortal spoil. soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze : so on thy broad mystic van lie the opal-colored days, and waft the miracle to man. soothsayer of the eldest gods, repairer of what harms betide, revealer of the inmost powers prometheus proffered, jove denied ; disclosing treasures more than true, or in what far to-morrow due ; speaking by the tongues of lowers, by the ten-tongued laurel speaking, may-day. 37 singing by the oriole songs, heart of bird the man's heart seeking ; whispering hints of treasure hid under morn's unlifted lid, islands looming just beyond the dim horizon's utmost bound ; who can, like thee, our rags upbraid, or taunt us with our lope decayed ? or who like thee persuade, making the splendor of the air, the morn and sparkling dew, a snare ? or who resent thy genius, wiles, and blandishment ? there is no orator prevails to beckon or persuade like thee the youth or maid : thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales, thy blooms, thy kinds, 33 may-day. thy echoes in the wilderness, soothe pain, and age, and love's distress, fire fainting will, and build heroic minds. for thou, o spring! canst renovate all that high god did first create. be still his arm and architect, rebuild the ruin, mend defect ; chemist to vamp old worlds with new, coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue, new-tint the plumage of the birds, and slough decay from grazing herds, sweep ruins from the scarped mountain, cleanse the torrent at the fountain, purge alpine air by towns defiled, bring to fair mother fairer child, not less renew the heart and brain, scatter the sloth, wash out the stain, make the aged eye sun-clear, may-day. 39 to parting soul bring grandeur near. under gentle types, my spring masks the might of nature's king, an energy that searches thorough from chaos to the dawning morrow; into all our human plight, the soul's pilgrimage and flight; in city or in solitude, step by step, lifts bad to good, without halting, without rest, liſting better up to best; planting seeds of knowledge pure, through earth to ripen, through heaven endure. the adirondacs. a journal. dedicated to my fellow-travellers in august wise and polita, — and if i drew their several portraits, you would own chaucer had no such worthy crew nor boccace in decarneron. the adirondacs. itte crossed champlain to keeseville with our friends, thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks of the ausable stream, intent to reach the adirondac lakes. at martin's beach we chose our boats ; each man a boat and guide, – ten men, ten guides, our company all told. next morn, we swept with oars the saranac, with skies of benediction, to round lake, where all the sacred mountains drew around us, taháwus, seaward, macintyre, baldhead, and other titans without muse or name. the adirondacs. pleased with these grand companions, we glide on, instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills, and made our distance wider, boat from boat, as each would hear the oracle alone. by the bright morn the gay flotilla slid through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets, through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower, through scented banks of lilies white and gold, where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day, on through the upper saranac, and up père raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass winding through grassy shallows in and out, two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge, to follansbee water, and the lake of loons. northward the length of follansbee we rowed, under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore. a paise and council : then, where near the head the adirondacs. on the east a bay makes inward to the land between two rocky arms, we climb the bank, and in the twilight of the forest noon wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. we cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts, barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof, then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire. the wood was sovran with centennial trees, oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, linden and spruce. in strict society three conifers, white, pitch, and norway pine, five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby. our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, the maple eight, beneath its shapely tower. • welcome!' the wood god murmured through the leaves, – 46 the adirondacs. • welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.' evening drew on; stars peeped through mapleboughs, which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire. decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft in well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, lie here on hemlock-boughs, like sacs and sioux, and greet unanimous the joyful change. so fast will nature acclimate her sons, though late returning to her pristine ways. off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold; and, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. up with the dawn, they fancied the light air that circled freshly in their forest dress the adirondacs. made them to boys again. happier that they slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind, at the first mounting of the giant stairs. no placard on these rocks warned to the polls, no door-bell heralded a visitor, no courier waits, no letter came or went, nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold; the frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, the falling rain will spoil no holiday. we were made freemen of the forest laws, all dressed, like nature, fit for her own ends, essaying nothing she cannot perform. in adirondac lakes, at morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded : shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make his brief toilette : at night, or in the rain, he dons a surcoat which he doff's at morn : 48 the adirondacs. a paddle in the right hand, or an oar, and in the left, a gun, his needful arms. by turns we praised the stature of our guides, their rival strength and suppleness, their skill to row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, to climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down : temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, and wit to trap or take him in his lair. sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, in winter, lumberers; in summer, guides ; their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve. look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen! no city airs or arts pass current here. your rank is all reversed : let men of cloth bow to the stalwart chúrls in overalls : the adirondacs. they are the doctors of the wilderness, and we the low-prized laymen. in sooth, red flannel is a saucy test which few can put on with impunity. what make you, master, fumbling at the oar ? will you catch crabs ? truth tries pretension here. the sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb ; the oar, the guide's. dare you accept the tasks he shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, tell the sun's time, determine the true north, or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods to thread by night the nearest way to camp ? ask you, how went the hours ? all day we swept the lake, searched every cove, north from camp maple, south to osprey bay, watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, or whipping its rough surface for a trout; 50 the adirondacs. or bathers, diving from the rock at noon; challenging echo by our guns and cries ; or listening to the laughter of the loon ; or, in the evening twilight's latest red, beholding the procession of the pines; or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, in the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. hark to that muffled roar ! a tree in the woods is fallen : but hush! it has not scared the buck who stands astonished at the meteor light, then turns to bound away, — is it too late ? sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark, six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five ; sometimes our wits at sally and retort, with laughter sudden as the crack of rifle ; or parties scaled the near acclivities the adirondacs. 51 competing seekers of a rumored lake, whose unauthenticated waves we named lake probability, — our carbuncle, long sought, not found. two doctors in the camp dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth; insatiate skill in water or in air waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss ; the while, one leaden pot of alcohol gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus, rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride, hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss, or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. 52 the adirondacs. above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, the raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp. as water poured through hollows of the hills to feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, so nature shed all beauty lavishly from her redundant horn. lords of this realm, bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day rounded by hours where each outdid the last in miracles of pomp, we must be proud, as if associates of the sylvan gods. we seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, so pure the alpine element we breathed, so light, so lofty pictures came and went. we trode on air, contemned the distant town, its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned that we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, the adirondacs. 53 and how we should come hither with our sons, ilereafter, — willing they, and more adroit. ilard fare, hard bed, and comic misery, — the midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands : but, on the second day, we heed them not, nay, we saluted them auxiliaries, whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. for who defends our leafy tabernacle from bold intrusion of the travelling crowd, who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly, which past endurance sting the tender cit, but which we learn to scatter with a smudge, or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn ? our foaming ale we drunk from hunters' pans, ale, and a sup of wine. our steward gave venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread ; the adirondacs. all ate like abbots, and, if any missed their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss with hunters' appetite and peals of mirth. and stillman, our guides' guide, and commodore, crusoe, crusader, pius æneas, said aloud, “ chronic dyspepsia never came from eating food indigestible" :— then murmured some, others applauded him who spoke the truth. nor doubt but visitings of graver thought checked in these souls the turbulent heyday 'mid all the hints and glories of the home. for who can tell what sudden privacies were sought and found, amid the hue and cry of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let into this oreads' fended paradise, as chapels in the city's thoroughfares, whither gaunt labor slips to wipe his brow, and meditate a moment on heaven's rest. the adirondacs. 55 judge with what sweet surprises nature spoke to each apart, lifting her lovely shows to spiritual lessons pointed home. and as through dreams in watches of the night, so throngh all creatures in their form and ways some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense inviting to new knowledge, one with old. hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the war. bler ? mark his capricious ways to draw the eye. now soar again. what wilt thou, restless bird, seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, thirsting in that pure for a purer sky ? and presently the sky is changed ; o world ! what pictures and what harmonies are thine! the clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, so like the soul of me, what if 't were me? 56 the adirondacs. a melancholy better than all mirth. comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, or at the foresight of obscurer years ? like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory, whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty superior to all its gaudy skirts. and, that no day of life may lack romance, the spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down a private beam into each several heart. daily the bending skies solicit man, the seasons chariot him from this exile, the rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair, the storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, suns haste to set, that so remoter lights beckon the wanderer to his vaster home. with a vermilion pencil mark the day when of our little fleet three cruising skiffs entering big tupper, bound for the foaming falls the adirondacs. 57 of loud bog river, suddenly confront twu of our mates returning with swift oars. one held a printed journal waving high caught from a late-arriving traveller, big with great news, and shouted the report for which the world had waited, now firm fact, of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, and landed on our coast, and pulsating with ductile fire. loud, exulting cries from boat to boat, and to the echoes round, greet the glad miracle. thought's new-found path shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, match god's equator with a zone of art, and lift man's public action to a height worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, when linked hemispheres attest his deed. we have few moments in the longest life of such delight and wonder is there grew,nor yet unsuited to that solitude : 3 * 58 the adirondacs. a burst of joy, as if we told the fact • to ears intelligent; as if gray rock and cedar grove and cliff and lake should know this feat of wit, this triumph of mankind ; as if we men were talking in a vein of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs, and a prime end of the most subtle element were fairly reached at last. wake, echoing caves ! bend nearer, faint day-moon! yon thundertops, let them hear well! 'tis theirs as much as ours. a spasm throbbing through the pedestals of alp and andes, isle and continent, urging astonished chaos with a thrill to be a brain, or serve the brain of man. the lightning has run masterless too long; ile must to school, and learn his verb and noun, and teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, spelling with guided tongue man's messages the adirondacs. shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea and yet i marked, even in the manly joy of our great-hearted doctor in his boat, (perchance i erred,) a shade of discontent; or was it for mankind a generous shame, as of a luck not quite legitimate, since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part ? was it a college pique of town and gown, as one within whose memory it burned that not academicians, but some lout, found ten years since the californian gold ? and now, again, a hungry company of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, perversely borrowing from the shop the tools of science, not from the philosophers, had won the brightest laurel of all time. 't was always thus, and will be ; hand and head are ever rivals : but, though this be swift, the other slow, — this the prometheus, 60 the adirondacs. and that the jove, — yet, howsoever hid, it was from jove the other stole his fire,. and, without jove, the good had never been, it is not iroquois or cannibals, but ever the free race with front sublime, and these instructed by their wisest too, who do the feat, and lift humanity. let not him mourn who best entitled was, nay, mourn not one : let him exult, yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant, and water it with wine, nor watch askance whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit : enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed. we flee away from cities, but we bring the best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. we praise the guide, we praise the forest life; but will we sacrifice our der-bought lore the adirondac). ci of books and arts and trained experiment, or count the sioux a match for agassiz ? o no, not we! witness the shout that shook wild tupper lake ; witness the mute all-hail the joyful traveller gives, when on the verge of craggy indian wilderness he hears from a log-cabin stream beethoven's notes on the piano, played with master's hand. well done!' he cries ; the bear is kept at bay, the lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire ; all the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold, this thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall, this wild plantation will suffice to chase. now speed the gay celerities of art, what in the desart was impossible within four walls is possible again, culture and libraries, mysteries of skill, traditioned fame of masters, eager strife of keen competing youths, joined or alone the adirondacs. to outdo each other, and extort applause. mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep twirl the old wheels ! time takes fresh start again, on for a thousand years of genius more.' the holidays were fruitful, but must end ; one august evening had a cooler breath ; into each mind intruding duties crept; under the cinders burned the fires of home ; nay, letters found us in our paradise ; so in the gladness of the new event we struck our camp, and left the happy hills. the fortunate star that rose on us sank not ; the prodigal sunshine rested on the land, the rivers gambolled onward to the sea, and nature, the inscrutable and mute, permitted on her infinite repose almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons, as if one riddle of the sphinx were guessed. occasional and miscellaneous pieces brahma. tf the red slayer think he slays, 1 or if the slain think he is slain, they know not well the subtle ways i keep, and pass, and turn again. far or forgot to me is near; shadow and sunlight are the same; the vanished gods to me appear; and one to me are shame and fame. they reckon ill who leave me out; when me they fly, i am the wings; i am the doubter and the doubt, and i the hymn the brahmin sings. brahma. the strong gods pine for my abode, and pine in vain the sacred seven ; but thou, meek lover of the good ! find me, and turn thy back on heaven. nemesis. already blushes in thy cheek the bosom-thought which thou must speak; the bird, how far it haply roam by cloud or isle, is flying home ; the maiden fears, and fearing runs into the charmed snare she shuns ; and every man, in love or pride, of his fate is never wide. will a woman's fan the ocean smooth ? or prayers the stony parcæ sooth, or coax the thunder from its mark ? or tapers light the chaos dark ? 68 nemesis. in spite of virtue and the muse, nemesis will have her dues, and all our struggles and our toils tighter wind the giant coils. fate. eep in the man sits fast his fate to mould his fortunes mean or great: unknown to cromwell as to me was cromwell's measure or degree ; unknown to him, as to his horse, if he than his groom be better or worse. he works, plots, fights, in rude affairs, with squires, lords, kings, his craft compares, till late he learned, through doubt and fear, broad england harbored not his peer : obeying time, the last to own the genius from its cloudy throne. for the prevision is allied unto the thing so signified ; or say, the foresight that awaits is the same genius that creates. freedom. once i wished i might rehearse freedom's pæan in my verse, that the slave who caught the strain should throb until he snapped his chain. but the spirit said, “not so ; speak it not, or speak it low ; name not lightly to be said, gift too precious to be prayed, passion not to be expressed but by heaving of the breast : yet, – wouldst thou the mountain find where this deity is shrined, who gives to seas and sunset skies freedom 71 their unspent beauty of surprise, and, when it lists him, waken can brute or savage into man ; or, if in thy heart he shine, blends the starry fates with thine, draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, and makes thy thoughts archangels be; freedom's secret wilt thou know? — counsel not with flesh and blood; loiter not for cloak or food; right thou feelest, rush to do.' ode sung in the town hall, concord, july 4, 1857. tenderly the haughty day fills his blue urn with fire ; one morn is in the mighty heaven, and one in our desire. the cannon booms from town to town, our pulses are not less, the joy-bells chime their tidings down, which children's voices bless. for iie that flung the broad blue fold o'er-mantling land and sea, one third part of the sky unrolled for the banner of the free. fourth of july ode. the men are ripe of saxon kind to build an equal state, — to take the statute from the mind, and make of duty fate. united states ! the ages plead, — present and past in under-song, – go put your creed into your deed, nor speak with double tongue. for sea and land don't understand, nor skies without a frown see rights for which the one hand fights by the other cloven down. be just at home ; then write your scroll of honor o'er the sea, and bid the broad atlantic roll, a ferry of the free. 74 fourth of july ode. and, henceforth, there shall be no chain, save underneath the sea. the wires shall murmur through the main sweet songs of liberty. the conscious stars accord above, the waters wild below, and under, through the cable wove, her fiery errands go. for he that.worketh high and wise, nor pauses in his plan, will take the sun out of the skies ere freedom out of man. boston hymn. read in music hall, january 1, 1863. the word of the lord by night to the watching pilgrims came, as they sat by the seaside, and filled their hearts with flame. god said, i am tired of kings, i suffer them no more ; up to my ear the morning brings the outrage of the poor. think ye i made this ball a field of havoc and war, where tyrants great and tyrants small might harry the weak and poor? boston hymn. my angel, his name is freedom, choose him to be your king; he shall cut pathways east and west, and fend you with his wing. lo! i uncover the land which i hid of old time in the west, as the sculptor uncovers the statue when he has wrought his best ; i show columbia, of the rocks which dip their foot in the seas, and soar to the air-borne flocks of clouds, and the boreal fleece. i will divide my goods ; call in the wretch and slave : none shall rule but the humble, and none but toil shall have. boston hymn. i will have never a noble, no lineage counted great ; fishers and choppers and ploughmen shall constitute a state. go, cut down trees in the forest, and trim the straightest boughs ; cut down trees in the forest, and build me a wooden house. call the people together, the young men and the sires, the digger in the harvest field, hireling, and him that hires ; and here in a pine state-house they shall choose men to rule in every needful faculty, in church, and state, and school. 78 boston hymn. lo, now! if these poor men can govern the land and sea, and make just laws below the sun, as planets faithful be. and ye shall succor men ; 'tis nobleness to serve ; help them who cannot help again : beware from right to swerve. i break your bonds and masterships, and i unchain the slave : free be his heart and hand henceforth as wind and wandering wave. i cause from every creature his proper good to flow : as much as he is and doeth, so much he shall bestow. boston hymn. 79 but, laying hands on another to coin his labor and sweat, he goes in pawn to his victim for eternal years in debt. to-day unbind the captive, so only are ye unbound; lift up a people from the dust, trump of their rescue, sound ! pay ransom to the owner, and fill the bag to the brim. who is the owner? the slave is owner, and ever was. pay him. o north ! give him beauty for rags, and honor, 0 south ! for his shame; nevada! coin thy golden crags with freedom's image and name. 80 boston hymn. up! and the dusky race that sat in darkness long, be swift their feet as antelopes, and as behemoth strong. come, east and west and north, by races, as snow-flakes, and carry my purpose forth, which neither halts nor shakes. my will fulfilled shall be, for, in daylight or in dark, my thunderbolt has eyes to see his way home to the mark. voluntaries. low and mournful be the strain, haughty thought be far from me; tones of penitence and pain, . moanings of the tropic sea ; , low and tender in the cell where a captive sits in chains, crooning ditties treasured well from his afric's torrid plains. sole estate his sire bequeathed hapless sire to hapless son — was the wailing song he breathed, and his chain when life was done. voluntaries. what his fault, or what his crime? or what ill planet crossed his prime ? heart too soft and will too weak to front the fate that crouches near, — dove beneath the vulture's beak; – will song dissuade the thirsty spear? dragged from his mother's arms and breast, displaced, disfurnished here, his wistful toil to do his best chilled by a ribald jeer. great men in the senate sate, sage and hero, side by side, building for their sons the state, which they shall rule with pride. they forbore to break the chain which bound the dusky tribe, checked by the owners' fierce disdain, lured by “ union” as the bribe. destiny sat by, and said, voluntaries. 83 * pang for pang your seed shall pay, hide in false peace your coward head, i bring round the harvest-day.' freedom all winged expands, nor perches in a narrow place ; her broad van seeks unplanted lands ; she loves a poor and virtuous race. clinging to a colder zone whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down, the snow-flake is her banner's star, her stripes the boreal streamers are. long she loved the northman well ; now the iron age is done, she will not refuse to dwell with the offspring of the sun; foundling of the desert far, 84 voluntaries. where palms plume, siroccos blaze, he roves unhurt the burning ways in climates of the summer star. he has avenues to god hid from men of northern brain, far beholding, without cloud, what these with slowest steps attain. if once the generous chief arrive to lead him willing to be led, for freedom he will strike and strive, and drain his heart till he be dead. iii. in an age of fops and toys, wanting wisdom, void of right, who shall nerve heroic boys to hazard all in freedom's fight, break sharply off their jolly games, voluntaries. forsake their comrades gay, and quit proud homes and youthful dames, for famine, toil, and fray ? yet on the nimble air benign speed nimbler messages, that waft the breath of grace divine to hearts in sloth and ease. so nigh is grandeur to our dust, so near is god to man, when duty whispers low, thou must, the youth replies, i can. iv. 0, well for the fortunate soul which music's wings infold, stealing away the memory of sorrows new and old ! yet happier he whose inward sight, voluntaries. stayed on his subtile thought, shuts his sense on toys of time, to vacant bosoms brought. but best befriended of the god he who, in evil times, warned by an inward voice, heeds not the darkness and the dread, biding by his rule and choice, feeling only the fiery thread leading over heroic ground, walled with mortal terror round, to the aim which him allures, and the sweet heaven his deed secures. stainless soldier on the walls, knowing this, – and knows no more, — whoever fights, whoever falls, justice conquers evermore, justice after as before, voluntaries. 87 and he who battles on her side, god, though he were ten times slain, crowns him victor glorified, victor over death and pain; forever : but his erring foe, self-assured that he prevails, looks from his victim lying low, and sees aloft the red right arm redress the eternal scales. he, the poor foe, whom angels foil, blind with pride, and fooled by hate, writhes within the dragon coil, reserved to a speechless fate. blooms the laurel which belongs to the valiant chief who fights ; i see the wreath, i hear the songs 88 voluntaries. lauding the eternal rights, victors over daily wrongs : awful victors, they nisguide whom they will destroy, and their coming triumph hide in our downfall, or our joy : they reach no term, they never sleep, in equal strength through space abide ; though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep, the strong they slay, the swift outstride : fate's grass grows rank in valley clods, and rankly on the castled steep, — speak it firmly, these are gods, all are ghosts beside. love and thought. t wo well-assorted travellers use the highway, eros and the muse. from the twins is nothing hidden, to the pair is naught forbidden ; hand in hand the comrades go every nook of nature through: each for other they were born, each can other best adorn ; they know one only mortal grief past all balsam or relief, when, by false companions crossed, the pilgrims have each other lost. lover's petition. nood heart, that ownest all ! i ask a modest boon and small : not of lands and towns the gift, — too large a load for me to lift,but for one proper creature, which geographic eye, sweeping the map of western earth, or the atlantic coast. from maine to powhatan's domain, could not descry. is 't much to ask in all thy huge creation, so trivial a part, a solitary heart ? lover's petition. 91 yet count me not of spirit mean, or mine a mean demand, for 't is the concentration and worth of all the land, the sister of the sea, the daughter of the strand, composed of air and light, and of the swart earth-might. so little to thy poet's prayer thy large bounty well can spare. and yet i think, if she were gone, the world were better left alone. una. oving, roving, as it seems, una lights my clouded dreams ; still for journeys she is dressed; we wander far by east and west. in the homestead, homely thought; at my work i ramble not; if from home chance draw me wide, half-seen una sits beside. in my house and garden-plot, though beloved, i miss her not; but one i seek in foreign places, one face explore in foreign faces. una. 93 at home a deeper thought may light the inward sky with chrysolite, and i greet from far the ray, aurura of a dearer day. but if upon the seas i sail, or trundle on the glowing rail, i am but a thought of hers, loveliest of travellers. so the gentle poet's name to foreign parts is blown by fame; seek him in his native town, he is hidden and unknown. letters. very day brings a ship, every ship brings a word ; well for those who have no fear, looking seaward well assured that the word the vessel brings 'is the word they wish to hear. rubies. m hey brought me rubies from the mine, and held them to the sun; i said, they are drops of frozen wine from eden's vats that run. i looked again, — i thought them hearts · of friends to friends unknown; tides that should warm each neighboring life are locked in sparkling stone. but fire to thaw that ruddy snow, to break enchanted ice, and give love's scarlet tides to flow, when shall that sun arise ? merlin's song. f merlin wise i learned a song, sing it low, or sing it loud, it is mightier than the strong, and punishes the proud. i sing it to the surging crowd, good men it will calm and cheer, bad men it will chain and cage. in the heart of the music peals a strain which only angels hear; whether it waken joy or rage, hushed myriads hark in vain, yet they who hear it shed their age, and take their youth again. the test. (musa loquitur.) hung my verses in the wind, time and tide their faults may find. all were winnowed through and through, five lines lasted sound and true ; five were smelted in a pot than the south more fierce and hot ; these the siroc could not melt, fire their fiercer flaming felt, and the meaning was more white than july's meridian light. sunshine cannot bleach the snow, nor time unmake what poets know. have you eyes to find the five which five hundred did survive ? solution. i am the muse wno sung alway by jove, at dawn of the first day. star-crowned, sole-sitting, long i wrought to fire the stagnant earth with thought : on spawning slime my song prevails, wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales ; flushed in the sky the sweet may-morn, earth smiled with flowers, and man was born. then asia yeaned her shepherd race, and nile substructs her granite base, – tented tartary, columned nile, — and, under vines, on rocky isle, or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, forward stepped the perfect greek : solution. 99 that wit and joy might find a tongue, and earth grow civil, homer sung. flown to italy from greece, i brooded long, and held my peace, for i am wont to sing uncalled, and in days of evil plight unlock doors of new delight; and sometimes mankind i appalled with a bitter horoscope, with spasms of terror for balm of hope. then by better thought i lead bards to speak what nations need ; so i folded me in fears, and dante searched the triple spheres, moulding nature at his will, so shaped, so colored, swift or still, and, sculptor-like, his large design etched on alp and apennine. 100 solution. seethed in mists of penmanmaur, taught by plinlimmon's druid power, england's genius filled all measure of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, gave to the mind its emperor, and life was larger than before : nor sequent centuries could hit orbit and sum of shakspeare's wit. the men who lived with him became poets, for the air was faine. far in the north, where polar night holds in check the frolic light, in trance upborne past mortal goal the swede emanuel leads the soul. through snows above, mines underground, the inks of erebus he found ; rehearsed to men the damned wails on which the seraph music sails. solution. 101 in spirit-worlds he trod alone, but walked the earth unmarked, unknown. the near by-stander caught no sound, yet they who listened far aloof heard rendings of the skyey roof, and felt, beneath, the quaking ground ; and his air-sown, unheeded words, in the next age, are flaming swords. in newer days of war and trade, romance forgot, and faith decayed, when science armed and guided war, and clerks the janus-gates unbar, when france, where poet never grew, halved and dealt the globe anew, goethe, raised o’er joy and strife, drew the firm lines of fate and life, and brought olympian wislom down to court and mart, to gown and town; 102 solution. stooping, his finger wrote in clay the open secret of to-day. so bloom the unfading petals five, and verses that all verse outlive. nature and life. nature. cinters know easily to shed the snow, and the untaught spring is wise in cowslips and anemonies. nature, hating art and pains, baulks and baffles plotting brains ; casualty and surprise are the apples of her eyes ; but she dearly loves the poor, and, by marvel of her own, strikes the loud pretender down. for nature listens in the rose, and hearkens in the berry's bell, to help her friends, to plague her foes, 5 * 106 nature. and like wise god she judges well. yet doth much her love excel to the souls that never fell, to swains that live in happiness, and do well because they please, who walk in ways that are unfamed, and feats achieve before they're named. i nature. . ii. he is gamesome and good, but of mutable mood, no dreary repeater now and again, she will be all things to all men. she who is old, but nowise feeble, pours her power into the people, merry and manifold without bar, makes and moulds them what they are, and what they call their city way is not their way, but hers, and what they say they made to-day, they learned of the oaks and firs. she spawneth men as mallows fresh, 108 nature. hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh ; she drugs her water and her wheat with the flavors she finds meet, and gives them what to drink and eat; and having thus their bread and growth, they do her bidding, nothing loath. what's most theirs is not their own, but borrowed in atoms from iron and stone, and in their vaunted works of art the master-stroke is still her part. the romany girl. mhe sun goes down, and with him takes the coarseness of my poor attire ; the fair moon mounts, and aye the flame of gypsy beauty blazes higher. pale northern girls! you scorn our race; you captives of your air-tight halls, wear out in-doors your sickly days, but leave us the horizon walls. and if i take you, dames, to task, and say it frankly without guile, then you are gypsies in a mask, and i the lady all the while. 110 the romany girl. if, on the heath, below the moon, i court and play with paler blood, me false to mine dare whisper none, – one sallow horseman knows me good. go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain, for teeth and hair with shopmen deal ; my swarthy tint is in the grain, the rocks and forest know it real. the wild air bloweth in our lungs, the keen stars twinkle in our eyes, the birds gave us our wily tongues, the panther in our dances flies. you doubt we read the stars on high, nathless we read your fortunes true ; the stars may hide in the upper sky, but without glass we fathom you. days. aughter of time, the hypocritic days, muffed and dumb like barefoot dervishes, and marching single in an endless file, bring diadems and fagots in their hands. to each they offer gifts after his will, bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all i, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, forgot my morning wishes, hastily took a few herbs and apples, and the day turned and departed silent. i, too late, under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. tiie chartist's complaint, day! hast thou two faces, making one place two places ? one, by humble farmer seen, chill and wet, unlighted, mean, useful only, triste and damp, serving for a laborer's lamp ? have the same mists another side, to be the appanage of pride, gracing the rich man's wood and lake, his park where amber mornings break, and treacherously bright to show his planted isle where roses glow ? o day! and is your mightiness the chartist's complaint. 113 a sycophant to smug success ? will the sweet sky and ocean broad be fine accomplices to fraud ? o sun! i ourse thy cruel ray: back, back to chaos, harlot day! my garden. if i could put my woods in song, and tell what's there enjoyed, all men would to my gardens throng, and leave the cities void. in my plot no tulips blow, — snow-loving pines and oaks instead ; and rank the savage maples grow from spring's faint flush to autumn red. my garden is a forest ledge which older forests bound; the banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, then plunge to depths profound. my garden 115 here once the deluge ploughed, laid the terraces, one by one ; ebbing later whence it flowed, they bleach and dry in the sun. the sowers made haste to depart, the wind and the birds which sowed it ; not for fame, nor by rules of art, planted these, and tempests flowed it. waters that wash my garden side play not in nature's lawful web, they heed not moon or solar tide, five years elapse from flood to ebb. hither hasted, in old time, jove, and every god, — none did refuse ; and be sure at last came love, and after love, the muse 116 my garden. keen ears can catch a syllable, as if one spake to another, in the hemlocks tall, untamable, and what the whispering grasses smother. evlian harps in the pine ring with the song of the fates ; infant bacchus in the vine, far distant yet his chorus waits. canst thou copy in verse one chime of the wood-bell's peal and cry, write in a book the morning's prime, or match with words that tender sky? wonderful verse of the gods, of one import, of varied tone; they chant the bliss of their abodes to man imprisoned in his own. my garden. 117 ever the words of the gods resound; but the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear. wandering voices in the air, and murmurs in the wold, speak what i cannot declare, yet cannot all withhold. when the shadow fell on the lake, the whirlwind in ripples wrote air-bells of fortune that shine and break, and omens above thought. but the meanings cleave to the lake, cannot be carried in book or urn; go thy ways now, come later back, on waves and hedges still they burn. 118 my garden. these the fates of men forecast, of better men than live to-day ; if who can read them comes at last. he will spell in the sculpture, stay' the titmouse. you shall not be overbold when you deal with arctic cold, . as late i found my lukewarm blood chilled wading in the snow-choked wood. how should i fight? my foeman fine has million arms to one of mine : east, west, for aid i looked in vain, east, west, north, south, are his domain. miles off, three dangerous miles, is home; must borrow his winds who there would come. up and away for life! be fleet! the frost-king ties my fumbling feet, sings in my ears, my hands are stones, curdles the blood to the marble bones, 120 the tithouse. tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, and hems in life with narrowing fence. well, in this broad bed lie and sleep, the punctual stars will vigil keep, embalmed by purifying cold, the winds shall sing their dead-march old, the snow is no ignoble shroud, the moon thy mourner, and the cloud. softly, — but this way fate was pointing, 't was coming fast to such anointing, when piped a tiny voice hard by, gay and polite, a cheerful cry, chic-chicadeedee! saucy note out of sound heart and merry throat, as if it said, "good day, good sir ! fine afternoon, old passenger ! happy to meet you in these places, where january brings few faces.' the titmouse. 121 this poet, though he live apart, moved by his hospitable heart, sped, when i passed his sylvan fort, to do the honors of his court, as fits a feathered lord of land ; flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, hopped on the bough, then, darting low, prints his small impress on the snow, shows feats of his gymnastic play, head downward, clinging to the spray. here was this atom in full breath, hurling defiance at vast death ; this scrap of valor just for play fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, as if to shame my weak behavior ; i greeted loud my little saviour, • you pet! what dost here? and what for? in these woods, thy small labrador, 122 the titmouse. at this pinch, wee san salvador ! what fire burns in that little chest so frolic, stout, and self-possest ? henceforth i wear no.stripe but thine ; ashes and jet all hues outshine. why are not diamonds black and gray, to ape thy dare-devil array ? and i affirm, the spacious north exists to draw thy virtue forth. i think no virtue goes with size ; the reason of all cowardice is, that men are overgrown, and, to be valiant, must come down to the titmouse dimension.' 't is good-will makes intelligence, and i began to catch the sense of my bird's song: ‘live out of doors in the great woods, on prairie floors. the titmouse. 123; i dine in the sun ; when he sinks in the sea, i too have a hole in a hollow tree ; and i like less when summer beats with stifling beams on these retreats, than noontide twilights which snow makes with tempest of the blinding fakes. for well the soul, if stout within, can arm impregnably the skin ; and polar frost my frame defied, made of the air that blows outside.' ce with glad remembrance of my debt, i homeward turn ; farewell, my pet ! when here again thy pilgrim comes, he shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. *doubt not, so long as earth has bread, thou first and foremost shalt be fed ; the providence that is most large takes hearts like thine in special charge, 124 the titmouse. helps who for their own need are strong, and the sky doats on cheerful song. henceforth i prize thy wiry chant o’er all that mass and minster vaunt; for men mis-hear thy call in spring, as t would accost some frivolous wing, crying out of the hazel copse, phe-be ! and, in winter, chic-a-dee-dee ! i think old cæsar must have heard in northern gaul my dauntless bird, and, echoed in some frosty wold, borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. and i will write our annals new, and thank thee for a better clew, i, who dreamed not when i came here to find the antidote of fear, now hear thee say in roman key, pæan! veni, vidi, vici. sea-shore, t heard or seemed to hear the chiding sea say, pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? am i not always here, thy summer home ? is not my voice thy music, morn and eve? my breath thy healthful climate in the heats, my touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath ? was ever building like my terraces ? was ever couch magnificent as mine? lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn a little hut suffices like a town. i make your sculptured architecture vain, vain beside mine. i drive my wedges home, aud carve the coastwise mountain into caves. lo! here is rome, and nineveh, and thebes, aarnick, and pyramid, and giant's stairs, 126 sea-shore. half piled or prostrate ; and my newest slab older than all thy race. behold the sea, the opaline, the plentiful and strong, yet beautiful as is the rose in june, fresh as the trickling rainbow of july; sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds, purger of earth, and medicine of men ; creating a sweet climate by my breath, washing out harms and griefs from memory, and, in my mathematic ebb and flow, giving a hint of that which changes not. rich are the sea-gods : — who gives gifts but they? they grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls: they pluck force thence, and give it to the wise. for every wave is wealth to dædalus, wealth to the cunning artist who can work this matchless strength. where shall he find, o waves ! a load your atlas shoulders cannot lift ? sea-shore. 127 i with my hammer pounding evermore the rocky coast, smite andes into dust, strewing my bed, and, in another age, rebuild a continent of better men. then i unbar the doors : my paths lead out the exodus of nations : i disperse men to all shores that front the hoary main. i too have arts and sorceries ; illusion dwells forever with the wave. i know what spells are laid. leave me to deal with credulous and imaginative man; for, though he scoop my water in his palm, a few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore, i make some coast alluring, some lone isle, to distant men, who must go there, or die. song of nature. m ine are the night and morning, the pits of air, the gulf of space, the sportive sun, the gibbous moon, the innumerable days. i hide in the solar glory, i am dumb in the pealing song, i rest on the pitch of the torrent, in slumber i am strong. no numbers have counted my tallies, no tribes my house can fill, 1 sit by the shining fount of life, and pour the deluge still ; song of nature. 129 and ever by delicate powers gathering along the centuries from race on race the rarest flowers, my wreath shall nothing miss. and many a thousand summers my apples ripened well, and light from meliorating stars with firmer glory fell. i wrote the past in characters of rock and fire the scroll, the building in the coral sea, the planting of the coal, and thefts from satellites and rings and broken stars i drew, and out of spent and ageil things i forined the world anew ; 6 * 130 song of nature. what time the gods kept carnival, tricked out in sfar and flower, and in cramp elf and saurian forms they swathed their too much power. time and thought were my surveyors, they laid their courses well, they boiled the sea, and baked the layers of granite, marl, and shell. but he, the man-child glorious, – where tarries he the while ? the rainbow shines his harbinger, the sunset gleams his smile. my boreal lights leap upward, forthright my planets roll, and still the man-child is not born, the summit of the whole. song of nature. 131 must time and tide forever run ? will never my winds go sleep in the west ? will never my wheels which whirl the sun and satellites have rest ? too much of donning and doffing, too slow the rainbow fades, i weary of my robe of snow, my leaves and my cascades ; i tire of globes and races, too long the game is played ; what without him is summer's pomp, or winter's frozen shade ? i travail in pain for him, . my creatures travail and wait; his couriers come by squadrons, he comes not to the gate. 132 song of nature. twice i have moulded an image, and thrice outstretched my hand, made one of day, and one of night, and one of the salt sea-sand. one in a judæan manger, and one by avon stream, one over against the mouths of nile, and one in the academe. i moulded kings and saviours, and bards o'er kings to rule ; — but fell the starry influence short, the cup was never full. yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, and mix the bowl again ; seethe, fate! the ancient elements, heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain, song of nature. 133 let war and trade and creeds and song blend, ripen race on race, the sunburnt world a man shall breed of all the zones, and countless days. no ray is dimmed, no atom worn, my oldest force is good as new, and the fresh rose on yonder thorn gives back the bending heavens in dew. two rivers. thy summer voice, musketaquit, repeats the music of the rain ; but sweeter rivers pulsing flit through thee, as thou through concord plain. thou in thy narrow banks art pent: the stream i love unbounded goes through flood and sea and firmament; through light, through life, it forward flows. i see the inundation sweet, i hear the spending of the stream through years, through men, through nature fleet, through passion, thought, through power and dream. two rivers. 135 musketaquit, a goblin strong, of shard and flint makes jewels gay ; they lose their grief who hear his song, and where he winds is the day of day. so forth and brighter fares my stream, – who drink it shall not thirst again ; no darkness stains its equal gleam, and ages drop in it like rain waldeinsamkeit. y do not count the hours i spend in wandering by the sea; the forest is my loyal friend, like god it useth me. in plains that room for shadows make of skirting hills to lie, bound in by streams which give and take their colors from the sky; or on the mountain-crest sublime, or down the oaken glade, o what have i to do with time? for this the day was made. waldeinsamkeit. 137 cities of mortals woe-begone fantastic care derides, but in the serious landscape lone stern benefit abides. sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, and merry is only a mask of bad, but, sober on a fund of joy, the woods at heart are glad. there the great planter plants of fruitful worlds the grain, and with a million spells enchants the souls that walk in pain. still on the seeds of all he made the rose of beauty burns ; through times that wear, and forms that fade, immortal youth returns. 138 waldeinsamkeit. the black ducks mounting from the lake, the pigeon in the pines, the bittern's boom, a desert make which no false art refines. down in yon watery nook, where bearded mists divide, the gray old gods whom chaos knew, the sires of nature, hide. aloft, in secret veins of air, blows the sweet breath of song, 0, few to scale those uplands dare, though they to all belong! see thou bring not to field or stone the fancies found in books ; leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, to brave the landscape's looks. waldeinsamkeit. 139 and if, amid this dear delight, my thoughts did home rebound, i well might reckon it a slight to the high cheer i found. oblivion here thy wisdom is, thy thrift, the sleep of cares ; for a proud idleness like this crowns all thy mean affairs. terminus. it is time to be old, to take in sail:the god of bounds, who sets to seas a shore, came to me in his fatal rounds, and said : “no more ! no farther spread thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. fancy departs : no more invent, contract thy firmament to compass of a tent. there's not enough for this and that, make thy option which of two; terminus. 141 many economize the failing river, not the less revere the giver, leave the many and hold the few. timely wise accept the terms, soften the fall with wary foot ; a little while still plan and smile, and, fault of novel germs, mature the unfallen fruit. curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, bad husbands of their fires, who, when they gave thee breath, failed to bequeath the needful sinew stark as once, the baresark marrow to thy bones, but left a legacy of ebbing veins, inconstant heat and nerveless reins, – amid the muses, left thee deaf and dumb, amid the gladiators, halt and numb.' 142 terminus. as the bird trims her to the gale, i trim myself to the storm of time, i man the rudder, reef the sail, obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: lowly faithful, banish fear, right onward drive unbarmed ; the port, well worth the cruise, is near, and every wave is charmed.' the past. the debt is paid, the verdict said, the furies laid, the plague is stayed, all fortunes made ; turn the key and bolt the door, sweet is death forevermore. nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, nor murdering hate, can enter in. all is now secure and fast; not the gods can shake the past ; flies-to the adamantine door bolted down forevermore. 144 the past. none can re-enter there, no thief so politic, no satan with a royal trick steal in by window, chink, or hole, to bind or unbind, add what lacked, insert a leaf, or forge a name, new-face or finish what is packed, alter or mend eternal fact. the last farewell. lines written by the author's brother, edward bliss emerson, whilst sailing out of boston harbor, round for the island of porto rico, in 1832. farewell, ye lofty spires that cheered the holy light! farewell, domestic fires that broke the gloom of night! too soon those spires are lost, too fast we leave the bay, too soon by ocean tost from hearth and home away, far away, far away. farewell the busy town, the wealthy and the wise, 146 the last farewell. kind smile and honest frown from bright, familiar eyes. all these are fading now; our brig hastes on her way, her unremembering prow is leaping o'er the sea, far away, far away. farewell, my mother fond, too kind, too good to me; nor pearl nor diamond would pay my debt to thee. but even thy kiss denies upon my cheek to stay ; the winged vessel flies, and billows round her play, far away, far away. farewell, my brothers true, my betters, yet my peers ; the last farewell. 147 how desert without you my few and evil years ! but though aye one in heart, together sad or gay, rude ocean doth us part; we separate to-day, far away, far away. farewell i breathe again to dim new england's shore ; my heart shall beat not when i pant for thee no more. in yon green palmy isle, beneath the tropic ray, i murmur never while for thee and thine i pray; far away, far away. in memoriam. e. b. e. mourn upon this battle-field, but not for those who perished here. behold the river-bank whither the angry farmers came, in sloven dress and broken rauk, nor thought of fame. their deed of blood all mankind praise ; even the serene reason says, it was well done. the wise and simple have one glance to greet yon stern head-stone, in memoriam. 119 which more of pride than pity gave to mark the briton's friendless grave. yet it is a stately tomb ; the grand return of eve and morn, the year's fresh bloom, the silver cloud, might grace the dust that is most proud. yet not of these i muse in this ancestral place, but of a kindred face that never joy or hope shall here diffuse. ah, brother of the brief but blazing star! what hast thou to do with these haunting this bank's historic trees? thou born for noblest life, for action's field, for victor's car, 150 in memorian. thou living champion of the right? to these their penalty belonged: i grudge not these their bed of death, but thine to thee, who never wronged the poorest that drew breath. all inborn power that could consist with homage to the good flamed from his martial eye ; he who seemed a soldier born, he should have the helmet worn, all friends to fend, all foes defy, fronting foes of god and man, frowning down the evil-doer, battling for the weak and poor. his from youth the leader's look gave the law which others took, and never poor beseeching glance shamed that sculptured countenance. in memoriam. 151 there is no record left on earth, save in tablets of the heart, of the rich inherent worth, of the grace that on him shone, of eloquent lips, of joyful wit; he could not frame a word unfit, an act unworthy to be done ; honor prompted every glance, honor came and sat beside him, in lowly cot or painful road, and evermore the cruel god cried, “onward !” and the palm-crown showed. born for success he seemed, with grace to win, with heart to hold, with shining gifts that took all eyes, with budding power in college-halls, as pledged in coming days to forge weapons to guard the state, or scourge tyrants despite their guards or walls. 152 in memoriam. on his young promise beauty smiled, drew his free homage unbeguiled, and prosperous age held out his hand, and richly his large future planned, and troops of friends enjoyed the tide, – all, all was given, and only health denied. i see him with superior smile hunted by sorrow's grisly train in lands remote, in toil and pain, with angel patience labor on, with the high port he wore erewhile, when, foremost of the youthful band, the prizes in all lists he won ; nor bate one jot of heart or hope, and, least of all, the loyal tio which holds to home 'neath every sky, the joy and pride the pilgrim feels in hearts which round the hearth at home keep pulse for pulse with those who roam. in memoriaji. 153 what generous beliefs console the brave whom fate denies the goal ! if others reach it, is content; to heaven's high will his will is bent. firm on his heart relied, what lot soe'er betide, work of his hand he nor repents nor grieves, pleads for itself the fact, as unrepenting nature leaves her every act. fell the bolt on the branching oak ; the rainbow of his hope was broke ; no craven cry, no secret tear, – he told no pang, he knew no fear; its peace sublime his aspect kept, his purpose woke, his features slept ; and yet between the spasms of pain his genius beamed with joy again. 154 in memoriam. o'er thy rich dust the endless smile of nature in thy spanish isle hints never loss or cruel break and sacrifice for love's dear sake, nor mourn the unalterable days that genius goes and folly stays. what matters how, or from what ground, the freed soul its creator found ? alike thy memory embalms that orange-grove, that isle of palms, and these loved banks, whose oak-boughs bold root in the blood of heroes old. elements experience. m he lords of life, the lords of life, i saw them pass, in their own guise, like and unlike, portly and grim, use and surprise, surface and dream, succession swift and spectral wrong, temperament without a tongue, and the inventor of the game omnipresent without name : some to see, some to be guessed, they marched from east to west : 158 experience. experience. little man, least of all, among the legs of his guardians tall, walked about with puzzled look. him by the hand dear nature took, dearest nature, strong and kind, whispered, “darling, never mind ! to-morrow they will wear another face, the founder thou ; these are thy race!' compensation. mae wings of time are black and white, pied with morning and with night. mountain tall and ocean deep trembling balance duly keep. in changing moon and tidal wave glows the feud of want and have. gauge of more and less through space, electric star or pencil plays, the lonely earth amid the balls . that hurry through the eternal halls, a makeweight flying to the void, supplemental asteroid, 160 compensation. or compensatory spark, shoots across the neutral dark. man's the elm, and wealth the vine : stanch and strong the tendrils twine : though the frail ringlets thee deceive, none from its stock that vine can reave. fear not, then, thou child infirm, there's no god dare wrong a worm ; laurel crowns cleave to deserts, and power to him who power exerts. hast not thy share ? on winged feet, lo! it rushes thee to meet ; and all that nature made thy own, floating in air or pent in stone, will rive the hills and swim the sea, and, like thy shadow, follow thee. politics. cold and iron are good to buy iron and gold ; all earth’s fleece and food for their like are sold. hinted merlin wise, proved napoleon great, nor kind nor coinage buys aught above its rate. fear, craft, and avarice cannot rear a state. out of dust to build what is more than dust, – walls amphion piled 162 politics. phoebus stablish must. when the muses nine with the virtues meet, find to their design an atlantic seat, by green orchard boughs fended from the heat, where the statesman ploughs furrow for the wheat, — when the church is social worth, when the state-house is the hearth, then the perfect state is come, the republican at home. heroism. ruby wine is drunk by knaves, sugar spends to fatten slaves, rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons ; thunder-clouds are jove's festoons, drooping oft in wreaths of dread, lightning-knotted round his head ; the hero is not fed on sweets, daily his own heart he eats ; chambers of the great are jails, and head-winds right for royal sails. character. the sun set, but set not his hope : stars rose ; his faith was earlier up: fixed on the enormous galaxy, deeper and older seemed his eye ; and matched his sufferance sublime the taciturnity of time he spoke, and words more soft than rain brought the age of gold again : his action won such reverence sweet as hid all measure of the feat. culture. man rules or tutors educate the semigod whom we await ? he must be musical, tremulous, impressional, alive to gentle influence of landscape and of sky, and tender to the spirit-touch of man's or maiden's eye : but, to his native centre fast, shall into future fuse the past, and the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. friendship. ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs, the world uncertain comes and goes, the lover rooted stays. i fancied he was fled, — and, after many a year, glowed unexhausted kindliness, like daily sunrise there. my careful heart was free again, o friend, my bosom said, through thee alone the sky is arched, through thee the rose is red; all things through thee take nobler form, and look beyond the earth, friendship. 167 the mill-round of our fate appears a sun-path in thy worth. me too thy nobleness has taught to master my despair ; the fountains of my hidden life are through thy friendship fair. beauty. w as never form and never face so sweet to seyd as only grace which did not slumber like a stone, but hovered gleaming and was gone. beauty chased he everywhere, in flame, in storm, in clouds of air. he smote the lake to feed his eye with the beryl beam of the broken wave; he flung in pebbles well to hear the moment's music which they gave. oft pealed for him a lofty tone from nodding pole and belting zone. he heard a voice none else could hear from centred and from errant sphere. beauty 169 the quaking earth did quake in rhyme, seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. in dens of passion, and pits of woe, he saw strong eros struggling through, to sun the dark and solve the curse, and beam to the bounds of the universe. while thus to love he gave his days in loyal worship, scorning praise, how spread their lures for him in vain thieving ambition and paltering gain! he thought it happier to be dead, to die for beauty, than live for bread. manners. grace, beauty, and caprice build this golden portal ; graceful women, chosen men, dazzle every mortal. their sweet and lofty countenance his enchanted food; he need not go to them, their forms beset his solitude. he looketh seldom in their face, his eyes explore the ground, — the green grass is a looking-glass whereon their traits are found. little and less he says to them, so dances his heart in his breast; manners. 171 their tranquil mien bereaveth him of wit, of words, of rest. too weak to win, too fond to shun the tyrants of his doom, the much deceived endymion slips behind a tomb. art. qive to barrows, trays, and pans grace and glimmer of romance; bring the moonlight into noon hid in gleaming piles of stone ; on the city's paved street plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet ; let spouting fountains cool the air, singing in the sun-baked square ; let statue, picture, park, and hall, ballad, flag, and festival, the past restore, the day adorn, and make tomorrow a new morn. so shall the drudge in dusty frock spy behind the city clock orrow a new morn. 173 art. retinues of airy kings, skirts of angels, starry wings, his fathers shining in bright fables, his children fed at heavenly tables. 'tis the privilege of art thus to play its cheerful part, man on earth to acclimate, and bend the exile to his fate, and, moulded of one element with the days and firmament, teach him on these as stairs to climb, and live on even terms with time ; whilst upper life the slender rill of human sense doth overfill. spiritual laws. . the living heaven thy prayers respect, house at once and architect, quarrying man's rejected hours, builds therewith eternal towers ; sole and self-commanded works, fears not undermining days, grows by decays, and, by the famous might that lurks in reaction and recoil, makes filame to freeze, and ice to boil ; forging, through swart arms of offence, the silver seat of innocence. unity. space is ample, east and west, but two cannot go abreast, cannot travel in it two: yonder masterful cuckoo crowds every egg out of the nest, quick or dead, except its own; a spell is laid on sod and stone, night and day were tampered with, every quality and pith surcharged and sultry with a power that works its will on age and hour. worship this is he, who, felled by foes, sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: he to captivity was sold, but him no prison-bars would hold : though they sealed him in a rock, mountain chains he can unlock : thrown to lions for their meat, the crouching lion kissed his feet: bound to the stake, no flames appalled, but arched o'er him an honoring vault. this is he men miscall fate, . threading dark ways, arriving late, but ever coming in time to crown the truth, and hurl wrong-doers down. worship 177 he is the oldest, and best known, more near than aught thou call'st thy own, yet, greeted in another's eyes, disconcerts with glad surprise. this is jove, who, deaf to prayers, floods with blessings unawares. draw, if thou canst, the mystic line severing rightly his from thine, which is human, which divine. quatrains. quatrains. s. h. w ith beams december planets dart his cold eye truth and conduct scanned, july was in his sunny heart, october in his liberal hand. a. h. high was her heart, and yet was well inclined, her manners made of bounty well refined ; far capitals, and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see, minstrels, and kings, and high-born dames, and of the best that be. 182 quatrains. "suum cuique." wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? pay every debt, as if god wrote the bill. hush! every thought is public, every nook is wide ; thy gossips spread each whisper, and the gods from side to side. orator. he who has no hands perforce must use his tongue ; foxes are so cunning because they are not strong. quatrains. 183 artist. quit the hut, frequent the palace, reck not what the people say ; '. for still, where'er the trees grow biggest, huntsmen find the easiest way. poet. ever the poet from the land steers his bark, and trims his sail ; right out to sea his courses stand, new worlds to find in pinnace frail. poet. to clothe the fiery thought in simple words succeeds, for still the craft of genius is to mask a king in weeds. 184 quatrains. botanist. go thou to thy learned task, i stay with the flowers of spring : do thou of the ages ask what me the hours will bring. gardener. true bramin, in the morning meadows wet, expound the vedas of the violet, or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop, see the plum redden, and the beurré stoop. forester. he took the color of his vest from rabbit's coat or grouse's breast; for, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide, so walks the woodman, unespied quatrains. 185 northman. the gale that wrecked you on the sand, it helped my rowers to row; the storm is my best galley hand, and drives me where i go. from alcuin. the sea is the road of the bold, frontier of the wheat-sown plains, the pit wherein the streams are rolled, and fountain of the rains. excelsior. over his head were the maple buds, and over the tree was the moon, and over the moon were the starry studs, that drop from the angels' shoon. 186 quatrains borrowing. from the french. some of your hurts you have cured, and the sharpest you still have survived, but what torments of grief you endured from evils which never arrived ! nature. boon nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold, and trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old : but blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why, too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die. quatrains. 187 fate. her planted eye to-day controls, is in the morrow most at home, and sternly calls to being souls that curse her when they come. horoscope. ere he was born, the stars of fate plotted to make him rich and great: when from the womb the babe was loosed, the gate of gifts behind him closed. power. cast the bantling on the rocks, suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, wintered with the hawk and fox, power and specd be hands and feet. 188 quatrains. climacteric. i am not wiser for my age, nor skilful by my grief; life loiters at the book's first page, ah! could we turn the leaf. heri, cras, hodie. shines the last age, the next with hope is seen, to-day slinks poorly off unmarked between : future or past no richer secret folds, o friendless present! than thy bosom holds. memory. night-dreams trace on memory's wall shadows of the thoughts of day, and thy fortunes, as they fall, the bias of the will betray. quatrains. 189 love. love on his errand bound to go can swim the flood, and wade through snow, where way is none, 't will creep and wind and eat through alps its home to find. sacrifice. though love repine, and reason chafe, there came a voice without reply, • 'tis man's perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die.' pericles. well and wisely said the greek, be thou faithful, but not fond ; to the altar's foot thy fellow seek, the furies wait beyond. 190 quatrains. casella. test of the poet is knowledge of love, for eros is older than saturn or jove ; never was poet, of late or of yore, who was not tremulous with love-lore. shakspeare. i see all human wits are measured but a few, unmeasured still my shakspeare sits, lone as the blessed jew. hafiz. her passions the shy violet from hafiz never hides ; love-longings of the raptured bird the bird to him confides. quatrains. 191 nature in leasts. as sings the pine-tree in the wind, so sings in the wind a sprig of the pine ; her strength and soul has laughing france shed in each drop of wine. αδακρυν νεμονται αιωνα. 'a new commandment,' said the smiling muse, 'i give my darling son, thou shalt not preach';luther, fox, behmen, swedenborg, grew pale, and, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore hafiz and shakspeare with their shining choirs. translations. . sonnet of michelangelo buonaroti. n ever did sculptor's dream unfold a form which marble doth not hold in its white block ; yet it therein shall find only the hand secure and bold which still obeys the mind. so hide in thee, thou heavenly dame. the ill i shun, the good i claim ; i alas! not well alive, miss the aim whereto i strive. not love, nor beauty's pride, nor fortune, nor thy coldness, can i chide, if, whilst within thy heart abide both death and pity, my unequal skill fails of the life, but draws the death and ill 196 translations. the exile. from the persian of kermani. in farsistan the violet spreads its leaves to the rival sky ; i ask how far is the tigris flood, and the vine that grows thereby ? except the amber morning wind, not one salutes me here ; there is no lover in all bagdat to offer the exile cheer. i know that thou, o morning wind ! o'er kernan's meadow blowest, and thou, heart-warming nightingale! . my father's orchard knowest. the merchant hath stuffs of price, and gems from the sea-washed strand, translations. 197 and princes offer me grace to stay in the syrian land; but what is gold for, but for gifts ? and dark, without love, is the day; and all that i see in bagdat is the tigris to float me away. from hafiz. i said to heaven that glowed above, o hide yon sun-filled zone, hide all the stars you boast; for, in the world of love and estimation true, the heaped-up harvest of the moon is worth one barley-corn at most, the pleiads' sheaf but two. translations. if my darling should depart, and search the skies for prouder friends, god forbid my angry heart in other love should seek amends. when the blue horizon's hoop me a little pinches here, instant to my grave i stoop, and go find thee in the sphere. epitaph. bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest mad destiny this tender stripling played; for a warm breast of maiden to his breast, she laid a slab of marble on his head. translations. 199 they say, through patience, coalk becomes a ruby stone; ah, yes i but by the true heart's blood the chalk is crimson grown. friendship. thou foolish hafiz! say, do churls know the worth of oman's pearls ? give the gem which dims the moon to the noblest, or to none. dearest, where thy shadow falls, beauty sits, and music calls ; where thy form and favor come, all good creatures have their home. 200 translations. on prince or bride no diamond stone half so gracious ever shone, as the light of enterprise beaming from a young man's eyes. from omar chiam. each spot where tulips prank their state has drunk the life-blood of the great; the violets yon field which stain are moles of beauties time hath slain. he who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him every. where. translations. 201 on two days it steads not to run from thy grave, the appointed, and the unappointed day; on the first, neither balm nor physician can save, nor thee, on the second, the universe slay. from ibn jemin. two things thou shalt not long for, if thou lovo a mind serene ; — a woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen ; and the second, borrowed money, — though the smiling lender say, that he will not demand the debt until the judg. ment day. 202 translations. the flute. from hilali. hark what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains, without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh ; saying, sweetheart! the old mystery remains, – if i am i; thou, thou; or thou art i? to the shah. from hafiz. thx foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down, poises arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear. to the shah. from enweri. not in their houses stand the stars, but o'er the pinnacles of thine ! translations. 203 to the shah. from enweri. from thy worth and weight the stars gravitate, and the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise. song of seid nimetollah of kuhistan. among the religious customs of the dervishes is an astronomical dance, in which the dervish imitates the movements of the heavenly bodies, by spinning on his own axis, whilst at the same time he revolves round the sheikh in the centre, representing the sun; and, as he spins, he sings the song of seid nimetollah of kuhistan.] spin the ball! i reel, i burn, nor head from foot can i discern, nor my heart from love of mine, nor the wine-cup from the wine. all my doing, all my leaving, reaches not to my perceiving ; 204 translations. lost in wnirling spheres i rove, and know only that i love. i am seeker of the stone, living gem of solomon ; from the shore of souls arrived, in the sea of sense i dived ; but what is land, or what is wave, to me who only jewels crave ? love is the air-fed fire intense, and my heart the frankincense ; as the rich aloes flames, i glow, yet the censer cannot know. i'm all-knowing, yet unknowing; stand not, pause not, in my going. ask not me, as muftis can, to recite the alcoran ; well i love the meaning sweet, i tread the book beneath my feet. translations. 205 lo! the god's love blazes higher, till all difference expire. what are moslems? what are giaours ? all are love's, and all are ours. i embrace the true believers, but i reck not of deceivers. firm to heaven my bosom clings, heedless of inferior things ; down on earth there, underfoot, what men chatter know i not. the end. cambridge : stereotyped and printed by welch, bigelow, & co. ccccccccccccccc cococcus os soccccccc c ococo gocok ccccccccc cccccccc sus ( cc cu c csc d . d c c coc ( ce csc > coco > ( . ( c cc >> co co(cc aaaaaaaaaanaa co (cc cc c c c c csc d . cccc ( 332 331 . mom al 1323.455.5 2 > od) patel 4 harvard college library ca joomooooooo cccc cccc coocco ccccccc ccm coccassic cccorso no co | ances ک م ، از من ort. 10th 1876. letters and and social a im s. by ralph waldo emerson. and boston: . james r. osgood and company, .. late ticknor & fields, and fields, osgood, & co. . 1876. al 1323.455.5 copyright, 1875. by ralph waldo emerson. harvard university libzady | llu 6 1973 ge university press : welch, bigelow, & co., cambridge. contents. page poetry and imagination . social aims . . . . eloquence. · resources . . . . the comic . . . quotation and originality. . . . . . 1 . . . . 69 · · · · 97 . . . . . . . . . 137 . . . . · · · · 183 . . . 211 · · · 239 . . . . 267 . . . . i 287 · progress of culture ogress of culture persian poetry . . · · · inspiration greatness immortality . . . . . . . poetry and imagination. poetry and imagination. the perception of matter is made the commonsense, and for cause. this was the cradle, this the go-cart, of the human child. we must learn the homely laws of fire and water; we must feed, wash, plant, build. these are ends of necessity, and first in the order of nature. poverty, frost, famine, disease, debt, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to common sense. the intellect, yielded up to itself, cannot supersede this tyrannic necessity. the restraining grace of common-sense is the mark of all the valid minds, — of æsop, aristotle, alfred, luther, shakspeare, cervantes, franklin, napoleon. the common-sense which does not meddle with the absolute, but takes things at their word, — things as they appear, — believes in the existence of matter, not because we can touch it, or conceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves, and the universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest, — is the house of health and life. in spite of all the joys of poets and the joys of saints, the most-imaginative and abstracted person never makes, with impunity, the least mistake in this particular, — poetry and imagination. never tries to kindle his oven with water, nor carries a torch into a powder-mill, nor seizes his wild charger by the tail. we should not pardon the blunder in another, nor endure it in ourselves. but whilst we deal with this as finality, early hints are given that we are not to stay here; that we must be making ready to go;& warning that this magnificent hotel and conveniency we call nature is not final. first innuendoes, then broad hints, then smart taps, are given, suggesting that nothing stands still in nature but death; that the creation is on wheels, in transit, always passing into something else, streaming into something higher; that matter is not what it appears ; — that chemistry can blow it all into gas. faraday, the most exact of natural philosophers, taught that when we should arrive at the monads, or primordial elements (the supposed little cubes or prisms of which all matter was built up), we should not find cubes, or prisms, or atoms, at all, but spherules of force. it was whispered that the globes of the universe were precipitates of something more subtle ; nay, somewhat was murmured in our ear that dwindled astronomy into a toy;— that too was no finality ;only provisional, — a makeshift ; — that under chemistry was power and purpose : power and purpose ride on matter to the last atom. it was steeped in thought, — did everywhere express thought; that, as great conquerors have burned their ships when introductory, once they were landed on the wished-for shore, so the noble house of nature we inhabit has temporary uses, and we can afford to leave it one day. the ends of all are moral, and therefore the beginnings are such. thin or solid, everything is in flight. i believe this conviction makes the charm of chemistry, — that we have the same avoirdupois matter in an alembic, without a vestige of the old form; and in animal transformation not less, as in grub and fly, in egg and bird, in embryo and man; everything undressing and stealing away from its old into new form, and nothing fast but those invisible cords which we call laws, on which all is strung. then we see that things wear different names and faces, but belong to one family ; that the secret cords, or laws, show their well-known virtue through every variety, — be it animal, or plant, or planet, — and the interest is gradually transferred from the forms to the lurking method. this hint, however conveyed, upsets our politics, trade, customs, marriages, nay, the common-sense side of religion and literature, which are all founded on low nature, — on the clearest and most economical mode of administering the material world, considered as final. the admission, never so covertly, that this is a makeshift, sets the dullest brain in ferment; our little sir, from his first tottering steps, as soon as he can crow, — does not like to be practised upon, suspects that someone is poetry and imagination. “ doing” him, — and, at this alarm, everything is compromised ; — gunpowder is laid under every man's breakfast-table. but whilst the man is startled by this closer inspection of the laws of matter, his attention is called to the independent action of the mind, — its strange suggestions and laws, — a certain tyranny which springs up in his own thoughts, which have an order, method, and beliefs of their own, very different from the order which this common-sense uses. suppose there were in the ocean certain strong currents which drove a ship, caught in them, with a force that no skill of sailing with the best wind, and no strength of oars, or sails, or steam, could make any head against, any more than against the current of niagara : such currents — so tyrannical — exist in thoughts, those finest and subtilest of all waters, — that, as soon as once thought begins, it refuses to remember whose brain it belongs to, — what country, tradition, or religion, — and goes whirling off — swim we merrily — in a direction self-chosen, by law of thought, and not by law of kitchen clock or county committee. it has its own polarity. one of these vortices or selfdirections of thought is the impulse to search resemblance, affinity, identity, in all its objects, and hence our science, from its rudest to its most refined theories. introductory. the electric word pronounced by john hunter a hundred years ago, — arrested and progressive development, — indicating the way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highest organisms, — gave the poetic key to natural science,of which the theories of geoffroy st. hilaire, of oken, of goethe, of agassiz, and owen, and darwin, in zoology and botany, are the fruits, — a hint whose power is not yet exhausted, showing unity and perfect order in physics. the hardest chemist, the severest analyzer, scornful of all but dryest fact, is forced to keep the poetic curve of nature, and his result is like a myth of theocritus. all multiplicity rushes to be resolved into unity. anatòmy, osteology, exhibit arrested or progressive ascent in each kind; the lower pointing to the higher forms, the higher to the highest, from the fluid in an elastic sack, from radiate, mollusk, articulate, vertebrate, — up to man; as if the whole animal world were only a hunterian museum to exhibit the genesis of mankind. identity of law, perfect order in physics, perfect parallelism between the laws of nature and the laws of thought exist. in botany we have the like, the poetic perception of metamorphosis, — that the same vegetable point or eye which is the unit of the plant can be transformed at pleasure into every part, as bract, leaf, petal, stamen, pistil, or seed. poetry and imagination. in geology, what a useful hint was given to the early inquirers on seeing in the possession of professor playfair a bough of a fossil tree which was perfect wood at one end, and perfect mineral coal at the other. natural objects, if individually described, and out of connection, are not yet known, since they are really parts of a symmetrical universe, like words of a sentence; and if their true order is found, the poet can read their divine significance orderly as in a bible. each animal or vegetable form remembers the next inferior, and predicts the next higher. there is one animal, one plant, one matter, and one force. the laws of light and of heat translate each other; — so do the laws of sound and of color; and so galvanism, electricity, and magnetism are varied forms of the selfsame energy. while the student ponders this immense unity, he observes that all things in nature, the animals, the mountain, the river, the seasons, wood, iron, stone, vapor, — have a mysterious relation to his thoughts and his life; their growths, decays, quality, and use so curiously resemble himself, in parts and in wholes, that he is compelled to speak by means of them. his words and his thoughts are framed by their help. every noun is an image. nature gives him, sometimes in a flattered likeness, sometimes in caricature, a copy of every humor and shade in his character and mind. the world is an immense introductory. . picture-book of every passage in human life. every object he beholds is the mask of a man. “the privates of man's heart they speken and sound in his ear as tho' they loud winds were"; for the universe is full of their echoes. every correspondence we observe in mind and matter suggests a substance older and deeper than either of these old nobilities. we see the law gleaming through, like the sense of a half-translated ode of hafiz. the poet who plays with it with most boldness best justifies himself, — is most profound and most devout. passion adds eyes, — is a magnifying-glass. sonnets of lovers are mad enough, but are valuable to the philosopher, as are prayers of saints, for their potent symbolism. science was false by being unpoetical. it assumed to explain a reptile or mollusk, and isolated it, — which is hunting for life in graveyards. reptile or mollusk or man or angel only exists in system, in relation. the metaphysician, the poet, only sees each animal form as an inevitable step in the path of the creating mind. the indian, the hunter, the boy with his pets, have sweeter knowledge of these than the savant. we use semblances of logic until experience puts us in possession of real logic. the poet knows the missing link by the joy it gives. the poet gives us the eminent experiences only, — a god stepping from peak to peak, nor planting his foot but on a mountain. 10 poetry and imagination. science does not know its debt to imagination. goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty. he was himself conscious of its help, which made him a prophet among the doctors. from this vision he gave brave hints to the zoologist, the botanist, and the optician. poetry. — the primary use of a fact is low : the secondary use, as it is a figure or illustration of my thought, is the real worth. first, the fact; second, its impression, or what i think of it. hence nature was called “a kind of adulterated reason.” seas, forests, metals, diamonds, and fossils interest the eye, but 't is only with some preparatory or predicting charm. their value to the intellect appears only when i hear their meaning made plain in the spiritual truth they cover. the mind, penetrated with its sentiment or its thought, projects it outward on whatever it beholds. the lover sees reminders of his mistress in every beautiful object; the saint, an argument for devotion in every natural process; and the facility with which nature lends itself to the thoughts of man, the aptness with which a river, a flower, a bird, fire, day, or night, can express his fortunes, is as if the world were only a disguised man, and, with a change of form, rendered to him all his experience. we cannot utter a sentence in sprightly conversation poetry without a similitude. note our incessant use of the word like, — like fire, like a rock, like thunder, like a bee, “like a year without a spring.” conversation is not permitted without tropes ; nothing but great weight in things can afford a quite literal speech. it is ever enlivened by inversion and trope. god himself does not speak prose, but communicates with us by hints, omens, inference, and dark resemblances in objects lying all around us. nothing so marks a man as imaginative expressions, a figurative statement arrests attention, and is remembered and repeated. how often has a phrase of this kind made a reputation. pythagoras's golden sayings were such, and socrates's, and mirabeau's, and burke's, and bonaparte's. genius thus makes the transfer from one part of nature to a remote part, and betrays the rhymes and echoes that pole makes with pole. imaginative minds cling to their images, and do not wish them rashly rendered into prose reality, as children resent your showing them that their doll cinderella is nothing but pine wood and rags : and my young scholar does not wish to know what the leopard, the wolf, or lucia, signify in dante's inferno, but prefers to keep their veils on. mark the delight of an audience in an image. when some familiar truth or fact appears in a new dress, mounted as on a fine horse, equipped with a grand pair of ballooning wings, we cannot enough testify our 12 poetry and imagination. surprise and pleasure. it is like the new virtue shown in some unprized old property, as when a boy finds that his pocket-knife will attract steel filings and take up a needle ; or when the old horseblock in the yard is found to be a torso hercules of the phidian age. vivacity of expression may indicate this high gift, even when the thought is of no great scope, as when michel angelo, praising the terra cottas, said, “if this earth were to become marble, woe to the antiques !” a happy symbol is a sort of evidence that your thought is, just. i had rather have a good symbol of my thought, or a good analogy, than the suffrage of kant or plato. if you agree with me, or if locke or montesquieu agree, i may yet be wrong; but if the elm-tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what i say, it must be true. thus, a good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands. the vedas, the edda, the koran; are each remembered by their happiest figure. there is no more welcome gift to men than a new symbol. that satiates, transports, converts them. they assimilate themselves to it, deal with it in all ways, and it will last a hundred years. then comes a new genius, and brings another. thus the greek mythology called the sea “the tear of saturn." the return of the soul to god was described as “a flask of water broken in poetry. 13 the sea." saint john gave us the christian figure of “souls washed in the blood of christ.” the aged michel angelo indicates his perpetual study as in boyhood, — "i carry my satchel still.” machiavel described the papacy as “a stone inserted in the body of italy to keep the wound open.” to the parliament debating how to tax america, burke exclaimed, “shear the wolf.” . our kentuckian orator said of his dissent from his companion, “i showed him the back of my hand.” and our proverb of the courteous soldier reads : “an iron hand in a velvet glove." this belief that the higher use of the material world is to furnish us types or pictures to express the thoughts of the mind is carried to its logical extreme by the hindoos, who, following buddha, have made it the central doctrine of their religion, that what we call nature, the external world, has no real existence, — is only phenomenal. youth, age, property, condition, events, persons, — self, even, are successive maias (deceptions) through which vishnu mocks and instructs the soul. i think hindoo books the best gymnastics for the mind, as showing treatment. all european libraries might almost be read without the swing of this gigantic arm being suspected. but these orientals deal with worlds and pebbles freely. for the value of a trope is that the hearer is one; and indeed nature itself is a vast trope, and 14 poetry and imagination. all particular natures are tropes. as the bird alights on the bough, — then plunges into the air again, so the thoughts of god pause but for a moment in any form. all thinking is analogizing, and ’t is the use of life to learn metonomy. the endless passing of one element into new forms, the incessant metamorphosis, explains the rank which the imagination holds in our catalogue of mental powers. the imagination is the reader of these forms. the poet accounts all productions and changes of nature as the nouns of language, uses them · representatively, too well pleased with their ulterior to value much their primary meaning. every new object so seen gives a shock of agreeable surprise. the impressions on the imagination make the great days of life: the book, the landscape, or the personality which did not stay on the surface of the eye or ear, but penetrated to the inward sense, agitates us, and is not forgotten. walking, working, or talking, the sole question is how many strokes vibrate on this mystic string, — how many diameters are drawn quite through from matter to spirit; for, whenever you enunciate a natural law, you discover that you have enunciated a law of the mind. chemistry, geology, hydraulics, are secondary science. the atomic theory is only an interior process produced, as geometers say, or the effect of a foregone metaphysical theory. swedenborg saw gravity to be only an external of the irresistible poetry. 15 attractions of affection and faith. mountains and oceans we think we understand : — yes, so long as they are contented to be such, and are safe with the geologist, — but when they are melted in promethean alembics, and come out men, and then, melted again, come out words, without any abatement, but with an exaltation of power ! — in poetry we say we require the miracle. the bee flies among the flowers, and gets mint and marjoram, and generates a new product, which is not mint and marjoram, but honey ; the chemist mixes hydrogen and oxygen to yield a new product, which is not these, but water; and the poet listens to conversation, and beholds all objects in nature, to give back, not them, but a new and transcendent whole. poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing, to pass the brute body, and search the life and reason which causes it to exist; to see that the object is always flowing away, whilst the spirit or necessity which causes it subsists. its essential mark is that it betrays in every word instant activity of mind, shown in new uses of every fact and image, — in preternatural quickness or perception of relations. all its words are poems. it is a presence of mind that gives a miraculous command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling of the moment. the poet squanders on the hour an amount of life that would more than furnish the seventy years of the man that stands next him. 16 poetry and imagination. the term genius, when used with emphasis, implies imagination; use of symbols, figurative speech. a deep insight will always, like nature, ultimate its thought in a thing. as soon as a man masters a principle, and sees his facts in relation to it, fields, waters, sķies, offer to clothe his thoughts in images. then all men understand him : parthian, mede, chinese, spaniard, and indian hear their own tongue. for he can now find symbols of universal significance, which are readily rendered into any dialect; as a painter, a sculptor, a musician, can in their several ways express the same sentiment of anger, or love, or religion. the thoughts are few; the forms many; the large vocabulary or many-colored coat of the indigent unity. the savans are chatty and vain, — but hold them hard to principle and definition, and they become mute and near-sighted. what is motion ? what is beauty? what is matter? what is life ? what is force ? push them hard, and they will not be loquacious. they will come to plato, proclus, and swedenborg. the invisible and imponderable is the sole fact. “why changes not the violet earth into musk?” what is the term of the ever-flowing metamorphosis ? i do not know what are the stoppages, but i see that a devouring unity changes all into that which changes not. the act of imagination is ever attended by pure delight. it infuses a certain volatility and intoxiimagination. 17 cation into all nature. it has a flute which sets the atoms of our frame in a dance. our indeterminate size is a delicious secret which it reveals to us. the mountains begin to dislimn, and float in the air. in the presence and conversation of a true poet, teeminy with images to express his enlarging thought, his person, his form, grows larger to our fascinated eyes. and thus begins that deification which all nations have made of their heroes in every kind, — saints, poets, lawgivers, and warriors. imagination. — whilst common-sense looks at things or visible nature as real and final facts, poetry, or the imagination which dictates it, is a second sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words for thoughts which they signify. or is this belief a metaphysical whim of modern times, and quite too refined ? on the contrary, it is as old as the human mind. our best definition of poetry is one of the oldest sentences, and claims to come down to us from the chaldæan zoroaster, who wrote it thus : “poets are standing transporters, whose employment consists in speaking to the father and to matter; in producing apparent imitations of unapparent natures, and inscribing things unapparent in the apparent fabrication of the world ”; in other words, the world exists for thought : it is to make appear things which hide : mountains, crystals, 18 poetry and imagination. plants, animals, are seen; that which makes them is not seen: these, then, are “apparent copies of unapparent natures.” bacon expressed the same sense in his definition, “poetry accommodates the shows of things to the desires of the mind”; and swedenborg, when he said, “there is nothing existing in human thought, even though relating to the most mysterious tenet of faith, but has combined with it a natural and sensuous image.” and again : “names, countries, nations, and the like are not at all known to those who are in heaven; they have no idea of such things, but of the realities signified thereby.” a symbol always stimulates the intellect; therefore is poetry ever the best reading. the very design of imagination is to domesticate us in another, in a celestial, nature. this power is in the image because this power is in nature. it so affects, because it so is. all that is wondrous in swedenborg is not his invention, but his extraordinary perception ; — that he was necessitated so to see. the world realizes the · mind. better than images is seen through them. the selection of the image is no more arbitrary than the power and significance of the image. the selection must follow fate. poetry, if perfected, is the only verity; is the speech of man after the real, and not after the apparent. or, shall we say that the imagination exists by sharing the ethereal currents ? the poet contemimagination. 19 plates the central identity, sees it undulate and roll this way and that, with divine flowings, through remotest things; and, following it, can detect essential resemblances in natures never before compared. he can class them so audaciously, because he is sensible of the sweep of the celestial stream, from which nothing is exempt. his own body is a fleeing apparition, — his personality as fugitive as the trope he employs. in certain hours we can almost pass our hand through our own body. i think the use or value of poetry to be the suggestion it affords of the flux or fugaciousness of the poet. the mind delights in'measuring itself thus with matter, with history, and flouting both. a thought, any thought, pressed, followed, opened, dwarfs matter, custom, and all but itself. but this second sight does not necessarily impair the primary or common sense. pindar and dante, yes, and the gray and timeworn sentences of zoroaster, may all be parsed, though we do not parse them. the poet has a logic, though it be subtile. he observes higher laws than he transgresses. “poetry must first be good sense, though it is something better.” this union of first and second sight reads nature to the end of delight and of moral use. men are imaginative, but not overpowered by it to the extent of confounding its suggestions with external facts. we live in both spheres, and must not mix them. genius certifies its entire possession 20 poetry and imagination. of its thought, by translating it into a fact which perfectly represents it, and is hereby education. charles james fox thought “poetry the great refreshment of the human mind, — the only thing, after all ; that men first found out they had minds, by making and tasting poetry.” man runs about restless and in pain when his condition or the objects about him do not fully match his thought. he wishes to be rich, to be old, to be young, that things may obey him. in the ocean, in fire, in the sky, in the forest, he finds facts adequate and, as large as he. as his thoughts are deeper than he can fathom, so also are these. 't is easier to read sanscrit, to decipher the arrowhead character, than to interpret these familiar sights. 't is even much to name them. thus thomson's “seasons” and the best parts of many old and many new poets are simply enumerations by a person who felt the beauty of the common sights and sounds, without any attempt to draw a moral or affix a meaning. the poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols; that nature is the immense shadow of man. a man's action is only a picture-book of his creed. he does after what he believes. your condition, your employment, is the fable of you. the world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and mind of man, and taken his 48 . imagination. 21 mould and form. indeed, good poetry is always personification, and heightens every species of force in nature by giving it a human volition. we are advertised that there is nothing to which he is not related ; that everything is convertible into every other. the staff in this hand is the radius vector of the sun. the chemistry of this is the chemistry of that. whatever one act we do, whatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning all things, — marching in the direction of universal power. every healthy mind is a true alexander or sesostris, building a universal monarchy. the senses imprison us, and we help them with metres as limitary, — with a pair of scales and a foot-rule, and a clock. how long it took to find out what a day was, or what this sun, that makes days! it cost thousands of years only to make the motion of the earth suspected. slowly, by comparing thousands of observations, there dawned on some mind a theory of the sun, — and we found the astronomical fact. but the astronomy is in the mind : the senses affirm that the earth stands still and the sun moves. the senses collect the surface facts of matter. the intellect acts on these brute reports, and obtains from them results which are the essence or intellectual form of the experiences. it compares, distributes, generalizes, and uplifts them into its own sphere. it knows that these 22 poetry and imagination. transfigured results are not the brute experiences, just as souls in heaven are not the red bodies they once animated. many transfigurations have befallen them. the atoms of the body were once nebulæ, then rock, then loam, then corn, then chyme, then chyle, then blood ; and now the beholding and co-energizing mind sees the same refining and ascent to the third, the seventh, or the tenth power of the daily accidents which the senses report, and which make the raw material of knowledge. it was sensation; when memory came, it was experience; when mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought. this metonomy, or seeing the same sense in things so diverse, gives a pure pleasure. every one of a million times we find a charm in the meta. morphosis. it makes us dance and sing. all men are so far poets. when people tell me they do not relish poetry, and bring me shelley, or aikin's poets, or i know not what volumes of rhymed english, to show that it has no charm, i am quite of their mind. but this dislike of the books only proves their liking of poetry. for they relish æsop, — cannot forget him, or not use him; bring them homer's iliad, and they like that; or the cid, and that rings well : read to them from chaucer, and they reckon him an honest fellow. “lear" and “macbeth” and “richard iii.” they know imagination. 23 pretty well without guide. give them robin hood's ballads, or “griselda,” or “sir andrew barton,” or “sir patrick spense,” or “ chevy chase,” or “tam o'shanter,” and they like these well enough. they like to see statues; they like to name the stars; they like to talk and hear of jove, apollo, minerva, venus, and the nine. see how tenacious we are of the old names. they like poetry without knowing it as, such. they like to go to the theatre and be made to weep; to faneuil hall, and be taught by otis, webster, or kossuth, or phillips, what great hearts they have, what tears, what new possible enlargements to their narrow horizons. they like to see sunsets on the hills or on a lake shore. now, a cow does not gaze at the rainbow, or show or affect any interest in the landscape, or a peacock, or the song of thrushes.. nature is the true idealist. when she serves us best, when, on rare days, she speaks to the imagination, we feel that the huge heaven and earth are but a web drawn around us, that the light, skies, and mountains are but the painted vicissitudes of the soul. who has heard our hymn in the churches without accepting the truth, — “as o'er our heads the seasons roll, and soothe with change of bliss the soul” ? of course, when we describe man as poet, and credit him with the triumphs of the art, we speak of the potential or ideal man, — not found now in 24 poetry and imagination. any one person. you must go through a city or a nation, and find one faculty here, one there, to build the true poet withal. yet all men know the portrait when it is drawn, and it is part of religion to believe its possible incarnation. he is the healthy, the wise, the fundamental, the manly man, seer of the secret; against all the appearance, he sees and reports the truth, namely, that the soul generates matter. and poetry is the only verity, — the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal, and not after the apparent. as a power, it is the perception of the symbolic character of things, and the treating them as representative: as a talent, it is a magnetic tenaciousness of an image, and by the treatment demonstrating that this pigment of thought is as palpable and objective to the poet as is the ground on which he stands, or the walls of houses about him. and this power appears in dante and shakspeare. in some individuals this insight, or second sight, has an extraordinary reach which compels our wonder, as in behmen, swedenborg, and william blake, the painter. william blake, whose abnormal genius, wordsworth said, interested him more than the conversation of scott or of byron, writes thus : “he who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine imagination. 25 at all. the painter of this work asserts that all his imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely organized, than anything seen by his mortal eye. .... i assert for myself that i do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it would be a hindrance, and not action. i question not my corporeal eye any more than i would question a window concerning a sight. i · look through it, and not with it.” 't is a problem of metaphysics to define the province of fancy and imagination. the words are often used, and the things confounded. imagination respects the cause. it is the vision of an inspired soul reading arguments and affirmations in all nature of that which it is driven to say. but as soon as this soul is released a little from its passion, and at leisure plays with the resemblances and types for amusement, and not for its moral end, we call its action fancy. lear, mad with his affliction, thinks every man who suffers must have the like cause with his own. “what, have his daughters brought him to this pass ?” but when, his attention being diverted, his mind rests from this thought, he becomes fanciful with tom, playing with the superficial resemblances of objects. bunyan, in pain for his soul, wrote “ pilgrim's progress ”; quarles, after he was quite cool, wrote “ emblems.” 2 . 26 poetry and imagination. imagination is central; fancy, superficial. fancy relates to surface, in which a great part of life lies. the lover is rightly said to fancy the hair, eyes, complexion of the maid. fancy is a wilful, imagination a spontaneous act; fancy, a play as with dolls and puppets which we choose to call men and women; imagination, a perception and affirming of a real relation between a thought and some material fact. fancy amuses ; imagination expands and exalts us. imagination uses an organic classification. fancy joins by accidental resemblance, surprises and amuses the idle, but is silent in the presence of great passion and action. fancy aggregates; imagination animates. fancy is related to color; imagination, to form. fancy paints ; imagination sculptures. veracity.—i do not wish, therefore, to find that my poet is not partaker of the feast he spreads, or that he would kindle or amuse me with that which does not kindle or amuse him. he must believe in his poetry. homer, milton, hafiz, herbert, swedenborg, wordsworth, are heartily enamored of their sweet thoughts. moreover, they know that this correspondence of things to thoughts is far deeper than they can penetrate, -defying adequate expression; that it is elemental, or in the core of things. veracity, therefore, is that which we require in poets, that they shall say how it was with them, and veracity. not what might be said. and the fault of our popular poetry is that it is not sincere. “what news?” asks man of man everywhere. the only teller of news is the poet. when he sings, the world listens with the assurance that now a secret of god is to be spoken. the right poetic mood is or makes a more complete sensibility,piercing the outward fact to the meaning of the fact; shows a sharper insight: and the perception creates the strong expression of it, as the man who sees his way walks in it. 't is a rule in eloquence, that the moment the orator loses command of his audience, the audience commands him. so, in poetry, the master rushes to deliver his thought, and the words and images fly to him to express it; whilst colder moods are forced to respect the ways of saying it, and insinuate, or, as it were, muffle the fact, to suit the poverty or caprice of their expression, so that they only hint the matter, or allude to it, being unable to fuse and mould their words and images to fluid obedience. see how shakspeare grapples at once with the main problem of the tragedy, as in “lear” and “macbeth,” and the opening of “the merchant of venice.” all writings must be in a degree exoteric, written to a human should or would, instead of to the fatal is : this holds even of the bravest and sincerest writers. every writer is a skater, and must go 28 poetry and imagination. partly where he would, and partly where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who can only land where sails can be blown. and yet it is to be added, that high poetry exceeds the fact, or nature itself, just as skates allow the good skater far more grace than his best walking would show, or sails more than riding. the poet writes from a real experience, the amateur feigns one. of course, one draws the bow with his fingers, and the other with the strength of his body; one speaks with his lips, and the other with a chest voice. talent amuses, but if your verse has not a necessary and autobiographic basis, though under whatever gay poetic veils, it shall not waste my time. for poetry is faith. to the poet the world is virgin soil : all is practicable; the men are ready for virtue; it is always time to do right. he is a true re-commencer, or adam in the garden again. he affirms the applicability of the ideal law to this moment and the present knot of affairs. parties, lawyers, and men of the world will invariably dispute such an application as romantic and dangerous: they admit the general truth, but they and their affair always constitute a case in bar of the statute. free-trade, they concede, is very well as a principle, but it is never quite the time for its adoption without prejudicing actual interests. chastity, they admit, is very well, — but then think of mirabeau's passion and temperament !eternal veracity. 29 laws are very well, which admit no violation, — but so extreme were the times and manners of mankind, that you must admit miracles, — for the times constituted a case. of course, we know what you say, that legends are found in all tribes, — but this legend is different. and so, throughout, the poet affirms the laws; prose busies itself with exceptions, — with the local and individual. i require that the poem should impress me, so that after i have shut the book, it shall recall me to itself, or that passages should. and inestimable is the criticism of memory as a corrective to first impressions. we are dazzled at first by new words and brilliancy of color, which occupy the fancy and deceive the judgment. but all this is easily forgotten. later, the thought, the happy image which expressed it, and which was a true experience of the poet, recurs to mind, and sends me back in search of the book. and i wish that the poet should foresee this habit of readers, and omit all but the important passages. shakspeare is made up of important passages, like damascus steel made up of old nails. homer has his own, “one omen is good, to die for one's country"; and again, — “they heal their griefs, for curable are the hearts of the noble.” write, that i may know you. style betrays you, poetry and imagination. as your eyes do. we detect at once by it whether the writer has a firm grasp on his fact or thought, exists at the moment for that alone, or whether he has one eye apologizing, deprecatory, turned on his reader. in proportion always to his possession of his thought is his defiance of his readers. there is no choice of words for him who clearly sees the truth. that provides him with the best word. great design belongs to a poem, and is better than any skill of execution, but how rare! i find it in the poems of wordsworth,—“laodamia," and the “ ode to dion," and the plan of “the recluse." we want design, and do not forgive the bards if they have only the art of enamelling. we want an architect, and they bring us an upholsterer. if your subject do not appear to you the flower of the world at this moment, you have not rightly chosen it. no matter what it is, grand or gay, national or private, if it has a natural prominence to you, work away until you come to the heart of it: then it will, though it were a sparrow or a spider-web, as fully represent the central law, and draw all tragic or joyful illustration, as if it were the book of genesis or the book of doom. the subject — we must so often say it — is indifferent. any word, every word in language, every circumstance, becomes poetic in the hands of a higher thought. subject weer word in lang hands of a bi veracity. 31 the test or measure of poetic genius is the power to read the poetry of affairs, — to fuse the circumstance of to-day; not to use scott's antique superstitions, or shakspeare's, but to convert those of the nineteenth century, and of the existing nations, into universal symbols. 't is easy to repaint the mythology of the greeks, or of the catholic church, the feudal castle, the crusade, the martyrdoms of mediæval europe; but to point out where the same creative force is now working in our own houses and public assemblies, to convert the vivid energies acting at this hour, in new york and chicago and san francisco, into universal symbols, requires a subtile and commanding thought. 't is boyish in swedenborg to cumber himself with the dead scurf of hebrew antiquity, as if the divine creative energy had fainted in his own century. american life storms about us daily, and is slow to find a tongue. this contemporary insight is transubstantiation, the conversion of daily bread into the holiest symbols; and every man would be a poet, if his intellectual digestion were perfect. the test of the poet is the power to take the passing day, with its news, its cares, its fears, as he shares them, and hold it up to a divine reason, till he sees it to have a purpose and beauty, and to be related to astronomy and history, and the eternal order of the world. then the dry twig blossoms in bis hand. he is calmed and elevated. 32 poetry and imagination. . the use of “occasional poems” is to give leave to originality. every one delights in the felicity frequently shown in our drawing-rooms. in a game-party or picnic poem each writer is released from the solemn rhythmic traditions which alarm and suffocate his fancy, and the result is that one of the partners offers a poem in a new style that hints at a new literature. yet the writer holds it cheap, and could do the like all day. on the stage, the farce is commonly far better given than the tragedy, as the stock actors understand the farce, and do not understand the tragedy. the writer in the parlor has more presence of mind, more wit and fancy, more play of thought, on the incidents that occur at table, or about the house, than in the politics of germany or rome. many of the fine poems of herrick, jonson, and their contemporaries had this casual origin. i know there is entertainment and room for talent in the artist's selection of ancient or remote subjects ; as when the poet goes to india, or to rome, or persia, for his fable. but i believe nobody knows better than he, that herein he consults his ease, rather than his strength or his desire. he is very well convinced that the great moments of life are those in which his own house, his own body, the tritest and nearest ways and words and things, have been illuminated into prophets and teachers. what else is it to be a poet ? what are his garveracity. 33 land and singing robes ? what but a sensibility so keen that the scent of an elder-blow, or the timber-yard and corporation-works of a nest of pismires is event enough for him, — all emblems and personal appeals to him. his wreath and robe is to do what he enjoys; emancipation from other men's questions, and glad study of his own; escape from the gossip and routine of society, and the allowed right and practice of making better. he does not give his hand, but in sign of giving his heart; he is not affable with all, but silent, uncommitted, or in love, as his heart leads him. there is no subject that does not belong to him, — politics, economy, manufactures, and stock-brokerage, as much as sunsets and souls; only, these things, placed in their true order, are poetry; displaced, or put in kitchen order, they are unpoetic. malthus is the right organ of the english proprietors; but we shall never understand political economy, until burns or béranger or some poet shall teach it in songs, and he will not teach malthusianism. poetry is the gai science. the trait and test of the poet is that he builds, adds, and affirms. the critic destroys: the poet says nothing but what helps somebody; let others be distracted with cares, he is exempt. all their pleasures are tinged with pain. all his pains are edged with pleasure. the gladness he imparts he shares. as one of the old minnesingers sung, 2* poetry and imagination. “oft have i heard, and now believe it true, whom man delights in, god delights in too." poetry is the consolation of mortal men. they live cabined, cribbed, confined, in a narrow and trivial lot, — in wants, pains, anxieties, and superstitions, in profligate politics, in personal animosities, in mean employments, -and victims of these; and the nobler powers untried, unknown. a poet comes, who lifts the veil; gives them glimpses of the laws of the universe; shows them the circumstance as illusion; shows that nature is only a language to express the laws, which are grand and beautiful, and lets them, by his songs, into some of the realities. socrates ; the indian teachers of the maia; the bibles of the nations; shakspeare, milton, hafiz, ossian, the welsh bards, — these all deal with nature and history as means and symbols, and not as ends. with such guides they begin to see that what they had called pictures are realities, and the mean life is pictures. and this is achieved by words; for it is a few oracles spoken by perceiving men that are the texts on which religions and states are founded. and this perception has at once its moral sequence. ben jonson said, “the principal end of poetry is to inform men in the just reason of living." creation. — but there is a third step which poetry takes, and which seems higher than the others, creation. 35 namely, creation, or ideas taking forms of their own, — when the poet invents the fable, and invents the language which his heroes speak. he reads in the word or action of the man its yet untold results. his inspiration is power to carry out and complete the metamorphosis, which, in the imperfect kinds, arrested for ages, — in the perfecter, proceeds rapidly in the same individual. for poetry is science, and the poet a truer logician. men in the courts or in the street think themselves logical, and the poet whimsical. do they think there is chance or wilfulness in what he sees and tells ? to be sure, we demand of him what he demands of himself, veracity, first of all. but with that, he is the lawgiver, as being an exact reporter of the essential law. he knows that he did not make his thought, no, his thought made him, and made the sun and the stars. is the solar system good art and architecture ? the same wise achievement is in the human brain also, can you only wile it from interference and marring. we cannot look at works of art but they teach us how near man is to creating. michel angelo is largely filled with the creator that made and makes men. how much of the original craft remains in him, and he a mortal man! in him and the like perfecter brains the instinct is resistless, knows the right way, is melodious, and at all points divine. the reason we set so high a value on any poetry, as often on a line or a 36 poetry and imagination. phrase as on a poem, is, that it is a new work of nature, as a man is. it must be as new as foam and as old as the rock. but a new verse comes once in a hundred years; therefore pindar, hafiz, dante, speak so proudly of what seems to the clown a jingle. the writer, like the priest, must be exempted from secular labor. his work needs a frolic health ; he must be at the top of his condition. in that prosperity he is sometimes caught up into a perception of means and materials, of feats and fine arts, of fairy machineries and funds of power hitherto utterly unknown to him, whereby he can transfer his visions to mortal canvas, or reduce them into iambic or trochaic, into lyric or heroic rhyme. these successes are not less admirable and astonishing to the poet than they are to his audience. he has seen something which all the mathematics and the best industry could never bring him unto. now at this rare elevation above his usual sphere, he has come into new circulations, the marrow of the world is in his bones, the opulence of forms begins to pour into his intellect, and he is permitted to dip his brush into the old paint-pot with which birds, flowers, the human cheek, the living rock, the broad landscape, the ocean, and the eternal sky were painted. these fine fruits of judgment, poesy, and sentiment, when once their hour is struck, and the world creation. . 37 is ripe for them, know as well as coarser how to feed and replenish themselves, and maintain their stock alive, and multiply; for roses and violets renew their race like oaks, and flights of painted moths are as old as the alleghanies. the balance of the world is kept, and dewdrop and haze and the pencil of light are as long-lived as chaos and darkness. our science is always abreast of our self-knowledge. poetry begins, or all becomes poetry, when we look from the centre outward, and are using all as if the mind made it. that only can we see which we are, and which we make. the weaver sees gingham; the broker sees the stock-list; the politician, the ward and county votes; the poet sees the horizon, and the shores of matter lying on the sky, the interaction of the elements, — the large effect of laws which correspond to the inward laws which he knows, and so are but a kind of extension of himself. “the attractions are proportional to the destinies.” events or things are only the fulfilment of the prediction of the faculties. better men saw heavens and earths; saw noble instruments of noble souls. we see railroads, mills, and banks, and we pity the poverty of these dreaming buddhists. there was as much creative force then as now, but it made globes, and astronomic heavens, instead of broadcloth and wineglasses. 38 poetry and imagination. the poet is enamored of thoughts and laws. these know their way, and, guided by them, he is ascending from an interest in visible things to an interest in that which they signify, and from the part of a spectator to the part of a maker. and as everything streams and advances, as every faculty and every desire is procreant, and every perception is a destiny, there is no limit to his hope. “anything, child, that the mind covets, from the milk of a cocoa to the throne of the three worlds, thou mayest obtain, by keeping the law of thy members and the law of thy mind.” it suggests that there is higher poetry than we write or read. rightly, poetry is organic. we cannot know things by words and writing, but only by taking a central position in the universe, and living in its forms. we sink to rise. “none any work can frame, unless himself become the same.” all the parts and forms of nature are the expression or production of divine faculties, and the same are in us. and the fascination of genius for us is this awful nearness to nature's creations. i have heard that the germans think the creator of trim and uncle toby, though he never wrote a verse, a greater poet than cowper, and that goldsmith's title to the name is not from his “ deserted village,” but derived from the “vicar of wakefield.” better examples are shakspeare's ariel, creation. 39 his caliban, and his fairies in the “midsummer night's dream.” barthold niebuhr said well, “there is little merit in inventing a happy idea, ör attractive situation, so long as it is only the author's voice which we hear. as a being whom we have called into life by magic arts, as soon as it has received existence acts independently of the master's impulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and relates what they do and say. such creation is poetry, in the literal sense of the term, and its possibility is an unfathomable enigma. the gushing fulness of speech belongs to the poet, and it flows from the lips of each of his magic beings in the thoughts and words peculiar to its nature.” * this force of representation so plants his figures before him that he treats them as real; talks to them as if they were bodily there; puts words in their mouth such as they should have spoken, and is affected by them as by persons. vast is the difference between writing clean verses for magazines, and creating these new persons and situations, — new language with emphasis and reality. the humor of falstaff, the terror of macbeth, have each their swarm of fit thoughts and images, as if shakspeare had known and reported the men, instead · of inventing them at his desk. this power appears not only in the outline or portrait of his * niebuhr, letters, etc., vol. iii. p. 196. 40 poetry and imagination. actors, but also in the bearing and behavior and style of each individual. ben jonson told drummond “that sidney did not keep a decorum in making every one speak as well as himself.” this reminds me that we all have one key to this miracle of the poet, and the dunce has experiences that may explain shakspeare to him, — one key, namely, dreams. in dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costume; they are perfect in their organs, attitude, manners : moreover, they speak after their own characters, not ours;— they speak to us, and we listen with surprise to what they say. indeed, i doubt if the best poet has yet written any five-act play that can compare in thoroughness of invention with this unwritten play in fifty acts, composed by the dullest snorer on the floor of the watch-house. melody, rhyme, form. — music and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures of the child, and, in the history of literature, poetry precedes prose. every one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony: no matter what objects are near it, a gray rock, a grasspatch, an alder-bush, or a stake, — they become beautiful by being reflected. it is rhyme to the eye, and explains the charm of rhyme to the ear. melody, rhyme, form. 41 shadows please us as still finer rhymes. architecture gives the like pleasure by the repetition of equal parts in a colonnade, in a row of windows, or in wings; gardens, by the symmetric contrasts of the beds and walks. in society, you have this figure in a bridal company, where a choir of whiterobed maidens give the charm of living statues ; in a funeral procession, where all wear black; in a regiment of soldiers in uniform. the universality of this taste is proved by our habit of casting our facts into rhyme to remember them better, as so many proverbs may show. who would hold the order of the almanac so fast but for the ding-dong, “thirty days hath september," etc.; or of the zodiac, but for “the ram, the bull, the heavenly twins,” etc. ? we are lovers of rhyme and return, period and musical reflection. the babe is lulled to sleep by the nurse's song. sailors can work better for their yo-heave-o. soldiers can march better and fight better for the drum and trumpet. metre begins with pulse-beat, and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs. if you hum or whistle the rhythm of the common english metres, — of the decasyllabic quatrain, or the octosyllabic with alternate sexisyllabic, or other rhythms, you can easily 42 poetry and imagination. believe these metres to be organic, derived from the human pulse, and to be therefore not proper to one nation, but to mankind. i think you will also find a charm heroic, plaintive, pathetic, in these cadences, and be at once set on searching for the words that can rightly fill these vacant beats. young people like rhyme, drum-beat, tune, things in pairs and alternatives; and, in higher degrees, we know the instant power of music upon our temperaments to change our mood, and give us its own: and hu. man passion, seizing these constitutional tunes, aims to fill them with appropriate words, or marry music to thought, believing, as we believe of all marriage, that matches are made in heaven, and that for every thought its proper melody or rhyme exists, though the odds are immense against our finding it, and only genius can rightly say the banns. another form of rhyme is iterations of phrase, as the record of the death of sisera :“at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down : at her feet he bowed, he fell : where he bowed, there he fell down dead." the fact is made conspicuous, nay, colossal, by this simple rhetoric. “they shall perish, but thou shalt endure : yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed : but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end." melody, rhyme, form. 43 milton delights in these iterations:“ though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen, and evil tongues.” “was i deceived, or did a sable cloud turn forth its silver lining on the night ? i did not err, there does a sable cloud turn forth its silver lining on the night." comus. “a little onward lend thy guiding hand, to these dark steps a little farther on." samson. so in our songs and ballads the refrain skilfully used, and deriving some novelty or better sense in each of many verses :“busk thee, busk thee, my bonny bonny bride, busk thee, busk thee, my winsome marrow." hamilton. of course rhyme soars and refines with the growth of the mind. the boy liked the drum, the people liked an overpowering jewsharp tune. later they like to transfer that rhyme to life, and to detect a melody as prompt and perfect in their daily affairs. omen and coincidence show the rhythmical structure of man; hence the taste for signs, sortilege, prophecy and fulfilment, anniversaries, etc. by and by, when they apprehend real rhymes, namely, the correspondence of parts in nature, — acid and alkali, body and mind, man and maid, character and history, action and reaction, — they do not longer value rattles and ding-dongs, or barbaric word-jingle. as44 poetry and imagination. tronomy, botany, chemistry, hydraulics and the elemental forces have their own periods and returns, their own grand strains of harmony not less exact, up to the primeval apothegm “that there is nothing on earth which is not in the heavens in a heavenly form, and nothing in the heavens which is not on the earth in an earthly form.” they furnish the poet with grander pairs and alternations, and will require an equal expansion in his metres. there is under the seeming poverty of metres an infinite variety, as every artist knows. a right ode (however nearly it may adopt conventional metre, as the spenserian, or the heroic blank-verse, or one of the fixed lyric metres) will by any sprightliness be at once lifted out of conventionality, and will modify the metre. every good poem that i know i recall by its rhythm also. rhyme is a pretty good measure of the latitude and opulence of a writer. if unskilful, he is at once detected by the poverty of his chimes. a small, well-worn, sprucely brushed vocabulary serves him.now try spenser, marlow, chapman, and see how wide they fly for weapons, and how rich and lavish their profusion. in their rhythm is no manufacture, but a vortex, or musical tornado, which falling on words and the experience of a learned mind, whirls these materials into the same grand order as planets and moons obey, and seasons, and monsoons. there are also prose poets. thomas taylor, the melody, rhyme, form. 45 platonist, for instance, is really a better man of imagination, a better poet, or perhaps i should say a better feeder to a poet, than any man between milton and wordsworth. thomas moore had the magnanimity to say, “ if burke and bacon were not poets (measured lines not being necessary to constitute one), he did not know what poetry meant.” and every good reader will easily recall expressions or passages in works of pure science which have given him the same pleasure which he seeks in professed poets. richard owen, the eminent paleontologist, said :“all hitherto observed causes of extirpation point either to continuous slowly operating geologic changes, or to no greater sudden cause than the, so to speak, spectral appearance of mankind on a limited tract of land not before inhabited." st. augustine complains to god of his friends offering him the books of the philosophers :“and these were the dishes in which they brought to me, being hungry, the sun and the moon instead of thee." it would not be easy to refuse to sir thomas browne's "fragment on mummies” the claim of poetry :“of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as hospitia, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and, planting there46 poetry and imagination. on lasting bases, defied the crumbling touches of time, and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. yet all were but babel vanities. time sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto memphis and old thebes, while his sister oblivion reclineth semi-somnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. history sinketh beneath her cloud. the traveller as he paceth through those deserts asketh of her, who builded them ? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not." rhyme, being a kind of music, shares this advantage with music, that it has a privilege of speaking truth which all philistia is unable to challenge. music is the poor man's parnassus. with the first note of the flute or horn, or the first strain of a song, we quit the world of common-sense, and launch on the sea of ideas and emotions : we pour contempt on the prose you so magnify; yet the sturdiest philistine is silent. the like allowance is the prescriptive right of poetry. you shall not speak ideal truth in prose uncontradicted: you may in verse. the best thoughts run into the best words ; imaginative and affectionate thoughts into music and metre. we ask for food and fire, we talk of our work, our tools, and material necessities in prose, that is, without any elevation or aim at beauty ; but when we rise into the world of thought, and think melody, rhyme, form. 47 . of these things only for what they signify, speech refines into order and harmony. i know what you say of mediæval barbarism and sleighbell-rhyme, but we have not done with music, no, nor with rhyme, nor must console ourselves with prose poets so long as boys whistle and girls sing. let poetry then pass, if it will, into music and rhyme. that is the form which itself puts on. we do not enclose watches in wooden, but in crystal cases, and rhyme is the transparent frame that allows almost the pure architecture of thought to become visible to the mental eye. substance is much, but so are mode and form much. the poet, like a delighted boy, brings you heaps of rainbow bubbles, opaline, air-borne, spherical as the world, instead of a few drops of soap and water. victor hugo says well, “an idea steeped in verse becomes suddenly more incisive and more brilliant: the iron becomes steel.” lord bacon, we are told, “ loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactyls and spondees”; and ben jonson said, " that donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging." poetry being an attempt to express, not the common-sense, as the avoirdupois of the hero, or his structure in feet and inches, but the beauty and soul in his aspect as it shines to fancy and feeling, and so of all other objects in nature, — runs into fable, personifies every fact :-"the clouds clapped : 48 poetry and imagination. . their hands,” — “the hills skipped,” — “the sky spoke.” this is the substance, and this treatment always attempts a metrical grace. outside of the nursery the beginning of literature is the prayers of a people, and they are always hymns, poetic, — the mind allowing itself range, and therewith is ever a corresponding freedom in the style which becomes lyrical. the prayers of nations are rhythmic, — have iterations, and alliterations, like the marriage-service and burial-service in our liturgies. poetry will never be a simple means, as when history or philosophy is rhymed, or laureate odes on state occasions are written. itself must be its own end, or it is nothing. the difference between poetry and stock-poetry is this, that in the latter the rhythm is given, and the sense adapted to it; while in the former the sense dictates the rhythm. i might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image themselves. ask the fact for the form. for a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the verse must be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the music. in reading prose, i am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but in poetry, as soon as one word drags. ever as the thought mounts, the expression mounts. 'tis cumulative also; the poem is made up of lines each of which filled the ear of the poet melody, rhyme, form. 49 in its turn, so that mere synthesis produces a work quite superhuman. indeed, the masters sometimes rise above themselves to strains which charm their readers, and which neither any competitor could outdo, nor the bard himself again equal. try this strain of beaumont and fletcher :“hence, all ye vain delights, as short as are the nights in which you spend your folly! there's naught in this life sweet, if men were wise to see't, but only melancholy. oh! sweetest melancholy ! · welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, a sigh that piercing mortifies, a look that's fastened to the ground, a tongue chained up, without a sound ; fountain-heads and pathless groves, places which pale passion loves, midnight walks, when all the fowls are warmly housed, save bats and owls ; a midnight bell, a passing groan, these are the sounds we feed upon, then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley. nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.” keats disclosed by certain lines in his “hyperion” this inward skill; and coleridge showed at least his love and appetency for it. it appears in ben jonson's songs, including certainly “the faery beam upon you,” etc., waller's “go, lovely rose !” herbert's “virtue” and “easter,” and lovelace's lines 50 poetry and imagination. “to althea” and “to lucasta," and collins's “ ode, to evening,” all but the last verse, which is academical. perhaps this dainty style of poetry is not producible to-day, any more than a right gothic cathedral. it belonged to a time and taste which is not in the world. as the imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of every man, so also is this joy of musical expression. i know the pride of mathematicians and materialists, but they cannot conceal from me their capital want. the critic, the philosopher, is a failed poet. gray avows “ that he thinks even a bad verse as good a thing or better than the best observation that was ever made on it." i honor the naturalist; i honor the geometer, but he has before him higher power and happiness than he knows. yet we will leave to the masters their own forms. newton may be permitted to call terence a play-book, and to wonder at the frivolous taste for rhymers; he only predicts, one would say, a grander poetry: he only shows that he is not yet reached; that the poetry which satisfies more youthful souls is not such to a mind like his, accustomed to grander harmonies ; — this being a child's whistle to his ear; that the music must rise to a loftier strain, up to handel, up to beethoven, up to the thorough-bass of the sea-shore, up to the largeness of astronomy: at last that great heart will hear in the music beats like its own: the waves of melody bards and trouveurs. 51 will wash and float him also, and set him into concert and harmony. bards and trouveurs. — the metallic force of primitive words makes the superiority of the remains of the rude ages. it costs the early bard little talent to chant more impressively than the later, more cultivated poets. his advantage is that his words are things, each the lucky sound which described the fact, and we listen to him as we do to the indian, or the hunter, or miner, each of whom represents his facts as accurately as the cry of the wolf or the eagle tells of the forest or the air they inhabit. the original force, the direct smell of the earth or the sea, is in these ancient poems, the sagas of the north, the nibelungen lied, the songs and ballads of the english and scotch. · i find or fancy more true poetry, the love of the vast and the ideal, in the welsh and bardic fragments of taliessin and his successors than in many volumes of british classics. an intrepid magniloquence appears in all the bards, as :“the whole ocean flamed as one wound.” king regner lodbook. “god himself cannot procure good for the wicked." welsh triad. a favorable specimen is taliessin's “invocation of the wind” at the door of castle teganwy. 52 poetry and imagination. “discover thou what it is, the strong creature from before the flood, without flesh, without bone, without head, without feet, it will neither be younger nor older than at the beginning ; it has no fear, nor the rude wants of created things. great god ! how the sea whitens when it comes ! it is in the field, it is in the wood, without hand, without foot, without age, without season, it is always of the same age with the ages of ages, and of equal breadth with the surface of the earth. it was not bom, it sees not, and is not seen ; it does not come when desired; it has no form, it bears no burden, for it is void of sin. it makes no perturbation in the place where god wills it, on the sea, on the land.” in one of his poems he asks :“is there but one course to the wind ? but one to the water of the sea ? is there but one spark in the fire of boundless energy ?" he says of his hero, cunedda, — “he will assimilate, he will agree with the deep and the shallow.” to another,“when i lapse to a sinful word, may neither you, nor others hear.” of an enemy, — “the caldron of the sea was bordered round by his land, but it would not boil the food of a coward.” to an exile on an island he says, “the heavy blue chain of the sea didst thou, o just man, endure." bards and trouveurs. another bard in like tone says, “i am possessed of songs such as no son of man can repeat; one of them is called the ‘helper'; it will help thee at thy need in sickness, grief, and all adversities. i know a song which i need only to sing when men have loaded me with bonds : when i sing it, my chains fall in pieces and i walk forth at liberty.' the norsemen have no less faith in poetry and its power, when they describe it thus: “odin spoke everything in rhyme. he and his temple-gods were called song-smiths. he could make his enemies in battle blind or deaf, and their weapons so blunt that they could no more cut than a willow-twig. odin taught these arts in runes or songs, which are called incantations.”* the crusades brought out the genius of france, in the twelfth century, when pierre d'auvergne said, “i will sing a new song which resounds in my breast: never was a song good or beautiful which resembled any other.” and pons de capdeuil declares, — “ since the air renews itself and softens, so must my heart renew itself, and what buds in it buds and grows outside of it.” * heimskringla, vol. i. p. 221. 54 poetry and imagination. there is in every poem a height which attracts more than other parts, and is best remembered. thus, in “morte d’arthur," i remember nothing so well as sir gawain's parley with merlin in his wonderful prison :“ after the disappearance of merlin from king arthur's court he was seriously missed, and many knights set out in search of him. among others was sir gawain, who pursued his search till it was time to return to the court. he came into the forest of broceliande, lamenting as he went along. presently, he heard the voice of one groaning on his right hand ; looking that way, he could see nothing save a kind of smoke which seemed like air, and through which he could not pass ; and this impediment made him so wrathful that it deprived him of speech. presently he heard a voice which said, "gawain, gawain, be not out of heart, for everything which must happen will come to pass.' and when he heard the voice which thus called him by his right name, he replied, “who can this be who hath spoken to me?' 'how,' said the voice, sir gawain, know you me not? you were wont to know me well, but thus things are interwoven and thus the proverb says true, "leave the court and the court will leave you.” so is it with me. whilst i served king arthur, i was well known by you and by other barons, but because i have left the court, i am known no longer, and put in forgetfulness, which i ought not to be if faith reigned in the world. when sir gawain heard the voice which spoke to him thus, he bards and trouveurs. 55 thought it was merlin, and he answered, “sir, certes i ought to know you well, for many times i have heard your words. i pray you appear before me so that i may be able to recognize you.' 'ah, sir,' said merlin, ‘you will never see me more, and that grieves me, but i cannot remedy it, and when you shall have departed from this place, i shall nevermore speak to you nor to any other person, save only my mistress ; for never other person will be able to discover this place for anything which may befall; neither shall i ever go out from hence, for in the world there is no such strong tower as this wherein i am confined ; and it is neither of wood, nor of iron, nor of stone, but of air, without anything else ; and made by enchantment so strong, that it can never be demolished while the world lasts, neither can i go out, nor can any one come in, save she who hath enclosed me here, and who keeps me company when it pleaseth her : she cometh when she listeth, for her will is here.' 'how, merlin, my good friend,' said sir gawain, "are you restrained so strongly that you cannot deliver yourself nor make yourself visible unto me; how can this happen, seeing that you are the wisest man in the world ?' “rather,' said merlin, 'the greatest fool; for i well knew that all this would befall me, and i have been fool enough to love another more than myself, for i taught my mistress that whereby she hath imprisoned me in such manner that none can set me free.' "certes, merlin,' replied sir gawain, ‘of that i am right sorrowful, and so will king arthur, my uncle, be, when he shall know it, as one who is making search 56 poetry and imagination. after you throughout all countries.' 'well,' said merlin, “it must be borne, for never will he see me, nor i him ; neither will any one speak with me again after you, it would be vain to attempt it; for you yourself, when you have turned away, will never be able to find the place : but salute for me the king and the queen, and all the barons, and tell them of my condition. you will find the king at carduel in wales; and when you arrive there you will find there all the companions who departed with you, and who at this day will return. now then go in the name of god, who will protect and save the king arthur, and the realm of logres, and you also, as the best knights who are in the world. with that sir gawain departed joyful and sorrowful ; joyful because of what merlin had assured him should happen to him, and sorrowful that merlin had thus been lost.” morals. — we are sometimes apprised that there is a mental power and creation more excellent than anything which is commonly called philosophy and literature; that the high poets, — that homer, milton, shakspeare, do not fully content us. how rarely they offer us the heavenly bread! the most they have done is to intoxicate us once and again with its taste. they have touched this heaven and retain afterwards some sparkle of it: they betray their belief that such discourse is possible. there is something — our brothers on this or that side of the sea do not know it or own it; the eminent scholars of england, historians and reviewers, romorals. 57 mancers and poets included, might deny and blaspheme it which is setting us and them aside and the whole world also, and planting itself. to true poetry we shall sit down as the result and justification of the age in which it appears, and think lightly of histories and statutes. none of your parlor or piano verse, — none of your carpet poets, who are content to amuse, will satisfy us. power, new power, is the good which the soul seeks. the poetic gift we want, as the health and supremacy of man, — not rhymes and sonneteering, not bookmaking and bookselling ; surely not cold spying and authorship. is not poetry the little chamber in the brain where is generated the explosive force which, by gentle shocks, sets in action the intellectual world ? bring us the bards who shall sing all our old ideas out of our heads, and new ones in; men-making poets; poetry which, like the verses inscribed on balder's columns in breidablik, is capable of restoring the dead to life; — poetry like that verse of saadi, which the angels testified “met the approbation of allah in heaven”;poetry which finds its rhymes and cadences in the rhymes and iterations of nature, and is the gift to men of new images and symbols, each the ensign and oracle of an age; that shall assimilate men to it, mould itself into religions and mythologies, and impart its quality to centuries ; — poetry which tastes the world and re3* 58 poetry and imagination. ports of it, upbuilding the world again in the thought; “ not with tickling rhymes, but high and noble matter, such as flies from brains entranced, and filled with ecstasies.” poetry must be affirmative. it is the piety of the intellect. “thus saith the lord,” should begin the song. the poet who shall use nature as his hieroglyphic must have an adequate message to convey thereby. therefore, when we speak of the poet in any high sense, we are driven to such examples as zoroaster and plato, st. john and menu, with their moral burdens. the muse shall be the counterpart of nature, and equally rich. i find her not often in books. we know nature, and figure her exuberant, tranquil, magnificent in her fertility, coherent; so that every creation is omen of every other. she is not proud of the sea, of the stars, of space or time, or man or woman. all her kinds share the attributes of the selectest extremes. but in current literature i do not find her. literature warps away from life, though at first it seems to bind it. in the world of letters how few commanding oracles! homer did what he could, — pindar, æschylus, and the greek gnomic poets and the tragedians. dante was faithful when not carried away by his fierce hatreds. but in so many alcoves of english poetry i can count only nine or ten authors who are still inspirers and lawgivers to their race. , morals. 59 the supreme value of poetry is to educate us to a height beyond itself, or which it rarely reaches ; — the subduing mankind to order and virtue. he is the true orpheus who writes his ode, not with syllables, but men. “in poetry,” said goethe, “only the really great and pure advances us, and this exists as a second nature, either elevating us to itself, or rejecting us." the poet must let humanity sit with the muse in his head, as the charioteer sits with the hero in the iliad. “show me,” said sarona in the novel, “one wicked man who has written poetry, and i will show you where his poetry is not poetry; or rather, i will show you in his poetry no poetry at all.” * i have heard that there is a hope which precedes and must precede all science of the visible or the invisible world; and that science is the realization of that hope in either region. i count the genius of swedenborg and wordsworth as the agents of a reform in philosophy, the bringing poetry back to nature, — to the marrying of nature and mind, undoing the old divorce in which poetry had been famished and false, and nature had been suspected and pagan. the philosophy which a nation receives, rules its religion, poetry, politics, arts, trades, and whole history. a good poem — say shakspeare's “ macbeth,” or “hamlet,” or the “tempest” goes about the world offering itself to reasonable * miss shepard's “counterparts,” vol. i. p. 67. 60 poetry and imagination. men, who read it with joy and carry it to their reasonable neighbors. thus it draws to it the wise and generous souls, confirming their secret thoughts, and, through their sympathy, really publishing itself. it affects the characters of its readers by formulating their opinions and feelings, and inevitably prompting their daily action. if they build ships, they write “ariel” or “prospero ” or “ ophelia” on the ship’s stern, and impart a tenderness and mystery to matters of fact. the ballad and romance work on the hearts of boys, who recite the rhymes to their hoops or their skates if alone, and these heroic songs or lines are remembered and determine many practical choices which they make later. do you think burns has had no influence on the life of men and women in scotland, — has opened no eyes and ears to the face of nature and the dignity of man and the charm and excellence of woman? we are a little civil, it must be owned, to homer and æschylus, to dante and shakspeare, and give them the benefit of the largest interpretation. we must be a little strict also, and ask whether, if we sit down at home, and do not go to hamlet, hamlet will come to us ? whether we shall find our tragedy written in his, — our hopes, wants, pains, disgraces, described to the life, — and the way. opened to the paradise which ever in the best hour beckons us ? but our overpraise and idealization of famous masters is not in its origin a poor bosmorals. 61 wellism, but an impatience of mediocrity. the praise we now give to our heroes we shall unsay when we make larger demands. how fast we outgrow the books of the nursery, — then those that satisfied our youth. what we once admired as poetry has long since come to be a sound of tin pans; and many of our later books we have outgrown. perhaps homer and milton will be tin pans yet. better not to be easily pleased. the poet should rejoice if he has taught us to despise his song; if he has so moved us as to lift us, — to open the eye of the intellect to see farther and better. in proportion as a man's life comes into union with truth, his thoughts approach to a parallelism with the currents of natural laws, so that he easily expresses his meaning by natural symbols, or uses the ecstatic or poetic speech. by successive states of mind all the facts of nature are for the first time interpreted. in proportion as his life departs from this simplicity, he uses circumlocution, — by many words hoping to suggest what he cannot say. vexatious to find poets, who are by excellence the thinking and feeling of the world, deficient in truth of intellect and of affection. then is conscience unfaithful, and thought unwise. to know the merit of shakspeare, read“ faust." i find “faust” a little too modern and intelligible. we can find such a fabric at several mills, though a little inferior. “faust” abounds in the disagreeable. the vice is poetry and imagination. prurient, learned, parisian. in the presence of jove, priapus may be allowed as an offset, but here he is an equal hero. the egotism, the wit, is calculated. the book is undeniably written by a master, and stands unhappily related to the whole modern world; but it is a very disagreeable chapter of literature, and accuses the author as well as the times. shakspeare could, no doubt, have been disagreeable, had he less genius, and if ugliness had attracted him. in short, our english nature and genius has made us the worst critics of goethe, “we, who speak the tongue that shakspeare spake, the faith and manners hold which milton held.” it is not style or rhymes, or a new image more or less, that imports, but sanity; that life should not be mean; that life should be an image in every part beautiful; that the old forgotten splendors of the universe should glow again for us ;— that we should lose our wit, but gain our reason. and when life is true to the poles of nature, the streams of truth will roll through us in song. transcendency. — in a cotillon some persons dance and others await their turn when the music and the figure come to them. in the dance of god there is not one of the chorus but can and will begin to spin, monumental as he now looks, whenever the music and figure reach his place and duty. transcendency. 63 o celestial bacchus ! drive them mad, — this multitude of vagabonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for poetry, starving for symbols, perishing for want of electricity to vitalize this too much pasture, and in the long delay indemnifying themselves with the false wine of alcohol, of politics, or of money. every man may be, and at some time a man is, lifted to a platform whence he looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth; and in that mood deals sovereignly with matter, and strings worlds like beads upon his thought. the success with which this is done can alone determine how genuine is the inspiration. the poet is rare because he must be exquisitely vital and sympathetic, and, at the same time, immovably centred. in good society, nay, among the angels in heaven, is not everything spoken in fine parable, and not so servilely as it befell to the sense ? all is symbolized. facts are not foreign, as they seem, but related. wait a little and we see the return of the remote hyperbolic curve. the solid men complain that the idealist leaves out the fundamental facts; the poet complains that the solid men leave out the sky. to every plant there are two powers; one shoots down as rootlet, and one upward as tree. you must have eyes of science to see in the seed its nodes; you must have the vivacity of the poet to perceive in the thought its futurities. the poet is representative, — whole man, diamond-merchant, symbolizer, 64 poetry and imagination. emancipator; in him the world projects a scribe's hand and writes the adequate genesis. the nature of things is flowing, a metamorphosis. the free spirit sympathizes not only with the actual form, but with the power or possible forms; but for obvious municipal or parietal uses, god has given us a bias or a rest on to-day's forms. hence the shudder of joy with which in each clear moment we recognize the metamorphosis, because it is always a conquest, a surprise from the heart of things. one would say of the force in the works of nature, all depends on the battery. if it give one shock, we shall get to the fish form, and stop; if two shocks, to the bird ; if three, to the quadruped; if four, to the man. power of generalizing differences men. the number of successive saltations the nimble thought can make, measures the difference between the highest and lowest of mankind. the habit of saliency, of not pausing but going on, is a sort of importation or domestication of the divine effort in a man. after the largest circle has been drawn, a larger can be drawn around it. the problem of the poet is to unite freedom with precision; to give the pleasure of color, and be not less the most powerful of sculptors. . music seems to you sufficient, or the subtle and delicate scent of lavender; but dante was free imagination,—all wings,—yet he wrote like euclid. and mark the equality of shakspeare to the comic, the tender and sweet, and to the grand and terrible. transcendency. 65 a little more or less skill in whistling is of no account. see those weary pentameter tales of dryden and others. turnpike is one thing and blue sky another. let the poet, of all men, stop with his inspiration. the inexorable rule in the muses' court, either inspiration or silence, compels the bard to report only his supreme moments. it teaches the enormous force of a few words and in proportion to the inspiration checks loquacity. much that we call poetry is but polite verse. the high poetry which shall thrill and agitate mankind, restore youth and health, dissipate the dreams under which men reel and stagger, and bring in the new thoughts, the sanity and heroic aims of nations, is deeper hidi and longer postponed than was america or australia, or the finding of steam or of the galvanic battery. we must not conclude against poetry from the defects of poets. they are, in our experience, men of every degree of skill, — some of them only once or twice receivers of an inspiration, and presently falling back on a low life. the drop of żchor that tingles in their veins has not yet refined their blood, and cannot lift the whole man to the digestion and function of ichor, – that is, to godlike nature. time will be when ichor shall be their blood, when what are now glimpses and aspirations shall be the routine of the day. yet even partial ascents to poetry and ideas are forerunners, and announce the dawn. in the mire of the sensual 66 poetry and imagination. life, their religion, their poets, their admiration of heroes and benefactors, even their novel and newspaper, nay, their superstitions also, are hosts of ideals,—a cordage of ropes that hold them up out of the slough. poetry is inestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely protest in the uproar of atheism. but so many men are ill-born or ill-bred, — the brains are so marred, so imperfectly formed, unheroically, — brains of the sons of fallen men, — that the doctrine is imperfectly received. one man sees a spark or shimmer of the truth, and reports it, and his saying becomes a legend or golden proverb for ages, and other men report as much, but none wholly and well. poems, we have no poem. whenever that angel shall be organized and appear on earth, the iliad will be reckoned a poor balladgrinding. i doubt never the riches of nature, the gifts of the future, the immense wealth of the mind. o yes, poets we shall have, mythology, symbols, religion, of our own. we, too, shall know how to take up all this industry and empire, this western civilization, into thought, as easily as men did when arts were few ; but not by holding it high, but by holding it low. the intellect uses and is not used, uses london and paris and berlin, east and west, to its end. the only heart that can help us is one that draws, not from our society, but from itself, a counterpoise to society. what if we find partiality and meanness in us? the grandeur of our life transcendency. 67 exists in spite of us, all over and under and within us, in what of us is inevitable and above our control. men are facts as well as persons, and the involuntary part of their life so much as to fill the mind and leave them no countenance to say aught of what is so trivial as their selfish thinking and doing. sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song. social aims. social aims. much ill-natured criticism has been directed on american manners. i do not think it is to be resented. rather, if we are wise, we shall listen and mend. our critics will then be our best friends, though they did not mean it. but in every sense the subject of manners has a constant interest to thoughtful persons. who does not delight in fine manners? their charm cannot be predicted or overstated. 't is perpetual promise of more than can be fulfilled. it is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of those arts. it is even true that grace is more beautiful than beauty. yet how impossible to overcome the obstacle of an unlucky temperament, and acquire good manners, unless by living with the well-bred from the start; and thiş makes the value of wise forethought to give ourselves and our children as much as possible the habit of cultivated society. 't is an inestimable hint that i owe to a few persons of fine manners, that they make behavior the very first sign of force, — behavior, and not perform72 social aims. ance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. whilst almost everybody has a supplicating eye turned on events and things and other persons, a few natures are central and forever unfold, and these alone charm us. he whose word or deed you cannot predict, who answers you without any supplication in his eye, who draws his determination from within, and draws it instantly, — that man rules. the staple figure in novels is the man of aplomb, who sits, among the young aspirants and desperates, quite sure and compact, and, never sharing their affections or debilities, hurls his word like a bullet when occasion requires, knows his way, and carries his points. they may scream or applaud, he is never engaged or heated. napoleon is the type of this class in modern history; byron's heroes in poetry. but we, for the most part, are all drawn into the charivari; we chide, lament, cavil, and recriminate. i think hans andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invisible, — woven for the king's garment, — must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature. such a one can well go in a blanket, if he would. in the gymnasium or on the sea-beach his superiority does not leave him. but he who has not this fine garment of behavior is studious of dress, and then not less of house and furniture and pictures and gardens, in all which he hopes to lie perdu, and not be exposed. social aims. 73 “ manners are stronger than laws.” their vast! convenience i must always admire. the perfect defence and isolation which they effect makes an insuperable protection. though the person so clothed wrestle with you, or swim with you, lodge in the same chamber, eat at the same table, he is yet a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. manners seem to say, you are you, · and i am 1. in the most delicate natures, fine temperament and culture build this impassable wall. balzac finely said : “kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze." nature values manners. see how she has prepared for them. who teaches manners of majesty, of frankness, of grace, of humility,— who but the adoring aunts and cousins that surround a young child? the babe meets such courting and flattery as only kings receive when adult; and, trying experiments, and at perfect leisure with these posture-masters and flatterers all day, he throws himself into all the attitudes that correspond to theirs. are they humble ? he is composed. are they eager ? he is nonchalant. are they encroaching ? he is dignified and inexorable. and this scene is daily repeated in hovels as well as in high houses. nature is the best posture-master. an awkward man is graceful when asleep, or when hard at work, or agreeably amused. the attitudes of chil74 social aims. dren are gentle, persuasive, royal, in their games and in their house-talk and in the street, before they have learned to cringe. 't is impossible but thought disposes the limbs and the walk, and is masterly or secondary. no art can contravene it, or conceal it. give me a thought, and my hands and legs and voice and face will all go right. and we are awkward for want of thought. the inspiration is scanty, and does not arrive at the extremities. it is a commonplace of romances to show the ungainly manners of the pedant who has lived too long in college. intellectual men pass for vulgar, and are timid and heavy with the elegant. but, if the elegant are also intellectual, instantly the hesitating scholar is inspired, transformed, and exhibits the best style of manners. an intellectual man, though of feeble spirit, is instantly reinforced by being put into the company of scholars, and, to the surprise of everybody, becomes a lawgiver. we think a man unable and desponding. it is only that he is misplaced. put him with new companions, and they will find in him excellent qualities, unsuspected accomplishments, and the joy of life. ' 't is a great point in a gallery, how you hang pictures, and not less in society, how you seat your party. the circumstance of circumstance is timing and placing. when a man meets his accurate mate, society begins, and life is delicious. what happiness they give, — what ties they social aims. 75 form! whilst one man by his manners pins me to the wall, with another i walk among the stars. one man can, by his voice, lead the cheer of a regiment; another will have no following. nature made us all intelligent of these signs, for our safety and our happiness. whilst certain faces are illumined with intelligence, decorated with invitation, others are marked with warnings : certain voices are hoarse and truculent; sometimes they even bark. there is the same difference between heavy and genial manners as between the perceptions of octogenarians and those of young girls who see everything in the twinkling of an eye. manners are the revealers of secrets, the betrayers of any disproportion or want of symmetry in mind and character. it is the law of our constitution that every change in our experience instantly indicates itself on our countenance and carriage, as the lapse of time tells itself on the face of a clock. we may be too obtuse to read it, but the record is there. some men may be obtuse to read it, but some men are not obtuse and do read it. in borrow's “lavengro," the gypsy instantly detects, by his companion's face and behavior, that some good fortune has befallen him, and that he has money. we say, in these days, that credit is to be abolished in trade : is it? when a stranger comes to buy goods of you, do you not look in his face and answer according to what you read there? credit is to be abolished ? 76 social aims. can't you abolish faces and character, of which credit is the reflection ? as long as men are born babes they will live on credit for the first fourteen or eighteen years of their life. every innocent man has in his countenance a promise to pay, and hence credit. less credit will there be ? you are mistaken. there will always be more and more. character must be trusted; and, just in proportion to the morality of a people, will be the expansion of the credit system. there is even a little rule of prudence for the young experimenter which dr. franklin omitted to set down, yet which the youth may find useful, — do not go to ask your debtor the payment of a debt on the day when you have no other resource. he will learn by your air and tone how it is with you, and will treat you as a beggar. but work and starve a little longer. wait till your affairs go better, and you have other means at hand; you will then ask in a different tone, and he will treat your claim with entire respect. now, we all wish to be graceful, and do justice to ourselves by our manners; but youth in america is wont to be poor and hurried, not at ease, or not in society where high behavior could be taught. but the sentiment of honor and the wish to serve make all our pains superfluous. life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy. self-command is the main elegance. “keep cool, and you command everybody,” said st. just; and social aims. 77 the wily old talleyrand would still say, surtout, messieurs, pas de zèle, —"above all, gentlemen, no heat.” why have you statues in your hall, but to teach you that, when the door-bell rings, you shall sit like them. “eat at your table as you would eat at the table of the king,” said confucius. it is an excellent custom of the quakers, if only for a school of manners, — the silent prayer before meals. it has the effect to stop mirth, and introduce a moment of reflection. after the pause, all resume their usual intercourse from a vantage-ground. what a check to the violent manners which sometimes come to the table, of wrath, and whining, and heat in trifles ! 'tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration. a lady loses as soon as she admires too easily and too much. in man or woman, the face and the person lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration. a man makes his inferiors his superiors by heat. why need you, who are not a gossip, talk as a gossip, and tell eagerly what the neighbors or the journals say? state your opinion without apology. the attitude is the main point, assuring your companion that, come good news or come bad, you remain in good heart and good mind, which is the best news you can possibly communicate. self-control is the rule. you have in you there a noisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, 78 . social aims. and turn all his strength to beauty. for example, what a seneschal and detective is laughter! it seems to require several generations of education to train a squeaking or a shouting habit out of a man. sometimes, when in almost all expressions the choctaw and the slave have been worked out of him, a coarse nature still betrays itself in his contemptible squeals of joy. it is necessary for the purification of drawing-rooms, that these entertaining explosions should be under strict control. lord chesterfield had early made this discovery, for he says, “i am sure that since i had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard me laugh.” i know that there go two to this game, and, in the presence of certain formidable wits, savage nature must sometimes rush out in some disorder. to pass to an allied topic, one word or two in regard to dress, in which our civilization instantly shows itself. no nation is dressed with more good sense than ours. and everybody sees certain moral benefit in it. when the young european emigrant, after a summer's labor, puts on for the first time a new coat, he puts on much more. his good and becoming clothes put him on thinking that he must behave like people who are so dressed; and silently and steadily his behavior mends. but quite another class of our own youth, i should remind, of dress in general, that some people need it, and others need it not. thus a king or a general does not need social aims. 79 a fine coat, and a commanding person may save himself all solicitude on that point. there are always slovens in state street or wall street, who are not less considered. if a man have manners and talent he may dress roughly and carelessly. it is only when mind and character slumber that the dress can be seen. if the intellect were always awake, and every noble sentiment, the man might go in huckaback or mats, and his dress would be admired and imitated. remember george herbert's maxim, “this coat with my discretion will be brave.” if, however, a man has not firm nerves, and has keen sensibility, it is perhaps a wise economy to go to a good shop and dress himself irreproachably. he can then dismiss all care from his mind, and may easily find that performance an addition of confidence, a fortification that turns the scale in social encounters, and allows him to go gayly into conversations where else he had been dry and embarrassed. i am not ignorant, i have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared "that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.” thus much for manners : but we are not content with pantomime; we say, this is only for the eyes. we want real relations of the mind and the heart; we want friendship; we want knowledge; we want virtue; a more inward existence to read the history 80 social aims. of each other. welfare requires one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life with, persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words every day, by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good sense and virtue; and these we are always in search of. he must be inestimable to us to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves. yet now and then we say things to our mates, or hear things from them, which seem to put it out of the power of the parties to be strangers again. . “either death or a friend,” is a persian proverb. i suppose i give the experience of many when i give my own. a few times in my life it has happened to me to meet persons of so good a nature and so good breeding, that every topic was open and discussed without possibility of offence, persons who could not be shocked. one of my friends said in speaking of certain associates, “there is not one of them but i can offend at any moment." but to the company i am now considering, were no terrors, no vulgarity. all topics were broached, life, love, marriage, sex, hatred, suicide, magic, theism, art, poetry, religion, myself, thyself, all selves, and whatever else, with a security and vivacity which belonged to the nobility of the parties and to their brave truth. the life of these persons was conducted in the same calm and affirmative manner as their discourse. life with them was an experiment continsocial aims. 81 ually varied, full of results, full of grandeur, and by no means the hot and hurried business which passes in the world. the delight in good company, in pure, brilliant, social atmosphere; the incomparable satisfaction of a society in which everything can be safely said, in which every member returns a true echo, in which a wise freedom, an ideal republic of sense, simplicity, knowledge, and thorough goodmeaning abide, – doubles the value of life. it is this that justifies to each the jealousy with which the doors are kept. do not look sourly at the set or the club which does not choose you. every highly organized person knows the value of the social barriers, since the best society has often been spoiled to him by the intrusion of bad companions. he of all men would keep the right of choice sacred, and feel that the exclusions are in the interest of the admissions, though they happen at this moment to thwart his wishes. the hunger for company is keen, but it must be discriminating, and must be economized. 't is a defect in our manners that they have not yet reached the prescribing a limit to visits. that every welldressed lady or gentleman should be at liberty to exceed ten minutes in his or her call on serious people, shows a civilization still rude. a universal etiquette should fix an iron limit after which a moment should not be allowed without explicit leave granted on request of either the giver or receiver 82 social aims. of the visit. there is inconvenience in such strictness, but vast inconvenience in the want of it. to trespass on a public servant is to trespass on a nation's time. yet presidents of the united states are afflicted by rude western and southern gossips (i hope it is only by them) until the gossip's immeasurable legs are tired of sitting; then he strides out and the nation is relieved. it is very certain that sincere and happy conversation doubles our powers; that, in the effort to unfold our thought to a friend, we make it clearer to ourselves, and surround it with illustrations that help and delight us. it may happen that each hears from the other a better wisdom than any one else will ever hear from either. but these ties are taken care of by providence to each of us. a wise man once said to me that “all whom he knew, met”:meaning that he need not take pains to introduce the persons whom he valued to each other: they were sure to be drawn together as by gravitation. the soul of a man must be the servant of another. the true friend must have an attraction to whatever virtue is in us. our chief want in life,is it not somebody who can make us do what we can ? and we are easily great with the loved and honored associate. we come out of our eggshell existence and see the great dome arching over us; see the zenith above and the nadir under us. speech is power: speech is to persuade, to consocial aims. 83 vert, to compel. it is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. you are to be missionary and carrier of all that is good and noble. virtues speak to virtues, vices to vices, — each to their own kind in the people with whom we deal. if you are suspiciously and dryly on your guard, so is he or she. if you rise to frankness and generosity, they will respect it now or later. in this art of conversation, woman, if not the queen and victor, is the lawgiver. if every one recalled his experiences, he might find the best in the speech of superior women, which was better than song, and carried ingenuity, character, wise counsel, and affection, as easily as the wit with which it was adorned. they are not only wise themselves, they make us wise. no one can be a master in conversation who has not learned much from women; their presence and inspiration are essential to its success. steele said of his mistress, that “ to have loved her was a liberal education.” shenstone gave no bad account of this influence in his description of the french woman: “there is a quality in which no woman in the world can compete with her, — it is the power of intellectual irritation. she will draw wit out of a fool. she strikes with such address the chords of self-love, that she gives unexpected vigor and agility to fancy, and electrifies a body that appeared nonelectric." coleridge esteems cultivated women as 84 social aims. the depositaries and guardians of “ english undefiled”; and luther commends that accomplishment of “pure german speech ” of his wife. madame de staël, by the unanimous consent of all who knew her, was the most extraordinary converser that was known in her time, and it was a time full of eminent men and women; she knew all distinguished persons in letters or society, in england, germany, and italy, as well as in france, though she said, with characteristic nationality, “ conversation, like talent, exists only in france.” madame de staël valued nothing but conversation. when they showed her the beautiful lake leman, she exclaimed, “o for the gutter of the rue de bac !” the street in paris in which her house stood. and she said one day, seriously, to m. molé, “ if it were not for respect to human opinions, i would not open my window to see the bay of naples for the first time, whilst i would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom i had not seen." ste. beuve tells us of the privileged circle at coppet, that, after making an excursion one day, the party returned in two coaches from chambéry to aix, on the way to coppet. the first coach had many rueful accidents to relate, a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom to the whole company. the party in the second coach, on arriving, heard this story with surprise ; — of thunderstorm, of steeps, of mud, of danger, they knew nothsocial aims. 85 ing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a purer air: such a conversation between madame de staël and madame récamier and benjamin constant and schlegel ! they were all in a state of delight. the intoxication of the conversation had made them insensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. madame de tessé said, "if i were queen, i should command madame de staël to talk to me every day.” conversation fills all gaps, supplies all deficiencies. what a good trait is that recorded of madame de maintenon, that, during dinner, the servant slipped to her side, “ please, madame, one anecdote more, for there is no roast to-day.” politics, war, party, luxury, avarice, fashion, are all asses with loaded panniers to serve the kitchen of intellect, the king. there is nothing that does not pass into lever or weapon. and yet there are trials enough of nerve and character, brave choices enough of taking the part of truth and of the oppressed against the oppressor, in privatest circles. a right speech is not well to be distinguished from action. courage to ask questions; courage to expose our ignorance. the great gain is, not to shine, not to conquer your companion, — then you learn nothing but conceit, — but to find a companion who knows what you do not; to tilt with him and be overthrown, horse and foot, with utter destruction of all your logic and learning. there is a defeat that is useful. then you can see 86 social aims. the real and the counterfeit, and will never accept the counterfeit again. you will adopt the art of war that has defeated you. you will ride to battle horsed on the very logic which you found irresistible. you will accept the fertile truth, instead of the solemn customary lie. let nature bear the expense. the attitude, the tone, is all. let our eyes not look away, but meet. let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. a just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. when people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. but things said for conversation are chalk eggs. don't say things. what you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that i cannot hear what you say to the contrary. a lady of my acquaintance said, “i don't care so much for what they say as i do for what makes them say it." the main point is to throw yourself on the truth, and say with newton, “there's no contending against facts.” when molyneux fancied that the observations of the nutation of the earth's axis destroyed newton's theory of gravitation, he tried to break it softly to sir. isaac, who only answered, “it may be so; there 's no arguing against facts and experiments.” but there are people who cannot be cultivated, people on whom speech makes no impression, social aims. 87 — swainish, morose people, who must be kept down and quieted as you would those who are a little tipsy; others, who are not only swainish, but are prompt to take oath that swainishness is the only culture; and though their odd wit may have some salt for you, your friends would not relish it. bolt these out. and i have seen a man of genius who made me think that if other men were like him co-operation were impossible. must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy? here is centrality and penetration, strong understanding, and the higher gifts, the insight of the real, or from the real, and the moral rectitude which belongs to it: but all this and all his resources of wit and invention are lost to me in every experiment that i make to hold intercourse with his mind; always some weary, captious paradox to fight you with, and the time and temper wasted. and beware of jokes ; too much temperance cannot be used : inestimable for sauce, but corrupting for food: we go away hollow and ashamed. as soon as the company give in to this enjoyment, we shall have no olympus. true wit never made us laugh. mahomet seems to have borrowed by anticipation of several centuries a leaf from the mind of swedenborg, when he wrote in the koran :“on the day of resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will be called to the door of paradise, and 88 social aims. have it shut in their faces when they reach it. again, on their turning back, they will be called to another door, and again, on reaching it, will see it closed against them; and so on, ad infinitum, without end.” shun the negative side. never worry people with your contritions, nor with dismal views of politics or society. never name sickness; even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a valetudinarian, who will soon give you your fill of it. the law of the table is beauty,a respect to the common soul of all the guests. everything is unseasonable which is private to two or three or any portion of the company. tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never “talk shop” before company. lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, whilst they sit in one parlor with common friends. stay at home in your mind. don't recite other people's opinions. see how it lies there in you; and if there is no counsel, offer none. what we want is, not your activity or interference with your mind, but your content to be a vehicle of the simple truth. the way to have large occasional views, as in a political or social crisis, is to have large habitual views. when men consult you, it is not that they wish you to stand tiptoe, and pump your social aims. 89 brains, but to apply your habitual view, your wisdom, to the present question, forbearing all pedantries, and the very name of argument; for in good conversation parties don't speak to the words, but to the meanings of each other. manners first, then conversation. later, we see that, as life was not in manners, so it is not in talk. manners are external; talk is occasional: these require certain material conditions, human labor for food, clothes, house, tools, and, in short, plenty and ease, — since only so can certain finer and finest powers appear and expand. in a whole nation of hottentots there shall not be one valuable man, — valuable out of his tribe. in every million of europeans or of americans there shall be thousands who would be valuable on any spot on the globe. the consideration the rich possess in all societies is not without meaning or right. it is the approval given by the human understanding to-the act of creating value by knowledge and labor. it is the sense of every human being, that man should have this dominion of nature, should arm himself with tools, and force the elements to drudge for him and give him power. every one must seek to secure his independence; but he need not be rich. the old confucius in china admitted the benefit, but stated the limitation : "if the search for riches were sure to be successful, though i should become a 90 social aims. groom with whip in hand to get them, i will do so. as the search may not be successful, i will follow after that which i love." there is in america a general conviction in the minds of all mature men, that every young man of good faculty and good habits can by perseverance attain to an adequate estate; if he have a turn for business, and a quick eye for the opportunities which are always offering for investment, he can come to wealth, and in such good season as to enjoy as well as transmit it. every human society wants to be officered by a best class, who shall be masters instructed in all the great arts of life; shall be wise, temperate, brave, public men, adorned with dignity and accomplishments. every country wishes this, and each has taken its own method to secure such service to the state. in europe, ancient and modern, it has been attempted to secure the existence of a superior class by hereditary nobility, with estates transmitted by primogeniture and entail. but in the last age, this system has been on its trial and the verdict of mankind is pretty nearly pronounced. that method. secured permanence of families, firmness of customs, a certain external culture and good taste; gratified the ear with preserving historic names : but the heroic father did not surely have heroic sons, and still less surely heroic grandsons; wealth and ease corrupted the race. in america, the necessity of clearing the forest, social aims. 91 laying out town and street, and building every house and barn and fence, then church and townhouse, exhausted such means as the pilgrims brought, and made the whole population poor; and the like necessity is still found in each new settlement in the territories. these needs gave their character to the public debates in every village and state. i have been often impressed at our country town-meetings with the accumulated virility, in each village, of five or six or eight or ten men, who speak so well, and so easily handle the affairs of the town. i often hear the business of a little town (with which i am most familiar) discussed with a clearness and thoroughness, and with a generosity, too, that would have satisfied me had it been in one of the larger 'capitals. i am sure each one of my readers has a parallel experience. and every one knows that in every town or city is always to be found a certain number of publicspirited men, who perform, unpaid, a great amount of hard work in the interest of the churches, of schools, of public grounds, works of taste and refinement. and as in civil duties, so in social power and duties. our gentlemen of the old school, that is, of the school of washington, adams, and hamilton, were bred after english types, and that style of breeding furnished fine examples in the last generation; but, though some of us have seen such, i doubt they are all gone. but nature is not poorer 92 social aims. to-day. with all our haste, and slipshod ways, and flippant self-assertion, i have seen examples of new grace and power in address that honor the country. it was my fortune not long ago, with my eyes directed on this subject, to fall in with an american to be proud of. i said never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent preference for others. wherever he moved he was the benefactor. it is of course that he should ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well, administer affairs well, but he was the best talker, also, in the company: what with a perpetual practical wisdom, with an eye always to the working of the thing, what with the multitude and distinction of his facts (and one detected continually that he had a hand in everything that has been done), and in the temperance with which he parried all offence, and opened the eyes of the person he talked with without contradicting him. yet i said to myself, how little this man suspects, with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to himself. and i think this is a good country, that can bear such a creature as he is. the young men in america at this moment take little thought of what men in england are thinking or doing. that is the point which decides the welsocial aims. 93 fare of a people; which way does it look ? if to any other people, it is not well with them. if occupied in its own affairs and thoughts and men, with a heat which excludes almost the notice of any other people, as the jews, the greeks, the persians, the romans, the arabians, the french, the english, at their best times have done, — they are sublime; and we know that in this abstraction they are executing excellent work. amidst the calamities which war has brought on our country this one benefit has accrued, — that our eyes are withdrawn from england, withdrawn from france, and look homeward. we have come to feel that " by ourselves our safety must be bought”; to know the vast resources of the continent, the goodwill that is in the people, their conviction of the great moral advantages of freedom, social equality, education, and religious culture, and their determination to hold these fast, and, by them, to hold fast the country and penetrate every square mile of it with this american civilization. the consolation and happy moment of life, atoning for all short-comings, is sentiment; a flame of affection or delight in the heart, burning up suddenly for its object, as the love of the mother for her child; of the child for its mate; of the youth for his friend; of the scholar for his pursuit; of the boy for sea-life, or for painting, or in the passion for his country; or in the tender-hearted philanthropist social aims. to spend and be spent for some romantic charity, as howard for the prisoner, or john brown for the slave. no matter what the object is, so it be good, this flame of desire makes life sweet and tolerable. it reinforces the heart that feels it, makes all its acts and words gracious and interesting. now society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. these we call sentimentalists, — talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having. they have, they tell you, an intense love of nature; poetry, 0, they adore poetry, and roses, and the moon, and the cavalry regiment, and the governor; they love liberty, “dear liberty !” they worship virtue, “ dear virtue !” yes, they adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. the warmer their expressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. a little experience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist, the soul that is lost by mimicking soul. cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment ? was ever one converted? the innocence and ignorance of the patient is the first difficulty: he believes his disease is blooming health. a rough realist, or a phalanx of realists, would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend your bad road with diamonds. then poverty, famine, war, imsocial aims. 95 prisonment, might be tried. another cure would be to fight fire with fire, to match a sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. i think each might begin to suspect that something was wrong. would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household life we must learn to adorn every day with sacrifices. good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. temperance, courage, love, are made up of the same jewels. listen to every prompting of honor. “as soon as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to the man, i see no limit to the horizon which opens before me.” * of course those people, and no others, interest us who believe in their thought, who are absorbed, if you please to say so, in their own dream. they only can give the key and leading to better society: those who delight in each other only because both delight in the eternal laws; who forgive nothing to each other; who, by their joy and homage to these, are made incapable of conceit, which destroys almost all the fine wits. any other affection between men than this geometric one of relation to the same thing, is a mere mush of materialism. these are the bases of civil and polite society; namely, manners, conversation, lucrative labor, and public action, whether political, or in the leading of * ernest renan. 96 social aims. social institutions. we have much to regret, much to mend, in our society; but i believe that with all liberal and hopeful men there is a firm faith in the beneficent results which we really enjoy; that intelligence, manly enterprise, good education, virtuous life, and elegant manners have been and are found here, and, we hope, in the next generation will still more abound. eloquence. eloquence i do not know any kind of history, except the event of a battle, to which people listen with more interest than to any anecdote of eloquence; and the wise think it better than a battle. it is a triumph of pure power, and it has a beautiful and prodigious surprise in it. for all can see and understand the means by which a battle is gained: they count the armies, they see the cannon, the musketry, the cavalry, and the character and advantages of the ground, so that the result is often predicted by the observer with great certainty before the charge is sounded. not so in a court of law, or in a legislature. who knows before the debate begins what the preparation, or what the means are of the combatants ? the facts, the reasons, the logic,—above all, the flame of passion and the continuous energy of will which is presently to be let loose on this bench of judges, or on this miscellaneous assembly gathered from the streets, — are all invisible and unknown. indeed, much power is to be exhibited 100 eloquence. which is not yet called into existence, but is to be suggested on the spot by the unexpected turn things may take, — at the appearance of new evidence, or by the exhibition of an unlooked-for bias in the judges, or in the audience. it is eminently the art which only flourishes in free countries. it is an old proverb, that “every people has its prophet"; and every class of the people has. our community runs through a long scale of mental power, from the highest refinement to the borders of savage ignorance and rudeness. there are not only the wants of the intellectual and learned and poetic men and women to be met, but also the vast interests of property, public and private, of mining, of manufactures, of trade, of railroads, etc. these must have their advocates of each improvement and each interest. then the political questions, which agitate millions, find or form a class of men by nature and habit fit to discuss and deal with these measures, and make them intelligible and acceptable to the electors. so of education, of art, of philanthropy. eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. there is one of whom we took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a secret virtue never suspected, that he can paint what has occurred, and what must occur, with such clearness to a company, as if they saw it done before their eyes. by leading their thought he leads their will, and can make them do gladly what an hour eloquence. 101 ago they would not believe that they could be led to do at all :) he makes them glad or angry or penitent at his pleasure; of enemies makes friends, and fills desponding men with hope and joy. after sheridan's speech in the trial of warren hastings, mr. pitt moved an adjournment, that the house might recover from the overpowering effect of sheridan's oratory. then recall the delight that sudden eloquence gives, — the surprise that the moment is so rich. the orator is the physician.. whether he speaks in the capitol or on a cart, he is the benefactor that lifts men above themselves, and creates a higher appetite than he satisfies. the orator is he whom every man is seeking when he goes into the courts, into the conventions, into any popular assembly,—though often disappointed, yet never giving over the hope. he finds himself perhaps in the senate, when the forest has cast out some wild, black-browed bantling to show the same energy in the crowd of officials which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills, or in scrambling through thickets in a winter forest, or through the swamp and river for his game. in the folds of his brow, in the majesty of his mien, nature has marked her son; and in that artificial and perhaps unworthy place and company shall remind you of the lessons taught him in earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of the pine-woods, when he was the companion of the mountain cattle, of jays and foxes, 102 eloquence. and a hunter of the bear. or you may find him in some lowly bethel, by the seaside, where a hardfeatured, scarred, and wrinkled methodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he pours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language all glittering and fiery with imagination, — a man who never knew the lookingglass or the critic, a man whom college drill or patronage never made, and whom praise cannot spoil, — a man who conquers his audience by invfusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right of being the person in the assembly who has the most to say, and so makes all other speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. for the time, his exceeding life throws all other gifts into shade, – philosophy speculating on its own breath, taste, learning, and all, — and yet how every listener gladly consents to be nothing in his presence, and to share this surprising emanation, and be steeped and ennobled in the new wine of this eloquence! it instructs in the power of man over men; that a man is a mover; to the extent of his being, a power; and, in contrast with the efficiency he suggests, our vactual life and society appears a. dormitory. who can wonder at its influence on young and ardent minds ? uncommon boys follow uncommon men; and i think every one of us can remember when our first experiences made us for a time the victim and worshipper of the first master of this art whom eloquence. 103 we happened to hear in the court-house or in the caucus. we reckon the bar, the senate, journalism, and the pulpit, peaceful professions ; but you cannot escape the demand for courage in these, and certainly there is no true orator who is not a hero. his attitude in the rostrum, on the platform, requires that he counterbalance his auditory. he is challenger, and must answer all comers. the orator must ever stand with forward foot, in the attitude of advancing. his speech must be just ahead of the assembly,— ahead of the whole human race, – or it is superfluous. his speech is not to be distinguished from action. it is the electricity of action. it is action, as the general's word of command, or chart of battle, is action. i must feel that the speaker compromises himself to his auditory, comes for something, — it is a cry on the perilous edge of the fight, — or let him be silent. you go to a town-meeting where the people are called to some disagreeable duty,— such as, for example, often occurred during the war, at the occasion of a new draft. they come unwillingly: they have spent their money once or twice very freely. they have sent their best men: the young and ardent, those of a martial temper, went at the first draft, or the second, and it is not easy to see who else can be spared, or can be induced to go.' the silence and coldness after the meeting is opened, and the purpose of it stated, are not encouraging. when a good 104 eloqcesce man rises in the cold and malicious assembly, you think, well, sir, it would be more prudent to be silent; why not rest, sir, on your good record ? nobody doubts your talent and power; but for the present business, we know all about it, and are tired of being pushed into patriotism by people who stay at home. but he, taking no counsel of past things, but only of the inspiration of his to-day's feeling, surprises them with his tidings, with his better knowledge, his larger view, his steady gaze at the new and future event, whereof they had not thought, and they are interested, like so many children, and carried off out of all recollection of their malignant considerations, and he gains his victory by prophecy, where they expected repetition. he knew very well beforehand that they were looking behind and that he was looking ahead, and therefore it was wise to speak. then the observer says, what a godsend is this manner of man to a town! and he, what a faculty! he is put together like a waltham watch, or like a locomotive just finished at the tredegar works. no act indicates more universal health than eloquence. the special ingredients of this force are: clear perceptions ; memory; power of statement; logic; imagination, or the skill to clothe your thought in natural images ; passion, which is the heat; and then a grand will, which, when legitimate and abiding, we call character, the 'height of maneloquence. 105 hood. as soon as a man shows rare power of expression, like chatham, erskine, patrick henry, webster, or phillips, all the great interests, whether of state or of property, crowd to him to be their spokesman, so that he is at once a potentate, a ruler of men. a worthy gentleman, mr. alexander, listening to the debates of the general assembly of the scottish kirk, in edinburgh, and eager to speak to the questions, but utterly failing in his endeavors, delighted with the talent shown by dr. hugh blair, went to him, and offered him one thousand pounds sterling if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public. if the performance of the advocate reaches any high success, it is paid in england with dignities in the professions, and in the state with seats in the cabinet, earldoms, and woolsacks. and it is easy to see that the great and daily growing interests at stake in this country must pay proportional prices to their spokesmen and defenders. it does not surprise us, then, to learn from plutarch what great sums were paid at athens to the teachers of rhetoric; and if the pupils got what they paid for, the lessons were cheap. but this power which so fascinates and astonishes and commands is only the exaggeration of a talent which is universal. all men are competitors in this art. we have all attended meetings called for some object in which no one had beforehand any warm 5 * 106 eloquence. interest. every speaker rose unwillingly, and even his speech was a bad excuse; but it is only the first plunge which is formidable, and deep interest or sympathy thaws the ice, loosens the tongue, and will carry the cold and fearful presently into self-possession, and possession of the audience. go into an assembly well excited, some angry political meeting on the eve of a crisis. then it appears that eloquence is as natural as swimming, — an art which all men might learn, though so few do. it only needs that they should be once well pushed off into the water, overhead, without corks, and, after a mad struggle or two, they find their poise and the use of their arms, and henceforward they possess this new and wonderful element. the most hard-fisted, disagreeably restless, thoughtparalyzing companion sometimes turns out in a public assembly to be a fluent, various, and effective orator. now you find what all that excess of power which so chafed and fretted you in a téte-dtête with him was for. what is peculiar in it is a certain creative heat, which a man attains to perhaps only once in his life. those whom we admire — the great orators — have some habit of heat, and, moreover, a certain control of it, an art of husbanding it, — as if their hand was on the organ-stop, and could now use it temperately, and now let out all the length and breadth of the power. i remember that jenny lind, when in this eloquence. 107 country, complained of concert-rooms and town-halls, that they did not give her room enough to unroll her voice, and exulted in the opportunity given her in the great halls she found sometimes built over a railroad depot. and this is quite as true of the action of the mind itself, that a man of this talent sometimes finds himself cold and slow in private company, and perhaps a heavy companion; but give him a commanding occasion, and the inspiration of a great multitude, and he surprises by new and unlooked-for powers. before, he was out of place, and unfitted as a cannon in a parlor. to be sure there are physical advantages, — some eminently leading to this art. i mentioned jenny lind's voice. a good voice has a charm in speech as in song; sometimes of itself enchains attention, and indicates a rare sensibility, especially when trained to wield all its powers. the voice, like the face, betrays the nature and disposition, and soon indicates what is the range of the speaker's mind. many people have no ear for music, but every one has an ear for skilful reading. every one of us has at some time been the victim of a well-toned and cunning voice, and perhaps been repelled once for all by a harsh, mechanical speaker. the voice, indeed, is a delicate index of the state of mind. i have heard an eminent preacher say, that he learns from the first tones of his voice on a sunday morning whether he is to have a successful day. a singer 108 eloquence. cares little for the words of the song; he will make any words glorious. i think the like rule holds of the good reader. in the church i call him only a good reader who can read sense and poetry into any hymn in the hymn-book. plutarch, in his enumeration of the ten greek orators, is careful to mention their excellent voices, and the pains bestowed by some of them in training these. what character, what infinite variety, belong to the voice ! sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer; what range of force! in moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy, the voice will attain a music and penetration which surprises the speaker as much as the auditor; he also is a sharer of the higher wind that blows over his strings. i believe that some orators go to the assembly as to a closet where to find their best thoughts. the persian poet saadi tells us that a person with a disagreeable voice was reading the koran aloud, when a holy man, passing by, asked what was his monthly stipend. he answered, “nothing at all.” “but why then do you take so much trouble ?” he replied, "i read for the sake of god.” the other rejoined, “for god's sake, do not read; for if you read the koran in this manner you will destroy the splendor of islamism.” then there are persons of natural fascination, with certain frankness, winning manners, almost endearments in their style ; like bouillon, who could almost persuade you that a quartan ague was wholesome; like eloquence. 109 louis xi. of france, whom commines praises for “the gift of managing all minds by his accent and the caresses of his speech”; like galiani, voltaire, robert burns, barclay, fox, and henry clay. what must have been the discourse of st. bernard, when mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands, companions their friends, lest they should be led by his eloquence to join the monastery. it is said that one of the best readers in his time was the late president john quincy adams. i have heard that no man could read the bible with such powerful effect. i can easily believe it, though i never heard him speak in public until his fine voice was much broken by age. but the wonders he could achieve with that cracked and disobedient organ showed what power might have belonged to it in early manhood. if "indignation makes good verses," as horace says, it is not less true that a good indignation makes an excellent speech. in the early years of this century, mr. adams, at that time a member of the united states senate at washington, was elected professor of rhetoric and oratory in harvard college. when he read his first lectures in 1806, not only the students heard him with delight, but the hall was crowded by the professors and by unusual visitors. i remember when, long after, i entered college, hearing the story of the numbers of coaches in which his friends came from boston to hear him. on his return in 110 eloquence. the winter to the senate at washington, he took such ground in the debates of the following session as to lose the sympathy of many of his constituents in boston. when, on his return from washington, he resumed his lectures in cambridge, his class attended, but the coaches from boston did not come, and, indeed, many of his political friends deserted him. in 1809 he was appointed minister to russia, and resigned his chair in the university. his last lecture, in taking leave of his class, contained some nervous allusions to the treatment he had received from his old friends, which showed how much it had stung him, and which made a profound impression on the class. here is the concluding paragraph, which long resounded in cambridge:“at no hour of your life will the love of letters ever oppress you as a burden, or fail you as a resource. in the vain and foolish exultation of the heart, which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite, the pensive portress of science shall call you to the sober pleasures of her holy cell. in the mortifications of disappointment, her soothing voice shall whisper serenity and peace. in social converse with the mighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under the galling sense of dependence upon the mighty living of the present age. and in your struggles with the world, should a crisis ever occur, when even friendship may deem it prudent to desert you, when even your country may seem ready to abandon herself and you, when eloquence 111 priest and levite shall come and look on you and pass by on the other side, seek refuge, my unfailing friends, and be assured you shall find it, in the friendship of lælius and scipio, in the patriotism of cicero, demosthenes, and burke, as well as in the precepts and example of him whose law is love, and who taught us to remember injuries only to forgive them.” the orator must command the whole scale of the language, from the most elegant to the most low and vile. every one has felt how superior in force is the language of the street to that of the academy. the street must be one of his schools. ought not the scholar to be able to convey his meaning in terms as short and strong as the porter or truckman uses to convey his ? and lord chesterfield thought “ that without being instructed in the dialect of the halles no man could be a complete master of french.” the speech of the man in the street is invariably strong, nor can you mend it by making it what you call parliamentary. you say, “if he could only express himself”; but he does already better than any one can for him, — can always get the ear of an audience to the exclusion of everybody else. well, this is an example in point. that something which each man was created to say and do, he only or he best can tell you, and has a right to supreme attention so far. the power of their speech is, that it is perfectly understood by all; and i believe it to be true, that when any orator at the bar 112 eloquence. or in the senate rises in his thought, he descends in his language, – that is, when he rises to any height of thought or of passion he comes down to a language level with the ear of all his audience. it is the merit of john brown and of abraham lincoln one at charlestown, one at gettysburg in the two best specimens of eloquence we have had in this country. and observe that all poetry is written in the oldest and simplest english words. dr. johnson said, “there is in every nation a style which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered. this style is to be sought in the common intercourse of life among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. the polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides.” but all these are the gymnastics, the education of eloquence, and not itself. they cannot be too much considered and practised as preparation, but the powers are those i first named. if i should make the shortest list of the qualifications of the orator, i should begin with manliness; and perhaps it means here presence of mind. men differ so much in control of their faculties! you can find in many, and indeed in all, a certain fundamental equality. funeloquence. 113 damentally all feel alike and think alike, and at a great heat they can all express themselves with an almost equal force. but it costs a great heat to enable a heavy man to come up with those who have a quick sensibility. thus we have all of us known men who lose their talents, their wit, their fancy, at any sudden call. some men, on such pressure, collapse, and cannot rally. if they are to put a thing in proper shape, fit for the occasion and the audience, their mind is a blank. something which any boy would tell with color and vivacity they can only stammer out with hard literalness,—say it in the very words they heard, and no other. this fault is very incident to men of study, — as if the more they had read the less they knew. dr. charles chauncy was, a hundred years ago, a man of marked ability among the clergy of new england. but when once going to preach the thursday lecture in boston (which in those days people walked from salem to hear), on going up the pulpit stairs he was informed that a little boy had fallen into frog pond on the common, and was drowned, and the doctor was requested to improve the sad occasion. the doctor was much distressed, and in his prayer he hesitated, he tried to make soft approaches, — he prayed for harvard college, he prayed for the schools, he implored the divine being “to-to-to bless to them all the boy that was this morning drowned in frog pond.” now this is not want of talent or learning, but of 114 eloquence. manliness. the doetor, no doubt, shut up in his closet and his theology, had lost some natural relation to men, and quick application of his thought to the course of events. i should add what is told of him, — that he so disliked the “sensation” preaching of his time that he had once prayed that “ he might never be eloquent”; and, it appears, his prayer was granted. on the other hand, it would be easy to point to many masters whose readiness is sure; as the french say of guizot, that “what guizot learned this morning he has the air of having known from all eternity.” this unmanliness is so common a result of our half-education, — teaching a youth latin and metaphysics and history, and neglecting to give him the rough training of a boy, — allowing him to skulk from the games of ball and skates and coasting down the hills on his sled, and whatever else would lead him and keep him on even terms with boys, so that he can meet them as an equal, and lead in his turn, — that i wish his guardians to consider that they are thus preparing him to play a contemptible part when he is full-grown. in england they send the most delicate and protected child from his luxurious home to learn to rough it · with boys in the public schools. a few bruises and scratches will do him no harm if he has thereby learned not to be afraid. it is this wise mixture of good drill in latin grammar with good drill in cricket, boating, and wrestling, that is the boast eloquence. 115 of english education, and of high importance to the matter in hand. lord ashley, in 1606, while the bill for regulating trials in cases of high treason was pending, attempting to utter a premeditated speech in parliament in favor of that clause of the bill which allowed the prisoner the benefit of counsel, fell into such a disorder that he was not able to proceed; but, having recovered his spirits and the command of his faculties, he drew such an argument from his own confusion as more advantaged his cause than all the powers of eloquence could have done. “for,” said he, “if i, who had no personal concern in the question, was so overpowered with my own apprehensions that i could not find words to express myself, what must be the case of one whose life depended on his own abilities to defend it?” this happy turn did great service in promoting that excellent bill. ų these are ascending stairs, –a good voice, winning manners, plain speech, chastened, however, by the schools into correctness; but we must come to the main matter, of power of statement, — know your fact; hug your fact. for the essential thing is heat, and heat comes of sincerity. speak what you do know and believe, and are personally in it, and are answerable for every word. eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak. he 116 eloquence. who would convince the worthy mr. dunderhead of any truth which dunderhead does not see, must be a master of his art. declamation is common; but such possession of thought as is here required, such practical chemistry as the conversion of a truth written in god's language into a truth in dunderhead's language, is one of the most beautiful and cogent weapons that is forged in the shop of the divine artificer. it was said of robespierre's audience, that though they understood not the words, they understood a fury in the words, and caught the contagion. this leads us to the high class, the men of character who bring an overpowering personality into court, and the cause they maintain borrows importance from an illustrious advocate. absoluteness is required, and he must have it or simulate it. if the cause be unfashionable, he will make it fashionable. 'tis the best man in the best training. if he does not know your fact, he will show that it is not worth the knowing. indeed, as great generals do not fight many battles, but conquer by tactics, so all eloquence is a war of posts. what is said is the least part of the oration. it is the attitude taken, the unmistakable sign, never so casually given, in tone of voice, or manner, or word, that a greater spirit speaks from you than is spoken to in him. but i say, provided your cause is really honest. eloquence. 117 there is always the previous question: how came you on that side ? your argument is ingenious, your language copious, your illustrations brilliant, but your major proposition palpably absurd. will you establish a lie ? you are a very elegant writer, but you can't write up what gravitates down. an ingenious metaphysical writer, dr. stirling of edinburgh, has noted that intellectual works in any department breed each other by what he calls zymosis, i. e. fermentation ; thus in the elizabethan age there was a dramatic zymosis, when all the genius ran in that direction, until it culminated in shakspeare; so in germany we have seen a metaphysical zymosis culminating in kant, schelling, schleiermacher, schopenhauer, hegel, and so ending. to this we might add the great eras not only of painters but of orators. the historian paterculus says of cicero, that only in cicero's lifetime was any great eloquence in rome; so it was said that no member of either house of the british parliament will be ranked among the orators whom lord north did not see, or who did not see lord north. but i should rather say that when a great sentiment, as religion or liberty, makes itself deeply felt in any age or country, then great orators appear. as the andes and alleghanies indicate the line of the fissure in the crust of the earth along which they were lifted, so the great ideas that suddenly expand at some moment the mind of mankind indicate themselves by orators. 118 · eloquence. if there ever was a country where eloquence was a power, it is in the united states. here is room for every degree of it, on every one of its ascending stages, — that of useful speech, in our commercial, manufacturing, railroad, and educational conventions; that of political advice and persuasion on the grandest theatre, reaching, as all good men trust, into a vast future, and so compelling the best thought and noblest administrative ability that the citizen can offer. and here are the service of science, the demands of art, and the lessons of religion to be brought home to the instant practice of thirty millions of people. is it not worth the ambition of every generous youth to train and arm his mind with all the resources of knowledge, of method, of grace, and of character, to serve such a constituency? resources. resources. men are made up of potences. we are magnets in an iron globe. we have keys to all doors. we are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. the world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck; the earth sensitive as iodine to light; the most plastic and impressionable medium, alive to every touch, and, whether searched by the plough of adam, the sword of cæsar, the boat of columbus, the telescope of galileo, or the surveyor's chain of picard, or the submarine telegraph, to every one of these experiments it makes a gracious response. i am benefited by every observation of a victory of man over nature, — by seeing that wisdom is better than strength; by seeing that every healthy and resolute man is an organizer, a method coming into a confusion and drawing order out of it. we are touched and cheered by every such example. we like to see the inexhaustible riches of nature, and the access of every soul to her magazines. 122 resources these examples wake an infinite hope, and call every man to emulation. a low, hopeless spirit puts out the eyes ; scepticism is slow suicide. a philosophy which sees only the worst; believes neither in virtue nor in genius; which says 't is all of no use, life is eating us up, 't is only question who shall be last devoured, — dispirits us; the sky shuts down before us. a schopenhauer, with logic and learning and wit, teaching pessimism, – teaching that this is the worst of all possible worlds, and inferring that sleep is better than waking, and death than sleep, all the talent in the world cannot save him from being odious. but if, instead of these negatives, you give me affirmatives, – if you tell me that there is always life for the living ; that what man has done man can do; that this world belongs to the energetic; that there is always a way to everything desirable; that every man is provided, in the new bias of his faculty, with a key to nature, and that man only rightly knows himself as far as he has experimented on things, — i am invigorated, put into genial and working temper; the horizon opens, and we are full of good-will and gratitude to the cause of causes. i like the sentiment of the poor woman who, coming from a wretched garret in an inland manufacturing town for the first time to the sea-shore, gazing at the ocean, said “she was glad for once in her life to see something which there was enough of.” resources. 123 our copernican globe is a great factory or shop of power, with its rotating constellations, times, and tides. the machine is of colossal size; the diameter of the water-wheel, the arms of the levers, and the volley of the battery, out of all mechanic measure; and it takes long to understand its parts and its workings. this pump never sucks; these screws are never loose; this machine is never out of gear. the vat, the piston, the wheels and tires, never wear out, but are self-repairing. is there any load which water cannot lift? if there be, try steam; or if not that, try electricity. is there any exhausting of these means ? measure by barrels the spending of the brook that runs through your field. nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. she shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. what spaces ! what durations! dealing with races as merely preparations of somewhat to follow; or, in humanity, millions of lives of men to collect the first observations on which our astronomy is built; millions of lives to add only sentiments and guesses, which at last, gathered in by an ear of sensibility, make the furniture of the poet. see how children build up a language; how every traveller, every laborer, every impatient boss, who sharply shortens the phrase or the word to give his order quicker, reducing it to the lowest possible terms, – and there it must stay, – improves the national tongue. what power does 124 resources. nature not owe to her duration of amassing infinitesimals into cosmical forces ! the marked events in history, as the emigration of a colony to a new and more delightful coast; the building of a large ship; the discovery of the mariner's compass, which perhaps the phænicians made ; the arrival among an old stationary nation of a more instructed race, with new arts : each of these events electrifies the tribe to which it befalls; supples the tough barbarous sinew, and brings it into that state of sensibility which makes the transition to civilization possible and sure. by his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe like uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature. ah! what. a plastic little creature he is ! so shifty, so adaptive ! his body a chest of tools, and he making himself comfortable in every climate, in every condition. here in america are all the wealth of soil, of timber, of mines, and of the sea, put into the posresources. 125. session of a people who wield all these wonderful machines, have the secret of steam, of electricity, and have the power and habit of invention in their brain. we americans have got suppled into the state of melioration. life is always rapid here, but what acceleration to its pulse in ten years, — what in the four years of the war! we have seen the railroad and telegraph subdue our enormous geography; we have seen the snowy deserts on the northwest, seats of esquimaux, become lands of promise. when our population, swarming west, had reached the boundary of arable land, as if to stimulate our energy, on the face of the sterile waste beyond, the land was suddenly in parts found covered with gold and silver, floored with coal. it was thought a fable, what guthrie, a traveller in persia, told us, that “in taurida, in any piece of ground where springs of naphtha (or petroleum) obtain, by merely sticking an iron tube in the earth, and applying a light to the upper end, the mineral oil will burn till the tube is decomposed, or for a vast number of years.” but we have found the taurida in pennsylvania and ohio. if they have not the lamp of aladdin, they have the aladdin oil. resources of america ! why, one thinks of st. simon's saying, “the golden age is not behind, but before you.” here is man in the garden of eden; here the genesis and the exodus. we have seen slavery disappear like a painted 126 resources. scene in a theatre; we have seen the most healthful revolution in the politics of the nation,.the constitution not only amended, but construed in a new spirit. we have seen china opened to european and american ambassadors and commerce; the like in japan : our arts and productions begin to penetrate both. as the walls of a modern house are perforated with water-pipes, sound-pipes, gaspipes, heat-pipes, so geography and geology are yielding to man's convenience, and we begin to perforate and mould the old ball, as a carpenter does with wood. all is ductile and plastic. we are working the new atlantic telegraph. american energy is overriding every venerable maxim of political science. america is such a garden of plenty, such a magazine of power, that at her shores all the common rules of political economy utterly fail. here is bread, and wealth, and power, and education for every man who has the heart to use his opportunity. the creation of power had never any parallel. it was thought that the immense production of gold would make gold cheap as pewter. but the immense expansion of trade has wanted every ounce of gold, and it has not lost its value. see how nations of customers are formed. the disgust of california has not been able to drive nor kick the chinaman back to his home ; and now it turns out that he has sent home to china american food and tools and luxuries, until he has taught his resources. 127 people to use them, and a new market has grown up for our commerce. the emancipation has brought a whole nation of negroes as customers to buy all the articles which once their few masters bought, and every manufacturer and producer in the north has an interest in protecting the negro as the consumer of his wares. the whole history of our civil war is rich in a thousand anecdotes attesting the fertility of resource, the presence of mind, the skilled labor of our people. at annapolis a regiment, hastening to join the army, found the locomotives broken, the railroad destroyed, and no rails. the commander called for men in the ranks who could rebuild the road. many men stepped forward, searched in the water, found the hidden rails, laid the track, put the disabled engine together, and continued their journey. the world belongs to the energetic man. his will gives him new eyes. he sees expedients and means where we saw none. the invalid sits shivering in lamb’s-wool and furs; the woodsman knows how to make warm garments out of cold and wet themselves. the indian, the sailor, the hunter, only these know the power of the hands, feet, teeth, eyes, and ears. it is out of the obstacles to be encountered that they make the means of destroying them. the sailor by his boat and sail makes a ford out of deepest waters. the hunter, the soldier, rolls himself in his blanket, and the falling snow, which he did not have to bring in his 128 resources. knapsack, is his eider-down, in which he sleeps warm till the morning. nature herself gives the hint and the example, if we have wit to take it. see how nature keeps the lakes warm by tucking them up under a blanket of ice, and the ground under a cloak of snow. the old forester is never far from shelter; no matter how remote from camp or city, he carries bangor with him. a sudden shower cannot wet him, if he cares to be dry; he draws his boat ashore, turns it over in a twinkling against a clump of alders, with cat-briers, which keep up the lee-side, crawls under it, with his comrade, and lies there till the shower is over, happy in his stout roof. the boat is full of water, and resists all your strength to drag it ashore and empty it. the fisherman looks about him, puts a round stick of wood underneath, and it rolls as on wheels at once. napoleon says, the corsicans at the battle of golo, not having had time to cut down the bridge, which was of stone, made use of the bodies of their dead to form an intrenchment. malus, known for his discoveries in the polarization of light, was captain of a corps of engineers in bonaparte's egyptian campaign, which was heinously unprovided and exposed. “wanting a picket to which to attach my horse," he says, “i tied him to my leg. i slept, and dreamed peaceably of the pleasures of europe.” m. tissenet had learned among the indians to understand their language, and, coming among a wild party · resources. 129 of illinois, he overheard them say that they would scalp him. he said to them, “will you scalp me? here is my scalp," and confounded them by lifting a little periwig he wore. he then explained to them that he was a great medicine-man, and that they did great wrong in wishing to harm him, who carried them all in his heart. so he opened his shirt a little and showed to each of the savages in turn the reflection of his own eyeball in a small pocket-mirror which he had hung next to his skin. he assured them that if they should provoke him he would burn up their rivers and their forests; and, taking from his portmanteau a small phial of white brandy, he poured it into a cup, and, lighting a straw at the fire in the wigwam, he kindled the brandy (which they believed to be water), and burned it up before their eyes. then taking up a chip of dry pine, he drew a burningglass from his pocket and set the chip on fire. what .a new face courage puts on everything! a determined man, by his very attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat, and begins to conquer. “for they can conquer who believe they can.” every one hears gladly that cheerful voice. he reveals to us the enormous power of one man over masses of men; that one man whose eye commands the end in view, and the means by which it can be attained, is not only better than ten men or a hundred men, but victor over all 6 * 130 resources. mankind who do not see the issue and the means. “when a man is once possessed with fear,” said the old french marshal montluc, “and loses his judgment, as all men in a fright do, he knows not what he does. and it is the principal thing you are to beg at the hands of almighty god, to preserve your understanding entire; for what danger soever there may be, there is still one way or other to get off, and perhaps to your honor. but when fear has once possessed you, god ye good even ! you think you are flying towards the poop when you are running towards the prow, and for one enemy think you have ten before your eyes, as drunkards who see a thousand candles at once.” against the terrors of the mob, which, intoxicated with passion, and once suffered to gain the ascendant, is diabolic and chaos come again, good sense has many arts of prevention and of relief. disorganization it confronts with organization, with police, with military force. but in earlier stages of the disorder it applies milder and nobler remedies. the natural offset of terror is ridicule. and we have noted examples among our orators, who have on conspicuous occasions handled and controlled, and, best of all, converted a malignant mob, by superior manhood, and by a wit which disconcerted, and at last delighted the ringleaders. what can a poor truckman who is hired to groan and to hiss do, when the orator shakes him into convulsions of laughter so resources. 131 that he cannot throw his egg? if a good story will not answer, still milder remedies sometimes serve to disperse a mob. try sending round the contribution-box. mr. marshall, the eminent manufacturer at leeds, was to preside at a free-trade festival in that city; it was threatened that the operatives, who were in bad humor, would break up the meeting by a mob. mr. marshall was a man of peace; he had the pipes laid from the waterworks of his mill, with a stopcock by his chair from which he could discharge a stream that would knock down an ox, and sat down very peacefully to his dinner, which was not disturbed. see the dexterity of the good aunt in keeping the young people all the weary holiday busy and diverted without knowing it: the story, the pictures, the ballad, the game, the cuckoo-clock, the stereoscope, the rabbits, the mino bird, the pop-corn, and christmas hemlock spurting in the fire. the children never suspect how much design goes to it, and that this unfailing fertility has been rehearsed a hundred times, when the necessity came of finding for the little asmodeus a rope of sand to twist. she relies on the same principle that makes the strength of newton, — alternation of employment. see how he refreshed himself, resting from the profound researches of the calculus by astronomy; from astronomy by optics; from optics by chronology. 't is a law of chemistry that every gas is a vacuum 132 resources. to every other gas; and when the mind has exhausted its energies for one employment, it is still fresh and capable of a different task. we have not a toy or trinket for idle amusement, but somewhere it is the one thing needful for solid instruction or to save the ship or army. in the mammoth cave in kentucky, the torches which each traveller carries make a dismal funeral procession, and serve no purpose but to see the ground. when now and then the vaulted roof rises high overhead, and hides all its possibilities in lofty depths, 't is but gloom on gloom. but the guide kindled a roman candle, and held it here and there shooting its fireballs successively into each crypt of the groined roof, disclosing its starry splendor, and showing for the first time what that plaything was good for. whether larger or less, these strokes and all exploits rest at last on the wonderful structure of the mind. and we learn that our doctrine of resources must be carried into higher application, namely, to the intellectual sphere. but every power in energy speedily arrives at its limits, and requires to be husbanded; the law of light, which newton said proceeded by “fits of easy reflection and transmission”; the come-and-go of the pendulum is the law of mind ; alternation of labors is its rest. i should like to have the statistics of bold experimenting on the husbandry of mental power. in england men of letters drink wine; in scotresources. 133 land, whiskey; in france, light wines; in germany, beer. in england everybody rides in the saddle; in france the theatre and the ball occupy the night. in this country we have not learned how to repair the exhaustions of our climate. is not the seaside necessary in summer? games, fishing, bowling, hunting, gymnastics, dancing, — are not these needful to you? the chapter of pastimes is very long. there are better games than billiards and whist. 't was a pleasing trait in goethe's romance, that makaria retires from society “to astronomy and her correspondence.” i do not know that the treatise of brillat savarin on the physiology of taste deserves its fame. i know its repute, and i have heard it called the france of france. but the subject is so large and exigent that a few particulars, and those the pleasures of the epicure, cannot satisfy. i know many men of taste whose single opinions and practice would interest much more. it should be extended to gardens and grounds, and mainly one thing should be illustrated: that life in the country wants all things on a low tone, — wants coarse clothes, old shoes, no fleet horse that a man cannot hold, but an old horse that will stand tied in a pasture half a day without risk, so allowing the picnic-party the full freedom of the woods. natural history is, in the country, most attractive; at once elegant, immortal, always opening new 134 resources resorts. the first care of a man settling in the country should be to open the face of the earth to himself, by a little knowledge of nature, or a great deal, if he can, of birds, plants, rocks, astronomy ; in short, the art of taking a walk. this will draw the sting out of frost, dreariness out of november and march, and the drowsiness out of august. to know the trees is, as spenser says of “the ash, for nothing ill.” shells, too; how hungry i found myself, the other day, at agassiz's museum, for their names ! but the uses of the woods are many, and some of them for the scholar high and peremptory. when his task requires the wiping out from memory “ all trivial fond records that youth and observation copied there,” he must leave the house, the streets, and the club, and go to wooded uplands, to the clearing and the brook. well for him if he can say with the old minstrel, “i know where to find a new song." if i go into the woods in winter, and am shown the thirteen or fourteen species of willow that grow in massachusetts, i learn that they quietly expand in the warmer days, or when nobody is looking at them, and, though insignificant enough in the general bareness of the forest, yet a great change takes place in them between fall and spring; in the first relentings of march they hasten, and long before anything else is ready, these osiers hang resources. 135 out their joyful flowers in contrast to all the woods. you cannot tell when they do bud and blossom, these vivacious trees, so ancient, for they are almost the oldest of all. among fossil remains, the willow and the pine appear with the ferns. they bend all day to every wind; the cart-wheel in the road may crush them ; every passenger may strike off a twig with his cane; every boy cuts them for a whistle ; the cow, the rabbit, the insect, bite the sweet and tender bark; yet, in spite of accident and enemy, their gentle persistency lives when the oak is shattered by storm, and grows in the night and snow and cold. when i see in these brave plants this vigor and immortality in weakness, i find a sudden relief and pleasure in observing the mighty law of vegetation, and i think it more grateful and healthgiving than any news i am likely to find of man in the journals, and better than washington politics. it is easy to see that there is no limit to the chapter of resources. i have not, in all these rambling sketches, gone beyond the beginning of my list. resources of man, — it is the inventory of the world, the roll of arts and sciences; it is the whole of memory, the whole of invention; it is all the power of passion, the majesty of virtue, and the omnipotence of will. but the one fact that shines through all this plenitude of powers is, that, as is the receiver, so is 136 resources. the gift; that all these acquisitions are victories of the good brain and brave heart; that the world belongs to the energetic, belongs to the wise. it is in vain to make a paradise but for good men. the tropics are one vast garden ; yet man is more miserably fed and conditioned there than in the cold and stingy zones. the healthy, the civil, the industrious, the learned, the moral race, — nature herself only yields her secret to these. and the resources of america and its future will be immense only to wise and virtuous men. the comic. the comic. a taste for fun is all but universal in our species, which is the only joker in nature. the rocks, the plants, the beasts, the birds, neither do anything ridiculous, nor betray a perception of anything absurd done in their presence. and as the lower nature does not jest, neither does the highest. the reason pronounces its omniscient yea and nay, but meddles never with degrees or fractions; and it is in comparing fractions with essential integers or wholes that laughter begins. aristotle's definition of the ridiculous is, “what is out of time and place, without danger.” if there be pain and danger, it becomes tragic; if not, comic. i confess, this definition, though by an admirable definer, does not satisfy me, does not say all we know. the essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well-intended halfness ; a non-performance of what is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. the balking of the intellect, the 140 the comic. frustrated expectation, the break of continuity in the intellect, is comedy; and it announces itself physically in the pleasant spasms we call laughter. with the trifling exception of the stratagems of a few beasts and birds, there is no seeming, no halfness in nature, until the appearance of man. unconscious creatures do the whole will of wisdom. an oak or a chestnut undertakes no function it cannot execute; or if there be phenomena in botany which we call abortions, the abortion is also a function of nature, and assumes to the intellect the like completeness with the further function, to which in different circumstances it had attained. the same rule holds true of the animals. their activity is marked by unerring good-sense. but man, through his access to reason, is capable of the perception of a whole and a part. reason is the whole, and whatsoever is not that is a part. the whole of nature is agreeable to the whole of thought, or to the reason; but separate any part of nature, and attempt to look at it as a whole by itself, and the feeling of the ridiculous begins. the perpetual game of humor is to look with considerate goodnature at every object in existence aloof, as a man might look at a mouse, comparing it with the eternal whole ; enjoying the figure which each selfsatisfied particular creature cuts in the unrespecting all, and dismissing it with a benison. separate any object, as a particular bodily man, a horse, a turnip, the comic. 141 a flour-barrel, an umbrella, from the connection of things, and contemplate it alone, standing there in absolute nature, it becomes at once comic; no useful, no respectable qualities can rescue it from the ludicrous. in virtue of man's access to reason or the whole, the human form is a pledge of wholeness, suggests to our imagination the perfection of truth or goodness, and exposes by contrast any halfness or imperfection. we have a primary association between perfectness and this form. but the facts that occur when actual men enter do not make good this anticipation; a discrepancy which is at once detected by the intellect, and the outward sign is the muscular irritation of laughter. reason does not joke, and men of reason do not; a prophet, in whom the moral sentiment predominates, or a philosopher, in whom the love of truth predominates, these do not joke, but they bring the standard, the ideal whole, exposing all actual defect; and hence, the best of all jokes is the sympathetic contemplation of things by the understanding from the philosopher's point of view. there is no joke so true and deep in actual life, as when some pure idealist goes up and down among the institutions of society, attended by a man who knows the world, and who, sympathizing with the philosopher's scrutiny, sympathizes also with the confusion and indignation of the detected skulķing institu142 the comic. tions. his perception of disparity, his eye wandering perpetually from the rule to the crooked, lying, thieving fact, makes the eyes run over with laughter. this is the radical joke of life and then of literature. the presence of the ideal of right and of truth in all action makes the yawning delinquencies of practice remorseful to the conscience, tragic to the interest, but droll to the intellect. the activity of our sympathies may for a time hinder our perceiving the fact intellectually, and so deriving mirth from it; but all falsehoods, all vices seen at sufficient distance, seen from the point where our moral sympathies do not interfere, become ludicrous. the comedy is in the intellect's perception of discrepancy. and whilst the presence of the ideal discovers the difference, the comedy is enhanced whenever that ideal is embodied visibly in a man. thus falstaff, in shakspeare, is a character of the broadest comedy, giving himself unreservedly to his senses, coolly ignoring the reason, whilst he invokes its name, pretending to patriotism and to parental virtues, not with any intent to deceive, but only to make the fun perfect by enjoying the confusion betwixt reason and the negation of reason, — in other words, the rank rascaldom he is calling by its name. prince hal stands by, as the acute understanding, who sees the right and sympathizes with it, and in the heyday of youth feels also the the comic. 143 full attractions of pleasure, and is thus eminently qualified to enjoy the joke. at the same time he is to that degree under the reason, that it does not amuse him as much as it amuses another spectator. if the essence of the comic be the contrast in the intellect between the idea and the false performance, there is good reason why we should be affected by the exposure. we have no deeper interest than our integrity, and that we should be made aware by joke and by stroke, of any lie we entertain. besides, a perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. it appears to be an essential element in a fine character. wherever the intellect is constructive, it will be found. we feel the absence of it as a defect in the noblest and most oracular soul. the perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. a rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. if that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him. it is true the sensibility to the ludicrous may run into excess. men celebrate their perception of halfness and a latent lie by the peculiar explosions of laughter. so painfully susceptible are some men to these impressions, that if a man of wit come into the room where they are, it seems to take them out 144 the comic. 1 of themselves with violent convulsions of the face and sides, and obstreperous roarings of the throat. how often and with what unfeigned compassion we have seen such a person receiving like a willing martyr the whispers into his ear of a man of wit. the victim who has just received the discharge, if in a solemin company, has the air very much of a stout vessel which has just shipped a heavy sea; and though it does not split it, the poor bark is for the moment critically staggered. the peace of society and the decorum of tables seem to require that next to a notable wit should always be posted a phlegmatic bolt-upright man, able to stand without movement of muscle whole broadsides of this greek fire. it is a true shaft of apollo, and traverses the universe, and unless it encounter a mystic or a dumpish soul, goes everywhere heralded and harbingered by smiles and greetings. wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. no dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. it is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity, — they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all. “dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ?" plutarch happily expresses the value of the jest as a legitimate weapon of the philosopher. “men cannot exercise their rhetoric unless they speak, but their the comic. 145 philosophy even whilst they are silent or jest merrily; for as it is the highest degree of injustice not to be just and yet seem so, so it is the top of wisdom to philosophize yet not appear to do it, and in mirth to do the same with those that are serious and seem in earnest; for as in euripides, the bacchæ, though unprovided of iron weapons and unarmed, wounded their invaders with the boughs of trees, which they carried, thus the very jests and merry talk of true philosophers move those that are not altogether insensible, and unusually reform.” in all the parts of life, the occasion of laughter is some seeming, some keeping of the word to the ear and eye, whilst it is broken to the soul. thus, as the religious sentiment is the most vital and sublime of all our sentiments, and capable of the most prodigious effects, so is it abhorrent to our whole nature, when, in the absence of the sentiment, the act or word or officer volunteers to stand in its stead. to the sympathies this is shocking, and occasions grief. but to the intellect the lack of the sentiment gives no pain; it compares incessantly the sublime idea with the bloated nothing which pretends to be it, and the sense of the disproportion is comedy. and as the religious sentiment is the most real and earnest thing in nature, being a mere rapture, and excluding, when it appears, all other considerations, the vitiating this is the greatest lie. therefore, the oldest gibe of literature is the ridicule 146 the comic. of false religion. this is the joke of jokes. in religion, the sentiment is all ; the ritual or ceremony indifferent. but the inertia of men inclines them, when the sentiment sleeps, to imitate that thing it did; it goes through the ceremony omitting only the will, makes the mistake of the wig for the head, the clothes for the man. the older the mistake and the more overgrown the particular form is, the more ridiculous to the intellect. captain john smith, the discoverer of new england, was not wanting in humor. the society in london which had contributed their means to convert the savages, hoping doubtless to see the keokuks, black hawks, roaring thunders, and tustanuggees of that day converted into church-wardens and deacons at least, pestered the gallant rover with frequent solicitations out of england touching the conversion of the indians, and the enlargement of the church. smith, in his perplexity how to satisfy the society, sent out a party into the swamp, caught an indian, and sent him home in the first ship to london, telling the society they might convert one themselves. the satire reaches its climax when the actual church is set in direct contradiction to the dictates of the religious sentiment, as in the sketch of our puritan politics in hudibras :"our brethren of new england use choice malefactors to excuse, and hang the guiltless in their stead, of whom the churches have less need; the comic. 147 as lately happened, in a town where lived a cobbler, and but one, that out of doctrine could cut use, and mend men's lives as well as shoes. this precious brother having slain, in times of peace, an indian, not out of malice, but mere zeal (because he was an infidel), the mighty tottipottymoy sent to our elders an envoy, complaining loudly of the breach of league held forth by brother patch, against the articles in force between both churches, his and ours, for which he craved the saints to render into his hands, or hang the offender; but they, maturely having weighed they had no more but him o'th' trade (a man that served them in the double capacity to teach and cobble), resolved to spare him ; yet to do the indian hoghan moghan too impartial justice, in his stead did hang an old weaver that was bedrid." in science the jest at pedantry is analogous to that in religion which lies against superstition. a classification or nomenclature used by the scholar only as a memorandum of his last lesson in the laws of nature, and confessedly a makeshift, a bivouac for a night, and implying a march and a conquest to-morrow, becomes through indolence a barrack and a prison, in which the man sits down immovably, and wishes to detain others. the physiolo148 the comic. gist camper, humorously confesses the effect of his studies in dislocating his ordinary associations. “i have been employed,” he says, “ six months on the cetacea ;; i understand the osteology of the head of all these monsters, and have made the combination with the human head so well, that everybody now appears to me narwhale, porpoise, or marsouins. women, the prettiest in society, and those whom i find less comely, they are all either narwhales or porpoises to my eyes.” i chanced the other day to fall in with an odd illustration of the remark i had heard, that the laws of disease are as beautiful as the laws of health ; i was hastening to visit an old and honored friend, who, i was informed, was in a dying condition, when i met his physician, who accosted me in great spirits, with joy sparkling in his eyes. “and how is my friend, the reverend doctor ?" i inquired. “o, i saw him this morning; it is the most correct apoplexy i have ever seen : face and hands livid, breathing stertorous, all the symptoms perfect.” and he rubbed his hands with delight, for in the country we cannot find every day a case that agrees with the diagnosis of the books. i think there is malice in a very trifling story which goes about, and which i should not take any notice of, did i not suspect it to contain some satire upon my brothers of the natural history society. it is of a boy who was learning his alphabet. “that letter is a,” said the teacher; the comic. 149 "a," drawled the boy. “that is b,” said the teacher ; “b,” drawled the boy, and so on. “that is w,” said the teacher. “the devil !” exclaimed the boy, “is that w?" the pedantry of literature belongs to the same category. in both cases there is a lie, when the mind, seizing a classification to help it to a sincerer knowledge of the fact, stops in the classification ; or learning languages, and reading books, to the end of a better acquaintance with man, stops in the languages and books : in both the learner seems to be wise, and is not. the same falsehood, the same confusion of the sympathies because a pretension is not made good, points the perpetual satire against poverty, since, according to latin poetry and english doggerel, is not poverty does nothing worse than to make man ridiculous. in this instance the halfness lies in the pretension of the parties to some consideration on account of their condition. if the man is not ashamed of his poverty, there is no joke. the poorest man who stands on his manhood destroys the jest. the poverty of the saint, of the rapt philosopher, of the naked indian, is not comic. the lie is in the surrender of the man to his appearance; as if a man should neglect himself, and treat his shadow on the wall with marks of infinite respect. it affects us 150 the comic. oddly, as to see things turned upside down, or to see a man in a high wind run after his hat, which is always droll. the relation of the parties is inverted, hat being for the moment master, the by-standers cheering the hat. the multiplication of artificial wants and expenses in civilized life, and the exaggeration of all trifling forms, present innumerable occasions for this discrepancy to expose itself. such is the story told of the painter astley, who, going out of rome one day with a party for a ramble in the campagna, and the weather proving hot, refused to take off his coat when his companions threw off theirs, but sweltered on; which, exciting remark, his comrades playfully forced off his coat, and behold on the back of his waistcoat a gay cascade was thundering down the rocks with foam and rainbow, very refreshing in so sultry a day,—a picture of his own, with which the poor painter had been fain to repair the shortcomings of his wardrobe. the same astonishment of the intellect at the disappearance of the man out of nature, through some superstition of his house or equipage, as if truth and virtue should be bowed out of creation by the clothes they wore, is the secret of all the fun that circulates concerning eminent fops and fashionists, and, in like manner, of the gay rameau of diderot, who believes in nothing but hunger, and that the sole end of art, virtue, and poetry is to put something for mastication between the upper and lower mandibles. the comic. 151 -alike in all these cases and in the instance of cowardice or fear of any sort, from the loss of life to the loss of spoons, the majesty of man is violated. he, whom all things should serve, serves some one of his own tools. in fine pictures the head sheds on the limbs the expression of the face. in raphael's angel driving heliodorus from the temple, the crest of the helmet is so remarkable, that but for the extraordinary energy of the face, it would draw the eye too much; but the countenance of the celestial messenger subordinates it, and we see it not. in poor pictures the limbs and trunk degrade the face. so among the women in the street: you shall see one whose bonnet and dress are one thing, and the lady herself quite another, wearing withal an expression of meek submission to her bonnet and dress; and another whose dress obeys and heightens the expression of her form. more food for the comic is afforded whenever the personal appearance, the face, form, and manners, are subjects of thought with the man himself. no fashion is the best fashion for those matters which will take care of themselves. this is the butt of those jokes of the paris drawing-rooms, which napoleon reckoned so formidable, and which are copiously recounted in the french mémoires. a lady of high rank, but of lean figure, had given the countess dulauloy the nickname of “le grenadier tricolore,” in allusion to her tall figure, as well as to 152 the comic. her republican opinions; the countess retaliated by calling madame “the venus of the père-la-chaise,” a compliment to her skeleton which did not fail to circulate. “lord c.," said the countess of gordon, “o, he is a perfect comb, all teeth and back.” the persians have a pleasant story of tamerlane which relates to the same particulars : “ timur was an ugly man; he had a blind eye and a lame foot. one day when chodscha was with him, timur scratched his head, since the hour of the barber was come, and commanded that the barber should be called. whilst he was shaven, the barber gave him a looking-glass in his hand. timur saw himself in the mirror and found his face quite too ugly. therefore he began to weep; chodscha also set himself to weep, and so they wept for two hours. on this, some courtiers began to comfort timur, and entertained him with strange stories in order to make him forget all about it. timur ceased weeping, but chodscha ceased not, but began now first to weep amain, and in good earnest. at last said timur to chodscha, “hearken! i have looked in the mirror, and seen myself ugly. thereat i grieved, because, although i am caliph, and have also much wealth, and many wives, yet still i am so ugly; therefore have i wept. but thou, why weepest thou without ceasing ?' chodscha answered, 'if thou hast only seen thy face once, and at once seeing hast not been able to contain thyself, the comic. 153 but hast wept, what should we do, we who see thy face every day and night ? if we weep not, who should weep? therefore have i wept.' timur almost split his sides with laughing.” . politics also furnish the same mark for satire. what is nobler than the expansive sentiment of patriotism, which would find brothers in a whole nation ? but when this enthusiasm is perceived to end in the very intelligible maxims of trade, so much for so much, the intellect feels again the half-man. or what is fitter than that we should espouse and carry a principle against all opposition ? but when the men appear who ask our votes as representatives of this ideal, we are sadly out of countenance. but there is no end to this analysis. we do nothing that is not laughable whenever we quit our spontaneous sentiment. all our plans, managements, houses, poems, if compared with the wisdom and love which man represents, are equally imperfect and ridiculous. but we cannot afford to part with any advantages. we must learn by laughter, as well as by tears and terrors; explore the whole of nature, — the farce and buffoonery in the yard below, as well as the lessons of poets and philosophers upstairs, in the hall, — and get the rest and refreshment of the shaking of the sides. but the comic also has its own speedy limits. mirth quickly becomes intemperate, and the man would soon 154 the cоміс. die of inanition, as some persons have been tickled to death. the same scourge whips the joker and the enjoyer of the joke. when carlini was convulsing naples with laughter, a patient waited on a physician in that city, to obtain some remedy for excessive melancholy, which was rapidly consuming his life. the physician endeavored to cheer his spirits, and advised him to go to the theatre and see carlini. he replied, “i am carlini.” quotation and originality. quotation and originality. whoever looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats, and innumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must have remarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes the main business of their life. if we go into a library or news-room, we see the same function on a higher plane, performed with like ardor, with equal impatience of interruption, indicating the sweetness of the act. in the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. he who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. like plato's disciple who has perceived a truth, “he is preserved from harm until another period.” in every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views. of a large and powerful class we might ask with confidence, what is the event they most desire ? what gift ? what but the book that shall come, which they have sought through all libraries, through all languages, that shall be to 158 quotation and originality. their mature eyes what many a tinsel-covered toy pamphlet was to their childhood, and shall speak to the imagination ? our high respect for a wellread man is praise enough of literature. if we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read. we expect a great man to be a good reader; or in proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. and though such are a more difficult and exacting class, they are not less eager. “he that borrows the aid of an equal understanding,” said burke, “ doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates." we prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest or private addition so rare and insignificant, — and this commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing, — that, in a large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. all minds quote. old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. there is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. by necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. we quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs by imitation. the patent-office commissioner knows that all machines in use have been invented and quotation and originality. 159 re-invented over and over; that the mariner's compass, the boat, the pendulum, glass, movable types, the kaleidoscope, the railway, the power-loom, etc., have been many times found and lost, from egypt, china, and pompeii down; and if we have arts which rome wanted, so also rome had arts which we have lost; that the invention of yesterday of making wood indestructible by means of vapor of coal-oil or paraffine was suggested by the egyptian method which has preserved its mummy-cases four thousand years. · the highest statement of new philosophy complacently caps itself with some prophetic maxim from the oldest learning. there is something mortifying in this perpetual circle. this extreme economy argues a very small capital of invention. the stream of affection flows broad and strong; the practical activity is a river of supply; but the dearth of design accuses the penury of intellect. how few thoughts ! in a hundred years, millions of men, and not a hundred lines of poetry, not a theory of philosophy that offers a solution of the great problems, not an art of education that fulfils the conditions. in this delay and vacancy of thought we must make the best amends we can by seeking the wisdom of others to fill the time. if we confine ourselves to literature, 't is easy to see that the debt is immense to past thought. none escapes it. the originals are not original. there is imitation, model, and suggestion, to the very arch160 qcotation and originality. angels, if we knew their history. the first book tyrannizes over the second. read tasso, and you think of virgil; read virgil, and you think of homer; and milton forces you to reflect how narrow are the limits of human invention. the “paradise lost” had never existed but for these precursors; and if we find in india or arabia a book out of our horizon of thought and tradition, we are soon taught by new researches in its native country to discover its foregoers, and its latent, but real connection with our own bibles. read in plato, and you shall find christian dogmas, and not only so, but stumble on our evangelical phrases. hegel pre-exists in proclus, and, long before, in heraclitus and parmenides. whoso knows plutarch, lucian, rabelais, montaigne, and bayle will have a key to many supposed originalities. rabelais is the source of many a proverb, story, and jest, derived from him into all modern languages; and if we knew rabelais's reading, we should see the rill of the rabelais river. swedenborg, behmen, spinoza, will appear original to uninstructed and to thoughtless persons: their originality will disappear to such as are either wellread or thoughtful; for scholars will recognize their dogmas as reappearing in men of a similar intellectual elevation throughout history. albert, the "wonderful doctor,” st. buonaventura, the “seraphic doctor,” thomas aquinas, the “angelic doctor" of quotation and originality. 161 the thirteenth century, whose books made the sufficient culture of these ages, dante absorbed and he survives for us. “renard the fox," a german poem of the thirteenth century, was long supposed to be the original work, until grimm found fragments of another original a century older. m. le grand showed that in the old fabliaux were the originals of the tales of molière, la fontaine, boccaccio, and of voltaire. mythology is no man's work; but, what we daily observe in regard to the bon-mots that circulate in society, that every talker helps a story in repeating it, until, at last, from the slenderest filament of fact a good fable is constructed, — the same growth befalls mythology: the legend is tossed from believer to poet, from poet to believer, everybody adding a grace or dropping a fault or rounding the form, until it gets an ideal truth. . religious literature, the psalms and liturgies of churches, are of course of this slow growth, — a fagot of selections gathered through ages, leaving the worse, and saving the better, until it is at last the work of the whole communion of worshippers. the bible itself is like an old cremona; it has been played upon by the devotion of thousands of years, until every word and particle is public and tunable. and whatever undue reverence may have been claimed for it by the prestige of philonic inspiration, the stronger tendency we are describing 162 quotation and originality. is likely to undo. what divines had assumed as the distinctive revelations of christianity, theologic criticism has matched by exact parallelisms from the stoics and poets of greece and rome. later, when confucius and the indian scriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could be thought of; and the surprising results of the new researches into the history of egypt have opened to us the deep debt of the churches of rome and england to the egyptian hierology. the borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. a great man quotes · bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good. what he quotes, he fills with his own voice and humor, and the whole cyclopædia of his table-talk is presently believed to be his own. thirty years ago, when mr. webster at the bar or in the senate filled the eyes and minds of young men, you might often hear cited as mr. webster's three rules : first, never to do to-day what he could defer till to-morrow; secondly, never to do himself what he could make another do for him; and, thirdly, never to pay any debt to-day. well, they are none the worse for being already told, in the last generation, of sheridan; and we find in grimm's mémoires that sheridan got them from the witty d'argenson ; who, no doubt, if we could consult him, could tell of whom he first heard them told. in our own quotation and originality. 163 . college days we remember hearing other pieces of mr. webster's advice to students, among others, this : that, when he opened a new book, he turned to the table of contents, took a pen, and sketched a sheet of matters and topics, — what he knew and what he thought, — before he read the book. but we find in southey's “ commonplace book” this said of the earl of strafford : “i learned one rule of him," says sir g. radcliffe," which i think worthy to be remembered. when he met with a well-penned oration or tract upon any subject, he framed a speech upon the same argument, inventing and disposing what seemed fit to be said upon that subject, before he read the book; then, reading, compared his own with the author's, and noted his own defects and the author's art and fulness; whereby he drew all that ran in the author more strictly, and might better judge of his own wants to supply them." i remember to have heard mr. samuel rogers, in london, relate, among other anecdotes of the duke of wellington, that a lady having expressed in his presence a passionate wish to witness a great victory, he replied : “madam, there is nothing so dreadful as a great victory, — excepting a great defeat.” but this speech is also d'argenson's, and is reported by grimm. so the sarcasm attributed to lord eldon upon brougham, his predecessor on the woolsack, “what a wonderful versatile mind has brougham ! 164 quotation and originality. he knows politics, greek, history, science; if he only knew a little of law, he would know a little of everything." you may find the original of this gibe in grimm, who says that louis xvi., going out of chapel after hearing a sermon from the abbé maury, said, “si l'abbé nous avait parlé un peu de religion, il nous aurait parlé de tout.” a pleasantry which ran through all the newspapers a few years since, taxing the eccentricities of a gifted family connection in new england, was only a theft of lady mary wortley montagu's mot of a hundred years ago, that “the world was made up of men and women and herveys." many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity. columbus's egg is claimed for brunelleschi. rabelais's dying words, “i am going to see the great perhaps ” (le grand peut-être), only repeats the “if” inscribed on the portal of the temple at delphi. goethe's favorite phrase, “ the open secret," translates aristotle's answer to alexander, “these books are published and not published.” madame de staël's “ architecture is frozen music " is borrowed from goethe's “ dumb music,” which is vitruvius's rule, that "the architect must not only understand drawing, but music.” wordsworth's hero acting “on the plan which pleased his childish thought,” is schiller's “ tell him to reverence the dreams of his youth,” and earlier, bacon's“ consilia juventutis plus divinitatis habent.” quotation and originality. 165 in romantic literature examples of this vamping abound. the fine verse in the old scotch ballad of “ the drowned lovers,” “ thou art roaring ower loud, clyde water, thy streams are ower strang; make me thy wrack when i come back, but spare me when i gang,” is a translation of martial's epigram on hero and leander, where the prayer of leander is the same :“parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo.” hafiz furnished burns with the song of “ john barleycorn,” and furnished moore with the original of the piece, “when in death i shall calm recline, oh, bear my heart to my mistress dear,” etc. there are many fables which, as they are found in every language, and betray no sign of being borrowed, are said to be agreeable to the human mind. such are “the seven sleepers,” “gyges's ring,” “the travelling cloak,” “ the wandering jew," “ the pied piper,” “ jack and his beanstalk," the “ lady diving in the lake and rising in the cave," — whose omnipresence only indicates how easily a good story crosses all frontiers. the popular incident of baron munchausen, who hung his bugle up by the kitchen fire, and the frozen tune thawed out, is found in greece in plato's time. 166 quotation and originality. antiphanes, one of plato's friends, laughingly compared his writings to a city where the words froze in the air as soon as they were pronounced, and the next summer, when they were warmed and melted by the sun, the people heard what had been spoken in the winter. it is only within this century that england and america discovered that their nursery-tales were old german and scandinavian stories; and now it appears that they came from india, and are the property of all the nations descended from the aryan race, and have been warbled and babbled between nurses and children for unknown thousands of years. if we observe the tenacity with which nations cling to their first types of costume, of architecture, of tools and methods in tillage, and of decoration, if we learn how old are the patterns of our shawls, the capitals of our columns, the fret, the beads, and other ornaments on our walls, the alternate lotusbud and leaf-stem of our iron fences, — we shall think very well of the first men, or ill of the latest. now shall we say that only the first men were well alive, and the existing generation is invalided and degenerate ? is all literature eavesdropping, and all art chinese imitation ? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar's dinner, from a hundred charities ? a more subtle and severe criticism might suggest that some dislocation has befallen the race ; that men are off their centre; quotation and originality. 167 that multitudes of men do not live with nature, but behold it as exiles. people go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. as they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. worse yet, they live as foreigners in the world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. quotation confesses inferiority. in opening a new · book we often discover, from the unguarded devotion with which the writer gives his motto or text, all we have to expect from him. if lord bacon appears already in the preface, i go and read the "instauration" instead of the new book. the mischief is quickly punished in general and in particular. admirable mimics have nothing of their own. in every kind of parasite, when nature has finished an aphis, a teredo, or a vampire bat, an excellent sucking-pipe to tap another aniinal, or a mistletoe or dodder among plants, — the self-supplying organs wither and dwindle, as being superfluous. in common prudence there is an early limit to this leaning on an original. in literature quotation is good only when the writer whom i follow goes my way, and, being better mounted than i, gives me a cast, as we say; but if i like the gay equipage so well as to go out of my road, i had better have gone afoot. but it is necessary to remember there are certain 168 quotation and originality. considerations which go far to qualify a reproach too grave. this vast mental indebtedness has every variety that pecuniary debt has, — every variety of merit. the capitalist of either kind is as hungry to lend as the consumer to borrow; and the transaction no more indicates intellectual turpitude in the borrower than the simple fact of debt involves bankruptcy. on the contrary, in far the greater number of cases the transaction is honorable to both. can we not help ourselves as discreetly by the force of two in literature ? certainly it only needs two well placed and well tempered for co-operation, to get somewhat far transcending any private enterprise! shall we converse as spies ? our very abstaining to repeat and credit the fine remark of our friend is thievish. each man of thought is surrounded by wiser men than he, if they cannot write as well. cannot he and they combine ? cannot they sink their jealousies in god's love, and call their poem beaumont and fletcher, or the theban phalanx's ? the city will for nine days or nine years make differences and sinister comparisons: there is a new and more excellent public that will bless the friends. nay, it is an inevitable fruit of our social nature. the child quotes his father, and the man quotes his friend. each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value. whatever we think and say is quotation and originality. 169 wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth. there is none so eminent and wise but he knows minds whose opinion confirms or qualifies his own: and men of extraordinary genius acquire an almost absolute ascendant over their nearest companions. the comte de crillon said one day to m. d'allonville, with french vivacity, “if the universe and i professed one opinion, and m. necker expressed a contrary one, i should be at once convinced that the universe and i were mistaken.” original power is usually accompanied with assimilating power, and we value in coleridge his excellent knowledge and quotations perhaps as much, possibly more, than his original suggestions. if an author give us just distinctions, inspiring lessons, or imaginative poetry, it is not so important to us whose they are. if we are fired and guided by these, we know him as a benefactor, and shall return to him as long as he serves us so well. we may like well to know what is plato's and what is montesquieu's or goethe's part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. they fit all our facts like a charm. we respect ourselves the more that we know them. next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. many will read the book before 8 170 quotation and originality. one thinks of quoting a passage. as soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west. then there are great ways of borrowing. genius borrows nobly. when shakspeare is charged with debts to his authors, landor replies : “yet he was more original than his originals. he breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.” and we must thank karl ottfried müller for the just remark, “ poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious and inspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowers originally grew.” so voltaire usually imitated, but with such superiority that dubuc said: “he is like the false amphitryon ; although the stranger, it is always he who has the air of being master of the house." wordsworth, as soon as he heard a good thing, caught it up, meditated upon it, and very soon reproduced it in his conversation and writing. if de quincey said, “that is what i told you,” he replied, “no: that is mine, mine, and not yours.” on the whole, we like the valor of it. 'tis on marmontel's principle, “i pounce on what is mine, wherever i find it”; and on bacon's broader rule, “i take all knowledge to be my province.” it betrays the consciousness that truth is the property of no individual, but is the treasure of all men. and inasmuch as any writer has ascended to a just view of man's condition, he has adopted this tone. in so far as the receiver's aim is on life, and not quotation and originality. 171 on literature, will be his indifference to the source. the nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship. it never troubles the simple seeker from whom he derived such or such a sentiment. whoever expresses to us a just thought makes ridiculous the pains of the critic who should tell him where such a word had been said before. “it is no more according to plato than according to me.” truth is always present: it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles. but the moment there is the purpose of display, the fraud is exposed. in fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others, as it is to invent. always some steep transition, some sudden alteration of temperature, of point or of view, betrays the foreign interpolation. there is, besides, a new charm in such intellectual works as, passing through long time, have had a multitude of authors and improvers. we admire that poetry which no man wrote, no poet less than the genius of humanity itself, — which is to be read in a mythology, in the effect of a fixed or national style of pictures, of sculptures, or drama, or cities, or sciences, on us. such a poem also is language. every word in the language has once been used happily. the ear, caught by that felicity, retains it, and it is used again and again, as if the charm belonged to the word, and not to the life of thought which so enforced it. these profane 172 quotation and originality. uses, of course, kill it, and it is avoided. but a quick wit can at any time reinforce it, and it comes into vogue again. then people quote so differently: one finding only what is gaudy and popular; another, the heart of the author, the report of his select and happiest hour: and the reader sometimes giving more to the citation than he owes to it. most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in english books; and you can easily pronounce, from the use and relevancy of the sentence, whether it had not done duty many times before, — whether your jewel was got from the mine or from an auctioneer. we are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. we read the quotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. as the journals say, “ the italics are ours." the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. the passages of shakspeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century ; and milton's prose, and burke,' even, have their best fame within it. every one, too, remembers his friends by their favorite poetry or other reading. quotation and originality. 173 observe, also, that a writer appears to more advantage in the pages of another book than in his own. in his own, he waits as a candidate for your approbation ; in another's, he is a lawgiver. then another's thoughts have a certain advantage with us simply because they are another's. there is an illusion in a new phrase. a man hears a fine sentence out of swedenborg, and wonders at the wisdom, and is very merry at heart that he has now got so fine a thing. translate it out of the new words into his own usual phrase, and he will wonder again at his own simplicity, such tricks do fine words play with us. 't is curious what new interest an old author acquires by official canonization in tiraboschi, or dr. johnson, or von hammer-purgstall, or hallam, or other historian of literature. their registration of his book, or citation of a passage, carries the sentimental value of a college diploma. hallam, though never profound, is a fair mind, able to appreciate poetry, unless it becomes deep, being always blind and deaf to imaginative and analogy-loving souls, like the platonists, like giordano bruno, like donne, herbert, crashaw, and vaughan; and hallam cites a sentence from bacon or sidney, and distinguishes a lyric of edwards or vaux, and straightway it commends itself to us as if it had received the isthmian crown. it is a familiar expedient of brilliant writers, and 174 quotation and originality. not less of witty talkers, the device of ascribing their own sentence to an imaginary person, in order to give it weight, — as cicero, cowley, swift, landor, and carlyle have done. and cardinal de retz, at a critical moment in the parliament of paris, described himself in an extemporary latin sentence, which he pretended to quote from a classic author, and which told admirably well. . it is a curious reflex effect of this enhancement of our thought by citing it from another, that many men can write better under a mask than for themselves, — as chatterton in archaic ballad, le sage in spanish costume, macpherson as “ossian,” — and, i doubt not, many a young barrister in chambers in london, who forges good thunder for the “times,” but never works as well under his own name. this is a sort of dramatizing talent; as it is not rare to find great powers of recitation, without the least original eloquence,— or people who copy drawings with admirable skill, but are incapable of any design. in hours of high mental activity we sometimes do the book too much honor, reading out of it better things than the author wrote, — reading, as we say, between the lines. you have had the like experience in conversation : the wit was in what you heard, not in what the speakers said. our best thought came from others. we heard in their words a deeper sense than the speakers put into them, and could express ourselves in other people's phrases to quotation and originality. 175 finer purpose than they knew. in moore's diary, mr. hallam is reported as mentioning at dinner one of his friends who had said, “i don't know how it is, a thing that falls flat from me seems quite an excellent joke when given at second-hand by sheridan. i never like my own bon-mots until he adopts them.” dumont was exalted by being used by mirabeau, by bentham, and by sir philip francis, who, again, was less than his own “junius”; and james hogg (except in his poems “kilmeny”. and “the witch of fife") is but a third-rate author, owing his fame to his effigy colossalized through the lens of john wilson, — who, again, writes better under the domino of “christopher north” than in his proper clothes. the bold theory of delia bacon, that shakspeare's plays were written by a society of wits, — by sir walter raleigh, lord bacon, and others around the earl of southampton, — had plainly for her the charm of the superior meaning they would acquire when read under this light; this idea of the authorship controlling *our appreciation of the works themselves. we once knew a man overjoyed at the notice of his pamphlet in a leading newspaper. what range he gave his imagination! who could have written it? was it not colonel carbine, or senator tonitrus, or, at the least, professor maximilian ? yes, he could detect in the style that fine roman hand. how it seemed the very voice of the refined . 18 176 quotation and originality. and discerning public, inviting merit at last to consent to fame, and come up and take place in the reserved and authentic chairs ! he carried the journal with haste to the sympathizing cousin matilda, who is so proud of all we do. but what dismay, when the good matilda, pleased with his pleasure, confessed she had written the criticism, and carried it with her own hands to the postoffice! “mr. wordsworth,” said charles lamb, “allow me to introduce to you my only admirer.” swedenborg threw a formidable theory into the world, that every soul existed in a society of souls, from which all its thoughts passed into it, as the blood of the mother circulates in her unborn child; and he noticed that, when in his bed, — alternately sleeping and waking, — sleeping, he was surrounded by persons disputing and offering opinions on the one side and on the other side of a proposition; waking, the like suggestions occurred for and against the proposition as his own thoughts; sleeping again, he saw and heard the speakers as before: and this as often as he slept or waked. and if we expand the image, does it not look as if we men were thinking and talking out of an enormous antiquity, as if we stood, not in a coterie of prompters that filled a sitting-room, but in a circle of intelligences that reached through all thinkers, poets, inventors, and wits, men and women, english, german, celt, aryan, ninévite, copt, — back to the quotation and originality. 177 first geometer, bard, mason, carpenter, planter, shepherd, — back to the first negro, who, with more health or better perception, gave a shriller sound or name for the thing he saw and dealt with ? our benefactors are as many as the children who invented speech, word by word. language is a city, to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent. itávta pei: all things are in flux. it is inevitable that you are indebted to the past. you are fed and formed by it. the old forest is decomposed for the composition of the new forest. the old animals have given their bodies to the earth to furnish through chemistry the forming race, and every individual is only a momentary fixation of what was yesterday another's, is to-day his, and will belong to a third to-morrow. so it is in thought. our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds : our language, our science, our religion, our opinions, our fancies we inherited. our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair, — all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote them. goethe frankly said, “what would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius ? every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things: 178 quotation and originality. wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. my work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature; it bears the name of goethe.” but there remains the indefeasible persistency of the individual to be himself. one leaf, one blade of grass, one meridian, does not resemble another. every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more pronounced is that difference. he must draw the elements into him for food, and, if they be granite and silex, will prefer them cooked by sun and rain, by time and art, to his hand. but, however received, these elements pass into the substance of his constitution, will be assimilated, and tend always to form, not a partisan, but a possessor of truth. to all that can be said of the preponderance of the past, the single word genius is a sufficient reply. the divine resides in the new. the divine never quotes, but is, and creates. the profound apprehension of the present is genius, which makes the past forgotten. genius believes its faintest presentiment against the testimony of all history; for it knows that facts are not ultimates, but that a state of mind is the ancestor of everything. and what is originality? it is being, being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are. genius is, in the first instance, sensibility, the capacity of receiving just impressions from the quotation and originality. 179 external world, and the power of co-ordinating these after the laws of thought. it implies will, or original force, for their right distribution and expression. if to this the sentiment of piety be added, if the thinker feels that the thought most strictly his own is not his own, and recognizes the perpetual suggestion of the supreme intellect, the oldest thoughts become new and fertile whilst he speaks them. originals never lose their value. there is always in them a style and weight of speech, which the immanence of the oracle bestowed, and which cannot be counterfeited. hence the permanence of the high poets. plato, cicero, and plutarch cite the poets in the manner in which scripture is quoted in our churches. a phrase or a single word is adduced, with honoring emphasis, from pindar, hesiod, or euripedes, as precluding all argument, because thus had they said: importing that the bard spoke not his own, but the words of some god. true poets have always ascended to this lofty platform, and met this expectation. shakspeare, milton, wordsworth, were very conscious of their responsibilities. when a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. all spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. pindar uses this haughty defiance, as if it were impossible to find his sources : “ there are many swift darts within my quiver, which have a voice for those with understanding ; but to the crowd 180 quotation and originality. they need interpreters. he is gifted with genius who knoweth much by natural talent.” our pleasure in seeing each mind take the subject to which it has a proper right is seen in mere fitness in time. he that comes second must needs quote him that comes first. the earliest describers of savage life, as captain cook's account of the society islands, or alexander henry's travels among our indian tribes, have a charm of truth and just point of view. landsmen and sailors freshly come from the most civilized countries, and with no false expectation, no sentimentality yet about wild life, healthily receive and report what they saw, — seeing what they must, and using no choice; and no man suspects the superior merit of the description, until chateaubriand, or moore, or campbell, or byron, or the artists arrive, and mix so much art with their picture that the incomparable advantage of the first narrative appears. for the same reason we dislike that the poet should choose an antique or far-fetched subject for his muse, as if he avowed want of insight. the great deal always with the nearest. only as braveries of too prodigal power can we pardon it, when the life of genius is so redundant that out of petulance it flings its fire into some old mummy, and, lo! it walks and blushes again here in the street. we cannot overstate our debt to the past, but the moment has the supreme claim. the past is quotation and originality. 181 for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the present. only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. we must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul. 't is certain that thought has its own proper motion, and the hints which flash from it, the words overheard at unawares by the free mind, are trustworthy and fertile, when obeyed, and not perverted to low and selfish account. this vast memory is only raw material. the divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition. an... ------progress of culture. progress of culture. address read before the bk society at cambridge, july 18, 1867. we meet to-day under happy omens to our ancient society, to the commonwealth of letters, to the country, and to mankind. no good citizen but shares the wonderful prosperity of the federal union. the heart still beats with the public pulse of joy, that the country has withstood the rude trial which threatened its existence, and thrills with the vast augmentation of strength which it draws from this proof. the storm which has been resisted is a crown of honor and a pledge of strength to the ship. we may be well contented with our fair inheritance. was ever such coincidence of advantages in time and place as in america to-day ? the fusion of races and religions ; the hungry cry for men which goes up from the wide continent; the answering facility of immigration, permitting every wanderer to choose his climate and government. men come hither by nations. science surpasses the old miracles of mythology, to fly with them over the sea, and to send their mes186 progress of culture. sages under it. they come from crowded, antiquated kingdoms to the easy sharing of our simple forms. land without price is offered to the settler, cheap education to his children. the temper of our people delights in this whirl of life. who would live in the stone age, or the bronze, or the iron, or the lacustrine? who does not prefer the age of steel, of gold, of coal, petroleum, cotton, steam, electricity, and the spectroscope ? “prisca juvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum. gratulor.” all this activity has added to the value of life, and to the scope of the intellect. i will not say that american institutions have given a new enlargement to our idea of a finished man, but they have added important features to the sketch. observe the marked ethical quality of the innovations urged or adopted. the new claim of woman to a political status is itself an honorable testimony to the civilization which has given her a civil status new in history. now that, by the increased humanity of law she controls her property, she inevitably takes the next step to her share in power. the war gave us the abolition of slavery, the success of the sanitary commission and of the freedmen's bureau. add to these the new scope of social science; the abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonment for debt; the improvement of prisons; the efforts for the suppression of intemprogress of culture. 187 perance; the search for just rules affecting labor; the co-operative societies ; the insurance of life and limb; the free-trade league; the improved almshouses ; the enlarged scale of charities to relieve local famine, or burned towns, or the suffering greeks; the incipient series of international congresses, — all, one may say, in a high degree revo• lutionary, — teaching nations the taking of government into their own hands, and superseding kings. the spirit is new. a silent revolution has impelled, step by step, all this activity. a great many full-blown conceits have burst. the coxcomb goes to the wall. to his astonishment he has found that this country and this age belong to the most liberal persuasion; that the day of ruling by scorn and sneers is past; that good sense is now in power, and that resting on a vast constituency of intelligent labor, and, better yet, on perceptions less and less dim of laws the most sublime. men are now to be astonished by seeing acts of good-nature, common civility, and christian charity proposed by statesmen, and executed by justices of the peace, by policemen and the constable. the fop is unable to cut the patriot in the street; nay, he lies at his mercy in the ballot of the club. mark, too, the large resources of a statesman, of a socialist, of a scholar, in this age. when classes are exasperated against each other, the peace of the world is always kept by striking a new note. in188 progress of culture. stantly the units part, and form in a new order, and those who were opposed are now side by side. in this country the prodigious mass of work that must be done has either made new divisions of labor or created new professions. consider, at this time, what variety of issues, of enterprises public and private, what genius of science, what of administration, what of practical skill, what masters, each in his several province, the railroad, the telegraph, the mines, the inland and marine explorations, the novel and powerful philanthropies, as well as agriculture, the foreign trade and the home trade (whose circuits in this country are as spacious as the foreign), manufactures, the very inventions, all on a national scale too, have evoked !all implying the appearance of gifted men, the rapid addition to our society of a class of true nobles, by which the self-respect of each town and state is enriched. take as a type the boundless freedom bere in massachusetts. people have in all countries been burned and stoned for saying things which are commonplaces at all our breakfast-tables. every one who was in italy twenty-five years ago will remember the caution with which his host or guest, in any house looked around him, if a political topic were broached. here the tongue is free, and the hand; and the freedom of action goes to the brink, if not over the brink, of license. progress of culture. 189 a controlling influence of the times has been the wide and successful study of natural science. steffens said, “the religious opinions of men rest on their views of nature.” great strides have been made within the present .century. geology, astronomy, chemistry, optics, have yielded grand results. the correlation of forces and the polarization of light have carried us to sublime generalizations,— have affected an imaginative race like poetic inspirations. we have been taught to tread familiarly on giddy heights of thought, and to wont ourselves to daring conjectures. the narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. the creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory, and a new and healthful air regenerates the human mind, and imparts a sympathetic enlargement to its inventions and method. that cosmical west-wind which, meteorologists tell us, constitutes, by the revolution of the globe, the upper current, is alone broad enough to carry to every city and suburb — to the farmer's house, the miner's shanty, and the fisher's boat — the inspirations of this new hope of mankind. now, if any one say we have had enough of these boastful recitals, then i say, happy is the land wherein benefits like these have grown trite and commonplace. we confess that in america everything looks new and recent. our towns are still rude, the 190 progress of culture. make-shifts of emigrants, — and the whole architecture tent-like, when compared with the monumental solidity of mediæval and primeval remains in europe and asia. but geology has effaced these distinctions. geology, a science of forty or fifty summers, has had the effect to throw an air of novelty and mushroom speed over entire history. the oldest empires, — what we called venerable antiquity,— now that we have true measures of duration, show like creations of yesterday. 't is yet quite too early to draw sound conclusions. the old six thousand years of chronology become a kitchen clock, — no more a measure of time than an hour-glass or an egg-glass, — since the duration of geologic periods has come into view. geology itself is only chemistry with the element of time added ; and the rocks of nabant or the dikes of the white hills disclose that the world is a crystal, · and the soil of the valleys and plains a continual decomposition and recomposition. nothing is old but the mind. but i find not only this equality between new and old countries, as seen by the eye of science, but also a certain equivalence of the ages of history; and as the child is in his playthings working incessantly at problems of natural philosophy, — working as hard and as successfully as newton, — so it were ignorance not to see that each nation and period has done its full part to progress of culture. 191 make up the result of existing civility. we are all agreed that we have not on the instant better men to show than plutarch's heroes. the world is always equal to itself. we cannot yet afford to drop homer, nor æschylus, nor plato, nor aristotle, nor archimedes. later, each european nation, after the breaking up of the roman empire, had its romantic era, and the productions of that era in each rose to about the same height. take for an example in literature the romance of arthur, in britain, or in the opposite province of brittany; the chansons de roland, in france; the chronicle of the cid, in spain ; the niebelungen lied, in germany; the norse sagas, in scandinavia ; and, i may add, the arabian nights, on the african coast. but if these works still survive and multiply, what shall we say of names more distant, or hidden through their very superiority to their coevals, — names of men who have left remains that certify a height of genius in their several directions not since surpassed, and which men in proportion to their wisdom still cherish, as zoroaster, confucius, and the grand scriptures, only recently known to western nations, of the indian vedas, the institutes of menu, the puranas, the poems of the mahabarat and the ramayana ? in modern europe, the middle ages were called the dark ages. who dares to call them so now? they are seen to be the feet on which we walk, the 192 progress of culture eyes with which we see. 't is one of our triumphs to have reinstated them. their dante and alfred and wickliffe and abelard and bacon ; their magna charta, decimal numbers, mariner's compass, gunpowder, glass, paper, and clocks; chemistry, algebra, astronomy; their gothic architecture, their painting, — are the delight and tuition of ours. six hundred years ago roger bacon explained the precession of the equinoxes, and the necessity of reform in the calendar; looking over how many horizons as far as into liverpool and new york, he announced that machines can be constructed to drive ships. more rapidly than a whole galley of rowers could do, nor would they need anything but a pilot to steer ; carriages, to move with incredible speed, without aid of animals; and machines to fly into the air like birds. even the races that we still call savage or semi-savage, and which preserve their arts from immemorial traditions, vindicate their faculty by the skill with which they make their yamcloths, pipes, bows, boats, and carved war-clubs. the war-proa of the malays in the japanese waters struck commodore perry by its close resemblance to the yacht “america.” as we find thus a certain equivalence in the ages, there is also an equipollence of individual genius to the nation which it represents. it is a curious fact, that a certain enormity of culture makes a man invisible to his contemporaries. 't is progress of culture. 193 always hard to go beyond your public. if they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. if they know what is good, and require it, you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. but, from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon. the founders of nations, the wise men and inventors, who shine afterwards as their gods, were probably martyrs in their own time. all the transcendent writers and artists of the world, — 't is doubtful who they were, — they are lifted so fast into mythology, — homer, menu, viasa, dedalus, hermes, zoroaster, even swedenborg and shakspeare. the early names are too typical, — homer, or blind man; menu, or man ; viasa, compiler; dædalus, cunning; hermes, interpreter; and so on. probably, the men were so great, so self-fed, that the recognition of them by others was not necessary to them. and every one has heard the remark (too often, i fear, politely made), that the philosopher was above his audience. i think i have seen two or three great men who, for that reason, were of no account among scholars. but jove is in his reserves. the truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in the minorities. michel angelo was the conscience of italy. we grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now; but in his own days, his friends were few; and you would need to hunt him in a conventicle with the methodists of the era, name9 194 progress of culture. ly, savonarola, vittoria colonna, contarini, pole, occhino, superior souls, the religious of that day, drawn to each other, and under some cloud with the rest of the world, — reformers, the radicals of the hour, banded against the corruptions of rome, and as lonely and as hated as dante before them. i find the single mind equipollent to a multitude of minds, say to a nation of minds, as a drop of water balances the sea ; and under this view the problem of culture assumes wonderful interest. culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers; as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. culture alters the political status of an individual. it raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 't is king against king. it is ever the romance of history in all dynasties, — the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. it creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and to which he must often succumb. if a man know the laws of nature better than other men, his nation cannot spare him; nor if he know the power of numbers, the secret of geometry, of algebra, on which the computations of astronomy, of navigation, of machinery, rest. if he can converse better than any other, he rules the minds of men wherever he goes; if he has imagination, he intoxicates men. if he has wit, he tempers despotism by epigrams: a song, a satire, a sentence, has played its part in great events. eloquence a hunprogress of culture. 195 dred times has turned the scale of war and peace at will. the history of greece is at one time reduced to two persons, — philip, or the successor of philip, on one side, and demosthenes, a private citizen, on the other. if he has a military genius, like belisarius, or administrative faculty, like chatham or bismarck, he is the king's king. if a theologian of deep convictions and strong understanding carries his country with him, like luther, the state becomes lutheran, in spite of the emperor, as thomas à becket overpowered the english henry. wit has a great charter. popes and kings and councils of ten are very sharp with their censorships and inquisitions, but it is on dull people. some dante or angelo, rabelais, hafiz, cervantes, erasmus, béranger, bettine von arnim, or whatever genuine wit of the old inimitable class, is always allowed. kings feel that this is that which they themselves represent; this is no red-kerchiefed, red-shirted rebel, but loyalty, kingship. this is real kingship, and their own only titular. even manners are a distinction, which, we sometimes see, are not to be overborne by rank or official power, or even by other eminent talents, since they too proceed from a certain deep innate perception of fit and fair. it is too plain that a cultivated laborer is worth many untaught laborers; that a scientific engineer, with instruments and steam, is worth many hundred men, many thousands; that archimedes or 196 progress of culture. napoleon is worth for labor a thousand thousands; and that in every wise and genial soul we have england, greece, italy, walking, and can dispense with populations of navvies. literary history and all history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one. every book is written with a constant secret reference to the few intelligent persons whom the writer believes to exist in the million. the artist has always the masters in his eye, though he affect to flout them. michel angelo is thinking of da vinci, and raffaelle is thinking of michel angelo. tennyson would give his fame for a verdict in his favor from wordsworth. agassiz and owen and huxley affect to address the american and english people, but are really writing to each other. everett dreamed of webster. mckay, the shipbuilder, thinks of george steers; and steers, of pook, the naval constructor. the names of the masters at the head of each department of science, art, or function are often little known to the world, but are always known to the adepts; as robert brown in botany, and gauss in mathematics. often the master is a hidden man, but not to the true student ; invisible to all the rest, . resplendent to him. all his own work and culture form the eye to see the master. in politics, mark the importance of minorities of one, as of phocion, cato, lafayette, arago. the importance progress of culture. 197 of the one person who has the truth over nations who have it not, is because power obeys reality, and not appearance ; according to quality, and not quantity. how much more are men than nations ! the wise and good souls, the stoics in greece and rome, socrates in athens, the saints in judæa, alfred the king, shakspeare the poet, newton the philosopher, the perceiver, and obeyer of truth, — than the foolish and sensual millions around them! so that, wherever a true man appears, everything usually reckoned great dwarfs itself; he is the only great event, and it is easy to lift him into a mythological personage. then the next step in the series is the equivalence of the soul to nature. i said that one of the distinctions of our century has been the devotion of cultivated men to natural science. the benefits thence derived to the arts and to civilization are signal and immense. they are felt in navigation, in agriculture, in manufactures, in astronomy, in mining, and in war. but over all their utilities, i must hold their chief value to be metaphysical. the chief value is not the useful powers he obtained, but the test it has been of the scholar. he has accosted this immeasurable nature, and got clear answers. he understood what he read. he found agreement with himself. it taught him anew the reach of the human mind, and that it was citizen of the universe. 198 progress of culture. the first quality we know in matter is centrality, – we call it gravity, — which holds the universe together, which remains pure and indestructible in each mote, as in masses and planets, and from each atom rays out illimitable influence. to this material essence answers truth, in the intellectual world, — truth, whose centre is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere, whose existence we cannot disimagine, — the soundness and health of things, against which no blow can be struck but it.recoils on the striker, — truth, on whose side we always heartily are. and the first measure of a mind is its centrality, its capacity of truth, and its adhesion to it. when the correlation of the sciences was announced by oersted and his colleagues, it was no surprise; we were found already prepared for it. the fact stated accorded with the auguries or divinations of the human mind. thus, if we should analyze newton's discovery, we should say that if it had not been anticipated by him, it would not have been found. we are told that, in posting his books, after the french had measured on the earth a degree of the meridian, when he saw that his theoretic results were approximating that empirical one, his hand shook, the figures danced, and he was so agitated that he was forced to call in an assistant to finish the computation. why agitated ? — but because, when he saw, in the fall of progress of culture. 199 an apple to the ground, the fall of the earth to the sun, of the sun and of all suns to the centre, that perception was accompanied by the spasm of delight by which the intellect greets a fact more immense still, a fact really universal, — holding in intellect as in matter, in morals as in intellect, that atom draws to atom throughout nature, and truth to truth throughout spirit ? his law was only a particular of the more universal law of centrality. every law in nature, as gravity, centripetence, repulsion, polarity, undulation, has a counterpart in the intellect. the laws above are sisters of the laws below. shall we study the mathematics of the sphere, and not its causal essence also ? nature is a fable, whose moral blazes through it. there is no use in copernicus, if the robust periodicity of the solar system does not show its equal perfection in the mental sphere, the periodicity, the compensatory errors, the grand reactions. i shall never believe that centrifugence and centripetence balance, unless mind heats and meliorates, as well as the surface and soil of the globe. on this power, this all-dissolving unity, the emphasis of heaven and earth is laid. nature is brute but as this soul quickens it; nature always the effect, mind the flowing cause. nature, we find, is ever as is our sensibility; it is hostile to ignorance; plastic, transparent, delightful, to knowledge. mind carries the law; history, is the slow 200 . progress of culture. and atomic unfolding. all things admit of this extended sense, and the universe at last is only prophetic, or, shall we say, symptomatic, of vaster interpretation and results. nature an enormous system, but in mass and in particle curiously available to the humblest need of the little creature that walks on the earth! the immeasurableness of nature is not more astounding than his power to gather all her omnipotence into a manageable rod or wedge, bringing it to a hair-point for the eye and hand of the philosopher. here stretches out of sight, out of conception even, this vast nature, daunting, bewildering, but all penetrable, all self-similar, — an unbroken unity, — and the mind of man is a key to the whole. he finds that the universe, as newton said, “was made at one cast”; the mass is like the atom, the same chemistry, gravity, and conditions. the asteroids are the chips of an old star, and a meteoric stone is a chip of an asteroid. as language is in the alphabet, so is entire nature — the play of all its laws — in one atom. the good wit finds the law from a single observation, the law, and its limitations, and its correspondences, — as the farmer finds his cattle by a footprint. “ state the sun, and you state the planets, and conversely." whilst its power is offered to his hand, its laws to his science, not less its beauty speaks to his taste, imagination, and sentiment. nature is sanaprogress of culture. 201 tive, refining, elevating. how cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. look out into the july night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age, — lasting as space and time, embosomed in time and space. and time and space, — what are they? our first problems, which we ponder all our lives through, and leave where we found them ; whose outrunning immensity, the old greeks believed, astonished the gods themselves; of whose dizzy vastitudes all the worlds of god are a mere dot on the margin; impossible to deny, impossible to believe. yet the moral element in man counterpoises this dismaying immensity, and bereaves it of terror. the highest flight to which the muse of horace ascended was in that triplet of lines in which he described the souls which can calmly confront the sublimity of nature :“hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla imbuti spectant.” the sublime point of experience is the value of a sufficient man. cube this value by the meeting 9* 202 progress of culture. of two such, — of two or more such, — who understand and support each other, and you have organized victory. at any time, it only needs the contemporaneous appearance of a few superior and attractive men to give a new and noble turn to the public mind. the benefactors we have indicated were exceptional men, and great because exceptional. the question which the present age urges with increasing emphasis, day by day, is, whether the high qualities which distinguished them can be imparted ? the poet wordsworth asked, “what one is, why may not millions be?” why not? knowledge exists to be imparted. curiosity is lying in wait for every secret. the inquisitiveness of the child to hear runs to meet the eagerness of the parent to explain. the air does not rush to fill a vacuum with such speed as the mind to catch the expected fact. every artist was first an amateur. the ear outgrows the tongue, is sooner ripe and perfect; but the tongue is always learning to say what the ear has taught it, and the hand obeys the same lesson. there is anything but humiliation in the homage men pay to a great man; it is sympathy, love of the same things, effort to reach them, — the expression of their hope of what they shall become, when the obstructions of their mal-formation and maleducation shall be trained away. great men shall progress of culture. 203 not impoverish, but enrich us. great men, — the age goes on their credit; but all the rest, when their wires are continued, and not cut, can do as signal things, and in new parts of nature. “no angel in his heart acknowledges any one superior to himself but the lord alone.” there is not a person here present to whom omens that should astonish have not predicted his future, have not uncovered his past. the dreams of the night supplement by their divination the imperfect experiments of the day. every soliciting instinct is only a hint of a coming fact, as the air and water that hang invisibly around us hasten to become solid in the oak and the animal. but the recurrence to high sources is rare. in our daily intercourse, we go with the crowd, lend ourselves to low fears and hopes, become the victims of our own arts and implements, and disuse our resort to the divine oracle. it is only in the sleep of the soul that we help ourselves by so many ingenious crutches and machineries. what is the use of telegraphs ? what of newspapers ? to know in each social crisis how men feel in kansas, in california, the wise man waits for no mails, reads no telegrams. he asks his own heart. if they are made as he is, if they breathe the like air, eat of the same wheat, have wives and children, he knows that their joy or resentment rises to the same point as his own. the inviolate soul is in perpetual telegraphic communication with 204 progress of culture. the source of events, has earlier information, a private despatch, which relieves him of the terror which presses on the rest of the community. the foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment. this is the fountain of power, preserves its eternal newness, draws its own rent out of every novelty in science. science corrects the old creeds ; sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms; and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses. yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment. that was older, and awaited expectant these larger insights. the affections are the wings by which the intellect launches on the void, and is borne across it. great love is the inventor and expander of the frozen powers, the feathers frozen to our sides. it was the conviction of plato, of van helmont, of pascal, of swedenborg, that piety is an essential condition of science, that great thoughts come from the heart. it happens sometimes that poets do not believe their own poetry; they are so much the less poets. but great men are sincere. great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. no hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment. every generalization shows the way to a larger. men say, ah! if a man could impart his talent, instead of his performance, what mountains of guineas would . progress of culture. 205 be paid ! yes, but in the measure of his absolute veracity he does impart it. when he does not play a part, does not wish to shine, when he talks to men with the unrestrained frankness which children · use with each other, he communicates himself, and not his vanity. all vigor is contagious, and when we see creation we also begin to create. depth of character, height of genius, can only find nourishment in this soil. the miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed. enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding hope never spreads her golden wings but on unfathomable seas. the same law holds for the intellect as for the will. when the will is absolutely surrendered to the moral sentiment, that is virtue ; when the wit is surrendered to intellectual truth, that is genius. talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor. i know well to what assembly of educated, reflecting, successful, and powerful persons i speak. yours is the part of those who have received much. it is an old legend of just men, noblesse oblige; or, superior advantages bind you to larger generosity. now i conceive that, in this economical world, where every drop and every crumb is husbanded, the transcendent powers of mind were not meant to be misused. the divine 206 progress of culture. nature carries on its administration by good men. here you are set down, scholars and idealists, as in a barbarous age; amidst insanity, to calm and guide it; amidst fools and blind, to see the right done; among violent proprietors, to check self-interest, stone-blind and stone-deaf, by considerations of humanity to the workman and to his child; amongst angry politicians swelling with self-esteem, pledged to parties, pledged to clients, you are to make valid the large considerations of equity and good sense ; under bad governments, to force on them, by your persistence, good laws. around that immovable persistency of yours, statesmen, legislatures, must revolve, denying you, but not less forced to obey. we wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty instead of chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its proper checks; believing that a free press will prove safer than the censorship; to ordain free trade, and believe that it will not bankrupt us; universal suffrage, believing that it will not carry us to mobs, or back to kings again. i believe that the checks are as sure as the springs. it is thereby that men are great, and have great allies. and who are the allies ? rude opposition, apathy, slander, even these. difficulties exist to be surmounted. the great heart will no more complain of the obstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gun which hinder the shot from scattering. it was walled progress of culture. 207 ccesses. round with iron tube with that purpose, to give it irresistible force in one direction. a strenuous soul hates cheap successes. it is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defender. the great are not tender at being obscure, despised, insulted. such only feel themselves in adverse fortune. strong men greet war, tempest, hard times, which search till they find resistance and bottom. they wish, as pindar said, “ to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.” periodicity, reaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter. bad kings and governors help us, if only they are bad enough. in england, it was the game laws which exasperated the farmers to carry the reform bill. it was what we call plantation manners which drove peaceable, forgiving new england to emancipation without phrase. in the rebellion, who were our best allies ? always the enemy. the community of scholars do not know their own power, and dishearten each other by tolerating political baseness in their members. now, nobody doubts the power of manners, or that wherever high society exists, it is very well able to exclude pretenders. the intruder finds himself uncomfortable, and quickly departs to his own gang. it has been our misfortune that the politics of america have been often immoral. it has had the worst effect on character. we are a complaisant, forgiving people, presuming, perhaps, on a feeling of 208 progress of culture. strength. but it is not by easy virtue, where the public is concerned, that heroic results are obtained. we have suffered our young men of ambition to play the game of politics and take the immoral side without loss of caste,to come and go without rebuke. but that kind of loose association does not leave a man his own master. · he cannot go from the good to the evil at pleasure, and then back again to the good. there is a text in swedenborg, which tells in figure the plain truth. he saw in vision the angels and the devils ; but these two companies stood not face to face and hand in hand, but foot to foot, — these perpendicular up, and those perpendicular down. brothers, i draw new hope from the atmosphere we breathe to-day, from the healthy sentiment of the american people, and from the avowed aims and tendencies of the educated class. the age has new convictions. we know that in certain historic periods there have been times of negation, a decay of thought, and a consequent national decline; that in france, at one time, there was almost a repudiation of the moral sentiment, in what is called, by distinction, society, — not a believer within the church, and almost not a theist out of it. in england, the like spiritual disease affected the upper class in the time of charles ii., and down into the reign of the georges. but it honorably distinguishes the educated class here, progress of culture. 209 that they believe in the succor which the heart yields to the intellect, and draw greatness from its inspirations. and when i say the educated class, i know what a benignant breadth that word has, — new in the world, — reaching millions instead of hundreds. and more, when i look around me, and consider the sound material of which the cultivated class here is made up,what high personal worth, what love of men, what hope, is joined with rich information and practical power, and that the most distinguished by genius and culture are in this class of benefactors, — i cannot distrust this great knighthood of virtue, or doubt that the interests of science, of letters, of politics and humanity, are safe. i think their hands are strong enough to hold up the republic. i read the promise of better times and of greater men. persian poetry. persian poetry. to baron von hammer purgstall, who died in vienna in 1856, we owe our best knowledge of the persians. he has translated into german, besides the “divan” of hafiz, specimens of two hundred poets, who wrote during a period of five and a half centuries, from a. d. 1050 to 1600. the seven masters of the persian parnassus — firdousi, enweri, nisami, dschelaleddin, saadi, hafiz, and dschami have ceased to be empty names; and others, like ferideddin attar and omar chiam, promise to rise in western estimation. that for which mainly books exist is communicated in these rich extracts. many qualities go to make a good telescope, -as the largeness of the field, facility of sweeping the meridian, achromatic purity of lenses, and so forth, — but the one eminent value is the space-penetrating power; and there are many virtues in books, — but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock, by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions, which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories. 214 persian poetry. oriental life and society, especially in the southern nations, stand in violent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability, and the vast average of comfort of the western nations. life in the east is fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. its elements are few and simple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of european existence, but rapidly reaching the best and the worst. the rich feed on fruits and game, the poor, on a watermelon's peel. all or nothing is the genius of oriental life. favor of the sultan, or his displeasure, is a question of fate. a war is undertaken for an epigram or a distich, as in europe for a duchy. the prolific sun, and the sudden and rank plenty which his heat engenders, make subsistence easy. on the other side, the desert, the simoom, the mirage, the lion, and the plague endanger it, and life hangs on the contingency of a skin of water more or less. the very geography of old persia showed these contrasts. “my father's empire,” said cyrus to xenophon, “is so large, that people perish with cold, at one extremity, whilst they are suffocated with heat, at the other.” the temperament of the people agrees with this life in extremes. religion and poetry are all their civilization. the religion teaches an inexorable destiny. it distinguishes only two days in each man's history, — his birthday, called the day of the lot, and the day of judgment. courage and persian poetry. 215 absolute submission to what is appointed him are his virtues. the favor of the climate, making subsistence easy, and encouraging an outdoor life, allows to the eastern nations a highly intellectual organization, — leaving out of view, at present, the genius of the hindoos (more oriental in every sense), whom no people have surpassed in the grandeur of their ethical statement. the persians and the arabs, with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the pleasures of poetry. layard has given some details of the effect which the improvvisatori produced on the children of 'the desert. "when the bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was almost beyond control. the other bedouins were scarcely less moved by these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild tribes of the persian mountains. such verses, chanted by their self-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, will drive warriors to the combat, fearless of death, or prove an ample reward, on their return from the dangers of the ghazon, or the fight. the excitement they produce exceeds that of the grape. he who would understand the influence of the homeric ballads in the heroic ages should witness the effect which similar compositions have upon the wild nomads of the east.” elsewhere he adds, “poetry and flowers are the wine and spirits of the arab; a 216 persian poetry. couplet is equal to a bottle, and a rose to a dram, without the evil effect of either.”. the persian poetry rests on a mythology whose few legends are connected with the jewish history, and the anterior traditions of the pentateuch. the principal figure in the allusions of eastern poetry is solomon. solomon had three talismans: first, the signet-ring, by which he commanded the spirits, on the stone of which was engraven the name of god; second, the glass, in which he saw the secrets of his enemies, and the causes of all things, figured ; the third, the east-wind, which was his horse. his counsellor was simorg, king of birds, the all-wise fowl, who had lived ever since the beginning of the world, and now lives alone on the highest summit of mount kaf. no fowler has taken him, and none now living has seen him. by him solomon was taught the language of birds, so that he heard secrets whenever he went into his gardens. when solomon travelled, his throne was placed on a carpet of green silk, of a length and breadth sufficient for all his army to stand upon, men placing themselves on his right hand, and the spirits on his left. when all were in order, the east-wind, at his command, took up the carpet and transported it, with all that were upon it, whither he pleased, the army of birds at the same time flying overhead, and forming a canopy to shade them from the sun. it is related, that, when the queen of sheba came persian poetry. 217 to visit solomon, he had built, against her arrival, a palace, of which the floor or pavement was of glass, laid over running water, in which fish were swimming. the queen of sheba was deceived thereby, and raised her robes, thinking she was to pass through the water. on the occasion of solomon's marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents, appeared before his throne. behind them all came the ant with a blade of grass : solomon did not despise the gift of the ant. asaph, the vizier, at a certain time, lost the seal of solomon, which one of the dews, or evil spirits, found, and, governing in the name of solomon, deceived the people. firdousi, the persian homer, has written in the shah nameh the annals of the fabulous and heroic kings of the country: of karun (the persian creesus), the immeasurably rich gold-maker, who, with all his treasures, lies buried not far from the pyramids, in the sea which bears his name; of jamschid, the binder of demons, whose reign lasted seven hundred years; of kai kaus, in whose palace, built by demons-on alberz, gold and silver and precious stones were used so lavishly, that in the brilliancy produced by their combined effect, night and day appeared the saine; of afrasiyab, strong as an elephant, whose shadow extended for miles, whose heart was bounteous as the ocean, and his hands like the clouds when rain falls to gladden the earth. the crocodile in the rolling stream 10 218 persian poetry. had no safety from afrasiyab. yet when he came to fight against the generals of kaus, he was but an insect in the grasp of rustem, who seized him by the girdle, and dragged him from his horse. rustem felt such anger at the arrogance of the king of mazinderan, that every hair on his body started up like a spear. the gripe of his hand cracked the sinews of an enemy. these legends,, with chiser, the fountain of life, tuba, the tree of life, the romances of the loves of leila and medschun, of chosru and schirin, and those of the nightingale for the rose,pearl-diving, and the virtues of gems,— the cohol, a cosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows are indelibly stained black,— the bladder in which musk is brought, the down of the lip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash,— lilies, roses, tulips, and jasmines,make the staple imagery of persian odes. the persians have epics and tales, but, for the most part, they affect short poems and epigrams. gnomic verses, rules of life conveyed in a lively image, especially in an image addressed to the eye, and contained in a single stanza, were always current in the east; and if the poem is long, it is only a string of unconnected verses. they use an inconsecutiveness quite alarming to western logic, and the connection between the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between the refrain of our old english ballads, persian poetry. 219 “the sun shines fair on carlisle wall,” or “the rain it raineth every day," and the main story. take, as specimens of these gnomic verses, the following: “the secret that should not be blown not one of thy nation must know ; you may padlock the gate of a town, but never the mouth of a foe." or this of omar chiam :“on earth's wide thoroughfares below two only men contented go : who knows what's right and what's forbid, and he from whom is knowledge hid.” here is a poem on a melon, by adsched of meru:“color, taste, and smell, smaragdus, sugar, and musk, amber for the tongue, for the eye a picture rare, if you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a crescent fair,if you leave it whole, the full harvest moon is there." hafiz is the prince of persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts adds to some of the attributes of pindar, anacreon, horace, and burns the insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at nature than belongs to either of these bards. he accosts all topics with an easy audacity. “he only,” he says, “is fit for company, who knows how to prize earthly happiness at the value of a nightcap. our father adam sold paradise for two ker220 persian poetry. nels of wheat; then blame me not, if i hold it dear at one grapestone." he says to the shah, “thou who rulest after words and thoughts which no ear has heard and no mind has thought, abide firm until thy young destiny tears off his blue coat from the old graybeard of the sky.” he says, – “i batter the wheel of heaven when it rolls not rightly by; . i am not one of the snivellers who fall thereon and die." the rapidity of his turns is always surprising us: “see how the roses burn!. bring wine to quench the fire ! alas! the flames come up with us, we perish with desire.” after the manner of his nation, he abounds in pregnant sentences which might be engraved on a sword-blade and almost on a ring. "in honor dies he to whom the great seems ever wonderful.” “here is the sum, that, when one door opens, another shuts." “on every side is an ambush laid by the robbertroops of circumstance; hence it is that the horseman of life urges on his courser at headlong speed.” “the earth is a host who murders his guests." “good is what goes on the road of nature. on the straight way the traveller never misses.” persian poetry. 221 “ alas! till now i had not known my guide and fortune's ġuide are one." “the understanding's copper coin counts not with the gold of love." 66't is writ on paradise's gate, 'woe to the dupe that yields to fate!'" “ the world is a bride superbly dressed ; who weds her for dowry must pay his soul.” “loose the knots of the heart; never think on thy fate: no euclid has yet disentangled that snarl.” “there resides in the grieving a poison to kill ; beware to go near them 'tis pestilent still." harems and wine-shops only give him a new ground of observation, whence to draw sometimes a deeper moral than regulated sober life affords, and this is foreseen :. “i will be drunk and down with wine; treasures we find in a ruined house." riot, he thinks, can snatch from the deeply hidden lot the veil that covers. it :“ to be wise the dull brain so earnestly throbs, bring bands of wine for the stupid head." “the builder of heaven hath sundered the earth, so that no footway leads out of it forth. 222 persian poetry. “on turnpikes of wonder wine leads the mind forth, straight, sidewise, and upward, west, southward, and north. “stands the vault adamantine until the doomsday; the wine-cup shall ferry thee o’er it away." that hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which result from the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the world, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an object of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant, are in hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone. his was the fluent mind in which every thought and feeling came readily to the lips. “loose the knots of the heart," he says. we absorb elements enough, but have not leaves and lungs for healthy perspiration and growth. an air of sterility, of incompetence to their proper aims, belongs to many who have both experience and wisdom. but a large utterance, a river that makes its own shores, quick perception and corresponding expression, a constitution to which every morrow is a new day, which is equal to the needs of life, at once tender and bold, with great arteries, — this generosity of ebb and flow satisfies, and we should be willing to die when our time comes, having had our swing and gratification. the difference is not so much in the persian poetry. 223 quality of men's thoughts as in the power of uttering them. what is pent and smouldered in the dumb actor is not pent in the poet, but passes over into new form, at once relief and creation. the other merit of hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a certificate of profound thought. we accept the religions and politics into which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility of those whom it entangles, — that the mind suffers no religion and no empire but its own. it indicates this respect to absolute truth by the use it makes of the symbols that are most stable and reverend, and therefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion. hypocrisy is the perpetual butt of his arrows. “let us draw the cowl through the brook of wine.” he tells his mistress, that not the dervis, or the monk, but the lover, has in his heart the spirit which makes the ascetic and the saint; and certainly not their cowls and mummeries, but her glances, can impart to him the fire and virtue needful for such self-denial. wrong shall not be wrong to hafiz, for the name's sake. a law or statute is to him what a fence is to a nimble school-boy,a temptation for a jump. “we would do nothing but good, else would shame come to us on the day when the soul must, hie hence; and should they then 224 persian poetry. deny us paradise, the houris themselves would forsake that, and come out to us.” his complete intellectual emancipation he communicates to the reader. there is no example of such facility of allusion, such use of all materials. nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. he fears nothing, he stops for nothing. love is a leveller, and allah becomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to his mistress or to his cupbearer. this boundless charter is the right of genius. we do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to make mystical divinity out of the song of. solomon, much less out of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of hafiz. hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. but the love or the wine of hafiz is not to be confounded with vulgar debauch. it is the spirit in which the song is written that imports, and not the topics. hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy; and lays the emphasis on these to mark his scorn of sanctimony and base prudence. these are the natural topics and language of his wit and perception. but it is the play of wit and the joy of song that he loves; and if you mistake him persian poetry. 225 for a low rioter, he turns short on you with verses which express the poverty of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the most unpalatable affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world. sometimes it is a glance from the height of thought, as thus :“bring wine ; for, in the audience-hall of the souls independence, what is sentinel or sultan? what is the wise man or the intoxicated ?”. and sometimes his feast, feasters, and world are only one pebble more in the eternal vortex and revolution of fate :“i am: what i am my dust will be again.” a saint might lend an ear to the riotous fun of fålstaff; for it is not created to excite the animal appetites, but to vent the joy of a supernal intelligence. in all poetry, pindar's rule holds,ouvetois povei, it speaks to the intelligent; and hafiz is a poet for poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with a parrot's, or, as at other times, with an eagle's quill: every song of hafiz affords new proof of the unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. in general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? yet in the “divan” you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports him better. 10* o 226 persian poetry. " what lovelier forms things wear, now that the shah comes back !" . and again :“ thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down, poises arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear.” it is told of hafiz, that, when he had written a compliment to a handsome youth, “take my heart in thy hand, o beautiful boy of shiraz! i would give for the mole ou thy cheek samarcand and bu. chara!” the verses came to the ears of timour in his palace. timour taxed hafiz with treating disrespectfully his two cities, to raise and adorn which he had conquered nations. hafiz replied, “ alas, my lord, if i had not been so prodigal, i had not been so poor!” the persians had a mode of establishing copyright the most secure of any contrivance with which we are acquainted. the law of the ghaselle, or shorter ode, requires that the poet insert his name in the last stanza. almost every one of several hundreds of poems of hafiz contains his name thus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. it is itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. we remember but two or three examples in english poetry: that of chaucer, in the “house of fame”; jonson's epitaph on his son, “ben jonson his best piece of poetry"; persian poetry. 227 and cowley's, “the melancholy cowley lay.” but it is easy to hafiz. it gives him the opportunity of the most playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun of falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. he tells us, “the angels in heaven were lately learning his last pieces.” he says, “the fishes shed their pearls, out of desire and longing as soon as the ship of hafiz swims the deep." “out of the east, and out of the west, no man understands me; o, the happier i, who confide to none but the wind ! this morning heard i how the lyre of the stars resounded, sweeter tones have we heard from hafiz !'" again, — “i heard the harp of the planet venus, and it said in the early morning, “i am the disciple of the sweetvoiced hafiz !'" and again, “when hafiz sings, the angels hearken, and anaitis, the leader of the starry host, calls even the messiah in heaven out to the dance.” “no one has unvailed thoughts like hafiz, since the locks of the word-bride were first curled.” “only he despises the verse of hafiz who is not himself by nature noble.” but we must try to give some of these poetic 228 persian poetry. flourishes the metrical form which they seem to require:“fit for the pleiads' azure chord the songs i sung, the pearls i bored.” another:“i have no hoarded treasure, yet have i rich content; the first from allah to the shah, the last to hafiz went.” another:“high heart, o hafiz! though not thine fine gold and silver ore ; more worth to thee the gift of song, and the clear insight more." again :“o hafiz! speak not of thy need; are not these verses thine ? then all the poets are agreed, no man can less repine.” he asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. to the vizier returning from mecca he says, – " boast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of thy fortune. thou hast indeed seen the temple ; but i, the lord of the temple. nor has any man inhaled from the muskbladder of the merchant, or from the musky morningwind, that sweet air which i am permitted to breathe every hour of the day.” and with still more vigor in the following lines :“oft have i said, i say it once more, i, a wanderer, do not stray from myself. persian poetry. 229 i am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me; what the eternal says, i stammering say again. give me what you will; i eat thistles as roses, and according to my food i grow and i give. scorn me not, but know i have the pearl, and am only seeking one to receive it.” and his claim has been admitted from the first. the muleteers and camel-drivers, on their way through the desert, sing snatches of his songs, not so much for the thought, as for their joyful temper and tone; and the cultivated persians know his poems by heart. yet hafiz does not appear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholars collected them for the first time after his death. in the following poem the soul is figured as the phænix alighting on tuba, the tree of life:“my phenix long ago secured his nest in the sky-vault's cope; in the body's cage immured, he was weary of life's hope. “round and round this heap of ashes now flies the bird amain, but in that odorous niche of heaven nestles the bird again. "once flies he upward, he will perch on tuba's golden bough; his home is on that fruited arch which cools the blest below. “if over this world of ours his wings my phenix spread, 230 persian poetry. how gracious falls on land and sea the soul-refreshing shade! “either world inhabits he, sees oft below him planets roll; his body is all of air compact, of allah's love his soul.” here is an ode which is said to be a favorite with all educated persians :“come ! – the palace of heaven rests on aëry pillars, — . come, and bring me wine ; our days are wind. i declare myself the slave of that masculine soul which ties and alliance on earth once forever renounces. told i thee yester-morn how the iris of heaven brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy? o high-flying falcon! the tree of life is thy perch; this nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest. hearken ! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven; i cannot divine what holds thee here in a net. i, too, have a counsel for thee ; 0, mark it and keep it, since i received the same from the master above : seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls; a thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride. cumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not, 't is but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us. accept whatever befalls ; uncover thy brow from thy locks; never to me nor to thee was option imparted; neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose. the loving nightingale mourns ; cause enow for mourning ;why envies the bird the streaming verses of hafiz ? know that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech.” the cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, the birds that inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these musky persian poetry. 231 verses, and are always named with effect, “the willows,” he says, “ bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness." we may open anywhere on a floral catalogue. “ by breath of beds of roses drawn, i found the grove in the morning pure, in the concert of the nightingales my drunken brain to cure. “ with unrelated glance i looked the rose in the eye: the rose in the hour of gloaming flamed like a lamp hard-by. “she was of her beauty proud, and prouder of her youth, the while unto her flaming heart the bulbul gave his truth. “ the sweet narcissus closed its eye, with passion pressed ; the tulips out of envy burned moles in their scarlet breast. “ the lilies white prolonged their sworded tongue to the smell; the clustering anemones their pretty secrets tell.” presently we have, — “all day the rain bathed the dark hyacinths in vain, the flood may pour from morn till night nor wash the pretty indians white." and so onward, through many a page. 232 persian poetry. this picture of the first days of spring, from enweri, seems to belong to hafiz:“o'er the garden water goes the wind alone to rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave; the fire is quenched on the dear hearthstone, but it burns again on the tulips brave.” friendship is a favorite topic of the eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of montaigne. hafiz says, – “thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.” ibn jemin writes thus:“whilst i disdain the populace, i find no peer in higher place. friend is a word of royal tone, friend is a poem all alone. wisdom is like the elephant, lofty and rare inhabitant: he dwells in deserts or in courts; with hucksters he has no resorts.” dschami says, "a friend is he, who, hunted as a foe, so much the kindlier shows him than before ; throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw, he builds with stone and steel a firmer floor.” of the amatory poetry of hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations, though it forms the staple of the “divan.” he has run through the whole persian poetry. 233 gamut of passion, from the sacred to the borders, and over the borders, of the profane. the same confusion of high and low, the celerity of flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him. from the plain text, • the chemist of love will this perishing mould, were it made out of mire, transmute into gold," — he proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in his religious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote to afford a token of his mistress. the moon thought she knew her own orbit well enough; but when she saw the curve on zuleika's cheek, she was at a loss :“ and since round lines are drawn my darling's lips about, the very moon looks puzzled on, and hesitates in doubt if the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth be not her true way to the south.” his ingenuity never sleeps :" ah, could i hide me in my song, to kiss thy lips from which it flows !” and plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:“fair fall thy soft heart! a good work wilt thou do ? o, pray for the dead whom thine eyelashes slew !" 234 persian poetry. and what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abode in ! “they strew in the path of kings and czars jewels and gems of price: but for thy head i will pluck down stars, and pave thy way with eyes. “i have sought for thee a costlier dome · than mahmoud's palace high, and thou, returning, find thy home in the apple of love's eye." then we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:“i know this perilous love-lane no whither the traveller leads, yet my fancy the sweet scent of thy tangled tresses feeds. “in the midnight of thy locks, i renounce the day; in the ring of thy rose-lips, my heart forgets to pray." and sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:“plunge in yon angry waves, renouncing doubt and care ; the flowing of the seven broad seas shall never wet thy hair. “is allah's face on thee bending with love benign, and thou not less on allah's eye o fairest ! turnest thine." we add to these fragments of hafiz a few specimens from other poets. persian poetry. 235 nisami. “while roses bloomed along the plain, the nightingale to the falcon said, “why, of all birds, must thou be dumb ? with closed mouth thou utterest, though dying, no last word to man. yet sitt'st thou on the hand of princes, and feedest on the grouse's breast, whilst i, who hundred thousand jewels squander in a single tone, lo! i feed myself with worms, and my dwelling is the thorn.' the falcon answered, “be all ear: i, experienced in affairs, see fifty things, say never one ; but thee the people prizes not, who, doing nothing, say'st a thousand. to me, appointed to the chase, the king's hand gives the grouse's breast; whilst a chatterer like thee must gnaw worms in the thorn. farewell !'”. the following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the persian poets to contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory. enweri. body and soul “a painter in china once painted a hall;such a web never hung on an emperor's wall ; one half from his brush with rich colors did run, the other he touched with a beam of the sun; so that all which delighted the eye in one side, the same, point for point, in the other replied. 236 persian poetry. · “in thee, friend, that tyrian chamber is found ; thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground: is one half depicted with colors less bright? beware that the counterpart blazes with light!". ibn jemin. “i read on the porch of a palace bold in a purple tablet letters cast, 'a house though a million winters old, a house of earth comes down at last; then quarry thy stones from the crystal all, and build the dome that shall not fall.'" “what need,” cries the mystic feisi, “of palaces and tapestry ? · what need even of a bed ? “ the eternal watcher, who doth wake all night in the body's earthen chest, will of thine arms a pillow make, and a bolster of thy breast.” ferideddin attar wrote the “bird conversations,” . a mystical tale, in which the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on a pilgrimage to mount kaf, to pay their homage to the simorg. from this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. the tone is quite modern. in the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and difficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. three only persevered, and arrived before the throne of the simorg. persian poetry. 237 “ the bird-soul was ashamed ; their body was quite annihilated ; they had cleaned themselves from the dust, and were by the light ensouled. what was, and was not, — the past,was wiped out from their breast. the sun from near-by beamed clearest light into their soul; the resplendence of the simorg beamed as one back from all three. they knew not, amazed, if they were either this or that. they saw themselves all as simorg, themselves in the eternal simorg. when to the simorg up they looked, they beheld him among themselves; and when they looked on each other, they saw themselves in the simorg. a single look grouped the two parties, the simorg emerged, the simorg vanished, this in that, and that in this, as the world has never heard. so remained they, sunk in wonder, thoughtless in deepest thinking, and quite unconscious of themselves. speechless prayed they to the highest to open this secret, and to unlock thou and we. there came an answer without tongue. • the highest is a sun-mirror; who comes to him sees himself therein, sees body and soul, and soul and body; when you came to the simorg, three therein appeared to you, and, had fifty of you come, so had you seen yourselves as many. 238 persian poetry. him has none of us yet seen. ants see not the pleiades. can the gnat grasp with his teeth the body of the elephant? what you see is he not; what you hear is he not. the valleys which you traverse, the actions which you perform, they lie under our treatment and among our properties. you as three birds are amazed, impatient, heartless, confused: far over you am i raised, since i am in act simorg. ye blot out my highest being, that ye may find yourselves on my throne; forever ye blot out yourselves, as shadows in the sun. farewell !"" inspiration. inspiration. it was watt who told king george iii. that he dealt in an article of which kings were said to be fond, power. 't is certain that the one thing we wish to know is, where power is to be bought. but we want a finer kind than that of commerce; and every reasonable man would give any price of house and land, and future provision, for condensation, concentration, and the recalling at will of high mental energy. our money is only a second best. we would jump to buy power with it, that is, intellectual perception moving the will. that is first best. but we don't know where the shop is. if watt knew, he forgot to tell us the number of the street. there are times when the intellect is so active that everything seems to run to meet it. its supplies are found without rnuch thought as to studies. knowledge runs to the man, and the man runs to knowledge. in spring, when the snow melts, the maple-trees flow with sugar, and you cannot get tubs fast enough ; but it is only for a few days. the hunter on the prairie, at the 242 inspiration. right season, has no need of choosing his ground; east, west, by the river, by the timber, he is everywhere near his game. but the favorable conditions are rather the exception than the rule. the aboriginal man in geology, and in the dim lights of darwin's microscope, is not an engaging figure. we are very glad that he ate his fishes and snails and marrow-bones out of our sight and hearing, and that his doleful experiences were got through with so very long ago. they combed his mane, they pared his nails, cut off his tail, set him on end, sent him to school, and made him pay taxes, before he could begin to write his sad story for the compassion or the repudiation of his descendants, who are all but unanimous to disown him. we must take him as we find him, — pretty well on in his education, and, in all our knowledge of him, an interesting creature, with a will, an invention, an imagination, a conscience, and an inextinguishable hope. the hunterian law of arrested development is not confined to vegetable and animal structure, but reaches the human intellect also. in the savage man, thought is infantile ; and in the civilized, unequal, and ranging up and down a long scale. in the best races it is rare and imperfect. in happy moments it is reinforced, and carries out what were rude suggestions to larger scope, and to clear and grand conclusions. the poet cannot see inspiration. 243 a natural phenomenon which does not express to him a correspondent fact in his mental experience ; he is made aware of a power to carry on and complete the metamorphosis of natural into spiritual facts. everything which we hear for the first time was expected by the mind; the newest discovery was expected. in the mind we call this enlarged power inspiration. i believe that nothing great and lasting can be done except by inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury. the man's insight and power are interrupted and occasional; he can see and do this or that cheap task at will, but it steads him not beyond. he is fain to make the ulterior step by mechanical means. it cannot so be done. that ulterior step is to be also by inspiration; if not through him, then by another man. every real step is by what a poet called "lyrical glances,” by lyrical facility, and never by main strength and ignorance. years of mechanic toil will only seem to do it; it will not so be done. inspiration is like yeast. t is no matter in which of half a dozen ways you procure the infection; you can apply one or the other equally well to your purpose, and get your loaf of bread. and every earnest workman, in whatever kind, knows some favorable conditions for his task. when i wish to write on any topic, 't is of no consequence what kind of book or man gives me a hint or a motion, nor how far off that is from my topic. 244 inspiration. power is the first good. "rarey can tame a wild horse; but if he could give speed to a dull horse, were not that better? the toper finds, without asking, the road to the tavern, but the poet does not know the pitcher that holds his nectar. every youth should know the way to prophecy as surely as the miller understands how to let on the water or the engineer the steam. a rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us. fine clothes, equipages, villa, park, social consideration, cannot cover up real poverty and insignificance from my own eyes, or from others like mine. thoughts let us into realities. neither miracle, nor magic, nor any religious tradition, not the immortality of the private soul, is incredible, after we have experienced an insight, a thought. i think it comes to some men but once in their life, sometimes a religious impulse, sometimes an intellectual insight. but what we want is consecutiveness. 't is with us a flash of light, then a long darkness, then a flash again. the separation of our days by sleep almost destroys identity. could we but turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy of copernican worlds! with most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together. their house and trade and families serve them as ropes to give a coarse continuity. but they have forgotten the thoughts of yesterday; they say to-day what ocinspiration. 245 . ther sit curs to them, and something else to-morrow. this insecurity of possession, this quick ebb of power,— as if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand, — tantalizes us. we cannot make the inspiration consecutive. a glimpse, a point of view that by its brightness excludes the purview, is granted, but no panorama. a fuller inspiration should cause the point to flow and become a line, should bend the line and complete the circle. today the electric machine will not work, no spark will pass; then presently the world is all a cat's back, all sparkle and shock. sometimes there is no sea-fire, and again the sea is aglow to the horizon. sometimes the æolian harp is dumb all day in the window, and again it is garrulous, and tells all the secrets of the world. in june the morning is noisy with birds; in august they are already getting old and silent. hence arises the question, are these moods in any degree within control? if we knew how to command them! but where is the franklin with kite or rod for this fluid ?-a franklin who can draw off electricity from jove himself, and convey it into the arts.of life, inspire men, take them off their feet, withdraw them from the life of trifles and gain and comfort, and make the world transparent, so that they can read the symbols of nature ? what metaphysician has undertaken to enumerate the tonics of the tornan lden opers i to gain hat a 246 inspiration. pid mind, the rules for the recovery of inspiration ? that is least within control which is best in them. of the modus of inspiration we have no knowledge. but in the experience of meditative men there is a certain agreement as to the conditions of reception. plato, in his seventh epistle, notes that the perception is only accomplished by long familiarity with the objects of intellect, and a life according to the things themselves. “then a light, as if leaping from a fire, will on a sudden be enkindled in the soul, and will then itself nourish itself.” he said again, “the man who is his own master knocks in vain at the doors of poetry.” the artists must be sacrificed to their art. like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. what is a man good for without enthusiasm ? and what is enthusiasm but this daring of ruin for its object? there are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls; we are not the less drawn to them. the moth flies into the flame of the lamp; and swedenborg must solve the problems that haunt him, though he be crazed or killed. there is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'tis the doctrine of faith over works. the raptures of goodness are as old as history and new with this morning's sun. the legends of arabia, persia, and india are of the same complexion as the christian. socrates, menu, confucius, zertusht, we recognize in all of them this ardor to solve the hints of thought. inspiration. 247 i hold that ecstasy will be found normal, or only an example on a higher plane of the same gentle gravitation by which stones fall and rivers run. experience identifies. shakspeare seems to you miraculous; but the wonderful juxtapositions, parallelisms, transfers, which his genius effected were all to him locked together as links of a chain, and the mode precisely as conceivable and familiar to higher intelligence as the index-making of the literary hack. the result of the hack is inconceivable to the type-setter who waits for it. we must prize our own youth. later, we want heat to execute our plans : the good-will, the knowledge, the whole armory of means, are all present; but a certain heat that once used not to fail refuses its office, and all is vain until this capricious fuel is supplied. it seems a semi-animal heat; as if tea, or wine, or sea-air, or mountains, or a genial companion, or a new thought suggested in book or conversation, could fire the train, wake the fancy, and the clear perception. pit-coal, — where to find it? 't is of no use that your engine is made like a watch, — that you are a good workman, and know how to drive it, if there is no coal. we are waiting until some tyrannous idea emerging out of heaven shall seize and bereave us of this liberty with which we are falling abroad. well, we have the same hint or suggestion, day by day. "i-am not,” says the man," at the top of my condition to-day, but the 248 inspiration. favorable hour will come when i can command all my powers, and when that will be easy to do which is at this moment impossible.” see how the passions augment our force, — anger, love, ambition ! sometimes sympathy, and the expectation of men. garrick said, that on the stage his great paroxysms surprised himself as much as his audience. if this is true on this low plane, it is true on the higher. swedenborg's genius was the perception of the doctrine " that the lord flows into the spirits of angels and of men ”; and all poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves, — when a light, a freedom, a power came to them, which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times; so that a religious poet once told me that “he valued his poems, not because they were his, but because they were not." he thought the angels brought them to him. jacob behmen said: “art has not wrote here, nor was there any time to consider how to set it punctually down according to the right understanding of the letters, but all was ordered according to the direction of the spirit, which often went on haste, so that the penman's hand, by reason he was not accustomed to it, did often shake. and, though i could have written in a more accurate, fair, and plain manner, the burning fire often forced forward with speed, and the hand and pen must inspiration. 249 hasten directly after it, for it comes and goes as a sudden shower. in one quarter of an hour i saw and knew more, than if i had been many years together at an university.” the depth of the notes which we accidentally sound on the strings of nature is out of all proportion to our taught and ascertained faculty, and might teach us what strangers and novices we are, vagabond in this universe of pure power, to which we have only the smallest key. herrick said :gre hare sa 163 ps en se “ 't is not every day that i fitted am to prophesy; no, but when the spirit fills the fantastic panicles, full of fire, then i write as the goddess doth indite. thus, enraged, my lines are hurled, like the sibyl's, through the world: look how next the holy fire either slakes, or doth retire; so the fancy cools, — till when that brave spirit comes again." dhe ti thogen wrote te t to see ped so bonaparte said : “ there is no man more pusillanimous than i, when i make a military plan. i magnify all the dangers, and all the possible mischances. i am in an agitation utterly painful. that does not prevent me from appearing quite serene to the persons who surround me. i am like a woman with child, and when my resolution is taken, all is forgot, except whatever can make it succeed.” 12 250 inspiration. there are, to be sure, certain risks in this presentiment of the decisive perception, as in the use of ether or alcohol. “great wits to madness nearly are allied; both serve to make our poverty our pride." aristotle said : “no great genius was ever without some mixture of madness, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken except by the agitated soul.” we might say of these memorable moments of life, that we were in them, not they in us. we found ourselves by happy fortune in an illuminated portion or meteorous zone, and passed out of it again, so aloof was it from any will of ours. “'t is a principle of war," said napoleon, “ that when you can use the lightning, 't is better than cannon.” how many sources of inspiration can we count? as many as our affinities. but to a practical purpose we may reckon a few of these. 1. health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air, landscape, and bodily exercise on the mind. the arabs say that “allah does not count from life the days spent in the chase," that is, those are thrown in. plato thought “exercise would almost cure a guilty conscience." sydney smith said: “you will never break down in a speech on the day when you have walked twelve miles.” i honor health as the first muse, and sleep as inspiration. 251 the condition of health. sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped. life is in short cycles or periods; we are quickly tired, but we have rapid rallies. a man is spent by his work, starved, prostrate; he will not lift his hand to save his life; he can never think more. he sinks into deep sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with hope, courage, fertile in resources, and keen for daring adventure. “sleep is like death, and after sleep the world seems new begun ; white thoughts stand luminous and firm, like statues in the sun ; refreshed from supersensuous founts, the soul to clearer vision mounts." * a man must be able to escape from his cares and fears, as well as from hunger and want of sleep; so that another arabian proverb has its coarse truth : “when the belly is full, it says to the head, sing, fellow !” the perfection of writing is when mind and body are both in key; when the mind finds perfect obedience in the body. and wine, no doubt, and all fine food, as of delicate fruits, furnish some elemental wisdom. and the fire, too, as it burns in the chimney; for i fancy that my logs, which have grown so long in sun and wind * allingham. 252 inspiration. by walden, are a kind of muses. so of all the particulars of health and exercise, and fit nutriment, and tonics. some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. 2. the experience of writing letters is one of the keys to the modus of inspiration. when we have ceased for a long time to have any fulness of thoughts that once made a diary a joy as well as a necessity, and have come to believe that an image or a happy turn of expression is no longer at our command, in writing a letter to a friend we may find that we rise to thought and to a cordial power of expression that costs no effort, and it seems to us that this facility may be indefinitely applied and resumed. the wealth of the mind in this respect of seeing is like that of a looking-glass, which is never tired or worn by any multitude of objects which it reflects. you may carry it all round the world, it is ready and perfect as ever for new millions. 3. another consideration, though it will not so much interest young men, will cheer the heart of older scholars, namely, that there is diurnal and secular rest. as there is this daily renovation of sensibility, so it sometimes, if rarely, happens that after a season of decay or eclipse, darkening months or years, the faculties revive to their fullest force. one of the best facts i know in metaphysinspiration. 253 ical science is niebuhr's joyful-record that, after his genius for interpreting history had failed him for several years, this divination returned to him. as this rejoiced me, so does herbert's poem “the flower.” his health had broken down early, he had lost his muse, and in this poem he says:“and now in age i bud again, after so many deaths i live and write ; i once more smell the dew and rain, and relish versing : o my only light, it cannot be that i am he on whom thy tempests fell all night.” his poem called “the forerunners ” also has supreme interest. i understand “the harbingers ” to refer to the signs of age and decay which he detects in himself, not only in his constitution, but in his fancy and his facility and grace in writing verse; and he signalizes his delight in this skill, and his pain that the herricks, lovelaces, and marlows, or whoever else, should use the like genius in language to sensual purpose, and consoles himself that his own faith and the divine life in him remain to him unchanged, unharmed. 4. the power of the will is sometimes sublime; and what is will for, if it cannot help us in emergencies ? seneca says of an almost fatal sickness that befell him, “the thought of my father, who could not have sustained such a blow as my death, 254 inspiration. restrained me; i commanded myself to live." goethe said to eckermann, “i work more easily when the barometer is high than when it is low. since i know this, i endeavor, when the barometer is low, to counteract the injurious effect by greater exertion, and my attempt is successful.” “to the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift.” yes, for they know how to give you in one moment the solution of the riddle you have pondered for months. “had i not lived with mirabeau,” says dumont, “i' never should have known all that can be done in one day, or, rather, in an interval of twelve hours. a day to him was of more value than a week or a month to others. to-morrow to him was not the same impostor as to most others.” 5. plutarch affirms that “souls are naturally endowed with the faculty of prediction, and the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtue is a certain temperature of air and winds.” my anchorite thought it “sad that atmospheric influences should bring to our dust the communion of the soul with the infinite." but i am glad that the atmosphere should be an excitant, glad to find the dull rock itself to be deluged with deity,— to be theist, christian, poetic. the fine influences of the morning few can explain, but all will admit. goethe acknowledges them in the poem in which he dislodges the nightingale from her place as leader of the muses. inspiration. 255 musagetes. “often in deep midnights i called on the sweet muses. no dawn shines, and no day will appear: but at the right hour the lamp brings me pious light, that it, instead of aurora or phæbus, may enliven my quiet industry. but they left me lying in sleep dull, and not to be enlivened, and after every late morning followed unprofitable days. “when now the spring stirred, i said to the nightingales : dear nightingales, trill early, 0, early before my lattice, wake me out of the deep sleep which mightily chains the young man.' but the love-filled singers poured by night before my window their sweet melodies, kept awake my dear soul, roused tender new longings in my lately touched bosom, and so the night passed, and aurora found me sleeping ; yea, hardly did the sun wake me. at last it has become summer, and at the first glimpse of morning the busy early fly stings me out of my sweet slumber. unmerciful she returns again: when often the half-awake victim 256 inspiration. impatiently drives her off, she calls hither the unscrupulous sisters, and from my eyelids sweet sleep must depart. vigorous, i spring from my couch, seek the beloved muses, find them in the beech grove, pleased to receive me; and i thank the annoying insect for many a golden hour. stand, then, for me, ye tormenting creatures, highly praised by the poet as the true musagetes." the french have a proverb to the effect that not the day only, but all things have their morning, — “il n'y a que le matin en toutes choses.” and it is a primal rule to defend your morning, to keep all its dews on, and with fine foresight to relieve it from any jangle of affairs, even from the question, which task? i remember a capital prudence of old president quincy, who told me that he never went to bed at night until he had laid out the studies for the next morning. i believe that in our good days a well-ordered mind has a new thought awaiting it every morning. and hence, eminently thoughtful men, from the time of pythagoras down, have insisted on an hour of solitude every day to meet their own mind, and learn what oracle it has to impart. if a new view of life or mind gives us joy, so does new arrangement. i don't know but we take as much delight in finding the right place for an old observation, as in a new thought. inspiration. 257 6. solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, the october woods! i confide that my reader knows these delicious secrets, has perhaps “slighted minerva's learned tongue, but leaped with joy when on the wind the shell of clio rung.” are you poetical, impatient of trade, tired of labor and affairs ? do you want monadnoc, agiocochook, or helvellyn, or plinlimmon, dear to english song, in your closet ? caerleon, provence, ossian, and cadwallon? tie a couple of strings across a board and set it in your window, and you have an instrument which no artist's harp can rival. it needs no instructed ear; if you have sensibility, it admits you to sacred interiors; it has the sadness of nature, yet, at the changes, tones of triumph and festal notes ringing out all measures of loftiness. "did you never observe,” says gray, “while rocking winds are piping loud,' that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an æolian harp? i do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit.” perhaps you can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, when you have stood by a lake in the woods, in summer, and saw where little flaws of wind whip spots or patches of still water into fleets of ripples, so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it was more 258 inspiration. uay. like the rippling of the aurora borealis, at night, than any spectacle of day. 7. but the solitude of nature is not so essential as solitude of habit. i have found my advantage in going in summer to a country inn, in winter to a city hotel, with a task which would not prosper at home. i thus secured a more absolute seclusion; for it is almost impossible for a housekeeper, who is in the country a small farmer, to exclude interruptions, and even necessary orders, though i bar out by system all i can, and resolutely omit, to my constant damage, all that can be omitted. at home, the day is cut into short strips. in the hotel, i have no hours to keep, no visits to make or receive, and i command an astronomic leisure. i forget rain, wind, cold, and heat. at home, i remember in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too much sympathy. i envy the abstraction of some scholars i have known, who could sit on a curbstone in state street, put up their back, and solve their problem. i have more womanly eyes. all the conditions must be right for my success, slight as that is. what untunes is as bad as what cripples or stuns me. novelty, surprise, change of scene, refresh the artist, — "break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms," as hafiz said. the sea-shore, and the taste of two metals in contact, and our enlarged powers in the presence, or rather at the approach and at the departure of a friend, inspiration. 259 et meg , to it the bite of the and the mixture of lie in truth, and the experience of poetic creativeness which is not found in staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one to the other, which must therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitional surface as possible, — these are the types or conditions of this power. “a ride near the sea, a sail near the shore,” said the ancient. so montaigne travelled with his books, but did not read in them. “ la nature aime les croisements,” says fourier. " i know there is room for whims here; but in regard to some apparent trifles there is great agreement as to their annoyance. and the machine with which we are dealing is of such an inconceivable delicacy that whims also must be respected. fire must lend its aid. we not only want time, but warm time. george sand says, “i have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.” and i remember that thoreau, with his robust will, yet found certain trifles disturbing the delicacy of that health which composition exacted, — namely, the slightest irregularity, even to the drinking too much water on the preceding day. even a steel pen is a nuisance to some writers. some of us may remember, years ago, in the english journals, the petition, signed by carlyle, browning, tennyson, dickens, and other writers in london, against the license of the organgrinders, who infested the streets near their houses, to levy on them blackmail. remes t bermain anlser suchein somed d. i rather 260 inspiration. certain localities, as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the shores of rivers and rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, where the ground is smooth and unencumbered, are excitants of the muse. every artist knows well some favorite retirement. and yet the experience of some good artists has taught them to prefer the smallest and plainest chamber, with one chair and table, and with no outlook, to these picturesque liberties. william blake said, “natural objects always did and do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me.” and sir joshua reynolds had no pleasure in richmond; he used to say "the human face was his landscape.” these indulgences are to be used with great caution. allston rarely left his studio by day. an old friend took him, one fine afternoon, a spacious circuit into the country, and he painted two or three pictures as the fruits of that drive. but he made it a rule not to go to the city on two consecutive days. one was rest; more was lost time. the times of force must be well husbanded, and the wise student will remember the prudence of sir tristram in morte d'arthur, who, having received from the fairy an enchantment of six hours of growing strength every day, took care to fight in the hours when his strength increased; since from noon to night his strength abated. what prudence, again, does every artist, every scholar, need in the security of his easel or his desk! these must be inspiration. 261 weakens groente remote from the work of the house, and from all knowledge of the feet that come and go therein. allston, it is said, had two or three rooms in different parts of boston, where he could not be found. for the delicate muses lose their head, if their attention is once diverted. perhaps if you were successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your book-shelf and your task. when the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, and you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. the moth must fly to the lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die. 8. conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications. not aristotle, not kant or hegel, but conversation, is the right metaphysical professor. this is the true school of philosophy, — this the college where you learn what thoughts are, what powers lurk in those fugitive gleams, and what becomes of them; how they make history. a wise man goes to this game to play upon others, and to be played upon, and at least as curious to know what can be drawn from himself as what can be drawn from them. for, in discourse with a friend, our thought, hitherto wrapped in our consciousness, detaches itself, and allows itself to be seen as a thought, in a manner as new and entertaining to us as to our companions. for provocaa gre but les o come ence de tv 2 :hons ince prudens d in the must be 262 inspiration. tion of thought, we use ourselves and use each other. some perceptions — i think the best — are granted to the single soul; they come from the depth, and go to the depth, and are the permanent and controlling ones. others it takes two to find. we must be warmed by the fire of sympathy to be brought into the right conditions and angles of vision. conversation; for intellectual activity is contagious. we are emulous. if the tone of the companion is higher than ours, we delight in rising to it. 'tis a historic observation that a writer must find an audience up to his thought, or he will no longer care to impart it, but will sink to their level, or be silent. homer said, “when two come together, one apprehends before the other”; but it is because one thought well that the other thinks better: and two men of good mind will excite each other's activity, each attempting still to cap the other's thought. in enlarged conversation we have suggestions that require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and sciences. · by sympathy, each opens to the eloquence, and begins to see with the eyes of his mind. we were all lonely, thoughtless; and now a principle appears to all: we see new relations, many truths; every mind seizes them as they pass ; each catches by the mane one of these strong coursers like horses of the prairie, and rides up and down in the world of the intellect. we live day by day under the illusion that it is the inspiration. 263 fact or event that imports, whilst really it is not that which signifies, but the use we put it to, or what we think of it. we esteem nations important, until we discover that a few individuals much more concern us; then, later, that it is not at last a few · individuals, or any sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the large equality to truth, of a single mind, as if in the narrow walls of a human heart the whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by which the universe is judged, found room to exist. 9. new poetry; by which i mean chiefly, old poetry that is new to the reader. i have heard from persons who had practice in rhyming, that it was sufficient to set them on writing verses, to read any original poetry. what is best in literature is the affirming, prophesying, spermatic words of menmaking poets. only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me. words used in a new sense, and figuratively, dart a delightful lustre; and every word admits a new use, and hints ulterior meanings. we have not learned the law of the mind, -cannot control and domesticate at will the high states of contemplation and continuous thought. “neither by sea nor by land,” said pindar, “canst thou find the way to the hyperboreans”; neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of three or rule of thumb. yet i find a mitigation or solace by providing always 264 inspiratios. a good book for my journeys, as horace or vartial or goethe, some book which lifts me quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which i draw some lasting knowledge. a greek epigram out of the anthology, a verse of herrick or lovelace, are in harmony both with sense and spirit. you shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor montaigne, nor the newest french book. you may read plutarch, plato, plotinus, hindoo mythology, and ethics. you may read chaucer, shakspeare, ben jonson, milton,and milton's prose as his verse; read collins and gray; read hafiz and the trouveurs ; nay, welsh and british mythology of arthur, and (in your ear) ossian; factbooks, which all geniuses prize as raw material, and as antidote to verbiage and false poetry. factbooks, if the facts be well and thoroughly told, are much more nearly allied to poetry than many books are that are written in rhyme. only our newest knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought, as only the outmost layer of liber on the tree. books of natural science, especially those written by the ancients,-geography, botany, agriculture, explorations of the sea, of meteors, of astronomy,-all the better if written without literary aim or ambition. every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood. the deep book, no matter how remote the subject, helps us best. inspiration. 265 neither are these all the sources, nor can i name all. the receptivity is rare. the occasions or predisposing circumstances i could never tabulate ; but now one, now another landscape, form, color, or companion, or perhaps one kind of sounding word or syllable, “ strikes the electric chain with which we are darkly bound,” and it is impossible to detect and wilfully repeat the fine conditions to which we have owed our happiest frames of mind. the day is good in which we have had the most perceptions. the analysis is the more difficult, because poppyleaves are strewn when a generalization is made ; for i can never. remember the circumstances to which i owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put myself in the conditions. “'t is the most difficult of tasks to keep heights which the soul is competent to gain." i value literary biography for the hints it furnishes from so many scholars, in so many countries, of what hygiene, what ascetic, what gymnastic, what social practices their experience suggested and approved. they are, for the most part, men who needed only a little wealth. large estates, political relations, great hospitalities, would have been impediments to them. they are men whom a book could entertain, a new thought intoxicate, and hold them prisoners for years perhaps. aubrey and burton and wood tell me incidents which i find not insignificant. 12 266 inspiration. these are some hints towards what is in all education a chief necessity, the right government, or, shall i not say, the right obedience to the powers of the human soul. itself is the dictator; the mind itself the awful oracle. all our power, all our happiness, consists in our reception of its hints, which ever become clearer and grander as they are obeyed. greatness. greatness. there is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and goodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. every human being has a right to it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other's way. for it has a long scale of degrees, a wide variety of views, and every aspirant, by his success in the pursuit, does not hinder but helps his competitors. i might call it completeness, but that is later,— perhaps adjourned for ages. i prefer to call it greatness. it is the fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. it is a fruitful study. it is the best tonic to the young soul. and no man is unrelated; therefore we admire eminent men, not for themselves, but as representatives. it is very certain that we ought not to be, and shall not be contented with any goal we have reached. our aim is no less than greatness; that which invites all, belongs to us all, to which we are all sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quite despair, and which, in every sane moment, we resolve to make our own. it is also the only plat270 greatness. form on which all men can meet. what anecdotes of any mąn do we wish to hear or read ? only the best. certainly not those in which he was degraded to the level of dulness or vice, but those in which he rose above all competition by obeying a light that shone to him alone. this is the worthiest history of the world. greatness — what is it? is there not some injury to us, some insult in the word? what we commonly call greatness is only such in our barbarous or infant experience. 'tis not the soldier, not alexander or bonaparte or count moltke surely, who represent the highest force of mankind; not the strong hand, but wisdom and civility, the creation of laws, institutions, letters, and art. these we call by distinction the humanities; these, and not the strong arm and brave heart, which are also indispensable to their defence. for the scholars represent the intellect, by which man is man; the intellect and the moral sentiment, — which in the last analysis can never be separated. who can doubt the potency of an individual mind, who sees the shock given to torpid races — torpid for ages — by mahomet; a vibration propagated over asia and africa? what of menu ? what of buddha ? of shakspeare? of newton ? of franklin ? there are certain points of identity in which these masters agree. self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears. the man in the tavgreatness. 271 ern maintains his opinion, though the whole crowd takes the other side; we are at once drawn to him. the porter or truckman refuses a reward for finding your purse, or for pulling you drowning out of the river. thereby, with the service, you have got a moral lift. you say of some new person, that man will go far, — for you see in his manners that the recognition of him by others is not necessary to him. and what a bitter-sweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgment of a man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our good opinion! they may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim; but he who rests on what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and can make mouths at fortune. if a man's centrality is incomprehensible to us, we may as well snub the sun. there is something in archimedes or in luther or samuel johnson that needs no protection. there is somewhat in the true scholar which he cannot be laughed out of, nor be terrified or bought off from. stick to your own; don't inculpate yourself in the local, social, or national crime, but follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven, for you to walk in. a sensible person will soon see the folly and wickedness of thinking to please. sensible men are very rare. a sensible man does not brag, avoids introducing the names of his creditable companions, omits himself as habitually as another 272 greatness. man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is content with putting his fact or theme simply on its ground. you shall not tell me that your commercial house, your partners, or yourself are of importance; you shall not tell me that you have learned to know men; you shall make me feel that; your saying so unsays it. you shall not enumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles what books you have read. i am to infer that you keep good company by your better information and manners, and to infer your reading from the wealth and accuracy of your conversation. young men think that the manly character requires that they should go to california, or to india, or into the army. when they have learned that the parlor and the college and the counting-room demand as much courage as the sea or the camp, they will be willing to consult their own strength and education in their choice of place. there are to each function and department of nature supplementary men: to geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a taste for mountains and rocks, à quick eye for differences and for chemical changes. give such, first, a course in chemistry, and then a geological survey. others find a charm and a profession in the natural history of man and the mammalia, or related animals; others in ornithology, or fishes, or insects; others in plants ; greatness. 273 others in the elements of which the whole world is made. these lately have stimulus to their study through the extraordinary revelations of the spectroscope that the sun and the planets are made in part or in whole of the same elements as the earth is. then there is the boy who is born with a taste for the sea, and must go thither if he has to run away from his father's house to the forecastle; another longs for travel in foreign lands; another will be a lawyer; another, an astronomer; another, a painter, sculptor, architect, or engineer. thus there is not a piece of nature in any kind, but a man is born, who, as his genius opens, aims slower or faster to dedicate himself to that. then there is the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the orator, the clergyman, the physician. 'tis gratifying to see this adaptation of man to the world, and to every part and particle of it. many readers remember that sir humphry davy said, when he was praised for his important discoveries, “my best discovery was michael faraday.” in 1848 i had the privilege of hearing professor faraday deliver, in the royal institution in london, a lecture on what he called diamagnetism,by which he meant cross-magnetism ; and he showed us various experiments on certain gases, to prove that whilst, ordinarily, magnetism of steel is from north to south, in other substances, gases, it acts from east to west. and further experiments led him to 12* 274 greatness. the theory that every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and a different, polarity. i do not know how far his experiments and others have been pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, that diamagnetism is a law of the mind, to the full extent of faraday's idea; namely, that every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind;as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character. whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him in a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. we call this specialty the bias of each individual. and none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. swedenborg called it the proprium,not a thought shared with others, but constitutional to the man. a point of education that i can never too much insist upon is this tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and that it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. it is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction greatness. 275 to his proper path, with more or less variation from any other man's. he is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights that come. to him, and to have the entire assurance of his own mind. and in this selfrespect, or hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, i may say, or need never be at a loss. in morals this is conscience; in intellect, genius; in practice, talent; — not to imitate or surpass a particular man in his way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method, style, wit, eloquence. 'tis easy for a commander to command. clinging to nature, or to that province of nature which he knows, he makes no mistakes, but works after her laws and at her own pace, so that his doing, which is perfectly natural, appears miraculous to dull people. montluc, the great marshal of france, says of the genoese admiral, andrew doria, “it seemed as if the sea stood in awe of this man.” and a kindred genius, nelson, said, “i feel that i am fitter to do the action than to describe it.” therefore i will say that another trait of greatness is facility. this necessity of resting on the real, of speaking your private thought and experience, few young men apprehend. set ten men to write their journal for one day, and nine of them will leave out their thought, or proper result, that is, their net experi276 greatness. ence,and lose themselves in misreporting the supposed experience of other people. indeed, i think it an essential caution to young writers, that they shall not in their discourse leave out the one thing which the discourse was written to say. let that belief which you hold alone, have free course. i have observed that, in all public speaking, the rule of the orator begins, not in the array of his facts, but when his deep conviction, and the right and necessity he feels to convey that conviction to his audience, — when these shine and burn in his address; when the thought which he stands for gives its own authority to him, — adds to him a grander personality, gives him valor, breadth, and new intellectual power, so that not he, but mankind, seems to speak through his lips. there is a certain transfiguration; all great orators have it, and men who wish to be orators simulate it. if we should ask ourselves what is this self-respect, — it would carry us to the highest problems. it is our practical perception of the deity in man. it has its deep foundations in religion. if you have ever known a good mind among the quakers, you will have found that is the element of their faith. as they express it, it might be thus : "i do not pretend to any commandment or large revelation, but if at any time i form some plan, propose a journey, or a course of conduct, i perhaps find a silent obstacle in my mind that i cannot account for. very * greatness. 277 well, — i let it lie, thinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away, i yield to it, obey it. you · ask me to describe it. i cannot describe it. it is not an oracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law ; it is too simple to be described, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it is something which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, and which the consent of all mankind could not confirm.” you are rightly fond of certain books or men that you have found to excite your reverence and emulation. but none of these can compare with the greatness of that counsel which is open to you in happy solitude. i mean that there is for you the following of an inward leader, — a slow discrimination that there is for each a best counsel which enjoins the fit word and the fit act for every moment. and the path of each pursued leads to greatness. how grateful to find in man or woman a new emphasis of their own. but if the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept that work for which you were inwardly formed, the second rule is concentration, which doubles its force. thus if you are a scholar, be that. the same laws hold for you as for the laborer. the shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else. let the student mind his own charge; sedulously wait every morning for the news concerning the structure of the world which the spirit will give him. 278 greatness. no way has been found for making heroism easy, even for the scholar. labor, iron labor, is for him. the world was created as an audience for him; the atoms of which it is made are opportunities. read the performance of bentley, of gibbon, of cuvier, geoffroy st. hilaire, laplace. “he can toil terribly,” said cecil of sir walter raleigh. these few words sting and bite and lash us when we are frivolous. let us get out of the way of their blows, by making them true of ourselves. there is so much to be done that we ought to begin quickly to bestir ourselves. this day-labor of ours, we confess, has hitherto a certain emblematic air, like the annual ploughing and sowing of the emperor of china. let us make it an honest sweat. let the scholar measure his valor by his power to cope with intellectual giants. leave others to count votes and calculate stocks. his courage is to weigh plato, judge laplace, know newton, faraday, judge of darwin, criticise kant and swedenborg, and on all these arouse the central courage of insight. the scholar's courage should be as terrible as the cid's, though it grow out of spiritual nature, not out of brawn. nature, when she adds difficulty, adds brain. with this respect to the bias of the individual mind, add, what is consistent with it, the most catholic receptivity for the genius of others. the day will come when no badge, uniform, or greatness. 279 medal will be worn; when the eye, which carries in it planetary influences from all the stars, will indicate rank fast enough by exerting power. for it is true that the stratification of crusts in geology is not more precise than the degrees of rank in minds. a man will say: 'i am born to this position; i must take it, and neither you nor i can help or hinder me. surely, then, i need not fret myself to guard my own dignity. the great man loves the conversation or the book that convicts him, not that which soothes or flatters him. he makes himself of no reputation; he conceals his learning, conceals his charity. for the highest wisdom does not concern itself with particular men, but with man enamored with the law and the eternal source. say with antoninus, “if the picture is good, who cares who made it? what matters it by whom the good is done, by yourself or another ?” if it is the truth, what matters who said it? if it was right, what signifies who did it? all greatness is in degree, and there is more above than below. where were your own intellect, if greater had not lived ? and do you know what the right meaning of fame is ? 'tis that sympathy, rather that fine element by which the good become partners of the greatness of their superiors. extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility. no aristocrat, 280 greatness. no prince born to the purple, can begin to compare with the self-respect of the saint. why is he so lowly, but that he knows that he can well afford it, resting on the largeness of god in him ? i have read in an old book that barcena, the jesuit, confessed to another of his order that when the devil appeared to him in his cell, one night, out of his profound humility he rose up to meet him, and prayed him to sit down in his chair, for he was more worthy to sit there than himself. shall i tell you the secret of the true scholar? it is this : every man i meet is my master in some point, and in that i learn of him. the populace will say, with horne tooke, “if you would be powerful, pretend to be powerful.” i prefer to say, with the old hebrew prophet, “seekest thou great things ? — seek them not”; or, what was said of the spanish prince, “the more you took from him, the greater he appeared,” plus on lui ôte, plus il est grand. scintillations of greatness appear here and there in men of unequal character, and are by no means confined to the cultivated and so-called moral class. 'tis easy to draw traits from napoleon, who was not generous nor just, but was intellectual, and knew the law of things. napoleon commands our respect by his enormous self-trust, — the habit of seeing with his own eyes, never the surface, but to the heart of the matter, whether it greatness. 281 was a road, a cannon, a character, an officer, or a king, — and by the speed and security of his action in the premises, always new. he has left a library of manuscripts, a multitude of sayings, every one of widest application. he was a man who always fell on his feet. when one of his favorite schemes missed, he had the faculty of taking up his genius, as he said, and of carrying it somewhere else. “whatever they may tell you, believe that one fights with cannon as with fists; when once the fire is begun, the least want of ammunition renders what you have done already useless." i find it easy to translate all his technics into all of mine, and his official advices are to me more literary and philosophical than the memoirs of the academy. his advice to his brother, king joseph of spain, was: “i have only one counsel for you, — be master.” depth of intellect relieves even the ink of crime with a fringe of light. we perhaps look on its crimes as experiments of a universal student; as he may read any book who reads all books, and as the english judge in old times, when learning was rare, forgave a culprit who could read and write. 'tis difficult to find greatness pure. well, i please myself with its diffusion, — to find a spark of true fire amid much corruption. it is some guaranty, i hope, for the health of the soul which has this generous blood. how many men, detested in contemporary hostile history, of whom, 282 greatness. now that the mists have rolled away, we have learned to correct our old estimates, and to see them as, on the whole, instruments of great benefit. diderot was no model, but unclean as the society in which he lived; yet was he the best-natured man in france, and would help any wretch at a pinch. his humanity knew no bounds. a poor scribbler who had written a lampoon against him, and wished to dedicate it to a pious duc d'orleans, came with it in his poverty to diderot, and diderot, pitying the creature, wrote the dedication for him, and so raised five-and-twenty louis to save his famishing lampooner alive. meantime we hate snivelling. i do not wish you to surpass others in any narrow or professional or monkish way. we like the natural greatness of health and wild power. i confess that i am as much taken by it in boys, and sometimes in people not normal, nor educated, nor presentable, nor church-members, — even in persons open to the suspicion of irregular and immoral living, in bohemians, — as in more orderly examples. for we must remember that in the lives of soldiers, sailors, and men of large adventure, many of the stays and guards of our household life are wanting, and yet the opportunities and incentives to sublime daring and performance are often close at hand. we must have some charity for the sense of the people which admires natural power, and will elect greatness. 283 it over virtuous men who have less. it has this excuse, that natural is really allied to moral power, and may always be expected to approach it by its own instincts. intellect at least is not stupid, and will see the force of morals over men, if it does not itself obey. henry vii. of england was a wise king. when gerald, earl of kildare, who was in rebellion against him, was brought to london, and examined before the privy council, one said, “all ireland cannot govern this earl.” “then let this earl govern all ireland,” replied the king. 'tis noted of some scholars, like swift, and gibbon and donne, that they pretended to vices which they had not, so much did they hate hypocrisy. william blake, the artist, frankly says, “i never knew a bad man in whom there was not something very good.” bret harte has pleased himself with noting and recording the sudden virtue blazing in the wild reprobates of the ranches and mines of california. men are ennobled by morals and by intellect; but those two elements know each other and always beckon to each other, until at last they meet in the man, if he is to be truly great. the man who sells you a lamp shows you that the flame of oil, which contented you before, casts a strong shade in the path of the petroleum which he lights behind it; and this again casts a shadow in the path of the electric light. so does intellect when brought into 284 greatness. the presence of character; character puts out that light. goethe, in his correspondence with his grand duke of weimar, does not shine. we can see that the prince had the advantage of the olympian genius. it is more plainly seen in the correspondence between voltaire and frederick of prussia. voltaire is brilliant, nimble, and various, but frederick has the superior tone. but it is curious that byron writes down to scott; scott writes up to him. the greeks surpass all men till they face the romans, when roman character prevails over greek genius. whilst degrees of intellect interest only classes of men who pursue the same studies, as chemists or astronomers, mathematicians or lin-guists, and have no attraction for the crowd, there are always men who have a more catholic genius, are really great as men, and inspire universal enthusiasm. a great style of hero draws equally all classes, all the extremes of society, till we say the very dogs believe in him. we have had such examples in this country, in daniel webster, henry clay, and the seamen's preacher, father taylor; in england, charles james fox; in scotland, robert burns; and in france, though it is less intelligible to us, voltaire. abraham lincoln is perhaps the most remarkable example of this class that we have seen, — a man who was at home and welcome with the humblest, and with a spirit and a practical vein in the times of terror that commanded the admiragreatness. 285 tion of the wisest. his heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. these may serve as local examples to indicate a magnetism which is probably known better and finer to each scholar in the little olympus of his own favorites, and which makes him require geniality and humanity in his heroes. what are these but the promise and the preparation of a day when the air of the world shall be purified by nobler society; when the measure of greatness shall be usefulness in the highest sense, greatness consisting in truth, reverence, and good-will ? life is made of illusions, and a very common one is the opinion you hear expressed in every village: o yes, if i lived in new york or philadelphia, cambridge or new haven or boston or andover there might be fit society ; but it happens that there are no fine young men, no superior women in my town.' you may hear this every day; but it is a shallow remark. ah! have you yet to learn that the eye altering alters all ; " that the world is an echo which returns to each of us what we say”? 'tis not examples of greatness, but sensibility to see them, that is wanting. the good botanist will find flowers between the street pavements, and any man filled with an idea or a purpose will find examples and illustrations and coadjutors wherever he goes. wit is a magnet to find 286 greatness. wit, and character to find character. do you not know that people are as those with whom they converse ? and if all or any are heavy to me, that fact accuses me. why complain, as if a man's debt to his inferiors were not at least equal to his debt to his superiors ? if men were equals, the waters would not move; but the difference of level which makes niagara a cataract, makes eloquence, indignation, 'poetry, in him who finds there is much to communicate. with self-respect, then, there must be in the aspirant the strong fellow-feeling, the humanity, which makes men of all classes warm to him as their leader and representative. we are thus forced to express our instinct of the truth, by exposing the failures of experience. the man whom we have not seen, in whom no regard of self degraded the adorer of the laws, — who by governing himself governed others; sportive in manner, but inexorable in act; who sees longevity in his cause; whose aim is always distinct to him; who is suffered to be himself in society; who carries fate in his eye;— he it is whom we seek, encouraged in every good hour that here or hereafter he shall be found. immortality. immortality. in the year 626 of our era, when edwin, the anglo-saxon king, was deliberating on receiving the christian missionaries, one of his nobles said to him: “the present life of man, o king, compared with that space of time beyond, of which we have no certainty, reminds me of one of your winter feasts, where you sit with your generals and ministers. the hearth blazes in the middle and a grateful heat is spread around, while storms of rain and snow are raging without. driven by the chilling tempest, a little sparrow enters at one door and flies delighted around us till it departs through the other. whilst it stays in our mansion it feels not the winter storm; but when this short moment of happiness has been enjoyed, it is forced again into the same dreary tempest from which it had escaped, and we behold it no more. such is the life of man, and we are as ignorant of the state which preceded our present existence as of that which will follow it. things being so i feel that if this new faith can give us more certainty, it deserves to be received.” 13 290 immortality. in the first records of a nation in any degree thoughtful and cultivated, some belief in the life beyond life would of course be suggested. the egyptian people furnish us the earliest details of an established civilization, and i read, in the second book of herodotus, this memorable sentence: “the egyptians are the first of mankind who have affirmed the immortality of the soul.” nor do i read it with less interest, that the historian connects it presently with the doctrine of metempsychosis ; for i know well that, where this belief once existed, it would necessarily take a base form for the savage and a pure form for the wise ; — so that i only look on the counterfeit as a proof that the genuine faith had been there. the credence of men, more than race or climate, makes their manners and customs; and the history of religion may be read in the forms of sepulture. there never was a time when the doctrine of a future life was not held. morals must be enjoined, but among rude men moral judgments were rudely figured under the forms of dogs and whips, or of an easier and more plentiful life after death. and as the savage could not detach in his mind the life of the soul from the body, he took great care for his body. thus the whole life of man in the first ages was ponderously determined on death; and, as we know, the polity of the egyptians, the by-laws of towns, of streets and houses, respected burial. it made every man an immortality. 291 undertaker, and the priesthood a senate of sextons. every palace was a door to a pyramid ; a king or rich man was a pyramidaire. the labor of races was spent on the excavation of catacombs. the chief end of man being to be buried well, the arts most in request were masonry and embalming, to give imperishability to the corpse. the greek, with his perfect senses and perceptions, had quite another philosophy, he loved life and delighted in beauty. he set his wit and taste, like elastic gas, under these mountains of stone, and lifted them. he drove away the embalmers ; he built no more of those doleful mountainous tombs. · he adorned death, brought wreaths of parsley and laurel ; made it bright with games of strength and skill, and chariot-races. he looked at death only as the distributor of imperishable glory. nothing can excel the beauty of his sarcophagus. he carried his arts to rome, and built his beautiful tombs at pompeii. the poet shelley says of these delicately carved white marble cells, “they seem not so much tombs, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits.” in the same spirit the modern greeks, in their songs, ask that they may be buried where the sun can see them, and that a little window may be cut in the sepulchre, from which the swallow might be seen when it comes back in the spring. christianity brought a new wisdom. but learn292 immortality. ing depends on the learner. no more truth can be conveyed than the popular mind can bear; and the barbarians who received the cross took the doctrine of the resurrection as the egyptians took it. it was an affair of the body, and narrowed again by the fury of sect; so that grounds were sprinkled with holy water to receive only orthodox dust; and to keep the body still more sacredly safe for resurrection, it was put into the walls of the church : and the churches of europe are really sepulchres. i read at melrose abbey the inscription on the ruined gate:“the earth goes on the earth glittering with gold ; the earth goes to the earth sooner than it should ; the earth builds on the earth castles and towers ; the earth says to the earth, all this is ours." meantime the true disciples saw through the letter the doctrine of eternity which dissolved the poor corpse and nature also, and gave grandeur to the passing hour. the most remarkable step in the religious history of recent ages is that made by the genius of swedenborg, who described the moral faculties and affections of man, with the hard realism of an astronomer describing the suns and planets of our system, and explained his opinion of the history and destiny of souls in a narrative form, as of one who had gone in a trance into the society of other worlds. swedenborg described an intelligible heaven, by continuing the like employments in the immortality. 293 like circumstances as those we know, — men in societies, in houses, towns, trades, entertainments, continuations of our earthly experience. we shall pass to the future existence as we enter into an agreeable dream. all nature will accompany us there. , milton anticipated the leading thought of swedenborg, when he wrote, in “paradise lost,”— “what if earth be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein each to the other like more than on earth is thought ?” swedenborg had a vast genius, and announced many things true and admirable, though always clothed in somewhat sad and stygian colors. these truths, passing out of his system into general circulation, are now met with every day, qualifying the views and creeds of all churches, and of men of no church. and i think we are all aware of a revolution in opinion. sixty years ago, the books read, the sermons and prayers heard, the habits of thought of religious persons, were all directed on death. all were under the shadow of calvinism and of the roman catholic purgatory, and death was dreadful. the emphasis of all the good books given to young people was on death. we were all taught that we were born to die; and over that, all the terrors that theology could gather from savage nations were added to increase the gloom. a great change has occurred. death is seen as a natural event, and is met with 294 immortality. firmness. a wise inan in our time caused to be written on his tomb, “think on living.” that inscription describes a progress in opinion. cease-from this antedating of your experience. sufficient to to-day are the duties of to-day. don't waste life in doubts and fears ; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it. “the name of death was never terrible to him that knew to live.” a man of thought is willing to die, willing to live; i suppose, because he has seen the thread on which the beads are strung, and perceived that it reaches up and down, existing quite independently of the present illusions. a man of affairs is afraid to die, is pestered with terrors, because he has not this vision, and is the victim of those who have moulded the religious doctrines into some neat and plausible system, as calvinism, romanism, or swedenborgism, for household use. it is the fear of the young bird to trust its wings. the experiences of the soul will fast outgrow this alarm. the say‘ing of marcus antoninus it were hard to mend : “it were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none." i think all sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction, namely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall continue, it will continue ; if not best, then it will immortality. 295 not: and we, if we saw the whole, should of course see that it was better so. schiller said, “ what is so universal as death, must be benefit.” a friend of michel angelo saying to him that his constant labor for art must make him think of death with regret, “ by no means,” he said ; “for if life be a pleasure, yet since death also is sent by the hand of the same master, neither should that displease us." plutarch, in greece, has a deep faith that the doctrine of the divine providence and that of the immortality of the soul rest on one and the same basis. hear the opinion of montesquieu: “if the immortality of the soul were an error, i should be sorry not to believe it. i avow that i am not so humble as the atheist; i know not how they think, but for me, i do not wish to exchange the idea of immortality against that of the beatitude of one day. i delight in believing myself as immortal as god himself: independently of revealed ideas, metaphysical ideas give me a vigorous hope of my eternal well-being, which i would never renounce."* i was lately told of young children who feel a certain terror at the assurance of life without end. “what! will it never stop?” the child said ; "what ! never die ? never, never ? it makes me feel so tired.” and i have in mind the expression of an older believer, who once said to me, “ the thought that this frail being is never to end is so over* pensées diverses, p. 223. 296 immortality. whelming that my only shelter is god's presence.” this disquietude only marks the transition. the healthy state of mind is the love of life. what is so good, let it endure. i find that what is called great and powerful life, the administration of large affairs, in commerce, in the courts, in the state, — is prone to develop narrow and special talent; but, unless combined with a certain contemplative turn, a taste for abstract truth, for the moral laws, — does not build up faith, or lead to content. there is a profound melancholy at the base of men of active and powerful talent, seldom suspected. many years ago, there were two men in the united states senate, both of whom are now dead. i have seen them both; one of them i personally knew. both were men of distinction, and took an active part in the politics of their day and generation. they were men of intellect, and one of them, at a later period, gave to a friend this anecdote: he said that when he entered the senate he became in a short time intimate with one of his colleagues, and, though attentive enough to the routine of public duty, they daily returned to each other, and spent much time in conversation on the immortality of the soul, and other intellectual questions, and cared for little else. when my friend at last left congress, they parted, his colleague remaining there, and, as their homes were widely distant from each other, it chanced immortality. 297 that he never met him again, until, twenty-five years afterwards, they saw each other, through open doors, at a distance, in a crowded reception at the president's house in washington. slowly they advanced towards each other, as they could, through the brilliant company, and at last met, — said nothing, but shook hands long and cordially. at last his friend said, “any light, albert ?” “none," replied albert. “any light, lewis ?” “none,” replied he. they looked in each other's eyes silently, gave one more shake each to the hand he held, and thus parted for the last time. now i should say that the impulse which drew these minds to this inquiry through so many years was a better affirmative evidence than their failure to find a confirmation was negative. i ought to add that, though men of good minds, they were both pretty strong materialists in their daily aims and way of life. i admit that you shall find a good deal of scepticism in the streets and hotels and places of coarse amusement. but that is only to say that the practical faculties are faster developed than the spiritual. where there is depravity there is a slaughter-house style of thinking. one argument of future life is the recoil of the mind in such company, our pain at every sceptical statement. the sceptic affirms that the universe is a nest of boxes with nothing in the last box. all laughter at man is bitter, and puts us out of good activity. when bonaparte in13 * 298 immortality. sisted that the heart is one of the entrails; that it is the pit of the stomach that moves the world ; do we thank him for the gracious instruction ? our disgust is the protest of human nature against a lie. the ground of hope is in the infinity of the world, which infinity reappears in every particle; the powers of all society in every individual, and of all mind in every mind. i know against all appearances that the universe can receive no detriment; that there is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul. here is this wonderful thought. but whence came it? who put it in the mind ? it was not i, it was not you; it is elemental, — belongs to thought and virtue, and whenever we have either, we see the beams of this light. when the master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds. but proceeding to the enumeration of the few simple elements of the natural faith, the first fact that strikes us is our delight in permanence. all great natures are lovers of stability and permanence, as the type of the eternal. after science begins, belief of permanence must follow in a healthy mind. things so attractive, designs so wise, the secret workman so transcendently skilful that it tasks successive generations of observers only to find out, part with part, the delicate contrivance and adjustment of a weed, of a moss, to its immortality. 299 wants, growth, and perpetuation, all these adjustments becoming perfectly intelligible to our study, and the contriver of it all forever hidden! to · breathe, to sleep, is wonderful. but never to know the cause, the giver, and infer his character and will! of what import this vacant sky, these puffing elements, these insignificant lives full of selfish loves and quarrels and ennui ? everything is prospective, and man is to live hereafter. that the world is for his education is the only sane solution of the enigma. and i think that the naturalist works not for himself, but for the believing mind, which turns his discoveries to revelations, receives them as private tokens of the grand good-will of the creator. the mind delights in immense time; delights in rocks, in metals, in mountain-chains, and in the evidence of vast geologic periods which these give; in the age of trees, say of the sequoias, a few of which will span the whole history of mankind; in the noble toughness and imperishableness of the palm-tree, which thrives under abuse; delights in architecture, whose building lasts so long, — "a house,” says ruskin, “is not in its prime until it is five hundred years old,” — and here are the pyramids, which have as many thousands, and cromlechs and earth-mounds much older than these. . we delight in stability, and really are interested in nothing that ends. what lasts a century pleases 300 immortality us in comparison with what lasts an hour. but a century, when we have once made it familiar and compared it with a true antiquity, looks dwarfish and recent; and it does not help the matter adding numbers, if we see that it has an end, which it will reach just as surely as the shortest. a candle a mile long or a hundred miles long does not help the imagination; only a self-feeding fire, an inextinguishable lamp, like the sun and the star, that we have not yet found date and origin for. but the nebular theory threatens their duration also, bereaves them of this glory, and will make a shift to eke out a sort of eternity by succession, as plants and animals do. and what are these delights in the vast and permanent and strong, but approximations and resemblances of what is entire and sufficing, creative and self-sustaining life? for the creator keeps his word with us. these long-lived or long-enduring objects are to us, as we see them, only symbols of somewhat in us far longer-lived. our passions, our endeavors, have something ridiculous and mocking, if we come to so hasty an end. if not to be, how like the bells of a fool is the trump of fame! nature does not, like the empress anne of russia, call together all the architectural genius of the empire to build and finish and furnish a palace of snow, to melt again to water in the first thaw. will you, with vast cost and pains, educate your immortality. 301 children to be adepts in their several arts, and, as soon as they are ready to produce a masterpiece, call out a file of soldiers to shoot them down? we must infer our destiny from the preparation. we are driven by instinct to hive innumerable experiences, which are of no visible value, and which we may revolve through many lives before we shall assimilate or exhaust them. now there is nothing in nature capricious, or whimsical, or accidental, or unsupported. nature never moves by jumps, but always in steady and supported advances. the implanting of a desire indicates that the gratification of that desire is in the constitution of the creature that feels it; the wish for food, the wish for motion, the wish for sleep, for society, for knowledge, are not random whims, but grounded in the structure of the creature, and meant to be satisfied by food, by motion, by sleep, by society, by knowledge. if there is the desire to live, and in larger sphere, with more knowledge and power, it is because life and knowledge and power are good for us, and we are the natural depositaries of these gifts. the love of life is out of all proportion to the value set on a single day, and seems to indicate, like all our other experiences, a conviction of immense resources and possibilities proper to us, on which we have never drawn. all the comfort i have found teaches me to confide that i shall not have less in times and places 302 immortality. that i do not yet know. i have known admirable persons, without feeling that they exhaust the possibilities of virtue and talent. i have seen what glories of climate, of summer mornings and evenings, of midnight sky, — i have enjoyed the benefits of all this complex machinery of arts and civilization, and its results of comfort. the good power can easily provide me millions more as good. shall i hold on with both hands to every paltry possession ? all i have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all i have not seen. whatever it be which the great providence prepares for us, it must be something large and generous, and in the great style of his works. the future must be up to the style of our faculties, — of memory, of hope, of imagination, of reason. i have a house, a closet which holds my books, a table, a garden, a field: are these, any or all, a reason for refusing the angel who beckons me away, — as if there were no room or skill elsewhere that could reproduce for me as my like or my enlarging wants may require ? we wish to live for what is great, not for what is mean. i do not wish to live for the sake of my warm house, my orchard, or my pictures. i do not wish to live to wear out my boots. as a hint of endless being, we may rank that novelty which perpetually attends life. the soul does not age with the body. on the borders of the grave, the wise man looks forward with equal elasimmortality. 303 ticity of mind, or hope; and why not, after millions of years, on the verge of still newer existence ?-for it is the nature of intelligent beings to be forever new to life. most men are insolvent, or promise by their countenance and conversation and by their early endeavor much more than they ever perform, — suggesting a design still to be carried out; the man must have new motives, new companions, new condition, and another term. franklin said, “ life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life. a man is not completely born until he has passed through death.” every really able man, in whatever direction he work, – a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter, if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. what is this better, this flying ideal, but the perpetual promise of his creator ? the fable of the wandering jew is agreeable to men, because they want more time and land in which to execute. their thoughts. but a higher poetic use must be made of the legend. take us as we are, with our experience, and transfer us to a new planet, and let us digest for its inhabitants what we could of the wisdom of this. after we have found our depth there, and assimilated what we could of the new experience, transfer us to a new scene. in each transfer we shall have acquired, by 304 immortality. seeing them at a distance, a new mastery of the old thoughts, in which we were too much immersed. in short, all our intellectual action, not promises, but bestows a feeling of absolute existence. we are taken out of time and breathe a purer air. i know not whence we draw the assurance of prolonged life, of a life which shoots that gulf we call death, and takes hold of what is real and abiding, by so many claims as from our intellectual history. salt is a good preserver; cold is : but a truth cures the taint of mortality better, and “preserves from harm until another period.” a sort of absoluteness attends all perception of truth, — no smell of age, no hint of corruption. it is self-sufficing, sound, entire. lord bacon said: “some of the philosophers who were least divine denied generally the immortality of the soul, yet came to this point, that whatsoever motions the spirit of man could act and perform without the organs of the body might remain after death, which were only those of the understanding, and not of the affections; so immortal and incorruptible a thing did knowledge seem to them to be.” and van helmont, the philosopher of holland, drew his sufficient proof purely from the action of the intellect. “it is my greatest desire,” he said, “that it might be granted unto atheists to have tasted, at least but one only moment, what it is intellectually to understand; whereby they may immortality. 305 feel the immortality of the mind, as it were, by touching.” a farmer, a laborer, a mechanic, is driven by his work all day, but it ends at night; it has an end. but, as far as the mechanic or farmer is also a scholar or thinker, his work has no end. that which he has learned is that there is much more to be learned. the wiser he is, he feels only the more his incompetence. “what we know is a point to what we do not know.” a thousand years, – tenfold, a hundred-fold his faculties, would not suffice. the demands of his task are such that it becomes omnipresent. he studies in his walking, at his meals, in his amusements, even in his sleep. montesquieu said, “the love of study is in us almost the only eternal passion. all the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruin.” “art is long," says the thinker, “and life is short." he is but as a fly or a worm to this mountain, this continent, which his thoughts inhabit. it is a perception that comes by the activity of the intellect; never to the lazy or rusty mind. courage comes naturally to those who have the habit of facing labor and danger, and who therefore know the power of their arms and bodies ; and courage or confidence in the mind comes to those who know by use its wonderful forces and inspirations and returns. belief in its future is a reward kept only for those who use it. “to me,” said goethe, “the eternal existence 306 immortality. of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. if i work incessantly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence, when the present can no longer sustain my spirit.” it is a proverb of the world that good-will makes intelligence, that goodness itself is an eye; and the one doctrine in which all religions agree, is that new light is added to the mind in proportion as it uses that which it has. “he that doeth the will of god abideth forever.” ignorant people confound reverence for the intuitions with egotism. there is no confusion in the things themselves. health of mind consists in the perception of law. its dignity consists in being under the law. its goodness is the most generous extension of our private interests to the dignity and generosity of ideas. nothing seems to me so excellent as a belief in the laws. it communicates nobleness, and, as it were, an asylum in temples to the loyal soul. i confess that everything connected with our personality fails. nature never spares the individual. we are always balked of a complete success. no prosperity is promised to that. we have our indemnity only in the success of that to which we belong. that is immortal and we only through that. the soul stipulates for no private good. that which is private i see not to be good. “if truth immortality. 307 live, i live; if justice live, i live,” said one of the old saints, “and these by any man's' suffering are enlarged and enthroned.” the moral sentiment measures itself by sacrifice. it risks or ruins property, health, life itself, without hesitation, for its thought, and all men justify the man by their praise for this act. and mahomet in the same mind declared, “not dead but living ye are to account all those who are slain in the way of god.” on these grounds i think that wherever man ripens, this audacious belief presently appears, — in the savage, savagely; in the good, purely. as soon as thought is exercised, this belief is inevitable; as soon as virtue glows, this belief confirms itself. it is a kind of summary or completion of man. it cannot rest on a legend; it cannot be quoted from one to another; it must have the assurance of a man's faculties that they can fill a larger theatre and a longer term than nature here allows him. goethe said: “it is to a thinking being quite impossible to think himself non-existent, ceasing to think and live; so far does every one carry in himself the proof of immortality, and quite spontaneously. but so soon as the man will be objective and go out of himself, so soon as he dogmatically will grasp a personal duration to bolster up in cockney fashion that inward assurance, he is lost in contradiction.” the doctrine is not senti308 immortality. mental, but is grounded in the necessities and forces we possess. nothing will hold but that which we must be and must do. “ man's heart the almighty to the future set by secret but inviolate springs." the revelation that is true is written on the palms of the hands, the thought of our mind, the desire of our heart, or nowhere. my idea of heaven is that there is no melodrama in it at all; that it is wholly real. here is the emphasis of conscience. and experience; this is no speculation, but the most practical of doctrines. do you think that the eternal chain of cause and effect which pervades nature, which threads the globes as beads on a string, leaves this out of its circuit, — leaves out this desire of god and men as a waif and a caprice, altogether cheap and common, and falling without reason or merit? we live by desire to live; we live by choices; by will, by thought, by virtue, by the vivacity of the laws which we obey, and obeying share their life, — or we die by sloth, by disobedience, by losing hold of life, which ebbs out of us. but whilst i find the signatures, the hints and suggestions, noble and wholesome, — whilst i find that all the ways of virtuous living lead upward and not downward, — yet it is not my duty to prove to myself the immortality of the soul. that knowledge is hidden very cunningly. perhaps the archangels immortality. 309 cannot find the secret of their existence, as the eye cannot see itself; but, ending or endless, to live whilst i live. there is a drawback to the value of all statements of the doctrine ; and i think that one abstains from writing or printing on the immortality of the soul, because, when he comes to the end of his statement, the hungry eyes that run through it will close disappointed; the listeners say, that is not here which we desire, — and i shall be as much wronged by their hasty conclusion, as they feel themselves wronged by my omissions. i mean that i am a better believer, and all serious souls are better believers, in the immortality than we can give grounds for. the real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down in propositions, and therefore wordsworth's “ ode" is the best modern essay on the subject. we cannot prove our faith by syllogisms. the argument refuses to form in the mind. a conclusion, an inference, a grand augury, is ever hovering; but attempt to ground it, and the reasons are all vanishing and inadequate. you cannot make a written theory or demonstration of this as you can an orrery of the copernican astronomy. it must be sacredly treated. speak of the mount in the mount. not by literature or theology, but only by rare integrity, by a man permeated and perfumed with airs of heaven, with manliest or womanliest 310 immortality. enduring love, can the vision be clear to a use the most sublime. and hence the fact that in the minds of men the testimony of a few inspired souls has had such weight and penetration. you shall not say, “o my bishop, o my pastor, is there any resurrection? what do you think? did dr. channing believe that we should know each other? did wesley ? did butler ? did fenelon ?” what questions are these! go read milton, shakspeare, or any truly ideal poet. read plato, or any seer of the interior realities. read st. augustine, swedenborg, immanuel kant. let any master simply recite to you the substantial laws of the intellect, and in the presence of the laws themselves you will never ask such primary-school questions. . is immortality only an intellectual quality, or, shall i say, only an energy, there being no passive ? he has it, and he alone, who gives life to all names, persons, things, where he comes. no religion, not the wildest mythology, dies for him; no art is lost. he vivifies what he touches. future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. it is not length of life, but depth of life. it is not duration, but a taking of the soul out of time, as all high action of the mind does: when we are living in the sentiments we ask no questions about time. the spiritual world takes place ;-that which is always the same. but see how the sentiment is wise. jesus explained nothing, but the influence of him immortality. 311 took people out of time, and they felt eternal. a great integrity makes us immortal; an admiration, a deep love, a strong will, arms us above fear. it makes a day memorable. we say we lived years in that hour. it is strange that jesus is esteemed by mankind the bringer of the doctrine of immortality. he is never once weak or sentimental; he is very abstemious of explanation, he never preaches the personal immortality; whilst plato and cicero had both allowed themselves to overstep the stern limits of the spirit, and gratify the people with that picture. how ill agrees this majestical immortality of our religion with the frivolous population! will you build magnificently for mice? will you offer empires to such as cannot set a house or private affairs in order ? here are people who cannot dispose of a day; an hour hangs heavy on their hands; and will you offer them rolling ages without end ? but this is the way we rise. within every man's thought is a higher thought, — within the character he exhibits to-day, a higher character. the youth puts off the illusions of the child, the man puts off the ignorance and tumultuous passions of youth; proceeding thence puts off the egotism of manhood, and becomes at last a public and universal soul. he is rising to greater heights, but also rising to realities; the outer relations and circumstances dying out, he entering deeper into god, god into 312 immortality. him, until the last garment of egotism falls, and he is with god, shares the will and the immensity of the first cause. it is curious to find the selfsame feeling, that it is not immortality, but eternity, — not duration, but a state of abandonment to the highest, and so the sharing of his perfection, appearing in the farthest east and west. the human mind takes no account of geography, language, or legends, but in all utters the same instinct. yama, the lord of death, promised nachiketas, the son of gautama, to grant him three boons at his own choice. nachiketas, knowing that his father gautama was offended with him, said, “o death ! let gautama be appeased in mind, and forget his anger against me: this i choose for the first boon.” yama said, “through my favor, gautama will remember thee with love as before.” for the second boon, nachiketas asks that the fire by which heaven is gained be made known to him; which also yama allows, and says, “ choose the third boon, o nachiketas !” nachiketas said, there is this inquiry. some say the soul exists after the death of man; others say it does not exist. this i should like to know, instructed by thee. such is the third of the boons. yama said, “for this question, it was inquired of old, even by the gods; for it is not easy to understand it. subtle is its nature. choose another boon, 0 nachiketas! do not compel me immortality. 313 to this." nachiketas said, “ even by the gods was it inquired. and as to what thou sayest, o death, that it is not easy to understand it, there is no other speaker to be found like thee. there is no other boon like this.” yama said, “choose sons and grandsons who may live a hundred years; choose herds of cattle; choose elephants and gold and horses ; choose the wide expanded earth, and live thyself as many years as thou listeth. or, if thou knowest a boon like this, choose it, together with wealth and far-extending life. be a king, o nachiketas ! on the wide earth i will make thee the enjoyer of all desires. all those desires that are difficult to gain in the world of mortals, all those ask thou at thy pleasure;— those fair nymphs of heaven with their chariots, with their musical instruments; for the like of them are not to be gained by men. i will give them to thee, but do not ask the question of the state of the soul after death.” nachiketas said, “all those enjoyments are of yesterday. with thee remain thy horses and elephants, with thee the dance and song. if we should obtain wealth, we live only as long as thou pleasest. the boon which i choose i have said.” yama said, “one thing is good, another is pleasant. blessed is he who takes the good, but he who chooses the pleasant loses the object of man. but thou, considering the objects of desire, hast abandoned them. these two, ignorance (whose object is what is pleas314 immortality. ant) and knowledge (whose object is what is good), are known to be far asunder, and to lead to different goals. believing this world exists, and not the other, the careless youth is subject to my sway. that knowledge for which thou hast asked is not to be obtained by argument. i know worldly happiness is transient, for that firm one is not to be obtained by what is not firm. the wise, by means of the union of the intellect with the soul, thinking him whom it is hard to behold, leaves both grief and joy. thee, o nachiketas ! i believe a house whose door is open to brahma. brahma the supreme, whoever knows him, obtains whatever he wishes. the soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from any one. nor was any produced from it. unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain; subtler than what is subtle, greater than what is great, sitting it goes far, sleeping it goes everywhere. thinking the soul as unbodily among bodies, firm among fleeting things, the wise man casts off all grief. the soul cannot be gained by knowledge, not by understanding, not by manifold science. it can be obtained by the soul by which it is desired. it reveals its own truths.” the end. cambridge : electrotyped and printed by welch, bigelow, & co. a fine is incurred if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. 45591409 ccccccc sicccccess se sc gc ( cos ccccccccccc cliccccccccccc cc cccccccccc coccccccccc (ccccc cs ccc a aaaaaaaaaaaaaa siccio c al 1323.455.5 letters and social aims / widener library 001771899 ccc (cc c 3 2044 080 906 258 c d ccccccc c ccc ccc cccc (cc d d (cs c (cc co coco lo cos g c c ce >>> cok ccc d ) ))) ss )) ) c (cg ( ( co ccc (cosce ccc ( ecco cc ( ( cccccc co coc ccccc ( so co (68cccc croc (cccccc occo 331 al 132 3.415.7 the gift of mr. james e. gardner, jr. ve harvard college library al 1 } al 1323.415.7 the gift of mr. james e. gardner, jr. harvard college library al 323. , 1 ور مرد و دواتر را به مرز conduct of life. sicer 2 let. 11th, 1870 lit بر conduct of life. ייייי { . the conduct of life. by r. w. emerson. boston: james r. osgood and company, late ticknor & fields, and fields, osgood, & co. 1876. al 1323,45.7 а warnir usisity lillary des à 1972 entered according to act of congress, in the year 1860, by r. w. emerson, to the clerk's office of the district court of the district of massachusetts 724 325 contents. page 1 43 71 .. .111 i fate, ii. power,.... iii. wealth, iv. culture,... v. behavior, vi. worship, vii. considerations by the way,... viii. beauty, .. ix. illusions, . 145 .173 .213 .245 .271 i. fate delicate omens traced in air to the lone bard true witness bare birds with auguries on their wings chanted undeceiving things him to beckon, him to warn ; well might then the poet scorn to learn of scribe or courier hints writ in vaster character ; and on his mind, at dawn of day, soft shadows of the evening lay. for the prevision is allied unto the thing so signified; or say, the foresight that awaits is the same genius that creates air * + ", " 至 ​} fate ir chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that our cities were bent on discussing the theory of the age. by an odd coincidence, four or five noted men were each reading a discourse to the citizens of boston or new york, on the spirit of the times. it so happened that the subject had the same prominence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals issued in london in the same season. /to me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. how shall i live? we are incompetent to solve the times. our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. we can only obey our own polarity. 'tis fine for us to speculate and elect our course, if we must accept an irresistible dictation. in our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immovable limitations. we are fired with the hope to reform men. after many experiments, we find that we must begin earlier, school. but the boys and girls are not docile ; at 1 } 1 مردم می میرم سر بار conduct of life, } the conduct of life. by r. w. emerson. boston: james r. osgood and company, late ticknor & fields, and fields, osgood, & co. 1876. al 1323,415.7 4 lavad us-sity liurary dec 61072 entered according to act of congress, in the year 1860, by r. w. emerson, ta the clerk's office of the district court of the district of massachusetta 724325 contents. page 1 43 71 111 i fate, . ii. power, iii. wealth, iv. culture,.... v. behavior, vi. worship, vii. considerations by the way,.. viii. beauty, ix. illusions, 145 173 213 .245 271 1 i. fate delicate omens traced in air to the lone bard true witness bare birds with auguries on their wings chanted undeceiving things hiin to beckon, him to warn; well might then the poet scorn to learn of scribe or courier hints writ in vaster character ; and on his mind, at dawn of day, soft shadows of the evening lay. for the prevision is allied unto the thing so signified ; or the foresight that awaits is the same genius that creates say, 5 1 fate season. ir chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that our cities were bent on discussing the theory of the age. by an odd coincidence, four or five noted men were each reading a discourse to the citizens of boston or new york, on the spirit of the times. it so happened that the subject had the same prominence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals issued in london in the same to me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. how shall i live? we are incompetent to solve the times. our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. we can only obey our own polarity. 'tis fine for us to speculate and elect our course, if we must accept an irresistible dictation. in our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immovable limitations. we are fired with the hope to reform men. after many experiments, we find that we must begin earlier, at school. but the boys and girls are not docile ; 1 2 conduct of life. we can make nothing of them. we decide that they are not of good stock. we must begin our reform earlier still, — at generation : that is to say, there is fate, or laws of the world. but if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation understands itself. if we must accept fate, we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. this is true, and that other is true. but our geometry cannot span these extreme points, and reconcile them. what to do? by obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding on each string, we learn at last its power. by the same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some reasonable hope of harmonizing them. we are sure, that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times. the riddle of the age has for each a private solution. if one would study his own time, it must be by this method of taking up in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our scheme of human life, and, by firmly stating all that is agree able to experience on one, and doing the same justice to the opposing facts in the others, the true limitations will appear. any excess of emphasis, on one part, would be corrected, and a just balanco would be made. fate 3 but let us honestly state the facts. our america has a bad name for superficialness. great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it. the spartan, embodying his religion in his country, dies before its majesty without a question. the turk, who believes his doom is written on the iron leaf in the moment when he entered the world, rushes on the enemy's sabre with undivided will. the turk, the arab, the persian, accepts the foreordained fate. " on two days, it steads not to run from thy grave, the appointed, and the unappointed day; on the first, neither balm nor physician can save, nor thee, on the second, the universe slay." the hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. our calvinists, in the last generation, had something of the same dignity. they felt that the weight of the universe held them down to their place. what could they do? wise men feel that there is something which cannot be talked or voted away, — a strap or belt which girds the world. “the destiny, minister general, that executeth in the world o'er all, the purveyance which god hath seen beforne so strong it is, that tho' the world had sworn the contrary of a thing by yea or nay, yet sometime it shall fallen on a day conduct of life. that falleth not oft in a thousand year; for, certainly, our appetites here, be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, all this is ruled by the sight above." chaucer: the knighte's taie. the greek tragedy expressed the same sense : “whatever is fated, that will take place. the great immense mind of jove is not to be transgressed.” savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. the broad ethics of jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism. and, now and then, an amiable parson, like jung stilling, or robert huntington, believes in a pistareen-providence, which, whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at his door, and leave a half-dollar. but nature is no sentimentalist, does not cosset or pamper us. we must see that the_world is rougn and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. the cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your hlool, henumbs your feet, freezes a man like an appie. the diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. the way of providence is a little rude. the habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the fate. 5 scurvy at anaconda, — these are in the system, and our habits , are like theirs. you have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races, — race living at the expense of race. the planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, precessions of equinoxes. rivers dry up by opening of the forest. the sea changes its bed. towns and counties fall into it. at lisbon, an earthquake killed men like flies. at naples, three years ago, ten thousand persons were crushed in a few minutes. the sea ; the sword of the climate in the west of africa, at cayenne, at panama, at new orleans, cut off men like a massacre. our western prairie shakes with fever and ague. the cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to some tribes, as a frost to the crickets, which, having filled the summer with noise, are silenced by a fall of the temperature of one night. without uncovering what does not concern us, or counting how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx; or groping after intestinal parasites, or infusory biters, or the obscurities of alternate generation ; -the forms of the shark, the labrus, the jaw of the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, , are hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature. 6 conduct of life. let us not deny it up and down. providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixea instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity. will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind are exceptional, and one need not lay his account for cataclysms every day? aye, but what happens once, may happen again, and so long as these strokes are not to be parried by us, they must be feared. but these shocks and ruins are less destructive to us, than the stealthy power of other laws which act on us daily. an expense of ends to means is fate; organization tyrannizing over character. the menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate : the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits. so is the scale of races, of temperaments; so is sex ; so is climate; so is the reaction of talents imprisoning the vital power in certain directions. every spirit makes its house ; but afterwards the house confines the spirit. the gross lines are legible to the dull: the cabman is phrenologist so far: he looks in your face to see if his shilling is sure. a dome of brow denotes one thing; a pot-belly another; a squint, a pugnose, mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis, fate. 7 a betray character. people seem sheathed in their tough organization. ask spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask quetelet, if temperaments decide nothing ? or if there be anything they do not decide ? read the description in medical books of the four temperaments, and you will think you are reading your own thoughts which you had not yet told. find the part which black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally in the company. how shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or his mother's life? it often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of the progenitors were potted in several jars, some ruling quality in each son or daughter of the house, and sometimes the unmixed temperament, the rank unmitigated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a separate individual, and the others are proportionally relieved. we sometimes see a change of expression in our companion, and say, his father, or his mother, comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote relative. in different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is. at the corner of the street, you read the possibility of each passenger, in the facial angle, in the complexion, in the depth of his eye. 2 seven 8 conduct of life. dred years. his parentage determines it. men are what their mothers made them. you may as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber. ask the digger in the ditch to explain newton's laws: the fine organs of his brain have been pinched by overwork and squalid poverty from father to son, for a hunwhen each comes forth from his mother's womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. let him value his hands and feet, he has but one pair. so he has but one future, and that is already predetermined in his lobes, and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form. all the privilege and all the legislation of the world cannot meddle or help to make a poet or a prince of him. jesus said, “when he looketh on her, he hath committed adultery.” but he is an adulterer before he has yet looked on the woman, by the superfluity of animal, and the defect of thought, in his constitution. who meets him, or who meets her, in the street, sees that they are ripe to be each other's victim. in certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. the more of these drones perish, the better for the hive. if, later, they give birth to some superior individual, with force enough to fate. 9 add to this animal a new aim, and a complete apparatus to work it out, all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. most men and most women are merely one couple more. now and then, one has a new cell or camarilla opened in his brain, — an architectural, a musical, or a philological knack, somo stray taste or talent for flowers, or chemistry, or pigments, or story-telling, a good hand for drawing, a good foot for dancing, an athletic frame for wide journeying, &c. — which skill nowise alters rank in the scale of nature, but serves to pass the time, the life of sensation going on as before. at last, these hints and tendencies are fixed in one, or in a succession. each absorbs so much food and force, as to become itself a new centre. the new talent draws off so rapidly the vital force, that not enough remains for the animal functions, hardly enough for health ; so that, in the second generation, if the like genius appear, the health is visibly deteriorated, and the generative force impaired. people are born with the moral or with the material bias ; – uterine brothers with this diverging destination : and i suppose, with high magnifiers, mr. frauenhofer or dr. carpenter might come to distinguish in the enbryo at the fourth day, this is a whig, and that a free-soiler. it was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, which led the hindoos to say, “fate is 1* 10 conduct of life. nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." i find the coincidence of the extremes of eastern and western speculation in the daring statement of schelling, “there is in every man a certain feeling, that he has been what he is from all eternity, and by no means became such in time.” t say it less sublimely,— in the history . of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate. (a good deal of our politics is physiological. now and then, a man of wealth in the heyday of youth adopts the tenet of broadest freedom. in england, there is always some man of wealth and large connection planting himself, during all his years of health, on the side of progress, who, as soon as he begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his troops, and becomes conservative. all conservatives are such from personal defects. they have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. but strong natures, backwoodsmen, new hampshire giants, napoleons, burkes, broughams, websters, kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them. the strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities and nations, in the healthiest and strongest. probfate. 11 ably, the election goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if you could weigh bodily the tonnage of any hun. dred of the whig and the democratic party in a town, on the dearborn balance, as they passed the hayscales, you could predict with certainty which party woull carry it. on the whole, it would be rather the speediest way of deciding the vote, to put the selectmen or the mayor and aldermen at the hayscales. in science, we have to consider two things : power and circumstance. all we know of the egg, from each successive discovery, is, another vesicle ; and if, after five hundred years, you get a better observer, or a better glass, he finds within the last observed another. in vegetable and animal tissue, it is just alike, and all that the primary power or spasm operates, is, still, vesicles, vesicles. yes, but the tyrannical circumstance ! a vesicle in new circumstances, a vesicle lodged in darkness, oken thought, became animal ; in light, a plant. lodged in the parent animal, it suffers changes, which end in unsheathing miraculous capability in the unaltered vesicle, and it unlocks itself to fish, bird, or quadruped, head and foot, eye and claw. the circumstance is nature. nature is, what you may do. there is much you may not. we have two, things, – the circumstance, and the life. once we thought, positive power was all. now we learn, that negative power, or circumstance, is half. 12 conduct of life. a a nature is the tyrannous circumstance, the thick skull, the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock-like jaw; necessitated activity ; violent direction; the conditions of a tool, like the locomotive, strong enough on its track, but which can do nothing but mischief off of it; or skates, which are wings on the ice, but fetters on the ground. the book of nature is the book of fate. she turns the gigantic pages, – leaf after leaf, — never re-turning one. one leaf she lays down, a floor of granite ; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate, a a thousand ages, and a measure of coal; a thousand ages, and a layer of marl and mud: vegetable forms appear; her first misshapen animals, zvophyte, trilobium, fish; then, saurians, rude forms, in which she has only blocked her future statue, concealing under these unwieldly monsters the fine type of her coming king. the face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate, and man is born. but when a race has lived its term, it comes no more again. the population of the world is a conditional population ; not the best, but the best that could live l now; and the scale of tribes, and the stea liness with which victory adheres to one tribe, and defeat to another, is as uniform as the superposition of strata. we know in history what weight belongs to we see the english, french, and germans planting themselves on every shore and market of race. fate. 13 > america and australia, and monopolizing the commerce of these countries. we like the nervous and victorious habit of our own branch of the family. we follow the step of the jew, of the indian, of the negro. we see how much will has been expended to extinguish the jew, in vain. look at the unpalatable conclusions of knox, in his “ fragment of races," – a rash and unsatisfactory writer, but charged with pungent and unforgetable truths. "nature respects race, and not hybrids.” “every • race has its own habitat.” “ detach a colony from the race, and it deteriorates to the crab.” see the shades of the picture. the german and irish millions, like the negro, have a great deal of guano in their destiny. they are ferried over the atlantic, and carted over america, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie. one more fagot of these adamantine bandages, is, the new science of statistics. it is a rule, that the most casual and extraordinary events if the basis of population is broad enough — become matter of fixed calculation. it would not be safe to say when a captain like bonaparte, a singer like jenny lind, or a navigator like bowditch, would be born in boston: but, on a population of twenty or two hundred millions, something like accuracy may be had. * “ everything which pertains to the human species, considered 14 conduct of life. 'tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. they have all been invented over and over fifty times. man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. he helps himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far as the need is. 'tis hard to find the right homer, zoroaster, or menu; harder still to find the tubal cain, or vulcan, or cadmus, or copernicus, or fust, or fulton, the indisputable inventor. there are scores and centuries of them. • the air is full of men.” this kind of talent so abounds, this constructive tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to the chemic atoms, as if the air he breathes were made of vaucansons, franklins, and watts. doubtless, in every million there will be an astronomer, a mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. no one can read the history of astronomy, without perceiving that copernicus, newton, laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that thales, anaximenes, hipparchus, empedocles, aristarchus, pythagoras, enopides, had anticipated them ; each had the same tense geom.etrical brain, apt for the same vigorous comnutation and as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. the greater the number of individuals, the more does the influence of the individual will disappear, leaving predominance to a series of general facts de pendent on causes by which society exists, and is preserved." quetelet. tate. 15 logic, a mind parallel to the movement of the world. the roman mile probably rested on a measure of a degree of the meridian. mahometan and chinese know what we know of leap-year, of the gregorian calendar, and of the precession of the equinoxes. as, in every barrel of cowries, brought to new bedford, there shall be one orangia, so there will, in a dozen millions of malays and mahometans, be one or two astronomical skulls. in a large city, the most casual things, and things whose beauty lies in their casualty, are produced as punctually and to order as the baker's muffin for breakfast. punch makes exactly one capital joke a week; and the journals contrive to furnish one good piece of news every day. and not less work the laws of repression, the penalties of violated functions. famine, typhus, frost, war, suicide, and effete races, must be reckoned calculable parts of the system of the world. these are pebbles from the mountain, hints of the terms by which our life is walled up, and which show a kind of mechanical exactness, as of a loom or mill, in what we call casual or fortuitous events. the force with which we resist these torrents of tendency looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it amounts to little more than a criticism or a protest made by a minority of one, under compulsion of millions. i seemed, in the height of a tempest, to 16 conduct of life. see men overboard struggling in the waves, and driven alvout here and there. they glanced intelligently at each other, but 'twas little they could do for one another; 'twas much if each could keep afloat alone. well, they had a right to their eyebeams, and all the rest was fate. we cannot trifle with this reality, this croppingout in our planted gardens of the core of the world. no picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. a man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc. a the element running through entire nature, which we popularly call fate, is known to us as limitation. whatever limits us, we call fate. if we are brute and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. as we refine, our checks become finer. if we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form. in the hindoo fables, vishnu follows maya through all her ascending changes, from insect and crawfish up to ele phant; whatever form she took, he took the male form of that kind, until she became at last woman and goddess, and he a man and a god. the limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched at the top. when the gods in the norse heaven were unable fate. 17 to bind the fenris wolf with steel or with weight of mountains, — the one he snapped and the other he spurned with his heel, — they put round his foot a limp band softer than silk or cobweb, and this held him : the more he spurned it, the stiffer it drew. so soft and so stanch is the ring of fate. neither brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, can get rid of this limp band. for if we give it the high sense in which the poets use it, even thought itself is not above fate: that too must act according to eternal laws, and all that is wilful and fantastic in it is in opposition to its fundamental essence. : and, last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late, when justice is not done. what is useful will last; what is hurtful will sink. 66 the doer must suffer,” said the greeks: "you would soothe a deity not to be soothed.” “god himself cannot procure good for the wicked," said the welsh triad. consent, but only for a time," said the bard of spain. the limitation is impassable by any insight in its last and loftiest ascensions, insight itself, and the freedom of the will, is one of its obedient members. but we must not run into generalizations too large, but show the natural " god may of man. 18 conduct of life. bounds or essential distinctions, and seek to do justice to the other elements as well. thus we trace fate, in matter, mind, and morals, in race, in retardations of strata, and in thought and character as well. it is everywhere bound or limitation. but fate has its lord ; limitation its limits ; is different seen from above and from below; from within and from without. for, though fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world, immense. if fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes fate. we must respect fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history. for who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter ? man is not order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, link in a chain, nor any ignominious baggage, but a stupendous antagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the universe. he betrays his relation to what is below him, — thick-skulled, small-brained, fishy, quadrumanous, quadruped ill-disguised, hardly escaped into biped, and has paid for the new powers by loss of some of the old ones. but the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. on one side, elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and, on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature, fate. 19 man. here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man. nor can he blink the freewill. to hazard the contradiction, freedom is necessary. if you please to plant yourself on the side of fate, and say, fate is all; then we say, a part of fate is the freedom of forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. intellect annuls fate. so far as a man thinks, he is free. and though nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like “ declaration of independence,” or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act, yet it is wholesome to man to look not at fate, but the other way: the practical view is the other. his sound relation to these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to them. 6 look not on nature, for her name is fatal,” said the oracle. the too much contemplation of these limits induces meanness. they who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear. i cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud believers in destiny. they conspire with it; a loving resignation is with the event. but the dogma makes a different impression, when it is а. 20 conduct of life. 了 ​. held by the weak and lazy. 'tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on fate.' the right use of fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. rude and invincible except by themselves are the elements. so let man be. let him empty his breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship by manners and deeds on the scale of nature. let him hold his purpose as with the tug of gravitation. no power, no persuasion, no bribe shall make him give up his point. a man ought to compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or a mountain. he shall have not less the flow, the expansion, and the resistance of these. 'tis the best use of fate to teach a fatal courage. go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim of destiny. if you believe in fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good. for, if fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can confront fate with fate. if the universe have these savage accidents, our atoms are as savage in resistance. we should be crushed by the atmosphere, but for the reaction of the air within the body. a tube made of a film of glass can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled with the same water. if there be omnipotence in the stroke, there is oninipotence of recoil. fate. 21 1. but fate against fate is only parrying and defence: there are, also, the noble creative forces. the revelation of thought takes man out of servitudle into freedom. we rightly say of ourselves, we were born, and afterward we were born again, and many times. we have successive experiences so important, that the new forgets the old, and hence the mythology of the seven or the nine heavens. the day of days, the great day of the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to the unity in things, to the omnipresence of law; sees that what is must be, and ought to be, or is the best. this beatitude dips from on high down on us, and we see. it is not in us so much as we are in it. if the air come to our lungs, we breathe and live ; if not, we die. if the light come to our eyes, we see ; else not. and if truth come to our mind, we suddenly expand to its dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. we are as lawgivers; we speak for nature; we prophesy and divine. this insight throws us on the party and interest of the universe, against all and sundry; against ourselves, as much as others: a man speaking from insignt affirms of himself what is true of the inind: seeing its immortality, he says, i am immortal ; seeing its invincibility, he says, , strong. it is not in us, but we are in it. it is of the maker, not of what is made. all things are couched and changed by it. this uses, and is not i am 22 conduct of life. used. it distances those who share it, from those who share it not. those who share it not are flocks and herds. it dates from itself;not from former men or better men,-gospel, or constitution, or college, or custom. where it shines, nature is no longer intrusive, but all things make a musical or pictorial impression. the world of men show like a comedy without laughter :— populations, interests, government, history ; 'tis all toy figures in a toy house. it does not overvalue particular truths. we hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. but, in his presence, our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says, much more interested in the new play of our own thought, than in any thought of his. 'tis the majesty into which we have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage lis. once we were stepping a little this way, and a little that way; now, we are as men in a balloon, and do not think so much of the point we have left, or the point we would make, as of the liberty and glory of the way. just as much intellect as you add, so much organic power. he who sees through the design, presides over it, and must will that which must be. we sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream will come to pass. our thought, though it were only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity, not to . fate. 23 ness. be separated from thought, and not to be separated from will. they must always have coëxisted. it apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead, which refuse to be severed from it. it is not mine or thine, but the will of all mind. it is poured into the souls of all men, as the soul itself which constitutes them men. i know not whether there be, as is alleged, in the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which carries with it all atoms which rise to that height, but i see, that when souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive above selfisha breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of the right and necessary. it is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit. thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. of two men, each obeying his own thought, he whose thought is deepest will be the strongest character. always one man more than another represents the will of divine providence to the period. 2. if thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. the mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed. yet we can see that with the perception of truth is joined the desire that it shall prevail. that affection is essential to will. more24 conduct of life. over, when a strong will appears, it usually results from a certain unity of organization, as if the whole energy of body and mind flowed in one direction. all great force is real and elemental. there is no manufacturing a strong will. there must be a pound to balance a pound. where power is shown in will, it must rest on the universal force. alaric and bonaparte must believe they rest on a truth, or their will can be bought or bent. there is a bribe possible for any finite will. but the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. whoever has had experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. each pulse from that heart is an oath from the most high. i know not what the word sublime means, if it be not the intimations in this infant of a terrific force. a text of heroism, a name and anecdote of courage, are not arguments, but sallies of freedom. one of these is the verse of the persian hafiz, “ 'tis written on the gate of heaven, wo unto him who suffers himself to be betrayed by fate !'» does the reading of history make us fatalists ? what courage does not the opposite opinion show! a little whim of will to be free gallantly contending against the universe of chemistry. but insight is not will, nor is affection will. perception is cold, and goodness dies in wishes ; as voltaire said, 'tis the misfortune of worthy people 6 fate. 25 that they are cowards; “un des plus grands malheurs des honnêtes gens c'est qu'ils sont des lâches.” there must be a fusion of these two to generate the energy of will. there can be no driving force, except through the conversion of the man into his will, making him the will, and the will him. and one may say boldly, that no man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on , by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr. the one serious and formidable thing in nature is a will. society is servile from want of will, and therefore the world wants saviours and religions. one way is right to go: the hero sees it, and moves on that aim, and has the world under him for root and support. he is to others as the world. his approbation is honor; his dissent, infamy. the ; glance of his eye has the force of sunbeams. a personal influence towers up in memory only worthy, and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate, gravitation, and the rest of fate. a . we can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it is the meter of the growing man. we stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. but when the boy grows to man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall, and builds a new and bigger. 'tis only a question of time. every brave youth is in training to ride 26 conduct of life. and rule this dragon. his science is to make weapons and wings of these passions and retarding forces. now whether, seeing these two things, fate and power, we are permitted to believe in unity ? the bulk of mankind believe in two gods. they are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion : but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they come under another; and that it would be a practical blunder to transfer the method and way of working of one sphere, into the other. what good, honest, generous men at home, will be wolves and foxes on change! what pious men in the parlor will vote for what reprobates at the polls ! to a certain point, they believe themselves the care of a providence. but, in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a malignant energy rules. but relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always. the divine order does not stop where their sight stops. the friendly power works on the same rules, in the next farm, and the next planet. but, where they have not experience, they run against it, and hurt themselves. fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; — for causes | which are unpenetrated. but every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us, is convertible by intellect into wholesome fate. 27 force. fate is unpenetrated causes. the water drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. but learn to swim, trim your bark, and the wave which drowned it, will be cloven by it, and carry it, like its own foam, a plume and a power. the cold is inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like a dew-drop. but learn to skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. the cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make you foremost men of time. cold and sea will train an imperial saxon race, which nature cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in yonder england, gives a a hundred englands, a hundred mexicos. all the bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more than mexicos, the secrets of water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the ductility of metals, the chariot of the air, the ruddered balloon are awaiting you. the annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that of war; but right drainage destroys typhus. the plague in the sea-service from scurvy is healed by lemon juice and other diets portable or pracurable: the depopulation by cholera and small-pox is ended by drainage and vaccination ; and every other pest is not less in the chain of cause and effect, and may be fought off. and, whilst art draws out the venom, it commonly extorts some benefit from the vanquished enemy. the mischievous torrent is taught to drudge for man: the 28 conduct of life. wild beasts he makes useful for food, or dress, or labor ; the chemic explosions are controlled like his watch. these are now the steeds on which he rides. man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own element. there's nothing he will not make his carrier. steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. every pot made by any human potter or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. but the marquis of worcester, watt, and fulton bethought themselves, that, where was power, was not devil, but was god ; that it must be availed of, and not by any means let off and wasted. could he lift pots and roofs and houses so handily? he was the workman they were in search of. he could be used to lift away, chain, and compel other devils, far more reluctant and dangerous, namely, cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance of water, machinery, and the labors of all men in the world ; and time he shall lengthen, and shorten space. it has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. the opinion of the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of society, a layer of fate. 23 soldiers ; over that, a layer of lords ; and a king $ on the top; with clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. but, sometimes, the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and rive every mountain laid on top of it. the fultons and watts of politics, believing in unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying it, (as justice satisfies everybody,) through a different disposition of society, -grouping it on a level, instead of piling it into a mountain, — they have contrived to make of this terror the most harmless and energetic form of a state. very odious, i confess, are the lessons of fate. who likes to have a dapper phrenologist pronouncing on his fortunes ? who likes to believe that he has hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the vices of a saxon or celtic race, which will be sure to pull him down, — with what grandeur of hope and resolve he is fired, into a selfish, huckstering, servile, dodging animal ? a learned physician tells us, the fact is invariable with the neapolitan, that, when mature, he assumes the forms of the unmistakable scoundrel. that is a little overstated, but may pass. but these are magazines and arsenals. a man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. a transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces, as to lame him ; a defect pays him revenues on the other side. the sufferance, 30 conduct of life. : which is the badge of the jew, has made him, in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth. if fate is ore and quarry, if evil is good in the making, if limitation is power that shall be, if calamities, oppositions, and weights are wings and means, — we are reconciled. fate involves the melioration. no statement of the universe can have any soundness, which does not admit its ascending effort. the direction of the whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in proportion to the health. behind every individual, closes organization : before him, opens liberty, the better, the best. the first and worst races are dead. the second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher. in the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. liberation of the will from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is the end and aim of this world. every calamity is a spur and valuable hint; and where his endeavors do not yet fully avail, they tell as tendency. the whole circle of animal life, — tooth against tooth, — devouring war, war for food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass is mellowed and refined for higher use, pleases at a sufficient perspective. fate 31 ! but to see how fate slides into freedom, and freedom into fate, observe how far the roots of every creature run, or find, if you can, a point where there is no thread of connection. our life is consentaneous and far-related. this knot of nature is 60 well tied, that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends. nature is intricate, overlapped, interweaved, and endless. christopher wren said of the beautiful king's college chapel, “that, if anybody would tell him where to lay the first stone, he would build such another.” but where shall we find the first atom in this house of man, which is all consent, inosculation, and balance of parts ? the web of relation is shown in habitat, shown in hybernation. when hybernation was observed, it was found, that, whilst some animals became torpid in winter, others were torpid in summer : hybernation then was a false name. the long sleep is not an effect of cold, but is regulated by the supply of food proper to the animal. it becomes torpid when the fruit or prey it lives on is not in season, and regains its activity when its food is ready. eyes are found in light; ears in auricular air ; feet on land ; fins in water; wings in air; and, each creature where it was meant to be, with a mutual fitness. every zone has its own fauna. there is adjustment between the animal and its food, its parasite, its enemy. balances are kept. 32 conduct of life. it is not allowed to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. the like adjustments exist for man. his food is cooked, when he arrives; his coal in the pit; the house ventilated; the mud of the deluge dried; his companions arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him with love, concert, laughter, and tears. these are coarse adjustments, but the invisible are not less. there are more belongings to every creature than his air and his food. his instincts must be met, and he has predisposing power that bends and fits what is near him to his use. he is not possible until the invisible things are right for him, as well as the visible. of what changes, then, in sky and earth, and in finer skies and earths, does the appearance of some dante or columbus apprise us! how is this effected ? nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends. as the general says to his soldiers, “ if you want a fort, build a fort,” so nature makes every creature do its own work and get its living, — iş it planet, animal, or tree. the planet makes itself. the animal cell makes itself; — then, what it wants. every creature, wren or dragon, shall make its own lair. as soon as there is life, there is self-direction, and absorbing and using of material. life is freedom, life in the direct ratio of its amount. you may be sure, the new-born man is not inert. life work, both voluntarily and supernaturally in its neighbor fate. 33 an] hood. do you suppose, he can be estimated by his weight in pounds, or, that he is contained in his skin, — this reaching, radiating, jaculating fellow ? the smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, the papillæ of a man run out to every star. when there is something to be done, the world knows how to get it done. the vegetable eye makes leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need is; the first cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, nose, or nail, according to the want: the world throws its life into a hero or a shepherd; and puts him where he is wanted. dante and columbus were italians, in their time: they would be russians or americans to-day. things ripen, new the adaptation is not capricious. the ulterior aim, the purpose beyond itself, the correlation by which planets subside and crystallize, then animate beasts and men, will not stop, but will work into finer particulars, and from finer to finest. the secret of the world is, the tie between perso and event. person makes event, and event person. the “times,” “the age,” what is that, but a few profound persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times ?— goethe, hegel, metternich, adams, calhoun, guizot, peel, cobden, kossuth, rothschild, astor, brunel, and the rest. the same fitness must be presumed between a man and the time and event, as between the sexes, or between a race of animals and the food it eats, or the inferior races men come. a a 2* 34 conduct of life. it uses. he thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. but the soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. the event is the print of your form. it fits you like your skin. what each does is proper to him. events are the children of his body and mind. we learn that the soul of fate is the soul of us, as hafiz sings, alas! till now i had not known, my guide and fortune's guide are oue. all the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for, — houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, are the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or two of illusion overlaid. and of all the drums and rattles by which men are made willing to have their heads broke, and are led out solemnly every morning to parade, — the most admirable is this by which we are brought to believe that events are arbitrary, and independent of actions. at the conjuror's, we detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties cause and effect. nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character. ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the sea margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to countingrooms, soldiers to the frontier. thus events grow on the same stem with persons; are sub-persons. fate. 35 the pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or the place. life is an ecstasy. we know what madness belongs to love, — what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven. as insane persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, and other accommodations, and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to strange company and work. each creature puts forth from itself its own condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, and the fish its shell. in youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac. in age, we put out another sort of perspiration, — gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and avarice. a man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. a man's friends are his magnetisms. we go to herodotus and plutarch for examples of fate; are examples. quisque suos patimur manes." the tendency of every man to enact all that is in his constitution is expressed in the old belief, that the efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it: and i have noticed, a man likes better to be complimented on his position, as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on his merits. a man will see his character emitted in the but we 36 conduct of life. events that seem to meet, but which exude from and accompany him. events expand with the character. as once he found himself among toys, so now he plays a part in colossal systems, and his growth is declared in his ambition, his companions, ard his performance. he looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece of causation ; – the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into the gap he fills. hence in each town there is some man who is, in his brain and performance, an explanation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, churches, ways of living, and society, of that town. if you do not chance to meet him, all that you see will leave you a little puzzled : if you see him, it will become plain. we know in massachusetts who built new bedford, who built lynn, lowell, lawrence, clinton, fitchburg, holyoke, portland, and many another noisy mart. each of these men, if they were transparent, would seem to you not so much men, as walking cities, and, wherever you put them, they would build one. history is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought ;two boys pushing each – other on the curb-stone of the pavement. everything is pusher or pushed : and matter and mind are in perpetual tilt and balance, so. whilst the man is weak, the earth takes up him. he plants his brain and affections. by and by he will take up the earth, and have his gardens and vineyards fate. 37 in the beautiful order and productiveness of his thought. every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of the mind. if the wall remain adamant, it accuses the want of thought. to a subtler force, it will stream into new forms, expressive of the character of the mind. what is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man ? the granite was reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it came. iron was deep in the ground, and well combined with stone; but could not hide from his fires. wood, lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and sea, in vain. here they are, within reach of every man's day-labor, — what he wants of them. the whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the poles or points where it would build. the races of men rise out of the ground preoccupied with a thought which rules them, and divided into parties ready armed and angry to fight for this metaphysical abstraction. the quality of the thought differences the egyptian and the roman, the austrian and the american. the men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. certain ideas are in the air. we are all impressionable, for we are made of them; all impresionable, but some more than others, and these first 38 conduct of life. s els altri express them. this explains the curious contemporaneousness of inventions and discoveries. the. truth is in the air, and the most impressionable brain will announce it first, but all will announce it a few minutes later. so women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour. so the great man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man, -of a fibre irritable and delicate, like godine to light. he feels the infinitesimal attractions. his mind is righter than others, because he yields to a current so feeble as can be felt only by a needle delicately poised. the correlation is shown in defects. möller, in his essay on architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end, would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. i find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive; that a crudity in the blood will appear in the argument; a hump in the shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. if his mind could be seen, the hump would be seen. if a man has a seesaw in his voice, it will run into his sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his fable, into his speculation, into his charity. and, as every man is hunted by his own dæmon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity. so each man, like each plant, has his parasites. fate. 39 worms: a strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. such an one has curculios, borers, knifea swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as moloch. this correlation really existing can be divined. if the threads are there, thought can follow and show them. especially when a soul is quick and docile; as chaucer sings, " or if the soul of proper kind be so perfect as men find, that it wot what is to come, and that he warneth all and some of every of their aventures, by previsions or figures; but that our flesh hath not might it to understand aright for it is warned too darkly." some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, periodicity, and presage : they meet the person they seek; what their companion prepares to say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs apprise them of what is about to befall. wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy in the design this vagabond life admits. we wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year after year we find two men, two women, without legal or carnal tie, spend a great part of their best time within a few feet of each other. and the 40 conduct of life. moral is, that what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us ; as goethe said, “ what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in old age,” too often cursed with the granting of our prayer: and hence the high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to ask only for high things. one key, one solution to the mysteries of human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. a man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other. so when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit ; a sour face, and a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affection; or is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his relation to the universe, which his ruin benefits. leaving the dæmon who suffers, he is to take sides with the deity who secures universal benefit by his pain. to offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls down, learn this lesson, namely, that by the cunning co-presence of two elements, which is throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes 1 fate. 41 youl, draws in with it the divinity, in some form, to repay. a good intention clothes itself with sudden power. when a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse. let us build altars to the blessed unity which holds nature and souls in perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve an universal end. i do not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies; that all is and must be pictorial ; that the rainbow, and the curve of the horizon, and the arch of the blue vault are only results from the organism of the eye. there is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when i cannot look without seeing splendor and grace. how idle to choose a random sparkle here or there, when the indwelling' necessity plants the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central intention of nature to be harmony and joy. let us build altars to the beautiful necessity. if we thought men were free in the sense, that, in a single exception one fantastical will could prevail over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's hand could pull down the sun. if, in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life? a 40 conduct of lii. (: moral is, that what we seek we flee from flees from us; as is! we wish for in youth, com ! old age, too often cursed with i prayer: and hence the high we are sure of having what the to ask only for high things. one key, one solution to tl. condition, one solution to the freedom, and foreknowledge, ... ing, namely, of the double con must ride alternately on the low and his public nature, as t! circus throw themselves nim!! or plant one foot on the back foot on the back of the oth: ". the victim of his fate, has spi.. cramp in his mind; a clul-f wit; a sour face, and a selfi.': his gait, and a conceit in his all to powder by the vice of his r. his relation to the universe, wli: leaving the dæmon who suffers, with the deity who secures unii pain. to offset the drag of ten which pulls down, learn this li by the cunning co-presence of' tu.. is throughout nature, whatever l. le . 7 il power his tongue was framed to music, and his hand was armed with skill, his face was the mould of beauty, and his heart the throne of will. 42 conduct of life. are made let us build altars to the beautiful necessity, which secures that all is made of one piece ; that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. in astronomy, is vast space, but no foreign system ; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day. why should we be afraid of nature, which is no other than “philosophy and theology embodied ” ? why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements, we who up of the same elements ? let us build to the beautiful necessity, which inakes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger that is appointed, nor incur one that is not; to the necessity which rudely or softly educates him to the perception that there are no contingencies; that law rules throughout existence, a law which is not intelligent but intelligence, not personal nor impersonal, — it disdains words and passes understanding; it dissolves persons ; it vivifies nature; yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence. il power his tongue was framed to music, and his hand was armed with skill, his face was the mould of beauty, and his heart the throne of will. 1 power. a there is not yet any inventory of a man's face ulties, any more than a bible of his opinions. who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being ? there are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race. and if there be such a tie, that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will accompany him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that force to draw material and elemental powers, and, where they appear, immense instrumentalities organize around them. life is a search after power; and this is an element with which the world is so saturated, there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged, — that no honest seeking goes unrewarded. a man should prize events and possessions as the ore in which this fine mineral is found ; and he can well afford to 'let events and possessions, and the breath of the body go, if their value has been added to him in the shape of power. if he have secured the elixir, he can spare the wide gardens from which it was distilled. a cultivated man, wise to know and bold to per46 conduct of life. form, is the end to which nature works, and the education of the will is the flowering and result of all this geology and astronomy. all successful men have agreed in one thing, they were causationists. they believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things. a belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being, and, in consequence, belief in compensation, or, that nothing is got for nothing, – characterizes all valuable minds, and must control every effort that is made by an industrious one. the most valiant men are the best believers in the tension of the laws. all the great captains," said bonaparte, “ have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of the art, — by adjusting efforts to obstacles.” the key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe ; — the key to all ages is — imbecility ; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments ; victims of gravity, custom, and fear. this gives force to the strong, that the multitude have no habit of selfreliance or original action. we must reckon success a constitutional trait. courage, — the old physicians taught, (and their meaning holds, if their physiology is a little myth power. 47 ical,) courage, or the degree of life, is as the degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries. during passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, wrestling, fighting, a large amount of blood is collected in the arteries, the maintenance of bodily strength requiring it, and but little is sent into the veins. this condition is constant with intrepid persons.” where the arteries hold their blood, is courage and adventure possible. where they pour it unrestrained into the veins, the spirit is low and feeble. for performance of great mark, it needs extraordinary health. if eric is in robust health, and has slept well, and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old, at his departure from greenland, he will steer west, and his ships will reach newfoundland. but take out eric, and put in a stronger and bolder man, — biorn, or thorfin, -. and the ships will, with just as much ease, sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, and reach labrador and new england. there is no chance in results. with adults, as with children, one class enter cordially into the game, and whirl with the whirling world; the others have cold hands, and remain bystanders; or are only dragged in by the humor and vivacity of those who can carry a dead weight. the first wealth is health. sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one: it must husband its resources to live. but health or fulness answers its own ends, 48 conduct of life. and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities. all power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. the mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of events, and strong with their strength. one man is made of the same stuff of which events are made ; is in sympathy with the course of things ; can predict it. whatever befalls, befalls him first; so that he is equal to whatever shall happen. a man who knows men, can talk well on politics, trade, law, war, religion. for, everywhere, men are led in the same manners. the advantage of a strong pulse is not to be supplied by any labor, art, or concert. it is like the climate, which easily rears a crop, which no glass, or irrigation, or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere rival. it is like the opportunity of a city like new york, or constantinople, which needs no diplomacy to force capital or genius or labor to it. they come of themselves, as the waters flow to it. so a broad, healthy, massive understanding seems to lie on the shore of unseen rivers, of unseen oceans, which are covered with barks, that, night and day, are drifted to this point. that is poured into its lap, which other men lie plotting for. it is in everybody's decret ; anticipates everybody's discovery ; and if it do not command every fact of the genius and the scholar, it is because it is large and sluggish, and power. 49 does not think them worth the exertion which you do. this affirmative force is in one, and is not in another, as one horse has the spring in him, and another in the whip. “on the neck of the young man,” said hafiz, “ sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise." import into any stationary district, as into an old dutch population in new york or pennsylvania, or among the planters of virginia, a colony of hardy yankees, with seething brains, heads full of steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and toothed wheel, -and everything begins to shine with values. what enhancement to all the water and land in england, is the arrival of james watt or brunel! in every company, there is not only the active and passive sex, but, in both men and women, a deeper and more important sex of mind, namely, the inventive or creative class of both men and women, and the uninventive or accepting class. each plus man represents his set, and, if he have the accidental advantage of personal ascendency, which implies neither more nor less of talent, but merely the temperamental or taming eye of a soldier or a schoolmaster, (which one has, and one has not, as one has a black moustache and one a blond,) then quite easily and without envy or resistance, all his coadjutors and feeders will admit his right to absorb them. the merchant works by book-keeper and cashier; the lawyer's authorities are hunterl up а 50 conduct of life. by clerks ; the geologist reports the surveys of his subalterns; commander wilkes appropriates the results of all the naturalists attached to the expedition ; thorwaldsen's statue is finished by stonecutters; dumas has journeymen ; and shakspeare was theatre-manager, and used the labor of many young men, as well as the playbooks. there is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many. society is a troop of thinkers, and the best heads among them take the best places. . a feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. the strong man sees the possible houses and farms. his eye makes estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds. when a new boy comes into school, when a man travels, and encounters strangers every day, or, when into any old club a new comer is domesticated, that happens which befalls, when a strange ox is driven into a pen or pasture where cattle are kept; there is at once a trial of strength between the best pair of horns and the new comer, and it is settled thenceforth which is the leader. so now, there is a measuring of strength, very courteous, but decisive, and an acquiescence thenceforward when these two meet. each reads his fate in the the weaker party finds, that none of his information or wit quite fits the occasion. he thought he knew this or that: he finds that he other's eyes. power. 51 omitted to learn the end of it. nothing that he knows will quite hit the mark, whilst all the rival's arrows are good, and well thrown. but if he knew all the facts in the encyclopædia, it would not help him : for this is an affair of presence of mind, of attitude, of aplomb : the opponent has the sun and wind, and, in every cast, the choice of weapon and mark; and, when he himself is matched with some other antagonist, his own shafts fly well and hit. 'tis a question of stomach and constitution. the second man is as good as the first, — perhaps better; but has not stoutness or stomach, as the first has, and so his wit seems over-fine or under-fine. health is good, — power, life, that resists disease, ! poison, and all enemies, and is conservative, as well as creative. here is question, every spring, whether to graft with wax, or whether with clay; whether to whitewash or to potash, or to prune; but the one point is the thrifty tree. a good tree, that agrees with the soil, will grow in spite of blight, or bug, or pruning, or neglect, by night and by day, in all weathers and all treatments. vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. we must fetch the with dirty water, if clean cannot be had. if we will make bread, we must have contagion, yeast, empty. ings, or what not, to induce fermentation into the dough: as the torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by pump 52 conduct of life. prayer or by wine. and we have a certain instinct, that where is great amount of life, though gross and peccant, it has its own checks and purifications, and will be found at last in harmony with moral laws. we watch in children with pathetic interest, the degree in which they possess recuperative force. when they are hurt by us, or by each other, or go to the bottom of the class, or miss the annual prizes, or are beaten in the game, if they lose heart, and , remember the mischance in their chamber at home, they have a serious check. but if they have the buoyancy and resistance that preoccupies them with new interest in the new moment, the wounds cicatrize, and the fibre is the tougher for the hurt. one comes to value this plus health, when he sees that all difficulties vanish before it. a timid man listening to the alarmists in congress, and in the newspapers, and observing the profligacy of party, --sectional interests urged with a fury which shuts its eyes to consequences, with a mind made up to desperate extremities, ballot in one hand, and rifle in the other, — might easily believe that he and his country have seen their best days, and he hardens himself the best he call against the combut, after this has been foretold with equal confidence fifty times, and government six per cents have not declined a quarter of a mill, he discovers that the enormous elements of strength which are here in play, make our politics uniming ruin. power. 53 por tant. personal power, freedom, and the resources of nature strain every faculty of every citizen. we prosper with such vigor, that, like thrifty trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, so we do not suffer from the profligate swarms that fatten on the national treasury. the huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of the disease attests the strength of the constitution. the same energy in the greek demos drew the remark, that the evils of popular government appear greater than they are ; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens. the rough and ready style which belongs to a people of sailors, foresters, farmers, and mechanics, has its advantages. power educates the potentate. as long as our people quote english standards they dwarf their own proportions. a western lawyer of eminence said to me he wished it were a penal offence to bring an english law-book into a court in this country, so pernicious had he found in his experience our deference to english precedent. the very word commerce' has only an english meaning, and is pinched to the cramp exigencies of english experience. the commerce of rivers, thcommerce of railroads, and who knows but the commerce of air-balloons, must add an american extension to the pond-hole of admiralty. as long as our people quote english standards, they will miss che sovereignty of power; but let these rough riders, 6 54 conduct of life. – legislators in shirt-sleeves, — hoosier, sucker, wolverine, badger, — or whatever hard head arkansas, oregon, or utah sends, half orator, half assassin, to represent its wrath and cupidity at washington, let these drive as they may; and the disposition of territories and public lands, the necessity of balancing and keeping at bay the snarling majorities of german, irish, and of native millions, will bestow promptness, address, and reason, at last, on our buffalo-hunter, and authority and majesty of manners. the instinct of the people is right. men expect from good whigs, put into office by the respectability of the country, much less skill to deal with mexico, spain, britain, or with our own malcontent members, than from some strong transgressor, like jefferson, or jackson, who first conquers his own government, and then uses the same genius to conquer the foreigner. the senators who dissented from mr. polk's mexican war, were not those who knew better, but those who, from political position, could afford it; not webster, but benton and calhoun. this power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 'tis the power of lynch law, of soldiers and pirates; and it bullies the peaceable and loyal. but it brings its own antidote ; and here is my point, that all kinds of power usually emerge at the same time; good energy, and bad ; power of mind, with physical health ; the ecstasies of devotion, with the power. 55 exasperations of debauchery. the same elements are always present, only sometimes these conspicuous, and sometimes those; what was yesterday foreground, being to-day background, — what was surface, playing now a not less effective part as basis. the longer the drought lasts, the more is the atmosphere surcharged with water. the faster the ball falls to the sun, the force to fly off is by so much augmented. and, in morals, wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses have great resources, and return from far. in politics, the sons of democrats will be whigs ;' whilst red republicanism, in the father, is a spasm of nature to engender an intolerable tyrant in the next age. on the other hand, conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism. those who have most of this coarse energy, the bruisers, who have run the gauntlet of caucus and tavern through the county or the state, have their own vices, but they have the good nature of strength and courage. fierce and unscrupulous, they are usually frank and direct, and above falsehood. our politics fall into bad hands, and churchmen and men of refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit persons to send to congress. politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts. men in power have no opinions, but may be had cheap for any opinion, for any purpose, a 6 56 conduct of life. and if it be only a question between the most civil and the most forcible, i lean to the last. these hoosiers and suckers are really better than the snivelling opposition. their wrath is at least of a bold and manly cast. they see, against the unanimous declarations of the people, how much crime the people will bear; they proceed froin step to step, and they have calculated but too justly upon their excellencies, the new england governors, and upon their honors, the new england legislators. the messages of the governors and the resolutions of the legislatures, are a proverb for expressing a sham virtuous indignation, which, in the course of events, is sure to be belied. in trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace of ferocity. philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints. the communities hitherto founded by socialists, — the jesuits, the port-royalists, the american communities at new harmony, at brook farm, at zoar, are only possible, by installing judas as steward. the rest of the offices may be filled by good burgesses. the pious and charitable proprietor has a foreman not quite so pious and charitable. the most amiable of country gentlemen has a certain pleasure in the teeth of the bull-dog which guards his orchard. of the shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market. and in repro power. 57 poor de sentations of the deity, painting, poetry, and popular religion have ever drawn the wrath from hell. it is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs, as if cayed formalists of law and order cannot run like wild goats, wolves, and conies ; that, as there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues ; that public spirit and the ready hand are as well found among the malignants. 'tis not very rare, the coincidence of sharp private and political practice, with public spirit, and good neighborhood. i knew a burly boniface who for many years kept a public-house in one of our rural capitals. he was a knave whom the town could ill spare. he was a social, vascular creature, grasping and selfish. there was no crime which he did not or could not commit. but he made good friends of the selectmen, served them with his best chop, when they supped at his house, and also with his honor the judge, he was very cordial, grasping his hand. he introduced all the fiends, male and female, into the town, and united in his person the functions of bully, incendiary, swindler, barkeeper, and burglar. he girdled the trees, and cut off the horses' tails of the temperance people, in the night. he led the rummies' and radicals in town-meeting with a speech. meantime, he was civil, fat, and easy, in 3 * 58 conduct of life. ; his house, and precisely the most public-spirited citizen. he was active in getting the roads repaired and planted with shade-trees; he subscribed for the fountains, the gas, and the telegraph ; he introduced the new horse-rake, the new scraper, the baby jumper, and what not, that connecticut sends to the admiring citizens.. he did this the easier, that the peddler stopped at his house, and paid his keeping, by setting up his new trap on the landlord's premises. whilst thus the energy for originating and executing work, deforms itself by excess, and so our axe chops off our own fingers, — this evil is not without remedy. all the elements whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become his masters, especially those of most subtle force. shall he, then, , renounce steam, fire, and electricity, or, shall he learn to deal with them? the rule for this whole class of agencies is, — all plus is good; only put it in the right place. men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies ; cannot read novels, and play whist; cannot satisfy all their wants at the thursday lecture, or the boston athenæum. they pine for adventure, and must go to pike's peak; had rather die by the hatchet of a pawnee, than sit all day and every day at a counting-room desk. they are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing; for power. 59 will 66 hair-breadth adventures, huge risks, and the joy of eventful living. some men cannot endure an hour of calm at sea. i remember a poor malay cook, on board a liverpool packet, who, when the wind blew a gale, could not contain his joy; “blow!” he “ cried, “me do tell you, blow !” their friends and governors must see that .some vent for their explosive complexion is provided. the roisters who are destined for infamy at home, if sent to mexico, cover you with glory,” and come back heroes and generals. there are oregons, californias, and exploring expeditions enough appertaining to america, to find them in files to gnaw, and in crocodiles to eat. the young english are fine animals, full of blood, and when they have no wars to breathe their riotous valors in, they seek for travels as dangerous as war, diving into maelstroms ; swimming hellesponts; wading up the snowy himmaleh; hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in south africa ; gypsying with borrow in spain and algiers ; riding alligators in south america with waterton ; utilizing bedouin, sheik, and pacha, with layard ; yachting among the icebergs of lancaster sound; peeping into craters on the equator ; or running on the creases of malays in borneo. the excess of virility has the same importance in general history, as in private and industrial life. strong race or strong individual rests at last on nataral forces, which are best in the savage, who, like 60 conduct of life. the beasts around him, is still in reception of the milk from the teats of nature. cut off the connection between any of our works, and this aboriginal source, and the work is shallow. the people lean on this, and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as we sometimes say, for it has this good side. “ march without the people,” said a french deputy from the tribune, “ and you march into night: their instincts are a finger-pointing of providence, always turned toward real benefit. but when you espouse an orleans party, or a bourbon, or a montalembert party, or any other but an organic party, though you mean well, you have a personality instead of a principle, which will inevitably drag you into a corner.” the best anecdotes of this force are to be had from savage life, in explorers, soldiers, and buccabut who cares for fallings-out of assassins, and fights of bears, or grindings of icebergs ? physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. the luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. the luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth : and of electricity, not volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. so of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the pacific. neers. a power. 61 } in history, the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty :and you have pericles and phidias, not yet passed over into the corinthian civility. everything good in nature and the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity. the triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated : the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war. we say that success is constitutional; depends on a plus condition of mind and body, on power of work, on courage ; that it is of main efficacy in carrying on the world, and, though rarely found in the right state for an article of commerce, but oftener in the supersaturate or excess, which makes it dangerous and destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and must be had in that form, and absorbents providd o take off its edge. 62 conduct of life. a the affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. they originate and execute all the great feats. what a force was coiled up in the skull of napoleon! of the sixty thousand men making his army at eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were thieves and burglars. the men whom, in peaceful communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged them to their duty, and won his victories by their bayonets. this aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure when it appears under conditions of supreme refinement, as in the proficients in high art. when michel angelo was forced to paint the sistine chapel in fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he went down into the pope's gardens behind the vatican, and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, mixed them with glue and water with his own hands, and having, after many trials, at last suited himself, climbed his ladders, and painted away, week after week, month after month, the sibyls and prophets. he surpassed his successors in rough vigor, as much as in purity of intellect and refinement. he was not crushed by his one picture left unfinished at last. michel was wont to draw his figures first in skeleton, then to clothe them with flesh, and lastly to drape them. 6 ah !” said a brave painter to me, thinking on these things, “ if a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed power. 63 instead of working. there is no way to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.” success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight. and, though a man cannot return into his mother's womb, and be born with new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two economies, which are the best succedanea which the case admits. the first is, the stopping off decisively our miscellaneous activity, and concentrating our force on one or a few points; as the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf of twigs. enlarge not thy destiny,” said the oracle : “ endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.” the one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation : and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine ; property and its cares, friends, and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. friends, books, pictures, lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes, — all are distractions which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make a good poise and a straight course impos66 64 conduct of life. the poet sible. you must elect your work; you shall take what your brain can, and drop all the rest. only so, can that amount of vital force accumulate, which can make the step from knowing to doing. no matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. 'tis a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitful. ness. many an artist lacking this, lacks all: he sees the masculine angelo or cellini with despair. he, too, is up to nature and the first cause in his thought. but the spasm to collect and swing his whole being into one act, he has not. campbell said, that “a man accustomed to work was equal to any achievement he resolved on, and, that, for himself, necessity not inspiration was the prompter of his muse." concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of hu, man affairs. one of the high anecdotes of the world is the reply of newton to the inquiry, “ how he had been able to achieve his discoveries?”. “ by always intending my mind.” or if you will have a text from politics, take this from plutarch : “ there was, in the whole city, but one street in which pericles was ever seen, the street which led to the market-place and the council house. he declined all invitations to banquets, and all gay assemblies and company. during the whole period of his administration, he never dined at the table power. 65 i am “i am of a friend.” or if we seek an example from trade, а “i hope,” said a good man to rothschild, “ your children are not too fond of money and business : sure you would not wish that.” sure i should wish that: i wish them to give mind, soul, heart, and body to business, -that is the way to be happy. it requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution, to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. if i were to listen to all the projects proposed to me, i should ruin myself very soon. stick to one business, young man. stick to your brewery, (he said this to young buxton,) and you will be the great brewer of london. be brewer, and banker, and merchant, and manufacturer, and you will soon be in the gazette." many men are knowing, many are apprehensive and tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. but in our flowing affairs a decision must be made, the best, if you can; but any is better than there are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set cut at once on a man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly. the good speaker in the house is not the man who knows the theory of parliamentary tactics, but the man none. one. 66 conduct of life. who decides off-hand. the good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance of suitors. the good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape. dr. johnson said, in one of his flowing sentences, “ miserable beyond all names of wretchedness is that unhappy pair, who are doomed to reduce beforehand to the principles of abstract reason all the details of each domestic day. there are cases where little can be said, and much must be done." the second substitute for temperament is drill, the power of use and routine. the hack is a better roadster than the arab barb. in chemistry, the galvanic stream, slow, but continuous, is equal in power to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent. so in human action, against the spasm of energy, we offset the continuity of drill. we spread the same amount of force over much time, instead of condensing it into a moment. 'tis the same ounce of gold here in a ball, and there in a leaf. at west point, col. buford, the chief engineer, pounded with a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon, until he broke them off. he fired a piece of ordnance some hundred times in swift succession, a power. 67 " url it burst. now which stroke broke the trunnion ? every stroke. which blast burst the piece ? every blast. diligence passe sens, henry viii. was wont to say, or, great is drill. john kemble said, that the worst provincial company of actors would go through a play better than the best amateur company. basil hall likes to show that the worst regular troops will beat the best volunteers. practice is nine tenths. a course of mobs is good practice for orators. all the great speakers were bad speakers at first. stumping it through england for seven years, made cobden a consummate debater. stumping it through new england for twice seven, trained wendell phillips. the way to learn german, is, to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart. no genius can recite a ballad at first reading, so well as mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twentieth reading. the rule for hospitality and irish help,' is, to have the same dinner every day throughout the year. at last, mrs. o'shaughnessy learns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are well served. a humorous friend of mine thinks, that the reason why nature is so perfect in her art, and gets up such inconceivably fine sunsets, is, that she has learned how, at last, by dint of doing the same 68 conduct of life. thing so very often. cannot one converse better on a topic on which he has experience, than on one which is new? men whose opinion is valued on 'change, are only such as have a special experience, and off that ground their opinion is not valuable. “more are made good by exercitation, than by nature,” said democritus. the friction in nature is 80 enormous that we cannot spare any power. it is not question to express our thought, to elect our way, but to overcome resistances of the medium and material in everything we do. hence the use of drill, and the alessness of amateurs to cope with practitioners. six hours every day at the piano, only to give facility of touch; six hours a day at painting, only to give command of the odious materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. the masters say, that they know a master in music, only by seeing the pose of the hands on the keys;so difficult and vital an act is the command of the instrument. to have learned the use of the tools, by thousands of manipulations; to have learned the arts of reckoning, by endless adding and dividing, is the power of the mechanic and the clerk. i remarked in england, in confirmation of a frequent experience at home, that, in literary circles, the men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, editors, university deans and professors, bishops, too, were by no means men of the largest literary talent, but usually of a low and ordinary intellectualpower. 69 ity, with a sort of mercantile activity and working talent. indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces to a lucrative point, or by working power, over multitudes of superior men, in old as in new england. i have not forgotten that there are sublime considerations which limit the value of talent and superficial success. we can easily overpraise the vulgar hero. there are sources on which we have not drawn. i know what i abstain from. i adjourn what i have to say on this topic to the chapters on culture and worship. but this force or spirit, being the means relied on by nature for bringing the work of the day about, — as far as we attach importance to household life, and the prizes of the world, we must respect that. and i hold, that an economy may be applied to it; it is as much a subject of exact law and arithmetic as fluids and gases are ; it may be husbanded, or wasted ; every man is efficient only as he is a container or vessel of this force, and never was any signal act or achievement in history, but by this expenditure. this is not gold, but the gold-maker ; not the fame, but the exploit. if these forces and this husbandry are within reach of our will, and the laws of them can be read, we infer that all success, and all conceivable benefit for man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and has its own sublime economies by which it may attained. the world is mathematical, and has no be 70 conduct of life. casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. success has no more eccentricity, than the gingham and muslin we weave in our mills. i know no more affecting lesson to our busy, plotting new england brains, than to go into one of the factories with which we have lined all the watercourses in the states. a man hardly knows how much he is a machine, until he begins to make telegraph, loom, press, and locomotive, in his own image. but in these, he is forced to leave out his follies and hindrances, so that when we go to the mill, the machine is more moral than we. let a man dare go to a loom, and see if he be equal to it. let machine confront machine, and see how they come out. the world-mill is more complex than the calico-mill, and the architect stooped less. in the gingham-mill, a broken thread or a shred spoils the web through a piece of a hundred yards, and is traced back to the girl that wove it, and lessens her wages. the stockholder, on being shown this, rubs his hands with delight. are you so cunning, mr. profitloss, and do you expect to swindle your master and employer, in the web you weave ? ? a day is a more magnificent cloth than any muslin, the mechanism that makes it is infinitely cunninger, and you shall not conceal the sleezy, fraudulent, rotten hours you have slipped into the piece, nor fear that any honest thread, or straighter steel, or more inflexible shaft, will not testify in the web. iii. wealth who shall tell what did befall, far away in time, when once, over the lifeless ball, hung idle stars and suns ? what god the element obeyed ? wings of what wind the lichen bore, wafting the puny seeds of power, which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade e and well the primal pioneer knew the strong task to it assigned patient through heaven's enormous year to build in matter home for mind. from air the creeping centuries drew the matted thicket low and wide, this must the leaves of ages strew the granite slab to clothe and hide, ere wheat can wave its golden pride. what smiths, and in what furnace, rolled !in dizzy æons dim and mute the reeling brain can ill compute) copper and iron, lead, and gold ? what oldest star the fame can save of races perishing to pave 72 conduct of life. the planet with a floor of lime ? dust is their pyramid and mole: who saw what ferns and palms were pressed under the tumbling mountain's breast, in the safe herbal of the coal ? but when the quarried means were piled, all is waste and worthless, till arrives the wise selecting will, and, out of slime and chaos, wit draws the threads of fair and fit. then temples rose, and towns, and marts, the shop of toil, the hall of arts; then flew the sail across the seas to feed the north from tropic trees; the storm-wind wove, the torrent span, where they were bid the rivers ran; new slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. then docks were built, and crops were stored, and ingots added to the hoarıl. but, though light-headed man forget, remembering matter pays her debt: still, through her motes and masses, draw electric thrills and ties of law, which bind the strengths of nature will to the conscience of a child. wealth. as soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, one of the first questions which all wish to have answered, is, how does that man get his living? and with reason. he is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. society is barbarous, until every industrious man can get his living without dishonest customs. every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. he fails to make his place good in the world, unless he not only pays his debt, but also adds something to the common wealth. nor can he do justice to his genius, without making some larger demand on the world than a bare subsistence. he is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich. wealth has its source in applications of the mind to nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, up to the last secrets of art. intimate ties subsist between thought and all production ; because a better order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute labor. the forces and the resistances are nature's, but the mind acts in bringing things from where they abound to where they are wanted ; in wise a 74 conduct of life. combining; in directing the practice of the useful arts, and in the creation of finer values, by fine art, by eloquence, by song, or the reproductions of memory. wealth is in applications of mind to nature, and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot. one man 1:23 stronger arms, or longer legs; another sees by the course of streams, and growth of markets, where land will be wanted, makes a clearing to the river, goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. steam is no stronger now, than it was a hundred years ago ; but is put to better use. a clever fellow was acquainted with the expansive force of steam ; he also saw the wealth of wheat and grass rotting in michigan. then he çunningly screws on the steam-pipe to the wheat-crop. puff now, o steam! the 'steam puffs and expands as before, but this time it is dragging all michigan at its back to hungry new york and hungry england. coal lay in ledges under the ground since the flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. we may well call it black diamonds. every basket is power and civilization. for coal is a portable climate. it carries the heat of the tropics to labrador and the polar circle: and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. watt and stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw wealth. 73 tlm..tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make canada as warm as calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power. when the farmer's peaches are taken from under the tree, and carried into town, they have a new look, and a hundredfold value over the fruit «hich grew on the same bough, and lies fulsomely on the ground. the craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly. wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn ; in a good double-wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land ; in a boat to cross the sea ; in tools to work with ; in books to read ; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good-will. wealth begins with these articles of necessity. and here we must recite the iron law which nature thunders in these northern climates. first, she requires that each man should feed himself. if, happily, his fathers have left him no inheritance, he must go to work, and by making his wants less, or his gains more, he must draw himself out of that state of pain and insult in which she 76 conduct of life. forces the beggar to lie. she gives him no rest until this is done : she starves, taunts, and torments hin, takes away warmth, laughter, sleep, friends, and daylight, until lie has fought his way to his own loaf. then, less peremptorily, but still with sting enough, she urges hiin to the acquisition of such things as belong to him. every warehouse and shop-window, every fruit-tree, every thought of every hour, opens a new want to him, which it concerns his power and dignity to gratify. it is of no use to argue the wants down: the philosophers have laid the greatness of man in making his wants few ; but will a man content himself with a hut and a handful of dried pease? he is born to be а. rich. he is thoroughly related; and is tempted out by his appetites and fancies to the conquest of this and that piece of nature, until he finds his wellbeing in the use of his planet, and of more planets than his own. wealth requires, besides the crust of bread and the roof, — the freedom of the city, the freedom of the earth, travelling, machinery, the benefits of science, music, and fine arts, the best culture, and the best company. he is the rich man who can avail himself of all men's faculties. he is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in distant countries, and in past times. the same correspondence that is between thirst in the stomach, and water in the spring, exists between wealth. 77 > the whole of man and the whole of nature. the elements offer their service to him. the sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it, — day by day to his craft and audacity. 6 beware of me,” it says, “ but if you can huld me, i am the key to all the lands.” fire offers, on its side, an equal power. fire, steam, lightning, gravity, ledges of rock, mines of iron, lead, quicksilver, tin, and gold; forests of all woods; fruits of all climates; animals of all habits; the powers of tillage; the fabrics of his chemic laboratory ; the webs of his loom; the masculine draught of his locomotive, the talismans of the machine-shop; all grand and subtile things, minerals, gases, ethers, passions, war, trade, government, are his natural playmates, and, according to the excellence of the machinery in each human being, is his attraction for the instruments he is to employ. the world is his tool-chest, and he is successful, or his education is carried on just so far, as is the marriage of his faculties with nature, or, the degree in which he takes up things into himself. the strong race is strong on these terms. the saxons are the merchants of the world ; now, for a thousand years, the leading race, and by nothing more than their quality of personal independence, and, in its special modification, pecuniary independno reliance for bread and games on the 2 ence. 78 conduct of life. government, no clanship, no patriarchal style of living by the revenues of a chief, no marrying on, no system of clientship suits them; but every mari must pay his scot. the english are prosperous and peaceable, with their habit of considering that every man must take care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he do not maintain and improve his position in society. the subject of economy mixes itself with morals, inasmuch as it is a peremptory point of virtue that a man's independence be secured. poverty demoralizes. a man in debt is so far a slave; and wallstreet thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. and when one observes in the hotels and palaces of our atlantic capitals, the habit of expense, the riot of the senses, the absence of bonds, clanship, fellow-feeling of any kind, he feels, that, when a man or a woman is driven to the wall, the chances of integrity are frightfully diminished, as if virtue were coming to be a luxury which few could afford, or, as burke said, " at a market almost too high for humanity.” he may fix his inventory of necessities and of enjoyments on what scale he pleases, but if he wishes the power and privilege of thought, the chalking out his own career, and having society on his own terms, he must bring his wants within his proper power to satisfy. > wealth. 79 the manly part is to do with might and main what you can do. the world is full of fops who never did anything, and who have persuaded beauties and men of genius to wear their fop livery, and these will deliver the fop opinion, that it is not respectable to be seen earning a living; that it is much more respectable to spend without earning; and this doctrine of the snake will come also from the elect sons of light; for wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason. the brave workman, who might betray his feeling of it in his manners, if he do not succuinb in his practice, must replace the grace or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work done. no matter whether he make shoes, or statues, or laws. it is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. he can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him. the mechanic at his bench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, and deals on even terms with men of any condition. the artist has made his picture so true, that it disconcerts criticism. the statue is so beautiful, that it contracts ng stain from the market, but makes the market a silent gallery for itself. the case of the young lawyer was pitiful to disgust, a paltry matter of buttons or tweezer-cases; but the determined youth saw in it an aperture to insert his dangerous 80 conduct of life. wedges, made the insignificance of the thing for gotten, and gave fame by his sense and energy to the name and affairs of the tittleton snuff box factory. society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is made a toy. the life of pleasure is so ostentatious, that a shallow observer must believe that this is the agreed best use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, it ends in cosseting. but, if this were the main use of surplus capital, it would bring us to barricades, burned towns, and tomahawks, presently. men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design. power is what they want, not candy ; power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thouglıt, which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied. columbus thinks that the sphere is a problem for practical navigation, as well as for closet geometry, and looks on all kings and peoples as cowardly landsmen, until they dare fit him out. few men on the planet have more truly belonged to it. but he was forced to leave much of his map blank. his successors inherited his map, and inherited his fury to complete it. so the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, . wealth. 81 und survey, — the monomaniacs, who talk up their project in marts, and offices, and entreat men to subscribe :how did our factories get built ? how lid north america get netted with iron rails, except by the importunity of these orators, who dragged all the prudent men in? is party the inadness of many for the gain of a few ? this speculative genius is the madness of few for the gain of the world. the projectors are sacrificed, but the public is the gainer. each of these idealists, working after his thought, would make it tyrannical, if he could. he is met and antagonized by other speculators, as hot as he. the equilibrium is preserved by these counteractions, as one tree keeps down another in the forest, that it may not absorb all the sap in the ground. and the supply in nature of railroad presidents, copper-miners, grandjunctioners, smoke-burners, fire-annihilators, &c., is limited by the same law which keeps the proportion in the supply of carbon, of alum, and of hydrogen. to be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the master-works and chief men of each race. it is to have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, niagara, the nile, the desert, rome, paris, constantinople ; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories. the reader of humboldt's • cosmos” follows the marches of a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are armed by all the science, a * 82 conduct of life. arts, and implements which mankind have any where accumulated, and who is using these to add to the stock. so is it with denon, beckford, belzoni, wilkinson, layard, kane, lepsius, and livingston. “ the rich man,” says saadi, “is everywhere expected and at home.” the rich take up something more of the world into man's life. they include the country as well as the town, the ocean-side, the white hills, the far west, and the old european homesteads of man, in their notion of available material. the world is his, who has money to go over it. he arrives at the sea-shore, and a sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for him the stormy atlantic, and made it a luxurious hotel, amid the horrors of tempests. the persians say, tis the same to him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were covered with leather.” kings are said to have long arms, but every man should have long arms, and should pluck his living, his instruments, his power, and his knowing, from the sun, moon, and stars. is not then the demand to be rich legitimate ? yet, i have never seen a rich mail. i have never seen a man as rich as all men ought to be, or, with an adequate command of nature. the pulpit and the press have many commonpla res denouncing the thirst for wealth ; but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in wealth. 83 the people, lest civilization should be undone. men are urged by their ideas to acquire the command over nature. ages derive a culture from the wealth of roman cæsars, leo tenths, magnificent kings of france, grand dukes of tuscany, dukes of devonshire, townleys, vernons, and peels, in england; or whatever great proprietors. it is the interest of all men, that there should be vaticang and louvres full of noble works of art; british museums, and french gardens of plants, philadelphia academies of natural history, bodleian, ambrosian, royal, congressional libraries. it is the interest of all that there should be exploring expeditions ; captain cooks to voyage round the world, rosses, franklins, richardsons, and kanes, to find the magnetic and the geographic poles. we are all richer for the measurement of a degree of latitude on the earth's surface. our navigation is safer for the chart. how intimately our knowledge of the system of the universe rests on that ! and a true economy in a state or an individual will forget its frugality in behalf of claims like these. whilst it is each man's interest, that, not only ease and convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus product should exist somewhere, it need not be in his hands. often it is very undesirable to him. goethe said well, “nobody should be rich but those who understand it." some men > 84 conduct of life. are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. others cannot : their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends. they should own who can administer; not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves out work for more, opens a path for all. for he is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor : and how to give all access to the masterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization. the socialism of our day has done good service in setting men on thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all. for example, the providing to each man the means and apparatus of science, and of the arts. there are many articles good for occasional use, which few men are able to own. every man wishes to see the ring of saturn, the satellites and belts of jupiter and mars; the mountains and craters in the moon : yet how few can buy a telescope! and of those, scarcely one would like the trouble of keeping it in order, and exhibiting it. so of electrical and chemical apparatus, and many the like things. every man may have occasion to consult books which he does not care to possess, such as cyclopædias, dictionaries, tables, charts, maps, and public documents : pictures alsu wealth. 85 of birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, flowers, whose names he desires to know. there is a refining influence from the arts of design on a prepared mind, which is as positive as that of music, and not to be supplied from any other source. but pictures, engravings, statues, and casts, beside their first cost, entail expenses, as of galleries and keepers for the exhibition ; and the use which any man can make of them is rare, and their value, too, is much enhanced by the numbers of men who can share their enjoyment. in the greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it. i think sometimes, — could i only have music on my own terms ; could i live in a great city, and know where i could go whenever i wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine. if properties of this kind were owned by states, towns, and lyceums, they would draw the bonds of neighborhood closer. a town would exist to an intellectual purpose. in europe, where the feudal forms secure the permanence of wealth in certain families, those families buy and preserve these things, and lay them open to the public. but in america, where democratic institutions divide every estate into small portions, after a few years, the public should step into the place of these proprie. 86 conduct of life. tors, and provide this culture and inspiration for the citizen. man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich by the use of his faculties ; by the union of thought with nature. property is an intellectual production. the game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. cultivated labor drives out brute labor. an infinite number of shrewd men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain best and shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, navigations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world to-day. commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. the right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense ; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. he is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. there is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune, and so, in making money. men talk as if there were some magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. he knows, that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent, — for every effect a perfect cause, and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose. he insures himself in every transaction, and likes small and sure gains. probity and closeness to the facts are the basis, but the maswealth. 87 ters of the art add a certain long arithmetic. the problem is, to combine many and remote operations, with the accuracy and adherence to the facts, which is easy in near and small transactions ; so to arrive at gigantic results, without any compromise of safety. napoleon was fond of telling the story of the marseilles banker, who said to his visitor, surprised at the contrast between the splendor of the banker's chateau and hospitality, and the meanness of the counting-room in which he had seen him, young man, you are too young to understand how masses are formed, the true and only power, — whether composed of money, water, , or men, it is all alike, a mass is an immense centre of motion, but it must be begun, it must be kept up:” — and he might have added, that the way in which it must be begun and kept up, is, by obedience to the law of particles. success consists in close appliance to the laws of the world, and, since those laws are intellectual and moral, an intellectual and moral obedience. political economy is as good a book wherein to read the life of man, and the ascendency of laws over all private and hostile influences, as any bible which has come down to us. money is representative, and follows the nature and fortunes of the owner. the coin is a delicate meter of civil, social, and moral changes. the farmer is covetous of his dollar, and with reason a 88 conduct of life. it is no waif to him. he knows how many strokes of labor it represents. his bones ache with the day's work that earned it. he knows how much land it represents; — how much rain, frost, and sunshine. he knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much discretion and patience, so much hoe ing, and threshing. try to lift his dollar; you must lift all that weight. in the city, where money follows the skit of a pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on as light. i wish the farmer held it dearer, and would spend it only for real bread; force for force. the farmer's dollar is heavy, and the clerk's is light and nimble ; leaps out of his pocket; jumps on to cards and faro-tables : but still more curious is its susceptibility to metaphysical changes. it is the finest barometer of social storms, and announces revolutions. every step of civil advancement makes every man's dollar worth more. in california, the country where it grew, what would it buy? a few years since, it would buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad company, and crime. there are wide countries, like siberia, where it would buy little else to-day, than some petty mitigation of suffering. in rome, it will buy beauty and magnificence. forty years ago, a dollar would not buy much in boston. now it will buy a great deal more in our old town, thanks to railroads, telegraphs, steainers. wealth. 89 a and the contemporaneous growth of new york, and the whole country. yet there are many goods appertaining to a capital city, which are not yet purchasable here, no, not with a mountain of dollars. a dollar in florida is not worth a dollar in massachusetts. a dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral values. a dollar is rated for the corn it will buy, or to speak strictly, not for the corn or house-room, but for athenian corn, and roman house-room, — for the wit, probity, and power, which we eat bread and dwell in houses to share and exert. wealth is mental; wealth is moral. the value of a dollar is, to buy just things: a dollar goes on increasing in value with all the genius, and all the virtue of the world. a dollar in a university, is worth more than a dollar in a jail; in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding community, than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic, are in constant play. the “bank-note detector” is a useful publication. but the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the detector of the right and wrong where it circulates. is it not instantly enhanced by the increase of equity? if a trader refuses to sell his vote, or adheres to some odious right, he makes so much more equity in massachusetts; and every acre in the state is more worth, in the hour of his action. you take out of state-street the ten honestest merchants, and put in ten roguish persons, conif 90 conduct of life. trolling the same amount of capital, — the rates of insurance will indicate it; the soundness of banks will show it: the highways will be less secure : the schools will feel it; the children will bring home their little dose of the poison: the judge will sit less firmly on the bench, and his decisions be less upright; he has lost so much support and constraint, which all need ; and the pulpit will betray it, in a laxer rule of life. an apple-tree, if you take out every day for a number of days, a load of loam, and put in a load of sand about its roots, — will find it out. an apple-tree is a stupid kind of creature, but if this treatment be pursued for a short time, i think it would begin to mistrust something. and if you should take out of the powerful class engaged in trade a hundred good men, and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the same thing, introduce a demoralizing institution, would not the dollar, which is not much stupider than an apple-tree, presently find it out ? the value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society. every man who removes into this city, with any purchasable talent or skill in him, gives to every man's labor in the city, a new worth. if a talent is anywhere born into the world, the community of nations is enriched ; and, much more, with a new degree of probity. the expense of crime, one of the principal charges of every nation, is so far stopped. in europe, crime is observed to increase a wealth 93 or abate with the price of bread. if the rothschilds at paris do not accept bills, the people at manchester, at paisley, at birmingham, are forced into the highway, and landlords are shot down in ireland. the police records attest it. the vibrations are presently felt in new york, new orleans, and chicago. not much otherwise, the economical power touches the masses through the political lords. rothschild refuses the russian loan, and there is peace, and the harvests are saved. he takes it, and there is war, and an agitation through a large portion of mankind, with every hideous result, ending in revolution, and a new order. wealth brings with it its own checks and balthe basis of political economy is noninterference. the only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. do not legislate. meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. give no bounties : make equal laws : secure life and property, and you need not give alms. open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. in a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile, to the industrious, brave, and persevering. the laws of nature play through trade, as a toy. battery exhibits the effects of electricity. the level of the sea is not more surely kept, than is the ances. 92 conduct of life. equilibrium of value in society, by the demand and supply: and artifice or legislation punishes itself, by reactions, gluts, and bankruptcies. the sublime laws play indifferently through atoms and galazies. whoever knows what happens in the getting and spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of beer; that no wishing will change the rigorous limits of pintsand penny loaves; that, for all that is consumed, so much less remains in the basket and pot; but what is gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, if it nourish his body, and enable him to finish his task ; — knows all of political economy that the budgets of empires can teach him. the interest of petty economy is this symbolization of the great economy; the way in which a house, and a private man's methods, tally with the solar system, and the laws of give and take, throughout nature ; and, however wary we are of the falsehoods and petty tricks which we suicidally play off on each other, every man has a certain satisfaction, whenever his dealing touches on the inevitable facts; when he sees that things themselves dictate the price, as they always tend to do, and, in large manufactures, are seen to do. your paper is not fine or coarse enough, is too heavy, or too thin. the manufacturer says, he will furnish you with just that thickness or thinness you want; the pattern is quite indifferent to him ; here is his schedule ; any variety of paper, as cheaper or dearer, with the wealth. 93 prices annexed. a pound of paper costs so much, and you may have it made up in any pattern you fancy. there is in all our dealings a self-regulation that supersedes chaffering. you will rent a house, but must have it cheap. the owner can reduce the rent, but so he incapacitates himself from making proper repairs, and the tenant gets not the house he would have, but a worse one; besides, that a relation a little injurious is established between landlord and tenant. you dismiss your laborer, saying, “ patrik, i shall send for you as soon as i cannot do without you.” patrick goes off contented, for he knows that the weeds will grow with the potatoes, the vines must be planted, next week, and, however unwilling you may be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and cucumbers will send for him. who but must wish that all labor and value should stand on the same simple and surly market ? if it is the best of its kind, it will. we must have joiner, locksmith, planter, priest, poet, doctor, cook, weaver, ostler; each in turn, through the year. if a st. michael's pear sells for a shilling, it costs a shilling to raise it. if, in boston, the best securities offer twelve per cent. for money, they have just six per cent. of insecurity. you may not see that the fine you a shilling, but it costs the community so much. the shilling represents the number of enemies the pear has, and the amount of risk in a pear costs 94 conduct of life. ripening it. the price of coal shows the narrcw ness of the coal-field, and a compulsory confinement of the miners to a certain district. all salaries are reckoned on contingent, as well as on actual services. “if the wind were always southwest by west,” said the skipper, “ women might take ships to sea.” one might say, that all things are of one price; that nothing is cheap or dear; and that the apparent disparities that strike us, are only a shopman's trick of concealing the damage in your bargain. a youth coming into the city from his native new hampshire farm, with its hard fare still fresh in his remembrance, boards at a 'first-class hotel, and believes he must somehow have outwitted dr. franklin and malthus, for luxuries are cheap. but he pays for the one convenience of a better dinner, by the loss of some of the richest social and educational advantages. he has lost what guards ! what incentives ! he will perhaps find by and by, that he left the muses at the door of the hotel, and found the furies inside. money often costs too much, and power and pleasure arc not cheap. the ancient poet said, “ the gods sell all things at a fair price.” there is an example of the compensations in the commercial history of this country. when the european wars threw the carrying-trade of the world, from 1800 to 1812, into american bottoms, a seizure was now and then made of an american wealth. 95 ship. of course, the loss was serious to the owner, but the country was indemnified; for we charged threepence a pound for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, and so on; which paid for the risk and loss, and brought into the country an immense prosperity, early marriages, private wealth, the building of cities, and of states: and, after the war was over, we received compensation over and above, by treaty, for all the seizures. well, the americans grew rich and great. but the pay-day comes round. britain, france, and germany, which our extraordinary profits had impoverished, send out, attracted by the fame of our advantages, first their thousands, then their millions, of poor people, to share the crop. at first, we employ them, and increase our prosperity : but, in the artificial system of society and of protected labor, which we also have adopted and enlarged, there come presently checks and stoppages. then we refuse to employ these poor men. but they will not so be answered. they go into the poor rates, and, though we refuse wages, we must now pay the same amount in the form of taxes. again, it turns out that the largest proportion of crimes are committed by foreigners. the cost of the crime, and the expense of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and the standing army of preventive police we must pay. the cost of education of the posterity of this great colony, 1 will not compute. but the gross amount of these 96 conduct of life. costs will begin to pay back what we thought was d net gain from our transatlantic customers of 1800. it is vain to refuse this payment. we cannot get rid of these people, and we cannot get rid of their vill to be supported. that has become an inevitale element of our politics; and, for their votes, ach of the dominant parties courts and assists them o get it executed. moreover, we have to pay, not what would have contented them at home, but what they have learned to think necessary here; so that opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral considerations complicate the problem. masses. there are a few measures of economy which will bear to be named without disgust; for the subject is tender, and we may easily have too much of it; and therein resembles the hideous animalcules of which our bodies are built up, — which, offensive in the particular, yet compose valuable and effective our nature and genius force us to respect ends, whilst we use means. we must use the means, and yet, in our most accurate using, somehow screen and cloak them, as we can only give them any beauty, by a reflection of the glory of the end. that is the good head, which serves the end, and commands the means. the rabble are corrupted by their means: the means are too strong for them, and they desert their end. 1. the first of these measures is that each man's wealth. 97 expense must proceed from his character. as long as your genius buys, the investment is safe, though you spend like a monarch. nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. this native determination guides his labor and his spending. he wants an equipment of means and tools proper to his talent. and to save on this point, were to neutralize the special strength and helpfulness of each mind. do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and not its acceptableness. this is so much economy, that, rightly read, it is the sum of economy profligacy consists not in spending years of time or chests of money, — but in spending them off the line of your career. the crime which bankrupts men and states, is, job-work;— declining from your main design, to serve a turn here or there. nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life : nothing is great or desirable, if it is off from that. i think we are entitled here to draw a straight line, and say, that society can never prosper, but must always be bankrupt, until every man does that which he was created to do. spend for your expense, and retrench the expense which is not yours. allston, the painter, was wont to say, that he built a plain house, and filled it with plain furniture, because he would hold out no bribe to any to visit him, who had not similar tastes to 5 98 conduct of life i so his own. we are sympathetic, and, like children, want everything we see. but it is a large stride to independence, — when a man, in the discovery of his proper talent, has sunk the necessity for false expenses. as the betrotlied maiden, by one secure affection, is relieved from a system of slaveries, the daily inculcated necessity of pleasing all, the man who has found what he can do, can spend on that, and leave all other spending. montaigne said, “when he was a younger brother, he went brave in dress and equipage, but afterward his chateau and farms might answer for him.” let a man who belongs to the class of nobles, those, namely, who have found out that they can do something, relieve himself of all vague squandering on objects not his. let the realist not mind appearances. let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. the virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. thus, next to humility, i have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. a good pride is, as i reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hunpride is handsome, economical pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel dred a year. wealth. 99 afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent wellcontented in fine saloons. but vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health, and peace, and is still nothing at last, a long way leading nowhere. only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work. we had in this region, twenty years ago, among our educated men, a sort of arcadian fanaticism, a passionate desire to go upon the land, and unite farming to intellectual pursuits. many effected their purpose, and made the experiment, and some became downright ploughmen; but all were cured of their faith that scholarship and practical farming, (i mean, with one's own hands,) could be united. with brow bent, with firm intent, the pale scholar leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a juster statement of his thought, in the gardenwalk. he stoops to pull up a purslain, or a dock, that is choking the young corn, and finds there are two : close behind the last, is a third ; he reaches out his hand to a fourth ; behind that, are four thousand and one. he is heated and untuned, end, by and by, wakes up from his idiot dream of a 100 conduct of life. worse. chickweed and red-root, to remember his morning thought, and to find, that, with his adamantine purposes, he has been duped by a dandelion. a garde:) is like those pernicious machineries we read of, every month, in the newspapers, which catch a man's coatskirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresistible destruction. in an evil hour he pulled down his wall, and added a field to his homestead. no land is bad, but land is if a man own land, the land owns him. now let him leave home, if le dare. every tree and graft, every hill of melons, row of corn, or quickset hedge, all he has done, and all he means to do, stand in his way, like duns, when he would go out of his gate. the devotion to these vines and trees he finds poisonous. long free walks, a circuit of miles, free his brain, and serve his body. long marches are no hardship to him. he believes he composes easily on the hills. but this pottering in a few square yards of garden is dispiriting and drivelling. the smell of the plants has drugged him, and robbed him of energy. he finds a catalepsy in his bones. he grows peevish and poorspirited. the genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. one is concentrative in sparks and shocks : the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties. an engraver whose hands must be of an exquisite wealth. 101 delicacy of stroke, should not lay stone walls. sir david brewster gives exact instructions for microscopic observation :—“lie down on your back, and hold the single lens and object over your eye,” &c. &c. how much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentram tion, and almost a going out of the body to think ! 2. spend after your genius, and by system. nature goes by rule, not by sallies and saltations. there must be system in the economies. saving and unexpensiveness will not keep the most pathetic family from ruin, nor will bigger incomes make free spending safe. the secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo; as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, then new and steady rills of income, though never so small, being added, wealth begins. but in ordinary, as means increase, spending increases faster, so that, large incomes, in england and elsewhere, are found not to help matthe eating quality of debt does not relax its voracity. when the cholera is in the potato, what is the use of planting larger crops ? in england, the richest country in the universe, i was assured by shrewd observers, that great lords and ladies had no more guineas to give away than other people; that liberality with money is as rare, and as immediately famous a virtue as it is here. want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never ters ; 102 conduct of life. large enough to cover. i remember in warwick shire, to have been shown a fair manoi, still in the same name as in shakspeare's time. the rent-roll, i was told, is some fourteen thousand pounds a year: but, when the second son of the late proprietor was born, the father was perplexed how to provide for him. the eldest son must inherit the manor; what to do with this supernumerary? he was advised to breed him for the church, and to settle him in the rectorship, which was in the gift of the family ; which was done. it is a general rule in that country, that bigger incomes do not help anybody. it is commonly observed, that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery, or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. they have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and, with the rapid wealth, come rapid claims : which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated. a system must be in every economy, or the best single expedients are of no avail. a farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out. thus, the cattle are a main link in the chain-ring. if the non-conformist or æsthetic farmer leaves out the cattle, and does not also leave out the want which the cattle must supply, he must fill the gap by begging or stealing. when men now alive were born, the farm yielded everything that was con: wealth. 103 sumed on it. the farm yielded no money, and the farmer got on without. if he fell sick, his neighbors came in tə his aid : each gave a day's work; or a half day; or lent his yoke of oxen, or his horse, and kept his work even : hoed his potatoes, mowed his hay, reaped his rye ; well knowing that no man could afford to hire labor, without selling his land. in autumn, a farmer could sell an ox or a hog, and get a little money to pay taxes withal. now, the farmer buys almost all he consumes, tin-ware, cloth, sugar, tea, coffee, fish, coal, railroadtickets, and newspapers. a master in each art is required, because the practice is never with still or dead subjects, but they change in your hands. you think farm-buildings and broad acres a solid property: but its value is flowing like water. it requires as much watching as if you were decanting wine from a cask. the farmer knows what to do with it, stops every leak, turns all the streamlets to one reservoir, and decants wine : but a blunderhead comes out of cornhili, tries his hand, and it all leaks away. so is it with granite streets, or timber townships, as with fruit or flowers. nor is any investment so permanent, that it can be allowed to remain without incessant watching, as the history of each attempt to lock up an inheritance through two generations for an unborn inheritor may show. when mr. cockayne takes a cottage in the coun104 conduct of life. a try, and will keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a creature that is fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk twice a day. but the cow that he buys gives milk. for three months; then her bag dries up. what to do with a dry cow ? who will buy her ? perhaps he bought also a yoke of oxen to do his work; but they get blown and lame. what to do with blown and lame oxen ? the farmer fats his, after the spring-work is done, and kills them in the fall. but how can cockayne, who has no pastures, and leaves his cottage daily in the cars, at business hours, be pothered with fatting and killing oxen ? he plants trees; but there must be crops, to keep the trees in ploughed land. what shall be the crops ? he will have nothing to do with trees, but will have grass. after a year or two, the grass must be turned up and ploughed : now what crops ? credulous cockayne ! 3. help comes in the custom of the country, and the rule of impera parendo. the rule is not to dictate, nor to insist on carrying out each of your schemes by ignorant wilfulness, but to learn practically the secret spoken from all nature, that things themselves refuse to be mismanaged, and will show to the watchful their own law. nobody need stir hand or foot. the custom of the country will do it all. i know not how to build or to plant; neither how to buy wood, nor what to do with the house-lot, the field, or the wood-lot, when wealth. 105 bought. never fear: it is all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, in the custom of the country, whether to sand, or whether to clay it, when to plough, and how to dress, whether to grass, or to corn; and you cannot help or hinder it. nature has her own best mode of doing each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and ears open. if not, she will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own way to hers. how often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position ; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. on this art of nature all our arts rely. of the two eminent engineers in the recent construction of railways in england, mr. brunel went straight from terminus to terminus, through mountains, over streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal estates in two, and shooting through this man's cellar, and that man's attic window, and so arriving at his end, at great pleasure to geometers, but with cost to his company. mr. stephenson, on the contrary, believing that the river knows the way, followed his valley, as implicitly as our western railroad follows the westfield river, and turned out to be the safest and cheapest engineer. we say the cows laid out boston. well, there are worse surveyors. every pedestrian in our pastures has 106 conduct of life. frequent occasion to thank the cows for cutting the best path through the thicket, and over the hills : and travellers and indians know the value of a buffalo-trail, which is sure to be the easiest possible pass through the ridge. when a citizen, fresh from dock-square, or milkstreet, comes out and buys land in the country, his first thought is to a fine outlook from his windows : jnis library must command a western view: a sunset every day, bathing the shoulder of blue hills, wachusett, and the peaks of monadnoc and uncanoonuc. what, thirty acres, and all this magnificence for fifteen hundred dollars! it would be cheap at fifty thousand. he proceeds at once, his eyes dim with tears of joy, to fix the spot for his corner-stone. but the man who is to level the ground, thinks it will take many hundred loads of gravel to fill the hollow to the road. the stone mason who should build the well thinks he shall have to dig forty feet: the baker doubts he shall never like to drive up to the door: the practical neighbor cavils at the position of the barn ; and the citizen comes to know that his predecessor the farmer built the house in the right spot for the sun and wind, the spring, and water-drainage, and the convenience to the pasture, the garden, the field, and the road. so dock-square yields the point, and things have their own way. use has made the farmer wise, and the foolish citizen learns wealth. 107 to take his counsel. from step to step he comes at last to surrender at discretion. the farmer affects to take his orders; but the citizen says, you may ask me as often as you will, and in what ingenious forms, for an opinion concerning the mode of building my wall, or sinking my well, or laying out my acre, but the ball will rebound to you. these are matters on which i neither know, nor need to know anything. these are questions which you and not i shall answer. not less, within doors, a system settles itself paramount and tyrannical over master and mistress, servant and child, cousin and acquaintance. 'tis in vain that genius or virtue or energy of character strive and cry against it. this is fate. and 'tis very well that the poor husband reads in a book of a new way of living, and resolves to adopt it at home: let him go home and try it, if he dare. 4. another point of economy is to look for seed of the same kind as you sow: and not to hope to buy one kind with another kind. friendship buys friendship; justice, justice ; military merit, military success. good husbandry finds wife, children, and household. the good merchant large gains, ships, stocks, and money. the good poet fame, and literary credit; but not either, the cther. yet there is commonly a confusion of expectations on these points. hotspur lives for the moment ; praises himself for it; and despises furlong, that he 108 conduct of life. does not. hotspur, of course, is poor; and furlong a good provider. the odd circumstance is, that hotspur thinks it a superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to be rewarded with furlong's lands. i have not at all completed my design. but we must not leave the topic, without casting one glance into the interior recesses. it is a doctrine of philosophy, that man is a being of degrees ; that there is nothing in the world, which is not repeated in his body ; his body being a sort of miniature or summary of the world : then that there is nothing in his body, which is not repeated as in a celestial sphere in his mind : then, there is nothing in his brain, which is not repeated in a higher sphere, in his moral system. 5. now these things are so in nature. all things ascend, and the royal rule of economy is, that it should ascend also, or, whatever we do must always have a higher aim. thus it is a maxim, that money is another kind of blood. is another kind of blood. pecunia alter sanguis : or, the estate of a man is only a larger kind of body, and admits of regimen analogous to his bodily circulations. so there is no maxim of the merchant, e. g., “best use of money is to pay debts ;” “every business by itself ; ” “ best time is present time;” “the right investment is in tools of your trade; or the like, which does not admit of an extended sense. the counting-room maxims " "> wealth. 105 the mer liberally expounded are laws of the universe. the merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. it is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure. it is to invest income; that is to say, to take up particulars into generals ; days into integral eras, literary, emotive, practical, of its life, and still to ascend in its investment. chant has but one rule, absorb and invest : he is to be capitalist : the scraps and filings must be gathered back into the crucible; the gas and smoke must be burned, and earnings must not go to increase expense, but to capital again. well, the man must be capitalist. will he spend his income, or will he invest? his body and every organ is under the same law. his body is a jar, in which the liquor of life is stored. will he spend for pleasure? the way to ruin is short and facile. will he not spend, but hoard for power? it passes through the sacred fermentations, by that law of nature whereby everything climbs to higher platforms, and bodily vigor becomes mental and moral vigor. the bread he eats is first strength and animal spirits : it becomes, in higher laboratories, imagery and thought ; and in still higher results, courage and endurance. this is the right compound interest ; this is capital doubled, quadrupled, centupled ; man raised to his highest power. the true thrift is always to spend on the higher lane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, ? 110 conduct of life. that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation, nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures, he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good, to be already on the say to the highest. iv. culture can rules or tutors educate the semigod whom we await ? he must be musical, tremulous, impressional, alive to gentle influence of landscape and of sky, and tender to the spirit-touch of man's or maiden's eye : but, to his native centre fast, shall into future fuse the past, and the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. | culture. cess. the word of ambition at the present day is culture. whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success. a man is the prisoner of his power. a topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. it watches sucfor performance, nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the performer to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a tympany of him. if she wants a thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any excess of power in one part is usually paid for at once by some defect in a contiguous part. our efficiency depends so much on our concentration, that nature usually in the instances where a marked man is sent into the world, overloads him with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working power. it is said, no man can write but one book ; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its im114 conduct of life. pression on all his performances. if she creates a policeman like fouché, he is made up of suspicions , and of plots to circumvent them. " the air,” saia fouché, “ is full of poniards.” the physician sanctorius spent his life in a pair of scales, weigning his food. lord coke valued chaucer highly, because the canon yeman's tale illustrates the statute hen. v. chap. 4, against alchemy. i saw a man who believed the principal mischiefs in the english state were derived from the devotion to musical concerts. a freemason, not long since, set out to explain to this country, that the principal cause of the success of general washington, was, the aid he derived from the freemasons. but worse than the harping on one string, narire has secured individualism, by giving the private person a high conceit of his weight in the system. the pest of society is egotists. there are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. in the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly on one spot. is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady? the man runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. it is a tendency in all minds. one of its annoying forms, is a craving for sympathy. the sufferers parade their miseries, tear the lint from culture 115 their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity them. they like sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of interest from the bystanders, as we have seen children, who, finding themselves of no account when grown people come in, will cough till they choke, to draw attention. this distemper is the scourge of talent, of artists, inventors, and philosophers. eminent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing it is. beware of the man who says, , "i am on the eve of a revelation." it is speedily punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor it, and by treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower selfism, and exclude him from the great world of god's cheerful fallible men and women. let us rather be insulted, whilst we are insultable. religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped. this goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in nature which it subserves ; such as we see in the sexual attraction. the preservation of the species was a point of such necessity, that nature has secured it at all hazards by immensely overloading the passion, at the risk of perpetual crime and dis116 conduct of life. 1 order. so egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which each individual persists to be what he is. this individuality is not only not inconsistent with culture, but is the basis of it. every valuable nature is there in its own right, and the student we speak to must have a motherwit invincible by his culture, which uses all books, arts, facilities, and elegancies of intercourse, but is never subdued and lost in them. he only is a well-made man who has a good determination. and the end of culture is not to destroy this, god forbid ! but to train away all impediment and mixture, and leave nothing but pure power. our student must have a style and determination, and be a master in his own specialty. but, having this, he must put it behind him. he must have a catholicity, a power to see with a free and disengaged look every object. yet is this private interest and self so overcharged, that, if a man seeks a companion who can look at objects for their own sake, and without affection or self-reference, he will find the fewest who will give him that satisfaction; whilst most men are afflicted with a coldness, an incuriosity, as soon as any object does not connect with their self-love. though they talk of the object before them, they are thinking of themselves, and their vanity is laying little traps for your admiration. but after a man has discovered that there are a culture. 117 have you liniits to the interest which his private history has for mankind, he still converses with his family, or a fuw companions, — perhaps with half a dozen personalities that are famous in his neighborhood. in boston, the question of life is the names of some eight or ten men. have you seen mr. allston, doctor channing, mr. adams, mr. webster, mr. greenough? have you heard everett, garrison, father taylor, theodore parker ? talked with messieurs turbinewheel, summitlevel, and lacofrupees? then you may as well die. in new york, the question is of some other eight, or ten, or twenty. have you seen a few lawyers, merchants, and brokers, — two or three scholars, two or three capitalists, two or three editors of newspapers . ? new york is a sucked orange. all conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our american existence. nor do we expect anybody to be other than a faint copy of these heroes. life is very narrow. bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up! the to which we have sacrificed, tariff or democracy, whigism or abolition, temperance or socialism, would show like roots of bitterness and a 66 causes 118 conduct of life. n dragons of wrath : and our talents are as mischievous as if each had been seized upon by some bird of prey, which had whisked him away from fortune, from truth, from the dear society of thu poets, some zeal, some bias, and only when he was now gray and nerveless, was it relaxing its claws, and he awaking to sober perceptions. culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities, through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. culture redresses his balance, puts him among his equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion. 'tis not a compliment but a disparagement to consult a man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, or on eating, or on books, and, whenever he appears, considerately to turn the conversation to the bantling he is known to fondle. in the norse heaven of our forefathers, thor's house had five hundred and forty floors; and man's house has five hundred and forty floors. his excellence is facility of adaptation and of transition through many related points, to wide contrasts and extremes. cúlture kills his exaggeration, his conceit of his village or his city. we must leave our pets at home, when we go into the street, and meet men culture. 119 on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense no performance is worth loss of geniality. 'tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy. in the norse legend, allfadir did not get a drink of mimir's spring, (the fountain of wisdom,) until he left his eye in pledge. and here is a pedant that cannot unfold his wrinkles, nor conceal his wrath at interruption by the best, if their conversation do not fit his impertinency,— here is he to afflict us with his personalities. 'tis incident to scholars, that each of them fancies he is pointedly odious in his community. draw him out of this limbo of irritability. cleanse with healthy blood his parchment skin. you restore to him his eyes which he left in pledge at mimir's spring. if you are the victim of your doing, who cares what you do? we can spare your opera, your gazetteer, your chemic analysis, your history, your syllogisms. your man of genius pays dear for his distinction. his head runs up into a spire, and instead of a healthy man, merry and wise, he is some mad dominie. nature is reckless of the individual. when she has points to carry, sne carries them. to wade in marshes and seamargins is the destiny of certain birds, and they are so accurately made for this, that they are imprisoned in those places. each animal out of its habitat would starve. to the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. a sol120 conduct of life. dier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. and thus we are victims of adaptation. the antidotes against this organic egotism, are, the range and variety of attractions, as gained by acquaintance with the world, with men of merit, with classes of society, with travel, with eminent persons, and with the high resources of philosophy, art, and religion: books, travel, society, solitude. the hardiest skeptic who has seen a horse broken, a pointer trained, or, who has visited a menagerie, or the exhibition of the industrious fleas, will not deny the validity of education. “a boy," says plato, “is the most vicious of all wild beasts ;” and, in the same spirit, the old english poet gascoigne says, “a boy is better unborn than un' taught.” the city breeds one kind of speech and manners; the back-country a different style; the sea, another; the army, a fourth. we know that an army which can be confided in, may be formed by discipline; that, by systematic discipline all men may be made heroes : marshal lannes said to a french officer, “ know, colonel, that none but a poltroon will boast that he never was afraid.” a great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. and, in all human action, those faculties will be strong which are used. robert owen said, “ give me a tiger, and i will eđucate him.” 'tis inhuman to want faith in the power 5 culture. 121 > a of education, since to meliorate, is the law of nature; and men are valued precisely as they exert onward or meliorating force. on the other hand, poltroonery is the acknowledging an inferiority to be incurable. incapacity of melioration is the only mortal distemper. there are people who can never understand a trope, or any second or expanded sense given to your words, or any humor ; but remain literalists, after hearing the music, and poetry, and rhetoric, and wit, of seventy or eighty years. they are past the help of surgeon or clergy. but even these can understand pitchforks and the cry of fire ! and i have noticed in some of this class a marked dislike of earthquakes. let us make our education brave and preventive. politics is an after-work, a poor patching. we are always a little late. the evil is done, the law is passed, and we begin the up-hill agitation for repeal of that of which we ought to have prevented the enacting. we shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. what we call our root-andbranch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. we must begin higher up, namely, in education. our arts and tools give to him who can handle thern much the same advantage over the novice, as if you extended his life, ten, fifty, or a hundred years. and i think it the part of good sense to 122 conduct of life 6 provide every fine soul with such culture, that it shall not, at thirty or forty years, have to say, • this which i might do is made hopeless through my want of weapons.' but it is conceded that much of our training fails of effect; that all success is hazardous and rare; that a large part of our cost and pains is thrown away. nature takes the matter into her own hands, and, though we must not omit any jot of our system, we can seldom be sure that it has availed much, or, that as much good would not have accrued from a different system. books, as containing the finest records of human wit, must always enter into our notion of culture. the best heads that ever existed, pericles, plato, julius cæsar, shakspeare, goethe, milton, were well-read, universally educated men, and quite too wise to undervalue letters. their opinion has weight, because they had means of knowing the opposite opinion. we look that a great man should be a good reader, or, in proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. good criticism is very rare, and always precious. i am always happy to meet persons who perceive the transcendent superiority of shakspeare over all other writers. i like people who like plato. because this love does not consist with self-conceit. but books are good only as far as a boy is ready for them. he sometimes gets ready very slowly. culture. 123 you send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. you send him to the latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop-windows. you like the strict rules and the long terms; and he finds his best leading in a by-way of his own, and refuses any companions but of his choosing. lie hates the grammar and gradus, and loves guns, fishing-rods, horses, and boats. well, the boy is right; and you are not fit to direct his bringing up, if your theory leaves out his gymnastic training. archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod, horse and boat, are all educators, liberalizers; and so are dancing, dress, and the street-talk; and, provided only the boy has resources, and is of a noble and ingenuous strain, — these will not serve him less than the books. he learns chess, whist, dancing, and theatricals. the father observes that another boy has learned algebra and geometry in the same time. but the first boy has acquired much more than these poor games along with them. he is infatuated for weeks with whist and chess; but presently will find out, as you did, that when he rises from the game too long played, he is vacant and forlorn, and despises himself. thenceforward it takes place with other things, and has its due weight in his experience. these minor skills and accomplishments, for example, dancing, are tickets of ad:nission to the dress-circle of mankind, and the 124 conduct of life. being master of them enables the youth to judge intelligently of much, on which, otherwise, he would give a pedantic squint. landor said, “i have , suffered more from my bad dancing, than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together,” provided always the boy is teachable, (for we are not proposing to make a statue out of punk,) football, cricket, archery, swimming, skating, climbing, fencing, riding, are lessons in the art of power, which it is his main business to learn ;-riding, specially, of which lord herbert of cherbury said, “a good rider on a good horse is as much above himself and others as the world can make him." besides, the gun, fishing-rod, boat, and horse, constitute, among all who use them, secret.freemasonries. they are as if they belonged to one club. there is also a negative value in these arts. their chief use to the youth, is, not amusement, but to be known for what they are, and not to remair to him occasions of heart-burn. we are full of superstitions. each class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has not; the refined, on rude strength ; the democrat, on birth and breeding. one of the benefits of a college education is, to show the boy its little avail. i knew a leading man in a leading city, who, having set his heart on an education at the university, and missed it, could never quite feel hiinself the equal of his own brothers who had gone culture. 125 thither. his easy superiority to multitudes of professional men could never quite countervail to him this imaginary defect. balls, riding, wine-parties, and billiards, pass to a poor boy for something fine and romantic, which they are not; and a free admission to them on an equal footing, if it were possible, only once or twice, would be worth ten times its cost, by undeceiving him. i am not much an advocate for travelling, and i observe that men run away to other countries, because they are not good in their own, and run back 6 to their own, because they pass for nothing in the new places. for the most part, only the light characters travel. who are you that have no task to keep you at home? i have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but i mean to do justice. i think, there is a restlessness in our people, which argues want of character. all educated americans, first or last, go to europe ; – perhaps, because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits of this country might suggest. an eminent teacher of girls said, “the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to europe.” can we never extract this tape-worm of europe from the brain of our countrymen? one sees very well what their fate must be. he that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. he only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. you do not think you will find anything there which you have 1 126 conduct of life. not seen at home? the stuff of all countries is just the same. do you suppose, there is any country where they do not scald milkpans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish ? what is true anywhere is true everywhere. and let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries. of course, for some men, travel may be useful. naturalists, discoverers, and sailors are born. some men are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, missionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for farmers and working-men. and if the man is of a light and social turn, and nature has aimed to make a legged and winged creature, framed for locomotion, we must follow her hint, and furnish him with that breeding which gives currency, as sedulously as with that which gives worth. but let us not be pedantic, but allow to travel its full effect. the boy grown up on the farm, which he has never left, is said in the country to have had no chance, and boys and men of that condition look upon work on a railroad, or drudgery in a city, as opportunity. poor country boys of vermont and connecticut formerly owed what knowledge they had, to their peddling trips to the southern states. california and the pacific coast is now the university of this class, as virginia was in old times. to have some chance' is their word. and the phrase 'to know the world,' or to travel, is synonymous with all 6 6 culture. 127 find men. mer's ideas of advantage and superiority. no doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages as many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. a foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own. one use of travel, is, to recommend the books and works of home ; [we go to europe to be americanized ;] and another, to for, as nature has put fruits apart in latitudes, a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge and fine moral quality she lodges in distant men. and thus, of the six or seven teachers whom each man wants among his contemporaries, it often happens, that one or two of them live on the other side of the world. moreover, there is in every constitution a certain solstice, when the stars stand still in our inward firmament, and when there is required some foreign force, some diversion or alterative to prevent stagnation. and, as a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best. just as a man witnessing the admirable effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating on the contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices in dr. jackson's benign discovery, so a man who looks at paris, at naples, or at london, says, “if i should be driven from my own home, here, at least, my thoughts can be consoled by the most prodigal amusement and occupation which the human race in ages could contrive and accumulate.' 128 conduct of life. akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the æsthetic value of railroads is to unite the advantages of town and country life, neither of which we can spare. a man should live in or near a large town, because, let his own genius be what it may, it will repel quite as much of agreeable and valuable talent as it draws, and, in a city, the total attraction of all the citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, every repulsion, and drag the most improbable hermit withir. its walls some day in the year. in town, he can find the swimming-school, the gymnasium, the dancing-master, the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, and panorama; the chemist's shop, the museum of natural history; the gallery of fine arts; the national orators, in their turn; foreign travellers, the libraries, and his club. in the country, he can find solitude and reading, manly labor, cheap living, and his old shoes ; moors for game, hills for geology, and groves for devotion. aubrey writes, “ i have , heard thomas hobbes say, that, in the earl of devon's house, in derbyshire, there was a good library and books enough for him, and his lordship stored the library with what books he thought fit to be bought. but the want of good conversation was a very great inconvenience, and, though he conceived he could order his thinking as well as another, yet he found a great defect. in the country, in long time, for want of good conversation, one's understanding and invention con culture. 129 و tract a moss on them, like an old paling in an orchard.” cities give us collision. 'tis said, london and new york take the nonsense out of a man. a great part of our education is sympathetic and social. boys and girls who have been brought up with well-informed and superior people, show in their manners an inestimable grace. fuller says, that “ william, earl of nassau, won a subject from the king of spain, every time he put off his hat.” you cannot have one well-bred man, without a whole society of such. they keep each other up to . any high point. especially women ;it requires a great many cultivated women, --saloons of bright, elegant, reading women, accustomed to ease and refinement, to spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant society, in order that you should have one madame de staël. the head of a commercial house, or a leading lawyer or politician is brought into daily contact with troops of men from all parts of the country, and those too the drivingwheels, the business men of each section, and one can hardly suggest for an apprehensive man a more searching culture. besides, we must remember the high social possibilities of a million of men. the best bribe which london offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the 6 * 130 conduct of life. poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts. i wish cities could teach their best lesson, of quiet manners. it is the foible especially of american youth, — pretension. the mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. he does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. he calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. his conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy. how the imagination is piqued by anecdotes of some great man passing incognito, as a king in gray clothes, — of napoleon affecting a plain suit at his glittering levee; of burns, or scott, or beethoven, or wellington, or goethe, or any container of transcendent power, passing for nobody; of epaminondas, “ who never says anything, but will listen eternally;” of goethe, who preferred trifling subjects and common expressions, in intercourse with strangers, worse rather than better clothes, and to appear a little more capricious than he was. there are advantages in the old hat and box-coat. i have heard, that, throughout this country, a certain respect is paid to good broadcloth ; but dress makes a little restraint: men . a culture. 131 will not commit themselves. but the box-coat is like wine; it unlocks the tongue, and men say what they think. an old poet says, u go far and go sparing, for you'll find it certain, the poorer and the baser you appear, the more you'll look through still.” * not much otherwise milnes writes, in the “ lay of the humble," 9 • to me men are for what they are, they wear no masks with me.” a 'tis odd that our people should have— not water on the brain, but a little gas there. a shrewd foreigner said of the americans, that, “ whatever they say has a little the air of a speech.” yet one of the traits down in the books as distinguishing the anglo-saxon, is, a trick of self-disparagement. to be sure, in old, dense countries, among a million of good coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, and you find humorists. in an english party, a man with no marked manners or features, with a face like red dough, unexpectedly discloses wit, learning, a wide range of topics, and personal familiarity with good men in all parts of the world, until you think you have fallen upon some illuscan it be that the american trious personage. * beaumont and fletoher: the tamer tameda 132 conduct of life. forest has refreshed some weeds of old pictish bar. barism just ready to die out, — the love of the scarlet feather, of beads, and tinsel ? the italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery ; and i remember one rainy morning in the city of palermo, the street was in a blaze with scarlet umbrellas. the english have a plain taste. the equipages of the grandees are plain. a gorgeous livery indicates new and awkward city wealth. mr. pitt, like mr. pym, thought the title of mister good against any king in europe. they have piqued themselves on governing the whole world in the poor, plain, dark committee-room which the house of commons sat in, before the fire. whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. the countryman finds the town a chophouse, a barber's shop. he has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and with them, sobriety and elevation. he has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to public opinion. life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. you say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of insignificant annoyances : “mirmidons, race féconde, mirmidons, enfin nous commandons; 1 cui ture. 138 jupiter livre le monde aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." 'tis heavy odds against the gods, when they will match with myrmidons. we spawning, spawning myrmidons, our turn to-day! we take command, jove gives the globe into the hand of myrmidons, of myrmidons. what is odious but noise, and people who scream and bewail ? people whose vane points always east, who live to dine, who send for the doctor, who coddle themselves, who toast their feet on the register, who intrigue to secure a padded chair, and a corner out of the draught. suffer them once to begin the enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go down on the unfinished tale. let these triflers put us out of conceit with petty comforts. to a man at work, the frost is but a color: the rain, the wind, he forgot them when he came in. let us learn to live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. the least habit of dominion over the palate has certain good effects not easily estimated. neither will we be driven into a quiddling abstemiousness. 'tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. all is made at last of the same chemical atoms. a man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. how can you mind diet, bed, dress, or alutes or compliments, or the figure you make in * béranger. 134 conduct of life. a company, or wealth, or even the bringing things to pass, when you think how paltry are the machinery and the workers? wordsworth was praised to me, in westmoreland, for having afforded to his country neighbors an example of a modest household where comfort and culture were secured, without display. and a tender boy who wears his rusty cap and outgrown coat, that he may secure the coveted place in college, and the right in the library, is educated to some purpose. there is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again. we can ill spare the commanding social benefits of cities; they must be used; yet cautiously, and haughtily, — and will yield their best values to him who best can do without them. keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed to retirement. solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. he who should inspire and culture. 135 lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. “ in the morning, solitude; " said pythagoras ; that nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'tis very certain that plato, plotinus, archimedes, hermes, newton, milton, wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors : and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude. the high advantage of university-life is often the mere mechanical one, i may of a separate chamber and fire, which parents will allow the boy without hesitation at cambridge, but do not think needful at home. we say solitude, to mark the character of the tone of thought; but if it can be shared between two or more than two, it is happier, and not less noble. “ we four," wrote neander to his sacred friends, “will enjoy at halle the inward blessedness of a civitas dei, whose foundations are forever friendship. the more i know you, the more i dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all my wonted companions. their very presence stupefies me. the common call it, > 136 conduct of life. understanding withdraws itself from the one centre of all existence.” solitude takes off the pressure of present importunities that more catholic and humane relations may appear. the saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal : and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality. here is a new poem, which elicits a good many comments in the journals, and in conversation. from these it is easy, at last, to eliminate the verdict which readers passed upon it; and that is, in the main, unfavorable. the poet, as a craftsman, is only interested in the praise accorded to him, and not in the censure, though it be just. and the poor little poet hearkens only to that, and rejects the censure, as proving incapacity in the critic. but the poet cultivated becomes a stockholder in both companies, – say mr. curfew, in the curfew stock, and in the humanity stock; and, in the last, exults as much in the demonstration of the unsoundness of curfew, as his interest in the former gives him pleasure in the currency of curfew. for, the depreciation of his curfew stock only shows the immense values of the humanity stock. as soon as he sides with his critic against himself, with joy, he is a cultivated man. we must have an intellectual quality in all property and in all action, or they are nought. i must culture. 137 have children, i must have events, i inust have a social state and history, or my thinking and speaking want body or basis. but to give these accessories any value, i must know them as contingent and rather showy possessions, which pass for more to the people than to me. we see this abstraction in scholars, as a matter of course : but what a charm it adds when observed in practical men. bonaparte, like cæsar, was intellectual, and could look at every object for itself, without affection. though an egotist à l'outrance, he could criticize a play, a building, a character, on universal grounds, and give a just opinion. a man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill; as when we learn of lord fairfax, the long parliament's general, his passion for antiquarian studies ; or of the french regicide carnot, his sublime genius in mathematics; or of a living banker, his success in poetry; or of a partisan journalist, his devotion to ornithology. so, if in travelling in the dreary wildernesses of arkansas or texas, we should observe on the next seat a. man reading horace, or martial, or calderon, we should wish to hug him. in callings that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, and civil engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, if only through a certain gentleness when off duty; a good-natured admission that there are illusions, 138 conduct of life. and who shall say that he is not their sport? we only vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when we say, that culture opens the sense of beauty. a man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be said to have arrived at self-possession. i suffer, every day, from the want of perception of beauty in people. they do not know the charm with which all moments and objects can be embellished, the charm of manners, of self-command, of benevolence. repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, repose in energy. the greek battle-pieces are calm ; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect; as we say of niagara, that it falls without speed. a cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. for it indicates the purpose of nature and wisdom attained. when our higher faculties are in activity, we are domesticated, and awkwardness and discomfort give place to natural and agreeable movements. it is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifference to death. the influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships. even a high dome, and the expansive interior of a cathedral, have a sensible effect en manners. i have culture. 139 heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. i think, sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry. but, over all, culture must reinforce from higher influx the empirical skills of eloquence, or of politics, or of trade, and the useful arts. there is a certain loftiness of thought and power to marshal and adjust particulars, which can only come from an insight of their whole connection. the orator who has once seen things in their divine order, will never quite lose sight of this, and will come to affairs as from a higher ground, and, though he will say nothing of philosophy, he will have a certain mastery in dealing with them, and an incapableness of being dazzled or frighted, which will distinguish his handling from that of attorneys and factors. a man who stands on a good footing with the heads of parties at washington, reads the rumors of the newspapers, and the guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the right and wrong in each statement, and sees well enough where all this will end. archimedes will look through your connecticut machine, at a glance, and judge of its fitness. and much more, a wise man who knows not only what plato, but what saint john can show him, can easily raise the affair he deals with, to a certain majesty. plato says, pericles owed this elevation to the lessons of anaxagoras. burke descended from 140 conduct of life. a higher sphere when he would influence human affairs. franklin, adams, jefferson, washington, stood on a fine húmanity, before which the brawls of modern senates are but pot-house politics. but there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. these are lessons only for the brave. we must know our friends under ugly masks. the calamities are our friends. ben jonson specifies in his address to the muse : “get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, and, reconciled, keep him suspected still, make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse, almost all ways to any better course; with me thou leav'st a better muse than thee, and which thou brought'st me, blessed poverty." we wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at heroism. but the wiser god says, take the shame, the poverty, and the penal-solitude, that belong to truth-speaking. try the rough water as well as the smooth. rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. when the state is unquiet, personal qualities are more than ever decisive. fear not a revolution which will constrain you to live five years in don't be so tend:r at making an enemy now and then. be willing to go to coventry sometimes, and let the populace bestow on you their coldest contempts. the finished man of the world must eat of every apple once. he must hold his hatreds one. culture. 141 also at arm's length, and not remember spite. he has neither friends nor enemies, but values men only as channels of power. he who aims high, must dread an easy home and popular manners. heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit. if there is any great , and good thing in store for you, it will not come at the first or the second call, nor in the shape of fashion, ease, and city drawing-rooms. popularity is for dolls. “steep and craggy,” said porphyry, "is the path of the gods.” open your marcus antoninus. in the opinion of the ancients, he was the great man who scorned to shine, and who contested the frowns of fortune. they preferred the noble vessel too late for the tide, contending with winds and waves, dismantled and unrigged, to her companion borne into harbor with colors flying and guns firing. there is none of the social goods that may not be purchased too dear, and mere amiableness must not take rank with high aims and selfsubsistency. bettine replies to goethe's mother, who chides her disregard of dress, “if i cannot do as i have a mind, in our poor frankfort, i shall not carry things far.” and the youth must rate at its true mark the inconceivable levity of local opinion. the longer we live, the more we must endure the elementary existence of men and women ; and 142 conduct of life. > every brave heart must treat society as a child, and never allow it to dictate. 6. all that class of the severe and restrictive virtues," said burke, “ are almost too costly for humanity.” who wishes to be severe ? who wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of the poor, and low, and impolite ? and who that dares do it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits ? the high virtues are not debonair, but have their redress in being illustrious at last. what forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries ! the measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later. let me say here, that culture cannot begin too early. in talking with scholars, i observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem. i find, too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased by being the son of an appreciator, and that these boys who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or three births too late, to make the best scholars of. and i think it a pre sentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well-born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats of youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel a habitual desire that the estate shall suffer culture. 143 no harm by his administration, but shall be delivered down to the next heir in as good condition as he received it; so, a considerate man will reckon himself a subject of that secular melioration by which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, and will shun every expenditure of his forces on pleasure or gain, which will jeopardize this social and secular accumulation. the fossil strata show us that nature began with rudimental forms, and rose to the more complex, as fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling-place; and that the lower perish, as the higher appear. very few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. we still carry sticking to us some remains of the preceding inferior quadruped organization. we call these millions men ; but they are not yet men. half-engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all the music that can be brought to disengage him. if love, red love, with tears and joy ; if want with his scourge ; if war with his cannonade; if christianity with its charity; if trade with its money; if art with its portfolios ; if science with her telegraphs through the deeps of space and time; can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the tough chrysalis, can break its walls, and let the new creature emerge erect and free,make way, and sing paan! the age of the quadruped is to go out, the age of the brain and of the heart is to come in. the time will come when the evil 144 conduct of life. forms we have known can no more be organized. man's culture can spare nothing, wants all the material. he is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power. the formidable mischief will only make the more useful slave. and if one shall read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort of nature to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the better in the human being, we shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. he will convert the furies into muses, and the hells into benefit v. behavior. grace, beauty, and caprice build this golden portal ; graceful women, chosen men dazzle every mortal : thcir sweet and lofty countenance his enchanting food; he need not go to them, their forms beset his solitude. he looketh seldom in their face, his eyes explore the ground, the green grass is a looking-glass whereon their traits are found. little he says to them, so dances his heart in his breast, their tranquil mien bereaveth him of wit, of words, of rest. too weak to win, too fond to shun the tyrants of his doom, the much deceived endymion slips behind a tomb. 7 產 ​ behavior. mand none, ú the soul which animates nature is not less significantly published in the figure, moveinent, and gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. this silent and subtile language is manners; not what, but how. life expresses. a statue has no tongue, and needs good tableaux do not need declamation. nature tells every secret once. yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the face, and by the whole action of the machine. the visible carriage or action of the individual, as resulting from his organization and his will combined, we call manners. what are they but thought entering the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the body, the speech and behavior ? there is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. manners are the happy waye of doing things ; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage. they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. 148 conduct of life. ners : if they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows. manare very communicable men catch them from each other. consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, on the stage ; and, in real life, talma taught napoleon the arts of behavior. genius inventy fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. they stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. the power of manners is incessant,an element as unconcealable as fire. the nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a democracy, than in a kingdom. no man can resist their influence. there are certain manners which are learned in good society, of that force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. he has not the trouble of earning or owning them · they solicit him to enter and possess. we send girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their own sex; where they might learn address, and see it near at hand. . behavior. 149 the power of a woman of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she knows resources and behaviors not known to them; but when these have mastered her secret, they learn to confront lisr, and recover their selfpossession. every day bears witness to their gentle rule people who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. the mediocre circle learns to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. your manners are always under examination, and by committees little suspected, — a police in citizens' clothes, — but are awarding or denying you very high prizes when you least think of it. we talk much of utilities, but 'tis our manners that associate us. in hours of business, we go to him who knows, or has, or does this or that which we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way. but this activity over, we return to the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease with ; those who will go where we go, whose manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. when we reflect on their persuasive and cheering force; how they recommend, prepare, and draw people together ; how, in all clubs, manners make the members; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries manners ; when think we 150 conduct of life. what keys they are, and to what secrets ; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they con vey; and what divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph, we see what range the subject has, and what relations to convenience, power, and beauty. their first service is very low,when they are the minor morals : but 'tis the beginning of civility, to make us, i mean, endurable to each other. we prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get people out of the quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set up on end ; to slough their animal husks and nabits ; compel them to be clean ; overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base, and choose the generous expression, and make them know how much happier the generous behaviors are. bad behavior the laws cannot reach. society is infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom, a public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach : tradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight:have seen men who neigh like a horse when you contradict them, or say something which they do not understand :then the overbold, who make the conbehavior. 151 their own invitation to your hearth; the persever ing talker, who gives you his society in large, saturating doses ; the pitiers of themselves, a perilous ; class; the frivolous asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand to twist; the monotones ; in short, every stripe of absurdity; these are social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure or defend you from, and which must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom, and proverbs, and familiar rules of behavior impressed on young people in their school-days. in the hotels on the banks of the mississippi, they print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, that “no gentleman can be permitted to come to the public table without his coat;” and in the same country, in the pews of the churches, little placards plead with the worshipper against the fury of expectoration. charles dickens self-sacrificingly undertook the reformation of our american manners in unspeakable particulars. i think the i lesson was not quite lost; that it held bąd manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. unhappily, the book had its own deformities. it ought not to need to print in a reading-room a eaution to strangers not to speak loud; nor to persons who look over fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs and butterflies' wings; nor to persons who look at marble statues, that they shall not smite them with eanes. but, even in the 152 conduct of life. perfect civilization of this city, such cautions are not quite needless in the athenæum and city library. manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstance as well as out of character. if you look at the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of different periods and countries, you will see how well they match the same classes in our towns. the modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in titian's venetian doges, and in roman coins and statues, but also in the pictures which commodore perry brought home of dignitaries in japan. broad lands and great interests not only arrive to such heads as can manage them, but form manners of power. a keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, or see in the manners the degree of homage the party is wont to receive. a prince who is accustomed every day to be courted and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a corresponding expectation, and a becoming mode of receiving and replying to this homage. there are always exceptional people and modes. english grandees affect to be farmers. claverhouse is a fop, and, under the finish of dress, and levity of behavior, hides the terror of his war. but nature and destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every quality. it is much to conquer one's face, and perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the behavior. 153 strong wills. whole secret when he has learned, that disengaged manners are commanding. don't be deceived by a facile exterior. tender men sometimes have we had, in massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would not serve him ; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped ; little cared he; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation. when he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands : but underneath all this irritability, was a puissant will, firm, and advancing, and a memory in which lay in order and method like geologic strata every fact of his history, and under the control of his will. manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be capacity for culture in the blood. else all culture is vain. the obstinate prejudice in favor of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and monarchical fabrics of the old world, has some reason in common experience. every man, mathe, matician, artist, soldier, or merchant, looks with confidence for some traits and talents in his own child, which he would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. the orientalists are very orthodox on this point. “take a thorn-bush,” said the emir abdel-kader, “ and sprinkle it for a whole 154 conduct of life. year with water ;it will yield nothing but thorns, take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will always produce dates. nobility is the datetree, and the arab populace is a bush of thorns.” a main fact in the history of manners is the wonderful expressiveness of the human body. if it were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were written on steel tablets within, it could not pablish more truly its meaning than now. wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. the whole economy of nature is bent on expression. the tell-tale body is all tongues. men are like geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement. they carry the liquor of life aowing up and down in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the curious how it is with them. the face and eyes reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. the eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or, through how many forms it has already ascended. it almost violates the proprieties, if we say above the breath here, what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter to every street passenger. man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imperfect. in siberia, a late traveller found men who could see the satellites of jupiter with their unarmed eye. in some respects the animals excel us. the birds have a longer sight, beside the behavior. 155 تار advantage by their wings of a higher observatory. a cow can bid her call, by secret signal, probably of the eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. the jockeys say of certain horses, that . they look over the whole ground.” the outdoor life, and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human eye. a farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse; his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. an eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy. the eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. when a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain gazing at a distance; in enumerating the names of persons or of countries, as france, germany, spain, turkey, the eyes wink at each new there is no nicety of learning sought by the mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. “ an artist,” said michel angelo, “must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye;' and there is no end to the catalogue of its perform ances, whether in indolent vision, (that of health and beauty,) or in strained vision, (that of art and labor.) eyes are bold as lions, -roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. they speak all languages. they wait for no introduction; they are no englishmen; ask no leave of age, or rank; l name. 156 conduct of life. they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you, in a moment of time. what inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another, through them ! the glance is natural magic. the mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the springs of wonder. the communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. it is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. we look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhab itant is there. the revelations are sometimes terrific. the confession of a low, usurping devil is there made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and simplicity. markable, too, that the spirit that appears at the windows of the house does at once invest himself in a new form of his own, to the mind of the beholder. the eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over. when the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practised man relies on the language of the first. if the man is off his centre, the eyes show it. you can read in the of eyes 'tis rebehavior. 157 your compinion, whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess it. there is a look by which a man shows he is going to say a good thing, and a look when he has said it. vain and forgotten are all the fine offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. how many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by the lips ! one comes away from a company, in which, it may easily happen, he has said nothing, and no important remark has been addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the society, he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from him, through the eyes. there are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries. others are liquid and deep, — wells that a man might fall into ;others are aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, and require crowded broadways, and the security of millions, to protect individuals against them. the military eye i meet, now darkly sparkling under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'tis the city of lacedæmor; 'tis a stack of bayonets. there are asking eyes, asserting eyes, prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate, some of good, and some of sinister omen. the alleged power to charm down insanity, or erocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. it aust be a victory achieved in the will, before it a 158 conduot of life. can be signified in the eye. 'tis very certain that . ' each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. a complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. whoever looked on him would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were generous and universal. the reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye. if the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features have their own. a man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants. the sculptor, and winckelmann, and lavater, will tell you how significant a feature is the nose ; how its forms express strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. the nose of julius cæsar, of dante, and of pitt, suggest “ the terrors of the beak.” what refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! “ beware you don't laugh," said the wise mother, “ for then you show all your faults.” balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called " théorie de la démarche,” in which he says: “ the look, the voice, the respiration, and the attitude or walk, are identical. but, as it has not been given to man, the power to stand guard, at once, over these four different simultaneous expreso sions of his thought, watch that one which speaks > behavior. 159 power. out the truth, and you will know the whole man.' palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, which, in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. the maxim of courts is, that manner is a calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier : and saint simon, and cardinal de retz, and ræderer, and an encyclopædia of mémoires, will instruct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. thus, it is a point of pride with kings, to remember faces and names. it is reported of one prince, that his head had the air of leaning downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. there are people who come in ever like a child with a piece of good news. it was said of the late lord holland, that he always came down to breakfast with the air of a man who had just met with some signal good-fortune. in “ notre dame,” the grandee took his place on the dais, with the look of one who is thinking of something else. but we must not peep and eavesdrop at palace-doors. fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. a scholar may be a well-bred man, or he may not. the enthusiast is introduced to polished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding himself not in their element. they all 160 conduct of life. have somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought to have. but if he finds the scholar apart from his companions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the scholar has no defence, but must deal on his terms. now they must fight the battle out on their private strengths. what is the talent of that character so common, — the successful man of the world, in all marts, senates, and drawingrooins ? manners : manners of power; sense to see his advantage, and manners up to it. see him approach his man. he knows that troops behave as they are handled at first;— that is his cheap secret; just what happens to every two persons who meet on any affair, one instantly perceives that he has the key of the situation, that his will comprehends the other's will, as the cat does the mouse; and he has only to use courtesy, and furnish goodnatured reasons to his victim to cover up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance. the theatre in which this science of manners has a formal importance is not with us a court, but dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the day's business, men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertainment, in ornamented drawing-rooms. of course, it has every variety of attraction and merit; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens who have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. a well-dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to amuse the other, — yet the high-borp a behavior. 161 : turk who came hither fancied that every woman seemed to be suffering for a chair; that all the talkers were brained and exhausted by the deoxygenated air : it spoiled the best persons : it put all on stilts. yet here are the secret biographies written and read. the aspect of that man is repulsive: i do not wish to deal with him. the other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. the youth looks humble and manly: i choose him. look on this woman. there is not beauty, nor brilliant sayings, nor distinguished power to serve you; but all see her gladly; her whole air and impression are healthful. here come the sentimentalists, and the invalids. here is elise, who caught cold in coming into the world, and has always increased it since. here are creep-mouse manners; and thievish manners. 6 look at northcote,” said fuseli ; “ he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." in the shallow company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the columnar bernard : the alleghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. here are the sweet following eyes of cecile : it seemed always that she demanded the heart. nothing can be more excellent in kind than the corinthian grace of gertrude's manners, and yet blanche, who has no manners, has better manners than she ; for the movements of blanche are the sallies of spirit which is sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to express every thought by instant action. 162 conduct of life. manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes ker attentions. society is very swift in its instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers a you; or quietly drops you. the first weapon enrages the party attacked; the second is still more effeetive, but is not to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is not easily found. people grow up and grow old under this infliction, and never suspect the truth, ascribing the solitude which acts on them very injuriously, to any cause but the right one. us. the basis of good manners is self-reliance. ne cessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. those who are not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain some men appear to feel that they belong to a pariah caste. they fear to offend, they bend and , apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. as we sometimes dream that we are in a welldressed company without any coat, so godfrey acts ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circumstance. the hero should find himself at home, wherever he is; should impart comfort by his own security and good-nature to all beholders. the hero is suffered to be himself. a person of strong mind comes to perceive that for him an immunity is recured so long as he renders to society that service behavior. 163 which is native and proper to him, — an immunity from all the observances, yea, and duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file of its members. “ euripides,” says aspasia, “has not the fine manners of sophocles ; but,” — she adds good-humoredly, “the movers and masters of " our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they please, on the world that belongs to them, and before the creatures they have animated." manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command. here comes to me roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'tis a great destitution to both that this should not be entertained with large leisures, but contrariwise should be balked by importunate affairs. but through this lustrous varnish, the reality is ever shining. 'tis hard to keep the what from breaking through this pretty painting of the how. the core will come to the surface. strong will and keen perception overpower old manners, and create new ; and the thought of the present moment has a greater value than all the past. in * landor: pericles and aspasia. 164 conduct of life. persons of character, we do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness. we are surprised by the thing done, out of all power to watch the way of it. yet nothing is more charming than to recognize the great style which runs through the actions of such. people masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as academic or civil presidents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, and a good deal on each other, by these fames. at least, it is a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations tenderly, as if they were merited. but the sad realist knows these fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in paris the chief of the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they pass. “i had received,” said a sibyl, “i had received at birth the fatal gift of penetration : "-and these cassandras are always born. manners impress as they indicate real power. a a man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads. and you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression. nature forever puts a premium on reality. what is done for effect, is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love, is felt to be done for love. a man inspires : behavior. 165 affection and honor, because he was not lying in wait for these. the things of a man for which we visit him, were done in the dark and the cold. a little integrity is better than any career. so deep are the sources of this surface-action, that even the size of your companion seems to vary with his free dom of thought. not only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything around him becomes variable with expression. no carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will measure the dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into the house : if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 'tis of no importance how large his house, how beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come to the end of all : but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded, indefinitely large and interesting, the roof and dome buoyant as the sky. under the humblest roof, the commonest person in plain clothes sits there massive, cheerful, yet formidable like the egyptian colossi. neither aristotle, nor leibnitz, nor junius, nor champollion has set down the grammar-rules of this dialect, older than sanscrit; but they who cannot yet read english, can read this. men take each other's measure, when they meet for the first time, and every time they meet. how do they get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each other's power and dispositions ? one would say, that the persuasion of their speech is not in 166 conduct of life. what they say, or, that men do not convince by their argument, but by their personality, by who they are, and what they said and did heretofore. a man already strong is listened to, and everything he says is applauded. another opposes him with sound argument, but the argument is scouted, until by and by it gets into the mind of some weighty person ; then it begins to tell on the community. self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too much demonstration. in this country, where school education is universal, we have a superficial culture, and a profusion of reading and writing and expression. we parade our nobilities in poems and orations, instead of working them up into happiness. . there is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand it, whatever is known to thyself alone, has always very great value.' there is some reason to believe, that, when a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing ; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses. jacobi said, that “when a man has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less possession of it.” one would say, the rule is, what a man is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. in explaining his thought to others, he explains it to himself: but when he opens it for show, it corrupts him. behavior 167 society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are their literature. novels are the journal or record of manners ; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily. the novels used to be all alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. the novels used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the boy and girl they described. the boy was to be raised from a humble to a high position. he was in want of a wife and a castle, and the object of the story was to supply him with one or both. we watched sympathetically, step by step, his climbing, until, at last, the point is gained, the wedding day is fixed, and we follow the gala procession home to the castle, when the doors are slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an idea, or a virtuous impulse. but the victories of character are instant, and victories for all. its greatness enlarges all. we are fortified by every heroic anecdote. the novels are as useful as bibles, if they teach you the secret, that the best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people. 'tis a french definition of friendship, rien que s'entendre, good understanding. the highest compact we can make with our fellow, is, -let there be truth between us two 168 conduct of life. forevermore.' that is the charm in all good nov. els, as it is the charm in all good histories, that the heroes mutually understand, from the first, and dea) loyally, and with a profound trust in each other. it is sublime to feel and say of another, i need never meet, or speak, or write to him : we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance: i rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or thus, i know it was right. in all the superior people i have met, i notice directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained away. what have they to conceal? what have they to exhibit ? between simple and noble persons, there is always a quick intelligence: they recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground than the talents and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on sincerity and uprightness. for, it is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. the man that stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. it is related of the monk basle, that, being excommunicated by the pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell; but, such was the eloquence and good-humor of the monk, that, wherever he went he was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil angels : and, when he came to discourse with behavior. 169 them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his manners: and even good angels came from far, to see him, and take up their abode with him. the angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him, attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, that he found something to praise in every place and company, though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. at last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying, that no phlegethon could be found that would burn him ; for that, in whatever condition, basle remained incorrigibly basle. the legend says, his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint. there is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspondence of bonaparte with his brother joseph, when the latter was king of spain, and complained that he missed in napoleon's letters the affectionate tone which had marked their childish correspond“i am sorry," replies napoleon, “ you think you shall find your brother again only in the elysian fields. it is natural, that at forty, he should not feel towards you as he did at twelve. but his feelings towards you have greater truth and strength. his friendship has the features of his mind." how inuch we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners ! we will pardon ence. 8 170 conduct of life. them the want of books, of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. how tenaciously we remember them! here is a lesson which i brought along with me in boyhood from the latin school, and which ranks with the best of roman anecdotes. marcus scaurus was accused by quintus variris hispanus, that he had excited the allies to take arms against the republic. but he, full of firme ness and gravity, defended himself in this manner: quintus varius hispanus alleges that marcus scaurus, president of the senate, excited the allies to arms: marcus scaurus, president of the senate, denies it. there is no witness. which do you believe, romans ?" “ utri creditis, quirites ?” when he had said these words, he was absolved by the assembly of the people. i have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. but they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. they must always show self-control : you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word ; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. then they must be inspired by the good heart. there is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. behavior. 171 tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. we must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. special precepts are not to be thought of: the talent of well-doing contains them all. . every hour will show a duty as paramount as that of my whim just now; and yet i will write it, — that there is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. if you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, i beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which all the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and groans. come out of the azure. love the day. do not leave the sky out of your landscape. the oldest and the most deserving person should come very modestly into any newly awaked company, respecting the divine communications, out of which all must be presumed to have newly come. an old man who added an elevating culture to a large experience of life, said to me, “when you come into the room, i think i will study how to make humanity beautiful to you." as respects the delicate question of culture, i do not think that any other than negative rules can be 172 conduct of life. laid down. for positive rules, for suggestion, nature alone inspires it. who dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners ? — the golden mean is so delicate, difficult, — say frankly, unattainable. what finest hands would not be clumsy to sketch the genial précepts of the young girl's deineanor ? the chances seem infinite against success; and yet success is continually attained. there must not be secondariness, and 'tis a thousand to one that her air and manner will at once betray that she is not primary, but that there is some other one or many of her class, to whom she habitually postpones herself. but nature lifts her easily, and without knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we are continually surprised with graces and felicities not only unteachable, but undescribable. vi. worship. this is be, who, felled by foes, sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: he to captivity was sold, but him no prison-bars would hold: though they sealed him in a rock, mountain chains he can unlock : thrown to lions for their meat, the crouching lion kissed his feet: bound to the stake, no flames appalled, but arched o'er him an honoring vault. this is he men miscall fate, threading dark ways, arriving late, but ever coming in time to crown the truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. he is the oldest, and best known, more near than aught thou call'st thy own, yet; greeted in another's eyes, disconcerts with glad surprise. this is jove, who, deaf to prayers, floods with blessings unawares. draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, severing rightly his from thino, which is human, which divine. 1 1 worship. some of my friends have complained, when the preceding papers were read, that we discussed fate, power, and wealth, on too low a platform ; gave too much line to the evil spirit of the times; too many cakes to cerberus ; that we ran cudworth's risk of making, by excess of candor, the argument of atheism so strong, that he could not answer it. i have no fears of being forced in my own despite to play, as we say, the devil's attorney. i have no infirmity of faith ; no belief that it is of much importance what i or any man may say: i am sure that a certain truth will be said through me, though i should be dumb, or though i should try to say the reverse. nor do i fear skepticism for any good soul. a just thinker will allow full swing to his skepticism. i dip my pen in the blackest ink, because i am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. i have no sympathy with a poor man i knew, who, when suicides abounded, told me he dared not look at his razor. we are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth. 176 conduct of life i see not why we should give ourselves such sanctified airs. if the divine providence has hid from men neither disease, nor deformity, nor corrupt society, but has stated itself out in passions, ir. war, in trade, in the love of power and pleasure, in hunger and need, in tyrannies, literatures, and arts, — let us not be so nice that we cannot write these facts down coarsely as they stand, or (loubt but there is a counter-statement as ponderous, which we can arrive at, and which, being put, wil] make all square. the solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have i any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of faith cannot down-weigh. the strength of that principle is not measured in ounces and pounds : it tyrannizes at the centre of nature. we may well give skepticism as much line as we the spirit will return, and fill us. it drives the drivers. it counterbalances any accumulations can. of power “ heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." we are born loyal. the whole creation is made of hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster, and whether your cummunity is made in jerusalem or in california, of saints or of wreckers, it cohere in a perfect ball. men as naturally make a state, worship 177 on a church, as caterpillars a web. if they were more refined, it would be less formal, it would be nervous, like that of the shakers, who, from long habit of thinking and feeling together, it is said, are affected in the same way, at the same time, to work and to play, and as they go with perfect sympathy to their tasks in the field or shop, so are they inclined for a ride or a journey at the same instant, and the horses come up with the family carriage unbespoken to the door. we are born believing. a man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples. a self-poise belongs to every particle ; and a rectitude to every mind, and is the nemesis and protector of every society. i and my neighbors have been bred in the notion, that, unless we came soon to some good church, calvinism, or behmenism, or romanism, or mormonism, there would be a universal thaw and dissolution. no isaiah or jeremy has arrived. nothing can exceed the anarchy that has followed in our skies. the stern old faiths have all pulverized. 'tis a whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions. 'tis as flat anarchy in our ecclesiastic realms, as that which existed in massachusetts, in the revolution, or which prevails now on the slope of the rocky mountains or pike's peak. yet we make shift to live. men are loyal. nature has self-poise in all her works; certain proportions in which oxygen and azote combine, and, 8* 178 conduct of life. not less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in the spring and the regulator. the decline of the influence of calvin, or fenelon, or wesley, or channing, need give us no uneasiness. the builder of heaven has not so ill constructed his creature as that the religion, that is, the public nature, should fall out: the public and the private element, like north and south, like inside and outside, like centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every soul, and cannot be subdued, except the soul is dissipated. god builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions. in the last chapters, we treated some particulars of the question of culture. but the whole state of man is a state of culture; and its flowering and completion may be described as religion, or worship. there is always some religion, some hope and fear extended into the invisible, — from the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, up to the song of the elders in the apocalypse. but the religion cannot rise above the state of the votary. heaven always bears some proportion to earth. the god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. in all ages, souls out of time, extraordinary, prophetic, are born, who are rather related to the system of the world, than to their particular age and locality. these announce absolute truths, which, with whatworship. 179 ever reverence received, are speedily dragged down into a savage interpretation. the interior tribes of our indians, and some of the pacific islanders, flog their gods, when things take an unfavorable turn. the greek poets did not hesitate to let loose their petulant wit on their deities also. laomedon, in his anger at neptune and apollo, who had built troy for him, and demanded their price, does not hesitate to menace them that he will cut their ears off.* among our norse forefathers, king olaf's mode of converting eyvind to christianity was to put a pan of glowing coals on his belly, which burst asunder. “ wilt thou now, eyvind, believe in christ?” asks olaf, in excellent faith. another argument was an adder put into the mouth of the reluctant disciple rand, who refused to believe. christianity, in the romantic ages, signified european culture, — the grafted or meliorated tree in a crab forest. and to marry a pagan wife or husband, was to marry beast, and voluntarily to take a step backwards towards the baboon. “ hengist had verament a daughter both fair and gent, but she was heathen sarazine, and vortigern for love fine her took to fere and to wife, and was cursed in all his life; for he let christian wed heathen, and mixed our blood as flesh and mathon." + • iliad, book xxi. l. 456. t moths or worms 180 conduct of life. what gothic mixtures the christian creed drev from the pagan sources, richard of devizes's chronicle of richard i.'s crusade, in the twelfth century, may show. king richard taunts god with for saking him : “o fie! o how unwilling should i be to forsake thee, in so forlorn and dreadful a position, were i thy lord and advocate, as thou art mine. in sooth, my standards will in future be despised, not through my fault, but through thine : in sooth, not through any cowardice of my warfare, art thou thyself, my king and my god conquered, this day, and not richard thy vassal.” the religion of the early english poets is anomalous, so devout and so blasphemous, in the same breath. such is chaucer's extraordinary confusion of heaven and earth in the picture of dido. she was so fair, so young, so lusty, with her eyen glad, that if that god that heaven and earthe made would have a love for beauty and goodness, and womanhede, truth, and seemliness, whom should he loven but this lady sweet? there n' is no woman to him half so meet." . with these grossnesses, we complacently compare our own taste and decorum. we think and speak with more temperance and gradationi, -but is not indifferentism as bad as superstition ? we live in a transition period, when the old faiths which comforted nations, and not only so, but made nations, seem to have spent their force. worship. 181 no i do not find the religions of men at this moment very creditable to them, but either childish and insignificant, or unmanly and effeminating. the fatal trait is the divorce between religion and morality. here are know-nothing religions, or churches that proscribe intellect; scortatory religions; slaveholding and slave-trading religions; and, even in the decent populations, idolatries wherein the whiteness of the ritual. covers scarlet indulgence. the lover of the old religion complains that our contemporaries, scholars as well as merchants, succumb to a great despair, — have corrupted into a timorous conservatism, and believe in nothing. in our large cities, the population is godless, materialized, bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. these are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. how is it people manage to live on, so aimless as they are ? after their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose. there is no faith in the intellectual, none in the moral universe. there is faith in chemistry, in meat, and wine, in wealth, in machinery, in the steam-engine, galvanic battery, turbinewheels, sewing machines, and in public opinion, but not in divine causes. a silent revolution has loosed he tension of the old religious sects, and, in place of the gravity and permanence of those societies f opinion, they run into freak and extravagance 182 conduct of life. in creeds never was such levity; witness the heathenisms in christianity, the periodic “revivals," the millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to popery, the maundering of mormons, the squalor of mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat and mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and black art. the architecture, the music, the prayer, partake of the madness: the arts sink into shift and make-believe. not knowing what to do, we ape our ancestors; the churches stagger backward to the mummeries of the dark ages. by the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the christian traditions have lost their hold. the dogma of the mystic offices of christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality ; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws. from this change, and in the momentary absence of any religious genius that could offset the immense material activity, there is a feeling that religion is gone. when paul leroux offered his article “ dieu” to the conductor of a leading french journal, he replied, “ la question de dieu manque d'actualité.” in italy, mr. gladstone said of the late king of naples, “ it has been a proverb, that he has erected the negation of god into a system of government." in this country, the like stupefaction was in the air, and the phrase worship. 183 " higher law” became a political jibe. what proof of infidelity, like the toleration and propagandism of slavery? what, like the direction of education? what, like the facility of conversion ? what, like the externality of churches that once sucked the roots of right and wrong, and now have perished away till they are a speck of whitewash on the wall ? what proof of skepticism like the base rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are held ? let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any american has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all america will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him ; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of america, that the best use to put a fine person to, is, to drown him to save his board. another scar of this skepticism is the distrust in human virtue. it is believed by well-dressed pro. prietors that there is no more virtue than they possess; that the solid portion of society exist for the arts of comfort: that life is an affair to put somewhat between the upper and lower mandibles. how prompt the suggestion of a low motive! certain patriots in england devoted themselves for years to creating a public opinion that should break down the corn-laws and establish free trade. well,' says the man in the street, cobden got a stipend out of it.' kossuth fled hither across the 6 184 conduct of life. 6 6 ocean to try if he could rouse the new world to a sympathy with european liberty. “aye,' says new york, he made a handsome thing of it, enough to make him comfortable for life.' see what allowance vice finds in the respectable and well-conditioned class. if a pickpocket intrude into the society of gentlemen, they exert what moral force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, and glad to get away. but if an adventurer go through all the forms, procure himself to be elected to a post of trust, as of senator, or president, — though by the same arts as we detest in the house-thief, — the same gentlemen who agree to discountenance the private rogue, will be forward to show civilities and marks of respect to the public one: and no amount of evidence of his crimes will prevent them giving him ovations, complimentary dinners, opening their own houses to him, and priding themselves on his acquaintance. we were not deceived by the professions of the private adventurer, the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons ; but we appeal to the sanctified preamble of the messages and proclamations of the public sinner, as the proof of sincerity. it must be that they who pay this homage have said to themselves, on the whole, we don't know about this that you call honesty; a bird in the hand is better. even well-disposed, good sort of people are worship. 185 a touched with the same infidelity, and for brave, straightforward action, use half-measures and compromises. forgetful that a little measure is a great error, forgetful that a wise mechanic uses a sharp tool, they go on choosing the dead men of routine. but the official men can in nowise help you in any question of to-day, they deriving entirely from the old dead things. only those can help in counsel or conduct who did not make a party pledge to defend this or that, but who were appointed by god almighty, before they came into the world, to stand for this which they uphold. it has been charged that a want of sincerity in the leading men is a vice general throughout american society. but the multitude of the sick shall not make us deny the existence of health. in spite of our imbecility and terrors, and “universal decay of religion,” &c. &c., the moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. you say, there is no religion now. 'tis like saying in rainy weather, there is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of his superlative effects. the religion of the cultivated class now, to be sure, consists in an avoidance of acts and engagements which it was once their religion to assume. but this avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their due hour. there is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all > 186 conduut of life. action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, yur rightful lord : we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon; and to this homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and just men in all ages and conditions. to this sentiment belong vast and sudden enlargements of power. 'tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists with total inexperience of it. it is the order of the world to educate with accuracy the senses and the understanding; and the enginery at work to draw out these powers in priority, no doubt, has its office. but we are never without a hint that these powers are mediate and servile, and that we are one day to deal with real being, essences with essences. even the fury of material activity has some results friendly to moral health. the energetic action of the times develops individualism, and the religious appear isolated. i esteem this a step in the right direction. heaven deals with us on no representative system. souls are not saved in bundles. the spirit saith to the man, “how is it with thee? thee personally ? is it well ? is it ill ?' for a great nature, it is a happiness to escape a religious training, religion of character is so apt to be invaded. religion must always be a crab fruit: it cannot be grafted and keep its wild beauty. “i have seen,' said a traveller who had known the extremes of society, "i have seen human nature in all its forms, 6 a worship. 187 > in our it is everywhere the same, but the wilder it is, the more virtuous." we say, the old forms of religion decay, and that a skepticism devastates the community. i do not think it can be cured or stayed by any modification of theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline. the cure for false theology is motherwit. forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour. that which is signified by the words “moral ” and “spiritual,” is a lasting essence, and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, will certainly bring back the words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. i know no words that mean so much. definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. the true meaning of spiritual is real ; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing. men talk of “mere morality,” — which is much as if one should say, 'poor god, with nobody to help him.' i find the omnipresence and the almightiness in the reaction of every atom in nature. i can best indicate by examples those reactions by which every part of nature replies to the purpose of the actor, — beneficently to the good, penally to the bad. let us replace sentimentalism by realism, and dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern. 188 conduct of life. goes well. every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. but a day comes when he begins to care that he do not chcat his neighbor. then all well. he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. what a day dawns, when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith! to prefer, as a better investment, being to doing; being to seeming; logic to rhythm and to display; the year to the day; the life to the year ; character to performance; and have come to know, that justice will be done us; and, if our genius is slow, the term will be long, 'tis certain that worship stands in some commanding relation to the health of man, and to his highest powers, so as to be, in some manner, the source of intellect. all the great ages have been ages of belief. i mean, when there was any extraordinary power of performance, when great national movements began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict a grasp as that of the hands on the sword, or the pencil, or the trowel. it is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet, are somehow born out of that alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm. thus, i think, we very slowly admit in worship. 189 a another man a higher degree of moral sentiment than our own, a finer conscience, more impressionable, or, which marks minuter degrees; an ear to hear acuter notes of right and wrong, than we can. i think we listen suspiciously and very slowly to any evidence to that point. but, once satisfied of such superiority, we set no limit to our expectation of his genius. for such persons are nearer to the secret of god than others; are bathed by sweeter waters; they hear notices, they see visions, where others are vacant. we believe that holiness confers a certain insight, because not by our private, but by our public force, can we share and know the nature of thii.gs. there is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals. given the equality of two intellects, which will form the most reliable judgments, the good, or the bad hearted ? '" the heart has its 6. arguments, with which the understanding is not acquainted.” for the heart is at once aware of the state of health or disease, which is the controlling state, that is, of sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, to all question of the ingenuity of arguments, the amount of facts, or the elegance of rhetoric. so intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, that talent uniformly sinks with character. the bias of errors of principle carries away men into perilous courses, as soon as their will does not control their passion or talent. hence the extraor190 conduct of life. dinary blunders, and final wrong head, into which men spoiled by ambition usually fall. hence the remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love. “ as much love, so much mind,” said the latin proverb. the superiority that has no superior; the redeemer and instructor of souls, as it is their primal essence, is love. the moral must be the measure of health. if your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, and your opinions and actions will have a beauty which no learning or combined advantages of other men can rival. the moment of your loss of faith, and acceptance of the lucrative standard, will be marked in the pause, or solstice of genius, the se quent retrogression, and the inevitable loss of attraction to other minds. the vulgar are sensible of the change in you, and of your descent, though they clap you on the back, and congratulate you on your increased common sense. our recent culture has been in natural science. we have learned the manners of the sun and of the moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the mineral and elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. man has learned to weigh the sun, and its weight neither loses nor gains. the path of a star, the moment of an eclipse, can be determined to the fraction of a second. well, to him the book of history, the book of love, the lures of passion, and worship. 191 a the commandments of duty are opened : and the next lesson taught, is, the continuation of the inflexible law of matter into the subtile kingdom of will, and of thought; that, if, in sidereal ages, gravity and projection keep their craft, and the ball never loses its way in its wild path through space, a secreter gravitation, a secreter projection, rule not less tyrannically in human history, and keep the balance of power from age to age unbroken. for, though the new element of freedom and an individual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms are prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, are in search of justice, and ultimate right is done. religion or worship is the attitude of those who see this unity, intimacy, and sincerity ; who see that, against all appearances, the nature of things works for truth and right forever. 'tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry ap into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward. and this appears in a class of facts which concerns all men, within and above their creeds. shalluw men believe in luck, believe in circumstances : it was somebody's name, or he happened 192 conduct of life. to be there at the time, or, it was so then, and anviler day it would have been otherwise. strong men believe a cause and effect. the man was born to do it, and his father was born to be the father of him and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry. the curve of the flight of the moth is preordained, and all things go by number, rule, and weight. skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. a man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see, that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits ; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in. as we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes ; cant and lying and the attempt to secure da good which does not belong to us, are, once for all, balked and vain. but, in the human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. the law is the basis of the human mind. in us, it is inspiration ; out there in nature, we see its fatal strength. we call it the moral sentiment. we owe to the hindoo scriptures a definition of a worship 193 a law, which compares well with any in our western books. “ law it is, which is without name, or color, or hands, or feet; which is smallest of the least, and largest of the large; all, and knowing all things ; which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves without feet, and seizes without hands." if any reader tax me with using vague and traditional phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real. let me show him that the dice are loaded; that the colors are fast, because they are the native colors of the fleece ; that the globe is a battery, because every atom is a magnet; and that the police and sincerity of the universe are secured by god's delegating his divinity to every particle; that there is no room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice. the countryman leaving his native village, for the first time, and going abroad, finds all his habits broken up. in a new nation and language, his sect, as quaker, or lutheran, is lost. what! it is not then necessary to the order and existence of society? he misses this, and the commanding eye of his neighborhood, which held him to decorum. this is the peril of new york, of new orleans, of london, of paris, to young men. but after a little experience, he makes the discovery that there are no large cities, — none large enough to hide in; that the censors of action are as numerous and as a 9 194 conduct of life. near in paris, as in littleton or portland ; that the gossip is as prompt and vengeful. there is no concealment, and, for each offence, a several vengeance; that, reaction, or nothing for nothing, or, things are as broad as they are long, is not a rule for littleton or portland, but for the universe. we cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. we are disgusted by gossip; yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties. the smallest fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impossible to exclude from the privatest, highest, selectest. nature created a police of many ranks. god has delegated himself to a million deputies. from these low external penalties, the scala ascends. next come the resentments, the fears, which injustice calls out; then, the false relations in which the offender is put to other men; and the reaction of his fault on himself, in the solitude and devastation of his mind. you cannot hide any secret. if the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. if you make a picture or a statue, it sets the be holder in that state of mind you had, when you made it. if you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. we are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective, if you follow the suburban fashion in building a worship. 195 sumptuous-looking house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as a cheap dear house. there is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. no secret can be kept in the civilized world. society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. if a man wish to conceal anything he carries, those whom he meets know that he conceals somewhat, and usually know what he conceals. is it otherwise if there be some belief or some purpose he would bury in his breast ? 'tis as hard to hide as fire. he is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. a man cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or, in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty. people seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. we can only see what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect others. the fame of shakspeare or of voltaire, of thomas à kempis, or of bonaparte, characterizes those who give it. as gas-light is found to be the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity. each must be armed — not necessarily with musket and pike. happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that he has better muskets and pikes in his energy and constancy. to every creature is his own ! 196 conduct of life. weapon, however skilfully concealed from hiinself, a good while. his work is sword and shield. let him accuse none, let him injure none. the way to mend the bad world, is to create the riglit world. here is a low political economy plotting to cut the throat of foreign competition, and establish our own ;-excluding others by force, or making war on them; or, by cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse wares of ours. but the real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war. the way to conquer the foreign artisan, is, not to kill him, but to beat his work. and the crystal palaces and world fairs, with their committees and prizes on all kinds of industry, are the rebult of this feeling. the american worknan who strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst the foreign workman only strikes one, is as really vanquishing that foreigner, as if the blows were aimed at and told on his person. i look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply, not into the market, not into opinion, not into patronage. in every variety of human employment, in the mechanical and in the fine arts, in navigation, in farming, in legislating, there are among the numbers who do their task perfunctorily, as we say, or just to pass, and as badly as they dare, they dare, — there are the working-men, on whom the burden of the business falls, those who love work, and love to see it worship. 197 nesses are near. rightly done, who finish their task for its own sake; and the state and the world is happy, that has the most of such finishers. the world will always do justice at last to such finishers: it cannot otherwise. he who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter. men talk as if vio tory were something fortunate. work is victory. wherever work is done, victory is obtained. there is no chance, and no blanks. you want but one verdict: if you have your own, you are secure of the rest. and yet, if witnesses are wanted, witthere was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. i cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone, and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life, now under one disguise, now under another, like a police in citizens' clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all the kingdom of time. this reaction, this sincerity is the property of all things. to make our word or act sublime, we must make it real. it is our system that counts, not the single word or unsupported action. use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are. what i am, and what i think, is conveyed to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. what i am has been secretly con198 conduct of life. veyed from me to another, whilst i was vainly making up my mind to tell him it. he has heard . from me what i never spoke. as men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. in the progress of the character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions. young people admire talents, and particular excellences. as we grow older, we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, or quality of the man. we have another sight, and a new standard ; an insight which disregards what is done for the eye, and pierces to the doer; an ear which hears not what men say, but hears what they do not say. there was a wise, devout man who is called, in the catholic church, st. philip neri, of whom many anecdotes touching his discernment and benevolence are told at naples and rome. among the nuns in a convent not far from rome, one had appeared, who laid claim to certain rare gifts of inspiration and prophecy, and the abbess advised the holy father, at rome, of the wonderful powers shown by her novice. the pope did not well know what to make of these new claims, and philip coming in from a journey, one day, he consulted him. philip undertook to visit the nun, and ascertain her character. he threw himself on his mule, all travel-soiled as he was, and hastened through the worship. 199 mud and mire to the distant convent. he told the abbess the wishes of his holiness, and begged her to summon the nun without delay. the nun was sent for, and, as soon as she came into the apartment, philip stretched out his leg all bespattered with mud, and desired her to draw off his boots. the young nun, who had become the object of much attention and respect, drew back with anger, and refused the office: philip ran out of doors, mounted his mule, and returned instantly to the pope ; “ give yourself no uneasiness, holy father, any longer : here is no miracle, for here is no humility.” we need not much mind what people please to say, but what they must say; what their natures say, though their busy, artful, yankee understandings try to hold back, and choke that word, and to articulate something different. if we will sit quietly, — what they ought to say is said, with their will, or against their will. we do not care for you, let us pretend what we will : — we are always looking through you to the dim dictator behind you. whilst your habit or whim chatters, we civilly and impatiently wait until that wise superior shall speak again. even children are not deceived by the false reasons which their parents give in answer to their questions, whether touching natural facts, or religion, or persons. when the parent, instead of thinking how it really is, puts them off with a traditional or a hypocritical 200 conduct of life. а answer, the children perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical. to a sound constitution the defect of another is at once manifest: and the marks of it are only concealed from us by our own dislocation. an anatomical observer remarks, that the sympathies of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis, tell at last on the face, and on all its features. not only does our beauty waste, but it leaves word how it went to waste. physiognomy and phrenology are not new sciences, but declarations of the soul that it is aware of certain new sources of information. and now sciences of broader scope are starting up behind these. and so for ourselves, it is really of little importance what blunders in statement we make, so only we make no wilful departures from the truth. how a man's truth comes to mind, long after we have forgotten all his words ! how it comes to us in silent hours, that truth is our only armor in all passages of life and death! wit is cheap, and anger is cheap; but if you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other party, cleave to the truth against me, against thee, and you gain a station from which you cannot be dislodged. the other party will forget the words that you spoke, but the part you took continues to plead for you. why should i hasten to solve every riddle which life offers me? i am well assured that the questioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring the answers also in due time. very rich, very po1 worship 201 if there is grantent, very cheerful giver that he is, he shall have it all his own way, for me. why should i give up my thought, because i cannot answer an objection to it? consider only, whether it remains in my life the same it was. that only which we have within, can we see without. if we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. · deur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps. he only is rightly immortal, to whom all things are immortal. i have read somewhere, that none is accomplished, so long as any are incomplete; that the happiness of one cannot consist with the misery of any other. the buddhists say, “no seed will die:” every seed will grow. where is the service which can escape its remuneration? what is vulgar, and the essence of all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward ? 'tis the difference of artisan and artist, of talent and genius, of sinner and saint. the man whose eyes are nailed not on the nature of his act, but on the wages, whether it be money, or office, or fame, is almost equally low. he is great, whose eyes are opened to see that the reward of actions cannot be escaped, because he is transformed into his action, and taketh its nature, which bears its own fruit, like every other tree. a great inan cannot be hindered of the effect of his act, because it is immediate. the genius of life is friendly to the noble, and in the dark brings ther friends from far. 9* 202 conduct of life. а fear god, and where you go, men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals. and so i look on those sentiments which make the glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, as being also the intimacy of divinity in the atoms; and, that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and previsions emanate from the interior of his body and his mind; as, when flowers reach their ripeness, incense exhales from them, and, as beautiful atmosphere is generated from the planet by the averaged emanations from all its rocks and soils. thus man is made equal to every event. he can face danger for the right. a poor, tender, painful body, he can run into flame or bullets or pestilence, with duty for his guide. he feels the insurance of a just employment. i am not afraid of accident, as long as i am in my place. it is strange that superior persons should not feel that they have some better resistance against cholera, than avoiding green peas and salads. life is hardly respectable, – is it ? if it has no generous, guaranteeing task, no duties or affections, that constitute a necessity of existing. every man's task is his lifepreserver. the conviction that his work is dear to god and cannot be spared, defends him. the lightning-rod that disarms the cloud of its threat is his body in its duty. a high aim reacts on the means, on the days, on the organs of the worship. 205 body. a high aim is curative, as well as arnica. napoleon,” says goethe, “ visited those sick of the plague, in order to prove that the man who could vanquish fear, could vanquish the plague also; and he was right. 'tis incredible what force the will has in such cases : it penetrates the body, and puts it in a state of activity, which repels all hurtful influences; whilst fear invites ; them.” it is related of william of orange, that, whilst he was besieging a town on the continent, a gentleman sent to him on public business came to his camp, and, learning that the king was before the walls, he ventured to go where he was. he found him directing the operation of his gunners, and, having explained his errand, and received his answer, the king said, “ do you not know, sir, that every moment you spend here is at the risk of your life ?” “i run no more risk,” replied the gentleman, “ than your majesty." “ yes," said the king, “ but my duty brings me here, and yours does not." in a few minutes, a cannon-ball fell on the spot, and the gentleman was killed. thus can the faithful student reverse all the warnings of his early instinct, under the guidance of a deeper instinct. he learns to welcome misfortune, learns that adversity is the prosperity of he learns the greatness of humility. he shall work in the dark, work against failure, the great. 204 conduct of life. pain, and ill-will. if he is insulted, he can be insulted; all his affair is not to insult. hafiz writes, at the last day, men shall wear on their heads the dust, as ensign and as ornament of their lowly trust. a the moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. it is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. under the whip of the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. in the greatest destitution and calamity, it surprises man with a feeling of elasticity which makes nothing of loss. i recall some traits of a remarkable person whose life and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this sentiment. benedict was always great in the present time. he had hoarded nothing from the past, neither in his cabinets, neither in his memory. he had no designs on the future, neither for what he should do to men, nor for what men should do for him. he said, “i am never beaten until i know that i am beaten. i meet powerful brutal people to whom i have no skill to reply. they think they have defeated me. it is so published in society, in the journals ; i am defeated in this fashion, in all men's sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. my leger may show that i am in debt, cannot yet make my ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. my worship. 205 race may not be prospering: we are sick, ugly, obscure, unpopular. my children may be worsted. i seem to fail in my friends and clients, too. that is to say, in all the encounters that have yet chanced, i have not been weaponed for that particular occasion, and have been historically beaten ; and yet, i know, all the time, that i have never been beaten; have never yet fought, shall certainly fight, when my hour comes, and shall beat.' “a man,” says the vishnu sarma, “ who having well compared his own strength or weakness with that of others, after all doth not know the difference, is easily overcome by his enemies." 'i spent,' he said, ten months in the country. thick-starred orion was my only companion. wherever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, i ate whatever was set before me; i touched ivy and dogwood. when i went abroad, , i kept company with every man on the road, for i knew that my evil and my good did not come from these, but from the spirit, whose servant i was. for i could not stoop to be a circumstance, as they did, who put their life into their fortune and their company. i would not degrade myself by casting about in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting if the thought come, i would give it 'ntertainment. it should, as it ought, go into my ands and feet; but if it come not spontaneously, it : omes not rightly at all. if it can spare me, i can go. a for one. i am 206 conduct of life. sure i can spare it. it shall be the same with rny friends. i will never woo the loveliest. i will not ask any friendship or favor. when i come to my own, we shall both know it. nothing will be to be asked or to be granted.' benedict went out to seek his friend, and met him on the way; but he expressed no surprise at any coincidences. on the . other hand, if he called at the door of his friend, and he was not at home, he did not go again; concluding that he had misinterpreted the intimations. he had the whim not to make an apology to the same individual whom he had wronged. for this, he said, was a piece of personal vanity; but he would correct his conduct in that respect in which he had faulted, to the next person he should meet. thus, he said, universal justice was satisfied. mira came to ask what she should do with the poor genesee woman who had hired herself to work for her, at a shilling a day, and, now sickening, was like to be belridden on her hands. should she keep her, or should she dismiss her? but benedict said, “why ask? one thing will clear itself as the thing tɔ be done, and not another, when the hour is it a question, whether to put her into the street ? just as much whether to thrust the little jenny on your arm into the street. the inilk and meal you give the beggar, will fatten comes. > worship 207 jenny. thrust the woman out, and you thrust your babe out of doors, whether it so seem to you or not.' in the shakers, so called, i find one piece of belief, in the doctrine which they faithfully hold, that encourages them to open their doors to every wayfaring man who proposes to come among them; for, they say, the spirit will presently manifest to the man himself, and to the society, what manner of person he is, and whether he belongs among them. they do not receive him, they do not reject him. and not in vain have they worn their clay coat, and drudged in their fields, and shuffled in their bruin dance, from year to year, if they have truly , learned thus much wisdom. honor him whose life is perpetual victory; him, who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds support in labor, instead of praise ; who does not shine, and would rather not. with eyes open, he makes the choice of virtue, which outrages the virtuous; of religion, which churches stop their discords to burn and exterminate ; for the highest virtue is always against the law. miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician. talent and success interest me but moderately. the great class, they who affect our imagination, the men who could not make their hands meet around their objects, the rapt, the lost, the fools of ideas, — they suggest what they 208 conduct of life a cannot execute. they speak to the ages, and are heard from afar. the spirit does not love cripples and malformations. if there ever was good man, be certain, there was another, and will be more. ani so in relation to that future hour, that spectre clothed with beauty at our curtain by night, at our table by day, — the apprehension, the assurance of a coming change. the race of mankind have always offered at least this implied thanks for the gift of existence, — namely, the terror of its being taken away ; the insatiable curiosity and appetite for its continuation. the whole revelation that is vouchsafed us, is, the gentle trust, which, in our experience we find, will cover also with flowers the slopes of this chasm. of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. it is so well, that it is sure it will be well. it asks no questions of the supreme power. the son of antiochus asked his father, when he would join battle? “dost thou fear,” replied the king, “ that thou only in all the army wilt not hear the trumpet ?” 'tis a higher thing to confide, that, if it is best we should live, we shall live, 'tis higher to have this conviction, than to have the lease of indefinite centuries and millenniums and æons. higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be worship 205 izes. a great soul in future, must be a great soul now. it is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend, that is, on any man's experience but our own. it must be proved, if at all, from our own activity and designs, which imply an interminable future for their play. what is called religion effeminates and demoralsuch as you are, the gods themselves could not help you. men are too often unfit to live, from their obvious inequality to their own necessities, or, they suffer from politics, or bad neighbors, or from sickness, and they would gladly know that they were to be dismissed from the duties of life. but the wise instinct asks, 'how will death help them ?' these are not dismissed when they die. you shall not wish for death out of pusillanimity. the weight of the universe is pressed down on the shoulders of each moral agent to hold him to his task. the only path of escape known in all the worlds of god is performance. you must do your work, before you shall be released. and as far as it is a question of fact respecting the government of the universe, marcus antoninus summed the whole in a word, “ it is pleasant to die, if there be gods; and sad to live, if there be none. and so i think that the last lesson of life, the choral song which rises from all elements and all angels, is, a voluntary obedience, a necessitated freedom. man is made of the same atoms as the world 210 conduct of life. is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. when his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure. the religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. the scientific mind must have a faith which is science. “ there are two things,” said mahomet, " which i abhor, the learned in his infidelities, and the fool in his devotions.” our times are impatient of both, and specially of the last. let us have nothing now which is not its own evidence. there is surely enough for the heart and imagination in the religion itself. let us not be pestered with assertions and half-truths, with emotiors and snuffle. there will be a new church founded on moral acience, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters ; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. it shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must have himself to his worship 211 friend. he shall expect no coöperation, he shal? walk with no companion. the nameless thought, the nameless power, the superpersonal heart, he shall repose alone on that. he needs only his own verdict. no good fame can help, no bad fame can hurt him. the laws are his consolers, the good laws themselves are alive, they know if he have kept them, they animate him with the leading of great duty, and an endless horizon. honor and fortune exist to him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes. vii. considerations by the way. hear what british merlin sung, nf keenest eye and truest tongue. say not, the chiefs who first arrive usurp the seats for which all strive; the forefathers this land who found failed to plant the vantage-ground ; ever from one who comes to-morrow men wait their good and truth to borrow. but wilt thou measure all thy road, see thou lift the lightest load. who has little, to him who has less, can spare, and thou, cyndyllan's son ! beware ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, to falter ere thou thy task fulfil, only the light-armed climb the hill. the richest of all lords is use, and ruddy health the loftiest muse. live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air's salubrity : where the star canope shines in may, shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. the music that can deepest reach, and cure all ill, is cordial speech : mask thy wisdom with delight, toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 214 conduct of life. of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none. cleave to thine acre; the round year will fetch all fruits and virtues here. fool and foe may harmless roam, loved and lovers bide at home. a day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too shorte considerations by the way. a although this garrulity of advising is born with as, i confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. so much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enters into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other. all the professions are timid and expectant agencies. the priest is glad if his prayers or his sermon meet the condition of any soul ; if of two, if of ten, 'tis a signal success. but he walked to the church without any assurance that he knew the distemper, or could heal it. the physician prescribes hesitatingly out of his few resources, the same tonic or sedative to this new and peculiar constitution, which he has applied with various success to a hundred men before. if the patient mends, he is glad and surprised. the lawyer advises the client, and tells his story to the jury, and leaves it with them, and is as gay and as much relieved as the client, if it turns out that he has & verdict. the judge weighs the arguments, and puts a brave face on the matter, and, since there 216 conduct of life. must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice, and given satisfaction to the community ; but is only an advocate after all. and so is all life a timid and unskilful spectator. we do what we must, and call it by the best names. we like very well to be praised for our action, but our conscience says, 66 not unto us.' 'tis little we can do for each other. we accompany the youth with sympathy, and manifold old sayings of the wise, to the gate of the arena, but 'tis certain that not by strength of ours, or of the old sayº ings, but only on strength of his own, unknown to as or to any, he must stand or fall. that by which a man conquers in any passage, is a profound secret to every other being in the world, and it is only as he turns his back on us and on all men, and draws on this most private wisdom, that any good can ame to him. what we have, therefore, to say of life, is rather description, or, if you piease, celebration, than available rules. yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and enlarges our field of action. we have a debt to every great heart, to every fine genius; to those who have put life and fortune on the cast of an act of justice; to those who have added new sciences; to those who have refined life by elegant pursuits. 'tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. fine society is only a selfconsiderations by the way. 217 protection against thu vulgarities of the street and the tavern. fine society, in the common acceptation, has neither ideas nor aims. it renders the service of a perfumery, or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'tis an exclusion and a precinct. sidney smith said, “ a few yards in london cement or dissolve friendship.” it is an unprincipled decorum ; an affair of clean linen and coaches, of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. there are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day. society wishes to be amused. i do not wish to be amused. i wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. i wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. now we reckon them as bank-days, by . some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste. is all we have to do to draw the breath in, and blow it out again ? porphyry's definition is better; “life is that which holds matter together.” the babe in arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, and reason, visibly stream. see what a cometary train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, and imponderable elements. let us infer his ends from this pomp of means. mirabeau said, “why should we feel ourselves to be men, unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere. you must say of nothmg, that is beneath me, nor feel that anything can > 10 218 conduct of life. be ont of your power. nothing is impossible to the man who can will. is that necessary ? that shall be :-this is the only law of success. whoever said it, this is in the right key. but this is not the tone and genius of the men in the street. in the streets, we grow cynical. the men wo ineet are coarse and torpid. the finest wits have their sediment. what quantities of fribbles, paupers, invalids, epicures, antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and triflers of both sexes, might be advantageously spared! mankind divides itself into two classes, benefactors and malefactors. the second class is vast, the first a handful. a person seldom falls sick, but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die :quantities of poor lives; of distressing invalids; of cases for a gun. franklin said, “ mankind are very superficial and dastardly: they begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it discouraged: but they have capacities, if they would employ them.” shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? by the minority, surely. 'tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time. leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. i wish not to concede any. considerations by the way. 219 tning to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. the worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. masses ! the calamity is the masses. i do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. if government knew how, i should like to see it check, not multiply the population. when it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men spoken on their honor and their conscience. in old egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. i think it was much under-estimated. “clay and clay differ in dignity,” as we discover by our preferences every day. what a vicious practice is this of our politicians at washington pairing off! as if one man who votes wrong, going away, could excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going away; or, as if your presence did not tell' in more ways than in your vote. suppose the three hundred heroes at thermopylæ had paired off with three hundred persians : would it have been all the same to greece, and to history ? napoleon was called by his men cent mille. add honesty to 220 conduct of life. him, and they might have called him hundred million. nature makrs fifty poor melons for one that is good, and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, unripe crabs, before you can find a dozen dessert apples; and she scatters nations of naked indians, and nations of clothed christians, with two or three good heads among them. nature works very hard, and only hits the white once in a million throws. in mankind, she is contented if she yields one master in a century. the more difficulty there is in creating good men, the more they are used when they come. i once counted in a little neighborhood, and found that every able-bodied man had, say from twelve to fifteen persons dependent on him for material aid, -to whom he is to be for spoon and jug, for backer and sponsor, for nursery and hospital, and many functions beside: nor does it seem to make much difference whether he is bachelor or patriarch; if he do not violently decline the duties that fall to him, this amount of helpfulness will in one way or another be brought home to him. this is the tax which his abilities pay. the good men are employed for private centres of use, and for larger influence. all revelations, whether of mechanical or intellectual or moral science, are made not to communities, but to single persons. all the marked events of our day, all the cities, all the colonizations, may le traced back to their origin considerations by the way. 221 in a private brain. all the feats which make our civility were the thoughts of a few good heads. meantime, this spawning productivity is not noxious or needless. you would say, this rabble of nations might be spared. but no, they are all counted and depended on. fate keeps everything alive so long as the smallest thread of public necessity holds it on to the tree. the coxcomb and bully and thief class are allowed as proletaries, every one of their vices being the excess or acridity of a virtue. the mass are animal, in pupilage, and , near chimpanzee. but the units, whereof this mass is composed are neuters, every one of which may be grown to a queen-bee. the rule is, we are used as brute atoms, until we think : then, we use all the rest. nature turns all malfaisance to good. nature provided for real needs. no sane man at last distrusts himself. his existence is a perfect answer to all sentimental cavils. if he is, he is wanted, and has the precise properties that are required. that we are here, is proof we ought to be here. we have as good right, and the same . sort of right to be here, as cape cod or sandy hook have to be there. to say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply, that the majority are unripe, and have not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion. that, if they knew it, is an oracle for them and for 222 conduct of life. all. but in the passing moment, the quadruped interest is very prone to prevail : and this beast-force, whilst it makes the discipline of the world, the school of heroes, the glory of martyrs, has provoked, in every age, the satire of wits, and the tears of good men. they find the journals, the clubs, the governments, the churches, to be in the interest, and the pay of the devil. and wise inen have met this obstruction in their times, like socrates, with his famous irony; like bacon, with life-long dissimulation ; like erasmus, with his book “ the praise of folly;" like rabelais, with his satire rending the nations. “they were the fools who cried against . me, you will say," wrote the chevalier de boufflers to grimm; "aye, but the fools have the advantage of numbers, and 'tis that which decides. 'tis of no use for us to make war with them ; we shall not weaken them; they will always be the masters. there will not be a practice or an usage introduced, of which they are not the authors." in front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. good is a good doctor, a but bad is sometimes a better. 'tis the oppressions of william the norman, savage forest-laws, and crushing despotism, that made possible the inspirations of magna charta under john. edward i. wanted money, armies, castles, and as much as he could get. it was necessary to call the people to gether by shorter, swifter ways, and the house considerations by the way. 223 of commons arose. to obtain subsidies, he paig in privileges. in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, he decreed, " that no tax should be levied without consent of lords and commons;” which is the basis of the english constitution. plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which followed the march of alexander, introduced the civility, language, and arts of greece into the savage east; introduced marriage ; built seventy cities; and united hostile nations under one government. the barbarians who broke up the roman empire did not arrive a day too soon. schiller says, the thirty years' war made germany a nation. rough, selfish despots serve men immensely, as henry viii. in the contest with the pope; as the infatuations no less than the wisdom of cromwell; as the ferocity of the russian czars ; as the fanaticism of the french regicides of 1789. the frost which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvests of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust. wars, fires, plagues, break up immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten races and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to there is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters a rotten system, allows things to ke a new and natural order. the sharpest evils are bent into that periodicity which makes the errors of planets, and the fevers and distempers dew men. 224 conduct of life. of men, self-liriting. nature is upheld by antag. onism. passions, resistance, danger, are educators. we acquire the strength we have overcome. without war, no soldier ; without enemies, no hero. the sun were insipid, if the universe were not opaque. and the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity, to draw thence new nobilities of power : as art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night. what would painter do, or what would poet or saint, but for crucifixions and hells? and evermore in the world is this marvellous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats. not antoninus, but a poor washer-woman said, “ the more trouble, the more lion ; that's my principle.” i do not think very respectfully of the designs or the doings of the people who went to california, in 1849. it was a rush and a scramble of needy adventurers, and, in the western country, a general jail-delivery of all the rowdies of the rivers. some of them went with honest purposes, some with very bad ones, and all of them with the very commonplace wish to find a short way to wealth. but nature watches over all, and turns this malfaisance to good. california gets peopled and subdued, civilized in this immoral way,— and, on this fiction, , a real prosperity is rooted and grown. 'tis a decoy-duck; 'tis tubs thrown to amuse the whale : considerations by the way. 225 the agenbut real ducks, and whales that yield oil, are caught. and, out of sabine rapes, and out of robbers' forays, real romes and their heroisms come in fulness of time. in america, the geography is sublime, but the men are not : the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashained of. cies by which events so grand as the opening of california, of texas, of oregon, and the junction of the two oceans, are effected, are paltry, coarse selfishness, fraud, and conspiracy: and most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means. the benefaction derived in illinois, and the great west, from railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceeding any intentional philanthropy on record. what is the benefit done by a good king alfred, or by a howard, or pestalozzi, or elizabeth fry, or florence nightingale, or any lover, less or larger, compared with the involuntary blessing wrought on nations by the selfish capitalists who built the illinois, michigan, and the network of the mississippi valley roads, which have evoked not only all the wealth of the soil, but the energy of millions of men. 'tis a sentence of ancient wisdom, " that god hangs the greatest weights on the sipallest wires.” what happens thus to nations, befalls every day in private houses. when the friends of a gentla 10 * 226 conduct of life. man brought to his notice the follies of his sons, with many hints of their danger, he replied, that he knew so much mischief when he was a boy, and had turned out on the whole so successfully, that he was not alarmed by the dissipation of boys ; 'twas dangerous water, but, he thought, they wculd soon touch bottom, and then swim to the top. this is bold practice, and there are many failures to a good escape. yet one would say, that a good understanding would suffice as well as moral sensibility to keep one erect; the gratifications of the passions are so quickly seen to be damaging, and, what men like least, — seriously lowering them in social rank. then all talent sinks with character. “ croyez moi, l'erreur aussi a son mérite," said voltaire. we see those who surmount, by dint of some egotism or infatuation, obstacles from which the prudent recoil. the right partisan is a heady narrow man, who, because he does not see many things, sees some one thing with heat and exaggeration, and, if he falls among other narrow men, or on objects which have a brief importance, as some trade or politics of the hour, he prefers it to the universe, and seems inspired, and a godsend to those who wish to magnify the matter, and carry e point. better, certainly, if we could secure the strength and fire which rude, passionate men bring mto society, quite clear of their vices. but who considerations by the way. 227 dares draw out the linchpin from the wagonwheel? 'tis so manifest, that there is no moral deformity, but is a good passion out of place ; that there is no man who is not indebted to his foibles ; that, according to the old oracle, “the furies are the bonds of men ;” that the poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease, and save the life. in the high prophetic phrase, he causes the wrath of man to praise him, and twists and wrenches our evil to our good. shakspeare wrote, * tis said, best men are moulded of their faults;" and great educators and lawgivers, and especially generals, and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on this stuff, and esteem men of irregular and passional force the best timber. a man of sense and energy, the late head of the farm school in boston harbor, said to me, “i want none of your good boys, give me the bad ones." and this is the reason, i suppose, why, as soon as the children are good, the mothers are scared, and think they are going to die. mirabeau said, “ there are none but men of strong passions capable of going to greatness; none but such capable of meriting the public gratitude.” passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. any absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the little coils and cares of every day : 'tis the heat which sets our human 228 conduct of life. atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing thresholds, and first addresses in society, and gives us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when once it is begun. in short, there is no man who is not at some time indebted to his vices, as no plant that is not fed from manures. we only insist that the man meliorate, and that the plant grow upward, and convert the base into the better nature, the wise workman will not regret the poverty or the solitude which brought out his working talents. the youth is charmed with the fine air and accomplishments of the children of fortune. but all great men come out of the middle classes. 'tis better for the head; 'tis better for the heart. marcus antoninus says, that fronto told him, “ that the socalled high-born are for the most part heartless ; whilst nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as a tender consideration of the ignorant. charles james fox said of england, “ the history of this country proves, that we are not to expect from men in affluent circumstances the vigilance, energy, and exertion without which the house of commons would lose its greatest force and weight. human nature is prone to indulgence, and the most meritorious public services have always been performed by persons in a condition of life removed from opulence.” and yet what we ask daily, is to be conventional. supply, most kind gods ! this defect in 1 > considerations by the way. 229 my address, in my form, in my fortunes, which puts me a little out of the ring: supply it, and let me be like the rest whom i admire, and on good terms with them. but the wise gods say, no, we have better things for thee. by humiliations, by defeats, by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, learn a wider truth and humanity than that of a fine gentleman. a fifth-avenue landlord, a west end householder, is not the highest style of man : and, though good hearts and sound minds are of no condition, yet he who is to be wise for many, must not be protected. he must know the huts where poor men lie, and the chores which poor men do. the first-class minds, æsop, socrates, cervantes, shakspeare, franklin, had the poor man's feeling and mortification. a rich man was never insulted in his life : but this man must be stung. a rich man was never in danger from cold, or hunger, or war, or ruffians, and you can see he was not, from the moderation of his ideas. 'tis a fatal disadvantage to be cockered, and to eat too much cake. what tests of manhood could he stand ? take him out of his protections. he is a good book-keeper; or he is a shrewd adviser in the insurance office : perhaps he could pass a college examination, and take his degrees : perhaps he can give wise counsel in a court of law. now plant him down among farners, firemen, indians, and emigrants. set a dog in him : set a highwayman on him : try him with 230 conduct of life. a course of mobs : send him to kansas, to pike s peak, to oregon : and, if he have true faculty, this may be the element he wants, and he will come out of it with broader wisdom and manly power. æsop, saadi, cervantes, regnard, have been taken by corsairs, left for dead, sold for slaves, and know the realities of human life. bad times have a scientific value. these are occasions a good learner would not miss. as we go gladly to faneuil hall, to be played upon by the stormy winds and strong fingers of enraged patriotism, so is a fanatical persecution, civil war, nam tional bankruptcy, or revolution, more rich in the central tones than languid years of prosperity. what had been, ever since our memory, solid continent, yawns apart, and discloses its compo sition and genesis. we learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea. in our life and culture, everything is worked up, and comes in use, passion, war, revolt, bankruptcy, and not less, folly and blunders, insult, ennui, and bad company. nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations ; like a good chemist, whom i found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar. life is a boundless a privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and considerations by the way. 231 get into the car, you have no guess what good company you shall find there. you buy much that is not rendered in the bill. men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim. if now in this connection of discourse, we should venture on laying down the first obvious rules of life, i will not here repeat the first rule of economy, already propounded once and again, that every man shall maintain himself, — but i will say, get health. no labor, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, that can gain it, must be grudged. for sickness is a cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters. i figure it as a pale, wailing, distracted phantom, absolutely selfish, heedless of what is good and great, attentive to its sensations, losing its soul, and afflicting other souls with meanness and mopings, and with ministration to its voracity of trifles. dr. johnson said severely, “every man is a rascal as soon as he is sick.” drop the cant, and treat it sanely. in dealing with the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. we must treat the sick with the same firmness, giving them, of course, every aid, — but withholding ourselves. i once asked a clergyman in a retired town, who were his companions ? what men of ability he saw ? he replied, that he spent his time with the sick and the dying. i said, he seemed to me to need quite other company, and all 232 conduct of life. the more that he had this : for if people were sick and dying to any purpose, we would leave all and go to them, but, as far as i had observed, they were as frivolous as the rest, and sometimes much more frivolous. let us engage our companions not to spare us. i knew a wise woman who said to her friends, “ when i am old, rule me.” and the best part of health is fine disposition. it is more essential than talent, even in the works of talent. nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdomn. whenever you are sincerely pleased, you are nourished. the joy of the spirit indicates its strength. all healthy things are sweet-tempered. genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last; and, for the reason, that whoever sees the law which distributes things, does not despond, but is animated to great desires and endeavors. he who desponds betrays that he has not seen it. 'tis a dutch proverb, that “paint costs nothing," such are its preserving qualities in damp climates. well, sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. and so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more of it remains. the latent heat of an ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible. you may rub the same chip of pine to the point of kindling, a hundred times ; and the power of happiness of any soul is not to be computed or a considerations by the way. 233 > drained. it is observed that a depression of spirits develops the germs of a plague in individuals and nations. it is an old commendation of right behavior, “ aliis lætus, sapiens sibi,” which our english prove erb translates, “be merry and wise." i know how " easy it is to men of the world to look and sneer at your sanguine youth, and its glittering dreams. but i find the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled, far better for comfort and for use, than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people. i know those miserable fellows, and i hate them, who see a black star always riding through the light and colored clouds in the sky overhead : waves of light pass over and hide it for a moment, but the black star keeps fast in the zenith. but power dwells with cheerfulness; hope puts us in a working mood, whilst despair is no muse, and untunes the active powers. a man should make life and nature happier to us, or he had better never been born. when the political economist reckons up the unproductive classes, he should put at the nead this class of pitiers of themselves, cravers of sympathy, bewailing imaginary disasters. an old french verse runs, grave in my translation : some of your griefs you have cured, and the sharpest you still have survived; but what torments of pain you endured from evils that never arrived! 234 conduct of life. 6 there are three wants which never can be satisfied : that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveller, who says, 'anywhere but here.' the turkish cadi said to layard, “ after the fashion of thy people, thou hast wandered from one place to another, until thou art happy and content in none." my countrymen are not less infatuated with the rococo toy of italy. all america seems on the point of embarking for europe. but we shall not always traverse seas and lands with light purposes, and for pleasure, as we say. one day we shall cast out the passion for europe, by the passion for america, culture will give gravity and domestic rest to those who now travel only as not knowing how else to spend money. already, who provoke pity like that excellent family party just arriving in their well-appointed carriage, as far from home and any honest end as ever ? each nation has asked successively, what are they here for ? ' until at last the party are shamefaced, and anticipate the question at the gates of each town. genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. i doubt not this was the meaning of soc. considerations by the way. 235 rates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so. in childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by the horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not, by distant travel, we should reach the baths of the descending sun and stars. on experiment, the horizon flies before us, and leaves us on an endless common, sheltered by no glass bell. yet ’tis strange how tenaciously we cling to that bell-astronomy, of a protecting domestic horizon. i find the same illusion in the search after happiness, which i observe, every summer, recommenced in this neighborhood, soon after the pairing of the birds. the young people do not like the town, do not like the sea-shore, they will go inland; find a dear cottage deep in the mountains, secret as their hearts. they set forth on their travels in search of a home: they reach berkshire; they reach vermont; they look at the farms; good farms, high mountain-sides : but where is the seclusion? the farm is near this; ’tis near that; they have got far from boston, but 'tis near albany, or near burlington, or near montreal. they explore a farm, but the house is small, old, thin ; discontented people lived there, and are gone :there's too much sky, too much out-doors ; too public. the youth aches for solitude. when he comes to the house, he passes through the house. that does not make the deep recess he sought. . all now, i perceive,' he says, 'it must be deep ag а • 236 conduct of life. with persons; friends only can give depth.' yes, but there is a great dearth, this year, of friends ; hard to find, and hard to have when found: they are just going away: they too are in the whirl of the flitting world, and have engagements and necessities. they are just starting for wisconsin; have . letters from bremen :-see you again, soon. slaw, slow to learn the lesson, that there is but one depth, but one interior, and that is — his purpose. when joy or calamity or genius shall show him it, then 'voods, then farms, then city shopmen and cablrivers, indifferently with prophet or friend, will mirror back to him its unfathomable heaven, its populous solitude. the uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit. it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life. what a difference in the hospitality, of minds! inestimable is he to whom we can say what we cannot say ourselves. others are involuntarily hurtful to us, and bereave us of the power of thought, impound and imprison us. as, when there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, --so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother. when he comes into the office or public room, the society dissolves; one after another slips out, and the apartment is at his disposal. what is incurable but a frivolous habit? to a considerations by the way. 237 a fly is as untamable as a hyena. yet folly in the sense of fun, fooling, or dawdling can easily be borne ; as talleyrand said, “i find nonsense singularly refreshing;” but a virulent, aggressive fool taints the reason of a household. i have seen a whole family of quiet, sensible people unhinged and beside themselves, victims of such a rogue. for the steady wrongheadedness of one perverse person irritates the best : since we must withstand absurdity. but resistance only exasperates the acrid fool, who believes that nature and gravitation are quite wrong, and he only is right. hence all the dozen inmates are soon perverted, with whatever virtues and industries they have, into contradictors, accusers, explainers, and repairers of this one malefactor ; like a boat about to be overset, or a carriage run away with, — not only the foolish pilot or driver, but everybody on board is forced to assume strange and ridiculous attitudes, to balance the vehicle and prevent the upsetting. for remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, i recommend phlegm and truth : let all the truth that is spoken or done be at the zero of indifferency, or truth itself will be folly. but, when the case is seated and malignant, the only safety is in amputation ; as seamen say, you shall cut and run. how to live with unfit companions ? for, with such, life is for the most part spent: and experience teaches little better than our earliest instinct of self-defence, namely, not to . : 238 conduct of life. engage, not to mix yourself in any manner with them; but let their madness spend itself unopposed; you are you, and i am i. conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live. our habit of thought, — take men as they rise, is not satis fying; in the common experience, i fear, it is poor and squalid. the success which will content them, is, a bargain, a lucrative employment, an advantage gained over a competitor, a marriage, a patrimony, a legacy, and the like. with these objects, 'their conversation deals with surfaces : politics, trade, personal defects, exaggerated bad news, and the rain. this is forlorn, and they feel sore and sensitive. now, if one comes who can illuminate this dark house with thoughts, show them their native riches, what gifts they have, how indispensable each is, what magical powers over nature and men; what access to poetry, religion, and the powers which constitute character; he wakes in them the feeling of worth, his suggestions require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and sciences, – then we come out of our egg-shell existence into the great dome, and see the zenith over and the nadir under us. instead of the tanks and buckets of knowledge to which we are daily confined, we come down to the shore of the sea, and dip our hands in its miraculous considerations by the way. 239 waves. tis wonderful the effect on the company. they are not the men they were. they have all been to california, and all have come back millionnaires. there is no book and no pleasure in life comparable to it. ask what is best in our experience, and we shall say, a few pieces of plain. dealing with wise people. our conversation once and again has apprised us that we belong to better circles than we have yet beheld ; that a mental power invites us, whose generalizations are more worth for joy and for effect than anything that is now called philosophy or literature. in excited conversation, we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours. add the consent of will and temperament, and there exists the covenant of friendship. our chief want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do what we this is the service of a friend. with him we are easily great. there is a sublime attraction in him to whatever virtue is in us. how he flings wide the doors of existence! what questions we ask of him ! what an understanding we have ! how few words are needed! it is the only real society. an eastern poet, ali ben abu taleb, writes with sad truth, can. 240 conduct of life. “ he who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." but few writers have said anything better to this point than hafiz, who indicates this relation as the test of mental health : " thou learnest no secret antil thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound ao heavenly knowledge enters." neither is life (ong enough for friendship. that is a serious and majestic affair, like a royal presence, or a religion, and not a postilion’s dinner to be eaten on the run. there is a pudency about friendship, as about love, and though fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they do not name it. with the first class of men our friendship or good understanding goes quite behind all accidents of estrangement, of condition, of reputation. and yet we do not provide for the greatest good of life. we take care of our health ; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, — friends ? we know that all our training is to fit us for this, and we do not take the step towards it. how long shall we sit and wait for these benefactors ? it makes no difference, in looking back five years, how you have been dieted or dressed; whether you have been lodged on the first floor or the attic; whether you have had gardens and baths, good cattle and horses, have been carried in a neat equipage, or in a ridiculous truck: these things are forgotconsiderations by the way. 241 ten so quickly, and leave no effect. but it counts much whether we have had good companions, in that time; almost as much as what we have been doing. and see the overpowering importance of neighborhood in all association. as it is marriage, fit or unfit, that makes our home, so it is who lives near us of equal social degree, a few people at convenient distance, no matter how bad company, these, and these only, shall be your life's companions : and all those who are native, congenial, and by many an oath of the heart, sacramented to you, are gradually and totally lost. you cannot deal systematically with this fine element of society, and one may take a good deal of pains to bring people together, and to organize clubs and debating societies, and yet no result come of it. but it is certain that there is a great deal of good in us that does not know itself, and that a habit of union and competition brings people up and keeps jhem up to their highest point; that life would be wice or ten times life, if spent with wise and fruital companions. the obvious inference is, a little useful deliberation and preconcert, when one goes to buy house and land. but we live with people on other platforms; we live with dependents, not only with the young whom we are to teach all we know, and clothe with the aavantages we have earned, but also with those who serve us directly, and for money. yet 11 242 conduct of life the old rules hold good. let not the tie be mer cenary, though the service is measured by money. make yourself necessary to somebody. do not make life hard to any. this point is acquiring new importance in american social life. our domestic service is usually a foolish fracas of unreasonable demand on one side, and shirking on the other. a nian of wit was asked, in the train, what was his errand in the city ? he replied, “ i have been sent to procure an angel to do cooking.” a lady complained to me, that, of her two maidens, one was absent-minded, and the other was absent-bodied. and the evil increases from the ignorance and hostility of every ship-load of the immigrant population swarming into houses and farms. few people discern that it rests with the master or the mistress what service comes from the man or the maid ; that this identical hussy was a tutelar spirit in one house, and a haridan in the other. all sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair. if you are proposing only your own, the other party must deal a little hardly by you. if you deal generously, the other, though selfish and unjust, will make an exeeption in your favor, and deal truly with you. when i asked an iron-master about the slag and cinder in railroad iron,-“0," he said, “there's always good iron to be had: if there's cinder in the iron, 'tis because there was cinder in the pay." : considerations by the way. 243 but why multiply these topics, and their illustrations, which are endless ? life brings to each his task, and, whatever art you select, algebra, planting, architecture, poems, commerce, politics, all are attainable, even to the miraculous triumphs, on the same terms, of selecting that for which you are apt;begin at the beginning, proceed in order, step by step. 'tis as easy to twist iron anchors, and braid cannons, as to braid straw, to boil granite as to boil water, if you take all the steps in order. wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which nature never pardons. the happy conditions of life may be had on the same terms. their attraction for you is the pledge that they are within your reach. our prayers are prophets. there must be fidelity, and there must be adherence. how respectable the life that clings to its objects! youthful aspirations are fine things, your theories and plans of life are fair and com mendable: but will you stick? not one, i fear . in that common full of people, or, in a thousand, but one: ạnd, when you tax them with treachery, and remind them of their high resolutions, they have forgotten that they made a vow. the individuals are fugitive, and in the act of becoming something else, and irresponsible. the race is great, the ideal fair, but the men whiffling and unsure. the hero is he who is immovably centred. the main difference between people seems to be, that one man can 244 conduct of life. come under obligations on which you can rely,is obligable ; and another is not. as he has not a law within lim, there's nothing to tie him to. 'tis inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and of condition, and to exaggerate them. but all rests at last on that integrity which dwarfs talent, and can spare it. sanity consists in not being subdued by your means. fancy prices are paid for position, and for the culture of talent, but to the grand interests, superficial success is of no account. the man, it is his attitude, not feats, but forces, not on set days and public occasions, but, at all hours, and in repose alike as in energy, still formidable, and not to be disposed of. the populace says, with horne tooke, “ if you would be powerful, pretend to be powerful.” i prefer to say, with the old prophet, “seekest thou great things ? ? seek them not: or, what was said of a spanish prince, “ the more you took from him, the greater , he looked." plus on lui ôte, plus il est grand. the secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these tow are alone to be regarded, the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are ; and love of what is simple and beautiful ; independence, and cheerful relation, these are the essentials, — these, and the wish to serve, -to add somewhat to the well-being of , a men, viii. beauty. was never form and never face so sweet to seyd as only grace which did not slumber like a stone but hovered gleaming and was gone. beauty chased he everywhere, in flame, in storm, in clouls of air. he smote the lake to feed his eye with the beryl beam of the broken wave he flung in pebbles well to hear the moment's music which they gave. oft pealed for him a lofty tone from nodding pole and belting zone. he heard a voice none else could hear from centred and from errant sphere. the quaking earth did quake in rhyme, seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. in dens of passion, and pits of wo, he saw strong eros struggling through, to sun the dark and solve the curse, and beam to the bounds of the universe. while thus to love he gave his days in loyal worship, scorning praise, how spread their lures for him, in vain, thieving ambition and paltering gain ! he thought it happier to be dead, to die for beauty, than live for bread. beauty. > the spiral tendency of vegetation infects edito cation also. our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know. what a parade we make of our science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is from its objects ! our botany is all names, not powers : poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace and healing ; but what does the botanist know of the virtues of his weeds? the geologist lays bare the strata, and can tell them all on his fingers : but does he know what effect passes into the man who builds his house in them ? what effect on the race that inhabits a granite shelf? what on the inhabitants of marl and of alluvium ? we should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, if he could teach us what the social birds say, when they sit 'in the autumn council, talking together in the trees. the want of sympathy makes his record a dull dictionary. his result is a dead bird. the bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its relations to nature; and the skin skeleton you show me, is no more a heron, than i heap of ashes or a bottle of gases into which his ok 248 conduct of life body has been reduced, is dante or washington. the naturalist is led from the road by the whole listance of his fancied advance. the boy had juster views when he gazed at the shells on the beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to call them by their names, than the man in the pride of his nomenclature. astrology interested us, for it tied man to the system. instead of an isolated beggar, the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star. however rash and however falsified by pretenders and traders in it, the hint was true and divine, the soul's avowal of its large relations, and, that climate, century, remote natures, as well as near, are part of its biography. chemistry takes to pieces, but it does not construct. alchemy which sought to transmute one element into another, to prolong life, to arm with power, that was in the right direction. all our science lacks a human side. the tenant is more than the house. bugs and stamens and spores, on which we lavish so many years, are not finalities, and man, when his powers unfold in order, will take nature along with him, and emit light into all her recesses. the human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer. we are just so frivolous and skeptical. men hold themselves cheap and vile: and yet a man is a fagot of thunderbolts. all the elements pour beauty. 249 amuses us. through his system: he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire ; he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood : they are the extension of his personality. his duties are measured by that instrument he is; and a right and perfect man would be felt to the centre of the copernican system. 'tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live. we do not think heroes can exert any more awful power than that surface-play which a deep man believes in miracles, waits for them, believes in magic, believes that the orator will decompose his adversary; believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent; can . overcome all odds. from a great heart secret magnetisms flow incessantly to draw great events. but we prize very humble utilities, a prudent husband, a good son, a voter, a citizen, and deprecate any romance of character; and perhaps reckon only his money value, his intellect, his affection, as a a sort of bill of exchange, easily convertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, and wine. the motive of science was the extension of man, or all sides, into nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. but that is not our science. these geologies, chemistries, 11 * 250 conduct of life. a astronomies, seem to make wise, but they leave us where they found us. the invention is of use to the inventor, of questionable help to any other. the formulas of science are like the papers in your pocket-book, of no value to any but the owner. science in england, in america, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. there's a revenge for this inhumanity. what manner of man does science make? the boy is not attracted. he says, i do not wish to be , such a kind of man as my professor is. the collector has dried all the plants in his herbal, but he has lost weight and humor. he has got all snakes and lizards in his phials, but science has done for him also, and has put the man into a bottle. our reliance on the physician is a kind of despair of ourselves. the clergy have bronchitis, which does , not seem a certificate of spiritual health. macready thought it came of the falsetto of their voicing. an indian prince, tisso, one day riding in the forest, saw a herd of elk sporting. “see how happy," he said, “these browsing elks are! why should not priests, lodged and fed comfortably in the tem ples, also amuse themselves ?” returning home, he imparted this reflection to the king. the king, on the next day, conferred the sovereignty on him, saying, “ prince, administer this empire for seven days: at the termination of that period, i shall put thee to death.” at the end of the seventh day, beauty. 251 the king inquired, “ from what cause hast thou become so emaciated ?" he answered, he answered, “ from the horror of death.” the monarch rejoined: “live, my child, and be wise. thou hast ceased to take recreation, saying to thyself, in seven days i shall be put to death. these priests in the temple incessantly meditate on death ; how can they enter into healthful diversions ?” but the men of science or the doctors or the clergy are not victims of their pursuits, more than others. the miller, the lawyer, and the merchant, dedicate themselves to their own details, and do not come out men of more force. have they divination, grand aims, hospitality of soul, and the equality to any event, which we demand in man, or only the reactions of the mill, of the wares, of the chicane ? no object really interests us but man, and in man only his superiorities; and, though we aware of a perfect law in nature, it has fascination for us only through its relation to him, or, as it is rooted in the mind. at the birth of winckelmann, more than a hundred years ago, side by side with this arid, departmental, post mortem science, rose an enthusiasm in the study of beauty ; and perhaps some sparks from it may yet light a conflagration in the other. knowledge of men, knowl. edge of manners, the power of form, and our sensibility to personal influence, never go out of fashion. these are facts of a science which we 9 are 252 conduct of life. study without book, whose teachers and subjects are always near us. so inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of our knowledge in this direction belongs to the chapter of pathology. the crowd in the street oftener furnishes degradations than angels or redeemers : but they all prove the transparency. every spirit makes its house; and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant. but not less does nature furnish us with every sign of grace and goodness. the delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, “ the sweet seriousness of sixteen,” the lofty air of well-born, wellbred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through life, we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us. beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world. all privilege is that of beauty; for there are many beauties; as, of general nature, of the human face and form, of manners, of brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of tl:e soul. the ancients believed that a genius or demon took possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him; that these genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire partly immersed in the bodies which they governed ; -on an evil man, resting on his beauty 253 man head ; in a good man, mixed with his substance. they thought the same genius, at the death of its ward, entered a new-born child, and they pretended to guess the pilot, by the sailing of the ship. we recognize obscurely the same fact, though we give it our own names. we say, that every is entitled to be valued by his best moment. we measure our friends so. we know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure and beautiful. on the other side, everybody knows people who appear beridden, and who, with all degrees of ability, never impress us with the air of free agency. they know it too, and peep with their eyes to see if you detect their sac plight. we fancy, could we pronounce the solving word, and disenchant them, the cloud would roll up, the little rider would be discovered and unseated, and they would regain their freedom. the remedy seems never to be far off, since the first step into thought lifts this mountain of necessity. thought is the pent air-ball which can rive the planet, and the beauty which certain objects have for him, is the friendly fire which expands the thought, and acquaints the prisoner that liberty and the question of beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of things. goethe aid, 66 the beautiful is a manifestation of secret power await him. 254 conduct of life. laws of nature, which, but for this appearance, had been forever concealed from us.” and the working of this deep instinct makes all the excitement much of it superficial and absurd enough about works of art, which leads armies of vain travellers every year to italy, greece, and egypt. every man values every acquisition he makes in the science of beauty, above his possessions. the most useful man in the most useful world, so long as only commodity was served, would rernain unsatisfied. but, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high value. i am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to attempt a definition of beauty. i will rather enumerate a few of its qualities. we ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. it is the most enduring quality, and the most ascending quality. we say, love is blind, and the figure of cupid is drawn with a bandage round blind : yes, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is love, for finding what he seeks, and only that; and the mythologists tell us, that vulcan was painted lame, and cupid blind, to call attention to the fact, that one was all limbs, and the other, all eyes. in the true mythology, cove is an immortal child, and beauty leads him as his eyes. beauty. 255 a guide: nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say, beauty is the pilot of the young sonl. beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and colors of nature have a new charm for us in our perception, that not one ornament was added for ornament, but is a sign of some better health, or more excellent action. elegance of form in bird or beast, or in the human figure, marks some excellence of structure: or beauty is only an invitation from what belongs to us. 'tis a law of botany, that in plants, the same virtues follow the same forms. it is a rule of largest application, true in a plant, true in a loaf of bread, that in the construction of any fabric or organism, any real increase of fitness to its end, is an increase of beauty the lesson taught by the study of greek and of gothic art, of antique and of pre-raphaelite painting, was worth all the research, — namely, that all beauty must be organic; that outside embellishment is deformity. it is the soundness of the bones that ultimates itself in a peach-bloom complexion : health of constitution that makes the sparkle and the power of the eye. 'tis the adjust ment of the size and of the joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace of outline and the finer grace of movement. the cat and the deer cannot move or sit inelegantly. the dancing 256 conduct of life. ence. : master can never teach a badly built man to walk well. the tint of the flower proceeds from its root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin with its existhence our taste in building rejects paint, and all shifts, and shows the original grain of the wood : refuses pilasters and columns that support nothing, and allows the real supporters of the house honestiy to show themselves. every necessary or organic action pleases the beholder. a man leading a horse to water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors of haymakers in the field, the carpenter building a ship, the smith at his forge, or, whatever useful labor, is becoming to the wise eye. but if it is done to be seen, it is mean. how beautiful are ships on the sea ! but ships in the theatre, — or ships kept for picturesque effect on virginia water, by george iv., and men hired to stand in fitting costumes at a penny an hour ! what a difference in effect between a battalion of troops marching to action, and one of our independent companies on a holiday! in the midst of a military show, and a festal procession gay with banners, i saw a boy seize an old tin pan that lay rusting under a wall, and poising it on the top of a stick, he set it turning, and made it describe the most elegant imaginable curves, and drew away attention from the decorated procession by this startling beauty. another text from the mythologists. the a a beauty. 257 greeks fabled that venus was born of the foam of the sea. nothing interests us which is stark or bounded, but only what streams with life, what is in act or endeavor to reach somewhat beyond. the pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye, is, that an order and method has been communicated to stones, so that they speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime with expression. beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms. any fixedness, heaping, or concentration on one feature,-a long nose, a sharp chin, a hump-back, — is the reverse of the flowing, and therefore deformed. beautiful as is the symmetry of any form, if the form can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. the interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps through which it is attained. this is the charm of running water, sea-waves, the flight of birds, and the locomotion of animals. this is the theory of dancing, to recover continually in changes tne lost equilibrium, not by abrupt and angular, but by gradual and curving movements. i have been told by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. the new mode is always only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new fashion. this fact suggests the reason of 258 conduct of life. all mistakes and offence in our own modes. it is necessary in music, when you strike a discord, to let down the ear by an intermediate note or two to the accord again : and many a good experiment, born of good sense, and destined to succeed, fails, only because it is offensively sudden. i suppose, the parisian milliner who dresses the world from her imperious boudoir will know how to reconcile the bloomer costume to the eye of mankind, and make it triumphant over punch himself, by interposing the just gradations. i need not say, how wide the same law ranges; and how much it can be hoped to effect. all that is a little harshly claimed by progressive parties, may easily come to be conceded without question, if this rule be observed. thus the circumstances may be easily imagined, in which woman may speak, vote, argue causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the most naturally in the world, if only.it come by degrees. to this streaming or flowing belongs the beauty that all circular movement has ; as, the circulation of waters, the circulation of the blood, the periodical motion of planets, the annual wave of vegetation, the action and reaction of nature: and, if we follow it out, this demand in our thought for an ever-onward action, is the argument for the immortality. one more text from the mythologists is to the same purposa, — beauty rides on a lion. beanty beauty. 259 rests on necessities. the line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. the cell of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength with the least wax; the bone or the quill of the bird gives the most alar strength, with the least weight. “it is the purgation of superfluities,” said michel angelo. there is not a particle to spare in natural structures. there is a compelling reason in the uses of the plant, for every novelty of color or form : and our art saves material, by more skilful arrangement, and reaches beauty by taking every superfluous ounce that can be spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the poetry of columns. in rhetoric, this art of omission is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof of high culture, to say the greatest matters in the simplest way. veracity first of all, and forever. rien de beau que le vrai. in all design, art lies in making your object prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing objects that are prominent. the fine arts have nothing casual, but spring from the instincts of the nations that created them. beauty is the quality which makes to endure. in a house that i know, i have noticed a block of spermaceti lying about closets and mantel-pieces, for twenty years together, simply because the tallowman gave it the form of a rabbit ; and, i suppose, it may continue to be lugged about unchanged for a a 260 conduct of life. a century. let an artist scrawl a few lines or figures on the back of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from danger, is put in portfolio, is framed and glazed, and, in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, will be kept for centuries. burns writes a copy of verses, and sends them to a newspaper, and the human race take charge of them that they shall not perish. as the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how surely a beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, and is copied and reproduced without end. how many copies are there of the belvedere apollo, the venus, the psyche, the warwick vase, the parthenon, and the temple of vesta ? these are objects of tenderness to all. in our cities, an ugly building is soon removed, and is never repeated, but any beautiful building is copied and improved upon, so that all masons and carpenters work to repeat and preserve the agreeable forms, whilst the ugly ones die out. the felicities of design in art, or in works of nature, are shadows or forerunners of that beauty which reaches its perfection in the human form. all men are its lovers. wherever it goes, it creates joy and hilarity, and everything is permitted to it. it reaches its height in woman. " to eve,” say the mahometans, “ god gave two thirds of all beauty.” a beautiful woman is a practical poet, " taming her savage rate, planting tenderness, hope, beauty. 261 and eloquence, in all whom she approaches. some favors of condition must go with it, since a certain serenity is essential, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, “yes, i am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any i yet behold.' french mémoires of the fifteenth century celebrate the name of pauline de viguiere, a virtuous and accomplished maiden, who so fired the enthusiasm of her contemporaries, by her enchanting form, that the citizens of her native city of toulouse obtained the aid of the civil authorities to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at least twice a week, and, as often as she showed herself, the crowd was dangerous to life. not less, in england, in the last century, was the fame of the gunnings, of whom, elizabeth married the duke of hamilton; and maria, the earl of coventry. walpole says, “ the concourse was so great, when the duchess of hamilton was presented at court, on friday, that even the noble crowd in the drawing-room clambered on chairs and tables to look at her. there are mob: at their doors to see them get into their chairs, and people go early to get places at the theatres, when it is known they will be there.” “such crowds,” he adds, elsewhere, “flock to see the duchess of hamilton, that seven hundred people sat up all night, in 262 conduct of life. and about an inn, in yorkshire, to see her get into her post-chaise next morning." but why need we console ourselves with the fames of helen of argos, or corinna, or pauline of toulouse, or the duchess of hamilton ? we all know this magic very well, or can divine it. it does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes never so long. women stand related to beautiful nature around us, and the enamored youth mixes their form with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. they heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. we observe their intellectual influence on the most serious student. they refine and clear his mind; teach him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and difficult. we talk to them, and wish to be listened to; we fear to fatigue them, and acquire a facility of expression which passes from conversation into habit of style. that beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual effort of nature to attain it. mirabeau had an ugly face on a handsome ground; and we see faces every day which have a good type, but have been marred in the casting: a proof that we are all entitled to beauty, should have been beautiful, if our ancestors had kept the laws, -as every lily and every rose is well. but our bodies do not fit us, but caricature and satirize us. thus, short legs, which constrain us to short, mincing steps, are beauty. 263 > a kind of personal insult and contumely to the owner; and long stilts, again, put him at perpetual disadvantage, and force him to stoop to the general level of mankind. martial ridicules a gentleman of his day whose countenance resembled the face of a swimmer seen under water. saadi describes a schoolmaster “so ugly and crabbed, that a sight of hiin would derange the ecstasies of the orihodox.” faces are rarely true to any ideal type, but are a record in sculpture of a thousand anecdc tes of whim and folly. portrait painters say that most faces and forms are irregular and unsymmetrical ; have one eye blue, and one gray; the nose not straight; and one shoulder higher than another; the hair unequally distributed, etc. the man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. a beautiful person, among the greeks, was thought to betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods : and we can pardon pride, when a woman possesses such a figure, that wherever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the world. and yet – it is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. beauty, without expression, tires. abbé ménage said of the president le bailleul, “ that he was fit 264 conduct of life. a for nothing but to sit for his portrait.” a greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but when the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored. and petulant old gentlemen, who have chanced to suffer some intolerable weariness from pretty people, or who have seen cut flowers to some profusion, or who see, after a world of pains have been successfully taken for the costume, how the least mistake in sentiment takes all the beauty out of your clothes, — affirm, that the secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting. we love any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. if command, eloquence, art, or invention, exist in the most deformed person, all the accidents that usually displease, please, and raise esteem and wonder higher. the great orator was an emaciated, insignificant person, but he was all brain. cardinal de retz says of de bouillon, “ with the physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an eagle.' it was said of hooke, the friend of newton, “ he is the most, and promises the least, of any man in england." 66 since i am so ugly,” said du guesclin, “it behooves that i be bold.” sir philip sidney, the darling of mankind, ben jonson tells us, “ was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands beauty. 265 of years, were not handsome men. if a man can raise a small city to be a great kingdom, can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organize victory, can lead the opinions of mankind, can enlarge knowledge, 'tis no matter whether his nose is parallel to his spine, as it ought to be, or whether he has a nose at all; whether his legs are straight, or whether his legs are amputated; his deformities will come to be reckoned ornamental, and advantageous on the whole. this is the triumph of expression, degrading beauty, charming us with a power so fine and friendly and intoxicating, that it makes admired persons insipid, and the thought of passing our lives with them insupportable. there are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features really are. when the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its power, it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared ; that an interior and durable form has been disclosed. still, beauty rides on her lion, as before. still, "it was for beauty that the world was made.” the lives of the italian artists, who established a despotism of genius amidst the dukes and kings and mobs of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in all times are to a finer brain, a finer method, than their if a man can cut such a head on his stone gate-post as shall draw and keep a crowd about it > own. 12 266 conduct of life. all day, by its beauty, good nature, and inscrutable meaning ; – if a man can build a plain cottage with such symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces look cheap and vulgar; can take such advantage of nature, that all her powers serve him ; making use of geometry, instead of expense ; tapping a mountain for his water-jet ; causing the sun and inoon to seem only the decorations of his estate; this is still the legitimate dominion of beauty. the radiance of the human form, though sometimes astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few years or a few months, at the perfection of youth, and in most, rapidly declines. but we remain lovers of it, only transferring our interest to interior excellence. and it is not only admirable in singular and salient talents, but also in the world of manners. but the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. this is the reason why beauty is still escaping out of all analysis. it is not yet possessed, it cannot be handled. proclus says, " it swims on the light of forms.” it is properly not in the form, but in the mind. it instantly deserts possession, and flies to an object in the horizon. if i could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful ? the sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. for beauty. 267 a > the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time. wordsworth rightly speaks of “ light that never was on sea or land,” meaning, that it was supplied by the observer, and the welsh bard warns his countrywomen, that “ half of their charms with cadwallon shall die.” the new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful, is a certain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest relation to the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. every natural feature, sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone, has in it somewhat which is not private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit which is the soul of nature, and thereby is beautiful. and, in chosen men and women, i find somewhat in form, speech, and manners, which is not of their person and family, but of a humane, catholic, and spiritual character, and we love them as the sky. they have a largeness of suggestion, and their face and manners carry a certain grandeur, like time and justice. the feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility of every thing into every other thing. facts which had never before left their stark common sense, suddenly figure as eleusinian mysteries. my boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors and constellations. all the facts in nature are nouns of the intellect, and make 268 conduct of life. the grammar of the eternal language. every word has a double, treble, or centuple use and meaning what! has my stove and pepper-pot a false bottom! i cry you mercy, good shoe-box! i did not know you were a jewel-case. chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are clothed about with immortality. and there is a joy in perceiving the representative or symbolic character of a fact, which no bare fact or event can ever give. there are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. the poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with the spoils of the landscape, flowergardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning, and stars of night, since all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever thing does not express to me the sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. into every beautiful object, there enters somewhat immeasurable and divine, and just as much into form bounded by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music, or depths of space. polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies ; and when the second-sight of the mind is openeil, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray hail been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things. the laws of this translation we do not know, or why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word beauty. 269 or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders ; as if the divinity, in his approaches, lifts, away mountains of obstruction, and deigns to draw a truer line, which the mind knows and owns. this is that haughty force of beauty,“ vis superba formæ,” which the poets praise, under calm and precise outline, the immeasurable and divine : beauty hiding all wisdom and power in its calm sky. all 'high beauty has a moral element in it, and i find the antique sculpture as ethical as marcus antoninus : and the beauty ever in proporti in to the depth of thought. gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles ; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. an adorer of truth we cannot choose but obey, and the woman who has shared with us the moral sentiment,her locks must appear to us sublime. thus there is a climbing scale of culture, from the first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords tie eye, up through fair outlines and details of the landscape, features of the human face and form, signs and tokens of thought and character in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries of the intellect. wherever we begin, thither our steps tend : an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trappings, up 270 conduct of life. to the perception of newton, that the glooe on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from a larger tree; up to the perception of plato, that globe and universe are rude and early expressions of an all-dissolving unity, the first stair on the scale to the temple of the mind. ix. illusions. flow, flow the waves hatea, accursed, adored, the waves of mutation : no anchorage is. sleep is not, death is not ; who seem to die live. house you were born in, friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, day's toil and its guerdon, they are all vanishing, fleeing to fables, cannot be moored. see the stars through them, through treacherous marbles. know, the stars yonder, the stars everlasting, are fugitive also, and emulate, vaulted, the lambent heat-lightning, and fire-fly's flight. when thou dost return on the wave's circulation, beholding the shimmer, the wil dissipation, 272 conduct of life. and, out of endeavor to change and to flow, the gas become solid, and phantoms and nothings return to be things, and endless imbroglio is law and the world, then first shalt thou know, that in the wild turmoil, horsed on the proteus, thou ridest to power, add to endurance. illusions. -a some years ago, in company with an agreeable party, i spent a long summer day in exploring the mammoth cave in kentucky. we traversed, through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit, niche or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, i believe, serena's bower. i lost the light of one day. i saw high domes, and bottomless pits; heard the voice of unseen waterfalls ; paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep echo river, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish; crossed the streams “lethe ” and “styx;” plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries ; saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers, — icicle, orangeflower, acanthus, grapes, and snowball. we shot bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four combined engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and time, could make in the dark. 12 * 274 conduct of life. the mysteries and scenery of the cave had the same dignity that belongs to all natural objects, and which shames the fine things to which we foppishly compare them. i remarked, especially, the mimetic habit, with which nature, on new instruments, hums her old tunes, making night to mimic day, and chemistry to ape vegetation. but i then took notice, and still chiefly remember, that the best thing which the cave had to offer was an illusion. on arriving at what is called the “starchamber,” our lamps were taken from us by the guide, and extinguished or put aside, and, on looking upwards, i saw or seemed to see the night heaven thick with stars glimmering more or less brightly over our heads, and even what seemed a comet flaming among them. all the party were touched with astonishment and pleasure. our musical friends sung with much feeling a pretty song, “ the stars are in the quiet sky,” &c., and i sat down on the rocky floor to enjoy the serene picture. some crystal specks in the black ceiling high overhead, reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this magnificent effect. i own, i did not like the cave so well for eking out its sublimities with this theatrical trick. but i have had many experiences like it, before and since; and we must be content to be pleased without too curiously analyzing the occasions. our conversation with nature is not just what it seems. the illusions. 275 ; cloud-raek, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows, and northern lights are not quite so spheral as our childhood thought them; and the part our organization plays in them is too large. the senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of. once, we fancied the earth a plane, and stationary. in admiring the sunset, we do not yet deduct the rounding, coördinating, pictorial powers of the eye. the same interference from our organization cre: ates the most of our pleasure and pain. our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance. life is an> ecstasy. life is sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman dripping all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the railway intersection, the farmer in the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street, the hunter in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the ball, all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment, which they themselves give it. health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat. . we fancy that our civilization has got on far, but we still come back to our primers. we live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by our sentiments. the child walks amid heaps of illusions, which he does not like to have disturbed. the boy, how sweet to him is his fancy ! how dear the story of barons and battles! what a hero he a 276 conduct of life. is, whilst he feeds on his heroes! what a debt 19 his to imaginative books ! he has no better friend or influence, than scott, shakspeare, plutarch, and homer. the man lives to other objects, but who dare affirm that they are more real ? even the prose of the streets is full of refractions. in the life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters into all details, and colors them with rosy hue. he imitates the air and actions of people whom he admires, and is raised in his own eyes. he pays a debt quicker' to a rich man than to a poor man. he wishes the bow and compliment of some leader in the state, or in society; weighs what he says ; perhaps he never comes nearer to him for that, but dies at last better contented for this amusement of his eyes and his fancy. the world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. in london, in paris, in boston, in san francisco, the carnival, the masquerade is at its height. nobody drops his domino. the unities, the fictions of the piece it would be an impertinence to break. the chapter of fascinations is very long. great is paint; nay, god is the painter; 'and we' rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. society does not love its unmaskers. it was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by d'alembert, “ qu'un état de vapeur était un état très fâcheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses comme elles sont." i find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. chilillusions. 277 dren, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, proteus, or momus, or gylfi's mocking, for the power has many names, — is stronger than the titans, stronger than apollo. few have overheard the gods, or surprised their secret. life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. all is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle. there are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. we wake from one dream into another dream. the toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in refinement to the quality of the dupe. the intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. but everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge. amid the joyous troop who give in to the charivari, comes now and then a sad-eyed boy, whose eyes lack the requisite refractions to clothe the show in due glory, and who is afflicted with a tendency to trace home the glittering miscellany of fruits and flowers to one root. science is a search after identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners. at the state fair, a friend of mine complained that all the varieties of fancy pears in our orchards seem to have been selected by somebody who had a whim for a particular kind of pear, and only cultivated such as had that perfume ; they 278 conduct of life. were all alike. and i remember the quarrel of an. other youth with the confectioners, that, when he racked his wit to choose the best eomfits in the shops, in all the endless varieties of sweetmeat he could only find three flavors, or two. what then ? pears and cakes are good for something; and be cause you, unluckily, have an eye or noșe too keen, why need you spoil the comfort which the rest of us find in them? i knew a humorist, who, in a good deal of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. he shocked the company by maintaining that the attributes of god were two,power and risibility; and that it was the duty of every pious man to keep up the comedy. and i have known gentlemen of great stake in the community, but whose sympathies were cold, presidents of colleges, and gov. : ernors, and senators, who held themselves bound to sign every temperance pledge, and act with bible societies, and missions, and peace-makers, and cry hist-a-boy! to every good dog. we must not carry comity too far, but we all have kind impulses in this direction. when the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, i own i enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. but this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid ou very thick. their young life life is thatched with them. bare and grim to tears is the lot of the illusions. 279 children in the hovel i saw yesterday ; yet not the less they hung it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune, and talked of “the dear cottage where so many joyful hours had flown.” well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the country. women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion. being fascinated, they fascinate. they see through claudelorraines. and how dare any one, if he could, pluck away the coulisses, stage effects, and ceremonies, by which they live ? too pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of affection, and its atmosphere always liable to mirage. we are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. we live amid hallucinations; and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up first or last. but the mighty mother who had been so sly with us, as if she felt that she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the pandora-box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some great joys. we find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children, that makes the heart too big for the body. in the worstassorted connections there is ever some mixture of true marriage. teague and his jade get some just relations of mutual respect, kindly observation, and fostering of each other, learn something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if they were now to begin. 280 conduct of life. 'tis fine for us to point at one or another fine madman, as if there were any exempts. the scholar in his library is none. i, who have all my life heard any number of orations and debates, read poems and miscellaneous books, conversed with many geniuses, am still the victim of any new page; and, if marmaduke, or hugh, or moosehead, or any other, invent a new style or mythology, i fancy that the world will be all brave and right, if dressed in these colors, which i had not thought of. then at once i will daub with this new paint; but it will not stick. 'tis like the cement which the peddler sells at the door; he makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can never buy of him a bit of the cement which will make it hold when he is gone. men who make themselves felt in the world avail themselves of a certain fate in their constitution, which they know how to use. but they never deeply interest us, unless they lift a corner of the curtain, or betray never so slightly their penetration of what is behind it. 'tis the charm of practical men, that outside of their practicality are a certain poetry and play, as if they led the good horse power by the bridle, and preferred to walk, though they can ride so fiercely. bonaparte is intellectual, as well as cæsar; and the best soldiers, sea-captains, and railway men have a gentleness, when off duty; a good-natured admission that there are illusions, illusions. 281 > and who shall say that he is not their sport? we stigmatize the cast-iron fellows, who cannot so detach themselves, as “ dragon-ridden,” “ thunderstricken," and fools of fate, with whatever powere endowed. since our tuition is through emblems and indirections, 'tis well to know that there is inethod in it, a fixed scale, and rank above rank in the phantasms. we begin low with coarse masks, and rise to the most subtle and beautiful. the red men told columbus, “ they had an herb which took away fatigue;" but he found the illusion of “ arriving from the east at the indies" more composing to his lofty spirit than any tobacco. is not our faith in the impenetrability of matter more sedative than narcotics? you play with jackstraws, balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and politics ; but there are finer games before you. is not time a pretty toy ? life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals. yonder mountain must migrate into your mind. the fine star-dust and nebulous blur in orion, “ the portentous year of mizar and alcor,” must come down and be dealt with in your household thought. what if you shall come to discern that the play and playground of all this pompous history are radiations from yourself, and that the sun borrows his beams ? what terrible questions we are learning to ask! the former men be lieved in magic, by which temples, cities, and men > 282 conduct of life. were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone, we are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon. there are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of the passions, and the structural, beneficent illusions of sentiment and of the intellect. there is the illusion of love, which attributes to the beloved person all which that person shares with his or her family, sex, age, or condition, nay, with the human mind itself. 'tis these which the lover loves, and anna matilda gets the credit of them. as if one shut up always in a tower, with one window, through which the face of heaven and earth could be seen, should fancy that all the marvels he beheld belonged to that window. there is the illusion of time, which is very deep ; who has disposed of it? or come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series? the intellect sees that every atom carries the whole of nature ; that the mind opens to omnipotence; that, in the endless striving and ascents, the metamorphosis is entire, so that the soul doth not know itself in its own act, when that act is perfected. there is illusion that shall de ceive even the elect. there is illusion that shall deceive even the performer of the miracle. though he make his body, he denies that he makes it. illusions. 283 our though the world exist from thought, thought is daunted in presence of the world. one after the other we accept the mental laws, still resisting those which follow, which however must be accepted. but all our concessions only compel us to new profusion. and what avails it that science has como to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even thoughts are not finalities; but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization ? with such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no wonder if our estimates are loose and floating. we must work and affirm, but we have no guess of the value of what we say or do. the cloud is now as big as your hand, and now it covers a county. that story of thor, who was set to drain the drinking-horn in asgard, and to wrestle with the old woman, and to run with the runner lok, and presently found that he had been drinking up the sea, and wrestling with time, and racing with thought, describes us who are contending, amid these seeming trifles, with the supreme energies of nature. we fancy we have fallen into bad company and squalid condition, low debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, butcher's meat, 284 conduct of life. 6 sugar, milk, and coal. • set me some great task, ye gods ! and i will show my spirit.' • not so, says the good heaven ; plod and plough, vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; great affairs and the best wine by and by.' well, 't's all phantasm ; and if we weave a yard of tape in all humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that the threads were time and nature. we cannot write the order of the variable winds. how can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility ? yet they differ as all and noth-, ing. instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are. from day to day, the capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. suddenly the mist rolls úp, and reveals them, and we think how much good time is gone, that might have been saved, had any hint of these things been shown. a sudden rise in the road shows us the system of mountains, and all the summits, which have been just as near us all the year, but quite out of mind. but these alternations are not without their order, and we are parties to our various fortune. if life seem a succession of dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams also. the visions of good men are good ; it is the undisciplined will illusions. 285 that is whipped with bad thoughts and bad fortunes. when we break the laws, we lose our hold on the central reality. like sick men in hospitals, we change only from bed to bed, from one folly to another; and it cannot signify much what becomes of such castaways, — wailing, stupid, comatose creatures, — lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of life to the nothing of death. in this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for stays and foundations. there is none but a strict and faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring out of all duplicity or illusion there. whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth. i look upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in character. speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. i prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the éclat in the universe. this reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art. at the top or at the bottom of all illusions, i set the cheat which still leads us to work and live for appearances, in spite of our conviction, in all sane hours, that it is what we really are that avails with friends, with strangers, and with fate or fortune. one would think from the talk of men, that 286 conduct of life. for we riches and poverty were a great matter; and ouu civilization mainly respects it. but the indians say, that they do not think the white man with his brow of care, always toiling, afraid of heat and cold, and keeping within doors, has any advantage of them. the permanent interest of every man is, never to be in a false position, but to have the weight of nature to back him in all that he does. riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume; and our life the life of all of us identical. transcend the circumstance continually, and taste the real quality of existence; as in our employments, which only differ in the manipulations, but express the same laws; or in our thoughts, which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams. we see god face to face every hour, and know the savor of nature. the early greek philosophers heraclitus and xenophanes measured their force on this problem of identity. diogenes of apollonia said, that un less the atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend and act with one another. but the hindoos, in their sacred writings, express the live‘liest feeling, both of the essential identity, and of that illusion which they conceive variety to be “ the notions, 'i am,' and · this is mine,' whick influence mankind, are but delusions of the mother of the world. dispel, o lord of all creatures ! the conceit of knowledge which proceeds from igno illusions. 287 in a cance.” and the beatitude of man they hold to lie in being freed from fascination. the intellect is stimulated by the statement of truth in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws of life in illusions. but the unities of truth and of right are not broken by the disguise. there need never be any confusion in these. crowded life of many parts and performers, ou a stage of nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in maine or california, the same elements offer the same choices to each new comer, and, according to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute nature. it would be hard to put more mental and moral philosophy than the persians have thrown into a sentence : “fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise: then be the fool of virtue, not of vice." verse. there is no chance, and no anarchy, in the uniall. is system and gradation. every god is there sitting in his sphere. the young mortal enters the hall of the firmament: there is he alone with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. on the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. he fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. the mad crowd drives 288 conduct of life. hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. what is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself? every moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. and when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones, — they alone with him alone. the end. 1 t 1 3 2044 004 351 631 the borrower will be charged an overdue fee if this book is not returned to the library on or before the last date stamped below. non-receipt of overdue notices does not exempt the borrower from overdue fees. harvard college widener library cambridge, ma 02138 (617) 495-2413 m widener dec 1 2 1997 book due ed 613 waldo emendoro wal leder 1999 o ws nondeerporeneque indolo james hardy ropes harvard divinity school the gift of alice · lowell · ropes 1933 andover-harvard . theological library ralph waldo emerson. complete works. centenary edition. 12 vols., crown 8vo. with portraits, and copious notes by edward waldo emerson. price per volume, $1.75. 1. nature, addresses, and lectures. 2. essays : first series. 3. essays : second series. 4. representative men. 5. english traits. 6. conduct of life. 7. society and solitude. 8. letters and social aims. 9. poems. 10. lectures and biographical sketches. ii. miscellanies. 12. natural history of intellect, and other papers. with a general index to emerson's collected works. riverside edition. with 2 portraits. 12 vols., each, 12mo. gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00. little classic edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with riverside edition, except that vol. 12 is without index. each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15.00. poems. household edition. with portrait. 12mo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. essays. first and second series. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. nature, lectures, and addresses, together with representative men. in cambridge classics. crown 8vo, $1.00. parnassus. a collection of poetry edited by mr. emer. son. introductory essay. household edition. 12mo, $1.50. holiday edition. 8vo, $3.00. emerson birthday book. with portrait and illustrations. 18mo, $1.00. emerson calendar book. 32mo, parchment-paper, 25 cents. correspondence of carlyle and emerson, 834-1872. edited by charles eliot norton. 2 ols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. library edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00. correspondence of john sterling and emerson. edited, with a sketch of sterling's life, by edward waldo emerson. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend. 1838-1853. edited by charles eliot norton. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. the correspondence between emerson and grimm. edited by f. w. holls. with portraits. 16mo, $1.00, net. postpaid, $1.05. for various other editions of emerson's works and emer. son memoirs see catalogue. houghton mifflin company boston and new york journals of ralph waldo emerson 1820-1872 vol. v ralph waldo emerson, about 1846 journals of ralph waldo emerson with annotations edited by edward waldo emerson and waldo emerson forbes 1838–1841 boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1911 andover-harvard theological library cambridge, mass. copyright, 1911, by edward waldo emerson all'rights reserved published november 1911 contents journal xxix (continued) 1838 (from journal d) botany with george b. emerson. bible misused. railing. herbert's poems. never compare. good scholars. tennyson. speaking. rare genius. the true jesus. rivalry. the momentary object; trees. waldo. dartmouth college address. persons, not things. always beauty. frugal nature. joy in composition. limitation. sanity rare. mathematics and ethics. the understanding. outgoing virtue. seeing pictures; thorwaldsen, greeks, raphael's angel, sibyls. woinan’s tragedy. lecture topics. dr. ripley's prayer. book-readers. distraction. perceivers and recorders. joy in others' gifts. want of harmony. the might of sympathy. dr. ripley. orator. eyes. faithful writing. duties of libraries. evening parties. landor. scholar must have ideal. the church clock. samuel hoar. the common thought. pathos of form, of women. heeren's egypt; tragedy of the negro. wise spending; gardens and architecture. doctrine of benefits. questions. cathedral; the problem. o bk day; signs of ndium; the scholar's freedom; the hoscontents tile array; the ride home. lottery of visits. landscape art. censure. living times. professor andrews norton's attack. george p. bradford. proverbs. ignore the personal. the salt fish. others' books. boys and girls. sin. proposal for a journal. a human book. beauty shuns sermons. license of reform, its relief. culture and cheer. sympathy is missed. silken persecution. limit. the scholar's lot; not accountable for his vision. use of facts. otherism. concord ministers. despondents, their remedy. sunset from the hill. a stranger. the vast. the eloquent man. housekeeping a college . . . . . . . . 3-50 look outward. alcott. nomads. man a stranger in his body. nomad and pivot. the proud mushroom. man and book. facts detached. dr. palfrey baptizing. proverbs. w. h. channing. originality. teeth. superior nature. tennyson. nature a deist, a resource, no fool. races. le blaie. goethe's naming. irreligious intellect. your turn. walk with john l. russell. casella's song. nature's insurance. cause and effect. heroes provided. sickness. famed books. order of wonder. apples and men. faction. letter to margaret fuller; writing history. on inconsistencies. nature forces interchange. the abstract practical. literary warfare. the blessed wife. education for adversity; for princes. rich and poor. vice. tokens. letter to w. silsbee; ideas of god; truth. definitions. books secondary. hostile reviews. compensations. higher riches. van burenism. politics; overvalued facts; debate; election. faces. facts settle into place. turns. fertilized eloquence. truth shunned. swedenborcontents vii gianism. direct speech saves; cant; scholar must be fearless. part means strife; whole, peace, silence. awakening thought. doctors. hold your own. measure yourself; result. poet's powers. potatoes. edward palmer; no-money reform; his practice; another view; quoting texts. the peace manifesto. facts or doctrines. the living now sought in antiquity. one mind. the wife's counsel. new science looks within. story hunger. idols. letters to aunt mary; ideals and society. laughing dangerous. jones very's visit; be hospitable to souls. vocabularies. scholar must not stop for attacks . . . . . . . . . . 51-100 winning fate. the grahamite gospel. on literature. man and thought; tragedy of light that does not guide. mrs. sarah alden ripley. shakespeare must be realized. jones very's attitude of protest; spiritual state; manners. travelling. coincidences. o'connell and the slaveholder. example. fear of the new lights, but soul must win. a catechism. tone. grief. jones very rebukes. soirées. “ charity.” culture. the trismegisti. summons to poets. weans and wife. living with scholars. autobiographical; bereavement. ideal society. chaucer. argument. numerical religion. insanity; repose. a divine man; beauty; deep joy in nature. not hope, but trust. freedom. asylums of the mind; natural science, fancy, invention, music. beauty. instinct to adorn life. obedience. true society. don't play the martyr. time and space illusions. lear and hamlet; not owed to book-learning. expression of faces. the wonder of shakespeare. henry thoreau; talk on property and viii contents on writing. always pay. the man of will; the magnetic maiden incalculable man; great men. walk with h. g. o. blake; enchantment of memory. fire, water, woods, birds good company. the miraculous. love of the child. slavery to words, yet god now, here, face to face. man thankful for sympathy. musical eyes. be hospitable to thought. one wise word. keep the will true. books. soul. « the travellers.” poets. nature soothes. tone shows advance. swedenborgian chains. alfred haven. dr. ripley. teachers from within and from without. genius must charm; respect your impressions; swedenborg; beethoven. scholar in fashionable society; autobiographical. sir thomas browne. boys and girls. hunger for thought; its joy; yet the masters hold their own." beware theory. cant. fear of light; peace of insight. illicit studies. one mind. a test. man's history unwritten; creation going on. reading . . . . . 101-153 journal xxx 1839 (from journals d and e) lectures on human life. the lord's supper; farreaching genius. naming the pond. plymouth. blessed warmth. stewart newton's sketches. children's toys. falling. demonology; its traces in christianity. epaminondas. ellen tucker. the pathetic.' my ambition. tax tests honesty. waldo's sayings. ellen's birth. memory fixes rank. the solo songstress. “symcontents posium” meets. no age in talk. heads. a gentleman. lectures in plymouth. early poems. lesson of warlike energy. gates and burgoyne. books. church must respect the soul; a sabbath. vanity. “ another state”; foolish preaching; thoughts in church; self-trust. right conversation. institutions illusory. sure compensation. growth or stagnation. peeping. art. content. thought visible, eternal, universal. at home in nature. cousins. a confession of st. augustine. low religion; spiritual teaching. art strong from within. housekeeping. ali in each; the foreworld. john fletcher; “ bonduca,” “the coxcombs," “ the false one”; cæsar, poet's use of heroes. men are photometers. secure isolation through elevation. music masses; utterance by indirection. books as gardens of delight. artificial memory; value of catalogue; annals of thought. know one to know all. self-trust; serious visitors. praise. landor's pericles and aspasia. elegance. neighbour sam staples. respect the philanthropies. “symposium.” conversation. present, past, future, theist or atheist. epochs of life. propriety. pictures. formal preaching; speak things, or be silent. 154-200 no hiding. keep in tune. “symposium,” fear instructs. landor, germany and america. a fancied college. character. allston's pictures; american genius unreal. hedge; dualism. the poor and rich mind. slow consolations. a timid people. brave henry thoreau. the potato mine. biography; individuals new. idolaters. eternity. the foam of the infinite, “so hot, little sir.” friendship. virtues of labor. contents domestic conqueror. child has poetry of life. the lotus-eaters; perspective of reform. be natural. compression. rich men of language. slackness of scholars. the sabbath. the reforming age. living conversation. life a may-game. love's miracles. a great man's light. types of man. guido's aurora. analysis. absolutions. iteration. calming labor. allston's pictures. repetitions of history. god. cherish freedom. contrasted characters. jones very. goethe's help. the savant. be sacred. history is biography. the divine. beauty a sword and shield. composition necessary. aroma. rhyme, its privilege of truth; may need a spur, pindaric, warlike, daring. religion now looks to life. boston athenæum. limited belief. referred life. prop the world! boston chances; beards; pictures. puling virtue. edward palmer. the lecture a new organ. reforms teach; the nomoney doctrine. drunk with party. beauty needs faith. miracles. cathedral. reform's source. the verbs painted. possible great men. wood-thrush. all elements needed. bettina von arnim. two-headed nature; good in evil. the child's power. strawberries. the home sweet, but sacred. “ abandon." manners demonological. night's pageant. thoreau's “sympathy.” friends fated. immortality falsely taught; the soul affirms. carlyle sees webster. unitarian weakness. burke's rhetoric. manners have no hurry. new hampshire; hills and lakes; poverty; calvinism; men disappoint; the profile; the horn's echo. poor health. margaret fuller and f. h. hedge; george bradford. help for the day from books. days. horace mann; education . . . . . . . 201-250 contents the thoreaus' voyage; the farm as school; the aurora in vain. lackof zeal for reform; pledges avoided. common people interest. futile college. age of words, vain repetition. things and men. teamsters versus railroads. two singers, voice and taste. poor literary meetings. accident of riches. writing dialogue. water ; home tasks. speech or writing. be shakspeare. sad tales and convicting books. false temperance. purgatory. the band of protesters. friendship. oliver twist. children foreigners. cromwell apud forster. woods, a prose sonnet. usefulness honorable; raphael, dante. unripe power. walk to fairhaven hill. mankind awards fame. sorrow and age; god equal to the cure. lethe and beauty. military eye. the village singer. faces. all in man. hospitalities. autobiographical. cant. memory, not wit. re-reading old sermons. renouncing soul's birthright the madness of christendom; yet shun denial; true help of jesus. noviciate. ebb tide of the day. organization. aristocracy and idealism. the solemn ego. some progress; the time's woes. anna barker. the lyceum's opportunity. the boston bells. horace walpole. matter. books of all time, the annals of soul, inspired. dangers of commerce. no age in good writing. waiting for a friend. weather. poem-making. my lecturing. obey the spirit. the cornwallis and its teaching. visit of alcott and margaret fuller. trust thy time. confidences. enlisting in reforms. the soul heir of all. books, the universal light in them. interpreting of fact; lectures. michel angelo. truth of character. temperance · · · · · · · · · · · 251–300 contents our twofold nature. our varied teachers; health not squeamish. rest and love. the past. william lloyd garrison; non-resistance. the present teaches the law. letter to s. g. ward. art and letters. principles not details. kant; what is the age ? keep young. michel angelo, phidias, raphael. nature's indulgence; health. innocence. vision. nose and teeth. city and country. our generation's problem. reason above understanding. ideal when practised alarms. john sterling. subject. raphael; tone. reign of prudence. gustavus adolphus; cavendish, harleian miscellanies; american standards. linnæus and french novels. our spurs to work. effect of books. advancing men humble; stagnant talent shines. fashionists barometers. ideal men ? praise a bad omen. do your work. true men. the over-anxious host. alcott. the city of the muse. our age our all. margaret fuller complains of the intervening gulf. mimicry. one mind. systems; autobiographical. analysis may be sublime; idleness the danger. nature's analogies. union and constitution, but man is above measures. the annoyers. justice. politics; measures or popular opinion? sabbath. death. the boarder. homerides; successive ideas working. temperance. the bible, a foundation, primary; so all scriptures of the nations. eyes of women and men. comparisons. scholar and soldier. the clerisy or learned class to-day; their problems. the woods a temple. the best literature makes death incredible. raphael's four sibyls; guido's aurora; the capitoline endymion. sun-spiced diet. unconscious writing. disunited self, worthy and unworcontents x111 thy. poetry makes its pertinence. shelley never true poet; other modern british poets. genius shirks reform. man's eating repulsive; camping. keats. true and false subjective. coldness as disguise. michel angelo's giants created by the jewish idea. nature. society. shaking off forms. swedenborg's force 301-350 hope works. the age alive. opposition good. sterling and carlyle. true revelations. the present age. use our own tests. influences shed; longanimity. proportion. advertisements, man's dignity and opportunity; god our force; true citizen. treat poetically. love a reflection. writing on the age, eternity's fruit. ideal and circumstance. the wise man. woman's attraction. reverent friendship; its tides. reading . . . . . . . . . . . 350-364 journal xxxi 1840 (from journals e and f) guy learns friendship. man before measure; character brings theocracy. plato's “ politician.” estimating nations. one miracle. scholar. church's poverty. balzac. character plus sensibility. course on the present age; disappointment in it. the maiden; gems. the elect. wealth in thought and senses. bible priceless, yet not final. shakespeare. things the divine language. instinct speaks for immortality. nature flows. writing and speech. confessions help. power of manners, yet humanity greater. death in xiv contents story. dollars. allston. cry for religion; individuality accepted everywhere else. walk in autumn woods with jones very; “ the romans still masters”; insane? new playthings. egotism's nemesis. « unconscious” inspiration explained. new thought. the new journal's (dial) position. waldo. superlative. alcott's ground. man — jesus — no institution. foresight. farming ; follow your calling. influence of authors. men will seek out knowledge and faculty. animal food. stars. spontaneous thought. the soul. europe. wordsworth makes sane. the thinker let loose. life's means and ends. goethe's service. architecture. apple-blossom. a grand aim saves. simple life; hands or head. latent joy. criticism must be transcendental. helpless cosmogonies; society prefers secondaries. the golden age. be slow to print. the circus. reformers. unmagnetic men.“ father” edward taylor, his power and charm. old age. reform, ideas. books like birds. advertising for a master. nature clears eyes. buddhist hospitality. man's capital. standing. bat and ball. how to see pictures. waldo. composure. love. intoxications. diet whims. scots. how to drive a bargain. the scythe. thoreau on diet. friendship . 365-415 originality the test of man. respect a friend's heights. power exhilarates. crude poetry. love's picturing. all in each. hive facts. originality. montaigne. new chapter « nature" ; her cipher. magic of heat. assets not taxed. the house and the poor-house. the democrats magnetic. the day at the cliff; river, rock and flower immortality. poet must teach citicontents ху zen. symbols of harrison campaign. inviting company. our perilous foundation. immersed in a river. increase our faith; trifle of diet. our expense. society. time and fate fix relations. the man behind the sentence. practical man and prophet. egotism. love and intellect. osman, his endowment and his fortune. self-trust. the greeks ; no time in the antique. children's speech. the gloomy comrade. the woodman's real thought. prometheus ; æschylus. memory. nature's counsel. graces of sleep. carlyle has power and wit ; no philosopher; exhaustive. life and poems. education raises man above circumstance. fine behavior. sun and shade. genius bids work. the woods a temple; love be thy art. question for scholars. the short visit. miss martineau's deerbrook. character. pericles and aspasia. a woman's criticism. the dial's purposes. all history personal. the old in the new. poet needs good and bad chances. clouds. love makes us children. be, not say. exacting friends. ovid. gaston de foy. love of friends. talk of what you know. christianity now insists on persons, not ideas. courts. truth. the forest. oblique training. the lonely society. gardening. character comes out. experiments in community. sarah clarke. new questions. property. sleep. toiling terribly. conversion of a woman. experimenting in life. life all emblems; the angle. trust the god within; light coming ; nature's teaching; she is all-musical; has no shock. i love your virtue . . . . . . 416-464 saccharine faces. broadcast virtue. rhetoric's charm. the soul. whigs. reform looks not back. property. xvi. contents true friendship. marriage of friends. life’s romantic power; waiting; nature reassures and rewards. the riddle of the landscape. a timesworth. attacks are compliments to dial; exhortation to it. brook farm. project does not attract. “ bonduca.” society constricts, — obey your call; draw on nature; wild poetry. let the elemental laws work. life present; swedenborg. each supposes another himself. creation, not gold. history of jesus typical. moods. church horns. a wedding gift. dignity. self-reliance again. saccharine principle. osman and the fine folk. soul will win; infinite time. essence of a book. life shows your compass. elemental death. excess of directions; god drives us on ever. the poet who gives wisdom and faith. useful swearing. rule of transformation. thought's twilight. the angel's command. vision of retribution. dependent and independent. joy not pain endures. literature's excuse. imitation. in nature all equal. working power of art. the moon's phases and the spirit’s; yet strive on. gleams from nature; moments. godlike calm. french novels. cırcles. nitrous oxide. jesus's command of silence. man finds what he is. self-service elegant. thoughts during music. wrinkles. the great circles. nature's message derided, yet true. beauty cannot be held. how to treat a genius? the flowing; heed the lesson. crowns waiting us. waldo's prayer. real or absurd immortality; your share of god. the living god neglected. dream of debate on marriage; solution. be universalists. love of jesus and of the great scriptures reasonable. reading 465-503 contents xvii journal xxxii 1841 (from journals e, f, g, h, and j) thoreau as helpful friend. the first essays. goethe; beethoven. nature's continence. the confessional. nature's song ever new. the memory of progress. influence. progress of knowledge. plotinus listening for the oracle. man a link. snow and woods. nature's sublime law. god gives facts; find their reason. forest thoughts. ecstasy and the soul. to-day; its shining remembrance. novels, quentin durward, wilhelm meister, their moral; diaries and autobiographies. half-sickness. the concert, magic chest of tea. labor and letters; marriage, wife's protection. no time; hurry. spring. experience not valid against soul's possibility. friends given essays. poet and poem; the sincere dissembler. french. iamblichus on pythagoras. mexican views. nature; man the receiver, to recreate. social tests for all, their fruit. nichol's astronomy and saint-simon's mémoires. rewards. poems. the café. precepts to children. present literature abroad and here; rejection, discontent, slight reformers. samuel g. ward. life of talent or following your own sacred path. polite war. the advancing west. animals. the scholar's courage. man sacred. hold to your quest. opportunity. god in man. vitality, ascendency; subservient scholars. revealing eyes. balance. beauty goes with truth. north end picturesqueness stirs the painter within; each xviii contents has power of expression. aunt mary's original, wild genius; family quotations; her letter to charles ; waterford. new england's old religion, its dignity and worth. the brothers edward and charles. 504-545 edward's high tone; charles's attraction; family history; new england's old religion; aunt mary; milton and young. the sabbath of the woods. gentleman and christian. president harrison. the dew. weeds and men. age and grief wrong; all flowing, religion too; man receives to give; pantheism; hospitality. the heart a gate. genius draws the curtain; keep impressionable. saints' worship dangerous; keep thy soul. manners; good sense. thoreau as poet and helper. night's enchantment, the river, liquid sunset; stars and moon, animated law. “chaldæan oracles.” tree and man. books beguile. critics borers. poet (“ hafiz”) transforms surroundings. the actual; waste power. osman and schill, simple life, nature's elegance. constancy. the great ages; real life; man's dimensions. variety. yearnings. trees teach the planter. sixteen-hour days. piety's sins. meeting your soul. alterity. success's deprivation. asiatic genius. the unpardoned sin. carlyle's rhetoric. . . . . . . . . . . 546-571 illustrations ralph waldo emerson . . . . . . . frontispiece from a crayon, about 1846, by either hildreth or johnston. . . . 352 john sterling . . . . . . . after a painting by delacour in 1830. amos bronson alcott . . . . . . . . . 388 samuel taylor coleridge . . . . . . . . 528 from a drawing by daniel maclise. journal divinity school address abiding the storm dartmouth address course on human life journal xxix (continued) 1838 (from journal d) [all page references to passages from the journals used by mr. emerson in his published works are to the centenary edition, 1903-05.] sunday, july 1, 1838. in boston, friday, and rode to charlestown, and afterward to the cambridge bushes with george b. emerson. a beautiful thicket like a mat of south american vegetation. arcadian ladders did the dead vines of the smilax make; a delicate fruit the pyrus villosus offered; the azalea was in profuse flower; the tupelo tree and the ilex canadensis i had never seen before. it seemed not june, but august or september. the pines have a growth and twisted appearance that i do not remember elsewhere. hamamelis. asper indentatus. aralia nudicaulis. [during july and the exciting events connected with the delivery of the divinity school journal (age 35 address and its reception, mr. emerson did not forget to care for the interests of his friend carlyle in this country. (see the correspondence, vol. i, letters xxv to xxxii.)] most of the commonplaces spoken in churches every sunday respecting the bible and the life of christ, are grossly superstitious. would not, for example, would not any person unacquainted with the bible, always draw from the pulpit the impression that the new testament unfolded a system ? and, in the second place, that the history of the life and teachings of jesus were greatly more copious than they are? do let the new generation speak the truth, and let our grandfathers die. let go, if you please, the old notions about responsibility for the souls of your parishioners, but do feel that sunday is their only time for thought and do not defraud them of that, as miserably as two men have me today. our time is worth too much than that we can go to church twice until you have something to announce there. if you rail at bodies of men, at institutions, and use vulgar watchwards, as bank; aristocracy; agrarianism ; etc., i do not believe you. 1838] herbert. comparison 5 i can expect no fruit. the true reformer sees that a soul is an infinite, and addresses himself to one mind. look for a thing in its place and you will find it, or tidings of it. the red leaf of the strawberry-vines is mistaken for a berry; but go to it and you will find a real berry close by. read herbert. what eggs, ellipses, acrostics, forward, backward and across, could not his liquid genius run into, and be genius still and angelic love? and without soul, the freedom of our unitarianism here becomes cold, barren and odious. never compare. god is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive, and, of course, its sense differs today and tomorrow. but never compare your generalization with your neighbor's. speak now, and let him hear you and go his way. tomorrow, or next year, let him speak, and answer thou not. so shall you both speak truth and be of one mind; but insist on comparing your two thoughts; or insist on hearing in order of battle, and instantly you are struck with blindness, and will grope and stagger like a drunken man. journal [age 35 we think too lowly altogether of the scholar's vocation. to be a good scholar as englishmen are, to have as much learning as our contemporaries, to have written a successful book, satisfies us, and we say, “now, lord, we depart in peace !” a true man will think rather, all literature is yet to be written. ... i think tennyson got his inspiration in gardens, and that in this country, where there are no gardens, his musky verses could not be written. the villa d’este is a memorable poem in my life. there is a limit to the effect of written eloquence. it may do much, but the miracles of eloquence can only be expected from the man who thinks on his legs. he who thinks may thunder; on him the holy ghost may fall, and from him pass. july 2. the price of the picture indicates the common sense of men in regard to the chance there is for the appearance of equal genius. the chances are millions to one that no new raphael is born today, and therefore pictures as great as the actual raphael painted express that chance the true jesus in their nominal value. but it is beautiful to see that when genius does arrive, it writes itself out in every word and deed and manner, as truly and self-same as in its masterpiece. a leaf in the forest, or a flower, as a violet, would be as highly prized as the transfiguration, if they were the solitary productions of human genius, and would administer the same gratification and the same culture. july 8. we shun to say that which shocks the religious ear of the people and to take away titles even of false honor from jesus. but this fear is an impotency to commend the moral sentiment. for if i can so imbibe that wisdom as to utter it well, instantly love and awe take place. the reverence for jesus is only reverence for this, and if you can carry this home to any man's heart, instantly he feels that all is made good and that god sits once more on the throne. but when i have as clear a sense as now that i am speaking simple truth without any bias, any foreign interest in the matter, — all railing, all unwillingness to hear, all danger of injury to the conscience, dwindles and disappears. i refer now to the discourse now growing under my eye to the divinity school. journal (age 35 july to. a true man can never feel rivalry. all men are ministers to him, servants to bring him materials, but none, nor all, can possibly do what he must do, he alone is privy,nor even is he yet privy to his own secret.. they can never know until he has shown them what that is. let them mind their own. a mo [on july 15, mr. emerson delivered before the graduating class at the divinity school in cambridge the address which raised such a storm of dissent. now a memorial tablet to him may be seen on the walls of the divinity school chapel.] july 16. the object catches your eye today, and begets in you lively thought and emotion which, perchance, arrives at expression. tomorrow, you pass the same object, it is quite indifferent: you do not see it, although once you have been religious upon it, and seen god through it, as we worship the moon with all the muses at midnight, and, when the day breaks, we do not even see that scanty patch of light that is fading in the west. they who have heard your poetry upon the thing are surprised at your 1838) trees and men. waldo 9 negligence of a thing they have learned from you · to respect. tonight i saw fine trees. trees look to me like imperfect men. it is the same soul that makes me, which, by a feebler effort, arrives at these graceful portraits of life. i think we all feel so. i think we all feel a certain pity in beholding a tree: rooted there, the would-beman is beautiful, but patient and helpless. his boughs and long leaves droop and weep his strait imprisonment. little waldo cheers the whole house by his moving calls to the cat, to the birds, to the flies, –“ pussy-cat, come see waddow ! liddle birdy, come see waddow ! fies! fies! come see waddow !” his mother shows us the two apples that his grandfather gave him,' and which he brought home in each hand and did not begin to eat till he got nearly home. “see where the dear little angel has gnawed them. they are worth a barrel of apples that he has not touched.” july 17. in preparing to go to cambridge with my speech to the young men, day before yesterday, it occurred with force that i had no right to i dr. ripley. 10 (age 35 journal go unless i were equally willing to be prevented from going mr. emerson drove in a chaise from concord to hanover, new hampshire, to deliver the“ literary ethics” address, with john keyes, esq., a leading citizen and lawyer of concord, and a dartmouth graduate, and the young son of the latter, john shepard keyes, later united states marshal under lincoln, and justice of the middlesex central district court, who died in 1910. the northward journey must have taken three days. it is interesting to consider that, although the divinity school address had startled the clergy and the harvard professors into denunciation of the views therein expressed, no ripple of the storm at cambridge seems to have reached the orthodox new hampshire college six days later, and mr. emerson was kindly received.] iew august 6. at dartmouth college, tuesday, 24 july. lidian wonders what the phrenologists would pronounce on little waldo's head. i reply that his head pronounces on phrenology. 1838] persons, not things 11 it is bad of poverty that it hangs on, after its lesson is taught, and it has a bad side ; poverty makes pirates. the senses would make things of all persons; of women, for example, or of the poor. the selfishness in the woman, which hunts her betrayer, demands money of him, exposes him, swears a child on him, etc., is only the superficial appearance of soul in her, resisting forevermore conversion into a thing. as they said that men heard the music of the spheres always and never, so are we drunk with beauty of the whole and notice no particular.' august 9. [the entry of this date is the criticism on wordsworth with which the dial paper, “europe and european books,” opens.] the poet demands all gifts, and not one or two only. yet see the frugality of nature. the men of strength and crowded sense run into 1 the two twilights of the day fold us, music-drunken, in. poems, “ merlin,” ii. 2 natural history of intellect, pp. 365, 366. 12 journal [age 35 affectation. the men of simplicity have no density of meaning. august 10. if that worthy ancient king, in the schoolbooks, who offered a reward to the inventor of a new pleasure could make his proclamation anew, i should put in for the first prize. i would tell him to write an oration, and then print it, and, setting himself diligently to the correction, let him strike out a blunder and insert the right word just ere the press falls, and he shall know a new pleasure. hateful is animal life resembling vegetable, as when a pear-worm is mistaken for a twig of the tree, or a snake for a stick. limitation.— i told mr. withington at the medical rooms in hanover that this melancholy show of bones of distortions and diseases was one of the limitations which the man must recognize to draw his plan true. august 14. sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness, and the combinations of society continually detect it. see how many experiments at the perfect man. one 1838] the understanding 13 thousand million, they say, is the population of the globe. so many experiments then. well, a few times in history a well-mixed character transpires. look in the hundreds of persons that each of us knows. only a few whom we regard with great complacency; a few sanities. herbert's piece called “constancy” is noble, and seems to have suggested wordsworth's “happy warrior.” august 15. the sun and the moon are the great formalists. i woke this morning with saying or thinking in my dream that every truth appealed to a heroic character. this does not seem to hold of mathematical as of ethical science. the understanding possesses the world. it fortifies itself in history, in laws, in institutions, in property, in the prejudice of birth, of majorities, in libraries, in creeds, in names ; reason, on the other hand, contents himself with animating a clod of clay somewhere for a moment, and through a word withering all these to old dry cobwebs. the little girl comes by with the brimming pail of whortleberries, but the wealth of her pail 14 journal (age 35 ne. has passed out of her little body, and she is spent and languid. so is it with the toiling poet who publishes his splendid composition, but the poet is pale and thin. august 17. saw beautiful pictures yesterday. miss fuller brought with her a portfolio of sam ward's, containing a chalk sketch of one of raphael's sibyls, of cardinal bembo, and the angel in heliodorus's profanation; and thorwaldsen's entry of alexander, etc., etc. i have said sometimes that it depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art. i have enjoyed more from mediocre pictures, casually seen when the mind was in equilibrium, and have reaped a true benefit of the art of painting, — the stimulus of color, the idealizing of common life into this gentle, elegant, unoffending fairy-land of a picture, than from many masterpieces seen with much expectation and tutoring, and so not with equipoise of mind. the mastery of a great picture comes slowly over the mind. if i see a fine picture with other people, i am driven almost into inevitable affectations. the scanty vocabulary of praise is quickly exhausted, and we lose our common sense, and, much worse, our reason, in our superlative degrees. but these 1838] sculpture. raphael 15 pictures i looked at with leisure and with profit. in the antiques i love that grand style the first noble remove from the egyptian blocklike images, and before yet freedom had become too free. the phocion, the aristeides, and the like. the dying gladiator, too, is of an architectural strength. what support of limbs in these works, and what rest therefore for the eye! a head of julius cæsar suggested instantly “the terror of his beak, the lightning of his eye,” a face of command, and which presupposed legions and hostile nations. thorwaldsen is noble and inventive, and his figures are grand, and his marchers march, but i see in him all the time the greeks again. i could wish him a modern subject, and then an ignorance of greek sculpture. besides, it seemed to me that alexander wanted a divine head. raphael's heads seem to show more excellent models in his time than any we have now. his angel driving out heliodorus is an ideal. the purity, the unity of the face is such that it is instantly suggested, here is a vessel of god. here is one emptied of individuality, nothing can be more impersonal. this is no gabriel nor uriel, with passages of private experience, and a long biography,— but is a dazzling creation of the 16 journal [age 35 moment, a divine wrath, as the resisted wave bursts into dazzling foam. again the expression of the face intimates authority impossible to dispute. the crest of the angel's helmet is so remarkable, that, but for the extraordinary energy of the face, it would draw the eye too much; but the countenance of this god subordinates it, and we see it not. the sibyl to whom the messiah is announced is a noble, daring picture with a radiant eye and a lovely youthful outline of head, and admonishes us that there is a higher style of beauty than we live in sight of. the persian sibyl of guercino is an intellectual beauty. a single expression lights the whole picture. how much a fine picture seems to say ! it knows the whole world. how good an office it performs! what authentic messengers are these of a wise soul, which thus stamped its thought, and sends it out distinct, undecayed, unadulterated to me, at the end of centuries, and at the ends of the earth. life is a pretty tragedy, especially for women. on comes a gay dame, of manners and tone so 1838] woman. lecture themes 17 fine and haughty that all defer to her as to a countess, and she seems the dictator of society. sit down by her, and talk of her own life in earnest, and she is some stricken soul with care and sorrow at her vitals, and wisdom or charity cannot see any way of escape for her from remediless evils. she envies her companion in return, until she also disburdens into her ear the story of ber misery, as deep and hopeless as her own. august 18. it would give me new scope to write on topics proper to this age and read discourses on goethe, carlyle, wordsworth, canova, thorwaldsen, tennyson, o'connell, baring, channing, and webster. to these i must write up. if i arrived at causes and new generalizations, they would be truly valuable, and would be telescopes into the future. elizabeth hoar says, add the topic of the rights of woman; and margaret fuller testifies that women are slaves. [here follow quotations from heeren's ideas on the politics, mutual relations and commerce of the leading peoples of the ancient world, which are used in “history” in the first series of essays.] 18 journal [age 35 dr. ripley prays for rain with great explicitness on sunday, and on monday the showers fell. when i spoke of the speed with which his prayers were answered, the good man looked modest. i think it must be conceded to books that they are grown so numerous and so valuable that they deserve to have imperfect characters, half-witted persons, and the like persons who are confessedly incapable of working out their own salvation, appointed to study these, and render account of them. for want of a learned class, here, i am in ignorance where valuable facts and theories are found until years after their promulgation. august 19. always that work is the more pleasant to the imagination which is not now required. ah! how wistfully, when i have been going somewhere to preach, i looked upon the distant hills! a scholar is a selecting principle.' . .. so in every community where aught new or good is going on, god sets down one of these perceivers i here follows the passage in “spiritual laws” thus beginning, with the simile of the lumber-boom. essays, first series, p. 144. 1838] gifts of others 19 and recorders. what he hears is homogeneous ever with what he announces. i think myself more a man than some men i know, inasmuch as i see myself to be open to the enjoyment of talents and deeds of other men, as they are not. when a talent comes by, which i cannot appreciate and other men can, i instantly am inferior. with all my ears i cannot detect unity or plan in a strain of beethoven. here is a man who draws from it a frank delight. so much is he more a man than i. i noticed in fine pictures that the head subordinated the limbs and gave them all the expression of the face. in poor pictures, the limbs and trunk degrade the face. so in women, you shall see one whose bonnet and dress are one thing, and the lady herself quite another and wearing withal an expression of meek submission to her bonnet and dress; another whose dress obeys and heightens the expression of her form. sympathy. he whose sympathy goes lowest, dread him, 0 kings ! i say to you, dread him. see you a man who can find pleasures everywhere, in a camp, in a barn, in a school20 journal (age 35 house, in a stage-coach, in a bar-room, so that he needs no philosophy, but drops into heaven wherever he goes, because of the great range of his affinities; who is an observer of boys and admires so much the strokes of nature they deal, that he feels himself their inferior whilst he watches them; who is an observer of girls and lacks countenance to speak to them, so warm is his interest in their well-being ; who is so alive to every presence that the approbation of no porter, groom or child is quite indifferent to him, and a man of merit is an object of so much love as to be a fear to him — see you such a man, and is he a worshipper also of truth and of virtue ? then mark him well, for the whole world converts itself into that man and through him as through a lens, the rays of the universe shall converge, whithersoever he turns, on a point. dr. ripley preached from the noble text, “trust in the lord with all thy heart and lean not to thine own understanding. in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” when he was to speak of its reasonableness he said, “reasonableness! it is all reason.” 1838) orator. eyes. printing 21 in perfect eloquence, the hearer would lose the sense of dualism, of hearing from another; would cease to distinguish between the orator and himself; would have the sense only of high activity and progress.' ... what makers are our eyes ! in yonder boat on the pond the two boys, no doubt, find prose enough. yet to us, as we sit here on the shore, it is quite another sort of canoe, a piece of fairy timber which the light loves and the wind, and the wave, a piece of sunshine and beauty. august 21. the address to the divinity school is published, and they are printing the dartmouth oration. the correction of these two pieces for the press has cost me no small labor, now nearly ended. there goes a great deal of work into a correct literary paper, though of few pages. of course, it cannot be overseen and exhausted except by analysis as faithful as this synthesis. but negligence in the author is inexcusable. i know and will know no such thing as haste in composition. all the foregoing hours of a man's 1 this entry is followed by the passage on eyes, printed in “ behavior" (conduct of life, pp. 178, 179). w no 22 journal (age 35 life do stretch forth a finger and a pen and inscribe their several line or word into the page he writes to-day. i remember the impatience charles expressed of the frolicking youth who had finished his college oration a fortnight before the day and went about at his ease; remembering the pale boys who worked all the days and weeks of the interval between the appointment and the exhibition, and dreamed by nights of the verses and images of the day. providence library. it seems to me that every library should respect the culture of a scholar and a poet. let it not then want those books in which the english language has its teeth and bones and muscles largestand strongest, namely, all the eminent books from the accession of elizabeth to the death of charles ii, shakspear, bacon, jonson, marlowe, herrick, beaumont and fletcher, north, sidney, milton, taylor, dryden, cotton, the translator of montaigne, donne, marvell. not only in the masters, but in the general style of the pulpit and the history of that time, there is greater freedom, less affectation, greater emphasis, bolder figure and homelier idiom than in books of the same classes at the present day. 1838) parties. landor 23 bell's bridgewater treatise on the hand. davy's elements of chemistry. herschel. cudworth. landor. taylor's plato. august 22. i decline invitations to evening parties chiefly because, besides the time spent, commonly ill, in the party, the hours preceding and succeeding the visit are lost for any solid use, as i am put out of tune for writing or reading. that makes my objection to many employments that seem trifles to a bystander, as packing a trunk, or any small handiwork, or correcting proof-sheets, that they put me out of tune. landor has the merit of knowing the meaning of character. i know no modern writer who gives traits of character with more distinct knowledge than he. he has also the merit of not explaining. he writes for the immortals only. in a hot-house, should be a lotus, a mandrake, a century plant, a banian, a papyrus. 24 journal [age 35 the great difference between educated men is that one class acknowledge an ideal standard and the other class do not. we demand of an intellectual man, be his defects what they may, and his practice what it may, faith in the possible improvement of man. august 25. what is more alive among works of art than our plain old wooden church, built a century and a quarter ago, with the ancient new england spire? i pass it at night, and stand and listen to the beats of the clock — like heart-beats; not sounding, as elizabeth hoar well observed, so much like tickings, as like a step. it is the step of time. you catch the sound first by looking up at the clock-face, and then you see this wooden tower rising thus alone, but stable and aged, towards the midnight stars. it has affiance and privilege with them. not less than the marble cathedral it had its origin in sublime aspirations, in the august religion of man. not less than those stars to which it points, it began to be in the soul. samuel hoar.— i know a man who tries time. the expression of his face is that of a patient judge who has nowise made up his 1838] the common thought 25 opinion, who fears nothing, and even hopes nothing, but puts nature on its merits. he will hear the case out, and then decide. the manners of society indicate every hour the consciousness of one soul. put three or four educated people together who have not seen each other for years, and perhaps they shall be unable to converse aloud without force. each predicts the opinion of the other, so that talking becomes tedious. all know what each would say. why should i officiously and emphatically offer a pail of water to my neighbor minot? he has a well of his own that sucks the same springs at the same level that mine does. why should i drum on his tympanum with my words to convey thoughts to which he has access equally with me? how expressive is form! i see by night the shadow of a poor woman against a window-curtain that instantly tells a story of so much meekness, affection, and labor, as almost to draw tears. almost every woman described to you by a woman presents a tragic idea, and not an idea of well-being. one most deserving person whom i commiserated last night with my friends, has such con 26 journal [age 35 peculiar and unfortunate habits of conversation that she can say nothing agreeable to me. say what she will, — rare and accomplished person that she is, — i hear her never, but only wait until she is done. i think with a profound pity of her family. were she my sister, i should sail for australasia and put the earth's diameter between us. [here follow long quotations from heeren on the architecture of egypt, its might, its dignity and repose, of which one is given below. many are on the ethiopians.] “since our acquaintance with these wonders wrought in the highest style of perfection, we feel convinced that so just and noble a taste could never have been formed under the rod of tyrants, but that there must have been a period, and indeed a long one, however different the form of government from ours, during which the mind could unfold its faculties freely and undisturbed, and could soar to a height in certain points never attained by any other.” the whole history of the negro is tragedy. by what accursed violation did they first exist that they should suffer always.' ... i think they are i here follow other quotations from heeren, which were 1838] negro. wise spending 27 more pitiable when rich than when poor. of what use are riches to them? they never go out without being insulted. yesterday i saw a family of negroes riding in a coach. how pathetic! the negro has been from the earliest times an article of luxury. it is very fit that man should build good houses. such an irritable, susceptible, invalid, beauty-loving creature as he is, should not dwell in a pen. his understanding, his eye, his hand are fitly employed on persian terraces, egyptian temples, and european palaces. the wise man will prize and obtain the luxuries of baths, of ventilated houses, of gardens, of clean linen, of digestible meats and drinks, and thereon will spend time and money, and not on fine clothes, equipage, and rich living. is not thought freer and fairer in a house with apartments that admit of easy solitude than in a foul room where all miscellaneous persons are thrown together, cheek by jowl, heads and points? i look upon the stately architecture of used by mr. emerson in his address on emancipation in the british west indies. in his poem “ voluntaries” the tragedy of the negro is portrayed. 28 journal [age 35 persia and of egypt as a real part of the human heaven as much as a poem or a charity. justice can be administered on a heath, and god can be worshipped in a barn. it is, nevertheless, fit that justice should be administered in a stately hall open to the sun and air and to nations; and that god should be honored in temples whose proportion and decoration harmonize rather with the works of nature than with the sheds we build for the domestic animals. it is a comfort to me, who neither build nor see built, that egypt builded. it was done by the family : and i had as lief my brother did it as i. is it great? then the task that falls to me in the division of labor may be greatly done, as well. how charming is the ignorance of children! august 27. a good subject for a sermon would be the doctrine of benefits. benefit is the end of nature. benefit is done to all by all, by good and bad, voluntarily and involuntarily. air, water, sun and moon, stone, plant, animal, man, devil, disease, poison, war, vice, — all serve. but man is a voluntary benefactor. the meaning of good 1838] benefits. questions 29 and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting. he is great who confers the most benefits. he is base — and that is the one base thing in the universe — to receive favors and render none.' ... in the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. but the benefits we receive must be rendered again line for line, deed for deed to somebody. there is history somewhere worth knowing, as, for example, whence came the negro? who were those primeval artists that in each nation converted mountains of earth or stone into forms of architecture or sculpture? what is the genealogy of languages ? and when and what is the genesis of man? “a man and his wife,” says menu, “constitute but one person; a perfect man consists of himself, his wife, and his son.” august 28. it is very grateful to my feelings to go into a roman cathedral, yet i look as my countrymen do at the roman priesthood. it is very 1 the rest of the passage thus beginning is in « compensation” (essays, first series, p. 113). 30 (age 35 journal grateful to me to go into an english church and hear the liturgy read. yet nothing would induce me to be the english priest. i find an unpleasant dilemma in this nearer home. i dislike to be a clergy man and refuse to be one. yet how rich a music would be to me a holy clergyman in my town. it seems to me he cannot be a man, quite and whole; yet how plain is the need of one, and how high, yes, highest, is the function. here is division of labor that i like not. a man must sacrifice his manhood for the social good. something is wrong, i see not what. august 31. yesterday at 0 b k anniversary. steady, steady. i am convinced that if a man will be a true scholar, he shall have perfect freedom. the young people and the mature hint at odium, and aversion of faces to be presently encountered in society. i say, no: i fear it not. no scholar need fear it. for if it be true that he is merely an observer, a dispassionate reporter, no partisan, a singer merely for the love of music, his is a position of perfect immunity: to him no disgusts can attach: he is invulnerable. the 1 this passage is the theme of " the problem,” in the poems. 1838) the scholar's freedom 31 vulgar think he would found a sect, and would be installed and made much of. he knows better, and much prefers his melons and his woods. society has no bribe for me, neither in politics, nor church, nor college, nor city. my resources are far from exhausted. if they will not hear me lecture, i shall have leisure for my book which wants me. besides it is an universal maxim worthy of all acceptation that a man may have that allowance which he takes. take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce. who are these murmurers, these haters, these revilers? men of no knowledge, and therefore no stability. the scholar, on the contrary, is sure of his point, is fast-rooted, and can securely predict the hour when all this roaring multitude shall roar for him. analyze the chiding opposition, and it is made up of such timidities, uncertainties and no opinions, that it is not worth dispersing.' i a scrap of verse, of uncertain date, in which mr. emerson expressed the same idea, but with regard rather to mobs than inquisitors, may be here given :look danger in the eye — it vanishes : anatomize the roaring populace, big, dire and overwhelming as they seem, piecemeal 't is nothing. some of them [but] scream, 32 journal [age 35 we came home, elizabeth hoar and i, at night from waltham. the moon and stars and night wind made coolness and tranquillity grateful after the crowd and the festival. elizabeth, in lincoln woods, said that the woods always looked as if they waited whilst you passed by waited for you to be gone. but as you draw near home you descend from the great selfabandonment to nature, and begin to ask, what's o'clock? and will abel be awake and our own doors unlocked ? a topic touched at waltham was the metaphysics of the antagonisms, or, shall i say, elective affinities observed in conversation. sometimes we have nothing to say to persons with whom we can talk well enough at other hours. what a lottery, for instance, are my own visits at waltham. but it is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with fearing the others; some are lookers-on; one of them hectic day by day consumes, and one will die tomorrow of the aux. one of them has already changed his mind and falls out with the ringleaders, and one has seen his creditor amidst the crowd and aies. and there are heavy eyes that miss their sleep and meditate retreat. a few malignant heads keep up the din, the rest are idle boys. 1838) landscape painting 33 them; whilst these visits are lotteries, the intercourse with others, as george bradford, never is. he makes my commencement holiday usually : so that this year i feel poor in his absence at bangor. september 1. looked over s. g. ward's portfolio of drawings and prints. in landscapes it ought to be that the painter should give us not surely the enjoyment of a real landscape, — for air, light, motion, life, dampness, heat, and actual infinite space he cannot give us, — but the suggestion of a better, fairer creation than we know; he should crowd a greater number of beautiful effects into his picture than co-exist in any real landscape. all the details, all the prose of nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendor. so that we should find his landscape more exalting to the inner man than is walden pond or the pays de vaud. all spiritual activity is abridgement, selection.' september 3. i have usually read that a man suffered more from one hard word than he enjoyed from ten i a portion of this paragraph is found in the opening pas. sage of “ art” (essays, first series). 34 journal [age 35 good ones. my own experience does not confirm the saying. the censure (i either know or fancy) does not hit me; and the praise is very good. is it not better to live in revolution than to live in dead times? are we not little and low out of good nature now, when, if our companions were noble, or the crisis fit for heroes, we should be great also ? september 5. how rare is the skill of writing? i detected a certain unusual unity of purpose in the paragraph levelled at me in the daily advertiser, and i now learn it is the old tyrant of the cambridge parnassus himself, mr. norton,' who wrote it. one cannot compliment the power and culture of his community so much as to think it holds a hundred writers; but no, if 1 andrews norton, professor of sacred literature in the harvard divinity school, a strong writer and good man. he was the father of professor charles eliot norton, mr. emerson's valued friend. a year after the latter's address at the divinity school, professor norton gave an address before its alumni association on “ the latest form of infidelity,” an attack upon the « transcendental movement." for an account of this, see george willis cooke's ralph waldo emerson : his life, writings, and philosophy. 1838) cambridge address 35 there is information and tenacity of purpose, what bacon calls longanimity, it must be instantly traced home to some one known hand.' george bradford has been here, to my great contentment, and to him i have owed the peace and pleasure of two strolls, one to walden water, and one to the river and north meadows. i like the abandon of a saunter with my friend. it is a balsam unparalleled. george says his intellect approves the doctrine'of the cambridge address, but his affections do not. i tell him i would write for his epitaph, “pity 't is 't is true.” i saw a maiden so pure that she exchanged glances only with the stars. of proverbs, although the greater part have so the smell of current bank-bills that one seems to get the savor of all the marketmen's pockets, and no lady's mouth may they soil, yet are some so beautiful that they may be spoken by fairest lips unblamed; and this is certain, — that they i this is followed by another passage, printed in “ the tragic," as to actions, opinions, prayers, loves, etc., being few in life, and therefore composure and readiness being all that it demands (natural history of intellect, pp. 412, 413). 36 [age 35 journal give comfort and encouragement, aid and abetting to daily action. for example: “there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” is a piece of trust in the riches of nature and god, which helps all men always. is it so? is there another shakspeare? is there another ellen ? september 8. that which is individual and remains individual in my experience is of no value. what is fit to engage me, and so engage others permanently, is what has put off its weeds of time and place and personal relation. therefore all that befals me in the way of criticism and extreme blame and praise, drawing me out of equilibrium, — putting me for a time in a false position to people, and disallowing the spontaneous sentiments, — wastes my time, bereaves me of thoughts, and shuts me up within poor personal considerations. therefore, i hate to be conspicuous for blame or praise. it spoils thought. henry thoreau told a good story of deacon parkman, who lived in the house he now occupies, and kept a store close by. he hung out a salt fish for a sign, and it hung so long and grew so hard, black and deformed, that the deacon 1838] others' books 37 forgot what thing it was, and nobody in town knew, but being examined chemically it proved to be salt fish. but duly every morning the deacon hung it on its peg. september 9. how attractive is the book in my friend's' house which i should not read in my own! at waltham, i took up jouffroy, and if they had left me alone an hour, should have read it well. but goethe, schleiermacher, lie at home unread. many books are not so good as a few. once, a youth at college, with what joy and profit i read the edinburgh review. now, a man, the edinburgh review, and heeren, and blackwood, and goethe get a languid attention. september 10. fancy relates to color; imagination to form. stetson, talking of webster this morning, says, “he commits great sins sometimes, but without any guilt.” how is a boy, a girl, the master, the mistress of society, independent, irresponsible, — gore ripley, for example, or a. p., or any other, i mrs. ripley was an eager reader of every new work on science. 38 journal (age 35 looks out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by; tries, and sentences them on their merits, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome.' ... teachers' meetings everywhere are disturbed by the question whether . . . any sin can be repented of so as to place the sinner where he had been if he had not sinned at all. ... the question is answered by the consideration of the nature of spirit. it is one and not manifold: when god returns and enters into a man, he does hallow him wholly, and in bringing him one good, brings him all good." september 12. yesterday, the middlesex association met here, with two or three old friends beside. yet talking this morning in detail with two friends of the proposition often made of a journal to meet the wants of the time, it seemed melancholy as soon as it came to the details.3 ... 1 the above and a long passage which continues it are printed in “ self-reliance” (essays, first series, p. 49). 2 here follows the sentence about tacit reference to a third party in conversation (« the over-soul,” essays, first series, p. 277), 3 this is followed by the passage on “ the painful kingdom of time and place” (“ love," essays, first series, p. 171). 1838) human book, sermons 39 alcott wants a historical record of conversations holden by you and me and him. i say, how joyful rather is some montaigne's book which is full of fun, poetry, business, divinity, philosophy, anecdote, smut, which dealing of bone and marrow, of cornbarn and flour barrel, of wife, and friend, and valet, of things nearest and next, never names names, or gives you the glooms of a recent date or relation, but hangs there in the heaven of letters, unrelated, untimed, a joy and a sign, an autumnal star. mar n autu a sermon, my own, i read never with joy, though sincerely written; an oration, a poem, another's or my own, i read with joy. is it that from the first species of writing, we cannot banish tradition, convention, and that the last is more easily genuine? or is it that the last, being dedicated to beauty, and the first to goodness, to duty, the spirit flies with hilarity and delight to the last; with domestic obligation and observance only to the first? or is it that the sentiment of duty, and the divinity, shun demonstration, and do retreat into silence; they would pervade all, but they will not be unfolded, exhibited apart, and as matter of science? journal (age 35 september 13. licence. — consider that always a licence attends reformation. we say your actions are not registered in a book by a recording angel for an invisible king ; action no. 1, no. 2, up to no. 1,000,000, — but the retribution that shall be is the same retribution that now is : base action makes you base : holy action hallows you. instantly the man is relieved from a terror that girded him like a belt, has lost the energy that terror gave him, and when now the temptation is strong, he will taste the sin and know. now i hate the loss of the tonic. the end is so valuable, — to have escaped the degradation of a crime is in itself so pure a benefit, that i should not be very scrupulous as to the means. i would thank any blunder, any sleep, any bigot, any fool, that misled me into such a good. and yet (as william henry channing said yesterday in reply to my remark), there is a certain intimation that joy is the home of the mind, in this new licence. the analogous evil may be seen in literature. we say now, with wordsworth, to the scholar, leave your old books; come forth into the light of things ; let nature be your teacher; out upon your pedantic cartloads of grammars and diction1838) culture and cheer 41 aries and archæologies; the now is all. instantly the indolence and self-indulgence of the scholar is armed with an apology:tush, i will have a good time. answ sou culture. – a cheerful face makes society ; a cheerful, intelligent face shows the present end of nature and education answered ; a sour face, a waiting face, dissatisfaction, unrest: impatience of the rain, of the company, suspense, care, betray imperfect culture or uncultivation. cannot a man have so various parts of his nature unfolded that he shall have a resource when conversation flags, and dull men come, and there are no books or letters ? cannot he play? can he not be domestical and affectionate, and crack nuts and jokes ? it is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. . . . yet it is difficult not to be affected by sour faces. sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well. but climb into this thin, iced, difficult air of andes of reform, and sympathy leaves you and hatred comes. the state is so new and strange and uni here follows most of the matter, though differently arranged, that is found on p. 56 of "self-reliance” (essays, first series). 42 (age 35 journal pleasing that a man will, maugre all his resolutions, lose his sweetness and his flesh, he will pine and fret. we css the person that has acted, fears; the person that looks on is formidable. the silken persecution. — martyrs with thumb-screws, martyrs sawn asunder, martyrs eaten by dogs, may claim with gory stumps a crown. but the martyrs in silk stockings and barouches, with venison and champagne, in ballrooms and picture galleries, make me sick — self-pitying. ow . after thirty, a man is too sensible of the strait limitations which his physical constitution sets to his activity. the stream feels its banks, which it had forgotten in the run and overflow of the first meadows. true science. — i do not wish to know that my shell is a strombus or my moth a vanessa, but i wish to unite the shell and the moth to my being. september 15. a disinclination to society will keep out more visitors than a good bolt. 1838] the scholar’s lot 43 i please myself with the thought that my accidental freedom by means of a permanent income is nowise essential to my habits, that my tastes, my direction of thought is so strong that i should do the same things,should contrive to spend the best part of my time in the same way as now, rich or poor. if i did not think so, i should never dare to urge the doctrines of human culture on young men. the farmer, the laborer, has the extreme satisfaction of seeing that the same livelihood he earns is within reach of every man. the lawyer, the author, the singer, has not.' society seems to have lost all remembrance of the irresponsibility of a writer on human and divine nature. they forget that he is only a reporter, and not at all accountable for the fact he reports. if, in the best use of my eyes, i see not something which people say is there, and see somewhat which they do not say is there, instantly they call me to account as if i had uni it was only for a short time that mr. emerson's permanent income was equal to the needs of his modest housekeeping and large hospitality. it was absolutely necessary in later years that he spend most of the winter in lecturing far and near for modest fees to carry him through the year. 44 journal [age 35 made or made the things spoken of. they seem to say, society is in conspiracy to maintain such and such propositions: and wo betide you if you blab. this diffidence of society in authors seems to show that it has very little experience of any true observers, of any who did not mix up their personality with their record. the arabs of the desert would not forgive belzoni with his spyglass for bringing their camp near to him. not the fact avails, but the use you make of it. people would stare to know on what slight single observations those laws were inferred which wise men promulgate and which society receives later and writes down as canons. a single flute heard out of a village window, a single prevailing strain of a village maid, will teach a susceptible man as much as others learn from the orchestra of the academy. one book as good as the bodleian library. i have learned in my own practice to take advantage of the aforesaid otherism' that makes other people's bread and butter taste better than 1 the reference is to one reading books in a friend's house while ours at home are neglected. 1838) otherism. despondency 45 our own, and books read better elsewhere than at home; and now, if i cannot read my german book, i take it into the wood, and there a few sentences have nothing lumpish, but the sense is transparent and broad, and when i come back i can proceed with better heart. so in travelling, how grateful at taverns is goethe ! september 16. dr. ripley prays, “ that the lightning may not lick up our spirits.” mr. frost' said very happily in today's sermon, “we see god in nature as we see the soul of our friend in his countenance.” you must read a great book to know how poor are all books. shakspear suggests a wealth that beggars his own. ... it does seem as if history gave no intimation of any society in which despondency came so readily to heart as we see it and feel it in ours. young men, young women, at thirty i rev. barzillai frost, dr. ripley's colleague and successor as minister of the first church in concord. 2 the rest of the passage occurs in « the over-soul” (p. 289). 86 [age 35 journal a and even earlier seem to have lost all spring and vivacity, and if they fail in their first enterprise, the rest is rock and shallow.' is the stoic in the soul dead in these late stages? i cannot understand it. our people are surrounded with greater external prosperity and general well-being than indians or saxons: more resources, outlets, asylums: yet we are sad, and these were not. why should it be? has not reflection any remedy for her own diseases ? assume the immortality. say boldly, there is no trifle. i see before me the bended horizon. there hangs on high a lovely purple cloud. i accept these sublime pledges by which creative love and wisdom yet speak to you and say to you, i am. the memory assures me i have lived. nature affirms that god is still with me. then how can i doubt that as good and fair things remain for me as yet i have known? . . . sadness is always the comparison of the idea with the act. sunday eve. i went at sundown to the top of dr. ripley's hill and renewed my vows to the genius of that place. somewhat of awe, somewhat grand and 1 the beginning of this paragraph is printed in « the tragic" (natural history of intellect, p. 406). ny 1838] the sunset. strangers 47 solemn mingles with the beauty that shines afar around. in the west, where the sun was sinking behind clouds, one pit of splendour lay as in a desert of space, a deposit of still light, not radiant. then i beheld the river, like god's love, journeying out of the grey past on into the green future. yet sweet and native as all those fair impressions on that summit fall on the eye and ear, they are not yet mine. i cannot tell why i should feel myself such a stranger in nature. i am a tangent to their sphere, and do not lie level with this beauty. and yet the dictate of the hour is to forget all i have mislearned ; to cease from man, and to cast myself into the vast mould of nature. a stranger. — it is singular how slight and indescribable are the tokens by which we anticipate the qualities of sanity, of prudence, of probity, in the countenance of a stranger. we see with a certain degree of terror the. new physique of a foreign man; as a japanese, a new zealander, a calabrian. in a new country how should we look at a large indian moving in the landscape on his own errand. he would be to us as a lion or a wild elephant. ounic 48 [age 35 journal in such proximity stand the virtues and defects of character that a disgust at some foible will blind men oftener to a grandeur in the same soul. in describing the character of his wife a man may even omit to name a sensibility which is the costliest of attributes, which gives the person who hath it an universal life, and mirrors all nature in her face. is not the vast an element in man? yet what teaching or book of today appeals to the vast? when the preacher begins to talk of miracles, i think immediately of the capuchins. the mural crown for an argument, the triumphal crown for one just and noble image. pericles was not yet ready. to keep order and to give him time, a man of business was in the rostrum mumbling long initial statements of the facts before the people, and the state of greek affairs. after what seemed a very long time, the people grew nervous and noisy, and, at a movement behind him, he sat down. pericles arose and occupied the rostrum. his voice was like the stroke of a silver shield. a cold, mathemat1838] housekeeping 49 ical statement warmed by imperceptible degrees into earnest announcements of a heroic soul. he conversed with the people, he told stories, he enumerated names and dates and particulars; he played; he joked, though coldly and reservedly, as it seemed to me; then having thus, as it seemed, drawn his breath, and made himself master of his place and work, he began to deal out his thoughts to the people: the conclusions of his periods were like far-rattling storms. every word was a ball of fire. september 18. a stranger. – what is the meaning of that? the fork falling sticks upright in the floor, and the children say, a stranger is coming. a stranger is expected or announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a household.' . .. housekeeping. — if my garden had only made me acquainted with the muckworm, the bugs, the grasses and the swamp of plenty in august, i should willingly pay a free tuition. but every process is lucrative to me beyond its economy. for the like reason keep house. whoso does, here follows the long passage thus beginning in “ friendship” (essays, first series, pp. 192, 193). 50 [age 35 journal opens a shop in the heart of all trades, professions and arts, so that upon him these shall all play. by keeping house i go to an universal school where all knowledges are taught me, and the price of tuition is my annual expense. thus, i want my stove set up. i only want a piece of sheet-iron 31 inches by 33. but that want entitles me to call on the professors of tin and iron in the village, messrs. wilson and dean, and inquire of them the kinds of iron they have or can procure, the cost of production of a pound of cast or wrought metal, and any other related information they possess, and furthermore to lead the conversation to the practical experiment of the use of their apparatus for the benefit of my funnel and blower, —all which they courteously do for a small fee. in like manner, i play the chemist with ashes, soap, beer, vinegar, manure, medicines; the naturalist with trees, shrubs, hens, pigs, cows, horses, fishes, bees, cankerworms, wood and coal; the politician with the selectmen, the assessors, the probate court, the town meeting. is not the beauty that piques us in every object, in a straw, an old nail, a cobble-stone in the road, the announcement that always our road 91 51 1838] alcott. nomads lies out into nature, and not inward to the wearisome, odious anatomy of ourselves and comparison of me with thee, and accusation of me, and ambition to take this from thee and add it to me? alcott is a ray of the oldest light. as they say the light of some stars that parted from the orb at the deluge of noah has only now reached us. nomads. — we are all nomads and all chimney ornaments by turns, and pretty rapid turns.' i fancy the chief difference that gives one man the name of a rover, and one of a fixture, is the faculty of rapid domestication, the power to find his chair and bed everywhere, which one man has, and another has not. in paris, a man needs not to go home ever. he can find in any part of the city his coffee, his dinner, his newspaper, his company, his theatre, and his bed, as good as those he left. a new degree is taken in scholarship as soon as a man has learned to read in the wood as well as he reads in the study. i compare the pages on the nomad tendency in « history” (essays, first series). 52 : journal [age 35 this afternoon the eclipse. peter howe did not like it, for his rowan would not make hay: and he said, “the sun looked as if a nigger was putting his head into it.” the people say, when you shudder, that someone is walking over your grave: they describe and feel a murder and the insults done to a murdered body as a successful revenge ; and to pluck out the quivering heart is thought to consummate the harm. they do not see that a man is as much a stranger in his own body as another man is.' the nomad and the pivot are two poles, quite essential both to the intellectual culture. the intellectual nomadism is the faculty of objectiveness, or of eyes which everywhere feed themselves. who hath such eyes, everywhere falls into true relations to his fellow men. every man, every object, is a prize, a study, a property to him, and this love smooths his brow, joins him to men and makes him beautiful and beloved in their sight. his house is a wagon, he 1 this is followed by the passage in “ self-reliance,” p. 57, about bringing the past into the thousand eyed present. 1838] the proud mushroom 53 roams through all latitudes as easily as a calmuc.' he must meantime abide by his inward law as the calmuc by his khan. we are by nature observers, and so learners.2 as september 19. i found in the wood this afternoon the drollest mushroom, tall, stately, pretending, uprearing its vast dome as if to say, “well i am something ! burst, ye beholders ! thou luck-beholder ! with wonder.” its dome was a deep yellow ground with fantastic, starlike ornaments richly overwrought; so shabby genteel, so negrofine, the st. peter's of the beetles and pismires. such ostentation in petto i never did see. i touched the white column with my stick, -it nodded like old troy, and so eagerly recovered the perpendicular as seemed to plead piteously with me not to burst the fabric of its pride. shall i confess it? i could almost hear my little waldo at home begging me, as when i have menaced his little block-house, and the little puff-ball i compare stanza in « the poet” (poems, appendix, p. 311). 2 here occurs the passage so beginning in the last paragraph of “ love” (essays, first series). 54 (age 35 journal seemed to say, “don't, papa, pull it down!” so, after due admiration of this blister, this cupola of midges, i left the little scaramouch alone in its glory. good-bye, vanity, goodbye, nothing! certainly there is comedy in the divine mind when these little vegetable selfconceits front the day as well as newton or goethe, with such impressive emptiness. the greater is the man, the less are books to him. day by day he lessens the distance between him and his authors, and soon finds very few to whom he can pay so high a compliment as to read them. september 20. the fact detached is ugly. replace it in its series of cause and effect, and it is beautiful. putrefaction is loathsome; but putrefaction seen as a step in the circle of nature, pleases. a mean or malicious act vexes me; but if i can raise myself to see how it stands related to past and future in the biography of the doer, it becomes comic, 1 the first entries under this date are the passage in “ selfreliance,” p. 48, about the boy who can speak strongly to his mates, and that in “ friendship,” p. 200, about the protection of delicate souls by the husk of bashfulness, etc. 1838] names, proverbs 55 pleasant, fair, and prophetic. the laws of disease are the laws of health masked. case all affections to persons are partial and superficial. aunts. all peggy heard she deemed exceeding good, but chiefly praised the parts she understood. jane taylor. they say dr. palfrey lost his countenance once at the baptismal font when the affectionate father whispered in his ear the name of his babe, jacob adonis. 'tis poor fun, but sometimes resistless -odd names. zephaniah tearsheet; beelzebub edwards, not the distinguished beelzebub. every homely proverb covers a single and grand fact. two of these are often in my head lately : “every dog his day,” which covers this fact of otherism, or rotation of merits; and “there are as many good fish in the sea as ever came out of it”; which was nelson's adage of merit, and all men's of marriage. my third proverb is as deficient in superficial melody as either 56 (age 35 journal of the others: “the devil is an ass.” the seamen use another which has much true divinity : “every man for himself and god for us all.” september 21. the equinox. subjectiveness. “i wish i could forget there is any such person as william channing,” said my friend william henry channing the other day. originality. — how easy to repeat, how mysteriously problematic to begin an action! to sit upon the merits of plato, of voltaire, of shakspear, and simply judge them from our station seems very easy when it is done, and as fast as the author names his subjects it is half done. yet we do it not. “where's kitty ?”. teeth. — the greatest expression of limitation in the human frame is in the teeth. “thus far," says the face; “ no farther,” say the teeth. i mean that, whilst the face of the child expresses an excellent possibility, as soon as he opens his 1 mrs. emerson was in the habit of diverting the child waldo when he hurt himself, by saying, “ where's kitty ?”; 80 when the conversation took a tone of reproof disagreeable to him, he said to his mother, “ where's kitty ?" 1838] nature. tennyson 57 mouth, you have an expression of defined qualities. i like him best with his mouth shut. scale. – man, says goethe, loves the unconditional. all or nothing, in blame, in praise. i like the scale, and hate the neglect of the scale, and, as i tell some of my friends who love the superlative, one day an angel will bring them a golden gunter. inferior nature. — the excursions of poetry into lower nature, into the winds, waters, beast, bird, fish, insect, plant-tribes, are man taking possession of the world on one side, as the classifications of science are on another side, and the taming of animals and their economical use-on a third side. tennyson is a beautiful half of a poet. september 22. nature a deist. — the thermometer, the microscope, the prism are little deists. they stand like pagans, have a very pagan look when the creed and catechism begin; they are little better than profane: and so a doctor of medicine, a chemist, an astronomer do never remind one of st. athanasius. 58 journal [age 35 september 24. nature a resource. nature is the beautiful asylum to which we look in all the years of striving and conflict as the assured resource when we shall be driven out of society by ennui or chagrin or persecution or defect of character. i say, as i go up the hill and through the wood and see the soliciting plants, i care not for you, mosses and lichens, and for you, fugitive birds, or secular rocks! grow, fly, or sleep there in your order, which i know is beautiful, though i perceive it not; i am content not to perceive it. now have i entertainment enough with things nearer, homelier. things wherein passion enters, and hope and fear have not yet become too dangerous, too insipid, for me to handle. but by and by, if men shall drive me out, if books have become stale, i see gladly that the door of your palace of magic stands ajar, and my age shall find the antique hermitage the hairy gown and mossy cell. connature-knowing.— nature is no fool. she knows the world. she has calculated the chances of her success, and if her seeds do not vegetate, 1838] aboriginal. goethe 59 she will not be chagrined and bereft. she has another arrow left, another card to play, her harvest is insured. from her oak she scatters down a thousand seeds, and if nine hundred rot, the forest is still perpetuated for a century. every man projects his character before him, praises it, worships it. the indians say, the negro is older than they, and they older than the white man. the negro is the pre-adamite. but the great-grandfather of all the races, the oldest inhabitant, seems to be the trilobite. le blaie was a man who never printed a letter but straightway every country curate must read it, and, without saying a word, run to his barn, tackle up his old horse and chaise and take the road to paris to know what he must think of this. it is of great entertainment to read goethe's notices of kepler, roger bacon, galileo, newton, voltaire. yet they consist of the simplest description, almost merely naming of the persons from his point of view. nothing was easier 60 journal [age 35 than to strike them off. it implied no such labor as to write a faust or an egmont. before it is done, one shrinks from such a dark problem as the estimate of a great genius, a voltaire, a newton. yet he has only to address himself to it, to utter the name of the man in a self-contained, self-centred way, and the problem is solved.' a religious culture to the intellect of men is needed. the intellect has been irreligious these many years, or ages. the antique expresses the moral sentiment without cant. your turn. — “each dog,” etc. in childhood, in youth, each man has had many checks and censures, and thinks modestly enough of his own endowment. when, by and by, he comes to unfold it in propitious circumstance, it fills his eye and it fills the eye of all. it seems the only talent. he is surprised and delighted with his success, and carries that out also into the infinite, as man will, and accounts himself 1 the continuation of this passage, written four days later, on goethe's mention of " the grandees of european scientific history" from his own point of view, occurs in representative men (“goethe," p. 287). 1838) j. l. russell. love 61 already the fellow of the great. but he goes into company, into a banking house, into a mob, into a mechanic's shop, into a society of scholars, a camp, a ship, a laboratory; and in each new place he is a fool; other talents take place and rule the hour, and his presumption, cowed and whipped, goes back to the timid condition of the boy. for every talent of man runs out to the horizon as well as his. september 25. the kiss of the dryads is not soft; the kiss of the oreads is still. a good woodland day or two with john lewis russell who came here, and showed me mushrooms, lichens and mosses, a man in whose mind things stand in the order of cause and effect, and not in the order of a shop, or even of a cabinet. casella' sang of love. a song of love that gave us to know and own the natural and the heavenly or divine — that were indeed uplifting music. it seems to me that in the procession of the soul from within outward it enlarges its 1 when dante met his friend, the beautiful singer, in purgatory, he begged him to sing, and the souls alocked to hear. – purgatorio, canto ii. 62 (agb 35 pnal journal circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond or the light proceeding from an orb.' ... nature insures herself. nobody cares for planting the poor fungus. so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores tomorrow or next day.2... let the scholar know that the veneration of man always attaches to him who perceives and utters things in the order of cause and effect. the divine soul takes care for heroes. it inspires not only every animal body with sagacity and appetite that shall secure food to its belly; and several individuals in every society, with skill to organize social labor, to build the dam, the road, and the boat; to make the law and mend it; but it transcends the zones of appetite and of prudence, and darts into some souls gleams out of the deeper heaven. so that here i here follows the long passage thus beginning, printed in “ love” (essays, first series, pp. 183–186), although combined with sentences written in journal c the previous year. 2 the long paragraph follows, which is printed in the poet” (essays, second series, pp. 23-25). 1838] sickness. famed books 63 came b. r. and said he never planted anything which he expected to reap, except corn. he plants forest trees and arranges improvements of water and land which will be good for children and towns to come. september 28. like-minded. — nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood.' ... sickness. — our health is our sound relation to external objects ; our sympathy with external being. a man wakes in the morning sick with fever; and he perceives at once he has lost his just relation to the world. every sound in the lower parts of the house, or in the street, falls faint and foreign on his ear. he begins to hear the frigid doom of cold obstruction, “thou shalt have no part in anything that is done under the sun.” famed books. — it is always an economy of time to read old and famed books." .. order of wonder. — if you desire to arrest attention, to surprise, do not give me facts in the i “spiritual laws” (essays, first series, p. 146). 2 see « books” (society and solitude, pp. 195, 196). 64 [age 35 journal order of cause and effect, but drop one or two links in the chain, and give me with a cause, an effect two or three times removed." ses apples and men. — the st. michael's peartree of the present day is a vast forest scattered throughout the gardens of north america and england, yet subject in all the quarters of its dispersion to the diseases incident to the parent stock, and like a disease or an animal race, or any one natural state, it wears out, and will have an end. each race of man resembles an apple or a pear, the nubian, the negro, the tartar, the greek; he vegetates, thrives, and multiplies, usurps all the soil and nutriment, and so kills the weaker races; he receives all the benefit of culture under many zones and experiments, but his doom was in nature as well as his thrift, and overtakes him at last with the certainty of gravitation. “ faction.” – a foolish formula is “the spirit of faction,” as it is used in books old and new. can you not get any nearer to the fact than that, 1 this was mr. emerson's own method in lectures, to keep attention on the stretch, and give the hearer the creative pleasure of supplying the link. 1838] longanimity 65 you old granny? it is like the answer of children, who, when you ask them the subject of the sermon, say, it was about religion. why need you choose?? ... i wrote margaret fuller today, that, seeing how entirely the value of facts is in the classification of the eye that sees them, i desire to study, i desire longanimity, to use bacon's word. i verily believe that a philosophy of history is possible out of the materials that litter and stuff the world that would raise the meaning of book and literature. “cause and effect forever,” say i. those old egyptians built vast temples and halls in some proportion to the globe on which they were erected, and to the numbers of the nation who were to hold their solemnities within the walls. they built them, not in a day, nor in a single century. so let us with inveterate purpose write our history. let us not, as now we do, write a history for display and make it after our own image and likeness, — three or four crude notions of our own, and very many crude notions of old historians, hunted out and patched i here follows the passage thus beginning in “spiritual laws." 66 journal [age 35 together without coherence or proportion, and no thought of the necessity of proportion and unity dreamed of by the writer, a great conglomerate; or, at best, an arabesque, a grotesque, containing no necessary reason for its being, nor inscribing itself in our memory like the name and life of a friend. but let us go to the facts of chronology, as newton went to those of physics, knowing well that they are already bound together of old, and perfectly, and he surveys them that he may detect the bond. let us learn with the patience and affection of a naturalist all the facts, and looking out all the time for the reason that was, for the law that prevailed, and made the facts such ; not for one that we can supply and make the facts plausibly sustain. we should then find abundant aperçus or lights selfkindled amid the antiquities we explored. why should not history be godly written, out of the highest faith and with a study of what really was? we should then have ideas which would command and marshal the facts, and show the history of a nation as accurately proportioned and necessary in every part as an animal. the connexion of commerce and religion explains the history of africa from the beginning until now. nomadism is a law of nature, and asia, 1838] cause and effect 67 africa, europe present different pictures of it. the architecture of each nation had its root in nature. how ample the materials show, when once we have the true idea that explains all! then the modern man, the geography, the ruins, the geology, the traditions as well as authentic history, recite and confirm the tale. i said above, cause and effect forever! in the thought that out of such incongruous patchwork, thoughtlessly put together as our histories are, nothing can come but incongruous impressions, obscure, unsatisfactory to the mind; but that views obtained by patient wisdom drudging amidst facts would give an analogous impression to the landscape. they say the sublime silent desert now testifies through the mouths of bruce, lyon, caillaud, burkhardt, to the truth of the calumniated herodotus. september 29. i have a full quiver of facts under that sapphic and adonian text of “every dog,” etc. we are ungrateful creatures. there is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it. we sneer at ignorance and the life of the senses and the ridicule of never thinking, and then goes by a fine girl like m. r., a piece of 68 journal [age 35 life, gay because she is happy and making these very commonalities beautiful by the energy and heart with which she does them, and seeing this, straightway we admire and love her and them, say, “lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not blasé, not flétri by books, philosophy, religion or care ”; insinuating by these very words a treachery and contempt for all that we had so long loved and wrought in ourselves and others. [many quotations from the writings of arnold l. heeren on asia and africa occur in this journal, some of which are used in “history” and other essays.] course a as nature enforces intercourse among men by putting salt and dates and gold and slaves in the desert, and corn in the fields, and hides on the mountains, and fishes in the sea, and these cannot be had but by going thither where they are, so various circles of society possess facts which cannot be had by the student without repairing to them, and they are people he does not like and cannot approach without preparation; frenchmen, italians, germans, talleyrand, esterhazy, metternich, merchants, lovers 1838) literary warfare 69 of art, owners of picture galleries at home, the physician and the master mechanics. i once wrote that the most abstract truth is the most practical. see how quickly the whole community is touched by an academical discourse on theism. at an imagined assault of a cardinal truth, the very mud boils. literary men amuse themselves with speculations which do not go into the abstract and absolute, but linger in the conditional and verbal. wit, old poetry, old philosophy, mathematics are favorite amusements, for they have no claws, no dangers. . censure and praise.' — i hate to be defended in a newspaper. as long as all that is said is said against me, i feel a certain sublime assurance of success, but as soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, i feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. i this passage is printed in “ compensation” (p. 118), but it is given here with those immediately preceding and following it, because this was a stormy period with a doubtful future to mr. emerson and his wife, for the “ divinity school address” had excited a storm of criticism. it seemed a question whether mr. emerson's lectures would be attended. the attacks of professor andrews norton and others drew out replies from george ripley, orestes brownson, theophilus parsons, and james freeman clarke. 70 journal [age 35 blessed be the wife, that in the talk to-night shared no vulgar sentiment, but said, “ in the gossip and excitement of the hour, be as one blind and deaf to it; know it not. do as if nothing had befallen.” and when it was said by the friend, “ the end is not yet: wait till it is done,” she said, “it is done in eternity.” blessed be the wife! i, as always, venerate the oracular nature of woman. the sentiment which the man thinks he came unto gradually through the events of years, to his surprise he finds woman dwelling there in the same, as in her native home. september 30. nearness and distinctness seem to be convertible. a noise, a jar, a rumble, is infinitely far off from my nature, though it be within a few inches of the tympanum, but a voice speaking the most intelligible of propositions is so near as to be already a part of myself. it seems as if a man should learn to fish, to plant, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence if he were cast out from society and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.' 1 this was more than an abstract speculation to mr. emerson at this crisis. 1838] education. classes 71 royal education. — it would seem that in the ancient eastern kingdoms better views of an education at court prevailed than in the kingdoms of modern europe. “and the king spake unto ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of israel and of the king's seed and of the princes; children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them, to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and tongue of the chaldeans.” daniel, i, 3, 4. rich and poor. — my grandfather, john haskins, was wont to say, “that the poor ought to pray for the prosperity of the rich, for, in that lay their own.” not so thinks the globe. e necesevery vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function. we love to hear in the midst of society some word that nothing but austerest solitude and conversation with god, with love and death, could ever have uttered. such, too, is the sincerest joy of fine society to meet in its princes 72 (age 35 journal and princesses some authentic token of the eternal beauty. october 4. letter to w. silsbee. – i read in your letter the expressions of an earnest character of faith, of hope, with extreme interest; and if i can contribute any aid by sympathy or suggestion to the solution of the great problems that occupy you, i shall be glad. but i think it must be done by degrees. i am not sufficiently master of the little truth i see, to know how to state it in forms so general as shall put every mind in possession of my point of view. we generalize and rectify our expressions by continual efforts from day to day, from month to month, to reconcile our own sight with that of our companions. so shall two inquirers have the best mutual action on each other. but i should never attempt a direct answer to such questions as yours. i have no language that could shortly present my state of mind in regard to each of them with any fidelity; for my state of mind on each is nowise final and detached, but tentative, progressive, and strictly connected with the whole circle of my thoughts. it seems to me that to understand any man's thoughts respecting the supreme being, we need an inever 1838] ideas of god. truth 73 sight into the general habit and tendency of his speculations : for, every man's idea of god is the last or most comprehensive generalization at which he has arrived. — but besides the extreme difficulty of stating our results on such questions in a few propositions, i think, my dear sir, that a certain religious feeling deters us from the attempt. i do not gladly utter any deep conviction of the soul in any company where i think it will be contested, no, nor unless i think it will be welcome. truth has already ceased to be itself if polemically said; and if the soul would utter oracles, as every soul should, it must live for itself, keep itself right-minded, observe with such awe its own law as to concern itself very little with the engrossing topics of the hour, unless they be its own. i believe that most of the speculative difficulties which infest us, we must thank ourselves for; each mind, if true to itself, will, by living forthright, and not importing into it the doubts of other men, dissolve all difficulties, as the sun at midsummer burns up the clouds. hence i think the aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic. if we are true and benevolent, we reënforce each other by every act and word. your heroism stimulates mine; your light mer 74 [ace 35 journal kindles mine. and the end of all this is, that i thank you heartily for the confidence of your letter, and beg you to use your earliest leisure to come and see me. it is very possible that i shall not be able to give you one definition, but i will show you with joy what i strive after and what i worship, as far as i can. meantime, i shall be very glad to hear from you by letter. october 5. once i thought it a defect peculiar to me, that i was confounded by interrogatories and when put on my wits for a definition was unable to reply without injuring my own truth: but now, i believe it proper to man to be unable to answer in terms the great problems put by his fellow: it is enough if he can live his own definitions. a problem appears to me. i cannot solve it with all my wits : but leave it there ; let it lie awhile: i can by patient, faithful truth live at last its uttermost darkness into light. books. — it seems meritorious to read: but from everything but history or the works of the old commanding writers i come back with a conviction that the slightest wood-thought, the least significant. native emotion of my own, is more to me. 75 ve as a 1838] hostile reviews compensation.—how soon the sunk spirits rise again, how quick the little wounds of fortune skin over and are forgotten. i am sensitive as a leaf to impressions from abroad, and under this night's beautiful heaven i have forgotten thatever i was reviewed. it is strange how superficial are our views of these matters, seeing we are all writers and philosophers. a man thinks it of importance what the great sheet or pamphlet of to-day proclaims of him to all the reading town; and if he sees graceful compliments, he relishes his dinner; and if he sees threatening paragraphs and odious nicknames, it becomes a solemn, depressing fact and sables his whole thoughts until bedtime. but in truth the effect of these paragraphs is mathematically measureable by their depth of thought. how much water do they draw? if they awaken you to think — if they lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence — then their effect is to be wide, slow, permanent over the minds of men: but if they instruct you not, they will die like flies in an hour. october 9. they put their finger on their lip, — the powers above.' 1 the opening line of “ eros" (poems, appendix, p. 362). 76 journal (age 35 i have intimations of my riches much more than possession, as is the lot of other heirs. every object suggests to me in certain moods a dim anticipation of profound meaning, as if, by and by, it would appear to me why the apple-tree, why the meadow, why the stump stand there, and what they signify to me. van burenism. i passed by the shop and saw my spruce neighbor, the dictator of our rural jacobins, teaching his little circle of villagers their political lessons. and here, thought i, is one who loves what i hate: here is one wholly reversing my code. i hate persons who are nothing but persons. i hate numbers. he cares for nothing but numbers and persons. all the qualities of man, all his accomplishments, affections, enterprises, except solely the ticket he votes for, are nothing to this philosopher. numbers of majorities are all he sees in the newspaper. all of north or south, all in georgia, alabama, pennsylvania or new england that this man considers is, what is the relation of mr. clay, or of mr. van buren, to those mighty mountain chains, those vast, fruitful champaigns, those expanding nations of men. what an existence is this, to have no home, no 1838) political bugbears 77 heart, but to feed on the very refuse and old straw and chaff of man,—the numbers and names of voters ! one thing deserves the thought of the modern jacobin. it seems the relations of society, the position of classes, irk and sting him.'... in our vulgar politics the knowing men have a good deal to say about the “moral effect " of a victory and a defeat. the fact that the city of new york has gone for the whigs, though only by a slender majority, is of the utmost importance to the whig party about to vote in a distant state. why? because it is a fact, a presentable fact. states of mind we care not for; we ignore them ; but a mere fact, though proving a less favorable state of mind than we have a right to infer, we overvalue. a man writes a book which displeases somebody, who writes an angry paragraph about it in the next newspaper. that solitary paragraph, whilst it stands unanswered, seems the voice of the world. hundreds of passive readers read it with such passiveness that it becomes their voice. the man that made i the rest of the passage thus beginning on the offence of superiority in persons” is in “ aristocracy” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 35). 78 [age 35 journal the book and his friends are superstitious about it. they cannot put it out of their heads. their entire relations to society seem changed. what was yesterday a warm, convenient, hospitable world, soliciting all the talents of all its children, looks bleak and hostile, and our native tendency to complete any view we take carries the imagination out at once to images of persecution, hatred and want. in debate, the last speaker always carries with him such a prevailing air that all seems to be over and the question settled when he concludes; so that, if a new man arise and state with nonchalance a new and opposite view, we draw our breath freely and hear with a marked surprise this suspension of fate. an election. — the fact of having been elected to a conspicuous office, as president, king, governor, etc., even though we know the paltry machinery by which it was brought about, is, notwithstanding, a certificate of value to the person in all men's eyes, ever after. the courage of men is shown in resisting this fact and preferring the state of mind.' the poet i compare thoreau's attitude. “thoreau ” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 471). 1838) faces. facts. turns 79 must set over against the lampoon his conviction of divine light, the patriot his deep devotion to the country against the mere hurra of the boys in the street. faces. — a domestic warning we have against degradation in the face of a man whilst he speaks his best and whilst he speaks his basest sentiment. now, uttering his genuine life, he is strong as the world, and his face is manly, but instantly, on his expression of a mean thought, his countenance is changed to a pitiful, ridden, bestial portrait. if a man live in the saddle, the saddle somehow will come to live in him. tick, tack. any single fact considered by itself confounds, misleads us. let it lie awhile. it will find its place, by and by, in god's chain; its golden brothers will come, one on the right hand and one on the left, and in an instant it will be the simplest, gladdest, friendliest of things. turns. it is a beautiful fact that every spot of earth, every dog, pebble, and ash-heap, as well as every palace and every man, is whirled round in turn to the meridian. 80 journal (age 35 eloquence. i thought i saw the sun and moon fall into his head, as seeds fall into the ground, that they might quicken and bring forth new worlds to fill nature.' october 11. it is not true that educated men desire truth. the medical committee decline proffered opportunities of witnessing experiments in animal magnetism. swedenborgianism is one of the many forms of manichæism. it denies the omnipotence of god or pure spirit. october 12. if it were possible to speak to the virtue in each of our friends in perfect simplicity, then would society instantly attain its perfection. if i could say to the young man, the young girl whom i meet in company,“ your countenance, your behaviour please me: i discover in you the sparkles of a right royal virtue. i entreat you to revere its sublime intimations ”; and this could be heard by the other party with a quiet, perfect trust, then instantly a league is struck between 1 see “ fragments on the poet," etc. (poems, appendix v, p. 326), also the last sentence in “ man the reformer" (nature, addresses, and lectures). 1838) direct speech 81 two souls that makes life grand, and suffering and sorrow musical. who would pine under the endurance of the many heavy hours of incapacity and mere waiting that creep over us? who would decline a sacrifice, if once his soul had been accosted, his virtue recognized, and he was assured that a watcher, a holy one followed him ever with long, affectionate glances of inexhaustible love? what then if many simple souls, studious of science, of botany, of chemistry, natural history, lovers of all learning, and scorners of all seeming, should freely say to me,“god keep you, brother; let us worship virtue,” – by what a heavenly guard i should feel myself environed ! but the charm is that mere heathens should say this. they may be lovers of christ, be sure, but they must love him heathenly. for if there be the least smoothness and passive reception in them, then all their talk is cant, and i quit the room if they speak to me. but now i am not sure that the educated class ever ascend to the idea of virtue; or that they desire truth: they want safety, utility, decorum. in order to present the bare idea of virtue, it is necessary that we should go quite out of our circumstance and custom, else it will be instantly confounded with the poor decency and inanition, 82 (age 35 journal the poor ghost that wears its name in good society. therefore it is that we fly to the pagans and use the name and relations of socrates, of confucius, menu, zoroaster; not that these are better or as good as jesus and paul (for they have not uttered so deep moralities), but because they are good algebraic terms, not liable to confusion of thought like those we habitually use. so michel angelo's sonnets addressed to vittoria colonna, we see to be mere rhapsodies to virtue, and in him, a savage artist, they are as unsuspicious, uncanting, as if a spartan or an arab spoke them. it seems not unfit that the scholar should deal plainly with society and tell them that he saw well enough before he spoke the consequence of his speaking; that up there in his silent study, by his dim lamp, he fore-heard this babel of outeries. the nature of man he knew, the insanity that comes of inaction and tradition, and knew well that when their dream and routine were disturbed, like bats and owls and nocturnal beasts they would howl and shriek and fly at the torch-bearer. but he saw plainly that under this their distressing disguise of birdform and beast form, the divine features of man 1838] brave protest 83 were hidden, and he felt that he would dare to be so much their friend as to do them this violence to drag them to the day and to the healthy air and water of god, that the unclean spirits that had possessed them might be exorcised and depart. the taunts and cries of hatred and anger, the very epithets you bestow on me, are so familiar long ago in my reading that they sound to me ridiculously old and stale. the same thing has happened so many times over (that is, with the appearance of every original observer) that, if people were not very ignorant of literary history, they would be struck with the exact coincidence. i, whilst i see this, that you must have been shocked and must cry out at what i have said, i see too that we cannot easily be reconciled, for i have a great deal more to say that will shock you out of all patience. every day i am struck with new particulars of the antagonism between your habits of thought and action, and the divine law of your being, and as fast as these become clear to me you may depend on my proclaiming them. um 11 succession, division, parts, particles, this is the condition, this the tragedy of man. all things cohere and unite. man studies the parts, 84 [age 35 journal strives to tear the part from its connexion, to magnify it, and make it a whole. he sides with the part against other parts; and fights for parts, fights for lies, and his whole mind becomes an inflamed part, an amputated member, a wound, an offence. meantime within him is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal one. speech is the sign of partiality, difference, ignorance, and the more perfect the understanding between men, the less need of words. and when i know all, i shall cease to commend any part. an ignorant man thinks the divine wisdom is conspicuously shown in some fact or creature: a wise man sees that every fact contains the same. i should think water the best invention, if i were not acquainted with fire and earth and air. but as we advance, every proposition, every action, every feeling, runs out into the infinite. if we go to affirm anything we are checked in our speech by the need of recognizing all other things, until speech presently becomes rambling, general, indefinite, and merely tautology. the only speech will at last be action, such as confucius describes the speech of god. 1838] new thought. doctors 85 october 12. i wrote margaret fuller;i begin to be proud of my contemporaries and wish to behold their whole course. such pictures as you have sent me now and before exalt our interest in individual characters and suggest ideas of society how lofty and refined! but not now to be realized.' . . . i see my old gossip montaigne is coming up again to honor in these prim, decorous days; who would think it? and are you not struck with a certain subterranean current of identical thought that bubbles up to daylight in very remote and dissimilar circles of thought and culture? nea the physician tends always to invert man, to look upon the body as the cause of the soul, to look upon man as tyrannized over by his members. october 13. do not be a night-chair, a warming-pan, at sick-beds and rheumatic souls. do not let them make a convenience of you. do not be a pastrycook either and give parties. 1 here follows the passage in “ friendship” about subtle antagonisms, etc. (essays, first series, p. 199). journal (age 35 october 14. measure your present habit of thought and action by all your external standards, if you will; by the remembrance of your dead; by the remembrance of the three or four great men who are yet alive; by the image of your distant friends; by the lives and precepts of the heroes and philosophers; these all are only shadows of the primary sentiment at home in your old soul. the talent of the poet seems to consist in presence of mind, the ability to seize the fact and image which all others know very well, but cannot collect themselves sufficiently to use in the right time. october 16. reform and potatoes seem to have a pretty strict understanding. most venerable plant! thou sturdy republican, abolitionist, anti-money, teetotaller! does a man hear of temperance or peace, or embargo, or slavery, or domestic hired service, or the rise of the poor against the rich; of any revolution or project of perfection? — he thinks directly on blue-noses and long-reds. here came on sunday morning (14th) edward palmer and departed today, a gentle, faithful, s 1838) edward palmer 87 sensible, well-balanced man for an enthusiast. he has renounced, since a year ago last april, the use of money. when he travels, he stops at night at a house and asks if it would give them any satisfaction to lodge a traveller without money or price. if they do not give him a hospitable answer, hegoes on, but generally finds the country people free and willing. when he goes away, he gives them his papers or tracts. he has sometimes found it necessary to go twenty-four hours without food, and all night without lodging. once he found a wagon with a good buffalo under a shed, and had a very good nap. by the seashore he finds it difficult to travel, as they are inhospitable. he presents his views with great gentleness; and is not troubled if he cannot show the way in which the destruction of money is to be brought about; he feels no responsibility to show or know the details. it is enough for him that he is sure it must fall, and that he clears himself of the institution altogether. why should not i, if a man comes and asks me for a book, give it him? if he asks me to write a letter for him, write it? if he ask me to write a poem or a discourse which i can fitly write, why should i not? and if my neighbor is as skilful in making cloth, why should not all of us who ca88 journal (age 35 have wool send it to him to make for the common benefit, and when we want ten yards or twenty yards go to him and ask for so much, and he, like a gentleman gives us exactly what we ask without hesitation, and so let every house keep a store-room in which they place their superfluity of what they produce, and open it with ready confidence to the wants of the neighborhood, and without an account of debtor and credit?' edward palmer asks if it would be a good plan for a family of brothers and sisters to keep an account of debtor and creditor of their good turns, and expect an exact balance? and is not the human race a family? does not kindness disarm? it is plain that if perfect confidence reigned, then it would be possible, and he asks how is confidence to be promoted but by reposing confidence? it seems to me that i have a perfect claim on the community for the supply of all my wants if i have worked hard all day, or if i have spent my day well, have done what i could, though no meat, shoes, cloth, or utensils, have been made by me; yet if i have spent my time in the best manner i could, i must have benenan race i the above seems to be mr. emerson's abstract of palmer's theory, considerately stated. 1838] the money system 89 fitted the world in some manner that will appear and be felt somewhere. if we all do so, we shall all find ourselves able to ask and able to bestow with confidence. it seems, too, that we should be able to say to the lazy, “you are lazy; you should work and cure this disease. i will not give you all you ask, but only a part. pinch yourself today and ask me for more when you have laboured more, as your brothers do, for them.” however, i incline to think that among angels the money or certificate system might have some important convenience, not for thy satisfaction of whom i borrow, but for my satisfaction that i have not exceeded carelessly any proper wants, have not overdrawn. the devil can quote texts. there is one rule that should regulate the appeal, often so indecorous and irrational, to scripture: you may quote the example of paul or jesus to a better sentiment or practice than the one proposed, but never to a worse. thus, if it is acknowledged or felt that there would be a superior purity in using water to using wine, – do not quote jesus as using wine. if it would be nobler to appeal to the love of men when you want bread 90 (age 35 journal or shoes than to give them a pledge of restoring them (which money is) do not quote jesus or paul as paying taxes or living in “mine own hired home.” it was said in conversation at mr. b's, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay, so that the world had better fail and settle up. edward palmer said that it usually happened at farmhouses where he stopped, that, “when he came in conversation to unfold his views to the people, they were interested in his plan.” thus each reformer carries about in him a piece of me, and as soon as i know it, i am perforce his kinsman and brother. i must feel that he is pleading my cause and shall account myself serving myself in giving him what he lacketh. october 18. sent a letter today to t. carlyle, per royal william.' 1 this is letter xxviii in the carlyle-emerson correspondence, in which mr. emerson asks carlyle to postpone his intended visit and the lecturing scheme in america until the storm which the “ divinity school address" had raised up as 1838] present skepticism 91 today came washburn, lippitt, ellis, and atkins to dine." october 19. let me add of quoting scripture, to what was said above, that i hate to meet this slavish custom in a solemn expression of sentiment, like the late manifesto of the peace convention. it seems to deny, with the multitude, the omnipresence and the eternity of god. once, he spoke through good men these special words. now, if we have aught high and holy to do, we must wrench somehow their words to speak it in. we have none of our own. humbly rather let us go and ask god's leave to use the hour and language that now is. cannot you ransack the grave-yards and get your great-grandfather's clothes also ? it is like the single coat in sainte lucie in which the islanders one by one paid their respects to the new governor. it is a poor-spirited age. the great army of cowards who bellow and bully from their bed-chamber windows have no confidence in truth or god. should abate, for he felt that carlyle's prospects would suffer thereby. i edward a. washburn, george warren lippitt, rufus ellis, and benjamin f. atkins ; the first three, having graduated at harvard that year, were divinity students. 92 journal (age 35 truth will not maintain itself, they fancy, unless they bolster it up, and whip and stone the assailants ; and the religion of god, the being of god, they seem to think dependent on what we say of it. the feminine vehemence with which the a. n.' of the daily advertiser beseeches the dear people to whip that naughty heretic is the natural feeling in the mind whose religion is external. it cannot subsist; it suffers shipwreck if its faith is not confirmed by all surrounding persons. a believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees. it is plain that there are two classes in our educated community : first, those who confine themselves to the facts in their consciousness; and secondly, those who superadd sundry propositions. the aim of a true teacher now would be to bring men back to a trust in god and destroy before their eyes these idolatrous propositions: to teach the doctrine of the perpetual revelation. october 20. all inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity re1 andrews norton. 1838) the living now 93 specting the pyramids ... is simply and at last the desire to do away this wild savage preposterous then, introduce in its place the now: it is to banish the not me and supply the me; it is to abolish difference and restore unity.'... and this is also the aim in all science, in the unprofitable abysses of entomology, in the gigantic masses of geology, and spaces of astronomy, simply to transport our consciousness of cause and effect into those remote and by us uninhabited members, and see that they all proceed from “ causes now in operation,” from one mind, and that ours. steady, steady! when this fog of good and evil affections falls, it is hard to see and walk straight. one mind. — the ancients exchanged their names with their friends, signifying that in their friend they loved their own soul. what said my brave asia? concerning the paragraph writers, today? that “this whole i here occurs the paragraph so beginning in “ history" (p. 11). 2 one of mr. emerson's names for his wife. 94 journal [age 35 practice of self-justification and recrimination. betwixt literary men seemed every whit as low as the quarrels of the paddies.” then said i, “but what will you say, excellent asia, when my smart article comes out in the paper, in reply to mr. a. and dr. b.? ” — “why, then," answered she, “ i shall feel the first emotion of fear and sorrow on your account.” –“but do you know," i asked,“ how many fine things i have thought of to say to these fighters? they are too good to be lost.” -“then,” rejoined the queen, “there is some merit in being silent.” it is plain from all the noise that there is atheism somewhere ; the only question is now, which is the atheist? it is observable, as i have written before, that even the science of the day is introversive. the microscope is carried to perfection. and geology looks no longer in written histories, but examines the earth that it may be its own chronicle. “ please, papa, tell me a story,” says the child of two years; who will say then that the novel has not a foundation in nature ? 95 1838] idols. letter idols. — men are not units but poor mixtures. ... they accept how weary a load of tradition from their elders and more forcible neighbors. by and by, as the divine effort of creation and growth begins in them, new loves, new aversions, take effect, — the first radiation of their own soul amidst things. yet each of these outbursts of the central life is partial, and leaves abundance of traditions still in force. each soul has its idols.' ... but the new expansion and upthrusting from the centre shall classify our facts by new radiation and will show us idols in how many things which now we esteem part and parcel of our constitution and lot in nature. property, government, books, systems of education and of religion, will successively detach themselves from the growing spirit. i call an idol anything which a man honors, which the constitution of his mind does not necessitate him to honor. to miss emerson october 21. is the ideal society always to be only a dream, a song, a luxury of thought, and never a step 1 here follows the passage on the idol of italy, of travelling, etc. (“self-reliance,” pp. 80, 81). 96 [age 35 journal taken to realize the vision for living and indigent men without misgivings within and wildest ridicule abroad? between poetry and prose must the great gulf yawn ever, and they who try to bridge it over be lunatics or hypocrites ? and yet the too dark ground of history is starred over with solitary heroes who dared to believe better of their brothers, and who prevailed by actually executing the law (the high ideal) in their own life, and, though a hissing and an offence to their contemporaries, yet they became a celestial sign to all succeeding souls as they journeyed through nature. how shine the names of abraham, diogenes, pythagoras, and the transcendent jesus, in antiquity! and now, in our turn, shall we esteem the elegant decorum of our world, and what is called greatness and splendor in it, of such a vast and outweighing worth, as to reckon all aspirations after the better fanciful or pitiable, and all aspirants pert and loathsome? there is a limit, and (as in some hours we fancy) a pretty speedy limit, to the value of what is called success in life. the great world, too, always bears unexpected witness to the rhapsodies of the idealists. the fine and gay people are often disconcerted when the reformer points out examples of his doctrine in 1838) success and reform 97 the midst of what is finest and gayest. thus always the christian humility was aped by the protestations of courtesy, and always the greathearted children of fortune, the cæsars, cleopatras, alcibiadeses, essexes and sidneys within their own proud pale have treated fortune and the popular estimates with a certain defiance and contempt. irregular glimpses they had of the real good and fair which added a more than royal loftiness to their behavior and to their dealing with houses and lands. is it not droll, though, that these porcelain creatures should turn as quick as the fashionable mob on the poor cobblers, peasants and schoolmasters who preached the good and fair to mankind, and be willing to burn them up with the rays of aristocratic majesty ? i, for my part, am very well pleased to see the variety and velocity of the movements that all over our broad land, in spots and corners, agitate society. war, slavery, alcohol, animal food, domestic hired service, colleges, creeds, and now at last money, also, have their spirited and unweariable assailants, and must pass out of use or must learn a law. mine asia' says, a human being should bei mrs. emerson. 98 (age 35 journal ware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults. a great colossal soul, i fancy, was swedenborg.' .. edward palmer asked me if i liked two services in a sabbath. i told him, not very well. if the sermon was good i wished to think of it; if it was bad, one was enough. october 26. jones very came hither, two days since, and gave occasion to many thoughts on his peculiar state of mind and his relation to society. his position accuses society as much as society names it false and morbid; and much of his discourse concerning society, the church, and the college was perfectly just. entertain every thought, every character, that goes by with the hospitality of your soul. give him the freedom of your inner house. he shall make you wise to the extent of his own uttermost receivings. 1 here occurs the passage beginning similarly in representative men, p. 102. it is followed by the passage in the same volume (p. 204) as to the effect of shakspear's work on german thought. 1838] monotones. souls 99 especially if one of these monotones, whereof, as my friends think, i have a savage society, like a menagerie of monsters, come to you, receive him. for the partial action of his mind in one direction is a telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. and as we know that every path we take is but a radius of our sphere, and we may dive as deep in every other direction as we have in that, a far insight of one evil suggests instantly the immense extent of that revolution that must be wrought before he whose right it is shall reign, the all in all. we vocabularies. — in going through italy i speak italian, through arabia, arabic: i say the same things, but have altered my speech. but ignorant people think a foreigner speaking a foreign tongue a formidable, odious nature, alien to the backbone. so is it with our brothers. our journey, the journey of the soul, is through different regions of thought, and to each its own vocabulary. as soon as we hear a new vocabulary from our own, at once we exaggerate the alarming differences, — account the man suspicious, a thief, a pagan, and set no bounds to our disgust or hatred, and, late in life, perhaps too late, we find he was loving and hating, doing 100 (age 35 journal and thinking the same things as we, under his own vocabulary. scholar. — every word, every striking word that occurs in the pages of an original genius, will provoke attack and be the subject of twenty pamphlets and a hundred paragraphs. should he be so duped as to stop and listen? rather, let him know that the page he writes today will contain a new subject for the pamphleteers, and that which he writes tomorrow, more. let him not be misled to give it any more than the notice due from him, viz., just that which it had in his first page, before the controversy. the exaggeration of the notice is right for them, false for him. every word that he quite naturally writes is as prodigious and offensive. so write on, and, by and by, will come a reader and an age that will justify all your contest. do not even look behind. leave that bone for them to pick and welcome. let me study and work contentedly and faithfully; i do not remember my critics. i forget them, i depart from them by every step i take. if i think then of them, it is a bad sign. to in my weak hours i look fondly to europe 18381 time. persuasion 101 and think how gladly i would live in florence and rome. in my manly hours, i defy these leanings, these lingering looks bebind, these flesh-pots of egypt, and feel that my duty is my place and that the merrymen of circumstance should follow as they might. ... quand on a raison, on a souvent beaucoup plus raison qu'on ne croit. — guizot. we refer all things to time, as we refer the immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere, and so we say that the judgment is near.'... c. had a persuasion to win fate to his purpose; make that which was seem to the beholders not to be, and his tongue did lick the four elements away. converse with a soul which is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. ... o, worthy mr. graham, poet of bran-bread and pumpkins, there is a limit to the revolui here follows a long passage printed in « the oversoul,” beginning thus (essays, first series, p. 273). 2 here occurs the long passage so beginning in « the over-soul ” (pp. 291, 292). 102 (age 35 journal tions of a pumpkin, project it along the ground with what force soever. it is not a winged orb like the egyptian symbol of dominion, but an unfeathered, ridgy, yellow pumpkin, and will quickly come to a standstill." literature is a heap of verbs and nouns enclosing an intuition or two, a few ideas and a few fables. literature is a subterfuge. one man might have writ all the first rate pieces we call english literature. literature is eaves-dropping. literature is an amusement; virtue is the business of the universe. we must use the language of facts, and not be superstitiously abstract. october 27. the ray of light passes invisible through space, and only when it falls on an object, is it seen. so your spiritual energy is barren and useless until it is directed on something outward : then is it a thought: the relation between 1 this apostrophe is to mr. sylvester graham, the diet reformer, whose book, bread and bread-making, had a great influence among dyspeptics and reformers in those days. 1838) true light or false 103 you and it first makes you, the value of you, apparent to me. it is the tragedy of life that the highest gifts are not secure. what purer efflux of the godhead than the ray of the moral sentiment? yet it comes before me so pure as to consent in language to all the tests we can apply, and yet is it morbid, painful, unwise. my faith is perfect that what is from god shall be more wise, more fair, more gracious, more manifold, more rejoicing than aught the soul had already. how sad to behold aught coming in that name (self delighted too that it comes from him), which gives no light, which confounds only, which shines on nothing, affirming meantime that it is all light; which does nothing, affirming steadily that it does and is all. mrs. ripley is superior to all she knows. she reminds one of a steam-mill of great activity and power which must be fed, and she grinds german, italian, greek, chemistry, metaphysics, theology, with utter indifference which, something she must have to keep the machine from tearing itself. the influence of an original genius is matter 104 journal (age 35 seen of literary history. it seems as if the shakspear could not be admired, could not even be seer until his living, conversing and writing had diffused his spirit into the young and acquiring class so that he had multiplied himself into a thousand sons, a thousand shakspears and so understands himself. october 28. jones very says it is with him a day of hate ; that he discerns the bad element in every person whom he meets, which repels him : he even shrinks a little to give the hand, — that sign of receiving. the institutions, the cities which men have built the world over, look to him like a huge blot of ink. his own only guard in going to see men is that he goes to do them good, else they would injure him (spiritually). he lives in the sight that he who made him, made the things he sees. he would as soon embrace a black egyptian mummy as socrates. he would obey, obey. he is not disposed to attack religions and charities, though false. the bruised reed he would not break; the smoking flax he would not quench. to lidian he says, “your thought speaks there, and not your life.” and he is very sensible of interference in thought and act. a very accurate 1838) jones very 105 discernment of spirits belongs to his state, and he detects at once the presence of an alien element, though he cannot tell whence, how, or whereto it is. he thinks me covetous in my hold of truth, of seeing truth separate, and of receiving or taking it, instead of merely obeying. the will is to him all, as to me (after my own showing) truth. he is sensible in me of a little colder air than that he breathes. he says, “ you do not disobey because you do the wrong act; but you do the wrong act, because you disobey; and you do not obey because you do the good action, but you do the good action because you first obey." he has nothing to do with time, because he obeys. a man who is busy says he has no time; he does not recognize that element. a man who is idle says he does not know what to do with his time. obedience is in eternity. he says, it is the necessity of the spirit to speak with authority. what led him to study shakspear was the fact that all young men say, shakspear was no saint, — yet see what genius! he wished to solve that problem. he had the manners of a man, one, that is, to whom life was more than meat, the body than raiment. he felt it an honor, he said, to wash his face, being, as it was, the temple of the spirit. 1106 journal (age 35 and he is gone into the multitude as solitary as jesus. in dismissing him i seem to have discharged an arrow into the heart of society. wherever that young enthusiast goes he will astonish and disconcert men by dividing for them the cloud that covers the profound gulf that is in man. october 29. we are wiser, i see well, than we know.'... travelling foolish. we imagine that in germany is the aliment which the mind seeks, or in this reading, or in that. but go to germany, and you shall not find it. they have sent it to america. it is not without, but within: it is not in geography, but in the soul. sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay. jones very charmed us all by telling us he hated us all. october 30. and i am to seek to solve for my fellows the problem of human life, in words, — for that is i here follows the sentences in “ the over-soul” about not interfering with the thought, and the soul's being a separating sword (essays, first series, p. 280); and that on the divine thought demolishing centuries, witness christ's teaching (p. 273). 1838] o'connell on slavery 107 the subject advertised for my lectures presently. well, boy, what canst thou say ? knowest thou its law? its way? its equipoise? its endless end? seest thou the inevitable conditions which all seek to dodge?' ... there is reason enough for the coincidences, the signs, the presentiments which astonish every person now and then in the course of his life. for, as every spirit makes its own condition and history, the reason of the event is always latent in the life. the correspondence of o'connell and our american stevenson indicates a new step taken in civilization. our haughty, feudal virginian suddenly finds his rights to enter the society of gentlemen questioned, and he obliged to mince and shuffle and equivocate in his sentences, to deny that he is a slave-breeder without denying that he is a slave-owner. he finds that the eyes of men have got so far opened that they must see well the distinction between a cavalier and the cavalier's negro-driver, a race abhorred. i here follow the passages in “ compensation ” thus beginning (p. 105), and on the price exacted for eminence, for light, wealth, and fame (pp. 99, 100, 104). 108 (age 35 journal the men you meet and seek to raise to higher thought know as well as you know that you are of them, and that you stand yet on the ground, whilst you say to them sincerely, let us arise, let us fly. but once fly yourself, and they will look up to you. there is no terror like that of being known. the world lies in night of sin. it hears not the cock crowing: it sees not the grey streak in the east. at the first entering ray of light, society is shaken with fear and anger from side to side. who opened that shutter? they cry, wo to him! they belie it, they call it darkness that comes in, affirming that they were in light before. before the man who has spoken to them the dread word, they tremble and flee. they flee to new topics, to their learning, to the solid institutions about them, to their great men, to their windows, and look-out on the road and passengers, to their very furniture, and meats, and drinks, -anywhere, anyhow to escape the apparition. the wild horse has heard the whisper of the tamer : the maniac has caught the glance of the keeper. they try to forget the memory of the speaker, to put him down into the same obscure place he occupied in their minds before he spake to 1838] dreaded reform 109 them. it is all in vain. they even flatter themselves that they have killed and buried the enemy, when they have magisterially denied and denounced him. but vain, vain, all vain. it was but the first mutter of the distant storm they heard, it was the first cry of the revolution, it was the touch, the palpitation that goes before the earthquake. even now society is shaken because a thought or two have been thrown into the midst. the sects, the colleges, the church, the statesmen all have forebodings. it now works only in a handful. what does state street and wall street and the royal exchange and the bourse at paris care for these few thoughts and these few men ? very little; truly; most truly. but the doom of state street, and wall street, of london, and france, of the whole world, is advertised by those thoughts; is in the procession of the soul which comes after those few thoughts. does a man wish to remain concealed? a few questions (who does not see?) determine a man's whole connexion and place. does he read wordsworth, goethe, swedenborg, bentham or spurzheim ? botany? geology? abolition? diet? shakspear? coleridge ? uio (age 35 journal the tone a man takes indicates his right ascension. swedenborgianism introduces unnecessary machinery. young men rough and unmelodious. the point of absolute rest in communion with god. nature is loved by what is best in us.' ... there are some men above grief and some men below it. i ought not to omit recording the astonishment which seized all the company when our brave saint, the other day, fronted the presiding preacher. the preacher began to tower and dogmatize with many words. instantly i foresaw that his doom was fixed; and as quick as he ceased speaking, the saint set right and blew away all his words in an instant, — un horsed him, i may say, and tumbled him along the ground in utter dismay, like my angel of heliodorus. never was discomfiture more complete. in tones of genuine pathos he “bid him wonder 1 the passage thus beginning occurs in “ nature" (essays, second series, p. 178). 2 jones very. erw d w 1838) jones very. soirées iii at the love which suffered him to speak there in his chair, of things he knew nothing of; one might expect to see the book taken from his hands and him thrust out of the room, -and yet he was allowed to sit and talk, whilst every word he spoke was a step of departure from the truth, and of this he commanded himself to bear witness !” october 31. yesterday evening l's soirée. as soon as the party is broken up, i shrink and wince, and try to forget it. ... when i look at life, and see the patches of thought, the gleams of goodness here and there amid the wide and wild madness, i seem to be a god dreaming; and when shall i awake and dissipate these fumes and phantoms? november 2. heard i not that a fair girl said, she would not be “charitable” as she wished to, because it looked to her so like feeding? rem acu tetigisti. to all let us be men, and not pastry-cooks. culture thorough. i see in the lip of the speaker the presence or absence of wordsworth, coleridge, shakspear, and the mighty masters. ii2 journal (age 35 november 3. the trismegisti. — there is always a higher region of thought, — soar as high as you will; and in literature very few words are found touching the best thought; laodamia; james nayler's dying words; the address of the parliamentary soldier to the army, in coleridge's friend; and sampson reed's oration; these are of the highest moral class. come on, ye angels who are to write with pens of flame the poetry of the new age. the old heathens who have written for us will not budge one step, — neither plato nor shakspear, until a natural majesty equal to their own, and purer, and of a higher strain, shall appear. goethe will die hard. even scott dares stand his ground. a henry iv of france a nascent napoleon and the first european king. weans and wife. — that's the true pathos and sublime of human life. we owe a good many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, 1838] living with scholars 113 and who say the thing without effort which we want and have been long toiling for in vain.' this and that other fact, that we kindle each other's interest so fast in what happen to be our present studies, and the rapid communication of results thatis obviously possible between scholars of various pursuit, – lead me to think that acquisition would be increased by literary society: that i could read more, learn faster, by association with good scholars, than i do or can alone. there are few scholars. the mob of so-called scholars are unapt peasants caught late, coated over merely with a thin varnish of latin and reading-room literature, but unlearned and unintelligent: they sleep in the afternoons, read little, and cannot be said to have faith or hope. for this reason, i think the reading of sir william jones's life, or the life of gibbon, or the letters of goethe, might serve the purpose of shaming us into an emulating industry. i should not dare to tell all my story. a great deal of it i do not yet understand. how much of it is incomplete. in my strait and decorous way of living, native to my family and to my country, and more strictly proper to me, is no1 this sentence is printed in “ the over-soul.” 114 journal [age 35 thing extravagant or flowing. i content myself with moderate, languid actions, and never transgress the staidness of village manners. herein i consult the poorness of my powers. more culture would come out of great virtues and vices perhaps, but i am not up to that. should i obey an irregular impulse, and establish every new relation that my fancy prompted with the men and women i see, i should not be followed by my faculties; they would play me false in making good their very suggestions. they delight in inceptions, but they warrant nothing else. i see very well the beauty of sincerity, and tend that way, but if i should obey the impulse so far as to say to my fashionable acquaintance, “you are a coxcomb, — i dislike your manners — i pray you avoid my sight," — i should not serve him nor me, and still less the truth; i should act quite unworthy of the truth, for i could not carry out the declaration with a sustained, even-minded frankness and love, which alone could save such a speech from rant and absurdity. we must tend ever to the good life. i told jones very that i had never suffered, that i could scarce bring myself to feel a concern for the safety and life of my nearest friends that 1838] grief's cure. women 115 would satisfy them; that i saw clearly that if my wife, my child, my mother, should be taken from me, i should still remain whole, with the same capacity of cheap enjoyment from all things. i should not grieve enough, although i love them. but could i make them feel what i feel, — the boundless resources of the soul,— remaining entire when particular threads of relation are snapped, i should then dismiss forever the little remains of uneasiness i have in regard to them. november 4. i wish society to be a congress of sovereigns without the pride, but with the power. therefore i do not like to see a worthy woman resemble those flowers that cannot bear transportation, and when i behold her in a foreign house perceive instantly that she has lost an inch or two of height — her manners not so tall as they were at home. a woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion. if they be great only on their own ground, and demure and restless in a new house, they have all to learn. if people were all true, we should feel that all persons were infinitely deep natures. but now in an evening party you have no variety of persons, but only one person. for, say what you 116 (age 35 journal will, to whom you will, — they shall all render one and the same answer, without thought, without heart, — a conversation of the lips. ... chaucer. — the religion of the early english wits is anomalous ; so devout, and so blasphemous, in the same breath. the merriest tale concludes — thus endeth here my tale of januarie, god blesse us, and his moder, seinte marie. chaucer. chaucer's canon had such wit and art, that he could turn upside down all the ground between here and canterbury, and pave it with silver and gold, yet was “his overest sloppe not worth a mite.” he is too wise, in faith, as i believe; thing that is overdone, it will not preve aright, as clerkés say; it is a vice. wherefore in that i hold him lewd and nice; for, when a man hath over great a wit, full oft it happeth to misusen it. we do not justice to ourselves in conversation. an agreeable instance of this i have repeatedly remarked, — when a man warmly opposes in conversation your opinion, even to an 1838] numbers. sanity. 117 extreme, and afterwards, in his public discourse, tempers his opposition so freely with your thought that it is scarcely opposition. religion. our religion stands on numbers of believers. a very bad sign. whenever the appeal is made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers, – proclamation is then and there made that religion is not. he that finds god a sweet, enveloping thought to him, never counts his company. insanity. — swedenborg said insanity was a screen; so i think are the active trades and professions that employ and educate and restrain so many thousands of unbelievers. we are screened from premature ideas. one of the tests of sanity is repose. i demand of a great spirit entire self-command. he must be free and detached, and take the world up into him, and not suggest the idea of a restless soul bestridden alway by an invisible rider. he must not be feverish, but free. a divine man, be assured, will not be impudent. an angel may indeed come to heliodorus all wrath, but its terror will be beautiful." 1 mr. emerson took great delight in the head of the avenging angel in raphael's stanza in the vatican. 118 journal [age 35 i am very sensible to beauty in the human form, in children, in boys, in girls, in old men, and old women. no trait of beauty i think escapes me. so am i to beauty in nature: a clump of flags in a stream, a hill, a wood, a path running into the woods, captivate me as i pass. if you please to tell me that i have no just relish for the beauty of man or of nature, it would not disturb me certainly. i do not know but it may be so, and that you have so much juster, deeper, richer knowledge, as that i, when i come to know it, shall say the same thing. but now your telling me that i do not love nature will not in the least annoy me. i should still have a perfect conviction that, love it, or love it not, every bough that waved, every cloud that floated, every water ripple is and must remain a minister to me of mysterious joy. but i hear occasionally young people dwelling with emphasis on beauties of nature, which may be there or may not, but which i do not catch, and blind, at the same time, to the objects which give me most pleasure. i am quite unable to tell the difference, only i see that they are less easily satisfied than i; that they talk where i would be silent, and clamorously demand my delight where it is not spontaneous. i fancy the love of nature of such persons is rhetorical. 1838] loving nature. trust 119 if, however, i tell them, as i am moved to do, that i think they are not susceptible of this pleasure, straightway they are offended, and set themselves at once to prove to me with many words that they always had a remarkable delight in solitude and in nature. they even affirm it with tears. then can i not resist the belief that the sense of joy from every pebble, stake, and dry leaf is not yet opened in them. “hope, the master element of a commanding genius.” — coleridge, “macbeth.” i doubt the statement. there is somewhat low in hope. faith or trust, yes, trust, the conviction that all is well, that good and god is at the centre, will always rest as basis to the intellectual and outward activity of a great man, but this may coexist with great despondence and apathy as to the present order of things and of persons. november 7. freedom. — i will, i think, no longer do things unfit for me. why should i act the part of the silly women who send out invitations to many persons, and receive each billet of acceptance as if it were a pistol-shot? why should i read lectures with care and pain and afflict myself with 120 journal (age 35 all the meanness of ticket-mongering, when i might sit, as god in his goodness has enabled me, a free, poor man with wholesome bread and warm clothes, though without cakes or gew-gaws, and write and speak the beautiful and formidable words of a free man? if you cannot be free, be as free as you can. november 8. the asylums of the mind.— i have said on a former page that natural science always stands open to us as any asylum, and that, in the conflict with the common cares, we throw an occasional affectionate glance at lichen and fungus, barometer and microscope, as cities of refuge to which we can one day flee, if the worst come to the worst. another asylum is in the exercise of the fancy. puck and oberon, tam o'shanter and lili's park, the troubadours and old ballads are bowers of joy that beguile us of our woes, catch us up into short heavens and drown all remembrance, and that too without a death-tramp of eumenides being heard close behind, as behind other revels. better still it is to soar into the heaven of invention, and coin fancies of our own, weave a web of dreams as gay and beautiful as any of these our brothers have done, and learn by bold attempt our own riches. as the re 1838) the mind's asylums 121 body is rested and refreshed by riding in the saddle after walking, and by walking again after the saddle, or as new muscles are called into play in climbing a hill, and then in descending, or walking on the plain, an analogous joy and strength flows from this exercise. let no man despise these entertainments as if it were mere luxury and the drunkard's bowl. these airy realms of perpetual joy are also in nature, and what they are may well move the deep wonder and inquisition of the coldest and surliest philosopher. so is music an asylum. it takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who weare, and for what, whence, and whereto. all the great interrogatories, like questioning angels, float in onits waves of sound. “away, away,” said richter to it, “thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless being i have found not and shall not find.” so is beauty an asylum. asylums; books, natural science, fancy, music, beauty. everything must have its flower or effort at the beautiful, finer or coarser according to its stuff. the architect not only makes sewers and offices, but halls and chapels. the carpenter 122 journal (age 35 of a village farmhouse expends his taste and ornament on the front door; the cook rejoices in his dinner, the laborer has his sunday clothes, the poorest irish scullion has her ribbon and tags of finery. and in society the senses, the appetites, the life of the actual world, has also its virtues or seemings. thus, in the planting states, where the whole culture is a culture of appearance, exists what is called a romantic state of society, and the wine-bibber and drabber is yet required to meet blow with blow, and pistol with pistol. ... it makes little difference, the circumstance.' obedience or disobedience is all. we read lear and hate the unkind daughters. but meantime perhaps our fathers and mothers find us hard and forgetful. we swell the cry of horror at the slave-holder, and we treat our laborer or grocer or farmer as a thing, and so hold slaves ourselves. not always shall we need to avoid society. when many men have been bred with god they are able to know god in each other. yea, who1 this is preceded by several sentences used in the first few pages of " history.” 1838] compensations 123 ever has come to a steady communion with him can well come into society. remember hampden's letter to eliot. am er a let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that i am persecuted whenever i am contradicted. no man, i think, had ever a greater well-being with a less desert than i. i can very well afford to be accounted bad or foolish by a few dozen or a few hundred persons, – i who see myself greeted by the good expectation of so many friends far beyond any power of thought or communication of thought residing in me. besides, i own, i am often inclined to take part with those who say i am bad or foolish, for i fear i am both. i believe and know there must be a perfect compensation. i know too well my own dark spots. not having myself attained, not satisfied myself, far from a holy obedience, — how can i expect to satisfy others, to command their love? a few sour faces, a few biting paragraphs,—is but a cheap expiation for all these short-comings of mine. november 9. with the vision of this world the fugitive measures of time and space shall vanish. spirits 124 journal : [age 35 can crowd eternity into an hour, or stretch an hour to eternity." ers this superstition about magnitude and duration is a classification for beginners introductory to the real classification of cause and. effect, as the linnæan botany gives way to the natural classes of jussieu. why should that complex fact we call assyria, with its hundreds of years, its thousands of miles, its millions of souls, be to me more than a violet which i pluck out of the grass? it stands for about so much; it awakens perchance not so much emotion and thought. i surely shall not cumber myself to make it more. everything passes for what it is worth. shakspear.read lear yesterday and hamlet today with new wonder, and mused much on the great soul whose authentic signs flashed on my sight in the broad continuous daylight of these poems. especially i wonder at the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of life and intellectual superiority find in us all in connexion with our utter incapacity to produce anything like it. the superior tone of hamlet 1 the editors have not been able to find the source of this quotation which occurs also in « the over-soul.” 1838] hamlet and lear 125 in all the conversations how perfectly preserved, without any mediocrity, much less any dulness in the other speakers. how real the loftiness! an inborn gentleman; and above that, an exalted intellect. what incessant growth and plenitude of thought, pausing on itself never an instant; and each sally of wit sufficient to save the play. how true then and unerring the earnest of the dialogue, as when hamlet talks with the queen! how terrible his discourse! what less can be said of the perfect mastery, as by a superior being, of the conduct of the drama, as the free introduction of this capital advice to the players; the commanding good sense which never retreats except before the godhead which inspires certain passages, — the more i think of it, the more i wonder. i will think nothing impossible to man. no parthenon, no sculpture, no picture, no architecture can be named beside this. all this is perfectly visible to me and to many, — the wonderful truth and mastery of this work, of these works, yet for our lives could not i, or any man, or all men, produce anything comparable to one scene in hamlet or lear. with all my admiration of this life-like picture, set me to pro126 (age 35 journal ducing a match for it, and i should instantly depart into mouthing rhetoric. now why is this, that we know so much better than we do? that we do not yet possess ourselves, and know at the same time that we are much more? '... one other fact shakspear presents us; that not by books are great poets made. somewhat, and much he unquestionably owes to his books; but you could not find in his circumstances the history of his poem. it was made without hands in his invisible world. a mightier magic than any learning, the deep logic of cause and effect he studied : its roots were cast so deep, therefore it flung out its branches so high. i find no good lives. i would live well, i seem to be free to do so, yet i think with very little respect of my way of living; it is weak, partial, not full and not progressive. but i do not see any other that suits me better. the scholars are shiftless and the merchants are dull. expression of faces. — in many faces we are 1 the rest of the passage is printed in « the over-soul,” as to jove nodding to jove, and the arab sheiks (essays, first series, p. 278). 1838] the face. shakspear 127 struck with the fact that magnitude is nothing, proportion is all. a brow may be so formed that in its few square inches i may receive the impression of vast spaces: what amplitude ! what fields of magnanimity! of trust! of humanity! november 10. [the opening entry of this date is the passage in “history” (page 6) as to our reading as superior beings and in the grandest strokes of the author feeling most at home. also about our sympathy with riches and character. this is followed by the passage in “intellect” as to our being draughtsmen in dreams (essays, first series, p. 337).] shakspear fills us with wonder the first time we approach him. we go away and work and think, for years, and come again,he astonishes us anew. then having drank deeply and saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of him for another period of years. by and by we return, and there he stands immeasurable as at first. we have grown wiser, but only that we should see him wiser than ever. he resembles a high mountain which the traveller sees in the morning and thinks he shall quickly near it and 128 (age 35 journal pass it and leave it behind. but he journeys all day till noon, till night. there still is the dim mountain close by him, having scarce altered its bearings since the morning light. my brave henry thoreau walked with me to walden this afternoon and complained of the proprietors who compelled him, to whom, as much as to any, the whole world belonged, to walk in a strip of road and crowded him out of all the rest of god's earth. he must not get over the fence: but to the building of that fence he was no party. suppose, he said, some great proprietor, before he was born, had bought up the whole globe. so had he been hustled out of nature. not having been privy to any of these arrangements, he does not feel called on to consent to them, and so cuts fishpoles in the woods without asking who has a better title to the wood than he. i defended, of course, the good institution as a scheme, not good, but the best that could be hit on for making the woods and waters and fields available to wit and worth, and for restraining the bold, bad man. at all events, i begged him, having this maggot of freedom and humanity in his brain, to write it out into good poetry and so clear himself of 1838] thoreau. property 129 it. he replied, that he feared that that was not the best way, that in doing justice to the thought, the man did not always do justice to himself, the poem ought to sing itself: if the man took too much pains with the expression, he was not any longer the idea himself. i acceded and confessed that this was the tragedy of art that the artist was at the expense of the man; and hence, in the first age, as they tell, the sons of god printed no epics, carved no stone, painted no pictures, built no railroad; for the sculpture, the poetry, the music, and architecture, were in the man. and truly bolts and bars do not seem to me the most exalted or exalting of our institutions. and what other spirit reigns in our intellectual works? we have literary property. the very recording of a thought betrays a distrust that there is any more, or much more, as good for us. if we felt that the universe was ours, that we dwelled in eternity, and advance into all wisdom, we should be less covetous of these sparks and cinders. why should we covetously build a saint peter's, if we had the seeing eye which beheld all the radiance of beauty and majesty in the matted grass and the overarching boughs? why should a man spend years upon the carving an apollo, who looked 130 journal (age 35 apollos into the landscape with every glance he threw?' always pay, for first or last you must pay your entire expense.” . . should not the will be dramatised in a man who, put him where you would, commanded, and who saw what he willed come to pass? 3... a supreme commander over all his passions and affections as much as hampden, yet the secret of his power is higher than that. it is god in the hands. men and women are his game: where they are, he cannot be without resource. shall i introduce you to mr. r? to madame b? “no,” he replies, “introduction is for dolls: i have business with a and with b.”. i this walk with thoreau seems to have suggested the conversation in "the conservative," between the protesting youth and the men of the established order (nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 306, 307). 2 here follows the sentence thus beginning in “ compensation” (p. 113). it is immediately followed by the concluding sentences in “self-reliance,” as to easy days being deceptive, peace only to come from yourself. 3 here follows the long passage about cæsar and men of that stamp in “ eloquence” (society and solitude, pp. 78, 79). 1838] will woman's power 131 will never consults the law, or prudence, or uses any paltry expedient, like that falsely ascribed to saint paul about the unknown god. tricks, saith will, for little folks. i am dearer to you than your laws, for which neither you nor i care a pin. he is a cool fellow. everybody in the street reminds us of somewhat else. will or reality reminds you of nothing else. it takes place of the whole creation. “ he'd harpit a fish out of saut water, or water out of a stone, or milk out of a maiden's breast that bairn had never none." the counterpart to this master in my drama should be a maiden, one of those natural magnets who make place and a court where they are. she should serve in menial office and they who saw her should not know it, for what she touched she decorated, and what she did the stars and moon do stoop to see. but this magnetism should not be meant for him and he should only honor it as he went by. it is to work on others, on another as a balance to him, or, if i may refine so far, another richmond, a i “glenkindie,” in child's english and scottish ballads. 2 " i think there be six richmonds in the field.” shakspear, richard iii, last scene. 132 journal (age 35 transmuted will infused into form and now unconscious, yet omnipotent as before and in a sweeter way. november 12. i could forgive your want of faith if you had any knowledge of the uttermost that man could be and do, if arithmetic could predict the last possibilities of instinct. but men are not made like boxes, a hundred or thousand to order, and all exactly alike, of known dimension, and all their properties known; but no, they come into nature through a nine months' astonishment, and of a character, each one, incalculable, and of extravagant possibilities. out of darkness and out of the awful cause they come to be caught up into this vision of a seeing, partaking, acting and suffering life, not foreknown, not fore-estimable, but slowly or speedily they unfold new, unknown, mighty traits : not boxes, but these machines are alive, agitated, fearing, sorrowing. great men.— i like the rare, extravagant spirits who disclose to me new facts in nature. always, i doubt not, men of god have, from time to time, walked among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer. hence evidently the tri1838] the great 133 pod, the priest, the inspired priestess with the divine afflatus. they saw it was not of the common, natural life; they felt its consonance with the inmost constitution of man and revered it, without the attempt to reconcile it to the actual life. swedenborg is now scarce yet appreciable. shakspear has for the first time in our time found adequate criticism, if indeed ye have yet found it. coleridge, lamb, schlegel, goethe, very, herder. the great facts of history are four or five names : homer, phidias, jesus, shakspear, — one or two names more i will not add, but see what these names stand for. all civil history and all philosophy consists of endeavors more or less vain to explain these persons. november 13. yesterday h.g.o. blake'spent with me; and departed this morning. we walked in the woods to the cliff, to the spring, and had social music. ah, memory, dear daughter of god! thy 1 harrison gray otis blake of worcester, thoreau's friend and correspondent, and the editor of some of his works. he was a man of great sincerity, modesty, refinement, and personal charm. 134 journal (age 35 blessing is million-fold. the poor, short, lone fact that dies at the birth, thou catchest up and bathest in immortal waters. then a thousand times over it lives and acts again, each time transfigured, ennobled. then in solitude and darkness, i walk over again my sunny walks ; in streets behold again the shadows of my grey birches in the still river; hear the joyful voices of my brothers, a thousand times over; and vibrate anew to the tenderness and dainty music of the early poetry i fed upon in boyhood. as fair to me the clump of flags that bent over the water, as if to see its own beauty below, one evening last summer, as any plants that are growing there today. at this hour, the stream is flowing, though i hear it not; the plants are drinking their accustomed life, and repaying it with their beautiful forms, but i need not wander thither. it flows for me, and they grow for me in the returning images of former summers. “fire,” aunt mary said, “was a great deal of company”; and so is there company, i find, in water. it animates the solitude. then somewhat nearer to human society is in the hermit birds that harbor in the wood. i can do well for weeks with no other society than the partridge and the jay, my daily company. so 1838] children. word-blight 135 “the miraculous,” said sampson reed, “is the measure of our alienation from god.” it is so in persons as much as in facts. ... the child is a realization of a remembrance, and our love of the child is an acknowledgment of the beauty of human nature. the soul subtends the same angle in the child and in the man. the proportion of each is the same, and the central power and magnitude, whether of space or time, disappears in the eye of god. gladly i would solve, if i could, this problem of a vocabulary which, like some treacherous, wide shoal, waylays the tall bark, the goodly soul, and there it founders and suffers shipwreck. in common life, every man is led by the nose by a verb. even the great and gifted do not escape, but with great talents and partial inspiration have local cramps, withered arms and mortification. proportion is not. every man is lobsided, and even holding in his hands some authentic token and gift of god, holds it awry. it must be from everlasting and from the infinitude of god, that when god speaketh, he should then and there exist; should fill the world with his voice, should scatter forth light, 136 journal [ace 35 nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole.'... the present hour is the descending god, and all things obey: all the past exists to it as subordinate: all the future is contained in it. all things are made sacred by relation to it, one thing as much as another. it smooths down the mountainous differences of appearance, and breathes one life through creation from side to side. . . . if a man interposes betwixt you and your maker, himself or some other person or persons, believe him not: god has better things for you. this should be plain enough; yet see how great and vivacious souls, with grand truths in their keeping, do fail in faith to see god face to face, to see time pass away and be no more, and to utter directly from him that which he would give them to say; but rather imprison it in the old hebrew language, mimick david, jeremiah and paul and disbelieve that god, who maketh the stars and stones sing, can speak our english tongue in massachusetts and give as deep and glad a melody to it as shall make the whole world and all coming ages ring with the passage thus beginning occupies most of p. 66, of “self-reliance." sentences not there given are retained. 1838] the soul's gratitude 137 the sound. be assured we shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives.' ... november 14. this palsy of tradition goes so far that when a soul in which the intellectual activity is a balance for the veneration (whose excess seems to generate this love of the old word) renounces the superstition out of love for the primary teaching in his heart, the doctors of the church are not glad, as they ought to be, that a new and original confirmation comes to the truth, but they curse and swear because he scorns their idolatry of the nouns and verbs, the vellum and ink, in which the same teaching was anciently conveyed. ... i said, in the wood, to the soul, that i received thankfully the reprieve which kind and candid opinions make to the dark and steep and painful road which truth must travel, and it seemed to me the while that man never appears to such advantage as in the act of acknowledgment with melting eye and plaintive voice. i here follows a long passage to be found in “ self-reliance” (pp. 67, 68). 2 the rest of the passage, on the highest truth of this subject, is mainly to be found in “ self-reliance” (p. 68). 138 (age 35 journal what is the hardest task in the world? to think.' ... musical eyes. — i think sometimes that my lack of musical ear is made good to me through my eyes. that which others hear, i see. all the soothing, plaintive, brisk or romantic moods which corresponding melodies waken in them, i find in the carpet of the wood, in the margin of the pond, in the shade of the hemlock grove, or in the infinite variety and rapid dance of the treetops as i hurry along. erners knowledge of character. — we are all born discerners of spirits. ... november 15. a pathetic thing it is, that we allow men of talents, and characters in which we are interested, to which we are naturally allied, to go by us without heed and the tribute of our sympathy, because of our momentary preoccupation with some nearer object. use hospitality to thoughts. one wise word. — a single remark indicating wisdom characterizes the person who made i see « intellect” (essays, first series, p. 331). 2 for the rest of the passage, see “ the over-soul” (pp. 285, 286). e a te ani co 1838] keep the will true 139 it. all we know of him is these dozen words; yet patiently, with a good assurance, we wait until he shall make good that pledge in a whole orbit as grand as that curve. november 16. all we are responsible for is the will. but your will cannot always make you appear well. in the presence of a man or woman of elegance and fashionable manners, you do not play a quite manly part. where is your wisdom? why falters the word of truth on your tongue, and comes so lamely and inarticulately off? why do you defer to such persons? have you not been taught of god that all things are yours? why should you decline from the state of truth, and vail your manly supremacy to a woman or a fine gentleman? it is in vain these questions are asked: you have asked them yourself. you cannot do otherwise. admit your weakness. do not be disturbed by it. keep your will true and erect, and, by and by, this rebellious blood, this painful suppleness, this epilepsy of the wit, will pass away imperceptibly, and the whole man shall be the faithful organ of the wisdom which is no respecter of persons. books. – you are wrong in demanding of the 140 journal (age 35 bible more than can be in a book. its only defect is that it is a book, and not alive. “seek ye first the kingdom of god, and all these things shall be added unto you.” what! art? hamlets ? ballads? the life is more than meat and the body than raiment. the soul. — he judgeth every man, yet is judged of no man. november 17. the traveller. — it occurs to me that, in remembrance of my own extreme needs when i was in europe, i ought to keep by me a blankbook to be called “the traveller,” and from time to time insert in it the names and places of such objects as a student of art or of natural beauty or of history should especially visit. so shall i have a useful gift for those who, having eyes, cross the ocean. i am reminded of this project by the notice of giotto's frescoes at pisa in coleridge's table-talk, vol. i, pp. 123, 124. see also ibidem, p. 138. “poets are guardians of admiration in the hearts of the people.” fine offices are discharged by the men of literary and poetic faculty every2281 1838] beauty soothes 141 where. each has certain opinions, tastes, shades of thought, which go at large in the great common world of men, of books, selecting every connate fact, particle, word, relation, work of art, until, by and by, that which was or might seem a mere whimsy or trifle not worth the entertainment of a thought has grown to some size and is ready to be born. jones very said to me in the woods, one might forget here that the world was desart and empty, all the people wicked, ... and [ignored?] the whole refreshment or consolatory aspect of the natural sciences, of the telescope and barometer. in coleridge's table-talk, vol. i, p. 129, i find the following: “john thelwall had something very good in him. we were once sitting in a beautiful recess in the quantocks, when i said to him, “citizen john, this is a fine place to talk treason in !' 'nay, citizen samuel,' replied he, it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!”” november 18. the infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes.... i the rest of this passage occurs in “ the over-soul” (pp. 286, 287). 142 journal (age 35 the swedenborgian violates the old law of rhetoric and philosophy, nec deus intersit dignus nisi vindice nodus, in its forcible interposing of a squadron of angels for the transmission of thought from god to man. i say, i think, or i receive, in proportion to my obedience, truth from god; i put myself aside, and let him be. the new churchman says: no; that would kill you, if god should directly shine into you: there is an immense continuity of mediation. as if that bridged the gulf from the infinite to the finite by so much as one plank. would he not kill the highest angel into whom he shone just as quick? november 25. at portsmouth mr. haven described the passage to the guillotine of manuel and general houchard, as he saw it in paris. alfred haven remarked (when i said that universalism certainly covered a truth) that never a soul was without hope of life everlasting, and of course no soul was ever fully convinced that it deserved hell, and of course god would justify his act to the soul of the sinner. rse c i remember that when i preached my first sermon in concord, “on showing piety at 1838] teaching from within 143 home,” dr. ripley remarked on the frequent occurrence of the word virtue in it, and said his people would not understand it, for the largest part of them, when virtue was spoken of, understood chastity. i do not imagine, however, that the people thought any such thing. it was an old-school preacher's contractedness. the great distinction between teachers sacred or literary; between poets like herbert and poets like warton ; between philosophers like coleridge and philosophers like mackintosh; between talkers like reed and very and talkers like walker and ripley, is, that, one class speak ab intra, and the other class, ab extra. it is of no use to preach to me ab extra. i can do that myself. jesus preaches always ab intra, and so infinitely distinguishes himself from all others. in that is the miracle. that includes the miracle. my soul believes beforehand that it ought so to be. that is what i mean when i say i look for a teacher, as all men do say. if however you preach ab extra, at least confess it.' i all of the above entry is, in substance, in « the oversoul” (p. 287), but is here given because of the difference in the authors named, and because of its relation to what follows. 144 journal (age 35 say, “ come let us do thus and so,” and not affect to say, “come thou up hither.” for thy pretension deceives nobody. thy body, i can see well enough, stands above me in a pulpit: but thy soul, i can see as well, stands down on my own, or even a lower level. that is the essential distinction of genius, the charm of its every syllable, — that they are an emanation of that very thing or reality they tell of, and not merely an echo or picture of it. see these lines of edward powell to fletcher : « fletcher, whose wit was not an accident to the soul, but it; only diffused; thus we the same sun call moving i’ the sphere or shining on a wall.” how incalculable and potent seem to me the strokes and glances of a few mystics, saints and philosophers whom i have seen and reverenced, living within the veil of their sanctuaries ! how feeble and calculable the uttermost that modish divines, writers, and readers can say! this is the reason why you must respect all your private impressions. a few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you 1838) real teachers 145 measure them by the ordinary standards of history. do not, for this, a moment doubt their value to you. they relate to you, to your peculiar gift. let them have all their weight, and do not reject them and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in english literature. swedenborg taught ab intra; and in music beethoven, and whosoever like him grandly renounces all forms, societies and laws as impediments and lives in, on, and for his genius and guiding idea. how great the influence of such ! how it rebukes, how it invites and raises me! my soul answers them saying, “so it is, even as i have heard: it is no dream: god is; and there is a heaven for his saints; and that heaven is obedience to him, i hear ye what ye say, great servants of my lord! i also believe; lord, help mine unbelief !” the fine account i read of beethoven was translated from bettina von arnim's correspondence with goethe, in a notice of that book in the (london) gentleman's magazine for october, 1838. a man of letters who goes into fashionable society on their terms and not on his own makes a fool of himself. why i should be 146 journal [age 35 given up to that shame so many times after so much considered experience, i cannot tell. heaven has good purposes in these often mortifications, perchance. it is strange to me how sensible i am to circumstances. i know not how it is, but in the streets i feel mean. if a man should accost me in washington street and call me base fellow! i should not be sure that i could make him feel by my answer and behaviour that my ends were worthy and noble. if the same thing should occur in the country i should feel no doubt at all that i could justify myself to his conscience. sir thomas browne. george haven, at portsmouth, read me noble passages in sir thomas browne's writings. how inward he is! what a true example of the noble daring of a thinker who sees that the soul alone is real, and that it is a true wisdom to launch abroad into its deep, and push his way as far as any glimmer of light is given, though the element and i compare what is said of saadi (used in that place for the ideal poet) in the verse beginning, “ god only knew how saadi dined.” see poems, appendix, “fragments on the poet and the poetic gift," v, p. 325. 18387 thought-hunting 147 the path be in wild contradiction to any use or practice of this world. boys and girls. — the strong bent of nature is very prettily seen in the winning, half-artful, half-artless ways of young girls in the middle classes who go into the shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper and talk half an hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy.' .... november 26. impotent creatures that we are! stung by this desire for thought, we run up and down into booksellers' shops, into colleges, into athenæums, into the studies of learned men. the moment we receive a new thought, it is the identical thing we had before with a new mask, and therefore, though hailed as authentic, yet as soon as we have received it, we desire another new one, we are not really enriched. but when we receive it we are beatified for the time. we seem to be capable of all thought. we are on a level then with all intelligences. we cast all books and teachers behind us. what have i to do with means, when i am in the presence 1 here occurs the passage in “ love” (p. 173), on wholesome village boy and girl relations. 148 [age 35 journal of the infinite light? and yet, familiar as that state of mind is, the books of bacon and leibnitz still retain their value from age to age. so impassable is, at last, that thin, imperceptible boundary between perfect understanding of the author, perfect fellowship with him, quasi consciousness of the same gifts, and the faculty of subordinating that rapture to the will in such degree as to be able ourselves to conjoin and record our states of mind. i have written above that the price of the picture indicates the odds that exist against the appearance of a genius pure as raphael or angelo. so is the glory of the name of shakspear, bacon, milton, an index of the exceeding difficulty with which the reader who perfectly understands what they say, and sees no reason why he should not continue the sentence, overleaps that invisible barrier and continues the sentence. whilst he reads, the drawbridge is down. nothing hinders that he should pass with the author. when he assays to write lo suddenly! the draw is up, and will not down.' i the latter part of this entry occurred in the third lecture of the course on “human life,” called “school.” see abstracts in cabot's memoir, appendix f, 1838. 1838] theory. cant. fear 149 november 27. the brilliant young student full of philosophy and happy in the faculty of unfolding and illustrating his theories, should dread his own theories. they are snares for his own feet. we put our love where we have put our labor. having done so well, having won so much praise by them, and so many opinions, how can he turn his back on them and follow the great light of truth to which these were only porches ? yet must you leave your theory, as joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. i have no less disgust than any other at the cant of spiritualism. i had rather hear a round volley of ann street oaths than the affectation of that which is divine on the foolish lips of coxcombs. the man who fears and is therefore intolerant indicates at once that he is not yet grounded in the soul: for lack of his natural root, he clings by tendrils of affection to society, may hap to what is best and greatest in it, and in calm t it will not appear that he is adrift and not moored; but let any disorder take place in society, any revolution of custom, of law, of opinion, and instantly his whole type of perma150 journal [age 35 nence is rudely shaken. in the disorder of society, universal disorder seems to him to take place, chaos is come again, and his despair takes at first the form of rage and hatred against the act or actor which has broken the seeming peace of nature, but the fact is, he was already a driving wreck before the wind arose, which merely revealed to him his vagabond state. if a man is at one with the soul and in all things obeyeth it, society becomes to him at once a fair show and reflection of that which he knoweth beforehand in himself. if anyone affirm a strange doctrine, or do a wild deed, or if any perversity or profligacy appears in the whole society, he will see it for what it is, and grieve for it as a man and member of society, but it will not touch him with resentment, it will not cast one shadow over the lofty brow of the soul. the soul will not grieve. the soul sits behind there in a serene peace; no jot or tittle of its convictions can either be shaken or confirmed. it sees already in the ebullition of sin the simultaneous remedy arising. this is the city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is god. ene phrenology and animal magnetism are studied a little in the spirit in which alchemy and witch1838) one mind. tests. man 151 craft or the black art were, namely, for power. that vitiates and besmirches them and makes them black arts. all separation of the soul's things from the soul is suicidal. so are phrenology and animal magnetism damned.' extremes meet : the sublime of war in the iliad meets the doctrine of one mind. hector says to ajax:— . exchange some gift, that greece and troy may say, not hate, but glory, made these chiefs contend and each brave foe was in his soul a friend. iliad, book vir. the test of a religion or philosophy is the number of things it can explain : so true is it. but the religion of our churches explains neither art nor society nor history, but itself needs explanation. whence this fact that the natural history of man has never been written?... whence, but because god inhabits man and cannot be known but by god? the ancients affirmed the incorruptibility of i compare « demonology” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 25). 2 compare «the over-soul” (essays, first series, p. 367). 152 journal (age 35 the world : modern geology teaches the same doctrine in the perpetual renewing of what is perpetually consumed. races pass and perish; cities rise and fall, like the perpetual succession of shells on the beach ; and the sound of the waters and the colors of the flower, cloud, and the voice of man are as new and affecting today as at any moment in the vast past. cou [on december 5, mr. emerson began his course of ten lectures in boston, one a week, the subject being “human life,” as follows:i, doctrine of the soul (parts of this were printed later in “the over-soul”); ii, home; iii, school; iv, love; v, genius; vi, the protest; vii, tragedy; viii, comedy; ix, duty; x, demonology.] authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1838 [as has been mentioned in a previous volume, certain standard authors, and the favorites of mr. emerson, most frequently referred to in the journals, will be omitted from the lists; viz., homer, plato, plutarch, cicero, virgil, horace, juvenal, montaigne, bacon, shakspear, ben jonson, beaumont and fletcher, donne, herous 1838] reading 153 rick, herbert, sir thomas browne, jeremy taylor, pascal, newton, fénelon, young, pope, pitt, johnson, swedenborg, gibbon, de staël, wordsworth, scott, landor, coleridge, byron. in spite of the frequent mention of plotinus, proclus, and the other neo-platonists, and of the oriental scriptures and poets, these names will appear in the list, as shedding light on the question when mr. emerson was reading them. goethe and carlyle will also be mentioned. the names of the books, which appear year by year, charged to mr. emerson in the record of the boston athenæum library are also given. it must be borne in mind that often the authors are not quoted directly, but mr. emerson came upon some passage from their works in another writer's book.] de menu, institutes of ; buddha; zoroaster; confucius; xenophanes ; pindar; herodotus; thucydides; polybius ; terence; plautus; pliny the elder ; martial ; epictetus; seneca ; galen; hermes trismegistus; synesius; proclus; roger bacon; dante, purgatorio; chaucer, griselda ; erasmus; michel angelo, sonnets; sir thomas more ; troubadours ; ballads; 154 journal (age 35 luther ; richard edwards ; calvin ; giordano bruno; richard hooker ; sir philip sidney; kepler ; boehmen, aurora; thomas hobbes; john hampden, letters to eliot ; cudworth; marvell; charles cotton; dryden; pepys, diary; newton; leibnitz; rousseau; voltaire ; spence, anecdotes; linnæus; winckelmann, history of art; warton; lessing; james bruce, travels ; spinoza; niebuhr; horne tooke (john horne); herschel ; herder; sir william jones, translations of asiatic poetry; bentham; goethe, william meister, farbenlebre, faust, iphigenia ; thomas taylor; burns, tam o'shanter; heeren, leading peoples. of the ancient world; fichte; schleiermacher; humboldt; schlegel; bettina von arnim, letters to goethe ; charles lamb; o'connell, correspondence with stevenson ; miss jane porter, novels ; spurzheim; davy, chemistry; belzoni, discoveries in the pyramids ; sir charles bell, on the hand; dr. william ellery channing; jane taylor, 1838] reading 155 poems; daniel webster; southey, kebama; o'meara, napoleon ; andrews norton ; sprague, centennial ode; guizot; caillaud, travels; miss catherine m. sedgwick, novels ; cousin; sylvester graham, bread and bread-making; jouffroy ; jussieu ; george b. emerson ; carlyle; hugh williamson; tennyson ; dickens, oliver twist; jones very; sampson reed; henry d. thoreau, poems; w. ellery channing, poems; north american and edinburgh reviews, foreign quarterly, london quarterly, fraser's and blackwood's magazines. journal boston lectures symposia visitors jones very. edward palmer the white mountains journal xxx 1839 (from journals d and e) for virtue's whole sum is to know and dare. donne. still lives the song, though regnar dies, – fill high the cups again! sterling [the course of lectures on “human life," begun in december, 1838, lasted until the latter part of february. it was interfered with by the sleeplessness of which mr. emerson speaks, and, later, by weakening colds. these made the course seem unsatisfactory to him, and he told his audience that he had meant to round out the series by two more lectures, one on the limitations of human activity by the laws of the world, and one on the intrinsic powers and resources of our nature. yet mr. alcott, on returning from the sixth lecture (“the protest"), wrote in his journal: “emerson has triumphed, ... the large hall in the temple was filled; and the audience, the choicest that could begathered in new england.” of the closing lecture he wrote: “the perora160 journal (age 35 tion was grand. he dwelt for a moment on the spirit in which his word had been conceived and uttered; on the inscrutability of the soul, its marvellous fact; the feeble insight which he had been suffered to get of it. the audience was larger than on any former evening.”] (from d) january 1, 1839. adjourned the promised lecture on genius until wednesday week, on account of my unaccountable vigils now for four or five nights, which destroy all power of concentration by day. sunday, january 6. it seemed to me at church today that the communion service, as it is now and here celebrated, is a document of the dulness of the race. then presently, when i thought of the divine soul of my nazarene whose name is used here, and considered how these my good neighbors, the bending deacons with their cups and plates, would have straightened themselves to sturdiness if the proposition came before them to honor thus a known fellow-man, i was constrained to feel the force of genius that, hallowing once those hebrew lips, should propagate its influences thus -n 1839] names. plymouth. heat 161 far and not be quite utterly lost in these ultimate shoals and shores of our concord congregation. january 12. set your own rate.' ... let us call goose pond the drop, or god's pond. henry thoreau says, “ no; that will shock the people; call it satan's pond and they will like it, or still better, tom wyman's pond.” alas! say i, for the personality that eats us up. “seekest thou great things? seek them not.” — jeremiah, xiv, 5. february 3. returned last night from plymouth, where on thursday evening, 31 january, i read a lecture on genius; on friday afternoon, one on home; and in the evening, one on being and seeming. february 7. the drunkard retires on a keg and locks himself up for a three days' debauch. when i am sick, i please myself not less in retiring on a i the sentence thus beginning is in “spiritual laws” (essays, first series, p. 151), and is immediately followed by that about soulin dealing with a child (" the over-soul,” p. 279). 162 journal (age 35 salamander stove, heaping the chamber with fuel, and inundating lungs, liver, head and feet with floods of caloric, heats on heats. it is dainty to be sick, if you have leisure and convenience for it. how bland the aspect of all things! one sees the colors of the carpet and the paper-hangings. all the housemates have a softer, fainter look to the debilitated retina. yesterday i saw pencil sketches done by stewart newton whilst confined in the insane asylum a little before his death. they seemed to betray the richest invention, so rich as almost to say, why draw any line, since you can draw all? genius has given you the freedom of the universe, why then come within any walls? [written to james freeman clarke.] as soon as you once come up against a man's limitations, it is all over with him;'.... public speaking, not realism. — we see it advertised that mr. a. will deliver an oration on the fourth of july. ... 1 the passage thus beginning occurs in “circles” (essays, first series, p. 308). 2 the passage following is printed in “spiritual laws” (essays, first series, p. 152). 18391 falling. demonology 163 as soon as a child has left the room his strown toys become affecting. falling. — “it is as easy as falling.” — in nature nothing is done but in the cheapest way. when the fruit is ripe, it falls. when the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. the circuit of the waters is mere falling: the walking of man and all animals is a falling forward. all our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing, etc., are done by dint of continual falling; and the globe and the globes, earth, moon, sun, comet, star, fall forever and ever. nature works by short ways. february 8. memory is the deaf man's hearing and the blind man's sight. plutarch’s morals, vol. iv, p. 47. february 14. demonology seems to me to be the intensation of the individual nature, the extension of this beyond its due bounds and into the domain of the infinite' and universal. the faith in a genius; in a family destiny; in a ghost; in an amulet, is the projection of that instinctive care which the individual takes of his individuality beyond what is meet and into the region where 164 (age 35 journal the individuality is forever bounded by generic, cosmic and universal laws. yet i find traces of this usurpation in very high places, in christianity, for example. christianity, as it figures now in the history of ages, intrudes the element of a limited personality into the high place which nothing but spiritual energy can fill, representing that jesus can come in where a will is an intrusion, into growth, repentance, reformation. the divine will, or, the eternal tendency to the good of the whole, active in every atom, every moment, is the only will that can be supposed predominant a single hairbreadth beyond the lines of individual action and influence, as known to the experience; but a ghost, a jupiter, a fairy, a devil, and not less a saint, an angel, and the god of popular religion, as of calvinism, and romanism, is an aggrandized and monstrous individual will. the divine will, such as i describe it, is spiritual. these other things, though called spiritual, are not so, but only demonological; and fictions. february 15. walking. in the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs; the trunk is carried along almost motionless. 1839) plutarch. ellen 165 what fine traits plutarch gives epaminondas in his essay on the demon of socrates, representing him as taking no part in a bold attempt upon archias and the tyrants because his nature was averse to it; and, “he loves to be silent, said his father; he is very cautious how he proposeth anything, but will hear eternally, and is never weary of an instructive story." ellen was never alone. i could not imagine her poor and solitary. she was like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing beauty was society for itself, and she taught the eye that beheld her why beauty was ever painted with loyes and graces attending her steps. february 22. i closed on wednesday evening, 21 february, my course of lectures at the masonic temple in boston, on human life. the pathetic lies usually not in miseries, but petty losses and disappointments, as when the poor family have spent their little utmost upon a wedding or a christening festival, and their feast is dishonoured by some insult or petty disaster, — the falling of the salver, or the spoiling of a carpet. when i was a boy i was sent by my 166 journal (age 35 mother with a dollar bill, to buy me a pair of shoes at mr. baxter's shop, and i lost the bill; and remember being sent out by my disappointed mother to look among the fallen leaves under the poplar trees opposite the house for the lost bank note. my ambition.— when i was in college, robert barnwell, the first scholar in my class, put his hand on the back of my head to feel for the bump of ambition and pronounced that it was very, very small. would you know if the man is just, ask of the tax-gatherer. bambino. — “where's the cover that lives in this box?” asks little waldo. when he saw the dead bird, he said, “he was gone by-by”; then he said, “he was broke.” when dr. jackson smoked a cigar, waldo said, “see the cobwebs go up out of the gentleman's mouth.” february 25. yesterday morning, 24 february at 8 o'clock, a daughter was born to me, a soft, quiet, swarthy little creature, apparently perfect and healthy. my sacred child ! blessings on thy head, little 1839) the new ellen. memory 167 winter bud! and comest thou to try thy luck in this world, and know if the things of god are things for thee? well assured, and very soft and still, the little maiden expresses great contentment with all she finds, and her delicate but fixed determination to stay where she is, and grow. so be it, my fair child! lidian, who magnanimously makes my gods her gods, calls the babe ellen. i can hardly ask more for thee, my babe, than that name implies. be that vision, and remain with us, and after us.' march 3. the memory plays a great part in settling the intellectual rank of men. a seneschal of parnassus is mnemosyne. thus, am i a better scholar than one of my neighbors who visited me? i see how it is. we read the same books a year, two years, ten years ago; we read the same books this month. well, that fact which struck us both, then, with equal force, i still contemplate. he has lost it. he and the world have only this fact. i have that and this. a fine voice in a choir seems to inundate the i it was the fortune of ellen to be a joy and comfort to her father and mother in the home through all the years, and to take care of them in their last days. 168 [age 35 journal house with spouts and jets and streams of sound, and to float the old hulk of the choir itself, insinuating itself under all the droning groans and shrill screams and hurrying them all away, the spoils of its own stream. [on march 5, the symposium met at mr. morse's, the subject of the evening being “wonder and worship.” the next day mr. emerson gave a discourse, “ intellectual integrity,” before the mechanics' apprentices' association. again, on march 11, the symposium gathered at mr. morse's and conversed on “innocence and guilt.”] vanity, — we all wish to be of importance in one way or another. the child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claims on the company. no age in talk. — i make no allowance for youth in talking with my friends. if a youth or maiden converses with me i forget they are not as old as i am. young love. — the rude village boy teases the girls about the schoolhouse door.' ... 1 here follows the passage thus beginning in “ love” (essays, first series, p. 172). 1839) art hints. gentleman 169 mountain heads. — brant's head in stone's life of brant reminded me instantly of a mountain head, and the furrows of the brow suggest the strata of the summit. gladly i perceive this fine resemblance, for we like to reconcile man and the world in all ways. then i went to boston and saw allston's “sisters ” at alexander's room. there again were human forms more related to the lights of morning and evening than to human society as we know it. gentleman. when i consider how much it is to be a gentleman, how deep the elements of the gentleman lie in nature, i doubt if i should find anywhere among the privileged classes, and the select even of these, anyone who would not in some point of behaviour suggest vulgarity and imperfect breeding. non è nel mondo se non volgo. es [on the last day of january and the first of february mr. emerson by invitation gave three lectures at plymouth : “ genius,” “home,” and “being and seeming.” in february his friend james freeman clarke, then a young minister in louisville, kentucky, asked for some verses for his newspaper the western messenger, and mr. emerson sent him 170 journal (age 35 “good-bye," written in 1823, and “each and all,” founded on a boyish experience recorded in the journal, may 16, 1834, and turned into verse later.] march 9. the indo-american war of brant and gansevoort, etc., illustrate as well as any other the uninventive, the inventive. allsit still in the fort, persuaded that the militia cannot meet the british regulars and the dreadful indians. at last comes a restless, creative man, some general herkimer, or captain willett, and makes a sally to the woods to a distant fort, engages the indians, beats them, and shows the stupidity of the former sitting. instantly “they conquer who believe they can.” god invents: god advances. the world, the flesh, and the devil sit and rot. not less is all society an optical illusion to the young adventurer.' ... stay at home in god, and the whole population will do homage with cap and knee. general gates behaved with great delicacy to general burgoyne when he capitulated, in 1777, at saratoga. burgoyne mentions in a letter to 1 the rest of this passage is found in the first paragraph of “ politics” (essays, first series). 1839) preacher and hearer 171 the earl of derby, that when the british soldiers had marched out of their camp to the place where they were to pile their arms, not a man of the american troops was to be seen. (see stone's life of brant.) books. — “what's hecuba to him?” byron says of jack bunting, “ he knew not what to say, and so he swore." i may say it of our preposterous use of books, he knew not what to do, and so be read.'... march 10. i charge the church with a want of respect to the soul of the worshipper. the question every worshipper should ask of the preacher is,“ what is that to me? what have i to do with thee? what with thy fact; what with thy history; thy person; thine alleged inclinations, and aversions? i am here. behold thy tribunal. come with thy persons and facts to judgment.” and the church, the preacher should say, “soul of my brother, methinks i have glad tidings for thee. methinks i have found something of thine spoken by one jesus, by one zoroaster, by 1 the rest of the paragraph is printed in spiritual laws" (essays, first series, p. 164). 172 journal [age 35 one penn. hear and judge. — but now we are a mob; man does not stand in awe of man ;'..." i suppose that my desire to retain a church visible grows out of the present state of society, and that, in a right state, every meeting for practical, intellectual, or civic purposes would be predominated by the sentiment of holiness, and would yield the precise satisfactions i have in view, when i ask more sabbath than the eternal sabbath of action. vanity. — do not be so troublesome modest, you vain fellow. real modesty still puts the thing forward and postpones the person, nor worries me with endless apologies. “another state.”—i am weary of hearing at church of another state. when shall i hear the prophet of the present state? also the preacher admonishes his man not to bring a dishonor on religion by his misconduct. why not ask him not to shut his eyes for fear of putting out the sunshine ? isolation must precede society. i like the 1 the substance of what follows is in "self-reliance” (p. 71). 1839) peace by fidelity 173 silent church before the service begins better than any preaching.' ... es at church in the afternoon i doubted whether that dislocation, disunion, reflex life, second thought, that mars all our simplicity, be not an universal disease, and whether all literary pictures of nathan the wise, or whatever calm, placid philosopher, be not false and overcharged. howbeit, i thought it best to seek one peace by fidelity; and at least i would write my procrastinated letters. ... then again it seemed wise to sit at home contented with my work and word, and never rove into other men's acres more. why this needless visiting? if you can really serve them, they will visit you. one thing more. it is not by running after napoleon that the corresponding element, the napoleonism in you, is stimulated and matured; but by withdrawing from him, from all, back on the deeps of home. all history is in us. march 13. conversation.— the office of conversation is to give me self-possession. i lie torpid as a clod. i the rest of the passage is found in “ self-reliance” (pp. 71, 72). 174 journal (age 35 virtue, wisdom, sound to me fabulous, — all cant. i am an unbeliever. then comes by a safe and gentle spirit who spreads out in order before me his own life and aims, not as experience, but as the good and desirable. straightway i feel the presence of a new and yet old, a genial, a native element. i am like a southerner, who, having spent the winter in a polar climate, feels at last the south wind blow, the rigid fibres relax, and his whole frame expands to the welcome heats. in this bland, flowing atmosphere, i regain, one by one, my faculties, my organs; life returns to a finger, a hand, a foot. a new nimbleness, -almost wings, unfold at my side, — and i see my right to the heaven as well as to the farthest fields of the earth. the effect of the conversation resembles the effect of a beautiful voice in a church choir as i have noted it above, which insinuates itself as water into all chinks and cracks and presently floats the whole discordant choir and holds it in solution in its melody. well, i too am a ship aground, and the bard directs a river to my shoals, relieves me of these perilous rubs and strains, and at last fairly uplifts me on the waters, and i put forth my sails, and turn my head to the sea. alcott is the only majestic converser i now meet. 18391 institutions. gain 175 he gives me leave to be, more than all others. alcott is so apprehensive that he does not need to be learned. institutions are optical illusions. all concentrates ; let us not rove. a few sounds, a few sights, suffice and outvalue a multitude. kings make their own scale and new write the tariff of prices. let us mind our business with a great heart and never vex ourselves with institutions or consequences. the great man knew not that he was great.' ... painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the body.' ... march 19. such is my confidence in the compensations of nature that i no longer wish to find silver dollars in the road, nor to have the best of the bargain in my dealings with people, nor that my property should be increased, — knowing that all such gains are apparent, and not real; for they pay the sure tax. but the perception that 1 the rest of this passage occurs in “spiritual laws" (p. 155). 2 the rest of this long passage occurs in “ art” (essays, first series, p. 336). 176 journal (age 35 it is not desirable to find the dollar, i enjoy without any alloy. this is an abiding good: this is so much accession of godhead. popularity is for dolls; a hero cannot be popular. i meet men whose faces instantly assure me they are where i left them; no new thoughts, new books, new facts, but facts old and decrepit by the inaction of the soul. others i know, who are new men, in new regions, with faint memory of their own words and deeds on past occasions. “it is in bad taste," is the most formidable word an englishman can pronounce. ers. peepers and listeners. — there is other peeping beside setting the eye to chinks and keyholes ; reading goethe's letters, or the history of the saracens, for example.' march 23. art. — each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. for the time it i mr. emerson refers here to a previous page in which he had spoken of “the preposterous use of books,” also the continuation of the subject in “ spiritual laws” (p. 164). 1839] self-trust. thoughts 177 is the only thing worth doing, to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of cæsar, or an oration.' ... a man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.? . .. march 26. a good man is contented. i love and honor epaminondas, but i do not wish to be epaminondas.3 ... we are always ducking with our unseasonable apologies. shall the priestor priestess on the tripod, full of the god, baulk the inquirer with nonsense of modesty ? to him who said it before.— i see my thought standing, growing, walking, working, out there in nature. look where i will, i see it. yet when i seek to say it, all men say, “no: it is not. these are whimsies and dreams!” then i think they look at one thing, and i at others. my 1 the substance of what follows is printed in “ art” (p. 353). 2 here follows the passage in “ self-reliance” about the preacher hampered by being an attorney for his sect (pp. 54, 55). 3 here occurs the long passage so beginning, which is printed in “spiritual laws” (pp. 162, 163). 178 (age 35 journal thoughts, though not false, are far, as yet, from simple truth, and i am rebuked by their disapprobation, nor think of questioning it. society is yet too great for me. but i go back to my library and open my books and lo i read this word spoken out of immemorial time,“ god is the unity of men.” behold, i say, my very thought! this is what i am rebuked for saying; and here it is and has been for centuries in this book which circulates among men without reproof, nay, with honor. but behold again here in another book, “man is good, but men are bad.” why, i have said no more. and here again, read these words, “ne te quaesiveris extra.” what then! i have not been talking nonsense. these lines of greek and latin, which pass now current in all literatures as proverbs of old, wise men, are expressions of the very facts which the sky, the sea, the plant, the ox, the man, the picture, said daily unto me, and which i repeated to you. i see that i was right; that not only i was right, which i could not doubt, but my language was right: that the soul has always said these things, and that you ought to hear it and say the same. and thou, good ancient brother, who to ancient nations, to earlier modes of life and politics and religion, 1839) one mind and life 179 didst utter this my perception of today, i greet thee with reverence, and give thee joy of that which thou so long hast held and which today, a perfect blessing, one and indivisible, yields itself to me also, yields itself all to me, without making the possession less. the perception of identity is a good mercury of the progress of the mind. i talk with very accomplished persons who betray instantly that they are strangers in nature. the cloud, the tree, the sod, the cat, are not theirs, have nothing of them. they are visitors in the world, and all the proceedings and events are alien, immeasureable, and across a great gulf. the poet, the true naturalist, for example, domesticates himself in nature with a sense of strict consanguinity. his own blood is in the rose and the apple-tree. the cause of him is cause of all. the volcano has its analogies in him. he is in the chain of magnetic, electric, geologic, meteorologic phenomena, and so he comes to live in nature and extend his being through all: then is true science. april 6. i have regard to appearance still. so am i no hero. do what you are doing with a single 180 journal (age 35 mind and utter disregard of eyes, and then what you have done before will justify you now.'... cousins. — would it not dissipate the maiden's romance if she foresaw, in the hour of wedding, the arrival of young cousins three, four years hence at her door, without any work in their hands, or word in their mouths, dropped out of the stage-coach like eggs not yet alive, to spend a fortnight? “the learning to write and to read was better than the latin lessons in poetry whereby i was constrained to lay up the follies of i know not what æneas, whilst i forgot mine own, and to bewail dido dead because she killed herself for love, whilst in the meantime i, most miserable creature, did endure myself with dry eyes to depart and die from thee, o my god, and my life.” (st. augustine's confessions, book 1, chap. xiii.) see what i have written above." april 7. popular christianity is far below, in its tone of teaching, the poorest moral philosophy that i the rest of the passage with similar beginning is in “ self-reliance” (p. 59). 2 mr. emerson again alludes to what he wrote, on march 9, of the “ preposterous use of books.” suco 1839) low religion 181 has been originally taught. the pulpit concedes that judgment is not executed in this world ; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable;'... that is to say, these last are to have their full swing of wine and peaches another day.... you sin now, we shall sin by and by. or we would sin now if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge tomorrow. of course such teaching degrades the disciple. can they wonder that every pure, generous and intelligent man and woman rejects what they call their gospel ? every pure mind has always rejected the popular estimate of men and things, and made its own. it has not called bread happiness. it has said, “i am in heaven when i am true. poor wanderers, comfort, flatter each other that you are happy because you have flocks and herds, gardens and cellars, piles of wood and piles of coin; you are not happy; i know it; you know it in my presence. all literature, all grandeur of spirit, testifies for me, if testimony i needed; but i need none, i affirm, i am, the fact; and you need none, confront us, and you confess!” i here follows in nearly the same words the account of the sermon which disgusted him, that is printed on the second page of “ compensation.” 182 journal [age 35 the teaching that shows this would be spiritual; the teaching that shows the omnipotence of the will, that heaven proceeds forever from me outward to all things, and not to me from coffee and custard. the teaching that concedes success to sensual good, the teaching of calvinistic and unitarian pulpits, is carnal. n an opium pill does not teach the doctrine of the soul, but the preponderance of structure. in the prints of rogers's italy i am struck in certain figures which are handsome and unblameable, with the quite conventional character. they are not original. every outline, however coarse, from the phidian marbles, and every drawing in that book of salvator rosa's, is as original as a man, and strong as a tree or a stone; but these pretty english pictures look thin and superficial. whatever we travel to see was domestic, and not the product of travelling; as the pyramids, the parthenon, its marbles; raphael's and michael angelo's pictures ; venice, and the residence of dante, shakspear, burns. we shall never find god out there in the world. always he abides fast at home. 1839) households. our gift 183 [it appears from the letter to carlyle that, in april, mr. emerson began to put his papers together in preparation for his first book of essays.] april 9. housekeeping. — unroof any house, and you must find there confusion. order is too precious and divine a thing to dwell with such fools and sinners as we all are.'... incredible is it to me that in any family the work can be despatched from monday to monday again, all the year round, with sense and system. then if the house is well kept, are the relations of the keepers, the men and women and children well and reverently observed, or are persons made things? on the whole, i am sure there is no house well kept: there go too many things to it. april 11. “the large utterance of the early gods.” it is the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it. that is the best part of each which he does not know; that which flowed out of his constitution.... 1 here follows the passage on the disproportion in the sacrifice of higher things in homes to good housekeeping, printed in “ domestic life” (society and solitude, p. 112). 2 here occurs the passage thus beginning, printed in “compensation ” (p. 108). 184 (age 35 journal “the large utterance of the early gods.” i believe, not only in omnipotence, but in eternity. and these are not words, but things. i believe in the omnipresence; that is, that the all is in each particle; that entire nature reappears in every leaf and moss. i believe in eternity; that is, i can find greece and palestine and italy and england and the islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind.' the primeval world, the foreworld, as the germans say, i can dive to it in myself as well as grope for it with researching fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. there is, at this moment, there is for me an utterance undoubtedly bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of phidias, or trowel of the egyptians, or pen of moses or dante, but different from all these. not possibly will the soul deign to repeat itself, but if i can hear what these patriarchs say, surely i can reply to them on the same pitch of voice. dwell up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, act thy heart, and skulk no longer nor respect thy 1 this sentence occurs in “ history" (essays, first series, p. 9). 2 printed in “ history” (p. 23). 1839) john fletcher 185 fears, and thou shalt reproduce the foreworld again. realism. — of fletcher, william cartwright writes, where, in a worthy scorn, he dares refuse all other gods, and makes the thing his muse. fletcher, whose wit was not an accident to the soul, but it; only diffused; thus we the same sun call moving i' the sphere and shining on a wall. edward powell. nor were thy plays the lotteries of wit, but like to dürer's pencil, which first knew the laws of. faces, and then faces drew. william cartwright. april 13. fletcher's bonduca is a play whose tune goes manly. let the professors and reviewers who prate of strong saxon speech read this, and write so. it is short of shakspear's dire style (as in hamlet's dialogue with his mother), but only of that. caratach is right great, especially in the first scene, and the hard knocks which junius and petilius give each other recruit the ear and heart. these men are not mush. 186 (age 35 journal then i read the coxcombs, a play which is a just encomium of woman. the situations and sentiments of viola are genuinely pathetic and true. and the true nature of woman in her, when she asks valerio, pray what is love for i am full of that i do not know,contrasts with that violated nature which valerio considers when he says,thy thoughts would be, like a thrice married widow, full of ends. in bonduca, caratach [showing the impossibility of peace] paints the romans out of tacitus:and with those swords that know no end of battle ; those men beside themselves allow no neighbor ; those minds, that, where the day is, claim inheritance; and where the sun makes ripe the fruits, their harvest; and where they march but measure out more ground to add to rome, and here in the bowels on us,it must not be. april 14. yesterday, i read beaumont and fletcher's tragedy, the false one, which, instead of taking its name from septimius, ought to have been cleopatra. a singular fortune is that of the man nan 1839] cæsar's name 187 cæsar, to have given name, as he has, to all that is heroic ambition in the imaginations of painters and poets. cæsar must still be the speakingtrumpet through which this large, wild, commanding spirit must always be poured. the poet would be a great man. his power is intellectual. instantly he seizes these hollow puppets of cæsar, of tamerlane, of boadicea, of belisarius, and inflates them with his own vital air. if he can verily ascend to grandeur, — if his soul is grand, behold his puppets attest his might, they are no more puppets, but instant vehicles of the wine of god; they shine and overflow with the streams of that universal energy that beamed from cæsar's eye, poised itself in hector's spear, purer sat with epaminondas, with socrates, purest with thee, thou holy child, jesus! the poet has used these names and conventions as he would use a flute or a pencil to convey his sense. he does not therefore defer to the nature of these accidental men, these stock heroes.' ... the great names cannot stead him ; if he have not life himself. let a man believe in god, and not in names and places and persons. ... i the rest of the passage thus beginning forms the concluding pages of “ spiritual laws." 188 journal (age 35 ule we are the photometers, we the irritable gold-leaf and tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. we know the authentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises. does it raise and astonish the spirits, does it soar above all custom and use, and work new in every stroke, yet quietly and lawfully as rosebuds open, and constrain thee to greet in its newest and strangest works a friendly and domestic power, kind to thee as was thy mother's milk, — then we know the sign of god. always it stays at home; never is gadding. isolation you must have, but it must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, elevation.” the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to invade you, to vanquish you with emphatic details, to break you into crumbs, to fritter your time. friend, wife, child, mother, fear, want, charity, all knock at the student's door at the critical moment, ring larums in his ear, scare away the muse, and spoil the poem. do not spill 1 the sentence above, with which « spiritual laws” ends, is given for the sake of its conclusion in the journal, which is omitted there. 2 this passage occurs in “. self-reliance” (p. 72), but is given here to show its original form and different ending. 1839) music. indirections 189 thy soul, do not all descend, but keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven and let fingers do the fingers' work. unite and break not. music masses. — the philosopher has a good deal of knowledge which cannot be abstractly imparted, which needs the combinations and complexity of social action to paint it out, as many emotions in the soul of handel and mozart are thousand-voiced and utterly incapable of being told in a simpler air on a lute, but must ride on the mingling whirlwinds and rivers and storms of sound of the great orchestra of organ, pipe, sackbut, dulcimer, and all kinds of music. as the musician avails himself of the concert, so the philosopher avails himself of the drama, the epic, the novel, and becomes a poet; for these complex forms allow of the utterance of his knowledge of life by indirections as well as in the didactic way, and can therefore express the fluxional quantities and values which the thesis or dissertation could never give. there is the courage of the cabinet as of the field. there is the courage of painting and of poetry as well as of siege and stake. april 15. my books are my picture gallery. every man has his fine recreations and elegancies 192 journal [age 35 is all in vain, for the way nature tells her secrets is by exposing one function in one flower, and another function in a different plant. if the spiral vessels are seen in bulbs, the vesicles are seen in others, stomata in another, pila in another, and chromule in a fifth; and to show all the parts of the one plant, she leads you all round the garden. self-reliance. — ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou, only firm column, must presently appear on a throne, the king of all men. april 17. am i a hypocrite, who am disgusted by vanity everywhere and preach self-trust every day? we give you leave to prefer your work to the whole world, so long as you remain in it; but when, uninvited, you come to visit me, what was the praise of god sounds in my ear like self-praise. i will assume that a stranger is judicious and benevolent. if he is, i will thereby keep him so. if he is not, it will tend to instruct him. the author appeals to the judicious reader; but if he has prevailed so far with any reader that he is influenced with a desire to behold and 1839) human relation 193 converse with this master, the author is shy, suspicious and disdainful. let him go into his closet and pray the divinity to make him so great as to be good-natured. philosophy teaches how to be personal without being unparliamentary. in life it is a great matter to live with the people you are used to. go where there is real affinity and the highest relations for you, and it serves very well for the short time that thought and poetry flow, but as soon as the tea-tray comes in, we feel the yoke of foreigners, and wish we were at home with our stupid familiars. april 21. how great it is to do a little, as, for instance, to deserve the praise of good nature, or of humility, or of punctuality; but to say, this was a man; he lived wisely; he lived well, outgoes all probability. i dare not believe it of my fellow. many thoughts lately on truth of character, but they are fugitive; so let not the volitions be, or rather, the preceding instructions of the soul! i thought how slowly we learn to be single and meek. if you visit your friend, why need 194 journal (age 35 you apologize for not having visited him and waste his time and deface your own act? visit him now.' . . in landor's noble book, pericles and aspasia, is honor and elegance enough to polish a nation for an age. all the elements of the gentleman are there, except holiness. religion in a high degree he does not know. what is the substance of elegance but the will to serve all? how does a benevolent person who has helped, helps, and will help men, sitting by your side, rise out of all considerations of fashion of the times, of costume, of birth, decorated only by this primary nobility ! [in the last days of april, mr. alcott and mr. john s. dwight, mr. emerson's successor as preacher in east lexington, came to visit him. he told them of an engagement at noon to marry some young people at the middlesex tavern. the bridegroom was samuel staples, then bar-tender, and the bride the landlord's daughter. this good man, three years later, in his official capacity, arrested for refusal to pay 1 for the rest of the passage, sce « spiritual laws" (pp. 160, 161). 1839) a neighbor 195 taxes alcott, thoreau, and charles lane, the english friend of the former, and held two of them in jail until ransomed by friends. it should be said that he offered to pay thoreau's tax himself, but this thoreau would not allow. having come to concord a boy, with a few pence in his pocket, and begun as hostler, mr. staples rose through the grades of bar-tender, clerk, constable and jailer, deputy-sheriff, representative to the general court, auctioneer, realestate agent, and gentleman-farmer, to be one of the most valued and respected fathers of the village-family. in mr. emerson's last years, mr. staples was his next neighbor and good friend, and came affectionately to bid him goodbye in the last hours of his life. he once was commenting to a friend of the family on the number of visitors that came, some of them from beyond the seas, and added, “well, i suppose there's a great many things that mr. emerson knows that i could n't understand ; but i know that there's a damn sight of things that i know that he don't know anything about.” on may 1, mr. emerson read“ comedy" at the concord lyceum, and after the lecture several of the friends and neighbors came to his home and the talk ran on conversation. the 196 (age 35 journal next evening mr. alcott had a “conversation” at the house of mr. thoreau.] may 4. in reference to the philanthropies of the day, it seems better to use than to flout them. shall it be said of the hero that he opposed all the contemporary good because it was not grand ? i think it better to get their humble good and to catch the golden boon of purity and temperance and mercy from these poor — s and s and s. [may 8, the symposium met at rev. cyrus bartol's. the company were alcott, hedge, george ripley, theodore parker, dr. lebaron russell, rev. caleb stetson, rev. mr. osgood, and emerson. the subjects were, the journals, property, and harvard college.] may 1o. the best conversation equally, i think, with the worst, makes me say, i will not seek society. at least i wish to hear the thoughts of men which differ widely in some important respect from my own. i would hear an artist, or a wise mechanic, or agriculturist, or statesman, or historian, or wit, or poet, or scholar, great in a peculiar department of learning, but 1839) yourself. sincerity 197 not one who only gives me in a varied garb my own daily thoughts. i think it is better to sever and scatter men of kindred genius than to unite them. i hate to quote my friend, who, with all his superiority, still thinks like me. in quoting him, i am presently reduced to defend his opinion. then i find it not only hard, but impossible, to separate his view from mine, and i am admonished to preach another time from god and not from a man. hence comes the pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. may 11. two letters from carlyle, dated 13 and 17 april. beasts belong to the hour: they are the literature of the present moment. men are the result or value of the past. prophecy alone records the eternal. may 12. does it not seem imperative that the soul should find an articulate utterance, in these days, on man and religion? all or almost all that i hear at church is mythological; and of the few books or preachers or talkers who pretend to have made some progress, the most are in a transi198 (age 35 journal tion state, janus-faced, and speak alternately to the old and the new. it is manifest in every word the man says whether he speaks with truth or tradition. you can tell by his pronunciation of god whether he is theist or atheist. our aim in our writings ought to be to make daylight shine through them. once i supposed that only my manner of living was superficial; that all other men's was solid. now i find we are all alike shallow. may 19. the epochs of life. — god loveth not size: whale and minnow are of like dimension. but we call the poet inactive because he is not a governor, a president, a merchant or a porter. but real action is in silent moments. the epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling.'... propriety. — the propriety which distinguishes the great writer is more excellent than any one profound thought or sublime image, for it i here follows the rest of this long passage in spiritual laws” (pp. 161, 162). 1839) propriety. pictures 199 is truth or beauty domesticated, and not now a sally of the soul, a single wild peal of music, but so habitual that it modulates every thought and movement. a plateau or table-land is a vast collection of mountains with no valleys between the peaks. i am struck with the propriety of shakspear, taylor, burke, saint augustine. add the humanity of the great writers and their spontaneity. i think i gain more from one picture than from a gallery. one picture gives me, in the first place, all the agreeable stimulus of color, — itself a tonic, that a gallery can. this makes me brisk, gay, and thoughtful. then, i see freely the forms, and dream pleasantly of what they would say ;-i carry the picture out far and wide on every side, and i highly enjoy the unity of the hour: for the picture, of course, excludes all other things ; and for a long time afterwards i can well remember the day. i conspire with the painter, lend myself willingly to him, see more than he has done, see what he meant to do. but the gallery will not permit this. the eye glances from picture to picture. each interferes with the other. each can only 200 journal (age 35 now stand for what it really is, no more. and the artist is lowered, not exalted, by the beholder. at least thus thought i at allston's gallery, where i recognized in almost all the pictures that they gained nothing by juxtaposition. it is somewhat so with men. they are less together than they are apart. they are somewhat wronged, discrowned and disgraced by being put many together in one apartment. at church today i felt how unequal is this match of words against things. cease, o thou unauthorized talker, to prate of consolation, and resignation, and spiritual joys, in neat and balanced sentences. for i know these men who sit below, and on the hearing of these words look up. hush, quickly: for care and calamity are things to them. there is mr. t, the shoemaker, whose daughter is gone mad, and he is looking up through his spectacles to hear what you can offer for his case. here is my friend, whose scholars are all leaving him, and he knows not what to turn his hand to, next. here is my wife, who has come to church in hope of being soothed and strengthened after being wounded by the sharp tongue of a slut in her house. here 1839) no hiding. tune 201 is the stage-driver who has the jaundice, and cannot get well. here is b., who failed last week, and he is looking up. o speak things, then, or hold thy tongue. there is no such thing as concealment: every element hangs out its flag. health is a quality that cannot lie; so is disease. the wild exotic which no man can tell of, at last puts out its flower, its fruit, and the secret can be kept no longer. ali may keep the secret of his gold, but a bit will stick to the wax at the bottom of the peck measure. you cannot wipe out the foottrack, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no trace and no inlet. to those who have crimes to conceal the simplest laws and elements of nature, fire, water, snow, wind, gravitation, become penalties, and the sun and the moon are the frowns of god and lanthorns of his police.' in fable, again, there is the vindictive circumstance in the old age of the immortal tithon. in society let this be thy aim, to put men in tune. untune nobody. if, o doctor prose! the faces of thy friends do lengthen and quiver 1 some sentences of this paragraph are in “compensation” (p. 116). 202 journal (age 35 and gape, canst thou not retreat to thine own lexicons and grammars, to thy spade and poultry-yard? the narrowest life is very wide; as wide as the largest. [on may 22, the symposium met at mr. george ripley's, and the talk was on the genius and claims of jesus. present, hedge, bartol, emerson, alcott (rev. ephraim ?), peabody, stetson and rev. convers francis.] may 23. the poor madman, whipped through the world by his thoughts ! fear is an instructor who has a great talent. you may learn one thing of him passing well, this, namely, that there is certainly rottenness where he appears.' ... if you do not feel pleasantly toward your workman or workwoman, your kinsman or townsman, you have not dealt justly. man osn ver landor's pericles and aspasia has little religion, but it speaks to your taste, your honor, and your wit; then it charms me that he never stoops to explanation, nor uses seven words where one will do. i here follows the passage thus beginning in “ compensation” (pp. 111,112). 1839] a new college 203 in that old rotten country of germany it seems as if spontaneous character — fresh outbursts of dear nature— were less rare than in this country, called new and free. we are the most timid, crippled old uncles and aunts that ever hobbled along the highway without daring to quit the sidewalk. i have no better sponsors however at this moment in mind than beethoven and bettina. a college.— my college should have allston, greenough, bryant, irving, webster, alcott, summoned for its domestic professors. and if i must send abroad (and, if we send for dancers and singers and actors, why not at the same prices for scholars ?), carlyle, hallam, campbell, should come and read lectures on history, poetry, letters. i would bid my men come for the love of god and man, promising them an open field and a boundless opportunity, and they should make their own terms. then i would open my lecture rooms to the wide nation; and they should pay, each man, a fee that should give my professor a remuneration fit and noble. then i should see the lecture-room, the college, filled with life and hope. students would come from far; for who would not ride a hundred 204 journal (age 35 miles to hear some one of these men giving his selectest thoughts to those who received them with joy? i should see living learning; the muse once more in the eye and cheek of the youth. “if i love you what is that to you?” etc.' sa sense character. – what we value in a man is that he should give us a sense of mass. society is frivolous; cuts up its day into shreds. ... two persons lately, very young children of the most high god, have admonished me by their silent being. ... the wise man not only leaves out of his thought the multitude when he converses on poetry or on virtue, but also the few. tell me not that you are sufficient to yourself but have nothing to impart. i know and am assured that whoever is sufficient to himself will, if only by existing, suffice me also. i see « love" (essays, first series, p. 180). 2 the entry thus beginning is from a loose sheet in journal d. the rest of the passage occurs in “ experience" (essays, second series, p. 99). 3 this passage also is from the same loose sheet, and is printed in “ experience” (pp. 105, 106). 1839] allston's pictures 205 may 26. at waltham i repeated, with somewhat more emphasis perhaps than was needed, the impression the allston gallery makes on me; that whilst homer, phidias, dante, shakspear, michel angelo, milton, raphael, make a positive impression, allston does not. it is an eyeless face. it is an altar without fire. beautiful drawing there is,-a rare merit, — taste there is; the blandest, selectest forms and circumstance; a highly cultivated mind; a beneficent genial atmosphere; but no man. and this it does not seem unreasonable or ungrateful to demand, that the artist should pierce the soul; should command; should not sit aloof and circumambient merely, but should come and take me by the hand and lead me somewhither.' ... allston's pictures are elysian; fair, serene, but unreal. i extend the remark to all the american geniuses. irving, bryant, greenough, everett, channing, even webster in his recorded eloquence, all lack nerve and dagger. i the rest of the passage is printed in “ art” (essays, first series, bottom of p. 355). 206 journal (age 36 if, as hedge thinks, i overlook great facts in stating the absolute laws of the soul; if, as he seems to represent it, the world is not a dualism, is not a bipolar unity, but is two, is me and it, then is there the alien, the unknown, and all we have believed and chanted out of our deep instinctive hope is a pretty dream. the poor mind does not seem to itself to be anything unless it have an outside oddity, some graham diet, or quaker coat, or calvinistic prayer-meeting, or abolition effort, or any how some wild, contrasting action, to testify that it is somewhat. the rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is nature. or why need you rail, or need a biting criticism on the church and the college to demonstrate your holiness and your intellectual aims? let others draw that inference which damns the institutions, if they will. be thyself too great for enmity and fault-finding. may 27. the compensations of calamity are not to be found by the understanding suddenly, but require years of time to make them sensible. the death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, seems 1839] gain in loss 207 an unmixed loss.' ... what loss like the loss of a bridegroom to a bride? the wise and the unwise have but one sentiment. there seems no atonement. yet, come years after, and see selfreliance where was frailty and tenderness alone; come and see character where was only confiding love ; see sweetness and wisdom and endless benevolent actions instead of a girl's tears. see, instead of the mother of children, the friend and lover and high counsellor of all young maidens, exercising a better than maternal influence over the fine endowments and good aspirations of a large circle, encouraging, refining, and hallowing many worthy young persons,— you may reconcile yourself better to the early bereavement. en a great genius must come and preach selfreliance. our people are timid, desponding, recreant whimperers. if they fail in their first enterprises they lose all heart. if the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined.' . .. 1 the passage thus beginning forms the conclusion of « compensation.” 2 here follows the long passage printed in “self-reliance" (p. 79), of which a few sentences are here given as showing that they were inspired by the manly young thoreau. 208 (age 36 journal s my brave henry here who is content to live now, and feels no shame in not studying any profession, for he does not postpone his life, but lives already, — pours contempt on these crybabies of routine and boston. he has not one chance but a hundred chances. now let a stern preacher arise who shall reveal the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows. ... a great act of much import to the new philosophical opinions is the garden discovery that a potato, put into a hole, in six weeks becomes ten. this is the miracle of the multiplication of loaves. may 28. there is no history. there is only biography. the attempt to perpetrate, to fix a thought or principle, fails continually. you can only live for yourself; your action is good only whilst it is alive, whilst it is in you. the awkward imitation of it by your child or your disciple is not a repetition of it, is not the same thing, but another thing. the new individual must work out the whole problem of science, letters and theology for himself ; can owe his fathers nothing. there is no history ; only biography, 1839) infinite and finite 209 we are idolaters of the old. we do not believe in the omnipotence of the soul: we do not believe there is any force in today, to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. we linger in the ruins of the old tent.' . .. in proper eternity there are few believers, that is, in omnipresence and omnipotence, few. the finite is the foam of the infinite. we stand on a shore and see the froth and shells which the sea has just thrown up, and we call the sea by the name of that boundary, as, the german ocean, the english channel, the mediterranean sea. we do the like with the soul. we see the world which it once has made, and we call that god, though it was only one moment's production, and there have been a thousand moments and a thousand productions since. but we are to learn to transfer our view to the sea instead of the shore, the living sea instead of the changing shore, the energy instead of the limitation, the creator instead of the world. i here follows the passage so beginning in « compensation” (p. 125), which is here immediately followed by that about the shell-fish crawling out of its beautiful case when outgrown (pp. 124, 125). 210 journal (age 36 nature will not have us fret or fume. when we come out of the caucus or the abolition convention or the temperance meeting, she says to us, “ so hot, my little sir!”. i fear the criticism of the sun and moon. how can i hope for a friend to me who have never been one ? may 29. the laws, literature, religion, at certain times appear but a sad travestie and caricature of nature, and so do our modes of living. i think we ought to have manual labor, each man. why else this rapid impoverishing which brings every man continually to the presence of the fact that bread is by the sweat of the face, and why this continual necessity in which we all stand of bodily labor, by walking, riding, fencing, pitching, shooting, or billiards, if not by ploughing and mowing. and why this sentiment of honor and independence which cannot receive printed in “spiritual laws” (essays, first series, p. 135). this passage is followed by the one on holding a man amenable for choosing an evil occupation (p. 140), and that on travelling being a fool's paradise. (see “self-reliance,” p. 81.) 21i s 1839) labor. hero. aging 211 a pecuniary benefit until the man has suffered a fatal slackness on his springs. i suppose his needs of labor are such to the health of his organization, his life, and his thought, that these hints are so broad. labor makes solitude and makes society. it kills foppery, shattered nerves, and all kinds of emptiness. it makes life solid. it puts pericles and jack upon a firm ground of sweet and manly fellowship. but its degeneracy comes from the too much, the exclusive life of the senses. it is only human when tempered by the touches of thought and love. i think that the heroism which at this day would make on me the impression of epami-, nondas and phocion must be that of a domestic conqueror.' ... may 30. 'tis pity we should leave with the children all the romance, all that is daintiest in life, and reserve for ourselves as we grow old only the prose. goethe fell in love in his old age, and i would never lose the capacity of delicate and noble sentiments. 1 the rest of the passage forms the conclusion of “ domestic life” (society and solitude, p. 133). 212 journal (age 36 the lotus-eaters. — reform always has this damper, viz., that a new simplicity can be preached with equal emphasis (and who shall deny that it is preached with equal reason too?) on the simplicity it preaches. thus, when we have come to live on the fruits of our own gardens, and begin to boast that we lead a man's life, then shall come some audacious upstart to upbraid us with our false and foreign taste, which steadily plucks up everything which nature puts in our soil; and laboriously plants everything not intended to grow there. behold, shall that man of the weeds say, the perpetual broad hint that nature gives you. every day these plants you destroyed yesterday, appear again; and see a frost, a rain, drought, has killed this exotic corn and wheat and beans and beets, which luxurious man would substitute for his native and allowed table. then too will arise the society for preventing the murder of worms. and it will be asked with indignation what right have we to tear our small fellow citizens out of the sod and put them to death for eating a morsel of corn, or a melon leaf, or a bit of apple, whilst it can be proved to any jury by a surgical examination of their jaws and forceps and stomachs, that this is the natural food of this eater. in the same age a man will 213 1839] style. speech be reproached with simony and sacrilege because he took money of the bookseller for his poem or history. we see all persons who are not natural with a certain commiseration. we see that the avengers are on their track and that certain crises and purgatories they must pass through. compression. there is a wide difference between compression and an elliptical style. the dense writer has yet ample room and choice of phrase, and even a gamesome mood often, between his noble words. there is no disagreeable contraction in his sentence any more than there is a human face, where in a square space of a few inches is found room for command and love and frolic and wisdom and for the expression even of great amplitude of surface. language is made up of the spoils of all actions, trades, arts, games, of men. every word is a metaphor borrowed from some natural or mechanical, agricultural or nautical process. the poorest speaker is like the indian dressed in a robe furnished by half a dozen animals. it is like our marble foot-slab made up of countless shells and exuviæ of a foreign world. 214 journal (age 36 june 3. our young scholars read newspapers, smoke, and sleep in the afternoons. goethe, gibbon, bentley might provoke them to industry. undoubtedly the reason why our men are not learned, why g— , for instance, is not, is because the genius or the age does not tend that way. this old learning of bentley and gibbon was the natural fruit of the traditional age in philosophy and religion. ours is the revolutionary age, when man is coming back to consciousness, and from afar this mind begets a disrelish for lexicons. alcott, therefore, and very, who have this spirit in great exaltation, abhor books. but at least it behooves those who reject the new ideas, the sticklers of tradition, to be learned. but they are not. the sabbath is painfully consecrated because the other days are not, and we make prayers in the morning because we sin all day. and if we pray not aloud and in form, we are constrained to excuse ourselves to others with words. o son of man, thou should'st not excuse thyself with words. thy doing or thy abstaining should preclude words, and make every contrary act from thine show false and ugly. 1839] reform. happy life 215 june 6. i suppose the number of reforms preached to this age exceeds the usual measure, and indicates the depth and universality of the movement which betrays itself by such variety of symptom. anti-money, anti-war, anti-slavery, anti-government, anti-christianity, anti-college; and, the rights of woman. our conventional style of writing is now so trite and poor, so little idiomatic, that we have several foreigners who write in our journals in a style not to be distinguished from their native colleagues. as dr. follen, maroncelli, dr. lieber, græter. but whatever draws on the language of conversation will not be so easily imitated, but will speak as the stream flows. my life is a may game, i will live as i like. i defy your strait laced, weary, social ways and modes. blue is the sky, green the fields and groves, fresh the springs, glad the rivers, and hospitable the splendor of sun and star. i will play my game out. and if any shall say me nay, shall come out with swords and staves against me to prick me to death for their foolish laws, come and welcome. i will not look 216 (age 36 journal grave for such a fool's matter. i cannot lose my cheer for such trumpery. life is a may game still. love is thaumaturgic. it converts a chair, a box, a scrap of paper, or a line carelessly drawn on it, a lock of hair, a faded weed, into amulets worth the world's fee. if we see out of what straws and nothings he builds his elysium, we shall read nothing miraculous in the new testament. june 7. if a great man turn his attention to inferior natures, he will show the divine in them. ... the stars to which loving and hoping men have added such moral splendor are white points to the dull. june 8. i remembered in the wood the profuse nature which scatters from her hand all sorts of creatures. at dartmouth college, last july, was a good sheriff-like gentleman with a loud voice, a pompous air, and a fine coat, whose aid, it seemed, the college annually called in, to marshal their procession. he was in his element; he commanded us all with such despotic condescension, as put all dignities and talents but his es vas 1839] the aurora. analysis 217 own quite aside. he marched before, the college followed him like a tame dog. june 9. guido's aurora for a morning prayer; so wills and so loves us thomas carlyle.' june 10. analysis, too, is legitimate to the poetic soul. i find analysis not less poetical than synthesis, but it must be analysis into elements, and not mechanical division. if i can detect nature converting water into hydrogen and oxygen, two beautiful and perfect wholes, i see not that it is less grand than when she recomposes water, a new whole. mechanical analysis picks the lock: right analysis produces the key. june 11. two absolutions. — you may fulfil acceptably your circle of duties by clearing yourself in the direct or in the reflex way.” i carlyle had sent to mrs. emerson the engraving of the rospigliosi aurora, which always thereafter hung in the emersons' parlor. on it he wrote, “will the lady of concord hang this italian sun-chariot in her drawing-room and, seeing it, think of a household which has good reason to remember hers ?" 2 the rest of this paragraph is in “ self-reliance” (p. 74). 218 journal [age 36 iteration. — walked to the two ponds yesterday with c. s. a beautiful afternoon in the woodlands and waters and aerial waters above. i thought how charming is always an analogy, as, for example, the iteration which delights us in so many parts of nature, the reflection of the shore and the trees in water; in architecture, in the repetition of posts in a fence, or windows or doors or rosettes in the wall, or, still finer, the pillars of a colonnade; in poetry, rhymes, and better, the iteration of the sense, as in milton's “though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen and evil tongues,” — and the sublime death of sisera.' ... t june 12. i know no means of calming the fret and perturbation into which too much sitting, too much talking, brings me, so perfect as labor. i have no animal spirits; therefore, when surprised by company and kept in a chair for many hours, my heart sinks, my brow is clouded and i think i will run for acton woods, and live with the squirrels henceforward. but my garden is nearer, i (in the song of deborah and barak, judges, v, 27.) “ at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.” 1839] garden revenge. alcott 219 and my good hoe, as it bites the ground, revenges my wrongs, and i have less lust to bite my enemies. i confess i work at first with a little venom, lay to a little unnecessary strength. but by smoothing the rough hillocks, i smooth my temper; by extracting the long roots of the pipergrass, i draw out my own splinters; and in a short time i can hear the bobolink's song and see the blessed deluge of light and colour that rolls around me. in allston's lorenzo and jessica, there is moonlight, but no moon. in the jeremiah, the receiving baruch is the successful figure. his best figures read and hear : and always his genius seems feminine and not masculine. i said, all history becomes subjective and repeats itself, parthia, macedon, rome and netherlands, in each man's life. and now alcott with his hatred of labor and commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, makes good to the nineteenth century simeon the stylite and the thebaid, and the first capuchins." i compare in “history" (p. 28) the passage beginning, “i have seen the first monks and anchorets without crossing the seas.” 220 journal [age 36 the prayer of the farmer.' ... june 14. shall i not call god the beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts?? june 16. was not the motto of the welsh bards, “those whom truth had made free before the world”? certainly the progress of character and of art teaches to treat all persons with an infinite freedom. what are persons but certain good or evil thoughts masquerading before me in curious frocks of flesh and blood? i were a fool to mind the color or figure of the frock, and slight the deep, aboriginal thought which so arrays itself. in this sense you cannot overestimate persons. and now in my house, as i see them pass, or hear their step on the stair, it seems to me the step of ages and nations. and truly these walls do not lack variety in the few individuals they hold. here is simeon the stylite, or john of patmos in the shape of jones very, religion for religion's sake, religion i see “ self-reliance” (pp. 77, 78). 2 the long passage in “ friendship” follows, there beginning, “i awoke this morning with dumb thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new” (essays, first series, p. 194). 1839) saints old and new 221 divorced, detached from man, from the world, from science and art; grim, unmarried, insulated, accusing; yet true in itself, and speaking things in every word. the lie is in the detachment; and when he is in the room with other persons, speech tops as if there were a corpse in the apartment. then here is mine asia, not without a deep tinge herself of the same old land, and exaggerated and detached pietism, and so she serves as bridge between very and the americans. then comes the lofty maiden who represents the hope of these modern days, whom the “limits of earthly existence, the highest knowledge, the fairest blessings, cannot in the slightest degree satisfy,” and whose beautiful impatience of these dregs of romulus predicts to us a fairer future. and here are the two babes not yet descended into our sympathy or the world where we work, not yet therefore individualized and rigid, but a common property to all, which each can blend with his own ideas. june 18. yesterday departed jones very from my house. in the afternoon departed also c. s. in the evening came and departed george b. emerson and mr. adam of calcutta. 222 journal [age 36 goethe unlocks the faculties of the artist more than any writer. he teaches us to treat all subjects with greater freedom, and to skip over all obstruction, time, place, name, usage, and come full and strong on the emphasis of the fact. the savant is formed at the expense of the man. the naturalists whom i know are disproportioned persons and have nowise learned to ally their facts to themselves, to see unity. the office of the naturalist should certainly be poetic. he should domesticate me in nature. he should make me feel my kindred to the tree and bring the rock nearer to my spirit. c. s. rightly says she cannot draw a child by studying the outlines but by watching for a time his motions and plays.' . .. be sacred. do not let any man crowd upon you by peeping into him. no man can come near me unless i cumber myself about him. hecomes too near by my act, not otherwise. remember the great sentiment, “what we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the 1 the rest of the passage occurs in “history” (essays, first series, p. 16). 1839] the private soul 223 love," which schiller said, or said the like. i must be myself.' . .. i do with my friends as i do with books. ... idealism. there are degrees in idealism. we learn first to play with it academically.: ... there is no history, only biography. the private soul ascends to transcendental virtue. like very, he works hard without moving hand or foot; like agathon, he loves the goddess and not the woman; like alcott, he refuses to pay a debt without injustice; but this liberty is not transferable to any disciple, no, nor to the man himself, when he falls out of his trance and comes down from the tripod. i will surrender to the divine, to nothing less : not to jove, not to ephod or cross. beauty.— i seek beauty in the arts and in song and in emotion for itself, and suddenly i i the rest of this passage is in “ self-reliance” (p. 73). 2 the long passage thus beginning is found in " friendship” (pp. 215, 216). 3 for the rest of the passage, see “ circles" (essays, first series, p. 309). 224 journal [age 36 find it to be sword and shield. for dwelling there in its depths i find myself above the region of fear, and unassailable, like a god at the olympian tables. june 21. it may be said in defence of this practice of composition, which seems to young persons so mechanical and so uninspired, that to men working in time all literary effort must be more or less of this kind, — to byron, to goethe, to de staël not less than to scott and southey. succession, moments, parts, are their destiny, and not wholes and worlds and eternity. but you say that so moving and moved on thoughts and verses, gathered in different parts of a long life, you sail no straight line, but are perpetually distracted by new and counter currents, and go a little way north, then a little way northeast, then a little northwest, then a little north again, and so on. be it so; is any motion different? the curve line is not a curve, but an infinite polygon. the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line on a hundred tacks. this is only microscopic criticism. see the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. all these verses and thoughts were as spontaneous 1839] weakness. being. rhyme 225 at some time to that man as any one was. being so, they were not his own, but above him the voice of simple, necessary, aboriginal nature, and, coming from so narrow experience as one mortal, they must be strictly related, even the farthest ends of his life, and, seen at the perspective of a few ages, will appear harmonious and univocal. june 22. it is one of the signs of our time, the ill health of all people. all the young people are nearsighted in the towns. that which we are shall certainly teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily.' ... men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit an aroma every moment. i told elizabeth hoar last night that rhyme resembled music in this advantage, that it has a privilege of speaking truth which all philistia is unable to challenge.” i for the rest of the passage, see “ the over-soul” (p. 286). 2 for the rest of this passage, see “ poetry and imagination” (letters and social aims, pp. 51, 52). 226 (age 36 journal it seems to me often as if a little concentration, perchance within the power of circumstances, mountains, war, danger, or love, might give me that faculty of daring rhyme. i would gladly exchange my languid life for this drum-beat. yet i will not decline a languid life, since also that seems to be the only pattern fashionable today. as i read ben jonson the other eve, it seemed to me, as before, that there is a striking resemblance between the poetry of his age and the painting of the old masters in the depth of the style. with all the frolic and freedom, the poetry is not superficial, and with all the weight of thought, it is not solemn. the beauty is necessary, and the shadows are transparent. as i looked into the river, the other afternoon, it struck me that the rembrandts and salvators who paint the dark pictures probably copied the reflection of the landscape in water. certainly its charm is indescribable, and as i think, not to be painted. june 27. rhyme. — rhyme; not tinkling rhyme, but grand pindaric strokes, as firm as the tread of a horse. rhyme that vindicates itself as an art, 1839) rhyme. live religion 227 the stroke of the bell of a cathedral. rhyme which knocks at prose and dullness with the stroke of a cannon ball. rhyme which builds out into chaos and old night a splendid architecture to bridge the impassable, and call aloud on all the children of morning that the creation is recommencing.' i wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. “ no noble virtue ever was alone.” religion does not seem to me to tend now to a cultus, as heretofore, but to a heroic life. we find extreme difficulty in conceiving any church, any liturgy, any rite, that would be genuine. but all things point at the house and 1 mr. emerson's juvenile verses were modelled on the poets of the eighteenth century; smooth in rhythm, trite in imagery, the virtues, vices, and motives personified. his emancipation from tradition and formalism showed in his verses of the middle period, when he felt that the thought or image must be roughly hammered out while hot, so to speak. the wild and irregular song of the norseman, or of the welsh bards, seemed stronger and truer to nature. he softened as little as possible his first rhapsody for a poem that came to him in the woods. the verses of the third period were long kept by him and smoothed and ripened like wine. 228 journal (age 36 mon the hearth. let us learn to lead a clean and manly life. write your poem, brave man, first in the earth with a man's hoe, and eat the bread of your own spade. i have no hope of any good in this piece of reform from those who only wish to reform one thing. a partial reform, like palmer's, or graham's, or the praiser of the country life, is always an extravaganza. a farm is a poor place to get a living by, in the common expectation. a boston doll who comes out into the country and takes the hoe that he may have a good table and a showy parlor may easily be disappointed. but who takes hold of this great subject of reform in a generous spirit with the intent to lead a man's life will find the farm a proper place. he must join with it simple diet, and the annihilation by one stroke of his will of the whole nonsense of living for show; and he must take ideas instead of customs. he must make the life more than meat, and see to it that“ the intellectual world meets men everywhere,” in his dwelling, in his mode of living. he must take his life in his hand too. i do not think this peaceful reform is to be effected by cowards. he is to front a corrupt society and speak rude truth, and emergencies may easily be where collision and suffering must ensue. 1839) reforms. rich world 229 but all the objections to the great projects of philanthropy are met and answered by a deep and universal reform. thus, it is said that, if money is given up, and a system of universal trust and largess adopted, the indolent will prey on the good. consider that our doctrine is that the labor of society ought to be shared by all, and that in a community where labor was the point of honor, the coxcombs would labor ; that a mountain of chagrins, inconveniences, diseases and sins would sink into the sea with the uprise of this one doctrine of labor. domestic hired service would go over the dam. slavery would fall into the pit. dyspepsia would die out. morning calls would end. redeunt saturnia regna. atheneum gallery.— how rich the world is! i said on reading a letter of m. m. e.; i say the same when i hear a new verse of a new poet. i said the same when i walked about the athenæum gallery the other day and saw these pictures called rembrandt, poussin, rubens, etc., painted by god knows who, obscure nameless persons yet with such skill and mastery as to bring connoisseurs in doubt. 230 journal (age 36 belief. — the man i saw believed that his suspenders would hold up his pantaloons and that his straps would hold them down. his creed went little farther. progress of the species! why the world is a treadmill. a friend looks to the past and the future.'... june 30. you dare not say “i think,” “i am,” but quote st. paul, or jesus, or bacon, or locke. yonder.roses make no reference to former roses or to better ones. they exist with god today.” it is proposed to form a very large society to devise and execute means for propping in some secure and permanent manner this planet. it has long filled the minds of the benevolent and anxious part of the community with lively emotion, the consideration of the exposed state of the globe; the danger of its falling and being 1 the passage thus beginning is in “friendship” (p. 214). 2 the passage is differently expressed in ~ self-reliance" (p. 67). 1839) dangerous planet 231 swamped in absolute space; the danger of its being drawn too near the sun and roasting the race of mankind, and the daily danger of its being overturned, and, if a stage-coach overset costs valuable lives, what will not ensue on the upset of this omnibus ? it has been thought that by a strenuous and very extensive concert aided by a committee of masterbuilders and blacksmiths, a system of booms and chains might be set round the exterior surface and that it might be underpinned in such a manner as to enable the aged and women and children to sleep and eat with greater security henceforward. it is true that there is not a perfect unanimity on this subject at present, and it is much to be regretted. a pert and flippant orator remarked to the meeting last sunday that the world could stand without linch-pins, and that even if you should cut all the ropes and knock away the whole underpinning, it would swing and poise perfectly, for the poise was in the globe itself. but this is transcendentalism. july 3. in boston yesterday and the day before, and saw the allston gallery, and the athenæum, and met margaret fuller, miss clarke, dwight, 232 journal age 36 oon a muftis anik and the and apoli. and young ward on that ground; and alcott on the broader platform. in the allston gallery, the polish jews are an offence to me; they degrade and animalize. as soon as a beard becomes anything but an accident, we have, not a man, but a turk, a jew, a satyr, a dandy, a goat. so we paint angels, and jesus, and apollo, beardless, and the greek and the mohawk; leave them to muftis and monks. the landscapes pleased me well. i like them all: he is a fine pastoral poet and invites us to come again and again. the drawing also of the figures is always pleasing, but they lack fire, and the impression of the gallery, though bland, is faint in the memory. nothing haunts the memory from it. it never quickens a pulse of virtue, it never causes an emulous throb. herein perhaps it resembles the genius of spenser; and is, as i have said, elysian. when i went to europe, i fancied the great pictures were great strangers; some new unexperienced pomp and show; a foreign wonder; “barbaric pearl and gold.”.... i now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. alli here follows the long passage printed in “ art” (essays, first series, pp. 360–362). 1839) allston. palmer 233 ston's st. peter is not yet human enough for me. it is too picturesque, and like a bronzed cast of the socrates or venus. july 4. once the doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines.' . .. i have no duties so peremptory as my intellectual duties. e no july 5. edward palmer” left my house yesterday morning after staying here four days. his mind has grown since he was here last fall. he said he did not think it necessary for him to write anything, for, he thought he could do everything that came into his mind and so not need any record. why should we write dramas, and epics, and sonnets, and novels in two volumes? why not i here follows the long passage about “whim," and the “ wicked dollar” in “ self-reliance” (pp. 51, 52). 2 this was the young and eager apostle of doing away with money, as a chief cause of mischief in the world. mr. emerson tells of him and his reforming schemes in “life and letters in new england” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 345). 234 journal (age 36 write as variously as we dress and think? a lecture is a new literature, which leaves aside all tradition, time, place, circumstance, and addresses an assembly as mere human beings, no more. it has never yet been done well. it is an organ of sublime power, a panharmonicon for variety of note. but only then is the orator successful when he is himself agitated, and is as much a hearer as any of the assembly. in that office you may and shall (please god!) yet see the electricity part from the cloud and shine from one part of heaven to the other. july 7. reform. — the objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. ... i owe much to these beneficent reformers of all colors and qualities. each one shows me that there is somewhat i can spare. shows me thus how rich i am. within my trench there is a wall; if the town be taken, there is yet a citadel. if the tower be stormed, there is still the invincible me. i thank edward palmer for this demonstration, and for one other recorded on the last page. i the passage is printed in “self-reliance” (p. 55). 1839] no money. partisans 235 in regard to his money movement, however, discussion always shows that the principle now and always takes effect, and that it would not much alter things to take money out of society, but it would alter things much to put the love in. great men have always played with property, and used it as though they used it not. spirit is all, acts indifferent. the sublime is always the true. palmer had somewhat great in him, a certain negligence of statement and extreme carelessness whether he was understood or not. he makes it felt also how surely a sincere person is raised by a partial into an universal reform. there is no time to roses.' . .. so shall man one day live with living nature, happy and strong in the deep present. there is no time to just men. the profuse roses blow. men are made as drunk by party as by rum. in this county they have let a proven defaulter be chosen to congress over an affectionate, honest, able gentleman, because, as the lovely philanthropists say, the only question they ask is, “what is his relation to the slave?” thus you cease to be a man that you may be an abolitionist. 1 for the rest of this passage, see “ self-reliance” (p. 67). 236 journal (age 36 there is no art where society is unbelieving, honeycombed and hollow; but when it tingles and trembles with earnest, will beauty be born. be hospitable to the soul as well as to the body of thy guest, thou tart hater. miracles. — the miracle is always spiritual, always within the man, affecting his senses from the soul, so that the lover walks in miracles, and the man beside him sees nothing. the believer sees nothing as he ever saw it before; the unbeliever looks at the same facts and reads the old dull story. the true disciple never therefore magnifies the sensible miracle ; he ignores it also; he says, “i knew a man once, whether in the body or out of the body i cannot tell, god knoweth.” mass. — extempore speaking can be good, and written discourses can be good. a tent is a very good thing, but so is a cathedral. reform. — the past has baked my loaf, and in the strength of its bread i break up the old oven. 1839) verbs. thrush. bettina 237 a lady, it seems, has painted the auxiliary verbs, – do, ought, might, cannot. i gave c. s. for a subject, the age, to be represented in a series of heads; conservatism, state street, christian register; revolt; protest; fair perplexity; dyspepsia ; warren chapel. wbat possibilities! — in the country church, i see the cousins of napoleon, of wellington, of wilberforce, of bentham, of humboldt. a little air and sunshine, an hour of need, a provoking society, would call out the right fire from these slumbering peasants. i went to the woods and heard the woodthrush sing, ab willie willie; he willio, willio! we want all the elements of our being. high culture cannot spare one. we want the exact and the vast; we want our dreams, and our mathematics; we want our folly and guilt. yet a majestic soul never unfolds all these in speech, they lie at the base of what is said, and colour the word, but are reserved. you may be goethe, but not bettina. july 9. wonderful bettina! the rich, inventive genius of the painter must all be smothered and lost 238 journal (age 36 for want of the power of drawing; and when i walk in walden wood, as on 4 july, i seem to myself an inexhaustible poet, if only i could once break through the fence of silence, and vent myself in adequate rhyme. nature is two headed. invoked, or uninvoked, god will be there. et vocatus et non vocatus deus aderit. it is even capable of a sublimer extension, that the unhappiness of hell is overpowered by a happiness. all which liveth tendeth to good. it cannot be otherwise. i like my boy, with his endless, sweet soliloquies and iterations, and his utter inability to conceive why i should not leave all my nonsense business and writing, and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. and he is wiser than we when threatens his whole threat, “ i will not love you.” nature delights in punishing stupid people. the very strawberry vines are more than a match for them with all their appetites, and all their fumbling fingers. the little, defenceless vine coolly hides the best berry, now under this leaf, then under that, and keeps the treasure for yon1839] housekeeping. abandon 239 der darling boy with the bright eyes when booby is gone. july 14. i desire that my housekeeping should be clean and sweet and that it should not shame or annoy me. i desire that it should appear in all its arrangements that human culture is the end to which that house is built and garnished. i wish my house to be a college, open as the air to all to whom i spiritually belong, and who belong to me. but it is not open to others, or for other purposes. i do not wish that it should be a confectioner's shop wherein eaters and drinkers may get strawberries and champagne. i do not wish that it should be a playground or house of entertainment for boys. they do well to play; i like that they should, but not with me, or in these precincts.' ... july 16. the “abandon" of a scatter-brain, the “abandon” of a woman, are no better than calculation; but the “abandon” of a self-commanding and reserved mind is like the fire of troops when the enemy is at the end of the bayonet. i portions of this paragraph occur in slightly different form in “ domestic life.” 240 journal (age 36 july 17. manners demonological. — beauty dwells also in the will. you plant a tree for your son, or for mankind in the next age. decline also the low suggestion, stablish the lofty purpose in the moment when it flits so evanescently by, and you plant bodily beauty for the next age. who saw you do the mean act? ah brother! your manners saw you, and they shall always report it to men. saw people do not distinguish between perception and notion.' july 20. night in this enchanting season is not night, but a miscellany of lights. the journeying twilight, the half-moon, the kindling venus, the beaming jove, — saturn and mars something less bright, and, fainter still,“ the common people of the sky,” as crashaw said : then, below, the meadows and thickets flashing with the fireflies, and all around the farms the steadier lamps of men compose the softest, warmest illumination. a poet is a namer. his success is a new nomenclature. 1 this passage may be found in “ self-reliance” (p. 65). 1839) friends. immortality 241 august 1. last night came to me a beautiful poem from henry thoreau, “sympathy.” the purest strain, and the loftiest, i think, that has yet pealed from this unpoetic american forest. i hear his verses with as much triumph as i point to my guido when they praise half-poets and half-painters. i have no right of nomination in the choice of my friends. sir, i should be happy to oblige you, but my friends must elect themselves.” a thought is a prison also.3 ... august 14. the way in which the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is taught and heard is false. it is duration, but there is no warrant for teaching this. there is no promise to aaron and abner that aaron and abner shall live. it is only the soul that, in rare awakenings, saith through i this was the poem beginning, “ lately, alas ! i knew a gentle boy,” in which disguise thoreau expressed his disappointment in love. guido's aurora was carlyle's gift. 2 see “friendship” (p. 209). 3 the rest of the passage is in “ intellect” (essays, first series, p. 339). 242 journal [age 36 all her being, i am, and time is below me; and the awkward understanding translates the rapture into english prose, and saith, that voice came out of a mortal man, and he said that he should live a good many thousand years. it will not serve any good purpose to avail ourselves of the healing formula with which our wives and the kind-hearted mediate between the truth speaker and the churchman, and affirming that the difference is merely in terms, that we misunderstand each other, etc., etc., and inferring that our discrepancy is only on the threshold of speculation; that after we have stated our whimsy of instinct, of the one mind, of the potential infinitude of every man, and the like, our doctrines then become identical with all orthodoxy, and differences vanish. but it is not so. it is the peculiarity of truth that it must live every moment in the beginning, in the middle, and onward forever in every stage of statement. i cannot accept without qualification the most indisputable of your axioms. i see that they are not quite true. august 16. conversation is an evanescent relation, no more.' ... i for the rest of the passage, see " friendship” (p. 208). 1839) vision. burke 243 with those devouring eyes, with that portraying hand, carlyle has seen webster.' august 19. this old complaint of the unitarians, that the calvinists deny them fellowship and access to the communion table, is a plain confession that their religion is nought, that they have no vision. whoso has, never begs allowance; he commands and awes men. fox and penn, swedenborg and very, never complain of not being admitted, but complain that none come and ask admittance. [on august 23, mr. emerson set forth for the hill-country of new hampshire with a companion, probably his friend, mr. george p. bradford. the following notes remain on a loose sheet of paper.] centre harbor, n. h., august 25. burke is a rhetoric, a robe to be always admired for the beauty with which he drapes facts, as we love light, or rather colour, which clothes i mr. emerson rejoiced that carlyle had seen the idol of his youth. (see the carlyle-emerson correspondence, vol. i, pp. 247, 248 and 255, 256 ; also pp. 16 and 19.) 244 journal [age 36 all things. what rich temperance, what costly textures, what flowing variety! manners need somewhat negligent and even slow in the perceptions, as business requires quick perceptions. manners must have an ignoring eye, a languid, graceful hand; a sluggard knight who does not see the annoyances, inconveniences, shifts, that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the sensitive.' the popular men and women are often externally sluggish, lazy natures, not using superlatives, nor staking their all on every peppercorn. august 27. yesterday ascended red hill and saw our lake and squam lake, ossipee, conway, gunstock, and one dim summit which stood to us for the white hills. mrs. cook lives on this red mountain, half a mile from the top and a mile from the bottom. we asked her what brought her here fifty-one years ago. she said, “poverty brought and poverty kept her here." for our parts, we thought that a poor man could not afford to live here, that it was to ini mr. emerson would never notice any awkwardnesses in service or mischances at table, but kept perfect serenity unless a servant were reproved ; that always troubled him. 1839) poverty. calvinism 245 crease poverty tenfold, to set one's cabin at this helpless height. her son makes 1000 pounds of maple sugar in a year. they use the coffeebean for coffee, and the fever-bush for tea. the hedysarum, which they call wild-bean, was the principal food of the cows when they first came here until grass grew. there is no man in mountain or valley, but only abortions of such, and a degree of absurdity seems to attach to nature. on sunday we heard sulphurous calvinism. the preacher railed at lord byron. i thought lord byron's vice better than rev. mr. m.'s virtue. he told us of a man he had seen on lake michigan who saw his ship in danger and said, “if the almighty would only stand neuter for six months, it was all he asked.” in his horror at this sentiment, the preacher did not perceive that it was the legitimate inference from his own distorting creed; that it was the reductio ad absurdum of calvinism. concord, september 4. in the journey to the white mountains from which i returned monday evening, 2d september, i found few striking experiences. nature seems ashamed of man and stands away from him, even while he lives from her bounty. the 246 journal [age 36 was men and women whom we see, live in their sensations, and repeat in memory and talk their paltriest satisfactions. the profile mountain was a pleasing wonder. i admire the great and grave expression of this mountain bust (where nature herself has done what lysippus (?) and michel angelo projected) which sternly gazes eastward to the sea. black eagles were wheeling over the summit when i saw it. but i believe the most agreeable circumstance in the tour was the echo of the horn blown at the door of the white mountain hotel [fabyan's] which turned the mountains into an æolian harp, and instantly explained the whole attic mythology of diana and all divine hunters and huntresses. how lofty, how haughtily beautiful is a musical note!" ov mr. emerson had been, thus far in the year, below his standard of health, and went to the mountains for strength. on his return, he wrote to his brother william that he had gained little: “i am as usual neither sick nor well, but, for aught i see, as capable of work as ever, let once my subject stand, like a good ghost, palpable 1 this experience is mentioned in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 175). 1839) new hampshire 247 before me. but, since i came home, i do not write much, and writing is always my meter of health — writing, which a sane philosopher would say, was the surest index of a diseased mind.” a depressing circumstance moreover was that he saw the necessity of preparing another course of boston lectures, because of the strain on his finances due to the advances for the publication here of his friend carlyle's books. (see cabot's memoir, vol. ii, pp. 392, 393.)] september 5. how tedious is the perpetual self-preservation of the traveller! his whole road is a comparison of what he sees and does at home with what he sees and does now. not a blessed moment does he forget himself and, yielding to the new world of facts that environ him, utter without memory that which they say. could he once abandon himself to the wonder of the landscape, he would cease to find it strange. in new hampshire the dignity of the landscape made more obvious the meanness of the tavern-haunting men.' i do not know that i can recall the thought of last thursday which made the mountains greater. i compare the poem “ monadnoc." 248 (age 36 journal margaret fuller and frederic henry hedge must have talent in their associates. and so they find that they forgive many defects. they do not require simplicity. i require genius and, if i find that, i do not need talent: and talent without genius gives me no pleasure. george bradford's verdict on a poem or a man i should value more than theirs, for hedge would like moore, and george bradford not. i am enlarged by the access of a great sentiment, of a virtuous impulse. it is the direct income of god. i am not enlarged by a prodigy, a raising of lazarus, a turning water into wine: open my eyes by new virtue, and i shall see miracles enough in this current moment of time. you prefer to see a dove descending visibly on jesus; i acknowledge his baptism by the spirit of god. and which is greater and more affecting, — to see some wonderful bird descending out of the sky, or to see the rays of a heavenly majesty of the mind and heart emitted from the countenance of a man? good reading is an art also. i would read the great action and great passiveness of fabius, his perfect equanimity under the popular odium and 1839) day nobly spent 249 general calamity, as the exhortation which the great god gives me for this day's bread. as bonaparte organized victory in the french armies, i would organize the old eternal heroism in mine. society thinks of nothing less than of appropriating the fine sentiments which are repeated in it. they are merely ornaments for show-days, as when a very wealthy and hard aristocrat declaims with fine tones, — “ let such, such only, tread this sacred foor, as dare to love their country and be poor.” the true conciseness of style would be such a writing as no dictionaries, but events and character only could illustrate. september 12. how to spend a day nobly is the problem to be solved, beside which all the great reforms which are preached seem to me trivial. if any day has not the privilege of a great action, then, at least, raise it by a wise passion. if thou canst not do, at least abstain. now the memory of the few past little days so works in me that i hardly dare front a new day when i leave my bed. when shall i come to the end of these shameful days. and organize honour in every day? 250 journal [age 36 september 14. yesterday mr. mann's address on education. it was full of the modern gloomy view of our democratical institutions, and hence the inference to the importance of schools. but as far as it betrayed distrust, it seemed to pray, as do all our pulpits, for the consolation of stoicism. a life in plutarch would be a perfect rebuke to such a sad discourse. if christianity is effete, let us try the doctrine of power to endure. education. — sad it was to see the death-cold convention yesterday morning, as they sat shivering, a handful of pale men and women in a large church, for it seems the law has touched the business of education with the point of its pen, and instantly it has frozen stiff in the universal congelation of society. an education in things is not. we all are involved in the condemnation of words, an age of words. we are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.' we 1 although the remainder of the paragraph is printed in “ new england reformers," it is given here because of its connection with the voyage of john and henry thoreau on the concord and merrimac rivers, referred to on next page ; 18391 the thoreaus voyage 251 cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. we do not know an edible root in the woods. we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. it is well if we can swim and skate. we are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. far better was the roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. now here are my wise young neighbors' who, instead of getting, like the woodmen, into a railroad-car, where they have not even the activity of holding the reins, have got into a boat which they have built with their own hands, with sails which they have contrived to serve as a tent by night, and gone up the merrimack to live by their wits on the fish of the stream and the berries of the wood. my worthy neighbor dr. bartlett expressed a true parental instinct when he desired to send his boy with them to learn something. the farm, the farm, is the right school. the reason of my deep respect for the farmer is that he is a realist, and not a dictionary. the farm is a piece of the world, the school-house is not. also because of its harmony with the educational trend advocated by many to-day. john and henry thoreau. (see a week on the concord and merrimack rivers.) 252 journal [age 36 the farm, by training the physical, rectifies and invigorates the metaphysical and moral nature. now so bad we are that the world is stripped of love and of terror. here came the other night an aurora so wonderful, a curtain of red and blue and silver glory, that in any other age or nation it would have moved the awe and words of men and mingled with the profoundest sentiments of religion and love, — and we all saw it with cold, arithmetical eyes, we knew how many colors shone, how many degrees it extended, how many hours it lasted, and of this heavenly flower we beheld nothing more: a primrose by the brim of the river of time. shall we not wish back again the seven whistlers, the flying dutchman, the lucky and unlucky days, and the terrors of the day of doom? i lament that i find in me no enthusiasm, no resources for the instruction and guidance of the people, when they shall discover that their present guides are blind. this convention of education is cold, but i should perhaps affect a hope i do not feel, if i were bidden to counsel it. i hate preaching, whether in pulpits or in teachers' meetings. preaching is a pledge, and i 1839) pledges. the people 253 wish to say what i think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps i shall contradict it all. freedom boundless i wish. i will not pledge myself not to drink wine, not to drink ink, not to lie, and not to commit adultery, lest i hanker tomorrow to do these very things by reason of my having tied my hands. besides, man is so poor he cannot afford to part with any advantages, or bereave himself of the functions even of one hair. i do not like to speak to the peace society, if so i am to restrain me in so extreme a privilege as the use of the sword and bullet. for the peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence: but with knife and pistol in my hands, if i, from greater bravery and honor, cast them aside; then i know the glory of peace. it was a fine corollary of stoicism that aristotle said that the honour of chastity consisted in self-sufficiency. the mob are always interesting. we hate editors, preachers and all manner of scholars, and fashionists. a blacksmith, a truckman, a farmer, we follow into the bar-room and watch with eagerness what they shall say, for such as 254 journal [age 36 they do not speak because they are expected to, but because they have somewhat to say. rs how sad a spectacle, so frequent nowadays, to see a young man after ten years of college education come out, ready for his voyage of life, — and to see that the entire ship is made of rotten timber, of rotten, honeycombed, traditional timber without so much as an inch of new plank in the hull. it seems as if the present age of words should naturally be followed by an age of silence, when men shall speak only through facts, and so regain their health. we die of words. we are hanged, drawn and quartered by dictionaries. we walk in the vale of shadows. it is an age of hobgoblins. ... when shall we attain to be real, and be born into the new heaven and earth of nature and truth? it is not good sense to repeat an old story to the same child. yet the pulpit thinks there is some piquancy or rag of meat in his paragraph about the traitor judas or the good samaritan. things versus men.how many men can measure themselves with a ton of coals ? over 1839] things. singing 255 a thing power and awe hang inseparably. in every moment and change it represents nature, but these transformed men are an impotent canting. september 18. the teamsters write on their teams, “no monopoly. old union line, fitchburg, groton,” etc. on the guide-boards they paint, “free trade and teamster's rights.": with the past, as past, i have nothing to do; nor with the future, as future. i live now, and will verify all past history in my own moments. i heard with great pleasure lately the songs of jane tuckerman. the tone of her voice is not in the first hearing quite pure and agreeable. the tone of abby warren's voice is much more pure and noble;but the wonderful talent of miss tuckerman, her perfect taste, the sweetness of all her tones, and the rich variety and the extreme tenuity with which she spins the thread of sound 1 this seems to have been due to the alarm of the coming railroad. 2 this was the voice in the village choir that he has praised before. the lady, as mrs. belden, later sang in park street church. 256 (age 36 journal to a point as fine as a ray of light, makes the ear listen to her with the most delicious confidence. her songs were better with every repetition. i found my way about in the hollows and alleys of their music better each time. yet still her music was a phenomenon to me. i admired it as a beautiful curiosity, as a piece of virtu. it does not marry itself to the mind and become a part of it. she composes me by the serenity of her manners. allconversation among literary men is muddy. i derive from literary meetings no satisfaction. yet it is pity that meetings for conversation should end as quickly as they ordinarily do. they end as soon as the blood is up, and we are about to say daring and extraordinary things. they adjourn for a fortnight, and when we are reassembled we have forgot all we had to say." 1 under date of september 18, mr. alcott wrote in his journal: “symposium met again at bartol's, chestnut street. we discussed the subject of a journal designed as the organ of views more in accordance with the soul. present, francis, alcott, hedge, bartol, w. channing [william henry channing], dwight, ripley, parker, bartlett, russell, robbins, morison, shattuck, miss fuller. a good deal was said about our journal, but no definite action taken upon it. its idea and plan are not defined.” 1839] rich man. novels. work 257 the rich man will presently come to be ashamed of his riches, when he sees he has any accidental advantage which takes away all the praise of every good thing he does. the race is won by no skill or strength of his, but by the sinews of his good horse. the serene and beneficent life he leads solves the problem of life for nobody but the rich. his wealth, then, if not the earning of his own sweat, is his backbiter and enemy in all men's ears. it is no easy matter to write a dialogue. cooper, sterling, dickens, and hawthorne cannot. water is more agreeable to the imagination as an article of diet than any other, because it is a kind of material absolute. the common household tasks are agreeable to the imagination: they are the subjects of all the greek gems. how trifling to insist on ex tempore speech, or spontaneous conversation, and decry the written poem or dissertation, or the debating club. a man's deep conviction lies too far down in nature to be much affected by these trifles. do what 258 (age 36 journal we can, your genius will speak from you, and mine from me. september 20. it is only by doing without shakspear that we can do without his book. be shakspear, and we shall value it no longer. so it is with the holy men whose life is recorded in the religious books of the nations. children like the story that makes them weep better than the one that makes them laugh. men love the play, or the fight, or the news that scares or agitates them. and the great man loves the conversation or the book that convicts him; not that which soothes and flatters him. for this opens to him a new and great career, fills him with hope. therefore a great man always keeps before him the transcendent, and humbles himself in its presence. losing this he is no longer great. temperance that knows itself is not temperance. that you cease to drink wine or coffee or tea is no true temperance if you still desire them and think of them; there is nothing angelic there. it is thus far only prudence. 1839) lonely revolution 259 the only condition on which i can expect a better sight is, that i put off all that is foreign. i am still busy in that initial endeavor, i have not yet arrived at virtue. i burn in purgatory still.' “these men.” — in massachusetts a number of young and adult persons are at this moment the subject of a revolution. they are not organized into any conspiracy: they do not vote, or print, or meet together. they do not know each other's faces or names. they are united only in a common love of truth and love of its work. they are of all conditions and natures. they are, some of them, mean in attire, and some mean in station, and some mean in body, having inherited from their parents faces and forms scrawled with the traits of every vice. not in churches, or in courts, or in large assemblies; not in solemn holidays, where men were met in festal dress, have these pledged themselves to new life, but in lonely and obscure places, in 1 the tone of the journals of this and the next two or three years seems to show that the widespread awakening and manifold protests of the period had stirred mr. emerson out of the serenity of the immediately preceding years. the new lights must be tested as guides to action. it required time and more solitude than his many visitors left him to regain his equipoise. med me me 260 [age 36 journal servitude, in solitude, in solitary compunctions and shames and fears, in disappointments, in diseases, trudging beside the team in the dusty road, or drudging, a hireling in other men's cornfields, schoolmasters who teach a few children rudiments for a pittance, ministers of small parishes of the obscurer sects, lone women in dependent condition, matrons and young maidens, rich and poor, beautiful and hard-favoured, without conceit or proclamation of any kind, have silently given in their several adherence to a new hope. september 24. friendship.— i do not wish to treat friendships daintily.' ... i have the most romantic relations precisely with my oldest friends. ... who is rich, who is fashionable, who is highbred, has great hindrances to success [in friendships]. very hardly will he attain to mastery with all these ribbons, laces and plumes, in a tug where all the hap depends on eternal facts, on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles. genius and virtue, like diamonds, are best plain set, — set in lead, set in poverty. and the highest beauty should be plain set. i here follow several sentences which are printed in “ friendship ” (pp. 201, 202). 1839) dickens. children 261 those only can sleep who do not care to sleep, and those only can act or write well who do not respect the writing or the act. i have read oliver twist in obedience to the opinions of so many intelligent people as have praised it. the author has an acute eye for costume; he sees the expression of dress, of form, of gait, of personal deformities; of furniture, of the outside and inside of houses; but his eye rests always on surfaces; he has no insight into character. for want of key to the moral powers the author is fain to strain all his stage trick of grimace, of bodily terror, of murder, and the most approved performances of remorse. it all avails nothing, there is nothing memorable in the book except the flash, which is got at a police office, and the dancing of the madman which strikes a momentary terror. like cooper and hawthorne he has no dramatic talent. the moment he attempts dialogue the improbability of life hardens to wood and stone. and the book begins and ends without a poetic ray, and so perishes in the reading. children are all foreigners. we treat them as such. we cannot understand their speech or the 262 journal (age 36. mode of life, and so our education is remote and accidental and not closely applied to the facts. day and night are vests only of things. [here follows a page or more of anecdotes of cromwell.] i have been reading all this in no bigger book than a volume of lardner's cabinet cyclopædia, by forster. the man is great, though his historian is small. cromwell is a droll, and always has a design under his dulness or his horseplay. it is odd indeed, his talk to the parliament. he talks like a porter with his endless expletives and circumstantial statement of nothings, and affirmations that he is telling the truth. he is a new combination, and suggests, as every strong nature does, how easily those qualities may be combined in the next babe that is born, which we commonly pronounce incompatible, — the inspiration of holiness, for example, with the shrewdest selfishness. we love force and we care very little how it is exhibited. state is a great game which is fit for young natures to play at, though not for the strongest, for these selfish fellows never can, in my judgment, compete with s never om rs a ever re 1839) forster's cromwell 263 the artist. he draws out of the invisible his material, his counters, and then plays his game by a skill not taught or quickened by his appetites. the cromwells and cæsars are a mob beside him. histories are written, like this forster's, in ridiculous deference to all the lowest prejudices. the simple fact of being the potentate of england seems to the good scribe a thing so incredible and venerable that he can never allude to it without new astonishment and never records a victory without new bows and duckings and empressements, like a catholic priest kneeling whenever he passes the crucifixin crossing the church. a gentleman sees empire and victory in every right action, and makes no ado about the circumstances. “ these applications of the wit and mind are tender things; they do not fancy the sun and the cloud, but delight in shade and retirement. like noble and delicate maidens, they must rather be kept safe at home, than brought forth into engagements and perils.” – milton to cromwell. woods. a prose sonnet wise are ye, o ancient woods! wiser than man. whoso goeth in your paths or into your 264 journal [age 36 thickets where no paths are, readeth the same cheerful lesson whether he be a young child, or a hundred years old, comes he in good fortune, or bad, -ye say the same things, and from age to age. ever the needles of the pine grow and fall, the acorns on the oak, the maples redden in autumn, and at all times of the year the ground pine and the pyrola bud and root under foot. what is called fortune and what is called time by men — ye know them not. men have not language to describe one moment of your eternal life. this i would ask of you, o sacred woods, when ye shall next give me somewhat to say, give me also the tune wherein to say it. give me a tune of your own, like your winds or rains or brooks or birds; for the songs of men grow old when they have been often repeated, but yours, though a man have heard them for seventy years, are never the same, but always new, like time itself, or like love. september 28. usefulness is always handsome, uselessness always vulgar. hint a little service of the household, a lady will instantly do it, a nurse will toss her foolish head with, “ lor! i'll call someone.' 1839) artists' lives. sunday 265 the life of raffaelle is the catalogue of his works. the life of a great artist always is thus inward, a life on no events. shakespear has no biography worth speaking. dante, by how much he had a biography, is by so much the worst artist. for dante is a person of strong understanding and shares the vulgar pride of noblemen and fashionists, and seldom a seer. i love the sunday morning. i hail it from afar. i walk with gladness and a holiday feeling always on that day. the church is ever my desk. if i did not go thither i should not write so many of these wayward pages. the better place, the better deed. mr. dewey said to me that w. c. promised to be a great man twenty years hence. mr. felt, then one of the parish committee in the first church in new york, observed, “yes, but we want a minister ready grown; he must have his growing elsewhere.” so it is with us all. only fathers and mothers may contentedly be present at the growing. i hate to hear a singer who is learning, let her voice be never so sweet. i wish not to be asked in every note whether i will allow it. i wish every note to command me with sweet yet perfect empire. 266 journal (age 36 also i hate early poems. a lovely saturday afternoon, and i walked toward fairhaven with henry thoreau, and admired autumnal red and yellow and, as of old, nature's wonderful boxes in which she packs, so workmanlike, her pine seed and oak seed, and not less the keys of frost and rain and wind with which she unlocks them by and by. mankind have ever a deep common sense (using that word in the highest style) that guides their judgments, so that they are always right in their fames. how strange that jesus should stand at the head of history, the first character of the world without doubt, but the unlikeliest of all men, one would say, to take such a rank in such a world. well then, as if to indemnify themselves for this vast concession to truth, they must put up the militia — alexander, cæsar, napoleon, etc. — into the next place of proclamation. yet it is a pit to olympus, this fame by that, or even by the place of homer, pindar and plato. i can be wise very well for myself, but not ra 1839) sorrow and age 267 for another, nor among others. i smile and ignore wo, and if that which they call wo shall come to me i hope and doubt not to smile still. they smile never and think joy amiss. all their facts are tinged with gloom, and all my pains are edged with pleasure. but if i intermeddle, if i quit my divine island and seek to right them in particulars, if i look upon them as corrigible individuals and their fortunes curable, i grow giddy and skeptical presently in their company. old age is a sad riddle which this stony sphinx reads us. how base to live, as the old, when now their period of outdoor activity is over, in their sensations; to exist to trifles; to have the palate and the eye and ear and skin so ignominiously wise and knowing; to be a taster, and an inexhaustible quiddle; to sell the sweet and noble human soul to all the imps of spite and gloom on the cause of an illdone omelet, heavy cakes, or a draught of air. i can only solve this sad problem by esteeming it a slide in my lamp. it is a shade which adds splendor to the lights. but if i intermeddle, if i esteem it an entity, already my own hair grizzles. age is to be parried and annihilated to thee, o son of god, by wrapping thyself in god's eternal youth. cast thyself frankly as 268 (age 36 journal these sweet children do into the beauty and joy of this moment; do not addle the egg with thought, but generously sleep in thy sentiment, in thine act, the arms of the wise god being around thee, and thou shalt take thy being again from him presently, refreshed and exalted. but seest thou not that in nature every set sun rises, every loss has a gain, nor shall even this hated phantom with its evil insignia of baldness, of toothless gums, cracked voice, defaced face, and fumbling, peevish trifling, stand in the wide beauty of the universe hopeless. there is recovery from this lapse, and awaking from this haggard dream. but what is old age? what is the fall? what sin? what death? lying as we do in this eternal soul originating benefit forevermore. the dullest scholar learns the secret of space and time; learns that time is infinite; that the instruments of god are all commensurate. is not that lesson enough for a life? the power that deals with us, the power which we study and which we are to inherit as fast as we learn to use it, is, in sum, dazzling, terrific, inaccessible. it now benignly shows us in parts and atoms some arc of its magnificent circle, elements which are radically ours. 1839) beauty eyes. song 269 september 29. a fair child went by who made me think, as others have done, that a mixture of lethe adds to beauty. the military eye which i meet so often darkly sparkling, now under clerical, now under rustic brows, e. g., robert bartlett, w. channing, and our william shepherd here, — the city of lacedæmon; and the poem of dante, which seems to me a city of lacedæmon turned into verses. a fine melody again at the church. i always thank the gracious urania when our chorister selects tunes with solos for my singer. my ear waits for those sweet modulations, so pure of all manner and personality, so universal, that they open on the ear like the rising of the world. a walk in the woods is only an exalted dream. some faces turn on the pivot of the collarbone, with eyes that are shallow beads — no more: and some on a pivot at least as deep as the orbit of the sphere, so slow and lazily and great they move. 270 journal [age 36 a man is a diamond edition of the world. what comedy, or what tragedy, like a john barrett or john brown or mr. smith or mr. clark, as we facetiously denominate these incarnations, with all he is and has, denoted in his countenance. the foolish science of phrenology is yet founded on this very admiration, and sheds lights. then my babies are the true academy of sculpture. in every house there is a good deal of false hospitality. relatives come thither of all the degrees of cousindom and family acquaintances, who, like cats, frequent the place and not the man. the hero meets with content all this claim on time and labor and takes care that his “hospitality run fine to the last,” as lamb finely said. but not so the saint. he is so much the servant of absolute goodness, that he feels the falsehood of merely feeding and amusing these butterflies and beetles, and austerely tells them so. when i was thirteen years old, my uncle samuel ripley one day asked me, “how is it, ralph, that all the boys dislike you and quarrel with you, whilst the grown people are fond of you?” now am i thirty-six and the fact is re1839] cant. fact and ideal 271 versed, — the old people suspect and dislike me,' and the young love me. never exhort, only confess. all exhortation, o thou hoarse preacher ! respects others and not thyself, respects appearance and not facts, and therefore is cant. shall i not once paint in these pages an experience so conspicuous to me, and so oft repeated in these late years, as the debating club, now under the name of teachers' meeting, now a conference, now an æsthetic club, and now a religious association, but always bearing for me the same fruit; a place where my memory works more than my wit, and so i come away with compunction? in correcting old discourses to retain only what is alive, i discover a good deal of matter which a strong common-sense would exclude. i seem however to discover in the same passages which i condemn the commendation of the ideal and holy life, and hence am annoyed by a discrepancy betwixt the two states. i love facts, and so erase this preaching. but also i venerate the good, the better, and did therefore give 1 the natural shyness at bold thought and experiment. 272 journal (age 36 se it place. cannot montaigne and shakspear consist with plato and jesus? the whole world is in conspiracy against itself in religious matters. the best experience is beggarly when compared with the immense possibilities of man. divine as the life of jesus is, what an outrage to represent it as tantamount to the universe! to seize one accidental good man that happened to exist somewhere, at some time, and say to the new-born soul, behold thy pattern ; aim no longer to possess entire nature, to fill the horizon, to fill the infinite amplitude of being with great life, to be in sympathy and relation with all creatures, to lose all privateness by sharing all natural action, shining with the day, undulating with the sea, growing with the tree, instinctive with the animals, entranced in beatific vision with the human reason. renounce a life so broad and deep as a pretty dream, and go in the harness of that past individual, assume his manners, speak his speech, this is the madness of christendom. the little bigots of each town and neighborhood seek thus to subdue the manly and free-born. but, for this poor, dependent fraction of a life, they bereave me of that magnificent destiny which the young soul has embraced with auguries of im1839] keep the soul free 273 measureable hope. i turn my back on these insane usurpers. the soul always believes in itself. it affirms the eternity and omnipresence of god which these deny. it knows that all which hath ever been is now, that the total world is my inheritance, and the life of all beings i am to take up into mine. by lowly listening, omniscience is for me. by faithful receiving, omnipotence is for me. but the way of the soul into its heaven is not to man, but from man. it leaves every form of life and doctrine that ever existed. it touches no book, or rite, or crutch, or guide, or mediator; it gives itself alone, original, pure, to the lonely original and pure, who, on that condition, inhabits, leads and speaks through it. then is it glad, young and nimble. it is not wise, but it sees through all things. it is not called religious, but it is innocent. it calls the light its own and shares the pleasures of all creatures." and yet i know the dangers of this sort of speculation. it is somewhat not wholesome to be said in a detached form. it is not good to say with too much precision and emphasis that we are encroached upon by the claims of jesus in 1 a part of this passage is found in « the over-soul” (p. 296). 274 journal [age 36 the current theology. it brings us into a cold, denying, irreligious state of mind. it is of no use to say, quit jesus and the saints and heroes. but without the saying, which is proud, and so, suicidal, let us turn our eyes to the vast, the good, the eternal. there fasten the eyes, there build the perpetual hearth and house and altar of the soul. and dare to try thy pinions by flights into the transcendent and the unknown. thou awful cause ! hardly with sincerity can i ask that my eye may learn to keep upward, so prone is it ever to things around and below. i was about to say and omitted it in the middle of the last page, — that we have nothing to do with jesus in our progress, nothing to do with any past soul. the only way in which the life of jesus or other holy person helps us is this, that as we advance without reference to persons on a new, unknown, sublime path, we at each new ascent verify the experiences of jesus and such souls as have obeyed god before. we take up into our proper life at that moment his act and word, and do not copy jesus, but really are jesus, just as jesus in that moment of his life was us. say rather, it was neither him nor us, but a man at this and at that time saw the truth, and was transformed into its likeness. ons on a s 1839] noviciate. problems 275 i must not bait my hook to draw men to me. i must angle with myself and use no lower means. be dion to dion. as much may be gleaned as gathered in strawberry-beds, grape-vines and books. ere october 2. it is strange how long our noviciate lasts; that the period of our mastership still loiters, that as long as we remain growing, and do not inveterate, we are always subject to circumstances and do not control them. all the chemical agents act with energy on us, and we come, greenhorns, to every conversation. the young, the knowing, the fashionable, the practical, the political, the belle, the pharisee and the sadducee, all overact on us, and make us dumb. sad the complaints of the young people, sad their despondency and skepticism which seem to spread every day. the young girl asks, what shall i do? how shall i live? and there is none to answer. it is vain to point them to the uncultivated and pious. could they bear the ordeal of cultivation and leisure? if not, as e. h. says, “i do not wish to be whipped by 276 journal (age 36 toil all day, and whipped to bed at night.” they must learn this fact, – that their sorrows are the ebbs of a happiness so delicate and spiritual, and if they are proportionate to the preceding flux, so are they also the preparation of a new tide. organization. — a chaste woman is indeed a poetic institution, but when you organize that idea by a stone convent with grated windows, shorn hair, dreadful vows, and terrific penalties, it is not chastity, but unchastity. the heart of a soldier is an impregnable castle, but if it be not, you add no strength with moats and mortars, ramparts, and cannon. aristocracy and idealism. — 1. society in our bright hours seems not to claim equality, but ought to be treated like children to whom we administer camomile and magnesia on our own judgment, without consultation. what we can do is law enough for them. and we glance for sanction at the historical position of scholars in all ages, whom we commend in proportion to their self-reliance. but when our own light beams less steadily and flickers in the socket, the pupil seems suddenly riper and more frocell iss en assume 1839] idealists. solemn ego 277 ward, and even assumes the mien of a patron whom we must court. 2. do you say that all the good retreat from men and do not work strongly and lovingly with them? very well; it is fit and necessary that they should treat men as ghosts and phantoms here for our behoof, here to teach us dramatically, as long as they have not yet attained to a real existence, existence in their own right, that is to say, until the uprise of the soul in them. then instantly we shall, without tedious degrees, treat them as ourselves. now they are not ourselves : why should we say they are? the best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence, as the greatest chemical energy of the prismatic spectrum is a little out of the spectrum. how we hate this solemn ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes ! let us be ravished by the fact and the thought, as these beautiful children are by the acorn, the hobby-horse and the doll, rush into the object, nor think of our existence; though by the laws of nature, forever and ever, only 278 journal [age 36 the subject is consulted, let the objects be as many and as grand as they will. i discern degrees in the proficiency of the malcontents of the day. i see some who, though not arrived at the chamber called peace, have yet such redundant health that no poverty or unfriendly circumstance could much affect them; and others who are still seeking in the saloons of the city what not even solitude can give them. is the transcendent is economy also. the woes of the time, – is not that topic enough? he that can enumerate their symptoms, expose their cause and show how they contain their remedies, comes to men from heaven with a palm branch in his hand. october 7. only this strip of paper remains to me to record my introduction to anna barker last friday at jamaica plains.' a new person is to 1 this lady became soon after the wife of mr. emerson's valued friend samuel gray ward of boston. she was bred a quaker, but was born to adorn society. though an invalid during the greater part of her long life, she was a person of great charm and beauty of character, and a strong influence in 279 1839) anna barker me ever a great event, and few days of my quiet life are so illustrated and cheered as were these two in which i enjoyed the frank and generous confidence of a being so lovely, so fortunate, and so remote from my own experiences. she seemed to me a woman singularly healthful and entire. she had no detached parts or powers. she had not talents, or affections, or accomplishments, or single features, of conspicuous beauty, but was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she did became her, whether she walked or sat or spoke. she had an instinctive elegance. she had too much warmth and sympathy and desire to please than that you could say her manners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanour on each occasion. she is not an intellectual beauty, but is of that class who in society are designated as having a great deal of soul, that is, the predominating character of her nature is not thought, but emotion or sympathy, and of course she is not of my class, does not resemble the women whom i have most admired and loved, but she is so perfect in her own nature as to meet these by the the lives of many persons, the young especially. in middle life she joined the church of rome, and was the means of bringing many into that communion. 280 journal [age 36 fulness of her heart, and does not distance me, as i believe all others of that cast of character do. she does not sit at home in her mind, as my angels are wont to do, but instantly goes abroad into the minds of others, takes possession of society and warms it with noble sentiments. her simple faith seemed to be, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble, and so her conversation is the frankest i ever heard. she can afford to be sincere. the wind is not purer than she is. (from a loose sheet) eloquence. lyceum. — here is all the true or' ator will ask, for here is a convertible audience, and here are no stiff conventions that prescribe a method, a style, a limited quotation of books and an exact respect to certain books, persons or opinions. no, here everything is admissible, philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdotes, jokes ventriloquism, all the breadth and versatility of the most liberal conversation ; highest, lowest, personal, local topics, all are permitted, and all may be combined in one speech; it is a panharmonicon, every note on the longest gamut, from the explosion of cannon, to the tinkle of a guitar. co 1839) lyceum. boston bells 281 let us try if folly, custom, convention and phlegm cannot hear our sharp artillery. here is a pulpit that makes other pulpits tame and ineffectual — with their cold, mechanical preparation for a delivery the most decorous, fine things, pretty things, wise things, but no arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growling, no transpiercing, no loving, no enchantment. here he may lay himself out utterly, large, enormous, prodigal, on the subject of the hour. here he may dare to hope for ecstasy and eloquence. (from journal e) concord, october 11. at waltham, last sunday, on the hill near the old meeting-house, i heard music so soft that i fancied it was a pianoforte in some neighbouring farmhouse, but on listening more attentively i found it was the church bells in boston, nine miles distant, which were playing for me this soft tune. co ii. horace walpole, whose letters i read so attentively in the past summer, is a type of the dominant englishman at this day. he has taste, common sense, love of facts, impatience of humbug, love of history, love of splendor, love of 282 journal [age 36 justice, and the sentiment of honour among gentlemen, but no life whatever of the higher faculties, no faith, no hope, no aspiration, no question even touching the secret of nature. “ matter, which is itself privation, often scatters and dissolves what a more excellent being than herself had wrought,” says plutarch (vol. iv, p. 12, “ on oracles"). those books which are for all time are written indifferently at any time. how can the age be a bad one which conveys to me the joys of literature? i can read plutarch, and augustine, and beaumont and fletcher, and landor's pericles, and with no very dissimilar feeling the verses of my young contemporaries thoreau and channing. let those, then, make much of the different genius of different periods who suffer by them. i who seek enjoyments which proceed not out of time, but out of thought, will celebrate on this lofty sabbath morn the day without night, the beautiful ocean which hath no tides. and yet literature, too, this magical man-provoking talisman, is in some sort a creature of time. it is begotten by time on the soul. and one day we shall forget this primer. but how 10 1839) books of all time 283 obviously initial it is to the writer. it is only his priming. the books of the nations, the universal books, are long ago forgotten of him who spake them. we must learn to judge books by absolute standards. criticism, too, must be transcendental. society wishes to assign subjects and method to its writers. but neither it nor you may intermeddle. you cannot reason at will in this and that other vein, but only as you must. you cannot make quaint combinations, and bring to the crucible and alembic of truth things farfetched or fantastic or popular, but your method and your subject are foreordained in your nature, and in all nature, or ever the earth was — or it has no worth. all that gives currency still to any book published to-day by little and brown is the remains of faith in the breast of men that not adroit book-makers, but the inextinguishable soul of the universe, reports of itself in articulate discourse through this and that other man, today, as of old. the ancients strongly expressed their sense of the unmanageableness of these words of the god, by saying that the god made his priest insane, took him hither and thither as leaves are whirled by the tempest. but we sing as we are bid. our inspirations are very manageable and tame. death and sin have whispered 284 journal (age 36 in the ear of our wild horses and they are become drays and hacks. it is very easy to hint keen replies to these statements of the independency of writers. it is easy to make persons ridiculous. let us all, or any who say so, be ridiculous. grant that we have been vain, boastful, cunning, covering our wretched pride with this claim of inspiration. still the fact holds for ever and ever, that the soul doth so speak, and that the law of literature, giving its exact worth to every ballad and spoken sentence, is thus transcendent and only self-contained. it certainly is never vitiated by any affectation, cant, dulness, or crime of those who speak for it. their lie or folly recoils on them. point out what abuses you will that might flow from the reception of this doctrine in weak and wicked heads, — the wind will still blow where it listeth, and the eternal soul will overpower the men who are its organs, and enchant the ears of those who hear them by the same right and energy by which long ago and now it enchants the mountains, and the sea, the air and the globes in their musical dance. “ thou shalt not plant a palm tree,” said pythagoras, intimating that, as that tree comes up best out of the ground self-sown, 1839) trust. soul. trade 285 so virtue and wisdom are the direct proceeding of god, and are not to be overlaid and distorted by indiscreet meddling and art. men have yet to learn the beauty and depth of the doctrine of trusts. o believe as thou livest that every sound that is spoken over the round world which thou oughtest to hear will vibrate on thine ear.' ... in all particulars the doctrine of the soul must be taught. men must be accustomed to ask if the thing they say of god holds. for the father is with them. a question which well deserves examination now is the dangers of commerce. this invasion of nature by trade with its money, its credit, its steam, its railroad, threatens to upset the balance of man, and establish a new, universal monarchy more tyrannical than babylon or rome. very faint and few are the poets or men of god. those who remain are so antagonistic to this tyranny that they appear mad or morbid, and are treated as such. sensible of this i here follows the passage thus beginning in “the oversoul” (essays, first series, pp. 293, 294). it was originally a part of a sermon preached by mr. emerson at east lexington. 286 journal (age 36 extreme unfitness they suspect themselves. and all of us apologize when we ought not, and congratulate ourselves when we ought not.' plutarch fits me better than southey or scott, therefore i say, there is no age to good writing. could i write as i would, i suppose the piece would be no nearer to boston in 1839 than to athens in the fiftieth olympiad. good thought, however expressed, saith to us, “ come out of time, come to me in the eternal.” we wish the man should show himself for what he is, though he be iscariot. if the humour is in the blood, bring it out to the skin by all means. october 16. friendship. what needs greater magnanimity than the waiting for a friend, a lover, for years? we see the noble afar off.? ... how sadly true all over human life is the saying, “to him that hath shall be given ; from him that hath not shall be taken.” attentions are showered on the powerful, who needs them not. 1 this passage is followed by the greater part of the opening paragraph of art (essays, second series). · 2 what follows is printed in “ friendship” (essays, first series, p. 212). 1839) plutarch. sleep. poem 287 friends abound for the self-trusting, and he retreats to his cliff. weather.— “if it be true that souls are naturally endued with the faculty of prediction, and that the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtue is a certain temperature of air and winds,” etc. — plutarch, de oraculis. “hermes played at dice with the moon and won of her the seventieth part of each of her revolutions with which he made five new days and added to the year that osiris might be born.” plutarch, isis and osiris.' re said lidian, “how we covet insensibility! my boy whines and wails if i wake him.” we are buddhists all. nature mixes facts and thought to evoke a poem from the poet, but our philosophy would be androgynous, and itself generate poems without aid of experience. october 18. lectures. in these golden days it behooves me once more to make my annual inventory of i this myth is alluded to in “ experience” (essays, second series, p. 46). 288 journal [age 36 the world. for the five last years i have read each winter a new course of lectures in boston, and each was my creed and confession of faith. each told all i thought of the past, the present and the future. once more i must renew my work, and i think only once in the same form, though i see that he who thinks he does something for the last time ought not to do it at all. yet my objection is not to the thing, but with the form : and the concatenation of errors called society to which i still consent, until my plumes be grown, makes even a duty of this concession also. so i submit to sell tickets again. but the form is neither here nor there. what shall be the substance of my shrift? adam in the garden, i am to new name all the beasts in the field and all the gods in the sky. i am to invite men drenched in time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air. i am to fire with what skill i can the artillery of sympathy and emotion. i am to indicate constantly, though all unworthy, the ideal and holy life, the life within life, the forgotten good, the unknown cause in which we sprawl and sin. i am to try the magic of sincerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and poets. tam to celebrate the spiritual powers in 1839) heed the spirit 289 their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of this time. i am to console the brave sufferers under evils whose end they cannot see by appeals to the great optimism, self-affirmed in all bosoms. jones very only repeated, in a form not agreeable, the thought which agitated me in earlier years, when he said, “the same spirit which brings me to your door prepares my welcome.” shall i not say this in its extent of sense to the men and institutions of today? think, and you annihilate the times. drink of the cup which god proffers to your lips and these storming, anxious, contradicting, threatening crowds which surround you, mad with debt and credit, with banks and politics, with books and churches and meats and drinks, shall all flee away like ghosts from the new-born soul. they are much to you while the same blood flows in your veins and theirs. but let the man put off the merchant in you, and all this shall be pictures merely. october 19. another day; the old game; up again, this wonderful but unhandsome machine, with thy hopes and shames; poor boasting augur, who 290 journal (age 36 sufferest as many misgivings on the edge of success as on the brink of failure, and tremblest with as many hopes on the eve of misfortune as on thy best day. and hark, new day! they batter the grey cheek of thy morning with booming of cannon, and now with lively clatter of bells and whooping of all the village boys. an unwonted holiday in our quiet meadows and sandy valleys, and cornwallis must surrender today.' without sympathy with the merry crowd, the pale student must yet listen and perchance even go abroad to beg a look at the sun. who can blame men for seeking excitement? they are polar, and would you have them sleep in a dull eternity of equilibrium? religion, love, ambition, money, war, brandy,—some fierce antagonism must break the round of perfect circulai a popular and attractive feature in the annual musters of the state militia as late as 1856 was a representation of the surrender of lord cornwallis at yorktown. some jovial country colonel in blue and buff took the part of washington, and another powdered red-coated officer, as the british general, gave up his sword to him. old costumes and weapons from garrets lent an antiquarian interest to the historic farce. " recollect what fun we had, you 'n' i and ezry hollis, up there to waltham plain, last fall, along o' the cornwallis ?". lowell, biglow papers, first series. 1 1839) the cornwallis 291 tion or no spark, no joy, no event can be. as good not be. in the country, the lover of nature dreaming through the wood would never awake to thought if the scream of an eagle, the cries of a crow or a curlew near his head, did not break the continuity. nay, if the truth must out, the finest lyrics of the poet come of this coarse parentage; the imps of matter beget such child on the soul, fair daughter of god. and so i went to the sham-fight and saw the whole show with pleasure. the officer instantly appears through all this masquerade and buffoonery. i thought when i first went to the field that it was the high tide of nonsense, and indeed the rag-tag and bobtail of the county were there in all the wigs, old hats, and aged finery of the last generations. then the faces were like the dresses, so exaggerated, noses, chins and mouths,that one could not reconcile them with any other dress than that frippery they wore. yet presently nature broke out in her old beauty and strength through all this scurf. the man of skill makes his jacket invisible. two or three natural soldiers among these merry captains played out their habitual energy so well that order and reason appeared as much at home in a farce as in a legislature. meantime the buffoons of a sham 292 journal (age 36 fight are soon felt to be as impertinent there as elsewhere. this organization suffices to bring pioneers, soldiers, outlaws and homicides distinct to view, and i saw washington, napoleon and marat come strongly out of the mottled crew. october 21. how can i not record, though now with sleepy eye and flagging spirits, so fair a fact as the visit of alcott and margaret fuller, who came hither yesterday and departed this morning? very friendly influences these, each and both. cold as i am, they are almost dear. i shall not, however, fill my page with the gifts or merits of either. they brought nothing but good spirits and good tidings with them of new literary plans here, and good fellowship and recognition abroad. and then to my private ear a chronicle of sweet romance, of love and nobleness which have inspired the beautiful and brave. what is good to make me happy is not however good to make me write. life too near paralyses art. long these things refuse to be recorded except in the invisible colors of memory: trust thy time also. what a fatal prodigality to contemn our age. one would say we could 1839) trust thy time 293 well afford to slight all other ages if only we value this one. not for nothing it dawns out of everlasting peace, this pretty discord, this great discontent, this self-accusing reflection. what apology, what praise, can equal the fact that here it is; therefore certainly in the vast optimism here it ought to be? the great will seize with eagerness this novel crisis when the old and the new stand face to face, and reflection is for a time possible, and faith in the eternal stands in close neighborhood to exhausting analysis of the economical. the very time sees for us, thinks for us ; it is a microscope such as philosophy never had. insight is for us which was never for any. and doubt not the moment and the opportunity are divine. he who shall represent the genius of this day, he who shall, standing in this great cleft of past and future, understand the dignity and power of his position so well as to write the laws of criticism, of ethics, of history, will be found, an age hence, neither false nor unfortunate, but will rank immediately and equally with all the masters whom we now acknowledge. i heard with joy that which thou toldest me, o eloquent lady, of thy friends and mine, yet 294 journal (age 36 with my joy mingled a shade of discontent. things must not be too fine. parian marble will not stand exposure to our new england weather, and, though i cannot doubt the sterling sincerity of the mood and moment you describe, and though i am cheered to the bottom of my heart by these dear magnanimities which made their way to the light in the neighbourhood of all that is common, yet i dare not believe that a mood so delicate can be relied on like a principle for the wear and tear of years. it will be succeeded by another and another, and the new will sport with the old. yet as it is genuine today, it will never be nothing. a part of the protest we are called to make is to the popular mode of virtuous endeavor. “will you not come to this convention and nominate a temperance ticket? let me show you the immense importance of the step.” nay, my friend, i do not work with those tools. the principles on which your church and state are built are false, and a portion of this virus vitiates the smallest detail even of your charity and religion. though i own i sympathize with your desire and abhor your adversaries, yet i shall persist in wearing this robe, all loose and unbe1839] the soul heir of all 295 coming as it is, of inaction, this wise passiveness until my hour comes when i can see how to act with truth as well as to refuse. ness it pleases the great soul, that the present perception should arise in the universal heart of man of the soul's all sufficiency and so that literature, art, persons, space, time should be undervalued. do not doubt that this mood is one sign in heaven's eternal zodiack, or mistake the spirit of piety in which this old noblesse is assailed. it is not, as old men fancy, in a bragging spirit, that philosophy now tends to disparage books, and affirm that the reader of shakspear is also a shakspear, or he could find no joy in the page. nor does the young student persuade himself that he could bodily restore the parthenon, whilst he affirms the ultimate identity of the artist and the spectator; but only in the spirit of a child who says, i am but a child, but i am the heir of all. certainly we concede that nothing has yet been greatly done, but we will not therefore distrust this great faith. its boundlessness is already a grandeur. the greatness of this age is in its prayer. you say you see no miltons or dantes, and only are disgusted by the flippant pretenders who decry 296 journal (age 36 them. but take the same view of your poets [that] we do whom this vision of god makes happy, use your literature more impersonally, strip it of this accurate individuality. take all that you call dante, the whole mass of images, thoughts and emotions, and believe, what is certainly true, that it is not poorly confined to certain florentine flesh and blood, but that it is an eternal flower of the world, a state of thought indigenous in all souls, because in the one soul a sign of your zodiack, and so shall you in your progress learn at last that the deified alighieri was only a type of the great class of divine shapes to which he led you, the book a brute harp-string which, vibrating on your ear, causes you to see god and his angels, and that you have a right, not derived, but original, to all the pomp of real nature to which the name of dante was frontispiece. observe, then, that this humour which offended you as brag is not so, but is only a different manner of considering literature, and leaves in the pupil as much veneration for shakspear and homer as before; only they are made still alive, their power still accessible and not a sepulchre to him. books. in the statements we make so freely 1839) the christian epoch 297 that books are for idle hours' and when we flout all particular books as initial merely, we truly express the privilege of spiritual nature, but alas not the fact and fortune of this low concord and boston, of these humble octobers and novembers of mortal life. ... the christianity represents no absolute fact in history, but only the present and recent state of thought. the traditional or conventional language on the subject is very ignorant. we choose to speak as if only in one book, or one life, was the pure light; but the wise know better; the experience of each intelligent reader belies the tale. whenever we are wise, every book we read streams with an universal light. whenever we are wise, the whole world is wise and emblematic. the great books do in that hour give us in every page the most authentic tokens that they also recognize the holiest law, the unutterable. they do not preach; they recognize it in strains of pure melody. the greek mythology what a won1 see « the american scholar”(nature, addresses and lectures, p. 91). 2 the rest of this long passage is the opening paragraph of « thoughts on modern literature," printed in the dial, and included in natural history of intellect, pp. 309, 310. 298 (age 36 journal derful example is that of profound sense overmastering the finite speakers and writers of the fables ! always and never the world is wise. october 23. fact is better than fiction if only we could get pure fact. do you think any rhetoric or any romance would get your ear from one who could tell, straight on, the history of man, who could reconcile your moral character and your natural history, who could explain your misfortunes, your fevers, your debts, your temperament, your habits of thought, your tastes, and in every explanation not sever you from the whole, butunite you to it? is it not plain that, not in senates, or courts, or chambers of commerce, but in the conversation of a true philosopher, the eloquence must be found that can agitate, convict, inspire and possess us and guide us to a true peace?' i look upon the lecture-room as the true church of today and as the home of a richer eloquence than faneuil hall or the capitol ever knew. 1 all of this entry, thus far, is printed in “ domestic life.” (see society and solitude, pp. 107, 108.) it is reproduced here because of the curious change in the text in the printed volume, seeming to show the mellowing of the author's character. there “the dwelling house" takes the place of the conversation of a true philosopher.” 1839] michel angelo 299 michel angelo is as well entitled to the surname colossal as charles to his magne, or alfred to his great. the genius of michel aims at strength in all figures, not in gods and prophets alone, but in women and in children; a divine strength, titanic, aboriginal before the world was; a strength anterior to all disease. the colossal in him is not in the outline or particular drawing, but is intrinsic; and so appears in all; to this, beauty is made incidental. michel esteemed the human form the best ornament, and so uses no other in each cornice or compartment, only a new and wondrous attitude of sleep or energy. see a knot of country people working out their road-tax or laying a new bridge. how close are they to their work. how they sympathize with every log, and foreknow its every nod and stir with chain and crowbar, and seem to see through the ground all the accidents of preservation and decay. truth of character. temperance. — truth will cure all our ails. i hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it. i hate giving seven pounds of rice or sugar to a poor 300 journal (age 36 person whose whole character is disagreeable to me.' ... but now men are multiplex. the good offices they do are not their genuine aim, the mere flower and perfume of their nature, but are a compliance and a compliment, and contradicted by other actions on the same day. their temperance is a plume, a feather in the cap, this ostentatious glass of cold water and dry, raw, vegetable diet that makes your blood run cold to see, is not the joyful sign that they have ceased to care for food in nobler cares, but no, they peak and pine and know all they renounce. temperance when it is only the sign of intrinsic virtue is graceful as the bloom on the cheek that betokens health, but temperance that is nothing else but temperance is phlegm or conceit. is it not better they should do bad offices and be intemperate so long as that is their ruling love? so at least they should not be hypocrites. also i lament that people without character, seeing the homage that is paid to character, demand the homage, and feel seriously injured and bewail themselves if it is withholden; and then the silly friends affect to yield that homage, 1 the rest is in “ domestic life” (society and solitude, p. 109). 1839) facets of life 301 and so lie and steal and transform themselves into the similitude of apes and serpents. october 26. there is that in us which mutters and that which groans and that which chants and that which aspires. the piano educates, and the evening game, as well as the sciences and afflictions. abolition is poetic, has produced good verses, whittier's, for example; phrenology never one, but prose only. there are facts which turn curled heads round at church and send wonderful eyebeams across assemblies, from one to one, never missing in the thickest crowd, which it behooves the philosopher also to remember. one must not in scrutiny.of causes forget, any more, that a large part of the content of men in institutions which poets esteem odious arises from the rude health of men, a health which makes a hard board pew as soft a seat as an ottoman in a palace, and the drowsiest sermon as agreeable a circumstance as music and dancing to another man. rest and love. — there are two elements of which our nature is mixed, most unequally in 302 journal (age 36 different individuals. the first is rest, predominant in manifold facts, from the vision of reason, the contemplation of the infinite, to the simple satisfaction in permanence, the love of whatis old, old age itself, sleep and death. the second is love. the past. — the centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. the greatness of greece consists in this, that no greece preceded it. october 27. garrison. — don't seek to vamp and abut principles. they were before you were born, and will be when you are rotten. you might as well paint the sky blue with a bluebag. the old thought which i loved in my youth when the roar of politics fell harshest on my ear, that presently government would cease to be sought by gentlemen and would be despatched by a few clerks, is now embodied, and, as far as i heard last night, very ably and truly preached by the non-resistants with garrison at their head, a man of great ability in conversation, of a certain longsightedness in debate which is a great excellence, a tenacity of his proposition which no accidents or ramblings in the con1839] garrison 303 versation can divert, a calmness and method in unfolding the details of his argument, and an eloquence of illustration, which contents the ear and the mind, — thus armed with all the weapons of a great apostle — no, not yet, until i have remembered his religion, which is manifest, his religious trust in his principles, and his clearness from any taint of private end. and yet the man teases me by his continual wearisome trick of quoting texts of scripture and his judaical christianity, and then by the continual eye to numbers, to societies. himself is not enough for him. but to the principle of non-resistance again, trust it. give up the government without too solicitously inquiring whether roads can be still built, letters carried, and title deeds secured when the government of force is at an end.'... again it seems clear that we should never cumber ourselves with maintaining either popular religion or popular sabbaths or popular laws, if we do not want them ourselves. are they now maintained by [us] because the world needs them? let the world maintain them. and you shall find, if the deacons and the 1 the continuation of this passage is found in “ politics” (essays, second series, p. 220). 304 journal (age 36 priests all fail, the bank presidents and the chambers of commerce, yea, the very inn-holders and democrats of the county would muster with fury to their support. prophecy is not more sacred than the knowledge of the present. it is only the fixing the eye on the hill-top before you, instead of the fields around. believe thy faintest presentiment, and thou art a prophet. and how all my experience admonishes me not to throw up an abstraction because i cannot solve to flesh and blood the objections they make to it. i am always sure to see those objections highly solved, self-solved, by cleaving to the law. a law has eagle-wings, and its own path to heaven and to earth. in our modern reforms there's a little too much commentary on the movement by the mover. it is not to be contested that a selfish commerce and government have got possession of the masses. whilst we plead for the ideal we do not pretend that we have the majority." i wrote to s. g. ward, “there are fewer 1 the passage thus beginning occurs in “ thoughts on modern literature,” first printed in the dial (national history of intellect, p. 317). 1839) poem or picture 305 painters than poets.”ten men can awaken me by words to new hope and fruitful musing for one that can achieve the miracle by forms. besides, i think the pleasure of the poem lasts longer. and yet the expressive arts ought to go abreast and as much genius find its way to light in design as in song, and probably does, so far as the artist is concerned, but the eye is a speedier student than the ear. by a grand or a lovely form it is astonished or delighted once for all, and quickly appeased, whilst the sense of a verse steals slowly on the mind and suggests a hundred fine fancies before its precise import is settled. or is this wholly unjust to the noble art of design and only showing that i have a hungry ear but a dull eye? will you let me say that i have conceived more highly of the possibilities of the art sometimes in looking at weatherstains on a wall, or fantastic shapes which the eye makes out of shadows by lamplight, than from really majestic and finished pictures ? i see letters from ralph waldo emerson to a friend, 1838–1853 (edited by charles eliot norton ; houghton, mifflin & co., 1899). mr. ward had lent his friend a portfolio containing the large engravings of michel angelo's frescoes in the sistine chapel. 2 this coincides with the advice of leonardo da vinci to artists in his treatise on painting. 306 [age 36 journal clails, october 28. the world can never be learned by learning all its details. variety of topic and of illustration may be a sign of poverty and not of wealth, as the double and treble plots of spanish plays, and the overcrowding of action, indicate a lack of genius to expand one action to just and majestic issues. the age. — one would say that the present reflective period had not reached its meridian and will endure for some time yet, who considered that no great analyst except kant has yet appeared, and kant is rather a technical analyst than an universal one such as the times tend to form. the age, what is it? it is what the being is who uses it, a dead routine to me, and the vista of eternity to thee. one man's view of the age is confined to his shop and the market, and another's sees the roots of today in all the past and beneath the past in the necessary and eternal. let us not dwell so fondly on the characteristics of a single epoch as to bereave ourselves of the permanent privileges of nian, iiiiin 1839] keep young. angelo 307 we ought never to lose our youth. in all natural and necessary labors, as in the work of a farm, in digging, in splitting, rowing, drawing water, a man always appears youngis still a boy. so in doing anything which is still above him, which asks all his strength and more; somewhat commensurate with his ability, so that he works up to it, not down upon it, he is still a youth. but if his work is unseasonable, as botany and shells or the greek verbs at eighty years of age, or playing blindman's buff, we say, go up, thou baldhead! best gift.— the dreams of youth, the passion of love are the constant reproduction of the vision of the ideal, which god will not suffer a moment to remit its presence or to relax its energy as a coagent in history. october 31. no article so rare in new england as tone. w november 3. in boston i visited the gallery of sculpture and saw the day and night of michel angelo. i find in michel more abandon than in milton. . . . wonderful figure and head of day. the head suggests not only, as when i first saw it in florence, the sun new risen resting over the 308 [age 36 journal brow of a hill, but, when better seen, a whole rough landscape of woods and mountains. i see reason for this figure being called day: and i called the night, night. the jove of phidias pleases me well. in the afternoon i visited alcott and in the evening ward came to see me, and the next morning again brought me raphael's designs to show me that raphael was greater than angelo, great as shakspear. but in making this scale we must be very passive. the gods and demigods must seat themselves without seneschal in our olympus, and as they can instal themselves by seniority divine, so will i worship them, and not otherwise. i had told alcott that my first class stood, for today, perhaps thus : phidias, jesus, angelo, shakspear; or if i must sift more sternly still, — jesus and shakspear were two men of genius. the common reply to the physician is, — “see how many healthy men use the foods and liquors and practices which you reprehend.” and men see in this fact a treachery in nature herself, instead of esteeming it the bending goodness of the god, the resistance of the soul, the moral purchase, the intercession of the spirit, the elas1839) health. innocence 309 ticity straining still against the noxious wrong and giving the poor victim still another and yet another chance of self-recovery and escape. health. — is it becoming or agreeable to your imagination that the bursts of divine poetry, that the new delineations of god and his world should be the inspirations of opium or tea? it is the condition of inspiration marry nature, and not use her for pleasure. he who has not yet departed from his innocence stands in the highway which all souls must travel, and, solitary as he may at moments seem to himself, he is lovely, and that which we seek in society : so that he appears to all beholders to stand betwixt them and the sun, a transparent object, and whoso journeys towards that person, journeys towards the sun. but he who departs from his innocency must be loved for himself and not for virtue: the time given to courting his affection is lost to any other object, and the affection itself is a false and fugitive affection. it is only known to plato that we can do without plato. 310 journal (age 36 older! older! we wish sign, in praising or describing aught, that the eye has seen other things. deep eyes that have drank more of this wine than others. nose and teeth. i saw at the athenæum with great pleasure that old head of jove attributed to phidias. it is sublime in general and in all the details except the nose, which did not beseem the father of the gods. indeed, it is not easy to imagine the shaping of that feature (long ago excluded from epic poetry) worthily for such a form. and this is strange. yet the nose of cæsar and of pitt suggest “ the terrors of the beak.” i have mentioned elsewhere that the teeth in the physiognomy express limitation. for that reason it is very plain that no painter could dare to show the teeth in the head of jupiter. the city delights the understanding. it is made up of finites: short, sharp, mathematical lines, all calculable. it is full of varieties, of successions, of contrivances. the country, on the contrary, offers an unbroken horizon, the monotony of an endless road, of vast uniform plains, of distant mountains, the melancholy of uniform and infinite vegetation; the objects on the road 1839 our generation's duty 311 are few and worthless, the eye is invited ever to the horizon and the clouds. it is the school of reason. the problem which belongs to us to solve is new and untried. born in the age of calculation and criticism, we are to carry it, with all its triumphs, and yield it captive to the universal reason. educated in the very shop and the mill, taught that nature exists for use and the raw material of art, conveyed, clothed, fed by steam, educated in traditions, and working in state, in church, in education, and in charities by mechanical methods, we are yet made to hear the auguries and prophecies of the soul, which makes light of all these proud mechanisms, breathes on them and they become ashes and shadows, and calls us to the holy and the eternal, not by the past, but by the present, not by men, but alone, not by bibles, but through thought and lowliest submission of heart. i see already this effort in eminent individuals. they are renouncing that which had been their pride: they encounter scorn and live with scorned men. they acquire a serener, heavenlier eye and brow. they avow and defend what yesterday they contradicted; and gain daily a reliance on principles and the habit 312 journal (age 36 cessant of reposing child-like on the lap of the incessant soul. the greatness of all our heroes is to be revised. all reputations each age revises. very few immutable men has history to show. we are to issue a quo warranto and revoke the charters of fame. there are all degrees of greatness, and this foolish praising, so vague and superlative, must be retrenched. ... november 6. people hold to you as long as you please yourself with the ideal life only as a pretty dream and concede a resistless force to the limitations of the same, to structure, or organization, and to society. but as quickly as you profess your unlimited allegiance to the first, so far as to be no longer contented with doing the best you can in the circumstances, but demand that these mountain circumstances should skip like rams and the little hills like lambs before the presence of the soul, then they distrust your wisdom and defy your resolutions. and yet nature is in earnest. that aspiration in every heart which they like that you should paint, or carve, or chaunt, — anything but enact, is not a castle in the air. they moreover admit it in the moral world ; they concede that a perfect jus1839) ideals.. alarm 313 tice should be sought and done; but an intellectual equality, an intellectual society, a mode of domestic life, in which trifles should at last descend to their place, confectionery should come down, and character, art, and joy ascend, this is an incredible proposition. but what they concede destroys the force of their denial. nature is unique throughout. the prayer of the soul predicts its own answer in facts. the moral nature is not a patch of light here, whilst the social world is a lump of darkness there, but tends incessantly to rectify and ennoble the whole circumference of facts. never was anything gained by admitting the omnipotence of limitations, but all immortal action is an overstepping of these busy rules. in rome, a consul was thanked by the senate because he had not despaired of the republic. today a letter came to me from john sterling. so have i two friends in england to make the heart and mind glad.' a great man stands on god. a small man stands on a great man. i see correspondence of john sterling and emerson ; houghton, mifflin & co., 1897. 314 journal [age 36 a man's subject always lies in his recent thought and habits, and is to be found by just observations, not in odd moments, but in sane moments. honor him whose life is a perpetual victory.' ... virtue was never yet a good whig. ward showed me a volume of raphael's designs by way of evincing raphael's title to stand in the first class of men of genius. the book did certainly surprise me with the opulence of his genius, and if this were a question in which details of power had any place, this would be unexceptionable evidence. but it is a question not of talents but of tone, and not particular merits, but the mood of mind into which one and another can bring us is the only relevant testimony. prudence governs the world, and not religion or science or art. mr. cunard sends the steampacket from boston to england, and not i. in order that principles should rig and man and sail the ship, it needs to begin far back, and bring about a new state of society. at present, 1 what follows is printed in “worship” (conduct of life, p. 237). 1839] harleian miscellany 315 a right-minded individual can only live so as to point at these ends, to imply love and art and knowledge in every moment of his life. an admirable account of the battle of lützen is contained in the fourth volume of the harleian miscellany, translated from the french, though, if it were not so stated, i should not suspect a translation. the piece was printed 1633, 4to, 45 pages, — far superior to anything i remember in schiller's war. the story of the battle of lützen is worthy of plutarch.“ gustavus was never weary though ever busied, as if action had been his nourishment.” “he would often say “that he was willing to bear with others' infirmities, as the phlegm of some and the wine of others, and that therefore reciprocally his choler deserved some support.' and, to say truth, this passion may challenge and win connivance from him who shall duly consider his working spirit never weakened though ever bended,” etc., etc. in the same volume is cavendish's “negotiations of cardinal wolsey," printed in london 1641. cavendish, who was wolsey's gentleman usher, being sent before him when in france 316 [age 36 journal to secure lodgings at champaigne, relates that on his arriving at champaigne, being sat at dinner in his inn over against the market place, he “ heard a great noise and clattering of bills and looking out i saw the officers of the town bringing a prisoner to execution, and with a sword cut off his head. i demanded what was the offence. they answered me, 'for killing of red deer in the forest near adjoining.' and incontinently they held the poor man's head upon a pole in the market place between the stag's horns, and his four quarters set up in four places of the forest.” certainly this anecdote is not a specimen of law as we know it in america. government is here less ferocious, but it has not yet become amiable. does the custom house, does the statute book associate itself with any idea of gladness, of genius, of holiness, of the progress of man? when we look at a plant, at a gem, at a landscape, we behold somewhat accordant with, though inferior to, our own nature. but i ask if a man should go to walk in the woods and should there find suspended on the oaks or bulrushes electioneering placards setting forth the pretensions of mr. van buren or mr. harrison, whether the new train of thoughts thus 1839] books. helps 317 awakened would harmonize with the place, or would exalt his meditation? is not the breast of man the home of the vast and the awful, as well as the gay and convenient? the (holy) ideal still soars above us, let us mount as we will, and is as far from the heights of thought as from the chaffering of the market. our moods do not believe in each other.'... books. — linnæus's tour in lapland, and two french novels. i read the first as white's selborne, or plutarch, or elgin marbles, or the cold, moist morn itself. the latter is lamp-smoke and indigestion. november 9. we are helped along by good and bad ; ambition, want, vanity, and such canaille spur us to industry. i have no love for lord brougham, yet the recital of his immense and unweariable activity inspires good resolutions in me. so comes ever the question whether our profane mode of educating children even up to manhood by emulation is purely noxious.... 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ circles” (essays, first series, p. 306). 2 the long passage in “ education," including the dis318 journal (age 36 and yet the familiar observation of the universal compensations might suggest the fear that so summary a step of a bad humour was more jeopardous than its continuance; it is driven into the constitution and has infected the brain and the heart. the same difference is between the revival of religion or the partaking of the lord's supper, and the life of spiritual obedience. the book that alarms one man, threatening the disorganization of society, is heard of by one of higher principle with no more emotion than the cheeping of a mouse in the wall. the question between men is, are they still advancing? or, are the seals set to their character and they now making a merchandise simply of that which they can do? in general, men of genius who know no period are incapable of any perfect exhibition, because, however agreeable it may be to them to act on the public, it is always a secondary matter. they are humble, self-accusing, moody men, whose worship is toward the ideal beauty which chooses to be cussion of corporal punishment, follows (letters aud biograpbical sketches, p. 154). 1839] advance. fashionists 319 courted in sylvan solitudes, in retired libraries, in nocturnal conversations with a few; with one companion, or in silent meditation. their face is forward and their heart is in this heaven. by so much are they disqualified for a perfect success in any of the arenas of ambition to which they can give only a divided affection. but the man of talents, who has attained and has ceased to advance, has every advantage in the controversy. he can give that cool and commanding attention to the thing to be done, as shall secure its just performance. e fashionists. — do not be afraid of cold water, nor cold weather, nor cold countenances. frost is wholesome and hardens the constitution. there will always be in society certain persons who are very mercuries of its approbation and so whose glance will at any time determine for the curious their standing in the world. these are the mercuries of the lesser gods. accept their coldness as a good omen of grace with the loftier deities. and be not so weak as to quarrel with these functionaries. they are clear in their office, nor could they be there and thus formidable to you without their own merits. 320 . journal (age 36 our exaggeration of all fine characters arises from the fact that we identify each in turn with the soul. presently the individual warps and shrinks away and we accuse him. it it very hard to find an ideal in history. by courtesy we call saints and heroes such, but they are very defective characters.' i cannot easily find a man i would be. it is only low merits that can be enumerated. fear when your friends say to you what you have done well, and say it through. but when they cannot say it, when they stand beside you with uncertain, timid looks of respect and yet half dislike, inclined to suspend their judgment of you for years to come, then you may begin to hope and to trust. november 13. do something; it matters little or not at all whether it be in the way of what you call your profession or not, so it be in the plane or coincident with the axis of your character. the reaction is always proportioned to the action, and it is the reaction that we want. strike the hardest blow you can, and you can always do this by work i compare what is said to this effect in the third page of “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series). 1839) true men. company 321 which is agreeable to your nature. this is economy. self-culture. — in hard times, cultivate yourself, and you cannot lose your labor. a just man, a wise man, is always good property; the world cannot do without him, be the fashions or the laws or the harvest what they may. but if he seek to suit the times he miserably fails. even plato and kant can hardly be trusted to write of god. as soon as one sets out to write in the course of his book of the divine mind, the love of system vitiates his perception. he grows a little limitary. the truest account of that idea would be got by an observation and record of the incidental expressions of the most intelligent men when they speak of god quite simply and without any second thought. hospitality, — who is timid and uneasy and fleeting but the master of the house, when his house is full of company? he should be glad that such brave and wise men are happy around his hearth, and he is tormented instead with fantastic supposition. he hates every civil thing that is said to him, as if it implied that their freedom was less than he had wished it. he scorns to treat 322 journal (age 36 any one with particular kindness, as if it were some encroachment on that rude freedom he desires should prevail. it would give him some contentment if they would put his real generosity to the proof by hard knocks and abusive personalities levelled at himself. what a fine sentiment lay under the bold usage of the romans when they set buffoons and satirists about the triumphing consul to warn and insult him! so they took off this slight delirium and vacillation of success, and gave to the day a solid content. alcott seems to need a pure success. if the men and women whose opinion is fame could see him as he is and could express heartily as these english correspondents their joy in his genius, i think his genius would be exalted and relieved of some spots, with which a sense of injustice and loneliness has shaded it.' i alcott's records of a school awakened the lively interest of several earnest englishmen, who wrote letters welcoming his high ideas on education. first of these was john pierpont greaves, a merchant, who, when his trade was ruined by napoleon's wars, went to switzerland and became the friend of pestalozzi, and in england worked for infant schools and emancipation. other correspondents were w. oldham, john heraud, who conducted the monthly magazine, which took notice of the american transcendentalists, and charles 1839) inspired writing 323 but no great man will ever drill. none will ever solve the problem of his character according to our preconceived notions or wishes, but only in his own high, unprecedented way. eve m a good sentence, a noble verse which i meet in my reading, are an epoch in my life. from month to month, from year to year, they remain fresh and memorable. yet when we once in our writing come out into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this communication at pleasure indefinitely. up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no enclosures, but the muse makes us free of her city. well, the world has a million writers. one would think then that thought would be as familiar as the air and water, and the gifts of each new hour exclude the repetition of those of the last. yet i remember a beautiful verse for twenty years. air november 14. we cannot overvalue our age. all religious considerations lead us to prefer it. then it is our all. it is the world. as the wandering sealane and henry g. wright, masters of the school founded in alcott's honor in surrey, england, and named for him. 324 journal [age 36 bird which, crossing the ocean, alights on some rock or islet to rest for a moment its wings and to look back on the wilderness of waves behind and forward to the wilderness of waters before, so stand we perched on this rock or shoal of time arrived out of the immensity of the past and bound and road-ready to plunge into immensity again. generosity does not consist in giving money or money's worth.' the poor therefore are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor.' ... s. m. f. writes me that she waits for the lectures, seeing well, after much intercourse, that the best of me is there. she says very truly; and i thought it a good remark which somebody repeated here from s. s.,' that i “always seemed to be on stilts.” it is even so. most of the persons whom i see in my own house i see across a gulf. i cannot go to them 1 the rest of the passage is found in “ domestic life" (society and solitude, pp. 114, 115). 2 the rest of this passage is in “ domestic life” (p. 118). 3 perhaps sarah shaw, later the wife of mr. george r. russell of boston. re 1839) the gulf. mimicry 325 nor they come to me. nothing can exceed the frigidity and labor of my speech with such. you night turn a yoke of oxen between every pair of words; and the behavior is as awkward and proud. i see the ludicrousness of the plight as well as they. but, having never found any remedy, i am very patient with this folly or shame, patient of my churl's mask, in the belief that this privation has certain rich compensations, inasmuch as it makes my solitude dearer, and the impersonal god is shed abroad in my heart more richly, and more lowly welcome for this porcupine impossibility of contact with men. and yet in one who sets his mark so high, who presumes so vast an elevation as the birthright of man, is it not a little sad to be a mere mill or pump yielding one wholesome product at the mouth in one particular mode, but as impertinent and worthless in any other place or purpose as a pump or a coffee-mill would be in a parlor or a chapel? i make rockets: must i therefore be a good senator? ma mimicry. we cannot hear anyone mimic the notes and sounds of the lower animals, as frogs, birds, insects, without instantly conceiving a new and immense extension possi326 journal (age 36 ble to the descriptiveness and energy of language. one mind. — all languages are inter-translateable. er systems.— i need hardly say to anyone acquainted with my thoughts that i have no system. when i was quite young, i fancied that by keeping a manuscript journal by me, over whose pages i wrote a list of the great topics of human study, as, religion, poetry, politics, love, etc., in the course of a few years i should be able to complete a sort of encyclopædia containing the net value of all the definitions at which the world had yet arrived. but at the end of a couple of years, my cabinet cyclopædia, though much enlarged, was no nearer to a completeness than on its first day. nay, somehow the whole plan of it needed alteration, nor did the following months promise any speedier term to it than the foregoing. at last i discovered that my curve was a parabola whose arcs would never meet, and came to acquiesce in the perception that, although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation of disposition of details, yet does the world 1839] analysis. analogy 327 reproduce itself in miniature in every event that transpires, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. so that the truthspeaker may dismiss all solicitude as to the proportion and congruency of the aggregate of his thoughts, so long as he is a faithful reporter of particular impressions.' literature is now critical. well, analysis may be poetic. people find out they have faces, and write physiognomy; sculls, and write phrenology; mysteries of volition and supervolition, and explore somnambulism. chemistry is criticism on an apple, and a drop of water, and the glassy air, which to our fathers were wholes, but which we have resolved. is not the sublime felt in an analysis as well as in a creation? urinnature loves analogies, not repetitions. and those eclectics are doomed to an agreeable surprise who have fancied the creator so poor in invention that he can produce but three or four ages or schools of thought, and having run through so short a gamut, must needs repeat the old tune to infinity. once more, it is not the analyst who is unhappy or who desponds. it is the idler who in328 [age 36 journal does not the work of the time, who is not in its spirit, the frivolous and sensual who have the vices of their class, modified, of course, by the character of the era, and so we have frivolity and sensuality with cant, because the time is decorous, and with a smattering of letters and philosophy, because the time is social and analytic. it is not when i analyse that i am unhappy. that is common to all men, and independent of circumstances; in so much that the peculiar disadvantages of any time or mode sink into nothing beside it. the real danger of american scholars is not analysis, but sleep, or that they be not scholars. there is a town in which it is said all the inhabitants are on their backs at 2 p.m. november 15. we are accustomed to speak of our national union and our constitution as of somewhat sacred. individual character and culture are sacred, but these bands are trivial in the comparison. the language of the newspapers will undergo a great change in fifty years. the precious metals are not quite so precious as they have been esteemed. the spirit of political economy is low and degrading. man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state. there18391 man above measures 329 fore, i never can forgive a great man who succumbs so far to the mere forms of his day as to peril his integrity for the sake of adding to the weight of his personal character the authority of office, or making a real government titular. adams, clay and webster electioneer. and nature does not forgive them, for thus they compromise their proper majesty, and are farther than ever from obtaining the adventitious. our life is infested by unjust persons, by fools, by paltry fellows who win a political importance — by all these tormentors who exercise a power of annoyance sadly disproportioned to the shortness of the term in which we converse with the ideas of religion, wisdom and society. yet the power to annoy which is given to these agents for a season, we give. it is merely an outward or reflex exhibition of our defects. with the uprise of the soul these recede and decay. in the beginning of thought we discriminate between all those means and labors which contribute to a well-being of the senses, and those in which the means and the end are one, or which seek an absolute good, as, justice. whatever proposes this end without end is sacred in our 330 journal '[age 36 eyes. all the mechanic arts contribute nothing to this end. the commerce of the world forwards this end no more than the indian and his wampum belt. the forms of governmentan eastern despotism and a western democracy — are indifferent to it. but love, friendship, poetry, solitude are friendly to the conscience. you would have me at advantage, o friend; you would come to face me by having first wronged me. you would cheat me of the majesty which belongs to every human being. november 16. politics. it is plain that the statesman occupies himself only with the measure, not with the opinion of the people. by directing all his understanding and affection on the fact, and not allowing the people or their enemies to arrest it, he is able to make his hands meet to come at his end. if the people must meddle with what they don't understand, he reprimands them if they would check, he encourages them if they would distrust his movement. is it not plain then that when the eye of the political agent veers too frequently from the measure to the opinion of the people, and in course of time fastens on the opin1839) sabbath. death 331 ion mainly, he must lose just so much steadiness of conduct and therewith so much success ? in this country there is no measure attempted for itself by legislatures, but the opinion of the people is courted in the first place, and the measures are perfunctorily carried through as secondary. extra fortunam est quicquid donatur amicis. j. c. scaliger. november 17. the sabbath, ... that frankincense out of a sacred antiquity! why should they call me good-natured? i too, like puss, have a retractile claw. what just theology is in the popular proverb, « every man for himself and the lord for us all.” death. — and where is he now? o, he is dead, poor fellow! that is the sentiment of mankind upon death, that the dead, be he never so wise, able, or contented, is a poor fellow. men kill themselves. and run the risk of great absurdity; for our faculties fail us here to 332 journal [age 36 say what is the amount of this freedom, this only door left open in all the padlocked secrets of nature, ... this main entry and royal staircase admitting apparently to the presence-chamber, yet so designedly it seems left wide. it may be that he who sheathes his knife in his own heart does an act of grand issues, and it may be a preposterous one. i think i would not try it until i had first satisfied myself that i did not baulk and fool myself. the question is whether it is the way out, or the way in. board. — l. c. b. went to board in the country, and complained that she got bad air, bad light, bad water, bad fire, bad sound, bad food, and bad company. the house shook with rats and mice, smelt of onions, the oil in the lamp would not burn, the water was foul, the wood on the fire was soggy and made no flame, the children stunned her, the table was poverty itself, and the people vulgar and knavish, and when she would walk abroad she could not draw the bolt. i advised her to publish her adventures under the name of bad board, or the baroness trenck. homerides. it is strange how hard we find it to conceive of the organization of any other 1839) homerides. temperance 333 ideas than those under which we live. we do not see that what we call church, state, school, are only ideas embodied which have succeeded to other ideas and must give place hereafter to new. a new thought will orb itself in a moment. our savants cannot believe that the greek bards should be able to carry in the memory several thousand lines, as the iliad and the odyssey; for we have no need of such memories. as little could one of these minstrels conceive of the faculty of one of whitwell and bond's clerks, who, i have heard, can add up five columns of figures by one numeration instead of five. mr. chase, a clerk of waterston, pray and co., will with a ruler add up any number of columns, three, four, or five figures at one ascent of the column. temperance. who argues so sourly for beef and mutton against the man of herbs and grains ? the fat and ruddy eater who hath just wiped his lips from feeding on a sirloin, whose blood is spouting in his veins, and whose strength kindles that evil fire in his eye. it is not then the voice of man that i hear, but it is the beef and brandy that roar and rail for beef and brandy. but shall these play the judge in their own cause? 334 journal [age 36 the bible. — the transcendent, i have said, is economy also. literary accomplishments, skill in grammar, logic and rhetoric can never countervail the want of things that demand voice. literature is but a poor trick when it busies itself to make words pass for things. the most original book in the world is the bible. this old collection of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the supreme desires and contritions of men, proceeding out of the region of the grand and eternal, by whatsoever different mouths spoken, and through a wide extent of times and countries, seems the alphabet of the nations, and all posterior literature either the chronicle of facts under very inferior ideas, or, when it rises to sentiment, the combinations, analogies or degradations of this. it is in the nature of things that the highest originality must be moral. the only person who can be entirely independent of this fountain of literature and equal to it, must be a prophet in his own proper person. shakspear, the first literary genius of the world, leans on the bible : his poetry supposes it. if we examine this brilliant influence, shakspear, as it lies in our minds, we shall find it reverent, deeply indebted to the traditional morality, in short, compared with the en 1839] scriptures. eyes 335 tone of the prophets, secondary. on the other hand, the prophets do not imply the existence of shakspear or homer, — advert to no books or arts, — only to dread ideas and emotions. people imagine that the place which the bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. it owes it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book, and the effect must be precisely proportionate. gibbon fancied combinations of circumstances that gave christianity its place in history. but in nature it takes an ounce to balance an ounce. i have used in the above remarks the bible for the ethical revelation considered generally, including, that is, the vedas, the sacred writings of every nation, and not of the hebrews alone; although these last, for the very reason i have given, precede all similar writings so far as to be commonly called the book, or bible, alone. son 2 eyes. — women see better than men. men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. women see quite without any wish to act. men of genius are said to partake of the masculine and feminine traits. they have this feminine eye, a function so rich that it contents itself without asking any aid of the hand. trifles may well be ini ni 336 journal [age 36 studied by him, for he sees nothing insulated; the plaid of a cloak, the plaits of a ruffle, the wrinkles of a face, absorb his attention and lead it to the root of these matters in universal laws. noblesse quoique je ferme un corps, je ne suis qu'une idée : plus ma beauté vieillit, plus elle est decidée: il faut, pour me trouver, ignorer d'où je viens : je tiens tout de lui qui reduit tout à rien. mme. du deffand, letters of h. walpole. november 18. we are constrained to compare continually the inspiration of shakspear with that of isaiah, and each new fact with an old standard. comparisons are odious, we say, and we feel a certain poverty of mind in a too sudden reference of some new merit to one or a few measures. yet who does not see in this inevitable instinct which forces the rudest to compare, the confession of one substance, of one cause, of one mind? scholar and soldier. — unius ætatis sunt qui fortiter fiunt; quæ, vero, pro utilitate reipublicæ scribuntur, æterna vegetius. se 1839) the clerisy 337 animal magnetism. — “extasi omnia prædicere.” — see burton's anatomy of melancholy, vol. i, p. 12. november 19. society quarrels with the clerisy, or learned class, if they shall sell their wisdom for money. but society compels them to this course. once, before malthus was in vogue, the world thought its health and grace consisted in its clerisy. the state magnificently maintained them. no one could spend money so well, of course, as the most cultivated. the state took care that the best qualified should be the richest benefactors. but times are changed. the church is not now the resort of all or almost all this class. they are gone out hence, and the ecclesiastics are not drawn to the church by their nature, but by convenience. of course the church has lost the veneration of the people ; and they do not like to pay for its support. meantime the scholars out of the church have the same needs as before: the same fitness to be the almoners of the state: for all the expenditure of a truly cultivated man is like the expenditure of a temple, religious and public. they have a right, — have they not?in proportion to their enlarged sight to exert a large power, to direct the means of ven 338 journal (age 36 not the community, to select and aid and enrich the youth of genius and virtue. shall they then, since the state is no state, gives them no place, desert also their function in the commonwealth, untimely deny themselves and those whom they ought to serve the first means of education? shall they kill, through a fatal economy, every generous proposition of culture to the community, forbear assembling themselves together, grudge the miles of travel that will bring them face to face with poets and sages, deny themselves the sight of a picture, a statue, and a concert of music, a correspondence with distant philosophers and the interchange of books and apparatus ? or shall they forsake their duties, since they are so straitened by your penury, and go dig in the fields and buy and sell in the markets, to the detriment of all learning and civility in the commonwealth, in order that they may have that share of external power which their insight has made a higher need to them? if not, then leave open to them the resource of selling the works which are the only vendible product of so many laborious days and watching nights, and whose price ought to be esteemed sacred, and not vile. ve 1839] nature's word 339 death.—“when people are going to die their faults come out,” was one of aunt mary's old sayings. november 20. ah, nature! the very look of the woods is heroical and stimulating. this afternoon in a very thick grove where henry thoreau showed me the bush of mountain laurel, the first i have seen in concord, the stems of pine and hemlock and oak almost gleamed like steel upon the excited eye. how old, how aboriginal these trees appear, though not many years older than i. they seem parts of the eternal chain of destiny whereof this sundered will of man is the victim. is he proud, high-thoughted and reserved sometimes? let him match if he can the incommunicableness of these lofty natures, beautiful in growth, in strength, in age, in decay. the invitation which these fine savages give, as you stand in the hollows of the forest, works strangely on the imagination. little say they in recommendation of towns or a civil, christian life. live with us, they say, and forsake these wearinesses of yesterday. here no history or church or state is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. 340 (age 36 journal o lord! unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy. cacothis country is not an aristocracy, but a cacocracy rather. this town is governed in wesson's bar-room; and the country in bar-rooms. november 21. the best of literature is in the feeling of immortality it awakens. the names of scaliger, cardan, galen, sallust, livy, suggest ideas of immortal leisure, of elegance and olympian thoughts. and the reading these books, or the exercise of the same faculties in compositions of our own, makes, for the time, death somewhat incredible and out of nature. you teach your boy to walk, but he learns to run himself. i am charmed with the pensive beauty of the younger sibyl of raphael's four sibyls, as i see the single head in this fine chalk drawing in ward's portfolio. what delights me especially is to observe that in a drawing so wonderfully bold and yet precise, the face has a liquid softness. genius must have copied what genius drew. str 1839) aurora. endymion 341 in guido's aurora i enjoy the distinct expression of morning health and earnestness. it breathes the dawn. what profound health these hours have and how firmly they tread the clouds. with the most masculine force in every part of the picture, there is no convulsion, no straining, no foam, no ado, but the most flowing grace and ease. what fine propriety in all the details, in the arrangement of the horses, in the disposition of the group, in the variation of the attitude and drapery of the figures on the foreground. then the horse is nothing but a morning cloud. the little sea-landscape in the corner is matutinal also. november 26. ward has given me the endymion with friendliest letter.' it shall hang by carlyle's guido. 1 of this beautiful copy, in a warm reddish sepia, of the bas-relief in the capitoline museum of the sleeping endymion and his dog, mr. emerson wrote, “i confess i have dificulty in accepting the superb drawing which you ask me to keep. in taking it from the portfolio, i take it from its godlike companions to put it where it must shine alone. besides, i have identified your collection with the collector ; i have been glad to learn to know you through your friends. they tell me very eloquently what you love, and a portfolio seems to me a more expressive vehicle of taste and character than a bunch 342 journal (age 36 temperance. — the caterpillar and cow and robin mix the sun and blue sky with their diet. we hide our bread in cellars and basements. it matters not how plain is the fare which is spiced by the sun and sky, as mountaineers and indians know. november 27. unconsciousness. — happy is he who in looking at the compositions of an earlier date knows that the moment wrote them, and feels no more call or right to alter them than to alter his recollections of a day or a fact. we pretend sometimes to find somewhat of this sacredness in our scrolls; but i speak of one who should know it. when once and again the regard and friendship of the noble-minded is offered me, i am made sensible of my disunion with myself. the head is of gold, the feet are of clay. in my worthiness i have such confidence, that i can court solitude. i know that if my aspirations should demonstrate themselves, angels would not disdain me. of my unworthiness, the first person i meet shall apprize me. i shall have so little of flowers. this beautiful endymion deserves to be looked on by instructed eyes.” see letters from ralph waldo emer. son to a friend, p. 15. sect 1839) friendship's troubles 343 presence, such pitiful, gingerbread considerations, so many calculations, and such unconcealable weariness of my company, — that in my heart i beseech them begone, and i flee to the secretest hemlock shade in walden woods to recover my self-respect. patimur quisque suos manes! but when i have shriven myself to the partridges, i am gay again and content to be alone. then i am let into the secret, daily history of others to whom that grace and conversation i covet is given, and find such savage melancholy, such passion, discontent and despair, that suddenly i count myself the happiest of men, and will know the sweetness of bread and water, and live with the jays and sparrows still. november 28. it seems a matter of indifference what, and how, and how much, you write, if you write poetry. poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose. one stanza is complete. but one sentence of prose is not. but it must be poetry. i do not wish to read the verses of a poetic mind, but only of a poet. i do not wish to be shown early poems, or any steps of progress. i wish my poet to be born adult. i do not find 344 journal (age 36 youth or age in shakespear, milton, herbert, and i dread minors. shelley is never a poet. his mind is uniformly imitative; all his poems composite. a fine english scholar he is, with taste, ear, and memory; but imagination, the original authentic fire of the bard, he has not. he is clearly modern, and shares with wordsworth and coleridge, byron, and hemans the feeling of the infinite, which so labors for expression in their different genius. but all his lines are arbitrary, not necessary, and therefore, though evidently a devout and brave man, i can never read his verses. the same secondariness pervades wilson's poetry. scott and crabbe are objective and have not the feeling of the infinite. but from crabbe's poems may the muses preserve me!... genius and reform. — and where were the men of genius whilst these coarse missionaries were 1 this judgment of shelley was printed in the dial in 1840 (see « thoughts on modern literature,” in natural history of intellect, p. 319), but in that paper richter, chateaubriand, and manzoni are associated with wordsworth, instead of coleridge, byron, and hemans, as here. 1839] genius vs. reform diet 345 making odious the high doctrines of temperance, love, and the life of nature, which they had first broached in solemn hymns ? alas, master, the devil put them in their own keeping ; their own mouths. for their fine organization the pleasures of sense were doubly attractive. palaces, sofas and delicious tables amused them like other men, and more than other men, and in their holiday they forgot to resume their task. i saw them each taking himself in charge, to keep himself silent, nor plague the world longer with the harsh counsel of reform, drugging and quieting, how he best could, the nerves that were once harpstrings on which every sunbeam played music. why is our diet and table not agreeable to the imagination, whilst all other creatures eat without shame? we paint the bird pecking at fruit, the browsing ox, the lion leaping on his prey, but no painter ever ventured to draw a man eating. the difference seems to consist in the presence or absence of the world at the feast. the diet is base, be it what it may, that is hidden in caves or cellars or houses. . . . did you ever eat your bread on the top of a mountain, or drink water there? did you ever camp out 346 (age 36 journal with lumbermen or travellers in the prairie? did you ever eat the poorest rye or oatcake with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness? and did you not find that the mixture of sun and sky with your bread gave it a certain mundane savour and comeliness? november 30. keats. — “ and scarce three steps ere music's golden tongue flattered to tears this aged man and poor.” : “so saturn as he walked into the midst felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest, but that he met enceladus's eye whose mightiness and awe of him at once came like an inspiration.”? — i mr. emerson loved to repeat these lines, as also the saturn passage given in the text. in the journal he also copied the passages beginning — “ as when upon a trancèd summer night" — and “ as heaven and earth are fairer, — fairer far,than chaos and blank darkness" and “one avenue was shaded from thine eyes." 2 here follow the greater part of two long paragraphs first printed in the dial « thoughts on modern literature," and included in the volume natural history of intellect, pp. 314-316. 1839) true subjective 347 december 1. we are misled by an ambiguity in the use of the term subjective. it is made to cover two things, a good and a bad. the great always introduce us to facts; small men introduce us always to themselves. ... would you know the genius of the writer, do not enumerate his talents or his feats, but ask thyself what spirit he is of? has he led thee to nature because his own soul was too happy in beholding her power and love? or has he only shown you stars and mountains, woods and lovely forms as his bouse, bribing you by the splendor of his palace to come and see him? what has lord byron at the bottom of his poetry, but, i am byron, the noble poet, who am very clever, but not popular in london? the little can see nothing in nature but their own stake, and their most discursive regards are still economical. and as scaliger says, in reference to montaigne's gossiping account of himself, that he likes red wine, but never drinks white, “ who the devil wants to know what wine you drink?” the water we wash with never speaks of itself, nor does fire, or wind, or tree. neither does the noble natural man; he yields himself to your 348 (age 36 journal occasion and use, but his act expresses a reference to universal good. rob was tender and timid as a fawn in his affections, yet he passed for a man of calculation and cold heart. he assumed coldness only to hide his woman's heart. there is a play in which the sister is enamoured of her brother, and when they embrace, she exclaims, “ j'ai froid." in taking, this afternoon, farewell looks at the sibyls and prophets of michel angelo, i fancied that they all looked not free, but necessitated; ridden by a superior will, by an idea which they could not shake off. it sits in their life. the heads of raphael look freer certainly, but this obedience of michel's figures contrasts strangely with the living forms of this age. these old giants are still under the grasp of that terrific jewish idea before which ages were driven like sifted snow, which all the literatures of the worldlatin, spanish, italian, french, english – tingle with; but we sleek, dapper men have quite got free of that old reverence, have heard new facts on metaphysics, and they are quite ready to join any new church. we are travellers, and not responsible. 1839) nature. society 349 let the painter unroll his canvas. millions of eyes look through his. canvas. we are not at home in nature. we confess our unworthiness inadvertently in all we say of it. the unusual beauty of the sunset attracts us and the soul dares not say, “behold my peace passed into nature also!” but we mendicantly say, “what a scene for a painter or for a poet!” or more superficially still, “what an italian sky!” “society," like wealth, is good for those who understand it. it is a foolish waste of time for any who do not. it seems impossible for anyone to expand in the crowd to his natural dimensions. it seems vain to expect any sentiment, any truth and human encouragement. all character seems to fade away from all the accomplices. every woman seems to be suffering for a chair, and you accuse yourself and commiserate those you talk to.... he must be rich, and of a commanding constitution, who can stand this malaria. it spoils the best persons for me. i will never quarrel with a man because he makes little of the forms, laws, and usages of 350 journal (age 36 the world. he cannot do so, if he be thoughtful and earnest, but by the force of his perception. he sees that the soul is a creator, and instantly makes light of all your present works, since he knows it can very easily make more when these are gone; a secret which others do not know, and so contradict him with petulance. it is very pleasant to me to hear of any fine person that he or she is a reader of swedenborg. it is an uncomputed force, — his influence on this age, his genius still unmeasured. he is the fabulist, the cebes, the better æsop of the last ages. how bland, how warm, how renovating it works on the cold crudities of calvinism or unitarianism! gather yourself into a ball to be thrown at a mark. lectures.in boston, december 4, i read the first lecture of my course on the present age; with the old experience that when it was done, and the time had come to read it, i was then first ready to begin to write.' 1 the lectures of this course, lasting into february of the following year, were as follows: i, introductory; ii and iii, 1839) hope. the age alive 351 there is no hope so bright but it is the beginning of its own fulfilment. the dearer it is to us, the more it engages the hands to work for it, and approaching by nature to its object in proportion to its justice, it enlists heaven and earth to work in its behalf. o age! he who embraces thee heartily finds all ages in thee. the magazine of the gods, which every age dispenses in its own way, is now thine, and thou hast thine own expenditure. and lo! how fast the great critic, who now instructs, — discerns, separates the dead from the living, the flesh from the spirit! see the living veins and strata run, detaching as bark and burr what we thought was stock and pith. see laws to be no laws, and religions to become impieties, and great sciences mistakes, and great men perverters. ccs it is in the order of nature one of the curbs and ligaments, that great good is first contended against before it is heartily appropriated, as the literature; iv, politics; v, private life; vi, reforms; vii, religion; viii, ethics; ix, education; x, tendencies. 352 journal [age 36 heroes first made war against the amazons whom they afterwards married. mor sunday, december 8. my friends.— i read with joy sterling's noble critique on carlyle in the westminster review. all intellectual ability seems to have somewhat impersonal and destructive of personality; and yet i read with warm pride because a man who has offered me friendship gives this unequivocal certificate of his equality to that office. o friend! you have given me that sign which high friend ship demands, namely, ability to do without it. pass on, we shall meet again. ... i woke this morn with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. i think no man in the planet has a circle more noble. they have come to me unsought: the great god gave them to me. will they separate themselves from me again, or some of them? i know not, but i fear it not, for my relation to them is so pure that we hold by simple affinity; and the genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whosoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever i may be." 1 although the last three sentences are printed ("friendship," essays, first series, p. 194), they are given here john sterling 1839) true revelations 353 a man with his thoughts about him distinguishes at first sight those fancies which are momentary, and the revelations of the soul: knows among his reveries which is a circumstance and which is a thought, a flower, as well as a man walking knows which is the wall and which is the road. well, thus among my fancies it occurs that the mind of this age will endure no miracle, and this, not because of unbelief, but because of belief. it begins to be that the sun and the moon and the man who walks under them are miracles that puzzle all analysis; and that to quit these and go gazing for i know not what parish circumstances or jewish prodigies is to quit the eternal signs scrawled by god along the dizzy spaces of the zodiack, for a show of puppets and wax lights. i say how the world looks to me without reference to blair's rhetoric or johnson's lives. and i call my thoughts the present age, bebecause of their connection with emerson's high friendship with sterling, continued until his death, four years later. emerson and he never met in the flesh, but their lives had run strangely parallel up to this time, and their religious experiences, their desire to become poets, and their noble humanity showed that they might have been more to each other at closer range than carlyle and emerson could ever have been. 354 journal (age 36 cause i use no will in the matter, but honestly record such impressions as things make. so transform i myself into a dial, and my shadow will tell where the sun is. it is dangerous to “crush the sweet poison of misused wine” of the affections.... [december 11, after the general lecture, mr. alcott mentions in his journal that mr. and mrs. emerson came to his house with several of the persons who had attended the lecture, margaret fuller, miss white (probably later the wife of lowell), mr. bartlett (sidney?), mr. wilson and mr. palmer.] december 21, all things that speak of heaven speak of peace : . peace hath more might than war: high brows are calm: great thoughts are still as stars : and truths, like suns, stir not, but many systems tend around them. bailey, festus. . december 22. i do not care what you write, but only that you should show yourself a man by writing. 1 for the rest of the passage, see “ friendship” (essays, first series, p. 195). 355 1839] self-criticism why should we go to our grandfathers for all our rules and tests for measuring the age and our state of society, and not rather take those that are near and dear to us? do not i know what i want? must i ask thee, reverend doctor of divinity, or thee, o learned chief justice of the bench? ... it is the necessity of my nature to shed all influences. who can come near to kehama? neither the rain, neither the warm ray of love, nor the touch of human hand. it seemed, as i mused in the street in boston on the unpropitious effect of the town on my humor, that there needs a certain deliberation and tenacity in the entertainment of a thought, a certain longanimity to make that confidence and stability which can meet the demand others make on us. i am too quick-eyed and unstable. my thoughts are too short, as they say my sentences are. i step along from stone to stone over the lethe which gurgles around my path, but the odds are that my companion encounters me just as i leave one stone and before my foot has well reached the other, and down i tumble into lethe water. but the man of long wind, the man who receives his thought with a certain phlegmatic 356 [age 36 journal entertainment and unites himself to it for the time, as a sailor to his boat, has a better principle of poise and is not easily moved from the perpendicular. the material is nothing, bitumen, wood, or stone; the proportion is all. proportion makes permanence, beauty, grandeur. so is it with this daily life; here lie the same materials for all men, the common day, the common men, the common woes, necessities, and, deep under all, the uplifting sentiment of the good. out of these selfsame elements the sot builds his sty, and the hero his prevailing character,— pantheon, shall i say. in my dream i saw a man reading in the library at cambridge, and one who stood by said, “he readeth advertisements," meaning that he read for the market only, and not for truth. then i said, do i read advertisements ? unbecoming is this shamefacedness of ours, this fear of poverty, — for presently the wonderful spectacle of the universe will withdraw from us; we shall be old, blind, deaf, and die. yet though we be brave, let us not be ungraceful. 1839) god our force 357 let us stand too much in regard of the beauty of nature to be pert or foolish. hide, from a great motive, or not at all. we are brothers, and the worst of us is a miracle beyond analysis. let us only not be frivolous or vulgar. let not the sun shine and the infinitude of moral nature exist in vain for us. if we have seen that under our wooden or brick houses the living magical earth lay, yet lay not still a moment, but whirled forever on in its orbit, true to the orbs of its system, and its system just to its vast sympathy with nature; if we have seen that under our ridiculous routine of selfish trade and government bloomed unhurt the life of god, and found ever and anon vent in our consciousness and in our action, that we have not set ourselves systematically and invariably to stifle it, and so kill ourselves, but in sane moments have opened it a passage into the laws and institutions, have let our private bark follow the course of the river, and be blown in the path of the monsoon, have not selected for honour the mean and the dead in whom no virtue lived, and such therefore as honour could not cleanse or great aims enliven, but have let our votes follow ideas, and our elections express our character and as358 journal (age 36 piration, so that the highest sentiment cheered us in the assembly of the people, and the ballot was a voice of truth and veneration, then the state will stand, then the laws will be memorable and beautiful for long thousands of years, — will shine by intrinsic light as easily through many as through a few ages. should not a man be ennobled by his vote? is it not a prayer? now he and his candidate are both degraded. treat things poetically. — everything should be treated poetically, -law, politics, housekeeping, money. a judge and a banker must drive their craft poetically as well as a dancer or a scribe. that is, they must exert that higher vision which causes the object to become fluid and plastic. then they are inventive, they detect its capabilities. if they do not this, they have nothing that can be called success, but the work and the workman become blockish and near the point of everlasting congelation. all human affairs need the perpetual intervention of this elastic principle to preserve them supple and alive, as the earth needs the presence of caloric through its pores to resist the tendency to absolute solidity. if you would write a code, or logarithms, ne 1839) heroic fire. books 359 or a cookbook, you cannot spare the poetic impulse. we must not only have hydrogen in balloons, and steel springs under coaches, but we must have fire under the andes at the core of the world. no one will doubt that battles must be fought poetically who reads plutarch or las casas. economy must be poetical, inventive, alive: that is its essence, and therein is it distinguished from mere parsimony, which is a poor, dead, base thing: but economy inspires respect, — is clean and accomplishes much. is love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. some books leave us free and some books make us free. december 24. we are to write on this topic not by black art of any kind, not by trick, or journey work, or direction; not stimulated by strong waters, or by fashion, or by praise, or money, but feeling the power of the past ages laid on our hand. we are to stand all-related, all accomplished, having covenanted with truth that we will bear witness for it, though by our silence. let us not rashly judge an age shallow,-so 360 journal (age 36 we accuse only ourselves. for not by might or disease of man came in this posture of affairs and thoughts we call today, but it is the fruit towards which a whole past eternity has flowered and ripened, and it is not weak, but the sprouting seed of all that shall ever be. december 25. all life is a compromise. we are haunted by an ambition of a celestial greatness, and baulked of it by all manner of paltry impediments. but each of us can do somewhat marked, either lucrative or graceful or kind or wise or formidable.' ... december 26. the whole world travails to ripen and bear the sufficiency of one man. the wise man is the state. louis xiv was right. the wise man needs no army, fort, or navy: he loves men too well. even if they turn on him, he is invulnerable. he needs no bribe or feast or palace to 1 this sentence and a long passage which follows it are printed in “ politics” (essays, second series, pp. 217-219). 2 although much of the following paragraph has been printed (see “ politics,” essays, second series, p. 216), it is fuller here, and is given therefore, and also because of its beauty. one of mr. emerson's friends suggested that much of the passage would be most appropriate for his epitaph. 1839) the wise man 361 draw friends to him. he is supremely fair. he angles with himself and with no other bait. he asks no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. the obedient universe bends around him, and all stars lend their ray to the hour and the man. nature speaks ex tempore to him and lights up a sudden festival whithersoever he bends his steps. he needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and from him animates brute things and turns them immediately to their desired ends. he has no personal friends, for he does not need to husband and educate a few to share with him a select and poetic life, who has the spell to draw the select prayer and piety of all men unto him. his relation to all men is angelic. his memory 'is myrrh to them, his presence frankincense and flowers. i have heard that it is not usually beauty which inspires the strongest passion. i can even believe that aspasia was not beautiful, seen têteà-tête, but almost plain and homely, yet in a 362 journal (age 36 circle of dames in a gallery or across the apartment, hers was the only face on which the eye would fix, and when all were gone, the only one whose form and behaviour the heart would remember. treat your friend as a spectacle.' ... be not so much his friend that you can never know your man, like fond mammas who shut up their boy in the house until he is almost grown a girl. reverence is a great part of friendship. there must be very two before there can be very one.' ... whoso sees law does not despond.). .. pleasant these jets of affection that relume a young world for me again. delicious is a just and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a feeling. but we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits in the heyday of friendship and thought. our faculties do not play us true. i the rest of the passage is in “friendship” (essays, first series, p. 209). 2 see • friendship,” pp. 208, 209. 3 see “ considerations by the way" (conduct of life, p. 264). this passage is followed by others from “ friendship.” 1839) reading 363 thorso ks oted or referred to rnal for authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1839 vedas; pythagoras; cebes ; aristotle; galen; livy; sallust; vegetius apud burton ; saint augustine, confessions ; the welsh bards; dante, purgatorio, paradiso ; petrarch ; michel angelo; melancthon, cardan and scaliger, apud burton; william cartwright and edward powell, on john fletcher ; donne; burton, anatomy of melancholy; bentley; william penn; linnæus, tours in lapland; blair, rhetoric; gilbert white, natural history of selborne; harleian miscellany, french account of battle of lützen, cavendish on negotiations of cardinal wolsey; walpole, letters of madame du deffand; bentley; crabbe; burns ; samuel rogers ; campbell; humboldt; chateaubriand; hazlitt, remains; wilson ; hallam, literature of europe; las casas ; manzoni; maroncelli; · keats, hyperion ; shelley ; mrs. hemans; 364 journal [age 36 southey; cooper; irving ; everett; stone, life of brant; lieber; dr. follen ; graeter; dickens, oliver twist; forster, cromwell; bailey, festus; john sterling; bryant; horace mann; hawthorne ; jones very; w. ellery channing, fredrick h. hedge; fraser's magazine. journal preparation of essays symposia friends the dial appears brook farm project journal xxxi 1840 (from journals e and f) se mai continga che 'l poema sacro al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra si che m'ha fatto per piu anni macro, dante, il paradiso, xxv. (from f) january, 1840. guy wished all his friends dead on very slight occasion. whoever was privy to one of his gaucheries had the honour of this stygian optation. had jove heard all his prayers, the planet would soon have been unpeopled. at last it occurred to guy that, instead of wringing this hecatomb of friends' necks every morning, he would dine better if he gave as much life as he now took. he found to his astonishment the embryos of a thousand friends hid under his own heart, and that for every offence he forgave, and for every great choice he made, suddenly from afar a noble stranger knocked at his street gate. 368 (age 36 journal what is the state ? the hero is the state: the soul should legislate, postponing still the measure to the man; one sage outweighs all china and japan. no man may have any measure which is to be preferred a moment to the man itself. the state may avail as long as it can be treated as wise man. after that, stop. coax it not. lie not unto it nor for it. the influence of character, that is the theocracy. it is never nothing. it is never omnipotent, but in the inspired moments of each people prevails. in each of our towns and cities, there are periods when the influence of genius predominates for a season over a circle of minds. (the power of swedenborg at this moment is an impure theocracy.) the influence of a preacher, of a book, of a character of singular worth, exerts this magnetism: the recipients feel that they do not so much borrow the light as find the same light in their breast which flames so high from this inspired brother. the effect of jesus on men, after an immense deduction is made for false reception of all kinds, is an impure theocracy. but character is scarcely allowed any rule at season ove rns 1840] character. plato 369 all. everything governs but that. it is a force not yet known. rarely a young man, a young woman, reckoned fastidious and whimsical, goes alone, doth somewhat, or forbears somewhat, in contradiction to all custom, out of private motions, — hath insuperable reluctances which are not to be expressed, or invincible urgencies to particular action. but this is a spirit which does not love much the old, hard people, but rather haunts childhood and tender youth. there is a great deal of theocracy in a blush. nothing is incredible of this power. its feeblest motion is a counterbalance for mightiest monarchies. i have read plato's dialogue, “the politician,” in cousin. he seems to me, as before, to owe his fame to the fact that he is a great average man.' ... it is pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or the geographical extent, by coin, or antiquity. we compromise ourselves when we depart from necessary standards, – that is, from their importance to the mind of the period. if i for the rest of this passage, see “ plato” (representative men, p. 61). 370 journal [age 36 russia is a scarecrow, that fact at least tells somewhat of them whom it scares. if england, france and italy draw the steps of all travellers, that fact characterizes at least the traveller. but to measure miles and count hands is brute, indicates hopeless formalism. we want one miracle by way of evidence; this, namely, that a mind not profound should become profound. the teaching which has that miracle to show will go round the world. man of genius belongs to monarchy, aristocracy and democracy equally. the scholar verifies the duke of ormond's experience, who went to court because there only he could see his equals, and stayed away because there he could see a superior. genius avails always itself of a fact as language for its abstractions. . the capital crime with which the church stands charged is its poverty. truth is always rich, all-related, all explaining. but our church is a little byeway, an eddy, a nook, wherein you hear 1840) causes. friendship 371 some words and notions you will hear of nowhere else, and which will not explain to the handcart-man, his cart, nor to me my pen and ink, my sex, my form and face. “les événements ont des causes dans lesquelles ils sont préconçus, comme nos actions sont accomplies dans notre pensée, avant de se reproduire, au dehors ; et les pressentiments, les prophéties sont l'aperçu de ces causes.” louis lambert's psychological maxim at fifteen years of age in balzac's le livre mystique. february 3. every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and here is the letter which he writes to each candidate for his love.'... i here follows the letter printed in “ friendship” (essays, first series, p. 198). in december, mr. emerson had sent to his friend samuel g. ward, in boston, at his request, a paper on burke, but, in his letter, said, “i think i might qualify this anodyne by sending you one of last winter's composition, a piece which i wrote in good heart, and trust you may find some sparks still alive in the cinders. the argument were fitter for rhyme ; but that comes only by special favor of the skies.” this was probably “friendship," as would appear from mr. emerson's next letter. (see emerson's letters to a friend. letters vi and vii.) 372 [age 36 journal character plus sensibility. — they were selfcentred: willow was not. he went to them more than was due. he would be poised, and they should pass and repass. yet was this mobility of his only superficial, and in manners. the flintiest brow in the hall did not surmount a purpose as fast as his to its natural objects, or · one as impatient of a false position. he was a rocking stone, always tilting, but never overthrown. [here follows the dialogue between xenos and iole, which occurs in “character” (essays, second series, p. 90).] february 19. i closed last wednesday, 12th instant, my course of lectures in boston, on “the present age,” which were read on ten consecutive wednesday evenings (except christmas evening). i. introductory. (4 december.) ii. literature. iii. literature. iv. politics. v. private life. vi. reforms. vii. religion. ca in 1840) the lecture course 373 viii. ethics. ix. education. x. tendencies. i judge from the account rendered me by the sellers of tickets, added to an account of my own distribution of tickets to my friends, that the average audience at a lecture consisted of about 400 persons. 256 course tickets were sold and 305 evening tickets or passes. i distributed about 110 to 120 course tickets. these lectures give me little pleasure. i have not done what i hoped when i said, i will try it once more. i have not once transcended the coldest self-possession. i said i will agitate others, being agitated myself, i dared to hope for extasy and eloquence. a new theatre, a new art, i said, is mine. let us see if philosophy, if ethics, if chiromancy, if the discovery of the divine in the house and the barn, in all works and all plays, cannot make the cheek blush, the lip quiver, and the tear start. i will not waste myself. on the strength of things i will be borne, and try if folly, custom, convention, and phlegm cannot be made to hear our sharp artillery. alas! alas! i have not the recollection of one strong moment. a cold mechanical preparation for a delivery as decorous, — fine 374 journal (age 36 things, pretty things, wise things, — but no arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growling, no transpiercing, no loving, no enchantment. and why? i seem to lack constitutional vigor to attempt each topic as i ought. i ought to seek to lay myself out utterly,large, enormous, prodigal, upon the subject of the week. but a hateful experience has taught me that i can only expend, say, twenty-one hours on each lecture, if i would also be ready and able for the next. of course, i spend myself prudently; i economize; i cheapen ; whereof nothing grand ever grew. could i spend sixty hours on each, or, what is better, had i such energy that i could rally the lights and mights of sixty hours into twenty, i should hate myself less, i should help my friend. i ought to be equal to every relation.'... i saw a maiden, the other day, dressed so prettily and fancifully that she gave the eye the same sort of pleasure that a gem does, – a fine opal, or the coloured stones. when i rememi here follows the paragraph thus beginning in “ friendship” (essays, first series, p. 200). 1840] persons. thoughts. man 375 ber what fairy pleasure i found in some cornelians or agates which i saw for an hour when a very little boy, i think none but children and savages enjoy gems. i wrote s. g. ward :i see persons whom i think the world would be richer for losing: and i see persons whose existence makes the world rich. but blessed be the eternal power for those whom my lawless fancy, even, cannot strip of beauty, and who never for a moment seem to me profane. (from f) how much we augur in seeing an unusual natural phenomenon, as, for instance, an electric spark. already we are groping for its ethics. what absence of all sadness in the drops of the snow-bank. what nimble, gigantic creatures our thoughts are. what saurians, what palæotheria these? "o moikilos, rich, leopard-skinned man! who art a palace of sweet sounds and sights, and carriest in thy brain the city of god; in thy cunning senses the morning and the night; the unfathomable galaxy and the realms of right and wrong. 376 (age 36 journal rich past! one word of the old book is so penetrating to my imagination. what shall i say of thy world of old words and virtues and crucifixions and gifts to men? and yet, poor and thoughtless though today is, i count this instinct sacred which bids me slight thy admirable wealth, even in my starving poverty, as a testimony to my faith in my more admirable possibilities. february 21. self-respect is demanded of us by the most general considerations. we stand here for nature and humanity. they bid us make them comely and honorable. the aim of art is always at somewhat better than nature, but the work of art is always inferior to nature. the book only characterizes the reader. is shakspear the delight of the nineteenth century? that fact shows whereabouts we are in the ecliptic of the soul. ah! that i could reach with my words the force of that rhetoric of things in which the divine mind is conveyed to me, day by day, in what i call my life; a loaf of bread, an errand cms 1840) immortality 377 to the town, a temperate man, an industrious man. providence, march 28.' send very's poems to carlyle and wordsworth. providence, march 30. when the materialist represents mind as the result of body and, at the perishing of body, deceasing — he tells us that this is true, though not so satisfactory to our pride. this last remark is a fatal concession. nature is always true, there is no lie, no betrayal in it, and yet, it seems in all the individuals there arises this feeling, on hearing his statement, that it is less satisfactory to our pride than something else. in other words, all the individuals feel, here is some wrong, some crack; something else is desirable than that you say is done, something else is best. then surely something else must be true. nature is in continual flux. everybody is an hourly mercury of the state of its soul. so much for phrenology and physiognomy. i mr. emerson seems to have been giving several lectures there at about this time. 378 (age 36 journal some men write better than they speak. of such i had rather see the manuscript than see the man. for what he speaks he says to me, but what he writes he says to god. i said to c. s., the difference between persons is not in wisdom, but in knack.' ... (from e) april. by confession we help each other; by clean shrift, and not by dictation. i like manners and their aristocracy better than the morgue of wealth. it is a gay chivalry, a merit, and indicates certainly the presence of a sense of beauty. i am always a fool to these mannered men at the first encounter. the southerner holds me at arm's length; he will not let me measure him, and after twenty-four hours my opinion shall still not be worth the telling, — such a cloak is his politesse. and yet, o stately friend, do not presume on this gay privilege of thine. yonder simple countryman, on whom you have yet bestowed no smile, strikes down all your glittering and serried points with 1 the paragraph thus beginning (with “ art” substituted for “ knack”) occurs in “ intellect” (essays, first series, p.333). 1840) death. the dollar 379 a wave of his hand, and overawes you, as does some grey friar a circle of armed barons. he oversteps with a free stride all your spaces marked with ribbons and etiquette, for he does not respect them; he is dignified by a higher thought, viz., by a humanity which slights all this, and overstands it, as a sane man an insane. verdeath in a novel, or a poem, is but the mechanical sublime, manage it how you will. lay any emphasis on it, and it only betrays the poverty of the writer ; the feeblest action, the faintest thought must always be superior to the most imposing death in fable. ah, my poor countrymen! yankees and dollars have such inextricable association that the words ought to rhyme. in new york, in boston, in providence, you cannot pass two men in the street without the word escaping them in the very moment of encounter, “dollars,” “two and a half per cent," "three per cent.” april 7. what does that fact signify, that nobody in this country can draw a hand except allston? asserted by mr. cole, i think. 380 [age 36 journal at providence i was made very sensible of the desire of all open minds for religious teaching. the young men and several good women freely expressed to me their wish for more light, their sympathy in whatever promised a better life. they inquired about the new journal of next july. i was compelled to tell them that the aims of that paper were rather literary than psychological or religious. but the inquiry and the tone of these inquirers showed plainly what one may easily see in boston and cambridge and the villages also — that what men want is a religion. ver the railroad makes a man a chattel, transports him by the box and the ton; he waits on it. he feels that he pays a high price for his speed in this compromise of all his will. i think the man who walks looks down on us who ride. i see with great pleasure this growing inclination in all persons who aim to speak the truth, for manual labor and the farm.' in all my lectures, i have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man. this the people accept readily enough, and even with here follow passages printed in “ man the reformer" ( nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 233, 238). 1840) the laborer. walden 381 loud commendation, as long as i call the lecture art, or politics, or literature, or the household; but the moment i call it religion, they are shocked, though it be only the application of the same truth which they receive everywhere else, to a new class of facts. the case of the menaced and insulted monarch is not quite aloof from our own experience. we have tasted that cup too. for see this wide society, in which we walk, of laboring men. we allow ourselves to be served by them. we pay them money and then turn our backs on them.' ... . (from f) april 9. we walked this afternoon to edmund hosmer's and walden pond. the south wind blew and filled with bland and warm light the dry sunny woods. the last year's leaves flew like birds through the air. as i sat on the bank of the drop, or god's pond, and saw the amplitude of the little water, what space, what verge, the little scudding fleets of ripples found to scatter and spread from side to side and take so much time to 1 for the rest of this long passage on service, see " man the reformer” (nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 252, 253). 382 journal [age 36 cross the pond, and saw how the water seemed made for the wind, and the wind for the water, dear play fellows for each other, — i said to my companion, i declare this world is so beautiful that i can hardly believe it exists. at walden pond the waves were larger and the whole lake in pretty uproar. jones very said, “ see how each wave rises from the midst with an original force, at the same time that it partakes the general movement!” he said that he went to cambridge, and found his brother reading livy. “i asked him if the romans were masters of the world? my brother said they had been : i told him they were still. then i went into the room of a senior who lived opposite, and found him writing a theme. i asked him what was his subject? and he said, cicero's vanity. i asked him if the romans were masters of the world? he replied they had been: i told him they were still. this was in the garret of mr. ware's house. then i went down into mr. ware's study, and found him reading bishop butler, and i asked him if the romans were masters of the world? he said they had been: i told him they were still.” 1 1 an interesting memoir of very was written by mr. w. p. andrews, and several of his poems were printed at the were 18401 very. child's desires 383 very obvious is the one advantage which this singular man has attained unto, that of bringing every man to true relations with him. no man would think of speaking falsely to him. but every man will face him, and what love of nature or what symbol of truth he has, he will certainly show him. but to most of us the society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. to stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?' (from e) april 27. my little boy says, “i want something to play with which i never saw before," and thus lives over already in his experience the proclamation of xerxes advertising a reward for a new pleasure. i tell him that the sun and moon are good playthings still, though they are very old; they are as good as new. so are eating and drinking, though rather dangerous toys, very good amusements, though old ones; so is water which we wash and play with ; but he is not persuaded by my eloquence. end. mr. emerson used to praise « the strangers” and “the barberry,” and included them in his parnassus. i the last paragraph is printed in “ friendship” (p. 203), but it seemed better to let it stand here in its connection. 384 journal [age 36 so there seems a strange propensity to egotism in the mind of several eminent spiritualists whom i have known, disproportion, a sad exaggeration which disables them from putting their act and word aloof from them, detaching it, and seeing it as a pitiful, shrivelled apple, at its best a disgrace to the tree and to nature; and this in souls of unquestionable power and greater nearness to the secret of god than others. it is sadly punished too, and that speedily, inasmuch as this habit always leads men to humour it, to treat the patient tenderly, not roundly, and so shut him up gradually in a narrower selfism, and exclude him from the great world of god's cheerful, though fallible, men and women. i had rather be insulted whilst i am insultable. james naylor, george fox, luther, are eminent examples of it long ago; and now we have poets, critics, abolitionists, prophets, and philosophers infected with the same elephantiasis. isi narr there is an important équivoque in our use of the word unconscious, a word which is much played upon in the psychology of the present day. we say that our virtue and genius are unconscious, that they are the influx of god, and the like. the objector replies that to represent 1840) unconsciousness 385 the divine being as an unconscious somewhat is abhorrent, etc. but the unconsciousness we spake of was merely relative to us; we speak, we act, from we know not what higher principle, and we describe its circumambient quality by confessing the subjection of our perception to it, we cannot overtop, oversee it, — not see at all its channel into us. but in saying this, we predicate nothing of its consciousness or unconsciousness in relation to itself. we see at once that we have no language subtle enough for distinctions in that inaccessible region. that air is too rare for the wings of words. we cannot say, god is self-conscious, or not self-conscious; for the moment we cast our eye on that dread nature, we see that it is the wisdom of wisdom, the love of love, the power of power, and soars infinitely out of all definition and dazzles all inquest. true criticism is inexhaustible. every new thought supersedes all foregone thought and makes a new light on the whole world. all spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. it is for those who come after to find its relation to other thoughts. 386 [age 36 journal if there be need of a new journal, that need is its introduction : it wants no preface. it proceeds at once to its own ends, which it well knows, and answers now for the first time. that consummated fitness is a triumphant apology. it will ignore all the old, long constituted public or publics which newspapers and magazines address. it ignores all newspapers and magazines. it is so real, so full of its own authentic aim which it exists to attain, that it knows them not; not seeing them to fill any place which this mind esteems real, it has no thought to waste on them. it speaks to a public of its own, a newborn class long already waiting. they, least of all, need from it any letters of recommendation. it is of course too confident in its tone to comprehend an objection, and so builds no outworks for possible defence against contingent enemies. it has the step of fate, and goes on existing, like an oak or a river, because it must. if the projected journal be what we anticipate, and, if not, we should not care for it, it does not now know itself in the way of accustomed criticism; it cannot foretell in orderly proportions what it shall do; its criticism is to be poetic, not the peeping, but the broad glance of the american man on the books and things of this hour. 1840) dial. waldo. glory 387 its brow is not wrinkled with circumspection, but serene, cheerful, adoring. it has all things to say, and no less than all the world for its final audience. there are, no doubt, many dogs barking at the moon, and many owls hooting in this saturday night of the world, but the fair moon knows nothing of either. april 30. waldo looks out today from my study window and says, “these are not the woods i like to look at.” –“and what woods do you like to look at?” — “those that i see from the window of the nursery.” may 4. waldo says, “god is very glorious, he always says his prayers, and never 'haves (behaves) naughty.” may 6. yesterday with the club' at medford. superlative. it is somewhat sad that a word of such sacred meaning as glory should now be the emptiest of all words, and scarcely in a lifetime shall we hear it used without disgust. 1 “symposium.” 388 [age 36 journal · in conversation, alcott will meet no man who will take a superior tone. let the other party say what he will, alcott unerringly takes the highest moral ground and commands the other's position, and cannot be outgeneralled. and this because, whilst he lives in his moral perception, his sympathies with the present company are not troublesome to him, never embarrass for a moment his perception. he is cool, bland, urbane, yet with his eye fixed on the highest fact. with me it is not so. in all companies i sympathize too much. if they are 'ordinary and mean, i am. if the company were great, i should soar: in all mere mortal parties, i take the contagion of their views and lose my own. i cannot outsee them, or correct, or raise them. as soon as they are gone, the muse returns; i see the facts as all cultivated men always have seen them, and am a great man alone. every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.' . .. strange how hard it is for cultivated men to free themselves from the optical illusion by 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ circles" (essays, first series, p. 306). a. bronson alcott 1840) jesus no institution 389 which a great man appears an institution. they know and have observed in particular instances that the demonstration of a strong will, of a vast thought, at once arrested the eyes and magnetized the wills of men, so that society and events became secondaries and satellites of a man; and the genesis of that man's thought is not now explored after the laws of thought, but externally in his parentage, in his country, climate, college, election by his fellow citizens, and the like, -as we know is the tenor of vulgar biography. and yet, though familiar with this fact, the moment jesus is mentioned, they forget their knowledge, and accept the apparatus of prophecy, miracle, positive supernatural indication by name and place, and claim on his part to extraordinary outward relations;—all these, which are the prismatic hues and lights which play around any wonderful genius, they regard as of an adamantine reality, and in the selectest society where beauty, goodness and the soul are named, these men talk of “ preaching christ,” and of “christ's being the ideal of man,” etc., etc. we se we are halves: we see the past in memory, but do not see the future. they say, that, at 390 journal [age 36 times, this hemisphere completes itself, and foresight becomes as perfect as aftersight. may 9. is it not pedantry to insist that every man should be a farmer as much as that he should be a lexicographer? suppose the doctrine of the right estate of man finds him at sea, shall he therefore scrape together what dust and refuse he can find on deck, and dibble in a flowerpot, or shall he learn to use the ropes, to stand at the wheel, to reef a sail and draw a fish out of the sea and be a farmer of the sea? in like manner, if the doctrine of universal labor find him in the midst of books, whose use he understands, and whose use other men wish to learn of him, shall he cast away this his skill and usefulness to go bungle with hoe and harrow, with cows and swine which he understands not? should he not rather farm his books well and lose no hour of beneficent activity in that place where he now is? the doctrine of the farm is merely this ;'... where is the fertile earth? where the farmer 1 the rest of the passage is printed in “ man the reformer” (essays, first series, pp. 240, 241). 1840) books that draw you 391 is. where do books become great engines but where the scholar is? may 10. self-trust. — if you have no talent for scolding, do not scold; if none for explaining, do not explain ; if none for giving parties, do not give parties, however graceful or needful these acts may appear in others. i said once, that everyone should read proudly, not too anxious to find himself in æschylus or in spinoza, but quite ready to dismiss the book as an inadequate interpreter of his consciousness. i said again, that the scholar must not fear the excess of influence of any author, but follow with heart and strength the master whom he loved, leaving father and mother, house and land behind him, and by and by the over-influence would abate and the light of this would .blend with the general day. do these two statements clash ? i think not. heis to give himself to that which draws him, because that is his own; and he is to refuse that which draws him not, because it draws him not. the age. — the age is marked by “an increasing tenderness for human life.” 392 (age 36 journal if a man knows the law, he may settle himself in a shanty in the pine forest, and men will and must find their way to him as readily as if he lived in the city hall. (from f) i begin to dislike animal food. i had whimsies yesterday after dinner which disgusted me somewhat. the man will not be much better than the beast he eats. conformity is the ape of harmony. i have supped with gods to-night, shall i come under wooden roofs ? as i walked on the hills the great stars did not shine aloof, but they hurried down from their deep abodes and hemmed me in their glittering troop.' all spontaneous thought is irrespective of all i from 1838 for many years mr. emerson's longings to express himself in verse resulted in fragments (scattered through some journals, and in his special verse-books) which he never published, but which were collected after his death, forming a fairly connected whole called “the poet,” and printed in the appendix to the poems. the lines given here occur in better form in “the poet” (poems, p. 314). 18401 soul. travel. thought 393 else. it is for those who come after to find its relation to other thoughts. the soul.— i think whenever we are addressed greatly we greet the brave speaker, and are by him instantly admonished how we ought to speak. it is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish even our contritions.' ... can we never extract this maggot of europe out of the brains of our countrymen?? plato and pythagoras may travel, for they carry the world with them and are always at home, but our travellers are moths and danglers.3 wordsworth has done as much as any living man to restore sanity to cultivated society. beware when the great god lets loose a new thinker on this planet. ... 1 here follows the passage thus beginning in “ circles" (essays, first series, p. 317). 2 these lines are in “ culture" (conduct of life). 3 this passage is followed by that in “ friendship” on european travel (essays, first series, p. 214). this is followed by the sentences about the brook in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 178). 4 the rest of the passage is printed in “ circles” (essays, first series, pp. 308, 309). 394 journal (age 36 but ah, we impute the virtues to our friends, and afterwards worship the face and feature to which we ascribe these divine tenants. labor with the hands that you may have animal spirits. be not an opium-eater. cold water has no repentance. but do not let debt and the bondage of housekeeping fret you out of the knowledge of the value of house, husbandry, property. suppose you have reformed, and live on grains and black-birch bark and muddy water, that you may have leisure. well, what then? what will you do with the long day? think? what! all day? do you not see that instantly taste and arithmetic and power will plan plantations and build summer-houses and carve gods? we must have a basis for our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy in our handicraft. we must have an antagonism in the tough world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties or they will not be born. in regard to this goethe i have to add that a man as gifted as he should not leave the world as he found it.' . .. 1 much of what follows may be found in “ thoughts on modern literature," originally printed in the dial (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 333). 1840) goethe, architecture 395 yet how is the world better for goethe? what load has he lifted from men or from women? there is austria, and england, the old and the new, full of old effete institutions and usages, full of men born old, and the question still incessantly asked by the young, “ what shall i do?” with forlorn aspect. but let some strong zeno, some nervous epaminondas, moses or isaiah come into our society, and see how he defies it, and enables us to brave it, to come out of it, and remake it from the corner-stone. there is hardly a life in plutarch that does not infuse a new courage and prowess into the youth and make him gladder and bolder for his own work. (from e) may 17. in architecture, height and mass have a wonderful effect because they suggest immediately a relation to the sphere on which the structure stands, and so to the gravitating system. the tower which with such painful solidity soars like an arrow to heaven apprizes me in an unusual manner of that law of gravitation, by its truth to which it can rear aloft into the atmosphere those dangerous masses of granite, and keep them there for ages as easily as if it were a feather or a scrap an a rro 396 [age 36 journal of down. then, great mass, especially in height, has some appreciable proportion to the size of the globe, and so appears to us as a splinter of the orb itself. the earth is gay in these days with the blossoming of all fruit-trees. an apple-tree near at hand is a great awkward flower, but seen at some distance it gives a wonderful softness to the landscape. there are many things which teach that high lesson that success depends on the aim, not on the means. look at the mark, not on your arrow. and herein is my hope for all reform in our vicious modes of living. let a man direct his inquiry on details in attempting an amelioration, and he will be met at every step by unanswerable objections, insoluble difficulties. but let him propose to himself a grand aim, to live a prophet, a helper, a member of the morning and of nature, one whom the flowering tree and the summer wind and the sovereign stars shall recal to the remembrance of men, and be the newborn child of absolute love,-a pure power, a calm and happy genius through whom, as through a lens, the rays of the universe converge 1840) aims. simple life 397 to the joy of the eye that seeth, — and i think he shall be floated into his place of activity and happiness by might and mind sublime over all these rocks and shoals that now look insuperable. fix his heart on magnificent life, and he need not know the economical methods: he shall be himself astonished at the great solution of the problem of means.' living has got to be too ponderous than that the poor spirit can drag any longer this unnecessary baggage-train. let us cut the traces. the bird and the fox can get their food and house without lies, and why not we? a great aim shall bring it, as if ravens brought it, the bread of love, apples, pomegranates, berries and corn, not stolen from nature, not.polluted nor polluting. there is this plea always considerable when it is said, let the bard, the priesthood, receive no contributions, but be rather tent-makers and ploughmen as others are; namely, that in the experience of all sedentary men that degree of i compare « the poet” (poems, appendix): – means, dear brother? ask them not ; soul's desire is means enow; pure content is angels' lot, thine own theatre art thou. 398 journal [age 36 manual labor which is necessary for the maintenance of a family indisposes and disqualifies for intellectual exertion.' ... latent heat performs a great office in nature. not less does latent joy in life. you may have your stock of well-being condensed into extasies, trances of good fortune and delight, preceded and followed by blank or painful weeks and months; or, you may have your joy spread over all the days in a bland, vague, uniform sense of power and hope. yet is this figure of a stock of well-being only rhetorical, or rather relative to certain limitations. for the latent heat of an ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible, and the power of happiness of any soul is not to be computed or drained. may 18. criticism must be transcendental, that is, must consider literature ephemeral, and easily entertain the supposition of its entire disappearance. in our ordinary states of mind, we deem not only letters in general, but most famous books i the rest of the paragraph is found in “ man the reformer ” (p. 241 ), and is followed by much of the matter on the next two pages of that lecture. 1840] helpless cosmogonies 399 parts of a preëstablished harmony, fatal, unalterable, and do not go behind dante and shakspear, much less behind moses, ezekiel, and st. john. but man is critic of all these also, and should treat the entire extant product of the human intellect as only one age, revisable, corrigible, reversible by him. ra we have more traditions than the most resolute skeptic has yet interrogated or even guessed. how few cosmogonies have we. a few have got a kind of classical character, and we let them stand, for a world-builder is a rare man. and yet what ghosts and hollow, formless, dream-gear these theories are; how crass and inapplicable; how little they explain; what a poor handful of facts in this plentiful universe they touch. let me see. — moses, hesiod, egyptian lore of isis and osiris, zoroaster, menu — with these few rude poems, or extracts from rude poems, the nations have been content when any clever boy, black or white, has anywhere interrupted the stupid uproar by a sharp question, “would any one please to tell me whence i came hither?” to be sure that question is contrary to the rules of good society in all countries. for society is always secondary, not primary, and delights in 400 journal (age 36 secondaries. it is gregarious and parasitic and loves to lay its egg like the cow-troopial in a nest which other birds have built, and to build no nest itself. absolute truths, previous questions, primary natures, society loathes the sound of and the name of. “ can you not as well say christ as say truth?” it asks. “who are you, child, that you must needs ask so many questions? see what a vast procession of your uncles and aunts who never asked any. can't you eat your dinner and read in the books? besides, i hate conversation, it makes my head ache.” but if the urchin has wild eyes, and can neither be coaxed nor chidden into silence, and cares not a pin for the greeks and romans, for art or antiquity, for bible or government, for politics or money, and keeps knocking soundly all night at the gate, then at last the good world condescends to unroll for him these solemn scrolls as the reports of the commissioners from the east, from the south, from the north and the west, to whom his question had been formerly referred. if the poor lad got no answer before, he has got none now. — what birth do these famous books of genesis reveal? do they explain so much as the nest of a bluebird or the hum of a fly? can they tell him the pedigree of the smallest effect? 1840) the golden age 401 can they detect the virtue of the feeblest cause? can they give him the least hint of the history of the eyes he has worshipped, or disclose his relations to the summer brook and the waving corn? and yet every man is master of the whole fact, and shall one day find himself so. may 25.' in the golden age men did not lay up property for their children, for the marriages were equal and the children abler than their parents. in the golden age men did not study the song of the bird by writing down, with nuttall, the notes in awkward syllables, che, che, che, etc., but the chaste and simple hermit found himself intelligent of the song by the love in his own heart. neither did they know too much of bird or beast, and peep after them; but treating them brotherly and greatly, they without pains saw through their being. in the golden age a brave pleasure was not purchased too dearly, like a poet's day, by many leaden days; but every joy was embosomed in joys like a lupine in the woods. people wish to be settled. it is only as far i mr. emerson's birthday. 402 journal [age 37 as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them. you admire this tower of eternal granite defying the assault of ages. yet a little waving hand built this huge wall.' ... criticism is timid. ... when shall we dare to say, only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me? hate this childish haste to print and publish; for the hours of light come like days of judgment at last, and cast their glory backward, forward, above, below. then, poor child, all the folly stands confessed in thy scrolls and detaches itself from the true words. by help of tea, tea was renounced. was renouno i went to the circus. . . . one horse brought a basket in his teeth, picked up a cap, and selected a card out of four. all wonder comes of showing an effect at two or three removes from the cause. show us the two or three steps by which the horse was brought to fetch the basket, i the rest of the passage occurs in “circles” (essays, first series, pp. 302, 303), and is followed by the passage beginning, “ in the thought of tomorrow,” etc. (p. 305). 18401 unmagnetic writers 403 and the wonder would cease. but i and waldo were of one mind when he said, “ it makes me want to go home.” ear a pleasant walk and sail this fine afternoon with george bradford. i threatened by way of earnest-penny in this absorbing reform to renounce beef and the daily advertiser. there is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest, good men. it is very strange, but we flee to the speculative reformer to escape that same slight ridicule. i think it ought to be remembered in every essay after the absolute criticism that one circumstance goes to modify every work of literature, this, namely, that books are written generally by the unmagnetic class of mankind, by those who have not the active faculties, and who describe what they have never done. this circumstance must certainly color what they say of character and action. may 28. at bartol's, our club was enriched by edi the story is not all told here. it was when the painted clown began his fooleries that the little boy said, “ papa, the funny man makes me want to go home,” and mr. emerson always cherished this evidence of his refinement. 404 journal [age 37 no ward taylor's presence. i felt in a higher degree the same happiness i have formerly owed to that man's public discourses, the exhilaration and cheer of so much love poured out through so much imagination. for the time, his exceeding life throws all other gifts into deep shade, “philosophy speculating on its own breath,” taste, learning and all, — and yet how willingly every man is willing to be nothing in his presence, to share this surprising emanation, and be steeped and ennobled by the new wine of this eloquence. he gives sign every moment of a certain prodigious nature. no man instructs like him in the power of man over men. instantly you behold that a man is a mover, — to the extent of his being, a power, and in contrast with the efficiency thus suggested, our actual life and society appears a dormitory. we are taught that earnest, impassioned action is most our own, and invited to try the deeps of love and wisdom, — we who have been players and paraders so long. and yet i think i am most struck with the beauty of his nature. this hard-featured, scarred and wrinkled methodist, whose face is a system of cordage, becomes whilst he talks a gentle, a lovely creature — the amore greco is not more beautiful. 1840) age. idealism 405 in conversation we pluck up the eternal termini which bound the common of silence." old age. — sad spectacle that a man should live and be fed that he may fill a paragraph every year in the newspapers for his wonderful age, as we record the weight and girth of the big ox or mammoth girl. we do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count. what can we do in dark hours ? we can abstain. in the bright hours we can impart. reform.the world accuses the scholar of a tendency to idealism. and why tends he thither? he loves the warm sun and the magnetic person as well as they, but finding that your facts and persons are grown unreal and phantastic by reason of the vice in them, he nears that most real world of ideas within him, and aims to recruit and replenish nature from that source. let ideas obtain and establish their sway again in society, let life again be fair and poetic, and we shall gladly be objective, lovers, citizens and philanthropists. 1 the rest of this long passage on this subject is printed in “ circles" (essays, first series, pp. 310, 311). 406 [age 37 journal the books of men of genius are divers or dippers. when they alight on the water, they soon disappear, but after some space they emerge again.' other books are land-birds which, falling in the water, know well that their own safety is in keeping at the top, they flutter and chirp and scream, but if they once get their heads under they are drowned forever. may 30. wrote letters yesterday by “british queen” to john sterling and richard monckton milnes. was it æsop or epictetus who, being sold for a slave at the market, cried out to all comers, “ who'll buy a master?” i should like to buy or hire that article. my household suffers from too many servants. my cow milks me. a rope of sand for asmodeus to spin i cannot find.3 now if so many dollars as i could amass would fetch the good husband or gardener who would tell 1 this thought appears in verse in « the poet” (see poems, appendix, pp. 309, 310). 2 who was reviewing mr. emerson's writings in england. 3 asmodeus is mentioned in the book of tobit in the apocrypha, and in the talmud. this image, the keeping a troublesome demon occupied with sand-ropes, occurs in “ behavior” (conduct of life), and in or resources” (letters and social ass aims). 1840) nature gives sight 407 me what i ought to do in garden and barnyard, would summon me out to do it, even with a little compulsion, when i resisted, — that would put me well. may 31. we can never see christianity from christendom; but from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from the song of a starling, we possibly may. cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. we must be great to see anything truly. our weak eyes make goblins and monsters. but man thyself, and all things unfix, dispart, and flee. nothing will stand the eye of a man, — neither lion, nor person, nor planet, nor time, nor condition. each bullies us for a season; but gaze, and it opens that most solid seeming wall, yields its secret, receives us into its depth and advances our front so much farther on into the recesses of being, to some new frontier as yet unvisited by the elder voyagers. and yet alas for this infirm faith, this will, not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! i am god in nature, i am a weed by the wall. 408 [age 37 journal has the naturalist and the chemist learned his craft who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities?' ... the use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life.? ... june 1. the buddhist expresses the true law of hospitality when he says, “do not flatter your benefactors.” the bread that you give me is not thine to give, but mine when the great order of nature has seated me today at your table. do not let me deceive you by my thanks into the notion that you are aught but the moderator of the company for the hour, though you call yourself rich man and great benefactor, perhaps. the capital or stock of man our estimates always overlook; it is not set down in any invoice. ruined ! are you? have you not earth and water? have you not gravity, chemistry, love, cause and effect, time, fate, men? do not all these i here follows the analogy that all that belongs to men comes to them. see « circles” (essays, first series, p. 314; also end of second motto to “ compensation”). 2 the rest of the paragraph is found in “ circles” (p. 312). 1840] america. standing 409 circulate through you, and you through them? what in god do you whimper for? what else wouldst thou have, o child? a personal influence is an ignis fatuus.' ... our american letters are, we confess, in the optative mood.? ... the swallow over my window ought to weave that straw in his bill through all my web also of speculations. standing.– all men have learned one use of their feet, to go; but another use, to stand, — few have learned. we lean upon a wall, on a book, on a man. is it not strange, too, that, in french, there should be no word for stand? is it that the frenchman knows only a leaning and referred existence, and cannot stand? 1 this paragraph is found in nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 229), except that there the names of washington and franklin are substituted for dr. channing and garrison in the journal. the next entry is that on the greek sculpture having all melted away (“ circles,” p. 302). 2 the rest of the passage occurs in the transcendentalist” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 342). 410 (age 37 journal all great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain. they knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them. so did dante, so did machiavel. what else has goethe done in this hated meister?'... bat and ball. — toys, no doubt, have their philosophy, and who knows how deep is the origin of a boy's delight in a spinning top? in playing with bat-balls, perhaps he is charmed with some recognition of the movement of the heavenly bodies, and a game of base or cricket is a course of experimental astronomy, and my young master tingles with a faint sense of being a tyrannical jupiter driving spheres madly from their orbit. june 4. self-reliance sanctifies the character, for whoso is of that habit does not gossip or gad; is not betrayed by excess of sympathy into trifles, but ignores what he should ignore. in looking at pictures, you must stop soon. you may see one or two, but, after turning over 1 the long criticism of goethe follows, first printed in the dial, which may be found in "thoughts on modern literature” (natural history of intellect, pp. 329–333). 1840] waldo. composure. love 411 seven or eight, you see no more. and when you do chance to see one, bid it good-bye, you will never see it again. waldo says, “the flowers talk when the wind blows over them.” my little boy grows thin in the hot summer, and runs all to eyes and eyelashes. ne ii. sawho has more self-repose than i masters me by eye and manner, though he should not move a finger; who has less is mastered by me with the like facility. i finish this morning transcribing my old essay on love, but i see well its inadequateness. i, cold because i am hot, cold at the surface only as a sort of guard and compensation for the fluid tenderness of the core, — have much more experience than i have written there, more than i will, more than i can write. in silence we must wrap much of our life, because it is too fine for speech, because also we cannot explain it to others, and because somewhat we cannot yet understand. we do not live as angels, eager to introduce each other to new perfections in our brothers and sisters, and frankly avowing our delight in each new trait is nor 412 journal (age 37 se 1 no of character, in the magic of each new eyebeam, but that which passes for love in the world gets official, and instead of embracing, hates all the divine traits that dare to appear in other persons. a better and holier society will mend this selfish cowardice, and we shall have brave ties of affection, not petrified by law, not dated or ordained by law to last for one year, for five years, or for life; but drawing their date, like all friendship, from itself only; brave as i said, because innocent, and religiously abstinent from the connubial endearments, being a higher league on a purely spiritual basis. this nobody believes possible who is not good. the good know it is possible. cows and bulls and peacocks think it nonsense. sunday, june 14. tranquil and great sailed or slept the clouds today in the northeastern horizon as i walked and mused on my friends. i thought, why should i play with the young people this game of idolatry?'... the great man will not be prudent in the popular sense.? ... i the rest of the passage is found in “circles" (essays, first series, p. 307). 2 the rest is found in “ circles” (pp. 314, 315). 1840] · intoxicants. diet 413 our country men love intoxication of some sort. one is drunk with whiskey, and one with party, and one with music, and one with temper. many of them fling themselves into the excitement of business until their heads whirl and they become insane. but ambition is for strong heads, not for weak ones. it is droll that the laurel in our woods is called lamb-kill, and even the larger laurel spoon-hunt. dr. abernethy's rule for diet to the invalid was, “live on sixpence a day and earn it.” it is a superstition to insist on vegetable, or animal, or any special diet. all is made up at last of the same chemical atoms. the indian rule shames the graham rule. a man can eat anything, — cats, dogs, snakes, frogs, fishes, roots and moss. all the religion, all the reason in the new diet is, that animal food costs too much. we must spend too much time and thought in procuring so varied and stimulating diet and then we become dependent on it. admiral keppel said of the scots, “they are excellent soles, but terrible bad upperleathers.” 414 journal (age 37 (from f) june 18. edmund hosmer taught me by his generous care of my interest, in the matter of the cow, that the part which each man should look at in driving a bargain with his neighbor is his neighbor's interest, and not his own. what right have i, because there is money in my pocket, to furnish me with toys and comforts on an idle or wicked day? if i have not in my conscience earned a right to what i desire, let me not buy; the money is not mine, though it lie in my drawer. a gay and pleasant sound is that of the whetting of the scythe. a summer sound. yet, as my mowing dr. bugbee replied to me, what is there more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? diet.— i like henry thoreau's statement on diet: “if a man does not believe that he can thrive on board nails, i will not talk with him.” ye rogues, my company eat turf and talk not; timber they can digest and fight upon 't; old mats, and mud with spoons, rare meats, your shoes, slaves, 1840] essay on friendship 415 dare ye cry out of hunger and those extant ? suck your sword hilts, ye slaves, if ye be valiant, honor will make them marchpane. beaumont and fletcher, bonduca. june 19. on the 17th june the mercury stood at 96° in the shade at i o'clock p. m. (from e) june 21. can we not be so great as to offer tenderness to our friend,tenderness with self-trust? why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them?' [in his letter to mr. s. g. ward, of june 22, mr. emerson wrote: “i am just now finishing a chapter on friendship (of which one of my lectures last winter contained a first sketch) on which i would gladly provoke a commentary. i have written nothing with more pleasure, and the piece is already indebted to you, and i wish to swell my obligations. if i like it when i read it over, i shall send it to you.”'] i here follows the long passage, thus beginning, found in “ friendship” (pp. 210, 211). 2 emerson's letters to a friend. 416 (age 37 journal of a man we should ask, has he invented a day? an action? every act, every moment, every mode of being he showed us ? alas! often he invented nothing: he was a speaking ape; he did not rise to an original force, not for an instant, — and we are hardly able in thought to detach him from his body, and we talk well pleased of having put him in the ground. a lover does not willingly name his mistress; he speaks of all persons and things beside ; for she is sacred. so will the friend respect the name of his friend. name him for pride and he is already ceasing to be yours. the base lover is piqued by the natural dignity of the virgin which overawes and disconcerts him, do what he can. he desires to possess her, that so, at least, he may recover his tongue and his behaviour in her presence. thus he steals the victory, which he ought greatly to earn by raising his own character to the royal level of hers. the same ethics hold of thy friendship. worship the superiorities of thy friend. wish them not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all : they are the uplifting force by which you are to rise to new degrees of rank. self-reliance applied to another person is revsa 1840] power. channing 417 erence, that is, only the self-respecting will be reverent. june 24. the least sense of power, as the newly attained skill to make corn grow, or to row a boat, raises the spirits, and from it a new wisdom immediately flows. we love to paint those qualities which we do not possess.'... i, who suffer from excess of sympathy, proclaim always the merits of selfreliance. channing's poetry and — 's have a certain merit which unfits them for print. they are proper manuscript inspirations, honest, great, but crude. they have never been filed or defiled for the eye that studies surface: the writer was not afraid to write ill; had a great meaning too much at heart to stand for trifles, and wrote lordly for his peers alone. this is the right poetry of hope, no french correctness, but hans sachs and chaucer rather.” we are never so fit for friendship as when we cease to seek for it, and take ourselves to friend. see “ prudence," opening paragraph (essays, first series). 2 yet channing's refusal to mend his verses was a trial to his friend. 418. (age 37 journal once i was in love, and whenever i thought of what should happen to me and the maiden, we were always travelling ; i could not think of her otherwise. again i was in love, and i always painted this maiden at home. why should i wish to do or write many things, since any one well done contains my history? why should i see with regret the felling of the woods, and fear lest my son should lack the lessons his father drew from nature, when i have known myself entertained by a single dewdrop or an icicle, by a liatris, or a fungus, and seen god revealed in the shadow of a leaf? nature is microscopically rich, as well as cumulatively. why should i covet a knowledge of new facts and skills, when i know that they are only other illustration of laws daily playing before my eyes?' ... each new fact i look upon, as this steaming of hot air from the wide fields upward, is a new word that i learn and hive, well assured the use for it will come presently, as the boy learns with good hope his latin vocabulary. what is it i several sentences, thus introduced are in “the poet” ( essays, second series, p. 32). 1840) montaigne. language 419 to be a poet? what are his garland and singing robes?' (from a loose sheet) originality. – talent without character is friskiness. the charm of montaigne's egotism, and of his anecdotes, is, that there is a stout cavalier, a seigneur of france, at home in his château, responsible for all this chatting. now suppose it should be shown and proved that the famous “essays” were a jeu d'esprit of scaliger, or other scribacious person, written for the booksellers, and not resting on a real status, picturesque in the eyes of all men, would not the book instantly lose almost all its value? (from e) montaigne. — the language of the street is always strong. what can describe the folly and emptiness of scolding like the word jawing? i feel too the force of the double negative, though clean contrary to our grammar rules. and i confess to some pleasure from the stinging rhetoric of a rattling oath in the mouth of truckmen and teamsters. how laconic and brisk it is by the side of a page of the north american review. 1 the rest of the passage is in “poetry and imagination” (lectures and biographical sketches, p. 36). 420 journal . (age 37 ci cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive; they walk and run. moreover they who speak them have this elegancy, that they do not trip in their speech. it is a shower of bullets, whilst cambridge men and yale men correct themselves and begin again at every half sentence.' i know nobody among my contemporaries except carlyle who writes with any sinew and vivacity comparable to plutarch and montaigne. yet always this profane swearing and bar-room wit has salt and fire in it. i cannot now read webster's speeches. fuller and browne and milton are quick, but the list is soon ended. goethe seems to be well alive, no pedant. luther too. nature.— i think i must do these eyes of mine the justice to write a new chapter on nature. this delight we all take in every show of night or day, of field or forest or sea or city, down to the lowest particulars, is not without sequel, though we be as yet only wishers and 1 sentences from the above paragraph occur in the chapter • art and criticism,” printed only in the centenary edition (natural history of intellect, p. 288), and in “ montaigne” (representative men, p. 168). 1840] nature's cipher 421 gazers, not at all knowing what we want. we are predominated herein, as elsewhere, by an upper wisdom, and resemble those great discoverers who are haunted for years, sometimes from infancy, with a passion for the fact or class of facts in which the secret lies which they are destined to unlock, and they let it not go until the blessing is won. so these sunsets and starlights, these swamps and rocks, these birdnotes and animal forms off which we cannot get our eyes and ears, but hover still, as moths, round a lamp, are no doubt a sanscrit cipher covering the whole religious history of the universe, and presently we shall read it off into action and character. the pastures are full of ghosts for me, the morning woods full of angels. now and then they give me a broad hint. every natural fact is trivial until it becomes symbolical or moral. how i am touched and gladly surprised by hearing the chemist propounding the theory of heat, viz., that every particle of matter is in constant revolution round its own axis, slower or faster, alike in a column of smoke, or a stone jug. increase the heat, and you accelerate the revolution by separating the atoms; increase the heat again, and the particles acquire such 422 [age 37 journal freedom that the form is changed to liquid ; increase the heat again, and they gyrate in larger circles and become gas and (as we call it) die, or enter into the universe again. shall we not apply the moral for our consolation to these men of fire and these men of stone that sit around us? the dullest lump is yet amenable to this law of fire. warm him with love, and he too must begin to feel new freedom, and presently to become luminous with thought and glowing with affection. no inventory is complete. the farmer does not count the sparrows and bobolinks that breed in his meadow in his account of his poultry, and the selectmen assess on me no tax for my use of the woods, where i find first sight, second sight, and insight. the asters and eupatoriums are maturing their leaves and buds, the gerardia is getting ready its profuse flowers, warning me that my book should be ended before their capsules are filled with seed. now for near five years i have been indulged by the gracious heaven in my long holiday in this goodly house of mine, entertaining and entertained by so many worthy and gifted friends, 1840) magnetic men. river 423 and all this time poor nancy barron, the madwoman, has been screaming herself hoarse at the poor-house across the brook and i still hear her whenever i open my window. the best are never demoniacal or magnetic, but all brutes are. the democratic party in this country is more magnetic than the whig. andrew jackson is an eminent example of it. van buren is not, but his masters are, who placed him in his house. amos kendall and woodbury. mr. hoar is entirely destitute of this element. it is the prince of the power of the air. the lowest angel is better. it is the height of the animal; below the region of the divine. june 29. today at the cliff we held our villegiatura. i saw nothing better than the passage of the river by the dark clump of trees that line the bank in one spot for a short distance. there nature charmed the eye with her distinct and perfect painting. as the flowing silver reached that point, it darkened, and yet every wave celebrated its passage through the shade by one sparkle. but ever the direction of the sparkles was onward, onward. not one receded. at one 424 journal [age 37 invariable pace, like marchers in a procession to solemn music, in perfect time, in perfect order, they moved onward, onward, and i saw the warning of their eternal flow.' then the rock seemed good to me. i think we can never afford to part with matter. how dear and beautiful it is to us!? ... the flowers lately, especially when i see for the first time this season an old acquaintance, a gerardia, a lespedeza, have much to say on life and death. “you have much discussion,” they seem to say, “on immortality. here it is: here are we who have spoken nothing on the matter.” and as i have looked from this lofty rock lately, our human life seemed very short beside this ever renewing race of trees. your life, they say, is but a few spinnings of this top. forever the forest germinates: forever our solemn strength renews 1 this was the view southwestward from fairhaven hill, and the same sight may be seen now (1911) on a sunny afternoon, when ripples gleam out of the dark reflection of the pines on the opposite bank. far seen, the river gleams below, tossing one sparkle to the eyes. i catch thy meaning, wizard wave the river of my life replies. 2 from “ peter's field” (poems, p. 364). continued in “ nature” (essays, second series, p. 171). 1840] nature. poet's duty 425 its knots and nodes and leaf-buds and radicles. grass and trees have no individuals, as man counts individuality. the continuance of their race is immortality; the continuance of ours is not. so they triumph over us; and when we seek to answer, or to say something, the good tree holds out a bunch of green leaves in your face, or the woodbine five graceful fingers, and looks so stupid-beautiful, so innocent of all argument, that our mouths are stopped and nature has the last word. a notice of modern literature ought to include (ought it not?) a notice of carlyle, of tennyson, of landor, of bettina, of sampson: reed. we chide the citizen because, with all his honest merits, he does not conceive the delicacies and nobility of friendship, but we cannot forgive the poet if he does not substantiate his fine romance by the municipal virtues of justice, fidelity and pity. the simplest things are always better than curiosities. the most imposing part of this harrison celebration of the fourth of july in 426 [age 37 journal concord, as in baltimore, was this ball, twelve or thirteen feet in diameter, which, as it mounts the little heights and descends the little slopes of the road, draws all eyes with a certain sublime movement, especially as the imagination is incessantly addressed with its political significancy. so the log cabin is a lively watchword.' i think we must give up this superstition of company to spend weeks and fortnights. let my friend come and say that he has to say, and go his way. otherwise we live for show. that happens continually in my house, that i am expected to play tame lion by readings and talkings to the friends. the rich live for show: i will not. (from f) july 6. it is very easy to represent a farm, — which in most hours stands for the organization of the 1 the political campaign for harrison and tyler was at its height, with its watchword, “ tippecanoe and tyler too," – its log cabin, and « hard cider”; and it is said that even venerable citizens helped to keep the ball a-rollin'!” up 1840] a safe home. heroism 427 gravest needs of man, — as a poor trifle of a few pea-vines, turnips and a henroost. the name of death was never terrible to him that knew to live. double marriage. the rankest materialist must build his house, – no matter how deep and square on blocks of granite he lays his foundations, — must set it last, not on a cube, but on a mass which rounds off to an almost perfect sphericity and lies floating in soft air and goes spinning away thousands of miles the hour, — he knows not whither. heroism made easy is that for which people are always seeking to find some recipe. but god saith, it shall not be. heroism means difficulty, postponement of praise, postponement of ease, introduction of the world into the private apartment, introduction of eternity into the hours measured by the sitting-room clock. we see the river glide below us, but we see not the river that glides over us and envelopes city streets or along country roads. mr. emerson was pleased with the symbolism, and alludes to it in “ the poet” (essays, second series, p. 16). 428 journal [age 37 new us in its floods. a month ago, i met myself, as i was speeding away from some trifle to chase a new one, and knew that i had eaten lotus and been a stranger from my home all this time. and now i see that, with that word and thought in my mind, another wave took me and washed my remembrance away, and only now i regain myself a little and turn in my sleep. increase our faith. practical faith we have not. let us believe in unity until our actions are united. let us not believe, as we do now, in means and medicines, but in our action recognize that the world flows ever from the soul, and, instead of attacking the toothache or the dyspepsia, or any other symptom, raise the aim of the man, — and toothache and indigestion, cramp and croup, pain and poverty, will disappear in troops, as now in troops these calamities come. it makes no difference what a saintly soul eats or drinks; let him eat venison or roots, let him drink champagne or water, nothing will harm him or intoxicate or impoverish him; — he eats as though he eat not, and drinks as though he drank not. but we are skeptics over our dinnertable, and therefore our food is noxious and our i compare, in the poems, the “ two rivers.” 1840] expense. my servants 429 bodies fat or lean. looking as we do at means, and not at grand ends, being in our action disunited, our bodies have come to be detached also from our souls, and we speak of our health. n ou our expense is almost all for conformity. it is for cake that we all run in debt, — not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs us so much.' ... the ends of society will appear; now, we live solitary ; men of genius, being apart, half snore and spend their time in girding at society for not thinking as they do, but do nothing to convert it. but these hermits, when brought near and acting directly on each other, shall sleep no more, but be put on their mettle. m i have better servants than taste and attention to polish and adjust my relations to my friend, namely, time and fate, or the prevailing harmony of nature. these harden, these attemper and polish my relation to the smoothness and finish that will weather all accidents and stand for eternity. i the rest of this long passage in “ man the reformer" (nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 244, 245). 430 journal [age 37 our quarrel with every man we meet is not with his kind, but with his degree. there is not enough of him; that is the only fault. we pretend to our friends that we do not need direct communication — neither actions, nor gifts, nor conversation — to keep their influence whole. but it is a pretence. no in it makes a great difference as to the force of any sentence whether there be a man behind it or no.' ... filled with her love, may i be rather grown mad with much heart than idiot with none. donne. no spring nor summer's beauty hath such grace * as i have seen in one autumnal face. donne. there is always this impassable gulf between the men of the world and the men of principle. the practical man hears the theory or the advice of the prophet and laughs or is angry at such raving. for he says, look at the tools with which this world of yours is to be built. ... i the rest of the paragraph is found in “goethe" (representative men, p. 282). 2 for the rest of this paragraph, see " man the reformer" (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 252). 1840) ego. pure love. osman 431 a man of principles is nature. but the worldsman cannot once withdraw his eye from his actual neighbors, or cease to believe that you are dreaming of making them do the deeds of angels, their wills remaining as they are. someone said to me, “but if we were simpler should we not talk more of ourselves?" i reply, not of this named and mortal me. when i have talked of myself, i am presently punished by a sense of emptiness, and, as it were, flatulency, that i have lost all the solemnity and majesty of being. love and intellect, each in their perfection become the other. love is beautiful in action, but can never be spoken without some cloying or fulsomeness until it becomes quite pure, like fénelon's, or st. john's. less than a saint, it is but a goody. osman. — osman was a poor and simple man and was neglected in his youth, being esteemed a person of narrow intellect, whilst his brothers were able and ambitious men. his features were mean and irregular, his form was unproportioned, his movement was awkward and he had a bass, unmu432 journal (age 37 sical voice. he was, therefore, never instructed in any trade or art, but was put to household chares, and later, to aid a small farmer in his husbandry. not until he reached the middle age was he at all remarked, but left in obscurity, served last, and no notice taken of what he said. osman thought no more of himself than others thought of him, but acquiesced in this low and menial place which was assigned to him, and with great respect to others who, he doubted not, had superior parts, and with great good humor, did all that was required of him. much serving made him very meek and very useful. he could turn his hand to any ordinary work, and do it well. as there was no one to serve him, he learned to serve himself, and, as happens where a man waits on his own wants, he made them very few. he was social and affectionate in his nature as a dog, and readily talked with all who availed themselves of his hands to end some odd piece of work. nobody dreamed of being either civil or of assuming any airs before poor osman, so that he knew everybody for just what they were, as they all knew him. although affable enough, he really spoke little during the day, and was of a grave, quiet deportment. in his youth he had been sickly, but these long ser 1840) osman. self-trust 433 habits of light daily work established his constitution, and when he had counted thirty-five years he began to be much considered for his probity and his wisdom. everybody who knew him liked him, as if he had been their brother. the farmers said he worked like the rain or the wind, which need nobody's aid, but do their charity themselves. he had a strong memory, and having neither selfishness nor learning to cloud it, it might be depended on like a thermometer or a sun-dial. he was temperate in his diet, and, on account of his ill-health in childhood, had been bred to prefer a vegetable nutriment." you must steadily prefer your own native choices against all argument and all example. (if you stand by them, they will certainly bring you out safe into reality and excellence, at last, i mr. emerson, through many years, occasionally diverted himself by writing the traits and adventures of the imaginary osman, many of which — by no means all — were autobiography. in this instance osman's experiences are humbler and more practical and he has a social gift, the absence of which in himself mr. emerson used sometimes to deplore, and yet often said, “solitude is my doom, and my strength.” but in many other cases osman appears a sublimed self, a sort of ideal man. 434 journal (age 37 unworthy and contemptible as they may now seem.) defend them against the multitude, and defend them against the wise. he who told you of them is wiser than the colleges, wiser than the holy men. cannot you, instead of contributing to bunker hill monument, or the charity lecture, learn to serve yourself? society is full of infirm, lazy people who are incessantly calling on others to serve them.' ... whenever i read plutarch or look at a greek vase i am inclined to accept the common opinion of the learned that the greeks had cleaner wits than any other people in the universe. but there is anything but time in my idea of the antique. a clear and natural expression by word or deed is that which we mean when we love and praise the antique. in society i do not find it; in modern books seldom; but the moment i get into the pastures i find antiquity again. once in the fields with the lowing cattle, the birds, the trees, the waters and satisfying outlines of the landscape, and i cannot tell whether this is tempe, thessaly and enna, or concord and acton. 1 the long paragraph thus beginning is printed in “ man the reformer" (pp. 246, 247). 1840) children's speech 435 what is so bewitching as the experiments of young children on grammar and language? the purity of their grammar corrects all the anomalies of our irregular verbs and anomalous nouns. they carry the analogy thorough. bite makes bited, and eat, eated in their preterite. waldo says there is no “telling” on my microscope, meaning no name of the maker, as he has seen on knife-blades, etc. “where is the wafer that lives in this box?” etc. they use the strong double negative which we english have lost from our books, though we keep it in the street. “i wish you would not dig your leg,” said waldo to me. ellen calls the grapes “green berries,” and when i asked, “does it rain this morning?” she said, “ there's tears on the window." but what is so weak and thin as our written style today in what is called literature? we use ten words for one of the child's. his strong speech is made up of nouns and verbs, and names the facts. our writers attempt by many words to suggest, since they cannot describe. there is a difference between one and another i the suggestion of a possible unhandiness with the spade implied was long thrown up against mr. emerson in the domestic circle. 436 (age 37 journal moment of life in their authority and subsequent effect.' ... waldo asks if the strings of the harp open when he touches them! as for walking with heraclitus, said theanor, i know nothing less interesting ; i had as lief talk with my own conscience.” you fancy the stout woodchopper is thinking always of his poverty, compared with the power and money of the capitalist who makes the laws. i will not deny that such things have passed through his mind, for he has been at a caucus with open mouth and ears. but now he is thinking of a very different matter, for his horse has started in the team and pulled with such a spring that he has cleared himself of the harness hames and all — and he, as he mends the broken tackle, is meditating revenge on the horse. “well, you may draw as fast as you like up the mile hill; you shall have enough of it, if you like to draw, damn you !” — the horse, that is, and not the capitalist. i here follows the opening passage of " the over-soul.” 2 possibly a reflection on a recent walk with the sad and austere jones very. 1840] prometheus. æschylus 437 let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable. read a translation of the prometheus chained. ... it seems to be the first chapter of history of the caucasian race.. it is, besides, a grand effort of imagination. imagination is not good for anything unless there be enough. that a man can make a verse or have a poetic thought avails not, unless he has such a flow of these that he can construct a poem, a play, a discourse. symmetry, proportion we demand, and what are these but the faculty in such intensity or amount as to avail to create some whole? ... there is no irregular, auroral shooting in æschylus, but calm, equal strength; in plato most of all men. but æschylus treated of greek subjects. what should we treat? the poet in 1840 and in new england, what does that signify? who shall quarrel with literature as unnatural and pedantic? what is a man but nature's final success in self-explication?'.... i the rest of the passage is printed in “ art” (essays, second series, p. 352). 438 (age 37 journal prometheus is noble. he is the jesus of the old mythology, and plays with much exactness the part assigned to the nazarene in the genevan theology. he is the friend of man. stands between the unjust justice of the eternal father and the frail race of man; then readily suffers all things on their account.' it is a pity he should be so angry. anger continued and indulged becomes spleen. a single burst of indignation is heroic enough, but a persisting expression of it degenerates fast into scolding. prometheus scolds, and eteocles in “the seven”; and electra in sophocles. [here is the first thought of the quatrain “memory":-] the dreams of the night are shadows of the thoughts of the day and thy fortunes as they befall thee are the ghosts of thy will, the children of thy spiritual body. [here it begins to take form :-) let the dreams of night recall shadows of the thoughts of day i the last two sentences occur in “ history” first series). (essays, 1840) nature's counsel 439 and see thy fortunes as they fall each secret of thy will betray. [the finished poem is in quatrain, “memory,” poems, p. 295.] (from e) july 10. nature invites to repose, to the dreams of the oriental sages; there is no petulance, no fret; there is eternal resource and a long tomorrow, rich and strong as yesterday. we should be believers in necessity and compensation, and a man would have the air of pyramids and mountains, if we forsook our petulant mates and kept company with leaves and waters. [here follows the opening passage of “history” in the first volume of essays, about the uniform recognition of gentility in the elder dramatists.] all diseases run into one, old age. we grizzle every day.' ... i here follows the passage thus beginning in “ circles" (essays, first series, p. 319). 440 (age 37 journal “faith and hope”; these words are used in the church as if they were as unmeaning as selah and amen.' ... july 13. the graces of sleep not three, but three thousand; no man is ever awkward, ever sly, canting, or otherwise false whilst asleep. only one thing they do amiss, the sleepers,—sn-e. carlyle shall make a statement of a fact, shall draw a portrait, shall inlay nice shades of meaning, shall play, shall insinuate, shall banter, shall paralyze with sarcasm, shall translate, shall sing a tyrtæan song, and speak out like the liturgy, or the old english pentateuch, all the secrets of manhood. this he shall do and much more, being an upright, plain-dealing, hearty, loving soul of the clearest eye and of infinite wit, and using the language like a protean engine which can cut, thrust, saw, rasp, tickle or pulverize as occasion may require. but he is not a philosopher: his strength does not lie in the statement of abstract truth. his contemplation has no wings. he exhausts his topic. there is no more to be said when he has ended. he is not suggestive. 1 the rest of the passage is in “ man the reformer" (nature, addresses, and lectures, pp. 249, 250). 1840) days and poems 441 every new history that shall be written will be indebted to him. it will not be stately, but will go now into the street and sitting-room and the ale-house and kitchen. what he has said shall be proverb; nobody shall be able to say it otherwise. se ove c it does not need that a poem should be long. life, i have written above, is unnecessarily long, and poems are, as we learn when we meet with a line “in the large utterance of the early gods,” or milton's “beyond the manhood of a roman recovery,” moments of personal relation, smiles and glances how ample. borrowers of eternity, they are. some mellow, satisfying sessions we have in the woods in cool summer days. education aims to make the man prevail over the circumstance. the vulgar man is the victim of the circumstance. in the stagecoach, he is no man, but a tedious echo of each new accident of the journey, absorbed in the heat, in the cold, in the bad horses, in the fret of a crowded carriage. in the rain, he can think of nothing but that he wishes it would stop; in the drought, he 442 journal (age 37 waits till the rain fall; in debt, he postpones his being until his note is paid ; in dull company, until the company is gone; and never rallies himself to sink the circumstance and these encroaching trifles into their proper nothingness before the energies, the sweetness, the riches, the aspirations of a human mind. the common man has no time. one circumstance delivers him over to another. now he cannot be, for he is travelling. then he cannot be, for he has arrived in a new place; now, because he labors, then because he rests. july 15. bebaviour. — i like to see a man or a woman who does not palter or dodge, whose eyes look straight forward, and who throws the wisdom he or she has attained into the address and demeanor. what blandishment in the pronouncing of your name. your name is commended to your ear ever after it has been spoken by a man like otis or a woman like aw. july 17. . “sunshine was he on the cold day and when the dogstar raged shade was he and coolness," 1840] sun and shade. work 443 says the arabic poet translated by goethe (vol. vi). the hottest weather, so long continued, that i have noticed ; — redhot noons,—the mercury reaches 93° in the shade — the crops are drying up. let me be coolness and shade. the gardener floods his vines with water out of the well, sure that the good rain will in the year fill his well, though it delays to feed his garden. so is he “ coolness and shade.” in the winter he covers his asparagus with straw, and in the cold spring his young tomatoes with glass. so is he to them “sunshine,” but i weep with the weepers and fear with the fearers and am not a tower of defence, but a foolish sympathy. july 18. 969 fahrenheit. what right has the man of genius to retreat from work and indulge himself? the popular literary creed is:“ i am a man of genius; i ought not therefore to labor.” but genius is the power to labor better and more availably than others. deserve thy genius. exalt it. the good, the illuminated sit apart from the rest, censuring their dulness and vices, as if they thought that by sitting very grand in their chairs the very brokers and congressmen would see the error of their ways and flock to them. but the 444 journal (age 37 good, the wise must learn to act and carry this very salvation to the brokers and the demagogues which they need. july 26. beside the self-repose which manners express the alleghanies seem to me the drifting sand. tantalus is but a name for you and me. transmigration of souls: that too is no fable.' ... go to the forest, if god has made thee a poet, and make thy life clean and fragrant as thy office. true bramin in the morning meadows wet expound the vedas in the violet. thy love must be thy art. thy words must spring from love, and every thought be touched with love. only such words fly and endure. there are two ways of speaking: one, when a man makes his discourse plausible and round by considering how it sounds to him who hears it, and the other mode when his own heart loves and so infuses grace into all that drops from him. only this is living beauty. nature also must 1 see the passages thus beginning in “ history” (essays, first series, p. 32); and these, in the journal, are followed by the image of proteus, in “ history," p. 31. 1840] clean the mind. visit 445 teach thee rhetoric. she can teach thee, not only to speak truth, but to speak it truly. only poets advance with every word. in most compositions there is one thought which was spontaneous, and many which were added and abutted: but, in the true, god writes every word. shall the scholar write every word in his mind, -how bad as well as how good he is, — like rabelais and goethe? or shall he be an eclectic in his experience? is there not then cant when he writes more chastely than he speaks if you should hear his whispers ? let him then mend his manners and bring them within the mark which he trusts his pen to draw. i cannot ... travel with parties of pleasure or with parties of business. the frivolous make me lonely. neither can i well go to see those whom i. esteem, unless they also esteem me, for i can bęstow my time well at home. i have thus found that i cannot visit any one with advantage for a longer time than one or two hours. love should always make glad, never gloomy. we talked of deerbrook in these days, miss martineau's novel. it is a good book to read : there is much observation and much heroism in 446 journal (age 37 it, and people will be the better for reading. yet the author is of that class who mistake a private for an universal experience and venture to record it. a perfectly sound nature may accept all his own experience for the uniform experience of mankind, and so record it. but a man partially sick may not. if he record his morbid passages they will be accepted only by the sick for general truths. to the well they will be offensive. it is a delicate matter this offering to stand deputy for the human race, and writing all one's secret history colossally out as philosophy. very agreeable is it in those who succeed: odious in all others. it is good when one of these heroines remarks that all martyrdoms looked mean when they happened. it is ill when she suggests to a third person what her lover must have suffered on her account, for of that a woman can never say little enough. sa character makes an overpowering present, a cheerful, determined hour which fortifies all the company by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of.'... i the rest of the paragraph is in “circles ” (essays, first series, p. 321). 1840) landor. one mind 447 july 31. talked with elizabeth hoar last night on landor whom i read for a few minutes yesterday. we agreed that here was a book of sentiment (pericles and aspasia), sentiment in the high and strict sense that one could hardly read it without learning to write with more elegance. the inimitable neatness of the sentences and then the wonderful elegance of suppression and omission which runs through it might polish a dunce. a newspaper in providence contains some notice of transcendentalism, and deplores mr. emerson's doctrine that the argument for immortality betrays weakness. the piece seems to be written by a woman. it begins with round sentences, but ends in ohs and ahs. yet cannot society come to apprehend the doctrine of one mind? can we not satisfy ourselves with the fact of living for the universe, of lodging our beatitude therein ? patriotism has been thought great in sparta, in rome, in new england even, only sixty years ago. how long before universalism or humanity shall be creditable and beautiful 448 journal [age 37 [the first number of the dial was issued in july, miss fuller being the literary editor, and mr. george ripley the business manager. mr. cabot, in his memoir of emerson, volume ii, pp. 403-409, gives an interesting account of the dial and mr. emerson's relation to it. and now i think that our dial ought not to be a mere literary journal, but that the times demand of us all a more earnest aim. it ought ,to contain the best advice on the topics of government, temperance, abolition, trade, and domestic life. it might well add to such compositions such poetry and sentiment as now will constitute its best merit. yet it ought to go straight into life with the devoted wisdom of the best men and women in the land. it should — should it not?— be a degree nearer to the hodiurnal facts than my writings are. i wish to write pure mathematics, and not a culinary almanac, or application of science to the arts. every history in the world is my history. i can as readily find myself in the tragedy of the atrides as in the saxon chronicle, in the vedas as in the new testament, in æsop as in the 1840] the old in the new 449 cambridge platform, or the declaration of independence. the good eye, the good ear, can translate fast enough the slight varieties of dialect in these cognate tongues. the wildest fable, the bloodiest tragedy is all too true.' let fiery hope nourish you in the angelic region.— zoroaster. august 9. a man of genius or a work of love or beauty cannot be compounded like a loaf of bread by the best rules, but is always a new and incalculable result like health. do not therefore rattle your rules in our ears, we must behave and do as we can. the ancients, the antique ; i see in all that is excellent under that name somewhat near to me. it is the genius of the european family. the discovery and the planting of america and the american revolution and mechanic arts are greek, attic, antique, in this sense, as much as the parthenon or the prometheus chained. i can easily see in our periodical literature, for example, a diffused and weakened athens. exa i the third page in “ history” (essays, first series) is much to this effect. 450 journal (age 37 the poet cannot spare any grief or pain or terror in his experience: he wants every rude stroke that has been dealt on his irritable texture. i need my fear and my superstition as much as my purity and courage to construct the glossary which opens the sanscrit of the world. c. delights in the beauty of clouds, the shining people of the sky; and i felt that they, with their hard and fawn-coloured surface and broad edges of glory, were the flowers of the upper element, and the fittest symbols in nature of an illustrious life. the clock by which we measured our stay in this field of outsight and upsight was one of these splendid clouds which lost its large dimension and nearly faded in the air whilst we stood. [here follow some verses from a poem by mrs. wells:“my own delighted, laughing boy,” etc.] i compare « the poet”:thanked nature for each stroke she dealt ; on his tense chords all strokes were felt; the good, the bad, with equal zeal he asked, he only asked, to feel. poems, appendix, p. 316. 1840] exacting friends 451 love makes us little children. we never attain a perfect sincerity in our speech except we feel a degree of tenderness. and lovers use the monosyllables and the short and pretty speech of children. love takes off the edges and the ceremonies of speech and says thee to one, and you to many. do not say things. what you are stands over you the while and thunders so that i cannot hear what you say to the contrary. (from f) august 16. after seeing anna barker i rode with margaret [fuller] to the plains. she taxed me, as often before, so now more explicitly, with inhospitality of soul. she and c. would gladly be my friends, yet our intercourse is not friendship, but literary gossip. i count and weigh, but do not love. they make no progress with me, but however often we have met, we still meet as strangers. they feel wronged in such relation and do not wish to be catechised and criticised. i thought of my experience with several persons which resembled this : and confessed that i would not converse with the divinest pernverse wil 452 (age 37 journal son more than one week. m. insisted that it was no friendship which was thus so soon exhausted, and that i ought to know how to be silent and companionable at the same moment. she would surprise me, — she would have me say and do what surprised myself. i confess to all this charge with humility unfeigned. i can better converse with george bradford than with any other. elizabeth hoar and i have a beautiful relation, not however quite free from the same hardness and fences. yet would nothing be so grateful to me as to melt once for all these icy barriers, and unite with these lovers. but great is the law.... but this survey of my experience taught me anew that no friend i have surprises, none exalts me. this then is to be set down, is it not? to the requirements we make of the friend, that he shall constrain us to sincerity, and put under contribution all our faculties. i read in rabelais that thomas walleys, an english dominican friar, published a book in which he spiritualized ovid's metamorphoses. august 18. gaston de foy was a pleasant man, but he was no saint. he said he had little faith in 1840] love of friends 453 prayer, and never used it but for one class of persons, namely, his benefactors. their chance, he thought, of any return for their kindness was so small, that, if there was a possibility that a prayer should be effective, these ought to have the benefit of it. september 1. one fact the fine conversations of the last week — now already fast fading into oblivion revealed to me, not without a certain shudder of joy, that i must thank what i am, and not what i do, for the love my friends bear me. i, conscious all the time of the shortcoming of my hands, haunted ever with a sense of beauty which makes all i do and say pitiful to me, and the occasion of perpetual apologies, assure myself to disgust those whom i admire, — and now suddenly it comes out that they have been loving me all this time, not at all thinking of my hands or my words, but only of that love of something more beautiful than the world, which, it seems, being in my heart, overflowed through my eyes or the tones o my speech. gladly i learn that we have these subterranean, — say rather, these supersensuous .channels of communication, and that spirits can 454 journal (age 37 meet in their pure upper sky without the help of organs.' orn granted that my theory of the world born out of the side of man is a false one, and that it is pedantry in us helpless and ignorant people to make this vast pretension, when we do not want a dollar the less, not a yard of cloth, not a loaf of bread less than other people who do not talk of their relations to the universe. well, you do not talk of such things, but only of stocks and streets, the cunard boats, and the politics of the new administration. well, it is just as much pedantry in you not to talk of that which really is there, and makes the dignity of politics and trade, viz., your relation to the world. each was a half view; granted. but one half view was nobler, and therefore truer, than the other. september 5. the objection to the popular christianity is a philosophical one. it is in the nature of things that persons can never usurp in our minds the 1 the poem which serves as the motto of “ manners” (essays, second series), beginning, — grace, beauty and caprice build this golden portal, was written in these days. 1840) courts. truth. forest 455 authority of ideas. every man is at last, in his purest thought, an idealist, and puts all persons at an infinite distance from him, as every moralist is at last in his purest thought an optimist. now christianity goes to invest persons with the rights of ideas, which is absurd. mr. w. remarked that in the courts of justice it seemed to him that the judge, the jurors, and the witnesses, mutually tried each other. september 8. we should be very rich if we could speak the truth, for, since that is the law of our progress, in proportion to our truth we should coin the world into our words. if we, dear friends, shall arrive at speaking the truth to each other we shall not come away as we went. we shall be able to bring near and give away to each other the love and power of all the friends who encircle each of us, and that society which is the dream of each shall stablish itself in our midst, and the fable of heaven be the fact of god. (from e) i went into the woods.' i found myself not i the substance of what follows occurs in “ nature" (essays, second series, pp. 192, 193 and 198), but it seemed 80 attractive in its personal form that it is given here. 456 (age 37 journal wholly present there. if i looked at a pine-tree or an aster, that did not seem to be nature. nature was still elsewhere: this, or this was but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph that had passed by and was now at its glancing splendor and heyday,– perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if i stood in the field, then in the adjacent woods. always the present object gave me this sense of the stillness that follows a pageant that has just gone by. it was the same among men and women as among the silent trees. always it was a referred existence; always an absence; never a presence and satisfaction. thus i was looking up to nature. afterwards, i was for a season active, devout and happy, and, passing through the woods, the trees and asters looked up at me. there was i, and there were these placid creatures around, and the virtue that was in them seemed to pass from me into them. nature is thus a differential thermometer detecting the presence or absence of the divine spirit in man. september 1o. it was the oblique and covert way in which the good world was training to the discovery a season 1840] hermits. gardening 457 that a man must have the saintly and the poetic character; that by taste he must worship beauty, and by love of the invisible, if it were only of opinion, must carry his life in his hand to be risked at any instant. september 11. would it not be a good cipher for the seal of the lonely society which forms so fast in these days, two porcupines meeting with all their spines erect, and the motto, “we converse at the quill's end”? i would labour cheerfully in my garden every day, if when i go there it did not seem trifling. it is so easy to waste hours and hours there in weeding and hoeing, and as pleasant as any other play, that i can impute to you no merit that you labour. nothing is easier or more epicurean. character establishes itself and blows a grand music through whatever instrument, though it were an oat pipe or a cornstalk viol. if love be there, i shall find it out, though i only see you eat bread or make some trifling but necessary request. the reform that is ripening in your mind for the amelioration of the human race i shall find already in miniature in every direction 458 (age 37 journal to the domestics, in every conversation with the assessor, with your creditor, and with your debtor. the monastery, the convent, did not quite fail, many and many a stricken soul found peace and home and scope in those regimens, in those chapels and cells. the society of shakers did not quite fail, but has proved an agreeable asylum to many a lonesome farmer and matron. the college has been dear to many an old bachelor of learning. what hinders, then, that this age, better advised, should endeavor to sift out of these experiments the false, and adopt and embody in a new form the advantage ? september 12. sarah clarke,' who left us yesterday, is a true and high-minded person, but has her full proportion of our native frost. she remarked of the dial, that the spirit of many of the pieces was lonely. (from f) . september 16. the questions which have slept uneasily a long time are coming up to decision at last. i miss clarke, the sister of rev. james freeman clarke, was a friend of mr. emerson's from the days when she was one of the scholars in the school in boston kept by his brother william and himself. she devoted her life to art. 18401 property. sleep 459 men will not be long occupied with the christian question, for all the babes are born infidels; they will not care for your abstinences of diet, or your objections to domestic hired service; they will find something convenient and amiable in these. but the question of property will divide us into odious parties. and all of us must face it and take our part. a good man now finds himself excluded from all lucrative employments.' ... there is so much to be done that we ought to begin quickly to bestir ourselves. lidian says well that it is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the wind. as palmer remarked, that he was satisfied what should be done must proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. well then, let us begin by habitual imparting. . . . let my ornamental austerities become natural and dear. the state will frown; the state must learn to humble itself, repent and reform. a sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveller in a very far country. in a i here follows the passage beginning thus in “ man the reformer” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 234). 460 (age 37 journal “he can toil terribly,” said cecil of sir walter raleigh. is there any sermon on industry that will exhort me like these few words? these sting and bite and kick me. i will get out of the way of their blows by making them true of myself. the conversion of a woman will be the solidest pledge of truth and power. (from e) september 17. i am only an experimenter.' do not, i pray you, set the least value on what i do, or the least discredit on what i do not, as if i had settled anything as true or false. i unsettle all i though printed in “ circles” it seems well to let this whole passage stand here, among the notes of critical years in mr. emerson's life. as appears in these pages, all usage in private and public relations was brought to the bar of new theories of independent, self-reliant action. reforms were rampant, everything questioned by the young radicals who came to mr. emerson for backing. to his private journal he confided, not his settled opinion, but the mood or aspect of the moment. the solid virtue in his character and his good sense carried him safe through the spiritual breakers into serene, happy, and helpful life. 1840] alcott. angle. trust 461 things. no facts are to me sacred, none are profane; i simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back. every hour has its morning, noon, and night. alcott said, “who are these people there is not one of them whom i cannot offend in any moment." ah vast spirit! i weary of these egotisms. i see well how puny and limitary they are. september 19. life is emblematic to every good mind and is equally profound, let the circumstances or emblems be a kingdom, a camp, a college, or a farm. it is the angle which the object makes to the eye which imports.' ... september 20. can we not trust ourselves ? must we be such coxcombs as to keep watch and ward over our noblest sentiments even, lest they also betray us, and god prove a little too divine? dare we never say, this time of ours shall be the era 1 the remainder of the passage is found in “ history” ( essays, first series,p. 39); and , as to mere transfer of idol. atry, in “character” (essays, second series, p. 98). : 462 [age 37 journal of discovery? these have been the ages of darkness. wide europe, wide america lieth in night, turneth in sleep. the morning twilight is grey in the east: the columbuses, the vespuccis, the cabots of moral adventure are loosening their sails and turning their bowsprits to the main. men have never loved each other. see, already they blush with a kindness which is pure, and genius, the inventor, finds in love the unknown and inexhaustible continent. love which has been exclusive shall now be inclusive. love, which once called genius proud, — behold, they have exchanged names. love, which was a fat, stupid shaker, or a maudlin methodist, or moravian, now is a brave and modest man of light, sight, and conscience. god hateth the obscure. on the last day, as on the first day, he still says, let there be light. where there is progress in character, there is no confusion of sentiment, no diffidence of self, but the heart sails ever forward in the direction of the open sea. perhaps after many sad, doubting, idle days, days of happy, honest labor will at last come when a man shall have filled up all the hours from sun to sun with great and equal action, shall lose sight of this sharp individuality which w 1840) nature and man 463 contrasts now so oddly with nature, and, ceasing to regard, shall cease to feel his boundaries, but shall be interfused by nature and shall [so] interfuse nature that the sun shall rise by his will as much as his own hand or foot do now; and his eyes or ears or fingers shall not seem to him the property of a more private will than the sea and the stars, and he shall feel the meaning of the growing tree and the evaporating waters with a more entire and satisfactory intelligence than now attends the activity of his organs of sense. every glance we give to the landscape predicts a better understanding, by assuring us we are not right now. when i am quite alone in my morning walk, if i lift up my eyes, the goodly green picture i see seems to call me hypocrite and false teacher — me who stood innocently there with quite other thoughts and had not spoken a word. for the landscape seems imperatively to expect a clear mirror, a willing reception in me, which, not finding, it lies obtrusive and discontented on the outward eye, unable to pass into the inward eye, and breeds a sense of jar and discord. the most trivial and gaudy fable, kehama, jack giant-killer, red ridinghood, every grandam's nursery rhyme contains, as i have elsewhere are 464 journal (age 37 noted, a moral that is true to the core of the world. it is because nature is an instrument so omnipotently musical that the most careless or stupid hand cannot draw a discord from it. a devil struck the chords in defiance, and his malevolence was punished by a sweeter melody than the angels made. there is no leap not a shock of violence throughout nature. man therefore must be predicted in the first chemical relation exhibited by the first atom. if we had eyes to see it, this bit of quartz would certify us of the necessity that man must exist as inevitably as the cities he has actually built. september 24. cities and coaches shall never impose on me again.'. .. september 26. you would have me love you. what shall i love? your body? the supposition disgusts you. what you have thought and said? well, whilst you were thinking and saying them, but not now. i see no possibility of loving anything but what now is, and is becoming; your cour1 see “ man the reformer" (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 230). 1840] faces. communities 465 age, your enterprise, your budding affection, your opening thought, your prayer, i can love, but what else? “ paradise,” said mahomet, “is under the shadow of swords.": it is easier to distinguish the sweet apples from the sour in a multitude of human faces than it is in an orchard. in the good old women one detects at sight the saccharine principle. perhaps it is folly, this scheming to bring the good and like-minded together into families, into a colony. better that they should disperse and so leaven the whole lump of society. i will not be chidden out of my most trivial native habit by your distaste, o philosopher, by your preference for somewhat else. if rhetoric has no charm for you, it has for me and my words are as costly and admirable to me as your deeds to you. it is all pedantry to prefer one thing that is alive to another thing which is also alive. the mystery of god inhabits a nursery tale as deeply as the laws of a state, or the heart of a man. i here other quotations from simon ockley's history of the saracens are given. 466 (age 37 journal the soul. — do not indulge this rabble of second thoughts. cast yourself on the hour and the man that now is, nor be so much a littérateur as to cast about already for the benefits that shall accrue from this new fact to art. so is your literature thievish. the whigs meet in numerous conventions and each palpitating heart swells with the cheap sublime of magnitude and number.' ... in the history of the world the doctrine of reform had never such scope as at the present hour. . . . nations will not shield you, neither will books. ... vain is the cumulative fame of tasso, of dante, — vain the volumes of literature which entrench their sacred rhymes, if the passing mystic has no glance for them, not a motion of respect. alas ! too surely their doom is sealed. lidian gives the true doctrine of property when she says, “no one should take any more than his own share, let him be ever so rich.” i for the rest, see «rself-reliance” (essays, first series, p. 88). 2 see the second page of “ man the reformer.” 1840] absorbing persons 467 (from f) september 30. yes, i resent this intrusion of a few persons on my airy fields of existence. shall our conversation when we meet, o wife, or sister elizabeth, still return, like a chime of seven bells, to six or seven names, nor we freemen of nature be able long to travel out of this narrowed orbit? rather i would never name these names again. they are beautiful, and therefore we have given them place; but they affront the sun and moon and the seven stars when they are remembered once too often. beware of walls; let me keep the open field. douglas-like, i had rather hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep. yet though i start like a wild arab at the first suspicion of confinement, i have drank with great joy the contents of this golden cup hitherto. with great pleasure i heard george bradford say, that this romance' took from the lustre of the reformers who alone had interested him before. i felt that what was private and genuine in these rare relations was more real, and so more public and 1 this seems to refer to the engagement and coming marriage of samuel g. ward and anna h. barker. the friendship with both had made the past year very happy to mr. emerson. 468 [age 37 journal universal than conventions for debate, and these weary speculations on reform. the call of a heart to a heart, the glad beholding of a new trait of character, — freedom (derived from the friendly presence of a fellow being) to do somewhat we have never done, — freedom to speak what i could never say, — these are discoveries in the ocean of life, they are perus, brazils, and plymouth rocks, which to me were the more inestimable that i had been such a homekeeper, and knew nothing beyond the limits of my own forest and village fair. (from e) october 5. on saturday evening i attended the wedding of samuel gray ward and anna hazard barker at the house of mr. farrar in cambridge. peace go with you, beautiful, pure, and happy friends, peace and beauty and power and the perpetuity and the sure unfolding of all the buds of joy that so thickly stud your branches. october 7. circumstances are dreams, which, springing unawares from ourselves, amuse us whilst we doze and sleep, but when we wake, nothing but 09 1840] waiting 469 causes can content us. the life of man is the true romance which, when it is valiantly conducted and all the stops of the instrument opened, will go nigh to craze the reader with anxiety, wonder and love. i am losing all relish for books and for feats of skill in my delight in this power. do not accuse me of sloth. do not ask me to your philanthropies, charities, and duties, as you term them ;— mere circumstances, flakes of the snow-cloud, leaves of the trees; “i sit at home with the cause, grim or glad. i think i may never do anything that you shall call a deed again. i have been writing with some pains essays on various matters as a sort of apology to my country for my apparent idleness. but the poor work has looked poorer daily, as i strove to end it. my genius seemed to quit me in such a mechanical work, a seeming wise — a cold exhibition of dead thoughts. when i write a letter to anyone whom i love, i have no lack of words or thoughts. i am wiser than myself and read my paper with the pleasure of one who receives a letter, but what i write to fill up the gaps of a chapter is hard and cold, is grammar and logic; there is no magic in it; i do not wish to see it again. settle with yourself your 470 journal [age 37 accusations of me. if i do not please you, ask me not to please you, but please yourself. what you call my indolence, nature does not accuse ; the twinkling leaves, the sailing fleets of waterflies, the deep sky, like me well enough and know me for their own. with them i have no embarrassments, diffidences or compunctions ; with them i mean to stay. you think it is because i have an income which exempts me from your day-labor, that i waste (as you call it) my time in sun-gazing and star-gazing. you do not know me. if my debts, as they threaten, should consume what money i have, i should live just as i do now: i should eat worse food, and wear a coarser coat, and should wander in a potato patch instead of in the wood, — but it is i, and not my twelve hundred dollars a year, that love god. we feel that every one of those remarkable effects in landscape which occasionally catch and delight the eye, as, for example, a long vista in woods, trees on the shore of a lake coming quite down to the water, a long reach in a river, a double or triple row of uplands or mountains seen one over the other, and whatever of the like has much affected our fancy, must be the 1840) deeds. the dial 471 rhetoric of some thought not yet detached for the conscious intellect. virtues are among men rather the exception than the rule. they do what is called a good action, ... much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.'... i do not give you my time, but i give you that which i have put my time into, namely, my letter, or my poem, the expression of my opinion, or better yet an act which in solitude i have learned to do. october 17. a newspaper in a grave and candid tone censures the dial as having disappointed the good expectation of our lovers of literature. i read the paragraph with much pleasure; for the moment we come to sense and candor i know the success of the dial is sure. the dial is poor and low and all unequal to its promise: but that is not for you to say, o daily advertiser! but the rest of the paragraph beginning thus is in “selfreliance” (essays, first series, pp. 52, 53). the very next entry in the journal seems a reflex wave after this misprizing of actions. 472 (age 37 journal for me. it is now better after your manner than anything else you have; and you do not yet see that it is, and will soon see and extol it. i see with regret that it is still after your manner, and not after mine, and that it is something which you can praise. “the saugh’kens the basket-maker's thumb.” scottish proverb. go, dear soul, and be scales and sword, an accusation and a terror, a day of doom and a future to the world lying in wickedness. the fat and easy and conceited world, the cultivated and intellectual world, takes the prophets by the hand and affects to be of their part and to deplore the general ignorance and sensuality which rejects and derides them. yet it takes a secret pleasure in the fact that this reprobation reaches not to them, instead of finding therein conviction of sin. this derision is a laurel on the brows of the prophets. this same prelacy, these men of intellect on good terms with the world, are glad to speak the sheriff and the constable fair, for they do not yet see what height and i sallow, willow. 2 perhaps addressed to the dial. 1840) community dreams 473 what debasement are, and that the only asylum and protection and lordship and empire is virtue. ... why should i use a means? why should i not rush grandly to ends? yesterday george and sophia ripley, margaret fuller and alcott discussed here the social plans.' i wished to be convinced, to be thawed, to be made nobly mad by the kindlings before my eye of a new dawn of human piety. but this scheme was arithmetic and comfort: this was a hint borrowed from the tremont house and united states hotel; a rage in our poverty and politics to live rich and gentlemanlike, an anchor to leeward against a change of weather; a prudent forecast on the probable issue of the great questions of pauperism and poverty. and not once could i be inflamed, but sat aloof and thoughtless; my voice faltered and fell. it was not the cave of persecution which is the palace of spiritual power, but only a room in the astor house hired for the transcendentalists. i do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. i wish to break all 1 the project of the community at brook farm. mr. emerson gives some account of it in “life and letters in new england” (lectures and biographical sketches). mov 474 journal (age 37 prisons. i have not yet conquered my own house. it irks and repents me. shall i raise the siege of this hencoop, and march baffled away to a pretended siege of babylon? it seems to me that so to do were to dodge the problem i am set to solve, and to hide my impotency in the thick of a crowd. i can see too, afar, — that i should not find myself more than now,no, not so much, in that select, but not by me selected, fraternity. moreover, to join this body would be to traverse all my long trumpeted theory, and the instinct which spoke from it, that one man is a counterpoise to a city, that a man is stronger than a city, that his solitude is more prevalent and beneficent than the concert of crowds. an [here follow two pages of fine extracts from beaumont and fletcher's tragedy of bonduca, of which three are here given.] there's not a blow we gave since julius landed that was of strength and worth, but, like records, they file to after ages. our registers the romans are for noble deeds of honour. ten times a night i have swum the rivers when the stars of rome 18401 dumb in company 475 shot at me as i loated, and the billows tumbled their watery ruins on my shoulders ; charging my battered sides with troops of agues. ye fools, ye should have tied up death first, when ye conquered; ye sweat for us in vain else. see him here, he's ours still, and our friend, laughs at your pities, – and we command him with as easy rein as do our enemies. (from f) the old experiences still return. society, when i rarely enter the company of my welldressed and well-bred fellow creatures, seems for the time to bereave me of organs, or perhaps only to acquaint me with my want of them. the soul swells with new life and seeks expression with painful desire, but finds no outlets. its life is all incommunicable.... those who are to me lovely and dear seem for that reason to multiply and tighten the folds that envelop and smother my speech. a dandy, mr. pacelise calls, “ un mille-fleur judas.” we need not do what we cannot. let us go 476 [age 37 journal home again, home to our faculties and work. is one associate or one circumstance unfit, in heaven i should hapless be. we use our virtues and their fruits as purchase money for our vices. not when i walk in the streets of the city, am i earning the prayers of the young and the highly endowed, but when i forget boston and london in rapid obedience to the invisible and only spirit. not by wealth and a city consequence, not by skill in arts, nor by the manners and address of the world could i, if these i had, bring any gift worthy of the acceptance of friendship, but only out of a deeper magazine whereto sities and bankers cannot go, out of the realms of an unbroken peace, of loving meditation, of a habitual conversation with nature. out of these alone can i draw the natural gold which universally commands all other goods and is the royal currency of the world. i love spring water and wild air, and not the manufacture of the chemist's shop. i see in a moment, on looking into our new dial, which is the wild poetry, and which the tame, and see that one wild line out of a private heart saves the whole book. iver i wrote c. s. this afternoon that it is not we, but the elements, the destinies and conscience 1840) advance. dr. ripley 477 that make places and hours great, they the omnipresent:— and if we will only be careful not to intrude or chatter, the least occasion and the domestic hour will be grand and fated. we shall one day wonder that we have ever distinguished days, or circumstances, or persons. life only avails, not the having lived.' . .. neither thought nor virtue will keep, but must be refreshed by new today. but we get forward by hops and skips. shall we not learn one day to walk a firm continuous step? as nothing will keep, but the soul demands that all shall be new today, therefore we reject a past man, or a past man's teaching. who is swedenborg? a man who saw god and nature for a fluid moment. his disciples vainly try to make a fixture of him, his seeing, and his teaching, and coax me to accept it for god and nature. dependence is the only poverty. october 18. dr. ripley is no dandy, but speaks with the greatest simplicity and gravity. he preaches i continued in “self-reliance” (p. 69). 478 journal (age 37 however to a congregation of dr. ripleys; and mr. frost to a supposed congregation of barzillai frosts ;' and daniel webster to an assembly of websters. could this belief of theirs be verified in the audience, each would be esteemed the best of all speakers. the acquirer of riches seems to me a man of energy, good or bad; the inheritor of riches to be a man lamed by his shoes, crippled by his crutches. the respect i pay to a poet i understand; the respect i pay to a ship-master, to a farmer, and to every other conqueror of men or things; but the deference i pay to wealth is opaque, and not transparent, is a superstition. “what news?” asks man of man. the only teller of news is the poet." 0 the history of jesus is only the history of every man written large. the names he bestows on jesus belong to himself, — mediator, redeemer, saviour. i dr. ripley's successor as pastor of the first church in concord. 2 see « poetry and imagination " (letters and social aims, p. 30). 1840] the wedding gift 479 the whole history of the weather is a wonderfully fit symbol of the varying temper of man. the moment we come into such relations to any man or woman that we need consider their moods, we shall find the whole vocabulary of a seaman at our tongue's end. captain pitts did not take out his handkerchief for nothing. the church rung with his echo.' i went to a wedding and the lord said unto me, where is thy gift? and i looked and saw that there was nothing in my hand. then i thought of twenty useful or shining things, and remembered all that i had seen in the goldsmiths' windows, and considered what book or gem or trinket i might buy. but the lord said, these are no gifts for thee: thy desire for these is not thy desire, but the desire of others in thee: thou lookest back on the city and the people thou hast left. the gift which thou canst bring, and which thy friends expect at thy hands, is that which thou alone canst offer them. i 1 mr. emerson used to say that the old-fashioned nasal trumpeting, “ the service of the lord with trumpets in the sanctuary,” seemed to have gone by. it perhaps sometimes uttered comments which church decorum forbade the worshipper to put into words. 480 journal [age 37 have given thee a door of the soul to keep: go in thereat, and hearken to what shall be told thee, for never man stood in that place before; and then go to thy friends, and tell them what thou knowest. they shall hearken to thee and shall forget all that they ever knew. my word is all that thou shalt carry in thy hand. i ought not to allow any man to feel that he is rich in my presence.'... october 23. and must i go and do somewhat if i would learn new secrets of self-reliance ? for my chapter is not finished. but self-reliance is precisely that secret, to make your supposed deficiency redundancy. if i am true, the theory is, the very want of action, my very impotency, shall become a greater excellency than all skill and toil. and thus, o circular philosopher, you have arrived at a fine pyrrhonism.' ... the good swedenborg was aware, i believe, of this wonderful predominance and excess of 1 see “ man the reformer” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 249). 2 see “ circles” (essays, first series, p. 317). 1840] osman. good incessant 481 the saccharine principle in nature, and noticed that the hells were not without their extreme satisfactions." october 24. osman. fine people do not prosper with me: they are so curious and busy with their claude lorraine glasses, and their exploration of doves' necks and peacocks' tails, that they do not see the road, and the poor men who go up and down on it. i must go back to my cabin and be, as before, the trusty associate of those whom a household and highway experience has chastened, and be the poor man's poet. i should break with one fine person, if i did not see, or think i see, my own rude self hid under the present mask. 20 what is the fall, what sin, what death, with this eternal soul under us originating benefit forever more? we learn that time is infinite, if we learn nothing else. is not that lesson enough for a life? the power is dazzling, terrific, inaccessible in its impulses. it now calmly shows us in parts the circle of elements which it also shows us are radically one. 1 in the passage in “ circles” (pp. 317, 318) swedenborg's name is not used. 482 journal (age 37 it is rhetoric that takes up so much room: the result of the book is very small and could be written down in a very few lines. to what purpose should you tell me of your faith, of your happiness, if you do not make me feel that you are at rest and blessed ? jones very's words were loaded with his fact. what he said, held; was not personal to him; was no more disputable than the shining of yonder sun or the blowing of this south wind. but i do not know that you are looking at universal facts. the fate of the poor shepherd who, blinded and lost in the snow storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his own cottage door, is a faithful emblem of the state of man.'... out of doors, in the snow, in the fields, death looks not funereal, but natural, elemental, even fair. in-doors it looks disagreeable. the excess of direction. — every promise of the soul has twenty or twenty thousand fulfil1 the passage thus introduced is in “the poet” (essays, second series, p. 33). 1840] excess of direction 483 ments. the soul forever tends to the satisfaction of love. it is the promise of all times and of all the faculties. the first friend the youth finds, he cries, “lo! the hour is come and the man; the promise is fulfilled.” but in a few days he finds that it was only a quasi-fulfilment, that the total, inexhaustible longing is there at his heart still; and is aspiring to grander satisfactions. god will not be confuted nor silenced. god kindled this love in me, made me a burning love. i presently dedicate myself to some single object, and find the love insatiate still. how contradictory and unreasonable, you say. little careth god; he drives me forth out of my cabin, as before, to love and to love. he tells me not what that is i seek,whether choirs of beatific power and virtue; or the value of nature shut up in a private form; or the total harmony of the universe. from the beginning this is promised us as the crisis and consummation of life, but no final information is ever afforded us. i value the poet. i think all the argument and all the learning is not in the encyclopædia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the body of divinity, but in the sonnet and the tragedy. in my daily work, i retrace my old steps and do 484 journal (age 37 not believe in remedial force, in the power of change and reform; but some petrarch or beaumont and fletcher, filled with the new wine of their imagination, write me a tale or a dialogue in which are the sallies and recoveries of the soul; they smite and arouse me with the sharp fife, and i open my eye on my own possibilities. they clap wings to the side of all the solid old lumber of the world and i see the old proteus is not dead. what a pity that we cannot curse and swear in good society! cannot the stinging dialect of the sailors be domesticated? it is the best rhetoric, and for a hundred occasions those forbidden words are the only good ones. my page about “ consistency” would be better written thus: damn consistency! the method of advance in nature is perpetual transformation. be ready to emerge from the chrysalis of today, its thoughts and institutions, as thou hast come out of the chrysalis of yesterday. every new thought which makes day in our souls has its long morning twilight to announce its coming. 1840] visions 485 i dreamed that i floated at will in the great ether, and i saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple. then an angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, “this must thou eat.” and i ate the world. october 26. theanor said that he saw too much; that he could no longer live at peace with other men for what he saw and they saw not. he said he went to the house of a man who in a dark and stormy night killed his enemy with a sword; “and i,” said theanor, “through the darkness and the storm, sitting myself by the murderer's hearth, saw him go along the road to his victim's house. i saw the sword and the thrust that reached his heart; then new vision came to my eyes and i saw that the sword had a new length, which he saw not, beyond its visible point, and bent about like a cow's horn, and when the short point struck the sleeping enemy, i saw the elongated invisible point reach far back to his own house, in which i sat, and to the body of his own child. the child started in the adjoining room with a loud wailing, and when the haggard man came back his child was dying with black fever. and another man i knew who solaced himself with 486 (age 37 journal voluptuous imaginations, and i saw that every pleasure he seemed to himself to steal from his paramours he was tearing away from the scanty stock of his own life.” when i go into my garden with the spade and dig : .. i discover that i have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what i should have done with my own hands.' ... i have a pen and learned eyes and acute ears, yet am ashamed before my wood-chopper, my ploughman and my cook, for they have some sort of self-sufficiency. they can contrive without my aid to make a whole day and whole year; but i depend on them. our little romances, into which we fling ourselves with so much eagerness, end suddenly, and we are almost sad to find how easily we can brook the loss. let us learn at last that the tragedy of other men, of the sufferers in the old world, was as slight and medicable. we are made 1 here follows the long passage on the education and manliness given by personal work, found in “ man the reformer” (p. 337). 1840] letters, style, nature 487 for joy and not for pain. we are full of outlets; full of resources; made of means, as the infusories are said to be the genetical atoms of which we are made. literature.o pardon it, for it is the effort of man to indemnify himself. air is matter subdued by heat. order is matter subdued by mind. it does not help the matter much that you live and write according to milton, and not according to what cheap contemporary models, what wordsworth, carlyle, or webster, may happen to stand in your sunlight. november 5. in nature there is a mystical equality; nothing is low. it costs the exertion of the very highest principle to effect the feeblest function of vegetable life. the total god meets you everywhere in the bract or stipule of the most unobserved weed. the least seed is of new significance to the oldest cherub as well as to the child; but every new thought whose light we drink adds new scores of works of art to the obsolete and unmeaning. 488 journal [age 37 art is cant and pedantry; it is not practical and moral, that is, if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them also and brings with it the oracle of conscience. and i find this power of art in the fact that human power grows with virtue; that virtue transfigures the face into its own glorious likeness, and of course redeems and purifies and beautifies posterity. a grand soul flings your gallery into cold nonsense, and no limits can be assigned to its prevalency and to its power to adorn. the past combines with the present in every object. you admire the graceful convolutions of the seashell.: .... the moon keeps its appointment. will not the good spirit? wherefore have we labored and fasted, say we, and thou takest no note? let him not take note, if he please to hide, then it were sublime beyond a poet's dreams still to labor and abstain and obey, and if thou canst, to put the good spirit in the wrong.? that 1 the rest of the paragraph is in the conservative” (nature, addresses, and lectures, p. 300). 2 this passage may be found in pleasing form in “ the poet” (poems, pp. 319, 320). not per ke the esther: 1840] gleams. moments 489 were a feat to sing in elysium, on olympus, by the waters of life in the new jerusalem. yet no thought dawns on me. this morning i woke with a gleam of the true light, but it faded away as the old trifles reappeared. will it reappear? yea. i know something of these mysterious approaches of a thought. cience : chatte allery ssigt: orn. coluto laban every moment compromises the last; every moment, but not the man. the fountain is always superior to the stream, the life to the phenomena. nature delegates her smile to the morning.... i was ashamed before the laborer cutting peat in the meadow, though i could well see that his life at last was as superficial as mine, save — if save — that more necessity entered into it and made it sublime. how, then, should i not be ashamed before that pending bulrush into which nature had flung her soul? every moment instructs, though we know it not, and call today trivial, for wisdom is so melted and disguised into every form that we know not it is wisdom.' ... 1 what follows, and the omitted sentence above, are found in the concluding paragraph of « nature” (essays, second series). ilde, drean it the o top 490 [age 37 journal it is not irregular hours or irregular diet that make the romantic life. a sylvan strength, a united man, whose character leads the circumstances, and is not led by them, — this makes romance, and no condition. calmness is fabulous. the most iron men give to the spiritual eye the impression of leaning, mendicant manners. calmness is always godlike. funestes are these french novels with their pistols. a career, say the french, — “il aurait en des talents, de l'ambition, et une carrière.” (valentine.) w circles, — what avail marble brows and inscrutable purposes ? bring in a new man with a truth that commands the last, and the marble brow becomes a rippled wave, the inscrutable purposes are exposed and scattered. in boston, at dr. jackson's, i saw five or six persons take the nitrous-oxide gas. it looked very much as if the bladder was full of opinions. 1840) jesus. temptation 491 when jesus bade the disciples not tell of this. or that, he would say, “the last thing you shall do is to gossip of this; lie low in the lord's power. receive this fact into your mind in silence.” he had no ways of prudence, as we call it. the main end to be answered by each man's working is, his own character; and if what you call his imprudence, that is, his directness, thwarts his private ends, it may yet answer this end; then i call it success. november 21. swedenborg exaggerates the circumstance of marriage.' . . is 23 c i make my own temptations. if i am clean and sound, the heavens and earth are new and glorious; they are my hands and feet, my willing instruments, my means, my organ, my element, and language. if i am imperfect, everything i touch i turn into an enemy and hurt; i make the bread i eat and the air i inhale a temptation. it is more elegant to answer one's own needs than to be richly served; inelegant, perhaps, it i here follows the substance of two pages in “swedenborg" (representative men, pp. 128, 129). 492 [age 37 journal may look today, and to a few, but elegant forever and to all. i hear much that is ridiculous in music. you would laugh to know all that passes through my head in hearing a concert. not having an ear for music, i speculate on the song and guess what it is saying to other people; what it should say to me. it is universal and seems to hint at communication more general than speech, more general than music also. what mystic obscurities in every breast do these lovesongs accost? 1 e how fast these wrinkles come! adust complexions with burning eyes. “ pales filles du nord ! vous n'êtes pas mes sæurs.” : the circulation of the waters, the circulation of sap, the circulation of the blood, the immori with regard to complexions mr. emerson was rather a fatalist. he would remark on the thick, saddle-leather complexion which, with dark coarse hair and a strong jaw, often marked a calvinist. he would say of a spirited youth, “ah, but he has the hopeless adust complexion which augurs no good.” the french quotation — its source not given evidently suggested his romany girl's pale northern girls ! you scorn our race, you captives of your air-tight halls. 1840] nature an ally 493 tality of an animal species through the death of all the individuals, the balance and periods of planetary motion ; — these are works of art, quick, and eternal. in the presence of these his [man's] proudest works seem to be the puppets and scratch-cradles and toy-mills which betray the incessant instinct of his infant hands. whatever is divine will share the self-existence of god. every true institution will be selfexistent. present a poetic design to people and they will tear it to mammocks. yet how subtle an auxiliary is nature; i knew a man who learned that his modes of living were false and mean by looking at the hill covered with wood which formed the shore of a small but beautiful lake which he visited in his almost daily walk. he returned to his gossips and told them his schemes of reform and they contradicted and chided and laughed and cried with vexation and contempt and shook his confidence in his plans. but when he went to the woods and saw the mist floating over the trees on the headland which rose out of the water, instantly his faith revived. but when he came to his house, he could not find any words can 494 journal (age 37 to show his friends in what manner the beautiful shores of the lake proved the wisdom of his economy. he could not show them the least connexion between the two things. when he once tried to speak of the bold shore, they stared as if he were insane. yet whenever he went to the place and beheld the landscape his faith was confirmed. beauty can never be clutched; in persons and in nature is equally inaccessible.' . .. glory is not for hands to handle. i shed all influences. a. is a tedious archangel. how few have faith enough to treat a man of genius as an exiled prince of the blood, who must presently come to his own, and it will then appear that it had been best to have been of the same household all the time. yet if you have not faith in you, bow can i bave faith in you? nature ever flows; stands never still. motion or change is her mode of existence. the poetic eye sees in man the brother of the river, and in woman the sister of the river. their life is always transition. hard blockheads only drive i the substance of what follows is in “ nature” (essays, second series). the best sion : on the thers he we 1840] nature flows and man 495 nails all the time; forever remember; which is fixing. heroes do not fix, but flow, bend forward ever and invent a resource for every moment. a man is a compendium of nature, an indomitable savage; ... as long as he has a temperament of his own, and a hair growing on his skin, a pulse beating in his veins, he has a physique which disdains all intrusion, all despotism ; it lives, wakes, alters, by omnipotent modes, and is directly related there, amid essences and billets doux, to himmaleh mountain chains, wild cedar swamps, and the interior fires, the molten core of the globe. tsons gir man: home hen a over every chimney is a star; in every field is an oaken garland, or a wreath of parsley, laurel, or wheat-ears. nature waits to decorate every child. diamond sparks and beryl beads, carbuncles and pearls in seeds, drops of amber, golden thread from the rock unravelled, — prize not these, thou blessed child, be they trampled and defiled; but the life that in thee flows each drop of blood a blessing owes. each drop did infinite time distil 496 [age 37 journal from all the flowers that nature fill, from all the hidden crafts that lie in stone, plant, worm, wave, star, or sky, — from all the magic light intrudes, gilding the starry multitudes. .... waldo declines going to church with mrs. mumford, “because mrs. mumford is not beautiful; she has red hands and red face.” the next week, when reminded that he does not like mrs. mumford, he tells louisa, “i have made a little prayer that mrs. mumford might be beautiful, and now i think her beautiful.” louisa proposed to carry waldo to church with her, and he replies, “i do not wish to go to church with you, because you live in the kitchen." december 20. i think nothing is of any value in books excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.' ... people are uneasy because the philosopher seems to compromise their personal immortality. i the rest of the passage is in « the poet” (essays, second series, p. 32). 1840] the god in us 497 mr. quin thinks that to affirm the eternity of god and not to affirm the reappearance of mr. quin bodily and mentally with all the appearances and recollections of mr. quin, excepting of course his green surtout and bank-stock scrip, is to give up the whole ship. but mr. quin is a sick god. all that sin and nonsense of his, which he parades these many summers and winters so complacently, which seem to him his life, his stake of being, in losing which he would lose all, are the scurf and leprosy which do not perish and smell in the nostril only because the divine life has not yet ebbed quite away from them. but it is the life, it is the incoming of god by which that individual exists. it is the god only which he values and pleads for, though to his diseased eye that poor skin and raiment seem to have an intrinsic price. when that divine life shall have more richly entered and shed itself abroad in him, he will no longer plead for life, he will live. do not imagine that the universe is somewhat so vague and aloof that a man cannot be willing to die for it. if that lives, i live. i am the universe. the universe is the externisation of god.' ... i the rest of the paragraph is found in « the poet” (pp. 14, 15). 498 [age 37 journal but there is no interval between this perception of identity of the growing god and littleness. if you do not see your right to all, and your being reflected to you from all things, then the world may easily seem to you a hoax, and man the dupe. yet the little fellow takes it so innocently, works in it so earnest and believing, blushes and turns pale, talks and sweats, is born red and dies grey, thinking himself an adjunct to the world which exists from him, that, until he is explained to himself, he may well look on himself as the most wronged of victims. everything is worshipped in the world but god. the new inspiration is always rejected. the world is bowing to a past revelation of god, to god seen through the lens of time, and so shorn of his dazzling rays, which offend weak eyes — diluted by much time; homer, jesus, shakspear may pass and be suffocated with incense — yet by how much these revelations are old, by so much do they cease to be divine. the omnipresent exacts a total devotion to the present and impending, — hands and hearts, and not a lazy gazing at old pictures. yet genius always finds itself a century too early. but let not genius complain of its cold welcome co me v 1840] the droll dream 499 and hard fare. hath it not god? let it cease from man. a droll dream last night, whereat i ghastly laughed. a congregation assembled, like some of our late conventions, to debate the institution of marriage; and grave and alarming objections stated on all hands to the usage; when one speaker at last rose and began to reply to the arguments, but suddenly extended his hand and turned on the audience the spout of an engine which was copiously supplied from within the wall with water, and whisking it vigorously about, up, down, right, and left, he drove all the company in crowds hither and thither and out of the house. whilst i stood watching, astonished and amused · at the malice and vigor of the orator, i saw the spout lengthened by a supply of hose behind, and the man suddenly brought it round a corner and drenched me as i gazed. i woke up relieved to find myself quite dry, and well convinced that the institution of marriage was safe for tonight. and why, as i have written elsewhere, not be universalists, or lovers of the whole world? why limit our zeal and charity to such narrow parochial bounds ? are there black, bilious, sad tem500 journal [age 37 peraments? they accuse me and thee. let us arise and redeem them and purge this choler and sediment out of nature by our calmness and immoveable love.' (from e) december 26. we all know why jesus serves men so well for a deity: why pure and sublime souls like a kempis and herbert can expend their genius and heart so lavishly on his name and history, and feel no check; why he stands ambassador or proxy for the sovereign, and receives homage of the lieges without any cloud of shame darkening the brow of the noblest among them. we all know, yet we cannot easily tell. it is for the same reason that the koran and the vedas and buddhism have their martyrs and their sages. it is for the same reason that swedenborg's mythus is so coherent and vital and true to those who dwell within; so arrogant or limitary to those without. there is nothing that comes out of the human heart — the deep aboriginal region — which is not spheral, mundane, thousand-faced — so rethis passage is followed by the last two pages of -history” (essays, first series). 501 1840) reading lated to all things that if perchance intense light falls on it and immense study be given to it, it will admit of being shown to be related to all things. the rose is a type of youth and mirth to one eye, of profound melancholy to another. there is nothing in nature which is not an exponent of nature. i feel this in nature constantly. if you criticise a fine genius, as burns or goethe, the odds are that you are quite out of your reckoning.'... authors or books quoted or referred to in journal for 1840 ? · buddha; vedas ; zoroaster; æschylus, prometheus bound, seven against thebes ; sophocles, electra; plato, politicus, apud cousin ; vitruvius ; st. augustine, confessions ; koran; petrarch; dante; thomas à kempis ; chaucer; luther; rabelais; hans sachs; chapman; i for the rest of this paragraph, see “ nominalist and realist” (essays, second series, p. 241). 2 including books from the boston athenæum charged to mr. emerson. 502 journal (age 37 spenser; donne; hampden, memoir by nugent; fuller ; gilbert burnet, history of his own times; count anthony hamilton, mémoires du comte de gramont; simon ockley, history of the saracens; andré michaux, les chênes d'amérique septentrionale; d’abrantès, mémoires ; sir william jones; goethe, wilhelm meister ; lives of haydn and mozart; karoline von günderöde; bettina von arnim ; burns; dr. abernethy; cousin; fourier, social destiny of man; mignan, travels in chaldea ; webster, speeches; bryant, ancient mythology; carlyle; harriet martineau, deerbook; r. h. dana, jr., two years before the mast; tennyson; balzac, le livre mystique : french novels; valentine; w. ellery channing, poems ; mrs. wells, poem, “my own delighted, laughing boy." journal first essays printed reforms journal xxxii 1841 (from journals e, f, g, h, and j) [in january, mr. emerson— his book of essays sent to the printerhad to prepare the lecture “man the reformer," which he delivered before the mechanics' apprentices' library association in boston on the 25th of the month. his sedentary work and the severe winter seem to have left him in bad condition in the spring, and in april a pleasant and successful alliance was made with henry thoreau, then twentyfour years old, which lasted for two years. thoreau became, as it were, an elder son in the family, attended to the gardening, established a poultry-yard, grafted the trees, and skilfully did odd jobs and repairs in the house. he was man of the house during mr. emerson's absences, and was most respectfully attentive to mrs. emerson, to whom he always looked up as a sort of lady-abbess. he was a delightful friend to the children, and had great gifts of amusing and helping them. he reserved what time he wished for 506 (age 37 journal studies, afield and at home. sometimes he walked with mr. emerson and showed him nature's secrets in the woods or swamps or on the river. mr. emerson's lack of skill in gardening or household emergencies was admirably supplemented by his young friend.] (from e) january 1, 1841. i begin the year by sending my little book of essays to the press. what remains to be done to its imperfect chapters i will seek to do justly. i see no reason why we may not write with as much grandeur of spirit as we can serve or suffer. let the page be filled with the character, not with the skill of the writer. goethe is right in his mode of treating colors, i. e., poetically, humanly. beethoven is too proud, yet is grand. (from f) i wondered at the continence of nature under the glittering night sky, and truly pan ought to be represented in the mythology as the most continent of gods. but not less admirable is the phlegm of the good ghost that inhabits it. for can i, can any, spare the next day, the next year 32 -se 1841) the confessional 507 of our lives? can any consent to die now? are we not always expecting that this marvellous moderation which refuses to blab the secret, and yields us no rapturous intelligence such as all feel must lie behind there, will give way at last to the necessity of imparting the divine miracle? this reserve and taciturnity of time.' ,11 eins : eek notr can se g cock o pro january 11. the confessional. — does nature, my friend, never show you the wrong side of the tapestry? never come to look dingy and shabby? do you never say, “old stones! old rain! old landscape! you have done your best; there is no more to be said ; praise wearies; you have pushed your joke a little too far”? – or, on the other hand, do you find nature always transcending and as good as new every day? i know, i know, how nimble it is, the good monster. you have quite exhausted its power to please, and to-day you come into a new thought, and lo! in an instant there stands the entire world converted suddenly into the cipher or exponent of that i and matched his sufferance sublime the taciturnity of time. « the poet,” poems, appendix. -e unca e me e is the 508 [age 37 journal very thought, and chanting it in full chorus from every leaf and drop of water. it has been singing that song every day since the creation in your deaf ears. away with your prismatics, i want a spermatic book. plato, plotinus, and plutarch are such. it is necessary in considering the nature of everything to direct our attention to the purity of it. (plotinus.) every soul pays a guardian attention to that which is inanimate. (plato in phædrus.) • necessity indeed is in intellect, but persuasion in soul. (plotinus.) (from e) january 17. it appears sometimes what prudence stands for. the true prudence is no derogation from the lofty character. the man who moved by interrupted impulses of virtue would lead a violent and unfortunate life. these continent, persisting, immoveable persons who are scattered up and down for the blessing of the world, howsoever named, osiris or washington or samuel · hoar, have in this phlegm or gravity of their 211 509 1841) new nature nature a quality which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill which distributes the motion equably over all the wheels and hinders it from falling. unequally and suddenly in destructive shocks.' ... he did not get it from the books, but where the bookmaker got it. books lead us from ecstasy. ** de we look at the mercury to know the heat, but nature is the mercury of our progress. do we dissolve the sun or the sun us? do we freeze the january, or january us? we have exhausted nature, but we read one of the masters and instantly are made aware of new classes of laws, and the world casts itself into types so smiling grand and so equal to the sense that we get a new idea of wealth, and grow impatient of our words and think we will never use them again; like boys who have had a rocking-horse or boat and then are mounted on a live horse or a sailboat — they despise their toys. much of this in substance, but without naming men, occurs at the end of “ man the reformer” (nature, addresses, and lectures). 0 275 ciec 510 journal [age 37 powerful influence should never let us go; never be out of the mind, sleeping or waking: his name is on our lips, though we do not frequent his society. thou, o truth, never lettest us go. the love of nature, what is that but the presentiment of intelligence of it? nature preparing to become a language to us. din mechanics easily change their trades, for that which they learn in their apprenticeship is the use of tools, and, having learned that, they can readily turn themselves to any new work. all knowledge is thus eccentric, and of course the progress of knowledge geometric. are there three rates of increase, arithmetical, geometrical, and circumferential, or from the centre on all sides out? january 20. of these unquiet dæmons that fly or gleam across the brain what trait can i hope to draw in my sketch-book? wonderful seemed to me as i read in plotinus the calm and grand air of these few cherubim — great spiritual lords who have walked in the world they of the old religion – dwelling in a worship that makes the 1841] the hearing man 511 sanctities of christianity parvenues and merely popular.' ... “blessed,” said the review which pleased me so well, “is the man who has no powers,” and, as i had written long ago, happy is the man who hears: unhappy the man who speaks. the reason is obvious: it is better to be poor and helpless in doing, because our heart is preoccupied and astonished with the immensities of god, than to be at leisure to adorn and finish our trivial works because communication with the deity is no longer open to us. therefore very wisely did the ancients represent the muses as daughters of memory. but when vision and union come, there is no leisure for memory or muses. the ploughman and the ox, or a rider and his horse, indicate the natural society of wisdom and strength: each is necessary to the other. i the rest of this passage on the philosophers of ancient hellas and the neoplatonists forms the conclusion of “ intellect” (essays, first series), and it is, in the journal, immediately followed by the opening passage of the same essay. 512 journal (age 37 january 21. a man should think much of himself because he is a necessary being: a link was wanting between two craving parts of nature and he was hurled into being as the bridge, over that yawning need.' . . when i look at the sweeping sleet amid the pine woods, my sentences look very contemptible, and i think i will never write more: but the words prompted by an irresistible charity, the words whose path from the heart to the lips i cannot follow,are fairer than the snow. it is pitiful to be an artist.? .... we are to come into nature from a higher law, and classify it anew. there is no mire, no dirt to chemistry: the ignorant, the foul, know of dirt: the chemist sees all dissolved into a chain of immaterial, immortal, irresistible laws. even so must we come into nature, that is, so walk and work and build and associate. we 1 the rest of this paragraph is found in “ the method of nature” (nature, addresses, etc., p. 207.) 2 the rest is in the above address (p. 110) and is immediately followed here by the concluding passage in “ man the reformer" in the same volume. 1841) god's gift of facts 513 must not scold, we must not lay hands on men, but, being inspired, must awe their violence and lead them by our eye into harmonic choirs. a man is a poor, limitary benefactor,' . .. code stor january 31. god gives us facts and does not tell us why; but the reason lives in the fact; we are sure their order is right : there is no interpolation: and they only await our riper insight to become harmonious in their order and proportion. god knows all the while their divine reason. swedenborg writes history after ideas. if he names jew or persian, moravian or lutheran, papist or african, he gives us the reason in their character for the fact he names. i hope that day will come when no man will pretend to write history but he who does so by divine right. a man being born to see the order of certain facts, is born to write that history. every other person, not so qualified, who affects to do this work is a pretender, and the work is not done. ... 12 all my thoughts are foresters. i have scarce a day-dream on which the breath of the pines the passage thus beginning is in “ the transcendentalist” (nature, addresses, etc., p. 346). hae 514 journal [age 37 has not blown, and their shadows waved. shall i not then call my little book forest essays? ecstasy, religion, are essentially self-relying, the entranced instantly speak down as from an immeasureable height to him who but yesterday was walking at their side. they ask no sympathy. but the soul which enters its noviciate in the temple, when it has prayed or chaunted inquires of its old friends, whether this was verily prayer and music? the present. — cannot all literature, and all our own remote experience avail to teach us that the to-day which seems so trivial, the task which seems so unheroic, the inexpressive blank look of the present moment, . . . cannot all avail to teach us that these are wholly deceptive appearances, and that as soon as the irrecoverable years have placed their blue between these and us, these things shall glitter and attract us, seeming to be the wildest romance, and — as far as we allowed them in passing to take their own way and natural shape — the homes of beauty and poetry? novels. — to find a story which i thought i remembered in quentin durward, i turned 1841] disappointing novels 515 over the volume until i was fairly caught in the old foolish trap and read and read to the end of the novel. then, as often before, i feel indignant to have been duped and dragged after a foolish boy and girl, to see them at last married and portioned, and i instantly turned out of doors like a beggar that has followed a gay procession into the castle. had one noble thought opening the abysses of the intellect, one sentiment from the heart of god been spoken by them, i had been made a participator of their triumph, i had been an invited and an eternal guest, but this reward granted them is property, all-excluding property, a little cake baked for them to eat and for none other, nay, which is rude and insulting to all but the owner.' in wilhelm meister, i am a partaker of the prosperity. yet a novel may teach one thing as well as my choosings at the corner of the street which way to go, whether to my errand or whether to the woods, — this, namely, that action inspires respect; action makes character, power, man, god. i compare the passage in “ behaviour," where the same complaint is made in a more general way (conduct of life, pp. 191, 192). 516 (age 37 journal these novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies; — captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly ! or a february 4. i am dispirited by the lameness of an organ : if i have a cold, and the thought i would utter to my friend comes forth in stony, sepulchral tones, i am disgusted, and i will not speak more. but, as the drunkard who cannot walk can run, so i can speak my oration to an assembly, when i cannot without pain answer a question in the parlor. but lately it is a sort of general winter with me. i am not sick that i know, yet the names and projects of my friends sound far off and faint and unaffecting to my ear, as do, when i am sick, the voices of persons and the sounds of labor which i overhear in my solitary bed. a puny, limitary creature am i, with only a small annuity of vital force to expend, which if i squander in a few feast-days, i must feed on water and moss the rest of the time. i went to the rainers' concert last night in our court-house. when i heard them in bos1841] townsfolk. tea. labor: 517 ton, i had some dreams about music: last night, nothing. last night i enjoyed the audience. i looked with a great degree of pride and affection at the company of my townsmen and townswomen, and dreamed of that kingdom and society of love which we preach. his virtues were virtues of the senses. you can't tell how much good nature and generosity is to be ascribed to a good dinner, and how much to the character. there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. ... if i judge from my own experience i should unsay all my fine things, i fear, concerning the manual labor of literary men. they ought to be released from every species of public or private responsibility. to them the grasshopper is a burden. i guard my moods as anxiously as a miser his money; for company, business, my own household chares, untune and disqualify me for writing. i think then the writer ought not to be married; ought not to have a family. i think the roman church with its celibate clergy and its monastic cells was right. if he must marry, perhaps he should be regarded happiest who has a shrew for a wife, a sharp-tongued notable 518 (age 37 journal dame who can and will assume the total economy of the house, and, having some sense that her philosopher is best in his study, suffers him not to intermeddle with her thrift. he shall be master but not mistress, as elizabeth hoar said. february 1o. prudence. — what right have i to write on prudence whereof i have but little and that of the negative sort?'.... february 12. there is no time. — if the world would only wait one moment, if a day could now and then be intercalated, which should be no time, but pause and landing-place, a vacation during which sun and star, old age and decay, debts and interest of money, claims and duties, should all intermit and be suspended for the halcyon trance, so that poor man and woman could throw off the harness and take a long breath and consider what was to be done, without being fretted by the knowledge that new duties are gathering for them in the moment when they are considering the too much accumulated old duties ! but this i the rest of the passage is the opening paragraph of « prudence” (essays, first series). ne totalec e sense that suffers we shaltz h hoare 1841] hurry. the soul's law 519 on, on, forever onward, wears out adamant. all families live in a perpetual hurry. every rational thing gets still postponed and is at last slurred and ill-done or huddled out of sight and memory. februn i to le and march 1. in march many weathers. march always comes if it do not come till may. may generally does not come at all. ebruant would's of 70 time, during at ebts zu , shock the poorness or recentness of my experience must not deter me from affirming the law of the soul: nay, although there was never any life which in any just manner represented the facts. we are bound to say what already is, and is explained and demonstrated by every right and every wrong of ours, though we are far enough from that inward health which would make this true order appear to be the order of our lives. what a coxcomb is our experience which decides that such a fact or character cannot be because it has never been, as if that was not the reason why it should now be. march 19. sentcopies of my essays to nathaniel l. frothingham, sam g. ward, j.g. palfrey, n. i. bowditch, margaret fuller, caroline sturgis, w. h. cyon tz thrort nd corso frettes thering considera ! burebis 520 [age 37 journal furness, [rev.] dr. francis, samuel ripley, f. h. hedge, george ripley, abel adams, j. r. lowell, dr. james jackson, dr. charles t. jackson, [aunt] mary moody emerson, william emerson, henry ware, jr., george p. bradford, d[avid] h[enry] thoreau, a. b. alcott, w. ware, mrs. lucy c. brown, f. a. farley, elizabeth hoar, william henry channing, w. e. channing, jr., [rev.] barzillai frost, j. m. cheney, rockwood hoar, mother, lidian, h. colman, thomas w. haskins, sarah searle, edward palmer, william wordsworth, thomas carlyle, john sterling, harriet martineau, j. w. marston, sophia peabody [mrs. hawthorne], wm. m. jackson, h. bulfinch, mary russell, m. w. willis, n. 7. review, knickerbocker. april 10. do not judge the poet's life to be sad because of his plaintive verses and confessions of despair. because he was able to cast off his sorrows into these writings, therefore went he onward free and serene to new experiences. you must be a poet also to draw any just inference as to what he was from all the records, be they never so rich, which he has left. did you hear him speak? his speech did great injustice to his thought. it was either sorro 1841) poet and poem 521 better or worse. he gave you the treasures of his memory, or he availed himself of a topic rich in allusions to express hopes gayer than his life entertains, or sorrows poured out with an energy and religion which was an intellectual play and not the habit of his character. you shall not know his love or his hatred from his speech and behaviour. cold and silent he shall be in the circle of those friends who, when absent, his heart walks with and talks with evermore. face to face with that friend who for the time is unto him the essence of night and morning, of the sea and the land, the only equal and worthy incarnation of thought and faith, — silence and gloom shall overtake him ; his talk shall be arid and trivial. there is no deeper dissembler than the sincerest man. do not trust his blushes, for he blushes not at his affection, but at your suspicion. do not trust his actions, for they are expiations and fines often, with which he has amerced himself, and not the indications of his desire. do not conclude his ignorance or his indifference from his silence. do not think you have his thought, when you have heard his speech to the end. do not judge him worldly and vulgar, because he respects the rich and the well-bred, for to him the glittering symbol has a surpassing beauty which mar 522 [age 37 journal e it has not to other eyes, and fills his eye, and his heart dances with delight in which no envy and no meanness are mixed. him the circumstance of life dazzles and overpowers whilst it passes because he is so delicate a meter of every influence. you shall find him noble at last, noble in his chamber. france. — “but gymnast said, “my sovereign lord, such is the nature and complexion of the french that they are worth nothing but at the first push.'” -(rabelais.) i read with joy the life of pythagoras by iamblichus; and the use of certain melodies to awaken in the disciple now purity, now valor, now gentle ness. that life is itself such a melody, and proper to these holy offices. especially i admire the patience and longanimity of the probation of the novice. his countenance, his gait, his manners, diet, conversation, associates, employments, were all explored and watched; then the long discipline, the long silence was imposed, the new and vast doctrines taught, and then his vivacity and capability of virtue explored again. — if all failed, then his property (otherwise made common) was restored to him, a tomb built to his ds 1841] pythagoreans. mexico 523 memory, and he was thenceforward spoken of and regarded by the school as dead. the long patience in this fugitive world is itself an affecting argument of the eternity of soul, affirms the faith of those who thus greatly slight our swift almanacs. he who treats human beings as centennial, millennial natures, convinces me of his faith. ... yet how much i admire their use of music as a medicine. but for me, with deaf ears, order and self-control are the “melodies” which i should use to mitigate and tranquillize the ferocity of my animal and foreign elements. i saw with great pleasure the plates of the french artist of the ruins of palenqua in mexico: cyclopean remains of a simple and original architecture that compares at once with what is best of egyptian, doric, or gothic. its great value to the eye is the emancipation of the spirit which it works. everything is again possible. we are no longer forced to reproduce buildings in one of five or six foolish styles, but are as free as dreams, free as wishes, free as new necessities can make us. seest thou not how social and intrusive is the nature of all things ? ever they seek to penetrate 524 journal . (age 37 dan and overpower each the nature of every other creature, and itself alone in all modes and throughout space and spirit to prevail and possess.' ... man is the tender, irritable, susceptible matrix or receiver. the pollen of all these grand flowers, these savage forests, blows up and down and is lodged in him, and he bears a universal variegated blossom, rich with the qualities of every nature. there is nothing man meditates but he tends presently to recreate, — whether a gallery of sculpture, or economical machines, or a government, or a bank, or the starry heaven, or a field of flowers, — a ship or a picture, music or a farm, a whaling voyage, or a war. soft and facile all images float freely over his retina : the poet is he who can fix the grandest image and keep the vividness of a brisk conversation to a millennium. what are all these artists and masters of commerce, war, science, art, who go up and down so energetically, but the celebrators and worshippers and minions, one may say, each of some substance or relation in nature? that shining, alluring property did first sing in his ear a syren i the rest of this long and striking passage is in “the method of nature" (nature, addresses, etc., p. 212). e 525 1841) social tests song, was his seducer and sycophant, that it might in the end utterly possess and infuriate him in its service. april 13. in the unwelcome great snowstorm of this day i must blot a line to acknowledge the value of those social tests to which we all are brought in turn to be approved or damned. precisely as the chemist submits the new substance to the action of oxygen, hydrogen, electricity, vegetable blue, etc., each soul in our little massachusetts coterie is passed through the ordinary series of social re-agents, the market, the church, the parlour, the literary circle, writing, speaking, the ball, the reforms, etc., to ascertain his distinctive powers. those tests which call out our latent powers and give us leave to shine, we love and applaud; those which detect our deficiencies we hate and malign. the poet who is paralysed in the company of the young and beautiful, where he would so gladly shine, revenges himself by satire and taxing that with emptiness and display. it is but fair that they for whose friendship we are candidates, and they who are candidates for ours,and such are all men and all women, -should have the opportunity of putting and of being put into all the crucibles. 526 [age 37 journal but when we have been tried and found wanting in any one, the wise heart will cherish that mortification until the flower grows out of the noisome pit. it will learn that not by seeking to do, as others do, that thing for which it was shown that we had no faculty, but by pious waiting from month to month, from year to year, and ever new effort after greater self-truth, will the new way at last appear by which we are to do the correspondent act in our circle. i read alternately in doctor nichol and in saint-simon,' that is, in the heavens and in the earth, and the effect is grotesque enough. ... i am of the maker and of the made. the vastness of the universe, the portentous year of mizar and alcor are no vastness, no longevity to me. in the eternity of truth, in the almightiness of love, i slight these monsters. through i the architecture of the heavens, by john pringle nichol; mémoires, louis de rouvroi, duc de saint-simon. 2 here follow the two pages in « the method of nature" as to the consolation she gives by her teachings of tendency always working, when we are disgusted with man's present meanness (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 201-203). this is followed by the passage beginning, “ the whole code of her [nature's] law may be written on the thumbnail” (“nature,” essays, first series, p. 180). 1841) reward. the café 527 all the running sea of forms, i am truth, i am love, and immutable i transcend form as i do time and space. is a service of plate a fit reward of a virtuous action? or, is the friend whom it has won, and the insight it has given, and the reaction it has caused, the fit reward? and is science to be learned always in laboratories, or will it one day be eaten and drunken, be smelled and tested, be digged and swum and walked and dreamed? every man tries his hand at poetry somewhere, but most men do not know which their poems are. φυγή μόνου προς μόνον.' april 19. saint-simon paints fénelon as he sees him from the army and the saloons of versailles, so that his fénelon is a saint-simon in surplice, and no fénelon at all. i am tempted lately to wish, for the benefit of our literary society, that we had the friendly institution of the café. how much better than munroe's bookshop would be a coffee-room the fight of the only to the only. 528 journal (age 37 wherein one was sure at one o'clock to find what scholars were abroad taking their walk after the morning studies were ended. education. — we assume a certain air of holiness when we go to deal with our children, and appeal at that moment to a principle to which we do not appeal at other times. of course, we do not succeed: the child feels the fraud. simply the holy spirit is not there, and the effects cannot appear. april 20. would it not be well to write for the young men at waterville a history of our present literary and philosophical crisis, a portrait of the parties, and read the augury of the coming hours? in england, ethics and philosophy have died out. how solitary is coleridge and how conspicuous, not so much from his force as from his solitude. in this country, a throng of eager persons read and hear every divine word. yet for the most part there is great monotony in the history of our young men of the liberal or reforming class. they have only got as far as rejection, not as far as affirmation. they seem therefore angry and railers: they have nothing new or memorable to offer; and that is the vice of their writings, samuel t. coleridge 1841) american conditions 529 profuse declamation, but no new matter: after a very short time, this becomes to the reader insufferably wearisome, and the fine young men and women who looked but the other day in that direction, with eyes of hope like the first rays of morning, are turning away with a kind of bitterness from the saturation of talk, of promise, and of preaching. silence, personal prowess, cheerfulness, solid doing, seem to be the natural cures. we are a puny and fickle folk. hesitation and following are our diseases. the rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest, the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the whole generation is discontented with the tardy rate of growth which contents every european community. america is ... the country of small adventures, of short plans, of daring risks, not of patience, not of great combinations, not of long, persistent, close-woven schemes, demanding the utmost fortitude, temper, faith, and poverty. our books are tents, not pyramids : our reformers are slight and wearisome talkers, not man-subduing, immutable, all-attracting ; discharging their own task and so “charming the eye with dread," and per530 [age 37 journal suading without knowing that they do so. there are no duke wellingtons, no george washingtons, no miltons, bentleys, or hearns among our rapid and dashing race; but abundance of murats, of rienzis, of wallers, and that slight race who put their whole stake on the first die they cast. the great men bequeath never their projects to their sons to finish: these eat too much pound cake. the most interesting class of people are those who have genius by accident and are powerful obliquely.' ... beautiful to me, among so many ordinary and mediocre youths as i see, was sam ward when i first fairly encountered him, and in this way just named. there are two theories of life, one, for the demonstration of our talent, and the other for the education of the man. the life of politics, of the college, of the city, is very seductive, as it invites to the former, but sincerity counts all the time spent in the former lost, or all but a little. but obey the genius when he seems to 1 the rest of the passage is printed in « experience" (essays, second series, p. 68). 1841] polite war. the west 531 lead to uninhabitable deserts, penetrate to the bottom of the fact which draws you, although no newspaper, no poet, no man, has ever yet found life and beauty in that region, and presently when men are whispered by the gods to go and hunt in that direction, they shall find that they cannot get to the point which they would reach without passing over that highway which you have built. your hermit's lodge shall [be] the holy city and the fair of the whole world. war was courteously carried on, as a tournament of the aristocracy, in louis quatorze's time. duc de saint-simon relates that when the maréchal de lorges, general of the army on the rhine, fell sick, louis of baden, the general of the enemy, sent by trumpet offers of his physicians, of supplies, and every courtesy and attention in his power. april 21. america, and not europe, is the rich man. according to de tocqueville, the column of our population on the western frontier from lake superior to the gulf of mexico (twelve hundred miles as the bird flies) advances every year a mean distance of seventeen miles. he 1. a mea ournal (age 37 532 journal adds, “this gradual and continuous progress of the european race towards the rocky mountains has the solemnity of a providential event; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of god.” animals. — pirates do not live on nuts and herbs. the use of animal food marks the extremely narrow limits of our ideas of justice. we confine our justice to men alone, according to porphyry's remark. certainly our whole life ought to be a benefit, and the heliotrope and sweetbriar and thyme should not smell sweeter. april 22. whenever the church is restored, the culture of the intellect will be enjoined in it, not, as now, with an apology and reservations, but conscientiously and to the shame and repentance of our fat, sluggish, and trivial modes of living. and i think that the labor in a college should be as strenuous and rugged, i may say as audacious as any labor that is undertaken in agriculture or in war. and the student ought to feel a poignant shame if when he reads the marches of hannibal or napoleon across the alps, or the hardships of hudson and parry in their 1841) the scholar's courage 533 polar voyages, or the patience of columbus, these eminent pieces of endurance appear to him to indicate a greater manhood and resolution, a more incessant industry, or a ruder courage than that which he exercises in his silent library. does he wish to be a placid smiler, a demure, inoffensive reader of such books as the newspapers applaud, to be helped over a fence when he walks with a man, as if he were a girl (like my dear rev. mr. a.), – i see not how he is better than a lacquey hired to read, instead of one hired to wait on table or to polish boots. his courage is not that of a soldier or a sailor, but that of a scholar, and as worthy of their admiration as theirs is worthy of his. should not man be sacred to man? what are these thoughts we utter but the reason of our incarnation? to utter these thoughts we took flesh, missionaries of the everlasting word which will be spoken. april 23. do not cast about for reasons among their shop of reasons, but adduce yourself as the only reason. we forget daily our high call to be discoverers — we forget that we are embarked 1 i. e., the scholar's should be. overers 534 journal (age 37 on a holy, unknown sea in whose blue recesses we have a secret warrant that we shall yet arrive at the fortunate isles hid from men; and at each saucy wood-craft or revenue cutter or rum-boat that hails us, we are astonished, and put off from our purpose, and ready to return to the rotten towns we have left, and quit our seeking of the virgin shore. no great man ever complains of want of opportunity,— no, nor of any want except of being wanting to himself. all that he lays to the charge of his fortune accuses himself only. want of opportunity! why, did not divine necessity create him? did he not come into being because something must there be, and be done, which thing he and none other is and does? if i see, the world is visible enough, clothed in brightness and prismatic hues. if again i see from a deeper energy, i pierce the gay surface on all sides, and every mountain and rock and man and operation grows transparent before me.' .... when i wish, it is permitted me to say, these hands, this body, this history of waldo emerson are profane and wearisome, but i, i descend not i the rest of the paragraph is found in the method of nature” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 207, 208). an to vs trans1841) god in man. vitality 535 to mix myself with that, or with any man. above his life, above all creatures, i flow down forever, a sea of benefit into races of individuals. nor can the stream ever roll backward, or the sin or death of a man taint the immutable energy which distributes itself into men, as the sun into rays, or the sea into drops." 17 to encari when coleridge converses, or scott romances, or wordsworth writes poems, there is an admirable fact; and now the activity of the engineer, of the railroad builder, and the manufacturer is real and inventive, and deserves regard. commerce, speculation overflow their old boundaries and run into new paths. reform is to-day creative and not slavish. but the only rule and condition of merit and noteworthiness is not renown, nor number, nor property, nor geography, but only vitality. its title to be studied is not to be measured by anything but persons. . . . if you would know what was done long ago, examine the institutions, the millions, the wealth, the laws. if you would know what god now hath at heart, behold the bright eye, hear the melodious speech, mark the irresistible hand i the doctrine of the universal mind or the over-soul. see also “ pan" in the appendix to the poems. mer 536 [age 37 journal which that energy now flows into. it matters not what topic men prefer, but what subject or instance they select to study the same upon. not divination or ethics or astronomy is better than farriery or the rules of chess, but the one object of study is a great man. a great personal ascendancy is an inundation of reason, and therein they shall read the laws of gods and men and atoms. but scholars who should be diviners, ephori, judges, eyes and souls, bow to badges and officers, and do not require of every man whom they meet, that he should be the founder of a family, or a profession, the inventor of a way of life. geology, chemistry, animal dynamics, electricity, the law of day and night, and of all material relation is being read aloud. men we must distinguish between the hero's greatness and his foible, and not consecrate so much nonsense as we do because it was allowed by great men. there is none without his foible.' ... i here follow the passages in “ nominalist and realist” (p. 227) about the fear of angels' foibles ; and that in “ new england reformers ” (pp. 265, 266), about true and false concert of men (essays, second series). 1841) revealing eyes. beauty 537 april 24. i beheld him and he turned his eyes on me, his great serious eyes.' then a current of spiritual power ran through me, and i looked farther and wider than i was wont, and the visages of all men were altered and the semblances of things. the men seemed to me as mountains, and their faces seamed with thought, and great gulfs between them, and their tops reached high into the air. and when i came out of his sight, it seemed to me as if his eyes were a great river, like the ohio or the danube, which was always pouring a torrent of strong, sad light on some men, wherever he went, and tingeing them with the quality of his soul. the balance must be kept, — the power to generalize and the power to individualize must coexist to make a poet; will and abandonment, the social and the solitary humour, man and opportunity. beauty is the only sure sign, so that if your word threatens me, i know it is a bully, i know it is weak, i know there is a better word discoverable and returnable. that word only which is i perhaps some vision. v538 (age 37 journal fair and fragrant, which blooms and rejoices, which runs before me like verdure and a flowering vine, sowing an eden in the path, is truth. i hate, therefore, to hear that a cloud always hangs on an american's brow. i frequently find the best part of my ride in the concord coach from my house to winthrop place to be in prince street, charter street, ann street, and the like places at the north end of boston. the dishabille of both men and women, their unrestrained attitudes and manners, make pictures greatly more interesting than the cleanshaved and silk-robed procession in washington and tremont streets. i often see that the attitudes of both men and women engaged in hard work are more picturesque than any which art and study could contrive, for the heart is in these first. i say picturesque; because when i pass these groups, i instantly know whence all the fine pictures i have seen had their origin: i feel the painter in me: these are the traits which make us feel the force and eloquence of form and the sting of color. but the painter is only in me; it does not come to the fingers' ends. but whilst i see a true painting, i feel how it was made; i feel that genius organizes, or it 1841) god's gift to each 539 is lost. it is the gift of god; as fanny elssler can dance and braham can sing, when many a worthy citizen and his wife, however disposed, can by no culture either paint, dance, or sing. do not let them be so ridiculous as to try, but know thou, know all, that no citizen, or citizen's wife, no soul, is without organ. each soul is a soul or an individual in virtue of its having, or i may say being, a power to translate the universe into some particular language of its own: ... into something great, human, and adequate which, if it do not contain in itself all the dancing, painting, and poetry that ever was, it is because the man is faint-hearted and untrue. wouldest thou see the wonders of art and the graces of society without a sense of inferiority, make thy life secretly beautiful. [here follow passages on genius and on talent, which are printed in “the method of nature” (pp. 204 and 218). the following reference to miss mary moody emerson occurs, in the journal, in the middle of the latter passage.] may 4. aunt mary, whose letters i read all yesterday 540 journal (age 37 afternoon, is genius always new, subtle, frolicsome, musical, unpredictable. all your learning of all literatures and states of society, platonistic, calvinistic, english or chinese, would never enable you to anticipate one thought or expression. she is embarrassed by no moses or paul, no angelo or shakspeare, after whose type she is to fashion her speech: her wit is the wild horse of the desart, who snuffs the sirocco and scours the palm-grove without having learned his paces in the stadium or at tattersall's. what liberal, joyful architecture, liberal and manifold as the vegetation from the earth's bosom, or the creations of frostwork on the window! nothing can excel the freedom and felicity of her letters, — such nobility is in this self-rule, this absence of all reference to style or standard: it is the march of the mountain winds, the waving of flowers, or the flight of birds. but a man can hardly be a reader of books without acquiring their average tone, as one who walks with a military procession involuntarily falls into step. in every family is its own little body of literature, divinity, and personal biography, -a common stock which their education and circommon ve 1841] mary moody emerson 541 cumstance have furnished, and from which they all draw allusion and illustration to their conversation whilst it would be unintelligible (at least in the emphasis given to it) to a stranger. thus, in my youth, after we had brought home don juan and learned to pester aunt mary with grave repetition of the lines from the shipwreck: « they grieved for those who perished in the cutter, and likewise for the biscuit-casks and butter,” — these became the byword for the mean spirit of derision that characterised the present age, in contrast with the alleged earnest and religious spirit of the puritans, and especially the austere saints of concord and malden, she was so swift to remember. i find a letter of hers to charles, dated waterford, october, 1831:“o could you be here this afternoon—not a creature but the dog and me— we don't go to four-days-meeting. there's been one at the methodists', closing to-day, and such a rush from the other society. but such a day! here's one balm-of-gilead tree but a few leaves left, as though on purpose to catch the eye to see them play in the wind day after day, — and the 1 a « revival” then going on in waterford, maine. 542 journal [age 37 deserted nest. ah! where are its anxious parents and their loved brood ? dead? where the mysterious principle of life? . . . past nine o'clock. the vision of beauty has changed a white mist has risen which hides the venerable mount,' but shows the trees in fine picturesque, and the deserted nest is sheltered with a soft pall, like the oblivion which rests on the miseries of the wretched. just after the house was left for the evening vigils at the chapel, a man came for me to write a note he was going to carry. the peculiarity of notes here, is, a friend asks for another's conversion — thus the best of human feelings are brought into action. but note the cracker's;' i brought down by mistake the only pen which is good of the four (one which i don't use to you or brother s.3) and i persuaded him to shorten his petitions; and, as he was satisfied, surely there was no harm. and here comes a living voice — the charm too is gone from the i bear mountain, with a beautiful lake at its foot. 2 perhaps the humble revivalists were so called. the “ notes” referred to were written requests sent up to the minister in the pulpit for special remembrance in his prayer in cases of suffering or death of relatives, or for thanksgiving for happy events. 3 rev. samuel ripley of waltham, her half-brother. 1841] early new england 543 moon — she rides full brightly — the tarn has gathered her misty wanderers in her bosom, and the trees stretch their naked arms to the skies like the scathed martyrs of persecution.” new england theology. — the new relations we form we are apt to prefer, as our own ties, to those natural ones which they have supplanted. yet how strict these are, we must learn later, when we recall our childhood and youth with vivid affection, and feel a poignant solitude, even in the multitude of modern friends. in reading these letters of m. m. e. i acknowledge (with surprise that i could ever forget it) the debt of myself and my brothers to that old religion which, in those years, still dwelt like a sabbath peace in the country population of new england, which taught privation, self-denial, and sorrow.' a man was born, not for prosperity, but to suffer for the benefit of others, like the noble rock-maple tree which all around the villages bleeds for the service of man. not praise, not men's acceptance of our doing, but the spirit's holy errand through us, absorbed the thought. 1 this passage, although much of it is printed in the method of nature," is so intimate and personal that it is kept here. 544 journal (age 37 how dignified is this ! how all that is called talents and worth in paris and in washington dwindles before it! how our friendships and the complaisances we use, shame us now, — they withdraw, they disappear, and the gay and accomplished associates, and our elder company, the dear children and grave relatives with whom we played and studied and repented, they return and join hands again. i feel suddenly that my life is frivolous and public; i am as one turned out of doors, i live in a balcony, or on the street; i would fain quit my present companions as if they were thieves or pot-companions, and betake myself to some thebais, some mount athos, in the depths of new hampshire or maine, to bewail my innocency and to recover it, and with it the power to commune again with these sharers of a more sacred idea. i value andover, yale, and princeton as altars of this same old fire, though i fear they have done burning cedar and sandalwood there also, and have learned to use chips and pine. but i meant to say above, that we are surprised to find that we are solitary, that what is holiest in our character and faculty is unappreciated by those who stand around us, and so lies uncalled for and dormant, and that it needs 1841) the brothers 545 that our dear ghosts should return, or such as they, to challenge us to right combats. charles and edward. — i ought to record the pleasure i found, amid all this letter-reading, in some letters to c. c. e. from his college mates, in the uniform tone of affection and respect with which these boys — for such they still were — accost him. edward also was respected, admired by his mates, but, i suspect, never loved, not comprehended, not felt, — he puzzled them. yet i still remember with joy charles's remark when he returned from visiting edward at porto rico, that the tone of conversation there was the most frivolous and low that could be, yet that edward never suffered anything unworthy to be said in his presence, without speaking for the right, and so good-humoredly and so well, as invariably to command respect, and be a check on the company.' but charles always, from his i of edward emerson, dr. oliver wendell holmes thus spoke at a meeting of the massachusetts historical society in his tribute to the elder brother, in 1882: — “children of the same family, as we well know, do not alike manifest the best qualities belonging to the race. but the two brothers of ralph waldo emerson whom i can remember were of exceptional and superior natural endowments. edward bliss emerson, next to him in order of birth, was of the highest 546 (age 37 journal school days, had this following, and that of the best who were about him; it was true, leal service, homage to something noble and superior, which the giver felt it was a compliment to himself to pay. thus he brought boarders to the houses where he went, to danforth's in cambridge, and pelletier's in boston. may 6. these letters revive my faded purpose of writing the oft-requested memoir of charles. that certainly would have been unfit: it was right for the young and the dear friend to ask: it had been wrong in me to undertake; the very nobleness of the promise should make us more reluctant to recite the disappointment of the promise. let us not stoop to write the annals of sickness and disproportion. charles delighted in strength, in grace, in poetry, in success ; — shall we wrong promise, only one evidence of which was his standing at the head of his college class at graduation. i recall a tender and most impressive tribute of mr. everett's to his memory at one of our annual 0 b k meetings. he spoke of the blow which had jarred the strings of his fine intellect and made them return a sound, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,' in the saddened tones of that rich, sonorous voice still thrilling in the ears of many whose hearing is dulled for all the eloquence of to-day.” 1841) the old religion 547 him so far as to make him the unwilling object of pity, the centre of a group of pain, a caryatid statue in our temple of destiny? yet now, as i read these yellowing letters of aunt mary, i begin to entertain the project in a new form. i doubt if the interior and spiritual history of new england could be trulier told than through the exhibition of family history such as this, the picture of this group of aunt mary and the boys, mainly charles. the genius of that woman, the key to her life is in the conflict of the new and the old ideas in new england. the heir of whatever was rich and profound and efficient in thought and emotion in the old religion which planted and peopled this land. she strangely united to this passionate piety the fatal gifts of penetration, a love of philosophy, an impatience of words, and was thus a religious skeptic. she held on with both hands to the faith of the past generation as to the palladium of all that was good and hopeful in the physical and metaphysical worlds; and in all companies, and on all occasions, and especially with these darling nephews of her hope and pride, extolled and poetised this beloved calvinism. yet all the time she doubted and denied it, and could not tell whether to be more glad or sorry to find that these boys 548 [age 37 journal were irremediably born to the adoption and furtherance of the new ideas. she reminds me of margaret graeme, the enthusiast in scott's abbot, who lives to infuse into the young roland her enthusiasm for the roman church; only that our margaret doubted whilst she loved. milton and young were the poets endeared to the generation she represented. of milton they were proud, but i fancy their religion has never found so faithful a picture as in the night thoughts. these combined traits in aunt mary's character gave the new direction to her hope, that these boys should be richly and holily qualified and bred to purify the old faith of what narrowness and error adhered to it, and import all its fire into the new age, — such a gift should her prometheus bring to men. she hated the poor, low, thin, unprofitable, unpoetical humanitarians as the devastators of the church and robbers of the soul, and never wearies with piling on them new terms of slight and weariness. “ah!" she said, “what a poet would byron have been, if he had been born and bred a calvinist.” sunday. beautiful, eloquent day, rich with more than i have skill to tell, though i have attempted it 1841) advancing man 549 in verses. we rightly call the woods enchanting, they so confound all our measures, and upset our whole system of tradition.' ... here reigns eternal sabbath, and the hours so ample and profound, they seem to stretch to centuries. ... how far off is man and his works; babylon and britain draw very near together, and are not to be discriminated. the circumstance is here emphatically felt to be nothing. the present age will perhaps be characterised long hence by the importance now for several centuries attached to two words, namely, gentleman and christian. yet see how this is the prevalence or inundation of an idea, and not of any person or purpose. who did this? who elevated these two words to their dignity in the metaphysical and practical world? was any man a party to this exaggeration? plainly no man, but all men. well, there is no fact and no thought which shall not equally come in turn to the top and be celebrated. general harrison was neither whig nor tory, but the indignation president; and, what was i the omitted sentences are in the first pages of “ nature" (essays, second series). 550 journal [age 37 not at all surprising in this puny generation, he could not stand the excitement of seventeen millions of people, but died of the presidency in one month. a man should have a heart and a trunk vascular and on the scale of the aqueducts or the cloaca maxima of rome to bear the friction of such a mississippi stream. the dew-drops which are only superficial, what a depth do they give to the aspect of the morning meadows as you walk! so do manners, so do social talents to frivolous society. we know as little of men as we do of plants. we doubt not that every weed in our soil hath its uses, and each no doubt excellent and admirable uses; yet now how poorly they figure in our materia medica ! and is not a man better than a mullein or a buckthorn? i walked in my dream with a pundit who said, ... he could not speak with me many words, for the life of incarnate natures was short, but that the vice of men was old age, which they ought never to know; for, though they should see ten centuries, yet would they be younger than the waters, which — hearken unto their sound! 1841) flowing religion 551 how young is it, and yet how old ! neither, said he, ought men ever to accept grief from any external event; for, poverty, death, deluges, fires, are flaws of cold wind or a passing vapor which do not affect a constant soul. he added, that, as the river flows, and the plant flows (or emits odours), and the sun flows (or radiates), and the mind is a stream of thoughts, so was the universe the emanation of god.' . .. therefore, he added, they mistake who seek to find only one meaning in sacred words and images, in the name of gods, as jove, apollo, osiris, vishnu, odin : or in the sacred names of western europe and its colonies, as jesus and the holy ghost: for these symbols are like coins of different countries, adopted from local proximity or convenience, and getting their cipher from some forgotten accident, the name of a consul, or the whim of a goldsmith; but they all represent the value of corn, wool, and labor, and are readily convertible into each other, or into the coin of any new country. that sense which is conveyed to one man by the name and rites of pan or jehovah, is found by another in the study of earthquakes and floods, by another in i the omitted passage about emanations is found in “ the method of nature” (p. 199). or 552 journal (age 37 the forms and habits of animals; by a third in trade, or in politics; by a fourth in electromagnetism. let a man not resist the law of his mind and he will be filled with the divinity which flows through all things. he must emanate; he must give all he takes, nor desire to appropriate and to stand still. he also said, that the doctrine of pantheism or the omnipresence of god would avail to abolish the respect of circumstance, or the treating all things after the laws of time and place, and would accustom men to a profounder insight. thus hospitality, he said, was an external fact. the troops of guests who succeed each other as inmates of our houses and messmates at our tables, week after week, are recording angels who inspect and report our domestic behaviour, our temperance, our conversation, and manners. therefore, the pure in heart, having nothing to hide, are the most hospitable, or keep always open house. but to those who have somewhat to conceal, every guest is unwelcome. a man is a gate betwixt hell and heaven. through his heart streams a procession, when he wills good, of all angels and mights; when he wills evil, of all cattle and devils. thou saidst 1841) the heart a gate 553. of thy heart just now that it was cold, that it was broken, and thou wonderest why god should create it to be pained; and other the like things. what is the heart, but the power to give and receive which varies every moment with the action? whoso blesseth all beings or any being, to him, to her, bend all the world of spirits, as the brothers' sheaves to joseph's sheaf. whoso curseth any, by word or deed, from him, from her, all spirits in all worlds turn their backs. you cannot will without turning the key of nature and opening or shutting the door of light and of darkness. there where you are, create value, and you publish yourself on the wings of every wind, every ray of light becomes your advertisement, and all souls shall bid on you until your just wages are paid. i owe to genius always the same debt of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing me that gods are sitting disguised in this seeming gang of gypsies and pedlars.' and why should i owe it to a book or a friend, and not myself pierce the thin incognito ? a question i may well ask, but i must ask it of my hands and of my i this sentence occurs in “ works and days” (society and solitude, p. 176). 554 [ace 37 journal will. holiness is the only stair to the mount of god. yet am i continually tempted to sacrifice genius to talent, the hope and promise of insight (through the sole door of better being) to the lust of a freer play and demonstration of those gifts i have. we seek that pleasurable excitement which unbinds our faculties and gives us every advantage for the display of that skill we possess, and we buy this freedom to glitter by the loss of general health. humility, patience, abstinence, mortification, nakedness (stripping off these clothes of law, custom, fortune, and friends), they can teach a philosophy, a rhetoric, and a poetry which the world has not heard these thousand years. coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer. — dost thou not fear that this perception, so keen, of right and wrong thou hast, of the true and the ridiculous in reform, will some time vanish and not be, and dost thou not wish to hold it to thee? i know thou dost. do then what thou knowest.'.... what is strong but goodness, and what is energetic but the presence of a good man? it is time that this doctrine of the presence?... i « method of nature” (p. 222). 2 ibid. (p. 216). 1841] saints' worship 555 the crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological globe we inhabit.'... the various matters which men magnify, as trade, law, creeds, sciences, paintings, coins, manuscripts, histories, poems, are all pieces of virtu which serve well enough to unfold the talents of the man, but are all diversions from the insight of the soul. saints' worship is one of these, the worship of mahomet or jesus, — like all the rest, a fine field of ingenuity wherein to construct theories : a fine, capacious platform whereon to build institutions and societies, poetry, eloquence, and reputation — nay, a drug, a specific for the present distress, a crutch for fainting virtue, a lozenge for the sick;but, seriously and sadly considered, a remedy more dangerous than the disease. the soul will none of this roving. why goest thou boswellizing this saint or that? it is lèse-majesté, it is the razor to the throat: here art thou, with whom so long the universe travailed in labor. darest thou to think meanly of thyself — thee whom the stalwart fate brought forth to unite his ragged sides; to shoot the gulf; to reconcile the erst irreconcileable? as long as thou magnifiest anything, thou accusest thyself i “method of nature” (pp. 195, 196). 556 journal [age 33 e of trifling, of dallying and postponing thy own deed, for, when once thou graspest the handles of thy plough, thou wilt put all names behind thee as living nature forces us to put all dead bodies under ground. in the infinite disparity between the soul and any one incarnation of it, though holiest and grandest, all differences between one and another disappear, — they have no parallax at a distance so vast. " in every pulse of virtue, in every revelation, tho’ slightest, of the soul, the soul affirmeth the kingdom of the universe, the descent of itself into man. may 28. can i not learn that there is nothing settled in manners?'... good sense is the leader of fashion as of everything else. a man has strong sense to write or to command armies, but he makes no figure in society, simply because there his sense does not work,is dismounted by his selfconsciousness, or excessive desire to please, or some other superstition; but the reason why he yields so readily to the victors of the carpet is, (essays, second series, 1 the rest is in “manners” pp. 131, 132). 1841) night 557 that he feels and sees that they carry the matter more sensibly than he. [in his letter to carlyle, may 30, mr. emerson said:— “one reader and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as i hope, for a twelvemonth to come, henry thoreau, a poet whom you may one day be proud of;a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and inventions. we work together day by day in my garden, and i grow well and strong.” — (carlyle emerson correspondence, vol. i, letter lx.)] june 6. i am sometimes discontented with my house because it lies on a dusty road, and with its sills and cellar almost in the water of the meadow. but when i creep out of it into the night or the morning and see what majestic and what tender beauties daily wrap me in their bosom, how near to me is every transcendent secret of nature's love and religion, i see how indifferent it is where i eat and sleep. this very street of hucksters and taverns the moon will transform to a palmyra, for she is the apologist of all apologists, and will kiss the elm trees alone and hides every meanness in a silver-edged darkness. then near 558 (age 38 journal the good river-god has taken the form of my valiant henry thoreau here and introduced me to the riches of his shadowy, starlit, moonlit stream, a lovely new world lying as close and yet as unknown to this vulgar trite one of streets and shops as death to life, or poetry to prose. through one field only we went to the boat and then left all time, all science, all history, behind us, and entered into nature with one stroke of a paddle. take care, good friend! i said, as i looked west into the sunset overhead and underneath, and he with his face toward me rowed towards it, — take care; you know not what you do, dipping your wooden oar into this enchanted liquid, painted with all reds and purples and yellows, which glows under and behind you. presently this glory faded, and the stars came and said, “here we are ”; began to cast such private and ineffable beams as to stop all conversation. a holiday villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, most magnificent, most heartrejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and poetry ever decked and enjoyed — it is here, it is this. these stars signify it and proffer it: they gave the idea and the invitation,' ... i portions of this passage are printed in "nature"(essays, second series, pp. 172-174). stars and moon 559 these beguiling stars, soothsaying, flattering, persuading, who, though their promise was never yet made good in human experience, are not to be contradicted, not to be insulted, nay, not even to be disbelieved by us. all experience is against them, yet their word is hope and shall still forever leave experience a liar. ... yes, bright inviters! i accept your eternal courtesy.' ... but on us, sitting darkling or sparkling there in the boat, presently rose the moon, she cleared the clouds and sat in her triumph so maidenly and yet so queenly, so modest yet so strong, that i wonder not that she ever represents the feminine to men. there is no envy, no interference in nature. the beauty and sovereignty of the moon, the stars, or the trees, do not envy; they know how to make it all their own. as we sail swiftly along, and so cause the moon to go, now pure through her amber vault, and now through masses of shade, and now half-hid through the plumes of an oak or a pine, each moment, each aspect is sufficient and perfect; there is no better or worse, no interference, no preference; but every virtuous act of man or woman accuses other i compare lines in “the poet” (poems, appendix, p. 314). 560 journal (age 38 men and women; shames me; and the person of every man or woman as in my varying love slighted or preferred. blessed is law. this moon, the hill, the plant, the air, obey a law, they are but animated geometry and numbers; to them is no intemperance; these are through law born and ripened and ended in beauty: but we through the transgression of law sicken and inveterate. june 7. here follow several sentences from the “ chaldæan oracles” attributed to zoroaster.] things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand body; but only as many as are lightly armed arrive at the summit. it is not proper to understand the intelligible with vehemence but with the extended aame of an extended mind measuring all things except that intelligible. but it profits to understand . this for if you incline your mind you will understand it not earnestly, but it becomes you to bring with you a pure and inquiring eye; to extend the void mind of your soul to the intelligible because it subsists beyond mind. 1841) culture. books beguile 561 you will not understand it as when understanding some particular thing. there is a certain intelligible which it becomes you to understand with the flower of the mind. let the immortal depth of your soul lead you. enlarge not thy destiny. to every tree its own leaf and fruit, and every man; are you a juniper or are you an orange : but if the tree is pruned and exposed to the south wind and manured, then it will bear a cartload of oranges; if neglected, few and bad. so it seems more the pity if you are a man of genius, the sweetest of all poets, that you should pine in bad condition and yield one song in a year. tok sed ive ii idei es we are too civil to books. for a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. even the great books, — “come,” say they, “we will give you the key to the world.” — each poet, each philosopher says this, and we expect to go like a thunder-bolt to the centre. . . . ever and forever heraclitus is justified, who called the world an eternal inchoation. undercut rstands critics. — the borer on our peach trees bores i see « the method of nature” (p. 196). 562 [age 38 journal that she may deposit an egg : but the borer into theories and institutions and books bores that he may bore. the man of practical or worldly force requires of the preacher a talent, a force like his own.' ... you defy anybody to have things as good as yours. hafiz” defies you to show him or put him in a condition inopportune and ignoble. take all you will, and leave him but a corner of nature, a lane, a den, a cowshed, out of cities, far from letters and taste and culture; he promises to win to that scorned spot, the light of moon and stars, the love of men, the smile of beauty, the homage of art. it shall be painted, and carved, and sung and celebrated and visited by pilgrimage in all time to come. (from g) july. the actual. – o protean nature, whose energy is change evermore, thou hurlest thyself i the rest of the passage is printed in « the preachers” (natural history of intellect, p. 30). 2 mr. emerson uses the name of hafiz, as he more frequently did that of saadi (seyd or said), in describing a poet's life or ideal. (see “saadi,” beauty,” and “ fragments on the poet and the poetic gift" in the poems.) 1841) waste power. ascetic 563 into a berry or a drop, thou lodgest all thought in a word, all moral quality in the glance of an eye, but tell me, art thou only such a creator as bards and orators ? is thy power only for display? or canst thou change the form of this waste and unnecessary day into an hour of love and fitness ? when i see what waste strength is in friendship and in the writing and reading of modern society, the world seems to exist to dilettantism. osman and schill' schill. no tea! no wine! how are you the better or how am i the worse? osman. you are wise for me now. i am dull and you are inspired. but i know what you say, and shall remember it when you cannot. schill. how mean you that? osman. time is my friend and not yours. the vital force is more ductile than gold, and the coin which you throw into a gambler's hand may be beaten into a leaf which shall gild the globe. schill. whilst i confess i come eating and drinking, i praise your self-denial which i also 1 there seems to be no reason to be given for the choice of the name schill for one of the interlocutors. it has nothing to do with the hero of wordsworth's sonnet. 564 journal [age 38 think is ton and tournure which makes kings vulgar. osman. it is no virtue in me, sir. my father gave me a good constitution, which makes the taste of berries as grateful to me as pears or pineapples to you; and my temperance is no more to be imputed to me for righteousness than is the fact that a straw hat protects my head for all these years as well as an iron helmet. i think myself master of assyrian luxury when i walk in the woods through sweet-fern and sassafras, or pass to the leeward of an elder bush in flower, or blacken my teeth with the betel nuts we have now plucked. one thing fell from you just now concerning fashion, which, though i did not quite understand it, may be the same thing which i have often thought, — that the best teachers of elegance are the stars which shine so delicately in yonder amber sky; and in the presence of the woodland flowers and the birds, i am ashamed to be coarse in my costume or behavior. character. a word warm from the heart written or spoken, that enriches me. i surrender at discretion;'... i for the rest of the passage, see « character” (essays, second series, pp. 104, 105). 153co 1841] constancy. real life 565 i value my welfare too much to pay you any longer the compliment of attentions. i shall not draw the thinnest veil over my defects, but if you are here, you shall see me as i am. you will then see that, though i am full of tenderness, and born with as large hunger to love and to be loved as any man can be, yet its demonstrations are not active and bold, but are passive and tenacious. my love has no flood and no ebb, but is always there under my silence, under displeasure, under cold, arid, and even weak behavior. bas ei: herk 7 sati a inc 113 73 i think not of mean ages, but of chaldæan, egyptian, or teutonic ages, when man was not featherbrained, or french, or servile, but, if he stooped, he stooped under ideas: times when the earth spoke and the heavens glowed, when the actions of men indicated vast conceptions, and men wrote histories of the world in prison, and builded like himmaleh and the alleghany chains. i think that only is real which men love and rejoice in.'... ence i asked the i e. . men do not to-day believe in one who ascribes to man the attributes of the soul: even they who i most of what follows is in the « lecture on the times” (nature, addresses, etc., p. 264). 566 (age 38 journal speak that speech will scarcely stick to it, and if a man assert that great mystery, every little scribbler in the newspaper shall make great eyes, and point at his own little brain, and say, he is mad; and it may and does happen that the man who spoke it shall flee before the word of this newspaper written by some shallow boy in the dark, who wrote he knew not what, dipping his pen in mire and darkness. and yet night and morning, earth and heaven, and the soul of man are not to be so easily disposed of. it is true that there is another side to man. the other side, of fugitiveness, of frailty, that man is moth, or bubble, or gossamer, they readily hear and say: but that man is necessary and eternal they unwillingly hear. a man must reach the whole extent from heaven to earth. but it is possible that a man may come to subsist in some other way than that which the prudent think of. hateful it is that transcendent men should only come to us in obscure and lurid forms, and not like sunshine and blue sky. yet when they come, they will not be reported: they will affect men in a rapturous and extraordinary way, and the last thing they will think of will be to take notes. the age once more should appear capacious, undefinable, far retreating, still renewing, as the en 1841) variety. yearnings 567 depths of the horizon do when seen from the hills. you have many coats in your wardrobe, for you are rich. you need many for your conversation; and your action i am heartily tired of, — old, musty, and stale. but godfrey, who has but one coat to his back, has as many to his thought as nature has days or plants or transformations. july 6. ah, ye old ghosts! ye builders of dungeons in the air ! why do i ever allow you to encroach on me a moment; a moment, to win me to your hapless company? in every week there is some hour when i read my commission in every cipher of nature, and know that i was made for another office, a professor of the joyous science, a detector and delineator of occult harmonies and unpublished beauties, a herald of civility, nobility, learning, and wisdom; an affirmer of the one law, yet as one who should affirm it in music or dancing. a priest of the soul, yet one who would better love to celebrate it through the beauty of health and harmonious power. my trees teach me the value of our circumstance or limitation. i have a load of manure, 568 [age 38 · journal and it is mine to say whether i shall turn it into strawberries, or peaches, or carrots. i have a tree which produces these golden delicious cones called bartlett pears, and i have a plant of strong common-sense called a potato. the pear tree is certainly a fine genius, but with all that wonderful constructive power it has, of turning air and dust, yea, the very dung to hesperian fruit, it will very easily languish and bear nothing, if i starve it, give it no southern exposure, and no protecting neighborhood of other trees. how differs it with the tree-planter? he too may have a rare constructive power to make poems, or characters, or nations, perchance, but though his power be new and unique, if he be starved of his needful influences, if he have no love, nobook, no critic, no external call, no need or market for that faculty of his, then he may sleep through dwarfish years and die at last without fruit. colombe prefers to take work of edmund hosmer by the job, “ for the days are damn long.” 1 a french-canadian laborer. edmund hosmer was a neighbor and friend of mr. emerson's, a farmer of the oldfashioned thrifty type. his virtues are told by mr. emerson in “ agriculture in massachusetts," first printed in the dial, now included in the works (natural history of intellect, p. 358). 1841) a text. facing the soul 569 sunday. if i were a preacher, i should carry straight to church the remark lidian made to-day, that “she had been more troubled by piety in her help than with any other fault. the girls that are not pious, she finds kind and sensible, but the church members are scorpions, too religious to do their duties, and full of wrath and horror at her if she does them.” re every man has had one or two moments of extraordinary experience, has met his soul, has thought of something which he never afterwards forgot, and which revised all his speech, and moulded all his forms of thought. i resent this intrusion of alterity. that which is done, and that which does, is somehow, i know, part of me. the unconscious works with the conscious, — tells somewhat which i consciously learn to have been told. what i am has been conveyed secretly from me to another whilst i was vainly endeavoring to tell him it. he has heard from me what i never spoke. if i should or could record the true experience of my late years, i should have to say that i skulk and play a mean, shiftless, subaltern part 570 journal (age 38 much the largest part of the time. things are to be done which i have no skill to do, or are to be said which others can say better, and i lie by, or occupy my hands with something which is only an apology for idleness, until my hour comes again." but woe to him who is always successful, who still speaks the best word, and does the handiest thing, for that man has no heavenly moment. i find an analogy also in the asiatic sentences to this fact of life. the oriental genius has no dramatic or epic turn, but ethical, contemplative, delights in zoroastrian oracles, in vedas, and menu and confucius. these all embracing apophthegms are like these profound moments of the heavenly life.” lidian says that the only sin which people never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion. 1 the rest of the passage, in an impersonal form, is found in “ the transcendentalist” (nature, addresses, etc., pp. 353, 354). 2 the dial was printing, under the title “ ethnical scriptures," sentences from the above sources. 571 1841) carlyle carlyle with his inimitable ways of saying the thing is next best to the inventor of the thing. “i king saib built this pyramid. i, when i had built it, covered it with satin. let him that cometh after me and says he is equal to me cover it with mats.” end of volume v @be riverside press cambridge . massachusetts u.s. a